One More Body

by Josh Stallings

  “Low. Mr. Gallico around?”

  “Where else would he be?”

  “A crypt?”

  He didn’t smile, even a little bit. “Heard you was in Mexico.”

  “Came back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Missed you. Can I go back?” He had me raise my hands, did a pat down. Found nothing. Hell, I didn’t even have a lock-blade. Would have to change that sooner than later.

  Don Gallico sat at his usual table, drinking a tall glass of milk. He had tubes running out of his nose to an oxygen tank. A nurse in a starched white uniform sat beside him reading a paperback.

  “Shelly, this is Moses McGuire. A famous man-killer.” He quacked through a buzzing cylinder he pressed to what was left of his vocal cords. The nurse nodded but didn’t look up from her book. “Moses, who have you come to ask my permission to kill today?” In years past he spoke in code, always afraid of a wire. Time had made him either bold or stupid.

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Of course you are. Anthony,” he called to the kitchen, “get Moses a bowl of soup.” You never refuse a meal with Don Gallico. The room was largely empty. It was a relic of better times. The Pope looked around the room; two old men sat drinking coffee. “Not like back in the day, right, Moses? I ran this town. Tell Shelly, tell her I ran this whole town.”

  “He did, he no shit ran Los Angeles.” She looked up, smiled at me, then went back to reading.

  “Those was the days. When I made my bones? We had Frank the Voice. Fuck pads all over town. We had class in those days. Never sold drugs, left that to the niggers. I miss those times, know what I mean, Mo?”

  “Good old guinea days? No drugs, but you never shied away from prostitution, right?”

  “Class, kid. Girls, loans, numbers, none of that drug-drive-by-backward-baseball crap.”

  “No, you just sold young girl’s innocence for five bucks a shot in back rooms and alleyways. Pure class, you old guinea prick.”

  He looked like his head was going to explode. He sputtered, trying to form words. From the door, Bobby the aged thug started to move on me. I wrapped my hand around a fork. Focused on the Pope’s throat. Bobby left his hand resting on the automatic in his belt, but stopped moving.

  The Pope looked from Bobby to me to the nurse and smiled. “Don’t grow old, kid.”

  “I’m doing my best not to.”

  He let out a rattling laugh. “Yes, you are.” The laugh turned into a coughing fit. The nurse handed him a tissue. Blood flecked his phlegm. He finally looked up. His eyes went hard. I knew he hated me seeing him like this. His pride made him dangerous. I’d hate to get shot so he could prove he still had his balls intact. A gray-haired waiter broke the tension when he set a bowl before me. Vegetables in chicken broth. It was good, fresh, healthy tasting.

  “Mangia, che ti passa. Doctor has me off the sausages, cheese, butter. Life, huh?”

  “Life.”

  “They say you took out those Russians, cleaned house, no one here or in Mexico was left standing. They say you even took out an Israeli defense team.”

  “They say a lot of things.”

  “You should have stayed with me, kid. We could have owned this town.”

  “From where I was sitting, it looked like you did.” He smiled at that one. He was strolling down a bloody memory lane.

  “True. Our friend from Chicago convinced the families to leave you alone. As long as you weren’t killing Italians, who cared?”

  “How is he?” Leo was a mob fixer. He saved my life and I, in turn, had kept him out of jail.

  “Leo, is Leo. Impeccable. They gave him LA.” The old man looked off into the near distance, starting to lose focus.

  “Mr. Gallico, I’m looking for a girl. She was kidnapped. I think you can help me.”

  He didn’t look up.

  “I’m looking for a gun dealer named Sunshine.”

  “That moolie bitch been a thorn in my side since she was a kid.” His face flushed. “In the seventies, she took a couple of very good earners off the board. Not that I didn’t use her as a hitter when I needed it clean. You wanted someone killed in nigger town, or anywhere else, she was your man.”

  “I need to find her. ”

  “Why would you want that? She’s washed out.”

  “She’s the only lead I have. Unless you know who’s been giving bangers rocket launchers.”

  “Rocket launchers? It is the Wild West out there. Crews coming up from El Salvador are going to make people wish Italians still ran things.” He was talking more to himself than to me.

  “Mr. Gallico, I need to find Sunshine.”

  “Yes, you do.” He scrawled an address and passed it to me. He looked confused. “Anthony, get Moses a bowl of soup.” If the waiter was confused by this, he didn’t show it. He replaced my almost full bowl with a fresh one. I ate it.

  I pulled the 5.0 into traffic and headed for Compton. The old man gave me an address, beyond that I was on my own. An older Chevy Malibu was following me from two or three cars back. I wasn’t sure how long they had been on me. Not good. To stop noticing who was behind you was a quick way to end up dead.

  CHAPTER 17

  I was doing over a hundred when I exited the 101 at Stadium Way, up on two wheels and sliding. The Malibu followed me. Their tires were smoking hard, but keeping stuck on me. The signs pointed toward Dodger Stadium. I kept the gas pedal nailed down. Rounding a sweeper, I saw what I was hunting for. LAPD Police Academy. I hammered the brakes and went from sixty to thirty fast. The Malibu almost rear-ended me. The driver was an olive-skinned veterano, do-rag. I could almost read the tattoo on his neck. His passenger was a teenage Latino banger.

  I slid into the police academy’s visitors’ parking lot. They didn’t follow me, so I guessed they weren’t undercover cops. Titan had a whole stack of reasons to want me in a casket. If these cats had been black, I’d have known why they wanted me dead. Hell, Russians, Italians, Armenians, they all wanted me dead. But other than the Ensenada crew, I couldn’t think of any Latino who wanted me dead. Maybe Xlmen had familia in Los Angeles.

  Raffi was singing “Shake My Sillies Out” under the low rumble of the Mustang’s custom pipes. I waited for the verse to end then barreled ass out of there. By the time I hit the 101 I was relatively sure I’d shaken the Malibu. Rain started coming down, turning the windshield into a colorful smear dotted with ruby flashes of brake lights. The 5.0 had good rubber and clean wipers. Gregor bought it for Nika, he was teaching her to drive, so I knew it was safe.

  Raffi was killing me with his jolly tunes so I switched to the radio and was confronted by thumping hip hop. I turned it off and listened to the rhythm of the wipers. The address The Pope gave me for Sunshine was in Culver City, at the base of Baldwin Hills.

  THE BUILDING WAS a scarred warehouse in an industrial neighborhood in that no man’s land stuck between Compton’s poverty and West LA billionaires. It was after seven, streetlights painted the slick asphalt. The factory buildings lining the road were all closed for the night. The only parked cars looked like they hadn’t moved in a long time. I circled the warehouse twice to be sure there weren’t any surprises.

  All was quiet.

  I parked and moved up to the front door. The windows were blacked out. I raised my hand to knock.

  The door snapped open and a young man stabbed a revolver barrel into my cheek. “Wrong fucking door, old man.”

  “Pull the trigger.” I was relaxed. “Or don’t.” He clicked the hammer back. “Son, you’ve been watching too many movies. If you want to kill a man, cock it before opening the door.”

  “Fuck you, bitch.” He was sweating, but he wasn’t squeezing the trigger.

  “Son?”

  “I ain’t your son.”

  “Nope. It’s time to decide. Drop me, or step aside.”

  “Kenny,” a woman called from the shadows.

  “I got this handled, Miss S.”

  She rolled h
er wheelchair into the light. She had a beautiful face, flawless coffee and cream skin. I knew she was in her fifties, but only her eyes showed her age. They were cold. No, more than cold, they were world-weary. I knew that look; it stared back at me in the mirror every morning. A quilt covered her shoulders and lap. Her right hand was under the quilt, holding a piece no doubt.

  “Kenny, put the gun away before Mr. McGuire rips your hand off.” Kenny eased up, then let his hand fall to his side, still ready to pull it up. “Now step out of the way. Mr. McGuire, please come in out of the rain.”

  Kenny finally cleared the doorway. I rubbed my cheek where the barrel had been. I shook the water off my leather. “Sunshine?”

  “Join me for a drink?” She turned the chair around, expecting me to follow. I did.

  “Mr. Gallico’s people call you?”

  “Who?” She seemed surprised to hear The Pope’s name. Kenny slid back a thick steel door and we entered a warm, windowless office. It was a combination of rich leather couches, club chairs, an antique coffee table, a bookcase filled with leather-bound books and high-tech computer workstations. Video monitors showed the neighborhood surrounding us.

  “Macallan, right?” She stopped in front of an oak bar.

  “Neat.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  “Not in my opinion. I saw a kid showing off order it with Coke.”

  “Did you shoot him?”

  “Nope. Should have.”

  “Yes, you should have.” She poured a good three fingers into a crystal tumbler. Kenny settled at one of the computers. The revolver was on the desk beside his hand.

  “Why are you here, Mr. McGuire?”

  “How do you know me? I know we never met, some things a man doesn’t forget.”

  She smiled very slightly. “You don’t flatter, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” She was the kind of stunner you could have seen crossing a street just once and never forget. “How?”

  “Yeah, baby, how do I know you? Right? You are one of my heroes. Aren’t too many big old Vikings running around this hood after dark.”

  I took a healthy slug of whiskey. Tried not to look half as confused as I felt.

  “What you did to those flesh traffickers in Ensenada was pure gold. We could have made quite a team back in the day.”

  “Except I was in the joint and you were working for the mob.”

  “Gallico, he gave you my address? Man either trusts you or you had a gun on his junk.”

  I took another swallow. She was enjoying holding all the cards. “Let’s say he trusts me. Or that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Someone fired an RPG at me, from inside a car. The blowback didn’t rip out the door behind him.” That got Sunshine’s attention, not that she showed it much. “They also used a tracer round, but it was the RPG that got my attention.”

  “How the fuck did you survive?” Kenny had been listening in.

  “It’s rude to eavesdrop, son.” Even from across the room I saw him tense at being called son again. Back to Sunshine I said, “Luck, I guess.” I thought about Angel, dead. Luck? It was anything but that.

  “Luck? More likely operator error. Surprising. An AT4-CS, close quarters urban RPG. Limited backblast.” There was a spark in her eyes as she talked about it. “Sexy motherfucker. Simple, any grunt can use it. Point, shoot and throw away. You must have been a very bad man to have someone willing to spread the green to kill you. Who have you been pissing on?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. Who would have the juice to get one of these?”

  “You want me to tell you if I sold any. That’s the reason you’re here, right?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “You are a fine-looking man. I still had working legs, I might wrap them around you and see if we could break some furniture. But I don’t. So just what the fuck is in it for me?” Hearing the edge in her voice, Kenny moved his hand onto the revolver. He was watching my reflection in the monitor in front of him.

  “Lady, I got nothing. I’m miles in over my head and dropping fast. Anyone who helps me is guaranteed to be paid back with trouble. I’m also a thirteen-year-old girl’s only hope. She was grabbed in Crenshaw. I think she’s being pimped out.”

  “Why her? Why this little girl? Toss a rock and you’ll hit some baby being forced to suck a dick she don’t want to. Why this one?”

  “Freedom. That’s her name, Freedom. I know her name. I promised I’d get her home. No more complicated than that. Gave my word.” I shrugged and stared into my empty tumbler. Sunshine closed her eyes and looked like she was running some tough calculation. She opened her eyes and looked at me from my boots to my face.

  “Right answer, McGuire.” She tossed me a smile. It was genuine, something stirred. I looked at her full lips, plump and sexy, better looking for her lack of lipstick, dry with soft cracks that made me want to kiss them.

  “McGuire?”

  “Yes?”

  “We are not going to be hitting skins any time soon.” She looked down at her immobile lap for proof. I wanted to say that wasn’t what I was thinking. I wanted to say I left my sex drive in a shitty hacienda above Ensenada. I wanted to tell her I was as numb as her legs. I wanted all that to be true.

  I DRANK ANOTHER whiskey while she went to work, sliding between three computers. Over her shoulder she asked me to repeat everything that had happened since leaving Mexico. She called up a photo of me, a mug shot. She showed me a picture taken with a red light camera two blocks from her warehouse. She told me she had face recognition software, beta, but three generations beyond Homeland Security. “Kenny’s broken into more databases than I can remember. NSA, Homeland, FBI—name it, he’s up in it.”

  Kenny looked over at me, almost smiling. I raised my glass to him.

  “Fuck you, old man. Jury’s way the fuck out on you.”

  “Always is.” I shot him a playful wink. He frowned and went back to typing.

  “He was being followed, but they backed off once he hit the blocks,” Kenny said, not taking his eyes off a display.

  “They either knew there is only one way in and out,” Sunshine was mulling, speaking to herself mostly, “or they are players and know we have eyes on the blocks. You forgot to tell me?”

  “Figured it was his motherfucking problem, long as they didn’t roll on our street. Fuck ’em.”

  “Was it a Chevy Malibu, maybe mid 70s?” I asked.

  “Sounds right.” If Kenny knew more, he wasn’t sharing.

  I was three more whiskeys to the good when Sunshine spun her chair around and rolled over to me. “Ok, big man, here’s how it looks. Bitch is, this is at best an educated guess, nothing solid. We straight on that?”

  “Straight. I shouldn’t take heads based on this intel.”

  “Exactly. You know Mara Salvatrucha? MS-13?”

  “I hear it’s best to stay clear of those crazies. Hear that machetes are their weapon of choice.”

  “Whatever you heard, times ten, no shit. When we came up, we had Crips and Bloods to deal with. Good old days. Really. Mara Salvatrucha, El Salvadorian immigrants, got tired of being kicked around. If they wanted to survive they needed to make up for body count with brutality. These cats put Crip heads on spikes in their mommas’ front yards. They burned their enemies alive. Old school Inquisition shit.”

  She took a long drink of Pellegrino then launched back in. “Jump thirty years down the road, they make the Mafia look like kindergartners. They control more territory in SoCal than any other gang. They are in forty-seven states, Canada and Central America. Suddenly the Feds are all over stopping them. Problem is, they work like Al Qaeda cells. These motherfuckers have no real overriding power structure. They have Councils, but it doesn’t connect to a head. History lesson over.”

  Another deep drink of mineral water. “Now,” she said, “the Middle East wars have been like opening an arms superstore for these evil bastards. If I was still a player, I would never sell t
o MS-13. They want it all and they may make it. Drugs, protection and prostitution. But they don’t need me. The military is grinding up poor boys. Rich ain’t going, powerful ain’t going, educated ain’t going. That leaves ghetto princes. Motherfuckers with nothing to lose and everything to gain by grabbing what they can.”

  My eyes were glassing. “Too much information, no closer to who is trying to kill me.”

  “Why? That’s the key. Why leads to who.”

  “Buddhist monk? This a koan I’m supposed to spend years thinking about?”

  “Sorry, this is what I do now. I sell possible futures and motivational branching lines. Sexy, right? I started as a stripper, and this is where that line led.”

  Truth? She was sexy as hell. On fire, passionate, when she spoke.

  “Done.” Kenny dropped a freshly printed map of LA. It had big stars with notes like Took pimp’s ear here and Crippled soldier here. He had overlaid it with known MS-13 turf. Sunshine looked over the map, gave Kenny a nod and small smile. He bounced back to his computer as if she’d given him a medal.

  “So, big man, this is the best intel we got. Now, what is your plan? Hit me with it.”

  “I’ll go after the pimps I saw before and find out if any of them draw heat. If they do, I will kill every motherfucker who comes after me until I get to Freedom.”

  “Hmmm.” She looked me over once more. “What a shame. Fine men are rare. You are going to stake yourself out like a goat, and you are going to be the hunter?”

  “I’ll have back up.”

  “It won’t be enough.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Doesn’t matter who you bring, it won’t be enough.”

  She slipped the map into a military case. We left Kenny pounding keys. He didn’t look up as we closed the middle door. At the front door, Sunshine slipped me a number.

  “Dead drop. Leave a message if you need . . . want. Hell.”

  “Goodnight, Sunshine.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. McGuire.” She leaned forward.

  “Moses.” I leaned in. I was planning to kiss her cheek. She turned. Our lips met. Neither pulled back. Her lips were as soft and full as I had imagined. We pressed semi-closed lips together. Slowly, she reached her arms up around my neck, pulling me closer. She opened her lips. Her small tongue darted against mine. My hands looked like giant mitts on either side of her face. I was lost in the kiss. Nothing else was out there. For a brief moment, the constant pain went away. After almost forever, she pulled away. Her eyes looked soft, slightly unfocused. From under the quilt she handed me a snub-nosed Ruger .454 Casull.