Sunshine tossed a passport on my lap. It had my picture, but the name was Joseph MacGowan. She dropped Freedom’s passport on top of mine. It listed her name as Freedom MacGowan; it came with a clean birth certificate. The last to fall was Sunshine’s. Her name was Serenity MacGowan.
“Will you marry me, Mr. MacGowan?”
“Looks like I already did.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Sorry. Yes. Yes, I would be proud to marry you. Fact is, nothing I’d rather do.” I leaned in to her and gave her the kiss that sealed any deal we ever had.
WHEN I WAS able to get out of bed, I had Peter call I.A. Detective Carbone. He set up a meet with D.A. Rodriguez. Peter had evidence to sell, said he could prove a link between the D.A. and the building’s ownership. It was bullshit. Peter could show it, but would never prove the fact in court.
I also had Peter call his partner, Deloris, to let him know when it was going down. Let him clean up his own mess.
THEY MET UNDER a eucalyptus tree behind Occidental College. When Peter arrived, Detective Carbone was leaning against a Town Car. He patted Peter down. The young detective was too sure of himself, didn’t hear his partner move up behind him.
“Why don’t we sit this one out?” Deloris said, shoving his pistol into Carbone’s ribs.
“Vanish,” he told Peter, who was gone in seconds.
Deloris walked his ex-partner into the trees, where his car was waiting. He gave Carbone ten hours to do the honorable thing. Kill himself or turn state’s evidence.
WHEN I CLIMBED into the Town Car, Henry Rodriguez looked arrogant. This was his world. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Just a man finishing a job he started for your father.” The .22 magnum subsonic made a sound like a twig breaking when I shot him. Two in the head. I took pictures of the body with my cell and ghosted into the night. The paper would find a bag of cash in the car’s trunk. They would call it gang retaliation for money he took from MS-13. Close to true.
MR. SANCHEZ WAS happy to see me. I was using a cane; my hip would remain fucked for a long time. I walked like a useless old man. Sanchez’s men pat searched me, found the .44 and the buck knife.
Alone in Sanchez’s lavish office, he motioned me to sit. He poured us a Macallan fifty-year-old this time, hundred and fifty dollars a shot booze. I must have been a very good boy. “To you, sir.” He raised his crystal tumbler. I have never had a fifty-year-old Macallan. I should have loved it, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I would stick to mescal from here on.
“You have done what no other could.”
“You sent me to find out who was stealing your girls. I did.”
“You took down those MS-13 putas and half of the LAPD. You are quite a man, McGuire. Another drink?”
“No.”
“How would you like to become my head of security? I can make you a rich man.”
“Thing is, Sanchez, there is more to the deal and how it went down.”
“Regale me with the gory details.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar.
“MS-13, they were soldiers. You sent me for the head of the man stealing your girls. Here it is.” I dropped a folder on his desk. In it was an 8x10 shot of the very dead D.A. Rodriguez.
Sanchez went still. The corner of his left eye twitched.
“This is my son.”
“Yes, it is.”
“My son. You killed my son?”
“This whole deal was his. His way to clean up the streets and raise cash for a run at the Mayor’s office.”
“A lie. He could have come to me for the money.”
“Your name would be poison. Feds were on to him. He never would have pulled it off. I just ratcheted up the timetable.”
“Did you, yourself, kill him?”
“As agreed.”
“Hijo de puta!” He bounced his cigar off my chest. I let it lie, burning a hole in his cashmere carpet. “I’m going to kill you, cabrón. Not now. Our truce will hold until you leave my office. Then?”
“I’m through looking over my shoulder.”
“So what will you do?”
“Break the truce.” I raised the cane and pulled the hidden trigger. The blast of the .410 took him between his eyes. The blow toppled his chair.
His security men rushed in. Two threw me to the floor. A third fought hopelessly to save the dead old man.
THEY DRAGGED ME into the main courtyard. Without a cane or help there was no hope of standing. I curled fetal while they took their kicks. They were halfhearted at best. Not much macho in kicking a crippled old man. They might have killed me out of a lack of anything better to do if Stephan Sanchez hadn’t called them off. Out with the old Jefe, meet the new Jefe.
“Get our guest into my office.”
STEPHAN SAID HE would make good on his promise to leave me be if the old man was dead. He asked me how he could repay me. I had some ideas.
Entrepreneur that he was, Stephan had been fighting to take the family legit. He was going to open an entertainment complex: one-stop dance club, restaurant, cantina, karaoke, and souvenirs all under one roof. Strippers and whores were too much trouble for the money they generated. He was tired of scraping the barrel.
His men destroyed my cane, but Stephan gave me a gold and ivory over mahogany walking stick. It had his family crest. “Anyone fucks with you, show them this and watch them bow.”
He would keep enough crime to afford the police and military on the payroll, enough guns to keep rival cartels from attempting to roll on him. He hadn’t seen the error of his ways, just a new way to make more cash. If petty crime paid better, Donald Trump would be running whores. Real green was in legit, big business crime. Stephan was on his way. Me, he promised to forget.
I trusted him only because killing me was harder than leaving me alone.
CHAPTER 40
The sun and hot sand felt good on my hip and leg. My limp was pronounced; two months later I still needed a cane. My head was in Serenity’s lap. She was idly stroking my hair and watching Freedom, Angel and Adolpho’s kids splashing and laughing, playing a variation of tag that involved a long clump of seaweed being worn as a wig.
Adolpho was out on a charter. The boat, a gift from Señor Sanchez Jr., had allowed Adolpho to quit his job at the whorehouse.
SERENITY GAVE THE business to Kenny and Gregor, with the understanding they would get out of guns and armaments and into information only. I tried to get Gregor to retire, but he reminded me he was a young man with a life to build. He did promise to bring the family down for spring break.
IT WAS STRANGELY hot the night I said good-bye to Mikayla. When I buried Moses I let a lot of his shit go. It was time I let her go.
Pussy, Mikayla said.
I was looking out to sea, Angel leaning against my good leg.
Pussy. Walking away.
“You could be right. Maybe the fight’s just gone from me. Maybe I’m a pussy.”
You are.
“You have to leave me alone now.”
I know. Will you miss me?
“Always.”
When I looked back from the sea, she was gone.
PETER WAS SHORT-LISTED for a Pulitzer. Maybe he’ll win. Maybe he won’t let success drive him mad.
THEY DID FINALLY make the Moses McGuire movie. After his tragic death it was a done deal. In the end they didn’t go with The Rock to play me. They went with a shorter younger hunk, and Gregor became East Indian. Hollywood. Peter set it up so that payments due to the dead Mr. McGuire would go into a trust fund for Freedom MacGowan’s college. She would need all the edge I could give her.
In the spring we would enroll her in a private Catholic school run by nuns who had escaped the death squads in Nicaragua. They had been to war. I hoped it would be a good match. If not, we would find her another, and another. Raising Freedom was a long-haul proposition. Tough as she was, she slept in a sleeping bag at the foot of our bed, curled up with Angel. She never took off her Sain
t Jude medal. She often woke screaming. When I asked her what it was she would go silent, as if giving it a name would make it real.
I was not one to give her advice. I still chewed pain pills like Chiclets and drank too much. They say time heals all wounds. Bullshit. Time just gives you enough scar tissue to make it bearable.
I hope I’m full of shit.
I hope one day Freedom wakes free of what was done to her, free of the guilt she carries for the lives she took. I hope one day I will wake with the uncomplicated joy of simply living. But if I don’t, an Angel, Serenity and Freedom are enough to keep the gun barrel from ever going back into my mouth.
OTHER WORKS
by Josh Stallings
Beautiful, Naked & Dead
A Moses McGuire Novel
Out There Bad
A Moses McGuire Novel
All the Wild Children
A Noir Memoir
www.joshstallings.net
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