L.A. Rotten

by Jeff Klima

  This gets Caruzzi’s blood moving. “That mutt-blooded son of a bitch.” He snarls and pounds the table. “Even a half spic like him oughta know better than to bad-mouth me to one of my boys. Fucking unprofessional is what that is.”

  I nod quickly, selling full agreement, mirroring his disgust and subtly mimicking his body movements to disarm his subconscious. Learning body language and how to use nonverbal cues is an important tactic in both sales and surviving prison. Caruzzi is seething, and so, outwardly, I am too. Hammering a crack into his precious cop honor code is the right move, but I have other avenues to work as well. “Also…about that stuff…that organization you’re always telling me about? I’m finally ready to listen.”

  This catches Caruzzi off guard and his eyes narrow. I maybe played the race hand too early, because the disbelief sails back in. “Ah, don’t shine me about that now. You can’t pull that shit just to keep you out of the can.”

  “I’m not,” I insist, dead earnest exuding from me as hard as I can sell it, working him like a kite in a delicate breeze. I’ve started it; I have to see it through. “The reality is these are good white people this guy is killing—innocent white people. You think he’s gonna stop because I’m back in the can? He’s avoided the police this long; you think they’ll get him before he strikes again? He likes me. Because of Holly Kelly…I killed a cop’s kid. Accident or whatever, it makes him feel like he can trust me. I’m in a uniquely fucked situation here.” My fingers gesture in tandem with my mouth, creating images, reeling him in. “I can get close to him—I can maybe stop this thing before any more good people get hurt.”

  This strikes a nerve with Caruzzi; uncertainty and something else—curiosity, perhaps—are playing out on his hard features, but it requires a little more pushing. “What happens if you’re wrong and he puts a bullet in your brain?” he asks, rubbing his fingers absentmindedly, further spreading barbecue sauce around on them.

  “Then everyone is right back where we were before this thing started. You said it yourself, though—you gotta think outside the box if you wanna survive Los Angeles. For a little leniency now, you maybe help me help myself. And I bring a good brain to your club.”

  “Fuck, Tommy, I don’t know…you got proof this guy even exists?”

  I have been dreading this question but I can’t let even a hint of uncertainty show. I have to sell A. Guy’s strengths over my weaknesses. “I had letters he left me but he took them back right before the police searched my place. I told you, this guy is a game player.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m the one getting played here?” Caruzzi asks, and yet, he’s not completely dismissive.

  “Wait—I do have some of the contents of the letters—I entered them into my work computer…also, I can print out some of the crime scene photos—show you how I got on his trail.”

  “That’s it?”

  “When I have more, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Me neither. I’d rather just be left alone, cleaning up crime scenes. If I could unfind this asshole, believe me, I would.”

  “Why do you care so much that this fuck gets caught?”

  I’m back where I want to be. “Maybe I’m tired of feeling like the bad guy?”

  He continues to mull it over, but I’ve got nothing left with which to convince him. I feel optimistic—and yet, a gloss of cold sweat has slimed up on my forehead, betraying my fear of going back to prison. If he doesn’t budge, I have to consider my chances. Admittedly, they aren’t pretty. Can I run? Will I? Would he shoot me in the back?

  Finally, he speaks: “When you get close to this guy, bring me in on it. You and I nail him together. Fuck Stack. Fuck him in his bocca di fica.” He says this with gusto and I don’t need the translation to know it’s bad. “And…” he adds authoritatively, “you become a regular at those meetings. A good regular.”

  I nod. “Deal.” I don’t smile or show elation; rather, it is an expression of contrite understanding, as if I am receiving penance from a Catholic priest.

  “In the meantime, bring me everything you’ve got so far…pictures, letters, everything.”

  Caruzzi picks up another rib as I stand to leave, my legs jellied from a sense of evaded terror. “Do me right on this one, Tommy. I don’t want no more good people dying—including you. This is the Wild West; out here, us white people gotta stick together.” He gives me a serious, knowing wink, which I nod at. “And, Tommy,” he adds, “I’m not stupid, quit the fucking dope.”

  I don’t try to bullshit him. “Okay.”

  —

  My next stop is a bar up the block from my apartment. It’s a Mexican-run place that blasts Banda music through the open front door. Most importantly, it has a payphone in the back. Turning my head to drown out the jukebox, I dial Tony Brahma’s cell. Expectedly, after four rings, it goes to voicemail. “This is Tony Brahma!” his voice announces, good-natured and alive. “If you’re calling me, then you don’t know me, so don’t bother leaving a message, motherfucker!”

  After the beep, I say, “If you get this in the next three minutes, call me back at this number,” and hang up. My guess is A. Guy is screening his calls.

  True enough, I don’t even have to wait a minute before the payphone rings. “Dr. Tom—how proactive of you. Did you call to tell me you got a new number?”

  “Don’t call my cell phone—the police are eager to put a nightstick up my ass.”

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” he gushes, undeterred. “Did that just blow your fucking mind?”

  “It blew something…what the fuck were you thinking?”

  “When I apologize, I apologize in a big way. Just admit that you’re a little bit happy. Please?”

  “I’m fucking ecstatic. Except the cops think I called in a hit! They searched my apartment.”

  “That was a necessary evil. But I took care of you there too, right? Cleaned up your messy little drug addiction, found my stash of correspondence in your bathroom, left some fag mags under your bed.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that, cocksucker.”

  “I couldn’t resist,” he laughs, proud.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Glad you asked, Tom, I’m glad you asked. I want us to work together, to partner up. You and me, we could be like Lake and Ng two-point-oh. I’m Lake, of course.”

  “I don’t know who those people are.”

  “You gotta learn your killers, man, if you wanna team up. Otherwise, what are we gonna talk about?”

  “Lake and Ng. I’ll check into them. Hey, not to press my apparent good fortune or anything, but why do you want to team up with me? What’s in it for you?”

  “You know what I discovered pretty early on, Tom?”

  “What’s that?”

  “L.A. is a pretty lonely place.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Be sure that you do. Also, call me back later. I’m in the drive-thru at McDonald’s. We’re gonna do dangerous things together, brother. This is as things are meant to be. This is the natural balance of life, I feel it.”

  I hear him begin to order as I place the phone back in its cradle. I can now tack “McNuggets” on to the list of things I know about him. Partner up. I can’t quite believe the words he used. For some reason the ugly notion makes me grin. The two of us in tandem, gutting and gunning down Angelenos. A couple of outlaws, just painting the town red. I shake my head, disturbed by it all, but the grin steadfastly remains.

  —

  I pull my cell phone out and dial Ivy as I climb in my car to drive down the block to my apartment. The phones connect as I turn right out of the narrow parking lot and onto the street.

  “Done freaking out so soon? I thought it would be at least another week,” she says by way of hello.

  “Shit. I’ll call you back,” I say, and toss the phone onto the passenger seat.

  Red and blue lights are flashing behind me as the cop lays on his intercom. “
Pull over. Pull the vehicle to the side of the road.”

  Dutifully I do as he commands and shut off the engine, placing my wrists at the eleven-and-one position on my steering wheel, clearly in sight. The officer pulls in behind me, stepping out and up to my side window, hand on his holster. “License, registration, and proof of insurance, sir.”

  “What seems to be the trouble, Officer?” I ask innocently of the young blond cop.

  “The trouble, Mr. Tanner, is,” he says, before I’ve even handed him my information, “talking on your cell phone while driving is illegal. Now, that law probably went into effect while you were still in jail, but ignorance is no defense. Also, the light over your license plate is out.” He takes my papers and license and scrutinizes them closely, hoping to find some inconsistency. Finally, he hands back the registration and insurance, but keeps the license and goes to retrieve his ticket pad from the patrol car.

  When he comes back, he wordlessly hands the pad in for my signature, which I give. The officer tears off a ticket for the cell phone as well as the plate light and hands it in to me. “Compliments of Detective Stack.”

  “Does he have all you guys all over the city on lookout for me?”

  “He’s even got us following you in shifts. I’m watching you till seven-thirty, then the night guy takes over. Make it easy on yourself—turn yourself in, huh, cop killer?”

  “I’ll consider that,” I say, and wait for the cop to move back before I pull away so he can’t claim I tried to run him over. Instead of heading home or calling Ivy back, I turn left at the end of the block and head for the library. Behind me, the cop dutifully does the same. At the library, I gather every book I can find pertaining to serial killers and pile them in a stack beside me as I nest in at a table to read. Evidently, the police officer has elected to stay in his car. It’s for the best; I don’t need him to see what I’m researching. I’ve got to relate to A. Guy enough to make sure he trusts me, though. Flipping to the pages about Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, I begin my education.

  Between the two men, they’d managed to rack up several murders—twelve of which they’d been officially tied to, but the book alludes to between twenty-five and, potentially, as many as forty victims. It had been tough for the police to give an exact number because many of the bodies had been incinerated beyond recognition on the duo’s property in Northern California. Forty-five pounds of charred bone fragments and ash were collected from the homestead, as well as videotapes of them brutalizing and raping their female victims. Lake and Ng had even built a reinforced bunker into the hillside with secret rooms where they’d imprisoned their victims until they were bored with them. Men, women, even children had been killed by the two until they were found out in 1985. Leonard Lake killed himself with a hidden cyanide capsule before the police ever knew the caliber of person they had in custody. Charles Ng fled to Canada and almost got away with it until the Canadian police agreed to extradite him. I couldn’t help but wonder how close A. Guy intended us to mirror these men. They’d only been caught because of a stupid shoplifting mishap. Other than that, they’d appeared to do everything just right—so to speak.

  On my way home, still tailed by a police presence, I stop by an auto parts store and buy a light bulb to replace the one above my license plate. It will give the officers one less excuse to hassle me. As I install the bulb in the parking lot, careful not to even litter, I raise a hand to acknowledge my night guard, a bespectacled black man who does not wave back.

  This time, I park my car outside my apartment and hoof it back down to the Mexican bar with the officer driving slowly up the block behind me, forcing cars to stack up behind him.

  The bar is full now of day laborers in festive shirts, quaffing cervezas and carrying on. I am forced to cover the phone receiver with my free hand so I can hear. Still, it is better than the alternative—a quiet place where everyone can hear everything.

  “Tom, how nice of you to call again.”

  “I did my homework.”

  “And?”

  “It could be done better.”

  “How?”

  “No shoplifting for one.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “Their method of burning the bodies was really smart—the cops could only charge them with the bodies they didn’t burn.”

  “So?”

  “Burn all the bodies, for starters. Don’t record our crimes. Don’t leave clues to our identity.”

  “Believe me, I’m learning as I go,” A. Guy admits.

  “This could really work, you know? Between us, we’re smart enough to avoid the pitfalls.” Even as I say it I know I don’t mean it, and yet, it is all truth. If I were depraved enough and more motivated, I could put a hell of a scare into this town, with or without him. “No more motel jobs, though.”

  “Tom, I promise. That was something of a jumping-off point—I had to start somewhere, you know?”

  “But why there? Why on the second floor? It seems like an easy way to get caught.”

  “True…and you proved as much, which is how come I’m not doing it anymore. When I first came out to Los Angeles trying to make it on my own, I stayed at the Offramp Inn for a while—”

  “Room 236?”

  “Exactly. And all I did my first week was lay there in that room, awake all night, just praying that some crazed lunatic wouldn’t kick open the door and attack me. My first purchase in Los Angeles was a knife. Before anything else, I bought a knife. And I would just lie there all night, gripping that knife, listening to people trying to open my door because they thought it was their room, or knocking on my window asking if I was holding. I about went mad from that. Then I got to thinking, ‘I have a knife. Fuck them. Let them come in.’ And, I started leaving my door ajar at night.”

  “Did any of them come in?”

  “One. Guy had a Marine tattoo on his forearm, snuck into my room just after two in the morning, real jittery. I wasn’t terrified, though, staring at that tattoo through the slits in my eyes, pretending to be asleep. Like a spider, I was waiting. By that point, I too was a warrior. He checked all around the dresser and everything, not knowing that I kept all my possessions with me, in the bed. And I’m just not stirring at all, right? So he grows bolder and decides that there must be something of value beneath the bed. I can feel him staring at me, just staring, and I’ve got the knife tight in my hand—half my brain is screaming for me to attack, the other half is telling me to wait it out. Well, finally, he gets all the way down on his belly and scoots beneath the bed, his arms extended, just searching out anything. And at that moment, I struck. I rolled over and jammed that knife down as hard as I could right into his back, between the shoulders. He didn’t last long and he didn’t scream but a little bit. He died with his head and arms still beneath the bed, never knowing what hit him. I felt so tough and so scared, I kept waiting for the police or someone to come, but no one did. Finally, I dragged the body out of the room and down into the L.A. River—what a joke that thing is. I left him out there and went back to the room. I told the front desk the next day that I’d spilled fruit punch on the floor—they charged me fifty dollars for someone to come in and change out the carpeting. That was it. I got away with it. I never heard about the Marine again, and the whole murder cost me fifty bucks. It was pathetically easy. And so it went.”

  “What about the Bible/condom thing? You religious?”

  “God no. That was a bit of my own twisted humor. I got carried away. It seemed so poetic at the time, but now when you bring it up, I just feel like a dork. I—I shoulda just stuck with the smiley faces.”

  “Yeah, because those were so much less lame.”

  “I told ya, I’m still learning.”

  “Before we can do anything together, we’ve got to get this cop presence off of me.”

  “Forget the cops—if they were bright, they wouldn’t be cops. They won’t keep after you forever; they’re fickle. You can lose ’em.”

  “Then where should we
meet up?” I try to present the notion in a nonchalant, casual manner, as if it doesn’t really matter whether we do or not, but in the silence that follows, I realize I’ve overplayed my hand again.

  “Not so fast, Dr. Tom—just because I can’t spell for shit doesn’t mean I’m as dumb as a cop. I’ve earned some trust; now you’ve got to earn some of your own.

  “You still there?” he asks after I don’t answer.

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Well, as it just so happens, I’ve already decided on your first task.”

  “Out of how many?”

  “Baby steps, Tom. Baby steps. We don’t meet until I decide it is time we meet, so just enjoy the ride. I don’t partner up with just anybody, you know.”

  “How silly of me.”

  “That’s alright, you’re eager. I’ll give you extra points for that.”

  “What do I gotta do?”

  “Like I said, the first one is easy. I’m going to do the killing, but I want you to choose the weapon I do it with. Do they suffer, or is it over quickly? Do I use a gun or a hatchet or a knife or a weed whacker or a candlestick? Whatever. Creativity counts here, so go nuts. Call me back when you’ve decided. And try to keep the calls to normal business hours—I’ve got shit to do at night. In the meantime, I put a package in that locker for you, just to tide you over. Can’t have an unfocused mind when there is work to be done, can we?”

  “No one else can die around me—they’ll send me back to prison.”

  “Tommy, you’ve got to take a chill pill, man. Somehow, someway, we have got to file that nervous edge off of you; it’s bad for business.” A click on the other line announces that he’s hung up.

  —

  “Choose ‘time’—you know, old age. Outsmart him,” Ivy decides, and I can see she is proud of herself for the thought.

  “That’s just it—it’s as much about me choosing the weapon as it is about him doing the deed. Too easy and I’m a pussy, too impractical and he’ll never agree to meet up. It’s a double-edged sword that way.”