THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

by Mark Russell

  Ferdinand Espinosa, Marco Alsina and Carlo Matilla, the other men of Unit Two, were parked farther up the street in Espinosa's pale blue Cadillac. They hadn't heard the gunfire in Thirteen's house due to their own excitable chatter and being parked too far away. In any case they were keen for the Westwood operation to end. More important business awaited Commando C tonight.

  Ramirez's men were scheduled to meet a Jamaican posse in a deserted Compton warehouse in two hours time. The newly conglomerated gang had begun an aggressive push onto a lot of established turf, notably firebombing one of Ramirez's downtown brothels. It'd happened the night of the week the brothel specializing in S/M, discipline and bondage was closed. No one was hurt, therefore, but the Jamaicans insisted they'd do the same to Ramirez's biggest brothel Sweet Secrets on a Friday night, if Ramirez continued to buy wholesale cocaine from his Colombian suppliers. The Jamaicans wanted Ramirez to buy cocaine from them, and had offered him an enticing kilo-price. However Ramirez believed the Jamaicans' hidden agenda was to destroy him and his network. The deserted Compton warehouse meeting had all the earmarks of an ambush.

  Once told of the indecent proposal, Ramirez's LA-based Colombian associates had sold him a pair of Armbrust Short Range Anti-Tank weapons, replete with Latam Target Markers and a dozen 300mm AT projectiles. The Colombians had bought the modern expendable weapons from Manuel Noriega, an acne-scarred colonel in the Panamanian National Guard. Noriega was the head of G2, Panama's national intelligence agency which had jurisdiction over Panama Customs. The enterprising colonel had even promised shoulder-fired RBS 70 Ray Rider Anti-Aircraft weapons that would prove ideal, the Colombians knew, against the DEA-sponsored helicopters increasingly patrolling Colombian highlands.

  With Armbrust-armed men placed strategically along the backstreet leading to the Compton warehouse grounds, the carloads of Jamaicans arriving for the meeting would be in for an unpleasant surprise indeed. As it turned out, two Armbrust Anti-tank weapons were in the trunk of Espinosa's pale blue Cadillac.

  Bruno Lozano was shocked to see the tangle of dead men on the stairs. His chest tightened and he lost his bearings for a vulnerable moment. His heart thudded against his ribs as he gripped the newel post of the banister. Madre de dios, were the killers still afoot? Holding his Browning 9mm handgun at chest-level, he moved cautiously up the stairs.

  Before he came off the staircase proper, he looked with narrowed eyes into the unfamiliar room. He moved his semiautomatic pistol defensively in front of him. The poorly lit room was unnervingly quiet. Wind whistled under eaves and only highlighted his unease as he stepped hesitantly forward. He recognized the acrid smell of cordite and came to an abrupt stop.

  His mind reeled from the carnage about him.

  It wasn't possible. After a long, dizzying moment, he shouted into the mike of his radio headset, 'Muerto! Muerto! Everyone's dead! Ramirez. No, Ramirez. Gacha ... Martinez ... Carrasco.' He glanced back at the staircase. 'Nazario ... Cortez ... Ruben ...Coloradas ... Muerto! Muerto! They're all dead!'

  Espinosa tightened his grip on the wheel, his bony knuckles white with tension. He couldn't believe what he was hearing through his hands-free headset. Everyone in the house was dead? How in God's name was it possible?

  'They're all dead!' he said to Matilla and Asina. 'Muerto!'

  'Diga otra vez?' Matilla pulled on his wispy goatee beard. Though he'd drunk a six-pack of beer, the unexpected news chilled him to the bone. His leathery face broke into a scowl and his hands balled into fists.

  'Que pasa?' Alsina sat in the backseat and was no less shocked than his colleagues. He ground his teeth in protest. 'Are you sure?'

  'Muerto! Everyone's dead!' Espinosa shouted.

  'Mirar,' Matilla said. 'Over there.' The others looked to where their beer-drinking colleague pointed. In shifting patterns of light (palm fronds swayed in front of overhead lights), the Cubans saw a hunched man brandishing an automatic weapon as he stole across the street several car lengths down from Espinosa's Cadillac. That the armed stranger came from the house Erasmo had gone into was the unspoken consensus between the Cubans. By the fact of his escape, this slinking gringo had probably murdered the men back in the house. Very likely he was the target of the operation.

  Goldman saw the silhouettes of men in the car ahead and dropped to the sidewalk. Icicles of fear embedded themselves in his spine. He wasn't sure if the men were part of the team that had stormed the house or not. Luckily they were a good distance from him. With brazen nerve, he uttered a short prayer, bent forward, and dashed across the poorly lit street. He reached the sidewalk opposite and hunkered down beside a parked car, hoping he'd escaped the men's attention. A narrow backstreet was nearby. An avenue of escape.

  He popped up and peered at the men in the car. They seemed unaware of his presence. Cloaked in shadow and painfully aware each minute was vital to Michelle's injuries, he made a crouched-run for the backstreet.

  Espinosa gunned his Cadillac to life and screeched from the curb. Alsina hung from the rear passenger window, looking much the predator as he gripped an Ingram submachine gun. Espinosa didn't doubt this scuttling man was responsible for his comrades' deaths. His mind reeled. The men who'd stormed the house were dead? Ramirez was dead? Before he could incinerate the scumbag Jamaicans? It didn't seem possible, but somehow Espinosa knew it was.

  The craggy-faced Cuban stomped the accelerator and slewed his big blue sedan into the narrow thoroughfare. His car's rear end struck a glancing blow to a parked Dodge Charger, smashing one of its four headlights. Espinosa bit down on a wood toothpick and swore the DGI perro caught in his car's headlights was as good as dead.

  Thirty-seven year old Bruno Lozano ran onto the street, eager to join the other men of Unit Two. He heard the roar of Espinosa's V8 Cadillac and saw it disappear down a side street, its red taillights slipping from view.

  'Ay dios mio!' He adjusted the straps of the seven automatic pistols slung over his shoulders. Lozano could hardly have left such weaponry behind, especially as Ramirez had fitted the guns with military paracord straps, making them easily retrievable from a crime scene. And the body-littered house behind him was one hell of a crime scene.

  Lozano spun on his heels as an LAPD patrol car shot out from a nearby street. The police officer behind the wheel hadn't engaged the squad car siren and flashers as he wanted to take by surprise whoever had fired the shots that a local resident had reported hearing in the vicinity of Thirteen's house.

  The house Lozano stood in front of.

  'Mierda!' The heavily armed Cuban looked about for a means of escape.

  With a blaring siren and flashing roof lights, the squad car made a beeline for the lone gunman. The police officers inside the vehicle were duly alarmed when their headlamps revealed a hard-faced man shouldering an implausible number of automatic weapons. The officers froze when the long-haired Latino wearing an AC/DC sweatshirt held up a silenced submachine gun. A Mini Uzi by the look of it.

  'Holy shit,' said Jack Martignetti, a young rookie with the West Los Angeles Police Division. Martignetti's older partner was wide-eyed and speechless as he reached for the Hi-Standard shotgun attached to the patrol car's dashboard.

  Lozano squeezed the grip safety mechanism and opened fire. Jagged holes peppered the patrol car's windshield, while the front passenger window blew apart. Much of the pelleted glass mottled reddish-brown. Still unhinged from the sight of his dead colleagues back in the house (particularly Ramirez's battered-to-death corpse), Lozano fired nonstop into the cabin of the squad car. He wasn't prepared to spare the officers' lives. They'd seen his face and he didn't want to be connected to the multiple killings in the house behind him.

  Furthermore, Lozano still harboured anger over a recent incident. Spread-eagled by LAPD officers in Silver Lake community, his young cousin Angelo had had his head shoved through a storefront window, his face horribly cut. He was charged with willful damage of property and resisting arrest. With Angelo's family mouse poor, Lozano had pa
id Angelo's costly plastic surgery bill, as well as a swag of legal fees. Yes, Lozano hated cops – America's and his home country's.

  The Uzi finally clicked empty. Local dogs barked alarmingly and the patrol car's remaining headlamp cast a golden glow over the gunman's rigid face.

  'Si. Fucking Si.' Thrumming with adrenaline, Lozano re-shouldered the spent Uzi before de-shouldering a fresh one. He looked about for onlookers. Wholly prepared to kill on sight. Tonight he was king of the streets. Above the law of the land.

  Wanting to reconnect with Unit Two, he ran awkwardly from the shot-up squad car, weighed down by the guns hanging off his shoulders. He couldn't get Ramirez and the other murdered men from his mind. So many bodies, so much blood ... Whoever was responsible was going to die a thousand agonizing deaths. He followed after Espinosa's car, broken headlight glass crunching under his steel-capped boots.

  Espinosa, Matilla and Alsina were on the heels of whoever was responsible for the murders. Lozano increased his pace along the backstreet, praying he would take part in the killing.

  Goldman took cover behind a luxuriant hedge out front of a multi-storey apartment block. Squatting behind the tall evergreen growth, his chest shuddered from ragged breaths. He had the sharp, desperate look of a hunted animal. One of his hands bled lightly and a small strip of skin had been scraped from his jaw. He couldn't complain, however, considering what he'd been through.

  Espinosa had almost run him over in the side street near Thirteen's house. At the very last moment Goldman had dived over a wire-mesh fence. He'd landed with a well-executed roll into a landscaped backyard that could have featured in a home and garden magazine. No sooner was he back on his feet than he leapt over another fence, and then another, followed by another still. After stealing between houses and scampering through a labyrinth of alleys and back streets, he eventually lost the gunmen, the moonless night swallowing him up as if he were more shadow than human.

  However he'd been forced to wrestle an irate householder who'd caught him prowling. He eventually threw the fit, middle-aged man into the property’s in-ground pool. A short time later, while scrambling over another fence, he'd kicked a particularly aggressive Doberman Pinscher, causing the dog's lower jaw to dislocate. Landing on the other side of the fence, he'd felt sorry for the bawling creature; but after halogen security lamps snapped on, he was sure the dog's owner would whisk it off to the nearest veterinarian.

  Now, Goldman eased himself up from behind the hedge. He scanned a spacious two-lane street. He'd no clue to his whereabouts. In any case, traffic and pedestrians were surprisingly light for the hour. He cursed that he'd lost the Uzi during the struggle with the householder. Most likely the compact gun had fallen into a poolside shrub. Whatever, he would have to make do without it.

  His heart lifted when he saw a pay phone on the other side of the street. He took a confident breath and ran purposefuly towards the booth, alert for Espinosa's Cadillac and patrol cars. He glanced at a nearby street sign. Incredibly it was Thirteen's street. He'd never used this end of the street before and was dismayed he hadn't covered as much ground as he thought. In any case it hardly mattered now he had a telephone.

  He burst into the booth and dialled the emergency number.

  'Yes,' he said urgently into the receiver. '108 Sandwood Avenue ...'

  A car screeched from a sharp U-turn.

  '... get paramedics there ASAP. Yes, people are shot and dying. Yes, please hurry. Right, 108 Sandwood ...' He looked out from the booth. Espinosa's Cadillac rushed toward him. A bolt of recognition passed between all parties. Goldman's reddish hair and dishevelled appearance dispelled any doubt as Alsina leant out of the car and aimed his machinegun.

  No sooner had Goldman dropped to the floor than shattered booth glass sprayed down on him. Bullets thudded into the metal pay phone and its dangling handset ripped loose and banged the chemist's foot. Blood oozed from a light wound on his forearm while broken glass rained down on him on all sides. He clenched his eyes shut and hugged his knees to his chest. Oddly enough relief surged through him. He visualized a phalanx of ambulances speeding with traffic-parting din to the Spanish-style house in which Michelle lay dying. He couldn't entertain the notion she'd already expired – and indeed could only think of his own survival as further bullets sprayed into the booth.

  'Shit.' He flung open the metal-framed door (now devoid of glass) and ran helter-skelter for cover. Pressing close to parked cars, he put his head down and scuttled along the sidewalk. Gunfire dogged him like a slithering snake.

  Alarmed by the approaching fracas, a middle-aged man with a walrus moustache snatched up his leashed King Charles spaniel. Cradling the dog against his chest, he bolted for cover across the street. Alsina's bullets tore through a music store window, cutting down a cardboard display for Blondie's new album Autoamerican. The chemist put his head down and moved closer to parked cars. He heard windows and tyres being shot apart as he scrambled along the pavement with no escape in sight.

  A half-drunk Matilla leaned out of the front passenger window and shot at Goldman as well. He whooped excitedly as errant bullets vandalized white gowns in the display window of The Modern Bride Boutique. With plenty of ammo on hand, he fired gratuitously at his quarry. After a time he stopped, wiped his brow, and looked up and down the street for any sign of police. He cocked his head. 'Mierde.' Did he hear sirens?

  He looked behind him with widened eyes. Bruno Lozano was running towards the car. Lozano had hidden his clutch of automatic weapons in a stand of golden palms in the landscaped entrance of a nearby office block. He was about to call his Guam girlfriend for a ride home when he saw Espinosa's tyre-torturing turn. Now, Lozano yelled at his comrades to stop.

  Matilla saw his wildcat comrade was laden with automatic weapons. 'Espinosa, wait!' he shouted with a drunken slur, his wispy goatee laced with spittle. He could hear sirens. 'It's Bruno. We have to get him. He's got the guns from the house.'

  A young brunette woman in an Audi put her foot down at the sight of Alsina shooting at Goldman, and spared no horses at the further sight of Lozano shouldering an implausible number of weapons.

  'What?' Espinosa yelled.

  'It's Bruno, we have to take him with us.'

  Three LAPD squad cars appeared from a side street, their loud sirens and bright roof lights a dramatic declaration of authority. The black and whites were headed for Thirteen's house; but Lozano and his clutch of automatic weapons hardly went unnoticed. The police officers screeched their vehicles to a halt and drew service revolvers and riot guns.

  'THIS IS THE POLICE! declared an imperious voice from a bullhorn. 'STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS! I REPEAT, STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!'

  Caught in the crossbeams of police car spotlights, Lozano ran towards Espinosa's crawling Cadillac, from which Alsina still fired at Goldman. It was credal to Lozano not to surrender to police. Hell, he'd only just killed two of them, and was wholly prepared to kill more.

  Surmising this scruffy Latino shouldering automatic weapons was the same scum who'd wasted Jack Martignetti and his partner (word of the shot-up patrol car was already out on the LAPD dispatch), a determined young officer who'd been a close associate of Martignetti leant on the open door of his squad car and fired his service revolver at Lozano.

  Three times.

  Two bullets went wide. But the third punctured the Cuban's left leg. Lozano screamed and spun about, much of his movement caused by the bullet's impact. Even so, he willfully fired his Intratec TEC-9 at his attackers. In standard defensive positions behind their stopped vehicles, the police officers fired a concerted and accurate response. Lozano was struck down by a wall of bullets. He fell back onto the road top, with a metallic clatter from the guns he carried. Blood spilled from his shuddering torso and his dying movements were highlighted in the red and blue beams of the squad cars.

  'Bruno!' Matilla screamed.

  Alsina stopped shooting at Goldman and twisted round i
n his seat. 'Mierda!' The forty year old Cuban physically slumped as police advanced on his fallen comrade. His chest leadened with grief. 'Bruno, Bruno ...' In no time he was suffused with anger. 'NO! NO! NO!' Other officers climbed back in their cars and look sharply in his direction.

  'Mierda! Policia bastardos!' Alsina gritted his teeth, his stout body rigid with rage. These norteamericano policia would pay for killing his friend. Equally they'd pay for interfering with the shooting of the DGI dog who'd killed Ramirez.

  Espinosa braked his crawling sedan and looked over his shoulder.

  'Bruno! Mother of God!' he cried.

  'Matilla,' Alsina barked, 'get out and kill the Yanqui bastardo. Ahora!' He shoved Matilla forward with such force the drunk gunman banged his head on the dashboard. Matilla rubbed his forehead, growled a curse, and checked his gun. With squinted eyes, he detected Goldman farther along the footpath. The Yanqui perro was hunkered down and looking toward the flashing lights of the police cars. The gunman shoved open his door.

  A cursing Alsina climbed in from the rear passenger window and tossed aside his Ingram machinegun. He yanked out the upper part of the Cadillac's back seat and dropped it into the space between himself and the front seat. It was for occasions like this that Espinosa kept the upper backseat on such accessible footing. Espinosa and his colleagues had fought off attacks from rival gangs because of this customization that offered access to weaponry hidden inside the walls of the Cadillac's trunk. But tonight weaponry of greater firepower was at Alsina's fingertips.

  He reached into the darkness of the trunk and pulled out the compact Armbrust Anti-Tank weapon, plus a blue vinyl tote bag containing AT projectiles. Matilla cackled with excitement as he looked on from the front seat. His salt-and-pepper goatee flecked with spittle.

  'GET OUT!' Alsina barked. 'GET OUT AND KILL THE YANQUI PERRO!'

  'Okay, boss! Okay!' Matilla shook his head with underling resignation. He jumped from the Cadillac. Gripping a MAC-10, he shouted with beery confidence from the sidewalk, 'FUCK YOU, YANQUI PERRO! AND FUCK YOU, YANQUI POLICIA!'