THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

by Mark Russell

  'Si, I'm gonna fuck them good,' Alsina said coldly. He slid a shape charged AT projectile into the matt-black weapon's breech. 'This one's for Bruno.'

  In a fury of competing sirens and lights, two squad cars rushed towards Espinosa's Cadillac. Alsina leant out of the rear window, comfortably shouldering the 1.5 metre long ballistic weapon ...

  Crouched beside a parked car, Goldman knew the gunmen were distracted by the police. A perfect opportunity for escape. Nearby the chemist, a homeless man lay sprawled on the sidewalk. He was slumped against a bus stop seat, his head bowed, a ragged trouser leg outstretched before him. Goldman gave the dishevelled man scant attention before glancing over his shoulder to see if he could make a quick getaway.

  No such luck.

  Matilla had materialized on the sidewalk. The scruffy gunman held his weapon with a heavy-handedness as if no stranger to killing. Once again Goldman was low on options. His pulse quickened and a rising panic threatened to paralyze him; but he was too fired with adrenaline not to make a break for it. Like a racehorse bolting from the starting gate, he ran for a low, concrete wall lining the parking lot of Microsync Computer Services.

  Matilla snarled like a confident predator and squeezed his gun's trigger.

  Two things happened simultaneously.

  No sooner had Goldman turned to run than he tripped over the outstretched leg of the wino propped against the bus seat. Matilla's bullets, therefore, cut through empty air, narrowly missing Goldman's back as he fell forward.

  At the same time, Alsina fired the Armbrust Anti-Tank weapon at the closest approaching squad car. The smokeless and flashless weapon emitted a hollow plomp of a lower report than a pistol shot. With the Armbrust's projectiles capable of piercing tank armour, the AT projectile transformed the targeted squad car into a blistering fireball. There was a deafening boom as the blackened vehicle lifted from the ground. The powerful explosion set afire the second police car, blowing out its windows and showering its occupants with a deadly barrage of red-hot metal fragments. All about the burning cars was cast in wavering gold light, making the street look like a battle-torn Third World thoroughfare. The pungent smell of burning rubber fouled the night air, alongside the sickly smell of charred human flesh. A 280 SL Mercedes swerved around the flaming patrol cars. Its panicked driver tore away from the crime scene at well over the speed limit.

  After his bone-jarring fall on the pavement, Goldman rolled into a defensive crouch position. Matilla had his back to him and was cackling at the orange flames twisting towards the star-specked sky. Believing he'd shot Goldman in the back, the half-drunk gunman had spun round to watch the havoc Alsina had wrought with the Armbrust Anti-Tank weapon.

  'Burn fuckers, burn,' a youth called out drunkenly. Goldman peered over the car bonnet next to him. A group of teenagers in a convertible Mustang had screeched to a halt on the far side of the street. They were almost abreast with Matilla who seemed enchanted by the blackish bodies that had ceased all movement from inside the second patrol car. The dark-haired youth threw an opened can of beer at the flaming wreckage of the first patrol car. 'Yes siree, burn fuckers, burn!'

  As if not caring for the Yanqui teenager's attitude, Matilla fired his MAC10 and a string of bullets punctured the road top close to the Mustang. The alarmed driver hit the gas and tufts of smoke escaped from the car's squealing back tyres. A pair of group-affiliated bikers riding FLH-80 Harley Davidsons were rigid with respect as they idled past Alsina's vulgar display of firepower. Seeing armed police officers about the remaining patrol car, the bikers roared away on their thundering machines, swerving about the red-hot metal cinders littering the roadway.

  Goldman had to act fast or else die on this godforsaken street. Matilla would soon turn around ... He moved closer to the shabby drunkard who was in his fifties and torpid from drink. The wino's ruddy face was grimed from similar street-side encampments and his shiny-from-endless-wear rayon slacks were stained with urine and dried strings of vomit. Goldman cringed. The man was hardly the citizen envisaged by Captains of Industry, and similarly had no place in that tomorrow world peopled by smart young professionals in control of their senses.

  Close by the homeless drunk was an empty Thunderbird bottle, a bottle of orange juice and an unopened bottle of Methylated Spirits. Goldman guessed the wino couldn't afford the hard liquor he craved and planned to make a cocktail mix of the two fluids. Moreover, he guessed the Methylated Spirits' childproof cap had proved the better of the wino's impaired motor-nerve functions.

  In any case, the desperate chemist was illumined with a flash of invention.

  He looked up. The street's mayhem still held Matilla fixed to the spot. Goldman glanced at Espinosa's idling Cadillac. Alsina was reloading the Armbrust as unbelievably the third patrol car raced towards the Cadillac. The brave young officers fired handguns and a riot gun from out of the black and white's windows. And indeed some bullets did puncture Espinosa’s long blue Cadillac.

  Again Goldman had to act quickly. With bullets slicing the air, he snatched up the bottle of Methylated Spirits. With a brute strength the bottle's owner would never be capable of, he yanked the childproof cap clean off the bottle. He poured the Methylated Spirits into the empty Thunderbird bottle, before grabbing the remaining pages of the drug formula still bunched in the back pocket of his jeans. After jamming the pages into the top of the bottle, he made sure sufficient paper jutted from the bottle's neck. He tipped the glass bottle upside down then righted it, its scrunched papers generously soaked with the Class 3.1 Ethanol.

  Goldman reached into his jeans and grabbed the cigarette lighter he’d gotten from the Japanese girl at the Subway Slaves concert (at this awkward moment the concert seemed like a memory from another life). He brought the lighter's fully adjusted flame to the bottle's scrunched papers. Smoky tongues of flame highlighted his face as he held the bottle alight and ran towards Matilla.

  Espinosa shouted a warning from behind the wheel of the Cadillac. Matilla spun round, wholly surprised by a much alive Goldman. No sooner had he raised his gun than the chemist threw his makeshift Molatov cocktail. The glass bottle smashed against the top of Matilla's MAC10. A flaming sheet of spirits spread over the gunman's chest and face. Matilla screamed from shock and increasing pain as more of him began to burn. He dropped his gun. With flailing hands, he tried to extinguish the pale blue flames clinging to his face, the smell of his burning goatee pungent in the air.

  Goldman knocked the struggling gunman to the ground. He grabbed the MAC10 and winced as tiny flames on the weapon's surface burned his palms. Then he saw the .357 Magnum handgun Espinosa was levelling at him from inside the idling Cadillac. Goldman shot a barrage of bullets into Espinosa's chest. The driver fell forward onto the steering wheel. Pellets of windshield glass lodged in his hair while dark strings of blood dripped from his punctured shirtfront. His dead weight pushed down on the accelerator and the Cadillac plowed into the side of a parked car.

  Before this, Alsina had fired the anti-tank weapon at the remaining squad car. Like its sister cars, the third patrol car was wholly gutted, reduced to a fiery wreck with charred bodies inside. The explosion reverberated up and down the street, and again the overall impression was that of an urban war zone. Alsina slotted another projectile into the breech of the Armbrust. He bristled with fury and moved to the other side of the crashed Cadillac.

  Matilla writhed in agony on the pavement. Even so he reached inside his leather jacket. With a shaky but resolute hand, he whipped out a Baretta 92F auto-pistol. Goldman shot him at close range with the MAC-10. An unsightly crimson sludge coated the sidewalk about Matilla's head and shoulders.

  Goldman spun toward the Cadillac. Alsina was aiming the Armbrust at him, the Cuban's murderous face highlighted by the orange light of the burning cars. Goldman fired a slew of bullets into the back of the long blue sedan. Alsina cried out and flew back with blood jetting from his shot-apart chest. As he fell, the expendable Anti-Tank weapon in his hands must have
accidentally engaged, for Espinosa's Cadillac exploded.

  The car's back end lifted from the ground. Billowing flames engulfed the vehicle, while hot metal fragments shot out in all directions. Blowing apart shop windows and pitting the paintwork of parked cars. Several electronic alarm systems were activated from the blast and their shrill sound cut like razors through the night air.

  Goldman was running away from the Cadillac for all he was worth when the explosion occurred (he'd rightly intuited the Anti-tank weapon might engage from Alsina's awkward fall). Even so, the blast sent him flying through the air. He sailed over the homeless man and thudded painfully onto the sidewalk, crunching his shoulder in the process. The wino was rudely awakened from his soused torpor. Hot metal fragments savaged his torso and limbs. He screamed and looked accusingly at Goldman, his puffy eyes filled with cataracts.

  With a sure and swift hand, Goldman brushed the burning fragments from off the wino. He howled and swung a grubby fist at Goldman, who of course dodged it. Both men were noticeably singed, and the trimmed bushes lining this section of the sidewalk were in places alight from the shocking explosion. Glowing cinders were strewn for quite a radius and local dogs barked alarmingly from the multiple explosions that had rocketed through the neighbourhood. A cacophony of sirens drew closer, while traffic slowed to a stop from the burning vehicles and general debris blocking all lanes.

  'Sorry mate.' Goldman rubbed his aching shoulder. 'And thanks, bud, you'll never know how much you helped.' The confused bum looked desperately about the sidewalk for his bottles. With wailing sirens filling the air, Goldman peeled a twenty dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it into the bum's top pocket.

  The grizzly Thunderbird drinker snarled his crusted lips and watched the fugitive chemist escape into the night.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Friday, 14th November, 1980.

  Michelle Eastman sat in a chair on an upper floor balcony of the Los Angeles Memorial Hospital. The sky was a vast cloudless blue, save for a russet band of smog lining the horizon. Buildings basked in early-afternoon light while traffic streamed along Olympic Boulevard below, punctuated by an impatient horn or the screech of rubber on asphalt.

  Michelle stubbed her cigarette in the tin ashtray that a Tina Turner lookalike nurse had given her for this her fourth cigarette since that fateful night in Westwood.

  She'd been lucky.

  The three bullets that had savaged her chest had mostly torn muscle, inflicting minimal organ and artery damage, and had been extracted without incident by ER personnel. After several injections of Meperidine, intricate internal stitching with dissolvable thread, IV bags of A-positive blood, drip-fed antibiotics, around-the-clock saline drips, and what would be to some an inordinate amount of rest, she felt close to her former self.

  A light breeze caressed the balcony. She squinted her eyes, to better study the parade of airliners flying to and from LAX. She sighed from the lassitude of recent hours and turned her attention to a copy of Newsweek on her lap. It was open at a three-column article under Crime in the United States section of the magazine. Drug-Related Killings on the Rise in Los Angeles, the article by Michael Whiting and Margaeux Maas devoted several paragraphs to the November 6th killings. The infamous Westwood killings had left nineteen people shot dead in one house, two police officers shot dead in a patrol car out front of the same house, and four men and six police officers killed on a neighbouring street. Three police vehicles and another private vehicle had been destroyed, from all accounts, by a modern Short Range Armour-Piercing weapon.

  The general consensus amidst investigating parties, cited the article, was the murders were drug-related. The house where the majority of the killings took place had been occupied by known Caucasian drug dealers. An undisclosed Colombian crime family with Cuban-exile connections was thought responsible at this early stage of a joint FBI/DEA investigation. The Time magazine article portended such runaway violence was heraldic of the coming decade as Latino drug lords ruthlessly expanded their influence in the Americas, as well as in the United States proper.

  Michelle had become something of a celebrity being the only person to have survived the urban bloodbath that had made national headlines and caused President-elect Ronald Reagan to promise a tougher crackdown on international narcotics traffickers. She had refused media interviews bar one (a popular current affairs program had offered an exorbitant sum for an exclusive prime-time interview).

  Of course she wasn't able to avoid official inquiry. Hospital doctors and ward staff had done their best to keep police at bay, which gave the ex-model a window of opportunity to prepare for the barrage of questions coming her way. Accordingly she'd told the same scant tale to the LAPD, FBI and DEA officials who'd visited her hospital bedside.

  So Miss Eastman, why was a car rented by you in San Francisco parked out front of the house where the murders took place?

  Well, I met this cute guy in a DC nightclub, Justin Pierce, or Bierce, I think his name was ... anyhow we hooked up and flew to San Francisco because he had to give these, like, record reviews to an agent heading back to London. Justin had lost his license from drinking so I rented the car and we drove down here.

  And he knew the residents of the house in question?

  That's right.

  Did you know him well, this, er, Justin?

  No, not really. I just like went off with him after breaking up with my boyfriend of six years. Terence now there's a guy that ...

  So what does this Justin do for a living? Where could we find him?

  Oh, he's a freelance rock journalist, or something equally absurd ... though he's written reviews for Rolling Stone, or was it Circus? Maybe both ... anyhow he stayed behind at the Slaves gig that night to snap more pics and get a backstage interview. I was dog-tired and drove back to the Westwood house where he said he'd later meet me.

  Well, we all know what happened. Have I seen him since? Hell, no. What a guy, he just bailed altogether. Probably to save his pimply ass from you guys. Jesus, men ...

  Such was the theme of Michelle's contrived patter, her twittering Monroe persona only sealing her version of the events. The consensus of the officials who'd questioned her was that she was a twenty-four year old floozy who'd divulged what little she knew. Officialdom soon stopped visiting her.

  Michelle was amazed (and equally horrified) that she and Scott were the only ones to have survived the notorious killings. A florist's delivery of a dozen roses to her hospital bed had dispelled any doubt concerning Scott's escape. He'd said in a letter attached to the roses that he still had strong feelings for her, that in fact he loved her; but was completely broken by the events of that night. He planned to stay away from her even though he longed to be with her more than anything else. The bottom line of his letter: he'd nearly got her killed and couldn't bear the thought of again putting her in harm’s way.

  Michelle thought back to the haze and pain of that fateful night. The head gunman had asked Rick Sorenson if he was Scott Goldman. It seemed the night's violence had come about because of Scott. What kind of trouble was he in? Obviously of a worse kind than what he'd painted in her Crystal City apartment.

  Still she knew he was right, sober and wise, by his absence; even though it pained her that she wouldn't see him again. But of course she had to look out for herself. After all physical survival was paramount. Her romantic connection with Scott wasn't worth getting killed over. No way, Jose. And what were she and Scott if not star-crossed lovers? All the same it'd been quite a ride. Yes, the reckless Australian whose car and life she'd stepped into back east had greatly affected her, and she wouldn't easily forget him. He'd touched her deeply and made her feel unprecedentedly good for a time. So much so she'd covered his ass from the law. Maybe in the future, under different circumstances ...

  She gazed from the hospital balcony at sun-lit buildings, at the distant specks of flying birds. A sunny moment of contemplation she would surely look back on. She couldn't deny she'd reached a t
urning point in her life. For past days she'd thought about many things, about being violently gunned down. From her brush with death she'd adopted a more sober perspective. She'd promised herself not to jump willy-nilly into unchartered waters. For one thing she wouldn't allow herself to be swept off her feet by another man. She would resist the heady flush of neurochemicals that induce any initial attraction for a member of the opposite sex. She would abstain. After all where had being with men got her? Nearly killed, it would seem ...

  Well such was her determination as she sat alone on the hospital balcony, straddled with days of introspection. She was an attractive woman. Men were always after her and she would have to deal with their advances for many years to come. Accordingly she promised to be more discerning of future suitors. She would insist on a probationary period before committing herself physically and emotionally to any kind of relationship. She would simply wait for a genuine mate who had a worthwhile life to share with her.

  Meantime there was good news. Carmen had called from the NY rehab her brother had put her in. Apparently she'd beaten her addiction, but brother and staff had insisted she finish the program. She'd sent Michelle a lush bouquet of assorted roses, beautifully arranged and attractively bowed. And on a gold, embossed card Carmen's flowery scrawl gushed with the sentiment of resurrected friendship. She was truly glad 'chelly had split up with Terence, “Even if you had to get shot-up on the other side of the country to achieve it”. Thanks C, Michelle had thought upon reading the line. It seemed Michelle's roller-coaster friendship with Carmen had survived yet another turn.

  Meanwhile the promise of a new career beckoned.

  Alexis Models had tried to contact Michelle for the past fortnight, but without success. Then an agency employee saw Michelle's prime-time television interview. The following day Michelle received a call on her bedside phone. The deal sounded good, better than the original deal the agency had set up for her.