Asian Pulp

by Asian Pulp (retail) (epub)

  “Lee!” Derry screamed.

  I looked back and saw that she was clutching Riley’s left arm with both of hers, stepping back to throw off his aim. His right hand now held his own 1911 Colt .45, a black weapon with checked handles. Because of Derry’s movements, his aim wavered, but his eyes focused on me and I suddenly got the feeling his experience might make up for a lot of liquor.

  I threw myself down across Lingo, tossing the .38 from my right hand back to my left so I could reach for Lingo’s firearm. Riley fired two shots that went through the space where I’d been standing. I snatched up Lingo’s Colt .45 in my right hand. It was heavy and unfamiliar.

  “Son of a bitch,” Riley yelled, shoving Derry away and coming forward. He raised his gat at me and then Derry wrapped her arms around Riley’s left arm and leaned back, bending both knees.

  Just as I turned sideways from my prone position and lined up Lingo’s .45, Riley shuffled sideways, trying to keep his balance while Derry pulled him. His next shot went wild to my left.

  I got Riley’s big stomach in the sights and squeezed the trigger. The .45’s recoil caught me off guard, but Riley’s legs collapsed under him. From the way he crumpled, I was sure the big bullet had severed his spinal cord.

  Next to me, Lingo was either dead or close enough for my purposes. According to Derry’s plan, I wiped my fingerprints off the smooth surfaces of his Colt .45 with my shirttail. Then, still using the shirttail, I set it into Lingo’s limp hand, remembering to slip his forefinger in front of the trigger and press it enough to leave a print.

  I walked up to Riley. His eyes were closed and blood was spurting out of some artery. He only had a minute or so left.

  Derry kicked Riley in the side of the head with the rounded toe of her deep red shoe with the little bow on it.

  Music still came to us from the juke box. Maybe that helped cover the sound of the shots for people in China City and neighbors in nearby blocks. Then again, maybe everyone took the sound for China City firecrackers.

  “Tommy must be back there safe by now,” Derry said quietly.

  I left Riley’s Colt .45 in his right hand. To follow through with Derry’s plan, I wiped off my .38 on my shirttail and set it into his left hand, also with his forefinger pressed against the trigger to leave a print. Some people in the restaurant had seen Riley take my .38 from me. With Lingo and Riley dead, they might even say so if other cops asked them. If I was lucky, the cops who checked out this scene would conclude the two partners got into a fight over the beautiful colleen who staggered into the bar apologizing and smelling of whiskey when she arrived—and left with both of them, laughing and flirting.

  I looked across Main Street toward China City. No one came running out to look around. For a moment, I lost track of what Derry was doing behind me.

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” said Derry, as she came up close to me.

  I was turning to ask why she was apologizing when she slammed my .38 Colt Detective Special into the back of my head. For the second time that night, I collapsed, unconscious even before I landed on the rough, broken pavement of the alley.

  * * *

  So two crooked cops lay dead in the alley behind me when I regained consciousness in the dead of night. No lights or music came from China City. No one else was in sight. Sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer.

  I stood up in the shadows. Across Main Street, red and yellow flames roared inside China City. I touched the back of my head, which pounded with a dull, heavy ache in contrast to the sharp pains in my ribs. Drying blood matted my hair and came away on my hand.When I glanced back at Riley, I saw that Derry had put my .38 back in his left hand, according to plan. For a moment, I watched the blaze in China City’s main section, along Dragon Road. It was empty of people at this hour.

  I found my fedora and picked it up, struggling to keep my balance. As long as I got out of sight up the alley before cops and firefighters arrived, I’d be free of the whole mess—even if I still didn’t know why Derry cared about Wing or why she’d clubbed me. However, as I glanced back at the flames, I saw a dark shape walking toward me, lit from behind against the blaze. I stopped, fascinated and mystified.

  The silhouette displayed a woman’s form with a big triangle on her head. Then she drew near, stepping into the glow from a streetlight. While the sirens grew louder and closer, she stopped and looked at me.

  She wore a coolie hat damaged with a long crease, as though it had been pushed flat before being opened again. Long, black hair streamed down past her shoulders. A tight red cheongsam revealed her slender shape with excellent curves. Her nylons were more beige than the pale skin of her arms. She stood in shoes of deep red, with rounded toes and little bows. A big shoulder bag hung on a long strap, perfect for carrying a change of clothes and a long wig—even a flattened coolie hat.

  The classic cheekbones like Katharine Hepburn’s and her slightly sad eyes finally gave me my answer, with the black wig framing her face. I just hadn’t seen it before.

  “Paul Wah-lim Wing was related to you?” I asked.

  “My grandfather,” said Derry MacSwain. “He pampered me as a little girl. I adored him. The day he died was the worst day of my life.”

  I stared into her green eyes, thinking of my late mother and father.

  Derry searched my face, those eyes asking an unspoken question. “I was afraid you’d try to stop me,” she said, answering my unspoken question.

  I looked past her at the fire. It would do a lot of damage, but it wasn’t going to burn down the entire facility and spread. I wasn’t going to tell the cops or George Moorville that I knew who killed Wing or who set the blaze. The press never cared about Wing’s death and the arson would go unsolved. My chance at a license would have to wait even longer. “You never passed out flyers,” I said. “You’ve been the perfect person to go underground in Chinatown.”

  She read my unspoken answer to her unspoken question in my face. Then she stepped close and drew off the coolie hat, her face tilted upward.

  Her lips were soft and her body lithe and warm in my arms. She smelled of fire smoke now, not rye whiskey. After a long kiss, she backed away and put on the coolie hat. Without a word, she walked up Main Street as the sirens grew loud and close. She obviously wasn’t worried about the cops seeing her as they rushed to the fire. No false modesty from Derry MacSwain.

  I drifted backward into the alley, still watching. The rising flames threw unsteady light against her. Her other side remained in shadow. As she walked, her slender shape flicked red, then black, then red again, with each step she took into the darkness.

  BRET KHODO, AGENT OF C.O.D.E.

  by

  Gary Phillips

  — :: —

  The scuba diver in nylon trunks and flippers swam as fast as he could, pursued by two mermen. One of the sea creatures had a spear gun and the other a good-sized knife. A spear hit the tank of the scuba diver but only dinged its surface. He descended toward a rusting hulk of a freighter partially buried in the ocean floor below. He shot through undulating seaweed and into the ship.

  The two mermen, grey-blue scaly bodies, with gills on the sides on their necks and large, bubbly slit eyeballs, slowed as they got closer to the ship. They signaled to each other and one went in through the opening to the cargo hold, the other through a jagged hole in the side where the long useless ballast tanks were located.

  There was an oily gloom pervading the interior of the freighter. The two pursuers proceeded cautiously from opposite ends, essentially trying to box in their quarry. The one with the knife came to a bend in a passageway, on the lookout for tell tale air bubbles. But the scuba diver had been holding his breath and he jumped on the merman’s back as he swam past. They thrashed and twisted as the scuba diver held the wrist of the merman’s knife hand. He had his other arm around the merman’s neck. But rather than try and pull his grip tighter, the scuba diver relaxed his hold. Like an underwater Fred Astaire, he let him go, spinning him away from his
body and into the bulkhead.

  The merman with the spear gun had arrived and, having reloaded his weapon, shot a spear again at the scuba diver. The diver reacted fast enough that the spear didn’t impale him dead center. Still his bicep was nicked by the tip and blood eddied from the wound. The spear gunner moved in. But the scuba diver struck with the stiffened ends of his fingers, right into the area of the merman’s Adam’s apple.

  The merman gagged, a wreath of air bubbles escaping his open mouth. He tried to clear his head but the scuba diver struck him again and then ripped off the combination mask and regulator, also tearing lose the hose to the oxygen tank hidden underneath the ribbed rubber dorsal fin on his back. He broke for the surface as the other pretend merman attacked the scuba diver anew.

  The two fought with their knives, the scuba diver having unsheathed his as well. As they engaged in their underwater ballet of parry and thrust, a great white shark suddenly shot into the passageway, attracted by the blood in the water. The combatants went still at the sight of nature’s near perfect killing machine. The scuba diver went horizontal, stomach up and kicked the merman in the chest. This sent him toward the shark and it did what sharks do, and promptly clamped his jagged teeth on the merman’s thigh. He screamed a burst of air bubbles as the creature shook him like a poodle’s chew toy and began devouring him.

  While the great white was busy rending and biting his disguised human prize, the scuba diver cut the other merman’s mask into strips. Swimming away, he tied them around his wound to prevent trailing blood. Up toward the light, he could see the remaining merman swimming across the water’s surface. The scuba diver increased his speed…

  The beachgoers lazing or playing on the warm white sand stared at the scuba diver coming out of the ocean. He took off his mask to reveal a chiseled handsome six-foot Asian man, stark eyes, tawny skinned and muscular in a lithe way with high cheekbones and black hair, a bit long over his ears. That’s not why he attracted attention, other than turning the heads of a few pretty women. It was the man in the sea creature costume he dragged with him by the collar of his rubber suit that was the grabber. Some looked around for movie cameras but saw none. A pretty brunette in a turquoise bikini listened to a transistor radio laying on a blanket. Playing was “Midnight Confessions” by the Grass Roots. She stared slack jawed at the newcomers.

  The scuba diver let go of the unconscious man who plopped onto the sand as something buzzed. He unhooked a square compass from his weight belt and clicked a hidden button on the side of its casing. The compass was a disguised two-way radio.

  “Agent 77?” a query sounded over the radio-compass. It was a whispery, ethereal voice. It was as if a specter had materialized on the other end of the connection, and was experimenting in how to speak to humans via their artificial devices.

  “Yes, sir,” the scuba diver said to the head of CODE, Confidential Operations for Defense and Enforcement.

  “Have you had success dealing with the saboteurs?”

  “I have, Zero-One,” Bret Khodo, Agent 77 of CODE answered. Zero-One’s true identity and even what he looked like were known only to a select few. His office in CODE’s headquarters was sealed and guarded, and he communicated with his personnel via radio speakers. If it was necessary for him to be in person, he wore gloves and a silken hood with reflective material behind the eye slits.

  “Good man. As you’re already on the West Coast, I’m sending you in to rendezvous with Agent 82 in Los Angeles.”

  “What’s the situation?”

  “Briefly it’s this.”

  * * *

  Khodo settled the ’68 dark green Mustang Fastback at the curb on the Sunset Strip. He didn’t bother to put a dime in the meter as he got out and jaywalked across the street to the high rise housing Maltese Magazine Distributors.

  On the sidewalk, coming past him was a brunette in granny glasses, fringe vest, and a flower print dress. She had a folded over copy of the Free Press newspaper in one hand and she put a coin in for him saying, “I dig your vibe, man.”

  Khodo looked back at her and grinned. “Right on.” He continued into the building.

  Inside, he took off his sunglasses, like the kind Mastroianni sported in Fellini’s 8 1/2. He tucked them away inside his dark Bill Blass blazer as he got on the elevator. He also wore bell bottom slacks, an emerald colored paisley shirt, and scruffy dingo boots. A pretty black woman with a large afro and a short skirt gave him the twice over as the car stopped at various floors. He returned the look. Khodo reached his floor and touching the edge of his snap brim to her, he got off.

  “Yes, can I help you?’ the redheaded receptionist asked him when he stepped to where she sat behind a rotunda. Off to one side was a rack of the various magazines the company distributed, including Buckhorn, the leading men’s magazine in the nation.

  Khodo had pushed his hat back on his head. “Is Tony Barabos in?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.” He turned from her and headed toward an open doorway.

  “Sir,” she said, rising from her seat, “you can’t just barge in there.” She rushed from around the rotunda.

  Khodo was in an inner hallway and marched toward Barabos’ office, head of the company. The redhead was at his heels.

  “Don’t make me call security on you, sir,” she said testily.

  Khodo whirled and smiling serenely, gave her a nerve pinch like Spock wielded on Star Trek. She wilted unconscious in his arms and he gently eased her onto a molded plastic chair in a cubicle. A twice divorced accounts rep, cigarette dangling from his mouth, his afternoon blast of scotch in hand, witnessed this.

  “Can you teach me that? There’s a couple of chicks I’d like to try that on.”

  Khodo chuckled dryly and opened the door to Barabos’ office. He entered unannounced.

  The exec looked up startled from the line of coke he was snorting from his glass-topped desk. A tawny-skinned surf bunny in a polka dot bikini and sandals was off to one side of the room. She had on Pioneer headphones, plugged into the stereo system, and was doing the Frug to a playback from the Teac tape recorder.

  “Who the hell are you?” Barabos demanded.

  “You’re going to tell me where Rodar will be tonight.”

  Barabos, in a pointed collar shirt opened to reveal his thick chest hair and gold medallion astrological sign, absently wiped away a residue of powder from his mustache. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man.”

  Just then two bruisers entered the office, both several inches taller and heavier than the wiry Khodo.

  “Time to go, Charlie Chan,” one of the goons said. He wore a sharkskin suit sans tie. He had a bent nose and one of his ears was cauliflowered from various fights. He put a beefy hand on Khodo’s arm intending to turn him around and Spanish walk him out. But the larger man suddenly found himself airborne after being easily flipped. He landed heavily on his butt on the shag carpet.

  The other one had a blackjack handy and swung it at Khodo’s head, who ducked and sidestepped away. Khodo countered with striking his heel into the man’s knee, which caused him to buckle. Then a combination left-right also put him on the floor, dazed.

  The man in the sharkskin suit was upright and had a Luger in his hand. That is, he’d barely cleared the weapon from his shoulder holster when Khodo charged him, chopping the gun from his grip, cracking his wrist in the process.

  “Hey,” the other man grimaced.

  Khodo finished him off with several blurred blows to the man’s upper body and head. He flopped over, done.

  As this was happening the other thug again came at Khodo, but a roundhouse kick connecting with his jaw halted his hostilities.

  At the desk, gathering Barabos’ shirt front in his hands, Khodo, his hat having left his head, talked calmly and forcibly to the executive.

  “Now I know you front for Solango. That this outfit moves cocaine and H in its trucks, a revenue stream for him.”

  “
I, I can’t tell you anything, he’ll kill me.”

  “CODE will protect you, Barabos.”

  “No, you’re lying. You’ll feed me to the wolves.”

  Khodo sighed and let the man go. He looked over at the gorgeous woman in the bikini who was coming over to the desk. She started to say something but just then three men in coveralls dropped down outside of the picture window on a window washer platform.

  “Get down, Agent 82,” Khodo yelled.

  He tried to shove Barabos out of the way as one of the men squeezed rounds from a Sten machine gun. Slugs tore into the walls as the window burst into tinkling multishaped shards.

  Barabos was hit and screamed in pain as he toppled over. From where he’d thrown himself on the floor, Bret Khodo extended his arm, bending his wrist downward. His watch stem shot from his wristwatch in a puff and the projectile exploded a few inches in front of the man raking the machine gun. The stem was a miniature grenade devised by CODE’s tactical weapon’s unit, the X-9 section.

  His face partially destroyed, the machine gunner lost control of his weapon and accidentally ripped bullets into one of his fellows. The third gunsel, a tough looking individual with thick brows, manhandled the other two—the dead and the dying—over the platform’s railing given they were no longer useful. Their bodies broke and released crimson when they struck the pavement thirty four stories below.

  The last man on the platform only had a handgun and wasn’t keen on seeing what other gadgets the secret agent might put into play. He pushed the lever on the rig’s motor to draw the platform upward.

  “Get back here,” Khodo growled. He dove out of the window. Agent 82 stared at his hurtling form open-mouthed.

  Khodo clutched a portion of the bottom of the platform. The man standing on it was shooting into the flooring trying to kill him.