Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  “I mean, I realized that I was totally helpless and at the mercy of these people… Maybe they were gonna rape me first. Hurt me. It wasn’t a matter of whether I was gonna die, it was more a matter of when I was gonna die, and how fucking painful it was gonna be.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lupe. I mean, I been some dark places in my life honey. I ain’t even told you all of it… But I can’t even imagine what was going through your head right then. So what was it? I guess your father owed these guys money or something?”

  Lupita laughed coldly. “Not even. That’s the fucked up thing. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time, but I managed to piece it together later. Like I said, years after the fact I managed to meet Angel Caribe. I actually met him at pop’s funeral. You couldn’t miss him. He was tall. Really fucking tall, shoulder length grey hair, cheekbones and lips. He looked like an actor on one of those awful fucking telenovelas I useta watch. I had most of the story down by then, but he filled in the holes. Basically, the guys who took me were bajadores. That means they were freelancers – bandits basically – who specialized in ripping off the bigger guys. Now in and of itself that should tell you a little about how insane these motherfuckers were. Any place these assholes hit was guaranteed to be full of gangsters… real gun-toting fuckin’ psychopaths who weren’t afraid to kill to protect their patch. We’re talkin’ houses full of drugs, weapons, or in Caribe’s case the pollos they were holding hostage…”

  “Whaddya mean, pollos?”

  “That’s what they’d call the people they’d smuggle over the border. Most of the time it would go down that they’d pay say a thousand or so US dollars to get over the border, and then the coyotes – the guys who would smuggle them across – would bring them to a safe house. But instead of just letting them go free, most of the time they’d hold them to ransom. So unless they could come up with even more money – or their family could – the first thing that would happen to ’em north of the border was that they’d get offed by a bunch of pissed-off people smugglers, or sold into prostitution or whatever.”

  “Jesus, that’s cold blooded.”

  “Uh-huh. Happens all the time though. This wasn’t just Angel Caribe’s guys who did this shit. It was pretty much standard practice with most of the smuggling operations. The pollos might pass through two or three sets of hands before being turned loose, getting re-ransomed and abused every step along the way. Crazy bastards like the guys who took me would burst in on a safe house, kill the guards, and kidnap the pollos. Then they’d re-ransom them to their families. It was just like they were property or something.”

  “So how does this involve your pop?”

  “Well it turns out that these guys had been pretty busy doing hit-and-runs on Caribe’s patch. They’d just hit one of Angel’s houses. They’d kidnapped a few people, killed the rest. One of the guys they took was an associate of Caribe’s called Lucky Marcelino. The Charles Bronson look-a-like was the boss man, a fuckin’ psycho who went by the name El Cortador. It means the cutter, which should tell you somethin’ about the kinda shit he was into. Well, El Cortador tortured Lucky Marcelino until he gave up some names… other associates of Angel’s, you know?”

  “Man,” Genesis said, “I guess he wasn’t so lucky after all.”

  “Damn straight. He wasn’t the only one with shitty luck though. Apparently Lucky managed to hold out for a few hours. Thing is, he knew that if he talked he was a dead man anyway. Caribe would have had his head. When he couldn’t take it anymore he cracked and gave up a name in an effort to save his own ass… just some low-level operator that he had dealt with from time to time. He started talking about my father, Jesus Garcia, painting him as some major player in Angel Caribe’s organization. I guess he figured that if he gave up someone who was of little consequence to the organization, then on the off-chance that he’d somehow got out of El Cortador’s clutches the punishment for talking might not be so severe. So he convinced these assholes that my pop was some big time player and that’s why they decided to hold me to ransom.”

  “What happened to this Lucky guy? Did they let him go?”

  Lupita shook her head. “I asked the same thing when I met Caribe. I figured if this motherfucker got away, then maybe I’d wanna pay him a fucking visit, you know, and say hello. But it was too late; the bajadores beat me to it. Apparently they found Lucky’s head two days later. It was stuffed into a backpack that had been dropped off outside of a local police precinct. The body never showed up.

  “Of course I didn’t know any of this at the time. When the van pulls up, and I’m dragged out of that fucking crawlspace in the back, I don’t have a clue what the fuck is going on or who these people are. All I know is I can barely stand because my legs are cramping up so bad, and I’m about to piss my pants. I mean, I was still dressed in my fucking pajamas, and here I am in some fucking garage with a bunch of crazies. We must have driven for twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. I had no idea where the fuck we were. Charlie Bronson – you know, El Cortador – he pulls the bag off of my face and waves the gun at me. Get up the stairs, he tells me, it’s picture time. Here, Genesis. Let me get a drink of that will ya? How you feeling?”

  “Little better. The pills are takin’ the edge off, a little. Here.” Genesis reached down for the Wild Turkey with her good hand, “Let me hold the wheel steady… Go for it.”

  As they cruised down the I-15, heading toward Las Vegas, Lupita tipped the bottle back and took a slug. She coughed, and said, “Thanks.” She took the wheel again.

  “So anyway. They take me into the living room. It looks like one of those showroom houses. You know, beige on beige. Plastic flowers, marble counter tops, the kind of place that looks like nobody really lives there. They tell me to get upstairs. When I get upstairs it’s a different scene altogether. There’s, like, a landing with three doors shut tight with padlocks, kinda crudely fitted on there. There’s one open door. They tell me to get in. Inside the room…” Lupita shuddered at the recollection, “It was horrible. Really horrible. It smelled like a fucking abattoir. Newspapers covering the floors. The only light is a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The walls are unfinished, and it looks like they got blood splattered all over them. There’s a radiator in there, the only window is boarded up, and the only other furniture is a plastic bucket and a bloodstained wooden chair. When I saw the room I felt like I was gonna puke. No shit Genesis, the place reminded me of those newspaper reports about those crazy fucks over in Belgium or Utah… you know, the ones who kidnap girls and keep ’em in dungeons for years? That’s exactly what it looked like, hun. A fucking dungeon. So they shove me in there, and by now I’m about ready to faint, you know? And then El Cortador, says, Strip.”

  There was a long pause. Lupita kept her eyes firmly fixed on the dusty desert horizon.

  “I’m looking at the guy like he’s got two heads. I’m hoping I maybe misheard, because I know that if these bastards get me undressed, that’s it. The best that can happen – the very best thing that can happen – is that I’m getting gang raped. And I don’t even wanna think about what the worst thing is. So I’m standing there, playing dumb, and he says it again to me. Strip. I hesitate and he points the gun at me and says with this real malicious look on his face, Take it all off bitch, or you’re dead fucking meat.”

  “Oh, Lupe. What the fuck did you do?”

  Lupita looked at Genesis, and smiled sadly. “Girl, I wasn’t looking forward to getting raped, but as far as it goes that possibility sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than getting myself shot in the face. What do you think I did? I fucking stripped and I kept my goddamned mouth shut. Hey wait. Let’s pull over here. I gotta get high.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jacques Seltzer was at Denny’s on Sunset with a streetwalker called Peggy. Peggy was black – not just black as in “African American” but truly, literally black. Her skin was deep ebony, the colour of space, beautifu
lly, undeniably black. Her tattoos – and she had plenty – were almost totally camouflaged against the inky pigmentation of her corpulent flesh.

  Her skin colour was the first thing that drew Jacques to Peggy when he encountered her last night, loitering outside of a taco stand on La Brea. The image of her smoking a cigarette, standing under a flickering cathode light captivated Jacques. She wore a platinum blonde wig and weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. She was big all over: big tits, big lips, big ass, big thighs, all squeezed into a lime green PVC corset and flesh-hugging white hot pants. The whole ensemble was finished off with thigh-high, spike-heeled white patent-leather go-go boots. Jacques circled around the block to check her out, and then pulled the rental BMW over. She negotiated a generous price for pictures and sex. Peggy smiled, flashing her hot pink gums, and got him to throw in breakfast as well.

  “Not some cheap-ass joint like this. Somewhere decent.”

  After an evening of debauchery in his room at the DeVille, Jacques and Peggy drove to the Denny’s on Sunset and Gower, close to the 101 on-ramp. When they walked in there even the hardened nighthawk denizens of Denny’s on Sunset did double takes and gawped as Jacques – wearing his red sharkskin Alexander McQueen suit and cowboy boots – walked in with Peggy, still dressed up in her dime store hooker outfit. They strode inside arm in arm, Jacques beaming like a proud groom.

  Ravenous after a night of crack, anal sex and posing for Jacques’ hungry lens, Peggy was wolfing down a Grand Slam Breakfast. Jacques was on his third cup of black coffee. He watched, smiling indulgently, as she poured blackberry syrup on her remaining bacon and hash browns.

  “So, uh, Jack,” Peggy said, through a mouthful of syrupy eggs, “What exactly you gonna do with those pictures? I mean, you got me in some pretty… uh, compromising positions.”

  Jacques reached into his pocket and produced a blurry, photocopied sheet with the header MODEL RELEASE. He flattened it out on the table.

  “Peggy my love,” he said, “If you sign here your pictures will hang in the finest galleries in Paris.”

  “Galleries?” Peggy snorted, “What you mean, Jack?”

  “Art galleries. The most highly respected galleries in the cultural heart of Europe.”

  Peggy’s mind drifted back to some of the positions she had found herself in last night, while Jacques snapped away with his camera.

  “Honey,” she said, “I ain’t really one for art. But I kinda find it hard to believe that any gallery – in Paris or anywhere else – is gonna hang that picture you took of me taking a leak while I was hittin’ that crack pipe.”

  “You would be surprised, Peggy. Prurience is art, my sweet. Here’s a pen.”

  Peggy signed the release form without glancing at it. Then she frowned at Jacques. “You sure this shit ain’t gonna end up on that damn Internet? I got two young boys in a foster home, an’ I don’t want them finding a picture of their birth momma on some kinda porn site…”

  Jacques leaned across the table. “However the pictures will be used, I assure you that it will be… tasteful. Credible. I am an artiste, not a pornographer.”

  Peggy’s plate was clean, and she mopped up the last of the syrup with a slice of buttered white toast. Then she gulped down the remains of her root beer float. Wiping her mouth with a napkin, she said, “An artist? Maybe I shoulda charged ya more.”

  Jacques laughed, and said, “Pah, Peggy – you must know that all artists are starving, no?”

  Peggy raised a painted-on eyebrow and gave Jacques a playful prod on the belly. “No offense, Jack, but ya don’t look like you’re starvin’ to me. Can I ask YOU a question?”

  “Oui, of course.”

  “Well, I ain’t done much travelling Jack, but I heard that Paris is a beautiful city. Is that right?”

  “Oh, oui, it is. It is one of the cultural centres of Europe… it has some of the most breathtaking galleries and museums in the world. Our cuisine and our artistic achievements are the envy of Europe.”

  “Uh-huh. So tell me somethin’. What the fuck iz you doin’ hanging around roach-infested motels smoking ghetto crack and taking pictures of me for? I mean, I know I got me some fine-ass titties, Jack, but I’m figuring bitches got those over in Paris too. I mean – what in the hell are you thinkin’?”

  Jacques laughed, and reached across the table. He gave her meaty arm a squeeze.

  “Peggy, my love,” he said, his coke-numbed tongue fumbling with the words, “I came here to find America. The real America. I came to find her soul, yes? And the only way to get to her soul is to crawl up… through her guts. To confront America on her own terms.”

  “Come again?”

  The waitress brought the check over. Jacques rummaged around in his pockets and dumped a pair of crumpled twenties on the table.

  “Peggy, it is as simple – and as complex – as this. I am here to find the American Dream. And when I find it, I am going to make love to it… with my camera, yes?”

  Peggy looked at Jacques, incredulously.

  “The American dream?”

  “Oui.”

  “And you’re gonna make love to it?”

  “Oui.”

  “With your camera?”

  “Oui. Exactement!”

  Peggy looked around the diner thoughtfully before fixing Jacques in a quizzical stare. “An’ you think you’re gonna find the American Dream in a room at the De Ville motel?”

  Jacques nodded. “Why not? It is as good a place as any, no? But you are right about something, my dear. You have magnificent tits. They remind me of my mother’s. You make me want to be an enfant once more.”

  “You smooth-talkin’ bastard. Look Jack, this has been fun and all, but I gotta get some shuteye. You wanna call me a cab?”

  “Of course. But first, tell me something, Peggy. Why is it that I can buy the finest Columbian cocaine on the market, straight from the Amazon rain forest, one-hundred percent pure and uncut… the kind of cocaine reserved for Presidents, movie stars and European Royalty… yet it does not thrill me the way that a twenty dollar rock of crack smoked in a sleazy motel room does?”

  Peggy laughed. “You wanna know what I think, Jack?”

  “Of course! You are inspiring me, Peggy. Speak your mind…”

  “Well, seems to me that you’re one of those hard to please-type motherfuckas. You know what I’m saying?”

  Jacques nodded sagely. He waited a few beats, as if fully digesting the enormity of her words.

  “You should become a therapist, Peggy,” he said at last. “You could make a lot of money. Well… I think we are done here. Thank you, Peggy. You are not only a beautiful woman, you are a philosopher and an original mind. You will make some man very happy one day.”

  Peggy sucked in her gut a little, and reached into her purse for her pack of Kools. “Shit. If you hurry up and call me that cab so I can rest up for a few hours, I can prolly make a whole buncha men happy later tonight.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “We’re almost outta crank,” Lupita said, holding the bullet up to her nostril and inhaling sharply. “You want some?”

  Genesis shook her head. “I’m gonna take more painkillers. If I can, I wanna sleep later. Hand still hurts like a motherfucker.”

  Lupita put the bullet away, and ruffled Genesis’s hair. “Cheer up hun,” she said. Genesis pouted. “Come on, lemmie see a smile.”

  Genesis smiled unenthusiastically. They pulled away from the rest stop and got back on the freeway. Lupita turned the music on again. They were listening to one-hit wonder ’60s group Mouse and the Traps doing a Dylan-esque number called Sometimes You Just Can’t Win.

  “So what happened after they made you undress?” Genesis asked. “They raped you?”

  Lupita shook her head. “No, actually.”

  Genesis shook herself out of her painkiller and
booze addled haze. “Really? So why did they make you strip?”

  “To take pictures. That was part of their M.O. They’d take a buncha humiliating pictures and send ’em back to the family. It was a way of pressuring ’em to pay up, I guess. The head guy keeps a gun pointed at me, and the other guy – the bastard with the wart on his nose – he pulls a balaclava over his head. He comes over and pulls his dick out. He stands next to me, and they tell me to hold it. The third guy is snapping pictures on a Polaroid instamatic. They took four or five pictures like that, with me posing with this motherfucker in all kinds of positions. You know… sexual positions. The guy snapping the pictures says to me, Nice big smile for daddy! I couldn’t stop crying the whole time, Genesis hun, but these motherfuckers thought this shit was real funny. I remember just closing my eyes and praying, you know, praying to Our Lady that they wouldn’t rape me. Just praying for it all to end. When they were done the bastard with the gun, El Cortador, he says You guys wanna fuck her? Real casual, like. Just like they was talkin’ about running out to pick up some drive-thru. You guys wanna fuck her?” Lupita shook her head, “So that’s when I tell ’em I’m on the rag.”

  “Were you really?”

  “Uh huh. Only just though. It was, like, my last day, but I still had a tampon in. I showed ’em the string, and after that – thank God – they wouldn’t go near me. Typical machismo Latin guys. You’da thought I had fuckin’ AIDS or some shit. Instead of raping me they kicked me about a bit and handcuffed me to the radiator. Left me to stew overnight.”