“You need to cool your jets.”
“Don’t tell me what I need. I’m the GD father. I’m paying YOU!” Once again, Andrew unleashed another fist into the protective dash panel of foam and composite plastic.
Thump. Thump. Thump!
“Stripping for men. And not young men, either. Older men who stare and drool and have fantasies about…about all kinds of horrible evil shit.”
The disconsolate dad, both fists balled with a building rage, pounded the passenger door panel with the heel of his right hand. But that wasn’t enough. He went after the dash again, striking it with the toe of his left shoe.
Lucky applied the brakes. Hard. Not only to slow the Crown Vic, but also to shock Andrew out of his billowing rage.
It was a downsloped drag overlooking downtown. The streets were wet with that seemingly unending month of rain. With the wheels slightly locking, the Crown Vic began a skid. To avoid the fishtail, Lucky released the brake, righted the car toward the curb, eased into a stop, and meant to scratch out a mental note to have the anti-lock system checked before returning the Crown Vic to its home.
That note, though, would burn in the next minute.
“My precious baby,” growled Andrew. “Living with a GD prostitute.”
“Are you gonna ease off or what?” said Lucky.
“Whore.”
“Enough.” Lucky put a firm grip on Andrew’s shoulder. A touch that, nine times out of ten, would have resulted in one of two responses: a momentary pause in the uncontrollable outbursts or the manly “don’t touch me” shrug. Only Lucky got neither. It was as if he had pressed a button that sent Andrew’s right leg into a coil just before he unleashed a hammering heel into the dash.
Lucky wanted to box the little man’s ears. Or twist one until he squealed himself back to Planet Reality. But that would have been a dumb-assed move. Smacking the client. The man with the checkbook. Causing actual pain and injury to the actual father of the runaway teen.
Forfuckssake!
He shouldered the damn driver’s door, stepped out into a sudden downpour and splashed his way onto the sidewalk until he had a hold of the passenger door’s handle. All the while, the vehicle was rocking with heavier and heavier kicks from Andrew, unhinged and barking his fatherly frustrations at the world.
“C’mon. Outta the car,” ordered Lucky with the rap of his knuckles, preparing to pull the door open for punctuation. He lifted the handle, expecting that feeling of the door unlatching. Instead, there was the impotent sensation from a locked door.
Lucky knuckled the window again.
“Unlock the door, Andrew!”
That’s when he saw it. The final blow to the Crown Vic’s dash. Andrew’s right knee lifted, showing a yogi’s flexibility, hinging near his right earlobe. Then came the final crack, followed by a concussive WHUMP. The cabin of the car instantly filled with a gassy mist as the airbag’s capacitors dumped their electric load. At nearly the speed of light, a servo joined a thimble-sized reserve of sodium azide and potassium nitrate, making for an instantaneous chemical production of nitrogen. The result was an inflating bag with enough protective sock to bust the average adult’s nose, or save his or her life.
What it also did was blow a gaping hole in the car’s dashboard—one that would require a wallet-denting replacement.
“Sheezus!” muffled Andrew, flailing his arms until he found the inside handle. As the door swung out, Andrew was greeted by Lucky’s hand grabbing a fistful of red hair.
“You stupid knob-jockey!” Lucky spun Andrew onto the sidewalk, letting go of the red scruff and leaving his paying client stumbling up against the brick wall of a closed Argentine carniceria.
“What you do that for?” asked Andrew before realizing his busted nose had turned into a bloody sieve. “My frickin’ nose again!”
“Like I did that?” said Lucky. “I think you’d know if I’d actually been the one to hurt you.”
“Your GD car.”
“Not my car, as a matter of record!” pissed Lucky. “And because you had to have your little panty fit. Well, look at it. Now I gotta replace the fuckin’ dash. You know what airbags cost? There’s a reason why gangbangers boost ’em!”
“My nose is broken again.”
“Well whaaaaaa, whaaaa, whaaaa,” mocked Lucky. “For Christ’s sake, grow a pair, will ya?”
“You don’t give a crap,” cried Andrew. “Not about me. Not about my daughter.”
“Know what? You need to walk your shit off.” Lucky stepped back and gestured down the sidewalk. “Easy stroll back to the hotel. Get your head unscrewed from your asshole.”
“Don’t talk to me that…You work for me!”
“Said walk it off, Andy.”
“Maybe you don’t get how the world works! I pay! And you get done what I need done!”
Steadfast, Lucky’s left arm remained a straight directional sign, angled to the sidewalk, strongly encouraging Andrew which way he should beat his feet. Yet the only steps Andrew took were the two between himself and Lucky.
“I bet this is the real reason why you’re not a cop anymore.” Andrew’s finger was accusing, pointing just south of the tip of Lucky’s nose. “You have a problem with your GD place in the food chain.”
If patience was a gas tank, Lucky was already on fumes. Nonetheless, he gathered what wits he had left, inhaled a single, cleansing breath, and gave one last instruction.
“You’re angry. You’re hurt cuzza the airbag. You need time to yourself,” advised Lucky. “Walk back to your hotel. Pull yourself together.”
“I need. To find. My daughter!”
“Doin’ the best I can,” shrugged Lucky. “And I don’t need you making it any harder.”
“Read. My. Lips. Dipstick,” pointed Andrew. “You. Work. For. Me—”
If Andrew Kaarlsen let out a howl, nobody but Lucky was within earshot to hear or give witness. At least not when, under that torrent of rain, Lucky grabbed hold of Andrew’s accusing finger and twisted it counterclockwise until he detected the distinct diffused snap of a bone. The scream was sharper than that of the actual bone breaking.
“Now,” hissed Lucky. “That was me. Hurting. You.”
Lucky left the spoiled ass-hat bitching on the sidewalk, the little man winding in place as if centrifugal force would send pain-killing blood to his swelling digit. The Crown Vic with its deployed and flaccid passenger airbag was still humming when Lucky shut one door, climbed in through the other, and fast-drifted into a curb-to-one-eighty U-turn. If Andrew Kaarlsen was calling after him, shouting invectives or even hurling loose bricks, Lucky wouldn’t have had a glimmer because he had consciously chosen to ignore both rear and side view mirrors.
Walk if off, Andrew.
It was strong advice that Lucky would have stood behind. But because of how the argument terminated, Andrew would need to walk it off into the nearest emergency room or urgent care facility.
And if Andrew needed to cool his hot ass down, Lucky needed to lie down, swallow a pair of Percocets, and allow his screaming back muscles to unclench. The extra drug dose would pretty much assure seven-plus hours of deserved sleep. There would be absolutely no need to set an alarm or rise early. He was certain to be sacked by sun up. Relieved of his teenager recovery duty forever ad infinitum.
Part V
Friday
36
Panorama City. 4:41 A.M.
It had been a hellish storm. At least by Southern California standards. After the two-hour torrent of downpours, dumping God only knows how many inches of rain on Greater Los Angeles and thereabouts, a nasty wind had whipped up with gusts of about forty-plus miles per hour across the Valley floor.
Unable to sleep, Herm lay in bed, waiting for the sound of drip-drops inside his half-renovated house. When the hard rain finally abated around one in the morning, he experienced a warm glow of satisfaction that his roof repairs had held strong under the severe conditions. But as the moist air gave way to that howling wind, a second worry
crept under Herm’s skull-cap. Then a third. The latter being a nattering pang that involved his surprise encounter back at The Casting Place.
No doubt that officious-looking man flashing a cutesy-pie pic of Miss Strawberry Blonde was some kind of cop.
Herm’s only question about the situation was if he had been set up by his suspicious office neighbor. Or that ball-busting purple-haired skank called Cherry Pie.
Then would come another hard push of wind and instantly, foremost in Herm’s mind, his anxiety would shift to his beloved duo of mature eucalyptus trees.
Once a majestic eighty feet of hardwood glory, the pair had become a nuisance to the nearby homes with their forever peeling bark in need of monthly cleanups. Making matters worse, their wide reaching branches continued to harass city telephone and power lines. So much so that the city had, without Herm’s permission, sent in a crew of tree-climbing saw-monkeys to dispatch the problem. One afternoon, while Herm was on the other side of the hill plying his flesh-selling trade, a truckload of Spanish-speaking illegals pulled up to his Panorama City project. A crew of a dozen tree-trimmers emptied out and in a matter of an hour, had both sheared and topped his magnificent eucs effectively cutting their height by half and leaving them looking like a pair of bare, white forearms sprouting from the southeast corner of his backyard.
I grew up with those Goddamn trees, groused Herm to the Department of Water and Power. How dare the city desecrate property without the owner’s proxy.
Soon after, the trees began to grow fat and wide, bushing up like a pair of massive chia pets in a race to overtake each other. A friend who was both an AA member and arborist explained the ugly phenomenon as a kind of ecological panic. The end result was that his precious trees had been permanently transformed into massive shrubs.
They’d also become hazards. With compromised root systems and top heavy from the sudden concentration of foliage, they had lost the ability to allow a stiff wind to sift safely through their branches. This caused Herm to lie awake on more than a night or two, wondering when the hell what was left of his eucs would come crashing through his bedroom ceiling, maiming or killing him in such an unglamorous fashion. He could solve it with a phone call and a personal check to the same private contractor who had gladly cut ’em down. They could haul the wood and grind the roots into pulp until the trees were just a boyhood memory.
Hell no.
The dangerous wind had peaked and diminished sometime just after 3 A.M. The eucs hadn’t toppled that night. Nor would they ever have a chance again. That’s because an idea had stirred in Herm. Something delicious and poetic and more masculine than a lifetime prescription of medical testosterone.
A chainsaw.
A tool with teeth. Shiny, new, and best of all, his. Able to fell tall hardwoods or anything else that might stand in his way.
Like a flesh-poaching office neighbor.
Or a cop bearing bad news in the form of an old wallet photo.
Certain his chainsaw was waiting for him at his nearby Home Depot, Herm lay in his bed, checking the clock, dozing in and out, but all the while lusting for a one of those long-bladed bitches he’d seen on so many reality survival shows.
When the digital clock finally ticked over to 5:29 A.M., Herm was up, showering, brewing a pot of dark roast, then in his car by 5:50. He wasn’t the first in line at the construction mart. The Mexicans were always there first. Or Hispanics, as Herm would have to remind himself. Brown and usually short and barely awakened faces would be milling about, speaking a speedy form of Spanglish, and sucking the straws on supersized jugs of caffeinated soda and energy drinks.
The doors opened precisely at 6 A.M. After the initial rush of contractors—licensed or otherwise—Herm strolled in right behind them. And because he pretty much knew every square inch of the store, he was quick to navigate to the powered tools section. He bypassed both the battery and electric saws and went straight through to the gas-powered machines. If Herm was going to cut down his favorite old friends, he wanted the entire neighborhood to hear it. That and he couldn’t wait to feel what it was like, laying that blade against a trunk, trigger in full throttle mode, teeth chewing at the fleshy wood exactly the way he had designed.
Yes. It was sexual as hell to Herm. And if asked, he would have fully admitted as much to pretty much anybody. Hell, he might even share about the thrill of the first cut in Alcoholics Anonymous, once he found a new regular meeting.
A Husqvarna quickly caught his fancy. The body was lipstick red and glossy, sporting a twenty-four-inch blade and nearly six horses of trunk-gnawing ecstasy. It was the epitome of lust at first site. Once Herm had checked it out, he could barely read the other brands and their specs. The Husqvarna was too damn sexy to leave Home Depot with anyone but him. He imagined his credit card was so desperate to buy the monster it might melt a hole right through the leather of his billfold.
“You’re gonna be mine,” whispered Herm to the power tool, flagging down a white-haired sales associate. “Need help with a chainsaw.”
“Okey-dokey,” replied the mustached old Irishman in the orange bib. “Know much about ’em?”
“My first,” said Herm, certain by the old man’s former bronco-breaker look that he knew his way around man tools. “But I kinda got my attention stuck to this Husqvarna right here.”
“That’s my top model,” shadowed the salesman. “On the high side price-point wise, but pretty much can do everything you ask.”
“I want it to eat a couple old eucalyptus.”
And possibly a human or two.
“And it’ll smell good doin’ it,” smiled the salesman. “Want me to give you the tour?”
“Oh, please. Do your magic,” smiled Herm, feeling not the least bit fatigued after a nearly sleepless night. “I am all yours.”
37
In his entire fifty years of life on earth, Andrew Kaarlsen had never suffered a single broken bone. While the other boys participated in football and hockey, Andrew was part of the burgeoning wave of young men who were raised on VHS movies, computer games, and Twizzlers. Outdoor sports, healthy or otherwise, were damned in lieu of school afternoons and weekends spent in front of computer screens playing in simulated worlds.
And then, in a matter of days, Andrew had to endure both a beat down, a busted nose, and a double finger fracture. But rather than wander into a strange emergency room or urgent care clinic, the Wisconsin software mogul called his personal secretary’s home number, waking her in the middle of a blizzard with a less-than-polite demand that she rustle up some kind of limousine or town car. Bleary-eyed, she was able to geo-locate her boss via his smartphone and, in minutes, she’d rallied an available car to hustle over to Andrew’s downtown location, gather him up and deliver him once again to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai hospital next to Beverly Hills. And because his secretary thought to call Conrad Ellis, Andrew was leap-frogged over the waiting sick and injured, x-rayed, his finger expertly splinted, and his nose reset once again by the very same on-call plastic surgeon.
“This is like our second date,” joked the plastics doc. “What happens if we make it to a third?”
“Unlucky you, I’m still married,” nasaled Andrew.
The good news? Andrew would survive. The bad news? He would have to make do breathing only through his left nostril for however many days he was to remain in Los Angeles.
Nobody knew it yet, but that number was down to less than twenty-four hours.
The town car dropped Andrew back at the downtown Biltmore at around 3 A.M. The Vicodin the ER docs prescribed to ease the oncoming pain to Andrew’s swollen face and finger had left him sluggish and drowsy. Despite his considerable anguish, he fell asleep on the couch just inside the front door of the suite. He would have remained there for eight or more hours if he hadn’t already ordered an automatic room service meal of oatmeal and shaved almonds with milk and espresso to be served every morning promptly at 6:30 A.M. The door unlatched at exactly the bottom of the
hour and into the suite entered a uniformed, Sudanese transplant carrying a silver-plated tray. The server hadn’t noticed the heavily bandaged face of the hotel guest slumped onto the couch until he heard an audible groan.
“Sorry, sir!” panicked the startled server.
“Leave it and go,” growled Andrew.
The server left the tray on the desk and made a hasty retreat, quietly clicking the hotel room door behind him. Andrew, in the meantime, just wanted to return to his slumber, but the pain from the swelling on his face eventually proved it impossible. Afraid that another dose of prescription painkillers would result in more wasteful slumber, he padded to his bathroom and found his travel bottle of Advil.
Eight hundred milligrams later, Andrew gingerly gave himself a sponge bath, dressed in fresh sweats, then sat down with his laptop and oatmeal. His right hand worked the spoon and his left the trackpad, avoiding his usual clicks on news and sports stories for searches on a website he had only recently heard of.
Jumpfinder.com.
He tapped out the word “escort” and quickly narrowed his results filter to “strawberry” and “petite” and “freckles” and “green eyes” and most dangerously, descriptors designed to imply the illicitness of youth. The results flowed quickly as he scrolled through one personal ad after another, wishing, hoping, praying he would land on something familiar. A limb. An eyeball. A familiar dimple that would identify his Karrie who, he had somehow become certain, had turned to whoring as a way to support herself.
The mere idea of it gave Andrew’s stomach an uncomfortable churn. Escort after escort, scanned through a cheap pair of reading glasses that couldn’t find the true bridge of the man’s nose. The specs were askew, but still functional, maximizing the resolution of each suggestive pose.
Slightly less than an hour into the exercise, as Andrew continued to revise and narrow every search, he became overwhelmed and began to tear up. Not from the pain in his face, but an increasingly fearful heart. Andrew hurt for himself, of course, and also for every other parent who had lost a young girl to the child-swallowing vortex.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 48