The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset)

by Doug Richardson

  Not a one of Lucky’s made-up “family” were actual blood relatives. There was Gonzo and her fourteen-year-old son, Travis. Newest to the made-up clan was sixteen-year-old Karrie Kaarlsen. The pretty teen, originally from Wisconsin, was a runaway who’d tried to exchange a dark past in the freezing Midwest for the sunny skies of Southern California. To describe her adventure as a bump-filled hell ride would have been kind. Yet she’d found healthy parental attachments in the unmarried duo of Lucky and Gonzo, plus a strength of purpose in serving as a surrogate big sister to socially challenged Travis and in her ongoing obsession with Muay Thai.

  “You look like shit,” deadpanned Karrie before Lucky could roll up the window of his ’99 primer gray Crown Victoria.

  Lucky squinted into the glare, barely able to make out the outline of the strawberry blonde teenager. He could picture her though. Her image had been branded onto his brain ever since he’d first seen her picture. Freckles. Green eyes. Gone were the heavy makeup and pretense of being an adult. The girl was apple pie Americana in a five-foot-three-inch package. Sixteen and, Lucky could only guess, happy.

  He’d pulled into the driveway at the same moment Karrie was about to roll out in her nearly new Toyota Prius, a Sweet 16 gift from Conrad Ellis, an old family friend turned patron and rich Dutch Uncle. The metallic lime green paint job just added to the burn in Lucky’s retinas.

  “If I could see what you were wearing I’d probably tell you it was inappropriate,” swung Lucky.

  “Called summer school,” jibed Karrie. “No stupid uniforms.”

  Kushunk-thunk. Lucky heard the Prius’s passenger door open and shut in a simple one-two cadence. Travis, he easily figured, climbing into the Toyota. The boy hadn’t summoned so much as a hi Lucky, let alone a good morning or how are you? He was, after all, fourteen and cursed with the weird kid gene. And though Travis worried his mother into sleeplessness, Lucky reckoned the boy was just fine. Travis was odd and Lucky was the odder surrogate dad. Perhaps that was why they got along so well.

  As Lucky stepped gingerly from the car he knew he was something shy of thirty-nine aching paces to a bed and a fast slip into unconsciousness. Between the driveway and the mattress, he’d surely encounter Gonzo, the matriarch of his faux familia. He knew she loved him with little condition—having nursed him back to the living twice—the first after a head-on collision with a speeding Volvo—the second and more recent rescue was from his addiction to opioids, namely Percocet and Vicodin.

  Hello. My name is Lucky and I’m a drug addict.

  Lucky, in turn, loved Gonzo. He just loathed the ambivalence of his own affection. While he appreciated the onset of sudden stability in his life, he felt he neither deserved nor trusted it—that where he was truly meant to live and breathe was amongst the miscreants and the deadbeats of the streets.

  Let’s be frank, Lucky. It’s a miracle you’re not in jail.

  “Honey, I’m home,” Lucky called out.

  The Craftsman bungalow was sturdy. Most of the exterior shingles were still in place. Not to mention it was full of tax incentives for anyone who restored it (another reason why Gonzo wanted to buy instead of rent).

  “Bedroom,” called out Gonzo.

  Lucky lumbered down a tight corridor that was two shoulder widths wide. Karrie and Travis, both on the slighter side, could slip past each other without having to turn sideways, but Lucky and the swimmer-built Gonzo could barely maneuver without bumping uglies.

  Gonzo called it architectural foreplay.

  The master bedroom was two steps up—small, but neat and warm and decorated in a collage of fabrics and soft textures in contrast to the floor-to-ceiling hardwood. The room was rather dark on the most blue-skied of days, yet Lucky couldn’t wait to pull the black-out drapes and erase all evidence of sunlight.

  “You around for that water main thing?” asked Gonzo almost absently.

  Lucky’s eyes flicked to the TV angled atop the dresser. From first glance he could see the news helicopters were still in the air, telephoto lenses focused on the sinkhole with the Sheriff’s black-and-white stuck nose down in the water.

  “It’s all hands on deck down there,” deflected Lucky. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to debrief Gonzo on his first night’s adventure with his trainee. He just wanted sleep so badly. If he’d copped to his involvement, Gonzo would’ve demanded he describe every last detail.

  “I’m late,” offered Gonzo as she finished folding laundry. She moved the neat pile from the mattress top to a nearby chair, clearing the way for Lucky to flop. “When you wake up, could you move what’s in the washer to the dryer?”

  “Sure, sure.” Lucky kicked off his sneakers and fell face down onto the bed. His arms scrunched a pillow up underneath his head.

  “Not even a kiss hello or goodbye?”

  “How about goodnight?” he asked, his words half-muffled by his bicep. “Does that count?”

  Gonzo crawled onto the bed, straddling Lucky with her gazelle-like legs, hugged her man from behind, then lightly bit his ear.

  “I’d say ow, but I’m toast,” said Lucky.

  “That didn’t hurt.”

  “The back,” he nearly complained.

  “Noob put you through your paces?”

  “Just sore, that’s all.”

  “Trainees wear old men out,” said Gonzo. “Except me, of course. I was a perfect and efficient trainee in every imaginable way.”

  “Bet you were a nightmare.”

  “I’ll be one if you forget the laundry.”

  “G’night,” said Lucky, eyes closed and hoping to drift off.

  “You got AA before shift tonight?” she asked, before realizing he was already comatose. She left him, dressed, asleep, but not yet snoring. She made sure to lock the front door behind her.

  9

  Downtown Los Angeles. 9:11 A.M.

  Face it, Timbo. You’re fat.

  At least once a day, Tim Gilligan chastised himself for letting his weight climb out of control. He would sometimes blame the divorces and subsequent calorie-boosting drinking binges. But just getting in and out of his DWP-issued Hyundai was becoming a strain. His knees hurt. His lung capacity felt shallow. He was a heart attack on a stick waiting for life’s last lick.

  Short of sleep and not receiving a scintilla of satisfaction from his behemoth McDonald’s McCafé, he’d rolled down to Compton and witnessed firsthand the damage done by the DWP’s most recent blowout. But for the sheriff’s radio unit partially consumed by the sinkhole, it was pretty much like most of the other incidents—a water-spewing crater roughly the depth of the mainline with a circumference matching three-quarters the width of street.

  In essence, a pothole big enough to swallow a blind elephant.

  After putting a cork in his nerves, Tim made sure to check in with each department—fire, police, street services bureau, and even the Compton Assistant Mayor who lived just three blocks to the west. He’d made sure to thank them for any and all early morning efforts of support before promising that the DWP would contain and repair the damage as quickly as humanly possible.

  Or bureaucratically possible.

  The Water and Power manager kept up his political presence if only inside the safety tape. With the media throng, which had begun assembling just shy of 6:00 A.M., Tim thought it wise to leave both video and live camera interfacing to the perky Ann Marie Callahan, the department’s Ivy-League-groomed public affairs officer.

  As for his personal inspection of the blowout hole, with the presence of so much mud, foaming water, and crumbling asphalt, Tim couldn’t tell if anything incriminating had been unearthed. The odds, he knew, were against it. But the street name—Poinsettia—it struck him as familiar. Worrisome. Not until he’d returned to the office and checked the schematics would he know for sure if there was any more to the Compton water main break than what it hopefully was—just another lousy blowout.

  At ten past nine, Tim parked in his assigned DWP parking spot. As he waddl
ed the short distance to the garage elevators, he could have sworn his knees were popping so loudly that the noise could be heard reverberating throughout the entire underground car park.

  You’re not only fat, Timbo. You’re also a corrupt SOB.

  Stuffing his self-flogging long enough for an elevator ride, Tim stepped onto the twelfth floor of the downtown John Ferraro Building to discover fifteen-thousand-square-feet of unmanned desks, empty cubicles, and unanswered ringing telephones—reminiscent of scenes from the post-apocalyptic sci-fi films he’d loved as a preteen. The government-gray-on-gray space had the look of a fluorescent-lit sea of inefficiency, devoid of the slow-moving human slugs often attracted to civil service. The seemingly lifeless space curried a chill of mausoleum coldness.

  Then came the low hum of human grumbling—muffled from somewhere within the office space. Tim swung left, expecting to find a crowd assembled in the windowless break room which was barely large enough to contain a couple of adult carloads. Instead, his eyes were drawn to the newly redecorated conference space, a generous glass-encased room with a view of the intersection of the Hollywood and Pasadena freeways—famously known as the four level—and beyond, Dodger Stadium cast in a soft low-soaring cloud-fill affectionately known as June gloom.

  Gloom indeed, thought Tim. Only it was already July.

  Crammed into the conference space was what Tim perceived to be the entire engineering department staff. Heads were lowered, but Tim could pick out his favorite receptionist—a pleasing-to-the-loins twenty-something redhead he’d privately named Front Office Peggy—who was passing around pink tissues from a floral-printed Kleenex box. When she spied Tim, she handed off the tissue box and moved to the door to greet the latecomer.

  “It’s Hal Solomon,” said Peggy.

  “He’s here?” wondered Tim.

  “God, no,” she said. “He was killed last night. He and his ex-wife. Right in front of his house.”

  “Hal Solomon?” duplicated Tim, oddly uncertain that he’d heard correctly, even though Peggy’s diction was pretty clean and without the vocal up-lilt of a typical Valley girl.

  “As in our Hal Solomon,” replied Peggy. “He was just visiting last Thursday.”

  No doubt Tim knew Hal Solomon. The sixty-year-old was a former engineer and DWP lifer who’d been elevated to a career peak as Water and Power board member.

  “Jesus,” said Tim. “And sudden, yeah? Heart attack?”

  “You haven’t seen the news?” asked Peggy.

  “Blowout down in Compton. Where do you think I’ve been?”

  “Not that. In the West Valley, you know? The deadly carjacking!” she stressed, already utilizing the banner adopted by the local TV news outlets.

  Tim could only shake his head, still putting the pieces together.

  “Hal was carjacked?”

  “He and the ex-Missus Solomon were found dead in their driveway,” whispered Peggy, as if it were some kind of inside DWP secret. “Shot in the head.”

  Tim’s fingertips touched his cranium, massaging his own thinning follicles. As if the idea of Hal Solomon’s murder needed assistance penetrating his own thick melon.

  “Chandra invited everyone into the conference room for prayers,” said Peggy. “Not that it’s mandatory or anything. I mean, I’m not even Catholic anymore. And I think Kevin’s an atheist. But he’s in there. I’m sure everyone would appreciate if you came, too.”

  There came a tingling beneath Tim’s skin—an uncomfortable agitation that arrived without warning. His pores were opening and his sudden flop sweat was instantly chilled by the wafting air conditioning.

  “I feel sick,” said Tim, not even meaning to excuse himself. He pivoted and made a dead reckoning for his office.

  The notoriously windowless tomb—which was well beneath Tim Gilligan’s managerial station—was in a cramped L-shaped space that hugged the floor’s main electrical box. The thermostat was also in there to make certain the temperature was correctly adjusted for the equipment. Tim’s seniority could have easily afforded him a corner suite with a view, but he found the constant hum of electricity regulated by the industrial breakers to be soothing and privacy-enhancing. He’d configured his desk and computer screen in such a way that if he saw someone coming, whatever private correspondence or conversations in which he might be engaged could be terminated without a hint of suspicion. That and the waves of electrical interference would make it almost impossible for anyone with an agenda to plant a listening device.

  Turning to his desktop PC, Tim performed a quick news search for Hal Solomon. Within an eye-blink, media sources unfurled across his screen with clickable links. Each station had produced familiar video packages—a ridiculously telegenic stand-up reporter under a blaze of white camera lights, replete with B-roll footage of pools of coagulating blood and a driveway roped off with yellow crime scene tape dramatically fluttering in the early morning breeze.

  “Sheezus hell,” mouthed Tim.

  The details of the murders were currently just guesswork and possible scenarios. Police sources called it a “carjacking gone horribly wrong.” There were rumors of an African-American suspect in black jeans and a dark hoodie captured on a nearby supermarket’s security cam. The suspect could be seen in the parking lot, testing the doors of luxury cars. More tangible details were being kept under lock and key by the LAPD while unnamed sources were already floating theories that after the hooded felon failed to shoplift a parked luxury ride, he’d shifted his focus to the sleepy driveways south of Ventura Boulevard.

  Car jacking gone wrong?

  Early reports claimed the spindly, sixty-year-old Hal Solomon had put up a fight. Tim couldn’t even imagine the older man struggling with man or woman over a dinner check, let alone a fully-insured car. Then there was the black suspect in the West Valley. Tarzana was hardly lily-white. In fact, there was little of Los Angeles that hadn’t been integrated by nearly every stripe of ethnicity, except possibly the eight-mile-deep, black and brown swath that cut from South Central Los Angeles southwest to Compton where very few Caucasians chose to live.

  Still, wondered Tim—an armed black man jacking cars on the slopes of Tarzana? What was the likelihood of such a scenario versus something…

  …more malevolent?

  Tim rolled his desk chair deep into the corner of his odd-shaped office. He pressed his seat back against a wall of steel shelves which held stacked schematics of every Water and Power pipe that had been sunk into Southland earth since William Mulholland had overseen the installation of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, forever changing the city’s destiny. He thumbed his mobile phone to a number on speed dial. There was barely a single ring before his call was kicked to voicemail.

  “This is Catalina Rincon. I’m not available, so leave a message.”

  A finger swipe and Tim had hung up. Cat would surely know. For a moment, he considered leaving word for her at her office. What could be suspicious about an executive on the engineering floor phoning a Water and Power board member? He might be calling to offer his condolences over the tragic circumstance of losing an esteemed colleague.

  Tim’s phone vibrated in a pair of quick bursts. He glanced at the incoming text contained in a white-on-green bubble.

  in a meeting. usual spot? 1245?

  He exhaled, then replied in a three-letter affirmative. His unanswered questions swilled like spoiled milk. Tim rationalized it would be better if he waited. Cat—or Catalina—was guaranteed to come with her own queries concerning the blowout in Compton: how it compared to some of the more recent failures; plans for cleanup and repair; and if by ugly chance it could endanger the dirty secret the two of them had shared with Hal Solomon. The very dead Hal Solomon. Murdered by a hooded assailant in his West Valley driveway. A black assailant, at that. Coincidence? Or an early sign of oncoming calamity?

  The odds of a connection between the blowout and the murder appeared astronomical. Yet if Tim was a betting man instead of a man afflicted by constant crav
ings for food, drink, and prostitutes, he’d have wagered most of his money roll on the calamity.

  10

  Pasadena. 1:00 P.M.

  “Hi. My name is Lucky. And I’m an addict.”

  He’d said the words many times over, but he wondered if he’d ever truly believed them. Even as an afterthought the moment they’d crossed from his tongue to his lips. The personal and public admission was the assumed and de facto requirement for attending AA meetings. Addicts need only apply. All attendees were there to surrender to the God of Almighty Dependency. Through the help of a sponsor and consistent meetings, Lucky had kicked his habit of greater mobility through over-prescribed pain medications. Yet when he cocked his ears and listened to the other addicts and the life stories they shared, he couldn’t quite personally relate to the depths of their former depravities.

  Not that he didn’t pretend. Lucky was adept at pretending—mostly, in his odd prismatic opinion, at pretending to be human or at least a regular guy. In part, that’s what Gonzo loved about him. He was middle-class, blue-collar, and suffered little of life’s bullshit. Keeping things simple was both credo and calling. Like sorting out the good guys from the bad guys. His tool-like purpose was as a valid, societal need. There was no demand to complicate things any further, let alone dig deep for unscrubbed emotions. There was too much darkness down there. Lucky thought it best to keep those trap doors barred, bolted, and secured to a fault.

  Yet there Lucky sat in a circle of folding chairs in an old church basement. Transom-styled windows flooded the all-purpose space with fuzzy daylight, igniting the microns of dust into shafts of gold. Eleven adult men and two women—one who was so emaciated it was hard to believe she was more than three weeks sober—took turns putting words to their own intestinal wrestlings.

  Then there was the familiar looking fellow with the oversized forehead. At least that’s how Lucky clocked the man. A peer. Maybe a year or two younger than Lucky, inches taller, with the hair of a man in his late fifties, gray and neatly trimmed, harshly receding around a perfect dome of skin. Lucky guessed the man in the buttoned-down business shirt and conservative tie either drove a convertible or was a hardcore tennis addict. That would explain the man’s over-tanned complexion.