Frosty observed the already posture-perfect Julius stiffen. At five-foot-seven, Julius was all pectorals and bulging thighs and had the soft brown facial features of mixed races. Dominating in the ring as well as the streets had taught him the art of looking down on his lesser.
“You heard too many stories,” said Julius, betraying his truest feelings. “That Lennox shit’s behind me.”
“Oh, right,” corrected Tuba. “Jus’ thought you might wanna know.”
“That some fat ol’ Reaper be workin’ Compton?” faked Julius. He forced a business pose to mask the belly full of flame the word Reaper wrought inside—memories of an embarrassment the street would not abide. “Your heart’s in the right place and I appreciate it. But we don’t dust up with Sheriffs. We take care of our business. They takes care of theirs. Now what’s your job?”
“Clock out. Watch your big hole.”
Julius thumped a friendly fist on Tuba’s chest.
“Good. Now get back in there before Raydon fucks up my pizza game,” gestured Julius before turning to Big Otis. “You waitin’ on me to tell ya to get the car?”
Otis performed an awkward pivot and hulked off around the corner. This left Frosty to lead Julius fifteen paces west to the Escalade parked against a curb darkened by an overgrown Ficus.
“Love this ol’ tree,” remarked Julius, “but it’s kicking the ass of my sidewalk.”
The businessman knew all about liability. The concrete had long ago stopped containing the tree’s clamoring roots. Surrounding pieces of cement were either loose in chunks or dangerously and unevenly protruding.
“Ficus microcarpa,” said Frosty, with the correct Latin for the Indian Laurel Fig tree.
“Well, whatever it called, some ol’ woman gonna trip, break her hip ’n’ dial that 222-2222 motherfucker on the back of all them busses.”
Frosty laughed.
“You laugh,” warned Julius. “But you wait till you get your first legit biz. Insurance? Liability premiums don’t know nothin’ but how to ask ‘pass the lube.’”
After a cautious read of the street in both directions, Frosty used his remote to pop the rear gate of the Escalade. He was lifting the top off the spare wheel well when Julius interrupted.
“Don’t want your bloody underwears,” touched Julius before snapping his fingers. “That’s your shit to burn. Jus’ need me the pop gun.”
“Why? Was gonna drop it in the harbor.”
“City idiots got a buyback goin’,” answered Julius. “Givin’ away gift cards from Walmart ’n’ shit for turnin’ in guns. And I’m talkin’ any gat no matter if it works or not.”
“Y’ain’t serious.”
“As a hard-on. Them city assholes dumb enough to trade dollars for any bang bang that chambers a bullet, let ’em pay me for the gun that kilt one of their own Water ’n’ Power bitches.”
Frosty paused, wondering if Julius had been kicked hard in the head during a sparring session.
“Nothin’ for your skinny ass to worry about,” explained Julius. “They go right from the buy-back to the place where they melt ’em down. Use the metal to make wheelchairs or some such do-good bullshit.”
“Makin’ good from the bad,” surmised Frosty.
“Don’t care what them fools call it,” said Julius. “Call it leavin’ no easy dollar behind. That and you gotta love the irony. Yeah. I said irony. Know that word?”
Frosty didn’t think it cool to scratch his head. From the bag of bloody evidence, he lifted a gallon-sized Ziploc containing the Taurus .22 he’d used to execute the Tarzana man and his screeching ex-wife.
“Shell casings?” asked Julius.
“Jackers don’t stop to pick up their trash,” answered Frosty. “Left no prints on ’em so…”
The rest was left unsaid, considering Julius’s plan to trade the palm-sized pistol for certain destruction and a gift card.
“When they handin’ over them gift cards? Any of ’em from Olive Garden you send my way, ’kay? My Gran’nana loves her some breadsticks.”
Julius accepted the Ziploc, tucking it into his armpit just as Big Otis rounded out of the alley in a metallic gray Chevy Suburban.
“Still scoutin’ property?” asked Julius before slipping into the Suburban’s passenger seat.
“If its got source water and transmission towers,” said Frosty, “I’m eyeballin’.”
“Almost there, Frost-man,” grinned Julius. “We’re almost there. You will have your garden.”
15
“Hotter ’n Hades,” moaned the boy wonder from the backseat of the black-and-white. “Seriously. My skin’s gonna crack. Any air conditioning in this bitch?”
Lucky flicked an eye to his rearview mirror.
“Tell our guest why sheriffs roll with windows down,” suggested Lucky.
“It’s because LA Sheriffs use their ears,” replied Shia. “All year round it’s windows down. That way we hear what’s happening outside the vehicle like whistles or shouts for assistance. Or triangulation of gunfire—”
“Right, right,” complied Atom. “Must be hell on your skin and hair though.”
“My second night, sir,” replied Shia, keeping her eyes forward and scanning the ghostly corners and storefronts. “Time will tell.”
“Complexion like yours,” said Atom. “I mean, it’s fucking beautiful. Like camera-ready—art-school beautiful. And I would know because I’ve directed hours of cosmetics spots.”
“Spots?” asked Shia.
“TV commercials,” said Atom. “When I’m not making a movie, I shoot ads for television. Easy money if you’re A-list.”
“Wouldn’t know about that, sir,” said Shia.
“Hey,” said Atom. “Ever heard of an actress named Lupita Nyong’o?”
“No, sir,” fibbed Shia. She didn’t want to appear too interested in anything as shallow as show biz—at least not in front of Lucky. Shia had obviously both heard of and been compared to the Twelve Years a Slave actress, especially after the mixed Kenyan-Mexican performer had collected an Academy Award. Their rich complexions and bone structures were striking in similarity. Once while standing in line for a nightclub, Shia had even been mistaken for the actress and escorted past the velvet rope by a bouncer. She hadn’t protested.
“You are every bit as spectacular as Lupita,” impressed Atom. “Especially now that I’ve been this close to both of you. I’d say your uniform thing gives you the edge.”
“Didn’t know I was in a competition,” fended Shia, flat and trying to sound unflattered.
“Come on,” laughed Atom. “All women are in a competition whether they admit it or not. Ain’t that right Sergeant Lucky?”
“Sir?” asked Lucky, pretending not to have been listening. He’d already reached what he sometimes called his douchebag threshold. If there were a switch he could have flipped to shut the visitor’s mouth to the off position, Lucky would have thrown it.
“All women,” confirmed Atom. “And call me sexist, but in one way or the other they’re in competition with all other women. And I’m talking the planet earth.”
From his left, Lucky marked a beige mid-nineties Lincoln Town Car slow-rolling through a stop sign before turning right onto East Compton Boulevard. He clicked the flashlight between his legs and, in an instant, crunched the math. Three men in the front, four deep in the backseat. Teens to early twenties. A fresh square of gauze poked out from under the driver’s white wife beater—the telling signature of a new tattoo.
But more importantly—as Lucky would calculate—not a single head inside the Lincoln so much as twitched when his black-and-white rolled past. The lack of interest informed Lucky that inside that car he’d likely find something arrest-worthy.
Like a gun.
Lucky spun the steering wheel and U-turned the radio unit into an immediate one-eighty.
“See ’em?” asked Lucky to his trainee.
“Counted six or seven,” said Shia. “Rolled the stop sign.”
“Kind of a chicken shit infraction, dontcha think?” suggested Lucky.
“Four in the back, there’s at least one riding without a seatbelt,” she countered. “So that’s two. I’ll run tags.”
The beams of the black-and-white’s headlights converged as Lucky closed the gap on the Lincoln. Yet before the license plate was even readable, Lucky could see the rear of the vehicle had been custom lowered.
“It’s gonna come back clean,” said Lucky. “Custom car out for a cruise.”
“You’re right,” said Shia, proving to have keen eyes and quick fingers on The Box.
Both cars slowed at the west-facing stoplight, the black-and-white slipping in a mere two feet from the Lincoln’s lowered bumper.
“You gonna light these bad boys up?” asked Atom from behind the protective screen which separated the backseat from the radio car’s occupied front.
Lucky ignored the director, keying his vision on the near-finished cigarette pinched between the middle and index fingers of the Lincoln driver’s left hand.
One. Last. Puff.
Sure enough—and as if on telekinetic command—the outstretched arm crooked at the elbow and the trail of smoke disappeared back into the car as the driver took a final drag. When the hand returned, the cigarette had been relegated to a flick position, momentarily perched on the driver’s cuticle.
Ready. For. Launch.
The light turned green. Simultaneously with the turning of the Lincoln’s front wheels, the cigarette’s remains were unconsciously discarded, catapulted end-over-sparking-end into the Compton air.
“Littering,” spoke Lucky in a throaty whisper. “Now there’s an infraction I can get behind.”
Atom pressed himself up against the right side of the screen, hoping to get close to Shia’s ear.
“What do you think we got in the car?” asked the boy wonder.
“You’re here to observe, sir,” reminded Shia. “Sit back and we’ll see what comes.”
Lucky engaged the button cuing the light array, spinning up the cherry and hot blue mirrored bulbs into an unmistakable frenzy. And certainly it was zero surprise to the seven male occupants of the Lincoln. Nary a silhouette in the backseat so much as swiveled. The driver acknowledged the sheriff with an empty-handed wave and glided the custom car nearly a quarter mile before indicating he was looking for a place to pull to the curb.
Like all those traffic stops the night before, Shia observed Lucky placing the black-and-white in park, popping the front door, and un-skinning his pistol.
“Stay in the car, sir,” ordered Lucky without even a glance back at the director.
As for Shia, she’d already learned to set her rhythm to Lucky’s. During a near sleepless day leading up to her second night of training, she’d tuned her radio to a meditation stream and mentally practiced syncing her movements to her T.O.’s. She’d replayed Lucky’s every moment from the night before—awkward or otherwise—trying to make a memory metric of all his ticks and twitches. Still, when she found herself drifting off to sleep, her brain would scan back to that rare Lucky Dey smile. With that, she’d jerk awake, left to wonder if the warmth Lucky had reserved for the dog-sledding Mush Man and his team of goofy mutts was what some call a “soul window”—a tiny indication of the man’s true self.
She could only hope.
As Lucky neared the Lincoln’s open driver’s window, he observed the driver wisely had both his hands on the wheel. A quick strike of the eyes and he’d clocked the hands of the two young men nearest him in the backseat. Nothing concealed. Palms on knees.
These boys know the drill all too well.
“What I do, officer?” asked the driver without even a lift of the chin.
“My name’s Deputy Dey. What’s yours?”
The driver calmly eyed Lucky, the corner of his mouth forming an indifferent smirk.
“Guess it’s okay if you call me…Howdy Doody,” said the driver to audible giggles from his crew.
“Okay, Mr. Doody,” said Lucky without a hitch.
“You can call me ‘Howdy,’” joked Howdy Doody, his glibness on full drip.
“Here’s what it is, Mr. Doody. I got nothin’ against smokin’. But you know what happens when you drop a butt in the street?”
“Called litterin’, right?” asked Howdy Doody, who Lucky surmised was as old as twenty-five and rather vain, manicured from his fingernails to his five-day beard.
“Cigarette butt stays on the pavement till it rains. Then it’s the storm drain to the river and out to the ocean with all the other trash people toss from their cars.”
“Sorry, officer,” said Howdy Doody. “S’pose I could be more—like environmental—you know? That means I’m gonna get me a ticket, well, I guess I deserves one.”
Lucky bent slightly at the waist, checking the hands of the skin ’n’ bones fourteen-year-old squeezed between the driver and front passenger. All Lucky could see of the teen’s face were acne scars and hanging dreads, yet clear as day, he noted the boy’s cellphone recording the traffic stop.
Lucky finger waved a hello at the tiny mobile camera lens.
“Hey, we knows our rights,” claimed the acne-prone teen.
“Expect you do,” said Lucky, returning his attention to the driver. “So let’s start with you. One at a time, I want you to step out of the vehicle.”
With that, the mood shifted into an altogether different gear. Some groans erupted from the car. But mostly it was the eyeballs—initially resistant to making contact with Lucky, each pair now switched from indifferent to a deadly stare.
“All cuzza my fuckin’ cigarette?” bitched Howdy Doody, pushing open his door. “You harassing us now.”
“Reasonable suspicion,” replied Lucky, “Now turn around, hands behind your back.”
From the black-and-white’s backseat, Atom Blum pressed his face against the screen in hopes of getting his least obstructed view. To him, the traffic stop routine appeared orderly. Safe. Hardly how he’d imagine filming the scene.
While Shia was poised near the sidewalk, left foot forward and clearly prepared to face down any unwarranted conflict, Lucky allowed every young black male to exhume himself from the Lincoln one at a time. Each was instructed to spread his legs shoulder width while Lucky patted him down for weapons then freely dug into his pockets, temporarily depositing all contents onto the Lincoln’s hood. When he was satisfied, Lucky directed each to the curb to sit on his hands.
Wow, thought Atom. The compliance of it all. As if they were following some scripted routine.
“Boorrrring,” he whistled to himself.
No. Were Atom to have captured the traffic stop on precious film, he would’ve built up the scene’s tension by having deputies sweat the suspected gangbangers while remaining seated in the black-and-white. Next, he’d set his camera low and on a forward-moving dolly track. A medium wide-angle lens would best capture Shia stepping onto the curb, hand on the grip of her pistol, and unconsciously sashaying that dynamic ass in the direction of the suspects’ vehicle. So sexy, Atom thought, the way the gun belt and all the equipment hugged the top of the woman’s hips, both rocking and squeaking with every purposed step.
“Don’t be afraid to sex shit up a little,” demanded Atom to nobody whatsoever.
Worried his senses were dulling, the boy wonder released his brain to obsess over the beautiful young deputy. He loved dressing women. And suddenly he ached to be dressing Shia. From silky, bejeweled underthings to her Kevlar vest, Atom imagined Shia waking. Showering. Buttoning herself down for the day. Only the way Atom imagined it she’d be climbing into clothes sewn by his favorite costumer. Tighter in the thighs and buttocks. Tapered at the waist. Slight padding in the bust to offset the obvious constraints of the body armor.
Oh, and please, some red flippin’ lipstick.
“Seven on the sidewalk, sir,” announced Shia the moment the last of the passengers had parked on the curb. Shia eyed the last to sit, a freckled gangs
ter in a bright red skully. He kept shifting from cheek to cheek as if inconveniently uncomfortable. “I said sit on your Goddamn hands!”
Lucky stuck his flashlight inside the Lincoln for a cursory looksee. After circling around the front end of the town car, he repeated the same routine on the passenger side. Peek. Flashlight. Sweep. And out. He eased over to Shia.
“Mr. Doody,” addressed Lucky. “Got license and registration?”
“Already took my wallet,” bemoaned the driver. “Registration’s in the box, you know?”
Lucky gestured for Shia to retrieve both the driver’s license and vehicle registration.
“So my guess is you’re all of the Blood persuasion.” It was hardly much of a guess considering the amount of crimson each man was wearing. Two in the middle, seated butt cheek against each other, wore twin Los Angeles Clippers home jerseys, the dominant crimson over blue. “Particular set you wanna affiliate?”
“I’m settin’ on taking me a nap,” pissed the retro one with the kinky afro. He wore a whimsical SpongeBob character comb stuck in his man-bun.
“Outta the pocket trash, I got some weed and—looks like maybe Xanax and a few hits of MDMA,” Shia called out as she organized all Lucky had removed from their pockets. “Got the d.l. You Lawrence Holmes?”
“An’ I’m sober as a church mouse, Ms Dep-u-tee,” sang back Howdy Doody. “And this is some sheriffs’ ass bullshit.”
Shia crouched at the Lincoln’s passenger door and twisted the latch on the glove box. It dropped open with a heavy kuh-thunk. Out spilled wads of bubble gum wrappers, empty jeweler bags used for single servings of drugs, and two unopened twelve-ounce bottles of Mexican Coca-Cola. One tumbled onto the floor mat.
At the curb, Lucky paced behind the line of young black men who were either squirming on their hands or slump-shouldered on meditative pause. He keenly let his eyes scour for temple or neck sweat or perspiration stains spreading from the creases of an armpit. The row of semi-obedient young men revealed some beady scalps and wet necklines. Yet the wettest of the crew was the red skully at the end with the freckled face. He kept wiping his palms on his cargo shorts before replacing them under his butt. Of the seven, Freckles as Lucky cast him, hadn’t once made eye contact with either police officer.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 70