“Stupid Compton,” she groused back to the TV as if the micro-city was a cold sore no one could cure.
The TV reporter’s voice track mentioned a semi-familiar name—Atom Blum—identified as the blockbuster Hollywood movie director of the Roadkill trilogy. With her attention only slightly piqued, Cat looked up from digging for fresh underwear and took in the news story’s pro forma footage of the boy wonder working one of his movie sets, setting a camera shot, instructing actors, dressed in a suit on a red carpet, waving at paparazzi while exiting a restaurant, and answering publicity questions with a rehearsed smile.
Think I know this guy.
Or Cat wondered as much. She’d seen none of his movies—the snob in her wouldn’t deign to pay money for some lowbrow action flick. Perhaps she’d met Atom at a dinner party or one of those charity fundraisers designed to pluck money-feathers off the entertainment pigeons. No matter. The young studio gun was dead, found shot in the head in the middle of some federal housing project. No doubt, she reasoned, the byproduct of some underground addiction.
Yet why am I still staring at the TV?
It was like an itch she couldn’t scratch—a bothersome, unrelenting nag at her paranoid subconscious. Then the puzzle pieces clicked. A famous Hollywood movie director had been murdered in Compton. Whether it was a drug deal gone sideways or a pimp robbing a white john seeking some chocolate kink, it was sure to draw a very public spotlight. Atom Blum’s death could very well be a white-hot klieg lamp aimed at a slice of Southland that was otherwise ignored but for the ubiquitous gang shootings that played liked wallpaper on the local news feeds. That was, in part, the beauty of doing business in Compton with Julius Colón. Nobody that mattered gave a Goddamn.
But they would now.
“Shit,” Cat audibled back to the TV. “Shit, shit, and SHIT!”
37
Pasadena. 9:13 A.M.
The pain in Lucky’s shoulder had elevated from a searing sting to a flaming ache that referred from the wound both down his left arm and up through his neck until it dammed at the back of his skull. Tempting as it was, Lucky refused the ER doctor’s recommendation that he dull the discomfort with a narcotic-based fentanyl patch, opting instead for a cocktail of over-the-counter anti-inflammatories. The primary downside was that once Gonzo had driven him home from Martin Luther King Hospital and prepared a comfortable cradle of goose-down pillows for him, sleep had remained as elusive as answers to Mush Man’s murder. Thus Lucky righted himself, found the spare keys to Karrie’s Prius, and navigated fifteen minutes east to Arcadia and the converted boxing gym where his sixteen-year-old emancipated girl was testing for her green tassel in Muay Thai.
Left arm immobilized in a baby-blue sling, Lucky rested on a bench near Travis. The boy barely acknowledged him with a glance before returning his attention to the game on his phone. The gym, normally a bustling crunch of fighters and mitts slapping flesh and vinyl, was empty but for the few students testing as well as a half-dozen on-looking parents. The converted transmission shop was painted glossy gray from the floor to the ducting with punching bags of all weights and sizes hung like sentries waiting for war.
Karrie was on the checkerboard mat, her strawberry mane cinched in a bun. She wore black compression shorts and a t-shirt screaming the silk-screened name of the home gym—Dynamite Muay Thai. Having danced since age two, Karrie had turned in her tights and tutus for a four-day-a-week regimen of fight training. She’d landed on Muay Thai after an Internet search for “the most deadly martial art for self-defense.”
Lucky approved.
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” reminded Gonzo after returning from the bathroom, ice cold Dr. Pepper in hand. The can sweat bullets in the gym’s eighty-degree temperature.
“Didn’t work out,” said Lucky.
“Hurts like hell, huh?” she asked.
Lucky nodded, but only slightly since engagement of his neck muscles resulted in even more pain. The sound of Karrie striking her instructor’s hand pads made a popping noise not unlike the fireworks stuck in his skull from the night before. Sharp, like air split by bullets.
“She’s somethin’ huh?” remarked Gonzo. “Traded jazz hands for boxing gloves.”
Lucky keyed on Karrie’s hands, moving swiftly through her rehearsed routine. Her padded fire-engine-red leather grappling gloves had been a Christmas gift from her newly adopted daddy.
Whap! Whap whap! Whap whap whap!
“Before long you’ll both be able to kick my ass,” muttered Lucky.
“You don’t have a prayer,” smiled Gonzo, before offering him a sip of her soda. “Hear anything from your trainee?”
“Like what?” asked Lucky. “A fuck-you-very-much for the worst start of a patrol deputy’s career?”
“Or something like, ‘How you feeling?’” corrected Gonzo. “You’re her T.O. for God’s sake.”
“By the time the shoot inquest is done, my guess is she’ll be cured of wanting to be a cop.”
“Well, if it were me,” encouraged Gonzo, “I’d wanna get right back in the car with you.”
“No chance for that,” said Lucky. “I’m good as done. Zero chance of survival.”
“You had no control over what happened. And for Christ’s sake, you kept your trainee alive.”
“That I did,” he acknowledged. “But I got my ride-along killed.”
“That’s not on you.”
“Don’t matter. He’s news. Downtown’s gonna need a head on a stake.”
“The union will fight for you.”
“Third day back in a black ’n’ white? If there ever was an easy sacrifice…” Lucky let the sentence hang. But was resigned only to losing the job, not the battle. “My head hurts. But all I keep thinkin’ about is Mush Man.”
“Your ghettocide?”
“Bad enough some CSI gets zapped to take the spotlight off,” groused Lucky. “Now, with Atom dumb-fuck getting himself dead, it’s callin’ all cars to cement cap the hornet’s nest. And when the crime clears?”
“I know. Nobody cares about a nobody.”
Karrie’s instructor hoisted up a body-sized punching pad and braced for a series of kicks from his student. The teenager’s grace was mesmerizing and so fluid her sparring could have been confused for a dance. Only this routine was punctuated by bone-breaking power, with blow after blow echoing across the space. The instructor continued backing away to absorb the strikes. All while Karrie’s freckled face, a usual picture of concentrated cool, had turned fetal pink with rage.
“Hyud!” barked the instructor, Thai for Stop!
Karrie heard the demand, but couldn’t resist a final core-jacked thwack to the body pad. The last strike echoed like a broken two-by-four.
“You’ve created a little killer there,” remarked Gonzo.
Lucky would have liked to shake his head in disagreement, but he didn’t care to invite any more pain. As for any concern over creating a weapon out of Karrie? But for the example he set, Lucky deserved no credit for Karrie’s martial arts transformation. The kid had clearly been marching to her own aggressive drummer since she had transformed from the only child of an ugly divorce into a homeless runaway surviving in some of the darkest corners of Los Angeles some eighteen months earlier.
“Wonder what’s with his dogs?” segued Lucky.
“Whose dogs?”
“Mush’s.”
“No. No. And no. You can’t bring ’em home. You’re way too allergic and I’m—”
“Not home. Just wondering who’s got ’em.”
“Thought you knew who got ’em. Some O.G. with the—”
“Pizza,” finished Lucky. “Yeah. He was feedin’ ’em pizza.”
Julius, Lucky remembered. Julius Colón. Just thinking the name raised gooseflesh on Lucky’s legs. Why? Wasn’t Julius Colón just another criminal? Or was there more to the unfinished picture? And why in the name of Jesus was Lucky imagining Julius Colón when his mental picture was still choked with last nigh
t’s Fourth of July conflagration at the New Wilmington Gardens?
38
Three uninvited union reps had descended upon Tim Gilligan in his most unwelcoming bunker. And it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet.
“Job’s stalled,” shrugged burly Vernon DeMacher of I.B.E. Local 18. “Nobody steps on site until that phantom line is shut off.”
“In process,” defended Tim, failing to appear relaxed even though his chair was tilted fully back, his feet propped across the corner of his desk.
“Clock’s on my guys,” said Vernon. “And because that’s your emergency hole down there, they’re making double time for doing dick.”
“On top of that, if we can’t get in that hole,” complained Ken Chang, the municipal employees’ union spokesman, “We can’t do our investigating diligence for the family of the dead CSI.”
“Don’t think I know that?” Tim contended.
“Have to say it or we’re not on record,” argued Kenny.
“And I already got your email,” defended Tim.
“And now I’m here,” smiled Kenny.
“Who had a good Fourth?” Tim asked, lamely trying to ease the tension in the space. “Me? I had two families to—”
“C’mon, Timmy. Holiday’s over,” moaned Jeanette Reyes, seated in the one visitor’s chair opposite Tim’s über-utilitarian tank desk.
“‘Timmy?’” complained Tim. Five minutes earlier, he’d never met the mannish, tattooed Ms Reyes. He wondered if the city had paid for her sex reassignment.
“What’s the hold-up on shutting down that old transmission line?” she asked.
“Holiday yesterday,” defended Tim. “I just got in. Right now you’re all taking up my time, keeping me from my job.
“Our job to be here,” insisted Kenny.
“You didn’t even gimme a chance to answer your email!” barked Tim. “And since all of you had to coordinate to find me, what happened to the service employees’ union or someone from Coalition? Why aren’t they here to bust my balls?”
“Take any longer than the morning,” chilled Vernon, “And my guess is they’ll be right along.”
“Re-routing the line today,” shrugged Tim.
“When?” asked Reyes.
“As soon as you beat your clumsy-ass feet outta my office,” pushed Tim.
“That’s a mouthful,” stood Reyes. “Especially comin’ out of a management fat ass.”
“And why’s your office so cold?” asked Vernon, the only hand Tim was willing to shake.
“So I can see everyone’s nipples,” joked Tim, quickly gulping after the last syllable crossed his lips. “That was a joke. Nobody write me up, okay?”
Tim watched the trio file out, then proceeded to stare at the open door for a good thirty seconds. He fully expected a second wave of desk jockeys purporting to represent union employees using the phantom underground transmission line as a reason to shirk work.
My underground line.
If there was pride in Tim’s self-admission, it was because he had done all the heavy lifting to rediscover the eons-old transmission line. His hung-over eyes had trudged through volumes of ancient Compton City schematics in search of forgotten, underground electrical pathways. He’d eventually landed upon a prewar designated trunk-line with branches that travelled from south to north, from Long Beach to Lynwood as it cut through the east side of Compton. The DWP manager had let out an excited whoop. As if X had marked the exact spot where bags of forgotten gold had been buried.
To be an engineer in those old days? What must it have been like to be on the burgeoning start of a great cityscape instead of on the tired decrepit end?
Back at the turn of the century, when Los Angeles and thereabouts were developing into an industrial juggernaut, engineers were at odds over the best ways to transmit power. Above ground or below? Transmission of electricity through overland power lines was cost effective by clear multiples. Routing cables underground, though, was considered safer for the obvious reasons of weather-proofing the lines from downed trees, storms, and other potential catastrophes.
By the second half of the century, faster and cheaper had won the day and most of Southern California’s power had been relegated to above-ground delivery. The landscape from the Valley to the Basin was cluttered with telephone poles and drooping power lines. In more recent decades, a significant number of residents, especially those living in higher income neighborhoods, had judged the exposed lines unsightly, spoiling their views of sunsets, mountain desert scapes, and the gentle swaying palm trees. The demand to bury power lines was, once again, on the rise.
Shutting down his private transmission line would be the easy part. A simple text to the tech he’d paid off at the Central Avenue receiving station and the power would be reverted back into the DWP’s mainstream.
But rerouting juice back to the all-important destination?
That’s what scorched Tim’s insides. It might take weeks. Months even. There’d been no back-up plan. And why should there have been? Along the hundreds of miles of DWP-managed water mains, who on earth could have predicted a blowout along his surreptitious underground transmission line? Only to be followed a day later by a murder and fatal accident? What were the odds?
Nobody can blame you, Timbo. Shit just happens.
Tim handled his prepaid flip-phone, purchased for cash at a gas-station convenience store just outside Disneyland. He had spent all day and half an evening at the famed amusement park with his two youngest kids. As his DWP-owned car chugged gasoline from a self-serve pump and the incessant melody of It’s a Small World pinged in his head, he’d dropped $24.99 on the untraceable number. From that point on, every time he’d handled the flip-phone, that awful song cycled in his ears.
It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears…
Inside Tim’s head, counterpoint pictures played along with the song. There were the moving images from all that he’d watched on TV about the West Valley murder of Hal Solomon; the newspaper clipping slipped across the Chili’s tabletop by tiny, frightened Cat Rincon in her Walmart pink; the yellow crime-scene tape, like a scarlet letter announcing his dirty secret. The more Tim reflected, the more the insufferable song fit his idea of what would happen the moment he grew the gonads to shut off the power.
It’s a world of hope and a world of fears…
39
Compton. 2:02 P.M.
Frosty never tired of it.
Whether the moment was imagined or real, he’d stretch out his gangly arms and, while slowly strolling, let his fingertips graze the leaves of the plants aligned in neat, man-made rows. It was a spiritual connection he couldn’t quite describe. Not even to his deeply religious mother or Gran’nana. The connectivity of it was—if he were ever coerced to admit as much—the nearest thing to heaven the twenty-two-year-old Crip could envision.
This from a man who’d not once set foot in anything wilder than the urban gardens of south Los Angeles County. A true forest or jungle might scare the wits out of him with its unevenness and chaos. Nurseries were clean and ordered and quantifiable by genus, age, size, and price.
In the nursery world, man was God.
Above him, rows upon rows of grow lights were arranged like upside-down church pews. As they devoured electricity, each unit hummed in harmonic unison, casting the five-acre former aircraft tire plant in an ominous yet loving magenta hue. Fore and aft, six-foot diameter industrial fans provided a controlled breeze to provide a constant tickle of agitation to the grove of hydroponically accelerated cannabis.
The plants, each raised from the Oracle seed strain, were rooted freely in buckets of clay pellets and wired like vineyard grapes allowing them to stand at their tallest—some as high as ten feet.
Julius estimated the first crop alone would clear five million dollars.
Money, thought Frosty. Those distinctive marijuana leaves might as well have been twenty-dollar bills ripening for the harvest. Illegal? For now, sure. And not as sexy as h
is dream, the under-the-transmission-towers tree and shrub farm he planned to own one day. By Frosty’s measure, he was more than halfway there. The high-tech, oxygen-rich marijuana factory was a poster card of modern horticulture. Each plant had been raised from handpicked seed, grown free of soil from sprout to adulthood, then potted in a deep bed of clay pellets and fed with a mix of reverse-osmosis water, pH-balanced organic grow product, and a pinch of Epsom salts.
Frosty’s Magic Maryjane Mix was his alone to brew in the five-hundred-gallon stainless-steel feeder tank that was suspended on a platform to drip-line height at the north end of the warehouse.
He named the steel tank feeder The Big Tit.
Frosty acknowledged a marijuana shrub was not a tree. It was a flowering plant. So despite the grove’s rows of ten-foot perpendicular growth, the entire crop was trunkless. Yet every damned stalk demanded his utmost care.
He scrutinized each plant, making sure the leaves were healthy and green to the twig. No sign of malnutrition, root rot, or insects. At the southern end he looped around, skipped a row, and continued the inspection. Seventeen plants deep, Frosty happened upon a duo of stalks with a coating of mold on the top clusters of buds. The fuzzy gray growth was like poor Christmas tree flocking surrounding a gray-green pine cone. Mold meant unwelcome moisture had gathered on the bud.
Turning in place, Frosty checked the airflow, holding up his open palm to feel if the massive fans were positioned and moving the air molecules at the proper, humidity-killing speed. Satisfied with the flow, he turned his attention to the ceiling to see if condensation was somehow pooling into a gravity defying dark splotch, only to have it drip onto the infected plants.
His eyes were scouring the reaches beyond the magenta cast when he was overcome by a blanket of blackness. The darkness was so complete and immediate that it fooled his brain into thinking he’d been cracked on the head with a heavy object. Yet Frosty felt his feet underneath him. Balance. And then he heard the tick-tick-ticking as the grow lamps began to cool down.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 82