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

by Doug Richardson

  While ambling, Frosty’s phone rang, reminding him to switch the device to silent mode. On the screen was the same name from earlier: momma.

  Jeesuz. What now?

  Did his mother already suspect Frosty’s lie? Had she read through the spaces in his voice that he’d had no intention whatsoever of driving her and his Gran’nana to church and would return home later with a lame “work” excuse. Frosty assuaged himself. He slipped the phone back into the front pocket of his lightweight hoodie and walked on, pretending a greater sense of purpose with each continued stride.

  A man was about to die.

  A deserving man.

  Who knows? Given time—especially considering all Frosty had unwittingly forfeited—including his plans to move his family far away from Compton—sweet momma Des’ree might even forgive him, if not approve of the Godless act.

  It was 8:11 P.M. when Frosty eased opposite Lucky’s house, staying semi-distant from the sidewalk across the street. Passing cars were few and random. The light was the gray, dim netherworld between day and night. Murky. Perfect. Unless a witness was face-to-face with Frosty, he’d be impossible to identify in a photo line-up of random black males of similar age.

  Frosty crossed at the street corner, then reversed west with his sights set on the Craftsman bungalow with the queen palm tree and its spray of fronds in front of a large picture window. In the ungated driveway were parked a Honda Accord and a primer-gray ’99 Crown Victoria. Frosty utilized the space between the six-foot hedge separating properties and the parked cars to shield his creep up the sloped drive.

  Quick feet, Frostman.

  Swiftly, he padded between the unkempt hedge and the pair of parked vehicles. Ahead was a side window with winged panels, both cranked half-open to take advantage of the cooling air. TV light projected from the inside—as well as the sounds of video gaming. As he closed, Frosty thought he recognized the manufactured cracks and booms playing over what sounded like a pretty decent speaker system.

  C.O.D: Black Ops: Declassified.

  As Frosty edged nearer, he could make out the back of two silhouetted heads seated low on a couch. A single, incandescent lamp spilled into a small converted bedroom, partially shelved with books, walls collaged with framed family photos in no discernible design.

  Family den. Gaming. Go, Frost-man, go!

  The silhouetted heads—one shaved and the other curled into an unruly hairball, made for easy division. Lucky was on the left, a teenage boy on the right. Lucky’s boy? Who cares? Every young scrub had a sperm donor. So what if another pimple-faced tit-squeezer had to grow up hard?

  Frosty inched closer and more of the room came into view. A woman sat in an armchair next to the floor lamp. A tall Latina with a wild African mane trained back into a ponytail. Despite the ear-splitting video game she appeared lost in a book.

  Or deaf as my Gran’nana.

  The gun felt snug in Frosty’s grip, the weight balanced from breach to the barrel. The high-pitched snap of the .22’s gunshots, once unleashed, would mesh neatly with the sounds of the game.

  Two in the back of that shaved skull.

  Ignore the shattering glass.

  Crouch and run back down the driveway.

  Brisk walk back to the Escalade.

  Frosty curled around the nose of the Accord, knees bent, cleanly below the window frame. Barrel first, he slowly rose, pivoting the muzzle against the glass. There was no more than a foot separating the business end of the pistol and the back of Lucky’s head. The millisecond pause that followed offered little more than a moment of personal recognition. Frosty had indeed been correct about the video game. Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified. On the fifty-inch TV was a two-player split screen. PlayStation controllers in both Lucky’s and the teenager’s grips.

  Two shots. Bang bang. And all would be good.

  For the first few hours, the antibiotics administered at the Altadena urgent care had made Lucky want to puke. After he’d told the desk nurse he was a Sheriff’s deputy recovering from an on-the-job gunshot, he was hurried in to treatment. The wound was flushed, sewn shut again with a drain, and then redressed before he was excused to go home and rest. A seven-hour nap later, Lucky reconnected with his made-up family, scarfed down some cold, leftover meatloaf, and retired for a few hours of gaming with Travis. The suspended cop felt all thumbs with the controller and could barely get four steps in the game without losing life, only to be re-spawned with a full magazine of ammo.

  “If only the real world was like this,” he quipped to the teen boy who may or may not have registered his words. Travis’s face was a picture of practiced concentration, his fingers and thumbs eradicating computer-generated insurgents with expert grace.

  “Loud enough for you boys?” deadpanned Gonzo, her rhetorical finesse matching her concentration on the novel she’d rather read in the company of her men than elsewhere and alone.

  For Gonzo’s sake, Lucky contemplated turning down the volume. On the other hand, he was happy to have his headspace dominated by the constant wall of images and sound built expressly to feed a floor-shaking sub-woofer. Any reduction of the barrage might easily lead to a flood of thoughts and images from the prior week. The last pictures Lucky wanted in his brain were the memories of for-real, dead bodies.

  Mush Man.

  Atom Blum.

  Julius Colón.

  Realistic as the action on-screen appeared to a civilian, to Lucky it was both innocently counterfeit and oh-so-welcome. With even more effort, the distraction might have dulled the constant ache along the left side of his body.

  Then came the tick.

  Was it an actual sound? Or merely a feeling posing as the slightest noise at the base of Lucky’s sensitive neck? After all, he’d been shot there before. A survivable .25 caliber hunk of lead had remained lodged behind his soft palate for years. Ever since, he’d experienced a strange sensitivity—not unlike a driver who’d been rear-ended once too often.

  So Lucky engaged his neck. Slowly. Clockwise, following his uninjured right shoulder. He registered danger, death and another slo-mo mortal moment.

  The looming darkness married with the mostly blue spectrum rays from the TV made for a harsh reflection. Nonetheless, Lucky was able to discern two faint shapes. First, a gun muzzle, the fat piston of metal with a straw-sized hole bored through it, only a half-inch from the glass, aimed between his eyes. Beyond the barrel he could make out no more than a dark shape in a hoodie. Utterly featureless but for the most dim impression of two, widely-set yellow eyes. Moistened. Lost in space.

  Before Lucky could flinch or reflect on the imminent moment his motors would be cut and his life extinguished, the shape withdrew as if sucked back into the gray. Not realizing he’d been holding his breath, Lucky exhaled in a lung-dumping whoosh.

  “You okay?” asked Gonzo from pure impulse.

  Next came a shout—or scream—completely unmistakably—

  “Karrie!” popped off Lucky.

  He was off the couch and slashing through the open door into the corridor. He bounced off the opposing wall, sent a framed kindergarten painting crashing to the floor, but kept enough balance to turn the kitchen corner and shoot for the side door leading into the driveway. Only when Lucky pulled the door open did he realize he was without a weapon. As he swung the door open, he may as well have been miles from the bedroom where Gonzo and he kept their pistols locked in electronic quick safes.

  His mind flashed forward. Any second he’d be sure to hear gunfire. He expected to fall out the side door and find Karrie slumped between the cars, sucking for her last breath.

  Only there was a different kind of ruckus.

  Both Karrie and the stranger were flat on the concrete. The girl had already felled the would-be assassin. The young man in the hoodie was on his side, arm pinned while Karrie used the power of her left leg to unleash kick-stomps to the side of his skull.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” she kept screaming with each strike of her heel against
Frosty’s face.

  Frosty flailed with his free arm, begging as he was losing consciousness.

  “Stop, please…” he croaked.

  Lucky swooped in, kicked the .22 Ruger under the car, and dragged Karrie away.

  “He’s got a gun!” Karrie wailed.

  Frosty, freed for barely a second, quickly found himself flipped over and his head pushed to the pavement, a sharp knee fitting into the thin space between his shoulders.

  “She said gun!” yelled Gonzo, leaving no ounce of her considerable skill wasted in pinching the assailant between herself and the driveway.

  “Under the Honda,” said Lucky moving in to frisk what parts of Frosty Gonzo hadn’t secured.

  “What’s going on?” asked innocent Travis from the doorway.

  “Not another foot, Trav!” demanded Gonzo. “Stay right there.”

  “He was pointing the gun at the window,” cried Karrie.

  “I know,” breathed Lucky.

  “You know?” questioned Gonzo. “Or you know him?”

  During the frisk, Lucky came up with Frosty’s vibrating smart phone.

  “Was gonna shoot,” pleaded Frosty. “But I din’t!”

  “Was gonna what?” pressed Gonzo.

  “Shoot me in the back of the head,” finished Lucky before reading the name on the phone. “Who’s ‘Momma?’”

  “But din’t!” repeated Frosty.

  “Why didn’t you?” asked Lucky.

  “I dunno…” wheezed Frosty, still pinned. “Cuzza church, I think.”

  “Who is he?” asked Karrie, confused and in semi-shock. “Why’s he at our home?”

  “Your momma calling you?” Lucky squatted and aimed the screen at Frosty’s face.

  “She ain’t got nothin’,” said Frosty. “Was all me.”

  “You came here to kill me.”

  “But I din’t!”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Said so…I think.”

  “You fucked up on shit?” asked Lucky.

  “Don’t do no drugs. Not nothin’. I’m straight up—”

  “You were gonna straight up put a cap in me.”

  “Yeah, but I din’t! You saw me walk away.”

  “You wanna explain this bullshit?” glared Gonzo at Lucky.

  “What’s your name, kid?” asked Lucky.

  “Frosty.”

  “Like the snowman?”

  “Frosty,” he repeated.

  Once again, the mobile phone buzzed with Frosty’s mother re-trying her luck.

  “Jus’ wanna take my momma to church, ’kay?” cried Frosty.

  “He is so high!” insisted Karrie.

  “You didn’t put one in me,” said Lucky, “cuz you wanted to take your momma to church? That it?”

  “All it is,” insisted Frosty.

  “Okay.” Lucky stood, put the phone to his ear, and clicked the green icon. “Hello?”

  “You ain’t—” began the voice of Des’ree. “I don’ know who you are, but you put Lamar on the phone right now!”

  “Who’s Lamar?” asked Lucky.

  “Lamar’s my—he knows his name’s Lamar,” said Des’ree. “But you probably call his skinny butt Frosty or somethin’, ain’t that right? Now, may I please talk to my son?”

  “Lamar’s kinda busy right now,” answered Lucky.

  “He ain’t got no kinda busy that forgives him for what he supposed to be doin’.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Drivin’ me ’n’ his Gran’nana to church,” Des’ree braved. “And I don’t care what fun his friends make of him for it. He’d a man doin’ what a man’s supposed to do.”

  Lucky paused as if capturing the moment as a still picture. Gonzo wearing a t-shirt and Star Wars pajama bottoms, her sharp knee pinning the thin young black man to the driveway like a fly under a rolled newspaper. Karrie, flushed from her five-mile run and the unexpected scuffle, staring down at the assailant, prepared to pounce and carry on with her Muay Thai beat-down.

  “Hello?” came the voice over the phone.

  “Where’s the church?” asked Lucky.

  “Lamar knows where it is,” she said. “And it’s too late now for him to drive us. He just better meet us or go home and move himself outta my house.”

  “No worries. Lamar’ll be there,” assured Lucky. He clicked off and pocketed the phone. “Travis. You know where your mom keeps her handcuffs?”

  Travis twisted in the doorway and was off on the errand.

  “Lucky,” warned Gonzo. “Call the Altadena station.”

  “S’okay,” said Lucky. “I got this.”

  “Lucky. He brought a gun to our home,” added Gonzo. “Our home!”

  “I know.” Lucky put his arms briefly around Karrie, squeezed her tight and kissed the top of her head. With that, the formerly broken runaway melted into a stream of sobs and tears. “You did so good, sweetie. So proud.”

  “He was gonna kill you,” she huffed.

  “Like he said,” assured Lucky. “He didn’t.”

  Travis returned with a set of matte-black handcuffs dangling from one hand.

  “Give ’em,” said Gonzo before hooking Frosty up and ratcheting each bracelet tighter than regulations permitted.

  Lucky stood Frosty up and walked the Crip around to the front passenger seat of his ’99 Ford. Frosty didn’t resist a muscle, resigned to whatever might come. Lucky looped the retention seatbelt through Frosty’s joined wrists and essentially lashed him to the seat.

  Gonzo approached from behind.

  “Last thing you should be doing is something off-book,” Gonzo cautioned.

  “I’m good,” promised Lucky. “Travis? I’ll be back soon to finish our game. Okay?”

  “’Kay, Luck,” said the teen boy.

  “Lucky!” insisted Gonzo.

  “I promised,” shrugged Lucky. “So there it is.”

  “We’ll see,” she said without any certainty whatsoever. “We’ll all see, and you know what that means.”

  Lucky nodded, but didn’t dare try to kiss her goodbye. Gonzo wasn’t wired for token affection. Actions were all the meaning she required. And with a would-be assassin at her home she was angry beyond consolation.

  “Cocked and locked,” said Lucky, reminding Gonzo to keep the doors and windows shut and her weapon close. “Pretty sure this is all over. But just in case…”

  54

  Lucky drove, windows down and in a general state of silence, save for asking Frosty for the names of cross streets and his mother’s house of worship.

  “Greater Zion Baptist.”

  As was his preferred habit, Lucky kept their travel to surface streets. If asked, he would have said it was because stoplights and streetlamps and cross traffic added to his gravitational pull. It brought constant context to the expansive horizontal plane that was Los Angeles, where good neighborhoods bled into bad and vice versa.

  “You like church?” asked Lucky.

  “Like trees.” Frosty had propped his head between the headrest and the doorpost, his eyes fixed on the constant streak of lights playing off the front windshield.

  “Trees,” repeated Lucky.

  “Yeah…trees is good.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s good about trees?”

  Lucky kept glancing over to his prisoner who, by his calculation, had barely shifted a muscle in the thirty-plus minutes they’d been on the road.

  “Trees,” began Frosty. “They like all of us… Start as babies. Need lookin’ after till they strong enough to be on they own, you know? Better they root, harder they are to knock around. An’ once they put down the roots, see, they don’t really go no place else. That home. Tha’s they life.”

  “Sounds like you know more than somethin’ about trees.”

  “I know bucket about trees. You can ask. Ain’t nothin’ ’bout trees I don’ know or can’t find out.”

  Lucky could’ve tested the young Crip, calling out the first tree that caught h
is eye. Would it have mattered? Not in the least. Lucky believed him. And that was enough.

  “You came for Julius?” asked Lucky.

  “Julius dead. I came for me.”

  “Yeah? What I do to you?”

  “Trees, man. Fucked up my trees.”

  “The weed farm?”

  “Weed farm, shit. Cannabis jus’ a shrub. Lotta trouble, weed… Mean, liked learnin’ the hydro. Liked that… You know pot roots is white? Least when they hydro’d. No light down there so they roots is like ghost fingers. Spider webby ghosty fingers.”

  “So how—”

  “No matter now,” said Frosty. “Feel me? S’all over. Weed. Future.”

  Frosty hadn’t yet realized they’d parked. The ’99’s engine still humming, was in a passenger loading green zone in front of Compton’s Greater Zion Baptist Church. It was a low-slung three-building complex, better resembling a small primary school. All appeared dark but for a subtle glow leaking from the sanctuary door.

  “Little late for church service,” remarked Lucky.

  “Not for Momma. She go anytime somebody slingin’ the Word. No matter, no how.”

  “She gonna be happy to see you?”

  “Might slap my face. But she kiss it after.”

  Lucky gestured for Frosty to twist a bit. He unwrapped the seatbelt and keyed the cuffs until Frosty’s wrists were freed.

  “’Kay,” said Frosty. “You did that. Now what your game?”

  “No game. Your momma wanted you to take her to church.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t deserve no church.”

  “Maybe not. But maybe it’s what you need more than a trip to County.”