There were two other occupants in the van. Another buzz cut boy, somewhat younger and similarly featured to the first one and someone in the backseat she couldn't make out.
Somewhat mollified, Ms. Sinatra turned back. She had done her duty, and the rest would be up to an overworked police department. She walked the dog back toward her home, waved at Bernie the attorney that things were under control then paused on her own porch to text. The kids were smoking marijuana and at least driving under the influence. What the hell, it might help them do something. Ms. Sinatra went back into her home without giving the matter further thought, this kind of occurrence being common in the San Fernando Valley, particularly since the onslaught of the Great Recession.
The rest of what took place just after dark that evening had to be reconstructed by the police and the testimony of the lone survivor.
The driver, buzz cut number one, was a twenty-six-year-old two-time loser with a virtually unpronounceable Armenian last name. His posse called him Dawg. Nothing terribly original about that or that fact that he was supposedly fond of chasing girls. With a second streak of blazing originality, Dawg often referred to his colleagues as The Pussy Posse. Their nicknames and the alleged hilarity attached were likely related to the copious amounts of weed the boys ingested.
Dawg was driving the van. With him were little brother Gregor, nineteen years of age, one DUI on his record as well as an assault charge that had been reduced to disturbing the peace. His juvenile record, though formidable, had been recently sealed. The third occupant of the vehicle was a thirty-year-old black man named DeMarcus Oliver, a resident of Long Beach. Mr. Oliver had been in the Army in Iraq, honorably discharged. He had done one stretch and some rehab for savagely beating his ex-girlfriend while on crank. His jail time, originally a seven to ten, had been greatly reduced due to his addiction history and persuasive evidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. DeMarcus twitched a lot and rarely made eye contact.
Dawg, Gregor and DeMarcus were sitting in the van to make a swap. That's all the other two knew. DeMarcus Oliver had set things up. No one else had all the details. DeMarcus had been told not to bring a weapon, since the people he would be dealing with would search his ass but blow it away in a New York minute if he was holding anything but the suitcase and his dick when they arrived. He had gotten his instructions and the suitcase earlier that same day, but as the hour approached, the young ex-soldier found himself too frightened to go through with the assignment alone. He then recruited the other two at a nearby Medical Marijuana Dispensary, a place where they hung regularly to sample weed and listen to rap.
DeMarcus figured nobody was carrying, so this whole deal was just waiting for the other guy to pull up and then like just handing him the suitcase and shit in exchange for a small package, so what would be the harm if he and some friends were getting baked while they waited? Why should anybody be pissed off about that? The shit was even legal now. So they drove up early and parked and sat and smoked. And sat. And smoked. And sat and smoked.
At a couple of minutes after seven o'clock, Gregor started whining. "Where are these people man? I'm starving. You sure this is the right spot and shit?"
DeMarcus watched his own fingers wiggle. He'd never noticed how cool that was until now. Like little stubby garden snakes. Creatures with a life of their own. Some other part of him responded to Gregor. Said, "Shut the fuck up, man. It's barely seven and they are supposed to pick it up from me now. They ain't even LA late, which is like being fifteen minutes late to everything, dude, even your own funeral."
Dawg laughed. Hearing himself, he said, to absolutely no one's surprise, "Dude, I am so fucking high."
"We been here too long already," Gregor said. "All these old people are walking around looking at us. One of them has probably called the cops already."
"Told you, man. The shit is legal now. We just chillin'."
"Who are these people anyway?" Dawg asked. "Or is that like an I don't even want to know kind of thing."
For a moment, DeMarcus got all serious. "Dude, no you do not want to know. We don't care about that, or what we're handing over, or even what I'm taking back to the man. None of our damned business, not anybody's biz, you hear me? I'm just getting square with somebody who paid my lawyer off. You guys get that fifty bucks and keep what we don't smoke. That's it. End of story."
"It's dark out there," Dawg said, as if he hadn't heard a word.
"That's what happens when the sun goes down." One of them said, and they all laughed.
The van lit up bright and white. They all freaked. Cops?
Frantic movement all over the van. Gregor started trying to find a way to hide the bowl and the weed and damned near broke the glass. DeMarcus clutched the suitcase by the handle and got ready to open the side door. The light burned his eyes. It was just headlights on high beam. The lights passed slowly over the van as the car went by with a soft hiss of tires. The driver hit the brakes for a lazy second, little red dots blossomed, and then the car turned right and vanished from view.
"Man, that scared my shorts brown," Dawg said. "Think that was your guy?"
"I dunno."
Gregor said, "Let's see if he goes around the block, comes back again."
"Man, its dark out there. Why don't this place have street lights?"
Nobody said anything then, they all just waited to see if the car would come back. DeMarcus said, "If they don't show up soon then fuck this shit man, whatever it is ain't safe out here on the street, us without a piece."
"You don't even know what it is?"
"Told you I don't, dude. Don't know what it is, or what I'm getting in exchange and I don't want to and neither should you."
Gregor shivered as if with a fever and said, "Dude, I'm freaking out, what did you get us into here?"
"It's cool, be cool."
DeMarcus opened the side of the van, figuring the dudes in the other car would be less tight assed if they could see everything. He kept the suitcase between his knees and his hands in plain sight, palms open, those chubby little garden snake fingers slowly wriggling.
"Heads up."
Dawg looked in the rear view mirror. They could all sense it, the way the car slowly lit up again. The slow crunch and glide of the wheels as the car approached, the tension building as the moment grew closer . . .
"Gotta be them. This is it. Just everybody stay real cool. Let me do the talking," DeMarcus said. His voice trembled.
The car closed the distance in the dark, those bright headlights blinding them all. Outside, the street light half a block away clicked on. They could hear the faint chugging of a lawn sprinkler. The sidewalks and yards were empty, the neighborhood gone impossibly quiet. Suddenly all three kids wished the locals would come out again. Just walk their dogs and look out their windows and water their plants like before. They could have used the company.
Dawg rolled the window all the way down. He kept his head inside the van and out of the way. Gregor hunched down a bit in the passenger seat, willing himself out of this bad movie. DeMarcus sat there by the open side door of the van with the suitcase between his knees and that big, wide, dumb-assed grin on his face. His expression seemed to shout don't worry I'm no trouble for anybody shit I don't have any idea what's going on, just take it and go . . .
The car parked right next to the van. Seconds passed. Another beam sliced through the night and a flashlight wandered over them. It came to rest on DeMarcus and the suitcase between his knees. The kid just kept smiling, as if that silly grin was as protective as a Taser, solid as a Kevlar vest. After a moment, they all heard a man's voice, low and gruff.
The man said "Toss it here. Slow and smooth."
"I'm supposed to get the envelope first," DeMarcus said. He set his jaw a bit, like the soldier he once was, to emphasize the point.
"Toss it here, kid." There was nothing extra in the voice, no implied threat or subtext, but instantly the temperature in the van seemed to drop by thirty degrees.
&
nbsp; DeMarcus thought what the fuck. He got partway to his knees and half handed, half tossed the suitcase to the man behind the light. It did not seem particularly heavy. The light stayed on DeMarcus. Someone either checked the contents of the case, or made absolutely certain it had not been tampered with. They could hear the noises and some muttering. Gregor was still cringing in the front seat. He whispered that he no longer had the munchies but he had never needed to pee so badly in his life.
Dawg watched the flashlight beam crawl like a light spider across the hood of the van and up into his face. He smiled weakly and half waved. He knew better than to move quickly. Cops usually played by a set of rules you could understand. These men did not feel at all like cops to him.
"You were supposed to come alone, you stupid shit."
DeMarcus was still sitting there. His legs were slightly apart, no suitcase to protect his balls. Still grinning like a fool. His lips moved as if searching for an appropriate response, but nothing came out. The men in the car whispered in low, urgent tones. One seemed calm; the other irate. They were not speaking English, but some other language. The calmer man stopped talking. The pissed off man spoke again, this time without even the slightest trace of an accent.
"Take this back to him. And next time come alone."
DeMarcus felt his head nodding rapidly, like someone was moving it from behind. He was a ventriloquists dummy with loose parts. "Yes, sir."
It was okay, things were going to turn out all right after all.
Then SHIT they were lit up again. DeMarcus was confused for the first second, and then realized that the light was coming from somewhere else, someone had rolled up behind the other car. And this time the light was bright and on the top of the car. The two strangers swore in that strange language. The siren barely had time to squawk before the first shot took DeMarcus in the chest. The slug slammed him back against the wall of the van. His legs trembled and gave out as he slid down. The second shot took off most of the left side of his face.
Dawg screamed "no man, no man," over and over again in a panicked voice. In the second or two left to him, he managed to move back one foot. Then the top of his head separated and splattered against the inside of the front windshield. The police were returning fire. Someone in the car was shooting directly at them with what sounded like a semi-automatic, a gun that kept burping strings of firecracker rounds. The noise was deafening. Glass was shattered, men were screaming, the siren blaring.
The mystery car roared forward. It slammed against the van as it drove by, trapping what was left of Dawg behind the wheel. The driver was experienced and tough. He roared off into the night without stopping. The driver of the police car, Officer Charles Carney, had been hit once just below his Kevlar vest. He let go over the cruiser's door, fell heavily to the pavement. Carney rolled on his back with his knees up, groaning.
His partner Kate DiMattia called in. She gave a vehicle description and license plate. She also asked for immediate backup and at least one ambulance. Officer DiMattia was cautious approaching the van. She had no way of knowing if any of the shots just fired had come from inside. She did as she was trained, used her flashlight and 9mm and scanned everything carefully. Meanwhile, Dawg and DeMarcus finished bleeding out. The officer finally ascertained that two of the occupants were dead or dying. She could not see any weapons.
DiMattia wrinkled her nose at the odor of blood and voided bowels. She played her flashlight around the van. Bags of weed scattered everywhere, the broken glass and empty beer cans. She almost missed the last boy at first, nearly mistaking him for a lump of dirty laundry. The tennis shoes gave him away, like two white exclamation points. DiMattia forced herself to lean closer.
Gregor, the youngest brother, was scrunched down in the passenger seat. When discovered, the kid was holding onto his bong as if it were a flotation device after a plane crash at sea. One of the rounds that struck his brother had spun off a metal ashtray glued to the dash. It had entered Gregor's brain through his left eye. He was completely paralyzed on that side and already experiencing respiratory difficulties. After a harrowing ambulance ride, Gregor was ensconced in the ICU at Valley Presbyterian Hospital. He was fragile, but able to give a statement to investigating officers just before sliding into a coma. He died shortly after midnight.
FIFTEEN
Thursday night
"We're going," Rosa said.
"No fucking way."
It was difficult to see at night, even with the lanterns, but Rosa had done this hundreds of times in the daylight. She wound the harness around his waist and stuffed his legs through the holes. Wes had three beers in him, it was windy and dark. The sun had long finished painting rainbows on the ocean, all color had slid down into the horizon to await another day. The sea was rolling black velvet. Catalina sparkled to the west, lights like landlocked versions of the stars in the clear summer sky. Squinting, Wes could just make out some movement over there. The tourists were out in force, packing the glass-bottom boats and faux submarines, overpriced restaurants and bars. Kind of like busy ticks on a slumbering dog.
Rose and Wes sat way off shore, rocking in heavy waves, the ocean around them black as pitch. Their boat driver was a skinny white kid from somewhere in Europe. He gunned the engine. Said, "You two going up, you had better get it over with. Can't see much as it is."
Rosa strapped herself into the second harness. She parked next to Wes.
"Sit down," she said. "Put your legs straight out. When he guns it the parachute will lift us up. You're not going to believe this ride after dark."
"What if I throw up?"
She punched him on the arm. "Just make sure you know which way the wind is blowing. Some big, bad-ass 173rd Airborne stud you are."
She was always game for trouble, Rosa. They'd had a hot thing before he'd shipped out to fight the fucking ragheads. Rosa was the girl who'd have your back in a bar fight, and take your side against her own family. If she wanted to talk 600 feet above the ocean at night, with a bottle of rum between them, who was Wes to stand in her way? He was getting so drunk now that it didn't seem like a half bad idea.
"I don't know why we never ended up together," Wes said, surprising himself. He could barely make out her features under the lights tied to the rocking boat, but he was pretty sure her eyes got wet. "I thought about you a lot."
"You were up to your ass in sand and fighting a war," Rosa said. "I got it. You likely came back all fucked up, just like they all do. Just like my dad did."
The driver gunned the engine. Despite himself, Wes felt a rush of adrenaline. He took a deep slug of rum and handed the bottle back to Rosa. She matched him, shook her head brrrrr and hollered, "Cut us loose, Vigo!"
The wind caught the chute at once. It tugged urgently. Wes felt his legs get a bit of a rug burn from the carpet. Their bodies were yanked up and away. Both of them whooped like kids on a roller coaster. They held hands real tight, the way they used to. Vigo made some circles and then seemed to set the boat on automatic, doing some kind of a predetermined oval pattern, Wes figured them at about 600 feet, give or take. The air was silent, the evening magnificent, brisk and chill. They floated quietly. Once in a while a bird traveled beneath them seeking a buoy to park on for the night.
They let this thing sink in for a while. It was that beautiful; rocking in the air back and forth in tandem, seeing the gorgeous little Christmas tree of lights from the town of Catalina, listening to the bells and the waves and the faint hum of their boat down below. Wes remembered his first time in jump school, all the nerves and then this peaceful, weightless feeling.
Freedom.
. . . Like the freedom of being a kid, immortal, filled with sex and rage and laughter. You're never gonna die. And then your friend dies. And another friend. And it starts to be so damned obvious you're going to die too or get maimed at minimum, it's just a question of when. There is no order to this, it's just random chance, the crosses and Stars of David are just superstitious nonsense. That insigh
t becomes a terror deep in the bones. And your brain, it begins to fucking re-wire all that immortality into terror and sex into rage and rage into horror and revulsion. Combat ops, back and forth, day after day of punishment and grief. Meanwhile, those fucking Blackwatch dudes were everywhere, just lording it over the grunts, making two hundred grand a year and answering to nobody . . .
Wes blinked, found himself back in the air over Catalina. It was a warm night far away from battle. He had a beautiful girl under his arm. For a moment it was okay. And then he drifted again.
. . . Read an article in the infirmary back in 'Stan and they say your amygdala loses how to control positive social behavior, and the prefrontal cortex changes reality, you start blowing up here and there, and pretty soon you're like some street guy, all drugged out or acting like it. Just an addict looking for another high. Every warrior in history has had some experience with that, and whatever you come back to, it can't ever measure up to the high you got facing death. A man just can't come down from being that high. Not ever.
Way up there, in the air above the ocean, Wes loved Rosa. He realized her brilliance. How high he felt in a safe and loving way, contained somehow by both her affection and her fierce independence. She cared for him without holding on. And that was something he could handle, be with for a night or two. He looked down at the water far below, the shifting white caps. Wes caressed at her shadow features with his eyes.
"Thank you."
He turned and kissed Rosa, kind of a gentle thank you. She grabbed his face and kissed him back harder. Rosa kept her eyes pinned on his as if reading his thoughts. She wanted to heal his pain.
"Okay," she said. "Now tell me what happened. Tell me what your life has been away from me so long. And then I want to know how and why Cal died."
Running Cold (The Mick Callahan Novels) Page 15