Lustmord 2

by Kirk Alex

  Biggs motioned that he follow him to the kitchen in back. Pointed to the floor and the footprints in the blood. Blood had begun to coagulate. It never took long for it to happen when exposed to oxygen. He’d mentioned it to him so often already.

  “What do it matter?”

  Biggs handed him the bottle of enzyme he dug up out of the duffel, a brush, additional towels and rags.

  “We either make the footprints disappear or we burn our shoes. Got it? Those footprints can be traced back to us.”

  “Know it.”

  “You know it?”

  “Said I did.”

  “Sui generis.”

  “Say what?”

  “One of a kind.That’s you. Luftmensch: unrealistic. Impractical.”

  “Make no sense.”

  “Use the enzyme spray. That’s what it’s for. Spray and scrub. Make sure you wipe up real good—and toss it all in the garbage bag. The garbage bag goes in the duffel. Do it right. Let’s get it done.”

  “Still don’t be used to the smell of blood, me.”

  “Dry blood has no smell.”

  “It don’t all be dry.”

  “All the more reason to get with it.”

  CHAPTER 320

  They were finished cleaning up and the used towels were shoved inside the plastic garbage bag, the garbage bag itself was stuffed into the duffel. Enzyme spray and brush were dumped on top of the garbage bag (after the latter was thoroughly rinsed off). Duffel top was closed.

  Marvin thought to grab clear plastic bags of day olds: bagels and Danish, and laying them on top of the various green bags that the bodies were in. Biggs looked at him.

  “Why do that when you can get fresh?” Bishop pointed at the display case that contained Danish on a tray wrapped in cellophane. The bagels were in bread baskets on a wooden shelf in back of the counter. Biggs waited while Marvin returned the day old items where he found them, and went for the good stuff. Now the plastic bags had to be wiped down.

  “Rent-A-Ho, huh?”

  Biggs shook his head. Did what he could to wash the blood out of his duster and shirt. Urged Marvin to do likewise, although the latter was less successful at it. So be it, thought Biggs. The bodies needed to be carried out, and he and Marvin needed to make themselves scarce.

  Lugging Olivia Duarte out to the van in the laundry bag hadn’t been entirely easy, but they had managed; on the other hand, they knew the others would be a real bitch and a challenge. Slim may have been lean, but he was tall and weighed plenty, and then there was Big Bertha who was called Big Bertha for a good reason. Woman weighed close to three hundred pounds. She didn’t merely have junk in that trunk, she had the entire junkyard. Marvin was right; there were times the imbecile was right on the money, although you had to see to it that he never got his hands on any.

  They managed to carry Slim and his mistress out somehow, cursing and straining during the entire process. Sweated through it. Climbed in the van. Cecil got out of his duster and tossed it in Marvin’s direction. Told him to get out of his and stuff them both out of sight. The bishop made certain the toggle was in place and the lights disengaged, before slowly pulling out and taking it down the quiet, poorly lighted alley.

  He made a right at the first street they reached.

  CHAPTER 321

  Biggs turned his headlights on, found a funk tune on the FM dial. He tore open a box of Hostess Ding Dongs, and he was feeling pretty good, a bit disappointed over the way he had knocked down the Latin spitfire for sure, but feeling okay nonetheless. The adrenaline was still there.

  “Four years down the drain. . . .” Well, you’ve got to feel all right. No use crying over spilt milk. She sure would have been something. Got carried away, that’s all. Hit her too hard. It’s Marvin’s fault. All the punk’s fault.

  Biggs unraveled the foil and stuck the chocolate cake with the creamy filling in his mouth, and thought he could eat these things and Zingers and Crumb Mini Donuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (which he damned near did, with the exception of the occasional balanced meal) and not get tired. Problem was this type of lousy diet had a way of leaving him constipated for days at a time, as did the medication. Other times the meds gave him runs; that definitely irritated the ’roids. Side effects, they said.

  The sidekick was eating a Snickers candy bar.

  “Why’d I have to hit her twice? Why twice? Once would have been enough.”

  “We taking them back to the cribby?”

  Biggs kept checking both mirrors from time to time to make certain they were not being followed. It looked like things were going their way, but you never knew. You had to be careful. Had the fake plates on for that reason. Had served their purpose as far as potential witnesses at/or near the diner having possibly seen them drive off. But now, on the road—they caused him nothing but trepidation. If rollers stopped them—they were fucked. It would have made better sense to go to the legit plates.

  “The hell for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have to go plant them someplace.”

  Biggs had considered taking Bertha back to the basement for the countless number of thick steaks they’d be able to get out of her, lots of chili and jambalaya for the staff and congregation, not to mention all the homeless bellies that could have been filled down by the Mission and Little Tokyo, only she was too heavy and a hassle. His back had had enough to deal with for one day.

  “The Duarte ho, too? She ain’t dead. Can’t be. Not from that little knock on the mouf you give her. Why don’t we have some fun wiff her first?”

  “I think I hit her too hard.”

  CHAPTER 322

  Biggs made a left at the next light. They were on Lankershim heading south.

  “Lemme have some fun wiff Livia, Cecil. Come on, man. We partner’.”

  Biggs kept wondering if someone were tailing the Meat Wagon, kept checking both door mirrors, and it was not easy to determine something like that, not when you had to drive a van this long without any windows in the back. He had always hated the goddamned door mirrors for this reason. It made it a real challenge to figure anything out this way, but dumbass Marvin kept on about wanting to do things to Olivia Duarte, and Cecil was beginning to ask himself why he even let this dimwit hang around.

  He turned his head back far enough to glance at the layers of old Salvation Army blankets that had been draped over the laundry bags bulging with bodies, and his eyes were back on the road ahead, the traffic, bright lights. He had to be careful. Keep his eyes peeled for black-and-whites and heat on two wheels.

  “I help you get vagina, don’t I? Done my share to help wiff the Messican.”

  “We’re getting rid of her.”

  “How come, Cecil? Yo.”

  Biggs drew the Magnum and pointed it at Marvin’s temple. Held it. Marvin waited for the gun to go off. . . .

  “You gonna ice me, Dawg? Your partner? You gonna off me? After all the heavy shit we done been through together? Yo.”

  Biggs held the barrel steady, aimed at the other man, while images flickered in his mind’s eye of the countless times John Joseph did the same to him: would hold a gun inches from his face (never letting him know it was empty) and would pull the trigger and bust out laughing his drunken ass off. Cecil, tears rolling down his cheeks, usually wet his pants. Well, you live up to your name, don’t you, Pissy?

  “She’s dead. I smacked her too hard, and I don’t want to hear about it anymore.”

  “You got it, Brotha. Ain’t no need to talk about the ho if the ho be dead. There be other hoe’ out there like her.”

  Biggs put the firearm away.

  “Not many. Not like her, anyway.”

  He looked in the mirror on his left and thought he saw something. He was pretty sure now they were being followed. The outline of the car had looked suspect to him—or was he being paranoid?—one of the side effects of the meds the quacks had him on.

  “We’re being tailed.”

  Biggs lea
ned over to turn up the volume on the radio. They would be announcing the winning Lotto numbers after the Preparation H commercial.

  Preparation H. What a con. Hardly helped. He was sitting on a cushion. For what good it did him.

  He knew what caused the hemorrhoids: constipation, careless eating habits; anything that stretched your rectum out whenever you took a dump left your poor colon on fire, burning. Then, too, the running shits tended to exacerbate the condition. Side effects. Once again. Due to the meds.

  The goddamned meds. What choice did he have? If he didn’t stay on them the deep blue blues sent him way down there, into the deepest abyss of gloom and suicidal tendencies—and that was something he needed to stay clear of, if at all possible.

  “No shit? Think they know?”

  Biggs didn’t want to talk. Listened intently for the voice on the radio to read off the winning numbers.

  Fifty-seven million, on top of the half-million-plus he was already worth. He’d be on Easy Street for sure, even if he only won some of it, a few million.

  “I don’t know.” Biggs held up the Lotto ticket he’d purchased at the convenience market owned by the ayatollahs. “I want to hear this.” He was still trying to think of different ways to ditch the car, lose it—if indeed they were on someone’s radar.

  CHAPTER 323

  The announcer gave up the winning number at last, and Biggs did not even come close. Nothing. He cursed through clenched teeth. Tore the ticket to shreds.

  “Who the fuck do it be? Think they seen us put them stiff in the van?”

  It was then Cecil’s right fist snapped out, striking Marvin R. Muck right in the mouth. While Marvin was spitting out one of his front teeth, Biggs was looking at the knuckle he skinned on the idiot’s overbite, and thought he ought to immediately treat it with antiseptic. He reached down inside his black bag for the bottle of iodine and poured it on the cut. Recapped the bottle and was about to drop it back in the bag.

  “How about me?”

  Marvin had the back of his hand pressed hard against his mouth to dull the pain. He hadn’t failed to notice how quickly Cecil moved to take care of himself and didn’t seem to give a thought to the pain he was in.

  “In a hurry to take care of that scratch on yo hand, while I be the one hurtin’.”

  “This is not a good time to be asking a bunch of questions, Base.”

  Biggs noticed that Marvin’s mouth was bleeding and came close to chuckling. What he’d needed to recover from losing out on the jackpot. His groin had begun to stir. Never failed. Sight of blood.

  He tossed him the iodine.

  “What be so funny, homes?” Marvin wanted to know, while seeing to his upper gum and lip. “My tooth be broke. Right there. Why come that be funny, Brotha? I don’t be gettin’ it. Hurt like a mothafuckah.”

  Biggs tore open a Band-Aid and applied it to his skinned knuckle.

  “Don’t get excited. Could be I didn’t mean it.”

  Marvin looked around on the floor mat for his lost tooth (and was not able to recover it). He held up his heavily bandaged left hand. “Could be you didn’t mean this, neither. I know you, man: You don’t do nothin’ you don’t mean.”

  “Hated losing out on a big pot like that.”

  “Yo. You lost a whole dolla’. An’ I lost me a chopper ’cause you lost you a whole dolla’” He lifted his left foot and turned a corner of the mat over. Gave up. Couldn’t see nothin’ down there.

  “What the fuck are you doing now?”

  “What do it look like? Maybe I could glue the tooth back with some of that Krazy Glue they got. If I could only find the fuckin’ tooth.”

  “Krazy Glue, huh? Sounds about right.”

  CHAPTER 324

  Cecil re-checked his rearview mirrors. Were those pepper bellies onto him? Is that who was back there in that car? Junkie Ace and brain-dead Felix Monk out for some good ol’ fashioned vengeance? Was he guessing? Wasting time? Jumpy? Yes, he was jumpy, on edge. Who wouldn’t be? Free Ride wouldn’t. That’s who wouldn’t.

  Hell. Those two always had a habit of hanging around the diner looking for a handout or somebody to roll, a place to break into, an easy mark to scam. Ortiz had had that beef with Jessup. Could have been hanging around looking for ways to get back at him.

  Was it them? Batman and Robin. Couple of spic sissies. Wannabe gang-bangers. All of them had to be. Macho my ass. Aztec savages was more like it. Only he couldn’t shake the notion. Had they been hovering around Slim’s earlier and spotted the bodies being carried out to the van? The bodies had been carried out in the green bags. Why assume that the meth suckers were bright enough to figure out what was in them?

  He felt like kicking the accelerator, the urge was there, and thought better of it.

  I’m losing my mind; I’m losing it. It’s the old lady’s fault for marrying the short-tempered juicer—not to mention all those backhands and clouts and blows and punches meted out by him. How could you ever hope to keep a clear head with a history like that? What’s the matter with me? Why am I being so paranoid?

  What he heard next on the police scanner and announced during the news breaks on the radio provided him with a reasonably good response: Jessup’s diner was ablaze.

  Arson?

  Not a far-fetched inclination to consider. Wished he’d have thought of it. What it meant was that all traces of DNA, prints—and other evidence, no matter how minute—would be destroyed by the fire. It also made him revisit his other fears: Did the gutter junkie and his cipher buddy catch them drive off in the van? If so, why sweat it? So long as they never stepped inside. Even if they had, there wouldn’t have been anything for them to see. No bodies, no traces of blood, no signs that anything resembling mayhem had taken place in there.

  What if they had seen them lugging the green body bags out and had been able to reason what had taken place prior to that?

  Not the bags again. He couldn’t seem to stay away from them.

  “You do it, Trusty?”

  “I wish.”

  Biggs pulled over to the curb. Allowed the traffic to go by for a few minutes, then rejoined it when there was a break.

  “You got some sharp peeper’ there, Cecil. No shit. How you ever knowed they was on our ass?”

  Marvin was still after it. Dumb as dirt. Although Biggs did not mind the compliment at all. Yeah, it paid to stay sharp. Alert.

  Bishop reached for another Ding Dong. Undid the foil it was wrapped in.

  “FBI’s been after my family for years. FBI and CIA, ATF. All of them. Maybe even KGB—they’re always on the lookout for potential moles. Truth is, I know when I’m being monitored. They were always putting a tail on my mother, not necessarily the KGB, but the rest, the others. Nobody ever believed her. The old man never paid attention to what she was saying. They said she was paranoid; all in her head. Well, I always knew different.”

  Marvin looked at him, and was sincere when he said: “KGB? Heard of them other’: PTA, NRA, ERA, and KRLA—but I ain’t never heard of no KGB.”

  Biggs turned his head to look at the sidekick.

  “Are you putting me on? Are you that stupid? Nobody’s that stupid.”

  “Okay. So maybe I heard of them.”

  “PTA.” Biggs shook his head. “KRLA is an Oldies station out of Pasadena. I don’t know why I waste my time. . . .”

  He drove the van up the on-ramp to the Ventura Freeway, taking them east.

  Easy does it, Cecil. Easy does it. Stick to the posted speed limit. You don’t want to get pulled over for some ridiculous traffic violation.

  CHAPTER 325

  Olivia’s eyes batted open inside the laundry bag. That was about all she dared do. She wondered if she stood a better chance of getting out alive if she played dead? Wasn’t sure and did not know.

  The handcuffs on her wrists had tightened through no fault of hers and the resulting pain was excruciating. She was determined not to move her wrists or arms in any way nor for any reason and cause fur
ther tightening of the cuffs. Blood from the facial wound had found its way inside her mouth.

  Tears rolled down, quiet tears, and there was nothing, nothing to do. . . . She prayed. . . . Thought about her mother and father. . . . Thought about her sisters and brother Carlos and the pain and agony, all the suffering she would cause them all now if she were murdered. . . .

  If they kill me please don’t let it be painful; please don’t let it be a slow, suffering death. . . . Please let it happen quickly when it does. . . . And deep down she knew she did not wish to die. She wanted to live. She thought of Rudy, and in her heart of hearts knew how much she loved him. . . . Rudy; if I die, Rudy; if I die. . . . I love you, Rudy. . . . I love you. . . . I didn’t know how to deal with the whole situation. . . . I had no answers, dearest Rudy, how to deal with all the pressure. I know that my parents only wanted what’s right for me. . . . I have such loving, truly caring parents. . . . Please, Rudy, don’t be angry with Yolanda. . . . She is a good person and was so worried about me. . . . Concerned, Rudy, that’s all; she was concerned. . . . Believe it or not . . . and this is something your brother ought to know: my sister still loves him; she is still in love with him . . . and knows you are good boys. . . . She just could not go against our parents. . . . We all love them so much and the last thing we would want to do is hurt them in any way, Rudy. Please, Rudy; I hope that you can get this. Please, Jesus; please see to it that Rudy understands. Please. If I die a horrible death. . . . If they do to me what was done to Mr. Jessup and my good friend Bertha, please Lord, don’t let it get back to my family. . . . It would just crush them. . . . My mother is not a strong woman emotionally. . . . It would destroy her if she ever found out that things had been done to me. Thoughts began to bump up against each other inside her head. It was getting crowded in there, fuzzy. The discomfort caused by the cuffs intensified and also her body had begun to tremble; various muscles in her belly, legs, neck, back, and shoulders, knotted, cramped on her—and she knew it was the fear; it was that utter state of fear that brought it on.