On the stereo: “Strychnine” by the Sonics.
Considering the name, you might think it’s all about the Assassins, or with the “water, wine” rhyme scheme, maybe the Merovingians. Nope. They’re talking about a crew of narchemists from down south who were big shit in the early ’90s. They were a combination of CIA psych-ops, turncoat DEA, corrupt local Mexican law enforcement, and cartel chemists. If there was a designer drug you heard about messing up heads, they were ultimately behind it, all for some weird claptrap about enlightenment and a buck.
The bar was chintzy wood, scratched and dented, with red plastic seat covers on the stools. It was a dive that earned its status mostly honestly, and it was a good enough place to wait it out where the cops wouldn’t bother me. Sort of ironic considering who I’d called.
Joel wasn’t a cop. She worked as a records keeper, keeping an eye on the LAPD for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She wasn’t what you’d call inconspicuous, but because of diversity requirements and the fact that she did her job well, she was practically impossible to fire. She was impossible to promote, too, but considering the Golden Dawn wanted her exactly where she was, that wasn’t a problem.
We knew each other from way back and were pretty friendly. After one job where we had to stay up all night calling this one whistleblower every twenty minutes, she had come out to me. My response was something along the lines of, “Yeah, and...?” I came out that night as a Farscape fan, which actually is a lifestyle choice.
Joel knew me as Jack Rizzo, a philosophy dropout whose choice of reading material had been deemed questionable by NYU. A seeker of truth, Rizzo had later been fired by the LA Times for a series of pieces on the mystical roots of Boy Scout merit badges. He was a man in need of direction, which the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was only too happy to provide, in exchange for running some errands.
I drank cheap whiskey and waited. Halfway into my first, I realized this thing was going to take longer than I wanted it to, so I made a phone call.
“Blank Books,” Khaali said.
“I really should have thought that name through. It’s Bob.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but this is going to take a little longer than I thought. Could you do me a favor? I need you to feed my salamanders.”
“Those horrible creatures?”
“Yeah. There’s frozen bloodworms in the fridge. If you could just give them two cubes a day...”
“Bloodworms?” She was horrified.
“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s mosquito larvae. You’re doing the world a favor.”
“Okay. Where is your spare key?”
“Look in the turtle out front. Thanks, Khaali. If I don’t see you, good luck on the exam.”
“Thank you. I hope this turns out well.”
“Me too.”
I hung up the phone right as Joel came in out of the windy night, fixing her hair. I got up from the table, grinning. She’d finally done it. She was a little taller than me, with broad shoulders and big hands. The hormones and surgery had softened her face, and the modest skirt and blouse suited her. She looked comfortable for the first time since I’d known her.
“Joel,” I said. She came over and hugged me. “You look fantastic.”
“Actually, it’s Lara now,” she said.
“Lara, you look fantastic.”
She appraised me. “So you do, Jack. Apart from the nose.”
“Actually, it’s Bob now,” I said.
“When did that happen?” she asked, sitting down at the table and putting her briefcase on the chair next to her. She raised a hand to signal the waitress.
“Turns out I had a more complicated professional life than I might have let on in our previous association.”
She raised an eyebrow. The waitress stopped by our table and, without turning, Lara said, “Seven and seven. And get him another round on me.” When the waitress scampered off, Lara said, “More complicated, hmm? I go away for a little while, and when I come back, you’ve vanished. Word around the campfire is there was some big shit going down right around that time.”
I nodded.
The waitress was approaching the table, and though I was positive there was no way Lara could see the woman from her angle, she opened her purse, set a couple bills on the table, and kept talking. “And then you call me out of the clear blue asking for a couple files.”
“Could you get them?”
“Who are you asking?”
“Right, sorry.”
“What happened to you?” she asked, gesturing at the duckbill.
“Filing mishap.”
She snorted into her drink. “I wasn’t just blowing smoke up your ass. Other than the nose, you do look good.”
“You too.”
“What’s this about?”
“My girlfriend was—”
“You do not have a girlfriend.”
“I do! That’s what that file was about!”
“Oh yeah? What does she do? Or do you even know, since you obviously met her in Niagara Falls on a class trip.”
“She’s a model.”
Lara snickered.
“I’m serious! She’s the hot redhead who was in that casserole commercial!”
Now Lara was really laughing. I swallowed the last of the whiskey in my glass and switched over to the one she got me. I had earned it.
Finally, she got herself under control. “Okay, I don’t know what this is about, but that’s the most I’ve laughed in a long time, so I guess you earned your files.” She dug into her briefcase and put a pair of files in front of me. “So, you dating Vassily Zhukovsky, too?”
“Yeah, we met at Niagara Falls.”
I opened the top one. It was a collection of Vassily’s greatest hits, and I could tell Lara had chopped it down for my benefit. There were his earlier arrests, which never resulted in convictions, leading up to his most recent one, which finally did. It was a series of weapons charges, attempted murder, the whole nine yards, all stemming from his attack on the V.E.N.U.S. compound in Mount Washington about six months before, which was half a year after I left town. He’d leaned on Mina to give up my location, and instead, she fed him to Uzi-armed V.E.N.U.S. guards. From the looks of things, the Feds were trying to tie a RICO case to the Whale, and thus bring down the Kosher Nostra in Los Angeles. Fine by me. Seemed like Vassily was spending most of his time in San Quentin, getting shuttled back and forth for a series of interrogations. Near as I could tell, he hadn’t eaten anyone yet.
This didn’t absolve Vassily of what was going on. He had the kind of reach to get things done from inside prison. I set his file aside and opened up Mina’s.
This one was far more focused, since Mina didn’t have a criminal record to begin with. In copspeak, she was a citizen. There was her mug shot, and by the set of her jaw, I could tell she wanted to cry but wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction. She was trying to stare the camera down. I touched the picture briefly, then put my hand away, blushing and hoping Lara hadn’t noticed.
“That’s your girlfriend?” Lara asked. Her voice was softer now.
I nodded.
“Pretty. How’d you do that?”
“I have no earthly idea.” I looked up from the page. “Why Lara, anyway?”
“Dr. Zhivago.”
I laughed. “I can’t believe you tricked me into watching that. You said it was about cannibalism.”
“Come on, if I had told you it was the lyrical examination of the troubled history of Russia, would you have Netflixed it?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing. I expanded your narrow-ass horizons.”
I paged through the file and immediately regretted it. Neil’s corpse lay on the floor of a living room, his head practically gone from a shotgun blast.
“Your girlfriend knows how to get it done.”
“She didn’t do this.”
Lara was silent for a moment. “All right, she didn’t do this. Bu
t believe me when I say it sure as hell looks like she did. I’ve seen a lot of files, Bobby, but this is one of the few honest-to-goddess slam dunks.”
She was right.
That was Neil. I mean, I didn’t quite recognize him, what with him being facedown and all. And missing his face. But he was the right size, the right shade, and I knew that green polo shirt that had turned Christmas-y from the flecks of blood blown across it. I wished Neil had gone through a biker phase or gotten a tramp stamp or something, just so there’d be more identifying features on him. But this was Neil Greene we were talking about. He spent his whole life as one of the gray men of the Underground. He didn’t want to be noticed, so no tattoos, no tribal gauges in his ears, no festive penile piercings. Well, none that could be seen through pants, anyway.
Something bugged me about that picture. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was like a tiny piece of glass in my palm, too small to cut but big enough to itch. Like I said, I’ve never killed anybody, but since I turned into the go-to gofer for the Information Underground, I’ve been around a lot of death. Hits, assassinations, frame-ups, and even your occasional accidental autoerotic mishap. Wasn’t even the first friendly I’d seen lain out flat, or even the worst condition. But something was wrong.
Neil was found dead Friday night after neighbors reported a single gunshot. Police arrived to find the scene as the picture showed in horrifying detail. Neil Greene, late bureaucrat, was found in his living room, his head pretty much blown off. He’d been shot once in the back of the head at close range by a .12-gauge pump-action shotgun. The weapon was found on the scene, wiped down for prints. Of course, that didn’t matter, because the gun was purchased by credit card online by Mina Duplessis. Unfortunately, my testimony that Mina would rather hump a polar bear than own a gun probably wouldn’t carry much water, especially when I gave a false name under oath.
To make matters worse, the cops found a ton of emails between Neil and Mina, painting a picture that they were involved in some kind of tortured love affair. As the emails progressed, Neil was trying to break it off and Mina was becoming more and more unhinged. In the final one, Neil dumped her.
Let me pause here for a second.
There was no way Neil and Mina were dating. This isn’t the ego of a jilted man talking. I mean, I know Mina has suspect taste in men because she’s seeing me. But Neil? He made me look like a more considerate version of Don Draper. Still, even if she saw something in the guy, it wasn’t in her to cheat. I’d like to say there was a little wheedling voice in my head reminding me not to be a sap, but there wasn’t. I knew Mina. I trusted Mina. That wasn’t her.
Still, the evidence piled up. There was a parking ticket for Mina’s car outside Neil’s place. When they arrested Mina, she had a key to Neil’s place in her belongings, and she had no alibi. That last part was my fault: her alibi was that she was having a lovely relaxing weekend with me, someone whose existence couldn’t be revealed. Mina even used some tail-losing protocols when she drove up north just to make sure she wasn’t followed.
It was perfect. It was clean. It led to one place, and one place only. Mina Duplessis had murdered Neil Greene, and now all that remained was fitting her for an eight by ten concrete room.
I put the paper down and muttered, “Goddamn it.”
“Looks pretty bad from where I’m sitting,” Lara said. She had the decency to sound apologetic.
“Sure does.”
“Means if it is bullshit, someone went through a lot of trouble to frame her.”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Someone with a lot of influence, more power, and some kind of vicious beef. You best watch out for her, Bobby, or she’s fucked.”
[5]
THEY SAY FRIENDS HELP YOU MOVE, but real friends help you move a body. If that’s the case, then I became real friends with the Kosher Nostra two years into my old life. It was the first time I’d ever been accessory to murder, so if there’s some kind of baked good associated with celebrating an anniversary that dark, mark me down for two. I had no idea I’d entered the trust circle with them, either. I’d just been dispatched on one of my errands: they handed me a bag with a sandwich and some potato salad. That hid the note, greasy now from the french dip, which listed an address and two words: “CLEAN UP.”
When I got there, I saw why. The entire room looked like it had been hosed down with blood, and there were pieces, human and animal, scattered about.
It’s impossible to throw up with any sense of aplomb, but I tried it anyway. I emptied my guts out right there on the floor. Hell, the place was going to be cleaned up anyway. Wasn’t changing anything.
The two Russian goons already present were wearing trash bags over their limbs. One was collecting the larger chunks while the other one wheeled in one of those wetvacs. They both impassively watched me empty my guts out over the carpet. I finally stood up straight and wiped the corner of my mouth, and one of them said something in a thick Russian accent that only got funny in retrospect.
“Bear got in.”
I found out later that “bear got in” to the home of Tony Piazza, some low-level associate in the Cosa Nostra. Fortunately, he was the only one home at the time, and by the time me, Kolya, and Boris were done with the cleanup, you never have known that it used to look like a set from Dexter. I never knew what beef the Kosher Nostra had with Piazza—they trusted me enough to move a body, not to tell me why it had to be moved. I only knew they had killed Piazza. A lot.
I thought about that as I went out into the LA night with the wind kicking leaves and trash down the street. The air was sharp and I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. Off in the direction of the Valley, a pillar of greasy smoke stretched into the sky, reaching outward as though to grab the wind. Helicopters thwacked through the air, circling the smoke. Because human beings are solipsists if you don’t watch them carefully, I instantly drew a connection. I was back in my city, and she was burning because we were both in crappy shape.
“You and me both,” I said to the smoke.
This thing was resolutely pointing me in one direction, something my subconscious was cheerfully reminding me of with “bear got in”: Vassily the Whale. The fat fuck was down in Quentin, but his organizatsiya was out there making trouble, and I knew just where to find them. The question was, did I have the dangly parts to walk into a Russian mafia gambling den sniffing around after the recently incarcerated boss?
No, not really. Not if I had another play, but as much as I wanted one, I didn’t see it. At least I wouldn’t have to tangle with the Whale.
I took the Harbor Freeway toward the docks, planning my next move. The trick was to look around without attracting suspicion from men who were suspicious professionally. I checked my bandage in the rearview mirror. It was a little dirtier than it had been, but it hid my face well enough. At least, that’s what I told myself, because fear-pooping would be a sure way to tell the Kosher Nostra that I didn’t belong.
On the stereo: “Undestructable” by Gogol Bordello.
I couldn’t even think of what it was about except for Vassily. Seriously, all I could think about was that gigantic monster, and every time I thought about him, he got bigger, shinier, scarier. Pretty soon he was the size of an actual whale, emerging from the briny deep to chow down on a couple cargo ships, longshoremen falling from his zeuglodonic jaws like screaming crumbs.
I pulled up near the Barbary Coast, which is a nice way of describing the docks. I parked a ways away and started toward the shore. Past the chainlink fence, the Port of LA stretched out in both directions on a little southern-facing spit of land. Industrial cranes loomed overhead, ships the size of city blocks floating beneath them in the oily water. The smell was an industrial stench, sort of tough to pin down into discrete scents, but strong enough to knock you on your ass. Diesel, dead fish, and something else apocalyptic tying it into Upton Sinclair’s nightmare. Longshoremen drove forklifts and guided cargo to neat stacks.
Even at night, the port was busy.
I ignored it all. Wasn’t what I was after. I headed toward a section of the port crammed up against the side of the freeway, about as out of the way as anything could be in one of the busiest ports in the world. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might miss it. It looked like a stack of shipping containers, and the two giants outside smoking could have been there loitering.
They were dressed awful nice, though. And I had spent enough time around people with guns to be able to know when someone was packing a Desert Eagle under his armpit because some hooker laughed at his junk one time. These guys would tell you to fuck off unless you knew the password, which I did. Problem is, I also knew them. Sasha Feldman and Mike “the Microwave” Mikhailovich. They knew me as Nicky Z, and if they recognized me, they might just decide to do Vassily Zhukovsky a little favor and drop my body in the bay.
I kept my head down a little, so both guys would be looking mostly at the haircut and the gauze duckbill. “Horrorshow,” I mumbled at them. The password was a corruption of the Russian word for “good” courtesy of Anthony “Don’t Call Me Tony” Burgess, though I doubted that when Vassily thought it up he’d had British literature in mind.
Sasha waved me past because I lacked a vagina and thus was not something Sasha wanted to waste his time with. I took a step forward.
Microwave looked at me, running a thumb over wiry stubble he probably had to trim with gardening shears. “Wait a minute.”
Crap. I stopped.
“I know you, yes?” Microwave said.
“Don’t think so,” I said, putting a little more nose into my voice.
“No, I know you. Where do I know you?”
I had a little hope here. See, the human mind is three things. First and foremost, it’s a miracle of evolution. A biological computer capable of astounding feats of cognition, like painting the Mona Lisa, putting a man on the moon, or writing those ID cards that used to come on the backs of G.I. Joes. The problem is, doing all this stuff takes a lot of space, and the human brain needs to be small enough at one time to pass through a pelvis without breaking literally everything, which accounts for the other two qualities of the human brain: it is stupid and lazy.
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