by Bruce Talmas
He drew the map. It was pretty good. A lot of detail. Showed all the important landmarks. He even drew a realistic picture of a naked woman spreading her legs at the destination point for good measure. He was being cute, but it wasn’t a half bad drawing.
“You missed your calling, Laslo. You should have been an artist.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled. “I been thinking about starting a tattoo parlor. Just need some startup cash.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said as I got up to leave. “Good luck.”
I didn’t bother telling him he’d need about two grand more than he currently thought he would.
Chapter 8
I decided to walk. I followed Laslo’s map to the drawing of the woman’s vagina and got there shortly after 6:00pm. I could have saved some time by getting another cab, but I’d had enough of talking to people. It was getting exhausting, and my conversation with Junk was likely just going to add to my weariness.
The Honeycomb was right where he indicated it would be: a white concrete building with a bleached wooden sign advertising LIVE NUDE GIRLS in faded pink letters. From what I could see, that was all that the place had going for it. The building itself lacked any charm whatsoever. It seemed to lean wearily in on itself, like it wanted to sit down for a spell to escape the indignities it had suffered in its half-century or so of existence. Although it almost certainly had a different function when it was first built, I couldn’t see the building being good for anything except its current purpose. It was one of those places you’d rather not be. Even the appeal of watching women dancing nude didn’t make up for the bleakness of the place. And I doubted the dancers were going to be top-tier talent. Maybe the place would have seemed more inviting during the night, but I doubted it.
Just inside the door was a small box office made from bulletproof glass. There was no one in it. It was probably only used on the weekends when it presumably got busy. I went through a second set of doors and almost ran into a burly guy standing in front of them. I took him for the bouncer. He looked like a bouncer: no neck and too much forehead. He was wearing a dress shirt that had once been white, but had been sweated into a sickly mustard color over the years.
“Twenty bucks,” he said without preamble.
I looked past him into the room. A forty-year old bottle blonde with track marks on her arm and a C-section scar on her abdomen was swaying drunkenly over a couple of truckers with John Deere hats and denim shirts. I looked back at the bouncer and laughed. He didn’t get the joke. Explaining it to him seemed like too much of a chore, so I punched him in the throat. Not hard enough to kill him, but enough to put him down for a few minutes. It would give me enough time for me to conduct my business.
Once inside, the smell of sweat and cheap perfume hit me like a right cross, made worse by the faint underpinnings of despair. It was hard to tell if the despair was emanating more from the strippers or the patrons. None of them seemed too happy with their lot in life.
There were a half dozen guys sitting around the stage. Most of them were in their fifties or older. Junk was there. He was the youngest guy in the club by two decades, but he fit right in. He couldn’t be too far into his thirties, but he looked like he was on the wrong side of fifty. Any meat he’d had on his bones the last time I’d seen him had wasted away under the effects of whatever he was smoking or putting into his veins these days. He wore a dirty wife beater, basketball shorts, and a Dodgers cap over his thinning hair. His eyes were darting and fidgety, but there was very little awareness to go along with all his nervous energy. He didn’t even notice me until I slid into the chair next to him, and even then it took a while, because the next dancer that came on stage held his undivided attention.
This new dancer was the first one's junior by at least twenty years. Young enough that I wondered whether she was legally allowed to be up there. I was about to say something when Junk finally became aware of me.
He turned his head toward me as though he were moving in slow motion. I noticed his arms, which I could probably encircle with the pointer finger and thumb of my right hand, had white pustules all over them. Some sort of infection was eating away at him from the inside.
“Hey Jacob,” he said in a voice that was barely there. The fact that he recognized me was a bit of a surprise. The fact that he said my name as though we’d just seen each other last week, rather than three years ago, made me wonder if there was anything left of his mind at all. I wonder if he even remembered that he’d sold me out for a chance to get high.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I knew I’d be seein’ you at some point.” His voice was monotone and lifeless, like a person on the edge of sleep who could converse clearly and even respond to questions, but who had no idea what he was saying.
He scratched his right arm and returned his stare to the young girl dancing on the stage before him. “She’s beautiful, ain’t she?”
I paid closer attention to the dancer and was surprised to see that, yes, she was in fact quite attractive. She was young—nineteen or twenty at the most—with long dark hair and a thin but still healthy frame. No track marks; no drug haze shadowing her gaze. I could tell she hadn’t been doing this long; there was still too much life in her. Give it six months, I thought, and she’d be lost like the rest of them.
“Yes she is,” I said. I had to give Junk some credit: she almost made it worthwhile to be in this shithole. At least he still had some taste.
“I bet you’d like to fuck her, huh?” He practically spit the words at me. I was caught by surprise at the venom in his voice, but I was careful to keep my face neutral. I could only imagine how out of it he must have been to talk to me like that.
“Not my type,” I replied, careful to keep the edge out of my tone.
“She’s my sister,” he said as he smiled up at her. She caught his eye for a second and then looked away, embarrassed. “Well, half-sister, but whatever.” Now that was an interesting family dynamic, I thought. Thanksgivings must have been a blast. Who went to watch their little sister take off her clothes for old men? I imagined how awkward it must be for her to dance naked in front of her older half-brother. I guess I had to reassess my thoughts on his taste in women.
“Then she’s definitely not my type.”
He turned back to me, about to say something incredibly stupid, no doubt, and for the first time his eyes started to focus on something beyond his own failing mind. Something primal inside him recognized how much danger he was in and pulled back in the nick of time. He returned his gaze to the stage as his little sister wrapped up her show for one of the old men.
“What, you gay or something?”
It took a second to register that Junk had said anything, and then another second for me to realize what he’d said. Gay jokes weren’t typically enough to get me in a lather, but the utter disdain with which he said it grated my last nerve. This just wasn’t my fucking day. Everyone was a smartass. I’d intended on playing it cool with Junk, but now I was just pissed off and tired. I kicked the chair out from under him and choke slammed him onto the floor. His back hit first or I probably would have knocked him out. His sister screamed as she picked up her panties off the stage and two patrons—old enough to know better—tried to intervene.
“Leave it,” I growled at them. To their credit, they held their ground for a second before retreating. It was the exact same reaction I received from Laslo’s dogs: all bark and no bite. If anything, the dogs figured out the score a little quicker than the men.
I grabbed Junk by his wife beater and pulled him to his feet. It felt like a holding a handful of dust. I grabbed his Dodgers cap off the floor and tossed it to him.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
We had to walk five blocks before I found a car worth stealing. I didn’t mind, and Junk could use the sun and fresh air. We stopped at a pimped-out black Escalade parked in the far end of a strip mall that h
ad more abandoned spaces than actual stores. When Junk saw me reaching for the car door, he tried to stop me.
“Hell no man! That’s Johnny T’s ride.”
I didn’t know who Johnny T was, but if Junk knew him he was either a pimp or a dealer. Either way, he was someone I didn’t mind stealing from. I was also a little upset that Junk was more afraid of a street level thug than he was of me. I’d given him far too long a leash these last few years.
I tried the door. It was unlocked. Apparently Johnny T was confident enough of his place in the criminal hierarchy to leave his car unlocked in a bad part of a bad neighborhood. Further evidence that street criminals were, first and foremost, a bunch of dumbasses.
“I am not getting in that fucking ride,” Junk said with admirable resoluteness.
“Get in or I’ll shoot you in the kneecap.”
He got in, but he moved slowly to show his displeasure. I allowed him the little display of bravado.
I pulled the Escalade out of the parking space and gunned it onto the highway. It handled quite well for such a big vehicle. I could understand what the gangbangers saw in them.
Junk pouted for the first twenty minutes of the trip, staring out the window and studiously avoiding making eye contact with me. It wasn’t until we merged onto the San Bernardino Freeway that he finally spoke.
“We going to Vegas?”
I didn’t answer him. I was hoping he’d continue the silent treatment for at least the first hour. It was going to be a long trip.
He let the matter rest for about ten minutes before he started up again. “Come on, where we going man?”
I still said nothing. I was thinking about how to handle this. Junk was, for all intents and purposes, already dead. The drugs had destroyed the little potential that he once had. Still, he was—and this was not an easy thing to admit to myself—just about the closest thing to a friend that I had in this world. He’d betrayed me for a couple stamp bags, true, but that was what addicts did. Never trust a junkie, someone once said. Truer words were never spoken.
“Seriously dude, why won’t you tell me?”
“If you call me dude one more time, I’m gonna push you out of this car.”
We were currently doing over a hundred, cutting in and out of traffic with reckless abandon. We probably would have been pulled over a dozen times already if not for the Obscuring I’d cast before pulling onto the freeway. I honestly didn’t know how people lived without magic.
After it became clear that I wasn’t going to engage Junk in conversation, he eventually fell into a restless slumber. I knew it wouldn’t last, but the respite was nice. Junk was in the throes of withdrawal, so eventually he would wake up. When he did, he’d be miserable and annoying, so the relative peace and quite of his half-conscious mumblings were fine by me.
After about thirty minutes, we got onto Interstate 15. I was all the way over in the far left lane when we got to the exchange, so I had to cross four lanes of traffic to make the exit. I heard tires squealing and the smash of metal on metal. I didn’t bother looking back. Karma’s a bitch, though, and the ruckus woke Junk from the stupor he’d settled into.
“Where we at?”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously, just tell me. We are going to Vegas, aren’t we?”
“Yes. I came all the way out here because I thought you could stand to blow a little of your drug money on some blackjack. Maybe take in a show. Prostitution’s legal there, you know.”
“Asshole.”
“Finally figured that out, huh?” I said.
He went silent once more, and at some point he passed out again. It was like riding with a drunken toddler. I was driving fast because I didn’t know how long ago his last fix was. For hardcore junkies like him, withdrawal could start to set in within six or seven hours from his last fix. I didn’t want to have to deal with the twitching and retching, so I wanted to get this over with as quickly as I could. I punched it up to 120 mph and sat back in my seat for the final stretch.
I let Junk sleep even after we got to our destination. He was going to have a rough couple of days; at least he’d be well rested.
The sky was starting to lighten in the east when he finally came to. I was smoking a cigarette on the hood of the Escalade with my back on the windshield. I could hear him moving around in the cab for a minute or two before he eventually opened the door.
“Where are we?” he asked as he rubbed his eyes against the harsh desert light.
I took one last drag on the cigarette and flicked it toward the as-yet-unseen sun. “Middle of the desert. Approximately.”
“What’s here?” He jumped on the hood next to me. I handed him a smoke.
“We are,” I said. “Not much else besides sand and sky.”
He lit the cigarette. “What are we doing here?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I pointed at a solitary rock formation about fifty yards away. “You see that rock? It’s called the Iadiel. It means ‘The Hand of God.’ Supposedly, an angel is buried underneath that rock. It’s considered a holy place.”
“Cool,” he said, absently scratching at his arm. I wondered if he even knew what he was responding to.
When I first started working L.A., I used Junk to set up jobs for me. Back before the drugs took over. He’d been a smalltime entrepreneur then: he owned his own moving company and had a couple of vehicles. He also had some less-legitimate business pursuits, but I didn’t hold that against him since that was how we met. At the time, he was one of the hardest-working people I’d known. I missed that guy. We’d been partners at least a dozen times over the years, but he’d never known my true nature. As far as he was concerned, I was just a professional killer with a particularly dangerous reputation. That garnered respect on the streets, and he enjoyed the increased status that his association with me brought to his business. For a while, everything he touched turned to gold. Because of me. He used to be grateful for that.
Before the drugs took over.
He was staring out towards the skyline and still scratching his arms. I noticed a slight tremor that seemed to start in his core and radiate outward. Withdrawal was setting in.
“You sold me out, Junk.”
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even acknowledge I’d spoken. He just kept staring at the sky…or maybe at the Iadiel.
“I can’t let that go,” I said,
“I said I was sorry,” he said. His tone was whiny and pathetic.
I looked at him, but he wouldn’t return my gaze. He just kept staring. It was the rock he was staring at.
“Actually,” I said, “you didn’t.”
The tremors turned into shudders. He started to cry. “What now, Jacob?” he asked. “Are you going to make me dig my own grave out here in the desert? Seems like a waste of gas. I know at least a hundred places in L.A. where you could have dumped my body.”
I shook my head and slid off the hood. I ordered him off the hood as well and turned him to face me. His unwillingness to meet my gaze was getting irritating. “I’m not gonna kill you Junk. The desert might, but I’m not. I’m going to give you one last chance.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re two days’ walk from the nearest town. There might be people closer, or you might find a highway that has a callbox on it somewhere. It all depends on which direction you choose.” I didn’t actually know any of that. I hadn’t seen a town for miles, but for all I knew there was a Marriott on the other side of the nearest rock formation. It sounded good though, and I think it drove my point home.
“That’s my choice? Walk and maybe die or stay and definitely die?”
I went to the cab of the Escalade as he talked. I pulled out a jug of water that I’d picked up at a gas station near the border while Junk slept. I set it in the sand before him. Once he had a chance to process it, I reached into my jacket and threw one of Laslo’s bricks on the ground next to it.
“No, Junk, that’s your choice.”
I pointed at the water and the brick of heroin. “I’m giving you the chance to change your life. You can either take the water and be on your way, or you can have yourself one hell of a final fix. Either die a junkie or find a way to live without the drugs. That’s your choice.”
Tears were rolling down his cheeks as he stared at the choice before him. He fell to his knees in between the water and the heroin. “Come on man, you can’t do this to me!”
“Trial by fire, Junk. It’s the only way to end this. I hope you choose wisely.”
He stayed where he was for a long time: a broken thing given the tools to either repair itself or utterly annihilate itself once and for all. The sun crept over the horizon, and the light seemed to give him the strength to stand. As he did, he reached down and grabbed the brick of heroin. He didn’t bother looking back. Just walked off toward the burning horizon.
I got back in the Escalade and headed on the way back toward civilization. I allowed myself one glance in the rearview mirror, but I couldn’t see anything through the glare of the sun and the haze of the sand.
I left the water, just in case.
Chapter 9
I didn’t go back to Los Angeles. There was nothing for me in that city anymore, and there was someone I needed to see in Vegas. Plus, using magic in a casino is a license to print money.
I ditched Johnny T’s stolen Escalade as soon as I got into the city. I left it unlocked, figuring it would be stolen again before anyone knew that it had already been stolen once. I hit up six different casinos throughout the day, winning a few grand at each one before moving on. My heart wasn’t in the gambling, so I got myself a penthouse suite at the Bellagio and raided the wet bar. Leaving a friend to die in the desert was thirsty work.
After sampling three different wines, I found a Merlot that fit my mood. Ignoring the fact that I was going to have to pay a small fortune for the two bottles I didn’t like, I took the bottle with me to the window and stared out over the city.