Shamus wrestled with the child-proof top and popped it open. He took a sniff. The scent of fresh mangoes drifted into the air.
“Is it for real?”
“What do you think?”
Shamus didn’t say anything. He clamped the lid back on the bottle and set it on the table. Vincent sighed and stroked his goatee. He looked thoughtful, in control, but really he wanted to strangle Shamus, choke the life out of him or beat him with a bat, whatever took the longest. Instead, he leaned forward, struggling to keep his voice under control.
“So here’s the deal. First you’re going to go to that herbal co-op and get this weed from them. We’re the exclusive sellers, do you understand?”
Shamus nodded.
“Then you’re going to find out where the little fucker is and finish the fucking job.”
…
Shamus sat in the passenger seat and let Guillermo negotiate the nightmare traffic as they crept back toward West Hollywood from Santa Monica. He was clenching his fists, knuckles white and his nails biting into his palms. His anger pulsed inside him like hot magma. Yeah. He thought he’d killed that motherfucker. He’d put a bullet right into the guy’s torso. That usually does the trick. Shamus knew that going for a head shot was a low percentage move. Why risk a miss? Maybe he could’ve fired another shot or two but that kind of noise just alerts the neighbors. They hear one shot and it could be anything, a car backfiring, an imaginary sound, a dog fart. Crack off a couple rounds and they know it’s gunfire and they’re peeking out their windows, witnessing the crime, IDing the car, and calling the LAPD.
Shamus told himself he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d done everything right. It was just bad luck that the guy lived to tell the tale.
What he didn’t like was being talked down to by Vincent. Fuck that shit. He’d got into this line of work so he wouldn’t have to deal with a boss and here he was dealing with a boss. Shamus was supposed to be the right-hand man, the go-to guy. Now he was getting scolded like a little bitch.
It really wasn’t the way you were supposed to treat employees. It wasn’t professional and Shamus thought of himself as a professional. He resisted the urge to pop a cap in Vincent’s head. He wanted to. Fuck, yeah. But if he did that he’d have problems finding other people who’d be willing to do business with him. Going psycho might be the way things worked in Mexico, where you could execute someone who bugged you and put his decapitated head in a gym bag, but that was a throwback to the old cowboy days when the cannabis trade was illegal; now, with the semilegal nature of medical marijuana, it was impractical. Nowadays you needed to develop trust. You had to cultivate connections and build a personal network.
The interior of the West Hollywood herbal cooperative was exactly how Shamus had imagined: crappy leftover couches and chairs that looked like refugees from some old-folk’s-home salvage sale, some kind of lame art on the wall that looked like dolphins swimming around a dwarf nebula in space, and a large glass counter holding baked goods like banana bread and some kind of whole-grain muffins made with hash oil and oat bran, presumably so the geriatric hippies could get high and still fight constipation. There was also an assortment of homemade candies chock-full of THC. A laser-printed “daily specials” sign was taped to the counter and offered a variety of Sativas, Indicas, and hashish. Highlighted as “highly recommended” was the Cannabis Cup–winning Elephant Crush.
Shamus kept one eye on the security guard as he went up to the counter. An attractive brunette was busy weighing eighths of bud on a scale, then popping them into prescription bottles. She looked up when she saw Shamus.
“Can I help you?”
Shamus spoke quietly yet clearly, keeping a polite, conversational tone to his voice.
“I have a gun. I’m not here to rob you but if you trigger the alarm or alert the guard, I will kill you and then I’ll kill him.”
The woman blinked. Shamus could tell that she was rattled; he didn’t want that. He wanted her to stay calm.
“What do you want?”
“I want all your Elephant Crush and I want to know where you got it.”
Shamus watched the woman’s eyes dart back and forth, from the security guard then back to him.
“Tell me and you won’t have any trouble.”
He watched her swallow.
“A friend sold it to me.”
“Miro Basinas?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“Where can I find your friend?”
“I don’t know. Honest. I don’t know where he lives.”
“He just showed up with the stuff in his car?”
She nodded again. Shamus saw her eyes dart back and forth again, a sign she wasn’t being exactly honest. Shamus reached for his gun.
“You want me to shoot the guard?”
She shook her head.
“Actually, he rode a bike.”
Shamus tilted his head back, looking down his nose at her. He wanted to appear imperious, intimidating.
“A bike?”
“A bicycle.”
“In LA?”
She shrugged.
“I know. I know it’s weird.”
Shamus squinted his eyes, trying to give her the classic Clint Eastwood glare.
“I don’t believe you.”
He could see her hands trembling.
“It’s true. I swear. He was dressed like one of those Mormon guys. Like a missionary.”
…
Guillermo cracked the window and exhaled. This totally fucking sucked. Not that it was so bad to be sampling a little of the Elephant Crush that Vincent had given him—it was easily the best weed he’d ever had the privilege of blazin’—but it truly sucked that he was stuck in the car. That had been Damon’s job. Damon was the fucking chauffeur. But now he was here, his ass asleep and the THC riding the swelling tide of his nervous system turning the pinprick tingle of bad circulation in his legs into a kind of needle-jab irritation. Since when am I Shamus’s bitch?
Guillermo didn’t want to end up like Damon. He wasn’t going to be the butt of the joke, the whipping boy, the guy everyone made fun of. And he wasn’t going to sit around waiting to drive Shamus to and fro like some kind of fucking chump. Besides, this was his chance to prove himself. If you want to be a star you have to step onto the stage. That’s what they always said on that singing show he watched on TV. That’s what Damon had never understood. Guillermo needed to show Shamus that he wasn’t like that fat freak. He wasn’t frontin’ or half-steppin’ or any of that bogus bullshit, he was OG through and through, as OG as a white boy from Encino could get.
Guillermo got out of the car and popped the trunk. He pulled Shamus’s AK-47 out from under a couple of blankets, snapped back the bolt, and calmly walked towards the co-op.
It was his time to shine.
…
Miro blinked. He read the e-mail from Guus again. The Dutchman was flying, in the air at this exact moment, on his way to save the day. And he was bringing a surprise. Miro sat in the swivel chair in the overly air-conditioned Kinko’s business center and wondered what that cryptic message meant. Was he bringing some kind of professional hitman? A cleaner? Or did he have some kind of Interpol agent on his side?
Miro checked the ETA and realized that the plane would be landing that night.
“Fuck.”
Daniel looked up from a weekly magazine—one of those free newsprint papers that are piled up in restaurants and CD stores—where he’d been scanning the ads in the back.
“What does ‘full release’ mean?”
“It means what you think it means.”
“Really?”
Miro logged off the computer and stood.
“C’mon. I need to get my car.”
…
Daniel and Miro pedaled up to the grotty little house on a culde-sac in Echo Park, locked their bikes next to a tree, and headed to the door. Miro’s old Mercedes sat in the driveway. Daniel could hear some kind of stra
nge music—Arabic sounding or Indian, mixed with one of the show tunes he remembered from a high school production of The Fantasticks—drifting out of the house along with a wall of burbling conversation. He turned to Miro.
“You sure this is okay?”
Miro gave him a reassuring smile and nodded toward the Benz.
“Relax. We’re invited. Besides, that’s my car.”
…
Rupert opened the door and doubled over laughing like he’d taken a punch to the solar plexus. Miro patted him on the head.
“Don’t wet yourself.”
“Miro. What the fuck?”
Stacey stuck her head around the corner to see what all the hooting was about. When she saw Miro and Daniel standing there in their white short-sleeved shirts and ties her jaw dropped.
“What the fuck?”
Daniel fidgeted. Miro returned Stacey’s stare.
“What?”
“You look like you joined a cult.”
Miro looked Rupert in the eye and kept his expression blank, almost dour.
“A near-death experience will do that.”
Rupert stopped laughing.
“You’re scaring me, man.”
Miro smiled.
“I need my car.”
Stacey pointed at Daniel.
“He looks like a real one.”
“He is.”
…
It was, in many ways, a typical hipster party in a typical hipster home. A late-afternoon barbecue that might last until four in the morning depending on the vibe of the party, the strength of the drugs, and the endurance of the guests. The decor was classic alt-rock; a collection of random thrift-store furniture, framed movie posters from French New Wave films like Masculine/Feminine, a couple of guitar amps, a bookcase filled with old pulp-fiction paperbacks and new DVDs, a hand-woven Mexican basket filled with maracas and tambourines, a Vibraslap on top of the TV. Slightly grungy but boasting a kind of comforting retro-domesticity.
A dozen hipsters grazed in the dining room, crowding around a table loaded with bowls of guacamole, salsa, chips, carrot sticks, and croquetas from Porto’s Cuban bakery in Glendale. The chatter was typical of these kinds of parties. Discussing the formation or dissipation of local rock bands like they were the weather, one low pressure system moving in, looking for a drummer, another band collapsing under the cold front of a nationwide tour. The latest indie films were parsed, cult novels discussed, and underground art shows reviewed. It was a cultured group.
Miro knew almost everyone there. Hadn’t they been to a party at his house once? Hadn’t he gone to their shows and provided high-grade cannabis to them? These had once been his people, the tribe he belonged to. But since the shooting he hadn’t heard from any of them and now that he was back, dressed like some kind of freak, he realized that perhaps he’d never really fit in. The tribe has spoken.
A vinyl record spun on the turntable. Daniel stopped and stared at it. “That’s a record?”
Rupert did a double take, shooting a curious look at Miro.
Miro shrugged. “Kids.”
Daniel whispered to Miro.
“I’ve never seen a record before. Not in real life anyway.”
The record was some kind of jazz, but not the bebop kind or the soothing elevator kind; this was experimental hooting, tooting, and clanging with a Bollywood beat. It was Rupert showing off his eclectic tastes. Miro would’ve put on some reggae, or maybe some Brazilian music, something soothing and lively and positive, but it wasn’t his party.
Rupert plopped down on the couch. Miro sat down in an overstuffed chair across from him, his messenger bag swinging out and hitting the neck of a Rickenbacker twelve-string causing it to chime out a dissonant chord as it banged into the Gretsch Duo Jet on the stand next to it. Rupert looked dismayed.
“Those are collectible.”
“Sorry.”
Daniel sat on the couch next to Rupert as Stacey drifted off.
There were a few people huddled around the coffee table, passing around a large plastic bag filled with smoke. Daniel realized it was marijuana. He’d always assumed that you smoked it in a pipe or rolled it up in paper like a cigarette. Like in the movies. But there they were, carefully grinding up the leaves and putting it in some kind of machine and then sucking the smoke out of a big balloon. The bag came his way and he shook his head. He noticed that Miro wasn’t smoking, either. In fact, Miro didn’t do much of anything: he didn’t drink alcohol or eat red meat. He claimed it was because his wound needed time to heal properly and Daniel had teased him, saying he was becoming a Mormon.
Miro turned to him.
“Relax. Go get something to eat.”
“Maybe I’ll drink a beer.”
He’d gotten used to having a beer with Lenny at the end of his shift on the taco truck. He liked the taste of it; it complimented the flavors of a burrito and it made him feel happy. He didn’t know why his church was antibeer. It was, like Miro said about marijuana, made from ingredients God put on the planet. Why wouldn’t God want people to drink beer and be happy?
He excused himself and walked into the kitchen.
The party was crowded but people moved out of the way when he approached, as if he were contagious, a leper in his missionary outfit.
Daniel reached into the ice chest and pulled out a beer, one from Mexico. As he was looking for the bottle opener, he heard a husky voice behind him.
“That one needs a little squirt of lime.”
Daniel turned toward the voice.
…
Miro sat on the couch and watched Daniel. He had a brief flash where he felt like he was watching a show on the Nature channel. He saw the prey, the innocent little Mormon in his goofy white shirt and tie, standing in Rupert’s kitchen drinking a beer like a baby ibex at the watering hole. Circling Daniel was the predator. It wasn’t a lion or a cheetah, it was a wild cat named Aimée LeClerq, a real star, a multimillionaire singer who made her career trading on a kinky sexpot image to match her infamously husky voice. She was famous for sexualizing everything she touched. She’d even written a best-selling illustrated instructional pop-up book about fellatio called Blow by Blow. She’d starred in several films and even posed topless on the cover of Vanity Fair. But her career had gone into a slow fade after she hit forty. Now, fast approaching fifty, she devoted most of her energy to promoting animal rights and a vegan lifestyle.
Miro tapped Rupert on the shoulder.
“What’s she doing here?”
Rupert grinned.
“She’s starting a label and they’re thinking about signing us.”
“That’s great.”
Rupert shrugged and acted like he was stifling a yawn, as if getting a recording contract was just some necessary evil that true artists had to subject themselves to in order to get their music to the people.
“If she lets us do the record our way.”
Rupert stood and trudged off to the kitchen, and Miro turned his attention back to the scene unfolding in front of him. He would be the first to admit that human sexuality—the complex psychology of men and women mixed with the hormonal instincts more common in animal behavior—baffled him. A plant blooms and pollen drifts in the air, or bees, butterflies, and bats carry it from flower to flower; there’s no ritual or etiquette to it, no sense of ownership or guilt. It just happens on the breeze. Like that fling he’d had in Amsterdam, a sexual encounter that floated into his life on the wind and then drifted away. There had been something different about that one, though. It’s rare for two people to bring out the flora in each other.
Aimée, wearing a silk T-shirt that showed her nipples protruding through the sheer, clingy fabric, sidled up to Daniel. It was interesting to watch, Miro had to admit, as she reeled him in, laughing, touching his arm, working her sex magic, bewitching the teen. Miro wished he’d had an animal behaviorist with him, someone who could decode the finer points of the dance, point out the subtle mating cues. But then maybe he didn
’t need an expert because from across the room Miro could see an erection stretching the fabric of the young Mormon’s church-mandated trousers.
35
“OH MAGOO, you’ve done it again.”
Cho had to admit that Quijano did a pretty great imitation of Jim Backus. Cho laughed and shook his head as Quijano reached for the computer mouse.
“I’ve got to see this again. This shit is classic.”
Quijano dragged the tab back on the computer screen, clicked PLAY, and they watched the scene unfold for a third time. It was hall of fame material, some of the best surveillance camera footage Cho had ever seen. He reminded himself to save a copy to show at the precinct Christmas party.
The camera was placed almost perfectly, looking down from a high angle as a Latino man stood at the counter talking to the female proprietor. A security guard loafed by the door, his legs crossed, looking at some freshly scooped snot from his nose, glistening on the tip of his pinky.
All in all, a pretty normal exchange was taking place; business as usual at the herbal co-op. That is until Mr. Magoo entered the scene carrying an AK-47.
Cho hit PAUSE. In the frozen frame he could see the Latino customer turning toward Mr. Magoo with the AK, a slight look of recognition flashing across his face. Cho couldn’t see the proprietor’s face from this angle, he could only guess what she was thinking as she reached down and triggered the silent alarm.
“C’mon, man,” Quijano complained.
“Sorry. I just thought I’d do a little police work while you’re enjoying the show.”
Quijano snorted.
“Right.”
Cho clicked it forward a few frames.
On the surveillance tape they watched the security guard finally noticing that someone has just walked into the store with a giant automatic assault rifle in his hands. The guard started to raise his hands in surrender but then, tragically, changed his mind.
“First instinct was the best.”
“Usually is.”
Cho clicked and the pictures slowed down.
It was Darwin’s theory of evolution in action, unfolding on the surveillance tape, captured as it happened, digitized for posterity. The security guard says something as he starts to pull his Taser. Mr. Magoo spins, swinging the AK with him, but before he can get off a shot the Taser darts hit him in the chest and he starts to jiggle and shit himself as his knees buckle and he hits the floor. That’s when the Latino at the counter pulls a handgun and shoots the guard in the heart.
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