I impulsively decided to take the shopping cart. It helped tremendously to lean my battered bones on the handle as I limped along the empty street. Plus, if I actually did encounter a fellow human, shopping carts are the world’s best urban camouflage. They have the power to make a person invisible in any big city in America. You hear a shopping cart coming down the street, you immediately look away from the person pushing it. Homeless, you tell yourself. Better not look, or they’ll ask for money.
I thought I might really die before I found a phone. More and more it seemed like the best course of action would be to just lie down on the pavement. The only thing that kept me going was picturing Jesse Black’s cocky smirk disintegrating under a point-blank lead facial.
I finally saw a sign for a tiny Mexican mercado at the far end of the street. The mercado was closed, but there was a payphone out front, plastered with stickers advertising taxis, escorts and phone cards with special rates to Central and South America. Amazingly, the phone worked.
I punched 9-1-1 on the grimy keypad. A woman came on the line, asking about the nature of my emergency. I told her I had been shot and gave the address of the mercado. She told me to hold on, that help was on the way.
Hearing this, my body wanted to pass back out. Mission accomplished, right? Time to lie down and wait for the cavalry. But my mind wouldn’t shut up about what had happened, fighting to make logic out of the madness. I thought of feisty little Didi giving those goons what for in my office and was suddenly very afraid for her. I had to make sure she was okay.
Even though I have a great memory for numbers and addresses, it took me a minute to pull my own calling card number out of the numb mush of my brain. As soon as I did, I phoned Didi’s home and her cell. Nothing. That scared me even worse, since I knew Didi to answer the phone any time, day or night. Even on the toilet or in the heat of her frequent intimate liaisons. And no, I didn’t want to leave a message. What I had to say was for her ears only. Paranoia coiled around my aching ribs, making it even harder to breathe. No sign of an ambulance. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to Didi. I needed to call someone to go check up on her, to make sure she was okay. There was only one person I could think of who would be awake, willing and able. I called Malloy.
Lalo Malloy was the new guy, since Daring Angels’ faithful security escort Joe Saturnino got married and moved to Florida. I always employ a guy part-time to drive my girls to gigs with new production companies and hang out while they shoot. I like an older guy, reliable and mature enough not to go all gaga over the girls, but still intimidating enough to make sure no one thinks to try anything funny with my models. I pay a small hourly wage and the girls top it off with tips. Not bad for a part-time gig.
Malloy was an ex-cop like Joe, though he looked much more like a thug. Six-two, thick through the shoulders and the middle and pretty much everywhere else. Olive drab eyes that sized up the world through a taciturn tough-guy squint. Buzz-cut hair gone solid silver and under it a face like a police sketch based on the descriptions of terrorized victims. His left ear was slightly cauliflowered, just enough to let you know that he was no stranger to knuckles. His look was perfect for the job and he came highly recommended by Joe. They had been buddies back in the old LAPD days and had both left the force under less than sterling circumstances. I didn’t ask and they didn’t tell.
“Lalo’s okay,” Joe told me with a smirk the day he introduced us, faking a punch to Malloy’s meaty shoulder. “For a Hispamick.”
“A what?” I had asked.
“His daddy was Irish,” Joe explained. “And mama’s Mexican. A Hispamick.”
Malloy himself seemed neither amused nor annoyed by the joke. He just shrugged and put his big hands in his pockets.
He’d been driving my girls for almost two months and I still didn’t really know him all that well. He wasn’t an easy guy to get to know. Came in, did his job and left. Solid, but not much for casual conversation. I felt really strange calling him in the middle of the night like this, but there just wasn’t anyone else. It took me several wrong numbers to get him on the line. He picked up on the first ring.
“Malloy,” he said, like he was still answering the phone at the Homicide desk.
I had no idea what the hell I was going to say to him.
“Malloy,” I repeated, feeling like I had forgotten how to speak. “It’s... I...”
“I’ll call you back,” he said suddenly and hung up.
Baffled, I stared at the dirty blue receiver in my hand, then slowly put it back on the cradle. I leaned over the handle of the shopping cart and maybe grayed out for a little while, but then the phone rang, scaring me and making me jump. It hurt.
“Malloy?” I said into the phone.
“Angel,” he replied. I could hear traffic in the background. I figured he must have gotten the number off caller ID and then gone out to a payphone. “You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”
I felt suddenly sure I really was going to black out. What the hell was going on? I didn’t even know where to begin.
“Angel,” Malloy was saying. “Angel, are you there?”
I tried to tell Malloy about the blonde and the briefcase full of money and Jesse and the blue Civic. I can’t imagine I made much sense, but eventually Malloy got the gist of it.
“Did you call an ambulance?” he asked.
It took me a minute to answer that. Did I call an ambulance? Things were getting woozy and confusing and I just wanted to lie down.
“Yeah,” I eventually said, or must have because then Malloy was telling me to get the hell away from the mercado, to hide from the ambulance.
“Hide from the ambulance?” I said. Nothing seemed to make any sense. “But why...”
“Angel,” Malloy said. “If you let them take you to the hospital, you’re going to be arrested for the murder of Sam Hammer.”
7.
“Angel,” Malloy was saying again. “Angel.”
His voice sounded so far away that I thought I was still on the phone until I felt his hands on me, wrapping a rough blanket around my body and lifting me like a tired kid. I have no idea how I got away from the phone and the mercado but I did. I also had no idea how Malloy found me, but he did. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life. I would have kissed him if my lips hadn’t felt like I’d just kissed a belt sander. He bundled me into the passenger seat of his blocky old SUV.
Things went all non-sequential and confusing again. The next thing that seemed solid was me in a doctor’s office. I was lying on one of those examination tables with the paper that rolls down to cover it fresh for each patient. There were stirrups, like at the gynecologist. My trash bag dress was gone and I was wearing one of those backless deals they give you in the hospital. I seemed relatively clean and odor-free, but the cacophony of pain made it hard to concentrate.
I rolled on my side, briefly breathless from the effort. That’s when I noticed a tan leather locking restraint hanging from the nearest stirrup. I frowned and looked around.
There were three other restraints hanging from the table, plus a thick leather strap that presumably buckled around the waist. Beside the table was a stainless steel tray on wheels, filled with terrifying antique medical instruments. There was a red rubber enema bag on a pole by my head. The glass-front cabinet against the opposite wall was filled with boxes of needles and bags of saline solution and clear plastic speculums and catheter kits and medical staplers. Above the examination table was a large framed photograph of an icy blonde in skintight white latex. Her waist was corseted down to insect proportions and her long legs were laced into thigh-high boots. She held a hypodermic needle the size of a .357 Magnum.
I struggled to sit up, dizzy and sick but then Malloy was there and so was the blonde, although she was dressed down in faded jeans and a white t-shirt. Her pale, shiny face was free of make up. She was still stunning.
“Angel,” Malloy said. “Lie down, will you?”
“Where the hell am I?” I asked. “This isn’t a hospital.”
The blonde smiled. Malloy shook his head.
“It was this or Tijuana,” he said.
I didn’t want to lie down but my body overrode my brain and I fell back on the table. I looked up at the photo.
“You brought me to a dominatrix?” I asked, pressing my thumb and forefinger into the corners of my eyes and then flinching at how much that hurt.
“This is Ulka,” Malloy said. “She’s gonna fix you up.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said.
“Don’t be afraid,” the blonde said in a clipped German accent that did nothing to reassure me. “I am very good. And much cleaner than Tijuana.”
She turned and began washing her hands at a steel sink with foot-operated faucets. Suddenly I remembered Didi, how she hadn’t answered her phone. I’d meant to ask Malloy to check on Didi, not rescue my sorry ass.
“Shit!” I said, sitting up too fast and feeling stabbed by a dozen knives, the largest just beneath my armpit. “Malloy, I need you to go check on Didi right away.”
“Keep your shirt on,” Malloy told me. “I talked to Didi on the way to pick you up. She’s ticked off at the cops who took her in for questioning and worried sick about you, but otherwise she’s fine.”
Relief stole the very last drops of energy I had left. My body slumped back down on the table while my brain concentrated on not puking. It worked, but just barely.
“I’m ready,” Ulka said.
“I’ll wait outside,” Malloy replied.
I wanted to ask him to stay with me, but I felt suddenly shy and embarrassed and then it was too late, because he was gone, leaving me alone with Ulka, She Wolf of the SS.
I’ve never gotten along all that well with pro Dommes. The ones I’ve made videos with always seemed to look down on me and my girls because we do things on camera that they feel are beneath them. The way I see it, we’re all in the same business. Providing visual stimulation. Does it really make a difference if that stimulation is the most exotic, esoteric fetish or just good old fashioned baby-making? Bottom line: Everyone is doing the same thing while they watch it.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any sort of anesthesia,” Ulka said, slipping her mannish hands into latex gloves. “That would be sort of counterproductive in my line of work.”
“Great,” I said, looking away toward the wall.
“I do have some of these,” she said, pressing several chalky white pills into my palm. “You’ll need them.”
I didn’t even ask what they were. I just dry swallowed them all before she could even bring a paper cup of water to my lips.
I waited impatiently for the pills to work while she started to examine the mess below my right armpit. Her hands were much more gentle than I would have expected.
“It looks like the bullet went right between your arm and your torso,” she said. “Maybe bounced off a rib and then angled through the triceps. Either you are very lucky or the person who shot you is very stupid.”
“A little of both, I think,” I replied.
“You will need a few stitches,” she said.
“Stitches?” I felt suddenly lightheaded. “Can you do that?”
“Of course,” she said, selecting a sterilized paper packet the size of an index card from a box in the cabinet. “Sutures are my specialty, though to tell the truth, my clients rarely actually need them.”
I wouldn’t say that she was nice, but she had a wry, deadpan sense of humor and her hands were steady as stone. Of course it hurt like hell, but she didn’t make me feel like a slut. She treated me almost like a real patient. I’ve had legit doctors treat me worse. I wound up liking her far more than I had planned to.
“How do you know Malloy?” I asked between bouts of silent, jaw grinding pain. “He’s not a client, is he?”
I couldn’t see Malloy crawling around on the floor begging to lick a woman’s boots, but you never knew these days. Ulka smirked and shook her head as she snipped the thread from the last stitch.
“Nothing like that,” she said. “He provides security for me when I book night sessions with new clients. I removed a bullet from his right thigh two years ago. That was amazing. Well, for me anyway.” She placed a bandage over her handiwork. “One more thing.”
Before I could protest or even register what was happening, she was pressing her large thumbs against the mess of my nose, giving the whole thing a decisive shove to the left. The pain was indescribable.
“You’re done,” she said, slapping a piece of tape over the bridge of my nose.
Truer words were never spoken. There was no need to stick a fork in me. The pills had kicked in with a vengeance while I wasn’t paying attention and now that the bright foreground pain of the stitches and whatever the fuck she’d done to my nose was over, I could feel everything shutting down. I was most definitely, unequivocally done. I vaguely remember Malloy returning to carry me somewhere and cold leather against my bruised skin and then merciful nothing.
8.
I didn’t exactly wake up. It was more like I fought my way up through a twilight sea of gauzy pain and confusion for what felt like centuries until I finally focused on Malloy’s profile and the glowing tip of his cigarette.
“You’re awake,” he said. Not a question, just a statement.
“If you want to call it that,” I replied. My throat hurt. Come to think of it, everything hurt.
I looked around and saw that I was in a small lounge that could have been the chic waiting room for a celebrity plastic surgeon. Malloy pushed an oversized white mug of coffee across the table till it was close enough for me to reach.
“You wanna go first,” he asked. “Or should I?”
I looked down at the coffee and then back at Malloy. He must have been up all night but didn’t look it. He looked the same as ever, unchanging as a stone idol, except he had on a different cheap suit jacket, dark gray instead of dark green. I’d probably bled on him at some point the night before.
I picked up the coffee with my left hand. It smelled wonderful, but my stomach wasn’t too sure about the prospect. I took a sip anyway. I needed it.
I was mildly surprised by the fact that the coffee was exactly the way I like it. Black with one Sweet’N Low. Funny, since I didn’t recall ever telling Malloy how I take my coffee.
“You go first,” I finally managed to say. My throat hurt worse than the day I shot Sword Swallowers 14 with Axl Rodd and Dix Steele. My voice sounded thick and gritty, like somebody else.
“Uniform patrol found Sam Hammer’s body in your abandoned car over by the Van Nuys airport,” Malloy said, stubbing his cigarette in a smooth stone ashtray. “One in the knee and two to the back of the head. Tortured and then executed. Stone cold. They’re considering the possibility of a male accomplice but it sounds as if they like you for the shooter.”
I didn’t do a spit take with the coffee, but I came close. The idea that Sam was dead was bad enough but the fact that the cops thought I’d done it was even more unreal.
“Why me?” I asked, forcing the words through numb lips. “Why would they...”
“You own a Sig P232?”
I felt a sick, spiraling feeling of hopelessness and despair gathering under my solar plexus. Now I knew why a big butch bastard like that fucking rhino would use such a girly gun. Because it was a girl’s gun. Mine.
“Fuck,” I said softly.
I remembered that bland-faced motherfucker telling me he had my house and office searched, looking for his goddamn money. Whoever did the search—maybe that weasely Eastern Bloc guy—must have stolen my gun from my nightstand drawer and brought it to the house in Bel Air. I was starting to grasp just how meticulously and thoroughly I had been fucked.
“They found your Sig in a dumpster around the corner from the abandoned vehicle,” Malloy said. “A coupla young hard-ons from the Valley division questioned me just before you called. Thought maybe I might be the ma
le accomplice.” He shook his head. “I’m ironclad. I was out propping up an old buddy in the department, a detective sergeant going through a nasty divorce.”
“I...” I tried to swallow, but my throat felt squeezed down to nothing. “I didn’t kill Sam, I swear. You don’t believe this bullshit, do you? If I was going to kill Sam, you think I’d be stupid enough to shoot him with my own legally registered gun and then just leave his body sitting in my fucking car?”
Malloy looked at me with his narrow alligator eyes, wordlessly sizing me up. An endless minute passed. He pulled another cigarette from a crumpled pack, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and put the pack away, then stuck the cigarette between his lips.
“No,” he finally said, shaking his head as he lit up with a battered Zippo. “I don’t buy it. Smells like setup city, but it’s not just that.” He snapped the lighter shut. “I could maybe buy you getting all pissed off and blowing some guy away in the heat of the moment. But the truth is, you just don’t strike me as the type who’d torture a good friend and then finish him with a cold-blooded, professional execution. No offense, but I just don’t think you’ve got it in you for that kind of action. You want to tell me what really happened?”
Malloy was completely still and silent as I filled him in. His cigarette burned unsmoked between two thick fingers. It was disconcerting. You don’t realize how much you depend on a listener to spur your story on with little nods and noises and various cues to continue like “Really?” or “No shit.” However, I did get the feeling that I was being listened to more intently than ever before. Like I was feeding information into a machine for processing. I told him everything, starting from the blonde with the briefcase and ending with him showing up to scrape my ass off the sidewalk.
Hard Case Crime: Money Shot Page 4