Fast Bang Booze

by Lawrence Maddox

  Wood from the table splintered up in front of me. Through a burst of sawdust I saw Ball Cap draw a bead on me.

  I dived out of the way and slid five feet in my own vomit. His Five-Seven puffed again, and he turned to follow me, aiming carefully with both hands. I rose to my feet. The wall plaster above me popped like a sharp cough as I fell to the slick floor.

  I turned just as his hand tensed for the bullseye. He held his position like a Guns & Ammo model. Chunks sprayed from his shoulder and head. His eyes followed me as he collapsed in a one-two, knee-face pattern.

  Popov held his gun high, surveying the damage. Finally he turned to me. “Okay, Frank. Maybe I keep you on for a while longer.”

  I was the first to notice Popov’s briefcases, crammed with over a million bucks, were missing.

  Chapter 4

  1994

  “You’re a trip, Frank,” Ray said. “These crazy stories you tell me. Gun battles, drug deals. I don’t know, dude.”

  I pulled on my Jack and Coke, hammered enough to have my voice back. “You think I’m lying?” I said, settling into Cloud Time.

  It was early into the new year, weeks since the gunfight at the 35er. I had a job now. I’d finished making a drop at the Glendale Train Depot earlier, something that had become a weekly ritual, and now the weekend was mine.

  I was hanging at Ray’s. He was truly one of my only friends. Ray lived in the lower half of a duplex in Venice Beach, and the slow-moving canals crept twenty steps from his front door. I loved it here. I could show up at his doorstep anytime, unable to speak, and he’d open up his liquor cabinet. I wasn’t interested in his drugs, which was how he made his living. I think that separated me from everyone else he hung with. Most of the conversations I’d had in my life I’d had at Ray’s.

  “I mean, maybe a week from now, I’ll think this conversation was just a dream,” Ray said. “That happens to me sometimes. Like I’ll get a package or something in the mail from my parents, and I’ll think, ‘Whoa, I had a dream mom was gonna send me, I don’t know, an espresso machine.’”

  He paused to slowly light his Djarum clove cigarette. After a long drag, he continued. “I’ll think, ‘I just dreamed they sent me an espresso machine. And here it is!’ And later I’ll tell Brenda about my psychic dream, and she’ll say, ‘You idiot! Your mom called you and told you she sent the machine last week, from money you sent her. You were just so wasted you forgot.’”

  New girls were always popping up at Ray’s. Tonight there was Janie, who sat listening with a tricky grin and a swath of freckles across her nose.

  Ray coughed. “Frank, tell Janie here how you can’t watch movies.”

  “They don’t look like movies to me,” I said. “What I mean is, they don’t move. They’re just jumping pictures going by real fast.”

  “I don’t get it,” Janie said.

  “He can see each frame,” Ray said. “Like those flip-it books.”

  “Folioscopes,” I added.

  “You flip the pages, Bugs Bunny in the corner blows up Yosemite Sam. If you don’t do it right, it doesn’t really look like they’re moving. Get it?”

  “Right,” she said. “Prove it.”

  I fished a quarter out of my pocket and stood up. I was on the edge of Cloud Time. This might not be so easy. “If you flip this quarter, I can see if it lands heads or tails each time.”

  Janie studied me with big, brown eyes. “No way. Anyway, what’s that got to do with movies?”

  “I see in between the frames in movies—and in life,” I said dramatically.

  “Don’t you get it?” Ray asked impatiently. “He sees everything in slow motion. If we need twenty-four frames in a movie, he needs, like, a thousand. And it turns him into the fastest man alive.”

  “If that’s true, you’re one screwed-up guy,” Janie said. “All that gun stuff and shooting all those guys and everything. I think you’re just another LA weirdo liar.”

  “How much you wanna bet?” I asked.

  “Let me see the quarter.”

  I flipped it to her. She rolled it around in her palm.

  I pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, part of a recent work bonus. Snapped it, added another to the pot.

  “Okay, Mr. Quickdraw McGraw, but I don’t have any money.” She eyed the two hundreds.

  “Flip it ten times,” Ray said. “If Frank misses even one, the money is yours. All correct, you have to do whatever he says. I’m talking Rob Lowe sex tape, Pretty Woman times ten—”

  “I get it,” Janie said, interrupting him. She bounced the quarter in her hand, flipped it back to me. “No way I can lose. You’re on.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “Be right back.”

  I hurried to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. Though I looked gaunt, my eyes were wide and alert. I slapped myself hard. Bourbon put me in Cloud Time, and now I had to take myself out.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Drink these,” Ray said. He handed me two coffee cups. The liquid inside looked like black sludge. “Espresso on steroids. Straighten your shit right out.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Cloud Time was mostly gone. Walking back into the living room was like walking into a painting. Still life of Ray, sitting cross-legged, propped up on his pillows. Stiff except for a flutter in his eyelids.

  Janie took a deep drag off her cigarette. “It took you long enough. Chicken out?”

  I tossed the quarter to Janie.

  “Cool. Let the show begin,” Ray announced.

  Janie flipped the quarter high in the air. I watched it turn over and over, catching the lights’ dull reflections, shutting them off and on. When it landed in her palm, she slapped it down on the back of her hand.

  I had time to listen to the canals lap under a breeze.

  I gave her a big thumbs-up.

  “That means heads,” Ray said, getting it.

  She opened her hands and peered at the coin. “Damn. You’re right.” she said. “Let’s see you do it again.”

  Janie flipped it in the air.

  Thumbs-up.

  She uncovered it. “Right again.”

  Janie flipped the quarter six more times, and six more times I got it right. I began celebrating with shots. Not smart.

  “I told you, Janie. This guy will trip you out,” Ray said.

  Janie looked me over before her next coin toss, reassessing the magic.

  As soon as the quarter popped into the air, I was worried. It moved too fast. The shots pushed up against the edge. The quarter slowed down at the last possible moment.

  “Heads.”

  Janie uncupped her hands and stared at her palm. Ray leaned in to see and knocked his bong over. Janie jubilantly raised her palm to show me. “Look! Tails.”

  She waved it under Ray’s nose. “See? I win! It’s tails.”

  Ray moaned. “I can’t believe you blew it.”

  Janie scooped up the two bills. She paused before putting them in her purse. “You missed it on purpose, didn’t you?”

  I smiled back, on my way to obliteration. My answer was another shot.

  She put the money in her purse and sat opposite me. “If everything you said is true, that makes you a real criminal. But then why would you let me off the hook? I mean, a bad guy would’ve, you know, gone for it. That story you told isn’t true, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Janie flipped the quarter into the air and caught it. She sat next to me.

  Close.

  “Tell me what happened next.”

  Chapter 5

  1993

  We ran out back to the parking lot in time to see Antoine peeling out in a hulking, frosted white GMC Typhoon. He had Popov’s two briefcases cozy in the passenger seat.

  “Damn shit!” Popov yelled.

  A honk came from Popov’s Lincoln Town. Vlad was behind the wheel. Popov pulled him out of the driver’s seat and turned to Ronny and me. Ronny clutched his arm, a ragged patch of blood at his shoul
der. Popov smacked me in the back. “You drive!”

  “I’m the best driver,” Vlad murmured, collapsing into the backseat next to Ronny.

  “Feel under seat,” Popov instructed.

  I did, and pulled out a 9mm Ruger with an extra clip.

  I decided if I made it out of this I’d subscribe to Guns & Ammo like an honest citizen and stop shoplifting it. It taught me a lot.

  “Yours,” Popov said. “Be fast like you were in there. Get my money back.”

  My disgrace faded. I could do wonders if given a chance. Sober, I threw the Lincoln in gear and charged onto Colorado Boulevard.

  Popov whipped out his Motorola and punched at the keys with his thick sausage fingers. “Deal off,” he said into the phone. “Deal is off!”

  He hung up and looked at his Rolex. “It’s seven o’ clock. We have nine hours to get my briefcases and pay back money. If not, we’ll be more dead than Lenin.”

  It was early Friday evening and decrepit Old Town Pasadena was filling up with cruisers.

  Rearview mirror. Vlad rocked back and forth, tying off his bleeding thigh. Ronny kicked him away, making room to fill the chambers of his snub nose.

  “Ahead,” Popov ordered. His bulky shoulders crowded into me as he leaned into the dash.

  I tapped the brake for the slow-moving Hyundai in front, and was blocked by a car full of collegiate types to my right. I swerved out into oncoming traffic, getting up to sixty in a sea of candy lights until oncoming cars made me search out an open space to my right. Antoine’s Typhoon weaved back and forth, trying to pass a car in front.

  I saw a spot about four cars ahead, but I’d never make it. An oncoming car made a frenzied, uninterrupted honk. I changed left into waiting cars at a valet stop. The honker passed as I swerved into him, making minor contact with an idling Lexus. I found open space and jammed it, landing in the left-hand lane headed the right way. Ronny let out a long nervous breath. Popov eased his painful-as-hell grip on my arm. I slowed to forty.

  Antoine found an opening and zoomed ahead, aiming for the Ventura Freeway. I watched the pink lights of Antoine’s electric license plate circle around the personalized “MY F8.”

  “Giddy up, retard,” Vlad said. Trigger click from the backseat as I quickly hunched over. A sonic boom erupted behind my head, bullet buzzing through my window like an angry wasp. My ears rang. Gunpowder wisps stung us with caustic cordite whiffs. He’d almost blown my scalp off.

  Popov grabbed Vlad’s arm and smacked him. Vlad crumpled silently into his seat. “Vlad acts like he got shot in head,” Popov said. “Too crazy. Going to ruin Popov’s hearing, too.” Popov rubbed his ears furiously.

  Antoine hit the freeway when I saw flashing lights of a police car charging up behind us. A tin voice blared from the cop-car megaphone. “Pull over!”

  I pushed the Lincoln past a hundred as the cops tried to edge around on my left.

  “Ronny, you take off my license plate?” Popov asked. Ronny told me earlier that Popov always took his plates off before any kind of deal went down. He learned that from watching the TV show Cops.

  “Vlad took care of it back in your garage,” Ronny answered.

  “Yes,” Vlad said.

  “When we get money back, I take Antoine’s stupid license plate and hang it in my office,” Popov said.

  The police car pulled up on our left side. I could see their faces. One with a crisp, blond mustache spoke rapidly into the radio. His clean-shaven partner checked shotgun shells.

  Popov leaned over me and fired out my window. The cop brought up his big pump action and I slammed on the brakes. The big gun flared, shooting into the empty street. I got behind him and Ronny blew out the rear window of the police car. A skinny guy holding a video camera cowered in the back seat.

  “They’re filming us,” Popov said. “Only in America.”

  The police car swerved while Ronny and Popov fired rounds. Clean Shaven had his bulletproof vest on. I saw him grimace and jerk back in his seat, nailed by a bullet from Ronny’s little snubby. Crisp mustache checked him out. They swerved into the wrong lane.

  Speeders emptying out from the freeway, trying to beat the red light, didn’t give the cops a chance. The police car met head on with a Jeep Cherokee as we rocketed past. The cop car spun back into my lane and flipped, cracking its cherry top before bouncing back on all fours.

  I entered the bridge when Popov grabbed my arm. “No! Make a U-ey!” he shouted.

  I eyed him in disbelief.

  He shouted again, “U-turn! We have to get the video from the cameraman! They have our faces!”

  Popov was extra conscious about being taped since Rodney King and the riots last year. Koreans had hired me for protection when it hit the fan in KTown, and I’d been in the thick of it. I wish I’d done better for them.

  “Video is the enemy,” Popov said. “Don’t you watch Cops?”

  I sure as hell do!

  I made an about face at the head of the bridge and drove back to the accident.

  Oncoming traffic had stopped as I approached the wreck on the wrong side of the road. Popov jumped out. I followed while Ronny sat bolt upright in his seat.

  A bystander in a checked sport coat and shades ran up beside me. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Clean Shaven’s head had must’ve slammed into the windshield. Tiny shards of glass glistened in his hair like fresh raindrops. Crisp Mustache had a cord from the camera in the back seat wrapped around his neck. He was turning blue. I ran over and unraveled it.

  Popov played a brief tug of war with the bloodied cameraman over the video camera. It ended with a brutal jab from Popov that snapped the cameraman’s head back. Popov ran back to the Lincoln holding the camera. “Let’s go!” Popov yelled.

  I started to answer, but my schizoid turkey gobble came out. I put my hand over my mouth and tried to disguise it with a cough.

  The bystander backed away from me.

  We sped off, passing ambulances and police cars, taking the same route Antoine had minutes earlier.

  But he was long gone.

  “I should be driving, not the retard.” Vlad leaned over the front seat between Popov and me. His speech was slurred and his head weaved back and forth like a charmed snake.

  Popov gave me directions.

  We left Pasadena and got onto Figueroa, heading east.

  Ronny groaned.

  “Shoulder?” Popov asked.

  Ronny carefully felt his shoulder. “It just winged me.”

  Vlad leaned over the front. “Ya xachu papirosu.”

  “No,” Popov answered. “No cigarette unless you say it in English.”

  “Ya xachu—”

  “No.” Popov interrupted sharply.

  “—papirosu—,” Vlad continued.

  “English.”

  Vlad took a deep breath. “Give me cigarette.”

  Popov placed one in Vlad’s mouth, lit it for him.

  Vlad weakly dragged while settling his gaze on Popov. “Hate you.”

  Popov ignored him. “You need help, Vlad,” he said. “I think I know where to find Antoine. We look. You get help.”

  Popov patted Vlad on the shoulder, then turned to me. “Stop the car, Frank.”

  I came to a slow stop near Avenues gang territory in Highland Park. Across the street, Sycamore Park. Dark silhouettes of men strolled aimlessly among the sycamore trees.

  “Too crazy. Out,” Popov ordered Vlad.

  Vlad stumbled out of the car. “I should drive, not the retard,” he said. “I need phone!”

  “Wait for ambulance,” Popov instructed him. “Give him Ronny’s phone, Frank.”

  Vlad took the Motorola, sneering. “Retard,” he said. He spat on the ground.

  “We will get Antoine, Vlad. You are not helping.”

  Popov stuck his thumb at me. “Drive.”

  We left Vlad standing there.

  “Next stop, we ambush Antoine’s associat
e,” Popov said. “We will be outnumbered. We will probably die. Let’s have fun.”

  Chapter 6

  The turkey gobble. It’s like opening your mouth to speak, and hearing someone else’s voice come out. Except it’s not a someone. It’s a something. Subhuman. Insane. Sideshow geekish.

  I’ve made that sound. Thinking too fast for my nervous system, thus for tongue and mouth, I’ve gobbled helplessly. In front of chicks, businessmen, strangers on the bus. All reacting in their own cruel ways.

  I’ve done the turkey gobble with my own gun pointed at my head, daring myself to do it again and again while trying to form simple sentences.

  I pictured myself drilling a real turkey, one running around gibbering madly. Until I put it out of its misery.

  Tonight, I gobbled again. At the tiny El Recreo on Cypress. After dumping Vlad, Popov directed us here, to the empty outskirts of downtown. “Gilbert Martinez knows where Antoine is,” Popov said. “And I know Gilbert’s every move.” How he knew, we were about to find out. “If he doesn’t lead to Antoine and the briefcases, Popov is more done than sunbather in Siberia.”

  Popov called Gilbert a “lower-up” in the hierarchy of La Eme. “Not as important as a captain, except in his own mind,” Popov explained. El Recreo was Gilbert’s joint, and Popov, Ronny and I held a small crowd of drinking caballeros at gunpoint, waiting for Gilbert to show.

  A hombre with a brass belt buckle depicting a horse stood at the bar. He wouldn’t sit down. Ronny and Popov didn’t notice. I pointed and gestured, and Belt Buckle just grinned. That’s when it came out. Full-on turkey gobble. It was a real buzzkill.

  The voices in the piñata-sized room had fallen silent. The jukebox blared. A tough guy with a sombrero chuckled. His date, a petite woman with gray streaks, glanced at him nervously. I gripped my 9mm. Suddenly, we weren’t being taken seriously. This made me look like some kind of ass-breathing tool in front of Popov.

  Ronny leaned against the counter as one of the bar patrons bandaged his shoulder at gunpoint. “Damn, Frank. Don’t make that noise again.”

  I pointed my new Ruger at Belt Buckle. Popov turned his SIG 210 on the cowering manager. “He’s very psycho this one. You say Gilbert is here soon?”