“Well damn. You should’ve given them my regards. And asked if they delivered.”
“It’s not too late.” She said, excited. “Or even better, let’s call Tiki Tom’s!”
I put my hands on her smooth, bare shoulders and looked her right in the eye. “Let me finish my story, and then you’ll see why no Tiki response will be forthcoming.”
“I just talked to El Recreo,” she said, dancing around the room. “Maybe you’re really not lying. Unless you happen to just know every dive bar in LA. Not the Sunset Strip places, naturally. Those would be too obvious. Anybody who’s into LA knows those places. So either it’s all true or you really did your fucking research.”
“Yep. I get thrown out of the nice places anyway.”
Janie stopped at the bed and pulled a box out from under the bed. “So what’s this?”
It was an amateur magician’s set, one of those things that Ray had mentioned to his mom while he was high and then forgot about.
“One of Ray’s many treasures, I guess. Ray has lotsa stuff like this,” I said.
“Frank, here’s the truth. I like you. I know I’m a little drunk, but I like you. When you got up to use the potty, I found this.” Janie had a quarter in her hands. It was heads up. She tossed it in her hands and it landed on the other side. Again, heads up.
She tossed it to me.
I checked it out. It was a two-headed coin.
“Where’d you find it?”
“I snooped. It fell out of Ray’s magic set,” she said.
“Never seen that before. I let you toss the quarter. You held it. It was just a regular quarter,” I said. “Plus it wasn’t always heads.”
“I know, but if you have magician skills, you could’ve pulled some sleight of hand.”
I was too ensconced in Cloud Time to repeat my earlier quarter stunt. “I’m telling the truth, Janie.”
“Prove it, then. I mean, I stripped for you. And other things are maybe gonna happen. It’s your turn to deliver the goods.”
“Like what goods?”
“I don’t know,” Janie said. “Show me the million dollars.”
“It’s long gone. Those briefcases aren’t around anymore. Hey, maybe we never recovered them. There’s a lot of story left.”
“If you didn’t recover them you’d be dead.”
“You really need to hear the end. Trust me.”
“All I can say is prove it.”
I couldn’t show her the briefcases, but I had a better idea.
Chapter 13
1993
“It wasn’t meant to be that way, I swear it!” Calendar said.
“That way” meant Ronny dead, roadside in front of an Acapulco’s, a restaurant he fittingly loved in life. I liked Ronny, even though he helped Vlad shove that bottle down my throat. He easily spoke the best English of all the Russians I’d been hanging out with lately. I thought he kind of got me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about what just went down.
I hadn’t connected Crack Eyes from the house on San Fernando to the bum at the counter, and that cost Ronny his life. Was I responsible? It gave me doubts. I was fed up with stupid doubts. But Popov wasn’t blaming me, and that’s all that counted now.
Calendar sat upfront with me. In the back sat Popov, and crazily enough, the fat bartender. Calendar insisted on bringing him along.
“I did so much for you Marie,” Popov said. He was surprisingly fresh after the beating he’d taken. “I paid your rent one full year when you move out from home, save you from dirty movie making. You know what Marie would be doing now if not for kindness of Popov?”
Popov reached into his pocket and pulled out an alligator skin wallet.
“Please, Popov,” Calendar said.
He took a photo out of his wallet and showed it to me, then the bartender. “See this? See her?”
It showed Popov arm in arm with a younger, scruffier Calendar. Behind them was a sign that read, “Orange County Fair World’s Largest Ox.”
The weirdest date ever.
“I take her to all over, the best places.” Popov ripped the photo into little pieces and sprinkled them out the window.
Calendar looked stricken. “Just listen. I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” she said.
“Why lead Popov to Gilbert’s ambush?”
She flicked her hair. “Vlad.”
Silence.
Damn.
“Vlad, and gordo here,” she said, taking a swipe at the bartender.
“Back off, bitch!” Gordo said.
“Shut up,” Popov ordered. “Explain, Marie.”
“I needed to get something back. Gordo, he broke into my mama’s house, stole some things.”
My mind was blown. This was getting interesting.
“True?” Popov asked.
“I don’t know. Shit, yeah, whatever,” Gordo said. “Since Gilbert’s dead, I’ll just tell it. Show that I’m cooperating with you, right?”
Popov slapped him upside the head. Gordo yelped like a kicked dog. Popov’s pinky ring must’ve left a dent.
“Okay!” Gordo said. “Yeah, Gilbert had some photographic negatives he wanted that he said were lifted from him. Didn’t say by who. And he wanted them back. I got some protection from the beaner mafia while I was in the joint for fraud. Which I didn’t do, had a bad lawyer. Anyway, I owed Gilbert.”
“Photos of what?” Popov said.
Gordo snorted, nodding towards Calendar.
“Gilbert showed me the high life, Popov, you know?” she said. “He fooled me. Good times. Better than I’d known. And you’re kinda, I don’t know, treating me like you’re my uncle or something. I mean, it’s all about Martinis and senile Italian singers with you.”
Popov shrugged. “You don’t have good taste yet. Popov will teach you.”
“That’s it. You’re always trying to teach me how I should be. Gilbert was more like, he just dug me. But after awhile, I learned what that cabron was all about.”
“Get to point.” Popov’s eyes were closed.
“It began as a party,” Calendar said. “I remember throwing up once. I don’t even remember much else. I guess some of it was, you know—”
“Kinky.” Popov looked like a chess player contemplating his next move.
“Later, maybe a week, he showed me some pictures. Photos of that night. There must have been a hole in the wall or something. I don’t remember anyone else in the room. There were over fifty shots. He said it was enough to make a deck of cards. With a few left over. Plus the Internet, which I know Gilbert’s dumb ass don’t know anything about. He would bring it up, each time I went to an audition or a shoot. Somehow he’d know. Tease me with them. But it wasn’t a tease. It was a threat. I had to be friendly with him, or the pictures would be put out there.”
Calendar paused to light a cigarette, nervously working the car’s push-in lighter. “Something like that would make me worthless in legit modeling. I’d be done, and then what?”
“So you ask Vlad to help steal pictures back,” Popov said.
“How did you know?” Calendar looked puzzled. The lighter glowed red in her hand.
“Just finish story.”
“So I got the negatives back, plus all the prints. From Vlad. Until this puerco stole them out of my mama’s house!” She threw the flaming lighter at Gordo.
Bullseye. It fell into his Hawaiian shirt.
“Geez!” Gordo wiggled like he was working it out on stage at Jumbo’s Clown Room.
Popov ignored him. “In return, you do Vlad favor. Vlad cash in favor tonight. Kill Popov.”
“No, that wasn’t it at all. Vlad said he needed to just delay you for a while. In time for him to make a pick up or something. I asked him what, but he said it was none of my damn business. Do all Russians act like such dicks? Anyway, he told me what to say. When I saw Gilbert pull up, I was shocked. I didn’t know they’d try to kill you. When I knew it was him or you, I didn’t even have to thin
k about it. I blew his chump ass away.” She dragged on her cigarette anxiously. “Doesn’t that mean something?”
I watched Popov’s eyebrows untie each other out of a knot as he came back to the here and now. “Popov positive it was Vlad taking pictures while Gilbert played sexual stunt man,” Popov continued.
“No way!” Calendar said. She looked horrified.
“Do same thing with well-off Colombian house wife married to old friend from Saint Petersburg.” Popov said. “Vlad likes to be there, in the room. To watch. Vlad loves the dirty picture trick.”
Calendar ran her hands tightly through her long black hair.
“You make deal with Vlad to steal photos that he took in first place. You were a pawn in Vlad’s game, Marie.”
I saw Calendar in a new light. I felt stupid about it, but I felt sorry for her. Gilbert used the photos to keep her in check. Vlad used them to get close to Popov, to reel in a big favor. At the moment, she seemed like a hopeless beautiful badass disaster.
“Gilbert gave Vlad photos so he can give them to you. To make you owe big favor to get to me. But Gilbert doesn’t want to let you go, so he uses fat pig to steal them back from you.”
“My name’s Chet,” Gordo said glumly.
Popov slapped the back of my seat. “I should have killed Vlad. Should have dumped his body in park dead, not alive.”
“I need those photos, Popov,” Calendar blurted. “We’ve got this fat pinche puto right here next to you! This is my last chance. Because of you I blew away the last guy who could have forced him to give ’em to me.”
Popov turned to Gordo. “Where are the photo negatives?”
“I—”
Popov popped him in the mouth before he could say another word. Gordo’s lip turned bloody and his eyes turned hurt.
“No lies. Talk.” Popov demanded.
Chapter 14
Gordo directed us north into Burbank, where he claimed the negatives were hidden. “Gilbert had me mock up these playing cards in my print shop. Each card showed a different pic of him getting it on with her,” Gordo said, avoiding Calendar’s laser beam glare. “Yep, I used to own my own print shop.”
No one cared.
“Gilbert did it to mess with her mind. He was all super jazzed up about it,” Gordo added. “And plus to keep the nookie train chugging along.”
Calendar crossed her arms, a portrait of contained fury. Her eyes sparkled wetly, like something inside had been stepped on and hurt. It bummed me a little to see her cowed like this. Popov’s whole body was turned against her, like he was ashamed of his little Marie.
But with these two, I couldn’t be sure. It was possible that they had just entered a new level of their ever-changing game.
We cruised down a desolate stretch of Burbank Boulevard and stopped in front of a shabby storefront with an unlit sign that read “Catch All Thrift.” A line of rats scampered up a nearby palm tree.
Gordo kicked over Ronny’s burlap bag getting out of the car. The hypodermic and syringe spilled onto the floor. “What’s this?” Gordo asked.
“Just move,” Popov said.
“Gonna cap your ass,” Calendar whispered to Gordo. Either she was messing with him big time or his seconds were numbered.
Popov stopped dead at the back of his trunk, eyeing his license plate. “Frank, pop trunk,” he said.
I unlocked it for him. I saw nothing unusual. He pulled apart the compartment for the spare with his bare hands. A doughnut, jack, lug wrench, nothing else. He slammed the trunk shut so hard the whole car bounced like a lowrider.
“My Motorola is dead. Phone inside this place?” Popov asked.
“Yes,” Gordo said.
“I need reinforcements. Frank, tonight we raid the house of one of Los Angeles’ biggest maniac criminals.”
I shook my head. Who?
“Me, Frank. Me! We’re raiding my house.”
I was about to get out my pocket notebook. What the fuck?
“I am so stupid. Vlad left the real briefcases in my garage, when he switched plates. After Marie’s story, I am certain. He hoped to come back, get them after we’re all dead. Split money with Antoine. Or Vlad planned on cheating him too. I make call now, get help, then we go home.” Popov grabbed my shoulder. He must’ve seen me wince because he loosened his grip. “I know you are all the back-up I will need, Frank. But to increase our odds, we get more guns on our side. Vlad might be waiting for me there, to finish business. And I think he is not happy with you, Frank.”
“But you’re getting my negs first, right?” Calendar asked.
“You’re lucky Gordo’s thrift store has phone,” Popov answered.
Gordo, silent, defeated, led us around back. We stepped into whispering crab grass that reached our knees. It was half past midnight.
“This is my hiding place. What I got after the divorce settlement,” Gordo said. He took a key out of his wallet. “This dump and a year’s worth of free Xeroxing at the print store that I built and my ex-wife now owns.” His tone was flat, like he had no more emotional corners to back into. His eyes stared straight ahead, taking care of business one step at a time.
“We know all about the color Xeroxing, jerk,” Calendar said.
Gordo was still talking about his marital woes. “My wife was banging the printer, who I hired. He was an ex-con. If he gets caught with even a little weed, the moron goes back to finish out his sentence. And my wife is the one he relieves almost two years of joint pressure with. Geez.”
“Can it,” Calendar squelched.
Gordo ignored her. He was sweating. “This place was my dad’s, before he passed on. His one love in life. The freaking thrift store.”
“I said, ‘Can it.’”
Gordo didn’t seem to care. I should’ve realized this made him dangerous.
Gordo put the key in the lock and leaned his shoulder against the door. Once in, he hit the light switch. A hanging bulb pierced the darkness, igniting a million particles of dust that swam in circles.
“I think I’m going to barf,” Gordo said. His little eyes darted about the room.
“Take loser back to car, Frank,” Popov said. “I don’t want to see him. Negatives in refrigerator?”
Gordo rubbed his face. “Yes. I gotta get out of here!”
Popov jerked his thumb towards the door.
I took Gordo to the car. He made the back seat emptier than if he’d not been there at all.
“Can I have a cigarette?” he asked. “A real one? These Virginia Slims don’t cut it.”
I didn’t like Gordo. Even so, I was afraid we had too much in common. Things I wished I could alter about myself, but was afraid I could never reach. Loser things. But I still didn’t give him a cigarette.
A police car turned onto the boulevard and cruised slowly toward us. We crouched low in the seat until it went by.
I was just changing my mind about giving him a cigarette when something stung deep in my neck. I instinctively swatted hard where it hurt and I saw a syringe go flying.
Oh.
I gingerly felt the side of my neck and touched something sharp and jagged. The hypodermic needle had broken off and was planted there. It must’ve been the hypodermic that we’d picked up for Ronny.
Boy.
Gordo stepped out of the car. “Sorry dude. I hope you don’t die. When that crazy chola gets the negs she’ll get me killed for sure.”
I noticed the outer sole of one of his Van’s sneakers was loose and flapped on the sidewalk as he jogged away.
Is this the last thing I’m gonna remember?
A cold spot traveled past my jaw. Suddenly I was on my back while the speed juice exploded in my brain.
Like. A. Cold. Wet. Warhead.
Chapter 15
Hurricane roar. Eaten alive, can’t run or scream. Tremors shake my legs, travel my torso, slam my skull against the pavement.
Nothing. Except slow pulses of pin light. Dark, cold, distant stars, beating slowly, sucking their
light out of mine.
Freezing cold. Grab the hood of an abandoned car to stand. Searing pain burns my hand. I pull my palm away. A strip of skin is left frozen to the hood.
Never seen a street so dead. Something is terribly wrong. I look up to the sky. Now it’s black. Who turned off the stars? It all comes rushing down on me like a net. I fall down, tumbling with the cold, the fear, the forever darkness surrounding me.
It was a gurgling noise, mixed with a high-pitched whine, which brought me back. A glowing streetlight shimmered like a hovering angel. I reached out my hand to touch it, stretching out as far as I could. A car drove by. Leaves in the street blew over me. My hands fell into cold water. I was in the gutter. Not the first time. Then I remembered.
Gordo stabbed me in the neck when my back was turned, injecting me with Ronny’s speed serum.
I gingerly fingered my neck, starting at my collarbone. It was sticky wet. Blood. Then I touched the needle. Maybe a quarter inch protruded from the skin, which meant much more was imbedded inside. I grasped it. My hands shook too badly to get a firm hold. If it broke off, I could really be screwed. The needle might travel up my carotid, harpooning the great, tormented beast that was my brain.
I struggled to my feet. My heart pounded, chiseling its way out of my chest. Ronny’s speed juice doing its work. I staggered back onto the sidewalk, fell against a building. My legs trembled. Black gnats danced in my eyeballs. I was alone out here.
Something weighty was in the back of my pants. Reaching around, I felt a gun tucked under my belt. What a relief. I was afraid I’d pooped my drawers. I couldn’t remember where the gun came from. Did I take it from Calendar? Ronny’s snub nose?
It was a Ruger, unusually heavy. Or maybe I was just weak. Popov gave it to me in Pasadena.
Popov.
I clung to the side of Gordo’s thrift store and dragged my lifeless legs to the back. Santa Ana’s tiptoed through the tall crabgrass like voodoo dolls. As I reached for the knob, the door, propelled by the shifting wind, slammed into my forehead. The ensuing adrenaline rush pumped pain into my skull. It took me minutes to recover.
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