Full Release

by Marshall Thornton

  Once inside, I stood at a counter and filled out a form to get my belongings back. The place reminded me of a pawnshop, and the unhappy civilian behind the counter looked like a pawnbroker. Eventually, he brought out a box with all my things. It happened to be the same box Jeremy kept his porn in. In addition to my now useless cell phone and my laptop, they were giving me back Jeremy’s porn. As each item was checked off on the form that went with the box, the unhappy clerk read it aloud, including each individual DVD titled. “One DVD Fists of Fury, one DVD Piss Boys of Chicago.” And it went on and on.

  I remembered I had porn on my computer, as well. I wondered if they’d gone through that, too. Was it really porn on the thumb drive? Would Cameron even know what real gay porn was? I let the clerk drone on while I called Tiffany. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey,” I said, “did you bring that Pez drive with you to work?”

  “Yeah, it’s in my purse. It’s not the kind of thing you leave with a fifteen-year-old.”

  I skipped a second apology and asked, “Can I come by and get it?”

  She hesitated a moment and said, “Um, sure.”

  “Great. I’ll be there in about a half hour.”

  I grabbed my box of belongings and left. I hurried out to my car and drove to Burbank. Tiffany had left me a drive-on pass so I could park in the underground garage. I zipped up to my old office, luckily not running into anyone I knew, and expecting to find Tiffany in her cubicle, I didn’t.

  In fact, the cubicle was empty. All her paraphernalia -- the pictures of her boys, her framed AA degree, the buttons with kittens on them -- it was all gone. I looked around, then walked into my old office, where Tiffany sat behind my desk. Well, her desk. She had the decency to blush.

  “You got my job,” I said.

  “I feel bad, I really do. But it did seem like you were going to jail.”

  “How did you get my job? I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but Sonja doesn’t like you.”

  “I caught Sonja and Charles in a compromising position and happened to have my phone on me, so I took a photo…”

  “Um…wait, Charles is--”

  “Not a closet case.”

  “So you blackmailed your way into my job?” It had been a surprise to find out Eddie was a blackmailer. It was bigger one to find out Tiffany was one too.

  “I don’t like to think of it that way,” she said, “but yes. Sonja couldn’t exactly give the job to Charles after I took that picture, could she?”

  I thought about it for a moment. In a way, I was impressed; I never expected Tiffany to do something like that. On the other hand, she scared me a little. I thought it best to say, “Do me a favor, when you get Sonja’s job, keep me in mind.” Then I asked for the Pez drive and left.

  I didn’t have the patience to wait until I got home to watch the video. After I left the studio, I pulled into a hilly side street on the way back to my house. If I’d followed the winding streets upward, I’d have ended up near the Hollywood Reservoir. I parked as best I could then pulled out my laptop, hoping it had a charge, hoping they hadn’t deliberately destroyed it. It took forever to power up, but finally it was on. I plugged in the flash drive, clicked on the file and put in the password El Gordo. That opened the folder. I clicked on the quick time file, and it came up in the player.

  It took a moment for me to figure out what I was seeing. The video was dark, but I could clearly see two entwined figures on a bed. Both male. Both naked. It wasn’t a professional porno. I wasn’t even what they called amateur porn on the Internet. This was something different. One of the men was Eddie. Suddenly, I realized that this was shot in the garage-slash-studio behind Sylvia’s house. Eddie was taping this man without his knowledge, I was pretty certain of it.

  The man’s face was turned away from the camera, buried in Eddie’s lap. I sped forward to see if I could get a good look at his face. Later in the video, as he’s fucking Eddie doggie style, Eddie slowly moves them toward the camera so that the man’s face will…yes, there he is. He looked familiar, but it was still very dark. He was stocky, well-muscled, had black hair… it was Carlos Maldonado.

  Hanson was protecting Maldonado. Her former partner. A rising political figure. Things began to make sense. A guy who wanted to do things for the community. I turned the video off. I didn’t need to see any more. Though I suppose I should have continued to see if Carlos tried choking Eddie, or if they had any kind of conversation when they finished. Maybe I’d finished watching it some other time.

  Right then, I needed to think about what to do. Now that I had the video, the answer to the murders, what did I do with it? I couldn’t just bring the Pez drive to the police. It was far too possible I’d find another friend of Maldonado’s. I supposed I could call Alan Moskowitz at the Herald. Would that be safe? He’d written a real puff piece of Maldonado, though. Did the budding politician have allies at the paper? Newspaper people had seemed incorruptible when I was a kid. Now they seemed as bad as politicians. The safest choice would be to give the drive to Tripp’s lawyer. But I didn’t have his name. Tripp hadn’t said.

  If Tripp didn’t get out of jail soon, I could go back to visit him in the morning and get his lawyer’s name. Unfortunately, that was a long way off and just knowing what was on the video made me feel vulnerable. I needed to make sure the file was safe. The best way to make sure the file was safe would be to email it to myself. I clicked on the wireless icon and discovered that everyone nearby had security on their network. I’d have to find a coffee shop with a hot spot or go home and use my own wireless. In the mean time, I copied the file onto my hard drive and renamed it ultimates 2011. At first glance, it would look like a work file.

  I did a U-turn and was about to head back into the valley when I noticed a Crown Vic turning into the street I was on. Detective Hanson was in the driver’s seat, glaring at me as she drove by. Crap! I’d put the GPS back onto my car and hadn’t bothered to take it off. I made a quick turn back toward L.A.

  I drove through the Cahuenga pass as quickly as I could. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I didn’t see Hanson. She was back there, but the road I was on took a number of dips and turns as it worked through the Cahuenga Pass. I had the sudden realization that Hanson hadn’t framed Tripp to get him to take the blame for to murders, she framed Tripp so he couldn’t help me. Hanson and Maldonado wanted the file. They weren’t at all concerned about the murders. Hanson probably thought she’d be able to make sure they went unsolved.

  My first impulse was to go home, but that was crazy. I’d be a sitting duck there. Instead, I drove south on Highland down to Sunset, where I took a right, heading west. Traffic was thick. I glanced in my rear-view mirror; no sign of Hanson. I made a sudden, sharp turn onto Formosa and double-parked in a driveway. I jumped out of the car, ran around to the passenger side wheel well and retrieved the GPS. Then I ran back and hopped in the driver side. I made a U-turn and headed back to Sunset.

  I could have stuck the GPS onto a parked car or thrown it onto someone’s lawn, but I was too worried that Hanson would resort to other methods to find me. Like police APBs or even helicopters. I had to keep her busy for as long as possible. Though at first, I wasn’t sure how I’d accomplish this.

  Back on Sunset, I looked around trying to think of a way to get rid of the GPS. Ahead of me, in the next lane about two cars up, I noticed an old Buick convertible. It was an enormous boat of a car with a huge back seat. The top was down; it was L.A. after all.

  There were two cars in front of me, so I couldn’t just pull up next to it. I had to be patient and try to figure a way to get next to it. It took three blocks before I was just one car length behind them. I kept my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t make a left turn and disappear. Then, at the next light, I was able to pull up next to them. The driver was a middle-aged man in his fifties. His balding head was sunburned, and he looked about as happy as
a man can while driving. I could tell he just loved that car. He kept scanning the sidewalks to see if anyone was noticing him.

  I buzzed my electric window down and got the GPS in my left hand. I’m right-handed, so I knew it would be a little on the tricky side. There was room to move ahead, but I wasn’t budging. The guy in back of me seemed to getting annoyed about that, but I couldn’t worry about him.

  At the next stop light, as the driver looked at a pretty blonde entering the crosswalk, I carefully tossed the GPS into his back seat. He heard something, but he wasn’t sure what. He turned and looked at me. I smiled and nodded my head at the blonde. Just as I’d hoped, he went back to watching her. When the light turned, I sped up and drove west on Sunset.

  I had it in the back of my mind where I could go. I had Peter’s key on my keychain; I could go to his place in Venice and hide out. No one would know I was there. It took another forty minutes to get there. Most of that time I spent freaking out a little. I turned my cell phone off. I read somewhere that the signal could be used to pinpoint a location. There wouldn’t be much point of getting rid of the GPS if my cell could be used for the same purpose. I was pretty sure they couldn’t do the same thing with a computer. It would be safe to use my laptop when I got to Peter’s.

  His apartment was on a side street in the not-so-good part of Venice where it borders on Culver City. Just off Venice Boulevard, the apartment complex was five pre-World War Two clapboard buildings on a large lot. Each building had two units. Peter lived in the back building.

  Inside, the apartment was composed of a tiny living room, a cramped, makeshift kitchen, a bathroom barely big enough for the tub, toilet and sink it held, and a closet-sized bedroom. In the living room, a mattress sprawled on the floor in front of an over-large flat screen television hooked up to a new DVD player and an Xbox. As though suggested by its size, the bedroom was now a closet. It held a dresser, two metal clothes racks, several laundry baskets full of clothes, and stacks of plastic boxes full of shoes. In the kitchen, the appliances were covered with dust and the refrigerator empty.

  When I got there, I set my things by the door; my laptop and the bag I used for massages into which I’d shoved some clothes. I used Peter’s landline to order some Thai food. There was a stack of menus conveniently kept on the DVD player. I dug around the closets until I found a fresh set of sheets. After I changed the bed, I turned on the TV and discovered that Peter had every possible cable channel; I decided to lie there and do nothing as long as possible.

  Since it was safe to use Peter’s landline, I went out to my car and got the instructions to my cell. I looked through them to see if there was a way to retrieve messages from a landline. There was. I followed the instructions and picked up my messages. There was one from my sister asking if I’d be coming to Thanksgiving with the family. That felt totally bizarre. For one thing, they had no idea what I’d been going through; for another, Thanksgiving was only a few days away. You’d think if they wanted me there they’d have asked before now. Fortunately, there were no other messages.

  Then I pulled out my computer and tried to get on Peter’s wireless. He had password on it. At this point, I was getting pretty sick of passwords. I knew Peter pretty well, and I wondered if I’d be able to guess it. I had no idea what the name of his first pet was, but I did know the name of his ex, Donald. I tried it. Didn’t work. I tried a few combinations of Donald and years that he might have been born. Donald1978, Donald77, things like that. Then, on a whim, I tried Donald&Peter. That worked. I was on. Moments later, I had mailed the file to myself. Now I had three copies. One on the flash, one on the laptop, and one in cyberspace. That wouldn’t necessarily keep me safe, but it gave me options.

  As I ate my Pad Thai, I wondered if Detective Hanson was still following the guy in the Buick convertible.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Shit! Shit!” I’d been so worried about being found through some fancy new technology, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be found through simple, old-fashioned footwork. They’d had my computer; they’d probably printed out my address book. Hell, they might have copied my entire hard drive.

  All they had to do was work their way through, checking with people to see if they’d seen me, until they got to Peter’s name. Warren, Peter Warren. If they began at the beginning of the alphabet, it would take them quite a while to get to him. Well, maybe not such a long while. I didn’t know all that many people.

  Jumping out of bed, I threw my clothes on and started grabbing my things. I had enough cash to spend the rest of the night in a hotel, thanks to my work as a masseur. I figured I should do that. Once I had everything, I turned off the light and left Peter’s apartment. It was around two in the morning. I walked down the complex’s sidewalk toward the street. Almost to the street, I was brought up short when a man stepped in front of me. Carlos Maldonado.

  I looked into his angry eyes, then at the gun he held in his hand. “Turn around and go back to your friend’s apartment,” he said.

  I wondered if he was waiting for Hanson. Was that why he was on the street? Had she said, “meet me out front then we’ll go in and kill him”, just as though they were planning some kind of shopping excursion?

  Having no choice, I turned around and headed back to Peter’s apartment, Carlos close behind me. When we got in the door, Carlos asked, “Do you have it?”

  There wasn’t much point in playing coy, so I said, “Yes, I’ve got it. It’s in my bag.”

  He snatched my bag away from me, unzipped it, and began to rifle through it. A moment later, he looked up at me, pissed off. “Where is it?”

  “The key chain. If you pull the duck’s head off, it’s a thumb drive.”

  He pulled the duck’s head off and stared at the metal square end of the drive. “Is this the only copy?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “That would be stupid. You must have made a copy.”

  “The file is password-protected. I never figured out how to open it.” He stood there, deciding whether to kill me. I still held my bag in my hand. At the bottom of the bag was a knife wrapped inside of a towel. It wasn’t much help against a gun, but it was something. If I could get to it, that is.

  “What’s on the drive?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t already know.

  He just stared at me.

  “You killed two people to get it.”

  “I have a big future ahead of me. City council. Maybe mayor some day. Maybe more. I’m going to be able to do good things for people. Do two lives really matter when compared to all the people I can help?”

  I tried not to think too much about this, instead, I stayed focused on letting my hand fall into the bag and extending my fingers until I felt the towel.

  “That’s kind of a leap, don’t you think?” I said, confronting him in hopes of keeping him distracted. “You killed to cover your ass, plain and simple.”

  He raised the gun and aimed. I had my hand on the towel, separating it, my finger grazing the knife as I tried to grasp it without being noticed.

  “They were blackmailing you, but that doesn’t make it okay to be my self-appointed executioner.”

  “Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong?”

  “I’m innocent. I never tried to blackmail you. How are you going to justify killing me?” I could see him wavering at the thought. I had my fingers on the knife. I got my fist around the handle and pulled it out of the bag as I stepped forward. Before I really knew what I was doing, I plunged it into his stomach just below his ribs as the gun fired over my shoulder. The knife was cold, and the blood that spilled out of him was hot and sticky. I’d stabbed a man. I nearly stopped breathing.

  Dropping the gun, he looked down at the blood pouring out of him in a wave. Bloody knife in hand, I backed away from him. I’d hit something major. Peter
’s carpet was covered in blood. So was Carlos. So was I. With one hand, he feebly attempted to put pressure on the wound, but the blood kept coming. Then his hand dropped away. He was weakening all ready. I couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening. I must have driven the knife right into his heart.

  He fell to his knees, looked up at me, and with barely any strength left, said, “Fuck you.” He collapsed onto the floor. I stared at his lifeless body for a moment, then jumped into action. I ran into the bathroom and with a wet towel wiped as much of his blood off of myself as I could. I could have taken a shower and changed, but I felt like I had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  I put the bloody knife in the bag; I’d get rid of it somewhere. On my way to a hotel, maybe. I’d find a quiet neighborhood with an open storm drain. I’d drop it in and go on my way. Of course, I felt bad about leaving a dead body in Peter’s apartment. But he had the perfect alibi. He was in France, so no one would suspect him. And no one could connect me to Carlos without connecting him to the deaths of Eddie and Sylvia.

  Calling the police and telling them the truth wasn’t even an option. Hanson had it in for me, and my actually killing someone, even in self-defense, wasn’t likely to stop her. Her devotion to Carlos wouldn’t end with his death.

  I left the apartment and bolted down the sidewalk toward the street. I was just about to get into my car when I heard the scream, “STOP RIGHT THERE!”

  I spun around. A wave of nausea hit me when I saw Hanson standing in the middle of the street aiming a big, black gun right at me. I breathed deeply, trying to get hold of myself. There was nothing to do but stop. “Where’s Carlos?” she asked.

  “He’s in my friend’s apartment. I gave him the video. He told me to take off.”