I stared at Scar D.’s face. I couldn’t help it. It was like staring at the aftermath of a car wreck. He had hundreds of tiny, gruesome lacerations all over his skin. The surgeons had done the best they could but his skin looked like a badly made quilt or a deranged jigsaw puzzle. He stood one side of me and Big Bullion the other.
“Now do you need some help?!” Mia called out.
“Uhuh,” I said and then gulped. Scar D. threw a punch, but he telegraphed it and I ducked it easily. Big Bullion rabbit punched me from behind in the kidney, winding me, I turned to deal with him when Scar D. caught me on the side of the head. The force of the punch lifted me off my feet and onto the hood of my car. He lunged at me, choking me two-fisted.
“What about now?” Mia asked me smugly.
She was starting to get on my nerves. Scar D. pushed me up the hood and squashed my face into the windshield. I saw Mia applying lipstick using the vanity mirror. She saw me and gave a small finger wave.
Scar D. was throttling me and I found myself light-headed. “Mind my wheels, man, the car’s a classic,” I managed to gasp.
I saw him ponder this and he considered it a reasonable request and lifted me from the hood one-handed. “Thanks, man, appreciate it.”
He dropped me on the sidewalk and I kicked him in the groin. It was the only way to even up the fight. He was stunned, his eyes crossed and he dropped to his knees holding himself.
“Oh, hon?” Mia said.
“Hold on a moment,” I said and made the universal time-out signal and we all took a moment to get our breath back.
I turned to face her. “Yah?”
“If they kill you, can I have your car?”
“Sure.”
I signaled for them to continue and somehow, within seconds, Scar D. had me in a headlock and rammed me into my car door.
“Hey, mind my car!” Mia yelled.
Scar D. tightened his grip and threw me to the ground as Big Bullion jumped on my chest, knocking the wind out of me.
I was losing, badly. There was only one thing for it.
Everything went black.
“Hot damn!” Scar D. gasped. “I think you killed him.”
Big Bullion got off my chest, felt my neck for a pulse. “Now we’ve done it.”
Mia climbed out of the Camaro tentatively, pointing her gun at them. Scar D. slowly backed away when I jumped up and hit him two-fisted in the solar plexus, dropping him like a stone.
“But . . . but you were dead?” stammered Big Bullion. “I saw it with my own eyes . . .”
Mia covered him with her gun and gave me a quick hug of relief and whispered, “How?”
“It’s just something I can do. It’s like a catatonic state,” I told her. “I used to freak my buddies out as a kid.”
I took out my own gun and pointed the Glock at them. I sucked in breath and said to Mia. “I’m gonna shoot them to death. Will you cover up for me?”
“Oh, you know I will, hon. You shoot them as much as you like.”
I put the gun against Big Bullion’s tiny forehead. “Tell me about the pedo ring?”
“Oh, that? I thought you were here investigating our drug operation.”
“Well, I am now.” What drug operation? I thought.
“Can we switch one thing for the other?” he asked hopefully. “Maybe swop information for you to overlook the drugs?”
I nodded. He said, “There ain’t much to tell. Over the years there’s been rumors of snuff movies and young chicks disappearing, being trafficked.”
Scar D. spoke. “A lowlife asked me for underage chicks for a snuff once.” His voice was unusually light and whispery for someone his size. “I told him to beat it. Then secretly followed him.” I tried to picture him surreptitiously shadowing the scumbag but couldn’t. “All the way up to a highfalutin lawyer’s office on Sunset.” He stared up at the sky and scrunched his eyes, trying to recall the name, then smiled, “Eglin and Claybourne. That was the name of the mutha’s firm.”
Bingo!
Marcus Eglin, I thought. Now, that is interesting. Could he be the Svengali-type character, completely dominating Bruce Matherson, hiding in the wings, pulling the strings behind the scenes, could he be the puppet master?
The Fox and Hounds Bar & Restaurant, Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, 90028 – 22:15.
After a long, fruitless day of dead-end leads and mounds of pointless paperwork, Mia went home saying she was bushed. I needed to clear my head and wanted to check out a couple of things: the whole case was screwy. The Hangman was bad enough and now we seemed to have stumbled upon a major pedophile ring involving the high and mighty, even high-ranking cops, council officers, and I expected lawyers and judges as well. I would have to play that part of my investigation close to my chest because the only person at the station I could totally count on was Mia and we were already tied in trust to each other by the ‘suicide’ of Donnie Deathstar. I ran through the sequence of events but I couldn’t make a connection. The pedo ring went back years and the Hangman was relatively new. It was driving me crazy and I decided it called for a drink. I would sound out Perry. He had a cool, level head, but he wasn’t at the Dog and Duck on Pico, or the Kings Head in Santa Monica. My next bet would be the Fox and Hounds on Sunset Boulevard up in Hollywood, which was open until 2 a.m., another British pub, where expats and Anglophiles like to hang out. The Fox and Hounds established over thirty years ago had everything you’d expect from a genuine pub, lots of British paraphernalia, darts, warm beer, and fish ’n’ chips were on the menu, as was a cup o’ tea. Sure enough, Perry was propping up the bar, he looked pleased to see me – well, as pleased as he would ever get.
“Alright, mate.” He said it as a statement, rather than a question, but made it sound like ‘all white, mate’. “Want a pig’s?”
Huh? Oh, hold on, I know this one. Pigs, cockney rhyming slang, pig’s ear equals beer. “Sure, I’ll have the same as you.”
At least that what I thought it meant. He ordered me a pint of some imported strong lager. At least they served it cold. I quickly explained what had happened, how I had ditched the rockstar into the canyon where he had crashed and subsequently died.
Perry was extremely impressed, held up his hand to high-five me and said, “Welcome to my world.”
I didn’t know what his world was but was always kinda suspicious, and that statement confirmed that it was something murky and against the law. “So, what do I do?” I asked when I got to the end of my story.
He signaled for me to move away from the bar and any possibility of eavesdropping. We went over to the dartboard. He threw his darts quickly and as it turned out very accurately and scored an impressive one hundred and eighty, all three darts grouped in the treble twenty. He handed me the darts. “I bet yer ain’t eaten yet? Are yer hungry?”
“Yah.”
“I know a ‘gaff’ where they do a blindin’ ‘Ruby’. It’s just around the ‘Johnny’ from the ‘rubber’.”
Oh, maaan, here we go again, although I’m used to his way of speaking, my brain digested the words but couldn’t decipher them. I must’ve looked puzzled.
He explained, “I know a ‘gaff’ – a place, in this case, a restaurant, around the ‘Johnny’ – Johnny Horner, means corner, from the ‘rubber’ that means rubadub – which in turn means pub. ‘Blindin’’ just means good restaurant around the corner from the pub that served ‘Ruby’, which was Ruby Murray that equaled a curry.” He raised his eyebrows as if this was basic stuff.
“Why didn’t ya just say that?”
“I could murder some Indian food,” he said. “Are yer up for it?”
I nodded my agreement and threw my first dart, and although I failed to score, at least I hit the board.
“Your problem is easy to solve. Yer got to kill ’em,” he stated simply and that ensured my next dart hit the wall. I told you his life was simple. All straight lines up and down and black and white. He shrugged at me as if he’d told me to take them out to dinne
r.
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a cop, remember?”
“That’s why yer can do it. You have anonymity.”
“Not gonna happen,” I said flatly.
“So you’ll let ’em keep on torturin’ kids?”
“No . . .”
“Can yer pursue them through the courts?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why not?”
“They’re very powerful.”
“Lawyered up?”
“Yah.”
“How do yer stop ’em without takin’ them through the court?” He took another gulp of lager and burped loudly, as I reached the same conclusion as he had. “Yer know I’m right.”
“It’s still wrong,” I said, trying to put up an argument.
“What they do is worse.”
I threw my last dart and hit the two.
Perry rolled his eyes, collected the darts, and threw his in quick succession, scoring one hundred and forty with the three darts, two treble twenties and a single. “Can yer prove they’re doing it without a shadow of doubt?”
“Yah.”
“They’re evil, right?”
“Yah.”
“Then they deserve to die, right?”
“Yah.”
“There yer go, you’ve answered yer own question.”
“We’re talking about killing someone in cold blood?”
“But they don’t deserve to live. It’ll be like squashin’ a bug, nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I said.
“Sometimes yer have to do the wrong thing to do the right thing.”
“It would be almost impossible.”
“And that’s where I come in,” he said with a grin.
La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90016 – 02:02.
It was just gone two in the morning when I was driving down La Cienega Boulevard from the Delhi Belly restaurant in Hollywood when I got a call from Dispatch. I guess years of experience told them that I would still be up and awake. I took the call that there’d been a homicide, in an apartment block on 23rd Street, just off Wilshire Boulevard on the same floor as Detective Candy Morton. It was a botched attempt of murder; the victim had been partially hanged and saved by Candy’s intervention. The hanging element had made them alert members of the Hangman Homicide team, of which she was one. The captain had first thought that maybe Candy was meant to be the target, as the Hangman had taunted suggesting that the next victim would be closer to home, closer even than the department psychiatrist, which we determined meant one of the detectives assigned to tracking him down. We felt that this would appeal to his enormous ego and we had doubled our security. Note to self, best remove rope ladder from outside my apartment, although we felt that the male detectives were safe, but who knew what would make him change his mind? I involuntarily belched and remembered that hot, spicy food didn’t agree with me. I could do Mexican food, no problem, but food from the subcontinent was some of the hottest on the planet. Perry had taken me to a new restaurant called the Delhi Belly, not the most appetizing name, but the food Perry assured me was “the dog’s bollocks” which for some reason meant good. I already knew that bollocks was an old Anglo-Saxon word for men’s genitals and could not fathom how dog’s balls could mean good, but there you have it.
I never understood the Brits’ fascination for curry, but then they occupied India for over three hundred years, maybe they got a taste for it then. We sat in a window seat to watch Hollywood go by, but in the small hours, most tourists had gone and just left the dregs, the ten-buck hookers, and the crystal meth dealers. We ordered Cobra, an Indian beer, designed especially to complement curry. I read the menu, which had helpfully placed a sliding scale of hotness of the spices, using a chili symbol, starting with a one chili for a mild dish like korma, going right up to a five-chili symbol for the vindaloo. Perry ordered two of those. Looking down the list, I knew that my eyes would stream at around a three-chili dish like rogan josh or balti. I guess I should at least be thankful that he didn’t order the widow-maker, a curry so hot that the diner signed a disclaimer acknowledging that they know of the dangers of eating it. It tops several million on the Scoville scale, where cayenne peppers, for example, only scored thirty to fifty thousand on the same scale. It would score even higher than drinking anti-riot tear gas. No one in the US has completed the task yet, someone had eaten a few mouthfuls when he had started hallucinating. Even the cooks must wear goggles and face masks while preparing it. I took on the challenge of the vindaloo, but wondered about consuming a gastronomic dish that appeared to be based on a dare and I was suffering from it now.
I thought back to Perry’s reaction at the restaurant when I told him that Mia had bitten me. “She bit yer?”
“Yah.”
“Actually drew blood?”
“Yah.”
“Here,” Perry said. He tended to start his sentences with the word ‘here’, although he would drop the ‘h’ and it would sound more like ‘ear’. “Here,” he said. “Have yer thought about shots?”
“Maybe I should, I heard that a human bite is worse than a dog’s –”
“I meant for her.”
“Oh, funny, ha ha,” I said flatly.
He took a mouthful of curry and washed it down with a beer. “Actually, maybe yer should get a shot because, y’know . . .”
“No?”
“Well, she’s a bit of a skinny bird, ain’t she?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, maybe she’s got AIDS.” That Perry, such a kidder. Well, at least I thought he was kidding.
“Hey, cool it, man, I like her, like her a lot.” I paused while I wondered if he was joking or not. I’d long given up on trying to work out the way his mind worked. A waiter brought over two more beers. I said, “Why would she be trying to give me AIDS?”
“Well, tell me this, why would a gorgeous bird like that be datin’ you?”
“He’s gotta point, man,” said Elvis.
“She is totally out of your league,” agreed Sheldon.
I had no idea why she was dating me, but I was extremely pleased that she was and felt myself smiling just thinking about her. I downshifted a gear and turned right on a red light, one of the few good ideas the Californians had devised. I screeched to a halt outside the apartment block, which was old and had the shape of an office block. Some canny entrepreneurs had done just that, switching an office block that was in an area that had fallen out of favor with the business sector, close to city center but not close enough, but bordering residential. They had breathed new life into the building by transforming it into trendy modern apartments that were close to the city center. However, this one had done little to improve the façade:, it was very square and blocky with a wide ledge at each floor.
I joined the other detectives assembled as Uniform taped off the scene from the onlookers. Yah, loads of gawkers still up and about ready to stand for hours and gawp on the off chance of what? Seeing a dead body being carried out, a shoot-out, who knew? Maybe the sirens and lights had disturbed them; either way there was quite a crowd, most filming with their cellphones. A few tried to get headshots of me; this was becoming quite normal and it crossed my mind that this may be how the Hangman was able to determine who was working on his case. I made a mental note to check on the crowd at the other Hangman murder scenes. It was common practice now to film the crowd surreptitiously at murder sites. In times gone past it had become apparent that a murderer more often than not would return to the scene of his crimes. I thought the Hangman was too smart for that: he always seemed to be one step ahead, as if he knew our every move. I had a feeling that he knew police procedure well, plus I was thinking more and more with a sinking dread that the Hangman might just be a cop.
CHAPTER 17
Areca Palms Apartments, 797 W Olympic Boulevard, CA 90015 – 02:25.
I joined the group and the captain pulled
me to one side. “Candy thinks she has the Hangman cornered, trapped in the apartment adjacent to hers. She has the door covered, I’ve told her to wait for re-enforcements, then to go into her apartment and lock herself in as we think she is his target. He’s failed this time, but he might just try and kill her out of spite.”
George McGinty and Milo Sanchez glanced over in my direction wondering why I was getting special treatment and acted sulkily, however, I had a sneaking feeling that the captain’s apparent favoritism was not going to do me any favors in the long run. “What are ya thinking?” I asked him.
He glanced up to the fifth floor. “Do you have a head for heights?”
* * *
And that was how I found myself shuffling along a one-foot-wide ledge one hundred feet above the ground. Just my luck. I’d happily have exchanged my position with George or Milo. If this was favoritism – you could keep it. It was hard to see one foot in front of the other that high up. The street lights were ineffectual and the captain had decided not to light the ledge for me to see as this may alert the Hangman to our method of attack, which made sense. Well, it made sense when I was at ground level. We’d agreed that the Hangman would be expecting an assault through the only door, and at a given signal, the others would attack the door and I would go in through the window and disable him. That was the theory, at least. Not only was it hard to see at that height, it was also surprisingly windy and it turned out I had no head for heights either. I remembered the adage not to look down and then, of course, I immediately did. The street one hundred feet below surged towards me as if I was already falling, then retracted back and then zoomed in again, making me feel nauseous. I swallowed my fear and shuffled past a window hoping not to disturb the occupants. I’d crawled out onto the ledge from a communal hallway window and had to shuffle about two hundred feet along to the apartment next to Candy’s. I remembered that she lived in a one thousand-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment that overlooked the front of the building. A gust of wind made me freeze to the spot, then I shuffled along. I could make out the shape of a bird that looked nestled in for the night, and as I approached it squawked at me. Great. Just what I needed. I hoped the bird would fly away. At least it had that option, I didn’t. I moved closer and the goddamned thing pecked at me. I pulled my gun and realized that idea wouldn’t work. I kicked out, making it fly away, but my leg swung after it automatically and I realized that my point of balance was in trouble. I pulled my leg back in gently, flattened myself against the wall and gulped in large lungful of air. I clipped my gun back on my belt. One more apartment to pass then I would be in position. I heard my gun clunk against the window as I passed and hoped I did not wake the owner. It suddenly occurred to me that it would have been easier to go out of Candy’s apartment window, as it was only next door. Oh well, too late now. I just needed to ease by the bedroom window of the adjacent apartment and I would be there.
On The Edge Page 18