Shooters

by Lankford, Terrill Lee; Raphael, Lev; Parker, T. Jefferson

  I studied the weapons in the trunk. Many of them were totally unfamiliar to me. I picked a 9mm Beretta. I had a girlfriend in Germany who had one just like it and we used to go target shooting once in a while. It was the only gun experience I ever had.

  "Good choice," Whitney said. "It's clean. But it's also four bills."

  I only had a little over two hundred bucks on me. I gave Whitney the two, kept some carrying cash, and told him I'd pay him the rest the following day.

  "Make sure you're still around to pay me, boss," Whitney said.

  "If I'm not, go into the office and take it out in camera equipment."

  "You want some help, man?"

  "No. This is my deal. I've got to play it out."

  "It's your funeral."

  "Probably."

  Whitney shook my hand with the four-stage soul shake.

  "No prisoners, boss. No prisoners."

  2

  I ripped back up Benedict Canyon, blowing the doors off all the other cars on the road. I screeched to a halt in front of Mark Pecchia's house. There weren't as many cars in the driveway as before. Someone had left. I hoped it was the bodyguards and not Mark Pecchia. Maybe they had been hired for the event only. Or maybe they were just very close acquaintances repaying favors or drug loans. It was doubtful, considering that Mark had as much as confessed to Candice s murder in front of them. No, they had to be in on the scheme as well. As I thought about it I realized that the guy sitting by the pool who tripped me could have been the masked man in the video. He was approximately my height, coloring, and build, although he looked like he was in somewhat better shape than me.

  I got out of the car, carrying the Beretta low and in front of me. I went up to the front door and rapped on it with the pistol. There was no answer. I went through a maze of thick bushes and trees around to the rear of the house. I looked down the hill at the swimming pool and tennis courts. No one was there. I went to the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house and rapped on the glass with the pistol. Still no answer.

  I slammed the edge of the Beretta against the glass door, shattering it. Glass cascaded down in front of me. I turned away for a moment to shield my eyes from the flying shards. If there was an alarm it was silent or turned off. I stepped through the shattered doorway and made a very quick room-to-room search of the house. Vengeance would have to wait. Nobody was home. I had gone to all the trouble of purchasing a gun, like a proper Angeleno, and I had steeled myself for some good old-fashioned vengeance like they do in the movies, but I had been defeated by the simple fact that no one was home. The bad guys were always home for Clint Eastwood or Sly Stallone. It would have been comical if I was in a better state of mind, but I had the fever. I realized I was going down. I wasn't going to get out of this one this time. But I wanted to take Mark Pecchia with me. He'd never do time for Candice Bishop's murder. I would. I wanted to avenge myself as well as the poor girl they had used to get to me.

  I had the who, and I had the how, what I still didn't know was the why. Why did Mark Pecchia hate me so? I didn't even know the guy. What did this have to do with what happened over ten years ago? How did he even know about that? What was the connection? My head was swimming with questions.

  I considered sitting and waiting for Pecchia and his boys to return. There was a good chance that it would be the Beverly Hills Rent-a-Cops instead. I was willing to take the chance. Then an image came back to me in a flash and I suddenly realized that there was one person I had met who might have the answers I needed. Someone who knew about Candice Bishop's murder and had probably been there when it went down. Maybe he could even be frightened into a confession. See, there was one thing familiar in the Candice Bishop snuff film that hadn't registered with me until now. The floor. The floor in the room where Candice was killed. The floor was splattered with various colors of old paint.

  I got back into my car and roared down Benedict Canyon. I was heading for the beach.

  3

  It was twilight by the time I got through traffic to Venice Beach. Parking was relatively easy this time. Huge clouds of smoke hung over Malibu to the north. The flames had gotten away from the firefighters and were now making the "firestorm" of a few days ago look tame by comparison. Half of Malibu was burning. Let it burn, I thought to myself. Let it all burn. Including my fucking house.

  I kicked the front door of Nate Boritzer's warehouse open. Nate was sitting in a tall director's chair in the center of the big, empty room, a bottle of Bacardi 151 in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A single light from a bare bulb dangling loosely from the ceiling shone directly over his head, creating a halo effect around him. Dead cigarettes covered the floor around the chair. God knows how long he had been sitting there, drinking and smoking, letting that nonsense dance around in his head.

  Nate looked up at me and smiled. He either didn't notice or didn't care that I had a gun in my hand. He took a sip from the bottle and a puff from the cigarette. I crossed the room as quickly as I could without running. Another sip from the bottle and I was right in front of him. I pistol-whipped the Bacardi bottle in mid-swig and it shattered in Nate Boritzer's face. Nate looked startled as he fell backwards. The chair tipped over and he crashed to the floor.

  I stood over Nate, aiming the pistol point-blank at his bleeding, glass-covered face.

  "Now, fucker, you're going to talk," I said. "You're gonna get me out of this mess." I was all raw nerves and adrenaline. Very little reason was left in my head.

  Nate tried to wipe glass and rum out of his eyes. He finally comprehended what had just happened to him.

  "Aaasssshooollle!" he yelled. It was a deep, guttural explosion. He managed to stretch the word out for a good seven seconds.

  I stomped Nate Boritzer in the nuts to distribute his pain more evenly. The action sent a wave of relief through me. I felt like kicking the shit out of the little fuck; instead I simply bent forward and put the pistol to his cheek. With my free hand I pulled him closer by the collar of his dirty sweatshirt.

  "Yeah, I'm an asshole," I said. "And so are you. Only difference is, you're about to be a dead asshole."

  I chambered a shell in the gun.

  "Don't do it," he yelled. "Don't, man!" Either he believed I meant business or he thought I might make a mistake handling the gun and shoot him by accident. Either way he was scared.

  "Why not?" I asked. "Everything's shit, right? I'm just gonna put you out of your misery!"

  "No, no, c'mon, you don't want to kill anybody!"

  "I've already killed two women, right? What's one more?"

  I jammed the barrel of the gun into Nate's crotch and shook him by the collar.

  "I can't do anything!" he screamed. "It's too late!"

  "Then you're gonna die."

  I jabbed him in the chest with the gun. Nate was shaking like crazy.

  "See your buddy!" he said. "Your old partner. David . . . David Rink! He can help you!"

  This got my attention. I backed the gun off a few inches.

  "David Rink? What's he got to do with this?"

  "Oh, man, c'mon. He shot the stuff."

  My jaw dropped.

  "He shot the snuff film?" I asked incredulously.

  "Fuck, yes. They used my back room, but he shot it."

  "Who else was there?"

  "I don't know."

  I pistol-whipped Nate in the face again. It opened up an old scar under his right eye. Blood trickled down and joined the tiny rivulets that were flowing from the glass cuts.

  "I swear to God, I don't know," Nate whimpered. "I was zoned out that night. . . . I don't remember shit! But it wasn't the first time they used that room."

  "They who?"

  "You know. Mark and David."

  "They've . . . killed other girls?"

  "Of course. You think they did all this just for you? You're vain. They've got a business, man. Sort of a cultural exchange program, you know, a pound of flesh every now and then for a kilo of coke here and there. Those g
uys, they're in deep with some dudes from the south. You're just the cherry on top of it all this time."

  "Why?"

  "Ask Rink. He knows more than I do. He got me into this shit. I never wanted it. Never!"

  "You're going to tell this whole story to the police."

  Nate spit blood onto the floor. "Yeah, right," he said sarcastically.

  I hit him in the face with the gun again. Nate's attitude adjusted properly. He tried to shake off the effects of the blow. He slumped a little, accepting his fate.

  "Whatever you say," Nate mumbled.

  "Let's go," I said.

  I picked Nate up off the floor and shoved him toward the door. He staggered drunkenly all over the place. I kept hold of his arm with my free hand to control him. I opened the door. Nate started to step out. He suddenly half-turned, grabbed the door, and slammed it into my face. I fell backward and dropped the Beretta. Nate pulled the door shut, cackled like a madman, and hauled ass down the street.

  I shook the pain off, picked up the gun, and rushed out onto the sidewalk. I pointed the gun at Nate Boritzer and fired twice. Nate was already out of range for my lousy aim. He cut a hard right and disappeared down an alley.

  The street was suddenly alive with people yelling and screaming from their houses and apartments, things like "Someone's shooting," "Get my shotgun," and "Shut the fuck up out there!"

  I slowly became aware of what I was doing. I was standing in the middle of the street in Venice, California, firing a gun. I walked quickly to my car and threw the Beretta into the passenger seat. I climbed in and started the Lamborghini. I looked around at the surrounding houses. The braver residents were beginning to peer out their windows. I was more embarrassed than frightened.

  People started coming out of their dwellings, staring at me. Some of them carried pistols and rifles. A few of them looked like they'd really like to get a chance to use their weapons. A man on a nearby porch aimed a pump shotgun at me.

  "Don't move," he shouted. "I called nine-one-one."

  I burned rubber out of there. The man with the shotgun yelled curses at me and fired into the air. He was absolutely civilized about the whole affair.

  _____

  "He was a crazy fuck. I knew it the first time I saw him. He had that look in his eyes. Like a hunted animal. A goddamn elk that's been shot. But that second time he came to see me he almost killed me. It felt good hitting him in the face with that door. He had it coming."

  —Nate Boritzer

  _____

  PART XIV

  "I think he's got a hard-on for dead women."

  —David Rink

  1

  I drove without really knowing where I was going. The more I saw of the puzzle, the more questions I had. I sifted the information I had gathered through my brain. By the time I was actually paying attention to my surroundings I found myself driving the deserted, garbage-strewn streets of the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles. Subconsciously, instinctively, I had gone home. Home to a place I had not seen in over a decade. The loft. The place where it all began.

  I parked and looked up at the old redbrick building, dotted with plates connected to steel rods driven through the walls to hold the place together during earthquakes. It was a three-story job. David's loft occupied one complete corner of the bottom floor. The rest of the place housed garment manufacturing sweatshops where the wetbacks grunted out twelve-hour workdays and got paid for six. They were all closed now. No use flagging Immigration with a twenty-four-hour operation. No reason to get greedy.

  The street was dead. An eerie silence pervaded the steel-and-brick canyon. Not even bums liked to hang out in this neighborhood at night. There was no one to feed off of except for the artists who occupied some of the lofts full-time. Most of them were poorer than the average homeless person. The only life to be seen came from the Santa Ana winds that gently blew loose paper and Styrofoam cups down the street. Even the Santa Anas were subdued in this ghost town.

  A faint glow was in the window of the loft. As I got closer I could hear rock music filtering out from within the place. Jimmy Page's old supergroup, the Firm, was playing "Tear Down the Walls."

  I tried the door to the loft. It was locked of course. I reached through the metal bars on the exterior of the door and smashed two of the middle jalousie windows. David Rink and I had glued them all shut eons ago, when we first leased the place. The building hadn't changed a bit in all that time. It was like looking at something out of a time capsule.

  I reached through the metal bars and turned the lock on the doorknob. Back when we were partners David was notorious for forgetting to lock deadbolts and set alarms. He was incredibly lazy about things like that, no matter what kind of crime zone he lived in. He didn't like messing around with any more keys than he had to. We used to argue about the subject often. His pattern had held, but now I was glad he was so lackadaisical. The door swung open and I entered. No alarms, no hassles.

  It was dark in the loft. The only illumination came from two neon signs, a standard-issue Heineken advert and a custom job that said "FUCK IT!" in red. The music was much louder now that I was inside. David had it up full blast. I could also hear a phone ringing somewhere in the loft, but it was too dark for me to see where it was located.

  The loft was just large enough for a functional studio space and a couple of tiny offices. A homemade second floor stretched out over roughly one third of the room on the north side above the bathroom and the kitchenette in an attempt to maximize the space. I hit the light switch on the side of the door, but nothing came on. The bulb was burned out.

  I was carrying the pistol, aiming it defensively in front of me, unsure whether David was here or not, whether he was alone or traveling with his own set of aging football players turned bodyguards. I didn't plan on getting slapped around again. I peered through the shadows and stepped cautiously toward the wooden ladder that led to the second floor. This was where David used to keep his part of the office and a cot for napping. I could only hope that he hadn't changed his basic floor plan. I climbed with one hand, holding the gun in front of me with the other.

  The second floor was even darker than it was downstairs. The neon glow didn't clear the landing. A few tiny lights could be seen on the stereo along the far wall, but the rest of the area was pitch-black. I could hear that the phone was up here, ringing on a desk somewhere in the darkness. I stared through the gloom at David's cot, trying to let my eyes adjust. It was too dark to tell for sure, but it looked like someone was sleeping there. I could hear traces of a slow, rhythmic breathing under the loud music.

  I flipped a light switch on the wall. A standing halogen lamp came on in the corner of the room, filling the place with harsh white light. I looked over at the cot, but it was not a cot anymore. David had squeezed a four-poster bed up here, a morsel left over from his messy divorce. Maybe he had given the cot to Nate Boritzer.

  David Rink was asleep in the bed, wrapped in a thick green comforter, dead to the world, snoozing through noise, light, phones, whatever. His breathing was deep and slow. He looked like he was on tranquilizers of some sort.

  I reached over and turned off the radio. I looked at his messy desk and saw why his answering machine hadn't picked up the phone. It was smashed to pieces on the floor next to the desk. I pulled the phone line out of the wall, killing the ringing, and tossed the phone next to the smashed answering machine. This did not wake David Rink.

  I walked over to the bed and stood above David, the Beretta dangling from my arm at my side. I put my foot on the wooden frame of the bed and shook it slowly. Then harder. Then I kicked the shit out of it.

  David woke with a start and looked up at me through heavy eyelids. He didn't appear shocked to see me.

  "I could have had a party up here and you would have slept right through it," I said.

  "That's the idea," he replied groggily.

  "Why the fuck did you set me up?"

  David rolled over and turned his back
to me.

  "Go away," he mumbled.

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "Tired . .."

  "Talk to me, David. I'm in a lot of trouble and you put me there. I want out."

  "Nothing I can do."

  He wasn't paying attention. I decided to resort to subtle threats.

  "David, I've got a gun," I said calmly.

  David chuckled. "So?"

  I kicked the bed and yelled, "So get up and FUCKING TALK TO ME!"

  "Can't we do this tomorrow?" he groaned.

  "What are you on?'

  "Just some pills . . . haven't been sleeping good."

  "Join the club."

  I reached over, grabbed David by the arms, and pulled him out from under the comforter. David was fully dressed in a wrinkled Armani suit. He had just crawled into bed without changing. He tried to shake me off, but I hoisted him to his feet.

  "Goddamnit, Nick, leave me alone," he grumbled, not wanting to get fully conscious.

  I shoved David down into a swivel chair at the desk.

  "Not until I get what I want!" I yelled into his face, trying to startle him out of his fog.

  David blinked repeatedly and rubbed his eyes. I shifted on my feet and felt the gun in my hand. My anger was making me nervous.

  "What do you think I can do?" David asked, starting to come around.

  "You killed that girl and pinned it on me. You can get me out of this whole mess."

  "I can't. There's no way. And I didn't kill anybody."

  "You were there. You shot that video. . . . YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE!"

  "Like you were ten years ago?"

  My face suddenly dropped. I slowly sat down on the edge of the bed.

  "That was different," I said. "You know it was."

  "How?"

  "I didn't know they were going to do what they did. . . . They didn't even know. It was an accident. Things just got out of hand. I tried to stop them, but I didn't move fast enough."