by James Frey
He immediately starts looking at the man who opened the door, who motions to the two men on the floor. The bearded men have spread out.
Some are going to Tiny’s office. Others are crouching around the men on the floor they immediately start calling Doc Doc, get over here Doc. No one seems to notice Dylan, who sits in the corner, his knees at his chest, his entire body shaking with fear. Over the course of the next two hours he watches and listens as:
Tiny tells the men that he and their friends were doing a meth deal when their Mexican partners pulled out weapons, taped them to the chairs, demanded their cash, guns and drugs, and tortured them until they revealed their locations.
The doctor pronounces the one man dead. And though he knew it already, hearing the doctor say—This man is dead—is shocking, crushing.
One of the bearded men leaves and returns with an old Cadillac. The garage door is opened and the Cadillac is backed into the space.
Three men move a large steel tool cabinet, Tiny opens a floor safe hidden beneath it. They pull out two scoped sniper’s rifles, two handheld rocket launchers, a machine gun, and four machetes.
The second man dies. He goes into convulsions before he goes, vomits blood, bites off part of his tongue. The doctor is unable to do anything to save him.
The trunk of the Cadillac is opened.
Tiny and the remaining man have their facial cuts stitched and the wounds on their arms and chests cleaned and dressed. Tiny is silent through the process, the other man alternates between moaning and screaming.
The weapons are dispensed.
The doctor is paid from a large bundle of cash hidden in the back panel of a refrigerator and the doctor leaves.
The bodies of the dead men are loaded into the trunk of the Cadillac.
Tiny tells the driver, and two other club members who are going with the driver, to take the bodies into the desert and bury them. The Cadillac pulls away.
Tiny gathers the remaining club members and gives them the names of the men who tortured and robbed him. He tells them he thinks they’re somewhere in or around Echo Park, a Hispanic neighborhood just northwest of downtown LA. He wants them found preferably in their homes. He wants their families killed in front of them, to be, if possible, hacked to pieces using the machetes. If it isn’t possible, shoot them, blow them up, find some way to fucking kill them and send a strong fucking message to motherfuckers who think they can get away with fucking with him. Tiny gives them each a bundle of cash in case they need it, tells them paying off addicts and small-time dealers might help them find the men.
The club members leave.
When they’re gone, when everyone is gone but the two of them, Tiny walks over to Dylan, stands above him, speaks.
Get up.
Dylan stands he’s stiff and it hurts to stand he’s shaking.
I probably don’t gotta say it, but if you tell anyone about anything you saw or heard in here today I’ll fucking kill you.
Dylan nods.
And I’ll fucking rape your girlfriend, and then kill her. And then I’ll fucking find out where you’re from and kill your fucking family.
I’m not gonna say anything.
You can’t ever say shit. Not a week from now, not twenty fucking years from now.
I understand.
I need you to clean this place up. Mop the fucking blood off the floor and find a dumpster for the bloody clothes.
Okay.
Put the clothes in a bag and put a buncha fucking rags on top of ’em and climb into the dumpster and stick it right in the middle of all the trash. If you put them at the bottom they’ll be at the top when they empty it. It’s gotta go right in the middle.
Okay.
And then lock this place up. Make sure it’s fucking locked.
Do I come in tomorrow?
Yeah. Business as usual. I gotta keep up a front. You should fucking know that by now.
Okay.
Tiny turns, walks out. Dylan hears him start his bike and ride away.
Dylan goes to the cleaning closet, which is near where he just spent two hours huddled in the corner, he gets a mop, fills a bucket with bleach and water. He walks to the spot where he found the man taped, starts mopping dried blood. He moves to spots where the men died, and where the blood had dried in outlines roughly the size of their bodies, and mops the blood. He mops along the paths where Tiny walked, and where there were thick red trails. He mops in the area beneath the trunk of the car, which leaked after it was filled. He cleans the mop. He cleans the bucket. He walks through the entire garage, picking up rags making a large pile of them. He does it again picks up bloody clothing, soaked bandages, towels. He puts the clothing bandages and towels in a black garbage bag puts the rags on top of them. He puts the bag inside of another black bag, does it again. He walks through the entire garage to make sure he hasn’t missed anything.
As he passes the refrigerator he notices the back panel is still open, just slightly, almost imperceptibly. He walks over to it opens it further there are still bundles of cash in it. He has never seen this much money in one place. He has no idea how much there is. All he sees are hundred-dollar bills. They’re worn, beaten, frayed at the ends, held together by rubber bands. He reaches out touches a stack of them. He knows one stack would change his life. He knows one stack would get him and Maddie out of the hotel, give them a new start, provide them with a safer more stable existence. One stack. His hands start shaking for different reasons this time just one stack. One fucking stack. Change his life. Make Maddie safe. Maddie safe.
If he gets caught he’ll die.
There’s no way anyone will notice, no way Tiny has any idea how much was in there earlier, how much is in there now, how much he used today.
Dylan’s hands are shaking.
One stack.
Maddie safe.
One stack.
He’ll die.
One stack.
There’s no way Tiny will ever know.
His hands are shaking.
It’ll change their life.
He reaches out his hand to touch the smooth surface of the worn paper.
He looks at the door no one’s there he’s scared fucking terrified he’ll die.
He takes out the stack it’s too big for his pocket he puts it in the waist of his pants tightens his belt to secure.
No one will know.
He closes the panel, leaves it exactly as he found it. He picks up the black trash bag. He walks to the back door makes sure it’s locked. He leaves through the front door, locks it behind him, double-checks it, triple-checks it. He walks to the garage door makes sure it’s locked, double-checks it, triple-checks it.
He starts walking down the street with the garbage bag. He’ll find a dumpster away from the shop.
The cash is his waistline, secured by his belt.
His life just changed.
In 1895, all twenty-three of the incorporated banks in Los Angeles County are robbed at least once. Twenty-one of them are robbed more than once. One of them is robbed fourteen times.
Freeways! Highways! EXPRESSWAYS!! AN EIGHTEEN-RAMP INTERSTATE EXCHANGE!!!! Is there anything more fun than sitting in a vehicle on a hot, crowded, slow-moving stretch of concrete and blacktop? Is there anything more fun than driving at four miles per hour? Is there anything more fun than a twelve-car pileup? No, there’s nothing, no way, it’s impossible, there’s absolutely nothing. CO2 and exhaust! Horns that never end! ROAD RAGE!!!! Fun fun fun, it’s so much fucking fun!!!!
There are 27 million cars in Los Angeles County, nearly two for every human being. On any given day, approximately 18 million of them are on the 20,771 miles of state, county and city roads that stretch across its every inch. In an average year, 800 people die on the roads of Los Angeles, and an additional 90,000 are injured. There are 29 state freeways, 8 interstate highways, and one US highway. All of them are named. There’s the Pearblossom Highway, the Future Chino Hills Parkway, the Antelope Valley Freeway.
There’s the Magic Mountain Parkway, Rim of the World Freeway, the Kellogg Hill Interchange. There’s Stinkin’ Lincoln (a nickname), Johnny Carson’s Slauson Cutoff (highway with a sense of humor), Ronald Reagan Freeway (very conservative, very presidential), the Eastern Transportation Corridor (booorrrinnng), and the Terminal Island Freeway (oh my, don’t want to end up there). Despite the fact that many of the highways, freeways, parkways and expressways of Los Angeles have strange and wonderful names, no one uses them. Every state, interstate and federal road in the county also has a numerical designation, the lowest of them is 1, the highest is 710. When discussing roads, the citizens of Los Angeles almost always use the numbers, immediately preceded by the word the. The roads above are better known as the 138, the 71, and the 14. The 126, the 18, the intersection of the 10, the 57, the 71 and the 210. The 1, the 90.
The 118, the 261, and the 47/103.
Interstate 10, the Santa Monica/San Bernardino Freeway, or, the 10. The 10 is the largest and most heavily traveled east/west thoroughfare in Los Angeles. It is an ugly, stinking brute of a road, huge and gray, hulking and dirty. It creates massive amounts of noise and smog, and makes everything around it uglier and significantly less pleasant. It’s the school bully of LA highways, it is hated, dreaded, people cringe at the thought of it, try to avoid it, plan their day around trying to avoid it, plan their life around trying to avoid it, but to no avail, absolutely none, because it’s always there, always looming, ever present, fucking up traffic and ruining people’s days, whether it wants to or not. Like the school bully, who is also very occasionally nice and cool and occasionally does something to make life easier or better, every now and then one drives onto the 10 and sees a massive, empty, open stretch of road that provides an incredibly fast and easy way to cross the most congested city in America. It’s a wonderful sight, that open road, and it stays in one’s mind the 99 percent of the time that the 10 is a nightmare.
The 10 starts at an intersection with the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, runs coast to coast for 2,460 miles along the entire southern span of the United States, and ends (or starts, if you want to look at it that way) at an intersection with I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was originally part of the Atlantic and Pacific Highway, a transcontinental trail that pioneers and settlers followed during the westward migration of the 1800s. Starting around 1920, it became a series of paved roads interrupted by unpaved patches of desert in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and swamp in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In 1940 the project to turn all of them into one road began, and in 1957, it was fully integrated, finished and officially christened as Interstate 10.
The 10 has a humble beginning, two lanes angling left and moving quickly upwards from the PCH at the base of the Santa Monica Pier. It looks like the entrance to a parking garage or the route for people who aren’t wealthy or attractive enough to go to the beach. It rolls through an underpass and spreads into eight lanes, four on each side, with thirty-foot concrete walls on both sides. Everything is hard and gray, there are chunks of concrete missing and scrape marks on the walls, it looks, and is, extremely unforgiving. It continues straight east and continues spreading and within a mile it becomes twelve lanes, within another mile it becomes sixteen. Along most of the west side of Los Angeles, the 10 is either elevated or lined with sound-reducing walls. Traffic is thick and often clogged all day every day, it is only clear late at night and early in the morning. Without traffic, it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to get from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles. With traffic, it can take two hours. As it moves east, and into neighborhoods that are not as economically healthy as those farther west, the 10 levels out and the walls disappear. When it hits downtown, it intersects with the 110, which runs from Long Beach to Pasadena, and just east of downtown, and it intersects with Interstate 5, which runs from Mexico to Canada.
From there it continues east into San Bernardino County and the desert.
Just outside of Palm Springs, it becomes the Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway.
US 101, the Santa Ana/Hollywood/Ventura Highway, or, the 101. The highway that is so damn cool it has five names. And yes yes yes, this is the highway that the song “Ventura Highway” by the supergroup America is named after, that song from the ’70s with the great vocal harmony, the first time you hear it it’s great, the second time it’s okay, the third time it’s annoying, and the fourth time it makes you want to find a grenade and stick it in the goddamn stereo.
The 101 starts in East LA, at the five-level East Los Angeles Interchange, where the 5 and the 10 and the 60 intersect, and it moves north and west through downtown. From there, it curves around the northern edge of Hollywood and through the Cahuenga Pass until it reaches the Hollywood Split, where two other freeways cut away from it and head north (the 170) and east (the 134). After the split, the 101 moves into the Valley, where it heads straight west, running parallel to Ventura Boulevard, the Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills. It then moves north into Ventura County. It follows the Pacific coastline through California, Oregon and Washington, where it once again merges with Highway 5 (Washingtonians don’t call it the 5). The 101 was originally part of a trail that connected the missions, settlements and forts of early Spanish California. It ran from the border of Mexico to San Francisco. When the larger and more efficient Highway 5 was constructed, the southern section of the 101 was redesignated as San Diego County Route S-21. The 101 is LA’s hometown freeway, most akin to the outside world’s image of the city. It’s referenced in dozens of songs, video games are made and named after it, it frequently appears in television shows and films. People all over the globe equate the 101 with good times, fast cars, hot chicks, warm weather, movie stars and money. As is also the case with its Hollywood namesake, the reality of the 101 is very different from the outside view of it. It’s crowded. It’s dirty. It’s run-down. It’s dangerous. Runaway kids and homeless crack and heroin addicts live in cardboard-box encampments beneath its underpasses. Garbage lines its shoulders. Deserted tires, and occasionally dead bodies, are dumped on it. Driving on the 101 can be a terrible experience. It’s either at a standstill, with drivers and passengers glaring at each other, threatening each other and sometimes attacking each other, or it’s like the world’s largest, most crowded, most dangerous racetrack, with cars weaving in and out of lanes, cutting each other off, running into the cement walls and barriers that line it. Once it moves out of downtown and Hollywood, the 101 becomes a drab, boring stretch of gray cement lined with housing developments and apartment complexes and gas stations and mini-malls.
It’s a dramatically different place than it was when the big hit, THE BIG HIT!!!, was written about it. It’s going to be interesting to hear the words to the next one.
Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, or, the 405. Someone in the State of California’s naming office was smoking weed when they named this road because it doesn’t run within forty miles of San Diego. It’s almost as if they felt sorry for San Diego for not having any big famous roads on the scale of the roads in LA, so they decided to throw them a bone and give them the 405. Lucky for them, no one in Los Angeles gives a shit, and no one in Los Angeles even bothers with the misleading and entirely inaccurate given name. The big sixteen-lane north/south artery, infamous as the scene of the OJ Simpson slow-speed car chase of June 17, 1994, is and always will be known as the 405. As a proud citizen of Mar Vista, which borders the route of the 405, once uttered—Fuck that silly San Diego bullshit, it’s our road and we’ll call it whatever the fuck we want. Certified as an interstate in 1955, and completed in 1969, the 405 runs for seventy-five miles between Mission Hills in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley and the city of Irvine, which is part of Orange County.
The 405 runs parallel to the Pacific coastline, but lies several miles inland.
It merges with Interstate 5 at both of its ends.
The 405 is one of the most heavily traveled and congested roads in the world. When shots of the mass
ive traffic jams of LA appear in films and television shows, they’re usually taken in the ten-mile stretch of freeway between the junctions of the 405 and the 10 in Santa Monica, and the 405 and the 101 in Sherman Oaks, which are two of the five busiest highway interchanges in the country. During that stretch, the 405 moves through the Sepulveda Pass, which cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains and is one of the primary thoroughfares between the Westside of LA and the Valley. It’s also home to the Getty Museum and the Skirball Cultural Center (couldn’t they have come up with a better name, like maybe the San Diego Cultural Center?).
Driving on the 405 is like standing in line for a roller coaster. You dread the line, you know you have to deal with it, you get in it, and then you slowly inch your way forward for what seems like an eternity. It’s always hot, something always smells, you always regret having decided to get in the line. Unlike a roller-coaster line, however, there is usually no payoff when you get off the 405. Whether you’re getting on another highway, freeway or interstate, or getting on one of Los Angeles’s larger surface streets, the only thing you get is more traffic. More traffic. More fucking traffic. Fuck.
Interstate 5, the Santa Ana Freeway, or, the 5. The Old Man. The Graybeard. The Granddaddy. The 5 is the oldest of the major roads in Los Angeles, tracing back to times before Europeans had landed on the continental United States, when it was part of a series of trails and trade routes, later known as the Siskiyou Trail, that were used by Native Americans. In the 1800s it was co-opted by the Pacific Railroad. In the early 1900s it became the Pacific Highway, and in the 1930s it was redesignated US Highway 99. In the 1950s it became Interstate 5, and about two hours later, the citizens of Los Angeles started calling it the 5.