L.A. Rotten (12 page)

“What do you want from me?”

“Oh, I think I'm going to get what I want from now on, so don't you worry about that. I gotta tell you, that's a really pretty girl you're with…kinda skanky, but cute. Maybe we should include her in some of the fun?”

“Leave her alone, you fuck!” I search for a trace of someone on a cell phone, but there, of course, is nothing.

“Next time you start feeling the urge, call me, and we'll negotiate a price.” His phone—Tony's phone—clicks off.

“What was that?” Ivy asks, forgetting she's mad at me.

“He's here…he killed Tony and took his cell phone…he knows who I am…and now he knows about you. It's all like a goddamn game to him.”

Ivy punches me, hard, in the face, her tiny fist with its sharp knuckles connecting with my eye socket. “Did you know my bad dreams have started again, knowing that this creep knows about you? The fire—it's horrible—worse even than it used to be. Now I can actually feel the pain in my dreams—and it wakes me up it hurts so fucking bad. And that's the kind of shit I dreamt of before this asshole knew I existed—imagine what my dreams are going to be like
now
. And I'm the one who's supposed to live through this.”

“I didn't want you involved, remember? You
had
to step into my world. Well, this is it.”

Ivy hits me again, and my eye socket is now the thing that's on fire. “I'm not mad about the dreams, I'm mad that you made me care about you, you fucker.”

“Believe me, I'm mad too.”

“And you're still not going to go to the police now, huh?”

“To tell them what? That this bastard poisoned my stash and murdered my dealer? No, I'm not going to the police.”

“For some reason, it makes me even more mad that you've got a good point. Well, hmm.” She looks out her window, resigning herself to the reality of it all.
My reality
. “I guess it's safe to say that if this is all a game,” she asks, “right now, we're losing?”

“Yeah.”

Wednesday morning brings the worst crime scene I've had in my year and a half on the job. The call comes from the service at 10:00 a.m. By 11:00 a.m., I'm standing on the ledge of a partially drained pool in a Beverly Hills backyard, with a black eye, staring down into the marsh of guts that used to be a billionaire. Apparently, he was between pool-cleaning companies. A Russian cement tycoon, he'd shot himself and dropped into the deep end of his art deco swimming pool. He must have been unpopular, because no one called in the shot, and three weeks had transpired before anyone had thought to find him. During that time, it was long and hot enough for him to dissolve in the chlorine, soaking the liner walls in the grease that was once his vital organs. Scrubbing out the grease is my job.

Initially, I think I am off the hook because there are no known relatives to sign off on my work order, and since it is private property, the cops don't want to touch it. Then, some county flack finds a portfolio with a lawyer's business card in it, and I am in business. I charge twelve thousand dollars because I can, and the lawyer, seeing that there is plenty of money to be made by everyone, pens his name on my invoice.

Utilizing my company credit card, I head to Lowe's and purchase a power sprayer, several scrub brushes, five bottles of industrial degreaser, a sieve, two buckets, trash bags, and a whole shitload of paper towels. The sprayer alone costs six hundred bucks, and Harold will be fuming that I spent so much, but in the end, the twelve grand will do a lot of pacifying.

My eye stings like hell, and already the heroin itch has returned, but I'm doing my damnedest to deal with it, and bury it all behind the shitload of work I've got ahead of me. I'm determined to kick my habit, but at the moment, I'm not optimistic. Hopefully, the work can pull me through it. I consider hiring day laborers from the parking lot at Lowe's to help me with my pool work, but I still have a couple days' worth of scooping and sieving the chunky gray water from the bottom of the pool, and if I am repulsed at the task ahead, I can't imagine that they'd be on board. Desperate or not, even those guys have their limits.

The work is basic enough—I, in my Tyvek suit, waddle down the slope of the polymer-coated concrete pool floor, careful not to slip as I wade into the thigh-high remnants of pool water, with a bucket in each hand. Evidently a drainage system exists at the bottom of the pool that someone had activated upon finding the body, but it had become clogged with flesh, and that is the point at which I was called. Dipping the buckets into the water one at a time, I trudge back to the shallow end, up the steps, and out of the pool. In the safety of the grass, I pour the buckets through the sieve, which collects anything thicker than a tooth. The contents of the sieve then go into a trash bag, and I go with my empty buckets, back down into the swamp to repeat the process. Maybe there's an easier way to collect the dead Russian, but I'm certain Harold won't pony up for it.

By the end of Thursday, the water is down to my calves and my nose is running to the point where I am constantly spitting. The withdrawal symptoms are more subdued this time around, but in part, it is because I am anticipating them and working around it. It's still early yet, though, and they will get much worse before they get better. A sudden unease seizes me as to whether I'm going to be able to finish this job before I find that I can't get out of bed. I try not to think about that, but there isn't too much else I can fixate on.

I take the work truck home, my shoulders and arms too exhausted to lift, and ride the elevator up to the fifth. All I can think of is the sleeplessness that I will endure as I lie, miserable and sickly, sweating into my mattress. After that, it is back to work in the morning for more misery toting buckets.

Inside my apartment there is a small box wrapped in children's birthday paper and topped with a colorful bow, sitting on my counter. I actually debate whether I even care what is inside, before finally shuffling, limply, over to tear it open. Beneath the wrapping, I find the usual typed note, but also, a loaded, capped syringe, and two baseball tickets. Without touching either the syringe or the tickets, I take up the note, frustrated to read what stupid thing A. Guy expects of me now.

Tom,

I've been doing my research on you and have found out some pretty interesting stuff. You are one dark fuck. I apologize for messing with you all this time, when, really, you are, like, my compadre. You and I have death in our veins, brother. So as my way of making it up to you, I am giving you the hit that you are probably fiending, as well as these Dodger tix (but that is not all!). The seats are right in front, and they were expensive—but for you, it is worth it. I owe you, and I aim to make it right between us. DON'T MISS THIS GAME!! It's this Friday, so cancel whatever you are doing and go. Take your chick…but go to the game. You'll be sorry if you don't (believe me, I mean that in the nicest way possible).

Respectfully,

A. Guy

P.S. DON'T MISS THIS GAME!!!

I now pluck the tickets from beneath the syringe and look them over. Seats 13 and 14, Row A, Dodgers versus the Giants. He's right, they are good tickets. Too bad the Dodgers are so goddamn lousy this year. I drop the tickets on the counter and grab up the syringe. Its cloudy brown cocktail is exactly what I need to take the sting off.

I don't for a moment trust A. Guy or his motives, but I'm craving an injection in the worst way, and this little bluebird has my name all over it. I can't imagine that he'd write a friendly-ish note and buy good Dodger tickets just to poison me, but there is something uneasy about the way that he says we both have “death in our veins.” Or am I just reading too much into it? I guess I'll find out if I don't wake up in the morning.

As I insert the needle into the soft, pale flesh of my inner arm, a part of me begs,
You're doing so good with the withdrawals, don't give up!
But this voice is frail and easily drowned.

The next morning is a revelation. I awaken refreshed and alert, and head in to work early, and full of energy. A. Guy was true to his word in that he'd cooked up and delivered a massively good shot. Going without it for as long as I had made me realize how much I've been lagging in my work. But now I am a goddamn dynamo, marching up and down the length of the pool, not sagging, not slouching, just busting my ass.

I manage to get the water down enough so that I can find the filter vent and scrape out the mound of flesh that has plugged the hole. As soon as I pull it out, there is a loud sucking noise, and the rest of the pool drains with ease. I should have just bought a scuba suit and done that at the beginning.

Shedding my sweat-logged Tyvek suit, I quickly suds up the walls of the pool with degreaser and a long-handled scrubbing broom, working relentlessly, quickly, and with an eye toward finishing the job that day. The grease from the body is gray and slick on the pool walls and floor, but there is an excessive patchwork of hazy yellow fat in splotches across the surface as well.
Obesity isn't just for poor people with their fast food
, I think, scrubbing.

Three bottles of degreaser later, I attach the power washer to its hose unit and drag the machine down into the pool with me where I can blast the soapy walls clean from inches away. Everything comes off easily and runs down the slope of the pool to its filter, where it forms a mini-eddy before getting slurped away, likely out to some poorer adjacent neighborhood.

I am all packed up and finished by 2 p.m., but rather than zooming off back to headquarters as I might do with any other job, I decide to instead go inside the mansion and poke around. The lawyer left me a key to the place for incidentals, and now, with no one around, I decide to make use of the opportunity. Blocked in on all sides by mammoth green shrubs that are themselves just beginning to die, the Russian's mansion has a sleek ultramodern roundness to it, with curved glass windows and the omnipresent sound of water from an indoor waterfall. In the saltwater pool beneath the waterfall, expensive-looking tropical fish float, pale, dead, bloated, and some partially eaten among the coral formations, forever ignorant of their proximity to opulence. I feel worse for the fish than I do the human.

The Russian liked red and gold, and his decorating scheme reflects both of these hues in abundance, from the abstract wall art on down to the tips of his fireplace tools.

Twin stairs curve like ribs around a vertebrate elevator, its gold doors polished to a high shine, and I push the button with my knuckle, so as not to leave fingerprints. The doors slide apart silent and smooth, revealing the rich padded red leather insides of the lift. My options are a second floor, a third, and a basement. I choose the third floor, once again mindful of leaving clues to my presence. His lawyer mentioned that the Russian had, in essence, been left to rot so long because he was so rich. Everyone he'd known had assumed he was at one of his many other homes, and therefore no one thought to look for him. I can't decide if this is a good problem to have or not. The elevator opens on what has to be the master bedroom: a cavernous den swathed in burgundy tones and focused on an enormous, custom-made bed. A console on the oak nightstand controls the television, a one-hundred-inch screen that, when it descends from the ceiling, feels like it should have a Wagnerian orchestra accompanying its descent. I send the screen back up, and leave the room, heading down one of the stairwells to the second floor, where he's built an elaborate marble spa and a weight room that, based on the amount of fat in the pool, was never used.

Some rooms on the floor are empty, as in he had more rooms than he'd known what to do with. Others are filled with boxes of acquisitions, both new and antique, that have yet to be assembled or showcased in their particular place. The whole house is like some museum, a shrine built to showcase just one man.
All that money, and he had nothing better to do than blow his fucking brains out
. I think back to that poor son of a bitch on the steps of city hall.
Rich problems and poor problems both have the same solution, I guess.
Now this mansion and all its money will likely end up in the hands of lawyers. I decide I've seen enough.

I pick Ivy up for the Dodger game at her apartment. Both on the phone and now, she has assured me she is only going because she's not working tonight, and because there is “nothing on TV on Fridays.” I tell her that the Dodger game is on, and she warns, “Don't tempt me.”

“I'm glad you decided to come.” I'm being sincere…it would suck going to the game by myself. She responds by flicking on the radio.

In all honesty, I am glad I am going to a game at all—it is something I haven't done since long before I went to prison. I don't know what to expect from A. Guy, and to that extent, I mostly don't care. There isn't too much that he can do to me or Ivy in a stadium full of people, and if he does choose to do something, and he's successful, well, then at least I don't have to deal with his shit anymore and he can go back to offing people in cheap motel rooms.

Ivy gets two Dodger dogs, peanuts, and a beer without asking me if I want anything. I don't offer to pay, because I'm sure she won't let me. She's wearing a Dodgers jersey and ball cap that both look new, and she's pulled her hair into pigtails, which makes me crave her all the more. She grabs extra napkins, humming to herself as I walk behind, acting indifferent. Her hands are full, but she won't let me help with that either. Marching down the stairs, I marvel at how nice the seats really are—right against the netting, just to the left of the batter's box. Every pitch will look like it is aimed straight at us. I've never sat anywhere close to this section, and the people who surround us look like they are probably famous.
A. Guy really did shell out some dough for these seats.

Ivy makes herself at home, setting her tray of food on the empty seat to her right, and yelling “Let's go, Dodgers!” with her hands cupped around her mouth, though they are still only warming up.

“Aren't you going to eat?” I ask, nodding to her untouched food.

“Sorry, no talking till the game starts,” she responds snidely. “It's a new tradition I'm starting. Shoot, if it goes well, I might extend the ‘no talking' policy to cover the entire game. And the ride home.”

“I doubt you'll last that long,” I retort, slouching so I can rest my heels up on the rail.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Sorry, I'm not going to be the one to break a tradition.”

Ivy manages her silence until the bottom of the second inning. “My parents got in a fight one night and Mom drove off. She was going to go stay with my grandma, but she got in a car accident and died. I was little. My dad was so guilty about the fact that she left angry. It really messed him up, made him a worse drunk, and I told myself that I'd never leave anyone I cared about when I was upset, because you never know what can happen. So that's what I'm doing here. Now, why'd you shell out for the good seats?”

“I didn't.” I shrug. “A. Guy did.”

“What?!”

“I don't know…he gave me a package with some dope, a letter, and these tickets. He said he was sorry to have hassled me, and this was his way of making nice.”

“And you believed him?”

“No, but he was hell-bent on getting us here, and as you can see, they're pretty damn good seats.”

“I don't care.” She stands to leave. “This guy is dangerous, Tom. You know how crazy paranoid I've been since you told me he knows I exist? I lock the door when I pee in my own bathroom. I hardly sleep, and when I do, it's with a baseball bat. I got my super to change my locks, and pretty much anytime I do anything, I think I am being watched. And then you bring me here because
he told you to
. It's
obviously
some sort of setup. We have to leave!”