L.A. Rotten (21 page)

“Fuck!” I slam my fist into the center of the steering wheel so hard it seems to shock the car, which forgets to honk. Unable to get the bilious anger to leave, I punch several more times, attempting in vain to break my hand, only giving up when my knuckles are throbbing and red. “He's lying, he's fucking lying,” I attempt, and retrieve my dropped phone to prove it. Exiting the car, I dial Ivy's number with one hand; the other, still sore, I tuck beneath my armpit, squeezing it there against my body. I storm out into oncoming traffic, oblivious, forcing an oncoming pickup to swerve or hit me. “C'mon, c'mon,” I beg the ringing phone as car horns sound around me, and I march to the center of the road, allowing the traffic to resume its course as befuddled drivers give me the stink eye.

“Helloooo, whoooo is it?” The falsetto voice comes through the phone, cartoonish, and at first I think I've dialed the wrong number.

“Let me talk to Ivy,” I demand of Andy, who is now laughing into the receiver.

“I'd make a terrible girl,” he admits. “So, didn't believe me, huh? Or at least, you didn't wanna believe me. Well, Romeo,” he chortles. “Looks like I ain't lying, am I?”

“Put Ivy on the phone.”

“Can't. She's unconscious—jacked up on your heroin—less painful that way, right? Can't say I'm not considerate, can you?”

“Don't fucking hurt her!”

“Jesus, Tom, it's weird to see you angry. Ugh, it gives me the willies. I like ambivalent Tom so much better.”

“Please just tell me where you are.”

“Finally. You're now beginning to realize how powerless you really are. Admit it, you need me.”

“I admit it.”

“Now say, ‘Sally sells seashells by the seashore.' ”

“Andy, what the fuck do you want from all of this? What are you trying to achieve?”

“Maybe I just want the world to feel like I do?”

“I don't believe you.”

“Please stop bothering me, I've got slaughtering to do.”

“Give me something, Andy! I need something here!”

“Tell you what, Tom, ol' buddy, ol' pal. Just watch the six o'clock news tonight. I'm sure she'll be the lead story.” And for the second time that day, Andy hangs up on me.

I hit redial but Ivy's phone just rings and rings. “Goddamnit!”

As I stand in the midst of cars, seeing the faces of strangers observing me—probably thinking I'm some loon who might just dart out in front of them at any second in some sort of crazy scheme to get a cash settlement—Ivy's words from only a few hours ago haunt me with the knowledge that, indeed, in this moment, I can't do it alone.

Gritting my teeth, I head back for my car with the driver's door still hanging open and tear into the glove box hunting through miscellaneous papers that have accumulated in there over the past months. Stack's business card is in there, I'm sure of it. It has made the slow transition from my kitchen counter to a shirt pocket and finally inside the glove box, where it was otherwise destined to remain until I remembered to discard it. Now it is the most important thing I own.

I find it and dial the number as quickly as my fingers will punch buttons, then wait, begging the thing to ring faster.

“Stack,” he answers, mercifully, sharply, sounding like his usual gruff self.

“Detective, it's Tom Tanner. I need you to do something for me right now and not ask a lot of questions; I'll explain later. A woman's life is in immediate danger and I don't know where she is. You can track her cell phone number, though—do you have a pen?”

“Tanner,” Stack sneers, disregarding my request entirely, “you really think I gave you my card so you could call me up to bark orders at me?”

“This really is an emergency…can you please just trace the number?”

“Who's the woman?” he asks, still no urgency or interest in his voice.

“It's Ivy…” and I suddenly realize I don't have the foggiest fucking clue what her last name is. “The girl from the police station. She's about to be murdered.”

“So this is what it takes for me to get the story out of you? What, is her pimp knocking her around? Call dispatch.”

“Look, asshole, take the goddamn number, trace it, and let's go save her. Then you can arrest me or do whatever the fuck it is you want to do with me. Just save her already!”

“All this emotion is giving me a hard-on. Alright, hold on…give me the number, I'll see what I can do.”

I give him the number.

“That's a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“And this is a matter of imminent life and death?”

“Fuck, yes!”

“Watch it, Tanner. All right, sit tight. I'll take a run with this.”

“Call me the second you know where.”

“Don't macho me, bud.”

“Sorry. Just hurry.”

“Will you unclench your ass cheeks and get off the line already so I can deal with this?”

I hang up the phone and sit back, unable to relax the muscles in my neck. I flash back over every correspondence and comment Andy has ever made to me, each letter like a photograph in my mind, but nothing comes of it. I am alone and outplayed.

I stare at my cell phone, propped up on the dashboard, for the next half hour, willing it to vibrate the announcement of an incoming call, but it is silent. A woman in an Escalade pulls up to the curb behind me finally, and, hell-bent on getting to the mailbox, leans aggressively on her horn. I just sit there, eyes unfocused, waiting, and so she does it again. When it becomes apparent to her that I am not moving, she yanks her wheel hard to the left and peels out into the traffic, running a red light. I pray that a cop sees this and will give hot pursuit, but life seldom works out that way. I debate calling Stack again, but hold off. The way I got it figured, it's a fifty-fifty shot that he took Ivy's number, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash.
Just like I would've
. I shift the Charger into drive and take off, merging hard into the flow of cars heading west. I wind up back at the Trauma-Gone offices, where the police have since concluded their investigation into Harold's death. The police tape has all been taken down, and the doors have been shut and locked. The familiar coroner's seal warning against trespass has been stuck to the jambs between the roll-up door and the front office. Using the tip of a key, I slit the seal and unlock the door.

The office is inert—even the normal hum of electrical overload seems halted in the small dark room—and I realize they've tripped the breaker. The leftover cops probably couldn't be bothered to find all the light switches.
Police laziness, what a fucking surprise.
I move through the dark, out to the warehouse where the panel box is built into the wall.

Flipping the switches one by one brings the overhead fluorescents flickering to life and illuminating the mess before me. Harold's blood, thick and crimson, has formed a lake just before the lip of the drain at the center of the floor. This is the blood that didn't have the necessary push from Harold's fluttering heartbeat to send it all the way down into the sewers. This is the dead blood, mixed with trace amounts of soap left from the cleaning of the truck. No longer in shock, I now look around the room, seeing as if for the first time the scope of damage inflicted upon the Trauma-Gone warehouse. The shot-up cabinets with coagulating residues of disinfectants, the tiny punctures of bullet holes knocked through the back wall to let the daylight in; even the truck, with its fresh scrub job, is now the recipient of two bullet holes in its side panel and a splotch of blood.
That will stay
, I decide, wrenching myself from my numbed state.
The rest is going
.

Harold didn't have a family, just a brother who'd killed himself several years ago and whom Harold had been tasked with cleaning up back in Korea. It was the catalyst for his entry into the world of cleaning up crime scenes. If you can survive cleaning up the spilled guts of a loved one, you can make a small fortune cleaning up the loved ones of strangers. This is the closest I will ever get to cleaning up a loved one—the little Asian man whose ghost would be extorting money from me if it could. That is what I have for a father figure.
Had
.

I work fast and hard, attacking the blood, eager to make the room safe again. It's actually quite handy having the cleanup done in the midst of the warehouse and its collection of various chemicals and cleaners. I'm surprised nobody joked about it in my presence today—the crime scene cleaner killed in his own warehouse. There is something funny about that, but I'm not laughing. As I scrub, my phone sits positioned on the truck above me at the ready, but I've ceased to pay it any mind. If it does ring, which it hasn't, I am no longer certain that I will pick it up. I've decided I am the caterpillar, ready to wash my hands of everything and begin anew. No more Ivy, no more Andy, and no more Detective Stack. I will close the business and disappear, go to a new town, a smaller one, and just be nameless. I don't even have to go back to my apartment. I think about all the cities in all the states out there, and how I've never lived in any of them except rotten Los Angeles.

The cold doesn't bother me—I could go to Alaska and be a crab fisherman. Or off to Kansas, or Maine, or even somewhere exotic and far away…Ibiza. Mazatlán. Tokyo. I'd hold to my solitude this time, no more guilt, and no more hang-ups. Hell, Hollywood hinges on movies about nameless drifter types trying to forget a past. Of course, in Hollywood, that guy never really escapes, and he winds up dealing with it or being consumed by it—but that's just Hollywood fiction. In reality, people slip into the shadows and stay gone all the time. Husbands run out on wives and kids to start a new family; children run away from small towns and become street urchins in big cities; women get fed up with their husbands and go south. My car is paid for—a lifetime of savings bonds as birthday and Christmas presents took care of that. “You'll be thankful when you're older,” my father would say. He was right, in a sense. It's a good plan.
Fuck 'em all
. And then the phone rings.

I stand, Pavlovian, with the first ring and stare at the phone precariously balanced on the side wall of the truck. Another ring sounds and I evaluate my options. The smart thing is to ignore it, to never learn the outcome of everything that has happened in the last several weeks of my life.
It's Ivy's fault anyway. She wouldn't let this go. She dragged me into this clusterfuck. I was happier when it was just me and my heroin…right?
Another ring.
Just walk away
. And yet, I do not. Maybe Ivy is wrong and I have a heart after all? Stripping the blood-soaked gloves from my hands, I grab the phone just as it bleats its final taunting call. “Tom.”

“Tommy-tom, Tommy gun! How're ya doing?” Andy answers, ebullient as ever.

“Where's Ivy?”

“Ivy's dead, sport. Ka-put. Burned her to death in her car. Used the gas and lighter you gave me. All that trash in the backseat? The car went up in a fireball; it was cool, like an action movie. I nearly singed my eyebrows off. Turn on Channel 5 news if you don't believe me.”

“No, I believe you.” Though I know I should feel hatred here, there is only numbed acceptance, the realization that at one moment a person was here and now she is not.

“Ivy's the past, Tom. Now you've got nothing left but us. No distractions, no hang-ups, no issues. We're free.”

“I don't know what to say right now.”

“Say ‘Thank you, Andy.' ”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

“So, now that we got that unpleasantness out of the way, do you still want to meet up?”

“Yes.”

“I know I shouldn't have to ask, but you're not going to get the cops involved, are you?”

“No, no cops.”
Stack, you cunt
.

“I know, I know, I feel silly just saying it. I'm in a warehouse, 1729 Wall Street, right off the 10. The neighborhood isn't great, but the price is right and it's quiet. So come on down. I'll be inside, waiting. Whaddya say?”

This time, I hang up on him.

I actually consider calling Duane as I drive down through the heart of Los Angeles and over to Wall Street—just to give him the name “Andy Sample.” I could even tell him that the position of father figure has freshly opened up…but I don't. Whatever this is, it's only for Andy and me now. Overhead, I can see the news choppers circling and I don't need to guess what they're focused on. It's good to see that a pretty young woman burning to death in her shitty little car still makes the news around here; it almost gives me hope. Wall Street is mostly deserted by the time I pull onto it, and it seems to be about as far away from its more famous New York namesake as it possibly can be. Weeds grow from the cracks and rust seems to be the central color theme of the block. Tall, sharp-tipped gates line the fronts of buildings that couldn't possibly contain anything worth protecting. It is a place that looks well acquainted with gunfire and the sort of graffiti that has lives attached to it.

Number 1729 is indeed a warehouse, a big, flat-faced white thing with bars in the windows and a small roll-up door that looks like it has been battered shut. I park in front of the only other entrance I can find; it's beside a utility pole adorned with ancient sneakers that didn't quite make it up to the wire. In the distance behind me, cars are deadlocked in rush hour on the 10's overpass, and I can no longer see the sun—not that it shines over here anyway. No, over here there is just heat and trash.

Reaching beneath my seat, I pull out the semiautomatic from Duane's. I don't worry about smudging his prints, because I would never roll over on the man anyhow. Of course, for me, it's better if he doesn't know that. Right now, though, it's a whole different game with a whole different set of rules and two very different players
.
I know how Duane would play it, but how would Andy play it? More important, how do I play it? I stare down at the gun, but I already know the answer.

An iron gate is bolted to the front entrance, but someone has been kind enough to leave it open for me. As I walk in, I push on the gate a little just to hear the metal shriek. It's what passes for a doorbell down here.

Inside, the air is stale and hot, but enough natural light still permeates the windows to create shadows along the walls. The floor space has been cleared out for machinery that isn't there. I don't bother calling out, because Andy, if he's actually here, certainly knows I am as well. In the front southernmost corner of the room, facing the roll-up door, is a black Dodge Charger with black rims, identical to mine. It is the cleanest, newest thing in the place.

“What the fuck?” I question, but do not move toward it.

A sudden groan from the opposite corner gets my attention, though; it is low, wincing, and sounds human.

“Hello?” I venture, moving into the shadows that extend into the middle of the space.

“Who's that?” the voice asks, weak and male, and though I cannot yet make out a form, I am at once crushed by the acceptance that it is not Ivy.

“It's Tom,” I say, and realize that I can't see the person because he is not standing, but rather lying on his belly, feet toward me, with his arms hugged around the base of a thick metal pipe that extends from floor to ceiling.

“Tanner?” the voice exclaims, livelier now, and a head rises, attempting to glance in my direction.

It's Detective Stack, and he's lying on the floor because his hands have been shackled around the pipe with his own handcuffs. Beside him there is a stainless-steel dog food bowl that contains one sprinkled, pink-frosted donut.

“Tanner, my legs are broken,” he moans.

“Where's Andy?”

“I'm here,” Andy announces from behind me, and moves out of the depths of a back hallway. He's wearing black military-style cargo pants and black combat boots—probably the same ones from the motel—and a T-shirt that reads hero in big block lettering. His red hair stands out on him even in the dim natural light. He's more fit than he was at our last encounter and I can't help but wonder if he's been furiously working out in anticipation of this moment. Up close, his green eyes seem animated, alert; there isn't that hollow thousand-yard stare that killers adopt after years in prison or war, that blank gaze that feels permanently stamped across my eyes—he doesn't have that look yet. A smug, self-satisfied grin slides across the sharp lines of his cheekbones, betraying the awkward loner that the people at the comedy store spoke of. In person, he's more handsome than his low-resolution comedy videos allow, even with the red hair…and he's more confident, cocky even…maybe because this is it—his true element, where he feels most comfortable—the wolf happily in hunt.

“Like the car?” Andy asks, genuine. “You looked so damn cool driving around in yours that I decided I had to have one of my own—I get like that sometimes. Tom, it's so, so damn good to finally meet you.”

“We've met before,” I remind him. “You gave me a good slash on my arm.” I feel a tinge of nervous energy in his presence, as if I am meeting a celebrity—someone I've only seen on the big movie screen and now they're standing before me in person. I almost can't believe it's him.

“Water under the bridge, compadre. Now is the time to begin anew.” As he says this, he pulls a black semiautomatic pistol from his waistband and shifts it from his right hand to his left. “So, do you remember, on the phone, when I said no police?”

“Sure. But that was after I sent this one.”

Unconsciously, Andy shifts the gun back to his other hand so he can gesture with his left. “I see. Tom, can I ask why you sent the cop after me? I mean, I know I hadn't said it then, but I feel like the ‘no cops' rule was at least implied.”

“I think the rules changed when you killed Ivy.”

“Christ,” Stack breathes, through gritted teeth.

Andy glances to him and then at me. “Do me a favor, Tom. Just lift up your shirt and give a quick spin around for me. I've got a nervous feeling like you got a gun or something. Call me crazy but I trust my gut with this stuff.”

He's got his pistol trained back on me and is close enough that I do what he says without questioning it. My gut told me he would check for the gun, and my not having it has momentarily extended my life.

Satisfied that I am who he wants me to be, he smiles. “I apologize. From here on out it is total trust. Do you know why I killed all those people, Tom? Ivy included?”

I stand silent awaiting an answer; Stack listens as well.

“Because they were detrimental. They were worthless. They were poor and filthy creatures who brought no benefit to society. What was Ivy? A bartender in a titty joint? Ooh, the world can't live without that.”

“So you're society's broom?”

“And dustpan. Why not? Obviously you can't stand on the ‘killing people is wrong' soapbox.”

“No, but so what if the world is full of scumbags, losers, and assholes? You can't kill them all.”

Stack groans, agonizingly, as if in agreement.

“You ever do the math on people, Tom? When I'm not doing stand-up, I've got nothing but free time. Coming from a wealthy family has afforded me that which is the greatest asset—time and the freedom to do what I want with it. Sometimes I learn skills to improve my capabilities as a human being, skills like lock picking or trapshooting—this morning, I was teaching myself to juggle. But sometimes, I just sit there and I think. And one day, I had the realization that if a couple has three kids and those three kids each has three kids, and each of those kids has three kids, and so on and so on, do you know how many generations it would take for there to be a thousand extra poverty-stricken fucks on this planet? Six. Six short generations. The earth isn't getting any bigger and the renewable resources we have can't possibly keep up with that kind of multiplying. And then you've got the Catholics, Tom. They don't believe in birth control at all. So do you think they stop at three? Christ, no. Do you know how my family made its money? Condoms, Tom—we're a condom family.”

“Love Sock,” I say, realizing.

“That's right. Seems kind of fitting then that I carved my own niche in the family business, doesn't it?”

“So your primary focus these days is population control? You're not really a bad guy? You're just a new-wave sociologist?”

“I'm loving the sarcasm right now, Tom. No, my primary focus is stand-up, because what can anybody really do these days but fucking laugh at all the misery and filth that surrounds us? Do you know how many of those people just let me into their motel rooms because I told them that I had drugs? Killing thousands of future scumbags is just my way of giving back.”

“A philanthropist as well. Why spare me then? I'm an ex-con junkie with a bullshit job and no money. You'd think I'd be the first person you'd kill, if you're so noble.”

“Because you intrigue me. You're smarter than the garbage that you surround yourself with. I think you get it; I think you get exactly what I'm about, and I think you like it. ‘It's not too late to be a person of substance in this world'—that's what my dad always tells me on the phone. Needless to say, the Condom King does not approve of stand-up comedy.”

“My dad told me it was too late for me. That's the last thing he ever said to me.”

“Prove him wrong.”

“Don't—agh—listen to him, Tanner,” Stack pipes up from his place on the floor.

“See, normally I wouldn't hurt a police officer,” Andy says, feigning sympathy to the man. “I respect them somewhat. They do a version of what I do, but their hands are tied because they are also just poor civil servants doing what they're told to do. They are governed by the rules of a country that doesn't quite understand itself anymore. The idealism with which the Constitution was struck didn't anticipate this dystopian shithole, because Thomas fucking Jefferson didn't do the fucking math. Do you get what I'm saying?”

“Absolutely. But that doesn't mean I'm going to join you.”

“Sales! I love sales! I love the idea of selling—it's in my blood, I suppose. Sales is this sort of rhetoric where I keep pitching you ‘whys' and you keep hitting back ‘why not's' until one of us runs out of reasons. So, please, tell me, why not?”

“I don't have the motivation for the work. I'm just not that interested.”

“What does interest you?”

“I don't know anymore.”

Stack moans again, and I wonder if he's slipping in and out of consciousness.

“Did it ever bother you that you spent years of your life in prison for a crime that you can't remember?”

“Yes.”

“Hypothetically speaking, of course, if you were going to do that same amount of time in prison regardless, wouldn't you have rather felt the experience so you could decide for yourself whether it was worth it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so what if you had the opportunity, hypothetically again, to find out—without going to prison this time—if killing suits you? I mean, experience is the stock of life, right?”

“Yeah, I'd be curious.”

“Alright then.” Andy flips the gun around in his hand to grab it by the barrel and extends it, butt first, to me. “No more hypotheticals.
This
is your final test—he's wearing a bulletproof vest, so shoot this crippled fuck between the ears and finalize our partnership.”

I take the gun from him slowly, checking to see that the safety is off. It's a wicked, boxy-looking thing with slightly rounded edges and a coarse grip. “I don't know too much about guns,” I say, looking up at Andy, who is watching me with widened eyes—possibly a heightened sense of anticipation?

“Feels good, right? Much better to be on this side of the gun. It's ready to go, just point and shoot. Feel free to stand as close and get as messy as you like.”