A Better Goodbye (6 page)

DuPree was wiggling his toes comfortably in a pair of Bruno Magli cordovan loafers, the O.J. touch in his wardrobe, when his man came around the curve off Bronson and headed up the hill, driving too fast in his Acura MDX for such a narrow street. It didn't look like he noticed DuPree, which was what DuPree was counting on. Just keep everything normal, let the man do his home deliveries, like the one he'd be making to an actor in another minute or two.

The actor had struck it rich in the early nineties as a lovable goof in a sitcom that made being stupid look like a good thing. He had celebrated his good fortune ever since by shooting as much smack as he could without killing himself. The times he had tiptoed to the edge of the abyss, his standup girlfriend had been around to dial 911. Barely half his age and she was the adult in the equation, until she wound up loving heroin even more than he did. It figured he wouldn't be in any condition to call for help when she OD'ed. Now he sat up in a three-million-dollar house with a view of the Hollywood sign and a rat problem, grieving and staying as fucked up as he could, coming down just long enough to sleepwalk through another TV or movie gig that would finance his drug habit.

DuPree wondered if the hopeless motherfucker even remembered his dealer's name. He should have, seeing as how the dealer made deliveries three nights a week, always right around this time. But the important thing was, DuPree remembered.

He'd seen Teddy George for the first time six or eight months ago playing bass for Esther May at the House of Blues. Other than having a big head of rock-and-roll hair and pants so tight he must have been castrated to squeeze into them, George was nothing special musically, no Flea or Stanley Clarke. But DuPree started getting interested when one of the guys in his party said Esther had been a stone junkie back in the 50s, when she was taking R & B mainstream with a song called “Midnight Moan.” Then someone else, a Latina with glitter on as much of her titties as DuPree could see, said if Esther was still using, she probably got it from Teddy George.

Turned out he dealt an upscale high to writers and directors in the Hollywood Hills, producers and lawyers in Beverly Hills, and agents, record executives, and moguls of every description in Bel Air, Brentwood, and the Palisades. The only time he didn't make his appointed rounds was when he was on the road; then his kid brother hauled the tar heroin, rock cocaine, weed, crystal meth, Ecstasy, Vicodin, and OxyContin. But with Esther May looking like she would spend her golden years nodding off, George had more and more time to devote to his nightly magical mystery tour.

DuPree had spent the past month figuring out the man's stops and which night was the busiest. He had time on his hands after the bank robbery in Porter Ranch, way the hell out there in the Valley. There might be even more downtime if he stayed away from the armored car job that was getting talked about. Armored cars seemed like too much trouble—more partners, more chance of gunfire and bloodshed, and the last thing he wanted was a piece of a shootout like that B of A shitstorm, two crazy motherfuckers with full body armor and insane firepower, and they still got their asses blown away. When it came to pain, DuPree was about giving, not receiving.

So he had gone solo, liking the feeling as he followed Teddy George partway one night, then partway another, piecing things together until here he was, waiting to cash in on a Thursday night. Thursdays were the heaviest with cheddar, George's clients most likely stocking up for the weekend and George not running a credit card operation. As DuPree wondered what that dumb-fuck actor up the street paid for his smack, George came rolling back down the hill and disappeared around the curve.

DuPree started his car and pulled out, punching up
Stillmatic
on the CD player, listening to Nas kick the shit out of Jay-Z and all the other Nee-groes too fucking stupid to realize that the flag is red, white, and blue, no room for black. An hour of this and DuPree would have his blood up right where he wanted it.

The colonial's porch light was on, and DuPree could see the front door open and George step inside the way he'd done the other times DuPree had followed him to the Palisades. He'd stay four minutes, five tops, just long enough to conduct business.

DuPree used the time to ease his Beemer up two houses without turning on its lights. Then he snugged up his leather driving gloves and picked up his Luxeon Hand Torch from the passenger seat, $89.95 worth of flashlight straight off the Internet, approved by SWAT teams and the military, now on the verge of being tested in a criminal endeavor. He made sure the interior light was off before he opened the door and eased onto the street. He closed the door softly, then checked the nine-millimeter Glock tucked in the back of his pants and stepped to the other side of his car. If anyone should come along and ask—a cop, for instance—he had his big-assed flashlight out so he could say he was checking a tire that had been making some bad noises.

A minute later, as the porch light went off behind him, George came back down the walk without the grocery bag he had taken in. He was humming a tune that DuPree couldn't put a name on. George unlocked his MDX by remote, and when he started to open the door DuPree made his move, hurrying across the street toward his target, flashlight in his left hand and raised to shoulder height.

“Yo, Teddy,” he said.

George grunted in surprise and turned around just as DuPree clicked on the flashlight, aiming the beam at his eyes. George threw up his left arm to block the glare.

“Who is it?” he asked, having no success whatsoever at keeping the uncertainty out of his voice.

“It's me, man.”

“Who?”

DuPree, still advancing, could see George running through the file of black male voices in his memory bank, trying to find one that belonged in a neighborhood full of rich motherfuckers. That ruled out most of the musicians he had played with, drunk with, maybe even sold drugs to.

“Shit, get that fucking light out of my eyes so I can see you, dude.”

Just as George came to the realization that he had never seen the black guy who was almost on top of him, DuPree said, “Yeah, sure.” And he turned off the flashlight and clubbed George on top of the head with it, making a noise that sounded like a drum he had heard once in a reggae band.

George's knees buckled and he grabbed his open door to stay upright. DuPree skull-thumped him again, hard enough to draw blood and send the batteries flying out of the flashlight. George lost his grip on the door and did a face plant on the street.

DuPree kneeled and turned him over. Motherfucker had a bloody nose now, to go along with that gash on his coconut. DuPree dug through George's pants pockets, pulling them all inside out. His first discovery was a glassine bag containing cocaine, no shake, all rock, a little something to help him celebrate later. Then he moved on to George's faded Doobie Brothers tour jacket, wondering who the fuck the Doobie Brothers were until he unzipped an inside pocket and pulled out the night's grand prize. It was a wad of bills the size of his fist, and DuPree had a big fist.

The clock in his head told him to wait on counting the money. He straightened up and climbed behind the wheel of George's MDX, checking everywhere he could think of for more to steal. The glove compartment contributed a vial of pills and there was another, smaller roll of bills under the passenger seat. The only other thing of interest he found was a CD with “Britney Demo” written on it with a girlish star over the “i.” Britney Spears? What self-respecting musician would have anything to do with her? Was George doing session work? Auditioning for her band? He couldn't be a fan, could he? All that cracker bitch was good for was bending over, and DuPree was positive he'd had better white pussy at Uni High, those little rich girls giving it up so nice for the football hero.

He pulled the CD from its diamond case and snapped it in half. Then he got out of the MDX, took a look at George on the ground, blood still oozing from his head and nose, and kicked the motherfucker in the ribs hard enough to hear one of them breaking. Then he kicked him again, trying for another. Fuck Britney Spears.

Kill someone and he never really goes away, not if you have a conscience. Alonzo Burgess had haunted Nick since that night in Oakland, toppled by one last four-punch combination and doomed to hit his head on the bottom rope. The result was the worst kind of whiplash, his brain stem snapping and the lights going out on his life.

Fourteen years later Burgess still ghosted through Nick's dreams and shadowed his waking hours, and the only time Nick got to come up for air was when trouble found him. He'd lost his bloodlust, and yet he had felt whole there in that parking lot, the gangbanger in a post-knockout fog and Eddie the shopkeeper pressing a hundred-dollar bill into Nick's hand and telling him to take his wife or girlfriend out to dinner. “Both if you got 'em,” Eddie said. For just a few minutes, Nick embraced the return of his capacity for violence. But soon enough he was alone again, alone except for the specter of Alonzo Burgess.

Sometimes Nick would swear it was Burgess's voice in his ear, though he didn't remember hearing him speak even at the weigh-in, when boxing protocol smiles like a death's head at fighters with big mouths. Nick didn't remember saying anything either. They were just two warriors out to make seventy-five hundred apiece, him on his way up, a fight away from Las Vegas, thinking he'd be a champion someday—promoters would cut off body parts for a good white fighter—and Burgess the old campaigner, who had to sweat and spit and starve to make one-sixty. A human stepping stone, that's all Burgess was supposed to be, a middleweight education for a kid with eleven knockouts in eleven pro fights. But this was the thing Nick never told anyone, the thing he had a hard time admitting to himself even now: Until he saw Burgess's leg start twitching, he'd wanted to kill him.

Boxing could do that to you, make you forget everything nice you ever did outside the ring and turn you into a treacherous motherfucker. The man in the ring with you was intent on destroying you, and you had to destroy him first. Forget just beating him, even if you respected the guy. You wanted that son of a bitch on his back and the referee counting ten over him.

Alonzo Burgess sure as hell had that in mind for Nick, though you wouldn't have known it from the way he pawed and shuffled through the first four rounds. Then, not quite a minute into the fifth, as Nick peppered him with punches that puffed up his eyes and impressed the judges, Burgess dug a right hand into Nick's liver. Everybody in the arena must have heard him grunt with pain. But nobody except another fighter could have imagined the instant paralysis he felt or the breath he was gasping for and not getting.

To the half-filled house that was suddenly on its feet and howling, the next punch Burgess threw looked like a left hook that missed Nick's chin. It was the elbow trailing the fist, however, that was meant to do the damage, and it did, knocking Nick's mouthpiece halfway out. He had just enough of his wits left to tie up Burgess and waltz him into the ropes, reflexively throwing punches but far more eager to find a moment's peace before the referee made them break. He rested his head on Burgess's left shoulder, looking away from those unshaven jowls, treasuring every second he had to regroup.

Burgess responded by turning his shoulder into a weapon, abruptly bringing it up into the side of Nick's face. Nick reeled backward, unable to protect himself against the overhand right that Burgess brought crashing down on his head. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. It was what he deserved for getting suckered, and it would have been worse if he hadn't unscrambled his thoughts and climbed off the deck at the count of eight. The referee warned Burgess about the shoulder, but there was no disqualification, not even any points taken away.
Fuck it
, Nick thought, he'd take care of the dirty motherfucker himself.

He was so wrapped up in his anger that he scarcely realized his left eyebrow had been split until he was back in his corner and Cecil Givens, his trainer, was closing the cut with a mixture of Vaseline and adrenaline 1:1000. All the while, Cecil kept telling him not to let Burgess work him that way—just hit and run and let the old son of a bitch wear himself out. And don't fall for any more of his damn tricks.

Burgess just missed thumbing Nick's right eye in the sixth, and he tried stepping on his feet too, but Nick was too nimble, or maybe Burgess was too slow. Every round seemed to take a little more out of him, depleting any quickness he'd had to begin with, stealing the sting from his punches. What the hell, he was thirty-eight years old and he worked days on the docks. Motherfucker had a right to be slowing down as the sixth round bled into the seventh, the seventh into the eighth, and the eighth into tragedy. No fight of Nick's had ever lasted this long, but he was twenty-two then, and young legs trump old ones every time. Old legs turn to stone.

If Burgess saw any openings, he was a split-second late getting to them. The openings Nick saw, he filled with the punches that were his vengeance. And his vengeance began with a right to the heart that stopped Burgess where he stood and turned him into a statue to be disassembled. Nick followed with a right to the ribs. Was that a death rattle he heard somewhere inside Burgess then? No, he would tell himself later, just his imagination giving him a preview of the tape loop being embedded in his memory. And the beating went on.