Dog Eat Dog (21 page)

He turned the key. The engine kicked in; so did the radio. He headed toward I-5. The interstate had very light traffic. A sign said it was patrolled by planes. They would have a hard time giving him a ticket. He pressed the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb quickly past ninety.

When he stopped for gas in Bakersfield, he used a pay phone to call home. He called collect.

“Yes, I’ll accept the charges,” Gloria said. “Charles, what’re you doing in Bakersfield?” Her tone was querulous and aroused his ire.

“I’ll call you when I get to L.A. See if you learned how to say hello.” He slammed the receiver back on the hook and went to pay the gas station attendant. Back on the highway and beginning the climb over the Ridge Route, he remembered that he had Alex’s phone number. Greco would hook him up with Troy and Mad Dog, so he had no necessity to call Gloria. That made him grin. Fuck her. “The bitch can stew for all I give a shit.”

The KFWB News (“Give us twenty-two minutes and we’ll give you the world”) said that rain was falling in L.A. What would Troy say when told about the missing girls? Missing, shit, the
murdered
girls … That was four murders he knew about. How many more had Mad Dog killed? All four were women or children, but that didn’t mean he didn’t kill men. Everybody died with a bullet in the brain or a knife in the heart. It was scary being around a homicidal maniac. Sometimes the crime life called for icing somebody, but goddamn, not everybody, or anybody, for no good reason. Mad Dog was a mad dog. Jesus.

Troy was listening to the same newscast, but he already knew it was raining in L.A. The windshield wipers easily swept away the soft drizzle. He was careful. In another light rain, long ago, he had slid into the rear of a car waiting at a traffic light. The truck he’d been driving reeked from broken bottles. If he was still there when the police came, he would go to jail—so he told the other driver that he had to take a piss, went to an alley—and kept going. He got away, but caught pneumonia. Now he was very cautious behind the wheel, except when police sirens and flashing lights were on his ass. Then he drove like it was LeMans. A car cut in front of him and he had to hit the brakes. He grinned, but Mad Dog reacted: “That asshole don’t know who he’s fuckin’ with. Pull up beside him.” Mad Dog started to haul out his pistol.

“Hey, hey,” Troy said. “Whaddya wanna do … shoot the fool for cutting you off? I can see you tellin’ the dudes in the yard, “The motherfucker cut me off, so I shot him …’”

“Those dudes would never let me forget it.”

“That’s right.”

“But the fuckin’ punk—”

“You can’t kill all the assholes in the world.”

Ahead, the freeway sign announced: S
OTO
S
TREET,
N
EXT
E
XIT.

Troy eased over and got off. This was City Terrace and Hazard, in the shadow of the General Hospital. Troy knew the area. He had Chicano pals from around here, Sonny Ballesteros, Gordo, and Crow, among others.

He stayed on Soto as it followed the base of some low hills. On top of one was a radio tower with flashing red lights on top. The lights barely showed in the rain. As they passed the towers, Troy said, “I climbed that once. I was drunk, of course.”

Mad Dog looked. He was a bit awed. It was a daredevil act if he ever saw one. There was no ladder, just the steel framework.

Soto became Huntington Drive, a six-lane boulevard with a wide median that had once carried the big red streetcars east across the county to Azusa and Claremont and Cucamonga. Troy thought of how the giants of the automobile and tire industries had destroyed the biggest public transportation system in the world—one that showed a profit every year of its existence. The money stolen from the public had not been returned; it was part of empire, “Ah, well, the fuckin’ fools deserve it,” he muttered. They give some dumb junkie twenty years if he runs into a bank with a note and gets $800 from a teller—and some financial executive can gamble away a billion dollars of taxpayer money, which the Congress borrows, and when the public finishes paying the interest, it is four billion dollars. The executive signs a consent decree and buys a five-million-dollar house in Florida before he files for bankruptcy. “Now why shouldn’t I rip off a motherfucker like that?” he said, and looked playfully to Mad Dog as he said it.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

Tiny ramshackle houses gave way to stores, and then again to houses, albeit nicer, as they crossed into Alhambra, and nicer still in South Pasadena. Now the median was lawn and tended bushes. The sign said San Marino and the houses were nicer still. Troy had looked up Virginia Road in the
Thomas Street Guide
. They were getting close. He saw it. “Turn left.”

Suddenly the houses were large and lovely, the dream realized. They sat back on wide lawns; their inner workings were modern American, the latest plumbing, the latest wiring, the latest central air. They were lath and plaster, but their looks were diverse copies of English Tudor and French Provincial, Monterey Colonials, brick Williamsburg, and sprawling modern ranch. Their grounds were manicured and flowers still bloomed despite it being December. A few already had decorated Christmas trees in big front windows framed with lights.

Mad Dog whistled. “This is
definitely
the high-rent district.”

As the Jaguar continued, the road narrowed but the houses got bigger, now set behind high wrought-iron fences, hidden by thick greenery. The addresses told him they were getting close.

It was a two-story Mediterranean behind a brick wall topped with wrought-iron spikes. The lawn was the size of a football field. “Are you sure this is the place?” Mad Dog asked.

“We’ll keep going. Lemme see.” He turned on the map light and looked at the slip of paper. Unless Chepe had made a mistake, this was the place. “That’s the one. Let’s go back around … take another look.”

They made two more passes along the front of the house. The corner pillar of the fence had no spikes. It would take ten seconds to go over there, and they could drop into bushes. The way the road was, they would see any approaching car at some distance. The only house with a view of the corner pillar was directly across the street, and it peeked out from behind a stand of trees.

“We’ll come back in the daytime,” Troy said. “Let’s go.”

They were on Monterey Road in South Pasadena when the cellular phone rang. It was Greco. “Your big man is on the Hollywood Freeway. I told him to get off at Highland and check into the Holiday Inn. We’ll be waitin’ for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Chepe’s gonna call me pretty soon.”

“Cool. There’s a couple things I gotta see you about.”

The Jaguar was now in South Pasadena. Suddenly there was a whole row of houses decorated with brilliant Christmas lights in front-yard trees and windows. One had a creché erected on the lawn. This was the season that touches many, including Mad Dog McCain. “You know what, Troy,” he said, “you’re the only real friend I’ve got in the whole fuckin’ world.”

“C’mon, bro’, lighten up.” He said it with a grin.

“No, man. I mean it, man. I really do.”

“You’re my pardnuh,” Troy said, and disliked the lie. In truth he was nervous around Mad Dog. Too volatile; too unpredictable. Yet there was an intoxicating power in knowing he could say, “Kill so and so,” and it would be done. How could he know that murder would become a habit with Mad Dog? He imagined the Old Man of the Mountains, Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah, from whom the word
assassin
is derived. He hired his assassins out all over the world—gave them some hash to smoke and they cut throats, the ones they were sent to cut. Jesus, the world could use a few of them these days, instead of idiots ruling wholesale with their automatics.

After another half block, Mad Dog spoke again. “I gotta tell you, brother, I don’t like that fuckin’ Diesel.”

Troy lied again. “I thought you guys were cool. He likes you. He thinks you’re a little wild sometimes, but he just told me, ‘That is a stand-up guy.’”

“Diesel said that?”

“Yeah. No bullshit.”

“Maybe I’m wrong, but sometimes he acts like he’s some kinda tough guy ’cause he weighs two-fifty and used to be a prizefighter. Motherfuckin’ prizefighters bleed, too.”

“He doesn’t think that. He knows all the tough guys are in the grave.” It was a convict axiom that tough guys ended up in the graveyard. “But if he really fucks with you, you let me know and we’ll take care of it.”

“That’s cool. Thanks, Troy. You’re the best dude …” His voice trailed off.

Troy felt misgivings about his deception. As a child, he had heard special scorn for the deceitful, which had something to do with his choice of armed robbery as a crime. What was more direct and less deceitful than that?

Monterey Road came out of the hills of South Pasadena and crossed the bridge over the Pasadena Freeway and Arroyo Seco. Now they were again in the Los Angeles city limits. The area had been Italian and Irish working class, with a few second-generation Chicanos, ten years ago, but now it was totally Mexican. All the store signs were in Spanish. He knew about a ramp onto the inbound Pasadena. It was the oldest freeway, and instead of a lane that blended into the flow on the move, he had to jump in from a dead stop. He hit the gas pedal and the Jag accelerated like a rocket. Good old Chevy V8.

“I’m hungry,” said Mad Dog.

“Me, too. Let’s pick up Diesel and Alex at the hotel. It’s close to one of my favorite restaurants.”

“Oh, yeah. Which one is that?”

“Musso Franks on Hollywood Boulevard. They used to call it the Algonquin West.”

“I never heard of either one.”

“I’ll run it down sometime.”

At the Holiday Inn, a message was at the desk that their friends waited in the bar. Alex was sipping a screwdriver and Diesel was drinking beer. “Let’s go eat,” Troy said. “We can walk. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

While they walked, Diesel and Mad Dog followed the example of the many tourists and looked at the famous names of stage, screen, TV, music, and radio emblazoned with stars in the sidewalk.

In the restaurant booth, Troy told Diesel about the kidnapping. The big man’s first reaction was a pained expression and a shake of the head. “Oh, man, I dunno. I don’t like kidnapping a baby. I mean … damn … it’s a fucked-up crime.”

“Hey, we’re not gonna hurt the kid. He won’t even know he’s been snatched.”

“What about the Little Lindbergh law? That’s life.”

“
Anything
is life with three strikes,” Alex said. “Shoplifting or defrauding an innkeeper.”

“Maybe even mopery, these days,” Troy said.

“Mopery. What the fuck is mopery?”

Troy and Alex answered in unison: “Exposing yourself to a blind person.”

“What? Oh, man, quit jiving.”

“Look,” Troy said, “we’re gonna split a lotta dough. Maybe two million. And ninety-nine out of a hundred it won’t even get reported.”

“You think it’s okay, huh?”

Troy nodded slowly.

“Okay, I’m in.”

The waiter arrived with their food. As Diesel ate, he began thinking about what he would do with his share. He would invest in something real safe, maybe rental property. That would put some security under Charles, Jr. He would ask Jimmy the Face about it. Jimmy had some real flophouse S.R.O. hotels in Sacramento and Stockton. About the kidnapping, so what if the baby’s father was a kingpin drug dealer who would want to kill them? He had no idea who they were. Somebody had been trying to kill Diesel as far back as he could remember. His own crime partner, Mad Dog McCain, was scarier than any drug dealer. The thought reminded him to show Troy the newspaper clipping about the missing girls as soon as they were alone.

13

Mike Brennan, without disguise except for rimless glasses and a different hairstyle, blended perfectly into the torrent of U.S. citizens who walk across the international border from Tijuana to San Ysidro every Sunday afternoon. The day trippers pour north as the sun descends. The turnstiles whirl as fast at Border Patrolmen can glance at a face and maybe ask where they were born or where they live. A reply of San Diego or L.A. is less suspicious than some distant city. Mike had a wallet full of identification in an alias. As he had never been arrested, or been in the army, no fingerprints were on file. Consequently, he had no fear of being arrested on the warrant from the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California. He never told anyone he was coming, so nobody could snitch him off. He had no intention of going to jail; only fools went to jail. For him it was far riskier driving on a freeway. Even if there was a risk, he was going to take it. Christmas was close and he was going to see his firstborn son. The baby lived with the mother. While still sucking a nipple and shitting in a diaper, a baby needed his mother—but when the boy was older, somewhere between eight and ten, Mike was going to take him. The mother was getting four hundred grand a year to cooperate. She also knew bad things would happen if she stopped cooperating.

While driving the Hertz rental car half the two hundred miles of megalopolis that sprawled solidly from the border to Santa Barbara, and from the sea deep into the desert (the city went wherever water could be piped via aqueduct), Mike Brennan decided against calling ahead. She’d been told not to bring any men to the house. If. Mike found one, shit was going to splatter. Mike Brennan saw the world with an arrogance similar to that of the Spanish conquistadors five centuries earlier, which meant he was governed by no law except that of his own whim. Killing someone was trivial in the court of important affairs. When he thought of his son’s mother, it was always as “the bitch,” or “the broad.” Forgotten was the interlude of affection and intimacy that had produced the child. He lived on momentary impulses; he had the emotions of a child and the power of a gang lord. Yes, he owed Chepe, but had no intention of paying the old man, who was now powerless and locked away. If the old man wanted to start trouble, Mike Brennan was ready for that, too. But Chepe was the furthest thing from his mind as he passed through the downtown interchange and went east on I-10: He was thinking of his son, whom he hadn’t seen since shortly after the baby’s birth. Christmas was close. Junior, he thought, was too young to know about Christmas presents, but soon … Visible from the freeway was a tall building dressed in lights like a giant Christmas tree. Should he check into the hotel in Pasadena before or after he went to the house?