Immortality Is the Suck (16 page)

pier where my ride would meet me, so when I got there I went into a drugstore,

added a few minutes to my prepaid cell phone, and while I was standing there I

looked over and saw the Marlboros.

“Give me two packs,” I said to the clerk.

I was just outside the entrance to the pier, so I tapped the tobacco tight

against my fist while strolling all the way to the end. Where there always

seemed to be a nodding old man with leathern skin and a line reaching forty

feet down into the rolling black water.

104

A. M. Riley

I lit up. Dragged the evil smoke into my lungs. God, it felt good. I loved

smoking, you know? I only quit to prolong my life. Seemed funny now. Except

it didn't. I smoked a few cigarettes then walked back the length of the pier.

I walked by kids throwing basketballs at hoops to win cheap stuffed

animals. A
churro
standkeeper getting ready to go home. The smell of burned

sugar saturated the air as he cleaned out his machine and the smell was bright

and alive.

I wasn't.

At seven p.m. on the button, the distinct roar of double mufflers on an old

Harley rose above the pier's hubbub, and I looked down Main and saw the

remembered, chromed out, hard-tail Harley, Albert's bald pate, rebelliously

sans helmet, shining almost as much as the polished chrome, under the Santa

Monica city lights.

Right on time. Just because a man's a criminal doesn't mean he isn't

prompt.

He pulled up and killed the engine. His mirrored sunglasses danced with a

rainbow of colored merry-go-round lights on the pier behind me. “El Demonio!

La caminata muerta
,” he said cheerily. He grinned and the diamond-capped

tooth flashed at me. “
O es usted un fantasma
?”

“You always said I was a demon.”

He spat a laugh. “
Epa
, that you are.” Albert removed his sunglasses. His

black black eyes were heavily creased at the corners and a white scar raised

one eyebrow in perpetual surprise. He managed to look amused and patrician.

Like a svelte Sean Connery. No mean feat for a bald-headed, diamond-toothed,

evil biker.

“I'm surprised you'd heard,” I said. I wondered who had called him, and

stored that question for later.

“
Mierda
, everyone has heard.” He eyed my duffel. “Are you leaving town?”

“Can't. My bike's in impound. On account of I'm dead.”

Immortality is the Suck

105

“The lot up on Venice?”

“Yeah.”

“Epa, 'mano, it may as well be Alcatraz.” He kicked the clutch and the

carburetor filled the night with sound.

“It's my
bike
, man,” I shouted. “But I need to make a stop first.”

“Do I look like the fucking RTD?”

I looked him up and down. “You
are
getting a little big in the ass, 'mano.”

He flipped me the bird. “Climb on. Where we going?”

I yelled in his ear as he gunned his engine and slid into traffic. “The

county morgue.”

106

A. M. Riley

Chapter Eleven

Okay, I know you're thinking Albert and I are friends. But remember when

I was stuck naked in the basement of the LA morgue and I told you the only

person I could call was Peter? Nothing's changed.

I pay Albert to be my friend. So, you could say Peter was currently

bankrolling our friendship.

Albert and I had crossed paths, as they say, a few times already. He'd

been part of the Bandidos, in Texas, when his fortune changed by way of a hit

on his brother. Albert turned state's evidence against the Bandidos and had

helped put a couple in prison. In return, Albert entered witness protection.

Which is why Albert didn't ride with the Hispanic OMG in SoCal. Our federal

marshals have a limited comfort zone about those things.

But Alberto still rides, because you can change a man's social security

number and last name. You can rewrite his personal history and give him a

new life. But you can't peel a biker off his ride while his body lives. And it

wasn't long before I recognized Albert's smiling face roaring by the Rock Store,

thick hair shaved, newly capped teeth spread in a wide grin and tats lasered

clean, cruising the back roads of Mulholland Highway. Poor guy was pulling

into the bushes every time he saw a man wearing colors. I was looking for a

knowledgeable source that maybe could function outside the gossipy, paranoid

OMG. Albert was feeling the financial pinch of living an honest life. And he and

I both saw the potential for a mutually satisfying relationship.

The federal marshals would undoubtedly protest this little arrangement.

Which is why you'd never see Alberto on my books.

Immortality is the Suck

107

It's a twenty-minute ride from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles, even

flogging it, and I had time to think about things. Unfortunately, I was

distracted by the smell of Albert. He wore a beaten brown leather vest, no

patches, no shirt beneath. I could smell the aged, soft leather, his clean sweat.

His arms were like a hairless gorilla's, and I could still see the faintest bruise of

ink where the lasers had scoured his past. The armpit hair slightly damp and

curling where it disappeared into the loose armholes.

Albert smelled a little like chicken mole and vanilla milk shakes.

I was salivating heavily when he finally looped down the freeway off-ramp,

hanging a slow left to cruise under the overpass, by the graffitied “Wall of

Memories,” slowing as we drove by the morgue parking area. He cruised

another half block down and slid his bike around the tire spikes set in the

entryway to the Children's Hospital parking lot, then circled to the second level

where we had a clear view of the morgue and the coroner's cars parked there.

Albert ripped his engine a couple times and killed it. His scent seemed to

gather and wash over me and I practically fell trying to get off the bike and

away from him. From behind a concrete pylon I could survey the entire area.

There was an unmarked car sitting behind a tree in the permit only parking lot.

In over a decade of service to the LAPD, 90 percent of which had probably

been spent numbing my ass cheeks in some car, I'd staked out the morgue

myself a couple times. It's often interesting to see who, besides the next of kin,

comes to identify a murder victim. I figured the dusty black TransAm sitting

there was a stakeout.

The morgue was open twenty-four seven, but I had to get inside without

whoever that was seeing me.

Albert perched his ass on his bike, watching me think and smoke. He dug

a pipe out and lit it, inhaling fiercely. The sickly rich odor of marijuana mixed

with a minty hint of heroin floated past my nostrils.

“Albert, we are ten yards from an LAPD establishment.”

108

A. M. Riley

Albert seemed unimpressed. He squinted at the building through the

smoke curling from the bowl of his pipe. “Those are scientists, 'mano,
sí?
They

can't hurt nobody.”

“Not just scientists,” I told him. But I knew it was hopeless. If you're going

to try to intervene with every drug user you encounter, you aren't going to be

long in Vice. “Just keep it cool. I might need you to make a quick getaway

later.”

He seemed to think this very amusing and his black eyes danced as he

relit his pipe. “What has happened to you,
mi bueno
, eh? I've never seen you

like this.”

I'm not what you'd call vain, but the lack of a reflection in the past twenty-

four hours was fucking with my head. I made an attempt to smooth my

perpetual cowlick and said, “What do you mean?”

He shook his head, considering me, as he rose from the curb. “I don't

know, 'mano. You walk, you look, like someone else. Like the
lupi
, you

understand?”

Like a wolf.

“Like a hunter,” said Albert. “Hungry.” Albert looked surprised at himself.

He wasn't a poetic man. “Never mind.” He chuckled. “Maybe I shouldn't have lit

that last bowl after all.”

Of course he'd put his proverbial thumb right on it, hadn't he? Hungry.

That's how I felt. Ravenous. The gnawing ache that only subsided when I drank

the blood, a constant spur. I'd seen men who looked like I felt and wolfish was

a good description. I remembered at an NA meeting one of the members talking

about reconciling himself to a life of longing for a fix he'd never have. Fuck.

Who could live like this?

“I haven't been myself lately,” I said.

Albert pursed his lips and let his gaze drop briefly to my groin. Yeah, and

then there was
that
. Like I was on a Viagra drip or something.

Immortality is the Suck

109

“Sí,
cuate
." The scarred eyebrow dipped knowingly.

“
Cojale
.”

“
Ah, no
.” He was laughing. “
Pero, sí, usted necesita culear
.”

Yeah. All the time, it seemed. “I'm going to try to climb the hill from

Marengo street,” I told him. “Wait here for me.”

I jogged down the stairs to the street, suddenly very aware of my loping

stride, my “wolflike” movements. My senses were unnaturally tuned. Especially

my sense of smell. I could smell the exhaust raining down from the freeway,

the burning rubber scent from so many EMT vehicles. I slowed to a hump-

shouldered, shambling walk as I passed the unmarked vehicle. Hoping to look

like just another random homeless man. Then I picked up speed, jogged left at

the corner and climbed the Hurricane fence, jumping into the mass of fire-

retardant coated vines holding the slope in place.

I could easily climb a fence and jump the ten feet to the ground with

grace. Fact number three hundred and whatever the fuck. It was starting to

seem almost natural. Well, not natural, but something I presumed upon.

From there, I hopped up onto the cement overhang and swung open the

glass doors leading to the front desk. About four security cameras swiveled to

record my entry. Well, there was nothing I could do about those, I reasoned,

but I could avoid the guard who seemed absorbed in the sports pages as I

zipped by him and around the corner. Unnaturally fast and quiet. Adrenaline

pumping, hearing and sight ramped up so that I could almost
feel
the click of

digital clocks, the
beep, beep
of lab equipment, the slight crinkle of the guard's

fingers as he held up the newspaper.

I waited, heard nothing to indicate he'd noticed my passage, then slid

down the first flight of stairs to the lower level. Security cameras noted my

passage down the stairwell. From there, I entered the elevator, taking it

straight down to the subbasement where the new intakes were held. It looked

as it had the night I'd died, except the only corpse was Freeway's.

110

A. M. Riley

And he looked exactly as he had on the floor of the shed in Hollenbeck.

Right down to the big black holes in his neck. I shook him and whispered,

“Freeway, 'mano. Wake up.”

He didn't move. I wondered if there was some trick to this. Of course I'd

been there when I'd woken, but I didn't know what had transpired beforehand.

For lack of any better ideas, I tried a little CPR, pressing my mouth to

Freeway's clammy cold lips and recoiling in disgust at the fetid air that exhaled

from his mouth when I paused.

Maybe he needed some blood?

I found one of the slim metal tools the coroner used and pricked my

thumb. Only one blob of blood fell out before the cut closed again, but I

managed to get that blob to fall on Freeway's open mouth. It trickled over his

lip and part of it slid down his chin but nothing happened.

Repelled by the idea, but having none better, I pressed my mouth to

Freeway's again.

He stirred under my hand. His lips opened, his chest heaved upward. One

of his hands moved. Then, all at once, he was awake, spitting and sputtering

and shoving me away violently, yelling, “
Puta
, you fucking
marcena
, what the

fuck you trying to fuck me?” He looked down at his naked body and cursed

again, struggling to get off the table and away from me.

“Freeway! Hold on, amigo. I brought you back from the dead.”

That stopped him. He swayed, as if feeling that massive headache that I

had also felt. Freeway's head swiveled slowly as he took in his surroundings.

Then he sat his scrawny ass down on what must have been the freezing cold

cement and covered his face.