One More Body Read online

  “There are going to be some very mellow fish.”

  “Shit’s not funny, Boss. You can’t afford to be blurry.”

  “Agreed.” We shook hands in the rain. I meant it. I also knew the value of my word when it came to drugs, so I added, “I’ll try.”

  “All any of us can do, Boss.”

  In the Chrysler, I laid the photo of Freedom on the dash. It had survived, a bit torn, but still clear as day. Her sweet face looked out at me. Demanding action.

  “Think she’s real, Boss?”

  “That, my little brother, is the question. But, yes, I do.” Gregor nodded. No more need be said on that.

  He started the car. “You will come to my house, Anya will want to see you.”

  “We both know that’s a lie.” If he knew I was right, he didn’t show it.

  “You should meet the baby.” A bit of pride flashed in his steel eyes.

  On the way, he took me to The Rack, a discount clothing store in little Armenia. I traded my torn jeans for a pair with big embroidery on the back pockets. Bought a t-shirt with wings painted on the back. None of it was my style, but it fit. They had some aviator sunglasses, Hilfiger or some such bullshit. He tried to get me to trade my stained Docs for a pair of Caterpillars. I drew the line there.

  GREGOR LIVES IN the foothills of northern Glendale. They tried the Valley, tried to escape their Armenian neighborhood, live in the melting pot. Told me when the baby came they moved back. He had squared it with his former employer, Rafael Hakobian, the local mob boss. Hakobian had no love for the Russian crew we took out. “Our reputation, yours and mine, is strong. Has a value now and then.”

  “He’ll be glad I’m back in town?”

  “Doubt it. But won’t fuck with us if he can help it.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  The house was nice. Not fancy, not up in the money part of the hills. A ranch style, made me expect June and Ward Cleaver to live there instead of a Russian ex-whore and her Armenian thug.

  Anya took my breath away. She stood in a bedroom doorway, baby in her arms. Her tall, lithe, dancer’s body had rounded with childbirth. Her wild chestnut hair was tamed by a knot in the back. Her sea-green eyes pierced me to the soul. I’d killed a lot of men to save her and her sister. I thought we would be together. I was wrong.

  “Moses. Gregor tells me you are back.” No warmth.

  “It won’t be long.”

  “Good.” Gregor snapped her a look. She waved him off. “What? I am wrong to want my man alive? That is not our life anymore.” Gregor tried to hold his cold stare, but his baby gurgled. He took the baby and passed it to me.

  “Support his head, like this.” The little bugger was warm. Gregor kept a hand on his baby. “His name is Moisse. Russian. Her idea.” He nodded to Anya.

  “Hoped it would be a memorial.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” She had to turn away before the smile fully bloomed on her face.

  From the kitchen, I heard his mother humming and could smell cabbage cooking. She truly did hate me. Blamed me for her son’s injury. Blamed me worse for getting Angel hurt a year ago. I didn’t tell her what had happened in the recent accident; if she thought I got Angel killed she would bury a butcher’s knife in my chest.

  “I should go.”

  “You will stay for lunch. All of this,” Gregor swept a hand around the room, “you gave to us.”

  “No, man, you built this. We still good on the wheels?” He had offered to loan me a car.

  He nodded.

  The rain had let up for the moment. It was cold but dry when we walked out. In the driveway was a 2001 Mustang 5.0. Not the new, cool retro style, but maybe more honest. It was piped and chipped. Good rubber. The fucker could run. He didn’t ask me to return it in the same condition. We both knew odds were slim. Gregor pulled the baby seat out and swept a pacifier and a few toys into it. He looked embarrassed by the state of the car. I smiled. He looked good. Domestic life had softened his features, if only a bit.

  I was about to get in when a car pulled to the curb. Nika was in the passenger seat. She was a younger, softer version of her big sister Anya—Anya without all that life had marked her with. I tried lying to myself, saying she wasn’t beautiful. I hated myself for it.

  The driver was a good-looking all-American boy. Fuck, he even had a letterman jacket. Nika had a cheer dress on. It was like they stepped out of the fifties. They fit the home. They fit her new life.

  If my raping her had left a trace it was invisible at this distance. She kissed the boy and bounced out. She took one look at me and flew across the lawn and into my arms. “Moses. When? Gregor didn’t tell me.” She was hugging me. Kissing my cheek. The boy was out, giving me the nearest he could come to a hard stare. Nika looked at him and laughed. “Steve, come over here and meet my Uncle Moses.”

  Uncle Moses? Sounded good. I could have bought it, if I didn’t know what it had cost us both to be standing on the lawn. The boy reached out his hand. I didn’t take it. I eased Nika back. Looked at her. “You look good, kid.”

  “You don’t. Ha, one day you will have to stop your wild ways.” Her Russian accent was fading fast. “Even Gregor is settling down. Your turn next?”

  “Not in the cards.”

  “Change the cards. You taught me that.”

  If only it was that easy. I couldn’t stand there any longer pretending we hadn’t been where we had. Hadn’t hurt the way we had. The gun had been on us. I had no choice in that whorehouse.

  If only I believed that.

  Gregor handed me the keys. Nika was in the rearview, watching me drive away. The me she saw was a fantasy, a dream that let her sleep at night.

  Lucky her.

  CHAPTER 16

  You are an asshole.

  “And you are a dead, one-titted killer.” I was driving across LA. I felt like a giant in the driver’s seat of the 5.0. My head hit the roof and I had to recline the seat and push it all the way back to fit.

  You want to fuck that child.

  “Bullshit.”

  Then why are you jealous of the boy.

  “I’m not, wrong again. Just don’t trust him. Has that ‘I’m a nice guy, wouldn’t hurt a fly’ look. Seen plenty of those jocks trying to pay for a gang bang at the strip joint.”

  Moses.

  “Yeah?”

  Either go back and kill him, or admit you are an asshole with a thing for a teenager.

  “Fuck off.” I cranked the stereo and the car filled with a kid’s song. Something about a baby whale. It drove Mikayla away. After she was gone, I let it play.

  Baby beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free.

  It was oddly calming.

  I FELT NAKED without a piece. I knew it was safer for an ex-con to roll clean, but fuck, at least one set of squids wanted to blow my shit up. And two pimps would love to see me splattered. And that didn’t include Rollens, if she was still above ground, and whatever deal she did or didn’t strike with Sanchez. To quote Eazy-E, “Fuck tha police.” Next chance I got, I was packing heavy.

  LIGHT FOG DROPPED down, blanketing Silver Lake. A pillow of white surrounded Helen’s hillside home, a Frank Lloyd Wright modern cliff hanger. Helen met me at the door. Her Rottweiler pushed past her, stopped, and then cocked his head when he didn’t find Angel at my side. Helen arched an eyebrow. I shook my head.

  “Oh damn, Mo, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too. Someone’s gonna pay a mighty price.”

  “Won’t bring her back.”

  “No, but it will show that her life mattered, wasn’t cheap.” Her face told me she had no idea what I was talking about.

  “This must be the heroic Moses.” The woman had short-cropped silver hair and a Scots accent.

  “Jules, play nice.”

  “What?”

  “Lady, I’m big, broken and usually impaired. But my needle for sarcasm and dislike is so finely tuned, I hear it when it isn’t even said.” Kept my face neutr
al. Scary.

  Jules matched my stare for a good sixty seconds then busted up laughing. Made me smile. “I like him.”

  “I knew you would.” Helen forced a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich on me, slightly burnt, just the way I liked them. I was hungry. Jules hung while we ate then faded to the bedroom when I said I needed solo time with Helen.

  “I like her. You did good. Don’t fuck it up.”

  “I will, but I’ll enjoy it until I do. Now, business. What do you need?”

  “To find Peter, the reporter.”

  “Screenwriter, now. Big shot stopped taking my calls months ago.”

  “You got a number?” She tapped her phone and after a moment looked back.

  “Been canceled.”

  “Got an address?”

  “Umm, email . . . Twitter . . . Facebook . . . here we go.” She wrote out an address in the Hollywood Hills. At the door, I kissed her good-bye, promised to stay in better contact.

  “Mo, you should get another pup.”

  “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” Angel asked so little of me, and I got her killed. Fuck the bastards who had done it. Fuck me for taking her on this run north.

  “No, you won’t.”

  “No, I won’t.

  “Mo, you can give yourself permission to hang up your guns and live a life. You are a good man. You deserve it. You do. Those Russian girls you rescued? All in high school. None being forced to have sex. You did that. You. Maybe it’s time you saved yourself?”

  “Tried that in Mexico, shit came looking for me.”

  “Try harder next time.”

  “I got to go, Helen.”

  “I know, a world to save.”

  “Just one tiny corner of it.”

  IT WAS DUSK when I drove up Beachwood Canyon. The neighborhood was posh, new Hollywood money living in Old World chateaus and faux Tudors. Peter’s address was small by the neighborhood standard, maybe only five bedrooms. All the lights were out. Peter had tagged along when I went to war with the Russians in Mexico. It got wet down there, but he held his shit together. The story he wrote from our exploits won him a bunch of awards. Movie deals. He broke a promise and leaked my name. I couldn’t complain too bad, he got me the knot of cash that bought me my house down South.

  The front path wound past a curving, leaf-covered koi pond. It didn’t look like the gardeners had been by in some time. On the front door was a fading eviction notice. I knocked and waited. Heard nothing. Walked around back, where hills dropped to a cliff five feet from the back door. LA stretched out beyond, a carpet of dreams and murder and love and laundry and grocery shopping and panaderías, where puppies once played with little girls and memories and all that other shit that made life.

  The sliding door was unlocked so I let myself in. The house was gutted. Anything of any value had been sold. Wire stripped from the walls; at three bucks a pound, copper was worth scrapping. Moving through the house, more of the same. In the kitchen the cupboards were bare. The stove and fridge were gone. I followed the chemical smell of meth and rank sweat to the master suite. In the center of the empty room, Peter sat on a beanbag chair. A skinny waif of a woman was sleeping at his feet. He looked up, sunken face, ashen skin. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “Moses.”

  “Yeah, Peter.”

  “They send you to kill me?”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Government? Black Ops? Who? Yeah, who?” Sweat was beading liberally on his forehead and upper lip.

  “Peter, any chance you can focus?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m here big time. I’d offer you a seat but, um . . . So what you need? Spy shit, killing mobsters, saving girls?”

  “Peter.” I leaned into his face. His eyes were pinned. “I need some information.”

  “Ok, wait here. Wait here. Wait here.” I sat down with my back against the wall. He disappeared. I heard a shower running. Gave me time to think; never a good thing. Maybe I had chosen the wrong moment to get sober. Seeing Nika had been rough. Was Mikayla right? At some deep level did I want to fuck a child? Did all men? Was I just self-righteous enough to keep that desire buried? And who the fuck was I to think I could do shit to save Freedom? Where the fuck was Rollens?

  Peter finally came back. The woman on the floor hadn’t moved. He looked two small notches closer to sane. “What, yeah, what do you need, Moses?”

  “What happened to the forty Gs I told you to give to Jason for the truck?”

  “I invested that. Good deal. Points, lots of tits and ass, a real moneymaker.”

  “Shut up.” He stopped talking, but his jaw kept moving. “I need to know who is moving military-grade weapons to gangbangers.”

  “Fuck yes. Like a Shane Black action flick. Mel Gibson minus the anti-Semitic rants. Updated Taylor Lautner, it is Big Moses. Fast and the—”

  I hit the back of his head, trying to get his attention, but wound up knocking him off his feet.

  “What the fuck? Ouch. Fucking ouch.” He was sprawled on the carpet.

  I helped him up. Holding his face toward mine I forced him to focus. “Hypothetically. I’m a gangbanger and I want a rocket launcher. Who do I see?”

  “Hell, Mo, grenades, shit like that, are flooding back from the monumental sand trap. Give a banger keys to the locker, some shit’s making it home. Who cares? The money is made in resupply, so who gives a fuck where it goes, right? Right?”

  “This was high-grade tech. Fired from inside a SUV with almost no backwash.”

  “Swedish. Crap, yeah. They track shit that can take down planes and crap.”

  “Who would know how or who’s got it?”

  “Sunshine.”

  “Sunshine? What the fuck, Peter? Sunshine?”

  “Sunshine. Fuck, follow me.” He leads me through the empty kitchen into the garage. It’s wall-to-wall file cabinets. In the middle is a computer on a card table. “Yeah, this is, ok . . .” He bangs away on the keys, and for a moment he looks almost human. Driven, but human. “Here. Oh, you are going to love this woman.” He read rapid-fire off the screen. “Rumored to have been a hit man, um woman, um assassin in the seventies, up until the late eighties. Resurfaces in ninety-five and is investigated as part of an arms smuggling ring, bust doesn’t stick. Two thousand she is investigated for trafficking arms in and out of Africa. Two thousand five she shows up in a congressional investigation into arms-for-hostages. Remember the Reagan deal? Ollie North and that bullshit? She was at least a person of interest, but probably a hell of a lot more. If anyone knows how bangers got hold of ordnance, it would be her.” He sat back, spent.

  “I need to find her.”

  “Sure you do. Hell yes, this is what I do.” He rallied and typed away. Sat back. Waited. “Mo, you ain’t holding are you?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. Yeah, of course not. Right. I know I left a taste upstairs.” He started to stand but I gently pushed him back down.

  “Your dealer deliver?”

  “Used to. Cut me off. If I had cash, different story.”

  I lay three, hundred-dollar bills on the keyboard. Peter let out a gasp, like a dying man in the desert seeing water, and typed furiously.

  “You can score online now?”

  “IM, Gmail, ping off the Netherlands . . . untraceable. Cell phones? Screw ’em. Give me a keyboard and I’m in.” He kept rambling but I tuned out. I wondered if I should see if he could score me some Vicodin. Just enough to ease the spooky, empty feeling, enough to get me back to normal. I sat on the floor, leaned back against the cool steel of a filing cabinet, closed my eyes.

  I can still feel the gun barrel against my neck. I can remember Nika, how dry it felt entering her. I can see the pain in her eyes. Her eyes. Wide. Resigned. I killed that Russian; hasn’t stopped her eyes from haunting me.

  “They’re making our film.”

  “What?”

  “Duane ‘The Rock’ Johnson is going to play you. Justin Timberlake is playing me. They got thi
s Hong Kong babe to play Mikayla. Oh yeah, it’s set in the Philippines. Russian investors like that better so, bam, location change. We get eighty large—each—if they make it to first day of production. WGA.” He pauses to catch his breath. Something beeps and he types furiously. “Bastard tells me to bring the cash to him. Fuck he thinks he is? Mo, got to make a quick run.”

  I snatch the cash off the desk. “You got to earn it.”

  “No, I will. See, it takes time. Contacts have to get back, you know?” He couldn’t hold my gaze.

  “They won’t be getting back to you, will they? You burned your contacts. Useless fuck.”

  “It’s not like that. It, well . . . time, Moses, give me time.”

  “This Sunshine, she work West Coast?”

  “Yes, home base was LA I think.”

  “Mob work when she was a hitter?”

  He pounded the keyboard. “Bingo, but that was a long ass time ago. More time and I’ll have an address and a drive-on pass to where she is.”

  “I’m all out of time. Porsche in your driveway, it run?”

  “It better, thing’s only four months old. Got it to celebrate the film going. Cash, should have seen the salesman’s face. Bam, stack of bills. Credit crunch this.”

  “Give me the pink.”

  “The Porsche? No . . . no.”

  “Give.” He gave. Bitched a lot, but he gave. I left him the cash. I stuffed the pink slip in an envelope and addressed it to Jay’s Auto Shop. I put Peter’s address as a return, and for the name I put “M” and a drawing of a square.

  IT WAS TIME to talk to The Pope, Don Gallico. He was the head of the LA mob. They were a weak family but they still had juice, or I hoped they did. I had run errands, done some collections for him when I was a kid. Me and the other junior mobsters always called him The Pope, and his lieutenants we called the cardinals. Never to their faces. If anyone knew where to find an arms dealer in LA, it was The Pope.

  He operated out of Figueroa’s, a small Italian restaurant and bakery in the Los Feliz area. When I entered, I was met by a gray-haired thug. “Mo, how’s it hanging?”