Francisco shrugged. “Fine, be that way. We’re just going to be spending a lot of time together and we can’t sit here in silence all the time.”
“Why the fuck not?”
That seemed to take the wind out of his sails a bit. His shoulders sagged, and D felt a little tug behind his sternum at the hangdog expression on his face, like a puppy who just wanted his belly rubbed and didn’t get how anybody could resist when he was laying there looking all cute. “Well… can’t you at least call me Jack?”
D sighed. “Yeah. Guess I can do that.” And you know what, Jack? You can call me… call me…. But that wasn’t happening. That name was no longer his; it belonged to a different man who didn’t exist anymore.
Jack brightened. “Good. Progress.”
Progress, D thought, lighting another cigarette from his first. Wants ta make progress. Next he’ll be wanting ta talk about our childhood traumas and our favorite colors and our deep innermost thoughts. He waited for that idea to be repugnant, or horrifying, but it refused to be either. D stared out the window, shoving down the feeling that it might be real nice to sit here and tell Jack Francisco everything about himself, confess things he’d never told nobody, just to feel like somebody cared, and to keep those big blue eyes fixed on him for as long as he could.
Chapter Four
Jack blinked around in disorientation, his sleep-addled brain trying to make sense of the strange surroundings. What the fuck…. Oh, yeah. Motel. Quartzsite. Almost murdered. Gotcha. He turned on his side. D was sitting in the chair by the window, fully dressed in what looked like the same clothes, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t appear to have moved at all since Jack had finally crawled into bed and fallen asleep the night before. Had D slept? Did he even require sleep? Maybe he’d been one of those MK-Ultra top-secret government genetically engineered super-soldiers who didn’t need to sleep and had a photographic memory, but he’d rebelled against his superiors and their immoral experimentation and struck out on his own to right the wrongs done to him….
Jack rubbed his hand over his face. He’s right. I do read too many Tom Clancy novels. “Did you sleep?” he asked.
D grunted. “Enough.”
“Did you… use the bed?” The other bed didn’t appear to have been slept in.
“Laid on top.”
“Why? So you could leap into action if we were ambushed?”
D just looked at him, one eyebrow ever so slightly cocked. “We gotta get goin’,” was all he said. “Ya want breakfast?”
“Let’s just pull through a drive-up window or something. I feel like eating something really bad for me. Do they make bacon-covered donuts?"
In the end, the Golden Arches had been the lucky recipients of their patronage, and as they set out on the road to LA, Jack was mopping the grease off his mouth from the Egg McMuffin. “Damn, that was disgusting,” he commented. “I’m not much for fast food, normally.”
“Ate it all though, didn’tcha?” All D had gotten was an extra-large orange juice.
“I was hungry. You weren’t?”
“Don’t like ta eat in the mornin’,” D muttered. “Stomach troubles.”
“Oh, but that highly acidic orange juice will calm you right down. Fruit juice is pure sugar, you know.” That got him The Eyebrow again, so Jack shut up. Briefly. “Where are we going, again?”
“Ta get ID.”
“I know that, but where? No, let me guess. You know a guy.”
“Right, fer once.”
“You sure we can trust him? You said that….”
“We can trust him,” D said flatly, his tone forbidding any argument.
“How long will it take to get new papers?”
“Dunno. We’ll see. Easy ta disappear in LA. Oughta be okay. No one really looks at ya unless yer some kinda movie star, which we ain’t.”
They passed the drive in silence. Jack felt jumpy. He’d thought that he’d be more at ease the farther he got from Vegas, but the opposite seemed to be the case. The idea of going back where there were so many people was unnerving. The desert offered a lonely kind of security in its remoteness. It was hard to hide there. In the sprawling city, a city Jack had visited only once and disliked intensely, danger might lurk around every corner and behind every face.
~~~~~
Jack seemed a mite jittery. D wasn’t surprised. LA did that to people, even him, although he wouldn’t show it. He didn’t like LA and only came here when absolutely necessary. In his business it was hard to avoid. Any illegal activity west of the Mississippi had to come through LA eventually. There were certain things you could only get here, like the papers he and Jack needed.
He didn’t say so, but he was a little anxious about showing his face at the club where Dappa kept his shop. He was hardly the only one who used the man’s services, and he might run into some of his competitors. Any one of them could already have heard about the price that was no doubt on his head. He hoped that for once, word had not gotten around too quickly, and they could be in and out without running into anyone he knew.
D drove around San Bernardino until he found a motel that looked generic enough for his purposes. Not nice enough to attract robbers, not grungy enough to be populated with lowlifes paying by the week. It was a fine line. “Are we getting a room first?” Jack asked.
“Gotta. I ain’t drivin’ inta the city with a duffel fulla guns, ammo ‘n’ money in the trunk.” Jack nodded, and helped him carry everything into the room, where D locked it all into the aluminum cases he’d brought from the bunker and slid them under the bed. They both took a few minutes to freshen up a little, and Jack changed his clothes on D’s suggestion. “Ya look like a refugee from a fuckin’ softball game. Put on pants and a jacket.”
Within half an hour they were back in the car and headed into the city. Jack stared out the window, looking like a kid from the suburbs seeing a ghetto for the first time. If he’d ever visited LA, which D guessed he probably had, he sure as hell hadn’t come to this part of town.
Dappa’s shop was beneath a nightclub. D had often wondered why it was that folks who were up to no good had such a damned fondness for setting up shop behind, underneath, above, or otherwise proximal to fucking nightclubs. Couldn’t go anywhere without that goddamned bass line thumping around in your chest when all you were trying to do was buy black-market ordnance or launder some cash. This particular nightclub, a raunchy spot called Del Muerto that catered to the Hispanic crowd, was owned by Dappa’s brother.
He and Jack made their way through the crowds outside, then through the door and past the bouncer with a quick high sign. Jack was sticking ridiculously close to him. D wondered if he ought to hold his hand like a scared kid at an amusement park. “Jus’ don’t say nothin’,” he muttered as they entered. “Let me handle this.”
Jack nodded vigorously. “Sure, sure. No problem.”
They went down the dirty back staircase to the basement, through an Employees Only door, and into what looked like a supply closet. Cut into the back of the closet was another door. D knocked, and the door was opened by a large man in a beret that always made D think of those beanie-copters that kids in 1950s’ cartoons wore. “Who’s knockin’?” the man asked.
“The good and the bad, which I guess makes you the ugly, Carlos. Lemme in.”
Carlos glanced past him at Jack, his dark, beady eyes sweeping him up and down. “Who’s the twink?”
“My cousin. Step aside. Dappa’s expectin’ me.”
Carlos shouted over his shoulder. “Boss? D’s here.” D winced when Carlos said his name out loud. Don't fuckin broadcast it, asshole. Tryin’ ta lay low here.
“Let him in!” came a familiar, reedy voice.
“He got a preppy-lookin’ friend with him.”
“I said let him in!”
Carlos stepped aside, grudgingly. “Hafta take yer weapon,” he said.
D reached under his coat and handed over his pistol. He felt Jack stiffen; likely he hadn’t realized D
was carrying. Ought to know by now that D always carried. “Happy?” Carlos just jerked his head, and they entered the workroom.
Dappa’s shop just looked like a regular office, if a cyclone hit it. D had no idea how the man found anything. “He called me a twink,” Jack muttered, as they lurked near the door, waiting for Dappa.
“Shut up.”
“Is that good or bad? What’s it mean?”
“Means a man who knows when ta fuckin’ shut up, so clearly he was mistaken. Now shut up.”
“Got your message,” Dappa said, scurrying up. “I got things set up; just need to take pictures. You got the money?”
“Got it,” D said, withdrawing most of the roll of bills he’d recovered in Quartzsite.
Jack leaned close as Dappa walked away. “It costs that much for papers?”
“Nah. Dappa’s set me up with a new checking account so we don’t gotta carry cash, usin’ whatever name he’s givin’ me. He’ll take my cash, put it in his front company, and then transfer that much cash inta the new account with papers listin’ my alias as some kinda consultant or investor or somethin’.”
“Huh. Seems so… boring.”
“What’d you expect, sacks a gold coins like in pirate movies?”
Jack shrugged, looking out of his element and nervous. “How do you know we can trust this guy?” he asked, leaning even closer, his voice barely a whisper.
D sighed. He hadn’t known he was taking on a full-time backseat driver when he’d taken Francisco on as a pet project. “He owes me in a real personal kinda way. Relax. Know what I’m doin’.”
“Okay,” Jack said, giving off an if-you-say-so kind of attitude.
Dappa took their photos with a little camera, the kind they had at the DMV. “Be half an hour or so, D. Why don’t you guys go upstairs and have a drink? On the house.”
D considered this. Exposing himself and Jack made him nervous, but Jack could sure use a drink to calm him down some, and a whisky sounded mighty good to him too. He didn’t really want to sit here in this basement shop and wait with old Carlos giving him the hairy eyeball the whole time. He nodded curtly and left the shop, Jack sticking to his side like he’d been Velcroed there.
He scanned the crowd as they made their way to a shadowy corner of the bar. No one was paying them any attention. So far, so good. He ordered a whisky for himself, and to his surprise, Jack ordered the same. “Come here often?” Jack said, going for a joking tone and not quite getting there.
“Fuckin’ hate LA,” D said, turning his back to the bar and most of the patrons.
“Me too. Came here once for a medical conference and couldn’t wait to get home.” D watched Jack’s face as a brief shadow of sadness crossed it.
“Ya miss Baltimore?” he asked.
Jack nodded. “Yeah. Guess I’ll never be able to live there again.”
“Probly not,” D said, seeing no need to sugar-coat it for him.
They drank in silence for a few minutes. D was just starting to think that they’d get away with it when he spotted a dark-clad figure approaching from the other side of the bar.
Jack must have felt him tense up. “What is it?” he asked, looking around in a fine display of not-subtle.
“Calm down,” D said. “Jus’ drink yer drink.”
“See somebody?” Jack said.
“Fella in my line a work.”
“Shit,” Jack hissed. “Competition?”
“Nah. A friend, sorta. Did a coupla two-man jobs together.”
“Oh. That’s okay then, right?”
“Don’t bet on it. If the bounty on me’s less than two million it’ll be a fuckin’ insult. Don’t got no friends when yer hide’s worth that much.” He watched as Signor approached, being casual about it.
Sig walked right up, bold as you please. “D,” he said.
D nodded. “Sig.”
“This him?” He asked, with a jerk of the head toward Jack.
Shit. The word’s out. “Nah. Jus’ some guy buyin’ me a drink. Mus’ think I’m cute or somethin’.”
“Sure, whatever. The shit’s out on you, D. Hit went up this morning.”
“How much?”
“Three point five.”
D whistled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You better get out of here before someone sees you.”
“You already seen me.”
“I’m not taking that hit. Not on one of the brotherhood.”
D snorted. Sig was one of those types that had pipe dreams of some kind of honor-among-thieves bond of fraternity among men who did their kind of work. D thought it was an assload of Hollywood crap, but Sig was a Hollywood crap kind of guy. If it helped, D would nod and smile through it. “Who else is gonna see?”
“Well, Rolan Bartoz just came in with his posse. Sitting at his table like king of the hill. He sees you, he’ll have it to his guys in about five seconds and to everyone else in California in five minutes.”
D knocked back the rest of his whisky. That was not good news. Bartoz’s table was by the entrance. “Hafta go out the back way.”
“You’ll have to go past him to get your stuff from Dappa. Tell you what. I’ll go downstairs and get your papers and meet you around back through the dancers’ door. Cover you to your car. You park on top of the garage?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Better go now.”
D nodded, clapped Sig on the shoulder, and beckoned Jack to follow him. He walked quickly past the stage, through the curtain, and past a few screeching half-dressed go-go dancers, popping out behind the club in a little-used alley. He let the door shut behind him and turned to Jack.
“Nice of your friend to help out,” Jack said.
“He ain’t helpin’. He’s comin’ back here ta kill us.”
Jack froze, blinking. “But… he said….”
“I coulda got down to the shop without Bartoz seein’ me. Sig didn’t want me to go because Carlos has my gun and I’d a gotten it back if I’d gone for the case myself.”
“So you’re just letting him….”
“I let him think he was foolin’ me. When he gets here I’ll take care of it. You stay back. Stand next to that Dumpster. You get behind it any sign a trouble, ya hear?”
Jack nodded, his face white even in the darkness behind the club. “Christ, D… this is crazy! What if he kills you? What’ll happen to me then? Let’s get out of here before he gets back!”
“I need that case with Dappa’s papers.”
“What if he doesn’t bring it? What if he brings an empty one, thinking he’s just going to shoot us?”
“He won’t. He wants the papers too. That way he can take all the cash in my brand-fuckin’-new bank account.”
“Well… what if Dappa won’t give him the papers?”
“He will. He knows we’ve worked together. Now will you hush up?” D hissed at him. “We gotta act casual when he comes up, like we don’t suspect!”
“Then why did you even tell me?”
D blinked. That was a pretty fair question, actually. “Jus’ stand over there and be ready ta duck.”
Jack moved closer to the Dumpster, trying on various “casual” poses. Leaning against the wall, then arms crossed, then one hand on the Dumpster. It would have been funny if the situation were less tense.
Sig came walking around the corner bearing a briefcase. He glanced right and left as he approached. “Here you go,” he said, holding out the case.
“Jus’ put it on the ground,” D said.
Sig hesitated for a moment, then bent and set the case on the ground. D was watching, so he saw Sig’s hand steal into his jacket, and when the hand emerged holding a gun he was ready. He kicked out at the gun hand and the pistol went flying. Sig wasn’t exactly surprised, either, so he just pistoned his shoulder into D’s chest and slammed him up against the wall. D heard Jack yell something, couldn’t tell what. He grabbed Sig’s shoulders and jammed his knee upward into his stomach, then s
hoved him back.
Sig faced him, pale-faced and sweating. “Should have stayed clear, D,” he said.
“Shouldn’t a fucked with me.”
~~~~~
Even though D had warned him (which he kind of wished he hadn’t), Jack was still surprised when the other hit man (he hadn’t caught his name clearly, it had sounded like Ziggy, which couldn’t possibly be right) whipped out a pistol. D seemed to be ready and kicked it away, and then Ziggy slammed D into the wall. Jack heard someone yell, realized it had been himself, and ducked back behind the Dumpster as he’d been told to do.
“Should have stayed clear, D,” Ziggy said.
“Shouldn’t a fucked with me,” D snarled, in a voice that made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand on end.
Ziggy backed off, arms up in some kind of martial-arts pose. D just stood there, looking not the slightest bit ready, but when Ziggy came at him with the kung-fu action, D lashed out with one arm, then a leg, then a fist. Jack tried to watch but it was dark and they were moving so fast. Ziggy pulled a little knife out of his belt buckle and jabbed it at D, who just waited for him to swing it, then stepped forward, turning so his back was to Ziggy, grabbed the man’s arm and cracked his wrist back, forcing him to drop it. D kicked it away as Ziggy staggered back, wrist hanging limply, cursing.
Jack was terrified, horror-struck, and afraid for D’s life, but a part of him was fascinated. He wondered what kind of training D had. Ziggy seemed to be expending a lot of energy whipping himself around while D just stood there, relaxed, making a minimum of movements; the ones he did make were quick and decisive. It didn’t look like karate, not that Jack was any kind of expert apart from having watched The Matrix.