“We have a real problem, McGuire,” Sanders said. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead fighting to steady my pulse, the illegal.38 in my boot holster weighed heavily on my mind. “We have a tap on some undesirables and it seems your name keeps coming up. In a very short time, you have stirred up quite a hornets’ nest. What were their words exactly, Bob?”
“I want that big rat fuck dead, bring me his head on a platter,” the bald fed said.
“Yes, that’s it. So, I now have a couple of choices. A, let them kill you and hope to catch them in the act. B, cool you out in jail on some trumped up charge. Or C, you tell me everything you know to date and I see if I can keep you alive long enough to be an asset to us.”
“How about I say fuck you and get out of the car,” I said looking Sanders square in the eyes.
“Tell him what he gets, Bob,” Sanders said, enjoying his power.
“You do not collect two hundred dollars, you go directly to jail,” Bob said, flashing me a gold tooth. I could feel my blood starting to boil, I wanted to smash their faces in. They had me dangling and they knew it.
“You want to know what I know? I know that every time I turn around somebody is trying to jack me up. I’m just trying to make it home in one piece and it keeps getting harder every step I take. And now you want to take a shot at me? Well come on, let’s dance. I’ve done jail time, it don’t scare me. Now the next time I open my mouth it will be to my lawyer. We all clear on that?”
“Pull over,” Sanders barked at the driver.
“What are you doing?” Bald Bob asked.
“I’m cutting him loose.”
“No, he talks or he goes to jail.”
“I’m the agent in charge of this case. I say he walks, then he walks, now pull over.” As soon as we stopped he turned on me. “Get out.”
He led me into the fog away from the car, out of earshot of the other cops. He leaned against an abandoned storefront plastered with torn posters. “Alright McGuire, look I’ve read your jacket. You did some dumb things when you were younger, but that was a long time ago. You were in the Root, right?”
“So?”
“I was there, army intel.”
“Is that supposed to make us friends? You intel fucks killed more of my buddies than the enemy.”
“You don’t have to like me, I don’t really care if you hate me. But believe this, I am your only hope.”
“Then I’m fucked without a kiss.”
“If you decide you want to live through this, give me a call.” He faded away into the fog. I could hear the car door open and close and then move off down the street. It was a long slow walk back, stopping at street corners to search the mist for street names. At the Best Western I checked for messages from a way too cheerful young clerk. I took the elevator down to the parking lot, slipped out the side door and walked up the block to my little dive of a hotel. It was past midnight and the clerk was snoring away deep in some junkie dream.
From my room I called a number in Glendale, a groggy high-pitched voice answered. “Put Gregor on,” I demanded.
“Who the fuck is this?” he squeaked.
“Gregor, now.” After a few long moments Gregor picked up.
“Moses?”
“Want to make five large?”
“I’m there.”
“May get ugly.”
“So?”
CHAPTER 15
I woke at nine, rolled over and started to search for my white wake up pills, only to realize I had left them in the Crown Vic. Maybe it was a sign. My head hurt and my body felt like it had been run through a meat grinder. Between the feds and the mob I was dancing blindfolded in a minefield. Whatever brain cells I had left would need to be in fine tune if I had any hope of seeing my way clear to the DMZ.
I called the Best Western but there were no messages. Slipping my.38 into my pocket I had no desire to put it against my head. There were too many bastards out there who needed the bullet more than I did.
At a convenience store I bought a six-pack of Red Bull and a fistful of ready-pac vitamins. In Golden Gate Park I switched my boots for high-tops, wrapped an ace bandage tight around the gauze to keep my stitches from popping and started to run. After only a mile, I doubled over and threw up in the bushes. I never will understand why tossing your cookies makes you feel so much better. After another three miles I started to sweat and feel like I might survive the run back to the car.
Showered and dressed I drank another Red Bull and joined the world moving by on the street, firm in the belief that I was on the path to a healthier life. No more speed, no more booze, all I had left to worry about was dying of lead poisoning.
Billy Joe’s Pleasure Hole was a supermarket of porno just off O’Farrell street. In the back room men sat in private booths watching small screens and doing who knows what. You’d think the advent of the VCR would have done them in, but they were doing landmark business. The walls were lined with every kind of device imaginable, whatever your kink Billy Joe had you covered. A happy yuppie couple was looking at a huge studded black dildo with glee. Along the back wall I found what I was looking for, a life size love doll. She had realistic features made from latex; her glass eyes stared out at the room vacantly. The price tag touted three entries and fully articulated limbs all for only $1,500.00. Not a bad price considering what my last wife had cost me. I paid the sweaty old man behind the counter and carried my new friend out into the street. She was 5’2” with long curly dark hair and dressed in a baby doll nightgown. We got more than one glare from passers by until I got her into the Crown Vic’s trunk.
At a small wig shop on Market I bypassed the rainbow afro and chose a short platinum blonde job. I also picked up a pair of lightly tinted pink glasses and a floral print sun dress.
Gregor was standing outside the airport in a black wool trench coat, a black fedora and sunglasses looking very much the Eastern European thug that he was. He slid in and we rolled off. He didn’t ask me what the job was, he didn’t ask for his cash, he just watched the road go by. I passed him an envelope, he didn’t open it. It disappeared into his coat. “I put two bills in to cover the plane.”
“Cool,” he said.
“Let’s go shopping.” I slid along in the now constant Bay-shore freeway traffic. There was a time when the run to the south bay would have taken twenty minutes. But that was long before the microchip mavens turned this whole end of the state into their own personal Mecca. Now Beemers and Saabs lined up to crawl up and down the bay.
Benny King worked out of a pawn shop on Broadway, just down the street from The California Hotel in the heart of Oakland. Stepping around the hookers trolling the sidewalk we moved under the three giant brass balls. The shop was crammed to the rafters with everything from tubas to baby strollers. A cage in the back held the real valuables. Guns and gold, the universal coin of the realm. A half foot of glass kept the clerk protected from his customers.
“Benny around?” I asked the middle-aged egg shaped man in a Grateful Dead tee shirt.
“That depends, dude,” the clerk said, picking a loose piece of tobacco from his lip. His fingers were stained yellow from the nicotine.
“Tell him Moses McGuire is here.” I dropped seven hundred dollar bills into the cash troth below the bulletproof glass.
“Sweet, I’ll check it out.” The clerk scooped up the greenbacks and disappeared past a steel door.
“You have some interesting friends,” Gregor said, looking around at the odd collection of junk piled high around us.
“Live long enough, and you accumulate all sorts of connections. Benny’s alright, as long as you don’t take his word on anything.”
