'Your buddy here is dead.'
'Not my buddy.' He sat up. 'Fucking guy,' the man said, leaning out and looking over at his dead neighbor who was now illuminated in the narrow beam of my Mag light. 'Thought he was just sleeping off a powder fix.'
'You know John Bodine?' I asked. He looked at me through tangled hair. 'They call him Long Gone John,' I added.
'I can know lots about him. You got some cash?'
'Describe him. If you get it right, then we'll talk money.'
'Fat guy. No teeth.'
'Nice try.' I turned back to Rosey. 'Better radio this DB in.'
Lawrence Fischer triggered his walkie-talkie and tried to put out the call, but he only got static. 'We're in too deep,' he said. 'Gotta wait till we're outside.'
We moved on. The smell was horrific. The few people we encountered who hadn't slipped past us turned away, trying to hide from our flashlight beams. They looked like grotesque Salvador Dali sketches. The ones we did talk to claimed not to know anything. I pinned each one with my flashlight, asked about Bodine, got nothing and moved on.
'I can't take much more,' Adrian Young said. 'This stench is gonna make me yak up those tacos.'
Half an hour later I was beginning to feel like we were wasting our time. The end of the tunnel was coming up. The opening stopped at a dirty concrete wall, which was the foundation of the Bonaventure. It seemed a striking contrast. On the other side of that wall, just a few floors above, was a luxury hotel with people eating steaks while down here they were lined up waiting to get into hell. The paradoxes in this town can drive you nuts.
The smell was not quite as bad at the end of the tunnel because very few homeless people came this far in. The walls were damp and sweating with moisture, the air cool and moist. Something large scuttled past me, and I swung my light at a possum-sized rat scurrying toward the mouth of the tunnel a mile away.
Then I saw him, all the way back at the very end at the corner of the wall, as deep in as you could go. John Bodine had finally found the end of the line. I spotted the white plaster cast first, then Chooch's red Harvard- Westlake sweatshirt. I moved quickly toward him. As I got closer I could see the information Rosey had received was correct. Bodine had been badly beaten. Blood ran down the side of his face. His lip was split and he was clutching his stomach with both hands. Dried blood caked his fingers and stained much of Chooch's sweatshirt. I knelt in front of him and looked into his dusty brown eyes. Then I raised the sweatshirt and saw a deep knife wound in his left side.
'Ain't gonna put up with no more a your half-steppin', Scully,' Bodine whispered. 'See what you gone and done? I'm dying here and it's all your fault.'
'What the hell happened to you?' I said, shining the light on his knife wound. It looked deep but had stopped bleeding.
'Ohhhh, man. This ain't no way to treat no prince,' he moaned.
'How long you been in here?' I asked.
He looked at a watch on his wrist and whispered, ' 'Bout six hours, I guess.'
It seemed strange that he would even own a wristwatch. I didn't remember him having one before. Then I took a second look. Of course it was mine the good one from the top drawer of my bedroom dresser.
'This guy's been stabbed. Let's not wait for the EMTs and a stretcher. They hate coming in here; it's always a hassle,' I said. 'We gotta get him out now!'
The four cops behind me moved up. I lifted John to his feet and Rosey and Dario made a seat for him on their forearms. 'It's almost a mile, so we'll take turns carrying him,' I said.
Then we carted the Crown Prince of Bassaland out of the most miserable spot in L. A.
Chapter 26
The first thing I noticed when we brought Bodine out into the sunlight was that somebody had hacked off his dreadlocks. What hair he had left was now unbraided and sticking out at strange angles, chopped and uneven. It made him look even crazier than he probably was. Lawrence Fischer and I were carrying him. As we hurried up Lucas Avenue toward my car, I asked him, 'Who cut off your hair?'
'I did. African prince don't be needin' no fancy man hair. It's a tribal thing,' he ranted. 'In Africa, you see a brotha with no hair, says he's a revolutionary, 'cause first thing a freedom fighter in the Bassaland goes an' does is breaks his muthafuckin' hair pick, 'cause a hair pick look just like a field tool, like for pickin' cotton. Be like a rake or some such. I say to hell with the rake and the pick and the whole exploitation of my African brothers.' Naturally, I was sorry I had asked.
We set his feet down so that I could unlock the car door. When we did that, he stopped talking about hair combs as a symbol of slavery and started screaming in pain.
'What you bust-out-muthafuckas doing to me?' he shrieked.
Gary and I loaded him into the front seat of the Acura. We must have opened the wound carrying him a mile out of the tunnel, because when he slid in he left a streak of fresh blood on the gray leather. I slammed the door shut while he was still braying insults at me and looked at Rosey, Dario, Adrian, and Lawrence, who were all now shaking their heads in disbelief.
'That's the sorriest human being I've ever seen,' Adrian Young said.
'This is as far as we're gonna take it,' Dario added. 'We'll stay here and call in the tunnel DB. Wait for the coroner. But we aren't gonna get involved. Gonna have nothing more to say on it.'
'Thanks for finding him,' I said.
'Shane, you want some advice from a friend?' Rosey said.
'Sure.'
'I wouldn't lone wolf this thing. You're gonna get caught in the net.'
'I'll be careful.'
Then I got into the car and pulled away from the taco stand.
'Ohhh… OHHH! Watch them bumps. Got myself gizmoed here. Got guts an' shit hanging all out.'
'I'm taking you back to the hospital.'
'That be our thing, ain't it. First you downs me, then you clowns me.'
'How'd I down you? You stole my wife's computer. I need it back.'
'How'd you down me? Is that the question? 'Cause a you, I end up with four hundred in Benjies I shouldn't never have plus what I got for selling all your dumb-ass junk. Bunch a no-good quality-of-life criminals put me down with a hobo's birthday, take all the money. 'Cept for you, I never would a had all that coin in the first place.'
Tortured logic, but I pushed on. 'What's a hobo's birthday?'
'Put a blanket over your head and start hitting ya with a pipe till it blow out your candle.'
'Where's the computer, John? I need it. It's got important stuff on it.'
'It be G-O-N-E.'
'Where to?'
'Man, I'm dying here. Why I gotta be constantly in da mix? Do we got to talk about this now?'
'Yes!'
'I pawned it at Jungle Jack's on Alvarado at Seventh. Next to the produce market.'
'You got the pawn ticket?' A crafty look came across his face. 'Gimme the ticket, John. I'm not screwing around here.'
He fumbled deep in Chooch's loose jean pockets and finally pulled it out and handed it to me.
Fifteen minutes later, I parked under the porte cochere at County-USC. I went inside the ER, found a wheelchair, got John out of my car, loaded him into the chair and pushed him into the waiting room. He was slumped over, bitching and moaning. His wound was still bleeding. Fresh blood was again seeping through Chooch's sweatshirt and beginning to puddle under the wheelchair. I tapped on the glass and got the nurse's attention. It was early afternoon and the ER wasn't busy yet.
'I need some help here. This guy has a knife wound in the gut.'
