bright and sharp, everything crystal clear and intensely significant, but it also seemed like things were happening before my mind had time to sort them out. Like my brain was just a befuddled old grandma in my body’s backseat, demanding to know where on earth we were going in such a hurry.
The next thing I knew my cheek was pressed against the battered door of an old Chevy Nova. Either the pops had stopped or I had gone totally deaf. All I could hear was ringing inside my ears. It seemed pretty comfortable and safe down there by the Nova and I felt like maybe I could use a little nap, but Malloy was dragging me again, impatient fingers digging into me and forcing me to leave the comfy Nova behind. He pushed me into his SUV through the driver’s side door. I hit my chin on the steering wheel and nearly impaled myself on the gearshift but he was right behind me, shoving me aside, cranking the ignition and stomping on the gas before the door was even shut.
I thought I couldn’t hear anymore but I was wrong. The sound of the rear windshield shattering was like the end of the world.
“Jesus!” Malloy said, wrenching the wheel from left to right and then reaching under the seat for my gun.
I guess you could call what happened next a car chase. It was probably pretty spectacular and exciting, with lots of near misses and bullets flying all around. I’m sure it would have been a blast to watch in a movie theater, but I’ll tell you what, it’s not nearly as much fun when you’re jammed down into the place under the dashboard where your feet go, arms wrapped around your head and screaming at the top of your lungs, slamming from side to side like improperly stowed luggage and wishing you would die in a fiery wreck already, just to get it over with. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.
But we didn’t die in a fiery wreck. I felt the car slow, then stop and it took me a few seconds to get up the guts to uncover my face and risk a peek at our surroundings.
We were over by the L.A. River. There were no other cars in sight. Feeling beaten up all over again, I slowly unfolded myself from under the dashboard and crawled up into the passenger seat. My heart was still pounding so hard it felt like it was going to bust out like a baby alien and run off down the street.
I looked over at Malloy. He was gripping the wheel, breathing hard through his nose, his mouth a thin, tight line. He had a rapid tic in the bunched muscle at the hinge of his jaw and there was blood running down his neck, into the collar of his shirt. His right earlobe looked like a piece of red chewing gum.
There was a strange, indefinable charge in the air between us that felt almost sexual in its intensity but neither one of us did anything about it. We just sat like that for several minutes. Separate, not speaking. The motor idled. A sparrow perched in one of the diamonds on a nearby chain link fence. My heart slowly returned to a normal pace.
“I lost my wallet,” Malloy said.
I frowned.
“What?”
“In the parking lot, back at the mall,” he squinted at the sparrow. “My pocket got torn while I was fighting with that guy you popped.” He tugged at the ragged flap in his trousers. “I guess my wallet must’ve fallen out.”
“Fuck,” I said softly. “Is that how they found your address?”
“Could have been a lot worse,” Malloy said, putting the car into gear. “Cops could have found it. My wallet next to a dead body. That would have been tough to explain.”
“Guess that means the bad guys found the body first, huh?” I said. “Think they took it?”
Malloy nodded and lit a cigarette.
“They don’t want cops in this any more than we do,” he said.
“Do we still need to get rid of the gun?” I asked.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Malloy said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you another one.”
“Now what?” I asked.
I looked away. I felt bad for dragging Malloy into this mess but he didn’t seem all that sorry. He just smoked.
“For now, I say we hole up somewhere anonymous,” he said. “Somewhere with a DVD player.”
That’s how we wound up at the Palmview Court Motel.
The Palmview Court Motel got one thing right. The tiny office did feature a view of a dry, brown, rat-infested palm tree slowly dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. Most of the Palmview’s downwardly mobile clientele probably never bothered to look out their windows, since they were busy looking at the stained ceiling while turning tricks or at the insides of their eyelids while nodding out with needles in their arms. Not much in the charm department, but every room boasted its own DVD player, built into the bolted-down television.
The scrawny, hyperanimated tweaker behind the desk had a shoebox full of cheap porn compilation DVDs that a handwritten sign offered for two dollars a piece. When I asked about the DVD players, he rattled the box at me in a manner that I guess was meant to be enticing.
“The queer ones are mostly toward the bottom,” the guy told me, weird blue eyes jittering around like they were trying to figure out a way to escape from their sockets. “Not that I got anything against queers. Takes all kinds, I guess. Anyway, if you return the DVD when you’re done you can have one of your dollars back.”
I kept on forgetting that I was supposed to be a boy. I couldn’t help but wonder what Malloy thought about being constantly mistaken for some kind of gay Daddy. If it bothered him, he never let it show.
The DVDs in the box were the kind that promise SIX SIZZLING HOURS OF NONSTOP XXX ACTION but actually feature one so-so scene with a girl you’ve maybe heard of, along with endless hours of swimmy European crap from 1985. I didn’t bother to dig for the gay ones. I was afraid to look too closely at the ones on top, in case there might be one of mine in there.
“No
“Yeah well,” the clerk replied. “If you don’t see one you like, there’s Le Sex Shoppe over on Van Nuys. Tell ’em Reno from the Palm sent you and you’ll get a discount.”
“Great,” I said, feeling like I needed to wash my brain.
“Let’s go,” Malloy said.
Although I’d driven right past Le Sex Shoppe a billion times, I’d never actually been inside. I could get pretty much any dirty DVD I wanted for free since I used to write reviews for
A lot of people are surprised that these kinds of places are still booming, considering the fact that everything is available on the Internet. The truth is, there are still plenty of guys who share computers with their wives, guys who don’t own computers, or guys who just prefer to pay cash for their smut. Places like that also feature video booths so guys with too much feminine supervision at home can rub out a quick one on their lunch hour.
“Here,” Malloy said, indicating a row of similarly packaged DVDs in the amateur section. Sure enough, it was
Seeing them all side by side like that, I was suddenly hit with the sheer number of girls involved in this nasty business. There were twenty-one DVDs in a tidy row. Each DVD contained four or five scenes. Sure, there were a few repeats but still, that meant there had been nearly a hundred girls involved in this sex slave racket. It must cost a pretty penny to buy, house, feed and most importantly keep secret, such a large group of illegal foreign women. I couldn’t imagine the meager sales of these DVDs alone provided enough income to make something like that profitable enough to be worth the risk.
I shared my thoughts with Malloy.
“It just seems odd to me that they don’t bother to really shoot the hell out of each girl,” I said. “A busy actress can shoot twenty-five scenes a month even without a gun to her head. These girls only do one or two scenes each. Why not get the maximum value out of their investments?”
