“Eighteen,” I said, “maybe nineteen.”
“Awful young to be a cop, especially a cop that deals with the things the Nightwise do.”
“Just kinda happened,” I said, looking out the window at the neighborhood we were driving through. Once the hunting grounds of the Hillside Stranglers and the Nightstalker, today Eagle Rock was a hipster’s wet dream. We passed vintage vinyl shops, comic book stores, and all manner of upscale mom-and-pop restaurants. I told Vigil to slow as we approached a building on our left across the street from a Jack in the Box. “Here,” I said, pointing. “Pull in the parking lot.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” the knight said. The building’s sign, which looked straight out of the seventies, said ALL-STAR LANES. Smaller signs declared DANCING, COCKTAIL LOUNGE, ARCADE, AND BILLIARDS. “You’re going to meet an occult Cambodian street gang in a bowling alley?”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m meeting them in the bowling alley.”
We parked the car and walked into All-Star Lanes. The place smelled like most bowling alleys, greasy french fries, foot sweat, stale beer, and floor wax. The decor was every bit as eclectic and seventies as the sign outside. It was a little like stepping onto the set of The Big Lebowski. The jukebox, playing “All the Gold in California” by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, competed for attention over the thunder of balls rolling down wooden lanes, the crash of pins, dozens of televisions chattering, and the rumble of conversation. Vigil was in a charcoal-gray Brioni suit with no tie. He and I walked like we owned the fucking place, side by side. Despite the heat, I had never seen him sweat. I had to admit, Burris carried himself well. He was no hired goon.
“No way in hell am I wearing those nasty shoes,” Vigil said as we walked down the lanes. At the last two lanes, next to the wall, were a bunch of Cambodian guys in their teens and twenties. There were about fifteen of them, total. All of them were dressed in the same kind of gear most bangers, rappers, and wannabes wore: expensive baseball caps, the bill, with a sticker still on it, turned at an angle; some wore knit beanies. They almost all wore baggy, sagging jeans. Some wore tight, ribbed tank tops, commonly referred to as “wifebeaters” back where I came from. Others wore plaid shirts, hanging out. They all had lots of gold and silver bling, tattoos, and guns. It was a shame the shitty jewelry wasn’t hidden like the weapons. All of them had worked the colors of red and blue into their attire, the colors of the Cambodian national flag.
Samnang Bun was sitting at the scoring table. Samnang was an older man, in his thirties, dressed the same as the others, in a baseball cap, blue-and-red plaid shirt, hanging loose. He had facial tattoos that gave him the look of an Asian-style demonic mask, with tusks and horns. His right eyelid drooped due to an ugly scar that ran down to his eye and then below it. That eye was drained of color, like glass, while the uninjured eye was a deep brown. Samnang stood as he saw Vigil and me approach their lanes. Several of his guys went for their pieces under their shirts, but Samnang stopped them from drawing the weapons with a curt shake of the head.
“Hang back a sec,” I said, “let me talk to him.” Vigil didn’t seem thrilled with this but held back while I walked down to meet Samnang.
“You got old, Ballard,” Samnang said in Khmer.
“Look who’s talking, punk,” I replied in kind. “You own any age-appropriate clothing, or are you going to keep dressing like Wiz Khalifa when you’re eighty?”
“Don’t intend to live that long, baulis,” he said with a shrug. I hadn’t been called that for a long-ass time.
“I’m not a cop anymore,” I said. “I quit.”
“Shit, bangabros, way I heard it, they canned your ass. Something about you going widdershins, and then you fucked up that thing with that dead girl. You remember that thing with the girl?”
A wet, tumbling nightmare unfolded behind my eyes, crouching in my skull meat, waiting to jump out and drag me back screaming to 1984. I remembered her face, perfect and unmarred, and what had been done to the rest of her. The lonely strip of beach, the gulls, screaming, the only witnesses to the atrocity. “Yeah,” I said, “I remember, and I fucking quit.” Samnang shrugged again.
“Don’t mean nothing to me, either way,” Samnang said. “Once a baulis, always a baulis. Can’t wash that shit off you. Why you calling me up after all these years, and how the fuck did you get my fucking cell phone number to text me?”
A thought crossed my mind. Samnang and his boys would be great mercenary muscle to back me up, as long as my check cleared. However, I knew they’d balk when they heard I was going to be squaring off against MS-13. The mara employed Aztec wizards with a penchant for cutting out hearts. Even reckless supernatural brawlers like the Freakz and Yeakz would think twice about crossing MS-13. No, it would have to be Dwayne.
“I looked you up in the ‘Who’s Who of Cambodian Gangsters,’” I said, “small book. Don’t matter how I did it, all you need to know is I can. I need you to do me a solid, Sam. You see the guy that came in with me? I need you to keep him tied up for a bit, you and your crew. Don’t kill him. Just give me some time to get out of here, okay?”
“Asshole looks wound way too tight,” Samnang said. “He’s strapped. What if he decides to start shooting?”
“I don’t think he will,” I said. Vigil was crossing his arms and leaning against the back wall. He obviously saw us discussing him and didn’t like it. The jukebox was playing Coleman Hell’s “2 Heads” over the ceiling speakers. “Not unless your
