The Killing League

83.

Nicole

She was exhausted. Today, they had chosen to take the long trail in the Santa Monica mountains. Nicole’s thighs burned with the effort but Tristan, as always, seemed unfazed by the exertion.

“How come you’re not tired?” Nicole said.

Tristan laughed and drank from her water bottle. “Oh, I’m tired. I just try not to show it.”

They stopped at the last small rise before the trail descended into the parking lot. Nicole shook a little water into her hand and rubbed it on Sal’s back. The big dog’s dark coat absorbed the heat and she frequently had to cool him down.

She rubbed the water down Sal’s back, heard Tristan shuffle her feet. The dog’s hair bristled under her hand and she felt a deep vibration echo from his chest. His ears shot forward.

Nicole looked up as a man swung his hand at Tristan’s head. In his hand was a large rock.

It struck Tristan on the temple and she folded like a rag doll, flopping on her back and tumbling down the slope of the hill.

Sal charged the man who had attacked Tristan, and the two of them went over the side of the plateau, crashing down off the trail in a cloud of dust, snarls and shouts.

Two men came at Nicole, one going high, the other low. She dove forward, between them. When she rolled and stood, coming into a crouch, she had a knife in each hand. She could tell that the men noticed how she held them, too. By the handle, but the blade went back along her forearm, with the cutting edge out.

It made them hesitate. She could tell it wasn’t what they expected, what they’d signed up for.

One of them overcame his hesitation and sprang at Nicole, swinging a lead pipe. She used her left fist to knock it past her, then brought her right arm up and hooked her knife over the man’s arm, pinning it across his body.

She swung her left hand like a punch across his chin, but it wasn’t a punch. The knife in her hand cut the man’s throat wide open and blood shot out in a bright red geyser.

The other man charged Nicole, his bare hands out in front of him. She figured his plan was to get her by the throat and choke her. She knocked his arms upward and raked the knives along his belly. His guts fell out onto the hard-packed dirt.

The man dropped to his knees and looked at another man who had silently appeared at the end of the trail. He had long hair and weird blue eyes.

Nicole felt his eyes on her and she met them directly. She saw his eyes glance down at her knives, blood dripping from their razor-sharp edges. He looked at his cohort, now dead or dying on the sun baked trail.

The long-haired man looked back into Nicole’s eyes.

He turned and ran away.





84.

Truck Drivin’ Man

Roger Dawson was not happy. He’d been shot and clobbered over the head. And then, after being discharged from the Emergency Room, he’d immediately been arrested.

What a f*cking joke.

The whole reason he’d agreed to go along with this stupid shit was to avoid going to prison in the first f*cking place.

And look where it had gotten him.

This prick was going to pay.

Roger Dawson was going to meet with his attorney, and he was going to get the guy to make a sweetheart deal. Dawson was going to tell everyone everything he could about this stupid “Commissioner” and lower the boom on the bastard. No way in hell Dawson was going to rot in prison. He’d join witness protection and lay low for awhile. But eventually, he’d start his fun back up again.

The guard came and got him. Dawson saw the look of disapproval and disgust on the guard’s face. Well f*ck you too, buddy.

He was led through a series of metal doors where they had to get buzzed through, and eventually came to a conference room.

The guard brought Dawson in and put him in a chair. The table was empty. The guard left, and Dawson heard the lock slide into place.

He waited five minutes before he heard the lock being thrown. The door opened and his lawyer came in.

Dawson almost laughed.

The guy had big, wavy blonde hair and a big blonde handlebar moustache. He looked like some lame guy from a seventies television show. Jesus Christ, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel around here for lawyers.

“Mr. Dawson?” the man said. His voice was raspy, like he’d smoked a dozen cigarettes in the last ten minutes. Dawson immediately figured him for a faggot.

“Yeah, listen,” Dawson said. “I don’t want any bullshit — I did some bad shit but I was forced to. I want to testify against the a*shole that set me up.”

The lawyer smiled a little beneath the big moustache.

“From what I’ve read, Mr…” he paused to look at his notes. “Dawson. You acted alone. Most criminals have trouble seeing the monsters they truly are and simply blame someone else for their horrible acts. Are you certain you aren’t solely responsible for your actions? Maybe it’s time you took some responsibility.”

Dawson turned red. What was the deal with this a*shole?

“Did you not f*ckin’ hear me?” Dawson said. “Get your faggy ass over to wherever the other lawyers are and tell ‘em I want a deal. And I want it fast. And while you’re at it, go f*ck yourself.”

The lawyer opened his briefcase, turned it sideways and pulled out a gun.

“A verdict has been reached,” he said.

“What the f*ck?” Dawson said.

“Instead of a judge, a guilty plea was accepted by an officer of the court. Someone called…The Commissioner?”

Dawson’s face blanched.

The lawyer pulled off his moustache, smiled, and shot Dawson in the throat.





85.

Nicole

A gunshot rocked the air around Nicole’s head. She ran to the edge of the trail and peered down. Tristan was on her feet, her gun in her hand. The other attacker was on his back, his chest a bloody mess.

Tristan looked at Nicole as Sal shot past her. Nicole spun on her heel in time to see Sal race down the trail in the direction the long-haired freak had gone.

Now Nicole had no choice.

She had to protect Sal. She ran, following a thin cloud of dust and dirt that still hung in the air.

From below, she heard Sal howl. Nicole couldn’t tell if it was from pain or if he was attacking.

She charged down the hill, the thick, sharp chaparral brush cutting her legs and arms as she went. She stumbled and fell, rolling down the final few feet of the grade until she came up on her feet. Both knives were still clenched in her hands. Her breath was short and rapid.

She spotted them immediately.

The man was on his back, Salvatore on top of him. The dog had the man by his throat. The long-haired coward had a stone in his hand and was clubbing Sal on the head with it. Even from where Nicole stood, she saw that the blows were weak.

Blood gushed from Sal’s head.

The man looked at Nicole. His eyes were a cool blue fire and Nicole couldn’t tell if he was laughing or if the power of Sal’s jaws clamped on his throat were forcing the man’s mouth into a lopsided leer.

Nicole held the knives at her side. She looked down, saw blood all over her hands and arms.

She looked back up toward the rise. No one was there.

“Help me,” the man said.

She saw a bubble of blood pop from the man’s mouth.

The stone dropped from his hand.

“Sal,” Nicole said.

The big Doberman shifted his body but didn’t let go of the man’s throat.

“Sal, that’s enough,” Nicole said.

Thick red blood, part of it frothy, gushed from the man’s mouth. His eyes rolled back into his head.

“Drop it,” Nicole commanded, her voice low and firm.

Salvatore looked at her.

And then he lifted his head.

And when he did, most of the man’s throat came with it.

“Good boy,” Nicole said.

Salvatore wagged his tail.

Nicole sat down in the dirt.

And cried.





86.

Blue Blood

Douglas Hampton pulled up in the big BMW outside an office complex in Long Beach, California. The building was fifteen stories, and the parking lot was occupied by mostly Toyotas and Hondas.

The sign read Sycamore Hills Business Park.

Hampton had sent the email address associated with the obviously non-existent Alpha Delta Entertainment to the woman in IT at Hampton Industries who claimed she could tell him anything from an email address.

Within minutes, an address had popped up on his Blackberry. From the Holiday Inn in Omaha, he had made the trip in less time than it would have taken for the average person flying to get to the airport, check in, make the trip, and get off the plane. The BMW had a V-12 and he had a built-in radar detector.

Now, he looked at the office building. Sycamore Hills. Yeah, right. More like, Depressing Suburban Shithole.

The sight of the building infuriated him and it took a moment for him to understand why. If this was the headquarters of The Commissioner, then he, Douglas Hampton, had been blackmailed by some pissant loser who made his living in a low-rent shitty Long Beach office building.

Hampton watched the activity around the complex. He quickly garnered that business was slow at Sycamore Hills.

A UPS truck pulled up and the jackass in his little brown uniform ran in with a package and a few minutes later ran back out. A fat woman with a cell phone pressed to her ear walked out of the building, got in a rusty Ford Explorer and drove away.

He knew the issue would be security cameras. Even these sucky little white trash office buildings had security cameras nowadays.

Hampton put the BMW in gear and cruised past the front entrance. He spotted one security camera, trained down at the entrance. He drove around the building, spotted a side door, no camera. In the back of the building was another door and a wider loading dock, one security camera, aimed in the general direction of the two doors.

So it would be the side door. And if they hadn’t bothered to put a security camera over the side door entrance, he was reasonably confident they wouldn’t have one in the hallway that led to the side door.

He parked the BMW, opened the glove compartment and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke on a regular basis, but found that lighting up was a great way to stand outside somewhere without attracting any special attention.

He walked to the building’s side door, fired up the cigarette and waited.





87.

Mack

Oscar Williams walked Mack out to his car. They both nodded at the two Florida Sheriff deputies parked at the break in the circular driveway.

Upstairs, an FBI agent was keeping Adelia company.

“I figure between a Marine sniper, an FBI agent, and half a dozen cops, she’ll be safe,” Oscar said.

Mack smiled.

“How’s Adelia doing?”

Both men knew what it was like to kill another human being. And how it took a long time to recover from. But they both also knew Adelia.

“She’ll be fine. I’m taking care of her, while she takes care of Janice.”

“You know, I offered to find someone else to take care of Janice,” Mack said.

Oscar waved his comment away. “She wants to be here. She told me she didn’t want to go back home and sit there, thinking about it. This will help her recover faster. You know how it goes,” he said.

Mack knew he was right. They shook hands. Oscar went back to the house. Mack fired up his car and drove down the winding driveway, waving to another cop as he passed.

He turned on to the busy street and headed for the airport.

And Nicole.

•

Mack was never comfortable in Los Angeles, even though he never generalized about cities. To a lesser degree, most cities had similar structures and dynamics. In general, he saw them as varieties on a theme.

But there was something about L.A. that always made him feel unsettled.

Now, he drove along Sepulveda toward Santa Monica. Like nearly every day he’d ever spent in L.A., it was clear and sunny, warm and dry. People drove much faster than Mack. He was passed by a half-dozen cars within the first minute on the road.

He turned on the radio and tried to find a station that played some classic rock. He was not successful. So he turned the radio back off.

It was hard for him to imagine Nicole choosing this as her place to put her life together. He typically thought of Los Angeles as the place where people’s lives become unraveled.

If she managed it, she would maybe be the first person in history to come to this city deeply wounded and become whole again. Los Angeles as a mecca for healing. Mack tried the idea on for size and quickly shook it off.

He checked his watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon — late enough for him to be able to check into his hotel. He’d chosen the LeMerigot Hotel on Ocean because he’d been there before and liked it. Plus, it was right across from the legendary Chez Jay bar and restaurant where he loved to go for a beer or three and just walk back across the street to the hotel when he was done.

He turned onto Pico, and crested the small rise, pleased as always to see the Pacific Ocean. If he put the pedal down on his rental car, he could zoom all the way down and crash onto the beach and drive right into the water.

Instead, he braked when he got to Ocean Avenue, drove halfway down the block and swung over to the LeMerigot’s driveway. He pulled up in front of the hotel and let the valet open his door.

His phone rang and he pulled it from the pocket of his sportcoat.

He looked at the display.

He read the name and number three times.

It was Nicole.