June 2013
Three weeks before the dog attack on the rapper, Kurt walked along the Santa Monica Pier, unconsciously massaging his arm and reminding himself that that was his name today. The weather matched his shitty mood. The air was damp, the sky a washed-out gray, the ocean dark and sluggish. There was a breeze but it wasn’t strong enough to blow away the smell of grease, stale popcorn, French fries, and hot dog water. The only decent thing out here was the old-fashioned merry-go-round. The rest was a bunch of stupid rides, fast-food stands, kiosks selling hats and key chains, and a restaurant called Bubba Gump’s from that boring movie about the retarded guy. Some old gook asked him if he wanted his name painted on a grain of rice. “What for?” Kurt said. “Who’s gonna read it?” He joined a family of foreign tourists watching the most interesting thing out here, a Mexican guy reeling in a spiny brown fish. “You eat that and you’ll be shitting mercury,” Kurt said.
They called him the Hatchet Man, a ground-and-pound heavyweight with an eighteen-and-eight record. His last fight was against a Korean fireplug nicknamed Seoul Man. With a minute to go in the second round, Seoul Man locked Hatchet Man up in a vicious arm bar. The pain was unbearable but his face was smushed into Seoul Man’s right calf and his arm was pinned under the Korean’s left leg. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t tap out. The ref called it when he heard Hatchet Man’s ligaments pop and his humerus splintering like a green twig. Everybody in the arena groaned. A guy in the front row threw up.
Three surgeries and months of rehab later, Hatchet Man regained some arm strength but nothing like before. Some of the nerves were permanently damaged and it was more comfortable carrying the arm at an angle. He could unbend it if he wanted to but his range of motion was limited. Still, he was dangerous. Some guy in Donahue’s made a wisecrack about the arm and Hatchet wrapped it around his neck like a python and choked him into unconsciousness. But bar fights weren’t cage fights and he had to retire. Now he was doing security for one of DStar’s clients.
Kurt took the wide wooden stairs leading down from the pier to the parking lot and the beach. The lot was almost empty. He walked along the second aisle from the right, trying to look nonchalant. Just a regular two-hundred-and-forty-three-pound guy in a lime-green muscle shirt and beaded dreadlocks, jagged scars under both cheekbones, his right ear shredded to nothing and an arm bent like he was escorting a date to the prom. It made him nervous, knowing he was being watched. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff was bullshit. He’d refused to do the job himself so the boss had him call DStar for a reference. That man knew people.
“You want somebody dead, my guy won’t let you down,” DStar said. “He’s a real lunatic. I mean they’re all lunatics but this guy is—” DStar hesitated like he couldn’t find the words. “Let me put it this way. He always gets it done.”
What’s a real lunatic that always gets it done? Kurt thought. Would the guy come cartwheeling across the sand dressed like a ninja or pop up out of the ocean wearing a headband and firing an M16?
A homeless guy was sitting on a parking block holding a cardboard sign that said HUNGRY. He was filthy like he’d been living with wolves, bundled up in an old gray blanket, rags wrapped around his feet.
“Sir, can you spare some change?” he said.
“Get a job, you fuck,” Kurt said.
There was a business-type guy sitting in a convertible Benz and thumbing a text. Kurt slowed as he walked past but the guy didn’t look up. Now a knock-kneed Asian girl wearing complicated high heels tottered toward him like a baby giraffe, Kurt wondering if the girl, the rice-painting guy, and Seoul Man all knew each other. The girl smiled and made eye contact, Kurt thinking no, it couldn’t be.
“This is way to pier?” she said.
Kurt looked at the pier big as life and looked at her. She couldn’t be the hitter, she was too stupid. “Yeah,” he said, “this is the way to the pier.” He kept going and reached the end of the lot. The beach was empty except for a bunch of seagulls camping on the sand. He waited, getting pissed off, not knowing if he should stand around like a dummy or blow the whole thing off.
“Kurt? I’m Fluke.” It was the kid with the HUNGRY sign, Kurt wondering why anybody would choose Fluke as a code name.
It was hard to tell what he looked like underneath the dirt and the wig. You’d have a tough time picking him out of a lineup, which was no doubt the point. Even so, you knew right away something was off about him. It was the eyes—twinkling and vicious. They reminded Kurt of that serial killer who dressed up like a clown to entertain the kiddies.