“Relax, your fucking dog is fine,” Piper said. We were sitting in the beast in the back parking lot of Club Xtasy. After finding Gregor’s apartment empty, I had gone to her. “Oh yeah, and Gregor and the Russian skirt are ok, too. By the way, are you fucking her or is Gregor?”
“No one’s fucking anyone.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If you’re not getting laid, then why are you tangled up in this mess?”
“Where are they?”
“Gregor called me, they’re laying low over at his mother’s place, he gave me the address. Now are you going to tell me what the hell you’ve got into?”
“Long story.”
“Will it have a happy ending?”
“I doubt it.” I filled her in, the short version, meeting Anya, the lap dance, the way she made me feel. I kept it simple.
“She must be good,” Piper laughed, “to convince an old cynic like you that she actually had the big O.”
“I don’t think she faked that.”
“Men never do, and you are a man. So you had a couch tumble, fell in love and now mobsters are trying to kill you. No, don’t explain it. It makes perfect sense in Moses World. You do know it is possible to fall in love without people ending up dead?”
“Didn’t say I was in love with her.”
“No, but you’re willing to risk life, limb and Gregor to save her and the baby sister. What’s that sound like to you?”
“Stupidity.”
“Exactly, or in other words, love.”
“Her little sister, she’s lost. Nobody will give a fuck if she lives, dies or anything in between.”
“And if you weren’t trying to get with the big sister, you’d still care?”
“Yes.”
“We have plenty of kids in trouble right here in LA, if it’s sainthood you’re aiming at.”
“I don’t know them, their stories. Hers, I do. If I don’t do something about it, I’m no better than the freaks who have her.”
Piper understood, even if she didn’t admit it. She and I didn’t vote, picket, donate to save the children, we just did what we could for those we met and left the big picture to those with grander visions than ours. She gave me Gregor’s mother’s address and a warm kiss goodbye. For a moment as her lips pressed on mine, I wondered when I was going to come to my senses and fall for her. Then again, even with all her flirting, she knew me too well to ever make the mistake of falling for me.
Gregor’s mother lived in a California bungalow court off Broadway in Glendale. The small house smelled of boiled meat, cabbage and fresh baked bread. Gregor pulled me in the door, looking around to be sure we were free of prying eyes. His mother knew nothing of our troubles, he wanted to make sure I kept it that way.
“Those Russian fucks showed up at your place. I should have stayed, taken them out. I was worried about Anya.”
“You did right.”
“No.”
“I’m alive, you’re alive, Anya’s alive. You did fine. I want you to stay here while I get us a clean car and try and figure out what the hell we’ve stumbled into.”
“We’re going to find Nika.”
“Yeah, we’ll find her.”
From the path outside, I looked in through the kitchen window. Angel was curled up on the floor, gnawing on a bone at the feet of a small plump woman. Anya was chopping carrots into a bowl. She was wearing a large denim shirt that came down to her knees, it had never looked that good on me. Maybe it was the domestic setting, or the lack of makeup and spike heels, but all the sense of stripper was gone. She was a beautiful young woman, the kind you took home to mother, if your mother wasn’t a gin-swilling Jesus freak. I knew, looking at her, I could wake up every morning, roll over, see her and count myself a lucky man.
Gregor came into the kitchen, snatching a bite out of the salad Anya was making. She slapped his hand playfully and they both started laughing. I walked quickly away before I could convince myself I should stay.
I called Helen, my friend from the dog park. She had someone for me to meet. The pink light of sunset was sparkling off the Silver Lake reservoir as I rolled into the hills.
“Bottom line? You could stumble around Ensenada for months and never find their safe house.” Peter Brixon, an LA Times reporter, was sitting across from me in the breakfast nook in Helen’s home.
“And taking you with me will do what?” I asked.
“A, I speak Spanish, helpful when in Mexico. B, I’ve spent the last year investigating Russian sex trafficking, so we won’t be starting from zero.” He spoke in a rapid clipped way that reminded me of a meth freak two grams into a bad bender.
“Rolling with a punk civilian, looking for his shot at a Pulitzer, is an easy way to get dead.”
“Moses, don’t be such a prick,” Helen interjected, “Peter came here to help you.”
“No, he’s right,” Peter said. “You want my credentials? Fine. Somalia riots, Haiti coup, in Afghanistan I was embedded with Air Cav. Now do I strip down, compare bullet scars to prove I’m no fucking cherry?”
I looked from him to Helen. “I like him. If he walks like he talks, he may survive.”
I had only one stipulation and it was a deal breaker: he could come along, he could write his story, I didn’t even care if he turned it into a million dollar movie deal, but he wasn’t to use my name. Not in the paper, not with cops if it went wrong, not even to his favorite girl. Never. I didn’t need the heat that came flooding in with a little notoriety.
While Peter went to pack, I dropped the Crown Vic with Jason B, he was a part-time actor and full-time gear head. He had started a business buying used cop cars and selling them on eBay. But he discovered the real green was in building sleepers for people who needed to run fast and attract as little attention as possible. I had steered illicit business his way, and had hooked him up with a connection for cheap parts of questionable origin. I figured he owed me a solid.
“This lil’ sweetie had a blueprinted 454 that delivers an honest 400 horses to the rear tires. But she ain’t cheap.” He was showing me a mid-sixties International Harvester Scout, the light blue paint was sun bleached almost to white, where it wasn’t gray from bondo and primer. The chrome was pitted and the upholstery was more duct tape than fabric. It was perfect.
“How are the papers?” I asked him.
“They’ll survive a Smokey stop and snoop, but if they dig into the VINs, you’re fucked.” He was handsome in a tan, chiseled leading man way, as well as he could sling bullshit, I wondered why he hadn’t made it in Hollywood.
“What’ll a week cost me?”
“Does this look like Avis? Do I look like I try harder? This beauty is forty grand, cash. And that is my tit buddy price.”
“What do you charge your enemies?”
“Look under there.” He kneeled down, pointing a flashlight at the undercarriage. “That’s a custom suspension, she’ll take a hairpin at seventy without a hint of body roll. And those Brembos? Stop on a frickin’ dime and give you nine cents change.”
“I don’t doubt the quality, it’s the price got me choking,” I told him.
“Did I mention it has two separate cargo hides, Kevlar door panels? This bitch is a smuggler’s wet dream, she makes the Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee look like a pussy wagon.”
“I’m sold. Now who am I going to have to fuck to get you to let me have it for a week?”
“If I let you take it for a week, I’m the one getting fucked and I don’t swing that way.”
“How’s a grand sound, and you keep the Crown Vic for collateral?” I offered.
He walked away, kicking up a small cloud of dirt. “Fuck it Moses, I know I owe you, but shit, you’re taking bread out of my baby’s mouth.”
“You don’t have any kids.”
“Yeah, but I could,” he said. “Alright, two grand, and if you dump it you owe me forty, plus I keep the Crown Vic for my trouble.”
I reached out my hand. “I could shout rape, but with our history, people might think it was my fault for stepping into your room.”
“Bitch and moan all you want, you know it’s a sweet deal.”
Hitting the gas, I knew he was right, the Scout leapt forward with enough force to pin me to the seat. Jason had done what he could to quiet the 454 down to a subtle roar, at idle it almost sounded like any other SUV, but when the hammer was dropped, there was no mistaking the deep throated rumble of the monster rat. I stowed my weapons in the cleverly disguised lockbox built into the rear quarter panel, all except my snub nose: it, I slipped into the pocket of my leather.
Peter Brixon was waiting in front of his condo, it was one of those classy new buildings in downtown. It had a sign that said if you lived here you’d be home now, plastered so that the slobs stuck in the 101’s constant traffic jam could see it and wish they could afford to live there. He had a canvas shoulder tote and a leather briefcase that had seen its better days somewhere in the 1990s.
“Nice car.” Peter looked over the Scout, unimpressed. “You want me to drive? I have a BMW 540.”
“Of course you do,” I said, holding the door for him to get in.
“I just meant, are you sure this thing will make it to Mexico?”
“Yup,” I said, climbing behind the wheel. It would have been easy enough to tell him about the Scout, but for some perverse reason, I liked the nervous look his face.
I had decided not to tell Gregor or Anya I was leaving. Chances were, they would have convinced me to take one or both of them. Anya didn’t have the docs needed to cross freely into Mexico, and Gregor was mistaken for an Arab enough to draw heat from the border patrol. That was what I told myself, but maybe it was looking in that window and seeing how normal and happy she looked that made me want to protect her from the jug fuck I was headed for.
It was late enough that the freeways out of town were moving with what we Angelinos had come to call fast: 65 mph with only slight congestion. As I watched the glittering high rises of downtown fade in my rearview, I got Peter to fill me in on the modern slave trade. Since the fall of Communism, Russia’s number one export had become women. He rattled off figures and stats like a machine gunner trying to stop the last wave. But the gist I got was that it was international big business, with no end in sight.
“And here, this is the saddest part, we are the end user of all this pain and we don’t even know it,” he rapped on. “If Johnny mid-level executive knew he was supporting rape, torture and destruction, do you think he would still pay for sex?”
“Absolutely,” I said, without a doubt.
“No, if he knew, I mean really got the price these girls were paying for his fun, he wouldn’t do it. Not the sickos, they fuck for pain, but Johnny normal, he would stop.”
“If you say so.”
The Scout proved to be a grand road cruiser, smooth and responsive. After Peter had talked himself dry, he leaned back and was snoring. Around midnight we passed Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base where I had done basic before being shipped to that gang bang in the streets of Beirut. Unlike some Semper Fi freaks, it held no warm memories for me. The Marines had taught me to pull a trigger without thinking and not ever trust the old bastards who are giving orders. Fuck questioning authority, there was no question involved, if they asked you to do it, it was a bad idea. If it was a good idea, they’d do it themselves. If what we were doing in that mess was so noble and right, why hadn’t I met even one politician’s son on the firing line? And here we were stuck in the sand pile again, young men dying with no end in sight. Just thinking about it made my throat dry. It was nothing a good shot of scotch wouldn’t cure.
I almost pulled off in San Diego for a half pint, but I knew that would never be enough. Flipping the radio around the dial, I filled the car with classic rock, at least that’s what they called it. After sitting through some Foreigner 80s hair band bullshit, Elvis Costello started singing about Alison. By the time she was dragging her fingers through the wedding cake, my mind was filled with Anya. Why the fuck hadn’t I taken her to bed when she offered? Instead, I had stuffed my feelings for her down into my gut and pretended I didn’t care. I tossed her at Gregor. Were they fucking on his mother’s couch while I was on a suicide run south of the border? Bullshit. She was a good woman and he was a true friend. I needed a drink. I needed to get laid. I need the love of a strong woman. But none of that was in the cards I’d dealt myself. Instead, I was stuck on the road with a motormouth reporter looking for trouble that any sane man would run away from.
“What the hell is that?” Peter asked. We were pulled onto a dark street a few miles from the border and I was putting my snub nose into the hidden lockbox.
“A thirty-eight,” I said.
“I know that, the other stuff in there?” He was pointing at my Mossberg, a Ruger Mini-14, two Chinese grenades Gregor had found for me, and my 1911.
“You want me to drop you at the bus station?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, after thinking about it long enough for me to wonder if he was going to come after all. “You know the Mexican government treats firearms harsher than heroin? We get caught, it will be decades before either of us breathes free air.”
“That’s why it’s hidden.”
The pedestrian bridge crossing from Mexico into the States was awash in a flood of drunken college kids and service boys heading home after their night’s debauchery. Like smart little gringos they had all parked their cars in the States and taken cabs into Sin City. Apparently they weren’t afraid of the cartels, the clap or jail, but if they got a dent in the family car, their dads would kill them. We drove under the bridge and through the border without any trouble. Getting into Mexico had never been the trick, it was getting out that often led to ugly phrases like cavity search.
Skirting downtown and dodging whizzing taxis, I arced through a roundabout and headed toward Playa Tijuana and the Ensenada highway beyond. Tijuana is the sort of town you shouldn’t even slow down in unless you are on the bad side of a mean drunk and need to get your ass kicked. I had misspent too many lusty, lonely nights in La Zona Norte when I was stationed at Camp Pendleton. At sixteen, it looked like Oz the first time I crossed that bridge, but that dreamy view turned ugly when it was confronted with the reality of those streets. Woozy, blurred out visions of naked girls I humped and the sweaty pimps I paid are collected someplace in my memory, along with so many others I’m not proud of. These are the photos I pull out at four in the morning to remind myself I really am a sack of shit.
The moon brightly lit our path as we broke free of the city and onto the open coast highway. In the years since I had last traveled this road, it had transformed from a potholed two-lane mess into a modern highway with banked curves and tall cement tollbooths. Dropping a buck twenty into a sweet faced young guard’s hand, I accepted his “Buenas noches” and rolled on. Fifty feet from the shoulder, the earth fell away, down steep cliffs lay the restless sea. Waves smashed on the rocks. With the windows open, the air was fresh and salty, with a hint of wood smoke and the rich odor of decay that let me know I was in Mexico.
Rosarito came and went as we powered on. Peter asked if we could stop for dinner, but I wasn’t taking my foot off the pedal until we hit Ensenada. Only then, with sixty miles between me and TJ, would I feel safe from her moaning call.
“Ensenada was built in the twenties by Al Capone. Not actually built, but up until prohibition, it had been a sleepy fishing village.” Peter was chattering on as we drifted over the hills and down into the small valley that held the town. “He opened a hotel and gambling house, for a few years it was the place for Hollywood royalty.”
Ensenada sat at the center of a small bay dotted with fishing boats and pleasure yachts. On a small steep hill to the north of town, large homes perched looking down on the tawdry street life below. It took about twenty minutes of cruising to find the right neighborhood for my particular mission. Past the partying kids at Papas and Beer, past the tourists pressed into Husongs, past the spa resort hotels. On Calle Arande I spotted three strip clubs in a two-block stretch. I was home.
Any doubt was erased when I stepped into the office of Motel 49. The price list on the wall listed $10 for a half-hour, $20 for an hour and $27 for anyone foolish enough to want to spend the whole night. We got two rooms on the upper floor and paid the extra two bucks for a set of towels.
The first thing I noticed about the room was that the door had no deadbolt, not even a flimsy chain, and the doorknob lock could be popped with a butter knife or a good yank. The only window at the rear was a slit in the bathroom, too small for escape. Pushing the dresser against the door, I stripped down and took a shower. It was two AM and the day was starting to wear on me. I told Peter he was on his own finding food and we would hook up in the morning. If I had to listen to his endless patter one more minute, I might have to kill him.
“You want some bud? Crank? I got some pure fucking rock.” The kid’s accent and choice of dress was straight out of East LA: chinos, plaid shirt over a white tee and buttoned only at the top. He was maybe twenty, but a hard life had given him much older eyes. His hair was cut within a millimeter of bald. Dark prison ink letters S G V scrawled across the back of his skull.
“I don’t do that shit since I got out of the joint,” I lied, wanting to make it clear I wasn’t a tourist pussy he should even think about running his scams on.
“Cool, living above the influence, right? So what you want? You want a titty show? I can take you to the best in town, no bullshit, I’m a Christian so I can’t lie.” Three other young men his same age and type leaned against a closed taco stand, watching us and scanning for their next customer. These guys were the street version of a concierge. If you needed anything from heroin to a face lift, they could hook you up for a small tip.
“Not into tits? Want a little strange, I got this chick with a dick’ll blow your mind and everything else. What’d ya say, you ready to party, muchacho?”
“You ever run into any Russian bitches?” I asked, as casually as possible.
“You mean like from Russia?” His eyes darted away just long enough to tell me he was dodging the question.
“Yeah,” I said, smoothing myself back into street hustler mode. “We got some of those Eastern Block bitches up in LA, suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”
“They teach them good over there, yeah?” he said, back into his easy sales pitch. “You want a BJ, I gots a bitch with tits out to here, let you come on ‘em if you like. Twenty bucks, thirty if you want her top off.”
“Slow up ace, just hit town. I wanna look around a bit before I get my knob polished.”
“Then come on, I know what you need to see.” Taking my elbow, he led me down the block and through the curtain into Le Paris.
It doesn’t matter where you travel, a strip joint is a strip joint. A naked little Latina spun on the pole on stage, drunken men sat at the rail staring up at her with glassy, transfixed eyes. The tip boy pushed me down into a chair at a small cafe table, then went to get me a girl and a drink. Five minutes after hitting the door, I had a barely dressed, barely legal gal on my lap, a scotch in hand and I was only twenty bucks lighter.
“You want to fuck her, they have a back room, safe, I’ll wait at the door make sure it all goes down clean,” he said.
“I got it from here.” I slipped him a ten spot and told him to blow. Pocketing the cash, he faded into the dark club and was gone.
“You want to buy me a drink?” The girl asked.
Who was I to refuse her impossibly large brown eyes? A bar woman with massive cleavage and one wandering eye brought a tequila sunrise, it cost ten bucks and I saw her pass the girl on my lap several pesos.
“I’m Lucy,” she told me, pointing out a gold necklace with her name written in cursive. “Just Lucy, not like these indio girls, they have two, three, even four names.” Her English was heavily accented but good, even if her grasp of the Spanish origins of multi naming wasn’t.
Pulling my arms around her, she told me how much she liked big men, they made her feel protected and comfortable. Downing her drink in three deep gulps, she held it up, shaking it for the bar woman to see. “You don’t mind?” she asked me as an afterthought.
Forty bucks later, she was well on the way to sloppy. My scotch sat on the table calling for me to drink it. The amber glow was so inviting. Just one sip, it called to me. To forget the booze, I tried to concentrate on Lucy’s voice. She gave me the bar Cliff Notes version of her life, single mother, born in Monterey, her mother looked after her daughter while she worked. She was too young to marry, and no, she hadn’t heard of or seen any Russians living in Ensenada. She had dated a German tourist for one weekend, gave her two hundred bucks and a case of the crabs. When the mood hit her, she would grab my face and kiss my cheek, or grind her butt against my crotch, but her attention was too unfocused to get my blood flowing, that and the fact she was a kid, and I’m many things, but a pedophile ain’t one of them.
Across the club I watched a sunburned American dance with a squat Indian girl. The music in the room was Spanish techno, but he was moving slow to some ballad in his head. The girl parted his swordfish print Hawaiian shirt, running her hands over his swollen pink belly. After two more drunken turns around the dance floor, she led him into the back. He was done and stumbling out of the club ten minutes later. His grin looked more befuddled than victorious.
Lucy caught me watching the drunk. “You want to go in back? I fuck you good. You like fucking?”
“I think I’ll take a pass.”
“Whatever.” Her head leaned on my shoulder, tequila filled eyes fluttered. At three thirty, they flashed the house lights to let the drinkers know it was last call. I slipped Lucy off my lap, and after a kiss on the cheek I was gone. The streets were mostly empty as I walked back towards Motel 49.
“How was she, did she fuck you good?” My tip boy materialized at my side. “I told you she was primo gash, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, she was primo.”
“Primo enough for another tip?” he asked, with a Cheshire cat grin that showed off three gold teeth.
“Do I look like your ready-teller?” I let my eyes go cold.
“Shit easy, I’m just fucking with you, homey. So where you staying?”
“Baja Queen.” I didn’t want him or anyone else knowing too many details. After a long conversation where he tried to sell me everything including his virgin mother, I finally shook him off by promising to hook up with him the next afternoon. We had a street appointment for five PM, we both knew we would be there only if a better offer didn’t come up first.