Immortality Is the Suck (19 page)

derivative, I guessed. Very expensive. “That was a good guess, Mr. FBI

informant. So what do you know besides street rumors? You got anything

worth paying for?”

“Paolo Spence is their leader. He calls himself Ozone.”

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125

I sat back. Whitey knew he'd told me something significant by my silence.

“You got any idea where I can find Ozone?”

“They say he is like an evil spirit. They say he lives in Hell,” said my overly

dramatic friend. “But I heard he has a house in Pasadena.”

I pulled out the roll of money Peter gave me and started peeling off bills,

tossing them across the table, where the guy snatched them up as fast as a

starving dog snatching at scraps.

“You got an address?” I asked him.

He gazed longingly at the remaining money in my hand. “No.”

“You've got another two hundred if you get me an address in the next four

hours,” I said. “A hundred if I get it in the next eight. Fifty if you can come up

with it by this time tomorrow.” By then I'd be a rampaging bloodsucking fiend, I

figured. “After that, I'll have found someone else with the info and you don't get

squat,” I said, pocketing the wad. I rattled off my prepaid cell number.

He pulled his hat a little lower over his eyes, wet his lips, and nodded.

“Yeah yeah. I'll call you soon,” he said. He slid out of the booth, looked around,

and slunk out.

“That was quite a performance,” I said to Albert after we'd watched our

friend run into an old lady, recoil, and run into a bush before finally finding his

way out to the parking lot and beyond. “Think any of it was true?”

Albert raised his shoulder in an amused shrug and smoothed his hand

over his pate. “What is truth?”

“What the fuck kind of answer is that?”

“It was a quote,” said Albert. He shook his head. “I didn't expect you to

recognize it.”

A bookish biker. Christ.

I took out my pack of cigarettes and played with one. They'd outlawed

smoking in public places since I'd quit. It sucked half the charm out of all-

night restaurants.

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A. M. Riley

“If what Whitey says is true, these guys are planning to make a big

statement.”

“They all like you, 'mano?” He said it casually enough but I felt that he'd

been holding back questions since the morgue.

“Maybe.”

His gaze went to my face, then away again. “Dangerous fuckers. There's a

lot of money out there for dangerous fuckers who can fly over rooftops.” I could

smell his blood. Rich, dark with the espresso he constantly drank. Alive with

adrenaline.

“There's a few details you don't need to know yet, but we don't want these

guys running around, Albert. They won't stick to meth distribution.”

“Ah.”

“Everyone is in danger. Maybe you could be in danger too. Where are you

staying?”

He looked sideways at me. Dark eyes measuring, and then the skin

crinkled at the edges as his lips spread in a smile. “I have a trailer up on

Mulholland. I can take you there.”

“You don't have to.” I buried my face in a coffee cup.

“But I want to, friend. You will protect me from the Chupacabra, no?”

I was going to have to find shelter before dawn and I was fairly certain I

could trust Alberto, as long as I had the cash to pay him. I pulled out my wallet

and threw enough money down on the table for the coffee, plus a couple of

fifties. “Thanks, Alberto.”

He slipped the money off the table with the expertise of a sleight of hand

card shark.

I slid out of the booth and picked up my helmet. “Let's roll.”

The hunger had abated somewhat as I'd drunk the coffee, but it was

starting to blaze high again. Albert, preceding me through the restaurant,

smelled better than a raspberry torte. Walking out of Tips, I brushed by a

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127

couple of young men slouching by the glass doors and I could smell their

blood. Young, bright, fiery. Their low burning lust like cayenne pepper. One of

the boys lifted his gaze to meet mine. Dark blue eyes with dark lashes.

The dual impulses to grab him and either fuck him or sink my teeth into

him were strong and equally compelling.

I was able to get myself across the lot to my bike and jam on my helmet

before I gave in to that impulse. Alberto flashed me a smile as he passed and

we pulled out of the lot, our long forks swinging right as we went.

It felt good to have my bike between my legs. The vibrations up my spine,

the ache in my kidneys as the entire body of the bike fought my control. It

distracted me from the hunger, gave me focus. The road rolled with a definable

texture under me and Albert and I sped up as we climbed onto the black velvet

of the well-maintained stretch of Sunset.

I followed him up the Crescent Heights mountain pass and Mulholland

Highway as it wound upward toward the stars and the homes of other

luminaries. We circled a home and dropped down a steep dirt track behind it

where an old shed, a camper trailer, and what looked like a small speedboat

circled a dried grass clearing.

Albert led me behind the camper and to a house trailer up under an oak

tree.

I climbed off, trying to clear my head of the heady smell of Albert; I

motioned toward a clump of bushes some fifty feet away. “Gonna take a leak.”

Albert had sat on an aluminum folding beach chair and appeared to be

rolling a joint on the threadbare knee of his black jeans. He waved me off.

I took a piss, managed to pull my brain together. If I'm good at anything,

it's dealing with cravings. Seems I've spent my whole life fighting one or

another. I was practically celibate in the Marines, and then there were the

drugs. I said a little serenity chant to myself, figuring it was probably the first

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A. M. Riley

time anyone had done that over a quart of blood, and found my way back to

where Albert sat, smoking.

He gestured toward another low beach chair and handed me the doobie,

watching as I took a drag. He looked a little testy. “You took your time.”

“Sorry.”

He looked me up and down.

“I was just thinking,” I said.

“Man, you should know better,” he said.

* * * * *

often gladly remind me. But Albert doesn't mind getting wasted and mutually

jerking off another guy.

So we got high and did that a couple times. Lying on a ratty old blanket

under the branches of the California oak, our jeans down around the tops of

our boots, knees spread, Albert's ringed fingers flying up and down my dick.

From where we lay, I could see the stars. They seemed to sort of sway in

the breeze. Or maybe that was the effect of Albert. Humming some tune,

occasionally throwing a few Spanish words in here and there. “Oh sí,

Demonio…”

Hey
, you romantics are protesting.
What about Peter?

What, are you kidding? Have we met? I'm not a nice man. Excuse me if

you thought otherwise.

Well, okay, I'll admit that at one point, when Albert's thick thumb was

painting circles around the head of my cock and he was whispering

obscenities, his sweat and blood in my nose, there was a moment there when I

wished it was Peter's hand on me. But, then, maybe that was just because

Peter knows best how to touch me there.

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129

But it's just sex. Hell, it's not even that. It's release. And when it was over

I just lay there feeling the drift of the marijuana and the smell of Albert, his

sticky hand lying across my exposed lower belly, his dark cock limp and warm

in my palm, and a slithering serpent of a thought surprised me. I mean

nobody, absolutely nobody, was going to care if one less biker is on this earth

come tomorrow morning. Right? Albert, who had undoubtedly raped, thieved,

pillaged, and possibly killed his way through the world and had only achieved

some sort of redemption through his work with the federal marshals was

certainly not going to leave behind weeping widows and children.

And his blood was as enticing as the smell of warm chocolate wafting from

a Ghirardelli's.

Nobody would care if he disappeared.

Nobody but Peter.

So I sat up, jerked my pants on, slicked my hair back with both hands,

and said, “I need to sleep. Can I crash in the trailer?”

He had out his papers and was busy rolling another spliff. He nodded.

The back of the trailer was completely dark, enclosed with heavy curtains.

I wouldn't even have to ask Albert to take care opening windows. I was just

nodding off when the prepaid cell phone rang.

Who had this number besides Whitey? I flicked it on without greeting.

Just listened.

“Adam?” Peter's voice. “You son of a bitch, I know you can hear me.”

I told you he's like my Jiminy Cricket, right? I should have said he's like

my fucking mother. “How the hell did you get this number?”

“I found the phone while you were in the shower.”

Sneaky bastard. Of course, if I'd known I would have tossed the phone,

but now it was my one tie to Whitey and, possibly, Ozone and the blood.

“Sometimes you really piss me off, Peter,” I said.

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A. M. Riley

“The feeling's mutual, asshole. Somebody stole your bike from impound,

by the way.”

“Did they?”

“You should know the plates are in the system by now.”

“Good. I hope you catch the goddamn bastard. Speaking of plates, you get

a feed on those I gave you?”

“Black Hummer was stolen from a valet parking lot at the Dorothy

Chandler. We found it, on fire mind you, abandoned by the side of the 2.”

Near Glendale, then. My memory began recovering the names and

locations of every meth distributor I knew around that area.

“And another body was snatched from the morgue.”

“Wow, really?” On San Fernando road, near the railroad tracks, and just a

block or so away from the 2 to 210 interchange, had been a house where

Freeway and I had frequently partied with a former Mongol top gun, Eric

Juarez. “Geez, Peter, they really should get better security on the morgue. Next

thing you know the
Times
is going to be demanding an investigation.”

Peter blew a fuse. “Adam, what the fuck are you doing? Stan expected you

to come in tonight and I've had to hold him off.”

“Thanks. I needed a little more time.”

“Time for
what
?”

“You
know
the minute I walk into the station I'm as good as dead.”

A silence. I could feel him somehow at the other end of the line. I was

surprised by a powerful tug of longing, like tendrils reaching from my gut and

though the phone line toward him. I struggled not to disconnect and throw the

phone out into the brush.

“You coming back here once you've done whatever the fuck you think

you're doing?”

How could I go back? I was dead. “Sure,” I said.

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131

He heard the lie, of course. “You owe me. I have a right to know what's

going on.”

Damn him. He knew just when to play that card. “We were right. There's a

new gang trying to establish themselves in the meth trade.” I searched my

discarded shirt and found the pack of cigarettes. “I think my CI might have

been working with them too, damn his sorry ass.” I lit the cigarette and found a

dirty coffee cup to use as an ashtray. “ And…and maybe they're trafficking in

stolen blood. We have any reports of blood banks being hit recently?”

“I thought of that. Nothing has been reported.”

I considered this bit of information. “They have to be getting it

somewhere.”

“You're assuming the donors are alive.”

“The blood still is viable, Peter. The donor had to have been alive. At least

when it was given.”

His voice sounded thick when he said, “That doesn't paint a pretty

picture.” He was right; the thought of some sicko draining people while they

were still alive was pretty awful. The fact that it still sickened Peter was a

measure of the man. “Do I want to know how you knew the blood was what you

called 'viable,' Adam?”

“Nope.” I exhaled and flicked ash into the coffee cup.

“Are you
smoking
?” he asked. You see? Like my fucking mother. I handled

him exactly as I had always handled her. I simply did not answer.

“Adam…” Christ, how could Peter's voice speaking my name prick at me

like it did? “I got the techs to clear your apartment. They let me have your