Immortality Is the Suck (4 page)

Gross. I ate it all anyway. My stomach grabbed hold of it. Studied it. Cramped.

“Jesus…” And I ran for the bathroom.

* * * * *

insides to deal with whatever poison I'd inflicted on my body. One had been

that time Peter had helped me get clean.

After a few minutes, I heard Peter's stumbling footsteps in the hallway;

sounded like he was running into walls. He stopped outside the open doorway

and stared at me sitting on his toilet. “Ah, memories,” he said. And then he

melted down the wall opposite until he was sitting, legs splayed out to either

side, bottle resting on the wooden floor between them.

My bowels seemed to be taking a rest break, so I reached behind myself

and flushed the toilet.

Peter just sat there, goggling away at me, drunker than I've ever seen him.

“You look like shit, by the way,” I told him. “What the hell is wrong with

you?”

“My best friend died,” said Peter. “The motherfucking son of a bitch.”

I assumed he was referring to me. Pretty big assumption, maybe, because

I haven't been much of a friend to Peter.

“I can explain,” I said immediately.

This cracked him up. “Of course you can.” He drank some more, straight

out of the bottle, then pointed the bottle at me, which made him lose his

balance. Poor Peter was so drunk he couldn't even
sit
straight. “Nobody can

fuck up bigger than you can, Adam.
Nobody
. You managed to get a DEA agent

killed, while screwing up a homicide investigation
and
, may I add, letting me

watch you die.”

Immortality is the Suck

19

“I didn't die.”

“You asshole. You'd even lie about
that
, you fucker.”

“I didn't die,” I told him. “Somebody screwed up.”

“It's always somebody else's fault, isn't it, Adam? You lost enough blood to

float a boat. You died.” Peter tipped back the bottle and drank the last ounce or

so in there. Then he let the empty fall to the wooden floor and kind of pushed it

away. His hand scrubbed at his eyes. “And now your ghost is fucking with me.”

“You're drunk,” I said. “There's no use talking to you when you're like

this.”

“You're
dead
,” said Peter. “And there's no use telling you what a son of a

bitch you are while you're like
that
.” And he lowered his head into his hands.

“So why do you keep telling me?”

Head buried in both hands, he was making some pretty disgusting noises.

Sniffling and snotty and mumbling and he said, “Okay, maybe I've still got

some things to say. Maybe that's why you're here.”

“I told you, Peter. I need your help. They still think I'm dead, so…”

“But you never wanted to hear it, so it's as much your fault as mine…”

“I figure tomorrow morning when the ME finds my body missing and the

bloody corpse on the table there…”

Peter looked up from his hands. “Bloody corpse?”

The cramps were starting up in my stomach again and I bent over,

groaning. “Fuck, Peter, I'm dying here.”

Peter kind of crawled back up the wall, using one hand to pull himself to

his feet. He stood there, swaying, and looking down at me. “Deal with it,” he

said. “I'm going to bed. When I wake up, you'll be gone. By the way, you fucker.

I love you.”

And he staggered off down the hallway. I heard the bedroom door slam.

20

A. M. Riley

A cramp reached all the way from my anus to my throat and tried to

disembowel me. Good. I deserved it.

Immortality is the Suck

21

Chapter Four

I spent the next hour or so waiting for my body to dispose of the ill-

begotten sandwich. In between the worst moments, I mulled over the events

leading up to my supposed demise.

Like I told you, I'd been working undercover for LAPD Vice. Specifically, a

long-term assignment in tandem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and

Firearms, or ATF. I'd spent the last three years infiltrating the Outlaw

Motorcycle Gang, known as the Mongols. The Mongols were one of Los

Angeles's most powerful OMGs, running drugs and guns from LA to Phoenix to

Texas.

The operation had ended in eighty-six local arrests, with charges ranging

from illegal possession of firearms to rape and murder. I'd received a medal,

handshake from the mayor, five seconds of fame on the local news and an

urgent recommendation that I retire and move elsewhere, before the vengeful

Mongols enacted their promised vengeance.

But I was loath to leave town. For a lot of reasons, one of which was

passed out in the nearby bedroom.

My CI, and the man who had helped me infiltrate the Mongols in the first

place, a certain Leonard, a.k.a Freeway, Chavez, also had reasons to linger in

East Los, despite an OMG death sentence. Some personal, some financial. It

was the financial reasons that he and I had in common.

Freeway and I had been smuggling drugs together for three years. Of

course, it was all part of my cover. I'd never skim off the top or keep a little

something for myself. Of course not. That would be
wrong.

22

A. M. Riley

Like I said, I figured I was headed for Hell.

A few days back, Freeway had heard of a dude named Starz who was

supposed to be moving a large quantity of meth through Los Angeles. Rumor

was he'd ripped off La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, and now found himself in the

unenviable position of possessing a lot of meth and a lot of cash, with no

connections or pipeline by which to dispose of either. In Southern California

that's like a fox walking among a pack of hounds carrying a bag of scent. Dude

was desperate for someone to take the meth off his hands, transport the payola

back to a bank in Mexico, and distract La Eme long enough for him to escape

in one piece.

The fact that this Starz had such a large quantity of ice, and that there

was, purportedly, several hundred thousand in small unmarked bills out there

in search of a home was
of interest
to yours truly and my friend Freeway.

It should have been simple. I'd meet with the guy, facilitate a few

connections. Spread a little of his green here and there and, with a small

broker's fee pocketed by yours truly, he'd be well on his way through San Diego

county before the narcotics officers I'd tip off descended and took out the trash.

Given what had gone down, it seemed somebody had misrepresented the

situation. Color me surprised.

None of this explained why Peter would have been there when the meet

went down. Peter was Homicide Special. The proverbial crème de la crème of

detectives. He worked out of Parker and only on high profile or sensitive

homicide
cases.

I couldn't think of any reason Peter would have been down in the Marina

while yours truly was meeting a meth distributor.

Obviously it was a setup. But who had set up whom? And why?

I cleaned myself up a bit as I considered my next moves. I needed my bike,

my cell phone, a certain small black book. I splashed water on my face, found

Immortality is the Suck

23

Peter's comb there on the sink, and looked in the bathroom mirror for the first

time. And that's when I got a big shock. 'Cause I wasn't there.

I opened and closed the medicine cabinet door. I held things up to the

glass. The things were there, floating in the air, disembodied, but my reflection

was not.

I
was
a ghost. What the hell?

But wait. Can ghosts use the can and stink up the place in the process?

Can ghosts fuck skater boys by the Santa Monica pier? Had I imagined that? I

went into the kitchen, where I found the evidence of the mess I'd made

preparing my sandwich. I cleaned it up, thinking about anything I'd ever heard

about ghosts and it was just not adding up.

I peeked in at Peter who was still passed out on his bed. After his parting

words I was loath to wake him.

So, I prowled the condo for a few minutes like the trapped animal I was,

then I went into the living room and switched on the set while I tried to think.

And guess whose murder was being featured on the ten o'clock news? They'd

dug up some old picture of me in my blues shaking hands with the mayor and

they were going on about what a big hero I was. It was a very old picture,

needless to say. None of my contemporaries would have recognized me. They

had a picture of Starz too, looking clean-cut and wholesome in a suit and tie

and they told me that he was an agent for Drug Enforcement.

What a clusterfuck. I was up to my neck in crap. I could see that.

I grabbed Peter's landline up from the end table and dialed a number from

memory.

“Freeway, '
mano
. It's Adam. If you're watching the news now…” I was cut

off by a computerized voice. “This mailbox is full.”

I cursed and slammed the phone back into the cradle.

“LAPD has issued these photos,” said the newscaster. And then they put a

picture of one of the two “assailants” up on the screen, and I recognized the

24

A. M. Riley

corpse I'd fought with down in the morgue. He was a Richie Ortiz. A “known

associate” of the Mexican Mafia, and last known to be residing in Tijuana,

Mexico, where he was wanted for money laundering and gun running.

According to the news, there was a “citywide” investigation and they wanted

any information anyone could provide about who might have offed me and DEA

agent Armante.

Now, I'm no Rhodes scholar, but even I could see that just calling the

precinct and telling them I wasn't dead was not the way to handle things.

So, I went back into Peter's room and thunked on him a few times. “Hey,

dude. Wake up. I've got a real problem here.”

He moaned. See? How could I be a ghost if I could elicit moans from a

man who was dead drunk? I shook him and he swatted at me but he didn't

seem about to wake up. And, while sitting there, I noticed the framed

photograph on Peter's bedside table.

The picture was of me and Peter, still in our academy days. We were out

on the rifle range and he was looking down at his gun with a sheepish smile

and I had my arm slung around his shoulder, smiling at him. I had no idea

who had taken the picture, but I wondered how they could have snapped that

shot without seeing what was so obviously between us.

It made me remember things, that picture.

I jumped up from the bed. Memories are like snakes. They'll bite you on

the ass. And thinking had never been my strong suit anyway. It was time to

take action.

According to the clock on Peter's microwave, it was only 11 p.m. There

were places in Los Angeles where that was normal business hours. I searched

around the condo and quickly found the keys to Peter's other car and, exactly

where he always kept it, Peter's old service Smith & Wesson. Bullets in the

shoe box in the lower left corner of the closet.

Immortality is the Suck

25

The gun was registered to Peter and if one of its slugs showed up

anywhere it shouldn't, he'd have my head. But you didn't go where I planned

on going without a weapon.

I found a wad of bills in the cookie jar that added up to roughly fifty

bucks, which would have gotten me about five miles if Peter hadn't kept the old

beaten blue Cadillac in his garage with a full tank. As it was, I had enough to

purchase a prepaid cell phone at the nearest service station.

An old canvas windbreaker of Peter's that tugged at the shoulders and a

pair of mirrored shades and I was good to go.

I wanted my bike, but I wouldn't be recognized in this old heap. I wasn't

used to traveling in a cage, though. The old interior smelled like mildewed

upholstery, gunmetal, and the sickening pine air freshener hanging from the

radio knob. I tossed the pine tree out of the window. The wheel was overlarge

and seemed to respond ten seconds after every twist I gave it. It was like flying

a crop duster as opposed to a jet and it took me awhile just to back out of the

garage. As I headed out, the Caddy swayed and careened on the road like the

driver was drunk. Then the soft tires squealed and the tail yawed left as I

turned right onto the freeway, headed south toward my old stomping grounds

and Freeway's home in Boyle Heights.

26

A. M. Riley

Chapter Five

Boyle Heights, from the 5, looks like a pretty stretch of little ticky-tacky

boxes, sprinkled with Christmas lights. And if that's all you see when you look