Immortality Is the Suck (6 page)

holding myself back until his head and shoulders emerged, and then it was

just a matter of getting my arm around his neck, my other hand holding both

of his wrists firmly, one leg catching and hooking his right foot back, and then

all of my two hundred plus pounds were on top of Freeway there in the sand

and Zoysia grass.

“
Petiso de mierd
,
you
set me up?” I said into Freeway's ear. It was a

hypothetical question, really, as I had his face shoved into the ground and I

don't think he could open his mouth to answer.

He spat grass and dirt when I jerked him to sitting, my arm still around

his neck. “Snake,
usted me hizo mear
,” he croaked.

I kissed the top of his head, which increased his terror all the more. “You

better start talking,
pinche
.” I smelled the skin behind his ear and tightened my

hold around his neck. His fingers went to my arm as if he could claw himself

free.

“I didn't know, Snake. I swear on my mother. B-B-Betsy she said she

scored ice from the dude right there on the boardwalk.”

Immortality is the Suck

33

“Betsy?” I cast around in my memory, keeping my grip as Freeway dug in

his heels and tried to leverage his body out of my arms. “She that Goth chick

down on Speedway?”

Freeway made an abortive attempt at escape and I hauled him sideways

and to the ground again, allowing the whole of my weight to rest on him. He

squeaked and squirmed like a landed salmon. “Freeway,
mi usted hizo palo
,” I

said. “Do you want to make me hard?”

“
No se
,” he whispered, still squirming.

“We're going for a ride,” I said. I brought him to his feet and, holding his

arms behind him, pushed him, stumbling and resistant to the Cadillac. “We're

going to go talk to Betsy.”

When I shoved him into the backseat and stood over him, he seemed to go

limp. “I didn't know,” he said again. “I thought he was legit, man. Merde, son of

a bitch, fucking cops…” he spat.

There were dirt and grass stains on his shirt, probably from being thrown

to the ground just then. But Freeway looked scruffy nonetheless. He was

usually a careful man. Hair just so, white T-shirt with the Mongol crest

immaculate. He wore those dark blue topstitched baggy jeans so popular with

his crowd and generally kept them clean and creased. I had been treated to the

sight of Freeway, thick hair in pin curls and in his shorts, ironing those jeans,

more than once.

Tonight, though, he wore shitty old worn jeans. A hole in the knee with

dried blood around the edges. His shirt stank of fear and his hair was a

lumpish mess. “What the hell is going on, Freeway?”

“They'll kill me next.”

I grabbed his shirt collar and his eyes went wide and shocky as he stared

at me. “
No me importa dos cojones
,” I growled. And, I mean “growled” literally.

My voice sounded fucking strange.

34

A. M. Riley

Freeway's mouth moved, saliva gathering at the corners, and he wet his

lips. “
Sí, hermano, sí
. I will tell you.”

I released his shirt. My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head for

another second. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, Betsy, she met up with a dude who said he could make us all some

extra money. She thought he was talking a few grams, you know? Then, I

talked to him and I saw what he had at the warehouse.”

“Wait. You'd already met with Starz?”

Freeway's gaze darted to me and away, pupils bouncing like black rubber

balls. “That was a lot of ice, Snake. I…I thought, you know…”

“You were going to skim the stash because you figured he'd get busted

halfway to Baja anyway and never notice.” Fuck, I'd taught the little weasel too

well. “You should have told me.”

“You been,
el loco, 'mano
. Strange. I wasn't sure…”

Okay, here's a little aside as he had brought it up. There were some things

happening in my head just before our story opens. Stupid things. Things that

girly girls and old men think about. Blame it on the damned NA meetings. And,

of course, the bust had done my head in. After all, the Mongols had been like a

family to me. Albeit a raping, murdering, thieving family. So ever since then, I'd

been having thoughts, and they'd been messing me up.

Some of those thoughts had been about Peter. This was why I'd kind of

been avoiding him lately.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Save the psychoanalysis for Dr.

Phil.

“Snake, we was set up by La Eme, it's so fucking obvious. Fuck, little

Ruben finds out I'm still in town and on his turf, he'll won't just kill
me
, 'mano.

He'll kill my mama. He'll kill my cousins. He'll kill my fucking cat.”

“Little Ruben” a.k.a Ruben Cavaso, Jr., was the son of the Mongols'

president, the now incarcerated Ruben Cavaso, Sr. If I recalled the hierarchy

Immortality is the Suck

35

correctly, he would be the new Ssergeant at Arms for the Mongols, since

Freeway was marked for death.

Things were a little clearer now. “How long you been hiding out?”

“Betsy called last night, said a bust happened in the Marina. An hour later

I get a text '86.'”

"86" was the Mongol code for “go into hiding.” Don't wear colors, avoid the

street, and if that wasn't possible, avoid cops. It meant something big had

happened directly affecting the Mongol MC.

“So, I called my old lady and she says that cop what infiltrated the Boyle

Heights chapter is dead. She says I should go to Canada, or even Alaska. She

says she don't want to talk to me no more, the bitch.”

Freeway and his “old lady” were actually divorced, a fact he managed to

forget frequently until another restraining order would remind him.

“You say Betsy told you what happened in the Marina? So what do you

think, maybe your girlfriend had her own agenda too?”

“No, my lady loves me, man. She'd never do nothing without telling me. It

was La Eme, man.”

“Call her,” I commanded.

He looked startled. “What?”

I dug out the prepaid and handed it to him. And that's when the black-

and-white rounded the corner at the end of the street. They recognized the blue

Caddy immediately, and a loop of light illuminated the backseat. Goddammit. If

I were the uniformed officer now pronouncing instructions over the car's

speaker, I'd figured I'd just busted a buy.

“You go east, I'll go west,” I said to Freeway. “Meet me back here in an

hour or I'll have your ass.”

Freeway slid across the seat, threw open the door, and practically fell into

the road, feet already moving. Then he veered east, as I had instructed and,

white soles of his sneakers flashing, took off across Hollenbeck. I hopped over

36

A. M. Riley

the hood of the Caddy and through a set of bushes and across a front yard,

heading west. The cruiser emitted another
bloop
of sound and then I could

hear the distinct crunch of pavement and grit beneath running boots, heading

away, toward Freeway.

I glanced back as I ran and saw Freeway make for a low fence, put a hand

on it, and hurdle it gracefully, one uniformed cop in pursuit behind him.

Nobody seemed to be following me and I got to the back fence of the house

whose driveway I'd run up, aware again of my body responding in a way it

hadn't since before the corps. I clambered a couple feet and jumped the six-foot

fence easily, landing in a single entrance cul de sac. And then a cruiser pulled

into my path at the mouth of the road. Fuck, the partner had circled in the

black-and-white and cut me off. I looked behind me and realized that I'd just

jumped into a trap. He was already out of the car, holster open and hand on

the butt of his gun. So I stopped dead, hands in the air. “I'm a police officer,” I

announced, without thinking.

He didn't even blink. They must hear that a lot. “Identification?” he said.

Oh. Yeah. “I forgot it,” I said, feeling as lame as I sounded. I saw the shift

in his attitude. The increased readiness. My heart sank. How could I explain

any of this without making it known that Peter had kept my undead state a

secret?

I followed his instructions and stood before one of his headlights, my

hands on the hood of the car, while he patted me down finding, of course, the

Smith & Wesson with a particularly fierce joy.

“I can explain,” I said, as he emptied the chambers and placed the gun

about two feet before me on the hood of the car. “Okay, I'm not a cop, but I'm a

CI,” I said. “I have a license for that, but it's with my ID.”

Watching me, he called in the information. Then he stood and waited for

them to check for any local reports of a “6 feet 4 Hispanic male, about forty,

muscular build, seen in the Hollenbeck Park area.” I'm actually Italian by

descent, but black hair and mocha skin in Los Angeles always reads as

Immortality is the Suck

37

Hispanic, whether you're Iranian, Indian, or just have a great tan. The cop

said, “So tell me why you and your friend ran.”

“Because look where the fuck we
are
, man. Wouldn't you run?”

Dispatch reported something back to him and I knew by the way he

looked at me, and the code he enunciated into the hand mike, that suspects

somewhere matched my description. Hell, half of Boyle Heights would. There'd

be another unit here any minute.

What I did next was just plain stupid.

I ran. Scooped the gun up off the hood of the car, and ran.

Something about near death did a body good. I ran like a veritable

cheetah, got to the fence I'd come over, jumped it in ONE JUMP and pretty

soon I was rounding the corner, keys out of my pocket, and leaping into the

Cadillac before any officers had yet to appear in my rearview mirror. I peeled

out.

Up on the freeway, tires screaming, I could hear sirens everywhere. No

idea where anyone was coming from, so I just kept heading north, took the 10

interchange, exited, circled under, up on the 110. The East LA interchange is a

knot of freeways and interlapping neighborhoods. All around me I could hear

sirens, see the scanning lights from helicopters.

I pulled off the freeway below Mount Washington and pushed the Caddy

up hairpin turns till I got to the top where I knew a house, half pitched off the

cliff and former home to a Mongol soldier, currently stood empty. The gate gave

way to the grille of the Caddy, and I parked the car under a tree laden with

bougainvillea. Then I ran around the foot-wide space next to the home until I

could perch my ass on the narrow garden wall in back. Pele and his old lady

and I used to hang out and watch the fireworks over Dodger Stadium from

here. I sat and watched the LAPD try to locate me.

A couple of hours passed. I can be patient when it's necessary. Like, when

I'm being hunted. After a while, I could see the place settling down, helicopters

38

A. M. Riley

circling back toward more immediate issues on the freeways, and unis sent off

to more urgent calls.

As I backed the Caddy out, broken bougainvillea and jasmine branches

fell from it, their odor so fragrant it sickened me and I had to stop the car to

clear them away. Weird. Then I circled the back streets for half an hour or so. I

sent two “call me” text messages to Freeway, but he didn't respond.

Like a skulking shark, I cruised back and forth toward the park, and then

I parked the car three blocks away and snuck back down to Hollenbeck. The

moon had risen and sat high and full at three o'clock, so I figured we were

rolling around three hours and if Freeway hadn't been arrested, he should be

waiting for me inside.

The first clue that something was wrong was the door, unlocked and ajar.

The second was the distinct smell of blood. Do you want to hear how the smell

made my mouth water? No? Fine then, I won't tell you.

I pulled out the Smith & Wesson, no more useful than a paperweight

without the bullets, but it could give me the second I'd need to jump back if

there was someone waiting on the other side of the door. I slid around the door

frame and into the room. The place had that absolute silence that seems to

surround the dead and sure enough, on the floor by a workbench, there lay a

body.

My plans to beat the truth out of Leonard Chavez, a.k.a Freeway, had

been circumvented by his untimely murder.

I scanned the room quickly, but I already knew I was alone with Freeway's

corpse. That same sense that allowed me to smell blood, to know he was dead,