CHAPTER ONE


You can't even count on a jack handle anymore.
This one came from the spare-tire well of my rented Chevy Tahoe. A two-ton SUV like that, you'd expect something stout. Something that could take or dish out a little punishment.
This handle was junk, pot metal with an outside diameter of a half inch at best. I wanted to, I could've bent it no sweat.
But it was what I had.
All I had.
And I knew that right now, Kenny Spoon was in the cinder-block building across the way. And I'd been in Los Angeles damn near a week, and it was my first taste of solid info.
So far, I wasn't too impressed with California. It'd rained three days running, which the locals said was about right for February. Things cost a fortune, even compared to Massachusetts. And the freeways were everywhere. Half the time, they cut right through neighborhoods that would've been damn nice otherwise.
This was not one of those neighborhoods.
This neighborhood—or town, or suburb, or whatever—was Van Nuys. In a place everybody called the Valley with a sneer on their lips.
The one-story building had once been painted turquoise but was now mostly graffiti covered. It was half garage and half headquarters for a lowrider crew called Los Bajamaros. To the right from my vantage point, the HQ was jammed against I-405, which the locals called the 405 or sometimes the San Diego Freeway.
A fenced area that tied into the building was filled with sweet old cars, everything from donor chassis to show-quality lowriders with fifteen-thousand-dollar paint jobs. They were all GMs, mostly Chevys. A few were from the fifties, a few from the seventies. The rest were Impalas and Biscaynes from the sixties.
Carwise, you had to hand it to California.
You're stalling.
Yeah. I was.
Knock it off.
Yup. I opened my Tahoe's door to confirm the bing-bing-bing that meant the keys were in the ignition. It had been a tough call: Pocket the keys and fumble for them while crossing the street on my way back, maybe half-dragging Kenny Spoon, maybe with a couple of pissed-off Bajamaros in pursuit? Or leave them in the ignition and risk running out to a hole where my stolen SUV used to be?
I'd gone with the bing-bing-bing. It was quarter of five on a Sunday morning, and the neighborhood was asleep except for freeway hum.
Quit stalling.
I breathed deep three times, regripped my pot-metal tire iron, looked both ways, trotted across the road. Got a hand on the front door handle, tugged just enough to make sure the dead bolt wasn't thrown, paused, took another pair of deep breaths, pulled hard, stepped into …
… one hell of a dark room, filled with the prettiest guitar sounds you ever heard.
Man, it was dark. I had to blink like crazy to get my eyes working, even though the morning outside was gray and new, with a three-day rain just letting up.
Feeling exposed and paranoid, I half-ducked and scanned the big room.
It was obviously a former bar. Posters for Corona Beer and bikini contests and car shows had been masking-taped across a pair of good-sized windows that ran along a side wall. That accounted for the dimness.
The bar, a squared-off U whose bottom faced me, dominated. Other than that, call it a typical dude clubhouse. Hand-me-down sofas and tables that people left behind when they moved. Overflowing black plastic ashtrays, the kind you used to see everywhere but didn't anymore. Pool table, its felt stained with who knew what, two bent cues dumped atop.
Underneath it all, thirty years' worth of stale-beer stench.
I nearly missed the man on my first scan, either because he was so still or because I was rusty. Or both.
He wasn't more than eight feet away, to my right, the last place my eyes fell during the scan. He could've shot or stabbed me while I blinked and had my look around.
Although he didn't look like the shooting or stabbing type. Looked more like he had all the shooters and stabbers he needed on speed dial.
He was a boy-sized man, and the giant armchair he sat in, mint green, made him seem even smaller. His fingernails were manicured. He wore a greased pompadour straight out of 1956 and a mustache and beard trimmed as carefully as a Chinaman's in any kung fu movie. His eyes were calm, but not in a reassuring way.
We stared at each other.
"That guitar," I finally said. "Pretty."
"More than pretty," he said with no accent I could make out. "Transcendent."
"You're Lobo Soto."
"Yes."
"Any more Bajamaros here?"
"No."
"I came for Kenny Spoon."
"Yes."
"Where is he?"
"Booth Three," the little man said, nodding at a hall just to the right of the bar, the hall you'd expect to lead to bathrooms and a pay phone.
"Stand up."
He did. Moccasins, narrow chinos, short-sleeve button-down with vertical stripes.
"Turn around."
He did. He was carrying no gun.
"Move away from the chair."
He did. I stepped to it and felt around while keeping my eyes on the little man.
There was no weapon stuffed behind the chair's cushion.
"Give me your phone," I said.
He did, then watched me boot-stomp it. His eyes never changed. They never showed any anger. They were patient eyes. They measured me.
Which worried me more than a lot of brave and useless talk would have.
I gestured at him to sit.
What else was I supposed to do? On TV, the cop slugs the bad guy just hard enough to knock him out for a few minutes. Try that in real life, you either break all your knuckles or kill a man.
One song ended and another began.
"Booth Three," the little man said. And leaned back in his giant chair and closed his eyes.
I put my back to him, not liking it.
In the hall, far from what little light the poster-covered windows allowed, it was dark as hell. I eased past reeking men's and ladies' rooms, sliding my boots to avoid tripping on the random junk that covered the floor. Old desktop computers, stacks of car magazines. Like that.
What the hell is Booth Three?
As my eyes came up to speed, I saw the hallway was longer—that is, the building was deeper—than it looked from out front.
I passed a presswood door on my left. Stick-on letters read BOOTH ONE. Then there was something that surprised me: a massive pane of reinforced glass, four feet wide by four feet tall, with an intercom about shoulder height.
I squinted through the glass, saw a mattress atop an old box spring.
That's when I figured out what this place was, or used to be.
I'll never claim to be a prince. Back when I was drinking, I ended up in a lot of ugly places. Still, I can truly say I'd never been in a place like this before.
This was a jackoff parlor. Once upon a time, pre-Internet, men paid their money out front, then came down the hall and looked at a girl in a booth and told her what to do and did what they needed to do.
The realization made my skin contract. I all of a sudden wanted a shower.
Focus. Booth Three.
A few long strides took me past Booth Two. I stumbled over a stack of old pizza boxes—judging from the flies, they still held a few slices—and pulled up in front of Booth Three.
And looked through.
He looked back at me.
If not for the eyes, I wouldn't have recognized Kenny Spoon.
They were blue going on purple. Just like his mother's.
Like Eudora's.
She said they were the only feature of hers that ever was worth a damn, called them her Liz Taylor eyes. Said Kenny's were the same.
She'd been right. His were bloodshot and puffed mostly shut and mostly dead, but even from here, even by the light of a two-inch candle on his crappy nightstand, I could make out those blue-going-on-purple eyes.
I took in the rest of him.
"Hell," I said.
And shouldered into the room.


Copyright © 2014 by Steve Ulfelder