Hard Bite (5 page)

"SID!" I holler again. He throws himself against the chain with all his might and moves a few feet forward into the back, far enough to grab the only thing close—her purse. It's a big red baggy affair filled with junk. Sid grabs it with both hands and half-strangled by the collar, heaves it with all his might. THOCKKK! It socks her right in the lip gloss. Her fingernails uncurl and gravity takes her down fast. The last thing to disappear is the train of blonde hair slipping off the ramp. A second of silence, then bushes ripple and branches break below. It takes her a while to bounce, crackle and jounce all the way to the bottom.

Sound carries really well way up here.

***

A whoosh of relief lets out of me. "Wasn't expecting that were we Sid?" I say as he coughs and sputters a little. The ramp retracts back inside, the doors close. I unclip Sid, and our heart rates return to normal. The van rattles shakily onto pavement and we putt-putt back down the canyon. Just a man and his monkey out for a sunny sightsee.

It should take weeks to find her broken, maggot-rotted corpse.

***

My mission is to take out as many hit-and-run drivers as possible before my life is over. Correction. Before
this
life is over. As you already know, good buddy, I'm more than fifty percent dead already. Only revenge animates this ravaged pile of flesh. There I go again, getting all philosophical. Gotta do something to keep spirits up and humor intact, right? Otherwise, the living, like Cinda, will desert me. Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone as people have been quoting since 1883 when Ella Whoever Wilcox originally said it.

"Sid. Cassette!"

His skinny black finger pokes "play" and Keni Lee Burgess revs into a great rendition of
Vigilante Man
. Sid likes his voice, too.

The view is really spectacular on the way down. Ah, Los Angeles. Where the weather is balmy and the people are cold as hell. More crazies, psychopaths and megalomaniacs per capita than… words fail. This is not to blame the nice, normal people who were born here. It's the nuts that move here. Hey, I'm talkin' about myself! It would be so nice to go America-wide with this but physical limitations mean I have to settle for cleaning up LA. There's lots of cleaning up to do. More than one lone vigilante like myself can handle. But still—the soul yearns for more.

I whistle along, taking it easy on the curves. Vigilante Cripple Man—rolling justice across Los Angeles one hit-and-run driver at a time.

By the time we reach PCH again, four o'clock rush hour is in full swing and too many vehicles are too close at a slow speed. Anybody alongside in a truck or SUV the same height as the van could look in and see Sid helping me shift. Up ahead, I can see Neptune's Net, a beachside biker hangout famous for fresh seafood. It has the kind of old-Cali, sawdust-on-the-floor ambience that promises Sid will be welcome, or at least tolerated at one of the outside picnic tables. Plus, Sid loves fresh shrimp with tangy cocktail sauce. He'll be glad to sample the catch of the day while I call Cinda and ask if she can take a cab out to meet us and chauffeur the van back.

Cinda won't be happy when I tell her where we've been. But I will tell her. The whole deal with us is telling the truth, bad or good. I accept her and what she does, no questions asked. When I showed her all my research on hit-and-runs and what I was doing, and why I was doing it, she said she respected it. I explained that knowing me made her an accessory to murder. She explained to me that knowing her made me a suspected pimp who could do prison time for living off the avails. We both thought about the implications and decided that the relationship was more important than the risks. We both come with baggage. It equals out. If I think too much about it it's scary, but life is pretty scary, dude. The quicker you realize that the better off you'll be. There are no guarantees on anything. If you can find a little comfort with someone who treats you kindly and with loving respect, you better take it, no matter how it's wrapped. You know what I'm saying?

We pull into Neptune's Net, get served by the capable staff, thank you God, and Sid settles in with a dish of fresh steamed peel 'n' eat shrimp. There are a few crusty old cruiser-riders in evidence, Viet Nam vintage, and they treat us with respect meaning they don't bat an eye at the cripple with the helper monkey scarfing shrimp at a picnic table.

My call to Cinda goes to voicemail—she must be with a customer—so there's nothing to do but kick back and watch the sea on the other side of the highway. It's a million-dollar view from here. The property this old shanty sits on must be worth a fortune. Sid gives me a toothy grin as he dips a pink shrimp in cocktail sauce. Life is good.

***

I arrive on the red-eye to LAX, ready for golden rays on my pasty face. Instead, I get June gloom as Angelenos call it—grey skies that hold the smog close over the city.

A fully furnished place was waiting for me at The Waves Corporate Housing in Marina del Rey. All-handicap access with daily maid service, front-desk staff, 24-hour security and maintenance crew a few blocks from the beach. All I had to do was roll in, plug in the laptop and I was made. Yep, made in the shade.

They sure do like cripples in LA. Door-to-door wheelchair van service from LAX to The Waves and my new corporate concierge and staff took it from there. I even had a gas fireplace in the wall and a balcony overlooking the pool for fifteen hundred a month. Try getting deal like that on the east coast. Starlets took in the sun out by the pool and soaked in the Jacuzzi by moonlight. Too bad none of it interested me.

One night I was sitting out on my balcony, late, probably past midnight. A woman was walking through the pool area which my balcony overlooked. She was headed to the underground parking, long layered brunette hair swinging with a white trench coat, the belt undone and a short skirt underneath. Her legs were long, her shoes looked high enough to hurt and she walked with loose-limbed fatigue, like she'd worked hard and the night was finally over. An oversized bag dangled from one shoulder. She could have been an actress or... she could have been something else.

She felt my eyes on her and looked up at me ten feet above. Swinging the bag off her shoulder like it was heavy, she stopped, waiting for me to speak, but I didn't. She cocked her head. "Is that a wheelchair you're sitting in?"

"If that's what it looks like, it probably is."

She smiled, slow and slightly amused. "Want me to come up?"

I was pretty sure then, that she wasn't an actress. "Okay by me," I said.

And that's how I met Cinda.

***

She drives us back to my place and I can tell by the set of her mouth that she's bothered. "You did it again," she says.

"You know what I do. Of course I did it again."

"Oh don't give me that shit. You weren't planning this. You just took off all of a sudden. While cops are all out looking." She looks askance at Sid. "Make him get in the back. He smells like a garbage can."

I ease Sid off my lap. He was pretty carefree back at Neptune's Net, dribbling shrimp juice and cocktail sauce all over himself. I hadn't bothered with napkins, but to be fair, the bikers weren't bothering either. But I don't think Cinda will accept that explanation, so I stay quiet.

"What is this now, a binge you're on?"

"No. Just opportunity knocking."

"And you didn't even bother to tell me first?"

"Do you call me up when you're going to work?"

There's a pregnant pause and she lets out a sigh. "Guess not."

While we peck at each other twilight befalls the glittering shore of Santa Monica. Ahead, the Ferris wheel at the Pier twirls in the air and a thousand lights twinkle into the distance.

"It's too beautiful a night not to talk," I try.

She turns her head and gives a sad little smile. "I think you're right. I just hate feeling like if you get picked up, I'll have no way of knowing."

"The police let people make calls don't they?"

"They trace them. I'd be nailed as an accessory."

"Tell you what. Let's set up a throwaway phone just for voicemail. If the cops trace it they can't connect it to anybody. It'll be like our safe phone for each other."

"That might be okay." She looks at the darkening sea. "Ever thought you might kill somebody who… you know… didn't do it?

"An innocent person?"

"Mmm hmm."

"Couldn't happen."

I get the arched eyebrow in response.

"Research. Fact checking. Due diligence. I'm not a psycho, I'm a vigilante. Tracking people down who need to pay for murder. It's a worthy cause."

She cogitates on that and says simply, "You don't hit women, I know that."

"Innocent people either. That's for barbarians."

"You're a strange man."

I get a kiss. It lasts until Sid barges between us, jealous monkey.

We watch the lights of the pier, go home to make love our style, and fall asleep.

***

I wake up from the dream, dripping flop sweat. But it's not a dream, it's a remembrance. It really happened. Cinda sleeps beside me, her brunette hair waving over her face, the pillow. Sid sits on his haunches at the end of the bed, watching me with eyes dark and glittering. He recognizes the dream. He can't know, but he knows anyway.

Knott's Berry Farm, California. Me, my wife and our daughter are returning from brunch at the IHOP. If you're seven years old, it's the only place to eat. Nothing else will do, according to our Heidi. I decide to skip the parking ordeal at Knott's main entrance, and use the smaller lot around the corner, on Western.

We stroll to the crosswalk, two lanes on each side, not much traffic. On the other side of the street, beyond the bright yellow entrance buildings, the Pony Express roller coaster goes by. Wheee! Loop-de-looping to the sky, the Xcelerator beckons in lurid pink. Heidi tugs on my arm. "Snot's Hairy Farm!" she shouts. My wife laughs, right behind us.

From the corner of my eye, a black BMW comes toward us. Fast. Can't he see it's a crosswalk? "GET IN FRONT OF THEM," the father in my head commands."This is really going to hurt," the self-preserving force in me answers. I lunge in front anyway, the BMW plows through, throwing my daughter onto the sidewalk, leaving my wife unharmed. I'm caught on the hood. Tires smoking, the Beemer carries me down the block until he gets the bright idea to slam on the brakes. I hit the pavement, plop, and he guns over top of me, shattering my neck, crushing my left arm and feet, and squashing my large intestine to mush. I curl in the street, breathing the white-smoke exhaust from a fishtail getaway .

My wife and child lie together on the sidewalk as people run to help, a dozen cell phones dialing 911. Too late. My wife holds our child as she slips away. On the sidewalk. Snot's Hairy Farm. Under the smiling California sun as riders scream with delight. My Heidi slips away.

The dream fades as Cinda's pager beeps on the bedside table. Sid grabs it and hands it to her.

"It's a regular," she yawns. "He's worth two hundred, I better go."

Hurtling back down the freeway, Doug picks his cell phone up on the first blip. It's Claire, her voice a tinny rasp coming through the tiny speakerphone. "Coroner's ready to autopsy Hector Stamos and Juan Doe."

"I'm about twenty minutes away." Ahead, traffic comes to a standstill and the nearest off-ramp that could have saved him whizzes by. "Scratch that. I
was
twenty minutes away. I'll be there as soon as the traffic clears."

"Don't worry, I'll give you a full narrative when you make it."

Doug flips on the MP3 with Miles Davis and John Coltrane
Kind of Blue
. Music so chill it put nervous adrenaline in the deep freeze. Good music for refection. His mind drifts over images of the past...

Unlike a lot of law-enforcement types, Doug never wanted to be anything but an officer of the law. The Sheriff's Department is the natural segue for lots of wannabe firefighters, and they see it as a comedown. For every thousand guys who want a spot fighting fire there is one job in the county. A thousand to one odds.

Back when Doug was a toddler, a big uniformed man picked him up in wraparound arms and gave him a drink of juice in a squad car. Doug was squatting with his mom in a shooting gallery flophouse along with other heroin addicts. He'd been without a meal for days and likely would have died of neglect had the place not gone down in a bust. The big policeman took him to a place with food, toys and a bed. A place where people smelled nice and spoke kindly.