Barmhärtighet

Los Angeles, 12/30/49

The job: clip a degenerate Swede ex-boxer named Goran Berglund.

Nickname: The Mountain Man, purebred dumbass unimaginative, the exact English translation of his actual name. No surprise, towhead idiot had a coma case’s imagination, could only outthink a brick if you laid it on its side.

Fighting days Goran the Mountain was a terror: long reach, anvil hands, concrete skull, never K.O.’d, almost never touched back-to-canvas over thirty-seven fights.

Post-fighting days Goran the ‘Degen still a terror: swilled rotgut, sucked electric lettuce, broke shit, wrecked shit, hurt people for money, beat folks for fun.

Word in the whisper stream, unconfirmed and still rock-solid: Goran wrecked the wrong shit, hurt forbidden folk, beat some Big Boy’s near and dear.

Details unknown, details irrelevant. The Mountain had to fall. Toppling him had fallen to me.

The order: kill that squarehead, dealer’s choice how fast, how painful.

Second order: make sure the stiff gets found, make sure all and sundry know why said body dropped. Send a message. Do it in public if at all possible. Witnesses? Evidence? Cops who might come after you resultant? Tough old world ain’t it boychik, guess you’re leaving L.A. one way or the other.

Do it cause it’s a favor for Mr. G over in Chicago. Do it cause Mr. G’s paisan Mr. C up in Beverly Hills will feed you a cold 3k as a sweetener. Do it cause Mr. C’s top button man Angie the Fountain somewhere in the shadows right over your shoulder will grease your whole fucking family before killing you for twelve looong fucking hours if you don’t. You know why.

Nobody said it: you OWE us. Nobody needed reminding: they OWN me.

Staking out The Black Emerald on Bonnie Brae in my Fraschini Monterosa, hour three, no end or Swede in sight. I was chaining Luckies with the radio on and the convertible top down, would’ve been bonehead obvious if the ‘48 Isotta hadn’t been water-in-the-desert rare Italian pageantry with right-hand drive and a price tag worth two Cadillacs. What the hell, Goran wouldn’t notice Zeus’ own thunderbolts unless one hit him. Wasn’t even impossible he’d be intrigued and want a ride, do half the job for me. My Monty was the only one in California, maybe America. Too noticeable, a Herculean ass-pain to repair, wrong-side driver seat kept me in perpetual crack-up danger and kept even the most low-down boosters perpetually salivating and I loved it anyway. Didn’t matter I hadn’t paid a dime for it, didn’t matter I ended up paying almost its full value getting it here from Milan anyway and almost ended up in Quentin in the acquisition, and that’s a story in itself. Didn’t matter cause I loved that four-wheel twelve-cylinder symbol of impracticality and you’d have to kill me twice before I’d part with it.

Goran could see me coming all he wanted. Wouldn’t change a thing.

Eighteen minutes till New Year’s Eve, twenty-four hours and change till a new decade. I was already figuring the 1950s were shit.

The mother-of-pearl .45 I swiped off a dead Dallas cop, not my kill but I hadn’t stopped the slayer either, rested on the dashboard. I was about as talented with that gun as anyone else around, with about any other gun around too, but the Lundberg hit was a pure waste of my skills, sending a surgeon to slice an orange. My skills were coincidental, my involvement mandated. If I couldn’t outshoot a blind man with blanks for bullets I’d still be here.

I had the .45 out on display for a quicker grab, no chance of a jacket snag or fumble fingers getting out to the street. Not on-paper smart, not even tonight and not even in this part of town, but not one peace officer in a hundred miles didn’t know me and not one in fifty would dare roust me over a humble pistol charge. I wasn’t untouchable but they knew I mostly wasn’t worth trying. You come after me, cop or con, Pope or President, you don’t do it lightly and you come better armed than the 82nd Airborne. Everyone in The Life knew everything I could and everything I would do, and the cops knew they weren’t any more bulletproof than anyone else.

But neither was I.

As a result by sunup, tomorrow’s ball drop latest, Goran Lundberg would be dead or I would be. Simple as that.

Why? What’d I do to get in the soup? Brother that’s another story and we ain’t got the papyrus.

The Black Emerald: long-standing bucket-of-blood serving up buckets of barely-flavored swill, long-suffering barkeeps swiping up enough blood and vomit to fill an actual bucket nightly off the sawdust. Goran fought in full view on the back ring when he was comer. Goran got gacked there on the reg in the front now that he was a goer. Shoot him where he sat, shoot him when he tried to slide, nobody gave a damn. Goran wouldn’t give a damn. Even money Goran would fucking thank me.

I didn’t want to do it. That was new.

I was starting to wonder if I even could. That should be impossible.

Only now, like just at this very moment, I’m realizing I’ve lost my taste for all this. But where do I go from there? All this, even this right now, is me. If this isn’t me then who am I?

Thoughts of how I got here, such a long way to fall. Nobody to blame but me.

Two minutes to midnight. I was bored. Benzedrine upping impatience, even trade for the edge. Maybe Goran took the Black Emerald’s back door. Worth a check.

Left the top down, left the doors unlocked. Nobody fucks with me. At least not anyone packing slim jims. Even my boss ride left the high pillow players limp. Sort of a pros and cons situation.

The Black Emerald was off the books, technically no-name. You had to know where to go, and they had to let you in.

Three fists on reinforced steel, the Emerald wasn’t keen on heist boys or any crushers dumb enough to go against their best interests. Eye-level panel slides back, eyes leveled at me. Flashback to Prohibition, good old days when vice reigned and open secrets ruled.

“Yeah?”

“Stick to the cratur.” Irish bogtrotter bullshit, a Joe-sent-me filtered through Hibernian hogwash folk lyrics. I’m playing along like I still care.

“Old code there, me old son.” Steel-plated eyes holding their steely expression. Years since I darkened this door, should’ve known better. Sigh.

“The best thing in nature? Fuck’s sake, open up.”

“Left that one behind boyo,” says the door-muffled Brogue thicker than the land of saints and scholars.

I wait, I glare, I fidget, I consider drawing down and seeing if I could make so narrow a shot.

“I’m Leland Meeks, which you should already know.” I get a blink in return. Good to see my name still does it. “Should therefore know it ain’t concern of mine if you reset your password. Let me in before I gotta huff and puff.”

Five second cogitation before the panel slides shut and the door swings open.

Plug-ugly bouncer, pure prison-pale Herring Choker probably three days from Galway, steps aside. I see the sign: NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND PERMITTED YOU WILL BE SEARCHED. The tribesman sees me see it. We both know I have several. I look a question at him to be polite. He waves me on.

You try disarming the devil you’re like to discover how sharp the pitchfork gets.

Single step into the main room speaks volumes, all discouraging: no fight at the Emerald tonight, rope-stripped boxing ring converted to a stage and sporting a Benny Goodman-style jazz band. Meaning louder, more chaotic, and more populated with amateurs and idiots than even a fight night. Wouldn’t make a huge difference, Goran was the definition of every sore thumb ever stuck out, but wouldn’t make shit any easier either.

I slip slide and shove to the bar, brace with double-bonded bourbon. Seamus behind the stick, he recognizes me from the old days. I get a hearty grin, a hail-fellow-well-met wink and a heavy pour from the mick mixmaster. Some things don’t change. I tip the old boy top dollar.

Spin around, scan the floor. Two city councilmen, a deputy D.A., assorted Hollywood heroes and harlots amid the montage of L.A. macks and murderers and monstrous mongrels, a swirling magnetized miasma between mirrored walls. I saw EVERYTHING.

I saw Goran, blonde-white hair like a neon sign.

I saw Angie the Fountain, fucker was always a step ahead, looking right back at me, making sure I did the job. He winked, more eloquent than any words: Goran won’t see the sunrise. You just might. Either way I get paid, go get laid, and bring in the new year in style.

Then I saw HER.

First time in a looong time I feel surprise.

Robin, like the bird and just as red. Hair like a fire engine, bottle-green emeralds for eyes. She didn’t see me. I didn’t want her to.

Not like we were ever a big thing. No marriage, no shack-job, not even going steady and what a fucking laugh that phrase is to someone in The Life. Someone like me. Someone, from the looks of it, still like her too.

She’s on the arm of some shark-suit card sharp, lounging and laughing and whispering little nothings in his noxious ears. I don’t know him. I still know who he is. I don’t judge her, fuck, how the hell could I? We all have our vices.

We had a fling. Wasn’t much more than that.

I wanted her: she was a live-wire pistol on a high-wire, legs and curves and a laugh like God’s own mercy.

She wanted me: I was tough and mean and untamed, meandering through life, a modern-day marauder with a cherry ride and a little charm and a chokehold on The Real. That’s what she called it, The Real. That space where life is more alive, colors coordinating into a cacophony, when you could fucking feel the world pulsating beneath you like a palpitating heart.

We were only together a month.

We were together for the kind of month only a select few ever get, a month few married couples could match over multiple decades.

She left me before I could leave her. We both knew it had to happen. It wrecked us both.

But we were both in The Life, so we knew we could move on. Them like us always did.

She still looked heart-stopping. I didn’t want her to see me.

Another bonded from Seamus, on the house. I didn’t know he poured it till it was in my hand, didn’t taste it till it burned down my throat.

Pushing and shoving my way through the crowd. Scenesters got irritated, swingers got irate, nobody said shit, no one tried stopping my steps. Half of them recognized me, Leland Meeks, shooter supreme, the rest saw my face and fucked off. I brushed by Angie the Fountain, felt the whisper of his bespoke suit, heard him whisper encouraging threats with G&T breath. Go, Lee. Get back down in the gutter where you belong, where you came from, where you ain’t never leaving. Get back down in the gutter or get way down in the grave and what the fuck is the difference?

The band quit for a short break right as I reached the Swede, sitting tall at his wobbly table. For a few glorious seconds the room went quiet. Felt like God smiling, felt like Lucifer lifting the veil. The bar-noise sort of silence felt blessed as the Sistine. The air fucking glowed.

Tapped the Mountain with my left hand. My right wrapped around the gun in my waistband. A dead man’s gun about to make another man dead in the possession of the soon to be.

Blue Nordic eyes meet my mud-brown mutt stare. A smile, a question: why-a hey there mister, who ya be? The smile was slipping before I spoke.

“Leland Meeks.”

Goran got it. Goran already knew. And he knew me. Told me he was half-honored they sent me to do the job. I didn’t have to heart to tell him otherwise.

I let him finish his beer. He toasted his friends, the band, the bar, the world. Without a word he shuffled toward the back door, but slow. No running left in him, let alone fight. I followed. Angie the Fountain grinned like buckshot into my back. I never looked. I could still feel it.

Goran went out into the night. I made one glance back. Robin caught it. I hadn’t meant for her to and I’d never wanted anything more in life. She smiled. I spun and crashed into the dark outside, burning like holy fire.

Across the Black Emerald’s backyard, vacant lot beyond. Goran on a broken busted crate, bulk freight empty of its cargo.

My gun was out. I was beside him.

He fell to his knees, love of life he probably hadn’t felt since Roosevelt’s first term ripping through him.

I thought he was praying. I still don’t know.

He was saying one word over and over again. I never knew what it was. It might’ve been mercy.

That’s how I heard it.

“You best reset your password, boyo.”

The Mountain looked up at the man. I put the gun to his temple. I looked up at the star-filled night sky and let it drop.

“Run.”

He ran.

So did I.

He wouldn't get far. Probably I wouldn't either. Didn't matter.

We ran in opposite directions. We were both going the same way.

Behind the backwards wheel of my ride, roaring away from The Black Emerald, from L.A., from The Life, from my life. Angie the Fountain stood on the sidewalk watching me as my engine screamed, hands empty. Despite the distance and speed I still saw him wink again. He'd get Goran, no doubt. He'd get me, maybe. He'd be the one who'd try anyway.

I'm out of the killing business, starting NOW. I might NOT be done killing. Who knows. This is a big country, and there are robins everywhere. Maybe I might find one I could treat better, who might treat me better. Maybe we could both make something of each other.

Meantime, I'd hang on to the .45. New life, sure. Short life, stupid life? Not if I could help it.

I had a full tank of gas. I had the wadded-up cold three-thousand of a hit fee in the glove box. Never pay the disreputable up front.

The night air was electric, the night wind howled like a hot-rodding angel. I turned up the radio loud as it went. I had a grin the size of the horizon.