A Better Goodbye Page 11

  Maybe a hundred people—men, women, even children—were gathered around the wire-enclosed fighting ring where a black dog and a red one were chewing each other up. Judging by their gore-covered heads and chests, the dogs had been at it for a while, and it didn’t look like there was any quit in either of them. Some of these fuckers would fight for hours, forty-five pounds of muscle and bone never making a sound while they sent arcs of blood into the air. It was like they were out to prove they were better than the people who bet hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on them and laughed at their pain when they won, cursed their weakness when they lost.

  The red dog was down now, his chest torn open so wide it looked like you could reach in and pull out his heart. But even with his blood spilling onto the ring’s industrial carpet, he refused to give up his hold on the black dog’s rear leg. The black dog fought back by chewing on the red one’s head, finally locking on the bone above the eye. The crowd, juiced by the sight of pain and the prospect of money changing hands, got louder, drowning out the noise of combat. But DuPree had watched enough of these fights up close to know the sound the black dog was making, like chewing on a knucklebone.

  He stood at the rear of the crowd for a moment longer and then moved on. He hadn’t come for entertainment, and if he had, he was in the wrong place. Too many gang kids were scattered around what was once a garage or a chop shop. Maybe they were promoting the fights. Or maybe it was their fathers, the veteranos who had more time for this kind of shit.

  One of the gang kids spotted DuPree and nudged a buddy, the two of them giving him a look that said they’d blow his black ass away if they didn’t have dogs to root for. For L.A. Mexicans, it was a superiority thing that went back to the fifties, when a black gang from Compton traveled to the east side to fight and got carved up by switchblade pachucos who ambushed them from the rooftops. The brothers ran, and the spics were still bragging about it, especially the old fuckers who dated back to the Sixth Street and White Fence gangs. DuPree had heard it all in prison. He didn’t need to renew the discussion with a couple of assholes whose great-grandfathers might have been there that night.

  So he kept moving, not too fast, not too slow, sending a message to anyone who noticed that he wasn’t someone to be fucked with. Wasn’t here to fight, wasn’t here to buy chronic or coke or roofies. This was a business trip. The only other people he saw with a similar demeanor were two middle-aged women at a tired wooden stand against one wall, selling beer and Pepsi, grilling beef and chicken, and tossing around tortillas that looked handmade. It was the lone good smell in the pit-bull funk.

  When he was in front of the stand, one of the women looked up and said, “DuPree?”

  “You see any other brothers in here?” he asked.

  The woman was short and thick, wearing jeans and a gray Old Navy sweatshirt. Her hairline dipped almost to eyebrows that needed weeding, the roundness of her face was undone by a double chin, and there was a gap between her two front teeth. All that and she wasn’t long on personality, either. She didn’t answer DuPree, didn’t smile at him, didn’t do anything except wipe her hands on a towel and mutter a few words in Spanish to the other woman. Then she looked back at DuPree.

  “You got the money?” she asked.

  He hated the lazy menace in her Spanglish accent. “You got the dog?” he said.

  “You don’t trust me?” The possibility made her smile.

  “I don’t even know who you are. I assume you’re Ynez, but you could be anybody.”

  “I tell you I’m Ynez, that make you feel better?”

  “It’s a start. But I still want to see the dog.”

  Leaving his words hanging in the air, Ynez fished a box of Kools out of her jeans, shook one loose, parked it in a corner of her mouth, and fired it up with a Zippo. Not until the Kools were back in her pocket did she let DuPree know she had heard him. She gestured with her head that he should follow, and started walking.

  DuPree, coming up behind her wide ass, resisted the urge to ask if they served pit-bull tacos. A question like that, she might get all righteous on him. Besides, he already had a damn good idea what happened out back, where they kept the dogs that were getting ready to fight and killed the ones that came out of fights too ruined to go on living. They doused the poor fuckers with gasoline and set them on fire. DuPree had already had enough stink for one night.

  Ynez stepped through a door next to an unlit window at the rear of the garage. A fluorescent light went on overhead as DuPree followed her into what turned out to be a bare-bones office. Just a dented metal desk with no paperwork on it, a cheap rolling chair, and an old-fashioned girlie calendar, not even a nude, like it wasn’t 2003 yet at the transmission shop that had sent it out.

  “The dog’s in here?” DuPree asked, suspicious.

  “Close the door,” Ynez said.

  He wanted to beat this bitch until she answered his fucking question. But this was her turf, and he hadn’t forgotten about her homeboys out front. He knew she hadn’t either. Better to close the door and keep an eye on her.

  She flicked the ash from her cigarette and stuck it back in her mouth before she stepped behind the desk. That was when DuPree heard a dog bark. Ynez bent at the waist and started pulling on something. DuPree heard scraping on the concrete floor to go along with the barking, and then he saw a wooden crate come into view. Inside, looking like it was searching for a way out, was a white pit bull.

  Ynez jerked a thumb back at DuPree and said, “This man want to be your new daddy, Blanco.”

  “He’s some kind of champion, right?” DuPree said.

  “Kicked ass every time he fought. Shit, I made mucho dinero with this bad boy.”

  “You gonna take him out of that thing? It’s not like he’s going to chew my ass up, is he?”

  “You scare, maybe you not the right daddy for him.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Ynez opened the hatch at one end of the cage, reached inside, and came back out with a firm grip on the dog’s collar.

  Goddamn, DuPree thought, Blanco is one ugly motherfucker. His face was wreathed in wrinkles, and the rims of his eyes were the same inflamed pink as the tongue that dangled from his mouth like a dishrag. It looked like somebody had trimmed his ears with garden shears and left them all ragged and nasty. And there were scars on his head and neck, and scars upon the scars.

  “You sure he never lost?” DuPree asked.

  “Shit, don’t you know nothing?” Ynez said. “A pit gets scarred up like that, it means he never let no dog get on top of him.”

  She took her hand from the dog’s collar, and for a moment the dog seemed content to stay beside her. Then she picked him up, turned him around, placed her hands on his haunches, and shoved him toward DuPree, who wondered if he could get his Glock out in time to shoot it before it did much damage—and shoot Ynez too. But the dog was smiling and his stump of a tail was wagging as he made his way toward DuPree with a thick-chested swagger.

  “Moves like Mike Tyson,” DuPree said.

  Ynez, busy lighting a fresh smoke off her old one, arched a brow in agreement.

  DuPree dropped to one knee and petted Blanco, tentatively at first, and then, once he was sure the dog wasn’t going to tear his hand off, with more enthusiasm. The dog’s smile got wider. “Well, shit,” DuPree said, “look at your happy ass.”

  “Five hundred,” Ynez said.

  DuPree looked up at her, the dog forgotten. “Artie said a hundred fifty.”

  The woman’s hairy brows slammed together indignantly. “Fuck you talkin’ about? For a champion?”

  “You said yourself there’s no more fights in him. He’s just a tired old motherfucker wants to curl up by my feet.”

  “He can still make babies.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who tell you that?”

  “Artie.”

  “That lying motherfucker.”

  “Where’s his babies? They out there fighting n
ow?”

  Ynez glared through the smoke from her cigarette.

  “So,” DuPree said, standing to make sure she knew just how much bigger he was than her, “a hundred and fifty?”

  “Four hundred,” she said.

  “A hundred and fifty.”

  “I don’t got to sell him, you know. Maybe I keep him for my own.”

  “Bullshit. All you’re going to do is kill him.”

  “Bullshit on you, pendejo. I love that fucking dog.” Ynez dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the toe of her cut-rate sneaker. “Three hundred.”

  From beyond the closed door, DuPree could hear the crowd getting loud. The fight must have been heating up; one of the pits might even be dying. Blanco growled and started toward the door, probably remembering the urge that had been built into him by all those hours on a treadmill, all those hours learning to kill cats and dogs, all those hours in the ring when the pain paid off in adulation. DuPree strained to keep the dog where he was. Motherfucker was as strong as he was ugly.

  “In a minute, man,” DuPree told the dog. Then he looked at Ynez. “You got a leash to go with his collar?”

  “Around here someplace, yeah,” she said. “But we ain’t made a deal.”

  “Just give me the damn leash,” DuPree said.

  Muttering and frowning, Ynez rummaged through one desk drawer after another until she found it. “See?” she said.

  He snatched the leash from her hand and examined it. “It’ll do,” he said. When he looked up again, Ynez was standing in front of the door, blocking the way out. She was holding a knife.

  “I think he cost five hundred after all,” she said.

  “Yeah, I can see how you would,” DuPree said.

  He reached over and pulled Blanco’s wooden carrier toward him. Then he used his grip on the dog’s collar to maneuver him toward the crate, expecting a struggle, but Blanco went in without a fuss.

  DuPree lowered the hatch, secured it, and stood again. “Five hundred, huh?” he said. He started to reach in the right pocket of his leather jacket, then stopped. “Be cool now,” he said. “I got money in here, not a gun, okay?” Ynez nodded and clutched her knife a little tighter while DuPree carefully extracted a wad of bills. Shifting it to his left hand and making sure to put it on display for her, he started peeling off Franklins. “One, two—”

  Ynez was leaning forward to get a closer look when DuPree hit her with a short right uppercut that slammed her teeth together hard enough to crack them. If she wasn’t out on contact, she was after she flew backward, the knife falling from her hand and her head bouncing off the door with a concussive thud that made Blanco bark.

  Good thing the crowd was still screaming for doggie blood. They hadn’t heard a thing, and they weren’t going to notice DuPree getting the fuck out of there either, as long as he moved fast. He’d have to make this right with Artie Franco, of course, tell him about the knife and the five-hundred-dollar bullshit, but that was for later.

  DuPree flicked off the overhead light and pulled Ynez away from the door. He liked the way the bitch had slid down it like a fucking bird dropping. He liked the idea that he had a pet even better. He opened the door a crack and checked outside to make sure all the noise meant the crowd was still looking the other way. There was a steak bone in the car, and he didn’t want to make his man Blanco wait for it any longer.

  12

  A goddamned jack shack, Nick kept thinking on the drive over that first day. Of all the places he thought he’d never work, this had to be number one. Amazing, the things you do when money is tight. But he told himself the job was just for a couple of months—and then he found himself smiling at the thought of sitting around with the women he’d been hired to protect. Hell, how tough could that be?

  The tough part looked like it would be finding a parking place. It was almost ten-thirty when he finally ignored a sign that said he needed a special sticker and squeezed his pickup between a new Lexus SUV and one of those little Benzes. That’s the kind of neighborhood it was, people living in high-rises that weren’t quite as fancy as the ones on Wilshire but still driving cars that made them look like money. They would probably think Nick was working on a nearby renovation project when they saw what he was leaving on the street. That was fine with him. He just didn’t want any tickets. Didn’t want any record that he was in the neighborhood either.

  He walked a block and a half to the address Scott Crandall had given him, wondering how long the remaining duplexes and single-family homes would survive before they were torn down for more high-rises. The place where Crandall did business looked new and exclusive: ten stories, circular drive, lots of ferns and plants that flowered even in winter, and glass double doors that wouldn’t open until Nick found the intercom and got whoever was waiting upstairs to buzz him in.

  He took the elevator to the eighth floor, exited and turned left, then saw the faux-gold apartment numbers on the wall and went the other way. Eight-twenty-four was a corner apartment. Before he could press the doorbell, a guy burst out of the apartment across the hall to confront him.

  “Tell that bitch Ling to leave Eddie alone,” the guy said, anger in his voice but tears in his eyes.

  “Ling?” Nick asked. “Male or female?”

  “You think you’re funny?”

  “I’m asking a question, that’s all.”

  “Female, she’s a female, the little twat,” the guy said. “Like there isn’t a world full of straight men for her to sink her claws into.” He brushed at the tears that were starting to spill down his cheeks. “Just tell Ling I suck cock better than she does, and Eddie knows it.”

  He spun on his heel and went back through his door as fast as he’d come out of it.

  Nick was wondering what the hell that had been about when the door to 824 opened and a woman peeked out at him, her eyes heavy with mascara.

  “Nick?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hurry up, get in here.”

  Nick shrugged and stepped inside. The woman closed the door so quickly that it clipped his heel. The light in the entryway was dim, but up ahead it looked like the late morning sun was doing its job.

  “What was all that about?” Nick asked.

  “Not here,” the woman said. “Come on.”

  She kept her distance as she led him into the apartment. Nick guessed she was twenty-five or maybe a little older if she scraped off her makeup. Her hair was dyed strawberry blonde, and he thought it looked good on her even if it did come out of a bottle. She was wearing something he would have called a robe if it wasn’t black silk, frilled with lace, and left unbuttoned to reveal tits so perfect he didn’t want to know if they were fake. He couldn’t help staring, and when she caught him, she gave him a frown that must have poleaxed unwanted admirers in settings where the play wasn’t for pay.

  There were Japanese dividers up in the living room, and from the other side of them, a second woman’s voice could be heard: “One-sixty for a half-hour, two hundred for the hour . . . Just me and my girlfriend in a high-rise, very luxurious . . . That’s right, completely nude.”

  She was hanging up when Nick walked around the divider and saw her sitting on a tired sofa, staring at him blankly, the outline of her nipples obvious under her red teddy. Good luck guessing what nationality she was. Maybe Asian, maybe Latin, maybe something he’d never heard of—anything was possible in L.A. All Nick knew was that she was so exotically beautiful she probably could turn that gay guy straight.

  “Are you Ling?” he asked.

  She laughed. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, there was this guy out in the hall—”

  “Neal,” said the woman who had met him at the door, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did, because the woman on the sofa laughed again.

  “That’s not Ling, incidentally,” the first woman told Nick. “She’s Kianna. I’m Sierra.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding, trying to file the na
mes in his memory. “Does somebody named Ling work here?”

  “Sometimes she does,” Kianna said, ignoring one of the two phones on the teak coffee table as it rang. “When she’s not, like, stoned or crashing her car or begging Mommy and Daddy in the Palisades for more money.”

  “Shut up, Kianna,” Sierra said.

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s not anybody’s business but ours, okay?”

  “Whatever,” Kianna said, and picked up the phone.

  Her conversation became background music as Nick turned his attention to Sierra. It was obvious she was the one in charge, and that she liked it that way.

  “I guess Scott told you your job,” she said.

  “Yeah, make sure you and her”—Nick nodded at Kianna—“don’t have any problems.”

  “But no rough stuff. Unless things get really scary.”

  “I’m not here to hurt anybody.”

  “You better not be. The last thing we need is you beating up some guy or whatever when he just needs to be put on the elevator. We don’t want the neighbors calling the cops. That would be fucked.”

  “You’re not worried about what’s-his-name out there?”

  “Neal? No way. Eddie would have a shit fit. Just be cool, all right?”

  Nick nodded. No sense in speaking to someone who wasn’t interested in hearing the sound of his voice.

  “You’ll be opening up mornings,” Sierra said. “I’ll give you the key before I take off today. Appointments start at eleven, and the girls should show up a half-hour before so they can book appointments for lunch. That means you’ve got to be here by ten-fifteen. Not like today, in other words.”

  “I didn’t think parking would—”

  “I’m not saying girls won’t be late. Some of them, I swear to God, you’re lucky if they get here at all.”