Josh Stallings - Out There Bad

The combination of whisky and pain made my drive home a real bundle of joy. I lived in a small rented house in Highland Park, a Latin neighborhood in northeast LA. The yuppies tired of housing prices in Silver Lake and the Westside had starting moving into the adjoining areas. We could hear the drums of urban renewal beating, but for now our corner of LA was safe.

Coming through my door, I was knocked down by hundred and twenty-two pounds of hurling Bullmastiff. Her name was Angel and she had been my dog since her owner was killed. She was my first pet. I always thought it was hard enough to take care of myself, why would I want an animal? But the fact was, she had squirmed her way into my heart. It was good to have a warm body to come home to.

Downing five aspirins with a tall glass of water, I crawled into bed. With a snap of my finger, Angel jumped onto the bed and curled up beside me. We were both snoring moments after I shut off the light.

MEXICO CITY — AUGUST 16TH 5:23 AM

Nika looked down on Mexico City as the plane circled for a landing. Volcanoes rose up above the brown haze that smothered the sprawling metropolis. It had been over twenty-four hours since she left Moscow. In Tel Aviv, she met a man in a very nice suit who had taken her Russian passport and given her an Israeli one. The picture the agent in Moscow had taken was on the new passport, but the name was not hers. When the man in the nice suit gave her a ticket and led her to the gate, he warned her not to talk to anyone until she was met in Mexico. With a kiss on each cheek he sent her off onto the plane. The last real sleep she had gotten was in Edgar’s squat. She stayed with him for three days while the arrangements were made for her trip. The only time he tried to kiss her was just before she climbed into the employment agent’s car to leave, and that was a sweet chaste kiss. She couldn’t believe how suspicious she had been of Edgar. He was nice, and sitting alone on the plane she wished he had come with her. This was her first trip in an airplane. She tried to sleep, but every bump of turbulence sent her heart into a rapid tattoo.

Nika let out an involuntary gasp when the wheels hit the runway. Many of the other passengers applauded the landing. Taxiing to the gate, they sat for several minutes with the seat-belt light still lit. Around her, people ignored the voice on the intercom advising them to please remain seated. The door slid open and a uniformed Mexican official walked onto the plane, followed by a young soldier. Passengers cleared the aisles and let him pass. In his hand he held a form and was checking it against the seat numbers. He stopped when he got to Nika’s row, looking her over carefully. Nika knew it was too good to be true. Somehow they had found out her plans. Now she would be sent back to Russia. She had been crazy to imagine she could escape her fate. The official checked his form once more and then spoke to her. She didn’t understand a word he spoke, but when he motioned for her to follow him, she understood. She walked with her head down, eyes averted from the other passengers, ashamed that so many had witnessed her failure.

With the official in front and the soldier behind, they led her past the customs lines and through a door into a small office. The official sat behind a desk and motioned for Nika to take a seat across from him. He spoke in racing Spanish, and only when he saw her lost eyes did he switch to English. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes.” Nika was relieved they had a common language.

“Passport please.” Nika handed it over and watched as he stamped it and stapled a form to it. “This is your student visa, it will allow you to stay in Mexico until you travel norte.” Placing her passport into an envelope, he handed it to the soldier, who stood at attention behind Nika. “Welcome to Mexico, and good luck on your travels.”

“Thank you.” Nika couldn’t believe what was happening, she could barely keep herself from shrieking with joy. The soldier led her through a series of halls that traversed the airport out of the public eye. They came out onto a freight dock where a white van was waiting. A middle-aged man with a face ruined by acne scars took the envelope from the soldier and opened the back of the van, it was windowless, like a dark cave. The man pointed for Nika to get in. Something about the man and the van scared her, but she pulled up her courage, reminding herself that nothing good ever came easily. Crawling into the van, she found no seats, only stained rough woven blankets and a few dirty pillows. The slamming door almost caught her feet as she scrambled to get in.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she discovered she was not alone. Pressed up against the far wall, two eyes gleamed.

LOS ANGELES — AUGUST 16TH 7:16 AM

A huge sloppy dog kiss woke me. Angel could sleep through the end of the world, but miss breakfast by ten minutes and she broke out in a rash. I had a sick gut and a head full of regret. I felt slow and clogged from my return to drinking. My mouth was dry, swollen and tasted like gym socks. That was it I told myself, no more drinking, I was done, time to climb back up on the wagon.

I poured two cups of kibble into a bowl for Angel and lumbered into the shower. While the hot water worked on my kinked muscles, I tried to reconstruct the previous night. Anya flitting across my inner-vision, beautiful and scared. The Russians picked up Marina at my club, then later Anya and the redhead in Santa Monica. The smaller of the two thugs, the one called Victor, had as much as admitted they were running whores when he denied that they did it in Hollywood. Was the blow job in my parking lot a one-time deal as Marina told me, or was she hooking out of the club and giving the cash to Victor? Was that the new scam, place girls in strip clubs so they could troll for Johns? Why not place an ad on Craigslist?

All these questions but no solid answers. It was time to reach out to Anya and find out what the fuck was going on. Drying off, I discovered a goose egg on the back of my skull, and a dark bruise had flowered on my jaw. Gifts from Victor and the giant.

“Privet! Smart boy, you found me, but sadly I am busy. You know what to do, so do it.” At the beep, I hung up without leaving a number. I didn’t know if Anya’s calls were being monitored. I made the call from a pay phone, if they checked her missed calls it wouldn’t give me up. The less they knew about me the better.

“Walk away, boss. You don’t want to fuck with these psycho Russians,” Gregor said as we sat the next morning, drinking thick Turkish coffee in his Frogtown apartment. “The ink — barbed wire across his head — that’s gulag shit. He was down for life without parole. The skulls, they get one for every man they murder.”

“Maybe they were fronting. Half the punks with spider webs never been locked down or even heard of the Aryan Brotherhood,” I said.

“No. Russian cons will kill anyone with ink he didn’t earn. First they cut the offending skin off. Sweet, yeah?” Gregor was a young Armenian thug, a big boy, six foot and pushing 250 hard. A blanket of baby fat surrounded his face, but the rest was pure muscle. When I met him, I’d broken his nose, then I’d hired him to cover my ass in a rescue mission that went sideways. He took a blast from an AK47 that ripped him up and left scars from his chest to his left knee. He never complained. After he recuperated, I set him up with an apartment outside of the grip of the Glendale Armenian Power boys. I had Manny hire him as a day bouncer. Plenty will say they got your back, Gregor had proven it. In our world, that was better than gold.

“Anya, the dancer, she had a tattoo on her hip, like a telephone pole.”

“Same as Marina?”