Robert Ferrigno - The wake-up

"Nothing wrong with white trash," said Cecil, coming out of the kitchen. "Elvis was white trash."

Clark sagged, his head falling forward.

"Betty B's column wasn't just an attack on who we are now; it's an attack on who we hope to become," Missy said to Clark. "It's like she's trying to ruin our future."

"Clinton was white trash, too," said Cecil.

Missy stroked Clark's face. He was growing a beard along his jaw-line, a half-inch extension of his sideburns that met at his chin, the look all the boy bands were going for. Clark was almost thirty, but he looked barely out of his teens. He said it was due to his drug cocktails, but Missy thought it was because he let her do all the worrying. Smart as he was, if it wasn't for her, they'd still be living in a cinder-block house in Riverside and percolating crystal on the kitchen range.

"I love you, babe," said Clark, his eyes fluttering.

"I love you, too. So, when are you going to kill Betty B? I want her done first."

Clark pulled away.

"It's a matter of survival," said Missy. "If we don't do something about the newspaper article, Guillermo is going to think we can be played. Then we're the ones going to get killed."

Clark snickered. "You think Guillermo reads the Gold Coast Pilot?"

"Maybe Guillermo doesn't read the Pilot, but you can just bet that someone he knows does," said Missy. "Some friend of his wife's, or maybe the man who sold Guillermo his last Porsche and wants to sell him the next one. Someone is going to tell him." She kissed him. "That's why you have to-"

"Arturo and Vlad spend half their day keeping our dealers in line and beating back freelancers. They don't need any more assignments."

"If we don't respond, Guillermo is going to think anyone can get away with-"

"Arturo and Vlad taught him a lesson last time. You think he wants a replay of that?"

Clark was interrupting her more often lately. Missy wondered if he was on some new brain scrambler, or just puffed up from all those people at the party telling him how talented he was. Not that any of them ever walked into one of their shops and bought some shorts or beach-wear. She let it pass. For now. "Clark, honey, I'm just saying this is an opportunity to remind Guillermo what happens to people who fuck with us."

"You're not worried about Guillermo," said Clark. "You're just mad because you got embarrassed in front of a bunch of yacht club snobs who don't like us anyway."

The phone rang.

"Cecil, you pick up that goddamned phone, and tell them I'm out shopping." Missy's eyes never left Clark's. "I want them dead. I want Vlad and Arturo to run the route on both of them."

"Dude gave you a full refund, Missy."

Missy snatched the paper. She practically had the column memorized. " 'Douglas Meachum, the urbane owner of Meachum Fine Arts, took pains to assure me that the mistake was an honest one, and that restitution was immediately proffered and accepted. In all fairness, the authenticity of pre-Columbian art is notoriously hard to verify, but what lingers in the ears of this columnist is the raucous bleating of Missy Riddenhauer at her soiree, telling everyone within range of her voice that she had personally selected her precious artifacts, and how knowledgeable she was about their history. Doug Meachum made an honest mistake. What's Missy's excuse?' " She threw the paper down.

"Spilt milk, babe."

"If you won't order Vlad and Arturo to kill them, I will."

Clark tried not to smile. "Come on, you know they won't take orders from you." He stood up, beckoned. "I'm going to hit the shower. You want to join me?"

Missy watched him leave. A few minutes later, she heard him singing in the shower.

"What about me?" asked Cecil.

"What about you?"

Cecil licked his lips. "Let me take care of Betty B."

"You?"

"What's the matter? You have something against a man bettering himself?"

The line in front of the Strand theater snaked down the sidewalk, a mix of stoners and surfers, freaks and fuckups, and movie buffs waiting to see the Tuesday showing of Curse of the Demon. A joint was passed slowly down the waiting line as a skateboarder rolled past the ticket booth. The Strand was fifty years old, an atomic age relic with sun-faded paint, cracked tiles, and neon marquee lights with half their tubes burned out. One screen. The theater showed second-run features daily, and classic films at midnight, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday.

Thorpe drove on-he could hardly wait until Saturday. Four more nights and Shock Waves would be the late-night feature, replacing Twenty Million Miles to Earth on the playbill, a replacement that had cost Thorpe five hundred dollars. He would have paid the manager five thousand if he had asked for it.

Downtown Huntington Beach was still going strong even at this hour, the bars and clubs rocking, the streets clogged with cruisers, the kids rubbernecking one another. Thorpe made a sharp left turn, heading inland on a two-lane road. He checked his rearview, keeping to the speed limit. There were three cars behind him at varying distances: a VW van, a Lexus with the windows blacked out, and a red Mustang with the top down. As Thorpe approached the green traffic light, he deliberately stalled his car. The Lexus was closest of the other cars, easing up right on his bumper. Thorpe started his car, popped the clutch, and stalled it again. The Lexus beeped. Thorpe started his car again as the light turned red, zipped across the intersection, narrowly avoiding a Chevy Suburban. Thorpe took the next right, quickly backed into a dark driveway, and turned off his headlights. He waited a few minutes, watched as the Lexus, the VW, and the Mustang passed through the intersection and kept going. Thorpe started the car, pleased. Old habits. Where would he be without them? A gray-white gob of bird shit splattered the windshield, a pelican dump, from the size of it, but Cecil didn't flinch. He was used to it. Lucky for him elephants couldn't fly. He turned on the wipers of the minivan, pressed the window washer. The washer motor spun, but it was out of fluid, the dry wipers smearing bird shit across the glass. Typical. He turned off the wipers, sat back, and waited.

No matter how you looked at it, Cecil was overworked and under-appreciated. He had boosted the minivan in record time-slim-jimmed the door latch, cracked the wheel lock with a breaker bar, and popped the ignition in two shakes of a lamb's tail. You think Missy would be impressed? You'd be out of your fucking mind, you thought that.

Cecil squeezed the steering wheel. The gardener's gloves were a little lame maybe, but he didn't have any of the cool surgical gloves movie badasses always wore. Cecil knew what he was doing. Gloves were gloves. He knew about cars, too. Missy would have given him a smack for boosting a minivan instead of a Hummer or a Mercedes, but those rides all had security systems and satellite monitoring units. No, if you were contemplating murder, a beat-up minivan was just what the situation called for.

He pulled his baseball cap lower, one of those expansion teams from a city no one ever heard of. Another advantage of watching so much television was that Cecil had learned how to get away with murder. Gloves, that was the first thing. Then a hat, so you couldn't be ID'd from your hair, which in Cecil's case was red and thinning. Clark kept saying he was going to work on some kind of hair-growing formula, but all he seemed to do was come up with better ways to get fucked-up. Not that Cecil was complaining. Clark and his new and improved dope kept the money train rolling. Still, the guy could spend a little time and help out his brother-in-law. Cecil's barber suggested he get a crew cut, said short hair put less stress on the scalp, but that was probably just a way to keep Cecil coming back every two weeks for a trim. Everyone was a rip-off.