Charlie Huston: Sleepless

Park watched a crowd of refugees gathering at a Red Cross truck. Most of them had been burned out of the canyons between the Ventura Freeway and the coast, flushed from the chaparral as far north as Mugu Lagoon.

Looking at the lost and unmoored, his mind drifted.

“The only thing I ever heard of really working other than Dreamer is maybe Pentosan. But the molecule is too big to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. So they have to install a shunt to administer it.”

He remembered the doctor who had described the procedure to him and Rose.

Basically we drill a hole in your skull and drive a bolt through it.

Rose had declined. Rather, Rose had said, No fucking way in hell.

Park shook his head.

“Anyway, all the Pentosan really does is keep you alive. You’re still sleepless, still in pain. Some sleepless have been given massive doses of Quina -crine and recovered. Briefly. Then they get worse than before. Palsies. Liver failure.”

He shrugged again.

“Valium, stuff like that, mostly it’s people grabbing at whatever makes them feel better for an hour or two.”

Hounds was tapping the brakes, slowing as they approached the line of cars before the Los Angeles River checkpoint.

“How you know all that shit?”

Again Park shrugged.

“I sell drugs.”

“Shit.”

Hounds wiped sweat from his forehead.

“My fucking mother-in-law, she’s with us. Sleepless for a couple months now. Bitch is getting bad. Fucking insufferable. Stumbling around all fucking hours. Talking shit all the time. Freaking out the kids. Why’s Grandma calling me Billy, Daddy? Try explaining to a kid, Well, honey, it’s cuz Granny’s thalamus is being eaten away by misfolded proteins and she’s having waking dreams that are more like fucking nightmares and she doesn’t know where the hell she is and she thinks you’re her son who was actually a miscarriage she had in high school when she was fifteen. I could give her ten Valium and a bottle of Zinfandel and she’d chill out; I’d fucking kiss you that worked.”

Park didn’t say anything.

Hounds held out his hand.

“Fuck it, give me the fucking things.”

His partner passed him the bottle of Valium.

“Yeah, you should give it a try. Got nothing to lose.”

Hounds pocketed the pills.

Park looked away, and Hounds caught it in the rearview.

“What the fuck? This a problem for you, asshole?”

Park didn’t say anything, just watched the crowd around the Red Cross truck start to roil as people realized there weren’t enough bags of rice to go around.

Hounds drove.

“Worst can happen to the old lady is she can die.”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Fucking real worst thing is that she could live another six months. Jesus. I get it, I go sleepless, I’m eating the bullet. Soon as I know it’s for real, I’m out. My wife’s mom, she gave us the money to put the down on our first place. Found out her daughter was marrying a black guy, she started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I mean, that was bullshit, but I appreciated the thought. Now? Watching that, watching someone rot in front of you? I thought I could get my wife to go along, I’d put the bullet in her brain. And swear to God, she’d fucking love me for it. Aw, this fucking shit, what now?”

A SWAT in full body armor, visored Kevlar helmet, a belt of 5.56-mm draped over his shoulder feeding the M249 Squad Auto in his arms, waved them to the side.

Hounds stuck his head out the window.

“What the fuck? We got a perp in here.”

The SWAT walked over, shifting the machine gun’s butt to his hip and pulling off his helmet.

“Easy, man, just trying to cut you through the line. Roll up here on the side.”

He pointed at the empty traffic lane, bordered by spools of razor wire, kept clear for military and emergency traffic.

Hounds nodded.

“Thanks, G, my bad with the attitude. Just someone up the chain put something in my captain’s ass and we spent the day tracking down some fucking dealer.”

The SWAT set his helmet on the roof of the car, looked in the back at Park.

“Dreamer?”

Hounds grunted.

“Right, you’d think that, make us roll for this shit when there’s real police work to do. Fucking recreationals is what he’s selling.”

The SWAT ran a hand over the top of his crew cut, a fine spray of sweat getting caught in the halogen glow of the generator-driven spots lighting the checkpoint.

“Any ups? I’m about to fall over here.”

Kleiner showed the remaining bottle and Baggie.

“Demerol and X.”

The SWAT stuck out his hand.

“Hit me with a couple tabs of X. Might keep me from shooting some of these fucking spics.”

Kleiner poured some pills into the outstretched hand.

“What’s the go-down?”

The SWAT shook two of the pills into his mouth and started to chew, tucking the others into a pouch on his tac belt.

“Avenues are burying one of their warlords. Guy started his Impala the other day and it blew up under him. Fucking Cyprus Park psychos. Anyway, funeral cortege is gonna roll at midnight tonight, and they want to run it right through Cyprus Park turf and over to Forest Lawn. Send some kind of I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck message.”

Hounds pointed east.

“Fuck that. Tell them no fucking way. Blockade the street.”

The SWAT nodded.

“Where you out of?”

Hounds took off his sunglasses.

“West Bureau, Hollywood Community. Something to say?”

The SWAT held up a hand.

“Nothing to say, police is police. But we got a treaty on with Avenues right now. They’re doing neighborhood enforcement east of San Fernando. All it really means is we can hit their turf without worrying too much about taking fire. But we come down on them about how they bury their dead? Next thing you know, cop can’t come out from behind the wire without a sniper taking potshots, getting shrapneled by a garbage can IED.”

Hounds put his shades back on.

“Yeah, I get it. Keep some of the scumbags on our side while we deal with the worse scumbags.”

The SWAT picked up his helmet.

“Hey, that’s a nice way of looking at it, but a little optimistic from where I am.”

He put on his helmet and pointed at the pedestrian bridge that crossed Los Feliz Boulevard where it jumped over the bone-dry bed of the Los Angeles River.

“See that?”

They could see it.

Hanging from the bridge, pinned in the light from one of the checkpoint halogens, a corpse, arms bound behind its back, skin blackened by fire, dangling by a chain that snaked down to what was left of its neck.

“That’s a sixteen-year-old cousin of the Cyprus Park warlord. Avenues hung him up there this morning. Checkpoint commander, he said leave it up. Said he ain’t gonna fucking antagonize Avenues as long as this is his post. Says he gives a fuck, just wants to stop watching his officers die. So you tell me.”

He buckled the chin strap of his helmet.

“Who’s dealing with whose scumbags over here? Cuz I don’t fucking know.”

“What do those fucking fashion plates have to do with it?”

Hounds pointed at a small group of men and women dressed in fitted black short-sleeve fatigues and Dragon Skin armor, Masada assault rifles at the ready, clustered around two armored Saab 9-7X SUVs with swooping white door stickers that matched the patches on their shoulders.

The SWAT spit.

“Thousand Storks? They got fuck all to do with it. Waiting here to escort some assholes from city hall on a tour of Glassell Park. Local council-woman wants to show how the situation has been normalized. Fucking showboaters will end up all over the evening news, speeding around, jumping out of their vehicles, securing perimeters and shit. Everyone will think they really deserve those huge security contracts. Tape won’t show the three gunships they got hovering overhead giving cover. Know why they won’t shoot that? Because a hovering helicopter isn’t good TV. Fuck this shit.”