Page 5 of Road to Ruin
“Cold, man.” Lucas lowers his hand. “That’s some really cold shit.”
“What can I say? I don’t get to watch much television.” I’m fucking pissed. Garrett’s sent me out here to stab an F-list celebrity in the carotid? No fucking way. Lucas is an idiot, no doubt about it, but he’s also on some fucking franchised TV series. When dealers are murdered in cold blood, it’s rarely ever reported in the news. A cast member of some shitty TV show, though? That’s bound to get a little attention.
My hand’s been closed around the knife handle in my pocket this whole time. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to stab this guy right in the goddamn heart. That plan’s not going to fly now, though. I left New Orleans so I wouldn’t go back to jail. I sure as shit don’t want to end up incarcerated in Los Angeles. From what I’ve heard, Chino’s no picnic. My hand uncurls from around the knife handle.
“All right, man,” Lucas says. “Just because you don’t watch the show doesn’t mean you can’t show a guy a little respect. I wouldn’t come to your place of work and give you attitude, would I?”
“This is my place of work, and you are giving me attitude. I guess we’re even. Thirty-six grand,” I say, holding out my hand.
Lucas shakes his head. “Garrett said twenty-five. I only brought twenty-three with me on account of the fact that I figured he’s a stand-up dude and wouldn’t mind spotting me the rest until Friday.”
Has he ever met Garrett? I find it hard to believe that he has. No one in their right mind would be going around accusing him of being a stand-up dude if they had actually spent more than three seconds in his company. I shake my head slowly.
“No dice. Garrett has a strict policy about taking product up-front before payment. Doesn’t fucking happen.” I don’t know why I’m giving the guy a hard time. Garrett didn’t give me a specific figure to take from his mark. He said I could keep whatever he brought along to the deal, and the contents of the rucksack is worth about five dollars, max, so twenty-three grand is a win for sure. Now that I’ve decided I’m not going to kill him, I don’t feel bad about being a dick to him, though. It’s like he owes me and he doesn’t even know it. I make him sweat it out for a moment before I look away, sighing. “All right. Fine. But Garrett’s not gonna be a happy man. He’s gonna come looking for you.” Damn straight he is. He’s gonna be raging that I didn’t finish the job. He’ll probably send Raj or Colby out to finish up after me, and then he’s going to hunt me down and have me explain why I sacked out on something he told me very specially he wanted me to take care of.
Lucas, the shitty actor with the shitty dreads, just gives me a loose smile, like he’s not in total control of his facial features. I know the look. Too much coke and your face feels numb as fuck. Too much heroin, and who knows what your goddamn face feels like. Who knows what goddamn planet you’re on. It’s a miracle this guy is even standing.
He has a ratty, torn duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. “Hand it over,” I tell him, pointing.
Lucas sways like a drunken stalk of corn. He allows the strap to fall from his shoulder, catching the bag before it can fall. “I need to get something out of here first,” he says slowly. “Can you hold this?” He holds out a handful of stuff—keys, his cell phone, a pair of tangled up headphones. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? And what am I, his motherfucking manservant? I stare him down, waiting for him to get the picture and start taking this whole thing a little more seriously. This is the problem with living in Los Angeles: there are too many soft-headed idiots here that think the world adores them and wants to bend over backwards to make their charmed lives easier.
Lucas clears his throat. “You are a very unhappy individual, my man. You need therapy.”
Fucking therapy. If one more person asks me who my therapist is, I’m legit going to pop them in the fucking throat. “I need you to get the fuck on with this so I can go home.” The intensity in my voice must finally break through the drugged haze inside his head, because Lucas swallows.
“Sure, man. Sure. Just trying to look out for you.” He unzips the bag slowly, and something about the way his hand is shaking makes me suddenly suspicious. He was easy-breezy a second ago, but now he’s anxious, his lips white, his shoulders inching slowly higher and higher up toward his ears. A realization hits me: he doesn’t have twenty-three thousand dollars in that busted-up bag of his. He has something far more unpleasant. I reach out, stilling his hand on the zip.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me, Lucas. Do you want to die?”
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Lucas drops his cell phone, his earphones clattering to the ground after it, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. He stares down at his belongings on the ground, a spider-webbed crack running across the screen of his oversized smart phone, and I can see his pulse hammering in his neck like a runaway freight train.
“Aren’t you going to pick that up?” I ask. Lucas doesn’t know what to do; fear and indecision are warring each other in his bloodshot eyes, plain as day. Slowly, I stoop down, collecting his things, careful not to take my eyes off him, ready in case he finally manages to grow a pair and opens that bag of his. I stand, and the guy hasn’t moved a muscle. Confident he won’t try anything stupid, I glance down at his phone. There’s a message on the lit up, fractured screen, which reads:
G Money: Is it done?
G Money.Why am I not surprised that this dude has a contact in his phone called fucking G Money? Probably some rich Hollywood exec waiting on his high. Or maybe the dude in the busted-up vehicle that dropped him off here ten minutes ago. Either way, I don’t like the sound of the message. Is it done? People don’t generally use a term like that to describe a drug deal. Not in my experience anyway. You got the stuff? You met up with Molly yet? Are you done?
“Is it done?” implies something else altogether.
I narrow my eyes at Lucas holding out his phone to him. He looks like he’s just shit his expensive, torn-up jeans. “Want to tell me why you’re here right now?” I ask calmly. Inside, I am anything but calm, though. My blood is lighter fluid, and I’m just waiting for a match. I’m about to go up in flames.
“Look, man, I’m just doing what I’m told, okay. I owed him a lot of money, and he said this was the only way to wipe the slate clean. He said if I—”
I punch him square in the jaw, lightning fast and hard as fuck. He doesn’t see it coming. No one ever does. Back when I used to fight for money, I could always count on my right hook to hit a guy’s off switch if I had a clean shot at him. I don’t hit Lucas that hard. I don’t want him out cold. I hit him hard enough to let him know he’s walked into a situation he should have run from, but soft enough that he’ll still be able to talk once he catches his breath. He hits the ground hard, ass first. I know how bad the spiraling pain shooting up his coccyx and into his spine is right now, ringing alarm bells inside his head. Grabbing hold of him by the shirt, I lift him up a little and I slam my fist into his face one more time, just to reinforce the fact that I mean fucking business.
“Garrett?” I say calmly. “Garrett told you to kill me?”
Lucas blinks, nodding frantically.
Well isn’t that just the most ironic news of the entire fucking evening? I shove him back down to the ground, snatching the duffel bag away from him. Inside: a sawed-off shotgun, and a “Tickle Me Elmo” stuffed toy, grinning manically up at me. No money whatsoever.
I stare at Elmo. Elmo stares at me.
“Have you ever fired a sawed-off?” I ask, my tone mild.
“What? No. No, man. I haven’t.” Lucas is jittery, crashing from his high. Adrenaline has a nasty way of bringing the mind sharply back into focus. I remove the shotgun from the bag and break it, checking down the barrels.
