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Like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
—Crazy Diamond,
PINK FLOYD
CROW'S NEST REAR PARKING LOT,
NORTH PARK
12:31 PM. P.D.T.
FUCKING COPS, MAN.
Fella leaves his van for twenty goddamn minutes, shoots a couple games of pool, and he comes back to what? To a cop’s fat ass hanging out the back of his van, that’s what. Some nosey SOB poking around in back like he’s got nothing better to do in the whole damn world than cause trouble for Big Ed Walker. When he shoulda been out patrolling the highways for asshole sons-of-bitches driving like maniacs. Catching real criminals.
So Big Ed killed the guy.
Well, what would you have done, smarty-pants? Say, Yessir, those’re my bodies, thank you very much for making sure nobody stole ‘em and now I’ll just be on my way, got things to do and people to see? Shit. Case nobody told you, the world don’t work like that. Least not nowadays, anyway.
See, so what Big Ed did was, he used his cat-like reflexes to catch the guy unawares, talking on his walkie-talkie . . .
“ . . . six, no make that five bodies in a white cargo van, license plate 3—”
. . . when Big Ed slammed the butt of his pistol down on the back of the guy's head and followed up with a maybe another half-dozen whacks. Then shoved the nosey SOB into the back with the others and slammed closed the door. Ed glancing around then, making sure nobody else needed killing and saw nobody, just him and the cop-car in the back lot.
Ed stood there a moment, sniffling back meth snot and considering the situation.
Hmmm . . . That SOB talking to the walkie-talkie, sure as shit, that ain’t good . . . Remember what they taught at the 'Academy' . . . Radios is always faster than cars.
Just like that, Big Ed was in the van and backing out, dodging the cop-car parked almost right behind him and out onto University. Thinking maybe he oughtta go back and take the cop car.
Ah, screw that noise . . . Cops get one look at you and your good looks, no mustache, they’d know you ain’t one a them.
Big Ed was moving at a good clip now— not fast enough to necessarily attract attention, you understand, but pretty damn fast. Then made a couple of turns, getting into some back streets and losing himself so he could come up with some kind of bold initiative, something so goddamn trick-dicky no cop’d ever figure out where he was. Least not til he killed that arrogant, Harrison Ford, FBI fuck.
❖
BIG ED GOT LOST, really really lost.
Streets back there were so confusing and convoluted, he passed the same liquor store three times before he took it as another sign from God and bopped inside to get himself a pint of Jack. Then headed down some street called Boundary, down to the bottom of the hill, and parked in a field overlooking a freeway, could be I-15, maybe 805, Ed wasn’t real sure; not that it mattered, understand, because he could hear the cops’ sirens wailing way off in the distance and he knew the bastards was stirred up like a regular hornet’s nest and best he pause a moment down here instead of out there with the cops.
This is kinda pretty . . . Be a nice place to live Raise a family, kids playing in the sprinklers n’ shit . . . A fine woman with dinner on the table when you come home from work. Big Ed snorted a line of pick-me-up off the dash and slugged down some Jack.
Yep, that’s what ya’ll need to do . . . Get all this shit behind you and get a move on with life . . . Make a success outta yourself.
Resolved then— at least for this speed-fueled moment— to get his shit together, Big Ed jumped out of the van to replace the original license plate; Ed immensely pleased with himself for thinking ahead yesterday, before the killing started, when he took the front plate off another van and put it on the back of his. Sure, cops’d probably still be looking for a van, but not his, not Van #3. Hell no, they’d be looking for Van #1, for those two musician guys, the arrogant fuckers thought they was so much better than Big Ed Walker.
Fucking fucks.
Ed walked around the van, trying to figure out why the cop’d checked him out in the first place, probably on account no front plate— then stopped. Coming out the back of the van and running down the bumper was a sluice of juice that Big Ed, maybe on account of the super-bright sunlight and meth-dilated pupils, maybe on account of the booze, whatever, for some damn reason Big Ed just hadn’t noticed.
Damn, boy, that’s one hell of a lotta blood.
Ed glanced around at the houses, but it didn’t look like anybody was watching. Cautiously, then, he opened the rear-door and squinted into the van’s dimness.
It was hard to see who the particular bleeder was since they’d all been big bleeders at some point, and the passengers were so damn disorganized, one laying on another, arms here and legs there, the piled-up dead fucks, that making heads or tails of ‘em was—
“Help me . . . Please, help me.”
Damn! That voice near had Big Ed jumping out of his skin, it was so unnatural, a whispery voice that freaked the Edster out.
“Please, you must help me.”
“Like hell I do, you spooky dying fuck. Ya scared the hell out me.”
“Please . . . Please, I am dying.”
It was a man’s voice, with some kind of accent, maybe like he was Russian or something, Ed wasn’t too sure.
“Please . . . Please, I am a wealthy man . . . I will pay you whatever you wish . . . Just please help me . . . I beg of you.”
Hmmm. Ed couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like it was one of the bodies toward the middle, either the apartment guy or maybe the pushy hitchhiker. Glancing around, checking on the houses, see if there were any nosey eyes watching him—
“Please, the pain is terrible.”
— and figured, no sirree bob, now was not the time or the place to be moving bodies around to find out exactly who the squawker was. So, being ever practical, Ed quickly grabbed a handful of towels and wiped down the bumper—
“Please, God, help me, please, I will give you anything.”
— then used the towels to build sort of what you might call a ‘blood-dam’, keeping all the juices trapped up inside. Then, slamming shut the doors, Ed was back in the van and getting the hell gone.
And when the selfish jerk started begging again, like it was all about him— Mr. Me Me Me— Ed was forced to turn up the radio and sing along as George Jones noted some woman thought he still cared.
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