Heaven, INC: Chapter 43: MAYBE JIMMY WASN'T SO CRAZY AFTER ALL

Not even five enforcement agencies can save their own.
Never mind the people
Tonite it's raining on the Angels of the City
Did anyone prophesize these people?
—Red Angel Dragnet,
THE CLASH

HIGHWAY 94 EAST,
GOLDEN HILL
12:32 PM PDT

BACK IN THE VAN, Jimmy’s phone beeped to indicate three voice messages. Checking the call record, he saw EVAN, NIGEL and TRAITOR.

It was the third call, Emond Winkle’s, that Jimmy returned first.


“ . . . Feds want us to think the kid was car jacked, but Stan Marcus says it’s something more than just a car jacking. He says all this shit going down stinks like another government jam job cover-up connected to whoever it was almost run over the Jones girl and after maybe running over the jogger, Jane Sorenson.” Elmond saying, “There’s some sneaky shit going down and the Feds’re involved. You feel me?”

“Feel you.” Jimmy thought about what Elmond was saying . . .

Dude, it would mean you really weren’t crazy, you were screwed.

. . . that somebody had tossed the biscuit, maybe in the evidence chain, maybe lied about the kid being ‘unreachably deep in Tibet’ . . .

“They recover the kid’s car yet?”

“No. Or the kid for that matter,” Elmond said. He was calling from just southeast Los Madres taco shop, said his partner was up getting tacos, Carmella Garcia, Tony Ruiz’s kid sister. Elmond saying then, “Brother, this is some exceptionally weird-ass, small-town bullshit even by San Diego standards.”

“Brother,” Jimmy said, shaking, “we’re just beginning to get into the shit.” Then told the story about the dead guy in 420.

Elmond saying, “What the fuck? Who is he, who is this guy?”

“No clue, other than I found some weird ass foreign uniform in the closet. Black one, kinda like the Nazi stormtroopers wore, but without all the Nazi, Death’s-head-regalia bullshit.”

Jimmy explained the blood and broken chair and the bare foot prints and how the crime
scene matched Mij Poopikov’s wounds.

“Yeah, that’s good, because we got description of the car-jacked matches Mij Poopikov. You find a crime scene proves he was here, that’s real good.”

“Not for Mij. Somewhere, somebody caught him, killed him and then tried destroying his body in Beeler Canyon. But I don’t think it was Bivo’s boys. Someone else killed, Mij. And it was in Ducroix’s car that Mij picked up the fiber.” Jimmy considered the situation. “We were told the State Department verified Christian Ducroix was in Tibet the entire time, so he wasn’t a suspect. But was he? And what the fuck was he doing deep in the hood last night?”

“Feds claim he was just passing through.”

Jimmy shifted in the van’s seat, trying to get comfortable with the spring sticking out. “You believe that?”

Elmond chuckled on the other end of the line. “Come on, brother, you know Market Park’s on the way to nowhere a rich kid wants to go unless it’s to score drugs— everybody knows there ain’t a better place to score than the Park. Y’ask me, that kid was down to score a baggy on his way home from the big party. Had a chick in the car with him, probably thought he’d get some powder.”

“Who was the chick?”

“Feds say it was his date, some model chick named Heidi Swenson. You know those models love their blow to keep them skinny. He probably needed an eightball to get her to put out.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Jimmy thought if the kid really did want blow, he’d have connections that didn’t require going ghetto. “Or maybe something we haven’t thought of yet.”


BEFORE OWEN COULD START ASKING QUESTIONS, Jimmy retrieved his voicemail, trying to concentrate on the music world and his future with the past threatening to devour him from behind . . .

“Hey, Jimmy, it’s Evan. Hey, the merch is ready, man: T-shirts, tank-tops, panties, stickers, buttons and every other possible manner of music mercantilism has been assembled and loaded into Odie’s van, so we’re good . . . Uh, listen, uh, about last night . . . Listen, Jimmy, I just kind of lost my head when Vic pushed me under the ladder, you know, I wasn’t ready to confront that yet, I’ve been over the edge, fucking Tom Collins, all that bullshit and fucking lies, man, I can’t take it any more . . . Fucking economy’s all fucked up and he’s helping his buddies steal our money . . . Fuck it, never mind . . . Look, I’ll pick up my Paxil prescription before the show . . . ”

Click.

Evan was a helluva bassist and easily the most neurotic person Jimmy knew. And that was saying something.

The second voicemail was Nigel, the man shaping the band’s sound, realizing qualities and possibilities within the songs you’d never know existed; being a consummate shakedown artist, he was extracting money for fees they also never knew existed.

“Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, you have got to hear this . . . I am telling you, lad, there are hits here, genuine #1 hits, and Fantasy of the Damned, Jimmy, it will be huge, huge . . . It’s just I’m gonna need the second half of the money if you’re gonna get to play for Wild Bill Donovan. Just business you know, gotta pay the bills . . .

The money, while not a fortune had, given the state of the Ebay community and economy at large, proven remarkably hard to come by, unless Jimmy tapped into ‘the money’. God, was he remiss to hit ‘the money’. It was for emergencies and could send him straight back to jail in the wrong circumstance and it was certainly a gamble, but sometimes, sometimes you gotta take risks if you’re ever gonna win.