The Power of the Dog

Chapter Ten
The Golden West

San Diego, 1996

The sunlight is filthy.

Filtered through a smudgy window and dirty, broken venetian blinds, it creeps into Callan’s room like a noxious gas, sick and yellow. Sick and yellow also describes Callan-sick, yellow, sweaty, rank. He lies twisted in the unchanged-for-weeks sheets, his pores trying (unsuccessfully) to sweat out the alcohol, dried saliva caked at the edges of his half-open mouth, his brain trying feverishly to sort out the bits and pieces of nightmares from the emerging, waking reality.

The weak sun hits his eyelids and they open.

Another day in paradise.

Fuck.

Actually, he’s almost glad to be awake-the dreams were bad, made worse by booze. He half-expects to see blood in the bed-his dreams are incarnadine; blood flows through them like a river, connecting one nightmare to another.

Not that reality is much better.

He blinks a few times, assures himself that he is awake, and slowly swings his legs, aching from the lactic-acid buildup, to the floor. He sits there for a second, considers lying back down, then reaches for a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. He pops a cig in his mouth, finds his lighter and shakes the flame to the tip of the cigarette.

A deep inhale, a wracking cough, and he feels a little better.

What he needs now is a drink.

An eye-opener.

He looks down and sees the empty pint of Seagram’s at his feet.

Hell’s fuck-and it’s happening more and more these days. More and more my aching ass, he thinks. It’s happening every night now. You’re finishing the whole bottle and leaving nothing for morning, not the thinnest ray of amber-liquid sunshine. Which means you’ll have to get up. Get up and get dressed and go out to get a drink.

Used to be-doesn’t seem like that long ago-he’d wake up with a hangover and what he’d want was a cup of coffee. In the earlier days of those earlier days, he’d go out to the little diner on Fourth Avenue and get that first headache-relieving cup and maybe ease into some breakfast-some greasy potatoes, eggs and toast, the “special.” Then he stopped eating breakfast-the coffee was all he could handle-and then, somewhere in there, somewhere along the slow, drifting river trip that is an extended bender, it became not coffee he wanted in the first awful hour of the morning, but more liquor.

So now he gets to his feet.

His knees creak, his back hurts from sleeping so long in one position.

He shuffles into the bathroom, a sink, toilet and shower crammed into what had once been a closet. A thin, insufficient lip of metal separates the shower from the floor, so in the days when he was still taking regular showers (and he pays a considerable extra amount each week for the private bathroom because he didn’t want to share the common one down the hall with the babbling psychos, the old syphilis cases, the drunken old queens), the water always overflowed onto the old, stained tile floor. Or sprayed through the thin, ripped plastic shower curtain with the faded peace flowers on it. He doesn’t take many showers now. He thinks about it, but it just seems like too much work, and anyway the shampoo bottle is almost empty, the remaining shampoo dried up and stuck to the bottom of the bottle, and it’s too much mental effort to go into Longs Drugs and buy another. And he don’t like being around that many people-not that many civilians anyway.

A thin sliver of soap survives on the shower floor, and another shrinking bar of strong-smelling antiseptic soap-provided by the hotel along with the thin towel-sits on the sink.

He splashes some water on his face.

He don’t look in the mirror but it stares back at him.

His face is puffy and jaundiced, his shoulder-length hair long and greasy, his beard matted.

I’m starting to look, Callan thinks, like every other wino, junkie and drunk in the Lamp. Well, shit, why not? Except that I can go to the ATM and always get money out, I am like every other wino, junkie and drunk in the Lamp.

He brushes his teeth.

That much he does. He can’t stand the stale-whiskey-and-puke taste in his mouth-it makes him want to puke more. So he brushes his teeth and takes a piss. He don’t have to get dressed-he’s already dressed in what he passed out in, black jeans and a black T-shirt. But he does have get his shoes on, which means sitting back on the bed and bending over and by the time he finishes tying his black Chuck Taylor high-tops (no socks) he almost feels like going back to bed.

But it’s eleven in the morning.

Time to get going.

Get that drink.

He reaches under the pillow, finds his. 22 pistol, sticks it in the back of his waistband under the oversized, untucked T-shirt, finds his key and walks out the door.

The hallway stinks.

Mostly of Lysol, which the management pours around like fucking napalm to try to kill the stubborn scents of urine, vomit, shit and dying old man. Kill the germs anyway. It’s a constant, losing battle-which is what this place is anyway, Callan thinks as he presses the button for the single, cranky elevator-a constant losing battle.

Which is why you chose it to live in.

Place to finally lose your own constant losing battle.

The Golden West Hotel.

SRO.

Single Room Occupancy.

Shit Right Out.

The last stop before the sheet of cardboard on the street, or the coroner’s slab.

Because the Golden West Hotel converts welfare checks, Social (in)Security checks, unemployment checks, disability checks directly into room rent. But once the checks run out, you’re Shit Right Out. Sorry, pops, hit the street, the cardboard, the slab. Some of the lucky ones die in their rooms. They haven’t paid their rent, or the smell of the decomposition seeps under their door and finally overpowers the Lysol, and a reluctant desk clerk puts a handkerchief over his nose and turns the passkey. Then the call is made and the ambulance makes its slow, accustomed trip to the hotel, and another old guy is taken out on a gurney for the last ride, his sun at last setting over the Golden West.

It’s not all old winos. The occasional Euro-tourist accidentally finds his way here, lured by the bargain price in otherwise expensiveSan Diego. Stays his week and checks out. Or the young American kid who thinks he’s the next Jack Kerouac or the new Tom Waits is attracted by the down-and-out seediness-until his backpack gets stolen from his room with his Discman and all his money or he gets mugged in the street outside or one of the colorful old-timers tries to grope his joint in the common bathroom. Then the would-be dharma bum calls Mommy and she phones her credit card to the front desk to get sonny boy out of there, but he has seen a part ofAmerica he wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

But mostly it’s old drunks and ancient psychotics, gathered like crows in the torn chairs in front of the television set in the lobby. Babbling their own dialogue, arguing over the channel (there have been stabbings, actual fatalities, over The Rockford Files or Gilligan’sIsland; shit, there have been stabbings over Ginger versus Mary Ann) or just mumbling internal monologues from real or imagined scenes playing out in their own brains.

Constant losing battles.

Callan doesn’t have to live here.

He has money, he could live better, but he chooses this place.

Call it penance, purgatory, anything you want-this is the place where he conducts his long self-punishment, pounds the booze in slowly fatal amounts (lethal self-injection?), sweats the night sweats, pukes blood, screams his dreams, dies every night, starts again in the morning.

I forgive you. God forgives you.

Why did the old priest have to say that?

After the fucked-up shootout inGuadalajara, Callan made his way toSan Diego, checked into the Golden West and started drinking. A year and a half later he’s still here.

This is a setting for self-hatred. He likes it here.

The elevator arrives, complaining like a tired old room-service waiter. Callan cranks the door open and hits the button below the faded L. The grille-door shuts, cell-like, and the elevator grinds its way down. Callan’s relieved that he’s its sole occupant-no French tourist jamming it up with duffel bags, no out-to-find-America college kid whapping him with his backpack, no smelly old drunk with BO. Shit, Callan thinks, I’m the smelly drunk with BO.

Doesn’t care.

The desk clerk likes Callan.

Nothing not to like-the strange, young (for the Golden West) guy pays in cash, in advance. He’s quiet and doesn’t complain, and there was that one night when he was standing there waiting for his key and this mugger pulled a knife on the clerk and this guy looks over and then just dropped him. Drunk as a lord and he just dropped the mugger with one punch, then politely asked for his key again.

So the clerk likes Callan. Sure, the man is always drunk, but he’s a quiet drunk who don’t cause no trouble, and that’s all you can ask for. So he says hi when Callan drops off his key, and Callan mumbles hi back and heads out the door.

The sun hits him like a punch in the chest.

Dimness to sunlight, just like that. Blinded, he stands and squints for a moment. He never gets used to this-they never had sun like this back inNew York. Seems like it’s always sunny in fuckingSan Diego. Sun Diego, they oughta call it. He’d give his left nut for one rainy day.

He adjusts his eyes to the light and walks into the Gaslamp District.

It used to be a tawdry, dangerous neighborhood filled with strip joints, porno places and SROs-your typical downtown in decline. Then the shabby hotels started to yield to condos as the process of gentrification set in and it became hip and trendy to live in the Lamp. So you have an upscale restaurant sitting next to a porn shop, a hip club across from an SRO, a condo building with a coffee shop on its ground floor playing neighbor to a derelict building with winos in the basement and junkies on the roof.

Gentrification is winning.

Of course it is-money always wins, and the Lamp is starting to become a yuppie theme park. A few of the SROs hold on, a couple of porn shops, a small handful of the seedier bars. But the process is irreversible as the chains start to move in-the Starbucks, the Gaps, the Edwards Cinemas. The Lamp starts to look pretty much like everywhere else, and the holdout porn places, alkie-bars and SRO hotels resemble aboriginal Indians drunkenly loitering in the parking lot of American commerce.

Callan ain’t thinking about any of this.

He’s just thinking about getting that drink, and his feet carry him into one of the old survivors, a dark narrow bar he doesn’t know the name of-the sign faded long ago-wedged between the last of the neighborhood Laundromats and an art gallery.

It’s dark, like all bars should be.

This is a serious drinkers’ bar-no amateurs or dilettantes need apply-and there are a dozen or so drinkers, mostly male, staggered around the bar and in the booths along the opposite wall. People don’t come in here to socialize, or talk sports or politics, or to sample fine whiskeys. They come in here to get drunk and stay drunk for as long as their money and their livers last. A few of them glance up resentfully as Callan opens the door and lets a wedge of sunshine break into the darkness.

The door closes quickly enough, though, and they all go back to staring at their drinks as Callan walks in, takes a stool at the bar and orders.

Well, not all of them.

There’s one guy at the end of the bar who keeps glancing surreptitiously over his whiskey. A little guy, an old guy with a cherub’s face and a full head of perfectly silver hair. He looks a little like a leprechaun perched on a toadstool instead of a bar stool, and his eyes blink in surprise as he recognizes the man who just came into the bar, sat down and ordered two beers and a whiskey chaser.

It’s been twenty years since he’s last seen this man, twenty years ago in the Liffey Pub in Hell’s Kitchen when this man-a boy then, really-pulled a gun from the small of his back and put two bullets into Eddie “The Butcher” Friel.

Mickey even remembers the music that was playing. Remembers that he had loaded the jukebox with replays of “Moon River” because he wanted to hear the song as many times as he could before starting on his next prison stretch. Remembers telling this man-no, it’s clearly him, even down to the small bulge in the back where he still carries a pistol-to go toss the gun in the Hudson River.

Mickey never saw the boy again, not until this moment, but he heard the rest of the story. About how this boy-what is his name?-went on to overthrow Matty Sheehan and become one of the kings of Hell’s Kitchen. How he and his friend made peace with the Cimino Family and became hit men for Big Paulie Calabrese, and how-if the rumors were true-he had gunned down Big Paulie outside Sparks Steak House just before Christmas.

Callan, the old man thinks.

Sean Callan.

Well, I recognize you, Sean Callan, but you don’t seem to know me.

Which is good, which is good.

Mickey Haggerty finishes his drink, climbs off his stool and slips outside to a phone booth. He knows someone who’ll be very interested to learn that Sean Callan is at a bar in the Gaslamp.

Must be the d.t.'s.

Callan reaches for his gun anyway.

But it’s gotta be the d.t.'s-here at last-because there ain’t no other explanation for Big Peaches and O-Bop standing over his bed in the Golden West Hotel, pointing their guns at him. He can see the bullets in their chambers, shiny and lethal, pretty and silver, reflected from the light of the street lamp outside, the fake gaslamp that the broken venetian blind can’t block out.

The red neon from the porn shop across the street flashes like an alarm.

Too late.

If this ain’t the d.t.'s, I’m already dead, Callan thinks. But he starts to pull the gun out from under his pillow anyway. Take them with him.

“Don’t, you dumb fucking mick,” he hears a voice growl.

Callan’s hand freezes. Is this a drunk dream or reality? Are Big Peaches and O-Bop really standing in his room with their guns trained on him? And if they was going to shoot, why don’t they shoot? They say if you die in your dreams you die in your life, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between dead and alive. Last thing he remembers is pounding beers and whiskeys at the bar. Now he wakes up (comes to) and he might be dead or he might be alive. Or is he back in the Kitchen, and the last nine years were a dream?

Big Peaches laughs. “What are you, some fucking hippie now? All that hair? The beard?”

“He’s on a binge,” O-Bop says. “An Irish sabbatical.”

“You got that little. 22 popgun under that pillow, don’t you?” Peaches says. “I don’t care how fucking drunk you are, you got that gun. Eeeeasy, there-we had come to whack you, you’d be dead before you woke up.”

“Then why the guns?” Callan asks.

“Call it an abundance of caution,” Peaches says. “You are Billy the Kid Callan. Who knows what brought you here? Maybe a contract on me. So bring the gun out slow.”

Callan does.

Thinks for a half-second about popping them both, but what the hell.

Besides, his hand is shaking.

O-Bop gently takes the gun out of Callan’s hand and tucks it into his own belt. Then he sits down beside him and wraps his arms around him. “Jesus, it’s good to see you.”

Peaches sits down on the foot of the bed. “Where the fuck you been? Jeez, we said go south, we didn’t mean like the Antarctic. You fuckin’ guy.”

O-Bop says, “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit.”

“Well, you look like it,” Peaches says. “And what the fuck are you doing in this fucking toilet? Jesus, Callan.”

“You got a drink?”

“Sure.” O-Bop takes a half-pint of Seagram’s out of his pocket and hands it to Callan.

He gulps down a heavy belt. “Thanks.”

“You fucking Irish,” Peaches says. “You’re all drunks.”

“How'd you find me?” Callan asks.

Peaches says, “Little Mickey Haggerty, speaking of drunks. He sees you at this shit-hole bar you been drinking at, he drops a dime, we find out you’re living in the Golden West Hotel, we can’t fucking believe it. The fuck happened to you?”

“A lot.”

“No shit, huh,” Peaches says.

“What'd you come for?”

“Get you the fuck out of here,” Peaches says. “You’re coming home with me.”

“New York?”

“No, dumb fuck,” Peaches says. “We live here now. Sun Diego, baby. It’s beautiful. A beautiful thing.”

“We got a crew going,” O-Bop explains. “Me, Peaches, Little Peaches, Mickey. Now you.”

Callan shakes his head. “No, I’m done with that shit.”

“Yeah,” Peaches says, “whatever you’re doin’ now is obviously working. Look, we’ll talk about that later. Now we gotta get you sobered up, get some good food into you. A little fruit-you wouldn’t believe the fruit out here. Not just the peaches, either. I’m talking pears, oranges, grapefruit so pink and juicy they’re better than sex, I’m telling you. O-Bop, get your boy some clothes together, let’s get him out of here.”

Callan’s drunk enough to be compliant.

O-Bop scoops some of his shit up and Peaches walks him out.

Tosses a c on the front desk and tells them the bill is settled, whatever the fuck it is. All the way out to the car-and Peaches got himself a new Mercedes-O-Bop and Peaches are telling Callan how great it is out here, what a sweet thing they got going.

How the streets are paved with gold, baby.

Gold.

The grapefruit sits like a fat sun in a bowl.

Fat, swollen, juicy sun.

“Eat it,” Peaches says. “You need your vitamin C.”

Peaches has become a health nut, like everyone else in California. He’s still three bills and change, but now he’s a tan three bills and change with a low cholesterol number and a high-fiber diet.

“I spend a lot of time on the can,” he explains to Callan, “but I feel fucking great.”

Callan doesn’t.

Callan feels exactly like a man who’s been on a years-long bender. He feels like death, if death feels really shitty. And now fat, tan Big Peaches sits there nagging him about eating his fucking grapefruit.

“You got a beer?” Callan asks.

“Yeah, I got a beer,” Peaches says. “You ain’t got a beer. And you ain’t getting no beer, either, you fucking alcoholic. We’re going to get you straightened out.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Four fucking days,” Peaches says. “And every moment a delight with you puking, crying, mumbling, hollering about shit.”

What shit was I hollering about? Callan wonders. It’s kind of worrisome because the dreams were bloody and bad. The goddamn ghosts-and there were a lot of them-just wouldn’t go away.

And that fucking priest.

I forgive you. God forgives you.

No, He don’t, Father.

“Man, I wouldn’t want to see a picture of your fucking liver for anything,” Peaches is saying. “Must look like an old tennis ball. I play tennis now, I tell you that? Play every morning, except the last four mornings I been playing nursemaid instead. Yeah, I play tennis, I Rollerblade.”

Three hundred twenty pounds of Big Peaches on wheels? Callan thinks. Talk about your accidents waiting to happen…

“Yeah,” O-Bop says, “we took the wheels off a Mack truck, put them on the blades for him.”

“Fuck you, Brillo Pad,” Peaches said. “I blade pretty good.”

“People get the fuck out of his way, I’ll tell you that,” O-Bop says.

“You ought to get some exercise other than lifting your fucking elbow,” Peaches says to O-Bop. “Yo, Lost Weekend, eat your goddamn grapefruit.”

“What do you, peel it first?” Callan asks.

“Honest to God, fucking idiots. Gimme the thing.”

Peaches gets a knife, cuts the grapefruit in half, then carefully slices it into sections and puts it back in Callan’s bowl. “Now you eat it with your spoon, fucking barbarian. You know the word 'barbarian’ came from the Romans? It meant 'redheaded.’ They was talking about you people. I saw that on the-what do you call it?-the History Channel, last night. I love that shit.”

The doorbell rings and Peaches gets up and goes to answer it.

O-Bop grins at Callan. “Peaches in that bathrobe, he looks like some old mamma mia, don’t he? He’s even getting tits. All he needs is them fuzzy pink slippers with the little pom-poms on 'em. Honest to God, you should see him on those Rollerblades. People like run out of the way. It’s like some Japanese horror movie. Wopzilla.”

They hear Peaches say, “Come in the kitchen, see what the cat dragged in.”

Couple of seconds later, Callan’s looking up at Little Peaches, who gives him a big hug.

“They told me about this,” Little Peaches says, “but I didn’t believe it until I saw it. Where have you been?”

“Mexico mostly.”

“They don’t got phones in Mexico?” Little Peaches asks. “You can’t call people, let them know you’re alive?”

“Where was I supposed to call you?” Callan asks. “You’re in the Witness Fucking Protection Program. If I could find you, so could other people.”

“All the other people are in Marion,” Peaches said.

No shit, Callan thinks. You put them there. Old-school Big Peaches turned into the most spectacular songbird since Valachi. Put Johnny Boy in prison for life and then some. Not that life is going to be long-word is, Johnny Boy has throat cancer.

It’s good, though, that Peaches flipped, because Callan don’t have to worry about him calling Sal Scachi, who can’t be happy that Callan has gone off the reservation. Callan knows too much about Scachi’s work-all that Red Mist shit-to be out there in the wind, so it’s a good thing that him and Peaches are disconnected.

Little Peaches turns to his brother. “Are you feeding this guy?”

“Yes, I’m feeding him.”

“Not this grapefruit shit,” Little Peaches says. “Jesus Christ, get him some sausiche, a little prosciutto, some raviolis. If you can find any. Callan, they got a Little Italy in this town, you couldn’t get a cannoli with a machine gun. Italian restaurants here they serve sun-dried tomatoes. What is that? A couple years out here I am a sun-dried tomato. It’s always eighty-three and sunny here, even at night. How do they do that, huh? Is anyone gonna get me some coffee, or do I have to order it like I’m in a fucking restaurant?”

“Here’s your fucking coffee,” Peaches says.

“Thank you.” Little Peaches sets a box on the table and sits down. “Here, I brought doughnuts.”

“Doughnuts?” Peaches says. “Why are you always sabotaging me?”

“Hey, Richard Simmons, don’t fucking eat them if you don’t want them. Nobody’s putting a gun to your head.”

“You fucking asshole.”

“Because I don’t come to my brother’s house empty-handed,” Little Peaches says to Callan. “Good manners make me a asshole.”

“A fucking asshole,” Peaches says as he grabs a doughnut.

“Callan, eat a doughnut,” Little Peaches says. “Eat five. Every one you eat is one my brother doesn’t, I don’t have to listen to him whine about his figure. You’re fat, Jimmy. You’re a fat, greasy guinea. Get over it.”

They go out on the patio because Peaches thinks Callan should get some sun. Actually, Peaches thinks that Peaches should get some sun, but he doesn’t want to seem selfish. It’s Peaches’ opinion that there’s no reason to live in San Diego if you’re not going to go sit in the sun every chance you get.

So he leans back in the chaise, opens up his robe and starts to slather his body with Bain de Soleil.

“You don’t want to fuck with skin cancer,” he says.

Mickey sure doesn’t. Now he puts on his Yankees cap and sits under the patio umbrella.

Peaches opens a chilled can of peaches and scoops a few into his mouth. Callan watches a drop of the juice plop on his fat chest, then merge with the sweat and suntan lotion and run down his belly.

“Anyway, it’s good you showed up,” Peaches says.

“Why’s that?”

“How would you like,” Peaches says, “to do a crime where the victims can’t go to the cops?”

“Sounds okay.”

“Sounds 'okay'?” Peaches asks. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

He lays it out for Callan.

Drugs go north-Mexico to the States.

Money goes south-the States to Mexico.

“They just put the bones-six, sometimes seven figures-into cars and drive it across the border, into Mexico,” Peaches says.

“Or not,” Little Peaches adds.

They’ve done three of these jobs already, and now they got word that a narco safe house in Anaheim is bursting with cash and has to make the trip south. They got the address, they got names, they got the make of the car and the license plate. They even got an idea about when the couriers are going to make the run.

“Where are you getting the info?” Callan asks.

“A guy,” Peaches answers.

Callan figured it was a guy.

“You don’t need to know,” Peaches says. “He takes thirty points.”

“It’s like being back in the dope business, except better,” O-Bop says. “We get the profits but we never have to touch the stuff.”

“It’s just basic, honest crime,” Peaches says. “Stick 'em up, give me the money.”

“The way the Good Lord meant it to be,” Mickey says.

“So, Callan,” Little Peaches says. “You in?”

“I dunno,” Callan answers. “Whose money are we taking?”

“The Barreras’,” Peaches answers with this sly, questioning look in his eye, asking, Is that a problem?

I don’t know, Callan thinks. Is it?

The Barreras are as dangerous as sharks, not people you fuck with thoughtlessly. That’s one thing. Also, they’re “friends of ours”-according to Sal Scachi anyway-so that’s another thing.

But they murdered that priest, straight up. That was a hit, not an accident. A stone-pro killer like Fabian “El Motherfucking Tiburon” don’t shoot nobody at point-blank range on accident. It just don’t happen.

Callan don’t know why they killed the priest, he just knows that they did.

And they made me part of it, he thinks.

So there’s gotta be payback for that.

“Yeah,” Callan says. “I’m in.”

The West Side gang is back together again.

O-Bop watches the car pull out of the driveway.

It’s three in the morning and he’s tucked down in his own rig, half a block away. He has an important job to do: Follow the courier car without getting spotted and confirm that it goes onto the 5. He punches a number into his cell phone and says, “It’s on.”

“How many guys?”

“Three. Two in front, one in back.”

He hangs up, waits a few seconds, then eases out.

As per plan, Little Peaches calls Peaches, who calls Callan, who calls Mickey. They start the chronometers on their watches and wait for the next call. Mickey has it timed, of course, the average drive time from the driveway to the on-ramp of the 5-six-point-five minutes. So they know within a minute or so when they should get the next call.

If they get the call, the plan is in place.

If they don’t, they’re going to have to improvise, and no one wants that. So it’s a tense six minutes. Especially for O-Bop. He’s the one doing the work right now, the one who can fuck it all up if he gets himself spotted, who has to stay where he can see them but they don’t see him. He lays off at varying distances. A block, two blocks. He gives a left-turn signal and flips his headlights off for a second so he looks like a different car when he turns them back on.

O-Bop works it.

While Little Peaches sits, sweating, an hour and a half south on the 5.

For three minutes.

Four.

Big Peaches is in a booth at Denny’s off the highway, just a little north of Little Peaches. He’s scarfing down a cheese omelet, home fries, toast and coffee. Mickey don’t like them eating before a job-a full stomach complicates things if you get shot-but Peaches is like, Fuck that. He don’t want to jinx himself by taking precautions about what if he gets shot. He polishes off the greasy potatoes, takes two Rolaids out of his pocket and chews on them while he looks at the sports section.

Five minutes.

Callan tries not to look at his watch.

He’s lying on the bed in a motel room at the Ortega Highway exit, off the 5. Got HBO on and he’s watching some movie he don’t even know what it is. No point in him sitting out there on a bike in the cold. If the couriers get on the 5 there’ll be plenty of time. Looking at his watch ain’t gonna change anything, it’s just gonna make him nervous. But after what seems to be about ten minutes he gives in and looks.

Five and a half minutes.

Mickey don’t look at his watch. The call will come when it comes. He’s sitting in a car parked at the Oceanside Transportation Center. He smokes a cigarette and goes through in his head what happens if the couriers don’t take the 5. Then what they should do is call it off, wait for the next time. But Peaches ain’t gonna let them do that, so they’ll have to scramble. Try to guess the route from the info that O-Bop’s giving them and find a way to get ahead of the courier car and then figure out a place to take them down.

Cowboy-and-Indian stuff. He don’t like it.

But he won’t look at his watch.

Six minutes.

Little Peaches is about to yank.

A million in cash on the line and The phone rings.

“We’re good,” he hears O-Bop say.

He presses the restart button on his watch. One hour and twenty-eight minutes is the average drive time from the on-ramp to this exit. Then he calls Peaches, who picks the phone up without taking his eyes off the paper.

“We’re good.”

Peaches checks his watch, calls Callan and orders a piece of cherry pie.

Callan gets the call, coordinates his watch, phones Mickey, then gets up and takes a long, hot shower. There’s no hurry and he wants to be loose and relaxed, so he stands in there awhile and lets the steaming water pound his shoulders and the back of his neck. He can feel the adrenaline start to build, but he don’t want it to get too high too soon. So he makes himself take the time to shave slowly and carefully, and he feels good when he notices that his hand isn’t shaking.

He also takes his time dressing. Slowly puts on black jeans, a black T-shirt and a black sweatshirt. Black socks, black biker boots, a Kevlar vest. Then the black leather jacket, tight black gloves. He heads out. He paid in cash the night before and signed in with a fake name, so he just leaves the key in the room and locks the door behind him.

O-Bop’s job is easier now. Not easy, but easier, as he can lay back a good distance from the courier car and get closer only as they get near off-ramps. He has to make sure that they don’t throw a curve and exit onto the 57 or the 22, or Laguna Beach Road or the Ortega Highway. But it seems like Peaches’ hunch was right, these guys are headed straight up the gut-they’re staying on the main road all the way down to Mexico. So O-Bop eases back, and now he can talk on the phone without fear of getting spotted, so he fills Little Peaches in on the details: “Blue BMW, UZ 1 832. Three guys. Briefcases in the trunk.” This last bit ain’t great news, as it causes an extra step once they’ve taken the car down, but of course Mickey made them practice this option so O-Bop ain’t too worried about it.

Mickey worries.

That’s what Mickey does. He worries and waits until the Amtrak window opens, then he goes in and pays cash for a one-way fare to San Diego. Then he walks over to the Greyhound station and buys a ticket to Chula Vista. Then he goes back to his car and waits. And worries. They’ve practiced this dozens of times, but he still worries. Too many variables, too many what if's. What if there’s a traffic jam, what if there’s a state trooper parked nearby, what if there’s a backup car and we don’t see it? What if someone gets shot? What if, what if, what if…

“If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle,” is what Peaches had said to all these worries. Now he finishes his pie, has another cup of coffee, leaves cash for the bill and tip (the tip just the right amount-not too small, not too large; he don’t want to be remembered for any reason), and goes out to his car. Takes the gun out of the glove compartment, holds it low in his lap and checks the load. All the bullets are still there, like he thought they’d be, but it’s a habit, a reflex. Peaches has this horror of going to pull the trigger someday and hearing the dry click of an empty chamber. He straps the gun into his ankle holster and likes its comfortable weight as he starts the car and steps on the gas pedal.

Now they’re all in place: Little Peaches off Calafia Road; Peaches on the Ortega Highway exit; Callan on his bike, waiting at the Beach Cities exit in Dana Point; Mickey at the Oceanside Transportation Center; O-Bop on the 5, following the courier car.

All in place.

Waiting for the stagecoach.

Which rolls right into the ambush.

O-Bop gets on the phone. “One half-mile out.”

Little Peaches sees the car come past. Lowers his binoculars, hits the cell phone. “Now.”

Callan pulls out onto the highway. “I’m on.”

Peaches: “Got it.”

Mickey starts a new chrono.

Callan sees the car in his rearview mirror and slows down a little and lets it pass him. No one in the car gives him so much as a glance. A lone biker headed south in the predawn darkness. It’s twenty minutes to the empty stretch at Pendleton, where he wants to do it, so he drops back a little but keeps the car’s taillights in sight. The commuter traffic is headed mostly north, not south, and the few cars that are headed their way will thin out even more as they leave the southernmost Orange County town of San Clemente.

They pass Basilone Road, then the famous surfing beaches called Trestles, then the two domes of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, then the Border Patrol checkpoint that blocks off the northbound lanes of the 5 and then it gets empty and quiet. Nothing on their right except sand dunes and ocean, which are now beginning to emerge in the faint light as the rays of the sun start to appear on the left over Black Mountain, which dominates the Camp Pendleton landscape.

Callan has a mike and a headset inside his motorcycle helmet.

He utters a single word: “Go?”

Mickey answers, “Go.”

Callan twists the accelerator, leans forward to cut down the wind resistance and speeds toward the courier car. Pulls beside almost exactly where he’d planned-on the long straightaway just short of the long right curve that sweeps toward the ocean.

The driver sees him at the last possible second. Callan sees his eyes widen in surprise, and then the car lurches forward as the driver steps on the gas. He’s not worried about getting stopped by a cop now, he’s worried about getting killed, and the Beamer surges ahead.

Momentarily.

This is why they got the Harley, right? This is why they bought the hog, basically an engine with two wheels and a seat attached to it. The fucking Harley ain’t gonna lose to no yuppie-mobile. And it sure ain’t gonna lose to no yuppie-mobile with two million dollars in cash for the taking.

So when the Beamer hits seventy, Callan hits seventy.

When it hits eighty, Callan hits eighty.

Ninety, ninety.

When it slides into the far right lane, Callan slides with it.

Back left, back left.

Back right, back right.

Beamer hits the hundred mph mark, Callan hits the century mark.

And now he lets his adrenaline loose. It’s pumping through his veins like fuel through the bike’s engine. Bike, engine, rider, adrenaline singing now, sailing, flying, Callan is in the zone now-pure adrenaline speed rush as he pulls even with the Beamer and the driver yanks the steering wheel to the left to try to ram him and almost does and Callan has to pull out and he almost loses it. Almost loses it at one hundred per, which would send him spinning out on the concrete, where he’d be just a smear of blood and tissue. But he rights the bike and pulls it behind the Beamer, which now has a ten-yard lead and then the back window opens and a Mac-10 peeks out and starts shooting like a tail gunner.

But maybe Peaches was right-even in a car you can’t hit shit at that speed, and anyway Callan is leaning left and right, swaying the bike back and forth and the guys in the Beamer figure that ain’t gonna work and they got a better chance with the gas pedal so they push it.

The Beamer hits 105, 110, and pulls ahead.

Even the Harley ain’t gonna catch it.

Which is why Callan hit it where he did-because the straightaway ends in that gigantic sharp outside curve that the Beamer isn’t going to handle at eighty, never mind a buck ten. That’s the fucking thing about physics-it’s uncompromising, so either the driver slows down and lets the shooter on the bike catch him or he goes flying off the road like a jet on a carrier deck, only this jet can’t fly.

He decides to take his chances with the shooter.

Wrong choice.

Callan slides to the left, his foot nearly scraping the concrete. He comes out of the top side of the curve even with the driver’s window and the driver freaks when he sees the. 22 come up near his face. Callan fires one shot to spiderweb the window, then Pop pop.

Always two shots, right together, because the second shot automatically corrects the first. Not that it needs to in this instance; both shots go dead center.

The two. 22 rounds are zipping around in the guy’s brain like the balls in a pinball machine.

That’s why the. 22 is Callan’s weapon of choice. It’s not powerful enough to blast a round through a skull. Instead, it sends the bullet bouncing around inside the brainpan, frantically looking for an exit, lighting all the lights and then putting them out.

Game over.

No bonus play.

The Beamer whips into serial 360s and then goes off the road.

Stays on its feet, though-fine German engineering-but the two passengers are still in shock from whiplash as Callan pulls the bike over and Pop pop.

Pop pop.

Callan pulls back onto the highway.

Three seconds later, Little Peaches pulls in behind the Beamer. Gets out of his car with a shotgun in his left hand, just in case, walks up and opens the driver’s door. Leans across the dead driver and takes the keys from the ignition. Walks to the back of the car, takes the briefcases from the trunk, gets back into his car and pulls out.

There must be a dozen cars spread out on the highway that see pieces of this scene, but none of them stop or pull over because Little Peaches is in a California Highway Patrol car and a CHP uniform, so they have to figure he has it under control.

He does.

Gets back in the cruiser and calmly drives south. He ain’t worried about getting stopped by a real cop, because moments before, right by Mickey’s clock, Big Peaches hit a switch on a radio-control transmitter and in a vacant lot a half-block away an old Dodge van went up like an octogenarian’s birthday cake and as Big Peaches pulls out for his next task he already hears the sirens screeching in his direction. He drives to the parking lot of a municipal golf course in north Oceanside and is sitting there when Little Peaches pulls in. Little Peaches takes the briefcases, gets out of the fake cop car and gets in with Peaches. As Little Peaches struggles out of his cop’s uniform they drive toward the Oceanside Transportation Center.

O-Bop has passed the crashed Beamer, so he knows that at least part of the job has gone off, so he drives to the Highway 76 exit. There’s a small dirt lot inside the cloverleaf and that’s where Callan has pulled off. He leaves the Harley and gets in with O-Bop. They drive toward the transport center.

Where Mickey’s waiting in his car.

Eyes on his watch, waiting.

The clock’s running down.

Either the job’s gone okay or his friends are hurt, dead, arrested.

Then he sees Little Peaches pull into the parking lot. They sit in the car until the train is announced and they can see it down the track, coming up from San Diego. Then they get out of their car, wearing conservative suits, each carrying a briefcase and a cardboard cup of coffee and an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, looking just like any other businessmen rushing to catch the train for a meeting in L.A. Mickey slips them their tickets as they walk past the car. They board moments before their trains pull out, and this is why they picked the Oceanside Transportation Center-because as the Amtrak train pulls up from the south, the local commuter train pulls out on a different track, headed south. Peaches takes one briefcase and gets on the L.A.-bound train. His brother takes the other case and heads south for San Diego.

As the trains depart the platforms, Callan and O-Bop pull into the parking lot and get out of the car. Their hair is cut short, Marine-style, and they’re wearing the kind of bad clothes that Marines wear when they’re off-duty. They sling their duffel bags over their shoulders, walk past Mickey’s car and get their tickets and then walk over to the side of the transport station where the buses are parked. Just two more Marines out of Pendleton on leave. O-Bop gets on a bus bound for Escondido, Callan on one headed for Hemet.

Peaches has a ticket for L.A., but he doesn’t take the whole ride. A few minutes south of the Santa Ana station, he goes into the lavatory and changes his clothes from the business geek’s suit into California casual, and he doesn’t come out until the train pulls into the station. Then he gets off at Santa Ana and checks into a motel. Little Peaches does a similar routine, only southbound, getting off in the funky surfing town of Encinitas and checking into one of those old roadside cottage motels across the PCH from the beach.

Mickey, he just drives back to his hotel. He hasn’t been close to the action, and if the cops want to track him down and ask him any questions, he’s got nothing to say anyway. He does his thirty-five per downtown and goes back to bed for a nap.

Callan and O-Bop take their full rides, O-Bop to a No-Tell Motel next to a porn shop, so he’s happy and has things to do while he’s lying low. He checks in, then walks over and buys twenty bucks’ worth of tokens and spends most of the afternoon pumping the coins into the video machines.

Sitting on his bus, Callan tries to forget about having just killed three men, but he can’t. He don’t feel his usual nothin'; he feels something he can’t put a name to.

I forgive you. God forgives you.

Can’t get that shit out of his head.

He gets off his bus and checks into a Motel 6. The room ain’t much, but it does have cable. Callan flops on the bed and watches movies on the television. The room smells of disinfectant, but it beats the Golden West.

The plan is to chill out for a few days, then if everything is cool-and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be-they’re going to meet up at the Sea Lodge in La Jolla, chill out on the beach for a few days, call in some broads (Peaches actually says “broads”) from Haley Saxon, have a party.

Callan remembers the girl he saw there, Nora. Remembers how much he wanted that girl, and how Big Peaches took her away from him. He remembers how beautiful she was, and thinking that if he could somehow touch that beauty it would make his own life less ugly. But that was a long time ago, a lot of blood’s flowed under the bridge since then and it’s not possible that the girl Nora is still in that house.

Is it?

He don’t want to ask, though.

Three days later, Peaches is on the phone like he’s ordering Chinese food: Whaddya want? A blonde, a brunette, how about a black chick? They’re all hanging out in Peaches’ room even though they all have adjoining rooms right on the beach. It’s actually pretty cool, Callan thinks-you step right out of your room and you’re on the beach, and he’s getting off on watching the sun set over the ocean while Peaches is on the phone ordering pussy.

“Whatever,” he tells Peaches.

“And a whatever,” Peaches says into the phone, and then he chases them out because he’s got business to do they don’t need to be a part of. Take a swim, take a shower, have some dinner, get ready for the broads.

Peaches’ business arrives about an hour later, after it’s dark.

They don’t talk a lot. Peaches just hands him a suitcase containing three hundred large in cash as his share for the information.

Art Keller takes the money and leaves.

Simple as that.

Haley Saxon has some business, too.

She decides on the five girls she’s going to send to the Sea Lodge, then gets on the horn to Raul Barrera.

Some wise guys from the old days are in town throwing around a lot of cash, and guess who they are. You remember Jimmy Peaches? Well, he suddenly came into a lot of money.

Raul is very interested.

And sure, Haley knows exactly where they are.

Just leave my girls out of it.

Callan lies in bed watching the girl get dressed.

She’s pretty, really pretty-long red hair, nice rack, nice ass-but she wasn’t her. She got his rocks off, though, gave him his money’s worth. Gave him head, then climbed on top of him and rode him until he came.

Now she stands in the bathroom fixing her makeup, and she sees him in the mirror, looking at her.

“We can go again if you want,” she says.

“I’m good.”

When she leaves he wraps a towel around himself and goes out onto the little terrace. Watches the small waves break silver in the moonlight. A nice-looking sports-fishing boat sits about a hundred yards out, its lights glowing golden.

It would be just goddamn tranquil, Callan thinks, if I couldn’t hear Big Peaches going at it in the next room, still going at it. Fucking Peaches never changes-pulled his “I like your girl better” routine again, except this time it was his brother. Little Peaches didn’t care-he’d already sent his girl to his room and he just said, “Take her,” so they switched women and rooms and that’s why Callan has to listen to Big Peaches huffing and puffing like an asthmatic bull.

They find Little Peaches’ body in the morning.

Mickey knocks at Callan’s door and when Callan answers it Mickey just grabs him and pulls him into Big Peaches’ room and there’s Little Peaches, tied to a chair with his hands in his pockets.

Except his hands aren’t attached to his arms.

They’re severed; the carpet is soaked in blood.

A washcloth is stuffed in Little Peaches’ mouth and his eyes are bulging. You don’t got to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out they chopped off his hands and left him to bleed out.

Callan can hear Big Peaches in the bathroom, crying and throwing up. O-Bop sits on the bed, holding his head in his hands.

The money is gone, of course.

What’s in the closet instead is a note.

KEEP YOUR HANDS IN YOUR OWN POCKETS.

The Barreras.

Peaches comes out of the bathroom. His fat face is red and streaked with tears. Little bubbles of snot pop out of his nostrils. “We can’t just leave him,” he cries.

“We got to, Jimmy,” Callan says.

“I’ll get 'em,” Peaches says. “Last thing I do, I’ll pay these bastards back.”

They don’t pack or nothing. Just get into their separate vehicles and go. Callan drives all the way up past San Francisco, then finds a little motel near the beach and holes up.

Raul Barrera has his money back, although it’s three hundred thousand light.

Raul knows that money went to whoever gave the Piccone brothers the tip.

But-and give Little Peaches credit, the man was tough-he never told them who it was.

Claimed he didn’t know.

Callan goes into the basement in Seaside, California.

He finds one of them old cabin-style motels not far from the beach and pays in cash. He doesn’t go out much at all the first few days. Then he starts taking long walks on the beach.

Where the surf whispers to him rhythmically.

I forgive you.

God…