Money Shot

20.

Malloy waited out my bout of dry heaves. I felt fairly close either to passing out or turning inside out when I finally slammed the door, leaned back and rested my pounding head against the seat.

“It’s no big deal,” Malloy said, putting the car in gear and pulling back out into traffic. “Lots of guys puke the first time.”

He reached under his seat and for a crazy second, I though he was going to pull out the gun. Instead, he came up with an unopened bottle of water and offered it to me without taking his eyes off the road. I accepted the water gratefully and took a deep swig. It was warm as tea, but I needed it.

“I was thirty,” Malloy told me as we waited at a red light. “It was two days after my birthday. I was still a rookie back then. Got a kinda late start on the job.”

He stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and punched the dashboard lighter. The light changed and he hit the gas.

“Anyway,” he continued, unlit cigarette bouncing as he spoke. “My partner and me, we got a call that this crackhead left her newborn baby in the toilet at a Carl’s Jr. Left it in there just like you’d leave a dump.” He shook his head. “We found her right around the corner, sitting on the ground, hitting the pipe like nothing happened. She was still bleeding down her legs. When my partner confronted her, she acted like she didn’t hear him. Then when he took a step closer, she pulled out this knife. I don’t mean some kind of pocketknife, I mean a big old kitchen knife like the kind on TV that cuts through tin cans. She stuck that knife right in Laimert’s calf. So I shot her.”

The lighter popped out. Malloy took it out and touched it to the end of his cigarette.

“I thought I was OK about it at first. I mean she was just a skinny little thing, barely more than a kid, but she was out of her fucking mind. She drowned her own baby in a dirty toilet and stabbed a cop. She had it coming, no doubt about it. But two hours later I was typing up some paperwork and all of a sudden, I saw her again, lying there on her side, and I puked right on the typewriter.”

I looked up at Malloy. I was so surprised by this unexpected soliloquy that I didn’t know what to say. Lalo Malloy, spontaneously sharing an intimate anecdote. With me. Something subtle and strange had happened between us. I had no idea what to make of it.

I looked out the window. Sherman Oaks became Valley Village and then North Hollywood as we zigzagged back toward Malloy’s place. I drank little sips of water, trying to find my voice, trying to set aside what I’d done and how totally alien everything felt and focus back on the problem at hand.

“What the hell happened to Lia?” I finally made myself ask. “Do you think she saw the weasel and his pal and took off?”

“Maybe,” Malloy said. “Maybe they already got her and were just waiting for us.”

“Now what?”

“Now we need to get that 2257 information you mentioned for PDM Video,” Malloy said. “See if we can get a drivers license on Lia.”

“We can probably get it online at your place,” I said.

Malloy nodded and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Do you have a breath mint or something?” I asked.

“Glove box,” Malloy said.

I opened the glove box and dug through maps and napkins and things until I found a tin of Altoids. I popped it open and took one. Malloy turned onto Hollywood Way. As the candy dissolved on my tongue, the details of the events in the parking lot started to dissolve as well. Part of me felt it was important to hang on to them, to savor them in all their ugliness. But there was another part of me that was just as glad to let them go.

We drove in silence. Malloy turned onto his street and parked a few doors down from his place. I followed him along the sidewalk and over toward the door to the apartment complex.

“You know,” I said. “This is gonna sound really weird, but I’m kinda hungry all of a sudden.”

Inexplicably, Malloy froze. He did not reply. His body language turned simultaneously tense and fluid, like a cat that had just spotted a mouse. He slowly reached out and wrapped his fingers around my upper arm.

“What?” I asked.

“My wallet,” he said. “I—”

Before he could finish the sentence, there was a sharp, sudden Fourth of July pop and a puff of plaster dust exploded from the wall about an asshair away from the left side of Malloy’s head.

“Go!” he said, shoving me ahead of him so hard I nearly fell.

I have no idea how I managed to keep my feet under me and Malloy behind me as we barreled down the sidewalk with those firecracker pops going off all around us. That cliché you always hear about how everything goes into slow motion at times like this is kind of true, but also kind of not. The world around me was suddenly way too bright and sharp, everything crystal clear and intensely significant, but it also seemed like things were happening before my mind had time to sort them out. Like my brain was just a befuddled old grandma in my body’s backseat, demanding to know where on earth we were going in such a hurry.

The next thing I knew my cheek was pressed against the battered door of an old Chevy Nova. Either the pops had stopped or I had gone totally deaf. All I could hear was ringing inside my ears. It seemed pretty comfortable and safe down there by the Nova and I felt like maybe I could use a little nap, but Malloy was dragging me again, impatient fingers digging into me and forcing me to leave the comfy Nova behind. He pushed me into his SUV through the driver’s side door. I hit my chin on the steering wheel and nearly impaled myself on the gearshift but he was right behind me, shoving me aside, cranking the ignition and stomping on the gas before the door was even shut.

I thought I couldn’t hear anymore but I was wrong. The sound of the rear windshield shattering was like the end of the world.

“Jesus!” Malloy said, wrenching the wheel from left to right and then reaching under the seat for my gun.

I guess you could call what happened next a car chase. It was probably pretty spectacular and exciting, with lots of near misses and bullets flying all around. I’m sure it would have been a blast to watch in a movie theater, but I’ll tell you what, it’s not nearly as much fun when you’re jammed down into the place under the dashboard where your feet go, arms wrapped around your head and screaming at the top of your lungs, slamming from side to side like improperly stowed luggage and wishing you would die in a fiery wreck already, just to get it over with. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.