The Pallbearers

Chapter 24

We got off the Hollywood Freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard and parked near Paramount Studios. Sabas kept the motor running. I was slumped in the passenger seat, dripping blood, looking down at a bunch of spaghetti wires hanging out from under my dash.

"What'd you do to my car?" I asked as blood drops continued to land sporadically in my lap.

"You had the keys. I needed to hot-wire the starter," he said. "Back in the day, I used to steal cars for my set, but those old ignition boxes were a lot easier to open."

"Why didn't you tell me you were such an animal? That was awesome," I said, looking over at him with new respect.

He smiled at me and started massaging his scarred knuckles, kneeding them as his entire right hand began to puff up.

"My punch has lost nothing, homes," he said, sounding like the vato g-ster he'd been fifty years ago. "My first agg-assault in two decades. I forgot how much fun it is, clocking guys."

"And you say I'm the one who runs stop signs and makes legal messes."

"I looked in the front window. I could see it was going bad. It was the best I could come up with." He grinned.

"It was great, Sabas. Perfect. I'm definitely takin' you on my next beat-down."

He kept smiling, pumped by his adrenaline rush, while my blood continued to run down the side of my face, ruining my trousers.

"You're making a mess. You better stop that bleeding. Looks like it might need stitches," he said.

I reached into the glove box, got some tissues, and pressed them hard onto the open cut 011 my forehead. After a few minutes, I stemmed the flow.

"Let's see what we got here." I pulled the two wallets out of my pocket with my free hand, handed one to Vargas, and took the other myself.

I had Baldv s ID. It turned out Chris was somebody named Christian Calabro. According to his DL, he was thirty-two, six three, and weighed two-sixty, so I'd definitely been fighting out of my weight class. He had four hundred in cash and half a dozen credit cards, including a Visa that was issued to him from some outfit called the Mesa Investment Group.

I went through the glassine section. Mostly business cards from personal trainers, nutritionists, and sports doctors. I found several business cards that said: