White Sister

Chapter 9.

SHE WAS FROZEN, holding the picture, looking for a suitable response.

"I want to know about that photograph," I pressed.

She looked up at me. Blue ice turning to hard steel.

Just then, I heard a car pull up out front. Seconds later, the front door was thrown open. I couldn't see the entry from the living room, but the door slammed so hard against the wall that the crystal chandelier shook, rattling the glass teardrops like wind chimes.

"Stacy!" a man roared.

"In here, Lou."

Then the biggest man I have ever seen lunged into the living room. He was carrying a foot-long.357 Israeli Desert Eagle, which is a huge chrome-plated gun, but despite its size, it still looked like a toy in Maluga's giant hand.

I'd seen pictures of him in the Calendar section of the L. A. Times, usually at some music awards banquet. The press shots didn't begin to capture the essence of him. He was a monster. From what I'd read, he was half-black, half-Samoan. His head was basketball sized. Round black eyes glinted maniacally from under hooded brows; his mouth an ugly tear in a steroid user's pockmarked face. The rest of him was right out of a Marvel comic muscles on muscles. He was maybe six-feet-seven or eight, and four hundred pounds, but I usually stop estimating height and weight after six-three, two-fifty, because beyond that, it's a SWAT exercise anyway. Maluga was dressed in a loose-fitting tan and yellow dashiki. There wasn't much else funny about him.

"How'd he get in here? Where's Wayne and KZ at?" he snarled. "What I pay them bustas for if dey can't keep shit like this from happenin'?"

"He's a cop," Stacy said, glowering at me. "They left the room to call you and he was going through my stuff, no warrant or nothin'."

Then Lou Maluga started toward me. There was little doubt how he'd earned the nickname "Luna." Roid rage flared in his eyes, sparking maniacally as he advanced. I felt like a wuss, but I knew I couldn't take him, so I yanked out the Beretta.

He saw it, then stopped, raised his gun, and said, "Go ahead, but I'll fuck you up, homes. One shot never gonna do it. You be dead 'fore you get off two."

"David Slade died tonight. It wasn't a car accident. He was shot behind the ear. Let's talk about that." I was trying not to look down the barrel of the huge Israeli cannon cradled in his right hand.

"Slade was a cheese-eater… If he's dead, we all better for it."

I took the photograph out of Stacy's hand and tossed it across the room to him. He plucked it out of the air. Then I said, "That looks like a motive for murder to me, Lou."

He glanced at the shot and threw it aside. "I don't kill nobody over pussy, asshole." Then he pushed the gun forward at me. "Let's get this done." He was actually up for it, willing to stand there and shoot it out with me at point-blank range right in his own over-decorated, African themed living room.

Then, breaking the moment, KZ and Wayne exploded into the den through the side door. Both had their guns drawn. The odds, lousy before, were suddenly impossible. I heard KZ trombone the slide on his auto-mag and I knew I was probably seconds from going down in a brutal crossfire. We stood there, John Wayne-style, faced off over gun barrels.

That's when the front gate buzzer sounded and Tommy Sepulveda's voice crackled over the intercom.

"LAPD. Open up," he said. Everybody in the room tensed.

"Open up!" Figueroa shouted next. "Open up or we're breaking it down!"

"I know Nathan Red is a good lawyer," I said to Stacy, "but in his absence, let me advise you that shooting it out with a cop in your house when the LAPD is standing at your front gate is a terrible idea."

KZ and Wayne started swinging their eyes back and forth from Stacy to Lou, looking like spectators at a tennis match, clearly hoping for further instructions.

"I got a better idea," Stacy finally sneered. "Why don't we just let five-oh handle this shitbird?"