Hoff was first to his feet.
Larry, a little slower, put up a hand, said, “Enough, I give up.”
Doc, a nasty smile leaking through the blood, suddenly like the poster of Die Hard, said, “Too bad. ’Cause there’s more where that came from.”
Larry, letting his body slump into the defeated mode, limped to the desk, said, “Let’s have some drinks, and we can work out this misunderstanding.”
Doc was coming up behind him, one arm raised. Larry spotted an ornate letter opener on the desk, snatched it up, and, turning, plunged it deep into the doc’s chest.
Doc looked stunned but Larry didn’t let that stop him. Rearing back, using all the force of his right hand, he hammered the hilt of the letter opener home, almost burying it in the doc’s chest. The Doc uttered a small oh! and crumpled to the floor.
Larry saw the fall in capital letters, as if it was a hot script, then kicked the body twice for luck and badness.
It hit — Jesus Christ, what the fuck did I do?
He got on his knees, like he was in that movie with Jon Voight, and said, “Champ, wake up, wake up, Champ.”
Shit, he’d snapped. Say it was an accident, self-defense, he’d say the doc came after him with the letter opener and Larry had to wrestle it away. But would they believe it? On C.S.I. didn’t they always figure out the truth? But that was a TV series, a fucking procedural, the truth had to come out. In real life lies held up, like Jodi Foster in The Accused. Wait, that movie was about a rape, not a fucking murder. Wasn’t there a Harrison Ford movie where this happened, where Ford been accused of a crime he didn’t commit, or didn’t mean to commit?
He took out his phone, said, “Idea for thriller. Harrison Ford is accused of a crime he didn’t commit.”
He had to sit down. As he did, the phone beeped. Automatically he picked up, the opposite of how he felt, said, “Make it real.”
A voice said, “You got the money yet or we gonna have to kill the bitch?”
The voice sounded familiar, but Larry wasn’t sure why.
Took Larry a moment to regroup. He said, “Look, the boss is dead, it’s fuckin’ over, so let my fuckin’ wife go.”
Silence, then, “The fuck you talkin’ about?”
It was Mo or Jo — the skinny one, not the Spanish, non-Mexican guy.
Tired of being manipulated, Larry said, “Look, the game’s over. You can tell my wife that too because I know she’s in on it.”
“Man, you crazy,” the guy said.
“You don’t understand,” Larry said, “the boss is gone now. I killed Geronimo.”
“What?”
“The guy you’re working for, Dr. Hoff. Bill. Or The Hoff, as he called himself.”
“Hef? Like Playboy?
“No, Hoff, like the guy who was fucking my wife.”
“The fuck is Hoff, man?”
Larry, a dread slithering along his spine, tried, “Your boss?”
“My boss is right here next to me, yo.”
Shit. Had Larry killed the wrong guy?
“Hey, Larry? You ready to play some ball now or what?”
This was a nightmare to end all nightmares. But — silver lining, he could use this twist in the movie too. Killing the wrong man? Oh yeah, people would eat this shit up.
Thirteen
Maybe my future starts right now.
Mo had it all figured out. Once they got the money from that Larry Reed motherfucker, they’d take out the boss too. Hell, why the fuck not? Mo liked even numbers a lot more than odd. Mo never was too good at math in school — or maybe the problem was he wasn’t in school all that much at all — but he knew 85K split two ways was a lot more than 85K split three. But can you even split 85? He thought you could only split even numbers. Fuck it, man, if there was an extra dollar, he’d keep it, and they’d go down to Meh-hee-coe. Man, eighty-five thousand dollars is like a million pesos down there. Money’s worth more below the border, he didn’t know why everybody didn’t want to move down there. Why waste your time with dollars when you can have pesos?
Mo’s plan: they could use some of the cash to buy a ranch-type hacienda or whatever they were called, then use the rest to see how they might take on part of the cartel’s business. Stay small but profitable. He’d need Jo for the heavy lifting, the guy was dumb as shit, but you don’t got a wingman, who else gonna take out the trash?
But Jo, man, he’d been sniffing round Larry Reed’s wife, going, “Can’t wait to taste a piece of that meat” and “Bet the lady be tastin’ sweet” and “There’s a sweet hole down in that basement and I’m gonna plug it.”
Disrespectful-to-women shit like that.
Mo was southern, and all southern boys are gentlemen. He didn’t mind that talk when it was for show, like at the producer’s house. But that was just to put on a show, to scare the dumb guy.
Mo went to Jo, “You talk to your momma with that mouth?” and Jo said, “If I wanted to fuck her, I would.”
Jo was so stupid, it was impossible to have a sensible conversation around the man.
Mo was from Tennessee, hundred miles outside Memphis. Mo was the type of guy who’d kill a man who looked at him funny — and he had, seven times. Make that eight — there was that guy who gave him queer looks at that honkytonk back home. But women, man, he didn’t never kill none of them. Women were sacred to Mo. He didn’t understand how any man could ever hurt a woman. Women were a gift from God. Just look at them — how soft and gentle they all were, with all them curves. A woman was like a beautiful white mountain. Not that women had to be white, he wasn’t no redneck — at least not when it came to fucking. He’d fuck any woman, no matter what color. Like at ho houses, some guys would only pick the white girls, but Mo went black, Chinese, Mexican, didn’t matter to him. But most of the guys Mo knew growin’ up went around hating niggers.
That’s one reason why Mo took off for Los Angeles. He had big dreams and he knew none of them would come true if he stayed in the back country with a bunch of morons his whole life.
The thing that surprised Mo most about L.A.: there were just as many morons out here as back home. Different kind of morons though, ’cause back home people were dumb and knew it, but out here people were dumb and acted smart. Putting on a front, always like a movie camera was going and they were, what, actors? Mo could see through all that fake though. People out here with their clothes and their cars and their perfect teeth, acting like they knew everything about the world. Whenever Mo saw one of them Hollywood dickbags he would be laughing his ass off inside, knowing the truth even if nobody else did.
Mo made money like he’d been doing back home — little dealing, little protection, little GTA. Only had to kill people once in a while. Struck out twice but, like a cat, he was good at burying his shit, and he never went down for killing nobody.
Mo had met Jo on a job, hired to kick the shit out of some dumb Hollywood fuck who owed money for coke. Mo thought Jo was all right, except for the way he treated women.
Driving in Santa Monica, passing a pretty blonde in a bikini, Jo yelled out the window, “Yeah, baby, sit on my face with that shit, I wanna taste you.”
Mo grabbed Jo, nearly crashed the damn car, said, “The fuck you talkin’ to her like that for? That there’s a woman. She’s sacred, man.”
“You crazy, yo?” Jo said. “Almost gettin’ our asses killed just ’cause I was talkin’ to a bitch.”
“Tellin’ a woman to sit on your face ain’t talkin’ to her,” Mo said.