SUICIDE HILL

465

TV console, state-of-the-art stereo system and four rooms’ worth of expensive high-tech furniture—gone. Four walk-in closets full of clothes, three for her, one for him—gone. Paintings that Vandy insisted gave the pad class—gone. The down payment and maintenance costs on a flop that he now couldn’t live in—adios, motherfucker. Add on the empty carport in back of the building and total it up: two hundred Class A felonies committed in the jurisdictions of the most trigger-happy police departments in the country. Sold down the river by a worthless—

When he couldn’t finish the thought, Rice knew that the game wasn’t over. He pissed on the living room carpet and kicked the front door off its hinges. Then he went looking for felony number 201 and the means to get back his woman.

The Pico bus dropped him on Lincoln Avenue, a stone’s throw from Venice Ghosttown and the likelihood of a shitload of customized taco wagons without alarm systems. On Lincoln and Ocean Park he spotted a hardware store and went in and boosted a large chisel, rattail file and pair of pliers. Exiting the store, he smiled and looked at his watch: two hours and ten minutes out of the rock and back on the roll.

Rice waited for dusk at a burrito stand on the edge of Ghosttown, drinking coffee and eyeballing the East Venice spectacle of overage hippies, overage hookers, overage lowriders and underage cops trying to look cool. He watched horny businessmen in company cars prowl for poontang, tried to guess which hooker they’d hit on and wondered why he had to love a woman before he could fuck her; he watched an aged love child with an amplifier strapped to his back strum a guitar for chump change and suck on a short dog of T-bird. The scene filled him with disgust, and when twilight hit, he felt his disgust turn to high-octane fuel and walked into Ghosttown. Stucco walk-back apartment buildings, white wood-frame houses spraypainted with gang graffiti, vacant lots covered with garbage. Emaciated dogs looking for someone to bite. The cars either abandoned jig rigs or welfare wagons in mint condition, but nothing exceptional. Rice walked west toward the beach, grateful that the cold weather had the locals indoors, seeing nothing that Louie Calderon would pay more than five bills for out of friendship. He kept walking, and was almost out of Ghosttown when automotive perfection hit him right between the eyes. It was a ’54 Chevy convertible, candy-apple sapphire blue with a canary yellow top, smoked windshield and full continental kit. If the interior was cherry and the engine was in good shape, he was home. 466

L.A. NOIR

Rice walked up to the driver’s-side door and pretended to admire the car while he got out his chisel and pliers. He counted slowly to ten, and when he could feel no suspicion coming down on him, jammed the chisel into the space between the door-lock and chassis and yanked outward. The door snapped open, no alarm went off. Rice saw that the dash was a restored ’54

original and felt underneath it for the ignition wires. Pay dirt! He took his pliers and twisted the two wires together. The engine came to life, and he drove the car away.

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Two hours later, with the Chevy safely stashed, Rice walked in the door of Louie Calderon’s auto body shop and tapped Louie on the shoulder. Louie looked up from the tool kit he was digging through and said, “Duane the Brain! When’d you get out?” Rice ignored the oil-covered hand he offered and placed an arm over Louie’s shoulders. “Today.” He looked around and saw two mechanics staring at them. “Let’s go up to your office.”

“Business?”

“Business.”

They walked through the shop and up to the office that adjoined the second story of Louie’s house. When they were seated across the papercluttered desk from each other, Rice said, “Now resting in your hot roller garage out by Suicide Hill is a mint ’54 Chevy ragtop. Continental kit, 326

supercharged, full leather tuck and roll, hand-rubbed sapphire blue metal flake paint job. Intact, I’d say it’s worth twelve K. Parts, close to ten. The upholstery is worth at least two.”

Louie opened the refrigerator next to his desk and pulled out a can of Coors. He popped the top and said, “You’re crazy. With your record, you have got to be the primo auto theft suspect in L.A. County. You bought your way out of what? A hundred counts? That kind of shit only happens once. Next time, they fuck you for the ones they got you on and the ones you got away with. How’d you get in my garage?”

Rice cracked his knuckles. “I cut a hole in the door with a chisel and unlocked it from the inside. Nobody saw me, and I covered up the hole with some wood I found. And I’m not planning on making a career of it. I just did it for a quick stake.”

“Nice sled, huh?”

“Primo. If you weren’t a Mexican, I’d call it a bonaroo taco wagon.”

Louie laughed. “All Chicanos with ambition are honorary Anglos. How much you want?”