Three To Get Deadly (76 page)

Marty hit the pavement face-first, too hard and too fast to do anything to break his fall, knocking the air out of him, crushing his glasses and smashing one of the tiny water bottles in his jacket pocket. As he lay gasping for breath, a piece of paper fluttered in front of his face, tiny flames beginning to curl the edges. It was the picture of Molly's kid. He slapped the flames out with his hand.

The edges of the picture were charred, but the smiling faces were intact. The Molly in the photo and the woman he'd left behind, the woman with the pleading eyes and bloody smile, were two different people. Marty would never be able to reconcile the two images, one of which he knew he would never shake.

Angel.

Was she crying out to her daughter, her little angel, with that last breath? Or was she calling out to Marty, mistaking him in her desperation for something he definitely was not? Or was she screaming in horrified recognition at the dark spirit that came to take her away?

He'd never know, but he'd probably never stop wondering, either.

Marty took the photo and staggered to his feet. Every part of his body seemed to ache. His hair was singed, his face was scratched, one pant-leg was torn at the knee, and his crotch was soaked with Evian, but he'd made it.

He turned slowly towards the narrow street, staring at the sight in disbelief. Both vehicles were engulfed in flames, the fire spreading to the ruins of the nearby buildings.

If he'd hesitated another second, he would have been burned alive. That's how close he cut it.

Up until today, he managed to live his life without risking it even once. And now, twice in one morning, he'd barely avoided death.

That kind of luck doesn't last, not for real people. He was almost killed, all because he stopped, all because he let himself be pulled into someone else's problem. Molly's certain death nearly became his.

He wouldn't make that mistake again.

Marty turned his back to the fire, crammed the picture deep into his wet pocket, adjusted the straps of the gym bag over his shoulders, and started walking.

11:40 a.m. Tuesday

Marty's Ray-Bans teetered precariously on the bridge of his nose, held in place by only one arm. A lens was cracked, too, but there was no way he was taking the glasses off. They were part of his disguise as he moved purposefully up the middle of Alameda Street, carefully winding his way through the debris field of fractured pavement, smashed cars, and crumpled buildings.

His dust mask was crushed, but he molded it back into shape and pulled it up over his nose and mouth. He only had three masks left and wasn't disposing of this one until it absolutely couldn't be used any more. It also covered his face and helped conceal any sympathy or fear that might inadvertently escape.

Smoke and dust filled the air, shrouding him in a swirling fog of destruction. He welcomed it. The haze further obscured him from others and they from him.

He ignored the crashed cars and the crushed cars and the victims inside them.

He ignored the dazed survivors, most of them elderly Asians, stumbling across his path like drunks, their faces lined and puckered with age.

He ignored the injured and the dead, laid out on the sidewalks like garage sale trinkets on display.

And he ignored the crying, the moaning, and the screaming.

He ignored it all.

There were a thousand Mollys out there, and he didn't want to meet another one. It was too painful and far too dangerous.

Marty kept his gaze at his feet, following the twisted iron of the long-forgotten railroad track imbedded in the broken asphalt. Or maybe it was an old trolley track. Marty didn't know and didn't really care. What little Los Angeles history he knew was gleaned from
Dragnet
reruns. If Jack Webb didn't film it, Marty didn't know it.

He didn't feel he was missing anything. Los Angeles didn't have much history anyway and what little it did have was paved over the instant it showed any age, which made sense to him. The only buildings tourists cared about were ones they saw repeatedly on TV or in classic movies, and most of those were facades on studio back-lots. In that regard, he was a learned historian.

Stately Wayne Manor. The Bates Motel. Melrose Place. 77 Sunset Strip. Baywatch headquarters. Jed Clampett's mansion. The Brady's house. Gilligan's lagoon. Cabot Cove. These places were more culturally and emotionally meaningful to LA, and perhaps to most people born after 1950, than the weedy battlefields of Gettysburg, the Liberty Bell, or the White House itself.

Beyond TV and film locations, the most interesting and significant landmarks in the city were as transitory and disposable as the historical record they were printed on—the slim "Maps to the Stars' Homes" distributed by bored Latinos sitting on folding beach chairs at street corners and freeway off-ramps.

Now they would all have to be replaced by new landmarks.

Marty was passing through Little Tokyo, a fact he wouldn't have known if the blue sign demarcating the neighborhood wasn't still standing, canted at a right angle. Now he noticed the Japanese businesses, their signs dangling from crumbling storefronts, or lying broken on the streets. Landwa Food. Mitsuwa Marketplace. Yaohan Plaza. And even through the dust, he could smell the unmistakably salty, greasy, and fishy aroma of Japanese food.

Or perhaps it was just Marty's imagination, spurred by the pained and perplexed Asian faces, the indecipherable Japanese lettering, the knowledge he was in their tiny, dying corner of a fading urban center.

The railroad track veered off and disappeared into a parking lot on the northwestern corner of 2nd and Alameda. Hundreds of terrified people gathered on the uneven concrete clearing, staring at the buildings they'd escaped from, taking comfort in the arms of their friends and co-workers, the agonized wailing of all those jostled cars drowning out their own.

He moved on, past a pile of sooty brick, rusted iron bars, and corroded metal awnings, all that remained of an abandoned building that had dissolved like a sugar cube hit by a drop of water. A bewildered security guard, presumably there to protect the place from squatters, sat on a stool in his rickety plywood shack, which was barely larger than the man himself. Judging from the look on the guard's face, Marty guessed he wouldn't be leaving his tall, narrow shelter any time soon.

The face of the Japanese American Museum had disintegrated, a pile of shattered glass glittering like snow in the wide plaza at Alameda and 1st Street. Marty crossed the intersection and headed west.

Even without a sign, he would've known he was in Little Tokyo now. On the south side of the street, a recreation of a wooden watchtower marked the entrance to a mini-mall designed to resemble an authentic Japanese village, at least as it would have been if built by a Winchell's Donuts franchisee.

The center, or what was left of it, faced a block of historic buildings dating back to the 1880s and the first Japanese settlers, something Marty wouldn't have known if he wasn't watching where he stepped. The previous occupants of the buildings, from the 1800s up until World War II, were inscribed in brass letters in the broken, buckled sidewalk as part of some urban art project.

Marty stopped in front of one of the buildings and read the listing: 1890, Queen Hotel. 1910, Nihon Hotel. 1914, T. Kato, Midwife. 1926, Dr. W. Tsukifuji, Dentist. 1935, Ushikawa Hospital. Now it was a video store.

A few steps farther down was Fugetsu Do, the Japanese bakery where the first fortune cookie was created. Marty looked through the shattered window. No one was inside. Perhaps the baker got advance warning from one of his cookies.

Marty continued on, Little Tokyo abruptly giving way to the Civic Center. A sign outside of City Hall announced that the 28-story edifice, familiar to anyone who ever looked at an LA policeman's badge, was undergoing an extensive seismic retrofitting that obviously came too late. The imposing, phallic tower, thrusting a faux-Greek temple into the heavens, was the official symbol of the city and it was even more so now, snapped in half, lying across the park like a fallen soldier.

But across the street, the ramshackle "World Famous Home of the Authentic Kosher Mexican Burrito" withstood the quake unscathed and was open for business. Steam escaped from the tiny, open kitchen, where the perspiring chef, seemingly oblivious to the disaster, was busily serving meals to the equally oblivious customers at the sidewalk counter.

If Marty limited his view to just the burrito stand, it looked like just another lunch hour, the counter crowded with hungry paralegals, secretaries, and civil servants, munching over-stuffed burritos and chugging huge sodas. The only thing wrong with the picture was that everyone was bleeding from somewhere, their clothes ripped, their bodies covered with dust. But there was no panic here, no moaning, no sobbing. The customers seemed to take great comfort in their familiar burritos, keeping their gaze on the kitchen and away from the shaken world around them.

Without thinking, Marty abruptly turned and headed for the burrito stand. Even though he hated Mexican food, he suddenly had an overpowering urge for a burrito; he didn't know why. Perhaps it was astonishment that drew him, the discovery of an oasis in the disaster. Then again, he'd never tried a Kosher burrito before, and this was certainly the day for new experiences.

Marty shouldered his way to the counter, pulled down his dust mask, and filled his nostrils with the smell of sizzling fat. Faded, water-stained photos of direct-to-video movie stars and TV character actors hung on the walls, their sun-bleached autographs retraced with a ball-point pen by a shaky hand. Lee Horsley ate here. A place couldn't have a stronger recommendation than that.

The chef worked frantically, taking orders, serving food, and running the cash register.

"What would you like?" The chef asked with a heavy, Mexican accent.

Marty glanced up at the menu. Besides the Kosher Burrito, and a dozen variations on it, they offered Teriyaki Chicken Burritos for their Japanese neighbors, hamburgers for the bland bureaucrat, and Shrimp Cocktails for the discerning gourmet. What would Lee Horsley have chosen?

"What's a Kosher Burrito?" Marty asked.

"Pastrami, Hebrew National salami, corned beef, chili sauce, onions, mustard, pickles and peppers wrapped in a home-made tortilla," the chef replied. "Is very very good."

All that was missing was a matzo ball and gefilte fish to really make it work.

"I'll take it," Marty put four dollars on the counter. "And a coke."

The chef swept the money into his hand, dumped it in the open register, and returned to his cooking, digging a handful of chopped meat out of a bucket and tossing it onto the hissing grill. Marty watched him.

"You know there was an earthquake, right?" Marty asked.

The chef replied without turning around. "People still got to eat. I still got to make a living."

Marty was about to ask what inspired the chef to create such a bizarre entrée, but was distracted by a hard shove from the big guy next to him.

"Hey asshole, your back is on fire."

Marty looked over his shoulder and, out of the corner of his eye, saw smoke rising from his gym bag. He yelped, shrugged the bag off and dropped it on the concrete floor, stomping out the flames. It was only after the fire was smothered, and he was staring down breathlessly at the scorched bag, that he realized the stupidity of what he'd done.

He'd put out the fire and saved the bag, only to destroy anything that hadn't burned inside by stomping on it. If he'd bothered to think first, instead of panicking, he could have extinguished the flames with a little water.

Now he knew why there was so much smoke everywhere he went.

"Nice going, dumbfuck." The big guy beside him, wearing the JC Penney suit and Wal-Mart tie, guffawed mightily, skillfully avoiding choking on a mouthful of burrito at the same time.

Marty picked up his burned bag and carried it over to one of the wobbly tables, where he spilled out the contents on the chipped Formica top.

The transistor radio was smashed, and so was the flashlight, but Marty thought he still might be able to get it to work. A couple of his Evian bottles had broken open, soaking his matches, but they would dry out. Or at least he hoped they would. His t-shirt was scorched, and so were a few of his granola bars, but the duct tape, first aid kit, and most of the other stuff seemed to be okay.

"You thought you were prepared for The Big One, didn't you, Chief?" The comment was followed by more mighty guffaws.

Marty looked up to see the big man standing at the table, shaking his boulder-like head with disgust. The guy clutched a Coke in his paw as if he were afraid it might try to wriggle free. He sorted through Marty's things with one, fat, hairy finger.

"You don't need any of this shit." He opened his jacket to reveal a large gun, hanging from a loose-fitting shoulder holster. "This is all you need to survive."

"You can't take a drink from a gun," Marty said.

"It's what you use to take one from somebody else, dumb fuck. You don't carry a fucking thing on your back, that's basic survival skills, no cucumbrances. Let some other dumb bastard drag the heavy shit around. Take what you want when you want it. That's the law according to Darwin, Smith, and Wesson."

The Chef set Marty's burrito and coke down in front of him. Marty glanced at the big guy, half expecting him to make a move on his meal. The big guy grinned, all yellow teeth and swollen gums.

"No thanks," the guy pulled out a chair and sat down. "I'm full."

Marty took a bite out of his burrito. It was hot, salty, and sticky with cheese. Incredibly delicious. He couldn't take a second bite fast enough.

"Makes you wonder why other Heeb food isn't this good, doesn't it?"