City of War
Authors: Neil Russell
Contents
Marcus Aurelius and the 405
Sexy Elevators and Killer Pastrami
PlumpJack Gets You to Toledo
Benny Joe and the Dobermans
And Along Came Dana
A Torn ACL and Russian Women
Skycaps and a Walk on the Beach
Dinner and Roses
Pain and Memories
A Couple of Cops and a Tiger
Amazing Grace and the Executioner
A Fortress on a Hill and A.A.
Veronica Lake and a Son of a Bitch Named Truman
Crimes and Tears
Big Boats and Bigger Bullshit
A Jogger and a Best Friend
State Department on the Pacific
Doritos and Buffalos
Bad Asses and a RIFALO
Handcuffs and Deep Water
Maximus
Late-Night NFL and RICO
Power Plays and Security Oaths
Safe Houses and Spitters
Private Sanctuary and Silent Requiem
The Flash Drive
Babushkas and Black Granite
Manfred and Marlon
Russians and Cities
Assholes and Apelles
Nehemiah and the Tooth Fairy
Balconies and Jengo
Greedy Lobbyists and Dreamy Eyes
Jetway Drivers and Dark Places
Missing Pieces and Body Art
Tears and Beethoven
Cognac and Legionnaires
Mountain Roads and Dead Pets
Pradas and Poof
Absinthe and Funeral Barges
Knights Quarters and Zeus
Everlast and Fireworks
Blue Jungles and Crimson Tents
Grandfathers and Ashes
Paintings and Pageants
It was December on Dove Way, but the night was…
Marcus Aurelius and the 405
A naked woman running full tilt through ankle-deep water in a freeway carpool lane isn’t something you see every day. But if you happen to stumble across it, your eyes could do a lot worse than Kimberly York.
Sometime around 167 AD, Marcus Aurelius said that life unfolds exactly like it’s supposed to—that neither gods nor man can change a thing. And over the years, as I’ve watched the pleas of good men go unanswered while scoundrels prospered, it’s become clear to me that Marcus stumbled onto something. But looking back on that Saturday night last August, if the Man Upstairs Himself had told me that what was about to unfold was preordained, I’d have asked Him to take a breathalyzer.
The earthquake wasn’t much by California standards. Only a 3.6. But the guy with the funny hair on the 11 o’clock news said it started a fire on my block in Beverly Hills, so I ushered ashore my dinner guests, Rhonda Champion and Bert and Brittany Rixon, and buttoned up my boat, the
Sanrevelle
.
It was a quiet night at the Dolphin Bay Yacht Club, and the parking valet wasn’t at his post. I eventually located him
behind the kitchen sharing a smoke with Emilio, the club’s chef, I tipped him generously for hustling up my Rolls Phantom and started the fifty-five-mile trek north from Newport Beach.
As I crossed into Long Beach in the heavy, but fast, late-night traffic, the first aftershock hit, setting off burglar alarms in the surrounding neighborhoods and undulating the grooved concrete of the 405 under my tires. Fifteen miles ahead, it also ruptured one of the City of Inglewood’s prehistoric water mains, creating half a dozen thirty-foot geysers along the freeway and sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pouring onto the northbound lanes. As the torrent rushed south, channeled by the solid concrete center divider and an unnatural inward tilt of the freeway’s right shoulder—compliments of stellar Cal-Trans engineering—it was turning my side of the highway into a six-lane trout stream. I just didn’t know it yet.
Ten minutes later, I noticed the pavement was wet, the water was getting deeper, and there wasn’t a drop of rain in sight. Anywhere else, drivers might have taken a beat. Maybe even considered it slightly distracting, feeling their vehicles hydroplaning under them while they tried to see through sheets of spray butterflying skyward off big-rigs slamming along at seventy miles an hour. But this is L.A., where we get on the freeway to watch a DVD, so in unison, several thousand would-be Mario Andrettis dialed their wipers up to Warp-3 and pushed their accelerators down a little further to compensate for the resistance.
I was in the fast lane approaching El Segundo Boulevard, and it was all I could do to see through the billowing cascades and still keep up enough speed so the red Lamborghini tailgating me didn’t drive up my exhaust. And thanks to the Phantom’s twelve cylinders and six thousand pounds of British steel, I was doing a pretty good job plowing a path for both of us until the 18-wheel Budweiser truck a quarter mile ahead saw the forest of geysers, hit his brakes and turned everything to shit.
Ten tons of metal, glass and beer sliding sideways with fast, bumper-to-bumper traffic bearing down on it isn’t missionary position driving—even in Southern California—and the first two rows of cars had no chance. They rammed into the truck without so much as tapping their brakes.
By the time the rear-ending got back to me, I’d swung my black and silver behemoth into the carpool lane and gotten it down to zero a few feet from the rear door of a sideways Mercedes. The guy behind me in the Lamborghini wasn’t so lucky. He tried veering into the carpool lane too, but there wasn’t any room left, and he hit the center divider at just the right angle, went airborne and tumbled end over end into the southbound lanes.
I stopped counting after I heard six cars hit him. And a few seconds later, all twelve lanes in both directions of the busiest freeway in the world came to a standstill. I was just about to get out to see if there was anything I could do for the guy in the Italian sandwich when Kimberly York entered my life.
Stopped dead in the southbound carpool lane, directly across the concrete barrier, was a midnight blue Ford van with the windows blacked out—like the ones you see in presidential motorcades. The driver’s side glass was down, and the guy behind the wheel looked nervous. He had a deeply pockmarked face and was wearing a thin black tie and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a large spider tattoo with red highlights on his left forearm. I noticed the spider was missing a leg.
More intriguing was the bloodred cloth headband tied tightly around his forehead, its loose ends trailing down his back. There was someone else in the front seat smoking a short cigar, but from where I sat, I could only tell he was solidly built and had on a dark baseball cap.
Suddenly one rear cargo door of the van burst open, and a tall, stark-naked woman leaped out. Before either guy in the van could react, she had climbed across the divider in front of my car and taken off running north like a track star, splashing through the six inches of water like it wasn’t there.
By the time Headband-man realized what had happened and got his door open, the girl had twenty yards on him. He climbed onto the divider, but I turned the Rolls’s wheels and pulled forward the few inches I had left, leaving him no room to get down. Angry at the intrusion into his affairs and wobbling awkwardly on the narrow ledge of concrete, he kicked at me through my window. I caught his foot, twisted it and pushed it back out.
He fell backward against his van and slid down between it and the center divider. When he came up, his eyes were murderous. Just then, the southbound carpool lane opened, and the traffic ahead of the van shot forward. In courteous L.A. fashion, the driver of the white Caddie behind the van leaned on his horn and yelled out the window, “Hey, asshole, get that fuckin’ piece of shit moving!”
Headband-man never took his eyes off me. He reached into his hip pocket and came out with a long switchblade, which he flipped open like he’d been born doing it. Finding new respect for his fellow motorist, Caddie-guy stopped yelling and got off his horn.
Just then, the van’s passenger shouted, “Tino, get the fuck back in here and drive. We’ll swing around and get her on the other side.”
The guy had some kind of accent, but I couldn’t quite place it. Tino didn’t move. He continued staring at me and waving the knife. So I said, “Hey, Cochise, why don’t you hustle on back to Universal before you miss the next tour bus. The girl voted with her feet.”
Tino lunged forward, reaching over the divider and swiping the knife at me. He didn’t really come close, but enough was enough.
“You know, Tino,” I said, “you’re the Babe fucking Ruth of bad decisions.” And I climbed across the front seat and got out on the passenger side. Seeing that Headband-man was preoccupied with me, Caddie-guy regained his gonads and leaned on his horn again.
It’s always interesting to watch people’s reactions when they see me unfold. I’m what you would call really tall, and even if you’re used to being around big people, I get your attention. I’m also lucky enough to have been born with enough definition to look like I spend more time in the gym than I do. It’s a combination that usually ends disagreements before they get up a head of steam.
I felt my Top-Siders grip the wet pavement, and I was glad I wasn’t wearing that slippery pair of Nikes I’d been too lazy to take back. Tino took a long look at me, and I could see him doing the math. But while he was deciding whether to go for it anyway, Caddie-guy broke the spell. He jammed his car in gear and rammed into the back of the blue van. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tino’s passenger fly forward and almost hit his forehead on the dash.