Marko rode his stretched FXR over to the Chowder Barge, the only floating restaurant in the Los Angeles Harbor, owned by a former Bandit girlfriend, Sin Wu. The Barge resided in the rat bikes of Wilmington Marinas.
The marina housed the only flotilla of destitute sail and powerboats in the port channels. No one dared motor their glistening yacht near the dank, trash-strewn waters teaming with half-empty beer cans, dead birds, scummy old shoes, mold-covered plastic bottles, and syringes.
The diesel-fuel slick waters of the Leeward Bay Marina were adjacent to the Dominquez channel. The channel ran from rat infested downtown Los Angeles to the sea and nothing in the channel filtered anything from rusting bumpers, fiberglass remenants, to used baby diapers from entering the salt water of the port.
At one time, several high-tech filtering boats were purchased to prevent the muck from entering the pure Pacific salty brine, but to this day they collect dust and rust in a storage yard, never to be used to prevent filth from entering the open ocean.
The major collection point remained the rotten wooden docks of Leeward Marina. As Marko dodged the web of train tracks and potholes leading down Henry Ford Boulevard leading to two bridges, one for trains to the dreaded Terminal Island, and one for container trucks, he slipped under a descending train barrier and past flashing lights as a massive locomotive pulling one hundred rail cars loaded with new vehicles approached the intersection.
He slipped into the marina parking lot and shut off his chopper. Karley, a young blond waitress, met him at the top of the gangplank. “They are just about to pull him out of the water,” she said and grimaced. “He’s badly swollen.”
Marko nodded and kissed her cheek, “Thanks for calling.”
“How’s Bandit?” she asked. “We don’t see him around here much anymore.”
Marko looked into her dark, sad eyes. “He’s okay, I’ll let him know you asked.”
He moved down to the dock as the sun dipped over the upscale Palos Verdes peninsula. Marko looked into the oily water surrounding the docks jammed with trash and slimy debris. The sky was gray except for a hint of red where the sun finally died over the horizon. He stepped over a sleeping drunk on the rickety docks and made his way to the EMTs, cops and members of the coroner’s office.
The emergency team hoisted the short swollen body, with fish-nibbled body parts, out of the water in a sling and they immediately transferred him into a dark body bag on the rough wooden dock, being careful how they touched his disintegrating flesh. The slightest pressure would cause the skin to fall away in slippery chunks. He was obviously Asian and Marko recognized his all-black biker apparel. It was the purportedly bad guy from Bartels’ H-D, but was he really the bad guy? No one would ever know his final story–maybe. There was still Maria in the hospital downtown.
Marko studied the body quickly without getting too close and drawing attention to himself. A couple of stab wounds were visible under the edge of his vest on his left abdomen area. Marko stepped back. If the Asian wasn’t a murderer, who was and what about the girl in the hospital?
Suddenly he thought he’d better get back quick. He jumped on his stretched FXR and cut a dusty trail toward LA and out of the harbor area.
Mage received a call from Bandit, “The Asian kid wasn’t the one.”
“How do you know,” Mage asked, “and when are we doing lunch again?”
“He’s dead,” Bandit said. “Stabbed. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”
Marko headed toward Maria. Marko split lanes across town to be close to Maria. She should be able to tell him something by now. His cell phone vibrated in his vest as he slithered off the jam-packed freeway.
“What?”
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“More bad news,” Margaret said stumbling. “A Softail was stolen from the parking lot. A nice one.”
The news hit Marko like a ball-peened hammer to his right thumb. “Ouch,” Marko said. “Anything more?”
Margaret was as sharp as she looked. She knew bikes, her Cantina customers, you name it. “I’m looking at the parking lot videos tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know.”
Marko, straddling his stretched FXR, wondered which way to turn. It was happy hour at the Cantina and he had a job to do. He wanted to make sure Maria was stable and in good hands. His cell phone rattled in his leather vest again. It also barked like rabid dog, his special ring for Bandit. “Take care of the Cantina,” Bandit said briskly. “I’ve got Maria.”
Marko hung up. What was it about Bandit? He always seemed to be two steps ahead. Marko scratched his day-old beard growth and fired up his long FXR. He hoped, in this case, Bandit had a handle on what was going on. Some bad sumbitch was still roaming the streets.
Maria regained consciousness before noon. Her room was empty, but she heard a voice outside the door. Attending college in Westwood at UCLA she was a good girl generally, sorta over-sexed and willing. A curvaceous knockout from the bottom of her dainty, olive feet to her luscious lips and mass of wavy, thick, black, Hispanic hair.
She studied history, but didn’t pay much attention. Her goals included wealth and stature, not much else. She had a heart, wasn’t evil, but her desire for wealth took her into the wrong hands from time to time. She thought the young athletic Chinese man represented stability, intelligence, and maybe wealth. Wrong on all accounts, she inadvertently stepped into a loser’s web. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide with fear.
Aching from head to toe, Maria’s wrists hurt the worst from the chains, but when she moved, everything functioned. An IV still fed her veins basic nutrients keeping her hydrated. A nurse entered the room just then, her bright, red hair tied in a bun at the back. Her freckles lit up to see Maria alert. “Good to see you’re alert,” she said. “Let me check your vitals.”
“Who is outside?” Maria said.
“There’s an officer,” the nurse said.
“Is he there all the time?” Maria questioned.
The nurse experienced many drug cases. As soon as these patients revived, they needed to get out and get a fix. Constantly bribed, Red knew the drill. “Yep, sometimes two of them will be on duty, especially during shift changes, and they don’t come in here. So you can’t bribe them.” She checked Maria’s blood pressure, which was slightly elevated, and her temperature, which was normal.
“It’s not about drugs,” Maria said, almost pleading.
“You’re safe here,” the nurse said. “Try to relax.”
“What if I said someone might try to kill me?” Maria stammered.
“So, you would be better off out there?” Red said, pointing toward the city sprawled outside the 5th story window. “A big biker or two have also been looking after you.”
“Thank God,” Maria said. She seemed to relax some.
The redhead looked at her inquisitively. “Apparently, you’re in good hands.”
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Suddenly Maria came face to face with the errors of her ways. She experienced a brief encounter with Bandit. He warned her, but again she didn’t listen. She just wanted to party and find easy bucks. Could she survive this encounter and walk in the sunlight again? She promised herself to learn, but was it too late?
The nurse returned but didn’t smile this time. A short, stout, balding investigator followed. “Ms. Sanchez,” the young officer spat, dressed in a sport coat, golf shirt, pressed slacks and tennis shoes, “I have some news and questions. Tommy Chin was found in another marina, dead. Evidently, he was stabbed multiple times and thrown into the channel. What can you tell us?”
“It wasn’t me,” Maria said startled. “He was alive when I last saw him.” Another nurse strode into the milky green hospital room. Suddenly Maria was petrified. Her eyes grew big as saucers. “We need to take her for an MRI,” she announced abruptly. “You can question her back here in an hour.”
Maria shut up. Her face went white as a ghost. She squeezed Red’s hand as if an earthquake started rattling the building. The new nurse moved around the room proficiently prepping it for release. “Give me a hand,” she almost ordered Red to help her lift the rails and disconnect the rolling bed for mobility.
Red looked at the tall brunette inquisitively, but didn’t say anything. The nurse wore the correct uniform and badges. She held the air of someone superior to a general nurse, maybe an imaging specialist. She moved to check Maria’s chart at the end of the bed for any mention of tests, but the brunette moved quickly and efficiently. “Give us just an hour and you can question her all you like,” she assured the investigator as she guided the gurney out the wide swinging door and into the hall.
Suddenly, all of the nasty night’s events flooded back into Maria’s mind as if she just snorted a line of meth and it dripped down the back of her throat. She remembered the meeting with Tommy and the brunette at an upscale seaside restaurant in Marina Del Rey. That’s when the party started. Tommy assured the brunette of his vast wealth and his ability to party hearty. He spent almost $300 on dinner.
By the time the buzzed-threesome headed for his small sailboat in the marina, he thought he had scored two bi-sexual mamas hungry for a night of licking pussy and sex. The brunette was at first a player with skinny legs and big bolt-on tits. But there was an edge about her. Immediately disappointed with Tommy’s boat her mood changed, but she enjoyed Maria’s perfect body.
Maria wasn’t having a bad time and as the drugs flowed, so did her whip-me side. When Tommy began to take photos, the Brunette went nuts and the whole night turned.
“It’s all coming back to you, isn’t it, sweetie,” Fay said while pushing the gurney toward the elevators.
“I wish it didn’t,” Maria said.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you,” Fay said and shoved the bed into the elevator.
“Of course not,” Maria said beginning to sweat.
“I’ll see to that,” Fay said and pushed the button for the parking garage in the basement.
On the 4th floor, the elevator stopped and a doctor stepped in and the large industrial elevator doors closed. He was clean, skinny, tall and bespectacled as he turned to check the floor buttons. He pressed 3. “Where are you going?”
“We’re going to get an MRI,” Fay said before Maria could speak.
“You’re going to the basement,” the doctor said and turned in Fay’s direction. “The MRI lab is on the 8th floor.”
Fay pulled a large Bowie-styled knife out from behind the nurse’s smock and drove it into the doctor’s stomach as his eyes widened. As the doctor stumbled to the metal floor covered with checkered linoleum and the doctor’s blood, the door opened on the 3rd floor. Fay scrambled to hit the door-close button as another nurse approached the door pushing an older gentleman in a wheel chair. The door started to close and the young agile black nurse quickly reached for the elevator button, but it creaked and was gone.
The cancer victim in the wheelchair gasped. Drugged and hazy he wasn’t sure what he saw, but he turned to the nurse who also saw something, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know whether to turn back to the head nurses’ station or continue to help her patient.
Fay wiped the bloody knife blade on Maria’s bedclothes. “You’re not going to make it,” she said as the elevator breezed past the 2nd floor. It had two floors to go. She put the knife to Maria’s neck. “This is going to be easy, but the sex was magnificent.”
The knife was so sharp Maria could immediately feel it cut her flesh and she started to scream as the elevator pinged the 1st floor and the door started to open. Maria’s feet faced the door and Fay was at the head of the bed. She attempted to move toward the elevator control panel.
The crowded hospital lobby teamed with staff, patients and visitors. As the door opened, a young stubby, obese patient with her bag of meds in one hand and her purse and car keys in the other looked into the elevator and witness Maria’s scream, the knife, the blood on the floor and the doctor’s limp, fetal-position body and she screamed bloody murder.
An overweight security guard charged the door as Fay hit the door-close button multiple times. The door started to close as the guard attempted to reach it and the rubber sensors that would automatically open the doors. At the crucial second his fingertips reached desperately and his finger slipped past the stainless steel exterior.
Just then Fay lurched at the door from the inside and drove the knife through the slither of an opening. The blade shot at the guards face, he reacted and lurched away, the blade disappeared and the doors shut.
Stunned, Fay stood on the inside of the elevator panting. A devious fuck-up and bad to the bone, she never stepped over the line into the criminal realm before. She wouldn’t hesitate to threaten a cheating husband for self-gain, destroy a family, play the pregnancy card, sue a boss she lured into bed, but this slipped over the line.
Her weakness was a lack of self-worth. She saw her existence as only a luscious body capable of destroying men. She used sex as her card to cash, but was constantly concerned about her age and the effects of her slipping appearance on her ability to score.
Terribly worried about her fleeting luring time clock, she became desperate to find a final score, but Tommy didn’t work out and she freaked.
She stood in front of the vibrating stainless doors, with the long knife at her side, as the elevator rattled to the basement floor. Maria, her neck cut slightly, the blood trickling over her beautiful skin, shook with fear as the door opened.
Fay’s resolve returned. Her survival chances slipping away, she spun to face Maria while raising the razor-sharp knife above her head. She spent many a night working the blade with a fine stone and olive oil for lubricant. Her non-descript brown eyes turned to evil slits and her mouth curved into an evil grin as she moved to round the bed and drive the knife into Maria’s abdomen.
Maria started to scream as she witnessed a long muscular arm from outside the elevator grab Fay’s wrist. Fay saw Maria’s gaze alter, but before her mind could process the information, Bandit’s paw surrounded her wrist, twisted it and yanked Fay into the basement, where she spun and slammed against the concrete deck. The knife lay at Bandit’s booted feet.
She scrambled to regain control of her knife and Bandit kicked it across the floor.
He pushed the button on the elevator back to the 5th floor, winked at Maria and stepped out.
Fay rolled abruptly and scrambled for the knife. She grabbed it off the pavement, jumped to her feet and held it menacingly in front of her. Her thinning frail hair disheveled hung in odd directions and her stolen uniform was grimy from the pavement.
“You look like hell,” Bandit said.
“I hate you,” Fay said. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”
“Go for it, bitch,” Bandit said. “You have two choices. You can attempt to attack me or run.” He had a run-in with her a decade prior—great sex. But he read her like a bad book and separated as quickly as he could.
“I hate you,” Fay spat.
“Your choice,” Bandit said, “but you’d be better off running. At least you might have a few hours to clear out before they find you.”
“I fuckin’ hate you,” Fay spat again and lurched at him, but he didn’t back down, just waited for her next move.
She threw the knife at the pavement, tore off the dangling nurse’s headgear and ran. Bandit watched and walked to his chopper. It fired easily to life and he gave Fay five minutes to roll toward the exit before he started down the ramp. He knew Maria would be okay and safe.
