THE PERPETRATORS

  Gary Phillips

  Copyright © 2002 by Gary Phillips

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Down & Out Books

  3959 Van Dyke Rd, Ste. 265

  Lutz, FL 33558

  DownAndOutBooks.com

  Second eBook Edition: August 2014

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

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  What this shit is about…

  Sharp knives

  Semi-naked women

  Armor-plated muscle cars

  Funky Attitudes

  Shotguns

  Pimp slapping

  Backstabbing

  Bloodthirsty housewives

  Greed

  Sex

  Sharp teeth

  The players…

  Marley—The expediter. The thinking man’s roughneck in a Hugo Boss suit.

  Lina Guzmán—The fine-ass drug cartel queen who doesn’t take shit from anyone.

  Samson Twelvetrees—The duplicitous lieutenant out to kill Lina no matter what it takes.

  Dakin Saunders—The ambitious California Attorney General.

  The Furys—Bad babes with big guns.

  The Goth Hit Team—Murderous dime store bloodsuckers.

  Coleridge—The lascivious defrocked doc.

  Plus an assortment of thugs and shooters looking to get paid by making sure Marley and Ms. Guzmán never reach their goal alive.

  To the storytellers:

  Big John Buscema, Gil Kane and Budd Boetticher

  “The only conception I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.”

  —Albert Camus

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Perpetrators

  About the Author

  Other Titles from Down & Out Books

  Sample from Les Edgerton’s The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping

  Sample from Richard Barre’s Lost

  Sample from J.L. Abramo’s Catching Water in a Net

  Chapter 1

  7:48 am/Tijuana, Mexico

  The hunting knife swept down toward the skull of the fly black man in the DI Marco suit. His game face on, Marley blocked the overhand thrust with his forearm.

  “Pinche cabron,” the knife man groaned, then made a vicious jab at brother man’s gut.

  Marley threw his body out of the doorway and into the room, narrowly avoiding the blade. Behind him and the bed, Lina Guzmán leveled her Beretta at the assassin.

  “No,” Marley hissed, his back against the funky wallpaper. “No shots, or we got 5-0.”

  The hombre with the knife stepped in close, waving his pig-sticker back and forth. The steely tip whisked past Marley’s Armani shirt, slicing a button off as he twisted aside. A tight smile creased his rugged face, “That’s your ass, amigo, you don’t fuck with my gear.”

  The knife man frowned, “No habla Ingles.”

  “Habla this, motherfuckah.” Marley popped off a kick to the man’s mouth, spouting crimson. The knife man buckled. Marley followed up with the style he employed best, street fighting. He set up the chump with two rapid lefts and dropped him with a straight right.

  Woozy, the knife handler’s agape mouth revealed two gold front teeth as he struggled off his knees. His eyes focused as he peeped Lina Guzmán securing a suppresser to her Beretta. In a fluid motion she let off two hot ones, wetting the knife man’s chest. He keeled over. He wouldn’t be getting up anymore.

  “No noise, no cops, no problems,” Guzmán declared. She was up against it, but would be damned if she’d have anybody tag her as helpless.

  Marley allowed a nod. Welcome to Tijuana, now get the fuck out. He eyeballed the raggedy hotel room with its rabbit-eared television playing a soap opera silently, faded paisley wallpaper, nasty-ass shag carpeting, and the smell of lost hope. It was only eight in the morning, but the heat outside already made the room oppressive.

  Marley had been in worse, a hell of a lot worse. But this was no time to reminisce about parachuting in from twenty-five thousand feet, part of a twelve-man detachment, and all the crazy shit he’d been through back in his Special Ops days.

  Taking a moment to clean blood from the tip of his Mezlan shoe, Marley gave his full attention to his latest client. She coldly replaced her gun in the conceal-and-carry in the waistband of her Versace capri pants. She was long and tall and slim-waisted with enough upstairs and down to keep things interesting. If not for her attitude—which had been evident in their phone conversation—she might have been all that. As it was, he was sure she’d prove to be a pain in the ass. But so what? Those ducats she was lacing him down with was worth the stress. Hopefully.

  “You fucked up.” Marley snapped as he strode to the open door and glanced in both directions along the hallway. Only the muffled sounds of a couple slappin’ skin could be heard a few doors down in room 14.

  “I fucked up?” Guzmán rasped. “I told you I was in danger.”

  “You’re going to be in a lot more danger if you don’t do as I say,” he responded cooly. “Your boy Samson Twelvetrees is gonna have shooters coming at us like flies on stink from here till we light up north. That’s six hundred miles of potential death unless you get on the good foot.”

  Marley eased the door shut and crouched next to the dead man. He began riffling through his pockets.

  “You can’t talk to me like that.” She put her hands on rounded hips, her eyes dark and hard. “Not with what I’m paying you.”

  “How should I talk to you, Ms. Guzmán? You called me, I didn’t call you. You need me, I don’t need you.” He kept searching.

  She folded her arms and tapped a foot. “Whatevah…”

  Marley grunted. His research on Lina Guzmán had informed him she was the only heir to one of the biggest drug operations Columbia had ever produced. She’d inherited Arturo Rosalva Guzmán’s business and ran it like a machine. Twenty years ago her pops had been a chemist at a soap company. When he got tired of chump change, he applied his knowledge of formulas to get his cut of that South American country’s number one export: cocaine. He worked smart and, by many accounts, ruthlessly. Rewarded for his efforts, he built an empire on snow.

  Two years ago, after his violent departure from this world, his daughter transformed an already substantial empire into the Microsoft of the dope trade.

  Marley shifted his orderly mind back to the task at hand while he stood and examined what he found. There was a set of keys, a pair of gaffs—hooks used on fighting cocks, a Los Tigres Del Norte cassette, and a ball point pen.

  “You sure you can get me there alive?” Guzmán paced back and forth, stopping only to peer out the window at the bus station across the Rio Zonal thoroughfare. “I am paying you three hundred fifty thousand dollars down against a sweet two million to get—”

  “Your tight ass to Sacramento by three tomorrow,” he finished for her. “I don’t need reminding.” The icy-demeanored black man smoothed out his Steven Land tie.

  “You’re a prick.”

  “Save your jaw-jacking in case we get jammed by the Border Patrol. Things are a lot tighter these days, you know.” He saw that the pen was from Le Colonial, a touristy hotel in Tijuana. He put that and the gaffs into his inner suit pocket.

  “Let’s bounce. And you can leave that Louis V behind.” Marley pointed to the two suitcases. Her mouth was working, and he held up a hand to cut the static. “There could be tracking devices sewn into their linings. Twelvetrees has got a real hard-on to take over your shit and take you out. And he won’t stop.”

  “What do I do for clothes? I like to look good—I am La Reina after all.” She’d put the girly-girl in her voice to get him sprung.

  There was no doubt she was fine, but his mind and body were in offensive mode. “You’ll get by.”

  He opened the door and scoped the empty hallway again. The couple in room 14 were going at it like they’d invented fuckin’, then abruptly halted—a little too quick. His radar kicked into high.

  Motioning Guzmán back into the room, he walked down the hallway’s dingy carpet toward the room. “Yeah, we’ll take the train to La Jolla and switch there,” he said loud enough for anyone in 14 to hear.

  The door to the room banged open, and a red haired Latina burst into the hall. Under other circumstances Marley would be vibin’ on her painted lips, big titties, and black sheer panties covering a jigglin’ ass. But dual machetes had a peculiar way of narrowing his attention. Big Red also had on an Aztec headdress and twirled those bad boys like a pro.

  A whirlwind of steel, she advanced on Marley. He rarely broke an emotion, but even he had to show this honey some respect. He set himself, focusing on what he had to do or get sliced and diced.

  Naturally Guzmán had disobeyed him and was now in the hallway. She didn’t have her gun out, and if she reached for it now, Big Red would lop her
head off. The woman in the headdress grinned, showing bad teeth. He inserted himself between her and his client.

  Marley feinted left at the precise millisecond that Big Red took a swipe, one of the deadly instruments whispering past his face. She chopped with the other one, but he spun, his reverse kick catching the redhead in her face. She reeled back and swung again, both machetes whisked past the top of his head as he ducked. Marley planted a hard blow in her stomach that caused her to drop one of the machetes. She tried to nut him with the other one, but he grabbed her wrist and broke it effortlessly.

  Big Red yelped, “Sonofabit—.” He finished her with a modified backhand strike that knocked the loca mujer out.

  Guzmán said to him, “Not bad. Maybe I should have listened to you, and met you at the safe house in Baja like you’d suggested.”

  Yeah, she was going to be a treasure. Through the open door to 14, Marley spotted Big Red’s former love interest, a naked fat fool, a bowler atop his curly locks. The mark was beached on his stomach atop a grubby comforter, his Columbian necktie sprouting fresh blood from ear-to-ear.

  Marley dragged Big Red into the room. Using an electrical cord from a lamp, he hogtied the woman. He tossed her in bed with the dead man and closed the door.

  Marley and Guzmán turned to leave. They had transportation to catch at the TJ bus station.

  “I think I’ve seen enough of Tijuana for one day,” Guzmán said.

  Samson Twelvetrees enjoyed having his dick sucked on the regular, morning, noon and night. He particularly liked having a kneeling ash-blonde amazon in five-inch fuck-me shoes and a thong do it just like Stella, or whatever the hell was her name, was doing now. Like ex-president Clinton, he liked getting head while he took care of business. Sitting sideways at his chrome office desk in his Armani silk robe, he leaned back in his padded swivel as the blonde worked his rod.

  His angular bronze face, a mix of Slavic and Asiatic Indian, features, was enigmatically composed. He was a Charles Bronson for the new millennium.

  “Is that right?” he said into the handset. “I am disappointed to hear they got away.”

  Impassively he listened to the caller from Tijuana. “I see,” Twelvetrees eventually remarked. “You have them tailed on the bus, that’s good. Get our next team ready in San Diego. I’m sure this Marley, this caballero who calls himself an expediter, will get them off the bus there and switch to a car or truck.”

  He was about to hang up but then added, “And let’s do it right this time, understand? That frosty ho is not to get to Sacramento and meet with Saunders.” He laughed. “I want her guts in a sack so I can feed them to my Rottweilers.”

  He hung up, and his eyes fluttered with pleasure as he let loose in whatshername’s mouth.

  Chapter 2

  10:42 am/San Diego, California

  Marley and his charge crossed the expanse of El Cajon Boulevard as all manner of vehicles drove by. He’d gotten them off the bus in downtown San Diego. He’d suspected the kid with the boombox sitting two rows behind them was a tail, but the non-stop trip hadn’t afforded him an opportunity to sweat the little shit. The kid had stayed on the bus, but Marley was sure he’d called in their position.

  They got to a side street which contained industrial-style structures. He pointed at their destination, a low-slung red-brick building down the block. Upright like sentinels on the roof were twelve-foot high cut-out metal letters proclaiming the establishment as ‘Millar Perfume Distributors.’

  “You sure know how to show a girl the town, player.”

  He ignored her sarcasm and continued walking, nearing a wooden fence.

  Plastered in a row along the fence were campaign posters picturing California Attorney General Dakin Saunders. “Your savior,” he remarked caustically, indicating the broadsides.

  “Fuck that. You never had to make a choice you couldn’t live with, Marley?”

  “Once or twice.”

  Saunders was an arch-conservative family values cheerleader. When the horrible events of the WTC and the Pentagon happened, he’d intimated on a radio call-in show that America, home to lip-pierced lesbians and the ACLU, got what it deserved. Later, under intense pressure from the State Legislature, he “modified” his remarks. In his campaign posters, the asshole wore the same expression he always did—like he had a plunger handle up his ass. By making a deal with Guzmán, he would build up his standing in the polls in his bid for governor. And she got immunity.

  “Come on,” Marley said, pushing open the glass door to the company.

  “Hi,” the beach bunny hottie in the slit mini at the reception desk greeted him. “Trap has it ready.”

  “Thanks, Dora.” Marley walked up to a locked door at the rear of the room. As Guzmán followed, she noticed the bulky Desert Eagle Dora tucked away under her desk as she reached into a drawer.

  “Here, let’s get you into a fresh one.” She extracted a folded and pressed Hugo Boss slate blue Oxford shirt. Dora stood and touched the area on Marley’s shirt where the button was missing.

  “Why not?”

  Dora helped him out of his jacket and loosened his tie. She also slipped him out of his shoulder holster with the S&W 945 combat model automatic in the rig. Then she began to unbutton his shirt, pulling it loose from around his taut waist.

  “Oh, please,” Guzmán said.

  “He’s got to represent, Ms. Guzmán.” Dora winked at her.

  Guzmán looked annoyed but checked out Marley’s V’d upper body and his rigid six pac. He wasn’t short, nor that tall. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than her twenty-seven, but there was a thin zig-zag of white shot through the top part of his close-cropped hair. And she’d seen enough bullet holes to recognize a couple of healed wounds on his torso, along with numerous scars. He’d been through a lot. But then, so had she.

  “Much better,” Dora murmured, after getting the new shirt on him and knotting his tie. One of her hands rested on his pecs.

  “Full of surprises, aren’t you?” Guzmán chided.

  “Ain’t I,” he answered. He rolled up the cuffs, putting his silver Cartier cuff links in his pocket.

  Guzmán was surprised he didn’t have a Baume & Mercier or similar expensive timepiece on his wrist. Rather, it was a beat Elgin with a cracked leather band. Some kind of family keepsake, she surmised.

  Marley punched in a combination on an electronic key pad. The rear door swung outward, and the duo entered the main area of the building. Inside, several men and women went about the routine of boxing and shipping fancy bottles and jars of scented water. A tall, stocky black man with a size twenty-two neck and arms the size of a bull’s leg hanging out of grease stained tank top appeared before them.

  “Stone Cold Marley,” the man said.

  “Trap.” Marley shook his hand, his coat draped over an arm. “What do you have for me, brah?”

  “Self-sealing tires, LTA glass, Armormax undercarriage, night vision navigator, and some goodies in the hideaway.” He tossed Marley the keys.

  “Lead on.”

  The three walked into another space in the rear. Profiled in subdued lighting was a ’73 black Dodge Charger with gleaming Dayton rims.

  “Well?” Trap jabbed a thumb in the direction of the ride.

  “It’ll do.” Marley opened the door and put his coat on the back seat.

  Trap addressed Guzmán. “That’s as close to a compliment I’ve ever gotten out of this cat.”

  “He must really like you.”

  Marley opened the trunk and took inventory. In short order, he closed the lid. “If anybody comes around—.”

  “They’re already dealt with,” Trap finished.

  Marley unlatched the passenger door. “If you please, Ms. Guzmán.”