Pulp Magnifiction

The longhaired man was turned halfway around in his seat, gesturing with the .45 still gripped casually in his hand as he debated the possibility of godly intervention with their man in the backseat, when the Chevy Nova hit a pothole and the gun went off. Luckily the silencer muffled the report to little more than a loud BANG, but the interior of the car was instantly showered with blood. The older man driving jumped but didn't lose control of the vehicle and demanded, "Why the hell did you do that?!"

"I didn't mean to do it; it was an accident - you hit a bump or somethin' and the gun went off, that's all."

"Accident my ass!" his partner roared. "Look at this mess, Vin! We're drivin' around on a city street in broad daylight . . . we gotta get this car off the road! Cops tend to notice shit like you're drivin' around in a car drenched in blood!"

Vin sighed and wiped blood off his face. "I know, I know. Can't we just take it to a friendly place, Josiah?"

"This is the Valley, Vin," Josiah snapped. "Chris don't got no friendly places in the Valley." He thought for a second and then pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. "A couple buddies of mine live not far from here, on the other side of the hill. If either Buck or JD's asses ain't home, I don't know what the hell we're gonna do - I ain't got anyone else in 818." He put the phone up to his ear and was visibly relieved when it was answered on the second ring. "JD? How you doin', brother, it's Josiah. Listen up, me and my homeboy are in some serious shit. We're in a car we've got to get off the road, pronto. I need to use you and Buck's garage for a couple of hours." He listened to the response and frowned. "JD, you know I can't get into this shit on a cellular phone . . . but what I can say is my ass is out in the cold and I'm askin' you for some sanctuary 'til our people can bring us in." He listened again, then smiled and nodded. "I appreciate this, brother . . . he is? When? We'll be gone by then . . . JD, I'm aware of your situation, I ain't gonna mess things up for you. I give you my word, he'll never know we were there. Okay, five minutes. Later."

He folded up the phone with a sigh and turned to Vin. "Okay, we're set - but their roomate comes home from work in an hour and a half, we gotta be out of there by then."

Six minutes later, with the Nova tucked out of sight in the garage of a two bedroom suburban house, the two men stood in Buck and JD's bathroom washing their bloody hands. "We gotta walk real softly in this situation," Josiah was admonishing a glowering Vin. JD's cool, but Buck is one remark away from kickin' our asses out the door and I don't want it to reach that pitch. These boys are my friends, and you don't bust into your friend's house and start tellin' him what's what."

Josiah rinsed and dried his hands while Vin took his place at the sink. "Just tell him not to get up in my face. He kind of freaked out back there when he saw the car."

"Put yourself in his position," the older man said. "It's eight o'clock in the morning, he just woke up, he wasn't prepared for this shit. Just don't forget who's doin' who a favor, okay?"

Vin finished with the water and took the towel from Josiah to dry his hands. "If the price of that favor is I gotta take shit, he can stick his favor straight up his ass."

Josiah snatched the towel away when he saw it beginning to turn red. "You were supposed to wash 'em, not just get 'em wet."

"You watched me wash 'em. If he'd had some Lava I might have been able to do a better job . . . "

"I used the same soap you did and when I dried my hands the towel didn't look like this!" his partner hissed. "Look, it's shit like this that is gonna bring this situation to a boil. If Buck were to come in here and see that towel like that . . . I'm tellin' you, Vin, you best be cool. 'Cause if I gotta get into it with Buck and JD on account of you . . . look, I respect you an' all, just don't put me in that position."

Vin smiled. "Josiah, you ask me nice like that, no problem. They're your friends, you handle them."

The two men exited the bathroom and made their way out into the kitchen where a scowling man with a mustache poured them each a cup of coffee. "Damn, Buck, this is gourmet stuff," Josiah said after the first sip. "Me and Vin woulda been satisfied with instant and you spring this gourmet shit on us . . . "

"Knock it off, Josie," Buck said. "I'm not corn, so you can stop butterin' me up. I don't need you to tell me how good my coffee is; I'm the one who buys it, I already know how good it is. When Nathan or the kid here go shoppin they buy that generic garbage, I buy the expensive stuff 'cause when I drink it I wanna taste it. But what's on my mind at this moment isn't the coffee in my kitchen, it's the dead guy in my garage."

"Buck . . . "

"I'm talkin," the other man snapped. "Now let me ask you a question, Josiah. When you drove in here, did you see a sign out front that said 'Dead Nigger Storage'?"

"Buck, I was the one that told him he could . . . "

Buck shot his younger roommate a glare. "Shut it, kid - I know damn good and well he didn't tell you what was wrong with the car. Now answer the question, Josiah; did you or did you not see a sign out front that said 'Dead Nigger Storage'?"

Josiah sighed. "No, brother, I didn't."

"You know why you didn't see that sign?" Josiah made a face and shook his head. "Because storin' dead niggers ain't my business!"

"Buck . . . "

"I ain't through! Now don't you understand that if Nathan comes home and finds a bunch of gangsters in here doin' gangster shit and a dead body in the garage, the kid and I are gonna be homeless in a heartbeat. I wanna help you out, Josie, I really do. But I ain't gonna break the promise I made to JD's mother doin' it - and if ol' Nate kicks us out and we have to move outta the Valley, I'm breakin' my promise. Now Nathan'll be comin' home from bein' on call at the hospital all night in less than an hour and a half. Make your phone calls, talk to your people, and then get the hell out of our house."

"That's exactly what we'll do," Josiah reassured him quickly. "We don't wanna mess things up for you and the kid. We just need to call our people to bring us in..."

"Then I suggest you do it," Buck interrupted. "Phone's in my bedroom."

"You're a real friend, Buck; I ain't gonna forget this," Josiah told him, and disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.

Chris Larabee was sitting at his dining table wrapped in a black robe and eating a large breakfast when the call came in. He scowled when Josiah explained the situation. "Well, say this Nathan comes home, what do you think he'll do? . . . No shit he'll freak, Josiah, that ain't no kind of answer. You know these people, I don't. How bad, a lot or a little?"

Across town, Josiah paced up and down in Buck's bedroom. "You've gotta understand the explosive element this Nathan situation is. If he comes home from a hard night's work and finds a bunch of gangsters doin' a bunch of gangster shit in his kitchen, ain't no tellin' what he's apt to do." Larabee asked a pointed question and Josiah made a face. "Now if push comes to shove you know I'll take care of business, Chris - but push ain't never gonna meet shove, because you're gonna solve this shit for us. 'Cause if I gotta mess up the promise my friend made to the kid's mother and screw things up with his roommate over your boy Vin, I'm gonna have bad feelings."

"I've grasped that, Josiah," Chris replied coolly. "All I'm doing is contemplating the 'ifs'."

"I don't wanna hear about no 'ifs'," Josiah insisted angrily. "All I wanna hear from your ass is 'You ain't got no problems, Josiah, I'm on it. Go back in there, chill those boys out and wait for the cavalry, which should be comin' directly."

Larabee's face set, and his turquoise eyes hardened with his special glare, but he said in a flat voice, "You ain't got no problems, Josiah, I'm on it. Go back in there, chill those boys out and wait for the Wolf, who should be comin' directly."

"You sendin' the Wolf?"

Larabee snorted. "Feel better?"

Josiah grinned into the receiver. "Brother, that was all you had to say."

Disconnecting, Larabee punched in another number and gave the details of the situation to the man who answered, then went back to his breakfast and put the matter aside. The Wolf was only thirty minutes away from the situation, so he would most likely be reaching the house in about ten . . .

Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds later . . .

Buck opened the door to find a short, tuxedo-clad man on the porch. The man glanced down at his notebook and then back up at the man holding the door. "You're Buck, right?" he inquired in a smooth Southern-accented tenor. "This is your house?"

"This is my roommate's house, but yeah, I'm Buck."

The small man stuck out his hand and smiled, showing a gold tooth. "I'm Ezra Wolf, Buck. I solve problems."

Buck took the offered hand with a frown. "Good, 'cause we got one."

"So I heard," Ezra replied gravely. "May I come in?" Buck answered in the affirmative and stepped aside to allow the man into the house, then led him to the kitchen. "I want to convey Mr. Larabee's gratitude for the help you're providing with this matter," the man told him. "And let me assure you, Buck, Mr. Larabee's gratitude is worth having."

Josiah and Vin stood up when the two men entered, and Ezra got straight to work. "You must be Josiah," he told the larger man. "Which would make this Vin and this young gentleman JD. Let's get down to brass tacks, then. If I was informed correctly, the clock is ticking, is that right Buck?"

"One hundred percent," was the reply.

Ezra referred back to his notepad. "Your roommate Nathan will be arriving home at 9:30 in the AM. I was led to believe that if he comes home and finds us here he would appreciate it none too much?"

"He won't," JD answered worriedly. "He'll kick us out, probably even call the cops."

The small man nodded and tucked his notes into a pocket. "That gives us forty minutes to remove ourselves from here, which, if you do what I say when I say it, should be plenty of time. Now, you've got a corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it."

The four men stayed back out of the way while the Wolf silently examined the car, opening the doors and looking inside, circling the vehicle to see it from all angles. Finally he straightened. "JD, would you do me a favor? I thought I smelled some coffee in there, would you be so kind as to make me a cup?"

JD had been watching the man with awe and practically bounced with enthusiasm to help. "Sure, how do you take it."

Ezra smiled. "Plenty of cream and sugar." He waited until the young man was out of the garage before opening the rear passenger door to fully reveal the headless corpse in the back seat, taking in the extent of the mess. "Now about the car, is there anything I need to know? Does it stall, does it backfire or smoke, is there plenty of gas in it?"

"Aside from how it looks, the car is cool," Josiah assured him. "As far as I know, it's tip-top."

"You're positive? I don't want to get out on the road and find out the brake lights don't work." Josiah's nod seemed to satisfy him. "Good enough, let's go back to the kitchen." The three men trailed him back into the house, intercepting JD as he returned with the coffee. Ezra took it from him with a smile of thanks and began to pace, thinking out a plan of action. "All right, first thing you two," he indicated Josiah and Vin, "take the body and stick it in the trunk. Now Buck, this looks to me to be a fairly domesticated house, which would lead me to believe that in the garage or under the sink you've got a plenty of cleaning supplies, am I correct?" At Buck's nod he continued, "Good. Now what I need you two gentlemen to do is to take those cleaning products and clean the inside of the car - and I'm talking fast, fast, fast. You'll need to go in the back seat and scoop up all those little pieces of brain and skull, get it out of there. Then you'll wipe down the upholstery - now when it comes to the upholstery, it doesn't need to be spic and span; you don't need to eat off of it, just give it a good once over. What you really need to take care of are the really messy parts, soak up the pools of blood that have collected and things like that. The windows are a different story, them you'll really clean. Get the Windex, do a good job. Now Buck, we need to raid your linen closet. I need quilts, comforters, bedspreads, blankest - the thicker the better, the darker the better. No whites. We're going to line the front seat, back seat and the floor boards with quilts and blankets. Now if a policeman were to stop us and look inside the car the subterfuge wouldn't last, but at a glance the car will appear to be normal. JD and Buck, lead the way; boys, get to work."

Vin called at his retreating back, "A 'please' would be nice."

Everyone froze, and Ezra turned around. "Come again?"

Vin scowled. "I said a 'please' would be nice."

The Wolf took a step toward him, his jade-green eyes taking on a look reminiscent of Larabee's dangerous glare. "Let's get something straight; I'm not here to say please, I'm here to tell you what to do. And if self-preservation is an instinct you possess, you had better do it quickly. I am here to help. If my help is not appreciated, then best of luck, gentlemen."

"It ain't that way, Mr. Wolf," Josiah jumped in quickly, shooting a scowl at Vin. "Your help is very definitely appreciated."

"I don't mean any disrespect," Vin chimed in. "I just don't like people barkin' orders at me."

The small man shook his head. "If I'm curt with you , it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you boys to act fast if you want to get out of this. So pretty please, with sugar on top . . . clean the damn car."

JD helped Buck gather all the usable blankets and bedspreads in the house while Ezra made a phone call. "It's a '74 Chevy Nova, white . . . nothing a'tall, except for the mess inside. About twenty minutes." He chuckled then. "Nobody who'll be missed. You're a good man, Orrin. See you soon." He disconnected and turned his attention to the two men and the pile of bedding. "How are we coming, gentlemen?"

JD shuffled his feet on the carpet and looked uncomfortable. "Mr. Wolf, you gotta understand somethin' . . . "

Buck started to say something but the Wolf's raised hand kept him silent. "It's Ezra, JD, please. And let me see if I can guess the problem; are these perhaps all the bed linens you have, and you are concerned lest your roommate notice their absence as you do not at the moment have the funds to replace them?"

The young man nodded and blushed. "I wanna help you guys out and all, but if I have to go out and buy all new sheets and stuff I'm not gonna have enough money to get my books this semester, and all my mama ever wanted was for me to finish college . . . "

"I understand," Ezra told him solemnly. "May I ask you a question, JD?" At the kid's nod he said, "Was your mother, by chance, a millionaire?" Buck frowned and JD shook his head, and Ezra smiled. "Well, your Uncle Chris is. And I'm positive that if your mother had been a millionaire she would have provided you with the funds to complete your education without having to pinch pennies, something your Uncle Chris is more than happy to do." He pulled out a roll of bills and began to thumb through them. "And while he's at it, it also appears to me that your friend here could use some new bedroom furniture to go with his new bedding, this set looks rather well-used. I like oak myself. How about you, Buck, are you an oak man?"

Buck met the smiling green eyes of the Wolf and nodded. "Oak's nice."

With much swearing and trading of threats, Josiah and Vin got the car cleaned out and lined it with bedspreads and quilts, restoring at least an appearance of normality to the vehicle. Ezra circled the car, examining it, while the two blood and gore covered men stood aside for him. "Fine job, gentlemen," he said finally. "We may get out of this yet."

Buck whistled. "I can't believe it's the same car."

"Let's not begin celebrating just yet," Ezra cautioned. "Phase one is complete, the cleaning of the car, which moves us right along to Phase two, cleaning these two." He hustled the two men in their bloodsoaked black suits out the back door of the garage and into the back yard, grabbing the garden hose from its hook on the way out and making sure the water was turned all the way on. Buck produced a black plastic garbage bag. "Now strip, gentlemen."

Vin's eyes widened. "All the way?"

"Down to bare skin," Ezra confirmed. "Be quick, we've got about fifteen minutes before Nathan comes pulling into the driveway."

The two men complied, shivering in the chilly morning air. Vin hesitated again when he was down to his underwear. "You sure this is necessary?"

"For a couple of guys who just blew someone's head off and are soaked to the skin with that individual's bodily fluids? Yes, strippin' off those bloody rags is absolutely necessary. Toss the clothes in Buck's garbage bag, JD is bringing out some replacements for you." As soon as both men were bare, he tossed them a bar of soap. "All right, I'm sure you've both been to County before so you know the drill. Here it comes."

His hand squeezed the trigger on the spray nozzel and a blast of frigid water impacted both men. "Damn that's cold!" Josiah exclaimed.

"Better you than me," Ezra said, smirking slightly. "Don't be afraid of the soap, gentlemen." Once he was satisfied with their efforts he stopped the water, tossing the hose on the ground. "Towels please, Buck."

Buck tossed each man a towel and they began to furiously rub the water off their bodies, trying to friction warmth back into their skin at the same time. JD appeared from inside with two piles of clothes. "Ezra, I got them some clothes."

"Excellent. You're dry enough," he informed Josiah and Vin, and they reluctantly returned the towels to Buck and accepted the folded clothing in exchange. They dressed quickly and then stood shivering, running hands through wet hair, to see if they passed inspection. Ezra chuckled and winked at Buck, who was grinning. "Perfect, perfect - we couldn't have planned this better. The two of you look like . . . what do they look like, JD?"

JD grinned at him. "They look like a couple of dorks, Ezra."

The Wolf slapped him on the shoulder and laughed. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Josiah scowled at Buck, who was openly laughing now. "Ha ha ha, they're you're clothes, brother."

Buck just grinned back at him. "I guess you've just got to know how to wear them - and I think the 'I'm with Stupid' shirt is fittin' under the circumstances."

"Come along, gentlemen, we're amusin' ourselves right into prison," Ezra broke in. "Don't make me beg." They followed him obediently back into the garage, where he tossed the garbage bag of bloody clothes into the trunk with the corpse and slammed the trunk shut. "Now let's get the rules of the road straight. We are going to a place called Travis' Truck and Tow in North Hollywood; Orrin Travis and his daughter Mary are sympathetic to our dilemma. Now I'll drive the tainted car. Josiah will ride with me, Vin will follow in my Jag. If we cross the path of any law enforcement types, nobody does anything unless I do it first." He fixed his hard green gaze on Josiah. "What did I just say?"

"Don't do nothin' unless you do it first," the big man told him.

"Spoken like a true prodigy," Ezra commended and turned his attention to Vin. "How about you, Mr. Trigger Happy, can you keep it together all the way up Hollywood Way?"

"I'm cool, Mr. Wolf," Vin assured him. "My gun just went off, you know."

"Fair enough." Ezra tossed his car keys to Vin. "I drive extremely fast, so keep up. And if I get my car back any different than I gave it to you, Travis is going to be disposing of two bodies, understand?"

"Why do you drive fast?" Josiah wanted to know.

The Wolf grinned wickedly, gold tooth gleaming. "Because it's a whole lot of fun. Let's move."

They reached Travis' Truck and Tow without incident and Ezra handed the keys of the Chevy over to a portly white-haired man along with a good-sized pile of cash and a joke about frequent flyer miles that made them both laugh. A pretty blonde woman joined them and insinuated herself under Wolf's arm as he walked back to reclaim his own keys from Vin. "This is Mary," he introduced her with a smile. "And someday all this will be hers."

Both men nodded to Mary, who looked them up and down with amusement. "Are you guys going to a volleyball game or something?"

Ezra laughed and the two men groaned. Josiah asked, "Are we cool?"

"Like it never happened," Wolf confirmed. "And now I am taking this lovely lady out to breakfast. Can we drop you boys off somewhere? Where do you live?"

"Redondo Beach," Vin told him.

"Inglewood," was Josiah's answer.

Ezra put a hand up to his forehead and adopted a look of exaggerated concentration. "Wait, I can see your future; I see . . . a cab and a long ride ahead of you." He grinned and winked at Mary. "Move out of the sticks, boys. Say goodbye, Mary."

"Goodbye, Mary," the woman said with a wink of her own, and the two of them headed for the Jag.

Josiah's voice stopped them. "Mr. Wolf?" The smaller man turned around, raising an eyebrow. "It was a pleasure watchin' you work."

The Wolf smiled, gold tooth gleaming. "Call me Ezra. Stay out of trouble, boys." He held the car door open for Mary, then got in himself and the Jag took off down the road like a bullet out of a gun.

Vin and Josiah looked at each other. "Wanna share a cab?" Josiah asked.

"You know, I could go for some breakfast," Vin replied. "Want to have breakfast with me?"

Josiah shrugged. "Sure." Both men checked the guns tucked into the waistbands of the swimming trunks they were wearing and then smoothed their t-shirts down to conceal the weapons before trudging down to the curb to flag down a cab.

The End