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  FAST BANG BOOZE

  Lawrence Maddox

  PRAISE FOR FAST BANG BOOZE

  “Lawrence puts you right in the middle of a dangerous world full of seedy characters, sex, drugs and non-stop action without ever losing his grip on his incredible attention to detail and humor. I couldn’t put Fast Bang Booze down and I can’t wait to pick up his next one.”—Greg Garcia, creator of My Name is Earl, Raising Hope, and The Guestbook

  “Thrill-paced, gritty and absorbing, Lawrence Maddox ratchets up a hardcore slice of ’90s underworld L.A. in Fast Bang Booze.”—Gary Phillips, author of Treacherous: Ruffians, Grifters and Killers

  “Lawrence Maddox’s Fast Bang Booze is a noir fever dream that shoots out of the station like a bullet train and never slows down. And when I say bullet I mean bullet.”—Paul D. Marks, Shamus Award-winning author of White Heat

  “Lowlifes and high stakes in LA’s 1990s concrete jungle, Maddox serves up a high-octane high-wire act of action and gut-busting humor. This is a masterful binge of pulp debauchery.”—John Shepphird, award-winning author of The Shill Trilogy and Bottom Feeders

  Copyright © 2018 by Lawrence Maddox

  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.

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  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 Bad Fido

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Fast Bang Booze

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Down & Out Books Publishing Family Library of Titles

  Preview from May by Marietta Miles

  Preview from Slaughterhouse Blues by Nick Kolakowski

  Preview from Texas Two-Step by Michael Pool

  For Grace

  Chapter 1

  1993

  As I sat in the back room of the 35er Bar, in a pool of my own whiz, puke, and blood, I thought: “This ain’t turning out so good.”

  Two days earlier, a fall chill had wandered into my blank LA afternoon. I’d planted my skinny twenty-four-year old ass on a barstool at Ye Rustic, pulling the last crumpled wad of singles from my pocket. Before I could get the bartender’s attention, I was blindsided, knocked clean off my perch.

  I’ll admit I don’t exactly inspire dread. I’m thin, grungy, and rarely start the day with soap and water. It’s not so much my appearance that makes people think they can push me around. It’s my, shall we say, impediments. You’ll hear about those soon enough.

  So I was on the floor, though not yet in whiz, puke and blood. Unluckily for the oversized hesher in the Poison T-shirt, I was totally sober. That meant my special impediments were in full bloom.

  The hesher raised his fist, and that’s as close as he got. I leapt, cracking him under the chin, swiping my elbow across his fading smirk, head-butting him flat on the nose. He went down faster than a Sloppy Joe at a homeless shelter. That’s five and a half seconds when hungover and starving—and I should know.

  Someone whispered, “That was fucking fast, dude.”

  I wanted to say, “Guess the Poison concert is cancelled,” but I knew what a freakshow my voice would be. That’s another impediment, and by far the worst of the lot.

  My main impediment is that I have a nervous system that’s souped-up like an engine with sixteen valves per cylinder and turbocharged to boot.

  This makes the world look slo-mo to me.

  This impediment makes me really really fast. Just ask the hesher.

  Too fast for all the mechanisms in my brain and mouth that make speech happen. Try meeting women when your pick-up lines sound like turkey gobbles.

  If I get shitfaced, all the impediments, including the speed, go away. It’s totally worth it because I get my voice back. This is the sweet spot of my existence I call Cloud Time.

  I stepped over the hesher as he, unbelievably, started to cry. He didn’t know not to mess with me when I’m sober. And sober was the last thing I wanted to be.

  A beefy paw slapped a twenty on the bar next to me, its gold pinky ring making the sound of a gunshot on the wood.

  “Bravo!” said the well-dressed tank in a thick Russian accent. “I always pay for my entertainment. Two Stoli martinis straight-up,” he ordered the bartender.

  Dude looked sharp: Zanetti sports coat, Banfi’s from Milano, Martinazzi pinkie ring. He turned to me, offering a manicured side of ham for me to shake. “I’m Popov.”

  I shook it.

  “Don’t you talk?” Popov asked.

  I wasn’t able to yet, but that would change if the drinks kept coming and I could take a window seat in Cloud Time. You’ll see.

  I took out my pocket notebook, wrote in it, ripped out the page and handed it to Popov.

  “’Hi! I’m Frank! Nice to meet you!’” Popov said, reading the page. He set it down and studied me, slowly nodding. “We drink. Then maybe I have opportunity for fast man like you.”

  “My job is buy things,” Popov explained later over chilled Belarus Vodka in his Pasadena stilt-mansion. We drank to that. I’d lost most of my buzz on the drive over, got farther from Cloud Time. It was time to get it back.

  His place was swank. I’d never seen gold-leaf wallpaper before. Or so many fake silk flowers. Or plush carpeting in a bathroom. It was straight out of Sky, GQ, or one of the other hundreds of magazines I’d shoplifted and pored over in my apartment.

  We sat on tall swivel chairs at the bar in his home office. I kept doing three-sixties on my chair until Popov stopped me. The bottle was between us and I poured myself another shot.

  “History lesson, Frank. Russia being sold off, lots of money coming from Mother Russia to people like me,” Popov said. “I invest it here. Buy houses, bars, and maybe things that go unreported to your Uncle Sam. First, do you do coke?”

  I shook my head. The last thing I needed was to speed my sped ass up.

  “Good. You are smart like Popov. Stick to healthy alcohol.” We drank to that, too. “One of my investments is coke,” Popov continued. “But big money coke days over. Crack is the new thing, which is not for Popov.”

  Popov explained he was going to make one last deal, buying sixty pounds of cocaine, twenty-seven kilos, for one-point-three million dollars. “I sell it, good profit. Pay back my first monies tonight, we all party. After this last one,” Popov said, “Popov moving out of LA’s noses for good.”

  Something dawned on me.

  Are you hiring me? I should admit right now it’s maybe possible I have a drinking problem and I screw up a lot.

  I took a deep breath and began to speak, but felt that familiar screech form in my throat. I covered it with a cough.

  I needed a job. I was broke. Zero prospects. I’d be out of my weekly Koreatown rental come Saturday. Forget doubts. This was sweet manna from heaven.

  Popov poured us another round. “I tell you, Frank. I’ve never seen anyone fast like you in fight. And I’ve seen bear fight lion.
Just be sober when I need you.”

  I knew I couldn’t promise that.

  “Vlad!” Popov shouted.

  A tall, pockmarked dude, his black hair slicked back with a quart of Quaker State, walked in the room. His eyes locked on me.

  “Meet Frank. He’s with us now,” Popov said.

  I shrugged and got up to shake this creep’s hand.

  Vlad’s asteroid face curled into a smile. He took the bottle, raised it cordially, and swung it at my head.

  Chapter 2

  Moments like these make me grateful to be occasionally sober.

  I was fast, and the world looked slow.

  I saw the bottle coming, the look of effort and rage on Vlad’s face, the way his acne scars were grouped on his chin like holes near a bullseye, and thought: “I gotta move.”

  I had just enough booze, danced just close enough to Cloud Time, that I fumbled.

  The swivel chair swiveled while I swerved. I spilled onto the hardwood floor, rolled twice and bounced to my feet. There was Vlad in profile, his arm completing its arc, vodka spilling like diamonds.

  I threw jabs, pinpointing a spot on his cheek that cruel nature had pinpointed before me. Left right left right left. A layer of red opened up. Vlad didn’t go down and the bottle swung my way.

  Usually I’m pretty psyched when the bottle comes my way. Not this time.

  Something powerful gripped my shoulder. Popov tossed me against the bar.

  Vlad spun toward the space where I’d just been, the bottle free of his hand and hurdling towards the opposite wall. The momentum sent Vlad to his knees as the bottle smashed all over that beautiful impossible golden wallpaper. Vlad drew what looked like a Glock and spun towards me.

  Popov kicked the gun out of his hand and pulled Vlad to his feet like he was a Cabbage Patch doll.

  “Frank,” Popov said happily. “You are hired. Vlad, shake hands.”

  Popov demanded I ditch my grungy thrift store ensemble and dress for criminal success. He raided a closet. “Guest room, many sizes in this one, though maybe not as skinny, eh?” Gone were my jeans, oversized flannel shirt, and toe-revealing high-top Converse. Now I loosely inhabited a navy blue suit with pinstripes that may have been tight on someone used to regular meals. Styling a three-button jacket, the straight collar of my cotton shirt wide open, I felt strange seeing clothes on my own body that I’d probably checked out in the pages of my stolen GQs. Stranger still, I dug the new me.

  “You look like shit,” Vlad said.

  “Ronnie,” Popov called out. Another damn Russian came in. He was stockier than Vlad, with prematurely grey locks shorn close to a bullet head. “Frank is with us now,” Popov said. “He can fight. Maybe useful soon for Popov’s last deal.”

  So two days later I parked Popov’s new lease, a brown Lincoln Town Car, in the alley behind Pasadena’s seedy 35er bar, which Popov claimed he partly owned. It was dusk. Santa Ana winds hurried us along, as if eager to see what was going to go down next.

  ‘Next’ was the coke deal.

  Antoine, a former enforcer who’d gone freelance since his boss Freeway Rick got busted, was meeting Popov in the backroom with the cocaine. Shipped in from Colombia via Nicaragua, Popov had said. Antoine had been the muscle for the biggest of the big for ten years running. Vlad, Ronnie and I would be there to have Popov’s back.

  “Good to do business with professional,” Popov had said before we left. “Like buying stamps at post office.”

  Popov would be joining us shortly. I walked around to open the car door for Vlad, but he let himself out. I’d had a few drinks and he knew it. I popped the trunk. Vlad grabbed one cash-stuffed briefcase. Ronny got the other. I entered the back door first, my eyes momentarily stunned going from daylight to darkness.

  “Sit,” Vlad ordered. I took a seat at the wet bar in the center of the olive-green soundproofed backroom. I was nervous, which only made me thirstier for booze.

  We weren’t alone. Two members of Antoine’s crew were waiting. “Our man Antoine is running a little late. May we partake?” a dude with a platinum mouth grill said, gesturing to the bar.

  Vlad shrugged. “Do what you want.”

  Settling in next to me was a guy in a Lakers ball cap. Vlad and Ronny stood backs to the wall, facing the room. We outnumbered Antoine’s crew three-to-two. It all seemed treacherously casual. I should’ve known better.

  Ball Cap put a bottle of Hennessy’s on the counter. “Maxin’ and relaxin’,” he said. I knew I should’ve said no, but I never do.

  Vlad was already pissed off, and Popov wasn’t here yet, so I started drinking, feeling better, getting a little Cloud Time in.

  I finished my fifth shot when Vlad tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Let’s talk,” he said, black hair hanging over his pitted face. “Got it, retard?”

  “I had it, but I gave it to your mom,” I said.

  Vlad squinted with bewilderment, surprised to hear me utter something comprehensible.

  Cloud Time had arrived. Impediments were gone. But now so was my speed.

  Vlad surprised me with a backhand to the face. That’s when I knew for sure I was in Cloud Time. I didn’t see it coming.

  “You embarrass us,” Vlad spat in his thick, Russian accent. “Popov come here for business and you act like boy come here to party. Ronny, hold him.”

  Ronny pinned my arms. Vlad grabbed the half-full bottle of Hennessey and rammed it down my throat, loosening my front teeth.

  The cognac gushed corrosively down my throat, filling me up like gasoline.

  Antoine’s guys laughed. “Look at that boy drink!”

  “Oh shit!”

  When the bottle was empty, I crumbled flat on my face. My esophagus throbbed all the way down to my gut. I feebly wiped blood from my mouth.

  My insides came back up with a vengeance, burning my throat as I spewed onto the wall in front of me. I thought it would never end.

  Platinum Mouth spoke up. “That’s off the hook, man.”

  He said it slow, his mouth moving like he was delicately chewing plastic explosives. The words stretched out like an overheated cassette tape left in the car stereo.

  That’s when I knew all my hard work was for nothing. All that Henny gone just so I could sit in it. Cloud Time was slipping away and I was back to my not-so-normal self, with the world slowed down and me sped up. Impediments.

  I began to talk, but a horrible screech came out. No more Cloud Timey, no more talky.

  I dry-heaved driblets as Popov came in the back door. He was dressed to impress. Armani jacket, that good ol’ Martinazzi pinkie ring, a Rolex so fat it belonged at the top of a tower. I was going to miss working for the bastard.

  Popov looked at me, then to Vlad. “What happened?”

  I watched Platinum Mouth speak. Watched the sweat glisten on the handle of the Taurus 605 in his concealed shoulder holster. Watched his mouth form words as everything froze into one long drip.

  When things look slowed down, you can see the little details.

  A doorknob was grasped, turned. I tilted towards the exit right before the door swung out. Popov, Ronny and Vlad pivoted to the room’s only escape route.

  Two of Antoine’s men came in and faced us. One had a hoodie, hands tucked away. The other, sporting the most flawlessly white Reeboks I’d ever seen, pushed a waiter’s cart. On it, a Samsonite suitcase. Right behind them was Antoine himself, tall, broad shouldered, plaid shirt and baggy khakis. He surveyed the room, settling his gaze on the two briefcases that were now at Popov’s side.

  I sat in my own mess, realizing that something was dangerously out of whack.

  Chapter 3

  Popov threw me into a chair next to Platinum Mouth. Hoodie and Ball Cap stood ready while White Reeboks brought in what was supposed to be a suitcase loaded with cocaine.

  I’d sobered up quickly. I watched the action in slo-mo, trying to figure out what seemed wrong, besides the fact I’d puked my guts out. I watched Vlad, smir
king triumphantly at me, take a slow step forward.

  White Reeboks ran his hand along the top of the Samsonite.

  Vlad in mid-step; Popov in mid-crotch adjustment; White Reboks inches from the latch.

  Popov had said he wanted Vlad open the case. But that’s not the way it was going down.

  I tried to say, “Look out!” but only uttered the psycho turkey gobble I make when out of Cloud Time. Popov’s face soured. He turned, probably to shoot me and put me out of my misery.

  Platinum Mouth seated by me had one hand under the table, creeping up over the edge towards his shoulder holster.

  The Samsonite latch clicked as Vlad completed his second step.

  It was now or never. Even after what they just did to me, I’d show Popov. I’d show them all.

  I pulled the sweaty Taurus 605 out of Platinum’s armpit hideaway.

  “Shit.” He whispered it like a prayer, even as I brought the gun down hard across his head. I elbowed him across his chin and he crashed to the floor.

  I shot twice at Ball Cap as he drew a Five-Seven from his belt. Smoke billowed out at the end. I turned to see Ronny’s left shoulder twitch.

  White Reeboks pulled a Mini-Uzi out of the Samsonite that was supposed to hold the cash for the drugs. I got off two shots his way as I crouched down behind a table. I missed, but he jerked forward and raked a beeline of bullets down the carpet towards Vlad, who yelped and toppled backward.

  Reebok’s head exploded. I guess his soul fled faster than even I could see. I turned as Ronny’s snub-nose blew cordite. I turned back and fired again. My Taurus’ hammer hit on empty cylinder chambers.

  I watched the rest of the puppet show. Blood bloomed on the tip of Ronny’s right shoulder. He fired back at Hoodie. They shot simultaneously. Ronny’s hand flew back with the gun’s recoil, and Hoodie slammed against the wall.