NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 10 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The fastest way to LA from Las Vegas was the Interstate. The Mustang had a full tank of gas, but Driscoll exited into the desert. Route 160 was no short-cut and Sean asked, "Where are you going?"

"There's a place up ahead I wanna stop at." Driscoll's eyes concentrated on headlight’s funnel boring through the night.

"Stop where? There's nothing out here."

Off the unlit two-laner not a single dot of electricity challenged the star-lit desert and Sean grasped the door handle, ready to bail out at 80mph. The car locks popped down and Driscoll turned on the radio.

"Sure, there's nothin', but nothin' out here, except Pawrump."

"What's Pawrump?" The name sounded like a bodily function.

"Two roads crisscrossin' in the middle of nowhere between a coupla golf-courses, though they're closed now."

"So why we going, if everything is shut?" Sean hated surprises.

"Because they have a couple of whore houses that never close and nothin' makes me hornier than murder." Elvis was a welcome change from the boy band drivel on the other stations.

"I like the idea of driving straight to LA better."

"And I like the idea of killin' a couple of hours with some trailer park whores. I'll get you LA tomorrow morning. How's that sound?"

"Like it's my only choice."

“Free will doesn’t exist in this life.”

”Only things you had to do.”

"No one ever said anythin' about this bein' a democracy," Driscoll interrupted the discussion by turning up the music and hummed NOW OR NEVER out of tune. The Mustang accelerated to 90mph. "Seano, I know how you feel."

"I don't think so.” Their only common link was New York.

"Hell, I felt the same as you after my first time. Me, I popped my cherry back in 1980. I go into an Avenue C apartment on a 1054 call, expectin' to clonk some PR for beatin' up on his wife, only I walk in the wrong apartment and stumbled on a heroin deal. One of the spics whips out a piece and pulls the trigger. I almost shit in my pants. I mean I thought I was dead, 'cept the greaser's gun jams. You shoulda seen his face, when I popped 'im. Boom. One shot to the head." The ex-cop laughed with the recollected comfort of having dodged fate, though it came out more like a drum roll of coughs.

"This old guy was scared.” Sean looked at the desert. It was empty.

"You’d think after living that long he’d be happy someone put him out of his misery."

The car raced toward Mountain Summit Springs.

"No, he wanted to live." And Sean had spared him.

"What he wanted was unimportant, Seano. I'm proud of you for pulling this off like a man."

"Thanks.”

Driscoll might have bought the faked murder, but this detour was wrong.

The DJ announced the rest of his shift was dedicated to Elvis and Driscoll tapped on the steering wheel to the beat of DON'T BE CRUEL. At the top of the pass, he pointed to a ball of light shimmering on the dark horizon like a star fallen to earth.

"That's Pawrump up ahead. Maybe another thirty miles. You're gonna love it there."

"Yeah, I can hardly wait." It sounded like the perfect place to disappear off the face of the Earth.

"Once we get to the whorehouse, I'll give you the other five thousand, but you be careful, cause the 'girls' out here are kinda fast with their hands, if you get my drift."

Driscoll stepped on the accelerator and the car sped up to 110 mph. After several minutes the car slowed to less than seventy.

“Damn, I gotta take a pee. I'll stop at the next road."

"What road?" The desert was untouched by man.

Sean never saw the punch riveting four knuckles into his temple. His mouth tasted metal, as if all the fillings in his teeth had come loose before he tumbled down a narrowing black hole to hover above a pool of unconsciousness. Something had gone horribly wrong and he didn't need any fingers to add up what, because sum came up snake eyes.

The Mustang rocked onto a rutted dirt road for a quarter mile. Driscoll's right foot stomped the brakes and the car skittered to a stop. He opened the passenger door and Sean Tempo slumped from the car like a bag of potatoes. The ex-cop squinted back to Route 160.

No headlights lit either direction.

Driscoll might have lost his taste for killing strangers, but wasting an old acquaintance would be a treat and he kicked Sean Collan several times, until burying his toe in the fallen man's ribs knocked his left knee out of alignment.

”Goddammit.”

The big man turned Sean face down in the sand and slipped the five wallets his partner had Fed-Exed him into Sean's jacket, then dropped the empty .357 revolver on the sand.

"Frank, you're a genius."

Tomorrow the local cop would investigate the buzzards circling in the air.

The police chief would wire the NYPD about the wallets and revolver on the corpse.

If the NYPD were on the ball, they would link the revolver's forensics to five unsolved New York murders and tonight's killing in Vegas, clearing any suspicion on his partner and him.

A car was coming from Las Vegas on Route 160.

Probably two miles away. Driscoll lowered to the 9mm’s muzzle to his victim.

"Seano, you won't feel a thing."

The ex-cop's words broke through the rushing in Sean's ears. Black shoes bracketed his head. Why sand was in his mouth and what the cold metal stuck into the base of his skull came to Sean. Driscoll was ignoring his own instructions about placing the muzzle to the back of his victim's neck.

Sean twisted his head to the side.

An explosive crack broke the sound barrier next to his ear and a sword seared across his neck without decapitating him. He rolled over and wildly swung his fist. The punch connected with the ex-cop's knee and threw Driscoll off-balance into the Mustang.

Sean scrambled to his feet and juked from side to side.

Shots rang out and bullets hissed through the air. Sand squished beneath his feet. Cactus tore at this clothing. Jesus had lived up his end and now it was up to Sean to fulfill his part of the bargain by running for his life.

Driscoll emptied the 9mm at the disappearing target. He jammed another clip into his automatic and popped off every round without hearing a shriek of pain.

"Godfuckingdammit, I hit nothin', but the motherfuckin'' wind."

He jumped in the Mustang and shoved the shift into DRIVE. The spinning rubber excavated a hole in the loose sand and buried the rear tires up to the hubcaps. Driscoll beat the steering wheel and screamed, until a chunk of phlegm popped out of his lungs.

Looking into the black desert, the ex-cop rubbed his aching knee and said aloud, "Frank's not gonna like this."

And that was the god-awful truth.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 11 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The winter wind whistled over the Skylark’s ragtop. The heat was on full and Che Chasta slid across the seat to caress Lena's thigh. Neither of them could wait till Death Valley.

"Is there a town close?" Stopping in the middle of nowhere might look good in a movie, yet there was no telling what kind of homicidal maniac was lurking in the dark and Lena stepped on the gas.

"I see a light up ahead." Che hadn't never been on this road. "Might be a town."

Good." Lena spread her thighs and the blonde’s hand slipped inside her panties. "You know I've dreamed about meeting you for a long time.”

"Not a gang-bang film." Che groaned, for while she could handle more than a hundred men at a row by imagining her body belonging to someone else, the recovery time from the all-out assault took weeks.

"No, it was a old film with Sherri.” Lena clenched the blonde’s hair tight like Sherri had in one scene. “Just the two of you.”

"GIRLS LIKE US was our only solo film.” Che didn't see any reason to tell Lena that they had done the film to pay off a drug debt. "You really like it?"

"No, but it was like your bodies were unattached from your souls."

"Yeah, we were damned."

"Drugs?"

"Crazy too."

"What was Sherri like back then?” Lena wished she could have been them with them for a night or two, only no time machine could resurrect that Sherri without killing her.

"Sherri didn't care about anything. She would fuck anyone for a fix and rob them. A lot of people were after her and not to wish her good luck, but she was so wild, no one would touch her, since it was real apparent that she was going to kill herself sooner or later. Why? She never told me why. Maybe because she fucked too many men for no good reason or maybe she realized she could never go back to whoever she was before she started in the business. I don't know, but she was crazy and even worse once her brother died. She never tell you about this?"

Before Lena could say, "No.", a blonde man in the black suit materialized on the road.

She stamped on the brake.

The sudden deceleration threw her passenger onto the floor. Lena braced for the expected impact, except the car swerved to a stop without her hearing the sickening thud of metal hitting a human body. The overpowering stench of burning rubber filled the interior and the Skylark's V-8 purred at low revs, its headlights pointing into the shadowy undergrowth.

Che climbed onto the seat. "What happened?"

"I might have hit something." Lena also might have killed a human being.

"What?" The blonde's eyes darted upward, as if a UFO might be fleeing into the heavens.

"A man.” Lena looked behind them.

A prone form lay on the road’s shoulder lit by the red glow of the brake lights.

"Men always show up, when you need them least." Che quickly pulled on her dress.

Lena put the car in neutral and opened her door.

"Where are you going?" Che clutched the younger girl’s arm.

"I am going to see, if he is dead or alive." Lena picked up the heavy Maglite under the front seat.

"Who gives a shit? Let's get out of here. No one saw nothing out here."

"Except us." Lena got out of the car and focused the tight beam on the horizontal man.

"Is he dead?"

"I don't think so, but sit behind the wheel. If I shout, be ready to get out of here." Lena cautiously approached the man on the highway.

He was in no shape to hurt anyone. His blonde hair was splotched with blood seeping from a cut over his left eye. Blood from a furrow on his neck was splattered on his white shirt. Neither wound could have come from her sideswiping him. When the flashlight's beam touched the man's face, he flinched and covered his eyes.

"Are you okay, Mister?" Lena was relieved he was alive.

"I'm just a little banged up, that's all," His left shoe was gone and he gasped for breath like he had been running a mile. "I got into a car crash back off the road."

"Anyone with you?" The headlights of a car blinked in the desert. She had no curiosity to find out whether or not the man was telling the truth.

"No, I was alone." The blonde man in the black suit blindly outstretched his hand.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise."

"How can you be sure?"

"Cause I'm in no shape to hurt anyone." The man shivered with an icy wind ripping across the road. "Help me."

She played the light on him. There was something familiar about his face. Not from a photo, but Sherri’s description of the man they needed to cast in her film. Her grasping voice was in character, his beaten face was forgettable and the dusty suit completed the image of the last man on Earth. Like the saint from Bunuel's SIMONE OF THE DESERT.

There was no guarantee that he could act or would do the film or that he wasn't dangerous other than her having a feeling that he had been put here to star in that role. She just had a feeling and helped him to his feet.

"You better not be any trouble.”

"Just get me out of here and I'll love you forever."

"That won't be necessary.” Lena was scared, but only for an instant, for the man sighed, "Good, because forever seems like it's coming real quick."

When he flopped onto the trunk of the car, Che poked her head out the window. "Girl, are you out of your mind? Drop him and let's go."

"Open the back door," Lena ordered the blonde. "I'm not leaving him out here."

"Great, just what the world needs. A good Samaritan for drifters." Che cleared their bags off the backseat and Lena released the man, who keeled through the car's open rear door.

Lena sat behind the wheel and both women regarded the man sprawled across the backseat.

"What do you think?" Lena asked Che, as if she might be a better judge of men.

"He looks no different than the hundreds of fuck-ups I've fucked for the camera or for the fuck of it. Just another man screwing up my night. We should dump him at the next town."

"No hospitals. No cops," the man muttered from the backseat. "All I want is a ride to LA."

"What if we're not going to LA, big boy?" Che rubbed her chilled skin.

"Then you're out $500." The blonde man produced five crisp hundred-dollar bills. "Once we hit LA, you can throw me out of the car."

"Deal." Che snatched the money out of his hand.

The blonde man crumbled into the seat, sapped by whatever had happened to him.

"I hope he doesn't snore." Che checked the bills. They looked good.

"Men like him talk in their sleep." Lena stepped on the gas and the Skylark raced along the forlorn two-laner. Che gave Lena $200. "So I guess our ride to Death Valley is shot."

"The faster I get him to LA the better.” Even at 80mph it would take three or four hours, but she could tell by the way the blonde man lay that he would be out for even longer. "I guess I'll have to give you a rain check."

"I was afraid you would say that, because it never rains there."

"You like his type?" Lena peeked in the rearview mirror.

"You're asking the wrong girl. Remember I'm the gang-bang queen. I'll do anyone," Che boasted, though it was all an act.

"I'm not asking about anyone.” Lena was having doubts about this man, whose face she couldn't see in the dark. "I'm talking about this one."

Che studied the man for several seconds. "He's a little older than I like them, but I'd do him, if they was no one else around. What about you?"

"I haven't been with a man in six months.” She couldn't say she missed it either.

"Hey, I told the truth. Now it's your turn."

"If he was the last man of Earth, maybe."

"Out here he's the only man on Earth." Che laid her head on Lena's lap. "Just remember that."

The Skylark picked up more speed and left only the tang of a V-8's exhaust on the passing wind, which was better for everyone, except for the man they had left behind in the rain.