Free Down Solo by Earl Javorsky Page A

LAPD.” My pal Dave, the writing detective. The guy’s got more stories than a pack of Nigerian scam artists, and he turns them all into novels. He writes on a laptop during coffee breaks, stakeouts, and during all his time off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he types while he craps. I know all this because we used to go to the same kickboxing gym and would do Starbucks or Rubio’s afterward. I even helped him close a homicide case once.
    So Ratboy’s got Mindy. Too bad he couldn’t have taken my ex instead.

14
    I know I should be furious, frantic, ballistic even, but instead I just feel focused. I’m a laser-guided missile looking for my target. Locate, lock, and launch. Except that I have no idea where to start looking.
    Time to get moving.
    I call Mindy’s cell on Tanya’s phone and get voicemail again. There’s a charger in my car for my own cell, so I head back to Jimmy’s building and hope that the Z is still in the underground parking.
    I’ve got no cash, no home, I’m fresh out of jail, my pal’s in the hospital, and my daughter has been kidnapped by a probable killer for reasons having to do with an investment scam and a bogus geology report, all stemming from a visit just a few days ago from a beautiful Eurasian stranger with a story. Oh yeah, and I’m clinically dead, with a bullet hole in my head to prove it. Jimmy’s Hummer is gone, probably towed and searched for drugs. My old Z is still sitting in its spot, rusty and battered but the only home I’ve got. I plug in my cell but have to wait for it to charge some before I can use it.
    Tanya’s BMW got me to Jimmy’s on fumes and the Z gauge is in the red. I’m a moron for not borrowing some cash from Tanya’s purse, but here I am, two fine steeds and no oats.
    I fire up the Z and head back out to Washington Boulevard. I’ve got no plan, but the car seems to know where it’s going. A few blocks and I’m at Mo’s 7-Eleven.

    ¤ ¤ ¤

    I’m standing in the alley next to the trash trying to think. The soggy August winds are wafting through the garbage and the air is hot and ripe.
    “Charlie! Hey Charlie, for God’s sake!” Mo yells at me from the back door. He’s not happy about our arrangement, but has agreed to give me thirty bucks in gas and ten in cash if I work for him till noon. I already put the gas in the Z. His regular guy didn’t show, so Mo needed me. Meanwhile, I’m going nuts. No calls from Mindy, can’t reach her mom, zip, zero, nada.
    “Hey, Goddammit, I need two cases of Michelob out front right now. What the hell are you doing?”
    “I just took out the trash,” I tell him. If I had been smoking a cigarette he wouldn’t have asked.
    “Come on, man, I need that beer.” He’s standing in the doorway; I can’t go through until he moves.
    “What’s the secret word?” He asks me, fingering an invisible cigar.
    “Fuck, Mo, I don’t know. Mackerel? Allah? There’s a hole in my head so I forgot.”
    “You know what, Charlie? You are a very strange guy.”
    I think about a time when I was small, my first day at a new school. I was walking across the blacktop when I noticed a speck in the sky. A bird, I thought. It grew larger. I stopped. It seemed to be flying to me. As I watched, it gained speed and then hit me on the forehead. An older boy had thrown a rock from the other side of the playground. So I want to say
It’s Life itself that’s strange, Mo, not me
. But instead I just tell him, “You don’t know the half of it.”
    “I calls ’em like I sees ’em,” he says.
    “Win a few, lose a few, right?”
    “Hey, like I always say, nobody’s perfect, ya follow what I’m sayin’?”
    When I was a teenager, I worked at an impound yard in Oakland, with the Dobermans and the wrecked cars. Every morning was the same: “Hey, big guy, how they hangin’?” And I knew to say, “Hangin’ loose, Walt.” Walt, who owned the yard, would say, “Well don’t let your meat loaf.” I’d say, “No way,