Free Criminal Karma by Steven M. Thomas

attracted by the cheap rents and quaint atmosphere. The city hit its nadir in the 1980s, when rival gangs took over poor neighborhoods, gunning one another down along streets lined with shabby bungalows.
    Now Venice was on an upswing again. There was a Democrat in the White House and a bull market on Wall Street. Property values were rising as prosperity returned to Los Angeles in the wake of the post–Cold War recession. Gentrification was creeping down the beach from Santa Monica, old apartment buildings and arcades bulldozed to make way for luxury condos and cute boutiques.
    The flophouse would disappear beneath the tide of redevelopment in the near future. In the meantime, we shared it with a triad of down-and-outers who occupied the first floor while we rented two furnished roomsand a bathroom at the top of a creaky wooden staircase. Two other big bedrooms on the second floor were unoccupied.
    Going through the front door into the living room, we found Pete lying on a broken-down couch, reading a library copy of
How to Win Friends and Influence People
, a good book that gave birth to an annoying industry of high-pressure happiness salesmen. There were empty wine bottles, beer cans, and fast-food containers scattered around the room, remnants of the usual Friday-night party that comprised card playing, drunk chicks, and arguments with the landlady.
    “Back from the desert already?” he said, sitting up with his habitual abruptness and placing the book, front cover down, on the wooden packing crate that served as an end table. “Why you guys dressed like that?”
    “Like what?” Reggie said, looking down at his vaudeville pants and sandals. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t recall telling Pete that we were going to the desert.
    “Where’s the other two stooges?” Reggie said.
    Pete’s face tightened. He didn’t like Reggie’s habit of referring to him and his roommates as the Three Stooges. Reggie knew it, which was why he kept doing it. It was part of his personality to always be stirring up a little trouble, whether there was a use for it or not.
    “They’re jacking off,” Pete said.
    Reggie made saucer eyes. “Together?”
    “Negative. I don’t allow any grab-ass in the house.”
    Pete was the Moe of the group. When they worked, which wasn’t all that often, he was the one that organized the jobs, laboring at construction sites up the road or doing yard work in the canal district, a few blocks south, where expensive homes lined the few waterways that hadn’t been filled in. He was five feet seven inches tall, about 150 pounds, with short brown hair and a neatly trimmed Fu Manchu mustache.
    “How do you know they’re jacking off?” I said.
    “I saw Candyman heading for his berth with a stack of
Hustlers
.”
    “How about Budge?”
    “That particular individual is always jacking off,” Pete said. “Why you back so soon?”
    He was full of questions.
    “We got homesick,” Reggie said.
    Upstairs, I put the pink diamond earrings and the .32 in my stash, took a shower, and changed into Levis, black Reeboks, and a midnight-blueT-shirt, the same color as my Seville. Our rooms were in the back of the house. The oversize double-hung window in my bedroom had admitted unobstructed sea breezes at one time. Now it held a view of the metal fire escape on the back of a run-down apartment building ten feet away, across an alley.
    The house was a dump, lumpy plaster behind peeling wallpaper, Goodwill-store furniture. The bathroom smelled faintly of sewer gas and the kitchen was like a Club Med for rats. More than once, I’d heard them splashing around in the sink like drunk newlyweds in a hot tub. If you went down to the kitchen at night to get a snack and surprised them, they sat up on their haunches and gave you a dirty look. If their little arms had been long enough, I’m sure they would have put their paws on their hips.
    It was a dismal contrast to the marble-floored resort we had just come from, and