Free Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) by Justin Robinson Page A

and animal, scattered about.
    It’s impossible to throw up with any sense of aplomb, but I tried it anyway. I emptied my guts out right there on the floor. Hell, the place was going to be cleaned up anyway. Wasn’t changing anything.
    The two Russian goons already present were wearing trash bags over their limbs. One was collecting the larger chunks while the other one wheeled in one of those wetvacs. They both impassively watched me empty my guts out over the carpet. I finally stood up straight and wiped the corner of my mouth, and one of them said something in a thick Russian accent that only got funny in retrospect.
    “Bear got in.”
    I found out later that “bear got in” to the home of Tony Piazza, some low-level associate in the Cosa Nostra. Fortunately, he was the only one home at the time, and by the time me, Kolya, and Boris were done with the cleanup, you never have known that it used to look like a set from Dexter . I never knew what beef the Kosher Nostra had with Piazza—they trusted me enough to move a body, not to tell me why it had to be moved. I only knew they had killed Piazza. A lot.
    I thought about that as I went out into the LA night with the wind kicking leaves and trash down the street. The air was sharp and I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. Off in the direction of the Valley, a pillar of greasy smoke stretched into the sky, reaching outward as though to grab the wind. Helicopters thwacked through the air, circling the smoke. Because human beings are solipsists if you don’t watch them carefully, I instantly drew a connection. I was back in my city, and she was burning because we were both in crappy shape.
    “You and me both,” I said to the smoke.
    This thing was resolutely pointing me in one direction, something my subconscious was cheerfully reminding me of with “bear got in”: Vassily the Whale. The fat fuck was down in Quentin, but his organizatsiya was out there making trouble, and I knew just where to find them. The question was, did I have the dangly parts to walk into a Russian mafia gambling den sniffing around after the recently incarcerated boss?
     No, not really. Not if I had another play, but as much as I wanted one, I didn’t see it. At least I wouldn’t have to tangle with the Whale.
    I took the Harbor Freeway toward the docks, planning my next move. The trick was to look around without attracting suspicion from men who were suspicious professionally. I checked my bandage in the rearview mirror. It was a little dirtier than it had been, but it hid my face well enough. At least, that’s what I told myself, because fear-pooping would be a sure way to tell the Kosher Nostra that I didn’t belong.
    On the stereo: “Undestructable” by Gogol Bordello.
    I couldn’t even think of what it was about except for Vassily. Seriously, all I could think about was that gigantic monster, and every time I thought about him, he got bigger, shinier, scarier. Pretty soon he was the size of an actual whale, emerging from the briny deep to chow down on a couple cargo ships, longshoremen falling from his zeuglodonic jaws like screaming crumbs.
    I pulled up near the Barbary Coast, which is a nice way of describing the docks. I parked a ways away and started toward the shore. Past the chainlink fence, the Port of LA stretched out in both directions on a little southern-facing spit of land. Industrial cranes loomed overhead, ships the size of city blocks floating beneath them in the oily water. The smell was an industrial stench, sort of tough to pin down into discrete scents, but strong enough to knock you on your ass. Diesel, dead fish, and something else apocalyptic tying it into Upton Sinclair’s nightmare. Longshoremen drove forklifts and guided cargo to neat stacks. Even at night, the port was busy.
    I ignored it all. Wasn’t what I was after. I headed toward a section of the port crammed up against the side of the freeway, about as out of the way as anything could be in