Chapter 10: The Downhill Slide

      Sometime back,  Fitz had somehow gotten his hands on an old timey tape recorder. They weren't a real common item, but some telephone companies and law offices often used some form of them back in the twenties. He told me he had come by it when he bought out the estate of lawyer who had lived in Northern California, close enough to town to have electricity, but far enough outside city limits to be often visited by bears looking for food. The guy was a lawyer who liked keeping abreast of technology, and he had once recorded about ten minutes of some rampaging bears trying to break into his house.

       I placed the old recorder on a shelf outside the boarded up window of where I was holding the chained up stranger from Ernie's place. I played the whole tape as loud as possible, thinking I could to soften up the red-headed fool before I even began to question him. Afterwards, putting the recording device away took about ten minutes which I figured was more than enough time to let him stew in his own juices.  I unlocked the door making as much ruckus as I could,  then walked then an unfastened the lock and chain that held him in the corner, got him up to his feet, walked him over to a chair in the middle of the room, made sit down in it, and then took the gag off of his mouth. He was still blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.

       "What the hell was that?" he demanded as soon as his mouth was freed.

        "What, the bear? Don't mind that. He's caged up and can't get at you. You need to focus your attention to me, not that bear."

        "You do know that this is a kidnapping, don't you? You just brought the Feds into this whether you know it or not. You're in big trouble, Young Man!"

         Instead of answering, I just walked over to where he sat and knocked him out of the chair. "You do know that walked into Ernie's looking for a lady named Rosa. You brought me into this whether you know it or not. Let's just say if I was thought I was going to be arrested for kidnapping, what would stop me from putting a couple of bullets in your head right this moment. I'd rather take my chances with a jury, I don't think they'd convict me if I told them you were looking for her to  take her back to Jimmy DeLeo so he could ravish her at gun-point."

        "Ravish her at gun-point? That ain't Jimmy's style. That girl would have made out like a bandit. Jimmy would've set her up real good."

        That's when I couldn't resist the urge to kick him. "That's the way you want to play things, then that's the way we'll play."

           "Wait, wait, wait, WAIT A MINUTE! I didn't mean that girl no harm. I just wanted to find Hector! That's who DeLeo wants to get this hands on. He owes DeLeo $5000, and he's a man who killed his own uncle for $50 gambling debt."

           I didn't believe he was telling me the truth about Rosa, so I kicked him again, this time even harder than before. I had sense that he was holding back, that he'd gone into Ernie's thinking he was dealing with a bunch of Rubes who he felt he could easily bamboozle.

            "You lie to me about the girl again, I'l kick you to death and feed you to that bear."

             "All right, all right, all right! DeLeo's been obsessed with finding the girl ever since Giancarlo told him about her.'

               "Giancarlo told him?"

              "It wasn't like that. It was obvious Giancarlo thinks she's his girl. There was a bunch of us sitting around playing poker and bragging about women and stuff, and Giancarlo just starts describing how beautiful his girl was, and just like that, DeLeo gets all snake-eyed and orders Giancarlo to bring her to him. Giancarlo is then forced to tell him that the girl is living with Hector, so DeLeo just grins and says that was great because Hector is $5000 short on his delivery and he was fixing to fixing to push his button anyway. Make a long story short, Giancarlo is forced to make the arrangement; you could tell it didn't like it, but there was nothing he could do about it."

              I kicked him again, "You trying to tell me you didn't know that Giancarlo is trying to set him up to knock him off?" I figured there was a good chance he really didn't know, but that he would immediately be thinking of ways to sell the knowledge to one of the main actors.

           "Quit kicking me! How the hell am I supposed to know that? I could by the look Giancarlo gave me when he walked away from the table that he angry enough to shoot the Old Man, but I never thought he'd have the nerve to try.

            Later, I walked him out to Fitz's truck and helped him step upon into the passenger seat. I was starting to think that he'd more useful alive and spreading misinformation than dead. It gave me kind of like a way to see behind the enemy lines because the information would, more than likely, produce certain reaction that'd only I would be in position to decipher.

          I was driving around using random streets  in order to confuse him and slowly making my way back up the hills towards Topanga Canyon. I decided to muddy up the waters a bit more.

           "The girl's gone for your information." I didn't think he'd believe it, but felt that he'd be suspicious if I didn't make the effort."She's waiting for me in Mexico. Soon as I get my money, I'll be leaving this snake-pit."

           "What is Hector going to think about that?"

           "Ask Louie." 

           "Yeah, Louie. They got in a fight over the money they stole from DeLeo. Louis killed him with a machete, buried him in the shed behind their mother's house. He half-way has the mother convinced that she did it in her sleep."

           "Excuse me if I'm a little skeptical. Did you hear that from the girl? I know that Louie would have brought that girl back if she was there."

       "She slipped out the back door while Hector was waiting for her to get dressed and hid in the alley behind the old woman's place. Hector was looking for her when Louie came up in the dark and killed him. He buried the body and went back in the house and drugged his mom. Check her out, she still has a needle mark where he shot her up. Then Louie left to go break the news to DeLeo, and Rosa came back, got her boy and took off."

            "Why you telling me all this?"

            "Way I see it, I'm putting you on the spot. I figure you're sleazy enough to know that what I'm telling you is worth some money to someone; the problem is if you tell the wrong person, you could end up in worst shape than you are now. Either way, one of them fools is going to have take care of the other ones, so I'll only have to deal with the winner. Then, I could go meet Rosa with a lot less blood on my hands."

           Even in the dark, I could see him smile when he realized that he was going to make out of the night alive and in one piece. Then, even though it was dark and he was blindfolded, I could see his mind kick into overdrive.

         Five, minutes later, I pulled up into a dark grove of trees and shut the lights off. I went around to the passenger side and helped him down out of the truck. I made him lean up against the side door, took out my knife that Fitz had especially sharpened for me. I used it to cut all the way up the side of each leg and jerked his pants off of him. I grabbed his underwear and pulled them down and cut them off, then did the same to his shirt."

        "Is this really necessary? Come on, man, give me a break. You want me to spread this dissension, at least untie me."

           "I'm going to unchain your feet. The rest, you can figure out on your own. It'll give me some time to do what I need to get done. and just so you know, if anything happens to Rosa or her son, I'll will find you, and I skin you alive." I knocked him down for good measure.

          I was so exhausted when I left, but when I got to the intersection where I should have turned to go home, I turned right. I had one more task to perform before I could sleep that night.