Dying For LA by Ian Jones (best adventure books to read TXT) 📗

weighed over four hundred pounds and stood six three. His head was absolutely massive, with bizarrely tiny piggy eyes which stared out, unblinking from the fat fleshy round face. He always wore dark coloured gowns with baggy trousers and bright flip-flops. Rico absently wondered where he got his clothes from. They had been together here for some time now, and nobody really knew anything about Voorhees, not even Rico and he was Number One, basically a supervisor. A title bestowed upon him randomly by Voorhees while they ate yet another pizza in the tiny kitchen. Rico couldn’t work the man out at all; he never left the apartment, not once. Without him, the men used to go to a bar some evenings, but this had been stopped a few weeks before following an incident which had brought attention to them and made Voorhees furious. Rico had sorted the problem out and done it very well but had felt the wrath even so. Occasionally they would return to the apartment after driving out past Barstow having spent hours shooting at targets in the desert and he wouldn’t have moved, although there was often a pizza box empty on the kitchen table. And he really smelled, sour, unwashed. Plus, he never smiled; Rico had not seen him do it once.

Everyone was scared of him. That was a simple fact. Despite all the bravado and what was said when he wasn’t with them the fear was tangible, absolute. He was in charge. They did what he told them. Nobody ever questioned. He made everyone nervous. There were rumours of what he had done in the past, unverified but believable.

This meant that right now Rico was conscious of getting too close to the big man, and he stood to one side, deferentially.

‘So it went wrong,’ Voorhees said calmly. Unnecessarily in Rico’s opinion, not that he would ever say so.

‘It did,’ he agreed.

‘You failed.’

Rico shook his head vigorously.

‘No Yann. I didn’t. We didn’t. The intelligence was wrong. It wasn’t there. I don’t even know if she was there if I’m being real honest, we never saw a clear photo. I mean I guess it might have been her but the package wasn’t. Definitely.’

‘She was there. I have been told. She was seen going in. These people do not make mistakes.’

‘Yann I don’t know what she looks like. None of us did. We only had the description, the photo could have been anyone.’

‘I just told you. I thought I made it clear. She walked in the station. They knew exactly where she was from when she arrived. She was being tailed, she was with the other woman. I explained this to you. This is why you were told to be Downtown, we knew where she would go, it was all set up.’

Rico sighed.

‘Look Yann, we searched all the bags. it wasn’t there. I don’t know why it wasn’t, and I sure as hell don’t know what you were told but there was nothing. And they searched everyone, every bag.’

Yann glanced over to the back of the room at Sal then turned and gestured at the doorway.

‘Come in here Rico.’

He led the way to the room he called his office. This would have been the living room. It was the biggest in the apartment and the only one with proper windows. There had been a lot of resentment that Voorhees had made it into his office considering the cramped conditions elsewhere, but of course nobody had said anything. There was a wide table in the middle of the room with an ancient laptop on it and an old beaten-up office chair. Voorhees spent most of his time here. Nobody knew what he did all day, or what the laptop was for. There was no Internet in the apartment as far as anyone knew, but again, nobody said a word.

Voorhees walked around the table and lowered himself into the chair which creaked alarmingly. He laid his forearms onto the table top with a heavy thump and leaned back.

There were no other chairs in the room, any time anybody had to talk to him they had to stand in front of the table feeling like a child. But Rico was defiant. This had not been his fuck up, whatever Voorhees said or did now. He had done exactly as he was told. He walked over to the side of the room and looked out of the window saying nothing. They were five floors up, he looked down in the darkness at a scruffy parking lot and a scruffier basketball court, and then the freeway, bright headlights sweeping in both directions. On the other side of that was a large construction site, a mall being built. The whole area felt depressed, the apartment block they were living in had sprung up with a bunch of others all round it back in the seventies, and they hadn’t lasted well. There were a couple of blocks of cheap shops and bars, a few fast-food outlets, and that was it. Mount Pleasant, Los Angeles, USA. Mount Pleasant? Yeah, right.

He turned to look at Voorhees who was still staring at him.

‘So, tell me then Rico. What happened? And where are the others?’

Voorhees had a high, mesmerising, sing-song voice, which was impossible to read. If he was berating someone’s ineptitude or talking about the weather it always sounded the same.

‘We did exactly as we planned. Exactly. We were there and waited till we got your call. All of us went in the station, OK? We did everything as you told us to. Once we were downstairs Pol and Sung went off down the platform, we were looking at all the women, just to be sure. Max stayed put at the bottom and me and Sal came back upstairs. Like I said, just as we planned it.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. The place was real quiet, not many people there. Lot of screaming and yelling then we heard the shooting. Then Pol shouted out to Max, and he called