Upgunned by David J. Schow Page B

high school with a burning desire to act, and indeed was fulfilling that charter in her current wage job. Los Angeles is busting at the seams with beautiful women, and the competition is even dirtier than you can imagine. Movies are heavily invested in trading flesh, and what makes it to the screen in a theater near you is only a surface skim. What’s more amazing is what is never seen: for example, Cypress Wintre had a degree in business administration, acquired since she had migrated westward. The poor lost junkies and ex-pornies that fucked for a fix or child support didn’t stand a chance against her pedigree. Like me, she had never paid taxes in her life and enjoyed being her own boss.
    I paid her up-front and we were solid for our “date,” six days away.
    *   *   *
    My rendez with Conover Tilly and Waddell Pindad—a.k.a. Blackhawk and Bulldog—came that same day at a watering hole called Re$iduals in Studio City, about an hour before last call. Its slummy industry charm had been diluted somewhat by the offer of free wireless Internet service, which meant losers sat around staring into laptops and nursing overlong beers instead of getting shitfaced and hooking up with bedmates who slid in under fake IDs. The barkeeps turned up the music to compensate, which made it an excellent venue for not being overheard.
    Blackhawk was a rangy ex-stuntman who doled his extracurricular pay toward ranch land somewhere up north. His chipped-granite countenance got him fairly regular film work as a heavy. You know the anonymous bad guy who always draws down on the hero and gets chopped apart, falling spectacularly while still firing his weapon? That was Blackhawk. He was absurdly proud that sometimes he even got a line of dialogue. What the viewing public missed was that Blackhawk’s second job—working for me, among others—fed his primary occupation; he had not learned how to act like a tough guy, he was a tough guy, a stress-tested badass. I watched him break a guy’s arm once, seven times, starting with the fingers, then the wrist, then the long bones of the forearm, then the elbow, then dislocating the shoulder, as easily as you would pop bubbles in packing plastic.
    Yet, Bulldog was the more schooled torturer, a compact man of Indian extraction, born in Rangoon, slaved out at age eleven to some oil sheik’s youngest son, whose throat he fatally opened up with a fork. After some mercenary work more or less paralleling America’s war-dog progress through the Middle East, he came to the attention of Mal Boyd after being in-country for a mere seven days. He still had a price on his head thanks to the oil sheik, who, despite an expenditure in the millions, had never come close to finding him. Mal Boyd dry-cleaned Bulldog’s identity—hence “Waddell Pindad”—so Bulldog was always up for any op sourced by Mal.
    Blackhawk took a tiny bit more convincing.
    â€œI’m all good,” he said, Texas accent lubricated by Mexican beer. “Got me a three-week commit on a dinosaur movie starts in eight days and my property payments are down to fumes. I don’t really need the gig, man.”
    â€œPussy,” said Bulldog.
    â€œIt ain’t that way, B,” I said. “Six days from now, next Thursday, we’re in and out in six hours, max, you’re five large richer, and you’ve still got two days until shooting—hell, you’ve even got time to wash your socks, not that you ever wear ’em with those shitkicker boots.”
    â€œCome on,” said Bulldog. “It’s not another drug shoot-’em-up. All we have to do is stand around and look menacing.”
    â€œDon’t diss my fuckin boots, dude,” Blackhawk said.
    â€œAll right then, your lovely, manly Tony Lama boots.”
    â€œFuck you, Chambers, you fuckin white supremacist Hitler Youth motherfucker with your blond fuckin