Dying For LA by Ian Jones (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

So Rico rang, and the conversation was short. There was money in LA. So get down there and call another number as soon as he arrives. The job would take a month or so, and he would be working for a crew.

And feeling like he had run out of options in Seattle he had done exactly as he was told.

He never had any names, he had made contact as soon as soon as he got off the train and been told to go to Mount Pleasant, which had been a huge pain in the ass, to use his own words. After a lot of hanging around and sleeping in a park he had been approached by Ji-hoon, who had been watching him. Again, he wasn’t told a whole lot but he was taken to Voorhees, and given a sleeping bag in the shitty apartment. From that point on he was told he was a soldier. 1-Too was never mentioned except when Voorhees was laying the law down about something. Sal had arrived a week or two later. The stated month or so became four, and in that time they didn’t actually do anything until the last week. All they did was occasionally have fun firing assault rifles out in the wilds, or just fetching and carrying around the city. The Metro station had been their first action, and that had gone wrong, but he didn’t know why because he hadn’t been on the platform. The information given had been poor, and he believed Voorhees and given everybody separate instructions, but his understanding has been that Ji-hoon and Sung-min were to get the bag and Pol was to keep everyone on the platform. He and Sal had to stop anyone else going downstairs, but once it was underway they were to get back to van and have it running. There had been no clear picture of Deanna, and no other detail had been given. Ji-hoon had been unhappy.

Rico was asked about all the weapons, he had no idea where they came from. He told them that Pol would take care of teaching everyone how to shoot, he was the only one with any real training. Rico said they used to enjoy going out firing at targets, apparently they got quite good at it in the end.

Weiss had killed the major, which hadn’t exactly been in the script. All they had been told by Voorhees was go get the briefcase.

But what happened seemed to cause panic, and straight after they had moved to the train yard, then Pinsky had shown up with Rolf and Greg and what had already been shit went way worse fast.

Finally, both he and Sal had snapped. Voorhees had been murdered, Rolf was dead and then that motherfucker Pinsky had killed Greg just like it was nothing. Weiss had left behind a Glock which nobody knew about and Sal had shot Pinsky with it in the hotel room. He had been aiming for a leg but had rushed it because he’d been panicking. Perez admitted that at the time they both were, they had been at breaking point for hours.

He was just happy to be alive.

If anything Rodriguez’s story was even more poignant. He was born in San Diego, so was a naturalised Californian. But he hadn’t been there long, his mother had taken him and his three sisters off in an old car in the middle of the night. He had no memory of it, he had been less than a year old at the time. They had pitched up in Miami, which was their home for the next few years until there had been another moonlight flit, this time to Atlanta. He had never known his father, his mother was Mexican. When he was ten she was arrested for her part of a credit card scam, and with a bunch of other charges ended up going to jail. So Rodriguez and his sisters were in the system. They were split up, and Rodriguez was fostered several times until at last he was eighteen. He was living in Birmingham, and involved in all sorts of petty street crimes. He did try and find his mother, but found out she had been released a long time ago but made no effort to contact him.

He too had been approached in a bar and told to ring a number, his story virtually matched that of Perez.

Yes, he had found the Glock in a car they had been forced to dump after that asshole Weiss got himself killed. He had kept it because things were getting ‘as ragged as shit’ and he was glad he had. He had no remorse about shooting Pinsky, it was the end of the line and both he and Perez would have been murdered for sure. He had spoken the truth, he had never shot anyone before, never aimed a gun at anyone. In the end they were stuck in a crappy hotel while Pinsky got angrier and angrier all the time while making impossible demands and he had just pulled the trigger.

At that point Sal Rodriguez laughed.

‘Man, you should have seen the look on that motherfucker’s face.’

Both men’s statements outlined life in the apartment identically. There were rarely any clear instructions, they never had any real idea what they were supposed to be doing. They were bored and spent most of their time either in McDonald’s or hanging around in the kitchen. Voorhees would occasionally issue orders to do something but was always secretive and would lock himself away in his office on the phone. The only money they had earned was the few bucks that Voorhees would hand out every now and then.

Pinsky’s wounding was serious but not fatal. He was stabilised in the emergency room and once the danger had passed was transferred to a private room.

He was not a happy man.

The doctors gave the police permission to question him but he clammed up and demanded a representative from the embassy.