I wrote some new stuff for my (online) piece “Outside Of Los Angeles” and I hope you enjoy it.

Every once in a while you gotta join the horde and play tourist out here. We got Disneyland, Universal Studios, and miles of beaches. Tough to spot some of us out there in the crowd full of plaid shorts and flip-flops, but we’re there. Lucky for me that old habits are tough to shake. I was down at the Santa Monica Pier with a dancer that flew in from Vegas for the week, she wanted to watch the sun go down into the Pacific. I knew my week would be spent hopping between the sheets and a 7-11 the way this gal was hitting every ice cream stand and snack bar along the pier. Didn’t bother me a bit, she was wearing a great dress and everything on her bounced around underneath it. We got to the end of the pier and took a seat on the edge of the continent, she was working on the last bit of a churro and I had my hand on her ass while the ocean drifted back and forth underneath our feet. A three hundred pound Hawaiian dude was playing Metallica on his ukulele, and then I smelled Happy John-John. In a city of almost ten million people I had only run across one person that liked to load a little bit of weed into a clove cigarette and that asshole was a no-good degenerate that sold stolen exotic cars and had beat us out of three hundred grand. Happy John-John was in the fucking wind, he was gone…and he was somewhere on that pier with me smoking a stupid fucking clove cigarette with a little bit of weed rolled into it. I took my hand off her ass. Three hundred grand was standing somewhere in front of me at the end of that pier and there wasn’t a fucking chance that it was ever gonna make it to dry land. Pete Dice was in Venice so he made it to the pier in under five minutes. Dono and Perry posted up at the beach, Pete was running bird dog, and I was searching the crowd for Happy John-John. White dude, chubby, weasel eyes…could be any one of the hundred or so assholes watching the sun fall below the horizon. Pete Dice is hard to miss. Six foot eight, covered in tattoos, and a surgical scar on the side of his shaved head. If you’re already on the run and you see someone like that scanning the crowd you know they’re probably there for you. Sure as shit I caught someone bolt in back. Pete did his job, flushed him right out in the open. I called up Dono and Perry, the three of them closed in on him. He didn’t fight it, he knew we had him. Happy had aged in the year since he dropped off the radar. Gained some weight, lost some hair, and what was left was going gray. Old men don’t run. There’s a little police department office at the entrance to the pier, Happy knew better than to even look in that direction. As soon as the boys walked Happy down to the beach to head towards the parking lot Pete looked back to me for the nod. The sun had gone down, only a few peach pastel streaks reached up from the ocean. The dancer in the great dress was starting to shiver. I took my coat off and put it around her shoulders and sent her into the arcade with ten bucks. The dark of night would happen soon, what needed to be done needed to happen quick before the street lights flicked on. This sunset would be Happy John-John’s last. I gave the nod. Pete turned and hit him right in the throat, legs went out and the boys scooped him up. Dono and Perry headed south out of the parking lot. Pete went north. I watched his car head up the PCH toward Malibu. He would probably take it all the way up beyond Point Mugu and cut over to the 101 in Oxnard. After that I really didn’t want to know. Pete had holes dug out in Ojai and some out in the farmlands outside of Santa Maria.

Paul Zies

dirtyandmean.com

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