A Good-Looking Corpse Read Online Free PDF

the cool shade of the parking garage, is basic and unexciting. Nobody will be staring at me, mesmerized, offering to suck my cock, that’s for sure.
    I leave Ramen, my truck following him out, with the promise that I will indeed make an appearance at Mikey Echo’s house tomorrow night. There is much about the legend of Echo that I want to sort out for myself. I feel certain that a lot of what Ramen had to say over the evening will, at the very least, be proven false. And yet, I can’t shake the belief that he was right that Alan Van didn’t jump. Removing that commercial safety glass? That would take a lot of work—as in intricately digging out the caulk that had held the window in place. And that didn’t seem like the work of a suicidal man with a roof option so close at hand.
    I drive the pile of guts and slush that used to be a celebrity back to my new warehouse space in downtown L.A., fighting the urge to head north toward the Valley and the old warehouse.
That was Harold’s space.
    Ultimately, after deciding to continue the business, I decided I needed something bigger, more prominently anchored in downtown, without the bad vibes of my former boss’s death confronting me every time I went to the office. The space I now rent used to be a mechanic’s shop. Built for the rigors of big-city life, it is bolstered with concrete and steel, like a fortress. Bars are fixed to everything and there is no large picture window to be broken or shot out—merely a series of small ones behind the prison-like bars. The whole building is just reinforced concrete painted a subtle brick red and molded into a giant two-story square shell. It is the sort of building that requires a tank or an earthquake like L.A. has never seen to bring it down. Even a fire several years back that necessitated a rebuild of most of the block failed to leave more than cursory black scorch marks atop the west wall.
Right now, I need exactly the kind of building that can stop an assault.
    The two steel roll-up doors on the building mean I can park both my Charger and work truck inside at all times. With the Sureño Lowriders calling this area of downtown L.A. their turf, it seemed like a smart idea. I wanted to make sure it would be tougher for them to get at me than it had been previously. Their killing of Harold did not in any way squash their beef with me, nor did I think that I would never encounter them again—not while we mutually called the City of Angels home.
In fact, I’d counted on it when I signed the lease
.
    I needed revenge for my boss’s death; he was one of the few people who had been good to me since I’d gotten out of prison. Revenge meant returning some pain to the Lowriders any way I could swing it. For that, relocation was key—as was a building that could handle the heavy firepower the Lowriders had access to. When I found this brick shithouse of a building right in Lowrider turf, I knew I had to have it.
    I hit the button for the garage door, idling the truck in front of the red building that appears a dark gray at night. The words “Trauma-Gone” are stenciled neatly above the garage doors and a fixed signpost out on the corner informs people who want more information that we are a twenty-four-hour service complete with an 800 number. T RAUMA- G ONE B IOHAZARD R EMEDIATION , that’s me.
    The bags containing Alan’s innards go into two of the black fifty-five-gallon steel barrels that line the inside of my shop, each of them stamped morbidly with a skull and crossbones decal. The cans, when full, would be sealed and then picked up by a company who would take them down to their incinerator along with shredded classified documents, medical waste, tattoo needles, and whatever other more normal companies needed destroyed. The two Mexican guys who picked up the goods never asked details about what was inside the barrels—they only made sure that I had sealed them tightly. If I needed more, the company would provide them,