Suicide Hill Read Online Free PDF Page B

cashboxes, because the vault has gotta be time-locked, walks out, takes the manager out to his car, slugs him and ties him up, calls the inside men at the chick’s pad, they tie her up, split, then meet later and divvy up the bread. Is that not fucking brilliant?”

    The soft-voiced man snorted: “Yeah, but how the fuck are you supposed to find happily married bank managers with girlfriends on the side? You gonna put an ad in the paper: ‘Armed robber seeks cooperative pussy-hound bank managers to aid him in career advancement? Send résumé to blah, blah, blah?’ Typical nigger bullshit and jive.”
    â€œWrong, bro,” the deep-voiced man said. “I don’t know how he got the info, but the black guy had two jobs cased—righteous rogue bank managers, girlfriends, the whole shot.”
    â€œAnd I suppose he gave you the skinny?”
    â€œYeah, he did, and I believe him. He got ten to life as a habitual offender, why not share the wealth, he’s looking at a dime minimum. One chick lives in Encino, on the corner of Kling and Valley View, in a pink apartment house; the other, Christine something, lives in Studio City, a house on the corner of Hildebrand and Gage. I told you: one smart fucking nigger.”
    â€œI still don’t believe it.”
    â€œIf Bo Derek offered you a headjob, you’d think she was a drag queen. You’re just a terminal fucking skeptic.”
    Rice listened as the conversation deteriorated into the usual jailhouse shtick of sports and sex. When the talk died altogether, he lay down with his head next to the ventilator shaft and once more fell asleep.
    Vandy took over his dreams, short-take images of her laughing, moving around in bed. Then she was there with the Vandals, vibrato growling their closing number: “Gotta get down in the prison of your love. Get down, get down, gonna drown, gonna come so good, so hard, burn my body in your prison yard, prison of your love!”
    Rice awakened for the final time in L.A. County Jail stint just as Vandy and the Vandals brought “Prison of Your Love” to its off-key crescendo. Coward, he said to himself. Coward. Using sleep the way a junkie uses smack. Maybe she fucked him and maybe she didn’t; when you look into her eyes, you’ll know. So stay awake and fight.
    He stood up and looked around the cell, his eyes catching a wad of newspaper beside the toilet and a book of matches on top of the sink. Thinking, let them know , he struck a match on the ventilator grate, then lit the newspaper and watched it fireball. When it started to burn his hand, he dropped it into the toilet and listened to the sizzle and hiss of newsprint. Satisfied with the way the ink was running, he turned his attention to the floor-to-wall-to-ceiling padding.
    Gouging was the only way.
    Rice dug his fingernails into a seam of wall padding and pulled outward. Naugahyde, foam and a layer of webbed cotton were revealed. He poked a finger into the hole and felt metal in back of the webbing. Spring reinforcement. He gouged his way to it, then twisted the nearest piece of metal back and forth until it broke off in his hand.
    It took him hours to hone his tool on the ventilator shaft grates. When the spring was razor sharp, he pressed it into a sodden ball of newspaper and darkened the tip. Flexing his left biceps into a hard surface, he thought of Hawaiian Gardens and Vandy. Then he marked himself with his past and future, so the whole world would know. The words were Death Before Dishonor.

2
    B obby “Boogaloo” Garcia watched his kid brother Joe loosen his clerical collar and do air guitar riffs in front of the bedroom mirror. He felt his own priest outfit constrict his body and said, “I can’t take none of your rock and roll rap today, pindejo. I quit fighting ’cause niggers kept knocking me out in the third round, and you’ll never make it as a musician ’cause you got no drive and