Lola: Chapter Twelve
Walters opens the door and turns on the lights. His hideout is located southeast of downtown, near the fashion district, amongst nondescript warehouses and derelict human beings. It’s a nice place for a hideout, a big loft, surprisingly modern, at least surprising to Lola, she hasn’t spent much time in underworld hideouts before. This is her first.
She tours the place like a prospective buyer. It’s barebones in terms of furniture but could otherwise be the trendy loft of some up and coming architect or maybe a desperate to be cool lawyer instead of what it is.
After her initial tour, Lola keeps wandering the place with empty eyes. There’s a couch and a bed and a kitchen, of course. A couple of chairs that look like they were hastily purchased at Ikea or some store like that. It doesn’t look like anybody has been here in years, which is possibly true.
While Lola is touring the loft, Walters is working away on a couple of the floorboards.
“Is this where you go when things are bad?”
“Are things bad?”
“They seem that way, yes.”
Walters shrugs. “I’ve seen worse.”
He raises one of the boards. “I keep a few places in the city no one else knows about. It makes my life less complicated.”
“And you’re good at avoiding complications?”
“Usually, yes.”
“But not anymore.”
Walters doesn’t answer. He’s now retrieving items from his hiding place under the floor. Lola keeps up the wandering and makes her way over to where he is. She peeks into the opening in the floor. It looks like he has an armory stored under there, and those are only the things she can see, who knows what else is down there, maybe a tank or antiaircraft gun as well. Walters is rifling through a large army green duffel bag.
“I know a guy who can help straighten things out. He’ll know what’s going on.”
“And you trust him?”
Walters stops rifling through the bag. He thinks about the question. “No. I don’t trust him. But he’s helped me in the past. He’s helped Moreno in the past. It’s in his interest to help me. I don’t trust him, but I trust he will do what’s in his best interest.”
“He’ll know what she’s planning?”
“Yes, he will.”
Now it’s Lola’s turn to stop and think. But the more she thinks the less she cares about Roxanne’s plans. She doesn’t care about Roxanne’s maneuvers in the criminal underworld. She doesn’t care about that briefcase she helped to steal and set all of this into motion. The list of concerns in Lola’s life have dwindled to only a select few primal urges. Basic desires of death and survival. She no longer wants anything else from this life.
After taking what he needs, Walters puts a smaller black bag with money and fake passports and practical items for those on the run back under the floor. The larger army green duffel bag stays out. It has an actual military insignia on it. It’s not just army green, it’s an army bag he must have stolen from some base somewhere. Walters unzips it and it is an armory within an armory. Exotic lethal killing machines of all sizes, a few rifles, a machine gun or two and lots and lots of handguns. For some reason, Lola instinctively smiles at this. She never smiled at the thought of such things before in her life, the thought of guns and bullets and death, these things did not bring her joy before but now that she sees her hitman sorting through pistols and automatic pistols she can’t help but to smile. Maybe it’s the absurdity of it all. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. Either way, she turns back from Walters and tours the loft for a third time.
“You still might want to consider getting out of town.” Walters shouts over the clanging of the metal he is moving about.
Lola stares at the only picture in the entire place. It’s an abstract painting. Not a Jackson Pollack. A sad derivative attempt at a Jackson Pollack, many generations removed. It’s the type of thing you would find on a hotel wall. Lola wonders what this says about the man behind her on the floor.
“I’m staying.” She answers.
“This isn’t your fight anymore. It’s bigger than that. You can disappear and not be a part of what’s going to happen next.”
“Can I?” Lola turns back.
Walters is standing, having successfully transferred enough weapons to a smaller white bag.
Lola doesn’t believe she can disappear any more than Walters can. Or Moreno could. Disappearing now would only be a kind of delayed death. She’s a loose end. Loose ends don’t have very long lifespans.
“I want her dead.” Lola is surprised at the words as they come out of her mouth, not because they aren’t true, they are most definitely the truth, but because she said them aloud. She isn’t sure of much in her life at this moment. She is sure of this.
“Those are pretty strong words for someone who just killed a person for the first time. It doesn’t get easier after the first one, you know that, don’t you?”
“She took everything from me. I’m going to take everything from her.”
Lola’s eyes turn microscopic and focused, no longer empty, full. Full of hatred. Full of certainty. Full of a ruthless confidence.
---
Marco’s homecoming is less welcoming than returning to an empty loft. He has to tell Roxanne the bad news of his failure.
“Walters escaped.”
“How could you let him go!”
“He’s teamed up with the girl. She surprised us and shot Dante and Rafa.” Marco has surmised it’s wiser to lie to Roxanne than tell the truth. He may not be the brightest goon around but he’s bright enough for a little self-preservation.
“You’re kidding.”
“It was a set-up. That girl knows what to do with a gun. She was waiting for us.”
Roxanne stares at the square jaw of her second favorite bodyguard. She knows he is lying, that isn’t even a question at this point, but what is he lying about. Is he working with for someone else now? One of the reasons she likes him isn’t because he is trustworthy or especially honest, but because he is too dim to try to scheme and plan. There is loyalty in his dimness. Has that changed? Has she misjudged him. After another look in his eyes and jaw, Roxanne dismisses the idea. Whatever he’s lying about, it isn’t because he's trying to trap her. He’s being honest in his dishonesty.
“I know I taught her well. I didn’t think I taught her that well. I didn’t think she had it in her.”
“She definitely has it in her.”
“So she’s back in the game.” Roxanne seems more bemused than concerned, bemused by the idea of her one-time protégé plotting revenge against her. Lola couldn’t handle playing with the big boys like that, it’s almost sweet even. Like a child wanting to sit at the adult’s table. Roxanne had just toppled one of the most ruthless men in the entire city of Los Angeles and Lola thinks she can play in the same game as her, please, she shouldn’t even be on the same field, she should be playing with the little leaguers not against Roxanne in the major leagues.
Tomas, Roxanne’s once and current favorite bodyguard enters the fray. His jaw is slightly squarer than Marco’s.
“Should we kill them both?”
Bemusement stays on Roxanne’s face then turns into a kind of quizzical gaze. Her eyes sparkle the sparkle of someone who has just had a particularly delicious thought. She smiles an enigmatic smile to her two favorite bodyguards.
“No. Let’s have some fun.”
---
Lola is lying in bed. Walters is in the shower. She is wide awake. Ever since the amnesia, she doesn’t seem to sleep anymore. She spends a lot of time lying in bed thinking. And staring. And staring. And thinking. Amidst the thinking and staring, her microscopic focus of earlier has turned into a vague daze of remembrance. She contemplates her past. She contemplates her future.
The sound of the shower shuts off. Lola stays in her daze and barely notices as Walters walks to bed in only a towel. He gets into bed beside her. She still doesn’t turn to him.
“I found out something interesting earlier. I made a few phone calls. There’s going to be a meeting this weekend at Moreno’s mansion.
“His former mansion.” Lola says.
“Roxanne is hosting a get together. It’s an important meeting for her. Kind of like a coming out party.”
“Or an audition?”
“Perhaps. She’s going to use that party to consolidate her power.”
“Is it that easy?”
“Easy? No. It’s not easy. But she’s been around these men for ten years. She had all that time to gain favor. She’s good at that. You know that. You’ve seen it. If she’s been planning this for years, this is just the final piece, she’s already done the hard work.”
“Yeah, she has done the hard work.”
Lola still hasn’t turned towards Walters. She crinkles the top of the sheet with her left hand, gripping it with all of her strength.
“If I’m going to stop her, I’m going to have to do it before that meeting.” Walters continues.
“Stop her from doing what?”
“From taking over Moreno’s organization.”
Lola scoffs and turns to Walters. “I don’t care about that.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I want her dead. I don’t care what she does to make money before I kill her.”
“You certainly know how to hold a grudge.”
“She’s my first.”
“The first person you’ve held a grudge against.”
“The first person I’ve vowed to kill.”
Walters doesn’t know what to say to that. Even a hitman doesn’t know what to say to that.
“I met her in a bar.”
“That’s Interesting.”
“I had just split up with my husband, we were separated, honestly, I thought we’d still get back together. Roxanne became my new best friend. We’d meet every week, drown our miseries, she would tell me about how bad her boyfriend was, I would tell her about how bad my ex was, she was older, wiser, someone to lean on.”
“She had this ruthless streak to her. I liked that. I hadn’t been so ruthless in my life, I was the nail, everyone else was the hammer. I wanted that to change. She urged me to split permanently from Bill. It was tough, I had no money, I was going to start fresh. I got deeper and deeper into debt, she said she had a way out of that. 93,000. That’s a lot of money. At least to me.”
Lola shakes her head.
“It was just supposed to be flirting. Easy money. No one was supposed to die. She set me up. I trusted her. It was all a lie. She played me. I’m not going to let her get away with it.”
“Wanting revenge and getting revenge are two very different things.”
Walters looks into the eyes of his new potential apprentice in the killing business. Maybe he sees something in there he likes, besides her beauty, besides the obvious.
“It’s a path you don’t come back from. At least I didn’t. It’s such a cold world to live in. It’s not a conscious choice, not for most people, maybe it was for Roxanne, I don’t know, but there’s more to killing than shooting a gun. Pulling the trigger is the easy part. Anybody can pull a trigger. People do it every day on the range. Into a body, a living human, it’s another thing completely.”
“I’ve done it.”
“That wasn’t planned. It was spur of the moment. You did it to save me. You did it to save yourself. That’s not what you are talking about now. You are talking about revenge, about doing it in cold blood, premeditated, planned. That’s the thing most people can’t do. And it’s a good thing they can’t do it. You become less human when you do.”
“Are you less human?”
“Yes. Than I was before. Than when my momma gave birth to me. Yeah, most definitely. But my path wasn’t one of choice. You have a choice.”
“No, I don’t. I’m not some amateur. I have more skills than you know. I went into the army after school. I served for five years. I wasn’t special forces or anything like that, I never was in combat, but I know enough. I grew up in fucking rural Kansas, for chrissakes, I grew up with a gun in my hand. You think I can’t handle myself. I can handle myself. When this is over, I’m going to be holding a briefcase with $93,000 in it and Roxanne, she’s..”
Lola shakes her head again, she doesn’t need to finish the thought.
Walters is still searching in those eyes of Lola. Is she an apprentice or an amateur. Is she talking big or is she willing to cross over to the other side. He decides to lighten the mood.
“Kansas, huh. Wizard of Oz and shit.”
Lola laughs. “Yeah, Kansas.”
“So you have some perfect middle America childhood, white fence, football games and prom and all of that?”
The daze of remembrance returns to Lola’s eyes. The bad memories return as well.
“No, I didn’t have any of that. It wasn’t a good childhood. I was an only child. I was alone a lot of the time. I liked to be alone. I was safe when I was alone. My mother hated me. I think she viewed me as competition, I don’t know. I was an only child to her. I did have a half-sister from my father. She was a lot older than me, almost the same age as my mom. For some reason my mom liked her, but she hated me. My half-sister hated me, too. They would gang up on me. It wasn’t Wizard of Oz, it was Cinderella, but not in a good way. It sucked. I hated every second of it.
“I think my dad felt guilty about the way they treated me so he would take me out hunting, fishing, shooting, he didn’t know much about girls even though he had two of them, those were the only moments that were half-decent. I guess that's why I joined the army after high school because I was used to that kind of stuff, only I didn’t do any of that in the army. I did a lot of logistics, whatever that is, and that was pretty boring so I got out as soon as I could and got out of Kansas with the little money I had from the army. I came to Los Angeles because that seems like the place people go when they want a new life. My dad was dead by then and I didn’t care about my mom. She's dead now, too. I met Bill out here pretty early on. He was from here, he was from Pasadena. He had a good family, his parents liked him, a good job, all this stability. That was good. And it was good. We got married. We had a few nice years. Then he cheated. So I cheated. And it went downhill from there. We tried to get back together. We didn’t know what we were doing, we could have made it work, I suppose, maybe. Then I met Roxanne in that bar. She was so damn cool. Assured. Seen everything. Knew everything. She was rich, too, I could tell that even without her telling me, she carried herself the way the rich do, the way those who don’t have to worry about next month’s rent do. Sure, I knew maybe the money wasn’t hers, that it was her boyfriends, but still it was money. That’s why I believed her when she fed me the story about the $93,000. Just a way of getting back at some guy who swindled her and her boyfriend. I looked up to her. I wanted to be like her. I was getting divorced and I had nobody, no family, no one else out here, and then I had her, she listened to me, she gave me advice, she gave me hope.
“And then she betrayed me. She stole the last few beliefs I had about this life. About the possibilities in this life. That’s as bad as stealing money. I’m not going to let her get away with it. She owes me. She owes me money. She owes me a future. She took my 93 grand and left me for dead. I’m not walking away from that. I’m going to get revenge. Even if it kills me.”
“Even if it kills you?”
“Yeah, don’t you know, I’m the most dangerous person in the world.”
“You are, huh.”
“I no longer have anything to lose.”
Walters wasn’t sure what would make him fall in love with a woman before her heard that speech from Lola, but that speech might have done it. He had the heart of a killer, and those words were the exact words that would make that heart, his heart, fall for another. Lola wasn’t about to make that same mistake. As they made love Walters was falling in love, despite his hardened heart. As much as she liked him, Lola reminded herself she had been betrayed before.