Kung Fu Factory Read online

  For

  Joe R.

  Lansdale

  edits:

  ashley/jose/rawson

  design:

  jose/Ashley

  cover:

  emma-jane johnson

  http://mynameisemma-jane.blogspot.com/

  KUNG FU

  FACTORY

  TOP AMERICAN, AUSTRALIAN & CANADIAN WRITERS IN ACTION!

  Fiction:

  Christa FAUST

  Joshua REYNOLDS

  M a t t h e w McBRIDE

  Chad EAGLETON

  Michael S. CHONG

  Cameron ASHLEY

  Jimmy CALLAWAY

  Chris LA TRAY

  Garnett ELLIOTT

  Bryon QUERTERMOUS

  Anthony Neil Smith

  FRANK B I L L

  interview -

  duane swierczynski

  a r t i c l e s :

  nerd of noir

  liam jose

  addam duke

  chokehold

  by Christa FAUST

  Angel Dare went into Witness Protection to escape her past—not as a porn star, but as a killer who took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. But sometimes the past just won’t stay buried. When a former co-star is murdered, it’s up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas...

  Vic’s kid and I walked along the side of the dark desert road. He had a miniature flashlight on his keychain that sent out a tiny circle of bluish light. It only made the dark around us seem darker.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Cody,” he said.

  “Cody what?” It probably wasn’t Ventura, or Pagliuca either, for that matter. Pagliuca was Vic’s real last name. I had no idea what Skye West’s real name was.

  “Noon,” the kid said. “Cody Noon.”

  I was thinking about what I was gonna say when he asked my name, but he beat me to the punch.

  “My dad called you Angel,” he said. “You’re not…” He chewed his lip, eyes on his boots. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but…are you a porn star?”

  I didn’t answer, but he wouldn’t let it go.

  “You are,” he said. “You’re Angel Dare, aren’t you?”

  What the hell was I supposed to tell him? There was no point denying it. I nodded, hating how raw and vulnerable I felt under that huge black sky.

  “I knew it,” he said. “Wow. You look so different. I never would have recognized you.”

  “That’s just because I have clothes on.”

  He laughed, then looked away. It seemed like he had something else he wanted to say, but whatever it was, he kept his mouth shut.

  We walked in silence for a few minutes. I could see he was starting to shiver, but trying to be a man about it. The quarter moon ducked in and out from behind swift-moving cloud banks. There was a small strip mall up ahead with no open businesses. On the other side of the road was a lot dealing in tractors and heavy farm equipment, also closed. There was a big dog in the farm equipment dealer’s fenced yard, a scrappy brown mutt that eyed us suspiciously but didn’t bark.

  As we walked, the tight, nauseous dread in the pit of my stomach seemed to get worse rather than better. I was itching to get out of town. To be anywhere but Yuma.

  After another twenty minutes of tense, awkward silence, we arrived at our apparent destination, a sorry little yellow house in dire need of fresh paint and a new roof. Or a can of kerosene and a match. The cheerful metal welcome sign out front was faded and rusty around the edges and featured a friendly, waving cartoon animal of indeterminate species that had been shot through the left eye with a small caliber rifle.

  Cody led the way up the dusty driveway and laid into the flimsy door with both fists.

  “Hank!” he called. “Come on, Hank, open up!”

  The sudden racket made my skin crawl, even though there were no other houses in sight. After what seemed like an hour, the door finally opened, revealing a man in his underwear.

  Even when I’m up to my eyeballs in paranoia, running from doped-up killers in the middle of the night, there are some things that will never escape my notice. A body like that guy's is one of those things.

  He was just a few inches taller than me, with a compact but hard and powerful build. A build like that wasn’t just for show. A build like that meant business. He had broad shoulders with a large, crescent-shaped surgical scar on the right. Strong arms and thick, muscular thighs. He hadn’t bothered to shave the hair off his chest and belly like Cody had. His tighty-whiteys had been scrubbed so many times that they were worn thin, nearly see-through. I liked what I could see through them. When my gaze finally made it up to his face, I was more than a little disappointed.

  He had a face that looked like something the tribe who made those stone heads on Easter Island might have come up with if they’d attempted a portrait of Chuck Norris. His large nose had been repeatedly smashed and flattened. His eyes were so pale they were barely blue and he had an equal length of blond stubble on his head and his heavy jaw. His crooked ears were cauliflowered, puffy and swollen up like they had hemorrhoids, the right more so than the left.

  “Dammit, Cody,” he said. “You got any fuckin’ idea…” He looked over Cody’s shoulder at me, then dipped his chin, shifting his gaze to his bare feet. “Scuze me, ma’am. I didn’t realize Cody'd brought company.”

  His voice was deep, distinctly Southern and full of gravel. I had the feeling if he’d been wearing a hat, he would have taken it off.

  There was a beat of awkward silence before he seemed to realize he was in nothing but skivvies. He blushed and began to stammer, then slammed the door.

  “Just give me a minute, willya?” he finally managed to say through the closed door.

  When he opened the door again, he was dressed in black track pants and a t-shirt advertising some kind of muscle-building supplement.

  “Why didn’t you say you brought company,” he said to Cody. “Well, ain’t you gonna introduce me?”

  “Angel,” Cody said distractedly. “This is Hank ‘The Hammer’ Hammond.”

  I cringed, wishing I’d thought to ask him not to use the name Angel.

  “Just Hank’ll do,” Hank said with a kid’s big guileless grin. He seemed to have completely forgotten about his previous embarrassment.

  He put out a thick, calloused hand that was stiff and permanently curled as if never more than two inches from a fist. I shook it. It felt like an inanimate object.

  “Charmed,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. “But I really think we ought to go inside.”

  “Sure, you bet,” Hank said, standing aside. “Come on in.”

  Inside the little house, it was cramped and cluttered. The ugly brown and orange furniture looked as if it had been preserved in amber since 1974. There were a lot of magazines lying around and at first glance I thought they were gay porn. When I looked closer, I realized the half-naked men were fighting, not fucking. I recognized that big side of beef who’d knocked up Jenna Jameson and then allegedly knocked her around. In addition to the magazines, there were also a lot of scattered fight DVDs, dirty Tupperware containers, big plastic cups crusted with the dried-up remnants of protein shakes and a distressing number of empty orange prescription pill bottles. Hank was gathering up armloads of junk and dumping it all randomly into drawers and cabinets.

  “I’d’ve straightened up if I knew…”

  He paused and turned towards Cody, who stood in the center of the room with his fists clenched and shoulders shaking. He was fighting not to cry and losing. I looked down at the stained carpet, feeling nervous and uncomfortable. I felt ba
d for the kid but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t even figure out how I was supposed to feel about what had happened to Thick Vic.

  “Hey, what’s all this about?” Hank asked, coming forward and slinging a huge, protective arm around Cody.

  “Fucking bastards,” Cody stammered, his face crimson. “They… They…”

  “Come on now,” Hank scolded softly, steering Cody over to the lumpy sofa. “You oughta watch your mouth in front of a lady.”

  The idea of anyone watching their mouth around me was pretty hilarious. Guess Hank never saw my scene in Trash Talking Tramps. Still, I have to admit it was kind of charming.

  He sat Cody down on the couch like a child with a skinned knee, surprisingly mother hen-ish for such an ugly brute.

  “Why don’t you just sit still for a minute and take some deep breaths. Come on now, breathe. There you go.”

  “They killed my dad,” Cody said all in a rush. “I just barely met him and they killed him. They tried to kill me too, but....”

  “Tried to kill you?” Hank said, frowning. “Who tried to kill you?”

  “I had the guy who did it, but I let him go,” Cody said, standing up and shaking off Hank’s comforting hand. “I had him, broke his fucking arm for him too, but when the shooting started, I…I got scared. I got scared and fucking let him go. Fuck!”

  He flipped the cluttered coffee table up on its side, kicked it across the room and then took a wild swing at the wall, but Hank was on him in a heartbeat, holding him tight from behind and talking to him in low soothing tones. Cody fought against him at first, but eventually whatever Hank was saying started working and the kid nodded, sniffling and settling down.

  “Okay now,” Hank said, guiding Cody back to the sofa. Hank fumbled around with various pill bottles until he found one that wasn’t empty and dumped a pair of tiny blue tablets into Cody’s hand. “Ain’t no point second guessing your fight after the bell’s already rung. All you can do is work on being better next time. So why don’t you just relax for a little while and we can talk more about this later. I got the pay-per-view there on the Tivo. You wanna watch a little bit? Your boy Kenner sure was something in the main.”

  Cody nodded and dry swallowed the pills. Hank set the coffee table back on its feet, put on the television and began messing around with several remotes. When he got the program he wanted to start playing, he put the remotes on the coffee table where Cody could reach them.

  “Listen, Hank,” I said softly. “You need to call the cops.” I looked back at Cody. “And I can’t be here when they arrive.”

  “Well,” Hank said. “Whatever issues you might have with the law are none of my business. But I can tell you right now there might be a problem or two with this plan of yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well for starters,” he said. “Ain’t got no phone service at the moment, on account of I forgot to pay the bill again.”

  “Then you could give him a ride to the station.”

  “No can do,” Hank replied. “Ain’t supposed to drive no more on account of my migraine headaches. Anyway, look at him.” He gestured towards Cody, already curled up and snoring on the couch. “Boy’s out cold. He ain’t going nowhere tonight. Not after what I gave him.”

  “Do you have a car?” I asked.

  “Got my old truck out back,” he said. “Reckon it still runs.”

  “Then he can drive there himself in the morning,” I said. “Look, I promised I’d get him somewhere safe and here he is, so if I could just get cleaned up and out of this uniform, I’ll hit the road and be out of your hair.”

  “You planning on going off alone on foot in the middle of the night?” he asked. He bent down over the sleeping boy and pulled Cody’s boots off his feet. “Ain’t nothing around for miles. Nothing that’d be open this time of the night, anyways.” He shook his head. “No, ma’am, I can’t let you do that. Ain’t safe. ”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute,” he replied, setting the boots on the floor and tossing a ratty knitted blanket over Cody. “But just the same, I think you’d better stay put till sunup. Cody can drop you at the Greyhound station first thing.”

  He was right. I was exhausted, shaken and in no shape for hiking. Or arguing.

  “Can I get you a cold drink?” he asked. “What’d you say your name was again?”

  “Angel,” I said, too exhausted to lie. “And yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

  “Ain’t got nothing but diet, so I hope that’ll do. I’m trying to cut weight.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, wondering where he was planning on cutting weight from. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him.

  I followed him into the tiny kitchen. He handed me a supermarket brand diet cola from out of the disproportionately enormous fridge and then began bustling around, tidying up.

  “Go ahead and take a load off.” He motioned to a spindly aluminum chair with a torn vinyl cushion, the only one in the room. “I’m just gonna get this mess taken care of real quick. If I’da known company was coming I’da straightened up a bit.”

  He seemed flustered, repeating himself. I wanted it to be because of me, but it was hard to be sure.

  He started methodically washing a teetering stack of identical square Tupperware containers. I popped open the cola, and was sucking in the tart carbonated rush of air around the mouth of the can, when I noticed a revolver sitting on the kitchen table. The cylinder was open and beside it was a single bullet standing upright on its flat end like a tiny hard-on. I was about to comment on that when Hank said, “You want to tell me what happened tonight?”

  I sat down in the uncomfortable chair and filled him in. As I told the story, I started to think more and more about who those guys might have been. They didn’t seem interested in robbing the place, not that there was anything obviously worth robbing in the diner. They could have been after Duncan’s money or his guns – but if they’d known about the guns, they would have been much better prepared. On the other hand they were clearly coked up to eleven and even though Vic said he didn’t know them, I couldn’t rule out a connection with his drug dealing past. I shared some of these musings with Hank and he nodded his huge head, dunking another container into the suds.

  “How long have you known Cody?” I asked to change the subject.

  “Oh, around five years.” He frowned and looked up at the low ceiling like the answer might be up there. “Well, more like three I guess. I forget exactly.” He paused, then turned on the hot water in the sink. “About three years, I guess.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked.

  “Well, that boy’s got a chin on him,” Hank said. “Real heavy hands, hits like a Mack truck, but his stand up is still a little sloppy. His ground game ain’t half bad though, on account of his varsity wrestling background. His main problem is he gets frustrated way too easy. If the fight don’t go the way he wants in the first round he gets all bent out of shape mentally and starts making mistakes. But you see that there’s just him being young. All that boy needs is a little growing up. The fight game’s a tough racket, and I ain’t just talking about the action inside the ring. Fight game can chew you up and spit you out the second you let your guard down. But with a good corner behind him, I think Cody’s got a real shot at the big time.”

  I smiled and took another sip of my cheap pop. That guy sure could talk your ear off once you got him started, and Cody was apparently one of his favorite topics. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea what anything he had just said actually meant.

  “So Cody’s a fighter?” I asked, hoping for a little more of an explanation.

  Hank turned to me with a puzzled frown.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t you?”

  “I’m a lover not a fighter,” I said but as soon as it was out, I realized it wasn’t exactly true anymore.

  “I just figured,” Hank said. “On account of the
way you hold your body, like you’re always ready for it. And that profile. You got a fighter’s nose.”

  I never did get my nose fixed after it was broken. I guess you could say it was a fighter’s nose and I couldn’t help but take that as a compliment, coming from someone like Hank. But I could see it dawning very slowly on him that maybe there was another reason a woman might have a broken nose. He blushed again. There was something inexplicably sexy about seeing a tough guy like him blush so easily.

  “I sure didn’t mean…” He picked up a Tupperware container and started drying it off with a striped dish towel. His hands were shaking a little. “I didn’t mean to bring up something that ain’t none of my business.” He looked down at his hands, then put the container away. “And I don’t want to make it sound like you ain’t pretty, because you are. I just don’t think sometimes before I speak. Sometimes?” He shook his head. “Most of the time, I reckon.”

  “Forget it,” I told him.

  “Yes ma’am,” Hank said, wiping his sudsy hands. “You wanna watch the fights?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We went into the living room and I stood for a moment looking at Thick Vic’s kid. He was curled up on his side, conked out with the blanket more bunched up around him than covering him. Sleeping, he didn’t look anything like his father. I wondered what the hell I was doing here.

  Hank offered me the remaining easy chair but I shook my head and I sat on the scratchy carpet with my back against the sofa. Hank lowered himself slowly, stiffly into the chair, leaning towards the television with his elbows on his knees. We watched the fights.

  Two guys were bashing the crap out of each other inside a fenced-in ring. Then they were down on the mat, rolling around together. One guy was cut above the eye, bleeding. The audience was filled with celebrities and girls who looked like they were in the business, but I didn’t see Jenna. I tried to imagine Cody in there, fighting like that. I tried not to think about Vic.

  I guess I nodded off, because I woke to Hank’s big calloused hand shaking my shoulder.