The Year of Eating Dangerously by K. Bennett

Author:K. Bennett [Bennett, K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Paranormal
ISBN: 9780786026258
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2012-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

The Thug Brothers drove me back to my car at the club, blindfolded again. I was nice to them this time because Mickey Cohen said he could help me out, and what did I have to lose?

Not that I was confident in anything. Mickey didn’t realize that he was trying to take over the city at the same time Lucifer was supposedly setting up a war headquarters here. That’s not a fight Mickey could win. And it was not a fight I cared about, frankly.

I drove home and went up. I turned on the news and went to my window. The city was alive with lights and car exhaust and pedestrian foot traffic and food smells—from the bacon-wrapped street dogs sold from unlicensed carts with wheels, to keep ahead of the gendarmes, to the grilled cow at Morton’s on Figueroa. And it reminded me how much I once loved to eat real food, like sushi in Little Tokyo and liver and onions at Musso’s.

Now the only liver I can abide is the same kind Hannibal Lecter favored, only I take mine without the fava beans and Chianti.

Wine! Oh, how I wish I could taste wine again, the nuances of it. But blood is my only grape now, and full bodied has an entirely different meaning in my vocabulary.

And then there is the pulse of the city, the way the people just are these days. On edge, looking for salvation in something other than a job, if they have one. For the jobs have all dried up except for, suddenly, local government. The cops are hiring and so is the fire department. The county is hiring, too, especially young DAs.

On the news was a story on our mayor, Ronaldo Garza, talking earlier that day about how great it was to live in Los Angeles, how wonderful to be in California.

Oh yes, I thought, how absolutely marvelous!

Ah, California!

The state that votes itself entitlements but can’t fund the ones it has.

Where our tab for unemployment benefits is $10 billion and will be $16 billion in a few years—even though we don’t have the money to pay for the current system.

California! Where we borrow $40 million a day from the federal gummint to pay for the claims we have.

Free money! That’s how you get clowns elected.

Ah, Los Angeles!

Where the city council votes itself raises and the county board of supervisors passes laws against things like, oh my gosh, plastic bags in grocery stores! That is what we want from our county overlords! Make it harder for people to pick up poop while walking their dogs! Because that makes the world safe. Just that one thing, banning plastic bags in our little corner of the world, will ensure that the earth survives another million years.

Los Angeles!

Where the mayor can say how wonderful it is, and while people can’t buy enough food, he can certainly buy enough votes.

Maybe this town would be better off if Mickey Cohen came back to run things. At least then people had order and a sense of civic pride.

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