Double Solitaire

by Craig Nova

“Remember,” said Shirushi to Farrell. “What I said about getting left holding the bag.”

  * * *

  In the silence of Farrell’s house, which was on the other side of the hill from Du-par’s, he knew, without any doubt, that Shirushi wouldn’t wait too long. She was certain, like any good cop, that something was wrong. The question for her was just what it could be. And, for that matter, Farrell wasn’t even sure he knew himself, although he surely was going to find out.

  He was alarmed by the sluggishness of his thinking and the sudden moment when it was obvious how wrong he had been in the way he had searched. It was evening and the front yard of Farrell’s house was dusky. Only one dim light was on in Rose Marie’s house, but she was there, and just that faint glow, that domestic haze from the window, left him with an ache. Then he checked his voice mail.

  Braumberg wanting to know “how things were.” Bob Marshall said that that Pavel and Nikolay had come by to “try to scare me.” It sounded to Farrell like they had done a pretty good job of that.

  Farrell called Marshall back and said, “Too bad I missed them.”

  “Too bad?” Marshall said. “Too bad? That’s just great.”

  He was equally angry at Farrell and the Russians.

  “We got another problem,” Marshall said. “A raccoon has gotten into a vending machine in a mini-mart on Ventura. It won’t come out, even when I told the Indian guy who runs the place to leave the back panel off. The raccoon just sits in there and it’s drooling, too. People try to buy Cheez-Its, but the raccoon charges at them from behind the glass.” He waited. “We could call the animal control people.”

  “No,” Farrell said. “We don’t want anybody poking around in our machines . . .”

  “But Adrith . . .”

  “The Indian guy?” Farrell said.

  “Yeah. He’s bugging out.”

  “We’ll pick up the machine and bring it to the shop.”

  “I’ve got news for you,” Marshall said. “Adrith has already done that. He’s put the machine, a USI Mercato 500, on a dolly, brought it over here, and left it. Right here. The raccoon is right in there, moving around.”

  “Okay,” Farrell said. “All right.”

  The light switches in Farrell’s house were a small, odd comfort, since he knew where they were in the dusk. The light came like a small blessing and the refrigerator hummed. The ice maker dropped a load of clinking cubes into the box in the freezer.

  Then Rose Marie made the hinges of the door squeak as she came in, and when she sat down opposite Farrell, she said, “Uh-oh.”

  Farrell shrugged.

  “Hey,” said Rose Marie. “It’s like the joke about the horse that goes into a bar.”

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Rose Marie. “The bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’”

  “Do you think it’s the horse’s fault?”

  “Of course not. That’s the joke,” said Rose Marie.

  He put two small glasses, like those in Paris cafés, on the table, one for Rose Marie and one for himself. Then he took a bottle of calvados from the cupboard and poured each of them a drink.

  “Let’s pretend we’re in Paris. In the Sixth at a café on Rue de Buci. Just down from the flower market.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” she said. “You really are a romantic.”

  He shrugged.

  “There are worse things,” he said.

  He sat in the slight, faintly sea-like intimation of her skin and hair, then reached over and took her hand.

  “You think we are an item?” he said.

  “Is that what you think?” she said.

  “You know, it’s been a long time,” he said. “But, if you want to know the truth, I think we are.”

  “Just like that?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It can happen fast.”

  “Sort of makes my head spin,” she said.

  Farrell’s phone lit up. The caller ID showed Coin-A-Matic.

  “Answer it,” she said.

  “All right, Bob,” he said into the phone. “This isn’t the best time.”

  “You better come now . . .” Marshall said.

  “You just called,” Farrell said.

  “One more thing like this and I quit,” he said. “You know what I’m saying?”

  Farrell glanced at Rose Marie and said, “He wants to know when I’m going to come down there to help him out? You know, Bob Marshall. The guy who works for me. In this business I bought. What an idea that turned out to be.”

  Rose Marie sat next to him and whispered in his ear, the warm, moist breath seeming to go right through him.

  “You know what the difference between a husband and a lover is?”

  “No, what?”

  “About twenty minutes,” she said.

  “I’ll leave here in about an hour,” Farrell said to Bob. “Will that do it?”

  “The animal is running around in there. Do you think the thing inside is rabid?” said Bob. “You know I don’t want to get bitten.”

  “I’ll leave in an hour,” Farrell said.

  “Very smooth,” said Rose Marie. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs. Then I want to go with you to see this place. The tax dodge.”

  “Who said anything about a tax dodge?” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay,” he said. “You can come. Do you speak Russian?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  She put her lips against him, just a brushing touch.

  “So, you’re determined to get rid of the long face?” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Rose Marie.

  They sat together and let the warmth build where they touched, along the thighs and hip. Just quiet, which had its own language, if one can say that, a way of speaking to one another.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m coming to see your kids again.”

  “Ah,” she said. “With a little encouragement I could fall in love with you.”

  Oh, he thought. If you only could.

  14

  THE SIGN FOR COIN-A-MATIC WAS in a wedding invitation script on a white background, as though vending machines could be gussied up by a traditional font. The large doors of the building, with a small door inside one of them, suggested that if you went in, you were getting into more than you bargained for. Rose Marie sat with the seat belt across her chest, her hair a little ruffled, her skin a little abrased. She glanced at Farrell and said, “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have said the difference between a lover and a husband is forty-five minutes.”

  “But we’re just getting started,” Farrell said.

  “So it will be sort of like a bedroom bake-off,” she said.

  She smiled with such a lascivious grin he was left blinking and wondering what he had got himself into.

  “So, this is it?” she said. She gestured to the door of the Coin-A-Matic.

  “This is it,” he said. “Do you know much about raccoons?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “I can tell you this,” he said. “They seem to like Cheez-Its and Milk Duds . . .”

  “So, you have one in a machine?” she said.

  “That’s about the size of it . . .”

  “You look worried,” she said. “It’s just a raccoon . . .”

  “Well, I’m not so worried about the animal,” he said.

  There’s the British girl for one, and another matter. Mary Jones. What happened the night she was there, at Terry’s place?

  “Penny for your thoughts,” said Rose Marie.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said.

  “Slippery,” she said.

  Inside the warehouse, not far from the open door, they approached the machine. It was still strapped to the dolly. Bob Marshall was pacing in front of it. If you looked closely and could imagine Bob twenty-five pounds lighter and with a little more hair, you could see the child actor he had been on San Pedro Blues. The
show he was on was about a fisherman and they had adventures every week, fish pirates, smugglers, lovers who weren’t getting along. Marshall had been a heavy kid, and his role was to look confused at what was happening with, say, the fish pirates, and at the end of the show he was a little wiser than before. Then he had lost the leg on a British motorcycle he kept on Catalina, a Panther Cat, the injury suggesting, as Farrell thought, the darkness the TV show had hinted at but always escaped. Now, Marshall limped on that leg, with his socks held up by thumbtacks, his eyes on Farrell, then on Rose Marie.

  “Rose Marie,” Farrell said. “This is Bob Marshall.”

  “Not the Bob Marshall,” she said. “From San Pedro Blues?”

  “In the flesh,” he said.

  “When I was a kid, I watched that show all the time,” said Rose Marie. “What happened?”

  Bob pulled up his blue jeans to show his leg, and the white socks held up with the red thumbtack.

  “Motorcycle,” he said. “Pretty cool with the thumbtacks, huh?”

  “Sure,” said Rose Marie, who, after all, had seen everything. Or just about. Or had had enough surprises to last a lifetime.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like a bulletin board. One day I’m going to leave a note, tacked to my leg for him.”

  He pointed to Farrell.

  “Let’s get these straps off the machine,” said Farrell.

  “I don’t know,” said Bob. “The animal gets stirred up pretty easy.”

  It was an old-style machine with large, wire screws that held the chips, the orange crackers with peanut butter, and the Twizzlers.

  “You can do it,” said Bob. “If you want to get the straps off.”

  At the first couple of clicks of the ratchet, the animal rushed to the window in front of the crackers and the candy bars in their festive wrappings. It hissed, scratched at the glass, slobbered, weaved from side to side, and while it was doing that it kept its eyes on Farrell. It had a mask just like a robber.

  “I didn’t know a raccoon hissed,” said Rose Marie.

  “Let me tell you,” said Bob. “They can growl, hiss, make a sound like a dog. Gives you a moment’s pause. You know, you don’t want to reach in there.”

  “Especially if it’s rabid,” Farrell said.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Bob.

  “It won’t go out the back panel?”

  “Take a look,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that raccoons like sardines,” said Rose Marie.

  “How do you know that?” said Bob.

  “A kid I knew told me,” said Rose Marie.

  “Must have lived in the hills out toward Malibu,” said Bob. “Is that where she lived?”

  “At one time. Then she had to move,” said Rose Marie.

  “Where to?”

  “Westwood,” she said.

  “Westwood?” he said. “Down toward UCLA? No raccoons down there, I bet.”

  Rose Marie swallowed.

  “Well, yeah,” said Bob. “I guess. Out there in Malibu they are building houses like nobody’s business. You know what the real estate developers think?”

  “Tell me,” said Rose Marie.

  “They look at a piece of land and they think, Yeah, it’s a beautiful place to build a house, and yeah, it’s gonna burn. But guess what? When it does, someone else is going to own it.”

  “Give me a broom, will you?” Farrell said to Bob.

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said Bob.

  Farrell undid the straps, backed the dolly away, and left the machine on the concrete of the floor. Behind it were the cardboard cases of crackers, chips, Mars Bars, Twizzlers, and next to it stood a workbench with its screwdrivers, socket wrenches, a soldering iron, a vise, a hacksaw, and some small fuses that the newer, electronic machines used. A couple of small motherboards.

  With the back panel off there was an opening about two feet by three, the darkness filled with a musty, animal scent. Bob handed Farrell the broom.

  “I don’t want to be a party pooper but rabies is a very serious disease,” said Rose Marie. “If you don’t get the shots, you know that the mortality rate is close to 90 percent?”

  “No kidding,” said Bob.

  “So, if I can get it to come out of there, then you should stand back,” Farrell said.

  The animal scratched the metal surface inside as it moved back and forth.

  “I’ll whack on the glass and chase him toward the back, where you are,” Farrell said. “Oh, shit. Wait. He’s just taken a peanut butter cracker. I’ll hit the front of it.”

  The sound was like a bum trying to get a free bag of chips by banging on the machine, and then the raccoon threw itself against the glass of the front and turned and ran toward the back.

  Rose Marie said, “Look out. Here he comes.”

  The raccoon appeared at the open panel, its eyes on Farrell’s, still with that accusatory quality, which made him think of the brush along the side of Mulholland Drive. He moved the broom to the side to get it behind the animal in the machine. The raccoon took a step back and hissed. The details of Farrell’s worries lingered like an old habit, or a recurrent mood. Were there raccoons off Mulholland?

  “By the way,” Farrell aid to Bob. “You haven’t gotten the money out of here yet, have you?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Okay,” Farrell said. “How much so you think is in there?”

  “Got to be five hundred. Reach in there and get the money,” said Bob.

  “So, you won’t reach in there but you think I should?” said Farrell.

  “You’re the boss,” said Bob.

  The raccoon grabbed the brushy end of the broom, and when Farrell tried to drag it out, the creature pulled back, and Farrell had sensation that he wasn’t pulling it out, but that the animal was pulling him in. Its dark eyes, in that moment, made Farrell think of the British girl with the Goth tattoo.

  “What are you doing?” said a man with a Russian accent. This was Pavel, who had bad acne scars. Maybe that’s what the KGB looked for in its recruits, someone with bad skin. He had short, regular teeth, although one of them was gold.

  “We were just passing by and saw the light. We figured that you must be counting the take, right?” said Nikolay.

  “Look at that,” Pavel said to Nikolay. “It’s an yenot . . . right inside that machine.”

  “I didn’t think they had them here,” said Nikolay. “I thought they were in the Caucus or in Siberia . . .”

  “Yeah, Siberia,” said Pavel with a wistfulness. . . .

  “What’s the broom for?” said Nikolay.

  “He’s trying to chase the yenot out of the machine . . .” said Pavel.

  “Might work,” said Nikolay.

  “Who is this?” said Pavel. He lifted his chin toward Rose Marie and at the logo for the Children’s Hospital on the T-shirt she wore. “And what’s that hospital?”

  “It’s where I work,” she said.

  “Huh,” said Nikolay. “We had a lot of sick kids after Chernobyl. Thyroid tumors, leukemia . . .”

  “We see a lot of leukemia . . .” said Rose Marie.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Pavel. He turned to Farrell and said, “Well, you know why we’re here.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “It’s five hundred now,” said Pavel. “So, forget the yenot and get us the money.”

  Rose Marie shifted her weight from one leg to another, and then glanced at Farrell.

  “Well, I’ve got news for you,” Farrell said.

  “What’s that?” said Pavel. He put his hands on his hips.

  “Your money,” he said. He pointed to the back of the machine, above the dark opening. “Is in there.”

  “Hmm,” said Pavel.

  “Are you afraid to reach in there?” said Bob.

  “Are you calling me a coward?” said Pavel.

  “I’m saying your money is right in there and why don’t you just pick it up and get out of here.�
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  Bob really had been a good actor. He moved a little closer to Pavel.

  Farrell pushed the broom back in. The raccoon hissed, and then made a hoot that was so much like an owl that a pigeon, visible on the street through the open door at the front of the building, flew away.

  “You’re just scaring it,” said Pavel.

  “Well, reach in to get the money,” said Bob.

  “What did you say?” said Pavel.

  “I think we should all take a big deep breath,” said Rose Marie.

  Her forehead was damp now, and her eyes seemed a little larger than usual. She stepped back, hugging herself.

  “I’m breathing just fine,” said Nikolay. Then he turned to Bob and said, “You’re still calling me a coward, aren’t you?”

  “I’m saying there is your money,” said Bob.

  “Take it easy, Bob,” Farrell said. “Rose Marie is right. Let’s just calm down and figure out how we are going to take care of this.”

  “Too late for that,” said Pavel.

  The raccoon ran from side to side, scratching, moving around among the peanut butter crackers, the chips, the candy bars. It kept turning its eyes on Farrell.

  “You aren’t trying to scare me, are you?” said Bob.

  “I want you to reach in there and to get the money and to give it to me,” said Pavel.

  “Get lost,” said Bob.

  Farrell shook his head, No, no, no. . . .

  Pavel reached under his arm, took out a .38 Police Special, short nosed, a revolver. He pulled back the hammer, put it against Bob’s leg and pulled the trigger. The noise was so loud that all of them couldn’t hear. The bullet went into Bob’s blue jeans and came out the other side, where it hit the concrete floor with the sound of a ball-peen hammer. Bob sat back, on the chair behind him, and those years when he had been an actor showed themselves.

  “I’ve been shot,” said Bob. “Oh god. It hurts. It runs up to my back. Oh, god.”

  “Christ,” said Nikolay. “Now they are going to call the cops.”

  “No,” said Pavel. He glanced at Farrell. “This guy doesn’t want to call the cops.”

  “No,” Farrell said. “I don’t think so.”

  “See,” said Pavel.

  “Are you going to let this guy bleed to death?” said Nikolay.

  “I don’t know yet,” Pavel said. He turned to Farrell. “So, what are you going to do?”