86'd

by Dan Fante

  I decided not to ask—not to smoke.

  Backup arrived suddenly, screeching into the deserted parking lot. The pinball machine flashing. The works.

  “Whatcha got, Tessman?” A much larger Blue snorted.

  “DUI, sergeant. And no ID.”

  “Didja call for the tow?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can I smoke now?” I asked, looking from one blue to the other.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  The big sergeant reminded me of someone dead. A guy I’d known in New York when I was a street peddler. Tooty LaPardo. Tooty sold watches outside the Time-Life Building. One Wednesday he said he had a stomach ache. The next Monday he was dead. Forty-eight years old.

  After handcuffing me, Blue stuffed me in his police cruiser.

  “Can I have my money back?” I asked.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  At the Pacific Station I was ordered to take a breath test. I refused. Then I was placed in a holding cell and allowed my one call. Joshua, our night manager, answered on the first ring at Dav-Ko. I told him to call Perry Busnazian, the attorney who had represented Robert Roller, and to tell Busnazian it was a personal matter and not a Dav-Ko business situation. I made sure that Joshua would keep the conversation to himself until we could talk personally.

  Sitting in the cell alone it was the first chance I’d had to examine my sore, stinging arm. I rolled up the right sleeve and there it was. A red, swollen tattoo, made worse by the sand and salt water. Three lines of black letters, in all caps, raised above the rest of the skin. Line 1: RICK DANTE. Line 2: DEAD FROM BOOZE, NAZIS. Line 3: STUDEBAKERS & STUPIDITY.

  I stared at the thing. Why had I done it? My brother never liked me and I never liked him. But there it was. Shit.

  Well well well, you’ve really done it now. So long limo career—hello orange, County Jail jumpsuit. How ’bout this, needledick: Go find that fucking .38, stick it in your mouth, and do world ecology a small favor.

  When I was released the next morning after court, Busnazian drove me to the impound in Marina del Rey to pick up my car and pay the $150 towing and parking fee.

  Busnazian knew his job. After stopping at the DMV for me to get a temporary license we went on to the impound. As we drove my attorney wanted to know the details of what happened and began a series of questions. Where was I exactly when I was arrested? Was there an open bottle in the car? What did I say to the cops? That stuff.

  Back at Dav-Ko I wrote him a $2,000 check. A down payment. There would be more, he said.

  After I walked him to his black Benz in the driveway he eyed me up and down. “DUI is serious business,” he said. “The new laws have sharper teeth. I’ll have to see what I can do.”

  “Will you keep this confidential? I don’t want my partner to know my business.”

  “You’re my client in this matter. No one will hear anything from me.”

  “Will they pull my license?”

  “You refused the breath test, right?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Not good, Bruno. Not smart. I tell everyone the same thing. Always cooperate fully. If you’re convicted, refusing the breath test is an automatic one-year license suspension in this state.”

  “Swell. I didn’t know.”

  “You seem to be a guy with a chip on your shoulder. Did you resist the police at any time?”

  “No. Just the breath test thing.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?”

  “I’m upset, for chrissake. I just got out of jail.”

  “Have you been to AA?”

  “Goddamn right. I go to AA.”

  “How often?”

  “Periodically. Once in a while.”

  “I can pretty much guarantee that will change if we manage to retain your driving privilege,” he said.

  “What are my chances here? I just want to know?”

  “California is a rough state.”

  “Will I lose the license?”

  “You’re a chauffeur. With first offenders there are generally imposed driving restrictions. But the breath test issue is a significant hurdle. And in California DUI convictions stay on your record for ten years.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Look, I have a couple of ideas. Just don’t piss on our shoes again, if you get my meaning.”

  “I’m a chauffeur. You’re telling me I might not have a goddamn job?”

  “Let me look into it. I’ll just say this: It pays to have friends in tall glass buildings.”

  “No shit,” I said. “And it pays pretty goddamn well too. Two thousand bucks worth.”

  “You just shot your horse, sir. You’ve been charged with drunk driving. Now let’s see what I can do to remove the bullet. For the time being just calm down and get some rest. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Take it easy,” Busnazian said, patting me on the back. “This is what I do. One of my partners specializes in DUI and drug cases. I’ll earn my fee. You have my word on that.”

  Then my attorney glanced down at the fresh, swollen tattoo on my forearm. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A mistake. Another fuckup.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

  “Thanks for the advice. And thanks for cheering me up. Have a swell day, Mr. Buznasian.”

  Then I walked into the office to find out from Rosie just how deep the shit around me was piled. But I was pretty sure I would be okay. Unlike crazy Portia, Rosie and Joshua regarded me as their boss. They knew that as far as I was concerned they were replicable and they were aware of my reputation for having a short fuse.

  twenty-four

  The following week, Wednesday, mostly sober for four days except for a few pills and some wine coolers here and there, I got a long-distance call on my cell from Che-Che Sorache in Manhattan. Against her protests La Natura cosmetics was dispatching her to do a statewide personal appearance tour of New York department stores. The whole deal would be filmed and turned into part of a national TV campaign. But Che-Che hated flying and she hated trains. Her idea was for me to catch a plane back east and drive her from store to store throughout the tour. She said the gig would take no more than a week.

  The idea appealed to me. I liked the tall model and getting out of L.A. for a few days to be back on the East Coast sounded more like a vacation than a job.

  I telephoned Koffman and he approved the assignment. I’d drive one of his limos while I was there. A new light-blue Benz that had just been stretched forty-eight inches in Mexico and shipped north. My partner had visions of some kind of advertising coup for the company if our limo made it into a TV ad.

  Dapper Joshua, night manager/bookkeeper, who’d lately appeared twice a week in a new sports coat and a made-to-measure dress shirts, would move in and run Dav-Ko Hollywood until I got back. I’d stay at David Koffman’s condo on Riverside Drive when I wasn’t chauffeuring Che-Che around to do her gigs.

  I left the next morning.

  In the baggage claim area at American Airlines at JFK I was greeted by Dennis, Che-Che’s blond, six-foot-two-inch boy toy. The guy looked like he’d just left a modeling shoot for Calvin Klein sportswear. My client had sent him to greet me and escort me back into town.

  In the limo on the Van Wyck Expressway Dennis let me know that he and Che-Che had met three weeks before in the lobby at Quick, the ad agency where they were both under contract. They were totally hot for each other and he’d been crashing at her place in the Village ever since. Apparently Dennis was a moron. Nineteen years old. A kid from Paramus with a football scholarship who’d passed it up for a modeling career. A real lightbulb of a kid.

  On the on-ramp to the Triborough Bridge Dennis raised the car’s tinted partition window then pulled a two-gram bottle out of his shirt pocket. “How ’bout a pick-me-up,” he sang.

  “Pass,” I said. “Maybe some other time. My tastes run more toward bottled in bond.”

  “Huh?”
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  “My drug of choice is bourbon,” I said. “It comes in bottles with a government stamp covering the cap.” Then I pulled a pint bottle of Early Times from my inside jacket pocket and showed Einstein the cap and seal.

  “No shit?” says Dennis. “I never noticed. Hey, I just learned something new.”

  While he began horning two big scoops from the vial with the end of a penknife, I turned to him, actually taking the kid in for the first time. “Well, there ya go,” I said. “Always happy to help.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dennis said.

  The first series of gigs that week began on a Friday. The department stores on Fifth Avenue. While I drove beautiful black-haired blue-eyed Che-Che, she had her face touched up in the backseat by a sweet girl name Ida.

  My client was a kick. By the second stop her wardrobe was all over the car, slung on top of the limo’s jump seats and stacked in my front passenger area. When she’d do a dress change she’d pull the last outfit off and be near naked in her thonged panties. Che-Che never wore a bra. She knew I couldn’t help but watch but she didn’t care. It was just business.

  “You getting your kicks up there, pisano?” she snickered as she slipped into a pair of fitted slacks, her pelvis in midair.

  “You bet, blue eyes,” I said back. “I’m having the time of my life.”

  And everyone was a cocksucker. The store managers, the leering, fat pimple-faced security guy at Saks, the rep from the Quick Agency. All of ’em.

  Outside Lord & Taylor there were photographers and no one except a lazy security guy to escort her into the store.

  “Hey Bruno, tell that dipshit door-shaker cocksucker I’m not getting out of the car until he gets rid of the fucking mob in front. Tell the cazzo I’m twenty minutes late and I’ll rat him the fuck out unless he wakes up and does his fucking job!”

  “Okay, Che-Che, I’ll tell him,” I said.

  Then the amazing smile. “Hey Brunissimo, you havin’ a good time? Need anything? A soda or something?”

  “Your twin sister. Do you have one?”

  Later that night Che-Che and her Rhodes Scholar boyfriend attended a private screening at Clearsky movie theater on Eighty-sixth Street. On the way from her place in the Village to the Upper East Side she and Dennis kissed a little and groped each other, then started drinking from the bar and snorting lines.

  “Hey, Bruno,” Che-Che giggled up from the backseat a few minutes from the theater, “how are you getting along with long-haired Rip Van Winkle? Your partner, Kong Koffman?”

  “Okay, I guess. Mostly okay.”

  “Did you know I quit using Dav-Ko as my New York limo service? Like, a year or so ago. I switched over to DEMURE. But, now I’m changing back because of you, Bruno baby. Because you’re the only blue Benz stretch guy for me.”

  “Thanks, Che-Che. I appreciate the business. You know that.”

  “Know why I quit using Kong Koffman’s Camel Caravan?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “But I bet you’re gonna tell me.”

  “It’s because Kong was padding my goddamn bill all the fucking time. Twenty minutes here, half an hour there. Once the asshole charged me for a full day because I left the car at one in the afternoon. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t spend a grand a week with the big dufus queen.”

  I decided to change the subject. “How come you call David, Kong?” I asked.

  “C’mon Bruno, you’re shittin’ me. You know why, don’t you? I mean, that’s his nickname. Everyone at the clubs calls him that. Kong.”

  “Honest to Christ, I really don’t know. David and I don’t exactly move in the same circles, other than business.”

  Che-Che was laughing. “Well, sweetcakes, it’s because your dear partner is rumored to have a twelve-inch schwanz. Kong is famous. He even has his club groupies. They wear chauffeur’s caps and follow him around.”

  “Okay. I mean I actually know what you’re saying.”

  “Ah ha! So you’ve seen the caged beast for yourself? El Grande. The big gorilla. Please do tell us. From personal experience, I assume.”

  “His robe was open.”

  “Uhhhh. So it’s true! You’ve seen the beast.”

  “I guess it is. The man does have one giant cock.”

  Che-Che giggled all the way to Eighty-sixth Street.

  When we got to the movie my client demanded that I go in and watch the film with her and Dennis. I paid one of the outside ushers fifty bucks to watch the big Benz limo and make sure it was out front at the curb when the show let out.

  Che-Che bought me popcorn and Gummi Bears and a box of Milk Duds. The large size. We sat in the middle seats in the back row with Dennis on her left and me on her right.

  Before the film started, the young director, who was dressed in a too-tight black turtleneck, ratty blue jeans, and Dominick Donne–shaped black horn-rimmed glasses, stood by the screen holding a mic, introducing the cast and acknowledging his film-school mentors and each of the seven or eight executive producers and everybody else he could think of.

  I figured that I might be in for a long ride so I decided to take a squirt and get a refill on the popcorn.

  In the men’s room after my piss I had a quick smoke and finished the last of the pint in my pocket, then dropped one of my remaining stash of Xanax from my stay in the hospital. I felt smooth and under control. After that I went to the candy counter and got a refill on the ten-dollar box of buttered popcorn.

  In the movie Che-Che was playing the slutty girlfriend of the lead man’s business partner. A five-minute scene. She was standing at a Vegas crap table heckling the guy throwing the dice. The performance was okay. Believable.

  When the theater lights went up everyone clapped for the director and the lead actors and then, in turn, the supporting cast. When beautiful, tall Che-Che stood up and took her bow every man in the theater’s eyes were on her.

  As people began to leave, I was setting my popcorn box down from my lap when I noticed a foot-wide dark stain on the crotch of my blue chauffeur’s pants. The “butter flavoring” goop had drained through the bottom of the box and darkened my slacks.

  On the way out, now wearing my chauffeur’s cap and feeling pissed off and feisty, I stopped at the candy counter and showed the teenage kid in the striped jacket the bottom of the box and my stained suit pants while Che-Che and Dennis stood by watching.

  The candy guy couldn’t have cared less. “Hey, that’s too bad,” he grunted, faking a look of detached bullshit concern. “It happens.”

  “It happens!” I said.

  “Yeah, tough break,” says candy stripes. “My advice: Use more napkins next time, is all.” Then he went back to stacking paper cups.

  I wasn’t done. I wasn’t done by a long shot. “Look, kid, this is crap!” I snarled. “I’m from out of town. I work in this suit. I’ve got one pair of pants with me. Now they’re screwed!”

  Candy boy refused any eye contact and continued replenishing the fucking cup supply from a big cardboard box. When he finally looked back and realized I wasn’t going away he stood upright and faced me. “On behalf of the staff and management of Clearsky Theaters, I want to extend our heartfelt apologies, sir,” the wiseguy punk parroted from some jiveass “How to Handle Complaints” pamphlet.

  “Fuck you!” I yelled.

  “Calm down, Bruno,” Che-Che whispered. “This is no big deal. I’ll buy you six goddamn blue suits tomorrow.”

  I ignored her. “Where’s the manager?” I demanded.

  The little shit behind the counter was apparently a master at treating people with blasé nonchalance. To him I was another stack of paper cups.

  “Look buddy,” he whispered, “just cool it. I hear what you’re sayin’. Okay?”

  “I’m not your buddy, asshole!” I said. “I’m YOUR CUSTOMER.”

  His new expression said it all. The kid rolled his eyes in an aw, fuck me, I got a real piece-a-work here look. He walked away down the counter, then threw the words back toward me over
his shoulder. “Mr. Aftar went home,” he said. “He leaves at ten o’clock just before the start of the last show. Sorreee. He’ll be in tomorrow at eleven.”

  Now Dennis was shushing me. “Bruno, man, knock it off. You’re attracting attention. Just chill.”

  I got the movie house manager’s name and the kid’s name and wrote them on the back of my ticket stub.

  The evening ended early. Che-Che and the professor went to eat at Umberto’s down in Little Italy, then she said she was tired, so I dropped her and Dennis in the Village, at her place, right after one.

  Since I was already downtown and still pissed off about my pants, I decided to stop in at St. Adrian’s bar on West Broadway for a few drinks. Five or six years before the place had been a favorite night haunt of mine. They had twice-weekly poetry readings and a couple of local newspaper guys who write columns had frequented the place from time to time.

  When I got to the bar the building was the same but the name was different. It was now called Euphoria.

  As I was parking the car, a pretty girl in her late thirties or early forties, wearing a short skirt, stepped out the entrance door for a smoke. When she saw the light-blue Benz stretch her eyes lit up. “Is that yours?” she called as I was clicking my driver’s door locked.

  “Yeah, it is,” I said. “Not exactly a low-profile ride, is it?”

  “Damn,” she cooed, “what a beautiful limo. The car. It’s a Mercedes, right?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  She was smiling and, for sure, a little drunk too. A very sexy smile on the face of a very sexy girl. “Hey, would it be okay if I looked inside?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, “let me open it up for you.” I pressed the remote in my hand and after the locks popped, I walked over and chauffeur-style opened the back door for her.

  When she stepped in and sat down I checked out her legs. They were beautiful—all the way up to her pink panties.

  After sliding across the seat to make room for me, I got in too. “THIS IS ME,” she giggled. “This is WHO I AM. The bar, the moonroof, the DVD TV! I’m in heaven.”