by Dan Fante
It took me an hour, but after totaling the last six months of business sales on the computer, I came to an actual average gross figure of nearly 41K per month. I printed out the pages and stuffed them in a legal envelope to take upstairs to my room.
Then I went to the file cabinet and pulled all the open accounts payable folders. Then the paid ones too. I wanted to get an accurate number, then make my own copies of everything. The first file I came to was American Express. Each tab inside represented one card, one employee. There were twelve in all.
That’s when I got the shock! It was almost unbelievable. Joshua Wright’s personal credit card charges were over $4,500 a month. Sometimes higher. Twenty-three thousand dollars in total. Restaurant charges! Charges for online gifts to his friends! Roundtrip first-class airline tickets for someone named Todd Kraft from Seattle, $1,500. A hotel charge for $800 for that weekend was beneath it. Joshua’s clothing transactions alone came to over $1,100 a month. What a fucker! Then I came to another page. On it were charges for porn sites. Subscriptions to all-male links. Then the kicker: a balance transfer of 23K to a new separate Visa card in the company name in an attempt to hide the whole snot-filled caper.
Still in disbelief, to backup the porn site charges, I clicked on the “downloads” tab on Joshua’s PC. There they were. Full photographs of cocks and men and young boys having sex. Cum shots and anal action. Pages and pages, file after file of the stuff. In his “sent” e-mail file there was more. Cell phone and webcam photos of Joshua himself. Jerking off. Ejaculating. His bared asshole.
On and on. E-mails to guys around L.A. that he’d met on gay websites. Meetings in park bathrooms and their back and forth notes on what they planned to do to each other.
Joshua Wright was two people. One of them was a well-dressed, well-spoken young man engaged to a pretty coed from USC, a clean-cut kid on his way up with a growing company. But Mr. Hyde was a total whackadoo. An embezzler and a homo sex freak.
I had no choice. I had to call my partner and report the insanity.
Koffman was at first in shock too. Then livid. His instructions were for me to do nothing. To say nothing. Business as usual. He would be on the next plane west.
Confronting the kid with his misdeeds was a sad and brutal occasion for me. Rosie had gone home and all the cars had been dispatched and our farm-out business to our affiliate companies was covered for the night. Dav-Ko’s senior partner had registered in a local hotel and hadn’t let Joshua know he was in town. He and attorney Busnazian entered the office together at eight o’clock. I came down from my room at the same time. We converged in the dispatch office.
When Joshua said “hi” to us no one replied. Wordlessly, Busnazian laid out copies of all the embezzling charges, and the porn photos of the kid’s sex stuff, on the desk. “Your employers and I especially would like an explanation of what you see here in front of you,” he said quietly.
Joshua stood there looking from one of us to the other. Then, slowly, he leafed through the pages on the desk, saw that he was screwed, then eased himself into his chair. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered finally. “I’m sorry, I suppose, is the best way to sum it up.”
David Koffman’s ire was directed more toward the kid’s sexual madness than the crazy credit card shit and the theft of money. “You meet your tricks at public bathrooms,” he hissed. “When you have sex with these men do you at least use a condom?”
“Sometimes,” Joshua said. “Why?”
“Why! You’re asking my WHY, for God’s sake!”
“Yeah, if I remember to bring a condom I use one. What’s the big deal?”
“Then you go home and have sex with your fiancée. Is that correct?”
“Yes, I guess it is. I mean, we live together and we have sex.”
“Unprotected sex! I’m talking about unprotected sex.”
“I suppose that’s right. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. But, I mean, that’s my business, David. That’s my personal life. It has nothing to do with Dav-Ko or what happened. What I did.”
“Spreading HIV is murder, young man. Like holding a fucking gun to someone’s head and then deliberately, knowingly pulling the trigger.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard my partner, David Koffman, use the word “fuck.”
Now Joshua was whispering. “Like I said, my personal life is my own business. But look, you guys do what you have to do. I did it. I mean, I did the things you said. My life and stuff, it all just got out of control.”
David Koffman sat there, looking at the clean-cut soft-spoken kid wearing the sports jacket and tie, in dazed amazement. “You need help, Joshua,” he said quietly. “You are a person without conscience. You’re insane.”
In the end, after the showdown and Joshua’s bizarre lack of conscience, the matter was settled between Dav-Ko and our night manager.
Of course he was fired. But then attorney Busnazian made an astute suggestion. Joshua held the title to a six-year-old BMW sedan—a gift from his parents as a college graduation present. Online, the car booked out at nineteen thousand dollars. Busnazian proposed that no criminal charges would be brought against him in exchange for the car’s signed ownership papers and California registration.
The matter was settled.
twenty-eight
The following day I was back driving Che-Che’s nana, J. C. Smart, and my partner was on his way back to New York.
When she needed a car, every week or so, J.C. had always requested me and my old Pontiac and, if I was available, I would drive her and do the job. It had been more than a month since we had last seen each other, and as I was on my way to pick her up I realized that I was now more determined than ever to get free of Dav-Ko. The episode with Joshua had been the final straw.
Mrs. Smart had become my favorite client. I loved her old-time Hollywood stories and nonstop gossip about movie stars and transplanted screenwriters like Ben Hecht and Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald. She and her husband Art had once spent weekends at Tracy and Hepburn’s home in Malibu, on Trancas Beach. J.C. was part of the Los Angeles that was long dead. Expired from totally unnatural causes.
Our routine had been well established. I’d drive her and Tahuti to her doctor in Santa Monica or to lunch in Beverly Hills or to tea with her favorite elderly girlfriend, Dawn, out at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills. Then she and I would return to Hollywood and do her supermarket shopping, then go to the post office to pick up whatever new books she had ordered, then home to the bungalow.
I arrived on time. J.C., as usual, was dressed handsomely and ready to go. I walked her to the car carrying her bag. After she got in my Pontiac and had nestled her fat cat on her lap, I went around to the driver’s door and got in too, then placed her bag on the seat between us. “I always appreciate your help with my bag,” she said.
“No big deal,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Smart hissed.
“I said, no big deal.”
“Just say ‘you’re welcome,’ for God’s sake. Why on earth would anyone above the age of ten use a phrase like no big deal?” The English teacher/critic in my customer was still a tyrant. She could not stop herself. She was like a kleptomaniac in a button store. She couldn’t get enough. The shit was relentless.
“In fact, I have a term for your type of grammatical carelessness,” she sneered. “I call it TV speak. You, apparently, have mastered it. In lieu of an actual education, the majority of the American population—I don’t necessarily mean you—has acquired its English usage by viewing Oprah or that simpering fraud Dr. Phil. Or possibly from the staggering array of situation comedy and police drama implanted nightly in their brains via that absurd and hideous box.”
“I’ll try to clean up my act,” I said, smiling.
“Merciful Jesus.”
“Where would you like to go first, J.C.?”
“The usual,” she said. “Dr. Prescription-Pad, in Santa Monica. Bu
t first, may I change the subject? I have some positive news for you. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes, I would. I’ve had nothing but bad news machine-gunned at me for a while, especially from inside my head, so some good news would be nice.”
“I’ve read the manuscript you gave me. Your stories are good, the characters well developed, and your sentences clear and succinct. In fact, absent the vitriol, profanity, and blatant pornographic content, your writing is often excellent. In some ways, in fact, your style reminds me of the writer H. H. Munro. Saki. Are you familiar with him?”
“Yes. It’s been a while, but, sure, I’ve read his stuff.”
“May I make a suggestion?” she said.
“Sure. Please do.”
“I still have a friend or two in the publishing business. Small press publishers. With your permission I will send each of them your manuscript.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very very much. You absolutely have my permission. You’ve made my day.”
J.C. was smiling. “Not at all. You deserve to have your work in print. You’re a good writer, Bruno Dante.”
In Santa Monica my client was her usual twenty minutes at the doctor’s office. For once she left Tahuti behind in the car. Her devoted cat was getting on in years too, but when I petted the monster a little he managed an approving purr.
From Santa Monica we drove over Topanga Canyon to Woodland Hills and the Motion Picture home. J.C. liked that route best because of the green and the natural beauty of the canyon.
She and her pal Dawn had tea for an hour at an upscale English joint in Calabasas. After that we drove back to the Motion Picture home to drop her friend off.
But, as we were getting on to the Ventura Freeway on our way back to Hollywood, I noticed that my client had slumped against the passenger door. Her eyes were closed. I leaned across and touched her arm. “J.C., are you all right?”
She opened her eyes slowly. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Please don’t be alarmed, Bruno, but I think perhaps you should take me to a hospital. Just now I’m not feeling well at all.”
“Sure. Of course,” I said. “What’s wrong? Do you know?”
“It’s probably nothing. But please hurry.”
I got off the freeway at Warner Center, where I knew there were at least two hospitals. Five minutes later we were in the emergency room.
They wheeled J.C. in right away while I waited nervously in the lobby.
Forty minutes passed. I went to the admitting window a few times to ask about her condition but no one would give me a straight answer. Finally, a nurse came out to talk to me. “Are you Bruno?” she asked. “You’re here with Mrs. Smart?”
“Yeah. I am. How’s J.C.?” I asked. “Is she okay?”
“Mrs. Smart appears to have had a fainting episode. We believe she took too much of her blood pressure medication. But she seems much better now. She’s asking for you. Would you like to go in?”
“Absolutely. I want to see her.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Right,” I said, “I’m her nephew.” The lie came easily. I knew from repeated trips to the ER with friends over the years that only family members are allowed inside emergency rooms.
I was guided through the set of double doors to one of a dozen curtained cubicles. J.C. was sitting up on her hospital bed, putting on her coat, looking weak. “You look a lot better,” I said, telling another lie. “How do you feel?”
“Alive,” J.C. snickered, “as opposed to the obvious other option. Please tell me that you did not call my granddaughter. You didn’t call Marcella, did you?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t want to worry her. She’s three thousand miles from here. She’d just get upset. There’s no point in scaring someone who can’t do anything anyway.”
“Thank you, Bruno. Excellent reasoning.”
“I’m glad you approve,” I said.
J.C. was smiling. “Sic biscuitus disintegrat.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
The old lady snickered. “It’s Latin,” she said. “The loose translation is: That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
We both laughed.
“Look,” I said finally, “are you getting enough rest? You seem very tired. Do you still lay down in the afternoon?”
“What’s that?” J.C. snarled. “What did you just say?”
“I said, do you lay down in the afternoon?”
“Bruno, have you no shame? You’re well read and apparently semi-educated, but obviously beyond any capacity for intelligent application. Have you so little comprehension of the mother tongue you speak? I do not LAY down, sir. I LIE down.”
But then she softened up a little and smiled, eyeing me closely. “Actually, apparently, it is you who should LAY down. You look tired too. I’m certain that you don’t get enough rest.”
I settled the score by quoting her favorite poet: “My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night…” I recited.
“But ah, my foes and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely light!” J.C. chimed in. “Well done, Bruno. Edna Millay again.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Shall I take you home to Hollywood? No post office today, okay?”
“Yes. That would be best,” she said. “I suppose I’ll remain at the mercy of that buffoon in Santa Monica, at least until I meet my maker. I find it incredible that I was just examined at that man’s office this morning. A few hours later I’m plopped down in an emergency room. Perhaps I’ll go home and read his cards. There’s no question that he’s incompetent but perhaps he is actually mad as well.”
Back outside in the parking lot, after helping my client into the passenger seat, I shifted my Pontiac into “D,” then pulled out on to De Soto Avenue heading toward the freeway. Tahuti, for some reason, suddenly left his master’s lap then jumped into the backseat.
“Hey,” I said chuckling, pulling the car back toward the curb, “what’s wrong with your friend?”
But J.C. was unable to answer me. She was dead.
The following day I picked up a weeping Che-Che and her in shock mother, Constance, at the airport, then drove them to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Two days later, J. C. Smart was buried next to her husband at Hollywood Memorial Park cemetery, at sundown, in their double plot near the lake. Joyce Smart had outlived almost every one of her contemporaries, so the service was only attended by a handful of people.
After the minister read J.C.’s favorite, the Twenty-third Psalm, her daughter Constance got up. With Che-Che standing next to her at the grave, she read two of J.C.’s last poems as a benediction.
I felt myself beginning to come apart.
MY BUNGALOW
The chirp of sparrows waking up
Counterpoints to my clinking coffee cup:
I hear the asthmatic morning cough
Of my neighbor’s old Cadillac driving off:
And here and there a garbage can
Vomits at the touch of man:
The substance of my life runs out
Through a rusted, percolating spout
Meanwhile I place upon the shelf
Well-dusted pieces of myself
And cube into my casserole
The severed fragments of my soul.
One continues to decay
Day by day, day by day.
Strange forms of agony are made
By those who have their last years betrayed.
The wolves of nameless doom await
My little house concealed from fate;
And those who lock their door and hide
Will soon be ravished by the beast inside.
And then there was this one too. After Constance read it I cried my ass off.
ANNIVERSARY
I have lingered too long outside in the late light
Amidst the twitterings of sparrows;
Already the eucalyptus cast their purple shadow
And the owl in the deodar has opene
d his yellow eyes
Unfolded his wings and flown away.
Tahuti, Lord of Magic, my black cat,
Prowls the lawn, dancing on delicate feet.
Beyond him a full moon begins to rise,
Twice reflected in his eyes.
I have lingered too long outside in the late light,
And now I find myself remembering,
Sixty years ago, this week, you gave me
Violets in San Francisco
Purchased from the last street vendor’s cart
Near Union Square