“How could I not have seen that coming?” Stinky opened the door of the car.
“So yes,” Ronnie said, “I tell you proudly, yes. I’ve devoted my life to stealing back my father’s treasures. If I have skills, which I modestly disclaim, they were earned in the pursuit of my patrimony. Does that answer your question?”
“How many have you gotten back?” I asked.
She said, “Eleven. I was hot on the trail of the twelfth when I met you and abandoned my life’s work. For a man who doesn’t even trust me.”
To me Stinky said, “And good luck.” He closed the door and then leaned down and said through the broken back window, “Don’t follow me.”
Ronnie said, “Of course not,” and watched him go. When the driver shut the limo door behind him, she said, “Follow him.”
We stayed four and sometimes five cars back whenever possible, catching up a little when we neared a signal and falling back on the long stretches. The driver took Ventura, which made things easier, to the 405, which made things easier still, and then over the hill to Santa Monica Boulevard. Even this late, Santa Monica was jammed. In Beverly Hills they made a right on Doheny, and I said, “I know where he’s going. The Four Seasons.”
“Must be nice,” Ronnie said. She’d been quiet ever since she commanded me to tag along.
“I’d think it would be small potatoes to the daughter of the Bangle King.”
She said, “Oh, fuck you.” It didn’t sound affectionate. “Take me home.”
“After I make sure,” I said. At that moment the stoplight one car ahead went yellow, and we stopped, but we could both see Stinky’s long car make a graceful turn into the hotel’s entrance, which was wide enough to admit armored personnel carriers, two abreast.
“Nice to know where he is,” I said. “I guess.” I drove past the hotel and made a left to get us on beam for the trip to West Hollywood and said, “Why did you want to follow him?”
She put down her window and stuck her head out of it like my favorite dog used to do, and she kept it there until we pulled up to her apartment, where I’d been staying for a few months, during a quiet patch when no one seemed to want to kill me and I’d gotten tired of obscure motels.
“Come in and get your stuff,” she said.
“All of it?”
“Enough for a few nights at least. I need some time to process the idea that literally saving your life twice in one night is the way to earn a space on your shit list.”
“Okay,” I said. “And I’ll try to adjust to the idea that after almost a year together, I’m still not entitled to know your actual name.”
“You do that,” she said, closing the door. “It’ll build character, although it would build more if you already had a foundation.” Through the open window, she said, “Leave your key on the living-room table.”
8
Sticking Points
The Dew Drop Inn was a holdover from the time before air quotes, the time before an entire generation managed in unison to misunderstand what the word irony means and to confuse it with cheap sarcasm aimed at everything cute, sunny, conventionally pretty, whimsical, good-hearted, and sentimental.
There used to be lots of Dew Drop Inns, just as there were restaurants called Sit & Sip and Chat ’n’ Chew. Okay, they were mainly in small towns and disproportionately in the South, but they existed, and every day a few thousand people would see one of those signs and smile and think for a second, How clever or How cute, and while that may not be a hip or sophisticated reaction, I’ll take it over a sneer any day. When the face a culture turns to the world has a sneer on it, it’s no wonder it has so few positive ideas.
All that said, the Dew Drop Inn was a dump, worthy of three stars in The Masochist’s Guide to Sleepless Nights. The carpet, which had apparently been shampooed with petroleum jelly, made an alarming little blown-kiss sound every time I lifted my shoe. The wallpaper was in the midst of a long and acrimonious divorce with the walls; it had developed big, unsettling blisters, as though something gelatinous, something straight out of H. P. Lovecraft, were trying to bloom its way through. The biggest, softest, dampest, seepiest-looking blister was on the wall directly above the head of the bed, and I’m not ashamed to say that I squished my way over, the carpet fighting me for my shoes, and pulled the bed about two feet from the wall. I’m also not ashamed to tell you that I refused to look at the area of carpet I uncovered when I moved the bed. Whatever was down there, I could do without seeing it.
Avoiding the couch, the upholstery of which shone like the knees of a preacher’s suit, I parked my small suitcase on the table and went out to the car for the backpack that contained my laptop, the few things I’d taken from Ronnie’s place, and several other essentials, including a spare cell phone. I also took a moment to refile, in a small document compartment hidden in one of the backpack’s straps, the driver’s license and credit card in the name of J. C. Leyendecker I’d used to check in to the motel. The actual J. C. Leyendecker pretty much created an entire worldwide aesthetic of male attractiveness—white male attractiveness anyhow—back in the 1920s with a classic series of ads for Arrow shirts. The Leyendecker man was the person Jay Gatsby wanted to look like, and I had leanings that way myself.
I like my false identities to be someone I’d actually enjoy being. It’s a kind of karmic nudge.
I put a bath towel, which smelled almost clean, on top of the bedspread, lay down, and opened my computer. Buried beneath ten or twelve graphic threats from Jake Whelan were three emails sent since seven that evening by my former wife, Kathy. They all had the same heading: RINA’S BIRTHDAY!!!
This took me aback. My daughter’s birthday wasn’t something I was likely to forget. Rina, who was set to turn fourteen (where had the time gone?) in twelve days, was (and is) the person I love most deeply in the world.
And yet just as the Dew Drop Inn, despite its sweetly dated name, was a smudge on the face of creation, my love for Rina didn’t translate into admirable fathering. I was notable primarily for my absence, at first because Kathy and I went through a period of mutual, if juvenile, antipathy after the divorce and later because Kathy—since I had declined to give up my career, such as it was, and get a straight-world job with her father’s insurance company—didn’t think I was a positive influence. And things didn’t thaw when I told her I morally preferred burglary to her father’s industry, which I characterized as a heartless swindle that preyed on our most primal fears—death, bereavement, illness, poverty—and then, when the dreaded day came, devoted most of its energy into finding ways to avoid paying off. It’s one, I unwisely said, of the many legal crimes that transfer the world’s wealth from shallow pockets to deep ones, twenty-four hours a day.
So Kathy and I had been stalemated, glaring at each other over the gulf between us, until Rina put her foot down and insisted that she would see me, with her mother’s consent or not. Kathy wisely gave in, making the provision that Rina and I, at first anyway, would see each other only in the house we all used to share, and only when Kathy was present to shed motherly light on the difference between right and wrong. And after a period of adjustment, the two of us growling at each other like pit bulls, we’d relaxed into our new roles. As a result I’d been able to participate, a bit sporadically, in my daughter’s life from about the time she was seven. I’d been there for the rocky transition from elementary to middle school. I’d been there when the braces went on. I’d watched her blossom into someone with a keen and inquisitive intelligence, an instinctive disdain for pretense, and a clear, strong heart. I’d been on the sidelines as she fell in love, for the first time, with a beautiful and apparently sweet-hearted kid named Tyrone.
And with all that love and understanding only about fifteen minutes away in Tarzana, here I was, solo and self-pitying in the blistering miasma of the Dew Drop Inn. I was, Kathy’s emails implied, invited to the party, but still, I should ha
ve been a lot more closely involved. I mean, isn’t fourteen supposed to be essentially a 365-day hormonal land mine? Isn’t fourteen the year when good goes bad and bad goes irremediable? It sure as hell had been for me. Wasn’t I supposed to be in the next room, ready with fatherly wisdom at the first question, fully equipped with comfort and advice at the first betrayed sob?
And what in the world did the topic heading “DN’T MISS RINA’S BTHDY PRTY FRI” mean? Aren’t birthday parties usually held on birthdays, or on the nearest weekend day?
Chnge of pln, Kathy had written, apparently confusing email with texting. Prty now this Fri nite, 7P. Pls rspnd asap. The other two emails were variations on the theme, some with more vowels and each with a new and puzzling piece of information. Fri Ptrcia’s bday so 2sies, read the first, and Dn’t tlk abt Tyrone, said the second. I was aware that Rina had a new best friend, and it appeared her name was Ptrcia, and the note seemed to suggest they’d decided to combine parties.
Seemed like a rancid idea to me, but I hadn’t been consulted, and anyway it paled in significance beside the possibility of a problem between Rina and Tyrone, because why else was I being warned not to “tlk abt Tyrone,” so I just emailed, Wht’s up wth th date & Tyrone? three times. By the time I pushed send it was almost 1:30 a.m. and I was unreasonably angry.
I was angry at my estrangement from Ronnie, which was partly my fault; at my isolation from my daughter and my powerlessness to make things better for her, which was mostly my fault; at my being in the Dew Drop Inn at this stage of my life, which was entirely my fault; and at the idea that people wanted to kill me. Again. At what point in a man’s life do people stop wanting to kill him?
Even I, the least introspective of men, recognized the anger as my usual way of hiding from self-pity. That didn’t mean, though, that I didn’t want to take it out on someone, so I picked up my phone and dialed.
“How do you like the Four Seasons?” I asked when Stinky came on the line.
“I’ve moved,” he said. “I didn’t want your friend to have any idea where I was.”
“You saw us?”
“I assumed you were back there. I figured the first thing she said when I got in the car was, ‘Follow him.’”
“You know her better than I do.”
“I know people I’ve never met better than you know her. Can she hear you? Am I on speaker?”
“No and no. We’re taking a time-out, she and I.”
“What a quaint way to put it. I think time-out could be used accurately to describe any period when that woman isn’t behind bars.”
“You no longer have a buyer for the stamp.”
“I can find another.”
“Good to hear it. And the Slugger isn’t going to stop wanting to kill you.”
“It’s a big world.”
“You’d be willing to leave all your beautiful things behind?”
“I wouldn’t describe myself as willing. But I’d rather leave them behind than get beaten to death with bats.”
“Then why don’t you hire me to fix things?” I said.
“Hire you. To fix things. You mean so he’d no longer want to kill me?”
“I mean so that you wouldn’t have to think about it.”
A beat while he analyzed my sentence. “How would you do that, if you please?”
“Ah-ah. That would be telling.”
“Here’s the flaw in the ointment—”
“Fly.”
“Pardon?”
“In the ointment,” I said. “It’s a fly in the ointment. An ointment is a viscous liquid. How can it have a flaw in it? In a sapphire yes or, more frequently, an emerald, but an ointment? Not a—”
“Pah,” Stinky said. “The flaw in the ointment is that he wants to kill you, too. It seems to me that it’s in your own interest to fix things, and it’s hard for me to see how you could fix things for yourself without also fixing them for me. And free of cost at that.”
“It would be a snap,” I said. “I could arrange to meet him, give him the stamp with a heartfelt apology, and sic him on you.”
“And you think you’d survive that?”
“I’ll take my odds over yours.”
Stinky said, “Mmmm,” something he’d picked up in England and clung to as a sort of no-fault way of admitting he was wrong. “Then if I thought you could accomplish that—eliminating the threat, so to speak—and if I decided to ask you to do it, what would it cost me?”
“I have the stamp,” I reminded him. “And you say you can find a buyer. I think it would be fair—”
“Eighty-twenty,” he said.
“I was a lot closer to fifty-fifty.” There was a lump in the bed, right under the towel, so I got up and moved the towel.
“It is to laugh,” Stinky said. He made a sound he probably thought was a laugh but that sounded more like a cat announcing a hair ball.
“Finished?” I said. “Wiped your eyes yet?”
“Out of the question,” he said. “It’s against the moral order of things. Anyway, there’s no one but me who can sell it for you, so what else could you do with it?”
“Eat it,” I said.
If a silence, which is after all just an absence of sound, can be characterized as appalled, what we had was an appalled silence. I yawned into the phone.
“You would, too,” he said.
“I sure would. Look, think about it this way. For half the price of the stamp, you’re getting the whole stamp and I’m throwing in your life as a sort of goodwill offer. A holiday bonus.”
“What holiday?” he asked suspiciously.
“My daughter’s birthday.” There was a lump under the towel’s new location, too.
“You have offspring?”
“Don’t test me, Stinky. The mood I’m in, I could just hang up, find a bolt-hole, and let you wait for batting practice.” I put the towel at the foot of the bed and climbed on.
“A counter-offer,” he said. “Forty thousand cash, right now, small bills.”
“Your life is worth five thousand dollars? You were already going to pay me thirty-five.”
“That was when I had a buyer.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Fifty.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “All of it.”
“This is what we call a sticking point,” Stinky said. “I’m not going to give you the money until I know you’ve completed your end of the bargain.”
“And I’m not going to give you the stamp or complete my side of the bargain until I have the money.”
“Hmmm.” While Stinky hmmm-ed, I looked up Jake Whelan’s number on my other phone, since I was using the one he had called me on and I’ve never known how to look up a number without disconnecting my call. I made a mental note to ask Rina to teach me.
“A deal,” Stinky said. “We’ll do it in tranches.”
“I’ve never known what tranche means.”
“It’s a financial term. It means payment in increments, each tied to the completion of one stage of development.”
“Sort of like lay-away,” I said.
“If that’s helpful to you. I’ll pay you a little more, but in stages. I’ll pay you sixty. You were willing to hand the stamp to me tonight for thirty-five. You do that, and when I’m convinced that the Slugger is no more, or is no longer interested in me, I’ll pay you another twenty-five.”
“No,” I said. “You pay me the forty-five in the hope that I can do the job, and when I’ve succeeded and I come for the remaining thirty-five, I’ll give you—”
“Twenty-five.”
I began to whistle. I can’t whistle in tune any better than I can climb a rope.
“All right,” he said. “Stop that. But when you get the forty-five, I get the stamp. And all I’ll owe you is fifteen.”
“Brilli
ant,” I said. “Exactly what I would have suggested if I were as smart as you are.”
Stinky said, “You know what, Junior? You deserve your little friend.”
Even before I said hello, Jake Whelan said, “Fuck you, Junior.”
“Everybody’s saying that to me tonight.” So far I hadn’t found any area of the mattress that was lump-free.
“When you’re standing in the middle of a hail of bullets, you cocksucker, when time slows down so far that your heart sounds lower than a bass drum, when you know you’re a millisecond away from seeing patches of sunlight appear in the middle of your own shadow—”
“Got it, Jake. Before I do the big blink. Before I’m tucked away for the dirt nap. Before I’m date bait for a taxidermist. Before I’m stitched like a pillowcase—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “I’m writing these down.”
“Why? You got a script you want to spoil?”
“You’re colorful, Junior, I’ll give you that. I’ll almost miss you.”
“Shame you’ve decided to kill me, then, isn’t it?” I said, and hung up. Almost instantly my other phone began to ring. I ignored it and dialed him on the one I’d just hung up. When he snapped a hello, I said, “Sorry, someone’s calling me on the other line,” and hung up.
Then I got up and turned down the blanket. Nothing scurried out of sight, although the sheets were the gray of a London fog. I was testing with both hands for more lumps, and finding them, when both phones began to ring.
“Hi, Jake,” I said. I dropped the phone on the bed and went into the bathroom, where I washed my hands, undid the zipper on my suitcase, and shook out a T-shirt so I could let it unwrinkle on a hanger overnight. Then I went back to the bed. “You still there?”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“You think?”
“Get over here.”
“What, I’m going to make it that easy? Actually show up someplace so your shooters can autograph my chest in bullet holes?”
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