Dangerous Games

by John Shannon

  “I didn’ mean nothin’.”

  “Well, that’s a hell of a reason.” Jack Liffey felt himself gliding into a very strange space, an emotional state in some marginal place he had never before been, as far as he could tell. He was disturbed and restless, fidgety, but he wasn’t actually angry. The boy seemed so clueless and so much a natural part of his environment—the graffiti on the walls, the shabby furniture, the unwashed dishes on the floor beside the cot—it would have been like getting angry at the weather or a telephone pole. But his eyes never strayed from the boy for long.

  “You paint this place?”

  “You was at the cop lineup, wasn’t you? How come you didn’t tell them it was me?”

  “So I could shoot you myself, and that’s the truth. Nobody hurts my daughter. What’s your name?”

  This time he gave in a little. “Tino Estrada. They call me Thumb.”

  “Thumb?”

  He held up his double-jointed thumbs, then gave a strange little salute, the thumbs tucked into his T mustache and beard and then pushed away like some fraternal-order secret greeting.

  Jack Liffey held up his left thumb, which bent back as far as the boy’s. His right thumb wouldn’t bend back at all, and anyway, the right hand was busy with the .45. Jack Liffey was having trouble deciding what was going on inside himself, what this weird razor-balanced calm was and where it was taking him. Was it, in fact, the prelude to a cold-blooded shooting? He knew he had complete control over the situation as long as he held the gun. For years, he had survived on this sense of control—plus an occasional whiff of conscience—but this evening was one of those times when nothing seemed to be functioning normally, nothing seemed to be in its accustomed psychic space.

  When dealt unpleasantness, he had always been able to steel himself to face it, to squeeze his fear or scruples down into an isolated blank space deep inside so he could do what had to be done, but this situation wasn’t operating like that at all. Nothing about the evening seemed all that unpleasant, even shooting this boy wouldn’t be a chore. He felt spacy, as if the boy’s presence gave off some intoxicating fumes.

  “My name is Jack. They call me Jack. The girl you shot is named Maeve. It’s an Irish name. She’s missing a foot of her intestines now. She’s sixteen and has to shit into a plastic bag attached to her body because of you.”

  “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yeah, you told me that. What did you mean?”

  “There was just this thing, this thing … I don’t know. You wasn’t Mexican, so you wasn’t even nothing. I didn’t want to shoot you. The pistola just went off.”

  Jack Liffey realized he probably wasn’t going to get anything more articulate out of the boy, no matter how much he persisted. There was even a certain honesty that he had to acknowledge in the boy’s bewilderment. “It just went off, okay, I got it. Well, what do you think is a … reasonable punishment for this pistola just going off in my front yard? How about if mine just goes off and shoots your mother?”

  His eyes went wide. “No! Don’t do that, señor. You got to shoot somebody, shoot me.”

  “That’s a thought.” He was maintaining a façade of control, but he could feel himself freewheeling, entering a sort of anchorless drift. Maybe the boy had defined the game for him. Just let it run itself. Maybe something would happen all on its own—as it had for this sick little killer who’d glared at him like a mortal enemy out the car window.

  “Man, shoot me, or don’t shoot me. I’m getting tired of this.”

  “Good. That’s good. I’m starting to get interested. What are you studying?”

  “American history.”

  “What period?”

  “Who gives a fuck?”

  “I give a fuck. It belongs to both of us, that history.”

  “It’s yours. I’m Mexican.”

  “This is Mexico, Thumb. Up to 1850 when a bunch of Gringo pirates and thugs like John C. Fremont seized it. And in case you haven’t noticed, Mexicans have been reclaiming the state on foot ever since.”

  This just seemed to confuse the boy. “I want to get a GED.”

  “Good for you.” Jack Liffey noticed for the first time stacks of Playboys and Hustlers under the cot. “Those won’t help much. What’s the textbook?”

  The young man reached down and showed him the cover: America The Brave—one of the usual revolting titles—with a colorful collage of Indians, pioneers, modern soldiers and women in chemistry labs.

  “You into it alone?”

  “Dije?”

  “You got a tutor, a teacher?”

  “Beto helps me with some of it, but he ain’t as smart as he thinks.”

  “Tell you what, you come over and mow our front lawn once a week, and I’ll teach you how to write an essay.” Jack Liffey was utterly astonished at what he’d just said. He’d had no idea he was going to say anything like it. He felt like a rummy waking up all of a sudden in a gutter with people staring at him. What was going on here? The dead weight in his right hand confused him. “Writing’s more important than reading. If you can write a passable essay, you can get through any subject.”

  “I wasn’t never any good in English.” His eyes had narrowed into suspicion.

  “It’s just a skill, like welding. Look, I can kill you or I can help you—it’s up to you.”

  “You’re loco, man.”

  “Loco’s my dog. We’ve got a kind of standoff between us, you and I. You’ve probably got lots of gang friends, know right where I live, and they can get me any time. I know where you live, and my girlfriend is in the biggest meanest gang of them all, the LAPD. So we either get to have a full-on war or a truce. You decide.”

  The boy laughed, but without any humor in it. “You’re fucking chingado. Complete zonzo.”

  Jack Liffey’s energy was running down, making him sleepy and confused, and his trigger-finger was getting worried. “It’s your choice, Thumb. Come on by the house about noon on Saturday and mow the lawn. We’ve got an okay old push mower, and then we’ll have a beer and learn about nouns and verbs.”

  The boy said something, all in Spanish, that had a nasty edge to it.

  “Buenas noches,” Jack Liffey said as he backed guardedly over the window sill. He wondered if he’d get shot before he could get to his car a block away. He wasn’t sure what had just happened. In a few minutes, the kid would probably be laughing at the crazy old gringo and calling his pals to plan another assault on his house. But something strange had descended on his spirit in that garage as he watched the boy. It made no sense, but the best his rational mind could suggest was this: Some voice had spoken up inside him to insist that Thumb Estrada was salvageable. He could surely take a little risk to turn a life around.

  Gloria was back when he got home, collapsed in the easy chair with her feet up and her eyes closed, a glass of red wine at hand. A Smithsonian magazine was tented on her lap. The complicated strap holster she sometimes carried up under her armpit was hanging off the chair, like a spiderweb that had captured quite a prize, the black Glock, and he kept his own .45 out of sight in the small of his back under his jacket. She seemed to be sloughing off the cares of her day, listening to soft Gregorian chants from the cheap boom box.

  “Bad day?” he asked.

  “I miss Steelyard. He was a goon sometimes, but he was predictable.” Ken Steelyard had died six months back, shot by someone Jack Liffey had been trying to help. He wondered if trying to help this kid might boomerang as badly.

  “Who’s your new partner—Gengis Khan?”

  She smiled without opening her eyes and sipped. “Gengis Cohen. Joel Lenski, actually. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s got no street cred. You know the way you can just assume you’ve got power over a dog and the dog can’t help buying in? A cop’s got to have that.”

  “Doesn’t work with Loco.”

  “I’ll show you how to do it some day when I’m rested. Poor Lenski can’t get it together when kids get in his
face. He’s either all bluster, or he freezes up. Then, he starts with the threats, and inevitably he has to back down. I’m his T.O., but how do you teach self-confidence?”

  He kissed the top of her head, liking the rich natural aroma of her hair, and rested his hands lightly on the ample top surfaces of her breasts through the cotton. “Don’t be teasing if you don’t plan to go to home base,” she told him.

  “You get as many trips all the way around the bags as you can handle,” he whispered. She reached up and caught the back of his neck with a strong hand and pulled his head down and kissed him. But he could tell there was no real sexual intent in the kiss, and she soon let him loose.

  “Hold that thought and let me unwind. Did you get any closer to our little Native American runaway?”

  “I’ve got the name of a producer she was sent to.” He couldn’t even remember the name for the moment—his confrontation with Thumb had fuzzed over everything—but he’d written it down. “I met Little Deer today.” He let it sit while he went to the kitchen for a tonic and some cherry juice. He still didn’t drink—it had been a part of the trouble that had blown up his first marriage—but he’d been thinking of trying it again. Soon.

  He came back and sat facing her. “I saw her photos first at an agency for these porn folks, looking gorgeous if a bit artificially enhanced, like all the porn stars. When I found her in person …” How did you describe that kind of shock? “She looked like a blowup doll that somebody had let all the air out of. She didn’t weigh ninety pounds. Poor woman.”

  “AIDS?”

  “Yup.” He let his eyes rest on some of the colorful Mexican curios Gloria had spread around, cars and altarpieces and skeletons dancing. They’d been made for tourists, but there was still a sincerity in them that made them heartening somehow.

  “That’s always hard to deal with,” she said.

  “She won’t have to deal with it much longer.” He was putting off mentioning Thumb, but he knew he would have to eventually.

  “Let me know if you need my help finding anyone. I can run a license, and we got these wonderful reverse directories, tell you who lives right now in 439, apartment A.”

  “Thanks. I hired a kid to mow the lawn today.”

  “I thought you wanted to do it.” She opened one eye to peer at him.

  “It’s free. In exchange I’m going to teach him how to write an essay so he can get a GED.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  He was on the edge of telling her that the boy was the shooter, but it would get too complicated, so he moved across the intervening space and buried his face between her thighs. She wriggled and spread her legs a little to him, and then the flat of her hand touched his back.

  “Jesus, Jack! What’s this gun?”

  He’d completely forgot.

  Dear Diary,

  I am so weary I cannot hardly keep my eyes open. There was this Japanese man who got drunk on Chivas & he talked & talked & I couldnt understand a word. He didnt seem to mind I didnt follow him like he was talking to a dog. Then he was very stubborn about something he wanted me to do & it took me a long time to figure it out. I guess I knew their were men like him but I didn’t really believe.

  Lucky I was only hert a little but Keith was unhappy with me because I hadnt gone and negotiated a big tip. When we got home he tore up my book again & threw it in the wet garbage. It was a new copy. I am just going to concentrate on thinking of being free & happy.

  TEN

  Silence is Better than Holiness

  She moved to the edge of the big bed. After last night with the Japanese businessman, she didn’t feel like being touched, even by accident. She might have dozed an hour or two somewhere in the night, but it hadn’t helped her exhaustion. She was beginning to realize that there were a whole lot of things in L.A. that were pretty much unheard of in the Owens Valley. And the adult industry or hostess industry, or whatever, wasn’t turning out as easy a career as she’d figured.

  She rolled onto her side, so she didn’t even have to see Keith where he lay snoring, the sheet tucked up to his cute cleft chin. The curtains were wide open, and the sky was beginning to lighten up out over the restless Malibu ocean when there was a loud crash of glass, like a brick going through a window in the next room. Keith sat up in bed beside her like a jack-in-the-box, his eyes crazy as a cat’s, and he took a second to get oriented.

  “Was that real?” he asked softly. There was doubt and anxiety in his voice that she’d never heard there before. “Was it?”

  “I heard it.”

  He yanked open a bedside table and came out with a big steel pistol with a long barrel, just as the bedroom door slammed open. The tallest Jamaican she’d ever seen came in first. At least she was pretty sure he was Jamaican because of the red-green-black knit cap and the striped yellow trousers—she’d seen a Jamaican movie on TV once and they all dressed like that. He also carried a little gray machine gun. The stocky white man behind him had his head shaved and his ears stuck straight out. He wore a fancy white linen suit like he was from somewhere in the tropics, too.

  “Drop dat naow an’ tek you hands up, Keity!”

  Keith and the Jamaican pointed their weapons at one another for a moment, but neither looked very much like firing, at least she hoped so. She held the sheet up to her neck and prayed to all her ancestors to make her as invisible as Hawk in low morning cloud.

  “Keith, don’t be such a fucking pain,” the bald man said.

  “Levine, sorry. I guess I didn’t recognize your knock. I hope you’re going to pay for the glass.” Keith let his pistol droop.

  The bald man looked at his empty hands, as if inspecting his manicure, then back at Keith. “Just shut up. You’re the guy wanted to graduate to peddling skezag to all your movie pals. Ain’t that the truth, Terror?”

  “First ting, he don’ even be payin’ on time for all the coke-a-moke, den he get him forward on the H. Get ready fe tek some blows, K. I-and-I ready.” He moved forward menacingly.

  The bald man put a palm on the Jamaican’s shoulder lightly to steady him. “That may not be necessary, Terr. I believe our man Keith is a paragon of honor, and he has already approached a select circle of responsible people in the fuck-movie world, where King H has been experiencing a small renaissance of late— the randy bunch liking to go all noddy and like, though mostly it’s for snorting, I bet. I’m sure he has our money all ready for us. Bundled and counted.”

  “Today, Levine. I swear. There won’t be any trouble. By noon.”

  “To-day.” Levine tried the syllables out a couple of times in his mouth, as if the word’s meaning might become more evident with unusual emphasis. “Perhaps you’d better explain this to my man Pennycooke here.”

  “The deal’s all set up, honest to God. I just got to deliver the skag and cop the money. Man, look, porn is so marginal there’s always money somewhere, but it’s sometimes a little slow to eke out.”

  “Eke.” The bald man tried that word on, too. “Where I come from, money doesn’t eke, Keithie. Did money eke back in Trench-town, Terror?”

  “Money in de han, dat’s de onliest money. Man say, money go be slow, I say, dem be wicked, and I-an-I boun fe harm de wicked man.”

  “Yes, we agree. Who’s the cute little cunt?” His eyes had flicked to Luisa, and she cowered, unable to help herself.

  “One of my girls. She was a hostess at the game expo last night.”

  “She’s worth something to you then. Collateral, shall we say. I think we’ll keep her until that money ekes into our hands.” He wrenched off the sheet, and Luisa, wearing only a T-shirt, covered herself as well as she could with her hands. The night before, she’d decided against wearing the black lace nightgown, the only sleep-wear he’d provided. She hadn’t felt like wearing anything even remotely seductive.

  “Don’t, Levine, please.”

  With the sheet yanked away, Keith was buck naked, and Levine was looking down at Keith’s crotch, at a large un
circumcised penis.

  “Rumor had it you were somewhere between a Holmes and a Wahlberg. I’d say a point-seven Holmes.” He seemed to note with amusement that Keith was unable to keep the fright from showing in his eyes. “How’d you end up uncircumcised, K? I’m curious.”

  “I was born in Germany. They don’t do it in Europe so much.”

  The bald man looked thoughtful. “Don’t you think it’s about time? For the sake of personal hygiene alone. What do you say, Tyrone?”

  “I-and-I, me tinkin’ dred.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” the bald man said.

  The Jamaican drew out an old-fashioned straight razor and flipped it open.

  “Man, I’ll get your money today, I swear!”

  The bald man pointed straight at Luisa. “You, stand over there.”

  She did exactly as he asked, climbing out of the bed and huddling in the corner, forgetting entirely about modesty. She had a horror of that straight razor and the kind of clean cuts it could make deep through your skin. Long ago, she had seen two distant cousins fight with box-cutters and only drunkenness had kept them from killing one another by inches. She tried looking away and noticed that the ocean was sparkly with reflected sun now, and had a light morning chop under a streaky sky.

  “No, man, no! Don’t!”

  The bald man knelt on the edge of the bed and placed his big hand hard around Keith’s throat, pressing down with all his weight. “Don’t thrash, son. You’ll make it worse.”

  Luisa’s eyes were drawn irresistibly back as the Jamaican reached out and took Keith’s long penis in his fist like the handle of a baseball bat and tested the razor in the air, making little limp-wristed arcing cuts, practicing near the tip of the penis.

  “I beg you guys …”

  “Hush, now.”

  Then in one swift circling motion, he excised Keith’s foreskin, if not a bit more. Keith screamed, a cry of both horror and pain, and he kicked out spasmodically with his legs and slapped the bed with his palms, but it was already over. With the bald man still holding Keith’s neck, the Jamaican picked up the detached and blooded foreskin, studied it impassively, and thumbed it into Keith’s open bellowing mouth.