Revolution Number 9

by Peter Abrahams

  He looked around for a cab. The acne-boy car came to a squeaking stop at the curb. The window slid down and Brucie said, “I can take you back across if you want.”

  Charlie got in the car. Flipper was sleeping in the back. Brucie had worked up a sweat in the short time they’d been apart. Charlie could smell him.

  Brucie shifted into first and gunned the car through a yellow light. A motorcycle roared behind them. Brucie patted Charlie’s knee. “Hey. Great to see you. You know? Brings back old memories. Those were the days, huh?”

  “Were they?”

  “Shit, yes. The chicks. Remember? Like willing chicks with no bullshit. A dream come true.”

  An acne-boy dream.

  “And the music. Jesus.” Brucie, swerving onto the bridge ramp, reached across and flipped open the glove box. Tapes slid out, fell to the floor. Brucie, his head below the dash, scrabbled through them. “Whaddaya like, whaddaya like?” He found something, jammed it in the tape player, jerked the wheel hard to his left to avoid the bridge railing.

  “Stairway to Heaven” at 120 decibels plus.

  “Led Zep,” Brucie shouted. “Did it ever get any better than that?”

  Or something of the kind. Charlie couldn’t really hear him.

  The bridge was a glowing span over a black abyss. They seemed to soar across on a current of energy—Brucie’s sudden excitement, the cranked-up volume of the tape player, the souped-up power of the car: each false in its own way. In the southwest, Candlestick was dark, the ballgame over.

  “Good to see you,” Brucie shouted. “Shit. I mean it.” This time he left Charlie’s knee unpatted.

  Brucie came down off the bridge, turned north onto the Embarcadero. It wasn’t where Charlie wanted to go. He glanced at Brucie, saw sweat shining on his face, and an uncharacteristic purposefulness in his eye. Brucie exited, into the heart of North Beach.

  Charlie switched off the music. “You forgot to ask where to drop me,” he said.

  “Hee-hee.” Brucie’s smell was stronger. “The thing is, old pal, I think we should drop in on this dude I mentioned.”

  “What dude?”

  “Or maybe I didn’t. The brainy one.”

  “It’s about Rebecca, isn’t it, Brucie? The name meant something to you.”

  Brucie depressed his door lock; the lock on Charlie’s side clicked too. “The name. Yeah. The name, but not the person. See, the name I heard before. The little old geezer kept asking me about her.”

  “What little old geezer?” Charlie tried to keep his tone calm, casual.

  “Oops,” said Brucie.

  “Oops?”

  “I meant I didn’t get his name.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Hard to say.” Brucie stopped in front of a restaurant named Fazool. Across the street lay a park, with an ice cream man standing watch over his wagon, smoking a cigarette; beyond the park a big church, its stone facade illuminated in the night. “An everyday geezer,” said Brucie. “Except this guy was on chemo.”

  Now Charlie began to sweat too. “How do you know that?”

  “Experience,” said Brucie. “What do you think happened to Pops?”

  “I see,” said Charlie, and he did. Brucie opened the door, but before he could get out Charlie gripped his right arm, not gently. “Brucie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You turned me in.”

  Brucie nodded. “I’m sorry. Really. I got nothin’ against you. Let’s face it—I’d forgotten all about you. But I couldn’t face prison. Did you see that movie, what was it? You know what goes on in those places? I wouldn’t last a day.” With his left hand Brucie brought a silver-plated revolver into view and pointed it at Charlie. “That’s why I’m gonna have to do it again. You’re under arrest.”

  Charlie laughed in his face.

  “A citizen’s arrest,” said Brucie. “I mean it.” The gun trembled. Charlie let go of his arm. Brucie got out of the car, came around to Charlie’s side, opened the door. “Out,” he said.

  Charlie got out of the car.

  Brucie pointed the gun at a door in the stucco wall beside the restaurant. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To see the brainy guy. He’ll know what to do.” Brucie motioned with the gun. Charlie moved toward the door. Brucie stepped behind him, touched the small of his back with the muzzle of the gun. In that one touch, Charlie learned all he needed to know about the future that awaited him if he entered that door.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “You don’t think what?” asked Brucie, behind him.

  Charlie didn’t explain. He’d always been able to move. He moved: ducking and whirling in one motion, then driving up at Brucie’s midsection. His shoulder struck something soft, his fist something hard. Brucie fell back with a grunt; Charlie grabbed at him, caught only a corner of his shirt, which tore off in his hand. Brucie rolled free on the sidewalk, came up on one elbow, the gun pointed at Charlie’s head. His nose was bleeding; the expression on his face primitive. He was stupid enough to be dangerous.

  “I’m not taking any more shit,” Brucie said, his voice too loud for whining, not loud enough for shrieking. The gun wasn’t especially steady, but it wouldn’t have to be at this distance. Brucie’s nose twitched, as though he’d suddenly developed a tic. Charlie knew with certainty that he was going to pull the trigger and that there was nothing he could do about it.

  A motorcycle burst out of the park across the street, just missing the ice cream man, jumped the sidewalk, spun in a circle around Brucie. The driver was huge, and dressed all in white, except for his black visor. Charlie had a crazy, childish notion that Brucie had already shot him, that he was already dead and this was an angel sent to take him away. But then the motorcycle roared like a killing beast, a hellish beast, and Brucie’s face went white. The driver gestured at him; something shone in his hand. Brucie fell back on the sidewalk, a round red hole now prominent in the center of his white forehead, like a caste mark.

  The driver extended one of his feet, pivoted the howling machine, and skidded to a stop in front of Charlie. He backed off on the throttle, reducing the noise to a rumble, and raised his visor.

  “You’re not having much luck are you, Charlie boy?” It was Svenson.

  Across the street the ice cream man was saying, “Mother of God, Mother of God.” A car had stopped next to his wagon. A Chinese man got out, a tiny man, not much bigger than a child.

  “Best be moving on,” Svenson said, lowering the visor. “Unless you’re ready to call it quits.” Charlie looked into the blackness of the visor and said nothing.

  Svenson revved the engine, pointed the front wheel toward the road. The Chinese man was on the sidewalk now, gazing down at Brucie. He turned on Svenson.

  “What the hell did you do that for? I had him by the balls.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” said Svenson, bumping the motorcycle onto the street.

  The Chinese man ran after him in fury. “What kind of answer is that? Who the hell are you?” He smacked Svenson on the back of his helmet.

  Svenson laughed, then gunned the engine; but as the motorcycle shot into the street, the Chinese man dove at it, caught hold of Svenson’s collar, held on. The motorcycle wobbled, then veered across the street, smashed through the ice cream wagon, knocking the Chinese man high into the air and twisting Svenson almost backward in his seat. The bike kept going, into the park, into darkness. Then came a boom, a rending of metal, and silence.

  The ice cream man’s lips were moving, forming the phrase “Mother of God,” although no sound came. He moved off down the sidewalk like a sleepwalker. Charlie ran across the street, past scattered Freeze Pops and Nutty Buddies, past the Chinese man, lying open-eyed on his back, his head at an impossible angle, and into the park.

  He found Svenson sprawled at the base of a tree. His head was at an impossible angle too.

  Charlie looked back at the trail of bodies: Brucie, the Chinese
man, Svenson. Facts on the ground, facts that made happy endings impossible. But hadn’t that been the case since the instant after the fourth bong of the chapel bell? All this was just one of the possible unhappy playouts. It never ends, as Laverne had said.

  Charlie kept going, through the park, past the church, and onto a busy street—a real place, with lights and people.

  · · ·

  The door beside Fazool opened. Nuncio came out. He spent a few seconds looking down at Brucie, a few more over the Chinese man. Then he went into the park, found the man in white, searched him. He found a wallet with money, credit cards, driver’s license, found a folder with a federal ID inside, found an audiotape that said “VHK” on its sticker. He left everything but the tape.

  People started coming out of the shadows. Sirens sounded. Nuncio walked back across the street, through the door, up the stairs to his two-floor apartment over Fazool. He picked up a Nutty Buddy on the way. He hadn’t had one in years.

  Somewhere nearby a dog whimpered.

  29

  Nuncio awoke early the next morning in a good mood. He’d been blessed with resilience, the way others are born to run and jump. The death of an old and valued client, the long police questioning in his living room that followed when said relationship became known, the resulting late bedtime: all had been, he admitted to himself, exhilarating. He opened his bedroom window and took a deep lungful of the new day.

  A man stood outside, examining the chalk figure that had taken Brucie’s place on the sidewalk. He wore Harold Lloyd glasses and a dark suit. Nuncio could hear him talking.

  “Boy oh boy,” the Harold Lloyd man was saying. He repeated it a few times.

  The Harold Lloyd man walked to the front door and pressed the buzzer. Nuncio put on a terrycloth robe with “Hedonism Negril” blazed in scarlet on the back and went downstairs. The buzzer sounded again just as he was opening the door.

  The Harold Lloyd man stood on the step. Up close, Nuncio saw that the face behind the glasses was nothing like Harold Lloyd’s. It offered no promise of entertainment of any kind.

  “Mr. Nuncio?” said the man.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My name is Bunting. I’m from the federal government.”

  Bunting paused, as though Nuncio might have something to say at that point. Nuncio did not.

  “May I come in?”

  Had that moron Brucie implicated him in anything? Nuncio tried to imagine possible dangers, and could not. Still, he was a counselor, and counselors counseled prudence. “If it’s about last night, I already told the police what I saw. Which was nada.”

  “Our inquiry has a somewhat different scope.”

  Nuncio wanted to check his watch, to give himself some stage business when he said, “I’ve got to be in court in an hour,” but all he wore was the Hedonism robe, so he had to let the words stand by themselves.

  “I’m sure you’re a busy man, Mr. Nuncio,” said Bunting. “I’ll be respectful of your time.”

  “Make it quick, then,” said Nuncio, and ushered Bunting brusquely up the stairs. If the man was going to carry on so politely and pronounce inquiry “inkwery,” what the hell else could he do?

  They sat in the living room, Nuncio in the white leatherette chair with the footstool, his guest on the matching couch. Nuncio opened a pack of El Productors that was lying on the end table. “Cigar?”

  Bunting shook his well-barbered head. Nuncio lit up; he preferred not to smoke until his first cup of coffee, but cigars helped him think. He blew a miniature cumulonimbus cloud into the room. Bunting was looking at a videotape box lying on the floor by the VCR. The title was big and garish, possibly visible from where Bunting sat: Debbie Does It—Up Close and Personal. Nuncio made a mental note to fire his cleaning lady, or at least dock her pay.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Butting?”

  “Bunting.” The man turned to him; his eyes were cold. “Perhaps you can tell me what Mr. Wine was coming to see you about last night.”

  “Was he coming to see me?” How to deal with this jerk, with funny glasses, Mr. Manners civility, icy eyes? Nuncio formed another cloud, not as big as the first.

  “Isn’t that a safe assumption? He was your client, unless I’m misinformed.”

  “My business is the law, Mr. Bunting. We don’t make assumptions, safe or otherwise.” Nuncio hadn’t lectured anyone on ethics for a long time, if ever. It made him feel good, and he resolved to do it again soon.

  “Angelica County College, wasn’t it?” Bunting said.

  Nuncio raised his eyebrows.

  “Where you got your law degree, I believe.”

  Nuncio nodded.

  “I’ve had a little legal training myself. Stuck with it right through to a doctorate, in fact. Didn’t have anything better to do, if you want the truth. This was at Harvard.” He took out a handkerchief with the initials RSB embroidered on one corner and blew his nose into it: loudly, violently, disturbingly, like some savage form of punctuation. “Wasted time, really. In my present position the law seems small and far away, if you understand what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Let’s put it this way. Anyone looking forward to a smooth continuance of his or her career would be inclined to agree with my earlier hypothesis re Mr. Wine’s intent last night.”

  Nuncio sucked on his cigar, found it had gone out. “Is that a threat?” he said, pulling the Hedonism robe tighter around his body.

  Bunting looked surprised. “Of course it is, Mr. Nuncio. I took you for a man of some experience—haven’t you ever been threatened before, or done some threatening of your own?”

  Not like this, pisshead, Nuncio thought. He stubbed out the El Producto; it bent in half.

  “After all,” Bunting continued, “isn’t that what the law’s about?”

  Yes. Nuncio couldn’t couldn’t argue with that. Threats, promises, deals, wheedling: that was law, and he knew how to practice it. But because they all played by the same rules, they were all protected—by the law. This little East Coast shit had already made it clear that he was beyond the law in some way. What protection, Nuncio wondered, did he have now? He shrugged. “So Wine was probably coming to see me. So what?”

  “Had he notified you he was coming?”

  “No. Like I told the police last night.”

  “As you told the police,” Bunting said. Was he correcting grammar or just thinking aloud? “And what do you think he wanted to see you about?”

  “I don’t know, since he didn’t call me ahead of time and never quite got here. Unless you’ve got another safe assumption that explains it.”

  “But I do,” Bunting said. “I assume he wanted to discuss the Wrightman case. Or perhaps we should call it the Wrightman-Ochs case.”

  “Don’t know it,” Nuncio said.

  “No? It concerns a radical group involved in terrorist bombings in the early seventies. Wrightman was a fugitive who re-documented himself as Ochs and lived undetected for over twenty years. Does that refresh your memory?”

  “I didn’t deny knowing the names. But you asked about the case. I don’t know anything about that, except what you just told me.”

  “Well argued,” said Bunting with a smile—that is, his face assumed a smiling arrangement. “First-rate.”

  Nuncio tugged the robe down over his knees, fat and white.

  “How much did you make last year?” asked Bunting.

  The question, posed in that Mr. Manners voice, was shocking, almost brutal. “That’s between me and the IRS,” Nuncio said.

  “Naturally. But one hundred and thirteen five would be pretty close, wouldn’t it?”

  Not really, but it was precisely what he had reported. Nuncio reached for the El Productos.

  “With that kind of income, you should spring for a better cigar. I’ll send you some.”

  “No thanks.”

  “A nice income,” Bunting went on, showing no sign of rejection. “Although your expenses have
been high. The mining investment was unfortunate.”

  That was one way of putting it. Forty grand sunk in Hollow Gulch Mineral Resources and gone, on the strength of a tip from his ex-brother-in-law’s son’s boss’s secretary. Nuncio lit another cigar and tried unsuccessfully to blow the cloud all the way across the room into Bunting’s face. “You’ve made your point,” he said.

  “I make no point,” Bunting replied. “I merely hope for cooperation. My information is that late last year Mr. Wine was arrested on various counterfeiting charges and you negotiated an agreement that resulted in the dropping of those charges.”

  “Correct.”

  “With whom was that arrangement made?”

  “The D.A., who else?”

  “That’s the question. Did you meet or speak to a man named Francis Goodnow at that time?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “An older man. Not in perfect health.”

  Nuncio shook his head.

  Bunting took out a passport-sized photograph, crossed the room, handed it to Nuncio. It showed a gray-haired man in a bow tie who looked healthy enough.

  “Don’t know him,” Nuncio said, giving it back.

  Bunting held out a photo of another man: much younger, with blond hair and an angular face. This was the white-suited motorcyclist who’d lain in the park last night, neck broken.

  “Never seen him, either.”

  Bunting sat back down on the white leatherette chair. He fished out his embroidered handkerchief, held it in his lap, eyes fixed on Nuncio.

  After a moment or two, Nuncio said, “If you’re looking for something dirty in that deal, you won’t find it. We make deals like that every day, the D.A. and me.”

  “We’re speaking of the federal D.A.”

  “That’s right. Counterfeiting.”

  “How much time elasped between your proposal and his acceptance?”

  “Don’t know. Less than a day. He said he’d have to …”