Men of the Mean Streets

by Greg Herren

  Then Randy drove us down into town while Arthur stayed behind, pecking away on his old Underwood. It was a fine day, clear and bright. We had lunch in a small café overlooking the beach, talking about old times, people we’d known. We laughed a lot, something I hadn’t done in a while. As Randy paid the check, I thought about what our lives might be like if Arthur wasn’t around, and immediately felt sick with shame.

  Back on the main street, Randy left me and headed for an office Arthur kept above an art gallery, where Randy handled their business matters. We agreed to meet in front of the gallery in an hour. To kill time I meandered about the town, until I happened across a little bookstore called the Book Nook. Displayed in the front window was the current bestseller list clipped from the Central Coast Times, with rankings calculated from sales figures collected from selected bookstores in the area. Remarkably, Bullets on the Trail was on the list, still selling well after more than a year in print, at least locally.

  Inside, I found three copies sitting alone on a bottom shelf labeled Westerns. I grabbed one and leafed through it, wincing with each new page. It was the same inferior writing I’d seen in Blood on the Trail, replete with glaring grammatical gaffes no competent editor would have missed. The publisher, Prospect Press, was based in San Francisco. Coincidence there—ten years ago, when I’d met him, Randy’s Los Angeles apartment had been on Prospect Avenue. It was obviously a small press, and one I hadn’t heard of, though that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good one. Still, I figured, even the crassest publisher would have standards higher than this. How Bullets on the Trail could still be selling a year after publication was puzzling.

  I put the book back on the shelf, browsed awhile, purchased an Annie Proulx collection, and left to meet Randy at our appointed time and place. We grabbed coffee, then took a short trip up the coast for the scenery, Randy at the wheel, while I studied the way the sun caught the mesh of fine hair on his forearms, and felt my longing for him rise in me like a tide I couldn’t hold back. When we stopped for a walk on a rocky beach, I took a chance and laid a hand on his slender neck. He let it stay a moment as if he might want more, before he broke away to walk on by himself.

  I tried to apologize on the ride back but he told me not to worry about it, and seemed to withdraw into himself, deep in thought. It was almost six when we arrived. Jorge, coming out in his old pickup, stopped at the gate to meet us. He and Randy exchanged a few words in Spanish. Jorge nodded vigorously, saying, “sí, sí,” and then we drove on.

  Arthur was waiting on the front steps, bending to his cane and looking irritable. He wanted to know where Liselle was. After reminding him for the third time that day that she’d quit, Randy promised to find a replacement as soon as possible.

  “No Mexicans!” Arthur barked. “I don’t want to be eating no damn Mexican food. And don’t go off and leave me alone again, either.”

  “Let’s get you a martini,” Randy said, and guided the old man into the house.

  *

  After Arthur polished off his fourth cocktail, the three of us repeated our stroll of the previous evening, along the narrow path above the deep arroyo. This time, Arthur was in his comfy L.L.Bean jacket, the one I’d worn the previous evening, while I was in an old Windbreaker I’d brought that wasn’t fit for a thrift shop.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll find you a nice jacket in town,” Randy said.

  To my surprise, he slipped an arm around my waist. Arthur, dull with drink, didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t mind. Maybe he was happy to have someone around who might provide what had been missing in Randy’s life, to keep him from straying too far, or leaving for good. As we walked on, the three of us, Randy and I exchanged a glance that seemed filled with possibilities.

  Dusk was deep now, with darkness not far off. Randy wanted Arthur to see a section of the stables that needed renovation and asked me to go on ahead to make sure all the animals were securely in their stalls.

  The horses stood placidly as I checked the latches on each gate. I didn’t see anything amiss and was about to turn back when something caught my eye at the rear of the barn. Several bales of hay had become dislodged and tumbled to the straw-strewn floor, exposing cardboard boxes stacked one atop the other and partially covered with a plastic tarp.

  Curious, I took a look. Under the tarp and hidden by baled hay, dozens more boxes were stacked against the wall. I examined a few. Each was affixed with a mailing label bearing the name and address of the Book Nook or some other bookstore in neighboring towns. I pried open a box. Packed tightly inside were pristine copies of Bullets on the Trail. Other boxes I opened held the same contents. There must have been hundreds of books there, thousands maybe, sequestered where Arthur was unlikely to ever find them, given his fear of horses.

  Yet Randy was about to bring Arthur into the barn now, which didn’t make sense. I was pondering that when I heard Randy’s voice behind me.

  “I guess you’ve uncovered my little secret, haven’t you?”

  I turned to find him standing there, stroking Dark Streak’s muscular neck as she stood obediently in her stall, her big eyes blinking passively.

  “You were gone so long,” he said. “I thought I’d better come check.”

  There was nothing in his voice or manner to suggest uneasiness. If anything, he seemed unusually calm, almost eerily so.

  “You’ve led him along all these years,” I said, “encouraging his writing, when you knew he had no talent for it.”

  “Nurturing his dream,” Randy said. “Everyone has a right to dream, Jack.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t to keep him tucked away all day in his study, where he wouldn’t be a bother to you?”

  “It gives him a purpose, a reason to keep going.”

  “Then, at sundown, you start filling him with booze so you can get him off early to bed.”

  “He was a heavy drinker when I met him.”

  “You created a phony company and published his book yourself.”

  Randy shrugged.

  “Nobody else would. I hid the rejection slips from him. I couldn’t bear to let him see them.” Randy smiled. “You should have seen his excitement when I showed him the acceptance letter from Prospect Press. He said it was the best moment of his life. I was able to give him that, Jack.”

  “You bought up all the stock at bookstores around here, still in the boxes. They kept ordering more, happy to play along. That kept Arthur on the local bestseller list, feeding his fantasies about being a big-shot writer.”

  “Isn’t a fantasy preferable, when the truth is so cruel?”

  I digested that and then felt a jolt of dread.

  “Where’s Arthur?”

  “Arthur had a bad fall,” Randy said.

  In that moment, all the questions that had been plaguing me, the concerns I’d tried to rationalize away, were clarified. The hidden books, the way Randy fed Arthur so much hooch, the fact that Liselle was conveniently gone, and that of all the sturdy fencing around the property, only that one section above the ravine had been in disrepair, along the path where Randy and Arthur took their evening walks.

  I dashed past Randy, back the way I’d come.

  *

  Out on the path, Arthur was no longer in sight.

  As I reached the section of cracked railing, I saw that it was broken through, a mess of splintered boards framing a gaping space. A hundred feet below, in the encroaching darkness, I could just make out a crumpled body on the rock pile.

  Randy joined me, looking over.

  “He was old and frail,” Randy said. “He wouldn’t have been happy as his health declined.”

  “You started planning this the moment Liselle gave notice, didn’t you? When you realized she wouldn’t be around to interfere.”

  “It was an accident. You know how unstable Arthur is on his feet when he’s had a few.”

  “You didn’t need me here, Randy. Why didn’t you leave me out of it?”

  “But I do need you, Jack. D
on’t you understand?”

  He reached to touch my face. I pushed his hand away.

  “I love you, Jack. I want you with me.” He swept an arm, taking in the property. “All this is ours now. We’ll have more money than we ever dreamed of.”

  “You think I’m going to be a part of this?”

  “But you are part of it, Jack. You must know that.”

  The conviction in his voice was unfaltering. I felt panic setting in.

  “You called me, wanting to get back together,” he went on. “I reluctantly agreed to see you one last time, hoping to talk some sense into you. That’s what I told Liselle, who can back me up if necessary.”

  “Jorge saw us together,” I said. “You and Arthur hardly treated me as an intruder.”

  “You wormed your way into Arthur’s good graces, played on his insecurities as a writer. He insisted that you stay on, not me.”

  “You called me, Randy. The phone records—”

  “The phone I used to call you was neither mine nor Arthur’s. It’s deep in the ocean, somewhere between here and Big Sur. Your phone records, on the other hand, will show that it was you who called me, initiating contact. Pleading with me to take you back, until I finally agreed to see you one last time.”

  “Don’t do this, Randy.”

  “Tonight, I left you and Arthur alone for a moment to check on the horses. I heard a struggle, then Arthur screaming. From the stables, I saw you push him through the broken railing.”

  “You could have had that railing fixed. You didn’t. That won’t look good.”

  “Last week, I asked Jorge to repair it. He’s wonderful with the horses but he tends to put off other tasks. I knew he’d take his time fixing it. This evening, as we passed him driving in, I told him to get it done first thing tomorrow morning. I was quite firm with him. Another witness in my favor, Jack.”

  “Did I do this to you? Did I make you this way?”

  “And then there’s the matter of your DNA on the jacket Arthur’s wearing, which puts you in contact with him.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. I shivered, but not from the cold.

  “There’s no reason for any of this to come up, Jack. Really, I’ve worked it all out. You don’t need to get in trouble over this, if we handle it right.”

  He reached for me again. I could have thrown him over the edge, or strangled him, or beaten him to death. It crossed my mind. But the impulse one needs for that, the burning rage, wasn’t in me anymore. Randy kissed me on the mouth and looked surprised when I didn’t respond. But I didn’t pull away, either. I stood there submissively, accepting his attention, the way Dark Streak had.

  Randy scrambled down the slope, no doubt to make sure Arthur was dead. I was waiting as he crawled back up. He must have known I’d be there.

  “He was good to me,” Randy said. “In a way, I’ll miss him.”

  He took my hand.

  “Come, there are things to do.”

  *

  Back at the house, I sat on the terrace, feeling dazed, numb.

  I could hear Randy on the phone, reporting his version of what had happened. His voice was tremulous before he broke into racking sobs. It was a fine performance, a mix of lies and truth. Already, I was having trouble separating the two.

  Across the hills, scattered oaks, the ones that had survived the power saw, created twisted silhouettes against a final blaze of orange in the darkening sky. Randy came out and lit a candle in a small globe. He’d brought with him two glasses and a bottle of tequila, my favorite brand. He took a seat, poured two glasses to the half mark, and pushed one in my direction. No lime, no salt. Just pure and straight, the way I’d always liked it.

  “You and I were drinking,” he said. “Arthur wandered off alone, after he’d had one too many. A tragic accident, but nothing too unusual.”

  “What were we talking about?”

  “What we talked about at lunch today. Don’t embellish. Just stick to that conversation, and we should be all right, if it even comes up. Our local police department doesn’t look for dirt where it doesn’t have to. Hurts property values, you know.”

  The candle flickered in the encroaching darkness. The cocktail hour was almost over. I stared at the golden liquid in the glass, felt myself tremble with my desire for it.

  “You’ll see,” Randy said. “In time, we’ll forget all this. Memory is malleable, Jack, something we revise to help us get through this life. You and I will be a couple, just like before, but with the bad parts edited out. You can start writing again, every day. You’ll find the discipline this time, I know you will.”

  “While you’re out riding horses,” I said.

  “Exactly.” He reached across, clasped my hand. “Trust me, Jack. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  He sipped his drink, but I left mine untouched, even though the craving had begun to claw at my insides. From down on the highway, sirens could be heard. They got louder as the patrol cars turned up into the hills.

  “I’d better meet them at the gate,” Randy said. “It will look better that way.”

  He left me sitting there, watching blades of grass ripple as the wind moved across the pasture. From the stables came a horse’s whinny. It was an agreeable sound, oddly comforting.

  Someone told me once that in a wildfire, horses will run back into a burning barn and into their stalls to die in the flames, so conditioned are they to the feedbag and the brush, the bridle and the bit, the illusion of safety. Now I believed it.

  Private Chick

  Julie Smith

  Don’s the name, Diva’s the game. That’s right, my baby. Born Don Devereaux in Terrebonne Parish, and magically morphed into the fabulous Diva Delish, New Orleans’s most famous mixologist, sometime drag performer, and Mistress of Detection and Disguise. In my business—my second business, that is—you see everything. But what you don’t usually see? A gutter punk with money to spend. The minute she walked in my bar, I recognized her.

  Oh, yeah, I knew her—Miss Thing from down the block. One day her hair’s purple, the next day it’s green, but tell me somethin’—who else goes out of their way to be the worst-dressed chick in the Faubourg Marigny? You know how much competition there is? On this particular night she had cotton candy where her hair should have been and she was wearing this severely clashing yellow polka-dot halter thing that showed off a couple collarbones you could shave your legs with, and the skinniest arms this side of a telephone wire, with brand-new tattoos wrapped around ’em.

  The Palace was hoppin’. You couldn’t hear yourself above the babble of the crowd and the ravishing caterwauling of the blenders making Miss Diva’s ambrosial margaritas. I don’t exactly own the Marigny Palace, but I do own the ambience, if you get my drift. And that night I was wearing my Bar Diva hat.

  “Hello, Your Pinkness,” I said. “Nice slave bracelets. What can I get you? Vodka and cranberry to match that hair?”

  But she wasn’t in a drinking mood. In fact, she seemed a bit puzzled. She consulted a crumpled piece of cardboard. “Somebody gave me this business card, but…I think I might be in the wrong place.”

  I knew all about that card. “Oh, not so much,” I said. “Let me guess whose card. Does it direct you, by any chance, to the world-famous Marigny Palace, home of Double D Investigations, Devereaux and Delish Proprietors, by any chance?” (My second office is just down a little hall at the back side of the bar.)

  All she said was, “This is the Marigny Palace?”

  Well! I thought everyone knew the Palace. They should. The Palace is the quintessence of Neighborhood Bar. It’s the size of a couple of double parlors, and it has ten tables, max. Who needs tables? Palace people—and believe me, they are all kinds of people—belly up. The whole idea is, it’s a lot less barroom than bar—a huge, warm, wooden, U-shaped bar you could wrap around two houses. When you’re in the middle of that U, which is where I was, you command the universe.

  I said. “You’re there, my bab
y. So. You need Diva?”

  “Who’s Diva?”

  Oh, really! Who doesn’t know Diva? But I am the soul of patience with my clients. Half a dick’s job is being a mom. If you can figure that one out. “Me, my darlin’,” I said, the soul of reassurance. “Diva Delish, PI, at your service. Devereaux’s the muscle, Delish is the brains. You’re Wendy, right?”

  “Hey, Delish!” hollered one of my regulars. “Who do I have to kill to get a cocktail around here?”

  I passed the buck. “Carlo, take care of him, okay, baby? Pink drink, extra ice. Wendy here’s got a problem. How about a little drink for her, too?”

  At the sound of her name, Miss Thing looked a little shaken. “Some guy gave me the card. How the hell do you know my name?”

  All righty, then. Nothing to do but tell her the truth. “Cause I’m gooood,” I admitted. “You’re the gutter punk kid panhandles over on Frenchmen, right? With her filthy-ass dreadlocked boyfriend. The one who hasn’t been there lately? Hey! Hey, don’t cry, my baby. Let’s just step into my office and you can tell Miss Diva all about it.”

  She followed me to the back of the bar and into the little hall, her boots clomping, my heels clicking. Barkus heard us and started barking as soon as we crossed the hall to the office. She had to know there was a dog in there. She had two ears, each sporting approximately nineteen piercings, but still, they were ears. But the minute I opened the door, and he rushed her and tried to kill her with kisses, she bellowed, “What the hell is that thing? Get away from me!”

  She pushed him away. Actually pushed my poor sweet baby with both hands, causing him to land back on four feet, puzzled and whimpering.