The Chinese Beverly Hills

by John Shannon

  The yellow gate swung open with a screech and he drove through. There were so few landmarks in the burned chaparral that he was afraid he might be on the wrong fire road—but there it was finally, the cabin with the old Studebaker beside it. A ‘53? He still hadn’t worked out a viable plan for approaching this kid, and now he’d have to wing it.

  He parked beside the Studebaker, near a dropoff into the ravine that was running fast with rainwater. Water seemed to have come up a foot.

  He wondered if he should pretend to be a member of the Tea Party. He had no rigid code about sticking to the truth, but truth sometimes helped in unexpected ways. Appeasing some fussy god.

  “Hello, Mr. Zukovich,” Jack Liffey said.

  The young man at the plank door was dangling a book from his hand.

  “My name is Jack Liffey. I was hired by the family of a young girl from Monterey Park who’s missing. She may have disappeared up here. I have no reason at all to think you have anything to do with this, but it seems to relate to this area and I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Come again?” The young man’s melancholy powder-blue eyes narrowed.

  “There’s a good chance the girl died a half-mile up the trail from here, about the time of the Sheepshead Fire.”

  “No shit. Wow. Come in, man.”

  He looked genuinely surprised, which was in his favor. The main room of the cabin was spartan but still untidy. A cluttered utility sink, a propane hot ring, empty food cans, an open bread loaf, and a big ice chest. On a table beside a hanging canvas chair a lovely old nickel-plated Aladdin mantle lamp was as bright as a hundred-watt bulb. He hadn’t seen one in years.

  “Everybody calls me Zook.”

  A single cot was against the wall with a sleeping bag. A small boom box on a windowsill. The room suggested an army billet out in the field in Vietnam.

  “What are you reading?”

  The young man showed the cover of his book. The Heart of Liberty. “It’s lame,” he said. “Philosophy for little people. No real mind challenge.”

  He went on talking about the real deep thinkers, like Glenn Beck, exposing a world of powerful Jewish banking elites—a zeitgeist that the young man had obviously lived in for years. Jack Liffey decided talking politics at all would only send him into loopy land.

  “I saw a bus bench in town with an ad for Cookie Zukovich, realtor,” Jack Liffey said. “Is that you?”

  “That was a really old bench, man. Shoot it full of holes and then photograph it. The old man and me had issues. His real name was Casimir.” He snorted, as if the name were shameful.

  “Was?”

  “He snuffed it a couple years ago eating oysters with a bunch of rich Chinks. Good riddance. Sorry to sound so doggy, but he beat the crap out of me and Mom when I was too little to stop him. I think it got him off. Hurting us, I mean. When I got old enough to threaten him with a baseball bat, he made me sleep in the garage.”

  “A lot of missing children I’ve looked for had stories like that,” Jack Liffey said.

  The young man stared intently at him for the first time. “Far out. You find kids. That’s awesome, man. Want a beer?”

  “Sure.” He could pretend to drink.

  “The old man was a bitchass of every kind. He helped sell the whole damn town to the Chinks, and when it was too late, he joined SAMP, Save American Monterey Park. Nobodies. Dark-suit assholes that didn’t have no balls. Afraid of really yanking on anybody’s chain. Coors okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Me and some pals still prank the Chinks, but it’s really just funnin’ ’em. We paint out their signs or plant a stink bomb. I ain’t stupid. I know the yellow man owns this valley now, lock, stock, and barbell.”

  Jack Liffey wondered if there was a crack anywhere in the young man’s worldview that might let some light in. He sensed a kind of struggling decency deep inside. Hunting for missing children had touched him.

  The young man clambered into his suspended canvas chair. He pointed to a folding beach chair for Jack Liffey.

  How to approach him? Jack Liffey asked if Zook had ever read Dickens. He barely knew the name. These next American generations lacked all his cultural reference points. He tried desperately to think of a popular movie that dealt with child abuse. A video game, a hip-hop song—good luck.

  “I have a weakness for children in trouble. You know, back in the 1800s, little kids were forced to crawl around all day under cloth looms, unsnarling the threads. The owners insisted they needed the tiny fingers.”

  “Aw, shit. Where do you learn this stuff ?”

  Not in your books, you can bet the farm. They talked for a while longer, but the young man gradually got suspicious. “I was at your keg party, Zook. What do you think of that big South African?”

  “Sketchy. He got me in deep doo-doo with the cops.”

  And it’s all about you, of course, Jack Liffey thought. “Didn’t you toss him the M16?”

  “You wired?”

  “Hell no. Check me out. I’m no cop.” He opened his arms.

  “It’s time for you to bounce. I know this world, man, and the wolves eat the dogs. I’m hanging way out in this. That’s why I’m in retreat here.”

  Jack Liffey took out the photo of Sabine.

  “This is the girl I’m looking for, Zook. She’s Chinese, but she’s innocent of anything her parents or your parents did. Have you ever seen her?”

  Zook stared for a few moments and handed it back. “Naw. I hardly never recognize Chinks. The round faces and slit eyes—they look so much alike they ought to tattoo their names on their foreheads.”

  “Could you tell me how many people use this cabin?”

  Ed Zukovich touched his feet down to bring the swing chair to a stop. “Say what?”

  “Not names. Just give me a round number. Five? Fifty? If she was up here, maybe she came here for some fun.”

  “Not many got a key.” His suspicion was on red alert now. “Hey, how come you was at the keg?”

  “I wanted to know why the USA is going down the tubes. But that South African guy wasn’t any help.”

  “He was a real weird noob. He couldn’t even look you in the eye. My pal said if he’d gone and ordered a whole boatload of loud sons of bitches, and they’d only sent that one, he’d still have accepted the shipment. Ha.”

  “He didn’t make much sense.”

  Zook nodded. “It’s hard to find people who want to straighten things out.”

  “Beware of straighteners,” Jack Liffey said. “Life is a lot stranger than their theories.”

  The boy stared hard at him.

  “I’ll see you again, Zook,” Jack Liffey said. Pointedly he left his business card on the table.

  “I don’t think so, man. Have a nice future.”

  *

  Roski stuck his head in the door at the arson lab. “Do I need booties and a hairnet?”

  “Not unless you’ve got the sniffles,” Monica Flagg said. “Stay back five feet.”

  “It’s hard to stay that far away from you, beautiful.” The official DNA test would come from the blood lab out at L.A. State, but he’d asked a special favor of his local lab to do their own.

  “Knock it off, Walt. I’ve got a steady now.”

  “All the sweetest dreams turn sour.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did, just now.”

  She scowled and discouraged him with a backhand wave. “You don’t want to see all the bars and comparisons. I had to teach myself a lot about DNA science to do this. But you don’t care about the science.”

  “Not so much.”

  “The race up the DNA graph paper has been run.”

  Monica Flagg held up the paper strips with a lot of fuzzy colored bars printed side by side. “In lane one we have the bone fragment. Running in lane two is the swab from Mommy Dearest. They sprinted side by side all the way to the finish line. You want a defensible courtroom number, I’d say it’s one chance in fourteen million t
hat these two aren’t closely related. You want my opinion, subject one is absolutely the daughter of subject two. You said you didn’t want to know the science, but see these two lines here? They’re identical GYPA alleles. When those two are the same, I’m convinced. After all the degradation at the fire, your pals at the big lab will never be able to do an RFLP test anyway.”

  She used forceps to hold up the bone fragment.

  “I’m morally certain that this is Sabine Roh. Sad.”

  “She’s a lot smaller than her picture,” Walt Roski said—the gallows humor of the lab. “And no boobs at all.”

  “Lay off the boobs, okay? I’m sensitive.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake? You’re stunning.”

  “You ever had car batteries hung off tiny straps on your shoulders? You ever had a date whose eyes never met yours? You try to jog and your whole body wig-wags? You can’t sleep at night for the backache? And everywhere you go even women stare at you. Can you assimilate any of that?”

  He held up a hand for a sympathy high-five. “Sorry, a lot of it never occurred to me.”

  She swept her gloved hand past his. “No touchie.”

  *

  It was afternoon and almost time to report in to his employer. Jack Liffey was parked uneasily down the street in Huntington Harbour, half an eye on a big pleasure yacht sliding down the channel. What a strange place this was for her to settle, he thought. As far as he could tell, Tien didn’t even like boats. But they were toys desired by the rich, so she lived with boats and owned boats and commanded boats.

  He’d been stonewalling his thoughts about her for several days now, a brawl between shame and lust running just about even. In the end—all else being equal—he was afraid lust would win.

  “Good morning, Tien,” he said as the door came open on her, not the help.

  “Right on time. You got a crazy thing about on time, Jackie.”

  “You could pretend I’m not here yet if you like.”

  “How I do that? I take one look at you, then down at your bulge, and I want that. I want you bad.”

  “Think of me as a severe librarian, telling you to shush and sit still,” Jack Liffey said.

  “Oooh, yes. Then naughty librarian.”

  I can’t win, he thought. “Get me a soda, Tien. I’m very tense.”

  “Soda make you more loose?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, but it gives us time to talk.” And try to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

  “I get it. You pretend you only good friend, old style. I can play. Lupeta!”

  They sat down in the maddeningly blue living room, and he noticed once again the giant art object of glass mirrors set at various angles. He would run through fire to escape something as disturbing as that.

  The Latina maid came in.

  “Lupeta, háganos algún refrescos softies, por favor. Y la cosa para me.”

  “Si, mi reina.” She withdrew immediately.

  “Very embarrassing, no, Jack? She say my queen. No good in democracy. Dinosaur world stuff.”

  “Ask her: reina de que?”

  “I know what I queen of. Reina de su pinga, amor.” She pointed at his crotch.

  Something about her wacky sexual thoughtlessness always grabbed his fancy. “Calm down. Let’s go out on the patio.”

  Reluctantly she took them out to the patio-dock, though the sky was overcast and the afternoon chilly. Jack Liffey gave her a concise report on his investigation. As he’d supposed, she wasn’t terribly interested.

  The maid found them with a ginger ale and an aperitif for Tien, an iced pale amber-colored liquid with a sliver of orange. It came with a bottle identified as Lillet. Jack Liffey poured himself the soft drink.

  She made a face. “You still do little boy drink.”

  “Tien, I’m weak. If I had both you and booze in the same room, I’d melt into a puddle of protoplasm.”

  “I not know proto-plastic, but I get the idea. You in dog heat, too.”

  “I couldn’t have put it any more vividly. Perfectly balanced by my guilt.”

  She made a face. “In Vietnam they tell me the goal in life for girl is to stay quiet and oh-so-delicate and let family obligation make you little doormat, guys walk-walk-walk over. You know what I say to that? I say passion is what life all about. You find that, don’t throw it away.

  “You know I study in Sorbonne. Maybe I learn it there. Not Buddhist or Roman Cath. All I know for sure—all this submit and shut up stuff is big damn suck. It never make no great ideas or great life. Rage, rage, against end of light—somebody say.”

  “Dylan Thomas.”

  “Okay, this Thomas, he really know his P. Q. You are my number-one passion guy, Jackie. You feel it, too, I think nobody ever tell you you got it. Remember our first time? We was fucking like two crazy kids in my old Porsche in garage, and you scream blood-murder. To wake my dead grandma! Not fair you got to be with cold woman that don’t know the hot in you.”

  “I never said that, Tien.”

  For some reason everything in his life seemed to be up for grabs. It was disturbing. Growing up in the changeless fifties, he’d acquired a comforting conviction that the world was a mapped place, known and predictable. But like most of the Baby Boomers, he’d had that outlook rasped away.

  She tapped her forehead. “I know you in here, Jackie. You in deep kim chee at home with this cold woman.”

  Where did she get these revelations? “Forget that, Tien. You won’t get to me by attacking Gloria.”

  “This no woman-woman contest.” Tien was unbuttoning her silky blouse. “This you me. You want. You need. You take. I want, too. You make me crazy, my love. Please please, no make me cry.”

  He experienced overwhelming arousal.

  “Jackie, you know you want. One time think of you-self, what you need.”

  She stood up. Her small breasts were in the open air, the nipples puckering in the chill, her dark delta in the open, too, and he felt drummed by big raindrops.

  Two couples in a boat passing slowly along the channel stood and applauded. Rain began to patter comfortingly on the whole world.

  “Stay tune for big screaming hello, Jack.”

  TWELVE

  Human Evolution

  Jack Liffey settled wearily on the splintery glide on the porch, trying to keep at least the front door between himself and Gloria—out of hearing range if she started banging away, or at least with plausible deniability. The winter rains had come for real, spilling erratically off the house gutters that were choked with leaves. Another of the chores he’d overlooked. On the way home he’d noticed that his car badly needed fresh wipers. A general and constant decay of things, including his recent sidestep into portable ethics. Oh, Jack. Oh, Tien.

  Loco hurried out of the drizzle, shook himself once, and clambered onto the glide with difficulty. He snuggled against Jack Liffey, panting from the six front steps and the two-foot vault. His age showed in a grizzled snout. He’d never fully recovered from bone cancer surgery and a long regimen of chemo. The half-coyote mutt had always had his own belligerent problems, but he’d become a lot more affectionate of late, as if the rational dog half had finally decided to acknowledge that his owner’s negligible nest egg had been sacrificed to treat his osteosarcoma. Never underestimate my sentimentality, Jack Liffey thought, fondling the bristly snout. Or my sense of guilt. What the hell was he doing with Tien?

  He wondered what it would be like to have so much money that none of your emotional relationships had to depend on it. All his life, he’d had to adjust to the available and existing.

  The sky darkened perceptibly and the rain stepped up a couple of notches. He was happy to be under shelter, watching the slanting offpour from the roof. “What do you think of that, Loco? Water from the sky. Never happens in L.A., right?”

  The flat yellow eyes searched upward at him, probably straining to make sense of the affable tone of voice.

  “It’s okay. You and me, huh? I can sure
make a mess of things. But you’ve seen plenty of that.”

  A flash of light lit the block briefly. Uh-oh. Four… five… six… seven. Then the peal of thunder. A little more than a mile, if he remembered right.

  There was no question of Loco waiting around to calculate the distance in dog miles. He was gone with the sound, vanished from the glide like a disturbing thought to head for whatever hidey-hole he had in reserve.

  The rap of the cane started up inside, strident enough to cut through the wall of the house and the guilt. Coming, my conscience, he thought.

  *

  The nurse had told him that 347 was doing quite well for a crispy. He’d said nothing since he’d invited that with a dark comment of his own. Roski peered inside.

  “You alive, Piscatelli?”

  “What if I said no?”

  “I’ll just send Housekeeping in to water you.”

  The fire jumper smiled, lying on his side on a bariatric air mattress that was noisily tilting him at an angle. He didn’t smile with his eyes. Pain obviously lurked in the tension inside. “You’re the arson desk jockey, aren’t you?”

  “Walt Roski.”

  “Thanks for coming, sir.”

  “In pain?”

  “I pray, that’s my way.”

  “Well, they say that what doesn’t kill you just about kills you.”

  The fire jumper looked puzzled. “They bury Routt yet, sir?”

  “Yesterday, partner. Fire trucks from all over the county flying the flag. A couple of antique pumpers. A slow code three to the cemetery. TV cameras. Mayor and chief at attention. Bagpipes and ‘Last Call.’ The whole nine yards.”

  “Routt woulda laughed at it, but not me.”

  Roski figured this was one earnest human being. “Nothing’s too good for a man who gives his life fighting fires. I hate firebugs with a passion.” Roski set down his briefcase. “Can I get you anything?”

  “That’s what the nurses are for.”

  Roski smiled. “They’re usually not so good about cheeseburgers or Little Debbies, but you seem to be a rule-abiding man.”

  “Rules are made for a reason, sir.”