The Chinese Beverly Hills

by John Shannon

  “Your urgent news,” Jack Liffey said when she’d gone.

  “Wall Street is messing with our economy.”

  Jack Liffey made an unpleasant sound. “I think I’ve heard that.”

  Roski took two eight-by-ten photos out of a briefcase. “We heard there might have been a gunshot wound, so once the DNA test was positive, we went back to the scene and sifted some more. And we were watched over by a shiny-shoes from D.C. who called himself Smith. Hah. He’s not my friend, I’ll tell you that.”

  Roski laid out the eight-by-tens that had no need to be that large. The first was of a bullet that had mushroomed badly on impact. “A .45 caliber, a crappy garage reload that you can buy by the hundred at a swap meet in big plastic bags. Basically you use unjacketed reloads because you’re an asshole and you don’t care about degrading your weapon. And, oh yeah, you don’t want to write your name down in a gun store.”

  He tapped the second photo. “This one is a piece of the frontal bone of a human skull. See the crack? They tell me it had to be a powerful blow, probably a bullet. Here’s the rub: the bullet wasn’t found under the skull. Probably in a shirt pocket, for Chrissake. When the science folks tell me the sun revolves around the earth, I believe them.” He sat back and closed his eyes.

  “Stay with me.”

  “You know what it means, Jack? Or probably means?”

  “Please.”

  “We got handcuffs. A smashed skull. And maybe a bullet stuffed into her clothing, who knows why. This poor kid was killed somewhere else and dragged there.”

  They fell silent as Roski’s beer came. A guitarist far across the interior space began tuning up and practicing, but the sound didn’t invade their privacy. Roski seemed to want to relax, but couldn’t get very close to it. He glanced at his watch, then at Jack Liffey’s Coke. “You in AA?” he asked.

  He’d told Roski most of it already, but the guy was lost in the null zone of his own troubles. “I got heavy into substances maybe fifteen years ago. I used to think I could mix it up with anything and come out on top, but it wasn’t true. I lost a lot for it.”

  Roski stared into his beer. “Yeah. Iraq cost me a wife and two kids. I was in the Marine Reserves. We volunteered to be the guys they call up to protect the homeland if Canada invades.”

  “Walt, I was drafted to invade another country. Full of small yellow people like Sabine Roh.” And Tien. “The only deal I had was being born in a country that never ever did things like that.”

  Roski nodded. “Somebody better be crying in Hell.”

  “You believe in Hell?”

  “Of course not. What a stupid idea. Jack, I don’t think I asked you here this afternoon to talk about a bullet. I asked you because I need a friend.”

  “Say what?”

  “I know it’s creepy. I’m supposed to be Mr. Tough and Competent. Most firemen are really good guys. But the guys who climb to the top…” He shook his head. “I go to lunch with my counterparts and they spend half the lunchtime talking about which is the best shopping mall, or arguing whether the Burger King Whopper is better than In-n-Out. After that, the inner life of my life seems to have crashed and burned.”

  A trumpet bleated across the mezzanine. Roski flinched and glanced around. “Ah, shit, that spooks me. Without calm-down drugs, I’d’ve been in orbit now. I’m a classic PTSD.”

  Jack Liffey thought of Gloria hiding her inner struggles from her captain. He stuck his fist out and Roski popped it from above with his.

  “Homes.” But Jack Liffey was thinking, why me? And a burning indigestion started up high in his chest.

  “I could see you were a mensch, man.”

  “Don’t go overboard.”

  Roski handed across a notecard with a hand-drawn map.

  “What’s this?”

  “A favor. I had my staff find out where your loud South African lives. I think you told me you’d like another talk with him.”

  He hadn’t told Roski any such thing, but he took the map, which looked a lot like the one he’d found in Sabine’s room. Apparently the man wanted to use him for a little free investigation. They chatted a while longer, but Roski became increasingly self-absorbed, like a high-strung ballet dancer.

  “I’ve got a wife to feed,” Jack Liffey said. He didn’t really want to add, but he did: “Let’s get together soon.”

  Roski thanked him with a nod. “I’ve got a parrot at home to feed.”

  “Really?” Parrots seemed to Jack Liffey to have passed out of the real world into the world of Saturday morning cartoons.

  “Fuck, no. I do all the squawking in my house.”

  FOURTEEN

  The Social Presence of a Woman

  The sensation of being lost was really only a game she was playing with herself in the desert stroll. Megan Saxton knew that if she glanced back across the weeds, she’d see Hardi’s isolated house. She did turn for a moment and blinked, startled by the world’s will to confute her. No house at all. Ahead somewhere was the dangerous border, so behind her had to be the house. But where exactly was behind?

  She gave a single bird cry, as she once had at camp. Was she cracking up? She could do anything she liked here. She could strip her clothes off and laugh in the face of God. She did laugh, remembering the delicacy of Hardi Boaz’s testicles in her hand. That a man so big would cry uncle if she squeezed.

  Something moved in the dry grass, and she held her breath. Some ruthless drug-runner? A part of her knew it wasn’t, knew it was just a breeze or a lizard or a nesting bird. She was playing with her fear, but she took the idea willfully and centered it in her head with the playacting impulse that seemed to have overtaken her.

  “It’s quiet,” she said aloud. “Too quiet,” and then she laughed. “Come get me.” She brushed her foot noisily through the dry grass and there was no reply.

  All the melodrama fed the mistrust she’d always harbored toward her mental faculties. She could never stay focused for long or think things all the way to the end, and it made her furious at herself and her parents’ deficient gene pool.

  Words were what she had and what she always came back to. Her diaries, poems, letters, essays to herself, and the A-list journalism. By unspoken pact with herself she did not look too closely at her words later, afraid they might not be good enough to make up for all the other failures. A haze in the air recalled summer days of hide and seek, and a burning smell evoked the taste of trash smoke, blue and damp and ashy. No, the sour smell was human shit along the cross-border trail.

  “Chuey. Tremenda cagada. El norte no es esta manera.”

  “Lo sé.”

  Every hair on her body stood on end at the voices. It had to be drug bandits, armed and dangerous. She backed up a step, her eyes scouring the rolling expanse of shrubs. The faintest of breezes disturbed the weeds, the crazed womankillers behind every bush. She nearly passed out, and then she hurled herself out of her faint into a run northward. Her legs wouldn’t work properly, and she veered left and right in the awkward gait of panic.

  *

  Ellen’s cell phone chimed the Internationale, which about ten people in America would recognize. She was staying home, taking care of her little girl to give her mom a day off.

  “It’s me, Diana.”

  “Ellen?”

  “So?”

  “I know I said I was out of this, but Sabby’s my best girl. I got some info on Zook. You want it?”

  “Go on.”

  “This is from a nice old Chicana in the County Assessor’s Office where they’re digitizing all the property records. Luckily he’s Zukovich, not Smith or Wang. She found me his family house on the north flats of MP, nothing special, but then she found something else. His family owns a cabin off a fire road in the mountains. It’s just into the Angeles National Forest.”

  Ellen was thinking about the body Jack Liffey had told her was found up there.

  “Those motorcycle asshats have been partying up there for years.”

 
“Have you got an address?” Ellen asked.

  “I can give you the GPS.”

  *

  “I want you stay tonight, Jackie. You know it. I got business in morning but I can work it out.”

  He looked around her home with amazement. What was it that the French intellectuals called an event like this? An overdetermined conjuncture. Too many things shoving you toward the same thought.

  Candles flickered everywhere in the room, come-hither lounge jazz was playing on an invisible sound system, and the table had a bottle of Cristal Brut Champagne with the cellophane still on it—plus, just in case, a bottle of ginger ale. To top it off, Tien was wearing a robe just translucent enough to taunt his imagination.

  “Everybody’s got business in the morning, Tien,” he said. “If I stayed here tonight, my life would disintegrate. And don’t phone my home again and leave a message like that. I mean it. If you do, you’ll never see me again.”

  “Your life no good at all, Jackie. Too much pain, no joy. You one torment guy. You need me to make you whole new life. Now you just part of the quan sat.”

  That Vietnamese expression—a direct translation from the innocent American newsmen—had become a dark joke among the troops. Body count.

  He wondered if he was just part of life’s body count. Sometimes it felt like it. Wasn’t that what Greek tragedy was? We’re all guilty and we’re all innocent because we don’t have a clue what we’re doing. Quan sat.

  He noticed across the room that the giant viewstopper yacht was gone. “Where’s your battleship?”

  She shrugged. “Tax problem. I get some sea guys take her to Ensenada for a while. We say that her home. No tax.”

  He was sure she didn’t know how deeply that offended him. He’d always paid his share without resentment—except for the part that went to wars and corporate subsidies. He’d been happy to build roads and give a little to the weak and unfortunate. I am the ninety-nine percent.

  She pointed at a place setting across the dining table blazing with candles. “You sit.”

  He slid out the chair and noticed a small box wrapped with gold ribbon on his plate. Uh-oh. He’d been through this with her before, but it was clear she still felt she could buy him. He sat, wondering if he did have a price. A hundred thousand dollars? A million? Ten million? He picked up the box and reached across the table to set it on her plate. “No, Tien. We’ve been down this road.”

  “It nothing to me, sweet love. No pressures, no-no. That number ten.”

  He shook his head, but of course he wondered what was inside. A diamond as big as the Ritz? He might be able to pay for all of Maeve’s college. “Tien, can’t you see how this makes me feel?”

  “You in bad way, I think. No big deal, Jackie. Small beer.” She slid the ribbon off and handed across the open box.

  How could he not look? He bent close to see a wristwatch in a velvet crèche. It was a gold Patek Philippe, with a diamond where the 12 should have been and only two roman numerals on the all-black dial. He could buy a Casio that performed a hundred other functions for fifty bucks, but he knew this absurd object was probably worth as much as Gloria’s house, maybe more. What is my price? he thought.

  “No, Tien. It doesn’t work this way.” He set the small box in the middle of the table. She didn’t seem upset at all, and in the end her nonchalance was more attractive to him than the watch, though she would never have understood why.

  “Forget watch,” she said. “We eat.” She headed for the kitchen, and he realized that for the first time ever she had no attendants hovering. Uh-oh again.

  “You cooked this yourself ?” he asked. She’d come back with plates holding two lettuce leaves with tiny squiggles of beige sauce on them.

  “Not exact. But you lick your lips. Coming soon is slice of wagyu ribeye, wasabi spinach and har-lee-quin peppers.” She’d said it all, as if she’d memorized the words, an immigrant waiter in training, but there was a catch in her voice. She left again.

  What the hell, he thought. He could eat some caterer’s best without obligation.

  When she strode back into the dining room carrying the two dinner plates, her gown was open all the way down to the dark delta of desire. He could see that tears were running down her cheeks.

  “You here right now, my big sweet love,” she said desolately. “Can you keep me busy?”

  It broke his heart.

  *

  Megan Saxton was about to crumple to the earth from the effort involved in running with her muscles so tensed up. Then she saw Hardi trotting toward her with an intimidating rifle in one hand, heard the steady clomping of his boots.

  “Mevrou, get down!” he ordered.

  She collapsed flat on the ground, gasping, and he sent horrible rifle shots in a steady banging out in every direction. Once, peeking up, she saw a little flame come out of the barrel. Then he waited, studying the terrain.

  “Venga matanza mí, pendejos!” he shouted. “Si tiene cualquier huevos!” Come kill me, assholes. If you have any balls.

  There was nothing but the rustling of breeze across the shrubs.

  “You heard men speaking Spanish?” he asked softly, and she nodded.

  He remained alert, but when nothing happened, he held his rifle with one hand and picked her up like a ragdoll with the other.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. She had little bluff left, she thought, feeling a primitive, numb shame that she was sure every girl would feel in the face of such power.

  Her confusion seemed to summon the supernatural. They were abruptly surrounded by a whirring nimbus that shimmered in the air, creating a pocket of reddish—what? The atmosphere was molten, alive. Something grazed her cheek. The nimbus was giving off a hissing sound, some phenomenon that had to struggle to live.

  She was absolutely alert in Hardi’s arms, straining to understand, yet she did not want to understand too quickly. And then a ladybug landed on his shirt and she saw that it was a cloud of them, a swarm, many of them tumbling to earth as if victims of engine failure. She breathed through a slitted mouth, excitable, near some emotional blooey.

  “Fear not, my woman,” he said softly. “They just search for a new home, like wetbacks.”

  He carried her through the gate and into the house and then through the big living room with its horrible trophy collection of antlers and animal heads plus the one small orange beret on a hook. What was that about, she wondered.

  *

  Zook tossed a quartered log into the Franklin and bumped the fire door shut with his knee. He’d had canned chili for supper, and a hot dog grilled on top of the stove wrapped in a slice of soft bread. Jack Liffey’s ice was down to meltwater and the beer was none too cold. He should put some cans out in the rain, which was roaring again like a good pushrod V-8 with a blown gasket, but he worried about two-legged predators coming up the fire trail.

  He settled into the swing chair with the beer and the book the old man had left him. Jack Liffey had suggested he start with the thing on women. Within minutes he realized he’d never read writing like this—it surprised, jumping across gaps, forcing you to build your own bridges.

  The presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power that he embodies. … A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.

  By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.

  Hay-sooze! He usually knew where shit was coming from or going, but not here. He pushed on into a way of looking at men and women he’d never thought of. It made him think of Sylvia, his spunky little sister who’d always said that he dissed her every time he opened his mouth. She’d fled the family for parts unknown.

  From earliest childhood she has always been taught to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her iden
tity as a woman.

  *

  Maeve wriggled comfortably on a floor pillow in the glass house on Canna Road that looked out to the whole Westside of L.A. She swiveled back to face the swami himself, who sat down comfortably in a lotus directly on the floor. He was in more characteristic swami attire: an orange robe with bare feet.

  “CD number one was rudimentary. I don’t want to drive anybody away. Evolving has to start slow.”

  “Explain evolving.”

  “Humans reached an end of physical evolution a hundred thousand years ago. We aren’t going to develop another opposable thumb, or a blunt finger for pushbuttons. Any further evolution is going to be in here.” He touched his temple. “And here.” He poked his chest. “Both the head and heart are ninety percent unused.”

  I know where they are, she thought, but decided not to be hostile.

  “There are generally three paths to enlightenment or evolution, but a few people in the Middle East discovered a fourth way. Madame Blavatsky, G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky. I call this path work because it’s not a weekend jaunt. Please shut your eyes and focus on the processes going on inside your body.”

  In for a dime, she thought, in for eleven cents.

  His voice became a purr. “Maeve Liffey, relax and open your inner ears.”

  He told her that the first conventional path was the way of bodily struggle—the way of the fakir. He pronounced it fah-KIR. Those who took this path could develop amazing powers over their body: slowing their heartbeat, living without food for months.

  The second path was the purification and stilling of the emotions—the way of the monk. The Albigensians, St. Teresa, the Buddha. He said he respected them all, but it had limits.

  The third path was the purification of the mind—the way of the yogi or the way of Zen. Or in the West, the intensive study of philosophy.

  She was tempted to peek at him but was afraid he was watching her like a furious animal.

  “Our architects found the fourth path. You may have noticed that the other three paths require seclusion from the world, in monasteries or ashrams or libraries.”