The Chinese Beverly Hills

by John Shannon

  The man brought his drink and handed Jack Liffey a little Coke bottle and a church key. An old six-and-a-half-ouncer from his youth. “These are from Mexico. The Mexes still use sugar instead of that shit corn syrup.”

  “You mean the Mexicans do something right?”

  Hardi waved that away. “I’m getting tired to death of this fooking outpost.”

  Hardi’s drink had a gin smell. He made some complicated pronouncement about holding off banditos and cartels. Wyatt Earp and Pancho Clanton. It had been simpler in South Africa.

  Jack Liffey heard the patio door slide open and the woman whose leg he’d seen slipped just outside to wait in deference with her own drink. She wore drawstring pants and a t-shirt that said Iron Man Contest. The illustration was a man working at an ironing board.

  “May I join the gentlemen?”

  “Afternoon, my gorgeous. This good lady is Megan Saxton, a journo sent by the great New Yorker to write what a freak of nature looks like. This is Jack Liffey, whose life is devoted to finding missing children, a saint in our midst.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Do you know the Reik brothers?” Hardi asked.

  “Not personally.”

  “They been paying for the Border Guardians, but no money came this month. I wonder if they dumping me. Those kaks.”

  “You want help exposing them? You can signify by nodding.”

  “No.”

  They talked small talk for a while, but Megan said nothing. She watched Jack Liffey like a hawk that was about to pounce on something to eat. He remembered screeches and handcuffs.

  Hardi said something about inferior races.

  “Beating up your own blacks didn’t work out so well, did it?” Jack Liffey said.

  That touched a nerve, though the man’s eyes still wandered. “Ja, sure, it breaks my heart. You bleeding hearts never understand that the dirty work of white people is not over yet. Ask this woman, she’s felt the cock of a real white man.”

  The woman winced.

  “Calm down,” Jack Liffey said. “My strong-hearted friend, I need to know about the orange beret you have on the wall. You can tell me, or you can talk to the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff here is my pal.” His voice was quite aggressive.

  “No, man. The Feds can still deport you. A simple answer will do.”

  He stared into space for a long time, then shrugged. “I caught a pretty little Chink girl right out there packing cocaine north. About twenty kilos. She’d missed her pickup car, lost her water bottle, and had all her cash stolen by some coyote guide. She was amateur city. She wept like a baby and told me she was trying to save her parents. She thought I was la migra.”

  “What did you do with her?” the woman said, suddenly very interested.

  He glared in her general direction. “Hardi, what did you do with the little bitch?” he asked himself, then shrugged. “I told her I’d let her go for a blowjob and her hat. She gave me both.”

  “Then what?” Jack Liffey insisted.

  “The big Boer has a very generous soul. I drove her to the Greyhound in El Centro and bought her a ticket to L.A. And what thanks do I get? She spits on me. The ticket lady will remember me and her, you can check. The bus is in the poor part of that shit town that got no other part. Of course, I kept all her snort.”

  “Can I use the facilities?” Jack Liffey asked.

  The big man thumbed to indicate where, but the woman spoke quickly. “My need is more urgent.” She went inside.

  “Why don’t you get out of this crazy business?” Jack Liffey suggested. “You’re not happy here. There’s plenty of respectable security outfits. I could call a guy for you.”

  “I think I’ll run with it for now. I like being an outlaw.”

  “The Reiks will dump you sooner or later.”

  “Maybe.”

  When the woman came back out, he went to the bathroom and found a scrawled note on the mirror.

  Get me out of here! Please, I’m a mess. The big Joshua tree 20 min.

  He snatched the note down. Every day seemed to take him right past something else that needed to be put right.

  *

  The house staircase was still an impassible cliff to her, so Gloria stood at the top landing hollering toward the front door, her cries muffled by the bandaging around her ribcage. Nothing. Eventually there was a phone call.

  “Is that you, Paula?”

  “I’m out front.”

  “Come right in and come on up. You’re the best. Jack’s out on his own job.”

  “I’m there, homes.”

  Gloria retreated to the bed in exhaustion as she heard the door downstairs come open and the heavy tread of shoes on the stairs. Paula was her best friend all the way back to the police academy, both early members of the brown-and-black club in the department. They’d both have flipped out long ago from harassment without each other.

  Paula’s short nappy hair appeared around the door. “You stuck up here, Gloria?”

  “Can’t help it. I’m old and raggedy.”

  “Girl, some decent guy comes around these days, I can barely get wet.”

  Gloria laughed and almost tore her chest bandages. “How’s life in the Devonshire?”

  “Mostly minor beefs. The murders all gang stuff. Yesterday I went out on an old man demanding that his priest marry him to his goat. I told the priest, why the fuck not if he can get the goat to say ‘I do.’ My captain promises I can finally have my promotion for a regular Tuesday date on my knees.”

  Gloria reached out and they held hands as Paula sat and offered a joint.

  “Oh, thanks. Jack is so damn puritan.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “He had bad trouble back in the day. I swear the man’s got discipline just short of God.”

  “Well, this is from God’s own stash, girl, from a banger hanging outside Mary Immaculate.”

  “Open the window,” Gloria said.

  On the third try, she got the balky sash up. “Tell it, Sergeant Gloria.”

  As they smoked, Gloria got around to what she needed to say. “I was a big stupid, hon. Jack figured out about my date up in Bakersfield, and I got a really bad case of the guilties about what I’d been doing.”

  “Nuh-oh. Time for a bump.” Paula brought out a second joint, waving the air to thin the smoke.

  Gloria relaxed some after a hit. “When they make bud legal, I’m gonna buy a truckload.”

  “Go on, girl. Your guilties.”

  She felt her bliss evaporating. “I felt so damn bad about Sonny up there that I told Jack to go and have himself a slice on the side to get back at me.”

  “Word!”

  “Shit, I didn’t think he’d do it. He’s so fresh and tight.”

  “What makes you think he took the contract?”

  “We know, don’t we? He come home late, smelling way too clean or hitting the shower right away. And he had some kind of bads inside.”

  “What he tell you?”

  “I didn’t ask. I didn’t feel I had the right.”

  “Oh, girl. You got to make him suffer.”

  They both laughed and hugged for a moment.

  “You know what worries me?” Gloria said finally. “Remember Joel Rothstein from the academy?”

  “Course. Who was it said every class always got one Jew to count the money on drug busts?”

  Gloria waved that away. “Joey called me out of the blue yesterday. I think he was sweet on me in the academy. He’s in the political unit now, and he warned me that Jack is messing with some crazy people. Mental cases training to shoot down black helicopters full of UN troopers.”

  “Lots of that hate around since Obama,” Paula said.

  “I wish I could make them all cry, girl. But right now I got to beg you to watch Jack’s back. He’s always trying to save their souls, these dickheads.”

  “I hear you. I’m way overdue for some time off.”

  Gloria wouldn’t tell her
directly to try to dig at Jack’s sex life.

  *

  The Triumph of the Cowboy was supposed to be an exclusive watering hole uptown on the east side, specializing in comfort food like steaks and ribs but secure for the topmost skin of the Manhattan social fabric. The first person Gustav Reik encountered past the door was a man in a scarlet tuxedo grinning and holding out an oversized pair of scissors like a demented tailor.

  “Hold still, sir, while I cut your tie off,” he announced.

  Gustav saw immediately that one large wall was hung with severed neckties. And everyone else in the room was sans necktie. Another joke of Andor’s, not to warn him.

  “Touch my tie if you want to die very slowly,” Gustav hissed. He’d deployed his full aura of command about the $200 Ferragamo, and the scissor-man got it right away and left.

  He took the tie off, and when his eyes adjusted he found Andor in a booth beside a redhead bimbo, body by Barbie. Gustav did not appreciate being summoned into a situation where he was out of place and unacknowledged. “Ad, I didn’t know you were in town until you called. Please stay in touch.”

  “Sorry, Gus. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “Honey, would you go powder your nose?” Gustav said.

  Barbie drew back. “I don’t need to powder my nose.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  She caught on, like the tie-cutter. “Sure, sure. Please don’t just leave me here, Mr. Walker.”

  Gustav sat down in the booth, and they waited until she was well gone. “Walker?”

  Andor shrugged. “That lawyer from the land of fairies is pissed about the South African speaker we sent him. He called me and threatened.”

  “Threatened?” That perked Gustav up.

  “Sort of. Says the cops there are harassing him.” Andor smiled. “We did fuck him over a bit, Gus, sending that colossal asshole.”

  He was in no mood for this. Their Iran-bound freighter had been boarded outside the Straits of Hormuz—ironically enough by the destroyer USS John S. McCain, named for a man who’d uselessly absorbed many millions of their political dollars. “People who want to ride with us better ride happy. I’ve already instructed Bernie to drop him. But did he make a direct threat?” Gustav Reik hated the vagueness that crept over his brother so often.

  “He said something about friends in the press.”

  “He’s history. I’ll deep-six his whole district if I have to.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “My generous period is over. I had to write off our cargo today—sixty million. Okay, it’s not even real money. But we’ve got to stay on top of events; domestic politics is the key to our future.”

  Andor sipped at a reddish drink that this horrible place had put in a proper martini glass. “Bro, I’ve been getting nervous about things since the New Yorker and Atlantic started following me around. Don’t you think it would be better to keep a low profile on this lawyer thing?”

  “If you want to keep eating at the big table, Ad, indicate by saying yes.”

  “Settle down. Have a drink.”

  “Not now. I’ll handle Mr. California. And you can go powder Barbie’s nose.”

  *

  The only Joshua tree within miles was a hundred yards up the road, and he found her sitting on a small suitcase, sort of behind it. Not exactly hidden.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, lunging inside his pickup. “Go!”

  “Was he holding you?”

  “Not exactly. Have you ever been caught up in something that made you need a knock upside the head to wake up?”

  He thought of Tien, of course. “I get it. The guy’s compelling.”

  “He’s a mile wide and I couldn’t get around him. Just when you start thinking he’s intolerable, he does something sweet. He’s a bit off the track, too. Probably Asperger’s.”

  “You came here to profile him?”

  She made a sour face. “I screwed that up, didn’t I? I hit the big time for a journalist, but I’m still just a farm girl from Iowa. When you get out of control, how can you know if it’s just temporary?”

  “Things aren’t necessarily better when they’re more intense,” he offered.

  She looked behind quickly to see if any cars were following.

  “You’re safe with me, ma’am. Megan? I won’t even ask for your hat.”

  “Or the blowjob?”

  “My life is complicated enough. And I used up most of my playground bluff on that big guy.”

  Twilight was just falling. “I’m glad you don’t have to get hurt to prove some macho point to yourself.”

  “Me, too. Where do you want me to take you?”

  “Any airport, thank you. Can I call you Jack?”

  “Of course. Talk to me. Get the poison out of your system.”

  She stared hard at him. “Hardi’s right. How did I blunder into such a saint?”

  He shook his head. “You know what really makes a saint? A point of view from so high up that you can’t make out the people down there. That way you can love them all.”

  She smiled. “I was such a dope, Jack. I’ve met a lot of men who fake a kind of stony, commanding presence. Gary Cooper, you know. I thought I loathed it all; I resented the servility of emotions they took for granted with me. But Hardi just walked up and blew all my resistance away.”

  “Why don’t you try imagining him nude in fancy cowboy boots.”

  She stared hard at him. “I take it you’re not available.”

  “You may not be able to see it, Megan, but I’m a bigger mess than you are. You prefer San Diego International or LAX?”

  *

  Ellen hunkered down behind a trash dumpster in the doorway alcove of the Sweet Blanket Beauty Salon that was just across a shiny wet street from the Commando clubhouse. She’d seen Beef go in ten minutes earlier.

  Waiting, she felt a pang of regret that her last encounter with Sabby had been a spat. “‘Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another,’” Ellen had quoted Emma Goldman to her. And Sabby had gone off on her usual mania: “Not with Nazis, never!”

  Ellen heard a scritch-scritch coming along the sidewalk. A weak streetlamp lit the drizzle that drifted into her alcove. Thunder rumbled in the mountains. Scritch. Scritch.

  Eventually a shopping cart nosed into sight, full of trash and hung with plastic bags of cans and bottles. A grizzled black man in bib overalls came into view behind it. He’d almost passed by when he halted and glared straight at her like someone in a nightmare. “Who dat debbil?”

  She peered around the wheeled trash bin, the worst possible hiding place to avoid a scavenger.

  “You wid de almon’ eye dere!”

  “I’m nobody. You can have everything in this can, sir.”

  “You tempt me into de dark? You for sure de debbil.”

  “I’m just a girl, sir.” She dug in her jeans pocket and waved a twenty around the side of the bin. “This is for you.” She scuttled out, set it down, and hurried back. “Please.”

  “I know your tricks!” he shouted. “Cotch up the next soul, debbil!” From the depths of his cart he dug up a rock about the size of a baseball. He backed off and kicked a straight leg high as if a pitcher’s moves were imprinted in his muscle memory. He fastballed the rock toward her, and she felt it skip hard off the lid of the trash bin. Then the glass door behind her shattered. An earsplitting alarm tore open the night.

  *

  Beef and Marly Tom and Sailor Boy Sallis had been trading turns at the foosball table. They missed Zook, but he hadn’t been responding to his cell, and they were worried.

  “Where you think Zook’s off to?” Tom asked.

  “We can kill one evening without the great Zook,” Sailor Boy said.

  “I have some 4-1-1,” Tom said reluctantly.

  “Go on,” Sailor Boy said. “You’re the only guy here who reads books that ain’t got pictures in them.”

  Beef gave a resonant fart sound by flapping hi
s underarm on his hand.

  “The slope cunt that’s been following us around and panting like a teacup dog—she went and got herself gone.”

  “Who cares?” Beef said.

  “Manny told me the cops think somebody had his fun with her and killed her. They’re looking hard at Zooker. We know Zook doesn’t do shit like that so I say we got to prove him innocent.”

  “How?”

  “I got a list of child molesters and weenie-waggers in town. We gotta find if any of these guys did the deed.”

  They heard a ruckus outside, a man yelling, and they cocked their ears. After a silence, glass shattered and a burglar alarm went off nearby. Beef sprinted straight out the clubhouse door before anybody else could move.

  *

  Ellen dodged and danced, confronting the fierce black man who’d decided to block her into the alcove. He countered every feint, his arms wagging.

  “Oh, debbil, I got you in lockdown!”

  “I’m not the devil, you idiot!”

  She heard a door slap open across the street and the nightmare went into overdrive as Captain Beef himself emerged into the street.

  She darted past the shopping cart and the man ripped off the do-rag covering her blue hair.

  “Debbil!” he yelled.

  “Stop there, Chinkie!” a baritone voice shouted.

  She knew her town as well as anyone, and ran hard to the right, then darted into the East Pacific Bank parking lot and made for a far retaining wall. If she could get into the back streets, she knew every alley and hedge. She heard shouts and steps behind her, and the baritone seemed to be gaining.

  She struggled over the wall and leaped down into a gated alleyway that opened on three apartment buildings with parking underneath. She ran for the electric gate at the side, but no one was entering. Voices cried out behind her.

  The only possibility now was a constricted passage between two stucco buildings that she hadn’t used since she was twelve. She made for it now.

  “We got you, bitch!”

  “Give up and we won’t dance a party on your butt!”

  She threw herself into the gap, so tight that she had to turn her head sideways and shove her body along, foot by foot, scraping dimples off the stucco. Claustrophobia sent a warning straight to some inner animal. If she freaked now, she thought, the fire department would have to demolish the buildings to drag her dead body out.