This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  “Great hotel,” Boone says, trying to figure out some way to be polite about moving on. Delia didn’t show for her shift again, and thirsty customers are lined up all the way to the waitress station.

  “Be nice to have a friendly tour guide,” Red says.

  “Talk to Robo, our doorman,” Boone replies. “I bet he can help you out.” He turns quickly to the guy standing next to Red and asks what he wants, and it’s go-go time after that. Gonzalo, the bar back, handles the drinks for the dining room while Boone moves up and down the stick, pouring beers and blending margaritas, completely focused on keeping his orders straight and making sure tabs are settled.

  He falls into a groove sometimes when he’s slammed, and an hour will pass like nothing. It makes him think back to Corcoran, when a day could last a month, no matter how many god-damn games of dominoes or chess you played, trying to burn off your time.

  Right when things are busiest, Simon, the owner’s son, appears at the end of the bar. A little schmuck with curly black hair and a prominent mole on his cheek, he runs the place for his father. This entitles him to hit on all the waitresses when he isn’t holed up in the office watching online porn and entertaining his “boys,” the greasy pack of rich shitheads he rolls with. He’s twenty-three, drives a Lexus, and recently boasted to Boone that he’s popped eight cherries so far. The mere sight of the guy is enough to put Boone in a foul mood.

  “See that dude?” Simon asks, pointing with his nose at a wigger in a baby blue warm-up suit who’s been nursing a Southern Comfort and Coke and chatting up the other customers.

  “Eminem?” Boone asks. The kid looks fourteen, but Boone checked his ID when he ordered, a Florida license that put him at twenty-two.

  “Watch him,” Simon says. “I think he’s up to no good.”

  “You want Robo to walk him out?”

  “What did I just say? I want you to watch him. Find out what his game is and call me.”

  Boone grits his teeth, being talked to like that by such a punk, but there’s not much he can do about it. Employment opportunities are limited for ex-cons, and he needs the job.

  “You got it, boss,” he says, the words stinging his tongue like acid.

  IT ISN’T LONG before Boone hears the kid offer to sell ecstasy to a young couple who look ready to party. Money changes hands, the deal is done, and the wigger moves on to work another section of the bar.

  Boone calls Simon in the office.

  “The kid’s selling X,” he says.

  “Okay. Now what I want you to do is take him out back, to the alley, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’m a bartender, Simon, not security. You’ve got Robo for this kind of shit.”

  “Robo has enough to do. Get Gonzalo to watch the bar for a minute while you handle this.”

  Boone hangs up. Deep breaths from the stomach. He needs to get past the initial red-hot, “I want to kill every fucking thing” spasm and shove his anger into a cage, where he can gawk at it like it’s a poor, dumb zoo animal. It’s a trick a shrink taught him in the joint, but it’s tough today. The tiger fights back with all its strength.

  * * *

  BOONE HAS EVERYTHING under control by the time he steps out from behind the bar. He’s focused yet alert, his antennae extended. He feels like he used to when guarding a client at a crowded premiere, like a cocked and loaded pistol. It’s good to be back in action, even if he is just rousting some goofball.

  He swoops down on the wigger, who’s bobbing his shaved head and mouthing the words to the old Beastie Boys song blasting out of the sound system. Putting his hand in the middle of the kid’s back, Boone exerts just enough pressure to get him moving, all the while talking in a low, friendly voice, a big smile on his face.

  “Hey, bro, how’s it goin’? Having a good time? Buddy of mine wants to invite you to join our VIP club. Have you tried any of our drink specials?”

  The idea is to fill his pea brain with so much noise that by the time he realizes what’s up, he’ll be out of the restaurant.

  “We got three-buck Jager shots, kamikazes.”

  “Do I know you?” the kid asks as they pass the bathrooms. He stiffens and slows, starts to turn around. Too late. Boone grabs his wrist and twists his arm up between his shoulder blades as he shoves him through the back door and across the alley that runs behind the restaurant, pinning him face-first against a brick wall and kicking his ankles until he spreads his legs wide.

  “What the fuck?” the wigger yells. “You best get offa me, motherfucker.”

  The stench of rotting garbage from a nearby Dumpster has Boone breathing through his mouth. Simon steps into the alley with a mean smile.

  “Let me see him,” he says.

  Boone wraps an arm around the kid’s throat and turns him to face Simon, who is careful to keep his distance. Spillover from a neon sign on the boulevard gives everything a spooky green glow and makes them all look like monsters.

  “So you’re a real pimp, huh? Big-time dope dealer,” Simon says to the kid, getting all South Central via Beverly Hills.

  “The fuck you talking about, dope dealer?” the kid replies.

  “I got you on camera, dog, selling to my customers. The cops are on their way.”

  The wigger struggles a bit, and Boone tightens up on his windpipe to calm him. The kid’s pulse taps frantically against the thin skin on the underside of Boone’s forearm.

  “What’s your name, playa?” Simon asks.

  “Virgil,” the kid replies. “Folks call me V for Vendetta.”

  “What do you think this is, Virgil, the fucking ghetto? The fucking trailer park where you grew up? This is Hollywood, son, and I own this town.”

  “I didn’t know,” Virgil says, his voice rising into a whine. “Come on and let me go and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Let you go. Right. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Bullshit. That mustache of yours looks like a motherfucking eyelash.”

  “Okay, eighteen.”

  “Eighteen? Oh, man, the booty bandits down at County are gonna be scrapping over you.”

  “Come on, dog.”

  Simon rubs his mole and pretends to think while Virgil trembles in Boone’s choke hold, close to crying. Boone frowns at Simon and shakes his head to say, “That’s enough,” but Simon ignores him.

  “Show me everything you got,” Simon says.

  “What?”

  “The drugs, fool.”

  Virgil reaches into his pocket and brings out a plastic bag. Simon grabs it and empties it on top of a Dumpster.

  “Shit, doc, you make house calls?” he says as he sorts through the contents. “We got some rock, some powder — what is it?”

  “Crank.”

  “These pills?”

  “Vicodin.”

  “Nice!”

  Simon sweeps everything back into the bag and says, “You know what I have to do, right? I’m confiscating all this garbage and taking it off the street. We have to think about the children.”

  “Come on, dog,” Virgil wails. “Why you want to rip me off?”

  “Why you want to peddle drugs in my house? You’re lucky I don’t have my man here tear you a new asshole.”

  “Seriously, bro, somebody fronted me that stuff. I come back with nothing, I’m in deep shit.”

  “You’re in deep shit right now, you idiot. What are you? Retarded? Let him go, Jimmy.”

  Finally, Boone thinks as he releases his grip and Virgil scurries out of reach. A couple of real criminal masterminds going head-to-head. Boone wants to smack them both. Virgil runs halfway down the alley, then stoops to pick up an empty beer bottle and turns back to face Boone and Simon.

  “You stupid bitch,” Simon says. “I’m giving you a pass. Take it and get the fuck out of here.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Virgil says around a sob. “Give me my shit.” Green tears crawl down his cheeks.

  Simon takes a few steps toward hi
m, and Virgil throws the bottle, which shatters harmlessly in the shadows. He then runs to where the alley opens onto Cherokee, turns left, and disappears.

  Simon is bent at the waist, laughing. “Now that was fucking funny,” he says.

  Boone snorts disgustedly and walks inside the restaurant. Danny Berkson, his lawyer, lined up this bartending gig for him when Boone was released from prison six months ago; worked out some kind of deal with Simon’s dad, an old friend of his. Boone is grateful, but he isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to tolerate Simon. And this kind of crap, jacking dope dealers — if his parole officer got wind of it, she’d violate him for sure.

  Simon catches up to him and pats him on the shoulder.

  “You must have been an excellent bodyguard,” he says with a nasty grin.

  Boone doesn’t respond.

  “Too bad you fucked up, huh?”

  “Too bad,” Boone says. He thought the story of how he ended up here was going to stay between him, Berkson, and Weinberg, but now Simon knows too. Boone hopes that whatever shit Simon helps himself to from Virgil’s stash is cut with rat poison.

  CUSTOMERS ARE THREE deep at the bar when Boone returns. Gonzalo is getting it from all sides. Boone steps behind the stick and dives right in. After a few orders he finds his rhythm, and his troubles slide to the back of his mind. Work can be a blessing sometimes, when everything else lists toward rotten.

  The crowd thins out at about eleven, when the restaurant stops serving and everyone moves on to one of the clubs in the neighborhood. Wait an hour in line, pay twenty bucks to some jerk-off with too much gel in his hair, and maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of a drunk starlet’s snatch.

  This is Boone’s favorite part of the night, the sudden quiet after all the hustle. It feels like a party has just ended, kind of mellow, kind of melancholy. He listens to the waitresses gossiping at the end of the bar as he polishes wineglasses. They’re all ten years younger than him. How the hell does that happen?

  Gonzalo is practicing tossing ice and catching it in a cup behind his back, some kind of Tom Cruise Cocktail move. He’s saving up to open his own place in Mazatlán where he’ll serve sweet, potent drinks with names like the Itchy Pussy and the Cum Shot to sorority girls on spring break. “You can come work for me,” he told Boone the other day. Definitely an offer to consider.

  Boone puts the Nirvana unplugged CD on the sound system and begins setting up for the day guy. Mr. King and Gina roll in for Mr. King’s nightcap. Mr. King is dressed to the nines as usual, in an ascot and a dark blue jacket with brass buttons. He’s eighty-two, a retired cameraman whose heyday was in the fifties and sixties. He’s got those big, thick glasses, and his last few strands of white hair are combed straight back and lacquered across his spotted scalp. Gina, his fourth wife, is a mail-order bride from the Philippines. She’s a plump little woman, maybe thirty years old. Looks more Spanish than Asian.

  They live in a condo at the base of the hills and come in an hour before closing every night. In spite of the difference in their ages, they seem to get along just fine. Gina doesn’t speak much English but always has a smile on her face, and the old man treats her with a gentleness Boone doesn’t often see husbands display toward their wives.

  Mr. King once told him that Filipino women are the best in the world. Loyal, loving, good cooks. “They smell kind of strange down there,” he said, pointing at his crotch. “But you get used to it quick enough.” Boone didn’t tell him that he’d been with plenty of Olongapo whores when he was in the Marines and never once caught a whiff of anything funny.

  “What can I get you tonight?” Boone asks. “The usual?”

  “For Gina, a Sprite, but for me, it’ll be a Blood and Sand,” Mr. King replies.

  “A Blood and Sand, huh? You’re gonna have to help me with that one.”

  Mr. King leans back on his stool and rubs his hands together. He’s on a mission to turn Boone into a proper bartender. That means once a week or so he forgoes his usual martini to order a drink nobody’s heard of since Kennedy died, then guides Boone through the process of preparing it. Boone gets a kick out of the way he calls out the ingredients, playing teacher.

  “First, you’ll need a shaker filled with ice.”

  “Got it.”

  “Now an ounce of scotch — not the good stuff, something blended will do fine — and an ounce of orange juice.”

  Boone measures them out and pours them into the shaker.

  “Then three-quarter ounces each of cherry brandy and sweet vermouth.”

  “I bet you sleep good tonight.”

  “Shake it, strain it into a martini glass, and I’ll have mine with two cherries.”

  Boone slaps down a napkin and sets the drink in front of Mr. King, who sips it, his hand shaking a bit as he raises the glass, then nods approvingly and says, “Fantastic. Make yourself one, Jimmy.”

  Boone doesn’t necessarily want a drink, but it’s part of the routine: Mr. King always buys him one of whatever classic concoction he’s having.

  Boone has refilled the shaker with ice and added the scotch when Robo appears at the bar and motions him over. Robo stands six feet tall and weighs in at about 350 pounds. His enormous gut starts right below his chest and hangs over his belt, and there are thick rolls of fat on the back of his bald head. He couldn’t run to save his life, but God be with you if he gets his hands on you. Boone once saw him dislocate a mouthy drunk’s shoulder with a flick of his wrist, and he can fold half-dollars between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Can you talk now?” Robo asks.

  “Sure, man, shoot,” Boone replies.

  “You heard about that kid on the bus, right? The one with the dog bites?”

  There was something about it on the news last week. A Guatemalan illegal turned up dead on an MTA bus. When they examined him they discovered that he was covered with dog bites that had gotten so infected, they’d killed him. The cops gave the picture from his bogus green card to the media, but nobody ever showed up to claim the body or to explain what had happened. A weird one, even for L.A.

  “That was messed up,” Boone says. “Did you know him?”

  Robo snaps his head back, feigning indignation. “Why?” he asks. “Because all us beaners hang out together? No, man, I didn’t know him, but it turns out my cousin, he knows someone who knows the kid’s grandpa, who heard about my side work, the community outreach stuff…”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  Robo does hero-for-hire gigs for people who can’t go to the police for this reason or that. He’ll evict that crackhead who refuses to pay rent, convince that gangbanger he really doesn’t want to date your daughter, or find out who your wife is screwing on her lunch break. Penny-ante strong-arm stuff and surveillance mostly. Half his customers pay him in trade — bodywork, haircuts. Even a fifty-gallon aquarium once.

  “Seriously, ese, check it out,” Robo says. “The grandpa wants to meet me tomorrow to talk business. I don’t know what’s going to go down, but he’s got three hundred dollars to spend, and I’ll give you fifty if you show up and pretend to be my cop buddy. All you got to do is wear a sport coat and sit there looking like you got a stick up your ass.”

  “Won’t that scare him off?”

  “Nah, nah. I’ll tell him you’re working under the table, that it don’t matter that he’s illegal or whatever. You’ll make me look legit is all, like I got weight. I wouldn’t ask you, but my regular white boy is fishing in Cabo.”

  Boone shrugs and throws up his hands. “I’d like to help you, man, but tomorrow’s my day off, and I really need a day off.”

  Robo narrows his eyes, strokes his handlebar mustache. “You like that Olds I got for you?” he says. “Runs good, don’t it? What’d I charge you for that again, for getting you that deal?”

  “I’m just saying, I’ve got to stay out of trouble,” Boone replies. “You know how it goes.”

  “There ain’t gonna be no trouble, ese. I’ll see to that.”


  Simon and his posse explode out of the back room and pass through the bar, laughing too loud and playing grab-ass. Simon stops, a little unsteady on his feet, and points at Robo.

  “If you’re in here, who’s watching the door?”

  “Just getting a drink of water, boss,” Robo replies.

  “And I told you I want you to wear a suit. Let’s get that going next time you’re on duty.”

  Robo tugs at his XXXL Raiders jersey and says, “Where’m I gonna find a suit that’ll fit me?”

  “That really ain’t my problem, bro,” Simon says. “Alls I know is, I can’t have you looking like a thug.”

  “Denny’s at Gower Gulch, eight a.m.,” Robo hisses at Boone before following Simon and the others out the front door, saying, “Yo, we need to talk about a raise then, boss.”

  Boone finishes making the drink he started, shakes it, and pours it into a glass. OJ and scotch. Tastes pretty good. You wouldn’t think it would, but it does.

  He could say fuck it and stand Robo up tomorrow morning, but there’s no denying that the ’83 Cutlass the guy hooked him up with is a pretty decent five-hundred-dollar ride. He’s had no real trouble with it yet, except that the battery won’t hold a charge. It’s hard for him to believe that he was driving a Porsche four years ago. Seems like he died since then and was born again into a different life.

  Kurt Cobain is singing about the man who sold the world as Boone walks down to where Mr. King and Gina are sitting.

  “This one’s a winner,” Boone says. He raises his glass. “Blood and Sand.”

  “After the Valentino picture,” Mr. King says.

  “How are you two doing tonight?”

  Mr. King pats Gina’s hand, and she smiles shyly. “It’s our anniversary tomorrow. Two years,” the old man says.

  “Congratulations.”

  “What about you? Are you married?” Mr. King asks.

  “I was,” Boone replies. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Well, don’t give up. It’s like the man said, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ ”

  Boone raises his glass once more and says, “Hey, I like that.”