A Passing Curse (2011)

by C R Trolson

  A man now held up his bird. The crowd yelled. Another man held up his bird. More shouts and cheers. A man dropped his cigarette and started a small fire in the sawdust. Another man poured beer on it. More laughing.

  “They’re going to pit’em!” Thomkins yelled. Rusty was next to Thomkins, touching his shoulder, hanging on every word. When the men shook their birds at each other, the smaller bird, dark green and gold, bit into the big silver one’s comb and shook it. The crowed roared and waved money, passing it back and forth as bets were marked down and money taken.

  A Mexican in a tan leather jacket with silver bolos approached Thomkins, his hand out. He was hatless, had a black mustache, shiny bald spot, and very white teeth.

  “It’s Pedro,” Thomkins said as they shook hands.

  Thomkins introduced everyone and Pedro invited them into a small office off to the side, behind a window that overlooked the ring.

  “That rascally Chief of yours is not hiding out in the bushes is he?” Pedro asked and they both laughed.

  “No,” Thomkins said, “but I’m not supposed to be here, either.”

  “I won’t tell him,” Pedro said and they laughed again. He turned to Reese and Rusty. “These men have brought their own birds and the betting is between them. They pay me for the ring and I provide the security and drinks. A safe haven for sportsmen.” He laughed and pulled his hands apart. “I stretch the law, but never break it.”

  Reese thought of several California penal code violations being broken but said nothing. He didn’t want to be a wet blanket, even if Rusty seemed to be ignoring him.

  “I want to bet,” Rusty said.

  Pedro nodded and told her that betting was possible, along with drinking and smoking. He then looked at Thomkins. “I still have that green bird of yours.”

  “Jedi? I thought you sold him?”

  “No. I sold Romulo but not Jedi,” Pedro said. “Fight Jedi. There’s an opening on the card. Let your friends bet on your bird. He’s a good one.”

  They walked out of the office. The first fight had ended. The small bird had spiked the silver’s eye. The small bird now tried to free himself, jerking the silver’s head along the wood chips, leaving a trail of blood. The owners finally pulled the birds apart. The victorious bird was raised above the owner’s head and paraded around the ring, its verdigris feathers translucent and fluffed. The dead bird was carried out by its feet.

  Rusty waved a few dollar bills at the man taking bets. Reese leaned over and asked, “What are you doing?” Her eyes were as wild as the birds’ and the bettors’. She licked her lips. Sweat glistened in the dips of her collarbones.

  “I need a favor!” she yelled.

  “What?”

  “Loan me fifty bucks.”

  She watched Thomkins walk toward them holding Jedi. The bird was green, as Pedro had said, but an iridescent green, full of golds and reds and smoky blues. The eyes milky yellow, darting eyes, not terrified but frantically curious.

  “He won nine fights when I had him,” Thomkins said. “He’s a small bird, six pounds, but he’s fast and a jumper. Has heart. The guy I’m going to fight has a bigger bird, a red, but it’s older and slower, the odds are even money, no advantage.”

  The man held up the red bird. There were hoarse shouts and cheers. The bird sat plump and glowing in its owner’s hands. It floated through the air unconcerned as the owner spun, showing him off.

  It would be a good fight, she thought, and handed Thomkins the two twenties and a ten that Reese had reluctantly parted with. “Bet it all!”

  Thomkins grabbed the money, adding it to his own. He held the struggling bird under his left arm and handed the money to the man taking bets, who worked feverishly, trying to jot down the action and keep the money straight.

  After Thomkins made the bet, Jedi kicked frantically, fight jitters, and Rusty thought he would jump free, escape through the door, and end the fight.

  Someone yelled, “Pit the birds!” and Thomkins faced the other man. They both held the kicking, struggling birds high. Then they brought them down to the pit, holding them by their tails and necks. “Pit’em!” someone yelled and they turned the birds loose, throwing them in the ring.

  Jedi flew straight at the big red, swinging his feet up and underneath. The short gaffs sank into the red’s neck. Feathers flew. The red shook out the gaffs and pecked Jedi’s comb, grabbing tight. Jedi shuddered violently and the red stiffened, his eyes like vises, and would not let go. Jedi danced around the ring, kicking up chips, dragging the large bird like a rag.

  The fight was going nowhere. It looked to her like a stalemate.

  “Pick’ em up,” Pedro yelled. Thomkins grabbed Jedi. The other owner pulled the red loose, and they both stepped back. With a spray bottle and rag, Thompson washed the blood off Jedi’s comb and ruffled the feathers. The big red was a ball of tangled feathers and blood. The owner spit in his hand and smoothed the feathers down. He wiped the blood with a small cloth. He held out a wing and wiped it down. He wiped the other wing also.

  “Pit ‘em!’ Pedro ordered.

  The big red rushed Jedi and tried to jump him but Jedi reared up and in a strong flurry, gaffed the wings and pecked the eyes. They grappled again and rolled to a stalemate.

  The crowd howled, “Pick’em up!”

  They separated the birds. The red’s left eye was hanging. The owner stuck the eyeball back in and licked it as if the spit would seal it in. The red was limp and done in, but she watched the owner insert his finger into the red’s vent. The red came alive. He extended his neck, looked around, and squawked in amazement as if he were seeing the ring and the yelling crowd for the first time.

  Jedi was fine. She watched Thomkins smooth his feathers. Jedi was not as anxious as before. He had focus. His head a bright rivet locked onto the enemy.

  “Pit’em!” Pedro yelled and the red’s owner yelled, “No!” He wanted to face the birds off closer to give his red a cleaner shot at Jedi. Thomkins agreed and they held the birds one inch apart by the tail only before releasing them. The red tried to jump again and got lucky and shivved through Jedi’s lower breast with the hooked gaff.

  Jedi was caught hard and struggled, shaking the red’s leg like the end of a rope. Jedi pulled loose and came down hard on the red’s back. Then up, the gaff flashing dully with blood, a stroke nearly severing the red’s neck. A ball of blood rose. The red staggered back and shook his head. The blood flowed, and his head fell to the side, held by a flap of skin. His feet folded. He was dead. Jedi started to peck at the red’s bloody eyes until someone yelled, “Hawk Bait!” and Thomkins gathered up his bird. The fight was over.

  22

  The sky was dark. The air was cool. Ajax strode down the stairs and across the courtyard. The sodium-arc lights glinted off 16 hand-rubbed layers of black paint. The Packard Phaeton was thirty-three feet long and had originally been built in 1930 for Raul Pavoni, a second-tier film star who’d made thirteen silent and eighteen talking movies before dropping out of sight in 1934. Ajax thought of the great premiers he’d attended in this car, the hungry flashing cameras, the slathering crowd, the tuxedos and the blonde on his arm, the blood so red on the platinum hair. He saw Ted leaning against the fender, lost in some moronic thought, and tapped his walking stick on the roof. Ted skittered around and opened the back door.

  “Do you remember where you dropped the boy?” Ajax said as he climbed into the plush leather seat. Ted nodded and shut the door behind him. He got into the front seat behind the wheel before turning around to fully acknowledge the question.

  “Behind the store, sir?”

  “Take us, please.”

  It was a short drive. Ted parked the car ten feet from the dumpster. Ajax saw the flickering yellow light against the upraised metal lid.

  Lung Butter Bill stood up when the car stopped. He removed his hat, a mashed and stained fedora, as Ajax walked over. He nodded to the Packard. “Nice car. I saw it the other night.”

  �
�Of course you did,” Ajax said. Lung Butter Bill had propped open the dumpster’s top with a broom handle. The light came from a candle stuck inside an empty tin of peaches. He’d folded his newspaper neatly on top of a cardboard box.

  “It’s a big one.”

  “But are you sure it is the same car? Can you identify the driver?”

  Lung Butter Bill rolled his eyes along the car. “It looks the same.” Ted was standing next to the driver’s door. “Both of them hard to miss.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Never was close to the police.”

  “They haven’t done you many favors.” Ajax said. “In any case, you are a lot like me. You sleep in the day. You live at night. Your life has become aimless. No distraction. No goals. Do you enjoy it?”

  Lung Butter Bill wrinkled his brow. He rolled a cigarette from his plastic bag of tobacco. He put the finished cigarette behind his ear and drank from an almost empty bottle of Thunderbird. “No one bothers me.”

  “Yes. No one bothers you. Exactly. A most agreeable situation. Enviable. It’s the life I have pursued for years. Not to be bothered. Most admirable.”

  “People don’t bother you when you live in a trash can.”

  Ajax laughed. “Room for two?”

  “You’re always welcome. Are you a veteran? I was in the navy myself. Korea. I was out on a ship, but we got shelled. And there were no foxholes to jump into if we sank.”

  “Good for you. I’ve been fighting all my life. Will you join me in a drink? A little spot of the good stuff to warm the night. If you don’t mind?”

  “You bet,” Lung Butter Bill said, warming up to his new friend.

  Ajax tapped his cane and Ted quickly brought a wicker basket from the trunk, set it on the ground, and walked back to the car. From the basket Ajax handed Bill a martini glass.

  “What you got, friend?”

  “Call me Ajax.”

  “What sort of hooch?”

  “Bloody Mary?”

  He smiled as Ajax filled his glass. The silver shaker had been packed in ice, its sides misted. Ajax filled his own glass. “What shall we drink to?”

  “I haven’t toasted in a while.”

  “To the night.”

  “To the night,” Bill said and they both looked to the moon. After he was finished he held his glass for a refill. “A bit salty for me.” He tasted his lips. “Beefy.”

  Ajax filled both glasses again. “I add a little bullion, for body.”

  Bill licked his lips after the second glass. “Well, sir, I liked it a lot. Where are you from?”

  “From the night,” Ajax said and they both laughed. Before he left, Ajax gave his new friend one hundred dollars. Lung Butter Bill was so happy that it was no problem for Ajax to drop the empty vial into his jacket pocket and a little something extra, something to give the curious mind something to think about.

  Thomkins dropped them off at the hotel and promised to meet Reese at the mission in the morning. Reese warned Thomkins to wait outside the room if he was early. He told him to go carefully. Do nothing without checking with him first.

  “You were really enjoying yourself,” he said when they got in the room. He’d felt jealous watching other men watching her, emotion he was uncomfortable with. He felt like a teenager because of it.

  She kicked off her shoes and loosened her belt. “What do you mean?”

  “Yelling and waving money around like a drunken sailor,” he tried to keep his voice neutral. “Everyone was staring at you.”

  She flopped on the bed with her hands behind her head, defiant and amused. “They were staring at you, mostly. They thought you were a cop.”

  “I was a cop.”

  “Well, quit acting like one, loosen up. It’s like having your dad tag along,” she said and laughed a little. “And you aren’t off the hook, yet, by a long shot, Mr. Detective.”

  “What hook?”

  “My gold cross.”

  “I told you who has the cross you stole from the mission. And where’s my fifty? Thomkins gave you back a hundred dollar bill. I’m not as rich as Ajax.”

  “Now you’re worried about fifty bucks?” She got up and sat down in front of Ramon’s book, still open on the writing desk. “I’ll get change for you tomorrow.”

  “I’m not worried about the money.” He didn’t know why he was worried about any of it, her having a good time or the rest of it, unless he was starting to care about her. He opened two bottles of Heineken. “I’m glad you had a good time.”

  She took a long drink, turned to the front of the book, and studied what looked like the table of contents. “There are portraits in the back.” She turned to the back, came to the pictures of long dead local celebrities. She flipped through the pages until they both saw a familiar face. She pointed to the name under the picture, a somber looking priest wearing a round hat with a flat brim. “Father Delgado.”

  “Ajax in a funny hat,” he said, suddenly glad for the diversion. He did not like being the jerk. He shouldn’t have mentioned the money or her having fun. He massaged the back of her neck.

  “Creepy old Ajax. And what’s he doing in a two-hundred-year-old book dressed like a priest?”

  “It only looks like Ajax,” she countered. “Ajax is not creepy. He has a classical face.” She moved his hand to her shoulder blade. “Ah, right there. Use your thumbs.”

  “Classical?”

  “Classically handsome. Straight nose. Regular features. Deep eyes. Ajax mentioned he had a great-great uncle, a priest in Santa Marina. That explains it.”

  “Likely story,” he said, looking at the portrait again. Ajax could have sat for the portrait. It was that close.

  “A family resemblance,” she said, “nothing more than that…move down a little on my spine, there, that’s it.”

  He slowly massaged the area between her shoulder blades. When he hit the right spots, she sighed. “A lot of people look like their great-great uncles,” she said.

  “I don’t have a great-great uncle.”

  “Everyone has one.”

  “Do you look like yours?”

  “My great-great aunt maybe. But I don’t know what she looks like. I don’t have any pictures. She was probably some dour thing wrapped in a corset.”

  “See. He also looks like a guy I used to see on late night TV, Raul Pavoni, an actor in the thirties. I think he died young or couldn’t make it out of the silent films.”

  “Raul Pavoni? Was he any good?”

  “A cross between William Powell and John Barrymore,” Reese said. “Ajax also has a painting of a lady cutting off a guy’s head with a sword, and that guy looks like Ajax.”

  “He does?” she asked. “I haven’t seen it.”

  “It is a big house.” He didn’t mention that the lady also resembled a composite of Richard Lamb’s victims. Especially Melissa Cunningham. He remembered twisting Melissa’s ear before she died. He shut his eyes.

  She touched Delgado’s face. “It’s still not an exact match. It may just be a family resemblance. A likeness. That’s all.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Because if you’re not, then Ajax is a few hundred years old. Anyway, I’ve looked at thousands of mug shots trying to match suspects and after a while every picture starts looking the same, especially when you’re tired.” He licked the edge of her ear.

  “Did you just lick my ear?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I liked it,” she said, but continued to ignore him. When he touched her hair she moved his hand away and rolled her eyes, slightly. “I’m busy.”

  “I’m trying to seduce you and you read a book? How would you like it if a guy was watching television while he was trying to get things going with you - ?”

  “Get things going?”

  “On top of you.”

  “As long as he stayed hard,” she said and he had to laugh. He sat on the bed and drank. She was definitely something. He wondered how much of it was bra
vado and how much of it was common sense.

  “What do you think of Thomkins?” she finally asked.

  “He’ll be fine. I guess. For a cop in Santa Marina, he’s fine. A good kid, actually.” He realized now that he wouldn’t help Thomkins pursue his dream of becoming an LA cop. He wouldn’t be responsible for Thomkins completing his delusions, for Thomkins getting killed in some back alley.

  “He thinks a lot of you,” she said without looking up from the book. “He idolizes you. He told me he wants to be like you. I hope he doesn’t start imitating you. Two of you is more than I can handle.”

  “I’m not so sure about the idolizing part. Thomkins doesn’t know any better. He’s still young and he’s still looking for his way. What about you?”

  “Idolizing you? Not yet.”

  “I’ll try harder.”

  She smiled and looked up from the book. “I know a girl, a substitute teacher, she’s twenty-three and smart. She’s good looking and, you know, a sense of humor - ”

  “Whoa,” he said. “Are we talking double date?”

  “Why not? She was my assistant, and she just broke up with her boyfriend. I could call her. She could drive down for the weekend. Thomkins seems lonely.”

  “Thomkins is at an awkward age,” Reese said. “He’s not exactly sure what he wants to do. He’s been thinking about joining the LAPD. That’s pretty awkward.”

  “I’m at an awkward age.”

  “You’re not lonely.”

  “I forgot. I’ve got you,” she said. “Still, it might work. Thomkins and Hilda has a ring to it and I think they’d look cute together. It would be nice - ”

  “Hilda?” he said. “I hope to hell that’s not short for Brunehilda. Brunehilda Thomkins?”

  “She’s German.”

  “Great. We could all go to a cockfight,” he said glumly. “We could invite Ajax.” The idea of a double date with Thomkins seemed depressing. He was surprised Rusty fancied herself a matchmaker.