“Don’t worry, you just get out of here, out of my life, and hopefully we’ll never see each other again and that would be great.”
“I want my twenty bucks.” Mary Jean stepped forward. Within seconds Eddie accommodated her with a crisp bill he pulled from his wallet, and Mary Jean and Maggie were out the door.
“I knew that boy knew more than he was telling,” Maggie said as she slowly cruised away in her cumbersome old truck.
“Red Hat Patty that little bitch. What now?”
“Let’s go talk to the Monk. I wouldn’t doubt if he knows something.”
They had just turned onto Broadway when Mary Jean felt she had to speak. “Maggie, I don’t know what I can say. I didn’t know about your cancer. Are you sure the doctors are right?”
“Cancer?” Maggie seemed puzzled for a moment. “Oh that. That was just a ruse, dearie. I’m probably healthier than that boy I just scared half to death.” Maggie turned and grinned. “I had you fooled too? I guess it was quite a performance. You know in college drama was my minor.”
Mary Jean stared at Maggie then forward at the gray sky. “That’s weird, so was mine.”
The Monk was seated in the same position just a few feet down from the spot they had last seen him. When he recognized Maggie’s truck he smiled, lifted himself from the lotus position, and strode up to the driver’s side. He almost seemed to be floating. Maybe he was real light on his feet. Maybe he had just finished chugging a forty of King Cobra.
“Hola, Maggie, que pasa?”
“You are a wise man, Monk. That redhatted what’s-her-name is who we are looking for.”
“What can I say? I am a man of God. I do what I can.”
“You wouldn’t know where she lives, would ya?” Mary Jean stuck her face into the conversation.
“I was just thinking about heaven.” He rolled his eyes up across the gray overcast that had been hanging in the sky for weeks. “Heaven for me right now would be a burrito from that place.” He pointed across the street. “And a cold beer.”
Mary Jean pulled four dollars from her sock and waved them in her fist. “You want these? Tell me where she lives and they’re yours.”
She lives in a garage behind someone’s house.
“Where? What’s the address?”
“For four bucks you want an address? I’m a man of God, not God, for God’s sake. I don’t know everything.”
“No deal.”
“I do know something that is worth more than a burrito to you.”
“What?”
The Monk smiled and held out his hand. Something in his eyes and manner told Mary Jean the negotiations had ceased. She handed him the four bucks.
“Red Hat Patty is laying low, keeping a low profile, maybe leaving town, that’s the word. It seems a blonde witch is out to get her. Probably the same person that tried to run over one-leg Larry a few weeks back. Patty recognized the car and the damaged fender from Larry’s description. They missed Larry but totaled his shopping cart. His fake leg fell off. Back then we just thought it was a hit and run, but now it seems it’s a serial thing, somebody out to get street people. What she did to Patty isn’t clear, chased her down an alley or something. Whatever, it scared her real good that’s for sure.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing, except it’s a bitch to fuck with Pyramid Power, huh Blondie?” He smiled and winked. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I don’t much care for Larry or Patty.”
“I didn’t try to run anybody down.”
“Sure, sure, I know. I understand.” He covered his eyes with his hand. “I see nothing. I understand.”
“Look, I’m telling you ”
“Well, we’ve got to run. Enjoy your burrito, dearie.”
They had only gone a few blocks when Maggie slowed to make a right down a narrow side street. “That’s it! Time to get serious.” She pulled to the curb but left the truck running as she leaned across Mary Jean, opened the glove compartment, and began to sort through the mess. “Excuse me, dearie…Oh here it is.” She came back up to sea level and handed a card to Mary Jean:
William Bennett
Private Detective/ Broadcast Executive/ Licensed Barber
Unflappable Optimist trapped in a cynical shell &
Courageous Pathfinder to justice/ 209-227-8481
“Is this for real?”
“Of course, we went to UC Berkeley together back in the stone age, which was before the stoned age.”
“The guy is a real private eye?”
“Among other things, most not listed on the card. He’s definitely different, but definitely one of the smartest people I’ve ever come across. He speed-reads Sartre for God’s sake.”
“Broadcast executive?”
“That’s fairly recent. He bought channel 63. His family has money. Lend me that picture you have, dearie. He’ll probably want to see it. I’ll get a hold of him and set up a meeting. He’ll know what we should do next.”
They drove home and then went their separate ways. Nadine was fixed in place on the couch becoming one with Maury Povich.
“Nadine, you ran over a homeless guy with my car?”
“Not the guy, I just hit his shopping cart, but it wasn’t my fault. He darted out right in front of me.”
“The guy had one leg. How could he dart out in front of you?”
“It all happened so fast, and the parking lot was so dark. I know I should have stopped, but when I saw he wasn’t hurt I panicked and took off.” Nadine finally looked up and over at Mary Jean. “I told you all of this the other night. Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah…. yeah, of course I do, I was just testing you to see if you’d changed your story.”
“And here’s the first payment to fix the fender.” Nadine dug into her jeans and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, which she handed to Mary Jean. “But remember, I only got the one estimate, so if you can get it done cheaper I’d appreciate it.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” MJ said as she took the money, sensing this had to do with things she’d missed while purposely sleeping through Nadine’s last late-night rant. “So what are you doing right now?”
“Not much, after this there’s just news and stuff on for a couple of hours.”
“Well, come on, let’s go get drunk. I haven’t had a cigarette since I left Mexico. Tonight I feel like buying a pack, having a few beers and smoking my face off. What do you say?”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’ve got fifty bucks.” MJ held up the bill.
“Okay.”
They walked to the Tally Ho tavern. It was a dark smoky place about a half a mile away on the fringes of the Pyramid District. A place so mellow that it hadn’t seen a fight in years, where four of five people standing out back partying a joint seemed more normal than not. MJ and Nadine were known and even welcomed there. It was one of the few places around town they’d never been thrown out of more than once. They were at the bar and well into their third pitcher of beer when Nadine went out back to burn one with a group of regulars. Mary Jean politely declined the invitation.
“If I get stoned I become an eating machine. That I don’t need. Put a joint in my mouth and ten minutes later my jaws automatically start moving, and if I don’t put food in my mouth I’d grind my teeth down to nothing,” Mary Jean said to Tom the bartender, her newest best friend. He was moonlighting from his day job driving a laundry truck and was more than content to sit still and listen.
“You know, Larry ”
“It’s Tom.”
“Whatever, you know Tommy, I don’t drink to avoid or escape reality. I drink to keep myself from killing people because just about everybody I run into deserves to be shot.” Mary Jean took another sloppy gulp of beer. She lit another cigarette though she already had one burning in the ashtray like a stick of incense. “The problem, Larry is that ”
“It’s Tom.”
“Whatever, the problem isn’t that I get
too drunk, it’s that everyone else stays too sober. If they were all there with me in the same state of mind believe me they’d be having a good time, or at least everybody would be too drunk to know the difference.” She killed off her beer and refilled the glass from her pitcher. “The last time I was in here, just before I went to Mexico, I had a good time, at least that’s what I was told. I couldn’t remember a thing. I was in a total blackout.” She looked around the room, then focused in on her burning cigarettes, pulled one from the ashtray, took a drag, and released a big cloud of smoke. “You know I could be in a blackout right now.”
“There’s a time and a place for everything.”
“I heard that once. At the time it seemed to make sense. But I’m not so sure now.” She took another drink. “All I want is my clock back, Larry. Is that too much to ask?”
“I guess not.”
MJ pulled Bill Bennett’s card from her pocket and slid it down on the bar. “This guy is going to find my clock.”
The bartender looked at the card and smiled. “I know this guy. He comes in here sometimes.”
“He’s rich.”
“In a way, in a way he’s very rich. He inherited a bunch of money but his old man didn’t trust him or something, so they have all this legal shit set up so he can’t get at it all at once. But the really bizarre part is how he’s rich. Do you know where his family got most of their money?”
“No.”
“For nothing, for not doing a fucking thing.”
“Yeah, right. I may be drunk. I may be blackout drunk, but I’m still not a fucking idiot.”
“No really, I heard this story, and I asked him about it once and he said it was true. You want to hear it?”
“Sure.” Mary Jean planted her elbows on the bar and her chin on her fists, an eager student anxious to learn.
“I guess his old man used to own a basketball team in the ABA. The old ABA, are you with me so far? Okay, so when the ABA merges with the NBA they don’t take his old man’s team into the league, but to make up for it they agree to pay his old man a percentage of the TV contract in perpetuity, that’s like forever. Back then it wasn’t much, but now his share is like tens of millions a year, so he gets that every year, tens of millions for doing nothing, for doing nothing at all. You’ll never see a sweeter case of pure capitalism than that.”
“I’ll say. Now I really hope I’m not blacked out. This is good shit. I want to remember this.”
Just then, a tall guy with long hair, a beard and a leather vest walked up and stood next to Mary Jean. “Can I buy you a beer?”
“I can buy my own beer, thanks.”
“Just trying to be polite.”
“Sure you were. Just like right now you’re politely staring at my tits. Here, I’ll show you polite.” With a quick motion Mary Jean tossed the beer from her glass into the guy’s face.
“You bitch!” The tall guy backhanded Mary Jean’s pitcher. The beer flew out all over the bartender still sitting on the stool behind the bar.
“You!” Tom jumped up, brushing at his chest. The tall bearded guy paused to think, then turned and raced out the front door. Tom, filled with energy and anger, jumped over the bar and was quickly out of the building in pursuit.
Mary Jean looked at her empty glass. She took a drag from one of her cigarettes as she considered walking behind the bar to fill her glass but quickly decided against it. “I think I should go,” she said out loud.
Mary Jean daintily brought herself off the barstool and navigated in a slight serpentine through the bar and out the back door. She grabbed Nadine by the shoulder and pulled her out of a communal smoking circle. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
Down the alley to the street, a few blocks south, a right turn just before Broadway, they preceded west with little conversation and even less awareness of anything around them. They turned a corner, saw Maggie’s house and, as they got to the driveway, a cop in a green uniform bent over inspecting MJ’s damaged fender.
“Oh shit.” Mary Jean grabbed Nadine’s sleeve. “Come on, keep going.”
Nadine pulled away from MJ’s grasp. “Don’t worry, it’s just my brother.”
“How long has he been a cop?”
“Maybe six months.” Nadine approached her sibling with MJ in tow. “Hey, Danny.”
“Hey, sis. Hey, Mary Jean, long time no see.”
“Must be, I didn’t know you were a cop.”
“Well, officially I’m state police, but I never go outside the institution.”
“Institution?”
“The prison, he’s a prison guard.”
“Correction officer,” Danny sternly corrected his sister. “Fastest growing industry in the state.” He smiled. “I keep telling sis she should apply. The pay’s good. A lot better than she can make cutting hair.” He glanced around the side of Mary Jean’s Rambler. “The thing is I can’t get to this headlight until tomorrow. I’m on my way to work right now, is that okay?”
“Sure, sure, no hurry,” said Mary Jean, placated by the paranoia brought on by the uniform.
“Man, aren’t hit and run accidents a bitch? Whoever this guy was, he must have backed into you pretty hard.”
“She was driving.” Mary Jean pointed directly at Nadine.
“I thought the car was parked?”
“Yeah, it was parked, but…. I gotta go.” Leaving Nadine to deal with the degeneration of the deception, Mary Jean went up the stairs and into the small apartment. After sighting in her bed, she plopped down and within minutes was out, drawn into slumber land, just as the fog-masked sun outside her window was doing the same.
Sometime later, amid darkness and confusion, MJ awoke to take three aspirins and an Ativan to deal with both her current headache and the shakes she knew to be lurking right around the corner. In the dark, on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water to wash down the drugs, she ran headfirst into the bedroom wall. “We have to quit meeting like this,” she said directly to the sheet rock. Then, after three more shaky steps into the other room, she was startled by three loud knocks on the front door. Filled to the brim with guilt and paranoia over whatever might have happened during her recent bout of drunkenness, MJ stood silent as the knocking continued.
“Who is it?” she asked softly after finally deciding there was no way out.
“It’s me, Maggie. You girls aren’t sleeping are you?”
“No, no,” Mary Jean said as she opened the door. “At least I’m not.” She looked over at Nadine on the couch, just now opening her eyes, her being bathed in the light of the TV.
“Good, good, I hate to wake anyone up.” She grinned. “Oh, look at me lying again. Actually I love to wake people up.” Her eyes gleamed behind the thick glasses. “I just wanted to let you know I’ve got us a meeting set up with Bill Bennett tomorrow right after the protest at the Pyramid Theater.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got a ride to the theater, but I thought maybe you could pick me up and we’d go from there.”
“Sure, that’d be okay. But let me get this straight about the guy we’re meeting. He’s a private detective with a degree from Berkeley?”
“Oh, he never finished up his degree. He purposely came up short, but that’s a long story.”
“And I hear his family got rich from owning a basketball team that doesn’t exist, and they don’t trust him with the inheritance.”
“Another long story.”
“And he owns a TV station?”
“He just bought that recently. Basically it’s some sort of tax write-off. I don’t know what it’s all about, but he did tell me I should watch it, that I might get a kick out of it.” Maggie stepped into the small living room. “I don’t watch a lot of television. I can only get the strong stations anyway since my antenna fell over years ago, and I’ve never bothered to fix it. I’ve never been able to pick up his station, but he told me it’s on cable too. Would you mind?” Maggie looked down at Nadine. “It’s channel 63.”
YOU ARE STUPID
Maggie grinned and looked at Mary Jean. “That’s Bill all right.”
“I suppose I should meet this guy.”
Nobody Bats a Thousand Page 8