Mesopotamia

by Arthur Nersesian

“I spoke to a gardener at a neighbor’s house who said he knew a plumber who had worked for Scrubbs, and he said the plumber claimed to know or see something hot, or at least warm.”

  “And you called this plumber?”

  “Course. He said it was actually a friend of his, some electrician who learned some vital detail and wouldn’t be available until this afternoon.” A typical Gustavo convolution.

  “What vital detail does he know?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  “How much does he want?”

  “He said eight hundred for him and two hundred for this electrician who had the goods. But we’re not supposed to tell the electrician that we were paying the plumber more.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m broke.”

  “Me too.” He delicately poured more bourbon down his throat.

  “Did he say anything at all about Scrubbs?”

  “Not a word, but he didn’t sound dumb.”

  “So we’re just supposed to just cough up a grand?”

  “Well, I thought we could get him down to six, then maybe we can each ask our editors for three hundred apiece and do different spins on the same item.” We had done this once before, but we had to keep it behind the editors’ backs. They didn’t like shared sources for exclusives.

  “Does this plumber think you’re calling him back?”

  “He didn’t actually give me his number, but I know where he’s working.”

  “Where?”

  “At Graceland later this afternoon,” Gustavo said as he nervously opened the trunk of his car. He took out a new gallon-size bottle of Jim Beam and brought it to the backseat of his car. “Maybe I can get the information out of him some other way.”

  He carefully twisted open his little flask. I watched him trying to control the tremor in one hand as he poured the firewater from the big bottle into his monogrammed flask. We were at the broad bottom of the achievement pyramid, far below the pointy tip of great success. Each little battle strengthened or weakened us for the next one. If Gustavo could successfully fill his flat metal container, even though half of it was dribbling onto the frayed carpet of his rental, it would improve his confidence in dealing with the plumber. While he continued to struggle with the golden liquid, I asked someone for directions.

  “Take 240 East to 55 South past the Elvis Presley RV Park.” From there we could drive over to the tacky wilds of Graceland.

  After briefly getting lost, we followed a packed tourist bus all the way to Presley’s infamous digs.

  We walked up from the outside gate where we bought tickets. Then, along with a group of roughly twenty-five heavyset people, we were slowly ushered from room to room and spoon-fed tidbits of Presley’s colorful life. During the tour we looked for a plumber, but seeing none, I spent the time telling Gus about last night’s trailer park saga and the murdered Elvis impersonator who may have been knocked off by his cheating wife.

  “That was the only time I ever killed a paying story,” he mumbled.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I had a terrific lead on Ginnie Laden.”

  “Any relation to Osama bin?”

  “No, she was the last girl the King was dating when he dropped dead off the toilet throne,” Gustavo explained. “I was going to sell it for the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. She had moved to New Orleans about twenty years earlier and married an Armenian rug merchant. Get this, she was living under the name Ginnie Ginnalian.”

  “Whoa! What did she say?”

  “When I tracked her down she was working for the hubby. It was Fourth of July just a few years ago. I followed from a distance taking photos and stuff, and then I saw her go into a Dunkin’ Donuts. She bought a cup of coffee and was just heading outside when some kid grabbed her purse and dashed off, knocking hot coffee all over her.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “As the guy ran toward my car, I whipped open my door. Wham! He didn’t even see it coming.”

  “Wow! You’re Starsky and Hutch!”

  “Actually, I’m Shaft,” he corrected. “Anyway, I picked up the purse and brought it over to her. She looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Everyone was just ignoring her. We ended up sitting in a booth and talking for about an hour.”

  “Oh my God, that sounds like a perfect headline story.”

  “I know, but I saw myself in her pain, with life at its worst. Though I desperately tried to lift my leg and kick her when she was down,” he looked off distantly, “I just couldn’t do it.”

  Possibly in homage to the King, Gustavo fingered his shirt pocket and popped down a flurry of little red and blue pills.

  “What are those?”

  “Dietary supplements,” he replied softly.

  Our tour brought us to the infamous Jungle Room where the guide, some skinny kid with a hoarse voice, pointed to a fountain and mentioned how it used to repeatedly flood into the living room.

  “In fact, it flooded just yesterday,” he added.

  It was then I noticed some young fellow in a light blue jumpsuit. He was squatting near the gaudy waterworks, wrenching on a pipe.

  “Is that him?” I asked Gustavo, who was smiling at everyone and everything.

  “Who?”

  “The plumber.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s him,” Gustavo replied, giggling to himself.

  “Pardon me, did you work at the Scrubbs home awhile ago?” I asked, taking the initiative.

  “No, that was my dad,” the young man answered, then, rising nearly seven feet tall, he asked, “Why?”

  “Is he here?”

  “Pa’s at the office. Want his number?”

  “Please.” As he gave me the nine digits, I typed them into my cell phone. I thanked him as he returned to his leaky pipe, then grabbed Gustavo, led him outside, deposited him in his car, and pushed call on my cell phone.

  “Yo,” answered the pipe fitter.

  “Hi,” I said in my best Diane Sawyer voice, “my name is Sandra Bloomgarten, I work for ABC. Maybe you heard of me?”

  “ABC, the convenience store on Route 9?”

  “No, the TV network. I’m doing a piece for Dateline on plumbers to the criminals.”

  “Isn’t Dateline NBC?” he asked, surprisingly informed.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I heard ABC, like the convenience store.”

  “Was my source wrong or did you unplug Ted Bundy’s drain when he was living in Memphis?”

  “Why, is he complaining?”

  “No. He killed over two dozen women. He was executed a few years back.”

  “That’s good, cause I don’t give refunds.”

  When you are not connecting at all, it’s difficult to con someone, so I just asked him, “Did you ever work on the pipes in the Scrubbs home?”

  “What of it?”

  “See anything unusual?”

  “Yeah, I saw a bunch of red stuff that could have been blood in the shower.”

  “Did you tell the police?” I was having trouble gauging his level of sarcasm.

  “Yeah, when the wifey disappeared.”

  A five-thousand-dollar story could be written on this alone if we had photos.

  “How well did you know Thucydides Scrubbs?”

  “Sid would call me whenever there was a plumbing problem. But I know someone who saw something more. Something that ain’t in the papers.”

  “What?”

  “Well hold on now,” he wizened up. “I talked to some other fella about this recently. We talked money.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I’m just trying to get to the truth for the sake of justice.”

  I could hear the pipes in his head rumbling. “Give me some justice and I’ll give you some truth,” he finally replied.

  “Two hundred bucks for the number.”

  “Five hundred,” he countered. It was half of what Gustavo had been told, but I simply didn’t have it.

  “Two-fifty
.”

  “What do you think I am, some Okie? You TV folks are loaded.”

  “Look, why don’t we get together and talk in person?”

  He gave me his address and directions. I hung up and started the car; I knew I could be more persuasive face-to-face.

  “You look like … like a caterpillar that ate the contrary,” Gustavo slurred. The “diet” pills had reduced the weight of his brain.

  After five minutes of weaving and screeching through the streets of Memphis, we were in front of the plumber’s garage.

  We pulled into an unweeded yard loaded with torn-out branches of old copper piping and several rusty water heaters. A dented pickup was sitting in the driveway. Gustavo was too out of it to budge. As soon as I started walking up the untrimmed driveway, the deep bellow of an old hound dog greeted us. In another moment, the Georgia bloodhound raced up with ears flopping, jowls flapping, and drool lacing behind. Gustavo locked his car door as I stood my ground.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The dog jumped up on me and started licking my face and nose. While I battled with his slobbering tongue, the plumber came out of the house, a short, fat man in filthy overalls. He grabbed his loose hound and peeled it off of me.

  “Sure, I remember you. You used to read the news with Dan Rather.” He thought I was Connie Chung.

  “That’s me,” I said, even though I probably looked more like Margaret Cho. “You got your buddy’s phone number?”

  “Sure thing.” The plumber made no pretense about inspecting the curves of my body, which were really just clumps of clothing. “So you got my two grand?”

  “Chinese people get paid a lot less here than real people.”

  “Well, maybe you should ask your husband. He’s got that pregnancy and lie detector show. Always solving the squabbles of trailer trash and whatnot.” I never knew what Connie saw in Maury Povich.

  “Unfortunately, we’re squabbling too,” I replied.

  “I’m right sorry to hear that. Good day, hon.”

  “Can’t you bring that price down a bit?”

  “’Xactly how much is a bit?”

  I counted all twelve of my twenties and fanned them out for him: “Two hundred and forty bucks.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do, pretty lady,” he said, ogling the lumpy stretch of pickled organs that made up my torso. Lowering his voice, he continued, “I’ll take your two-forty, but you also gotta show me those scrumptious ta-tas, then I’ll get that guy on the phone fer ya.”

  “Why don’t I just lay back and shoot ping-pong balls out over your house?”

  “And I bet you can, sweetie, I just bet you can,” he said, retreating.

  “Give me his number first,” I demanded, bringing him to a halt.

  “I ain’t giving out no numbers. I’ll dial him up and hand you my phone, but first I want to see yer twins.”

  I sighed in audible disgust, compelling him to turn away yet again.

  “All right!” I shouted before the lecher could walk out of my life forever. “Here’s what I’ll do. Call him on your phone and let me speak to him, just to see that you’re not bullshitting me. Then, if I get something out of it, I’ll go inside my car and flash you my breasts.”

  “Can’t see nothing from inside no car.”

  “Well I ain’t letting you near my nudity.”

  “Tell you what,” he countered, “you can stand on the far side of your vehicle.”

  “Fair enough.” I replied, “providing this isn’t bullshit.”

  Despite my Ivy League education, undoing my shirt and flashing my skeeterbites to this miserable man for a possible scoop was more than I could turn down.

  “Hold on now,” he said. “If I let you talk to him, what’s to keep you from just getting the info and driving off?”

  I took the most valuable thing I had out of my handbag—Gus’s pygmy digital camera—and handed it to him. “If I drive off, you keep that.”

  “All right,” he said, turning it on and zooming its lens like a pro, “but I will keep it.” Even he knew how to work the damn thing.

  “Fine, now call him!”

  “First I’m going upstairs to get my Polaroid.”

  “Your what!”

  “What what?”

  “I didn’t say you could take a photo.”

  “The only way I’m going to make up the cash that you’re costing me is by selling pictures of you to my buddies.”

  “Buddies?”

  “My bosom buddies,” he said, as if it should be obvious to me. “They’ll pay big bucks to see Connie Chung’s whatnots.” He opened the splintery door to his weathered house. “Unless you want to bail out now, I’ll be right back.”

  When I kept silent, he headed inside his dump. If I could make a living selling nude photos of myself, I would’ve given up journalism ages ago. I pulled open the backseat to find that Gustavo had nearly passed out.

  “Mission almost accomplished.”

  “What mission?” he grumbled.

  “Just tell me if you see him coming.” Pushing Gustavo’s sleepy body to one side, I went through the various novelty items—the rubber chicken, the fake vomit … and there they were: the polyurethane double-D boobs with long brown nipples that looked like they had been suckled by a litter of baby hippos.

  Totally unlike mine, these rubber breasts were huge and perfectly shaped. To have a jutting pair of udders like these would’ve required stilt-supports, but I bet on the plumber’s robust libido that he wouldn’t notice little inconsistencies like the fact that they were cocoa-brown, while I was a sickly lotus hue. When men are horny, the necessary shot of blood for clear thinking heads right to their peckers. I pulled open my billowy shirt, squeezed the monster boobs over my flat brassiere, and buttoned up, then I tied a red scarf over the rubbery seam where it met my neck.

  In another moment the plumber came down the stairs and I met him at his garage door. He was holding an ancient Polaroid camera in one hand and a phone in the other.

  “So let’s see them panda bears,” he charmed.

  “First let me speak to your connection.”

  “I will, but just to warn you, you try running …” He held up Gus’s micro digital camera. Then he dialed a number and pushed the speaker button so we could both hear it ringing. A moment passed before someone answered.

  “Tungston, that you, boy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Repeat to me what you told me about that Scrubbs fella.”

  “’Bout six months back, I see this blond teeny-bopper making out with some skinny dude at the Murphy County Mall …” I could hear a TV squawking in the background and imagined Tungston parked in front of it in his torn boxers balancing a cold forty-ounce on his knee. “Anyhow, later I realized it was Scrubbs’s wife on account of we worked there together and all.” The Murphy County Mall was roughly ten miles south of Mesopotamia.

  “Why didn’t you tell the police about this?” I asked.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, hearing my voice for the first time.

  “Answer her, boy, there’s money in it for you,” the plumber said.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” I repeated.

  “How much money?” Tungston asked.

  “She’s giving you twenty-five bucks,” the plumber replied.

  “It was two weeks before she even disappeared. And what’s wrong with lip wrestling a little? I don’t want to get no one in any hot water, cause Lord knows, I’ve done more than my share of casual smooching.”

  Interesting as it all was, that Missy was capable of cheating was something I could’ve figured out on my own. Tungston was giving me nothing.

  “Tell me about the guy who she was kissing.”

  “Don’t really remember, to be honest. Just skinny, good-looking, black hair, a little flavor-saver under his lip.” He was referring to a soul patch.

  “You think he might’ve worked at the Murphy County Mall?” I asked, hoping that maybe I could use that as a
place to start from.

  “Probably not. Looked too slick to be pulling down one of those miniwage jobs. But come to think of it, you know what I do remember? He was driving an old pink Cadillac covered with decals and doodads; one of them was a big profile of Elvis.”

  “A portrait?” I asked.

  “Yeah, wait, it was just his hair, I think.”

  The next moment he had to go. The plumber slapped the phone shut and grinned. It was time to pay the pipe fitter.

  “He gave me very little to go on,” I said earnestly.

  “You got your information. Now you put up or you ain’t getting your little camera back.” He held it up. “And I know it’s worth more than five hundred dollars, so that’s fine with me.”

  “Shit,” I relented, as I started heading to the far side of Gus’s car. When he began to follow I said, “You were going to let me stand on the opposing side of my car.”

  “Go on then.”

  I walked around to the passenger side, where I gave a disgusted expression as I slowly, reluctantly undid the middle buttons of my shirt, leaving the top and bottom buttons fastened. Leaning up on the top of Gustavo’s borrowed jalopy and checking both ways, I pulled open my shirt, sending the double-D rubber breasts shooting out like a pair of baby aliens.

  “Holy shit!” the plumber marveled, without wondering why I wasn’t wearing a bra.

  I had to grab hold of that double-headed monster to keep the entire prosthetic from falling out of my shirt. As I squeezed and fumbled to control them, I appeared lustier than if I had just displayed them.

  I could see his hands tremble and sweat trickle from his brow as he focused his twenty-year-old camera from the other side of the car, snapping photo after photo of Connie Chung’s massive gazongas.

  “No one is going to believe this!” he said as he snapped off a fifth and sixth shot. He tossed each photo to the ground without even waiting for them to develop. After his ninth photograph, to my nervous relief, the fool was all out of film. As he carefully retrieved his prized pictures from the weedy driveway, I squeezed the hot rubbery twins back into my shirt and buttoned up.

  “My camera, please,” I requested. He took a deep breath to steady himself and slid it over the roof of Gustavo’s car.

  “You drive safe, dear. I’m going to watch your channel for now on.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Connie had been off the air for a couple of years.