Lucky Supreme

by Jeff Johnson

  “Now comes the really fun part,” Yeary said grimly. I scowled up at him.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Just don’t try to lighten the mood.”

  “I always encourage cooperation,” he said, “but these particular guys? I’m not saying …” He trailed off. “Fuck it.”

  Now I was both confused and acutely paranoid. We walked side by side down the hallway to the door at the end, two sworn enemies approaching the Gateway to Hell together at last. Yeary glanced down at me and then opened the door. The sudden wash of light and sound almost gave me a heart attack. I took a step back.

  “I know,” Yeary said. He gestured for me to enter.

  The place was alive with activity, even though it was past ten. And the room was huge. Yeary and I waited in a surprisingly modern lobby after he gave some information to the receptionist. The doors to all the offices beyond the main desk were open, and I could hear dozens of voices, printers chattering, the clatter of heels on tile, two fighting radios. I took a seat and a moment later Sergeant Yeary sat down next to me, ramrod straight with his eyes forward. We waited, Yeary sitting at attention. I slouched and worried the laminate on my visitor’s pass with my thumbnail.

  “Sergeant Yeary, Darby Holland?”

  I looked up. A scuzzy version of Doogie Howser had appeared in the hallway behind the receptionist’s desk. He was wearing most of a shitty blue J.C. Penney’s suit and scuffed dress shoes, and looked like he’d been boning low-end whores and snorting speedy coke for the last three days.

  “Here,” Yeary said crisply, rising. I reluctantly rose as well.

  “This way.” The fed led us down the hall to a room straight out of a low-budget thriller, with a one-way mirror on one wall, a long fake wood table with plastic chairs, and a video camera on a tripod. Another man was sitting at the far end of the table, drinking black coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. He was older, with a sagging gut, pock-marked face, and sleepy eyes. I pegged him as a wife-beating closet boozer or a born-again Christian, maybe both.

  “I’m Agent Dessel,” the Doogie Howser kid said. “This is Agent Pressman. We just have a few questions, and then you can go.”

  “Sergeant James Yeary,” Agent Pressman said, picking up the clipboard in front of him. “Thanks for the escort. You may leave.”

  Sergeant Yeary gave me a blank look and walked out. He closed the door a little hard.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Holland,” Pressman continued. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs. Dessel remained standing, hovering and animated. Pressman looked over his notes for what seemed like a long time before he cleared his throat.

  “I have your record here, Mr. Holland. Eleven counts of assault with no convictions. Amazing. Some minor drug shit, a suspected connection with … well, just about everything we have a law for.” He tossed the clipboard on the table like he didn’t want to touch it for another instant. “So why don’t you tell me what you’re doing with Nicky Dong-ju.” There was no sleepiness in his eyes now. They glittered like the eyes of a weasel studying a nest of unguarded eggs.

  “Lawyer,” I said.

  “Fine, fine. We’ll get you one right now.” Pressman crossed his arms, but made no other move.

  “Wait a minute!” Agent Dessel said, making smearing motions in the air with both hands and smiling. “Everybody just settle down.” Dessel spun a chair around and straddled it across from me. “Listen, Holland, you’re strictly small time. We know that.” He winked and then his face went grave. “Nicholas Dong-ju isn’t. So let’s trade. You tell us everything we want to know and we’ll be so happy with you that you’ll walk, guaranteed. We’ll even owe you a favor. We’ll be that happy. How’s that sound?”

  “Or you get a lawyer and we get permanently irritated,” Agent Pressman added.

  “We just want information,” Dessel continued in an exasperated voice. He shook a cigarette out of a pack from the breast pocket of his wrinkled shirt and fired it up. “Not supposed to smoke in here, but fuck it. Crack that window, Bob?”

  Pressman got up and opened a window, then lit a cigarette of his own, a bent-up generic.

  “So,” Dessel said warmly, smiling again. He really did have a big personality. “Take it from the top.”

  I wanted to know what they knew, and there was only one way to find out. So I talked. Sort of.

  I went through the whole thing again. Pressman watched me like a human lie-detector while Dessel took notes and asked questions. I gave them a little more than I’d given Sergeant Yeary, including the truck stop incident this time. Pressman snorted with amusement when I got to the part about snapping off my laundry key in the Town Car’s ignition. Just like everyone at the Lucky had. Dessel actually laughed out loud, a braying, boyish thing that was embarrassing to hear. When I was finished I fired up a cigarette of my own. It was well past midnight.

  “I’m a little sketchy on how you found Dong-ju in the first place,” Dessel said, looking over his notes. “Tell me more about that.”

  “The shithead who stole the stuff was spotted by a friend of mine.”

  “Right. The shithead being one … Rick Deckard, the old buddy one … Emilio Gutierrez? Those real names?”

  I shrugged. Even after all Bling had done, I wasn’t about to rat him out to the feds, and of course I’d go to prison or an unmarked grave with any secret involving Obi.

  “That’s a yes or no question,” Pressman said.

  “Then yes,” I replied.

  “Why would you want to protect someone who stole”—Dessel glanced at his notes—“this flash from you?” He seemed genuinely curious. I shrugged again and Dessel nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s move on. How did ‘Rick’ and ‘Emilio’ come up with Dong-ju?”

  “Something Rick said when I asked him where my flash was made me think he worked for whoever had it. The trail led back to Dong-ju.”

  “This Rick Deckard,” Pressman said, his eyes bright on mine. “He wouldn’t be dead, would he?”

  “If he is, I’m afraid all deals are off,” Dessel said soberly.

  I met Pressman’s probing headlights. “He was alive the last time I saw him. I’m not going to kill some idiot over old flash. Especially not Roland Norton’s.” I held Pressman’s look until he seemed satisfied.

  “Okay. Back to Dong-ju Trust. Describe the building again. Try to remember everything you saw inside this time.”

  That went on for another hour, then they asked several questions about the Lucky Supreme, if I’d noticed any new people in the neighborhood, if there was any chance my apartment had been gone through. It seemed like they were fishing, until around four a.m. I realized with a cold shock that they were developing a detailed picture of my life and habits, to make it easier to unravel had what happened to me when I was finally killed, which they evidently assumed would happen shortly. They were building the framework for a very tidy conviction. All they would need is for Dong-ju to kill me and they could wrap him up.

  “Quite a cast of characters you have working for you,” Dessel went on. “Nigel Hurston. Registered to carry a concealed weapon. You bailed him out of jail a few years ago. Expunged. Nice of you. Michael Tayman. Seems like an okay guy. Drives too fast, I see here. Dwight Garnett. Sort of dumbass, don’t you think? Dropped out of UNM after one semester … picked up for drunk driving in Boise a year later. Alex Chin. Couple years at Brown for him, eh? I see he did a little time in juvie in Montana. And finally Cordelia Evelyn Ashmore. Daddy’s a big time LA mover and shaker. Private school, picked up a degree at Cal Arts. Owns a condo up on the west side. Slumming. Fine quality in a young woman.” He put his clipboard down and grinned. “Ever see that movie, the one with all the minor scumbags who crossed some really big scumbag … I forget.” He snapped his fingers at Pressman.

  “The Usual Suspects,” Pressman said.

  “That’s the one!” Dessel chirped. His grin ramped up a few dozen watts. “Dong-ju’s like the gimpy guy, ah …” He snapped his fingers.

  “Kevin
Spacey,” Pressman intoned.

  “Right! The smart one. Plays people like fucking bongos, Holland. I’m not trying to insult you when I say he’s probably ten times smarter than you are. Ever think any of your little circus clowns might be involved in all of this? I mean, you actually trust these people?”

  “That’s it,” I said, rising. “Fuck you guys.”

  Pressman and Dessel had smoked a pack of cigarettes between them. Neither of them looked ready to stop.

  “Just a few more questions,” Dessel said, picking up his notes again. It was a fat sheaf of paper by that point. “I’ll even trade you for something.”

  “Trade?” Lame.

  “Trade.” He glanced over at Pressman, then back. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Holland. This handlebar moustache man with the knife? Consider. Think really hard. Does this seem like the kind of guy Dong-ju would hire? And does the whole nature of the confrontation seem in keeping with his style?”

  “No.” It didn’t.

  “Because it isn’t. And that can only mean one thing. Dong-ju is close to you now. Very close. He’s moving around you, he and his people. And someone who knows what Dong-ju does, someone very like him, has noticed.”

  “And so the trade is …”

  “Would you like to know who that someone is?” Dessel’s eyes burned. I didn’t say anything. He leaned forward.

  “Work with us, Holland. Work with us, and we can find out together.”

  “Nope.” I stood up. “You guys know where to find me. If anything else happens and I’m still alive, I’ll try to call you.”

  Dessel took a card out of his wallet and slid it across the table. “My cell’s on the back. Any time, day or night.”

  I put the card in my jacket pocket.

  “Luck,” Pressman said, smiling sourly.

  Agent Pressman was a hard old cop and he’d been watching me for hours. I’d been watching him, too. He was an inquisitor, looking for a simple true or false, trolling for half-truths he might be able to button up. His scope was limited by his training, his instincts muted, a retarded predator. As a tattoo artist, I’d learned much more about faces and the language of the body than he would ever know, probing as I had to into the deeper realm of dreams and vague visions, every day reading the descriptions of images only half-formed. I knew what Agent Pressman was thinking when he wished me luck. I could see it in the narrow shape of his baggy eyes and the pre–car crash set of his shoulders.

  Agent Pressman was watching a dead man.

  Agent Dessel was smiling at me.

  “You know,” I said softly, “when you’re sitting in the electric chair? And you’re all strapped in and ready to go? You can smell the hot in the wires, and feel the last guy’s fingernail marks under your hands. The overhead light has chicken wire wrapped around it in case the bulb explodes. People are watching and smiling, just like you’re smiling right now. Or they’re just watching, bored, waiting for show time. And then some state-appointed killer with a big enough god to forgive him asks you … what the hell does he ask?”

  They looked at each other. Agent Dessel cleared his throat.

  “They ask if you have a statement, Mr. Holland.”

  “Bingo,” I whispered. I snapped my fingers and it echoed. “A statement. See, right then, sitting in that chair, I’d say the most confusing amount of shit I possibly could, so that everyone was going down into the dark with me. So my statement would be a kind of curse, so that nothing I ever did, nothing I ever said, would be admissible. Don’t bother asking me to sign anything, because I can’t put my name on any of that without seeing some money. Fiction is way more expensive than poetry.”

  They looked at each other again, and then back at me. Agent Dessel cocked his head, his grin gone blank. Agent Pressman narrowed his eyes. It was my turn to smile.

  “See ya.” I winked and then I left.

  I walked through downtown feeling wasted and vile. The cigarette and urine stink of the chat room clung to me like a huge wino ghost diaper. My spontaneous parting insult had an accidentally revelatory element of truth to it that would have pissed me off at any time of day. It was just before dawn and the courthouse region of the damned city was already awake. People in business suits and service uniforms of every description scurried down the sidewalks, their heads down against the misting rain. I walked slower than everyone else, with my head up and my eyes blinking, a lost man rinsing his eyes.

  My senses were blasted. The sound of wet cab tires on the street grated up my back, electrical shivers radiating from my spine. The flashes of light from passing cars left jagged red trailers over my retinas. My feet were soaked and my right ankle was throbbing, like it always did when I was cold and wet. A vague, all-over headache was emanating from my scalp like the first stage of radiation exposure. The inside of my mouth tasted like I’d been chewing on old cigarette butts scavenged from the lobby of a casino full of white wine drinkers.

  I ducked under the awning of a coffee stand and ordered one, noticing as I paid that my hands were astonishingly white, like I was dead already. I stood off to one side sipping it and lit a cigarette with one shaking hand. The coffee guy, a skinny kid with a floppy Jamaican hat and a scraggly hipster moustache, scowled at me, but the look on my face when I glared at him with a mute willingness to hurl my steaming cup into his face shut him down. As the sky went from black to slate in the east, the mist grew in strength into an earnest drizzle. The awning protected me from the knees up, but the rain gusted in sideways and froze my already drenched feet.

  I sighed and felt my ribs crack. It was shaping up to be a shitty day.

  “Hey man,” the coffee guy said, totally out of the blue. I couldn’t believe it. I glared at him again.

  “What.”

  “You just get out of court?” There was no one else around. He must have been seriously bored to try and strike up a conversation. He leaned on the counter of the cart on his elbows and gave me a knowing look.

  “Did I just what?” He was scaring me.

  “This time of the morning … usually court. Maybe county. Hooper, that kind of thing.” He glanced at my cigarette.

  “Oh my God,” I said. My stomach turned and a burning line of bile and acid rose up through my chest. The flesh under my right eye started to tic. He cocked his head, at once wise and knowing beyond his years.

  “Sleep it off,” he suggested, “and seriously about the cigarette, dude. Secondhand smoke is rude. Sorry. It’s just way super rude.”

  “Oh my God,” I said again.

  “Yeah man,” he went on. “Kinda sorta see ya.” He made a shooing motion with one skinny hand.

  “You just filled me with the worst sort of terror,” I confessed. He looked parentally admonishing. I continued. “See, it’s like this, Pussy. I just got grilled all night by some wack-job feds over my impending, grisly-ass murder. So I’m standing here wondering if I can hammer my way out of it, if I can just go stone cold fucking crazy and still come back. Because evidently I have to. So when some hippie cretin at the first coffee stand I hit post-interrogation gives me shit of any kind, it makes me wonder at my game. Don’t I look scary? Don’t I look like the kind of guy who might just freak out and bash your idiot skull flat and light your fucking corpse on fire? Because I know I did about six hours ago. You want to do me a big favor? A really big super solid?”

  He was backing away fast, ready to run. I put my cup down on the counter and stared into his cringe.

  “Give me a fucking refill.”

  He couldn’t move. I reached over the counter and squeezed two shots of coffee out of the big thermos into my cup. He remained frozen.

  “You know what brave is, dummy?” I took a sip and scalded my tongue. He made a tiny shake of his head. “I’ll tell you what it is because I know. All that John Wayne shit? James Bond? The Mission Impossible guy? Those dudes can suck my dick. They’re not even real. No, hipster pusswad. Brave is a mental illness you get when you’re desperate. Sometimes it
lasts for less than a minute. Sometimes it sticks with you forever, like leprosy or TB. It all depends on how many times you have to carry the condition around in your head. Think I could flip this level of shit to … I dunno. A Cambodian dishwasher? Works all night all year for peanuts? No fuckin’ way. We’d be rolling around in the gutter trying to bite each other’s fingers off.”

  I took one more sip of coffee and dropped the half-full cup in the trashcan, flicked my cigarette butt into the swollen gutter, and started walking again. I couldn’t decide what to do, so I headed for Old Town, my brain rambling through the fog inside of it at the same defeated pace my wooden legs chewed up sidewalk. Bitching out the hipster had been a so-so idea, but I did feel a little better. I wanted to go take back the stuff about John Wayne, but that would have made him call the police.

  By the time I got to the Lucky I was shivering. I went in and locked the door behind me and headed straight to the back. After I stripped off my jacket and shirt, I dried off with a beach towel and then grabbed a Lucky Supreme T-shirt and hoodie from the merch cabinet and put them on. In the bottom drawer of my desk was a bottle of single-cask bourbon, a tip from a bartender customer, probably stolen. I opened it and sloshed three fingers into a paper cup. We had ice in the mini-fridge, but I was too cold and too tired to get up again. I looked at the cup for a solid thirty seconds, studying the floral print on the waxed paper lip.

  If the mind is a basin for memory, then the stuff in the paper cup before me was definitely Drano, and I sure as hell needed to clear some hairy wads of scum out of my head. The final judgment on Pressman’s face, Dessel’s hungry smile, the charting of my life for a conviction against some kind of errant investment specialist the cosmos had appointed as my digestee … the new convict-knife-guy variable … bitching out that coffee kid … my wet feet, again …