by Jeff Johnson
“Don’t you boss me!” she yelled. “Not me, white boy! You think I’m stupid? Fuck you!” She hung up.
Damn.
I went back out and stood at the tip wall next to Nigel. We watched the car in silence.
“Maybe I should just go over there and see who they are,” he said eventually. Right then I knew he had a gun.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for either of us to approach that car,” I replied. “We do need to know who’s in there, though. Let’s just watch for a minute. I think I got it covered.”
“You sent a spy?” Nigel turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll see.”
Monique strutted around the corner onto Sixth on cue, decked out in a gray plastic mini, a tiny sky-blue halter top, and an oversized peacoat that hung open, revealing her dark abdomen. Her tiny outie belly button stuck out like a cold cork. She wobbled past the Olds with her iced tea in her hand and then turned around, as if noticing the car for the first time. She was great at playing a hooker.
She swished her hips and sauntered up to the Olds and rapped the bottom of her bottle on the passenger side window. Nigel and I watched as the window slid down and Monique leaned in, cocking her butt out.
“Don’t tell me,” Nigel said in a tone of wonder, “that you sicced Monique on them.”
I watched, ready to move if they pulled her in.
“Sometimes …” he shook his head. “You definitely have a signature style, dude.”
Monique abruptly staggered back from the car, her face twisted in epic, biblical rage. She screamed something and flipped them the bird, then took a big slug of her iced tea, which was at least half cheap gin, and spit it through the open window. Then she staggered back and gave a mock laugh, her face expressive enough for a dozen enraged people. After one more violent middle finger display she got moving.
“That’s our gal,” Nigel said. “Masterful, Darby. Simply brilliant.”
Monique hobbled off at top speed, a bowlegged fast walk, hurling insults over her shoulder, eyes on fire, her face wild with primal mobility. When she reached the corner she turned back and chucked the bottle with all her might. It fell mercifully short, shattering on the pavement twenty feet in front of the Olds. She screamed something, flipped them off one last time with both hands and rounded the corner.
“This has the benefit of originality,” I said.
“I agree. Keep them off balance. Hurl crazy hookers at the enemy at every opportunity. Sun Tzu said that, didn’t he?”
“I believe he did.”
The Olds remained in place. A moment later the shop phone rang. Nigel picked it up and handed it to me without taking his eyes off the car.
“Lucky Supreme Tattoo,” I answered. “This is Darby.”
“You owe me fifty bucks, white boy!” Monique thundered.
“What happened?” I held the phone just away from my ear. Nigel leaned in.
“I did what you asked and now you owe me fifty fuckin’ dollars s’what happened! Muthafucka!”
“Calm down,” I said. “I have your money. Just tell me what you saw.”
“Two big ol’ fuckin’ white boys. Strapped. Suits, but they ain’t no fuckin’ feds, oh no no no! Told me they wouldn’t spit on my asshole if I was the last nigger bitch in prison. Pole smokin’ faggots. An’ that car stink, too. Them men been up in there all damn day. Wrappers and shit everywhere.”
“Okay. Stay off of Sixth for a few hours.”
“I want my money!”
“Fine. I’ll get it to you later tonight.”
Monique hung up.
Steeling myself, I called Obi on my cell phone as I walked back to my office, leaving Nigel to stand guard. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey boss, what’s up?” The ever chipper Obi.
“I need a little favor, bro, and fast like a motherfucker. I need you to go to a pay phone and call the number for Dong-ju Trust. Book an appointment for me to meet him tomorrow afternoon. Do it fast, man, and don’t use a phone too close to you. This dude is even worse than we thought. It looks like I’m minutes away from a badass gun fight and fucking Nigel only brought the one gun.”
“Done.” Obi hung up, no questions asked. I was gambling that a meeting might put the brakes on the situation for the moment. I also wanted to let Dong-ju know that I had people in his area that I could trust, to encourage him to consider a pause. Plus, a little extra confusion never hurt. If the Oldsmobile was his, and I was sure it was, then they had to know that their cover was blown after what just happened.
I took a ball bearing out of my pocket and rolled it around in my hand. The front door chime sounded and I was on my feet in an instant, gliding swiftly through the room. Two Goth chicks had just come in. From where I stood in the doorway, I could see the Oldsmobile. They were still just sitting there, maybe waiting for me to be in the Lucky alone. Maybe waiting for the Goths to leave. Maybe taking a nap. Maybe checking their clips.
I went back to my desk and sat down again. My heart was beating a little faster and my palms were getting sweaty. I rolled the steel ball back and forth in my right hand. When my cell phone rang five minutes later, I jumped. Obi.
“Done deal, boss,” he said quickly. “But real weird. Some woman answered, said they’d been expecting you. You have an appointment tomorrow at two. It was almost like you already had one and you forgot.”
“Great,” I said flatly. They’d been expecting me. Dong-ju was one move ahead of me again. All it had taken to prompt me to confirm the appointment he had made for me was a sinister car parked in front of my shop, and all I’d managed to deploy on my end in retaliation was my crazy streetwalker. I sighed.
“I should tag along this time.” Obi sounded worried.
“No way, dude, but thanks. I’ll catch an early flight. If I have to stay overnight I’ll give you a call. Thanks, Obi. I owe you a big one.”
“You’ll never owe me one, boss.”
I hung up and walked out to stand next to Nigel at the tip wall. The two girls were sitting in the lobby looking through portfolios. Nigel was outwardly calm, but I knew he was ready to rock with no preamble. His only sign of tension was a minute tell; a rhythmic flexing of his trigger finger. In some part of his mind, he was already shooting.
There was motion inside the car and Nigel and I both tensed. His hand went to his side and mine to my pocket. Exhaust plumed from the tailpipe of the Olds, and it rolled slowly down the street and turned. Nigel let out the breath he’d been holding. So did I.
“Who was that on your cell phone?” he asked quietly.
“Obi. I had him book an appointment for me to meet with Dong-ju. Tomorrow at two.”
“Huh.” He shook his head, worried. “I have a strange feeling Obi made that call right on schedule, boss. We’re getting home schooled.”
He was right. I patted him on the shoulder. Nigel was the kind of guy you weren’t inclined to touch like that, but I did it anyway.
“We’re always getting schooled, Nige. And I might be a little behind in the game, but the tardy student takes the widest path.”
I called around and got a seven a.m. flight to San Francisco for a reasonable price. Then I called Delia.
“I need you to watch my cats again. Obi set up a meeting with this Dong-ju dude for tomorrow afternoon. My flight is at seven a.m.” I told her about the Olds.
“A meeting,” Delia said, clearly pondering. “This is good. Much better that the purely psycho plan you were entertaining earlier. Way to go, Darby.” I shook my head. “You finally talk to Dmitri?”
“Oh yeah.”
“That bad?”
“Probably worse than you can imagine. He says the city wants to renovate. I sort of threw a hypnotism on him, but it won’t last.”
Delia was quiet, a rarity.
“I told Gomez earlier. I don’t think there’s any need to bother any of the guys yet. Nigel had a shitty afternoon already. He thinks the new guys are fixing to pull the
ir rip cords.”
“What the hell are we gonna do?” she asked.
“I dunno. For now, I’m going back to San Francisco. We’ll see what happens.”
“What do I do if a building inspector shows up?”
“Wing it. Stall. Kill him. Run. Hire that big tranny with the beer can trick and say she’s in charge. Borrow my default setting. Right now I have a one track mind until I’m done with Bling’s crazy boss. Fucker’s playing me like a puppet.”
“That’s not hard to imagine,” Delia said. “You can talk to me.”
“I know.” I blew out a big breath.
“You’re trying to be a good person. Remember?”
“Bad timing, I guess.”
“Darby,” she snapped, suddenly angry. I was pissing off every woman I knew anymore. “You know what I admire about you the most?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“Think about it, moron,” she spat. Then she hung up.
I stared at the wall for a few minutes, thinking about it. Then I took two extra ball bearings out of my desk and drove home to pack. I gave Nigel three twenties from my wallet on the way out. Monique would be in soon to collect. The ten bucks extra was a good faith gesture to women in general.
I never slept well before a trip, and that night was no exception. Between fits of tossing and turning, I had disjointed David Lynchian nightmares about Dmitri weeping and frisbeeing pizzas out into Sixth Street, fiery plane crashes, and San Francisco hoodlums in ski masks. Delia stabbing me with a fork, slashes of lipstick all over her snarling face. Monique dead in the gutter in front of the Lucky with one pink boot clutched in her stiff, chalky arms like a teddy bear. I was glad to be awake.
I made coffee in the dark kitchen and tossed a few last-minute items in my bag. The house was cloaked in that early morning quiet, which normally seemed so peaceful to me. Instead it felt tense and uncomfortable, even depressing. I found myself trying to stay in the moment, tiptoeing around, a whisper inside of an echo of the shadow of the ghost I was fast becoming. I didn’t even wake up the cats.
At five thirty, I locked up and caught a bus over to the Max line. The redline train was the fastest way to the airport and the trains themselves were bright and new. It wasn’t raining, so I stood downwind of the shelter smoking until the redline arrived. By the time I got to the airport, the dream cobwebs had melted away and I felt angry rather than simply bleak. Because of the ball bearings, I checked my bag with some sleepy-eyed, overworked old lady at the terminal. After that I went through security with nothing but my sketchbook, got a second cup of coffee while I waited for boarding. When I took a seat at the gate, everyone around me seemed tired and distracted, all of them deep in their personal shells. Almost everyone was staring at a laptop. I drew sketches of their sad, puffy faces.
Airports had changed in the last few years. The Portland International Airport was a reasonably big one, with coffee shops, a decent steak house with a bar, a surprisingly good bookstore, and then the usual junk outlets. It even had sushi. Piano music wafted through the air. Distant stands of Douglas fir were visible from any of the banks of rain-spattered windows. I used to enjoy the once festive vibe there, and after 9/11 it faded to zero. I was surprised as anyone when it bounced back. The creepy militarism that had ruined American air travel and had all the airlines whining about lost revenue didn’t stick. The pussies won the day and they thought they could keep it, handing over their rights and their much more “important” comfort for nothing, but no. The fearmongers lost and no one gave a shit anymore. It was a strange, even unique thing in American culture. The average passenger had become immune to the checkpoints and the Homeland Security people. “Terror” as a tool lost its bite. It was a small triumph that I didn’t find as glorious as I normally did.
I took a sip of coffee and surveyed the other waiting passengers, casually trolling for something nice to look at, my mind still drifting, my sketching pencil still. Opening myself to memory.
Once, when I was a little kid, I’d gone to Lake Havasu with the foster mother of the month and her boyfriend. The episode bubbled up to the surface unbidden as I sat there people watching.
Lake Havasu is a foul, greenish body of polluted sludge in the California desert, perpetually fogged with the exhaust of speedboats and the orange smog rolling in from LA. Sunburned drunks with money ruled that weekend kingdom with a complete suspension of common sense, and it was to my child mind a nightmarish place of car wrecks, bikinis, broken sunglasses, withering heat. That first morning, I’d wandered around in the blazing sun until I found a quiet, filthy little lagoon. A crumbling slab of foundation cement jutted out into the oily water, so I’d walked out onto it and sat down. The light off the water was so bright I could see patterns when I blinked. It smelled like a mixture of summer morning dumpster and boiled dog.
A duck appeared, followed by a line of five ducklings. I laid down flat on my stomach on the hot gray slab and watched them, as still as a boy mannequin. They scooted by me and as they did the duckling at the end suddenly panicked and jumped the line. At first I thought it was me, but it wasn’t.
A big fish rose up through the dark, still green, its mouth an obscene, distended circle. The water dimpled as it sucked at the round belly of the next duckling. The tiny bird made a desperate leap and the giant, prehistoric monster sank back down into the darkness. Its bulging eyes were the size of quarters, centered with disks of mindless utter midnight. An hour later I saw the mother duck again. There were three ducklings.
I drew.
I was the little bird I was sketching right then, I knew, with hungry things roiling around in the scum below me, sitting in a hostile airport with a thin veneer of humanity over it. Ready to make a desperate jump to cruising altitude.
I was thinking about this and doodling a picture of a yawning fish mouth when the stewardess announced over the loudspeaker that it was time to board.
It always amazed me that a city the size of San Francisco couldn’t manage to run an airport. I eventually got my bag and took a shuttle to the Hertz rental lot, where I picked up another anonymous white Camry. I pulled out of the lot just after ten a.m. I had time to kill, so I went to an old oyster house I knew of down by the bay and killed an hour and two dozen plump, juicy Kumamotos. I enjoyed eating off of the newspaper, and when I went to take a leak, the filthy bathroom was wallpapered with trashy seventies pin-ups from Hustler. A good oyster place really needed a certain je ne sais quoi and those folks had nailed it decades ago with sniper-like precision. After noon, I headed out for my meeting with Nicky.
The warehouse looked abandoned when I pulled up with fifteen minutes to spare. No light shone through the grubby windows this time. The fenced parking lot was empty except for the tin shed and the street was blank. The Lincoln was evidently still in an impound lot with my laundry key. I got out of the Camry and lit up a cigarette.
At exactly two o’clock, a new white Mercedes slid out of the fog and rolled to a stop in front of me. I regarded it calmly, smoking.
The tinted driver’s window rolled down. The driver was another goon, a big, Slavic-looking guy with a flat face and slicked-back hair. Sort of like the driver of the Lincoln. Nicky was consistent with his messenger service.
“Get in,” the driver said. He tossed a thumb at the backseat.
“No.”
He seemed genuinely surprised.
“Now,” he said firmly, an incredulous smile warping his lantern jaw.
“Nah.”
He sighed. “I’m taking you to meet Mr. Dong-ju, asshole. Just get in the fucking car.”
I flicked my cigarette away and gave him my coldest look, a real frostbite-on-the-nuts piercer.
“I’ll follow you,” I said. I patted the hood of the Camry. “Car’s a rental and I don’t want to leave it in this shitty neighborhood. Take me months to straighten out the paperwork if some scumbag jacked the stereo or fucked with the ignition.”
He
muttered a string of insults and rolled up the window.
I stretched, checked my phone, and then leisurely climbed into the Camry, taking my time just to piss him off. When I finally started the engine, I flashed the high beams at him to let him know I was ready, and also to see who else was in the Mercedes. It was just the driver, flipping me off.
We got on the freeway and drove northeast for about forty-five minutes, then got off somewhere around San Rafael. I followed the Mercedes up into a hilly residential area, resisting the impulse to fiddle with the radio. The houses were all expensive McMansions, a mixed bag of everything from sprawling Victorians to Spanish Colonials. The road wound up and narrowed and the Mercedes finally stopped in front of a glass and steel postmodern nightmare perched forty feet above the road. Jutting from the fog and lit from within, it looked like the fortress of some awful techno goblin prince. I already didn’t like Dong-ju. Looking up at the place, I was prepared to hate him.
I parked behind the Mercedes and got out. The driver climbed out slowly, the new car rocking on its suspension. He had the build of a pro linebacker who had gone on to a barstool. He straightened his suit coat with his massive, bent hands and scowled at me. I had a ball bearing in my hand with the car key.
“Arms out,” he said, approaching me on stiff legs.
“Nope.”
He closed the distance between us and glared down at me. He was a good foot taller than me and at least one hundred-plus pounds heavier, most of it hard old gut muscle.
“Remember your little stunt at that truck stop in Northern California? Yeah? Well, that was my brother, you cocky little shithead, and now he’s sitting in some weed grower’s hippie nigger faggot spic migrant prison in NoCal looking at seven years. So either I frisk you or I beat the shit out of you and then I frisk you. Ponyat?”
I held my arms out and he roughly patted me down. When he was done he grunted and started up the stairs. The scrawny legs under his tailored slacks wobbled a little as he pushed his massive upper body up the steep stairs. He moved like a man who suffered from constipation and hemorrhoids. I followed him at his pace, slipping the steel ball and the rental car key into the front right pocket of my loose black cords.