The Kind One

by Tom Epperson

  “Well, it’s for this guy’s birthday party.”

  “Max Schnitter?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “A little.”

  “You gonna be there?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled at me and primped her hair a little. “I guess you’ll be seeing more of me then.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You must be in the mob, huh?”

  She seemed impressed. I shrugged.

  “Your name’s not really Vera Vermillion, is it?”

  She laughed. “Nah. Susie. Susie Pulaski. I’m from Chicago.”

  “Why’d you come to Los Angeles?”

  “Why do you think? To be in the movies, like every other girl. So I’m living downtown near Pershing Square, and I’m taking a trolley car out to the beach, and there’s this little guy in a bowtie looking at me. I think he’s trying to pick me up, and I’m ignoring him, then he says, Mae West has only got one thing that you don’t have. An agent. And I says, are you an agent, and he says yeah. And I says how do you know I don’t have an agent, and he says if you had an agent you wouldn’t be riding in some dumpy trolley car. And I says you’re riding in a trolley car, what kinda lousy agent does that make you, and he says it makes me a very good agent, ’cause I’ve just discovered the next Mae West.”

  I looked again at the business card. “Was that Mel Goldberg?”

  “Sure was.”

  “So how’s it going?”

  “You know, Danny, it’s tough. They say only one in a million make it to the top in Hollywood, but that’s why I chose my name. Vera Vermillion, ‘One in a Million.’ But you wanna hear something interesting?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mel became not only my agent, but also my husband.”

  She held up her hand to proudly show off a big diamond or something pretending to be a big diamond. “That’s great, Vera. Congratulations.”

  “That little guy’ll do anything for me, it nearly killed him not being able to bring me up here, I nearly had to tie him down to the bed. And the last thing he said to me when I was walking out the door was, Susie, you’re the only thing I’ve ever loved. He’s always saying that to me, you’re the only thing I’ve ever loved.” She frowned. “And sometimes I treat him like shit too.”

  Her glass was empty now, so I bought her another blue moon, which she seemed very happy to get.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, Danny, I ain’t some kinda lush. I don’t usually drink like this, but them fucking deers nearly scared me to death. I can’t get ’em out of my head. Jumping over my car like that.” She sighed. “The things a girl does to get ahead. It’s just I hear that clock ticking all the time. I’m not as young as I look, you know.”

  “No?”

  “How old do you think I look?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Go ahead. Guess.”

  “Thirty?”

  Vera looked disappointed. “I’m twenty-eight.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m scared time’s running out on me. I don’t wanna wind up some flea-bitten old floozy living downtown in some crummy room.”

  “That’s not gonna happen.”

  She eyed me over her beautiful blue drink.

  “You’re nice.”

  “Thanks. So are you.”

  “When we get back in town, if you ever wanna call me, that’s okay. You got my number.”

  I looked at the card again. “That’s Mel’s number.”

  “Just call it and ask for me. Mel won’t mind.”

  “He won’t?”

  “We got this understanding. Mel and me, we love each other, but all that bedroom stuff, that ain’t part of the deal. See, when he was thirteen, he had the mumps, and it caused his tetiscules to stop growing.”

  “His what?”

  “Tetiscules. You know, his manly parts.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re like little peanuts. So he’s not much good to a girl, in that department. But I’m not complaining. ’Cause like I said. We got this understanding.”

  I felt like changing the subject.

  “So I don’t know anything about agents. How does Mel go about getting you a job?”

  “Well in this case, Mr. Seitz called up and asked for me personally. He saw me perform once. I do this thing with peacock feathers.” She looked uncomfortable. “Look, Danny, the only reason I’m doing this thing tonight is ’cause it’s a hell of a lot of dough for Mel and me. Just remember, I really do act and stuff. Like it says on the card.”

  “What are you gonna be doing?”

  “I’ll be wrapped up like a present, then Mr. Schnitter’s gonna unwrap me, then I’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and then—well, you get the picture.”

  “Mm.”

  “Is he a nice guy? Mr. Schnitter?”

  “You know, I don’t really know him that well.”

  Teddy Bump came in, with Tommy. They took a table in the corner. The waitress went over, and they ordered coffee.

  Teddy had a funny kind of a face; his eyelashes were unnaturally long, and he had bushy eyebrows that seemed to be growing too far up on his forehead. Right now he was giving me one of those if-looks-could-kill looks. Vera looked over and saw it too.

  “What did you ever do to him?”

  “Saw him.”

  “Saw him what?”

  “I better not say.”

  “Ain’t you the mysterious one.”

  Chapter 14

  THE HOTEL SHUT down the Moonlight Room that night so we could have Schnitter’s birthday dinner there. Everybody sat at a long table and ate big pink slabs of prime rib. Bud was hosting the dinner, so he sat at the head. The important guys, Schnitter, Loy Hanley, Joe Shaw, Jack Otay, and Nuffer, were clustered up around him, and then came the rest, us Seitz guys, and some Schnitter guys and Hanley guys. There were about twenty of us all told. No Darla or Violet or any other girl.

  We were all in tuxedoes. I’d rented mine in a store downtown on Broadway. The clerk that helped me was this pissed-off little Russian who spent the whole time cursing out Roosevelt as a tool of the Bolsheviks and Jews. I asked him if he happened to know a Russian count named Anatoly who’d got two fingers shot off in the Revolution. He said it didn’t ring no bell.

  Waiters moved in and out keeping the food and booze coming. It was loud and there was lots of laughing and if there was any tension between anybody I didn’t see it.

  A guy in a powder-blue tux with curly golden hair and a sissy kind of a face sat at a baby grand playing soft swoony tunes that nobody seemed to be listening to but me.

  Doc Travis was being reminisced about.

  “You know how ugly Doc was,” said Loy Hanley. “But I ’member a time I thought he was the prettiest sight this side of heaven.”

  “What happened?” said Bud, already beginning to grin.

  “Well Doc was living in a tent in the desert out east of Yermo. There was a natural spring the Indians used to use, so he had all the water he needed for his operation. He kept his still hid in a old abandoned copper mine. So I drove out there in this big old Chevrolet truck with a load of sugar. It was more like a trail than a road, and by the time I got out there it was nearly sundown. Doc said he’d just finished up a new batch of turtle juice; that’s what he called moon. He said I oughta just stay out there tonight and him and me could sample the new stuff and I could drive back with my load of moon in the morning.

  “Well we sat there in his tent that night, drinking by the light of a kerosene lamp—and by God that goddamn turtle juice nearly took the top of my head off. After a hour or two all of a sudden Doc let loose with this big long scream, like he’d just been pushed off the top of a mountain, then he keeled over sideways and his head hit the ground so hard it bounced, and then he started to snore. But I stayed awake and kept drinking that dadgum turtle juice.”

  Loy knew how to tell a story, already he had everybody laughing; now he leaned in a little and l
owered his voice a notch.

  “And then I commence to hearing things. First I hear a coyote yipping, then a wind kicks up and starts the tent to flapping and snapping, then I think I hear people whispering to one another, like they’s out there in the dark creeping up on us. I get it in my head that the Dry Squad has done found us and they’re fixing to lower the boom.

  “Doc always kept a loaded thirty-thirty handy, so I took one more swig of turtle juice, then I grab up the rifle and go charging outa the tent. And the wind’s blowing sand in my eyes, but I think I can see people, some of ’em kinda hunkered down and others running away, so I go running through the greasewood bushes hollering my head off and shooting off the rifle, then that’s the last thing I remember for a while.

  “When I come to, I’m laying on the ground. I think it must still be nighttime, ’cause my eyes are open but I ain’t seeing nothing. But the funny thing is, it’s hotter’n hell. The sand’s burning my skin, and I’m thinking there has to be a fire, but how could there be a fire if I can’t see it, and then it comes to me: Loy Hanley, you are one dead son of a bitch, and your mama was right, you’ve done gone to hell. ’Cause I was remembering what I heard the preacher say when I was a kid, that hell’s a place of utter darkness, that the fires of hell burn without no light.

  “But then I’m thinking, if I’m in hell, how come I’m laying in the sand with the wind blowing over me, and then I figure it all out. I’m still in the desert out east of Yermo, and the sun’s come up, but I can’t see it ’cause Doc’s turtle juice has made me go stone-cold blind!

  “Well sir, I’m scareder than shit, I get up and start hollering for Doc: Doc, Doc, where are ya, come get me! But Doc don’t answer back. So I’m in the middle of the goddamn desert and I’m blind as a bat. And it’s a hunnerd twenty degrees, and I don’t have no water, and my tongue’s so swole up it’s sticking outa my mouth. So I start stumbling around yelling and moaning, and I run into a cactus and get a pussful of needles, and then I take a step and there ain’t nothing under my feet and I’m falling and I don’t know whether I’m fixing to fall five feet or a hunnerd feet.

  “And then I find myself waking up for the second time. Somebody’s splashing water on my face and saying Loy, Loy, are you all right? And then I open up my eyes and there’s Doc Travis. I ain’t blind no more! And I say: Doc, if you wasn’t so ugly, I’d kiss you right on your fucking mouth!”

  Everybody laughed. Jack Otay said: “You know that old bastard was wanted for the same murder in two different countries?”

  “How could that be?” said Joe Shaw.

  “He stuck a knife in a guy in Mexicali, Mexico. Then the guy got in his car and drove over the border and died in Calexico, California. So he got charged in both countries.”

  “What finally happened?” said Nuffer.

  “The main witness against him had a bad accident. Drowned to death in a dry river bed.”

  “Some witnesses just seem to have the shittiest luck,” said Bud.

  “We all miss Doc,” said Schnitter, slicing his knife through a juicy piece of meat. “But we all know there’s a reason he’s not sitting here with us at the table tonight. He showed a lack of loyalty. An unwillingness to work as part of a team.”

  This seemed to be directed at Loy Hanley.

  “Well, hellfire,” said Hanley, “let’s drink to teamwork!” and everybody bumped their glasses together and mumbled: “To teamwork.”

  “This ain’t a wake,” said Bud to one of the waiters. “Tell Goldilocks to pep it up a little.”

  The waiter went over to the piano player and said something, and the piano player glanced worriedly at Bud then started playing a rollicking version of “Bill Bailey.”

  I was sitting next to Nuffer, who was getting drunk as fast as he could. His face was florid with sunburn. He gave me a blurry affectionate smile, and patted my arm. “I like you, Danny. You’re a nice fella.”

  “I think you’re a nice fella too, Mr. Nuffer.”

  “Nice fella. So therefore I think there’s something you need to know.”

  “What?”

  He moved his mouth close to my ear. “A rumor has been afloat today. To the effect that you and Darla were observed together last night by the lake.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it—the lady was seen with your dick in her mouth.”

  I looked down the table at Teddy Bump. Caught him in the middle of one of his dying-hyena laughs, his mouth open and full of food.

  “But that’s not what happened—”

  “Shhh!” said Nuffer so sharply my ear was sprayed with spit. “The truth doesn’t matter. Only appearances matter,” then he squeezed my knee under the table. “A word to the wise, hm?”

  After dinner, the waiters brought around brandy and cigars.

  “Want my cigar?” I said to Dick Prettie.

  He shrugged, and put it in his pocket, then lit up his own. As usual, his clothes didn’t fit; the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket were too short, and his collar was too big for his long skinny neck.

  He still seemed to be in a sour mood. He studied the smoke curling up from his cigar.

  “You know, when I was growing up, no way I ever coulda imagined smoking a cigar like this in a joint like this. But now I’m here, who gives a fuck?”

  Joe Shaw started coughing and clearing his throat like something had gone down the wrong way, then he slowly stood up. Bud tapped on his brandy glass with a spoon and shouted to the loud table: “Hey, pipe down, you fellas! I think Joe’s got a few words he’d like to say.”

  “Thanks, Bud. Well, I got a few words, then my brother’s got a few more words.” Shaw was burly and pleasant-faced, with little glittery eyes and a dimple like a bullet hole in his chin. “I wanna thank you guys for inviting me up here, and I’ve had a great time the last two days. And on top of everything else, I got to see the Eighth Wonder of the World: Wendell Nuffer on water skis! Wendell, when you fell off them skis, I was afraid there wasn’t gonna be any water left in the lake. But luckily it all ran back in.”

  Nuffer laughed harder than anybody.

  “My brother was sorry he couldn’t make it up here himself, but I just finished talking to him on the phone, and filling him in on what we all been talking about. Frank said he can’t wait till we all get back in town so we can continue making Los Angeles the Greatest City in the World!”

  Loud applause. Joe Shaw took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Now let’s move on to what this night is all about.” He looked at Max Schnitter. “Max, Frank wanted me to read this to you.

  “‘Dear Max: Heartiest congratulations to you on your birthday! Max, you’re what the American Dream is all about. A poor immigrant kid who started from scratch and is now leading a prosperous, productive life and providing employment for a lot of people. I’m proud to call you my friend,’ and it’s signed: ‘Frank Shaw, Mayor of Los Angeles.’”

  More applause as Joe Shaw sat down and Schnitter stood up. Everybody was puffing away on their big cigars and the room was becoming as smoky as a battlefield.

  “Thank you, Joe. And I’m proud to call the Shaw brothers my friends. And to the rest of my friends here: Thank you very much for this birthday dinner in my honor.”

  Somebody sneezed so loud it was like a window falling shut and then they blew their nose.

  “Life is a forward motion, we are always marching into tomorrow. But an occasion like this sends us the other way, back into the labyrinth of memory.”

  He smiled a little, baring his eye teeth as he gazed off into the smoke.

  “My first night in America. I had slipped across the border from Mexico into Arizona. I had no passport, no papers of any kind. I barely knew any English. I was fourteen years old.

  “I was hungry and tired, and I walked into a bar. It was full of Mexicans and Indians. Not any whites but me. I put my last few coins on the bar, and ordered a glass of beer and a sardine sandwich.

&n
bsp; “There was an Indian boy and an Indian girl also sitting at the bar. I don’t know what their relationship was. Husband and wife? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Brother and sister? All I know is the girl was beautiful. Long black braids. Brown eyes that had no bottom to them.

  “I smiled at her. And she smiled back at me. And her husband, boyfriend, or brother watched. And that night I learned my first lesson in America: Never get in a knife fight with an Indian.”

  Schnitter paused and took a sip of his brandy to allow for the laughter.

  “When I got out of the hospital, I traveled west. When I arrived in California, I thought I had arrived in paradise. The warmth, the sunshine, the oranges hanging in the trees. But when I tried to pick one of those oranges, I was chased away by a man on horseback. And I learned that even in paradise, a price must be paid for oranges.

  “And so I got a job, picking lima beans, and I thought my back would break. Then ten years later I went back to that same tree, or one very much like it, and I picked an orange, and I peeled it, and I ate it, and that day no one tried to chase me away—for I was now the owner of the grove.

  “I enjoyed eating that orange as much as I have ever enjoyed anything, before or since. And my birthday message to you, my friends, tonight, is, savor all your victories, great or small, because ultimately there is just one rule in life: Everybody loses everything.”

  Schnitter sat down, to somewhat befuddled applause. Bud stood up, and started singing: “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and everybody else joined in as the piano player vigorously played along. As they reached the first which nobody can deny the blue lights in the Moonlight Room began to fade till all you could see were the fiery tips of everybody’s cigars. Then a spotlight hit a curtain on the stage. Then, as the song concluded, the curtain opened to reveal Vera Vermillion.

  She was lying on the stage wrapped in cellophane and tied up with red ribbons. She was completely naked. She was very white in the light, except for her auburn hair and her abundant pubic hair and her big pink nipples.

  “She’s all yours, Max!” said Bud. “Go ahead! Unwrap her!”

  Schnitter looked as if he’d just as soon be someplace else, but he managed a smile and walked toward the stage, accompanied by ribald cries of encouragement. He knelt in front of her, and pulled at the ribbons, and it quieted down in the Moonlight Room, and you could hear the crinkling of the cellophane, then you could hear Schnitter mutter: “What the fuck is this?”