“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll just talk to Biggie,” I said.
“Did I mention the extra napkins at Denny’s?” Ralph asked.
I met Biggie in the county jail. I was there for an overnight. Biggie said he was there for a research project.
We stepped inside. We were the only customers. Maybe Grassman Guzman owned Swen’s, too. Biggie was behind the counter when we came in. Biggie is black and very big. Six foot seven, two eighty. He wears lavender silk shirts. All the time. Large and loud. They match his Mercury Cougar.
“Joey, Ralph,” he said. “It’s great to see you. What can I get you?”
“Two orders of spaghetti and meat balls,” I said. I didn’t want to offend Biggie. I needed him. Ralph turned toward the door.
“Make it to go,” I said. Ralph joined me again.
“What brings you to Swen’s?” Biggie said. He looked at Ralph. “You hate sushi.”
“You still play the guitar?” I said before Ralph could answer.
“I switched to the banjo.”
“I need a lead guitar player. It’s for a gig at the bar. Saturday night.”
“Why you putting a band together, Joey?” Biggie stood straight and crossed his arms across his chest.
“I’m trying my hand at managing again. I’ve found this hot young singer.”
Biggie looked at Ralph. “Someone’s got Joey’s nuts in a vice, right?”
“Vincent the Hammer,” Ralph said.
Biggie looked at me again. “So you don’t have a lot of leverage here, right?”
“Look, do you want to play or not?”
“You know I play worse than I cook.”
“Doesn’t matter, Biggie,” I said. “Perception is reality.”
Biggie looked back at Ralph. “What the hell’s that mean?”
“I don’t know. Joey’s been listening to those self-help tapes again.”
“Is it working?”
Ralph shrugged. “Hard to tell. He’s still alive but he has to make Vincent the Hammer’s daughter into a rock star.”
“He needs some new tapes.”
“Look, Biggie, you gonna help me or not?” I said.
“Can I bring my banjo?”
“You bet.”
Five minutes later, when we walked out of Swen’s I was carrying a plastic bag. Inside were two Styrofoam containers filled with a reddish gray mixture that looked like industrial mop heads and croquet balls. I put the bag on the floor.
“Well, that went well,” I said.
“Yeah, if what you need is a six foot seven black banjo player who can’t keep time,” Ralph said.
“You need to look on the bright side,” I said.
“There’s a bright side?”
“He’s so big, I can hide Delilah behind him.”
Ralph’s eyes narrowed. His brow knit and he cocked his head. “That’s your plan?”
“So far, yeah.”
“Biggie’s right. You need some new tapes.”
Chapter 15
I was smiling when Ralph dropped me off at the bar. I had a band together. I had a singer. I was still breathing. Life was good. That’s when the wheels came off.
The Roo boys waddled in. I knew it was them without looking up. They crossed the floor, the neon beer sign in the window faded for a moment.
James leaned against the bar. Jimmy lowered himself onto a stool and looked at the Styrofoam container I’d brought back from Swen’s. Ralph wouldn’t let me leave it in the van. Jimmy flipped open the Styrofoam. I grimaced.
“We’ve got a problem,” James said.
“Got a fork?” Jimmy asked. I handed him a one. He started to eat but stopped a second later. “Got a steak knife?” I gave him a knife and tried to listen to James. It was hard. I’d never seen anyone actually eat Swen’s meatballs. Jimmy put me in mind of a bison stumbling across a couple of pool balls while grazing in a bamboo field, something you don’t see much outside the occasional Wild Kingdom episode.
“Everything’s under control,” I said.
“Delilah don’t want to be a rock star anymore,” James said.
“That’s a problem?”
“Vincent wants his daughter to be a rock star.”
“Yeah, but if she doesn’t want …” I didn’t finish. James had stood straight. Jimmy had stopped eating.
“Vincent wants his daughter to be a rock star,” James said. He bent across the bar and jabbed a finger at me. “Your job is to make her one.”
Jimmy had started eating again. I couldn’t watch. I looked at James. I waited. It came to me slowly. “Oh, no. Come on. He wants me to talk Delilah back into rock and roll?”
“There’s an alternative,” Jimmy said. “You can swim with the fishes.”
I couldn’t help it. I looked at him. A piece of gray spaghetti was stuck in the corner of his mouth. He was smiling. I swore I’d never eat pasta again.
“I think you mean sleep with the fishes,” I said.
“Yeah, that too.”
“Let’s go see Delilah,” I said. Some decisions aren’t really all that complicated.
“How you gonna talk her into becoming a rock star?” James said.
“I’ll give her the old double head fake, triple reverse,” I said. I had no idea what that meant. I hoped they wouldn’t ask.
“What’s that mean?” James asked.
“It’s a psychology term. I studied it in college,” I said. It was a correspondence class. The campus was a P.O. box in Peoria. I’d seen their ad on a matchbook cover. “Make big money in your spare time! Learn cigarette lighter repair in the privacy of your living room. Send today for details.”
James started toward the door. I fell in behind him. But Jimmy hesitated.
“Hey, can I take the rest of this with me?” he said, holding up the Styrofoam container.
“Knock yourself out,” I said.
I read somewhere that in the olden days, people used to have to pay their own executioner. I didn’t think of Swen’s meatballs as payment. More like pay back. I might be snug in a rug up off of Angeles Crest with Mickey in a day or two, but those meatballs would be giving Jimmy heartburn for a month, not to mention the gas.
In my position, I was looking for any leverage I could get.
Chapter 16
Never bet against worse. My friend Dutch, the narcoleptic gambler, told me that. He was right.
Delilah opened the door looking like a cross between Morticia Aadams and Mother Teresa. Long black wig, long black dress, heavy black eyeliner, red fingernails and a silver cross the size of a Towncar around her neck.
“Going to a wake?” I asked. She slammed the door in my face.
I turned and looked out at the Continental. The Roo brothers were in the front seat, staring straight ahead, immobile as tombstones. The car was low on its springs.
I rang the bell again. She opened the door.
“You’re worse that a damned Jehovah’s Witness.”
“I’m here to lead you to the musical promised land.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t care if he kills you,” she said. I liked that about her. Delilah was direct.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said. She crossed the living room, flopped on the couch, and smiled. I was beginning to hate people who smiled.
I followed her into the apartment and stopped near the couch. Then it hit me. If I could convince Vincent the Hammer to let me make Delilah a movie star instead … Maybe get her a late night cable show Goth with God or The Haunted and the Holy. We’d aim for a niche audience, born again horror movie junkies.
“Love the outfit,” I said. “It’s got potential.”
“Daddy wants me to dress like Cher.”
“Sure, I can see it. Torn jeans, tight shirt.”
“No. Gaudy costumes, glitter, and big hair. I told him to go to hell. He said in that case he’d have to kill you.” She studied her nails for a seco
nd and looked at me again. “You know, to make up for the fake John Lennon guitar.”
I sat on the couch next to her and looked around for the Southern Comfort. I needed it.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said.
“What?”
“You can’t let your dad dictate what you do. Doesn’t matter that you’re ten times more talented than Cher.”
It was part of the double head fake, triple reverse psychology I’d learned at correspondence school. Ethel wrote my paper for me: Toward the Operational Aspects of the Techniques of Persuasion. Who would have guessed Ethel had a Ph.D.? Even when you graduate from a P.O. box, you gotta write something.
“You know, Joey, you’re a really bad liar and no one’s going to miss you.”
I reassessed my affinity for her honesty.
“I’m not lying. I’m talking about a missed opportunity, that’s all. You want to be a wax museum Munsters wannabe, that’s your business. But you’ll never give your old man the Silent Gotcha.”
“You know, I checked up on you.”
I’d changed my name four times and moved six times in the past three years. How much could she have learned?
“Really? What’d you find out?” I asked.
“I found out you’re not as dumb as you look.”
“Depearances can be acceptances,” I said. I had no idea what it meant. I was improvising, stalling for time. Besides, I thought it sounded good, sort of.
Delilah curled her legs under her and leaned back in the corner of the couch the way a lazy cat stretches just before it goes looking for a mouse. That’s when I noticed how clingy the dress was. I was about to say something but she caught me up short with a look. Sure she’d looked at me before but those were all sort of Orkin-man-spots-a-termite looks. This was different. There was something in that look. Either that or she’d tried Swen’s meatballs, too. The look was gone a second later.
I saw the Southern Comfort bottle on the floor by the base of the flat screen. I got up from the couch, walked over to it and took a long drink. I moved slowly. It wasn’t for dramatic effect. I needed time to figure out what to say next. Sometimes relying on your wits can be taxing and I’d always figured alcohol was the perfect enhancer for my innate thought processing abilities. I took another swig. It wasn’t working. I took a third.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” she finally said. “What’s the Silent Gotcha?”
I crossed to the end of the couch, moving a little unsteadily. Must have been the Southern Comfort or maybe the look she gave me.
“It’s like this,” I said. “Your dad loves you, right?”
“My father doesn’t love anyone, Joey. He’s a mob boss. He has people killed and dismembered. That’s why you’re here. Remember?”
She had a point. It helped me focus. I put the bottle down and went to the couch.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “You don’t want me here because you think your dad can make you a rock star. You don’t want his help, right?”
“Duh,” she said and looked at me like I’d come in second in the World’s Dumbest Man contest just behind the guy who robbed the night clerk at the residence hotel he was living in.
“But he can’t make you a rock star. Only you can do that. It’s your talent and charisma that’ll make you a star, not him. So when you become a star, you’ll know it’s because of you not him busting kneecaps.”
“But he’ll think he did it.”
I raised my arms. Nixon on the helicopter.
“Right. And you’ll always be one step ahead, knowing he thinks he did it, and you really did it, despite what he thinks about it. Got it?”
“So, it’d be like I was flipping him off every time I sang a song,” she said.
I’d heard her sing. It’d be more like flipping off half of the northern hemisphere but I nodded my head.
“Just like it,” I said. I was channeling the Music Man conjuring up a boy’s band out of dreams and desperation. I could hear the tunes coming out of Vincent the Hammer’s iPod. I was still holding the bottle of Southern Comfort. “Here,” I said, “You want a swig?”
“Maybe I’ll switch to Peppermint schnapps,” she said.
I was starting to smile. Maybe it was the liquor or maybe it was the double head fake, triple reverse. Who knew you could learn so much from independent study.
Chapter 17
She didn’t look like any IRS agent I’d ever seen. Tall, thin, and pretty in spike heels. She came in about six thirty, settled on a stool and pushed a business card across the bar to me with a long, blood-red fingernail.
“You Joey?”
I stood straighter. Sucked in my stomach. I hadn’t read her business card. “Depends on who you are,” I said.
“I’m Agent Viola. I’m from the Internal Revenue Service and I’m here to help you.” I have a hard time putting the word ‘help’ in the same time zone as the IRS, let alone the same sentence. I slumped. My stomach slouched. I read her business card. I swallowed hard.
“Trust me, Joey,” she said. “You’ll thank me later.”
“I’ll thank you later? Isn’t that what the settlers told the Indians just before they swapped them a handful of beads for Long Island?”
She put her handbag, just big enough for a couple of quarters and a derringer, on the counter. She pulled out a compact, flipped it open, and powdered her nose. Her gaze switched from the compact to me.
“I see you’re a cynic,” she said. Her eyes sparkled.
Truth was, I wasn’t a cynic. I was just trying to figure out what she wanted. I hadn’t paid taxes in about five years. Hadn’t filed a return, either. I was pretty sure that eliminated a refund.
But I wasn’t all that worried. I had other priorities at the moment. The IRS tries to be tough, but at heart they’re all wimpy number crunchers, a bunch of J. Edgar wannabes, minus the dresses and pumps in the closet.
I glanced at Viola and tried to appear concerned. It wasn’t easy. The way I looked at it, the worse case scenario with the IRS was getting tossed in jail for a few years, but Vincent the Hammer would put me a rolled up carpet for eternity. It’s like trembling in the police interrogation room expecting Dirty Harry to bust through the door at any minute, and in walks Angelina Jolie. No matter how tough she acts, you’re going to relax a bit. It’s only natural.
“Me, a cynic?” I said. “I’m not a cynic, I’m just a bartender.”
“A very lonely one, too,” she said, and glanced around the bar. Her eyes lingered for a moment on Davey, then swept over one of Pablo’s murals. An edge of suspicion crept into her eyes. That’s when I noticed she was wearing steel rimmed glasses.
“It’s still early,” I said.
She looked at me. “It’s Happy Hour, Joey.”
“So it is. What can I get you, Viola?”
“Nothing, and you can call me Agent. We should be on a first name basis, right?”
I’ve been known to misread the general flow of the universe on occasion, but I can usually trace my lapses back to something I’ve smoked, inhaled, ingested, or drank. Other times, I have to admit, I’m just slow. This time I didn’t know if it was the edibles or the genes that were slowing me down.
“So Viola is ah … your ah… .”
“That’s right. It’s my last name.”
“So you’re Agent Agent Viola?”
“And people warned me you were slow.”
I wanted to argue the point, but then again I was the guy who tried to sell a mob boss a fake John Lennon guitar.
“So what brings you in?”
“Do you know a man named Hector Guzman?”
“No.”
“You work for him. He owns this bar.”
“Oh, you mean Gras … .”.
I got a bag of pretzels that were older than Grandmother Ethel from under the bar, dumped them in a small wooden bowl, and ate two. The idea was simple. If my mouth were full I wouldn’t have to say anything. My high school basketbal
l coach used to put it this way - good idea, bad pass. But bad pass didn’t quite sum it up. Two bites and my mouth froze. I looked at the bowl, my stomach protesting. The bowl should be declared an EPA super fund site. I wanted a beer, but the beer was at least as old as the pretzels. I tried to swallow. I tried again.
“I guess I never knew Mr. Guzman’s first name,” I wheezed. “I just call him Mr. Guzman, you know.”
“According to Mr. Guzman’s tax records, this place does a booming business.”
I nodded, buying myself a few more seconds. “Yup,” I managed. “Just a little slow tonight.”
Viola’s eyes narrowed. “Joey, it’s slow every night.”
“We’re under new management. Things are going to pick up.”
“New management?”
“Yeah, Mr. Guzman promoted me. I’ve got some ideas. I just had the place redecorated. We’re looking to attract a new crowd.”
She glanced at the murals again. “Really?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Sure, after a couple of margaritas, they look pretty good.”
“Let me be straight with you, okay? We’re willing to overlook the fact that you haven’t filed a tax return in several years in return for a favor.”
“What favor?”
“All we need is for you to tell the truth.”
“I’d love to do that, Ms. Viola, but the truth is a relative thing.” I’d heard that on Dr. Phil one time.
“Not with the government.”
“I guess you missed the last couple of wars, huh?”
“Five years is a long time, Joey.”
I didn’t know if she meant it was a long time to go without paying taxes or to spend in prison.
“Come back Saturday,” I said.
“Why?”
“Like I said. We’re under new management.”
Chapter 18
Turns out I wasn’t even Viola’s first choice. She’d been to Grassman’s other fronts, the Slither Center, a pet shop that specialized in small, poisonous snakes, and Grandma’s Getup, a senior citizens’ costume shop that sold novelty items through a door to the alley out back. They were closed when she got there.
Chuck Freadhoff - Free Booze Tonight Page 4