Memorial

by Bruce Wagner

  “These fine deputies that stand with me today wish to offer their unqualified and sincere apology to Mr Rausch,” said attorney Emmerich Pitori, general counsel of the Los Angeles County Professional Sheriff’s Assn.

  Sheriff Phin Oldwalder said he could not recall any other law enforcement officers in Los Angeles delivering mea culpas for a controversial police action. “This has never happened in this county and this speaks well for the integrity of these deputies.”

  The apology came at a news conference at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, called after an outcry from the ACLU. Mr Rausch has so far declined to take legal action, and somewhat colorfully characterized himself as a longtime supporter of “police and firemen.”

  “Sometimes we simply do not have the time, when the safety of the community is concerned, for due diligence when it comes to intelligence sources that have in the past been tested and deemed reliable. Each one of the deputies, to a person, wishes things would have been different and certainly wish the information they had been given that night had been more accurate.”

  Hours after the break-in, a correct address was verified, and deputies made an arrest just blocks from Mr Rausch’s Mercantile Road residence. Washington Lamont Birdell III was taken into custody for possession of narcotics and firearms.

  IT was “all good,” according to the ACLU attorney.

  Ray hated that phrase. It sounded juvenile and disrespectful.

  2 members of counsel showed up at the apartment to cynically explain the timing of the Oldwalder press conference, saying it was “no accident,” and how the Sheriff was “well aware” they were “smack in the middle” of negotiations. But the old man didn’t find anything Machiavellian about it, once the 10-dollar adjective had been provided. To the lawyers’ silent consternation, Ray said he felt the police were being sincere. The legal team was really hurting because Ghulpa couldn’t provide necessary backup, seeing as she had to wrangle the Friar, who’d been chasing his tail, throwing up, and crying all day—stopping just long enough to viciously curl his lip at the suited men. Ray felt like doing a little of that himself. She finally got Nip to the bedroom and slammed the door behind them.

  The offer had gone from 3-seventy-five to half a million, but they were almost certain the city would settle out at 7-fifty. To Ray’s and everyone’s surprise, the unseen Ghulpa shouted, “We’ll take it!” The visitors looked at Ray, and that was that.

  Sold, at half a mil.

  After a moment of readjusting ties and briefcases, the men were compelled to say it would be wise to go to jury, yet also acknowledged the wisdom of a settlement, for the sake of closure. Ghulpa emerged. The lawyers reiterated their position, this time more convincingly detailed and commonsensible, but she held ground, reaching out for her partner’s hand. He squeezed it in solidarity. Then one of the fellows said, “Good! Great! Terrific,” and Ray began signing a stackload of papers. BG made everyone chamomile.

  There were so many documents, at one point Ray took a breather and sat back in his La-Z-Boy with a grizzled, sleepy-eyed grin. He had cadmium-yellow curry in the crook of his mouth and Big Gulp reentered from the kitchen with a damp cloth to roughly wipe him while she affectionately clucked. 30 minutes later, the whole crew hustled their happy asses out of there.

  After they left, Ray told her how he’d visited Allied Trains while Nip/Tuck was getting a bandage change—the memories of bringing Chester to that place. He cautiously broached the name Lionel as a possibility, if they were to have a son. “Chester” didn’t feel right; she understood, and quietly agreed. (The cousins would probably wind up doing the christening anyway.) Ghulpa softly repeated: Lionel. What does it mean? she asked. Well, he said, inadvertently bobbling his head the Indian way—it’s the name of a train. His eyes widened and he smirked like a big, sweet clown while she kept the same blank look. “It’s the name of a famous toy train! But also,” he added, with utmost gravity, “the name of a very legendary actor: Lionel Barrymore. You know, come to think of it, Gulp, Lionel Barrymore was actually the American ‘Mr B.’ ” He was improvising, but had to admit that was a pretty good one. He probably should have thought it all through beforehand. Ghulpa didn’t seem entirely convinced.

  That’s when Ray pointed out that lion was the name’s root. She didn’t react—which was good.

  “Doesn’t your friend Durga ride on one of those?”

  “We’ll see,” she said. “And if it’s a girl?”

  He waited a moment, then said, “Lioness.”

  She scowled, then laughed in spite of herself.

  She went to let the dog out. He’d puked on the rug. She swore at him then soaked a towel to daub it up. The old man pushed PLAY on his Twilight Zone.

  STANIEL Lake stopped by and was promptly bit—the Friar actually broke skin. That didn’t make Ray happy at all. The detective shrugged it off but Ghulpa was mortified and brought out alcohol and cotton swabs. The detective said he was fine and asked if he could wash his hand in the kitchen sink. The old man felt even worse because when it happened, he’d instinctively swatted Nip’s butt—the dog yelped and pitifully shuddered, even though the hit was nowhere near the wound.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the kindly Mr Lake.

  Ghulpa put the dog back in the bedroom, where he began to shriek and howl. She shushed at him and somewhere a neighbor said, Shut it! Shut that crazy motherfucker up!

  “Sorry about that,” said Ray. “He hasn’t been himself. We’re gonna get some help—Friar’s got ‘mental’ stuff. You sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine. Not the 1st time. Hell, I was raised around dogs. He’ll have to do more than that to scare me off.”

  “He just might! Had your tetanus?”

  “Don’t even worry about it, Ray.”

  “I may have to give a press conference myself,” joked the old man. Then he thought the remark sounded cavalier. He tried to balance it out. “You know, I really appreciated that—the words of those officers. I know they’re good men.”

  He felt bad. He wasn’t sure if he should say they had reached a settlement; maybe it wasn’t kosher, legalwise. He forgot to ask the attorneys about that. He didn’t want to do anything to upset the applecart. But he made a note to eventually explain the decision to Detective Lake, why he’d agreed to accept the City’s terms, and let him know for the record there were no hard feelings—he was going to be a new father soon, that’s all, and worried about the child’s welfare and what the future held, plain and simple. He wanted to take the detective and his colleagues to the Pacific Dining Car when the money came in but didn’t know if that was allowed; again, if it was kosher. Oh, the hell with it, he’d do it anyway. He’d do it before—before he got a penny. He wanted to convene, explain himself to the cops so that when the news broke, they wouldn’t think he was a hypocrite or a greedy man because afterall they had the best intentions and he didn’t consider it to be their fault that things went wrong (like things sometimes/always do), they put their lives on the line each and every day, and they’d spoken from their hearts, and hadn’t been Machiavellian. He wanted to say all of that right this minute but BG kept shooting him looks, he understood those kinds of signals, she was telling him to bite down, button up, zip it, upset as she was about the dog chomping on their guest, she still wanted to protect her own, protect her man and the bump in her belly. She subtly glowered each time she sensed Ray was weakening, wanting to share his sappy thoughts with Mr Lake.

  The detective stayed about an hour, watching The Twilight Zone on and off, before going his way. Ray asked if he’d like to have a meal one day soon and Ghulpa seemed fine with that—it was the right thing to have said. He apologized for the Friar’s uncivil behavior and again, the detective shrugged it off.

  Ghulpa and Ray watched a Larry King rerun. He was interviewing the model who lost her fiancé in the tsunami, a beautiful girl who clung to a palm tree for hours before being rescued. She spent 3 weeks in the hospital with a broken pelvis.

&nbs
p; Ghulpa shuffled in from the kitchen with food, staring spitefully at the screen.

  “I will never return,” she said, as if suffering a fresh insult.

  “But that’s Thailand, not India,” said the old man.

  “My child will never see that terrible place. I don’t care.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  LI.

  Chester

  THE kiss at the zoo surprised him.

  It had stopped there, aside from a little groping, which was fine and dandy, because Chess didn’t think he was up for anything else. Too heavy. But it was obvious they were becoming more than just friends and he worried about getting too dependent. He didn’t need another drug in his life. Still, winding up as the neutered companion, like on some TV sitcom—standing on the sidelines while Ganesha Girl got involved with another Maurie-type—would be rough. (Though he knew he’d probably settle for anything; she was definitely nice to have around.) He was super-attracted. The idea of Laxmi even sitting on his toilet was a turn-on—just thinking about it gave Chess half a hard-on, which was all he seemed capable of lately. But for the life of him he couldn’t see her side of it.

  Why would she be interested?

  He got paranoid, occasionally wondering if it was a new setup involving Maurie, some meta–Friday Night Frights mindfuck. (Maybe his old pal was doing another reality show that even Remar was in on.) Chess started TiVo-ing FNF because Laxmi had become a semiregular. Apart from the thrill of watching her—she was usually scantily clad, as they say—he enjoyed it. One episode featured a clever show-within-a-show. They recruited a Vic, telling him he was going to “do some stunts” on a Punk’d-style series called The Fright Club. A real stuntman pretended to be fatally injured during the filming and the police came; the kid who’d been hired completely freaked. It was pretty sophisticated, kind of like the Michel Gondry version. Whenever Chess felt particularly vulnerable, usually after smoking weed, he thought Laxmi’s attentions might be part of an elaborate hoax. He knew it was crazy, and was usually able to talk himself down fairly quick.

  Chess was convinced that his fears were only a function of all the physical bullshit he’d been experiencing: bouts of room-twirling vertigo in the morning being the latest. His doc ascribed it to the voodoo of various meds but Chess made an appointment to come in anyway because there was evidently some sort of “non-invasive procedure” they could do right in the office to equalize the fluids in the ear. From everything he’d gathered off blogs and chatrooms, dizziness was a bitch to get rid of. (People usually got the cookie-cutter diagnosis of BPPV—Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo.) There was a widely accepted fix-it called the Epley Maneuver; like everything else, how-to diagrams were all over the Net. It seemed kind of hillbilly. The nurses took hold of Chess, yanking him this way and that until his eyes jumped and jittered in their sockets (“nystagmus,” said the regal RN), thus dislodging debris or “ear rocks”—literally what they were called. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. You had to sleep semi-recumbent for a few days after the mad teacup ride or risk undoing any salutary effects. If the vertigo didn’t go away after 2 or 3 Epleys, they left you twisting in the wind, in a thunderstorm of vomit.

  Like lots of things—chronic pain being Numero Uno—no one really took it seriously, not even putative professionals. MDs just kept writing scripts for antihistamines and Dramamine, generally categorizing repeat offenders as fags, drags, and whiners. If the problem persisted, they were legally compelled to rule out MS, Parkinson’s, compression of vertebral arteries (that’s what was worrying Chess), or Ménière’s. People with vestibular disorders were called “wobblers”—sometimes you could be sent to permanent vertigo jail from the side effects of a virus or something as routine as a run-of-the-mill antibiotic. There were surgical treatments for BPPV but Chess didn’t even want to go there. The idea of someone cutting into his spine was bad enough but plumbing into notoriously delicate aural canals and fluid reservoirs or tinkering with weensy ear bones sounded like an invitation to suffer the consequences of illustrating Mohammed. So for a while, he took to propping himself up while he slept, which wasn’t easy. He spent $400 on special formfitting bolsters at Relax Your Back. Sometimes, on top of the painkillers, he needed 4 Klonopin (1 mg) and 3 Ambien CRs (12.5 mg) just to get him through the night.

  He dutifully passed on his recent Job-like travails to Remar De Concini LLD, AKA the Gay Pit Bull.

  AFTER the make-out session in Griffith Park, Chess shared some memories of his dad. Laxmi enthusiastically echoed how The Jungle Book was a favorite of hers too, from girlhood. (She meant the version with John Cleese.) A few days later, she brought over a Netflix of the original Disney. They did hash brownies and Baileys Irish Cream: a killer combo. Laxmi said she used to watch the one from 1994 with her mom when they relocated to a rental on Tigertail Road in Brentwood Hills. From the commune.

  The odd couple sat on the couch munching magicsnacks, and got all snuggly and captivated. They wrapped themselves up in each other’s arms, grooving on the night’s activity. (Chess didn’t become aroused and as usual found that both worrisome and copacetic.) When it came to the innocuously clever, charming scat song of the old hipster orangutans, Laxmi exclaimed it was “totally racist.” “I mean, all they’re really saying is, they just want to be white.” Chess wouldn’t give an endorsement; he didn’t relate to the politics of it. She must have realized she sounded over-the-top, adding that “The Bare Necessities” was “amazingly perfect and Zen.”

  Chess remembered more of the movie than he cared to. He used to call Daddy Ray “Baloo.” They got to the part where Baloo wanted to adopt Mowgli as his son but the panther said it wasn’t right because Baloo was a bear. That was always a downer. Still was. The panther said the “man cub” had to be returned to the “man village” and Baloo got all sad and Chess, under a goodbye hashish-Baileys moon, grew teary-eyed as well. Baloo told Mowgli he couldn’t stay in the forest and it broke the bear’s heart. The boy ran off. When Baloo the bear said, “If anything happens to that little guy, I’ll never forgive myself,” Chess thought of Raymond. What a shitheel. A remark like that would never occur to that old fuck.

  A wave of dizziness washed over him and he braced himself to barf. Chess began to cry, the tears somehow stanching nausea. He full-on sobbed. Laxmi held him and they rocked together, then both began to laugh. That was cathartic and good, and what was special about their relationship. That funny-sad thing they could tap into on a dime. They lit up a bong.

  George Sanders was the voice of the man-eating Bengal that kicked the shit out of Baloo when he tried to protect Mowgli, and suddenly the old bear lay on the ground without moving. Chess had forgotten this part: he couldn’t remember if Raymond died or not, and in his stonedness, got briefly freaked. Then, ever so slowly, the bear opened an eye—of course. Of course he was OK. Those were the days before wholesale bloodbaths and glimpses of hell had worked their way into animated kid stuff. But actually, now that he thought of it, Bambi hadn’t had such a far-out time.

  “You know what you should do,” said Laxmi, “if it doesn’t work out with that lawyer of yours? You should get an Indian guy. My dad could probably help.”

  “For an attorney?” he said, confused. “But he’d be…in India. Right?”

  “You may not know it, Chess,” she said, taking a deep toke, holding it, then coughing a mite. “Every—or at least lots of American law firms outsource to Indian firms. Rebar probably has a whole—”

  “Remar.”

  “Remar probably has a whole fleet working for him already. They call them ‘chutney sweatshops.’ My father said that even Du Pont farms it out. It’s like a 10th of what they’d pay in the States. Why wouldn’t they?”

  The phone rang—it was Maurie. Chess gave her a furtive Freemason heads-up.

  Maurie mentioned the Morongo casino gig again and how Chess should lighten up so they could go make some bread. What the fuck. Yeah, I’ll go. He probably wouldn’t have assented i
f Laxmi wasn’t there but her secret presence lent a nice Fuck You to the conversation. Maurie was surprised, and glad to hear it. Laxmi got up to use the head, walking on giggle-suppressed exaggerated tippy toes to drive home the fact of her satisfying private life with Chester. That titillated him, there was something payback pervy about the 3some going on a trip without that arrogant piece of shit knowing what was happening behind the scenes. Not that there was much happening, not yet. Just a little huggin and kissin and smokin.

  Chester hoped to change all that. He went online to order Viagra. (He’d thrown the original free samples away out of pride, and didn’t want to call the doc back for a “refill.” Anyhow, the dick-stiffeners were expensive.) It was easy. They even had a “special”—like a clearance. He got Oxycontin, Xanax, and Ambien CR at a discount. Sweet.

  LII.

  Marjorie

  SHE bought her daily ticket.

  A funny feeling, because the notes and flowers that decorated the liquor store in memoriam were down now, and you had to look hard to see the wires, mostly gone themselves, that once held bouquets in place.

  The devout son was behind the counter and the mother nowhere to be seen. The young man smiled and went about his business. It was strange to Marjorie, not that it should have or could have been any other way, but she had the unsettling feeling that Riki had somehow died in a different way—the violence of it had conveniently receded, and now it seemed as if his death had been natural, or he’d gotten the flu and would soon be back, or he’d simply returned to India for an indeterminate amount of time. Marjorie knew it would be poor form to share her little wish-fulfillment fantasy-observations. What right had she to smalltalk about such a thing? Besides, it wasn’t part of their culture to endlessly hash over death; death was so much a part of their world that no one had the need to “kibitz” about it (as Hamilton would say). The Indian people embraced the cycle of life—karma, death, and rebirth—and didn’t need to be inoculated or familiarized or talked down to, or have their noses rubbed in the obvious by meddling, mawkish Westerners. That would be ignorant and presumptuous. But part of her still stubbornly wanted to reach out, and she remembered hearing something on a talkshow, maybe Dr Phil, where an expert said that in times like this, the worst thing a person could say was “nothing.” That had really stuck. Well, she would just have to get over it. She had done her part and given the widow an honorarium and anything else at this point would be self-indulgent. Marj would continue to patronize the shop, as usual, thus actively demonstrating her support. The side benefit being that the old woman could help restore a sense of normalcy, not that it was even possible. And she mustn’t forget: they would soon reap the benefits of her Blind Sister winnings. She needed to ask Lucas when they would be told, and if an exception could be made to inform them earlier. She wondered what % they had coming.