The heavenly smell of seasoned animal flesh sizzled on the grill while customers ate their meals on a countertop attached to the front of the small building. The proprietor, Harvey, a retired ex-Marine mess sergeant, stood posted in the small kitchen as if he were one with the grill, to which he was. His suntanned, leathery arms flipped the burgers, dogs, and pastrami gracefully, and his broad back, advertising the company logo, angled boorishly toward the customers who waited eagerly for their meals.
I placed myself at an empty bar stool at the end of the counter. Harvey looked my way and threw both Pastrami and a sourdough bun on the hot grill. Many who ate here were regular customers, so a simple showing of one’s face was all Harvey needed to prepare an order.
At the other end of the counter sat a couple I knew, Mr. and Mrs. Falsetto, which explained one of the late model BMWs. The chic land barons woofed down their patty melts until James Falsetto picked up the fresh scent of nearby prime real estate. He stopped eating long enough to follow his nose toward my direction. Carmella too picked up my scent and trained her Kewpie Doll eyes on me. As would be expected, she was delectably dressed in fashionable attire.
Mr. Falsetto lifted his meal and carried it to a couple empty seats next to mine. Carmella followed her husband, hiding in his shadow.
James Falsetto was a Frisco Bay class of Italian. He was too capricious to hold membership in any exclusive country club, yet he was also too refined to closet any Mafioso skeletons. His sole purpose in life was money, shuffled and laundered, earned and sharked, and truth be told, he was damn good at sniffing it out.
“Mr. Kidd, what a surprise,” Falsetto said. His hand stuck out as if he were collecting rent, hell, he might as well be. With a quick test of strength, we shook hands. “Your notoriety precedes you, Mr. Kidd.”
“As does yours, Mr. Falsetto.” Now that the tacit insults were out of the way, it was down to some impromptu-risky business.
“May we sit with you?” Falsetto asked.
“Absolutely.”
As the two of them took possession of their seats, I observed how Frank Falsetto’s pretense hid smartly inside his office-casual attire. His clothes and accessorized jewelry were typical for someone of his wealth. He had an athletic build, about my height, six foot, well-groomed, short, dark hair with grey around temples. His aftershave was Old Spice, wafting aromatically in the salty breeze. His magnum opus was a pearly white smile that no doubt scored points with the ladies. With his sleeves rolled up and his button-down collar flapping freely in the wind, the smug approach Falsetto was notorious for had instead, for the moment, the look of an all-around nice guy.
Harvey’s mad-dog glare beamed a Semper-Fi warning at me: Trust no one.
“What a coincidence seeing you here, Jack,” Falsetto said. “Carmella and I were just talking about you this morning.”
“I’m sure you were.” I peered behind Mr. Falsetto and asked, “Carmella, how’ve you been?”
“Splendid, Jack, just splendid.” She gazed out toward the highway sucking through a straw, slurping the remainder of her soda.
“You eat here often, Jack?” Falsetto asked.
“Ask Harvey.”
Harvey didn’t respond. He just flashed another mad dog caveat my way.
“Carmella and I drove down from the Bay area just few hours ago. We were cruising along this picturesque coastline and saw this cheesy food stand and thought, what the hell, why not pick up some heartburn. Every once in a while it’s fun to have working-class food that can clog up the works.” Falsetto pulled soda through his straw, causing an annoying sucking noise. “But you know all about clogging up the works, don’t you, Jack?” He let out a soft belch followed by a leering smile.
“You don’t see this too often,” I said, “a billionaire trekking his own junk-food road trip.” I glanced at my pastrami on the grill and had an intense desire to tell someone in close proximity to fuck off. I just wanted to eat my sizzling, bovine delicacy alone.
Falsetto continued, “The coast is beautiful down here. In fact, I’m even thinking about resettling to Southern California.”
“Oh? Is the wine country not to your liking anymore, James?”
“Not at all. I just see more opportunity down here.”
Harvey placed the searing Pastrami sandwich in front of me along with an opened bottle of Perrier.
“My wife was telling me about the meeting she had with you last week, Jack, and how you both had a heart-to-heart about that land of yours.”
“And what exactly did her heart tell you?” I took a man-sized bite of the sandwich, followed by a swig of the Perrier.
“I really don’t mind about you and my wife, Jack. It’s all business, you know.”
You sorry sack of shit, I thought. I can honestly say I’ve heard it all now. I took another bite without responding.
“So how is your quest coming along, big guy?” Falsetto asked. The leering smile reappeared. “Anything musing out there yet?”
“Jesus Christ, Jimmy!” Carmella blurted out. She stood from the counter with her purse over her shoulder, staring toward their car.
I leaned back in my stool and looked at her, enjoying her chagrin. I made a hard swallow and said, “Funny you should mention that, Jimmy. As a matter of fact, there is something musing that I’ve found.”
“Oh?” Falsetto stood, paid for the meals, and peered down at me like a card player with a stale, winning hand.
“For one, your wife likes it on her back, slow and easy, with a man gazing into her eyes. And two, she can make one hell of a nightcap, the kind that can put a guy to sleep really well. So much, in fact, I couldn’t even hear my lover sneak out of bed and rifle through my files.” I shot a gotcha look at Carmella.
“Goddamn it, Jack—goddamn it, Jimmy!” Carmella stormed away toward their shiny BMW, kicking a path through the gravel parking lot.
Falsetto laughed, the kind husbands guffaw when they’ve just stepped in it. “You must have my wife confused with all those spinsters you sell yourself to, Jack.” He flinched when his Beemer’s door slammed.
I took another bite of my sandwich, followed by a drink. “You see, Jimmy, I’ve got hidden cameras throughout my house. Not to mention data stored in the fax machine’s cache when certain documents were sent off to a certain Northern California area code. All hard evidence, my good man.” I let out a healthy belch from the Perrier.
“You think you’re fucking righteous with that land of yours, don’t you, Jack?”
“No more than you, Jimmy. Last I heard you had four-thousand acres of green, rolling vineyards. How much more righteous can you get than that?”
“My vineyards are in rural zones. It’ll take decades before any development comes close to my land. But your land is in the heart of a housing and commercial boom, and you sit on it with your finger up your ass dreaming about yesteryear.” Falsetto shuffled a nearby paper napkin in front of him and whipped out a ballpoint pen from his pocket. He scribbled a large numerical figure with several zeros onto the napkin. He pushed the napkin in front of me. “My offer for your land is sound offer, Jack.”
“About as sound as your marriage, huh, Jimbo?” I drained more mineral water, wanting to spit the fizzy tonic into a nearby face. I glanced at the napkin. “A ten-percent lowball? It’s a seller’s market, James, haven’t you noticed?”
“That’s standard when it comes to land investment, you know that. Hell, even with a ten-percent discount, you’ll be a billionaire. And besides, might even help with that quest of yours. You can buy an island somewhere in Micronesia and start your own Margarita-ville nudist colony for washed up Jimmy Buffet types like yourself. What do you say, Jackie boy?”
I looked at Falsetto’s pearly whites that had a piece of cilantro, chive, or whatever the hell it was stuck to them. I then thought, God, I’m glad I fucked this man’s wife. “So let me get this straight, James. I take your insulting offer, you flip the property, make a quick quarter-of-a-billion, then divvy
it up among your shady investment syndicate, after which you’ll walk away with around forty mil in your pocket, and I end up the idiot who just got suckered by the Jimmy the Great. Not a bad day’s work.”
Falsetto’s face took on the look of a despot whose bluff just got called.
I went on, “Besides, Jimbo, your wife and I already made our deal. Take it or leave it.” I pulled a long swig of Perrier, feeling the bite of its crispy bubbles course down my throat.
Falsetto chuckled and said, “Let’s not play some fucking game here, Jack.” He drew closer, putting the lean on me. “You do know, Mr. Kidd...” his voice dropped an octave, “I’m actually doing you a favor by making this offer.”
“How so, Mr. Falsetto?” I downshifted my tone of voice to match his.
“Oh, come on, Jack, you know as well as I that you’re a sitting duck on this piece of geography.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
“It means you need to get the fuck out of the way.”
My, my, what large, bloodthirsty fangs you have, Mr. Falsetto. “And what if I don’t, James?” We locked horns for a moment. After a few slow-and-heavy snorts of breath, Falsetto disengaged first and went for his car.
I devoured my remaining sandwich and watched the money-grubbing duo drive away. I laid cash on the counter. “Thanks Harvey. It was as good as always.”
Harvey grabbed the money, shook his head, and muttered, “You, goddamn rich people.”
26
My regular evening dance class was at 6pm with Angela Bashir. As I opened the door and entered the building, a woman’s voice spoke from the shadows, “Are you ready, Jay?”
After my eyes adjusted from bright sunlight to a dimly lit staircase, I noticed Angela sitting alone on the stairway. “Are we training here on the stairs today, Angel?” I asked in jest.
“We are.”
I assessed the location: the old staircase that climbed to Brenda’s studio with its dated carpeting, wood fixtures, and ancient, briny odors.
“The stairs will help with your Latin steps,” she said. “Take my hands.”
I did and stood below her on a lower step.
“Remember your posture—a slight lean forward—plow your toes ever so subtly. On eight: five, six, seven, eight...”
“We’re missing music,” I said.
“No music is needed. It’s all about posture.” She continued to count.
As I did what she told me and plowed my feet along the edge of the stairs, I couldn’t help but notice her low-cut blouse with shadowy line of cleavage bobbing in front of me. She had a fragrance today, cologne or body spray, I wasn’t sure, but there was a scent about her, pumped and pretty, seemingly flaunting.
“Lean forward, Jaywalk,” she commanded. “A little more, there, now move your feet the way I taught you.”
The wobbly placement of my feet along the edge of these worn stairs was difficult enough, to say the least, and not so much because of the exercise but more because of how my paws ached to grasp softer, more rounded places. I looked up, searching for her eyes in the dark shadows.
“Five, six, seven, eight; five, six, seven, eight...”
All I could see was her bouncing cleavage and her moist and appetizing mouth. We moved to another flight of stairs and proceeded.
“Is it true what I’ve heard about you, Jay?”
“Most likely.”
“That you sell real estate for sex.”
I stumbled and didn’t respond. We reached the top until she led me down a few steps and started over.
“You hate women, don’t you?” she said. “Five, six, seven, eight—or you wouldn’t do what you do. You’re a misogynist. I’ve read about men like you, although I’ve never met one.”
“You do know that men become misogynists because of women, right?”
She ignored that and kept counting, enticing me up more stairs. I thought about William’s wizardry at bugging this place and concluded he’d have no reason to wire the staircase, unless, of course, Angela was an accomplice. She did seem a little chatty today. I casually brushed my hand along her back to detect a wire. She was clean. I then made a more intense scan of her bobbing breasts, detecting nary a wire or recording device. I added, “You’re young. I doubt you’ve met that many misogynists.”
“Are you insinuating that I’ve never been with a man?”
“It’s hard to dance this way.”
“It’s necessary.”
The muscles in the middle of my back began to cramp, and so I stopped.
“Keep moving.”
“I’m finished with the stairs. Let’s say we head up to the dance floor. I perform misogyny better on flat surfaces.”
“When I said I’ve never met a man like you, Jack, I meant that your spirit is free, that you have no conscience, and that you’re trying to escape something.”
I began to feel the crosshairs now, but without the long lens, only the zeroing in of two pretty mink eyes hiding in shadows. “Escape?”
“You’re a non-conformist, someone who doesn’t care what the world thinks. A flourishing whore of a man.”
“You make non-conformity sound so vile.”
“I’m sorry, but I find you thrilling somehow, Jack, and...quite attractive.”
It was too easy in the dark. Stairway or not, I wanted to pull her close and caress my lips along every inch of her warm and tender peaks and forbidden valleys and then pound her hot, supple—
“Okay,” she said. “We can go up now.” She led me up the stairs.
“May I ask you something, Angela?” My heart skipped a beat.
“Yes, anything.”
27
The following morning I followed up on phone calls regarding a few real estate deals I had in escrow. One call in particular was from Gertrude, aka Granny Whitehead. Her stated last name was Jones, the classic WASP surname: generic, ubiquitous, easy to pull out of a hat.
Since that day in Brenda’s futon room, I’ve had the heebie jeebies about Gertrude’s desire for me to sell her house. Her outwardly acute knowledge of knowing I was a Realtor, and, well, the way she ogled my ass left me unsettled. But being the nosey, antsy kind of guy that I am, I decided to appease my curiosity by meeting her at her home—but only in broad daylight.
I turned left onto Twilight Lane where the house was located. I thought about the street name and its close comparison to that of a 1960s situational TV drama about other dimensions and the surreal. Nah, don’t go there, Jack.
I parked in front of the three-bedroom, two-bath target property. My 120k German coupe stuck out in this middle-class neighborhood like a Rolex watch strapped to Joe Six-pack’s wrist on bowling night. Truth be told, I rarely list houses this low on price scale. Most properties I sell are in the multi-million dollar range, and this modest cottage would probably only list for an affordable (in Newport Beach, that is), 950k.
I exited my coupe and made mental notes of the area as I panned my sight up and down the Twilight Zone, I mean, Twilight Lane. It was an older tract of homes, built in the 1950s, and probably one of the first tracts in Newport Beach.
I approached the house, making another mental note: no automobile sat in the driveway or at the curb in front of the house. Being the time-honored 1950s bungalow style, I located the garage at the back of the property. The garage door was closed. Because all the window coverings were drawn shut, no burning lights were seen.
I paused in front of the house. Holstered inside my loose-fitting Dockers around my right ankle was my 9mm Glock. I normally don’t carry my gun. In fact, hardly ever, but in times like these when forewarning whispers of ambush tickled my ear, I packed my piece. As I said, it was the heebie jeebies I had, a certain feel about Gertrude and this appointment I couldn’t shake.
I checked my watch, chronicling our appointment time. I was early, as usual. I stepped onto the welcome mat and rang the doorbell. After only a few seconds the sound of pacing footsteps on raised, wooden floor traipsed thr
ough the house. The door opened and sure enough Gertrude the white-haired mystery stood behind the screen door shrouded in a shimmering ambiance.
“Mr. Kidd, right on time,” she said, as if she were expecting me, which was kind of what I was afraid of.
“Gertrude. Good morning,” I said. My voice was a bit curt, which was planned. Unlike the landed gentry and gullible nouveau riche who own coastal properties with ocean views and who can pretty much name their selling price and get it, clients of the, shall we say, middleclass garden variety don’t have that luxury. So whenever I met with these type of clients, the time during my viewing of the property and my subsequent explanation of just how much their property will most likely sell for, as opposed to what they want it to sell for, can be somewhat tense. But this was my first time experiencing this awkward moment with a semi-automatic firearm strapped to my ankle.
Gertrude opened the screen door, allowing me to enter the house. I glanced subtly at her clothes, posture, and face. Her pose was amiable but tense, and her eyes, for the moment, seemed inviting. She had on the same style of clothes she wore at the studio: double-knit pants, a long-sleeve button-up blouse that was loose around her waist, and orthopedic shoes. Another mental note, either she was a penny pincher who didn’t own a varied wardrobe, or, and this is where my heebies really began jeebing, her choice of clothes was too off-the-rack, as if prearranged in some gun-for-hire briefing room.
In my hand was the usual binder I carry when meeting clients on location. Inside the binder were price comparisons of neighboring properties and also a net sheet of ensuing costs and any net profit. As I scanned the interior of the home, my first item of intrigue was that the property was void of furniture.
“Your property is vacant,” I said.
“Yes, my husband and I had the furniture moved to storage recently. This should make it easier for your appraisal, don’t you think?”
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 17