Shortcut Man

by p. g. sturges

  What body had Ravenich laid out? I stroked my chin. When knowledge runs out, try philosophy. “Age is point of view, I’m told.”

  “Perhaps. You didn’t tell me he was black, either.”

  Ravenich lifted a single shoulder.

  Old fibissedah face tried desperately to maintain his nonchalance. “You had too much class to ask, Mr. Benjamin, and he’s Cuban, by the way.” Put a man up on a pedestal he may stay there. So there I let it lay.

  Arnuldo, behind and off to the side, looked at me and slowly drew his finger across his throat.

  Benjamin’s eyes bulged. “Mr. Ravich says he was a musician,” he croaked through clenched teeth.

  Uhhh . . . sure. Black musicians had white pussy by the truckload. That old hoodoo thing.

  Ravenich’s face was a mask.

  I nodded to Benjamin. “Mr. Ravenich is correct. He was a musician.”

  Finally there was nothing left but bitter peace or sweet violence. Benjamin made a big swallow, nodded, walked for his Silver Cloud, Arnuldo bringing up the rear.

  Ravenich and I watched them go. I turned on Ravenich. “You nearly fried my bacon. Old? Black?”

  “It was either that or claim that Tom Salt was actually a woman. From El Salvador.”

  “How old was the guy you laid out?”

  “Old as Benjamin.”

  “Shit.”

  “What was the guy’s name?”

  “Charles James. You ever heard of Charles James?”

  “He was a musician?”

  Ravenich nodded. “Played harp. Little Walter style. A Milwaukee cat.”

  I handed Ravenich a fifty. “Send some flowers to the service, all right?”

  Ravenich examined the face of Ulysses S. Grant. “Uh, fifty bucks buys budget flowers.”

  I’d had all I could take. “For chrissakes, Billy, just send the man some flowers.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Lips and Tongue

  Arnuldo guided the Silver Cloud onto the 10 and across town at eighty-five smooth miles an hour. The dead black man he had just seen had nothing to do with anything. And asshole Dick Henry was a fraud. Was he covering up for Judy? Or involved with Judy? Didn’t matter. If they crossed paths and opportunity were present, the man’s days were numbered.

  He eyed Mr. Benjamin in the rearview mirror. The man was suffering.

  So, suffer. Magdusa.

  Arnuldo remembered the night of his first real conversation with Mrs. Benjamin. All their previous interactions had been incidental and formal. There was no conceivable benefit in talking to Mr. B’s woman and he hadn’t.

  They met in the kitchen. All other staff being out, and Mr. Benjamin on business in San Francisco, she had asked him to make her a sandwich.

  He made her a BLT with thin-sliced avocado by way of his razor-sharp butterfly knife and they’d gotten to talking and he found himself telling his tale.

  He talked of Tondo and his mother. Of Olongapo City, Delia, Mr. Dinkins, of the trip to paradise. Of the phone call he had received four years later. That Delia had died in flames in an accident with a wrong-way driver on the freeway.

  How he had loved Delia! With a fervency and quality he could never bring to the light of day. His last connection with his homeland. And though she had not loved him, had not recognized the burning orb in his chest, she was kind and that was something.

  Then, within months of her passing, Dinkins had perished at sea. He had fallen over the side on the ship’s passage from Long Beach to Pearl Harbor. The USS St. Louis, LKA 116. An amphibious cargo transport. The death was attributed to misadventure at sea. But Arnuldo knew better. Mr. Dinkins had died of a broken heart. The sea was merely his resting place.

  The deaths of Delia and Mr. Dinkins had severed all emotional connection, had set him free, free from hope, free from human obligation. He had embraced the void.

  As he recounted their deaths, tears came to her eyes and her hand accidentally touched his.

  Except there are no such accidents.

  With infinite mutual subtlety the brush became a hold. While his hands were in hers, and their eyes upon each other, something happened. Slowly, ever so slowly, she leaned across the table and kissed him lightly, so lightly, on the lips. The second kiss was deeper and full of passion.

  There was no question in his mind that he was doing the wrong thing, that he was giving license to huge trouble. But he was Arnuldo, from Tondo, raised from ruin, destined for solitude, his fate that he would scatter to the wind the little he would gather together.

  The knock he had both anticipated and feared came at half past eleven. He was not close to sleep. Though that’s what he pretended when he opened his door and she walked right in.

  Over the course of the evening they made love in every possible fashion. He even went down between her legs and pleasured her with his lips and tongue. Which he had never done before. A practice he had crudely abhorred in the company of his rough friends from National City. Apparently he had been good at it.

  From that day forth, he had been her willing slave. And from that day, like a cancer growing from a single malignant cell, he had begun to hate Mr. Benjamin.

  The Silver Cloud exited the 10 at La Cienega and proceeded north.

  “Arnuldo.”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Take Sunset, swing by Liquor Locker.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Some Rest for the Wicked

  I rolled out of O’Halloran’s and didn’t want to drive on the freeway so I drove home on surface streets, finally reached my place. To the dregs of my soul I yearned for the temporary absolution of sleep. As I turned the key, I heard a voice.

  “Hi, Dick.”

  It was Lynette.

  That night, when I thought all had been squandered, we got back to heaven’s groove. We flowed together; no words were necessary. Perhaps we had no place else to go. We made love slowly and my weariness fell away and the universe was a benevolent place. We lay in the dark and I wanted nothing, wanted for nothing. There was no past, there was no future. Just this moment of absolute peace. The tiniest breeze eddied in from the garden, and I could feel its soundless tide, in and out, over my face. The crickets did their work, I had done mine, and everything was as all right as it was ever going to get.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Patricia’s Dream

  It wasn’t much of a dream, but she had worked on it. Now, again, little Patricia Anne Nagle, age eleven, took the stage at St. Cecelia Parish Hall. As her hands descended softly to the keys, a sense of happy confidence filled her up, from tiptoes to tip-top. She had practiced “Für Elise” countless times. It was almost as if she’d written it herself.

  The melody spun out across the hall, and the hearts of all who heard it moved with it; they were comforted and transported to a place beyond woe and confusion. The liquid, self-evident mathematics of melody and harmony took the several hundred individual listeners and recast them as one entity. And that one entity held its breath and prepared itself for the sweet agony of finale.

  Patricia Anne sounded the final chord and then, at exactly the right moment, removed her hands from the keys.

  Into that perfect blessed silence fell the approbation of the crowd. It crashed into the vacuum, then outward against the walls, reverberating, everyone on their feet, applauding, cheering, whistling, yelling. And in the front row was a beautiful lady, on her feet, proudest of them all. The beautiful lady had hazel eyes, lambent orbs of kindness and love, and these wonderful eyes were focused entirely on Patricia Anne.

  The beautiful lady was her mother, and the supreme happiness of that single moment suffused Patricia Anne’s entire being, dissolved it in joy, rendered it incapable of shame, of dirt, of disappointment.

  Sometimes she ran back the dream again and again, took the stage one more time in the fragile hush of expectation. This time, she pushed herself up, looked down on Dick Henry, then walked to the kitchen to
get herself a drink of water.

  The water ran over her fingers. In actuality, her memories of her mother were few, flashes here and there. Then there were the numerous bastard conflated fictions, true memories mixed up with the recollections of others telling her their versions of what they thought she must have experienced.

  Her father had called her into the bedroom that evening. She was six years old. That day was a blur; she had been carrying on and on about something, whatever it was, refusing to make peace with it.

  “I’ll give you something to cry about, Patricia,” said her father, hands heavy on her shoulders. “Mama’s in heaven.”

  Richard Nagle looked down on his daughter. His life had fallen completely apart at eleven-sixteen that morning. How would he tell Patricia? How would he usher in the very worst day of her little life? She stared up at him. “Mama’s gone to heaven,” he repeated slowly. He had a feeling she had not understood the meaning of his words.

  “When is she getting back?” asked Patricia Anne.

  Now the water was cold. She filled a glass and drank it off. Los Angeles water was some of the best in the entire country. Yet millions of the city’s citizens drank bottled water in a mass billion-dollar delusion that it was better. Proof of tap water’s relative purity didn’t sway them. Barnum had been exactly right. Suckers were born every day.

  And it didn’t stop there. The sickening, frightening, cold-comedic fraud of this loveless world. Which no one wanted to acknowledge.

  Every single face the face of a liar. Every liar claiming truth. There was no merit, there was connection. There was no right way, there were ways. The front way meant you had friends, the back way meant you used money, and the side way meant you used whatever you had. No one was straight, nothing was true, everyone was crooked, everyone was on the take, everything was for sale. But at the highest level of the game, where a man was manicured, pedicured, shampooed, shaved, and blow-jobbed, you never, never, never admitted it was a game. You played with a straight face and made sure your cuff links were polished.

  She went back into the bedroom and looked down on Dick Henry. His body was still good and his face was lined but you could see the kid in it. He’d probably played third base or something. The hot corner, that’s what they called it. Hey, batta, batta.

  He was still a kid. Hadn’t seen it was all false, all a game, all a deception, all a ruin.

  She climbed into bed and lay beside him, smelled his scent, timed his respiration, joined it. Was it possible, was it faintly, minutely, microscopically possible that the game was not a game? That it was real? That love was not an angle?

  She moved her forehead against his shoulder, put her hand over his forearm.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tom Salt Is Dead

  Artie Benjamin looked into his backyard and was pleased. Water arced rhythmically over the lawn, deconstructed into diamond shards of beauty by the late morning sun. Roy G. Biv. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. But you don’t want to drink it.

  And where was Judy last night? Well, fuck her. He had some news for her.

  How had he allowed himself to marry her? He hated looking back but couldn’t help it. His courtship—courtship—had been a movie. A willing suspension of disbelief. Except he’d been paying for popcorn at lobster prices. And when time enough had passed so that he could look at the truth and the third woman he’d made his wife, there he was, sitting in a pile of shit. Why? Because Arthur Benjamin, as his father had claimed a thousand times, was as stupid as the day was long.

  Even his mother thought he was stupid. Well, eff all of them. His mother, his father, Judy, his uncles and the rest. Arthur Andrew Benjamin had made $50 million of his own.

  Judy had crawled in at five. Slept behind her locked door. Now he heard feet on the stairs. The big clock in the living room bonged out eleven.

  And here she was. In that long green silk bathrobe he’d purchased at a great price. Cantonese silk. But how was he to really know? Maybe it was Orlon from Santee Alley.

  She was smoking a cigarette and holding the newspaper. Yet even knowing all that he knew, her sheer beauty, her sheer freakish beauty had its effect on him. If only she loved him.

  Judy, without a word in his direction, sat down at the other end of the very long kitchen table. She brushed a tress of dark hair from her face. Agnalcia brought her breakfast in; he watched Judy ignore her utterly.

  “Coffee,” said Judy to Agnalcia’s back.

  Not an eye toward him. Toward the man who provided everything. So be it. If she wasn’t talking, neither was he. He had his pride and silence was the price.

  But, after a while, he couldn’t hold out. “Good morning, dear,” he sang, in deep falsehood.

  Judy did not look up. She took a drag on her cigarette. Agnalcia delivered her coffee.

  “Cream,” said Judy to Agnalcia’s back.

  “I didn’t hear you come in last night, darling.”

  Not the slightest reaction from Judy. With her latest Barneys bill coming in at $6,500. With another couple of grand at Kenneth Cole. Judy had brought forth in him feelings he had thought mutually incompatible. He wanted to bash her face in and at the same time he felt at the edge of tears, loving her, loving her.

  “We’ve come a long way since our wedding day, haven’t we, darling?”

  “Screw you, Artie.” She flicked her cigarette into her eggs. She was sick of being reminded how much he had done for her. The depths of her ingratitude.

  He suppressed his anger. “By any chance, have you read the obituaries this week?”

  She didn’t look up. “Are you dead yet?”

  “That’s funny. My only conclusion is that you didn’t see the news.”

  Finally she looked up at him. “What news?”

  “What news?” he mimicked. She hated that.

  She picked up her fork and threw it toward the working end of the kitchen. “More coffee.”

  Then she looked at him. “What possible news might there be that would be both important to you and important to me?”

  “Maybe you haven’t heard, darling. Tom Salt is dead.”

  If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she appeared honestly puzzled. “Who’s Tom Salt?”

  The bile in his stomach rose in sour glee. “Tom Salt is one dead son of a bitch. That’s all you need to know.”

  She continued feigning ignorance. “How’d he die?”

  Benjamin made quote marks in the air. “Natural causes.”

  Artie Benjamin was honestly stupid but this Tom Salt crap had her honestly confused. She looked at her husband. Husband. “Is there something I’m not getting? Who’s Tom Salt? Do you have some of his CDs or something?”

  Aha. Ravich had been right. Salt was a musician. Well, the black-assed fucker had played his last low-down blues.

  Benjamin leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, shook his head. “You know, you’re really something, you know that? You’re a much better actress than I thought.” She was still looking at him blankly. “But it doesn’t change the truth.”

  She gave up. He was talking in riddles. “Look, I’m not clairvoyant. What in hell are you talking about?” She stabbed out her cigarette in the fruit cup.

  Benjamin felt a cold calm. A man did what he had to do. “I’ll repeat the news, bitch. Tom Salt is dead. And it’s no accident.”

  Judy got to her feet, slung the plate down the counter and off the table, where it shattered on the Italian marble in an eggy mess. “Well, Artie, what can I say? Fuck the both of you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Incursion

  Hodgekiss was a doleful soul with a small office on South La Cienega above the 10 freeway. He was a forensic document examiner which meant he hated all others of his kind. They were all blind, corrupt incompetents worming their way through the soft loam of an imprecise science in service of the legal system. Luckily for the public, he, Carl F. Hodg
ekiss, was available for general consultation.

  I had not found Hodgekiss through his reputation. He was a poker buddy of Myron Ealing. He was a reliable loser who brought Costco platters.

  Hodgekiss studied the Francie—Tillman letters and the Philippine mission address of Linscomb’s.

  “So, what do you think?” I had told him of Linscomb’s ambidexterity.

  “Well, Mr. Henry, I would say it’s a strong possibility. An eighty percenter. You can’t rule him out.”

  Which is as good as you get with handwriting analysis. I had done a little reading on the JonBenét Ramsey case. Fifty experts swore Patricia Ramsey, her mother, had written the ransom note. Forty-nine experts, equally adamant, called the fifty misguided fools.

  It came down to this. If you didn’t actually see someone write the document in question, there would always be questions about its authorship.

  But Linscomb could have written it.

  I called in my Irregulars from assignment in the field. That night, Bobby and Lenny stopped by with a week’s information about Linscomb.

  Linscomb lived quietly. No visitors. Liked Thai food. Shopped at Smart & Final. Purchased pricey tequila at Liquor Locker. Exercised in Runyon Canyon, walking up to Mulholland and back.

  Wednesday at lunch, he procured an eighth ounce of medical marijuana from Dill’s on Santa Monica in West Hollywood. He did this every Wednesday. That Thursday night, at 10:47, he quietly exited his apartment, started up his late-model white Honda Civic, negotiated the twists and turns of Laurel Canyon Boulevard into the valley. There he drove north and eastward, his destination the Barracks, a bathhouse in NoHo right behind Circus Liquor. At 2:17 A.M. he arrived back at church property. At 9:00 A.M. he left his apartment and walked the fifty steps to the rectory, resuming his duties for Christ.

  All this information proved nothing; neither did it exclude him from suspicion.