Shortcut Man

by p. g. sturges

  The tender words she and Henry had whispered when they lay in the night. How she had touched him. What she had allowed, what she had entertained, what she had initiated. As if he, Arnuldo, had never walked the face of the earth. Henry would die. Slowly.

  And Judy? The conclusion slid smoothly out of his subconscious, a ticket from an automatic kiosk. Death. Death would cleanse dishonor. He watched the tide smash onto the rocks below. He would kiss her a last time, then commend her to the sea.

  “This place is very beautiful,” said Arnuldo, looking over the blueness. “But one day I will show you Baguio.”

  Oh no, you won’t. “Baguio. Where’s Baguio again?”

  “In the mountains of Luzon.”

  “In the Philippines.”

  “Of course, in the Philippines.” Arnuldo spat a shred of tobacco over the cliff. Long way down.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Arnuldo shaded his eyes, stared at her.

  What the fuck was with Arnuldo? All she needed was for him to go off. Kill a store clerk for cigarettes. “I’m sorry, Arnuldo. I haven’t been me. All this pressure. Artie told me he was going to have you killed.”

  “No way.”

  “But it scared me.”

  He watched her turn and walk away from him, to the far corner of the large wooden deck. Her back was to him, shoulders shaking.

  He felt himself filled with a noble sympathy. He walked over, put his stone hand on her shoulder. A last kiss. She turned to him, her eyes the color of the ocean on a misty day. “I love you so much, baby girl,” he said.

  But the howling vacuum had opened up inside her again, with its endless vistas of nothingness and no return, the harlequinade of grasping, painted lovers. Within the arms that reached to gather her close, she lowered her head, rammed it into Arnuldo’s face. That stood him up. He staggered backward. She followed him, quick as a cat, gave him a two-handed shove.

  He hit the rail, pinwheeled for balance. Judy. Then he went over.

  Time decelerated to a new constant, he was barely moving, he had all the time in the world, looking up at the sky, seeing those majestic blues and grays high above streaked with lacy tatters of cloud. He had a clear choice to scream but why bother? From his first moments of awareness in Tondo to the rocks calling him from below—all a string of specifically fashioned, inevitably connected events, a rosary of time and space with only one possible conclusion. He thought he heard his mother’s voice and then . . .

  What she needed was a cigarette. She lit up. The Pacific stretched away. A couple of thousand miles to Oahu.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  To Slay a Prince

  I arrived on Paseo de Pacific, shut down the Caddy, walked back to Benjamin’s house. Lucky bastard. It must have cost him seven, eight million. Not that lucky, I guess.

  There were two cars in the open garage. Lynette’s Jaguar and a midsize blue Mercedes. Arnuldo had come up, too. The police in L.A. were looking high and low for him.

  The front door was off the latch. I took the safety off my Korth 9 millimeter, $2,500 worth of fine German gunsmithing. I went in, called out, but no answer.

  There were dishes on the kitchen table. Two settings. An ashtray. Two brands. Had to be Arnuldo. He’d be dangerous as a snake. I went to the window that gave onto the deck. There she was. Alone. Where was the Inside Man? The house was silent.

  I pushed the door open, and she turned around.

  As always, her beauty hit me like a sledgehammer. She must have been very close to my personal ideal. My emotional side opened a wide door for excuses, lies, and fictions. But I wasn’t going there.

  “Where’s Arnuldo?”

  “You’re here to see Arnuldo?”

  “Where is he?”

  “He went down to the beach. What did you come up here for?”

  “To see you.”

  She spread her hands, invited me to gaze. “Here I am, slake your thirst.” A wide smile, innocent as the dawn.

  I looked, really looked at her. Pitch-black hair framed those green eyes set in porcelain with dark freckles. The most beautiful human being I’d ever known. And with all that, all the tools to slay a prince, much less a man like me, with all that she’d turned evil.

  My justifiable rage had bled out on Highway 1, and seeing her brought on a deep melancholy. Mood indigo. Yeah, Mr. Ellington knew the blues.

  “What’s with you, Dick? You’re looking at me like a basset hound.”

  “I know I’m not going to be seeing you for a long time.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “It’s where you’re going, darling.”

  “And where am I going?”

  “You’re going to prison.”

  That hit close to home. “For what, may I ask?”

  “You don’t think they blamed Artie on me, do you? They’ll be drawing up a case on you. For Jerry Shunk. For Lee Feldman. And for Artie.”

  “I don’t know Lee Feldman.”

  “I don’t think Arnuldo knew him, either.”

  “My alibis are airtight, Dick. For all those men.”

  “They better be blood tight, too.”

  Her voice took on that scornful tone. “What did you come up here for, Dick? To make a citizen’s arrest?”

  She was sagging in on herself. The oxygen was leaking out of her soul, her world was growing heavier. I could see it.

  “No. I came up to tell you how sorry I am. Because we had it for a while, you and me. We had it. But it takes two to believe, and you never had the guts. Now there’s nothing.”

  “Don’t make me puke.” Suddenly a butterfly knife was in her hand and she was coming at me. The blade whispered through the air.

  And again.

  And again. This time I stuck my foot out as she went by. She tripped, hit the railing. The railing fell away. Her momentum carried her right over.

  I thought she was gone but she wasn’t.

  She was looking up at me, holding on with one hand, suspended over the abyss from a thick root just under the decking. I dived under the railing, grabbed the post, held on, reached down. “Grab my wrist with your other hand.”

  But she didn’t.

  “Grab my wrist.”

  She asked me a question instead. “Do you love me, Dick?”

  “Grab my wrist, goddam you.”

  She took hold of it with a lunge. Then with both hands. Braced her feet against the face of the cliff, stared up at me.

  “Do you love me, Dick?”

  I tried to pull her up, she wouldn’t come.

  “Do you love me, Dick?”

  “Noooo,” I shouted, lying, pulling with all my strength.

  Those emerald eyes stared into my marrow.

  Then she let go.

  Acknowledgments

  Andrew C. Rigrod, Esq., Paul Pompian, Mace Neufeld—you guys were there in the great darkness before the earth was formed. Thank you.

  Ryan Fischer-Harbage and Nicole Robson at the Fischer-Harbage Agency—you guys turned the magic key, and I’ll always be grateful for your efforts.

  To Anna de Vries and the staff at Scribner—your patient and cheerful suggestions made this book better. I crawled, I stood, I limped, and finally I walked. Thank you.

  To all copy editors everywhere: no man is a hero to his valet, and no author a hero to his copy editor. Thank you for your excruciating attention to detail—my book is much improved for your efforts.

  All lyrics courtesy of Pearly King, www.pearlykingmusic.com.

  About the Author

  p. g. sturges was born in Hollywood, California. Punctuated by fitful intervals of school, he has subsequently occupied himself as a submarine sailor, a Christmas tree farmer, a dimensional and optical metrologist, a writer, and a musician.

  Read on for an excerpt from p. g. sturges’s next novel,

  TRIBULATIONS OF THE SHORTCUT MAN

  coming in February 2012 from Scribner.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHITE FOOLS WITH DREA
DLOCKS

  Loman London believed the labors of others should profit Loman London. I had been summoned to disabuse him, again, of this quaint notion.

  A soft Los Angeles morning sun gentled my shoulders as I made a left turn in my ’69 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible from Ocean Avenue to Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

  Kiyoko was on my mind. My on-and-off girlfriend, Kiyoko was a Buddhist who hadn’t yet come to appreciate my line of work. Last night, to the accompaniment of Japanese imprecations, she’d thrown me out of her house. It didn’t help that I’d laughed at her insults. I couldn’t help it. I understood only a few words of Japanese. Forku, steaku, porku, elephanto. Americanized additions to the language. Not the words she had chosen from the other side of the kitchen island. So I laughed, hoping to bluff my way through; a sitcom, a new take on the Odd Couple.

  Exiled. One arm stiffly pointing in the direction of the Pacific Ocean she summed up her aggravations in one word: barbarian.

  Up ahead on the left was my morning’s destination, a modern, two-story, yellow stucco building with purposely protruding i-beams. It housed the Peach Cat & Dog Hospital and heralded the gentrification of funky Venice. I parked in back and got out.

  The thing was this: Kiyoko believed all human suffering sprang from the denial of death. That denial took the form of greed, anger, and foolishness. And I agreed. Hell, I couldn’t agree more. But before everybody wised up there’d be problems here and there. That’s my line. My name’s Dick Henry. They call me the Shortcut Man.

  Clark Peach, wringing his hands, met me at the back door. Clark was five foot seven, weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, peered at the world through delicate gold-rimmed spectacles. He was one of the premier veterinarians in Los Angeles, according to a magazine that evaluated stuff like that. Ferocious, intractable beasts become docile in his presence. I’d seen that. But people? People were a different kind of beast.

  “Thanks for coming, Dick.”

  I liked him a lot. He’d actually done something useful with his life. “You the man, Dr. Peach,” I slanged. “Whazzup?”

  Of course, I had a good idea what was up.

  Dr. Peach kicked an invisible piece of dirt on the floor, then looked up. “Uh, he’s, uh, he’s back.”

  I nodded. Dr. Peach was at the butt end of a low-level extortion scam perpetrated by Loman London.

  I’d told London to go away early last week. “I didn’t see him on my way in, Doc.”

  Dr. Peach checked his watch. “He’ll be here anytime now.”

  “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  The doctor shrugged, with a tinge of embarrassment. “I, uh, I thought maybe I could talk to him myself.”

  Hence my vocation.

  Doc Peach beckoned to me to follow him. He walked into his office, looked out through the blinds. He turned to me, nodded.

  I took a look for myself.

  Loman London was a fiftyish wastrel whose contributions to society had not yet added up to a popcorn fart. Two hundred seventy or so pounds were apportioned over his large frame with a hefty surplus accumulating at the waistline. Matted dreadlocks depended thickly to his shoulders. His skin was rough and permanently reddened. Treelike legs, in shorts, interfaced the pavement through a pair of huaraches.

  Loman’s scam was a simple one. He would set up his rolling incense cart in front of a likely business and wait to be paid to go somewhere else. In the meantime he would frighten the little blue-haired old ladies bringing their little blue poodles in for a checkup.

  I turned to the doc. “I guess Mr. London has a learning disability. I’ll go out and have a talk with him.”

  But first I retrieved an accelerant from the Caddy’s trunk. I walked around the building. Tendrils of pungent smoke rose from the incense stand into the morning air. I actually liked the smell. Rastaman greeted me in friendly fashion.

  “Salutations, mon. What’s your pleasure? Sandalwood or Pondicherry Pine?” Loman spoke in a pseudo-Jamaican patois.

  I stared at him for a second. Beneath his sunny innocence was a surly streak. “I thought we discussed this, pal. You were going to exhibit elsewhere.”

  “And I did, mon. That was last week. This is this week.”

  The “mon” shit irritated me all over again. Loman the lump hadn’t been within a thousand miles of Jamaica. Though I was sure he’d smoked ten thousand spliffs. On someone else’s dime.

  “Doctor Peach isn’t going to pay you again. He asks that you move on.”

  There I was. The soul of reason. Even though I had just begun to feel that peculiar tingling in my fists.

  Rastaman shrugged. “And I have entertained his request, mon. Dr. Peach a good mon. But I have found a home for my business. This is a free country, mon.”

  “The doctor patiently asks you to move on.”

  Rastaman shrugged with hint of brusqueness. “I have found a home for my business, mon.”

  “And you refuse to listen to reason.” I was giving bad Bob Marley a last chance. I imagined the I-Three’s shaking their heads in unison behind him. Of course, London wasn’t appreciating his opportunity.

  “I refuse to be intimidated, if that’s what you mean, mon.” He folded his thick arms over his thick chest. His friendliness had evaporated.

  His chin was calling to my knuckles, but, thinking of Kiyoko, I hung on a little longer. “I guess you don’t recognize the former light-heavyweight champion of the Thirteenth Naval District.”

  “Should I be worried, mon?”

  It was the “mon” that did it. I stepped around his wares, planted my left foot, launched a right uppercut. The karma missile caught him on the point of the chin and set him, with a thud, flatly on his ass, knocking the wind out of him.

  I reached into my back pocket for the can of Ronsonol Lighter Fluid and soaked down the entire incense stand.

  Rastaman had not yet regained his feet. He shook his head as if to clear it.

  Having survived some righteous shots both in and out of the ring, I knew what he was experiencing. He was hearing a great swarm of bees, though he could not see them.

  I indicated his stand. “You ever get your shnozz into what these things smell like when they’re all burning at once?”

  I patted down my pockets with a theatrical flair. Had I really forgotten my lighter?

  Awareness slowly crept into Rastaman’s face. He looked at his incense stand, then the yellow Ronsonol can.

  “Does anyone have a match around here?” I laid my request before the universe.

  Rastaman held up a belaying hand.

  But the universe had seen fit to reply.

  “I got a match, brother.”

  My heart warmed. I turned and there was Rojas, right on schedule. “Enrique Montalvo Rojas! As I live and breathe!”

  Artfully chapeaued in black porkpie, Enrique Rojas was a badass Eastsider. An old colleague with a supremely checkered past, he had romanced heroin, done a stretch at San Quentin, and had found a cat’s eye worth a million dollars in Sri Lanka that currently supported an orphanage or two. He bore a passionate love for Eric Dolphy and Thelonius Monk. “Epistrophy,” baby.

  Rojas eyed the stand. “Should I light it on fire?”

  I smiled. “Please.”

  From the sidewalk Rastaman waved his hand. “Whoah, now. That’s my entire stock, there, man.” Man, not mon.

  I indicated Rojas. “This is Señor Rojas. Señor Rojas loves to beat the shit out of white fools with dreadlocks. Especially ones trying to shake down veterinarians in Venice. Have I made myself clear?”

  Rastaman now grasped the full breadth of his misapprehension. “I get it, man. Real clear. Don’t burn my shit. I got places to go. Please.”

  Rojas lit a match. “Shall we give the dude another chance?”

  “Please,” begged Loman the lump.

  I feigned consideration.

  “One more chance?” queried Rojas again, appearing for a second to be a nice guy.

  “Uhhh
. . .” I watched London hang on my every word. “. . . uhh, nah.” I shook my head. “Light him up.”

  “Okay,” said Rojas, bubbling with good cheer. He tossed the match onto the stand and it went up in a huge whoosh of flame and wave of heat.

  “Thank you, Señor Rojas.” I bowed low.

  “Thank you, Señor Henry.” Rojas bowed in return.

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