The Prince of Venice Beach

by Nelson, Blake

  “Good.”

  When he was gone, I looked in the envelope. There was a fact sheet, a police file, a couple photos, and a cheap, disposable cell phone.

  And quite a bit of money.

  That night, I went on Hope’s computer and checked Buckalter’s info against what I could find out for myself. It all matched up. Mugs’ real name was Edwin Torres. He was originally from Phoenix, Arizona. He had been married once, at nineteen. He had been sued several times for child support in his twenties. From thirty on, he lived the life of a homeless person. He had a long police record: vagrancy, assault, public drunkenness, resisting arrest.

  The main thing that struck me, he was only thirty-six. I would have guessed him to be fifty-six from the times I’d seen him on the boardwalk. That was another thing I needed to work on. Knowing how old people were. One time Diego and I got in an argument about how old one of the waitresses was at the Sidewalk Cafe. We started a contest of guessing people’s ages. We stopped people on the boardwalk and told them we were doing it as a school project. I was good with the teenagers. I was always within a year or two. But with the older people I was sometimes off by ten years. And the bums were hardest of all. Living all those years outside in the elements, you could miss by fifteen years, easy. I had to practice that more. Maybe there was a book about it at the Venice library.

  I went to my tree house and got out a notebook. What else did I know about Mugs? I’d never talked to him myself. I’d seen him around, standing at the chess tables, talking crap like everybody does. He was one of those guys who always “knew the score.” How the world was rigged against the little guy. How the rich could do anything they wanted. When he wasn’t talking conspiracies, he wanted you to buy him some wine or give him a ride somewhere or loan him twenty bucks.

  I wondered what sort of family situation would make someone come looking for him. Maybe his kid was searching for his long-lost father. If he was, I felt sorry for that kid.

  Or maybe some long-lost relative had died and Mugs had inherited a million dollars. That would be pretty funny. You always heard rumors like that: different street people having secret fortunes. Like Crazy Janet, who hung out at the chess tables. People claimed she had family money stashed away somewhere. Or the old guy who lived beneath the Santa Monica Pier, who was supposedly a famous movie director in the eighties. Or Joey One Shoe, who bummed change on Washington Boulevard; people said he got royalty checks from some song he wrote thirty years ago….

  You’d hear that stuff. And it was fun to think about. But mostly it wasn’t true. Most homeless people were just plain messed up. There was no happy ending, no secret bank account. That’s why you had to get off the street. Which was why I took the Mugs job. I wasn’t kidding about starting my own private-investigator agency. It wasn’t some dream.. I needed to find something I could do, and do well, and make a business out of it.

  If I didn’t, who knew where I’d end up.

  SEVEN

  I began my search for Mugs on Lincoln Boulevard, along a string of liquor stores, where a lot of local bums hung out.

  I first went to the Liquor Warehouse, which was a main gathering place. I cruised up on my skateboard and took a seat on the ground next to two hobo traveler types. I played the age-guessing game with them. I guessed their age to be around forty. They were thirty-three and thirty-six.

  Then a really old guy came over and wanted us to buy a bottle of Thunderbird with him. I asked him if he’d seen Mugs. He’d never heard of him.

  I asked some other people, sometimes asking, sometimes dropping the name into conversation. “If Mugs was here, he’d say…” But no response.

  I saw one of the employees standing outside having a smoke. He had a shaky, alcoholic look to him. “Hey,” I called to him. “You seen Mugs around?”

  He shook his head.

  I stood up and casually ambled over to him. “I hear he’s got puppies for sale,” I said. “I wanna get one.”

  The guy laughed. “Mugs selling puppies…?” he said, shaking his head..

  So at least he knew him.

  “Where’s he living nowadays?” I asked.

  “No idea,” said the guy. “Probably in the gutter somewhere.”

  “I heard he was down in Hermosa Beach,” I tried.

  “Hermosa Beach?” said the guy. “Could be. I wouldn’t know.”

  I skated down to the Community Outreach Shelter. I had gone there myself when I first landed in Venice. I sat on the bench outside, watching the cars drive by. Eventually, a guy came over and asked me for a cigarette.

  “Mugs has cigarettes,” I said. “I think he’s inside.”

  The name did not register with the guy.

  I tried that on every person who went in or out. I’d mention Mugs in passing and watch their face for recognition.

  Nothing.

  I cruised farther down Lincoln Boulevard and found another gang of bums, sitting on the curb outside the 7-Eleven.

  I went over to them. “Anybody got forty cents?” I asked, looking through some change in my hand.

  Nobody did. “Come on,” I said. “I’ll give you half my doughnut.”

  “I don’t want no stinkin’ doughnut….” said a particularly filthy old bum.

  He looked like a guy Mugs might know. “C’mon, forty cents,” I pleaded with him.

  “Get away from me,” he grumbled. “Punk kid.”

  I looked at him more closely. “I know you! You’re friends with Mugs!”

  “Mugs,” he scoffed, waving his dirty hand. “That bastard!”

  “Yeah?” I laughed. “He rip you off?”

  “He couldn’t rip me off. How you gonna rip me off? What ya gonna take from me?”

  I smiled and sat down next to him, then moved away a little because he stank. “Mugs is a true character,” I said. “That’s for sure.”

  “Mugs is a punk and a loudmouth,” the bum declared. “That’s all Mugs is.”

  “Where’d he go anyway?” I asked. “I gotta talk to him about a puppy.”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “San Diego,” I said. “That’s what I heard.”

  “San Diego? Nah! Mugs would never go there. What’s in San Diego? Nothing but a bunch of no-good… do-nothing… San Diego? I piss on San Diego!”

  “Besides the puppy, Mugs owes me twenty bucks,” I said.

  “That’ll be twenty bucks you never see again!” The bum laughed.

  “Where the hell is he anyway?” I said.

  “He’s probably holed up in Topanga, living in that trailer with his old lady.”

  That was the thing about crazy old people. If you talked to them long enough, you’d hit these little pockets of sanity. Like inside their jumbled brains were actual facts, actual information. You just had to be willing to wade through the confusion.

  “Mugs got an old lady?,” I laughed. “No way. That’s impossible!”

  “Some ol’ biker chick. She don’t know no better.”

  “Ha-ha. Well if he’s got an old lady, then he must have my money. I think I’ll cruise down there. Where was it, exactly?”

  “I dunno. Topanga. Down by the beach somewhere.”

  I thanked him and wandered off, really casual-like.. But once I was around the corner, I skated hard toward home. My heart pounded. What if I could find Mugs? I’d be two for two! Three for three if you counted the kid who stole bicycles.

  I was totally going to be a private investigator. I was good at this.

  I called Ailis and asked her if she felt like driving to Topanga that night. She couldn’t; she had a babysitting job.

  So I took the bus. It was dark when I got there. The town of Topanga wasn’t much, just a couple restaurants along the Pacific Coast Highway. There were two large parking lots below the road, by the beach. One was full of old trailers and hippie vans and broken down RVs. Drifter-types would camp there for as long as they could before the cops or the sanitation department kicked them out.

  I wal
ked along the Pacific Coast Highway and then down the hill to the drifter parking lot. There was an ancient school bus near the entrance that was so packed full of trash and other crap you couldn’t see in through the windows. The stuff was piled up right to the ceiling. Old newspapers, rags, appliances, plastic bottles, milk crates. There was even an old washing machine and some other junk tied to the roof.

  I circled around it, gawking at the crap. Then I nearly stumbled over its owner in the dark. He was an old guy and he was sitting in a lawn chair facing the ocean. He held a little dog in his lap.

  “Oh,” I said, bumping him. “Sorry.”

  He stared up at me, then looked away with a sneer. I guessed his age to be about… sixty. But I really had no idea.

  “What’s up?” I said..

  He didn’t answer.

  “Can I guess your age?” I asked.

  He stared at me. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It’s for a school project. Let me try.”

  He turned away, ignoring me.

  I studied him in the dim light of the highway above us. He had gray hair, a white beard. “Sixty,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “Sixty-five?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fifty-five?”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Well, how old are you?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s for a school project.”

  He sank into a stubborn silence. That was not a good sign.

  “Is Mugs around?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m supposed to meet him.”

  He sneered. The dog also sneered.

  “You know where he is?” I asked.

  “No idea.”

  I looked around at the twenty or so other trailers, vans, and RVs scattered around the huge parking lot. “Which one of these is his old lady’s?”

  “I couldn’t tell you that,” he said in his difficult way.

  I smiled. “Seriously, how old are you? I’m doing a thing for school. I’m supposed to ask twenty people.”

  “I don’t have to tell you nothin’.”

  “You’re sixty-seven.”

  “Nope.”

  “Fifty-seven?”

  “Nope.

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “Nope.”

  “Give me a hint: more than sixty or less?”

  He stared at me with watery, old-man eyes. “I’m sixty-two.”

  “Okay, so I was close.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Yes, I was. I said sixty to start.”

  “That’s not close. That’s two years off.”

  “Two years is pretty close.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Okay,” I finally said. “It isn’t.”

  I continued farther into the parking lot. Fortunately, the couple of trailers I could see were on the far end, away from the old man.

  I walked in that direction and wandered among the different campers and trailers Mugs might be in. One had lights on inside. I casually stood outside it until I caught sight of the people inside. They were dudes, young surfer types, probably not friends of Mugs’s.

  I walked around more. The lights of the cars up on Pacific Coast Highway reminded me that I would have to take the bus back to Venice. I wondered when the buses stopped running. Probably pretty early. And it was already nine thirty. I had to watch the time.

  I looked into another trailer that had lights on. A woman with white hair was in that one. She was reading something. She was not someone you would describe as a biker chick.

  I kept moving. I checked one of the darkened trailers. I tried looking in the window. I couldn’t see anything. I walked over to another. Nothing to see there, either. I was getting an anxious feeling now. This was not the best place to be prowling around, looking in people’s windows.

  A car pulled off the highway above me. There was some honking and a commotion—the car must have been blocking traffic. Someone shouted and a car door slammed shut and the car pulled away, to more honking and tire screeching. I retreated into some low trees beside the parking lot and watched the hill above me.

  A lone figure slid down the dirt embankment and came stumbling into the parking lot. He was mumbling loudly to himself. He almost tripped over his own feet.

  It was Mugs. I remembered him. He was short, wiry, with a scraggly beard and dirty long hair. He seemed drunk or tired or maybe just worn out from life in general.

  I stayed behind my tree.

  He made his way to the door of one of the darkened trailers. He dug some keys out of his pocket. He was wobbling on his feet. He couldn’t seem to locate the right key.

  Then, strangely, the old guy appeared, from the school bus. He walked slowly and with a limp. He was carrying his little dog. “Mugs,” he said.

  Mugs, in his haze, turned and looked back at him. “Wha—?”

  The old guy limped forward. “Some kid was looking for you.”

  Mugs turned back to his keys and grumbled to himself. “What kid?” he said. “I don’ know no kid.”

  “I told him you weren’t around,” said the old guy.

  “It ain’t no business of yours!” snapped Mugs.

  “I’m just telling ya….”

  “Well, go tell someone who gives a crap!” he shouted.

  “Suit yourself, ya miserable bastard,” said the old man. He turned and slowly limped away, holding his little dog.

  I stayed behind my tree. I watched Mugs try to unlock his trailer. He tried one key; it didn’t work. He tried another; it didn’t work, either. He swore and spat on the ground. “Gawddammit!” he said to no one.

  Finally he got the door open. He stumbled inside and the door banged shut behind him. A light came on.

  From the trees, I could see Mugs staggering around in the trailer.

  Why would anybody be looking for him? I wondered. He seemed like such a pathetic creature.

  I stayed where I was and waited. I wanted to see if his “old lady” was in there too, or if she would show up. But no one else appeared. I watched for twenty minutes. Mugs lurched around inside the trailer for a bit. Then he disappeared. He must have lay down with the lights still on. Ten more minutes went by. Nothing moved in the trailer.

  Now I began to worry about catching the bus home. It was almost eleven. I crept across the parking lot and then silently ran back toward the entrance. The old man had gone inside his school bus.

  I ran to the highway and jogged to the bus stop. With six minutes to spare, I caught the last bus back to Venice.

  I sat in the back. I took a long breath to calm myself. Then I got out Buckalter’s disposable cell phone. As the empty bus shuddered and banged along, I called the one number in the contacts.

  “Buckalter,” said the voice.

  “It’s me. Cali.”

  “Ahh,” he said. “Cali the kid.”

  “I found Mugs.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in a trailer in the parking lot below Topanga Canyon. The trailer’s a Streamliner. Blue and white. All the way on the right.”

  “Good job, kid.”

  “Can I ask one thing, though?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “What on earth do you want him for?”

  “That’s none of my business, kid. And it’s none of yours, either.”

  “I just can’t imagine—”

  “Don’t waste your brainpower. You did your job. I’ll send you a check. Don’t spend it all at once.”

  EIGHT

  The check came two days later. It was big. Really big. So big that I couldn’t sign it over to Hope. I had to go to the bank myself. Even then the bank lady had to call Hope’s friend who worked at a different bank to confirm I wasn’t a drug dealer or some other criminal.

  So then I had all this money.
The first thing I thought was to buy an old car, but I couldn’t do that, because I was still technically—legally—a ward of the state of Nebraska. And not in good standing, since I’d run away. Not that anyone was actually looking for me, three years later. But if I tried to get a driver’s license, my status would show up in the computers and then there’d be trouble. So no car. Not for now, anyway.

  So I bought some other stuff: Hope’s old laptop, so I wouldn’t have to be on her computer all the time; matching yellow watches for Diego’s sisters Pilar and Izzy, who left me free bags of oranges on Fridays. I also got a new wet suit since the one I found in the alley smelled bad, which was probably why it was in the alley in the first place.

  Then I decided to take Ailis to dinner and the movies. I’d actually been avoiding her since we never went to Love Cats. But when it came right down to it, she was my only friend who was my age, and seminormal, and didn’t live out of a shopping cart or whatever.

  So we drove to this fancy sushi place. It was awkward and we didn’t know what to order. Or how to use chopsticks. I ended up with some little rings that were octopus tentacles or something. Ailis got this sticky lump of fish that looked like somebody’s finger.

  When we got to the movies, I bought us a bunch of candy and two huge tubs of popcorn, which we chomped down on top of our weird fish dinner. Which wasn’t a good idea.

  “Where did you get all that money?” Ailis asked me afterward, sitting in her car, both of us feeling woozy and nauseous. She had seen how my wallet was stuffed with twenties.

  “I helped this guy,” I said, avoiding the subject and rolling down the window in case I puked.

  She didn’t seem impressed—more like suspicious. And annoyed with me in general. It was the opposite of what I thought would happen. I always thought people liked you more if you had some cash to throw around. But it didn’t seem to be the case with Ailis. The whole night was pretty much a disaster.

  But I still had all this money. Diego and I were hanging out at the chess tables, and I asked him what present he would buy someone if he could get anything, for anyone.

  “I’d buy Jojo some basketball shoes,” he said. “Some super nice ones.”

  It was true. Jojo mostly wore shoes he found around the boardwalk or in the trash. He deserved better. And think how much better he’d play.