Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  "Thanks."

  "There ain't nothing to it." He wouldn't wait for me to leave. He grabbed his gear and went to punch out. He disappeared faster than a church key.

  I followed the cobblestone path along the water's edge. The display model was close to the parking lot. At least I was headed in the right direction.

  The manager's wife answered the door. She didn't yelp when she saw me. She thought fast on her feet. "The Anatoles live over there, on the other side of that causeway."

  "It's Pauline, isn't it?"

  "That's right." The Anatole receptionist stared, still surprised, but she was flattered I remembered. "I don't remember your name," she apologized.

  "Brennen. Michael Brennen."

  "Oh, right, right." She was a little field mouse of a woman in her mid-thirties. She had round cheeks and big eyes and mousy brown hair. A lean face and a pointed chin gave her a slight overbite. "You don't want the Anatoles?"

  "I came to see your husband."

  She scratched her cheek. "What did you want to see him for?" She remembered her manners. "Come in, come in. Would you like some coffee?"

  "I'm trying to quit."

  "I just quit smoking," she said. "It's been seventeen hours now. They say the first twenty-four are the hardest."

  The living room was bright white, like an handball court on opening day. The walls and ceiling had whiter paint and windows.

  There was carpet and real-estate furniture. A sofa and two chairs, a portable display board and some pamphlets. A desk that collected paper cups and ashtrays.

  The seventeen-foot ceiling looked shipwrecked. It was mineshaft modern, too. Rafters pointed in odd directions, beams went into tight angles, joints redoubled back like billiard english.

  I stayed standing. "Nice place you got here."

  "My husband should be back soon." She was standing by a small Sony on a TV stand. The set was on, but the sound was down. She had been watching one of the Bowl games. She wasn't very happy watching a football game on the first day of a new year.

  "You both work two jobs." I was impressed. "It must be pretty hard on you."

  "Well, he's not full-time at the fish company," she told me. "He helped them build a couple dragboats and he got called back to do some engine work. The fish company always calls him in. He's real good with boats." She had proud eyes for him. "Orestes asked him to run this place for him."

  "Orestes Anatole? He owns this? Marina Riviera?"

  "He owns half of everything." She was a respectable woman, but the lines on her face said she had never been favored. She sat alone a lot. She thought a lot about money.

  "Your husband's doing the new trawler, right?"

  "He just finished yesterday," she admitted. Her shoulders slumped. "Ready and rigged for sea trials." She looked up. "Yeah, he just finished."

  "I hear Riki's taking the boat out on sea trials."

  Her face changed. "Riki's not going out. He's never been on a trawler. He's a real sweet guy, but he gets seasick in a swimming pool. His kid brother takes them out. Jack's the only sailor in the family."

  "He's that good a sailor?"

  "When he wants to be. He was born at sea." She smirked. "Sea trials, that's all he's allowed any more."

  "Because of his war injuries?"

  She had the devious grin that comes with office gossip. "Jack was thrown off the boats for spending so much time on the piers, him and those longhairs down in San Pedro. That's why he's working in the smokehouse." She sunk like a rock. "He used to work there," she reminded herself. "He don't work there anymore."

  I leaned forward. "Jack lost his job?"

  "I just called him.". She had a heart-broken smile. "Jack didn't believe me. He just got laid off. I just got laid off, too. They shut the plant down."

  "Wing that one past me again."

  She stared at the TV long enough to realize it was a TV. "Orestes called me this afternoon, said I better call the crew and tell them not to bother going out. He said the plant's shut down until further notice." She knew better. "Probably for good, that's my guess."

  "I'm very sorry."

  "I knew the company was going under," she told me. "They couldn't wise up. New equipment being used to send a five buck order down to San Jose. There's no money in that. My last paycheck from Anatole bounced higher than a basketball. Riki, when he heard about it, he paid me right out of his own pocket."

  "He knew the company was in trouble," I suggested.

  "It's not his fault," she insisted. "He tried his best, but everything was too new for him. He can't stop layoffs when the company's hurting."

  "He's new on the job?"

  "He's only been here a couple of years. Most people at Anatole's are just as new. Bernice came in June, I came last February, and Candy, she's the file clerk, she came in September, I guess. It's all still pretty confusing for us."

  "If Riki's family, why wasn't he here before?"

  "He's just a cousin. He was brought in a couple of years ago, sort of a caretaker government after the old man sold out to a Chinaman." She had a low opinion of that deal. "If the old man was still around, I'd still have my job."

  "What's the Chinese man's name?"

  "Ng," she mispronounced. "Tan Ng." She looked over at me. "He's the one who laid me off. They all have funny names."

  "Sure they do."

  "They're buying up the whole town." Her lips were tightening into a thin white line. "I grew up on Clement Street. Ten years ago there were a couple of Chinese families scattered around the neighborhood. Then they started blockbusting. Now there's nothing but Chinese restaurants and fish markets."

  "What about Tan Ng?"

  She had hitman eyes for the TV. "He goes back to the old days, just like Orestes, only he's skinny, even for a Chinaman, and they're skinny because they eat all that rice." She remembered me. "The Anatoles did a lot of business in Chinatown. Still do good business now. Our best customers in some ways. In appreciation for that, the old man gave him a deal on the stock."

  "And Riki was brought in?"

  "That's right. As office manager."

  "I thought he was president of Anatole Fish."

  "Oh no. Office manager. Tan Ng's the president."

  "Tan Ng?" I was talking to myself.

  She remembered everything. "First thing he did, he reorganized everything. Fired a lot of the old-timers, put that big fairy on the payroll as accountant. He tried to fire Jack once before, but Orestes said he had his job as long as he wanted it, so the Chinaman transferred him to the smokehouse."

  "He tried to fire the owner's grandson?"

  "He laid off most of the working crew," she said, resentment in every word. "That's why there're only three dragboats working out of the bay, a skeleton crew downstairs—and upstairs we were always swamped with paperwork." There was too much to forgive. "That son of a bitch."

  "You still have this job, don't you?"

  She had forgotten that. "I was only working there because I got bored hanging around here." She looked over the shipwrecked room like a salvage expert. "There's some money in this. Not much. Maybe it'll hold us until liquidation."

  On the TV, ten people were spaced like pie slices in a round bed. All were trying to sleep, but not with each other. They kept tugging at the one blanket for warmth, but the blanket was too short for the bed. When somebody was covering up, somebody else was always exposed. It was an oil company commercial.

  "You think that'll happen?"

  She didn't know for sure. "We called up my husband's uncle. He said we better get a letter down to the Labor Commission and make a claim for those wages we lost."

  "You might have been working for nothing?"

  She knew her future was a car payment away. "They still owe my husband some money. Not much. A grand, but that's a couple weeks worth, anyway. My husband's uncle said we won't get more than six hundred back. And god knows when that'll be."

  "You didn't know this was coming?"

  "They didn't
tell anybody. I guess that would be against the law. I mean, why should one person get paid over another? I feel sorry for the old-timers, though. Some of them, they worked thirty, forty years on the boats. They haven't been paid for their last trip, and already there's talk they might not get their pensions."

  I decided it was time I saw the silver-haired devil himself. Flying up to Tahoe was a hard decision. Yesterday's rain had moved east and it would be snowing today in the Sierras. I hate snow.

  I thanked her for inviting me in. "I better go now. I don't think I should talk to your husband today. Maybe I'll come back some other time."

  She stopped me at the door. "About that bad check?" She was thoughtful. "When you see my husband, don't mention it to him. He was screwed out of a thousand dollar fishing trip."

  I said her secret was safe with me.

  "His uncle got laid off too. He had thirty years in with the company. His whole family used to work there."

  The sun had sunk into the ocean. The coastal range was blue silhouettes with a white sky behind them. A fat mallard was prowling the black lagoon. He swam in lazy circles, took a dive and ate some weeds, then swam around some more. He had a pretty soft life in lotusland.

  Chapter 24

  The cabbie stopped rolling a joint long enough to hear the canyon address of Orestes Anatole. "That's a high class neighborhood," he agreed.

  "I know a chick who lives up there."

  He started his engine. "Tell her you want to move in with her."

  "It's that nice a neighborhood?"

  "There ain't no neighbors." He slapped his gearshift into drive and scooted off the airport stand. It was snowing at Tahoe City. He made some interesting turns on the ice-slick road through the lakeshore town.

  The Tahoe basin is the bordertown between Frontierland and Fantasyland. It has the usual bordertown amusements. Green gaming tables and big name entertainment, two bill hookers, and bars that never close. A fresh water lake is somewhere near the center of the action.

  Mostly, though, the basin is choice quarter acre plots and choice quarter pounders—motels and hotels, slumber lodges and coffee shops, gas stations and summer cottages, campgrounds and second homes, A-frames and fast food carryouts.

  The cabbie swung up a canyon road east of the airport. The road was a snowy snake uphill. The blizzard thickened and snow blew hard and fast across the headlights. The driver thought he was driving a plow. He hurtled through the drifts with half-closed eyes and a pinner between his lips.

  I asked him to slow down.

  He took the joint from his lips. "How would you like to have this crummy job?" he asked the rear view mirror. "Do I bother you when you're working?" But he slowed to fifty.

  Finally his cab crested a slope.

  "That's the crib, man."

  Orestes Anatole's house bit the neck of the valley. It didn't impress me, but I'm no taxman. The building only had two stories, but it was a block long and lined with acres of tinted glass and bright light. It was a nice house if you have a big family. You'd go stir-crazy living there alone. There were no neighbors.

  The cabbie wasn't sure he could wait for me. "This meter runs slower than pegleg when I have to wait for somebody. How about you double the difference between when you go in and when you come out?"

  "How else could I get out of here?"

  "You could always call a cab," he said.

  "You got a deal." I gave him a ten to seal it.

  A nurse answered the door. She wasn't much older than Catherine's maid, but her eyes were more placid. She had made a separate peace with her paycheck.

  I gave her my photostat. "Is Mr. Anatole home?"

  She told me to follow her. We went from room to room. Some rooms had paintings of trawlers and purse-seiners, and others had paintings of the ocean and the sunset. Every room had bright lights and tinted glass. There was plenty of central heating, too. The PG&E bills had to be hell.

  After I had lost all sense of direction, she held open one last door and closed it behind me. I was in a solarium overlooking scrub pines and scrub land. The spotlights were on outside, and the swirling snow was confetti. A Christmas tree stood in the center of the solarium. It was decorated with tiny mirrors, strings of popcorn, candy canes, homemade bulbs. My two boys had one just like it.

  I walked around the tree and found I wasn't alone. Something like a mole sat in a wheelchair watching the snowfall and the night. It was humanoid, genderless and old. Very old. Its soda straw legs were wrapped in a thick blanket.

  I went closer and found a man. His face was puffy and one eye was permanently half-closed. A phony birthmark covered a facial wart. Thick pink lips and chicken bone wrists. The jowls were thick, the chins were many, and his flesh was like chicken skin.

  The mole shook himself awake. "Glacierization."

  I smiled. "Right."

  He looked hard at me. "Did you fall down?"

  I was sick of answering. "Yeah. I fell down."

  "The glaciers are coming back," he told me. "It'll be another Ice Age." Slipping dentures slurred his words.

  "Take it easy," I told him. "The snow gets to everyone. You shouldn't stare at it so long."

  His eyes went outside again. "When they found those mastodons in Siberia, they were flash-frozen, like breaded fish sticks." He ack-acked a few coughs.

  "Don't strain yourself, old-timer." I wondered if the head nurse knew the old grey mole had tunneled from the funny farm.

  "There were still buttercups in their stomachs."

  "Buttercups are flowers."

  "That's what I said." He was mad and his voice was shriller. He punched the power button, and the wheelchair spun half-left to face me. "You're pretty dumb, boy."

  "I didn't get your name, old man."

  "I am Orestes Anatole." His teeny eyes were watery and flecked with red, but there was no mistaking the Anatole birthright of blue eyes. "You wanted to see me."

  No shit. "I thought I did." I needed a drink.

  He looked at me as if I were a fortune being squandered. "You've been snooping around." He hushed me. "I know you have. I know you have a legal right to do it, too. I don't know what you're looking for, or who you're working for, but you saved me a trip. For that I'm grateful."

  "You were coming down to see me?"

  "I couldn't find your office in the phone book."

  "I don't have one." I had one once. A hot little room in the basement of a bank. "How did you happen to hear about me?"

  "Oh, I've gotten more phone calls ..." He brushed it aside. "Would you like some wine?" He pushed a portable wine cart forward. "They're from my own vineyards."

  I read off the labels. There was zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon, pinot chardonnay and rhine. All were from the Mariana vineyards of Sonoma.

  "Mariana sounded more Italian," he confessed.

  "Sure." I poured myself a glass of white. I was still numb. I couldn't believe it. This old mole was Dani's grandfather. He looked like a mummy playing charades. I saluted him with my wine. "Here's to the Wizard of Oz."

  He decided to hide his irritation. The wheelchair spun to face the snow. "I came up here for my privacy. Privacy is all I have left. I'm a harmless old man. Who cares what I do, what games I like to play?"

  "Your family does," I said.

  He was not amused. "They don't admit that I exist, and I try to keep it that way." But there was less thunder behind his words. He showed me wounded eyes. "I've been very successful."

  I tried to think straight. This old mole was Dani's grandfather. I could see why nobody talked much about him. Then I remembered. "You must've been a helluva rum-runner."

  "That was too many years ago."

  "I heard you were Syndicate. Or had connections with them, back in the days when being in the Mob meant something."

  "I was never in the Syndicate," he said. "Oh, I knew them. Every runner did. Maybe you don't know this, but the West Coast was never their exclusive. People like me ran the most. Amateurs. Free la
ncers. They tried to stop us, but even the Coast Guard couldn't catch us."

  "You sold to the Chinatown bosses, right?"

  "Yes, I sold them booze and why not? I sold to anybody who had the money. Does that make me Chinese? You got something against the yellow man?"

  "Is that how you met Tan Ng?"

  He waited before he spoke. "You're a pretty fair detective."

  "Investigator's a better word."

  He gave me the point. "We started out together. Back when Grant Avenue was Dupont Gai and Dupont Gai bought Anatole fish. He ran a fantan parlor and I sold him the booze."

  "He's changed a bit."

  "He's a slick old boy. Still a little fantan, but now he's a busy lawyer. He helped me out once with the Tong people. They never did have much patience with amateurs. But you didn't come here to listen to an old man's sinful past."

  I lit a cigarette. "What did you want to see me about?"

  He asked me to put out my cigarette, then pointed behind him. The oxygen tanks sat like torpedoes, Bufano statues. I stubbed out my cigarette.

  "We can talk better in the next room." He pressed his power button and the wheelchair scampered towards the door. "Can you hold that door for me?"

  I did as he asked. He punched it and his chair surged forward and through. I wondered if he could do wheelies.

  The next room was windowless and large enough for echoes. It had chocolate pile carpeting and mahogany paneling. Against the wall, a fireplace the size of my car did its best against a chunk of telephone pole. A crystal chandelier the size of the fireplace threatened the pile carpet. All chairs were leather and all tables mahogany.

  "Are you married, Mr. Brennen?"

  "I'm divorced."

  "Why did she divorce you? No, you don't have to answer that." He pulled a file from a tabletop. "I know about you."

  "You have a legal right to check me out."

  "I didn't break the seal." He tossed me a pack of matches. "Would you like to burn it up?"

  "Why?" I found a seat. "You have other copies."

  He waited for his jowls to stop trembling. "No, Mr. Brennen, this is the only one."

  "Why don't you get a refund?"

  "What would you fight for, young man? What would you die for? You don't have to answer that. It's personal. Individual. But I can make a guess. Very little and certainly not for an old man like me. Not for a fish company, ever."