Try Dying

by James Scott Bell

  I got to the platform just as a Union Station train pulled in. I saw Ratso heading toward one of the middle cars. You can’t switch cars on the line, so I hustled down and got on the same one at the other end.

  The doors closed. Ratso found a seat at the far end of the car.

  I stood at my end holding a pole.

  Ratso moved his lips and head, singing to himself. Maybe he was high. He was certainly satisfied with life. That was a good thing. He was into himself and not looking too carefully at the people around him.

  Not like a few others, who were looking at me.

  Faces turned to me, looked away, and I wondered if I was violating some gang color rule in my crazy getup. If I got challenged on it, I could always claim I was an Oakland Raiders fan and that would probably do the trick. Raiders fans were known to be nuts and could therefore get away with pretty much anything.

  We continued on. Stops at Hollywood / Western, then the Vermont stops, and down to MacArthur Park. That’s where Ratso got off.

  I followed him up the stairs, almost plowing over a guy sitting on the steps with an empty cup.

  The Mac Park station was clean. And except for a mosaic on one wall, pretty nondescript. You could almost get a sense of repose here.

  And then you take the escalators to the outside world.

  MacArthur Park was directly across the street. As I emerged, still keeping Ratso in view, I could hear the simultaneous sounds of car horns, a jackhammer, and steel drums. That was the city all right. Anger, demolition, and music.

  Ratso turned left, toward Seventh. It also happened to be where my favorite deli in the city, Langer’s, was located. My chops lusted after a hot pastrami, but my feet kept me behind Ratso.

  He took a left on Seventh and kept walking, finally turning into a little strip mall and a Hispanic market. I took a seat on a low block wall and pretended to be watching the traffic.

  I sat there maybe ten minutes waiting for him to come out. No doubt he was taking his sweet time gyrating up and down the aisles looking for something to drink or eat or maybe smoke. When he came out, he had a little brown bag in his hand and continued a couple more blocks, finally turning right to go down two more streets.

  I had to hang back because there weren’t many people outside, and I didn’t want him to see me. I followed from the other side of the street and saw him disappear into an old building with a fading sign—Huntington Hotel. Not much to look at. But better than a freeway underpass.

  I ran to the hotel and entered. The lobby was full of old men sitting in old chairs watching a TV bolted to a corner. Soap opera. A couple of the old guys gave me a look. I saw the elevator doors close and went to it and watched. The lights told me it stopped at the fourth floor.

  There was a front desk, encased in Plexiglas with sound holes. Nobody watching the store. I took the stairs.

  At the fourth floor I entered a urine-smelling corridor. Walked it, listening. Heard babies crying and rap behind one door. A TV tuned loud, playing a commercial for DeVry University behind another. This was going to be door roulette. There were a dozen or so to choose from.

  So, I thought, start spinning.

  I ruled out the baby and rap door, and DeVry. I listened at a couple of others and heard nothing.

  Finally, I knocked on a door at random. A scuffling sound and then a woman’s voice, “What?”

  “Triunfo,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Triunfo?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Is Triunfo in there?”

  “Ain’t no Triunfo.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tried the door across the hall. Knock, no answer. I heard a TV or radio going, knocked again. Nothing. Maybe the person was out of it. Or had peeped me through the hole and didn’t want any. Maybe it was Ratso.

  “Triunfo,” I said to the door. The rap music was loud enough from down the hall that I had to shout.

  Nothing.

  Went next door. This time it flew open after I knocked.

  A man who looked like Shaquille O’Neal’s larger brother filled the space. “Yeah?”

  “Triunfo,” I said.

  His eyes were bloodshot. “Hell you talkin’ about?”

  “Looking for my buddy,” I said. “Thought this was his place.”

  “I look like your friend?”

  “Not exactly. He’s about this tall, Hispanic.”

  “Oh yeah. 403.” He jerked a thumb. “He owe you?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “Too bad.”

  “What’s too bad?”

  “Thought maybe you was a dealer and you’d smoke ’im. I don’t like ’im. Gives the place a bad smell. And you can tell ’im I said so.”

  “Sure.” I wasn’t about to deny this good citizen his wish.

  At the end of the corridor, under a dirty window, was a metal trash container, the kind with the swinging top. I grabbed it and put it down in front of Ratso’s door. I pounded on his door once with my fist. Then slid back to the wall, a few yards away.

  A long moment passed. I thought he wouldn’t bite.

  Then the door opened.

  I heard him say, “Hey.”

  His head popped out looking right, then left. At me.

  I turned toward him, approached with my finger to my lips. Counted on him not recognizing me right away.

  He frowned. “What’s this?”

  “It’s OK, man,” I whispered.

  “What’s this doin—”

  Several things happened at once.

  I saw his face change to recognition or fear. As he stepped back into the room, I lunged forward. Knocked the trash can over as my shoulder impacted the closing door. Drove with my feet. The door opened, slammed against the inside wall.

  Ratso scurried back into his nest.

  I slammed the door behind me.

  The place was like a big yellow stain. Directly in front of me was a kitchenette with a yellow shade pulled over the window. A smell like Dumpster Alley bit my nostrils.

  Ratso was not in the kitchenette.

  To the right was a room that shouldn’t have had the word living attached to it. It was a larger version of the trash can outside. It was a homeless camp inside four walls, down to a wire shopping cart overstuffed with items for survival on the street.

  But Ratso wasn’t here either.

  I turned just in time.

  Ratso took a Barry Bonds swing at me with a baseball bat. I ducked. The bat slammed into the inner doorjamb.

  I stumbled backward into the homeless camp. Hit the shopping cart. Saw Ratso get ready for another swing.

  Spinning, I whipped around to the other side of the cart as the bat whammed down on the cart stuffings. It made a sound like a fist hitting a pillow. A big fist.

  I could keep the cart between me and Barry Bonds now. Like kids playing tag around a car. But that couldn’t last forever.

  Ratso’s eyes gleamed like a rabid vermin wanting to bite something.

  I needed a weapon. There was some furniture in the place. Old sofa. Tattered chair. An end table, scuffed and ancient. But with four legs.

  “You die now,” Ratso said.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I said.

  “Yeah I do.” He smiled, and again I thought he might be high. Or just crazy.

  “Put it down and we talk about it,” I said.

  “You not leaving with your head,” he said.

  He started tapping the bat on the edge of the cart. Chank chank chank.

  I took a step back, put my right foot on the side of the cart, and drove it into Ratso’s middle. If he hadn’t slipped on something and gone down, I wouldn’t have made it to the end table.

  But he did slip. And I got the table. I held it up to him like a lion tamer. Or rat handler.

  His eyes widened a little, then narrowed. “You got nothin’, white boy.” He laughed. “Fat white boy, you don’t know how to fight.”

  I stared at him, not moving.


  “What you say, white boy?”

  Nothing.

  “Say something!”

  “I’m not fat,” I said.

  I charged, table up.

  He sidestepped, but I anticipated that, guessing which side. He went to my left and drew back the bat.

  I went left and high with the table. Caught his right cheek full on with a table leg.

  He swung the bat but without anything behind it. It hit my shoulder but only enough for a dribbler up the first base line.

  He screamed in pain.

  Shoving with the table, I got him back against the wall, pinning him.

  He kicked and almost got me flush between the legs.

  I brought the table back and shot it forward again. This time I got him with a leg just below the right eye.

  He cried out and his hands went to his face. He dropped the bat.

  I slammed the table on top of his head, holding back about twenty-five percent. I didn’t want him dead.

  Not yet.

  He crumpled to the floor like an old sleeping bag.

  I picked up the bat and let him writhe a little. Then I poked him in his back with the knob end.

  “Get up.”

  He put his hand behind him, rubbing the spot where I’d jabbed him.

  I kicked his hand. He screamed again. I was glad about the rap thumping in the hallway. It would make it harder to hear him. “Get up or I take out a knee,” I said.

  “Who you think you are, man?”

  “I’m a lawyer. Deal with it.”

  I poked him again. He struggled to his hands and knees.

  “Sit there,” I said, pointing to the couch.

  He pulled himself onto the couch, rubbing his head. A nice gash was open on his right cheek. Blood trickled down and spotted his T-shirt. He looked at his hand, saw the blood, and screamed again.

  I gave the outside of his left knee a healthy whap with the bat. His scream upgraded to a sharp wail.

  I pointed the bat at his face. “Shut up. Shut up now.”

  He did. Backed up against the couch as if trying to go through it, he put his hands up. No más.

  There was an old shirt in the spilled out mess from the shopping cart. I got it and tossed it to Ratso. “Put that on your cheek.”

  He did.

  “You get to talk to me now,” I said. “I want to know your connection to Triunfo.”

  “What?”

  “Triunfo.”

  “What’s that?”

  I whacked his knee in the same place.

  He shrieked. “Man, that hurts!”

  “Talk.”

  “They gonna kill you, man.”

  “How did they get to you?” I thought a moment. “Or you to them? Was that it? You came to shake me down, then you went to them? Are they paying for this place?”

  He didn’t answer. But his eyes rolled around his sockets. I’d scored something, like in pinball.

  “What were you doing in Bonilla’s house?” I said. “You were looking for something. You blew up a car. A diversion. Do you know you almost killed a little girl?”

  Another score. He shook his head slowly.

  “What were you looking for?”

  When he said nothing, I raised the bat. He waved his hands in front of his face. “He had stuff they want,” Ratso said. “He was gonna take it somewhere.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Stuff his wife wrote down.”

  “What, notes of some kind?”

  He nodded. It looked defensive to me. “Is that why he killed her?” I said.

  “I don’t know! I don’t talk to the guy. I look for what they want.”

  “You find anything?”

  Ratso shook his head.

  “So you started doing dirt for Triunfo, told them all about me, did you?”

  “Don’t hit me.”

  “I’m just getting warmed up.”

  “Come on!”

  “I’m looking into your eyes,” I said. “If I don’t like what I see I’m gonna break some bone. Comprende?”

  “I’m bleeding, man!”

  “More to come, unless you talk straight.” There were two Buchanans in that room. The one with the bat I hardly knew. “You know who killed Channing Westerbrook?”

  “No, man. I never heard that name!”

  “The reporter. You ever hear talk about a reporter?”

  “No. Honest, man.”

  I thought he was telling the truth about that. He was low level for Triunfo, a useful idiot. But there was one thing I knew he had details on.

  “Listen real careful to this,” I said. “The killing on the freeway. You saw who did it. You knew it was a Triunfo guy who killed the woman. Right?”

  Silence.

  “Talk,” I said.

  “Don’t hit me.”

  “Talk now.”

  “They kill me.”

  “So will I.” It came out almost effortlessly.

  “Please, man.”

  I held up the bat.

  “I don’t know!”

  Like an old-time cop with his billy, I slapped the bat in my hand a couple of times. “I don’t think you’re being up front with me.”

  “All I know, I swear.”

  “You know the name Frank Trudeau?”

  He shook his head.

  “A guy with curly hair,” I said. “Anglo, about ten years older than me.”

  “I told you everything, man. Come on, take off, okay?”

  “Barocas’s guy, Vargas. Enrique Vargas, the guy with the teardrop under his left eye. Know him?”

  “Everybody knows him,” he said.

  “Is he the one? Killed my woman?”

  “I don’t know, I never see him up close.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Come on, man!”

  Vine St. Metro Station

  98

  “GET ON THE floor,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  I slammed the couch with the bat. “On the floor, on your face.”

  “Oh, man!” He slipped off the couch onto the floor. “Just don’t hit me.”

  “Facedown.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about if you just stay still.” I rolled the shopping cart back a little and dumped the contents on him. Clothes and rags and plastic bags full of who knew what.

  “Hey!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is just a precaution.”

  “A what?”

  I turned the empty shopping cart upside down and positioned it on top of the stuff on top of Ratso.

  “That’s heavy, man,” he said. “What up?”

  I knelt, got close to his face. “If that cart moves, I have to get all in your face again. So just be cool.”

  “What you doing?”

  “Gonna search your place. You try to move, you’re gone. I find those notes, I’m gonna get mad that you didn’t tell me. I might go a little loco in my cabeza.”

  I slammed the bat hard on the floor, just missing his head. “Like that.”

  “Okay!”

  “Okay what?”

  “There. There!” He indicated with his head. “Under the freakin’ bed, man!”

  Watching him, I went to the mattress and lifted it up. There was a black binder underneath.

  “You take it,” Ratso said. “Let ’em kill you. They gonna kill me.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s over, man.”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “Just kill me now. Or take this off me.”

  “Not yet. Not till you tell me what this is.”

  “Just take it and go.”

  I thought about it. “You got something on Triunfo in here.”

  Ratso groaned.

  “You and me,” I said. “I’m taking you in.”

  “What?”

  “You got to talk to the man.”

  “No cops! Triunfo will cut me up.”

  “Then talk to me. You tell me what thi
s is.”

  “Get this off me.”

  “Talk first.”

  “No!”

  I took out my phone and faked punching in a number. Waited, then said, “Is Detective Fernández in?”

  “Okay!” Ratso screamed.

  “For real?”

  Ratso nodded.

  I closed the phone and kicked the cart off him. “Stay on the floor,” I said. “And start talking.”

  “I don’t know what’s in there, man. I just know it’s hot.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “Who?”

  “Alejandra, man.”

  “Alejandra Bonilla? The woman who got shot?”

  “Yeah, you stupid—”

  “You knew her?”

  “Yeah yeah.”

  “How?”

  “She was my sister, man.”

  99

  RATSO SAT BACK against the wall, holding his head. “They killed her. Ernesto pulled the trigger, but they did it.”

  I sat on the edge of the overturned cart, holding the bat, waiting for him to go on. He didn’t at first, then I saw he was crying softly.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Gustavo.” He sniffed

  “Where you from?”

  “Guatemala. We got ten in our house. Pigs in the yard. All we got is pigs. Alejandra, she get me here. She get me in with Triunfo. And this”—he looked around—“is all they give me.”

  “That why you tried to shake me down?”

  “I got to make money, man.”

  “Playing both sides will get you dead.”

  “Like Alejandra. Man, I tell her she’s crazy. But she is crazy for him.”

  “Who?”

  “Barocas, man.”

  “She was sleeping with Rudy Barocas?”

  Gustavo nodded. “She work for him like a, you know—” he made a writing motion.

  “Bookkeeper?”

  “Yeah. Like that. But he got tired of her, and she got mad. In my family, we get mad.”

  “I noticed.”

  “She tell me if anything happen to her, she has that in the floor. She say it will be like, you know, when you get money if somebody die?”

  “Insurance?”

  “Yeah. She say that.”

  “So you blew up a car on the street so you could get in and find it, is that right?”

  Gustavo shrugged.