by Jeff Johnson
It was true that Suzanne was a foot taller than me, but damn did she have nice legs. I pictured her in a black dress, lean and powerful, walking into a restaurant to meet me for dinner, and my mouth watered. It would make me feel good to be with her in public. I knew most of the men she had ever been with had some sort of masculinity issue with being seen trotting around with a woman like that, but I felt just the opposite. Deep down, I would have loved to be seen with her on my arm. It appealed to my impossible vanity, for one thing. To be measured as something equal to such a rare creature, to be her companion. Also, a woman like that was tough as nails. She would keep up, just like she had last night. For the first time in my life, the shoe might actually be on the other foot. I might have trouble keeping up with her. Still, to dream of all those lonesome dreams of corny romance I’d all but given up on … to see the rhododendron valleys of Nepal, to skirt the edge of the Sahara desert at dawn, to play some kind of idiot flute on the Great Wall of China, that kind of thing. She would like that. It sure as hell beat my current sense of romance, which was pretty much getting drunk in a crappy bar and washing my dick in the sink in the morning. I shook my head. Suzanne was dreamy.
I, on the other hand, was unemployed, in trouble with the police, recently disfigured, and about to mount an assault on a Russian real estate developer who had a bodyguard named Cheddar Box. I’d also been robbing people lately, though a case could be made that they all deserved it. I didn’t get the feeling she would buy it. The timing was almost comically bad, and I would have laughed if it had been Nigel or Big Mike. But it was me.
I considered beating the shit out of a mailbox. I considered a few other things. But mostly I walked through the rain and thought about the fact that one of my boots had no sock in it. Delia would have been overjoyed at the flaw in the foundation of my early morning reflection.
When I got home, the cats raced out and vanished into the darkness beside the house, unconcerned by the rain. I turned all the lights on and cranked up the heater, then stripped in the dining room and limped naked into the bathroom. While the shower was heating up, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Everything was healing. If I could just keep from adding to the damage for a few more days I’d be back into something approaching a leaner version of my top form, which would at least be one good thing to bring to the table in regard to Suzanne. I needed some seriously fatty food for breakfast, like five link sausages with a stick of butter as a starter. Two of Delia’s hippie vitamins on top would be good.
By the time I got out of the shower my hangover had diminished from train wreck to lawnmower accident. I considered working out, but I’d worked out enough with Suzanne to last me for a few days. It was almost six and the cafe around the corner would be open. I dressed in black wool pants, a black V-neck sweater over a fresh T-shirt, and thick socks, and laced my wet boots back on. I studied my wallet for a moment before I pocketed it. I needed a new one, which was sad in a sentimental way. The pile of bills on the counter beside it looked like the kind of thing I couldn’t believe I had to touch for the very first time since I’d been handling them, but I did. Smokes, Cheeks’s Zippo—which I realized linked me to him and had to be disposed of—and one of my two remaining metal balls. I was ready to once again sally forth and do questionable things.
I paused on the step out front and turned up my collar. A cold, windy sleet was in progress. I always wondered where the cats went on a morning like this. Maybe under the porch, and then maybe to some hideout I had no idea about, filled with bird skeletons and milk bottle caps, the kinds of things cats might collect. I had a sudden urge to find their hiding place and draw the things I found there. My right hand was still stiff, but beyond cigarettes, beyond booze, beyond even pussy or the word, art would always be my worst addiction. I needed to draw to stay alive. It was just that simple.
I stood there and thought about my sketchbook, the one that was lost in the explosion. There were others, somewhere in the warm house behind me. They were full of sketches of the little figurines and broken microscopes I collected, the mummified foreign beetles, roses, unusual leaves, and pencil renderings of old Salvation Army photographs. It smelled, I remembered from so long ago, like soap and tobacco. I let my mind wander over all the things I wanted to draw, but somehow I kept going back to Cheddar Box. There were too many obstacles in between me and fooling around with a pencil, and Cheddar Box was first on the list. On impulse, I went back inside and into my little library/home office, but I didn’t take down a sketchbook or pause to look at any of my strange little marvels or glorious old broken things. I took the phone book out and carried it to the dining room table and sat down.
And there he was. In the real estate section, a quarter-page ad. Turganov Investments. I had Dessel’s card, and since the asshole never slept, I thought about calling him on my new cell phone and bragging about my phone book skills, but I didn’t. It would be far better if everyone thought I’d given up.
Cheddar Box really was one seriously big motherfucker. Unfortunately, there was a brain in his huge head. I was lounging under the awning of the building across the street from Turganov Investments, studying the place and waiting for the inspiration for my next move, when the Mexican Conan stepped under the awning next to me. It was seven a.m.
“Got a gun?” he asked. His voice was low and rich, a deep, cigar-shaped vibration. He didn’t bother to stare me down, just joined me in watching the building across the street.
“Nah.”
“Smart.” Then he did look down at me and I looked up at him. He flexed his hands. My neck hurt.
“Yeah,” I continued, “I brought a bomb instead.”
Cheddar Box had a nice smile. Not a Dessel high beam or a Delia snarker, just pleasant.
“Mr. Holland,” he purred, “I think you’re lying to me.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I was. I’d just gotten there. All I had was my ball bearing and the cup of coffee I’d gotten on the drive over. I was holding the metal ball in the same hand as my cigarette.
“I was expecting you sooner.” He rolled his head and some massive thing in his shoulder or neck popped. He was wearing a gray Bill Blass suit.
“My girlfriend is a little taller than you,” I said. “I dig the suit, but the shoes, man. Heels, if you get me.”
He let out a deep breath. “How about one of those smokes? I quit. Wrecks my cardio, but a morning like this …”
I didn’t want him to see my metal ball, but he was almost three hundred pounds and less than a foot away, and on top of that he seemed oddly depressed. I stuck my cigarette into my mouth, slipped the ball back into my pocket and brought my hand out with my pack, shook one loose for him. Cheddar Box plucked it out with fingers that reminded me of burned tree roots and lit it with a tiny silver lighter. Then he turned back to the rain.
“I don’t like this job,” he said. “I’m not a morning person, for one thing. Little fucking dickheads like you comparing me to your girlfriend. My boss”—he stabbed the cigarette at the building across from us—“he’s a Russian, and I don’t want to be a racist, but I can’t stand those fucking guys.”
“Sucky.” I took a sip of coffee. We looked at the rain.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Ever eaten that shit they call lángos?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“It’s some kind of lumpy fried bread with salt all over it. It might be Hungarian, but I don’t fucking know.” He took a big drag and blew it out. “Sausage. So much sausage. And I swear, that vodka thing? Fuckin’ true. Morning, noon, night, and everything in between. It’s just unbelievable.”
“I got a guy used to work for me. Ate hot dogs every day for lunch. And nothing on ’em. Just a blank dog.”
“Jesus.”
“Yep.”
We smoked.
“So,” Cheddar Box continued. His cigarette was already down to his giant knuckles. “So standing here, me just rappin’ with you, that’s the good part of both our days.”
“Figured as much. I’m still shaking a hangover.”
“Yeah. So now we go see Oleg. You probably won’t like this. Don’t make any wisecracks. I can appreciate a sense of humor, but only when I’m standing around smoking a butt I just bummed off a retard. You ready to go?” He reached out and pinched my arm, once, a grip that almost fully encircled my bicep.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.” It was his turn to shrug. “Don’t try to run or I’ll shoot you.”
A few months ago I’d been in the office of a guy in San Francisco. He’d been a rich man, but his office was a shithole in a crappy warehouse. This was very different. The lobby of Turganov Investments was what I’d call Bank Modern, or even Trumpy. The entire lobby was carpeted in gray. There was an unmanned desk in one corner, surrounded by a range of insect chairs from a Scandinavian witch farm. A big, fake plant, possibly a weensy palm, was right in the middle of the place. There was a black security bubble on the ceiling, the kind you often found in grocery stores.
“Why in the hell are rich people always so damned tacky?” I asked.
Cheddar Box sighed in shared disgust. “No idea. But I constantly wonder the same thing. I mean, is it so hard to read Architectural Digest? One issue?” We stopped in front of the elevator and he stabbed the up button.
“Maybe it’s hard to find the time. Counting up all that change. The nickels alone …”
“The smartass thing,” he warned. “Though I can see your point.” The elevator doors opened and we stepped in. He hit the button for the top floor and the doors closed. We listened to the soft muzak. Billy Joel.
“I kind of like Décor,” I went on. “The paintings in the background, et cetera. Sunny pictures.”
Cheddar Box harrumphed. “I sort of like that one, too. It strikes me that you might be the kind of man who likes a good cooking show.” He glanced down at me appraisingly and then back at his warped reflection. “You Martha or Julia?”
I had to consider. “Julia, I guess. Tough call.”
“Damn right. My book, Julia gets the sauce and the protein, Martha gets the sweet stuff.” The bell chimed.
“I like how you put that,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. He craned his head at me again. “The bomb. I almost forgot.”
“Oh. That’s me,” I replied. I felt bad saying it. He shook his head sadly and faced forward.
“No detonations. And no more talking until he asks you something. Otherwise I got to flush you.”
The doors opened right onto Turganov’s sprawling office, a sterile replica of what the CEO of General Motors’ might have been, imagined by a dude who had never been in one of those offices. I certainly hadn’t, but Oleg evidently hadn’t made the Christmas card list, either. The same short gray utility carpet was everywhere, held down by a centrally located expensive desk that had a presidential feel in a discount, third-world kind of way. There were a few chairs that looked like they’d been ripped out of a Walmart super sale, and to top it off, it smelled like someone had blown up a bottle of very shitty cologne, and then burned a string of fat cigars through rotten teeth.
“Shut it,” Cheddar Box intoned, very low. He sank down in one of the chairs to our left.
Oleg Turganov was on the phone, pacing around behind the Dictator of New Jersey’s desk. He didn’t bother to look at us. Oleg was dressed in an unusual suit made out of a slightly shiny cloth, like cotton mixed with rayon. He wasn’t fat, but he was close. His gray and black hair was thick and slicked back with something like bacon grease. His florid, jowly face was the mug of a guy with the humble origins of a talentless but dedicated street fighter. I sat down next to Cheddar Box.
“Might be a while,” he said.
“I got time,” I whispered. “I’m in between jobs right now.”
“The mouth,” Cheddar Box reminded me. He reached into the interior of his suit jacket and came out with a folded copy of The New Yorker. I audibly sighed with relief.
The Russian droned on for about twenty more minutes. I sat there watching him for the first few minutes. Then I looked over at The New Yorker. Cheddar Box angled it a little toward me and in that fashion we read an article about seals and caught up on someone’s opinion of Norman Mailer. I was just beginning to consider trying to walk out by way of a visit to the restroom when Oleg finally hung up.
“Who ze fuck is dis?” he snapped at Cheddar Box. His little eyes were raw with hangover and red with malice.
The big man next to me folded his paper and tucked it back in his coat.
“Guy owned some tattoo shop down on sixth. Beat the fuck out of a guy named Ralston, if I’m right. Put him in the hospital. Seems like Cheeks might have met him as well. No gun, no wire the door scanner picked up. He’s got some metal in his pockets. Mouthy, too, but …” He let that hang.
“Cheeks!” Oleg smiled. “I heard of this man.” The smile flashed off. “Vat do you want?”
I looked at Cheddar Box, who almost winced in anticipation.
“This dude sounds just like Chekhov from Star Trek,” I said. “I always wondered if that guy had it down.”
“The mouth,” Cheddar Box said seriously. This close, I could see the tiniest hint of a smile, just around the edges of his eyes.
“Right.” I crossed my legs and slumped casually. “So I wanted to drop by and chat. Just a few little things. I know you have the cops in your pocket, fire department, shit like that, but the feds are a different story. Those guys have you on their radar. One of them is this creepy little bastard named Dessel. He told me this bizarre story the other day about apes and monkeys.”
“Apes and monkeys,” Oleg repeated slowly, mystified.
“Yeah. They don’t like me, but I get the impression that they aren’t all that happy with you, either. They seem to think you hired the guy who bombed my shop, so I thought I’d pop by and give you a heads-up.”
Oleg stared at me with a flat, dead expression for a full thirty seconds. I stifled a yawn.
“Vy tell me dis?”
I shrugged. “Because I’m about to do a whole bunch of shit, and it’s important for you to know just how fucked the situation is.”
Oleg looked at Cheddar Box and tossed his head at the elevator doors. He turned back to his desk and picked up his phone.
“Time’s up,” Cheddar Box said. We both got up and walked to the doors. I pressed the down button and then turned back.
“Be seeing ya,” I called. Turganov didn’t even glance our way.
“Mouth,” Cheddar Box said. The doors opened and we stepped in. He pressed L and the doors closed.
“So, these feds,” he began. “They the smart kind, or the Princeton variety?”
“One of them is a very clever little motherfucker.”
“Shit.” Cheddar Box didn’t like that. “I’m still on parole.”
“Bummer.”
The elevator doors opened. Cheddar Box made no move.
“You go on,” he said. “No way I’m going out there now.”
I nodded. “Some mornings are better than others.” I wasn’t looking forward to this, either. I patted his wide back.
“Later,” I said.
“Yep.”
The doors closed and I walked through the quiet, empty lobby and out into the rainy seven a.m. darkness. The white Prius was parked in front, just as the Mexican Conan predicted. The passenger window zipped down and Dessel gave me his monster grin, the real showstopper.
“Darby! We’ve been looking everywhere for you. I wanted to see if you had time to toss a frisbee later, but this rain. Not really flip-flop weather. Why don’t you hop in and we can do a little sightseeing instead.”
Dessel liked to lean over the seat like a really big puppy and look at me. Agent Pressman stuck with his drive and grunt routine. The car was littered with fast food wrappers and the ashtray was overflowing. Sloth was a essential element of their disguise.
“So what,” Dessel began. He made an exasperated l
ittle noise. “So what’s up? I mean, what the fuck were you doing in there?”
“Mostly talking about cooking. Martha Stewart and Julia Child.”
“Cool. I like that one guy, the peppy one.” He snapped his fingers at Agent Pressman.
“Bourdain.” Pressman offered. Dessel shook his head.
“No. I’m talking chefs here, not mouth jockeys. That one guy …”
“Bobby Flay.”
“That’s the one!” Dessel’s laugh was so high-pitched it made my tonsils hurt. “BBQ. Fuckin’ master class. So what else?”
“I had some quality time with this dude who evidently really likes a certain kind of cracker. It might actually be referred to as a snack chip. I’m in the dark on that one.”
“Tough distinction,” Dessel admitted. “Please, go on.”
“You guys aren’t going to drop me off twenty blocks from my car, are you? The cold makes my feet hurt.”
“Dunno,” Dessel replied. He slapped the back of the seat and Pressman did his grunt. “Sort of depends. I can hold you for twenty-four hours, so maybe we’ll drop you off in Idaho this time. I bet you like a good potato. So keep going.”