by Shelly Frome
What he’d lost in the bargain was the fun he’d always had. This new feeling-his-age crap sure as hell was getting him down. But, still and all, the chance of being on top of the game instead of winding up on the skids like guys everywhere was one hell of a sight better.
And so he eased back and let the sights come and go as the train rolled on: the gray sheen of the water approaching the Dalles and the Wishram station stop; the gouges of beige and deep chocolate brown across the way as if some giant had chipped out hunks of basalt. Pretty soon, the Columbia opened wide, the foothills of the Cascades glowed green, covered with thick Douglas fir and stands of skinny poplar. In the distance, the silvery Bridge of the Gods spanned over the Columbia so hikers could scamper across the Pacific Trail into Oregon.
But the sight of a bridge with no railings got Deke to feeling testy again. Losing a step, sure, but still as cocky as they come. Still the same rambler who, up till lately, hung loose around Cold Creek till Walt beeped him back down to Sin City or wherever.
Snapping out of it again, he noticed the seat next to him was empty. The lean woman might’ve said, “Nice talking to you.” He couldn’t really say.
Trudging back to his berth, he noticed the paper and pulp mills cropping up outside his narrow window, then the rows of tract houses followed by ones with second-story wooden balconies. In short order, traffic lights popped out along with eighteen-wheel rigs, rectangular high-rises and the green 5-South-to-Portland sign. The commercial craft and pleasure boats that clogged the Willamette came into view and clinched the deal. Deke was going to have to get himself set.
Less than twenty minutes later, he emerged from the cozy Portland train station and hailed a cab. While hanging onto the attaché case and making sure Frick’s billfold and smartphone were still secure in his travel bag, little spasms continued circling around his lower back. At this point he longed to meet up with Walt and have it out then and there. Smack up against something hard instead of more of this dos-a-dos.
Still antsy, he hopped a MAX downtown to Pioneer Square. The mix of fruity people on the glass-paneled light-rail system got to him immediately. It was Saturday, everybody’s day off. But did deadbeats in whacked-out T-shirts and sandals have to keep piling on, stop after stop? A few, okay, but there were bunches of them carrying green and white placards all starting with the word Save: “Save the Trees ... Save the Streams ... Save the Trails ...”
He tried the breathing thing again and waited for the deadbeats to scramble off before he exited at the Square. Echoing his impatience, the MAX trundled on away from him, headed due west like some jangled kiddie trolley.
Almost instantly, sunshine streamed down as the sky switched from gray to deep blue. An old lady yelled at the metal ticket machine, punching the rows of buttons, begging a senior all-day rail pass to drop in the slot. The ticket machine ignored her.
Moving away from the tracks, Deke tried to get his bearings. A file of brick steps led down to a piazza of pavers flanked by tall concrete shafts. Down below, a milling crowd suddenly looked up at a copper forecaster in the opposite corner that seemed to be going beserk: tolling bells, then whistling as pieces of jagged metal shot out from all directions. The tree huggers with the Save placards chanted the predictions: “Temperature, seventy-five ... humidity, forty-seven percent ... clear and sunny!”
Next, a pear-shaped bearded guy braced himself against the forecasting machine and jerked a floppy bible out of his knapsack. “You’re all fornicators!” he yelled down at the top of his lungs. Some of the crowd jeered. Most of the people turned away and went back to what they were doing: yammering, messing around, working on their sun tans and the like.
“You better change your ways and I don’t mean perhaps,” the guy went on, pitching his raspy voice a notch higher. “I am warning you. Today is the day. Jesus ain’t gonna wait much longer. You got a chance. It counts most on a bright sunny day when it seems you can get away with anything. But you can’t. The dark angel’s gonna snare you and cut you down.”
In a way, Deke was glad he’d stuck around for a second, glad for the reminder. Nothing was going to snare him and cut him down no matter what he was about to run into.
Chapter Nine
Deke finally came upon the rust-colored Roman frontage of the Hotel Vintage Plaza. He was late. Walt was bound to be in even a worse mood. But no matter. The sooner Deke got it over with, the sooner he’d be able to get a bead on where in hell this was all headed and get the drop on them all.
“You know what I think?” said Walt, leaning back on the wine-colored sofa. “I think you done it on purpose. Gave him so much slack he was bound to reach the empty log cabins so’s you could have yourself a good ol’ time. Serves you right about your damn back.”
Deke could’ve kept up the lie about the loose terrain. But he was more than sick and tired of Walt’s badgering. So he cut him off with, “How do I finish it, Walt? What’s the damn tie-in?”
“With what?”
“Don’t hand me that. What’s the tie-in with the bookkeeper outta the picture?”
“Out of the picture is he?”
“Right. With him spooked and you got the goods.”
“Outta the picture and spooked. Is that what I’m supposed to believe?”
Walt pulled on his red suspenders and leaned forward. He shook his full head of white hair and then leaned back hard, just missing the bottom of the gilt frame rimming the dumb painting of tiny birds perched on dainty wine glasses. He folded his thick arms and shook his head a second time as if Deke was still that lanky fool kid down in the Glades.
“Somebody put a trace on him, did you know that? Like he’s some kinda missing person. How come? I’ll tell you how come. Fallout and spillage is how I read it. And if so, if that’s how it plays out, it ain’t gonna be just some twisted back you got comin’. Handwriting will be on the wall and you’re gettin’ a little long in the tooth to hightail yourself out of it. So, you gonna talk to me while we still got time?”
“Don’t push it, Walt.”
“Oh, yeah? Since when? Since when ain’t there a question mark after every damn thing you done?”
That did it. Deke tossed the attaché case at the wood-paneling right next to Walt’s head.
Catching it just in time, Walt scrunched up his bushy brow. He set the case down on the coffee table between them and flipped the latches. Reaching inside, he grabbed a ledger and waved it around. “Okay, we’ll drop it for now. But it ain’t finished, not by a long shot. You hear? Not till mister bookkeeper is salted away. Now where were we?”
“A tie-in. You want me to run this down all the way, you got to at least give me a tie-in.”
“Why?”
“So I know what the hell I’m doing.”
Walt thought about it long and hard. “Okay, I can give you this much. A point man for the Outfit set up some entertainment company here doing whatever the hell they do up and down the coast.”
Leaning over opposite Walt on the matching vevety sofa, Deke took a few sips of black coffee and set the cup on the burgundy side table. “So?”
“ So, he overreached himself, his cover got blown and he had to split.”
“How come?”
Again Walt gave Deke a look and held back a while. Finally he said, “Since when are you interested in whys and wherefores? What is goin’ on here?”
“Since when do I have to track something down that’s not a one-shot? So why did the point man take off? How did his cover get blown?”
“‘Cause he still had to file a 10K with the S.E.C., that’s how come. Have an audit and such.”
“So?”
“So,” said Walt, “the CPA spots a red flag, downloads the data and says he’s gonna expose the point man and every goddanm thing else he’s in cahoots with. Are we clear now? Are we through?”
“Spots what red flag?”
“The goddamn dummy operation. Humongous expenses, no payroll checks and a high volume of money comin’ int
o a company going bust.”
“So where was the money coming from?”
“That’s it, Deacon. It’s bad enough worrying about the spillage after one of your one-shots. But I sure as hell ain’t gonna add to what you’re capable of if you start figuring and putting your nose in too.”
With that, Walt tossed the ledger back in the case, set the case by his side on the cushion, poured himself another tumbler of dark ale and drained it dry.
As the pain from the strained ligaments in Deke’s lower back started in again, Deke gulped down some more black coffee and said, “You’re telling me one blown dummy operation’s bled into another. Leaking maybe all the way down the coast ‘cause the point man dropped the ball twice. And this time it’s liable to all come apart.”
Leaning forward once more, Walt spelled it out as if he was talking to a flunky who was this close to getting sacked.
“Look, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you’d best get with the program. What’s really goin’ down is none of your friggin’ business. It’s the Outfit’s business. What’re they payin’ me for? What they’re always payin’ me for. For damage control, to find somethin’—guys who’ve been stiffing them, goods, information--whatever. So I don’t worry my head none about no big picture. I don’t worry about nothin’ long as there’s no screw-ups on this end that gets them down on my ass. Which brings us back to square one. Is there a screw-up I don’t know about? Is this CPA really spooked, it’s only you with a twisted back, and we can just goddamn get on with it?”
Still fighting off the twitching pain, Deke stretched out his long legs. The gold antique clock in the corner announced it was one-thirty. The dark wood paneling and the plump winy-red chairs made him feel he was caught inside some tycoon’s bedchamber. But he kept cooling it down, kept playing the game. “I told you, Walt. No worries.”
“And I told you, since when?” said Walt, his raspy twang really getting on Deke’s nerves. “It don’t figure it was nice and tidy and I can just cross it off the list. It brings to mind the time you rode the clutch on your old man’s Jeep, stripped the gears and blew the head gasket ramroddin’ it to hell and gone. And then, when your ol’ man called you out on it, you shrugged him off. Then got in trouble with some backwoods slut. And shrugged that off too.”
“Can we just get on with it?”
“Fine. Since you’re so all-fired anxious for the bottom line, here it is.”
Walt reached over to the side table and took a long pull on another tumbler of dark ale. “I have had it, the Outfit’s had it, you’ve had it. Even if the bookkeeper’s on ice and you do good on this last leg. On this end, it’s strictly electronic surveillance from now on. Legit corporations still on their feet who want to make sure of who, if anybody, they’re hirin’. Background checks, deleted e-mails pulled from hard drives; scourin’ databases and the like. Get me a team of hackers, changing the name to Great Western Risk Management. Nothin’ anybody can connect me with. Nothin’.”
“Well now,” said Deke, realizing he might have known.
“Look, at the moment I need a tracker to wrap this up. I can’t use no ex cops or P.I.’s ‘cause anybody in on this botched operation can spot one a mile away. Bottom line, we need the skinny on what’s going on with the leak in the pipeline. First stop, Salinas and something to do with farm workers and a clunker. And if anybody knows about crops, pickers and clunkers it’s you. But with you damn near useless ‘cause of your back, maybe you’d rather pack it in right here and now.”
Walt reached over for a handful of mixed nuts, washed them down with the rest of the ale and slammed the bottle down on the side table so hard the vase full of gladiolas jumped to the side.
“So what’s it gonna be, Deacon? If it’s yes, you ain’t gettin’ nothin’ but expenses till everything—and I am mean every thing—is goddamn swept clean. No holes in the flow, no more fallout and no questions about what this is all about.”
Just then, the waitress with the clown-like face came scurrying in, swept away the bottles, cup and silver pot, set them on a tray and promised to replace them with more of the same. Halting in mid-sentence, she stood still with a frozen grin like some windup toy whose batteries were shot. She came back to life the second Walt tossed a few bills on her tray.
“Ooh,” said the girl. “Your steaks. Your meal. Righty-o. Don’t go away. Be right back.”
She backed off past the built-in bookshelves lined with identical leather-bound volumes and cooed, “Have fun.”
Deke held his ground, still taking in Walt’s little bombshell. In the meantime, Walt simmered down and rambled on about how Deke might be able to parlay this into some kind of career move. Maybe find work in the shipping and trucking business. Keep things moving along. Something less of a strain. Still deflecting, he told Deke that while he’d excused himself a few minutes ago to see to a little business, for old times sake, he’d also made arrangements for a chiropractor in a suite on the fourth floor. Plus a gal who did a great massage and threw in other gratuities as well.
“I’m sayin’, great room service they got here,” said Walt, attempting to ease the tension. “The more I find out about this town, the more I am starting to appreciate it. At least twenty-five degrees cooler than Vegas, a lot greener, Mount Hood lookin’ down at you and they got somethin’ called grass and rain. All I need is a replacement for the naked bimbos shakin’ it on the table tops at the Tabu, makin’ the colored lights go round. And the strippers playin’ water volleyball. But hell, in this economy, you can’t have it all.”
As if Deke had resigned himself to Walt’s terms, Walt went on about arrangements in the hotel’s men’s shop for Deke’s new suit with all the trimmings. “You’ll need it soon as you hit L.A. And I’ll eat this coffee table if the trail don’t lead you straight there. Oh yeah, there’s nothin’ like that exec look. They’ll figure you for some hotshot producer and sell their mother on the off chance you’re their ticket to the moon.”
Walt chuckled over that one, Deke kept glaring at him. They sat like that, neither one speaking for a while. Walt shoved more mixed nuts in his mouth, guzzled another ale and kept wiping his walrus mustache with the back of his hand.
“Oh,” said Walt, “one more thing. Been in touch with our screw-up point man. He’s putting a good face on it, like it’s nothin’. Even asked for you special. The suit was his idea. Goes with your style, he said. Now ain’t that a kick in the head?”
“Come on,” Walt said in the icy stillness. “What the hell’s it gonna be? Look, I’m easing you in and out. All you have to do is go along till you plug the hole. You’ll be on a leash but still have plenty of slack.”
“And what if the hole can’t be plugged?”
“I don’t think I heard that.”
No sooner had Walt raised his bushy eyebrows for emphasis, when the clown-girl was back with a whirl. She wheeled in her serving cart, whisked everything off the coffee table, plunked down their order and snatched off the silver covers, revealing the steaming plates of rib-eyed steaks and side dishes.
“Whoops,” she said. “Forgot the extra ales. They are icy cold, set to go with frosty mugs this time. Be right back.”
She exited as fast as her bandy legs could carry her. Walt set to work slicing up his meat into tiny bite-sized cubes. Deke guessed it was some kind of ulcer, what you got for being a testy bastard all these years. It was no secret that Walt had no friends or love life to speak of. Not ever.
“Here’s to home cookin’,” said Walt, taking a careful bite of steak and chewing it slowly.
The girl returned and set the frosty mugs and open bottles of ale on the side table.
“Whoops,” she said, “Whoops again. Did I do this wrong? Can you manage? I should’ve got some tablecloths, huh? And the coffee table is kinda low and—”
“It’s dandy,” said Walt. “Just give us some time and space, okay, hon?”
The girl didn’t like Walt’s “hon” or his wayward hand patting
her backside. But she registered a forced smile anyways. “You sure? It’s no trouble. I could—”
“Leave us now, hon,” said Walt, beckoning to Deke to fill him a frosty mug to the brim. “We’ll be fine.”
The girl looked at Deke for a cue. Deke nodded. She scooted off as Deke poured the thick ale while Walt gave the girl a horny grin.
“Here’s to cuttin’ our losses,” said Walt.
Deke continued to give Walt nothing. As he saw it, his only choice was to keep playing along till he was ready to make his move. Which figured to be some time between tomorrow and the day after.
Walt wiped the foam off his mustache. Then he squinted, knitting the furrows on his mottled forehead, making the folds by his pug nose even more pronounced. “If it ain’t askin’ too much, I’d appreciate some kinda response. At least let on how you feel about headin’ for the last roundup.”
For an answer, Deke snatched a serrated blade and tore into his steak.
Chapter Ten
For a pittance, you could take in an old flick at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on any given Monday evening. As this crazy Labor Day drew to a close, Ben looked upon this outing as a continuing escape hatch as he drifted among the other film buffs setting up their folding beach chairs and blankets. Here he could kick back and enjoy one of his favorites projected on the wall of Rudolph Valentino’s mausoleum, with the tops of spindly palms lazing over the shadowy images. It was Ben’s cup of tea. An homage to movieland’s past. A fitting way to comfort those nearby stars of yesteryear, gone but close by and not forgotten.
However, despite the lingering buzz from the margaritas and the promise of mindless diversion, the low-key anxiety threatened to slip in again. As he eased behind a hibiscus hedge and sat on the carpet of grass, he rationalized that besides unwinding, he was also killing time in a productive way. Re-appreciating narrative film technique till Leo and Iris went to the mat for the last time. Honing his storytelling skills for his stint at the Avalon Studios and the big day tomorrow. Besides, there really was nothing left for him to do except sit back, watch the film, wend his way to Iris’ and go to bed. Give his body and overworked brain a reprieve.