The Straight Man - Roger L Simon

by Roger L. Simon

  "lt's cheaper that way."

  "Did you ever think it presents a less than professional image?"

  "Yeah. I've been thinking of moving out . . . starting an agency . . . but I'm waiting."

  "For what?"

  "I don't know. A lottery win." I didn't know how to answer better than that and I was grateful when I was interrupted, almost immediately, by the phone. I picked up. It was Bannister and he sounded upset.

  "Mr. Wine, uh, Moses, I mean, I hate doing this on the phone, but I've got an emergency on my hands."

  I glanced up at Chantal, who was pouring some coffee.

  "It's the Grand Shrink," I said, cupping the phone in one hand while stabbing a piece of omelet.

  "Are you alone?"

  "Enough."

  "What do you mean 'enough"? Can I be direct with you?"

  "You're a psychiatrist. You're supposed to be."

  "Don't be cute with me, Wine. This could be a calamity."

  "Go ahead."

  "Yes, well, uh, Otis disappeared last night. He got up when he and my son were watching a tape of Terminator and never came back."

  "How'd he get out?"

  "He took the louvers out of the jalousie window in the bathroom. He must've gone straight across the tennis court to the Coast Highway. I have reason to believe he took the red-eye to New York."

  "How do you know that?"

  "He told my son some mysterious person called him in the middle of the night to say his brother was in grave danger."

  "Do you believe him?"

  "I don't know. Otis is capable of making up anything if by it'll give him an excuse to get near the powder. My son I wasn't sure either. He said Otis was acting pretty crazy."

  "Where were you at the time?"

  "Attending to another patient. I can't be six people ....Moses, I'd like to hire you to go find him. It's very important that he be back as soon as possible, both for his own protection and because it would be disastrous for his career if the studio found out he was gone."

  "Not to mention yours."

  "Yes, mine too." There was a pregnant pause. I looked over at Chantal again. She was watching me with the same intensity with which she had studied the Xerox sheet at the private eye course. I realized this woman could learn all she needed to know about being a detective in about four days. I also realized my omelet was getting cold and swallowed another bite. "This has to be done right away, Moses. By Saturday." Bannister interpreted my silence as acquiescence.

  "Why Saturday?"

  "Because Otis is scheduled to be master of ceremonies for the Comedians and Chefs Benefit for Africa at Matthew Rodman's mansion in Bel Air. The whole entertainment community will be there."

  "Comedians and chefs?"

  "Yes. You know, chefs—Wolfgang Puck of Spago, that Waters woman up in Berkeley. They're the biggest thing going today. And now Sandor Romulus of Bistro Vega she's catering the affair. And for obvious reasons they wanted the hottest young black comic to headline the show. They've already sold five hundred tickets at a hundred and twenty-five apiece. Most of the major studios are buying blocks."

  "Look, Doctor, I'd like to help you. But as you know, I'm working for Emily Ptak and there might be a conflict of int—"

  "Don't worry. I've already talked to Emily about this. Besides, she's one of the sponsors of the benefit. It's important for her, too."

  "The Cosmic Aid Foundation."

  "Right. We've agreed to handle all your expenses in New York, of course. I suggest you get on the next convenient flight."

  "So I'm to be working for you now, as well as for Emily."

  "No, no. You'd still be working for Emily primarily. There'd just be this one overlap."

  I told him I'd call him back in a few minutes and hung up. I needed to think this over. I shoveled in a forkful more omelet while Chantal waited impatiently for me to fill her in on what was happening.

  "So we're going to New York," she said before I had barely finished my explanation.

  "Not you, me. And not New York, the Bronx. If I don't miss my guess, that's where Otis'll be hanging out. It's a waste of money for two of us to go."

  "No problem. I have friends in the Bronx. Montrealers who wanted to open a pétisserie on the Grand Concourse until they realized it was a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Now they run a laundry. I could stay with them."

  "It's still a waste of money."

  "I'll fly People's I don't mind arriving in Newark. It's easier than——"

  "And I don't want to have to worry about you in the Bronx, unless, among your other undiscovered talents, you're a fifth-degree black belt in something or other."

  "And I suppose in your condition you're ready to deal with--"

  "I'll be the judge of that. Now, as far as I know, you're working for me and I need you to stay here." Chantal was starting to look pissed. I recognized the symptoms from long experience and I moved on quickly before I was accused of sexism. "For one thing, I'm waiting to hear from an aging shamus named Stanley Burckhardt about a post office box in Glendale. I want you to stay on top of that. I'll give you the details. Also, I'd like you to go out to Malibu and keep your eyes on the comings and goings at Carl Bannister's shrinkery. Let me know if you find out anything interesting." I figured that last would mollify her for the moment.

  "What about the Chu's Brothers?"

  "I'll call a friend on the LAPD Asian Squad and see if they have anything. You can follow up on that. And rent all the video cassettes you can find of Mike Ptak. I doubt they'll tell us much, but you never know. Also stay tuned for further developments at the Fun Zone and keep in touch with your Greek elevator operator at the Picasso. That sounds like a full calendar, doesn't it'?"

  "I love New York," she said forlornly.

  "We're not operating a travel agency here. And as far as I'm concerned, your meter's running forty hours a week at twelve dollars per. That makes four hundred and eighty dollars weekly. You can add reasonable expenses to that. But don't go overboard. I don't think Emily Ptak would like you taking elevator operators to Spago, even if she does. Save your receipts."

  And with that I finished my omelet, picked up the phone, and made my calls: Emily, who verified what Bannister had told me and said she had no idea why Otis called her a "mind-fucking cunt" other than because he was paranoid and hated all white people uncontrollably "when it suited his purposes"; John Lu with the Asian Squad, who wasn't in (I left Chantal's number); Nathanson's service, to say I'd be missing my next appointment; and, finally, Bannister again.

  "Any idea where I should look?" I asked.

  "He has a girl friend named Della who lives in one of the projects."

  "What's her second name?"

  "I don't know. He always just called her Della. She's half Puerto Rican and has a three-year-old kid. But she told him she wouldn't see him until he kicked coke. That freaked him out. Then there's his manager, a real dumbbell lawyer named Purvis Wilkes who has an office near Yankee Stadium. Otis is absurdly loyal to him. And, of course, his brother, King."

  "King?"

  "King King."

  "Where do I find him?"

  "No idea. But if you do, I'm sure the DEA would like to know. From what I hear he controls half the drug trade for the South Bronx."

  9

  I got out of the gypsy cab on the Grand Concourse with a strong sense of déja vu. I hadn't been in this neighborhood very often since I was a little boy and went to Yankee games with my father. The area had gone through several changes since then, down to the bottom and halfway back again, but it was the earlier period of my childhood that was on my mind as I crossed the street to Purvis Wilkes's office, passing a deli that had been Jewish, Puerto Rican, and was now some weird mixture of Latino and Arabic, serving, I imagined, chorizos on pita with canned pina coladas and Turkish delight for dessert. The place I had gone to before the games for pastrami sandwiches with my father had disappeared, replaced by an Off-Track Betting parlor. Not that we would go there tha
t often. Usually we went to the Stadium Club because my father and his lawyer friends, season ticket holders, were members and that was what a man did, had a steak lunch at the Stadium Club and then sat in a box on the third base line, while his son stared with a combination of curiosity and envy at the black and brown people in the bleachers.

  There was nothing Wall Street about Purvis Wilkes's office. Actually, it was more reminiscent of a credit dentist, nestled like a bomb shelter into the dirty-yellow brick courtyard of one of those soot-ridden Concourse apartment buildings in which all the first-floor windows are honeycombed with steel grid antitheft wire. Wilkes's window looked as if it had been smashed a few times anyway. The name on the door read Feinstein & Wilkes, Attorneys at Law, but Feinstein, I later found out, had defrauded a couple of clients and skipped for Minneapolis some time ago, ending this supposedly ecumenical partnership.

  Wilkes himself was a tall, slightly paunchy man in his early thirties with light sepia skin and a neatly cut Van-dyke. He was reading the paper and listening to an old Thelonious Monk album on the radio when his secretary introduced me. The way he acted, he didn't seem over-eager for clients. He seemed even less eager when I told him what I wanted.

  "Hey, I'm Otis's manager. If I told some private dick where he was, think how long I'd have that job."

  "But as Otis's manager you should have his best interests at heart. The show business community is one tiny hornet's nest of gossip. Word gets out Otis went bye-bye and you can say sayonara to the fat movie contract. The people out there are getting supersensitive to drug publicity."

  "Oh, yeah? Who're they afraid of? Nancy Reagan?"

  I half smiled.

  "Anyway, we got a contract, so what's the big deal? Listen, you look like a decent guy."

  Wilkes leaned back and lit up a Jamaican cigar. "Jewish intellectual . . . guilty . . . smart. One of those ex-civil-rights dudes gone confused because the brothers have rejected you. You oughtta be ashamed of yourself, workin' for that social-climbing Svengali Bannister. That sinister fuck'll do anything to get his claws into Otis. You call that therapy? Filling Otis's head with all kinds of vile shit over a little toot?"

  "More than a little toot, if word has it correctly."

  "All right. More than a little. But so what? He's not hurting anybody except for himself. And Bannister's shameless. He even tried to get to be Otis's beneficiary. Can you believe that? . . . Janelle, where are you, girl? Bring this man some coffee."

  Janelle sashayed into the room with the coffeepot, five foot six of exquisitely formed burnt siena flesh bursting out of a beige silk paratrooper jump suit. This was the kind of black woman that would normally start my blood percolating so fast I'd have steam coming out of my ears in under thirty seconds, but this time, oddly, I scarcely reacted. I hadn't reacted on the plane either when the stewardess practically grabbed my crotch while pouring me a Bloody Mary. I wondered why that was and the image of Chantal filtered up through my brain like a holograph. I pushed it away and focused on Wilkes.

  "I share your opinion of Bannister, Purvis. But I'm not really working for him. I'm working for Emily. Ptak's widow."

  "Sister Salvation? You gotta be kidding. What's she after? There's not enough famine in Africa, she gotta be sending you to the Bronx?"

  "What she's after is trying to figure out why her husband committed suicide. More important to you is that the L.A. police think it had something to do with some massive drug connection between Hollywood and the Bronx."

  Wilkes broke up laughing. "That's pretty funny, isn't it?"

  "My guess is Otis thought they were going to connect him into it. That's why he split. Apparently, in the middle of the night, some mysterious person called him to warn him his brother was in trouble."

  Suddenly Wilkes wasn't laughing. He waved Janelle out of the room with the back of his hand.

  "King's too smart for shit like that," he said. "He's a businessman. He doesn't intrude on the province of other businessmen."

  "Where is King?"

  "You never know."

  "What about Otis?"

  Wilkes stared at me. "You know, a boy like you could get killed fucking around where you don't belong."

  "Couple of people already have been killed—Mike Ptak and a Romanian named Nastase."

  "And what do you expect me to do about that? Let me tell you something about the way the world works around here, my white liberal friend. Otis King's mother was a hooker who died of an overdose when he was four years old. His father's doing ten-to-twenty at Riker's Island for knifing a man in the back. Otis himself was out on the street by the time he was nine. Got his first robbery conviction at eleven and spent the years twelve to fifteen in juvenile hall. If he couldn't make people laugh, he'd be spending most of his life in jail for sure. Because it would have been the only way he could've survived. Only way he could eat, because the motherfucker can't read, can't spell. He can barely count to twenty. He's no different from the rest of those assholes out on the street there spending their days shooting China white because it's the only way they can make it till dark without killing themselves. That's the way it is here, Mr. Wine. And that's the way it's always been. And if you think people from my world are ripping off your world, you gotta be crazy. It's the other way around! Now, get out!"

  I stumbled out of Wilkes's office wondering what I had done to deserve this. I was tired of black people holding me responsible for everything from food stamp cutbacks to the Zionist conspiracy. And I was tired of excusing myself for things I had about as much to do with as the last space walk. I was about to go back in and give him a piece of it when Janelle came running out on the sidewalk straight up to me.

  "Hey, wait! Wait a minute, Mr. Wine . . . Otis needs help. He's gonna die out there on those streets if he stays any longer . . . like one of those zoo animals they send back and they can't live in the jungle anymore."

  "I know what you mean," I said.

  She looked at me a moment, trying to decide whether she could trust me or not. "You know Della?"

  "You mean Otis's girl friend?"

  "Yeah. She said she was with him last night, but she kicked him out because he was so loaded."

  "Any idea where he went?"

  "Maybe. She didn't say."

  "Where does Della live?"

  "Oh, hey, you don't wanna go there. That's not a smart place to go."

  "I know it's not smart, but where is it?"

  She looked back at the building. Wilkes was standing in his office window.

  "I gotta go."

  She started off, but I grabbed her by the arm.

  "Tremont Avenue Projects, number Seventeen B. But don't go in by l79th Street."

  "I won't," I said, letting her go. She ran back into the building before I could say thanks.

  It took me about twenty minutes to find a cab that would take me up to the Tremont Avenue Projects. But when I got there, I was surprised to find it wasn't half as bad as I expected. A few junkies were wandering down 179th Street in the midday sun that late October afternoon, but there was nothing particularly threatening about the neighborhood with its variety stores, hardware shops, and paint outlets. Some of the streets were cobblestoned and there was even a quaint reminder of the old Bronx in the way the road meandered up the hill toward Van Cortlandt Park.

  The project itself was in remarkably good shape for public housing dedicated, according to the bronze plaque, in 1962 by then Bronx Borough President Joseph Periconi. Only a handful of windows were broken and most of the graffiti had been restricted to the handball courts, the recognized canvas for the art form. Even the lawns were relatively clean, with a few flower beds sprinkled here and there.

  Just beyond the courts and over a chain link fence a group of aspiring Dr. Js were visible, practicing their slams and jams in bright orange and black uniforms that said Tremont Avenue Dunk Club. I stood there watching them a moment, wondering what politician was reaping what benefit keeping this particular housing project in s
uch classy shape, when a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud drove past me and slowed by the Dunk Club, three brand-new basketballs flying out of the Rolls's window and over the fence into the hands of the club members, who cheered and waved as the Rolls drove off.

  I looked from them over to the forbidden 179th Street entrance. A couple of junkies were weaving between the two seven-story buildings past a baby in a carriage, but nothing seemed particularly ominous until my gaze drifted up to the tops of the buildings where, on each side, two men in berets oddly reminiscent of the old Black Panthers were standing on opposite roofs surveying the area. They each held walkie-talkies and crossed back and forth along the roof' s edge in paramilitary fashion. Before they noticed me, I turned and headed around the block, moving at the pace of the average Bronx pedestrian, which meant fast enough to avoid trouble but not too fast to attract attention. In five minutes I came around the other side of the project on Knox Avenue. The street was narrower there and I stayed close to the building

  to avoid surveillance. Nothing had happened, yet I felt a tingling, urgent sensation on the edge of paranoia. I kept my eyes straight ahead and moved with the purposefulness of someone who knew where he was going. By the time I reached the rear entrance to the project, my hands were damp and I was feeling a little light-headed. I made a quick right through a gate and came through the entrance where two of the buildings formed a cul-de-sac. I walked straight through the nearest door into a stairwell. A couple of dozen men, most of them looking pretty stoned, were lined up on the stairs, shuffling about and talking to themselves as if they were waiting for a store to open. They stared at me blankly as some guy came lurching down the stairs, clutching a small balloon. I was about to turn and leave, when, from out of nowhere, someone grabbed my arm. It was one of the watchmen in the black berets. When I looked at him, I saw he was sixteen, maybe seventeen, just the age of my older son. He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and yanked it upward, revealing what appeared then to be a very pale white inner arm clearly devoid of tracks.

  "What're you doing here?" he said.