by John Shannon
The toaster burst upward noisily and startled him, and he’d forgotten he’d even loaded it with a split English muffin. OK, he could substitute instant gratification – melted salty butter and strawberry jam – for the deteriorating tangle of his psyche.
I’m fine, he thought. She’ll be back.
FIVE
De Whole Troof
Winston ‘Ratchet’ Pennycooke awoke with a splitting headache, not quite knowing where he was. He saw that a half bottle of Mount Gay Eclipse sat on the bedside table, and his brain worked things out quickly. He was finally in America, in L.A., in a crummy apartment for losers. He was following the footpads of his brother, Trevor, who had initiated him into Rasta when he was a nine-year-old back in Trenchtown and then taught him to break loose from the old ties of the West Indies – even the pull to all the cousins who’d emigrated to England. ‘That place just a black-n-white movie now, Win,’ he’d said and then sucked at his teeth. ‘Cha, Uncle Sam got more future in his likkle finger than John Bull total body, and Sam, he right over dere. Dey even cook our food in America. Dey got good jerk meat in every big city, real plantains, ackee and saltfish, dirty rice. But no cow-foot stew. Forget dat.’
Winston Pennycooke, Ratchet Pennycooke, sat up on the edge of the bed and wondered about his woman, Yasmin, in Golden Spring. He wanted her with him. It wasn’t much of a life yet, but from everything his brother and this new boss had said, it would be pretty good if he proved himself. But enough about himself. He had a duty, too. Trevor, brah, I here for you, ma’an. Trevor had been killed here three years earlier.
Walkin’ down the road
With your ratchet in your waist,
Johnny you’re too bad.
You’re just robbin’ and a-stabbin’ and you’re lootin’ and a-shootin’
Now you’re too bad.3
The phone rang, startling Winston Pennycooke wide-awake.
‘I-an-I present,’ he said into the phone.
‘Ratchet?’
‘The very one. Dat Harper?’
‘Now who else in this country know your location, my man?’
‘His Imperial Majesty, Conquering Lion of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God, Haile Selassie. He know all.’
‘Oh, Sweet Jesus. Forget that shit. I got a job for you.’
It was a drag that you couldn’t go out to the gate any more to meet people right off the plane, Harper thought. All this post 9/11 crap. The world had changed forever, as they say – but most of it for about a week. Then he remembered that you never had been able to go out to the gates in the Bradley, the international terminal, where they herded arrivals through customs and immigration first. He wondered if he should make a big cardboard sign, Ortagwaza – however the fuck the greasers spelled it – and stand there along the exit ramp like all the chauffeurs and tour-guides.
Fuck it. He was the only black waiting there who wasn’t dressed like a bellhop, and he and the big O had seen each other before. O was a light brown blanco, skin like an Indian, and his pals would be Spanish niggers. Not too hard to spot each other, Harper thought. Still, he was restless. He’d arrived just after the Avianca flight’s official landing time, and he’d been waiting more than an hour. Another troop of foreigners pushed their overloaded luggage trolleys out the glass doors and came up the ramp, brown men in silky non-tuck shirts with round women in tow. Could be Middle East, could be Latin America.
Women, listen up – eat a whole lot less, Harper thought. Men don’t like chubbies, whatever they tell you. He was a health nut and worked out twice a day to keep his abs solid. As more little groups came out, he craned his neck not to miss a single face.
A half hour later an angry little party of blacks in expensive clothes slammed out the door with only carry-ons. Their eyes caught his right away.
‘Or-tuh-guaz-a,’ he said softly as they came abreast on the ramp, leading their boss.
‘’Arper,’ the tall one said, glaring with his black eyes. ‘Or-tay-hwa-sa.’
No one said another word until he’d got half the steely-faced bunch into the black Escalade, and the other half into a mini-van taxi. He counted nine, no, ten with the boss. Jesus. Who needed ten ride-alongs for a dope delivery? Something was up. It was good he hadn’t brought Stoney. He’d have flipped out.
The tall guy had a tendency to grind off sparks of suppressed rage at just about anything, and the other guys looked like a jumpy Secret Service detail ready to fill the air around their President with lead.
‘Navigate us to the Beverly Wilshire,’ the O Dude ordered.
‘No trouble,’ Harper said. He passed the word to the cabbie, some kind of Middle Easterner, who followed them north on Sepulveda. At least they couldn’t possibly have any weapons, just getting off a plane.
‘There’s a bank called the Culver-Fed up ahead on your left,’ Orteguaza said. ‘Stop there.’
‘It’s changed,’ Harper warned. ‘Things is pretty unreliable in banks these days. It’s a Wells-Fargo, now.’
Orteguaza glared at him as if the takeover was his fault.
‘The big crash,’ Harper shrugged. ‘I lost some money, too.’
‘I don’ lose money. They lose my money, they die.’
A theory Harper rather liked, but he doubted if it could be enforced against Wells-Fargo. He was made to wait across the street, the mini-van behind him on a red zone, and the whole crew stopped traffic and trooped across six lanes of Sepulveda Boulevard, carrying empty handbags and nylon duffles. After a minute he slipped across and chanced a peek in the glass doors and saw all of them heading in through the grillwork to the safety-deposit vault. Shit, he thought. They probably could have stored anything in there – guns, small rockets, nukes.
When they came out, there was no question they were all strapped. Probably picked up some cash, too. Maybe the whole load of coke, or maybe that was later. He had Stoney’s million dollars in rumpled twenties stashed away safe to pay them, but not in easy reach.
‘’Otel.’
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Harper said, before he’d restart the Caddy. ‘All a’ you, I respect you guys all to hell, but I ain’ no hired dingus chauffeur. I’m an O.G. of the Rollin’ Seventies, the roughest social club in L.A. I’m due my props – my respect. I can see you guys are all fixed up with your armament now, and that’s just fine, but we got a chemistry expert who’s going to test any coke you give me ten ways from Sunday before I hand you a million real American dollars. Are we cool about that?’
Orteguaza tried to stare him down, and Harper took it as a challenge to his manhood and just wasn’t going to look away.
Time passed very slowly.
‘I feel the wrath in the air,’ Harper said finally. ‘You do understand English?’ He saw the look in the tall man’s eyes, the maniac expression of someone just about to go to war. ‘Please calm down, señor. No sea un tirón. I’m not a beginner. I respect you. Everything is perfectly cool this end. I have the money, if you got the snow. This isn’t Colombia or Mexico where there’s a bunch of heads lying in the streets every morning. This is the U. S. of A., where we do our shit clean and on the up-and-up.’
‘No sea un asshole, ’Arper. Drive.’
You could never get yourself so far away from this kind of macho that it smoothed out; Harper knew that. He’d have been happier just stopping in the middle of the boulevard and jumping out of the Escalade and killing all four of them right there, and letting the taxi-van behind go into panic. Money or no money. Driving around with a bunch of Spics showing off their I-gonna-keel-you eyes wasn’t Harper’s idea of a cheerful afternoon.
‘I hear you got problems,’ Orteguaza said out of the blue, almost no intonation in his voice. ‘Maybe somebody wants to stick a nine in your boss’s ear and take our drogas and your money.’
‘That’s your world,’ Harper said. ‘Not ours. Our end is all tied down. That shit don’t happen. We got guys ready to fuck up guys that even think like that before they get out o
f bed in the morning. It’s all cool. You and your boys have a good night sleep and go see Disneyland, and we exchange in two days.’
‘No meet today?’
‘The deal was day after tomorrow. It stays the same. No changes, none.’
Orteguaza smiled for the first time, but there was absolutely no humor in his rictus. ‘You ever have a greased pistol up you ass, cabrón?’
Harper hadn’t started the car yet. A gorgeous blonde was jogging right past them, her breasts too big for her sports bra, but not one eye in the back seat left Orteguaza and Harper.
It had taken Ratchet Pennycooke an hour of driving around in his rented Impala and asking questions – with dozens of other cars reacting in panic and honking rage at his oblivious, abrupt veers on to the left side of the street – but finally he found a four-pack of Reed’s Extra Ginger Beer at a place called Trader Joe’s Market. He’d learned a lot from his older brother, including the crucial importance of proper burning hot Jamaican ginger beer to interrogation.
The morning sun was blazing down, almost as uncannily tropical as home, an intense holy light, and it seemed to invigorate a very small horse that was prancing happily around a side yard of the orange cabin. Pennycooke parked on a section of shoulder that barely gave other cars room to pass, and carried the ginger beer under his arm to the corral fence.
‘Horsie, how you like dis here yard? You look like you full of rambunctious.’
The horse stared hard and came to rest a respectful distance from the Jamaican, pawing a little at the dust. ‘Sorry, ma’an, I-an-I got no apple or such. We see you later.’
He rapped on the front door, and before long it came open a few inches on a chain.
‘Ma’an, you got such a fine likkle horsie.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Let’s say I-an-I got a question for you.’
‘I teach class in half an hour. Can you come back when I have some free time?’
‘But you see, I got no time. Life go by as we stand.’
‘You can’t be much over twenty. You’ve got a lot of life left. Son, I really do have to teach, but I’ll be happy to talk to you after four o’clock. Whether it’s tutoring or accent reduction, no problem.’
‘Cha!’ Ratchet leaned back to kick at the door and his blow ripped the light chain right off the doorframe. Stepping inside, at about six-seven he looked big enough and strong enough to do a lot more damage than that.
‘Don’ hurt me, please. Take what you want. The TV is in the bedroom.’
‘I-an-I ain’ no t’ief. Sit and talk to me naow.’ He indicated one of the sling chairs and set the four-pack of ginger beer on the counter. Pennycooke plucked one bottle out of the pack and began shaking it.
Rolf Fuchs sat down gingerly in the chair. ‘I mean you no harm at all, son.’
‘I know dat, sir. But you the man knows everyt’ing, dey say. I got to be certain we gettin’ de whole troof, so help me Ras Tafari.’
Ratchet leaned forward and pressed his big hand against Fuchs’ adam’s apple to hold him against the canvas of the sling chair, but not too hard. ‘Dis jus’ my way to fin’ what g’wan wit’ you.’
‘I wish I knew what you wanted, I really do,’ Fuchs said.
‘Get ready fe tek some questions.’
‘Go right ahead.’
Ratchet smiled and shook the bottle of ginger beer even harder. He smashed the cap off against the counter. With one sweep of his arm he applied the spewing neck of the bottle to Fuchs’ nose, and slid his other hand up to smother the man’s mouth. The super-gingery carbonated brew did its job. The old man’s legs thrashed as if he was dying, and his fists beat hard at the Jamaican until Ratchet backed off a foot to let him retch and cough and nearly vomit. A wagging finger warned the man about trying to get up.
‘Yeeee! Yoooo! No more!’
‘Mebbe you had you plenty, heh? Or mebbe you jus’ be wicked. Firs’ ting, who be asking ’bout my frens?’
Ominously, the Jamaican shook the bottle again with his thumb over the neck. He glanced at the label casually, as if making sure it was genuine.
‘You like dis ting? Very good bev’rage, ma’an.’
‘Stop! Christ! My sinuses are on fire! I’ll tell you anything you want. Are any of your friends black men who used to go to Sandstone Retreat?’
‘How I know dat? Be full serious, ma’an.’
‘I thought Rastafarians were gentle souls,’ the man said.
‘I not on dat track. I-an-I a steppin’ razor. A likkle reminder hyere.’
He rammed the bottle against Fuchs’ nose once more, but let him off after a few seconds of spray.
‘Eeeeeee!’ Fuchs brushed at his face and coughed and sputtered. ‘No more! Please, I beg you!’
‘De troof naow. You no penetrait it? Who de baldheads come ’round to see you?’
‘Just one man. He was Jack Liffey, but he told me the movie star named Tyrone Bird was going to show up to see me. You know him?’
‘You cyan be dance again,’ Pennycooke threatened.
‘No, please! Bird is really famous. Ask anyone. Jack Liffey’s card is right there by your sodas. Introduce him to ginger beer. You tell your boss I’m your friend. I won’t help anyone else, no one. Not even a movie star.’
Ratchet Pennycooke claimed the business card off the cracked blue tile. Liffey – oh, yes, he knew that name. The man who’d been there when his brother was killed. He glanced up at the old man who had streams of tears running down his face.
‘Man who lie to me, I say, dem be wicked, and I-an-I boun’ fe harm de wicked man.’
‘Oh, no, sir. No, no. It’s the one hundred per cent truth I told you.’ The old man cringed back into the sling chair, and Pennycooke believed him.
Unaccountably Pennycooke set the bottle down and offered a friendly handshake. ‘I-an-I sorry to give you trouble, sir. You no seeit?’
Fuchs seemed afraid to take the hand, as if it was a trick. The hatch in the wall was open and the horse looked in now and whinnied once. When the Jamaican glanced at the horse and smiled, Fuchs finally held his hand briefly.
‘I give him a carrot?’ Pennycooke asked. ‘And you tell me ’bout dis hyere movie man.’
They’d met at the north campus grease-pit beside Rolfe Hall. It was one of those multi-cultural food courts that specialized in myriad ethnic stalls that mainly featured various forms of ground meat and carbohydrates – with a few all-veg stands for the health-conscious. Chad had an Armenian pizza, known as lahmajoun – and Maeve had a salad, dressing on the side.
‘What do you expect to do with organic chem?’ she asked.
‘I’m told with the degree and three bucks you can get a Starbucks latte anywhere in the U.S.’
‘Nonsense, you can invent expensive drugs that sell for exorbitant amounts of money. Move to New Jersey where all the drug companies are.’
A madly bobbing flock of pigeons ruffled past their feet to close in on a discarded paper tub of french fries nearby, shouldering hard at one another and tearing at the rancid fries in a very uncomradely way, and she wondered what their cholesterol count was.
‘I’m thinking of switching to lit, but I see a dead end there,’ Maeve said. ‘I don’t know if I care though. I really love books.’
‘They say that back in Greek times people our age used to hunt down sages like Socrates and just sit at their feet to learn from them,’ Chad said. ‘I wish universities were still like that.’
‘Maybe they really are,’ Maeve said. ‘If we just ignore all the credits and grades, we could walk in on any lecture we wanted. Philosophy, chemistry, Greek, French 101. Learn whatever we want.’ The sweep of her arm took in a whole lot of university, scores of big buildings on the four hundred or so acres of super-choice real estate, hard up against Bel-Air and Brentwood with some of the most expensive homes in the U.S.
‘My parental units would kill me,’ he said, ‘if I didn’t come out of here with a punched ticket for a good job.’
> She toyed with her salad, not very hungry. ‘I guess it’s part of what we all face. You’d never guess my dad’s job.’
‘OK, but I get a kiss, with some tongue, if I guess right. He’s a skip-tracer.’
‘Criminy! That’s just too spooky. How did you know that?’
He smiled. ‘Axel. I saw her for a while, but we’re over.’
‘Really? OK – Dad hunts for missing children. I really admire him for finding something decent to do after getting laid off from aerospace. It’s all kind of white knight stuff. What about your folks?’
‘My mom is Polish extraction,’ he said. ‘She’s blonde and slim and really smart, but that never matters when you say ‘Polish.’ Her family name was Nowicki, and they Americanized it to Novak. The jokes about Polish stupidity do get pretty tiresome. You know, Poland is an old and very cultured country. Even if a lot of farmer-peasants came to Wisconsin about 1900. The jokes are so brainless. But Dad was another story.’
‘You think the Irish had it any better?’ she said.
‘You’ve had your Kennedy. I guess we’re still waiting.’
Maeve was beginning to like the guy.
Suddenly there was an unmistakable gunshot, then several more, possibly nearing. People in the eating court looked at one another, and then about half of them bolted off their benches, abandoning their meals to head somewhere else.
‘Why take a chance?’ he said. She knew she was usually too slow to react to danger so she put herself in his hands, and Chad grabbed her arm and dragged her toward a sheltered alcove that was lined with vending machines.
Several more gunshots echoed in the eating plaza, closer now.
3 The Slickers (Winston Bailey; Roy Beckford; Derrick Crooks; Delroy Wilson), 1972
SIX
Death by Minimum Wage
‘Most of the time when a T is required to make up the new DNA strand, the enzyme will find a good T and there’s no problem.’ The man in the ostentatious lab coat and goatee drew something on the whiteboard with a snap. ‘After adding a T, the enzyme can go ahead and pick up more nucleotides. However, about five per cent of the time, the enzyme will get a dideoxy-T, and that strand can never again be elongated.’