by John Shannon
Stoney saw Orteguaza shake his head slowly at him, like a Roman emperor disdaining a petition for mercy. ‘Flayed. Think of that word.’ And the word from hell did stay with him.
The big car’s engine roared to life, and by now there was no percentage in letting the Panchos drive away in a vengeful state so Stoney rested his Desert Eagle on the window ledge and put repeated shots into the place where Orteguaza should have been. The huge car had lunged forward faster than you could imagine something that big launching – six hundred turbocharged horsepower – just as Harper’s Steyr opened up over the hood of the Caddy, thut-thut-thutting.
There was the sound of a car crash far behind them, but Stoney was busy lining up his sights on the smoking right rear tire of the overpowered Maybach limo and he fired again and again. He didn’t want anyone who used the word ‘flay’ in relation to him to walk around freely on the same planet.
The Maybach swerved and slowed and a Colombian leaned out the rear window aiming the cone-shaped nose of a rocket-propelled grenade straight at him.
Jesus Christ! Stoney dived across his Caddy and scrambled out to tackle Harper and take him down flat on the parking lot. But the rocket either wasn’t for them or wasn’t very accurate.
Looking behind, he could see that the old Buick had been driven into a line of parked cars by what appeared to be a side collision with a fancy Porsche Targa, just as the rocket flamed past them all, leaving a trail of smoke, and a parked Ford Taurus lifted one wheel off the ground and erupted in flames.
He got up quickly and put two more shots into what should have been the driver of the Maybach, but the thing was accelerating so fast that God himself couldn’t have hit it.
Harper stayed down low, and that was just as well.
Stoney watched the Maybach exit the parking lot in a squealing drift around two slower cars using the exit lane, and then blow a light on Century Boulevard to turn right, strangely away from the airport. Damn good driver, Stoney thought. He hoped they weren’t planning on staying around in town. He could have tried one more shot as they came past on the boulevard but it was too far, and the pistol was too powerful, and he knew he might have hit somebody at the racetrack.
He put the big pistol back into his shoulder strap as he heard the Porsche engine scream nearby in too low a gear. As it passed him he locked eyes briefly with the driver, a handsome light-skinned black man who looked strangely familiar. No time to think now.
‘Baghdad two point oh,’ Harper said, sitting up.
‘I wish you hadn’t signaled, Harp, but maybe you were right. Who knows? Things weren’t going down kosher. Let’s book before the heat shows up.’
‘What about my homies?’
‘They seem to be mobilizing.’
Their old Buick was wrenching out of its mess, backing away from the smash-up with wheels spinning smoke.
Stone headed diagonally across empty parking slots toward the exit. ‘Tell me again about this actor your Jamaican muscle has been watching.’
Ratchet had had the Impala running the whole time, but he’d had no sense of who was who in the fight – except the Escalade, maybe. That he’d seen at the pool house. It wasn’t clear who was uppressor and who was downpressor, and he wasn’t sure his poor movie star knew, either. Though Ty Bird had sure made up his mind fast and drove a great run to smack that Buick unexpectedly off course, and making a rumpled mess of his own front end on that nice Targa. Only a man with too much money would do that to a fine car.
He wondered what Trevor would have done in his place. His brother had always been impulsive, and as much as he’d loved him, he’d worried that Trevor would get himself hurt or killed one day. And that was apparently the way the gods had intended it.
He had to talk to Harper now, but maybe, really, he better talk to Mr Jack Liffey.
NINE
Immortal Is Way Too Long
Jack Liffey was just going out the door to help set Maeve’s life as gently as possible back on its track by driving her to her parked car at UCLA lot eleven when the phone rang. Somehow, it carried the imperious resonance of Gloria calling, burring impatiently. He had no idea why he thought that, but he was utterly certain of it, so it shocked him when he picked up the phone to hear a string of glorious West Indian vowels.
‘Big up onna you, ma’an. Blessed.’
‘Top of the day to you, too, Winston.’
‘Dis Mr J Liff?’
‘It is I. Do you prefer Ratchet or Winston? I never asked.’
‘Dozen a one, half a six of de udder. I need to talk wid you.’
He could hear the urgency, and some kind of quaver in his voice. ‘I’m at your service, son. I have a chore at UCLA right now. Are you anywhere near there?’
‘I forward dere easy.’
‘At the southeast corner of campus there’s a botanical garden. Meet me there in forty-five minutes. You know southeast?’
Jack Liffey heard a scornful laugh. ‘Kingston southeast of Montego Bay, ma’an.’
‘OK, fine. You go to Le Conte and face the campus and it’s all the way to the tip of your right fingers.’
‘I nah say I know sou’east? Everyting cook an’ curry.’
‘Smell the flowers by the stream. I’ll be there.’
Maeve was looking back into the open front door at him, curious.
‘Just work,’ Jack Liffey told her. ‘Not life asserting itself.’
She came back in and hooked her arm through his and squeezed. ‘Oh, Dad, it’ll all work out. I know it will. You’re such a sweetie. She has to know that in her heart.’
‘This whole thing wasn’t my first choice for my life,’ he said. The jealousy shamed him in front of her like a minor crime. ‘But thank you, you always manage to make it a sunny day.’
‘What do we do now, Stoney? Those greaseballs are really lunchin’ out.’
‘Have you heard from your friends in the Buick?’
‘You know I haven’t. You an’ me been together all morning.’
They were sitting out back at Woody’s smokehouse on Slauson. It was comfortable and always a busy place and you could bring in beer from just down the street, and no Colombians would ever sneak up on them there.
‘You might have got a text,’ Stoney sighed. ‘We were balls deep with the Panchos, and they were going to take us down, no question. Why? I think we can kiss any future deals with that crew good-bye.’
Harper looked at him like he was crazy. ‘Man, I hope you got an idea more than that. These trippers still here. I want to live to see my kids go to high school. You my ace boon, but I didn’t sign on for no peeling off my skin if that word flaying is what you say. Mr Big señor had eyes like a vampire.’
‘Ever since the Mexican drug guys started chopping off heads, people been trippin’ on threats. Put piranhas up your ass, sew it up. What the fuck’s wrong with the world? This was just business.’
‘Maybe when there’s too much money, business always go crusty,’ Harper suggested. He used a plastic knife fastidiously to loose one baby back rib from the rack they’d ordered.
Stoney nursed a beer in a brown bag and picked at a small cardboard skid of sweet potato fries. ‘Interesting thought. You know, we’ve still got the buy money. We could go put it in the First Bank of Janky Old Peckerwoods and make two per cent on it. Or we could find another supplier of flake fast. I didn’t get that green from some payday loan over by the donut shop. Ooops. Here’s your money back, sirs, but we ain’t got no interest for you today. So sue us.’
Harper rested his forehead on his palms. ‘Ah, shit-sakes.’
‘Ten per cent a week, brah. I didn’t teach math-a-matics, but I’ve got enough fingers to count how dead we’re gonna be when DJ Potter wants his vigorish. You can come visit me on life support at County. Unless …’
Stoney sat up straight. Harper saw he’d had an idea, as clearly as if he’d held a lightbulb over his head like Wile E. Coyote.
‘OK, you zonin’ now,’ Harper said. �
�What it is?’
‘Get that Rasta man of yours over here. He says a movie star’s been doggin’ us. Don’t know why, don’t know who – but movie stars mean big money, and they got lots of pals that got the hard-on for the good drugs. Maybe we fix up a whole new business scene.’
‘Man, it’s a relief not to see the failure in your face no more. I din’t like it.’
Jack Liffey let her off by her car at lot eleven just off Sunset Boulevard, under a bright clear sun like a promise that the world might just go on functioning favorably. The TV news that morning had said they weren’t shutting down the campus and everything was back to normal.
‘So, you going to class?’
‘Not today, Dad. I’m still discombobulated. I’m going home to Topanga to regroup.’
He couldn’t help himself. ‘Please don’t regroup by sniffing powder off a mirror, that’s all I ask.’
‘Dad, Dad. OK, you are a detective. I didn’t know Axel for five minutes when I signed on for my share of the cabin. Please don’t generalize to me.’
‘Sorry. And thanks for easing my heart.’
‘She has a lot of excuses and reasons. Next time maybe you can help her. You’re good at that.’
He wanted to jump out of his pickup and clasp Maeve in his arms for a moment, or maybe an hour or two, to comfort and cosset and protect her from all the world’s dangers. And soothe himself. ‘You’ll never be this age again, hon. Enjoy it all.’
‘Dad …?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’ll never be this age again, either. Think about you and Gloria.’
‘Do you think I ever stop?’
Sonny walked Gloria down to the shores of the Kern River, not two blocks from his house. Not so romantic a spot, but the best he could do in Oildale, unless he wanted to take her over to North Chester Avenue and the famous redneck fist-fighting bar called Trout’s.
It wasn’t exactly picturesque down by the depleted river. Scrubby clay and sand, patches of water willows like buggy whips stuck in the sand, and the pung of stagnant water.
‘Lovely,’ she said. Directly across what there was of a little gurgling stream, the rich of Bakersfield lived on top of the high cliff, with a picturesque view not only over the slum where the oil workers lived but also over a hundred square-mile complex of wellhead pumps and storage tanks, all lashed together by raised silver oil pipes, the Kern River Oilfield, one of the biggest in the world. ‘Just takes getting used to, I guess,’ Sonny said. ‘Devil take the hindmost.’
‘Leave us not speak of devils. You know why.’ It had been a crazed devil-worship hysteria in this town that had swept up Maeve and brought them all together to save her. They sat on a rotting ponderosa log that had been carried down the Kern Canyon from Lake Isabella in some unimaginable flood long ago. ‘All man’s creations are admirable,’ he said. ‘A Bako oilfield and Bourbon Street and the Champs-Elysées.’
‘I don’t know the shomz eeleezay, but I love the Eastern Sierra. Mostly because there’s so little of human creation. It’s the greatest mountain view I know, open high desert below, all creosote and greasewood, and snowy peaks up above you at fourteen thousand feet.’
‘There is that point of view as well. But does any of that help you know why you’re so unhappy now? You’re a smart woman. I know you’ve got both oars in the water, but you still row in big circles.’
She looked away from him. ‘What a sight you are in your white linen suit, Sonny. You should be named after a Southern State. Alabama Theroux.’
‘You’re changing the subject off of you-all, as you always do. You’re afraid to look ourselfs in the face.’
That got her back up. ‘I’m a near full-blood Indian, Sonny. Southern Paiute. My mom died drunk in a gutter in Lone Pine, fucked to death in winter by no-account cowboys for drinks and spare change. At seven, I was fostered to a Mex family that said Injuns was all dirty and I should pretend I wasn’t an Indian. At fifteen I was in an Eagle Scout group in L.A. run by the cops, and I fell in love with a cop, and I had to abort his kid because he was married and it would have ruined his career. It was a bad surgical job and it ruined me for having any more kids. I made my own way in the world since, and if you think Jack is the top prize in the ring-toss, think again. But for some amazing reason, Jack seems to care a lot for this fucked-up cigar store woman, almost unconditionally, and it astonishes me so much I still cling to it.’
‘I do believe you and I want to get beyond that; to another place that’s better for you,’ Sonny said.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘You don’t always sound so dependable yourself.’
‘I think I can take you where you really need to go.’
‘Can you tell me ahead of time where it’s at, Sonny? I really need that. Not just over some fucking rainbow.’
‘Give me half a chance, Glor. I know I’m a guy who’s good to cross a stormy river with.’
‘This river?’ A few yards away the remains of the Kern were about two feet wide and frothy with chemicals.
He winced. ‘Don’t be mean. I promise you a beautiful day today, a beautiful sunset and a wonderful night of love. And lots more talk – as much as we have on board. I love your busted-up soul more than you can know.’
A huge bird rose from somewhere unknown and flapped lazily past them, bigger than any bird should ever be.
‘Blue heron,’ he said. ‘We salute you.’
‘Watch how it labors along. Jesus. It’s looking so old to me.’
‘We’ve all got immortal longings,’ he said.
‘Nah. Immortal is way too long for me.’
Jack Liffey parked in the UCLA hospital structure and paid his nine dollars, resenting every penny of it. There was a whole neighborhood of rich people’s houses nearby, but it was zoned for residents only. Those bastards could park in front of his house in Boyle Heights for free any time they wanted.
But it was an old umbrage. He simmered down and walked along Tiverton to Le Conte, where he froze all at once.
At least thirty young women who were nude except for paint and panties jogged out of the botanical garden, right past him, seemingly driven by snappy whipcracks from a handful of slightly older women in black balaclavas. The driven women wore garish paint to disguise their breasts as eyes, targets, tiger stripes, brick walls.
‘Eros and Thanatos!’ a woman shouted.
‘You will learn to sing,’ one of the whip-crackers cried out.
It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, he admitted to himself, but still rather unsettling. When the group with their naked unpainted backs had run around the corner at Hilgard, up into sorority row, he realized that across the road three older matrons carrying shopping bags had stopped to look at him querulously, as if the bizarre display might have been his doing.
‘What on earth was that?’ one of them called.
‘“In wildness is the preservation of the world,”’ he called back. ‘It’s Thoreau.’ It was often misquoted as ‘wilderness’, but Jack Liffey liked it better the original way.
One of the matrons laughed. ‘I wish my boobs looked half that good.’ She chucked a forearm under her breasts as if to firm them up.
He walked into the Mildred Mathias Botanical Garden at the corner. OK, Winston. I’ve had my infusion of oddity for the day. Let’s do this thing.
I liked your brother. I helped his girlfriend, and I’ll help you, too, and I’ll help Maeve’s roommate, and I’ll help – God, I do believe there’s a limit to what I can mend. Now and then, there were dark days when Jack Liffey felt that maybe he’d been issued the wrong tools for life – a hairbrush along with a hammer, say. And here he was now, still brushing away at the hammer like mad, hoping it might do something. Life is such a blind rush to death, I hope there might be some kind of recompense for all the pain, but I know better. What he really meant was: Gloria and Sonny are fucking away in Bakersfield while I’m alone here.
He followed the path down to the bottom of the botan
ical garden where the artificial stream burbled away. Isn’t there something in all this disorder of life for me? he thought.
He’d had his midlife crisis, some time back. You don’t get a second one, sport. Sorry. The best you can do now is buy a spiffy little car, but you can’t even afford that. Enough. The steady drip of self-pity made him sick to his stomach.
A garden crew was raking and weeding up the slope, moving at the pace of those for whom work was largely physical and poorly paid. Somebody had left a worn push-broom on a bench built into the lovely WPA stonework by the stream. He moved the broom to the side of the bench and sat primly to watch the flitting of a few dragonflies. Their haphazard zig-zags calmed him immensely, following a course all their own.
‘Blessed,’ the deep voice announced, and then Jack Liffey saw Winston striding up the path. ‘Whoa, I-an-I see a true Bobo Shanti!’
‘Hello, Winston. What the hell is that?’
The tall Jamaican smiled and stopped before Jack Liffey like a large materialized djinn, arms on his hips. ‘Dat one of de many mansions of Rastafari. The Bobo Rastas wear turbans and carry brooms to signify dey cleanness. Dey followers of King Emmanuel, who ima dead now.’
Jack Liffey glanced at the broom he’d moved to the side and, superstitiously, he pushed its head farther away from the bench until it passed the tipping point and clapped down loudly on the path.
‘What say you sit down beside me and relax a bit?’ he said to the Jamaican. ‘I need a relaxed friend. Don’t try so hard to be Mr Outsider. I’ll bet we can finish this whole conversation in Standard English.’
‘Wicked bet.’ Winston sat beside him and grinned.
‘All those smart A-levels. Trevor said you were too speaky-spokey for your own good.’
‘Trevor said that?’ He laughed softly. ‘It’s true. Back on J, I go the opposite way entirely, and I sound like the gov’nor-gen’ral. I enjoy deviling people a little.’