by John Shannon
‘It’s not such a terrible plan, but give me a break now, Winston. I’ve had a bad morning.’
‘Yes, sir, indeed. But you seem strong and tallowah to me. And I need your help.’
He let the strange word go. ‘That’s why we’re both in this lovely garden in the middle of the city, I believe.’
Winston’s cellphone went off with a jaunty little reggae backbeat. He glanced at his pocket, but let it stay put and finally run down.
‘Is that the problem?’ Jack Liffey said, meaning the call, or whoever was on the other end of the call.
‘All is problem, man, when you don’t know the customs.’ He told Jack Liffey about coming to America in Trevor’s footsteps, hopefully to solve a family money crisis, and once he got here, his assignment to find out who was tracking down a certain Mr Big, probably a drug-dealer, and how he’d found out the tracker was the movie star Tyrone Bird. He said he liked Bird a lot, he’d always liked his movies – and Winston insisted that there was everywise a decent but troubled man inside every role he played.
One of the Latino workers wandered down the grassy hillside and reclaimed his broom.
‘Buenos,’ Jack Liffey tried to greet him.
The man just nodded, and they all stayed silent until he’d moseyed on up the slope again, dragging his broom behind. Contrails from a jetliner leaving LAX scraped the powder blue sky, and a few crows jumped from tree to tree complaining angrily.
Something more was worrying Winston. ‘This morning, Mr Bird went someplace where he should have stayed far away. You’ll be seeing it in the paper. A big bad deal was going down in a parking lot. Guns were all over the place. And Mr Bird drove his silver Targa right into the middle of it – I don’t know why. Ty Bird shut the deal down. It was all drugs and money, I’m sure – I’m no pickney just off the farm. People started shooting every direction. One guy even fired one of those Middle East rockets. Now, I think these guys I work for are going to want Ty Bird dead, Mr Liff. Or want him somewhere so they can twist his arm hard. I won’t do it.’
‘Why not, Winston?’
‘In my heart I didn’t come to the States to follow my brother’s footpads as a criminal, but to avenge him. Or maybe I can serve his memory. I had to pretend I was a rude bwoy, just like Trevor, but that’s not me, sir.’
‘You want to tell me the name of Mr Big?’ Jack Liffey asked.
‘Oh, sir. Then you step hard onna burning bag of shit, too. Like a prank we use to play.’
‘OK,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘Here’s the curveball. Or what do you call a deceptive bowl in cricket?’
‘Googly or an arm ball.’
‘Great, here’s the googly – I believe Ty Bird is on a search for his father. Is your Mr Big dope-dealer about the right age for that? Say, fifty-five to sixty?’
Winston’s eyes went large with thought. ‘I only see him from far. I deal with his lieutenant, call Harper.’ He pronounced the military title British fashion – leftenant. His cellphone rang again, and again he let it play on and on, then thunk into message. ‘Damn, sir. Everything go so bad. I don’t want to be part of something I don’t understand – or overstand, as the Rastas say.’
‘I’m with you, and I’m on your side, Winston. I know this city better than you ever will. Tell me the name of Mr Big, and let me deal with it all, and I’ll give you a place to hide, and then I’ll get you home.’ Can I actually mend something this complicated? Jack Liffey wondered.
Winston made a face. ‘Man, they lit that parking lot up, those guys with all the guns. I’ve heard that racket in Trenchtown, too, but never so bad as that. It was war. I don’t care about this job any more. I know my brah’s dead and gone. Cha, everyt’ing in the States start to feel wicked.’
‘Then let it go.’ He rested a hand on Winston’s muscle-hard shoulder. ‘Hand the weight to me. This is my country.’
Winston Pennycooke’s face wrinkled up as if in pain. ‘I don’t know why so, Mr Liff. I feel maybe I can help Mr Tyrone Bird. If I go hide, they’ll just send somebody else after him, like me, but real mean and unstoppable. Maybe I can help Mr Bird for Trevor. No, sir. I not budge on dat.’
‘You’re making a mistake.’
‘I got to do it.’
Jack Liffey could tell when a man had settled into place, into some groove in which he considered his inflexible honor ran. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘No, ma’an, I been lucky forever. I know I got to do this thing my only.’
‘I can see you’re determined,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘Move fast if you want to save Ty. Find him and talk to him. And call me if things go bad.’
‘If you was a girl, I’d hug you,’ Winston said.
‘In this country, it’s OK.’ But it wasn’t OK with him, apparently.
* * *
The sun was up and warming. It seemed precarious to step on to campus again, as if a killer could hop out of any crevice. But she changed her mind about going home and went back to the anthropology lecture, to give the professor one more chance. Classes were going on as if nothing had happened the day before. She had until Friday to drop the class.
Amazingly, Chad was in the huge lecture hall, too, near the back and the seat beside him was empty. On the whole, she’d rather have sat somewhere else, but felt it would be rude after all they’d been through.
She had her notebook out, but she recognized the same thing that she’d learned a dozen times before when she’d given other things a second or a third chance: a book that really bored her to death but somebody insisted was the best; a foreign movie that seemed so pretentious and talky, but some pal had said was better than Fellini. In her experience, the second chance was always just as bad as the first. Maybe one day it wouldn’t be like that, who could tell?
‘Let laughter flee,’ he said softly to her.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing. I’m probably out of here in a minute or two. Is your life always so eventful?’ He looked a bit chagrined.
‘Pretty much, yeah.’
‘I guess we all figure we’re somebody different until the Grim Reaper shows up. I really had the bads about that guy.’
Heads came around and glared at them, and several people shushed them. He nodded apologies and collected his books and notebooks.
Maeve hesitated but followed him out and tried to let the big door wub-wuff as softly as possible behind her.
‘Let’s go to the union and you buy me a beer,’ Chad said. ‘I’ve never seen anybody stand up to a gun like that. Shit, I mean, what was the idea? He could have blasted all of us, who knows? Maybe you’re just a lot braver than I am.’
‘He was a sad case,’ Maeve said. ‘They shouldn’t have shot him so quick. People like him go nuts when they can’t look straight at things. Or won’t. You’ve got to help them look, that’s all.’
Marcus Stone and Harper were still waiting restlessly behind Woody’s, nursing another few tubs of fries and two more beers. They hadn’t meant to kill off the morning quite so thoroughly, but they were both worried about returning to any known haunts. The Colombians would undoubtedly fly out of L.A. pretty soon, but they feared nothing would prevent a little ultra-violence on their way out. That big guy was a vampire. The idea of being flayed alive was enough to freeze your blood.
They both had feelers out everywhere – a carload of maniacs in a big Maybach was about as hard to miss as a steam locomotive on the freeway. Though the Panchos might have switched to a couple of plainer cars. They weren’t idiots.
‘I hope that guy in the Cubs hat doesn’t try to chase us out of here,’ Harper said. He meant the guy at the serving hatch.
‘He probably thinks we’re married and is leaving us alone.’
Neither of them found that very funny.
‘Call that useless Rasta of yours one more time,’ Stoney said. ‘I want to know if there’s something bent about this movie star. That was him for sure coming on hard in his little Porsche, and maybe he works for the Colombians. If so, I’l
l bust a cap on his ass myself. Maybe do it anyway for getting in our face.’
Harper sighed and thumbed in the speed-dial, which hadn’t been answering.
‘Ratchet! Man, where you fuckin’ at? Don’ you go bein’ off the grid like that.’
Stoney could just hear a tiny voice from the cell, like a man trapped in a bottle: ‘My bad, Mr H. Dis detective man bucked inna me an’ I hadda stay quiet on de cell.’
Marcus Stone grabbed the phone from Harper. ‘Listen here, Mr Rasta. I’m the boss. The buck stops here. I require your presence now, and I want to know about this movie star you talk about.’
‘Wa’ mek you so vex wid me, ma’an? I-an-I do good work fa you on dat rough scene today. So where I come see you?’
Yes, where, Stoney thought. Shit. He couldn’t announce it over a cell. Even the CIA could be listening. ‘You come to a place I keep.’ He didn’t want to say it was his crib, for too many reasons. He hinted at the pool house and found out the Jamaican already knew about it. Jesus, did everybody in L.A. know where he lived?
‘I forward, naow.’
Winston hung up before Stoney could ask him more about the movie star.
‘OK, then. Let’s go deal with your Rastaman before somebody else does.’
‘We can go home, Stone?’ He’d heard Stoney hinting at his own place in Woodland Hills.
‘I don’t like the idea, but he knew the place. We park a block over and go through the yards.’
‘These Mexes are stone crazy.’
All Latinos were Mexes to Harper, even Colombians. Stoney sighed. ‘Fo sho, brah. Keep your strap handy.’
What a day, I’m thinking – considering the nasty wrinkles in my Porsche’s front end – not to mention the rocket-propelled grenade that had passed about three feet from my head, unless that was a hallucination, too. A screeching high speed object I never want to see or hear again. I’m back in my motel by noon with a bag of In-n-Out animal burgers – the only consolation I can think of this early in the day. Too soon for a margarita or I’ll start dancing nude with the Skinnies. Luckily they all seem to be sleeping it off.
I use my Swiss Army knife and dig out the grout, then lever out a tile in the bathroom wall high above the tub. I dig out a hollow between studs and hide the cash I’ve managed to withdraw. I regrout the tile with toothpaste and who knows how good that’s going to be, when the moza starts washing down the bathroom. I hope she’s inefficient.
I’d better make friends with her, I think. Though my Spanish is pretty crappy. Why did I take French in high school? I mean, like I live one hundred miles from France or something and I’m going to be driving there every few months. To be honest, back in Dorsey High School I got scared about competing with all the Mexican kids in their own language. Dumb reasoning. Who cares about grades now?
I gobble down one of the burgers, cooled off to room termperature so it’s past the point where it tastes all that great. Still, that beef flavor, hit with extra salt I asked for, gives me a shot of nostalgia. Moms bought burgers and fries almost every day, even when all her buddies went veg. It was amazing she didn’t turn into a blimp, but that was probably from being on her feet so much as a waitress, and later, of course, the cancer.
Beside the bag is the old Himes novel, open like a tent, and I pick it up on impulse and flip to one of my permanent dog-ears:
I began wondering when white people started getting white or rather, when they started losing it. And how it was you could take two white guys from the same place – one would carry his whiteness like a loaded stick, ready to bop everybody else in the head with it; and the other would just simply be white as if he didn’t have anything to do with it and let it go at that.
Man, you can probably say that about a lot of blacks, too, I realize. Some whites seemed to get a lot less tense about it all after Obama. Like they’d finished a test where they’d got at least a respectable C and the whole nightmare of studying was over for good now. Weird. Voting for Obama made so many whites forgive themselves. A lot of blacks I know just got more worried. Maybe it’s about all that hate spilling out of the wingnuts now and lots of them have guns.
There’s a heavy rapping at my door.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Open, ma’an. I done be your brudda an’ your keepa for days.’ It’s clearly a West Indian voice, and it sounds incredibly sincere. It’s such a lovely accent; I’ve always wanted to be coached at it. ‘I gotta favor you or I gotta flee dis stoosh city naow, ma’an.’
I draw in a breath and then open the door on a handsome Jamaican kid who’s well over six-and-a-half feet tall and maybe twenty years old.
‘Ooooh. I seen all you moovies, ma’an,’ the young Jamaican says. ‘You de bes ob all. You all heart inside dere.’
OK, I’ll take a chance. My big weakness. Right, Skinnies?
‘Come in, tell me why you’re my brother. Other than being a big fan and all.’
This guy steps into my room without a hint of embarrassment. He carries a brown bag and draws out a half-filled bottle of dark rum, a brand I’ve never seen. Mount Gay Eclipse. Weird. ‘Dis a treat, ma’an. We get us some Coke and Cheetos from de machines, an’ I-an-I serve you like dat Mr Saxton fellow in Jookman. You ‘member him?’
The butler who’d suited me up in the movie and carried all the weapons that made it seem like I had real superpowers. Tom McCarthy, with a nice phony English butler accent. The first movie wasn’t too bad for a spoof of the genre, but the scripts became increasingly ludicrous, as usual – worse than the worst of the junk superhero movies – and I nixed Jookman III.
Two of the Skinnies are starting to get curious about this giant Jamaican, peering around the bathroom door.
‘Cha, I gotta say, ma’an, I wit’ you forever and ever and I will defend you to de death. But you in some big trouble wid de drug chaps here. I go get the Co-cola and we talk.’
Orteguaza had all his guys booked into big adjoining suites on the top floor of the Airport Radisson, and they were clustered in his huge twelfth floor suite now, smoking cigars importantly as they watched their boss negotiate with his cop contact in L.A., Randy Sem, Colombia-born, who was now a sergeant in the Inglewood Police Department.
All business was conducted in a rough and ready Norte Spanish that disgusted Orteguaza, but Sem’s parents had immigrated when he was only six. You worked with what you had.
‘OK, how long will it take you to find this Marcus Stone?’
‘Don’t worry about it. That’s all as good as done. This ain’t no third world country, man. Money makes us all smart.’
‘And the other thing?’
Sgt. Randy Sem made a shrug. ‘Somebody who can lay off a million bucks to wholesale for a new guy with pure snow, all in one day? Madre. And pay cash on the spot? And trust you because he trust me? Let’s talk again about my cut.’ In English, Sem added, ‘Ten big wans don’ seem hardly adequate. Ol’ fren’.’
‘You got me at a bad time,’ Orteguaza continued in English. ‘You act good for me now and I remember it. You be diddly shit, and I remember that, too.’
‘Don’t try and scare me for no phony friendship. You already gone an’ fucked up big time in my country. Shootin’ up a Costco! Shootin’ a RPG! No, my gentleman, we ain’ frens no more, not like the old time. You give me twenny-five big wans, and we back to frens for life.’
Orteguaza glared at him without making a sign. Streetlights were coming on in the dusk outside in long rows of haloed green embers behind this gypsy-market haggling Latino cop.
TEN
The Day of Creation
Gloria read the blurry printed image over his shoulder with a frown.
The tall guy (Dr Lenny?) goes, the more probes you use the greater the odds you get a poynter that just goes to one suspect. But two many probes cost a boatload of money …
It was a fax of a six-page report Sonny had got out of a friend in the Bako PD. The typing – actual typewriter typing – was full of strikeouts and words
scrawled between the lines.
‘DimTim Maloney can just barely see through a bob-wire fence,’ Sonny said, ‘but you can crib enough from his junk prose to write a legible memo that says you were there.’
‘Thanks, Sonny.’ She just couldn’t bring herself to run back up to Fresno. The drive itself, up truck-infested Highway 99, the ugly old city with its three absurd brown high-rises from the 1940s, the whole crappy conference. ‘They only sent me to the thing as punishment.’
‘And there’s me here, too, along the way.’
‘Sorry. I just don’t know what I’m saying,’ Gloria said. She turned to look at him beside her in the front seat, a pretty unlikely lover she would have thought, so much shorter than her, almost comic in his tropical suit, but there it was. He gave her a pang in her heart. They sat in his van behind the police station, watching a shift change, cops drifting out to their Corvettes and big American SUVs.
‘Can we do something innocent for a while?’ Gloria asked. ‘No unruly sex. No drinking. Maybe some mac-and-cheese. I need to stabilize. It’ll help me more than you can know.’
‘There’s a little zoo up the river five or six miles. A bit sad compared to the big city zoos, but they’re rescued animals and it’s a nice drive, anyway. And I’ll show you one thing there that you’ll like.’
‘Haul me up there, Mr Man.’
‘You’re sounding awful down.’
‘Let’s not talk about anything real, OK?’
‘Then I’ll be a close chewer and a tight spitter.’
‘Oh, stop that, honey. I’m really sick to my stomach.’
Maeve and Chad carried their book bags up into the sculpture garden that was scattered across north campus.
‘I’m gonna drop the class,’ Maeve said with finality. She didn’t look at Chad much. He was so damned square-jawed handsome. She was determined to lay off the romance for a while.
‘That’d just about finish you off as an anthro major, wouldn’t it?’
‘Probably. They assigned me a counselor; somebody named Betty Cherry, if you can believe it. I’ll go talk to her.’