A Little Too Much

by John Shannon

  ‘Of course, bitch. I want a down payment. Get on your knees under the table.’

  ‘So Moms wasn’t lying to me?’

  ‘We called them junior colleges back then, but it was the real deal. I was department head and taught “Historiography of Philosophy”, “Directed Study in Existentialism” and “Kant, Hegel, Marx”. I doubt if they teach any of that any more. It’s probably all “Ethics in the Business World” and “New-Age Religions”.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ We’re sitting in the tiny living room, drinking beers from long-necks, and two of the Skinnies seem to be drinking beers, too, playing with our discarded bottles and squatting with us like hippies.

  ‘You mean, did I get fired?’ Stoney says.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘It’s hard to fire a teacher, but, yeah, I suppose I did. It was another era, Ty, and I got caught up in what you could call revolutionary thinking. I met one of the L.A. Panthers, Bunchy Carter, and he was a friend of Huey Newton, but then Bunchy got himself killed by the black nationalists or maybe the FBI. I don’t know, I don’t care any more. We were all asking for it, really. Think of it. Carrying rifles into the statehouse, challenging cops to their face. But Bunchy’s murder made me so angry back then I think I was almost clinically insane with it.

  ‘I made my way to Mozambique for a while. I wanted to train with the ANC militants for South African raids. Umkhonto we Sizwe.’ He laughs. ‘They didn’t want some dipshit radical from the States who couldn’t speak a word of any African language. If I’d been in the army, I could at least have bartered some military expertise. There don’t be a lot of guerillas just crazy to learn existentialism.’

  Both the Skinnies giggle. They seem to like the guy’s utter honesty, and so do I.

  ‘OK, you walked away from a tenured teaching position.’

  ‘I came right back with my tail between my legs. It was six months later but everything had changed. The left had blown itself up. The world was closing in. It’s crazy, but I went on pretending to a lot of folks outside that I was still a teacher. I thought maybe I could get back in at Pierce, but I couldn’t. The new head of the department hated my ass, for good reason. You have to realize that in the midst of all that, this Sandstone place and all that bleating about sexual liberation was really not very important to me. It was like a burger joint I visited from time to time. There’s only so much of people looking at you like Mandingo you can take. I don’t mean Melanie. She was too cool for that, but.…’ He shrugs. ‘I lost track of her. Kid, I had a dozen girlfriends at Pierce College, of every color. I don’t like telling you this now, but honestly your mother didn’t mean that much to me, and I never heard from her afterward. That canyon place was a freakshow. I’m sorry.’

  I notice he’s given in to calling her my mother. ‘Tell me more about the time at Sandstone, please, sir. It’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘No – you’ve got me now. I can’t really be your father, we won’t make that mistake. I know it’s too late for that. But maybe we can be … good buddies or something.’

  For the first time, I start to wonder if he might be after my money. He obviously isn’t living too high on the hog here. It’s not a worthy thought, but actually I’m more than willing to help him out a lot. Even if that’s the bribe that’s necessary to get him closer to me.

  ‘That was a drug deal this morning, wasn’t it?’ I say.

  Stoney frowns. ‘Ty, don’t judge me. I got two degrees in philosophy from L.A. State. With that and three dollars, you can buy a fancy coffee at Starbucks. A black man who wrote mostly about Marx back then? Ha. Who wants him? I did the high school teaching thing, a substitute on day rate, and then I got an emergency credential and taught social studies to a lot of kids that didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t a way for a man of ideas and action to live.’

  ‘And selling drugs is?’

  Both Skinnies scuttle backward in fear, as if I’ve just whacked the old man with a stick.

  ‘You never did anything you ain’t proud of? All your movies ranked with the best literature?’

  ‘I apologize. No, sir. My first movie – this is still a big secret to the fan mags – was a bit part in gay porn, and then a dumb TV movie about a detective who dresses like a pimp. But I’m working on a Chester Himes now.’

  ‘No shit? Which one?’

  ‘If He Hollers, Let Him Go.’

  ‘God, that’s a great great book,’ Stoney says. He smiles at me, proud-like, and it means enough to send me into seventh heaven. I find myself tearing up a little.

  ‘My own son, bringing Robert Jones to life.’

  He’s said ‘son.’ I heard it. ‘Yeah – it’s something good in the world, isn’t it?’

  ‘Come here.’

  Stoney moves first, and we hug awkwardly in the middle of the small room. ‘That’s way too cool, boy.’

  ‘Then I really got to say something hard, Dad, see if you still so proud.’ It hurts so bad to own up. Maybe I’d rather die. ‘Something happened inside my head when I was about twenty. My mind – it just wasn’t working right any more. I have to take these powerful medications to control it.’ I sigh. Here comes the word. ‘They say I’m schizophrenic. That doesn’t mean I split into different people, like so many folks seem to think. It means the dopamine chemicals in my brain are out of whack, and sometimes I see things and hear things that aren’t there. Aw, let’s face it – it means I’m crazy.’

  The Skinnies are all fled out of sight for the moment, but making soft hooting sounds to remind me they’re still there.

  I can tell Marcus Stone doesn’t know quite what to say.

  ‘Another hour and I’d have to of booked you.’ Etcheverry held on hard to the handcuffs he’d affixed behind her back, then stressed her shoulders with a nasty upward pull as he nudged her up the steps of what looked like an abandoned dope house in some rotten area near downtown Bakersfield, everything gone bright and hard-edged in the new sun just coming up over the Sierras. The front door was screened by a torn-open steel grid, and inside there was nothing personal at all, just beat-up Salvation Army furniture and rubbish on the floor. The smell of meth chemicals from somewhere in back.

  ‘We don’t want no records,’ Etcheverry said. ‘This is the real nowhere.’

  She still had the sour taste of him in her mouth and kept trying to imagine ways to kill him discreetly. But she knew he could as easily kill her and dump her down some abandoned Central Valley waterwell or rural sinkhole. Nobody here would ever even look for her – except maybe Sonny. She was taking quite a risk to try and get out of this mess clear.

  In what had once been the living room of the abandoned house, he pushed her down on to an iron-frame double bed with a stained mattress, and he relocked one cuff on to the frame.

  ‘Get some sleep. I’m not a bad guy, Miss Gloria. I’ll bring us some doughnuts and beer later, and we can have us a party.’

  She knew better than to say a word. Her temper was her worst enemy now.

  Winston phoned Jack Liffey and insisted he turn on Channel Nine, where the TV crews were covering what seemed to be an extraordinarily gruesome execution in South L.A. It was hard to work it all out with all the queasy euphemisms the morning TV host was using. Apparently somebody had been nailed high on the side of the church in the night, a mock crucifixion; that much was clear. And then – who could tell? The poor guy had been repeatedly stabbed? Skinned? A crucifixion alone was enough to send the city’s media into the stratosphere, but there was clearly something even more. Something about torturing the poor man.

  Shit, I’ll probably never know what this is about until Gloria gets back, he thought. She could always get the real dope. And that made Jack Liffey realize Gloria was running late. Given her relationship with Sonny, he wasn’t too surprised, but there were such things as car accidents, too. So he felt he’d better call Sonny, as humiliating as it would be.

  ‘Didja seeit?’ Winston’s voice barked surprisingly in his ear. Jack Liffey
had forgot he was still on the line. ‘I know who that guy is,’ Winston said.

  ‘Good for you. Call me back in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Wait …’ Jack Liffey hung up and punched in the 661 number that was scribbled on a laundry receipt in the alcove.

  ‘Sonny, this is Jack.’

  ‘Good morning, Jack. It’s good to hear your voice.’

  ‘Let’s get to the point. You can have the luggage sent on later. She isn’t back yet. Should I know something that’s going on? I mean beyond what I’m already not supposed to know?’

  There was a deadly pause. ‘As far as I know, Gloria left town last night. She said she had a job to do before leaving.’

  ‘Said – how?’

  ‘A note left behind.’

  ‘Would you read it to me?’

  ‘No, Jack. You have to trust me that the only part you need to know is what I just said. Here’s the very words: “I have a job to do before I leave this crummy town.”’

  ‘I may come up there and make you eat that note right after I read it all. Will you go out and look for her right now?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not without resources in Bako.’

  ‘Good for you, Cajun. Here’s my note to you: I thought you were my friend. Fuck you plenty. You keep Gloria out of any heavy-duty shit up there, or I’ll hold you responsible.’

  ‘Understood. I’m no coward, Jack.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about that. I want Gloria home. Or safe. If she’s lying right next to you and safe, you tell me now.’

  ‘Her duffle and car are gone, I swear it, Jack.’

  Jack Liffey hung up, and he was all alone in the dim hallway with his heart pounding hard.

  We’ve been talking enthusiastically about our lives for what seems hours, and fresh sunlight is leaking through the curtains. God, what a wonderful gift – a gray-haired, thoughtful, intelligent, kindly – dare I even think the word? – father. Sure, I know he deals, but choices are limited when you’re black.

  A father. It’s like being given a whole new set of tools for life. Last night has been like one of those orgies of talk with a new summer girlfriend who you think, finally, is going to work out. It doesn’t really matter if she doesn’t in the end. It’s still such a delight – there’s nothing in life better than a summer romance. Can you have a romance with your pops?

  ‘What steered you to movies?’ Stoney asks me. He isn’t even fortifying himself with cognac any more.

  ‘Pure accident.’ This is the official version, leaving out that one day as an extra dick on the gay porn shoot. Maybe he’s forgotten that I mentioned it. ‘A friend took me up to Universal one day to be atmosphere. That’s what they call the people who just sit around in the background. I was a spectator for a boxing match, and some second assistant director ran his finger down the row and stopped at me. He yanked me out of the seats to dress me up as a defeated boxer who passed the star in the hall. I had a single line: “I’m too wiped out to count, man.” That’s my first movie line, Dad. I guess it’s historic’ The word ‘Dad’ feels funny in my mouth, but I work at it. ‘This was Second Comeback, that Mike Douglas boxing movie that nobody liked very much. Man, was he a shit to me when I tried to say hello.’

  ‘I loved his dad,’ Stoney said.

  ‘Everybody loves Spartacus,’ I say. ‘Nobody loves Gordon Gecko. What a stupid name. Did you see Second Comeback?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Now and again the Skinnies peek out at us from fissures between things, but they’re hanging way back, and I thank them internally, deeply. ‘Dad. Dad. Pops. Father. The words feel funny. You tell me which one you’d like. Why don’t we take all the money both of us’ve saved up and run away and start a ranch in Montana or an ice cream parlor in New Jersey? Buy an internet company, I don’t care. Something new and clean. A fancy steakhouse.’

  I want to save him from the drugs. Stoney makes a contorted face, but smoothes it out in thought. I can tell it’s probably hit him too quick. ‘Sounds interesting, Ty. But we might have to wait a little.’ That’s when the first Skinny comes back into the room with that big snarky look they get. ‘Everything I have,’ Stoney said, ‘is tied up in the mess in the Costco parking lot. I can’t walk away now, too many people are in on it. It’s the tar-baby of all deals.’

  The phone rings and we both look at the old-fashioned landline instrument. I can’t remember the last time a phone at six a.m. was good news.

  Stoney picks it up with great reluctance, and he listens for a long time. ‘You sure it’s Li’l Joker?’ A few other Skinnies gather and pretend to listen secretly to the phone – oohing and aahing to me silently. ‘Oh, shit.’ Before my eyes, my father changes into someone else. The softness is gone and he’s all business now, rising on the balls of his feet, ready to move fast. ‘Get your crew. You know where to come.’

  I try not to feel that my new dream is burned away, like a rose in a pizza oven, but it’s the way life has generally dealt with my dreams. My father hangs up gently, far away in thought.

  ‘Can I help?’ I ask oh-so-reluctantly.

  ‘No, Ty. I don’t want you involved in this at all. I’m up against some real beasts. I think one is a psycho-killer.’

  ‘Would money help?’

  ‘Not right now. But thank you. Don’t follow me when I go.’

  My father puts the big pistol that he set down long ago into a harness under his arm, and then reaches through a curtain under the sink and takes out a long gym bag that in my imagination can only contain a small submachine gun.

  ‘Wait here five minutes, then go somewhere safe. Copy down the number off that phone.’ He thumbs toward the landline. ‘I monitor it. We’ll get back in touch, Ty. I promise.’

  He hugs me quick, which is uncomfortable with all the metal. Then he’s out the too-bright door, and I’m alone again with the Skinnies, who are all shaking their heads with ghastly comic sneers.

  ‘Fuck you all,’ I say aloud. ‘My father will work out.’

  Sonny drove back across the wide sand riverbed to downtown Bako to the tidy craftsman home of the lawyer he’d worked with for years, Jenny Ezkiaga, a hefty and commanding Basque daughter of the town who was allowed pretty much to be herself because she grew up there in an old family. Her partner Teelee Greene was playing some game with plastic ducks in the side yard with her eight-year-old daughter Catalin. Jenny, Teelee and Catalin had driven joyously up to San Francisco in that brief interlude from February 12 to March 11, 2004, when same-sex couples had been allowed to marry legally because of the mayor Gavin Newsom. Legally married or not, there was a curious don’t-ask-don’t-tell standard at work even in tight-ass Bakersfield, as long they were all locals and they didn’t French kiss in public.

  ‘Teelee,’ Sonny called. ‘Jenny inside?’

  ‘She sleeps late.’

  ‘Not today,’ Sonny said and double-hopped hurriedly up the porch. He rapped on her bedroom door. ‘Sorry, dearheart! It’s an emergency.’

  It didn’t take long. ‘May you die painfully and soon.’

  ‘I’m sure I will. Are you decent?’

  ‘Too much theology at this hour, Sonny. Come in.’

  There was a sheet that did about all it could do for her abundant body, but left the imagination gasping. Sonny explained about the missing Gloria Ramirez, whom Jenny knew well from Gloria’s help in ending the devil-worship hysteria.

  ‘And you learned she didn’t make it home directly from Jack?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must have been a barrel of fun.’

  ‘Let’s leave fun out of it. He’d probably like to kill me with a stapler, to make it last, but that’s another story.’

  Jenny grinned. ‘Oh, I’ll need to know about the fun, too, but go away now and talk to Teelee while I dress and make some coffee. Want?’

  ‘With chicory?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t do that bayou shit. Strong French is the best I can do. This sounds like a mess.’

  ‘Y
ou know Gloria. Nobody is one hundred per cent innocent.’

  ‘How do we know that was Li’l Joker on the TV?’ Stoney asked his dirty cop on the phone. He was doing his best to act confident and in command, but he was worried. Apparently the Colombians weren’t about to jet home, the deal written off, as he’d expected. What could they want, except some kind of all-out war for no reason? It’s not logic, it’s not business. It’s not even wounded pride. He’d done nothing to them. The guy was nuts.

  Oddly, a part of him welcomed it all. Now he would be the Umkhonto we Sizwe commander that he’d once aspired to be in South Africa. The Spear of the Nation. It was such a great name.

  ‘The Colombos nailed his drive license to the wall, Stone,’ Sergeant Ernie Keeler of the Torrance Police Department said. ‘TV news say the name Deon Le-Vaughan Wilkins. That him? You think you the guy in the handwritten note? Rocky, Stoney – these guys ain’t Einstein.’

  Stoney settled back, thinking, and held the phone against his chest, looking at the Rollin’ Seventies. ‘Those who didn’t see the TV, they found Li’l Joker dead at that church they’re fixing up near his mom’s crib. They hurt him bad before they kill him.’ He repeated a little of the description for them and they all made awful faces. None of them normally gave a shit about the daily news.

  Keeler went on: ‘These Colombians got somebody knows this town pretty good – knows me and you – knows the whole Rollin’ Seventies. They got some dirty spic cop who can look in the files on me and you. Means they probably know the whole set. And know where the crib is at.’

  His eyes went warily to the painted-out windows of the old used furniture storefront that was the Rollin’ Seventies clubhouse. So Li’l Joker was dead. Every neighborhood soldier in the room already had his very best strap in hand – an Uzi, a smuggled M-16, an expensive Austrian Steyr, a Russian AEK, an M4, a couple of Ingram M11s, even an old M3 greasegun from World War II. Stoney figured these twenty-three gangbangers could put an awful lot of noisy metal into the surrounding air fast, though not very accurately.