A Little Too Much

by John Shannon

  ‘We all need something,’ Tyrone said. ‘What are we gonna do about my dad? I think he’s in big trouble.’

  ‘Don’t let a sense of hurry take you over. Your dad’s been in trouble for thirty years. Some of the guys I knew back then came down off the Panthers into social work or a college or a small business. Your dad chose drugs. We can try to help him, but it’s the most self-destructive choice there is.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Of course, Ty. I’ll call the only cop in L.A. who’s willing to talk to me right now, and see if she can find out what’s going on about him.’

  He picked up the motel room phone and called Gloria’s best friend Paula Green, feeling immensely guilty about not driving straight to Bakersfield to try to help Gloria. He’d thought about it and figured his presence might just make things worse – the cops there hated him so much. Gloria and Paula had been through the Police Academy together – black and brown sisters, back in the nineteen eighties when female cops-of-color had been a whole lot rarer.

  ‘Paula, this is Jack.’

  ‘Hi, Jack, not now. Give me five. I’ll give you a callback at that number.’

  ‘Of course.’

  You never knew what a cop was up to when you called their cell in the middle of the day – handcuffing a suspect, beating him over the head with their baton, or lying like mad to a clueless field superior about it all.

  Jack Liffey looked back at Ty, and he was once again watching something going on in the room that the rest of the world couldn’t see.

  ‘Anybody licking my ear?’ Jack Liffey asked.

  ‘How do you feel about kisses? Two of my Skinnies are at your cheeks.’

  ‘Seems pretty crappy that I don’t get the benefit. We’ll get a callback about your dad in a few minutes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Thank you, Jack. I feel I’m on the edge of pissing away everything that I ever wanted to matter in my life. But those crappy action movies – who cares?’

  ‘You regret risking the Chester Himes?’

  ‘Yeah, I hope I can pick it up again.’

  ‘Not much longer, I reckon.’ The last time Reston had called him from Monogram, he’d been pretty angry. He was threatening to kill the whole movie if Ty Bird wasn’t back in ten minutes, yesterday, whatever.

  Jack Liffey realized he hadn’t checked in with Reston in quite a while. Life was overfull. Nor had he called Sonny and Jenny in Bakersfield about Gloria in a while, nor had he touched base with his own daughter, whatever trouble she was getting herself into.

  Not for the first time, he wished he were three or four different people so he could watch over everything that needed watching over.

  ‘I started keeping a diary last week,’ Maeve said, as they drove back down the hill.

  ‘Doesn’t that feel a bit egotistical?’

  ‘If you don’t write down what you’re thinking and force yourself to move on, I have a feeling that your thoughts just recur. This way you’re pushed into reflecting on something new every day.’

  Chad smiled.

  ‘It’s pretty ambitious, I guess,’ she admitted. ‘But adults don’t think we know anything. It’s better to try to be fresh, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, loneliness is so inescapable,’ Chad said. ‘I ride a bicycle a lot, really long rides, and I love it. Nothing takes you into solitude more than a bike but that’s not the same as loneliness. You can be present in the world, in the city and nature.’

  ‘Maybe you could show me.’

  ‘You’ve got to be fit. I don’t dawdle.’

  ‘I could try to catch up. It sounds great.’

  ‘What are you going to do about our dreaded anthro class?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know yet. Have you got a second bicycle?’

  ‘Not here. You’d have to get one if you want to come along, a real road bike, not some crappy beach cruiser.’

  Sonny and Jenny strolled cautiously up to Lieutenant Efren Saldivar sitting on the stoop of the dilapidated bungalow with his face still in his hands, oblivious.

  Jenny Ezkiaga raised her eyebrows and nodded to Sonny a rudimentary go-ahead. Apparently she was no longer so sure of her relationship with the man.

  ‘Efren, Lieutenant, it’s Sonny Theroux. Don’t spook. We’re here to be helpful.’

  The officer lifted a reddened face from his palms, revealing a fierce glare.

  ‘What the fuck you two doing here?’

  ‘We followed you,’ Sonny admitted. ‘You look like a man who needs help.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? You both want to go back to your car and commit a double suicide? That would be my taste in help.’

  ‘I’m sorry we followed, sir. We’re really worried about Gloria. Just being in this part of Old Town can taint the nicest day for anyone.’

  Saldivar gave a short bark of a laugh, with no real humor in it. ‘Go on inside, midget, and then come back out here and bleat some more about how you plan to help.’ He turned his death-eye on Jenny. ‘You, too, dyke.’

  She chose not to reply. There was a freedom in knowing that she would never cure him of his attitudes – despite the fact that she actually liked him. She and he both knew that he would be forced to hew to his small-town cop world-view forever, and if he deviated by so much as an inch from the prescribed sensibility and attitudes and jokes, his brothers would punish him mercilessly down to the very end of his days on Bakersfield’s thin blue line. Perhaps it was all inevitable, she thought – stiff men of authority protecting the ancient yardstick of the normal.

  ‘May we go in, sir?’

  There seemed almost a malicious gleam in his eye. ‘Be my guest. I hope you haven’t ate recent.’

  ‘Cut, aw fuck, cut.’

  On Terminal Island, Joe Lucius had just craned up on another long angle using Tyrone Bird’s double walking out of the shipyard in a mass exodus, head down, full of anger and disgust. Hard to convey at a hundred yards. It was just about the last establishing shot that Meier Reston could find for him or invent for him.

  As the big Chapman crane with its heavy Panavision camera descended silently on its pneumatics, Lucius leapt down impatiently the last few feet. ‘Meier, you look like you got news.’

  ‘I hear our guy has found Bird.’

  ‘Yeah, you think so? Where is he?’

  ‘That’s still a problem.’

  ‘Get the Bird here or crucify your detective on the side of a church, like that guy in the papers. And yourself, too.’

  ‘Done, Joe.’

  ‘I want to shoot scene twenty-one A with the real live Tyrone Bird tomorrow morning or I’ll walk, and you can shitcan the film. Tell me what Friedkin thinks of that.’

  ‘He’ll be here, Joe.’

  Lucius stopped and turned back furiously. ‘If that black gentleman isn’t standing right there at nine a.m., you take a room deep in the funhouse and don’t come out.’

  Winston Pennycooke knocked softly at the rustic door of the long white California ranch house crowded uncomfortably close to the road on winding Mandeville Canyon. By L.A. show-off standards, it wasn’t much, but in Kingston it would have been top of the line.

  A chocolate-skinned maid in a frilly apron came to the door. ‘How may I assist you?’

  ‘Sistah, you a sight to make fine muzik.’

  The woman squinted at him. ‘I can tell you arrive on these shores recent, sir. Let there be no mistake. I am from Bell Gardens, South L.A. I am American. You remember that, sir. What you want here?’

  Winston smiled because he’d distinctly heard hints of the musical vowels of Kingston under the American black accent that she was working so hard to adopt. ‘Cha, I mean you no problem, sistah, but I got a letter from the man of the house to the woman of the house. I’m sure she want to see it.’ He handed her the note. ‘I got no wickedness caught up inside.’

  ‘Goody for you. You stay out there now.’ She took the note and closed and latched the door on him.

  Crows squawke
d at him and a squirrel running along a phone wire chittered. Oh, I’m on the outside here, all right, he thought. Even in the eyes of the wee animals.

  The door opened again. An imperious-looking white woman in a tightly cinched bathrobe. She had long blonde hair, different from her brown eyebrows, he noted, and she was getting overweight. He figured this had to be Ty’s wife.

  ‘If you think you can waltz in here and steal my husband’s drugs, you’ve got another think coming. Who are you?’

  ‘That not Ty’s real signing on that paper?’ Winston pointed.

  ‘Never you mind. Where’s my Tyrone, if you even know him? If you and your pals aren’t holding him for ransom, or for dead.’

  ‘You write a letter to him and I take it back with the pills. That’s all he say to do. I do my duty to this man I love.’

  ‘Serena, call the police!’ she shouted over her shoulder, but somehow it didn’t sound quite serious. ‘You know what an NIB is, boy? You’re up shit creek. That’s the worst crime there is to our patrol. Nigger in Brentwood.’

  He didn’t really expect this from the wife of a decent man like Tyrone, but he knew the white world was full of these bumbaclots. This bodderation had started out low-class for sure. He didn’t expect much help from Miss Bell Gardens, either. Probably the opposite.

  ‘Last chance for you to contact Ty, Mrs Bird. You ain’ give me no medicine, I ain’ take no note,’ he said. He turned and started to walk away.

  ‘Ah, you a smartie one, ain’t you?’

  He got half way back to his car.

  ‘No, stop! Come back, man. Forgive me, please – with Ty gone off on me, I’m all hard of heart. I got my own crown of thorns to deal with, please understand. Tyrone isn’t the easiest, and he’s been gone for days.’

  ‘Yeah, wanderers is real hard to live with,’ he said. ‘But he trying to help his dad he found just now.’

  Her eyes rolled, and he wondered if he should have said anything at all. ‘He won’t let go of that old dead dream,’ she said sadly. ‘He’s found himself another wino with a square jaw that wants to get into his money. Hell, let him babysit this one a while, too. They all need it more than we ever. What’s your name?’

  ‘Winston.’

  ‘Winston, you get Tyrone back to me in one healthy piece when this dad dream of his goes to hell in a handbasket, and it’s worth a thousand dollars.’

  ‘Mighty kind, ma’am, but I get him home to you in any case. He got another man helping, too, a really good man, I promise you. Big up onna him. Could I have the medicine, please? If you want him home still cool and instyle, I think he really need the stuff.’

  ‘He needs it, all right, Winston. Come in.’ She let him wait in a large foyer, alongside Miss Bell Gardens, arms on her hips, keeping a fierce watch so he didn’t pilfer any of the African masks or the Aztec pottery.

  ‘Dey a bran new breed back on J now,’ Winston tried out. ‘Dey get dey A-levels and plan for college. When you leave home?’

  She smiled, just barely. ‘All I remember is rude talk and fighting.’

  ‘Ah, nobody on J no more say – the only way be blood, the only way be violence. Different time now, different talk.’

  ‘I hope. It’s not so great for us here, neither.’

  ‘Oh, sistah, you sound so sad and lost.’ Mrs Bird was stomping down the hallway toward them with her forceful stride.

  ‘You,’ she called. ‘Mister Winston. Here’s Ty’s drugs and a note for him. If you don’t deliver them, I’ll find a way to send you to a nasty California prison for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Why you be that way?’ Winston took the pill bottle and an envelope. ‘I do everything smooth and sweet.’

  Thoughts of Miss Bell Gardens had addled his judgment a bit. He saw her on the other side of the room glowering, but he didn’t believe her furious air any more.

  ‘I’ll have Tyrone call you.’

  Mrs Bird stalked away, and he turned his attention to the better human being in that house.

  ‘Solitude heavy on my soul,’ the maid said softly. Her words gave his penis a little tweak.

  ‘Life is sugar, for true, ma’am,’ Winston said to her. ‘You widout friend here, in dis canyon of no-NIBs. I be back and be a friend.’

  * * *

  Jenny Ezkiaga pulled the steel crackhouse screen farther open and then pushed on the main door and went in just ahead of Sonny, then backed hard into him as if she’d been hit by a cattle prod.

  ‘Hey, there. Don’t be blindsiding me. I only weigh in at one twenty-seven.’

  She moved aside a little, in no mood for jokes. Sonny held on to her shoulders and bodily moved her bulk a little farther so he could get past. Immediately he wanted to scream out something, but his hard-as-nails old cop armor took over, and he only grunted. It took some assimilating, this bloody tableau that surrounded the unconscious woman he loved to distraction. The sunlight dazzle through the blinds helped etch it all onto his retinas. An image that would last for the rest of his life, he knew that.

  His ears pricked up for sirens or some cry of rage from Saldivar outside, but for the moment they were on their own, and maybe he could gather himself together enough to sort this out. As fast as he could, he started organizing in his head what he saw in that room.

  Gloria Ramirez lay half unclothed on the big bed, with her left arm handcuffed to the brass headboard. Her clothes appeared to have been torn open more than removed, and she was covered with blood and large purpling bruises on her dark skin. Her nose was apparently broken and had poured out blood that was hardening on the mattress. She’d been punched a lot, he could see, not clinically like someone had been after information, but angrily, to punish or revenge – and probably she’d been raped, too. His mind refused to stay in focus on the white cotton panties that had been ripped apart. He tried to get some distance so he could sort this out, but he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. He saw Gloria’s chest rise, a bloody bubble forming in the corner of her mouth, and he thanked whatever God there was that she was alive. No small favor given the extent of the beating she’d obviously received.

  The rest of the tableau was even worse. On either side of her, two large and pants-down cops were quite dead – Etcheverry had a black bullet hole centered in his forehead, and he lay on his back on the bed, his unseeing eyes wide open. Another not-so-bright cop whom Sonny recognized but couldn’t name had several holes in him and was lying still on the floor in pools of his own congealing blood. The wounds on the second one suggested a weapon fired again and again in a rage & not aimed too professionally. And there it was – right next to Gloria’s right hand on the mattress. A shorty Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special .38.

  Sonny guessed that he’d find a holster for a backup piece on the ankle of one or the other of the Bako cops, if he looked, but he had no interest in looking. She’d undoubtedly grabbed it and used it immediately – more power to her. If they’d finished their … business with her, her life would have been just as forfeit, and her body would have disappeared forever down a dry well out near Wasco or Buttonwillow. He couldn’t help it – the tears kept welling over and running down his cheeks.

  Jenny finally came to some sort of consciousness and stopped her gasping and gulping behind him. ‘Ohhhh. Sonny, what happened here?’

  ‘Hush,’ Sonny said. ‘Oh, hush. We don’t have time. That one will have the handcuff key.’ He pointed to Etcheverry. ‘Find it and release her. Wrap her in a blanket or anything you can find and bring her out to the car. Rip down a curtain if that’s all you can get.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘I’ll be talking to Saldivar when you come out. Just ignore us and lug her to the car. Don’t stop, no matter what he says. I’ll deal with him. You can do this.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Do it now.’ He could hear the unearthly calm in his voice, amazed he’d got it together. ‘Our future in this town depends on our composure for the next two minutes.’

  ‘Are we going to have to pay for
this forever?’

  ‘Nobody in Bako wants two local cops to be remembered for kidnap and rape of another cop. I’m sure they were killed by some Mexican meth dealers who ambushed them in this drug house.’

  ‘Is Efren going to buy off on that?’

  ‘I figure I’ve got about a minute-and-a-half to make it happen.’

  FIFTEEN

  Too Much Going Bad at Once

  ‘How sure are you that this Marcus Stone is really your dad?’ Jack Liffey was mainly trying to divert him, watching the poor kid get more and more nervous – trying so hard not to let on that he was seeing his ghostly pals moving about the motel room.

  ‘He admitted he was with my mom at the right time. He looks an awful lot like me. Darker, of course. I suppose we could do a DNA test. But I tracked him down. It’s not like he’s holding me up to get my money.’

  ‘A paternity test might be a good idea before you leap off the deep end of the gene pool. You already got your expensive car beat up pretty bad protecting him, and you’re right in the middle of a dope deal from hell that seems to be going nuclear. You and Marcus Stone haven’t seen the last of the Colombians, I’m afraid.’ He watched Tyrone’s attention go abruptly to something in the center of the room. ‘Instead of getting deeper in this violent melodrama, you could be filming a fine Chester Himes novel right now, maybe make a classic movie. I’m not riding you, son, but give it some thought. I’m with you, either way.’

  Tyrone Bird closed his eyes and finished off the last of Jack Liffey’s coffee, which Jack Liffey had dearly wanted. Life was full of minor disappointments, he thought. It would be good and cold by now, anyway, and the Sputnik Motel had no fancy features like microwaves or hotplates.

  ‘Could you keep the movie people off me, Mr Liffey? I bet the producer and all his little minions are having shit-fits. They’re probably threatening air strikes on my home, my wife, the charities I support. Probably you, too.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been threatened,’ Jack Liffey said impassively. ‘But as of now, you’re my man, Mr Bird. My usual profession is finding missing kids, a lot younger than you, but my rule number one is that I never take them home if they tell me home is no good. I figure my real client is always the kid. Or maybe my real client is just my own contrary frame of mind.’