by John Shannon
‘Is that an offer?’ Bunny asked.
Maeve made the most ambiguous expression she knew how to make. Bunny was big and a bit masculine but very attractive, and she appealed a bit to both sides of Maeve. ‘Not at this exact moment.’
Bunny chose to laugh.
‘I think about it, of course,’ Bunny said. ‘Maybe I’ll have to work my way to the end of men first. The Stanley Kowalskis and their ilk.’
‘I think I’ve been near there,’ Maeve admitted. ‘It’s very consuming.’
They sipped their Cosmopolitans, which Maeve wasn’t all that crazy about, but she was nothing if not obliging.
‘Whoa. You can’t start up and just stop.’ Bunny’s eyes bored into her.
What had she gotten herself into? But she liked Bunny – the woman was so big-hearted. ‘I can’t back into this gently, Bunny. For a time I was the girlfriend, the property really, of a gangbanger who was the leader of a Latino gang in East L.A. The Greenwoods.’
‘Girl, never!’
‘It’s true. My weak heart went so crazy I let him jump me into his gang – but I’m sure I was nothing more than a mascot – but then he got me pregnant. It’s beginning to feel like it all happened to somebody else long ago.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I wouldn’t believe me either, but look.’ Maeve unbuttoned the top of her blouse and pulled her bra cup down enough to show off most of the ornate Olde English letter G crudely tattooed on her left breast. She covered up quickly.
‘Merciful heavens!’
‘Please keep my secret. I don’t know how others would take it all. But I’ve got a past, Bunny.’ And you don’t know the half of it, she thought. Well, maybe she did know just about half of it. If Maeve had another Cosmopolitan she’d be talking about Ruthie, too.
‘How amazing! If you were in theater arts, you could really work with that. They always tell you to use your own experience.’ Bunny rested a big rough hand affectionately on her wrist, and it meant a lot. ‘Are you OK, now? You seem so sensible. I just can’t believe you ran with the Mexican bangers.’
She thought of telling Bunny that she’d dyed her hair black and run away from her dad and even scraped together a kind of apartment home for Beto for a while, stuck amidst all his stolen merchandise, teaching herself forlornly to cook Mexican to please him. And waiting a terrifying forever every evening for Beto to come back. It really had been another time and place, and maybe she’d been someone else. ‘I think I’m a bit impulsive,’ Maeve said. ‘Probably something I can unlearn in college.’
The front door slammed, probably Axel. Maeve made a shush gesture and Bunny nodded.
‘Who’s on deck?’
‘The rest of the Hillbrow crew.’
‘Want a Cosmo? I’m good at it,’ Bunny offered.
‘I’m too beered up. I’ll grab a sparkling water.’
There was a lot of banging in the house and Bunny and Maeve smiled at one another. Axel never did anything quietly, setting a frying pan down on the stove or even taking off a sweater.
Axel slammed open the French door to the darkening patio and announced, ‘That pretty well puts paid to Jean-François! People don’t always do what they promise. Make a note of that.’
‘No!’
‘What happened?’ Maeve asked, realizing with relief that her own past was a closed issue for now.
It seemed Axel’s boyfriend had refused to introduce her to his French parents. They did their best to placate Axel for a while, plying her with snacks, and then as the big red sun sank behind the hills, Maeve slipped away to study. It was hard to concentrate, and she lay down for a bit, trying to let her mind clear. But the big blowzy kindly face of Bunny stayed with her.
Stoney should have pushed them all out of the car immediately, but he hadn’t. He’d driven the whole load of hysterics over the hill, his nerves going jangly with it, and he’d locked the parking brake and jumped out a half mile from his home. Then he’d leapt fences and jogged through yards and gardens in the dusk, avoiding any police cruisers – or anyone else – who might be after him. A gunbattle could gel-up the sense of self-preservation wonderfully, that was for sure. He still carried the Israeli Desert Eagle pistol in his coat pocket, unfired as far as he remembered. He wondered who was still alive from the Rollin’ Seventies. Harper? He was so addled he couldn’t remember seeing any of them running away, as he’d ordered.
Hurriedly, in his little cabana, he packed a sports bag with underwear, a prepaid cellphone in the name of E. Manny Kant, and his emergency stash of twenty dollar bills that he kept in a hollowed-out old philosophy textbook, cut out initially as a dope ditch for his office at Valley JC. He’d lived outside the law so much of his life – but not quite like this, not on the run from stone crazy killers who seemed to skin their enemies alive. Why would they do that? To make a point? You Colombianos don’t much like me and my friends. Man, I get it, truly, he thought. Can’t we all just get along? He could feel his mind starting to go off on a free float, but he dragged it back to the business at hand. He was utterly unused to this recurrence of the state of panic.
He grabbed his car keys and headed out the door, but where to …? He didn’t want to go too far, because he knew the tacos would have to bounce out of the country pretty soon, given all the carnage they were leaving in their wake. And he wanted to try to pick up the pieces of what was left of his poor crew. It wasn’t just every day you could build up a functioning distribution network for the weight that he’d been dispersing. Too bad the profit had mostly been reinvested in more goof, but that had always been his way. Pay the guys well, no show-off flossin’, no spinning rims on his car, no leopard-fur jackets. A modest little place to stay and a modest lifestyle, befitting the good reliable community college man (and befitting his modest IRS payments). Preening goeth before a fall. Being with the Panthers in L.A., in their most abstemious phase, had primed him for it. He still had true respect for a lot of them. Bunchy from the Slauson gang, Masai, Geronimo Pratt, Ericka, Angela, Franco and John Kelley. People you could have built a whole world with.
But where to hide out now? You could never tell – a lot of motels wanted a name these days, a real DMV name. And he didn’t want to risk staying at the home of anyone he knew – the risk for them. They’d probably all be listed on his police jacket, and he was pretty sure the Colombianos or their Eighteenth Street allies had their own dirty cops to access that. For just an instant he thought of his new-found son, if he was his son, Tyrone Bird, but he had no idea where Ty lived, and looking for a movie star in L.A. was like wearing a neon hat saying, Look at me! I’m an asshole from Kansas!
Thinking of Ty brought to mind the whole spiral of feelings about Mel and the Sandstone Retreat in the hills. He knew the place had closed down long ago, and the whole isolated campus had been left abandoned, probably overrun with its own special ghosts and vampires – the tormented spirits of all that freaked-out sex. Hell, he thought all at once, that could be just the hideaway crib he needed. If he could remember the way to get there and then break in.
On the way to Woodland Hills, Jack Liffey and Winston listened to the local twenty-four hour radio news – not much choice since his frazzled old car radio had been stuck on that AM slot for years – and they finally heard about the astounding gunfight at Hillside Cemetery in Culver City, and the police hunt going on for two warring drug gangs – one from South Central and another from Latin America.
‘That’s our lads,’ he said.
‘For true, ma’an.’ Winston punched Jack Liffey’s shoulder softly. ‘Cha, stop! Dat de place. Right dere. Wit’ de big black Bent-Leg in de drive.’
Jack Liffey stopped the car across the pseudo-country lane, Topochico Road, no sidewalks but pretty fancy homes. A small building jutted above the low wall in the dusk, clearly not the main house on this property, especially with the Bentley coupe in the drive. ‘Are you sure, Winston?’
‘Mos’ def.’
He was getting
tired of the patois again. ‘How about going back to Standard English, just for me?’
‘Definitely, sir,’ Winston said, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Let me go first here. People who look like you and jump over a wall sometimes draw a stray shot or two in this country.’
‘You do what your heart say, Mr Jack.’
‘My heart says, Send in the First Armored ahead of us.’
He walked cautiously up the gravel driveway to what it soon became obvious was a pool house in front of a much bigger pseudo-Tudor mansion that lay back across fifty yards of lawn and an even more substantial gate. The Bentley was in a wide spot of the drive before the second gate. A light was on in the pool house, leaking across the flagstones beside the shimmery water that was lit weakly from below. Jack Liffey had brought his old .45, but he left it in the creaky leather shoulder holster under his armpit. He’d bought the holster and pistol at a firearm swap-meet many many years back when those things were still allowed by the gun-sale laws. By and large, he’d found that waving a big gun around was more trouble than it was worth, but it had occasionally been useful in his job.
Winston was dutifully a few feet behind him as he arm-vaulted the low wall. The front door of the pool house wasn’t quite closed, which gave him a chill. A vertical crack of light fanned its glow through the faint mists off the heated pool, like an entry to another dimension. He reached back and held his hand briefly on Winston Pennycooke’s chest to stay him. No sense in both of them getting killed here.
Jack Liffey pushed the door open slowly. ‘Mr Stone, I’m a friend.’
But it was obvious right away that the place was empty. Drawers were standing open, suggesting a rush to depart, but not enough drawers to suggest a burglary.
‘He’s running,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘I bet he was at that shoot-out and decided not to stay here.’
‘You say that with satisfaction?’
This Jamaican had a sensitive radar for tone of voice. ‘Lord, did I? I guess I just get pleased with myself when I figure anything out. I’m not much of a detective, Winston, but I keep coming. That’s my virtue.’
‘Like Mr Steam Train.’
‘Just like Mr Steam Train. Now let’s see what we can find out about Mr Marcus Stone.’
‘Jefe …’
Orteguaza was deep in thought and did not want to look up. He and his compadres – a restless army who’d been yanked out of the battle before they could deliver the final blow – were sleeping or waiting restlessly in the big room that was jammed with old sofas and threadbare easy chairs. Eighteenth Street had dropped them in this Pico-Union basement near downtown, to hide them away from the prodigious police search that was going on all over the city, and then all the Eighteens had gone away, vanished off the earth. Sirens were keening near and far like the Keystonéttos, on their big slapstick hunt.
Estuardo, their contact from Eighteenth Street, had come back to bring them a large cardboard tray of Mexican food, burritos, tacos, tamales and little plastic tubs of an inedible fiery red sauce. They’d found the food rather exotic and just palatable. To a man, they’d have preferred McDonald’s burgers.
‘Jefe, we going to be able to get back on the airline?’
‘Of course not, Andrés. El Diablo will send us a plane out in the desert where we don’t have to show our passports. We’ll fly out low and fast in the dark. El corporación takes care of its own.’
‘That’s good, man! We really shot the shit out of El Los, right?’ He was grinning.
‘They’re used to it. You’ve seen the movies. Heat is the best. Pacino and De Niro both.’
‘No, “Say hello to my leetle fren’”,’ somebody shouted in thick English – the Al Pacino line from Scarface about his assault rifle with a grenade launcher, a line that every gangbanger, roughhouser and petty criminal in the world repeated endlessly.
Ferdinand looked up slowly from his comic book. ‘¿Pasaportes?’ Then in English: ‘We don’ got to show you no stinkin’ passports!’
Jhon Orteguaza had seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, too, but he refused to smile. ‘Shut up, everybody. This isn’t movie night. We’ll get home safe as doves, I promise. But our honor is still in the smoke. We’ve got to make sure we leave the big Mr Marcus Stone kicking his little feet in the air. So everybody knows we did it.’
The house was down in a canyon, but the bands of haze boiled up behind the eastward hills and they were lit up a dull purple neon a half hour before the local sunrise. Stoney had slept restlessly on the fetid mattress facing the curtainless wall of windows downstairs at Sandstone, one of the original fuck-mattresses from the ‘ball-room,’ judging from the odor. The seemingly abandoned place had had a caretaker after all, some aging and rather dense cowboy in a strap undershirt who’d offered him a tour of Sandstone the night before for cash money, and money meant nothing to Stoney just then. He had plenty from his just-in-case running stash. A little ready money and a sharp word or two had transformed the sightseeing tour – the last thing he wanted – into an untroubled sojourn.
Stoney tossed off a prickly blanket and sat up on the mattress to watch as a pinprick of bloody light caught fire above the hills, and then, slowly, an arc of the red disc formed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a sunrise, and this terrible fiery spectacle couldn’t be a normal one or everyone on earth would go straight back to bed.
A few pills and a bottle of Scotch offered by the old geezer had calmed him down the night before, but they’d worn off now. He was as edgy as he’d ever been. He’d have to find out if the place had a TV and try to catch the news.
A dark figure at the top of the internal staircase gave him a fright. He really was jumpy, he thought, his mind leaping about like a scalded grasshopper. But why not, after getting shot up and rocketed by these Colombiano madmen?
‘Coffee, mister?’
Was hell run by the father of your lies or the father of your wishes? Stoney wondered. An old Philosophy One question. What an unruly mind he had going now – the fault of too much reading when he was too young.
The pounding noise finally awoke Joe Lucius, and he staggered to the flimsy door of his trailer, where he’d never before spent the whole night without going home, but last night’s whores had exhausted him.
He opened the door on one of the last faces he wanted to see: Meier Reston, looking for some reason like he’d just swallowed the canary. Behind Reston, a gigantic dull red moon – no, by god, it was the sun – was rising over the pathetic little skyscrapers of Long Beach, burning its way through ribbons of crimson cloud stretched across the sky. Maybe I should reshoot The Red Balloon – is that what the world is telling me? That old French chestnut was so full of pathos it would make a tree vomit. Jesus, Joe. But just as his mind was trying to grapple with the little boy and his willful sentient balloon, one of the whores shoved past him and then past Meier and ran clutching her half-buttoned clothing toward a yellow Corvette.
‘I hope you got Tyrone Bird in hand, not bush, fuckhead.’
‘I got him long ago, Joe, and he’s sleeping in his own trailer right over there with two gorillas outside watching the door. But I wanted to warn you he’s back on his psych meds, and we’ll have to talk about that. But you look like you ought to get a little more rest first.’
Lucius realized he was utterly nude except for his Breitling wristwatch, and he had a full woodie morning erection, Cialis leftover, which Meier was trying hard not to stare at. ‘Ah, Reston – aren’t you afraid of growing old?’
The whore’s Corvette growled to life.
‘Yes, I am, sir.’
‘I’m more afraid of not growing old.’ He slammed the flimsy door, which bounced all the way open, to summon the attention of two girl stagehands who were walking across the parking lot, both of whom started giggling at his erection. Lucius closed the door again with two steady hands.
Despite the dulling effect of the drugs and some muddled dream-memories of a lot of excitement the
day before, I wake up early and realize that I’m in my own star-trailer on the set on Terminal Island, surrounded by my old clothes and various other effects of mine. All those workshirts, a pair of Farmer Johns, that damn Vanity Fair with my interview that I’ve never been able to read all the way through, the makeup kit like a fishing tackle box, even the black wood Makonde sculpture of a distorted Picasso-like face that I usually bring along. Why do I bring that? Ugh. The motels with their junk art had been a relief. I’ve come to hate my own things, and I get so I never really want to see any of them again. They remind me of a bubble of intolerable loneliness and pain, surrounded by chatter so rapid and shrill I can’t even make it out. The usual movie set, I guess. I’d almost rather see one of the Skinnies cartwheel past now. But I feel a woozy heaviness all over and know I’m deep into the med.
I can just barely think straight. I feel it’s time for a real break in my life – dropping a great knife across the track of my actions to mark a new era – maybe something to do with a normal person who has a father. But I know I’m expected to jump back into playacting this morning, as if I never left.
The Himes script is tented on the little built-in kitchen table, bristling with Post-its, but I can’t bear the idea of studying lines, and I go to the trailer door and open it and sit on the stoop, watched abruptly by the two thugs from last night, sitting on folding chairs and eating off paper plates, very alert now. I ignore them. Already, set dressers and best boys and face-dabbers are scurrying to and fro, and in the distance I see a whole crowd of ‘atmosphere’ talent in dated-looking work clothes waiting patiently behind sawhorses. Caterers are setting up under a long awning – it’ll be coffee, danish and doughnuts, bagels and the trimmings, maybe even a steam tray of hard-boiled eggs.