A Little Too Much

by John Shannon

  ‘That’s the community college where Stoney taught ages ago,’ Jack Liffey said, pointing at the ever revolving aerial view. ‘But that was ancient history. My God. He’s been all over the world since then. Maybe he still has a friend there. He’s maybe a year or two older than me, and almost nobody that age is still teaching.’

  ‘Oh-ho,’ Winston said. ‘I slap your back – you turn to dust like a mummy.’

  ‘Fuck you, Winston.’ Jack Liffey chuckled and slapped his own cheek to demonstrate his solidity. ‘Nothing fell off, right? Not even a moldering ear? Yeah, I’m getting old, and it’s scary, too. What scares you, mon?’

  ‘Nothing, ma’an.’

  ‘Not even death?’

  ‘I don’t believe in it.’

  ‘You will one day, I promise. I wish you had a weapon.’

  ‘I don’t like guns. Guns let fools kill heroes.’

  ‘I’ve got to get you one. Sometimes the heroes have to shoot back. Let’s go.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Luck Pays Its Dues

  Before they left the house, Jack Liffey flicked through the TV news to check for any more updates on what those helicopters had spotted. It turned out to be the Colombians, for sure. About an hour ago, they’d killed an off-duty L.A. cop, some poor old desk guy who was moonlighting as security at the community college, then several teachers. It all sounded crazy as could be.

  Damn – he hadn’t checked up on Gloria in an hour.

  He called every number he knew in Bako, while Winston waited impatiently, drinking Jamaican ginger beer, but they all just rang forever or went over to voicemail. There wasn’t much point in threatening Sonny again on the tape. He’d already yanked out his left lung through his ear.

  Then – what a surprise! – an immediate ringback.

  ‘Listen to me, Sonny!’ Jack Liffey snapped. But the annoyed screech meant it wasn’t Sonny, after all.

  ‘Shutup, shamus! Tyrone’s gone again, running like a jackrabbit. This is going to be your last chance to earn some bread and get out of Dutch in this town. Bring in Ty Bird today and all is forgiven.’

  ‘Meier Reston. As I live and breathe. You already consigned me to the lower circles of hell. What are you going to do now? Send me to Vietnam?’ It seemed to be a day for phone threats.

  ‘I can find something you won’t like much, I bet.’

  ‘Meier, you know the main trouble with the film business?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s full of film people.’

  Sonny and his TV cameraman followed Jenny Ezkiaga’s station wagon to the very foot of the Grapevine, the historic designation for the four thousand foot ascent that led out of the Central Valley toward L.A. He was pretty certain no Bakersfield officers were following her – and the Kern County jurisdiction gave way to Los Angeles County at the top of the grade – so he felt it was about as safe as it was ever going to be to take his very annoyed captive home.

  It was amazing how intimidating the presence of the TV camera had been. After a little more prodding, the deputy had grudgingly pushed Gloria into the station wagon, then glared at Sonny and the cameraman a while, as if they’d just taken his lunch, which they basically had. Then he’d refused to talk at all and driven off fast – with that spurt of raw acceleration cops always kept in reserve when they needed to say, I can always do this and you can’t.

  Tony Zabatta, one of KGET’s prime cameramen, was looking away from Sonny in the passenger seat, still pretty pissed off at being drafted into a war he wanted no part of. The promise was a really big story.

  ‘Sorry, man.’ Sonny couldn’t even remember quite what lies he’d told to get Zabatta there. He turned the van around at the little coffee-clatch of gas stations and fast-food shops at the foot of the Grapevine.

  ‘What’s this all designed to do for me?’ Zabatta said.

  ‘All my hot tips are yours exclusively from now on. And I’ll watch for openings in L.A. TV, if you want the big time. And we may have saved a life.’

  ‘You say.’

  ‘Come on, you remember who she was. That whole business a few months ago of the mass arrest of the goth kids. Gloria made the cops look like idiots by finding the actual child-killer in two days of real police work.’

  ‘Yeah, she came up here and stepped on every sensitive toe in town.’

  ‘She did it in the interest of justice, man. Real justice – for all those messed-up kids – and for one baby-killer, too. Isn’t justice what journalism is about?’

  ‘I thought it was about keeping me in a well-paid career.’

  Sonny gave him a big fish-eye. ‘Maybe I misjudged you, Tony. I thought you were one of the good guys in TV news – they’re scarce as bird-dung in a cuckoo clock.’

  That did it. Zabatta laughed out loud and shook his head ruefully. ‘Oh, my Sonny. Where do you get this corny-pony stuff?’ He smacked Sonny’s shoulder, but not too hard, just enough to dislocate it a little. ‘Somebody says “justice”, I think of my old man. It never worked out for him when he tried to get his life savings back from a shyster contractor and shyster mortgage outfit. Dad just needed a new roof on one side of his cottage down in Magunden, and the fine print saddled him with a balloon refi that he could never pay.’

  ‘Hell, the mortgage crooks took the whole world economy down. Your dad’s in good company.’

  ‘There’s a CHP car, Sonny. Maybe you could sideswipe it and get the state cops after our ass, too,’ Zabatta suggested. ‘FBI, CIA, what the hell.’

  ‘I think you’re the only Jewish cowboy I ever met,’ Stoney said.

  ‘It’s just a name,’ Karl Rubin said. ‘I guess it’s Jewish. I never went to no special sing-along.’

  ‘Not your parents?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dad used to talk about his folks coming from a shtetl, but I don’t even know what the word means. I didn’t see much of him after he left us and I was sent to all the asshole fosters, which finally made me run off. I was fourteen and tried to join the Marines, but they weren’t buying the fakest ID you ever seen. I ranched for a few years. It’s every kid’s dream, but I found out most all the cowboys are Mex now, and I just didn’t fit in. Then I came out and tried to be a Hollywood cowboy. It wasn’t the smartest thing I ever done. At first I got propositioned a lot by old guys in Lincolns, when I still looked young and pretty, and then I got my body mashed up doing stunt falls in the glory days of the TV Oaters. I did dozens of Bat Mastersons and Wyatt Earps, even a couple movies. I still get residuals.’

  They sat in the big industrial kitchen, with stainless steel counters and open shelves everywhere. Two industrial ranges, two wide steel fridges, a wine cabinet and a horizontal freezer chest.

  ‘Does all this shit work?’ Stoney asked, waving vaguely at all the kitchen machines.

  The man shrugged. ‘Owner wants to keep it all here in case there’s a sudden rush of buyers. I dust it a bit.’

  ‘How come nobody’s bought the place?’

  ‘It’s only any good for a resort, or maybe a nursing home. The house sure isn’t a looker, and it’s way too expensive with all the land attached.’ He smirked a little. ‘And nobody likes that smell downstairs. Fifty thousand loads of semen seeped into the wood floors.’

  Which reminded Stoney of Tyrone Bird, who he was beginning to believe was truly his son, for all his first doubts.

  ‘More coffee, friend?’ the old man asked.

  Stoney pushed his cup across the table. He was in a funny, fatalistic mood, and he took out his untraceable prepaid cell and called the number Ty had given him. He got an annoying snatch of music and then a robot voice asking him to leave a message. No name at all. ‘Kid, this is you-know-who,’ he answered. ‘I’d like to see you. I’m at that place where you were a glint in your mom’s eye. Be extra careful and don’t let anybody follow you. I mean it. There’s some real wigged-out Latins out there.’

  When Rubin came back, instead of coffee, he set down a presentation bottle of Kentucky Spirit Wild Turkey, we
irdly crenulated across its shoulders, some special brew-up of bourbon that he’d never seen before.

  ‘There’s nothing better on earth than once in a while getting a little schnocked before noon,’ Rubin said. ‘Guys from the old Hollywood used to tell me how Faulkner was the whizz master of Jack Daniel’s over in the Garden of Allah, but I don’t think he coulda touched the stunt guys I knew for quantity. Go on, paint your tonsils.’

  The last thing Stoney wanted to do right now was buzz himself down, but he figured a sip might even put a little edge on, keep him alert. He was curious, too. He’d never been a bourbon man, but this was obviously special stuff. Rubin slid a jam jar with an inch of the stuff toward him.

  ‘To good character,’ Rubin toasted, holding his glass up.

  ‘To good luck,’ Stoney countered. ‘Luck is the only thing I ever found that pays its dues.’

  After he’d dropped the cameraman off at KGET on L Street, Sonny headed up Chester toward home across the riverbed. He was bone tired and, with Gloria gone, he felt more alone than he had in years. He was getting a little old to think he still had an endless supply of options ahead of him, just up the road. His job hadn’t opened a lot of romantic doors for him, this legwork for the most notorious lesbian lawyer in town. The women he’d met were an unending parade of lonely drunks and demanding hysterics and self-centered spiritualists.

  Across the marshy whipwillows poking out of the sand, he turned on to his own street, McCord. With a small frisson of alarm, he spotted Gloria’s RAV-4 in his driveway. Last he knew, the cops had towed it away from the zoo to impound. How he wished he’d never showed her that bald eagle.

  Sonny approached slowly and eventually parked and got out as a local Harley ratcheted past with its almost unbearable potato-potato din. He noticed a small note on her front seat, tucked under the spray of her keys. The door was unlocked.

  NEVER A FUCKING WORD, CAJUN. Or its el Slammer forever.

  The art teacher was an aging long-bearded hippie.

  ‘We had a dropout. The class is open again,’ he said. ‘Leave your reg card on my desk. If you haven’t got any supplies, that easel is open, and Dodd left all his stuff. One day you can thank him. He told me his Kentucky Christian upbringing wouldn’t let him stare at a nekkid lady. The catalog plainly says figure studies.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, so much.’ She was so relieved to find a slot to replace anthro that she was overwhelmed with gratitude. She’d never felt she had any particular aptitude for painting, but she figured she could work her way into art history this way.

  ‘Are you any good, Maeve?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Do some outlining in pencil first.’ Indicating the overabundant nude on the platform up front. ‘Or not. I’ll be back in half an hour. We’ll work on technique as we go.’

  ‘Jesus, this is very good stuff, my man,’ Stoney offered. ‘I almost never tried bourbon. I was a Scotch snob.’

  ‘This is better than your average corn likker,’ Karl Rubin said, slurring a little.

  Was it three or four slugs they’d had already? Maybe even five. ‘Thanks for sharing, man. You’re right – once in a while, a man’s got to go down the wet road before noon.’ He closed his eyes and found his phone, and, when, after pondering, he figured it out, he hit redial for Ty’s number. The imaginary resonance of long, long phone wires humming in the warm dry Santa Ana winds held his attention as he waited. When the phone seemed to come alive, he closed his eyes. ‘Ty, this is Stoney,’ he said.

  ‘Hi. I’m driving up PCH right now, sir. I shouldn’t use my cell in the car. I don’t want to risk the cops.’

  ‘Let’s make it all up,’ Stoney said, feeling how tipsy he was. ‘I mean it, son. My only excuse is I didn’t know. I didn’t know – honest to God. Your mom never said she was carrying you. We could be terrific, you and me.’

  Just then an explosion went off against the north side of the Sandstone Resort, and Stoney slapped the cellphone closed. ‘What the fuck’s that?’ he demanded of Rubin.

  ‘Mice?’ Rubin said, with a plastered smile.

  A second rocket-propelled grenade took out a lot of the windows in front of the ballroom down below them, with a great shattering of glass, and now Stoney guessed what was going on.

  ‘Get yourself together, man,’ Stoney said. ‘That’s gotta be the Colombian flippos. Last guy they took alive, they skinned.’

  Rubin’s eyes went wide, but Stoney couldn’t tell how seri-ously he was taking it.

  ‘Is there some way out of here?’ Stoney demanded. He felt himself slurring a little and patted for the big Desert Eagle that was still in the pocket of his coat slung over the chair. ‘I mean secret and right now!’

  ‘Follow me.’ Rubin hurried straight into the front room and then waddled down the steps to the ball-room. Stoney was suddenly enraged at himself for drinking. He was having trouble keeping up with the old man and not stumbling. When he got downstairs, he saw broken glass littering the whole room and sniffed the explosive. He’d seen the same damn things take out several buildings at the cemetery.

  Automatic weapon fire was slamming into the rock walls now, wap-wap-wap, quite a lot of it, as he saw Rubin dead-focused on rolling up a section of carpet and then lifting a trap door. Rubin had picked up a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere along the way.

  ‘You’re a genius, man,’ Stoney said. ‘What is this?’

  ‘At some point, the last bossman read a book about the Chinese in California. Every Chinatown had underground escapes because angry mobs came in and tried to wipe them out.’

  Another explosion went off against the stone side wall of the house, and he felt the shudder in his feet. Thank heavens the place was well built. ‘Too much information. Go now.’

  Rubin was already half way down a staircase, calling back, ‘Roll the rug and throw the bolt behind you, Mr Stoney.’

  Jack Liffey had had a quick call from Ty about where he was headed. Winston sat in the pickup in the driveway, antsy to get a move on, but Jack Liffey had to make one more try first. He was worried sick about Gloria. He used the house cordless from the living room and punched in the number again for Sonny Theroux in Bakersfield.

  ‘That’s Jack, isn’t it?’ Sonny’s voice came on surprisingly down the staticky connection, and he realized Sonny’s phone must have caller ID.

  ‘Where’s Gloria? I don’t have time to shilly-shally.’

  ‘I’m trying to stay square. Jenny is driving her to you right now, and I just tracked them to the Grapevine to make sure they’re safe. She pissed off the Bako cops really bad, Jack.’

  ‘Don’t be familiar, wifefucker. We aren’t friends any more. Why isn’t Gloria driving herself home?’

  ‘Ask her to tell you. She’ll be OK. But it’s her business, Mr Liffey.’

  ‘You bet,’ Jack Liffey said. The man’s voice had been steady, but you couldn’t know what that meant, not with a pro. ‘Maybe you care, too, guy. OK. I’ll go nuts right now if I don’t know what’s happened. You can appreciate that.’

  ‘You have to trust me now. Gloria’s going to be OK, she’s with Jenny, and she’s on her way to you, but what happened is something she’s going to want to tell you herself. Maybe after a long sleep. She got beat up.’

  ‘You fucker – don’t play with me.’ Then there was a roaring in Jack Liffey’s ear, as if something like death were flying down the telephone line. He realized it was only the howl of all those space satellites and wires and relays that made up the broken connection.

  Winston was starting to nod off when Jack Liffey got in and whacked his chest with the back of his hand. ‘Wake up, mon. I need you now. I don’t know why I’m heading for Topanga when I should be waiting right here for Gloria, but I trust the women to take care of themselves. Have you ingested any drugs this morning?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir.’

  ‘I want us both on top. I mean it.’

  ‘Did you have a bad childhood?’ Winston asked
, apropos of nothing.

  Jack Liffey started his pickup. ‘Not so bad, did you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, pretty bad. One day I tell you the story of my life.’

  ‘And how does it turn out?’

  Winston grinned and laughed. ‘I think I find some help. I think a guy with a heart.’

  Jack Liffey smiled. ‘Heart’s not always so great. It can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.’

  I drive up to the gates of the Sandstone Ranch that I still think of as my birthplace. Ominously, the gates have been ripped open. The iron grid is torn off its track and lies in the dry weeds. In the distance I can hear a lot of gunfire – reminding me of an action film I shot near here once out in Malibu, on the old M.A.S.H. set. I can see smoke rising from where the house is, over a crest of the graveled road. My father is in trouble, certainly. What would a movie hero do? Fly to the rescue, of course.

  A small brushfire was brewing up near the north wall of the house, cemented stone, but it was nowhere near enough fire for Jhon Orteguaza. The gods he served wanted much more. If you were going to have an inferno chasing down your enemies, you wanted a real roar-voiced firestorm, flicking its long red tongues far into the air and sending out the kind of heat you could feel for a kilometer. A dozen of his compadres had found the best cover they could, rock outcrops and small trees, and were firing AKs and fancier weapons at the much damaged house, which had stone side walls that seemed not to care very much. Another grenade went off where the lower floor windows had already been blown out, with little discernable effect.

  He rapped Andrés on the shoulder and said, ‘You got a Willie Pete, hombre. Use it.’

  ‘¡Ay, que, es feo!’

  Willie Pete was universal military slang for white phosphorus. It was precious here, they’d only been grudged one rocket round by Eighteenth Street. But it did fit their big launcher. Willie Pete would loose a glorious white starburst of phosphorus flakes burning at five thousand degrees Fahrenheit, a blazing flower the size of a pretty big hill.