by Peter Israel
“Is there another way out of here?” I asked for the hell of it.
“Sure, there’s the back door. But …”
She laughed, a little nervously.
“You don’t really think they’d do anything like that?” she said. “Out here? In broad daylight?”
“I not only think so, I’d be willing to give you points.”
“But who are they?”
I explained it, as succinctly as I could. At first she didn’t believe it, that he’d do a thing like that. She said I was crazy, I must have made it all up in my head. I said that with all due respect whether she believed it or not or I was crazy was beside the point.
We stared at each other. She hesitated, and I headed for the door.
“No, wait,” she decided.
She held out her arm.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “Sit down again and don’t move. You wait there for me.”
I sat down again. She left me. Quite some time went by, plenty of time for me to blow kisses out the window and think about my future. I figured she was trying to call him and having the same luck I’d once had back before George S. Curie III “relieved me of my duties.” I thought of going outside and trying to parley, and I tried to picture what would happen if I waited for them to make the first move, and I came up with the same ugly scenario both ways.
But then suddenly I heard her voice talking, arguing, angry. It wasn’t a short conversation either, but I didn’t get up to eavesdrop.
Finally she came back and sat down next to me. She didn’t say a word, but her nostrils were working overtime.
We watched together, like in a silent movie.
A little later, sure enough, we saw the little wimp in the black Firebird jump in his seat. He picked up a phone receiver and listened to it, his head cocked like a dog’s. His lips never moved. Then he hung up, got out and went over to each of the other cars, one by one. I was right, it was Gomez in one, also the guy with the elephant nose. They took turns shaking their heads at each other. Then the little wimp got back in the Firebird, and the motors fired one after the other, and they drove out the way they’d come, in a row, leaving the Mustang in the lurch.
It was magic, nothing less.
“I never knew I had a fairy godmother,” I said to her, or some dumb thing, but she was gazing out the window and I don’t think she heard, or when I said goodby.
I let myself out.
Her magic held. The Mustang and I got home all by ourselves, without escort. The apartment didn’t explode when I opened the door, and there weren’t any clicks on the phone, and the biddy from the answering service had a message for me from one of my lady friends. But it wasn’t Robin this time, or Karen, or any of the other Karens, or anyone you’ve heard of, though for the record her name was Solange and she works for Air France. On the impulse—the oldest one there is—I called Solange back. She said she’d like to visit me, her longlost friend Cage, if I wasn’t busy. I said I wasn’t, on the contrary, and that if she’d give me time to put in some provisions I’d come pick her up. “Bon,” she said, “O.K.,” but, with a little laugh, would I mind getting provisions for three? And then on second thought, why didn’t I forget about the provisions now and come for them right away?
Her friend’s name was one of those hyphenated jobs beginning with Marie. She was very outgoing, this hyphenated Marie, and so was Solange. So was I. In fact one way and another we never did get around to the provisions until Sunday morning when I cooked them a breakfast like they don’t get back in France, and then I took them back to bed in the sun and listened to them complain about Sunday flights, first with me in the middle, then Solange, then Marie, and they were still complaining when Solange finally took her hand off the throttle at the airport.
An interlude then. Beautiful. Or call it a hyphen.
Because when I got home, they’d already started filling in what came after the dash.
It was my Firebird wimp again with his cannon, sitting on the edge of my white couch, and this time he’d brought Gomez along for company.
The aztec shut the door behind me.
I made a crack about having the locks changed, but nobody laughed.
“He’s ready for you now,” the little guy said. He stood up. “Let’s go, Cage.”
Well what do you know? I thought. All of a sudden the shoe was on the other foot, and pinching.
“Go where?” I said. “Now wait a minute, you guys. Hell, I just got home. You know how it is, can’t you come back a little later?”
“Let’s go,” the little guy repeated, and Gomez encouraged me at the base of my spine.
“You’d better call him first,” I said. I wasn’t about to go anywhere with them, not till I had what I wanted, but at the same time I’ve never seen a fight I wouldn’t talk my way out of if I could.
“We had enough of your funny business yesterday,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of the Valley. “Now he wants you brought in. That’s what he said.”
“Sure he said to bring me in. But number one, it’s not me he wants, you know that. Number two, I’ve got it all right, you know that too, but number three, it’s not here. Look for yourself. And number four is that if you take me in now without it, like he’s never going to get it. Add it all up, sweetheart, it still spells Mother.”
Around in there was when Gomez gave me a little tap. Just for nothing, I think, or maybe he was sensitive about his mother. I couldn’t see it coming because he was standing behind me, but he sure didn’t wind up from the floor either. All the same it sent the colored light zinging down my vertebrae and back up, and the bell rang in my head and I ended up on my knees.
The little guy cussed him out in Spanish and he backed off.
I shook my head to make sure everything was still there. I stood up, rubbing the back of my neck and watching Gomez out of the corner of my eye.
“Look,” I said to the little guy, “I’m not trying to pull a fast one. All I want to do is talk to him first.
“Call him,” I said.
We waltzed around with it a while, while Gomez waited to cut in. Finally I managed to convince him. I tried to guess the number from his dialing, but I got screwed up between a 7 and an 8 on the third digit and blew the rest. Anyway it wasn’t Twink Beydon who answered, but you could tell when he came on by the way the little wimp popped to. Meanwhile Gomez was staring at me mournfully from across the room and scratching his nards.
“… says he wants to do it his way,” the little guy was saying. He didn’t actually use “sir,” but it was in his tone. “Yeah … O.K.… Right …,” and with a last “O.K.,” he handed me the receiver.
“Cage? Are you there?”
Hey ole buddy, I answered in my mind, how’re they hanging?
“That’s right,” I said.
“Look Cage, we’re finished playing around with you. I want my property back, right now. Either that or you. It’s up to you.”
Just like the general addressing the troops all right: It’s up to you, boys, either your nose in the shit or my boot up your ass.
“Like what are you going to do with me?” I said, staring back at Gomez. “Down in the squash court with your gorilla here and throw away the key? What would Margaret say?”
“That’s my decision,” he answered tersely. “You make yours.”
“I’ve already made it,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
I had one card left to play, so I played it.
“You’ll get your property, but I don’t keep it lying around here. I guess you’ve already found that out. I’ve got to go get it first, and I’m not taking your Indians along. You’ll have to call them off.”
“That’s a cheap trick, Cage. Why should I believe you?”
“That’s your decision,” I answered.
True to form, he made up his mind in a hurry.
“I’ll give you till five o’clock, that’s all.”
I
t was a little after three.
“That’ll make it a little tight …,” I began.
“Five o’clock, no more, no less.”
“Maybe your brothers-in-law would be a little more liberal,” I said.
He didn’t bat an eyelash, at least over the phone.
“You bring it here,” he said. “I’m at George Curie’s office. You know the address. And let me tell you something, Cage—” he dropped his voice for emphasis “—if you’re fucking with me now, it’ll be the last time.”
I didn’t answer.
“Is that clear?”
“It’s clear,” I said.
“Then let me talk to Freeling.”
Have a nice wait, Twink, I said in my mind, and turning to the room: “Hey, which one of you guys is Freeling?”
The little guy reached for the receiver, and I gave it to him. Gomez didn’t so much as grin. His stare just kept getting longer and longer, like I was a piñata and somebody’d taken his baseball bat away.
“That’s right,” Freeling said, keeping his eyes on me, and “O.K.” and “Yeah,” and then he hung up.
“So you did it again, bud,” he said to me, neither surprised nor disappointed. He put his cannon away. “So you got yourself another reprieve. But Mr. Beydon told me to make sure you got the message. It’s your last one.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said, showing them the door. “I’ll remember you both in my will.”
When I came down about an hour later, they were still there, Freeling behind the wheel of the Firebird and Gomez standing next to it. It must have been one powerful itch, because the aztec was shooting pocket pool again, but they didn’t follow me when I drove out of the garage, and later when I played a little hide-and-seek on the freeways just to make sure, I didn’t spot them or any of the others.
I took Twink Beydon at his word. It was, like I say, my last card, my big play for the brass ring. Even before I left the house I must’ve had a hunch I wouldn’t be sleeping there again for a couple of nights, or forty. I figured a suitcase would be too obvious, so I packed a toothbrush in my inside jacket pocket, and I even got out my dusty old musket from the dresser and loaded her up, though later I stuck her in the glove compartment for safety’s sake. And then I took a shower, a shave, said so long to myself in the bathroom mirror, and got dressed for church.
15
I think I called it “one of our less savory neighborhoods.” That must be the euphemism of the year. Oh they’ve put the new Convention Center down that way and called it urban renewal, but it’ll take a hell of a lot more than one measly Convention Center to bring civilization, Doris Day style, back to those parts.
South San Pedro? It’s warehouses and markets, and a string of Chink restaurants that look like Seoul, Korea, the morning after the earthquake. They’ve got rats as big as cats down there—yeah, rats, honest to God, Doris—and the freeways up above in the sky belong to another world. You go out a little further and it’s spadesville, solid, where they peddle the dope in six-packs and the law drives around in bulletproof vests shooting at anything that moves. And after that, it’s Watts. At night down there you can feel Crime roaming the streets, with bloodshot eyes and a shiv up his sleeve and a sweet hip way of talking that makes your blood run cold, and even on a Sunday afternoon in May you keep your windows rolled up and your doors locked.
A nice place to raise the family.
Five o’clock came and went and so did six. All this is for you, Twink baby, I said in my mind, but the dusty laugh which came back was my own. The bridges were burned all right, and I had an image of Gomez swimming the moat, tugging a pack of crocodiles behind him on leashes.
The address I wanted belonged to a warehouse which looked like it hadn’t been used since they switched over to round wheels. It was locked up tight. The street, like all the surrounding streets, was deserted, and the windows, such as they were, were either boarded over or black-painted. There weren’t any signs except for some graffiti in chalk, the most printable of which was “Louis sucks,” and even allowing for his proverbial humility, it was tough to imagine Mr. Christ picking it out as the place to make a comeback.
I drove around it, stopped, and drove around it some more. Once I drove downtown, just to make sure downtown was still there. I had a couple of Chivas in the Biltmore bar, which was about as deadly as you’d expect on a Sunday afternoon, and then I went back. Still nothing. I thought of calling George S. Curie Ill’s office to find out if a guy named Cage had showed up yet, then thought better of it. I thought maybe Christ had changed his mind, which was another thought I didn’t like to think about. Finally I said the hell with it, pulled my stomach together and drove around to one of the Chink joints on San Pedro.
About six of the natives were at the counter, three on either side, watching the tong wars on a TV set which Chiang must have taken with him when he blew the mainland. The three on my side were eating, and I figured if they could take it so could I. I slid into a booth, tucked my pigtail under a bib and dug into a bowl of seaweed soup, with a side of fortune cookies. Strange as it may sound, I even had seconds on the Moo Goo Gai Pan, and stranger still the whole mess stayed down.
It was dark when I went back again, and for a minute I thought I’d taken the wrong street. Either that or I was late for church. There wasn’t a parking space the length of the block, and they were big cars too, Buicks and Mercs, with a dash of foreign, what you’d expect maybe in a Baptist parking lot on Sunday morning, but off South San Pedro? I had to turn the corner and go almost to the next one before I found a slot for the Mustang, and then I walked back behind a squat little guy in a business suit and mustache who looked like he might have hustled clothes over on Westwood Boulevard.
I followed him to the warehouse door, which had only a single light behind it in a kind of entryway, then another door, and blocking it was a tall blond kid, Andy Ford style but bigger, and barefooted, and he was wearing one of those long rough brown robes of the model St. Francis introduced way back when. The coat-and-suit merchant in front of me had his wallet out, and I saw a fifty-dollar bill go from his hand to the kid’s to a money box on top of a wood table, and there wasn’t any change coming back. Then the kid stood by to let him through and it was my turn.
I could hear the music through the door and some other people coming in behind me.
“You wouldn’t by any chance take a credit card?” I said.
“Sure will, brother,” said the blond kid. “Anything you’ve got, BankAmericard, Master Charge …”
I guess I was too surprised to do anything but fish mine out of my wallet and sign the chit when he’d run it through his machine. Things sure had changed since we used to pass the collection plate back home.
My contribution was also for fifty dollars.
“I hope it’s worth it,” I said to the blond kid.
“There aren’t too many who go away disappointed, Brother Cage,” he said to me, handing me back my card and turning to the customers behind me.
I went through the door and into a well-lit vestibule with white partitioned walls. The music was coming from beyond the walls, an organ and a choir, or maybe the audience singing, and from what I could see, it may not have been St. Peter’s in Rome but it wasn’t any old warehouse either. A light show was playing on the ceiling, a row of spots focused on the altar and the stained glass behind it, but where the congregation knelt was pitch dark. I smelled a strong musky incense, more Indian than Catholic, and then a gust of perfume, and a voice was saying in my ear:
“This way, Brother. This way.”
She was a big broad-shouldered number, almost as tall as I was, with short auburn hair that frothed about her face. She wore a white robe that gathered high under the neck with a clasp and a sash around her waist and ended at her bare feet. A white hood fell back off her head and her eyes had a gray-green cast and the white-toothed smile that came with the perfume made my knees wobble.
“I’m Sister Jan,” she said gaily
, taking me by the arm. “I’m your sister for this evening.”
“But what about the service?” I said. “I …”
“We won’t miss a thing, Brother,” she said, flashing the smile again, “not a thing. I promise.”
She led me down the vestibule into another room divided into stalls. I went along, thinking sex and God, God and sex, but not very hard. I glimpsed the coat-and-suit man being helped out of his suit by another sister, and not just his suit, and then Sister Jan did the same with me right down to my shoelaces. From somewhere she produced one of the hooded St. Francis jobs and draped it around me, tying the tie around my waist like a bathrobe.
The cloth was rough to the skin. I guess it was supposed to be.
“Why don’t we just forget about the service, Sister Jan,” I said vaguely, and she laughed, dipping her hair in my eyes so that the perfume half-blinded me, saying huskily, “Oh come on now, the others are waiting for us,” or some such, the words no longer mattered very much, and back we went into the vestibule and around one end of the white partition, and she led me by the hand into church.
It was dark like I said, except for the colored lights on the ceiling and the spots on the altar, where a life-sized Christ was spreadeagled on a white cross. All I could make out following her down the aisle were the humpy masses of the faithful, but later when my eyes adjusted I saw brothers and sisters kneeling in couples on the floor, and all the brothers wore brown robes, the sisters white, and which were guests and which not I’ve no idea, except that some of the sisters looked twice as old as some of the brothers, and vice versa. There was sand scattered all over the floor, but it only hurt your knees a little while. The faithful were singing, and the incense so strong it blew down your pipes and out the other end, and the organ, which had to have been a tape amplified a thousand times, caromed off the lighted ceiling, the walls, and all but lifted your voice out of you.
“Sing along,” Sister Jan whispered to me, squeezing my hand, “sing along, Brother.” So I sang, and she never let go my hand while we knelt near the back. Others came in behind us, shadowy in their robes, kneeling and singing, until the music stopped with a gigantic organ chord rolling out of the L.A. hills, loud enough to bring down Jericho by itself, and another tall blond brother stood up in his Franciscan robe before the altar, extending his arms up and forward over the congregation, saying: “Would all you Sisters in Jesus please come forward now?”