Point Doom

by Fante, Dan

  I COULD FEEL Mom standing above me, looking over my shoulder, being nosy. “What’s your interest in Karl Swan, James? Why were you looking him up?” she asked.

  “I saw him at the noon AA meeting yesterday. He was with his daughter, Sydnye. As he was pulling out of the driveway he looked over at me and said, ‘Have a nice day,’ or something like that. But Swan doesn’t know me. We’ve never seen each other before. There was no reason why he’d stop to talk to me—there’s no reason why he would be eyeing me like a plate of pickled herring.”

  “You’ve said it to me yourself, several times, AA people can be effusive and annoyingly friendly.”

  Then Mom’s expression darkened. Leaning across the table, she picked up a manila envelope from a stack of four or five, then held it up. On the front, in black Sharpie lettering, was a name I couldn’t read upside down.

  “Remember,” she said, “when you were visiting us last week, I was working on a chart?”

  “You’re always working on somebody’s chart, Ma.”

  “He’s sending his valet or secretary over at noon to pick it up and drop off my check. What I’m telling you now is confidential information, James. As you know, I never reveal the identity of my clients.”

  “You mean, Karl Swan? That’s Karl Swan’s chart!”

  “Yes, Karl Swan.”

  “Jesus!”

  “You may remember that your father once had business dealings with him.”

  “I didn’t know that! What kind of business dealings?”

  “It was many years ago. You were a boy. It was some kind of studio dispute. I’m unsure of the substance of it but, at the time, I do know it bothered your father. As you know, your dad rarely discussed that kind of thing with me.”

  Gongs and whistles began going off in my head.

  Now Mom was staring at me. “Are you all right, James?”

  “Tell me about Swan’s chart.”

  “Well, as I mentioned to you before, he has some rather dark and unusual aspects, natally. Bluntly put, the man is odd, perhaps even sick or pathological. But that’s not the worst of it. Currently, he has an alarming Saturn conjunction that began three days ago and may denote violence and possibly indicate someone’s injury or death. I’d keep my distance from him if I were you, James.”

  “That’s in his chart?”

  “The stars are ruthlessly honest, James.”

  I stood up from the table. “I don’t like you doing this guy’s chart, Ma. I don’t like it at all. He’s a sick whacko fuck!”

  “For God’s sake, James, Coco and I are right here in the room!”

  “When did Swan order the chart? Give me the exact date!”

  “I’m not sure. A week or so ago. What’s wrong?”

  “Can you look it up?”

  “I don’t keep that kind of information. I simply tell my clients to call me in a week to ten days. Then, when I’m done I make arrangements for them to come by for a consultation and to pick up their horoscopes.”

  “Swan’s coming by to pick it up? To this house?”

  “His secretary told me that he doesn’t require the consultation. He’s sending someone over.”

  “What time is this someone coming by?”

  “Today at noon.”

  AN HOUR LATER, after a shower, I was drinking from a fresh pot of coffee and smoking out on Mom’s patio, with the door open, when the outside front-door buzzer went off.

  I flipped my cigarette away, went into the kitchen, then waved Coco away after grabbing the brown manila envelope off the kitchen table on my way to the front door.

  Standing there on Mom’s porch was one of Swan’s people, a well-muscled Latino wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and a sports jacket. He looked like a second-tier TV actor from a cop show.

  He took off his sunglasses and we were eye to eye. His face was blank. “My name’s Rudolpho,” he said in perfect English. “I’m here to see Mrs. Nancy Fiorella—to pick up a package for Mr. Swan.”

  “I’ve got it right here,” I said, swinging the door all the way open so he could see the envelope in my hand.

  “You have a check made out to my mother, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, I have the check. But I was told to speak to Mrs. Fiorella personally.”

  “Not today,” I said. “I’ll take the check now.”

  “My instructions are to give the check directly to Nancy Fiorella.”

  I closed the door behind me and stepped down the two concrete steps to be on the same level as the guy.

  Before he could react, I snatched the check from his hand.

  “What’s your problem!” Rudolpho snarled.

  “You’re at my mother’s house! That’s my problem. And now I’m your problem!”

  I spun him around. As I did so, he attempted a quick reverse kick and even tried a forearm to my chin. The kid had good moves but I blocked them both.

  Now I had his arm in a hammerlock and his face pressed hard against the rough white stucco siding of my mom’s house. He was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three and a hundred and seventy-five pounds, but his physical intensity felt powerful—martial-arts training.

  I snatched the Beretta out of my waistband and pressed it as hard as I could against his tight jeans, placing the muzzle between the cheeks of his ass at an upward angle.

  I quickly patted him down, found nothing, then leaned close to his ear. “Listen carefully, messenger boy,” I hissed. “For some reason your boss is stalking my family. And he sent you here to ID my mother.”

  “Let me go now or you’ll get hurt! That’s a promise.”

  “You work for a man who has made a serious mistake and no amount of money and no kung-fu punk and no team of lawyers are going to stop me if I see one of you guys here again. Tell Swan I know how to find him and when I do the gun barrel that you’re feeling up your ass will be aimed between his eyes. Can you remember all that, Rudolpho?”

  “I advise you to release me,” he said in a voice that was flat—and too calm.

  I spun him around and quickly moved the Beretta to a position under his chin, then pressed it hard against his throat. “Did Swan teach you how to torture wetbacks, Rudolpho? Is my mother on his menu?”

  His eyes were boring into mine. They were vacant and ice cold. “Are you done?”

  I gave him a forward thrust to the stomach. Hard.

  He went down and began gasping for air but instinctively knew how to cover up.

  I had him by the hair and slammed his head against the stucco wall. Once. Twice. Then I leaned close to his ear.

  “If you or anyone who works for Karl Swan makes any more moves against my mother—no matter what they are—they’re dead. I’ll kill you and I’ll kill Swan. I’ll kill his bodyguards and I’ll kill his dogs. I’ll kill everybody I see. From today on, your life is different, Rudolpho. Never come near this house again.”

  I spun him around, then scooped up the manila envelope and dragged him by the collar of his sports jacket—my gun under his neck—down the walkway toward Mom’s front gate.

  Swan’s Bentley convertible was parked on the gravel cutout.

  I opened the driver’s door, then pushed Rudolpho onto the front seat. I tossed the manila envelope onto his lap.

  “Mission accomplished, Rudolpho. You got what you came for and what you deserve. Tell Swan that he’ll see the horoscope of a very sick fuck when he opens this up. Tell him that he has death in his chart.”

  Then, with the barrel of my gun, I slammed a hole in the Bentley’s driver’s-side window.

  BACK INSIDE THE house, Mom was shaking and breathing hard. She and Coco had watched me handle the kid from the living-room window.

  “What’s the meaning of this, James? What just happened?” she said, gasping.

  “I’m going to make a call, Mom. You and Coco
and the cats are moving to a hotel—away from Malibu. You’ll have someone there to look after you. I’ll arrange everything.”

  An hour later, after talking to Mendoza, Carr’s pal—the gun dealer in Canyon Country—I had what I needed: two ex-cops armed with shotguns who knew how to keep their mouths shut. They were on their way to Mom’s house. The arrangements were set.

  Out back, in my mother’s garage, I moved Woody’s Honda into the spare bay, removed my stuff from the trunk, pulled the license plates, then covered the car with a stinky old tarp left over from my father’s sports-car days.

  A few minutes later I helped Mom and Coco load their luggage and their remaining four cats into her white Escalade.

  As I was closing the second garage door and was preparing to lock it, I heard a thud and looked down at the pavement near my feet. The stiff bodies of two cats were inches away from the end of my shoes. They had fallen as the garage door closed.

  Both Mom’s pets had mangled torsos. Their legs and heads were facing the wrong direction.

  Mom and Coco were in Mom’s car and busily arranging themselves. They hadn’t seen the bodies.

  Wordlessly, I got into the driver’s seat, then slid the Escalade’s shifting knob into reverse, and we were on our way.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When she woke up it was still dark outside. The girl rubbed her eyes and saw him standing by the side of her bed, tall and fully dressed in a dark jumpsuit and matching baseball cap. The coveralls looked like the work clothes some of his staff wore and, for a moment, she thought he might be one of the fellows that helped out during the day around the property. But then he clicked on her table light and she saw his face. “Up, child! Now!” her father said. “We have important things to do. Very important things.”

  He handed her a dark, thick sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants of the same color. “Put these clothes on,” he ordered.

  Later, she would remember how cold it was, especially as they walked from the main house to the stables, where her horse, Stampede, and the others, were kept. As they walked, she even thought for a second that he might be taking her riding, though he had never done so before at this time of the morning and, of course, she wasn’t wearing her riding boots, so she dropped the idea of riding. Don’t be a baby, she thought. Show him how grown-up you are. She reminded herself that he’d told her more than once what a smart girl he thought she was. She had a way of figuring things out on her own, he’d said. No, of course they weren’t going riding! They were doing something else. But maybe later, after this, she’d be able to go to the stables with Isabella, her nanny, and they’d let her brush Stampede again. That would be sooo cool.

  He wasn’t talking, her tall father, they were just walking. As he marched ahead of her she noticed that he was carrying something in his hand. It looked like a pole or a short, thick pipe. No, dummy! It was a flashlight. But it probably had something to do with the horses after all, she thought, because they were heading in the direction of the stables. Father went there a lot by himself and often stayed there for a long time.

  Her dad unlocked the long door to the stable with a metal key, then slid it open. It made almost no sound as it glided along its tracks.

  After they’d stepped inside, he slid the door closed again. Then he clicked on a switch. But no light went on. That was weird. He knew she didn’t like the dark. Then he clicked on the flashlight.

  He took her by the hand so she wouldn’t be afraid, and they walked the length of the stalls, past Stampede and Sheba and the new horse that her father had bought only last week. He’d named him Attila, and Attila was the biggest horse she had ever seen. A stallion.

  The horses were all still asleep now and Father aimed the flashlight on the floor to help them both see as they walked.

  At the very end of the long row of dark stalls they came to another door. It was really a gate and not a door.

  On the wall by the gate was a silver phone pad, like for a telephone, but there was no telephone. Father punched in some numbers and the gate made a clanking sound, then popped open.

  The light was already on and they went down some stairs.

  It didn’t smell right on the stairs. It was stuffy, and later she would remember being afraid of the odor, but knowing that he was there with her, she thought it’d probably be okay.

  At the bottom of the stairs he opened another door with the same kind of key pad that had no phone. A light came on inside the room.

  This room was like nothing she had seen before. It had some kind of padding on the walls and ceiling. Gray padding. Like pillows but not really. They were puffy and stuck out from the walls.

  Then she saw that there was a man there in the center of the room. He had no clothes on and he seemed to be asleep and there were straps on his wrists and feet and another one around his neck. He was lying on a long table, like a doctor’s-office table or an operating table on TV, only this table was made of wood and not metal.

  There were no pictures or windows in the room and the smell was stronger now, stronger than it had been on the stairs. It was like old, dirty clothes mixed with something else and it was making her start to feel sick. It smelled like poop.

  Her father closed the door and then pushed some more numbers on the keypad next to it on the wall. She heard the clunking noise again.

  Then he walked to the table where the man lay asleep.

  “Over here, child,” he ordered. “Stand on the other side of the table and face toward your father.”

  When she got to the table she thought that she recognized the man who was on it. The table was high, at the level of her shoulders, so she could only really see the side of the man’s face. He had black hair and his stomach bulged up.

  “Do you remember this fellow?” her father asked. “Look at him. Look at his face.”

  Then she remembered. She’d seen the man. On TV. He looked older now and fatter than the last time she had seen him, but she did remember him. “That’s Matt something,” she said. “I remember him. He used to be on that show. He used to come here with his friend, the bald man, and you all used to go to the screening room and watch movies. Right?”

  “That’s right, Sydnye. It’s Matt Hauser,” her father said.

  Then she laughed. “I remember! I remember that he fell asleep that time while we were eating pizza at the restaurant by Paradise Cove. That was strange, Father.”

  Her father nodded. “Good. Excellent memory. Very commendable. Yes, I recall that incident as well. Matt made a fool of himself that day. Did you know that Matt’s real name isn’t really Matt, child. It is Miguel. Miguel Herrera. I once produced his TV series. It was several years ago, when you were small. He was an actor on TV at that time. I helped him make a lot of money, but then he spent it all. Now all Miguel does is get drunk and smoke crack cocaine and go to jail for assault. Last night he came here in his car. To our home. He was intoxicated. He wanted money. I gave Anthony, at the gate, permission to allow him in. Then Matt fell asleep in his car, in front of our home. Before he fell asleep he rang the bell several times but I gave instructions for no one to admit him. Matt is what I call a misanthrope, Sydnye. That means he’s a fool. A mistake made by nature. Matt is human rubbish. Wastepipe rubbish. He is useless human rubbish. He’s asked your father for important favors before and then falsely claimed that he didn’t recall making the requests. So Matt is rubbish and Matt is also a liar of the worst kind. But today Matt will remember. He’ll remember everything because I’m going to show him how to remember. Today is a special day for you, my child. It’s a beginning. Today you will learn some of the things that your father has known for a long time—since he was your age. Special secrets, Sydnye. You are ten years old now and it is time that you learned.”

  Her father picked up a blue bottle from the table and poured some of what was in it on to a piece of cotton, then he held the cotton over Matt Hau
ser’s nose.

  Matt woke up right away. He looked confused and then, pretty soon, he looked afraid.

  Father took a piece of thick cloth out of the pocket of his overalls and pushed the cloth into Matt’s mouth as Matt was trying to say something. Matt pulled on the straps at his hands and feet, but then he knew—he understood—that he couldn’t move. He was strapped down tight. Her father was smiling.

  “Now Matt’s ready, Sydnye. Now it’s up to us to show Matt the things he must learn. Matt must learn pain, my child. He must learn to beg for his life. He must be taught the elegance of suffering. Your father knows the ways of suffering and how to administer pain. Soon Matt will beg your father. He will scream that he is sorry. He will scream and scream. But I will not hear him, because he is weak. And weakness is sickness, Sydnye. You see, my child, today you will begin to learn the special things that I know. I make that a promise to you. I will teach you my secrets, special things. Important things. We, you and I, will share those things together. There was once a great man named Nietzsche. He once wrote, ‘To live is to suffer—to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’ Today, you will begin to understand the meaning in suffering. The suffering of others.”

  Then her father motioned for her to come to his side of the wooden table. He unbuttoned his work suit, then pulled it down below his waist. He was smiling.