by Dan Vining
Ben flicked the stick.
“Watch this.”
The multimillion dollar toy popped a wheelie.
In the JPL employee’s dining room, Jimmy drank a bottle of water and watched as Ben attacked his five o’clock “lunch,” a can of sardines with a pull-top lid and two slices of dark rye wrapped in wax paper.
“I’m not going to eat that pear,” he said.
Jimmy took the pear.
“Rath-Steadman. Past, present, or future?” Ben said.
“Whatever you know.”
“I know everything,” Ben said, a simple statement of fact.
“Start with the past.”
“When Rath and Steadman merged in 1977, two rather interesting companies were lost and one rather uninteresting company was born, producing a particularly undistinguished series of spectacularly successful airplanes.”
Jimmy took the first bite of the pear. Ben eyed him, as if he now regretted giving it up.
“Presently,” Ben said, “R-S is in a becalmed patch of sea, captained by Kurt Rath, who is a real son of a bitch, to use the technical term. As for the future, all eyes are on the sky . . .”
It was a joke. Jimmy didn’t get it.
“The war with the birds . . .”
Jimmy still didn’t get it.
They took Ben’s car, a dust-white twenty-year-old Honda Civic. Ben cut across Pasadena and then up through La Canada/Flintridge. He was a shortcut kind of guy, a surface street guy. He made fifty right and left turns in the twenty-m ile trip, maximizing the torque in each gear, sometimes violently downshifting as he yanked the car around a turn, all while Persian music squeaked out of the Honda’s cheap speakers, snake charmer’s music to the untuned ear, and too loud to talk over.
Jimmy held on, his head under the lowered cloud of the torn headliner. They came down Sepulveda from the north, faster than the cars on the adjacent freeway, right and left and right and left down into Van Nuys to an industrial park.
One last turn and they were on the tarmac of Van Nuys Airport.
“You have a plane?” Jimmy said.
Ben threw open the doors of a hangar. There was an experimental plane hardly longer than the Civic with an odd wing configuration, two place, prop aft.
“I built it. In my garage,” Ben said as he yanked away the blocks and shoved it toward the doorway.
The light plane had power. There was some chatter on the radio as they came up the runway, fast.
“It’s the same model as John Denver’s,” Ben yelled to Jimmy as he pulled back on the stick and the plane leapt into the sky. “That seems to impress some people.”
They crossed the city. What would have taken an hour and a half down below took ten minutes. They fle w over the Rath-Steadman headquarters, the parking lot where Jimmy had burned up the last hours of last night. It was late afternoon and the light and the distance and the angle made everything look good, the shining buildings and rolling, green manmade hills around them, even the refinery, Oz in this light.
Ben banked right, a steep turn, and they were facing the dropping sun. As they approached the coastline, Ben looked down, shouting over the noise.
“See any B-One-R D’s?”
“What?”
“B-1-RDs.”
“What?”
“Birds.”
Jimmy looked over the side.
Below was a grim expanse of what once were wetlands, a broad section that fed, in a few flashing waterways, into the Pacific. It was a landscape dotted with abandoned tuna boats and decaying pleasure craft and a few figures too far off to read.
Jimmy’s eyes darkened.
“Last wetlands in the South Bay,” Ben yelled. “Rath-Steadman wants to build RS-20s here. Buddy of mine has been doing a little stealth air-mapping for them. Immense plant, no more wetlands. Look for the PR campaign to start soon. ‘Birds for Jobs! ’ ”
Ben pushed the plane into a wild, diving turn.
“I like birds,” he shouted, “but I’d bet on Rath-Steadman . . .”
The little aircraft spiraled down over the cluttered wetlands for an up-close view.
A man in a peacoat and watch cap looked up, a gasoline rainbow at his feet.
EIGHTEEN
It was on Western the block above Third, a storefront church with services in Spanish and Korean depending on the night, formerly an adult bookstore, next to a new adult bookstore. Through the open doorway, twenty folding metal chairs, a low stage, a plywood pulpit. A Fender Stratocaster leaned against an amp. It was the end of the day and hot and the Wednesday night services wouldn’t begin for another hour but a few people were already in place. A seven-year-old girl in a dress the color of cotton candy played scales on the upright piano.
Jimmy and Angel were out front on the sidewalk.
Jimmy started by telling him about The Airplane People.
“Red Steadman owned the building the murdered boyfriend’s business was in, a flight school. I think somehow Danko got mixed up in some Steadman business and they killed him and Elaine Kantke for it.”
“I thought it was about disco,” Angel said. “What? Mixed up in what?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s all a long time ago,” Angel said. “I don’t see how any of it matters now.”
Jimmy had an answer for that.
“Rath-Steadman wants to build a new plant down in South Bay,” he said. “On some wetlands. That’s the link to today.”
He waited before he said the next.
“It’s down at The Pipe.”
Jimmy let it sink in. Angel’s eyes darkened the same way his had when he’d looked over the side of the little plane.
A skinny preacher got off a bus and walked toward them up the sidewalk carrying a white-cover Bible the size of a cake box. He rolled his hand across Angel’s back as he passed, not wanting to interrupt what might be a witnessing.
“So that’s the link with Sailors,” Angel said.
“I guess.”
“They want it to happen or don’t want it to?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said.
Angel shook his head. “Are you still seeing them?”
“Not since the chase in the park.”
“What about the German woman?”
Jimmy shook his head.
Inside the church, someone played a brash chord on the guitar. “What about Jean?” Angel said as it blew on down the sidewalk.
“I still haven’t seen her.”
“Why is that?”
“I stopped calling her, stopped going by.”
“Why?”
There was a billboard down the street behind Angel for some movie that had opened and closed a month ago. Now it was peeling in the weather. The stars, man and woman, beamed toothy grins out at Jimmy, in their confidence just about the most pathetic faces on the street.
“I knew your guys were watching out for her.”
“Go to her,” Angel said. “Tell her her daddy didn’t do it and whoever did is probably long since dead. Whoever did it and for whatever reason.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Get her in the now,” Angel said.
“I’m trying.”
“Get yourself in the now.”
Jimmy smiled. “I’ve never had much luck at that.”
“Then you can maybe see what there could be with her. You could use some love in your life.”
“I already got you,” Jimmy said.
The music inside started, drums, piano and guitar.
“You wanna come in?” Angel said.
Jimmy shook his head.
Angel pulled him close for an embrace, then pushed him away.
“Con dios.”
Jimmy started toward the Mustang down the street.
“ ‘Someday this wall shall crumble, tumble and fall . . .’ ” Angel called after him.
Jimmy turned. “What book of the Bible is that from?”
“Los Lobos,” Angel said.
Ike’s wa
s dead and Scott wasn’t behind the bar.
Jimmy drank a beer. The handful of people who were there all had the same guilty look, embarrassed that they’d not known what everyone else apparently had known, that tonight you didn’t go to Ike’s.
The cop Connor came in. He was out of uniform, wearing his out-of-uniform uniform, a starched Brooks Brothers button-down shirt with the tail out over ironed, creased jeans.
“Nobody’s seen him,” Connor said. “His neighbor said he didn’t come back last night, after his shift.”
They were talking about Scott.
Jimmy turned around on the stool to face the bar, but avoided the image of himself in the mirror that was waiting there.
“What the hell is going on?”
“It’s getting close,” Connor said. “People are getting stressed. Let’s go look for him.”
Jimmy put some money on the bar and got up.
Then Jean came in. Angel and two of his men were behind her. The bodyguards were Hispanic. Big arms. Angel saw Jimmy and Connor, tipped his chin up to say hello. He and his men took a table out of the way as Jean came to the bar.
Connor stepped away to leave them alone. He went over to the jukebox. After a minute a saxophone piece started, so sentimental and blue the few people in the place turned to look, wondering if it was meant to be a joke.
“I was thinking about you all day,” Jimmy said to Jean. The way he said it didn’t have all that much romance in it.
She nodded in a way that meant she’d been thinking about him, too, and maybe the other way.
“I called,” she said. “Then I thought you might be here.”
“I came by a few times,” Jimmy said. He came by once.
“I’ve been staying in a hotel. I found myself leaving all the lights on at home,” she said.
“Come stay with me.”
He didn’t say anything else.
She nodded.
He was still standing. He looked over at Connor.
“We have to go see about a friend of ours,” Jimmy said. “We’ll come back for you here.”
“Can I come with you?”
Maybe it was time.
They left Angel’s truck and Connor’s red Corvette in the lot behind Ike’s and the four of them took the Mustang, Jean and Connor in the tight backseat. The traffic was light, even down the Strip. Angel’s friends followed closely in a low-slung Chevy for a block or two then flashed their lights and peeled off.
Scott’s apartment was on Doheny Drive at the corner of Elevado three or four short blocks up from Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, a cool white tower ten stories tall, lights in the landscaping shining on its face.
Jimmy stayed behind the wheel while Angel and Connor got out. Connor rang the bell downstairs and waited. Angel looked over at Jimmy, then got out a ring of keys and unlocked the outer door and went in. They all had each other’s keys.
Jean took this in, put it with the other things she’d learned that deepened the mystery.
“Scott is the bartender at Ike’s. He didn’t come in today.” Jimmy didn’t turn around when he spoke to her, didn’t even look at her in the mirror. “Nobody’s seen him since he left work last night. A neighbor said he’d looked a little shaky the last few days.”
Jean just looked at the back of Jimmy’s head.
Angel and Connor came out. Connor stepped into the backseat again, Angel got in front.
Angel shook his head.
“Maybe we’d better—”
“Yeah, I know,” Jimmy said and put it in gear.
He made a U-turn on Doheny and then a left on Santa Monica Boulevard, drove past The Troubadour, then across West Hollywood into Hollywood.
To the foot of the Roosevelt Hotel.
And the Walkers.
This time there were dozens of them in clusters in the alleyways in the three blocks around the hotel, the men (and a few women) Boney M had wanted Jimmy to be reminded of from that perch up on the roof.
They never stopped moving, Sailors ashore forever. They wore whatever they wanted, whatever they had. They lived on the street or in a few hotels the other Sailors kept open in an act of kindness. And fear, fear that any Sailor could end up with the same dead look in his eyes, the same lack of purpose—either for good or for bad—that was in their shuffling movements. This was the worst the worst Sailors could wish on you, what they could threaten you with, what they could hold you out over a precipice and make you see, what they could drive you toward, what they could hand you instead of death. It was a mystery how it happened but some Sailors saw something that made them fold, made them shuffle like this, made them walk. Death would be a step up.
Jimmy drove slowly past one knot of men.
“Did the kid come back?” Angel said to Jimmy.
“No,” Jimmy said, knowing Angel was thinking maybe Drew was down here, too.
“Stop,” Connor said. “There.”
“Scott’s not here,” Jimmy said.
There was a man apart from the others who was probably Scott’s age, who at least looked up at the Mustang. He was dark with filth. He didn’t look like anybody anyone could recognize anymore.
“That’s not him,” Jimmy said.
“Let me check,” Connor said.
Jimmy stopped and they let him out and the cop walked over to the blackened man.
“He couldn’t have fallen that far in a day,” Jimmy said.
Then he remembered Jean in the backseat.
Jimmy turned to look her in the face. She had that world-hurt face again, but brave, taking her medicine. He felt ashamed of himself for not having the courage to tell her a better, easier version of the truth of who he was.
Connor came back. He got into the backseat beside Jean. She could smell the men on him.
Connor shook his head.
“He’s not with them,” Angel said.
“I believe I just said that,” Jimmy said.
He sped away from the men, faster than he meant to.
“What about his old place?” Connor said.
Jimmy nodded.
When you were one of them, you knew everyone’s story, how It had happened. Five years before this night, Scott had put a bullet in his head. His boyfriend had died exactly a year earlier.
And now here was the apartment building where they’d lived together. It was a twenty-unit four-story box of a design duplicated all over L.A., screaming seventies! The front was all glass, the foyer two stories tall. A long light fixture hung from the ceiling looking like an protoplasmic explosion. It was on a street called North Rossmore, a transitional street, also duplicated all over L.A. A block north was a golf course edged with million-dollar houses, a block south the last funky half mile of Hollywood.
Jimmy tried a key in the glass door of the entryway. They’d changed the locks. Angel came around from the side of the building. “Over here, door into the garage.”
Jean came with them this time. They all went down some steps and in through the garage. They came out into the entryway where the mailboxes were and the elevator.
Angel hit the button. They rode up, not talking.
Jimmy knocked on the door to the apartment. There wasn’t any sound from inside. A stereo thumped somewhere down the hall, or maybe it was just someone thudding a fist against the common wall.
Jimmy was about to try his key when the door in front of him was yanked open.
A man with bugged out eyes.
“Just leave it!” He was what they used to call a hype. “Just leave it, man!”
Jimmy asked the wired man if anyone out of the past had been by the apartment that night. He got the door slammed in his face. The pounding down the hall stopped, took a breath or two, started again.
Angel was ready to go but Connor, who had cop instincts, who remembered things other people didn’t, looked at Jimmy and shot his eyes up toward the ceiling, the roof. They were on the fourth floor. There were stairs up.
The door at the top was
jammed. Angel put a shoulder against it and it opened and the four of them came out onto the roof.
The building wasn’t deluxe enough for any decking or patio furniture or umbrellas, or tall enough to offer much of a view.
While Angel and Connor stepped off in different directions, Jimmy went over to the edge and looked down at the traffic on Melrose. There was a car double-parked in front of a restaurant, five cars behind it, honking, nobody willing to give in and pull around it in the open inside lane. Across Rossmore and down a ways was the Ravenswood with its neon rooftop sign, where Mae West had lived out her life. Next to that, the El Royale, where George Raft had kept a bachelor’s pad.
Jean came up behind Jimmy, put her arms around him.
He didn’t expect it. Later, when he thought about it, maybe when he thought about it too much, he remembered it feeling in the moment like she was holding someone else.
“Jimmy,” Connor said.
Angel had found Scott at the other edge of the roof, sitting cross-legged, his back against a TV antenna.
Jimmy left Jean and went to him. She stayed where she was.
The three men stood over their friend a moment and Jimmy said something and Scott nodded. Angel squatted beside him. Jimmy crouched down and offered his hand. Scott took it and they held hands that way a moment. Connor seemed to stand guard, though against what wasn’t clear.
Jimmy pulled Scott to him and said things into his ear in a voice so low Jean couldn’t hear any of it, just as it had been with the kid Drew standing in the middle of the canyon road, trying to put it together, eyes on the moon.
More questions than answers.
There was a fuzz around the green letters on the El Royale sign and, up Vine, the Hollywood Hills were wrapped in something. Maybe it was going to rain overnight. But the weather had gone a little haywire. No one was predicting anything with much confidence.
What was going on?
Even she felt it, that everything was lurching toward something, not out of control exactly, just out of our control, in the control of something very very basic, like a car coming down out of the hills on a rain-slicked street.