Jamal Jefferson moved into the main house, and Didier was moved to one of the guest houses, becoming a sort of major domo, looking after the wine cellar, advising the chatelaine on art purchases, trotted out for dinner parties to regale her entourage with his invented stories of growing up in the bush of Ivory Coast.
The Velcro heiress never knew that he had been a drug dealer, let alone the Minister of Economics and Finance for the Republic of Upper Volta. As far as she was concerned, he was an affable African art dealer who liked to have a good time, knew about food and wine, spoke impeccable French and colorful English, and kept her happy in bed. At least until the basketball player showed up and he was moved to the bench.
Didier knew that his days as a hanger-on in Nancy Nemeroff’s compound and life were numbered. He was a court jester whose job it was to entertain her and her guests. Worse, she had taken to lending him out to her friends. He didn’t mind being a drug dealer, but he drew the line at being a whore.
He considered his next move. This time, money was a major factor, since he had fled France with enough cash for only a year, maybe two if he stretched things. All he had was a couple hundred thousand in the bank—no pensions, no social security, no medical insurance. Now, he didn’t need a front business to shelter income; he needed income to survive the twenty—if he was lucky—years in front of him.
Didier decided to stay in Palm Springs. The clean desert air and hot, dry climate agreed with him. The city was full of older wealthy people, refugees from Los Angeles, and New York, in search of a sybaritic lifestyle. They had money and leisure, two attributes that made them a promising market.
The art business once again was an obvious choice. This time, however, he would actually have to make money at it and not merely launder illegally earned cash. The city was full of galleries, most of them pedestrian—the kind of paintings you hung in your desert pastel den, sculptures you planted outside in your succulent garden. He needed an angle, a specialty, something that would distinguish him from all the other art dealers in town.
It was Jamal Jefferson who gave him the idea. The ex-Laker was going through an African roots phase. He had started to wear a dashiki and play drums.
“What tribe you from, man?” he asked Didier one day.
It took Didier a moment to remember. “Ashanti.”
“You like speak Ashanti and shit?”
“Well, not really anymore. I used to.”
“You ought to go back there and rediscover your roots, man. My people are from Kenya. I got like Maasai ancestors. That’s why I’m so tall, see. The Maasai were warriors. They kicked ass. Big time.”
Of course. Why hadn’t he seen the next opportunity? It was right in front of him. He would import African art. It would sell, and not just to blacks rediscovering their roots, but to all those people looking for things to put in their sunken living rooms to show how interesting they were.
When Didier looked into it, however, he discovered that the authentic stuff was no longer being exported. African governments, in their desire to rediscover their “Africanness,” had decided not to let their heritage migrate out of the country and had put limitations on what you could take out. Customs officials at airports from Lagos to Lomé had been trained to recognize authentic Benin bronzes, Yoruba masks, and ebony fertility sculptures.
But then he had a better idea. Why smuggle the real stuff? It would be the usual daisy chain of payoffs, all those unwanted partners who could blow the whistle on him at any moment. Besides, how many people in Palm Springs, California, could tell the difference between an authentic pre-Colonial fetish sculpture and something manufactured and aged to look like one?
He would make imitations of authentic pieces and sell them as the real thing. He would stay below the radar by keeping his prices low enough that his clients wouldn’t bother with appraisals. He had the market; now all he needed was the supply. And cheap labor.
The cheapest labor this side of Bangladesh was actually not far from Palm Springs. They weren’t all working in the casinos. The Cahuilla Indian tribe had a reservation nearby and their own native craft racket going. They were undoubtedly skilled at creating authentic works of Native American art, so why not African?
Didier had to do a number of things in preparation for launching his new business. He needed to find the right Indians. He needed to learn everything he could about African art, so he could talk a good game. And he needed to locate affordable gallery space, not to mention a place to live.
The gallery turned out to be a converted shoe store on the northern end of Palm Canyon Drive, and the condo in a complex less than a mile away. He wanted to be within walking distance or a short cab ride to the gallery. He had never bothered to get a driver’s license—a superfluous document in1960s Upper Volta and a luxury in France that he had decided he could live without.
Paradise Gardens, thirty-five units, each with its own patio, was affordable and well located for him. He put a 10 percent down payment on a $350,000 unit and moved in. Two months later, he was selling African art made by Cahuilla Indians in a converted garage in Cathedral City and attending meetings of his condominium complex’s homeowners’ society. And he had his eye on a woman.
The first time Didier Onyekachukwu saw Marcy Gray had been late at night, watching a very bad movie on his television. He was jolted out of his stupor by a pair of eyes staring out at him from the fifty-two-inch flat screen on his wall.
She was in bed with an actor whose name he couldn’t recall, staring across the man’s bare chest, through the cigarette smoke, right out at Didier in his condo in Palm Springs, as if to warn him to stay away. She was damaged.
Two days later, unloading groceries from his taxi, he saw her again—at least twenty years older, but still striking—getting out of her car with a small dog in her arms. The dog growled at him.
“Seien Sie ruhig, Klaus,” she said, quieting the dog.
“He is just being gallant,” Didier said. “When a man has the attentions of a beautiful woman, he doesn’t like to share them.”
He walked over, subdued the dog with a commanding scratching of the ears, and introduced himself.
“Didier Onyekachukwu, at your service, madame.”
Thirty minutes later, they were sitting on her patio, surrounded by suffering plants and sharing a bottle of Bourgueil that he had brought over from his modest wine cooler—a luxury from Costco that he had permitted himself.
It didn’t take him long to appraise her surroundings and realize that she was not going to be a customer for his African art business. There was nothing displayed of any value or taste. But there were a number of framed photographs of Marcy Gray with actors he recognized. And a modest statuette.
“That was a SAG award for Best Guest Actress on a Drama Series,” she explained. “Quincy, M.E.”
“And you are still acting, I hope.”
She smiled, lapping up the flattery like a starving kitten. “That’s very kind of you to say, but the phone isn’t ringing much these days.”
“Nooooo.” He painted incredulity on his face.
“I’m afraid so. There’s very little work for . . . mature actresses.”
“You see, that’s the problem with this country. Americans do not appreciate women in the full ripeness of their beauty. In France, they have an expression, une femme d’un certain âge. It’s meant as a compliment—a little vague, suggestive, exotic . . .”
“I wish I spoke French. It’s such a beautiful language.”
“Would you like lessons?”
“Really?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
The next time he saw her was at one of those ridiculous homeowners’ association meetings to discuss maintenance problems. This time it was mold. He had no idea what mold actually was, besides the topping on aged cheese. In this country, they hired exterminators to destroy snails instead of cooking them in butter and garlic.
She looked particularly alluring that night, wearing a
pair of reasonably snug-fitting leopard skin slacks and two-inch heels that added to her natural grace. She knew how to make an entrance, coming into the multipurpose room as if she anticipated that all eyes would be on her.
In addition to Didier’s eyes, she attracted the attention of a man whom he had noticed before sitting at the pool reading magazines and looking as if he was just about to drop off to sleep. The night of the mold meeting, the man interjected himself into a tête-à-tête he was having with Marcy Gray. She introduced him as Sammy Dee, from New York. Though he claimed to be half-Jewish, Sammy Dee reminded Didier of the Corsicans he had dealt with in Nice, with rough-hewn features set off by delicately groomed hair and nails.
It was clear that Sammy Dee entertained an interest in Marcy Gray as well. Without the slightest bit of encouragement, he invited himself to join the French lessons Didier had proposed for her. Two days later, he showed up for lunch at Marcy’s place, dressed like a Boulevard des Italiens pimp.
They ate crab salad and drank white wine as Didier sprinkled French words on the table and did his best not to cringe when they mangled the pronunciation. The two men lobbed little conversational hand grenades at each other.
The Italian claimed to be retired from the cement business. That Didier could believe. He had about as much charm as a slab of concrete. Conversation was more of a trial than an art with him. But he hung around long enough that Marcy finally excused herself to take a nap, effectively throwing them both out.
After that lunch, it seemed that every time he was making a move with Marcy, Sammy Dee showed up. Worse, he took her out to dinner, and Didier had to ambush them as they staggered home from the parking garage, tipsy with wine, and thwarted what was clearly going to be some sort of consummation.
In his days as Minister of Economics and Finance of the République de Haute-Volta, he could have dealt with a rival by having the colonels stick him in prison for twenty years. When he was in the drug business, he could have, for a price, had the Corsicans dispose of him. But now, he didn’t know who to contact to get the job done.
Didier had no doubt that there were people in Southern California, if not in Palm Springs, that you could hire to deal with this kind of problem. If there were people who removed mold and snails, there must be people who removed people.
The solution to his problem came through an open window. Didier was out on his patio one afternoon, snoozing in his hammock. It was a Monday, a day off from his gallery, which he had named “Afrique Ouest.” He had hired someone to run it for him, a post–middle-aged pédé named Clive who, Didier hoped, would bring his friends in to buy art. Clive’s friends came in, hung around, gossiped and talked about how “arresting,” how “primitive” the art was, but they didn’t buy any.
The immediate neighbor to his right was a former movie producer named Charlie Berns. He was not particularly interested in African art, but he was friendly enough and apparently the only other straight male in the complex under eighty, besides Didier and the Italian.
Lying in his hammock, hovering on the edge of sleep, Didier heard the gravelly voice of Sammy Dee coming through the window of Charlie Berns’s condo. Who keeps a window open in 104-degree heat? He was asking the producer about the movie business, specifically about a film he had made about a mafia contract killer. He wanted to write a novel, he explained.
A book? The man could barely talk. How was he going to write a book? A thriller about the cement business? But what Didier heard next changed everything. Charlie Berns gave Sammy Dee a telephone number, supposedly of an actual hit man he had contacted for research on a movie. The number implanted itself in his mind, lodged there like an errant strand of mango between his teeth.
He woke up with the telephone number in his teeth every morning and went to bed with it at night. More often than not, he would wake up at 4:00 a.m. with it, and during those sleepless hours before dawn, he would permit himself to consider how far he might go to get rid of his rival.
Besides being an impediment to Didier’s romantic plans, the man was of no use to anyone. The Italian had no friends, no family, no job. He did nothing but take up space. The Finnish lesbians accused him of being cruel to their cats. Klaus barely tolerated him. What kind of person was disliked by dogs and cats?
The art gallery wasn’t thriving. He had managed to sell a few pieces of his locally manufactured “authentic” African art to his neighbors at Paradise Gardens, but not enough to make up for his costs.
The boat was taking on water, and he couldn’t bail fast enough to stay afloat. His best—maybe his only—shot at this point was the actress. She could be his life raft. Perhaps she wasn’t a Velcro heiress, but she had to have social security, some sort of pension, friends with money, maybe even a little property somewhere. They could move in together; she could help him sell his art. It would all work out splendidly. If only he could get rid of the strand of mango stuck in his teeth.
Who would miss Sammy Dee? Not Marcy Gray, he hoped. À la limite—she might mourn for a couple of days, at most a week or two, and then welcome Didier with open arms. He would emerge the victor and claim his spoils.
Didier wrote 1-800-XTERMIN, the number he had heard through Charlie Berns’s open window, on a piece of paper and put it in the hollow penis of a Yoruba fertility fetish on his mantelpiece. The disturbing strand was no longer stuck between his teeth. It was out, loaded and ready to fire. The next time the Italian got in his way, he was a dead man.
IV
SAMMY
Acme Exterminating and Patio Decks sent Sammy Dee an envelope in the mail. Inside he found a construction contract for a rebuilt deck, a demand for an initial payment of $10,000 for “equipment and materials,” and a line asking for a co-signer. All of this was to be signed, notarized, and delivered in person to the same car wash on Bob Hope Drive where he had handed over the $5,000 for the initial “appraisal.”
Attached to the contract was a page of legal boilerplate. There was a paragraph that stated that “in the event that the signer is unable, for any reason, to fulfill the contractual obligations stipulated above, the co-signer assumes full responsibility thereof.”
Sammy had never seen anything like that in a construction contract. Unable for any reason? Like if he died? Between now and Christmas? Was this a threat? Or a promise?
On the golf course, they had made it clear that the patio deck bullshit both created a front and established grounds for them to pursue you legally if you backed out on the deal. They could go to court with evidence of services rendered. And your only defense would be telling the judge that you wanted a hit, not a new deck.
Sammy knocked on Marcy Gray’s door in the late afternoon, the construction contract in his hand. Klaus uttered his usual low growl, sniffing him through the door, and Sammy kept himself from growling back. He would have to find a way to win the dog over, but first things first.
The actress came to the door, in sweatpants, no makeup—clearly not expecting anyone.
“Sammy?” Klaus amped up the growl a few decibels. “Klaus, hör auf damit. It’s just Sammy.”
The dog slunk off to the corner of the living room, as if to say, Just give me the command, and I’ll tear this wop to pieces.
“Sorry to barge in on you, but I have a small favor to ask.”
“Sure. Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”
“No thanks.” Her coffee was awful, watery and bitter. Judging by the way her garden looked, she must have fed it to her plants.
They sat in her conversation nook, furnished with two rattan chairs and an ugly horsehair sofa and looking out on the pool, where Chris and Edie were plying a couple of middle-aged swingers with sangria.
“So how you doing, Sammy?”
“Good. Good. How about you?”
“I had to take Klaus to the vet this morning. He’s got some intestinal thing.”
“Sorry to hear that.” With any luck, it’s pancreatic cancer. Sammy put on his best sympathetic look. “So, anyway
, here’s the deal. I decided to get my patio deck redone.”
“Great. I should do it, too. Mine is in terrible condition.”
“So the thing is, they want me not only to sign a construction contract, but get a co-signer. I mean, it’s ridiculous. For a patio deck? It’s not like I’m taking out a mortgage. But nowadays, everyone’s got lawyers telling them what to do.”
“You want me to co-sign the contract?”
“I’d really appreciate it. They want someone local, and I haven’t been in Palm Springs long enough to know anyone that well. I mean, it’s nothing that you’d have to worry about. The work is only a couple of grand. There’s no way I’m not going to pay them.”
“Of course. I would be happy to do it, Sammy.”
“I really appreciate it. And just to thank you, let me take you out to dinner Saturday night.”
“I’d love to, but I promised Didier I’d go to that karaoke bar near the Marriott with him. He’s going to sing French songs. You want to join us?”
“Thanks, but I don’t sing.”
He managed to walk out without coffee and with Marcy Gray’s signature on the contract. As he passed the African’s condo, Sammy wondered if there was a way to get the deck built before Saturday night. A rush job.
When he met with Biff at the car wash to give him the signed contract and the up-front payment, he learned that his patio deck resurfacing job would start that week.
“Is it really necessary?”
“You bet.”
“I’m going to pay you the money.”
“That’s why they invented contracts, Sammy. Listen, your guy, the African? He doesn’t own a car.”
“So?”
“It makes it harder to hit him. We don’t want to do him in his home, if we can help it, and we don’t want some taxi driver as a witness.”
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