The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “Actually,” she said, “I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Petty said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “And I don’t even know why you’re here now. Does it make you feel better about yourself or something?”

  “You’re my daughter,” Petty said. “I want to see you as much as possible.”

  “Please,” Sam said. “Pretending we’re any kind of family, that we ever were, is such a lie, and I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna be a liar like you and like my mom.”

  So no Cancún. In fact, no trips at all after that. And the phone calls ended, too. Sam stopped taking them, so Petty stopped making them. He got by on updates from his mom and continued to send money to Sam through her until she told him that Sam wanted him to donate the cash to a cat rescue organization instead. Over the years he’d managed to convince himself he’d done the best he could by her—better than her mother, anyway. He’d never considered forcing the relationship, didn’t feel he had the right, but he’d always hoped she’d reconsider things someday and at least give him a call.

  “Is there a Jacuzzi at this new hotel?” Tinafey asked him.

  “Probably,” Petty said. “It’s a nice place.”

  “I like a Jacuzzi,” Tinafey said.

  She started to say something else but froze, open-mouthed, and stared out the window.

  “What’s wrong?” Petty said, turning to see what had caused her to stall out.

  “Bo,” she said and slid low in the booth.

  And there he was, hurrying down the sidewalk like he had somewhere to be. Petty watched him until he passed from sight, then said, “Okay, he’s gone.”

  “I got to get out of here,” Tinafey said.

  “We’ll leave right after we eat,” Petty said.

  “I mean out of here, farther than that hotel.”

  “You have any place in mind?”

  “I’m gonna go back to Memphis for a while. I got family there, places to stay.”

  Petty guessed this was probably the smart thing for her to do, but he wasn’t looking forward to saying good-bye. He hadn’t met a woman like her in a long time. She was funny and sexy and knew what was what. He could relax around her, didn’t have to lie about what he did and the circles he ran in. And she was nice. Genuinely nice. That was rare in his world. An idea came to him, a crazy idea, and he found himself sharing it with her before he’d thought it all the way through.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m leaving for L.A. this morning, driving down. Why don’t you come along and keep me company? We’ll get a hotel when we hit town, do some sightseeing, and you can fly to Memphis from there.”

  Tinafey closed one eye and looked at him askance.

  “L.A.?” she said. “To do some sightseein’?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Why not?” he said.

  “You’ve known me not even a day, and you already want to take me on vacation?”

  “It’s not a vacation. I’m trying to help you put some distance between you and Bo. If you don’t feel comfortable, all you have to say is no thanks.”

  “Does it seem like I can’t take care of myself?”

  “Not at all. I saw what you did to that asshole last night.”

  “That’s right, and you best remember that.”

  They paused the conversation while the waitress delivered their food. She called them honey and darlin’, and Petty wondered if her drawl was for real or a put-on for the customers.

  “Are you sweet on me?” Tinafey said as soon as the waitress left. She stared at Petty while scraping grape jelly onto her toast.

  “Maybe some,” Petty said. “You’re so cute it’s hard not to be.”

  Tinafey scoffed at this. “That’s a motherfuckin’ hustler talkin’ right there,” she said. “How long’s it take to drive to L.A.?”

  “I’ll get us there in eight hours.”

  “Your car ain’t gonna break down in the middle of the desert, is it?”

  “I just got it checked out. Everything’s good.”

  “’Cause I don’t want to be stuck out there with all those serial killers and shit.”

  Petty smiled and dug into his pancakes.

  He called Avi from the car as he and Tinafey were on their way out of town, put the phone on speaker, and told him he could shove the fishing job up his ass. Avi started in with “You ungrateful fuck” and “After all I’ve done for you,” but Petty cut him off, saying, “Hey! Hey! Remember Jersey? You’d still be living in that Corolla if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Bullshit!” Avi said. “What I have I got through my own initiative, and you’ll be calling back in a week, begging to shine my shoes.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Petty said. “I’ll eat rocks and shit sand first.”

  Tinafey laughed out loud at this and bounced in her seat.

  “Is someone listening in?” Avi roared. “Take me off speaker!”

  “Fuck you,” Petty said.

  “You’re a loser, Rowan. Nobody says it to your face, but they’re all thinking it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Petty ended the call and tossed the phone onto the dash.

  “A grown man actin’ like that,” Tinafey said.

  “Avi?” Petty said. “He’s not a man.”

  “I was talkin’ about you,” Tinafey said, then slapped his thigh to let him know she was joking.

  Petty sat back and grinned at the high desert scrub rolling past outside. The tufts of yellow grass that poked through the melting snow looked like flickering flames. He always got excited when he hit the road. It signaled that something was about to happen. Maybe good, maybe bad, but something. And that rush of possibility took the sting out of any disappointments that had preceded it.

  He was so busy enjoying the feeling that he didn’t notice the truck, the mud-streaked Ford Explorer that had been following them ever since they’d left the Sands, the one that had been keeping a careful two cars between itself and the Mercedes as both vehicles sped down the highway.

  6

  PETTY TOOK THE 395 SOUTH, A STRAIGHT SHOT ALMOST ALL the way down to L.A. The weather stayed nice, so he and Tinafey had clear views of the jagged, snow-capped Sierras to the west and the dusty desert ranges humped in the east.

  They stopped at Mono Lake and walked out to see the tufas—tall, spindly rock formations that resembled ruined castles and broken bones—but a cold wind blowing off the water and swarms of small black flies sent them running back to the car after just a few minutes. They stopped again in Bishop, for gas and lunch at a Carl’s Jr., and once more in Lone Pine, so Petty could show Tinafey Mount Whitney in the distance, crowned with wisps of cloud.

  “The tallest mountain in the contiguous United States,” he said.

  “Contiguous?” Tinafey said.

  “Not including Alaska and Hawaii.”

  “Okay.”

  “And over there”—Petty pointed east—“about a hundred miles away, is the lowest spot, Death Valley.”

  “You must have been good in school,” Tinafey said.

  “Not really,” Petty said. “You never know what’s gonna stick.”

  “The area of a rectangle is length times width,” Tinafey said. “The area of a triangle is one-half base times height. The area of a circle is pi times the radius squared.”

  “Whoa!” Petty said.

  “Don’t ask me to explain any of it, though,” Tinafey said.

  She fell asleep as they approached Mojave, curled in her seat, and didn’t wake up until Petty was getting off the freeway in Hollywood. The sun had set by then, and she blinked like a drowsy child at the lights, the traffic, the strolling crowds.

  “Hey,” she said. “We made it.”

  Petty consulted a hotel discount app and found a deal at the Loews Hollywood, two hundred bucks a night. He’d have looked for someplace cheaper if he’d been alone, but he’d promised Tinafey a nice time. The hotel wouldn’t take cash, so he put it on one of his cards
, crossing his fingers that there was enough space on it.

  Their stark black-and-gray room on the tenth floor had a view across a freeway of the Hollywood sign propped against a chaparral-covered hill. Tinafey oohed and aahed and snapped a dozen too-dark photos. Petty crept up behind her and kissed her on the neck. She purred and stretched when he reached around to cup her tits through her T-shirt, then turned and forced him to walk backward until they both fell onto the bed. She undressed him, he undressed her, and they knocked the lamp off the nightstand going at it, left it on the floor until they finished.

  Afterward, they showered and got ready to go to dinner.

  “Nowhere too nice,” Tinafey said. “I don’t have anything fancy.”

  “You look great,” Petty told her, and she did, in her tight jeans, silky red blouse, and black knee-high boots.

  “You don’t mind short hair on a girl?” she asked as she put the finishing touches on her lipstick.

  “I like it on you. You’ve got the face for it.”

  They walked across a bustling open-air shopping mall to the Chinese theater and had a look at the movie-star footprints immortalized in concrete there. Costumed hustlers worked the crowd, posing for photos in exchange for tips. Superman, Darth Vader, a princess, a raggedy SpongeBob.

  Tinafey wanted pictures with all of them, and Petty obliged. He shelled out a buck here, a buck there, pointed her phone, and said, “Smile!” Everything was cool until Edward Scissorhands demanded five dollars after previously agreeing to two. The guy got mouthy, and Petty leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t make me knock you on your ass in front of all these kids.” He gave the freak two singles and sent him on his way.

  “Michael Jackson!” “Jackie Chan!” “Britney Spears!” Tinafey walked along Hollywood Boulevard and called out the names on the pink terrazzo stars sunk into the sidewalk. “Tom Selleck! I think I heard of him.” “The Muppets!” “Chill Wills? Ha! Chill Wills? Who’s that?”

  Petty didn’t recognize most of the names himself. He’d never been interested in movies, was always too busy. He’d taken Sam to see Disney stuff now and then, Shrek and Nemo, but he usually fell asleep as soon as the lights in the theater dimmed.

  Still, this was his first time in Hollywood, and being in the thick of things was kind of exciting. The touts hawking bus tours to the stars’ homes, the music blasting out of the tourist bars, the toy Academy Awards arrayed in souvenir-shop windows. He enjoyed a cheap thrill as much as anybody, and it was good to get out every once in a while and rub elbows with real people, somebody besides gamblers and hustlers.

  There was a thing going on at one of the theaters, an event that involved limousines, a red carpet, and a cadre of photographers. Tinafey pulled Petty through the throng of onlookers until they reached the metal barrier that separated the public from the arriving celebrities. From there she scrutinized the stars as they slid out of shiny town cars and Escalades, gasping with excitement when she saw anyone she recognized.

  “Angie! Angie!” she called to a sleek redhead in short shorts. “She’s on that show, you know, with her sister.” Petty didn’t know, didn’t care, but as long as Tinafey was enjoying herself, he was happy.

  After a while the doors to the theater closed, the photographers lit cigarettes and packed up their cameras, and the crowd evaporated, off to the next thing.

  “Okay, now I’m starving,” Tinafey announced.

  Petty spotted a sign up the block: MUSSO & FRANK GRILL, OLDEST IN HOLLYWOOD. He and Tinafey came off the street into a hushed, high-ceilinged room with a long counter on one side and old-fashioned wooden booths on the other. Petty liked what he saw: spotless white tablecloths, red-jacketed waiters. The smell of meat grilling and potatoes frying set off a primal rumble in his stomach.

  The maître d’ pointed them toward a bar in a second dining room, said he’d have a table shortly. A wizened gnome of a bartender smiled from behind thick glasses and asked what they’d like. Tinafey had a glass of wine, Petty Johnnie Black.

  “This is nice,” Tinafey said.

  “Old-school,” Petty said.

  “Like you,” Tinafey said.

  “You from out of town?”

  The guy asking was a short man with a barrel chest. He wore a bright yellow jacket over a sky-blue button-down, faded jeans, and canvas deck shoes with no socks. Somewhere north of sixty, he still had a full head of suspiciously black hair that was combed straight back and hung to his collar.

  “Yes, sir,” Tinafey said. “I’m from Memphis.”

  “Love Memphis,” the man said. A couple of rings flashed on his fingers when he adjusted his tinted aviators and reached for his martini. “I was stationed at Fort Campbell in 1967 and used to ride the bus down there every time I got leave. Beale Street, man. Fucking wild. It was supposed to be off-limits to the military, but I didn’t give a shit. Guys I knew got jumped, got robbed, but nothing bad ever happened to me.”

  “It’s all cleaned up now,” Tinafey said. “Mostly tourists.”

  “Everything’s cleaned up now,” the man said. “Everything’s mostly tourists. Look outside this place. You used to be able to get into trouble out there, have some fun.”

  Petty felt like he’d seen the man before. If they were anywhere else, he’d think they’d played cards together. Here, though, he suspected it was something else.

  “You ever been on TV?” Petty asked the guy.

  He sat up straighter and showed his perfect teeth.

  “Some,” he said. “Quite a bit, actually.”

  “Like, name something I’d have seen you in.”

  “Oh, man, going back? Gunsmoke, Rockford Files, Murder, She Wrote, Dr. Quinn. More recently, Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire, CSI. Features, too. Bruce Willis beat me up in Die Harder.”

  “What’s your name?” Petty said.

  “Stanley Beckett.” The guy held out his hand. “Call me Beck.”

  “Rowan Petty, and this is Tinafey.”

  “Tinafey?” Beck said.

  “Like the woman on TV,” Tinafey said.

  “Yeah, but you’re prettier,” Beck said.

  “Listen at you,” Tinafey said.

  Beck winked and sipped his martini.

  “You guys taking in the sights?” he said.

  “Sort of mixing business with pleasure,” Petty said.

  “That’s smart,” Beck said. “What do you do?”

  “Commercial real estate,” Petty said.

  Beck looked past him to Tinafey. “And you?”

  “I sing a little, dance,” Tinafey said. “I always wanted to try actin’.”

  “You’re in the right place,” Beck said. “Maybe you’ll get discovered while you’re here.”

  “That doesn’t really happen, does it?” Tinafey said.

  Petty worked on his Scotch. He was thinking about how much dough a guy like Beck made. You heard the movies paid crazy money, but you heard a lot of shit that turned out not to be true. He couldn’t tell anything from the dude’s clothes except that he might be color blind. And people dressed down anyway. The real question was how smart he was with the cash he had. Petty had gotten over on doctors, lawyers, college professors, but never an actor. It’d be a challenge, bullshitting a professional bullshitter.

  Even as he was thinking this, Petty scolded himself. Here the man was, nice as could be, telling Tinafey funny stories about the stars he’d worked with, and here he was, trying to come up with ways to rip him off. Sure, it was scary being down to, what, three grand and change now, but there was no need to panic yet, not with two million dollars possibly floating around out there.

  Tinafey asked Beck for his autograph. Beck called to the bartender for a pen. To my Memphis belle he wrote on a napkin and scribbled an ornate signature.

  The maître d’ came by and said their table was ready. Beck stood when they did. “That’s my cue to exit, too,” he said. He reached into his back pocket, looked confused, then patted his jacket. “I don’t believe it,
” he said. “I must have walked out of the house without my wallet.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Petty said, still feeling guilty for sizing the guy up as a possible mark. “I’ll get it.”

  “Hey,” Beck said. “Thanks, amigo.” He shook Petty’s hand again and gave Tinafey a quick hug. “Manny,” he called to the bartender on his way out. “This handsome devil is taking care of my tab.”

  Manny brought over Beck’s bill and set it on the bar in front of Petty. Thirty-six bucks. Turned out the dude owed for three martinis, not just one. Petty chuckled to himself. The sly fucker had played him like a fiddle.

  The maître d’ led Petty and Tinafey to a booth with a view of the dining room: the wooden beams arching overhead, the old-fashioned coatracks and chandeliers, the fancy folk going at their steaks. Something about the acoustics muted the various conversations into a genteel murmur, and the wainscoting and yellowed wallpaper imbued the light with the warm caramel sheen of aged varnish. It was a place where old men felt young and young men felt wise.

  Petty ordered a New York strip. Tinafey had spaghetti and meatballs. Everything was à la carte—the salad, the dressing, the asparagus—but Petty quit trying to add it up in his head and even had a port with dessert. He’d go back to worrying about money tomorrow; tonight would be a splurge.

  7

  THE MASSIVE SANDSTORM ROLLING TOWARD BAGRAM AIRFIELD looked like a brick-red cloud aboil on the horizon. It added extra urgency to Staff Sergeant Armando Diaz’s search for Keller. Get caught out in one of those bitches and you’d choke on moon dust and be sneezing black mocos for a week. Diaz ducked into the DFAC, but Keller wasn’t chowing down on hot dogs and Tater Tots with the rest of the troops there.