by John Decure
“So we wait,” Dale said.
I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
The sound of sirens was growing now, punctuated by the occasional honk of a fire-engine horn. I craned for a look up Brand, checking for flashing lights coming our way. That’s when I saw the yachtlike Cadillac parked across the street not fifty feet away—Bobby Silver’s tacky rig, minus its tacky owner. The hair on the back of my neck bristled.
Bobby Silver was the man Angie and Carlito had dragged Rudy in to meet that first day Dale and I had come here. When Dale and I made our entrance, the pert little receptionist had known instantly that something was wrong, that even if Dale was the new chump Mr. Julian had hired, he was not the man Angie and Carlito were here to see. That meant that the receptionist knew what Bobby Silver looked like, which meant that Silver had been here before. Which might give him a reason to double back here now if the place was shutting down, as Detective Perry believed it might be.
Why else would that big boat be sitting there across the street?
Silver was in there right now. Had to be.
“Christ,” I gasped. My next few breaths came short and painful.
My legs felt like they were operating independently, and I found myself running in to the bakery to grab a stool. It was a lot heavier than it looked, with thick chrome legs and a welded steel plate under the cushion. The guy who’d been mopping started yelling something at me, but I was too fast for him and bolted back down the sidewalk, already gassed from hefting the awkward load on my hip.
“Ay, Dios mío!” a voice cried from behind as I flung the stool with everything I had and the glass front door exploded.
“J!” Dale shouted from the curb. “The smoke!” Headlights flashed behind him as traffic poured indifferently down Brand.
“I know!” I shouted lamely. Then I turned and stepped into the law center through the jagged new hole I’d just made, and instantly, everything went black.
Thirteen
In urgent circumstances the rational part of my brain typically generates a lot of noise, calculating the odds of my own imminent success or failure based on variables like speed, distance, and velocity. The size, strength, bulk, and fury of an opponent. The intent and duration of a smile on the wetted lips of the woman seated alone at the bar. The extent of my alcoholic and romantic impairment, and the likelihood of my sparklingly witty opening remark harpooning the moment. Rapid-fire counsel from a hundred tiny voices. I typically settle on the loudest voice, then make my move, buoyed by the slimmest belief—like a climber who has lost his rope but still clings to the rock—that, well, hell, at least I’ve got a plan.
Most of the time, that is. Far less frequently I will find myself diving headlong into risky situations hearing nothing but my heart’s rhythmic thud in my ears, as if the chorus of reason has gone temporarily mute. Paradoxically, these moments of seeming fearlessness scare the hell out of me because I know too well the trouble they can bring. I suppose that I am not suitably wired to be a man of action.
A mushrooming cloud of hot gray smoke clawed at my eyeballs and forced me to the floor. I crabbed past the receptionist’s desk on all fours, whacking my shin on a table leg as I passed. No fearless oblivion this time. The Big Question screamed inside my skull: Why, man, why risk your ass to save a walking douche bag like Bobby Silver? Shin throbbing, I crawled past a water cooler—oldstyle metal, the kind with a big upside-down water bottle up top—and peered into the back room.
The layout was rectangular and went deeper than I had expected. The back wall was brick with a tan metal door. It was the only wall that wasn’t burning. The long wall to my right was lined with storage cabinets blanketed in flames. Stacks of metal chairs stood before the wall to my left. Patches of fire flickered along the baseboards, but it wasn’t torching yet. Above the burning files, white ceiling tiles were going black and dropping out in sizzling chunks, but the roof above must still have been sound, because the smoke seemed to have nowhere to go.
I coughed hard and lost my breath, sucking in a lungful of overheated air. Bad idea. Crabbing in reverse now to the water dispenser, I dipped my tie in the tray, shot it with cool water, and stuffed it into my mouth. Another chunk of ceiling gave out overhead, and as I watched it fall, I spotted a pant leg dangling off a mustard sofa in the near right corner. Or at least the flames were making the furniture look mustard-colored. The pant leg belonged to Bobby Silver. As I crawled forward, I could see his distinctive shape—pointy boot tips in the air, the belt lost beneath a slab of gut, a nothing chin dropping off the face as if in its creation God had worked his way down from the top and just quit when he finished the nose—slung horizontally across the cushions. Not moving.
The water bottle was nearly full and heavy, but plastic, so I bounced and half rolled it into Silver’s corner and used it to douse the flaming cushions. Silver looked unharmed. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but in these conditions it didn’t much matter, as mouth-to-mouth was out of the question. As I leaned over to lift him, sparks shot out of a wall socket and a glass coffeemaker on a table next to us exploded, splattering us with cold water and coffee grinds.
The man was heavy like a fat man would be. No way I could carry him out on my shoulders, not with this visibility. Another section of ceiling gave way, a chunk of bubbling tile landing between Silver’s legs and igniting the couch again. I grabbed his shoulders, turned my back on the room, and dragged him backward with everything I had.
Outside, a fire truck had pulled up, and the hoses were reeling up the sidewalk. A pair of paramedics took Silver from me, rolled him onto a board, and were gone. I sat on the curb, spitting into the gutter. Staring up, I took in the view of black sky with a newfound appreciation for the vastness of deep space.
My head was spinning, so I stayed put until Dale brought help in the form of a stout female paramedic. She gave me oxygen, bottled water, and a few wet towels for my face and hands. As I started to feel better, the scene around the law center grew busier. Dale told me that the black man out front answering questions for a few local TV news crews was Tamango Perry. I figured the newspeople must have heard the calls on their police-band receivers and rushed over to cover the action. When I felt better I walked over and talked to Tamango. For a cop, he looked quite dapper in a navy suit and burgundy rep tie. He had a broad, handsome face and a buzz-cut Afro, was six-four, with a tilted posture that told you he’d been stooping to be at eye level with people all his life. My first impression was that he was friendly by nature, but with the shit detector switched on at all times. I gave him a full statement, which he took down on a small pad. Under the streetlamp’s yellow glow, the lines on his wide forehead seemed as elegant and permanent as wood carvings. When he spoke, every third or fourth syllable tripped off his tongue like a lilting dance step. I recounted all I knew about Bobby Silver, his reinstatement hearing, and what I’d seen inside the law center tonight. Tamango stopped me at times to ask questions, but mostly he listened and wrote.
“You know, you could have waited, like I asked you to,” he said finally as he closed his book.
Behind us, the fire had been put out, and the back room of the law office whispered with foul chemical smells I could not identify and creeping fingers of white smoke. Firefighters scuttled about on the sidewalk, packing up equipment. A guy who looked like the fire captain picked through debris inside. A dozen Hispanic folks, some who looked like regulars and some in white aprons, milled in front of the Cuban bakery, muttering and folding their arms tightly against the night air. A pair of uniformed policemen stood near the law center’s door, their faces stoic. Across the street, a TV newswoman’s silhouette was front-lit as she taped a segment, the smoldering office providing a dramatic over-the-shoulder backdrop.
“We did wait,” I said. “But then I saw his Caddy on the street and pretty much knew he was in there.”
Detective Perry peered up Brand in the direction the ambulance had driven twenty minutes earlier. Silver’s yacht
of a Cadillac was still there, just across the double yellow.
“The man was lucky you two came along when you did,” he said.
Dale was leaning against my car door in the street, smoking a cigarette. I thought of all those client files, perhaps all those that had his name sprinkled through them, destroyed.
“So, what now?” I asked the detective.
He shrugged. “Go home. I’ll call you when I know something about Mr. Silver.” Then he shook my hand formally. “And be careful. Please. I don’t like the looks of this fire.” Staring at the blackened facade, he stashed his notepad in his coat pocket and said good night.
Tamango Perry walked away before I could ask him what his warning was about, but a moment later the fire captain emerged from the law center’s front door, and the two stiffs in uniform snapped to life. As the fire captain and Tamango spoke, Dale walked over and stood next to me.
“How you feeling?” he asked.
“Like I cleaned out a fireplace with my tongue.”
He smiled, then cracked his knuckles, letting off nervous energy. When he asked his next question, I experienced a wave of déjà vu. “So, what do you think this, um, means, you know, for my situation, J.?”
“I don’t know. It could simplify your life, if that’s what you’re asking.” Then I frowned. “Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people whose files got torched probably got screwed by this place and have absolutely no recourse.” I shook my head. “It’s still a bad scene.”
He lowered his head. “Hadn’t thought of it that way.”
When I looked at Dale, he was straining for some stoicism, but his face practically shone with relief. “You’re probably off the hook,” I said.
“But it’s not like this is over. I’ve still got a client who’s in real trouble.”
I pictured Carmen inside my house, noticing the front door ajar, then having to give chase down Porpoise Way, Albert loping along behind her as Rudy Kirkmeyer roamed the neighborhood at will.
“We have to settle this thing with Rudy fast,” I said.
The smell of smoke and damp soot permeated my clothes. I wanted to get out of there, go home to Carmen, and forget about Bobby Silver and the law center for a while.
“Think it was an accident?” Dale said.
“I have no idea. But the detective said he didn’t like the way it looked.”
Dale motioned toward the front door. “Check it out.”
The fire captain and Tamango Perry were nodding as if some sort of consensus had been reached, their faces serious but unfazed, like men who in their daily work had seen far too much that was wrong with the world. Then Tamango turned and gave instructions to the two uniforms.
We watched the officers reel out the yellow crime-scene tape and secure the area.
At dinner, Carmen asked me about my history with Mick.
I drained my second glass of burgundy, still shaken by the fire at the law center.
“Well, certain days at the pier, there are just too many guys in the water and too few waves. So you have to share. Sometimes a guy will take more than his share. Occasionally, way more. When that happens, you’ve got to do something to maintain order. Otherwise it’s a free-for-all. Mick was known to be able to maintain order.”
Carmen picked at her green beans. “Oh, and just how was it that he was able to maintain order?” she said, emphasizing the last two words.
I glanced at Albert, but he was talking to himself in a low voice, which he often does. He wouldn’t be upset by the topic, I decided.
“Mostly through his presence alone. You know, like a police presence.”
Carmen dropped her napkin on the table. “I know all about police presence, J. They talked about it a lot in East L.A. when I was growing up.” She sipped her wine and swallowed slowly, but without any apparent enjoyment. Her face was hard looking, even in the candlelight. “There was a lot of police presence on my block. All it meant was the cops had carte blanche to take a nightstick to any brown face they didn’t like.”
“Mick wasn’t that way. He never ran roughshod over anyone just for the hell of it. He’s more of a peacekeeper. He merely ensured that a certain level of respect was maintained.”
“With what, his fists? That sounds like my father.” She sipped at her wine again. “Some peacekeeper.”
“Mick usually didn’t even need to fight,” I said, sounding ever more unconvincing. I poured myself a third glass of red, avoiding Carmen’s fixed gaze.
“So, he used physical intimidation,” she said. “That somehow makes it better?”
“I didn’t say that. I—”
“It’s the same thing with the wife beater,” she said, cutting me off. “Even when he doesn’t smack her a good one, he’s abusing her, using her fear to tie her up. Might as well use a rope, ’cause it’s no different.” She held out her wineglass, which I cautiously refilled.
I was intent on damage control at this point. “This is not like domestic violence,” I said.
“Wife beating,” she said through narrowed lips.
I felt my frustration level rising fast and had to take a moment just to breathe. “Whatever. But the fact is, at every surf spot in the world there’s a pecking order. It’s human nature to stake your claim.”
“Wrong, she said.”It’s an animal instinct to stake your claim, one that leads to violence against your neighbor, war, and death. We’re not animals. God gave us the intellect to rise above animal instincts.”
I fiddled with my wine, not drinking.
“Your friend Mickey Conlin stopped by a while ago, a little before sundown,” Carmen told me after dinner. We were in the kitchen doing dishes alone. Rudy and Dale were reclining in the living room with Albert, watching Wheel of Fortune. Every minute or so, Albert could be heard calling out a word or phrase, trying to solve the puzzles aloud.
“That why you were asking about him?”
She kept her eyes on the leftover salad, which she was covering with plastic wrap. “Maybe.”
“What did Mick say?”
“Not much. That he was just checking on Albert, to see how he’s doing.” She handed me the big pot I’d used to cook the pasta. Her lips were taut the way they had been at dinner.
“You don’t believe that.”
She moved closer and rinsed a dish; her brown eyes fixed on the tub of soapy water.
“He’s almost too concerned. I think he’s got the guilts.”
I stopped drying the big pot. “The guilts.” My tone was slightly incredulous.
She threw down the sponge.
“Oh, what difference does it make? What do I know about surfing, right? I’m just a girl from barrio East L.A. I don’t know a thing about this strange ‘code of the waves’ everybody goes by around here, you know, the one that gives a guy who lives here the right to pounce on any poor kid from out of town who takes one too many good waves. You call that ‘enforcing’? Sounds like punk thug stuff to me.”
I’d been thinking about our argument at dinner ever since it had happened. Coming from a neighborhood that was subdivided and controlled by no fewer than three street gangs, Carmen was no stranger to the territorial nature of young males. The concept of localism at the beach that I’d so lamely laid out couldn’t possibly have been new. No, I knew what was really bothering her: the sight of Albert’s bloody face coming up the walk. That’s the thing about violence; it’s usually just another abstract topic to discuss over dinner, wineglass in hand, like talking about the economy. But when you or someone you care about gets pummeled, your theories and social perspectives will be tested without mercy. And those theories and perspectives will fail and fail miserably because you cannot analyze and categorize and intellectualize the dark side of human nature with any real effect on the ultimate truth that remains. It is too immense and prevalent and elemental a thing—salvation’s gateway, God’s great gift to mankind crowned with thorns and drooping dead, nailed naked to a cross.
; But there are endless choices along the road. Sometimes you kill the insects to save the crop. Sometimes you wage war to stop a Hitler. And sometimes you fight back because the choice to not fight back is no choice at all.
“Listen,” I said, putting both hands on her shoulders, “I told you, I know Mick from way back, and he would never, ever punch out someone like … I mean, someone—”
“I know what you mean, J., someone like my brother. A gentle, sweet, trusting, helpless …” She started to cry. I put my arms around her shoulders from behind. “Kindhearted little pobrecito who wouldn’t hurt a flea,” she said, sniffling hard, her body shaking.
The past few days had ground us both down—what with my worsening job situation, Albert’s beating and subsequent foul mood, Carmen’s having to watch Rudy while Dale and I were gone for long stretches, and her unfinished business involving an invalid mother and title to the family house belonging to a longgone, no-good father. All of it hanging over us like the oppressive coastal gloom in June.
“You need some serious maintenance,” I said. “Tonight.” I kissed her up and down her neck and on her ear.
She softened in my arms. “How about an ice-cream sundae, some of those macadamia nuts?”
I nodded. Carmen is a careful, conservative eater. I’ve learned that serving her an elaborate dessert works as an excellent prelude to romance. Consuming all those extra calories makes her feel reckless, which stokes her burners.
“The whole shot.”
I flipped off the fluorescent lights overhead and pulled her even closer, kissing her face softly at first, then her lips, hands groping and squeezing as her lithe body pressed against mine. With a whisper, I suggested we try the counter tiles, but the phone rang before I could make my move. Tamango Perry.
“Robert Silver passed away,” he said without emotion. “About an hour ago.”
So much for my moment with Carmen.
By reflex, I told Tamango I was sorry, but the truth was I didn’t feel much of anything about Bobby Silver’s life being over. The only way I knew him was from the untold grief he’d caused those who had entrusted him with their legal representation. I also felt a certain burden lifting, though I knew that that was an illusion. Angie would find another Bobby Silver to assist her in fleecing Rudy Kirkmeyer—that is, if she hadn’t already.