Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir)

by Gary Phillips

  "He was killed, about half a year ago. Roadside bomb hit their convoy coming into Paktika Province." She drank some. "Jeff was Army then. After he rotated out, he wanted to do something about what he'd seen over there. Something different." She shook her head. "Jeff's a ... sweetheart. He worked for CARE International delivering food and relief." She put the gin down quietly.

  "Damn. Sure sorry to hear that."

  "Lori. My name's Lori." She offered her hand and he shook it, smiling crookedly at her.

  He told her his name and for several minutes they sat side by side in a shared silence. Carlson returned after escorting the soldier outside.

  "Sorry, folks, I'm back," he announced, and moved behind the bar to fulfill his enabling duties.

  "Hey, look," Randolph said, "let me get your second G and T, okay? I'm not, you know, trying anything funny."

  "Thanks but no thanks, Avery." She'd swiveled her body toward him slightly and was touching his arm. "I better get going. Inventory tomorrow, so I've got to be in early."

  The young widow got off the stool and strolled out of the landlocked Seaside Lounge.

  "You get her number?" Carlson asked when he came back over to Randolph.

  "Kind of," the piano player answered, looking off, then readying the order of songs in his head for the next set.

  A week later, Randolph was finishing off a loud and fairly incoherent sing-along version of "Volare" when Lori returned to the bar. She was wearing a modest skirt, a shirt and sweater top combo, and earrings that sparkled in the low artificial light. Randolph banged the keys with his heel a la Little Richard for the climax, everyone clapping and laughing. He stood, breathing heavy, pumping both fists in the air to more acclaim. A patron shouted, "Right on, baby," above the din.

  "Glad you came back," he said to her. She lingered at the side of the piano, her purse atop the instrument. Normally he'd say something about that but he didn't want to break the mood-his at least. People came by and gave him pats on the back and shoulders. The brandy snifter was brimming with bills tonight.

  "Want to go somewhere, have a sandwich or something? I'm hungry."

  She leaned in closer to him. "Hungry for what?" Her smoke-colored eyes remained steady on him.

  "There's a little hole-in-the-wall place over on Cerritos," he answered neutrally, but not breaking his gaze from hers. "They have great vegetarian burritos with fire-roasted peppers. Magnifico."

  "But I like meat."

  They grinned at each other like overheated teenagers as Randolph collected his tip money. Over in the corner at her customary table, Emily Bravera sipped her martini carefully as if testing the stuff for poison, watching the couple above the rim of her glass.

  Randolph and the woman descended the outside stairs of the Seaside Lounge, which was lodged on the second floor of an aging '80s strip mall. Down on the parking lot asphalt he became aware of a familiar odor and glanced up to see Carlson the bartender taking one of his Camel breaks. He leaned on the railing, the unfiltered cigarette smoldering in his blunt fingers. Lazily he looked at them. The two men then nodded briefly at each other. Randolph walked the woman to her eight-year-old bronze Camry that had a dark blue driver's door. He gave her the directions to where they were going, standing near her and pointing off into the distance.

  "See you there." She gave him a peck on his cheek, her fingers holding onto his upper arm. Her hair was freshly washed and smelled of blueberries and mint.

  At Agamotto's Late-Nite Eatery and Coffee Emporium, they ate and talked. Lori McLaughlin was originally from Buffalo. She'd met her late husband Jeff, a local boy from Long Beach, when she'd come out to Southern California four years earlier, winding up with a job at a dog food manufacturer.

  "That's a trip," Randolph remarked. "Like big vats where the meat and whatnot is all mixed together?"

  "This place, Emerald Valley, is like the Escalade of dog food makers," she said, biting into her barbequed meatloaf sandwich. She then pointed at her food. "Good cuts of meat like this, natural ingredients, grains-they make a high-end product for trendy pet stores in West L.A. and further down south here in Orange County like Newport Beach and Lake Forest."

  "But not for its peasants here in Los Al." They both chuckled. "You have family back in Buffalo?" Randolph asked.

  She sipped some of her beer and dabbed a napkin to her mouth. "Let's just say there's a reason I came out here, putting as much distance as I could between me and that socalled family." Still holding the napkin, she squeezed his hand. "Okay?" ?

  "Okay."

  A lanky youngster in a stained apron behind the counter gave the couple a grunt as they departed. He returned his at tention to a news item on the small TV he watched, an image of Long Beach cops leaving a burglarized condo in Belmont Shores earlier that day.

  Back in Randolph's car, after she had him pull behind a closed liquor store, they made out. There was a bare bulb streaked with an oily substance over the metal back door of the establishment, and slivered fractions of the light filtered into the car's interior and over their grasping forms. Randolph had his hand over her sweater, cupping one of her breasts as they kissed. He moved his thumb across her hardening nipple. She placed one of her hands on his zipper and rubbed.

  "That feels good," he murmured.

  "This'll feel even better." She tongued his ear and unzipped him. Involuntarily, he sucked in his stomach. "I didn't catch any hairs did I, Avery?"

  "No. Lightheaded is all."

  "Mmmm." She worked his shaft and then bent down. Randolph leaned back, eyes fluttering, noting that he needed to clean his headliner. Try as he might to fixate on prosaic matters to prolong the sensation, he soon wheezed, "Hey, careful, I'm ... I'm about to come."

  She gave him a lingering lick along his penis, returning to the tip. "Uh-huh." And then she let him climax in her mouth.

  "Sweet mother of mercy!" Randolph exclaimed, grinning like a goon.

  From her purse Lori McLaughlin produced a half pint of Jack Daniel's, broke the seal, took a swig, and handed it across.

  "Remember your motto," she said as he had a taste. "Everything in moderation."

  "Most assuredly," he retorted.

  She took something else from her purse and presented it to him. "Because you're not through, piano man. You have encores tonight."

  He took the offered orange tablet of Cialis. "I'm not that old, you know."

  "I know, darling." McLaughlin had pulled up her skirt and, using her middle finger, was touching herself. He stared and said nothing. She continued this for several moments, then slipped off her light blue panties and pressed them to his face. He breathed in deep and popped the Cialis in his mouth, not bothering to wash it down with the booze.

  Two hours later, at her three-and-a-half-room apartment not far from the joint-forces base, Randolph pulled on his cigarsmoking Woody Woodpecker boxers and went into the kitchenette in search of juice or cold water. He spotted a past-due notice from SoCal Edison on the counter.

  On a book ledge crowded with knickknacks, he noticed a picture of a square-jawed, handsome lance corporal he took to be the late husband. He picked up the photo to see it better by the moonlight. The confident look of the soldier reminded him of his father, a decorated combat captain who died in Vietnam. A man he never met and only knew from Polaroids and letters his mother kept. He sighed inwardly, set the picture down, and traipsed to the refrigerator.

  Inside he found an open can of Diet Pepsi. One hand on the door, the light from inside the refrigerator casting its glow about the compact kitchenette, Randolph glanced at a print of a leafy country lane hanging on the wall. It wasn't anything special, more like the kind of mass-produced image demonstrating the virtues of the frame.

  Guzzling the soda, looking sideways at the lane, cold air blowing against his lower legs, he suddenly felt a massive, pulsing erection.

  "Magnifico," he said, proudly stalking back into the bedroom, moving his hips to let his member swing from side to side. He hummed
"Rocket Man" and sent up a prayer of thanks to the horny bastard who'd cooked up the orange tablet wonder.

  In the morning Randolph stretched, scratched his side, and rubbed his whiskered face. In the other room he could hear Lori McLaughlin talking on the phone.

  "... No, you listen to me, Karen, that's not going to happen, you understand? I won't stand still why you try that kind of shit with me."

  He got up and used the bathroom. When he stepped out, McLaughlin was sitting on the edge of the bed in her cloth robe, hunched forward, arms across her upper thighs like a player waiting to get called back into the game. He sat next her her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

  "Can I help with anything?"

  She made a sound in her throat. "I could lie to you and tell you it's nothing," she began, "but you might as well know now." She regarded him for a moment. "I was talking to my wonderful ex-mother-in-law. A woman who would make Big Bird slap the shit out of her." She chuckled scornfully.

  "This involve a child?" he asked, having also noticed last night an assortment of toys in a cardboard box in a corner of the living room.

  "Yes. My daughter Farley."

  "Farley?"

  "Jeff had a good buddy who lost his legs over there. She's just two and a half and, well, you can see I'm not exactly living the O.C. lifestyle."

  "Who is around here?" He gave her a squeeze.

  She jutted her chin in a westerly direction. "Over in Rossmoor they are. Them and their wall."

  "Screw'em," Randolph said. "They think they shit gold."

  She snuggled closer to him, putting a hand on his thigh. "Jeff's mother, Karen, has recently stepped up her alleged concern about how tough it is for me to feed and raise Farley on my own. How she can provide for her and all that. Her third husband, not Jeff's father, owned a firm that supplied some kind of guidance system for missiles. Anyway, he dropped dead of a stroke and left her sitting pretty in a mortgagefree McMansion in Irvine. That's where Farley is now." She rubbed his thigh and, eyeing him, continued, "I didn't plan on seducing you, Avery. But Karen suddenly showed up yesterday when I went to pick up Farley from the sitter after work. And, well, she demanded time with her granddaughter. She lords it over me, what with her paying for the child care and other things for Farley."

  She scooted over to her pressboard nightstand, opened a drawer, and took out a digital print. She handed it across to Randolph, who smiled at the photo of a bright-eyed toddler held aloft by her beaming mother. She took it back, lingered on it, then returned it to the drawer.

  "So I was just a way for you to blow off steam? A revenge schtupp aimed at your mother-in-law?"

  She shoved him playfully and clambered on top of him as he lay on his back, wrapping her in his arms. "How observant of you, Dr. Phil." They kissed eagerly as he undid her robe.

  On a Thursday evening several days later, they lay in bed in Randolph's apartment near the racetrack. Intermingled yells of delight and disappointment could be heard through a cracked sliding window over the bed as the last race finished.

  Randolph dialed the radio from the news on the rock station Lori had put on to the jazz station from the college campus in Long Beach. "Suddenly," a McCoy Tyner number, was in midplay. Randolph let his mind drift as the pianist-composer did his thing.

  "You bet much?" she asked, laying partially on top of him. His finger gently followed Tyner stroke for stoke on her shapely butt.

  "Now and then I go over there, but I play the ponies like I know poker, not too damn good." He began kneading her flesh, getting aroused.

  She nuzzled his neck. "What if you could make about thirty thousand on a sure thing?"

  "You know a horse doppler?"

  "I know where to get sixty, maybe seventy thousand taxfree dollars. Half for you and half for me, Avery. Between your couple of nights a week at the Seaside and substitute music teaching, you're not exactly living la vida loca either."

  He stopped rubbing and focused. "What are you talking about, Lori?"

  "Remember I told you about Emerald Valley?"

  "The dog food company."

  "The owner, Brice, he's an old hippie, still smokes marijuana, gives his money to saving the rain forest and all that crap.

  "Okay. But I'm not comprehending."

  "He has a safe in his office. He's still down with the people, don't trust the system, so he's always kept cash around, different places, you see? One of them is his office cause he's always got some burned-out acid head or old surfing bro falling by for a touch." She paused, placing her hand firmly on his chest. "Even gives it up to an ex-employee or two. I had to go see him for a loan and he's always had a thing for me. Gave me a handful of those Cialis pills, saying to leave a trail of them through the forest and he'd find his way to me. Laughing and having a good time." Her tone had frosted.

  "This about keeping Karen at bay?"

  "She told me she's going to initiate, her words, legal action. If I just show her I can afford a lawyer, she'll back down. I know how her wormy mind works. She's cheap in so many ways.

  "Why not ask Brice for a loan? Sounds to me like he'd do it for you and not sweat when you could pay him back. The good fight and all that."

  She pulled slowly on his limp penis. "Because he'd want something in return, Avery. Brice is a freak, get it? He's been in trouble in the past for beating off in his office in front of females. He'd want me to do kinky things to him regularly for repayment. Do you want me to do that?" She started to stroke him slowly. His breath got short as he grew hard. "I might be willing to be a thief, but I'm no ho."

  She continued with her handjob. "Unless you're going to bitch up. Turn your head when I have to shove a studded dildo up his ass and hear him scream `Mommy.' Make like I'm not your woman." She took his balls in her hand.

  "Not likely," he groaned, as he put his fingers to her throat and applied pressure. She gasped and he leveraged her under him.

  "Rick me rough, baby," she demanded-and he did.

  The plan wasn't elaborate. It was straightforward and text book efficient. Emerald Valley Premium Dog Foods was in a 17,000-square-foot, one-story landscaped building in a cul-desac off an industrial park not far from a 605 Freeway off-ramp. Lori McLaughlin had made a Sunday after-hours rendezvous to get the money from a thrilled Brice Hovis. McLaughlin told Randolph he'd insisted that she think of the loan as a long-term investment in her and her daughter's futures, and to come by the office to finalize the deal.

  She knew the layout of the factory, and once she got Hovis wound up, she'd explained with a sneer, she'd leave a side door to the parking lot, used by employees when they had to work overtime, unlatched.

  Dressed in overalls obtained that day from a thrift store and wearing rubber dishwashing gloves, Avery Randolph gained access to the facility at the appointed time. Inside, he quickly spotted the thin strip of light coming from the office door at the far end the plant. He eased forward on tennis shoes also purchased at the thrift store. His outfit would be burned afterward.

  Randolph passed belt feeders, tall stainless steel devices with large conical vats atop them, automated packaging stations, and heavy machinery bolted to the concrete floor with drive shafts that led to partially encased circular rotors he assumed were used to chop and grind the meat Emerald Valley turned into dog food. Stilled circulation fans were set at various strategic locations in the ceiling.

  McLaughlin had explained to him that the business, like a lot of pet food manufacturers, bought rendered meat from elsewhere that was shipped to them, along with grains and cereals from other suppliers. Randolph was pleasantly surprised that the air smelled like cheeseburgers.

  Coming to the end of a large boxlike machine on stout legs-a dryer, he could tell from its stamped label-he approached the office. He halted, shutting out all distractions, getting it together for his performance. It's all about the inbetween, man, a jazz guitarist reminded him at a recent studio gig.

  He heard Hovis moaning between whaps. The tang of marijuana
cut through the burger aroma.

  "Goddamnit, yes, oh yes, doctor."

  Randolph stepped into the light to see Hovis leaning over his desk in a stripper/nurse costume, short skirt up over a thong, with high heels and a red wig lopsided on his bald head. McLaughlin, in her underwear beneath an open lab coat, was holding a dog hairbrush, the kind with short wire bristles. She'd been using it on the man's tenderized rear end. There was a strap-on dildo and a plastic enema bottle filled with clear liquid occupying the paper-laden desk.

  Hovis straightened up and stammered, "Who ... What is this?" There was a good-sized alligator clamp dangling from his penis over the thong.

  By then Randolph, trying not to giggle too much, had covered the distance between them and squirted liberal amounts of pepper spray into the man's eyes.

  "This is not safe," the dog-food man blurted, hands grabbing at his face while he did a run-in-place dance of pain in his night nurse uniform.

  McLaughlin slugged him over the head with a smoking bong, shattering it. Hovis ran and crashed into a tall filing cabinet, knocking it and himself over.

  "Don't either one of you fuckin move," Randolph blared. He quickly tied a handkerchief around the downed man's tearing eyes and McLaughlin made sounds like she was being manhandled. Randolph tied Hovis up with cord he'd brought along and fixed a ball gag around his mouth. The man writhed and whimpered on his side, then lay still.

  "Where is it, bitch?" Randolph growled, giving it his best Steven Seagal guttural rasp.

  "I don't know what you're talking about." She slapped her thigh for effect and grunted.

  "We'll see about that. Come here, let me show you what me and that dildo are gonna do to you." He marched her out and returned after a suitable period to begin tearing up the office. He knew where Hovis kept the money, but had to sell the search.

  He kicked over a surfboard leaning in a corner. Above that, in a compartment Hovis had installed, the cash was hidden in the ceiling. "Well, what do we have here?" He walked over to Hovis and kicked him, eliciting a stifled yell. "Clever cocksucker, aren't you? Your girlfriend held out, but it's a good thing for both of you I got eyes." He slid a chair over, stood on it, and pushed up on the acoustic tile, revealing a large fishing tackle box. He pulled it down, assessed the contents, and exited the office.