by Rich Leder
“He’s the dumbest whale in the water,” Omar said, flinging stone after stone at Mike and his pink raft.
“Tell me about the client,” Harvey said to Mike. “What does it mean breathed life in my dog?”
Mike could feel himself having a physical, emotional, and mental breakdown. He was alone in his pool, one hundred percent vulnerable, and these men were here on bad business, unafraid to threaten him in broad daylight. As he kicked his legs to maintain his position in the center of the pool, his eyes darted around the yard. There was no way to get out of the water and away from Ishmael and Ahab without getting caught and beaten or worse. “I don’t know who she is,” he said. “I don’t know what breathed life in my dog means.”
“If you refuse to cooperate, we will kill you in your pool,” Harvey said.
“I told you; I don’t know anything,” Mike said.
“You knew without my telling you that your brother’s client was a woman,” Harvey said. “I suspect you know precisely what breathed life in my dog means. So I’m going to ask you one more time: What do your brother and Greenburg and the woman intend to do with the dog that requires me to fund the proceedings?”
“What’s it going to be, Moby Dick?” Omar said, taking his Glock out and screwing a silencer on the end of the barrel.
Mike’s eyes went wide. “For God’s sake, please. I don’t know,” he said.
“Are all fat people this stupid?” Harvey said, shaking his head with incredulity.
“I’m not fat,” Mike said.
“Shoot him,” Harvey said.
And Omar pointed the silenced weapon at Mike and, bang, shot the raft. Mike screamed, and the pink lounger deflated, leaving him treading water without his kitty.
“Are you crazy? Are you fucking crazy?” Mike said. “It’s the middle of the day.”
Bang, bang. Omar fired two shots in the water in front of Mike.
“Okay, okay, okay, okay,” Mike screamed, gulping and spitting water, struggling to keep his head up and move his arms and legs and not drown and still talk at the same time. “Her name is Jenny.”
“Jenny, yes,” Harvey said. “And?”
“And she can breathe life into the dead,” Mike said. “Greenburg is going to pay to have his dog brought back to life. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
“Am I wearing a sign that says: Ahab is an idiot? Or do you just think I’m an idiot?” Harvey said.
Mike didn’t know what to say. Bang, bang. Omar fired two more muffled shots into the pool. “Answer the question,” Omar said.
“You’re not wearing a sign,” Mike said.
“So you think I’m an idiot?” Harvey said.
“No, no, you’re not an idiot,” Mike said.
“Then why would you tell me a story about a woman who can breathe life into death when such a thing is impossible?” Harvey said.
“Because it’s the truth if it’s true,” Mike said.
“Here’s the truth if it’s true, Moby Dick. I’m going to shoot you in the head if you don’t tell us why they need the money,” Omar said.
“Please, please,” Mike said, “the dentist needs the money to pay Jenny to bring the dog back to life. She’s going to breathe on the dog. That’s all I know.”
“Melville was right all along—the White Whale is a waste of time,” Harvey said to Omar. “It should look like an accident.”
“What?” Mike said. “What should look like an accident?” He could hear the terror in his voice, the abject fear, and it surprised him to hear himself afraid for his life. He wondered if other people were conscious of how they sounded in situations like this, and then he realized that most people never find themselves in situations like this.
Omar put his gun away and scanned the immediate area around the pool. His eyes stopped on the Bose Wave plugged into an exterior outlet with an extension cord.
“Not the Bose, not the Bose,” Mike said. “I paid five hundred for it. The touch-top controls are completely invisible. It has dual independent alarms, Waveguide speaker technology. Don’t kill me with the Bose…”
Omar lifted the Bose Wave off the little poolside table and threw it into the air over the water.
Mike’s heart stopped beating and his life passed before his eyes, except the thing before his eyes was his Weber grill and backyard picnic table, and so his life with his grill and picnic table passed before his eyes—the burgers, the steaks, the pork chops and lamb chops, the hot dogs and sausages, the chicken, oh the chicken, and the potato salad, and the corn on the cob, how he would miss the sweet corn on the cob…
He could feel tears fill his eyes as the Bose fell fast to the water. He would be instantly electrocuted in his own pool only hours after being duct taped to a childhood chair in his boxers. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe in a past life he had been a bad person, and this was his karmic payback. No matter now. His life was over.
The Bose hit the water, and he tensed, waiting for the pain of the electric shock to rip through his body and fry his brain and burn his heart and kill him dead.
But as the Bose splashed down, the extension cord pulled out of the wall socket and nothing happened. Mike continued to tread water, blinking and blinking and blinking. Omar and Harvey stood poolside.
“I am Ahab,” Harvey said.
“Do you have a longer cord, Moby Dick?” Omar said.
THE BOTTOM OF BIZARRE
Greenburg was wired. He’d started inhaling cocaine the minute he got home from work. Carol and her Seuss Search and Save posse were out and about in the Valley, pasting posters on power poles and brick walls and wide windows and bus stops and pet shops, and Greenburg needed a crutch to get him through what was coming.
One poster in particular made the dentist retch with embarrassment. Carol and the Seuss Women had dressed him in a yellow bathing suit, gelled his hair straight up, put a construction paper white collar around his neck, and painted a green star on his stomach so that he looked like an emaciated star-bellied Sneetch. He had resisted with what might he could muster, but he was weak-willed and soaked with gin and posed with drunkard’s regret. The Seuss Women then photoshopped a picture of Chachi on his hind legs (begging for a treat) beside the dentist and hand-lettered the plea: we’ve lost our loveable plain-belly Sneetch. They put Chachi’s name and the reward and contact information at the bottom. Greenburg’s name wasn’t on the poster, so at least there was that.
As the dentist pulled a fresh line from the pile of white powder, the doorbell rang. He looked at the fat envelope on his office sofa, the envelope with the seventy-five thousand dollars from Pacoima Pawn and Loan, and realized he was in so deep there was nothing left to do but drown.
He went to the front door and opened it. Dan Miller, his talent-agent patient, Jenny, Dan’s client, the pretty young woman who’d murdered his goldfish and then brought it back to life, and another man he didn’t know, overweight with blotchy skin that looked like it had been recently ripped off his body, stood under the portico.
“Who’s he?” Greenburg said, gesturing at Mike.
“My brother. He handles the money,” Danny said. “Do you have it?”
“I’m not paying you a penny until my dog is barking,” Greenburg said.
“This is completely insane,” Mike said.
“Shut up, Mike,” Dan said.
“You shut up,” Mike said.
“Where’s the dog?” Jenny said, still in her sundress and sandals.
It was six thirty. Thursday’s sun was sinking in the west, and the temperature had dropped to a broiling one hundred five. Greenburg stepped aside and let them in the house. He shut the front door and pointed through the living room to the pool and said, “Wait for me outside.”
“Who’s that?” Danny said, pointing at the black woman sitting by the pool, sipping a can of Coke and holding a Civil War sword.
“Ramona Clifton,” Greenburg said.
“Why the sword?” Mike said.
“Why not
?” Greenburg said, heading to the kitchen side of the house.
“Bring the money, Dr. Greenburg,” Danny said, calling after him.
“When my dog’s barking,” Greenburg said, and he went through a swinging door into the kitchen.
From Pacoima Pawn and Loan, Ramona had driven the dentist to a gas station in her 1985 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, a white, two-door ocean liner with blood-red leather interior and retractable roof, where she’d filled up her tank on his dime and then taken him to his office. He’d put her in his chair and examined her mouth and decided between her left lateral incisor and canine that it might be prudent for him to have her attend the Chachi event at his home after work, in case Dan Miller double-crossed him or Harvey and Omar crashed the party.
She’d agreed to watch his back in exchange for new tires for the Eldorado. Greenburg didn’t tell her exactly what was going to happen by the pool, just that there was cash money involved, and it would either be the most amazing thing she had ever seen or the biggest bust of all. As long as there were whitewalls in the deal, she’d told him, she and her sword were good to go.
Greenburg went through the kitchen into the garage and straight to the freezer. He opened the door and took out the garbage bag that held his dead dog, went back through the kitchen to the living room and then outside to where Danny, Mike, Jenny, and Ramona were waiting on the flagstone patio that surrounded the built-in pool.
He put the garbage bag on the ground, and they all looked at it for a full minute, as if they had forgotten what the hell they were doing here in the first place.
“He’s in the bag?” Danny said.
“In the freezer since Tuesday,” Greenburg said.
“A dogsicle,” Mike said, though no one laughed because they now remembered what the hell they were doing here in the first place.
“That some weird shit right there, DG,” Ramona said.
“Going to get weirder, RC,” Greenburg said to her.
“Open it,” Jenny said.
“Just like that, just open it?” Greenburg said.
“Open it, and put him on the ground,” Jenny said.
Greenburg looked at her and then looked at everyone else and then kneeled down, unknotted the bag, grabbed the closed end, and gently lifted the bag until Chachi slipped out onto the flagstone. The smell made everyone blanch and groan. Or maybe it was the sight of frozen death.
“That’s a dead damn dog,” Ramona said.
“Chachi,” Greenburg said with emotion, and the dog’s life raced across the screen in his head: Chachi running around the pool for thirty minutes straight while Greenburg swam laps and Carol did yoga; Chachi burying bones in the backyard after dinner; Chachi chasing birds he had no hope of catching; Chachi jumping in the pool and swimming with Greenburg and then climbing out and shaking the water on Carol while she rested on a lounge chair, recovering from augmentation mammoplasty. Good times.
“Froze all the way through,” Ramona said, touching the dog with the tip of her sword. “Hard as a rock.”
“Does it have to thaw?” Mike said.
“Can’t cook no frozen steak,” Ramona said.
“Swanson can,” Mike said. “Steak, potatoes, green beans, apple crisp.”
“Good point, dough boy,” Ramona said. “They eat dog meat in China. Maybe Chowking got frozen dog dinners.”
“Dog foo yung,” Mike said.
“Kung Pao Pooch,” Ramona said.
“This is a stupid conversation,” Danny said.
“We’re standing here looking at a frozen dead dog, waiting for Jenny to bring it back to life. That’s what’s stupid,” Mike said.
And then they looked at Jenny and realized she was kneeling on the flagstone beside Chachi.
She looked at the dead dog and made a sad little sigh. Then she leaned forward, put her face close to Chachi’s face, and gently blew on it. Then her lips turned ever so slightly up at the corners, and she stood.
They all looked at the dog and at Jenny and at the dog and at Jenny and at the dog and at Jenny and at the dog, and nothing happened. One minute ticked by and then another and then another, and still the dog was dead on the flagstone.
“Donald, what is going on out there?” Carol said. She and the Seuss Search and Save posse had returned and were standing in the living room looking out through the wall of French doors at the circle of strangers standing poolside. “Who are these people, and where is my car, and why is that Cadillac parked in my spot?”
There were six of them in total, Carol and five other Seuss women, all of them plastic surgery abusers, all of them pulled and stretched and tucked and augmented beyond believability, all of them devoted to the fashion-forward style of Dr. Seuss.
Greenburg was used to them, and so he was able to keep his jaw in place. The others on the flagstone, circled around the dead dog, were mouths agape at the sight of this small tribe of excessively Botoxed and Juvedermed Seuss Women.
“Who is this African person, and why does she have a sword, and what are you hiding out there, Donald?” Carol said, starting across the living room toward the French doors and the pool.
Greenburg knew his wife was high on Percocet and vodka, and he also knew that the sight of Chachi, frozen and broken and dead as Dillinger, would crush her forever.
“I can explain…” Greenburg said, but he knew he couldn’t explain a thing. What was happening here in his house was beyond explanation. If there was good news—and there wasn’t, but if there was—it was that he had hit the bottom of bizarre. His life could not get any more inexplicable. Right here, right now, was the end of all explanation.
Bark, bark. Bark, bark.
Mike and Danny and Ramona and Greenburg looked down to see Chachi prancing on his paws, alive and well, wagging his tail like a puppy.
Bark, bark. Bark, bark.
Greenburg was blown out of his skin, as frozen as Chachi was just seconds ago. He looked at Jenny with shock and astonishment and joy and fear and wonder, and she nodded as if she had simply found his lost wallet at the Studio City Starbucks and returned it to him with cash and credit cards intact.
Bark, bark. Bark, bark.
“You found him!” Carol said, screaming with excitement at the group by the pool and then turning to her girls. “They found my Chachi!”
The Seuss Search and Save posse started to jump and shout with crazy glee and relief, and the dog darted out of the circle and into Carol’s arms. Chachi kissed Carol like crazy until she pulled away and said, “Don’t just stand there, Donald. Give them their reward.”
Greenburg looked at his wife holding his dog, wondered what kind of devil magic was happening here, and then decided he didn’t give a shit. Chachi was alive, and Carol would not kill herself. He turned to say something to Danny, but Danny spoke first.
“Yes, Donald,” Danny said. “Give us our reward.”
FRIDAY
THERE GOES THE TRAIN
Harvey had no patience for religion, which made his recurring nightmare all the more puzzling—and problematic—because it involved the sort of religiosity he abhorred. His nightmare was that he had died a mysterious death and stood at the Gates of Heaven before St. Peter (who appeared in the nightmare as Peter O’Toole) and listened in horror as O’Toole reviewed the file of Harvey’s life on Earth.
“It says here, Little Man, that you lived your life with illegality, brutality, depravity, and debauchery, all of which amounted to triviality, inconsequentiality, immateriality, and negligibility,” O’Toole said in the dark dream. “It says here that you lived even smaller than you are…or were.”
That’s when Harvey would wake up in a sweat—when O’Toole would tell him, at the Gates of Heaven, that he had lived his life even smaller than he was. The idea that his life would amount to an anthill of beans was anathema to him, a loathsome fear he projected as sadism, which was better than internalizing the fear as insignificance.
He was reliving the nightmare on Friday morning, behind the w
heel of his Range Rover, parked across the street from Greenburg’s Encino house. Omar was in the front passenger seat, watching a busted underground sprinkler head shoot a spray of water straight up in the air, like whale blow from a big blue surfacing under Escalon Drive.
It was one hundred six degrees at eight thirty in the morning. The projected high for the day was one twelve. The smog index was Don’t Breathe. Los Angeles was going mad in the heat. Violent crime was on the rise. If the dentist doesn’t come clean as to the whereabouts of my cash, Harvey thought, it will tick up a notch before nine.
“The dentist and his new dog,” Omar said, pointing at Greenburg’s house.
“Carbon copy,” Harvey said as Greenburg took Chachi across the covered front patio and down the driveway on an early morning jaunt through the neighborhood before heading to the office.
“Nobody spends seventy-five grand on a poodle,” Omar said.
“Then where is my money?” Harvey said, and he climbed out of his Range Rover.
Omar followed him to Greenburg’s driveway, and the dentist stopped in his tracks three feet from the dwarf and the giant, who stood in the street at the edge of Greenburg’s property line.
“Let me guess,” Harvey said, looking at Greenburg and his little white poodle with revulsion, “you named him Chachi.”
“Spitting image,” Omar said.
“We saw you parked across the street from inside the house,” Greenburg said, gesturing behind him at Carol, who stood under the front door portico in a pink unitard and cartoon updo that made her look like Cindy Lou Who all grown up—if they’d had Percocet and plastic surgery in Whoville. “You have no business being here.”
“I called the police,” Carol said loud enough to be heard at the end of the driveway and holding up her cell phone. “They’re on the way.”
“Your identical twin brother and me were friends,” Omar said, kneeling down and sticking his hand across the property line toward the poodle. “And then I threw him out the window into traffic. I don’t think we were friends after that.”