by Rich Leder
THAT’S SO FUNNY, I DON’T CARE IF IT’S TRUE
Danny knew what to do with the seventy-five grand. He had to pay Jenny eighty percent, sixty thousand, and then split his commission with Mike—seventy-five hundred bucks in cash money each. That is what he knew he had to do. He said it to himself when Greenburg handed him the envelope: that is what I have to do.
There was an alternate thought in the shadows of his mind. It was a secondary notion that had occurred to him while Chachi was wagging his tail and jumping on Carol like he hadn’t been dead for days. He could explain to Mike and Jenny that in order for him to devote his full-time focus to their new partnership, it might be good business to first pay the thirty-six thousand he owed Harvey, thus erasing Danny’s debt and allowing him to move out of Mike’s garage, open a new office, and find their next dead Hollywood pet. That is what he wished he could do. He said it to himself when Chachi was running around the pool: that is what I wish I could do.
But what he did do was take the 134 to the 210 to Baldwin and make a left into Gate 8 at Santa Anita Park so he could bet the money on a horse named Let There Be Linda running in the first race at 9-2 odds.
Danny liked Santa Anita Park, with its 1930s art deco elegance, its San Gabriel Mountain vistas, its Hollywood history—Louis B. Mayer owned horses here, Seabiscuit won the Breeder’s Cup at Santa Anita in 1940, and this was where the Marx Brothers shot A Day at the Races. He liked the festivity and majesty of the place, the magnificent one-mile track, the Buglers in their red and gold uniforms playing “Call to the Post,” the Grandstand, with seating for twenty-six thousand (more than the Staples Center), the palm-treed infield that could accommodate fifty thousand (as many as the Stanford football stadium). He liked the Club House for lunch—Santa Anita’s fabulous, hand-carved, corned beef sandwiches were the best in LA. The beer was colder at the track. The air was cleaner.
He liked that it was an inexpensive way to spend an excellent day—unless you made a bad bet. If he was feeling flush, he would buy a ten-dollar Clubhouse admission ticket, otherwise a five-buck general admission ticket was just fine. The races were the same either way—electricity in the air, sun on your face.
He liked the paddock, where the horses gathered twenty minutes before they ran in the next race and where you could see up close and personal how massive and muscular they were, how gorgeous they were, how dignified and regal.
He liked the horses and the jockeys and the trainers and the owners. He liked reading their stories and histories—the bloodlines, the breeding, the training, the racing—all of it documented in journals and magazines, a spectacular archive of information with which to find and follow a horse, to measure its potential, to figure its future, to calculate the odds.
He liked the races, the frenetic prancing and pacing at the starting gate, the firing of the gun, and the excitement of the crowd as the horses pounded and thundered around the track, often sprinting neck and neck down the last stretch, nose to nose.
Most of all, he liked the betting, finding the right horse and the right jockey in the right field at the right time on the right day at the right track, the explosive adrenal rush as his horse came around the last turn, the thrill and power of winning, of being in the money.
He had liked the horses ever since his father had taken him to Santa Anita when he was a little boy. His dad said it was a secret he could never tell his brother or his mother, and he never did. Even back then, the horses blew Danny away.
He had been following this filly for two full years (at first because it had his mother’s name and then because he liked the trainer, a crusty Tampa veteran named Carl Gristle). She was three years old, sleek and strong, chestnut brown with a black mane. When she was a two-year-old, she had run in the money in several races when the track was very dry and the air was very hot. Then she ran in wetter and cooler weather and placed poorly for a year. Then Carl Gristle became her trainer, and her times improved, and Carl had just last week been quoted saying she was “almost ready” to break through—Gristle code for: fastest freaking horse I’ve ever trained. Yet she was way under the Santa Anita radar. There were other fillies in the race that were bigger and faster. They were the favorites today. Let There Be Linda was an afterthought.
Except the track was very dry, and the air was very hot, and the jockey was Garrett Flores, who also ran well in these conditions, had shown chemistry with the filly in past races, and was hungry for a breakthrough of his own—the right horse and the right jockey in the right field at the right time on the right day at the right track.
It was the perfect bet, the bet he’d been waiting for, the bet of a lifetime. If he’d had a million dollars, he’d have put it all on this filly to win on this day in the first race with these horses and the temperature pegged at one hundred six and the track Death Valley dry and Flores in the saddle and Gristle whispering in her ear, but he only had seventy-five thousand, so that would have to do. At 9-2, she would pay eleven dollars for a two-buck bet. He was about to make four hundred grand.
He parked the Pathfinder, grabbed his briefcase from the front passenger seat, got out of the Nissan, and started across the lot to the track. It was noon on Friday. The first race was in thirty minutes or so. His skin was burning, and he didn’t think it was the heat. He thought it was the anticipation of being rich. He was thinking about what he would do with the money—pay Harvey, pay Jenny, pay Mike, buy a new car, rent an office in Studio City, and rent a house in Laurel Canyon—when a black, two-door, Chevy Impala pulled in front of him and cut him off.
Gary Shuler jumped out of the Impala, his gun drawn and pointed at Danny, who looked at the detective with some confusion and then said, “Hey, wait, Gary, right?”
“That’s right, Danny,” Gary said. “Now, turn around, put your hands on the Camry, and spread your legs. You’re under arrest.”
He gestured at a Toyota parked right where Danny had stopped in his tracks, a few spots down from the Pathfinder.
“What? No. No way. I just signed you to a ninety-day deal. I’m your agent. You can’t arrest me. What are you arresting me for?”
“Put your hands on the Camry and spread your legs.”
“Not until you—”
Before he could finish objecting, Gary had spun him around, bent him over the hood of the car, stuck his right leg between Danny’s legs, and pushed them open so that Danny was spread-eagle over the front of the Toyota.
“What the hell is going on?” Danny said.
Gary patted Danny down. “Greenburg called me this morning. Can you guess what he wanted?”
“My dentist?”
“Can you guess?”
“Just tell me.”
“Protection.”
“From who?”
“Harvey and Omar. Harvey wants his seventy-five thousand back, and Greenburg says he gave it to you because you represent a woman named Jenny who breathed on his dead poodle and brought it back to life. Do you have a client named Jenny who breathes on dead poodles and brings them back to life?”
“Yes.”
“That’s so funny, I don’t care if it’s true.”
Gary took Danny’s soft brown leather briefcase off Danny’s shoulder, looked inside, and saw the envelope filled with cash.
“That’s my money, Gary. Don’t touch my money,” Danny said, still on the car but craning his neck all the way around so he could kind of see Gary behind him.
“Greenburg said Harvey was very upset. He feels cheated, Harvey does. He thinks you switched Chachis. Bought a new poodle for a few hundred bucks and took his money to bet at the track.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You’re at the track with the money.”
“It’s bullshit that I bought Greenburg a new poodle. That’s the real Chachi, the one who died. Jenny brought him back.”
“I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Neither did I.”
“I mean my act. I thought it was already really fun
ny, but now, are you kidding, the dead poodle comes back to life and the dwarf goes on a rampage of revenge? That’s hysterical. I’m going to be huge. Seinfeld huge. And I’m going to make my agent a lot of money. Hey, that’s you,” Gary said, stepping away from the Toyota.
Danny stood up and turned around. His briefcase was hanging from Gary’s shoulder, and the detective still had his gun out. Danny glanced at his watch. He had twenty minutes to get into the park and place his bet.
“They’re going to make this a TV series, CBS, I’m guessing, but maybe ABC or NBC, and you’ll be the executive producer,” Gary said.
“Are you insane?” Danny said.
“I think I am,” Gary said, walking backwards to the Impala, keeping his eye and his gun on Danny, “but I have to be. I’m a comedian.”
“You can’t do this,” Danny said. “Shit, Gary. Why are you taking my money?”
“For your own safety. If you lose it at the track—”
“I’m going to win four hundred grand.”
“—Harvey will kill you, and I need you alive to be my agent, so you can sell me big time. If you’re dead, you can’t do that. Now, you can tell Harvey that I took it for safety’s sake, and we’ll all keep the story going—dentists and dwarves and dead dogs, oh my. Hilarious.”
Gary climbed into the Impala, gunned the engine, and drove away with the seventy-five grand. Danny ran after him, but it was one hundred ten on the tarmac, and he had to stop halfway across the lot so he wouldn’t drop dead.
THERE’S NO GRAY AREA WHEN IT COMES TO BRANDING HUMAN BEINGS
Gary parked the Impala in a visitor spot by the Little Valley Trailer Park office, grabbed his backpack from the front passenger seat, and walked to the rotting Airstream. The Ford pickup was out front, so he knew the zombie was in there. He knocked on the door and waited. It was one hundred eight degrees in Sunland-Tujunga at one o’clock, Friday afternoon. He glanced up at the sun and thought it looked pissed off, burning with anger at Earth for cosmic reasons he would contemplate later and add to his act.
After Santa Anita, he had stopped at a convenience store and purchased two Oreo four-packs and a pint of milk. He was celebrating his great good fortune to have hit the mother lode of comedic gold. All he had to do now was mine it for all it was worth. While blissing out on the chocolate cookie drug, he had a happy daydream that he and Pat Paulsen were dressed as forty-niners and were panning for gold in a rushing stream in the San Francisco hills in 1852. They were knee deep in the water and Pat was slapping him on the back and telling him there was plenty of gold to go around.
He interpreted the daydream as a good omen. It was where he wanted to be, where he was going, where he belonged.
“Nobody home,” Martin said from inside the trailer.
“It’s Detective Shuler. Open the door,” Gary said.
“Can’t open the door if nobody’s home,” Martin said. “That’s stupid.”
Gary shook his head. He felt a bead of sweat run from the nape of his neck down his back to his gun. He reached around and took it out of the holster. “What’s stupid is you telling me nobody’s home while you’re talking to me.”
“Take the hint and take a hike. I have company.”
“You have company?”
“I’m entertaining.”
“I’ll have to see that to believe it.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe it, well, yes it is, I don’t believe it. Now open the door, or I’ll de-deputize you, and you’ll be a zombie without a badge, just another undead real estate developer running around LA with no authority to cause hardship and pain.”
“I like causing hardship and pain.”
“Open the door.”
The door opened, and Martin filled the trailer doorway, looking more dead than alive, holding an electric branding iron, used for claiming cattle, plugged in somewhere behind him in the Airstream. The iron looked red hot. “You going to shoot me?”
The detective side of his brain thought, That can’t be good—the zombie with a branding iron. But the comedian side thought, That’s as good as it gets. “It’s possible.”
“Fair enough,” Martin said. He moved aside, and Gary stepped up into the trailer.
Though Gary couldn’t have imagined it, the Airstream was even more of a mess than it was the last time he’d been here, which was yesterday. It looked like someone had blown the place up with a pipe bomb and then infected it with slum disease.
But Gary couldn’t concentrate on the putrid filth and trash and chaos, and he couldn’t focus on the poster of the accountant, which had gone from one big blade in the forehead to multiple blades all over the accountant’s face, because the accountant himself was blindfolded, gagged, and hogtied on the couch, naked as a baby.
Gary put on latex gloves and moved across the trailer to Mike. “There’s no gray area when it comes to branding human beings. It’s the sort of thing that juries don’t deliberate. They don’t even go to the jury room. They just stay in the box and tell the judge to fry the guy. They volunteer to throw the switch.”
He told himself to remember those lines—fry the guy and throw the switch—and put them in his act. Talk about laugh-a-minute material. This kind of comedy was so outrageous that they would have to give it a new name. Zombie-comedy. Zomedy.
“I’m exercising my rights as an agent of the law,” Martin said, and he pressed the end of the branding iron into a kitchen cabinet door. The wood sizzled.
“Maybe in Tombstone, Arizona, at the end of the 1800s,” Gary said. “But not at the dawn of the twenty-first century in Southern California.”
Martin let the cabinet burn for a few seconds and then removed the iron and left a smoking black “M” behind. “McCoy Cattle Ranch in Salinas,” he said. “Story is a cowboy got kicked in the mouth while branding a Brahma bull with this very iron, and McCoy said he could sell it for new teeth.”
“You bought it from the cowboy?” Gary said.
“I bought it from a dwarf in Pacoima. ‘M’ for Martin. Had to have it.”
Mike was positioned on his right side, bare ass facing into the trailer. He couldn’t see a thing or say a word, but he could hear every sound. He squirmed and shouted angrily through his gag, but he couldn’t move more than an inch, and his cries were deeply muffled.
While Martin moved across the trailer and extended the hot end of the iron toward Mike’s butt, it occurred to Gary that the accountant had heard the sizzling wood as well.
“You can’t brand him,” Gary said, aiming the gun at the zombie.
“Already did,” Martin said, and he flipped Mike onto his left side. In the center of Mike’s chest was a blazing red “M” that looked mean and nasty and painful as hell.
Good God, Gary thought. In his wildest dreams, he couldn’t make this shit up. They’ll get Ben Stiller to play me in the movie, he said to himself. He wondered who would play Judd Martin—Alec Baldwin, maybe. Or Gary Busey.
“Give me one good reason why not,” Martin said.
“Brand him once, you can say it was an accident,” Gary said.
“An accident?”
“‘Sorry buddy, my bad, I seem to have branded you by mistake. I hate when that happens, don’t you?’” Gary said. “But brand a man twice, and that’s no accident.”
“What is it?”
“A billboard. Brand him once, and people might not even notice. Brand him again and everyone will be pointing at him: Man, get a load of this guy. Somebody branded him not one but two times. He won’t be able to travel incognito. He won’t blend in. We’re in the middle of a case, you and me. Mike Miller is our high-speed Internet. He’s in the thick of this thing, gathering information at one hundred megabytes per second. We need him under wraps, undercover, and under the radar. He’s no good to us if you brand him again. Now sit him up; I want to talk to him.”
Mike was hogtied, so he couldn’t sit by himself. Martin put the branding iron down a
nd situated Mike in an upright, sort-of-resting-on-his-knees position and then physically held him in place so he wouldn’t topple over.
“He’s been blindfolded the whole time?” Gary said.
“Since I picked him up at the country club,” Martin said. “He has no idea where he is.”
Neither do you, Gary thought. And then he turned to face Mike and knew he had found another nugget in his pan. He could feel Pat Paulsen slapping his back in the middle of the stream. His cop intuition and his comedic instinct were both buzzing with the same message: there’s a lot more gold in the water.
“Hello, Mike,” the detective said. “My name is Gary Shuler. I’m a stand-up comedian. I have now heard from several sources that you and your brother are in the business of bringing dead dogs back to life—for seventy-five grand a pop—with a gypsy named Jenny. I would very much like you to gather up your brother and the gypsy named Jenny and bring another dead dog back to life, and I would like to be invited to that show because I think it will be hilarious. If I removed your blindfold, you would see how sincere I am about being at the next Jenny the Gypsy Show, but I’m not going to remove your blindfold because I think there’s some great comic tension to be gained by revealing my true identity to you later as opposed to now.
“Deputy Martin here will be in frequent contact with you—I know you’re excited about that—to find out exactly when and where the next Jenny the Gypsy Show is going to happen. You may need to kill somebody’s dog, but I think that’s fine because you’re going to bring it right back to life. If you don’t get me a front row seat on, well, let’s just pick a day, say Sunday, then I’ll allow Mr. Martin to go zombie on your ass. I haven’t known him very long, but I feel sure he has more monstrous things in mind than branding you. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth, and I want you to tell me you understand what I’m saying.”