On the Nickel

by John Shannon

  She pulled to the curb on a red zone on Sunset and killed the engine to spy on Gower Gulch. A girl with green hair, wearing a blanket like a cape that kept flapping open to reveal that she wore no clothes at all, was striding along in the wake of a basketball-tall hippie in fringed buckskin. They didn’t speak a word to each other as they crossed Sunset right in front of her and headed for the Starbucks in the Gulch, like fur-trader and squaw. If you could speak of a bright-green-haired squaw. A handful of other kids sat around on low walls, accepting and then discarding leaflets that were being distributed dutifully by a wino with a heavy canvas bag over his neck. Nothing here, she thought after a careful examination.

  The Rock’n’Roll Ralphs a little farther along drew her inside, but was little better, with only a handful of what might be runaways who were watched over by eagle-eyed security men. Then down to Pink’s, the hotdog place on La Brea, then the kid-shelters on Vine, the McDonald’s and Jack in the Boxes in the area, the warren of streets above Yucca that led up Ivar Hill to a nest of fleabag apartments. Few kids were out and about. It had been the dumbest of ideas, she chided herself, to come here in the light of day. She should have known. Most of the town’s freaks and dopers and Goths vanished like roaches into the baseboards by the light of day, awaiting the sulky urban night to prowl.

  Before she could stop him, a leafletter had tucked some wordy flyer under her wiper.

  FREE DESPAIR TEST.

  Wow, just what she needed.

  Beyond Despair is human growth, she read through the windshield. Beyond bad pain maybe, she thought, but not despair. The only thing she’d ever found beyond despair was more despair.

  All streams of life flow onward side by side until a time comes when one of the wise and loving ones who have chosen to stay behind to help others crosses into your immediate zone to help guide your evolution on to a higher plane.

  Oh, yeah, she knew these folks: the Theodelphian Elect, who had bought a huge old hospital in the middle of Hollywood and painted it yellow and attracted lost kids from all over the country with the promise of solving all the problems of adolescence and loneliness and then some, with a little abracadabra. But she didn’t think any of this was Conor’s kind of vulnerability.

  Remarkable that such a highly evolved elect would choose homeless alcoholics as their paid apostles. She wondered if the Theodelphians paid in small bottles of Thunderbird or Night Train.

  Answer Honestly. (You only have your soul to lose.)

  1. Do I feel empty and lost sometimes? Yes. Never. (Circle.)

  She opened the door enough to reach around and grab the quiz off her windshield, and then she violated her principles by crumpling it and littering the gutter with it. She couldn’t get the loathe-some thing away from herself far enough and fast enough.

  There wasn’t anyone at the desk. The albino was probably dozing in back, as long as you didn’t ring the little desk-bell to disturb his sleep, or maybe he’d fled after seeing Rice’s switchblade. The elevator had an Out of Order sign, starving out anyone who couldn’t hobble down the staircase to the little store up the road. We’re going to save them the trouble of all that, McCall thought.

  They went up the urinacious and unlit stairwell, Rice making a slight face. McCall knew there were only three tenants left to worry about now, all old-timers Vartabedian had inherited when he’d bought the Fortnum, the only three who clung to long-term leases as if the hotel were somewhere over in Santa Monica with a nice view of the ocean, or maybe about to rebound from years of skunk-time. The last three could probably be chased out in a week, but the old farts had banded together and talked to the Joe-goody Tim Voorhis about a pro bono suit – a high-profile lefty lawyer who loved getting his picture in the paper. That had to be discouraged toot-sweet.

  Door 322 looked like it had been painted every week for years to cover the graffiti most of the others displayed. McCall gestured and Thibodeaux hammered his fist on the wood, as if trying to squash a bug.

  ‘Look alive, Greengelb! Talk to us.’

  Eventually the door came open two inches on a new chain that looked like it would hold the Queen Mary.

  ‘You can tell Vartabedian to fuck his own ass,’ the short man said.

  ‘That’s not very nice, sir.’

  ‘And fix the elevator or we’ll have the city on him.’

  ‘Mr Vartabedian wants to pay you far more than it’s worth to move into a nicer place out on the Westside,’ McCall said reasonably. ‘We’ll find you a big comfortable apartment. I swear it’ll be near a deli and a synagogue.’

  ‘What do you know from delis, putz? Mr Moses can go take a flying leap into his tax deductions.’

  ‘You’re a genius, man,’ McCall said. ‘Don’t you know the really big guys always win? I mean, always. Why don’t you let him buy you out while you still got the first-class offers? You get twice what the city requires.’

  ‘What happens meantime, with me and my friends? Mysterious fires? Stairs collapse? Serial killers in the lobby?’

  ‘Sudden death is always a bitty inch away, Hebe,’ Thibodeaux put in.

  ‘Ahh! I heard that! I will go on with my arrangements in the law, and you can go on with your arrangement with Mr Strongarm here. We’ll see who got the moxie.’

  ‘Do you remember your dreams?’ McCall asked mildly.

  ‘I want you to know this is the United States of America, under law.’

  He was still in a good mood. ‘Dreams interest me, Mr Greengelb. Especially the bad ones we all have. The way people fight off their coward self with some kind of show-off stuff. They shout into the darkness. They still try to run when they’re stuck in the glue.’

  ‘Go away. Enough of the mishigas.’

  ‘Then I can’t help you a bit with your dreams, friend.’

  ‘Contact Tim Voorhis, gonif.’

  ‘He’s just another goat-fucking lawyer, man. V. got him in the bag, too.’

  The door slammed and Thibodeaux looked at McCall as if for permission to pound again or break it down.

  ‘He’s doomed and he knows it. Let’s hunt up that albino, see if he’s run off yet.’

  It was only an eight-block jaunt to the park but the nuisance of oddity had found Jack Liffey nevertheless, as he stared out the side window of the rented van, strapped this way and that against sudden momentums. Gloria, at the wheel, had undoubtedly missed it entirely and he had no way to call her attention to it, in any case.

  A woman wearing only a white bra and panties and an old flying-nun nurse cap carried a gigantic mock-up of a syringe under her arm and stepped quickly from street tree to tree (mostly stunted Chinese elms) pretending to inject them with the blunt needle, then giving each tree a genuine pat of condolence.

  I’ll have a little of that, Jack Liffey thought, whatever it is. It must be good to escape contingency for a while.

  Gloria held the control lever down to send the power-lift of the van grumbling down to the curb, and when it stopped Jack Liffey unhooked all the shock cords and wheeled himself off the shelf. She carried the bags of food and he fought his rubber wheels across the ragged Bermuda grass of Greenwood Park toward a picnic table that didn’t look too hacked up with carved graffiti. Across the way, young wannabe gangsters were sitting in the baseball bleachers passing around a slim dark Sherman, probably laced with something, and punching shoulders playfully.

  ‘You know, I could get used to doing all the talking,’ Gloria said as she started to dig into the food bags for their picnic. ‘It’s a little creepy sometimes when you nod and smile like crazy, but I think I could just go on yakking for years – it suits me well. When I run out of cop stories, I’ll tell you all those yarns from my aunt up in Owens. Paiute nonsense about how the gods hide themselves inside animals and rocks and trees. I wonder if there’s some shaggy little god hiding out in Loco?’ She laughed.

  REALLY WORRIED ABOUT MV SORRY.

  He smiled tightly and showed her the notepad.

  ‘Aw, shit, Jack. Give
it a break, please.’

  He shook his head as she started to set out burritos and chips and salsa.

  ‘Remember that bushido guy? It was when we first met? The guy that killed Ken Steelyard and almost killed us. I never forget that he said the secret to being a great warrior was deciding you were already dead. I don’t mean Maeve’s dead, but there’s something to just relaxing into what’s inevitable, OK? What she’s doing she’s doing. It’s already a happening thing. And your fatherly concern ain’t going to undo a bit of it. You got to decide she’s running with the native sense you taught her and won’t do stuff too stupid. And I promise I’ll do what I can to watch over her.’

  He nodded his thanks, but he was obviously still fretful.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this. I caught her with those business cards off her computer again: Liffey and Liffey, Investigations, with the big stupid eyeball from some old black-and-white movie.’ She smiled. ‘But I really think she’s safer than if she was trying to protect herself in a suit of armor. I got a cop on her – though I know it worries you.’

  EXPLODING WITH FRUSTRATION.

  She reached over to press a strong hand on his arm. ‘I get it, Jack. You’re the original guard-all-the-gates dad, but I think that time’s probably about over. Get with the new program. For right now, you get to park in the gimp spaces and let others help you out.’

  ‘Ak, ak!’

  ‘Come on, lighten up. The salsa is the fresca kind you like. I made it with lime juice. You can still enjoy your senses.’

  He ate a few chips, scooping up the terrific homemade salsa, and then gave in to his worried nature again and wrote painstakingly.

  WHAT’S UP WITH MIKE LEWIS’ SON? I KNOW MIKE CALLED IS MV LOOKING FOR HIM?

  ‘So you know about that. You’ve got a sixth and a seventh sense, don’t you, Jackie? Like Loco.’ They both looked over at the rented van, but despite the front door standing open, Loco was sound asleep on the front floor mat. He usually went pretty far under when he slept these days, either still recovering from the last of the chemo – or dying. Damn, he’d thought it.

  ARGH! HAVE TO PROTECT MV.

  ‘And we will, Jack. I promise. But your love is kind of a one-note fortune-teller of loss, it’s so gloomy. You know that?’

  There was an outcry from the bleachers, but it didn’t seem serious, and when they looked over, nothing seemed amiss.

  IS THAT THE GREENWOOD KLIKA?

  Greenwood was the gang Maeve had been involved with.

  ‘Jack, Jack, use your eyes, not your fears. The oldest kid over there is about fourteen. They’re taggers, wannabes. Bangers don’t sit out here in the afternoon.’ She knew he was thinking of Beto, the Greenwoods’ leader and Maeve’s Svengali.

  I’M SORRY, IT’S LIKE ALL THE AIR’S BEEN SUCKED OUT OF MY BRAIN.

  He wrote fast.

  ‘It can’t be easy to lose your voice, I know. Right now, you’ve got to learn to lean on me,’ Gloria said. ‘Lean as hard as you have to.’ All she could see in his face was shadings of desperation, and it made her sad. ‘I don’t have your expertise with your daughter, but I’m off shift today and tomorrow, and I’ll track her for you, wherever she goes. I’m good at that.’

  GOD BLESS YOU. I BLESS YOU, GL.

  ‘In my mind, you and that god guy are just about equally doofus. Maybe equally demanding. But there ain’t no philosophers going around claiming Jack is dead.’ She laughed. ‘Just don’t impose any of those giant losses on me.’

  He thought he saw her touch the pistol in its waistband holster at her skirt, just a brush as if for reassurance. ‘Jack, I can deal with the real world. It’s my profession. I think I can even change your goddam luck for you. But don’t make me deal with you losing heart. The way your fading dad does. It’s too much like my own relatives.’

  I HAVEN’T GOT ANY GODS FOR YOU – DARK OR LIGHT.

  ‘I know that. But I got a few Paiute gods left over and I may call on them. You’re too fragile now to call on anybody. That’s why I’m here for you.’

  He almost smiled.

  ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE I STILL BUY THE CATHOLIC LIBERATION NEWSPAPER. JUST TO SEE IF I CAN STILL BE TOUCHED BY PEOPLE SO DEVOTED TO THE POOR.

  ‘Don’t do it. Leave all that touching of shit to me.’

  He tried to enjoy being out in the park with Gloria in the afternoon – the wind, the noises of the kids across the way, traffic, passersby, sensations of life going on willy-nilly to punctuate his involuntary silence. It had been a strong bright day and should have filled him with self-awareness, the way that clarity tended to do, but he found he was watching what was happening around him as if it was all on TV, most of the feeling missing, his participation totally missing, except a faint rasp that he could sense now and then as air rushed through his airways. He tried to remember if tomorrow was the day the physical therapist came to give his legs and feet their range-of-motion exercises, a humiliating series of twists and tugs punctuated by such expressions as, ‘Now let’s do our best to flex that pinkie – oink, oink, oink, on the way to market.’ He desperately wanted his voice back, if only to bellow an insult.

  Yet Gloria was a nourishing presence, he never doubted it, and after watching the physiotherapist once, she reproduced many of the same exercises, with a lot less of the boiled twaddle. Gloria was certainly trying hard for him. He wished he could turn a page and recover some sense of hope in himself. Turn to challenge that dark ogre that he felt pushing him down deep into his own body, away from the surface, away from life. He knew he needed to do something about the rage that had taken him over so completely.

  A bird cried joyously overhead, and he took it for a sign. But a sign for what? Give life another try? He put everything he had into the will to move his right leg, and he may have managed a millimeter of a twitch, maybe not. He knew his attempts were not currently part of the clinical picture. If any sensation and movement returned – if – he had been told, it would be a glacial process, the beginnings of his real counter-revolt against the rebellious provinces, gaining a tiny tremor or a centimeter of attentive skin a day. The trench warfare of his Great War.

  Gloria told him that their neighbors were reporting in now and then that they were praying for Jack, lighting candles for him at Our Lady of the Assumption. He was in no position to refuse their spiritual ministrations, and he decided to dedicate each prayer, if he heard about it, to a specific body part. Old Señora Mendoza’s candles were for his left ankle. Señora Preciado’s rosaries could fly into his butt where he occasionally felt a throb of sensation from the chair. If Gloria only knew a Paiute shaman, he would offer up his vocal cords to a meso-American god. A Ghost Dance – that was what he needed. To bring back his buffalo and all the dead warriors.

  NOTES FOR A NEW MUSIC

  Day 2

  I met a very black man today on the street outside my hotel who held a fiddle on his lap on his wheelchair. We talked for a while and when I asked him to play something he liked for me, expecting ‘Turkey in the Straw,’ he played Liszt. It was not great but it was good enough to alarm me for some reason. In fact, I found myself crying. But, really, I wept secretly only after he had stopped playing and told me in a flat voice, ‘I’m sorry, kid, I just wet myself.’

  What kind of country treats a journeyman musician like this? I took him to a public toilet and then bought him a lunch of shrimp and scallops at a place he asked me to push him to, Fisherman’s Outlet, at the huge produce market between Central and Alameda at the east end of Fifth where the truckers all eat. I had wonderful tilapia, from one of those busy ordinary counters where the food was better than you’d believe and everybody was elbowing everybody, and where Latinos did all the cooking and most of the eating, too. We ate outside on a city block of concrete that was filled with picnic tables, and then I had to wheel him back down Fifth to the middle of The Nickel.

  He warned me to watch out as we went. That guy, or that guy maybe, might tip him over and try to run off with his
wheelchair. Not everybody who’s got one down here needs it. The chairs have a perceived value – unlike their occupants, I guess. His name was Eddie Monk. Eddie Coltrane Monk. He suggested I get the hell out as soon as I could, but I wanted to stay, and then he suggested the Fortnum Hotel. There was some kind of mischief in his eyes when he did.

  Surprised, I told him I was already staying there, and I went home for a while and tried to write a song. He’d mentioned hunger as a muted drumming in his belly. Human contact was terribly precious. Simple courtesy in life. The dignity of the docile. The wonder of eating a great filet of fish. Fearing what is odd and unexpected about poor people and disliking yourself for it. This one was purely my observation: how hard it is living beyond the borders of what you know. These observations deserved to be a song but it wouldn’t come together, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe with a backbeat like reggae.

  Maeve had had a horrible evening, frightened now and again once things got dark, despite herself. Old Hollywood was full of really dangerous people who could overtake you faster than fate. Guys with Mohawks and knives, guys with tattoos on their necks saying Vainglory who could hurry up behind you and tap you on the shoulder and say ‘Your turn to bend down, ho’ bitch!’

  She’d avoided them all – the green-haired beanpole at Hollywood and Vine and the little insinuating Asian guy at the Highland Center and even the smooth-talking business suit who’d promised her a ‘dead-easy’ part in a reality TV show if she’d only have a drink with him. Nobody had even looked very closely at the photo of Conor Lewis that she held up, and she was getting a bit crestfallen about her own delusions of being a detective. It was a city of way too many millions of people – ten million or more, if you counted out to the far boundaries of habitation. What did one person matter in all that? Who could care about one sad story in that immensity of sorrow?