The Concrete River

by John Shannon

The snake rose and fell with his breathing but all its other motions seemed to damp down. Most of its weight hung to the right side of his chest and he contemplated rolling slowly in that direction to encourage a departure, but wondered if disturbing the perch would touch off a strike. The strain got to him and he let his neck fall back, but he couldn't stand not seeing for long.

  Jack Liffey began to rotate his trunk to the right by infinitesimal stages. The reptile's scales did not seem to have much bite on his flesh, and when he got to forty-five degrees he could sense the snake beginning to move.

  The West is the best. The West is the best.

  The snake slid to the floor in a rush and Jack Liffey spun and rolled away in the opposite direction, picturing the rattler coming alert the moment it touched down and coming after him. He bucked and writhed, hit his head hard on the corner of his desk and finally wrenched his bound hands over his buttocks and brought them in front of himself for defense.

  The snake hadn't moved an inch. It lay in some sort of defensive posture with its head aimed square at where Jack Liffey waited.

  He ripped the tape off his mouth, then tore at the duct tape with his teeth and finally twisted his hands free, scrabbling for a weapon. A baseball bat would be perfect, but he didn't have a baseball bat. He settled for a heavy gray homemade vase one of his low-paying customers had given him in gratitude.

  The snake seemed to be mesmerized, and all at once Jack Liffey got mad and threw down the vase. He got to his feet, still bound at the ankles, and hopped forward until he came down hard on the snake's head several times. It made no effort to avoid him, and there was a solid gummy resistance under his shoes like stepping on a hose.

  It was some kind of rubber snake and they'd made him look like an idiot. Which was the point. His vision went red. To make you look the wrong way, to make you afraid of the thing that was irrelevant, the thing that was coming from the wrong place.

  He tore the tape off his ankles and waited for his heart to slow down.

  The end of nights we tried to die. This is the end.

  He knew he was way over his head now, up against some really dangerous people, but none of that mattered. They had fucked with his self-esteem.

  SEVEN

  The Deformation of Surfaces

  A smolder of anger rode with him and it flared irrationally when a policeman made a brusque two-hand pushing gesture to get his car to pull wider. For a millisecond he pictured driving the cop down, sending him topsy-turvy. But the reason for the detour was clear enough—a poultry truck had overturned and was burning across most of the road.

  He'd spent the night nursing images of the Cowboy and the snake and trying to think himself into an alternate universe where he had behaved bravely and well. It was no use.

  Chickens scurried past, a few actually on fire. Pedestrians chased them down, some laughing like children and others in an earnest of charity. He cranked the window down and could hear the cacophony of the chickens still in the truck, driven to an awareness of their danger. The driver tugged heroically on battery cage doors, freeing as many birds as he could, grabbing and flinging them away from him. A dusting of feathers hung in the air and one of the burning chickens fluttered up onto the Concord's hood with a tremendous will of wingbeats. The bird hit the glass and implored his comfort with hard yellow eyes for just an instant, and then it was gone, leaving a sad aftertaste of cruelty in the air. His psyche had no room to sympathize with chickens.

  From a poultry point of view, he thought, the holocaust would be remembered for generations, retold and embellished until at last it became only a dim folk tale in the chicken memory. The day the iron beast caught fire and devoured our grandmothers. The cop pointed straight at him like death in a Swedish movie and waved him on.

  And at his very worst the night before, Kathy had called. His child support was late.

  I loved you so damn much once, Jack, I loved you to drive me to distraction. I can't believe it. I used to say it all the time. Imagine that. We were so close there for so long, I just can't believe it any more. I won't let myself get that close to anyone any more, I won't. I haven't. Remember that time I hit you with the ladle? Remember? I broke your collarbone.

  Sure, he remembered.

  What was I mad about, I can't remember?

  He didn't know either but he must have deserved it.

  She wouldn't let him talk to Maeve.

  No money, no rights, Jack. That's the bottom line in this household. No money, no rights.

  It was the American credo, for sure.

  Tony was working out with his home-made weights when Jack Liffey drove up. He was doing curls in a frenzy, pumping away like a machine gone amok. Either it was a kind of aerobic training or the boy was working out his emotions. Across the street a handful of older boys with bandannas on their foreheads poked under the hood of a ’62 Chevy low-rider A woman was watering something in the tiny grotto. He wondered if they made Chia-pet Marys, and then decided it was a pretty mean thought.

  Jack Liffey went around to the back where Tony was huffing and puffing.

  “Hola, T-Bell,” he said.

  The boy noticed him but didn't break his pace. He'd be a real hard one someday if nothing intervened. At the end of the set, he slammed down the pipe with its concrete cans.

  “Grandma wants to see you.”

  “In a minute. I came to see you.”

  The boy picked up a towel, wiped his forehead off and tossed it back in the corner like a tennis player between sides.

  Two dogs came along the weeds gnarring at one another, the bigger one backing up in apprehension. The bigger was a mongrel but it had the fat strong mouth of a rottweiler. The smaller looked like a white coyote and had a coyote way of trying to get sideways.

  “Jaime! Ven!”

  The boy bolted and got between the dogs, kicking out at the bigger one.

  “Ve! Ve! Fuck off!”

  He grabbed the collar of the frenzied white dog with both hands and held it back. Jack Liffey walked straight at the rottweiler. “Get lost!”

  By some miracle the rottweiler barked once and then fled. Liffey knelt beside the white dog. The eyes were wild. The dog was really wired and couldn't get itself down.

  “He's part coyote, isn't he?”

  “I think so. My dad brought him from Arizona.”

  “When was that?” Liffey ran his hand down the dog's chest from the neck down between the forelegs, over and over, soothing the animal. The breeder's trick worked like a charm, and the dog stiffened up to stillness and then gradually relaxed.

  “I don't know.”

  “Is he in Arizona now? Your dad.”

  The boy didn't answer. It was a touchy subject.

  “Try this if he gets wild. No dog can resist it.”

  “We have to put him on a chain at night or he goes hunting for cats.”

  They both fell silent for a moment.

  “Do you know what a BMW M3 is?” Jack Liffey asked.

  The boy nodded, but just to make sure he added, “With all the skirts and spoilers and the lumpy fenders sticking out.”

  “Sure, I know.”

  As far as Liffey knew, nobody imported them back then, the bored-out engines couldn't make the smog regulations. They were brought in special order and modified at great expense.

  “It's all black, black chrome, and blacked out glass. Do you ever see anything like that around town here?”

  The boy shook his head. “You kidding? Only Nigger dope dealers drive that thing.”

  “Say black men. For me. Some yuppies have them, too, and others.” It had been in the lot outside his office before he ran into the Cowboy and it had been gone when he came down. And he remembered seeing it the morning of the break-in. “Keep your eye out and see if you can find out who has one.”

  “Is this about my mom?”

  “It might be.”

  “I get the C-60 Locos to find it, man. We blow him away.”

  “I said ‘might’.
Don't spook him. Just find out who it is. Let's talk to your grandma.”

  Senora Schuler was in the kitchen, spreading masa with her hands on a large sheet of plywood. Her eyes were red rimmed and she greeted him with great dignity. Immediately she washed her hands and offered him coffee. He could see it was not in her nature to chat with him in the kitchen, as a Midwest farm wife might have. She would have felt it rude, so he waited with the boy on the worn brocade sofa. The room had been tidied since the relatives and police had gone, but it looked even more cluttered, with every space taken up by something, photos, china, a crucifix, a book. It gave him an odd feeling of rigidity, like a world that would never have room for something new.

  She brought a brass tray with coffee and sugar-cookies.

  “She wants to thank you for coming back,” the boy translated. “And she wants to hire you to find who killed mama. She doesn't think the police will try very hard.”

  “Does she have some reason for thinking that?”

  “Does she need to?”

  That was the boy's reply, a twelve-year-old's world-size cynicism, and it might have masked an infinity of real issues.

  “Ask her, please.”

  The woman flicked her eyebrows once and poured out the coffee. “She spoke for a while. She has a feeling, she says. Ahm… the cop who is half Mexican isn't very honest. And the other doesn't count.”

  “Is she just judging on her experience of the Hermosillo police? Or does she have a reason for disliking Lt. Zuniga?”

  She stared at the carpet for a long time.

  “She says he took things without asking. Something from under the bed and some papers from mama's drawer.” The boy indicated the chest built into the wall with a mirror over it, a kind of sideboard. “It was her desk.”

  The coffee was strong and good. He would have to spend some time going through what was left in the drawer, but presumably if there was something interesting, it was in a manila folder on Zuniga's desk. What did people keep under the bed?

  “Grandma owns land in a village outside Hermosillo. If a lot of money is necessary to pay you, she can sell the land and get it.”

  “I've already hired myself.” He smiled. “Remember, I'm simpatico. How big was the thing that was under the bed?”

  The old woman shrugged. She made hand gestures that indicated it could have been anything from a missing earring to a smallish book. He made a mental note to look under all the beds and under the stuffed furniture.

  He drank up and asked permission to look over the house himself and use the phone.

  A dial phone was in a built-in plastered alcove in the hall. He hadn't seen a dial in years. “Art Castro, please.”

  Castro was a real detective, in a big agency with a secretary and a lot of electronic toys. Rosewood Agency, home office Cincinnati, where they once supplied strikebreakers to all the bigger robber barons. They even had a big eye painted on the door.

  “May I tell him who's calling?”

  “No.”

  He had no secrets, he just hated the formula, and she probably made him listen to the elevator music longer than normal on account of it.

  “Hello, who is this?”

  “This is Jack Liffey, Art.”

  “Next time why don't you give your name. You got Ellen really steamed.”

  “It's good for her. Besides, I don't want you being out to old friends.”

  There was an electronic squawk. “This is Art Castro's voice mail. Please leave a message.”

  “I swear to god, Art, if you've actually punched me over to voice mail, I'll come down there and make you eat the telephone.”

  “Just a joke, Jack. Lighten up.” Over the phone, there was a sudden rattle of tinny machine gun fire, then an ambulance siren, finally a fart. “Somebody gave me this battery thing from a funny store.”

  Liffey described the Cowboy and his pal in detail, and the car. “You know anybody like that on the east side?”

  “Jeez, the east side of what? What's in it for me?”

  “Maybe I can get you a sublease on the case. There seems to be some money here. You don't have to catch these guys, just identify them.”

  “Man, I can tell there's something there to be afraid of and you don't care if I'm afraid or not.”

  “Hell, Art, you got all the troops. When the going gets tough, the tough get toys.”

  “East side, huh? The gabacho cowboy sounds more like Canyon Country. But, okay, I'll ask a couple gentlemen I know. Know anything about the license plate?”

  “I don't even know if it had one. I don't think there was one in front, where I saw, but I wasn't paying attention.”

  “That's how you get hurt, my friend.”

  “You get hurt being a wiseass. I'll be in touch.”

  Of course he should have noticed the license plate. And the guy should have been looking up when the meteor came in low, too. You couldn't watch everything. It was only in the movies that the detective noticed the patch of red dust on the lounger's boots. The rest of the guys were busy watching women with big breasts or somebody in a flashy shirt or a beautiful blue sky. Maybe he'd always be an out-of-work technical writer.

  The drawer, actually two drawers, didn't help much. One was all bills and receipts, as if she had been saving up to file a Schedule C. Electricity, cable TV, gas, lots of grocery bills, phone. He set the phone bills aside, made sure all the recent ones were there, in case he wanted to look over the long distance numbers later. The other drawer was a tidy school desk, with class notes in spiral books and some loose papers in a Pee-Chee. They still made Pee-Chees, he thought with wonder, with the same sprinter heading for the tape. And still a white guy, the sprinter, as if the artist had never seen a real track meet.

  History of Religion. Historiography. Twentieth Century American. Russian. Europe after 1400. Labor History. Pre-Columbian Americas. And some other subjects, English Literature and Drama. Sociology. Anthropology. What was the difference between sociology and anthropology? The lives of white people, the lives of dark people? Her notes were all in a tidy hand and all in complete sentences.

  Under Tony's bed there was a dog-toy, a knot of leather like a bone, nothing under the other one. There were only the two bedrooms.

  When he was done, Tony was gone. Senora Beltran had retreated to the kitchen where she was wrapping masa in corn husks and he said goodbye. She held up one hand, as if she wanted to say something. They were both frustrated by the languages. Why had he always put off learning Spanish? Why had he taken Latin in high school? Latin! So now he could talk to old priests and read prescriptions.

  “Take very careful,” she said.

  “Si, cuidado. Gracias,” he said. He hadn't told her about the snake.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later he was peering in the glass door at the Catholic Liberation House, at all the empty desks in the storefront. The only person there was the earnest kid in the Pendleton, typing with two fingers like a cop. Most of the dismembered car in the street had been hauled away, though the seats and part of the dash had been left attached to the chassis for some reason, like the setup for a cheap play.

  “Eleanor Ong here?” The last name, as if there were a lot of other Eleanors he might be asking about. Jack Liffey noticed that the cops had been. All the drawers of Consuela Beltran's desk had been sealed up with yellow tape.

  “She's in the kitchen.” The boy nodded to the inner door and Liffey thought he sensed the boy's irritation. He went in to find an untidy hallway, bikes, coats on pegs, an aluminum walker. He guessed left and found an equally untidy kitchen.

  “You shouldn't see this,” she said. This was the fact she was frying slices of Oscar Mayer baloney.

  He was surprised, by the baloney and the getup. Since she'd worn a gypsy dress the first time, he expected her to be in something like that always, but she wore a tight green leotard and black jeans. She was thinner than he remembered, but that might have been the contrast to Marlena. It wasn't a value judgment, eve
n deep in his head. Marlena's body had been a lot of fun. His heart was light. How was it that being attracted to one woman could make you attracted to another one at almost the same time? The way Eleanor Ong's body moved under the leotard was fabulous.

  “Sometimes I slice a crumb doughnut,” he said, “and make a swiss cheese crumb doughnut sandwich.”

  She laughed. “In the convent, we'd pool our mad money once in a while and buy a packet of baloney and do this. One of the sisters grew up in working class Philadelphia and apparently this is popular there. I got a real taste for it. Did you really make cheese and doughnut sandwiches?”

  “No, but I thought it would make you feel better.”

  She laughed again. “I love the way they curl up and you sort of push them back down until you sear a ring and then flip them over and they invert themselves like some kind of sea anemone. There must be some branch of physics that explains it.”

  “Topology,” he said.

  She glanced up. “Seriously?”

  “It's the study of the deformation of surfaces.”

  “I never know when you're serious.”

  “I'm serious enough about taking you to dinner.”

  “Not tonight, but maybe soon.”

  Her voice had dropped a tone. She piled the baloney onto a slice of wheat bread, slapped another slice of bread on top and had a little fun with the way it resisted and tried to rise up.

  “Shouldn't play with your food,” he said.

  “Would you like some?”

  “I'll wait for the pickle ice cream. Did Senora Beltran ever talk about the big Samson Rubber building?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Did it come up in the city council campaign?”

  “Not really, but it was the ghost at the feast that you don't talk about. There's been hints about rebuilding it as an opera house for years. The Slow Growth people were probably in favor because it was a prestige project and developing it would supplant a lot of crowded Latino homes and would soak up a lot of redevelopment money that ought to go to low-cost housing. The community people were probably against it for about the same reasons. Prestige only meant prestige for the Anglo establishment in downtown L.A. Not many people here hum Figaro. Are you sure you wouldn't like something?”