Romeo's Rules

by James Scott Bell

  “I’m not doing any more business here, that’s for sure.”

  Stephen laughed and pulled up a clipboard. “I’ll just have you sign this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Our CYA form.”

  “Cover Your Arse?”

  He nodded. “Sign it and we don’t get in any trouble with the lawyers. Everybody’s happy.”

  “Except the lawyers.”

  “They’re never happy,” he said.

  “That’s why they’re lawyers,” I said.

  “Anyone we can notify?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Ira Rosen.” I translated his number from the memory trick in my head and Stephen made the call.

  I WAS IN THE lobby when Ira arrived. They had me in a wheelchair. Ira was in his wheelchair. We looked like a Vaudeville novelty act. I got out of my chair and pushed Ira back to the parking lot.

  “I should be pushing you,” Ira said.

  “Not exactly an option, is it?” My head was just getting its focus back. My feet dragged. It was like one of those slow-motion dreams.

  “Michael,” Ira said, his voice deep with concern. “What happened?”

  “How much did they tell you?”

  “Just that you’d lost a finger, and it was back on.”

  “Where’s your van?” I said.

  “Go straight,” he said. “How did you get here, anyway? Ambulance?”

  “I drove.”

  “Drove what?”

  “Lexus.”

  “What? Who—”

  “They towed it.”

  “Who towed it?” Ira said.

  “They,” I said. “You know, they. The ones who are always making trouble.”

  I saw Ira’s van and headed for it. When we got there Ira pulled himself into the driver’s seat. I used my good hand to pull the thing into the van through the side door, closed it. Got into the passenger seat.

  “Now tell me what happened,” Ira said.

  “I will,” I said. “When this is all over.”

  “Is this a police matter?” Ira said.

  “It’s my matter,” I said.

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Head downtown.”

  Ira started the van. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “There are things I have to do,” I said, “and I don’t want you to be part of it.”

  “I’m already part of it,” Ira said. “We need each other, Michael. I need your infusion of physical energy. You need my compass.”

  “I can get along without a compass.”

  “No one can.”

  We pulled out onto the street. Ira’s jaw had a certain set to it. The kind that punches back in an argument.

  “I’m not a reclamation project,” I said.

  “Everybody’s a reclamation project,” Ira said.

  “Head downtown.”

  He kept going toward the freeway. “Come home,” Ira said. “You need to heal.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not listening to this,” Ira said. “You’re coming home.”

  He gunned the van toward the onramp.

  I opened my door.

  “What are you doing?” Ira said.

  “Going to jump,” I said.

  “You crazy … shut that door!”

  “I mean it,” I said. “I’m not rational.”

  “All right, all right!”

  “Downtown.”

  “Close the door!”

  “Downtown?”

  Anger flashed across his normally placid face.

  “Okay, jump!” he said. “I am beyond caring.”

  That almost made me laugh. I closed the door. “You’ll never be beyond caring, Ira.”

  “That’s my curse!” He pulled the van to the curb, kept it idling. “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

  “I don’t want you to know,” I said.

  “You’re going to break the laws of God and man, aren’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “As your lawyer,” Ira said, “I have to strongly advise that you not do this.”

  “But you’re not my lawyer,” I said.

  “Am I your friend?”

  “You know you are.”

  “I’m beginning to doubt it,” he said, and that was difficult to hear. “Let me set you up in a decent place. For a day or two. Then we talk.”

  I was too tired to fight him. And he was already hurt enough.

  “You have a place in mind?” I said.

  It was a motel off Franklin, called the Atmosphere. The main atmosphere was one of old, musty beds and mattresses with moon-like craters.

  But it had Wi-Fi. Ira lent me the Mac laptop he carried around in his van. After he left I did some one-handed research on the name Dennis Bork, who was mentioned in the news item I’d seen about Yance Perry. Found Bork quoted in another news story on Perry’s death. And found out where he worked.

  TRADER JOE’S IS a grocery store chain that’s popular in southern California. The one where Dennis Bork worked was on Sunset. I went there the next morning.

  It was cool inside. The Trader Joe’s staff wore Hawaiian-style shirts or patterned tees. I stood by the produce and looked around and then stopped a petite woman in a TJ’s shirt and said, “Is Dennis working today?”

  She smiled and started to motion, then stopped suddenly and replaced her friendly look with one of suspicion. “You better not be a reporter,” she said.

  “I’d never even consider being a reporter,” I said. “Weatherman maybe.”

  “I don’t know how much you know about what happened, but he doesn’t need to be bothered.”

  “I do know about what happened, and I’m not going to bother him, I promise. In fact, he may find what I have to say helpful.”

  She did not look convinced. But her eyes made a quick dart to the left.

  I followed her look over to one of the checkout counters. A man of about forty with dark hair was bagging some groceries for an old woman.

  “Is that him?” I said.

  “I think you better go,” she said.

  “Trust me, Kiana.” That’s what her name tag said, Kiana.

  I went over to the counter and looked at the guy’s name tag and it said Dennis. He finished bagging for the old woman and put the bag in her shopping cart. Then he got behind the cart and started pushing it toward the doors. The woman walked beside him, talking about tea.

  I followed them out to the parking lot, watched as Dennis put the bags in the trunk of a Buick. Then he said good-bye to the woman and rolled the red shopping cart back toward the store. He stacked it with others just outside the doors.

  “Dennis, can I have a word?”

  He gave me a customer-service smile. His forehead furrowed a little. His hair was parted at the side with a little bit of it flipping up. His eyes were grey and he had a two-day beard in the fashion of out-of-work actors. “Do I know you?” he said.

  “No. But I’d like a few minutes of your time.”

  I felt the chill on his face. “No thanks.” He started for the door.

  I said, “I found Yance’s body hanging from the second floor, before the cops got there.”

  He turned and looked like a shot of tequila had been thrown in his face. And then like he might cry.

  “Come back in an hour,” he said, and rushed back inside the store.

  I WALKED HALF a block to a Panda Express and had some noodles and orange chicken. My fortune cookie said You will soon be confronted with unlimited opportunities.

  An hour later I was back at the produce section of Trader Joe’s. Dennis Bork brought his anxiety-laced expression over to me. “I have half an hour,” he said. I followed him out to the street. We found some shade in the shadow of an IHOP. Dennis pulled out a pack of Camel filters and fired one up with a Bic.

  “What happened to your hand?” he said.

  “Bad cut,” I said.

  “Bummer.” He took a deep drag on his
cig, blew out the smoke. “How can you say you found Yance’s body?”

  “Because I did,” I said.

  “But who are you?”

  “What happened is this. There was an explosion at a church in Los Feliz.”

  “Yeah, that was all over the news.”

  “And a car was around there that I didn’t like the look of. I ran the plates and—”

  “Wait, ran the plate? How?”

  “I have some resources.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “You look a little scary, you want to know the truth.”

  “I traced the car to the house where Yance lived,” I said. “Found his body there. Called the police. And I don’t think Yance killed himself.”

  He paused with his cigarette halfway to his mouth. “Why are you even interested?”

  “I have reasons. They have nothing to do with Yance. They have to do with the guy who killed him.”

  His eyebrows popped up. “You know who did it?”

  “I have a theory.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s only a theory. What I need from you is any reason you know of why someone would want to kill him.”

  Dennis looked at the ground and sucked up another nicotine stream.

  “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you,” he said.

  “Because you want justice.”

  “But why should I trust you? You’re not a cop. What are you, exactly?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that, Dennis. I’m a work in progress. I have a personal reason for getting at the answers.”

  “Are you …”

  “Go ahead.”

  “A criminal?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  “Let me help.”

  He paused. “I don’t want anything I say getting out.”

  “I give you my word of honor,” I said.

  He looked at me like that was the strangest thing anybody had ever said to him. Maybe it was. Times have changed.

  He shook his head. “Yance’s career wasn’t going so good. Hadn’t been for a while. We were together for a time, you know.”

  “That’s what the news said.”

  “He used to drink. Not so bad he couldn’t function, but enough that we used to fight about it. When I left I heard he started using speedballs. I saw him once a few months after we broke up and he looked like he’d lost a lot of weight. When I brought it up he told me to shut up and get out of his face. So I did.”

  Bork threw his cigarette on the ground, mashed it with his foot.

  “He wasn’t making the money he used to. I heard that he’d been asking for a loan from some of our friends. That wasn’t like Yance. The Yance I knew anyway. So I had to think that he was needing money for using. And when that happens, you know, there’s always somebody in the background who’s yanking a chain around your neck.” He stopped, frowned. “Bad choice of words.”

  “So why don’t you think Yance would have committed suicide over his troubles?”

  “Because he was afraid of hell,” Dennis said. “Yance was raised strict Catholic, and he had guilt up the wazoo. He told me once he was scared to death of dying without a priest giving him absolution, because his sins were so many. And he once said, like a joke, that the only reason he didn’t kill himself was he didn’t want to go to hell. I told him I didn’t believe in hell and he got real serious and said he didn’t want to, but he did.”

  I chewed on that for a second. “Do you know if he ever had any connection with the church, the one that blew?”

  Dennis shook his head. “Not that I ever knew of. He didn’t go to church, though a couple of times he told me he’d been to confession. But didn’t say where.”

  “Ever heard of Mark David Mayne?”

  He thought about it. “He’s the big developer.”

  “Right.”

  “Just that he’s rich. Why?”

  “I know somebody who knows him.”

  “But what does that have to do with Yance?”

  “I don’t know. You never heard him talk about Mayne?”

  Dennis shook his head.

  “How about a man named Tomás?” I said.

  Another shake.

  “How about Arvand Andandi? Or Stratemeyer?”

  Dennis Bork took out another cigarette. “Uh-uh.” And then it all caught up with him. A sob burst out of his mouth.

  “I loved him,” he said. He sniffed, looked at me. “Are you trying to get to somebody? Who might have done this to him?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Just keep thinking,” I said. “Think about anyone you know of who might have been involved in the drug thing with him. Friends, whoever.”

  “Should I call you?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t be reached. I don’t want to be reached. I’ll come back and talk to you in a few days. When do you work?”

  He gave me his schedule for the next week then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “I hope you find out what happened,” he said.

  “I hope so, too,” I said.

  IRA WANTED ME to put my plans on hold, so I went to a movie. I went to the Chinese theater and paid to watch an action flick starring Sylvester Stallone. It’s a little hard to get into a film with a monosyllabic actor on human growth hormone, but I tried. I went with the myth.

  That is the whole point of the hero’s journey. It is our identification with a figure who represents the values of the community, and by mythic exploits inspires the community to fight.

  Because to survive means to fight. There is never any rest. You’ve either got enemies outside, inside, or both.

  And softness is not going to survive. Can’t we all get along is not a question any serious student of history asks.

  So I watched as special effects and noise overtook story and nuance, then walked out into a street stuffed with tourists and out-of-work actors dressed as action figures so the tourists could have their picture taken with them and sent back home to Germany or Japan, ha ha, look who I met in Hollywood! That’s me and Captain Jack Sparrow!

  I walked down the boulevard past trinket shops and tattoo parlors, hot dog stands and decaying buildings, over the freeway and into Thai Town. I stopped at a liquor store and picked up a fifth of Knob Creek and took it back to my motel room.

  There I poured a shot of bourbon and sat down at the computer and pecked away one-handed, looking for a story on killings that took place in East Los Angeles, in a building, and by the knife.

  Nothing.

  Which meant one of two things. Either the bodies hadn’t been discovered yet. Or somebody had cleaned the building and didn’t want the cops to know a thing about it.

  Now wouldn’t that be a fine thing? What was I dealing with here?

  When I was twenty, a couple years after the events of the Tuesday that changed my life forever, I was heavily into building my body and my mind and my fighting skills, and I went to a local PI because I wanted to find a guy. The PI was a skinny, chain-smoking ferret named Joey Feint, which I thought an absolutely perfect name for a PI. We started talking about how to find people and instead of asking me for money he said I had a head for this and would I like a job?

  So for six months I worked for Joey Feint, helping him with bail skips and insurance fraud and divorce cases. And what I picked up was that a lot of what you see on TV and in books is manure. Now, manure can be entertaining, so that’s why it’s on TV. But in the real world this finding of people is a lot of dead ends, dullness, and needing to go to the bathroom.

  And there aren’t a lot of smart criminals out there. They are mostly dumb, mostly juiced, mostly surprised when you catch them because they thought they were the smartest guy in the room.

  But if someone was cleaning up a kill floor, they might actually be the smartest guys in the room. A
nd that meant I would have to be smarter still.

  And maybe do some cleaning up of my own.

  NEXT MORNING IRA picked me up and drove me over to Temple Beth Shalom. He parked in the nearly empty lot. The only other presence there was some faded burgundy metal with what looked like four tires underneath it.

  “Where is the car I’m supposed to be getting?” I said.

  Ira only smiled as he pulled up his wheelchair, opened it, got on. He opened the side of the van and took the lift down to the pavement.

  I got out and joined him in front of the van.

  The door of the heap opened and out stepped some bones with skin on them, and a head topped with frizzy white hair that looked like someone sneezed in the Arctic.

  “Hello, Saul!” Ira said.

  The old man peered at me. “Is this the fish?”

  “Saul, this is Michael.”

  I put my hand out. Saul just looked me up and down. “You got cash?” Saul said.

  “You got a car to sell?” I said.

  “Well what does that look like to you?”

  “That one?”

  Saul stiffened. “That’s a 1980 Dodge Aspen, my fine friend. And let me tell you, back in the day, it was a chick magnet.”

  My mind started bending on itself, trying to imagine a Dodge Aspen attracting chicks of any kind, and this man in front of me, even with thirty-plus years taken off him, cruising for anything but a good deal on hemorrhoid cream.

  “The price is right,” Ira said. “He only wants five hundred for it.”

  “That’s a deal,” Saul said. “The Sandy Koufax special, he’s getting.”

  Ira said, “Saul used to be in the carpet business. He sold Sandy Koufax some carpet back in 1965 and gave him a special deal. Ten percent off for each of his no hitters. Forty percent discount.”

  “I’ve never had a no hitter,” I said. “I’ve hit everybody I’ve ever faced.”

  Saul did not smile. He seemed incapable of it.

  “As long as it runs,” I said.

  Saul said, “To be insulted I came here?”

  “Oh, she’s a honey of a car,” I said. “A classic. What are we waiting for? Let’s do this thing.”

  “Don’t you want to take her for a spin?” Saul said.

  “I trust you, Saul,” I said. “No spin necessary. Hand over the keys and shake my hand and we’ve got a deal.”