Tribulations of the Shortcut Man Read online

  “A kid?”

  “Fifteen, sixteen.”

  “Someone steal his bicycle?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me nothin’, either.” Jack grinned. “Maybe he’s gonna be a judge.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t deal with kids. You know that.”

  “Told him that. But he keeps comin’ back. Came back yesterday.”

  “Asked for me?”

  “Yesiree. For Mister Dick Henry.”

  I didn’t deal with kids. Or snakes.

  Jack ran an eye over his racks, then glanced up into the mirrors that looked down on the aisles. “Hell, Dick. There he is now.” He pointed into the mirror.

  A kid was checking out something in the masked avenger section.

  “You Dick Henry?”

  “Yeah. But listen, kid. I don’t do stuff for kids. It’s a legal thing.”

  The boy was tall and skinny. Serious eyes. “What I wanted to talk to you about was—”

  I cut him right off. “Don’t waste your breath on me. I don’t work for kids. No exceptions. You got school counselors, campus police, after-school clubs, a thousand people to turn to. Sorry. No exceptions. Good luck.”

  I turned to Jack, waved. “Catch you later, Jack. Thanks.” I turned to the kid. “Good luck, son.”

  I could feel the kid’s eyes on my back as I walked down Cahuenga.

  You gotta draw a line.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Classical Dance

  Art Lewis lived in his dream house up Temescal Canyon off Pacific Coast Highway. He was seventy-four years old, six foot four, two-forty, a big, broad-chested man with a full, natural head of white hair. He’d fought and pushed and scratched and now he was done with the struggle. He’d made his money. He’d taken care of those it had fallen his lot to take care of. Now he did what he pleased.

  What pleased him was Pussy Grace.

  Pussy was a stripper of heroic and perfect dimension. Blond, blue-eyed, in her thirty-second year, she was not witless, but she was not an economist either. She was endearingly fallible, and possessed of a sunny disposition that made time in her company well spent. She had a little of her own money and she was not greedy. She was happy to be with Art and he was happy to take care of her. One day flew into the next.

  Art liked to cook, and was doing so now, adding chopped onions to the small, copper-bottomed fry pan where garlic and cilantro were liquefying in virgin olive oil. He adjusted the flame down a bit. Copper transmitted heat quickly.

  “Remind me, Puss. We need some more extra-virgin olive oil.”

  Pussy smiled up at him. “I used to be a virgin. But I was never an extra virgin.”

  “Who needs extra virgins? I’m not a schoolboy. I like experience.”

  “You know I don’t have much of that.” She checked her watch again.

  “Nervous?”

  “Jesus, Art, I’m not used to meeting judges. I’m used to standing in front of them.”

  He threw his head back and laughed in that big bark of his.

  “You’re going to be just fine. You’re here because I want you here. And the judge? The judge is a man whose dad could afford to send his son to law school. No better than you and me, certainly.”

  “I know we’re all the same before God and that stuff. But we’re not before God. I’m a stripper, Art.”

  Art beamed down on her. “And that’s just one of the reasons I like you. I got fifty others.” He patted her ass with one of his huge hands.

  She was still doubtful. “O-kay.” She brushed a few more cilantro leaves into the mix.

  “Bottom line, Puss, remember why the judge is here.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Money. Like any cook, sign painter, valet parker, or wedding violinist, he wants money. For some cockamamie scheme.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “The same thing I tell everyone else. No.”

  “I like that word.”

  “What word?”

  “Cockamamie.”

  Good God. She was still beautiful. Those eyes. And that smile. Sin and salvation. He’d watched her so long on television it was almost like he had known her. Then they met.

  “I’m Judge Glidden.”

  “I’m Ellen Havertine.”

  She’d liked him. Really liked him. Laughed at his jokes. Touched his arm when they were talking on the set.

  Touching is not a lie. That was one of his maxims. Physical contact between a man and a woman of appropriate age was never an accident. It happened or it didn’t. Even down to the seemingly incidental, two people at the office coffee mess, a woman didn’t even bump elbows or allow herself contact with someone she was specifically uninterested in.

  Their conversations had been vivid and wide-ranging. Her knowledge of the law was surprisingly deep.

  “Of course, I’m not a lawyer,” she’d laughed, “but I play one on TV.”

  “Or you stayed in a Holiday Inn,” he rejoined cleverly.

  “You’d have to do better than a Holiday Inn if you wanted me in a hotel, Judge.”

  A frozen moment. Then he jumped in with both feet.

  “What about the Island? In Newport?”

  “I prefer the Balboa Bay.”

  That was the exact moment he, the Honorable Harold J. Glidden, had allowed the fracture of his old life. Invited the fracture.

  I like the Balboa, too.

  A week after Law & Order had wrapped, that’s where they had spent a couple of days. And nights.

  How had he put it to Patricia? Miss Havertine and her representation wanted to consult him, for, uh, his legal expertise, uh, as a background, a background for creating a new cable series. About a lawyer, a female lawyer, a female lawyer in the dog-eat-dog world of Los Angeles law.

  Over the course of that weekend Ellen had taken him places he’d never been, places beyond his dreams. With horror he realized he’d been drifting sleepily toward the end of his life, hypnotized by the road, unaware there were still significant journeys yet to be undertaken. Ellen had woken him up.

  If he were down to the last chapters of his life, he decided he would live it his way. He’d made enough money to be comfortable, he’d raised his kids, he’d seen Patricia through everything. But Patricia had settled for old age and, after time with Ellen, he just couldn’t do that. So, with due responsibility, he’d chucked everything and endured the scandal.

  He’d felt young again, naked, exposed, alive. So alive. His children, Todd and Monica, had been furious with him. But he’d expected that. Loyalty to their mother. It was natural. They weren’t in his shoes. Christ, like that old cliché, he had shoes older than they were. They couldn’t possibly understand what a man felt as he gazed into the sunset. Gazed into the sunset bored stiff.

  He’d been generous to Patricia. Who’d spurned his offer of continuing friendship, who’d barely said another word to him since. The woman scorned. She’d dragged her feet through every evolution, every procedure, and at the bitter end, tenaciously fought for one of the few things she knew he’d grown to love.

  A painting. Kostabi #5. She hadn’t kept it physically, but she’d retained legal ownership of it. Bitch.

  A month after the divorce he’d married Ellen in grand and public style. He’d been in all those magazines at the checkout stand.

  He and Ellen had actually gone on to create a show. Ellen Hayes, Special Counsel. With that, and his recurring role on Law & Order, he had turned into a real celebrity. A celebrity judge. On the cover of all those magazines at the supermarket. Featured alongside murderers, thieves, and betrayers bereft of makeup, enflabbed at the beach.

  The only trouble with being a celebrity was acting like one. Waving like a grandee, smiling with his newly veneered teeth, pretending age was just a number. Spending lavishly, traveling first class, entertaining new friends. Tipping waiters, tipping parking boys, tipping anyone with a heartbeat. Anyone who might tattle to a tabloid, leak to the Internet. That Judge Glidden is one ti
ght-ass son of a bitch.

  After a while even Monica and Todd had come to believe he was having a ball. And he was. You know, pretty much.

  For four years he’d kept all the glittering balls in the air. Then, after acrimonious negotiations, in which he had been sure to prevail, Special Counsel had been canceled. With an abrupt income loss of $65,000 a week. But the celebrity train kept right on rolling. Other deals, sure things, scribed in stone, disappeared like tarpaper shacks in a hurricane. He recalled something Hemingway had said about going broke. Slowly at first, then all at once.

  The lights of the 7 series BMW played across the wrought-iron gates of Art Lewis’s place. His window whispered down and he reached out, pressed the green key on the entry pad.

  Ellen stabbed out her cigarette. “What’s this woman’s name again?”

  “I’m not sure. Kitty. Prissy. Something like that.”

  “Prissy? I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies, Miss Scarlett. That’s Prissy.”

  “Maybe I got it wrong. She’s a stripper, for godsake. Like all his girlfriends.”

  “She could be highly cultured.”

  “You’re right. Maybe she plays the piano.”

  “Or the skin flute.”

  They both laughed, then they heard someone key the intercom and then Art’s voice. “Who is it?”

  He’d always admired Art’s voice. Low, sandpaper rough, gruff, no fooling around. “It’s Harry and Ellen,” said Harry.

  “Ellen and Harry,” said Art, smiling through the wire, “come on in.”

  The big gate rolled back silently.

  Art and Pussy waited in the entryway for their guests.

  “So don’t introduce you as Pussy.”

  “Don’t you dare. Not to people like these people. I told you what to call me.”

  Ellen had just repaired her lipstick when the front door opened. There was Art and his stripper. Firm and high. Store-bought. Woman looked terrified. Probably Harry’s effect. There was more to his fame than his tan. He was a sitting judge in Superior Court. Hangin’ Harry Glidden.

  “Come on in, folks. Come on in.” Art’s bad-road face splintered into a grin. “Harry and Ellen, meet one of my good friends, Miss Penelope Grace.”

  The judge nodded, smiled, extended a smooth hand. “Penelope. How do you do?”

  Pussy took the hand, tried to be classy. “Pleased to meetcha.”

  “Call me Harry.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Everyone chuckled.

  Good Christ. Her cultural seams were showing. Like discount stockings.

  “I’m Ellen,” said the movie star.

  Puss took her hand and tried to smile at the same time. “I’m Puh-nelope,” she said, almost blowing it.

  It was going to be an informal dinner. In the kitchen. Thank God. There were too many knives and forks in the dining room. The judge and his wife were escorted to the big peasant table, set festively, with candles. A window looked out on the fountain and the pond. Art put a real log in the fireplace.

  The meal hadn’t started well. The judge got off the line with some heavy shit about marketplace ethics and ended up at the opera downtown.

  Pussy looked narrowly at Art, knowing this would happen. Marketplace ethics. She shopped at MarketBasket, they seemed honest enough. And, Christ, she didn’t know crap about opera. Someone named Gary was either an architect or a composer and whatever it was he had done was a masterpiece. Big deal. Then someone named Mickey built it. The judge turned to her with his blinding teeth. Had she been to the hall?

  The hall. Uh, no, at least she didn’t think so. But she was planning to. Soon. Real soon. She loved the hall. The judge and the special counsel bitch just nodded their perfect heads.

  She was utterly at sea and clutched her wine for flotation. Then Art said he’d seen enough opera to last a lifetime in one long weekend in Italy, in one of those bullshit cities. Florence, that was it. Which meant flowers, right? Art liked jazz. Pepper. He dug Art Pepper.

  Then the wine kicked in and everything was alright. She’d deflected questions about her former career but Special Counsel had gotten the wrong idea.

  “So . . . you’ve moved on from classical dance.”

  “Uh . . . yes,” said Puss. Classical pole dancing. But why should she feel down? She’d read about Miss Special Counsel more than once in the tabloids. Miss Havertine had lassoed a few poles here and there. Including the judge’s. Men were utterly predictable.

  Art surveyed his guests, smiled. Pussy had been magnificent. Keeping the conversational denominator low enough to prevent the judge from shoveling his rich, high-falutin’ manure. Art. Literature. Economics. That dismal superstition.

  Fucking economics. The only time Art was sure that Pussy had seen the Wall Street Journal was in the bottom of Tinkerbell’s cage. Until Tinkerbell had flown into a wall and broken her neck. Parakeets were stupid.

  Pussy related the triple play they’d seen last week at Chavez Ravine. With two out in the sixth inning.

  At that point the judge threw in the towel.

  “A fantastic meal, Art. Really great,” said the judge, formally setting his fork down. Conversation was an art, impossible to practice in the company of the disenfranchised.

  “And the remodel,” Ellen looked around the kitchen, “it looks so good. What I’ve seen of it.”

  “Why, thank you, Ellen.” Art beamed, wiped his mouth, set his napkin aside. He turned to Pussy. “Puss, why don’t you give Ellen the grand tour while I have a cigar with Harry?”

  As Pussy showed Special Counsel the house, she realized Miss High Life wasn’t really so bad once you got to know her a little.

  “Art called you Puss?”

  “Uh . . . like Puss in Boots.”

  “I thought it might be short for Penelope.”

  “That, too.” Puss gestured around the kitchen. She would start the tour here. “This, as you can see, is the kitchen. Biggest kitchen I’ve ever been in.”

  “It is big.”

  She pointed to the cooking island. “And here’s the stove, a twelve-burner Jenn-Air right here in the middle. And here, four restaurant ovens, two on each side. Up to five hundred degrees,” she added helpfully. “And up there are the smoke fans.”

  “Smoke fans,” said Ellen. Had Art invited the pole dancer to keep Harry off balance? So he could more easily turn him down?

  Puss stopped in front of two huge stainless-steel walk-in freezers. “Art put these in special. Walk-in freezers. Big enough to walk right in.”

  “You mean actual walk-in walk-in freezers.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Remarkable.” She’d gone over the presentation with Harry. They already had soft money. But who didn’t? What they needed was five million in cash. And the distribution—they’d get distribution, no worries.

  The pole dancer pointed out a strange, skinny door. “This is what Art calls the security shack.”

  In the library, sixty-five feet away, wreathed in the smoke of two fine Upmann cigars, Art nodded contemplatively.

  Glidden wanted him to invest in a movie that would lead to a cable series. The movie seemed strong. Some action, some sex, some cars. And Ellen still looked good. But what the hell did Art Lewis know about movies? Just enough to get fucked.

  Long ago he’d learned the hard way that you never went into a business you didn’t know absolutely everything about. Like he knew screw threads. Fasteners, translation, gear reduction, measurement. He knew everything there was to know about screws and threads. Plug gages. Tapered plugs. Handbook H-28. He knew it in and out, chapter and verse. But movies? Gone With the Wind still hadn’t made a goddamn profit. Not to worry. It had only been seventy years.

  He looked up into Harry’s eyes. Harry would find someone or something else. “My answer is no, Harry. With regret, but no, just the same.” Of course, a man with money never said yes at the first request. Otherwise he would no longer be a man with money.
/>   In the security shack Puss pointed at all the video screens. Didn’t look like the system was on. Underneath them a computer whirred and there were wires going everywhere. “I don’t know how all this stuff works, I’m not oriented, technically, uh, you know. But Art says you can see a gnat’s ass for twenty-four hours or something like that.”

  “Fascinating,” said Ellen. Maybe Harry was shaking hands with Art right now, victorious.

  Harry stood up, masking his disappointment with nonchalance. “Art, thanks for the straight shooting. I appreciate it. And Ellen appreciates it. And we appreciate the opportunity to run it by you.”

  Harry extended his hand and it disappeared into Art’s big mitt. Shit.

  The BMW moved down Pacific Coast Highway. Gloom pervaded the silence. “Son of a bitch wouldn’t part with a goddamn penny.”

  Ellen stared out into the ocean, exhaled her cigarette smoke into the slipstream. “Her name is Pussy. Pussy Grace.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kostabi #5

  My car, my ’69 Caddy Coupe de Ville, was nearly forty years old. But that was okay. I was driving through Angeleno Heights, where the houses were a hundred years old. I was headed downtown, to the Pantry, at Ninth and Figueroa.

  If you didn’t love the Pantry, you didn’t love L.A. With the exception of one sad, single day in the mid-’90s, the Pantry had been open, continually, 24/7, since 1929. Never without a customer. My father had been a customer. Now he and all the pretty girls he had chased were dust on top of every window blind in the city. Not that I did a lot of dusting.

  I parked across the street, walked over, got a seat toward the back. The Pantry had a full crew of union waiters, all male and professional. I liked watching them work. Not one out-of-work actor among them. Coleslaw and French bread were quickly delivered and I set in.

  I waited for Hangin’ Harry. My newest prospective client. Then I looked up and there he was. Tall, craggy, white-headed, firm of jaw and white of tooth, born to the bench.

  “Dick Henry?”

  “That’s me.”

  We both ordered New York steaks. He went well-done. I don’t generally trust a man who orders well-done. Can’t be afraid of your meat. I go medium-rare.