Shortcut Man Read online

  That afternoon, having borrowed a piece of bar stock from the engine room, I confronted Stevens in his room at the barracks. I knocked on his door with my iron bar.

  “My gearshift is installed in your car and I want it now,” I explained after he opened up.

  He didn’t know what I was talking about.

  I slammed the bar down on the steel railing outside his door and it made a big noise. “My gearshift is installed in your car and I want it now,” I repeated.

  From his face, I could see that Stevens now shared my concern, but, interpreting the spread of his hands, he remained ignorant as to the cause of the misfortune.

  “My gearshift is installed in your car and I want it now,” I shouted. I waggled the bar like a baseball bat.

  In that moment, Stevens realized he had been ripped off at the swap meet. He offered to reinstall it on the spot.

  And Nita? Nita never did come my way.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lynette

  Hell with Nita. Now I had Lynette.

  Lynette was a tantalizing witch with the face of an angel. She was whip-smart, streetwise, and had a mocking laugh that sent primordial forces straight to my cock. Coal black hair coursed down around rosebud lips and terminated at her full bosom with small, upturned, brown nipples. Part of me knew I wouldn’t have her long. That was what made the living tragedy so sweet.

  I met her at the Sunset Strip House of Blues, upstairs in the Founders Room after a Little Feat show. I don’t know how she picked me to talk to, but perhaps I was the only one content not to be a famous musician.

  “You don’t play anything?” she inquired, pretending to be disappointed.

  Her beauty might have intimidated me but the lighting was dim and I was two Laphroaigs on the good side. Earlier that day I had folded away a neat little check for $22,000. So I was feeling my oats, as they say. “I can play the swinette, in an emergency, but I know how to eat pussy.”

  “You’re on, sailor boy,” she replied with a grin.

  Later she asked me what a swinette was.

  “That would be three hairs across a pig’s ass, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” It was a bad joke, but the ship had already sailed, if you get my drift.

  We established a true adult relationship. She did her thing, I did mine. It was fast, it was fun. We fucked, we talked, we cooked, we laughed, we fucked. We saw little daylight but plenty of stars.

  She was a stewardess for a private airline that flew billionaires wherever they needed to go to exploit natives. She would be in town for a few days, then gone for a few weeks, then, there she’d be at my door at one in the morning smoking a joint.

  “What don’t I have?” she asked that night with a twisty smile.

  I looked her up and down. Honesty sprang to my lips and I let it pass. “You have everything.”

  Another devilish smile. “You’re wrong, Dick. I don’t have any underwear.”

  And we’d be off and running.

  The only problem with the beautiful bitch was that she had no respect for anything or anybody. “I’ll be over in fifteen minutes” could mean an hour, three hours, or not at all. And regardless of if and when, she knew no one could look into those green eyes and hold on to anger. I never could.

  I was steaming this second. Of course, she was way late. I was thinking I should’ve gone to Las Brisas in Redondo with Rojas and had some tacos carnitas, a few Pacificos, and a few laughs.

  Then I heard a knock at the door. Even her knock was feminine, don’t ask me how I could tell.

  There she was, smoking a joint, twirling her car keys around her finger. Then she walked in, right past me.

  “What’s up, Dick Henry?”

  “You’re lucky I’m still here.”

  “I’m the lucky type, sailor boy.” She laughed. “I stopped and had a drink.”

  “Or three. You’re two and a half hours late.”

  “Who’s counting?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m not late, Dick. I can’t be late.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because the party starts when I get here, darling.”

  With that I grinned and gave up.

  She reached the mantelpiece and paused to reexamine a small abstract sculpture.

  The piece was the size of an abalone shell, but there were extra rolls, flourishes, and cavities. In kiln-fired red, purple, and green. Maybe it was an alien vagina. To greet the three-headed cocks of Orlanafon.

  “What did you say this was, again, Dick?”

  “A piece an ex-client made for me. And hello, by the way.”

  She prodded it with a finger. “In lieu of payment, no doubt.”

  Uhh, that was true. “I can’t remember.”

  “Everyone takes you to the cleaners.” She pushed it to the edge just to see if I’d react. I didn’t.

  Then she pushed it off. It shattered on the flat of the fireplace.

  “Goddammit. Why’d you do that?” I didn’t know what it was, but it was mine.

  She laughed. “Try to surround yourself with objects of beauty, Dick. It matters. It really does.”

  Then she walked over, theatrically put her head on my chest, looked up into my eyes, batted her eyelashes. “You’re not really mad at me, are you, darling? Not for that.”

  What I was, was in over my head.

  She relit the joint. “Let’s go to Big Sur.”

  A friend of hers had a house there, and we’d driven up once. She’d treated the place like she owned it. Incredible view from a cliff above the ocean, a huge bed, nice liquor cabinet. But tonight, too far.

  I fought my way out of her game. “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m illuminated.”

  “What’s the difference?” There was brilliant riposte.

  “Intent.”

  “And what do you intend?”

  “I want to fuck.”

  Point, set, overmatched. I exhaled slowly. “Turn around.”

  I saw the pulse in her throat. Staring at me, she put down the joint.

  She turned and looked back over her shoulder and waited.

  “Show me your ass,” I said. I sincerely loved this part.

  Eyes locked on mine, she put her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt and panties and slowly pushed them down.

  Her ass was architectural triumph of divine origin. And for the moment it was mine.

  We sat on a long bench in the soft half darkness of the bedroom, looking into the back garden. The crickets worked away at their nightly labors.

  She was wearing the white button-down shirt I’d taken off. Sleeves rolled up, it was as big as a dress. She looked good in anything. She exhaled her Virginia Slim. It was a nice moment. “I love Laurel Canyon.”

  As did I. After living here and there around the city and then on Arden in Hancock Park for ten years, I’d been back in the canyon for about three. Every now and then, at night, the distant thrum of a car or the scent of the wind through the trees would sync up with an old memory and create a fleeting pocket of three-dimensional wistfulness, bittersweet on the tongue. Those simple, simplistic, innocent times. And the dreams born of them, now splintered, gray, and ridiculous.

  Lynette stubbed out her cigarette. “You ever kill anyone, Dick?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “That’s all you’re going to get.”

  “Come on. You’re a full-grown man. Stop being cagey. Tell me, yes or no.”

  “I’m starting to get black widow vibrations.”

  “I make you nervous?”

  “Not yet.”

  She picked up a gold ring from a knickknack ashtray on the bookcase. “This always been here?”

  “Long as you’ve been around.”

  “What is it?” She slid it over her finger, where it rambled around.

  I reached over and straightened it up. Like a school ring, it had a large, faceted red stone in an oval setting. “Tha
t’s an Inter-Services Championship ring.”

  If you looked closely enough you could see two tiny boxing gloves.

  She studied it, me. “You?”

  “1988.”

  I’d caught Marine Lance Corporal Charlton Parker with a perfect left hook eighteen seconds into the first round. Which was lucky because he was scheduled to kill me. I’d fought a series of stiffs and lumps, but Parker was in another league altogether. But the fates weren’t with him. The referee raised my hand, and I retired on top.

  Lynette studied the ring again. “Badminton?”

  “Tiddlywinks.”

  “You’re tough.”

  “Tough enough.”

  “I want it.”

  “You can’t have it.”

  “You’ll give me whatever I ask for.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know if you’ve ever killed anyone.” She put the ring down.

  “Yes. But that’s kill, not execute.”

  Though the Police Commission had not found the distinction significant. Ending my police career and consigning my friend and partner, Lew Peedner, to the working ranks forever. My former friend and partner.

  “You believe in heaven and hell, Dick?”

  “I believe that people are more than animals.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to believe it.”

  “But you admit there’s no proof.”

  “Any game is more fun at its highest level of significance.” I looked at the point of her nipple through my shirt. “You want me to kill someone for you?”

  In a foul old house near Western and Venice I’d caught Elton Reese rising, bloody, from the body of eight-year-old Soon Cha Kim. Reese had raised his hands. “I guess you got me, lawman. I surrender.”

  That’s when I put four bullets into his head.

  “Killing someone who deserves to die isn’t murder,” said Lynette.

  “You’re right. Sometimes it’s manslaughter.” I shook my head. “Don’t kill anybody. It’s too final.”

  She shrugged, picked up the ring again. “I love my ring, Dick.” She laughed. Then she pushed me over and we resumed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Near Sundown

  I hadn’t lasted long as a cop. I wasn’t cut out for it. One day, at the station, some genius was praising Nixon. I mentioned a Vietnamese proverb I’d come across. When a small man casts a long shadow, it’s near sundown.

  Deighan scratched his fat ass and uttered the words in which I foresaw the end of my police career. When a civil servant casts no shadow, it’s lunchtime, he said. Deighan.

  There was a big laugh. I shrugged, beat. I was too deep for the room. The next day I ventilated Elton Reese.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chuckie Gregory and A-1 Contractors

  I rolled over Mulholland and let Laurel Canyon Boulevard take me into the valley.

  Though many parts of the valley were lush and green, I could never unsee the parched yellowness beneath it all. Buildings budded quickly from the jealous soil, flowered, faded, were razed back into nothingness. Even the newest of the new, like the Laurel Gardenaire, now passing on my left, filled me with fatigue and hopelessness. In ten years it would be run into the ground, full of bug-eyed meth freaks.

  I had to get myself out of this mood. It could kill a nice day in the valley.

  I’d come over the hill from Hollywood after visiting Mrs. Wagner, my first landlord after I’d gotten out of the service. She’d been seventy-eight then; this very morning, twenty-odd years later, she was ancient, frail as a twig, and barely there.

  She lived in a tiny bungalow, now worth a fortune, on Vista below Santa Monica Boulevard. I’d lived over her garage. She served me coffee in the kitchen and showed off the same spoon collection I’d come to know all those years ago. I stirred the weak coffee with a spoon from Vienna, inquired about the problem.

  She hunched her fleshless shoulders and pointed her Heidelberg spoon toward the ceiling.

  I looked up and understood.

  “I had the ceiling replastered, and then it started falling out.”

  It certainly had. Some know-nothing had fixed up a bad batch of plaster, which dried, separated into pieces the size of an Oreo, and finally succumbed to the forces of Newton.

  “A piece fell right into my goldfish bowl.”

  Now I remembered. She’d always had a fishbowl on the kitchen table. The fish would swim through the little house.

  “Finny was killed when plaster fell in.” Her thin fingers fluttered around her mouth, and she smiled to let me know she knew she was an old bother. “Finny was my goldfish.”

  “How much you pay the guy?”

  “One thousand five hundred dollars.” She paused, embarrassed. “Which is a lot. For me.”

  “It’s a lot for me, too. Let me see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, Dick,” said Mrs. Wagner, touching my hands. With the weight of a butterfly.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wagner.” I realized I’d never known her first name. But there it was on the contractor’s receipt. Delores.

  So, on Delores’s behalf, I now plied the northernmost stretches of Sepulveda Boulevard, the longest thoroughfare in Los Angeles County. Forty-three miles long. From the South Bay to the mountains.

  Finally, off to my right, I saw my destination, the Stanhope Business Park. Single-storied, flat-roofed, baked to a sullen, ocher ugliness, the four long buildings radiating an angry, pitiless heat. The complex begged for a bomb. Or a maniac with a steamroller. Over on the end of Building B was A-1 Contractors, Inc.

  I parked the Caddy in a cloud of dust, let it settle, got out, went in.

  A-1 Contractors occupied a shallow rectangle. A lazy ceiling fan churned the heat and a cadre of tired flies. A long counter ran most of the way across the room and behind it sat a woman approaching her sixth decade. She put a cigarette into her ashtray.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m Dick Henry.” I looked at the card Mrs. Wagner had pressed into my hand. “I’m here to see Chuck Gregory.”

  The woman took a quick drag on her Benson & Hedges. “And the nature of this visit?”

  “I’m here on behalf of Mrs. Wagner, eleven thirty-three North Vista Street, in Hollywood. She’s having a problem with some work you guys did.”

  The woman’s eyes darted sideways to a closed door. You could hear music. “I’m sorry to hear that, I’m sure we’ll make it right.”

  She reached into a wire basket, took a form off the top, slid it over. “If you could just fill in the particulars.” She handed me a stubby yellow pencil.

  I never liked forms.

  “What about Chuck Gregory? Where’s he?”

  “Mr. Gregory is on site at the moment. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “No, he’s not. If you could fill in the form . . .”

  At that moment the music door opened and a big, crew-cut, muscle-bound man stepped out. Thirtyish. Sleeves rolled up, he carried his arms high and wide. “Lydia, I thought I asked you to call—”

  Then he saw me. “Uh, yes?”

  “Hi,” I said, with a pleasant smile. It’s always best to start out pleasant. “Mr. Gregory, I presume?”

  “Uhhh—”

  Of course he was Mr. Gregory. “Mr. Gregory, I’m Dick Henry, and I’m here to talk about the Wagner problem.” I smiled. “Should we talk privately?”

  I walked into the music room, sat down. Still in the outer office, Crewcut started bitching the woman out.

  “Goddammit, Lydia. I told you I wasn’t in.”

  “Then you demonstrated to the contrary.”

  “Shit. Call Andy and tell him to wait a few. No, just tell him to meet me at Foxy’s. Now who’s this asshole again?”

  “Dick Henry.”

  “And why’s he here?”

  “Mrs. Wagner. In Hollywood. You may have replastered her ceiling.”

  Gregory checked his watch. May have. Ma
y have replastered her ceiling. Was that a dig? He should fire the old bitch for fucking insolence but good employees were hard to find at the end of the valley and she could juggle huge columns of figures in her head even when she was drunk. Shit. He was going to miss Stormy’s turn on the pole. Maybe he’d go for a lap dance. But first maybe he’d have to kick Dick Harvey’s ass.

  The office was dirty and airless, partially illuminated by a small, smeared window. Not that there was anything to look at. I thought about Mrs. Wagner and felt a spike of active dislike for Chuck Gregory. Guys like this would run over the Mrs. Wagners of the world until they were made to stop.

  Gregory entered. “People don’t usually just barge into my office.” He sat down with a grunt.

  I maintained the pleasant tack into the stiffening wind. “Didn’t mean to barge, Chuck. Mrs. Wagner must have called six times over the last two weeks.”

  Crewcut leaned forward over his desk, knit his fingers, rubbed his thumbs together. “Well, we’re real busy. Now refresh me on the problem.”

  “Mrs. Wagner, eleven thirty-three North Vista Street. You, somebody, replastered her ceiling. And it’s not working out.”

  Crewcut decided to turn up the gas. He leaned forward, aggressive. “You a lawyer?”

  Somewhere in his recent past was an onion.

  I took a small bag of Mrs. Wagner’s little plaster cookies, slid it across the desk. “I’m not a lawyer. But this is what I’m talking about. You don’t need to be a lawyer.”

  Chuck fingered the bag, then stared at me. I guess I was supposed to be frightened.

  “Am I going to have trouble with you, Harvey?”

  Beneath the plane of his desk, my left fist had started to tingle. “The name is Henry. And I sincerely hope there’s not going to be trouble.”

  Chuck got up, started around his desk.

  I rose as well. “I just want to make things right.”

  “Good. That’s what small claims court is all about.” He was right in my face.

  “Actually, that’s not good. Mrs. Wagner is three hundred years old. She won’t be around for the court’s decision.” I was giving him a last chance, but I could tell he was too stupid to appreciate my consideration.