Tribulations of the Shortcut Man Page 4

“Four, five grand.”

  Violet looked at Dennis. “Well, uh, five, then.”

  “Yeah, five,” said Dennis. Or should he have said six? Was there a catch here?

  “Then five it is,” I said.

  “Five,” said Violet.

  “Five,” repeated Dennis. He took another pull on the joint. Fuck it. A consensus had been reached. Seemingly.

  I spread my hands. “Let’s make it five, then.”

  There was a confused silence, then everybody laughed again. A venture had been launched. Everyone was happy.

  “We’re talking cash, right?” Dennis could see it all slipping away in contracts, promises, taxes, and IOUs. But then he remembered. This was Dick Henry. Dick Henry was the ultimo no-bullshit dude.

  “Of course, cash.”

  “Well, we’re in,” said Violet. “And guess what?”

  But my mind had turned to Nedra, to fortune cookies at Ah Fong’s.

  “Dick,” said Violet, “you’re distracted today.”

  “What?”

  “You’re distracted today.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Guess who I saw yesterday?”

  “I’m not a good guesser.”

  “I saw Puss. She’d want me to say hello.”

  Pussy Grace. Violet’s sister on the pole. Christ Jesus. Now there was trouble. Pussy Grace. One thing after another, pillar to post. I mean pillar to pole. Trouble in endless variation with no end to it. “How is the old girl?”

  Violet grinned. “Don’t let her hear you say old girl.”

  Only a fool would do that. At the risk of physical remonstration.

  “Because that would make me an old girl, too,” concluded Violet, with frost.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean physically,” I said, laying on the grease, grinning at Dennis. “Youth is a state of mind. You’re nothing more than a foolish teenager.”

  Violet batted her eyes, allowed herself to be placated.

  “So, how often you see Puss?”

  “I go up to Hollywood once a week. For a singing lesson. With Mr. Montefiori.”

  “Singing lessons?”

  “He’s the best.”

  I left Dennis and Violet to their fattie, navigated Abbot Kinney to Pico. There I banged a left, the towers of downtown Los Angeles ahead in the haze.

  Fortune cookies. We’d taken them, mixed them up, so fate would truly have its way, then opened them and read.

  Dance as if no one is watching. That was mine.

  The one you love is closer than you think. That was hers.

  “Let’s dance,” I said, offering my hand across the table.

  “Okay,” she replied, dark eyes wide and serious.

  Ah Fong’s was an eatery, not a place for dancing. It didn’t matter. I still recall the pressure of her fingers as she took my hand. Nedra was looking at me with the same expression I think I was wearing. Things were so perfect, yet so delicate. Like it was foreordained.

  We came together in the narrow aisle that divided the ten little tables right and left. Ray Charles finished up and Etta James dropped down to take his place. At Last.

  I put my right hand on her hip and she moved into me.

  We danced.

  I still can remember every second. If I want to. The thud of my heart in my throat. The grit under my shoes. The best three minutes of my life. And I knew it, felt it as it ran out, second by second.

  The future had opened up before me, virgin, unlimited, unparalleled, untrammeled. Where mist and cloud had occluded my vision I now saw with diamond clarity. The universe was ancient and welcoming. I had purpose and mission and inspiration.

  And here we are in heaven. For you are mine at last.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vices and Spices

  The Cherokee Hotel wasn’t shit as far as trendy addresses went, and it wasn’t shit anyway. A working girl courting a wrecking ball. Some dopeheads, some whores, a few dealers, some speed-freak musicians, that asshole with the wandering eye trying to write the great American novel. Some writers would buy squalor. Felt obliged to buy it.

  No, the Cherokee wasn’t anybody’s final destination. It was a place you hung, precariously, for the moment, until you fell off or rescued yourself.

  Mr. Bobby Lebow didn’t give a shit. He’d seen better. Much better. He’d had automobiles, he’d had houses, he’d had a small plane, he’d had a fucking yacht, he’d had a record contract, he’d had plans. Had a retinue of hangers-on, both professional and amateur.

  Now all of that was long gone. But, at this moment, he was happy. Not Jesus-personal-savior happy, but all the same. In a drawer below the surface of his coffee table, in his totally trashed, fucked-up hole of an apartment, was a plastic bag with almost an ounce of cocaine in it.

  Yes, he was happy. The front door was locked, he had his Brillo pads, he had his pipes, he had his Bics, he had his vials, he had his baking soda, he had his pocketknife, he had his paper towels, and on that little mirror was a two-gram pile of cocaine. And with what was in the drawer, yes, it was still there, twenty-six delicious grams, he could maintain the mellow wire for four or five days. Before he had to scuttle over the hills into the Valley and score another piece.

  Even though he was anxious for that first hit, he allowed himself the discomfort of anticipation, as he surveyed his resources. Yes. Oh, yes. Everything was in order.

  But then, what was that he saw on the rug? Right between his feet? He picked it up; joy surged through him. Big as a pencil eraser, irregular as a Martian moon, a good four-hit rock of crack cocaine was couched between thumb and forefinger.

  He set it down on the Miles Davis CD, In a Silent Way, that had temporarily become the center of all things. He broke a chunk off, put it in the tube end of the liquor spout that he used, with the copper Brillo as a filter, as his crack pipe. He picked up a little red Bic. It worked. Then he brought flame to the end of the spout.

  Listening hard, as the fragrant purple-tasting pebble gave up its magic in that wonderful stream of tiny crepitations, he drew the cocaine vapor deep into his lungs. Before he set the pipe down, the cocaine had crossed his blood-brain barrier and he was off.

  Oh, yeah. It was good to be Bobby Lebow.

  In her yellow 1988 Mercedes SL 450 hardtop with tinted windows, Ellen Havertine passed Musso & Frank’s, made a left at Cherokee, parked in the lot behind Hollywood’s oldest restaurant. One of the three Hispanics crammed into the parking kiosk gave her a ticket, not giving her a second glance. Probably couldn’t read. Grew up in a mud hut.

  She walked down the steps into Musso’s, turned right, heading for the dining room, but stopped at the old wooden phone booths. Fifty cents later she had her ex-husband on the line.

  “Come on over,” said Bobby.

  The Cherokee was a fucking dump. But the people she needed to see didn’t live at the Four Seasons. She climbed to the third floor, delicately walked to the end of the hall. Who knew what loathsome things lived in that carpet. A long time ago, it may have been yellow. Bad choice. It would probably ruin her shoes. She knocked at 3G.

  She heard Bobby moving around and then the door opened.

  “Well, well, well,” said Bobby, “the judge’s wife.”

  He pointed to a chair across the coffee table. The chair was filled with papers, magazines, and pizza boxes. “Just push that shit onto the floor.”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “Just push that shit onto the floor. That’s the way I like it.”

  So she did. And sat down carefully. She hadn’t seen Bobby in how long? A couple of years. He’d gone downhill. He was thinner. “Where’s what’s-his-name? Didn’t you used to have a dog?”

  “Used to.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He took a shit in the kitchen.” Bobby volunteered nothing further.

  “And? Then what?”

  “Then he had to fuckin’ go, tha
t’s what. He started walkin’ funny.”

  “Intestinal problems?”

  “No. I kicked him in the head. And he blew a fuse. So he had to go. You here for animal rights or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then mind your own business. You know the last thing to go through a parakeet’s mind when you throw him against the wall?”

  “Don’t be gruesome.”

  “His ass. Now howya been?”

  “Fine, Bobby. How about you?”

  “Same ol’, same ol’, same ol’. I’m just about to cook up a couple grams. Want a hit?”

  Half of her mind instantly dissolved into a chemical longing. You never forgot. No matter how long it had been. “No,” she said.

  “Suit yourself.” She wouldn’t last.

  With a playing card, the Jack of Hearts, he dug into the pile of cocaine and transferred half of it into the vial. He added a thumbnail of baking soda and water, shook it up.

  Ellen had been watching like a hawk. “I’ll have one hit.”

  Bobby laughed. “That’s more like it.”

  “Just one.”

  He brought a Bic to the bottom of the vial, which he shook in a circle, applying the necessary heat to turn cocaine and baking soda into crack. “You bring my money, bitch?”

  “Don’t talk to me that way, Bobby. Even if you’re joking.”

  “I’m not joking. You got my money?”

  “It’s in the mail, as always.” She’d almost forgotten his belligerent rudeness.

  “It’d better be.”

  In the vial, sludgy, thick boogers of crack had formed. He stopped swirling and they sank gently to the bottom. Bobby held it up to the light. Bingo, all systems go. He wiped the soot off the bottom of the vial, satisfied.

  He poured the water in the vial through a paper towel into the trash can. Then the soft rocks were tumbled onto the CD. He sectioned them up with his pocketknife and troweled some of the sludge into the ends of two liquor-spout pipes.

  He slid one across to Ellen, followed by a Bic. Bitch could hardly wait. “Bon appetit, baby.”

  He picked up his pipe, watched her go, delaying his own pleasure.

  She heard that faint crackling that heralded paradise. And then she was off. Ohhh, Ellen. Goooooood God.

  Bobby watched the cocaine ring the big bell in her pleasure center. Right now he could stand up, go over there, stuff her face with cock and she’d take it. But been there done that. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

  He rang his own bell. Absolutely loved the taste. A taste you never forgot. The taste you dreamed of when it was all gone. When you were desperately scraping out old pipes and searching the carpet for shards.

  A wave of well-being rolled through him. Shit in hand, in hand, he was on the first steps of a five-day yellow brick road. Dreams and plans would rise to meet the clear surety of execution. It was good to be Bobby Lebow.

  “So, tell me the scheme.”

  “You’re sworn to secrecy.”

  “Secrecy? Doesn’t Superior Court Judge Harry Glidden’s wife have her cum-soaked lips wrapped around a crack pipe at this very moment? How much secrecy do you need?”

  The second toke floated in, rang her gong again. Float like a butterfly, sting like a goddamn bee. She sat back.

  “So tell me the plan,” said Bobby. “Just the hints you’ve given me. You’re fuckin’ broke.”

  “We’re not broke. Our circumstances are a little straightened.”

  Hilarious. “You didn’t marry the lame lawman for straightened circumstances.”

  “Regardless, Bobby. It’s Art Lewis we’re worrying about.”

  “I’ve heard of him . . . I think. Art Lewis—the unscrupulous developer.”

  “Every developer’s unscrupulous. Or you don’t make money. Art made his first fortune selling screws to the Chinese.”

  “Almost as good as the rice business.”

  “I’d rather be in the bowl business.”

  “But Mr. Unscrupulous doesn’t want to lend you anything.”

  “We offered him a sure thing.”

  “Another one of those filthy rich fools.”

  She took a clean-up hit off the smoked pipe. A muted bell sounded. “Art is seventy-five. We know him socially. He loves banging sluts. But his current one is going to kill him.”

  “She looks good, eh?”

  “She’s pretty. Nice ass, nice tits. Ex–pole dancer.”

  Bobby grinned. “What’s not to love, baby?”

  “The trouble is, when he pops a gasket, all his money is going to ESP research, reincarnation, UFO stupidities. And other bullshit.”

  “That would be a goddamn shame.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  She slid her pipe across for a refill. “We’re going to marry him off. And then when he goes, the estate will be divided appropriately.”

  “Won’t the wife get everything?”

  “His wife will be our hired gun.”

  “Too bad you can’t marry him. You got class. But you married that penniless blowhard instead.”

  “The hard part is the marriage itself.”

  “Isn’t it always? Why would Art Lewis get married? That’s the last thing on his mind. When you’re bored with a slut you rent another. So what are you going to do?”

  “He lives out in Temescal. We’re going to get out there and administer the proper chemicals.”

  “In his own house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aha. And in that state he’s going to get married.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who performs the ceremony?”

  “Ceremony? All we need is paper.”

  “Harry’s in on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Righteous.” Got to hand it to the bitch. This was an idea worth having. “Who’s he gonna marry? Eileen?”

  “Eileen is as stupid as a goat. We need someone with class, like you said. I’m thinking Erin Halle.”

  He flicked his Bic, rode the new wave. “Erin Halle. In principle, I agree. But isn’t she in a lot of trouble?”

  “Without help, Erin Halle is going to jail.”

  He grinned. “Here comes Uncle Harry. You’ve thought of everything.”

  “I just need a drug regimen.”

  “My specialty.”

  “Your specialty.”

  He put his hands behind his head and thought. “First, you soften him up. Rohypnol. Second, you flatten him out, Placidyl with Fentanyl back. Third, you keep him off balance with an antipsychotic like clozapine or Haldol. Or better yet, Prolixin if we can still find it.” He took a second hit off his pipe. “I can get them all. Except maybe Prolixin.”

  “What’s Prolixin?”

  “What fucked Gary Gilmore. In prison.”

  He reached for her pipe, refilled both of them. “When does this all go down?”

  “Soon as we can.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Library Stinker

  The sun was shining as I drifted down Santa Monica Boulevard, heading east, past the morning prostitutes, past the morning transvestite prostitutes, past the little theater district, past Cole Field, where I’d played ball as a kid. Hey, batta batta.

  I’d gotten a call fifteen minutes ago from Mrs. Dunlap. How in hell had she gotten my number? Didn’t matter. Probably through Jack.

  Mrs. Dunlap had been my fifth-grade teacher when I was called Richard and had been considered a student with possibilities. She had gone on to a second career as a librarian for the city of Los Angeles. I had gone on to become the Shortcut Man. Now she was the system’s oldest employee, still sharp as a tack, apparently.

  She held down the fort at the Cahuenga Library, a forlorn outpost of civilization near the corner of Santa Monica and Vermont. With diminishing funds, in a neighborhood where few people visited the library anymore, and even fewer spoke English, Mrs. Dunlap soldiered on.

  On the phone she’d been in
sistent but so polite I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. I walked up the broad stone steps and entered.

  In an instant I knew what Mrs. Dunlap’s problem was. All the windows were wide open. With nary a customer but one.

  A large, shabby man was at a reading table, head down, dozing. There, in all his reeking, solitary disglory, was a library stinker. The stench of long unwashed human flesh was beyond horrible and emanated in waves from the miscreant. I tried not to breathe through my nose.

  Mrs. Dunlap approached. She wasn’t breathing either.

  “Thank you for coming, Richard.”

  I nodded painfully. “You got a stinker, eh?”

  “Well, he’s not doing much reading.”

  “But he’s doing a whole lot of stinking.”

  Mrs. Dunlap gathered her sweater more tightly about her shoulders. With age, fresh air had a price.

  “I called the police, Richard.”

  “Yeah?” They wouldn’t do a goddamn thing.

  “They said he was within his rights.”

  Of course. Within his rights. What about the rights of the kids, the old people, the regular folks who appreciated a tiny oasis of learning and relaxation in the vast, trashy, depressing, sullen monstrosity that was Los Angeles?

  I looked around for the exits. “Where’s the back door around here, Mrs. Dunlap?”

  She pointed across the room.

  Okay. I knew what I had to do. “Close the library for a minute, Mrs. Dunlap. Like you do at night.”

  This went against protocol. “Oh, I’m not allowed to do that, Richard.”

  But it had to be done. I pulled a flashy health club card from my wallet. It was a holographic specimen of many colors.

  I waved it in front of her. I didn’t belong to the club but what the hell. “Go ahead. It’s alright. Close up.”

  “Ohhh. Alright, Richard.”

  “Then take a short walk. Go across the street and get a Coke.”

  “I don’t drink Coke, Richard.”

  No matter what you did in this world, there were right ways and wrong ways. “Then why don’t you get a little air. You could use it. I could use it. I’m going to have a man-to-man with the stinker.”

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you, Richard?”

  My God. This was truly a fine woman, and a pacifist to boot. If only I had been born in 1930. But I wouldn’t have measured up. “Are you a Buddhist, Mrs. Dunlap?”