Tribulations of the Shortcut Man Page 5

  “No, I’m a Christian Scientist. But I respect all faiths.”

  “As do I. Don’t worry.” I walked her to the door, sent her out.

  The stinker had his head up. I walked over.

  “Hey, buddy.” Good God, I wanted to puke. “What’s your name?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “It’s for the office.”

  “What office?”

  “The coroner’s office.”

  “Uhhh, the coroner’s off—whaddaya mean?”

  “I mean they’ll be calling the coroner’s office after I’m done with you. After I rip off your head and shit down your neck. Now, what’s your name?”

  “Rutland Atwater.”

  “Rutland Atwater. Well, Rutland, I need you to go someplace else.”

  “And where would you suggest I go?”

  A smart-ass as well. “The possibilities are infinite. But the choice is yours.”

  “Fine. I think I’ll stay here. The police have already been here. They say I’m within my rights.”

  Assholes and their rights. I was filled with a sudden rage. I walked over, knelt down, and yanked the chair out from under him.

  Atwater landed on the floor like a heavy sack of fertilizer, fomenting an updraft of stomach-turning air.

  Rising, steeling myself, I grabbed him by the back of the collar and dragged him toward the rear exit.

  “Hey! I know the law! You’re making a big mistake!”

  I hit the exit bar with my back, the door opened, and then we were in the parking lot.

  I hated to think what was on my hands. I saw a spigot and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed.

  Then I went over to asshole. “Listen to me. Don’t ever, ever, ever go back into that library again. Got me?”

  The stinker, sitting on the pavement, hands propped behind him, nodded. “I don’t have any olfactory glands,” he bleated.

  “I don’t give a fuck about your glands, Stanley.”

  “Rutland,” corrected the stinker meekly.

  I’d used Stanley generically. An idea struck me. “You know the old lady who works here?”

  “What about her?”

  “See. You’re not so smart.”

  “What about her?”

  “You say you know the law?”

  “Loyola School of Law.”

  “Loyola? Then you must know what happens to old ladies who commit terrible crimes.”

  “Uhhh, no. What happens?”

  “Nothing happens, you stupid son of a bitch. Nothing happens. I just saved your ass, see? She was going to set you on fire.”

  “Fire?”

  “Fire. Don’t test her. She’s my grandmother. On my mother’s side. She looks sweet as pie but all her tacos aren’t on one plate. She was the one who burned down the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in 1989.” Or whatever year it had burned down.

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. You owe me, Rutland.” Christ. Now I knew this misfit’s name. Because it had penetrated my consciousness at an angle; because I had made no effort to remember it.

  “The Pan-Pacific? Jesus. I didn’t know.”

  “Jesus had nothing to do with it.”

  And that’s how the Shortcut Man restored order and tranquillity to the last bastion of civilization on east Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Now the day’s real trial was ahead. At one o’clock I was visiting Nedra Scott.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nedra Scott

  Bledsoe Park had quickened in the ’40s to house the black population migrating west for the wartime jobs downtown. Fifty-some years later, when I had come to visit Nedra, the neighborhood looked its age, for the most part battered but still proud, here and there someone holding out to the last man, the house and yard pristine. White picket fence, palm tree, weathervane. The Right Reverend Asa J. Scott had one such house.

  Twenty years after my last visit, I pushed through a ring of liquor stores and fast-food places into a dilapidated war zone.

  At at stop sign by a school, a streetlamp arched high. It took me a few seconds to realize that every square inch of the streetlamp had been grafittied. Every square inch. Even way up where you’d think no one could possibly get to.

  To me it was a clear sign. The battle of Bledsoe Park had been convincingly and completely lost.

  It reminded me of a young lieutenant’s Vietnam War chronicle. The Americans had taken a village, had inoculated the children against whatever threats American children were inoculated against. Later, in the tide of war, the village had been lost. Then it had been recovered. The soldiers reentered, only to meet a large group of one-armed children. The Cong had hacked off the arms of all inoculated children.

  The lieutenant realized in that moment the war was lost. His soldiers, as professional and well trained as they were, possessed no singleness of purpose like the Cong. It was just a matter of time. And blood.

  I rolled to the next stop sign. Its streetlight was also fully grafittied. No hope for Bledsoe Park. Bring on Azure Gardens.

  Nedra’s house was exactly as it had been. Neat and clean. But the surrounding houses stood raggedly, in grim fatigue against gravity. My shiny white Cadillac looked like a conveyance from another solar system.

  I knocked and waited. Then the door was pulled back.

  Nedra had aged. Still beautiful. Harder. Her eyes were not defeated, but they were tired. “Come in, Dick, come in.”

  She led me to the kitchen. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” I watched her at work. Grinding some beans, filling the filter, measuring and pouring some water. For a second I felt I could reach and touch her, that I could erase all that had come between us.

  “Cream?”

  “As always,” I said, bringing the past forward.

  She placed two heavy cups on the table. Through the worn-out photo glaze I recognized them from the Grand Central Market. Where we had luxuriated in our secrets. She sat down.

  We looked at one another. A gray kitten wandered through the kitchen, under her chair. It peered up at me. It had one eye. She saw me look.

  “That’s Wide-Track.”

  My expression must have been interrogatory.

  “Wide-Track Pontiac,” she continued. “He’s got six toes everywhere. And he’s got one eye, but around here we roll with the upside.”

  “I had a one-eyed cat, too.”

  “And you called him—?”

  “Hi-Beam.”

  She smiled. “That sounds like you, Dick.” She took a sip of her coffee and we set in. “So Latrell paid you a visit.”

  “Yes. Found his way to Hollywood. On your behalf. He thinks you’re in trouble of some kind.”

  “When am I not in trouble of some kind?”

  “He told me a little about Azure Gardens.”

  “And a little is all you need to know, Dick. Some white people from downtown are looking for some cheap real estate and they’ve decided Bledsoe Park is the place. Nothing better for real estate prices than to get rid of the black people who live here. Who’ve lived here for seventy years.”

  She went on. I started having an odd feeling. That I was listening to something preprepared. Not directed at me in particular. “Are people threatening you, Nedra?”

  “Yes, fucking people are threatening me.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t need your help, Dick.” She got up, opened a drawer, pulled out a .38-caliber revolver, held it up. “If there’s trouble, I say, bring it on.”

  Her voice was pained and harsh, her face stone.

  We hung there for a second. Then she lowered the gun, put it back in the drawer. “Sorry.”

  “I think you do need a little help here. The average woman in this town doesn’t have a gun right at hand, ready to use.”

  “I’m not the average woman, am I, Dick?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “As long as we understand that. So I’ll do things my way, thank you very much.”

  Su
n Tzu and his Art of War floated into my mind. Some battles are not meant to be fought. Part of the Shortcut canon. “Can I be honest?”

  “Nothing’s ever stopped you before.”

  Point to Nedra.

  “And I mean no disrespect in what I’m going to say.”

  “Just speak your mind, Dick.”

  “My question is this: I drove here through a war zone. The battle of Bledsoe Park is lost. The forces of anarchy have won, hands down. Why are you here? Why the hell are you still here?”

  She stared at me with dangerous, glittering eyes. “Only this black woman knows her connection to her land, Dick. I won’t be moved. By a bunch of downtown rabbits. Now, did my son mention any other problems?”

  “Yes, he did.” I knew this next part wasn’t going to go over well. “He wants to know what happened to Uncle Charles.”

  That required some reflection. “He would come to you for that?”

  “Well, he did.”

  Nedra shook her head. She smiled but there was no light in it. “Don’t we all know what happened to my brother? I do. You do. Everyone around here knows. And the United States government knows.”

  “I guess Latrell is naive.”

  “Of course Latrell is naive. He lives with his mother, who protects him.” She looked at me, thinking, other responses being considered. But she opted out. “Thanks for stopping by, Dick,” she said. “Why don’t you go home now?”

  I slipped in some Pearly King, rolled for Hollywood. Pearly and the Temple Thieves had done a nice cover of a Little Walter tune, “Still Your Fool.” My vintage Cadillac tube radio gave it that luscious, fat sound.

  Charles Scott, Latrell’s uncle, had been a very difficult thorn in local politics, then, briefly, in national politics. Then he disappeared into thin air. Vanished. Nothing was proven, one way or another.

  Which proved everything.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Proposal of Marriage

  Erin Halle’s place was around here somewhere. A million years ago Ellen had been to a party there and met Erin, kissed air. This was the unknown section of Hollywood Boulevard, where it wandered into the hills above Crescent Heights, a curving two-lane shadow of itself.

  She parked the yellow Mercedes. The place had gone to seed. Literally and figuratively. A gardener was of very secondary importance when one nurtured an appetite for cocaine.

  She rang the bell and waited. Erin would probably be fifty. It had been at least twenty years since the television show Houston had been a primetime spectacle. Fifty meant choosing either one’s face or one’s body.

  The skeleton who opened the door had chosen neither. She had chosen cocaine. Nervous eyes played over the visitor. “Do I know you?”

  “We’ve met but you may not remember me.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I have your get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “Come in.”

  The breakfast nook had a nice view of West Los Angeles below. Erin Halle sat facing away from that view, looking down on her cocaine paraphernalia. Unapologetically, she packed the end of a long glass tube, flicked her Bic.

  Now she was ready to talk. “What was your name, again?”

  “Ellen.”

  “Ellen. Can I fix you a hit, Ellen?”

  “Not my thing,” said Ellen.

  “Good.” Erin nodded. She flicked her Bic, exhaled. “Why are you here?”

  “Because I need your services.”

  “Nobody needs me anymore.”

  “I do.”

  “Explain.”

  “First let me say, I’m an actress, too, and that I always thought you were very good. Very, very good.” Well, good. Pretty good.

  “Thank you.” Erin searched her memory. But her memory wasn’t associating all that well this year. Who was this woman? She did look familiar. Then the woman’s name fell into her head. Ellen. Ellen Havertine. “You’re Ellen Havertine.”

  “That’s me.”

  “We’ve worked together!”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “What did we do?”

  “I guested on Houston a few times, then we did a Ronald Reagan biopic thing. And probably some other stuff, too.”

  “As long as we got paid.”

  “We did. Look, Erin. I also know you’re in trouble. That you might go to jail.”

  Erin lit up, exhaled. “That’s what they say.”

  “I can help.”

  “How can you help?”

  “I can get you off.”

  Erin shook her head quickly, birdlike. “No one can do that. It’s an open-and-shut case. I’m screwed.”

  Ellen showed her hand. “If you marry the man I’m going to suggest to you, I can make sure you don’t go to jail.”

  “Marry? Me marry?”

  “Marry. Then you’ll share your new husband’s assets with me.”

  If that wasn’t an excuse to take a hit, nothing was. She took one. Two. She looked up at the lady. Things fell into place. This woman was on that piece-of-crap cable show Special Counsel. She was the Special Counsel! Things got curiouser and curiouser. “So let me get this straight. You’re going to fix my case and I’m going to marry Mr. X.” This was audacious enough to actually work. Because what often succeeded in life was audacity.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Guarantee me I’ll get off?”

  “You won’t go to jail.”

  “And, then, after I get married, I’ll be turning Mr. X’s assets over to you.”

  “Most of them. But there’ll be something substantial in there for you, don’t worry.”

  This was like a bad TV movie. Out of the blue came the perfect solution. A delirious joy filled her. Better take a hit. So she did. A soft red rose of emotion materialized in her heart. “Is my husband a nice man?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Art and Justice

  Judge Glidden’s courtroom was on the seventh floor of the House of Justice on Temple Street. I’d parked within sight of Gehry’s Disney Hall and walked over.

  Professional day-to-day justice was a dismal thing. Old suits, old briefcases, old shoes, old strategies, old jokes. The only thing new was today’s defendant. Who looked just like yesterday’s defendant. Who often was yesterday’s defendant.

  But today I was there for a different purpose. My purpose was art. Kostabi.

  A matter was in progress and I took a seat in the back. The courtroom was nearly deserted except for the concerned.

  “The defendant will approach the bench.” The bailiff, a large, forbidding black man, had seen it all.

  The defendant looked familiar. I wondered what she’d done. Good God, she’d been beautiful. And still was. No doubt she’d had to kick a path through the broken hearts at her doorstep. Now she was skinny, actually very skinny, but dressed well and made up well.

  Then I recognized her. Erin something. Erin Halle. One of the stars of Houston. She’d been Pamela Lorrilard, Texas aristocrat, a wealthy bitch who’d supported the opera and the museum but killed people for demanding a share of the water that flowed across her land. A civic-minded dame.

  She stood beside her lawyer.

  I recognized him, too. Andy Rigrod. A very sharp character. Rigrod, famously, could manufacture reasonable doubt out of mist and whole cloth.

  Glidden opened his mouth and out came that TV baritone. He hadn’t been using it at the Pantry. “Miss Halle, you’ve pleaded guilty to the possession of three-point-two-three ounces of crack cocaine. Is that right?”

  She looked at Rigrod. He nodded.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

  “And cocaine paraphernalia. Is that right?”

  Rigrod nodded again.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Ms. Halle, I’ve read your support documents from your friends, family, fans, and physicians. And I have some sympathy for your addictions, which you state as both to cocaine and to alcohol. But I assume you do know right from wrong. Am I correct
?”

  With the added authority of position, Glidden spoke with great heaviness.

  Ms. Halle swallowed. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Ms. Halle, your crime is punishable by no less than ten years in state prison and no more than sixteen years in state prison. Because this matter involves rock cocaine, not powder cocaine, there are sentencing guidelines. In accordance with these guidelines, I hereby sentence you to ten years in state prison.”

  Ms. Halle cried out and bent at the waist. Her voice echoed around the drabness. Then there was just the sound of her sobs, dry and pitiful. Rigrod reached out, grabbed her arm.

  Whew. Even if someone caused their own train wreck this moment was difficult to watch. The reckoning.

  “But,” Glidden continued, “because I believe you are truly contrite, and this is your first major offense in a long life of hard work, with many documented charitable works, I’m going to set the guidelines aside. I’m suspending the sentence to time served with the remainder to be served on probation.”

  Ms. Halle gasped, unsure of what she’d just heard.

  “In addition, I’m mandating a rehabilitation program, at least twenty-six weeks in duration, outpatient. One more thing, Ms. Halle. If you’re found with as much as one single nonprescription Percocet, Valium, Vicodin, Oxycontin, anything—you’re going to prison. For a long time. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Her voice a ghostly whisper.

  The gavel slammed down and the lady fell into the arms of Rigrod.

  Ten minutes later I was ushered into Glidden’s private office by the bailiff. The judge, still in his black robes, was behind his desk.

  “Was I too lenient, Mr. Henry? The prosecutors seemed to think so.”

  I shrugged. The waters of justice ran deep. “You must have your reasons, Judge.”

  “And I do.” He gestured me into a seat.

  I sat.

  He looked at me with his famous hawklike expression. “So. What’s up, Mr. Henry?”

  “Well, I’ve found your man. Ten thousand dollars.”

  “That’s just what you estimated.”