Tribulations of the Shortcut Man Read online

  “It so happens.”

  He nodded. “I’ll give you eight.”

  No way I was going to drive all the way to Venice for three grand. “You’ll give me twelve.”

  Glidden laughed. “Okay, ten. But I had to try.”

  “Of course.” I wasn’t the only game in town, but the other players lurked in the dark. Generally, it was always best to lurk in the dark. If you had to lurk at all. “Do you have the work in question, Judge?”

  He pointed over to the couch. A large green paper shopping bag. I went over, pulled it out.

  Right off, from what I saw on the Internet, I loved Kostabi. But standing in front of the actual painting was a big step up.

  Kostabi #5 was the depiction of a squarish perfume bottle. In or on the bottle were two lovers with featureless faces, mannequinlike, in a tender embrace.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” said the judge. He was reverent, searching my face.

  What’s art? I don’t know. I just know what I like. The Temple Thieves had weighed in on the subject in their song “Devotion”:

  Art is the sum of what is not

  in all the books

  ain’t no school teach between the lines

  love is the hope this ain’t no joke

  we’re all bleedin’ through

  I thank God every day that I am blind

  and other days I cannot see

  I nodded at Judge Glidden. “I like it. And I’ll get you a good copy.”

  “It has to almost fool me.”

  “That might be hard to do.” Anyone with teeth that white was susceptible to flattery.

  “It will be hard to do.”

  “I’ll get it done.”

  “Who’s going to do it?”

  “With all due respect, Your Honor, that’s none of your business.” Like what people think of the Shortcut Man. None of my business.

  Hangin’ Harry nodded his head.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Pussy Grace

  If Kiyoko had been more reasonable I would never have accepted Pussy Grace’s invitation. But Kiyoko currently considered me a barbarian and considered all attempts at reconciliation acts of disrespect. Which was pretty shortsighted of her. Me being a prince and all.

  Most of our squabbles were based on misunderstandings of English, word or idiom. But pointing this out pissed her off.

  Are you saying I can’t speak English?

  That’s not what I’m saying.

  I speak English all over the world.

  I have no doubt you have.

  Then she dropped the Big Conclusion and I realized I could never win:

  Every time we argue you say I can’t speak English.

  Meaning that I spitefully attacked her delivery to avoid the point of what she was saying.

  No, dearest. You have it backwards. We argue because concepts escape you—because you don’t understand English as well as you might if you’d been born in California. Where Dick Henry, your dim, monolinguistic friend was born. Forku. Porku.

  So I found myself driving through the guitar district of Hollywood looking for Puss’s place.

  The guitar district itself was testament that the most important concept in the retail music business was mediocrity.

  All of us possessed an Inner Star. The trouble was bringing him or her out. A burning talent required just an acoustic guitar and an audience. Bob Dylan. A less talented Inner Star might require a shiny new red electric guitar with two necks, a huge amp, a fuzz pedal, a chorus pedal, an echo pedal, a studded belt, a spiky haircut, some suede boots, an eyebrow piercing, another guitar or two, and a few more amps. Then, twenty thousand dollars later, he was almost prepared to get ready to get started to commence to begin. Planned for the morrow, of course.

  After Gardner Street was Sierra Bonita, where Puss lived. Her house was a white, sturdily built Hollywood bungalow. She opened up the door and was apparently overjoyed to see me. She crushed her boobs against my chest. And, of course, regardless of whose boobs, and how they came to be, that part of a feminine greeting always did feel pretty good.

  I’d met Puss after the unscheduled delivery of a pumpkin pie. That pumpkin pie. When I was no longer welcome in my own home, she welcomed me into her life, nonexclusively, and allowed me to put my cares and woes aside for a moment or two.

  On the negative side, she was a catalyst for trouble, bringing it down on others, remaining blithely untouched herself.

  You’re acting as her chauffeur, because she’s too high to drive. You’re driving around town like a gleeful maniac in the reddest, most powerful Dodge Viper on the planet.

  You congratulate her on her good fortune. You ask her when she acquired this amazing vehicle.

  This morning, she says with a giggle.

  This morning?

  The keys were on my kitchen table.

  What do you mean?

  I mean the keys were on my kitchen table.

  Slowly, her words sink in. This car—it isn’t yours?

  No. Is that a problem?

  It sure the fuck is a problem. You open the glove box. Great. There’s a gun. And a big bag of white powder. Then you hear the thudding noise. From the trunk. In the trunk.

  Puss isn’t worried. Let’s grab a burger.

  Luckily, beneath the stoplight at Sweetzer and Sunset, I pull up next to Bosto Ket, the mellifluous, phony Nigerian with a minor in shortcut work.

  Dick, my good man. What the fuck are you doing in Q-Pain’s automobile?

  Who’s Q-Pain?

  Compton’s angriest rapper. Especially now.

  Why now?

  His car’s been stolen.

  Puss was as beautiful as she’d ever been. Which always made visiting Pussy a risk. This time, however, I swore to uphold my virtue and not allow myself to be dragged into another of her reckless escapades.

  I was reaffirming that vow an hour later when I saw her bottle of Two-Buck Chuck was three-quarters down.

  “More wine, Dick?”

  I waved her off and cautioned her. “You drink any more of that, you’ll be forgetting your promise and sitting on my lap.”

  Pussy giggled.

  I should have run. But I didn’t.

  If only Kiyoko had called. But she didn’t.

  Next thing I knew we were in bed. Her body was outrageous and she knew it. She knew how to tease and took great pleasure in it. From practice with each other, we made good, long love.

  She achieved the clouds and rain, once, twice, thrice. Then, eyes half-closed with sated lust, she asked me one of my favorite questions. “Where do you want to come, Dick?”

  I told her and she made it happen.

  It was good. Very good. I was about to say that we should do this more often when the more mature part of me remembered doing this more often would only lead to the same stuff it led to before. So I asked her a different question.

  “Why am I here, Puss?” Her distressed call, last night, had interrupted a frustrating game of mau-mau with Rojas. I had just played my last card, winning, but had neglected, in conclusion, to say “this is a game called mau-mau.” With that omission, I carefully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, sending Rojas into an fit of table-pounding laughter.

  “Dude,” he spluttered, delighted, “you be playin’ like a white man.” Whatever that meant.

  Puss was lost in her thoughts. I had to ask my question again. “Puss. Why am I here?”

  She laughed a satisfied laugh. “To scratch my back, hon. Just like old times.”

  “That’s the wine talking.”

  She raised a finger. “No. That’s the wine singing.”

  She lit a cigarette with my Zippo. “You’re here because I need you. You know I’ve been dating Art Lewis, right?”

  I shrugged. “Should I know who that is?”

  “The real estate developer.”

  Apparently everyone else in the world knew who he was. Fine. “Maybe I have heard of him. Nice guy?”

  “Ye
s. And we have a good thing happening. We’re not going to be married or anything, but—but we’ve got a thing.”

  “Congratulations.” Maybe she needed a Sunday Man. Another tune by Pearly. “So, what’s happening with him?”

  “That’s the thing. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him. For a week. More than a week, actually. Ten days. He’s never not called me for this long before.”

  “So what?” Maybe the nonmessage was a message in itself.

  “And different people answer the phone.”

  “So you leave messages.”

  “I’ve left twenty messages. Everyone’s unfriendly.”

  “Unfriendly how?”

  “Like they don’t know me and Art. You know, as a couple.”

  What could I say? It didn’t seem to add up to all that much. “I don’t know Art well enough to judge this. Nothing is waving a flag, here. For me.”

  “Well, I see a flag.”

  “Okay. Is that all? Is there anything else?”

  “There is something else.” Pussy smiled and I knew I’d screwed up. “Scratch my back again, Dick.”

  I gathered my strength. “No.”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Then she rolled over on her stomach, pushed her ass up. Her perfect ass. She looked over her shoulder and wiggled. “Look, Dick, look.”

  Run, Dick, run.

  But I didn’t.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Goodbye to All That

  Although Puss had her twisted way with me, at least I woke up in my own bed. After a coffee I called Bosto Ket. I’d asked him to keep an eye out for Nedra down in the war zone and he’d said he would.

  “Just some young African-American freelancers down there, Dick. Working for some lowlife at Azure Gardens, LLC. Out of one of them construction-site trailer offices. A verbal contract. They were gonna get a fee for getting Ms. Scott to move on. They didn’t know who she was exactly.”

  “You explained?”

  “I had my long gun to one of the fucker’s ears. He was listenin.’ Hard.”

  I smiled. Education was expensive.

  Bosto went on. “At first, they thought they might have heard of Brother Charles. In a little bit they were sure that they had. Then they found out Nedra Scott was his sister. That’s when the shit start to move. They didn’t know she was that Ms. Scott. I told ’em no Ms. Scott would be dissed on my planet. Then I pulled the trigger. Click.” Bosto laughed. “And then I do believe I smelled shit.”

  As I ate the Egg King’s breakfast I saw Nedra’s face on TV and turned it up. Bosto had indeed done his work. She was alive and kicking.

  She was being interviewed in front of her house by Ted Sargent, a square-jawed, empty moron who blabbed for Channel 9 and was out of his depth with Nedra Scott. Conveniently irate at the Bledsoe injustice, he appeared afraid of Nedra and the neighborhood in general, his eyes darting right and left.

  Nedra radiated a cold anger and spoke precisely in the King’s English. “It comes down to this, ladies and gentlemen. Black people will not be pushed out of Bledsoe Park. Our blood, sweat, and tears are in the soil here. My father’s blood, sweat, and tears. I will not sell my home. The downtown, moneyed, white interests will not put up Azure Park on our land. On my land. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Look around,” she commanded with a sweep of her arm. The cameras panned over the wreckage: abandoned houses, junked cars, accreted garbage. A medley of wrack and ruin. “The downtown white interests let this happen. And now that it looks like they planned it would look, they can say, black people can’t manage their own affairs. Can’t manage their own neighborhoods. So we good, God-fearing, kind, and merciful white folks want to help. Well, WE DON’T WANT ANY HELP. We’ll do it ourselves. My house—and my blood—are not for sale.”

  Nedra was fierce. She talked about schools, talked about after-school programs, talked about nonexistent supermarkets, talked about medical clinics, brutally disparaged the many marijuana dispensaries. Like Du Bois on the export of gin to Africa. Keep the darkies stoned. Pliable. Complacent.

  Nedra had made me read Du Bois. Made me read Frederick Douglass.

  Then her segment was concluded. I snapped the TV off. Whew. Undoubtedly, Nedra and her interview had frightened the whole of L.A.’s Westside. Had raised the battered prices of all Los Angeles real estate north of Pico Boulevard. Things went dark below Pico. Managers of gated communities everywhere leapt to their computers, rubbed their palms, conjured up raises in association fees.

  From Pearly’s commentary on gated communities, “Seven Keys”:

  She showed me the seven keys

  she needed to get in

  in the middle of the night

  she had no doubt

  high security is fine I said

  it must ease your mind in bed

  does it take those seven keys

  to get back out?

  Nedra Scott had been the most extraordinary woman I’d ever known. Physically she was gorgeous. To me. But that almost didn’t matter. Her mind was infinitely agile, her choice of words exquisite, her deadpan delivery timeless, her scathing eye a source of delight. And she liked me! Genuinely liked me. We were on the same team. I was flattered, I was proud. For a time, my time with her, I was a larger human being than I’d ever been, before or since.

  And she’d been mine. Had lain in my arms. Breathed with me the rarefied air of heaven itself. But, long ago, goodbye to all that.

  Goodbye to all that.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Nothing Wrong with Him

  But you couldn’t keep even a Nedra in mind with a Puss by your side. Two nights later, Kiyoko maintaining her distance, Puss and I were in the dispatch office of the Gas Company. In the lot behind us were 250 Gas Company vans. Tom Thomason, who owed me one, dangled a set of keys in front of my face.

  “This makes us even, Dick,” said Tom.

  “Even Steven.” I had settled a small matter for Tom. I reached for the keys but he pulled them back.

  “Don’t kill anybody, dude,” he admonished, “I’ll get demerits on my employee review card.”

  We all laughed.

  In the van, we changed into Gas Company uniforms and set out for Temescal Canyon. Puss lit up a cigarette and put her feet up on the dash.

  “Thank you, Dick. This means a lot to me. I’ll be good, I promise.”

  She’d said that every time. She didn’t mean it to be bullshit.

  But this time it would be pretty straightforward. Lewis would be there or not there. He’d either just tell her it was over, or he’d have left a nice little gift for her and she’d know it was over. Then she’d get drunk, but that wouldn’t be my problem.

  Suddenly my mind was on Georgette and all that I’d blown. In hindsight, for the most trivial of reasons. Because I’d desired two incompatible states. I’d wanted a wife and my fun, too. I hadn’t been careful enough and now I was a satellite to a distant sun. But my children still loved me.

  Children. In whose eyes you could still imagine an earthly paradise. But then they grew up. Ten years of age was the last time your children would think you were a better man than you were. So, in order to cushion their inevitable disappointment, you tried to be better. For as long as you could.

  What would my descendants be doing as I set off on this profitless mission? Randy would be playing video games or watching The Fifth Element for the fiftieth time, or maybe, though I doubted it, he’d be reading those Edgar Rice Burroughs books I’d gotten for him. The Mars series. I loved Ghek, the hideous Kaldane.

  Georgette would be reading Martine a Beatrix Potter story. The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb. My personal favorite among Miss Potter’s excellent works. I’d read it twenty times to Randy. When the enraged mice destroyed the plaster food—I’d’ve done the same thing. Shortcut Mice.

  I looked over at Puss. “Puss, did I leave my lighter at your house the other night?”

  “What night?”


  “That night. Two nights ago.”

  “The Zippo from Georgette?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “You did.”

  The moon was fractured on the ocean and I was starting to feel sorry for myself when Puss started giving directions. I made a right at Temescal Canyon, then a turn this way and a turn that way and there we were.

  A ten-foot masonry wall overflowing with bougainvillea surrounded the enclave. Some people had houses, some had apartments, some lived in their vehicles—this place was an enclave.

  “What’s the plan, Dick?”

  Plan? Other than your disillusionment? “Look, either Art will be here or he won’t. If something feels funny we’ll take a quick look around if we can. But don’t expect a lot.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’ll listen to what people say and evaluate it.” Suddenly I found myself hoping this wouldn’t be a disaster. I wouldn’t let it. I turned to Puss. “We’re listening. Nothing more.”

  “Listening for clues.”

  “That’s right.” Clues. Like the Hardy Boys. “And that’s all.” Like Nancy Drew.

  I rolled the van up to the gate, pushed the button. After a bit, I heard a click and then a voice.

  “Yes?” It was female.

  “Gas Company for Mr. Lewis.”

  “Gas Company?”

  “As scheduled. Open the gate, please.”

  “Uhhh . . .”

  Pussy whispered at me. “That’s the lady who answers at night. Who won’t put me through.”

  “Mr. Lewis isn’t available right now,” said the voice. The voice had a spinsterish quality. I imagined a bitter, fiftyish woman, chain-smoking behind leaferous, ovate spectacles.

  “Fine,” I said. “But we need a signature. Can you come to the gate?”

  “Why do you need a signature?”

  “For the waiver.”

  “Waiver?”

  “Stating we were here at such-and-such a time.” I paused for emphasis. “And made warning.”

  There was a pause.

  “Warning? What warning?”

  “The paperwork says your water heaters are gas-operated. Anyway, some of those models, uh, like yours, uh, they, uh, have safety concerns. If you know what I mean.”