Shortcut Man Page 6

  The English in the letters was bad, purposely bad, I decided, not ignorant or careless. The penmanship, however, was uniform and excellent, with care to detail. It’s not that this dichotomy wasn’t possible, but it rang an alarm bell.

  “Do you have the envelopes these came in?”

  There were envelopes but no postmarks, no addresses. Just the name “Mr. Franklin” centered on every envelope in the same careful hand.

  “Where do the letters come from?”

  “Father is a member of the St. Paul of Tarsus congregation. These come in the biweekly post from a sister congregation in Manila.”

  “How much has he lost?”

  “Fourteen thousand, in around there. Maybe a little more.”

  “St. Paul. The place at Gardner and Hollywood?”

  “You must know the area.”

  “My first job. A paper route around there.”

  “Small world.”

  “As long as you don’t have to paint it.”

  “You think Dad’s being ripped off?”

  “Probably. How’d you find out?”

  “He said he had really good news. I thought it was bingo. Then he said he was going to get married. My teeth nearly fell out.”

  “How old’s your dad?”

  “Seventy-eight.”

  “What does he think?”

  “He’s in love, for godsake.”

  Silly old fuck. No fool like an old fool. But who could blame him? When Mr. Tillman looked in the mirror, who deserved to be loved more than Franklin? Behind those rheumy eyes, the game knee, the bad hip, or whatever—Frankie, the fastest kid in eighth grade. Frankie, basketball hero of the victory over St. Ambrose. Frankie, who’d survived that terrible brawl in Pusan, never deserting his buddies though the odds were five to one.

  “Where does he get the letters?”

  “At the parish office.”

  “Really. From whom?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. The parish secretary?”

  “Who’s in charge over there?”

  “Reverend Jenkins.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He’s been pastor at St. Paul for twenty years.”

  “How long has your dad been a parishioner?”

  “Since he got religion again. Maybe seven, eight years.”

  I looked through the stack. “Why doesn’t she write him at his address?”

  “I asked Dad that. She said she’s a single woman and feels more comfortable writing through the mission.”

  This had all the earmarks of a scam. Because it was a scam. Some lousy shithead was taking advantage of an old man’s trusting heart. I felt a strong buzz in my fist.

  “What do you think, Mr. Henry?”

  “I think someone is taking your dad to the cleaners.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Depends on what’s more important to you.” I raised a hand in warning. “I mean no disrespect. But what’s more important? Dad’s money or his heart?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your dad is seventy-eight. When did your mother pass?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I bet as long as your mom was around your dad never set foot in church. Am I right?”

  Betty nodded. A choked silence followed. “She died . . . ten years ago.”

  I handed her a napkin. Again I was reminded that all of us had suffered terrible blows, that we were the walking wounded. Fractured, crushed, punctured, abraded, lacerated. The five categories of injury.

  After a bit Betty took a deep breath and apologized. “So what do I do, Mr. Henry?”

  “Money is just money. As long as you have enough. Only you would know what that sum means to your dad. On the other hand, at a time in his life where he probably thought that love was beyond him, suddenly there it is.”

  “Here it is.”

  “So it’s up to you. Break his heart, shatter his pride, make him feel like a fool, and maybe this asshole will get a slap on the wrist. If we’re lucky. Maybe he’ll plead out to a misdemeanor, get fined, and he’ll have to make restitution. A hundred dollars a month for the next ten years.”

  “Dad won’t live that long.”

  “And every check he’ll get will remind him he was a goddam fool.” Like Lynette reminded me I was goddam fool.

  “What’s the alternative?” Betty clenched her fists in rage. “This bastard should die.”

  “That may be what he deserves. But that’s not what I do, and that’s not what you do. But he will have to clean up his mess.”

  “How do you know it’s a he?”

  “This sort of scam is not usually a woman’s crime. Not usually.”

  “How does he clean up the mess?”

  “Francie must die.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jerry Shunk

  Unless a person is professionally aware of the arts of surveillance he is oblivious to its practice. I decided to set my Laurel Canyon Irregulars on Lynette’s trail to see what she was all about. Besides Dick Henry.

  I didn’t pay the Irregulars much, just enough to keep them in marijuana and gasoline. But they were young, willing, and digital. Four days later I had a thousand images to sort through on my laptop.

  Lynette, I could not call her Judy, rose late and spent the day spending money. When she got up at all. Eating, shopping, hanging with friends. She had three automobiles to choose from. She was no stewardess.

  Looking through the cache, I saw there was an older man who didn’t fit into the friendship demographic. They’d met twice. Bistro Bijou on Ventura, and in Santa Monica on the Third Street Promenade. All in all, I had forty or so pictures of them. Every angle. Never intimate. God, she was gorgeous. I anesthetized a red thread of jealousy with some nicotine.

  The man was tall, skinny, sixty, well dressed. But his hair. Jesus. At least it wasn’t a comb-over. It had been dyed a pastel blue, curled tightly and permed, making the best of a volume shortage. A potbelly lumped abruptly over his belt line.

  Then I recognized him. Shunk. Jerry Shunk.

  Shunk was a family law practitioner whose largely ancient clientele always found ways to drop dead and leave him everything.

  A scenario played out in my mind. Eternally grateful after getting screwed right and left during the term of their marriage, Artie would die suddenly and conveniently, leaving Lynette everything. And part of everything would go to Jerry Shunk. Who was plainly lovesick. A vibration that usually, when obvious, drives a woman away faster than shoes of man-made materials. But there she was. Yes, the attraction had to be legal.

  Didn’t it?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  What Makes Us Human

  A couple of nights later there was a knock at my door.

  In the cold light of past mornings I’d planned on giving her the heave-ho but then she laughed in that certain way and I wanted her. She kissed me and emotion triumphed over intellect.

  Part of emotion over intellect lies in the mechanics of natural selection. If we came from long lines of cold-blooded rationalists, we would be cold-blooded rationalists. But we’re not, and emotional primacy has to be part of why our species is successful. The fact that all of us, from the president of the United States à la Monica to the president of your one-man hot dog stand, place heart over head implies that, from the haze of prehistory, those who placed heart above head were more successful than their logical competitors.

  Which means there’s something to be said for the damn-the-torpedoes approach; that, in fact, the statistical consequences of emotional decisions are more positive than negative. Perhaps emotion is intellectual shorthand.

  In other words, if it feels good, it probably is good. Which reminds me of what David Lee Roth said about music the night I met Lynette at the House of Blues. What’s good music, Dave? Well, if it sounds good, it is good. Which Diamond Dave may have learned from Bach because Bach said the same thing. And you thought they had nothing in common. Oscar Wilde on
how to overcome temptation? Succumb.

  So Lynette kissed me, and next thing I knew we were enjoying postcoital tobacco and crickets out my window.

  “You know, Dick, I may be falling in love with you.”

  Bullshit. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  What is love? With my little ones I know.

  Who does Daddy love?

  Me!

  Why does Daddy love you?

  Because he does!

  Because I do. The only satisfactory answer to the love question. Not based on merit, not based on qualification. A simple recognition of your loved one’s inherent pleasingness.

  And romantic love? I don’t know what it is anymore. Maybe I never did. Is it that glorious attention that confers grace, that shyness and openness that admit your power to delight? That perfectly spherical satisfaction of wishing to be nowhere else? That self-evident groove? The conspiracy of two against the universe?

  Maybe it’s all these things, maybe none of them. Whatever it is, as the days settled in after the Revelation, Lynette and I had it in full measure. We had a new laughter, a new clarity. The knowledge that after all that had transpired we still enjoyed each other’s company very, very much. And now we had nothing to hide, right?

  Of course it couldn’t last, but singly and together we allowed that fact to recede into the background. We asked no more questions, we lived in our own universe, in our own time, Artie Benjamin rendered distant and inconsequential.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ojai

  In the darkness I asked her if she’d ever been to Ojai and she said where’s that so up we went.

  Ojai is about seventy-five miles north of L.A. and there’re two ways to go but I always liked the back way. Up the I-5 past Magic Mountain, then over on the 126 through the Santa Clara River Valley. The valley is lush and expansive, restful and satisfying to the eye, and the change from the scenery of the I-5 corridor startling.

  “Wow.”

  I nodded. That’s the kind of place the Santa Clara Valley was. If you looked to the ridge of the mountains to the south you could see oak trees here and there. How pleasant it would be to sit at their feet in a breeze.

  “Those are oak trees up there, aren’t they?”

  “Those are the Oakridge Mountains.” My geographical knowledge of the area was shallow and with that pronouncement I had dispensed half of it. “I think.”

  She jumped on me. “You think? You mean they could be any old mountains?”

  “You see those oaks up there?”

  “Maybe they’re willows.”

  “Those are oaks. Those are the Oakridge Mountains.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Well, I think they are.”

  We laughed and laughed, and she put her hand on my leg. She looked north of the road, over the orange groves. “And what mountains are those?”

  “That’s easy. Those are the San Cayetanos.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Of course.” I paused. “I think.”

  We laughed again. We passed a couple of fruit stands. I promised we’d stop on the way back. Next was the town of Fillmore. We parked beside the green, wandered among the trains, tasted wine from a winery along the tracks.

  “Who lives here?” she asked.

  I didn’t know but it looked like a good life. A quiet life. A very quiet life.

  Ten minutes later we arrived in Santa Paula and turned up Highway 150, Ojai Road.

  Ojai Road was a two-lane thoroughfare that quickly left Santa Paula behind and entered the mountains. There it turned magical. It swooped, it dashed, it dipped, it sashayed. Then it climbed, slowly but inexorably, past single-family homes, past ranches and horse farms and schools, finally reaching a plateau where cattle grazed on vast fields of gold under wide open skies.

  “Those cows,” said Lynette, pointing.

  “What about ’em?”

  “Look at them.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “They look contented.”

  We laughed again.

  She looked over at me. “I’m contented, Dick.”

  “So am I, dear.” I indicated the fields. “Want to stop, grab ourselves a little hay?” The L.A.-ness of our lives had completely dropped away.

  Then the road turned right, and huge, majestic, layered mountains appeared far away, dead ahead. “Those are the Topa Topas,” I explained. And then, for a second, as the road suddenly started to serpentine downward, we had a view of a beautiful valley far below. “That’s the Ojai Valley.”

  Shangri-la. The Lost World.

  Slowly we dropped down, rolled into town.

  We parked along the arcade, wandered in and out of stores, purchased trinkets and held hands. I was as happy as I’d ever been since seventh grade. We had pizza and wine at a good little place called Movino, and I got a little sleepy so we got a motel. A nice place, further on up the Ojai Road. I hadn’t intended on staying the night but the sun was on the fall and what the hell.

  We made lazy love and dozed until evening. Then we found a bistro with a piano player and decided to have dinner. During our second set of Bloody Marys she tapped me on the arm.

  I looked at her. “You know you’re absolutely gorgeous. You know that, right?”

  She nodded. “I do know that.”

  I spread my hands. “Just so you know I know.”

  She pointed to the musicians. A stand-up bassist and a guitarist had joined the piano player. “How do you know if someone’s really good,” she asked, “or if they’re just fooling around? You know, when they jam.”

  An alarm bell rang in my mind.

  “Uhhh, it’s a matter of something called tipping in. That’s where a player uses certain notes in his improvisation that reflect the chords he’s playing over.”

  “Sounds like you know a lot about jazz, Dick.”

  Unconsciously and beyond my control, my voice dropped a manly octave and before I could stop myself I’d given her a little rundown on vertical and horizontal improvisation. As I explained, the difference between bebop Charlie Parker and cool Miles Davis.

  “Jeez, Dick. You really do know a lot about jazz.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

  “But you do.” She polished off her second Bloody Mary and I followed suit. “Now what was that thing you mentioned that they do, sitting in?”

  “No. That’s when you’re invited to come and blow a few tunes with the band.” Blow a few tunes. Why was I talking like that? “You’re talking about tipping in. That’s using certain notes in your improv that are important notes in the chords you’re jamming over. That lets the players know you know what you’re doing.”

  She nodded. “I’d like to hear a little of that. That tipping in. What’s a good tune for that?”

  For crying out loud.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. I only could remember the one. “Actually, there’s a famous tune called ‘All the Things You Are.’ They say if you can jam on those changes you can call yourself a jazz musician.”

  “Righteous.”

  I stared at her. “Did we ever talk about this stuff before?”

  “No.” She took a sip from our third round. “I didn’t think you knew anything.”

  We munched our way through the pupu platter, and the set ended.

  “Dick,” she said. “Ask these guys to play that tune.”

  “What tune?”

  “The tipping-in tune.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to ask them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look. I just don’t want to. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Of course, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  When a pretty girl gives you a compliment you accept it with grace. When a startlingly beautiful girl strews compliments you believe her. In a trice she had the three believers by the short and curlies.

  “Can we play a tune for you?” asked the
piano player.

  “Would you?”

  Of course, said the bassist, the pianist, and the guitarist. What would she like to hear?

  She looked up at me. “My boyfriend knows a lot about jazz but he’s too shy to ask.”

  The trio rallied to her aid. Just name it, dude. Don’t be bashful. We can even play in five-four time.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Okay, all right. Can you play, uh, ‘All the Things You Are’?”

  Their faces went stony and I knew what was coming. “We just played it, man,” said the guitarist, plosively expelling a shred of tobacco.

  Lynette turned and stared at me. Then broke out into peals of ascending laughter. It was contagious. I started off and couldn’t stop. Then the bassist rolled in and soon the band was gone. We couldn’t stand after a while but by then the three tables in front were with us, by osmosis.

  After a bit we wiped our eyes, found our seats. Dinner was served. The band started in but not before announcing they had a special request for “All the Things You Are.” Which started everyone laughing again and they couldn’t play.

  But finally they did. They played very crisply, very well. There was some good applause. Lynette looked over at me. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Was that the tune?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Lynette went off again and couldn’t stop. The maître d’ came to inquire if there were a problem. With the nitrous oxide.

  “Can we just get this stuff to go?” I asked. Our request was swiftly satisfied, but before we left we went up to the bandstand and I gave the guys a honeybee.

  They shook their heads. You don’t have to do that.

  “Oh, but I do,” I replied. “This has been one of the great nights of my life.”

  And I promise it won’t happen a third time.

  One day turned into two, into four. It was paradise. We ate when we were hungry, we drank when we were dry, we made love and it was always new, and we slept, untroubled, like children. My phone didn’t ring because I’d turned it off, just checked my messages. Nothing important.