Shortcut Man Page 7

  On the fourth day we’d awoken late. We walked outside, considered the pool, but the day was too nice. In fact, it was perfect. Warm, quiet, wind chimes somewhere, their volume fluctuating in the light breeze. We decided to take a walk.

  We wandered up into the streets behind the arcade. It was residential. Sizable houses on well-proportioned lots. After a few blocks and some random turns we came to an open house. It was a squarish, two-story Craftsman, olive green with brown trim. It had a brown picket fence to match, a straight brick walk, some tall trees, jacaranda and camphor, spreading over a clipped green lawn. “Nice place,” I said.

  “Let’s go in.”

  We opened the screen door and stepped inside. It was cool and clean with shiny, light-colored hardwood flooring. There was no furniture. A broad staircase with a landing led upstairs. We heard a chair scrape in the kitchen, and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman walked out. She was all in beige except for white pumps. She stuck out her hand. “I’m Miriam Walters,” she said. “Welcome.”

  We introduced ourselves. Dick and Lynette.

  Are you interested in Ojai real estate?

  Well, we’re visitors and we were taking a walk and here we are.

  “That’s where it all starts. Let me show you around. You’re my first guests of the day and I was getting lonely back there.”

  It was a five-bedroom place with a dining room, a living room, and a den, which could serve as our home office. The kitchen was big, with a slate double-sink island and a pair of Jenn-Airs venting into shiny ductwork. It made me want to cook.

  Upstairs was a master suite, fireplace, walk-in closets, Jacuzzi bathtub. Then another two bedrooms, white, airy, with large black ceiling fans.

  Then Mrs. Walters delivered the coup de grâce. “And here”—she smiled a brilliant smile—“is the nursery suite.”

  The nursery suite was white, but the walls and ceiling were a friendly riot of detailed murals. Tail-hanging monkeys smiled, elephants danced, birds soared, dolphins leapt from blue waves. Ships plied calm seas, gaily uniformed polemen maneuvered gondolas in Venice, overhead whirled the stars and galaxies of the infinite wheel.

  “Wow.” It was hard not to be impressed.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” furthered Mrs. Walters. “All we need is a baby.”

  I heard a quick intake of breath from Lynette. I turned. She was frozen. She stared at me, almost violently, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Lynette?”

  She spun, walked right past me, down the stairs and out into the street.

  “My God! Did I say something wrong?” asked Mrs. Walters. “I’m so sorry.”

  I ran down and out into the street, caught up with her. I reached for her arm but she shook me off.

  I tried again. “Lynette, what? What is it?”

  She spun on me fiercely, raw. “Don’t you know when something’s over, Dick? Don’t you know when something’s over?”

  That was the end of our enchantment in Ojai. We checked out of paradise an hour later and drove back, in silence, back the way we had come. We didn’t stop at the fruit stands.

  The specter of Artie Benjamin arose with the tangled traffic on the I-5. I could feel him, gray, heavy, looming. We got back to Laurel Canyon and slept. We woke up, made quick remedial love, fell back.

  I woke later in the dark. Three A.M. She was awake, lying on her back, smoking, a red point moving in the darkness. I remembered the sniper’s maxim: four inches above the red dot. Aim four inches above the red dot. Which, in this case, would put a hole in the headboard.

  “Hi, Dick.” She sounded distant and fragile.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m sorry. About all that.”

  “It’s okay.” It was cold. I asked her to shut the window and she did.

  I thought of the stars on the ceiling of the nursery. The tiny spark of light that a consciousness injects into the unthinkable wastes of time and distance. As a man, I realized, I had never considered, even for an instant, the carrying of life within me. That visceral, literal connection to infinity, the propinquity of God. God Herself. I was a leaf that would have my spring, she was part of the tree that would reach for heaven. Except she wouldn’t, couldn’t.

  Whew. Whatever it was she was feeling, I’d never get there. Maybe I could think of something practical. To distract things. “So what’s your plan?”

  “What plan are you talking about?”

  “The future. What are you going to do?” I don’t know what I was expecting.

  There was a silence. Then she exhaled quickly, rolled over, ground the cigarette out.

  “Why’s my future your business? You want to get married or something?” Her voice was unpleasant.

  “Just asking a question.”

  “Well, don’t ask me questions. Do I ask you questions?” She sat up, got up. “I don’t have a future.” She stepped into her jeans.

  If I’d used my brains, I would’ve just shut up. Because you can’t argue your way out of an argument. With a woman, certainly. But who said I had any brains? “What’s up your ass?” I inquired cleverly. “I thought people were pleasant after orgasm.”

  “Maybe I was faking.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “How would you know?”

  Actually a good question. The theatrical orgasm had a long, rich history. Back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam was a pest on Saturday night. With I Love Lucy coming on.

  Two minutes later she was out the door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Subtlety and Patience

  The next day was Blue Monday, so I rolled south down Vine Street toward my old house and the remnants of my old life. Right below Melrose, on the poor-relations outskirts of Hancock Park, I pulled to a stop at a small, three-bedroom Craftsman on South Arden Boulevard. I rang the doorbell and waited.

  Georgette must have known it was me because she took her time about it. But then the big oak door was pulled back and there she was through the screen.

  Georgette was a good-looking woman. She was Irish-German, a strawberry blonde. She was no twig; she hadn’t weighed 105 pounds since grade school. She stood five feet eight, had big, well-shaped legs and a waist shadowed by a mud wrestler’s generous bust.

  She did not appear overly pleased to see me, overlooking my friendly smile. “What do you want, Dick?”

  “I want to come in.”

  “Are you bringing money?”

  “I am.” Alimony and child support. Blue Monday.

  “Come in.”

  I followed her down the hall. In that second, part of me desperately missed the regard in which I had been held. We could have gone all the way but I was Dick Henry after all and a small man casts that long shadow near sundown and I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it.

  Georgette poured me a cup of coffee and I sat down at the kitchen table I had purchased so long ago. Oak.

  I’d always liked Georgette’s coffee. It was robust, like her chest. I set down my mug. “So, how’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been okay, Dick.” Uninflected and perfunctory.

  “And how are my little people?”

  “They’re all right, too.” A silence in the expectation that I would move along.

  I grinned at her. “I almost forgot why I was here.”

  “Money.”

  “Money, that’s right.” I pulled out my checkbook, wrote two checks, signed them largely, handed them to her. “Here you go.”

  She took them, examined them, put them under the saltshaker. “Why don’t you just put these in the mail like other men do?”

  I summoned all my charm. “Obviously, my dear, because I am not like other men.”

  “I try to explain that to your children.”

  “They’ll have a lifetime to appreciate me.” I smiled another sunny smile. “Actually, I like to see you once in a time.”

  Georgette frowned, exasperated. “What are you talking about?”

  “You asked me a question, dear.�
��

  “I’m not your dear, Dick. What question did I ask?”

  “Why don’t I put them in the mail like other men do?”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Because I like to see you once in a while. That’s why I don’t put the check in the mail.”

  A pinkness rose in Georgette’s cheeks. Which pleased me greatly.

  I placed a paper bag on the table, took out a stack of books. “These are for Randy. First half of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series. The best books I ever read as a kid.”

  Georgette picked up The Warlord of Mars. On the cover, a well-built man, dressed only in a scabbard, defended a statuesque, copper-skinned woman against a great white ape with two sets of arms. “Randy’s only eleven.”

  “That’s why I got them.”

  Georgette sighed—but moved the books to her side of the table.

  I looked at Georgette. She was checking out the man in the scabbard. “So, you want to go down to the Galley and grab ourselves a lobster one of these nights?”

  It took Georgette a few seconds to remember she didn’t like me anymore. “No! Are you crazy, Dick?”

  As I drove up Vine Street later, I felt a general optimism flow through my bones. Georgette still loved me. I could see it in everything she did. The way she moved, her attitude, her speech.

  Because there’s only one Dick Henry in this world and that’s me, baby. Georgette would come back around. In time. If I was extremely subtle and patient. And I am extremely subtle and patient.

  I rolled into the intersection at Vine and Santa Monica on the new red and banged a left to a clamor of horns from everywhere. Get a life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Photograph

  I’d done a little thinking about the letters to Franklin Tillman. The source of the evil had to be somewhere at St. Paul of Tarsus.

  How does someone start a conversation with someone who doesn’t exist? Well, they must be convinced that someone does exist. Which means a long story or a picture. A long story pointed to premeditation and careful choice of victim.

  Which made it unlikely. No, it started with a picture.

  A legitimate photo of the mission staff. In that photo, by coincidence, would have been a friendly face, an attractive woman from her forties to her sixties. Smiling and waving, like everyone else.

  Tillman would’ve seen the picture. Probably everyone at St. Paul had seen the picture. But Tillman had made a remark to somebody. Someone who had the photo in their hands. Someone who said, Yes, she’s very pretty.

  She looks so sweet, said Tillman.

  And that statement, in the hands of the right person, was the seed of opportunity. So the old widower was prompted.

  Why don’t you write her, Franklin? Her name is . . . Francie.

  No. I couldn’t.

  Why not?

  I could do that?

  Of course you could.

  She wouldn’t think I was out of line?

  Why should she? You both love the Lord.

  You’re sure I wouldn’t be out of line?

  We’ll send it over in the weekly mission package.

  You could do that?

  Of course we could.

  Then maybe I will write her a letter.

  It’s up to you.

  Then I will.

  Go for it, Franklin.

  I will. I just think I will.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Pumpkin Pie

  What drove the final, final nail into Georgette and me was Kiera Allen’s pumpkin pie.

  Swept along by Kiera’s mirage of intelligence and kindness, qualities I had lent her, our relationship acquired an ungainly momentum of its own. To my surprise, the sex wasn’t that good though we cried out and swore. Her passion seemed histrionic. Her apartment was full of mirrors and she seemed to be eyeing herself in the third person.

  We went on long expeditions to nowhere, to outlet malls in Camarillo and Barstow and Colton. Even there, in the sun-baked wastelands far from civilization, at every turn I expected to see my mother-in-law.

  In Barstow, at Salon 212, where leathery desert rats, at desert prices, could purchase chic apparel supposedly of New York City lineage, Kiera finally found something she liked. “Dick, what do you think?”

  I turned to regard a long, red-orange, zebra-skin coat. If such a beast had ever existed, it had grazed the Serengeti unmolested.

  That evening, in her apartment crowded with stuffed animals and other cute stuff, she looked soulfully into my eyes. Suddenly, my fervent hope was that a declaration of love would not be forthcoming.

  “I need you, Dick,” she said as the sweat dried on our skin.

  Shit. Here it came. “Okay.”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied solemnly. “Or someone just like you.”

  Part of me was stupid enough to feel insulted. But in the end it didn’t matter. Kiera Allen, femme fatale, had turned back into a very ordinary woman. I heard her voice echoing off the pink bathroom tiles. “Dick? Dick?”

  “What?”

  “Dick?”

  “What?”

  “Dick, I think I’ve got a yeast infection.”

  For chrissakes.

  The end came on Thanksgiving Day. For obvious reasons, I told her not to expect me, certainly not to call me. Did I have to explain further? But I received an emergency call on my business line.

  Be back in an hour, I told Georgette. The smell of turkey was in the air, and even Estelle, my mother-in-law, had swilled an early glass of chardonnay.

  Kiera met me at the door in a little French maid’s outfit with fishnet stockings and a flouncy apron. Before I could protest, her tongue was down my throat. She pulled my hands onto her ass, then reached into my trousers and had her way with me.

  “I thought you said there was an emergency.”

  “I needed you in my mouth,” she said.

  A whole Thanksgiving meal had been laid out. Turkey, glazed ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, buttered corn, asparagus, red and white wine. And a pumpkin pie.

  The turkey was very, very bland. “It’s a certified organic turkey,” said Kiera, with a big, simpering smile.

  A certified organic turkey. Great. It had probably been bored to death instead of just having its head cut off.

  “Just think,” said Kiera, “our first Thanksgiving.”

  That’s when I saw the clock. Somehow just a bite had already taken an hour and ten minutes.

  Now I raced down the street with a heaping plate covered in Saran Wrap. Where was a homeless psychiatrist or mathematician when you needed one? I threw the plate into a trash can at the bus stop. It landed with a thud.

  I arrived home two hours seventeen minutes after I’d left.

  “Where were you?” asked Georgette, looking up from the feast in progress. Estelle’s face had that pinched expression that came with the giving of unsolicited advice. Georgette’s sister, Bay, and her husband, Trout, looked up at me quizzically. Okay, his name was Trent. But all the kids were glad to see Uncle Dick.

  “Sorry. Business,” I lied, with enthusiasm. “Make me up a plate.”

  I tried to eat but I was full already. I picked and poked but it was slow going. I loosened my belt and thought of famished predators on the Serengeti.

  “Aren’t you hungry, Dick?” asked Georgette.

  “My, uh, stomach’s a little off, I guess.” I rubbed it. It felt as hard as a basketball. I shoehorned another carrot down my throat and gulletized a small spear of asparagus.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  Curious faces around the table.

  “Now who could that be?” asked Estelle disagreeably.

  Obviously she had forgotten the Prada purse I’d bought her for her 179th birthday. Albeit from Santee Alley, downtown L.A.’s haven of counterfeit merchandise.

  Georgette got up and walked to the door to find out what was up.

  Estelle looked at my plate. “
Why aren’t you hungry?”

  I shrugged.

  Georgette returned. Her face was several degrees below freezing.

  “Who is it, Georgie?” asked Estelle.

  Georgette turned to me. Just like in the movies, there was a pregnant pause.

  “What is it?” I asked, suddenly intuiting disaster.

  “You have a visitor.”

  “A visitor?” said Estelle. “What kind of visitor?”

  I pushed my chair back, got up, went to the front door, pulled it open.

  On the other side of the screen door was a woman in an orange zebra-skin coat. Kiera was very drunk. She proffered another Saran-Wrapped plate. A rumpled slice of pumpkin pie. “Di-ick,” she said.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Di-ick. You forgot your pumpkin pie.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Afternoon at the Fellatio Academy

  Benjamin Enterprises had offices in Beverly Hills, on Beverly Drive below Wilshire in a colonial-looking building. The free-parking structure was full so I had to cruise a back street.

  I found a spot near the corner. Well, two spots, but a silvery Korean import was in both of them. This was no problem if you owned a ’69 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible. I pulled in front of Pusan’s finest, backed up carefully until I kissed it, then, with 472 cubic inches of raw Detroit horsepower, pushed it back and created my parking place. You gotta know how to use your Cadillac.

  Benjamin’s offices were cool and subdued. I was greeted by a secretary. “Will Mr. Benjamin know the purpose of your visit?”

  “Yes,” I said, leaving her curiosity unsatisfied. On the wall I saw a poster for Arm Service. Then, partially obscured by a potted plant, a larger poster for Buffalo Bill in Hollywood.

  Suddenly, over the quiet, I heard a voice raised in anger. It was Benjamin.

  “Listen, motherfucker, you tell that stupid son of a bitch to straighten up and fly right. Nobody fucks with Artie Benjamin and dances off into the fuckin’ sunset, you got that? Now call me back when it’s done.”