Shortcut Man Read online

  I heard the phone slam down and wondered, for the fortieth time, what was Benjamin’s real game? What did he really know? Why was I really here? I didn’t know, couldn’t know. I’d have to bluff it out.

  Benjamin’s Filipino appeared. He still didn’t like me. Maybe he didn’t like anyone. I’d have to ask Lynette about him.

  “Mr. B will see you.”

  I followed him back. He took his place, standing by Benjamin’s left side.

  Benjamin was behind another huge desk. He looked at me, grinned. “I just had a brainstorm. A fucking brainstorm,” he began, “about school.”

  “School?”

  He pointed at me, grinned. “See? That’s exactly what I mean. I say “school” and people think, What the fuck does Artie Benjamin know about school? What does he care about school?”

  I nodded politely in agreement. To my knowledge, no one gave a fuck what Artie Benjamin thought about anything.

  “To those who know, your name does not exactly bring up scholarship,” I said carefully. But then I made the inductive leap. “Unless you’re thinking about schoolgirls.” In those little plaid uniforms. And white kneesocks. And little white panties.

  Benjamin slapped his desk. “You got it! You got it! What do you think of this?” He raised his arms, spread his hands, imagining a marquee. “Artie Benjamin presents—The Fellatio Academy! Get it? The Fellatio Academy.”

  “A school for Italian diplomats,” I returned.

  Benjamin laughed aloud. “Maybe you should be an associate producer. What do you think?”

  “Producers are about money. And I don’t have any.”

  I’d been invited to a porn set once. And I’d accepted, you know, just to see. It was a regular house up Beverly Glen. There was a small technical crew. A buffet had been set up in the kitchen. The stars walked around naked, unembarrassed. Picking up a slice of pepperoni here, a cheese ball there.

  Action was cold-blooded sex on cue. Every unobstructed orifice, with the exception of the nostril and the ear canal, was stuffed and pounded relentlessly, the eye of the camera six inches away from the organs involved. The women feigned perpetual orgasm, pleaded for more. The men had finite limits and would signal the camera operator when the money shot approached. Then they would disengage and ejaculate as directed. On the face, on the breasts, on the stomach, on the ass. But mostly on the face, where the tincture of humiliation was combined with epidermal rejuvenation.

  If I’d been concerned about my own arousal and how to pretend disinterest, I needn’t have worried. Without the fleeting, salutary fictions that had supported even my interactions with virtual strangers, the sex was sexless and I was profoundly unmoved.

  The afternoon on Beverly Glen had an unintended consequence. My fantasy life disappeared. Whereas previously I had engaged in benign sexual speculation about every woman who appealed to me, now I looked upon the feminine form without hope or curiosity. As days turned to weeks I began to worry that I had damaged myself.

  From sixteen to the occasional well-preserved Diane Keaton sixty, anyone might set me off. The sway in the walk, the sauciness of a laugh, the divine bounce of the natural bust. Twenty seconds later I’d see someone else and start over.

  Then one day, when I had despaired of its return, it was back. A waitress bent to pour my coffee and I saw a dark freckle and part of me went Look at that. I left her an excellent tip.

  * * *

  Benjamin leaned his head, studied me. I put my bluff on.

  “So, Mr. Henry. What can you tell me?”

  I felt my heartbeat in my temples. “Unfortunately, Mr. Benjamin, your suspicions were well founded. Your wife was seeing someone.” I had to say she was seeing somebody—deep down, he already knew it.

  “Is or was?”

  “Was.”

  He sat there a second. Then one word. “Okay.”

  He opened his desk, pulled out a Sig Sauer P250, placed it on his desk.

  I didn’t move a muscle. My heart didn’t beat either.

  Then he reached back into his desk. This time he came out with an envelope. I could feel the Filipino’s eyes on me. Benjamin slid the envelope across the desk toward me.

  “You said seven large?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Benjamin nodded.

  I got to my feet, picked up the envelope. “Thank you for your patronage, Mr. Benjamin.”

  His eyes flicked over me. There was the ghost of a nod.

  I left.

  I got the Caddy, drove down the street, made a U-turn, and headed for Hollywood. As I passed the place I had parked I saw a woman looking at her Daewoo in confusion. Had her automobile moved?

  I chortled. With joy and relief. I had seven thousand dollars in my pocket. I felt brilliantly alive.

  Don’t fuck with the Motor City, Daewoo lady. Just don’t do it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Arnuldo’s Tale

  Arnuldo Guinaldo had journeyed far from Tondo, the poorest, meanest, dirtiest, most desperate district in the city of Manila. Home to half a million hardened souls, tempered in strife, quenched in misfortune. He had never known his father. Nor did his mother remember. Most likely his father had been an American airman stationed at Nichols Air Force Base.

  His education had been limited to the basics. The nuns ensured that he could read, that he could write, that he could do sums. But he possessed certain qualities older men could clearly identify. He had no fear and he had no conscience.

  This lack stood him well in Tondo. At age twelve, after his mother died with the needle still stuck in her median cephalic vein, he had sought out the man who sold her the heroin and butchered him.

  With the heroin man’s little bit of money, he made his way to Olongapo City, Disneyland of the Seventh Fleet, where his mother had mentioned a sister. He never found her. But he did find gainful employment in Olongapo’s largest industry, prostitution. He ferried drugs for the girls and the American sailors they lay with and performed a thousand other useful tasks. Like securing fresh chicken blood for the professional virgins, that they might prove their innocence weekly and finally capture a sailor for a husband. To catch a husband was to catch the rainbow and ride it to the USA.

  Four years later, behind the Solar Club, an establishment on Rizal Boulevard devoted exclusively to the music of Miles Davis, Arnuldo had saved Machinist’s Mate Third Class Ed Dinkins from certain death.

  A disagreement had arisen with four young savages hailing from the Jungle, part of Olongapo and strictly off-limits to Americans. Very high, and tipping toward violence, the four were demanding the American’s money or the life of the whore with whom he’d been keeping company. Dinkins was very drunk and had not appreciated the gravity of his situation. He had turned his pockets inside out. He’d spent his last peso seeing an excellent Filipino rendition of Miles Davis in his Silent Way period. Dong Custodio was the best trumpet player in the Philippines. And who knew there was a Filipino Joe Zawinul? Well, there was. Alfonso Magat.

  At Dinkins’s side, Delia, his girlfriend, whose virginity he had taken just that afternoon, tried to reason with the young men.

  The first of the four animals flicked out his butterfly knife and sliced Delia’s cheek. Arnuldo heard her cry and something was loosed in his chest. He bounded across the intervening space and extinguished the lives of the four young men.

  Two weeks later, Dinkins, twenty-two, married Delia at the Subic Bay Naval Station Multi-Purpose Center. Delia was not twenty, as advertised. She was a young-looking twenty-seven. She was very happy. The couple adopted Arnuldo. He was sixteen. Dinkins took them both back to paradise: Poway, California, USA.

  Four years later Delia and Dinkins were dead. Arnuldo followed a dancer to Las Vegas. The dancer was a whore and he killed her. But the climate agreed with him.

  He had become part of Mr. Benjamin’s life during Mister’s first extended stay in Las Vegas.

  In a bar at Caesars Palace, Arnuldo had offered the man t
he funniest joke he’d ever heard. Besides the one about the old couple on the night of their fortieth anniversary. And the see-through gown. Where the ancient husband had succeeded.

  “What do you call a boomerang that does not come back?” asked Arnuldo.

  Mr. Benjamin, on his second double Stoli, came up empty, lifted his shoulders. “What do you call a boomerang that does not come back?”

  “A stick,” said Arnuldo, on his third Bloody Mary, choking.

  To Arnuldo’s delight, Mr. Benjamin also found the jest irresistible. After another double Stoli Mr. Benjamin offered Arnuldo a job.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Filthy Heat

  Lynette came over the next night. We screwed, quickly and violently, then set to argument.

  Which played into my new theory. The equivalence of sex and argument.

  Any couple possesses a natural level of intimacy, a function of personality. Unconsciously, the couple seeks to maintain that intimacy. Some couples screw. Others argue.

  My point, which Lynette had led me to consider: is there really a difference?

  There’s an inciting incident, a climb to passion, a climax, then all quiet on the Western Front. Though, admittedly, there’s less chance your partner will whip up a little Spanish omelet after being called a mindless clam.

  The subject of the argument was Artie.

  She glared at me. “If he ever finds out, he’s going to kill you.”

  “Why hasn’t he killed you already?”

  “Because to forgive me is to feel like a god.”

  “Well, God just paid me. The situation’s over.”

  “Paid you to sell me out.”

  “Sell you out? Fuck you for that.”

  “You said what you said, Dick.”

  “I told him what he already knew, dear. This isn’t my first fucking case.” I jabbed my finger at her. “And it isn’t your first case, either.”

  She snorted, jabbed her cigarette back at me. “This is one of those situations in life called opportunity, Dick. But you have to have the guts to grab it for what it is.”

  “Give it up, Lynette. I can’t be shamed into murder.”

  “You know what he did to my sister.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know the whole story?”

  “Part of it.” Supposedly Nyla Darkly, a.k.a. Thirsty Thelma, had been her sister.

  “Which part?”

  “The part where you don’t have a sister.” According to Myron Ealing’s Encyclopedia of Pornography, Nyla Darkly had no sister. Her real name was Elizabeth Gligg. “You’re a pretty bad liar, too.”

  With that, I engendered a second climb to passion. She came at me in a rage, claws out, ready to bite, to damage, but I was too strong for her. A knee came for my balls but I turned and her knee slid up my hip. We held each other close, wrestling.

  “I’m going to kill you . . . one day.”

  “I thought it was Artie.”

  “I’ll get my chance.”

  “No, darling. You won’t.”

  She tried to bite me but couldn’t, and pretty soon it was almost a vicious kiss and then it was a kiss. We separated and stared at one another.

  A complete stranger. I didn’t know her from Adam. A face from the supermarket, from the gas station, from the crossing gate, in the night, in another vehicle, waiting for that thousand-car train to roll through. “I don’t know who you are, lady.”

  She cocked her head. “Yeah?” She waited a beat, then hauled off and slapped me right across the face. I put my hand to the sting.

  Now I remembered.

  I slapped her right back just as hard, knocking her head back. It was certainly not the way to treat somebody’s wife.

  But the vibe had changed. A filthy heat coursed through my veins. I grabbed her blouse and ripped it right off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A Contract

  It was midnight. Her scent persisted on my skin. They say those who walk the delicate edge secretly hope to fall. But into what? I showered, poured peroxide over my scratches.

  The phone rang. I answered on the fourth ring. It would be Lynette, of course. Urging me, again, to take out Benjamin. For my own good. For money after probate.

  It was Benjamin.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Benjamin?” What had she done or said now?

  “Mr. Henry. When we first talked I said that knowing, just knowing one way or the other, would be enough for me.”

  “That’s what you said. That’s the information I gave you.”

  “Well, I’ve changed my mind.”

  “What do you want now?”

  “I want more. I need a name, Mr. Henry.”

  “You’re changing the nature of our agreement, Mr. Benjamin.”

  “I know that.”

  Sweet Christ.

  “Mr. Henry, you there?”

  “I’m here. But I don’t like doing these things over the phone.”

  “Then come pay me a visit.”

  “You’ve changed the nature of our agreement, Mr. Benjamin.”

  “I change agreements all the time. This is Hollywood. Money talks, right? I’ve got another five large for you.”

  He thought I was holding out.

  Okay. Okay. What to do. “I’ll be right over.”

  I rolled west on Sunset. The product of lies is more lies, like cracks spreading through a windshield. Sooner or later you can’t see.

  He needed a name. He needed a name. I needed a name. My folks, God bless them, had always taught me to stand up and face the music. But I couldn’t see the music being of much use to anyone in this case. And though, when I came to think of it, Chuckie Gregory of A-1 Contractors could use another drumming, somehow I felt that giving Benjamin his name would be transgressing too many lines of karma.

  There was plenty of parking on Rexford. The Filipino let me in and led me up, took his customary place to Benjamin’s left. This evening he added to his charm by pulling out a vicious butterfly knife, snapping it open—then cleaning his fingernails.

  Benjamin rewarded the show with a lordly smile of acknowledgment. “You can go, Arnuldo.”

  Arnuldo bowed and disappeared.

  Benjamin reached into his desk, pulled out an envelope, slid it across. “Five large.”

  “Five large.” I slid the envelope into my pocket.

  “So, tell me, Mr. Henry. What’s this asshole’s name?”

  The name had occurred to me as I passed Miyagi’s on the Strip. Miyagi’s had been Preston Sturges’s old place, The Players. Sturges had broken important rules in the movie business. Writers don’t direct. He directed. That was good. Then he broke important rules in the restaurant business. Don’t have too many doors and don’t hire your friends and relatives. He had too many doors and hired too many friends and relatives. That was bad. He went broke.

  Suddenly I’d craved a Bloody Mary with salt on the rim. And the name had come to me.

  “Salt. His name is Tom Salt.”

  Benjamin nodded. “Tom Salt.” He looked up at me. “Sounds a lot like your name.”

  “It does?” My heart pumped vapor. “If you say so.”

  Benjamin steepled his fingers. “I’ve always believed a man grows up to fully inhabit his given name. Dick Henry, Tom Salt. Tom Salt, Dick Henry. Small, ordinary names.”

  “Tom, Dick, and Henry.”

  Benjamin laughed, help up his hand. “No disrespect intended, of course. What I mean is, if your name is Thurston, or Peyton, or Winston, or Prescott, or one of those, you grow up to be a Thurston or a Prescott. Get it?”

  Kinda.

  “I’m not sure he knew that Judy was married.” In defense of Salt.

  “Fuck him. He should have known.”

  He should’ve indeed. Ignorance is no defense before the law or an angry husband. Benjamin rubbed his chin, looked at Dick.

  “You know what I’m going to do?”

  “Forgive him because he knows not what he does.”


  “Does?”

  “Did.”

  “No forgiveness, Mr. Henry. No. I’m going to have him killed.”

  “Killed?” This was more than a crack in the windshield.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Henry.”

  Sorry? Here it came. I could feel Arnuldo’s knife in my back. “Why are you sorry?”

  “I didn’t realize you’d want the job.”

  Sweet gentle Christ save the worthless skin of your lying son.

  “You do want the job?”

  “Uh-huh, of course I do.”

  “Wonderful. How much?”

  I remembered dreams I’d had, terrible dreams of my car sliding into an impenetrable fog on a dangerous highway at night, knowing that the vehicle certain to kill me would suddenly be right in front of me and unavoidable.

  “How much, Mr. Henry?”

  I scratched my head as if thinking. “Fifty. Twenty-five down. Twenty-five on completion.”

  Benjamin nodded. “Cheaper than I’d thought.”

  “Package deal.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “Uh, couple of weeks. End of next week.”

  “How will I know the job’s been done?”

  “His obituary in the Times.”

  Benjamin slapped his hand on his desk. “Great. Do him.”

  I held up my hand for time. “You realize, Mr. Benjamin, you’re taking an extreme step. There’s no turning back. And you may feel worse about it later than you do now. I really don’t advise it.” And perhaps you won’t hire me to kill myself.

  Benjamin nodded his head, then leaned forward. “You ever have money, Mr. Henry?”

  “No.” Nothing I was afraid to lose.

  “I thought so. It’s pretty disappointing. It can get you all sorts of pretty things, all kinds of them, but nothing of real value. And I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll probably never have anything I really want. But lately I’ve become curious—about the taste of revenge.”