Down Solo (6 page)

Lights from behind me. A silver BMW pulls up to the curb, the window hums down, and Tanya leans across the passenger seat and says, “Come on,” as she opens the door. When I get in she stomps on the gas and we blast off into the bleak, sodium-lit LA night.

“So, Charlie, you’re kind of an accident waiting to happen, aren’t you?” She runs a red light without blinking and puts her hand on my knee. “What are we ever going to do with you?” Her hand moves up my leg and long red fingernails do a little scratch dance on my thigh.

I tell her I need to use her phone. We hit the onramp to the Santa Monica Freeway doing close to ninety. She reaches in her purse, but instead of a cellphone she pulls out an amber vial with a little spoon attached to the cap. She unscrews the cap and helps herself to a healthy snort in each nostril. I don’t need a wakeup but go through the motions anyway.

Her cellphone is so tricked out you need a technical degree to turn it on, but I manage to dial Mindy’s number. I get her voicemail and tell her I’m on my way home, try me at the number on her caller ID.

“Charlie, you’ve been through a lot. I’ve got a room at the Oceana. Whoever you’re calling is probably sleeping anyway.” Her hand moves up even further and gives me a little pat. She says, “You deserve a break. Call it a celebration of your new freedom.”

There’s not much else to do at three in the morning. This could be interesting.

¤ ¤ ¤

The Oceana is more like a luxury condo than a hotel, although you can rent by the night. I could live like this, nice furniture, ocean view, don’t have to own anything and it still feels like home. I have to wonder about Tanya’s bankrupt husband and the credit card bill, but hey, I just work here.

Tanya seems to have quite an affair going with the nose candy. She hit on it three more times on the way here. Now she brings two glasses and a bottle of Chivas. I watch her pour three fingers for each of us and drain hers like it’s Gatorade after a hard run. She’s in party mode and hasn’t mentioned the reports once. Another snort from the vial and she excuses herself and leaves the room.

I give the room a once-over. The walls are covered with woven bamboo; the décor is a weird blend of modern and traditional. Gleaming wood floors, abstract art, and overstuffed furniture. A glass-top table with magazines, sitting on a Turkish rug. I pull up a corner of the rug and slide the reports under it. I let the corner back down and check to make sure nothing shows.

I sit on the sofa thinking it would be fun to roam into the other room and watch Tanya, but the sound of bare feet padding on the wood floor tells me she’s coming back. Music pops on, the African reggae guy who got killed when some punks carjacked him in Johannesburg. “Lucky” somebody. Or not. And now here’s Tanya standing over me in a silk thigh-length robe. She has a lighted joint that smells like the high-grade hydro that Jimmy sells. She bends down and puts her open mouth on mine and softly pushes smoke into me.

She straddles me, takes one more hit off the joint and puts it in an ashtray, then puts her lips to mine again. Her eyelashes are nearly gone, but the line between exotic and weird has always been a thin one for me. Her left hand is moving between her legs. She moans as she lets go another cloud of smoke into my mouth. I put my hand on her ass, which is gyrating in time to the music. She reaches out with her right hand and touches my ear with the tips of her nails. Her hand moves up and I deflect it before she gets to my wound. I wouldn’t want to destroy the mood for her.

She takes my hand and places it between her legs. It’s warm and slick and I find the spot and gently rotate the ball of my middle finger on it. She’s breathing into my ear, her face falls to my shoulder, she turns and bites my neck. I’m watching the silk robe ride up toward the middle of her back, the perfection of her little body, and wondering if I can make things work.

Tanya pulls back and looks down into my eyes. The robe falls open and her breasts point up and away from me.

She says, “Holy shit am I high.”

“Me too. Great stuff.” A perfect lie. Can’t feel a thing.

“Charlie Miner, there’s something spooky about you; I don’t know what it is, but it makes me hot.” She scoots backward off the sofa and leans down to undo my trousers. She pulls off my shoes and socks, then my pants and boxers, and puts out her hand. I take it and she leads me to the bedroom. I look down at myself and concentrate and bingo! It looks like I’m equipped for the job.

She falls backward onto the bed and pulls me down on top of her. She writhes and whimpers and twitches and moans and looks like a dream. We carry on for hours; the candles burn out and first light appears in the curtained windows. She brings me another drink and I down it. In my condition, I have the sex drive of a neutered lab monkey, but I persist for the sheer narcissistic pleasure of watching her.

¤ ¤ ¤

I topple off of her as if exhausted and lay on my side next to her, taking deep breaths. I let my breathing subside and fake a twitch. I feel her hand on my shoulder. It brushes up my neck and rests right on top of the bullet hole. She whispers, “Lights out, baby.”

I lay still as she gets up. I hear the sounds of clothes being picked up and put on, a zipper closing, a brush through her hair. I feel her watching me.

She leaves the room. I leave the body and follow. As I expect, she goes straight for my clothes on the floor and picks up my pants. She pulls out my wallet and looks through it, then throws it aside. She turns my pockets inside out, then checks the pockets of my jacket and throws it on the ground and says, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” She stomps around in a little circle and bangs her fist on the sofa.

I follow as she walks to the kitchen counter. Her cell phone is there, next to her car keys and purse. She picks up the phone and thumbs a number and taps an angry rhythm on the counter while she waits.

“He doesn’t have it.” Her tapping gets spastic in its intensity while she listens to the other end.

“How the fuck should I know? I thought this would be a snap. Look, I’m beat. I haven’t slept in two days. I’m going to take a couple of Ambien and check out.”

The tapping stops and now silence.

“Nah, I put two roofies in his drink. He’ll be out for way longer than me. Don’t worry about it.” She taps the phone off and rummages through her purse. I watch as she takes out two 10mg Ambiens and swallows them dry. She pours herself another drink from the bottle of Chivas, kicks off her shoes, and settles back onto the sofa.

¤ ¤ ¤

There’s nothing to do until she falls asleep. I move around, watching her from different angles as she drinks, scratches her chin, checks her text messages, and finally lets her head fall back against the cushions. She stares at the ceiling, slowly shakes her head and says, “Jesus Fucking Christ,” and then closes her eyes.

There’s something wrong and I don’t know what it is. I feel disoriented. Edgy, and almost dizzy. For a moment I don’t know how to get back to my body. When I get there it doesn’t seem to want to let me in. Maybe I was out too long. Maybe the roofies really did affect me. Or the weed and the booze. I don’t know, but I nearly panic for a second. It’s not something I ever want to feel again.

There’s an iPad on the table, and on an impulse I take Daniel’s card out of my pocket. It has his name on it, along with a logo. The logo is the mandala from the man’s hat in my dream. Below it is the inscription “Recover or Die.” Below that, embossed in silver, it says “Second Chance at Life” and gives a website address. I pull up the site on the iPad.

Second Chance at Life is a treatment program for heroin addicts. It uses a hallucinogen called ibogain, in combination with other psychotropic drugs, along with ritual chanting and drumming, to induce a state that is supposed to release the addict from the desire to use. It’s illegal—because of the ibogain—in the US, so they have facilities all over the place: Brazil, Switzerland, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

Out of curiosity, I tap the image of the mandala. It fills the screen and begins to move, generating new patterns from its center that move outward in concentric circles.

Like a kaleidoscope.

And I remember.

¤ ¤ ¤

They gave me a last fix: a dose of morphine from an ampule just before we crossed the border. It was so strong that I nodded out for most of the drive to the clinic. I had picked the program because it promised to be painless and was supposed to be over in a couple of days. They told me their recovery rate was over eighty percent.

We crossed from El Paso. Even as high as I was, I could feel the tension in the car as we drove through Juarez. In the late afternoon, after driving for miles through Chihuahua desert, we arrived at a farmhouse.

Daniel was my driver. Daniel was the man who brought the cup in my dream.

Dead plus two roofies should put me a few notches past comatose, but driving Tanya’s BMW M6 Coupe makes me feel like I’m seventeen and joyriding in my old man’s Vette. I got in a pile of trouble for that, but he’s the one that totaled the car in an alcoholic blackout. Best of luck, Pop, wherever you are.

I left Tanya snoring on the sofa, her mouth open and one eyelid fluttering. Not her best look, but convenient for me. I took her keys and cell phone and recovered the reports from under the rug. If I had been smart, I would have grabbed some cash since I’ve got none, but I’m coming up to the Venice Boulevard off-ramp and there’s no turning back. There’s no return call from Mindy, but she never gets up this early.

It’s 6:45 in the morning and the beginning of another muggy August day. Traffic is still light. I head east on Venice and turn up my street, same as I did when I rode my bike with the attaché case. I can picture the Mustang creeping up behind me. The guy in the passenger seat looks familiar. My mind stops there.

My house.

I pull into the driveway and look at the charred foundation, like a rotten stump of a tooth in an otherwise healthy smile of nice little white houses. There’s a pile of bricks surrounding the base of what was once my chimney.

I grab Tanya’s phone and text Mindy: Where are you? Call me ASAP

The front door of the house next to mine opens and my neighbor comes out. He’s a black ex-Marine, built like a heavyweight boxer, and has a kid that looks just like him. He crosses his lawn and comes up to me.

“Nice car.”

“Yeah, new girlfriend. Have you seen Mindy?”

“Not since before the fire.”

“The fire. What fire?” We’re both staring at the slag heap that was once my home. Crows perch on the chimney stump, claiming the property as their own.

Calvin shakes his head and whistles. “You’ve always got some goofy shit goin’ on, but this is a real jackpot.” Funny, I always thought I was the nice, quiet neighbor.

Cal hasn’t liked me ever since he found his wife prancing around my living room buck naked on a hot Friday afternoon. She had appeared at my door dressed in a raincoat with nothing on underneath and barged in demanding, “Fuck me, Charlie, I know you’ve always wanted to. My husband stinks of beer and cigars.” She told Cal that I had stuck my head over the backyard fence and interrupted her nude sunbathing to invite her to my house for a drink.

“Thanks, Cal, I appreciate the sympathy. Now, what the hell happened here?”

“Night before last, around midnight, my dog starts barking. Wakes me up.” Calvin’s got a noisy Rottweiler that I would gladly shoot if they made a big enough gun.

“Yeah, did you put on your cammies and crawl outside with a knife in your teeth?”

Calvin grins down at me like I’m a chump about to get pounded behind the bleachers. “Cop said you were in the county jail.”

“Cop, what cop? Why the fuck would he tell you that?”

“Man was in the Corps. Share intel. Semper Fi ’n all that shit.”

“Jesus, Cal, just tell me what happened.”

“So I look out my window and see a car pulled up in front of your house. Driver stays in the car. Small guy gets out. Funny lookin’, even in the dark. He goes to your front door, then goes around to the side of the house. Had a bag full of some kinda shit with him.”

“Yeah, what kind of car?”

“Silver Mustang. Ten minutes later he comes out with Mindy and they drive off.”

“What do you mean, ‘comes out with Mindy’? Was he forcing her?”

“She was walking in front of him. I told the cops it looked like he might have had a gun.”

“Why, did you see one?” The guy’s irritating me and enjoying himself. I want to slam open my car door on him and jump out and annihilate him on the charred remains of my lawn, but I stay cool. After all, he’s sharing intel. And I need to save my rage for its proper target.

“No,” he says. “But ten minutes later your house looked like the fuckin’ Reichstag.” He reaches in his pocket, pulls out a business card, and hands it to me through the window. “Cop says you know him and to give you this.” He lights a cigar and walks away.

I look at the card: it says “Sergeant Dave Putnam, LAPD.” My pal Dave, the writing detective. The guy’s got more stories than a pack of Nigerian scam artists, and he turns them all into novels. He writes on a laptop during coffee breaks, stakeouts, and during all his time off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he types while he craps. I know all this because we used to go to the same kickboxing gym and would do Starbucks or Rubio’s afterward. I even helped him close a homicide case once.

So Ratboy’s got Mindy. Too bad he couldn’t have taken my ex instead.

Time to get moving.

I call Mindy’s cell on Tanya’s phone and get voicemail again. There’s a charger in my car for my own cell, so I head back to Jimmy’s building and hope that the Z is still in the underground parking.

I’ve got no cash, no home, I’m fresh out of jail, my pal’s in the hospital, and my daughter has been kidnapped by a probable killer for reasons having to do with an investment scam and a bogus geology report, all stemming from a visit just a few days ago from a beautiful Eurasian stranger with a story. Oh yeah, and I’m clinically dead, with a bullet hole in my head to prove it. Jimmy’s Hummer is gone, probably towed and searched for drugs. My old Z is still sitting in its spot, rusty and battered but the only home I’ve got. I plug in my cell but have to wait for it to charge some before I can use it.

Tanya’s BMW got me to Jimmy’s on fumes and the Z gauge is in the red. I’m a moron for not borrowing some cash from Tanya’s purse, but here I am, two fine steeds and no oats.

I fire up the Z and head back out to Washington Boulevard. I’ve got no plan, but the car seems to know where it’s going. A few blocks and I’m at Mo’s 7-Eleven.

¤ ¤ ¤

I’m standing in the alley next to the trash trying to think. The soggy August winds are wafting through the garbage and the air is hot and ripe.

“Charlie! Hey Charlie, for God’s sake!” Mo yells at me from the back door. He’s not happy about our arrangement, but has agreed to give me thirty bucks in gas and ten in cash if I work for him till noon. I already put the gas in the Z. His regular guy didn’t show, so Mo needed me. Meanwhile, I’m going nuts. No calls from Mindy, can’t reach her mom, zip, zero, nada.

“Hey, Goddammit, I need two cases of Michelob out front right now. What the hell are you doing?”

“I just took out the trash,” I tell him. If I had been smoking a cigarette he wouldn’t have asked.

“Come on, man, I need that beer.” He’s standing in the doorway; I can’t go through until he moves.

“What’s the secret word?” He asks me, fingering an invisible cigar.

“Fuck, Mo, I don’t know. Mackerel? Allah? There’s a hole in my head so I forgot.”

“You know what, Charlie? You are a very strange guy.”

I think about a time when I was small, my first day at a new school. I was walking across the blacktop when I noticed a speck in the sky. A bird, I thought. It grew larger. I stopped. It seemed to be flying to me. As I watched, it gained speed and then hit me on the forehead. An older boy had thrown a rock from the other side of the playground. So I want to say
It’s Life itself that’s strange, Mo, not me
. But instead I just tell him, “You don’t know the half of it.”

“I calls ’em like I sees ’em,” he says.

“Win a few, lose a few, right?”

“Hey, like I always say, nobody’s perfect, ya follow what I’m sayin’?”

When I was a teenager, I worked at an impound yard in Oakland, with the Dobermans and the wrecked cars. Every morning was the same: “Hey, big guy, how they hangin’?” And I knew to say, “Hangin’ loose, Walt.” Walt, who owned the yard, would say, “Well don’t let your meat loaf.” I’d say, “No way, Jose.” Then the other guys would laugh and Walt would ask, “Hey Charlie, what time is it on the equator?” And when I’d answer, “Could be anytime, Walt, anytime at all,” he would tell the guys, “Ya gotta get up mighty early to fool Charlie,” like I was some dimwit they could all mess with.

“When you’re done with the beer I need you to get to the magazine racks. Fucking kids got ’em all messed up again,” Mo says over his shoulder. I already did the racks. Great stuff there: “DOG-FACED MAN MARRIES WORLD’S HAIRIEST WOMAN!,”“ABDUCTED WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO TWIN ETs,” and “FAITH HEALER CURES MOVIE STAR WITH CRYSTALS!”

The beer is in the storeroom, which is also the office. The room itself is a mess, but I know where everything is. For example, the Michelob is against the far wall, which is north from the doorway. Domestic beers line the west wall, except for where the desk is. I get the Michelob and take it out to Mo.

“Thanks, Charlie. Listen, catch the racks later. Some kid just dropped a bottle of SoBe over by the video games. Gotta get it mopped up. Get all the goddamn glass, OK?”

“You got it, Mo,” I tell him, and head back for the storeroom, where the mop is.

In the storeroom, I’m about to reach for the mop, but I’m really thinking about the desk. It’s cluttered on top with paperwork and receipts, candy bar wrappers and Styrofoam coffee cups. I sit down in front of it—on the wall in front of me is a calendar. A girl with enormous breasts spilling out of a bikini sits on a motorcycle, looking through me and smiling. She’s part Asian, and a chill of rage goes through me as I see Tanya, taunting me from the chopper.

In the top right drawer is a gun. I take it out. It’s a Walther P38-K and the clip is full. I put it back and close the drawer.

Another time, during college, I worked in one of those little photo huts in a supermarket parking lot. FAST-FOTO, it was called. I would look at the pictures and then seal them back in their packets. The people would come. A packet to the worried-looking woman in the beat-up sedan. Her pictures were of a young girl in a leg-brace walking on the beach, blowing out candles, opening presents, and smiling on a playground swing; in this last shot the brace is right out front. A packet to the teenage boy in a Jeep, with its loud, rumbling engine. He seemed to like taking photos of marijuana plants. They were in a series: growing in the yard, hanging upside-down from a clothesline, drying in the sun, and, finally, stuffed neatly into clear bags and displayed on a bed. A packet to the man in the red sports car—he had photographs of turds in a toilet, six of them. Photos, that is. The rest were of his car in a driveway. And Mo calls me strange.

I’m losing focus. I wheel the mop and bucket out to the game area. It’s packed into a corner, past the magazines, at the end of the aisle where the canned goods are. Three kids are playing at the games, dressed alike in jeans and long tee shirts. They all have the same sneakers and haircuts, short on the sides, spiky on top. I try to move into position to clean up the SoBe under the middle machine,
Invisible Enemy
.

“Hey, Pop, you’re messin’ up my game.”

“I have to clean up under there,” I tell him.

“I got high score of the day and three fuckin’ rockets left, dude,” says the kid. These kids could play forever on one quarter. I mop at the edge of the puddle by his foot.

“You better not mess with Bobby’s game,” says one of the other boys, who just now ended his own battle with
RoboCop
. He looks about sixteen. I’m thinking it’s time to call Mo, but instead I push the wet mop up against Bobby’s tennis shoe.

“Hey! You mess with my game I’ll fuck you up,” Bobby says without looking up. He has a gold hoop in his ear. I yank the cord on the machine and bend Bobby over so his forehead touches the panel.

“Bobby?” I whisper, “Can you hear me?”

He tries to nod. His friends are edged up against the racks.

“Bobby, I am the Invisible Enemy and you’re all out of ships. What do you want to do?”

“Nothing, man. Let me go.”

“Bobby, I’ve been resurrected from the dead. What do you think of that?” I ask him.

“Nothin’. I think you’re a fuckin’ wacko.” He’s struggling now, but I have more to say.

“Wrong, Bobby. It’s life that’s wacko, son. It’s not me. Chew on that for a while. Here . . .” I straighten him up. I hand him the mop and slap a quarter on the game counter. “Try to get all of the glass.”

I turn around and walk down the aisle, past the magazines, past paper plates and Lipton tea, past the carousel with the sunglasses, past Mo, who’s punching up fifty dollars worth of Lotto tickets for an old lady—she buys her food here with welfare stamps—and on into the office. I take off my apron. The drawer sticks shut and for a moment I worry that it’s locked, but then it opens.

I’m in the parking lot now, the gun stuck in my pants. As I start my car I see Mo looking up from the register, a puzzled expression on his face.

Sorry, Mo.