Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (11 page)

The three fentanyl patches clung wetly to me and itched
under my clothing. I looked at the side exit and noticed the
doorjamb was all but destroyed by termites; it didn't look like
anybody had used the door in a while and it didn't look like
I'd be using it now, either.

I came back into the living room. Rick had Doc and Sandra in front of the TV and told me to stand with them.

"Dude, you took a bath?" Doc said.

I nodded, not wanting or feeling much need to explain.

Rick pointed with his gun hand at Doc. "So, you're a
doctor?"

Doc nodded.

Rick said, "So am I. And THIS," he said, waving the gun
around, "is my hospice connection." He looked hard at Sandra. "Or did someone forget that?"

"I'm sorry, Rick."

"Shut the fuck up!" he yelled.

He wasn't on dope-he paced and chewed his lips and
had picker scabs. All speed and meth shit. I can't take speed
freaks-they pounce on everything, darty and unpredictable
as bats at sunset.

He walked back and forth. "Yeah, I've done fucking seventytwo-hour fucking shifts sewing up idiots like you, you careless
fucks. Fucking zombies. You BUY this shit from me, you don't
take it, is that understood? You better believe that's motherfucking understood."

He rambled on for a bit, not even looking at us, just
screaming, while the oxygen tank and the machines did their
job.

"You want to know something about our fucking insides?"
Rick said. "My first day in ER they tell me to sew this guy
up. They needed to get at the liver and you know what they
fucking do to get at a liver? They take the fucking twenty-five
feet of your guts and they put them in a silver tray next to
you. Upper, lower intestine, all out and throbbing in a bowl,
still connected to you but outside your fucking wrecked body,
while the doctors fix you idiots. And then they tell me to put it back together and you know how we do that? We just motherfucking DUMP the guts back in, all thirty, forty feet of guts,
any old place, and sew the fucker up. It takes about five days,
and they're all back to where they're supposed to be."

I was still kind of nodding, having real trouble seeing
where the guy was headed with all this. He was reading in
my brain like those poetry magnets that kids put together on
fridges. Words not adding up to anything. He seemed careless
and floppy with the gun and I thought about my dad, a state
trooper who had killed at least one man, who I saw kill my
dog when he was mad at me when I was a child. Shot my dog
in the head and made me bury it as punishment. I thought of
that man whose toxic blood ran through my veins and I tried
to remember if you rushed guns or knives, and I figured it had
to be guns because you'd run away from a knife, for sure.

Rick was in front of the dying man's bed, now pointing the
gun back and forth at all three of its like carny ducks he was
getting a bead on. "And you motherfuckers want me to put
you back together after you rip me off?"

I still had no idea what he was getting at, but I figured, I'll
try to get this gun and if he kills me, that's cool. Maybe this is
where I die. Everything slowed down. My blood felt like roofing tar. All I saw was that gun and the hands that held it and
everything else went away. I figured if I was going to let this
fucker shoot me, well, so what? I just didn't care.

That's when I jumped into his chest, head down. I
slammed him over the side bar of the dying man's bed and
started punching his sides. I know I hit Rick, but I also hit the
bed rails, and I hit IV tubes, and I punched the dying man's
chest, and one landed hideously on his ventilator tube. Rick
clawed at my back. I felt that he had both hands on my back,
which meant he didn't have the gun. I smelled piss from the catheter bag spilling to the hardwood floor, and a moment
later Rick and I were sloshing in it, the dying man's bed rolling off sideways like a drifting luxury liner, me still punching
at Rick's guts, because that's where you hurt a man. Idiots
punch heads. I'm not tough, but I know that much. I kneed
him in the balls repeatedly until he was making sounds like a
little kid and spit bubbled slowly from his mouth. I did it hard
enough for my knee and thigh to start hurting.

By the time Doc pulled me off of him, I think I was ready
to kill the guy. I never saw that coming. I was willing to let
him kill me, but I hadn't anticipated the savage rush I was still
feeling. I was briefly sickened by the notion that my father, in
all his animal brutality, would have been, for once, proud of
me. I felt like puking in a corner.

Doc held the gun and Sandra busily tried to reattach the
tubes and wires I had ripped out of her patient, whose machines, I now noticed, were all going faster and louder than
before. I didn't know if the guy was worse off, or if I was just in
some adrenaline-fueled space where noises were louder. Rick
was at my feet clutching his balls in a puddle of the dying
man's piss. I was drenched from the piss, from the tub, and
from sweat, which flowed out of me like my pores had tripled
in size.

Doc said, "Sandra, we're going to take what we came
for."

She nodded. "What about Rick?"

"We could call the cops after we leave," I suggested.

Sandra shook her head. "If he talks, cops are going to start
asking me questions." She paused. "And then they'll talk to
you.

We should kill him, I thought. This is not a thread to leave
loose. My father would have killed him.

I said, "Maybe you don't know its as well as you really do.
When Rick wakes up, you tell him we're strangers."

Doc turned to me. "He'll come looking for us."

I said what I was thinking: "It's that or we kill him. And
the biggest idiot cop on the planet would connect the dots to
its in one interview with her." This was when it occurred to
me that if we killed Rick, we'd have to kill Sandra. But that
would still leave way too much connective tissue from its to
this scene. And I couldn't believe I was even thinking about
it. I at least had enough sense to pull back. Rick rolled around
semiconscious on the floor. Doc kicked him in the thigh. Then
again.

"Fucker." Doc shook his head. "Let's get the fuck out of
here."

I got my bag. Doc put the gun in his pants and started to
collect more of the patches and pills from Sandra, who I'm
guessing already had the money, or else she was too scared to
ask about it.

Regardless, I went out the side door I'd noticed earlier.
Doc followed me. I walked by the recycling and garbage cans
and out the side yard gate. The driveway had a newer Lincoln
next to Doc's car. Rick's car, I logged, in case I ever saw it
again. I stopped, glanced left, away from the dead end and
toward 17th Street, my hair still wet and the sun warming me
as I peered down the street and then walked toward Doc's car,
trying hard to look like what I was. A man stepping into the
passenger side of a car on a beautiful day.

We got in. Doc took a deep breath and then another and
had both hands on the wheel without starting the car. He lit a
cigarette and said, "Dude, you were a fucking hero in there."

I didn't look in his eyes. Lawn sprinklers whirled on at the
neighbor's house. He fired the ignition and we pulled out of the driveway, away from the Lincoln I hoped to never seen
again in my life.

Doc said it again. "Dude, you are fucking heroic."

And this time, just to shut him up, just so I'd never have
to hear it again, I said, "Yeah."

ae was Hank's daughter. She had it and she flaunted
it, and though some of it was starting to sag, when
you're on the downside of your sixties and living in
Leisure World, you can let stuff like that pass.

So when Hank suggested walking to the pier, and that
Rae-who'd been staying with him for a month or so-would
pick its up and have lunch with its and drive its back, I couldn't
say no. Sheila was still my world, but a guy can have fantasies.
So I told Hank yes and we met at the giant metal globe out
by the guard gate and crossed to the other side of Seal Beach
Boulevard, by the Naval Weapons Station. We figured they
were up to something diabolical over there, like in that movie
The Mist that Hank got on Netflix, where the military types
open a rift to another dimension and giant insects show up and
eat everyone. We thought it would be fun watching three-foot
dragonflies chasing down the ladies from the quilting club.

Someone coming the other way might've thought we were
brothers. It was more than just the old-white-haired-man
thing. Our faces were the same shape and our eyes the same
watery blue and our mustaches were like caterpillars from the
same batch. Every once in a while we'd catch someone looking. I'd never had a brother, and it was kind of fun having at
least a pretend one.

Maybe a quarter mile along some moron had taped a cam paign sign to the fence that kept the riffraff out of the naval
base and the overgrown cockroaches in. The senatorial election propaganda had started showing up lately, on bumpers
and stuck in lawns and stapled to light poles. I planned on
voting for Roger Elliot. He wasn't much of anything, but his
heart seemed in the right place.

The other guy, Tim Swift, was a right-wing maniac better
suited for a turn-of-the-century hanging judgeship than the
U.S. Senate. Which was how he'd gotten elected to Congress
for eleven terms in Orange County. But I guessed it wasn't
enough for him, because since he'd gotten himself nominated for
senator, he'd ramped up the Neanderthal stuff. Truth be told,
the guy scared me, especially after that reporter got roughed
up. Swift was playing for keeps.

The sign taped to the fence was his. A Real American, it
said, like Roger Elliot was only playing one on TV. I muttered,
"Goddamn politicians."

Hank looked at the sign. Something started to come over
his face, but he got hold of it before I could figure out what it
was. I said, "What?" and he said it was nothing and that we
should pick up the pace.