Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (29 page)

Moths fluttered through the moonbeams. They were really
beautiful, Johnny thought. He started to walk out to the lonely
patch of ground, to his own little doom, but instead found
himself walking right for Ed.

"Not this way," Eddie said. "Out there. Back up."

But Johnny didn't back up. "No, I know what you want.
You want to turn me into a thing that you shoot. But I'm not
going to let you do it. You have to shoot me in the face." He
felt a wild panic inside but also a kind of demented hilarity. He had seen this scene in a crime movie from the '40s
a couple of years ago. He was pretty sure he had quoted the
lines verbatim.

Eddie suddenly seemed less confident. "I will shoot you
right in the fucking eye. I fucking will. Now get over there."

He gestured with the gun. But Johnny smiled and kept
walking toward him.

"In the face, Ed. In the face or in the balls, but in the
front. You got the cojones?"

"Back up," Eddie said. "You don't get it."

He started to say something else, but Johnny leaped on
him, and put his hands around his throat. Eddie screamed
and fell back, and Johnny choked him down, tightening his
grip.

"What's the matter, Ed, you think I just deal in words?
Motherfucker!"

The whole thing was over in about thirty seconds. Eddie lay in the sand with his tongue hanging out. His face was
purple under the moon. The gun was now in Johnny's hand.

He started back to the car.

When suddenly an apparition stood in front of him.

Blood-spackled Connie was up out of the trunk, like a
zombie from the B's.

Johnny made a funny shrieking sound, and aimed the gun
at her. But she ran by him and threw herself on Eddie's body.

"Ed, oh Christ," she said. "Oh, Ed." She turned, bloodied
and manic. "It was a joke," she said. "He wanted to show you
he was a good idea man. I tried to talk him out of it. But he
wanted to show you ... So when you went back up to Hollywood you wouldn't forget him."

"Very funny," Johnny said. He walked back to the trunk of
the car and saw the oilskin with the car jack and tire iron in it.

She got up and followed him there. He looked at her
dumb mouth and blood-splattered cheeks. And felt a tremendous disdain.

"What are you doing?" she said. "We've got to go in to the
police and report what you've done."

"I knew you were going to say that. So you're not even
pregnant?"

"No, of course not."

"Too bad," Johnny said.

He held the iron over his head and looked down at her
with real sorrow in his eyes.

"Johnny, you can't do this. You're not a murderer. You're
a writer."

Johnny smiled.

"No," he said. "Up to now I've always been a wordsmith.
But I think maybe Ed was right. The real thing. It's a lot more
exciting than fucking words."

He brought the tire iron down on her head, crushing her
face with one mighty blow. Under the pig's blood, human
blood began to flow. He hit her a few more times, and felt
even more refreshed than he had on the front porch. Power
slammed through him like two thousand volts.

Connie fell behind the car.

Johnny looked inside the well-stocked trunk and found
a small shovel. It would be a lot of work, but with all the
adrenaline coursing through him, he was up to it. Besides, it
was great being out here in nature, digging like a real man,
under the lunatic moon.

He strode out into the desert like some kind of Karloffian
monster, and started to dig.

Then he remembered Stenz.

A week later, Johnny was back in Hollywood and sold Hometown to NBC. He'd learned his lessons well from Boys in Blue.
Hometown was full of sentimental types: the good buddy with
a drinking problem; the old girlfriend who had been a hooker
but had a serious heart of gold; Mr. Mooby, the kindly janitor
who was secretly a Nazi. Problems that the hero, Dave, could
solve, because Dave, unlike his creator, was smart, and good. It was shot in a sunny, blue-sky way and sold to Hallmark in
a flash.

CBS gave him an overall deal at two million a year.

The bodies of Eddie and Connie were never found.

Johnny only went back to the O.C. one more time. To
hire his new assistant at a salary of two hundred thousand a
year. Stenz was delighted with his new digs in Hollywood, and
turned out to be the most loyal employee Johnny ever had.

The following season Johnny had three new series on the
air. Leonardo Stenz was Co-Executive Producer on all three.

And whenever interviewed, Johnny still maintains that
none of his good fortune would have ever happened if he
hadn't taken his two weeks to renew himself down in the laidback and beautiful O.C.

very Randolph finished the stretched-out riff of Billy
Joel's "Just the Way You Are," hoping his playing
covered the flat notes coming out of his mouth.
He'd meant to take his voice up in pitch during the last chorus, not down. The throat was the second thing to go. There
was polite applause from the Seaside Lounge crowd, and Randolph nodded slowly while noodling the keys.

An aging couple, both in bright attire, their matching
sterling-gray hair arranged just so, walked by the piano, hand
in hand. The woman, peach-colored lipstick gothically enticing in the bar's subdued lighting, dropped a five into the large
brandy snifter for tips. She smiled. Randolph smiled. The man
gave a quick wave to a short-haired woman at a table near
the window, and the two headed for the door. The man let
his hand glide down to briefly and tenderly flutter against the
woman's backside.

"This is for Emily," Randolph announced, and began a
leisurely intro into "Straighten Up and Fly Right." He channeled Nat "King" Cole's artful syncopation, letting it build
while several patrons bobbed their heads and tapped their feat
to the rhythm.

"Cool down, papa, don't you blow ... your ... toppppp,"
he finished in the key he meant to, and this time the applause
was more heartfelt. He stood and bowed and blew a kiss to Emily, the woman the guy had waved to, sitting at her usual
spot next to the window overlooking the medical center down
below. For sixty-three, Randolph reflected, she looked good,
handsome in her dark blue dress and diamond brooch, an everpresent martini glass near her steady blood-nailed hand. She
lifted her drink and toasted him with a sip and a toothy grin.

Randolph finished his set with an instrumental rendition
of Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'," adding, "Don't forget the
sand dab special, folks, Rene swears they are to die for." That
got a few chuckles and he offered a wave en route to the bar.
Sitting at one end of it was a National Guard trooper in his
camouflage, a combat service badge dully gleaming over his
flapped breast pocket. He was drinking a beer from a pint glass
and was having an animated conversation on his cell phone.
He turned his body away and hunched over some as Randolph approached the opposite end of the bar.

Carlson, the head bartender, came over with his Jack and
Coke. "You tinkled them good tonight," he commented, setting the squat glass on a napkin with the establishment's name
on it.

"Thanks, man." Randolph watched the logo become distorted by the wet bottom of the glass, then took it to his lips.

"I guess you have to go easy on that stuff, don't you? Or
does it help your playing?"

Randolph looked over at the woman who'd just sat down
beside him. She was young-that is, younger than him. In her
late twenties, he figured, jeans and some kind of loose fauxsuede top. Not too much makeup, Rite Aid earrings. Pretty,
but not overwhelmingly so. He sized her up as the wife or girlfriend of some soldier or marine over in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Lonely. Bored. There was a lot of that in Los Alamitos.

"Everything in moderation," he replied to her. He didn't offer to buy her a drink, making sure he kept his eyes on her
face and not down on that alert swell beneath the shirt's fabric. The bare arms, though, impressively toned.

"I used to play guitar in high school," she said. "Even had
us an all-girl band for a while. But you know how it goes." She
elevated a shoulder.

"Not the next Bangles, huh?"

She frowned.

"Before your time," Carlson piped in. A not so subtle reminder that Randolph was probably a decade and a half older
than the woman. Randolph resisted a remark. Goddamn Carlson was older than he was but worked out on the weights, and
had bragged about getting pectoral implants. So I can pick up
pussy more easily, he'd cracked to Randolph and Rene Suarez,
the chef.

"Can I have a gin and tonic?" the woman asked, looking
from Carlson back to Randolph.

"Yours to command," the bartender said, and went to prepare her drink.

"What do you do now?" What the hell, no sense making
it easy for Carlson. Besides, Randolph was just making chitchat, no more, no less.

"Work at the PX on the base. Original around here,
right?"

Carlson returned with her drink. "Me lady."

"Shit fire," the soldier down the bar snapped, then threw
his cell across the bar top. It landed in another customer's
glass, the drink's owner glaring at him.

"Aw, hell, here we go. Another old lady done told her hero
boy bye-bye." Carlson, himself a vet, double-timed to cool out
the service man.

"Your husband on his second or third tour?" Randolph asked the woman. They both watched Carlson putting an arm
around the shouldiers of the soldier, who dropped his head,
mumbling words of self-pity.

"He was killed, about half a year ago. Roadside bomb hit
their convoy coming into Paktika Province." She drank some.
"Jeff was Army then. After he rotated out, he wanted to do
something about what he'd seen over there. Something different." She shook her head. "Jeff's a ... sweetheart. He worked
for CARE International delivering food and relief." She put
the gin down quietly.

"Damn. Sure sorry to hear that."

"Lori. My name's Lori." She offered her hand and he
shook it, smiling crookedly at her.