The Nirvana Blues (40 page)

“You just let them get away with it, Heidi! You don't care! You're just gonna let them turn into a bunch of stuck-up, capitalist
preppies!
”

Jaws dropped. All three of them gaped at him as if he were a flying saucer, its retro rockets firing, settling to a touchdown on earth.

Heather yelled, “Daddy, you're having a nervous breakdown!”

Heidi shouted, “Joe, just
go!
'

Joe hollered, “Where am I supposed to go to?”

“Her house! Tahiti! Who cares?”

“Go to
hell!
” Heather suggested. “Go
crazy!
”

“I'm sick of that kid's foul mouth,” Joe warned Heidi. “If she's gonna talk like a guttersnipe let her go live in a gutter.”

“If you hadn't fucked Nancy Ryan,” Heidi wailed, “Michael never would have shot that damn monkey!”

“They are gonna be storm troopers when they grow up!” Joe couldn't resist saying.

Heather accused: “You already
are
a storm trooper, Daddy!”

“Joey, get out of here! Go away!”

“When are we gonna talk?” he raged. “What—we'll just stay mum and hope something works out?”

“Talk about
what,
for God's sake?”

“Would you believe,
us?
You and me! This so-called marriage! Our happy little family! Our living arrangements! The beautiful house we were gonna build together this summer!”

“I hardly think this is the time—”

“There are no right times in life, Heidi! If we always waited around for it to be the Right Time, nothing would ever get done!”

“Well right now I want you to be gone!”

“Great, thanks a lot, I'm going!”

“So don't just stand there,” she sobbed.
“Get out of here!”

“I don't wanna go out there!”
Joe shrieked at the top of his voice.
“It's a cold, cruel world out there, teeming with idiots!”
Shakespeare…? He added:
“It's a tale, full of sound and fury—!”

“Go,” Heidi pleaded. “Just go! go!
go!
”

Suddenly, what had seemed life-and-death crucial to Joe a moment ago became patently absurd. He moaned, “I can't go.” The sight of their big, wide-open, tormented eyes whammied by pathetic despair, set against soaking-wet features twisted in clownlike misery, broke his heart and raised a chortle at the same time.

Puzzled, wary, and infuriated, Heidi said, “If you don't go, I'm calling the police.”

“What's my crime? Who did I kill? What did I steal?”

Astonished, Heidi said, “You're actually
smirking!
”

“This whole thing is preposterous.”

For reasons even the most astute theologians, psychologists, and sports commentators would never understand, Joe's spirits had started to soar. He was enjoying the whole ludicrous Felliniesque imbroglio.

“Please go,” Heidi sobbed.

Joe let his voice drop to normal. “So long everybody, it's been good to know you.” And, tipping an imaginary Maurice Chevalier hat, twiddling an imaginary cane, he did a brief jig step, then slyly soft-shoed out of there.

Down by the Green Gorilla, inspiration—a three-hundred-watter!—flattened our cavalier boy. Joe ransacked the glove compartment for a soiled piece of typing paper and a pen. By starlight, leaning against the front hood, he wrote,
I love all three of you.
A cursory inspection of the surrounding terrain soon turned up the correct-shaped stone. Joe wrapped the note around it, went into a baseball windup (doing a double-pump-and-knuckle-dusters like big Don Newcombe), then reared back and tossed a strike through the southern window of their living room. And, as he pictured them unwrapping the rock, Joe fired up the Green Gorilla, cackling in ecstasy!

*   *   *

D
OWNRIGHT EUPHORIC
, firmly convinced he was one of the planet's most original and far-out human beings, Joe was about to sail onto the open road, bound for glory, when, from up high in the starlit darkness, Tribby Gordon called: “Hey Miniver! What's going on down there?”

At first Joe was startled: the voice, like that of God, seemed to be firing at him directly from heaven. Then he remembered Tribby's crow's nest atop his bedroom pyramid, and hollered back:

“It's nothing! Just a little domestic squabble!”

“You're breaking my windows, man! That's a tenant no-no!”

“I'll buy you another, shmuck!”

“Come up here a minute! Let's talk!”

“I can't! I'm afraid of heights!”

“Oh bull! Come on! I'm waiting! I'm smoking some dynamite shit up here!”

Joe quelled the truck, thinking: I hadda throw the rock. Me and my big fat inspiration!

Not that he wished to avoid Tribby. It's just that, for some reason, the tattered lawyer had made his crow's nest almost impregnable. You reached it not by navigating a sensible indoor or outdoor stairwell, or even by ascending a seminegotiable gizmo such as a ladder. Instead, you latched onto a large rope dangling from a lightning rod atop the pyramid and more or less belayed yourself up the side of the house and the treacherously steep pyramid cone. One slip, of course, at the higher elevations meant, if not instant death, at least a passel of broken bones. Razzed unmercifully by Tribby, Joe had clawed his hair-raising way to the top of the pyramid perhaps a half-dozen times, in mind-boggling terror every second. In fact, fear had made him so woozy that he had always lunged the final yards on the brink of fainting and doing an Icarus into the yard below.

Tribby, naturally, scrambled up and down the rope with the blasé dexterity of a monkey.

Joe whined, “Do I have to?”

“Absolutely.”

“Aw, shit…”

Nevertheless, he descended from the Green Gorilla, approached the side of the house, grasped the rope, and winced as terror sheathed his body in clammy goosebumps. Then, seeking to avoid the absolute hysteria that might strike if he overly circumspected the task ahead, Joe jerked himself aloft.

As he tugged himself painfully along, the soles of his feet went numb; shortly thereafter his calves became deadened. Joe gritted his teeth and would have closed his eyes had he dared. Everest was more human. A whimper, a gasp, a grunt—Joe tried to will himself on high. His fingers grew numb; his head buzzed. After the usual eternity, he found himself at the edge of the crow's nest, a square box shaped somewhat like an inverted sled, railinged on either side. Two people, in a squeeze, could camp in that rickety coffin.

“Come on in, Joe. The weather's great.”

“Now that I'm up here, how the hell am I gonna get down?”

“You always ask that question.”

“I still can't comprehend why you insist on making the route so dangerous.”

“It isn't dangerous. It's a routine climb. You just think it's dangerous. But the real peril comes from you
projecting
fear. I never feel insecure.”

“Just wait. One night you'll topple out of this box. We'll find you in the morning with a broken neck.”

“If I toppled out right now I'd sail away into the stars. Now look up for a minute, ferme la bouche, and be awed for a change.”

Joe obeyed. As always, despite his anguish over the precarious rope scene, he was floored by the aerial display. Nothing stood between them and eternity. Though only forty feet aboveground, the pyramid peak seemed light-years closer to the universe. Barely scathed by a polluting atmosphere, the stars sizzled in bold precision. The busy symmetrical beauty of twice as many constellations proclaimed immortality. Meteors, which would have been invisible from a second-story window, zipped through the bewitching clarity. Joe took no stock in the magic of pyramids, but all the same he had to admit …

Smoke from Tribby's joint was rich and pungent. One whiff and Joe's brain slithered sideways—he giggled nervously. “Want a drag?” Tribby asked. Joe declined: one toke would render him insensate and he'd pop free of their hazardous perch, experience a split second of euphoric zero-gravity, then punch against the earth so hard that his brain would squirt out of a split-open skull, zooming across the yard like a sloppy fluorescent softball until it collided against a tree:
shplat!

Tribby said, “What happened at the bus station last night?”

“All hell broke loose.”

“I know that, dumbbell. What I mean is, how did you rate the goodies?”

“You're not gonna believe this, but Nancy's monkey picked up one carton of tea.…”

“And it was in that carton?”

“How did you know?”

“Actually, Wilkerson Busbee told me this afternoon. I just wanted to double-check.”

“How come you talked to him?”

“I've been retained to spring them from the Clarion, Ohio, slammer. Wilkerson had already been briefed by Skipper Nuzum, who learned the details from Natalie. She apparently called Nancy—concerning the logistics of spiriting that imbecilic Hanuman crew from there to here—and I guess she let slip that Sasha had been the hero of that rather convoluted moment.”

“Sasha—egads. Don't remind me.”

“Michael picked some moment to perform his perfidy.”

“You heard about
that
already?”

“Rachel was having coffee in the Prince of Whales when Nancy phoned for help and Nikita Smatterling gallivanted off to the rescue.”

“Jeesh.”

“I wouldn't worry about it. Our main problem now is what to do with the dope.”

“Oy vay!” Joe exclaimed.

“What now?”

“I left it in the apartment.”

“Go back and fetch it.”

“I can't. I made an exit.”

“What sort of exit is worth a hundred thousand dollars?”

“An emphatic one.”

“No comprendo.”

“Don't try. I'm just sick of being a scatterbrained gangster. I'll climb back on The Bridge tomorrow.”

“Heidi won't do something irrational?”

“It's her future as well as my own.”

“Well … okay. Want me to bring you up to date on some of the more peripheral developments around that land?”

“No, but go ahead.”

“Skipper Nuzum dropped by the office today plumb gorged with bile. That shootout last night pushed his panic button. He wants the DA to move on Cobey's embezzling toot-sweet, as the saying goes. Rumor has it Cobey was one of those deranged depot marauders. So Skipper says it's time to nail Cobey, double-cross Roger Petrie when he proffers a hand for the payoff, and make Eloy an offer he can't refuse. Naturally, he assumes you'll be out of the running.”

“He doesn't know you're helping me unload the coke? Cobey does.”

“If he did, would I be the first to know?”

“No, but he wouldn't keep you on a retainer either, spilling all his plans.”

“He might. To throw me off the scent, keep me occupied. This way I'm a foil against certain parties while he makes secret moves elsewhere.”

“You want to hear one of those moves? Earlier today, Skipper stopped me on the road and tried to buy me off. He also assumes Heidi and I will split up, so that even if I land Eloy's acres I'll wind up unloading them to pay her off. Then, in about five minutes of fast talking he threatened my life, offered to buy the dope—first, at my original investment, then double that, then he asked me to be front man for him in purchasing the land for an eighteen-grand finder's fee, plus half my own shit. After that, he said if Nancy Ryan and I tied the knot, they'd make me a stockholder in the Simian Foundation. And he wound up ordering me to hand over the coke gratis and front the land for a ten-percent finder's fee. All that, of course, is on top of Cobey's earlier roadside offer to make a deal with Ray Verboten, on my part, for the coke and turn over to me half of whatever he could wrest from Ray. I blew it again trying to neutralize him by coughing up what I know about his plot to grab enough bucks for Eloy's property by embezzling from Skipper. He left in a huff.”

“Hmm. Well, that might not hurt us too badly. At least they know we have a few aces up our own sleeves. Cobey I figure we can ignore—though Skipper can't. In fact, I bet he still won't muzzle me on the Cobey D. case, even though our cards are on the table.”

“But that's crazy—isn't it?”

“Like a fox. While I'm preoccupied zapping Cobey and suffering Roger's sure-to-be-outraged invective, he's out there plotting with Nikita Smatterling and F. Lee Bailey, for all I'll know, on how to directly bugger Eloy, with or without your help.”

“But Eloy won't jump at his cash if I'm still in the picture.”

“Without the dope, he figures you're not in the picture.”

“But I have the coke.”

“I know that, you know that, even Skipper knows that. But he's also aware that you don't know squat about how to package, much less unload, it. And through Ray Verboten, and other lesser functionaries, the word is already out in the dope hotspots of the Southwest not to touch our scam with a ten-foot reefer. That way, any Chamisaville sale we try will have to be on the black market, and we'll have to wade through hell to stir even the faintest play. Because anybody who buys from us is telling every other pusher around to go fuck themselves. And Skipper figures that's as good as if we had no coke at all.”

“I haven't pushed a gram, and already I'm blacklisted.”

“On other fronts, Scott Harrison may or may not have been implicated in the fracas last night. Regardless, this morning he filed suit in district court against Eloy, figuring he had better move fast to offset the Dallas-Petrie-Nuzum troika. At best, he'll snarl the property in filibustering litigation so that even if you score the cash, Eloy won't be able to sell. If that fails, Scott may blow the cocaine whistle on us.”