The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (13 page)

He was just starting to come to and took a groggy
swipe at me when I heard police sirens. I pushed him back into the
garbage cans again and ran around the side of the building into the
back of the club through the kitchen. The police were coming in the
front and you could feel the anxiety level in the room rising about
ten thousand percent. The crowd started making for the bathroom like
a swarm of lemmings heading over the hill. Taken together, I figured
they could dump enough cocaine to rip the collective lids off the New
York sewers. But there was only one toilet in the john, and they were
backed up at the door worse than at a Springsteen
concert.

I found Otis clutching his arm behind one of the
aluminum palm trees. "I need a doctor," he groaned.

"You're also gonna need a lawyer if you don't
get your ass out of here as soon as possible." I led him rapidly
by his good arm through the kitchen again.

"All right, boys and girls. What is this'?
Substance Abuse Central? Against the wall!" I heard one of the
cops shouting as we ducked out the back door.

Fouad was on the corner of Ninety-fifth and Columbus,
where I had left him. Otis was too stoned or hurt to object, so I
eased him into the backseat and the Arab shot out of there like the
experienced ambulance driver he was. "Saw what you did with van
driver," he said as we careened across 110th Street to the Mt.
Sinai emergency room. "Good work. Remind me of Christian militia
in Shiite refugee camp."

Otis's broken arm proved to be nothing more than a
bad bruise and we were on the road to the airport in forty-five
minutes. Whatever protests he had about leaving New York had
dissolved in the confusion and the Valium they had given him at Mt.
Sinai. His usual idling speed of eighty thousand rpm had revved down
to a somewhat normal forty. "Don't take me amiss," Fouad
told him as we headed out the Van Wyck Expressway toward Kennedy,
"but that movie you make—what they call it?—Otis Goes
Maui—was for idiot."

"Hey, man. It was for kids."

"Kids not idiots. Fouad know. He have four kids.
Kids like computer. Garbage in/garbage out. But you not know about
that. I am sure."

Otis leaned into me. "Who the fuck is this dude?
PLO? I thought you was Jewish."

"Most movies insult children. They think
children be stupid, so they make children stupid. People stupid who
make the movies. That who stupid."

"Hey, man, I'm tryin' to be a serious artist—a
social satirist. Make a statement, know what I mean?"

"Only statement that movie make is where is
popcorn. Bad popcorn anyway, filled with additives. Children die of
cancer at twenty-five. Don't take me amiss."

"American Airlines," I said.

I left Fouad with five hundred in traveler's checks
when he dropped us at the terminal. I also took his phone number.

I wasn't sure exactly why, but some unformed feeling
told me it would be useful to have a potential Lebanese ally rattling
around New York.

"
Don't take it amiss," he said just as Otis
and I were about to enter the building, "but you should have
killed that driver. In my country they say if man get sentimental
about murder, he live to regret it."

12

Otis insisted on flying first class back to L.A. It
was in all his contracts, he said. Who was I to disagree? It wasn't
my money. So we sat there in the wide leather seats eating mediocre
chateaubriand and drinking Courvoisier from a full liter bottle a
fawning stewardess had placed in front of him as we jetted through
the night sky. With everything he had put in his body in the last
twenty-four hours, by the time the pilot announced we were flying
over Cleveland, the cognac had him speaking in tongues. I'd ask him a
question and get back an answer in what Jack Kerouac, desperate to be
identified with jazz musicians, used to call "spontaneous
boprosity." I told him, but he had never heard the term.

"
You know what it is with you liberal white
boys," he said, finally coming down to planet Earth or wherever
we were after a sugar rush from the chocolate sundae. "You
worship black people so much, it make us crazy. Y'all think you be
black, everything be great. No problems. No responsibilities. Get
laid every other minute. But if you was black, you'd hate it."

"Was Mike like that?"

"Worse case I ever saw. Talkin' jive all the
time. Listenin' to worn-out Motown shit and eatin' ribs till it made
you sick. Never saw the motherfucker shake hands straight in his
life. He always be high-fivin' you to death like he was Magic
Johnson. And lately it was Africa, Africa, Africa, everywhere he
went. I told him he liked Africa so much he should go live in Nigeria
for a while, see how much he like it."

"Did he ever go?"

"Yeah, he went. For about a week. With his old
lady. On a mission for that Africa aid la-dee-dah guilt trip she be
runnin' down. Bought himself a safari suit and one of them wide-brim
hats with the zebra band from Abercrombie and Fitch and got his ass
videotaped next to a scrawny water buffalo and some half-dead
Ethiopian kids with the fat bellies."

"Why don't you like her?"

"Who?"

"Emily."

"
Because she all bullshit, man. She just doin'
it to make herself feel good. She don't give a flying fuck about no
black kids. All she wants is her name on the charity letter. In big
print, right at the top."

"
Is that so bad if she gets them the money?"

"I don't know. Fuck." He emptied the cognac
bottle into his glass and downed it. Then his expression turned
plaintive, almost lost, as if there were no bottom to his sadness.

"Did Mike ever mention anything to you about
some twenty-five million dollars?"

"Who told you that?" Otis suddenly sat up
straight. "My brother? You ain't gonna do nothin' to my brother,
are you, man? He's all I got in the world, 'cause Della won't see me.
I love her so much, I'd marry her for life and write it in stone on
my heart, but she won't talk to me unless I kick for six months. She
wants me to get a fuckin' doctor's certificate. Now how'm I gonna get
that?"

"Maybe Bannister."

"
Yeah, Bannister. All's I gotta give 'im for
that is my balls, my career, and my freedom .... Well, that ain't so
bad." He grinned at me. "At least I'l1 have my woman."

"What about the money?"

"What money?"

"The twenty-five million."

"Oh, that bullshit story. I told you how bad
Mike wanted to be hip. It was all part of that, tryin' to be a black,
underworld motherfucker and makin' up some fairy tale about blood
money and Mafia shit."

"
Is that what it was? Mafia shit?"

"I don't know. I just made that up. All's I know
is Mike made it up too, tryin' to be important. He never said a word
to me until he knew our partnership was dead. It was like he was
braggin' or something. You know—if I was gonna get rich, he was
gonna get rich too. But he was all fucked up. He didn't know what's
obvious to anybody. Money don't count for shit after ya got enough to
eat, 'cause it won't buy ya love. And if yo mama didn't love ya, ya
ain't ever gonna get it anyway, so screw you. It's all a black
comedy—and I do mean black. " He laughed. "I didn't need
no Bannister to tell me that. I found out the truth fo' myself when I
was three years old and my mama leave me alone in the apartment to
turn tricks and come back three days later, me pissin' on the floor
and eatin' Wonder Bread and Kool-Aid out of the refrigerator till the
can run out. And that bitch Della don't want me now either. But she
says it's my fault. lt ain't my fault. It's a conspiracy. You know
what? Sometimes I think we live in a conspiracy of bitches."

Otis wanted to join the conspiracy the moment we got
off the plane and he saw Chantal waiting for us by the gate.

"This your woman?"

"Assistant, er, uh, partner."

"Thank God for that. " He stared at Chantal
with a smile of almost embarrassingly open rapture. " 'Cause I'm
in love, baby. Cupid just hit me with one of them incredible darts.
Wait a minute. Wait a goddamned minute. Didn't I see you onstage at
the Fun Zone a coupla weeks ago? You're a comic genius! Oh, help me,
help me, Jesus, Satan, somebody, I been stung. I ain't ever gonna get
out of this motherfucker." He made a charming little-boy face at
Chantal, who blushed in spite of herself.

"
How do you do?" she said.

"I dunno. You tell me. How'm I doin'?"

"Working a little too hard," I said.

"Hey, this motherfucker jealous. And he don't
even have a reason. C'mon, baby. Let's give him a reason." He
took Chantal by the arm and started off toward the exit with her.
"How's your career goin', baby? You know, I know the dude at The
Merv Griffin Show. He might be interested in your act. 'Bout time
they had a few more women on there. Support the ERA, y'know what I
mean?"

Otis kept going right to the car. I couldn't believe
Chantal would fall for a rap like that, but I couldn't shrug it off.
Otis was right. I was jealous. In fact, as we drove out of the lot, I
felt about ready to throttle him.

"Y'know what, baby?" He leaned over the
front seat and put his hand on her shoulder. "I been thinkin'.
Next spring I got this World War Two flick in Italy with Giancarlo
Giannini and-"

"Thanks, Otis, but no thanks." She took his
hand off her shoulder and placed it on the seat. "I quit show
business and I'm staying quit. Being a private investigator is more
interesting. It's about real life."

I looked over at her and smiled, but she just
shrugged.

"Oh, I get it," said Otis. "You guys
got eyes for each other, but you don't have the balls to admit it.
That just like white people."

And with that he went to sleep in the backseat.

Chantal and I didn't say a word to each other until
we were almost in Malibu.

"Is he out?" she asked, glancing back at
Otis as we passed the Getty Museum.

"He ought to be."

"Okay." She looked back at him again just
to make sure, then took out a note pad. "Your friend on the
Asian Squad says the Chu's Brothers are scavengers. They used to hang
around the Rampart Division trying to get information from the cops."

"
Police blotter groupies."

"What they were after here, I haven't been able
to find out. Ditto for Stanley Burckhardt at the Glendale post
office, but he's still trying. As for Bannister, things seem to have
been pretty normal at his compound, but I wasn't watching it that
much of the time because—here's the interesting thing—I think
Emily Ptak is having an affair."

"Really? Who with?"

"I'm not sure. All I know is I followed her from
her house this afternoon straight to the Bonaventure Hotel in
downtown L.A. She didn't know me, so I rode up to the seventh floor
with her on that glass elevator they have. She walked to Room
Seven-fifteen, knocked, and said 'It's me.' Someone opened the door a
crack and she slipped inside."

"Did you try to get in?"

"Of course I did." She looked annoyed I had
even asked.

"Ten minutes later I knocked on the door and
said it was Housekeeping, but Emily yelled back they didn't want
anything. An hour later I dialed them on the house phone and said it
was the switchboard and we were having a computer problem.

'
Is this Mr. Morgan's room?' The guy said no. I
asked, 'Well, then, whose room is it?' and he hung up. I also tried
the bell captain, pretending I had a package to deliver, but he
wouldn't tell me anything. I guess I could've done better, huh?"

"Not bad," I said. "Fancy hotels are
really hard to crack."

"
Are you sure? I think I screwed up. I should've
figured out something, talked to the chambermaid or the maintenance
guy. I mean, my mother was an actress and I grew up in hotels."

"You did fine. You found out more than I knew,
and at least we know she's having an affair with a man."

Then jet lag hit and I felt about ten feet underwater
by the time I turned into the Malibu Colony. I did manage to find
Bannister's place, however. It was almost two in the morning by then,
but the psychiatrist was waiting up like an angry parent when we
arrived. He sent the Samoan out to the car; he picked up Otis with
one arm and carried him toward the door like a Cabbage Patch doll. He
set him down on the front step, opposite Bannister.

"I never want you to leave again, Otis."

"
I won't, massa. You know that."

"Next time I'll have to take those measures I
described to you."

"
Uh-huh."

"I'll see you tomorrow morning at six for our
usual jog. Be ready."

"What the fuck?" said Otis, who could
barely stand up.

"Just because you ran off like a foolish child
doesn't mean you'll be allowed to abandon your schedule for one
second," said Bannister, who thanked me and followed the Samoan
and Otis into the house.