The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (21 page)

I hurried out of the building and headed back toward
my car. But just as I turned the corner onto Hill Street, I saw the
crowd surge forward. Otis, in dark glasses and a pin-striped suit,
was emerging from the criminal courthouse with his manager/attorney
Purvis Wilkes and three expensive-looking white lawyers with fat
briefcases. They were followed by a couple of dozen reporters
dangling Nikons and video cameras and chanting "Mr. King, Mr.
King."

Purvis Wilkes edged Otis behind him, holding his hand
up in front of the reporters while guiding his client toward a
waiting limousine. "Mr. King will not be making any statements
at this time."

"Mr. Wilkes, any comment on the million-dollar
bail?" someone shouted.

"No comment."

"
Are these gentlemen part of your defense team?"

"At this moment I am Otis's sole attorney. We're
looking for someone on the California bar."

And then they came all at once: "Is it true
Otis'll only be represented by a black man?" "Was he
high'?" "Was it PCP or speedballs?" "Are you
going to plead insanity?" "Was his father once indicted for
murder?" "Did the movie s studio force him into
psychotherapy?" "Did Bannister want to be his manager?"
"Has he always been self-destructive?" "Has King King
fled the country to avoid prosecution?" "Do you know his
whereabouts?" "Did Otis do this to defend his brother?"

"No comment. No more questions now," said
Wilkes, continuing to block Otis out and back him toward the
limousine. He almost had the reporters out of the way and Otis in the
limo, when the comic stopped and shouted, "Hey, wait a minute.
See that dude?" He pointed toward me. "He went all the way
to New York so's I could come back here and get my ass hung. You know
the moral of that one, don't you, all you print-freak motherfuckers?"
The reporters, seizing their opportunity, started edging forward,
cameras rolling. "Never trust a white man, any white man, but
especially one of them civil rights-kissing, Motown-loving,
Huey-hugging, Stokely-sucking, Jesse Jackson jive-time jigaboo
jelly-hopping liberal-radical whatevers who think they gonna save
your ass. Just 'cause those motherfuckers was on some kinda march
twenty years ago, they think they own you. But they got love and hate
and guilt all so screwed up in their own pea brains, all's they can
do is kill you with kindness! And with friends like that, like the
dude say, who needs enemies? So that be the Gospel According to Saint
Otis. When I die in jail, it ain't my cross they gonna nail!"

And with that he got into the limo and drove off. The
reporters and most of the crowd ran after him, trying to get some
last word. Not a bad speed rap, I thought, for someone who had been
clean for at least twenty-four hours. I thought I'd better move on
before the fourth estate decided to interview the object of Otis's
derision, but as I started down the sidewalk, I could see the New
Yorker standing there, staring at me.

18

He was still in my rearview mirror when I saw Nestron
near the corner of Sixth and La Brea, a low-slung warehouse in the
early sixties style with dull mustard brick walls and a shake roof.
Although the light was green, I slowed as I approached La Brea,
stopping at the intersection and ignoring the outraged shouts of the
truckdriver behind me. Then, when the light turned red, I gunned my
engine and ran it, zooming between two cars and a bus and shooting
across the wet intersection onto San Vincente amidst a chorus of
squeaking breaks and honking horns. I was going about seventy-five
and spraying enough water to irrigate a block's worth of azaleas.
Fortunately, there weren't any cops around as I made a hard right on
Orange Drive and then another onto Edgewood Place. I sped through La
Brea again, dodging more cars and a couple of trucks, and made my
third right on Citrus Avenue. Then I pulled over to wait to see if I
had lost the New Yorker. He must have been more sensible than I,
because it seemed as if I had given him the slip somewhere along the
line. I slid into first again and drove slowly down to the end of
Citrus, entering Nestron the back way and parking beside their
loading dock.

Two minutes later I was wondering what all the effort
was about. The only thing Nestron distributed was stationery, and the
closest it got to the pharmaceutical business was the paper for
prescriptions.

I got back in my car feeling dizzy and unfocused. I
knew there were things I should do, leads I should follow up, but I
couldn't concentrate on them. It suddenly occurred to me it was time
for my regular appointment with Nathanson, the one he had canceled. I
decided to go there anyway. The sky became darker and darker as I
headed west toward Santa Monica. By the time I was descending into
the canyon, it seemed like it was practically night, although, on my
watch, it was only a minute past two. Had it been scheduled, I was
just one minute late for my appointment. But as I approached
Nathanson's house, it was clear someone had replaced me. A dark,
bearded man was crossing from his car, a ten-year-old Mercedes, to
the psychiatrist's office. I parked right behind him and jumped out.
As if driven by unconscious forces, I rushed past him and into the
door. Nathanson looked up, startled, from his desk as I entered.

"What, Moses?"

"I know this isn't my appointment."

"Yes, you didn't reschedule."

"I want to know why you canceled it."

"
Another client had an emergency."

He turned toward the door where the dark, bearded man
was standing with a baffled expression. "It's all right,"
the man said in an extremely deferential voice. "I'1l go."

"No," said Nathanson, "that won't be
necessary."

"I also have to know what you were doing in
Koreatown."

Nathanson hesitated. "Give us a couple of
minutes," he said to his other patient.

"Yes, of course, Doctor." He exited,
shutting the door carefully behind him.

"Sit down, Moses."

"No, I'll stand." I glanced over at his
desk. The matches had vanished from atop the book from the Board of
Medical Examiners.

"Your eyes are crystallized. The woman. How are
things with the woman?"

"Bad."

"I thought so. Tell me about it."

"What? Tell me about what you were doing down
there with that reverend."

"Center yourself in the here and now. What is
going on with you at this very moment?"

"Don't give me that psychobabble! What the fuck
is going on?" I stood over him, looking down at his chair as if
I were ready to shake it.

"
I can't tell you. And if I could, I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm the wrong place to hear it."

"
What?"

"You have to figure this out for yourself. No
more gurus, Moses."

"I don't want a guru. I want the truth!"

"If you want the truth, you're going to have to
see what's around you. Start focusing on the present. Concentrate on
your breathing."

"
Is that all you have to say to me?"

"
At the moment, yes."

I stared at him for a second. "I'm finished with
therapy and do you know what else? I'm going to see you get
arrested!"

"
Good. Now you're taking control."

I walked out, slamming the door in his face. I
continued right past the other patient in the used Mercedes and into
my car, turning on the motor and roaring out of there. I was halfway
to Koreatown before I knew where I was going. But when I did, the
cobwebs were gone from my brain. All my senses were heightened and my
body was alert. It was as if I had just spent a year in the dark and
I was finally coming out into the daylight.

I pulled up across from the New Inchon and went in.
It was the middle of the afternoon, the dead hour for restaurants,
but there were still some men at the bar knocking down the well
drinks. I slipped in next to two of them and ordered a shot of
Glenlivet.

"You know, it's not just the labor costs,"
I said to them before the bartender even came back with my drink. The
two men looked at each other, naturally confused about what this
gringo was saying. "I mean the quality's not bad. But nobody's
going to tell me that Gold Star and Samsung are better than Sony and
Hitachi, at least not yet. So there's got to be some reason Korea's
the next wave, the next industrial power. And you know what it is?
Faith. Plain old-fashioned faith." The bartender poured out my
scotch and passed it in my direction.

"Thanks, Joe .... You know what I mean?" 
I said to the guys.

"Yes, yes. Sort of." The one nearest me, a
bulbous fellow in a red tie, smiled in embarrassment.

"What it is," I continued, "is that
Korea combines Oriental patience with Christian steadfastness. Now,
you tell me one other culture with that combination."
 
They looked at each other as if to say where did
this guy get off the boat. Only they were the ones off the boat and I
was the hometown boy.

"Not all Koreans are Christians," said the
bulbous one. "Some are Buddhist, some are Confucian."

"Same difference. Look, tell you what I mean.
Who are your biggest evangelists in Koreatown today? You know, the
top dogs."

"
Dr. Chung," said bulbous.

"Dr. Wu," chimed in his buddy.

"Chung? He's the one with the Mercedes stretch
limo, isn't he?"

"No, that's Wu," said bulbous.

"Yeah, right. He's the one with that church over
on . . ."

"Dr. Wu's church is not here. It is in Seoul."

"Yes, but he has the office building on Eighth
and Crenshaw," said the buddy.

"That's just my point. A businessman. He knows
the Lord wants us all to prosper. Right? Your health." I downed
my scotch and exited.

Five minutes later I was in front of the Hankyu
Investment Center on Eighth and Crenshaw. I walked past a realty, a
brokerage firm, and a coffee shop called The 38th Parallel into the
lobby and found the building index by the elevator. There was no
listing for a Dr. Wu or a Reverend Wu or indeed for a religious
organization of any sort. But my eye did stop on one particular name:
the VIP Leasing Corporation. It was the same Bahamian outfit that
owned Carl Bannister's tony Malibu property and it happened to be the
penthouse suite.

I got into the elevator by myself and pressed "P."
It was eleven floors up and I was going along pretty well until we
got to five and the elevator stopped. The doors opened and the Chu's
Brothers got in.

"Hey, smart dog," said the verbal Chu. "How
are you this afternoon?" He took out a .38 and pointed it at me.

"
Getting worse by the moment."

"We gonna change directions. See what's
happening in the basement."

"Yeah, I hear that's where they embalmed Sid
Vicious."

"You like punk music, smart dog. Good." He
pressed the emergency button, stopping the elevator.

"
Particularly religious punk music. It's
inspirational."

"Yeah. In tongues." He said the last word
long and hard as his brother grabbed my neck in a choker and pulled
me back against the wall. The verbal Chu laughed softly and pressed
"B." We were going down.

The basement was a series of corridors leading toward
a boiler room. The Chu's pushed me all the way in the back to a
laundry and shoved me inside, shutting the door behind us.

"Well, Brother Chu, we gonna kill him here and
carry him out? Or carry him out and then kill him?"

"Kill me here," I said. "Then dump me
in Joshua Tree National Monument. That's a great place. In the
sixties they burned somebody alive there. In a hearse."

"Flaming hearse . . . wow," said the verbal
Chu.

"Of course, there are other possibilities.
There's the cactus under the Hollywood sign. An actress committed
suicide that way, stripped naked. And then the PCH. Back in the
thirties, a German director named Murnau went flying off a cliff
there in his car while his boyfriend was sucking his cock."

"I like that," said the silent Chu, opening
his mouth for the first time.

"And wait a minute .... How about the bushes in
Elysian Park? That's where Angelo Buono—you know, the Hillside
Strangler—used to drag women to rape and kill them. And what about
the immortal Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker?"

"Yeah, heavy metal Satanism!" said the
verbal Chu.

"Whips and chains. Can you dig it? There are so
many possibilities in this world. Like you could garrote a guy with a
spike or. . .check this." I picked up one of the towels from the
top of the washer. "Even a common household item can be great
for torture. The Chinese used water, right? And the Shah of Iran, I
hear his boys used to wrap ordinary electric wire around the balls of
his prisoners and give 'em a jolt. Let 'em know who was really boss.
Great, huh? How about this?" I dangled the towel at arm's length
by my side.

"The white flag. They say a bull will only
charge at red but. . . what about a bully?" I jiggled the towel
again. The verbal Chu looked over at it and I rushed him, sending him
sprawling and the gun flying behind the dryer. I dove on him, pushing
off his sunglasses and sticking my fingers in his eyes the way I had
been taught in my Tae Kwan Do course. Then I rolled over and kicked
his brother in the face with the back of my heel. It was all about
fighting dirty. Before they knew what had happened, I was crawling
across the floor and grabbing the gun barrel, which was sticking out
from under the bottom of the machine. I jumped to my feet, training
it on them, feeling my hand shaking and face flushed with blood. I
hated violence. It always made me want to throw up.