Tinseltown Riff (11 page)

“What girl?” Ben asked even louder, traipsing into the kitchen as the juicer went into high gear.

But it was no use. Amidst the hum of the air-conditioner over the sink, the grinding juicer and the traffic noise which managed to insinuate itself through the louvered windows, Iris was in the throes of peeling, fending off slimy glop and measuring assorted powders and herbs.

For answers, Ben resorted to the answering machine in the den directly across. The news from Angelique only reiterated most of what Ben already knew: “I'm still like so antsy ... besides everything else, somebody was supposed to show who didn't. And that Ben, that sorta cousin of yours. Cute, sharp in a way like I said, but I don't know ... I just don't know. A little nosy if you catch my drift. Oh well, talk at you later.”

In sharp contrast to Angelique's sputtering patter, the maiden in the Chevy pickup  was perky and direct. The message she left was that Ben was in no way getting off easy.  Among her issues was the fact she needed a place to hole up. She ended with, “So, buddy, if you are finally home, you can count on seeing my face. And I don't mean perhaps.”

Too beat to react, Ben put the messages on the back burner. Even the insistent tinkling sound that followed seemed remote and distant. Absentmindedly, he picked up the receiver. “Sorry, we are closed for the night.”

“Hey! Que esta pasando aqui?”

“C.J.?”

“Who else?”

“What do you mean, ‘What's going on?'”

“Soy serio, payaso.”

“Okay, you're serious. Cut the put-downs, give it to me in English and make it short.”

From the scuffling sounds and echoes on the other end, Ben guessed that C.J. was at the Hollywood station. After he calmed down a bit, Ben learned that he had just intercepted some goofy message. Ben asked him to speak slowly and clearly trying to both keep from drifting off and make out what he was driving at.

“Idiota dispatcher,” said C.J. “Who can read his gringo handwriting, you know? But it sounds like you. I tell you to call Chula at the motel if you want me. Ese foe el trato!”

“I know that was the deal. Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Hey, you don't got to take a tone with me because they know I know you. You are on the nuisance file. No me hagas esas jaladas.”

“Hold it,” said Ben, becoming more alert. “You're the one jerking me around.”

“Oh, yes? If it's not you, then what payaso made the call?”

“What call? Spell it out right now or I'm hanging up.”

C.J.'s husky voice faded off as he shouted at someone. A tarty voice shrieked right back. This went on for a while until, as mercurial as ever, C.J. came back on the line laughing. “The hooker we dragged in, she says bad things but likes my chest and big muscles. Only the long hair, she says, it has to go. Dame un tiempo.”

“Give
me
a break, you mean. How old will I be till you read me the stupid message?”

There were more scuffing noises. Then the words came haltingly over the line as if C.J. were decrypting a secret code. “‘Evil enterprise ... coming your way ...  the audit proves it ... start looking for—'”  

“What audit?  What is this, a joke?”

“Ay, Chihuahua, there is more. About the Rockies ... crippled ... high fever ... no I.D., somebody got to believe me.”  

 “Listen carefully. I don't know who this guy is or what you're talking about.”

“Es la verdad? You did not send this?”

“No. Es la verdad.”

Ben heard a groan on the other end and sounds of a scuffle.

“Okay okay, it is late,” said C.J. “I jump the gun maybe. Nuisance call is passed around, so loco, so Hollywood, guys in the squad remember you and give to me. So maybe—”

“No maybe. You jumped the gun and owe me an apology.”

“Si, lo siento. It happens stations in Frisco and Vegas get this too. Maybe it is a promo.”

“Calling police stations?”

“Why not? Enough times then it gets on the news, you know?”

“Nobody in Hollywood is that desperate.”

“Everybody in Hollywood is that desperate. Especially you, pendejo.”

“Oh, that's cute. Another put-down. Are we through?”

“Si, si.  Hey, you still got a birthday coming up, que no? What you say I buy you drinks?”

“Great.”

“Bueno, got to go. Tranquilazate.”

“Not me,
you
take it easy.” It crossed Ben's mind to ask C.J. about an uninsured motorist in a borrowed car smacking into somebody's old truck, but it could wait. Everything could wait.  

Returning to the hallway, he was greeted by a frothing beaker of Iris's mango glop.

“Down the hatch, buster. You are so outta shape, it's pathetic.”

“Gotcha.” Ben knew the only hope of hitting the sack was to obey orders.

“Who was that?” said Iris as she disconnected the phone.

“Nobody, nothing.”

“At this time of night?”

“It's L.A. Only health freaks know it's late.” Ben downed the slippery liquid, wiped his lips, handed her back the beaker and prayed he wouldn't throw up. “Can we  say goodnight now?”

“Look at me, Benjamin.”

Ben did as he was told and peered down. As seen through his watery eyes, Iris' combative face seemed almost benign.

“I promised ol' June,” Iris barked, “that I would make sure you got your act together. Which is a no-brainer, what with Leo needing you to do the same and me dying to have this place all to myself again.”  

“Understood, Iris. Say it again and we'll dance to it. Just post the drill on the frig. I will commit it to memory at first light.”

“Damn straight you will.”

With that, Iris marched back into the kitchen, tossed the beaker in the sink, whisked by him and, for emphasis, slammed her bedroom door. Traipsing down the hall, too out of it to do more than take off his shoes and unbutton his shirt, Ben shifted past the two racks of barbells and flopped onto the cot.

 

In the dream, nothing worked, nothing fit. He got out an easel and tried to sketch a simple storyboard opening, but the panels turned into pictures of a crippled accountant dangling from a ridge, and the sheets of paper transformed into a ledger and then a ledge. Somebody stood above him crunching his knuckles with the heel of his boot; then a dangling maiden by his side was yelling at him while clutching his hand for dear life.

The scene dissolved as he rushed here and there in the pitch dark searching for the Prelude but couldn't find it anywhere. The traffic whizzed by him when he spotted her again wearing the same bib overalls. But there was no way of crossing over as the cars reached the speed of light and his legs were as heavy as the weights at Iris's gym.

She reappeared as a silhouette far off in the distance. “Let's see some I.D. Let's see it from both you and the accountant.”

All at once there was nothing but a cutting room floor. At his feet were strips of film; directly ahead, a blank mausoleum wall. He shouted over the wall, insisting that the maiden and accountant didn't belong in this movie and he had the outtakes to prove it. He bent down but all he could find was a toy box filled with crayons, binoculars and an oversized copy of Dr. Seuss'
Oh
,
The Places You'll Go.
The binocular lenses were shattered. The wind whipped by and rustled the tops of the spindly palms. Ben cocked his head and heard something whistling down the canyon closing in on him.

Startled, Ben sat straight up in bed. Sighing, dog-tired and unable to take it any more, he scrunched back down, rolled over and hugged the pillow. Reaching for the most benign imagery possible, he started counting mellow, sweet-natured sheep. Which, in practically no time, began to do the trick.

Just before he dozed off again, the counting brought back fuzzy images of accountants and C.J.'s call. Which showed how much police departments knew. Accountants were just bookkeepers. Theirs was a simple balancing act. The reason you'd always find them at a remove--cool, calm and collected.

Yes sir, no tension, no mayhem, no conundrums. Cool, calm and collected; that was the key.

  

Chapter Twelve
 

 

 

The day before, Deke was seated uncomfortably on a Southwest flight to Oakland. It wasn't just the dark suit and new shoes that cramped his style. It was everything, including his stiff back.

For openers, they told him at the check-in counter that the first seats on the plane were roomy, perfect for a long-legged fella like him. They didn't tell him that the whole time he'd be facing a plump, moon-faced mom and her thirteen-year-old moon-faced son and sixteen-year-old moon-faced daughter. He'd never seen a threesome so bubbly in his life. Without asking, the bunch of them—sometimes taking turns, sometimes talking all at once—told him crap he didn't want to hear. They were from Spokane, clad in sparkling Spokane sweatshirts—in-your-face commemorations of the son's exploits at first base in the Little League regional championship. After a play-by-play of the final inning, mom skipped over to the girl's triumphs on the swim team while the girl, at the same time, turned red and kept tugging at her short pleated skirt. Then mom switched to the wonders of the folks, schools and community get-togethers back home.

Then it was, Was the gentleman going all the way to Disneyland?  No, only to Oakland. But afterwards, on to L.A.? Maybe. First time?  Not exactly. Well, let me tell you all about Disneyland and the sights you absolutely don't want to miss.

As if mom jabbering away wasn't bad enough, the shapely flight attendants wore khaki shorts and matching loose blouses, and kept making dumb remarks up and down the aisles and over the intercom. It started with, “We've got good news and bad news.” And then moved on to groaners like, “Hope you brought some flotation devices with you ‘cause we're fresh out. Just kidding, folks.”  And, “If you're hungry, too bad. What did you expect from a no frills airline?”  After each bonehead announcement, one of the attendants would wiggle by, pick Deke out especially and say, “Hey, darlin', having fun yet?”

At this point, Deke figured his new outfit made him look rigid and uptight.   Which was the same reaction he got from the hooker and massage gal in Portland. She took one look at him in his new duds and told him he was going to be a real challenge. But neither she nor the muscle-relaxer pills Walt foisted on him hardly made a dent. They both mainly served as reminders he'd better not twist or make any sudden moves. Any way you looked at it, ever since that run-in with Elton Frick, ever since he'd scrambled after that nerd accountant, he'd been hamstrung.

Forcing himself to concentrate and shut off the yakking Disney-brained three, he closed his eyes and tried again to sort it out. Just as he'd done before boarding while shuffling the cards in Frick's wallet:

As things stood, two things went off the rails. First, Frick was about to blow the whistle on the pop touring company the Outfit was using as a front. Now that Deke had recovered the memory stick and as long as Frick was out of the picture, that problem was scratched. But the Outfit's point man screwed up again leaving a bigger hole—this one in the pipeline; what the Outfit was really running under the Fed's nose. Meaning, as far as Walt and the Outfit were concerned, intercepting that missing stash patched the hole and marked the end of the line for Deke. As far as Deke was concerned, sticking it to Walt and the Outfit and keeping the missing stash all to himself would put him in the catbird seat for the first time and for a long time to come.

And that's as far as Deke could get with it. The yakking and flirty interruptions from the flight attendants made any thoughts about what it might take and what he'd  run into almost impossible.    

Eventually, the Disney-brained three said their cutesy goodbyes but, as usual, he barely acknowledged it.

Afterwards, at the terminal, two more muscle-relaxers enabled him to get the new, soft-grain luggage off the conveyor belt in Oakland in time to meet up with his contact. The guy was twenty-something, baby-faced, wore a black tank top with a shimmering crimson logo that read
Starshine
over his silver cargo pants.   

After letting on that his name was Tyler, he snatched Deke's luggage and told him to follow close. Holding on to his carry-on bag, Deke nodded as Tyler dumped Deke's suitcases in the trunk of an electric blue Lincoln town car waiting at the pickup curb and told Deke to hop in the back.

Shortly it turned out that Deke had two disposable clowns to deal with. The driver, who introduced himself as Seb, had on a duplicate getup, his head and neck shaved smooth, accented by a stubbled pasty face. To top it off, he had four silver studs lodged in his earlobe and a set of blood-red Starshine tattoos plastered over both flabby arms.

As Deke shifted around in the roomy interior, he realized that either Seb was on something or had a screw loose. As a duo, Tyler tried to play it brainy while Seb kept breaking into some lame, rhyming patter as he headed the Lincoln south toward Salinas.

While barreling down a clogged freeway, air-conditioning blasting, tinted windows up so Deke could barely make out where he was, Deke reckoned his only recourse was to eke out whatever information he could before cutting loose.  

“I hear all you fellas from Starshine are about the same age.”  

“More or less,” said Tyler, turning his smooth face in Deke's direction.

“Less is more,” Seb chimed in. “Over thirty you hit the floor, like a wasted--”

“Shut it,” said Tyler. “Stick to your driving.”

“Like you're the boss, chief Crazy Horse, and I don't give a toss.”

Tyler shook his head and shrugged in apology. “Pay him no mind, man. He drives pretty good. That's about it.”

“Yeah,” said Seb, switching lanes and then swerving back to the center. “Enjoy the ride as I drive with pride.”