by Rex Bolt
“Apparently. There was a suicide attempt as well. They placed a sign on the back of the roundhouse that tells you in no uncertain terms, the updated consequences.”
Chris felt like he was pretty up on current developments in Manhattan Beach since he’d been here . . . but obviously there were the blocks of time where he was elsewhere and out of the loop, which kind of ticked him off right now, frankly.
“Well like I said,” he said to the guy, “I wish you’d mentioned it.”
“They had your friend in the truck, from what I could see. Beyond that who knows?”
“Let’s clear up one thing real quick,” Chris said, “he’s not my friend. But you mean, the vehicle was going somewhere? Or they were just socializing in place.”
“In place at that point,” the guy said, but Chris was curious and went back down toward the water to where you could see under the pier between the posts, and son of a bitch, the enforcement truck was moving now, toward the Strand, and you could see two heads in the front and one in the back, and there was no apparent human left behind out of the vehicle, so they were taking him someplace.
“Man . . . I feel kinda guilty about this,” Chris said to the old guy back by the stairs.
“What are you talking about? You ever speed?”
“Hunh? Okay, I know where you’re going, you see a guy pulled over and you’re going just as fast.”
“Exactly. Last ticket I got, I tried to play that card, the officer asked me if I ever went fishing. Enjoyed pointing out that you can’t catch all the fish.”
“That example I get,” Chris said. “But I like to be fair, take my lumps like the next person . . . only problem being, not a major one mind you, but I don’t like getting too mixed up in having to give out my name.”
“To the authorities you mean.”
Chris hesitated for a second, wondering, Jeeminy Christmas, was he being that transparent, meaning careless, and was the old guy eyeballing him different now . . . but the guy looked amused like he delivered a joke, so no point getting bent out of shape.
Chris said, “I wasn’t thinking the authorities so much, but fine, them too. My deal, I like some anonymity is all.”
“I’m with you. I tried a pen name once, it kind of backfired on me in my business, but I got attached to it and went with it for a while in real life. It presents a different spin, I learned.”
“Wait, you’re a writer, you mean?”
“Was. I’m afraid those days are long gone.”
“Well . . . what’d you produce? Anything I would have heard of?”
“Unlikely, but let’s get that coffee, how about, if you’re going to pepper me with the questions.”
The simple master plan had been, before Chris got sidetracked and competitive with the movie doofus--and you shouldn’t be calling him that, it was unfair, the guy obviously being put through some kind of ringer at this point--but he was supposed to meet up with Mancuso and Rosie and grab a little brunch, a new joint on Highland next to the designer sneakers place where Mancuso knew someone, and what else was new.
Admittedly that kind of thing was always fun and Ned had a way of suggesting what to order that was typically on the money, and maybe it was his imagination but the service and portions always seemed a little stepped up when Ned was involved . . . but the not so great aspect was Ned and Rosie having hooked up.
Or at least leaning that way, awful chummy the last week or so . . . and what did Chris expect really, the writing had been on the wall there when she asked him in Wyoming if he minded her riding with Ned the rest of the way.
So not a big deal at this point . . . but then again in the presence of Ned--and Rosie now too--you were in the back of your mind reminded of the recent not-so-pleasant stuff--nobody’s fault but you were . . . so you might as well keep it fresh today and see what the old guy had to say.
And staying with the not so pleasant stuff angle for a second . . . Chris wondered with a clarity that hadn’t hit him before, whether he had an alter ego . . . and if he did, what that even was?
Chapter 2
Chris said Peet’s or Starbucks? And the old guy said he favored the Coffee Bean, and Chris had only tried it once and the brew was a little weak but he could see the guy’s point, it had an old-fashioned slow-paced local vibe, if that’s what you were after.
“So don’t make me repeat my question,” Chris said.
The guy, who by now had introduced himself as Finch, said he wrote mostly in the 80’s, started to fall apart in the 90’s and faded into literary oblivion--so the heavy odds were there’d be nothing Chris would recognize.
“You could try a couple titles on me,” Chris said, “but first--I hate that, when guys use a last name like it covers the first one too.”
“You didn’t like the Kramer character on Seinfeld then?” Finch said.
“That guy I did like, I’ll give you that . . . Remember the one where they need a couple bucks and everyone’s reaching in their pockets and coming up empty and Jerry askes Kramer what about him, and Kramer says sorry he only carries hundreds.”
Finch laughed. “I don’t, but that’s a good touch, the guy’s always home or in Jerry’s apartment, no sign of ever working, but he’s loaded.” He laughed again, a little too hard, and coughed a couple times and Chris thought ah Jeez but fortunately the guy had ordered a cup of water with his coffee and handled it.
“You think though,” Chris said, remembering the movie guy and the fact that Finch had the guy’s phone, from when they asked him to hold the valuables, “we should try to contact him or something?”
“Offer to bail him out, you mean?” Finch said, which would have been funny to most people but not to Chris, at least this past 12 or 13 months, and Finch picked up on it and said he was kidding, and up to you.
Chris took a look at the guy’s phone, and he couldn’t seem to get the right screen, but he didn’t know much, he hated cell phones and had a mental block how to work them, beyond the basics he needed to check his own messages and essentially do nothing more complicated than speed dial the taqueria now and then to place his advance order.
He asked Finch if they were stuck and it was clear Finch knew less than he did, so Chris asked a kid at another table who was buried in a book but with a highlighter pen in hand, and the kid took the phone and ran his finger over the screen a few times and they were in.
“Thanks,” Chris said, “they still make you read physical books then?”
“Some,” the kid said. “Why?”
“No reason. My friend and I, we were just saying, books sort of dried up in the 90’s.”
The kid looked at Chris strange and went back to his work, and Chris said to Finch, “What now? And what was the pen name you adopted in real life for a while, you never said?”
“Pete Finnegan,” Finch said.
“I like it, nice balance, good ring. Go back to it and start writing again.”
Finch said, “You’re kind of all over the place, my friend. I ran into a gal a couple months ago, started badgering me the same way.”
“Older gal?”
“Young. Not too young, just perfect. She was an aspiring writer, she said. She fired me up, what can I say.”
“You do anything about it?”
“Me? No, not really.”
“Meaning you still have writer’s block. You know that’s all in your head, right? I been reading, there’s no such thing, it’s a figment.”
“You sound like my shrink, frankly. Not a real one of those, but my agent, Stew Portnoy. Retired guy now. Like me.”
“Sheez . . . the name. Wasn’t there a book . . .?”
“Yes of course, Portnoy’s Complaint. Not based on Stew though, I can assure you. Anyhow he’s an old New Yorker, we both are, lives in Santa Monica now. We shoot the shit every month or so.”
“And he helps keep you sane you mean,” Chris said, “since you referred to him as a type of shrink.”
“I had a real one once,” Fin
ch said. “You ever?”
“Nah . . . but let’s not worry about me. What I’m hearing, you got another book in you but it’s stuck.”
“All it is,” Finch said, “and I’ll repeat what I told the young gal that time--I wrote three, back in the day, not intending to be a trilogy, but you know, same characters and settings and all, so it got labeled as one.”
“And you never concluded it properly is my guess. You left the readers hanging.”
“Not so much hanging, as I disappointed myself with my effort in Book 3. I had Simon & Shuster back then and there were contracts and time pressure, and even movie rights dangling, which never panned out, but even so--and I sort of mailed it in.”
“So ever since,” Chris said, “the unwritten concluder, it’s been eating at you.”
“Okay, fine,” Finch said.
“What happened to the gal? . . . And what do you mean she fired you up? Something actually transpired?”
“No, no. We had dinner once. She was working on a newspaper story, and I happened to have a few tidbits for her, but I told her she’d have to have that dinner with me to receive them.”
“Dang. That’s not bad, you sound like me.”
Finch said, “We ended off, she was going to email me part of her manuscript, though that never did happen. But she seemed quite excited at the time to get my feedback. I told her it was lucky I remembered my email address, because I’ve been inconsistent in that department . . . She said I seemed just fine to her. Smiling, laying it on, no rush to be anywhere . . . That was a nice moment, I won’t deny it, it kind of turned back the clock briefly.”
“Wow, yeah, nice story. But not enough to get you writing?”
“I thought it might. I woke up the next morning, I had it sort of figured out--even the title, A Regular Monte . . . The guy resolves the issue with his sister, moves back from Winnipeg to Oklahoma City . . . let’s see . . . may or may not kill off the guy that screwed him out of the money . . . and yeah, through it all learns to appreciate the little things.”
“Holy Toledo,” Chris said. “That’s a wild imagination there. You kill people off in your books?”
“Oh very much so. Mind you this is--or was intended to be--the final concluder, leaving no doubt, so Monte likely steps it up, even by his standards.”
“The others,” Chris said, “they have Monte in the titles too?”
“Yep. Monte’s Question Mark in ‘87, the sequel Monte On Vacation in ‘89 . . . and then the one I wish I never wrote, Weekends With Monte in ‘93.”
“So let’s see,” Chris was counting it off on his fingers, “93, 2003, 2013 . . . Jeez, a quarter century actually.”
“See what I mean?” Finch said. “There’s no way now.”
“I was thinking the opposite,” Chris said. “You’ve amassed all that extra wisdom. Different animal today, the book. Could work.”
“I must say,” Finch said, “you have plenty of zip to your game, the way you’re bossing me around. How about you ghost-write it for me? That’s all the rage now.” He was half-smiling.
“Very funny. So bottom line, you woke up a new man the next day, but by lunchtime it wore off?”
“Sort of. What it motivated me to do out of the gate was go bodysurfing. Talking about your quarter centuries, it wasn’t quite that long maybe since I’d been in there trying that, but you get the idea . . . Then I suppose I had a run of beginner’s luck, caught a couple waves, harmless ones. What fucked me up next was the overconfidence. I ventured where I didn’t belong.”
“Damn. What happened? That what you were touching on earlier, with the beach lifeguard?”
“Yeah. There was a line of kids on their boogie boards getting excited, positioning for a substantial wave you could see forming. The regular local kids, who know what they’re doing. I line up with them, like an idiot. I was out of my league, and took off just a fraction late.”
“I can picture it,” Chris said, cringing, and he could.
“I got somersaulted around, didn’t know which way was up or down. It was strange, I never panicked exactly, but I started having unlikely visions.”
“Oh boy.”
“First I saw my parents at a movie theater, then I was in the yard of my elementary school at recess. Then I was on a train in South America that was going backwards through the mountains.”
Chris blew out a thin exhale. “You were up against it then, no question.”
“Then an arm, a strong one, locked around my chest and pulled, and I was gasping and coughing, but now breathing. The gentleman cinched the rescue tube around me and angled me onto my back and brought me in.”
“I love those guys,” Chris said. “You’re getting me choked up here.”
“I came back the next day,” Finch said, “I’d bought him a 10-pack for the Cinemaplex on Rosekrans, you can either go 10 times solo, or bring a date and go 5. Different lifeguard this time though, he didn’t know where the previous day’s gentleman was stationed.”
“They move ‘em around,” Chris said.
“Right, so I gave the movie tickets to the new one. He was awfully nice, and no doubt equally capable.”
“Stick that in the book,” Chris said.
***
They found what looked like a home number for the guy in his phone’s address book, and Chris dialed it.
A woman answered and said Regan--the guy’s name having been established now--typically rides his bike to the Manhattan Beach pier on Sunday mornings, but may or may not be coming straight home, and do you need his cell number?
This was an awkward spot, Chris wasn’t sure how to handle it, and he told her no that’s fine for now and they hung up.
“You see a bike on the guy, or locked up some place?” he said to Finch. “And as I’m thinking about it, how’d you know him? That what you said?”
“Don’t know about a bike, but weren’t those bicycle shorts he raced you in?”
Chris couldn’t tell the difference any more, or keep up with the steady developments in workout attire, but yeah that probably made sense.
“Correct, the timing didn’t seem appropriate to reference it,” Finch said, “but he and his partner turned me down on a film project. TV actually. He wouldn’t remember it.”
“Hold on. Recently? You just said you mailed it in, a long time ago in fact.”
“I thought I had. They called us. So Portnoy pitched them what they wanted, a pilot for a Netflix series.”
“Jeez. One of the ones you told me about, or something else?”
“The second Monte book, yeah. 80’s stories with crime in ‘em are enjoying a bit of a revival. Viewers like the lower-tech element, apparently.”
“Hmm. No DNA you mean, that type of deal?”
“Oh they had DNA. In fact I had to educate myself to try to be a credible author. But nothing like today’s forensics, that goes without saying.”
“Of course,” Chris said. “So the viewers, your era, they get more old fashioned police sleuthing then.”
“Right,” Finch said. “They like them solved circumstantially, at least that’s what the marketing people say.”
The whole thing reminded Chris, a sour taste to it, that he needed to take care of the business with Mark, why did he keep stringing it out so long, God dang.
He also had a few more questions for this guy, nothing earth shattering, but the inside scoop on the entertainment business was kind of interesting . . . except before he could go any further, a phone rang . . . the pier guy’s . . . which Chris figured it would sooner or later.
“Hey Butt-Fuck,” the guy, Regan, said, when it was established who was answering his phone, which didn’t take long.
“You okay?” Chris offered tentatively. “You sound a little stressed.”
“Yeah well, $900 bucks’ll do that to you. My credit cards are maxed out, I had go to the ATM and pay cash.”
“Jeez,” Chris said. “They, like, drove you, you mean?”
“Walked
me. Couple a dickheads. One of ‘em reminded me of you.”
Chris didn’t want to agitate the guy further . . . but was this the cops now? Not the lifeguard people anymore? He said, “The other one, he didn’t remind you of me?”
“Nah. They were tag-teaming me, good guy-bad guy. A third one spoke to me too, a detective. Apparently our little stunt was the highlight of their crime-fighting week.”
Wow, this was the cops. Even more of a relief now that Chris employed the right-turn option around the south side of the pier when it looked like Regan was swimming toward something developing on the beach.
Although . . . could the guy have mentioned him too, or if not, could that still happen?
Chris made a snap decision. “Look, I feel bad. We’re at the Coffee Bean. Give me a minute, and I’ll find an ATM too. I’ll have a couple hundred bucks for you, for your trouble.”
That was a bad way to phrase it and Chris knew it right away and Regan said, sort of disconcertingly sing-songy, “Oh you’ll have lot more than that for me. We’ll straighten it out.” And he clicked off.
“Didn’t sound the greatest there, honestly,” Finch said.
“No,” Chris said.
“Sounds like some fallout, if you don’t mind my two cents.”
“Like Newton’s Law, you mean,” Chris said, “every action, throwing you back an equal and opposite reaction.”
“Oh yeah,” Finch said, “good analogy.”
“Well how’s about you throw in your two cents productively--the mope’s gonna want a thousand bucks, at least, for his time and trouble.”
“Uh-huh,” Finch said. “Welp . . . in my books, with Monte, he’d get himself in those type of jams.”
“He always wriggle out of ‘em?” The old guy was starting to get on Chris’s nerves, frankly . . . though admittedly it was kind of interesting hearing how Monte did handle this kind of shit.
“Not always, no. I had to take some liberties, as the author, to keep him around for the next book. The funny thing though, you can ask readers to suspend disbelief--if they’re into the story by now--and they don’t question it.”
“You’re saying you can get away with stuff,” Chris said. “Well whoopee.” Giving the guy a bit of a look now.
