“No, no. I just have to go to this meeting and then I’ll be back, or I’ll call and tell you where to meet me.”
“Don’t fuck me around, Ram. You’ve got to keep me in the loop.”
“I will,” Ram said, leaning down to kiss her on the forehead. Sara grabbed his hair and pulled him down to her, kissing him violently at first, then backing off to sweetness that was not innocence, removing her tongue and brushing his lips lightly with hers. “Call me in an hour. I’ll go crazy if it’s longer than that.”
“I will.”
“You promise?”
“I do.”
Sara walked him to the door. He got in the Toyota, started it, and headed down the hill toward Sunset.
When he got to Duke’s, Cifuentes was seated in the booth near the kitchen. Ram sat down and ordered coffee.
“So what is it, José? Bad or good?”
“Bad. There’s muscle in town. More Joe’s Boys, four of ’em.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Maybe they’re here for you, maybe not. Maybe it’s something else, but I don’t think so. I never got that from my source. Besides, he wouldn’t tell me stuff like that and I wouldn’t ask him. But they’re definitely here.”
“Then I am definitely gone. Keep my car in good shape until I can reclaim her… What do I owe you, José?”
“What do you got?”
“That bad?”
“I have to look out for myself, Ram. They find out I’m working for you—if they find out and if it’s you they’re here for—then I’m gonna have to disappear like you’re doing.”
Ram reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a roll of hundreds. He counted out thirty. “I hope this is enough. I gotta hang on to the rest.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet. Besides, that’s something you don’t want to know, nor do I want it on my conscience if I told you.”
José stood up and clasped Ram tightly. “Okay, brother. Vaya con Dios, Don Le Doir.”
“Thanks for everything, mi hermano. You know I appreciate it.”
José nodded and looked down. When he looked up again, he saw Ram’s back as he pushed out the door.
At a payphone on the PCH near Topanga Canyon, Ram called Sara. She picked up on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“Can’t say.”
“Bad news?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want to see you.”
“I can’t come back to town.”
“Then I’ll come meet you.”
Ram thought about it for a long minute before answering. He didn’t want to jeopardize her, but he didn’t want to lose her either. His sense of self-preservation and his desire to be a living part of something greater than himself battled for supremacy. Finally, he answered. “Okay, come on out. Bring your cell phone and I’ll call you and direct you where to find me. I’ll call you in exactly twenty minutes.”
When he did, he told Sara to meet him at No Name Beach two miles north of San Piedras. He was sitting on the sand ten yards back from the incoming surf, watching plovers and sandpipers scurrying and pecking along the beach. The water was a metallic green; the surf a dead iron color as the waves played out like flapping shoes. A gray sky was low and mottled with black bruises, but out on the horizon, there seemed to be a clearing. A squadron of pelicans drifted above the shore break and a couple of seals floated on their backs looking up into the iron sky. He felt her before he saw her and then he heard her call his name. Ram turned and watched her negotiating the last of the cliff steps. She was in black jeans and a t-shirt, wearing sunglasses. She came over, sat beside him, and put her arm around his shoulders. He looked out to sea and saw nothing.
“How bad is it?” she finally asked.
“I won’t know until I get the final word from The Big E.”
“Aren’t you being over-dramatic?”
Ram laughed. “That’s what Vera said.”
“Fuck Vera. But really, aren’t you just a journalist working on a story?”
“That’s what I thought at first, truly I did… But this is a story that involves billions of dollars, not your everyday muckraking… They like their money—Big Louie and his crew—and they don’t particularly care what it costs or who gets hurt if it, or they, or him, stand in the way of their getting more or takes their marbles. They like their marbles and want more, as much as they can grab. To them, it’s a game. They want to keep the game going and they’ll do whatever is required to do so. There’s no limit, no rules anymore, none that they have to obey anyway. All that there is here are opportunities to exploit.”
“What about taking what you have and going to the FBI? Surely, they’ll protect you.”
Ram sighed and raised his head from the sea to look at her. He cocked his eyebrow, snorted, and lit a cigarette. Sara reached into her bag, cracked open two Coronas, and handed one to Ram. He drained half of it, then looked back at Sara with the same resigned expression.
“…I took the FBI a whole pile of documents about two years ago when I sensed this story could get dangerous… I asked for their protection… They did nothing, just left me to twist in the wind. Maybe these guys are too big for the feds… Maybe the feds get a cut, who knows? But they haven’t done a thing to move against Louie and his gang and I doubt they ever will.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s institutionalized now, corruption is. Maybe it always was and I was just too blind or naïve to see it… too dazzled by my own ego and bullshit to really smell what was growing the roses… This bunch just keeps doing the same thing again and again and they keep getting fat government contracts and making more billions from their bank stocks and nobody will lift a finger or raise their voice to stop them.”
“You did, Ram… You should be proud of yourself for the work you’ve done. I read the story. You should win prizes for it.”
“I thought I would, but was I wrong… The game is changed now. The rules are different now, or there are no rules, only rules for those who don’t make them.”
“What about your friends and family? Can’t you talk to them and see if they’ll help you out until you get the story out?”
Ram laughed bitterly, shook his head, and exhaled two jets of smoke.
“Friends and family… yeah… that’s what Bob Massino told me… He’s the Scalia family’s consigliere… You know the Scalia’s, right?”
Sara nodded. “The Mafia guys.”
“I call them respected Sicilian families… Anyway, I went to see them right after I stumbled onto the most dangerous part of this story. That’s what Bob told me too… Go to your friends and family, he said.” Ram sighed. “Let me tell you how that went,” he said, exhaling smoke and finishing the last of the beer. “As for friends, it seems that I made a series of rather terrible choices. First was Emile Donner, right after the accident, when he set me up as the patsy in that developer war.”
Sara nodded and kissed him on the cheek. “I remember,” she said.
“It was pretty much the same thing with the rest of the people who I used to consider friends. They said it was great what I was doing, but they didn’t want any part of it. They were all too busy, or too scared, or too numb to act. They’re frozen and worrying about how they’re going to survive the meltdown we’re all facing. That really hurt; the very people who once blew smoke up my ass about what a great writer I was, wouldn’t do a damn thing. It’s a long list I could go through, but what’s the point? It’s all the same answer, and the answer is always ‘No’; same with my allies.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m talking about the people who encouraged me to write the story in the first place. The ones who told me to keep on the story. I told them that I couldn’t do that without backing, and they swore that they’d find some. I told them, this is a ditch fight, and if you’re serious about it, then you’d better come armed… I told them to get all their people together under
one roof and raise some money. All of them knew what I was doing but none of them would help.”
“Why?”
“Why? I told you why, what I think anyway, but if I really knew that, I’d know a lot more about what’s going on in this country now.”
Ram lit another cigarette and asked Sara to walk with him down the beach. She rose, joined him, and they walked south along the waterline. After a moment, she spoke.
“It’s only been four days or so since I ran into you, and everything in my life has been turned upside down, sort of like when I first came to LA. I’ve gone from flirtation and vamping based on an old crush, to friendship, to falling in love with you, to loving you and wanting to partner with you, to discovering this strange world you’re living in. I don’t want you to live in it, and I know I don’t want to live in it either. Last night, after you passed out, and this morning, after you left, I began searching for an answer. Here’s what I came up with. Do you want to hear it?”
“Absolutely, I can’t come up with anything anymore. I’m shocked, gone, spent.”
“Can the gloom, okay, Ram?” Sara said, arching her eyebrow for emphasis.
Ram nodded.
“So anyway, here are three options I came up with, tell me what you think, okay?”
Ram nodded again.
“Option one is we let it go and turn the documents over to my lawyer and have him go to the FBI so they’ll protect you, Ram. Option two is I help you raise the capital you need to start your own magazine with a cover story on Louie Verde. I don’t like this option as much, but if that’s what you need to do, I’ll stand with you. Option three is to sell everything we own and go to Europe, to Venice or Tuscany or Amsterdam, not Paris or those freezing countries in Scandinavia, though. I like the third one best.”
When she finished, Ram looked out to sea. The waves were rising and a swell was building. A couple of surfers paddled out beyond the break line and turned their boards around. Sara stood looking at Ram, waiting for his answer. Finally, he spoke.
“I’m with you Sara,” Ram said. “Option three is best. I’ve gotta stop this nonsense. It’s suicidal to continue this. Let’s put the plan in motion.”
Sara squealed delightedly and threw her arms around Ram, kissing him full and hard on the mouth. They looked at each other and smiled. Then Ram raised his hand in a stop motion and spoke again. “There’s one last thing I have to do,” he said. “I have to go back up to The Arbor. I have to talk to my realtor and banker. There’s something unfinished there.”
“You can do that over the phone—the realtor and banking stuff anyway. What’s there that you have to go up there for?”
“Something started there, or began ending there. I need to face it and complete it.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s complicated, Sara. Something happened in that house a few years back, right before moving to France. It really fucked me up in a fundamental way. It was when I was doing that cover story on Barry Bailey. I sort of sold my soul on that thing, and I need to put it right.”
“Don’t be stupid. You don’t need to go back there to let that go. Just let it go, honey.”
“I can’t without going back there, Sara.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this. Don’t do it. Stay with me and let me handle the banker and realtor.”
“No, I have to, Sara. I have to.”
“No, you want to, Ram, and I don’t want you to. Don’t go.”
Ram sighed and looked at her. There was something indomitable in his look. She whimpered and then screamed at the ocean. She cried for a few moments and Ram held her. Then she composed herself.
“You’re a pig-headed fool who doesn’t know when to quit,” she finally sighed. “I really wish you wouldn’t go, but if you are gonna go, just do it. Don’t call me until you’re back here. I don’t want to hear any of it.”
She turned away and Ram could see her crying.
Ram held her a moment and stroked her hair. “It’ll be alright,” he said. “It’ll be okay.” He got up and walked to the Toyota, leaving Sara standing by the bluffs, looking vaguely out to sea. “A la prochaine," he called to her.”A tout à l’heure."
She waved without turning to face him.
The trip up the coast was uneventful. Ram thought mostly of nothing other than completing his mission of termination then beginning again with Sara. At least, he tried to, but there was another voice that told him she was better off without him; that he would only bring her trouble. He was torn as to what he should do. When he called The Big E, he got his message machine. “There’s nothing I can do for you, Le Doir,” was what it said.
When he pulled in to The Arbor late that night, a car was in the driveway and the house was lit up with music playing. He crept up to the master bedroom window and heard Vera’s laughter and the voice of a man. He stayed outside watching them through the window until he could watch no more. Then rage overtook him and he was outside himself. The rest, he didn’t remember.
Nor did he remember the arrest or when he was in the hospital bed with a catheter in his arm and an electro-thermal surge shooting through his body. Nor the trial, the meetings in chambers, and motions and negotiations as he sat there mute alongside his attorney, heavily sedated. All he remembered was the end of it, after the sentencing, when he was back in chains and an orange jail jumpsuit, being transported to Misericordia State Prison for the Criminally Insane. During the perp walk to the van, camera flashes popped and reporters’ voices shouted at him. The shoe was on the other foot; now Ram was the story, not the reporter. Out of the smear of voices, Ram heard one that he recognized but couldn’t place. The voice said, “Le Doir, give us a comment. Did you kill your wife and how does it feel?”
Ram looked up. The flashes flashed more furiously. He composed himself and answered.
“I did,” he said, quietly but firmly.
Book III
Restless Farewell
“In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.”
– Henri Bergson, (1859–1941). Nobel Prize Winner, Literature 1927.
Chapter Eleven
…Shaughn was still laughing at the other end of the line asking me if I remembered the night the toilet exploded. I could see him, hooded-eyed, shirtless, slouched in his leather recliner, plastic features jiggling like The Joker in those old Batman comic books, early Stones blasting on the stereo, bottle of Chivas on the table next to a mirrorful of lines. Shaughn didn’t upset the image when I heard him snort three times.
“C’mon, Le Doir, you remember the night the toilet exploded?”
I told him I didn’t and he began walking me through it. But that was unnecessary; it was too late. The gates were battered in from the first mention of it, the images spooling out, and the wheel turning from now to then.
Top down on Stew’s dad’s ’65 Impala SS, that bitching light-purple metallic ride with cream leather interior, bucket seats up front, three speed in the chrome center console between the bucket seats, a 327, not a 409, blasting into downtown Sagrada on 99, arc lights in wild ellipses on the underside of the clouds, the tumescent scent of summer already overwhelming in the milk-warm lapis night. School had just let out the day before and summer lay dead ahead.
“Pull in here,” Shaughn said, and Stew nosed down the alley between I and J, 17th and 18th streets. “This is as close as we’ll get without paying,” said Shaughn, taking a pull from his hammered silver flask and handing it forward to Stew.
“I better put the top up,” Stew said, getting out and unbuttoning the tonneau cover.
“Yeah, looks like rain,” said Ram, “wouldn’t want your parents to come home and find the carpets all wet.” Everybody laughed as Stew disengaged the wires underneath the dash. The engine died, and Stew got
out and unbuttoned the tonneau cover.
“Come on. Let’s get going. I don’t want to miss The Remains, they’re opening,” said Jaime.
“Check my hair,” said Ram. “Does it look tuff?”
Stew checked Ram out. “Still flips in the back and Jaime blocked it right this time.”
Five peroxide-blonde fourteen-year-olds, in black trench coats and baby-blue stretch Levi’s, pegged skin-tight, over needle-nosed Flagg Brothers boots with Cuban heels, the original Southside Mafia, moved down the alley, heading toward the lights shining through the sycamores. The doors to the auditorium were open when they got there, the crowd loading into the red-brick Romanesque building. From above, it looked like oil pouring through a funnel: a hurried rush from the rear, flowing easily until the narrow ingress at the gates, then the viscous clot backing up on itself, grumbling and shoving and voices calling out in recognition, eyes and teeth gleaming briefly in the reflected light.
On the inside hallway, down the left side dress circle, stood a clot of hard boys from Will C. Wood. “Here’s the Burnt Bacon girls,” one of them shouted. “Bunch of queers.”
“Fuck you,” said Shaughn.
A space cleared.
“Let’s go, hard boy,” said Shaughn, calling out the lead kid with the pomaded waterfall.
Eyes on both sides chose off. An usher and a cop ran up and separated them just as the inside lights flashed twice. They rushed to their seats, the curtain rising on a stage drenched blood red. Somebody tumbled from the tier above Ram and his friends, the collected human clot began shaking with a tremor as the band burned into “Round and Round.”
Then the air inside the auditorium got wet like it does before a thunderstorm. The walls shook in the steam-bathed air as though it were echoing the crowd—not rhythmic or in time, but jagged like the sheer physical earthquake that it most certainly was—pulsing, bursting, erupting, dangerous: The Rolling Stones, 1965.
Twenty minutes later, it was over. Keith had turned toward Mick when Jagger was doing a James Brown style mike drop. A blue light arced between them when the mike hit Keith’s Epiphone, and he shook into a heap. “He’s dead,” people screamed, when the curtain came down. They were playing “The Last Time” when it happened.
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