Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  I closed the notebook and put the empty Corona bottle in my recycle container. I did some push-ups then stretched out on the sofa with a copy of The Long Goodbye. For relaxation, there’s nothing like Raymond Chandler. I got lost in the book until I started to fall asleep. I pulled the sofa blanket over me and read another page before nodding off.

  I had a dream. It had something to do with dark hallways and closed doors. There were people behind the doors. I could hear them talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying. I knocked on one of the doors. No answer. I knocked again.

  Only the knock was coming at my door and woke me up.

  A guy in a suit was outside my screen door.

  “Mr. Romeo?” he said.

  “Huh?” I was a little groggy. What time was it? Had to be pretty early in the morning. There was gray light outside, the kind where the sun is fighting to get through fog.

  “May I have a word?” the man said.

  “Pick one.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “That’s three.”

  I swung my legs over and sat up. The Long Goodbye was on the floor where it had fallen during the night.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  “All right, this is fine. You’re an investigator for Ira Rosen on the Cunningham matter.”

  I got up and walked to the screen. I was still dressed in yesterday’s jeans and Hawaiian shirt. The guy—who was around forty and on the short side—certainly knew how to dress. His suit was gray. A crimson pocket handkerchief matched his crimson tie.

  “Who wants to know?” I said

  “We’re both professionals here. Let’s proceed that way.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, talk.”

  “On the Cunningham matter—”

  “What’s your interest?”

  “Our interests,” he said. “Yours, the boy’s, Mr. Rosen’s. Naturally, we all want to see this case resolved as quickly and equitably as possible.”

  “Uh-huh. And it’s also the best interest of whoever you’re representing. Now who would that be?”

  “Let’s not make this complicated.”

  “I like complicated. Keeps me limber.”

  “Truly, this is not the way to go. All I’m saying is, you can stop your investigation. There’s no need. The young man wants to plead guilty and get on with his life.”

  “How do you know?”

  “As I said.”

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  “Mr. Romeo, this is a friendly visit. Please have a talk with Mr. Rosen and let the matter go.”

  I slid the screen door open and stepped outside. “Now you’re going to tell me who you are.”

  He gestured with his head that I should look to the left. I did. And saw on my driveway about six-feet-eight inches of well-muscled meanness. He was leaning on the hood of a black sedan, his arms folded across his big chest. He had a bald head, neck tats, and a well-practiced squint.

  “Am I supposed to be intimidated?” I said.

  “I would be,” the guy said.

  I grabbed a handful of the guy’s coat and dragged him off the steps and to the driveway. The bald guy unfolded his arms like he was getting ready to jump me.

  “Hold it,” I said, and let go of the guy in the suit. “You don’t want to do this. It’s not civil.”

  “You’re being unreasonable,” the suit said.

  “You threaten me with Gargantua and say I’m being unreasonable?”

  “Step aside,” Gargantua said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to his boss or me.

  Then the boss stepped aside.

  I put my hands up. “Now wait, we can talk this thing over.”

  “We already have,” the boss said.

  “I’m not referencing your attempt to get me off the Clint Cunningham matter. I’m talking about the health and welfare of Gargantua here. See, you’re on my property, and without invitation, and that makes me surly. When I’m surly, I tend to hurt people. And when I’m awakened from a nice sleep, I get extra surly, and hurt people even more. I’m liable to do permanent damage to this man, and I hate doing that to people. Most of the time, that is.”

  A dismissive snort issued from Gargantua’s nose.

  I said, “You have a chance right now to reevaluate your life. You don’t have to do this. You could go back and finish middle school.”

  He told me to shut the eff up.

  “Maybe school isn’t your calling,” I said. “You could pursue a trade.”

  “Go on,” the boss said to his large charge.

  Back in the 1890s there was an English boxer by the name of Bob Fitzsimmons. A lightweight by poundage, he stepped up to take on the heavyweight champ, “Gentleman” Jim Corbett. Asked before the fight about the disparity in size, Fitzsimmons remarked, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  This is what I was thinking as Gargantua came toward me. His fists were the size of canned hams. One of those landing full force would send me to the hospital. He didn’t move like a martial artist—he was heavy-footed and too erect. He was clearly a guy who depended on his size and those meaty mitts.

  “One thing,” I said. “If you fall in my petunias I’m going to get very angry.” I had a nice little flower garden going. There was a twelve-inch marble statuette of Poseidon in the middle of it, keeping watch.

  Gargantua lunged at me with a right cross.

  I ducked it. His momentum spun him forty-five degrees. I hit him as hard as I could in the kidney area. My fist bounced off solid muscle.

  He tried to elbow my face, a good move from him. But I’ve been in that situation before, in the cage, and instinct pulled my head back.

  His deadly, pointy bone whizzed past my nose.

  Now we were facing each other again.

  He tried a kick next. He wore work boots that were sure to have steel toes.

  I, on the other hand, was in my bare feet.

  Fortunately, his boot didn’t find purchase in my most vulnerable area. But it got my thigh, sending a burn up my spine. Then his big right fist whipped toward me. I ducked but didn’t dodge it completely. He got me on the upper side of my head. It was enough to set off fire alarms and have me stumbling to my right.

  I fell into my petunias.

  This made me mad. Petunias have a shallow root system. Most of their roots stay in the top four to six inches of soil, making them susceptible to water stress. But that’s nothing like the stress of a 6’4”, 230-pound former cage fighter thudding on top of their delicate pink heads.

  And now a big boot was about to smash my face.

  I’m a good roller. You have to be in the cage. And you have to be able to roll and get to your feet, fast.

  I did that, and grabbed the statuette of Poseidon on the way up. It has a solid, square base. To confuse my opponent I did a 360 spin, like an Olympic hammer thrower. In this case the hammer was Poseidon. The side of Gargantua’s head was the target.

  I caught him flush. I couldn’t tell if the cracking sound was his head or the statue, but when he went down like a felled redwood, I knew. And I had to wonder if he was dead.

  As I gazed at the giant in my petunias, I heard a car door slam. The guy in the suit fired up the sedan, squealed out of my driveway, and tore up Paradise Cove Road, toward PCH.

  The side of Gargantua’s face was turning an ugly purple. I knelt and felt for his pulse. It was thrumming, slowly.

  Now what? Not having a hydraulic lift handy, I took hold of his thick wrists and dragged him out of my flower garden.

  It was like hauling a full refrigerator, but I managed to get him to the nook in the back of my mobile home, where the pipes for my water hookup stick out of the concrete. I went inside and got a pair of steel handcuffs. I cuffed his right wrist to the pipes. Had the guy been at his best I would have worried he’d rip the pipes right out. But he wasn’t going to be doing any ripping any time soon.

  I
went in again and started the coffee maker. I got The Long Goodbye and went back out and sat on the steps to read. Gargantua was breathing steadily. When the coffee maker beeped I got myself a cup and came back out and was met with the befuddled look of a wounded grizzly.

  “What’d you do?” Gargantua said. He touched the side of his face with his left hand, and winced.

  “You were smote by the god of the sea,” I said.

  “Whu?”

  “Had to do it. It was you or me.”

  “What are you gonna do now?”

  “How about a little friendly conversation?” I said.

  He blinked a couple of times. “I don't get you.”

  “Not many people do. Sometimes I don't even get myself.”

  He got a frustrated look on his puffy face. “Just tell me what you want and get this over with.”

  I said, “You're obviously freelance. Who's the guy who so shamelessly ran out on you?”

  “That was part of the deal.”

  “What was?”

  “If I got messed up instead of messing you up. No guarantees.”

  “It was still rather uncivil for your ride to take off.”

  He squinted. “You talk weird.”

  “So what was this guy’s name?”

  “I can't tell you,” he said.

  “Can't, or won’t?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters whether I use persuasion or coercion.”

  “Hurry up and do what you’re gonna do.”

  “Quit sounding so fatalistic,” I said. “You have human agency. You have the power of choice.”

  “Man, will you just talk plain?”

  “What part of human agency don’t you understand?”

  “Cut it out!”

  I leaned back for a moment and let him stew in uncertainty. Interrogation 101.

  Finally, I said, “What’s your name?”

  He hesitated, calculating his option. Then said, “Nick.”

  “Let’s be sensible, Nick. I don’t want to hurt you anymore. And you don’t want to hurt me. Your employment effectively ended when your employer drove away. Why not give me his name so I can find him and, you know, give him a piece of my mind?”

  “Don’t know his name.”

  “He pay you?”

  Silence.

  “Work with me, Nick. The sooner you do the sooner you get out.”

  “I got five hundred up front,” he said. “Supposed to get another five if I…”

  “Beat me up?”

  “Only if I had to,” he said.

  “Didn’t quite work out,” I said. “But you should at least get something for a good faith effort.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You ever work for that guy before?”

  He shook his head.

  “How’d you get the job?”

  “Guy I knew in the slam does a lot of work for him. Asked me if I wanted in.”

  “This friend—”

  “Not a friend. Just a guy I knew.”

  “He hooked you up with the guy who drove you out here?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Where’d you meet up with this guy?” I said.

  “He picked me up at a McDonald’s in Reseda.”

  “You do this kind of thing regularly?” I asked.

  “No, man,” Nick said. “I needed the money.”

  “Out of a job?”

  “Where is there any work in this town for a guy like me?”

  “Maybe your fr—the guy you were in the joint with—maybe he could tell us where to find the guy who drove you here.”

  “No way. More likely he won’t want to talk to me ever again.”

  “Let’s see what I can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can be persuasive.”

  Nick winced and tenderly touched his face. “I know.”

  I went inside and got some ice and put it in a plastic bag. I came back out with the ice and a butterfly knife.

  “I don’t know you well enough to trust you yet,” I said. “But I’m willing to take the next step. I’ll hand you this ice bag for your face, but if you try anything, I’ll gut you like a fish. Is that fair?”

  “More than fair, man,” he said. “I don’t want any part of you.”

  I gave him the bag. He put it on the side of his face that Poseidon had so imperiously mashed.

  “What were you in the joint for?” I asked.

  “Voluntary manslaughter,” he said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll redeem our time.”

  “Do what?”

  “Omnia tempus revelat.”

  He frowned, and it looked like it hurt.

  “Sorry, chum,” I said. “Quotes tend to pop into my mind. It means ‘Time reveals all.’ So tell me about the manslaughter.”

  He paused a moment, then said, “Drug deal gone bad. I was muscle for a crazy parolee I knew, and had to thump a kid who drew a knife.” He paused again. “I didn’t want him to die. They were gonna hang a murder charge on me and El-Wop.”

  By which he meant LWOP—Life Without Parole.

  He went on. “I got a young public defender who fought like a young public defender, not an old, tired one. My co-defendant got the max, but the jury hung on my charge. The D.A. didn’t want another trial and offered me the VM. I took it. I deserved it.”

  “But you were ready to thump me.”

  “I know what I can do,” Nick said. “I wouldn’t have killed you.”

  “That’s very comforting.”

  “No hard feelings?”

  “Let’s leave feelings out of it,” I said. “Most of the world’s woes have been caused by feelings overcoming rationality.”

  “There you go again with that talk. Why are you like this?”

  “Great question,” I said.

  His eyes got glassy. “I think I’m gonna hurl.”

  I backed away quick, as a hurling from a man this size covers a lot of ground. “Take some nice, easy breaths,” I said.

  He tried to. “I’m dizzy.”

  “Let me take you to a doctor.”

  “No way!”

  “Relax. She’s a friend. She lives here.”

  “Just lemme go.”

  “You’re coming with me. Remember the knife.” I held it up. “I’m going to unlock you and see if you can stand.”

  Artra Murray lives in a unit about a hundred yards from mine. She’s middle-aged and a doctor. A great doctor. The first African American woman to become head of surgery at Johns Hopkins. After a few years there she went to Kenya as a missionary surgeon. She now runs a health clinic up near Pepperdine University.

  I walked the unsteady Nick to her place and knocked on the door.

  Artra answered. She was in her bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee. “Mike, what’s up—” She gave Nick a look. “Hoo boy.”

  “Can you have a look at him?” I said.

  “Bring him in.”

  We went inside.

  “Sit him down there,” Artra said, pointing to her futon.

  I helped Nick to the futon. He was still holding the ice bag to his face. Artra took it from him and handed it to me. Then she leaned over and looked at the purple side of his face.

  “Okay,” she said. “What happened?”

  “We had a little scuffle,” I said.

  Nick said, “Puhh.”

  “You hit him?” Artra said.

  “With a marble statuette,” I said.

  She stood up and looked at me. Not approvingly.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “You’re a long story,” she said. “Is the trouble over now?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then put that knife away.”

  I put it in my pocket.

  Artra went back to Nick. “How you feeling?”

  “Not good,” Nick said.

  “Dizzy?”

  “Yeah.”
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  “I’m going to ask you to do something for me. Look straight ahead… That’s it.” She held her hand out about two inches from the left side—the purple side—of his face. “Just with your eyes, look at my hand.”

  He tried. His eyes looked jerky to me.

  She repeated this with the other side of his face.

  “Do you know where you are?” Artra said.

  “Your place,” Nick said.

  “And what part of town is my place located?”

  He blinked a couple of times. “I don’t know.”

  She leaned in a little closer. “Considering what you used on him, Mister Romeo, there’s a good chance we have a zygomaticomaxillary fracture. Broken cheekbone. I’m going to want to take a closer look. Can you get him to the clinic?”

  “I don’t wanna go to no clinic,” Nick said.

  “Young man,” Artra said, “you could have a major problem. An injury like this can affect your eating, even your breathing. You could even need surgery.”

  “No surgery!” Nick said.

  “Easy, big fella,” I said.

  “Lemme out of here,” Nick said.

  “I strongly advise against that,” Artra said.

  “I wanna go home,” Nick said.

  Artra put her hands on her hips. “You’re acting like a child. You’re too big to act like a child. Way too big.”

  “No hospital,” Nick said.

  “It’s a clinic,” Artra said. “It won’t take long to—”

  “No clinic,” Nick said.

  Artra shook her head and looked at me. “I can’t make him go. So you’re going to have to be responsible for him.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re the one who hit him.”

  “He was going to break my face.”

  “Nevertheless,” Artra said, “you are going to keep an eye on him and report back to me. Understand?”

  “For how long?” I said.

  “The rest of the day, at least. Call me in a few hours.” She looked at Nick. “I’ll give you something for the pain. But you need to work with Mike, okay?”

  “I just wanna go home,” Nick said.

  “That’s not the answer I was looking for,” Artra said. “Work with Mike.”