by Kirk Alex
Something to ponder over. It was about timing, usually. It came down to timing. Timing was everything—and having a plausible alibi, as well as a more accommodating dumping site—preferably away from his property. He had enough stiffs on the grounds to start his own graveyard as it was.
You had to ask yourself, too, would the risk even be worth the trouble? A PI is not going to be dumb enough to leave himself unprotected. And the illegals had been his employees for close to a year now. How would he go about eliminating the ungrateful motherfuckers? And then there was their lawyer. Actually, that one was simple: if wetbacks, Arturo and Bartolo, as well as their accomplice and so-called witness Violeta, should suddenly vanish off the face of the earth, so would their claim against him.
CHAPTER 244
He unlocked the inside shutters. Peered through the vertical crack that the outer shutters allowed. The belligerent Roscoes were taking it to the next level. Biggs pulled up on the lower half of the window to open it an inch or so. Had his hands on the shotgun mic and headset. Slid the latter over his ears, the former was aimed in the direction of the white trash couple he loathed with a seething passion.
“I have more respect for the common fag than I do a spineless punk like that. How do you let a chunky, homely twat emasculate you that way? How do you do it? How does he live with himself? Where is his self-respect?”
“Pussy-whip. That be it. Redneck Romeo ain’t nothin’ but pussy-whip.”
“You said it.”
Biggs reached for his binoculars. Petunia was on the verge of tears. She was still screaming, but her eyes were about to well up.
“I can’t live like this, Marty. There’s nothing wrong with tits, only I can’t look like those eighteen- and twenty-year-old bimbos. I can’t keep up with that. I am forty-two years old. Overweight and miserable. . . .”
“Nobody’s asking you to keep up with nobody, babe.”
“There’s times I’m convinced I’d be better off without you, Marty.”
Roscoe wrapped his muscular arms around her waist. Slid a hand up inside her blouse. Grabbed a handful of breast, waited and felt a nipple harden. “You don’t mean that, babe. I’d be lost without you.”
Biggs could see that Petunia was mellowing, responding to the redneck’s touch.
“Just long enough until you found yourself another meal ticket.”
Roscoe nibbled on her ear. Kissed her neck down and then the back of it.
“That’s cold-blooded.”
“I can’t help it. You make me feel that way sometimes.”
“I’d lose my mind without you, babe. I’d go nuts if we ever split up. Probably jump off a bridge. . . .”
“Not you. That’s isn’t you, Marty. . . .”
“You don’t know me, babe. You don’t know how much you mean to me. I couldn’t make it without you. . . .”
Marty Roscoe walked her to the sofa. Sat her down. He pulled her blouse off, undid the bra, and Petunia’s forty-four triple Es spilled out. Her nipples stayed firm, and she was starting to give in to the overture.
“I wish you were like this all the time, honey. I can’t stand it when you notice other women. I hate it so much. I want to be the best for you, Marty. . . .”
Roscoe played with her nipples. He flicked them with his tongue. Kneaded the heavy flesh. There was plenty there for both hands. More than enough.
“You are, babe. You’re the best. Even if you are nutty sometimes. . . .”
“Promise me you’ll stay away from that creep and his ‘church’ and his tramps in there.”
“You got it, Pet. They just don’t make them like you no more. None of those sluts could touch you.”
“You mean that, Marty?” She wanted to meet his eyes. Marty Roscoe looked right at her.
“I do mean it, babe.”
He buried his face between the huge mounds of pale flesh in his hands.
CHAPTER 245
The SUNSHINE SHOESHINE sign sat atop the roof of the cinder block hovel at the corner of Chandler and Lankershim.
It was ninety-two degrees in the shade, and if not for the awning Harold Crust had fashioned by securing either corner of his tarp to the roof itself, while having secured the opposite corners to a couple of extended push broom handles that he had positioned at an angle (with the heads) against either wall at the base and braced this way with sandbags, so that the makeshift canopy provided enough protection from the blazing Valley sun, the heat would have been far more difficult to bear up under.
Mr. Crust’s place of business was just about large enough for a mini fridge, tools of the trade, portable fan, radio, and two customer’s chairs, in one of which he whiled away the time by gazing at the latest Sports Illustrated, Special Summer Bikini Edition.
Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “You better watch yourself” played softly in the background. One of his favorites. Blues made life’s ups and downs easier to take usually. Another thing that mattered just as much, if not more so, were the regulars, one of whom drove past in his shiny Mercedes. Honked his horn. A Universal executive on his way to the studio. Harold glanced up. Waved back with a ready smile. What the Sunshine Shoeshine stand was about: being positive, no matter what. The only way to be. What kept folks coming back. Only thing was you had to stay cheerful somehow through the dry spells. Everybody had them. Even movie studios. Speak of studios, someone else connected to them in a much lesser way than the studio man, was Marty Roscoe.
Dude rolled up on his weighted down bicycle with the fat tires and wire baskets in back and the one large in the front, all of them crammed with old style, out-of-date black phones with rotary dialers, used record albums, figurines of Bugs Bunny and Minnie Mouse, and other doodads and knick-knacks he’d picked up that day at various garage and yard sales throughout North Hollywood. That wasn’t all: his neighbor had a box of Fruit Loops stuck in there among the junk in the front.
Seems Roscoe never went anywhere without them Fruit Loops. Harold didn’t get it/couldn’t understand it. How can a grown man eat so much of that crap? Didn’t he know this kind of cereal with its strong sugar content was bad news? All that sugar could fuck his heart up. Ain’t nobody hipped him to it?
Then you had them clothes he had on: bright enough to blind a blind man—even on a hot mother of a day like today was: canary yellow sweat suit that matched his yellow eyes. What usually made Harold uncomfortable about Roscoe: them yellow cat peepers that did nothing but remind him of Delonzo, his wife Fay’s disagreeable cat and how much he despised the tom.
To go with the bright yellow sweatpants and sweatshirt, or maybe not to go with them, depended how you looked at it, was a red kerchief with white polka dots tied round his neck and a red ball cap that sat half-cocked up there on his head the way that tee-vee character Johnny Yuma liked to wear. There it was: crud-covered and sweat-stained and had embroidered letters across the front that spelled out something only someone like Marty Roscoe could find remotely amusing:
WHO FARTED?
Harold almost laughed at the stupidity of it. A grown man with something like that on his head. The shoeshine man watched as Petunia’s husband lifted that sorry excuse for a hat and wiped his face and neck with that red kerchief with the white polka dots; wiped at the sweat that rolled down.
There was something else that Harold never failed to notice: Roscoe’s collar-length hair was brown, except where it had blond streaks in it. Hi-lights, they called them. Roscoe had told him how he did it once, a while back: dipped his thumb and index finger into a bottle of peroxide and ran them down his hair, at intervals. Let the sun do the rest. Gave him that Malibu surfer look. Never mind that the Arkansas native never cared for sand and feared the ocean. Said Latinas liked the streaks. “Negro” chicks, too. Said it was a horndog’s duty to resort to any and all tricks at his disposal to reel in poon.
Couldn’t get enough “strange.” What Roscoe liked to call pussy he got on the side: Strange. So long as Petunia didn’t get wind of it. It wasn’t that Harold
was judging, far from it, it’s just that he wondered if Roscoe would ever mature in time before his marriage fell apart.
Harold knew better than to say anything about it. Kept his notions to himself. Watched Roscoe wipe the sweatband inside his cap and wipe additional sweat and smog crud from his brow.
He wound the kerchief round his neck, tied the ends, and went about brushing his hair back from the sides of his face with the free hand—in a manly manner, always, making certain it was fluffed in back, as opposed to flat against his neck, and had the cap back on his full head of hair, half-cocked as before.
Harold knew the score. Used to have that same attitude himself once. Thought he was the cock of the hen house. Petunia’s husband, no doubt, felt certain the women of the world found this not only attractive, but irresistible. Wanted no one but him, and those who didn’t only thought they didn’t.
CHAPTER 246
Harold lowered his reading material, and was not entirely aware that he was rubbing the tips of his fingers up along the vertical scar at about the center of his chest, then running his fingers down the scar left there by the surgery.
His fingers wandered to the left of his heart, feeling the mound ’neath the skin, a mound about the size of a man’s watch, his pacemaker. The tips of his fingers lingered there, as they often did, while Harold wondered if and when the battery would run out of juice. Batteries in these things lasted anywhere from five to eight years, supposedly. He wasn’t certain. What he had been told. He had also been told to have the generator checked every three months, at least. His next visit to the cardiologist was due in one month.
Just as he became aware that he was doing the thing with the fingertips, he stopped doing it. Didn’t like thinking about the pacemaker, thinking and worrying and wondering if and when the damn battery would run down on him without warning—and he’d have to either recharge it or replace it.
The experts said not to worry; the experts. Easy for them to say. He’d be fine. Like the year before when he’d had the heart surgery. He’d be like new, they’d said. Sure. But then “complications set in.” “Should have a pacemaker put in, to be on the safe side. Got an irregular heartbeat.”
What happens when booze and toot come into play. Living the good life. You paid. He was paying now. The thing with the fingers was part of it—and he didn’t know how to stop himself from doing it, either, after four months of it. And now Marty Roscoe had to stop by and probably bug him about Cecil O. Biggs and his lap dog Marvin Muck. The white dude couldn’t quit about Biggs. Roscoe and them fake blond streaks in his hair like some California beach bum. Never mind he couldn’t tell a surf from a Smurf; couldn’t tell a surfboard from the kind you ironed your clothes on. World was a funny place.
Harold reached in his mini fridge for a couple of cans of diet soda. Handed one to Roscoe. Roscoe cracked the top and had a long pull. Made a face.
“This is some foul-tasting toe juice, Harold.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t mean to be rude, and I thank you kindly, but this crap causes cancer in lab mice.”
“My doc recommends it.”
“No disrespect meant, but doctors don’t know zilch now days. Half of them are quacks. Get their medical trainin’ in some third world burrito nation. I don’t ever eat anything that says fat-free, don’t drink nothin’ that says “diet” on it. That’s just me. Or lite beer. Gotta be the worst. A waste.”
“They don’t want me drinking regular sodas. Seems I’m at their mercy.”
Roscoe nodded. Had a longer pull this time that finished off the can. Handed the empty back to Harold. Belched loud and long. Sounded like a fog horn to the shoeshine man. It takes all kinds, thought Harold.
“See what I mean? What diet pop does.”
Roscoe dug the box of Fruit Loops out. Offered to let Harold have a few. Crust declined with a wave. Couldn’t be interested.
Roscoe shook out a mound of the breakfast cereal into his right palm and shoved the lot in his mouth.
“How’s the ticker? How’s the shoeshine business?”
“Ticker’s tickin’. So far. Business could be better. Good to be above ground, though. I’m grateful for that. Fay’s always reminding me of it, too. And she’s right. Slow time of the month; that’s all it is. You get used to it—and roll with the flow. If you’re looking for work I can let you use this other chair for a reasonable fee—”
“No, nothing like that.” Roscoe stuck the box of Fruit Loops back in the basket. “I wouldn’t be caught dead shining shoes, Harold. No offense. Got my hands full with garage sales, swap meets. I do okay.”
“Up to you. Jesus Ortiz been asking about it, showed interest. Just might let him rent it. Gotta have a job to keep his parole officer off his ass.”
“Jesus Ortiz? You mean Ace? Junkie who shits his pants? All you’re gonna draw is flies with him.”
“Maybe so. I hope not, anyway.”
Harold looked at all the useless knick-knacks the guy had in the large wire basket attached to the handlebar, and then at the baskets hanging from either side of the rear wheel.
“You actually make money buying that kind of crap at garage sales and then selling it again to people at swap meets? Hard to believe.”
“Not to ‘people’. Not stuff like the rotary phones. To the studios. Art directors need props all the time. Pay a pretty penny, too.”
“For old phones like that?”
“Hell, yes—if they’re doing a period picture. You better believe it. Old phones, soda machines, blenders, radios, clocks, hair dryers, watches; whatever you can get. All you gotta do is wait; there will be a call for it eventually. Only problem is storage. Garage is packed to the roof. Had to rent storage space recently to keep it all. Got stuff in the house, too. Petunia’s not happy about it. Except when the studios call and pay for what they need, if I got it—and I make them pay. You betcha.”
Harold still couldn’t quite understand that what the man did to make a buck was hardly worth the trouble.
“Been doing it for years. Beats punching a clock, bein’ on the road. Thing is, you gotta be patient when it’s slow; gotta know how to weather the slow times, when tee-vee programs is on hiatus, when none of the studios are doing any period shows.” Marty Roscoe was anxious to change the subject. “Listen, Harold: the hell’s going on with Biggs?”
“You don’t want to talk about him again? Dude’s gotta be bad news, Marty.”
“My wife could be right, Harold, about something funny going on in there. It’s that goddamn smell lately—like hair or something burning. I don’t know—”
“You smelt it, too? My old lady brought it up the other night. Foul, ain’t it?”
“Petunia says it smells like burnin’ flesh.”
“Flesh? Now you starting to sound like Lloyd Dicker and that grandson of his. What’s his name? Wilford? Wilmer?”
“Wacky Wilburn Flinger. “
“That’s the one: Wilburn Flinger. Got purple lips from suckin’ on them Popsicles all the time; Popsicles and pomegranates, or he’s suckin’ them raw eggs he lugs in that old mail bag. Kid is always sayin’ shit, makin’ up shit about people that don’t add up. He ain’t right in the head, Marty, is what I’m gettin’ at.”
“I don’t know. Smells like flesh. It’s the most godawful odor. . . . I knocked on Biggs’s door the other day, had to get the old lady off my back; knocked on his door to talk to him about all the noise—”
“Bet he didn’t come to answer it. See the sign on his fence? No visitors, agents, peddlers, or salespeople—admittance by appointment only. What kind of welcome sign is that for a church to have on its front gate?”
“The way I see it the only way we’ll find out anything is to go inside and take a look.”
“You can go ‘inside.’ If you can get past that locked gate and odor. Me? I’m too old for that shit. I don’t have to tell you.” Harold indicated the lump in his chest, more out of habit than anything else. “I don’t
need no kind of excitement in my life these days. My pump couldn’t take it.”
Roscoe nodded.
“Petunia’s been calling the cops. Called them a few times myself. Hell, you know all this. Asshole plays that music 24/7. And he don’t never play nothin’ I like, neither. I ain’t got nothin’ against Jackie Wilson and them. Prefer Charley Pride, though. He don’t never play no Pride; don’t never play no George Jones or Tammy Wynette; don’t never play no Flatt and Scruggs. Good bluegrass would sure pick up my spirits some. Take my mind off my finances. I ain’t exactly religious. Don’t mind gospel now and then. But, sweet Jesus, not all day and all night. When he plays it. Or he plays Barry White. Deep fuckin’ baritone rattles my doors and windows.”
“Ain’t no different on our side. Makes Delonzo nervous enough so that he goes right on the carpet. Goes to the bathroom right on the living room carpet.”
“You know what I’m saying. We call to complain and guess what happens? Nothing gets done about it.” Roscoe paused to wipe his brow with the damp kerchief. Sweat poured on down. Valley heat spared no one. Once Roscoe was through with what he had to do to battle the sweat attack, he looked at the shoeshine man.
“Something peculiar is going on in that ‘church,’ Harold. I’d bet my last Mickey Mouse watch on it.”
“You wouldn’t want to do that. Some art director might want one to put in a movie.” When Harold saw that the half-hearted joke laid an egg, he apologized.
“It’s like this, Marty: I mind my own business these days. Live the quiet life. The way I like it.” He turned his head briefly to wave to a passing motorcycle cop, then redirected his attention to Marty Roscoe. “I remember when Biggs married that young Filipino woman, the one run off on him finally? They was fighting like cats and dogs, out in public, too. Me and my missus kept our nose out of it. That’s the best way. Don’t need the excitement, like I said. And then when he had the church really goin’ strong, lettin’ all that riffraff come in off the street: car thieves, hopheads, runaways, porn hoes hooked on crack. All them crazy people looked like the Manson Family reunion. Well, they made noise, carried on. Me and my wife Fay stayed out of it. Best way. Oh, Fay dropped a dime on him from time to time only ’cause it got too loud for her to be able to hear the tee-vee preachers. For the most part, we kept our nose out of it. Ain’t got no use for trouble in my condition.”
