by Dan Fante
Cecil located a small metal box hidden beneath the workbench, then grinning, tossed me the keys. “Start her up,” he said.
I thought about it for a few seconds. “No thanks,” I said finally, aware of the presence of my brother’s bad-tempered ghost. “Maybe some other time.”
The day of the dead tour continued. Back in the house Cecil directed me to a room on the ground floor at the end of a hall. Its door was made of thick wood and armed with a double lock denying access to his wife and daughter and any other uninvited meddler.
Inside was a sort of half museum, half shrine where Rick alone was boss. Everything in the room, even the stale cigarette smell, enforced the personality of its excessive, troubled occupant. I felt him there behind me—leering—furious with me for encroaching on his privacy.
Across the room in one corner was his large drawing board, its surface a disorganized collage of unfinished automobile sketches and clipped newspaper articles. From the age of eight, even before he could type a letter for himself, our Mom had sent his designs off to automobile makers. The practice had become a lifelong obsession with only rare acknowledgments.
One entire wall of the room was filled with Nazi biographies and World War II literature. Cecil told me something about my brother that I had not known: In the last few years he’d taught himself to read and speak German.
Another wall was filled with photographs of the Reich elite: Erich von Manstein, Heinrich Himmler, Erwin Rommel, and Martin Bormann. It felt like I was exploring my brother’s decomposing asshole.
Cecil drained his glass then slid open a plastic closet door to show me Rick’s two favorite German trophies: Von Ribbentrop’s SS dinner jacket and his cap. They hung there in a thick, see-through plastic garment bag below the guy’s scary WWII photograph. His son’s uniforms were on either side. I was overcome by the need to get very very drunk.
We were about to leave the den when my guide stopped me at the door. “Wait. There’s one more thing I want to show you,” he half-whispered.
Cecil slid open the top drawer of a tall brown filing cabinet. “Here are the two things your brother loved more than anything.”
I was handed two typed and bound manuscripts. My father Jonathan Dante’s first-draft originals, yellowed by time. One was Ask the Wind and the other Brotherhood of the Vine.
It was like a punch in the face. Cecil had no way of knowing that our mother had guarded these manuscripts with her life and that she had never allowed them to leave the storage case in the basement of her home. Only a month before she’d given in and been persuaded to donate all Jonathan Dante’s original work to a local university. Somehow, in a crack in time, these two manuscripts had been pirated away by Rick Dante and then tucked neatly into his Nazi time capsule.
I’d had enough. I dropped them back into the file cabinet then slid the door closed. I looked at Cecil. “My brother was a real piece of work,” I said.
“You bet,” Cecil said. “Rick Dante was one of a kind. Let’s go get another drink.”
“Good idea,” I said back.
We drank the rest of that day and into the night, Cecil killing me with endless chatter about my brother and his strange obsessions.
In the morning I found myself asleep in my clothes on Rick’s living room couch, my brain half crazy. To fight off my hangover it was more of the same—three fingers of bourbon with my coffee. Then a half-pint from my suitcase.
Outside the church I was introduced to Rick’s secretary, a pretty rosy-faced forty-year-old who shook her head and filled me in. Rick’s doctor told him, she said, that if he kept on drinking and didn’t cut back he’d be gone in a year. Then, a couple of weeks after he’d returned to work from his near-death stomach surgery, she began discovering his empties under the daily newspaper in his trash can. Rick Dante lasted another six months.
I had a decent buzz going as I sat with Mom and Liz and Rick’s wife, Karin, and their daughter, Mindy, in the front row of Our Lady of the Bleeding Armpits. Mom and I hadn’t talked for months but for once she smiled and gave me a hug.
We were inches away from a body that—paint or no paint—had aged fifty years since I’d last seen it.
Then a Mexican priest who’d never set eyes on my brother delivered long measured doses of sweetened snot about Jesus and eternity and a good Christian life to the fifty distracted attendees. Excluded from his homily was any mention of weekends in jail or rehabs or an enraged, penniless wife and teenage kid, or the casual theft of his father’s most famous work.
Then, without warning, three feet away, the corpse in the box sat up and glared at me. Rick Dante was dressed in a black SS uniform and helmet. “What’s your problem?” the Nazi sneered.
“You, asshole,” I heard my voice report. “You’re my goddamn problem. You and your double-locked mausoleum where you boozed your life down the shitter.”
“Sieg heil!” the Gestapo corpse screeched back.
Liz was grabbing my arm. “Bruno! Stop it for God’s sake. You’re yelling. What’s wrong with you?”
“Him!” I said, gesturing at the body in the box, getting to my feet.
“Sit down,” Liz scolded. “Everybody’s looking.”
I sat down.
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“I guess you’re right. I guess I must be drunk.”
Then it was over. My brother’s entire life had been neatly dispatched in twenty-five minutes.
We drove the three blocks to the Roseville boneyard and then got out.
The only surprise in the day’s festivities came as our group of mourners walked across an acre of manicured graves and up to the top of a small hill to discover the gleaming Golden Hawk standing alone in the openness on the other side. Old Cecil was passed out behind the wheel while two caretakers were trying to wake him up. Tire tracks and skid marks ran in a circle around the tomb. The right front wheel of his Studebaker had gotten stuck in Rick’s unfilled grave.
ten
After returning to Hollywood it took me a week to get my head right. I was still choked by sadness and the memory of sighting of my dead brother’s twin only days before his death. The Jimmy voice was a nonstop monologue in my head. You’re next, asshole. Keep it up! You’re boozing yourself right into the boneyard like your fucking brother.
But the limo business was picking up and the grind of dealing with the minute-to-minute disruptions and concerns of running a busy dispatch office helped to keep my mind off myself. I’d cut out hard liquor completely after the Roseville funeral. A bottle or two of wine a day and a few vikes seemed to be keeping me mellow and allowed me to get my work done. Portia, on orders from New York, was boss and was watching me like a hawk. I had no interest in another blow up. I needed the job if I was to continue my writing.
Koffman’s publicist’s newest brainstorm of a formal wedding-looking invitation to our California clients had worked like magic. The filigreed announcement featured a color photo of Pearl, our gaudy white flagship limo. The phones were ringing and the company was really taking off. We had movie people and wannabe celebrities coming out of the woodwork, courtesy of Dav-Ko’s publicity and advertising blitz.
Our client roster looked impressive: Famous guys like Mick Jagger, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Paul Simon. Lots of the major rock bands too. They all wanted to ride in one of our stretches.
When these guys were in L.A. I drove them all myself on the first run to make sure that the account got off to a good start. But after I’d chauffeured Simon the first time he continued to request me as his driver when his manager phoned in for a car. Paul never talked to me or called me by name when I picked him up and he always raised the glass partition when he was in the car, so my repeated selection as his driver always came as a surprise. It took me a few weeks to realize why: Simon is around five feet tall and I am five foot seven, the shortest driver on the staff.
At the crest of our success wave was my boss. He’d splurged on three more different-colored
Town Cars to be “stretched” in Mexico and then shipped north to Hollywood.
Portia and I were barely on speaking terms but her snotty English nitpicky personality and her apparent lust for Frank Tropper were beginning to wear on me. Koffman still loved her. He found her “very capable,” and her personality “fabulous.” And there was no question that she’d covered my mistakes and appeared to be doing a good job. More than once in dealing with an angry corporate client, I’d lost my temper and one of them had threatened to cancel their business relationship with us. Double-bookings and no shows at pickups are among the problems that beset a busy limo company, and Portia had a way of smoothing things over with irate celebrities and bailing us out. Groveling to resurrect an annoyed client was hard for me but schmoozy Portia would do whatever it took to stay on good terms with a customer. They’d find a free bottle of champagne and a rose on the back seat on their next booking. Soon, on orders from Koffman, she began keeping her stuff in an office closet and sleeping over several nights a week on a newly installed pullout couch in the chauffeur’s room.
But then the worm turned when slick Frank Tropper was caught with his forked tongue in the cookie jar. He had become our busiest driver and reported to each assignment augmenting his vested blue suit and bow tie with weird accessories that appeared to have caught on with our customers in Hollywood, where appearance is everything. Tropper’d show up wearing dark motorcycle cop shades and black driving gloves and a black, military-looking cap. He called this his hit man uniform. And, to my annoyance, a couple of the other drivers were now dressing the same way.
Over the last few weeks I’d noticed a number of personal phone messages to Frank—excessive phone messages—from our clients, and I’d brought it to Portia’s attention. Then, with several customers, he had returned the car to the garage very late after the end of a run. Frank always had a ready excuse and Ms. Portia seemed to go along with whatever account he came up with to cover his ass. But I was beginning to smell a problem—the possibility of a drug dealer on my staff.
On this last run Frank had called in to the office at eight p.m. to report the end of the assignment, but it was two hours later and the limo was still not in the garage.
I decided that enough was enough.
The main client in question was currently our biggest cash account: Marv Afferman, a fifty-five-year-old Cheviot Hills millionaire with a knack for keeping a limo on call as many as eighteen hours a day. Afferman was a player and had a swank house at Trancas Beach and liked to shuttle his women back and forth on summer weekends.
Tropper’s hours and the actual in-and-out time for his Afferman gig weren’t jibing. I’d called him in the car on his cell phone. His quick excuse was that Afferman had overpaid him in cash and he’d gone back to return the excess deposit.
When Tropper returned to the garage in Big Red, our maroon stretch, I was waiting in the driveway. Portia, still making excuses for his behavior, followed me outside.
There was Frank decked out in his cop shades and black driving gloves. Before he could do anything to cover his tracks I ordered him out of the car. While he stood by I checked through the limo and found a deck of plastic baggies and three empty gram vials under Frank’s briefcase on the front seat.
He immediately began shucking and jiving, telling me that he’d found the items on the bar console in the back of the car while cleaning it out. I fired the asshole on the spot.
Portia immediately began yammering at me, trying to come to his defense again, but I refused any explanation.
Standing in the driveway she began hissing at me about integrity and personal trust and compassion and that shit. Then she stormed down the street yelling at me for humiliating her in front of an employee and for overriding her judgment. Now I smelled a cover-up and two slimy brown turds.
Frank whined and squirmed and asked for another chance but I’d been in the limo business long enough to recognize that chauffeurs who sell dope to their clients usually continue the practice. I was sure David Koffman would have done the same thing.
That’s when it came out. Tropper chose to take my night dispatcher down with him. It was the jerk’s way of getting even with her for not saving his ass this last time.
According to Frank, Portia’d been showing more than favoritism at Dav-Ko. He said that of course she knew what he was doing, that their friendship and her attraction to him permitted the skinny English girl to administer oral sex once or twice a week along with steering a lot of the cash work at Dav-Ko his way. Bottom line: Portia was a pole smoker and a coconspirator. Nice.
I’d never liked Tropper but the story didn’t sound like a rope-a-dope. It was too damning not to be true.
I made him turn in his cell phone and his credit card and his sets of limo keys, then wordlessly escorted the jerk down the block to where one of his girlfriends was parked and waiting.
“What are you going to do about Portia?” he asked, getting into the new red Mustang convertible.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t think she should run for mayor.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means mind your own fucking business. You’re lucky I don’t have you arrested. Have a nice day, Frank.”
But now I had a choice: I could inform Koffman of Portia’s foolishness and be rid of her once and for all or I could let the matter slide. I knew my boss. His business principles were unwavering. The sex angle aside, if Koffman found out a driver was dealing drugs and she’d been overlooking the behavior it would mean the axe for her too. All I had to do was say the word and she’d be gone.
When the bony English girl returned around midnight I switched the phones to the answering service and sat her down in the dispatch office. She was still pissy and oozing with self-righteousness.
“What’s this stuff about you and Tropper?” I said.
“The truth is you never liked him. That’s the obvious issue here.”
“He was dealing coke, Portia. You allowed the asshole to endanger our business.”
“That’s absurd. Totally preposterous and unjustified. Frank is a superb employee. And you questioning my integrity is an insult that I will not tolerate. I suggest we contact David in New York. I believe he’ll see my point of view in this matter.”
“Frank tells me that you give a decent blowjob; pretty nice tongue technique and all. That’s an interesting trade-off.”
Miss Britannia looked as if she’d just choked on a thick French fry. “I beg your pardon,” she whispered.
“Look, here’s how I see it: I’ve owed you one for my boozing and throat-cutting stuff. Now we’re even. I’m willing to let it go at that. But, for chrissake, no more driver favoritism and looking the other way on dope deals, and no more flirting with the staff. And I’d cut back on the cocksucking in the office if I were you.”
I held out my hand.
Portia was twitching like crazy and chomping away on her nicotine gum, her eyes on the floor. Finally she looked up and nervously shook my hand. “Thank you for understanding,” she whispered.
“No sweat. We’ve all made our share of dumbshit moves now and then.”
I checked my watch. “Hey, it’s after midnight. How about a drink to seal the deal?”
The bony blond girl with the actress face mustered her first smile of the day. “Thank you,” she said. “Perhaps another time.”
It was two a.m. a week or so later. An accident in one of the stretch limos that afternoon, an angry road manager and a screaming chauffeur, and a few drinks after dinner to level things out had turned a bad day into two pints of Schenley and a badass drunk.
Upstairs in my bedroom, with the house phones patched over to the answering service, I had been phoning sex ads from the L.A. Weekly for half an hour. Calling out-call hookers. But because I didn’t have enough cash I’d been turned down, pissed off, and hung up on a half dozen times.
Finally, pretty drunk, and determined to get laid at any price, wearing only my T-shirt,
I made my way downstairs.
In the dark office I opened drawers until I located the petty cash box. My plan was to make a loan to myself before I got my check. One of the girls at one of the 800 numbers—who said her name was DeVon—said she was ten minutes away on Fairfax, and if I had two hundred in cash she’d be right over.
My problem was Ms. Portia. I was buzzed enough to forget that she was asleep in the chauffeur’s room on one of her overnighters.
The commotion of me opening and closing the desk drawer then rattling the cash box woke her up. She stood in the dim light from the hall wearing a long, open man’s dress shirt—her giant tits half exposed above the two pole lamps she used for walking.
“I heard a noise. Is everything all right?” she whispered.
“Jesus! I forgot you were here! Sure, everything’s peachy. I’m just in need of a few bucks from the cash box.”
“At two-fifteen in the morning?”
“Exactly. Precisely. At two fifteen a.m. Or twelve seventeen in the afternoon. Or whenever the fuck I want to. I didn’t know I needed your permission?”
“Of course you don’t. I was simply inquiring. I wasn’t asleep anyway. I was reading.”
Brushing passed me she opened the desk drawer, then the cash box, then handed me several fifties that she’d paper-clipped together. “I think that’s three hundred dollars,” she cooed. “I counted it myself this afternoon. Do you need more?”
“Three hundred’s fine.”
“Let me make sure.” She turned on the light.
“Right. Thanks.”
And there she was. Under the fluorescent bulbs I could see she was naked beneath the shirt.
