The Chinese Beverly Hills

by John Shannon

  Beef came and plopped down on a folding chair. “Hup-hup-HUP.”

  He’d been center when they’d all played football at Mark Keppel High.

  “Okay, Mr. Seth tells me he’s bringing in an important border defender and the guy is ours for the afternoon. I want to do a keg for right-thinking people the way we used to. The border guy will give a little inspirational talk about saving the U.S. of A. And we can gather the clans. Godfather Seth will be watching over us so we’re all on our P’s and Q’s.”

  Their benefactor was a pole-up-the-ass lawyer from San Marino, but he let them use the old barbershop he owned as clubhouse, and they did favors for him.

  “Does that mean I can’t wave The Big Captain in front of the girls?” Beef asked.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what it means.”

  Captain Beef had a pecker bigger than the legendary John C. Holmes and at parties drunk San Gabriel girls tended to chant: Big Cap! Let him free! Big Cap! Let us see!

  “We’re all altar boys Saturday.”

  “Sure, Z,” Beef assented.

  “Back to your game, Beef. Marly and I’ll handle the details.”

  Zook watched Tony Buffano waddle away. Keppel High had once been the powerhouse team of the Almont League, but ever since the Chinks filled up the school, they’d had a hide-your-face record of 0–10 for twelve straight years.

  “We going for the power lines?”

  “Yeah. The rest of the world’s too civilized.”

  The area was unfenced, weedly land under the high-tension power lines that crossed town, fine for al fresco parties. They only had to push Sgt. Manny Acevedo in the Monterey Park P.D. to get his pals to look the other way for an afternoon. Open container in public, etc.

  Zook still had dreams of reanimating the Commandos. It would be good to keep their name out there. “Seth can get real bucks, so let’s be good to him.”

  They did a soft high five and watched Beef jig around for a few moments.

  Zook had a sudden sour feeling. Life was whizzing past—his mom drinking too much now, an endless run of dead-end jobs. He’d won a scholarship to UCLA but chosen to stay at East L.A. City with his pals. Zook had tremendous loyalty to the last of the old gang.

  “Zook,” Marly Tom said softly. “You saw that shadow watching us the other night, the one Beef took a shot at.”

  “Coulda been anyone.”

  “I don’t know. I think it was dogging us the whole time.” He sighed. “What about that Chinese chick you said was following you?”

  Ed Zukovich shrugged. “Must’ve given up.”

  *

  “Seth, be a man,” Andor said without inflection. “Show us what a he-man from the Golden State can do.”

  “I’m no big game hunter. I trained on an M16 in Iraq, but I never touched it after basic. I was in Legal Services.”

  Out on the verandah in Indiana, Andor was insisting he take the bolt-action rifle. The barrel appeared unusually fat. Seth Brinkerhoff finally took the weapon and sat on one of the rattan chairs.

  Andor nodded toward the two deer browsing peacefully at a big salt lick about a hundred yards away across the pond.

  “Don’t I need a license or something to shoot a deer?”

  Andor gave him a big stink-eye.

  Gustav belched on purpose. “It’s said that Lenin once dismissed the British Communist Party by saying that when it came time to seize the railroad stations, they’d all line up to buy platform tickets.”

  Andor chuckled.

  “You quote Lenin?”

  “I quote Ayn Rand a lot, too, but it doesn’t make me a cunt. Afraid of killing a deer, Mr. B?”

  Seth Brinkerhoff weighed the rifle in his hands. “This is a big one, isn’t it?”

  “You might say,” Andor said.

  “In the nineties, I sent my first kid to survival school,” Gustav told him. “Toughen up the whiny little prick.”

  “What sort of stuff do they do there?” Seth asked.

  “They survive. You never went?”

  “I’m not sure we had them.”

  “That’s California. You got Mr. John Chinaman Democrat representing your own damn district. He’s one hundred and ten percent liberal socialist. I want you to get him out. Find out if he likes boys, find something.”

  Brinkerhoff sighed a little and settled with his left elbow on the verandah’s outer wall and the rifle stock tucked against his shoulder, anticipating a bad recoil. A stag with lots of antler had wandered up to guard the deer.

  Reluctantly, Brinkerhoff settled into the firing discipline the Army had taught him. Left hand cupping the forestock halfway forward, cheek firmly against the stock, open sights aligned on the head of the deer, squeezing the trigger a millimeter at a time until you felt resistance, breathe and hold, start squeezing again so you surprise yourself with the moment of fire.

  All went well until a horrendous explosion went off near his head and the rifle butt smashed into his shoulder like a baseball bat in full swing, the rifle cartwheeling out of his hands.

  “What the F—!”

  Seth’s chair fell over, and Andor behind him caught the rifle as it flipped. Gustav and Andor chuckled as Seth lay on his side.

  “I love you guys,” Seth said grimly. “Great sense of humor.”

  Across the small lake, the male deer’s head and neck had just about disintegrated.

  *

  Piscatelli woke as his wife entered the room. He was reluctant to come back from his dreamless escape from pain.

  “Tony, darling, I’m sorry, are you still drowsing?”

  “It’s fine, Jenny. Come over here, I want to see you.”

  He could see she wore rubber gloves and had sneaked in a small brown bag, but he was far more interested in looking at her comforting face.

  “Are you at peace with Jesus, Tony?”

  He was determined that she not unravel his composure. “You sound like you’re giving me the last rites.”

  He was starting to hurt, which meant the morphine was subsiding and he might be able to think clearly.

  “What’s in the bag?” He wondered if this might be the big blessing of the Sheepshead Fire, to bring him and Jennifer closer together again. He’d begun to worry about their relationship.

  She set out a digital picture frame that offered a slideshow of the family and their pets. She touched a button, and their daughter Greta said, “Get well quick, Daddy.”

  He could feel tears.

  She rested her hand briefly on his forehead, weird with the rubber glove. “You’re burning up. Oh my, I’m sorry.” Wrong thing to say. “Let me get the nurse.”

  “Wait, please.” The bath of emotion had freed his memory a little. “Is there a business card on the table?”

  “Yes.” She bent closer to the table to read. “Captain Walter Roski, Los Angeles County Fire Investigation Unit.”

  “That’s it,” Piscatelli said. “Would you call that number? Tell him that he should look very carefully about a hundred meters… southwest from where they found Jerry. Southwest. There will be more remains—an Asian girl, I think, with a bullet wound. It’s over a berm, so it might be missed.”

  “What’s a berm?”

  “He’ll know.” He closed his eyes, visibly tense. “I love you so very much, Jen, but I have to go back inside now. Jesus bless.”

  *

  Friday, seven p.m. as ordered. Jack Liffey pushed the doorbell set into the sparkly pink stone facing beside the door. For some reason, you just couldn’t outdo Orange County in ugly houses.

  Tien Joubert came herself. Probably a bad sign, but everything to do with the woman could be a bad sign.

  “Jackie, hon! Right on time! Come in.”

  She was dewed with sweat and wearing a barely cinched flop-open robe, ostensibly a cover-up for being disturbed during her exercise and sauna, but he knew she knew he was always on time. He’d hoped to skip all the sexual teasing, but he did need the money.

  “Hello ag
ain, Tien. Sauna time?”

  “You betcha. Wanna try?”

  “Some other time.” As he came into the too-blue house, he noticed a teacup-sized Chihuahua going insane against Tien’s leg. No yipping, though.

  “Replacement for John Bull?” he asked.

  “Nobody ever replace nobody. John Bull go up to doggy heaven.” She picked up the dog, put it into her coat closet and shut the door.

  He watched, but she seemed to have no intention of letting the dog back out, despite the hysterical scratching.

  “I got special deal with Heaven. They give me half off, of course.”

  “You sure the deal isn’t from the other place?”

  “The way you dress, Jackie, maybe.” She pretended to shield her eyes. “You got to let me get you good silk Ferragamo jacket. Where you get that corduroy? Pic-n-Save?”

  He grinned, impervious on that score. “Salvation Army. If I had a silk jacket, my clients would think I’m stealing from them. Am I here for a sartorial roast or a report?”

  “You sit. Lupeta!” she yelled.

  A heavyset woman hurried in. “Yes.”

  “Jackie, you still teetotal man?”

  “I am. Some green tea would be fine.” She knew well that he drank ginger ale, but she would never honor it.

  “Green tea for two, and bring us biscuits.”

  “Yes, señora.”

  “You’ve done well the last few years?” he asked. “Your businesses?”

  She appeared to resist an impulse to sit down on his lap and sat opposite, her robe just about coming open. “I saw tech in trouble and got out. Then I see real estate head down shit creek. I bet against. Me and China good friend now. I import medicine, dress, toy, and other stuff, chemicals they put in food for good taste. My company grow three time in profit every year. Ten more year, I’m king of America, I tell president what to do.”

  He chuckled. “I believe it.”

  “Of course,” she said blandly. “He and his guys better believe right now.”

  “Tien, you can’t be beat. Just outlive all the bastards. That’s my plan.”

  She made a face, as if assaulted by a nasty smell. “No good, Jackie. No no. You got to get even, bury the bastards deep.”

  He saw the entirety of one of her breasts, remembered caressing the small nut-brown nipple, her yelps and moans, and he wondered if agreeing to this meeting was another falter in the long, slow, ethical sideslip of his life. When I get home, give me some affection, Gloria, please. Tien’s body was older now, of course, age showing in a little sagging and some vertical stretch lines, but she was still perfectly formed for her size. And the impact of a body never existed by itself, he knew that—it had to do with your relation to the whole person, all of its quirks, and maybe your flight from something else.

  “Time to report,” he said.

  SIX

  The Jewel in the Lotus

  “It was wonderful to have a front-row seat for that whole struggle. Talking to the principals, taking notes in the city council and all the local meetings. Then I could retreat here with my colleagues to talk it over and write it up.”

  John Hollister was a frail emeritus professor now, apparently begrudged a small shared office with two other retirees, but back in the 1970s he’d led a team of colleagues and students in producing a Pulitzer history about the race crucible of Monterey Park.

  Hollister and Jack Liffey stood side by side on the walkway of the former’s office building at L.A. State College, looking southeast across the I-10 and over the grid of Monterey Park.

  “We’ve never been able to study a flashpoint of immigration like that. When we came on board it was a real case study—Taiwanese businessmen arriving and facing a startling nemesis in Harry Batcher, a bitter city councilman, and his friends. They ran weekly newsletters about the yellow peril. But the town had dozens of white progressives, too, feisty Jewish ladies from New York who organized their own meetings.”

  Jack Liffey’s old pal Mike Lewis had set up the visit with a fellow social historian. “Sir, I’m really more interested in what’s going on now.”

  The office door behind them slapped open and an old man in a rumpled sweater almost toppled out. Hollister wrapped his arms gently around the man.

  “Eddy, it’s John.”

  The man’s eyes looked disturbingly vacant.

  “Let’s go back in and finish your work. Your wife will be here soon.”

  He gentled the man into the little office. Jack Liffey could guess the problem. It was his father’s, too. He’d just worked out a reverse mortgage on Declan’s bungalow in San Pedro in order to hire a daytime caretaker, a really sweet Filipina who didn’t seem to mind the man’s random racist outbursts. At least the dementia kept him from writing any more of his white supremacy articles. Where did all that racial hatred emanate from? Jack Liffey asked himself for the millionth time.

  Hollister shut the door softly. “Sorry. It’s Alzheimer’s.”

  “My dad’s on the same off-ramp,” Jack Liffey said.

  Hollister couldn’t stop once he’d been wound up. He told Jack Liffey about the crosscurrents of the struggle in the 1970s: “English Only” campaigns, groups attacking and defending Asians.

  Hollister sighed. “You could say it was democracy at work, all that goofy door-to-door fervor. The nutballs fastened on coded symbols—like ‘English only’ or building a statue of George Washington downtown in place of a Chinese mini-mall.

  “Decency actually prevailed—or numbers, if you prefer.” He shrugged contentedly. “The whole area you see there is seventy to eighty percent Asian.”

  “At least you didn’t have any dead bodies along the way.”

  Hollister pointed out a slope under some power lines just across the freeway in Monterey Park. “That bare spot. They found a sleeping bag full of bones there in 1977. I always felt if I upset the wrong people, the next bag would be me.”

  “I never knew.”

  “Sorry, I’m a bore about it. For more recent history, I’ll call a man you should meet. Father Soong in Monterey Park.”

  *

  Megan Saxton realized that for twenty-four hours she’d been no farther than thirty feet from Hardi Boaz. Lying in bed or being scrubbed and coddled in the bathtub or helping as he cooked crudely and loudly. It was comforting and terrifying at the same time, completely off her map. She wondered if she was having a nervous breakdown.

  “Oh, lord, look!” she cried as he drove.

  “Magtig!” he swore and braked hard. The Humvee dropped one wheel off the shoulder as it came to a stop.

  A small, wounded antelope was dragging itself along the desert, a few yards off the road. The antelope’s rear legs weren’t working and the sun picked out flashes of white on the backs of the rear legs. Megan recognized the flashes as compound fractures, bone jutting through flesh.

  Hardi Boaz yanked his rifle out of its rack and strode toward the animal. She got out herself as if drawn by his magnetic field, but she stayed on the pavement.

  She thought she heard a bleat. The man said something gently as he squatted.

  What she could see of the animal seemed to thrash all of a sudden. She moved to a better angle and saw him digging in a wound with a knife.

  “Stop it, for God’s sake!”

  He glanced impassively back, not directly at her, then flicked his eyebrows. In one quick motion he set the barrel of his rifle under the antelope’s chin. With an extraordinary echoing blast, the top of the animal’s head disappeared.

  She screamed, a complaint that seemed to have transmitted itself straight to her from the animal, and then she covered her eyes. She could still hear the terrible gunshot. A gentle man is writing poetry in a bee-loud glade somewhere, she thought, and this primitive has just killed an animal.

  When she looked, he was digging in the wounds again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Look, mevrou. I am not the Little Prince. This could be motorcar. But this in th
e side might have been a bullet, and I must know if we have armed border-crossers.”

  She gasped as he flipped the small animal over, what was left of the head lolling in a ghastly way. This is too primal for me, she thought. She felt a tremor in her legs.

  He dipped two fingers in the wound, then stood and walked to the road and brushed his gluey fingers against her forehead. “The English lords blood little girls on their first foxhunt.”

  The smell was feral and disgusting and she pawed at her forehead. She must flee whatever held her near this strange, powerful man who couldn’t look you in the eyes.

  He walked a few paces heavily and then stopped and looked back with an almost wistful stoicism. “All your life, mevrou, the rim of your civilization has been patrolled by men like me to keep out the barbarians. My ring of defense makes possible your fine fantasies of how pleasant the world is, and you’ve always been happy to sacrifice men like me to your self-image.

  “I must leave you for a few days. I ask you to stay and wait for me, but it is your choice.”

  *

  It was Monica Flagg from the arson team who found it in the gravel and called him. Walt Roski hurried toward her across the burned-out wash. He fancied Monica, but it was only an idle head game. He was divorced and lonely, severely depressed, thirty years her senior.

  She pointed to a patch of ground standing beyond a shallow berm, just as Piscatelli’s wife had described. An oval area of burned earth, and one odd grayish shape poking up out of the ground where Monica had swept the ash away with a paintbrush. A small hip bone, maybe.

  “That’s human remains,” she said. “Or I’m a bad dog.”

  “I hope I don’t have to punish you.” Her strange remark deserved that at least. He outlined the oval in the air with his finger as he always did to remember it. His memory clung best to gesture and body soma. “It wasn’t quite firestorm heat, so there’ll probably be more left. Where do you make the head?”

  “If I had to guess, there.”

  “Call Terry to bring a sifting screen. There’ll be more bone. Maybe other evidence. Wait.”

  Walt Roski took a ballpoint pen out of his shirt, stepped off the berm, and dragged the pen through a tiny irregularity in the powdery ash. Out of the ash came a trophy hooked on the plastic pen: a melted, misshapen set of handcuffs. Barely recognizable, but close enough.