by Peter Plate
He paid off Robert with a few stinky fivers and told him to get lost. Durrutti observed the junkie evanesce into the crowd near the Scenic India Restaurant and the Cafe Istanbul as the evening became chill; the wind from the west had a turgid bite to it. Maimonides arched his eyebrows and guffawed, “How about that Ephraim Rook? The man of the year. The hope of the Jewish people. What a morass he is. What do you want to do about him?”
Durrutti was listless. He imagined sticking a hand into a pool of blood and fishing out Ephraim Rook’s body. He trained his one good eye on the stoplight at Sixteenth Street and watched it turn from green to red. “Fuck Rook. He’s about the last headache I need right now.”
“This is so,” Maimonides said. “You have enough problems. More than most. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes for all the money in the world. But Ephraim must be dealt with vigorously. He’s going around stabbing us in the back. That, I cannot tolerate. My pride is at stake. Yours, too. You see Rook won’t be content to just drag our good names through the mud. He will want to do more than that. He’ll want to advertise our demise. Trust me when I tell you it will come down to the bottom line.”
Maimonides had a point, something Durrutti wasn’t willing to concede. It seemed every which way he turned, he plunged deeper into a bog. His fate was being decided by strangers. His history was being written by his enemies. He said in spite of himself, “And what’s that?”
In contrast to the rest of him, which was a showcase of impeccable grooming, a furze of wiry hair cluttered the nape of Maimonides’s neck. His face was dark with bad thoughts, the kind that sent men to the hospital in an ambulance. He made a forecast. “The only thing we can be sure of. If you don’t fuck him, he’ll fuck you.”
“So what do we do?”
“I have a suggestion. It’s a sweet one, if I do say so myself.”
“What is it?”
“You fuck him first.”
Chapter Nineteen
Finding someone is always an inward journey, a flight toward one’s self. The hunt for Jimmy Ramirez reminded Durrutti of how the Sioux in South Dakota searched for a missing person. The countryside in South Dakota isn’t like the city. There is nothing out there except rolling plains mined with gopher holes. You can’t just hire a private investigator.
An elderly couple in their seventies hadn’t seen their son Marvin in twenty years, not since he’d relocated to Oakland on a BIA welding school training program. They didn’t know how to find him—the letters they had mailed to California went unanswered. So they called on the local wicasa wakan for a consultation.
The medicine man lived in a government housing project on the edge of the prairie. Plywood and tar paper ranchette-style bungalows dotted the unlandscaped hill-sides. The road into the settlement was unpaved; dogs and kids on horseback were everywhere. The wicasa wakan was in his sixties, a retired cowhand who wore flannel shirts and cowboy boots and smoked Kool cigarettes. He was told about Marvin and after hearing the parents’ tale he agreed to conduct an investigation utilizing traditional methods.
A week later on a Sunday evening, he and his helpers— a son-in-law and his cousin—went to work. A one-room cottonwood log cabin at the back of his fields was stripped of furniture. The rough-hewn windows were covered with wool Pendleton blankets and wooden boards to make sure no sound, light or wind penetrated the cabin’s interior. The walls were caulked with river bottom mud and draped with star quilts. Nothing dead or alive; no ghosts, no animals, no human beings, not even a fly could get inside.
In the middle of the cabin’s hard packed dirt floor, the medicine man removed a set of owl’s wings, a handful of yuwipi stones, several eagle feathers and a sachet of red willow bark from a plain canvas gym bag. He laid the items on the floor in a semicircle around him and built an altar. Marvin’s parents and family and friends trickled into the cabin and sat down in a circle with their backs to the walls.
The medicine man finished the altar and, still kneeling, he signaled to his son-in-law to nail the cabin door shut from the outside—the noise of a hammer boomed and died away. He then chortled, “Nice and quiet in here now. Ain’t nobody coming in or out.”
The sole kerosene lamp illuminating the room was extinguished, throwing the cabin into blackness. The air was heavy and dry, scented with sweetgrass. The medicine man began to sing and pray with four cycles of songs. He asked his spirit guides to visit him. He asked them to tell him where Marvin was.
Spirits come in many shapes. Some have form and are called toutou. Heeding the medicine man’s plea, otherworldliness entered the cabin through the walls—blue lights materialized in the gloom and flashed helter skelter and darted from one corner to another. Flying gourds cavorted in the dark and danced in midair, sometimes touching people and pecking them on the shoulder or foot. While the wicasa wakan sang, the darkness writhed with things unseen.
The tonton moved through the medicine man like dust through a vacuum cleaner and departed just as quickly. When the ceremony was over, he was fatigued and happy, eager for a cigarette. He informed Marvin’s folks their son was healthy and safe and living in San Leandro, albeit divorced and residing in a trailer court. The nails in the door were removed and everyone trailed outside into the star-spangled night. In the half-bald overgrazed hills surrounding the cabin, a coyote yelped-Jerusalem wasn’t far off.
The double glass doors to the Redstone Building were unlocked, enabling Maimonides and Durrutti to stroll into the place without being questioned or seen by anyone, which suited them fine. Discretion was necessary. Recognition, they didn’t want.
The lobby was damp and chilly, an advertisement for pneumonia—Durrutti sneezed several times. Maimonides glanced at the elevator and was unimpressed by its lop-sided appearance. He said, “Let’s take the stairs. We can get some exercise.”
The staircase was unlit and several steps were broken, rendering their passage treacherous and unpredictable. Maimonides stubbed his toe in the dark and cursed. “Fuck, you’d think people would have the decency to fix these things. It ain’t even a question of convenience. I’m talking about survival here. God, I hate the dark.”
Durrutti was surly with him. “Shut up already. I’m tired of listening to your complaining.”
“You shut up. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
“I didn’t twist your arm. You’re here because you want to be.”
“Thank you for reminding me. I nearly forgot that.”
They crested to the landing on the third floor and established a beachhead. Durrutti had a cigarette and Maimonides became all workmanship. He emanated quiet professionalism and pulled two silk stockings from his jacket, handing Durrutti one of them. “This is for you, my son. Silk is easy on the skin. You’ll feel like a million bucks in it.”
Durrutti donned the stocking, slipping it over his head and Maimonides did the same as he removed the Charter Arms .44 revolver from his waistband. He thumbed the handgun’s hammer and nudged Durrutti toward a narrow hall, saying sotto voce, “Down here.”
Paint was peeling from the hallway walls; a hot white light bulb dangled from an outlet in the ceiling. The drab brown linoleum floor squeaked under their feet. A janitor’s industrial wash bucket and mop stood guard in one unfriendly corner. At the last office door in the corridor, Maimonides held up his hand to signal a halt. A lone light burned inside the office. The hypnotic percussion of a manual typewriter filtered through the walls. A sign hung from the brass doorknob: closed for the weekend.
“This is it.” Maimonides murmured. “You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To do what we have to do. To achieve our goals.”
Durrutti wasn’t sure. Decisions weren’t something he was good at it. His eyes were dumb with hesitation. His tongue was chalky. “I don’t want no bloodshed or anything to fuck up again. I can’t handle no more pressure.”
Maimonides made a moue rich with condescension. Confessions bored him. “Don’t gi
mme that sob story. It ain’t up to us. We’re only half of the dynamic here. The people in there, that’s the other piece of the gestalt. We can’t control what they’ll do. If they don’t screw up and if they cooperate with us, they’ll be okay. If not, it’s their tough luck.”
Flawed, Durrutti thought. He said, “Okay.”
There are several ways to enter an office unannounced. Most businessmen prefer to go in politely with a card in hand. Maimonides had never entertained such petite bourgeois banalities. He decocked the Bulldog’s hammer and kicked open the door, nickering in an ear-splitting falsetto, “Surprise! Surprise! Look who’s in the house!”
The tableau was as Maimonides said it would be. A pageant of riches. Ephraim Rook was sitting at his desk counting a hummock of cash, a stack of used ten and twenty and one hundred dollar bills as high as his chin. His back was to the door and when the intruders came in, the shyster was slow on the uptake. Curlicuing in his IKEA chair, he glimpsed the pair of thieves in the doorway.
Unable to recognize them, Rook underwent a crash course in premature aging, adding thirty years on himself in two seconds. He goggled at them and said with a quaver, “What’s with the fucking stockings? What is this? A joke? If so, you can see I don’t get the punch line.”
Maimonides was prompt to tell him otherwise. He was glad to do it. “No, it’s a tragedy. Your tragedy. Now gimme the cash.”
“Not so fast, buddy. Who are you guys anyway?” Ephraim demanded to know.
“Friends, we are not.” Maimonides’s face was mashed flat against the stocking. He loomed over Ephraim with his revolver. “We want the money. Everything else, including you, is inconsequential.”
Rook dressed better than anyone else in the Mission. Satin shirts and silk underwear were de rigueur for him. Expensive Italian boots from Milan were his due in life. Ephraim changed his suits twice a day and he drove a late model Saab coupe. He hadn’t gotten wealthy by handing his cash over to strangers. His job was taking money from people, not giving it to them. He refused to oblige Maimonides’s request—his entrepreneurial instincts wouldn’t let him do it.
“Fuck off,” he said. “The money is off limits! The shit is mine and I ain’t giving it to you! You’ll have to kill me first!”
“Don’t tempt me,” Maimonides replied.
When a man shoved a large bore revolver at your nose and you refused to give him the money he wanted, you were either crazy or a bullet proof thug. A lunatic or a hard-core recidivist. A person with a death wish or just plain self-centered. Ephraim was a little of everything. He jumped up from his desk, yapping, “You fuckers don’t get it! You can’t take me down! Do you know who I am?”
The quiescence that greeted him was galore with hate. “You’re nobody,” Maimonides raged. “A nebbish and a germ.”
“The hell I am! Who told you that?”
Ephraim fancied himself as an outlaw and he was full of tricks. Training his watery eyes on Maimonides, he reached in the desk’s top drawer for his gun, an itty-bitty Colt derringer. Maimonides anticipated the tactic and closed the drawer on Ephraim’s feminine wrist. His rival squealed in a heart-wrenching glissando. “Fucking God, what do you want from me?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, I can tell you that much.” Maimonides pushed aside a pile of twenties and parked his gargantuan buttocks on the desk. “Give us the paper and we’ll leave.”
The money didn’t belong to Ephraim—it never did. It belonged to the Nicaraguans employing the shyster. Rook was your classic middleman. One of a dying breed. If you needed to move a black market product from point A to point B, you called on Ephraim. Middlemen were a necessary link in the food chain of crime. You gave Rook a cut in a job—five percent and whatever he could steal without getting caught—and he did your dirty laundry for you.
Maimonides was not interested Ephraim’s histrionics. They made him cross—and his feet were hurting again. “Goddamn it, man, hand over the gelt. Don’t make me have to pop a cap in your ass.”
Ephraim cried even louder, holding his injured wrist. His self-mastery deteriorated as his voice ululated in the tastefully furnished office. “No, you can’t do this!”
Maimonides grinned like a harlequin under the silk stocking and said, “Yes, I can. I’m the boss here. You’ll do as I say. Now take off your fucking clothes.”
The command did not sit well with Ephraim—Maimonides was talking about his best suit. The vanguard of his self-esteem, a beautiful gold and black Gucci. Made him preen like a little rooster. He ran a hand over the jacket’s mega-expensive fabric and replied with incredulity, stretching out each word to express his displeasure. “You want me to strip?”
“Exactly. Do it now.”
“Why? You a faggot?” Ephraim harrumphed. His mouth disfigured itself with conceit. “Because if you are, buster, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t take it up the ass. Never have and never will. I ain’t no sissy.”
Maimonides was amused. “How noble of you. There’s always a first, you know. Think of what you’ve been missing.” He brandished the Bulldog at Rook. “Enough of the sex talk. Hurry up with this.”
Ephraim undressed, doing an inhibited striptease. Chastened by the sight of his own scrotum—there was more hair on a pair of coconuts—he tossed the Gucci to Maimonides. The expression on Ephraim’s beleaguered face was indecipherable. Naked or not, Rook was up to something. Making impromptu plans. The cunning meshugge was always up to something.
“I don’t know who you guys are,” he spoke up. “But you’ve got some courage to come in here and jack me up like this. It takes chutzpah to pull a stickup on Ephraim Rook. You gentlemen don’t know nothing about my reputation or maybe you wouldn’t be doing this.” Ephraim stroked his bare arms to stay warm. Standing behind the desk he resembled an orphaned child in need of a home.
Maimonides replied, “Your mother should care who you are. The United Nations should care. Amnesty International should care. The world should give a damn. But to be honest, I don’t.”
“This is a very big mistake,” Ephraim countered shrewdly.
“No, it isn’t,” Maimonides said. “It is written in the stars. It was fated. Some things were never meant to be.”
Ephraim pleaded with him, weaving his hoo-doo. “Who are you working for? Whatever he’s giving you, I’ll double it.” He saw neither man was moved by his largesse and he added, “I’ll triple what you’re getting. C’mon, who’s your boss? It ain’t that asshole Maimonides, is it? The bastard is dirt. He’s nothing, truly nothing. I can’t even begin to count the number of ways that make him nothing. You know who I mean?”
“No,” Maimonides teased him. “I don’t know the name. Who is he?”
Eager to be useful, particularly if it hastened his liberation, Rook gibbered, “This ex-con about my age, though he looks twenty years older than that. He’s overweight and has bad breath, smells with onions. He dresses like a dick. Drives an old Cadillac. Jewish trash. You know, low-rent.”
Durrutti evacuated the desk, shoveling the cash into a garbage bag Maimonides had given him. The money made a soft pleasant sound as it hit the bottom of the bag, like autumn leaves after you’ve raked them up on a warm October afternoon. It made him dreamy for the cool nights before Halloween.
Maimonides said to the subjugated Ephraim, “Now I have to figure out what to do with you. Frankly, I should blow your fucking brains out with this gun. But I’m willing to consider other methods. What would you suggest if you were in my shoes? Be creative.”
Ephraim was petrified, cowering with nausea. The nearness to his own death made him feverish. He reviewed his life and the climb from poverty to wealth and he was puzzled. All that for this? He put his veiny hands over his groin; the jewelry on his wrists tinkled. The musk of his fear mingled with his aftershave cologne. “Me? I should tell you how to snuff me?”
“Why not? Give me one good reason why you should live. You’re taking up precious space.”
A speechmaker, Ephraim
had never been. He’d rather let a cash register do the talking for him. His vocabulary was nil. His powers of introspection were nonexistent. Rook was a man who’d skimmed the surface of his own life; he didn’t have an inkling of self-consciousness in him. His imagination had only two colors, black and white. He glowered at Maimonides and snarled, “Fuck you, I ain’t telling you nothing!”
“Good. I respect your honesty. Now open your mouth.”
“What for?”
Maimonides propelled the Bulldog in between Rook’s lips and masturbated the gun’s barrel in his foe’s mouth. Ephraim’s eyes were moist with humiliation. His masculinity was being violated. The boundaries of his sanity were being tampered with. Maimonides was realigning his personality for him.
Then he squeezed the trigger.
Ephraim should have been dead and taking the expressway to heaven where he would experience everlasting peace. You could hear a choir of angels singing hallelujah in the background. Their saccharine voices were blended together in thunderous harmony concerning what a stupid man Rook had been. That he should have been wiser while he had the chance. Since Maimonides didn’t have any shells in the .44, none of these things happened.
Believing he’d been murdered in cold blood, the unexpected return to life proved too much for Ephraim and he became hysterical. He already had one foot in the grave—to switch directions in midstream was impossible. His eyes flickered. He put his hands over his ears and slavered, “No, no, this isn’t right!”
Maimonides sagely counseled him. “Yes, it is. That’s why we came here today. To make things right.” He clobbered the shylock on the head with the Bulldog, then took a roll of duct tape and tied Ephraim’s hands and feet to the ergonomic chair. Maimonides slung the bag of money over his shoulder and removed the silk stocking from his face. The fabric had etched his lily white skin with a fine meshed pattern. He spluttered at Ephraim, “So I’m nothing? Everyone is entitled to their goddamn opinion, but yours is no good. It’s just been canceled.”
