by Daniel Depp
‘Yeah,’ said Araz. ‘It was funny.’
They pulled up in front of the sushi place. It was 3 p.m., nobody was in there. Araz turned off the engine. He said,
‘You’re in a gay bar, suddenly this condom goes flying across the room. What does everybody say?’
‘I dunno,’ said Savan.
‘Who farted?’ said Araz.
They laughed.
‘That’s a good one,’ said Savan.
There was nobody in the restaurant. When they walked in Tavit locked the door. The owner was in the kitchen. His wife came out.
‘What you want?’ she said, crossing her arms defiantly.
Savan grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back into the kitchen, threw her at her husband’s feet.
‘No violence!’ said the man. ‘No violence!’
‘Too fucking late for that,’ said Savan. ‘You should have thought about that before you went yakking to the fucking cops.’
‘I no go police!’ said the man.
‘Fucking lying Toyota motherfucker,’ said Savan, and picked up a metal soup ladle and swung it and caught the man on the side of the head. The man staggered back. The woman came forward. Tavit grabbed her. She was screaming.
‘Shut her up,’ Savan said to Tavit. Tavit hit her in the mouth. She stopped.
‘You went to the police?’ the man said in Japanese to his wife. ‘I told you not to!’
‘You’re a coward!’ she said. ‘Someone had to!’
‘You’ve killed me,’ said the man.
‘Stop that fucking jabbering,’ said Savan.
‘She no understand!’ said the man.
Savan was looking around. He spotted the deep-fat fryer.
‘Come here,’ he said to the man.
The man had followed Savan’s eyes and made a run for the dining room. Araz hit him and threw him back toward Savan. Savan grabbed him and the man struggled.
‘Fucking help me,’ Savan said to Araz.
Araz went over and grabbed the little man around the neck, bending one of his arms high up behind his back. Savan grabbed the other arm. The little man struggled, shouted. Still gripping the man’s wrist Savan picked up a plate and hit him repeatedly across the bridge of the nose until the nose dissolved in a mass of blood and the man stopped.
‘Hold him,’ said Savan, and submerged the man’s hand into the roiling fat. The man screamed, flopped. The woman screamed too. Tavit clouted her again.
It was a job to hang on to the little fellow. The grease popped and splattered. Savan released him and both he and Araz jumped back as the man danced around, swinging the arm and flinging bits of hot flesh and crying.
‘Mother fuck,’ said Savan, who’d burned his own hand a little. He went over and turned on the cold-water tap and held it beneath the stream. ‘This fucking hurts.’
The man had gone to his wife who held him as they both cried and the man stuck his peeling and deep-fried arm uselessly in the air away from them. Savan watched this as he bathed his hand, but it angered him to watch them comforting each other and he went over and kicked them for a while then went back to bathing his hand.
‘Was that worth it?’ Araz asked him when they were back in the van.
‘What do you mean, was it fucking worth it?’ Savan snapped at him. ‘We did what we were fucking told to do. At least I did anyway. What the fuck is it with you, just standing around like you’re waiting for a fucking bus. Goddamn this hurts.’
‘You think we’re going to collect anything now? The guy can’t cook, he’ll be lucky he keeps the fucking hand. They’ll close down the business. Where’s the profit in that?’
‘Fuck the profit,’ said Savan. ‘We made an example out of him.’
‘All we had to do was smack him around a little,’ Araz said. ‘He’d have paid.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘What is the point exactly? I’ve lost track. I thought we were supposed to be making money. Do you see any money? Are we walking away with any fucking money?’
‘Atom is right, there’s something fucking wrong with you.’
‘That’s what Atom said?’
‘Talk to Atom.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Araz said. ‘This whole operation has gone fucking nuts. We’re supposed to be making fucking money, not getting revenge on the fucking whole of humanity. None of this makes any sense. It’s just fucking crazy, that’s all.’
‘You tell Uncle Atom he’s crazy,’ Tavit said laughing. ‘I want to be there.’
‘Shut up, you fucking needle dick,’ Savan said to him. To Savan he said, ‘Can we stop and get some fucking Neosporin or something?’
Tavit started to recommend something else, but Savan told him to shut the fuck up again so he did.
THIRTY-ONE
Spandau had phoned Walter off and on for two days now and finally decided to go by the house. He rang the bell and to his surprise Rosa answered.
‘I thought he fired you,’ Spandau said.
‘He fire me all the time,’ Rosa said in her Salvadorean accent, ‘but I never listen. I tell him I come even if he don’t pay me, so he give up and I come and he pay me. Same as always.’
‘I’ve been calling for two days. I got worried.’
‘He tell me not to answer the phone. You know what he like sometime.’
‘How is he?’
‘You go see for yourself.’
Walter was in his study. The walls were lined with books and photos of Walter with various distinguished people. Walter had a talent for cultivating people who were important, which was the key to his success. Of the books, there was not a single work of fiction among them. Books on history and law and psychology and forensics. Walter thought fiction was a waste of time.
The room was half dark. Soft jazz came piped in from an expensive system hidden in a hall closet. Walter lay on his back on the leather sofa, a thin blanket pulled up to his chest. Spandau thought he might be asleep and started to leave.
‘Don’t you ever call first,’ Walter said. ‘I don’t remember issuing an invitation.’
‘I did call. You gave orders not to answer the phone.’
‘That in itself might tell you something.’
‘I was worried. If you’re in one of your moods I’d just as soon go anyway. I’ve got a touch of the red ass myself and my patience is thin.’
‘You’re becoming a fucking prima donna, sport.’
‘I’m not the self-indulgent lush curled up in a dark room in a fetal position in the middle of the day.’
Walter gave a short laugh. ‘Ouch.’
‘I want you to get up off your ass and let me take you back to the desert to dry out.’
‘I don’t think so, sport.’
‘You intend to spend the rest of your days doing this?’
‘That’s pretty much the idea. You want to drop this now, because you’re getting to be a real fucking bore about this. Why don’t you mind your own goddamned business. You want to nag my ass about shit of which you know absolutely nothing, you know where the door is. Otherwise Rosa is no fucking Lillian Hellman and I could use the conversation.’
Spandau sat down.
‘Go ahead and get it out of your system,’ said Walter. ‘You’re just dying to tell me I look like shit.’
‘You look like shit.’
‘Great, thank you,’ Walter said. ‘How is the Margashack thing coming?’
‘I feel like a hamster on one of those plastic wheels. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Nobody’s talking?’
‘Oh, people are talking okay. It’s just the more they talk the more confused I get. I’ve never seen a case with so many leads that are certain to go absolutely nowhere.’
‘Follow the enemies, sport. That’s the way it works.’
‘Yeah, but with Margashack, all the enemies and all the friends turn out to be the same people.’ Pause. ‘I’m thinking about dropping the case.’
‘Well goodness, sport, w
hy in the hell would you want to do that?’ Walter pushed aside the blanket and sat up on the couch. Spandau noticed that it caused him pain.
‘You need to go to the doctor.’
‘You need to stop being such a pussy,’ said Walter. ‘I leave you for five minutes and you go all wimpy on me. You’ve never dropped a case before. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you’ve turned into a goddamn Buddhist or something.’
‘Turns out he may have raped a girl. I don’t want to work for the guy.’
‘How’d you find this out?’
‘A friend of his told me.’
‘And he knows this for a fact?’
‘The girl told him.’
‘You talk to Margashack about it? He own up to it?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘Is there a police report?’
‘It was never reported.’
‘Let me see if I have this straight,’ Walter said. ‘You interview a bunch of people but you can’t figure out which ones love him and which ones hate him, although it’s likely that one of them might be trying to stick a knife in his back. I have this correct so far?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you tell me that one of these people – who may or may not hate his guts – tells you a story that he says he heard from someone else. A story, I might add, which is completely unsubstantiated by any sort of facts. And on the basis of this you are willing to decide that the bastard is guilty and your finer sensibilities won’t let you defend him? Am I still on the beam here?’
‘It could be true,’ said Spandau. ‘Maybe it’s true.’
‘You think he did it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have a brain tumor, sport? Are unresolved sexual and emotional conflicts being stirred up and haunting you, clouding your mind? Has Jesus or at least one of the Apostles tapped you on the shoulder and given you the exclusive lowdown on the soul of Man?’
‘I’m allowed to make a moral choice.’
‘No you’re not,’ said Walter. ‘Who in hell put that idea into your head? Grow up, for god’s sake. We’re not in the moral-choice business, we’re in the do the fuck what we said we’d do business. Somebody hire you to find out if this girl was raped?’
Spandau got up to leave.
‘Sit your ass down,’ said Walter.
‘I’m not prepared to argue this with you, Walter.’
‘Me either. Which is fine, because this isn’t an argument, it’s a goddamned lecture. You are going to sit your ass back down and listen to me.’
Spandau was angry, wanted to leave. But Walter looked up at him and Spandau could see that Walter wasn’t angry, just concerned.
‘It doesn’t work this way,’ Walter said.
‘Meaning what? The customer is always right even if he destroys some innocent girl’s life?’
‘You’ve got him tried and convicted already, when there’s no proof that he did it. And even if he did, it doesn’t matter. Not now. Not after you’ve taken the case.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing you say this. You can be a callous shit much of the time, but this is a new low.’
‘We’re hired to do a job, not to pass moral sentence. I’ll tell you the same thing a defense attorney told me once, after I asked him if he’d ever defended anyone he was convinced was guilty. He said sure, all the time. Then I asked him how he could do it. And he said, I’m not defending the guy in the dock, I’m defending his rights, and what happens to him after that doesn’t concern me one way or another. That’s not my job, he said, and if he allowed himself to look at it any other way he’d be so crippled by moral confusion that he couldn’t function at all.’
‘I’m not Jerry Margashack’s attorney.’
‘No you’re not. Nobody hired you to defend him or convict him. That has nothing to do with you. That’s for somebody else to work out. You were hired to do one thing, to find out who’s releasing this information. There’s no moral element to this. There rarely is, and what worries me is that if you keep thinking this way, you’re not going to be able to function either. You’re not even working for Jerry Margashack, you’re working for Frank Jurado’s production company, and Jurado is a man you actually know to be a shit, but you took the job anyway. I’m interested in how you square this in your tight little moral universe.’
‘You’re right, I should never have taken the case.’
‘What I’m trying to say, sport, is that you keep doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. So far it seems to be working for you, but sooner or later you’re going to get your tit caught in the wringer. One day you’re going to get on your crusader’s high horse and make one of your emotional calls and it’s going to be the wrong one and somebody is going to get hurt. Life’s not that simple. You just do your job, you follow the only clear path. Sometimes the job seems like shit and you feel bad at the end of it but you have to tell yourself it was never your call to begin with. Just do your job.’
‘You and Eichmann and the banality of evil, right?’
‘You are a fucking child, David,’ said Walter. ‘You’re starting to sound like Dee. The world isn’t that simple. And by the way I’d appreciate it if my employees didn’t take such an active interest in my personal life.’
‘Pookie’s just worried about you.’
‘It’s not just Pookie I’m talking about.’ Walter shifted painfully on the couch. ‘When you can see clear to come down off of your cloud, I’d suggest you follow the fucking trail to that priest. Something doesn’t sound right. God keeps cropping up too fucking often for my satisfaction. You might want to go north.’
Spandau got up to leave.
‘By the way,’ said Walter, ‘I know about this crap with Dee’s husband.’
‘I’ve already set it up to pay for it out of my own pocket.’
‘Good, because it’s unprofessional as hell, not to mention emotionally stupid. I guess it’s too late now. Just don’t let it interfere with anything else. You’ve got Pookie and Leo on it?’
‘We didn’t have anything much for Leo and we’d both talked about giving Pookie a shot at street work. This seemed a fairly harmless way to begin.’
‘Sometimes I think you forget who it was that taught you how to bullshit,’ Walter said. ‘Just don’t let them get hurt.’
‘You need anything?’
‘Yeah, I need you to run my agency like you know what you’re doing. Can you do that?’
‘I don’t hear the toilet flushing yet.’
‘Good. Now get the fuck out of my face and go make some money.’
THIRTY-TWO
To get into the Glendale game room – number three of six Atom had running across town – you went into a barber shop, then out the back door into an alley. The alley had been sealed at both ends with locked covered gates. You walked across the alley and through a door that led into a former upholstery shop now brightened by a bar and half a dozen tables with card games going on and a couple of tables shooting craps. The place wasn’t packed but it did steady business and it was the middle of the afternoon. Araz did a sweep around the place, his usual check, then went back into the office to count the day’s take. While he was in there one of the girls at the bar came and told him Joey was up front. Araz counted out some money, put it in an envelope, and made a note of it in the account book he carried.
Joey Vernors was sitting back in the barber’s chair when Araz came in. Oracio the barber was wrapping a cloth around him. Joey always got a free haircut, shave, mustache trim, and ear, eyebrow, and nasal-hair prune. He was an ex-cop and knew what his rights were.
‘Araz, my man,’ Joey said.
‘How’s it going, Joey.’
They shook hands. They always shook hands. Araz pulled his away. Joey’s remained extended. Araz put the envelope into it, and it disappeared beneath the barber’s cloth. They did this every week.
‘Do what you can with the bald spot,’ Joey said to Oracio. This too he di
d every week. ‘How’s business?’ he said to Araz.
‘Not bad.’
‘Would you tell me?’
‘Jesus, Joey, why would I lie to you?’
‘Maybe the envelope ought to be a little thicker.’
‘Come back and look, Joey. It’s going to look the same fucking way it did this time last week and the week before. Business is steady but the economy sucks.’
‘This ain’t a BMW dealership.’
‘People can’t spend what they don’t have.’
‘Of course they can. They’re fucking card junkies.’
‘I let somebody lose more than they have and then I have to figure out some way to collect. It’s a pain in the ass. You know how it works.’
‘Like that fucking Jap you tempuraed.’
‘You heard about that?’
‘That was stupid. It doesn’t sound like you. I told that to the boys when I heard it. I said that’s not Araz, that’s crazy fucking Uncle Atom.’
‘Well,’ said Araz.
‘I’m supposed to remind you,’ Joey said, ‘that’s not your turf.’
‘Atom know that?’
‘He knows that.’
Araz shrugged. ‘I just do what I’m told.’
‘Watch yourself. Benny Bono’s got the contract on that street from Locatelli and he’s gone back bitching that you guys have now fucked him out of a couple of grand a month and this isn’t the first time.’
‘You mean the Jap was already paying Benny Bono?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Atom know this?’
‘Fucking straight Atom knows it. If he didn’t tell you he’s yanking your chain for some reason. You’re lucky Benny didn’t show up. Talk to your uncle. Atom’s never been the sanest fucker out there but you guys are pushing the envelope here. Unless you’re ready for a turf war with Benny Bono, which you are not, you’d better get your uncle to start using his head.’
‘I’ll find a more diplomatic way of saying it.’
Joey laughed. ‘You’re a good kid. You understand I’m not picking favorites here. The boys in blue don’t want to see things get ugly any more than you do. They just asked me to mention this.’
