Cactus Garden

by Ward, Robert

  “Like a roooooock. Ooooooh, baby. You are likkkke a roooock.”

  Jack smiled and thought, maybe he could get into women bodybuilders after all. Then he remembered Charlotte Rae Wingate and he began to feel something happening to him. Something that cut right through his attitude.

  He went back into the kitchen, grabbed the pizza paddle, and opened the red-hot oven. He grimaced and pulled out C.J.’s lunch, a pizza covered with pineapple, pine nuts, and Smithfield ham.

  “Jesus,” Jack said, as he carried in the pizza to his partner. “This is the most revolting pizza I’ve ever seen.”

  “So what?” Calvin said, grabbing a piece while looking at the real estate section of the paper. “You ain’t gotta eat it. Now, this is where I want to be. Down here in Laguna Beach. Get me a place near the sand, go home at night, walk out and feed the gulls.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, going back behind the bar. “It sounds charming until you start thinking about the beachheads. I had a girlfriend from down there at one time, and we had to go to parties with these stoners from the area. Everything was rad and bitchin’ and gnarly dude. Sorry, but I can’t see you in that scene.”

  Calvin looked up, and Jack was a little surprised to see the degree of annoyance on his face.

  “Not everybody down there is like that,” he said.

  “No,” Jack said, laughing. “Those are the nice people. The rest of them are like Orange County Ku Klux Klaners and skinheads. Not to mention the Vietnamese gang scene. You can go to human barbecues with those guys. Yeah, you’re gonna love it there, C.J.”

  C.J. removed his glasses and looked up. There was a stricken quality to his mouth.

  “Hey, fuck you, Jack. That’s just a bunch of liberal clichés. You don’t really know shit about it.”

  There was real anger in his voice. Jack knew he should back off, but his own nerves were wired from too much coffee and thoughts of Charlotte Rae Wingate.

  “Hey, all I mean is, as a black man, I don’t think you’d dig it down there for very long.”

  Now C.J. got up from his chair and walked toward Jack. He struck out his index finger, punching the air between them.

  “Hey, man, we’re partners but don’t be commenting on race, okay? ‘Cause you really don’t know shit about it, dig?”

  “No?” Jack said. “I haven’t been to your house? I haven’t hung with you and your family? Come on, C.J.? Gimme a break.”

  C.J. pushed his glasses back on his head.

  “I love it. White boy listens to jazz at the Catalina Bar and Grill a couple times a month and thinks he knows all about what it’s like to live like a black man in this world.”

  “Hey,” Jack said, trying to laugh his partner out of it. “I never said that.”

  “But you think it, man,” C.J. said. “Well, jes remember, you don’t know and you will never know, so don’t be telling me what I’m gonna like and what the fuck I should do. Dig?”

  “Geez,” Angel said, rubbing her forefinger through her eyebrow. “And I thought you two boys loved each other.”

  “Fuck you too, Angel,” C.J. said.

  He went back to his paper and stared at it as if he were trying to start a fire.

  Angel pouted and continued her dance even though the music had stopped. Jack shook his head and started to wash some glasses. C.J. was obviously having troubles at home again. He wanted to talk to him about it, but he’d have to wait for him to calm down. Suddenly, someone pushed back the black velvet curtain at the front door and light flooded the dark room.

  Jack looked up and saw her there. Charlotte Rae Wingate.

  She wore a black T-shirt with thin pink suspenders and tight black Levi’s. Her blonde hair seemed to absorb the street light, and her dark sunglasses gave her an extra touch of glamour.

  “Hi, Larry,” she said to C.J. “This is a charming place.”

  “Hey, honey, we don’t need no dancers,” Angel said, doing a split on the platform.

  “Relax, sweetie, I’ve already lived your life,” Charlotte Rae said.

  Now C.J. looked up and automatically turned on the charm.

  “Well, well, if we ain’t got the Dragon Lady herself. I heard they’re looking for you up at Mann’s Chinese.”

  Jack admired his partner for showing no trace of the anger and frustration he had obviously felt.

  “Well, they’re going to have to keep on looking, honey,” Charlotte Rae said, smiling at C.J., “because I avoid that place like the plague now.”

  Jack smiled and caught his breath. She did something to him, something they didn’t talk about at the academy.

  What was it about her? Sex, obviously, but something else too. Maybe it was the charming and witty spin she put on her own desperation.

  “Hi, Jack,” she said, walking toward him.

  “Hi, yourself. What you doing around here?”

  “Well,” she said, rubbing her finger up and down the bar. “I was going to call you, but then I sort of became nervous that you wouldn’t invite me over here. So I invited myself. Hope that’s okay.”

  “I’d say it’s very okay,” Jack said. There were times when he was amazed at his ability to sound like someone else, literally be someone else. But this wasn’t one of them. She shook him up too much.

  C.J. got up and joined them at the bar.

  “We are always delighted to see human beings in this bar, though we don’t recommend they stay very long.”

  Angel walked by them now, back toward her dressing room.

  “I got to work on my routines, okay?”

  She smiled at Charlotte Rae.

  “I do a whole new lap thing to Snoop Doggy. It would blow a round hole in your mind.”

  “Well, I can hardly wait,” Charlotte Rae said.

  “I think she likes you,” Jack said, when Angel had gone behind the stage.

  “No, I think she likes you,” Charlotte Rae said. “But then why shouldn’t she?”

  “I can think of about fifty reasons,” Calvin said.

  “But fathers are always toughest on their sons,” Charlotte said.

  Calvin laughed as if he was surprised.

  “I think you might have a bright as well as beautiful woman here, Jack. That’s a very scary prospect for an old guy like me.”

  “Listen to that,” Charlotte said. “I bet you drive all the women crazy.” She smiled and Jack watched C.J. light up.

  “I got to get in there and make pizza. Nice seeing you, kid,” C.J. said. “And go easy on Jackie. He’s just a poor hip white boy.”

  He walked back into the kitchen, and Jack sensed a little more spring in his step. That’s what she did for you. “Want a drink?” Jack said.

  “No thanks. I’m on my way to the gym. I did have an ulterior motive for coming by, though. I’m here to offer you to come away with me and Buddy for the weekend. Up to our place in Tahoe. We have a hundred acres, about forty minutes from town. Completely cut off from everything. And on the property is the most beautiful lake you’ve ever seen. Lake Echo.”

  “You and Buddy, huh?” Jack said. She smiled and shook her head.

  “Jack, I was afraid you and he had gotten off on the wrong foot. Buddy can be a little overbearing sometimes. Especially when he’s nervous. But he really likes you. He wants to show you around, and I want you to see Lake Echo. It’s a very special place.”

  Her voice had grown softer, and she had taken the glasses off now. She looked at Jack in a way that made him feel as though the bar was revolving beneath his feet.

  “Tell me the truth,” Jack said. “How does Buddy really feel about me?”

  “He likes you. I think he wants to help you.”

  “Yeah?” Jack said. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Of course it is,” Charlotte Rae said, smiling. “Look, you’re making too much out of all this. He’s grateful for what you did for me, and he wants to show you a good time. We can go out on the lake in the daytime and hit the casinos at night. Come on, you need a
break from this place.”

  She reached over and touched his wrist. It was clear to him that she had been sent here by her husband. But her hand was warm anyway.

  “Okay,” he said. “So happens I have the weekend off.”

  “I know.” She smiled.

  Jack smiled back. “You know? You already checked my schedule?”

  “Uh-huh. Am I a bad girl?” She pouted, then smiled.

  “I promise to make it all up to you,” she said. “Really.” She flipped her glasses down over her eyes. “Almost forgot,” she said. “What’s your address?” He wrote it down on a bar business card, and she put it in her leather bag.

  “Good. Be ready around seven. I’ll have the car pick you up then.”

  “The car?” Jack said.

  “The limo,” she said. “I think I see your problem already, Jack. You don’t have enough fun. But we’re going to fix that. I promise.”

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and he felt something inside of him stir, something he hadn’t expected. He had wanted her at first sight, no man in his right mind wouldn’t, but there was something else here, something both bold and appealingly shy in that kiss, and afterward, when he looked at her face, he saw the fear again—fear, and a sweet vulnerability.

  It was almost as though she was begging him to come, that underneath all the actressy bravado and sexual joking she was saying, “You’ve got to come. I can’t stand being alone with him.”

  And then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, and she was smiling at him brazenly, all fresh confidence.

  “See you soon, Jack. You won’t be sorry.”

  She turned and walked out then, and when she was gone, he sat down heavily on a stool behind the bar and felt like all the light had been sucked out of the room.

  He should feel great, he knew it. It was working, working beautifully. They had swallowed the bait whole. But he felt something else. Was it something about her? He wasn’t sure, but something made him grind his teeth, want to take a drink at lunch—or maybe two.

  Chapter 6

  Brandau stood on top of a stack of cargo containers a mile away from the San Pedro docks. He looked through his Nikon 10×50 binoculars, at Pier 23, which was over a mile away. This was the latest spot where drug smuggling activity had been spotted, and according to his snitches, it might be the rendezvous point for Wingate’s big deal. It was Brandau’s job to see if any of Wingate’s crew was setting things up.

  In truth, though, his mind was elsewhere. Agent Brandau was thinking of lunch. Maybe he’d make it a grilled chicken Caesar at Louise’s, or he’d cruise out to the Valley for sushi at Nozawa, which was too damned expensive but the best in the world. What the hell, he was forty-two years old, and he didn’t spend his money on anything else. Besides, his new girlfriend, Suzie, wasn’t poor. She came from a well-to-do Hong Kong family.

  Man, he was hungry right now.

  In fact, he was hungry all the time. After a lifetime of starving himself, trying to be fit, running five miles a day, there had been a subtle change in his psyche, which he didn’t fully understand, though he thought that maybe it had something to do with going to the shrink after his marriage had broken up.

  Thank God, he had gone to Dr. Terri Bascomb. It wasn’t his idea really, but Suzie Chow’s. Actually he had fought tooth and nail against going to any “goddamned shrink.” The truth was that if Suzie hadn’t threatened to leave him, he might not have ever made the move.

  He might have gone right on drinking and staying up late and making weird calls to his ex-wife, calls from pay phones where he just held the receiver in his hand like a ghoul from a horror movie. Held it and listened to her voice, saying:

  “Hello, hello. Who is this? Hello. Is this you, Richard, you total asshole? Well, I’ll be calling my lawyer tomorrow, Richard. I’ll be calling the goddamned bureau tomorrow and talking to Zampas, I’ll be talking to a lot of people, but I won’t be talking to you, shithead!”

  And then she would slam down the phone, and Brandau would start giggling, like some kind of fucking weirdo … and he realized fairly soon that if he didn’t get help, he would blow his brains out. It was that simple.

  Which was where his shrink came in—black-haired, thick-lipped, sexy, charismatic Dr. Terri Bascomb, who taught him a whole other way to be, for godsake.

  Brandau had been floored by his therapist. He was such an old-school guy that he’d been afraid that she’d come down on him, like some Sunday school teacher, showing him what a jerk he’d been in his marriage.

  But she’d been beautiful. She’d given him a completely new perspective on his life. It was really wonderful, amazing. For the first time he realized he hadn’t taken care of himself, that he’d spent too much time trying to please others. It had started with his own parents, who were always at each other’s throats, forcing him to play referee, and it had gone on in his relationships with guys at the frat house at UCLA and right on up into the Agency and his marriage.

  Brandau had always hated it when celebrities got on some talk show and practically foamed at the mouth as they told how therapy had saved their lives, but now he understood their almost religious enthusiasm.

  Because Dr. Terri had made him understand everything in a whole new way, she made him feel happy about who he was, about his potential. Let the other cops laugh when he waxed a little New Age at the Agency gym. To hell with them, they didn’t understand; they were all mired in the old cop “drink and hate the citizens” death trip.

  The bottom line was, he was entitled to good things and to happiness, and now he had things going his way.

  He had Suzie and he had power in the Agency and a good future, and he was really stopping to smell the roses. He even let himself get a few pounds on him, eating out occasionally.

  Of course, he didn’t want to become a fat slob, but why become a nut about that? To hell with the chicken Caesar, what he really wanted today was a fat steak.

  After he got done with his surveillance, he’d head for the Palm, eat a steak and onion rings, have a cold brew. Maybe he’d even run into Parker Morton, the movie director whom he’d recently met through Suzie at Babe N Rickey’s blues club. Parker said he ate lunch there and he might want Brandau to “consult” on a movie. Beautiful. One more example of good things happening once you empower yourself.

  He put the binoculars away and laughed to himself.

  Nothing happening here, time for lunch.

  He climbed down the side of the cargo containers, walked across the macadam to his car. He felt the salt air from the ocean and took a deep breath.

  Life was beautiful. Really.

  Brandau got in, dropped his binocs on the seat, and drove away.

  A half mile away from him, a man dressed as a dock worker, in overalls and a baggy old brown sweater, put away his binoculars and got into his car as well. Agent Brandau had headed toward the 405, and in a second the man would be right behind.

  Chapter 7

  Jack Walker lived in the Chateau des Roses, in the 1920s a fantastic hotel, but now a crumbling California Gothic in the violent crime and smack-dealing district at Franklin and Cherokee, just up the hill from Musso and Frank’s Restaurant on the tawdriest stretch of Hollywood Boulevard. Jack had lived in the hulking Chateau for ten months now, and each time he paid his rent check to his astrologer landlord, a black Jamaican named Dorian “Toots” Riley, he swore that this would be the last month he would spend there. But the rail-thin Rastaman would only run his long, elegant fingers through his matted dreadlocks and then his little goatee.

  “I see you here, mon. I see you here for a long, long time.”

  “How long?” Jack had said one time, smiling but feeling a small panic inside.

  Riley had turned and shuffled across the bright blue terrazzo tile in the Chateau’s grand old lobby, saying nothing more but laughing to himself.

  “Very long, mon.”

  “Come on, Mr. Fortune,” Jack said, trying for a light
tone. “Tell me how long.”

  “Until the emperor himself comes back to retake the throne,” Riley said, smiling as he shut the big wooden door to his apartment. “Until the Lion of Judah roars again!”

  “But the emperor is dead,” Jack said.

  “Don’t sweat the small stuff, mon,” Riley said. Then with a whiff of sinsemilla smoke and the craggy, visionary sounds of Bob Marley, Toots was gone.

  After that exchange, Jack didn’t ask him anymore. Riley was a little mad, though he had a steady clientele who came either to have their charts read or to buy dope, probably both. The truth was that Jack should have busted him, but he didn’t bother with small stuff. Besides, he liked Riley, liked knowing that there was a party going on in his landlord’s apartment, anytime, night or day. It was good that someone on the screwed-up planet was still having fun.

  Still, he knew that there were guys at the Agency who thought it was highly questionable that he lived where he did, in bad old Hollywood, among the very perps and weirdos that he was sworn to bust. Most of the guys in the DEA lived in the Valley or Pasadena; a few of the Latin guys, in Silverlake; but nobody else lived in Hollyweird. Jack knew that it made him a little suspect among the others and a lot suspect to Michaels, who thought he was some kind of wild man.

  Which was the way Jack liked to be seen. Everyone cuts a wild man more slack.

  Besides, before he had moved to the Chateau, Jack had tried the straight life. For two years he had lived with a makeup artist named Elaine Swanson, a beautiful, classic blue-eyed blonde from Iowa. During the first six months of their relationship, Jack had marveled at Elaine’s stability, enjoyed meeting her showbiz friends, actors, directors, and writers.

  But he’d grown tired of both Elaine and her scene within a year. He became bored with all the hysteria her friends felt about their movie and television projects, their endless nattering about who made what deal, who was lying to whom, eating with whom, sleeping with whom, as if all of it was of earthshaking importance. For Elaine, the show business world had endless fascination. She saw herself as someone who had transcended her Midwestern roots and who was on her way to the top. To Jack, show business was playacting. He found it especially irritating when Elaine talked about how he would be sure to like a certain movie because the writing or acting was “on the edge.” Inevitably, this would be some cop drama or action-adventure movie that was witless idiocy from start to finish. When he’d told her that, she’d accused him of having contempt for anything that wasn’t in his world. Then she’d nailed him with her best shot.