“Great. I’ll see you then. Thanks, Dad.”
“What are you thanking me for?”
“For … I don’t know. For making the time for me, I guess.”
“You don’t need to thank me for that. Four o’clock. Don’t be late. I’ll need time after to get ready for my shikse.”
“I’ll be on the dot.”
“Good. Good-bye, son.”
“Good-bye, father.”
I put down the phone, called Gina, got the machine. Decided not to try the cell. If she was in the middle of dropping Aricela off with the authorities, I wanted nothing to do with it.
So Sad About Us
I had some time to kill before I was due at my father’s. I drove up to Amoeba, found a spot down the street, and fed the meter some change. I was about to go in when my eyes fell on a sign on one of the office buildings across Sunset. There was something I had to do. It was as good a time as any.
Somebody probably thought the lobby looked classy, but mostly what it was was overdesigned. Something was wrong with the fake waterfall, unless a puny dribble was part of the design. There were a couple of swoopy metal sculptures lying around.
A guard accosted me and asked who I wanted to see. I told her. She said that without an appointment I wasn’t liable to get in. I gave her my name and said to call up. She did, looked surprised, had me sign a book, and gave me a pass. I took an elevator up to seventeen. The lobby it dumped me into had lots of wood and leather and gold records on the walls. I went to the desk. A pretty young man dressed all in black sat there. He had one of those tiny earphone-microphones on. He held up a finger, told whoever was on the other end not to get their panties in a twist, mashed a button on the phone, and looked up at me.
“Joe Portugal,” I said. “To see Ms. Chapman.”
“She’s expecting you.”
He pressed another button and announced my arrival. He nodded, clicked off, told me she’d be out in a few minutes. I sat on a leather loveseat and leafed through a copy of Billboard. I found the charts and counted how many of the top hundred albums were by artists whose work I was familiar with. I came up with eight, and two of those were dead.
Bonnie came out, dressed in dark green and looking fabulous. We exchanged air kisses and she led me to her office. It was bigger than anyone needs. A window stretched the width of the far wall, unveiling the spread of Los Angeles below. I walked to it and took in the view. I probably could have seen Leland Way if I knew where to look.
There were more gold records, along with photos of people I’d heard of and people I hadn’t. A couple of framed certificates, a picture of Darren and his band, another of Bonnie kneeling by Papa Cass or another basset hound and rubbing its ears.
I pointed at Darren’s band shot. “What were they called?”
“Changing Its Spots.” She turned toward the bar. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I had a bottle of Pellegrino from the minifridge. We sat on the leather sofa and chitchatted. I asked about Darren’s band again.
“Why are you so interested?” she said.
I shrugged. “Just making conversation.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I guess you’re right.” I sipped my pricey water. “It’s just that, out of all the weirdness since we all got reacquainted, I think you having a grown son is the hardest to accept.”
“I see.” She got up and went to a dark wood entertainment unit. She pulled out a drawer at the bottom, grabbed a CD, brought it back. “Here.”
I took a look. The cover showed a photo of a giraffe with its legs spread wide apart, drinking from a water hole. I pried the case open, took out the booklet, leafed through. Four guys, four haircuts. One shaved head, one longhair, a black guy in dreads, and a fairly shaggy Darren.
“Take it home, give it a listen,” she said.
“I will. Is Doldrum Records a branch of Hysteria?”
“It’s not a branch of anything. They made the CD themselves and thought it would be more impressive if it looked like it came from a real company.”
“Why isn’t he on your label?”
“Two reasons. First, the old bit about wanting to get where you get by your own efforts. First time I came to see them he told me he didn’t want any favors.”
“Worked out well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m guessing the second reason is they weren’t good enough for you to want to record them.”
“How’d you know?”
“Your reaction the other night, when I asked how good he was.”
She watched my eyes. “You didn’t come here to talk about Darren.”
“No. I got distracted. Or I was stalling.”
“So why did you?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“I thought so.”
Why was I so damned nervous? I caught her scent. That didn’t help. “Do you know how many times I’ve kicked myself for turning you down?”
“How many?”
“Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.”
“That’s very sweet, Joe.”
“It’s the truth.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“That you’ve regretted it too.”
“I’ve regretted it too.”
“Now that sounds sincere.”
“It is.” She smiled, touched a hand to my face. “It is. Trust me.”
I looked away. Her fingers slipped off. I turned back to her and took her hand. “This is the part where, in the movies, someone always says, ‘It’s not too late.’“
“This isn’t the movies.”
“No,” I said. “And I’m with Gina.”
“Lucky girl.” She glanced down at our hands, decided they were okay where they were. “That’s why you came here today? To tell me that?”
“It had to be said, if we’re going to work together. I just felt the need.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
“Me too,” I said.
A Quick One, While He’s Away
I rang my father’s doorbell at twenty seconds to four. Rang it again at ten seconds after. I heard someone opening the little brass door that covered the peephole, saw Leonard looking out. I don’t know why he bothered. He was legally blind.
“Joseph?”
“It’s me.”
Now I knew two people named Leonard. This one and Squig, formerly Lenny, Jones. I filed this piece of useless information away with the rest of the dross.
He let me in, we told each other we were fine, and he said my father was out back. I stopped in the kitchen to give Catherine’s cheek a kiss. She said I looked well and asked about Gina. I said she was fine. She asked when we were getting married. I said it wouldn’t be anytime soon. She smiled like she knew better and went back to her chicken breasts.
I stuck my head out the back door. “Dad?”
He was over in the corner, on his knees, pulling weeds from a patch of his beloved posies. They were really impatiens, but he called anything that flowered and died the same year a posy. He looked up at me, glanced at his watch, said, “You’re late.”
“I rang the doorbell before four.”
“I heard. I was just breaking your balls.”
“I need to make a couple of quick phone calls before we talk.”
“Go. Just remember I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Your hot date.”
“You got it, kid.”
I checked my machine first. Nothing but a guy who just happened to be in my neighborhood and was dying to install Dish Network at my house. I erased him, hung up, called Gina. She picked up on the first ring. “Yes?” I heard the TV in the background.
“Is that any way to answer the phone?”
“Oh, it’s you. I’ve had three telemarketers in the half hour we’ve been home. Two long distances and a satellite system.”
“The satellite one just happened to be in your neighborhood, right?”
“Right.�
�
“You said ‘we’ve.’“
“I did?”
“So how’s our little girl?”
The TV noise faded as she took the portable into another room. “She’s fine.”
“Did you call the Family Services people?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You know how I hate voice mail systems.”
“I’m the technophobe here, not you.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You didn’t try very hard, did you?”
“No.”
“Gi. We can’t just hold onto this kid like she’s a lost kitten or something.”
“I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I asked her about her parents again. She swore they were dead.”
“Some must be guardianing her.”
“One more night.”
“No.”
“Come on. It’s after four now. Even if I got through, they wouldn’t be able to do anything until tomorrow.”
“I don’t think these people stick to nine-to-five.”
“One more night.”
“I just don’t—”
“Joseph!” It was my father, standing just inside the back door, with his lower lip puffed out. I held up a finger. He went back out.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “We’ll talk about this some more.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Very funny. Bye.”
“Bye.”
When I went out my father was sitting at the table. A fancy wood thing Gina’d picked up for a song. I took a chair and moved closer to him.
“Something going on with your girlfriend?” he said.
“You could say that.”
“What?”
“Long story, Dad. And since you don’t have a lot of time, one I’m not going to tell now.”
“Whatever you say. So. What do you want from me?”
“It’s about the old days.”
“Which old days?”
“The old days before you went to prison. And while you were there.”
“You know I don’t like to talk about those days.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because it’s important.”
He looked at the back of his hand. He used a fingernail on the other one to remove the soil from under a nail on the first. Now the dirt was under the new nail. He made a face and looked up at me.
“This girl,” he said. “The one I have the date with.”
“I’d love to hear about her, Dad, but does it have anything to do with—”
He held up a hand—the one that now had the dirty fingernail—and I shut up.
“I’ve been seeing her for a while.”
“Define ‘a while.’“
“Two months. More, maybe.”
“I had no idea.”
He tilted his head toward the house. “Those two know. You can’t hide anything from them. But I haven’t said anything to anyone else.”
“You didn’t want to have to explain if things went wrong.”
He looked astounded that I was capable of such insight. “You got it.”
“And this is leading where?”
He leaned forward, put a hand on mine, said, “I told her.”
“Told her what?”
“About jail and everything.”
“And?”
“She said it doesn’t mean anything. Water under the dam.”
“Over the dam.”
“Over, under, what’s the difference?”
“How much did you tell her?”
“Everything. I didn’t just tell her about being a hoodlum and going to jail. I discussed it.”
“I’m not getting you.”
“I talked like I would talk to you about going to shul last Saturday. Like it’s something in my life that happened just like anything else in my life that happened.”
“That’s good, Dad.”
“I haven’t said anything to anyone about this for all these years because I thought it wasn’t fit conversation. Even with my son.”
“And now you do.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve had an epiphany.”
“A what?”
“A moment of enlightenment.”
“Now you’re a Hindu.”
He still had his hand on mine. He saw it there, reclaimed it, leaned back in his chair. “So what do you want to talk about?”
“Herb Wozniak.”
A smile grew. He nodded slowly, said, “Herb. I haven’t seen him since—”
“Jail?”
“I was going to say, since January.”
“You still know him?”
“I don’t see him much. But I saw him in January. At the dry cleaners. I was picking up, he was bringing in.” He turned and looked in the house through a window. There was a cuckoo clock in there. “Getting later,” he said.
“Remember your epiphany. Talk to me.”
He looked at me again, smiled, said, “This has to do with all the shooting.”
“What shooting?”
“Don’t fuck around with your father.”
It shut me up. He didn’t use the word often.
“I saw it on the television,” he said.
“I know. We discussed this. The story about Squig getting shot.”
“And the other. This business with the Volkswagen.”
“What makes you think I was—”
“I saw your truck. I saw Robbie Wozniak.”
He pulled a half-smoked cigar and a disposable lighter from his shirt pocket. He flicked on the flame and held it to the cigar, which he effortlessly rolled between his fingers to get an even burn. When I was a kid, I loved to watch that. It was such a grown-up-man thing. I knew when I was able to do that, I’d have made it out of childhood. But the only time I ever tried a cigar, I ended up puking my guts out.
He got the stogie lit, took it out of his mouth, regarded the end with approval. “Herb Wozniak and me,” he said, “we didn’t travel in the same circles a lot. He had his guys and I had mine. But once in a while we got together for something. A big job, needed more men. He was a hell of a guy. You could count on him. And strong like a bull.”
“Was he with you the night you got busted?”
“No. He was up in Fresno. There was a truckload of girdles.”
“Girdles.”
“There was big money in girdles those days. Herb wanted me to go, but I already had the thing with my regular crew.” He drew on the cigar and blew a smoke ring. Another man thing I loved when I was a kid. “Sometimes I wish I would have gone with him that night. Everything would have been different.”
“Water under the dam.”
He looked at me, frowned, went on. “Anyway, I got sent up for killing that guy—”
“Which I’m still not convinced you did, by the way—”
He dismissed me with a wave of the hand. “I was up there six months, and Herb showed up. He picked the wrong truck too. We started palling around together up there, him and me, a lot closer than we were on the outside. We talked about a lot of things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Some of the old guys, the real gangsters from the thirties and the forties. And what we were going to do when we got out. And our families.” A toke on the cigar. “How much we missed them, and how meshugga we were for getting in a line of work that put us away from them for so long.” He stared at the cigar, stubbed it out, put it back in his pocket. He never smoked them for long. “One thing we talked about was our boys.”
“I had no idea.”
“There are a lot of things you have no idea about. Your mother, may she rest in peace, and Herb’s wife Selma, we would hear about you from them. In letters mostly, because it was hard for them to visit.” He shook his head. “I thought it was bad with you, all the trouble you were getting in, but then I heard the kinds of things Robbie did. I was getti
ng off lucky. One day he broke the camel’s back and that was that.”
I knew about the camel. Robbie and some biker friends had a party one day when his mother was at work. One of the bikers ODed.
“For three months,” my father said, “Herb couldn’t think about anything but Robbie. Wondering where he was, and blaming himself for what happened. He was like a lunatic. Then Selma came one visiting day. She said she found Robbie. He was in a place up in the Hills, a place for problem kids like him. Selma was crazy happy because the boy was getting straightened out. Mostly I think she was happy to know he was all right and that she wasn’t the one who had to deal with him.”
“Is this leading where I think it’s leading?”
He looked in at the clock again. Then back to me. “I can be a little late. She’s a good woman.”
“I’ll have to meet her.”
“Soon. We’ll go on a double date. Where was I?”
“Selma telling Herb about Robbie getting his act together at Mark and Ginger’s. I assume it’s Mark and Ginger’s we’re talking about.”
He neither confirmed nor denied it. “Herb still had some friends around here, a couple of cops included, and they checked the place out and found out it was legit. So we made arrangements.”
“What kind of arrangements?”
“You’re a smart boy. You figure it out.”
“You’re saying you’re responsible for me ending up at Mark and Ginger’s.”
He did the poochy-lip thing, and I thought I’d totally misjudged where this was going and he was about to chastise me for being such an idiot. Then he said, “Not just me. Your mother too.”
“Mom? I don’t get it.”
“She talked to your friends. She found out where you liked to go.”
“My friends? My friends told my mother about me?”
“They were worried about you too.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t an accident that Mark found me at Ben Frank’s that day.”
He nodded. “Your mother came home, found you took your things, she knew what to do. Called the number we got from Herb and Selma. We were lucky. We got to this Mark right away. He looked at his list. Ben Frank’s was at the top.” He flashed a smile. “I used to like Ben Frank’s a hell of a lot too. It’s gone now, did you know that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re not saying anything.”
One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Page 15
