Chinatown Angel

by A. E. Roman

  “You were there?” I said.

  “No memory,” Albert said, knocking on his head. “Like some kind of post-traumatic stress. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

  Then he looked sad and stared at Ernest Borgnine on the TV again. “He was even uglier than me, and he made it.”

  Tears welled up in Albert’s eyes.

  “Robert Rodriguez. Quentin Tarantino. John Singleton. Steven Soderbergh. David Lynch. Cronenberg. The Coen Brothers. Spike Lee. Screw them all. Help me, Chico. Just follow Samuel Rivera. Help me.”

  I nodded. On the outside. On the inside, I thought about Pilar and that last kiss we never had.

  I looked back at the small black Uzi again and saw that there was a quote taped to the side of the machine gun: “Believe! Have faith! Make film! Kill if you have to!”

  Like I said, Albert was a complicated and interesting cat. Looking at that busted Uzi on the wall, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much more interesting he could get.

  NINE

  The newswoman on the giant TV said that it now took over one hundred million dollars to run for president in the United States. Atlas told me that he thought about running for president. He also told me that he thought about winning an Academy Award or maybe producing pornography. He had set aside the photos of the pretty actresses with big boobs who auditioned for his low-budget movie Doomsday, just in case the porno thing came to fruition. He considered all of these things, winning an Academy Award, running for president, and making porno with equal seriousness.

  “Samuel Rivera,” I said, “has a mistress. More than one, but no sign of Tiffany.”

  Loaded with countless cigarettes and coffee and a little sleep, I was standing next to Kirk Atlas, winter sun beating at the tall window of his luxurious penthouse apartment in SoHo, looking out at the Hudson.

  “What do you want to do?” said Atlas.

  “I’d like to take a look at Tiffany’s apartment for one,” I said. “I’d also like to get in closer to Samuel, see where that leads.”

  “Done,” said Atlas. “Olga’s staying at my mother’s, she’ll never have to know. And fuck Albert. You’re the detective. I’ll get the keys. My family owns the building. I’ll think about the Samuel thing.”

  “Do you know a guy named Irving?” I asked, feeling lucky.

  “Irving?” said Atlas. “He doesn’t know anything. I already asked him.”

  “Mind if I ask him?” I said.

  “Dude,” said Atlas, “don’t waste my money.”

  No luck. Don’t push it, Santana.

  I had spent endless hours, on different occasions, in restaurants, spas, and private clubs confirming the fact that Samuel Rivera was not in contact with his daughter Tiffany. And I paid a hundred dollars at one particular Midtown hotel to take a gander at the computers. Samuel Rivera checked in once a month with a different woman. Not his wife. Not Tiffany.

  I had even gone to Julliard, located and questioned some of Tiffany’s classmates and music teachers. I told them I was a musician, a saxophonist, and that I had a gig at the Knitting Factory downtown and needed a violinist for a mixed media thing based on the music in the movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. (Which was actually one of the many “cultural events” Ramona had dragged me to see last year.) Nothing. Tiffany Rivera had taken a leave of absence from Julliard. Her last known address was the Arcadia West where she’d lived with her sister, Olga.

  Meanwhile, Pilar’s case had been deemed a suicide and Kelly called back from St. James and Company to say she had conducted criminal history checks on my people. Except for disorderly conduct charges against Pilar Menendez, during an arrest at a protest march for immigration rights, they were all clean.

  “Awful what happened to Pilar,” I said.

  “I told her,” said Atlas, “stop going on that roof when you lock yourself out. Just call the landlord. She wouldn’t listen.”

  “Albert thinks she killed herself.”

  “That’s what the police think, too,” said Atlas. “I think she fell. I’m gonna have her body flown back to Brazil after the funeral.”

  Kirk Atlas was curiously satisfied that his servant and lover had met with an unfortunate accident. Open and shut.

  “Yeah,” said Atlas. “I told the cops she probably went out—” Atlas paused. “After you left.”

  He gave me a wink and a congratulatory slap on the shoulder as if to say boys will be boys and continued, “Maybe Pilar went out in search of dog food for the Chihuahua. She stupidly forgot her keys, and locked herself out because of the automatic lock on her door. She did it at least once a week. She went out on the roof to make her way down through the fire escape like she always did and slipped somehow and fell.”

  Yeah, and the Pope celebrates Kwanza.

  I watched his face for sadness. Nothing. Atlas smirked at me. It was the smirk of a kid used to getting his way, the smirk of a bully. But would he hurt Pilar Menendez? Would he kill Pilar if she tried to block his search for his cousin Tiffany?

  I spent years at St. Mary’s Home for Boys with kids just like Atlas. I had fought boys and half-grown men with that same smirk. I had loosened their teeth and blackened their eyes, almost killed one once when I was fourteen. I wanted to crack that smirk off his face. But I remembered the short stack of thousand-dollar bills in my basement studio and my anger went soft. Listen, I’m not rich. I’m poor, been poor all my life. Who was I to sniff at twenty-five thousand dollars? A poor man can’t afford to swim in booze and women and greasy food, cigarettes, and self-pity forever, no matter how big a demon he’s trying to drown. Believe me, I tried. I’d let Albert and Kirk Atlas think they were calling the shots, for the sake of gathering information, for Pilar. I knew this in my gut, it was no suicide, it was no accident. I didn’t care what Albert or Atlas or the police said. The way Pilar called out to me before she fell says she didn’t jump. “Chico!”

  “I don’t mean to rush you,” I said, checking my watch. “But I got things to see and people to do. Can I have the dog?”

  I never thought I’d ever be rescuing Pilar Menendez’s Chihuahua, but there I was. When Atlas reported that he was taking Pilar’s dog to the ASPCA in the morning and there was a chance that they could put it to sleep, taking it home until I could find somebody to adopt it was the least I could do.

  “Take it easy,” said Atlas. “You’ll get the dog. Hang out a bit. You just got here.”

  Kirk Atlas, wearing a creamy white terry-cloth robe that looked soft as pudding, shook his head and said, “You have no idea, Chico. How hard my life is. Money, money, money. Even in my sleep.”

  Poor, rich Kirk Atlas. All that money. Somebody get me my saxophone.

  Atlas checked his reflection in the tall window.

  “Don’t envy me, Chico, that’s all I’m saying. Thank God you’re poor.”

  “Gracias a Dios,” I said. “Where is the dog, anyway?”

  He ignored my question. “You don’t know the kinds of trouble I have.”

  I looked around the penthouse with its freshly polished floors, oak bar, and leather sofas. A swollen leather armchair sat on Persian rugs in front of a healthy collection of guns in a glass case. There was a drafting desk, a chair beside a new computer, tripods, microphones, an enormous DVD collection, and a digital video camera worth over ninety thousand dollars (according to Atlas) in a corner of the cavernous living room. Over the computer was a makeshift sign.

  BIG BOOT PRODUCTIONS

  I looked back at Atlas and said, “I can only imagine your troubles.”

  He nodded.

  “Fuck it!” said Atlas. “You gotta milk this world. And you gotta be willing to pay the price for the milk, right?”

  Atlas locked those cold green eyes on my face, and said, “I’m just like you, Chico. Man of action. I might even make a good P.I. myself. What do you think? I mean, from what you know about me so far?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  Atlas beamed at me l
ike I’d just handed him an award. Kirk Atlas. Short but handsome, prematurely balding maybe, prematurely rich, in need of love and acceptance.

  I checked my watch again. “I should get going.”

  “Take a look at this first,” Atlas said and handed me his film script.

  I took the fat manuscript, 120 white pages bound in a black hardcover with a white label:

  DOOMSDAY

  Story and Screenplay by Kirk Atlas

  I thumbed through it. “You wrote this?”

  “Sure. I bought a book.”

  “A book?”

  “Yeah. I bought a book. I sat up one night and finished the script.”

  “In one night?”

  “I can do anything,” Atlas said.

  I checked my watch again. “I really should get going.”

  “Read the screenplay.”

  Pilar was dead and Kirk Atlas wanted to talk about screenplays.

  “You gotta read it,” he said. Then he proceeded to tell me the story himself. “Our hero, me, lands on an abandoned planet, but little does he know, there are two other inhabitants of the planet. A woman and a creature, part male, part snake. The creature steals the hero’s alien woman for procreation purposes. Hero must fight to get his alien woman back and survive attacks by the creature. The fate of a new world depends on which of the two get the chick.”

  I thumbed through the screenplay.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s interesting,” I said. “I guess. I’m just a simple private investigator.”

  I thumbed through the screenplay some more. Atlas had written his script, added plenty of make-out scenes with BEAUTIFUL ALIEN WOMAN and included his character, HERO SCIENTIST, on every page.

  “Also,” Atlas said, “I’m playing the Hero Scientist and the Creature.”

  Naturally.

  I wanted to open the window and toss the script into the Hudson or force-feed Atlas the pages but he’d probably just say that it tasted good but needed a little more Kirk Atlas.

  “Yeah,” Atlas said. “Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness played multiple roles all the time. Look at Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. I’m the American dream, baby.”

  I stared at the creature.

  Atlas snatched up an Iron Man DVD. “A film based on a comic book, a kid’s story made over a billion dollars worldwide. I told Albert let’s stop screwing around here. No more idealistic speeches. Let’s make a movie. Let’s get rich.”

  “You’re already rich,” I said.

  “I’m not rich,” Atlas said. “Four hundred billion dollars. That’s rich.”

  Atlas went into a drawer and came out with some bills. He counted them and placed them on the drafting table. Two thousand dollars.

  I looked at the bills. I picked them up. He smiled. “For your troubles.”

  I turned and saw a girl who looked a lot like Pilar Menendez, only younger, entering now, in a tight white uniform, carrying a silver tray of bacon, eggs, and sausage.

  Atlas sat down like a king on a red leather sofa.

  “Renata?” moaned Atlas. “Headache.”

  I checked my watch and cleared my throat. Atlas looked up at Renata and said, “Chico’s impatient. He has to go get his legs waxed. Bring it.”

  She put the tray down on his lap and exited again.

  “Renata, Renata, Renata,” Atlas chanted. “Shameless Renata of Brasilia.”

  He scooped up a forkful of eggs and shoved them into his mouth.

  “You know what I love about her?”

  “Personality?” I said.

  “No,” Atlas laughed. “There’s something brutal in her touch, something like revenge. And I love it, I love my new punishment.”

  “Way too much information.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still a Catholic?” Atlas said.

  “No. But I try to be decent whenever I can squeeze it in. Also, I have a mean wafer habit but that’s another story.”

  “I borrowed her from my mother the morning when Pilar didn’t show up. It’s like I hit the jackpot. Three times before nine A.M. Apparently, Renata needs it nonstop.”

  Kirk Atlas was in lust and he felt the need to share this with me.

  “Must be nice for you,” I said.

  Pilar Menendez was freshly dead and Atlas had already replaced her. Ah, loyalty. Atlas stood up on the couch and studied himself in the living room mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He admired his shaved head, his short but muscular physique.

  “The low-carb, high-protein diet is working,” he said. “The body is good, don’t you think?”

  Before I could say anything Atlas hit the wood floor, and did twenty quick push-ups.

  The phone rang. Atlas ran to it and pressed speaker phone.

  “Yo!”

  A frail girlish voice said, “Why do you answer like that? Did you get the invitations for Pilar’s funeral?”

  “I’m having an important meeting with my agent, Ma.” Atlas winked at me. “I got the funeral invitations. They’re beautiful. Let me call you back.”

  “You always say that and you never do,” Atlas’s mother complained.

  “Don’t start.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Hanging up now, Ma.” Atlas pressed a button and the line went dead.

  Then I heard a small dog barking and looked up and saw Renata enter with two pills, bottled water, and Pilar Menendez’s Chihuahua, Baby.

  “Thank you, Pilar,” said Atlas, taking the pills. “I mean, Renata.”

  Renata gave Atlas an angry look and handed me the dog’s leash and stormed out.

  “Thanks for taking Pilar’s mutt,” said Atlas. “I can’t. Condo rules. You understand.”

  I looked down at the Chihuahua. He looked up at me, shivering the way they do and barking. That’s when I spotted a framed photo of Tiffany Rivera on a short table. She was wearing a fancy pink dress and stomping her black combat boots while confidently playing a violin in the living room of some ritzy apartment. A short man with a big belly, in an expensive double-breasted black suit, no necktie, black hair, fifties, husky, stood to her left, smiling proudly.

  “Who’s the guy in the photo with Tiffany?” I asked and pointed.

  “My uncle Benjamin,” said Atlas.

  Then his face lit up. “Dude, I just got a more brilliant idea. You want to get in close to my uncle Samuel? I’ll get you in close.”

  “How close?”

  “As close as possible without your cover being blown.”

  “What cover?”

  “Deep cover,” said Atlas. “You can go undercover, dude. I can get you a job.”

  “What kinda job?”

  “What do you know about international finance?”

  “Just what I learned on Wall Street.”

  “The stock exchange?”

  “The movie,” I said. “Oliver Stone.”

  Kirk Atlas pulled a cigar from his big pocket, lit it, and puffed thoughtfully, “How do you feel about food service?”

  “Well, I like the food part. Not so sure about the service. Why?”

  “There’s a position open in the executive dining room at HMD.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I go there for free lunch when I’m in the city,” said Atlas. “I was there when the last waiter quit to go back home to El Salvador. I suspect you’d be a good waiter, Chico.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  TEN

  Mimi had found the Greek. It was night and we were sitting in Mimi’s Cuchifrito sipping her homemade coquito. I was still wearing a tuxedo, not because I liked to play dress up, but because I had spent all day posing as an executive dining room waiter at HMD Financial where Samuel Rivera worked.

  HMD Financial had its headquarters on 43rd Street. It was the banking arm of Hannibal International Meat and Dairy, which had farms in Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Florida. There were three Rivera brothers: Hannibal Rivera III, Samu
el Rivera, and Benjamin Rivera. Samuel Rivera was co-owner of the whole operation and vice president at HMD. His older brother, Hannibal, was the president. The middle brother, Benjamin, was the wild one, slumming in the sixties, hooked on fast girls and strong drugs. Benjamin Rivera overdosed a couple of months back. Overdosed on heroin. It happens.

  Anyway, I loved coquito. The rum and sweet milk never failed to take me back to those days on Brook when I would sneak sips from unguarded plastic cups at Mom and Pop’s regular Friday night house parties, where the local folks, their friends, folks who worked in the factories and made the Bronx run, danced as if today was all that existed, as if today was nothing but sweetness. It was a time after the Bronx stopped burning, before the factories shut down, before all the work got sent overseas, before crack cocaine, before my father died. It was one of the best times I’ve known.

  “His name is George,” said Yolanda. Yolanda was the nanny in Astoria who lived over La Valencia Bakery. She sat on a stool on my right in large gold hoop earrings. She was about twenty-six. Dominican. Her face was dark like a soft brown leaf. Her hair was short and she had no trouble filling out her tight blue jeans and tight gold-colored blouse. No trouble at all. But I wasn’t looking for any trouble. I needed a name.

  “George Theodorus,” said Yolanda. “He owns the Theodorus Taverna on Broadway and Thirty-first Street. He is a loco who spends a lot of time with neighborhood borachos and teenagers talking about nothing.”

  “I met George the night Pilar died,” I said. “He was a little tipsy. And carrying a jug of ouzo.”

  “Sí!” said Yolanda, crossing her legs and adjusting the strap on one of her gold heels. “That is George. Always with his ouzo.”

  “How well did you know Pilar?” I asked.

  “I don’t know Pilar,” said Yolanda. “She knows a girl from Costa Rica,” said Mimi, seated on my left, “who knows a girl from Colombia who knows a girl from Brazil who knows Pilar.”

  “Of course,” I said, looking at Yolanda.

  “George,” said Yolanda, “is good friends with Pilar’s landlord. His name is Nikos.”