by Jeff Johnson
Foot traffic got thicker when I hit 21st, and I immediately found what I was looking for: umbrellas. Normally you didn’t see too many umbrellas in a place where it rains all the time. They break, people lose them, they only keep your head dry if there’s no wind, they poke other pedestrians and piss them off, et cetera. In short, they ultimately aren’t worth the effort, plus there were awnings everywhere. People mostly gave up on them after their first winter. But not in touristy northwest Portland.
I merged right into the medium-thick crowd of umbrella-toting walkers and visibility instantly dropped to ten feet. After a dozen yards or so, I paused under the awning of a sushi place and looked at the menu in the window, then ambled on to the convenience store next to it and went inside.
There were a few soggy people in line with chips and toilet paper and one guy with a six-pack of beer. I walked to the back and studied the beer selection through the glass. From there, I could keep an eye on the sidewalk, and selecting beer in a serious microbrew town could take some lengthy consideration.
Pressman blew by on the sidewalk with his head down, not really looking around. The dumb-ass didn’t even glance in my direction. I took out a six-pack of Full Sail and walked over into the generalized crap section of the store. Emergency raincoats, folded into tiny rectangles about the size of a pack of cigarettes, were ten dollars, which was wildly overpriced considering you could buy the exact same ones at the Dollar Store, but they came in multiple colors, including a glaring, warning buoy orange, which almost made up for it. I took an orange one and went up to the register. There was a hat display to stare at while you waited, all baseball caps with local slogans on them. I picked out a green-and-yellow one with a beaver. When I got to the front, the clerk rang me up without so much as a hello. As soon as he had scanned the hat I put it on and pulled the brim low.
“These come with hoods,” he said, holding up the raincoat packet.
“Lifelong beaver fan, what can I say. Bag for the beer?”
When we were done I tore the raincoat out and shook it open. There was no one waiting behind me, so the clerk just watched as I put it on and pulled the hood up.
“Those things never work twice,” he cautioned. The raincoat smelled like a Band-Aid.
Disguised as a distressed motorist with a sports fetish and beer-drinking plans, I went outside and merged with a group of assorted fanny-pack gawkers drifting toward Burnside. I kept my eyes on the ground like I was more interested in keeping the rain off my face, and I didn’t look up again until I’d reached Burnside. There, I had to pause as my protective cluster of pedestrians came to a collective halt. A few of them began angling their umbrellas this way and that to get a better look at each other. I knew there was a line a few blocks down to my left outside of a place called the Ringside, and I considered disappearing into the darkness of the old place as a fallback if detection appeared unavoidable. The walk sign went green and my group began to move. I stuck with them and politely worked my way closer to the newly emerging center. When we were across, I took a hard left toward downtown and picked up the pace.
At that point I was exposed. The rain was slacking off and foot traffic was light. The first bus stop was half a block down in front of a gas station, so I ducked down the side of the first business, which was some kind of yogurt place with completely empty wraparound covered seating. It was thankfully closed, but the tables and chairs were chained in place. I sat down a few tables in, gathered my billowing raincoat tight, and took my phone out. I could see a few blocks up Burnside through the glass, so I’d be able to spot the bus. Delia answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“22nd and Burnside. Dessel and his posse are out there somewhere, but they’re going to pick me up again any minute if I don’t get the fuck gone. When’s my bus coming?”
“I’m at Burnside and 6th and mine is at 12:11, so it should cross your stop in”—she checked the time on her cell phone—“less than two minutes.”
“Nigel and Mikey?”
“Nigel’s at the bridge a few blocks down from me, Mikey’s at the first stop on the other side. They just checked in.”
“OK.” I kept my head down. “Keep talking to me. It makes for good cover.” I cradled the phone under my chin and dug my cigarettes out and lit one.
“Well, chatwise, let’s see,” Delia began sweetly. “Hank has been so kind lately. He’s off the glue, you know. I did some sweet graffiti on the living room walls the other day and he relapsed. All of them did. It was cute, but I swear, give four punk boys spray paint and they all wind up in their underwear. One more mystery, but I’ve seen it before so it’s, like, universal. I’m having a really heavy period and my inner hippie is—”
“Delia!” I snapped. The bus was coming. “Get ready. I’ll be in the back. Beavers cap.”
“I love beavers! Did you—” I snapped my phone shut.
Burnside was a busy street. The bus paused to disgorge some people a few blocks up and was once again rumbling my way, but not very fast. Everyone was driving slow because of the slick streets and the high percentage of out-of-town drivers. My timing had to be perfect.
I waited until the bus was about five car lengths away from my stop. There was a restaurant delivery truck two cars in front of it, so right when it passed my yogurt place I stepped out and power walked alongside it, invisible to anyone across the street. When I got to the bus stop I tossed my cigarette and knelt to adjust my bootlaces, the bag with the beer on the wet pavement in front of me. From that low position, the passing cars hid me for the most part and there was no way the driver could miss me squatting at the stop in hazard orange. I flagged him anyway as he approached and he stopped. When the doors hissed open, I stepped in quickly with my bag. The bus lurched into motion.
“Just a sec,” I told the driver, grabbing the open seat by the door. “Gotta set this bag down to get at my change.”
He nodded without taking his eyes off the road. I pulled the raincoat off in one motion and stuffed it into the bag, slouched, and adjusted my beaver cap as I dug out a handful of quarters. Then I risked a peek outside. No one seemed to be scanning the sidewalks through the rain. No red Miata and no nearly invisible gray sedan. I glanced back at the rest of the bus. Two stoner kids listening to their headphones, but otherwise empty. I dumped the change in the terminal slot. The driver tore off my transfer and I took a seat in the second to last row. From there I ventured another peek out. Still clear. I slumped low, pulled the brim of my cap down, and pretended I was asleep.
Five stops later I heard the bus door hiss open and I didn’t even need to look up.
“Two bucks and change?” Delia complained. A wave of her newest custom perfume wafted over me, all the way at the back of the bus. She had perfected the essence of birthday cake. “That cuts into the whack doodle budget my horny stepdad worked out for me.”
The driver muttered something, and a moment later the seat rocked next to me. I sat up and returned Delia’s huge smile with a little less wattage.
“This is so cool,” she whispered. “I feel like a spy in a seventies porno movie. Can we strangle somebody?” She was wearing her huge, red-splattered motorcycle boots, pants that looked like they’d been made out of a motel shower curtain, three of Dildo’s Empire jackets, and a Burger King kid’s tee. Her hair was up in two rude little pigtails.
“Maybe later. You smell fuckin’ great.”
She wiggled her butt, lap dancing briefly. I got two beers out of my bag and passed her one. We popped the tops with our lighters together, the sound covered by simultaneous coughs.
“I’m almost positive they have no idea I’m on the bus,” I said. I slumped low and awkwardly drained half my beer.
“Those two baked little dudes got itty bitty boners when I walked past, so they can’t be five oh.” She patted my knee. “Very clever, Darby.”
I grunted and waited for the follow-up.
“Nigel,” she said brightly.
<
br /> The bus stopped and Nigel got on. He’d gone overboard on his disguise in the worst possible way. He was wearing a dark gray banker’s suit with a blue tie and a black overcoat, and he was carrying a briefcase. His short hair was slicked back to the skull. The net effect was that he looked like a representative of the Devil, on his way to a virgin soul swapping. He scanned the bus with hard eyes and then dropped a handful of change into the slot. The driver meekly offered him a transfer and he took it without looking. Nigel slowed briefly to give the stoner kids a terrifying once-over, then continued on to where Delia and I were sitting. He sat down in front of us and casually turned around.
“Hi, Darby. Cool scar. Who brought the beer?” He winked at Delia.
I handed him one and he draped his arm over the back of his seat to keep it out of the driver’s line of sight. Delia popped the cap with a dainty cover sneeze.
“So what’s the plan?” Nigel asked. “You do have a plan, right? You lost the cops, didn’t you?”
“The cops are lost as hell by now,” I replied. “We’ll get to the plan in a minute.”
Nigel sipped his beer and nodded. He looked good, but I could tell things had been going on in his life. They always were. He looked a little tired and wired, and the knuckles on the hand holding the beer had been torn up recently. He noticed my noticing and shrugged.
The bus started over the Burnside Bridge then. I looked out the window, and beside me Delia turned and looked, too. I could feel her warmth as she leaned in, smell her bubble gum breath. The river below was slow and wide and the exact same gray as the sky. Across the river were grain silos and assorted railroad garbage. My right eye felt good. Visibility wasn’t great, but about a quarter-mile away a big bubble of oil bloomed prismatically on the surface and slowly diffused into nothing.
“Oooh,” Delia murmured. “Pretty.”
I elbowed her off me and we snuck sips of beer until we hit the first stop on the other side, where Mikey got on. Even Nigel turned to look.
Big Mike looked like shit. His normally bald head had several days of multi-hued stubble on it, and so did his face. He was sporting a medium black eye, too. He was obviously depressed about something. It was in the slump of his wide shoulders, and the way he wasn’t bothering to suck his gut in. His classic olive drab bomber jacket was wet and vaguely dirty, zipped up all the way to the neck with some of the collar turned up. His jeans were wet, too, like he’d been waiting a long time without bothering to stand inside the empty bus shelter. Even his boots were scuffed. He pepped up a little when he saw us, dumped his change and got a transfer, and headed in our direction with a brief pause to mad dog the two kids, who finally elected to move to the front of the bus as soon as he passed. He dropped into the seat next to Nigel and turned.
“Hey guys,” he said. He sniffed at Delia with a weak smile and then looked at me. “Lame hat, man. The scar is very B-movie villain. Who brought beer?”
I popped the top of one with a cover sneeze and Mikey draped his arm next to Nigel’s. I could tell I was going to have to talk to him later. A month without my idiot brand of psychotherapy had done him no good at all.
“So,” Nigel began, “this plan. The Darby Holland Masterstroke. Let’s have it.” His eyes glittered with delight. Delia squirmed in anticipation. Mikey forced a smile and took his first sip of beer.
It felt good for all of us to be together again, and I knew they felt it, too. It felt great. But it also made me scrutinize my plan again in a new light. I realized part of what I was planning would sound utterly insane to most people. The three of them would be different, but I decided to hold the second half back for the time being. The whole thing, all at once, might be too much.
“It’s pretty simple,” I began. “I’m going to see our landlord Dmitri later. When I do, I’m going to beat the fuck out of him, although that’s just a maybe, but I’m going to tell him to sell the building. A Russian real estate developer named Oleg something or other was behind the bombing, but naturally there’s no proof. He wants to buy anything in Old Town with a price tag on it and he’s really ingenious about changing the value. So Dmitri spins it like this. This Oleg character is already all over him. Dmitri calls and says you win, game over. Meet me in a public place with the papers and I’ll sign, then retire somewhere far, far away. But Dmitri will want cash, say two fifty, to avoid whatever paranoid fuckers like him want to avoid.”
“Good so far,” Delia said.
“Lots of cash in the air. Confusion,” Nigel mused. “We do good there.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So the meeting is at Gomez’s brother’s restaurant over on Alberta. Romero’s Taqueria. The waitstaff will be replaced for the duration of the meeting by Empire of Shit, who already have their uniforms. First task goes to Nigel. We’re going to rufie the fuck out of Oleg and his bodyguard. Big-time, near-coma-level shit. Delia takes whatever Dmitri signed while the drugs kick in, uses her computer and her art skills to white out Oleg’s name and information and replace it with mine, Dmitri keeps the loot. I get the building for free. I need the money I have right now for a new roof and shit like that.”
“What about Oleg and the bodyguard?” Mikey asked. “When they wake up they’ll kill us or have us thrown in jail.”
“No they won’t,” I said. “I can’t kill Oleg and get away with it, but I have a plan. I’ll keep that part to myself for now. That’s where you come in, Mikey. I need you to go to the Bismarck Motel on 82nd and rent a room for a few days. Pay cash. That will be our base of operations. I was just there a few days ago and I had a chance to scope the place out. Get the room at the edge of the courtyard right by the parking lot and park your van in the spot closest to the door.”
Big Mike looked uncomfortable, but he nodded.
“Try to keep in character. Drink lots of beer. Slum for a few days. Get some hoes and blend.”
Nigel and Mikey looked at each other. Nigel cleared his throat.
“The ho thing might be a problem,” he said casually. “See, this mouthy pimp Clarence? Limpy dude? He, ah, well … he was running his mouth all over Old Town and our street cred was going down, kept going on and on about how he beat your ass and we were all his butt vaginas, shit like that, plus if the cops caught wind of his bullshit … Delia said you were busy getting pussy and whatnot, and we all know you needed it. Pussy is good. So Mikey and I tracked him down and had a talk with him. He loves us now. Especially you. You ever run for mayor of Old Town, this guy Clarence? He’s your PR guy. But me and Mikey are on the ho shit list big time right now.”
Mikey snorted. “Did you really pour toilet water on him? That fucked with his head somehow.”
Nigel clanked his beer against mine. “Points for style, boss.”
My eyes watered and my throat felt tight. Delia patted my thigh again.
“We got your back, monster boy,” she whispered.
“You guys,” I said. “You guys. Damn. So this all happens tomorrow afternoon. With any luck we’ll be up and running in six weeks or so. In the meantime, everyone get your vacation time in. Draw flash. We need about fifteen sheets each, plus I can make copies of the vintage crap I have in storage. Anyone needs money, hit me up tomorrow night. We can meet at Dante’s for drinks and you crazy motherfuckers can meet my new chick.”
“I’m goin’ to Cabo,” Mikey said. “Draw my flash poolside.”
“Paris for me,” Nigel said. He yawned. “Those tacky faggots need an infusion of game, plus I can tell people I was just chillin’ there, working on art, blah blah blah. Score cool points.”
“Maybe I’ll take Dildo to San Francisco for a week,” Delia mused. “Record shopping, motel porn … fuckin’ dreamy.”
“Good.” I turned to Delia. “My shit?”
Delia dug around in her purse and came up with an envelope and a small wrapped box.
“Check and gift. Don’t forget we still have to go by the bank at some point.”
“Phone number for Gomez?”
“
I’ll call him first,” she said. She took a pen out and started scrolling through the numbers. “He loves me.”
“I can get the rufies this afternoon,” Nigel said. “You know people actually do bong hits off ’em now? Even I wouldn’t do that, but I know who does.”
“Two nights in a motel and I can’t bring my woman.” Mikey shook his head. “She already freaked out about my eye, so this might actually be a good thing.”
Delia handed me the number. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
We were approaching 82nd, so I scanned the rainy streets again and zipped up, put my new things away.
“I’m off,” I said. “You guys finish the beer and then leave one by one. Take cabs back to wherever you came from or catch the oncoming bus back.” I looked at them one by one. “Thanks.”
None of them said anything, so we sat in companionable silence until we rolled up on my stop. After I rang the bell, Delia scooted her legs over so I could get out. I looked back once as I got off. They seemed contemplative, but I saw hope there, too. The dim kind. Then it was out into the rain.
I wondered for the hundredth time what the Armenian would want in exchange for my request as I walked through the rain toward his garage. Negotiating with him was always an exercise fraught with traps, extortion, thinly veiled vice, and unabashed bullshit. I always lost, too. Every single time. The trick was to realize that any interaction with him would always work out in his favor. With that clearly in mind, the strategy was to minimize losses and incur maximum debt in my favor. There was no doubt that the Armenian would do what I asked, but the exotic price tag had to be considered with great scrutiny as it developed, literally, on a second-by-second basis.
This strategy had been partially successful in the past, but the rulebook was his. If, for instance, the Armenian called in the middle of the night with an emergency, and you had to walk ten miles through the rain, shoot several rabid attack dogs, pick a few complicated locks with nothing more than your fingernails, dress his battle wounds with your own shirt, and then carry him to a black market doctor and wait with him for a few days while he schemed to rip the doctor off, a plan he was sure to involve you in, well, if you did all that and he bought you a sandwich afterward, everything was even. Impressing the gravity of a favor on him was impossible. Everything had to be negotiated incrementally, act by act, motion by motion. And you still lost.
