"You all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, man, don't worry about it." He tried to smile again, but he kept holding his stomach. "I just got a little bit of an ulcer, I read backward, and I got a heart murmur. Other than that I'm fine. And I gotta go to the bathroom, man." Still doubled over, he started heading toward the back of the club. Everybody was staring at him now and I could see the bouncers moving in.
"It's okay," I yelled. "I'll take care of him." And I pushed him through to the back, into the men's room.
He locked it behind us. "Okay, man, where's the blow'?"
"I don't have any."
"C'mon, don't give me that bullshit. Every white dude in El Lay looks like you does coke. And don't tell me you don't, 'cause then I know you're a liar and I ain't never gonna trust you."
"Yeah, I've done coke. But I wouldn't give you any, Otis."
"C'mon, man, don't be difficult. You gimme a little toot, you tell all your buddies back home you did nose candy with the famous Otis King. That make you one down white boy with a lotta class. The presidents of two fuckin' movie studios was beggin' me to do coke with them. Little Jewish boys just like you. One of them had a picture of Martin Luther King on his office wall."
"I'm here to take you back to Malibu, Otis."
"You wanna take me back to that fascist motherfucker Bannister and you ain't gonna give me some coke? That's no way to build a relationship. You got no sense of social etiquette, my man."
"l thought you liked Bannister."
"Liked Bannister? I was playin' along with the motherfucker. How'd you like to be locked in handcuffs half the day while listening to some bullshit about your mother? Motherfucker treats me like an infant and then expects me to be a grown-up. Hey, man, don't worry about it. C'mon, please please please. Just one little snort. When Kid Siena gets back, he'll pay you back double, triple, give you one of them big, juicy white rocks just for yourself, make you feel like your own Prudential Life Insurance advertisement, know what I mean?"
Just then there was a sudden bam! and the bathroom door flew open. The van driver was standing there, his hand buried deep in his pigskin suede jacket right at the bulge of what I guessed to be a .38.
"Who the fuck is that?" said Otis.
"Get outta here, nigger shit." He lifted Otis by the shirt front and pitched him out the door. Then he reached for the .38, but I didn't wait to see it. I ran straight at him, ramming him into the side of the bathroom, the mirror collapsing to the floor. Then I made an attempt to knee him in the groin, but he was too strong for me. He grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around, hurling me toward the toilet and pulling out his gun in one motion. He raised it to eye level, about to blow me away, when I heard shouting from the club. One of the Los Cocos bodyguards appeared at the bathroom door, and the driver wheeled about instantly and slammed him across the face with the butt of his gun, sending the bodyguard flying back into the club on his knees like a splayed turkey. People started screaming and running for their lives. Before he could turn back to me, I held my breath and dove through the milk glass bathroom window, no idea what was on the other side.
It proved to be a row of garbage cans, some of them unfortunately without their tops. I bounced off them right where my ribs had cracked, then rolled behind a few of the cans just as three shots from an automatic went whistling past me. I didn't know whether to run or pray or piss in my pants. I didn't do any of them but edged farther behind the cans, pressed my body against the ground, and lay as still as I could. The air was misting slightly and the pavement was still damp from the rain. I heard the driver climbing out of the window and then two solid thuds as he landed on the ground what sounded like fifty feet away. I stuck my hand in the open garbage can nearest me but couldn't find anything more helpful than some left-over onion rings.
The driver began surveying the area, walking first down the alley, then back in my direction, the soles of his feet slapping the wet asphalt. I twisted silently onto my back and slid my arm into the next garbage can. It felt damp and putrid, but I was in no mood to be fastidious. I fumbled through what seemed like yesterday's Caesar salad and then something mushy like au gratin potatoes, when my hand hit hard wood. A handle. I didn't know how long it was or what it was, but there was no research time left. The man was within ten feet of me now. I grabbed the handle, rolled to my right, jumped forward and swung, smashing him across the nose. I could hear a sharp crack along his bridge as he cried out and the gun went off, crumbling brick behind me.
This was survival time. I kicked him straight in the nuts and slammed him in the jaw again with the handle. He went flying backward, then crumpled against the garbage can, blood flowing rapidly from his nose, his head lolling forward. I slammed him one more for security, dove for his gun, and grabbed it. It was a Walther automatic. I stuffed it under my jacket; then I looked at my own weapon. It was a plumber's plunger. I tossed that away and stooped over the man, patting him down for identification. I found his wallet, but not surprisingly there was nothing in it except about a thousand dollars in cash. I stuck that back in his pocket, then checked his neck and face for any identifying marks. There was nothing remarkable, so I ripped open his shirt. A series of small orderly burn scars ran across his muscular chest from his left pectoral down to his belly button. I was no expert, but it sure looked as if at some point in his life this sonofabitch had been tortured.
He was just starting to come to and took a groggy swipe at me when I heard police sirens. I pushed him back into the garbage cans again and ran around the side of the building into the back of the club through the kitchen. The police were coming in the front and you could feel the anxiety level in the room rising about ten thousand percent. The crowd started making for the bathroom like a swarm of lemmings heading over the hill. Taken together, I figured they could dump enough cocaine to rip the collective lids off the New York sewers. But there was only one toilet in the john, and they were backed up at the door worse than at a Springsteen
concert.
I found Otis clutching his arm behind one of the aluminum palm trees. "I need a doctor," he groaned.
"You're also gonna need a lawyer if you don't get your ass out of here as soon as possible." I led him rapidly by his good arm through the kitchen again.
"All right, boys and girls. What is this'? Substance Abuse Central? Against the wall!" I heard one of the cops shouting as we ducked out the back door.
Fouad was on the corner of Ninety-fifth and Columbus, where I had left him. Otis was too stoned or hurt to object, so I eased him into the backseat and the Arab shot out of there like the experienced ambulance driver he was. "Saw what you did with van driver," he said as we careened across 110th Street to the Mt. Sinai emergency room. "Good work. Remind me of Christian militia in Shiite refugee camp."
Otis's broken arm proved to be nothing more than a bad bruise and we were on the road to the airport in forty-five minutes. Whatever protests he had about leaving New York had dissolved in the confusion and the Valium they had given him at Mt. Sinai. His usual idling speed of eighty thousand rpm had revved down to a somewhat normal forty. "Don't take me amiss," Fouad told him as we headed out the Van Wyck Expressway toward Kennedy, "but that movie you make—what they call it?—Otis Goes Maui—was for idiot."
"Hey, man. It was for kids."
"Kids not idiots. Fouad know. He have four kids. Kids like computer. Garbage in/garbage out. But you not know about that. I am sure."
Otis leaned into me. "Who the fuck is this dude? PLO? I thought you was Jewish."
"Most movies insult children. They think children be stupid, so they make children stupid. People stupid who make the movies. That who stupid."
"Hey, man, I'm tryin' to be a serious artist—a social satirist. Make a statement, know what I mean?"
"Only statement that movie make is where is popcorn. Bad popcorn anyway, filled with additives. Children die of cancer at twenty-five. Don't take me amiss."
"American Airlines," I said.
&n
bsp; I left Fouad with five hundred in traveler's checks when he dropped us at the terminal. I also took his phone number.
I wasn't sure exactly why, but some unformed feeling told me it would be useful to have a potential Lebanese ally rattling around New York.
"Don't take it amiss," he said just as Otis and I were about to enter the building, "but you should have killed that driver. In my country they say if man get sentimental about murder, he live to regret it."
12
Otis insisted on flying first class back to L.A. It was in all his contracts, he said. Who was I to disagree? It wasn't my money. So we sat there in the wide leather seats eating mediocre chateaubriand and drinking Courvoisier from a full liter bottle a fawning stewardess had placed in front of him as we jetted through the night sky. With everything he had put in his body in the last twenty-four hours, by the time the pilot announced we were flying over Cleveland, the cognac had him speaking in tongues. I'd ask him a question and get back an answer in what Jack Kerouac, desperate to be identified with jazz musicians, used to call "spontaneous boprosity." I told him, but he had never heard the term.
"You know what it is with you liberal white boys," he said, finally coming down to planet Earth or wherever we were after a sugar rush from the chocolate sundae. "You worship black people so much, it make us crazy. Y'all think you be black, everything be great. No problems. No responsibilities. Get laid every other minute. But if you was black, you'd hate it."
"Was Mike like that?"
"Worse case I ever saw. Talkin' jive all the time. Listenin' to worn-out Motown shit and eatin' ribs till it made you sick. Never saw the motherfucker shake hands straight in his life. He always be high-fivin' you to death like he was Magic Johnson. And lately it was Africa, Africa, Africa, everywhere he went. I told him he liked Africa so much he should go live in Nigeria for a while, see how much he like it."
"Did he ever go?"
"Yeah, he went. For about a week. With his old lady. On a mission for that Africa aid la-dee-dah guilt trip she be runnin' down. Bought himself a safari suit and one of them wide-brim hats with the zebra band from Abercrombie and Fitch and got his ass videotaped next to a scrawny water buffalo and some half-dead Ethiopian kids with the fat bellies."
"Why don't you like her?"
"Who?"
"Emily."
"Because she all bullshit, man. She just doin' it to make herself feel good. She don't give a flying fuck about no black kids. All she wants is her name on the charity letter. In big print, right at the top."
"Is that so bad if she gets them the money?"
"I don't know. Fuck." He emptied the cognac bottle into his glass and downed it. Then his expression turned plaintive, almost lost, as if there were no bottom to his sadness.
"Did Mike ever mention anything to you about some twenty-five million dollars?"
"Who told you that?" Otis suddenly sat up straight. "My brother? You ain't gonna do nothin' to my brother, are you, man? He's all I got in the world, 'cause Della won't see me. I love her so much, I'd marry her for life and write it in stone on my heart, but she won't talk to me unless I kick for six months. She wants me to get a fuckin' doctor's certificate. Now how'm I gonna get that?"
"Maybe Bannister."
"Yeah, Bannister. All's I gotta give 'im for that is my balls, my career, and my freedom .... Well, that ain't so bad." He grinned at me. "At least I'l1 have my woman."
"What about the money?"
"What money?"
"The twenty-five million."
"Oh, that bullshit story. I told you how bad Mike wanted to be hip. It was all part of that, tryin' to be a black, underworld motherfucker and makin' up some fairy tale about blood money and Mafia shit."
"Is that what it was? Mafia shit?"
"I don't know. I just made that up. All's I know is Mike made it up too, tryin' to be important. He never said a word to me until he knew our partnership was dead. It was like he was braggin' or something. You know—if I was gonna get rich, he was gonna get rich too. But he was all fucked up. He didn't know what's obvious to anybody. Money don't count for shit after ya got enough to eat, 'cause it won't buy ya love. And if yo mama didn't love ya, ya ain't ever gonna get it anyway, so screw you. It's all a black comedy—and I do mean black. " He laughed. "I didn't need no Bannister to tell me that. I found out the truth fo' myself when I was three years old and my mama leave me alone in the apartment to turn tricks and come back three days later, me pissin' on the floor and eatin' Wonder Bread and Kool-Aid out of the refrigerator till the can run out. And that bitch Della don't want me now either. But she says it's my fault. lt ain't my fault. It's a conspiracy. You know what? Sometimes I think we live in a conspiracy of bitches."
Otis wanted to join the conspiracy the moment we got off the plane and he saw Chantal waiting for us by the gate.
"This your woman?"
"Assistant, er, uh, partner."
"Thank God for that. " He stared at Chantal with a smile of almost embarrassingly open rapture. " 'Cause I'm in love, baby. Cupid just hit me with one of them incredible darts. Wait a minute. Wait a goddamned minute. Didn't I see you onstage at the Fun Zone a coupla weeks ago? You're a comic genius! Oh, help me, help me, Jesus, Satan, somebody, I been stung. I ain't ever gonna get out of this motherfucker." He made a charming little-boy face at Chantal, who blushed in spite of herself.
"How do you do?" she said.
"I dunno. You tell me. How'm I doin'?"
"Working a little too hard," I said.
"Hey, this motherfucker jealous. And he don't even have a reason. C'mon, baby. Let's give him a reason." He took Chantal by the arm and started off toward the exit with her. "How's your career goin', baby? You know, I know the dude at The Merv Griffin Show. He might be interested in your act. 'Bout time they had a few more women on there. Support the ERA, y'know what I mean?"
Otis kept going right to the car. I couldn't believe Chantal would fall for a rap like that, but I couldn't shrug it off. Otis was right. I was jealous. In fact, as we drove out of the lot, I felt about ready to throttle him.
"Y'know what, baby?" He leaned over the front seat and put his hand on her shoulder. "I been thinkin'. Next spring I got this World War Two flick in Italy with Giancarlo Giannini and-"
"Thanks, Otis, but no thanks." She took his hand off her shoulder and placed it on the seat. "I quit show business and I'm staying quit. Being a private investigator is more interesting. It's about real life."
I looked over at her and smiled, but she just shrugged.
"Oh, I get it," said Otis. "You guys got eyes for each other, but you don't have the balls to admit it. That just like white people."
And with that he went to sleep in the backseat.
Chantal and I didn't say a word to each other until we were almost in Malibu.
"Is he out?" she asked, glancing back at Otis as we passed the Getty Museum.
"He ought to be."
"Okay." She looked back at him again just to make sure, then took out a note pad. "Your friend on the Asian Squad says the Chu's Brothers are scavengers. They used to hang around the Rampart Division trying to get information from the cops."
"Police blotter groupies."
"What they were after here, I haven't been able to find out. Ditto for Stanley Burckhardt at the Glendale post office, but he's still trying. As for Bannister, things seem to have been pretty normal at his compound, but I wasn't watching it that much of the time because—here's the interesting thing—I think Emily Ptak is having an affair."
"Really? Who with?"
"I'm not sure. All I know is I followed her from her house this afternoon straight to the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown L.A. She didn't know me, so I rode up to the seventh floor with her on that glass elevator they have. She walked to Room Seven-fifteen, knocked, and said 'It's me.' Someone opened the door a crack and she slipped inside."
"Did you try to get in?"
"Of course I did." She looked annoyed I had even asked.
> "Ten minutes later I knocked on the door and said it was Housekeeping, but Emily yelled back they didn't want anything. An hour later I dialed them on the house phone and said it was the switchboard and we were having a computer problem.
'Is this Mr. Morgan's room?' The guy said no. I asked, 'Well, then, whose room is it?' and he hung up. I also tried the bell captain, pretending I had a package to deliver, but he wouldn't tell me anything. I guess I could've done better, huh?"
"Not bad," I said. "Fancy hotels are really hard to crack."
"Are you sure? I think I screwed up. I should've figured out something, talked to the chambermaid or the maintenance guy. I mean, my mother was an actress and I grew up in hotels."
"You did fine. You found out more than I knew, and at least we know she's having an affair with a man."
Then jet lag hit and I felt about ten feet underwater by the time I turned into the Malibu Colony. I did manage to find Bannister's place, however. It was almost two in the morning by then, but the psychiatrist was waiting up like an angry parent when we arrived. He sent the Samoan out to the car; he picked up Otis with one arm and carried him toward the door like a Cabbage Patch doll. He set him down on the front step, opposite Bannister.
"I never want you to leave again, Otis."
"I won't, massa. You know that."
"Next time I'll have to take those measures I described to you."
"Uh-huh."
"I'll see you tomorrow morning at six for our usual jog. Be ready."
"What the fuck?" said Otis, who could barely stand up.
"Just because you ran off like a foolish child doesn't mean you'll be allowed to abandon your schedule for one second," said Bannister, who thanked me and followed the Samoan and Otis into the house.
I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, so Chantal drove us back to West Hollywood while I told her what had happened in New York. It should have been a strange experience; it had been a long time since I had shared what I did with anybody other than my shrink. I often thought that I became a private eye because I liked my privacy, needed it even, as if the more I exposed of myself, the more I lost. But there I was, telling her everything, every detail from Fouad's driving habits to my out-right terror hiding behind the garbage cans in the alley of the Club Los Cocos, and it felt perfectly natural.
The Straight Man - Roger L Simon Page 9
