by Fante, Dan
That information made me cringe. But I had more questions. A lot more. “Okay,” I said, “so how did you guys take Swan down? What happened there?”
Archer went silent. He walked three steps over to the window and began looking down at the parking lot. The guy’s every gesture was a tell.
Taboo was now peeling the wrapper on a granola bar from my tray.
“C’mon, guys. Who got Swan!” I yelled. “I want to hear about that.”
Archer wouldn’t turn back or look at me.
Finally Afrika took up the slack. But before speaking he stuffed most of the bar in his mouth. “They nailed the S.O.B.—finally.”
“Good. Let me hear it. Tell me.”
Afrika rolled his eyes. “Well, it took us another twenty-four hours, but we caught up to him—in Mexico.”
“Put my fucking candy bar down! Mexico? How the hell did he get to Mexico?”
Ignoring me, Afrika consumed the last of the bar in one bite. “The tunnel,” he said. “It took us almost four hours to find the tunnel.”
“Tunnel! What goddamn tunnel?”
“There was a false wall down there in that cellar. When the fireworks started, Swan was in the wind.”
“You’re kidding!”
“We had two teams going over the grounds until we finally found it. But that took too long. The door, I mean the place where we think he came out, was under one of his sports cars in the stable; a fifties Ferrari. He must’ve had help to move the car out of the way and leave the tunnel, then pushed it back on top of the hole, after he’d climbed out. At least that’s how we think he did it. That’s what we assume.”
I wanted to boost myself up higher but I couldn’t. I’d just slammed my bandaged foot on the rail at the side of the bed. The pain was instant and brutal. I fell back down on the pillows.
“Relax,” Afrika said. “Like I said: done deal. The point is, we got our guy.”
I glared over at Archer standing by the window. He was mute, a nonparticipant.
It took a full minute for me to be able to talk again. “What happened in Mexico, Archer? Exactly?” I yelled. “You tell me! I want to hear it from you!”
Archer wouldn’t look back at me.
Taboo was now picking his teeth with the cellophane from the granola bar. “Okay,” Afrika said, realizing Archer’s decision to not answer me. “Here’s how it went down: Swan landed at the private airport in Cabo. We’d tracked his plane from LAX. A Gulfstream 550. His private jet.”
“And then what?” I said.
“When they set down, the Mexican cops were there on the tarmac. There was gunfire. Automatic weapons discharge was coming from the plane. The Mexican guys defended themselves. They returned fire. The plane exploded. End of story.”
“And Swan, goddamnit?”
“Dead in the fire. Like I said—a done deal.”
Archer suddenly turned from the window and spoke slowly, precisely. “Burned. Burned beyond recognition! Flames from the jet fuel. No bodies recovered.”
“No bodies?”
“No bodies. Charred remains.”
“But they got a shoe and a DNA match,” Afrika said. “From the suitcases in the luggage bay. Eleven and a half C. Same size as the shoes in his closet at Grey Fox. And his house keys, verified by photographs shown to his housekeeper as belonging to Swan.”
“Wait! Are you saying that you weren’t there? You guys weren’t at the scene? You took the word of the Mexican police and his fucking maid?”
Afrika glared at me, his arms folded across his chest. “The ID was made and verified. Solid police work. The only luggage on the plane belonged to Swam. It’s a done deal. The man is dead.”
“What about it, Archer?” I yelled. “You believe that? Did you buy that?”
He’d turned his back to me. “They wrapped it,” he finally whispered, looking back at me from his reflection in the window. “It’s over.”
“No kidding? Then I guess that means it’s also over for your eleven bodies buried out on the flats under Point Dume, too, and the others that he cut up and killed. It’s over for them, too, right?”
“It’s over! The fat lady sang.”
“Fuck the fat lady, Archer!”
“When the fat lady says it’s over, it’s over. Remember us? Remember me? I work for that fat lady. It’s wrapped. That’s all there is.”
THIRTY-ONE
It was almost three months later and I was sitting at the noon AA meeting room in the converted grammar school on Point Dume, sipping coffee in the back row, waiting for things to get started. After my hospital time I’d been living at Mom’s house again. What was left of my left hand was healed and I had been working on turning my stump into a battering weapon, thanks to daily martial-arts training and the heavy bag at the gym. My balance with the left foot had continued to give me trouble and I still had a slight limp as I walked. It was 11:58 A.M.
Albert, from months before, continued to be the secretary of the meeting. He was making his way toward the podium at the front of the room with a cup of free coffee in his hand. I noticed that Al was dyeing his hair these days and his obvious lust for the newcomer women was still his most annoying personal characteristic.
In my spare time, away from the gym, I’d started to write again. Poetry mostly. My typing at the computer keyboard was improving. Knuckles and fingers now.
I hadn’t seen pretty Meggie with the pink thonged panties in months, until she walked in. She looked like shit. After she got her coffee—she had to hold the cup with both hands because of her shaking—she made her way to the row in front of mine, then dumped her purse down on the chair heavily, then looked up at me. “Oh, hi,” she said, faking her best twelve-step grin. “How’s it going? I forgot your name.”
“JD. It’s JD. Howya doing? It’s been a while.”
“Meggie.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I’m back again,” she whispered. “I had a kinda bad slip. I just did a thirty-day mini bit for possession. So I’m back from the dead, I guess you could say.”
I shook my head. “No, Meggie, the dead don’t make it back to meetings. You and me are the lucky ones.”
She smiled with effort, then sat down in the seat in front of me. I was pleased to note that she still wore thonged panties. Today they were black. “Hey, look,” she said, turning back to me, “if you don’t mind—I mean, do you mind—going for coffee after the meeting? I really could use somebody to talk to. A familiar face. I’m having a tough time.”
“Sure. We can go to that place up on Dume Drive by the highway. The café.”
Then Meggie’s sad eyes wandered down to my stump of a hand with the missing thumb and fingers. “Hey, what happened to you? Oh geezzz! Shit, sorry—I mean, I hope you don’t mind me asking?”
I chose the words before I answered. “Surgery. I had surgery,” I said. “But it’s better now.”
Meggie made a face. “Jesus! That was some surgery.”
“Yeah. It was.”
There was stillness for several seconds on the once pretty face. I could feel her brokenness—her exhaustion with words—with the brutal disease inside her.
Finally, she looked me in my eyes. “But you’re okay? I mean, other than the hand?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m good. And still sober.”
“That’s good, JD. That’s cool.”
“So, look,” I said, “I’ll meet you up at the café after we get done here. I gotta check my P. O. box but I’ll be there by one-thirty, okay?”
”Thanks. I’ll wait for you. Look, I mean it; thank you.”
“Hey, no problem. We’ll talk later.”
I WAS SMOKING in the parking lot after the meeting, still favoring the foot as I made my way toward Mom’s Escalade. The speaker for half an hour had been a knucklehead named Milt
, some kind of former personal manager to a rich Malibu celebrity. During his share, Milt made a big point of not mentioning the guy by name, always calling him “Mr. B.” Milt hated this Mr. B. Mr. B had made Milt work sixteen-hour days, and he had numerous crazy personal issues. Milt had been sober for three years until he’d gone to work for Mr. B. But then there had been endless nights of dope and teenage hookers and lots and lots of pressure, so Milt—to make himself feel better at a job he hated—began snorting some of Mr. B’s dope and screwing a few of Mr. B’s girls. He’d shitcanned his recovery. Then Milt’s marriage had fallen apart and—surprise, surprise—Milt stole fifty thousand dollars worth of jewelry and cash from Mr. B and went off to Tahoe and got drunk for three weeks while he spent all the money. Milt was now a year clean and sober again and augmenting his recovery by going to therapy three times a week. He was also considering becoming a Scientologist. He’d just done three rounds of their auditing. Almost all of Milt’s share had been about his hatred and resentment toward his celebrity ex-boss and how the guy had ruined Milt’s life. He waved his arms a lot and used the word “motherfucker” as often as he could. These days Milt was interviewing for jobs, etc., etc, etc., and was determined to make it back on top and finally get his screenplay produced.
At the end of his recovery-free soliloquy, the thirty or so of us sitting in the chairs had not heard ten seconds about recovery, the Twelve Steps or a Higher Power, or anything worth remembering. There are over three thousand AA meetings in L.A. every week. Some of them represent Alcoholics Anonymous, but these days most have devolved into generic, canned recovery-speak that comes from inpatient programs that have little to do with any spiritual change. In treatment programs, after you pay your forty to seventy-five thousand, or whatever it is, they teach you that all addiction is the same—which is a lie. So the message of Alcoholics Anonymous has been permanently watered down and today the success rate is about one to two percent.
WHEN I REACHED Mom’s car, I clicked the automatic door mechanism and was getting in when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a beige four-door Crown Vic pull up, one space away. Detective Archer was behind the wheel. He leaned out his window and called, “I figured I’d find you here.”
I didn’t turn around; I threw the words over my shoulder. “Twelve to one every day, Detective.”
“It’s all over—the backwash on the Swan thing. I thought you’d want to know. All the pending stuff you had—the shootings and the B&E and the other thing with Sydnye’s girlfriend, Vikki—it all went away. Sydnye plea-bargained for life without possibility of parole. You’re in the clear. Funny how fast the smell of shit can disappear when the right names are mentioned in a courtroom by the right people.”
I finally turned toward him and made a face. “Yeah, it disappeared. But it’ll stay rotting and stinking under the rug for quite a while—along with the corpses that Karl Swan buried. Those people will never have grave markers.”
“You gunned down four people, pal. I’d call that a win-win. All charges against you are dismissed. You bought your walk because me and Taboo went to bat for you all the way. I’d say an atta-boy was in order—maybe even a thank-you.”
I glared at Archer. “I didn’t do enough,” I said. “I didn’t get Swan. I’ll have to live with that.”
The detective was looking down at my hand. He grinned. “So, you still crapping out fingers, Fiorella?”
“Not anymore, lawman.” I held up my now calloused stump. “Take a look for yourself. I’ve been working the heavy bag. In a couple of more months my trainer, a serious martial-arts kid I met named Kwan, tells me I’ll have the lethal weapon I want.”
“How about the headaches? How you doing there?”
“I’m down to only a couple a week. It’s livable. Much better than before. So let me ask you one: Are you still jerking yourself off? Pretending Swan is dead and this deal is over?”
“This is reality, pal. It’s part of my job description. Anyway, I thought you’d want to hear some good news.”
Archer clicked the gearshift of the Crown Vic into reverse. I pointed down at the car’s wheels I could see from my side of the car. I’d noticed sand in both rims—sand that had to have come from Swan’s former body dump site on Point Dume and nowhere else. Archer wasn’t fooling anyone.
“So,” I said, “you took the day off to play messenger and come out here and tell me I’m in the clear? What about the sand on your wheel rims? You didn’t get that sand in this parking lot.”
“I had to make a stop. Must’ve picked it up when I parked.”
“Don’t shit me, Detective. You could have dialed my cell. That’s not the only reason you’re here. You were back out on Point Dume again today. You were at Swan’s dump site. I’ll bet you went through the house again too. I know it’s still taped off. Am I right or wrong? You’ll never let this thing go. And neither will I.”
“The case is closed, Fiorella.”
“Sure it is. Look,” I said, “I’m meeting someone. I gotta go.”
“Hey, Fiorella, something’s still bothering us—me and Taboo: a dumb detail. We never found your friend Woody’s johnson. Feel like telling me about that?”
I made my best I-have-no-idea face. “Got me,” I said. “Maybe Sydnye or her sidekick Vikki flushed the thing down the toilet.”
Archer sneered. “And maybe you did.”
Then he backed up and was shifting his Crown Vic into drive. “So what are you up to these days?” he asked.
“I’m writing again—one-handed or one-handed with a stump. Some poetry, and I’m getting myself better. That’s it—until I’m ready to go again. You?”
“I’m going on vacation.”
“You’re not a vacation type of guy, Archer.”
“Yeah, I’m taking my full three weeks this year. Going down to Mexico. Maybe do a little fishing.”
“Fishing, huh? I didn’t know you fished, Detective.”
Archer smiled. “I have all my life—for one thing or another.”
“Not me,” I said. “I hunt. I’ll be hunting again very soon. And when I catch what I’m after, I’ll kill it. But I guess that’s the difference between us.”
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAN FANTE is the author of the memoir Fante, the novels 86’d, Chump Change, Mooch, and Spitting Off Tall Buildings, and several books of poetry, short stories, and plays. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
ALSO BY DAN FANTE
FICTION
86’d
Chump Change
Mooch
Spitting Off Tall Buildings
Short Dog: Cab Driver Stories from the L.A. Streets
PLAYS
Don Giovanni: A Play
The Boiler Room: A Play
POETRY
A gin-pissing-raw-meat-dual-carburetor-V8-son-of-a-bitch from Los Angeles: Collected Poems 1983–2002
Kissed by a Fat Waitress: New Poems
NONFICTION
Fante
COPYRIGHT
Cover design by Gregg Kulick
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POINT DOOM. Copyright © 2013 by Dan Fante. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-
books.
FIRST EDITION
Epub Edition June 2013 ISBN: 9780062229021
ISBN 978-0-06-222901-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
