Internecine

by David J. Schow

  “One of them forgot to take off his glasses. I saw a glint.”

  This was not the glamorous, gadget-laden getaway I had imagined.

  “Come on, Conrad, walk tie-to-tie. You know a better way to get to the train station?”

  We humped along railroad tracks in the dark, the city lights washing away all detail. I had to shade them away with my hand to see where my feet were.

  Had I helped Dandine, back at Varga’s? He had not said anything.

  Were Varga and his crew past tense already?

  Did it matter?

  Was I lapsing back into my corporate pattern, trying to please the boss, so to speak? Had Dandine become the new boss of my existence?

  Had I “played” well?

  (Always seek approval indirectly. To ask for reinforcement point-blank will only get you a placating lie.)

  It was a classic executive strategem: Don’t encourage or discourage, but allow the client to overcompensate on his or her own initiative since their fear is that they can never do enough, or could have done more.

  What a revolting goddamned business we were both in.

  Union Station, downtown, is pretty dead at three in the morning. But even then, the Metro Rail cars are running. Some people have to be at work at 4 A.M., commuting the span of the line, from Long Beach to the Valley. The grand old train palace has undergone a lot of expensive remodeling, but still retains the woodwork and brown leather look of bygone glory days. We could hear sirens outside—LAPD, fire trucks—but you always hear sirens in this part of town, most any hour. None of the loiterers around the station even bothered to look.

  Dandine had a mouthful of Milky Way when he handed me a rail map.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Prop,” he said. “You’ll see. Stare at it like you’re lost and can’t figure it out.”

  Except for security cops and a guy nodding toward sleep on the platform steps, we were alone on the northbound side.

  “Hey,” he said. “You did good at Varga’s.”

  “Yeah, and when those guys shot at us, I did everything but cry.”

  He shrugged again. I was coming to learn this gesture was, for him, a matter of disqualifying things that did not matter. Small shit he did not sweat. “How many times have you been shot at, Conrad?”

  “Exactly never.”

  “Point. At least you kept your head down, and you’re still with us. Pretty chipper for a guy who was about to hit the sack before midnight, after a full workday.” He finished off his candy bar. But it was Dandine finishing off a candy bar—even mundane gestures, by him, seemed fraught with portent. He broke a half-smile. “And where did you get that speech?”

  Already, it seemed like it had happened a week ago.

  “Come on, man!” Dandine twisted his face into an imbecilic tough-guy expression I gathered was meant to be me. “ ‘That means you’ve been lied to. So have we. That’s it, man.’ ” He even duplicated my open-palms gesture. “I mean . . . damn. I may have to reassess my whole picture of you.”

  “Listen, if you’re trying to make me feel good, I don’t feel good, okay? It’s my right not to feel good.” I said the words but didn’t believe it. Dandine’s world might have further use for me, and queerly, that did make me feel . . . better.

  “Next you’re going to say it’s a free country.”

  “No—I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “See? There’s hope for you, yet.” He went to fire up his next-to-last cigarette, noticed the NO SMOKING sign on the platform, and stowed it with a pained expression. NO SMOKING. NO RADIOS. NO FOOD. NO WEAPONS. NO ROWDY BEHAVIOR. No, No, No!

  I thought of the gun nestled in his armpit; the other weapons most likely inside the rucksack, and said, “Maybe if we had a boom box and some corn dogs, we could break all the rules on that sign at once.”

  He chuckled at that, and it somehow made me feel more stable.

  Careful, a little voice warned in my brain. That chuckle is for you, precisely to reassure you. It’s not real.

  Warm, oily wind began to stir us from the tunnel. An incoming subway train honked. Dandine peeled a cuff and checked his watch. “This might be us. I’m going to point you at a stranger. When I do, you approach them—use the map as an excuse—and ask if they’re Butcher. Then, if they say yes, tell them they’re covered; the very next thing you say. Okay?”

  I swallowed. My mouth was extremely dry. “Okay.”

  Los Angeles has the newest subway system in the world, and the cars are a wonder to behold, sleek and silver. The Red Line train zoomed in and shushed to a stop, making the air smell pneumatic.

  Dandine scanned the occupants. “Second car, the woman with the newspaper. Go.” He shoved me off and headed for the next car back.

  I stumped toward my target, again, like a zombie. The walking dead. The doors dinged and withdrew. Oh, I guarantee they won’t recognize me, Dandine had told Varga. Now I knew why. He had a spare warm body to throw toward the fray. Guess whose.

  I itemized what might be the final thoughts of my life, and they were depressingly mundane: (1) This was the first time I had ever ridden the subway. (2) I wish I had taken Dandine up on his offer of a candy bar, five minutes ago. (3) I’ve seen this goddamn movie—Strangers on a Train. Maybe Hitchcock’s ghost would help render me bulletproof, so I could indulge more dumb thoughts like these.

  The doors closed and the train lurched. Showtime.

  I wobbled my way toward the woman sitting midcar. Her paper was open and there was a full page of ads in red ink, reading Meat Specials at Ralphs. There were four other people in the car, seated as far away from each other as possible: a ragbag, asleep in the corner; a Hispanic lady who looked like a domestic maid, her stare abstracted, her ride long from over; a black man in a business suit, wearing headphones, paging through The Wall Street Journal; and a sleepy looking banger, probably trying to stay vertical long enough to get back to Van Nuys after overdoing Ecstasy at a rave. I glimpsed Dandine standing by the interlock door to the next car as I took the seat beside the woman. She seemed surprised that I’d crowd her . . . but she did not have that auto-reflex, flatline expression that said she was getting ready to deflect a commuter come-on.

  She had designer-cropped spiky blond hair and a model’s cut of jaw. Her eyebrows were blond, too. Eyes, brown. Fatigue pants, sweatshirt, Timberland boots.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Butcher,” I said.

  “Ms., actually,” she said, and then her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Oh, christ—it’s you. I mean—“

  “I’m supposed to advise you that you’re, um, covered.”

  She blew out a breath (no lipstick, I noticed), but didn’t look around to check. “Behind me, I suppose.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  She looked me up and down, from my bruised forehead to the hasty bandage job I’d done on my wrists from hitting the car window. “You get beat up?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And you were so depressed you tried to kill yourself.”

  “No.”

  “So what do we talk about?”

  “Let’s talk about Mr. Varga, and how you knew oh-christ-it’s-me.”

  “Varga’s been dealt with by now. You’re not supposed to be riding the train in the middle of the night.”

  I tried my best not to fear this woman. I tried to flash back to my demi-date with Katy, to use the way I’d played her in seemingly innocuous chitchat. “That’s not only a good start, but it’s very, very interesting. Do go on.”

  “Look,” she said, at odds with what she thought she knew. “Some bigwig set up a job. In de pen dent contract, strictly à la carte. A one-way deal. Signed, delivered, done. Except somebody else, I don’t know who, found out about it, took the job at face value, and tried to stop it. Somebody on the inside, because they tried to stop it by doctoring the hit-kit. Except Varga, who was contracted to stop what he believed was a genuine job, didn’t know that part. Now bigger wheels are involved, so the ins and
outs don’t matter anymore. That’s why I came—damage control.”

  I became sick of this argot—the dance-around—in record time. All of her words needed translation. My rage—at everything—touched off and burned bright, all in a microsecond. I grabbed her upper arm. “I need a better story. Less vague . . . and in English. I think you’re going to have to talk to my associate, Ms. Butcher.”

  I realized she assumed I was pointing a weapon at her already.

  “You unplug me, it still doesn’t stop them,” she said, eyes front.

  “Yeah, I know—it’s not your fault. Maximum deniability, and all that.”

  “I just came because Varga called about the gig. What do you want from me?”

  I wasn’t sure, exactly, but by that time, Dandine was behind us. The train pulled smoothly into the stop at the intersection of Sunset and Vermont.

  “This is our stop,” announced Dandine, startling her.

  Now we were three.

  Slight pause for a snapshot of me, admiring my own cool.

  Mr. Butcher had turned out to be a Ms. In a world where nothing happened by accident, I had accounted for this ploy in several phases. First, I made sure not to repeat the stupidity of being distracted by anything feminine. I did not want to make the Celeste mistake again. I had not hesitated to threaten or grab roughly, instead of hanging back with fake courtesy that could cost me my life. I had tried to channel Dandine instead of defaulting to the helplessness that makes people call the police too late to do any good.

  Still, this woman’s manner reminded me of myself just hours earlier. Unsure of what she had stepped in; positive she did not want it on her shoe. I had to caution myself not to cut her any excess sympathy that might provide her with an unfair advantage.

  Of course she looked great. She was supposed to look great.

  Now consider the last human being that caught your eye. We poor Homo sapiens have nothing to go on, no place to start, except our genetically ingrained mating checklist. The attractive stranger in the restaurant, the hot number hailing a cab. You flash forward through whole scenarios in an instant—what would they be like? How do they look naked? It’s always the same.

  Except. Add the notion that this delectable stranger made a call or had a meeting earlier in the day, a decided plot whose purpose was to erase you. Kill you. Now how would you feel?

  Only a fool tries to charm a rattlesnake.

  Hollywood isn’t a city. It’s another subsection of Los Angeles, distinct from downtown, which retains the old 213 area code. With the Los Feliz district to the east, it ends where West Hollywood and Beverly Hills begin, both of which are incorporated as cities and have their own police forces. In Hollywood, if you call the cops, you’re calling the LAPD. Every so often, a secession is attempted for assorted pocket-lining political reasons. I always thought it would be cool to see actual “Hollywood police”—just think of the uniform patches, and imagine what the patrol cruisers would look like.

  Dandine laid out the rules as we approached the first of the subway stations actually inside the boundaries of what is called Hollywood.

  “Listen carefully,” he told the woman. “You can alert police on the platform or in the station, but if you do, they’re history. They’ll hit the ground a couple of seconds after you do, because your life will be done. I’m not trying to frighten you. I am frightened for my own life. All I want to do is ask you a few things and try to get a better map of what has happened to me tonight. Now, answer yes or no. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. No protest. No excuses.

  “Do you work for Varga?”

  “No.”

  “But you contacted Varga and paid ten thousand dollars?”

  She swallowed, but didn’t falter. “Yes.”

  “Are you working on behalf of Alicia Brandenberg?”

  Another pause, barely perceptible. “Yes.”

  “So your job was to act as intermediary for a slightly less-than-legal assignment in order to protect Ms. Brandenberg?”

  “Yes.”

  Dandine cut her no mercy, and would not permit her to avert her gaze, or otherwise dissemble. “If you’re telling me the truth, you have absolutely nothing to be afraid of.” That didn’t prompt her, so he encouraged, “Go ahead, speak your piece.”

  “Varga wasn’t supposed to contact me again. Now I’m afraid the whole job has been compromised. Zero integrity. So, when Varga called, I had to come see for myself. All I did was play middleman. Middlewoman, I guess.”

  “So Alicia Brandenberg wouldn’t get any on her?”

  Ms. Butcher nodded. “All it was, was . . . somebody threatened her, or was planning to hurt her, and she wanted them taken care of. You know—neutralized.”

  “She came up with this plan?” Dandine seemed incredulous.

  “No, no . . . she met with some people . . . I don’t know who they were. Like, advisors.”

  “Staff?”

  “No. Outsiders. I’ve never seen them before.”

  The train glided to a stop and the doors racketed open.

  “I apologize, Ms. Butcher. My intention was to let you go home, stay on this train. But you haven’t talked fast enough or deep enough. Unfortunately, we need to continue our conversation. So we’ll be leaving, together. Remember what I told you about raising a ruckus. My partner’s job, here, is to deal with you exclusively, should anything go astray. Do you understand?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes.”

  He winked at me. “Let’s go, Mr. Lamb.”

  We walked off no differently than college buddies, all three of us. Two dicks and a chick. Ordinary citizens glanced and saw a woman enjoying the protection of two male friends. This neck of the woods, females couldn’t be too careful. Lots of rapists and robbers in LA. No street loudmouths or thugs would molest this woman. Not from the way one of her boyfriends was holding her by the biceps, almost possessively.

  We rode three escalators up to street level, and emerged on Sunset Boulevard, with a huge medical complex across the street. There was a sprawling Scientology building a block away, off a side road that had been granted its own stoplight and renamed L. Ron Hubbard Boulevard. That structure, too, had once been a hospital; I knew people who had been born there. (The street was originally called Berendo, and still is, to the north and south, a safe distance from where money talked.) By the time we came up out of the earth, Dandine had secured Ms. Butcher’s wallet. Pretty slick; I never saw him dip it. We were alone on the corner, smelling night air, maybe oncoming rain.

  “Ms. Butcher’s actual name seems to be—” Dandine scrutinized her billfold. “Choral Anne Grimes, is that right?” He frowned. “What was it before you changed it to Choral?”

  She shot him a hurt look. “Linda. Big fucking deal.”

  He handed me her mobile. “Take out the battery and throw it away.”

  Over a hundred million cellular devices in use right now contain the essential guts of a GPS system which cannot be activated by the user. That tiny circuit can be turned on, long-distance, and used to track you even when the mobile is turned off. Best of all, people carry their leash with them voluntarily.

  Dandine’s breakdown of Choral’s wallet was professional, not obvious, and swift, with the concentration of a Vegas blackjack dealer practicing a fast shuffle. “A Ralph’s card,” he said, meaning a supermarket discount card. “PETCO. You have a little whiny dog, I bet.”

  “You want to know his real name, too?”

  Dandine cracked a half-smile, indulgent, avuncular. “A library card; that’s kind of rare. Video Aces rental card. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf freebie card—look, you’re one punch away from a free espresso.”

  He was dissecting her via billfold. It’s ridiculously easy for most people you know. I kept mum because I was supposed to be the hang-tough enforcer guy, and yes, I’ll admit that I enjoyed the cheap thrill. As I watched this woman’s existence spill out of her wallet, I was reminded that most people scribble down
their PIN numbers and other vital data on other cards in their wallets. Most people kept ancient, smelly photos as some kind of goofy ritual—I was glad that I never did. It separated me from the walking dead a little bit; perhaps a little bit that could buy me negotiating time or room to lie. One thing was for certain: After tonight I was going to make sure my own wallet could never betray me again.

  But Dandine had access to secret files and dossiers. How much of your life, or mine, is really a secret from anybody? Your “personal information” is anything but. I watched Choral’s eyes follow Dandine’s every violation of her personality. It was obvious that the whole “Mr. Butcher” thing had been a one-off for her, a quick and easy dodge, because her contact with Varga had likewise been intended to be a quickie. A dip into the dark side, like kissing a stranger in an elevator. Her every twitch and blink told me that she was not used to this business. She was an errand girl.

  I stopped short of making her as “innocent” as I was supposed to have been. But the deadly magnetism, the attraction for a strange woman who was now being squeegeed through a ringer almost identical to mine, was present and insistent, working on autopilot to erode my composure. Charm the rattler? No, you don’t. But maybe you wonder what even a viper might be like.

  “Here we go,” said Dandine. He pulled out a MasterCard (not gold or platinum) and an AmEx card (entry-level green, not corporate). “How’re these, Choral-Linda?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we three hardy travelers are going to the airport, to rent another car, since mine just blew up a little bit ago.” LAX was practically the only place around where you could still rent a car at three in the morning . . . and not be subjected to a lot of undue scrutiny. “Oh, wait . . . even better,” he said, discovering another card and holding it up for me to see like a brass ring. “Hertz Travel Club. This is going to be smoother than I thought. You got this by working for Alicia Bran-denberg, didn’t you?”

  “Whatever you say.” Her composure was chipping. Soon enough she’d either have an outburst, or try to take action.

  He spun her to get her full attention. “Hey! Let me fill you in on something, Choral-Linda. You got a woman killed tonight. Her hand was blown off, then her face, in roughly that order. Ten seconds after Varga called you, his place was swarming with narcos, and he’s probably dead now, too. Please understand that the night is young, and the body count can get a lot bigger while you worry about splitting a fucking fingernail or being inconvenienced. You’re probably safer with us, right now, than you would be in your own home with a guard dog and a machine gun. Clear?”