Internecine

by David J. Schow

  Alicia and Choral entered, scanning around uncertainly in the darkness while the forty-plus people in the theatre were engrossed in the onscreen terminal-to-terminal rabbit hunt. The paying customers were clustered within the frontmost two-thirds of seating. Alicia and Choral settled down near the rear, two seats together, not far from the east exit door. I crossed behind them and sat down.

  “Ladies.”

  They both tried to turn and unleash accusations. I placed a hand on each shoulder to deter them. “Watch the movie.”

  “What do you want?” said Alicia, softly enough not to be shushed by the people in the theatre. Her accent was lilted and vaguely European.

  “Nice to see you again, Choral,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “No, I think it’s fuck you,” Alicia hissed at her assistant. “After tonight, you and I are no longer related, you dumb little squiff.”

  That froze Choral into a blank, standby state.

  “Be forgiving,” I said. Bounce images from the movie reflected off Alicia’s glasses, upside down, as in a camera lens. “She didn’t have any choice. Choral, remember when we were on the train?”

  Choral nodded.

  “Remember what I told you on the train, about being covered?”

  She nodded again. Tears brightened her eyes in the lurid glare from the screen. Her nascent career had just turned into sewage.

  And I was becoming more and more comfortable with using violence—even bluff violence—as a tool. No drug can equal the narcotic effect.

  “Same deal,” I said. “Now it’s Q and A time.”

  “How much?” said Alicia.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “How. Much,” she said. “How much do you want?”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said, just above a whisper. “But that’s a question, and I’ll be asking the questions. First question, How did you get mixed up with NORCO?”

  Alicia stiffened and tried to bluff. “I don’t know what you’re talking abou—”

  I tapped her gently on the back of the head. Her hair was thick and genuine. This kind of woman would hate physical prodding, most of all.

  “Licia,” I said, using Choral’s nickname for her. “Do you really want to sit through this entire movie?”

  “They came to me,” she said, after a bit of soul-searching.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard. What did they want?”

  “If I tell you, they’ll kill me.”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you right now.” God, was that ever easy to say. Rather, for “Mr. Lamb” to say.

  On the screen, one of the Chinese malefactor’s decoys got roughly bulldogged to the floor and handcuffed. Choral kept her attention on the action.

  Alicia swallowed a lump. “The whole thing was a third-party action. Nobody was supposed to get killed, not for real.”

  “Except maybe the guy you selected to do the job.”

  “That was NORCO’s call. Nothing to do with me.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. About what NORCO wanted.”

  “I met with them one time. One single time. They suggested the setup. But it had to come from outside. Third party.”

  “But they suggested whomever. And you sent Choral to make the arrangements?”

  “Yes.” She bit off the word. “I should have done it myself.” She turned to Choral. “God, you are so fired.”

  “Eat shit, you fucking bitch,” Choral muttered, still watching the screen.

  “Choral, shut up. Watch the movie.”

  “I don’t have to put up with this shit,” Choral said. “I did what she asked me to. And now, every five minutes, someone is threatening to kill me. So fuck you, fuck her, fuck y’all.”

  “I know how you feel,” I said. The way her Southern accent leaked when she was stressed was just too cute. “I’m not supposed to be mixed up in this either, but here we all are. I want to know what you think is supposed to happen.”

  Alicia tried to turn again. Eye contact is important for offensive maneuvers. I tapped her on the head and she startled back to her original position. “Right now, you die, she dies, I’m happy and I can go back to dinner.”

  “You said you had a meeting.” I had a firm grasp on Alicia’s shoulder, now. “There must be a name.”

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” she said.

  I reached around to squeeze the nerve in her right armpit. It was something I’d learned by accident, while being tormented by my once-upon-a-time half brother, Clay. He had hoisted me into the air (the way Dandine had lifted Zetts) to begin some mayhem, and while I was flailing, I grabbed his armpit and hit the nerve bundle there. Grab just so, and the whole arm goes numb. That’s what brothers and sisters were for, I guess—practice. Alicia arched slightly, then bulled down against the pain.

  “Oww, goddammit!”

  “Wrong answer, Licia.”

  “Geraldis. Or Gerald Something. That won’t do you any good; they all have fake names anyway; let go of my arm!”

  She was pissed off, but she still kept her voice down, and that was when I knew I had her. I pulled a Pilot pen out of my jacket pocket and pressed it into the hollow of her throat, from behind, while releasing her arm. “Feel that? This little toy can make you nerve-dead in less time than it will take your body to touch the ground.”

  “Gerardis. His name was Gerardis.”

  (Dandine to Choral, yesterday, right before we boarded the cab to the airport: “You don’t happen to know a gentleman who might have given his name as Gerardis, do you?”)

  “And Mr. Gerardis was your friendly NORCO representative?”

  “I already told you that.”

  “Tell me again.” I was aware of consciously making my own voice deeper. A bad-guy purr.

  She dealt with her breath as though expelling cigarette smoke. “Mister Gerardis was from NORCO.”

  “And what did NORCO want with you?”

  During the skirmish of thoughts warring in Alica’s brain, Choral spoke up, “She’s fucking the next governor of California.”

  That would be the honorable Theodore Ripkin, per the dossier. The opponent of G. Johnson Jenks, the man who employed her as campaign manager.

  “Thanks, honey,” Alicia said acidly.

  “She’s also fucking some guy, some industrialist who also wants to be governor. Garrett Stradling.”

  I knew that name, too, and not just from the dossier. Stradling had been the CEO of Futuristics, Inc. The subway builders. The man behind the corporate curtain. Futuristics had been involved with my firm, Kroeger Concepts, for publicity purposes when the initial train tunnels collapsed during drilling, and sinkholes had bloomed in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Wait a minute—Stradling wants to be governor, too?” I asked. Alicia was trysting on both sides of the political fence. That took organization, not to mention sheer nerve.

  “He changed his name,” said Choral.

  “That’s enough, Choral.” Alicia said.

  “Changed his name to Jenks, five years ago.”

  My heart said, coronary? Think I’ll try it! My mouth was hanging open.

  Garrett Stradling had changed his name to G. Johnson Jenks. That was why Stradling had stepped down from the big-business limelight. Now he was re-created, with political aspirations and probably all the help NORCO could provide, as a breath-of-fresh-air candidate named Jenks . . .

  . . . who had just become a client of my lust-object and co-worker at Kroeger, Katy Burgess. Katy and I had talked about the guy for nearly an hour while I was focused on her legs. My company was in line to sell this man as gubernatorial timber, and all the evidence suggested he was a NORCO puppet.

  “Do you get it, now?” said Alicia. “Or do I have to drag a blackboard and pointer in here?”

  She was making the beast with both candidates, waiting to see which would nose forward. You had to cut her some honest awe. Behind every great man was a good woman, so went the sayin
g. In this case, the same woman. To consider the blackmail she had already stockpiled made me feel dizzy.

  But I did not wish to allow a transfer of power to her, because she was already too comfortable in her anger. Immediately, I looked around for intruders. New patrons.

  I already had Choral by the arm. “How many backups?”

  She sighed. “Two in the parking garage, two in the forecourt, one more in the lobby, by now.”

  “Alicia, you sit right there for five more minutes. If I don’t call my partner and tell him I’m clear in that time, you’re done, am I clear?”

  She nodded, envisioning checkmate. “I have to make a call.”

  “Do it.”

  She unlimbered her cellphone and punched a predesignated number. “This is A for Alpha. Have Marion stand down; I’m all right.”

  Pause. Then her expression smoldered.

  “This is a fucking command override, numbnuts! On my authority. Do it.” She clicked off.

  I was already hustling Choral to the exit doors behind the screen. With luck, she’d be home in time to feed her cat, the unfortunately named Horace. As Andrew Collier might have said, Where’s the girl? Here, then, was the girl.

  We left the parking garage at the Laurel egress, on foot, moving downhill and southward, shrouded by the cover of residential trees and sidewalk. Not strolling; it was more a matter of my impulsion and Choral’s lack of resistance. Our only noise was the crisp click of her heels on the pavement.

  “Sorry about your job,” I said.

  “You didn’t really have a gun on us back there, did you?” She asked this without looking at me. Watching her step.

  “No.”

  “Great. I try to help out the boss, and here I am, look at me—fired.” She stopped and balled her fists, growling loud enough to almost be a scream, “Goddammiiiiiiiiiit!”

  I braced her quickly. “Don’t.” She sagged in my grasp. “Don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to yell, you know? God, it’s all so pointless . . .” Then some internal mirth caused her to start laughing.

  “What?”

  “Funny,” she said, resuming our little couple’s walk. “Without me, Licia is going to have a hell of a time keeping her affairs in order, right?”

  “Her lovers.”

  “Like, half my goddamn day was scheduling things to keep one guy out of sight of the other guy. Let’s see her juggle those balls on her own.”

  “Another pun?”

  “Maybe. Her leverage tapes fill up two of those rolling fileboxes you get at Staples.”

  “Leverage tapes?”

  “You know—tapes. Discs. Not suitable for YouTube.”

  “Are you talking about—” it seemed so lowbrow I had a hard time appreciating its simplicity and inevitability “—sex tapes?”

  “My, my. Don’t tell me you’re offended. What a joke. Of course, tapes. Of sex. With politicians. For leverage. Is this a new concept to you?” She sniffed, almost haughty.

  Why, yes—if Mr. Jenks, current Kroeger client under Katy Burgess’s stewardship, also happened to be the selfsame Mr. Stradling, after a name change and wash-rinse of his old identity—yes, it could be, as they say in the business, an item of note. Voters are much more incensed by the concept of copulation than by warfare, but never mind that—here was a link between Dandine’s universe and mine, at last.

  Choral sighed, then made a tiny sound of defeat or release. “In a way, it’s a relief. I shoulda known, the minute I had to start doing covert ops for her. All that lying and bullshit.”

  I thought, well what did you think you were signing up for? But I already knew the answer: Many people who worked honest lives in what Thoreau called “quiet desperation” often spent entire careers waiting for that one small chance at illicit advancement—that one happy accident or confluence of fates that equals embarrassment to some, but opportunity to others. Catching the boss in the lurch; covering his or her ass. Saving their kid from a hit-and-run. Being a fly on the right wall. Taking a bullet for a superior and not asking for recompense, but expecting it nonetheless. If you insider-traded, or went slightly sublegal just this one time, you might be able to buy a better car, or get out of your dingy apartment and into a real house. If you helped cover up or expose selected character quirks, some power person might enable the support of your entire family with a touch of the scepter. By such luck are people promoted. It had been Choral’s turn. She had drawn the duty and done the deed, strictly for her own self-interest, lying to herself that she was spotless while others were vile. Your life is always somebody else’s fault.

  She had left her shell to perform one task, as a gamble.

  “Like hiring hit men?” I said.

  “Hey, she just gave me a contact, and I contacted that guy, Varga. If it was all a setup, she probably knew about Varga from those other guys, those narco guys.”

  “NORCO guys.”

  “Yeah, like you said.”

  “No, wait.” Adrenaline blowback from my theatre drama was making me dizzy and slightly sick. “You said guys, before. Alicia said she met with just one guy. The business-suited guys; remember, you mentioned them?”

  “Yeah, there were three or four of them.” We had reached the corner of Laurel and Fountain avenues, which crosscut Hollywood between Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards. When neophyte actors asked Bette Davis for advice, she had been famously quoted as responding, “Take Fountain.”

  “Am I still a hostage?” she asked, watching the crosswalk light, giving us what was known locally as the Curse of the Blinky Hand.

  “You’re not a hostage,” I said, trying to invoke the tone Dandine had used on me when he was trying to convince me of the same thing “I just need to figure a couple of things out.”

  She shrugged at that, digging in her shoulder bag for a Kleenex. “Great. You don’t know any more about this than I do. I don’t suppose you’re hiring?”

  I couldn’t help but smile as I shook my head no.

  “Because,” she said, “normally I wouldn’t be this way. I mean, you didn’t hurt me or anything. But two fucking days in a row . . . my credit cards . . . this terrorist horse shit . . . like, everybody has a limit, right?”

  “You don’t know how right you are,” I said.

  “I work for a living,” she protested. “I don’t have time for all this rich-guy gamesmanship, this stupid pawn-pushing. Nothing ever changes anyway.” Her Southern accent was leaking forth again. “The deck is so stacked, and the guys at the top always get away with everything. What’s the point of ever caring, or trying?”

  Idiot me, I almost wanted to hug her.

  Before the light turned green, Choral gave me a full shot of Mace, right in the face, from the canister attached to her keybunch, while screaming epithets at me and kicking my ribs with her pointy high-heeled shoes as I fell to one knee and banged the back of my head against the light pole.

  That’s how I wound up getting arrested.

  DAY THREE

  Just so you’ll know, this is what happens while you’re waiting to be booked at the Santa Monica sheriff’s station . . .

  It’s cold in the holding cell. Colder, because they keep the temperature low to discourage hot-bloodedness, and because you’re not wearing your shoes. Your hands stink of the blue-gel industrial cleanser which was the only option for cleaning off the fingerprint ink. They seem to make sure your hair is in disarray when they snap the mug shots, and they compel you to hold up your own little letterpress board with name, date, crime code, and some of your important numbers. You are not coerced. Your act of holding up the board is as plain as a confession. The officer who runs you through the fingerprint procedure acts weary, as though he has been doing this one task for a century, a penance in Purgatory. He’s chatty, “So, your story is that this isn’t a rape, it’s a misunderstanding?” His manner is so casual that it crushes your ego—the guy is not worried you’ll flip out or try to get away. You
’re already behind too many locked doors. The officer’s breath smells like coffee laced with bourbon. Being a WeHo sheriff (as you recall the joke), there’s a fifty-fifty probability the guy is gay. He isolates you nice and tight into the holding cell, where there is a plank bench bolted to the wall, and two pay telephones, in plain view of the cops’ common room from windows inlaid with wire and shielded by thick, overpainted hurricane mesh. But you don’t have any spare change; they’ve already confiscated that and sealed it into a personal possessions envelope with your name, misspelled in black marker.

  Blinded by the Mace, your face raked open in furrows by Choral’s acrylic nails, your skull throbbing from its rough introduction to a protruding metal object (the crosswalk button on the lamppost), your breath rawed and ribs aching from repeated kicks by Choral’s pointy-toed, patent leather high heels, the next sensation you felt was a cop’s square-muzzled autopistol, kissing your kidney as somebody kneeled on your back and cuffed your hands. Choral must have spotted the sheriff’s cruiser an instant before you did, and formulated her scenario with flashbulb speed. When you last glimpsed her on the street, she had managed to rip her pantyhose and bloody her own lip with admirable haste. “Glimpsed,” because a uniformed officer named Bambra (according to his tag) made sure to guide your face right into the door frame as he was “helping” you into the rear seat, the one without door handles on the inside. Bang, stars, and no Miranda bullshit to waste anybody’s time, either. Bambra’s partner would cover that teeny procedural slip, if anybody ever asked, and nobody would.

  You don’t protest. You don’t talk to the officers. You don’t talk to the garrulous fingerprint guy. Anything you say, no matter how innocuous, will wind up in a written report as “spontaneously volunteered” information. Any protest counts as resisting arrest, and could land you in the hospital, or the morgue. You don’t know your rights, but the police know what rights they wish to grant you—another luminous deception that adds glitter to the veneer of civilization we all pretend to know by heart.