Try Darkness

by James Scott Bell

  “What made you see it that way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We paused. Father Bob said, “It was Jacqueline, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Of course,” I said. “You don’t see things the same after something like that. If you did, you’d be made of stone.” I took a draw on the robusto. “Maybe that’d be better. Didn’t Dylan once write a song about that?”

  “Not that kind of stoned.”

  We were quiet for a while after that and I thought about how I used to get baked in college and law school. How Jacqueline convinced me it was not a good thing to do that ever again.

  I missed her face and her love, the hurt coming on fresh. I thought then that her loss was going to be like that thing amputees get. Shadow pain. Your foot hurts but you have no foot, it was cut off, but the pain is there just the same. You don’t know when it’s coming on, it just does. You wince and bear it and hope it doesn’t return too often.

  “You okay?” Father Bob said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Doesn’t sound all that convincing to me.”

  “Am I paying you to be a shrink?”

  “I’m a shrink for free. Or a friend.”

  “Right.”

  “And you have a friend in God.”

  “Friend? He has a strange way of showing it.”

  “In what way?”

  “Okay,” I said. “You remember once at the Sip, when McNitt was talking about God and evil? You kind of brushed it off.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  “You made some comment about at least McNitt admitting God is alive or something. But that’s not the question. You want God to be a friend—how come he allows us to go through all this? How come he has a little girl come into the world, daughter of a whore, and then the whore gets murdered and she’s alone? And that’s not the worst of it. A lot more, a lot more goes on. So if you don’t mind, God as friend really doesn’t do it for me.”

  “You want to talk or you want to rant? If you want to rant, I’ll shut up. If you want to talk, I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “Fine, tell me what you think. You gave me a fine cigar. It’s the least I can do.”

  Father Bob took a languid puff, then said, “My good friend McNitt likes to say that a good God would never allow evil to exist. So when I ask him if it could be that a bad God exists, he clams up. Don’t you see the irony of it? The argument against evil really admits there is a God.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “You can say there’s evil, period, and that means there’s no God at all.”

  “You sure you want to make that argument?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s see where it goes. If the world is evil but there’s no God, where do you get your definition of ‘evil’?”

  Verbally circling me. And sounding like he was having fun. Got me a little mad. “Good and evil are self-evident,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Ty, but they’re not. Without the Cosmic Ump, you can’t settle anything.”

  “Say what?”

  “The Cosmic Umpire. The one who calls the game. If you say something’s evil and I say it’s not, how are you going to settle it? If there’s no ump, there’s only might-makes-right.”

  “So?”

  “So you can’t claim that the existence of evil is an argument against God, because just making that argument supposes the Cosmic Ump. Am I making sense?”

  “How ’bout those Dodgers?”

  “Shall we continue?”

  “Not tonight. My brain hurts. If we’re going to duel, I want to be fresh.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  We sat in silence, listening to the night, and I was glad that I knew where to find Father Bob. What he believed in didn’t matter to me much at all. What mattered is that he was a friend, that he was somebody who cared about what I did and what I was thinking, and it’s good to have somebody like that around.

  For a few minutes there, I was happy.

  You’re always happier when you don’t know what’s coming.

  76

  FRIDAY MORNING I called on B-2.

  Jonathan Blake Blumberg, better known as B-2 around town, is the electronic devices entrepreneur I’d helped once. In a bitter custody dispute during which his ex-wife had managed to float false accusations. Blumberg, despite all his money, couldn’t fight the power of a lie. That’s where I had come in.

  So now he liked me. And he was a self-made man who knew ways to get things done that weren’t always going to show up on a radar screen.

  I was on the 405 heading south when I called JatDome, Blumberg’s company that he built from scratch. His gatekeeper put me on hold, then came back and immediately put me through. Blumberg told me to come in, that he would drop anything he was doing to give me some time.

  Fifteen minutes later I was in the Blumberg Building, in B-2’s expansive office with the killer view of the ocean.

  The guy was as in shape as ever. He has thick black hair and a boxer’s body. Energy to burn. He wore blue jeans, Adidas shoes, and a yellow pullover shirt. I don’t think I ever saw him in a tie.

  His desk, as big as an aircraft carrier, had all sorts of electronics on it. I knew from before these were products, prototypes, and sometimes just something one of his R & D people threw together at his behest.

  He gave me a hug and a slap on the back. The slap took some of my breath away.

  “How are you, boy?” he said.

  I coughed. “Aces.”

  “That’s the ticket.”

  He looked a little looser than when I’d first met him. That’s when he had the heavy weight of false accusations over him. His ex-wife, a woman named Dyan, made Lucrezia Borgia look like Florence Henderson. She had poisoned the mind of their only daughter, Claudia, to the point where a false memory of sexual abuse was implanted in her brain.

  We didn’t sit. B-2 liked to pace around. Sitting in his presence felt like sleeping in anyone else’s.

  “How’s life out of the law firm?” he asked.

  “Humane,” I said.

  “You still living with the nuns?”

  “You make it sound like I’m some explorer among a strange race.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Yes, I’m still living with the nuns,” I said. “It’s peaceful up there. I get the occasional case, too. Right now I’ve got a client accused of murder. I’ve also got a little girl whose mother was murdered. At the Lindbrook Hotel downtown.”

  “How did you get involved with that?”

  “The mother came to see me at my office.”

  “Office?”

  “I rent a chair at a little coffee place in the valley. She came in with her daughter and they were trying to give her a fast one down at the Lindbrook. Get her out of the building because they want to develop it into lofts.”

  “Who does?”

  “The DeCosses.”

  “Oh yeah. Quite a little family. The old man did all right for himself in the wife department.”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “No fooling?”

  “I got invited up to see them. When I filed a temporary restraining order on their little eviction, it rippled its way up to the top. Quite a nice house he’s got.”

  “Almost as big as mine,” Blumberg said.

  “Anyway, I want to have a little talk with Junior. He’s speaking down at the Staples Center this afternoon.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Big success show, you know, where a bunch of people come and tell you how good they are at making money?”

  “Oh yeah. Then make their money selling you stuff that promises to make you money. What a racket. Ty, how can I help you out?”

  “I was thinking,” I said, “of putting a little tail on the kid. I’ve seen his car. I figure I might get lucky and find it down there somewhere, and maybe you know the best way to put a tracker on it.”

  “You need a GPS to stick under t
he car, gives you real-time location every fifteen seconds, and maps it on your phone. Gee, if only we made something like that.”

  Smiling, he tapped his own phone and gave some instructions. Turned back to me.

  “No time at all,” he said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I got you covered. Hey, take a look at this.” He snatched a cylinder off his desk, black and a little larger than a lighter. He pushed with his thumb and the thing made a snapping noise. “Cute, huh?”

  “What is it?”

  “EWT. Electroshock weapon technology. A mini stunner.”

  He held it up so I could see the twin prods. They looked so innocent.

  “This baby delivers four hundred K,” he said.

  “Volts?”

  “A quarter second on the neck, and your guy’s muscles contract. One to four seconds and he’s on the ground, confused as a Democrat with a tax break. Five seconds, he starts thinking he’s Al Gore and the earth is melting.”

  “You’re going to sell these things?”

  “I’m thinking of calling it the iProd, but Jobs’ll probably come after me. Let him. I’ve wanted to take him on for years. I’m also working on a new, very hot pepper spray.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “The iFog?”

  “That’s not bad! But I was thinking ‘Face Melters.’”

  “You’re the genius.”

  He put the iProd in my hand.

  “You’re giving this to me?” I said.

  Blumberg nodded.

  “I’m speechless,” I said.

  “But not sparkless. Hey, you know what? I’m your Q.”

  “My what?”

  “You know, in all those Bond movies? Bond’d see Q and get all his toys before going out on his mission. That’s me. I’m supposed to tell you not to play with anything, and you’re supposed to press a button and set the office on fire.”

  “I’ll skip that part,” I said.

  “I’m glad,” he said.

  77

  AFTER Q, I went to learn the secrets of success.

  Staples Center is on South Figueroa, down the street from one of my favorite eateries, the Original Pantry, where you can still get surly waiters and an honest breakfast. I treated myself to the pancakes and then prepared to have my life transformed.

  A hundred years ago there was a large ad in the L.A. Times from a woman named Romanya, “the Gypsy Queen.” In her dive on Main Street she promised to: “Tell all. Settle lovers’ quarrels, reunite the separated; tell whom and when to marry; how to control and win the one you love; how to overcome enemies. A visit will convince all. Skeptics and unbelievers invited!”

  I think Romanya would have been at home in today’s L.A. The selling of false hopes is a big business here, and every now and then a dog and pony show at Staples attracts thousands of the sweating masses aching to find the one secret they’ve been missing in their lives, the golden door to riches.

  I wandered into this circus at about two-thirty in the afternoon. The lobby was packed with tables and the tables packed with all sorts of swag—coffee mugs with pithy sayings, T-shirts, mouse pads, posters, books. Lots and lots of books and tapes and CD and DVD programs.

  Behind these tables were slim women in black dresses or guys in their twenties trying to dress and look like executives in their forties. Little success wannabes, working on behalf of this or that huckster or company.

  One of these guys saw me looking and called me over, the way a used-car salesman would verbally net an Okie with a fat roll on his way to Las Vegas.

  “How you doin’, sir?” he said.

  “Me?” I said.

  “You look like you’re here to reshape your world.”

  “Do I? I thought I looked a little pasty.”

  A forced laugh. “That’s a good one. Are you willing to invest in an unlimited future?”

  “How much?” I scanned his table of wares. The smiling face of Oz Julian jumped out from books and CD cases. He was a thin, multitoothed, black-haired bundle of joy.

  “Oh, I’m not talking about dollars,” the young man said. “I’m talking about life itself. These principles apply to everyone, without regard to income.”

  “How much for the books, I mean?”

  “Fifteen dollars. Today they’re on special. The CD series is eighteen dollars.”

  “Eighteen? And for that I get what?”

  “You get Oz reading his own book. Unabridged.”

  “Oz the great and powerful?”

  Another laugh. “Oh, we get that all the time, sir. That’s a good one. Would you like a book?”

  “Sure. You have anything by John Grisham?”

  He stared blankly, then plastered on a big grin. “This book will show you how to turn failure into finances, disappointments into diamonds, and a stinkin’ attitude into mountaintop altitude.”

  “All that in one book?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  “I’m actually looking for ways to make less money. You have any books on that?”

  Blank. Then grin. “That’s a good one.”

  “Give my best to the great and powerful Oz and remember not to look behind the curtain.”

  I went looking for Junior.

  78

  THE SCHEDULE HAD him down for a four o’clock talk. So I got to sit with the teeming masses and listen to a pitch from Pug Robinson. He’d been a pretty good fighter in his day. Peaked about the time I went to law school. Fought past his prime a couple of matches and blew through about fifty million dollars over his career.

  I remembered Pug from his fight with Mike Tyson—one of those fights in which Tyson didn’t try to chomp his opponent’s ear off. Pug had Tyson on the ropes in the fifth but got careless and almost had his head hooked into the press box. He didn’t come to until thirty minutes after the fight was over. When he woke up he thought he was a shoe salesman named Frank.

  His brains unscrambled, though, and he knocked around awhile after he retired. His money ran out and he was down, seemingly out.

  Then he got into skin cream products for men and built up a major business just as the metrosexual craze made Time magazine. The commercials of this former boxer putting cream on his cheeks as gorgeous women fawned were part of popular culture now.

  He bounded out to the theme from Rocky, shadow boxing, smiling. He did the “Pug two-step” a couple of times, a boxing move he made popular (though it grew less popular after the Tyson fight because it’s what he did before the left hook that turned him, momentarily, into a shoe salesman).

  “How y’all doin’?” Pug shouted when he got to the lectern. I could see teleprompter screens in front of him.

  “I wanna knock the ‘can’t’ right out of you today! I’m gonna jab your doubts and uppercut your fears.” And then he unloaded his catch phrase: “You can’t be beat if you stay on your feet!”

  At which the crowd cheered.

  I groaned. How much of this horseradish would I have to sit through before Junior?

  A lot, as it turned out.

  Pug was followed by the Key couple. They started with a slick movie showing how George Washington had used the Key at Valley Forge and Thomas Edison used it to invent the lightbulb.

  It has something to do with the universe being made of vibrating spheres of attraction, and how you could tune your body to be in harmony with them.

  Then the black-clad duo zipped onto the stage to the old Fleetwood Mac tune about yesterday being gone. She was a blonde and he was of darker hue. Both pumped their fists. Causing vibrations in the universe, no doubt. Both wore head mikes, so their hands could keep causing them.

  The man said, “You can have more than you’ve got because you can become more than you are!”

  The crowd cheered wildly.

  Then the woman said, “If you can think, you can attract. Think gold, attract gold. Think love, get love. Get anything you want!”

  “Five years ago we were living in a one-room apart
ment,” the man said. “Beans on the table, moths in my pocket! And then one day I looked in the mirror and I said to myself, Enough! I made a decision. That is the essential first step. You need to decide to be rich. Have you decided?”

  Five thousand voices shouted Yes!

  “If life gives you lemons,” the man said, “don’t just make lemonade. Make it, bottle it, sell it, and turn it into a lemonade fortune. We are going to tell you how.”

  No doubt, I thought. Look what they did with manure.

  It was all I could take. I made my way down toward the floor, where a ring of blue-blazered security guards stood facing the seats. They looked bored. I walked around the ring toward the tunnel where the power couple had emerged. I figured that might be the bullpen, key word being “bull.”

  Maybe I could get a word in with Junior before his talk. Get him all pumped up with questions about his fleabag hotel and throwing people out on the street to avoid the law.

  But a security guard stopped me when I tried to walk into the tunnel.

  “May I see your pass, sir?” he said.

  “Pass?”

  “No access without a pass.”

  “Oh, I’m just a fan. I wanted to see if I could get an autograph.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, this area is restricted.”

  “But I want a mountaintop altitude.”

  He did not change his face muscles into a winning smile. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Darn,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to go back to selling pencils again.”

  I scanned the seats in the arena, saw an empty about the third row. Went for it and sat between two guys. The black-clad couple were still pumping fists. The guy on my left leaned over to me and said, “This is a pile of you-know-what, but she’s a babe.”

  A formula for success in America.

  79

  FINALLY, MERCIFULLY, THE Key couple was through. Another slick video played on the jumbo screens, reminding people of all the great success junk they could buy in the lobby. A commercial for a “fail-safe” way to build an empire based on “distressed properties” played.