Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom

by A. L. Haskett

  “Much better.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me,” Duncan said, “who’s the artist here?"

  “This certainly is the nicest place we’ve been,” Fiona said.

  The club was immaculate and immense. Mahogany rails circled three stages, and the girls swaying upon them were illuminated by a variety of concealed lights. The ratio of well-dressed men in coats and ties to women in dresses and business suits almost reflected the general population. A young black girl in red lingerie with a microscopic waist and an inversely proportional chest approached their table.

  “Care for a table dance?” she asked.

  “No thank you,” Woody said, “my religion forbids it.”

  Fiona laughed and squeezed his hand. He did not tell her he had stolen the line from Benjamin, who once used it in response to a drunken rodeo whore. He squeezed her hand back. As much as he hated coming to these places, he loved the way her cares dropped from her face when they did, like snow from a cold January sky. A waitress in a black leotard and stiletto heels took their order and left.

  “The help is so friendly,” Fiona commented.

  Woody grunted. He had hurt his back trying a position diagrammed in a book Fiona had bought in Hollywood that afternoon. The Camel’s Suture was the book’s name. Or something like that. Woody was actually enjoying himself until the rope broke and he fell ass backwards over the bed. Fiona wanted to call a chiropractor but he put his boot down. It would have been too hard to explain. Seven Tylenols took the edge off the pain, but he doubted he could accommodate Fiona later that night. Maybe, he thought, for once she’ll leave me alone. Their beers arrived. Woody sucked his down and ordered another.

  “Pace yourself,” Fiona said, “or I’ll have to drive home.”

  That was his plan. Injured or drunk alone would not disqualify him from bedroom duties, but both together might. He wondered if he could fake the need for a body cast. Not permanent. Just a week or two to recover.

  “There’s so many young ladies here,” Fiona said.

  “It’s amateur night,” Woody said, “there’s a sign over the door.”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice over the speakers said as the lights dimmed, “time for our featured event!”

  “Hey,” Woody said. “Isn’t that Danny Carpenter over there at the bar?”

  “On stage number one it’s Sabrina!” A tall redhead strutted onto the far left stage.

  Fiona did not look. “Can’t be. He’s shopping with Tiffy for a new dress.”

  “On stage number three its Amber!” A buxom brunette in a plaid skirt, parochial sweater, and bobby sox somersaulted onto the stage on the right.

  “Nimble little vixen,” Fiona said. “All those dance lessons are finally paying off.”

  Woody squinted at the bar. “Well, they must have found one, because that’s Danny.”

  “And on center stage its Roxanne!”

  Fiona looked over. “I believe you are correct. No wonder he would come to a place like this. He can’t get a decent girl on his own merit.”

  Woody did not answer. He was distracted by the blonde approaching center stage. She wore a black leather skirt and a red spandex tube top. Silver studs ran the sleeves of her glossy black jacket. Black thigh boots shod muscular legs. She had chocolate eyes, strawberry lips, and breasts the size of softballs, though much softer and not as white. She slapped a riding crop against her thigh with a loud crack as she mounted the stage.

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” he finally said.

  Fiona looked to center stage. “Oh my god.”

  A disco song began with a loud, thumping base. Tiffy removed her jacket. The skirt was next to go. When she hoisted the tube top over her head Fiona stood as if poked by a cattle prod and ran out of the club. Woody slowly finished his beer. Tiffy left the stage to fervent applause. Woody left ten dollars on the table, and followed Fiona outside. She was mute all the way back to the hotel. A valet took their car and they walked quickly to their bungalow. Fiona went into the bathroom and slammed the door. Woody undressed and got into bed. The bathroom door opened. For the first time since their first visit to the Hollywood Bar and Grill, Fiona wore a nightgown. She sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling at this hour?”

  “Hush,” Fiona said.

  Woody went into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and threw water on his face. When he returned to bed Fiona was still on the phone.

  “That’s all right, Roy,” Fiona said, “I just thought you should know what Danny was into before it was too late.”

  She hung up and dialed again.

  “Who are you calling now?”

  “Hush. William? Fiona here. I’m afraid I have shocking news. No, no, she’s all right. No, she’s not pregnant. At least not by Duncan, that is. Don’t take that tone with me! Do you want to hear what I have to say or not? Fine. Are you sitting down?”

  Woody covered his head with a pillow. But no matter how hard he held it to his ear, he still heard Fiona breaching the news of Tiffy’s disgrace to William Bradshaw. His heart went out over more than a thousand miles of telephone wire to the man on the other end. He had never liked William Bradshaw for his blustering, bullying ways. He was proud of his concrete of all things. But Woody knew William Bradshaw would be holding his head in his hands and crying once the connection was broken. Despite his love for Fiona, Woody silently damned her for causing such pain. When she finally turned off the lights and sidled up to him, he pretended he was asleep, and for all her jostling he refused to give up the deception.

  The painting was half finished when the last bottle hit the trash. Long after he had completed his twelve steps, Duncan would look back at the paintings from what he called his drunken period to see potential and talent and myriad mistakes. From his new found sobriety he would blame the alcohol instead of his youth, though in reality it was his experience that made the difference between then and then. Duncan put down his brush and took out his wallet.

  “Beer run,” he said.

  Assan said, “It is after two. It is illegal to sell beer now.”

  “Well.” Duncan put his wallet back. “Well, damn it.”

  “Nicely spoken,” said Benjamin.

  Assan stood. “But nothing prevents me from giving you a six-pack.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Benjamin said. “I feel like having a Slurpee.”

  “Get me a pack of Necco Wafers while you’re at it,” said Duncan.

  “There he is,” said Howard Lomo.

  He and Leroy Kern sat in front of the hardware store in a faded blue sixty-six Mustang. Lomo had stolen it from the lot of a Vegas K-Mart after he busted out of the county lock up. Lomo had found an incarcerated vagrant of the same general height and build and, after determining the bum’s release date, offered him a drink from a bottle of whiskey allegedly hidden in the laundry room. Once there, Lomo beat the man senseless. It was not as easy as he had hoped, as he earlier had to pop his shoulder back in himself, and the agony of the exertion had a detrimental effect on his stamina. He had exchanged identity wrist bands then stuffed the unconscious man into an industrial dryer. Hours later, when the vagrant’s name was called, Lomo left through the front door. He had driven the stolen Mustang to their hotel room, where he found Leroy Kern watching a porno movie titled The Bitches of Madison County on pay per view. Kern had posted bail on his MasterCard. Lomo had been detained without bond due to the weapon found in his waist band and the violence with which he resisted apprehension.

  You sir, the judge had said, are clearly a danger to the community.

  “He ain’t alone,” said Leroy Kern.

  “So what?” Lomo pulled a ski mask over his face. “No one else is going to get hurt.” Lomo took his Beretta from the glove compartment and racked a round. “Unless they try to help that shit head.”

  “I don’t like this.”

&n
bsp; “Shut up. Just shut up. Just shut up and sit there and keep the car running and when I come out be ready to go. Can you handle that?”

  Leroy Kern did not like being bullied, but he was afraid of the man. Howard Lomo had not just crossed the line dividing good from evil, he had long jumped over it with wholehearted enthusiasm.

  “Sure. I can handle that.”

  Howard Lomo got out and ran across the street. He paused outside the mini-mart and looked in. Benjamin filled a cup with cherry Slurpee from a machine opposite the door. A pack of Necco Wafers protruded from his back pocket. Assan was in back taking a six pack from the cooler. A dark-skinned kid stood behind the counter. No one else was inside. Lomo jerked the glass door open and jumped inside.

  “Nobody move,” he yelled. “This is a robbery!”

  Benjamin turned and Lomo drew a bead. The glass door swung back and smacked Lomo hard in the ass. Lomo pulled the trigger, but his balance had been compromised. The round intended for Benjamin lodged in the Slurpee machine. Sticky red slush poured onto the linoleum. Assan dropped the beer and ran to the front.

  “Abdul!” he yelled in Hindi, “my equalizer!”

  Lomo turned to Assan. “What the hell are you jabbering about?”

  Benjamin dove for the frozen foods.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Lomo said.

  He fired another round. He had seen the result of Benjamin’s proficiency with poultry in Leroy Kern’s face. Abdul grabbed the Benelli Police Model semi-automatic twelve gauge shotgun with the pistol grip from under the counter and threw it to Assan, who caught it and racked a round into the chamber. It was an intimidating sound Lomo recognized from his police training. He turned. Assan lowered the weapon.

  “Oh, shit!” Lomo said.

  Assan fired. Abdul and Benjamin hit the floor. Lomo brought his arm up to shoot but when he pulled the trigger he noted his wrist ended in a bloody stump. His right hand twitched on the floor a foot from the Beretta. He screamed and picked up the hand and ran out the door.

  Leroy Kern heard the shots with a peculiar combination of sadness and satisfaction. He did not object to the act, but he found the possible consequences repugnant. He resolved to detach himself from Lomo at the first opportunity. Leroy Kern put the car into gear when he saw Lomo run from the store, holding his arm to his chest. Assan stepped out the door and aimed the shotgun. Leroy Kern decided this opportunity was as first as any. He hit the gas. Leroy Kern was a block and a half away by the time Howard Lomo reached the middle of the street. Lomo held his detached right hand in his left and shook it at the vanishing Mustang.

  “Come back, you asshole!”

  Something hit Lomo in the back of his head. He looked down. A broken pack of Necco Wafers, thrown with Benjamin’s usual accuracy, lay beside his dirty left sneaker.

  “That’s it,” Howard Lomo said.

  He put his severed right hand into his jacket pocket with his good left. He reached awkwardly behind his back and removed a second gun from his waistband. He turned. Benjamin and Assan stood at the sidewalk. Assan still held the Benelli, but Lomo no longer cared. He was dead anyway, he decided, and he was determined to enter hell dragging Benjamin by the hair with his one remaining hand. Assan lowered the Benelli. Lomo stepped past the center line into the path of a semi hauling portable dressing rooms to a movie shoot in Brentwood. The truck hit Lomo at an angle and threw him forty-five feet into a motorcycle parked in front of the Hollywood Bar and Grill, skewering him on a handlebar. Lomo blacked out. He woke to distant sirens and a tugging on his shoulder. The last thing Howard Lomo experienced in the land of the living was Sheila Rascowitz pulling his remaining hand, trying to remove him from the third Harley she had purchased in the last two weeks.

  “Delaney,” she screamed as she tugged, “you’re responsible for this!”

  But the clutch handle was caught in his ribs, and as he died reflecting on the ignominiousness of his predicament, all Howard Lomo could think of in a surprisingly clear way was that ultimately this strangely masculine woman was correct in her assessment of the situation.

  Leroy Kern drove until the Mustang coughed and sputtered and finally expired on Angeles Crest Highway high in the mountains north of Pasadena. He turned off the headlights and put his head in his hands. His head hurt, his nose hurt, his neck hurt, his soul hurt. He did not know if Lomo had killed Benjamin before he died. He did not care. All he wanted was peace. Leroy Kern opened the glove compartment and reached inside.

  Time to go, he thought.

  He was reaching for a forty-four Smith and Wesson revolver that Lomo had stolen from a liquor store in Barstow along with three hundred and fifty dollars in traveling money. Lomo had tied up the manager, locked her in the stock room, and took a half gallon of Wild Turkey for the ride. Leroy Kern had seen him put the gun in the glove compartment. But that was before they opened the whiskey. Leroy Kern was passed out drunk when, somewhere past the California state line, Lomo stuffed the revolver in his belt as a back up to his duty weapon.

  Leroy Kern panicked when he could not find the gun. He felt something cold and hard beneath an Auto Club Guidebook. He took it out. It was a small, white, glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus with a magnet on the bottom, like the one that rode shotgun on his father’s dashboard when he was a kid. Plastic Jesus shown ghostly in the night, arms outstretched as if to embrace Leroy Kern and head cocked slightly to one side as if to ask why. Leroy Kern clutched Plastic Jesus and cried. Years later, when he next met Benjamin at the First Church of the Evolutionary Jesus in Cheyenne, from the pulpit Benjamin would ask how Leroy Kern found Jesus and to the congregation’s delight, Leroy Kern would tell the truth: I just looked in the glove compartment, and there he was.

  Leroy Kern cried for an hour. Then he got out of the car. He placed Plastic Jesus on the Mustang’s roof and closed the door. He walked down the mountain towards the lights of Los Angeles, looking back every few steps, until the holy glow of Jesus faded into the night behind him.

  Fifteen

  “How’d you do?” Danny asked.

  He ached viewing the riding crop poking out of her bag. The memory of Tiffy on stage whacking herself with it sent his pulse galloping.

  “I won, didn’t I? That’s one thousand. Another six fifty in tips. Plus,” Tiffy almost squealed, “a man from Playboy wants to photograph me.”

  “That old line.”

  “That was no line. He gave me this.” Tiffy took a card from her shirt. Sure enough. Playboy Magazine. “They pay ten thousand for a centerfold.”

  “Now what would your daddy say if he saw you in Playboy?”

  “He’s got a collection in the garage dating back to nineteen seventy three. He’d be a hypocrite to object.”

  “I thought I saw Fiona in there.”

  “Be quiet. What would Fiona be doing in a place like this?” She looked at her watch. “I got to go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere.” The cold night frosted her breath as she spoke. She unlocked the Cobra and got in. The engine started with a potent roar. “You are going home. I am going to meet the man from Playboy.”

  “How am I supposed to get home?”

  Tiffy gave him a twenty. “Take a cab.”

  I’ve lost her, Danny thought as he watched her drive away. What he did not comprehend was that he had never actually possessed her. And worse yet, the stripping he had thought a lark had matured into a vulture, and Danny was incapable of putting either bird back in the cage. The message light was on when he returned to his room. He dialed zero.

  “Your father called,” the operator said. “He said it was urgent.”

  Danny hung up and dialed. His father answered and for five minutes Danny listened with only an occasional yes sir or no sir. He hung up and packed his duffel bag. He put on his jacket and put the duffel bag in the trunk of a taxi and rode to the airport. He exchanged his return ticket to Cheyenne for the next flight to Denver. Fifteen minutes before his plane left
, he remembered the Cobra. He ran to the rental counter and gave the clerk his contract. She punched keys on a computer and looked up.

  “Your father called and said the car was stolen. We’ve notified the police. Is there something we should know?”

  “Nope,” Danny said, “that about covers it.”

  He reached the gate as final boarding was announced. He gave the attendant his ticket. She was a young black woman with bright brown eyes.

  “Did you enjoy your stay in Los Angeles?” she asked.

  “Some parts more than others.”

  He settled in his seat in first class. A stewardess approached.

  “Can I get you anything? Some juice perhaps?”

  “Double Dewar’s, straight up.”

  Danny had never drunk whiskey before, but his father drank Dewar's in times of stress. He downed the glass in one gulp and coughed violently.

  “Are you all right?” the stewardess asked.

  “I’m fine,” he whispered when the fit finally passed. He held his glass out. “Another of the same, please.”

  “We’ve had a lot of calls since you moved in,” Detective Randolph told Duncan. “This is the third dead body related to this address.”

  “I don’t deserve credit for that drive by.”

  Randolph held up his hand. “Hell, it’s not your fault. No one person could cause this much trouble.”

  Duncan looked at Benjamin but said nothing. Benjamin called a cab after the police left. He was off to see Angela.

  “Near death makes me eager to propagate the Lonetree line,” he said.

  “Can we finish later?” asked Assan, “I have much cleaning to do.”

  The coroner took the handlebars from the bike when it proved too difficult to extricate Lomo, and now the bars rested with him in a body bag in the back of an ambulance. Sheila sat on the curb staring at her boots. Samantha pulled her to her feet, Sheila got on the bike behind her, and they rode off in tandem. Roscoe attached a hose to a spigot on the wall. He washed Howard Lomo’s blood into the gutter and down the sewer and ultimately to the sea. Duncan returned to his studio. He picked up Cat and slouched on the couch. The phone rang. He decided not to answer but whoever was calling decided with more conviction not to hang up. On the eighth ring Duncan set Cat on the floor and answered the phone.