by Jason Ridler
Mars hit the ground and Jack Lumber jabbed a finger at me that looked like it was drawn by Jack Kirby: thick and dangerous. “You say wrestling is fake? I’ll take you on right now, bubba, break you in two before all these little fans, and then win this board competition so that everyone knows Jack Lumber is the god of the Boardwalk.” Then he flexed down with a Charles Atlas pose that exposed even more muscle and spiderwebbed veins. Jack’s face was red as an unwanted stepchild.
“Then maybe we should race.”
We all looked at Kevin, cool and serene, waiting for the adults to get their shit together.
Billy firmly planted his black sneakers and straightened his lean body. “Enough of this jive. Zoey? Get ready to drop the flag!”
A wild-haired brunette in an army jacket took ten paces backward from where we stood, the crowd parting with military precision. She dipped her hand into her shirt and yanked out a small flag with a peace sign on it, and then raised it to the sky. “The only rule,” she said, in a smoky voice, “is whoever gets to the end first and grabs the prize is the winner. The rest? Losers!” She dropped the flag. “GO!”
12
ALL THREE OF THEM BLASTED OFF AND SET SAIL along the Boardwalk. I gripped the board with my feet like Dr. Fuji had taught me back in the Electric Magic Circus—not that the good doctor envisioned grasping anything like a skateboard. But holding the board as if I had talons seemed to work. Then I shoved off, feet grazing the ground, swimming in their wake as my body tried to balance the complex configurations of being a middle-aged man on a teenager’s wheeled weapon.
Pretty sure I was going five miles per hour.
My only experience with skate wheels was at the roller rink. It was nothing like dealing with these flat deathtraps. I chugged on harder. The stuttering ripple created by the Boardwalk planks gave me a headache before my mouth had time to go dry and holy Christ did I feel all of my forty years banging into each other as we slapped our feet to the ground to project ourselves forward—Billy and Kevin vying for the lead and me clawing my way through sweat and struggle to catch up with Jack Lumber’s insane quads, pumping him forward like pistons. My only saving grace was my grip on both the board and the world. Jack wobbled with the staggered confidence of a man who rarely thought he was wrong (even when his failure smacked him in the ass), and that overconfidence, step by step, allowed me to creep forward. Our soundtrack was the ocean crashing against the ambient sounds of the Boardwalk: the cries of gulls, the screams of kids, the electric static of rock and roll, the strums of battered acoustic guitars, and the hoarse cries of locals and tourists for all of us to watch where we were going.
About a third of the way to the end, Boardwalk attractions thickened and narrowed our passage. We passed booths filled with posters, cards, charms, and the bric-a-brac of the love generation: dream catchers without a flick of magic, because they were not made by any indigenous person, but by two stoners from Pasadena who had a vision quest while tripping at Woodstock.
Tie-dye and sun-tanned faces blurred past as one foot cranked the earth and the other grabbed the board with the strength of a dozen monkeys perched on the last branches of survival, Jack Lumber’s ridged and blistered back coming closer. For all his curls and lifts, his cardiovascular system clearly took second place to his gold-medal physique. He was struggling to catch his breath while I avoided crashing into a sun-burned tourist family in matching Hawaiian-print shirts and a kid in Spider-Man tee. Two more thrusts of my earth-gripping feet and I was neck and neck for last place.
“Ain’t no way!” screamed Jack as we circled around a mass of teenagers dancing in the center of the Boardwalk. “Ain’t no way some mark is gonna ruin my race!”
Mark? I smiled. He was a wrestler. Their slang is rooted in old carny code familiar as Edgar’s voice teaching me all about rubes, scabs, and freaks.
“Sorry if my healthy living is equal to all your days at the gym, Jack.”
The son of a gun growled at me. Two more thrusts and I was a solid six feet ahead. Mars and Kevin were in a dead heat in front of me. Mars looked back, his face etched in sweat and malice.
Then I had a Eureka moment: Jack was a tool meant to cripple Kevin’s chances so Billy could win. But the distance between the two frontrunners was growing by the second with Kevin shooting forward and Billy falling behind while Jack was focused on me.
A flicker of magic flavored the air, dark and cold, wafting from the back of the head of Jack Lumber, whose legs now pumped the ground like he was auditioning for the role of a taxi driver on The Flintstones.
He cut through a crowd of musicians, to the horror of their small audience. “Get the fuck out of my way!” Jack snarled, voice a primeval horn filled with gravel.
None of it was natural. His speed. His stench. His voice. It was all augmented by the twilight coil of stink that he’d somehow gotten into his body, the same kind that was in my pocket.
Jack Lumber was in the grips of Black Lotus, a berserker on the Boardwalk flying high on a skateboard, an unguided missile in a public theater of war.
There was no way to catch him, so I looked to the sides for something I could use to even the odds. One of the shack outlets on the left was selling useless trinkets, peace buttons, sacks of dice, and my weapon of choice: a sun-bleached blue pack of Bicycle playing cards.
I tore into my front pocket, which was sweatier than a prostitute in church, and tossed out a fistful of coins as I swerved close. The coins rained on the merchant, a steel-haired Mexican with sharp eyes.
I snatched the pack. “Sorry for the rude gesture,” I said in Spanish. “But thank you for the cards.”
His response was a swift flurry of swearing about this four wheeled gringo. I’d have to make it right somehow, but first I had to take care of the drugged maniac tearing through the Boardwalk. As I doubled my pace, Jack’s helter-skelter transit threw two women into shack-shops and everyone screamed. This sucker had to go down.
People now scurried for safety as he plowed hard and fast to cut the distance. I weaved and wobbled as I chugged forward, hands tearing the pack and unleashing the crisp, fresh cards. They instantly, if briefly, brought back the hours spent with such, mastering their weight and feel, practicing every trick in and out of the book, firing them into watermelons with the intent of an assassin.
I didn’t want Jack Lumber dead; being an asshole has never been a crime in L.A., but he was already too big for his bones.
Which meant I was going to have to throw cards faster than I was traveling on a skateboard and with pure accuracy.
There was no way I could pull this off without getting into the zone of the immortals.
The world blurred on the corduroy path as my mind whispered: Tyger Tyger, burning bright!
13
EVERYTHING SLOWED. I FELT AS IF I WAS SWIMMING through molasses; the pain pierced through my skin and nerves like barbed wire. Edgar had warned me never to “travel to the ethereal plane that maps our own” more than a fistful of times in a life. I’d done what I call joyriding three times in the past month—once earlier today—and if this electric bone sizzle was any measure, I’d best stay the hell away from it until I was already dead.
Against the tsunami of agony, the Boardwalk stood awash in dark and moody colors thanks to a slice of cloud killing the sun’s rays, the darkened landscape dampened into a depressive reflection, almost a negative afterimage. I wondered how much the pain burning through me had to do with the tone of the joyride, but I didn’t have time for pondering.
My right foot hit the ground three times and I rushed forward against the near-static images of the Boardwalk, closing in on Jack. He had the pallor of a corpse and his whole body was shaking. The death-ash tang of Black Lotus oozed from his sweaty flesh.
I flicked out a card from the deck, an ace of spades, but I had no desire to drop the death card on Jack—who was many things, but not worthy of murder by my fine hands. Instead, I flipped out the queen of clubs, the Lucky Lady of Freedom and
Movement, which seemed more apropos.
Blood began running from each of my nostrils as if a tap had opened, so I stopped the mental appraisal and let the queen fly with a snap of my arm and flick of the wrist. The card sang through the air, fast as lightning. Pain magnified behind my eyeballs like balloons made of broken glass being inflated in my brain.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright!
Chains of pain whiplashed my skull, knocking me back just as my grip on the board died. Left leg up in the air, head heading south, I shot out my arms to deaden the fall—totally forgetting the cards in my hand. Smacking the earth, the cards emptied from their pack as the pain of impact rumbled my bones. Then Jack Lumber’s scream reminded me of fates worse than myths.
“Argh!”
Everything felt like lead, and the Boardwalk’s planks were hotter than a branding iron. I brought my knees up to my chest, inhaling blood and snot before executing a perfect kip-up. A gaggle of heads wooo’d as I went from horizontal to vertical just in time to see Jack grabbing his bloody ankle, dancing on one leg like he was on a pogo stick. Then Jack was jumping in my direction with industrial-grade fists ready, the stink of Black Lotus billowing from him like cheap cigar smoke from the poor side of Hades.
“I’m gonna enjoy bashing your melon!”
Dizziness and exhaustion ate my equilibrium as I raised my guard, hands open and palms out as if in deference. “Easy, pal! You were going off the rails. No one gets bonus points for hitting women and old folks.”
“Rawr!”
The fists struck at me, clumsy and thick. I pulled a little wushu magic trick by inviting a punch to my face, then bending the momentum by twisting his wrist. Jack’s fist landed directly on Jack’s face. Goddamn, but that monster hand had speed and power. Add accuracy and he’d be dangerous.
Jack staggered back to the roar of laughter from the crowd, favoring his ankle, dripping blood and sweat all over my cards.
“Hah! He punched his own face!”
“This must be part of the Olympic Auditorium wrestling show.”
“Ah, this is fake! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!”
Calling these tough guys fakes was an invitation to trouble. The clarity of rage in Jack Lumber’s eyes confirmed it. He shot a hand out and grabbed some gawky teen, choked him, then lifted him in the air. “Call me a fake? I’ll be fucking your mom on your grave tomorrow, you goddamn rube!”
The crowd whistled, thinking it was all part of the show, but the kid’s purpling face spoke to the life being choked out of him by this musclehead. Enough was enough.
“Put him down, Jack,” I said. “Or can you only beat up kids a third your size?”
He jerked his head around, tossed the kid like a bag of rotten eggs into the crowd, and hobbled toward me. “You screwed my race! So now, I’m going to rip off your—”
I threw a spinning back kick to his face. Hit him right on the button, under the jaw, with the force of three uppercuts.
Jack shut up, then fell down, then was out for the one, two, three . . . thousand.
A roar of applause came from the crowd.
“This must be a new movie!”
“Where’s the camera?”
“Hey, mister, do you know Bruce Lee?”
I smiled. I did, but that story was for another day. “Show’s over, gang! Thanks for watching rehearsal for our new hit cop show, Boardwalk Beat, coming this fall to CBS right after Hawaii Five-O. But autographs to anyone who can fetch my wingtips from the end of the Boardwalk.”
A few of them ran off and I scrambled, feet burning, over to Jack.
He was out, but his body seemed to still be running like his foot was stuck on the gas, chest heaving like a bellows. The taste of magic was so bitter, it was as if it was coursing through his veins and its waste product pumping out as exhaust. In short, his body was a pollution factory, strong and deadly and working overtime to reach death.
I turned to the horizon just in time to see a silhouetted figure run off the pier. Someone tossed what looked like a bag into the air and the shadowy figure snatched it like a hawk, then descended over the edge.
Panting on hands and knees a few yards from the edge was Billy Mars.
Kevin vanished over the edge of the Boardwalk, followed by a splash.
I smiled, took off my brown paisley tie, and tied a strong tourniquet around Jack’s cut ankle, tight enough to staunch the bleeding and to make sure it hurt with each step he took. I ran through his pockets, and found a joint, keys, and a twenty-dollar bill. At least he was solvent. Also, an empty dimebag that stank of ashes from a lost age.
Black Lotus had been in there. But how had he taken it?
The mob of kids from Tumbledown and other assorted spectators were now running, many of them cheering “Kev! Kev! Kev!”
I put back Jack’s belongings, then checked his pulse. It was tapping like a speed freak in detention. I pulled back his ruddy lip.
Between his stained yellow teeth and bleeding gums were flecks of black. One poked out and seemed thin. Dried. A petal that had been cultivated somehow or way.
“Kev! Kev! Kev!”
I let the huffing Jack’s lips fall closed and grabbed my board, careful to keep one eye on Billy Mars in case he, too, had some kind of magic, or perhaps a transporter like Star Trek, and would vanish from L.A. the moment he knew someone was onto him.
“Kev! Kev! Kev!”
Two girls approached, the bikini-top and Mickey Mouse duo. “You forgot your shoes,” Mickey said. “Much obliged.”
“We heard there was a reward,” said Bikini. They each playfully hid a shoe behind their back.
Ugh. I never understood men who liked young girls after they got done being young boys. Sure, these two were cute, but something grilled into me from the circuit always proved true: girls you need to teach, women will blow your mind, so don’t creep backwards. Go around the block long as I have and you realize the best women are a challenge, and the best challenge comes from experience.
I held out the board. “Trade! One, two, three!”
I tossed the board in the air. Both girls launched my wingtips, heels first, at my chest, all to the sound of Austen moaning, “That’s my board!”
The girls laughed and ran off; Austen chased after.
Shoes slipped on without socks, I turned and saw Mars running into the oncoming traffic, clearly tired of the spotlight without a championship belt.
Until he looked up and saw me.
I smiled. “Looks like we both lost.” He sneered. I walked toward him and nodded at Jack. “Sorry your insurance policy didn’t pan out. Nice way to rig things when you know you’re going to lose.”
“And what would you know about anything, square?”
“I know our friend Jack’s about one gram of salt away from cardiac arrest with your product in his mouth.”
Billy snarled, board shaking.
“And if you think you can swing and hit better than Jack, hero, be my guest. But if you’d like to avoid naptime with your friend, why don’t you and I get a Coke and you tell me all you can about Black Lotus. Or else, when the beach cops ride in here, I might remember your name as I report this sad little adventure.”
Billy Mars lips pursed. “Let’s get this over with. I can’t be seen hanging with the enemy.”
I smiled, and we headed for a burger shack called Caveman, which featured a dinosaur eating a burger made out of screaming cavemen, which I thought was a clever reversal. “Your treat,” I said with relish, because when it came to the smug, I always enjoyed adding insult to injury. Helped them learn humility.
Two lukewarm Cokes in hand, Billy and I walked off the Boardwalk and into the little maze of “backstage” areas for shacks and stands, where the sizzle of grills merged with the ocean’s roar and the cacophony of human banter.
“My prophecy came true,” he said. “The most deserving won.”
“Funny thing about prophecies,” I said. “You keep them vague and you can justify any outcome
. Where’d you learn such hackwork? The Boardwalk?”
He snickered. “I’m in the Magic Circle!” He sat his Coke down on the wooden walk, then flashed his hands and did a series of junior coin tricks that would impress anyone who wasn’t me. “I’m not some back-alley carny fixing dice and doing the Paris drop for idiots. I’m legitimate!”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Sincere apologies. But I’d hate for that professional gang to think its main face on the Boardwalk was involved in illicit goods.”
His bravado retreated into an icy stare. “I don’t sell anything.”
“You mean ‘not anymore.’ Stop stalling, Billy. What do you know?”
His sour puss contorted more. Hoping to mask his reaction, he picked up his drink and took a slurp. “So, sure, I used to sell some. Still got friends in the concert world.” His brag indicated he was, apparently, a musician—and that I was supposed to be impressed.
“I made little mints here and there selling grass, uppers, coke, even H.” Then his nostrils flared. “But junkies, man, they’re like leeches. They’ll follow you around. I’d be doing my prophet routine and they’d be jonesing in the crowd, scaring away my daylight patrons and generally being a drag. God, that drug is going to ruin our good time, you know?”
I thought of the jazzmen I’d met, black musicians who were gods on the chitlin’ circuit, and how dope infected their lives and careers. So many dead from a drug that helped take away the sting of a world that said they were lesser men, of an America that enslaved their grandparents, then dropped the chains of the plantation and put on of those of Jim Crow. Heroin was another form of slavery. And this little putz was talking about his good time getting ruined? “Save the philosophy for the acolytes. You were slinging dope.”
“Yeah, until those zombies kept creeping me out. So, I sold my end of the business to another candy man.”
“Who?”
“A cat named Mick Butler. He’d been a roadie for the Pretty Things but was finding night work groovier. Man, what a sleaze.”
“What earned him that epitaph?”
