Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  “So what’re you gonna do when Billy gets out—stay on?”

  “I’m a house-sitter,” Overby said. “Not a nursemaid.”

  “Whatcha got lined up—anything?”

  Overby glanced at his Cartier tank watch. “I’ll know this afternoon.”

  “But you’re still paying the house bills—the gas, phone, electric and all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you mizewell pay mine.”

  Garfias reached into a pocket of his faded blue Levi’s jacket and brought out a pink statement. He passed it to Overby who saw that the bill was $100 more than the $200 it should have been. He rose, walked over to the kitchen counter drawer, took out a three-tier checkbook and brought it back to the table. Then he filled out a check—already signed by the incarcerated Billy Diron—for the exact amount of Garfias’ pink statement.

  When finished, Overby put down the pen, neatly tore the check out and extended both hands, his right offering the check, his left prepared to accept the $50 dollar bill Garfias had almost finished folding lengthwise into fourths. The check and the $50 dollar bill were exchanged simultaneously.

  When Booth Stallings walked off the United flight at 3:46 P.M. and into the arrival-departure lounge of Los Angeles International Airport, the first thing he noticed was the sign that had been neatly lettered on the coated side of a shirtboard by a sure hand with a felt pen. The sign read: Mr. Stallings.

  The man who displayed the sign without any visible self-consciousness was somewhere in his early forties and had one of those too still and too careful faces that are frequently worn by men who have something to do with the law—either its enforcement or its avoidance.

  Stallings also noticed that the man’s expensive dark blue suit seemed to be a size or so too large, as if he had lost ten or even fifteen pounds and, by grim resolve, had made sure the weight stayed lost. Stallings automatically classified the suit as a patently false testimony to steadfast character.

  Carrying his only luggage—a scuffed buffalo hide Gladstone he had bought in Florence years ago—Stallings walked toward the man with the sign. When they were seven or eight feet apart they made eye contact, an act of mild bravery that Stallings had noticed fewer and fewer Americans were willing to perform.

  The man’s cool blue-green eyes seemed to slide over Stallings, dismissing him. Stallings walked fifteen feet past the man, stopped and turned.

  The man with the “Mr. Stallings” sign stood patiently, examining each of the two hundred or so male economy passengers who were still filing off the Boeing 747. The man stood with his feet a little less than eighteen inches apart, his back straight, his pelvis tipped slightly forward. It was the posture of someone who knows all there is to know about waiting.

  Stallings retraced his steps until he stood just behind the man with the sign. “Otherguy Overby, I’ll be bound,” he said.

  If he hadn’t been watching for it, Stallings might not have caught Overby’s slight start that was really no more than a twitch. But Overby didn’t turn around. Instead, still watching the arriving passengers, he said, “I figured it was you from what that son-in-law of yours told me over the phone. An old crock, he said, who’ll be wearing funny cheap clothes, a barber college haircut and walks with kind of a waltz. Hard to miss, he said.” Overby turned, with no discernible hurry, and examined Stallings with the same time-wasting care. “He was right.”

  “Where do we talk?” Stallings said. “Here, there or in the bar?”

  “Unless you’re all done with the ha-ha stuff, we don’t. If you are, I’ve got somewhere in mind.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “You check any luggage?”

  With the look of one who has just been asked a particularly stupid question, Stallings turned and headed for the escalator where a four-color photo of the mayor who would be governor beamed down on arriving passengers.

  When they reached the Mercedes on the second level of the parking garage across the street from the United terminal, Stallings gave the car a dour glance and then turned to Overby. “Yours?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “You still got something against the Krauts?” Overby said, unlocking the car’s doors and slipping behind the wheel.

  Stallings opened his own now unlocked door, tossed the buffalo bag onto the rear seat and climbed in. “I just don’t much like dealing with anyone who needs to wear fifty-five thousand dollars worth of car.”

  Overby started the engine, shifted into reverse, changed his mind, shifted back into park and stared at Booth Stallings. “What are you, Jack—some kind of act?”

  Stallings smiled his smallest smile. “Didn’t that son-in-law of mine mention it? I do the old coot.”

  Overby put the car into reverse again. “It kind of gets on the nerves.”

  “It’s supposed to,” Stallings said.

  Neither spoke again until they were on the San Diego freeway and heading north. It was then that Stallings finally asked, “Where’re we going?”

  “Malibu.”

  “Jesus,” Stallings said.

  When they neared the off ramp to the Santa Monica freeway, Stallings spoke again. “Which way’s Pelican Bay from here?”

  Overby flicked a glance at Stallings and then looked back at the road. “South.”

  “Tell me about it—you and Pelican Bay.”

  “You already know or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  “What I know,” Stallings said, “I got out of the California newspapers in the Library of Congress. It lacked a certain savor.”

  Overby didn’t reply until he reached the Santa Monica freeway and had the Mercedes over in the far left fast lane, heading for the Pacific Coast Highway at a steady sixty miles per hour.

  “I’ll tell it just once,” Overby said, “and if you want more, then you’d better try the library again.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay The chief of police of Pelican Bay and I made a little money on a certain deal that there’s no need to go into. His name was Ploughman. Chief Oscar Ploughman. So we decided to invest in a political campaign and run him for mayor. Of Pelican Bay. I’d be campaign manager and later share in the satisfaction that always comes from good honest government.”

  “The graft,” Stallings said.

  “You want to tell it?”

  “No.”

  “Then just listen. The chief wants to build himself a real old-timey political machine. And since I’m bankrolling about half the campaign nut, he’s even started calling it the Ploughman-Overby machine, at least to me and him, if not to anybody else—except he always calls it the powerful Ploughman-Overby machine. The chief was a case.”

  “Apparently,” Stallings said.

  “Well, we put on one hell of a campaign and then he goes and dies on me Election Day afternoon.”

  “Of a heart attack,” Stallings said. “Or so I read.”

  “Yeah,” Overby said. “Of a heart attack. But the old bastard still won, lying in the morgue there with a tag on his toe, and if you think they really don’t tie the toe tags on, then you haven’t been to the Pelican Bay morgue where I went to make sure the asshole was really dead.” Overby gave the steering wheel a hard thump with the heel of his right palm. “But we by God won it going away—fifty-three point seven to forty-six point three—and him dead as Sprat’s cat.”

  “He did have a bad heart then.”

  “What he had,” Overby said, “was a yen for cupcakes—fifteen-, sixteen-year-old cupcakes. Election afternoon, right up there in the victory suite I’d already rented for him, two of ’em gave him what must’ve been one hell of a ride—his last one anyhow—because he died in the saddle, probably smiling that big yellow smile of his, and that was it for the powerful Ploughman-Overby machine.”

  “And you became house-sitter to the stars.”

  Overby glanced at Stallings. “I like to live well even when I can’t afford it.”

  “Who got you started—in the hous
e-sitting trade?”

  “A guy I once did a favor for.”

  “A guy with a name, I bet.”

  “A guy named Piers who’s married to the Lace in Ivory, Lace and Silk. Remember them? The Armitage Sisters?”

  “I seem to recall they sang awfully loud.”

  “Yeah, I always thought they were pretty good, too.”

  Stallings nodded thoughtfully and then spoke more to himself than to Overby. “Piers and Ploughman. Piers, Ploughman.”

  “No connection.” Overby said.

  “There was in a poem a long time ago.”

  “When?”

  Stallings tried to remember. “About six hundred years back.”

  “You jacking me around again?”

  “No.”

  They drove on in silence until they neared the Third and Fourth Streets off ramp that led to downtown Santa Monica. It was then that Overby asked, “You really a Ph.D. like that son-in-law of yours claims?”

  “I really am.”

  Overby nodded comfortably, as if the last few pieces had clicked into place. “After I talked to him, what’s his name, Mott, I went down to the Malibu Library and checked out that book of yours, Anatomy of Terrorism.”

  “Anatomy of Terror,” Stallings said, unable to resist the correction.

  “Yeah. Right. Well, I read it. Most of it, in fact, but then I quit about three-quarters through. Want to know why?”

  “Not really.”

  “Because I couldn’t figure out whose side you were on.”

  “Good,” Booth Stallings said.

  CHAPTER 6

  Stallings disliked Billy Diron’s house the moment he saw it. He was offended by its Disney-like mock-Tudor design and its tinted mullioned windows. He thought its weird eight-sided blue swimming pool was awful. But what bothered and dismayed him most of all was its total lack of trees and greenery.

  Yet Stallings couldn’t fault the view. The house was built on a high sloping bluff. A thousand feet away and a hundred feet down were miles and miles of Pacific Ocean. The view was from Trancas on the right to Santa Monica on the left and then out to Palos Verdes, Catalina and beyond. Stallings knew it was a view most could only dream of and of which few would ever tire—unless they developed an aversion to ninety-seven shades of blue.

  Standing beside the Mercedes in what he took to be the courtyard, Stallings looked from ocean to house, back to ocean and then at Otherguy Overby. “He hasn’t got any view from the house,” Stallings said. “He’s only got those tiny little windows the English thought up to let in some light and still keep out the cold but never do either.”

  Overby nodded in agreement as he too glanced from the ocean to the house and back to the ocean. “Billy didn’t want a whole lot of view. He figured it’d be a distraction.”

  “From what?”

  “His music.”

  “He’s a musician?”

  Overby cocked his head to the left, the better to study Stallings. “You never heard of Billy Diron?”

  “No.”

  “What about Galahad’s Balloon?”

  “I’d guess it’s a rock group. But that’s a guess from someone who no longer sings his country’s songs.”

  “That’s like guessing the Rams play—” Overby broke off when he heard the unmistakable whine of a Volkswagen engine. He turned toward the noise, clamping his lips into a stern line and folding his arms across his chest. A certain amount of forbidding crept into his eyes.

  Both men watched the open white VW cabriolet speed around the corner of the house too fast, skid on the used brick paving, and buck and shudder to a stop when the woman driver applied the brakes but forgot to throw out the clutch. Stallings saw that she was young, quite young, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and rather pretty once he got past the spiky silver hair and manic eyes.

  The man who sat next to her in the passenger seat was older, at least thirty or even thirty-two. He had a journeyman surfer’s tan, more ripe-wheat hair than he really needed, and jittery blue eyes so pale they seemed almost bleached. The man’s gaze flitted about, darting straight ahead to Overby, right to Stallings, left to the house and then back to Overby where it hovered with a hummingbird’s bold resolve.

  The woman opened the car door and got out. She was barefoot and wore half a blue T-shirt that just covered her breasts and ended eight inches above her navel. She also wore skimpy white shorts that hadn’t been washed in a while. The wind had made a mess of her spiky’silver hair. But even with the bird’s-nest hair and the forest creature eyes, Stallings thought she could pass for a standard Hollywood beauty if only something would iron the sullen rage out of her expression. He thought he knew what that something might be.

  As though feeling Stallings’ gaze, she looked at him but directed her question to Overby. “Who the fuck’s he, Otherguy?”

  “Nobody.”

  “He’s somebody. Everyone’s somebody.”

  “He isn’t.”

  She moved several steps closer to Overby who still stood guard, arms folded, eyes implacable, his mouth all set to say no.

  “I wanta go in and get my shit,” she said.

  “I work for Billy, Cynthia, and Billy says you don’t go in.”

  Cynthia Blondin’s wide unpainted mouth twisted itself into what began as an ingratiating smile but ended as a snarl. “I gotta have it, Otherguy.”

  “It’s gone,” Overby said. “I flushed it down the john. Just like Billy said to.”

  “You fuck.”

  Overby nodded his indifferent agreement.

  “The lady thinks you’re lying, Ace,” said the man in the car as he opened the door and stepped out, his lower body concealed by the car door.

  Overby glanced at the man without curiosity. “Who cares what she thinks?”

  “I do,” the man said as he stepped around the car door and aimed a short-barreled five-shot revolver at Overby. “She goes inside.”

  Overby first studied the pistol, and then the man’s face. After that Overby turned and walked slowly to the rear of the Mercedes sedan, produced a key and opened the trunk lid. He reached into the trunk and brought out a tire iron. Stallings wondered if the tire iron came as standard equipment with a Mercedes and decided it didn’t.

  Holding the tire iron down at his side in his left hand, Overby walked over to the man with the pistol. “You better take Cynthia and get in the car and leave,” Overby said. “I think maybe you better drive.”

  “You’ve just about cost yourself a knee, fuckhead,” the man said and pointed the pistol at Overby’s left knee.

  Overby brought the tire iron up fast and smashed it into the underside of the man’s right wrist. The man yelped as the pistol flew up and out of his grasp and landed at Stallings’ feet. Stallings bent down, picked it up, examined it briefly, and then aimed it at the man who now stood, slightly bent over, left hand clutching his right wrist.

  “Go get her what she wants, Otherguy,” Stallings said.

  A surprised Overby stared at Stallings. “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, she’ll be back, and I don’t want her here.”

  Overby thought it over, acquiesced with a nod to superior logic, turned and entered the house. Cynthia Blondin took two happy dance steps toward Booth Stallings. “Who’re you, Pops?” she said.

  “I’m Daddy Goodtimes,” Stallings said, looking not at her but at the man with the injured wrist who had now straightened up and was gently massaging the hurt wrist with his left hand.

  Cynthia Blondin giggled happily. The man with the hurt wrist glowered at her. She giggled again. The man turned his uncertain gaze on Stallings. “I want my piece back.”

  Stallings replied with a head shake and a slight smile.

  “Bet I can take it away from you.” This time there was no smile when Stallings again shook his head no.

  The man took a slow hesitant step toward Stallings who cocked the revolver, pleased with the ominous sound it made.

  “Ol
d fart’s gonna shoot you, Joey,” Cynthia Blondin said and again giggled. “You’ll shoot him dead, won’t you, Pops?”

  “You bet,” Stallings said.

  The man with the hurt wrist started to say something else but stopped when Overby came out of the house, still carrying the tire iron in his left hand and, in his right, a small brown paper bag that was folded over into a packet and wrapped with two rubber bands. Overby stopped in front of Cynthia Blondin who bit her lower lip, staring greedily at the packet.

  “I want you to listen to what I’m gonna say, Cynthia. You listening?”

  She nodded, not taking her eyes from the packet.

  “Billy doesn’t want you back. He doesn’t want to see you. He doesn’t want to talk to you. If you’ve got something to say to Billy, call Ritto and Ogilvie and talk to Joe Ritto. Am I getting through?”

  “Gimme my shit, Otherguy.”

  Overby sighed and offered her the packet. She took it with both hands, gently, carefully, as if taking a baby bird from its nest. She turned then, humming something, and hurried toward the driver’s side of the Volkswagen.

  The man with the hurt wrist started toward the passenger side, changed his mind, and turned back to Stallings. “You really ain’t gonna gimme my piece back?”

  “No,” Stallings said.

  The man nodded sadly, turned again, and climbed into the car. Cynthia Blondin, now holding the packet in one hand as if it might shatter, opened the driver’s door. Before sliding behind the wheel, she looked at Overby who stood, tapping the tire iron against the palm of his right hand.

  “Tell Billy,” she said. “Tell him I’ll always love him and I’ll always care for him and that I wish him all the success in the world.”

  “Okay,” Overby said.

  Cynthia Blondin slipped behind the wheel, gently placing the packet in her lap. After starting the engine she leaned her head out and called to Overby, “You won’t forget?”