by Rich Leder
He stayed silent not because Danny had told him to but because he was processing the fact that his brother had somehow for some reason moved both his talent agency and his bedroom into the garage—and had brought this sub-human clown creature with him. And then the last switch switched, and the last light flashed, and the last bell rang, and he couldn’t keep the screaming insanity inside him. “What the fuck, Danny?” he said, shouting at the top of his lungs. “What the fuck?”
“Cut, cut. Jesus, Mike. I told you to be quiet,” Danny said. “Now we have to go again. That was a good one too, Paul.”
“I like this doll,” the clown said. “I’m calling her Jackie.”
“You can’t work here. You can’t live here. Get the hell out of my garage,” Mike said to his brother.
Danny moved to Paul and made some adjustments to the light. “I’m not leaving, Mike. This is where I am now.”
Mike took an angry step toward Danny. “This is not where you are now. What the hell does that mean, this is where you are now?” He was red in the face and breathing fast and heavy, not hyperventilating, but filling with adrenalin at a furious pace.
“It means you swore an oath on Mom’s dying heart that when the very bad thing happened to me or to you or to both of us, that you would watch over me and take care of me, whatever that meant, whatever was necessary,” Danny said. He walked back to the camera, refocused the lens. “You swore that when the very bad thing happened, anything you could do you would do. You swore it now and forever.”
Mike blinked and blinked and blinked and blinked. He could feel his circuits and synapses snapping and sparking and overloading. He could physically feel himself losing his grip on reality.
“Well, guess what, Mike? The very bad thing happened. Mom died, I lost my race, I lost my house, and I lost my office,” Danny said. “I have no money and nowhere to go, so this is where I am now, and I’m not leaving. Here we go, Paul. And…action.”
Paul the Pervert sang the sick version of “Farmer in the Dell” and did unthinkable things to Jackie while Danny worked the camera.
Mike stood wide-eyed, watching them, looking around his garage, sweating bullets, breathing like an angry bull, and then found one final un-switched switch in his head. It toggled on, and he felt his mind go haywire.
Beside him, sitting on the built-in shelving, was the Makita chainsaw he had bought from Paul Bunyan all those years ago. Mike moved to the Makita, plugged it into a long extension cord, plugged the cord into an outlet, fired up the chainsaw, and walked toward his brother with bad intent.
The sound of the chainsaw churning echoed so loudly inside the garage that Danny had to scream at the top of his lungs to be heard. “What the fuck, Mike? Are you kidding me? What are you doing?”
Mike knew what he was doing; he was going to spill Danny’s guts all over the garage. Danny backed away, and Mike walked after him, holding the Makita in front of him like a broadsword. And then Danny’s back was up against the garage door, and Mike was in front of him, the chainsaw three feet from Danny’s chest.
“Pull the plug, Paul. Pull the goddamn plug,” Danny said, yelling across the garage at the clown.
“No way,” Paul said, yelling back. “Do it, fat man.”
“I’m not fat,” Mike said, staring at Danny but screaming at the clown.
“You look like you ate a beach ball,” Paul said.
“I’m losing weight tomorrow,” Mike said.
“So what’s the problem?” Paul said. “Tomorrow’s tomorrow. Now is now. Cut the man in half.”
“What’s the problem?” Mike said. “The problem is my mother died—she was my saint, and now she’s gone. The problem is I lost my job—instead of promoting me to partner, they fired me and killed my career. The problem is a real estate zombie with a hunting knife is stalking me. The problem is my wife and children are in Paramus, and they’re not coming home until I straighten everything out, and I can’t straighten everything out because I don’t have any money. That’s the goddamn fucking problem.”
He moved the Makita two feet from his brother’s body.
“I can help you, Mike,” Danny said, panicking.
Mike kept the chainsaw roaring. “How?”
Danny told him about Greenburg and the dead dog and the amount of money the dentist would pay to bring the dog back to life and about Jenny breathing life into death. “I’ll pay you. Seventy-five/twenty-five split.”
Mike moved the chainsaw one foot from Danny.
“Sixty-forty, sixty-forty, sixty-forty,” Danny said.
Mike moved the chainsaw six inches closer.
“Okay, okay, okay, fifty-fifty, fifty-fifty. We’ll be partners. Jesus Christ.”
Mike looked into his brother’s eyes and saw a reflection of himself as a madman with a chainsaw and then looked deeper and saw the two of them wearing towels as capes and running around the small yellow house in Canoga Park saving the world from disaster, and he powered the Makita down and wept like a child.
“Your brother’s a pussy,” Paul said.
“I know,” Danny said.
Mike looked at his brother and at the clown and at the chainsaw. There was too much emotion in play for him to process the proceedings, too much crazy shit hitting the fan all at once. And now here was his promotion to partner? Really? Linda had said something very bad was going to happen to them and something very bad had happened to them. He had sworn an oath on her dying heart—whatever is necessary. He had sworn it forever. “This is insane,” he said.
“No,” Danny said, pointing at the clown holding Jackie. “That’s insane.”
THURSDAY
TO AUDITION THE TICK OR NOT TO AUDITION THE TICK
Danny woke up disoriented and soon wished he could have stayed that way. Instead, the clouds cleared and he remembered where he was and, worse, why he was here. The smell of motor oil, lawn tools, bicycles, and kerosene made the air heavy and hard to breathe—like the inside of a Jiffy Lube. Danny’s dying-animal office fan struggled to blow a breeze over the bed, but it was no use because it was a hundred degrees in this un-air conditioned, two-car sweatbox.
It wasn’t ideal, reaching rock bottom in Mike’s garage, but thanks to The Oath, as he now called it, his new home office was free for as long as it had to be, and it had to be three years because he owed Harvey a grand a month for exactly that long. But three years, three days, or three hours, he would have to find a cheap window air conditioner and mount it in one of the soot-encased, cobweb-covered windows. If life wasn’t sweet, it had to at least be temperature controlled.
And then he remembered how much money Greenburg was going to spend to bring his dead dog back to life: enough to pay off Harvey, get his office back, buy a new car, and bet on a few fast horses. All Danny had to do was convince the distraught dentist that breathing life into death was possible. He got out of bed, pulled on his pants, stepped over Mike’s chain saw, found the remote on the Tiki bar, and punched the button.
The garage door groaned and then lifted. Paul’s truck was gone—thank God—and Danny stepped outside. It was roasting hot, a hundred five at ten in the morning. He imagined that some San Fernando Valley housewife could hold a chicken in a pot, stand outside for a few hours, and then bring it inside and serve it for lunch.
Danny put his hands up to block the sun and saw a vintage Impala parked behind his Pathfinder and a man standing at the front door. The man was wearing a suit, holding the jacket, slung over his shoulder, with his right hand. He had a gun in a holster attached to his belt in the middle of his back. Cop, Danny thought. Detective.
The man looked at Danny, stopped knocking, and said, “Mike Miller?”
“Mike’s not here,” Danny said. “He went to a storage unit to get some clothes for our mother. She died yesterday, Wednesday, early in the morning. It is Thursday, right?”
“All day,” the man said, coming down the driveway toward Danny and putting out his hand. “Detective Shuler. Sorry about your mothe
r.”
“Danny, Mike’s brother,” Danny said, shaking hands with Gary and nodding thanks for the condolences.
“Your mother kept her clothes in a storage unit?”
“No. That’s just where they are now. Why are you looking for Mike?”
“He called in a complaint. Said he was being stalked by a real estate zombie.”
“You’re the zombie cop?”
“Zombies, vampires, anything voodoo. Know anything about that, somebody stalking your brother?”
Danny did not care for cops. Five years ago, he had signed a Shirley Temple look-alike who’d sang and danced and acted so miserably that it physically hurt to watch her work. But the girl’s mother had money, and Danny liked money, so the girl became a client. After ninety days—and five grand in cold cash—the mother opted out of the deal and sued him for fraud and emotional damage. Danny had to sell his house to hire a lawyer to settle the case outside of criminal court. After that, he had moved in with his mother, and Mrs. Alemi had called him the Persian version of a flim-flam man. Anyway, the detective who’d investigated him was a tick that had burrowed under his skin and given him a disease that hurt like hell. Danny definitely didn’t want a cop hanging around looking for zombies and finding a talent agent who’d settled out of court instead.
“Nope,” Danny said, turning and walking back to the garage. “I’ll tell him you stopped by, Detective…”
“Shuler. Gary Shuler.”
“Shuler. I’ll tell him.”
Instead of heading back to his Impala, Gary followed Danny to the garage. “You live in your brother’s garage?” Gary said.
“My new home office, courtesy of Pacoima Pawn and Loan,” Danny said, thinking, Jesus, a tick. I knew it.
“Pacoima Pawn and Loan?” Gary said.
They reached the front of the open garage and stood facing each other in the narrow piece of shade the house provided. In two hours, when the sun was overhead, there would be no shade at all anywhere in Los Angeles, and it would be a hundred nine.
“You’ve heard of it?” Danny said, and he took a closer look at Detective Tick. Five-ten, maybe one sixty, athletic build, about fifty or a little younger, curly hair the color of sand, clean shaven, nothing unusual about his appearance, just an average Joe. Except for the eyes. There was something skewed about his eyes, something odd that Danny couldn’t put his finger on.
“Wait…Danny Miller?” Gary said.
“That’s right,” Danny said.
“Miller Talent Agency, that Danny Miller?”
Shit, Danny thought. “That’s me.”
Gary smiled. “Harvey and Omar told me about you. Harvey said, ‘Tell Danny Boy I said he should audition you and offer you a contract and get you on Kimmel.’”
Danny wasn’t expecting anything remotely like that sentence. Suddenly Shuler wasn’t a random tick detective. He had burrowed in with Harvey and Omar, and Danny wasn’t sure how to play his hand. “What do you do, Detective?”
“I’m a stand-up comedian.”
“You are not.”
“I play the clubs.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“I’m up-and-coming.”
“Good luck with that.”
And then they stood there. Danny looked over Gary’s shoulder at the Impala, conveying the vibe that it was time for Shuler to go and for Danny to return to his life in Mike’s garage. But the vibe shot right over the detective’s head.
“I can audition right now,” Gary said.
“You can?” Danny said in a way that meant: no, you can’t.
“Give me five minutes. I’m working on a new act that’s off the hook. Five minutes, Danny. You’re going to sign me up and get me on Kimmel.”
To audition the tick or not to audition the tick, that was the question. Which path would result in less personal pain? Danny said to himself. He decided they were equally awful choices. “Can I put a shirt on first?”
They went into the garage, and Danny put on a T-shirt and sat on the corner of his pineapple desk. “Five minutes, Detective. Starting now.”
Gary went from cop to comedian in less than half a second, which made Danny think that there wasn’t any difference between the two.
“I’m Detective Gary Shuler, back again, hello, hello, happy to be here, happy to be anywhere. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the cop comedian with the crazy cases you can’t believe, and when I say crazy, I mean it’s a laugh a minute out there, but you know that, right? Of course you do. Anyway, now I got one that I can’t believe, and you have to hear it. No, really, you have to. Captive audience. I’m a cop, right? What do you say, crime fans, want to hear a case even I can’t believe?”
He paused, hand cupped to his ear as if listening to the laughter, waiting for it to die down, but he was in Mike’s garage, and Danny wasn’t laughing.
“Okay, then, strap in and hang on and here we go. I get a call one day from a woman who sees a little white poodle get tossed out the back window of a Lexus. I know, I know, not a big deal if the Lexus is sitting in the driveway. But this one was doing seventy-five on the freeway—the car, not the poodle, although the dog might have been doing seventy-five when he went out the window, I’m no good with physics. Anyway, I know what you’re thinking: poodle puddle. Not this time. This time the poodle was punted to the side of the road, dead as a doorstop, and the ID tags send me to a broken-hearted dentist addicted to cocaine and gin who says he pawned his car in Pacoima…”
Danny used every ounce of willpower to hold himself in check when what he really wanted to do was jump up and down and scream: What the fuck, Shuler? Are you kidding me with this shit?
Gary talked about the Pawn Palace, the black woman with the Civil War sword who could hide a clerk in her cleavage, and the red-bellied piranha practically eating his face off. He laughed at most if not all of his own jokes and reminded Danny it was a laugh a minute out there every sixty seconds or so.
It wasn’t a laugh a minute for Danny. This was no joke; this was a nightmare. Shuler’s routine petered out after the piranha, although there was a mention of the real estate zombie that wasn’t causally motivated—and so felt tacked on—followed by an improvised bit about coming to the house and auditioning for the agent who signed him in a sweltering garage, which was a ballsy assumption by the detective, so it seemed like Shuler didn’t know about Jenny and the plan to charge Greenburg up the wazoo to bring Chachi back to life. But definitely the detective was on the case. “I’m working on a new act,” the tick had said. Working on it, that was the key thing about the new act. The question was whether Danny’s play was to get rid of the tick or keep him close. In other words, which choice was the better bet to keep the improvised part improvised and stop the story in its tracks?
If Danny didn’t sign Shuler, the rejection might piss the cop off enough that he would dig deeper into the Miller Talent Agency just to cause trouble. He would ask for the client roster and find Jenny. Or go back to Greenburg. Or back to Harvey and Omar. And all of that would be out of Danny’s control. Not a good idea when the plan is to bring a dead dog back to life for big bucks. Better to keep the detective close, keep an eye on him as he works on his new act, stay one step ahead of the story, as it were.
Danny went around his desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a contract. “It’s a ninety-day deal, Detective,” he said. “Standard non-signatory stuff.”
NATURE AND SCIENCE AND RELIGION AND REASON
Instead of spending his lunch hour behind a closed door in his private office drinking a tall Tanqueray and tonic on ice and blowing a few lines of Columbian white powder while his nurses sterilized dental tools down the hall, Dr. Donald Greenburg sat across his desk from a patient named Dan Miller, a talent agent who said his client could breathe life into death. They were waiting for that client, a young woman named Jenny, whose mother was supposed to have dropped her off fifteen minutes ago. They were going to pitch her talent to him, and he was going
to pay to have Chachi brought back to the world of the living.
Was he really that desperate? Oh, yes he was. He had never been more desperate in his life.
Just yesterday, after he had caught Carol committing suicide in their living room and convinced her that Chachi was alive and they could and would find him, she had rallied her Seuss reading group, and they had spent the remainder of Wednesday painting Seuss-like signs to hang across the Valley. They called themselves Seuss Search And Save.
This morning, while he was leaving for the office, they were gathered in the driveway, sharing a motivational moment before going forth to post posters.
The excitement with which Carol was approaching her quest, flying high with focus and hope and Percocet and vodka, he knew, would be more than matched by the ensuing Seuss Crash and Burn—and subsequent re-suicide—when Chachi wasn’t found.
“I went to UCLA dental school,” Greenburg said to Danny.
“I see your diplomas,” Danny said, gesturing at the framed papers on the wall behind the dentist. He wore a black V-neck T-shirt with jeans and black New Balance running shoes. His sunglasses were up on his head, pushing back his movie star hair.
Greenburg’s private office was small, maybe ten by twelve, wood paneled, with one wall of bookshelves containing volumes of dental reading material, a maple desk with a matching credenza behind it, two tan leather chairs in front of the desk for visitors and a tan, two-seat leather sofa on the wall opposite the bookshelves. There was a computer on Greenburg’s desk, along with a lamp, various and sundry office supplies, multiple patient folders, a phone, and a small fishbowl with two goldfish swimming endless-mindless-infinite laps around the perimeter, hoping, Greenburg imagined, that just once they would come upon a way out. During lunch, while he sipped gin and snorted coke, he often thought of himself as just another goldfish in the bowl. A wireless printer was on the credenza surrounded by multiple photographs of Chachi.
“I’m an educated man,” Greenburg said.
