by Rich Leder
“You’re exactly wrong, Doctor,” Harvey said. “I have a precise amount of business being here: seventy-five thousand dollars. I want to know where it is. I want—”
He was interrupted by a deep guttural growl that sounded as if it had emanated from the pit of hell. They all looked at each other and then looked down at the dog.
Chachi had bared his teeth and was snarling at Omar.
On its face, it was ridiculous. The poodle was the size of one of Omar’s giant feet. But there was something about the growl, something fearless that was incompatible with the poodle.
“This is not a nice dog,” Omar said.
“We know about Danny and Jenny,” Harvey said.
“We’re good at limericks,” Omar said, still kneeling in front of the growling Chachi.
“Then you know this is the same dog you murdered in cold blood. You know she breathed new life into him,” Greenburg said.
“If you believe that,” Harvey said, “then you are a fool. And if you gave my money to Danny Miller because you believed that, then you are a moron and a fool and in breach of our contract, which means you owe me seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“You got my wife’s car,” Greenburg said quietly so Carol wouldn’t hear him, “and I got the cash. That’s what the contract says.”
Chachi strained against the leash, trying to get at Omar. Greenburg had to hold on like he meant it, like there was a pit bull instead of a poodle pulling on the other end.
“The fine print says otherwise,” Harvey said, looking at the dentist and the dog and thinking that Greenburg was either the weakest man in Los Angeles or that whoever raised this clone dog had fed it full of steroids.
“Look at this fucking dog,” Omar said.
Chachi snarled and growled and drilled the giant with laser eyes.
“What fine print?” Greenburg said, and he looked down at his dog with wonder. “Chachi, stop.”
“If the money is used for reasons other than what we agreed upon, then the contract is breached, my money is paid back…and I keep the car,” Harvey said.
“What do I get?” Greenburg said.
“You get to live,” Harvey said.
“But your dog doesn’t,” Omar said.
Harvey did not remember Greenburg’s poodle being vicious. He remembered the dog being docile, almost cat-like, purring, for God’s sake, in Omar’s lap before being jettisoned out the window. Georganne had taught him to trust his internal radar, and it was telling him that there was something peculiar about the poodle. But more than that, it was telling him that he was missing the point of something much bigger than the dog, something so big it would make his life consequential and shut St. Peter O’Toole up once and for all. He had no idea what it was, but it had to do with the damn dog.
“I don’t have it,” Greenburg said. “Danny does.”
“You’re lying to me, Doctor,” Harvey said. “You bought this poodle for two hundred dollars at PetSmart, and now you and the idiot agent are spending my money behind my back on some kind of fool’s errand.”
“I’m not lying. I paid Danny. I assume he paid Jenny,” Greenburg said.
“To breathe life into your dog,” Harvey said with sarcasm and frustration.
“It’s no fool’s errand, bringing dead dogs to life, and you’re on the outside looking in,” Greenburg said. “You’re on the platform, but you missed the train.”
Of all the quips and comebacks and wisecracks that Greenburg could have dreamed up at this particular moment, with Harvey thinking about being small and insignificant, living a life that caused O’Toole to tell him he had figuratively missed the train, this was especially bad timing for the dentist.
Harvey felt the hatred rising from the bottom of his little feet. It was a living breathing entity, his hatred. It was hot and electric and burned inside him as it wormed its way up past his knees and into his chest. He could feel his face on fire and his eyes aflame with venom. (His feet weren’t far from his knees, his knees weren’t far from his chest, and his chest wasn’t far from his face: the point being, it didn’t take long for the hate to fill Harvey from head to toe.)
“I’m going to feed your new dog to my fish,” Harvey said, “bring you his skeletal remains, and then we’ll see if she can breathe life into a bag of bones.”
“He’s not my new dog,” Greenburg said. “He’s my old dog. He’s Chachi.”
The poodle’s eyes were practically popping out of his head; he was straining and pulling so hard against the leash to get to Omar.
“New or old,” Omar said, “this dog’s on crack.
“Last chance,” Harvey said. “What are you and Miller doing with my money? Tell me now or your poodle meets my piranha.”
“There goes the train, Harvey,” Greenburg said. “Wave good-bye.”
“Omar, take the dog,” Harvey said.
In spite of the growling and snarling and pulling and straining, Chachi was still a little poodle, and Omar was a giant who with one hand could lift and simultaneously crush the poodle’s spine. He reached across the driveway and came at Chachi from above, to grab the dog from the top of its back—a sneak attack and smart strategy considering the poodle was focused on Omar’s face.
Except at the last second, as if Chachi had planned it all along, as if the dog had rope-a-doped the giant, he snapped up and behind him with surprising speed and power and chomped down on Omar’s index finger.
“Jesus…fuck,” Omar said, trying to shake the dog off. “Fuck this dog…”
“Chachi,” Greenburg said, too stunned to say anything else. He pulled on the leash, but the dog pulled back, and the dentist couldn’t budge him. “Chachi, no…”
Carol, who had been standing under the portico the entire time, scanning Escalon Drive for the police, came running up the driveway. “Chachi…Chachi…Donald, do something…do something…”
Omar finally shook the dog off his hand, stood up, and took out his silenced Glock. “I’m going to kill this fucking dog,” he said to Harvey.
“No,” Greenburg said.
“No,” Carol said.
“Be my guest,” Harvey said.
But before Omar could pull the trigger, Carol pointed down the street and said, “Here they are.”
Harvey narrowed his eyes and looked all the way down Escalon Drive and saw a police car heading up the hill. His jaw was clenched, and his mouth was shut tight, but somehow the words escaped. “Put the gun away, Omar. We’ll kill the dog another day.”
Omar holstered his gun, and he and Harvey walked to the Range Rover.
Chachi growled like a demon until the SUV was out of sight.
THE NEW ROCK OF EL CAB
The thought had first occurred to Mike while he was floating on the Hello Kitty lounger. It was an inkling of an idea, looking for traction in the midst of Mike’s nutty neural pathways. And then Ahab and Ishmael had shown up and thrown river stones at his head and killed the Kitty floater with gunshots and tried to electrocute him with his own Bose in his own pool. The Bose had been ruined—same as Mike’s day.
The thought had returned while he and the black woman with the Civil War sword, Ramona Clifton, debated whether or not the Chinese served frozen dog TV dinners. They had been standing by the side of Dr. Greenburg’s pool, waiting for Jenny to breathe on Greenburg’s dead dog and bring it back to life, which, to Mike’s astonishment and abject terror, Jenny actually did, and his mind went to chaos and the thought, again, could find no footing and flew the coop.
It wasn’t until this morning, when he’d woken up missing his wife and daughters so badly that his heart hurt, that the thought became fully formed.
It was a long thought that began with the fact that his life had spiraled wildly downward and hopelessly out of control since the moment he had been fired from the firm—every negative and nasty thing that had happened to him had happened because he wasn’t working.
Some people are born to the fast lane of life—parties and
engagements and galas and high-profile appearances, calendars filled with social and professional affairs. Some people thrive on that frenetic pace. They are risk takers and gamblers. They are hip and happening and in the know. They are thin and have outstanding hair. It does not automatically make them successful or happy to be in the fast lane. It is just who they are and how they have to be. It is how they live, their way to survive the weight of the world.
And some people are grinders, born to the work lane. They wake up and drive their aging Acuras to the office and do their jobs. They coach rec-league soccer after hours and then cut their own grass and eat dinner with their wives and kids and play Scrabble and watch TV and eat bowls of ice cream and pass out in the recliner until their wives get them up so they can go to bed and do it again tomorrow. They are overweight and balding. It does not automatically make them unsuccessful or unhappy to be in the work lane. It is just who they are and how they have to be. It is how they live, their way to survive the weight of the world.
“We can’t all be chiefs,” Linda had often said to Mike. “Some of us have to be Indians. There can’t be chiefs without Indians.”
He was an Indian, Mike was. A grinder. Without work, he’d figured out fast, his family had emigrated to New Jersey and all manner of aberrant, preternatural, and psycho-bad shit had befallen him. If he could just find a job manipulating numbers, if he could just get a line on an open position allocating, tabulating, or correlating numbers, if he could just get that one damn numbers job, he could turn things around, get his life back on track, and fly his family home to Woodland Hills.
Money was an ancillary issue. Greenburg had paid seventy-five thousand to bring his dead dog to life. Danny’s commission was twenty percent, and Mike was due half of that: seven thousand five hundred (which he hadn’t been paid yet). That would get him some of the way through the rest of the month, but he couldn’t count on Danny and Jenny to get him any further.
Hell, he didn’t want to count on Jenny. What she had done in Greenburg’s backyard was unnatural in the sense that it was against the freaking laws of nature, and nothing good could come from that. He didn’t want anything to do with raising the dead for money. That was fast lane stuff. High-wire stuff. He just wanted to press on. He wanted to forget it happened, to put it out of his mind and get back to grinding out his life as an Indian.
If only he could find a place where a financial position had unexpectedly presented itself and there was an immediate need to hire someone straight away so that the numbers didn’t pile up to Pasadena. If only there was—
And then the thought finally came to fruition: El Caballero Country Club.
Which is how he came to be sitting in the office of El Cab General Manager Bob Cutting.
“To tell you the truth, I was glad to get your call, Mike,” Cutting said. “Happy to hear from you. Your mother ran the books for twenty-three years. In her own way, she was the backbone of The El Cab Lifestyle. It’s the nature of things to change, but your mother never did. We called her “The Rock of El Cab.” She kept the club on the straight and narrow. I have to admit, we’re a little lost without her.”
“I know what you mean,” Mike said. “It’s been the worst two days of my life.”
Cutting had been the club GM for six years. Mike had met him several times at El Cab functions he’d attended with his mother. Cutting had come from Ohio, where he had been the GM of a country club in Cleveland, so landing in Southern California was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he walked around every day with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He was fifty-five years old and had thinning red-gray hair. He was overweight and had three young sons, whose rec-league teams he coached when he was done at the club. Mike knew the rest of that story by heart—the lawn mower, the bowl of ice cream, the recliner. Cutting was a grinder, like Mike.
Cutting’s impressive office was on the first floor of the elegant El Cab Clubhouse. It was large and wood paneled and had green carpeting that made it feel like an extension of the eighteen-hole Robert Trent Jones Sr. golf course that was right outside Cutting’s double French doors, which opened onto a brick paver patio that led to the driving range and putting green. There were framed paintings of famous golfers on the walls. There were leather couches and wooden bookshelves. There was an oak desk covered with Cutting family photographs. Seeing them made Mike’s heart hurt again.
“The funeral’s tomorrow?” Cutting said.
“George Edwards Mortuary in Mission Hills,” Mike said, nodding.
“I know a lot of people from the club are going,” Cutting said. “She was loved and respected, Mike. I’m sure you’ll have a big turnout.”
Cutting wore a navy blue blazer, beige slacks, and a blue golf shirt. He looked relaxed and professional, like the GM of the finest country club in the Valley. Mike wondered how Cutting perceived him. He had worn a blue pinstriped suit with a white shirt and no tie. If he looked relaxed and professional, it was only because he was trying to. It certainly wasn’t how he felt. His skin was still patchy from where Mrs. Alemi had ripped off the duct tape, and he had sunburn from baking on the Hello Kitty lounger before Ishmael had shot it to shit. His nipples, in particular, were raw and on fire.
“Thank you, Bob,” Mike said. “Listen, have you hired someone to replace my mother?”
“We were waiting until after the funeral to think about that,” Cutting said sadly.
Mike knew the GM was forlorn for the right reasons—because his friend and colleague, “The Rock of El Cab,” had died—but he also knew Cutting was dreading the royal pain in the ass it would be to replace her. Accuracy, honesty, and proficiency don’t grow on trees.
“I’d like to take my mother’s place,” Mike said.
“Excuse me?” Cutting said.
“I’d like to be the bookkeeper for the club.”
“But you’re a senior accountant at a firm, aren’t you?”
Should have been a partner, Mike thought. “I left two days ago, after my mother died.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I realized, after she was gone, that life was short and doing taxes for real estate developers was unfulfilling. My mother loved El Cab. For twenty-three years, her life was about world-class golf and lasting fellowship. To honor her, and to keep continuity in our lives and at the club, and to be an accurate, honest, and proficient part of that fellowship, of that great golf, would be a higher calling for me. I could start right away, Bob. For my mother, for the club, and for you.”
Mike hoped it didn’t sound like the utter bullshit it was.
“I don’t know what to say, Mike. I wasn’t expecting this at all. I mean, of course we’ll consider you. I feel like we’ll probably hire you, if you’re serious about this. I mean, we won’t be able to pay you what you made at your firm. Have you considered that aspect of your decision?”
“My wife’s going back to work for the same reason I want to come here, fulfillment. Yes, we’ve considered the financial ramifications.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a florist.” It was a blazing lie. Marcy had the Thumb of Death when it came to gardening. Mike didn’t care. He was going for it. He was all in. “We’re at the stage of life where money is secondary. Family, fellowship, fulfillment—that’s what we’re going for now. Between the two of us, we’ll have enough money. We just want to do good work.”
The men looked at each other for a long moment and then Cutting nodded, stood up, and came around his desk. Mike stood up too, and they shook hands.
“We’d be lucky to have you, Mike. We really would. I’ll get you an application, there’s a committee, of course—after the government, there’s nothing more bureaucratic than a country club—but like I said, we’d be lucky to have you.”
“Thanks, Bob. It means a lot to me.”
“Great. Wait here.”
The men nodded at each other and then Cutting left the room. Mike sat back down in the leather cha
ir across from the GM’s desk, took his first easy breath in two days, and looked out the French doors toward the driving range and putting green. This will be my world, he thought, and life will be good.
But as he conjured up a vision of himself as “The New Rock of El Cab”—the casual clothes, the country club cocktails, the easy eighteen-hole pace, the tidy office, the numbers in straight rows in orderly books—he was interrupted by Judd Martin, who opened the French doors and filled the doorway, holding a handgun like Wyatt Earp.
“No,” Mike said. “Not you. Not now.”
“Get up you fat fuck,” Judd said.
“I’m not fat,” Mike said.
Martin was a mental whack-job, exploding with emotional instability, volatility, and violence. His physical appearance had deteriorated to the point of surreal. He was transforming into an actual zombie. He wore the same filthy jeans, work boots, and hunting vest with no shirt. He was pungent, even with the French doors open. In an enclosed space, Mike imagined, Martin’s aroma might knock a man out.
As Mike was thinking about that—and about calling for help—a stray ray of the hellish sun caught something on Martin’s camo hunting vest and made it glisten—a child’s badge made of some cheap Chinese metal. It was a Wild West badge emblazoned with the word: deputy, part of a packaged set that probably included a holster and two six-shooters and maybe a kerchief and a cowboy hat.
Linda had bought Mike and Danny matching sheriff get-ups with deputy badges when they were kids, and they’d ridden around the small yellow house in Canoga Park on imaginary horses for hours. Mike’s memory mind inexplicably traveled back in time to relive their childhood posse but couldn’t stay long because Martin was speaking.
“…vested in me as a deputized officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, I claim you as my fucking hostage. I can’t kill you, Miller, but I can hurt you bad.”
Mike tried to shout for help or maybe just shout, but Judd took a massive stride into and across the room and stuck the barrel of the handgun into Mike’s mouth before any sound escaped. He raised his gun hand, lifted Mike out of Cutting’s leather chair, and walked him backwards, face to face, through the French doors and across the patio.
