by Avery Duff
Hard to imagine. Erik’s Thailand-born wife, Priya, plus their two boys, all told weighed less than Erik.
Robert started to empty the melted ice from his Igloo, planning to walk across the boardwalk to see whether Delfina needed anything from him. By the time he looked up, three locals had rolled up to Teo. Each had a load on and distinctive hairstyle: a Mohawk, cornrows, and shaved bald. Heated words flew at Teo, but as the trio closed on him, Teo kept squatting.
Robert had learned way back to never get involved in a boardwalk beef. For all he knew, Teo had just stolen their car or worse. Then again, Delfina was there, so Robert shucked his Reef flip-flops, slung away his VB Surf cap, and headed over just as Teo eased to his feet.
At first, Teo moved away from the pack, his daughter’s hand in his, but they followed. Maybe he was letting concern for his daughter override street sense: backing down showed weakness.
Then Teo turned, swept his daughter behind him with one hand, and looked down. The locals must’ve mistaken that for fear, but Robert knew he was tucking his chin. Right then, the white guy with the cornrows and biggest mouth stepped inside Teo’s invisible line, and Teo stretched that boy out with a chopping left hook. Blink, and you’d have missed it. By the time Robert got between Teo and the others, Teo had scooped up his daughter, and the other two locals were striking aggro poses and crotch-grabbing in a united front against who the hell knew what.
Erik showed up, badged the conscious pair with his retired cop ID.
“Hey, pipe down, you clowns!”
They did until the real cops came. Then the locals started up again about Teo assaulting them for no reason.
Robert and Erik both said that, from where they’d stood—and they’d both been standing close—Whitey laid hands on Teo first, even though he hadn’t.
Turned out, Teo told Robert later, it all started because he had stared at them walking by. They’d asked Teo the age-old question: “The fuck you looking at, bitch?” A standard boardwalk riposte would be, “The fuck you looking at?” followed by everybody getting bowed up and moving on.
Instead, Teo told them, “Looking at myself.” That’s what set them off.
Whitey was back in the game now, on his feet and talking smack to the cops about Teo. “He was looking right at me, disrespecting me.”
Was it possible not to disrespect a grown man with Bubble Yum stuck to his cowboy jacket fringe?
Erik was looking at Whitey—looking down at him, actually. “Am I disrespecting you?” Whitey muttered something, and Erik said, “Trust me, son, I am disrespecting you. Lucky I don’t coatrack you, right where you stand.”
“Coat—say what?” Whitey asked.
Robert added, “Said coatrack, dude. Speak up. You want some or not?”
“Yeah, right, bro” was the best confused Whitey could muster, and once nobody filed charges, things broke up quick. Robert noticed that Teo had stayed calm through it all. Even after the cops came, he hadn’t tried talking up his version, like most people would. Just listened, said he was defending his daughter and himself, and left it at that.
After Erik left for home, Teo and Delfina joined Robert across the boardwalk at his conference table. He handed each of them a bottle of water. Teo opened Delfina’s for her, then poured his over his left-hook fist.
Robert asked Delfina, “Did you want to talk to me about something?”
She checked him out one last time: early thirties, with his slightly bent, flat-brim VB Surf cap over his short brown hair; Reefs on his feet again; board shorts; and lightweight hoodie.
“It’s okay. I’m a real lawyer, I promise.”
“Daddy doesn’t want me to go.”
“Go where?” Robert asked.
“To the court.”
Teo gave Robert the go-ahead nod. Robert lifted her onto his table.
“First, I need you to sign a release. Your dad needs to sign, too, and I bet he will.”
She said, “He won’t do it.”
Teo reached over and signed as his daughter’s guardian: Matteo Famosa.
“There you go, baby.”
“What does it mean?” she asked Robert about the release.
Before Robert could answer, Teo said, “Means he’s trying to help, and if he does, we won’t do anything bad to him for trying.”
“That’s exactly right,” Robert told her, surprised at Teo’s down-to-earth clarity.
“Now, baby, go ahead on and tell him what’s on your mind.”
She reached into her well-worn Hello Kitty backpack and pulled out an Argonaut, a local paper of record.
“There,” she said, pointing to the classified ads.
Opposite the last page of real estate ads was a personal ad that read:
Important Notice. Hearing in Matter of Vincent Famosa Family Trust.
Final Accounting. Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Room 356.
Don’t Forget!
Famosa, their surname. The hearing date was Monday, three days from now.
“Important, it says,” she told Robert.
Could be, Robert thought, but this wasn’t an actual legal notice. Those appeared in the Legal Notices section, where you’d read about corporate name changes and individuals notifying the public they were doing business under a fictional name: Bob Smith d/b/a Acme Plumbing. This ad or notice, whatever it was, looked a little squirrely.
Delfina explained how she’d happened across the notice—she’d spotted her last name while browsing the Argonaut for open houses. Over time, she’d learned the names of the real estate brokers who served the best snacks and food.
“Carrots, celery, broccoli, ranch dressing,” she said.
“She loves those little wrapped-up hot dogs,” Teo said.
“Pigs in a blanket,” she told Robert. “Yum.”
“They’re so good,” Robert said. “I love ’em, too.”
She asked, “Will you come to the court with me? It says don’t forget, and I don’t want Daddy to get in trouble.”
“Let me think about it,” he asked, knowing better than to answer right away.
Teo insisted on carrying the light conference table back to Robert’s place on Ozone. On the way, they stopped by Teo’s truck so he could disinfect his hand. A cutaway cube, separate from the old Ford’s cab, provided living space—their home.
Watching the pair talk and plan, Robert had next to no doubt their bond was strong and healthy. Delfina, so vibrant, sweet and innocent, still a little girl, even though her home was the inside of this cube. And Teo? Robert found himself already hoping that Teo wasn’t one of those guys trouble followed around, just for kicks.
Teo opened the cube’s padlocked, shuttered rear door, and light fell into the interior: ten by fifteen feet, eight feet high, its floors rough, wooden planks. About four feet inside the doorway, a rolled-canvas separator hung from the ceiling. Whenever Teo hauled either brush or bagged trash, he told Robert, he dropped the canvas and sealed off their living area.
“On a rare good day, I can clear a couple hundred after gas and landfill fees and keep us a step or two ahead of the game.”
Teo had customized the living space himself: a pop-up skylight, a venting fan, built-in bunk beds stacked on one side with a dolphin—delfina in Spanish—wood-burned into the frame. Open wire shelving lined the other side. One self-contained section of shelves had plastic drawers with combination locks: private spaces marked Delfina’s Stuff and Daddy’s Stuff.
Delfina jumped onto her bunk and told Robert she thought the place was awesome and her dad awesome, too, for putting it together. He was relieved that Delfina’s situation wasn’t as dire as others who actually lived on the street. Not even close.
“You a carpenter?” Robert asked as Teo swabbed alcohol on his left hand.
“Not really, just handy.”
“Looks professional. Why don’t you two shower and change over at my place?”
Instead of at the public showers down the boardwalk.
“Might
y nice of you, Robert. That’d be great.”
“What’s coatrack mean, like that big man said?” Delfina asked Robert. Meaning Erik.
“Well, have you ever seen a real coatrack?”
She nodded. “Downtown at the Mission. To hang your coat by the door.”
“So coatrack doesn’t really mean anything. It’s something my friend says to people when they’re acting bad. Not acting polite. It might make them stop and think about how they’re acting.”
“Oh,” she said, and gave him one of those kid smiles that sticks with you. “Coatrack.”
After that, Teo grabbed clean clothes and towels for himself and Delfina, locked the cube from outside, and lifted Delfina onto his back.
Robert took the conference table this time as they headed over to Ozone.
“This trust,” Robert asked. “You have a copy of it?”
“Not anymore. That trust, it caused me so much trouble . . .”
In Robert’s bathroom, Delfina was bathing in the old claw-foot bathtub. All of Gia’s beach-stay emoluments were on hand to occupy her, giving Robert time in the kitchen to learn more about Teo’s situation. As Teo washed out Delfina’s backpack in the sink, Robert assured him that nothing would happen without his say-so while Teo filled in some gaps about their current situation.
“Delfina’s not in school, but I’m gonna enroll her soon as I have a real address. Right now, though, right this minute, I have one item top of my list: stay sober. Stay sober, and keep working. Stay sober, and put a real roof over our heads. Stay sober, and keep Delfina out of the system.”
Got it, Robert was thinking. Stay sober.
Teo’s phone interrupted them. He took the call to the living room.
When he came back, he said, “That was my new AA sponsor. Almost.”
Turned out, Teo’s former sponsor had slipped up—gotten drunk—and had suggested as his replacement a regular at a Venice Beach AA meeting.
“Supposed to meet him up the boardwalk, but all that mess got started,” Teo said. “He told me being late was one of his big things, the wrong way to start off with him, so he gave me some other numbers. I’ll start calling around tonight.”
“Okay,” Robert said, a little confused.
“Wasn’t my fault I was late, right?”
“Crossed my mind,” Robert agreed, because it had.
“You thinkin’ like a sober person. A drunk—that’s what I am—a drunk can’t afford to think that way. Drunk starts thinking like that, pretty soon he’s dwelling on how unfair life is, telling himself, ‘Minding my own business, get set upon by those men, and I’m just trying to protect my daughter.’ Then the resentment and anger kicks in—right anger or wrong anger, don’t matter—and pretty soon the angry man goes looking for the man in the bottle, the man with all the answers. ‘And Delfina?’ I’d be telling myself. ‘The world’s unfair anyway, so who cares? She might as well learn about it now.’”
“Stay sober,” Robert said. “Got it.”
“For me, that simple, that hard.”
Teo’s move toward sobriety had started when he and Delfina had lived downtown at the Union Rescue Mission. There were AA meetings on site, where he’d found his first sponsor.
“I was still drinking some,” he said, “but they let you stay so you won’t be out on the street. I was thinking about quitting, but I sat, back of the room, didn’t share. Still don’t share, but I don’t drink, and I listen good and take it all in.”
Once he’d left the Mission with Delfina, his next sponsor—downtown was too far away then—was a self-described step-Nazi. Ninety AA meetings in ninety days, and all that time they worked the first three steps.
Teo said, “I admitted I was powerless over alcohol—that my life was unmanageable. Came to believe that a power greater than me, my higher power, could restore me to sanity. And I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him.”
“Where are you in the process?”
“Well, I’m powerless over booze, that’s for damn sure. Believe a higher power can restore my sanity, and my life’s unmanageable on alcohol. Taking a personal inventory, that comes next.”
“You drinking? That’s why you two left the Mission?”
Teo told him, “Nah. There’s a woman was taking a beating over dope down on San Pedro, and I backed the guy down. But he lost face, so him and his boys came up on me after I put Delfina on the school bus. Let me know that—well, they asked personal questions about her. Just a matter of time before they hurt her or I killed somebody, so I put together some money, said goodbye to Reverend Andy down at the Mission, and took off outta there.”
Robert was curious about the trust, and finally, they got around to it. As Teo told it, it was a family trust set up by his father. Far as Teo knew, the trust owned LA real estate. LA real estate, over time, had been a winning bet.
“You’re a beneficiary?” Robert asked.
“Me and my brother, Carlos, both of us. And once I shuffle off, Delfina.”
“Did the trust pay for your truck?”
“No, got the truck off a doper I used to know needed cash right then, so it didn’t cost much. But the trust? I don’t fool with it anymore. Haven’t in a good while.”
Teo offered more about how the trust started out.
“There was a rental house way, way back. Then Vincent sold it and bought something else . . . apartments . . . I never kept up with it. After Vincent died . . .”
“Your father?”
Teo nodded. “After that, my brother took over as trustee, in charge of the buildings and the money. By then, me and my drinkin’ and dopin’ and all the rest, I just . . . I caused some problems. And money? It caused me more problems than it solved, and once it stopped coming in, Bee—that’s Delfina’s mom—she split.”
Robert could tell that his past pained Teo, but Teo had more to say.
“You know, Vincent, he always liked to tell me, ‘Your brother, he’s a bookworm, and you? You nothing but a thug.’ Maybe Vincent got that one right.”
Ugly words to hear from your father. Before Robert could ask about Teo’s brother, he heard Delfina moving around in his bedroom.
“Want me to go to this hearing, or you want to drop it? Your call, Teo.”
“Guess going won’t hurt. She’s had plenty to worry about in life. No point me adding to it.”
“I’ll have more questions about this trust, so how about you two stay here till the hearing? That way, you’ll both be fresh.”
And three days from now, I won’t have to run around Venice trying to find your truck.
Robert expected token resistance, but Teo said. “Anytime I can get her closer to what’s normal, that’s a good day. I thank you, bottom of my heart, Robert.”
By the time Delfina joined them in fresh clothes, Robert was typing her engagement letter. He limited her contract’s scope to attending the hearing at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in three days and advising her on all legal matters that might arise from that hearing.
“So you’ll be my lawyer?” she asked, jumping up and down.
How do I say no to that? Robert wondered.
“But your father needs to sign for you.”
“Because I’m too young?” she asked.
“Too young and too cute,” Robert said.
Once Robert printed out her contract, Teo signed as her guardian.
“Dealing with trusts isn’t what I usually do,” Robert told them, “so if there’s a real problem, I’ll find another lawyer to help me out or to take over.”
Teo said, “Never heard of a lawyer saying there’s things he didn’t know.”
“I know just enough about trusts to be dangerous.”
“Then I think we can trust him, Delfina.”
Then to Robert: “You mind running off one of those engagement letters for me?”
CHAPTER 2
In Gia’s living room, fresh-cut roses from her front yard spilled from several clea
r vases. Robert found her scrubbing vegetables in the kitchen, slipped his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck.
“Better hurry,” Gia said. “Robert’ll be home any minute.”
“Not Robert Worth? They say nobody alive can handle that dude.”
“Watch me,” she said.
In her backyard, a small going-away barbecue was under way for Erik’s wife, Priya, and their two kids. They were off for a two-month visit to her family’s village in Isan, the largest Thai province. A couple of Erik’s cop buddies had showed up, too, along with the neighbors from either side of Gia’s house.
Erik was trying to throw horseshoes with his sons in the backyard pit Robert had built.
“They getting the hang of it?” he asked Gia.
“What happens is, they run the horseshoes from one stake down to the other one.”
Robert pulled sausages and marinating chicken out of the refrigerator.
“Then they . . . ?”
“Then they drop the horseshoes and run around the yard.”
“Win-win,” Robert said.
Six years ago, after a blistering American divorce, Erik had headed for Bangkok with one idea: “To have sex as many times as possible. With women,” Erik had added.
After sleeping off his jet lag, he’d grabbed his depravity list of Bangkok bars and clubs and stopped at the hotel’s front desk for advice. After all, it was a Buddhist country, accepting and all too familiar with depraved behavior by tourist farang, as the Thai people call foreigners. Alone, behind the desk: Priya, the first Thai woman to whom Erik had spoken. Petite, beautiful with delicate Isan-Thai features rightly considered a national treasure.
Erik had lost his mind on the spot. Instead of getting liquored up, he’d scheduled a temple tour and insisted she join him. The next ten days, he’d spent either with her or thinking about her, and before he’d left for home, she’d kissed him on the cheek, touched his nose.
“You han’some,” she’d told him.
Two children later, they were living in Mar Vista.
Robert and Gia walked outside to the barbecue, its coals already glowing, thanks to Erik. Robert started to grill the sausages and chicken.
