Romeo's Rules

by James Scott Bell

  “Hey!” Kid Video said.

  “Would you like to learn how to do this?” I said, and helped Tall Kit to his feet. He was about six three, a little under eye-to-eye with me.

  “What up, man?” Tall Kid said with reddened face.

  “I can teach you that takedown,” I said.

  Tall Kid rubbed his neck.

  “But I need to look at that footage.”

  Kid Video looked at his friend, then put his eye to the camera.

  I told Tall Kid, “Control a man’s shirt and you control the man. From behind you’ve got half a second, so make sure you grab a full fist’s worth. When you do, give your body a half-turn, put your leg behind his body, and pull.”

  I demonstrated by re-playing the move on Tall Kid in slo-mo.

  “That is so freaking cool,” Tall Kid said from the ground.

  I glanced across the street and saw Davis talking to Natalia.

  “You ever do ultimate fighting, anything like that?” Tall Kid said.

  I said nothing.

  “Okay, I got it,” Kid Video said. He turned the camera around so I could look in the viewfinder. The kid punched a button and the video played. It showed the tall friend in the foreground, making like he was a reporter. There was no sound. In the background I saw my own backside running out to the street, and the Lexus almost hitting me. The front license plate flashed into view for a second before the camera moved away from the shot.

  “There’s a place there where you can see the license plate,” I said. “Can you zoom in on that shot?”

  “Maybe,” Kid Video said.

  “See if you can.”

  The tall one said to me, “Show me something else.”

  “Master one thing at a time,” I said. “Specialize in just a few moves. That’s all you’ll need. And don’t do evil with it.”

  “Evil?”

  “Don't hurt anyone just because you can. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” Kid Video said. “This is what I got.”

  I looked in the viewfinder. The kid had zoomed into a shot showing the back of my legs and a partial of the license plate. 3ASB was all I could make out.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You wanna be in our movie?” Tall Kid said.

  “Call my agent,” I said and ran back across the street.

  DAVIS WAS STILL talking to Natalia.

  “The Lexus has a plate that begins 3ASB,” I said.

  Davis shook his head. “Not enough.”

  “What if I find these guys?”

  “How?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Don’t,” Davis said. He took out a card and gave it to me. “I am giving you an up front. You are not going to get involved with this in any way, unless it’s through me. Understand?”

  “Your message is clear,” I said.

  Davis looked like he was dealing with an out-of-control but ultimately harmless mental patient. He was probably right, except for the harmless part.

  “I’d like to help Mrs. Mayne look for her children,” I said.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Davis said, and it seemed like he was saying it to both of us.

  I took Natalia’s arm and led her toward the fenced-in yard. “Let’s make sure,” I said. “Then let’s go to my place.”

  She pulled her arm back. “Excuse me?”

  “So my friend can get on the computer and maybe find the car that almost hit me.”

  “I’m not going to do that—”

  “Then I hope you find them,” I said and started walking away.

  “Wait,” she said.

  I turned around.

  “Can you really?” she said.

  WE DID ONE more scan of the kids and checked with the nuns. Her children were not there.

  Natalia’s car, a silver Mercedes, was parked on the street. I told her I’d drive. She was nervous, but her desperation to find her kids canceled that out.

  As I pulled away from the church, past the fire engines and cop cars and arriving parents, I said, “How’s your head?”

  “Still hurts,” she said.

  “Try not to move too much.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s not far.”

  “Can you at least tell me your name?”

  “Mike.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Sure.”

  “What am I even thinking here?” she said. “I don’t know you.” She started fishing around in her purse. “Oh God!”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Sam’s inhaler. That’s why I came back! He needs his inhaler!”

  “Easy,” I said.

  She put her head in her hand.

  “Romeo,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My last name.”

  I got to my street. I mean, Ira’s street. This part of town is of 20s and 30s vintage. Small, mostly well-kept homes, a lot of Craftsman style, like Ira’s house, built in 1927. That was the year of Lindbergh’s hop and Babe Ruth’s sixty home runs. Professor Gatz back at Yale would’ve been proud of me for remembering both.

  I pulled in Ira’s driveway and we got out. The widow who lives next door was watering her geraniums with a hose.

  “Put on something decent, young man,” she said.

  “Yes, Mrs. Morgenstern,” I said.

  “Do it right now. I don’t want to see that display.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Morgenstern, I’ll get right to it.”

  “Don’t come back out here showing all that!”

  Feeling like a romance cover, I pulled what was left of my T-shirt over my middle and walked Natalia inside.

  Ira was sitting in his wheelchair by the front window, a large book open on his lap. “Ah, company,” he said. Ira is in his mid-fifties, gray of hair, which is full and bushy and sprouts like sea spray from under his yarmulke. He has a white mustache and blue eyes that must have driven the ladies crazy thirty years ago. Ira Rosen is gregarious and outgoing and loves nothing more than to make people feel good. Looking at him now, you’d never guess that he’d killed eighteen men.

  We met in New Orleans, five years earlier. A couple of teenagers were beating him up. Overturned his wheelchair, kicked him. Thing was, Ira could have taken both of them out. But he didn’t want to hurt “kids”—that’s what he told me later. I had no such qualms. I was jogging by the parking lot where it was happening and I … well, let’s just say I didn’t have any qualms. Ira Rosen has been my only friend in the world since. We kept in touch.

  Then, because of some trouble in Texas, I came out to L.A. to see him. That was just a few weeks ago. Ira said things were nice and quiet at his house. I could get some rest.

  Uh-huh.

  “There was an explosion at the Catholic church,” I said.

  “Is that what that was?” Ira said. “I thought I heard something, and then the sirens and all.”

  “We need to find a car,” I said.

  “Have you tried a dealership?”

  “No time for Rosen levity,” I said. “Her kids may have been snatched before the explosion. I got a partial plate on a Lexus. What do you think you can do?”

  “I’m sorry, young lady,” Ira said to Natalia. “I didn’t know. How's your head?”

  She touched the gauze. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Were you hurt at the church?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let me get to it.” He put his book on the window nook. It was a hardcover, From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun. He wheeled himself toward his computer. No motorized chair for Ira. He’s huge across the chest and upper arms.

  His computer, a Mac desktop with all the trimmings, sat on a classic oak desk from the 1950s that Ira had purchased and refurbished. The antique dealer who sold it to him said it had once been owned by Mickey Cohen, the L.A. mobster. Ira didn't believe the story but held onto it anyway. He used his desk to tell people about the nice Jewish boy gone bad a
nd how to avoid that same fate.

  “What do you know, Michael?” Ira said.

  I gave Ira the partial plate and the car’s description. Ira pulled the keyboard out and started hammering.

  “Who are you two?” Natalia said.

  “The Odd Couple,” Ira said.

  “Is this really happening?” Natalia said to me.

  “If anyone can find the car,” I said, “Ira can.”

  “Kindly put a cork in it,” Ira said.

  I motioned Natalia to follow me. Led her through the kitchen and out to the backyard. There’s a comfortable bench under Ira’s magnolia tree.

  “Have a seat,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went to the guest room, which is really Ira’s library. It’s packed with books, floor-to-ceiling shelves, but there’s enough room for the futon I sleep on. I got a fresh T-shirt from my duffel bag and put it on. I went back outside to Natalia.

  “What’s he doing in there?” she asked.

  “Getting information.”

  “How?”

  I sat on the bench next to her. “How about we let Ira do what he does and you tell me about your husband, what was it, Mark?”

  “Ex-husband.” She said it with a mix of anger and fear. An emotional cocktail. There’s a theory from the Gnostics about reading the soul, that it is done through the eyes and is seen most clearly when the two observers are similar in nature.

  If that was true, I was seeing something of myself in Natalia Mayne. Someone who wanted to get along if she could, but if she was pushed was going to push back, and hard.

  “You’ve heard of Mark David Mayne,” she said.

  “Haven’t heard of him.”

  “Do you know how mad he’d be if he heard you say that?”

  “And that should concern me why?”

  “Because he’s a man who does not like to lose at anything.”

  “I can relate to that,” I said.

  She stood. Then sat back down. “I can’t stand this!”

  “Give us a few minutes,” I said. “The police are on this. One of the sisters will call you if the kids show up. Is your phone on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me a little more about your ex. It’ll help us both.”

  “But who are you? What do you do?”

  “I’m pretty good at thinking. So’s Ira.”

  “Are you together?”

  “Sometimes more than we’d like to be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not even sure,” I said. “What about your ex?”

  Natalia paused, took a deep breath. “He’s worth two billion. The Los Angeles Business Journal listed the fifty richest people in Los Angeles, and Mark came out number eleven. Not even top ten. He almost tore the house down, he was so mad. Raving about conspiracies and talentless movie people and the people of America, in general.”

  “Sounds like a charmer.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Where’d he make his money?”

  “Oh, he’s the big American success story. Started working as an usher in a movie theater, then eventually managed it. He decided not to go to college because he didn’t think he needed it, and instead invented a software program for theater management that he sold for a few million. He bought the theater chain and turned it around and sold it for a ton, then started buying other companies and selling them. He’s got his fangs in grocery stores, rap entertainment, big-box stores of one kind or another. He’s also a major fundraiser and donor of the Democratic Party. He wants to be a kingmaker. Do I need to go on?”

  “Okay, he’s got a lot of money. And he knows some politicians. Why’d you get divorced?”

  “I wasn’t satisfying his needs, is the way his assistant put it.”

  “His assistant?”

  “I got the news from his assistant, by phone.”

  “How warm.”

  “He’s a glacier. That’s a good way to put it. Glaciers are big and powerful and you can chip away at them but you’ll never melt them down. It’s a miracle I got primary custody of the children. But he’s got his lawyers on it.”

  “On what?”

  “He’s trying to take the kids away from me.”

  “I can’t see him being the one to nab your kids from a church. It would be a stupid thing to do and he doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “Stupid is one thing he’s not.”

  From inside the house Ira shouted, “Hey, what are you doing?”

  A MOMENT LATER the back door opened and a guy about my height bulled through. Latino, shaved head over a black, collared shirt and his best punk face on.

  Natalia shot to her feet. “Tomás, what are you doing here?”

  I got up, too. “Who’s this joker?’ I said.

  “You shut up,” Tomás said.

  They say you can’t tell a book by its cover, but sometimes the book wants you to tell, because that’s all it is—all cover and no content. Or, to mix metaphors, all foam and no beer.

  That’s the way I sized up this foam. His chest was thrust out and his lower lip curled inward over his teeth in the universal sign of the self-satisfied thug.

  No subtlety. No nuance. He would be child’s play in a poker game. And now. Unless he had a weapon. Then we would have to take it to the next level. My thoughts were starting to ping the way they do at times like this, taking in all the contingencies, fitting facts to context, assessing character, anticipating moves.

  “He wants to see you,” Tomás said to Natalia.

  “Whoa!” Ira was rolling down his back ramp. “This is not good manners, young man.”

  “Okay!” Tomás announced as if he were the emissary from Xerxes, King of Persia, waltzing into Sparta. “Everybody slow down now, yeah? She knows me. It’s cool.”

  “What is not cool, young man, is trespassing,” Ira said. He was five feet from the back door. Tomás was directly in front of him and took a few steps so he could triangulate all of us. He’d done this before. Many times.

  “It’s all right,” Natalia said, standing.

  “Who wants to see you?” I said.

  “Mark.”

  “Your ex has a punk deliver his messages?”

  “Shut up,” Tomás said.

  “You don’t have to go,” I said.

  “Shut up!” Tomás said.

  My inner Achilles started to stir. Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed ….

  “Listen, Tommy,” I said, “you tell me to shut up one more time and—”

  “Don’t,” Natalia said. “Don’t make trouble.”

  Tomás smiled. Achilles scuffed the inside of my ribs with his sword and shield.

  “Let me talk to him,” I said.

  “No—” Natalia said.

  But I was already walking toward Tomás.

  He whipped out a butterfly knife and flicked it open.

  “Now listen, Tommy, you need to put that thing away. You really do.”

  He half smiled.

  “No, really,” I said. “Violence is a terrible thing. It takes away the rational faculties, and I hate it when that happens.”

  His smile ditched. “I told you, keep your mouth shut. Natalia—”

  “Hear me out. It’s not good for you to be violent. Especially deadly violent. It diminishes you. It takes away from mankind. And if I were to hurt you and take that knife away, then it would diminish me. And I just don’t feel like being diminished today, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “You crazy, man? You want me to cut you up, shut your mouth?”

  “There, do you hear yourself? Is that rational speech? Don’t undervalue the—”

  He screamed something at me. I think it was a Spanish epithet. He started forward, slowly, knife raised to the air in front of him, poking.

  I stood there and watched his middle. That’s what gives a guy’s movements away. Not his hands or his eyes.

  He was almost to me. Still pok
ing with the knife.

  “Don’t, Tomás!” Natalia said.

  That’s when I gave Tomás the rebel yell—a high, banshee screech the Confederate farmers and hillbillies used to freeze the blood of the Union soldiers during the Civil War.

  Tomás flinched, which is all I needed. I did a half-body turn to the left at the same time I grabbed his wrist and pushed down. With my right I gave him a hammer to the nose. His head snapped back.

  I let go of his arm and gave him a full-on kick to his fertility center. You don’t do as much damage with a Nike as with a steel-toed boot, but it was enough to scramble the man’s eggs.

  He doubled over. I kicked him in the face with what would have been a fifty yard punt.

  That kick brought him halfway back up. I hit his temple with the knuckle of my left middle finger. He crumpled to the ground.

  I stepped on his right wrist and removed the knife from his hand.

  Then I pulled his right index finger back until it snapped.

  He screamed and his eyes rolled up in his head. Then he was still and quiet.

  Natalia screamed, “No! Oh God, no!”

  “Was the finger necessary?” Ira said.

  “It’s didactic,” I said. I patted Tomás for more weapons. Nada. I turned back to Natalia.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” she said.

  “On the contrary,” I said.

  “He will kill you.”

  I looked at Tomás, sleeping it off.

  “Him?” I said.

  “He’s a killer.”

  “Would it be ethical, then, for me to kill him?”

  Ira said, “That would be murder.”

  I said, “He’s trespassing and he pulled a knife.”

  “Ah, but the imminent threat is past,” Ira said.

  “Delenda est Carthago,” I said.

  Ira nodded. “Well played, sir.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Natalia was nearly in tears.

  Ira said, “I’m sorry, my dear. That was very rude of us.”

  I said to Natalia, “Look at me and know that you don’t have to fear this man.”

  “It’s you that has to fear him,” she said.

  “I choose not to,” I said.

  She shook her head like I was some insane tourist stepping into a lion cage with steaks in my shirt.

  “I’ll call the police,” Ira said.

  “I’ll tie him up,” I said.