Romeo's Rules

by James Scott Bell

  “I’ll need his name.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  He said, “He’ll kill me, no questions asked.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” I said.

  “You? Man, you are alone in all this. You got no idea.”

  “Give me the name and location of your contact,” I said. “Because I can kill you before he does.”

  “Forget about it,” he said, summoning all the defiance he could under the circumstances.

  So thorny paid another visit to the soft flesh and sensitive nerves of his exposed toe.

  This time Arvand’s scream was more like the wail of a real housewife of Orange County who sees her swimming pool slip off her hillside property during a rainstorm.

  “Please, man, please please please. I can’t give you the guy’s name. These people, they’ll kill my whole family.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?”

  He was breathing pretty hard, but that statement slowed him down. “No,” he said, “you’re not that kind.”

  “Jimmy Short Hairs thought that, too,” I said.

  Arvand shook his head. “You’re not gonna last long.”

  “I need the name of your contact. Last chance.”

  “I told you, he’ll kill me.”

  “I told you to trust me.”

  “You?”

  I thorned him. He wailed. I left the thorn in and joysticked it.

  “God, stop! Okay! LaFleur. That’s all I know, I swear.”

  “How does he contact you?”

  “Message. At McKeever’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bar.”

  “Where?”

  “On San Fernando. In Glendale.”

  “You go there and pick up messages?”

  He nodded.

  “And he calls you at the bar?”

  He nodded.

  “Who’s the barkeep to see?”

  “No more names, please.”

  “One more. Trust me.”

  He paused. Closed his eyes. “Franklin.”

  “Good,” I said. “Nothing will happen to you.”

  He shook his head. “How?”

  “Really simple. Remember that guy, Jimmy Short Hairs?”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” I said, “Jimmy was living a good life under a new name. You get to do the same thing.”

  He shook his head.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You take that nice wife and baseball-playing boy, and you move out of Los Angeles. I can tell you, it does a body good.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait. I mean, you can’t, how can you say …”

  I took his license out of my pocket, waved it. “I know where you live. I know how to find you. You, on the other hand, will never find me. I don’t want your little boy, who’s going to be one great hitter, to lose his old man. I mean that. I’m all for family.”

  “You can’t. I can’t.”

  “I can. You can. You will. Because I don’t want to tell this LaFleur who’s been bumping his gums. And if it turns out you haven’t told me the truth about this guy, then I will become your LaFleur. Now, do you have any questions?”

  His mouth sagged. It looked like a pretty good reflection of his soul.

  “I’ll give you one week to put your home on the market. I will be checking the multiple listings. If I see your house is not on the market, we’ll go to step two.”

  “What’s step two?”

  “It’s what follows step one and comes before step three. You don’t want to know about step three.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “And now we’re done.”

  He paused, said, “So now what?”

  “In 1946, a German youth named Czeslaw Godlewski joined a gang that went around the countryside stealing what it could from the poor farmers who had survived the war. At one farm owned by a man named Wilhelm Hamelmann, they gunned down everyone in his family. Wilhelm Hamelmann alone survived the bullet wounds.”

  Arvand was looking at me now.

  “Godlewski was sent to prison for twenty years. When he completed his sentence the state wouldn’t release him because he had no one to take him in. When Wilhlem Hamelmann learned of this, he asked that Godlewski be released into his custody. When asked why he would ask for such a thing, Wilhlem Hamelmann replied, ‘Christ died for my sins and forgave me. Should I not then forgive this man?’”

  Arvand waited a long moment, then said, “Why’d you tell me that?”

  I stood. “To make clear to you I am not Wilhlem Hamelmann.” I grabbed him by his coat and pulled him to his feet.

  Then I threw him down the hill.

  I drove his car a little further along the road, to where it turns up to higher ground. Then I pushed it over the edge, too. I didn’t want to hit him with his own car. I’m considerate that way.

  Then I jogged down out of the hills.

  It was a good run.

  “IRA.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at a strip mall on Hollywood Boulevard.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Did I say something was wrong?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “Don’t depend on your feelings.”

  “Why are you calling then?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “With the whole system.”

  I was looking out at the flotsam and jetsam on the boulevard at night.

  “I want to see you,” Ira said.

  “You have to make sure you’re not followed.”

  Silence.

  “Ira?”

  “What have you got into?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. But before you come, do one thing for me.”

  “Just one?”

  “The woman. Natalia Mayne. Find out where she lives. Is that a hard one?”

  “Killing a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, that was a hard one. I’ll bring the van to you. Give me an address.”

  I looked for some address numbers and found them over a barber shop. Gave them to Ira.

  “I’ll be there soon,” he said.

  I cut the call and started to hang out at the strip mall. This is a metaphor of some kind. There was a chicken place (the sign said Pollo), the aforementioned barber shop, a donut and croissant joint, a Chinese restaurant, a frozen yogurt store, and a law office. I was intrigued by the law office.

  Night was making its rounds and a few packs of young America were on the move. The donut place seemed like a local hot spot for young and old. Except in this case the old was in the form of a man with a white beard and shopping cart full of possessions, sitting on the walkway just to side of the donut shop door.

  A trio of teens, two boys and a girl, came laughing across the parking lot toward the palace of fried dough. The girl had on a summer dress that provided a generous view of her copious endowments. She wore cowboy boots and her hair was the color of wheat. She threw back her head when she laughed. It looked a little forced, intended to manipulate, and the boy on her left, in a porkpie hat, was hanging on her every cackle. The boy on the right, who had the curly blond hair of the SoCal surfer and the shorts and flip flops to affirm it, smiled widely as if he’d just delivered the laugh line.

  They moved in hilarious union toward the store and stopped, looking down at the old man. He said something and held out his hand. The surfer bent over and said something to him, which caused him and the other two to laugh again.

  Then they went into the shop.

  Soon, Ira’s blue van rumbled into the lot. He pulled to a stop in front of the barber shop, now dark in the night.

  I let myself in the passenger side.

  “Good evening,” Ira said.

  “Were you followed?” I said.

  “You wound me.” He frowned and scanned my face. “Who beat you up?”

  “Do you have the address?”
/>   “I have it. But what do you intend to do with it?”

  “Visit.”

  “You’ll have to give me more than that, Stromboli.”

  “That’s all you’re going to get,” I said.

  “You forget, I have the keys. Unless you throw me out of the van, you’re going to tell me what’s up.”

  “What does it matter to you?” The moment I said it, I regretted it. Here was a man who had done nothing but good for me, wanted nothing but my ultimate good in everything. I owed him. But this was not the time to pay debts.

  “I thought we were wangnianjiao,” Ira said.

  “Chinese. Forget-the-years-friends.”

  “Yeah, a friendship where the distance in age between us is forgotten.”

  “Yes, Ira, I often forget you’re a chatty old coot under a little round hat.”

  “And I forget you’re an aging tough who lacks wisdom.”

  “I lack wisdom?”

  “Just look in a mirror. You are not at rest in reality.”

  “Which may make me the wisest of the two of us,” I said.

  “What is it?” Ira said.

  “What is what?”

  “That has brought you here, to this point. In your life. You haven’t told me about your past, your—”

  “Now is not the time.”

  “I don’t want you getting yourself killed. We have a lot to talk about yet. More conversations. And you’re going to need my help.”

  I took in a deep breath. “Years ago I had a dream. I was running in a forest, all alone, and a tree fell in front of me. It didn’t make any noise.”

  Ira looked at me, waiting.

  “It was the answer to the question everyone has,” I said. “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make noise? But I was there to hear it, and it still didn’t make noise. You get the dream?”

  “Be careful where you run?”

  “Or, we are always looking for the noise, but there isn’t any. Even if we’re there to hear it. There is no noise.”

  “So we’re all living in a dream?”

  “How do we know we’re not?”

  “I think, therefore I am,” Ira said.

  “No, Ira. You think you think, therefore you think you are.”

  He shook his head. “If that’s true, then why do anything? Why even go after whoever you’re going after?”

  “Revenge makes as much sense as anything else.”

  “Then telling me what’s going on makes sense, too, in your perverse universe.”

  It’s hard to argue with a really good rabbi.

  So I filled him in as quickly and directly as I could. I told him about getting nabbed, Tased, beaten up, kidnapped, killing a man in self-defense, finding one of the guys who did it to me, and then talking to him in no uncertain terms. That Mark David Mayne was going to be hard to get at, and had an intermediary by the name of LaFleur, and that Natalia might know who he was. And I repeated that he should be ready for intruders and that we shouldn’t be seen together. I told him I was staying at a place downtown, but I didn’t give him the name.

  “At some point,” Ira said, “we should involve the police.”

  “That time is not yet,” I said. “I’ll tell you where to drop me.”

  NATALIA MAYNE’S HOUSE was in the canyons above Beverly Hills. I had Ira stop half a block away.

  “I’ll meet you on Sunset,” I said. “Wait for me in front of that men’s store we passed. You know, the one with the suit that would make me look like a peacock?”

  “I think I know the one. But if you don’t show up in an hour, I’m coming back.”

  I got out of the van and walked to Natalia’s gate. Pressed the buzzer. Looked into the security camera.

  A moment later, Natalia’s voice came out of the speaker. “Mike! Have you found them?”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I’m sorry. But I need to talk to you.”

  “But how … never mind. Come up.”

  The gate opened and I went in.

  The house was a classic Mediterranean-style mansion. It had a veteran palm tree in the yard and a big arch that Caesar would have approved of. Before I got to the door it opened.

  Natalia Mayne was in a black dress that accentuated everything positive about her form. Her hair was styled, part of its black allure sweeping over her eyebrows in a way that would have made GIs in the 40s wolf whistle until they were parched.

  “Please come in,” she said. Her voice sounded tired. Or resigned.

  The foyer was full of Etruscan-looking art and design. I asked her if she liked Italy. She said she had a decorator that did all this, then said, “What happened to your face?”

  “That’s always what a gentleman wants to hear from a lady.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that …”

  “No worries. I got beat up. Your husband apparently didn’t like the way I was treating his guys, or you, or finding things out he didn’t want me to find out. So I got picked up and taken to a place in East Los Angeles for a little sit down. By the way, can we sit down?”

  “Of course.” She showed me into the living room. It had a high-beamed ceiling and recessed lighting and furniture that looked like it sipped martinis. I guess when you get divorced from a billionaire you’re not exactly left destitute.

  She motioned for me to park on a divan. I settled and she sat in a chair opposite me.

  “No news on my children?” she said.

  “I’ve been a little distracted,” I said. “It’s time for me to talk to your husband.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you just want to talk.”

  “I may want to balance the books a little bit.”

  “Don’t even think of trying anything,” she said. “He’s too powerful.”

  “Just help me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Got anything to drink? A single shot of bourbon if you have it. No ice.”

  She looked at me funny. “I can check. Do you really want that?”

  “I don’t ask for things I don’t want.”

  “All right.”

  She left the living room, which gave me a chance to take in the surroundings. She had a small bookshelf, built-in, with some books nicely arranged. I always like to look at peoples’ libraries.

  I got up and scanned the titles. There were some books on design and art. A biography of Evita Perón, a book called Great Actors of the American Stage, a couple of John Grishams.

  A black, leather Bible lay on one shelf. I picked it up. On the front, the gilded title said Holy Bible with the Apocrypha. It smelled new. I opened it and riffled the pages. I half thought about putting my finger on a verse at random and seeing what it foretold. But then I thought I might land on an Old Testament skin disease, or Judas went and hanged himself.

  At the back of the Bible something opened a page like a bookmark. It was a photo. A brown-skinned man with black hair, smiling at the camera. He had a strange tattoo under his left eye, a curve of some kind. Like the blade of a scimitar.

  Natalia Mayne came back in, holding a lowball glass.

  The glass shook slightly in her hand.

  “Danny,” she said.

  SHE PUT THE glass on a table and sat in the same chair.

  I closed the Bible and put it back on the shelf.

  “Who is Danny?” I said.

  “My brother,” she said.

  “Dead?” I said.

  She shook her head. “We don’t know. He’s been in jail and gangs … can we talk about something else?”

  “Sorry,” I said. I took up the glass and sat on the divan.

  “If it’s not the children, why are you here?”

  I said, “I was taken for a ride by a man named Arvand Andandi and his buddy, hijacked to a building I think your husband owns. I was met there by an Asian woman who told me to get out of town and stay out. To make sure I got the message they used an electric jolt on me and beat me up pretty good. Then they drove
me out of state and, well, I’ll leave the rest of the story for later. I just want to know who she is.”

  “I’m … I don’t know.”

  “Are you afraid to tell me?”

  “I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of never getting my kids back. I’m afraid that somebody saw you come here. I’m afraid …” She put her head in her hands.

  I didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  She looked at me again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “I shouldn’t dump any of this on you.”

  “No,” she said. “If I can help. It’s just …”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t get involved, Mike. You don’t know what Mark is like.”

  “Have the cops talked to him?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “He has a restraining order against me.”

  “Who are his lawyers?”

  “The biggest and the worst. Soulless.”

  I smiled.

  She said, “Why are you smiling?”

  “That’s one of the nicer things people say about lawyers.”

  In spite of the ribbon of tension tied around her, she smiled, too.

  “Does the name LaFleur mean anything to you?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “How much do you actually know about your husband’s business?”

  “Practically nothing. He wanted it that way.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  Natalia Mayne sighed. “Do we have to?”

  I said, “No, I guess not. I’m the one who bolted in here and interrupted you.” I started to get up.

  “Wait,” she said. “Maybe I should. Then maybe you’ll know what you’re up against.”

  “I WAS MODELING in New York,” Natalia said. “I was Natalia Saint then. Changed my name from Santiago. I’d come from Mexico with my parents. Legally. Grew up in Arizona. But early on I knew that I would not be going to school, I’d be going to the city. It’s something a lot of us girls knew when we’re very young, because men made sure we knew it. Even men in our own family.”

  I knew what that meant and I was not going to push it.

  “So I actually ran away when I was fifteen and went to live in Greenwich Village and passed myself off as eighteen. When they found me out a man arranged for me to get papers in order to get emancipated and all. In return for managing my career, which he did, up until the time I met Mark.”