Double Take (17 page)

1976

I am dreaming about coffee. I open my eyes and find a cup from Bob's Big Boy on the night table next to my nose. I turn around and find Michael on the bed next to me, leaning on one elbow. I wonder if he has been watching me sleep, something that used to really annoy me. Now for some reason it seems like the sweetest thing in the world, and I wonder, what the hell was the matter with me, why didn't I see how much I needed this? I picture myself sitting at the bar at Bert's, drinking an Old Style, and the juxtaposition is surreal.

“Good morning,” I say to him, afraid of what's coming next. I notice he is fully clothed, which gives him a psychological advantage. “Is this for me?” I reach for the cup, remove its plastic lid, and take a sip. Two sugars and double cream—he has remembered. I take heart. “Thanks.” I put the coffee down and turn toward him again. “Happy New Year,” I say, positioning myself so I am facing him, in case he'd like to get closer.

“Same to you,” he says, keeping his distance.

I sigh quietly and say, “It's really amazing that you're here—that I'm here. That we're here.”

“Rachel . . .” He sounds like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. “I can't talk about this right now. In fact, I really need to go.”

“Oh?”

“My parents are having a party and I promised to help them out.” He adds, very politely, “You're welcome to come.”

When you tell someone they're welcome to do something, it means that you really don't want them to, so he's got to be relieved when I say, “Thanks, I don't think so.” I drink some more coffee. It's just the way I like it.

He looks intently up at the acoustical tile ceiling as if counting the dots. Then he says, “Why did you come here?”

I have not been looking forward to this question. “Hey, it's a free country. Do I need a reason?”

“Was it because of me?”

“Well . . .” I drink some more coffee. “That sort of depends.”

“What do you mean it depends? Either it was or it wasn't.”

“Since when are you so binary?”

“It's been a tough year. I've had to make concessions.”

“I thought you were having such a great time.”

Bad move. He closes up like a mollusk.

“You can't do this,” he says after a moment's silence. “You can't just cruise into town and fuck up my life.”

“Actually, I'm not here to fuck up your life,” I say, moving things from bad to worse. “I'm here on business.”

“Business? What business? You came to deliver a pizza?”

“Funny,” I say. “I'm doing a little bit of work for a friend of mine. Someone I used to know.” Then, to provoke him, I add, “I really can't say anything more about it.”

He leans over and looks at me, trying to read my mind, something he used to be able to do. I jam all frequencies. “What are you up to?”

“I can't talk about it. I wouldn't want you to know, anyway, and risk disbarment.”

I wait for him to tell me that he can't be disbarred because he is not even barred yet, but he sees through my attempt to bait him and, only slightly irritable, comes back with, “I have a girlfriend, you know.”

“Just one?” I sound very blasé.

“I thought you'd want to know.”

“Why would that be any concern of mine?”

“Are you surprised?”

“Of course not.” I finish the last sip of coffee and toss the cup toward the waste basket across the room. It falls a foot short, so I get up to retrieve it and throw it away. When I come back, I can tell from his eyes that he's been watching my body, and once again I feel hope. I drape myself seductively in the bedspread. “So tell me all about her. What does she look like? Got a picture?”

He takes his wallet out of his jeans pocket and pulls out a photograph of him standing next to, but not touching, an extremely thin girl with sharp cheekbones and very short hair. I think she looks like his parents' dog, the whippet, but I say, “Great cheekbones. What's her name?”

He doesn't answer. He takes the picture back and puts it away, then walks around to my side of the bed and sits down on the edge. “I really have to go.” I lean over and put my arms around him, and he puts his around me, but without enthusiasm. “I'll call you later.”

“What for?” I ask in a pleasant manner tinged with sullenness.

“To say goodbye.” He walks over to the door and opens it, then turns back. “Rachel,” he says.

“What?”

“Her name is Rachel.”

When the door closes behind him, I start laughing and can't stop. After a while, I walk over to Bob's Big Boy and order breakfast: eggs, bacon, hash browns, whole wheat toast, orange juice, and coffee. I have a different waitress, but this one too has a hairpiece. I resolve that before I leave L.A. I am going to change my hairstyle to a beehive.

“Happy New Year.”

“Where are you?”

“Santa Monica. The Blue Palms Motel.”

“You been to see Fletcher yet?”

“I'm about to leave, so I'm calling like you told me to.”

“Don't do it, Cookie.”

“Come on, will you stop?”

“Really. Don't do it.”

“Don't worry. It'll be fine. I'll drop it off, and then I'll leave.”

There is a silence. Then Joey says, “Okay, listen, I want you to phone me when you get back.”

“What are you, my mom?”

“If I don't hear from you, I'm calling the cops.” He makes me give him Fletcher's address.

“Will you give me a break? What are you so worried about?”

“I just don't see why you have to get mixed up with this kind of shit after all these years.”

“Relax. I'll talk to you tonight.”

“I hope you know what you're doing. Hey, how's everything with the boyfriend?”

“Not so good.”

“Wow, I'm sorry, honey. I really am. Did you see him?”

“Yeah, I saw him.”

“Listen, give me his number.”

“Why?”

“Just in case. Seriously, if I don't hear from you, I want someone I can call.”

“I'd be so embarrassed if you called him.”

“So give it to me. It's like an insurance policy.”

I give it to him. When we say goodbye, he says, “Take care, little sister.”

I head east on the 10, not sure where I'm going. I have never really been able to fathom the geography of L.A. I'm used to a grid pattern where if someone gives you their address you can tell right where it is because of the numbers. Fletcher lives in Echo Park on Elsinore Street, and though Sam has given me rudimentary directions, I have no concrete idea of where I'm headed. I drive into nothingness.

I flip the radio dial looking for something that isn't disco. The Beach Boys are singing “Fun, Fun, Fun.” I crank the radio up really loud and sing along off-key. If the sun god wrote a rock and roll song, this would be it, I think, light, warm, shiny, erasing all the dark places, the parts that hurt.

Whatever works.

I am in the parking lot of a tiny Mexican food shack at the corner of Sunset and Alvarado, eating a veggie burrito. I have asked for extra peppers, and they burst inside my mouth as guacamole and frijoles caress my taste buds. I wonder why it has taken me this long to realize that burritos are the greatest food in the world, that I could eat them all day and night and never, ever feel sick. When I have finished the last bite I am tempted to order another one, but decide not to press my luck. The guy in the shack directs me to a hill so steep I have to crawl up it in first gear. At the top is Elsinore Street.

Fletcher's house is a white stucco bungalow with a small porch and a couple of withered palms at the edge of a brown lawn. The stucco on the front is cracked and the paint is peeling. The house not only looks empty, but as if no one has ever lived there. There are no curtains in the windows, and nothing is visible through them—no lights, no sign of movement.

Carrying the envelope of money, I walk hesitantly toward the house. As I get closer, I glimpse a face in the window, though it doesn't really look like a face, more like an indistinguishable mass, like a face with a stocking over it. It disappears. I search for a doorbell, but there isn't one, so I knock. There is no answer, so I try again. Suddenly, a shape appears behind the frosted window in the door, and a deep voice calls, “What do you want?”

“Hey Fletcher,” I call out. “It's me, Cookie, from Casa Sanchez. Remember me?”

“What do you want?” the voice says again.

“I've got something for you.”

“Go away.”

“It's from Sam. He asked me to deliver it to you.”

A silence, then I hear locks turn. The door opens a crack, a chain still on it. Through the opening I can see an eye—not exactly an eye, just an eyeball with a brown iris surrounded by shredded yellow flesh, like a bad collage made from skin. “Hand it over,” he says.

Fear shoots through me, which is weird, since Fletcher and I were friends and I always thought he was a sweet, gentle guy, despite being a criminal. “Hey, I wanted talk to you a little bit. Can I come in?” As these words are out of my mouth, a little voice in my head tells me that I if I had any sense at all, I would go back to my car and get the fuck out of here. I ignore the voice and say, “I heard about your accident and I want you to know how sorry I am. I know you don't like to see people too much now, but I wanted to have a little chat with you.”

“I got nothing to chat about.”

For some reason, I am remembering the time Michael and I drove across the Sierras. I had never driven in the mountains before and as we snaked our way up the steep twists in the road, I wasn't at all afraid, but when we finally got to the summit and the road started to wind down, I panicked. I started begging him to drive, but he said, “Just let go.” At his suggestion, I put the car in neutral and we spun downward as if we were flying. With this same soaring feeling, I say, “Fletcher, I want to ask you some questions about Brunette.”

The door slams shut, and for the instant where I think he is just not going to talk to me, I am flooded with relief—but then I hear the chain slide off. The door opens again, wider this time, and I see his face. I have mentally prepared myself not to do anything uncool when I see him but still, the face is a shock, a psychedelic mess of displaced tissue, carelessly rearranged, an abstract-expressionist painting in yellow and red. He doesn't really have a nose, just two holes in a clump of flesh. His hair is sparse and looks like white feathers. I stare into his eyes without flinching. He has no eyebrows, and his naked eyeballs stare back at me, two brown orbs held in place by strips of skin.

“What's hap, Fletcher,” I say, extending my hand. He hesitates, then extends his. It feels rough, like textured rubber, and his fingers are webbed together.

He steps back to let me into the house, then closes the door behind me, chain-locking it again. We walk through a small entranceway into the front room. There is almost no furniture, just a table and chair, and he doesn't ask me to sit down.

“I brought you this.” I hand him Sam's envelope.

He reaches out his hand and closes on it, claw-like. With his other hand, he awkwardly opens it, then spills the money onto the floor. He kneels down and counts it all methodically, stacking it in ten neat piles. Then carefully, he puts it all back into the envelope and lays it on the little table. “What did Sam tell you about this?”

“What do you mean? He didn't really tell me anything.”

“Did he tell you why he sends me money?”

“He just said he owed it to you. And that you needed it.”

He laughs, a sort of mooing noise.

“How are you, Fletcher?”

From the next room, I hear a strange noise, like a voice but not human.

“Oh, I'm great, can't you see that?” He laughs again, and the mooing sound makes my skin crawl. “I look good, don't I? Sam paid for my plastic surgery.”

“Oh, you had—”

“Can't tell, can you? You should have seen me before. Yeah, I'm one handsome motherfucker.” He seems to have lost his Canadian accent, and his voice is sarcastic, like he is mocking me. His voice is coarse, black and white, with hard edges. His voice. His voice is wrong.

I take a few steps backward and eye the front door. I'm wondering if I can get out before he stops me. I can see that it's chained, but I don't think he locked it, and I am rehearsing this in my mind when he says, “What did you want to ask me about? You said something about Brunette?”

“Actually,” I say, turning back toward him, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about his death.”

“Didn't you say you had some questions?”

“Not really. I just wanted to know—”

“What?”

“Never mind, it's not important.”

“You said you had some questions, what were they about?”

“About Bando,” I say, unable to restrain myself. The voice in my head tells me I am a fucking idiot. “I was wondering if you knew anything about him.”

“Like what?”

My big, stupid mouth says, “Like how he died.”

He takes a step closer to me, grabs my hand, and squeezes it. “What did he tell you?” he barks at me. His brown eyes look goofy, like the eyes of a stuffed animal.

Fletcher's eyes were blue.

“Ow, stop it. What did who tell me?”

“What did Sam tell you about me?”

“He didn't tell me anything.”

“Don't play dumb with me.” Whoever he really is, he's very strong. “I know he told you. Another fucking power play.” He makes another mooing sound; I guess something is wrong with his larynx. Then he starts dragging me down the hall.

We are in a small room at the back of the house. There is a mattress on the floor, and the room smells like rubbing alcohol and something rotting. He shoves me down on the mattress and stands over me, shouting, “What does he want from me, tell me, what the fuck does he want now? My God, what more could he possible want?”

“Fletcher, you've got to believe me, I don't know anything about anything. I just came to give you the money. And to say hi.”

“To say hi,” he says, mimicking my voice. “You can't be that stupid. It's not like you and I were ever even friends.”

“Of course we were. We got along great when we worked at Casa.”

He makes a snorting noise. Maybe he's forgotten he's supposed to be Fletcher. “So Sam told you about Bando.”

I think for a minute, and then, despite the voice in my head begging me to clam up, I say, “Well, yeah, he kind of told me some.”

I am expecting a burst of rage, but he says very calmly, “Can't he just fucking let this drop?”

“Hey, it's over.”

“He's got this hold on me and now he goes and tells you.”

“I'll never tell anyone. I'm your friend, Fletcher. We go way back. We're from the same place.”

“Bitch,” he says with a bitter laugh, “we're not from the same place. Anyway, if you know so much, quit calling me Fletcher.”

“Okay, fine. Brunette.”

He laughs some more, then starts kicking me hard in the ribs.

It is suddenly clear to me that I am about to die, that he is going to kill me because I know who he is, and he thinks I know what he did, though I really don't know anything, even my own name, at this point. My brain begins to short circuit, and the voice in my head is so freaked out it isn't even saying, “You see, I told you this would happen, dumbo.” My side hurts where he has kicked me, but then a feeling of calm passes through me and suddenly I am not afraid of anything as a sense of curious inevitability descends on me like snow, and I think, well, I still want to know what happened. So I manage to wheeze out, “Why did you kill Bando?”

Brunette seems taken aback by this question. He steps back and stands there, looking thoughtful, as if he's trying to figure out whether to answer me or just go on kicking. “A lot of reasons,” he says in an almost normal voice, like we are having a conversation in a coffee shop.

“Such as?”

“Such as he tricked on me and I got six months.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“No one else it could have been.”

Of course, I know it was Rat, but there doesn't seem to be any point in telling him this. “I see,” I say in what I hope is a soothing manner. “So you felt betrayed. So you went to his father's apartment, to the top floor—”

“There's a great view from up there.” He makes the horrible mooing sound.

“And you were so mad you pushed him out the window. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. I just wanted to know.”

“You stupid fuck, I didn't do it because I was mad. I did it because Sam made me do it. And he fucking paid me, like he always does, like I'm a whore and he's my john.”

“Of course, I knew that.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“That you killed Clay.” I decide to go for broke. “That he paid you to do that hit, too. Is that what he's got on you?”

“He's got all kinds of shit on me.” His tone has changed, and he sounds almost friendly. “After I killed Clay, I had to do whatever he wanted me to do because he could drop a dime on me any time. I had no proof he had anything to do with any of it, and he was friends with all the cops. He said they'd just laugh their asses off if I accused him of anything. He had the gun with my fingerprints in a safe deposit box, and any time he wanted, he said, he could prove it was me and I'd be back inside getting fucked in the ass by psychos again.”

“That must have been terrible for you,” I say, sounding like a social worker. I am considering it as a career possibility when he starts kicking me again, first in the ribs again, then on the side of the head.

“Give him this message for me,” I think I hear him say.