Shatterday (24 page)

I sat staring, waiting for Jimmy to speak to us from beyond the grave. I heard a sound, rushing toward me out of the fog at 225 m.p.h.

This is how Jimmy died.

The story was in all the papers.

It was pried loose, finally, from one of the three
culeros
they pulled out of the other wreck. All three of them lived; one of them lost his left leg; one of them has no teeth. But that was Jimmy, not the crash.

Appropriately enough it was Halloween. That's Bradbury's favorite holiday, and it's mine, and it was Jimmy's. It was last week.

Jimmy had spent the evening at a party thrown by one of the two married couples who had been inside the black, plush velvet, upholstered ropes at the burial ceremonies. Huck and Carol Barkin. She's an architect, he's a writer. They were very close to Jimmy.

Around midnight Jimmy had left. He'd only had a couple of glasses of wine, perfectly sober and, in fact, had been drinking Perrier since ten o'clock. That figures in the story.

He took a cold quart bottle of Perrier with him when he left, swigging it straight from the mouth to his mouth in the car. Then lie realized he was almost out of gas, probably couldn't make it back to the Valley and the ancestral manse, went looking for an open station on a holiday, near midnight, in Los Angeles where odd-even allocation is taken seriously.

He found a serve-yourself that was open, but they wouldn't let him fill up because it was an odd-numbered day and he had license plates that ended in an even number. So he pulled off to one side and waited for the clock to run past midnight when it would be the next day and he could get pumped tip.

I wasn't there, no one was there in his head, but I know what he was like, and from the story the
culeros
told, it had to have happened like this. And even if it didn't let's see how well we can get inside the characters, let's see how fluidly we can carry the action, let's see if we can plumb the intricate motivations. This is called sensitive, creative writing; full of heat, Jimmy; pulling the plow, Jimmy; getting the powerhouse up to peak efficiency.

What we need is a good opening, a tough literary hook.

Kerch Crowstairs slumped behind the wheel of the Rolls Corniche, listening to the second movement, the
Allegro appassionato
, of Brahms's Concerto in B-flat major. In the chopped and channeled Chevy beside him the raucous clatter of the Eagles banged uneasy counterpoint …

No, too esoteric. Not Hammett enough.

How about this:

He was distracted. Thinking about the past, the future, indefinite times and opportunities passing too fast for analysis. Under him the Rolls hummed softly, waiting for the light to change. Beside him three Chicanos in a decked Chevy raced their motor, Drag for pink slips, mister?

No, too diffuse. Not enough oomph.

I can't do it, Jimmy. I can't write like you! I can talk and think in your voice, because I can
hear you
… I've always had phonographic recall. But I can't put it down in your bloodthirsty Visigoth way.

What happened was …

He filled the tank. He drove back out onto the street. He was listening to the classical music on KFAC-FM. He was smoking his pipe. He was sitting at the light, waiting for it to change, simply enjoying the cool night air and the pleasant music and the smoke rising from the pipe. The empty Perrier bottle lay on the passenger seat. A car pulled up beside him in the left lane. Someone spoke in the night. He was caught up in the gentle feel of the music washing over him, the sense of ease and leisure. He was relaxed. For once, he wasn't on, he wasn't angry, he wasn't hyper. He was feeling good; and he paid no attention to the voice. But it spoke again, louder, coarser, directed at him. He looked across. Two young men, late teens, maybe early twenties, in the front seat. Another one in the back seat, looked asleep. The kid closest to him yelled again. "Hey!
Cabrón
! What're you smokin' in the pipe?" The light changed. He took off. At the next light they raced up, gunned the motor, closer to his lane now. "Hey, man,
de dónde
? I ast you what the fuck you smokin' in the pipe?" He stared ahead. He didn't want any hassles. God, don't these lights change? "Hey,
mamador
, you gonna answer me or I'm gonna come over there an' whip your ass?" He looked at them. If Rick Garza or Pano Del Rio were here, they'd have just the right words to back these clowns off. But he was alone. "I'm smoking Essence of Asshole," he said. "I'm smokin' your mama." And the light changed, and he hit it. They ran up his tailpipe to the next light. Jesus, how many lights are there before the freeway? As he screeched to a halt the one on the passenger side jumped out and came across to grab him. He dumped it into reverse, backed up three feet, threw open the door and knocked the silly sonofabitch flat on his ass. Then he took off through the just-changing light. Behind him the passenger was climbing back aboard as the driver decked it. They caught him at the next light and he thought about going straight through: the freeway was one street up. But now the adrenalin was pumping. He stopped at the light and grabbed the empty Perrier bottle. When the passenger got to his window he swung the bottle in his left hand with a flat, scythelike movement and busted out the guy's teeth, emptied his mouth and sent him careening backward into the Chevy.
Then
he went through the light, turned sharp left, ran down the side street to the freeway entrance, hit the ramp doing sixty and was on the San Diego before the driver could load his buddy back into the trashwagon. ¡
Huo de la chingada
!

They caught him just beyond the interchange of the San Diego and Santa Monica freeways. He was in the fast lane, the number one next to the divider. He was doing seventy-five. The Chevy came up on the right and the berserk latino swung it over hard; lock to lock, maybe not—but hard. The Rolls took it just behind the door, slewed into the cyclone fence, scraped along throwing sparks back in a fan, then shot ahead, as Jimmy floored the Corniche. ¡
Puto pendejo
!

Doing ninety, he cut out of the number one lane, slanted across the second, third and fourth lanes, and ran away. The Chevy caught up on the grade leading through the saddle of the hills to the Valley. The
culeros
rear-ended him. Hard; once twice three times. Jimmy braked, speeded up, cut in and out, but the Chevy was hot, it ran him down like a bulldogger. ¡
Vatos locos
!

Two miles before the Mulholland offramp the
cholos
said aw, fuck it, and decided to boom him. They came up in the number three, doing ninety-five, went ahead by two car-lengths and slant-drove across his bow. Jimmy stood on the brake but it didn't count. They impacted at eighty-five, the Corniche went in hard on the right front, ricocheted, spun out and went over the side. The Rolls hit the berin, dropped and began to somersault. The Chevy was horizontal across the three and four lanes, caught a centerpunch from a long-distance moving van, lifted, went tail-over onto its roof, sliding across the shoulder, followed Jimmy over the side two hundred yards beyond him and came to rest against a low hillside.

Behind the latinos the Rolls Corniche took one last roll, hit the crumbling hillside and went off like a can of beer shaken in a centrifuge. It blew apart scattering hot metal and parts of Jimmy all over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Say goodbye to Kercher O.J. Crowstairs.

•

"I'm not feeling too giddy about all this, now that we're alone," Jimmy said from the screen. "You five are the most I've got left. Everybody else has been taken care of; okay, they're okay; I took good care of them, in the ancillary sections of the will. But you five are the big scores, and I wanted you to hear it straight from me."

He stopped, wiped his mouth.
Jimmy nervous
? Come on, give me a break here.

"Missy, you're first," he said, looking all the way to his left, directly where Mississippi was slouched in her seat, long legs crossed straight out in front of her. "You get The Kerch Corporation and all its holdings."

SylviaTheCunt gasped, off to my left. The smell of cardiac arrest was there in the library.

Jimmy went on. "You keep it running. There's the land up at Lake Isabella, we own it free and clear now, and it'll be built up pretty big within the next five years, they're putting in that Kern County International Airport. Keep adding to the art, find a place to show it, something nice and stately like the Norton Simon Museum … you know … something toney and really chi-chi. Set your own salary, keep on as much of the staff as you need, hire more, fire some, do what the hell you want with it. It was just a dodge to keep the tax fuckers off my carcass, anyhow. You make it into something terrific, kiddo. I love you, babe. You watched out for me real good."

Missy was crying. Toughest woman I ever met, but she—even she—lost it when Jimmy went to work at the top of his form. In Iran there's a word—
zirangi
—it means cleverness, or wiliness. The Machiavellian quality. It's much admired by the Shiites. Jimmy would have been a smash in Islam.

"And for the record," Jimmy added, "let it be known that never once in all the years you and I worked together, did we once so much as fondle each other's genitalia. The bantlings will need their gossip, m'love; and they'll fasten first on she who was my amanuensis. Let the slushfaces herewith take note: you and I worked together for fifteen years plus however many more wash under the bridge from the date of this taping before I bite the big one, mostly on the basis of your being the best goddamned pool-shooter I ever met. I would have fired your tidy ass a million times, kiddo, if it hadn't been that you shot the most unbelievable three-bank cushions into the hip pockets."

Missy was dry now. And smiling gently.

Then he turned to Brandon Winslow sitting right beside her.

"Bran, my friend … I've done you right, and I've done you wrong. But you never once treated me like a hotshot, and for that I cannot thank you enough. Other people were in awe, or they wanted to drink my blood, or they came sharpshooting. But you were my friend and my colleague, and you started out as something like my student but went beyond what I could show you. And you maintained, chum. You make the Hall of Fame for hanging in there. So this house is yours. The house and the grounds and everything in it. Live here, and change it any way you want to make your nest the way I made it
my
nest. I built the west wing full of separate apartments for other writers who need a place to flop. I never could afford to buy San Simeon from the state of California; I always thought the old Hearst castle would be a dynamite place for a no-obligation writers' colony where kids who had the real stuff could come and work without worrying about rent or getting fed. So lay in half a dozen real outlaws, Bran. And the only rule ought to be that they can stay and be happy as long as they
write
. If they turn into leaners, if you catch them sitting around all day watching
The Price is Right
boot their asses into the street. But if they're producing, they can live here forever. Alone is okay, but loneliness can kill a good writer … you know that. Give them a community of sharp, witty minds … and three squares a day. You'll be the only landlord who writes books that chew on the hearts of the literary establishment.

"Do it for me and for you, Bran."

SylviaTheCunt was making sounds like the
Titanic
going down.

Then Jimmy looked straight ahead. At Leslie.

He didn't say anything. He just stared.

Leslie took it for about thirty seconds. Then she got up and walked to the side of the room where she stood with her arms folded, watching the screen, still curious, but—once having freed herself of Jimmy's power—unwilling to let him manipulate her beyond a certain point of tolerable terror.

Now Jimmy was staring at an empty seat.

She's insensitive, or maybe desensitized; but she's tough. Which also explains how she could have stayed married to him as long as she did. High-fashion barbed wire wrapped in Spandex.

"Leslie, you did okay in the settlement. But I suppose you rate more than a standard 'I'm sorry,' which doesn't count for shit …"

"You can say that again," Leslie murmured from the side of the room.

"… so the Corporation is depositing a million in the Bermuda account for you; I've signed over ownership of the magazine to your name; Kenny will transfer the chalet at Villarvolard to you … so you can keep that ski bum of yours on the string a little longer; and Missy'll find a letter in the safe that transfers a substantial block of non-voting stock in The Kerch Corporation to you. Stay out of the business, take the dividends, and try to remember me fondly."

"Right," Leslie said from the side of the room.

Now he looked all the way to his right, directly at SylviaTheCunt, who
had
to know what was coming. There was still a lot in the till, and from what Jimmy had said of her in years past I knew she'd be bolted to that chair till the final farthing had been accounted for; but, for a wonder, she
had
to know what was on the way.

"To my beloved sister, Sylvia …

"And that's the first time in over twenty years I've said your name without adding the sobriquet. Seems truncated, but these are formal proceedings and I want to do it without flaw so after I've finished taking to you—which you'll sit through right to the last syllable on just the off-chance that I might act like a brother even though we both know I despise you with a pure, blue flame of loathing, and you might be able to cadge a few bucks—where was I? Fouled in my own syntax. Oh, yeah, I was saying you'll sit through all this maleficent defoedation—Kenny, if she needs help with that, stop the tape and get her the definitions—you'll find them in something called
Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary
, in the reference shelf to the left of my typewriter in the office—shit, I lost myself again. Oh, yeah, I remember. You'll sit through it because you cling to greedy hope like a leech on floating garbage. You figure I can't be that big a prick after all these years, and so you'll wait for the last rotten word I'm going to speak to you, sister dearest. And I'm doing this without flaw so that you won't even have a scintilla of hope that you can contest this will. It's solid, Sylvia; ironclad, rockribbed, diamond-encrusted solid.