Six Easy Pieces (19 page)

Gator was perched at the edge of his desk. He was as tall as Ross, but whereas Saul’s cousin-in-law was burly Oliphant was long and lean. I didn’t think I could get inside his offense and I wouldn’t have wanted to try.

“For what?” he asked.

“My specialty is heating and cooling but I can do anything mechanical.”

“Oh really? Where you from, Larry?”

“Lake Charles.”

“You don’t say? Some good old boys down in Lake Charles. And they can eat.”

“Blue crab gumbo and crawdad pie to die for,” I said. “Put all that on a plate with some dirty rice and red beans and you will be in heaven.”

Oliphant smiled and a rough laugh escaped his lips.

He would have been handsome except for the pits on his cheeks and throat. In one way he was the exact opposite of Saul Lynx. The tall Cajun had brown eyes and green clothes.

“You know your food but do you know engines?”

“Oh yeah,” I said like they did down home. “Poor man got to know how to fix his car ’cause a place like this cost you a week’s wages.”

Again Oliphant laughed. “If you lucky.”

He picked up a slender stick and tapped the bottom of the engine.

“What’s that?” he asked me.

“Oil pan.”

“And that?” he asked tapping the upper region.

“Injector over the intake manifold.”

“What about down here?”

“Flywheel.”

We went on like that for a while. After I’d named twenty parts of the engine he began asking me how I’d fix various problems. I guess he was happy with my answers. I did know about cars.

“You say you’re a hot-and-cold man but you know your cars.”

“I know boiler rooms and air conditioners too,” I said. Working as the building supervisor I had to know how every machine at a school worked.

Oliphant rubbed his ravaged jaw and regarded me.

“I do have a position open,” he said. “But how’d you know about it?”

“Sam Houston,” I said.

“And here I thought the great man had died.” Oliphant’s smile was somewhat sinister.

“Not the original,” I said. “This one’s from Texas too, but he’s black and owns a restaurant in L.A. called Hambones. He found out about it somewhere.”

I doubted that Oliphant would go so far as to check my story but I’d already asked Sam to cover for me.

“Last boy to work here didn’t work out,” Gator said. “Broke my supervisor’s nose and broke into the safe too.”

“Was he from Louisiana?”

That got Gator laughing again. He liked to laugh.

“Okay, Larry,” he said. “We’ll try you out. If you can work as good as you talk you’ll do just fine.”

We smiled into each other’s eyes. He had the kind of eyes that made you feel that he knew what was going on in your mind.

TILLY MONROE was the first man I had to deal with. I knew his name from the moment I saw him—that wasn’t hard. First off he had a bandage over his black-and-blue swollen nose. Then he was short, five-five tops. He also wore red coveralls with the name TILLY stitched over his heart. All he needed was good sense and six inches and he could have been a matinee idol.

“So you the new buck?” he said, and I wondered why Ross had waited so long to bust his face.

“Just a mechanic,” I said.

“This ain’t no penny-ante backyard garage here, son,” he said. “This here’s a first-class operation. You get a job and a time estimate and you better believe that you will finish on time and keep your station clean.”

I inhaled through my nose and held it, trying to keep from saying something angry.

“No personal phone calls,” Tilly added, “except in emergency, and no sick pay. You get paid for hours worked and you work every hour you here. Understand?”

“Yes sir.” I hated myself for saying it.

I was given three engines and told that I had a week to overhaul them for the used-car lot across the street. That way, Tilly said, he could make sure that it was me and not some other man doing the job.

I signed up for the evening shift and worked into the night. It didn’t bother me not being home. Bonnie and I barely spoke but still it hurt my heart to have her near.

I SPENT SIX HOURS there and didn’t find out one thing that would help clear Ross Henry.

Gator was well named. He cruised around the garage like a huge green predator. He had the same kind of evil grin as the alligator and seemed to come up out of nowhere. I met eight men other than Oliphant, Tilly, and Ed. Ed was the kid I met coming in. I don’t remember anyone else’s name. They all worked hard and laughed well. Maybe one of them robbed the safe. It was beyond my ability to tell.

The garage closed at eight that Sunday night. I dawdled around until nearly nine, cleaning up my station.

“See ya, Larry,” Ed said to me.

“Later, kid.”

His bright smile shone in answer and Ed turned toward the door.

“You about finished, Burdon?” Tilly asked me.

When I looked up to see the small man, I saw Gator beyond him, looking at us both through the glass wall of his office. His brow was dark and dangerous.

“Just about,” I said.

“’Cause we don’t want any of the brothers around when we’re not here to watch ’em, if you know what I mean.” Tilly was standing nearly on top of me, which was unsettling because I was down on my knees putting my tools into an iron chest.

I stood to my full height and Tilly fell back, one step and then another.

“Didn’t that man who stole your money break your nose for you?” I asked him.

“What of it?”

“Nuthin’,” I said. “It’s just that you should go home and study your eyes and that nose in the mirror. See if you can find a correlation between the two.”

“Corra-what?”

I never expected to return to Oliphant’s garage. Why not give them a glimpse of the man who hid from them in plain sight?

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

I stripped the blue coveralls off of my street clothes and marched out of the mechanic’s glare into the briny night.

ED WAS STANDING on the corner, waiting for a ride I supposed. He was a good kid. Talked a little too much. But whenever he did Gator came out and set him straight without embarrassment. If anybody was going to let something drop, it would be Eddie.

I wanted to go home, to sleep on my sofa. But Saul was a friend and I had made a promise. So I went to the corner thinking this would be my last stab at getting information on the robbery.

“Hey, Ed.”

“Mr. Burdon.”

“Goin’ home?”

“Yeah. My mom’s coming to get me. I won’t get my license for three more months. Then I can drive myself. You need a ride?”

“Yeah, which way you goin’?”

“Up to Sea Breeze, but my mom can give you a ride anywhere around here.”

I had no idea where Sea Breeze was and I had my own car. I just wanted to hang around Ed until he answered a question or two.

“They say the guy I’m replacing broke old Tilly’s nose,” I ventured.

“Sure did,” Ed said. “Ross is a good guy and that Tilly’s just mean. He don’t like black people too much, you know. He’s from the South.”

“So’s Gator,” I said. “You got a little twang there yourself.”

“Ah yeah, but Gator’s great. He’s my dad.”

No one had mentioned this during the day. But it made sense once Ed said it. I thought Gator was looking out for him because he was the only kid at the place. But thinking about it, Gator wasn’t just being a boss, he was being paternal in a cold sort of way; like the lizard he emulated.

A white Cadillac pulled up to the curb.

“That’s my mom,” Ed said.

The car door opened and a woman said, “Come on now, Eddie. I got to—”

She didn’t finish her sentence because I turned and she saw my face. She was looking straight at me but her face still seemed to be in profile. That grin still thrilled my heart.

“Hey, mom,” Ed said. “This is Larry Burdon, the new mechanic. He needs a ride.”

“Easy?”

“No, it’s Larry,” Ed corrected.

“Oh.”

Amiee came around the side of the car to shake my hand. She grabbed onto two fingers, squeezed, and pulled.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Burdon. You look familiar.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “So did your son when I met him.”

“Mr. Burdon did the best of anybody on dad’s test,” Ed was saying.

We were looking into each other’s eyes. I was ready dive to in, right there.

“You don’t have a car, Larry?” Amiee asked.

“I took the bus, Mrs. Oliphant,” I said. “I live a ways up, near Sepulveda.”

“I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

As I climbed into the car I looked over at the garage. The lights went out just as I turned and so I couldn’t be sure that I glimpsed Gator standing in the glass door, staring in our direction.

We dropped Ed off at the Oliphant’s front door on Sea Breeze Lane. Then Amiee drove off in the opposite direction from my fictitious home.

“I was surprised to see you,” we both said at the same time.

“Twice,” she added.

“You mean when I came up on you in the clenches with Ross?”

“No,” she said. “When I saw your handsome face come in that room.”

I was a full-grown man, forty-four at that moment. I had been on three different continents and seen everything from birth to death many times over. With all that experience one would think that a slip of a girl with an uneven face would hardly even make an impression. But Amiee had my heart fluttering and my mouth watering to the point where I had to swallow.

She smiled at my discomfort.

“What’s goin’ on, Amiee?”

My question had extra meaning as we were pulling into a parking lot that bordered the Pacific Ocean. The low-slung three-quarter moon sent a corridor of light rippling from the horizon to the shore, not twenty feet from our car door. The moonlight and that woman filled my chest with awe.

“You working for Ross?” she asked me.

“After a fashion. You workin’ on him, or with him?”

“I was just giving him a little justice,” she said.

“Justice?”

“I told him that I knew he didn’t rob Gator but all I could do was to give him the secret knowledge that he had the boss-man’s woman before he ran.”

“No wonder he was so mad when we interrupted you.”

Amiee smiled and gestured at me with her jaw.

Only that morning I thought that I’d never kiss another woman.

We wrestled around for a minute or two. Her hands were quick and clever. I felt every hormone and instinct in my body surging but still, I took Amiee by the shoulders and pressed her back against the door—at arm’s length. Not daunted by the distance she pressed a bare foot against my erection and smiled.

“No,” I said.

“Not yet,” she replied. “But it’s comin’.”

“No,” I said again. “It’s not.”

Amiee composed herself then accepted my refusal without anger.

I felt a powerful urge to jump out of the car and run back to Bonnie. I wanted to tell her something, but I had no idea what.

“I’ll never forget you, Easy Larry,” Amiee said.

“Why’s that?” I asked in a voice much deeper than usual.

“I never had a man frustrate me twice in the same day.”

We both laughed.

“You still need a ride home?” Amiee asked. She leaned over to give me a half-friendly kiss.

“Naw,” I said. “My ride is a couple’a blocks away from the garage.”

“You gonna tell me why you workin’ there?”

“To see if there’s some other explanation for the robbery.”

“You find anything?”

“Nope.”

“But you’re there to help Ross?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“For a favor to Saul. That’s the guy I was with.”

“What if I told you something?” she said. “I mean, could I trust you to keep secret where you heard it from?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t know how to prove it.”

“Oh I’ll take your word, honey. I can feel how much you wanted me and still you held back. Some woman has made an honest man outta you.”

Her words seemed to be full of meaning.

“Any man that true,” she continued, “will keep his word if he can.”

“All right,” I said. “You got my word. So what can you tell me?”

“Gator and Tilly are movin’ stolen sports cars.”

“From the used car lot?”

“Uh-uh. They work on ’em late at night and then sell ’em from off the street.”

“How so?”

“They get the car in and paint it, then they leave it on some corner and send the buyer the key.”

“How long they been doin’ that?”

“Couple’a years.”

“And was Ross in on it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And how do you know about it?”

“Eggersly don’t give two shits about me. He got at least two girlfriends at any one time an’ he ain’t hardly ever home. When he is he treats me like a piece’a property. He brags about what he’s doin’ like I wasn’t in the room. Talk about women he had, men he beat, and the cars too. Gator always says that he was born poor white trash but he was smart and tough and made somethin’ outta himself. But my mama always said that you could put trash in a silver ashcan but it’s still just trash.”

I’d known men like Oliphant. Men so proud of their strength and their accomplishments that they forget even the greatest fighter can be stabbed in the back.

“So you think Gator or Tilly knows who stole the money?” I asked.

“Not himself. He wasn’t in there that night, ’cause it was Tuesday. On Tuesdays he drops Eddie off at Little League practice and then goes off. Nobody sees him again till Wednesday.”

“So what does that mean for Ross?”

“Ross don’t know none of it. He don’t know that most nights Tilly and Gator up in there with stolen cars. How’s he gonna be so smart to pick the one night you can be sure nobody’s there?”

It was a good question.

“YOU DIDN’T GET IT? What the fuck is wrong wit’ you, Easy?” Mouse asked.

It wasn’t really Mouse but just a specter in my mind. Lately, whenever I was disturbed or distressed, I’d start telling the story to the air and from somewhere in my mind I’d imagine my dead friend’s opinions.

“No,” I said in the empty car. “No. I haven’t set things straight with Bonnie yet.”