Laila must’ve figured I was in good enough shape. “Let me turn on some music, Bumper, then we can talk.”
“Okay.” I finished the second cup almost as fast as the first and poured myself a third.
The soft stirring song of an Arab girl singer filled the room for a second and then Laila turned down the volume. It’s a wailing kind of plaintive sound, almost like a chant at times, but it gets to you, at least it did to me, and I always conjured up mental pictures of the Temple of Karnak, and Giza, and the streets of Damascus, and a picture I once saw of a Bedouin on a pink granite cliff in the blinding sun looking out over the Valley of the Kings. I saw in his face that he knew more about history, even though he was probably illiterate, than I ever would, and I promised myself I’d go there to die when I got old. If I ever
did
get old, that is.
“I still like the old music,” Laila smiled, nodding toward the stereo set. “Most people don’t like it. I can put on something else if you want.”
“Don’t touch it,” I said, and Laila looked in my eyes and seemed glad.
“I need your help, Bumper.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“I want you to talk to my probation officer for me.”
“You’re on probation? What for?”
“Prostitution. The Hollywood vice cops got three of us in January. I pleaded guilty and was put on probation.”
“Whadda you want me to do?”
“I wasn’t given
summary
probation like my lousy thousand-dollar lawyer promised. I got a tough judge and I have to report to a P.O. for two years. I want to go somewhere and I need permission.”
“Where you going?”
“Somewhere to have a baby. I want to go somewhere, have my baby, adopt it out, and come back.”
She saw the “Why me? Why in the hell me?” look in my eyes.
“Bumper, I need you for this. I don’t want my sisters to know anything. Nothing, you hear? They’d only want to raise the baby and for God’s sake, it’s hard enough making it in this filthy world when you know who the hell your two parents are and have them to raise you. I’ve got a plan and you’re the only one my whole damned tribe would listen to without questions. They trust you completely. I want you to tell Yasser and Ahmed and all of them that you don’t think I should be dancing for a living, and that you have a friend in New Orleans who has a good-paying office job for me. And then tell the same thing to my P.O. and convince her it’s the truth. Then I’ll disappear for seven or eight months and come back and tell everyone I didn’t like the job or something. They’ll all get mad as blazes but that’ll be it.”
“Where the hell you going?”
“What’s it matter?” she shrugged. “Anywhere to have the kid and farm it out. To New Orleans. Wherever.”
“You’re not joining the coat hanger corps are you?”
“An abortion?” she laughed. “No, I figure when you make a mistake you should have the guts to at least see it through. I won’t shove it down a garbage disposal. I was raised an Arab and I can’t change.”
“You got any money?”
“I’ve got thirteen thousand in a bank account. I’d like you to handle it for me and see that the girls have enough to get them through the summer while they’re living here in my apartment. If everything goes right I’ll be back for a New Year’s Eve party with just you and me and the best bottle of scotch money can buy.”
“Will you have enough to live on?” I asked, knowing where she got the thirteen thousand.
“I’ve got enough,” she nodded.
“Listen, goddamnit, don’t lie to me. I’m not gonna get involved if you’re off somewhere selling your ass in a strange town with a foal kicking around in your belly.”
“I wouldn’t take any chances,” she said, looking deep in my eyes again. “I swear it. I’ve got enough in another account to live damn well for the whole time I’ll be gone. I’ll show you my bankbooks. And I can afford to have the kid in a good hospital. A private room if I want it.”
“Wow!” I said, getting up, light-headed and dizzy. I stood for a second and shuffled into the living room, dropping on the couch and laying back. I noticed that the red hose on Laila’s crystal and gold narghile was uncoiled. Those pipes are fine decorator items but they never work right unless you stuff all the fittings with rags like Laila’s was. I often smoked mint-flavored Turkish tobacco with Yasser. Laila smoked hashish. There was a black-and-white mosaic inlaid box setting next to the narghile. The lid was open and it was half full of hash, very high-grade, expensive, shoe-leather hash, pressed into dark flat sheets like the sole of your shoe.
Laila let me alone and cleared the kitchen table. What a hell of a time. First the decision to retire. And after I told Cassie, everything seemed right. And then Cassie wants a kid! And a goddamn pack of baby Bolsheviks make an ass out of me. Humiliate me! Then perjury, for chrissake. I felt like someone was putting out cigars on the inside of my belly, which was so hard and swollen I couldn’t see my knees unless I sat up straight. But at least I got a back office, even if I did almost die in the pigeon shit.
“What a day,” I said when Laila came in and sat down on the end of the couch.
“I’m sorry I asked you, Bumper.”
“No, no, don’t say that. I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”
She didn’t say anything, but she got up and came over and sat on the floor next to me, her eyes wet, and I’ll be a son of a bitch if she didn’t kiss my hand!
Laila got up then, and without saying anything, took my shoes off, and I let her lift my legs up and put them on the couch. I felt like a beached walrus laying there like that, but I was still swacked. In fact, I felt drunker now laying down, and I was afraid the room would start spinning, so I wanted to start talking. “I had a miserable goddamn day.”
“Tell me about it, Bumper,” said Laila, sitting there on the floor next to me and putting her cool hand on my hot forehead as I loosened my belt. I knew I was gone for the night. I was in no shape to get up, let alone drive home. I squirmed around until my sore shoulder was settled against a cushion.
“Your face and hands are cut and your body’s hurting.”
“Guess I can sleep here, huh?”
“Of course. How’d you get hurt?”
“Slipped and fell off a fire escape. Whadda you think about me retiring, Laila?”
“Retiring? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re too full of hell.”
“I’m in my forties, goddamnit. No, I might as well level with you. I’ll be fifty this month. Imagine that. When I was born Warren G. Harding was a new President!”
“You’re too alive. Forget about it. It’s too silly to think about.”
“I was sworn in on my thirtieth birthday, Laila. Know that?”
“Tell me about it,” she said, stroking my cheek now, and I felt so damn comfortable I could’ve died.
“You weren’t even born then. That’s how long I been a cop.”
“Why’d you become a cop?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Well, what did you do
before
you became a cop?”
“I was in the Marine Corps over eight years.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I wanted to get away from the hometown, I guess. There was nobody left except a few cousins and one aunt. My brother Clem and I were raised by our grandmother, and after she died, Clem took care of me. He was a ripper, that bastard. Bigger than me, but didn’t look anything like me. A handsome dog. Loved his food and drink and women. He owned his own gas station and just before Pearl Harbor, in November it was, he got killed when a truck tire blew up and he fell back into the grease pit. My brother Clem died in a filthy grease pit, killed by a goddamn tire! It was ridiculous. There was nobody else I gave a damn about so I joined the Corps. Guys actually
joined
in those days, believe it or not. I got wounded twice, once at Saipan and then in the knees at Iwo, and it almost kept me off the Department. I had to flimflam the shit out of that police surgeon. You know what? I didn’t hate war. I mean, why not admit it? I didn’t hate it.”
“Weren’t you ever afraid?”
“Sure, but there’s something about danger I like, and fighting was something I could do. I found that out right away and after the war I shipped over for another hitch and never did go back to Indiana. What the hell, I never had much there anyway. Billy was here with me and I had a job I liked.”
“Who’s Billy?”
“He was my son,” I said, and I heard the air-conditioner going and I knew it was cool, because Laila looked so crisp and fresh, and yet my back was soaked and the sweat was pouring down my face and slipping beneath my collar.
“I never knew you were married, Bumper.”
“It was a hundred years ago.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“I don’t know. Missouri, I think. Or dead maybe. It’s been so long. She was a girl I met in San Diego, a farm girl. Lots of them around out here on the coast during the war. They drifted out to find defense work, and some of them boozed it too much. Verna was a pale, skinny little thing. I was back in San Diego from my first trip over. I had my chest full of ribbons and had a cane because my first hit was in the thigh. That’s one reason my legs aren’t worth a shit today, I guess. I picked her up in a bar and slept with her that night and then I started coming by whenever I got liberty and next thing you know, before I ship out, she says she’s knocked up. I had the feeling so many guys get, that they’re gonna get bumped off, that their number’s up, so we got drunk one night and I took her to a justice of the peace in Arizona and married her. She got an allotment and wrote me all the time and I didn’t think too much about her till I got hit the second time and went home for good. And there she was, with my frail, sickly Billy. William’s my real name, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“So anyway, I screwed up, but just like you said, Laila, there was no sense anybody else suffering for it so I took Verna and Billy and we got a decent place to stay in Oceanside, and I thought, what the hell, this is a pretty fair life. So I reenlisted for another hitch and before long I was up for master sergeant. I could take Verna okay. I mean I gotta give her credit, after Billy came she quit boozing and kept a decent house. She was just a poor dumb farm girl but she treated me and Billy like champs, I have to admit. I was lucky and got to stay with Headquarters Company, Base, for five years, and Billy was to me, like . . . I don’t know, standing on a granite cliff and watching all the world from the Beginning until Now, and for the first time there was a reason for it all. You understand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You won’t believe this, but when he was barely four years old he printed a valentine card for me. He could print and read at four years old, I swear it. He asked his mother how to make the words and then he composed it himself. It said, ‘Dad. I love you. Love, Billy Morgan.’ Just barely four years old. Can you believe that?”
“Yes, I believe you, Bumper.”
“But like I said, he was a sickly boy like his mother, and even now when I tell you about him, I can’t picture him. I put him away mentally, and it’s not possible to picture how he looked, even if I try. You know, I read where only schizophrenics can control subconscious thought, and maybe I’m schizoid, I don’t doubt it. But I can do it. Sometimes when I’m asleep and I see a shadow in a dream and the shadow is a little boy wearing glasses, or he has a cowlick sticking up in the back, I wake up. I sit straight up in my bed, wide awake. I
cannot
picture him either awake or asleep. You’re smart to adopt out your kid, Laila.”
“When did he die?”
“When he was just five. Right after his birthday, in fact. And it shouldn’t have surprised me really. He was anemic and he had pneumonia twice as a baby, but still, it
was
a surprise, you know? Even though he was sick so long, it was a surprise, and after that, Vern seemed dead too. She told me a few weeks after we buried him that she was going home to Missouri and I thought it was a good idea so I gave her all the money I had and I never saw her again.
“After she left, I started drinking pretty good, and once, on weekend liberty, I came to L.A. and got so drunk I somehow ended up at El Toro Marine Base with a bunch of other drunken jarheads instead of at Camp Pendleton where I was stationed. The M.P’s at the gate let the other drunks through, but of course my pass was wrong, so they stopped me. I was mean drunk then, and confused as hell, and I ended up swinging on the two M.P.’s.
“I can hardly remember later that night in the El Toro brig. All I really recall was two brig guards, one black guy and one white guy, wearing khaki pants and skivvy shirts, dragging me off the floor of the cell and taking me in the head where they worked me over with billies and then to the showers to wash off the blood. I remember holding onto the faucets with my head in the sink for protection, and the billies landing on my arms and ribs and kidneys and the back of my head. That was the first time my nose was ever broken.”
Laila was still stroking my face and listening. Her hands felt cool and good.
“After that, they gave me a special courtmartial, and after all the M.P’s testified, my defense counsel brought out a platoon or so of character witnesses, and even some civilians, wives of the marines who lived near Verna and Billy and me. They all talked about me, and Billy, and how extra smart and polite he was. Then the doctor who treated me in the brig testified as a defense witness that I was unbalanced at the time of the fight and not responsible for my actions, even though he had no psychiatric training. My defense counsel got away with it and when it was over I didn’t get any brig time. I just got busted to buck sergeant.
“Is it hot in here, Laila?”
“No, Bumper,” she said, stroking my cheek with the back of her fingers.
“Well, anyway, I took my discharge in the spring of nineteen-fifty and fooled around a year and finally joined the Los Angeles Police Department.”
“Why did you do it, Bumper? The police force?”
“I don’t know. I was good at fighting, I guess that’s why. I thought about going back in the Corps when Korea broke out, and then I read something that said, ‘Policemen are soldiers who act alone,’ and I figured that was the only thing I hated about the military, that you couldn’t act alone very much. And as a cop I could do it all myself, so I became a cop.”