The Chinese Beverly Hills (25 page)

“Don’t be so self-deprecating. You’ve got words.”

Bunny hugged Maeve with one heavy arm. “Here’s some words. A. Lincoln is on the five-dollar bill. And
a
Lincoln is a sweet ride. Tada.” She kissed Maeve’s cheek. “Please be careful of the swami, girl. I went a long way up his road, and there were surprises I didn’t like.”

“I’m just a student of the passing parade,” Maeve said, intoxicated by Bunny’s body against hers.

Bunny kissed her again. “Parade this. Swami told you that you have a really big soul, didn’t he?”

Maeve cranked around to eye her but didn’t reply.

“Yeah, he did,” Bunny said. “You know what he means? He means you have really big tits. The swami may be holy as hell, but he’s also a boob man. Start to worry when he goes, ‘It’s getting too warm in here.”

“What are you telling me?”

“I didn’t mind a little lookie-loo and even some nipple-sucking. I’ve never been hysterical about the sex thing, but it started getting to me, like—
wait a minute
. What’s that little bitty dick got to do with my evolution?”

The mental picture was cheapening the swami and Bunny both.

“I don’t know, I respect some of it. The sex was mostly charity. You’ve never given it up to a guy for the wrong reason?”

“Not that kind of wrong. I went head-over-heels for a gangbanger for a while, but it sure wasn’t charity.”

“We’re different. I feel sorry for guys. They’ve got this thing about being in charge. That’s why they drink so much at parties, you know—it’s not to loosen
us
up. It’s Dutch courage. It’s such a relief being with you and escaping all that.”

“I hoped it was more.”

“Oh, honey.” Bunny hugged her. “You’re so smart and so dumb at the same time. Come inside and find out.”

*

Jack Liffey had slipped away from the house to reclaim his car so he could arrive in a normal fashion. The beret he’d seen worried him, and he wondered how hard he could push this loud soldier-of-fortune.

Hollers and screeches came from inside. A real sexual ruckus, but he knocked anyway. After a while things quieted, and the man came to the door wearing a floppy Arab
jalaba
. The man still couldn’t look him square on.

“Jack Liffey.”

“
Magtig
. My fainthearted friend. You come to shoot some wetbacks?”

Hardi Boaz glanced at a door behind him. Jack Liffey saw a woman’s bare leg kick the door shut. What gave him a real chill was the handcuff dangling from her ankle.

“Come out back. I get you any kind of booze.”

“Coke?” Jack Liffey made a careful circuit around a softly gnarring Rottweiler and went out onto the fieldstone patio. Due south, well into Mexico, stark mountains all in lizard colors, gray and green, marked the horizon, wavery in desert heat.

The man brought his drink and handed Jack Liffey a little Coke bottle and a church key. An old six-and-a-half-ouncer from his youth. “These are from Mexico. The Mexes still use sugar instead of that shit corn syrup.”

“You mean the Mexicans do something right?”

Hardi waved that away. “I’m getting tired to death of this fooking outpost.”

Hardi’s drink had a gin smell. He made some complicated pronouncement about holding off banditos and cartels. Wyatt Earp and Pancho Clanton. It had been simpler in South Africa.

Jack Liffey heard the patio door slide open and the woman whose leg he’d seen slipped just outside to wait in deference with her own drink. She wore drawstring pants and a t-shirt that said Iron Man Contest. The illustration was a man working at an ironing board.

“May I join the gentlemen?”

“Afternoon, my gorgeous. This good lady is Megan Saxton, a journo sent by the great
New Yorker
to write what a freak of nature looks like. This is Jack Liffey, whose life is devoted to finding missing children, a saint in our midst.”

“Hardly.”

“Do you know the Reik brothers?” Hardi asked.

“Not personally.”

“They been paying for the Border Guardians, but no money came this month. I wonder if they dumping me. Those
kaks
.”

“You want help exposing them? You can signify by nodding.”

“No.”

They talked small talk for a while, but Megan said nothing. She watched Jack Liffey like a hawk that was about to pounce on something to eat. He remembered screeches and handcuffs.

Hardi said something about inferior races.

“Beating up your own blacks didn’t work out so well, did it?” Jack Liffey said.

That touched a nerve, though the man’s eyes still wandered. “
Ja
, sure, it breaks my heart. You bleeding hearts never understand that the dirty work of white people is not over yet. Ask this woman, she’s felt the cock of a real white man.”

The woman winced.

“Calm down,” Jack Liffey said. “My strong-hearted friend, I need to know about the orange beret you have on the wall. You can tell me, or you can talk to the sheriff.”

“The sheriff here is my pal.” His voice was quite aggressive.

“No, man. The Feds can still deport you. A simple answer will do.”

He stared into space for a long time, then shrugged. “I caught a pretty little Chink girl right out there packing cocaine north. About twenty kilos. She’d missed her pickup car, lost her water bottle, and had all her cash stolen by some coyote guide. She was amateur city. She wept like a baby and told me she was trying to save her parents. She thought I was
la migra
.”

“What did you do with her?” the woman said, suddenly very interested.

He glared in her general direction. “Hardi, what did you do with the little bitch?” he asked himself, then shrugged. “I told her I’d let her go for a blowjob and her hat. She gave me both.”

“Then what?” Jack Liffey insisted.

“The big Boer has a very generous soul. I drove her to the Greyhound in El Centro and bought her a ticket to L.A. And what thanks do I get? She spits on me. The ticket lady will remember me and her, you can check. The bus is in the poor part of that shit town that got no other part. Of course, I kept all her snort.”

“Can I use the facilities?” Jack Liffey asked.

The big man thumbed to indicate where, but the woman spoke quickly. “My need is more urgent.” She went inside.

“Why don’t you get out of this crazy business?” Jack Liffey suggested. “You’re not happy here. There’s plenty of respectable security outfits. I could call a guy for you.”

“I think I’ll run with it for now. I like being an outlaw.”

“The Reiks will dump you sooner or later.”

“Maybe.”

When the woman came back out, he went to the bathroom and found a scrawled note on the mirror.

Get me out of here! Please, I’m a mess. The big Joshua tree 20 min.

He snatched the note down. Every day seemed to take him right past something else that needed to be put right.

*

The house staircase was still an impassible cliff to her, so Gloria stood at the top landing hollering toward the front door, her cries muffled by the bandaging around her ribcage. Nothing. Eventually there was a phone call.

“Is that you, Paula?”

“I’m out front.”

“Come right in and come on up. You’re the best. Jack’s out on his own job.”

“I’m there, homes.”

Gloria retreated to the bed in exhaustion as she heard the door downstairs come open and the heavy tread of shoes on the stairs. Paula was her best friend all the way back to the police academy, both early members of the brown-and-black club in the department. They’d both have flipped out long ago from harassment without each other.

Paula’s short nappy hair appeared around the door. “You stuck up here, Gloria?”

“Can’t help it. I’m old and raggedy.”

“Girl, some decent guy comes around these days, I can barely get wet.”

Gloria laughed and almost tore her chest bandages. “How’s life in the Devonshire?”

“Mostly minor beefs. The murders all gang stuff. Yesterday I went out on an old man demanding that his priest marry him to his goat. I told the priest, why the fuck not if he can get the goat to say ‘I do.’ My captain promises I can finally have my promotion for a regular Tuesday date on my knees.”

Gloria reached out and they held hands as Paula sat and offered a joint.

“Oh, thanks. Jack is so damn puritan.”

“What’s
that
about?”

“He had bad trouble back in the day. I swear the man’s got discipline just short of God.”

“Well, this is from God’s own stash, girl, from a banger hanging outside Mary Immaculate.”

“Open the window,” Gloria said.

On the third try, she got the balky sash up. “Tell it, Sergeant Gloria.”

As they smoked, Gloria got around to what she needed to say. “I was a big stupid, hon. Jack figured out about my date up in Bakersfield, and I got a really bad case of the guilties about what I’d been doing.”

“Nuh-oh. Time for a bump.” Paula brought out a second joint, waving the air to thin the smoke.

Gloria relaxed some after a hit. “When they make bud legal, I’m gonna buy a truckload.”

“Go on, girl. Your guilties.”

She felt her bliss evaporating. “I felt so damn bad about Sonny up there that I told Jack to go and have himself a slice on the side to get back at me.”

“Word!”

“Shit, I didn’t think he’d
do
it. He’s so fresh and tight.”

“What makes you think he took the contract?”

“We know, don’t we? He come home late, smelling way too clean or hitting the shower right away. And he had some kind of bads inside.”

“What he tell you?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t feel I had the right.”

“Oh, girl. You got to make him suffer.”

They both laughed and hugged for a moment.

“You know what worries me?” Gloria said finally. “Remember Joel Rothstein from the academy?”

“Course. Who was it said every class always got one Jew to count the money on drug busts?”

Gloria waved that away. “Joey called me out of the blue yesterday. I think he was sweet on me in the academy. He’s in the political unit now, and he warned me that Jack is messing with some crazy people. Mental cases training to shoot down black helicopters full of UN troopers.”

“Lots of that hate around since Obama,” Paula said.

“I wish I could make them all cry, girl. But right now I got to beg you to watch Jack’s back. He’s always trying to save their souls, these dickheads.”

“I hear you. I’m way overdue for some time off.”

Gloria wouldn’t tell her directly to try to dig at Jack’s sex life.

*

The Triumph of the Cowboy
was supposed to be an exclusive watering hole uptown on the east side, specializing in comfort food like steaks and ribs but secure for the topmost skin of the Manhattan social fabric. The first person Gustav Reik encountered past the door was a man in a scarlet tuxedo grinning and holding out an oversized pair of scissors like a demented tailor.

“Hold still, sir, while I cut your tie off,” he announced.

Gustav saw immediately that one large wall was hung with severed neckties. And everyone else in the room was sans necktie. Another joke of Andor’s, not to warn him.

“Touch my tie if you want to die very slowly,” Gustav hissed. He’d deployed his full aura of command about the $200 Ferragamo, and the scissor-man got it right away and left.

He took the tie off, and when his eyes adjusted he found Andor in a booth beside a redhead bimbo, body by Barbie. Gustav did not appreciate being summoned into a situation where he was out of place and unacknowledged. “Ad, I didn’t know you were in town until you called. Please stay in touch.”

“Sorry, Gus. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Honey, would you go powder your nose?” Gustav said.

Barbie drew back. “I don’t need to powder my nose.”

“Do it anyway.”

She caught on, like the tie-cutter. “Sure, sure. Please don’t just leave me here, Mr. Walker.”

Gustav sat down in the booth, and they waited until she was well gone. “Walker?”

Andor shrugged. “That lawyer from the land of fairies is pissed about the South African speaker we sent him. He called me and threatened.”

“
Threatened
?” That perked Gustav up.

“Sort of. Says the cops there are harassing him.” Andor smiled. “We did fuck him over a bit, Gus, sending that colossal asshole.”

He was in no mood for this. Their Iran-bound freighter had been boarded outside the Straits of Hormuz—ironically enough by the destroyer USS John S. McCain, named for a man who’d uselessly absorbed many millions of their political dollars. “People who want to ride with us better ride happy. I’ve already instructed Bernie to drop him. But did he make a direct threat?” Gustav Reik hated the vagueness that crept over his brother so often.

“He said something about friends in the press.”

“He’s history. I’ll deep-six his whole district if I have to.”

“You sure about this?”

“My generous period is over. I had to write off our cargo today—sixty million. Okay, it’s not even real money. But we’ve got to stay on top of events; domestic politics is the key to our future.”

Andor sipped at a reddish drink that this horrible place had put in a proper martini glass. “Bro, I’ve been getting nervous about things since the
New Yorker
and
Atlantic
started following me around. Don’t you think it would be better to keep a low profile on this lawyer thing?”

“If you want to keep eating at the big table, Ad, indicate by saying yes.”

“Settle down. Have a drink.”

“Not now. I’ll handle Mr. California. And you can go powder Barbie’s nose.”

*

The only Joshua tree within miles was a hundred yards up the road, and he found her sitting on a small suitcase, sort of behind it. Not exactly hidden.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, lunging inside his pickup. “Go!”

“Was he holding you?”

“Not exactly. Have you ever been caught up in something that made you need a knock upside the head to wake up?”

He thought of Tien, of course. “I get it. The guy’s compelling.”