A Small Matter (2 page)

Until these events, she hadn’t even been
fully aware of her pancreas. She was now. The thing had betrayed
her. The cancer, she felt, had already started to spread from
there. To remove it, she figured, they’d have to go in and cut
everything out. These events had forced her to confront reality,
had taken away any spirit of denial she might have otherwise
entertained. She understood fully now, and with no denial, that she
was going to die.

She threw on her favorite ratty white terry
robe and sat at the little vanity in her bedroom. She loved the
house, small though it was. She’d sold her former home--the one she
and her policeman husband Jack had lived in--a year after he died
and chosen this place instead. After Dalk’s semi-recent divorce a
few years back, he’d moved in with her. It was a dinky,
stucco-covered three-and-two in the traditional floor plan, with
all the bedrooms on the north side, the kitchen facing west towards
Tampa Avenue--a six-lane north-south artery well-stocked with
freeway-bound commuters. Once inside, the fact that the property’s
automobile blasted frontage was a complete write off didn’t really
matter, and she and Dalk had made good use of the spacious
living/dining combination enhanced by a wood burning fireplace and
a nice set of sliding glass doors opening onto the deep lot with
its detached garage serviced by a back alley. It’s true, she
thought. There’s just no place like home.

From the living room the stereo snapped to
life--Dalk’s favorite station, K-Earth 101, which played nothing
but oldies, at the moment The Four Tops--Bernadette--the fire and
passion of Levi White’s robust-lunged love croon taking her back to
1967--she'd only been a little kid.

Oh, she thought, Was I ever that young? She
thought of where Jack might have been in 1967, and laughed at the
thought, wondering what turnings in his road took him to the year
he’d entered the Los Angeles Police Academy. Fate had brought them
together ten years after his rookie year, over a traffic ticket.
She’d had the Z-28 for only a day when he’d pulled her over on
Laurel Canyon. Jack had been old school--he’d pulled her over--not
for speeding--but because she was a cute blonde in a racy car. He
followed suit by waiving the ticket in exchange for a phone number.
She’d gone through with his offer for an evening of dinner and
drinks. They’d wound up at The Lamplighter, and she’d met his
partner, Mulroney, in the days when the big guy was still the King
of the Streets. A year later, she and Jack, with Mulroney standing
in as best man, had tied the knot at Our Lady of Grace.

She pulled tight her robe, slipped on a pair
of furry house mules, grabbed her doctor’s prescription from her
bag and wandered to the kitchen, taking a seat at the tiny dinette.
Dalk was going whole hog--pancakes, and bacon, accompanied by
little fried potato balls and big glasses of orange juice. He set a
mug of strong coffee and a carton of heavy cream before her.

“Almost ready,” he said. “I just need to nuke
the bacon for two minutes more.”

In spite of her nausea, she knew she’d have
to eat. She remembered how her own mother had wasted down to a
stick from the same disease. The lesson? When you had cancer, you
had to eat big--you were “eating for two”--yourself and your tumor.
If you didn’t feed it, it ate you. She took a sip of coffee,
frowned at the bitterness and stirred in several spoonfuls of
sugar. Was her desire to eat, even while nauseous, a sign of her
wish to fight back against the tumor? She wondered just how well
she really knew herself, wondered if she had the guts to simply sit
idly by and watch the tumor kill her.

“After breakfast,” she said, “I’m sending you
out to fill this prescription--my back is absolutely burning. It’s
like somebody’s poking me with a hot curling iron.”

“What’d the doctor prescribe?”

She scrutinized the hieroglyphic the doctor
had scrawled. “Something unpronounceable.”

“I hope it’s non-habit-forming.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I wish you’d let me take you over to see
Sensei Toyama,” Dalk said. “Or at least try some acupuncture.”

“No thanks.”

“If you’re going to refuse traditional
medicine, you could at least look into Toyama's alternative
treatments.”

Vickie had expected this pitch from her
brother. Dalk, after their mother’s death, had left the L.A. area
to spend a decade in Japan studying a little-known school of the
martial arts, which focused on killing a great many people quickly
and without a lot of fuss--but which also contained an element of
magic and miracle healing. He’d done well and attained a high
degree of proficiency before leaving Japan and bringing home with
him his Sensei, Master Toyama.

Together, the two of them had opened a school
in Panorama City, a bad business move which quickly turned into a
hand-to-mouth operation, during which time Dalk had married, but
when his childless marriage of 5 years fell apart under the
economic strain of his faltering self-employment, ending in a
bitter divorce and leaving him with a need for steady income to
handle the alimony payments, he’d left Toyama to run the dojo alone
and taken a consultant job with the LAPD as a self-defense
instructor, a position he’d held for the past year.

“C’mon Dalk. You know how Toyama is--he’s
going to tell me I’m possessed by the spirit of a fox, or
something. I’d have a better chance seeking a cure from Sabrina the
teen-age witch.”

Toyama, Vickie knew, lived alone in a back
room at the dojo, where he devoted himself to his magic, keeping
himself attuned to the tenets of his magic-based messianic religion
which made him prone to offering to those around him some rather
unusual remedial methods when confronted with the darker face of
human frailties.

“Toyama will respect you,” Dalk said. “And
his religion does have a bona fide track record of healings. In any
case, whatever Toyama attempts will be cleanly controlled and
dignified.”

“He’ll start shaking his gold charm in my
face like he did the last time I had the flu. And I’ll tell you
something else--Last week Toyama called me on the phone after you
told him I was having my biopsy, and he told me he had a special
dish of beans, cheese, and roast mice guaranteed to draw out the
evil fox spirit inside me.”

“Eat your pancakes. And is it so farfetched?
Toyama offered to draw out an evil spirit from your back using a
roast mouse as a lure--compare that to the folks at the HMO who’re
waiting to go in with their knives and gut you like a fish.”

Vickie’s fork dropped to the floor.

“Oh Vickie. I’m so sorry. That was impossibly
tactless of me--it wasn’t really me talking. It’s just that I can’t
bear to lose you like this. The grief is killing me. I can’t sleep,
and I can hardly eat--I’m on an emotional roller coaster here.
Sometimes, I even wish it was me instead of you.”

“Dalk, you’ve got to stay strong for me. You
can’t let your emotions overwhelm you.”

“I’ll be strong. It’s just that lately I’ve
found myself really regretting the ten years I spent in Japan--I
should have stayed here with you. I realize now that running away
to Japan was my way of trying to process Mom’s death--I was just
trying to escape everything. I shouldn’t have left you alone to
handle the aftermath by yourself.”

“You did what you had to do. And look at you.
You’re one of the rising stars of the Los Angeles Police
Department. I’m so proud of you. Besides, after Mom died, and you
left for Japan, I wasn’t alone--I had Jack. Those ten years with
him were probably the best years of my life. It was like every day
I was a new bride. The only grief Jack and I experienced was our
inability to have children together, but we made up for it by
really loving each other.”

A knock on the front door sent Dalk to the
vestibule. He returned with Mulroney--the big guy looking frazzled
in his baggy black slacks and tired white shirt--the only thing
she’d ever seen him wear. Mulroney’s sudden appearance at their
home was a common occurrence, him being extended family, having
partnered with Jack for the twenty-six years preceding Jack’s
untimely death. At Jack’s death, Mulroney pulled the pin on the job
and bought The Lamplighter to give himself something to do, keep
connected with cops, and in his own words, “to keep from eating his
gun”.

“You’re just in time,” Vickie said. “The
coffee’s hot and so are the pancakes.”

“Get dressed,” he said. “We don’t have time
to eat. We’re going for a ride.”

“Oh? Where to?”

“North Hollywood. Guy I know says there’s one
of these Virgin Mary ladies living over there who has a statue of
Our Lady that cries real tears and heals people.”

"The hell you say. I just turned down an
offer of Sensei Toyama's roasted mice. I certainly don't need a
Virgin Mary lady lighting candles for me."

"Please. It's the last thing I will ever ask
of you," Mulroney pleaded. "This woman is a real miracle
worker."

"Okay, as long as you understand I am doing
it for you, not because I believe in her. But if she starts
handling snakes or drinking blood or anything, I am gone."

Chapter 4

Vickie entered the middle bedroom to look for
something to wear. It wasn’t an easy decision--the room had been
converted into a huge walk-in closet, the racks filled with an
amazing display of shoes, coats, and dresses, all the items
arranged by type, many of them still with the tags on. Bags and
boxes from famous designers lined the top shelves, as though
somebody had taken the whole of Rodeo Drive and extruded it through
a micro-screen, the net result appearing before her.

Not sure exactly what the protocol was for
visiting a faith-healer in North Hollywood, she finally decided to
keep it simple, going with a black cashmere tee tucked into a long,
plum, knit skirt, finishing off the look with mid-calf black boots.
Against the morning wind, she buttressed her outfit with a trendy
white coat and topped off the whole thing with a few miniature
butterfly clips attached to her baby braids. The clips added a
touch of whimsy she did not feel.

“You look incredible,” Mulroney said.

“We’ll take my car,” she said.

“Oh no. You know I can’t fit into that thing.
We’ll take mine.”

“You coming, Dalk?” she said.

“Can’t. I’ve got a building-search seminar at
10, after which I’m running the rookies up and down the fire trails
around Chavez ravine.”

“Give me back my prescription. We’ll get it
filled on the way to the crying statue.”

Mulroney led her out the front door to his
ride--a three-ton navy-blue Suburban with blackened windows. The
eighteen-foot-long monstrosity on its oversize tires looked ready
to assault a college campus demonstration, or an inner-city riot.
The Suburban was the un-ecologic, unapologetic choice of many
connected with copdom, it being the flagship of LAPD’s SWAT
Division.

He assisted her climb into the jump seat and
shut her in. As soon as she clipped her belt, a hoarse cough from
behind made her aware she was not alone. She turned to face a
wide-eyed feline peering through the grill of a big carry cage. The
beast was the largest of it’s kind she’d ever seen, with a head the
circumference of a dinner plate. A single paw, claws extended to
clutch the grill, easily outsized her own clenched fist. For a
brief instant, she had the feeling she belonged to the cat, as
though it had sized her up and mentally rehearsed her as a mealtime
possibility. Her instinct was to flee the vehicle, a sensation
interrupted by the intrusion of Mulroney’s massive carcass coming
through the driver’s-side door. He popped into the pilot’s seat
with an ease which seemed to defy gravity, considering his raw
bulk.

“What is that?”

“That’s Kilkenney,” Mulroney said. “He’s a
cat.”

“What do you feed him--small dogs?”

“Kilkenney’s a Maine Coon. They were first
sent to the U.S. by Marie Antoinette, shortly before she got the
blade. I won him in a dice game last week.”

“He looks like a raccoon.”

“I think they’ve been interbred with ‘coons,
because they use their paws just like hands. You should see him
sitting up with a chicken leg.”

“I hope I never do.”

Mulroney waited for a break in the busy
morning traffic, didn’t get one, so instead bullied his way across
the six-lanes in an outrageous U-turn before heading down Tampa to
Burbank and turning eastward into a short, sharp sun. Vickie
settled back. It would be a long overland haul over a varied and
sundry terrain across the Valley to North Hollywood.

“What’s Kilkenney doing in the car?”

“I’m introducing him to travel,” Mulroney
said. “Although you’ll never see a cat hanging out the window of a
moving car like a dog, it’s a fact that cats who are introduced to
travel often learn to enjoy it. We’re going to do some cage work
this week before going cageless.”

“What if he freaks out and rips your face
off?”

“Awww, he’s a big cream-puff. Although he’s
designed for survival in tough conditions, he’s a great
family-style pet.”

She glanced back at the glaring cat. There
was nothing in that wild visage which remotely suggested
family-style anything.

“What’s after going cageless? Restaurant
training?”

“Only if I think he’d feel comfortable doing
so.”

Vickie hit the radio--Janis Ian--Society’s
Child. “I can’t believe it. Every song I hear lately takes me back
to 1967. I was only a kid.”

“I love Janis Ian,” Mulroney said. “She was
only fifteen when she did this song.”

“I hate people like you who know something
about everything. You’re like an encyclopedia of Oldies--it makes
me feel like I’ve done nothing with my life.”

“You’re doing something now.”

The Suburban crossed through the crammed and
jammed Balboa Boulevard intersection and entered a curving,
car-stalled swoop of roadway which presented a different world from
the apartment/strip-mall zone they’d just left. The Sepulveda Dam
Recreation area--a patchwork ecological menagerie comprised of a
golf course, wetlands, ballparks, bike trails, and other amenities
finding their terminus at the edge of a massive Thirties-era
concrete flood control bunker erected--via a U.S. Government
work-relief project--by the emigrant dust-bowlers. The bunker and
its floodgates were part of a city-wide network of concrete
channels, an array which collectively dwarfed, in both size and
weight, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall combined.