Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) (4 page)

 

T
he bullet kicks up a shower of dirt six inches from a surprised rattlesnake. Hard Marvin holds his police issue Glock 9 away from his body, braces his right wrist with his left hand. He wishes he had hit the snake. Doesn't want to be out here in the Mojave on his day off, guns and a sun that can break you, killing rattlers. But Nadine Never wants to learn how to shoot, the girl a live wire, a rocket powered fun bundle with needs in central nervous system stimulation significantly above those of a normal person. Hard's dog, a Rottweiler named Bane watches calmly as his master squeezes off another round, bullets ricocheting off rocks, boom echoing off the distant hills, but the snake has already slithered under a boulder. Bane takes this opportunity to lie down. Hard glances at Nadine but she doesn't seem to mind that he hasn't killed the snake. That's a good thing about these young ones, Hard reflects. They aren't as demanding.

“Shit,” he says, squinting behind his aviator sunglasses. In his experience, women like to see deadly snakes get their brains blown out by big strong guys. He figures it must tap in to some genetic need they have to be protected. Hard doesn't claim to know a lot about women, but it would have been better if he'd killed the damn snake. “All right. You try.”

He slides behind Nadine, savors her slim blondeness. About half a foot shorter than Hard, she wears jeans and a sleeveless white belly shirt that shows off a flat stomach sliced by an inch of thin gold chain dangling from her navel. Her toned shoulders and arms are dusted with freckles. Her hair falls a few inches below her neck, bangs swept to the side, and a pair of inexpensive beaded turquoise earrings ceases their gentle swing as she stills herself to aim. She extends her arm away from her body and Hard eases the Glock into her right hand. Then he places his hand softly on hers and subtly grinds his pelvis into her denim-sheathed bottom. This is the best part of teaching a girl to shoot, he reflects: spoon position warrior version. He feels himself getting an erection.

“It's gonna kick, so be ready.”

“Aren't we gonna wait for a snake?”

He doesn't want her to kill a snake now. It won't be good if she kills one and he doesn't. Never mind he's tired of her already, regretting promises made. “Could take all day,” he says.

Hard has been at his police job nineteen years, coming up on a pension. Been working since he left the Marine Corps, the highlight of his hitch the Grenada invasion of 1983. Hard would have preferred to say he'd seen action in WW II or Korea or Vietnam but if it was Grenada then what the hell, at least he'd seen combat. Married a tae kwon do teacher when he got his discharge, smart businesswoman, owns her own dojo, Mojave Martial Arts. Two boys in the Army, both stationed overseas.

One night last year Hard was draining a can of Buck Rhino energy drink at the
AM
/
PM
on Twentynine Palms Highway when he saw a girl emerging from the snack aisle holding a bag of salted sunflower seeds. Before he could say anything, she asked if he was Hard Marvin. The best introduction he could have hoped for. A beautiful woman had made him for Hard Marvin and she was smiling when she said it. He'd been confronted by enough citizens in public places and it wasn't always pleasant, so he was already ahead in the encounter. He told her that yes it most certainly was the Police Chief of Desert Hot Springs in the flesh right next to the snack aisle and asked what he could do for her. Nadine said she could think of a few things and Hard started wondering if cameras from some television show were trained on the two of them. He asked if she was from around here and she told him no. Hard was a lot older, but a few graying chest hairs did nothing to diminish his confidence. They conversed for a while and she said she worked at Fake ‘N' Bake, a local tanning salon. He should come by some time.

“Aren't I tan enough?”

“I could spray you a few shades darker, make you look more mysterious,” she said, and told him she worked the evening shift three nights a week. Hard took the hint and stopped in two nights later, bought her a drink in a bar one town over and glanced at her drivers license when the bartender carded her. Twenty-two years old? That had caught him by surprise. She seemed older, tougher than twenty-two. He listened to the hopes, the dreams; registered the general emotional weather report: partly cloudy. Hard told her he was married—standard operating procedure—but apparently she didn't mind since they were having sex in the desert later than evening on a camp blanket Hard kept in the bed of his Dodge Ram truck.

“You're the kind of girl I could leave my wife for,” he lied, as she laid her head on his muscular shoulder. Two weeks later he was telling her the same thing only then he thought he might be serious.

That first night under the stars was when she asked him to teach her to shoot. And she took the Taser off his belt, ran her finger over it, said, “I want to learn how to use this, too.” Like she's planning to be a one-woman SWAT team. Hard said forget about the Taser, but I'll teach you how to use a gun.

Hard and Nadine would meet at the Sandy Hills Motel where the owner has some potential issues with
los illegals
he employs as maids. The Police Department looks the other way, something the owner appreciates. So the lovers burn the sheets gratis for a few hours once, maybe twice a week. Hard brings a bottle of tequila.

In the hotel room the first time: Nadine lying on the bed in a thong that Hard pulls off with his teeth. Inhaling her scent he takes a knife out the pocket of the pants he's thrown over a chair. With the knife he cuts a lemon. Takes a lemon quarter and squeezes it on her left breast, watches the cool juice running over her areola. Her nipple hardens. With his other hand he grabs a box of salt and leaves a snowy trail across her other breast. He pushes her knees up. She giggles as he pours the tequila on to her belly a little at a time, and he watches as it sluices downward over her pelvic bone. Hard tried that one time with his wife and she nearly punched him, made him get out of bed and wash the tequila-moist sheets. But Nadine! She arches her back as Hard sucks the liquor out, the sharp taste of the tequila mixing with the pungent flavor of Nadine, licks the salt off her right breast, the lemon juice off her left, and as they move their hips, roll and thrust, his perfervid mind reels with the usual delusions: let's get married, go to Mexico, sunny dreams. Kind of thing anyone paying attention knows will end in tears. But no one's ever paying attention. Besides, Hard doesn't really want to go to Mexico. He's got other things on his mind since he's spent time with Mary Swain, gorgeous, compelling, no, that doesn't do her justice—
inspirational
Mary Swain. He's getting ambitious. Not the kind of thing he feels the need to discuss with his girlfriend. Hard is still lost in his exhilarating thoughts, drunk on possibility and the boundless future when
BAAANNNGGG
the gun discharges next to his ear. He sees Bane's four paws lift off the desert floor.

“Goddamn, Nadine!” The blast ricochets off the rock formations, Hard's ears ringing. “You nearly shot Bane!”

“I thought I saw something move over there.” She had pivoted ninety degrees to the right and squeezed one off, catching Hard by surprise. This girl, he thinks, is dangerous. Not dangerous sexy, either
.
She looks at him with a lopsided grin. “This is fun.”

“Anything happens to that dog . . . ”

“You love him more than me?”

“You're damn right I do. I love that dog more than any human.” Trying to keep the stress out of his voice, Hard looks over at Bane, standing in a semi-crouch and shaking. “Point is, you can't be shooting every which way.”

“I swear something moved.”

“Didn't nothing move. Now aim where I told you.”

Nadine swings the Glock back around and fires again. Hard can't tell if she even aimed the weapon. It was turning him on, though. Now Hard is having second thoughts about breaking up with her. He would at least wait until after the election.

Nadine pulls out her cell phone. Hands him the weapon and throws an arm around his shoulder. “Now point that thing and me, but don't pull the trigger, okay?”

Hard thinks she's crazy, but everyone's got quirks. Still, a picture? “Nadine, I'm not sure that's such a great idea.”

“Why?”

“
Why
? Because I'm a damn police chief. And I'm
married
, remember?”

“I know, I know, but I won't show it to your wife, I swear.”

“Nadine, sweet thing . . . ”

“Don't you trust me?”

“Sure I trust you. It's not
you
I'm worried about. What if someone else gets their hands on a picture like that?”

“Okay. You want to know the truth?”

“Sure I do.”

“It kind of gets me going. I might like it on those cold nights you're not there.” She smiles at him, blue eyes wide.

“Sorry, darlin. Can't do it.”

Nadine puts the safety on and places the barrel against her own cheek and laughs.

“Fraidy cat.”

Hard is unable to fathom why the girl likes a gun tickling her cheekbone, but wonders why all women can't be like this. In Hardville, they would. Guns and tits and Hard's checking his sanity at the door. He would have liked to take the picture but he's not crazy. What's to stop her sending it to his wife? Would Mary Swain ever let him point a gun at her? While he was fucking her? That was another thing he had tried with his wife. She wouldn't talk to him for a week. He has to control these kinds of thoughts—they aren't going to lead to peace on Earth. But it sends a tingle from his lumbar region to his loins.

Nadine holds the cell phone at arm's length, points it at herself and snaps the picture.

“If you were in the picture, it could have been our wedding announcement.”

Hard hopes she's joking but doesn't say anything. When they're walking back to his truck, Bane trailing behind them, Nadine says, “You ever kill anyone when you were in the service?”

“No, but I've killed guys.” Hard gives her a little smile to show her how unaffected he is in the aftermath of dealing out the ultimate punishment.

“As a cop?”

“That's right.”

“Tell me one.”

“This time I was working with the INS south of here, we got a roadblock set up, we're looking for illegals, right? So we stop this truck, Mexican plates, and it's hauling tomatoes north. Well, you always got to wonder about a Mexican truck, no matter what's in it. So the boys and I, we stick a couple of pitchforks in the tomatoes and we hear this scream, well.” He hesitates here. Hard has told this story countless times and he is in performance mode, each pause and breath perfected. Nadine is enthralled. “Then all of a sudden three Mexicans fly out of the tomatoes in three different directions and we start chasing them. I catch my guy, and he's a little guy, but he's strong so when I try to get the cuffs on he coldcocks me. I was trying to be a good cop, do it by the book but that's when I kind of lost it and when I caught up I put him in a choke hold and that's all she wrote.”

“You killed him?”

“Didn't mean to.” When Hard sees the look on Nadine's face, not condemnatory exactly, but not accepting either—hasn't she just asked to hear the story?—he adjusts his swagger level down a notch. “Little
hombre
gave me no choice.”

“Did anything happen to you?”

“What do you mean? Did I get punished?” Nadine nods, looking at Hard with new eyes now, the man an actual killer. “There was a hearing. They always have one of those when someone gets killed but, no, nothing happened. Got promoted a year later.”

“You think there's retribution?”

“What, like from God?”

“Do you?”

“Death gets everyone in the end,” Hard says, feeling very much the Philosopher King despite not having killed a snake. He figures the tale of the dead Mexican will shore up his macho bona fides with Nadine. He's thinking about having sex with her right now when she says: “I really wish you took that picture with me.”

There goes the mood. Hard doesn't reply. A roadrunner zips past them fifty feet away. Hard briefly thinks about shooting at it, but he's already failed to hit the snake and doesn't want to compromise the newly minted respect he believes he just earned from Nadine by missing.

“Hard?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn't say anything when I said ‘wedding announcement'.”

He doesn't say anything the second time either.

“Hey, Hard,” she says. “Smile.” He turns around and she snaps his annoyed expression.

“Dammit, Nadine.”

“You're no fun.”

When Hard doesn't respond, Nadine trots a couple of steps in front of him, yanks her jeans down to the tops of her taut thighs, bends over and moons him. The manga kitten tattoo on her tight ass never fails to make him smile. She looks over her shoulder at Hard, her saucy expression shot through with a barely discernible vein of gravity. Hard marches past, slaps her on the butt and tells her he needs to get going. If he bothered to look he would have seen her bright young features sag toward the dry desert floor.

 

 

J
immy Duke is rolling south on Highway 111 through Palm Springs in the blue pickup truck. One hand on the wheel, his elbow resting on the open window, he ponders how fate could have served him a sibling like Dale. It was one of the subjects Jimmy talked about in the anger management sessions. What he was doing in anger management: a gang member wanted for murder cut him with a switchblade and when the criminal was finally subdued Jimmy broke his jaw. And his nose. Only two punches. He thought that showed a certain degree of self-control but it was the second time he had engaged in violent retribution when a lowlife he was trying to arrest had failed to obey orders and Hard Marvin insisted he get professional help.

The group therapy experience was something Jimmy failed to embrace so the leader suggested that Jimmy might benefit from the study of Buddhist meditation techniques. Intrigued, he had signed up for an on-line class being taught by Bodhi Colletti, a woman in Tacoma, Washington. He has spent the last four Sunday mornings sitting with his laptop at the kitchen table listening to Bodhi talk about the dharma. Jimmy aggravated the other students by repeatedly interrupting and asking what, exactly, was
the dharma.
Although she had given him a long and complicated answer as far as he could tell it boiled down to what Buddhists call the Four Noble Truths.

1. Life is suffering.

2. There is a cause for that suffering.

3. There is an end to it.

4. There is a means to that end.

Instructing her on-line novitiates, Bodhi Colletti talked about how to process the negative thoughts that inevitably arise in the course of sitting on the meditation cushion and remain in the mind's eye like bad weather. She talked about watching a thought rise, resisting the temptation to label it good or bad, then placing the thought in a pink bubble and watching it float away. She pointed out that the pink bubble, while not originating in Buddhist texts, was something her students often found helpful.

At first Jimmy thought the whole thing ridiculous, particularly the part about the pink bubble. How did people come up with this shit? But when he actually tried to do it he was astonished by the efficacy of the technique. The next time a thought about his ex-wife Darleen arose—he was remembering the time at the end of their marriage when she drunkenly told him about an affair with her colleague at the hotel restaurant where she worked as a hostess—he conjured the pink bubble. Fol­lowing Bodhi Colletti's instructions, Jimmy imagined his ex-wife Darleen encased in it. Then the pink bubble began to float away. Jimmy resisted the urge to imagine dousing the pink bubble with gasoline and lighting it on fire. That first time, however, he did manage to wish Darleen well as she soared skyward and disappeared into the clouds. The method worked a little better the next time a thought about his former spouse occurred to him, and still better the time after that. He knows he can never tell anyone about this technique—
You put your ex-wife in a pink bubble and wish her well?
Anyone would laugh
—
but he does not argue with the way it eases his vexation.

There is a palpable awareness in him that this easing of vexation will involve more effort than Jimmy wants to exert. But he knows he will to have to find some motivation if he's going to meet new people. Cali Pasco, newly minted Desert Hot Springs P.D. distaff detective, isn't exactly new
per se
, but she was off limits as long as they were on the force together. Now, though, he's got nothing to lose. She answers on the third ring, sounds happy to hear from him. Hi, Jimmy, how you doing? Fine, you? I'm good, what's up? Well, I was wondering . . . and they make what neither calls a date but involves them having dinner together tonight.

 

The apartment is an improvement over the cell in which Dale has spent the previous three years even if it's in Mecca. A bright one bedroom with handicapped access on the first floor of a building with walls and a roof, as a place to resume a free life Dale knows he could do a lot worse. The building is not due to open for another month and Dale is the only tenant. He spends his first hour alone watching a TV show about cars, plotting how he might get his life back on track, and not the one where he's hustling recreational vehicles to retirees. Yes, Randall has bought him a new wheelchair, arranged for a place to live, and got him a job, but it wasn't like Dale Duke could ever go completely straight. Whatever he does this time, he vows it will be better planned than the scheme that resulted in the three-year stretch at Calipatria. That was a home invasion in Rancho Mirage. Being paraplegic limited his utility if not his desire in the home invasion field. So Dale was the lookout and the wheelman. A lot of Los Angelenos own weekend houses in the desert. Dale and his partner Gorman, a guy he knew from high school, were working the second home circuit and doing good business. They'd steal appliances mostly and sell to a fence in Hemet who ran his operation out of a secondhand furniture store. Gorman would go into the house with his cell phone on vibrate and Dale, seated behind the wheel of his hand-controlled van, would keep him abreast of what was occurring on the street. They'd done nearly twenty jobs together and other than an unexpected run-in with a pit bull that Gorman nearly blinded with pepper spray, they had never had any surprises. On the night they were pinched a freak winter storm had knocked out a cell phone tower and the two of them weren't able to communicate when Gorman went into the house that belonged to a couple from Los Feliz, a high-class neighborhood on the east side of the Los Angeles. A Sheriff's Deputy in a patrol car had noticed Dale parked outside this particular house and had pulled alongside the van. The uniform was engaged in a conversation with him when Gorman emerged carrying a thirty-two inch flat screen television. Gorman quickly ascertained the situation, dropped the television and ran off into the desert. The officer persuaded Dale to stay put by pointing a gun in his face. When he told Dale to get out of the car, the man was nonplussed to learn he was dealing with a paraplegic. Gorman got picked up the next day and the two of them went down. It was a front-page story in the local paper because Dale's brother was serving his second term in Congress. Randall had cursed whoever it was who said there was no such thing as bad publicity. Dale Duke was certified bad publicity, having been in and out of jail most of the last two decades, drug possession, check kiting, now breaking and entering. Gorman: still in prison, his brother a pipefitter not a Congressman. Dale: ready to rock with ten thousand dollars cash parked in a safe deposit box in Borrego Springs.

Being the bad boy is something Dale embraces more from a paucity of choices than an inner conviction. With only a high school education and no marketable skills breaks have never come winging through his window. It would be a pleasure unbound to show Randall that he is possessed of innate worth. But where is the opportunity? Selling recreational vehicles does not satisfy his craving for larger meaning on a bigger stage.

Stripped to his boxers and tee shirt, Dale lies face down on the floor doing one-armed pushups, withered legs behind him, crudely tattooed arm thrusting up and down. In prison he lifted weights and played wheelchair basketball with the five other inmates in chairs. The scarring in his brain that causes the seizures also resulted in a weakened left arm that is immune to weightlifting. On his upper right side, Dale looks a gymnast. But his left arm and legs, they look like a bad science experiment.

On his twenty-fifth pushup the door opens and he hears a familiar voice: “You're not gonna get up and lay me out, are you?”

“Jimmy Ray motherfuckin Duke,” Dale says. “You want to arm wrestle?”

Jimmy drops the bag of takeout food he's holding on the table and says sure.

They line up opposite each other on the floor and grab hands. Jimmy counts off and they begin. Both are powerful men and neither has an advantage at first, but the superior leverage Jimmy has as a result of all of his limbs working, combines with Dale's push-up induced fatigue and allows him to finally get the back of Dale's hand to touch the floor.

“You get stronger in prison?”

“I want a rematch and next time I won't do any pushups before.”

“You're not getting a rematch, Slick. You might win.”

“Forget
might
, dude.”

Jimmy flops on the couch and looks around. He tries not to look as Dale crawls along the floor and hoists himself on to a chair like a seal. Feeling sorry for Dale is not in Jimmy's repertoire. And how do you feel sorry for someone as badass as Dale anyway? He'd just laugh at you. “Why are we in Mecca?”

“Randall wants to put me where I won't be seen, Jellybean.”

“You just call me Jellybean?”

“I'm rhyming is all. Got to rhyme to pass the time. Fuck that anyway. Randall's hiding me.”

“You blame him?”

When Dale doesn't respond immediately, Jimmy wonders for a moment if he wasn't a little too blunt. Jimmy announces he's brought lunch and asks if Dale is hungry. Although he never once visited his brother in prison, it's as if they talked a day earlier. He takes out a sandwich and tosses it to Dale. “I remember you like tuna, but I hear there's too much mercury in it now.”

“I can't eat tuna no more?”

“I got you roast beef. They're shooting the cattle full of hormones, but what the hell, right? And I got you some beer.” Jimmy flourishes a six-pack of beer. “All for you. I quit drinking.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God.”

Dale laughs. Unlike his charged relationship with Randall, he and Jimmy have an easier rapport, one that comes from each knowing the other will never ask for anything. The brothers chew their sandwiches in silence. Dale considers asking Jimmy why he never came to see him the three years he was in prison. But he decides nothing good could come from that line of inquiry.

Jimmy cracks open a can of soda. Takes a swig, says: “The Congressman did pretty well by you.”

“You see this wheelchair he got me,” Dale says, pointing to the contraption now parked several feet from the chair in which he is currently seated. “Motor vehicle is what it is, engine painted red and shit. And he hooked me up selling RVs.”

“Who's buying RVs now? Price of gas and all.”

“Alls I know is I'm getting paid, likes to be getting laid.”

“Big brother told me to keep an eye on you, check in. Gave me a key to your place. Hope you don't mind.”

It bothers Dale that Jimmy has been presented with a key, doesn't care that a paraplegic might need emergency help, chooses to resent the lack of trust he believes it reflects. But on the surface he is determined to keep it light. “Give me lectures on the straight and narrow, bow and arrow?”

“No lectures from me. You go right ahead and do what you want. And stop the damn rhyming, please. You're getting on my nerves.”

“And if you catch me, you'll throw my ass in jail?” Dale pauses, then says: “Then forward all my mail.”

Jimmy smiles. Can't help it. He says, “I'm leaving law enforcement in a couple of years, Dale. So if you're gonna be a fuck-up, I'd appreciate if you'd wait until I was out of the catching fuck-ups business.”

“It's a new day, Jimmy Ray.”

“Well, that's swell.” The word
swell
an ironic hint that he's not buying what Dale's selling. Dale misses it. “You want a lift somewhere?”

“Lets take a ride to Bombay Beach.”

This is a speck of a town on the shores of the Salton Sea about twenty-five miles south of Mecca. It is not a place anyone generally asks to be taken. Where Dale would really like to go is Borrego Springs so he can pick up the cash he has stowed, but he doesn't want to explain to Jimmy what he's doing in the Wells Fargo bank. He can take a cab.

“Why you want to go there?”

“To touch the water.”

“Just roll your ass into the kitchen turn on the tap you want to touch water.” Dale laughs. At least that's how Jimmy chooses to interpret the soft guttural bark that issues from his throat.

“You remember the time Dad took us fishing down there?”

“Yeah, I must've been about twelve. We rowed around in some piece of crap rental boat and I nearly got heat stroke.”

“I used to think about that day while I was in prison. Think it was maybe the only thing I could remember the three of us ever did with him.”

“What'd he take us, like, once?”

“Yeah, once. I caught a fish, but he wouldn't let me cook it because he said I'd get sick.” There is a silence that hangs between them for a moment as they each recall that day more than thirty years earlier. “We got date shakes at the Medjool Date Oasis.”

“How do you remember that?”

“Just do. Tried to get Randall to stop off and get one today but he's too damn important now.” Looks for backup on this sentiment but Jimmy gives him nothing. “You won't take your poor cripple-ass brother down there today?”

“Tell you what. You got a rain check for next week. Get a date shake at the Medjool Date Oasis, head down to Bombay Beach, how's that sound?”

“Profound.”

Jimmy spends another ten minutes there. He tells Dale about his new job he's about to start and Dale talks about what it was like being inside for three years. He'd never done a stretch that long before but he tells his brother he handled it well. Jimmy makes Dale nervous. Not because of anything he's doing, though. But his presence, his work in law enforcement, and their history together are a rebuke to Dale's entire life. Dale has felt this way about both of his brothers for a long time. Although grateful for the visit, when Jimmy says goodbye and closes the door behind him, Dale is relieved. The day is starting to stress him and stress can bring on a seizure. He reaches into his pocket for his meds and takes his second dose of the day.