Nobody Bats a Thousand (11 page)

“Yeah?
  I do need a cut.”

“I’d leave it long,
but

”

“Talk about that later,” Maggie interrupted, “what we want to know is who got the clock?”

“I don’t know. It was just some old bum blighting the neighborhood. I was doing everyone a favor by getting her on her way…
Please
put that gun down.”

Maggie
uncocked
the hammer, but kept the barrel pressed hard against his temple.
“First a description.”

“She was just an old bum. She had a bicycle with a little wagon attached. She had dirty blonde hair, and dirty clothes…Oh, and she pulled the twenty out of this dirty red hat she was wearing.”

Maggie and Mary Jean locked eyes. Maggie lowered the gun from Eddie’s head but kept it pointed at him as she picked up her purse and stepped back. “Just remember,
dearie
, if I were you I wouldn’t tell the police or anyone else about our little talk today. It’s your word against ours, and I’m still a crazy dying old woman with a bad temper, lots of guns, and nothing to lose.”

“Don’t worry, you just get out of here, out of my life, and hopefully we’ll never see each other again and that would be great.”

“I want my twenty bucks.
” Mary Jean stepped forward. Within seconds Eddie accommodated her with a crisp bill he pulled from his wallet, and Mary Jean and Maggie were out the door.

“I knew that boy knew more than he was telling,” Maggie said as she slowly cruised away in her cumbersome old truck.

“Red Hat Patty that little bitch. What now?”

“Let’s go talk to the Monk. I wouldn’t doubt if he knows something.”

They had just turned onto Broadway when Mary Jean felt she had to speak. “Maggie, I don’t know what I can say. I didn’t know about your cancer. Are you sure the doctors are right?”

“Cancer?
”
Maggie seemed puzzled for a moment. “
Oh
that. That was just a ruse,
dearie
.
I’m probably healthier than that boy I just scared half to death.” Maggie turned and grinned. “I had you fooled too?  I guess it
was
quite a performance. You know in college drama was my minor.”

Mary Jean stared at Maggie then forward at the gray sky. “That’s weird, so was mine.”

The Monk was seated in the same position just a few feet down from the spot they had last seen him. When he recognized Maggie’s truck he smiled, lifted himself from the lotus position, and strode up to the driver’s side. He almost seemed to be floating. Maybe he was real light on his feet. Maybe he had just finished chugging a forty of
King
Cobra
.

“
Hola
, Maggie,
que
pasa
?”

“You are a wise man, Monk. That
redhatted
what’s-her-name
is
who we are looking for.”

“What can I say?  I am a man of God. I do what I can.”

“You wouldn’t know where she lives, would ya?” Mary Jean stuck her face into the conversation.

“I
was just thinking about heaven.” H
e rolled his eyes up across the gray overcast that had been hanging in the sky for weeks. “Heaven for me right now wou
ld be a b
urrito from that place.” H
e pointed across the street.
“And
a cold beer.”

Mary Jean pulled four dollars from her sock and waved them in her fist. “You want these? Tell me
where she lives and they’re yours.”

She lives in a garage behind someone’s house.

“Where?
What’s the address?”

“For four bucks you want an address? I’m a man
of
God, not
God
, for God’s sake. I don’t know everything.”

“No deal.”

“I do know something that is worth more than a burrito to you.”

“What?”

The Monk smiled and held out his hand. Something in his eyes and manner told Mary Jean the negotiations had ceased. She handed him the four bucks.

“Red Hat Patty is
laying
low, keeping a low profile, maybe leaving town, that’s the word. It seems a blonde
witch
is out to get her. Probably the same person that tried to run over one-leg Larry a few weeks back. Patty recognized the car and the damaged fender from Larry’s description. They missed Larry but totaled his shopping cart. His fake leg fell off. Back then we just thought it was a hit and run, but now it seems it’s a serial thing, somebody out to get street people. What she did to Patty isn’t clear, chased her down an alley or something. Whatever, it scared her real good that’s for sure.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing, except it’s a bitch to fuck wit
h Pyramid Power, huh Blo
ndie?” H
e smiled and winked. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I don’t much care for Larry
or
Patty.”

“I didn’t try to run anybody down.”

“S
ure, sure, I know. I understand.” H
e covered his eyes with his hand. “I see nothing. I understand.”

“Look, I’m telling
you

”

“Well, we’ve got to run. Enjoy your burrito,
dearie
.”

They had only gone a few blocks when Maggie slowed to make a right down a narrow side street.
“That’s it!
Time to get serious.”
S
he pulled to the curb but left the truck running as she leaned across Mary Jean, opened the glove compartment, and began to sort through the mess. “
Excuse me,
dearie
…Oh here it is.” S
he came back up to sea level and handed a card to Mary Jean:

                                 
      
William Bennett

                
  
Private Detective/ Broadcast Executive/ Licensed Barber

 
                   
Unflappable Optimist trapped in a cynical shell &

  
                  
Courageous Pathfinder to justice/ 209-227-8481

“Is this for real?”

“Of course, we went to UC Berkeley together back in the stone age, which was before the
stoned
age.”

“The guy is a
real
private eye?”

“Among other things, most not listed on the card.
He’s definitely different, but definitely one of the smartest people I’ve ever come across. He speed-reads Sartre for God’s sake.”

“Broadcast executive?”

“That’s fairly recent. He bought channel 63. His family has money. Lend me that picture you have,
dearie
. He’ll probably want to see it. I’ll get a hold of him and set up a meeting. He’ll know what we should do next.”

They drove home and then went their separate ways. Nadine was fixed in place on the cou
ch becoming one with Maury
Povich
.

“Nadine, you ran over a homeless guy with my car?”

“Not the guy, I just hit his shopping cart, but it wasn’t my fault. He darted out right in front of me.”

“The guy had one leg. How could he
dart
out in front of you?”

“It all happened so fast, and the parking lot was so dark. I know I should have stopped, but when I saw he wasn
’t hurt I panicked and took off.
” Nadine finally looked up and over at Mary Jean. “I told you all of this the other night. Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah…. yeah, of course I do, I was just testing you to see if you’d changed your story.”

“And here’s the
first payment to fix the fender.
” Nadine dug into her jeans and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, which she handed to Mary Jean. “But remember, I only got the one estimate, so if you can get it done cheaper I’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” MJ said as she took the money, sensing this had to do with things she’d missed while purposely sleeping through Nadine’s last late-night rant. “So what are you doing right now?”

“Not much, after this there’s just news and stuff on for a couple of hours.”

“Well, come on, let’s go get drunk. I haven’t had a cigarette since I left Mexico. Tonight I feel like buying a pack, having a few beers and smoking my face off.  What do you say?”
             
“I don’t have any money.”

“I’ve got fifty bucks.
” MJ held up the bill.

“Okay.”

They walked to the
Tally Ho
tavern. It was a dark smoky place about a half a mile away on the fringes of the Pyramid District. A place so mellow that it hadn’t seen a fight in years, where four of five people standing out back partying a joint seemed more normal than not. MJ and Nadine were known and even welcomed there. It was one of the few places around town they’d never been thrown out of more than once. They were at the bar and well into their third pitcher of beer when Nadine went out back to burn one with a group of regulars. Mary Jean politely declined the invitation.

“If I get stoned I become an eating machine. That I don’t need. Put a joint in my mouth and ten minutes later my jaws automatically start moving, and if I don’t put food in my mouth I’d grind my teeth down to nothing,” Mary Jean said to Tom the bartender, her newest best friend. He was moonlighting from his day job driving a laundry truck and was more than content to sit still and listen.

“You know,
Larry

”

“It’s Tom.”

“Whatever,
you know Tommy, I don’t drink to avoid or escape reality. I drink to keep myself from killing people because just about everybody
I run into deserves to be shot.
” Mary Jean took another sloppy gulp of beer. She lit another cigarette though she already had one burning in the ashtray like a stick of incense. “The problem
,
Larry is
that

”

“It’s Tom.”

“Whatever,
the problem isn’t that I get too drunk, it’s that everyone else stays too sober. If they were all there wit
h me in the same state of mind
believe me they’d be having a good time
,
or at least everybody would be to
o drunk to know the difference.” S
he killed off her beer and refilled the glass from her pitcher. “The last time I was in here, just before I went to Mexico, I had a good
time,
at least that’s what I was told. I couldn’t remember a thing. I was in a
total
blacko
ut.” S
he looked around the room, then focused in on her burning cigarettes, pulled one from the ashtray, took a drag, and released a big cloud of smoke. “You know I could be in a blackout right now.”

“There’s a time and a place for everything.”

“I heard that once. At the time it seemed to make
sense. But I’m not so sure now.” S
he took another drink. “All I want is my clock back, Larry. Is that too much to ask?”

“I guess not.”

MJ pulled Bill Bennett’s card from her pocket and slid it down on the bar. “This guy is going to find my clock.”

The bartender looked at the card and smiled. “I know this guy. He comes in here sometimes.”

“He’s rich.”

“In a way, in a way he’s very rich. He inherited a bunch of money but his old man didn’t trust him or something, so they have all this legal shit set up so he can’t get at it all at once. But the really bizarre part is how he’s rich. Do you know where his family got most of their money?”

“No.”

“For nothing, for not doing a fucking thing.”

“Yeah, right.
  I may be drunk. I may be blackout drunk, but I’m still not a fucking idiot.”

“No really, I heard this story, and I asked him about it once and he said it was true. You want to hear it?”

“Sure.
” Mary Jean planted her elbows on the bar and her chin on her fists, an eager student anxious to learn.

“I guess his old man used to own a basketball team in the ABA. The old ABA, are you with me so far?  Okay, so when the ABA merges with the NBA they don’t take his old man’s team into the league, but to make up for it they agree to pay his old man a percentage of the TV contract in perpetuity, that’s like forever. Back then it wasn’t much, but now his share is like tens of millions a year, so he gets that every year, tens of millions for doing nothing, for doing nothing at all. You’ll never see a sweeter case of pure capitalism than that.”