On the Nickel (17 page)

She got herself to Frankfurt but fell through the Army's cracks and spent days and days knocking on doors in the immense Creighten Abrams Complex there, the center of all things American on Hansa Alee, always being sent on to some other building.

His attention was drifting a little, worrying about Maeve and fascinated by a new tingle in his leg. Jack Liffey did his best to keep his spirits up, but the tale went on and on, full of men acting like dogs and demanding her favors, with technicolor descriptions, and every chance to get home evaporating at the last minute. She told him she was finally forced to offer her fanciest favors to a colonel who got her home on compassionate something.

A police siren stiffened them both and the black-and-white car roared past, but headed for something that was well away.

Two old men shuffled past them on Sixth Street and she fell silent, caressing his forehead absent-mindedly. Next, next, he thought. That was the essence of story.
Tell me.

Abruptly there were more footsteps. She set his head down on the curb, a bit too hard, and got up to run toward them.

‘Man, all I know is the spread,' a man said.

‘Shawn! Is that you, lover? I be your true one, it Precious.' She was almost bellowing, but there was a desperation in her voice that Jack Liffey hated to hear. He had a feeling he'd never see her again, and never hear the bitter end of her tale. He waited, but only silence and faraway city noise answered.

He realized he'd never even got a proper name. What a shame, he thought. Don't we all want to come back some day and shower our affection on those who helped us when we were in need?

‘Shawn!' he heard her desperate voice in the distance. ‘My Titan missile!'

After careful consideration, he started to crawl generally westward with terrible effort, maybe toward civilization. The sidewalk was cracked and heaved up here and there, impeding him. After little more than a block, and one perilous street crossing, the attempt had just about drained him dry, when he heard a man's voice.

‘Man, s'up wit' you? Look like you went an' felled pretty hard.'

‘Ack-ack.' The voice was friendly and sympathetic, but he was tired of saviors who ripped him off or absconded. Jack Liffey rolled on to his shoulder, to where he could see the middle-aged black man squatting a few feet away. He wore a sweatshirt, ragged camo pants and an L.A. baseball cap. Dodger blue.

‘You hurt?'

What to answer to that, even if he could?

The man got up and patted his pockets. ‘You got some niceside clothes. Like you be dipped in butter sauce. But you got nothin' in here. You been robbed bad, ain't it? Cain't you talk, man?'

He shook his head hard.

‘Cain't talk, cain't walk. You a sad case. Don't you worry now – Chopper ain't gonna leave no one to rot in no street, not now and not never. And not some genna'man be turnin' up at dinnertime.'

The man got his hand in Jack Liffey's armpit and, surprisingly strong, he dragged him away from the curb, toward two refrigerator boxes, abutting and attached, tented over with blue plastic. Beside the doorway, an old food can was steaming on a grille set on bricks over a can of Sterno. He realized how much he hurt all over from the beating. And then he squeezed his eyes shut, mortified, because he could do nothing at all for Maeve.

‘You get the guest room, friend. My name Chopper Tyrus, and don't let that name worry you none. I don' be choppin' nothin' but cotton. That all ancient history.' Jack Liffey felt himself lugged by stages closer to the doorway. ‘I think I call you Richard, my genna'man. I always partial to that name. And I hope you got a taste for ham 'n' motha-fuckahs for dinner.' He laughed. ‘Tha's beans an' franks to you this wet night, for real. Just jokin' 'bout what we call that whack C-ration that ever'body hate back in Nam – the ham 'n' limas. Shit, and always just four fuckin' cigarettes. Seem I always got Kools.'

Jack Liffey remembered it clearly, indeed, even from his posting in the radar trailer in Thailand. They hadn't been called C-rations any more, not officially, but everybody still did, anyway, and ham-and-limas was the one that you could never trade away, especially for the prized spaghetti and meatballs or the steak and potatoes.

‘You been in the big Nam, Richard? You look 'bout the right age.'

He'd actually been in Thailand most of his tour, but he was part of the whole fucked-up event, and he'd been over to Nam often enough on R-and-R to nod now without feeling bad about it.

‘No money an' no voice. You don' got much to contribute tonight, do you, Richard?'

My luggage is coming along later,
Jack Liffey thought.

I
t was only a ten-minute drive home from The Nickel so Gloria headed east on Fourth Street to see if Maeve had just fallen dead asleep at home and was ignoring her cell. It was a cinch Jack wasn't going to answer anything. She stopped illegally on the long and narrow 1930s' viaduct that spanned riverbed and rail yards, just after the weird triumphal arch rising weirdly out of its side rails. She stepped out of the car, stared downward for a moment at the chemical-tainted rainbow-slick on the water flowing south in the channel, maybe twenty feet wide, that ran off-center in the broader concrete river. A car pulled out to pass her, honked as if annoyed, and she turned and gave it the finger. Then she slowly tore up the photograph of the nun's painting of Jack Liffey, doubled and tore again, letting pieces flutter away into the shadows far down below.

The nerve of that bitch. Trying to saddle her with a memento of her own love for Jack. Naïve only went so far, Miss Nun.
It's out of your control, woman. I may have had my doubts about the guy, but he belongs to me now, even if he is a basket case.

She stewed over it the rest of the way home, something about her own destructiveness in ripping the photo to shreds having disturbed her deep inside, until suddenly all her sour jealous rage blew away in an instant. She braked to a harsh stop on Greenwood, right in front of her geraniums. The front door stood wide open with the living room light pouring out unnaturally and every bug on earth heading for it. And his pickup was gone. She left her car running and sprinted for the door, yanking out her service pistol on instinct.

‘Maeve! Jack!' She paused a second on the porch. ‘This is LAPD, Sergeant Ramirez! If you're a burglar, you got two seconds to get on your face or you're dead where you stand!'

She came in slowly, her eyes scanning the front room with care. Nothing. She knew she should call for backup, but this was different, and she rushed the kitchen with the pistol thrust ahead of her, some of her training evaporating in the face of this violation of her personal space and the alarm over her vulnerable loved ones.

She checked the pantry before moving on, starting to get a grip and shutting doors behind her now. She would hear anything come open. She found the old house landline phone with its receiver smashed – something Jack might do in frustration. Loco glanced up at her curiously from the back porch, but the screen door was hooked and no one had come in or out that way. The dog wasn't alerting on anything, if he still had it in him, but he did look uneasy. In another few minutes of rampaging through the convoluted old two-story house, she'd satisfied herself that there were no home invaders in any closet, or under a bed, or behind the shower curtain. At least no one over a foot tall. And she knew for a fact that neither Maeve nor Jack was at home either. Not good news – not in Jack's case especially – unless maybe he and Maeve had left together. But it would have been a real struggle for Maeve to move Jack by herself. And where was Jack's car? Gloria finally stuffed her Glock .40 back into the holster clipped against her skirt.

She hated herself for it, but she went straight to the fridge and opened a beer. She'd had a twelve-hour police shift and a four-hour shift of her own and she was beat.
Corona, don't fail me now.

After sucking down half of it, she called Jack's ex-wife Kathy in Redondo and discreetly found out that neither Jack nor Maeve was down there. OK, when it's the end of the world, who do you call? Everybody has someone. Someone you never wanted nor expected to see failure in their face.

She speed-dialed three. It was the cell of Paula Green, her best friend from the Academy, who'd offended somebody upstairs and been stuck in the Foothill station in Pacoima in the north San Fernando Valley for three years – for a black woman it was like being assigned as liaison to Guadalajara.

‘Green.'

‘Paula, thank god. This is Glor. I really need a friend.'

‘Don't hyperventilate, girl. You know you got one.'

Chopper laid out a thick bedding of newspapers on the far side of his small cardboard home, for insulation and padding, and then offered Jack Liffey a fraying blanket he'd borrowed from the tent next door. He had a thin old foam pad for himself and a comforter that was leaking stuffing.

‘Well, Richard, we best beat a retreat indoors. They more rain on the way. Lot of skipskaps push theyselves into the missions on the rain nights, but we got a nice dry home out here. And safe from all them steal-me-Elmos. Can't trust nobody indoors.'

He dragged Jack Liffey foot-by-foot into the shelter and on to the newspaper padding, and then settled the blanket over him. Almost immediately a patter started up on the plastic over the top of the fridge boxes, then steadied, curiously like the sound of fire. ‘Stay warm, man. Better to stay than fight to get there.'

Jack Liffey made a gesture of writing on his palm.

‘I get you. We a little short a' pens and pencils in here, Richard. And I ain't so good with readin' neither. Got some a' that dis-lexus thing with words I been tole.' He lit an old olive-colored kerosene lantern with a cracked glass chimney and set it in the doorway, though once Jack Liffey's eyes had adjusted, he could see a faint glow of the city still reflected off the clouds over the buildings. The rosy warmth of the lantern felt good and the local light was immensely reassuring. Jack Liffey had never in his life felt quite so helpless. He almost laughed at himself, at how, some time back, how dependent he had once
thought
he'd been, when he was still in a comfortable wheelchair, and still had shoes and a wallet, and a writing pad, and a world of loved ones around him. Now he had none of that, but he'd certainly become well-traveled in misfortune.

‘Hey dere, perfessors,' Chopper called out to a pair of cops walking past, the nearest one a black woman. They wore long transparent raincoats and plastic shower caps over their hats.

The woman squatted down to peer inside.

‘Good evening, Mr Tyrus. S'up witchou?'

‘Nothin' pricey. I be shelterin' a new frien' and he cain' hardly talk. He a real moot. Man want to write to me. Either of you got a ol' pencil stub to borrow me?'

The male cop remained disdainfully back from the boxes, on his guard, while the woman patted her shirt through the transparent plastic. She dug out an old Bic and handed it to Chopper. ‘Who you got back there? You didn't go and mug Mr Richie Rich, did you, Chopper? That's not like you. Are you OK, sir?'

She pushed the lantern aside and crawled half into the shelter, shining her flashlight on Jack Liffey's face. A kind of stubbornness made him nod, rather than put himself into the care of the police.

‘Why don't you write me your name, sir? And your last address.'

Just as she was digging for a notebook, a powerful car accelerated past them, and Jack Liffey caught sight of the tail end of a police car. Both of their chest-pack radios started squawking orders. Then a siren whooped from the fleeing car.

‘Gotta go, Diana,' the male cop announced. ‘Ten-thirty-two. Gun – it's just two blocks away.'

‘You take care of yourself, sir,' the woman said, as she patted Jack Liffey's leg. ‘Chopper's a little schizy but he's harmless, and I happen to know he got a great big heart.' She patted Chopper's leg and backed out of the shelter. The two cops hurried off.

‘Why she gotta say that?' Chopper complained. ‘I as rationalistic as a sober judge. Here, Richard. Write your name on some a' that paper under you.'

IM JACK. THANK YOU, CHOPPER. He wrote big and slowly in the wide margin of a display ad from the
Times,
then showed it to Chopper, who laboriously sounded out the message, let it sink in and seemed to comprehend it as part of a slow process of absorption.

‘You
Jack,
not Richard. OK, Jack. Give me pounds.'

He held out a fist and Jack Liffey returned the old greeting as best he could, a couple of fist-bumps and then a finger-clasp up and down and a pull-away. They both smiled, knowing its Nam roots.

‘Knowledge is power,' Chopper said. ‘Good Conduct.'

Jack Liffey had a tattoo on his upper arm that proclaimed those very two words – acquired on Tu Do Street during a night of drunken revelry, under the superstitious urge to stay out of trouble long enough to get home unkilled. He was tempted to show the forlorn message to Chopper, but the air was just too cold for any disrobing. He'd read recently that they'd renamed Tu Do Street these days. It was Dong Khoi now – which was supposed to mean
uprising.
Why not – it was their country. They could call it Death to Americans, if they wanted.

MY WHEELCHAIR WAS STOLEN.

This one was much harder for Chopper to decipher, but it seemed only a matter of time and false-starts, because eventually the man nodded with great gravity and repeated it aloud.

‘That's so low. They's hitters out dere gonna steal yo' dirty underpants wit' you in 'em.'

I WILL PAY YOU TO CALL MY WIFE TO COME GET ME. TOMORROW. Somehow, Jack Liffey just couldn't bear any more humiliation tonight, and he didn't want to move any of his aches and pains. He was relatively comfortable in his exhaustion where he lay, and he felt a kind of loyalty to Chopper's hospitality. It might do him some good in the general humility sweepstakes to spend a night on The Nickel, especially with this gentleman that he'd been assured by the cops was trustworthy – if a little off his rocker.

Chopper finally mouthed out the message and took it in without a hint of questioning Jack Liffey's motives for waiting until the next day. ‘OK, Richard … Jack. Tonight I beat you at chess.'

Oh,
shit,
Jack Liffey thought. He hated chess, a game that required insane concentration. He'd played seriously for a while in high school, until his friends had started reading books on it, and then he'd walked away from the game until forced to play it again by his buddies in the radar outpost in Thailand, where there was virtually nothing else to do. As far as he was concerned, chess was a dark angel that thrived on OCD. Too much eyeball-to-eyeball, too much descent into some as-yet-to-be mapped intensity center of the brain that he had little access to.

One of his missing-child cases had carried him into a strange cultish circle that had worshipped Jack Parsons, the Jet Propulsion Lab scientist (and devotee of the black magician Aleister Crowley) who had blown himself up in his home in Pasadena in the 1950s. Parsons had left a note before the blast: ‘I saw those guys playing chess and suddenly decided that I did not want to end up like them.' Yes.

But Jack Liffey reclined on his elbow like a Roman feaster and resignedly watched Chopper Tyrus set up a tiny traveling peg-seated chess set between them. What the hell. One night.

Chopper took white, and Jack Liffey knew within a few moves that he'd be OK for the night. Chopper played jailbird chess, speed chess – every fervent move chosen within a few seconds, never thinking more than one move ahead. It was like playing with Tweetybird on crack.
‘Ooooh, look! A move!'

Jailbird chess was so subversive of the choking intensity of the game as he'd known it that he wouldn't be challenged at all. For one evening he could be a good sport.

* * *

Paula came immediately, as Gloria knew she would, toting a little overnight bag that said OJB on the side. That was for Oscar Joel Bryant, the name of a black L.A. cop who'd died arresting three gunmen in the 1960s. The LAPD's African-American officers association was named for him.

‘Thanks a bunch for coming, Paula. Your Captain up there in the far valley still calling you a
nee
gress?'

‘I think somebody got him wise. I'm black now. Not African-American, mind you, but you can't expect some of these guys to get too sensitive all at once.'

‘No, it would probably signal the end of the world. President or not. Thanks again.'

‘You don't send out a distress signal because there's a little leak under your sink.'

‘Maeve and Jack are both missing.' She handed Paula a beer and the woman took it and sat heavily. ‘Either separately or together. I don't even know. Her car's gone. His car's gone. The front door was standing open when I came home. That's not a good sign.'

‘Jack's still … the same?'

‘Same old same old. Maeve is playing PI a bit again, looking for a missing boy. Supposedly she was just making the first moves in order to crank Jack's motor a bit. The boy is the son of an old friend of his.'

‘So do we go after this boy or Maeve or Jack?'

‘As far as I can tell, it's mostly taking place on Skid Row so maybe we can do it all.'

‘Oh, OK. Only thirty or forty square blocks of missions and flops and dead old buildings. And more cardboard tents than you can peek inside in a week. In the rain. That ought to be a snap.'

‘And flesh-eating bacteria if you touch the wrong skell. Or triple-TB – the nasty one that meds can't stop.'

‘Shit, we could all end up in
Magic Mountain.'

‘The amusement park?'

Paula swigged down some more beer and smiled. ‘The book. It's about a TB asylum. Never mind. Should we do it now?'

‘All I needed was your moral support to get me back there. I've been around the block a few times with no luck, but I didn't look under every leaf. I'm sorry to drag you out, but I just can't leave Jack out in that hard rain, not in his condition. I talked to the locals down there but those boneless cops were no use. Rookies.'

Paula nodded. ‘Don't I know them. Last week I got called to a banging in east Pacoima. The kid who was shot was still lying on the porch, very dead, waiting for the coroner, and three cops were interviewing his pals. This was all taking place in Spanish, of course.

‘Then I heard a shriek – “
El mismo carro!” –
from one of the kids. I recognized the sound of a throaty old 1950s' muscle car rolling up the street behind me.