On the Nickel (20 page)

‘I don't even know her name. I don't know why she was there when you guys grabbed us.'

‘Whatta you think, Rice? You think he's being loyal to his cooze? This nose would make a nice hood ornament, wouldn't it?'

‘Let me play with him a little. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. Mr Nietzsche said that.' Rice Thibodeaux held the switchblade vertically in front of Conor's face with a ghastly grin.

‘You hear that, tweak? I think the best way we can impress your Jew pals is we start sending them some small pieces of you. Don't worry; we'll start with the expendable ones. What would you like to lose for starters? An earlobe? A pinkie?'

‘Please!'

‘An ear's the thing. Very
Reservoir Dogs.
I know it'll be good for me. It'll be good for Rice here. You may be of another opinion.'

Now Rice was using the index fingers of both hands like a juggler, flipping his open switchblade back and forth in space like a baton-twirler's trick.

‘Jesus Christ,' the big one said. ‘You got an endless line of bullshit tricks, don't you, Rice? You oughta try out for the circus.'

The little man suddenly tossed the knife at McCall's feet, so it stuck in the floor, vibrating, between his black Doc Marten boots. ‘In heaven all the interesting people are missing. You got a lot of empty talk, Stevie-boy, until somebody some day puts a knife straight into your ear,' Thibodeaux said. ‘You wanna get old in this lousy world?'

‘It's a lot better than the other thing.' McCall glanced at Conor. ‘I hope you're getting a vibe of evil here? I sure am.'

Conor was silently weeping.

There was a crash nearby, and Rice quickly retrieved his knife from the floor.

‘Conor, you OK? I brought help!' It was the girl's voice, bleating from along the corridor with all kinds of false confidence.

The big one pointed right at Conor. ‘Shut the fuck up, tweak.' Then he shouted, ‘Your pal's got a knife into his neck. Come on over if you want to see a lot of blood.'

‘Same to you,
gonif
! If you got a soul, run away now. We're coming to get our boy.'
Weird –
the voice of one of those Yids, he thought.

‘Oh, terrific, I can work with
that.
A coupla old kikes and a girl come to the rescue. Go on, cut his head off, dude.'

McCall waved off his command frantically, as Thibodeaux was just stepping up to do it.

No, no, no no, he mouthed, shaking his head hard.

‘Don't touch that boy!' Greengelb shouted. ‘The police are on their way.'

‘And Batman, too, right? You went and put up the big searchlight. Look, you Yids go and get lost and we'll talk about this later!'

But McCall could hear footsteps coming along the hallway.

‘Don't do a bad thing,
golem
!'

A siren approached in the street, and McCall tensed for a moment, but by careful discrimination, he could tell it was a fire engine, which went on past.

‘That your cops, Greengold? Bring ‘em on.'

‘I've got a gun,' another male voice put in.

‘Aw, Jeez, I'm quaking in my booties. Maybe you better come over then and shoot me.'

‘Good idea,
chozzer.
I'm coming for you. Just you.'

McCall was starting to get a little worried. Sometimes it seemed that everybody in L.A. was strapped except him. Maybe it was time to back off here. If they really were coming armed, it would put a serious crimp in things.

‘You want a grenade in the face, come on.' McCall picked up an old broken pencil sharpener and hurled it down the hallway, where it clattered hard. The footsteps broke off for a moment but then came on.

‘Let's book,' McCall said softly to his friend, nodding to the fire exit across the room. The tempo of things was going wrong, and he was unarmed. ‘This is lose-lose.'

‘Aw, cuz.'

Just then a tiny old man spilled out the doorway, tripping forward in his agitation. He waved a square little .25 automatic, a girl's purse pistol, and then fired it wildly in their direction, three times, almost as panicked as they were and tripping over a tangle of cords.

‘Oww!' Conor cried out.

McCall couldn't see any wounds. Thiboideaux grinned, and he could tell his partner had given the boy a love poke with the tip of his flick-knife. He was now wiping the blade on the boy's shirt, carefully keeping the boy between him and the toppled gunman. Then the two enforcers took off running, and McCall glanced back once to see the old man getting up on his knees, preparing to fire with two hands like a TV cop, and he loosed off another shot in their direction.

‘Faster, Ricey. Don't get in my fucking way!'

‘What's your weakness?' Gloria said, halting long enough on her way in to talk to the happy-looking black man who was eating a sumptuous tray of breakfast in a lawn chair, attended by a large black woman.

‘I gave up crank a long time ago, ma'am. My weaknesses are chess and fine food and taking care of strays. I got a deep personal esteem for strays. Would you believe, the men so mean here they even steal dogs?'

‘You the one they say adopted my man last night, didn't you?'

‘You say Richard? I mean Jack? Uh-huh. He play a crap chess.'

‘I owe you one, old man. Who are you?'

‘Chopper Tyrus my name. Money is always accepted here.'

She turned back. ‘Got anything, Paula? I'm good for it.'

Paula gave him a twenty, and they went up the steps into the musty feminine smells of Catholic Liberation Shelter just as Sister Mary Rose was coming along the hall toward them with a determined stride. There was something newly fretful about her manner that interested Gloria. She also noticed the political posters along the hall for the first time, and wondered what had become of her powers of observation the other night.

‘Prepare yourself for a shock,' the nun announced.

‘I don't think I'm shockable, Sister.' There was something about this woman that pissed Gloria off down deep, especially since she knew she'd once been Jack's girlfriend.

‘I'm talking about a shock you're going to like.'

What mattered, Gloria thought – caught up in a series of images of terrible cruelty that she carried around with her day-to-day from years of police work – what really mattered was knowing the relationship minute by minute between what was bearable in your daily life and what was not, and avoiding letting your mind sink into the what-was-not.

‘Jack seems to be getting better. A lot better.'

‘Bull.'

‘Go see him. He's your man. You'll know.' The nun stepped aside and gestured for Gloria to pass.

Gloria stared hard at her for a moment and then went by. She was so used to Jack being a dead nerve in a dead tooth that any news of a change for the better had to make her suspicious. She found herself tuning her radar up to its highest sensitivity, not quite knowing what was worrying her about all this.

In the tiny office, Jack Liffey was supporting himself on his arms against the rim of a small desk and trying to sidestep around it, apparently for practice. Yes, this was new all right.

‘He is risen,' Gloria said, and she did not know why she'd allowed a mocking note to creep into her voice.

‘Gloria! Wonderful. To see you. I love you.'

His croak of a voice stopped her in her tracks. ‘And he talks!'

‘I can't. Believe it. I was beaten. Kidnapped. My chair was taken, my wallet. A black man sheltered me. We played chess.'

‘And you met a nun you used to fuck.' Or still do, she thought.

‘This morning Chopper brought me. We used her phone.'

He turned and settled on the edge of the desk with a sigh of near exhaustion.

Gloria hit one of those unexpected air bumps that rearrange your feelings without you knowing it. Sometimes it wasn't garment-rending wails. Just recalling something within reach. She decided all at once not to be so cross and mistrustful.
Jesus, woman, this man you love has been yanked back from the very edge of the precipice. Don't be so Grinch.
She went across the few feet and hugged Jack to nearly break his ribcage.

‘I'm sorry if I take a while here, Jack. I'm stuck in the bad old world. I should remember the eight-story hotel.'

‘Don't know that,' he said.

‘I'll tell you later. How are you doing,
querido
? Tell me about your legs and your voice.' She felt Paula's presence behind her, but the woman sensibly kept her mouth shut.

‘I don't understand. Last night my faculties started. To come back. Just a little. I said “whoa” not “ack” to Chopper. May never know how. I was beat on the head. Maybe that. I don't know. I love you, Glor.'

Something wasn't quite right here. ‘Answer me one question,' she insisted.

‘Course.'

‘I mean it. Promise solemn to tell me the truth, Jack.'

‘Yes. I will. Total.'

‘Why am I feeling that there's something about your recovery that you know but you won't tell me?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Does it have anything to do with the little Miss Nun?'

His head sank into a deep nod, chin to chest, as if his neck had lost all muscular support, and Gloria's heart dropped like a stone through all her fears.

‘Gloria. Sister Mary Rose prayed. Over me. On her knees. To Mother Mary and all the saints. Do you think I want to admit. A religious miracle?
Me
?'

Gloria laughed aloud, feeling inordinately relieved.

R
ice Thibodeaux thrust his splayed palm against the dashboard of McCall's Dodge RAM-3500 and played mumbledypeg thereupon, chivying his switch blade in between his fingers and leaving tiny slits everywhere it struck down on the leatherette. McCall sighed and gave up any attempt to keep the man under control. Used cars could always be sold, no matter how weirdly abused, but partners like Rice were irreplaceable when you needed a bit of evil-eye fear-provoking aggression. Anyway, they were yoked together now like an ox and an ass in some twisted folktale. No question that the game they were playing with the tenants was
good psycho, bad psycho,
and it was always fun to watch every single victim keep a weather eye fixed on the crazy little Louisiana bugger.

‘Say, babe, could you dial it back a little. I know that trick's piquant and all, but you're puncturing the leatherette.'

Rice closed the knife with a slap and a frown of displeasure. ‘Piquant, you say? Shit-ass. When do we get to fuck up the Hebes?'

‘How would you feel about fucking the tenants up if they were blond and Norwegian?'

Rice looked at him as if he'd just spoken in Urdu. McCall doffed his cap and shook out his golden tresses that were beginning to turn into coiled dreadlocks.

‘Anglos got poor people in SROs, too, babe,' McCall said. ‘Ain't all colored guys and others.'

‘Bring some around. I'd like to meet them.'

McCall laughed. The guy wasn't as stupid or slow-witted as he sometimes pretended. He claimed to be a big fan of Nietzsche, for chrissake. McCall wasn't even 100 per cent sure who Nietzsche was, though he might have read about him in JC. Whoever – when the chips were down, Thibodeaux was every bit as malicious as he showed out and that could be useful.

‘I got the plan, Stan,' Thibodeaux said. ‘In that shithook Fortnum we string razor wire across the stairs at neck level and then set off a fire alarm.'

‘Great plan, babe. And doing all this work – measuring, like, neck height for these dwarves, drilling the holes, screwing in the wire – it's all real good exercise, just like coyote setting up his Acme booby-trap to get the roadrunner. It's all real life affirming.'

‘What the fuck you talking about?'

‘We don't need these violent fantasies right this minute,
compadre.
It's tough, but embrace the suck, OK. We fucked up. Right now we got to report to our fat money-dispensing boss, tell him the kid we picked up got away. Remember that? Everybody got away. And the asshole Yids at the Fortnum are armed now and probably already repairing the heater, maybe even the elevator. And nobody seems to want no money. You want to tell him all that yourself? I'll go have a drink while you do.'

‘Eat me, Steven.'

Vartabedian had insisted on meeting them again in the derelict Japanese Garden, obviously his way of keeping them at arm's length, and McCall gave the guard at the main door the finger when the old Japanese man asked where they thought they were going. ‘Japan, asshole, where do you think?'

The old man shrugged. They took the elevator down and swaggered through the far glass doors to the decaying garden that was even rattier than it had been a week earlier. A line of bamboo had overgrown itself and its spindly second-growth branches bowed across the pathway, some fronds actually touching down.

Thibodeaux began hacking bamboo away with his switchblade like Bogart going ape-shit on the sedge blocking the
African Queen.

‘Why does the fuckhead put us through this?'

‘If you're determined to be the straight man, babe, he's the guy that pays. The guy that pays puts you through whatever he fuckin' wants. Until we can pay, we get to follow his rules.'

‘You got
your
idea of rules,' Thibodeaux said, flailing crazily for a moment at the overgrown bamboo with his oversharpened knife. ‘But I got natural law. That's my thing. Natural law says they only do shit to you until you carve them a new eating hole in their neck. Save your wisdom for somebody of your own mental weakness.'

They got past the bamboo and stepped over coils of black plastic gardening borders that somebody was presumably going to bury alongside the path one of these days.

‘We don't want to kill no golden goose. Ricey, we get three bills a day retainer. That's my natural fucking law.'

‘That's ten minutes on stage to a rock star, Steve-o. I know what money is worth.'

‘Get back to me with your demo tape, Mr Rockstar,' McCall said contemptuously. ‘V's pay is just fine for now, and it lets me do what I'm good at. I'm good at diddling people.'

‘I'm good at hurting people bad. When do I get to do
that
? This whole program is fucked up.'

McCall sighed. ‘Maybe soon, Rice. But we follow orders now. I absolutely require it. There's the greaseball now.'

Vartabedian sat on a rock bench at the far end of the disused garden, smoking a cigar as if he didn't have a care in the world.

‘Any of you know your hat size?' the big man said as they approached.

‘Huh?'

‘Fuck no.'

He tsked and shook his head. ‘The world's changing. When I was a kid, every swingin' dick used to know hats.' He held out his smoldering cigar. ‘They knew Cohibas from Coronas, too. Now nobody knows shit from Shinola.'

‘Hey, I know Shinola,' McCall said. ‘I used to carry a shine rag in my back pocket in high school in Banning.'

‘Good for you. So, when are the tenants gonna be out?'

Rice Thibodeaux emitted a manifestly phony laugh. ‘Ha-there, yeah. Steve-o, whyn't you tell him how they're all packing up to grab the next plane for Israel?'

McCall glared at Thibodeaux for a moment before answering. ‘It was a real shock, believe me, Mr V. Those old Yids went and got themselves guns. They broke the fuckin' kid we was holding loose, and then shot at us like they was at Coney Island. No shit, man. They near greased us. I was pretty sure you didn't want us to kill them back.'

Vartabedian had sat straight up at first, but as an apparent act of self-control, he blew two smoke rings off into space before speaking.

‘For God's sake, man. Did you two … just re-up in the space patrol? No, let's be clear – I do
not
want anybody “killed back.” I got a perfectly legal city permit to convert the Fortnum Hotel into loft apartments. What do you think happens to that permit if you start whacking old men in there? Don't answer me. I don't have any use for your propositions. I mean, even morally, I don't want anybody killed, OK? It's against my principals. I got to worry this out.'

‘Fuck them guys, man,' McCall offered. ‘It's all in the degree of fear …'

‘Shut up, man. You two want any more paydays, you follow the letter of my orders down to the dot over the T. I'm a tenderhearted soul but there's limits. OK, here's the deal. You two go home, have some beers. Watch some crap on TV tonight, play cribbage, buy a hat – I don't give a shit. Call me in twenty-four hours at the office. Don't go anywhere near the Fortnum. You do, you're fired. Now, fuck off.'

McCall did his best to strut away. His mind immediately flashed back to Baghdad and other chewing outs he'd endured from junior officers with less time in than him. All those daily patrols into the nightmare, the taunts and blind alleys, the little kids trying to piss on you from windows. After a really bad patrol, and there were plenty of them, the only way to redeem yourself with the L.T., no matter what he said to you, was to make the next patrol a big win. You had to come home with the bacon – some real intel on the Ali Babas or maybe whack one of the
hajis
with his picture up in the mess. Whatever. You had to do something that would really light up the report to the guys who lived up above reality, up in the Green Zone.

Maeve was still jangled and upset by the gunfire. It wasn't that she'd never experienced guns fired in anger before – and sometimes just in bravado. L.A. was the world capital of urban gunfire, and no one avoided it entirely. The worst time had been the South Central uprising when she'd witnessed her father shot down by a thug standing over him. Some people she knew took it all in their stride, like trash talk or a couple of punches in the playground. But guns were a whole stage worse. She didn't like the cocky strut of them. It was so masculine and brutal, a stir of that disorderly Y chromosome. Morty Lipman had put his little pistol back into his pocket and managed to look a bit shamefaced.

‘Come on, kids,' Samuel Greengelb urged them up the stairs. Not a soul had been in the lobby, nor behind the wire grille at reception. ‘You best stick with the old
pishers
right now. It looks like the Indians are restless. Probably our worst enemy – Sitting Bagel himself.'

Maeve laughed in surprise at his unexpected joke. But her laugh collapsed when she noticed that the smell on the staircase was foul enough to choke a horse. Pee and mildew and something like fruit that had gone rotten a long time ago.

‘You have to walk up this all the time?' she asked, wrinkling her nose.

‘Since those
shmucks
busted the elevator. You get used to it. What's your name, daughter?'

‘Maeve Liffey.' She'd told him once, but you made allowances. ‘And yours, sir?' Conor trudged up glumly beside her.

‘Samuel Greengelb. Call me Sam, please. I think they picked up … this boy here … to get our goat. He's a new neighbor.'

‘My dad is a detective, and normally he'd help us, but at the moment he's kind of physically disabled.'

‘We can always use another
kalike.'

‘What's that?'

The old man grimaced. ‘A guy who's a bit inconvenienced. Sorry.'

‘The word means cripple, doesn't it?'

‘Strictly speaking.' They went toward his room

‘We gotta fix the heat,' Morty said.

‘We gotta circle the wagons,' Greengelb said. ‘The Indians are coming. Tonight, for sure.'

‘The elevator is completely dead?' Maeve asked.

‘Yes.'

‘OK, let's block the stairs.' She was getting into it. ‘My stepmom will be looking for us before long, I'm sure. She's an L.A. cop.' The lack of an actual marriage to her father made wordings awkward. ‘My cell is gone but maybe we can contact her. Any of you have a phone?'

‘We should afford a cellphone on Social Security?
Feh.
The pay phone downstairs was killed first. Most of the rooms are empty now.'

‘Fraynd,'
Morty Lipman insisted. ‘I want some heat tonight. An ice cube I'm not planning to be.'

‘OK, first we fix the heater. There's only a pipe missing. Then we have fun with booby traps.'

‘I can help with that,' Conor Lewis put in.

‘Wouldn't it be safer to go someplace else?' Maeve said.

‘Then the
schmucks
have won, little lady,' Morty said. ‘They'll padlock our doors and we're all included out forever.'

Gloria and Paula had taken Jack home and supported his shaky walk to an old comfy chair on the back screen porch beside the ailing Loco, to console one another, and left him with strict orders to stay put. Then they'd headed back downtown to look for Maeve at the address Jack Liffey had been given, but that was utterly empty.

‘What is going on in The Nickel?' Paula asked. ‘The real estate is, like, utterly worthless and people are fighting over it? What Yuppie wants to live with a hundred per cent vandalism, a hundred per cent homelessness, a hundred per cent graffiti? The old hotels are like sewers.'

‘Cities are doing it all over the country, at least before the collapse. People seem to want to be urban now – as long as they don't have to be bothered by urban people.'

‘Ah, crap,' Paula said. ‘You know – whites are always so sure they can get the upper hand.'

Something about Paula's attitude annoyed her. ‘Yeah, maybe all caucasians need to be held down and raped by a couple of mokes of color. That'll let them know how the world really works.'

Paula seemed a bit startled. ‘Jeez, that's pretty intense. Where you going with shit like that?'

Gloria locked the car doors and stared at her friend over the roof. ‘No farther than you talking about the “good death,” girl. Sorry. We probably both need a mood adjuster to mellow down. I don't know why I'm so angry.' She had faint memories of a nasty pit bull at one of her foster homes. She'd made a sign for him:
Don't even THINK of trying to pet this dog,
and then she'd tied him outside McCowan's market, doing her assigned chores, and she came back to find the beast methodically chewing and destroying the sign. ‘Am I getting worse, Paula?'

‘Yeah, recent-like. Maybe it's having to take care of your man when he's such a basket case.'

‘It's before that,' she said with distaste. ‘It's in my head. But you know what happens if I go to a shrink. It gets back to the brass in five seconds flat. That unstable bitch. Put her in traffic.'

A terrifying image came back for a moment – a dream from her childhood that had recurred again – so intense for that moment that it took her breath away: her nine-year-old self standing and screaming defiance into a dark open doorway and knowing utterly that her insolence would set something lethal to flying out of the darkness at her – but screaming anyway.
Girl, you need something. All this crazy rage down in there.

They walked through The Nickel, past a number of men reclining amongst dubious possessions. Gloria and Paula were both silent for a while, awed by the actual presence of so much human misery – and their own.

‘Shit,' Gloria said. ‘I keep thinking there should be labels posted over those guys back there, you know – common name, habitat, Latin name. That really sucks, doesn't it?'