Riding the Snake (1998) (5 page)

He left his sister and walked quickly out of the courtyard of the old building. He moved up the narrow, teeming streets, soon losing himself in the crowd. Without his permit, he knew he wouldn't last long. He had to find a "Snakehead," who could organize illegal immigration to America. The Snakehead would tell him how to pay for a ticket.

With the loss of his relocation permit, he had become part of China's huge floating population, a population of disenfranchised people that numbered in the millions.

He remembered studying a philosopher in school, long ago. "Turning toward the light," the philosopher had written, "is initially confusing, painful, and even blinding. But if not now . . . when?"

Zhang Fu Hai had turned toward the light, and, as promised, he was blinded by it. His heart pounded with fear and uncertainty, but he had to keep going. He was going to Ride the Snake. He would save his little sister. He would somehow make it to America.

If not now . . . when?

Chapter
3.

The White Rabbit Takes a Dive

Several days after the strange encounter with his brother, Wheeler sat in the W
. C. C
. grill bar and watched for Lois Atwater. She had been playing tennis on court three when he'd finished the front nine. Her long, tan legs had flashed invitingly under her short tennis dress. Lois was high up on his spear-fishing list. She had a tight, gym-trained body and an overweight, out-of-shape older husband. Her black hair was cut short and she seemed to constantly display her beautiful white teeth when Wheeler was standing around. She had that model's trick of being able to smile so that her bottom row got into the act. He knew he was close to pay dirt when she mentioned that her older sister had been at U
. S. C
. when he'd stolen the University fire truck and driven it up the steps of Annenberg Hall, crashing into the pillars of that august monument to higher eduction. This reckless stunt, pulled during the Middle European History exam, resulted in its postponement until after Christmas. Rimshot. Another Wheeler Cassidy masterpiece.

"Freshen that up for you, Mr. Cassidy?" Ramon Delgad
o a
sked. Ramon was a handsome Mexican, short and muscular, about ten years older than Wheeler. He had witnessed many of Wheeler's spear-fishing tournaments from his penalty box behind the bar.

"Might as well keep the barley farmers in business," Wheeler said as a new shot was poured into his glass.

"John Haverston was in here this morning," Ramon said, his voice sort of ending in a question. John Haverston was on the membership disciplinary committee, which had been deliberating for almost a week on whether or not to give Wheeler the boot. "He was looking for you," Ramon continued. "I said you was out playing golf."

"I think we're about to have a W
. C. C
. execution," Wheeler mused. "I'll be beaten to death by old lawyers with putters."

"I don't know, sir. I think they just gonna tell you you gotta be more discreet. . . ."

Ramon polished the bar, trying to find a way to put difficult thoughts into words. Wheeler always thought it must be strange for Ramon to deal drinks to bums like him all day. Ramon, who had come across the border in the back of an empty, stinking gasoline truck, who had worked in the lettuce fields in central California to support his family until he got a job through his cousin on the maintenance crew at Westridge Country Club. Ramon, who learned near-perfect English and worked like a peon, and who now found himself behind the bar listening to millionaires' sons bitch about their lives.

"See, I think if a woman member is married but she don't respect the sanctity of her marriage vows and decides to take liberties in the bedroom, this is not totally the gentleman's fault . . . because, sir, this was not a good marriage, I think, to begin with."

"That's got nice Latin spin on it, Ramon, but I don't think this bunch of pooh-bahs is gonna see it your way."

He knocked back the drink in one swallow as the phone on the bar rang and Ramon moved down to answer it. Wheeler could hear him say, "He's right here, sir."

Ramon brought the phone over to him. It sort of bothered Wheeler that most people now knew they could find him at the W
. C. C
. bar any afternoon, but it didn't bother him enough to do anything about it. Still, it was discouraging, as if he'd dropped another notch on the social ratchet wheel. He put the phone to his ear.

It was Jimmy, a willowy, overtly homosexual blond man who was his mother's secretary.

"You must get here immediately," he lisped.

"Why? What is it ... is Mother okay?"

"As if that matters one whit to you. . . ."

"Come on, Jimmy, cut the shit. What's up?"

"I'm not going to say. It's not my job to say. Better she tells, but you just better get your little white ass over here, Wheeler," and Jimmy hung up.

He thought it was also noteworthy that his mother's secretary felt he could sass Wheeler out. On the other hand, Jimmy was an expert on men's asses, so maybe it was just a nice compliment. With that amusing thought still rattling in his liquor-soaked head, he got up off the bar stool, dropped a twenty for Ramon, and left.

The Cassidy mansion was in Beverly Hills, on Wingate at the end of the cul-de-sac. It was a choice seven-acre spread, the house sitting in Colonial splendor on the top of a rolling hill of bright green, freshly mowed summer rye. He parked his new red XK8 Jag convertible out front and walked into the house, his hands in his pockets, linen pant cuffs flapping over polished Spanish leather loafers, feeling like a road-company Gatsby.

He had never lived in the house. His father had bought it just after Wheeler got thrown out of Special Forces. Wheeler had decided to live in sexual splendor with two topless dancers who worked the summer shows at the Trop in Vegas and were now wintering in Los Angeles, trying to open a health food restaurant. Why does everybody in L
. A
. want to open a restaurant?

Jimmy was standing by the banister with his hands on his hips, feet in fifth position, glowering savagely. "You're going to have to help her. You're the only one she has left," he said. "She's going to need a lot more than a half-drunken bum."

"I really wish you'd just tell me what the hell is happening, Jimmy."

The young man chose to say nothing, but moved to the side and pointed to his mother's room upstairs. Wheeler climbed the long circular staircase to the upstairs hall. He could hear his mother crying. When he entered the bedroom, his mother looked up from the chaise longue by the front window.

It happened again, as it had for all the years he had known her. He was momentarily startled by her incredible beauty. She was sixty-five but looked forty, and it wasn't Beverly Hills plastic surgeons who had performed the miracle. He knew he had received his looks from her gene pool, but there was something about Katherine Cassidy, something so beautiful and restrained and elegant, that she always required a moment of reappraisal. As if his memory wasn't strong enough to carry her perfection. She turned to him.

"Prescott, Prescott... is dead," she said, and her hand wandered up to her mouth and covered her lips, almost as if she was afraid the evil sentence would return.

"What?" Wheeler said, his mind in full gallop. "Dead? How?" Three one-word sentences. Mr. Bullshit comes up dry.

"How could this happen?" his mother wailed.

"Mom, who told you? Are you sure?"

"The police. They came by two hours ago. We didn't know where to find you."

"I was at the club," he said, instantly regretting the remark. "Did he ... ? Was it. . . ?"

"Heart attack," his mother whispered. "They found him in his office, at his desk, when they came to work this morning." And then she started to cry again.

It was such a mournful wail that Wheeler rushed to her and put an arm around her, trying desperately to comfort her. He felt the racking sobs. Her muscles quivered with the sickening effort.

"Mother, mother, I'm here," he said, as if that made any fucking difference. "I'm here," he whispered, and she reached down and squeezed his hand. The squeeze sort of said it all. It was the way you'd squeeze a child's hand when you want him to be quiet.

"What can I do? How can I help?" he asked, his mind still racing. Somehow, just like that--in a heartbeat--Pres wasn't part of the race anymore. He'd been scratched on a coronary technicality. Wheeler's world had shifted again. Prescott Cassidy had checked off the planet.

"Why? Why Prescott . . . ?" Kay said.

And immediately, Wheeler knew that the full sentence went: Why Prescott and not Wheeler? After all, Wheeler was the foul-up. The country club lush who was only trying to screw other people's wives. Wheeler was just taking up bar space while Prescott was taking up political causes. Wheeler was a much better candidate for a medical crack-up--he'd been processing ninety-proof Scotch through his kidneys and liver faster than a mid-sized distillery. Why Prescott and not Wheeler? Goddamn good question.

"The office has been calling," Kay finally said. "They're frantic. I don't know what to tell them."

"What office?" Wheeler said, dumbly.

"His office. Nobody knows what to do. Can you go see if you can help?" she asked, not looking at him, her eyes out the window as if maybe Pres was out there winning another race, about to come in and surprise them with a new gold trophy.

"Mom, what do I know about Pres's law office? What do I..." He stopped, speechless, because she looked at him with such a pained expression of anger and regret he felt dismembered by it.

"Okay, I'll go. I'll go over there."

So, with very little else to say, that's exactly what he did.

What he found made absolutely no sense at all.

Chapter
4.

Madhouse

Wheeler's thoughts about Pres were complicated. So complicated that he suspected they would never become totally clear to him. First there was love; Wheeler had really loved his younger brother, loved him unconditionally, loved him for who he was and what he had become. While Wheeler was getting drunk, Pres was getting rich and famous, and you had to admire that, because it was what Dad had wanted for both of them and Pres had taken the chance, stepped up and hit the ball. Wheeler had chosen his own path, which, lately, was winding in tighter and tighter circles around the nineteenth hole at the Westridge Country Club. Still . . . still, there was that early training, those fatherly lectures delivered to Wheeler earnestly and without deviation; lectures that had somehow managed to find a spot and fester malignantly in the back of his head. Now he could hear his father's warnings. "Wheeler, you're wasting valuable time. Your life is about nothing."

Pres had become the things they had both been told to be, and Wheeler truly admired Pres for taking the more difficult road.

Okay. So that said, there was also the other side of it. There was Pres, the fucking prince; Pres, the family kiss-ass; Pres, who, with his immense success, had made Wheeler's failure even deeper and more important. And for this, Wheeler had started hating his younger brother. Now his little brother was dead. Pres's heart had blown up like an old Studebaker engine. Wheeler was finally back out in front. He was alive and Pres wasn't. So who's better off now, buddy?

Wheeler's thoughts were a jumbled mixture of sadness and guilt. Then his mind flashed back to a drunken conversation he'd had one afternoon, a year ago, at the W
. C. C
. bar. He'd been looking into the rum-dimmed eyes of Stockton C. Tanquary IV, known around the club as "Tank." Alcohol had ravaged Tank, and tuned his Harvard-educated engine down to a dieseling, coughing idle. His complexion looked like a blueberry pie that had exploded in the oven.

"Fucking Suzanne Peiser . . . 'member Suzy?" Tank was referring to a younger member's athletic wife. "Fuckin' brain cancer. Deader'n dog shit in less than a year^" he slurred, wheezing musty breath over the rim of his tub glass at Wheeler, who nodded, not sure what to make of the abrupt statement. "Yep, she's right there with the Colonel," Tank continued. "The Spudster is one dead military son of a bitch. Fucker's doing close-order drill with Jesus now."

"Right," Wheeler had said, wishing he didn't have to smell Tank's alcohol-rotted breath. Colonel Warren "Spud" Westwater had had a fatal traffic accident coming home from his horse farm in Santa Barbara. His wife, Sissy, had also been killed in the crash.

"An' how 'bout Kip Lunsford? How 'bout that? Huh? The fuckin' guy died in the shower. Can you believe it? Thirty-nine years old, head of his own trucking company, and that bozo slips goin' for the soap, hits his fuckin' head on the tile ledge, and . . . kaboom! Adios, motherfucker."

Even in his dumbed-down stupor, as Wheeler looked at the ghost of his own future, he had known what Tank was saying: "I might be a drunk, I might look like two hundred and thirty pounds of yellow shit in a bag, but dammit, I'm better off than all these other world-beating assholes who are now gazing up at their own coffin lids."

The traffic was light on Beverly Glen, but Wheeler was so lost in thought he almost hit a pedestrian who was crossing the street at Wilshire. He was on his way to Century City, where Prescott's law firm was housed in two floors of antique-furnished splendor. Those ornate offices had always managed to give Wheeler the finger every time he dropped by to get his estate check, which his mother thought should be delivered each month by his reliable younger brother. So, fuck you, Pres! Who the hell is winning the race now?! Wheeler wanted to cry for his dead brother, but the tears wouldn't come. So he drove stone-faced, all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard to the Avenue of the Stars, and down the underground garage ramp of Prescott's building to visiting parking. Although he couldn't cry, he was broken-hearted because he would never be able to see his brother again or root for him or be proud of what he'd accomplished.