The Interview (13 page)

The machine whirred to a halt. Tristan gathered two bundles and held
them out. “This is yours.”

I held up my hands and took an involuntary step backwards.

“Come on, Kelly. This is standard. Your guy knew it, that's why
the extra hundred grand.”

“What am I supposed to do with that? That's two years salary
for me, and I'm just going to what? Deposit it in the credit union?”

“No. Don't do that. They track anything over ten thousand in
cash.”

“I know. I'm good. You keep it.”

Tristan laughed. “You're a trip, man.”

I should have left right then. I was in over my head. Way in over my
head. I should have just gone back to my life of softball, mail, and
the occasional Frankie visit. But I needed to return the papers to
Mr. Bat, so I followed Tristan into the kitchen.

Alex was at the table. A pair of reading glasses perched halfway down
her nose. She glanced up at us. She smiled. Did that thing she does.
My skin started to burn. I wanted her so bad.

“I need a cigarette.”

I grabbed my glass and headed out back.

“YOU HEARD OF THE TRIPLE Six?” asked Tristan. He was laid
out on a lounge chair, his glass balanced on his chest.

I shook my head and said, “Doesn't ring any bells.”

“It's on Orangethorpe, down in Atwood. Used to be called
something else, but I can't remember the name. It's by that car
wash.”

“Right. Sure, I know the place. Didn't know something had gone
in there.”

“Couple months ago. Strictly beer and nuts place. No class.”

“Sounds about right. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious if you had heard anything about it.”

“That's over on Route Thirty-four. Guy's an idiot. I avoid
talking to him.”

Tristan nodded his head. He looked thoughtful. I waited. “I'm
not a pimp, Kelly.”

I was more inclined to believe that now. I didn't understand how the
Row fit into his empire, but I no longer thought that Tristan was
running girls for profit

“OK.”

“Don't get me wrong, I like young, beautiful women. And I
always have some of the houses on this street filled with them. They
do things for me, but their employment is not conditional upon those
acts. They know it. I'm not a saint. Probably not even a good guy
when it comes right down to it. But I don't whore out women.”
His voice was edged with something as he spoke this last declaration.

“It's not my business. I don't judge.”

“But you do, Kelly. You judged that meathead in Tacqueria
couple nights ago. You judged me the same way. The only difference
was you kicked the other guy's ass.”

I realized that my conversations with Mr. Bat and Tristan had a
common theme. They both seemed to think that I acted out of some kind
of moral code that simply didn't exist. Just because I admire Dexter
doesn't mean I'm a psychopath running around only killing bad guys.

“I didn't kick his ass because he was bugging Yolanda. I kicked
his ass because he rushed me. There's a difference.”

“You pushed him into a confrontation, Kelly. Come on, you
challenge a guy like that and there is one possible outcome. Two
possible endings, but one outcome all the same.”

“Whichever.”

“See, right there. What's cooking in that head of yours? The
sight of Alex turns you into a stuttering idiot. But a guy twice your
size rushes you and you calmly take him down with, what, three moves?
You took our entire initial meeting in the same way. Took it all as
a matter of course. Not your concern.”

“It wasn’t. Still isn’t. Yolanda was being acted
upon. I was hot and tired. I just wanted to eat my food. There were
little kids in there that didn't need to see what he was doing.”

“But they could see you put him on the floor?”

Huh. Hadn't thought of it in those terms.

I shrugged. “Don't know what you're looking for.”

“I want to know what makes you tick.”

“Get in line. Back to The Triple Six. I guess there's a reason
you brought it up.”

“Right, right. OK, couple months ago the bar opens up. Way
below the radar. I didn't think nothing of it. Bars open and close
around here all the time. Whatever. One of the girls mentions it to
me. I make a mental note because I own bars and this one may or may
not be competition. Then I forget about it.

“A couple weeks go by and I start hearing more and more about
this place. I have a couple of my gorillas check the place out. Still
a dump, is about all they can tell me. I have my girls dig and find
out that some cat named Terrance Ills bought the place. Fucking
idiot. Watched too much Sopranos on HBO and now he thinks he's the
Orange County version of a Jersey mob guy.

“I forget about him, but I keep hearing stuff come down about
the new bar in Placentia. This is my world, Kelly. I'm out of the
hands-on crap now, but early on, I was in the thick of it. You don't
just walk into Placentia, set up shop, and start running shit out the
back door without at least checking with me. It's not about respect,
it's about courtesy. I've worked hard to build this city up. Last
thing I need is some joker who thinks he's going to just undo
everything I've done.”

He paused to refill his glass. If this story lasted much longer I'd
have to make more.

“Couple weeks ago, they brought a girl into the ER at
Placentia-Linda. Beat up bad. Cut up too. She'll live. It bothers me,
though. Women can't be treated like that, you know. We have to do
better by them. They deserve more.”

Odd coming from him. But I could see the difference. The look on his
face told me that he wasn't really talking to me anymore. He was
somewhere else.

“I did some checking. The girl was spending a lot of time at
the bar. Wasn't working the bar, but she was working there. Guess
Terrance runs a special out of the storeroom.”

“So what are you going to do?”

He took in a deep breath and returned his attention to me. “That's
the thing. I can't do much. Like I said, I don't do the dirty work
anymore. I can't take sides in my business. If I moved on him, then
I'd offend somebody. And from what I can tell, Terrance has some
big-time connections to people I don’t want to mess with. I
need to be neutral, you know what I mean. Back in the day, sure.
Now,” he shook his head. “I want to get out of this in a
couple years. Just waiting for the right time. But it's going to be
soon. Terrance is like a pebble in my shoe. I can still walk but
every now and then, my foot hurts.”

“I hate when I get a pebble in my shoe.” I do. I walk
nine miles a day on my route. Nothing worse than a rock digging into
the bottom of my foot. I still didn't see how this concerned me
though. I saw how Tristan might think it concerned me, but he was
wrong. He didn't know me well enough.

“Yeah, I bet you do.” He looked at me. I saw a beautiful
man with some serious demons. I liked him. But this wasn't my
problem.

“I gotta get going.”

“Oh, come on man. You can't leave till Alex finishes up anyway.
I'm just telling you a story about the town we both live in. That's
all.”

That wasn't what he was doing at all. He wanted me to push somebody.
I thought about what Magnum would do. Magnum would call T.C. and
Rick, then convince them that they needed to help him solve this
problem. He'd find a morally right solution to the problem of
Terrance, then wag his eyebrows and smoke a cigar after finagling
another couple months on the tennis courts from Higgins.

At that moment I felt like a 39-year-old mailman who smokes and
drinks too much. I was tired. The week's heat had drained me
physically. I needed to have sex and Frankie wouldn't be here for
another day. I was a walking hard-on whenever Alex entered my line of
sight. Let's face it, I wasn't Magnum. As I sat there on Tristan's
back deck, I didn't want to be.

“I work for the post office, Tristan. I'm not some avenging
angel of death. Parker's got that job, and he's good at it.”

“Who?”

“Forget it. All I'm saying is that once our business concludes
tonight, I'm going home and going to sleep. In the morning I'm going
for a run and try my best to forget any of this ever happened.”

“You're more than that, Kelly. I can see it.”

“No. I'm not. My father once told me that a lot of people spend
most of their lives regretting their decisions and dreaming about
what they could have been. It's true. I see people like that every
day in my job. They regret their choice in spouses and jobs. They
convince themselves that their lives would have been better if they
had made a different choice. They blame the world around them for
their horrible lives. They tell themselves they could have been
something more. Or worse, they expect others to fight their battles
for them. I don't have regrets. I'm right where I'm supposed to be.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Kelly. Maybe someday you will
believe it.”

“I'm out. I'll see ya, Tristan.”

I ran into Alex as she was coming out. She handed me the envelope. I
managed to not turn into a pool of goo, but it was a close thing.
Those damn glasses were the last straw.

“All set,” she said. She looked into my eyes. How did a
woman who was so black have such blue eyes? It just wasn’t
fair. My brain had turned to mush. I walked out before she could
touch or speak to me again. I could feel her eyes on my back, or
maybe I just wanted her to watch me walk away.

Either way, I left and drove home. The weight of unwanted
expectations rested on my shoulders and an unwanted erection pushed
against my shorts. I felt like I was being crushed while
simultaneously exploding.

Another interesting evening in the life of me. As I drove home, I
couldn’t help but think that I was running away. I didn’t
know what I was running from. But for some reason, I bolted every
time Tristan started talking about the job he had for me.

Screw it. I had a job. Didn’t need another one.

I SHOWERED, PUT ON CLEAN shorts, then climbed up on the roof to watch
for Mr. Bat's arrival. I didn't know for sure if he was going to show
tonight or not, but I decided that I was going to catch him if he
did. I chained smoked and pondered what I would do when I saw him
slinking down the sidewalk or hopping the back fence.

I was in the midst of a full blown fantasy where I had Batman by the
scruff of the neck. I banged his head against a tree, much like I had
dealt with Catty earlier in the day. I was about to unmask him when
Spider-Man sat down on the roof next to me.

“No way. How'd you do that?”

“You can't smoke on a stakeout, Kelly.”

Right. I knew that. That was Surveillance 101. “You're mixing
universes with that mask. You can't do that.” Ha. Back at you,
Mr. Bat.

“What are you talking about?”

“Batman is D.C. Comics. Spider-Man is Marvel. You can't mix em.
Pick a universe and stick with it. Don't you know anything?”

“I wasn't aware. I'll keep that in mind for next time.”

“Oh no. There is no next time. I did what you asked.” I
retrieved the paperwork from beneath my butt. “We're done.
Money's delivered. Papers are signed. Go terrorize somebody else.”

“I haven't terrorized you. I think I've been rather nice.”

“What? Just because you let me go outside and smoke? Give me a
break. Last time I checked it was against the law to hold a gun on
someone. It's probably against the law to go around impersonating
superheroes, too. And if not, it should be.”

“You're upset.”

“Well yeah, I'm upset. How'd you feel if the situation was
reversed?”

“I guess I'd be upset.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

“How did it go tonight with Tristan?”

“Fine. It was great. He took the money, had Alex do her thing,
then gave me some sob story about a bar down in Atwood that's running
hookers out the backdoor.”

“Interesting.”

“No, Spider-Man. It's not interesting. It's lame. What is it
with you two? You're both obviously bad guys doing bad things and
yet you've both decided to make me a participant in your personal
crusades.”

“Maybe we see something in you.”

“No, no, no. You guys don't know me. I mean, what, we sit
around and talk shit for an hour and you think I care about what
happens to the Romanoviches. Man, that guy sank his ship all by
himself. He didn't ask my opinion before getting sucked into a deal
that was destined to end bad.”

“He didn't ask his wife or son for their opinions either, but
they still would have suffered.”

“Hello! Earth to the anti-hero! I'm his mailman. All I care
about is that his letters get put in the right box. And some days I
don't even care about that all that much. And you know why I care
about it? Because it's my job to care about his letters, not his
business deals. I did what you asked because you threatened Frankie.
That's it. If you didn't have that stupid gun I would have kicked
your ass.”

“I don't have a gun tonight.”

“You don't?”

“Nope. A web shooter, but that's about it.”

“Smart ass. I don't want to beat you up anymore. I just want
you to go away.”

“OK. Fair enough. Thank you for doing what was right, Kelly. I
appreciate it.”

“That's it? You're just going to walk away?”

“Well, yeah. You said that's what you wanted. Take care.”

And with that Spider-Man got up and walked away. I was kind of
curious how his web shooter worked but didn't want to push my luck.

Huh. Now what?

THE NEXT MORNING I MET up with Kim on the beach and did the running
thing. I slept like crap and I didn't want to drive to the beach. The
marine layer had returned and the morning was cold, damp, and the
complete opposite of what the last few days had been like.

“I watched
Inception
last night,” she said
as I fell in beside her.