The Walk (5 page)

Marty shouldered his way to the counter, pulled down his dust mask, and filled his nostrils with the smell of sizzling fat. Faded, water-stained photos of direct-to-video movie stars and TV character actors hung on the walls, their sun-bleached autographs retraced with a ball-point pen by a shaky hand. Lee Horsley ate here. A place couldn’t have a stronger recommendation than that.

The chef worked frantically, taking orders, serving food, and running the cash register.

“What would you like?” The chef asked with a heavy, Mexican accent.

Marty glanced up at the menu. Besides the Kosher Burrito, and a dozen variations on it, they offered Teriyaki Chicken Burritos for their Japanese neighbors, hamburgers for the bland bureaucrat, and Shrimp Cocktails for the discerning gourmet. What would Lee Horsley have chosen?

“What’s a Kosher Burrito?” Marty asked.

“Pastrami, Hebrew National salami, corned beef, chili sauce, onions, mustard, pickles and peppers wrapped in a home-made tortilla,” the chef replied. “Is very very good.”

All that was missing was a matzo ball and gefilte fish to really make it work.

“I’ll take it,” Marty put four dollars on the counter. “And a coke.”

The chef swept the money into his hand, dumped it in the open register, and returned to his cooking, digging a handful of chopped meat out of a bucket and tossing it onto the hissing grill. Marty watched him.

“You know there was an earthquake, right?” Marty asked.

The chef replied without turning around. “People still got to eat. I still got to make a living.”

Marty was about to ask what inspired the chef to create such a bizarre entrée, but was distracted by a hard shove from the big guy next to him.

“Hey asshole, your back is on fire.”

Marty looked over his shoulder and, out of the corner of his eye, saw smoke rising from his gym bag. He yelped, shrugged the bag off and dropped it on the concrete floor, stomping out the flames. It was only after the fire was smothered, and he was staring down breathlessly at the scorched bag, that he realized the stupidity of what he’d done.

He’d put out the fire and saved the bag, only to destroy anything that hadn’t burned inside by stomping on it. If he’d bothered to think first, instead of panicking, he could have extinguished the flames with a little water.

Now he knew why there was so much smoke everywhere he went.

“Nice going, dumbfuck.” The big guy beside him, wearing the JC Penney suit and Wal-Mart tie, guffawed mightily, skillfully avoiding choking on a mouthful of burrito at the same time.

Marty picked up his burned bag and carried it over to one of the wobbly tables, where he spilled out the contents on the chipped Formica top.

The transistor radio was smashed, and so was the flashlight, but Marty thought he still might be able to get it to work. A couple of his Evian bottles had broken open, soaking his matches, but they would dry out. Or at least he hoped they would. His t-shirt was scorched, and so were a few of his granola bars, but the duct tape, first aid kit, and most of the other stuff seemed to be okay.

“You thought you were prepared for The Big One, didn’t you, Chief?” The comment was followed by more mighty guffaws.

Marty looked up to see the big man standing at the table, shaking his boulder-like head with disgust. The guy clutched a Coke in his paw as if he were afraid it might try to wriggle free. He sorted through Marty’s things with one, fat, hairy finger.

“You don’t need any of this shit.” He opened his jacket to reveal a large gun, hanging from a loose-fitting shoulder holster. “This is all you need to survive.”

“You can’t take a drink from a gun,” Marty said.

“It’s what you use to take one from somebody else, dumb fuck. You don’t carry a fucking thing on your back, that’s basic survival skills, no cucumbrances. Let some other dumb bastard drag the heavy shit around. Take what you want when you want it. That’s the law according to Darwin, Smith, and Wesson.”

The Chef set Marty’s burrito and coke down in front of him. Marty glanced at the big guy, half expecting him to make a move on his meal. The big guy grinned, all yellow teeth and swollen gums.

“No thanks,” the guy pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’m full.”

Marty took a bite out of his burrito. It was hot, salty, and sticky with cheese. Incredibly delicious. He couldn’t take a second bite fast enough.

“Makes you wonder why other Heeb food isn’t this good, doesn’t it?”

Marty washed down his mouthful of burrito with some Coke. It was very sweet, very cold, and absolutely wonderful. This was ranking as one of the best meals of Marty’s life, despite the present company.

“You a cop?” Marty asked.

“Better than that,” he reached into his breast pocket and dealt Marty his business card, a fresh, greasy fingerprint on the edge. Buck Weaver, licensed bounty hunter, skip tracer, and private investigator. “I just brought in Paco Pandito.”

Marty shrugged, his mouth full.

“Only the meanest, nastiest, saltiest mother-fucker in the western United States,” Buck said. “Carjacking, dope-dealing, coke-sniffing, cock-sucking bastard, that’s who he is. Caught him at the outlet mall outside of Barstow. Can’t resist discount clothing. That’s his weakness. Pistol-whipped him as he came out of Tommy Hilfiger, then kicked him in the balls to keep him pleasant on the drive back. ’Course it’s hard to be too unpleasant when you’re riding in the fucking trunk.”

Buck slurped on his coke. “I would’ve stayed in Barstow if I knew I was driving back for the goddamn Big One. At least I got my cash before it hit.”

Marty nodded, wolfing down his Burrito, taking breaks between bites for drags on his Coke. The way Buck was studying him, Marty wondered if the guy was about to snatch the burrito out of his hands. It made him eat even faster.

“You got that sleazy, insincere look of a car salesman or a lawyer,” Buck stated. “Am I right?”

“Network executive,” Marty replied.

“What the fuck is that?”

“I make TV shows,” Marty explained.

“You write them?”

“No.”

“You produce them?”

“No.”

“You direct them?”

“No.”

Buck slammed his fist on the table, frustrated and not too happy about it. “Then how the fuck do you make them?”

Marty finished his burrito and sucked the last bit of cola from around the ice cubes as he thought about his answer. The fact is, the shows could get made without his involvement at all. He served no real creative function beyond making sure the network was getting the show it paid for. But no network executive in town let his role stop there, not if he wanted to get anywhere in this business. The key was to seem involved enough in the show to take credit for all its success, but remain distant enough to take none of the blame for its failure. That was the mark of a great network executive.

“I provide guidance to the writers, producers, and directors,” Marty said. “I give very constructive notes.”

“You call that a fucking job?” Buck snorted.

“It’s a profession,” Marty replied, defensive. Why was he arguing with this man?

“What good is it going to do you now?”

“About as much as yours.”

“I got the fucking ability to survive out there,” Buck said. “What the fuck you got? Notes? Give me one of your great fucking notes.”

Marty looked him in the eye. The big, hulking, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal in a polyester suit and Treasure Island casino tie.

“It’s encumbrance,” Marty said, “not cucumbrance.”

Buck leaned slowly forward. “What the fuck you say?”

“You said you don’t want any cucumbrances,” Marty sneered. “Sounds like you don’t want to carry around any vegetables.”

Buck yanked out his gun and put the barrel right against Marty’s forehead. “One squeeze and you become a cucumbrance.”

Marty froze. The sheer idiocy of the situation struck him more than the fear of death. He’d survived the earthquake, only to get killed because he stopped to eat a Kosher burrito and correct a sociopath’s pronunciation. No one else in the place seemed to notice. They hadn’t noticed the earthquake, why should they notice a murder?

Marty held Buck’s fish-eyed gaze for a long moment. But instead of shooting, Buck broke into a smile and shoved the gun back into his holster.

“Get it? A fucking cucumbrance.” Buck clapped Marty on the shoulder, two friendly cavemen sharing a fire. “You didn’t think I was a funny guy, did you?”

Marty could still feel the imprint of the barrel against his forehead. He quickly got up and swept his stuff back into his pack. It was time to get the hell out of here. Why had he stopped in the first place?

“You’re right, that was a great fucking note,” Buck said, getting to his feet, blocking Marty’s escape. “You got some balls.”

One noticeably larger than the other, or so he’d been told, a condition that could explain his indecisiveness, undue caution, and unmotivated sperm.

“I just want to go home,” Marty said.

“Which way you headed?”

“West.”

Buck put his arm around Marty and dragged him into the street. “What do you know? So am I.”

12
:25 p.m. Tuesday

The streets were clogged with people now, hundreds of government workers, lawyers, jurors, marshals, judges, transients, parking lot attendants, and LA Times reporters. They milled around, trying to stay clear of the burning buses, the smoking cars, the fallen buildings, the wailing of the injured, the stink of the dead.

Buck pushed and shoved his way through them, clearing a path for himself and Marty up 1st Street as it rose over Bunker Hill. Marty realized there might be some advantages to having Buck along after all.

Marty had only traveled a mile or two since leaving the set, but it was a hard walk, making his way over ruined streets strewn with chunks of disgorged asphalt. Already his feet felt swollen, his knees were sore, and he was gasping for breath. If he kept deteriorating like this, Marty thought, he might need Buck to give him CPR in a couple more miles. He resolved at that moment to go back to the gym and use that membership, if the gym was still standing, or if it wasn’t, just jog around the rubble three or four times each day.

As he ascended Bunker Hill, Marty clearly remembered the last two times he’d been downtown. The first was five years ago, when he and Beth came down to get a wedding license and meet with the family court judge who was going to marry them. The judge seemed to embody the full force of the law, as if personally schooled by John Houseman in the art of glowering intimidation. But when he performed their wedding, he seemed to be channeling Henny Youngman instead, apparently using their vows as a chance to try out a possible Vegas lounge act.

The second time was about a year ago, to talk his way out of serving on jury duty. All it took was an autographed photo of Jennifer Garner and a promise to read the clerk’s spec screenplay when he finished it. Marty still hadn’t gotten it and, judging by the damage to the County Courthouse, stomped under one of Mother Nature’s enormous Doc Martens, he probably never would.

“Hey, did you piss yourself?” Buck glanced at Marty’s pants.

“That’s Evian,” Marty replied between labored breaths.

“Yeah,” Buck snorted. “I bet you shit Beluga caviar, too.”

Abraham Lincoln’s bronzed, decapitated head rolled past Marty as he paused at the corner of Hill and 1st and looked at the glimmering, downtown office towers a few blocks south. Buck was more interested in watching Honest Abe’s head roll through the intersection than appreciating the view.

The only way you could really see the polished granite and tinted glass monoliths was from a distance, up close they were about as welcoming and creative as a retaining wall. They were each designed to make a grand architectural statement that could be absorbed in one glance from the freeway. Now they were all shedding glass like tears.

From where Marty stood on the crest of Bunker Hill, catching his breath, he could even see the future, or at least the building that stood in for it in a thousand bad TV shows and movies. The Bonaventure Hotel was five giant glass cylinders waiting to blast off a concrete launch pad into outer space. Today it looked like the launch finally happened, only the rockets had exploded before lift-off.

The studios would have to find the future somewhere else.

“Now that’s what I call fucking ironic,” Buck snorted. Following the course of Abe’s wayward, bronzed noggin, Buck inadvertently spotted something interesting.

“What?” Marty asked.

“Look at that,” Buck pointed a block south, where the old, brick Kawada Hotel still stood at the corner of 2nd and Hill, the sign for their Epicenter Café intact. “Isn’t that fucking ironic?”

“Uh-huh,” Marty continued on up the street, wondering for maybe the eighth time in five minutes why Buck wouldn’t go away. But he told himself it couldn’t hurt to have a big guy with a big gun at his side, especially considering the bad neighborhoods he’d soon be walking through.

“I appreciate ironic, witty stuff like that,” Buck said. “Kind of goes against my hard-ass personality. Makes me so goddamn colorful you want to fuck me, doesn’t it?”

Marty heard cries from the Department of Water and Power, a boxy building erected on a parking structure, the top level of which had been turned into a square lake, creating a moat around the edifice. The forty-year-old architectural conceit had turned into a trap now that the parking structure had pancaked onto itself and the contemporary drawbridge connecting the building to the street had fallen. The DWP workers were stranded in a collapsing building, but could rationalize their fate as the price of working in a bureaucratic fairy tale.

“I once saved a puppy dog,” Buck added. “They were gonna kill the drooling little fur ball for protecting his home against an intruder. I couldn’t live with the fucking injustice, with the idea of this poor, fluffy creature dying for doing the right thing, so I took a goddamn moral stand. The night before they were gonna give him the needle, I broke him out of the pound and let him live in my Mercury Montego.”