86'd (15 page)

“Gulf War. Special Forces,” I said. “Machine gun fire.”

“That’s crap, Bruno. C’mon.”

“Give it a pass, okay?”

“Whatever. You don’t have to be a smart ass.”

“Okay,” I said. “It was stupid. A misunderstanding. But it
is
a battle scar. A Hollywood battle scar. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Sure. But hey, look baby, I gotta say this: you know this—you and me—was a one-time-only deal, right?” she whispered. “I mean, it was great and all but…you understand, right?”

“C’mon, you’re kidding me,” I chuckled. “And here I was getting ready to slip a Corona cigar wrapper on your wedding finger.”

“So it’s okay?

“Will you make me another drink?”

“Sure,” she smiled. “I’ll make you a doozie.”

“Then consider us even. How’s that?”

Then her expression changed again. “You know,” she said, “I’ve read your stories.”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“Nana copied the manuscript and sent it to me. She told me you were a damn decent writer. She wanted me to see what you’d written. The one I liked best was about the cabbie and a jerk doorman.”

“Your grandmother was a fine lady. Full of surprises.”

Now Che-Che was fighting tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s Nana. I loved her so much.”

“Sure. I understand.”

She tried to collect herself. “So, you want to write full time? Is that your ambition?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ve also just begun to realize that I don’t know anything. I’m pretty much a loose cannon these days. But I do know I’ll miss your nana.”

“Look,” she went on, “if you owned that company you could write full-time. Yes or no?”

“I don’t own the company. I have a partner.”

“Right,” she said, looking okay again. Smiling. “Kong Koffman.”

“You got it. The great Dong himself. Where’s that drink?”

“What if I bought Kong out and gave you the company? We’d be sort of partners except it would be yours.”

“C’mon. Get serious.”

“Bruno, I made eleven million bucks last year. I need write-offs. I have investments in a dozen companies. I could
buy it and lose all the money from the investment and it’d still be okay.”

“Thanks but no thanks. I hate the limo business,” I said.

“Think about it. It would make Nana very happy.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it. Now, who do I have to screw next to get my drink?”

Che-Che was smiling. “No one, baby. I’ll get it for you.”

“And put the fucking Eagles back on again. I’ve had all the fun and good news I can handle for one night.”

O
n my way back to Dav-Ko on Sunset Boulevard, after leaving Che-Che, I was feeling good. It was four a.m. and the streets were deserted. These days, out of self-protection, I made sure to throw away any bottles in the glove box or in my suit pocket while I was doing a limo run. So when I finished my pint of Seagram’s before leaving the side street outside the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalows, I slid the empty under the car where it came to rest against the curb. Then plugged in a Bob Seger CD.
Still the Same.
I’d just been in the sack with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And she’d asked me! Jesus.

At the stoplight on La Cienega Boulevard an old Toyota pulled up next to me. Two young Latino guys. They did what so many people in L.A. do at stoplights; they ogled the shiny stretch limo.

When the light changed they took off down Sunset. Then, a few blocks further, when I was opposite the Continental Riot House, the Toyota reappeared out of nowhere, then swerved in front of me. The driver slammed on his breaks.

The wreck was intentional and unavoidable. One of L.A.’s oldest gimme-gimme street scams to collect on an insurance company. I was going twenty-five miles an hour at the time but it didn’t matter. If I’d been doing fifty it would have been the same. I couldn’t stop. Ba-boom!

Asshole Number Two, the passenger, immediately flung himself out the door of the ratty, stopped Toyota. He lay on the asphalt, moaning and rolling around and holding his neck. Asshole Number One opened his driver’s door a few seconds later, then staggered around to the front of his car, feigning incoherence. Then Number One collapsed too. I watched from my driver’s seat while he pulled out his trusty cell phone to punch in 9–1-1.

My first instinct was to run. To shift Pearl into “R,” back up, then take off. There was very almost no damage to my car and this was an obvious setup. Why make it easy for the two scheming pricks? But that’d be a mistake. For sure one of them had taken down my plate number.

Instead, I was furious. The accident was technically my fault. I’d hit two scamming assholes who would claim injuries.

I got out of Pearl and walked over to Number One, who had just stuffed his phone back in the pocket of his khakis.

“Nice work, you sonofabitch,” I snarled. “I hope you’re bleeding. I hope your fucking neck is broken.”

“Hey man, jou slamm tha big, bling-out chitbox into the back of my car. I’m injored.”

I was standing over the guy. “How about if I stomp on your fucking leg and break it?” I yelled. “Then you can sue my insurance company for that too, motherfucker!”

Now Number Two, who’d heard the arguing, was on his feet, suddenly fully healthy. The prick pulled a blade and
stood there mad-doggin’ me. “Back off, prick,” he snarled in perfect English. “I’ll fucking cut you!
Afuera
! I said back off!”

(In New York, as a cabbie, for a long time I’d been called by the nickname Batman, because it was my habit to carry a cutoff Louisville Slugger in the trunk of my taxi or under the front seat—the result of being involved in two uptown holdups. The habit had continued when I went to work for Dav-Ko.)

Wordlessly, I turned and hurried to the passenger door of my car a few feet away. I opened it, then the glove box. Then I pressed the trunk release. The two assholes assumed they’d just scared me off.

With my bat in my hand I walked back to deal with Number Two. I was pretty drunk and I knew it. But I felt no fear. Only rage. These shitbags deserved what they got.

When they saw me coming back at them with my Slugger in my hand, they separated. Now Number One pulled a shank too—a letter opener kind of blade with a taped handle.

“Who’s first,” I yelled. “Which one of you cocksuckers wants a piece of this?”

“I’ll stick you,
puta!”
Number two screamed. “Get back. I’ll cut your fucking throat out!”

My first swing at Number Two didn’t miss by much. Then I saw Number One circling behind me so I took a cut at him too, missing his head but sending him falling back on his ass to the pavement where my next blow caught the side of his leg.

He scurried to his feet and backed away. They both did. Number One was screaming. “Jou krazee,
maricón!
The cops comin’! Dey gonna fuk u up!”

I was. I was crazy. And I wanted to hurt them both.

Now they stood ten feet away and every time I made a
move toward them one or both of the pricks would bolt in a separate direction.

A couple of minutes passed with me yelling and threatening and lunging at the punks with my bat on the empty street. Then, in the distance, I heard the siren and saw the lights of the black and white.

Seeing the squad car speeding toward us, knowing they were now safe from me, the two cockroaches reverted to their original M.O. They knew the drill: They first tossed their knives down a street drain, then flung themselves back down to the asphalt again, continuing their jiveass scam. I had just enough time to fling my bat into a bush.

I was escorted by a cop to the curb, where I blew a trusty .17 on the blue man’s Breathalyzer and was cuffed right away. My ranting explanation about the faked injuries of the two guys and the bogus accident was ignored. I was now a drunk driver. I was the criminal. The cops had their man. Case closed. I wisely left out the part about the knives and the bat. I wanted no part of risking an assault charge on top of the DUI.

Justice is swift in L.A. for intoxicated motorists. A few minutes later a hauling truck arrived to transport my limo. I watched, squatting on the curb next to the patrol car with my hands cuffed behind my back, as the two rats were put on stretchers by the EMT guys. Number Two, as he was being loaded into the ambulance, made eye contact with me and
grinned, then gave me the middle-finger salute. Then they were gone, sirens blaring.

The next morning without sleep, with
Jimmy’
s voice filibustering in my head and reminding me of every detail of my stupidity, I met with attorney Busnazian. He was accompanied, I was told, by Che-Che. I’d phoned her from booking and given her Busnazian’s number to call for me. But I was in L.A. County max lockdown, so only my attorney was allowed in.

Busnazian and I spoke through the thick plastic partition. But first I had to watch as he removed the jacket of his expensive-looking double-breasted brown suit jacket, then adjusted the diamond cufflinks on his pink shirt sleeves to make certain they were the requisite one inch above the end of his hands.

“This is a difficult situation,” he said finally while opening his briefcase and dumping my paperwork on the counter. “I did my best to explain the implications of your arrest to your friend, Ms. Sorache, as we drove down here this morning. Might I say that she’s a most attractive advocate for your cause.”

“Just tell me when I can get out?”

“Your field sobriety test indicated that your blood alcohol was at least twice the legal limit.”

“Okay, what does that mean? How long do I have to stay here?”

My representative paused to examine the positioning in the knot of his light-blue tie in the reflection from the Plexiglas. “The charge is felony DUI,” he whispered for dramatic effect. “You were involved in an injury accident. In a word, you’re in deep shit, sir.”

“That’s two words. Deep and shit. Look, it was a street scam, for chrissakes. A setup. The punks did it purposely. They caused the collision on purpose.”

Now I was getting a whiff of his cologne over the top of the glass wall. Busnazian shook his bald head and glanced down at the papers in front of him. “Not according to the arrest report. You apparently rear-ended vehicle number two in the number-one lane heading east on Sunset Boulevard. We need to be particularly mindful of the facts in evidence. A: You were intoxicated. They were not. B: You collided with their vehicle from the rear.”

“I don’t care. I want to plead not guilty.”

“Unfortunately, you cannot dispute your guilt at this point.”

“Fuck.”

Busnazian flashed a twisted grin.
“Fucked
describes your situation with accuracy. Felony DUI carries an automatic and immediate driver’s license revocation. A jail term is also automatic. Your actual sentence will be determined at your hearing. That’s the only area where I can be of help. I’ve discussed a strategy with Ms. Sorache and she has endorsed the scenario that I have in mind.”

“So now you’re buddies with Che-Che? Got yourself a new client, do you, Busnazian?”

“That’s really not relevant to your situation.”

“What else?” I said.

“Well, there can be no release from custody from now until your hearing. No bail is possible.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“It smacks of irony, doesn’t it?”

“And why is that?” I snapped back, really beginning to hate this pompous jerk.

“You recently mentioned to me that you wanted to disas
sociate yourself form the limo industry. Apparently, unwittingly, you appear to have achieved that end.”

“I don’t think it’s ironic, Busnazian. I think it sucks a big dick.”

Busnazian’s face was expressionless. “As it happens, unfortunately, I am the bearer of additional unpleasant news.”

“Swell. Let’s hear that too.”

“Your employment at Dav-Ko is officially terminated. Your conviction has ipso facto violated the terms of your partnership agreement with Mr. Koffman. In a telephone conversation with him this morning I was clearly charged to convey that message.”

“Thanks, Busnazian. Anything else?”

“We’ve known each other quite a while now. Our attorney-client relationship has expanded over time. You may now call me by my first name. Dalton. I’ve asked Ms. Sorache to do so as well.”

“Jesus! I’ve really gotta get out of Hollywood.”

I had $4,100 in my checking account. That day I signed a power of attorney that Busnazian already had in his silky leather briefcase, so he could withdraw my money against his fee.

I
n the end I served fourteen days in jail. The original sentence was six months and then a six month rehab, and I was in County awaiting transfer to Wayside jail when I was released.

It pays to have a good lawyer. But better said, it pays to
know
someone who can pay for a good lawyer. At my hearing Dalton Busnazian presented additional facts that one of his law clerks had discovered in the public record: The two greedy assholes whom I rear-ended had been involved in three of the same type accidents over the past two years. They were career victims and stupid enough not to change IDs between insurance claims.

On the basis of that information the judge dismissed the felony DUI charge and reduced my crime to simple DUI. I was resentenced to time served and a six-month inpatient rehab to begin within thirty days.

Busnazian picked me up and drove me to Dav-Ko, where I would be permitted, according to David Koffman’s note and Rosie Camacho’s instructions, to stay for “a day or two” until
I packed my books and belongings and found another place to live. It was then that
Dalton
let me know Che-Che had paid my fine and the rest of the legal bills above the money I’d already given him. I’d tried to call her many times from jail without success.

Up in my room at Dav-Ko while going through my mail and bills I found a padded brown shipping envelope with her name and New York City return address on the upper left corner. After tearing the package open by the tab I found a get well card inside in a white envelope. The message was handwritten: “Hang in, Bruno. Good luck. Don’t call me again. Che-Che.”

In another sealed envelope there were thirty hundred-dollar bills. The golden kiss-off.

It took a few dozen phone calls and a little time but I managed to find a temporary roommate deal through an apartment rental agency in Santa Monica: five hundred a month, first and last month’s rent payable immediately.

The building was on Lamanda Street in West L.A., about three miles from the beach. I had the back bedroom facing an apartment building across the courtyard, and I had my own bathroom and use of the kitchen. My only furnishings were a bed and a dresser and a table. But Che-Che’s money was coming in handy.

Robby LeCash was my roommate. The guy was a sixty-two-year-old jock and fitness trainer at a health club in Marina del Rey, on his way to Europe for four weeks to teach kung fu and endurance training to one of his actor clients who was preparing to film an action flick about a global-warming-mutated,
man-eating strain of fish. Buffed-out Robby was
totally
excited about the trip. Our deal hinged on a quickie proposition. He was leaving in two days and needed someone to move in immediately. The clincher turned out to be that I had to agree to watch and walk and feed his bulldog, Tub, while he was away.
No sweat.
While sitting in his living room I reached down to pet the farting old beast and we made friends easily. Tub’s main preoccupations appeared to be sleeping and breaking wind.

I put my books in storage and then moved my clothes and computer in before noon the next day. Later in the afternoon, walking the neighborhood, with my driver’s license now indefinitely revoked, I found a bicycle shop on Washington Boulevard and made an impulse purchase: a used, beat-up, beach-cruiser bike with a chain lock. Sixty-five bucks cash. It wasn’t much but I was riding again.

But then, after Robby was gone a day or two, I could feel myself beginning to sink. A wall of wet muck swallowed me and saturated my brain. I found myself no longer able to do the only thing that had ever saved me from myself: I could not write.

I’d turn on the computer and stare at the keys and blank screen for an hour at a time. There was nothing to write. I had nothing to say.

Unlike jail—where after the first few days of shaking it out and detoxing from tobacco, I’d spent my time reading books in enforced confinement, resigned to my situation, chatting occasionally with my cellmate, a kid calling himself Swank who filibustered me with stories of convenience-store stickups and pimping his girlfriend, then grunted loudly as he
jerked off every evening—I was now alone. My only companion at LeCash’s apartment was my mind.

Each night, through my room’s thin curtains, the exterior patio lights of the apartment across the courtyard flooded my bare walls, making sleep an impossibility. Without sleep my head’s malignant conjuration persisted.

During daylight hours I began to take long walks in the neighborhood or ride my bike to the boardwalk at Venice Beach to exhaust myself enough to pass out on LeCash’s living room couch, next to Tub. It didn’t work very well. Nothing was working. I had been weeks without a drink and the messages from my brain were getting louder and louder until the self-hate and the endless replay of my squandering stupidities and the futility of my life—even breathing in and out—demanded that I stop it. Kill it. Standing at my balcony rail I began trying to amass the courage to throw myself to the concrete twenty or thirty feet below. The spell lasted four days.

Tub the bulldog was my only salvation. When he’d get lonely on the living room couch he’d gimp his way into my bedroom, see me on the balcony, or at the computer viewing porno sites and book reviews, then limp over and force me to pet him by grabbing my arm, saturating my leg or shirtsleeves with his slobber.

My cell phone, which I hated and rarely answered and seldom turned on, had been collecting messages from Dav-Ko. Three in total over the last few days. “Bruno, call the office.” I ignored the shit.

At Safeway supermarket on Centinela Avenue, a few blocks away, my madness culminated unexpectedly.

Tub and I were there partly because LeCash’s refrigerator contents consisted of four types of organic juices and vegetables and brown paper bags of grains and gluten-free shit that was inedible, and partly because a dog needs beef to sustain himself. Real food, not organic snot compressed into little brown pellets from the Whole Foods pet department.

So, with Tub dragging behind, I rolled my cart down the Safeway aisles in search of bread and hard salami and mayonnaise for me and something decent for the bulldog to eat.

Then I made a bad decision. I came face to face with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 in the liquor area. I made a quick, stupid decision and paid for the bottle at the small counter. Then I pulled Tub out of sight behind a stack of boxed Miller Lite Beer, cracked my jug, and slammed its contents. This is
therapy
I told myself. With this at least I’ll be able to function and shut down the noise.

After getting nearly immediate relief I rolled around to the deli area and procured a Genoa salami, a loaf of French bread, mayonnaise and mustard, and a plastic-wrapped brick of Parmesan cheese.

In the pet department I stocked up on six cans of 100 percent beef for Tub, then I made my way into a checkout line run by a blond, chubby, college-looking kid whose name tag spelled PAMMI.

Holding Tub by his leash next to me, after my purchases arrived in front of PAMMI on the conveyor belt and she’d greeted me with the requisite smile and “Hi, and how are you today?” and I had nodded back toward her, she gave me my total: “That’ll be nineteen-forty-six.”

I dropped a twenty on the counter.

PAMMI was dispensing my change. “Would you like to give a donation to support prostate cancer research today?”
she chimed, then flashed me another checker-mandated shit-eating grin.

“Would I what?” I said.

“Would you like to donate to support prostate cancer research?”

“Why do you ask?” I said. “I’m buying groceries here, Pammi. What in Jesus’s name does me buying food have to do with the prostate cancer research business?”

Pammi appeared a bit unsettled. “It’s a donation, sir. It’s for a good cause.”

“I’m not here to
donate,
Pammi. If I wanted to
donate
I’d be where they take donations.”

“Oh, okay, I see,” she whispered, looking away.

“Tell me, what makes you think I give a rat’s turd about prostate cancer? And who in hell told you to ask me for money? I mean, along with your instructions to grin and be cordial and that unnecessary nonsense, that
how are you today?
snot, what imbecilic store policy dictates that you harpoon your clients in the checkout line to solicit contributions?”

“Look, it’s manager’s orders. We all do it. C’mon, mister. It’s no big deal.”

I could feel myself at the edge. But I couldn’t stop. “Where’s this manager?” I snarled. “Let’s get him over here, Pammi. I’d like to meet your manager personally and discuss Safeway’s
donation
policies.”

Behind me there were three customers. One of them—a guy—tapped me on the shoulder. “Look, my man, give it up, okay?” he hissed. “The kid’s just following orders.”

“I know what the kid’s doing,” I yelled. “How about just backing the fuck off!”

The guy could tell from my expression that I was getting upset. He wisely turned away.

Then Bill arrived. Bill was in his mid-thirties, wearing a
tie, with different colored pens in his starched, white manager’s smock pocket, and wire-rimmed glassed. “Yessir,” Bill grinned, “how may we help you today?” Then he leaned down to pet Tub, who reacted with a genuine snarl. Bill wisely pulled his hand away.

“I’m a customer here, Bill,” I said, now not giving a shit and not caring that a crowd was gathering and was watching us. “I buy my groceries here. So help me out here, will ya? Please tell me, what Safeway policy permits your employees to entrap their customers in the checkout line to solicit charitable contributions? What gives you guys the balls to ask me for money when I’m here to buy groceries?”

Bill’s smile faded quickly. “We’re just trying to help out. Could you please keep your voice down?”

“And it doesn’t tweak you in the slightest that you’re embarrassing people—putting them on the spot—forcing them into giving donations?”

“No sir, I guess it doesn’t. Our customers seem to like to donate to a worthy cause. I’ll ask you again: Could you please keep your voice down?”

“How about this idea, Bill? My personal opinion is that prostate cancer is a good thing. In my view prostate cancer is Jesus’s answer to population growth. How would you and your clerks like to join me and solicit contributions to spread my message?
Hey, it’s a good cause.”

“Okay, that’s it! I think you’d better pick up your groceries and your dog and move along. If not I’ll call security.”

Clearly Bill had the sympathy of the customers who stood around checkout aisle #4. Tub sensed trouble and was beginning to get edgy too. But I didn’t give a fuck. I scooped up my change and my plastic bag filled with dog food and salami.

I heard myself yelling again. “Lemme ask you another question, Bill. While I have you in front of me the same way
Pammi had trapped me in the checkout line: How would you like to
contribute
to anal herpes? My guess is that you take it up the ass, Bill. You look like a pole smoker too. Are you, Bill? Are you a bum pirate? Hey, I’ll bet Pammi would love to watch you go down on one of the young box boys on your staff. I’ll just bet she’d want to make a ‘contribution’ to watching that shit. Cock-sucking is a
good cause
too! Don’t you think?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the store’s security guard moving toward us from the canned soup aisle. I decided I’d had my say.

Bill whispered something to his nightstick door-shaker and then Security Man turned toward me ready for action. But Tub had been eyeing the scene, and the sudden movements of the two guys made the fat bulldog give the security guy a nice growl that backed him off a step. “Time to go, mister,” the guard, whose name tag spelled RAMON, barked. “Let’s move it out. We don’t want no trouble today, okay?”

I gave Tub a good yank on his chain choker leash, which created another immediate and appropriate snarl.

“Hey,” Ramon said, “watch your dog!”

I glared back. “You’re the one who should watch him, Ramon. You make another move toward me and
Slasher
here just might decide to take a chunk out of your fat ass. He’s a fully trained attack animal. So why don’t you just chill out and back the fuck off? Then maybe I’ll decide to be on my way.”

Down the line of stores in the Centinela Shopping Center was a Walgreens drugstore, the kind that carries everything from hair spray to lawn seed to frozen pizza to digital photo enlargement machines. They also sported a large and well-equipped liquor department. The solution to my week of
self-imposed insanity was in front of me and suddenly quite simple.

The image of my former partner’s elegant living room bar in New York City came into my mind. The thing was an oak replica of P.J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue in midtown, complete with several dozen quarts of the best bottled-in-bond shit on the market and a six-foot-high engraved mirror behind it.

I’d always wanted a home bar for myself so I made the decision to give my bedroom back at LeCash’s a little room decoration.

I headed toward the liquor area pushing my shopping cart with Tub tied to the handle.

They had it all: bourbons and brandies and vodkas and gins and flavored this and that. I loaded a quart of each into the cart, then headed for the checkout stand.

My total came to $646.00. Twenty-two bottles. I paid the tab with my pocket cash from Che-Che Sorache’s don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you, hasta-la-vista-baby, kiss-off fund.

Then I asked the counter guy to remove the cardboard packing boxes from around the bottles that came boxed to make the stuff easier to carry. He didn’t ask for a donation and appeared happy to oblige me. He triple-bagged everything in plastic. Six sacks—three on each arm. Then me and Tub headed up the street toward home.

Lamanda Street was five blocks away but by the time we’d covered half the distance, the plastic bag handles were cutting into my the hands, and yanking Tub along the sidewalk was no help either.