Dreams Die First (2 page)

Half an hour later the bodyguard signaled me from the foot of the stairs. I left my drink on the table and followed him up the steps. He opened the door of the office, closed it behind me and remained out in the hall.

The soundproofing and the faint hum of the air-conditioner unit cut out all noise from the bar. The room was starkly furnished and dominated by a large desk. A shaded round fluorescent lamp illuminated the papers on the desk blotter.

Lonergan was behind the desk, his face half hidden in the shadows. He looked up. “Hello, Gareth.” His voice was as noncommittal as his tie, white shirt and Brooks Brothers three-button jacket.

“Hello, Uncle John.” I made no move to the chair in front of the desk.

“Sit down,” he said.

Silently I sat down in the stiff-backed chair.

“Your mother hasn’t heard from you in more than two months.”

I didn’t answer.

There was no reproval in his voice. “She’s worried about you.”

“I thought you kept her informed.”

“I don’t,” he said flatly. “You know my rules. I never involve myself in family affairs. She’s my sister, you’re her son. If you have problems in communication, you solve them.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“She asked me to.”

I started to get up. He raised his hand. “We’re not finished. I said I had a proposition for you.”

“The Collector said it was a job.”

He shook his head. “People are stupid. They never get messages straight.”

“Okay,” I said.

His eyes glinted behind the small old-fashioned gold-rimmed glasses. “You’re getting kind of on in years for the role you’re playing. Somehow thirty-year-old hippies seem out of date.”

I didn’t answer.

“Kerouac, Ginsberg, Leary. They’re all rapidly disappearing into yesterday. Even the kids aren’t listening anymore.”

I fished the last cigarette from my pocket and lit it. I didn’t know what he was getting at.

“Where have all your heroes gone?”

“I never had any heroes. Except you, maybe. And that went out the window when my father jumped.”

His voice was empty. “Your father was a weak man.”

“My father couldn’t face the thought of going to jail for you. He chose the quick way.”

“He could have done four to six on one hand. When he got out, he would have been in clover.”

“If it was so easy, why didn’t you do it?”

A shadowed smile crossed his lips. “Because I have a business to run. Your father knew that when we made our deal.”

I dragged on the cigarette without speaking.

He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. “Do you know even the FBI gave up on you? They didn’t think you were worth keeping an eye on.”

I smiled. “That’s not very flattering, is it?”

“Would you like to know why?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “You were too intellectual. They said you’d never make a good revolutionary. You always saw both sides of a problem and found reasons for each of them.”

“Is that why they went to the trouble of fucking up the jobs I got?”

“That was before they had you figured. Now they don’t give a damn.”

“That doesn’t help me now. The damage is done. Every prospective employer has it in his record.”

“That’s why I sent for you.” He paused for a moment. “Maybe it’s time you went into business for yourself.”

“Doing what? You going to buy me a taxi, Uncle John?”

“How about a weekly newspaper of your own?”

My mouth hung open. “You’re putting me on.”

“No.” His voice was flat.

“There’s got to be a hooker in this somewhere.”

“Just one. I own the advertising. You can do what you like with the rest of the paper. Use it to say whatever you want to say. I don’t give a damn.”

“Advertising is where the money is. Where do I get mine?”

“Circulation. You keep the net receipts and I’ll throw in ten percent of the advertising revenue to help with the costs.”

“Who will own the paper?”

“You will.”

“Where does the money to start it come from?”

“It’s already started,” he answered. “You may have seen copies of it around. The
Hollywood Express
.”

I ground out the cigarette. For a moment I had felt elation. But now it was gone. The
Hollywood Express
was a throwaway sheet. Every once in a while I would find a copy stuffed in my mailbox.

He knew what I was thinking. “What did you expect? The
LA Times
?”

“The
Express
is not a newspaper.”

“That’s a point of view,” he said. “To me eight pages of newsprint is a newspaper.”

I fished for another cigarette but came up empty. He pushed a box across the desk. I took one and lit it.

“Your unemployment’s run out. There’s not a paper or magazine that would touch you and you know it. You’re not a good enough writer to make it free-lance in the magazines, and your novel has been turned down by every publisher including the vanity press houses.”

“Why me, Uncle John?” I asked. “You got to have better than me on your list.”

His eyes met mine. “Put it down to vanity.” He permitted himself a faint smile. “You got something going inside you. Maybe it’s the way you look at yourself. Or society. You’re skeptical about everything. And still you believe in people. It doesn’t make sense. Not to me anyhow.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “How long has it been since you got out of the army?”

“Five years. They kept me in for a year after I got back from Vietnam. I guess they didn’t like the idea of a Green Beret getting out and spouting off against the war.”

“You could get a GI loan to take over the paper,” he said.

“You really are serious about it, aren’t you?” The amazement showed in my voice.

“I always am about business,” he said flatly.

“And what’s in it for you?”

He took off his glasses, polished them, then put them back on his nose. His eyes were hard and bright. “Four pages of classified ads at a thousand dollars a page. That’s four thousand a week.”

“Impossible. That rag couldn’t sell ten lines a month.”

“That’s my problem. For your ten percent of the ads all you have to do is write them.”

“You mean make them up? Just like that?”

He nodded.

“Who pays for them?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “The money comes to you in cash. A dollar a line, four to ten dollars an ad. You just process it and skim your ten percent.”

Now it all began to fall into place. My uncle had to do a big cash business. This was as good a way to wash the money as any I had ever heard. The going rate on the street for turning black money into white was forty to fifty percent. He had it figured for only ten percent. “I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

“You do that. Tomorrow morning Bill will pick you up at your place and take you over to the paper so that you can look over the setup.”

“Bill?”

“The Collector.”

“Oh.” Until now I had never known he had a name. I got to my feet.

“You meet me here tomorrow night at the same time and give me your answer.”

“Okay.” I started for the door.

“By the way… that boy up at your place. If you fucked him, better get yourself a shot of penicillin. He’s got a bad clap.” He took a twenty from his pocket and threw it on the desk. “In case you haven’t got the money, there’s enough there for you and the Mexican girl you had dinner with.”

I looked down at the money then up at him. “I have enough,” I said and closed the door behind me. I went down the stairs and through the bar to the street.

Now I was sorry I hadn’t had Verita wait for me. Slowly I started walking back downtown. It would take at least an hour for me to make it back to her place. But I owed her that. She didn’t deserve clap on my account.

The awful part of the whole thing was that I couldn’t remember whether I had balled the boy or not. I couldn’t remember anything about last night. I shook my head angrily.

I used to have times like that when I had first come back from Vietnam. Times when I would lose a day or night. After a while the blackouts stopped. Now I wondered if they were coming back.

CHAPTER 3

A muggy, steamy smell rose from the streets as the heat baked the rain off the concrete. The streets were narrower as you came into East LA. The old houses leaned together as if to hold one another up. Now that the lights were out, the streets were almost totally dark. Even so, I was aware of life and movement within the shadows. It was something I sensed, yet did not see. Suddenly I found myself walking out in the middle of the street, my eyes searching the darkness. It was almost as if I had returned to Nam.

I felt as if I were going crazy. This is Los Angeles, I told myself. I’m walking down a street in the city, not up a jungle path.

I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear it. But I knew it was there and spun to one side. In the dark the loaded sock whistled by my head.

When I straightened up, he was standing there, a silly grin on his cream-colored face. The sock hung limply from one hand; the other hand held the inevitable bottle of orange juice. “I’m goin’ tuh hit you, Whitey,” he said.

His eyes were out of focus and he was weaving slightly to some music that only he could hear. “I’m goin’ tuh hit you, Whitey,” he repeated, still smiling that inane smile.

I stared at him, trying to penetrate his heroin fog. “You do and I’ll kill you,” I said quietly.

Somewhere in his head the music had come to a stop. He no longer weaved; his eyes struggled into focus. He sounded puzzled. “Why would you do a thing like that? I didn’t do nothin’ to you.”

Just then a car turned the corner and in the approaching headlights I could see him clearly for the first time. He was just a kid. Seventeen. Maybe eighteen. A straggly mustache and beard tried vainly to cover the pimples that were still on his face. Slowly we separated, moving backward toward opposite sides of the street as the car passed between us.

By the time the car went by he had disappeared back into the shadows from which he had come. I searched the street but saw nothing. Still, I didn’t move until the radar in my head told me he was really gone. Then I went back into the middle of the street and kept on walking.

You’re getting old and stupid, Gareth, I told myself. You have no right feeling sorry for a junkie. That loaded sock could have broken your skull. But I did feel sorry for him. If you’d never known the sweet surcease from pain the needle could give you, you might feel differently. But if you knew, all you could feel was sorrow at the waste. And I saw more men in Vietnam wasted by the needle than by bullets.

It was three thirty by the time I leaned on her doorbell. After a moment her voice came tinny and frightened through the brass speaker. “Who is it?”

“Gareth. Can I come up?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I have to talk to you.”

The buzzer sounded and I pushed the door open and went up the stairs. She was in her doorway waiting for me. I followed her into the apartment and she locked the door behind us.

“I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

I heard the sound of the television set coming from the bedroom. I reached into my pocket, took out the ten-dollar bill and held it out to her. “I didn’t need it,” I said.

“You didn’t have to come back for that.”

“Take it. I’ll feel better.”

She took it. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“That would be fine.”

I followed her across the room and sat at the table while she made a cup of instant and put it in front of me. She took one for herself and sat down opposite me. Her eyes were questioning.

I took a sip of the coffee. It was hot and strong. I met her eyes. “I may have picked up a dose and given it to you,” I said.

She was silent for a moment, but when she spoke, her voice was uncomplaining. “Why did you not say something before?”

“I didn’t know.”

“How did you find out?”

“Lonergan. He told me I’d better get a shot of penicillin. You too.”

She sipped at her coffee.

“Do you have a cigarette?” I asked.

She nodded, took a pack from the drawer and pushed it toward me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll go now if you want.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not angry. Most men I know would have said nothing. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”

“I’ll give you the money for the shot as soon as I can.”

“It will cost nothing. My doctor works at the clinic.” She was silent again for a moment. “Is that all Lonergan wanted to see you about? He has no job for you?”

“No job. He wants me to buy a newspaper.”

“A newspaper? Buy one? He must be crazy.”

“He is, but that’s not the point.”

“What does he expect you to use for money?”

“My GI loan. He said he could get one for me.”

“And what does he get out of it?” she asked suspiciously.

“The advertising. That goes through his company.”

“I don’t know what kind of newspaper you can buy like that.”

“The
Hollywood Express
.”

“That one,” she said in a strange voice.

“You know something about it?” I asked. “Tell me.”

“It’s not good,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing but trouble.”

“How?”

“In the office we have a list. Tax-delinquent employers and companies that do not pay the withholding taxes. The
Express
owes about thirty thousand with interest. If you buy it, you could become liable for it.”

“Do you think Lonergan knows that?”

“He knows everything else,” she said flatly.

I nodded. It was much too obvious for him to miss. I wondered what he had in mind. It made no sense for him to stick me into that kind of jam.

“Did you say you would do it?”

“I told him I would think about it. I’m supposed to look it over tomorrow morning.”

She reached for a cigarette. “I would like to go with you.”

“Why? What could you do?”

“Nothing maybe. But I am a CPA. And at least I will understand the books.”

“Certified public accountant—state license and all?”

She nodded.

“Then what are you doing at unemployment?” As soon as I asked the question, I felt stupid. There could be few, if any, jobs for Chicana accountants. “I would be grateful if you would come.”