Telegraph Avenue (52 page)

V

Brokeland

T
hey were like the kids in that newspaper comic, white nerd, black nerd, pretending at the bus stop on this fine Sunday morning that they were Jedi knights, samurais. Lost so deep in the dream, they didn’t have the sense to be embarrassed.
FoxTrot
: Bankwell read it sometimes, though the light had pretty much gone out of the funny papers for Bank Flowers back when the
Chronicle
got rid of the strip with the English basset hound.

Shorties rode the bus downtown, got off by Fourteenth Street, walked down to Franklin Street, where there was a donut place, egg roll place, the decor Chinese but the calendar by the telephone printed in some alphabet of snakes. Bank had long since incorporated the house bear claw into his ongoing survey of donut shops from Fremont to Richmond; this one was a notch above the run of the mill. If you were downtown and couldn’t hold out for the Federation or, farther north, the mighty Dream Fluff, Loving Donut would do.

White nerd, black nerd got off the bus and, for once with no swordplay, waited on the empty sidewalk in front of the donut shop as if something real was about to happen. Playing some kind of classic rock, had a flute in it, out of that old green-and-orange shoulder-strap eight-track the white nerd carried everyplace he went. Waiting for another bus to come along, tornado drop a house on them. After a minute or two with no tornado, the black nerd, Titus, said something out of the side of his mouth. Then they waited awhile longer. Titus was built lean, harder than the glasses and that retard bounce in his step led you to expect. Still growing, bound to work out to be tall like his father, maybe not as chesty. In response to whatever Titus said, the other one took out a plastic wallet, yellow and blue. Nestled it close to his chest as if it held magic ducklings, tiny orphan bunnies he was nursing back to health. He tweezed out a bill and passed it to Titus, who went in and returned a minute later holding what appeared to be a dead puppy.

“I see you a bear claw man,” Bankwell said to Titus through the windshield of the hearse, not the brokedown Cadillac or the borrowed Olds 98 but the Flowers & Sons workhorse, a 1984 Crown Vic. No fear or hope of Titus hearing him, kitty-corner away and through the safety glass. “Interesting.”

“You mean ‘nasty,’ ” said cousin Walter. Prince Walter, the favorite nephew, more like a son to a man who never had any sons of his own. In trouble, now, though. “What you always get.”

“It’s a longitudinal study,” Bank said. “Bear claw is my, what you call, control.”

“Uh,” Walter said, hand to his belly. “Like eating a deep-fried sock.”

“That is why bear claw have to be the control,” Bank explained patiently. “You want to see how much love and affection the chef put into the bear claw. If the bear claw’s good, the standardize donuts be even better.”

“You already had your donut for today,” said Feyd.

“Feyd, shut up.”

“You his conscience now?” little Walter said. “Fucking little Jiminy Cricket motherfucker.”

Walter in a pissy mood, squeezed into the front seat between Bankwell and Feyd. For many of the more reluctant passengers obliged in the past to occupy that spot, the back of the vehicle had come to seem preferable. But Prince Walter only saw his position, no doubt, for the indignity it was. Walter had graduated from the hearses years ago, from handling the dead, washing their horrible feet. Ushering crazy old ladies, keeping an eye on the gang-bang element, enduring the gusts of drama that caught people up, women especially, whenever funerals came along. Then from time to time, like today, paying a visit on behalf of Chan Flowers to somebody who did not want to be found, was not necessarily in the mood for visitors. Walter had left it all behind years ago, moved down to L.A. to work in the record business, come back from time to time showing off pictures of himself with Tupac, Jada Pinkett and Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg. Finding his way into Gibson Goode’s circle of love. Now here he was, back riding a hearse, not even driving it. Stuck between two cousins he used to know only as likely vessels for the downflow of family beatdowns.

“Feyd keeping track,” Bank said. “Everything I put in my mouth. Sometimes I see him writing that shit down. Boy is spying on my food.”

“Uncle Chan said put him on a diet, one donut a day,” Feyd said. “He said, uh, ‘Big bank,’ you do realize that’s just a figure of speech, right?’ ”

Walter laughed his scratchy laugh, Ernie from
Sesame Street
, working something loose at the back of his throat. Feyd took out his pocket vaporizer. He and Walter were well and fully vaped, deep into a fresh, veiny hank of Vineland County kush bought with Feyd’s auntie’s glaucoma prescription. Bank did not imbibe. Didn’t drink or eat swine, either. Seventy-five percent of the way to a five-percenter and thus enjoined to respect his elders, try not to violate Uncle Chan’s rules, which definitely included No Partying in the Funeral Vehicles. Also, No Profane Music, and here they were with Ghostface Killah playing on the CD, softly but the music so soaked in the world’s profanity that it bled like a saturated bandage.

“Shit,” Bank said. “You just a damn food spy.”

They watched white nerd watching black nerd ingest the bear claw, an alien feeding in a horror movie, even its teeth had teeth. White nerd looking duly horrified. Then it was his turn to go into the shop, but when he came out, he was holding a pink box tied up with white string.

“Bringing somebody a present,” Bank observed.

“Oh, shit,” said Walter happily. “No. Oh, no. It’s her, here she come.”

Here came Candyfox Brown, whatever her name was in the movies, that highjacked, big-titty mature, muscling past the boys on her Preakness haunches. Walking right past them without a glance.

“Valletta Moore,” Walter said, praying it. Sounding like he was feeling sorry for her or for himself. “Damn.”

White nerd black nerd swung their heads to watch the tick-tock of her bodily clockwork as she made her way past them. The motion of the two heads, whup-whup, so uniform, so abject, like those dogs they used to feature at the station breaks on Channel 20, whipping around with their tongues hanging out whenever somebody off-screen waved a pork chop.

“Why she didn’t stop?” Walter said. “Seem like she don’t know them.”

“She know them,” Bankwell said. He put the car into drive and turned right at the intersection, away from the boys and the donut shop. “She being careful. She going to come back around in a second, long as she doesn’t see us sitting here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Around the block.”

Somebody had speculated that Valletta Moore and the man, Luther, were most likely geeked up on crack, that it was just a matter of finding whatever hole they crawled into. But they had eluded Uncle Chan for some time, and obviously, she, at least, was capable of taking basic precautions. Maybe she was not as far gone as rumor had it, or maybe chronically paranoid. In any case, a hearse was by no means the ideal surveillance vehicle. Usually, by the time Uncle Chan sent Bankwell and Feyd around in the Crown Vic, the point was not about concealment. If Batman wanted to observe the thug life of Gotham City, he would not dress up in black rubber and drive around in a Batmobile; he would send Alfred in some poot-butt Daihatsu. The Crown Victoria was intended to make a Batmobile statement, a message of intent. But Uncle Chan, up against it, woke this morning willing to take his chances.

“There she is,” Walter said when they had circled around Fifteenth Street and Broadway. Two blocks down the street, Valletta Moore was opening the passenger door of an old, tired muscle car, looked like a Toronado, mottled gray and beige, streaked with green, like a slice of Oscar Mayer bologna after two months in the refrigerator. Titus and the other one fell into the backseat, then Cleopatra Clark or whoever got in and eased the door shut.

“Go,” Walter said, watching them pull away from the curb.

“You see I still got a red,” Bankwell said. “You want me to get a ticket? Police pull me over, how we going to follow them then?”

Bankwell was not afraid of Prince Walter.

When the light turned green, the Toronado was far enough ahead to be tailed with ease and discretion. Bank had himself ready, to tell the truth was hoping, to see the Oldsmobile put some evasive maneuvers into play, a Jim Rockford fishtail, something, but the driver of the Toronado, likely the very man they were supposed to be locating, made no efforts in that line. Right turn on Telegraph, up to MacArthur, then into the parking lot of a motel, the Selwyn, one of a number of fine establishments along the boulevard, looked like it catered to a select clientele of crankheads, day-raters, and the insects who loved them. The office was an A-frame, the motel a two-decker box, with a covered drive-through between them that the Toronado just managed to thread.

“Parking lot must be in the back,” Walter said. He settled between his cousins as if they were a couple of pillows and it was nap time for the little baby prince. “Go on, then.”

“What about you?” Bank said. “You coming, too, right?”

“Huh? I’m supposed to stay here.”

“What?”

“Monitor the situation.”

Bank stood there with the door open, patient. A man with time to burn. Presently, shaking his head at the low state to which he had fallen, Prince Walter got out of the car. “You strapped?” he said as they crossed the boulevard. Bank did not bother to dignify the question with a response.

In the front parking lot, there were three cars, a Band-Aid-tan VW square-back, a Jeep, an ancient B210. A housekeeping cart had the upper walkway all to itself. There was nobody in the office A-frame they could see. Two security cameras on light poles, but whatever. They were here only to pay a visit.

As Prince Walter had guessed, the covered area led to a smaller parking area behind the motel, gravel, subservient to a row of Dumpsters. The Toronado was tucked into a spot between the trash bins and the high stucco wall that kept the motel quarantined from the house behind it. The backside of the motel was blank stucco and frosted windows, a face that was minding its own business. On the ground floor beside the gas meters, a fire door warned that it must be kept unlocked at all times.

“I’m a wait here,” Walter said. “Case they see you coming, try to run out the back.”

It sounded cowardly, but it made sense, and some allowance needed to be made for Prince Walter’s likely uselessness in the event of trouble. Bank hiked up the left leg of his suit pants to take his little Beretta Bobcat out of the holster that was Velcroed to his ankle.

“Here you go,” he said, handing it over to Walter, who took it without bothering to hide his reluctance. “Remember to shoot at the horses’ legs.”

Prince Walter nodded solemnly before he caught what Bank had said. Scowled. As they went through the fire door, Bankwell was obliged to tell Feyd to shut up, man, quit laughing. They found themselves in a harsh-lit room, lollipop smell of laundry, a couple of coin-op washers and dryers. Something like a pair of sneakers was turning one of the dryers into a tom-tom. Purple tumbleweeds of lint rolled scattering as they passed through another door into a dim hallway, past an ice machine, and outside, under the second-floor walkway, right next to room 112. Aimless little flies hovered in the cool of the stairwell like the dots on a lacy funeral veil.

“You check out down here, I’ll go up,” Bank said. He had a feeling they would be on two.

It was not that he looked forward to trouble or violence. But he felt that it was better to rush up on it than to let it rush up on you. He rang his way up the steel stairs and was about to step onto the landing when somebody stuck out a leg. He fell hard. A lightbulb broke on his head. The stairway was a gong, resounding. While Bank was falling, though, he reached out to take instinctive hold of someone who turned out to be Titus. Shortie fell down beside him.

There was blood in Bankwell’s mouth, possibly a loose tooth.

“Motherfucker!” he said. Scrape against the concrete of the soles of his loafers as he reared up on his legs, flapping his necktie, flapping the tails of his jacket. Without intending to, he stepped on Titus’s stomach, and ho, shit, here came the bear claw, acrid brown slush in a jet. Bank jumped back, lost his footing, and then was attacked by a swordsman.

“Ya!” said the boy with the bunnies in his wallet. “Hi
ya
!”

The first blow glanced off Bank’s right arm, just above the elbow, but the second caught him square on the back of the head. It was a practice katana, see them racked in a dojo, solid wood. Coming after Bank’s interaction with the concrete landing, the blow to his head did no favors to the clarity of his thought process. Luckily, he was armed with a fully licensed Sig Sauer .38 that he was more than qualified to use. Thinking was not required.

He stuck the gun in the face of little, what was it, Julie. Julie Jaffe. Five feet five inches of redhead Mr. Peabody samurai fury. Bank could not help smiling. “Check this out,” he said to Feyd when his cousin came running up the steps. “Check out little white-boy Zatoichi.”

Mr. Peabody lowered the sword, possibly because he now had two guns pointing at him and a sword made out of wood. But it looked more to Bank like amazement than surrender. More like Bank had guessed his secret identity. Bank twisted the sword free of the boy’s grip.

“Zatoichi!” Feyd said. “That’s good, I could use me a massage.”

Feyd looked down at Titus, saw what had become of the bear claw, wrinkled up his face.

“Look at you, bitch,” he said to Titus, who rose dripping to his feet, boy full of hateful thoughts he sent out his eyeballs toward Bankwell Flowers III. “What the fuck you do to yourself?”

“It’s okay. Okay, come on. Leave them alone.”

Bankwell turned to see Walter bringing up the rear of a short procession, the apex of a loose triangle whose remaining points were Valletta Moore and Luther Stallings with their hands up. Walter held the Beretta high and crooked, one-handed, in that movie style Uncle Chan abhorred.

“You found me,” Luther Stallings said, the old-school kung fu movie star, wiry and fit in a kimono, parachute shorts, pair of black cloth Bruce Lee slippers. Gray in his hair and chest fur, more lines on his face than Uncle Chan. “Put up the thumpers. Let me get my clothes on. Go on home, boys. I’ll be fine.”