The Bones (37 page)

The walls of the office are covered in Civil War memorabilia and several sepia-tinted photographs of black soldiers. A large
sword hangs on one wall above the set of golf clubs from which Otis has removed the putter. Otis presses the button on a tape
recorder, then lines up a putt, aiming at a tennis-ball can lying on its side. Frank continues to stand while Lloyd sits silently
on the couch, scribbling away in a leather notepad, enjoying his new status as accredited observer.

"Let's get the fat out the way," Otis says. "They pulled your fingerprints off the rental car."

"That's the fat?" Frank asks.

"No biggie. Drivin' without a license. But here comes the gristle. The results of the ballistics test are in. The gun they
found in the glove compartment was the one killed Tino." This is a nuclear detonation. Frank takes the news stoically, the
inner beast quiescent, exhausted, but Lloyd has to keep from making involuntary noises. Not only has he found himself in the
middle of a murder investigation, now he is privy to its internal workings. Frank is on the receiving end of some deeply unpleasant
news and Lloyd is observing his reaction from a privileged perch. How will he describe the unfortunate comedian's response?
Indifferent? Apathetic? And Otis's manner in delivering the body blow: matter-of-fact? Casual? Cavalier? His luck is a thrilling
gift.

"You know they planted it. Christ!" Frank slumps on Otis's desk.

"You play golf?" Otis asks. Casually? Cavalierly?

"No," Frank says. Lloyd resists the urge to say "I do."

"See that sword on the wall?" Otis asks. "Belonged to my great-great-granddaddy. Used it in the Civil War. I laugh when I
think of him watching me play golf. Stupid game, chasing a little ball all over a goddamn cow pasture. Good for the image,
though. I get my picture in the paper playing golf, I double my price, no one asks why. People say, 'Otis Cain, the famous
golf-playing attorney. He's worth the money.' I'd try polo but I don't want anyone seein' me step in horseshit."

Lloyd nearly laughs out loud, struggling to get down all of Otis's words.

"They didn't find your fingerprints on it," Otis continues.

"Why would the cops want to plant a gun?" Lloyd asks, having wrestled his urge to laugh into submission.

Ignoring the question for the moment, Otis hands Frank the putter. "Try it. After I get you off, we'll play in one of those
celebrity pro-ams." Then in the voice of a golf announcer, he says, "Now on the fourth green, Frank Bones and Otis Cain."

Frank, to diffuse the tension that has begun to work its way from his neck to his shoulders, lines up a putt. He hits the
ball and misses the tennis-ball can by a foot. "Why would they plant the gun?" Frank asks, repeating Lloyd's question.

"You're a perfect patsy. Passing through town, witnesses see you have a fight . . . and baby, you got some resume. Menacing
in Cleveland, resisting arrest and the high-speed chase in Cali . . . Frank, you had a band called Killer Bones and none of
that's gonna help."

"It's not like my whole life's been leading up to this moment."

"But it has," Otis tells him. "It has. So you might want to watch your back, 'cause whoever it was smoked Tino . . ."

"What do you mean 'watch my back'?"

"If you get killed while you're under indictment for murder . . . case closed."

Lloyd can't believe he isn't watching a television show.

"What should I do?" Frank asks.

"Lloyd, don't write down what I'm about to say. If I see it in print, I'll kill you in your sleep." When Lloyd nods in assent,
Otis says to Frank, "As your attorney, I'd advise you to buy a gun. Oh, and, Frank, do you have a will?"

"No."

Otis slides a document across his desk toward Frank. "This gives me power of attorney in the event of your death."

Frank is more than a little shocked at both Otis's request and the intimation of his own mortality.

"I'm not signing anything."

"Look, Frank," Otis says patiently, "if we're gonna bring this thing to trial, I need you alive. I didn't get lucky with Wayman
and I don't want to be unlucky twice."

"Wayman? What do you mean, you didn't get lucky?"

"I was his lawyer. We grew up together. The police killed him."

Lloyd looks at the billboard across the street, REMEMBER WAYMAN. That answers his question.

"Why do you need power of attorney?" Frank asks.

"Have I talked price with you yet?"

"No."

"Well, what do you think? I'm the welfare office? I win with you alive and the publicity is going to be worth more than you
could ever pay me. You get killed . . . it's my insurance policy."

"So you would actually profit from my . . . ?"

"You don't trust me, Frank, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

Frank signs the document.

"Where are we going?" Lloyd asks from the passenger seat of his rented Cadillac, as Frank drives in light traffic on Highway
244 near the Tulsa State Fairgrounds.

"You got a police record, Lloyd?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"No history of mental illness or psychiatric confinement?"

"I had a crazy aunt in Queens. My mother's sister."

"But not you?"

"As far as mental health? Nothing obvious."

"Clean as a whistle?"

"Fresh as milk."

"You're buying a gun."

"Excuse me?"

"You're going to walk into a sporting goods store, buy a gun, and give it to me. I'll feel a lot safer."

"Frank," Lloyd says, choosing his words carefully, "I can't do that. You've got a couple of felony convictions . . . I could
get in very big trouble buying a gun and giving it to you."

Frank hits the brakes and pulls the car to the side of the road, cars shooting past. He stares at Lloyd for a moment before
saying, "Get outta the car."

"Bones, this is
my
car. The reason we're riding in it is you don't have one because you're not eligible to rent one because you've got a criminal
record."

"Babe, get outta the goddamn car."

"No."

"Fine. We'll sit here." Which they do for a few moments before Frank says, "Lloyd, you're never gonna be real because you
won't take risks. You can hang around with me, you can try to write about my world, but you'll never understand anything on
a bone level unless you learn to stick your neck out, pal." Frank gives Lloyd a moment to take this in, then continues, "You
don't like your life, right? I mean, you told me as much, and when Honey and I went out with the two of you I could see you
should have been with someone cooler. How long you married to her?"

"We're in double digits." He says it dully.

"I'm thinking about you that morning at Duke's with the fuckin' fabric samples. That's the life you want, okay. You're at
a fork here, man. You want to leave the suburbs behind and step out onto the highway? Now's the time."

Frank watches Lloyd's reaction and sees his expression darken slightly, indicating the armor has been pierced. Lloyd believes
what Frank reported to be true, but hearing it spoken aloud simply compounds the wound. "You're gonna be hanging around, right?
You heard what Otis said. Someone might want to take a pop at me and knock the case right off the docket. When that guy comes
looking, if I'm not packing, I'm dead, Lloyd. And those are usually take-no-prisoner situations, so you gonna make me draw
you a picture?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're dead, too."

Every so often a moment comes when a person is forced to make a decision so momentous it could affect him for the rest of
his life, stick to him like bad credit. Being asked to buy a gun for a man under indictment for murder fits neatly into this
category.

"What if I carried the gun?" Lloyd asks.

"What do you mean
you
carry the gun? Like a bodyguard?" Frank actually laughs out loud. "Babe, I want a bodyguard, I can hire one."

But Lloyd is undeterred. "For an all-access pass, I'll buy the gun. But I carry it."

"No dice. I saw you shoot. You couldn't hit the water from a boat."

"I told you I went back to the Gun Club and took a lesson. Don't worry about me," Lloyd says a bit rashly. "I can take care
of myself."

Frank waits in the car as Lloyd walks into Chet's Sporting Goods, a large barn of a place near the Oral Roberts University
campus in south Tulsa. After a tall Cherokee with a lazy eye does a background check that takes less than five minutes, Lloyd
returns to the car with a Beretta 9mm handgun. He settles back into the passenger seat feeling like an old-school gangsta
until Frank, who sees the gun jammed into his waistband, says, "Don't blow your dick off." Lloyd wants to say something clever
back to Frank, something to put the unlucky comic in his place, but remembers his last performance with a firearm while in
Frank's presence and decides it is perhaps best to keep quiet right now. So he smiles tightly.

As Frank pulls out of the parking lot, he answers his ringing cell phone. It's Otis saying, "I got great news."

"They dropped the indictment?" Frank asks, hope swelling his chest like oxygen.

"You're gonna be in
Rolling Stone!
They have a photographer passing through on another story, and they want her to shoot you, but she's on a very tight schedule
so you're gonna have to do it tomorrow."

"Rolling Stone?"

"I told you I was working on a few things."

Frank hangs up and turns to Lloyd, saying, "Give me the gun."

"I can't give you the gun, Frank."

"Babe, don't think I'm going to rely on you for protection."

"You don't have a choice," Lloyd says in the noirest tone he can manage, a vocal timbre meant to summon images of neon-lit
bars, smoke from a Lucky Strike, and several days gone without shaving.

"Did you remember to buy bullets?"

Five minutes later, Lloyd emerges from Chet's Sporting Goods again, this time fully supplied. He has told the clerk he is
protecting someone and then asks if the guy's heard of Frank Bones. The guy has heard of Frank.

The Trade Winds has been overrun by the College Christians, a group of boisterous, clean-cut kids in town for a convention
of like-minded youth. They are partying in large Caucasian numbers by the pool below Lloyd's second-story room. With their
innocent evening cries echoing in his ears, Lloyd, after recording the day's events in copious detail on his laptop and e-mailing
them to Tai Chi, with whom he had made arrangements to print and collate the material, stands in front of the mirror in his
room looking at his bad self in profile. He wears cream linen pants purchased the day of his shopping spree with the shiny-faced
Kevin, a dark blue T-shirt, and a loose-fitting, summer-weight sport coat whose billowing cottony folds perfectly conceal
the Beretta, which is resting comfortably in his newly purchased shoulder holster. On the desk next to Lloyd's open laptop
is an open bottle of Cuervo Gold from which Lloyd has been swigging.

The son of Estelle and Bernie, husband of Stacy and father of Dustin, denizen of Brentwood and the Lynx Network, ten-year
member of the Writers Guild of America West, tries out a series of facial expressions. First comes the silently sneering
Can I help you?
followed by a condescending
Sorry, but for a second I thought you wanted to fuck with me.
This is then replaced by the supremely confident
Keep walking,
accented by a slight upward tilt of the head indicating the direction in which the carbuncle should move if he doesn't want
Lloyd to unload a world of trouble upon him. Lloyd then reaches for the gun, rips it out of the holster, pivots, gripping
the handle with both hands, and imagines himself ending the miserable life of whatever poor bastard has been hassling him.
He finds it satisfying to hold a gun now, away from the judging eyes that beheld him on the range back in Los Angeles. The
piece comes out of the holster again and again as Lloyd repeats the movement, as if memorizing a dance step: dip, lift, pivot,
grip, point; dip, lift, pivot, grip, point. Lloyd could be back in L.A. now, standing on a soundstage addressing whether Jacy
Pingree's top reveals enough cleavage to keep Harvey Gornish tumescent, but instead he is here in Tulsa, learning to pull
a gun out of a shoulder holster and cogitating on how to describe the feeling some way other than
it's dead good.

Mercy spends the night in Frank's room at the Trade Winds, and over the course of making love four times to the ever-decreasing
background clamor of the cavorting College Christians, she tells Frank her life story, which goes like this: Her family were
Kentucky hill people who came to Oklahoma to work in the oil fields in the 1940s. Her mother, also named Mercy, was one of
twelve kids. Her father, a luckless petty criminal named Tom, married her mother because she was pregnant, although not by
him, and a judge gave him a choice of marriage or jail. When Frank asks her if she knew who her real father was, she glibly
says, "Some tickpicker named Marvin," and then loudly laughs in a way intended to convey she dealt with that shit a long time
ago.

Mother Mercy ditched her when she was three and headed down to Panama with the second of four husbands. When Frank asks her
whom she was left with, she tells him, simply, she was sold to a Tulsa couple, a preacher and his wife. Her new father had
a taste for pornography and read a lot of sex novels, which he would carelessly leave lying around the house. She liked to
read, and when there was nothing else around, she would pick them up and flip through them herself. This provided an unusual
educational environment for a prepubescent girl. One day, the local bookmobile was parked out front and Mercy hopped on. A
title caught her eye:
Of Human Bondage.
Believing it to be a sex novel, she picked it off the shelf, brought it home, and read it. She tells Frank the words of Somerset
Maugham changed her forever, and tonight Frank is falling in love with her and her crazy life. After the story they make love
one more time and Frank sleeps well for the first time in days.