Underbelly (10 page)

She sat in the car again, closing the door. It creaked. Several drivers slowed to rubberneck then went around them in the street. “There's no need for that.”

“Aren't you going to get your mouthpiece on the phone? I want to talk to him,” Magrady said authoritatively. He hedged this behavior would have her backing down.

“He's okay, right?” the young woman asked.

“I'm not saying that,” Magrady answered.

“I'm asking him,” she retorted irritably.

“I can make it,” Chambers said.

She started the Mustang. “So let's just call it even.” Putting it into gear, the vehicle slowly crept forward as the onlookers watched her go.

“I've got her license number,” one of the good citizens shouted. She looked to be the same age as the driver, but tanned, wearing a short T that exposed her taut belly and the jewel stud in her navel. She stepped forward and handed Magrady the information on the back of a crumpled receipt. He thanked her and she displayed very even teeth. She was cute. Magrady got back on task.

Mustang Sally took all this in but continued going. She got to the corner and then turned east into the afternoon flow.

“I'll make sure he gets home okay.” Magrady said and half-waved to the concerned.

“I can take him to a doctor,” the nice tanned lady said. “He might have internal injuries or who knows what.”

Magrady squeezed Chambers' shoulder blade, grinning.

“Thank you, but I'm fine. It's okay.” Chambers got the message. Doubtless too he didn't want to be hung up at some emergency room or clinic for several hours. He and his lowlife buddies were hunting in the tall grass, Magrady reasoned, and he intended to find out what kind of game they were after.

“Now I'm going to wheel your ass over here,” Magrady was close to his friend's ear, pushing him at a normal speed across the side street, away from the bear patrol.

Chambers licked his lower lip. “How come you're all up in this, Magrady?”

“Why'd you try to vamp on Angie?'

“It's not like that, man. She's been straight with me. I just wanted—” but he didn't finish.

They got to the curb and Magrady turned the chair around and cocked it back to pull the wheelchair up and onto the grass strip of the sidewalk. Behind him was a row of grey and white apartment buildings.

“Then why are you and Boo Boo making like Starsky and Hutch?”

“I had no choice.”

The two moved further into the residential section. “You need to let me know what the hell's going on, Floyd.” They went along some. “This has something to do with your sister, doesn't it?”

Chambers looked off to one side. “You talked to her?”

“No. But I know she works for that division of SubbaKhan.”

“What else do you know?”

“That my sorry self has a possible murder beef hanging over me.”

“They can't make it stick. You know that.”

Magrady said, “I know that Stover will be giving it the ol' college try.” He stopped pushing him and coming around in front, clamped his hands on both of Chambers' shoulders, leaning into him. “What the hell are you up to, Floyd? You know me, I don't give a fuck what kind of scam you're setting up or trying to run.” He let go of him. “But you ain't gonna make me your goat. You got me involved in this shit when you used me to go up against Savoirfaire then all of a sudden he winds up dead.”

“You sayin' I did that?”

“I'm saying that's a mighty funny coincidence.”

Chambers worked his wheels back and forth, his face downcast. “It's not like I don't think you're down, Magrady. But this, this could be big.”

“Big how?”

He smiled, his eyes lit up like he was faded on weed. “The rainbow, baby.”

Magrady was tired of this bullshit. “I've got your magnet card and the cassette tape, Floyd.”

That deflated his balloon. “I need that tape, Em. I guess you haven't played it yet, huh?”

“What if I burn it?”

Chambers held up a hand. “We can work something out.”

“What's the play, Floyd?”

For a moment it seemed he might try to bolt again. Instead, he took in a deep breath. The two had stopped partially up the incline of a rising street, the kind where the garages were set below the house and cut into the hillside. He motioned with his hands. “It's, you know, it's what they dug up.”

“Like lost treasure?” Magrady almost laughed.

His friend nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

Now he did laugh. “Come on, Floyd. You're after Blackbeard's treasure chest?”

“The item was dug up at the Emerald Shoals. Only they didn't know what they had. Not exactly.”

A tickle feathered Magrady's spine. “But your sister found out what this was and she told you?”

Chambers shook his head. “It's wild, Magrady, wild as sin.”

“The hell, Floyd? What are you going on about?”

Chambers adopted a cagey look. “I've already said too much.”

“Uh-huh. So what's this have to do with Savoirfaire getting iced?”

The disabled man hunched his shoulders. “I figured that was Boo Boo's and Elmore's doing. But now I don't know for sure.” He frowned.

The two were moving along the residential street, fine particles of ash dusted the parked cars and trees. Magrady sniffed the air but detected no burnt smell and wondered what had produced the residue. Was there a fire somewhere or was this some kind of sign portending coming events? The image of the young man reading the Philip K. Dick novel on the bus floated through his head. This caused him to softly panic, imagining he was really some sort of character wrought from Dick's meth-addled mind. That he merely dreamed he was real while trapped in a time loop forever doomed to repeat this futile search over and over again, while not gaining any insight whatsoever in any of his incarnations.

Magrady asked, “Then why'd you go all subterranean?”

Chambers steadily pumped the wheels of his chair, his hands fluid and seamless in their repetitive motion. “I figured those two were moving in on his territory and would be taking over Savoirfaire's book.” He glanced up. “I know you see yourself as six ways to bad, Em, but those two are money crazy.”

The explanation sounded plausible but Magrady knew his friend was holding back. Savoirfaire had attacked him with a hook knife, and if that wasn't a demonstration he was as homicide happy as the Wonder Twins, then what did? But he played along by saying, “And what made it different when our boy Boo found you? And by the way, where have you been keeping yourself?”

They'd come to a corner and reflexively, both turned north toward Wilshire again. “I got associates all over town, man,” Chambers joked. “Maybe I was laying up with the even finer cousin of Eva Mendes 'cause she likes to get her freak on with a dead leg'd man.” He leaned back and did a 360-degree donut, laughing.

Dryly Magrady said, “Anything you say, Floyd.”

“Friend of a friend, okay?”

“How'd butthead find you?”

Chambers grinned. “I guess I need to enlarge my circle.”

Magrady grabbed the wheelchair's handles, causing Chambers' gloved hands to skid on his wheels' high impact rubber. “Answers, Floyd. Stop fucking around. Or I dump you out here and take this thing with me.” He shook the wheelchair, gritting his teeth. They were in the middle of the block leading back to the main thoroughfare.

Chambers stared at his angry friend, deciding if the other man was bullshitting or not. He took in an audible breath. “I was staying at a few places where I could beg a night, even had to sleep out at the beach a couple of nights.” He did a quick head jerk to the west.

“Not only is it nasty when you're stuck in a chair, but you don't know what fool that's off his meds is sneaking around out there up to devilment. Wound up in a kind of shelter near there, Santa Monica I mean. It's actually just some rooms above that church run by that lefty pastor that has those meetings out there. Met him through Janis.”

“I know who you mean,” Magrady said, “Reverend Conn.”

“That's where that sadistic mufu Boo found me. Seems him and his crime partner put the promise of product as reward on the street, and you know them crackheads would sell their mama's left titty for some rock.” The two reached Wilshire. “One of them sported me and dimed me out. Next thing I knew homeboy showed up demanding the money I owed Savoirfaire.” He gestured feebly with his hands. “I tried to tell him you cleared that up but he wasn't having it.”

“So you were gonna have him knock Angie in the head, man?”

Chambers evidenced a pained expression. “I ain't that low, Magrady.”

“Then what was the deal?”

“I was buying time. He was gonna hang back like you saw and I'd get the mag card from her.”

“What did Boo Boo think you were going to take him to? This mysterious windfall you keep hinting at?”

Chambers rolled on thoughtfully then, “I had to do something, man, you know how he gets. I told him there was cash that I could get by using the card.” Continuing along he added, “But I made sure not to say shit to him about the cassette tape and what it, well,” he paused, not wishing to say more, “what it was.”

“Even homeboy can't be so gone on his chronic that he believed that a big company like SubbaKhan kept money lying around.” Magrady decided to keep Chambers focused on the procedural stuff rather than press him on what this grail of his was. He hoped to angle back to the mysterious prize at some point once he got his friend talking.

“He didn't know what kind of door the card opened. I convinced him my sister worked at a finance operation of SubbaKhan. So, you know, he just assumed there'd be money in a strong box or something.”

They'd halted on Wilshire, near the busy intersection of Westwood Boulevard. A group of young women walked by, one in tight sweatpants with “Juicy” in pink Gothic letters arched over her bouncy butt. Two of them had ear buds in leading to their iPods they thumbed selections on, and simultaneously maintained a conversation with the others. He found it hard to believe that Boo and Elmore had chased Chambers all over town just to shake him down for what? A few hundred dollars at the most? Sure those two were swap meet special gangstas, but were they that hard up?

Magrady asked, “What did you mean that you don't think they killed Savoirfaire?”

Chambers squinted up at him. “Your good buddy Boo was talkin' too much like he does and was saying to Elmore he figured you for Savoirfaire's killer. Yeah, they took advantage of a good situation from their viewpoint, but it sounded like they were as surprised as anyone else when he got done in.”

Magrady considered this and said, “We gotta come to an understanding, Floyd.”

The paraplegic rolled his chair a few feet forward then back, his version of pacing. “You give me the tape back and I tell you about what was dug up.”

“That's about right.”

“I'll have to get back to you on that, Em.”

“I guess that means you'll talk this over with your sister.”

Chambers nodded.

Magrady had already calculated that it didn't seem like it had been cash or jewels from some long ago robbery that had been recovered, as even a child would know such was valuable and would not have turned the swag over to anyone else. He assumed it was a construction worker on the Emerald Shoals project who initially unearthed this thing. Too, the dingus may not have been in the brother's and sister's possession from the way Chambers was acting. Or it had been but wasn't now. The tape was possibly some clue to getting it back? And from whom? This detective business could make a man weary, he sighed inwardly.

“I don't hear from you in two days, Floyd, then maybe I have to make other arrangements.”

Chambers' muscular upper body stiffened. “Jesus, Magrady, why you got to be such a stiff prick about this?”

He pointed at him. “Because you're playing me and the Sunshine Boys for chumps, Floyd. Now them that's fine, but we've been through some shit. I don't deserve this.” He was surprised at the emotion in his words.

Chambers held up a hand. “Look, man. Just let me talk to sis and we'll get straight on this. Just don't mess up that tape.”

“You better get back to me.”

“Where can I catch you?”

Magrady told him to leave a message at the Urban Advocacy offices. Chambers rolled west and Magrady walked east. He found a pristine pay phone—figures on this side of town he reflected—and made a call to Gordon Walters, the mouthpiece assigned to his case at Legal Resources and Services of Greater Los Angeles.

“Yo, Gordy,” he said after amenities, “you know any
particulars about how Savoirfaire was killed, aside from him getting his head beat in?”

“Not that I can recollect, but let me go through my notes. The deputy D.A. on this case is not fast-tracking this, which can be good. But that also might mean they're looking to gather enough to make the charge stick against you. Anyway, why all of a sudden you have such a keen interest in this? When Janis and I bailed you out, you certainly didn't seem to give a damn,” he said in his evenly modulated tone. As long as Magrady had known the man, he could count on one hand when he'd heard him raise his voice. Nonetheless, he was forceful and compelling when he needed to be before a jury.

“It means something to me now. Do you know if there was, what do the cops call it, signs of a forced entry?”

“No, not that I remember. Seems Mr. Savoirfaire believed in his security. He had bars on his windows and subscribed to an alarm service. Whoever did the deed had been invited in, as I understand from my initial round of give and take with Stover. That's why he liked you for the deed, as he assumed you and the late street entrepreneur had business together.”