Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (48 page)

So Gordon found himself driving for the first time in his life. Jimmy and Skip sat in the cab with him, peppering him with instructions. Hideous’ truck had an automatic transmission, so there wasn’t much to it, actually. Gordon was a bit nervous at first, but after he got the truck up to speed he started to enjoy the sensation of being in the driver’s seat, piloting a large vehicle along an endless stretch of asphalt. Few other cars or trucks shared the road with them. Jimmy tuned in Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” on a distant radio station and turned it up. They were just cruising along feeling euphoric. The whole world seemed a place of infinite goodness. But then, as they approached the junction where Highway 168 turned into North Academy Road, a shiny red eighteen-wheeler blasted its air horn as it was passing them on the left. The sudden noise in the turbulent wake of the mighty truck’s passage so shocked Gordon that he dropped into an instant narcoleptic paralysis. Jimmy and Skip–lulled by pot and the long miles Gordon had already driven without incident–didn’t realize what had happened until Hideous’ truck drifted off the road, bounced over a small ditch, and then started heading toward the open-air Mexican garden statue market set up in a gravel field to the left of where the two roads met.

Hideous’ truck was still traveling at about thirty miles an hour when it hit the first plaster gnome. Jimmy had tried wresting the steering wheel from Gordon’s sleepy grip, but by then it was too late. They plowed over the bearded gnome in his hooded red parka, sending him clattering beneath the truck’s transmission, where he shattered to pieces. Then the truck’s chrome push-guard knocked over a four-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus. The baby Jesus flew out of Mary’s arms on impact. Hideous’ B.F. Goodrich All-Terrain Radials rolled right over him, crunching Jesus’ plaster skull like an egg. After that it was a massacre: froggy flower vendors, donkeys half-asleep under yellow sombreros, turtles wearing tiny black top hats, a sultry Nereid being pulled in a white sleigh by twin sea horses, St. Francis with teensy bluebirds on his shoulders–all were crushed, decimated, left in shards and ruins.

The truck didn’t come to a complete stop until it bounced against a chain-link fence hung with half-a-dozen zebra skin rugs and some choice black velvet paintings. A six-foot tall portrait of a blue-eyed Siberian Tiger shook loose from the fence during the bounce and fell face down in the dirt. At that point the two Mexican brothers who owned and operated the market were running toward the truck shouting South-of-the-Border obscenities. They were big men in dusty rolled up jeans and wife-beater T-shirts. Their deeply tanned arms were ropy with muscles and dotted with prison tattoos: crude bluish-green spiders and swastikas and an Eye of Fatima dripping tears. “Oh shit…” Skip said, as he got out of the truck to greet them. While Hideous and D.H. cowered in back, Jimmy climbed on top of still-comatose Gordon and prepared to put the truck into reverse.

“
¡Pendejos!
You run over Baby Jesus!” said the first brother.

“We will kill you with death!” said the other brother. “You ruin our business!”

“¡Mira!”
said the first brother, picking up the painting of the Siberian Tiger and leaning it against the fence. “A great master of Mexico paint this masterpiece, but now, who will buy it? It is ruined!”

“It’s just a little dusty,” said Skip, inspecting the painting. “Couldn’t you, like, vacuum it off or something?”

“
¡Ay, cabrón!
He says to use the vacuum cleaner! On so great a masterpiece as this!
¡Pinche gringo!
You know nothing of art!”

“Look, I can see it’s
muy fabuloso
,” said Skip, “but if you just brush off those little dirt clods, I’m sure it’ll be fine. As for the statues we busted up–well, let’s work out a deal. We’ll pay you for ‘em, I guess.”

But the brothers would not be so easily consoled. They demanded two thousand dollars for the Siberian Tiger painting and when Skip said that seemed a bit excessive, they both pulled out switchblades. Meanwhile, Jimmy had thrown the truck into reverse with a loud ringing clank, but Gordon’s tangled feet got in the way of the accelerator and the engine stalled. One of the brothers leapt to the driver’s side window and put his blade next to Jimmy’s throat.

“
¡No me jodas!
You think you can just drive away,
maricón?”

And that was where things stood when Johnny Hoss walked up.

“We got us a problem here,
amigos?”

The two brothers turned. Johnny Hoss stood before them wearing steel-toed work boots, dark blue jeans, and a plaid flannel shirt stretched tight across his muscular gut. His knuckles cracked inside brown leather driving gloves as he clenched his hands into fists. In an instant, the brothers knew he could take them both, knives or no knives–it didn’t make a difference.

Johnny’s shiny red Freightliner stood by the side of the highway about a hundred yards to the north. It was his air horn that blew when he passed Hideous’ truck and recognized Gordon behind the wheel. Three years ago, Gordon’s Uncle Gerald had fired Johnny without any explanation while Gordon was away camping after his father’s funeral. Johnny soon found work as a long-haul trucker. He stopped by to say hello to Gordon and the rest of the lumberyard crew every few months, but Gordon missed their day-to-day contact. Somehow, they’d never gotten around to discussing the topic of narcolepsy.

“These boys, they kill Baby Jesus!” the brother holding the knife under Jimmy’s chin said with great vehemence.

“I’m sure they didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Johnny responded, pushing the brother aside to open the door of Hideous’ truck. He found Gordon slumped across the front seat, struggling for air under the weight of Jimmy, who was sitting on his chest. Johnny helped Gordon sit up.

“Oh, hi, Johnny…” Gordon wheezed, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to see his old friend standing amid a heap of demolished garden statues with two menacing Mexicans behind him brandishing switchblades.

“Who will pay for all this shit and disaster?” one of the Mexican brothers asked.

Johnny turned to them and took out his wallet. “I’ll give y’all fifty bucks,” he said. “I’m sure all this crap cost a lot less when you bought it down in Tijuana.”

“This is a terrible insult! Are we but donkeys? What of our travel expense?”

“Take it or leave it,
muchachos
.”

The Mexican brothers put away their switchblades and took the money. Then they stood around grumbling and kicking gravel until Johnny told them to
vamanos
. As they shuffled away, Gordon promised to pay Johnny back, but Johnny said not to worry about it–he was making good money now. They talked for a while about narcolepsy and the loneliness of being a long-haul trucker. At some point during that conversation, Hideous climbed out of the pick-up bed and announced that he felt sober enough to drive again. Johnny helped them get the truck back out on the road, making sure the Mexican brothers didn’t come after them for more money. Hideous gave him a ride back to the Freightliner. As Johnny climbed up the chrome ladder bolted to the side of the gleaming red cab, he gave them a cheery wave and shouted a parting word of advice:

“Remember, guys, there’s always a bigger dog.”

“
There’s always a bigger dog….”
Lloyd mulls that one over. “
Hmmph!
That reminds me of some advice my paternal grandfather gave me when I was about your age.” Lloyd pauses long enough to make eye contact with D.H., Jimmy, and Gordon as Iggy Pop croons the words to “Sea of Love” from the stereo behind them. “I was always tongue-tied around pretty girls. Then one day the old man sat me down and said, ‘Just keep this in mind, young Lloyd: for every beautiful woman, there’s a man somewhere who’s getting tired of her.’”

“Wow, that is
deep
ly cynical,” says Gordon, who’s decided he doesn’t like Lloyd, although he doesn’t understand
why
just yet. “Did it help?”

“Well, at first I fell victim to your man’s ‘Bigger Dog’ conundrum. I thought to myself,
‘Sure, a man may be getting tired of her, but that man probably has more money and a bigger penis than I myself.’
So I still felt nervous! But then, lucky for me, I grew up to be filthy rich and hung like a damn donkey, so now I can bed any woman I want.”

“Like a donkey, you say?” asks D.H., still affecting a clinical demeanor.

“Yes. One young lady rather picturesquely described my male endowment as ‘Sixteen Inches of Dangling Death.’”

“Is that in dog inches?” Jimmy jokes. D.H. and Gordon try not to laugh.

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent,” Lloyd says archly. “By the way, who puked in my Tang Dynasty vase?”

“Um, that’d be me,” Jimmy owns up

“What were you eating–linguini?”

“Top Ramen noodles, Cap’n Crunch… but mostly just a whole lot of beer and rum.”

“Keep carrying on like that, and the odds are incredibly good that at least one of you will die before you reach the age of twenty-one. In fact,” Lloyd says, “I’d bet money on it. Your little group should form a limited liability company. Then you could take out life insurance policies on each other and make them payable to the company–so when one of you dies, the others can divvy up the death benefits.”

“Sounds cool,” Jimmy says.

“With death benefits of, say, half-a-million each, the monthly premiums would hardly amount to anything, seeing as you’re all so young. I’d even cover the payments myself, if you cut me in on the deal.”

“But who would insure us?” D.H. asks. “Wouldn’t it be bad for your company if you’re so sure one of us will be cashing in early?”

“I’ve already considered that. There’s a new insurance agent from Fresno who’s been horning in on my territory. A man named Petrossian. That benighted prick deserves your business. Are you men up for a little paperwork?”

“I guess…” says Gordon, “but won’t we need a lawyer first?” He’s growing increasingly suspicious.

“Fuck it,” Lloyd says. “My guys’ll handle it for you.”

“All right!” shouts Jimmy.

“And now, young James, why don’t you take my highly-valuable twelve-hundred-year-old vase and go wash it out in the kitchen sink.”

While Jimmy goes off to scrub the barf out of Lloyd’s vase, Gordon mentions that his grandfather used to be in Lloyd’s business.

“Insurance is one of the most lucrative professions in the world,” Lloyd says proudly. “Your grandfather would have been able to attest to that. I’ve heard he was one of the greats.”

Insurance is all about statistical probabilities, like gambling, Lloyd explains–but the odds are stacked in favor of insurers in a way that Las Vegas casino operators can only envy. Insurers prey on people’s fears, selling them a product they hope they’ll never have to use. The sum of the premiums paid on the vast majority of policies, over the years, far exceeds the value of the claims made against them. “And those claims are often disputed,” Lloyd confides with a wink.

D.H. quotes Tom Waits: “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.”

“Exactly!” says Lloyd. “Look: I provide people a service by allowing them to hedge their risk against unmitigated disasters. But there’s no reason I have to make it easy for them. If they enter into an agreement without scrutinizing it, then why shouldn’t I take advantage of their negligence? Sometimes the sheer amount of paperwork I throw at people will cause them to give up in disgust and walk away from perfectly valid claims.”

“Don’t you feel guilty, taking advantage of people like that?” asks Gordon.

“Guilty? It’s the American way! This country was
founded
on the principle of taking advantage of other people. Look at what we did to the Native Americans–not only did we steal their land; we subjected them to the most brutal campaign of genocide in human history. America is one big Indian burial ground, when you get right down to it. And then we kick-started our mighty economic engine by exploiting African slaves. If you think anyone ever gets rich without taking advantage of other people, you’re just being willfully naïve. ‘Behind every fortune lies a crime.’ I believe it was Balzac who said that–or Mario Puzo…. If it’s not written into our Constitution, it’s somewhere in
The Godfather
, I’m almost certain.”

“So the Rockefellers, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan… all those guys were criminals?”

“Absolutely, along with a whole raft of others. They’d include Joseph Kennedy–a known bootlegger–and our current Vice President’s father, Prescott Bush, who was cited in 1942 for trafficking with the Nazis under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Don’t they teach an honest version of U.S. history at your school?”

“They hardly teach us anything,” Gordon admits. “If it was up to our right-wing high school principal, we wouldn’t even be allowed to read Mark Twain.”

Lloyd sets his fleshy lips in an academic scowl and sets about enlightening them. “The Rockefellers made their fortune by ruthlessly eliminating their competitors, creating a monopoly that controlled ninety-five percent of all the oil produced in America around the turn of the century. They held onto that fortune by routinely violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and opposing unions. Striking workers were actually shot dead–forty of them in Colorado alone during the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. As criminal activities go, how’s that?”

“Not bad,” Gordon admits. “I don’t suppose anyone went to jail for it.”

“Quite the contrary…. The Rockefellers remain one of the most powerful families in America. David Rockefeller likely wields more influence over global politics, through the Council on Foreign Relations, than even President Reagan. And his brother Nelson, with his misguided drug laws, is responsible for putting more people behind bars than anyone since Stalin–the vast majority of them blacks and Latinos.”

“That’s fucking insane…” D.H. says.

“It’s nothing compared to the infernal schemes going on behind the curtain of international banking,” Lloyd says. “That’s where the real money is–where they print it. And the Rockefellers are just the tip of the iceberg.” He catches Gordon rolling his eyes. “Trust me on this,” Lloyd tells him. “I’m a high-ranking Scottish Freemason and a graduate of the London School of Economics. Mick Jagger was a fellow classmate.”