Halfway House (21 page)

They drove up Sixth and stopped at a Chinese Restaurant that sold five dollar plates of noodles and General Tso’s chicken. He thought about what Annie had done for him. She didn’t seem to want anything in return. What did he care?

“Did she do this with you?”

“Me?” The gangbanger made a face. “Hell, no. She likes white boys.”

After dinner, they drove around for a few hours, keeping to the north side of San Pedro. Occasionally, Blockbuster would speak into his phone and spew rapid-fire Spanish when he saw a cop or a suspicious car, but otherwise he remained silent. Just after nine, Bobby got out by a hotel across from the cruise terminal and grabbed a cab. He gave the Sudanese cabbie a piece of paper on which Blockbuster had written down the address, then sat back and tried to relax.

The Angels had arranged a contact to get him into the party. With the help of Annie, he was dressed for it. But was he going to be able to pull it off?

A wave of depression washed over him. Who was he kidding? They were going to find him out the minute he opened his mouth. He wasn’t able to speak like they did on television. He was from the street. Worse, he was from the South. His accent made people think he was automatically stupid, as if smarter people talked differently. He remembered something Laurie had said, and as he remembered her, he smiled.

“That’s just crazy, Bobby.”

“I know. But it’s true. Because I speak Southern they think I'm stupid.”

“Like they have any room to talk. Ever hear a guy from New York speak? Or Boston? They sound as intelligent as Rocky Balboa.”

“I think he was from Philadelphia.”

“There, too! Maybe someone should remind them that five of the last seven presidents were from the South. We’re talking both Democrats and Republicans. If everyone thought they were stupid, then why were they elected?”

She’d always been willing to defend him.

But now she was dead.

The memory hit him in the face.

He lowered his eyes and blinked the images away. As he emptied his mind, he looked out the window of the cab at the lights of the cargo ships leaving the harbor. One of these days he might board one of those ships and sail around the earth for a while. Maybe then he’d find the place where mourning was an easy thing to do.

By the time he arrived, Bobby was lost in the memory of a Chicago train yard and being chased by Vice Lord bolos, running for his life along the tracks with only his backpack and baseball bat to his name. He’d never once looked back. Life with the Vice Lords wasn’t any life at all for him. It had been pure survival. Nothing more.

“We here.”

“What?”

The cabbie banged on the window, pointing toward an immense Tudor-style mansion that was lit up like a marquee. Palms and exotic plants were showered in their own oscillating individual lights. People came and went along a path illumined by recessed block lights. Security guards stood at the edge of the street and parked cars, while more stood at the door letting people inside.

“This is de place we go.”

Bobby jerked a twenty from his pocket and passed it through the metal slot. “Keep it,” he said.

He got out of the cab and pulled his gold sequined jacket tight. The onshore wind shot through him, making his teeth chatter. He trudged up the lane until he ran into three men parking cars. They wore black jackets with the words Silver Screen Security across their breasts. He didn’t know who they were, but they looked like offensive linemen. One was Hawaiian, another was black, and the third was Hispanic.

“What you want?”

“Either of you know Gabe?”

“I’m Gabe,” the Hawaiian said, his voice softer than expected.

Bobby tried to keep his voice low and still be heard over the wind. “Lucy sent me.”

“Lucy? Who’s this girl, Gabriel?” the black guard asked. “You been holding out on us?”

“It’s not like that, T,” Gabe murmured. “Anyway you got a car. Get back to work.”

Both Gabe and Bobby watched T open first the passenger door on a nearby Maserati, then the driver’s side door. The driver, a well-groomed Arab wearing white pants and a white tank top covered by a white jacket, handed the keys to T, took two steps, then turned. As he did, he saw all four hundred pounds of T get into his car and the 200,000 dollar automobile sink three inches on its suspension. As T sped down the street, sparks shot out from the undercarriage.

The Hispanic snickered and turned away. The Arab shook his head and snapped free a cell phone from his pants pocket. Bobby figured he was probably ordering a new Maserati.

A giant hand wrapped around Bobby’s arm.

“Listen now,” Gabe whispered. “I’m doing this as a favor, so don’t make me sorry I done it. Okay,
bra?
If you don’t behave like a good boy, I’ll come in there like your worst Kamehameha nightmare. You understand,
bra
?”

He nodded and the Hawaiian set him free. Bobby straightened and smoothed out the wrinkles left from the grip on his jacket. As he strode up the walk, he passed an ultra-thin, gorgeous blonde on the arm of a regular Joe. She was more than a little drunk, and the Joe was more than a little pissed.

“Why do you always have to drink everything in fucking sight?”

Instead of answering, she lolled her head to the side. Bobby caught her gaze and held it for a brief moment as they passed. He’d seen that kind of faraway look before. In the eyes of hobos across the campfire in the yards. In the eyes of his cellmate at Lawrenceville City Jail. In the eyes of his fellow orphans at the home. In the eyes of his friend Kanga as he dreamed of what it would have been like if he hadn’t run off to be a surfer superhero. All of them had shared the same backwards-looking gaze, as if they could see where things had been good, before whatever had happened to make everything so bad.
Why did she always drink? Maybe because she wants to forget where she is.

“Can I help you?”

A pair of security guards looked him up and down. One held his palm out, barring the way.

“I was invited by Mr. Shrewsbury,” Bobby managed to say.

The security guard glanced over his shoulder, then nodded. Suddenly both the guards’ demeanors changed as they stepped aside. One held open the door, saying, “Have a nice evening, sir.”

Bobby turned to see who it was behind him. Sure enough, the big Hawaiian stood there, giving a low
shaka
, his face a stern reminder to keep cool. Bobby turned back, promising himself that cool was where he’d reside, and stepped into the mansion.

The inside was like everything he’d imagined and like nothing he’d imagined. The marble entryway, the grand staircase to the second floor, the expensive porcelain and Picasso paintings on red-velvet wallpaper were things he’d expected to see. But in the middle of the entry hall, posed like two statues, were a man and a woman, their naked bodies painted in gold and locked in a sexual embrace.

No matter how metropolitan and worldly Bobby thought he was, he couldn’t keep from mouthing the words
what the fuck
as he followed the trail of limbs from the man’s feet to the woman’s chin and everything in between, each breast as perfect as if they’d been created by a master sculptor.

Realizing he was staring, Bobby moved further into the house. To the right was a study, filled with people sitting on chairs and couches and chatting. To the left was a living room where the main party was happening. People of all races and sexual orientation milled about, talking and touching each other.

He stepped that way and found a tuxedoed waiter presenting a tray of champagne glasses containing dark sparkly liquor. He downed a glass and handed it back to the man. Bobby took one step and felt his knees simultaneously buckle and his spine snap straight. He wobbled a second as his eyes bulged and blood raced through his heart. The burning liquor tasted like black licorice cough syrup but had the kick of a mule.

He returned it to the waiter who was beaming with pleasure. Evidently he’d had this reaction to the concoction before. But Bobby surprised him by taking another and sipping it. This time it went down easier...

“What is this?” he asked.

“It’s called a Jager Bomb, sir.” The man pronounced the
J
as a
Y
.

“Jager Bomb?”

“It’s a mixture of Jägermeister and Red Bull. All the young people are drinking it these days.”

I’m young and I’m people,
Bobby thought. He slung down the rest of the drink, replaced it on the tray and grabbed another one.
And if you aren’t careful, you’ll be a young drunk people,
he reminded himself. Bobby nodded to the waiter who moved on, seeking fresh prey.

Bobby sipped this one and skirted the edge of the party. He kept his eyes on the wall so he wouldn’t be drawn into any conversations and be forced to try his cover story. From waist-high to ceiling, the wall was plastered in pictures of a tall bald man with a goatee beside all sorts of men and women. In every picture, the man wore black boots, jeans and some sort of black shirt. Notably, none of the other people in the photos wore anything.

For some reason Bobby had forgotten that Shrewsbury was a porn director. How Verdina had hooked up with him was still in question. If it was for regular consenting adult movies, he had no problem, but if Bobby even once thought this was about more pedophiles, he’d find a way to go nuclear on them all.

So far, Bobby wasn’t getting that vibe from the home.

He moved on, stepping blithely through conversations about movies coming out, bestselling books people were reading and some fluffer who’d fallen in love with his fluffee and was being sued for sexual harassment.

Bobby turned a corner and found a woman falling into his arms. He managed to catch her without spilling either of their drinks. She flashed brown eyes at him, kissed him hard on the lips, then staggered past into the crowd. A man who’d been watching the whole thing grinned. Bobby couldn’t help but grin back.

He kept to the walls, looking for anything that might resemble his heirloom. He hoped it wasn’t upstairs. He didn’t want to be caught in a part of the house he wasn’t supposed to be in. The idea of Gabe tossing him into the street didn’t seem at all pleasant.

Above the buzz of the crowd, he heard a guitar riff from an old Colin Hayes song. By the unmistakable sound of a Peavey amplifier, it had to be live. He headed in that direction and found himself descending.

The basement was one immense room. The ceiling was low and covered with black baffles. The largely empty floor was covered by a dark blue carpet that reflected the wear of many parties. Cigarette burns pocked the carpet. White flecks from trash and other mysterious detritus lay scattered around. The walls were covered in rock and roll memorabilia. Posters from concerts, pictures of artists, and more than a few gold and platinum records lined the room.

At the far end on a raised lighted platform, half a dozen people stood around a guitarist as he spun rifts up and down the frets. Two were women whose most stunning quality was their complete and utter olive-skinned nakedness. One held a drink on a tray. The other held an ashtray on a tray. Both were dark haired Asians, petite except for ample breasts.

The man on the stage playing the guitar had to be Shrewsbury. Bobby recognized him from the pictures he’d taken with the porn stars, and like in the pictures, he wore black cowboy boots, blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the words
The Rising
emblazoned across his chest. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open in selfless concentration.

Bobby turned away. The last thing he needed was for the owner of the house to open his eyes and not recognize Bobby. He’d check the basement later when the coast was a little clearer.

He was about to climb the stairs when a picture caught his eye—Elvis in black leather for his televised
Comeback Special
. Bobby had seen that show on video so many times that the VHS had worn away until it looked like Elvis was playing in a blizzard. His favorite song had been
One Night With You
, and his heart had leapt with every repeat of the chorus. His father had been young and beautiful then, and at the peak of his charisma. He’d had the kind of high-cheeked smile that made girls swoon and men wish they were him.

Bobby allowed the poster to draw him in and as he got closer, noticed that it was signed.
To Shrews. Thanks for everything. TCB
, which represented Elvis’s catchphrase
Taking Care of Business
. Remembering the dark brown areolas of the two women on stage, everything was not at all mysterious. A man like Shrewsbury had to find ways to ingratiate himself, and sex certainly was one of the oldest ways.

Bobby noticed the two framed items next to the concert poster. One was a gold record, the other a platinum. Could this be it? He remembered a conversation he’d had with Lucy about the importance of finding the album.