Halfway House (25 page)

The hallway ended at the basement studio where he’d been confronted by the home’s owner. The long room was empty except for the stage where band equipment had been erected. The floor, the other tables, and the ledge that ran around the entire room were clean, as if a party hadn’t even taken place. He took one last look at the memorabilia on the walls, pausing a moment to stare at the two Elvis records, then he ascended the stairs.

Voices filtered from somewhere on the main level. He straightened his jacket and smoothed back his hair then followed the voices to their source.

“There he is. Drink too much,
bra
?” The three security guards-valet parking attendants sat around the dining room table sharing a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Gabe frowned and shook his head. “I told you not to do anything stupid, and here you go getting drunk and falling down.”

“He was doing the kicking chicken like I never seen,” the huge black man named T said. “Closest I saw was this girl on PCP. She was vibrating on the sidewalk like there was something turned on inside of her and she couldn’t turn it off.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” Bobby said. “I have a condition.”

The Hispanic snapped his fingers and leaned forward. “I told you that was it. He has
pepsilepsy
. I seen that on TV. People fall down and foam at the mouth like they have rabies.”

“It’s called epilepsy,” Bobby said.

“What I said,
pepsilepsy
.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with Pepsi, Jose. You saying it wrong.” Gabe sipped from a glass that was lost in his immense hand.

“I’m not saying it wrong.”

Gabe ignored Jose and addressed Bobby. “You sure put a scare into Mr. S. He was all set to toss you out on your ass when you fell. At first he thought you were fucking with him, but when it went on for a full minute, he got real nervous. He thought he’d have another dead body on his hands. That kind of attention he doesn’t need.”

Another dead body?
Bobby stored that knowledge away for future use.

“So we threw you in the bedroom until we figured out what to do. In fact, we were just about to check on you. The last of the paparazzi left so we were gonna put you in the back of the car and drive you down the street.”

“Saved us from having to go down the stairs,” T said.

“Who was that girl?” Bobby asked.

“The one who wanted you to leave? Sally is one of the boss’s movie stars.”

“Why does she hate me so much?”

“She don’t hate you,” Gabe said, levering his not-so-tiny frame out of the chair into a standing position. “She just wanted some attention.”

“Fucked up way to get attention.”

“This is a fucked up universe, Bobby. What can we say?”

The other two security guards stood, their combined thousand pounds of muscle and flesh impressive in the possible violence they could inflict.

“No need to get up. I know where the front door is. I’ll show myself out.”

“Not yet, Bobby. Mr. S wants to see you first.”

“I thought he wanted me gone.”

“After you did all that shaking, he wants an explanation. I don’t trust Mr. Pepsilepsy here to explain it, so he’ll have to hear it from your mouth.”

“It was my accent,” Jose said. “You shouldn’t make fun of someone because of their accent.”

T rolled his eyes and snickered. “
Pepsilepsy
. What a retard.”

Jose punched him in the arm, a blow that might kill a normal human, but T barely even noticed. He moved from the table and placed a hand around Bobby’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They escorted Bobby to the backyard. The pool was a long rectangle filled with water lit by a red light. Five people lounged around the pool as if the shine of the stars could tan them. Shrewsbury sat at a table with a pile of scripts beside him and a glass of wine. Across from him sat Sally, glowering at Bobby as he approached. Three chaise lounges were each occupied by a naked woman, arms and legs askew in their drunken slumber. Bobby couldn’t help but think of Barbie dolls and how their soft rubber limbs could be posed in virtually any position.

“Who writes this crap?” Shrewsbury asked, tossing the script into the pool. He took a sip of wine, shaking his head as he flipped through the stack of unread scripts. Then in a fit of rage, he grabbed the rest of them and threw them in the water as well. He slammed back his wine and walked to the edge of the pool. “See? Shit floats.”

Turning to see if his joke had found a home, he spied Bobby being escorted down the stairs leading to the pool deck. His smile widened momentarily, then fell. “I thought we’d killed you, son.”

“I’m all right.”

“I can see that. What the hell happened?”

Bobby glanced at Sally, whose expression had changed from anger to self-righteousness. That pissed him off. To think that a girl could manipulate the world to do her bidding without regard to other people was as wrong as wrong could be.

“You mean when you were kicking me out for being an orphan?”

“Yeah. Then.”

“Pepsilepsy.”

“What?”

Jose beamed. “I told you I said it right. Listen to him saying it the same way I did.”

“He’s fucking with us,” the big Hawaiian said.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Shrewsbury asked, looking from one guard to another.

“Pepsilepsy,” Bobby continued. “I get the heebie-jeebies from too much Pepsi. They really should put a warning label on the bottles.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“Absolutely.”

For a second it looked as if Shrewsbury was going to bury his fist in Bobby’s face, but then his fingers relaxed and he sat down. Sally refilled his wine glass and he took a long pull. “We pissed you off didn’t we?”

“You might say that.”

“You’re not from around here so you don’t know how things work.”

“You gonna teach me?”

“I think I already did. You just don’t like the lesson.”

“What? That a person can fuck with you whenever they want?”

Shrewsbury waved the question away. “You’ve heard of the golden rule, yes?”

“
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
.”

“Yeah. How quaint. You got it right.” He took another sip. “However applicable that rule is in Middle America, it doesn’t apply here. Here we have a different set of rules entirely. We do unto others, but not as we want them to do unto us. No fucking way. Our rule goes something like this: Do unto others before they can do unto you, because when you do it, they’re gonna be pissed off they didn’t do it first.”

T snickered and tightened his grip on Bobby’s arm.

“That’s a sad way to live.”

“Sad, my ass. It’s called survival. Look at you and me, Bobby Dupree.” Shrewsbury grinned and pumped his head at his inadvertent rhyme. “You’re all pissed off because Sally decided she didn’t like you and had me kick you out. So what if you were a fucking orphan. So what if you like Elvis. So do a million other hopeless fucks. Let me tell you what you’re really pissed at. You aren’t pissed that Sally chose you to gain my attention. You’re mad because you were helpless to stop her. And why is that? It’s because she did unto you before you did unto her.”

“It’s that simple?” Bobby asked, unimpressed.

“Absolutely. I see it every day, especially in my line of work, which comes with a certain unpleasant stench to those pretending to be Hollywood pure hearts. If I don’t begin the fight with the upper hand, I lose every time. From Hollywood to sex to real estate. It’s all the same. And there are times when that doesn’t even work. You know that Trump came in here and snatched up a hundred acres of prime ocean view real estate to build a golf course? Where do you think he got the idea? Do you think the idea of a golf course in Palos Verdes just appeared fully formed in his toupee-draped head? Fuck no. He thought of it because I began to buy up property by Averill Park in San Pedro with designs to build a course overlooking the Harbor. I’d bought seventeen homes when Trump came in, bought the property on the other side of the hill, then convinced the city council that his plan was good, and my plan was shit. I’d had some of those fuckers in my back pocket for years, only I couldn’t match what Trump could pay. No fucking way.”

“How does it feel to have shit done unto you?”

His eyes flashed at Bobby. “Pretty fucking bad. But that’s okay. I have my own plans.”

“I bet you do.”

“I think I’ve pissed you off, Bobby Dupree. Do you want to take a swing at me?”

“I’d do it, but these giants would tear me apart.”

“They wouldn’t do it if I told them not to.”

Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded toward his arms, held fast in T’s hands.

“Let him go, T. Let’s see what the orphanage taught this little fucking Elvis Impersonator.” Once Bobby was released, he added, “Okay, boy. Let me have it. Give me your best shot.”

Bobby took a step forward. Shrewsbury blinked, but didn’t move. He held his chin out, grinning through gritted lips. Bobby leaned into the man and whispered a name none too softly: “Alvin P. Verdina.”

“What who?” Shrewsbury’s face suddenly looked as if it had lost air. His expression went from confusion to fear to anger then back to fear. He took two steps backwards and plopped into his chair. “How?”

“Who the fuck is Verdina?” Sally asked. “I thought there was gonna be a fight.”

“There was,” murmured Gabe with a look of newfound respect on his face. “Bobby won.”

“How the hell do you know that name?” Shrewsbury’s eyes narrowed as he reappraised Bobby, realizing he’d made a serious mistake. “Who are you?”

“I’m just a little fucking Elvis impersonator. You said so yourself.”

“What do you want?”

“The Double Platinum awarded to Elvis Aaron Presley for his 1957 hit
Heartbreak Hotel
.”

Shrewsbury licked his lips. “I ain’t got it.”

“Then we have a problem.”

“Who’s Alvin Verdina?” Sally persisted.

“He’s nobody, honey,” Shrewsbury said, waving her off. To Bobby he said, “What’s to keep me from telling my boys to find a deep dark hole to put you in?”

“Louis Cabellos.”

“Who?”

“Tell him, Gabe.”

Gabe cleared his throat nervously. “He’s talking about Lucy Cabellos, the leader of the 8th Street Angels.”

Jose whistled low and long, exchanging looks with T.

“What’s he got to do with it?” Shrewsbury glanced from one to the other.

“Besides the fact he has my back?” Bobby reached across the table, grabbed the bottle of wine, and filled Shrewsbury’s glass. Downing half of it, Bobby snapped his lips appreciatively. “Besides that he also knows about Verdina and you.”

Shrewsbury had been staring at the glass the entire time Bobby had it in his hands, watching as Bobby finished the wine then returned it empty to the table. Shrewsbury snatched the glass, stared at it for several heartbeats, then threw it into the night. A moment later it shattered. “What do you really want?”

“I told you. The Double Platinum—”

“—awarded to Elvis fucking Aaron fucking Presley for Heartbreak fucking Hotel. Yeah. I heard. But I ain’t got that. So what do you really want?”

“Nothing. You give me the album and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“How do I know you won’t keep coming back for more? Maybe next time you’ll want money.”

“Nothing’s for certain in this world. You know you wouldn’t be so worried if you’d never hooked up with Verdina. Why did you guys get together, anyway?”

“A bunch of us used to get together to play poker.”

“With little boys?”

“What’s he talking about?” Sally said, her voice changing pitch as she began to piece the puzzle together.

Shrewsbury spoke fast and low. “Listen, I didn’t know what that sick fucker was involved in until it was almost too late. He paid me to make a movie for him, only I thought it was going to be legit. Some underground personal stuff with a girl or even a guy, I didn’t fucking care, as long as it was legal. Once I found out what he really wanted, I put the kibosh on the whole project. I never even started rolling.”

“You’re a regular standup guy.”

“I was.”

“Why’d he give you the album?”

“He owed me. Do you know how much a movie costs to make? Even an underground one can go in the five figures.”

“I thought you didn’t roll film.”

“I didn’t.” Shrewsbury shook his head. “But I had expenses and I told him I wasn’t going to eat the cost.”

“So you took it.”

“Yeah. So I took it.”

“Where is it now?”

“Why do you want it so badly? What’s the big deal?”

“That’s a personal question. Where’s the album?”

“I lost it in a card game.”

“Who has it?”

Shrewsbury sighed as if all the air had been squeezed out of him. He gave Bobby an address in Malibu.

Lucy had gotten the phone call twenty minutes ago. The only words were
We have one.
He then drove down to the docks in a neighbor’s Maxima. Everyone else was putting out fires or trying to chase down the last remnants of the MS 13 attack, so there were no other cars available. Blockbuster wasn’t responding to any of his calls, which worried Lucy. He and Split had been best friends. There was no telling what the boy would do when he found out what had happened.

With his dad in the hospital and Split dead, Trujillo had figured Lucy might want to get involved in this interrogation. As a rule, Lucy kept away from this side of the job. He was a leader. He was a money provider. He was not a mechanic. But Trujillo was right. Lucy did want to get involved, if only for a little bit, and if only for his own sanity.

ILWU officers had heard what had happened to his dad. Several had gone to the hospital, while a virtual platoon had gone to the house to take care of his
abuela
and his mother, who was returning from her sister’s in Tijuana. Normally they’d send one or two folks with some food and goodwill, but out of respect for Lucy and for his dad’s more than thirty years with the union, they’d shown up in full force. They’d also arranged for Lucy to use the docks, understanding, in the brotherly way of the union, that his gang needed some special privacy to create the proper amount of revenge.