Leave It to Me (8 page)

“My name’s Devi.”

“Like the goddess, eh? I had to learn all that Hindu, Jain, Buddhist shit at the U of T.”

“Where’s that? Texas?”

“Toronto, Texas, Tulsa, Topeka, Tempe.”

“Wow,” I murmured. “A goddess!”

“Tampa, Toledo—you shouldn’t need a private eye to track your Aged Ps.” He laughed. “Not if you are a goddess.”

“I was thinking of starting with the Yellow Pages.”

“Eenie meenie minie mo, et cetera?”

“I was thinking I’d pick the very first or the very last name listed.”

“Devi Aardvaark? Try Buzzards, Inc., in the Yellow Pages.”

“Buzzard? Like the bird?”

“If they ask, say Gabriel referred you. As in the archangel.”

We hung together the next couple of days, not doing much, just staking out a square of sidewalk at the corner of Belvedere and Haight, holding up a sign,
A BUCK FOR AN ANGEL OR A GODDESS, YOU NEVER KNOW
, feeling good about the world, especially good about the dollar bills we collected, and then Gabe took off with the sign and the cash. He stuck a note on my windshield.
Hope the Pls can help. Wish we’d met earlier. Just too fucked up
.

I looked for Buzzards, Inc., in the Yellow Pages. No Buzzards, but there was a listing for Vulture, Inc. I called and left my name on tape, then realized that I had no phone number for them to call me back at, so I hung up. Next I looked up the Church of Divine Intergalactica in the phone book. The Stoop Man’s church was listed under D, as Divine Intergalactica Worship Facility. I called Vulture, Inc., back, and this time left the DIWF number on the agency’s answering machine.

A whole week went by without any calls for me at the Stoop Man’s. I called the Vulture, Inc., number again, and kept calling until a human voice answered. “It’s Devi Dee again” was all I got in before the voice, a man’s, barked, “No solicitations, no market research surveys, no interest in freebie cruises or other prizes, so goodbye and thanks.”

“And fuck you, too,” I muttered to the dead line.

“All worked up, Goddess?” The Stoop Man snuck up on me on the sidewalk. He had on a beat-up, collapsible top hat and a satin-lined cape.

“Is that what they’re calling me on the street? I’ll kill Gabe!”

“Whoa! Bad nerves! You need something potent.”

“So what’re you selling?”

“Not selling. I’m giving it away today. The abracadabra of happiness.”

“In pill, powder or vial?”

“All of the above.” He flapped his cape, while he tap-danced in his running shoes. “Works like magic. How do you want it, Goddess?”

“I don’t need magic,” I grumbled. “I need a detective.”

Very early the next morning, while I was still asleep in my Corolla parked under a pigeon-free tree on a foggedup
block just south of Haight Street, a film company showed up with a convoy of trailers. Frankie never told me what bullies film crews on location are. They push real people from their homes on real streets and think you’ll be happy being a part of some fantasy you’ll never see. This film crew operated as though location shooting were military conquest. Longhaired guys rang doorbells and ordered sleepy car owners to please move their cars because the film company had paid the city for permits to park their semis and their Range Rovers instead. They told store owners not to open, people not to come out until the all clear was sounded. Funky young assistants put up police barricades. A smart aleck rapped on my papered-over back window. “Hey, man, time to haul ass,” he commanded in his mellow way.

I stepped out of the Corolla. Stoop Man, Duvet Man, Tortilla Tim, Beamer Bob, Snorting Sam, Pammy Whammy, everyone in the neighborhood, were already gathered behind one of the barricades on the far sidewalk. They weren’t looking my way; they were interested in the food table. The laggards, people I recognized from soup lines and doorways, were being encouraged by a woman in purple tights and yellow tank top to drag themselves and their supermarket carts and their milk crates and garbage sacks out of the crew’s way.

The woman fixed a friendly eye on me. “Hi, need help moving your car?”

“Who do you think you are?” I said.

“Locations PA,” she said. “We do have the city’s permission, you know.”

I held my hand out. “Devi,” I announced. “Also known as Goddess.”

The woman gave my fingers an air-shake. “We need you to cooperate.”

“Why?”

“Hey, nothing personal.” She flashed a tense smile. Her lips had been given a collagen workout. “The city permit—”

“You don’t have a permit from me,” I interrupted.

“That’s true”—the woman backed away from me—“very true.” She signaled the tow truck I hadn’t noticed before, because it was parked around the corner. “Look, I don’t make the rules. I’m not the bad guy here.”

My fists clenched up on their own. “Well, I do! I make the rules! So beat it, Ms. Loc!”

The woman looked down at her shoes. They were Mary Janes in purple suede. I began to enjoy myself.
PA ponders power play versus penitence
. I could still miss Frankie at the strangest times.

“Look, could you like move your car out of here for now, and maybe, like take it up with the mayor or something?” She sent an anxious glance to where Stoop Man was lecturing a longhaired man. “Ham?” she spoke into her walkie-talkie.

The longhaired man raised a walkie-talkie to his lips. “I just learned about inner-city problems in other solar systems. This dude’s a perfect extra. See if you can get me Sarah. Or any of the casting munchkins.”

“Ham,” the locations PA pleaded, “can you spare a minute? We have a situation.”

The man with the gray hair to his shoulders had to be in production. Some sort of desk job in the entertainment business, anyway. He wasn’t crew, and he wasn’t talent. I Sherlocked that from his clothes: a dress shirt and tuxedo jacket, white slacks, white loafers, pale panama hat on an oversized head. The white slacks had double pleats, the loafers gilt buckles that didn’t glint in the sun. Pretty cool himself. Not too many guys can wear white shoes and white slacks with wit or style. The shirt was authentic Jazz Age twenties, not shopping-mall knockoff. I’d worked at the expensive Love at Second Site too many summers in Saratoga not to know vintage from junk. Smooth, I decided.

Ham maneuvered Stoop Man behind the police lines, then ambled to where I was giving his assistant a hard time, all the while nodding to gawkers and shaking hands. Money changing hands as Ham advanced. He didn’t doff his panama, but he did scoop up my left hand in both his and kiss the inside of my wrist.

“Hi, honey, I’m Ham.” He hung on to my hand, and gave me a deep, I-really-care-about-you look. “What’s the problem? How can I help?”

“For starters, get this dodo out of my face.”

Ham did, with an “I’ll take care of this, Mimi, but have Sam call my office and check for messages; I hope Arturo made his flight okay.”

“Good luck,” the PA said over her shoulder.

Ham glanced at Pammy Whammy. She was at the crafts-service table, flirting with a man wearing some sort of utility belt. The man was more interested in her than in the Danish in his hand.

“You looking to break into movies like everyone else?” Ham asked. “You want it, you got it. The usual rate. Fifty bucks cash for the day.”

“So that’s how you guys take care of problems?”

“That’s the rate,” Ham repeated. “Nonunion nonfeatured extra.” He leaned towards me. I felt my back press against the Corolla’s door. Dawn had started out foggy, and the car was more soaked than dewy. “Are we working it out?”

I sized up my advantage. “What is this shit?” I snapped. “Ethnic cleansing?”

“That’s pretty heavy, honey.”

“Well, here’s a counteroffer.” I slipped my hand out of his, reached in through the driver’s side window and pressed the horn and kept pressing it and let up only when he pleaded, “Okay, LA tactics always win. So how much are we talking? Are you the community rep or just acting freelance?”

I tried to think big. “A grand,” I blurted. “In cash. No deductions.”

Ham’s face relaxed. “You got it.” He laughed.

I cursed myself for thinking small-time Hudson Valley.

Ham consolidated his win. “That’s you plural. You as spokesperson of, and disburser for …”

I was a counterfeit wheeler-dealer. Ham was the genuine thing.

“What’s your community organization? My assistant’ll need a name.”

I thought he was going to call me on the scam. But he smiled instead, as though he and I were playing a game.
“Have your assistant phone me.” I pointed to the pay phone.

“You have to come up with just the right name,” he advised. “Names count. How about Lower Haight Development Authority, or—”

I cut him off. “I hate authority. Development Association.” Ham looked impressed. He lifted his panama and dipped from the waist in a Japanese bow. I had a good thing going. “And what’s this Upper and Lower Haight bit, elitist scum! We’re the HDA. Your office is dealing with the HDA.”

Ham made a note on his palm with a Mont Blanc ballpoint. “My office, tomorrow. Be there?” He pulled a business card out of the pocket of his dress shirt.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“I’d guess so have you, honey.”

I flicked the card in through the car window. “Why should I trust you, Mr. Ham?”

The man acted stunned. Finally he said, “You have a sense of humor.”

“What’s the joke?”

“I’m Ham,” the man said. “Because I’m Ham, Hamilton Cohan.
The Father of His Country
, Parts I, II, III and IV?”

“A rip-off of Flash’s
Boss Tong of Hong Kong
, Parts I through VII,” I sneered.

“My god! You know the Flash films of Francis Fong!”

I knew from the sudden beatific sheen on the man’s baggy-eyed face that my life had turned an unexpected
corner. Welcome to the Magic Kingdom. I kept my excitement low profile.

“A Fong homage,” Ham Cohan explained, “not a rip-off.” He stroked the same wrist he’d kissed, then gripped my hand and gave it a reverent shake. “I can’t believe you know Fong’s films! That makes you an automatic member of the Flash Fan Club. Want to know who else belongs? Tarantino and me.”

Mimi crackled a message on Ham’s walkie-talkie. “Arturo checked in. But dead drunk. He’s a no-show for this afternoon.”

“Gotta go,” Ham apologized. But he was still beaming at me. “So you’re a Fong fan. This has to be karma! Have lunch tomorrow? I’ll send a car. Just stand at the corner there and Sam’ll find you. Ciao until then!”

The first time I heard of karma was from the Indian burger-muncher at McDonald’s, the one who’d asked me out to an Indian movie. A moonfaced man with heavy lids and a neat goatee, he’d made his move, then handled my rejection philosophically.

“Your no is not a personal disappointment,” he’d lectured, “because it is evidently not in my karma to see you outside this eatery. So, what to do? Overdose on Sominex like my roommate, Mukesh, who was having brilliant career in biochemistry? No! The concept of karma is that fate is very dynamic. Not too many peoples are understanding that part of it. True concept of karma is: when on a dead-end street, jump into alternate paths.”

I don’t think Ham had that Indian man’s concept of karma in mind when he sent his assistant for me. A woman was at the wheel of a blue Ford Escort. “I’m Sam,” she called out to where I was squatting on the sidewalk next to Pammy and her pup, Whammy. “Samantha. Ham’s assistant. He said you’d be expecting me.”

The woman’s face with its nose stud, tongue hoop and eyebrow rings didn’t seem out of place at the corner of Cole and Haight. I tested her as a matter of principle. “How do you know you want me and not her? Or her? Or
him?” It was a warm morning. Folks I didn’t recognize from soup lines were staking out spots and propping up cardboard signs.
GIVING FEELS GOOD, TRY IT! LOST MY TICKET HOME TO THE MOON, NEED HELP
. Amateurs, transients. Trust fund derelicts. Dim prospects of futurity.

Samantha said, “The boss doesn’t forget faces. He described you to a tee. Shall we?”

On the way to ShoeString Studios’ offices in North Beach, in the middle of one of my harangues on the highhandedness of rich movie people who thought they could come into a neighborhood and treat us like dirt, she asked, “Wow! Did you feel that?”