The Kind One (13 page)

“But then I’m thinking, if I’m in hell, how come I’m laying in the sand with the wind blowing over me, and then I figure it all out. I’m still in the desert out east of Yermo, and the sun’s come up, but I can’t see it ’cause Doc’s turtle juice has made me go stone-cold blind!

“Well sir, I’m scareder than shit, I get up and start hollering for Doc: Doc, Doc, where are ya, come get me! But Doc don’t answer back. So I’m in the middle of the goddamn desert and I’m blind as a bat. And it’s a hunnerd twenty degrees, and I don’t have no water, and my tongue’s so swole up it’s sticking outa my mouth. So I start stumbling around yelling and moaning, and I run into a cactus and get a pussful of needles, and then I take a step and there ain’t nothing under my feet and I’m falling and I don’t know whether I’m fixing to fall five feet or a hunnerd feet.

“And then I find myself waking up for the second time. Somebody’s splashing water on my face and saying Loy, Loy, are you all right? And then I open up my eyes and there’s Doc Travis. I ain’t blind no more! And I say: Doc, if you wasn’t so ugly, I’d kiss you right on your fucking mouth!”

Everybody laughed. Jack Otay said: “You know that old bastard was wanted for the same murder in two different countries?”

“How could that be?” said Joe Shaw.

“He stuck a knife in a guy in Mexicali, Mexico. Then the guy got in his car and drove over the border and died in Calexico, California. So he got charged in both countries.”

“What finally happened?” said Nuffer.

“The main witness against him had a bad accident. Drowned to death in a dry river bed.”

“Some witnesses just seem to have the shittiest luck,” said Bud.

“We all miss Doc,” said Schnitter, slicing his knife through a juicy piece of meat. “But we all know there’s a reason he’s not sitting here with us at the table tonight. He showed a lack of loyalty. An unwillingness to work as part of a team.”

This seemed to be directed at Loy Hanley.

“Well, hellfire,” said Hanley, “let’s drink to teamwork!” and everybody bumped their glasses together and mumbled: “To teamwork.”

“This ain’t a wake,” said Bud to one of the waiters. “Tell Goldilocks to pep it up a little.”

The waiter went over to the piano player and said something, and the piano player glanced worriedly at Bud then started playing a rollicking version of “Bill Bailey.”

I was sitting next to Nuffer, who was getting drunk as fast as he could. His face was florid with sunburn. He gave me a blurry affectionate smile, and patted my arm. “I like you, Danny. You’re a nice fella.”

“I think you’re a nice fella too, Mr. Nuffer.”

“Nice fella. So therefore I think there’s something you need to know.”

“What?”

He moved his mouth close to my ear. “A rumor has been afloat today. To the effect that you and Darla were observed together last night by the lake.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it—the lady was seen with your dick in her mouth.”

I looked down the table at Teddy Bump. Caught him in the middle of one of his dying-hyena laughs, his mouth open and full of food.

“But that’s not what happened—”

“Shhh!” said Nuffer so sharply my ear was sprayed with spit. “The truth doesn’t matter. Only appearances matter,” then he squeezed my knee under the table. “A word to the wise, hm?”

After dinner, the waiters brought around brandy and cigars.

“Want my cigar?” I said to Dick Prettie.

He shrugged, and put it in his pocket, then lit up his own. As usual, his clothes didn’t fit; the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket were too short, and his collar was too big for his long skinny neck.

He still seemed to be in a sour mood. He studied the smoke curling up from his cigar.

“You know, when I was growing up, no way I ever coulda imagined smoking a cigar like this in a joint like this. But now I’m here, who gives a fuck?”

Joe Shaw started coughing and clearing his throat like something had gone down the wrong way, then he slowly stood up. Bud tapped on his brandy glass with a spoon and shouted to the loud table: “Hey, pipe down, you fellas! I think Joe’s got a few words he’d like to say.”

“Thanks, Bud. Well, I got a few words, then my brother’s got a few more words.” Shaw was burly and pleasant-faced, with little glittery eyes and a dimple like a bullet hole in his chin. “I wanna thank you guys for inviting me up here, and I’ve had a great time the last two days. And on top of everything else, I got to see the Eighth Wonder of the World: Wendell Nuffer on water skis! Wendell, when you fell off them skis, I was afraid there wasn’t gonna be any water left in the lake. But luckily it all ran back in.”

Nuffer laughed harder than anybody.

“My brother was sorry he couldn’t make it up here himself, but I just finished talking to him on the phone, and filling him in on what we all been talking about. Frank said he can’t wait till we all get back in town so we can continue making Los Angeles the Greatest City in the World!”

Loud applause. Joe Shaw took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Now let’s move on to what this night is all about.” He looked at Max Schnitter. “Max, Frank wanted me to read this to you.

“‘Dear Max: Heartiest congratulations to you on your birthday! Max, you’re what the American Dream is all about. A poor immigrant kid who started from scratch and is now leading a prosperous, productive life and providing employment for a lot of people. I’m proud to call you my friend,’ and it’s signed: ‘Frank Shaw, Mayor of Los Angeles.’”

More applause as Joe Shaw sat down and Schnitter stood up. Everybody was puffing away on their big cigars and the room was becoming as smoky as a battlefield.

“Thank you, Joe. And I’m proud to call the Shaw brothers my friends. And to the rest of my friends here: Thank you very much for this birthday dinner in my honor.”

Somebody sneezed so loud it was like a window falling shut and then they blew their nose.

“Life is a forward motion, we are always marching into tomorrow. But an occasion like this sends us the other way, back into the labyrinth of memory.”

He smiled a little, baring his eye teeth as he gazed off into the smoke.

“My first night in America. I had slipped across the border from Mexico into Arizona. I had no passport, no papers of any kind. I barely knew any English. I was fourteen years old.

“I was hungry and tired, and I walked into a bar. It was full of Mexicans and Indians. Not any whites but me. I put my last few coins on the bar, and ordered a glass of beer and a sardine sandwich.

“There was an Indian boy and an Indian girl also sitting at the bar. I don’t know what their relationship was. Husband and wife? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Brother and sister? All I know is the girl was beautiful. Long black braids. Brown eyes that had no bottom to them.

“I smiled at her. And she smiled back at me. And her husband, boyfriend, or brother watched. And that night I learned my first lesson in America: Never get in a knife fight with an Indian.”

Schnitter paused and took a sip of his brandy to allow for the laughter.

“When I got out of the hospital, I traveled west. When I arrived in California, I thought I had arrived in paradise. The warmth, the sunshine, the oranges hanging in the trees. But when I tried to pick one of those oranges, I was chased away by a man on horseback. And I learned that even in paradise, a price must be paid for oranges.

“And so I got a job, picking lima beans, and I thought my back would break. Then ten years later I went back to that same tree, or one very much like it, and I picked an orange, and I peeled it, and I ate it, and that day no one tried to chase me away—for I was now the owner of the grove.

“I enjoyed eating that orange as much as I have ever enjoyed anything, before or since. And my birthday message to you, my friends, tonight, is, savor all your victories, great or small, because ultimately there is just one rule in life: Everybody loses everything.”

Schnitter sat down, to somewhat befuddled applause. Bud stood up, and started singing:
“For he’s a jolly good fellow,”
and everybody else joined in as the piano player vigorously played along. As they reached the first
which nobody can deny
the blue lights in the Moonlight Room began to fade till all you could see were the fiery tips of everybody’s cigars. Then a spotlight hit a curtain on the stage. Then, as the song concluded, the curtain opened to reveal Vera Vermillion.

She was lying on the stage wrapped in cellophane and tied up with red ribbons. She was completely naked. She was very white in the light, except for her auburn hair and her abundant pubic hair and her big pink nipples.

“She’s all yours, Max!” said Bud. “Go ahead! Unwrap her!”

Schnitter looked as if he’d just as soon be someplace else, but he managed a smile and walked toward the stage, accompanied by ribald cries of encouragement. He knelt in front of her, and pulled at the ribbons, and it quieted down in the Moonlight Room, and you could hear the crinkling of the cellophane, then you could hear Schnitter mutter: “What the fuck is this?”

Now Schnitter stood up, and turned and faced us in the bright round light. His pointy-eared face was contorted and terrible. He shouted: “What the fuck is THIS?!”

   SHE’D SUFFOCATED, EVIDENTLY.

Nucky and Nello had been in charge of her. They’d wrapped her up a little before dinner started. They said the last they saw of her she was fine, except she’d been drinking like a fish all night, so at some point she must have passed out, which must have been why she didn’t yell for help or something before she died.

Max Schnitter seemed to think the whole thing was some kind of practical joke on him, and he stormed off with his guys. Hanley, Shaw, and Nuffer bailed out of there pretty fast too.

Bill Flitter, the hotel manager, who looked like his name, and seemed terrified of us, called a doctor and the San Bernardino County sheriff.

Bud sat at the table wiping off his hands with one Kleenex after another. “Some fucking mess,” he said glumly.

Jack Otay said: “Don’t sweat it. We’ll fix it.”

Vera Vermillion lay on the stage in the cellophane and ribbons, looking very white, lonely, and pathetic. And still. So still. Finally a waiter flapped out a tablecloth and let it settle down upon her.

The doctor and the sheriff showed up. The doctor was an old, white-haired guy that looked just like the picture I had in my head of Dr. Ames. He examined the body, while Otay and the sheriff went off in a corner together. I’d have expected somebody that was a sheriff to look lanky and tough, like Buck Jones, the cowboy movie star, or maybe Loy Hanley, but this guy looked more like Oliver Hardy or Wendell Nuffer, wearing bright-red suspenders and a straw hat, and mopping his sweating neck with a handkerchief even though the room wasn’t hot.

Turned out the sheriff and Otay were old pals. Every winter they’d go south to El Centro together and shoot ducks. After the doctor finished with Vera, he went over to Otay and the sheriff, and the three of them talked for a while as Bud and myself and the rest of the guys watched. At one point they all busted out laughing, and the sheriff slapped Otay on the back.

“Hey, they’re laughing,” said Nucky. “That’s a good sign.”

“You better hope it’s a good sign, you fucking moron,” said Bud.

Finally the three shook hands all around, and Otay came walking back.

“The doc says it looks like a heart attack. ‘A tragedy in one so young,’ he said. Nothing nobody coulda done.”

Bud sighed with relief.

“Thanks, Jack. I won’t be forgetting this.”

“Glad to be of help,” said Otay with his usual smirk.

Now Bud addressed us generally.

“I don’t want some headline-happy reporter getting wind of this. You know, ‘Dame Dies At Wild Party Attended By Mayor’s Brother.’ Talk to the waiters and the busboys and the guy that ran the spotlight and anybody else you can think of. Spread around some dough. Tell ’em to keep a lid on it if they know what’s good for ’em.”

We heard a thud. The piano player had fainted. He was lying near his piano all crumpled up in his powder-blue tuxedo.

“Poor Goldilocks,” said Bud. “I guess the excitement was just too much for him,” and everybody laughed.

Two guys dressed in white came in and loaded the body on a stretcher and lugged it off into the night. I went up to my room without trying to bribe or threaten anybody. Took two aspirin and filled up the bathtub with the hottest water I could stand.

I eased myself in and lay there with just my nose and eyes above the surface like a crocodile. It seemed strange and somehow impossible I’d been talking to Vera this afternoon and now she was dead. I thought if I hadn’t bought her that second drink maybe she would have stopped drinking and maybe right now she’d be frolicking with Max Schnitter in his room instead of riding in an ambulance down a twisty road with the guys in white.

I was barely awake now, like my nose was barely above the water. And then I either dreamed, or imagined, or imagined I dreamed, or dreamed I imagined that Vera Vermillion was running naked through the woods around Lake Arrowhead, pursued by three angry snorting deers, and then I snorted up the hot water of the tub and sat up coughing and choking then heaved myself out and grabbed a towel.

Above my bed the Indian kid was still holding up his shining triumphant fish. I wandered over to the window. The moon had gone down, and I couldn’t see much, just a few dark trees; they looked like a bunch of guys standing around on a corner with their hands in their pockets and their backs to me, talking about stuff they didn’t want me to hear.

I sat down in an armchair. The back of my brain felt like it was teeming with bad dreams, and I was reluctant to go to bed, go to sleep, and unleash them.

I don’t know whether I’d been sitting there five minutes or two hours when I heard a ruckus out in the hallway: yelling, and cursing, and crashing around, and I jumped up and yanked on my pants and opened my door.

Wendell Nuffer was crawling down the hallway on his hands and knees, wearing nothing but blue-and-white-striped boxer shorts, while Loy Hanley walked behind him, kicking him violently in the butt with his cowboy-booted foot.