The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (10 page)

I looked at King. On one level he was a delusional,
vicious, dope-dealing bastard, but on another he made perfect sense.

"Where does Otis fit in all this?"

"Otis is crazy. He's all emotion and can't hold
anything in. When there's a threat on my life, he's absolutely out of
control. He thinks he's helping me, but he's hurting me. Lots of
people would be interested in getting the feds on my path, take over
my business. I'm a moving target and Otis is a liability because he's
so visible. Makes him guilty. You know what I mean. So he comes here,
he doesn't even see me. And then when Della shines him on, he's gone.
God knows where he is." Our scrod arrived and King started in on
it immediately. "He was better off when Ptak was around. He kept
him on the ground. Of course, their partnership was doomed anyway."

"Because Ptak didn't have the talent."

"Oh, yeah, everybody knew that. Even Ptak. But
he didn't want to be in show business anyway. He was the one who
broke the partnership with Otis."

"He did?"

King looked at me suspiciously. "You didn't know
that?"

"All the Hollywood press reported it the other
way around."

"Well, sure, what're they gonna say? But Ptak
had other plans."

"What kind of plans?"

"What do you want to know that for?"

"I'm investigating. It's my job."

"Some job." He laughed softly. "Eat
your scrod."

I ate my scrod. Then I said, "For a guy who
wants to have children and move to Grosse Pointe, you're pretty
cavalier about this LAPD investigation."

"What're you trying to do, gumshoe, put some
muscle on me? Make me tell you some secret that's going to unlock
your case? Let me tell you, there's no kind of muscle you can put on
me. You're a slimy little private eye and I'm a major businessman. I
make more money in a day than you make in a year."

"I wouldn't doubt it."

"And Mike Ptak needed me more than I needed
him."

"What would he need from you?" I added a
little smirk to the end of my question because I figured it might
make him defensive. It did.

"My expertise."

"Don't tell me Mike Ptak wanted to go into your
kind of business."

"How stupid can you be? No wonder you're a cheap
gumshoe."

"So Ptak wanted to go into legitimate business."

"Investment banking."

"And what did he have to offer the world of
investment banking?"

"Nothing. He just suffered from what you might
call an inflated self-image."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Investigator, because
it doesn't matter now anyway. The man's history. He said he knew how
to put his hands on twenty-five million dollars." King grinned
at me. "Now I bet you're thinking, Where can I get hold of this
twenty-five million dollars'?"

"Very good guess."

"I told you I was a business genius." He
grinned again, then sat there a moment enjoying the silence. "Well,
don't waste your time with that, because I can assure you I checked
it out fully and Ptak's twenty-five mil was a stone fantasy."

"
Checked it out with whom?"

"Figure that out for yourself. Besides, that
would've been real dirty money. Scum money. So dirty even I wouldn't
touch it." He checked his watch and frowned. "Now I've
talked so long I won't be able to finish my lunch." King stood
and put his initials on the back of the check. "This one's on
me. But for your own health, stay away from housing projects in the
Bronx. It's not Seventy-seven Sunset Strip, if you know what I mean.
And one other thing—if someone's trying to nail my ass for this
Ptak business, there's a good chance, since you're poking around in
my affairs, they might want to take a crack at you and blame me for
it. It's the kind of headline they love in the New York Post: 'L.A.
Private Dick Blown Away by Black Drug Lord.' Or maybe they'd just
dump you off a pier and leave you there. You wouldn't want to end up
one of those bloated corpses found every so often floating along with
the garbage in the Harlem River, now would you?"

"I'll ruminate on that."

"Ru-what? What'd you say?" he asked,
pulling out his little notebook. I spelled it for him. "Thanks,"
said King and left, leaving me sitting there with the scrod.

I stared at it for a second, wondering what kind of
money was so dirty even King King wouldn't touch it. When I didn't
get anywhere with that, I returned to the problem at hand: finding
Otis. Getting to him through Della didn't seem a particularly
promising idea, given the welcome I was receiving at the Tremont
Avenue Projects. And being a smart guy and trying to sneak back there
by disguise or by some other trick of tradecraft was about as quick a
route to ending my ambivalence about being a detective as I could
think of. In fact, in all probability it would end whatever
ambivalence I had about life. Then I thought of someone Otis had
mentioned during our laid back California lunch at the Malibu
Pharmacy. It was a flimsy lead indeed, but for the moment it was all
I had. Before I acted upon it, I went over to the restaurant pay
phone and dialed home to see what was happening. It had been a late
lunch and a good portion of the day would have passed on the West
Coast. An answering machine picked up and I thought I had the wrong
number until I realized Chantal had recorded a new message in a cool,
professional tone: "You have reached the offices of Moses Wine
International Investigative Consultants, specializing worldwide in
missing persons, technical surveillance, industrial espionage,
witness analysis, domestic relations, personal injury, and related
areas. All our operatives are engaged in field work at this time. If
you leave a message, together with your name, number, and time you
called, our staff will contact you as soon as possible."

Jesus, I thought, where did she get that jargon, the
Yellow Pages?

I hung up and headed for the door of the restaurant,
stopping by the cashier to find out where I could get the subway. It
turned out I had to get a bus off the island and pick up the IND near
Route 295, but all this complicated maneuvering stopped the moment I
exited the restaurant and noticed a van parked across the street. It
was a brand-new bronze Toyota without license plates and its driver
was a tall, muscular white man with chestnut brown hair and an
angular, chiseled face resembling the actor Scott Glenn—a killer's
face. He was pretending not to look at me, but I could see that the
sideview mirror of his van had been skewed slightly toward the front
of the restaurant. King's warning about the Harlem River flashed
through my mind and I quickly retreated inside. Ten seconds later the
van drove off. But it hadn't gone far because ten minutes later I
caught it in the rearview mirror as I rode yet another gypsy cab west
across the City Island Bridge back into the Bronx proper. My driver,
Fouad Fayed, a Lebanese on a green card studying to be a civil
engineer, was regaling me about the political significance of
evenhandedness.

"It not evenhanded. It not evenhanded," he
repeated about six times. "Don't take me amiss, but when the
Arab man blow up in his office in Orange County, nobody care. But
when the Jewish man, the old Jewish man in the wheelchair, about to
die and everything, goes boom off that boat, everybody scream and
yell like he Albert Schweitzer or something. Don't take me amiss."

"
Don't take me amiss either, but see that bronze
Toyota van right behind us?"

"I see. Yes. Good van. Japanese van. I for free
trade, but we better have restrictions for that. Otherwise who buy
American car? All industry go belly up. Green card worker first to
go. Don't take me amiss."

"No chance of that. Look, why don't you drive a
little faster?"

"Hey, mister, speed limit here twenty-five miles
per hour."

"So what? Nobody's going to bother you. I'l1 pay
the ticket." At that point we were heading east on 184th Street,
the van a couple of car lengths behind us.

"I don't care ticket. Big deal ticket. But
insurance go up. Big price. In this country, everybody sue, sue,
sue."

"
Okay, now listen to me and don't get nervous."

"I don't think I like what I going to hear."

"That car is following me."

"What for? Don't tell me. I don't want to know.
Get out of my cab. No, don't get out. I won't stop. I die. Hold on."

And he stepped on it.

In a moment we were hurtling between an oil truck and
an abandoned school bus, the van barreling along behind us. We came
out on the next street, both vehicles zigzagging through traffic,
maintaining their distance until Fouad, his neck straining, floored
the accelerator, jumped ahead, and made a hard right into a warehouse
alley, getting a fifty-yard advantage on our pursuer.

"Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Drive ambulance for Beirut Red Cross."

"Pull in there." I pointed to a driveway.
Fouad tucked in just as the van went whistling past.

"
Follow him."

"What're you, crazy? I no follow him. You get
out of cab. Pay twelve dollars forty-five cents." He nodded
toward his meter.

"Hey, listen, you're not going to abandon me
now. We're old friends."

"Friend? I no friend of yours. I leave here
right now. Have class Long Island University. Must study reserve book
room. Otherwise fail. Good-bye." He leaned over the front seat,
opening my door and muttering to himself.

"All right. Listen. Just drive me downtown like
I asked you in the first place."

He looked at me, then, continuing to mutter, closed
the door and drove off. In a few minutes we were crossing the Willis
Avenue Bridge, Fouad watching me all the while in the rearview
mirror, not saying a word. He finally spoke when we hit the FDR
south.

"Mister, how come that man following you? Don't
take me amiss."

"I think he wants to kill me."

"Oh, boy. Oh, boy. You the good guy or the bad
guy? No, don't tell me."

"Okay, I won't."

He fell silent again until we reached Washington
Square Park. "Okay, mister. Good-bye. I go."

"Hold on a second, Fouad. I'm not sure this is
where I want to be."

"What you mean this not where you want to be?
This Washington Square Park. What you talking?"

"I'm not sure my man is here."

"Look," he pointed. "Many men here.
All kinds men. Women too. Faggots too. See how they dress up.
Tomorrow Halloween. Big holiday for faggots. In my country everybody
a faggot. No big deal. Men hold hands, but nobody gets cancer in the
blood. No, no, no. They all die too young for that."

"
I'm looking for some guy who might help me find
another guy. What I'd like you to do is stay here." We were
double-parked on the corner of Fourth and Macdougal. "Keep your
meter running. I'll be right back. This is on account." I handed
him a crisp fifty and got out of the cab. Emily's tab was mounting
up.

In a few seconds I was wending my way through the
action in the park. It was only six P.M., but the area was already
jumping with the flotsam and jetsam of thirty years of American
culture. Every fad since the war was represented and I wasn't sure
which war. A toothless Jack Kerouac was sitting on a bench next to an
earth mother who looked like she was still raising money for the
Lincoln Brigade. Behind them a group of bisexual eleven-year-old
punkers wearing their pre Halloween masks were taunting an inept mime
who was trying to climb the inevitable imaginary stairs. Over to
their right, past some skateboarders and this year's Hare Krishnas,
the crowds were gathering around Washington Square Fountain, small
groups clustered about some eager beaver selling an
inflation-diminished nickel bag or the latest psychedelic. It all
reminded me of when I was a kid and would take the train down from
Cos Cob to hear poetry readings at Rick's Café Bizarre. And I was
mildly comforted that in their desperation to be new some things
never changed.

I didn't see any comics among the street entertainers
vying for an audience that evening, but I did notice a jazz musician
playing some complicated fusion version of "Salt Peanuts"
on a white plastic alto of the kind Ornette Coleman used to play, or,
for all I knew, still did. I wandered over and joined the group of a
dozen or so listening to him, waiting for him to finish the number.
Despite a few days' growth and a faraway bloodshot look in his eyes,
he still seemed to be in his late thirties. He wore a frayed
hound's-tooth overcoat that swayed back and forth as he moved his sax
to the beat of the music and a porkpie hat cocked sideways in the
Lester Young style. He took it off when the song was over and started
passing it around.

"How long you been playing around here?" I
asked when he reached me.

"Too long."

"Swami X?" I said, depositing a
twenty-dollar bill on top of the paltry collection of dimes and
quarters he would take home for supper. It was strange to think that
in his own weird way this guy was just as gifted a musician as Sting
or David Byrne. But whoever said the world was fair?