This Wicked World (3 page)

Gonzalo is practicing tossing ice and catching it in a cup behind his back, some kind of Tom Cruise
Cocktail
move. He’s saving up to open his own place in Mazatlán where he’ll serve sweet, potent drinks with names like the Itchy Pussy and the Cum Shot to sorority girls on spring break. “You can come work for me,” he told Boone the other day. Definitely an offer to consider.

Boone puts the Nirvana unplugged CD on the sound system and begins setting up for the day guy. Mr. King and Gina roll in for Mr. King’s nightcap. Mr. King is dressed to the nines as usual, in an ascot and a dark blue jacket with brass buttons. He’s eighty-two, a retired cameraman whose heyday was in the fifties and sixties. He’s got those big, thick glasses, and his last few strands of white hair are combed straight back and lacquered across his spotted scalp. Gina, his fourth wife, is a mail-order bride from the Philippines. She’s a plump little woman, maybe thirty years old. Looks more Spanish than Asian.

They live in a condo at the base of the hills and come in an hour before closing every night. In spite of the difference in their ages, they seem to get along just fine. Gina doesn’t speak much English but always has a smile on her face, and the old man treats her with a gentleness Boone doesn’t often see husbands display toward their wives.

Mr. King once told him that Filipino women are the best in the world. Loyal, loving, good cooks. “They smell kind of strange down there,” he said, pointing at his crotch. “But you get used to it quick enough.” Boone didn’t tell him that he’d been with plenty of Olongapo whores when he was in the Marines and never once caught a whiff of anything funny.

“What can I get you tonight?” Boone asks. “The usual?”

“For Gina, a Sprite, but for me, it’ll be a Blood and Sand,” Mr. King replies.

“A Blood and Sand, huh? You’re gonna have to help me with that one.”

Mr. King leans back on his stool and rubs his hands together. He’s on a mission to turn Boone into a proper bartender. That means once a week or so he forgoes his usual martini to order a drink nobody’s heard of since Kennedy died, then guides Boone through the process of preparing it. Boone gets a kick out of the way he calls out the ingredients, playing teacher.

“First, you’ll need a shaker filled with ice.”

“Got it.”

“Now an ounce of scotch — not the good stuff, something blended will do fine — and an ounce of orange juice.”

Boone measures them out and pours them into the shaker.

“Then three-quarter ounces each of cherry brandy and sweet vermouth.”

“I bet you sleep good tonight.”

“Shake it, strain it into a martini glass, and I’ll have mine with two cherries.”

Boone slaps down a napkin and sets the drink in front of Mr. King, who sips it, his hand shaking a bit as he raises the glass, then nods approvingly and says, “Fantastic. Make yourself one, Jimmy.”

Boone doesn’t necessarily want a drink, but it’s part of the routine: Mr. King always buys him one of whatever classic concoction he’s having.

Boone has refilled the shaker with ice and added the scotch when Robo appears at the bar and motions him over. Robo stands six feet tall and weighs in at about 350 pounds. His enormous gut starts right below his chest and hangs over his belt, and there are thick rolls of fat on the back of his bald head. He couldn’t run to save his life, but God be with you if he gets his hands on you. Boone once saw him dislocate a mouthy drunk’s shoulder with a flick of his wrist, and he can fold half-dollars between his thumb and forefinger.

“Can you talk now?” Robo asks.

“Sure, man, shoot,” Boone replies.

“You heard about that kid on the bus, right? The one with the dog bites?”

There was something about it on the news last week. A Guatemalan illegal turned up dead on an MTA bus. When they examined him they discovered that he was covered with dog bites that had gotten so infected, they’d killed him. The cops gave the picture from his bogus green card to the media, but nobody ever showed up to claim the body or to explain what had happened. A weird one, even for L.A.

“That was messed up,” Boone says. “Did you know him?”

Robo snaps his head back, feigning indignation. “Why?” he asks. “Because all us beaners hang out together? No, man, I didn’t know him, but it turns out my cousin, he knows someone who knows the kid’s grandpa, who heard about my side work, the community outreach stuff…”

“Is that what you call it?”

Robo does hero-for-hire gigs for people who can’t go to the police for this reason or that. He’ll evict that crackhead who refuses to pay rent, convince that gangbanger he really doesn’t want to date your daughter, or find out who your wife is screwing on her lunch break. Penny-ante strong-arm stuff and surveillance mostly. Half his customers pay him in trade — bodywork, haircuts. Even a fifty-gallon aquarium once.

“Seriously,
ese
, check it out,” Robo says. “The grandpa wants to meet me tomorrow to talk business. I don’t know what’s going to go down, but he’s got three hundred dollars to spend, and I’ll give you fifty if you show up and pretend to be my cop buddy. All you got to do is wear a sport coat and sit there looking like you got a stick up your ass.”

“Won’t that scare him off?”

“Nah, nah. I’ll tell him you’re working under the table, that it don’t matter that he’s illegal or whatever. You’ll make me look legit is all, like I got weight. I wouldn’t ask you, but my regular white boy is fishing in Cabo.”

Boone shrugs and throws up his hands. “I’d like to help you, man, but tomorrow’s my day off, and I really need a day off.”

Robo narrows his eyes, strokes his handlebar mustache. “You like that Olds I got for you?” he says. “Runs good, don’t it? What’d I charge you for that again, for getting you that deal?”

“I’m just saying, I’ve got to stay out of trouble,” Boone replies. “You know how it goes.”

“There ain’t gonna be no trouble,
ese
. I’ll see to that.”

Simon and his posse explode out of the back room and pass through the bar, laughing too loud and playing grab-ass. Simon stops, a little unsteady on his feet, and points at Robo.

“If you’re in here, who’s watching the door?”

“Just getting a drink of water, boss,” Robo replies.

“And I told you I want you to wear a suit. Let’s get that going next time you’re on duty.”

Robo tugs at his XXXL Raiders jersey and says, “Where’m I gonna find a suit that’ll fit me?”

“That really ain’t my problem, bro,” Simon says. “Alls I know is, I can’t have you looking like a thug.”

“Denny’s at Gower Gulch, eight a.m.,” Robo hisses at Boone before following Simon and the others out the front door, saying, “Yo, we need to talk about a raise then, boss.”

Boone finishes making the drink he started, shakes it, and pours it into a glass. OJ and scotch. Tastes pretty good. You wouldn’t think it would, but it does.

He could say fuck it and stand Robo up tomorrow morning, but there’s no denying that the ’83 Cutlass the guy hooked him up with is a pretty decent five-hundred-dollar ride. He’s had no real trouble with it yet, except that the battery won’t hold a charge. It’s hard for him to believe that he was driving a Porsche four years ago. Seems like he died since then and was born again into a different life.

Kurt Cobain is singing about the man who sold the world as Boone walks down to where Mr. King and Gina are sitting.

“This one’s a winner,” Boone says. He raises his glass. “Blood and Sand.”

“After the Valentino picture,” Mr. King says.

“How are you two doing tonight?”

Mr. King pats Gina’s hand, and she smiles shyly. “It’s our anniversary tomorrow. Two years,” the old man says.

“Congratulations.”

“What about you? Are you married?” Mr. King asks.

“I was,” Boone replies. “It didn’t work out.”

“Well, don’t give up. It’s like the man said, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ ”

Boone raises his glass once more and says, “Hey, I like that.”

The waitresses come out of the back room in their street clothes, all ready to go to a club. One of them cracks a joke, and the others laugh. Boone takes another sip of his drink, then moves off to help Gonzalo finish cleaning up.

F
AIL BETTER
. B
OONE WAKES UP THINKING HE’S GOING TO
take this as his motto, the most he can hope for. The previous night’s dreams, more real than life a moment ago, slip away from him, and he lies in bed and listens to the birds’ simple morning songs while waiting for dawn to chase the shadows into the corners.

He’s in the midst of putting his day in order — the meeting at Denny’s, the Laundromat, grocery shopping — when the past begins to circle like a persistent fly, demanding attention. As far as he’s concerned, it does him no good to look backward when all he’s going to do is beat himself up for the mistakes he’s made. But sometimes, despite his best efforts, he’s forced to contemplate the damage.

This time he goes back to when he was eighteen, right out of high school, and killing time in his hometown of Oildale, California, working pickup construction jobs and running with a hard crowd of wannabe bikers and gunslingers who were always half out of their heads on something, always zinging wildly between rage and black despair. He’d put in ten hours pounding nails in the merciless Central Valley sun, then spend the night drinking and doping with Chi Chi, McMartin, Frank, and the rest, doing his best to keep up.

Chi Chi was the ringleader. At twenty-three, he’d already served time for robbery. He lived in a trailer next to an onion field at the edge of town, where the crew gathered every evening to listen to Metallica, drink whatever beer was on sale, and smoke bowl after bowl of dirt weed, and it was he who came up with the idea to break into Tony Rubio’s cabinet shop.

Frank had worked for Tony for a while and remembered the combination to the lock on the door of the shop. They’d go in, steal as many tools as they could carry, pawn them in Bakersfield, then drive on to Magic Mountain to ride a new roller coaster and party at a motel with some girls Chi Chi knew from East L.A.

Boone had never stolen anything in his life, but, in a moment of drunken bravado, he volunteered for the job. Why the hell not? His mom was dying of lung cancer, his dad had split when he was a baby, and he didn’t give two shits about anything. Also, his participation would give him some cred with the gang from Chi Chi’s trailer.

He listened closely as the scheme was laid out: he and Chi Chi would go in and steal the tools, Little Jerry would act as lookout, and Frank would be playing pool at Shooters, so he’d have an alibi if the cops questioned him later.

The whole thing was so stupid it makes Boone wince even now. They didn’t do any planning, didn’t even bother to case the shop. The night it went down, they guzzled a twelve-pack of Pabst, parked the car by a canal, and set off through an orange grove to reach the shop, which was located in a Quonset hut next to Tony’s house.

It was slow going beneath the trees. The stink of a nearby dairy came to them on a hot wind that rattled leaves and rearranged shadows, and Chi Chi stumbled in the dark and fell, spitting a curse.

They paused at the edge of the grove. The shop lay twenty-five yards away, across a dirt road, and beyond that was the house. It was after midnight, and all the lights were out. The full moon, small and bright overhead, cast a graveyard pall, and a dog barked somewhere in the distance.

Once they got Jerry settled in a spot where he could keep an eye on things, Boone and Chi Chi stepped out onto the road and sprinted for the shop. Chi Chi spun the combination into the lock, and the door creaked as it swung open. Boone’s heart tossed in his chest. He glanced over his shoulder at the house. Nothing.

It was pitch dark in the windowless shop. Chi Chi fired up his disposable lighter and began pointing out the most valuable items. Within seconds, however, the lighter grew too hot for him to hold, and the flame died. Chi Chi let the lighter cool, then sparked it again, and Boone set about gathering as many tools as he could before Chi Chi’s thumb began to cook.

They worked in short bursts of weak, watery light. The router and bits, the circular saw. The petty-cash box was right where Frank said it would be, in the bottom drawer of the desk. Everything went into two duffel bags they’d brought along to carry the loot.

Boone was grinning as they stepped outside. He couldn’t believe they’d actually pulled the heist off. But then a powerful white beam scorched their eyes, and a voice shouted, “Hands on your heads, boys.”

Turns out Tony had installed an alarm since he’d fired Frank, one that went off in the house if anyone entered the shop. He waited for them to come out, got the drop on them, then used his shotgun to herd them into the yard, where they knelt next to Jerry, who was being covered by Tony’s wife and a .45. She’d spotted him pissing in the bushes, his stream shining in the moonlight. Approaching sirens cut the night’s stillness to ribbons.

The judge offered Boone a choice of jail or the military, so two weeks later he said good-bye to his mom and caught the bus to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. He enjoyed his four years in the service. The physical training added a thick layer of muscle to his frame, and the complex web of rules and regulations was the first real discipline he’d ever known. Even being forced to show respect for the officers, no matter what species of asshole they were, was good for him, a valuable lesson in how to hold his tongue and play the game.

Plus, it was a hell of a lot of fun. He got to shoot powerful weapons, blow up stuff with his fellow devil dogs, and see some of the world — the Philippines, Korea, Japan. He learned a little Tagalog, a little Japanese; climbed Mount Fuji while on leave; and fell in mad, sad love with an Okinawan bar girl who called herself Sunshine.

He also discovered that he could fight. A soft-spoken black guy in his platoon, Carl Perry, had won a few amateur bouts back in Compton, and Boone spent hours in the gym with him, training, sparring, and soaking up his knowledge of boxing. When it came to technique, Boone was a bit of a brawler. The first few times he climbed into the ring, anger welled up in him after taking a few jabs from Carl, and he charged in, swinging wildly. After a while, though, he was able to channel that anger into powerful punches that often rocked the bigger man back on his heels.