Underbelly (4 page)

Gladys gave Magrady a put-upon smile, then went to fill the pensioner's order. When she returned she leaned closer, “You don't seem stupid.”

Now he chuckled. “Hardheaded maybe.” He had more of his fizzy water. “Had a play auntie named Gladys.”

“That right?” she said, her smile revealing a tooth with a tiny star-shaped diamond in it.

“Would I kid you?”

“I imagine you might.” She adjusted some items below the bar. “Why you so hot to get with any of them fools that ran with Savoirfaire?” And as if on cue, Gladys' eyes shifted from him to the two new clients who entered from the sunlight into the cloying dimness of the bar.

She didn't say anything else to Magrady as her expression told him what time it was.

“Hey now, girl,” one of the men said, latching onto the bar. “What up?” He was at least ten years the bartender's junior. His homie sprawled in one of the ancient red leather booths.

“Same old shit,” she answered, automatically taking a swipe with her rag in front of him.

Magrady waited until the newcomer placed his order, then pivoted toward him on his stool. The man was dressed in slacks, a colorful shirt and a snap-brim hat.

“Just being curious, but did you inherit Savoirfaire's Escalade?”

The man barely acknowledged Magrady as Gladys returned with his bottled beers. He then nudged his head toward the booth. “Over here,” he said.

Magrady followed and sat opposite the two. The second man, in a velour tracksuit, had red eyes complimented by a marijuana fragrance.

“Dude here knew Savoirfaire.” The neatly dressed one tipped back some beer.

“Ain't that fascinatin',” his associate slurred, straightening up. He didn't take a sip. He did reach a hand below the table and Magrady then felt the tap of the gun's muzzle against his knee.

“Where's our money, bitch?” Red Eyes demanded, his voice suddenly clear as spring water.

“Let's go outside so you can hear us better,” his partner suggested.

On the narrow strip of a parking lot alongside the Hornet's Hive, Red Eyes jabbed the muzzle of his Glock into Magrady's fleshy side. He enjoyed intimidating. “Now what'd you say, old school?”

“I told you I don't know anything about any money that Curray owed you,” the vet answered.

“You did say that,” Red Eyes' partner offered, adjusting his snap-brim hat. He scanned the boulevard for possible interruptions. An elderly stooped woman trudged by, pulling her groceries in a cart with a bent hub. He stepped into Magrady's orbit.

“Why you sucking around about Savoirfaire?”

“He owes me money too. I've been on the look for him and that's how I wound up here.” Magrady gestured a thumb at the outside wall of the bar. On it was a faded and chipped mural of Malcolm X on a motorcycle, Pancho Villa casually holding an AK, and Selena dressed like Wonder Woman. Villa was on a horse and Selena on what looked to be flying disk. The three were side by side on a hill. There was no graffiti sprayed on the images.

“Why the fuck would somebody like the Sav owe an old punk-ass like you money?” Red Eyes snickered as he looked Magrady up and down and glared at his face. “You're bullshittin'.” To emphasize his point, he jammed the gun in Magrady's stomach, causing him to grimace.

Red Eyes taunted, “Don't like it in the belly, huh?”

Magrady remained silent, assessing if he had any options.

“Who are you?” the calmer one in the hat and print shirt said.

“I told you.”

“You told us what you wanted to, but that's not what I asked.”

“That's right, pops, it ain't.” Red Eyes made to punch him in the gut again with the business end of the pistol and Magrady grabbed his arm with both hands. He twisted that arm and pivoted his hip into the other man's side. Magrady hoped his reflexes remembered those long-ago judo lessons he'd taken during basic. Damned if he didn't flip his tormentor over his shoulder and slam his butt onto the asphalt.

“Mothahfuckah,” the downed man swore.

Still holding onto that arm. Magrady placed his foot into Red Eyes' armpit and turned his wrist viciously. The gun came loose.

“I'm impressed,” the second hood said genuinely. He drove a fist into Magrady's already tender stomach and followed that with a clip to the jaw that was brutally effective.

Magrady teetered and tried to keep his feet under him, figuring he was in for a boxing lesson. Only Red Eyes wasn't through. He picked up his gun and backhanded it across Magrady's face. The older man fell against the fender of a Volkswagen, and slid down against the car's tire well. The two now towered over him.

“You better stay away from 'round here and don't be nose'n into our bid'ness,” the one in the hat stated. “I don't know what the hell you're sniffing around for, but this shit don't concern you, understand?”

“Yeah,” Magrady said.

“I said do you understand?” he repeated forcefully, but in an even tone. Through all of this, he hadn't spoken above a normal tone.

“Yes,” the beaten man repeated.

“Good for you.” Red Eyes kicked him in the thigh and the two left in a dark blue Scion. Rather than rap blaring from its speakers, country and western music pumped from the vehicle as they drove off.

Magrady sat up and recuperated, breathing heavily through his mouth for several minutes. A decades-old Ford pickup with a bed-over toolbox pulled into the lot. The driver, in matching plaster-smeared khakis and shirt, took a long look at him, then went into the bar. Minutes passed. Having gathered himself,
Magrady got up and limped back into the Hornet's Hive. Gladys, the bartender, took in his appearance and produced a plastic first aid kit from below the bar.

“Thanks,” Magrady said. He took the kit and went into the men's room. He returned shortly thereafter having mostly applied Mercurochrome to the open wound where Red Eyes had slapped him with the gat. He took a position on a stool, sliding the kit back across the bar top. At the far end was the plasterer, leisurely having himself a martini, ignoring Magrady and everyone else as he munched on an olive. Magrady leaned his elbows on the wood and fought back the urge to order a shot.

“Who were those lovely fellows?”

Gladys frowned as if he were sticking his tongue out at her.

“Names can't hurt, can they?”

“Right,” she said warily. “You're an example of that.” She went off to fill an order, then returned. “Why you knocking yourself out like this?”

“I hate to be told what to do.”

“Who doesn't?”

“Then think of me as Tom Joad, standing in for all who have been put down and put upon.”

“You're fuckin' funny.” Her big earrings tinkled like chimes as she chuckled.

“I'm all about the charm.”

She spritzed him a glass of soda water. “The sharpie goes by Elmo re.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. His mama was a big blues fan. The other one, the weed head, is called Boo for Boo Boo.”

“Like Yogi the Bear's little buddy?”

She continued, “Only of course nobody calls him that unless they want him to go straight playground.”

“What's his real name?”

“Don't know. But Elmore's family name is Jinks. Not short for Jenkins.”

Magrady nodded and asked, “How about a guy in a wheelchair?” He described his missing friend Floyd Chambers.

“Nope, sorry.” The Manhattans sang “‘Kiss and Say Goodbye'” on the radio piping into the speakers up high in the corner behind the bar.

It was getting on in the afternoon. Sitting there at the bar, gazing into a swirl of dust motes in a cone of slanting light, the effects of the beatdown were overtaking Magrady. Here he was close to needing a walker playing Super Shaft, and for what? Get his head busted open over bullshit, he glumly concluded.

Still, the notion that he could do this, be of some worth, was what had set him going. And too, maybe he'd get one up on that self-righteous prick Stover—surely that was a good thing.

Magrady produced a wan smile and touched his tender face. Unlike the world-weary PI, he had no Girl Friday to patch him up, let alone a place to sleep tonight. Gladys presented possibilities but she definitely wasn't the kind of woman to take a dude like Magrady home on the first meeting. Especially as he was messing with Elmore and the Boo Boo, surely she wouldn't want that kind of grief on her doorstep.

Was his resistance to calling Janis Bonilla just because she'd bug him to come to work for Urban Advocacy? Or was it that he didn't want to appear weak and needy to her? Intellectually he knew she wasn't the judgmental type, so why did he want to maintain certain perceptions with her? Did he dig her in that way or hey, if he was a father figure to her, that too was a reason to show no cracks.

Reassessing his earlier decision, he could press matters and try and bunk with Angie Baine, as getting past Asher the deskman was more of a game than obstacle—at least for a few nights. But it could be a signal to her they were taking up again. The last time they'd tried playing house a decade ago, she'd gone off during an argument, bolstered by the afternoon vodka tonics she imbibed in those days. Going on about how he was devious like this producer who'd screwed her out of her comeback role. She'd nearly scaled the skin off his back by chucking a pot of boiling rice at him. For an old girl originally from a staid blue-veined family in Bridgeport, Connecticut, she had plenty hood rat in her, Magrady reflected. It made for interesting encounters, and she did seem calmer now—but he'd already been roughed over once today.

“Aw, hell,” he mumbled. He was too worn out to be scuffling on the streets tonight. “Can I borrow your phone?” he asked Gladys. “It's local, I swear. I mean it's 323.” Inglewood was in the 310 area code. A working pay phone, particularly in this part of town east of the airport was rarer than Lindsay Lohan not crashing a car.

Gladys placed an old rotary job on the bar. “Two bucks and you only get a minute. And I see what number you dial.”

What had he been smoking? A tough broad like her give him a place to lay his head? Even in the storeroom in this joint? She'd have laughed herself sick if he'd have asked. He paid the freight.

“Janis,” he said when he got her on her cell phone, “You give a veteran's discount, don't you?”

“You're not trying to proposition me, are you, Magrady?” she joked.

He explained his situation. Aware, too, that while he was consciously keeping his voice down, the whiskered gent with the metal cane was giving him a couple of glances.

“That's not a problem. Only I'm not getting home till around ten or so tonight,” Bonilla said. “I've got a strategy meeting with the coalition. What don't you come by that and then we go from there?” She told him where the meeting would be.

He said he would and ended the call. Magrady thanked Gladys again and got off the stool to leave. His body was stiff and he seriously considered just one brace of whiskey before he got back out there. He could handle that. He wasn't no kid, he was a grown-ass man, wasn't he? Sheeet.

“You were in Vietnam?” The old fella with the cane asked him. He was looking straight ahead across the width of the bar at the assortment of bottles on their shelves.

“I was.”

“Chosin,” the regular answered. “Heard of it?”

“Sure. It was a meat grinder during the Korean War.”

“Blood froze before it could spit out your body,” the old man said hollowly, looking off and shaking his head slowly. “We swabbed our M-1s in antifreeze-soaked rags to keep them from freezing up. Toes and fingers getting black from the gangrene
'cause of creeping frostbite.” He stopped talking and had more of his drink. He didn't continue so Magrady figured the VFWer just wanted to connect to another GI who might understand what it was still chasing him all these years later. He started to leave.

“Knew your boy Floyd,” the other man said. “Knew him before the accident that put him in that chair.”

Magrady said, “How'd you know him?”

The other man shook the ice in his now empty glass like a shaman preparing to roll the bones. Or seeking tribute.

Why not? He bought him another round. “Well?”

“Some kind of fall or some such put him in that chair. One of them construction jobs over there in El Segundo 'bout ten, eleven years ago. He was a welder.”

“You still haven't said how you know Floyd.”

“More it was his sister I knew. Had a little appliance store not too far from here and she clerked there for me. Floyd would come by when she was through to pick her up. She was a looker.”

“Sister got a name?”

The other man laughed and it echoed into the glass at his lips. “Want to make sure you're getting your money's worth, huh?”

Magrady remained quiet.

“Sally Chambers.”

“Not Prescott?”

“Not when I knew her.”

“Since she worked for you, any idea where she lived?”

He completed a leisurely sip, then, “My store survived the Negroes and Mex-cans tearing shit up in '92 only to have some sweet ol' sister on her way home from church suddenly get the Holy Ghost behind the wheel. She plowed that bad boy through the front of my shop like them hurricanes leveled the Ninth Ward.

“Between the hassles with the insurance company and the surviving family of that psalm-singer who went to see the Lord, I said, enough of this mess.” He got quiet and simply sat and stared.

“So, could be you have an old file somewhere with her last known address?”

He raised both eyebrows signaling “Who knows?”

“Maybe I can call you down here in a couple of days if you get a chance to look.” He handed a five to Gladys. “Another one on me.” He needed an expense account.

Rising from his stool again, Magrady asked, “So what made you all chatty?” Long shadows of late afternoon spilled under the bar's curtained threshold.