Underbelly (9 page)

“Who says?”

“His chick who came by.”

“That you lent a twenty to, I bet.”

She kissed his chest. “Thirty, darling.”

“Sheeeet.”

“He was at work. She showed me a picture on her cell phone. He's a security guard at the Emerald Shoals site.”

“Then he should be able to come by and see you.”

“He will.”

Magrady didn't want to cause static. We all needed something to hang onto.

As several strings and drums went wild on the record then settled into a moody dissonance, Baine let her hand go low on his body and damned if he wasn't able to soldier up. This was also why he didn't argue with her about her son. He figured she might be feeling frisky and why mess with that? Cialis? Viagra? Heh. He was Kong, son of Kong, baby.

When they were done he promised to call Baine this coming weekend, if only to prevent her taking up with that bastard Jeremy again he half-joked. Magrady got all stealthy coming down the hall and could see, as he feared, the one-armed Asher on the desk. He was doing a card trick with his pincer to keep himself amused. He flipped the king of hearts over in his metal grip then back and suddenly the face card was now a ten of clubs. Magrady was impressed but certainly wasn't going to clap.

At one point staying at the Chesapeake was a former stage magician who went by the name Greystone. He occasionally did gigs at the Magic Castle in Hollywood when his arthritis permitted. Being a magician who specialized in close work, like making coins fall through solid tables, required nimble fingers, yet he'd taught Asher a few tricks before he died of emphysema.

Going back the way he came, he passed Baine's room. From inside he could hear her pleasant voice hum and sing “Red River Valley.” He got to the inside stairwell door and creaked it open. Asher would hear it but probably wouldn't pursue him in the stairwell, as this meant disturbing his practice session. Magrady came out on the side of the building in a narrow passageway
crowed with trash and smelling ripe. He bought some tepid coffee from the Shell gas station quick mart and didn't give in to the lust to have a muffin. He walked over to the Urban Advocacy offices but Bonilla was in the field and the intern that had helped him, Fjeldstrom, wasn't around either. He was able to check for his mail and was surprised to find a letter for him.

“She must have strong ju-ju,” he mumbled, meaning Angie Baine talking about her family had conjured up his as well. Magrady went back to the waiting area in front and sat heavily in one of the plastic chairs. Snakes writhing in his throat, he stared at the envelope. The letter was from his ex-wife, Claudelia. She'd long ago remarried and was now living in Tulsa, being an Oklahoma girl originally. He tapped it against his fingertips. He just knew this couldn't be good news.

He debated reading the message now or later. A woman who'd been there before him was now talking to one of the organizers about her unfair eviction. Magrady folded the letter and tucked it in his back pocket. One goddamn problem at a time, he reasoned. He went to the bus stop on Wilshire and after two other buses came and went, got the Line 10 of the blue bus, Big Blue it was nicknamed, the one he needed to take him far enough. This one took a freeway route and its riders tended to be dressed in suits and expensive shoes—lawyers doing their part at being eco friendly.

The Westwood Farmers Market was a once-a-week fresh food affair held in the fourteen-acre garden on the expansive Veterans Affairs facility off of Wilshire near the 405 Freeway. The garden also included rows of rose bushes, and gave recuperating vets an opportunity to do some head healing through the symbolic and practical act of growing fruits and vegetables. Magrady wasn't much on sod busting, but he appreciated what this program did for the vets.

He nodded at a twenty-some-year-old man in cargo shorts with one of those space age curved metal legs attached below his real knee. He watched the Iraqi vet offload some red potatoes from a van and continued walking about, searching for Floyd Chambers. He bought some strawberries from a vendor because weren't they a natural way to keep your pencil sharp? Seemed his
dad used to say that. Stacked under the table's stall were several crates etched Shishido Farm in the soft wood.

Munching on his snack, he rounded another stall where a heavyset woman was using a screwdriver to undo the plastic straps sealing a cardboard box. He also spotted Chambers. He had on a floppy hat and was wheeling about, having just talked with a young woman holding a clipboard. Magrady was about to call to him but something clicked like those times in the war threading through jungle overgrowth. Damn if his Spidey Sense hadn't kicked in. Must be the way Floyd was looking around trying to seem casual but not. He followed his brief head turns to Boo Boo, he of the sunset eyes. His Yogi fortunately didn't seem to be about.

The thug was hefting a couple of husks of corn but he too was on alert. What had they intended to do to Angie, Magrady roiled moodily. Channeling his anger, he moved toward Boo Boo, having picked up the screwdriver from the vendor's table.

Magrady was behind and to the right of the Boo before he noticed him. He'd been distracted trying to mack on a smooth-skinned honey who had the good sense to not give him those digits. “How you doin', fuckhead?” he said while simultaneously jabbing the screwdriver into the hoodlum's lower side. He wasn't looking to puncture a kidney, just get a response.

“Motherfuck,” Boo Boo hollered, squinting then going wide-eyed at the sight of the evilly grinning vet. “That's your ass, old man.”

He lunged for Magrady, who immediately dropped to the ground and went into a fetal position. He yelled, “Oh my God, he attacked me. Help! Help!” His plastic bag of strawberries smashed into gooey red pulp beneath him.

Boo Boo was dependable. “Shut the fuck up,” he bellowed, aiming the points of his too-clean Jordans towards Magrady's stomach. Anticipating such, the other man had X'd his forearms in front of his body. Three of the VA's security guards who were weaving about in the farmer's market ran over.

“He just went crazy,” Magrady avowed, “I'm a veteran and he hates vets, he said.”

“Hey wait,” Boo Boo started as one of the guards, who'd
recently taken the Sheriff's exam and was anxious to learn the results, tackled him.

Magrady scooted out to the way. He had to give Boo Boo his props. At first as the guards swarmed him, he went on instinct and fought back. But even in what passed for a mind atop the hoodlum's thick neck understood the hole he'd been placed in, and further action on his part was only sucking him down deeper. He became compliant.

Problem was the guards were amped and as Double B declared, “I give,” the would-be deputy Tasered him in the side of his neck. His legs and arms convulsed and he swore a string of profanities, with some particular illustrative language aimed at Magrady and his kin. They got him to his feet, his legs the consistency of overcooked pasta.

“Mister, you okay?” one of the earnest young protectors asked. He was taller than Magrady with a country-boy Norman Rockwell look about him.

“Yes, I think so.” Magrady iced the cake. “For some reason he singled me out. I think he'd seen me here before, he knew I was a Vietnam vet.” That would set him in solid with these guys. “Walking around mumbling about how the marines wouldn't take him 'cause of some sort of criminal charge.”

“You lying shitfaced bitch-ass punk,” Boo Boo screamed. “I'll fix you for this.”

“Keep quiet,” the deputy hopeful said as he used metal cuffs on the bargain-store gangster. They bent him over a table with boxes of mushrooms on it and patted him down.

“Look, we're going to take him in and see if he has any priors,” the embodiment of all-Americanism said. “We saw him attacking you.”

“So did I,” a woman in pedal pushers holding a plastic sack of tomatoes said. “He simply went Rambo on this poor man.” She looked about, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn't say that right.”

The guard continued, “Look, you might have to swear out a complaint for the police, so we'll need to get in touch with you.”

“Not a problem.” Magrady gave him the address and phone for the Urban Advocacy offices. He shook the earnest guard's hand and went in search of Floyd Chambers. At the start of the trouble,
he'd wheeled away. Magrady figured they'd come in Boo Boo's car, and that he'd be able to track him on foot in the vicinity. He hoped too that Boo Boo did have unanswered charges or bench warrants for traffic tickets so the cops would keep him locked up at least for a few days. Once he got out… well… that was once he got out. Too bad the roughneck hadn't brought his heater with him. Guess he wasn't that stupid, Magrady concluded.

Huffing it out to Wilshire Boulevard, Magrady spotted Chambers on the other side of the street heading east, away from the VA and the soldier's graveyard where several of Magrady's comrades were buried. This part of the thoroughfare was wide and given the entrance and exits of the 405 freeway, the traffic was steady with assorted vehicles and buses. “How the hell did he get over there so quick?” Magrady mumbled.

Neither a stoplight nor a crosswalk were immediately available. But he couldn't let him slip away now so he timed it and darted into the street. Drivers braked and swerved and gave him the finger or cursed him.

He went around the rear of an accordion bus and made it to the other side, a motorcyclist blaring, “Idiot grandpa. Get back to your rest home.”

Chambers' arms were churning and he wheeled swiftly under the overpass. Magrady jogged after him, aware he was breathing harder than he'd like to be. He slowed his pace but kept on as Chambers worked his wheels with a practiced flourish. On the south side of Wilshire east of the overpass was the Federal Building where such offices including passport and the FBI were located. There was a contingent of protestors in front, which was not unusual, except this was a weekday in the mid-afternoon. Who the hell would be out now?

Magrady had to assume it was anti-war stalwarts. But as he dashed through the smattering of people he noted a sign with a cut out of a lazing polar bear on it with the words “Save Them” printed on it. Another read, “Stop Global Warming. More Ice for the Bears.” Swell sentiment, he reflected as he watched Chambers roll to the other side of the true believers. Did they expect the Bureau to drop their current caseload and build rafts for the polar bears?

He felt guilty for being a cynical asshole, but there would have to be another time to save the glaciers. Magrady took some deep breaths and got his arms and legs pumping … The one thing Magrady could do to close the space was cut across the huge lawn of the Federal Building. Chambers had to stick to the sidewalk for better traction.

“Come on, Floyd,” he yelled, running across the grass, “hold up. What's the deal, man?” He prayed that there weren't twenty-four-hour snipers on duty on the roof just waiting for some nut to sound vaguely threatening so they could relieve their boredom by misting his brains.

The disabled man glanced at him then kept on trucking toward Ohio Street. Magrady could feel his burst of energy dissipating and laughed inwardly at those who said age was just a number. Shit. Age was your body letting you down and sweat pouring out of you like a bucket with a hole in it. Fuck if he wasn't going to get away from him, a chump in a wheelchair. Okay, he admitted, that wasn't being touchy-feely either. But getting pissed gave him focus and renewed energy. Magrady, never one for the treadmill, put all he had left in a last effort to catch his fleeing friend.

“Watch it, lady,” Chambers hollered as he went off the curb and tried to cross in the middle of the street. A young woman illegally talking on her handheld cell phone, Mariah Carey rockin' on her car's sound speakers, had turned onto Ohio from the far corner and roared toward Wilshire in her late model Mustang. She was too wrapped up in her conversation to see Chambers until she was on him.

She slammed to a halt. Floyd's gloved hands locked on his wheels and he fishtailed his wheelchair into the side of the driver's door. Chambers fell over. The young woman, a strawberry blonde with heavy mascara scolded, “Dude, look what you did to my door.” She was staring down at Chambers, on his side, in the street next to his downed wheelchair.

“What he did to you?” Magrady said, running up, out of breath. “You just ran over a disabled man, miss. We need the police to test you for marijuana or ecstasy or something.” Gasping, he continued, “I saw everything. You never once slowed down, and you were illegally talking on your cell phone. No hands-free set.”

The pretty woman screwed up her face at him then looked past to the bear lovers who'd also come over. “Wait, what are you saying?”

“You know damn well what I'm saying,” Magrady helped Chambers, also breathing hard, sit up and righted his chair. “You're going to jail. You're a menace.”

“Maybe I should call my lawyer.”

“Yeah, I do think you should call mommy and daddy's lawyer. And I'll get some witnesses' statements while you're at it.” He got Chambers into his wheelchair. “How are you, sir? Can you understand the words coming out of my mouth?” He over-enunciated, stealing the line from that comedy movie with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

He muttered to Magrady, “Crazy motherfucker.” He rasped out loud, “I think I'll be okay.” It didn't escape him that Magrady had a grip on the handle of his chair.

“Well, your medical bills should be added to the lawsuit,” he said louder than necessary. “You'll need to get checked out thoroughly.”

The driver had put a sandal-clad foot on the ground preparing to step out of her car but froze at that statement. “He's all right,” she insisted, looking from Chambers to her dented door.

“Really?” Magrady challenged. “We better let a doctor determine that.”