Dangerous Games (13 page)

Getting tired of things was a funny idea, she thought. She wondered if men ever got tired of trying to hammer away at every woman they met to make sure they got their share. So many of them approached the whole thing in a permanent state of rage. If they'd just calm down a little, everybody could try to have some fun.

The bald one called Levine was driving the Caddy, and the Jamaican was bent forward doing something with the big revolver in his lap.

“You're a cute kid. How'd you end up with a douchebag like Keith?” Levine submitted.

“I ran off from home and I did the best I could. People keep telling you how pretty and nice you are and they're going to take care of you, and just when things seem to be maybe okay, some guy with a mean streak grab's you by the hair.”

She stopped and thought about what she'd just said and wondered if it would piss them off. She admitted to herself that she bore some responsibility for her plight, too. She'd done a little hopeful fibbing to the diary, but it wasn't like she'd been so attracted to any of these guys of the last week, except maybe Rod, and he was pretty pathetic really. The only thing she could say for sure was they seemed to get bigger and stronger all the time.

“I believe that's a pelican,” she said, a little surprised. It was unmistakable, with the big pouchy bill, gliding along parallel to the car as if checking them out, and then peeling away back toward the ocean. She'd never seen a pelican, though seagulls made it as far inland as the Owens Valley all the time.

The Jamaican had looked up. “Him be pemmican, for sure—just a scuffle for he bread in the water. You overstan de beast of nature?”

“I'm an Indian. I know stuff.”

“Look hyere, dawta, you mean you Red Indian?”

“Well, I ain't no spot-on-the-forehead Indian. I'm a Paiute.”

“I-and-I penatrayit. Dat somefing fine. Your mind born free.”

The car came off pavement and jounced along on a well-graded dirt road in the hills.

“Where are you taking me?” A chill of fear had overcome her.

The Jamaican looked over at the driver, as if for permission to let her into the secret.

“We've got a crib up here,” the driver said. “You be a good girl, and we'll all get along. Are you really Keith's old lady?”

“I don't belong to nobody, and not especially that creepoid. He just started to think he owned me. He made me work as a model and then a hostess. I didn't like it.”

“You mean he turned you out?” the driver said.

“I don't know what that means.” The Jamaican was looking over his shoulder, watching her, and he grinned with some private joke as the driver spoke.

“It means he made you fuck guys,” the driver said.

“I guess. It started out one way and kept changing and then I was stuck with this Japanese guy doing stuff I didn't like at all. I came to the city to be in movies. Little Deer sent me to some guy, and he seemed okay. Maybe I met the wrong people after that.”

“Maybe you've met the right people, now—that is, if you want to get over,” the driver said. “I remember Little Deer.”

“Oh, man, I seen that Likkle Deer, too. She got the shining of Ras in her ownself.”

Luisa thought of the poor dying woman she had met and didn't think it would help matters to tell them about her. “Sometimes I think I ought to just go waitress at Denny's.”

“Gwaan, girl, dat just an ordinary ting, and you start dat and you be stuck dere for you life. You wan some herb?”

The fact that he pronounced the H confused her at first, but it wasn't hard to figure out what he meant when he held out the fattest cone-shaped hand-rolled number she'd ever seen, like a small trumpet.

“Good God, is that all
weed
?”

“You ain' never seen a proper spliff?”

“Even Grandpa Russell would choke himself on this.”

He had it going already, smoking like a steam engine, and she took a big hit, and tried to hold it in and not to cough. It was raw and harsh, not smooth like the weed that Russell grew up in the Sierra canyons, but she felt the buzz right away. She handed it back.

“You wicked, girl.” He grinned and took another long, slow hit.

The car drew up to the most beautiful house Luisa Wilson had ever seen, all glass sides and flat roof and patio. There was another house, a little like it, a hundred yards farther on, and a few others scattered on lower roads, but this one seemed to be on the very top crest of the weedy hills. The driveway slumped down into a sunken three-car garage where the door came open automatically to show the rear of a big wide SUV, like something the army would use.

She finally let the smoke out, a slow blue hiss. “You fellows sure got you a house.”

“Dawta, we don settle for no lowdown 'commodation.”

“Make yourself comfortable, my dear,” Levine said. He even opened the car door for her, and she felt like a princess, all of a sudden. “No one is going to harm you here, I promise. But this is our house, and we've got two rules for you to remember. No crying is allowed here—all crying is blackmail. And, number two, if you got a problem, you come and ask us about it
only
if you want to get it fixed. It's what we do. You just want to whine, that's what your girlfriends are for.”

She thought about that for a moment. “I bet you leave the toilet seats up, too.”

“You want ‘em down, get your own house.”

Gloria was already frowning at him as he peered in the French window. The room was well lit, and the boy stood facing the far wall, his left hand rooting in a big bowl of what looked like chicharones on a barstool. With his right, he was using a spraycan to add dimension to a swelling bulbous graffito the size of a bicycle that seemed to be spelling out nothing more adventurous than THUMB.

Jack Liffey watched patiently for a while. The boy had excellent control of the spray pattern. He wouldn't have thought you could get that subtle a shading with an ordinary spray can.

“Jack, this is making me uncomfortable.”

They were, of course, plainly visible to anyone who might come along the alley or peer out the kitchen window of the house. She stood a few feet back from the window, her badge on a chain around her neck just in case. She had insisted he leave his pistol at home, but she had hers clipped inside the back of her skirt.

“That's a new one,” he said. “An uncomfortable cop. You've got the neon sign that gives you the right to do absolutely anything you want to in this town.”

“I know some cops treat the badge like that, but it's not my way.”

“Okay,
vamanos
,” he said and rapped on the window twice before pulling it open. He'd already told her this was the only way in.

Thumb Estrada looked around and made a disgusted face when he saw Jack Liffey stepping over the sill.

“Missed you at the lawn mowing today,” Jack Liffey announced. “I thought we had a deal.” He glanced back to see Gloria standing at the window like a sheep standing patiently at a field gate. “Thumb Estrada, this is my friend Sgt. Ramirez of the LAPD.”

“
No te doy color,
” the boy snapped.

“Sorry, I didn't get that,” Jack Liffey said. “Something about giving you color?”

A lot of emotions were passing over the young man's face, some angry and some just confused.

“He says, basically, that you don't exist,” Gloria explained.

“Ah. That may well be, Thumb, in your world, but I'm lifesize in mine. We had an agreement. In case you've forgot, if you don't mow my lawn, I turn you in. That's pretty simple, really. It's straight as I can make it. We are not sorry for our sins if we are not willing to make amends. I don't think Sgt. Ramirez here agrees with this deal I made with you, but I think she'll let me honor it if we get started pretty quick. The mower's all sharpened up and ready.”

“Fock you, man.”

“I forgot. I also promised to teach you how to write an essay. Nice mural, by the way.”

The boy looked back at his name on the wall, as if longing to add a few touches. He shook the spray can absently, and the ball inside rattled. For some reason, Jack Liffey felt a heavy pressure against his chest, as if a belt were tightening around him. He'd had a collapsed lung not long ago, and he was sensitive to feelings in his chest.

“The wall's not going anywhere.”

“Caifás con me lana,”
Gloria said sharply.

The young man answered in sullen Spanish, and they talked for a while. As near as Jack Liffey could tell, she was seething with suppressed anger, but probably as much of it was directed at him as at the boy. That was where it came from, he realized, this sensation in his chest. The pressure of her anger was like a standing shock wave.

“Okay, I go with you.” Thumb's face was rigid as a steel mask.

“Why don't you skip trying to be an outlaw for a while? It takes so much extra energy. I'm offering to be a friend.”

Jack Liffey held out his hand, but the boy only glared at it as he stalked past him.

“Well, maybe later,” Jack Liffey said brightly.

Dear Diary,

I dont know if this is all going from worse to better or what, strange things happen in this life. I was laid low by everything when these new guys show up & everything is different again. I seem to be starting to get over that boy Keith. My new friends make me laugh and that is what grandfather said always saved the Paiutes from bad times. Ha-ha. I laugh at Keith holding his thing & owwing after Trevor circumscribe him. Way to go Trev or Terror as he is also AKA. I sens that my destiny is now with these two. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

TWELVE

The Ugly Contest

It's just too difficult to decide who someone is, he was thinking, what he's
really
like, which one of all the contradictory parts is going to step front and center and which one is going to retreat. He could barely work out who he was himself, or Gloria, but there were worlds of bad faith standing between himself and this boy.
Hang on tight,
he told himself.

He had decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to sit up on the porch like a strawboss while Thumb slaved away at the lawn so Jack Liffey got out the old edger to keep his hand in. He was hacking away along the walk and the driveway but only managed to gum up the dull blade with damp grass so that it was virtually useless.

Thumb was doing a conscientious job, his shirt off to expose the tattoos on his brown torso, mostly blue and blurry and unreadable in Olde Englishe letters, the usual prison or juvie tats. He mowed an up-and-down pattern rather than the shrinking spiral box that Jack Liffey favored, and when he emptied the last bag of cuttings into the rose bed, Gloria brought them both lemonades and the boy, forearming sweat off his brow, took his gratefully.

“¡Ay, que padre!”
he exulted after a long swallow.

Since his English was perfectly good, Jack Liffey figured Thumb was getting his own back by excluding him from the conversation.

“Do you go to the JC?” Jack Liffey asked him.

The boy just stared at him without speaking.

“I saw the history book,” Jack Liffey said neutrally.

“It's for a GED, I told you,” he finally allowed. It was as if he'd forgot for a moment that he was supposed to be hostile, and then something hard came into his eyes again and he turned away.
“Pendejo.”

“There's nobody else here so you won't lose face if you're polite. You ever smell rotting meat?” he asked out of the blue. He'd tried this ploy once with a particularly snotty girl, and it had worked like a charm.

The boy's face opened up a little, curious.

“It's that almost sweet repulsive smell that makes you want to throw up. I was near a dead body once in Nam. Imagine stepping on a cat that's been in the gutter for weeks, that's turned soft as jelly with maggots crawling through it.” He paused for effect. “Believe it or not, that's what starts to happen to your insides when you disrespect yourself. Act like a cheap hoodlum, and your bones start turning into wet cardboard. Pretty soon you'll smell, and not even your mother will want to be anywhere near you.”

Jack Liffey went off on in this vein—crazily, he knew—for a little longer, inventing grosser and grosser details of rot, just to see if Thumb could be made to react. Eventually, the boy shook his head and waved a hand casually, as if flicking something repulsive off it. “You one spacy dude.”

“Listen to me,”
Jack Liffey demanded. “I do this for a living, dealing with kids who think they're tough punks. I've seen a million just like you. You know what, there's always a lonely lost kid inside, under all that bullshit, trying to look hard as nails but crapping himself when the cops show up to take him away. What you really want is respect from the world, just a little respect, It's not much to ask, I know, but you don't have a clue how to get it.”

He saw the first flickerings of self-pity expose themselves as he looked evenly at Thumb. The cold reading was a cheap trick, really: every fortune cookie was true of everyone. All it took was enough force of personality to shift someone's perceptions a few inches so that they acknowledged what you pointed out. He saw the boy's eyes flick up to where Gloria had been—but she'd known enough to absent herself. This was a moment between men.

“Why you being like this?” Thumb's voice spiraled down into a drone. “I'm sorry I shot at you. I said I was.”

“That's a start. Look, I'm trying to work on my own anger. Why shouldn't you try the same?”

“Huh.”

“Let's say I shoot you to get even. If I do, everybody loses. You're dead, and I probably go to jail, my girl has to visit me 400 miles away through bulletproof glass. If I teach you how to write a passable essay, we all win. Most important, my daughter wins. She didn't get shot in vain. You're up to the Civil War, right?”

“Huh.”

He was absently rocking the old push-mower back and forth a few inches, and Jack Liffey took it away from him. “The South after the Civil War, Reconstruction.”

“Si, esse.”

“That means you're well past the Mexican-American War. Write me one page about how the U.S. stole this part of the country from Mexico. If that's too big for you, you can limit it to how the war started. Don't just use that textbook you've got. Look in a couple of books.”

“I can't write good.”

“You will when we're through, I promise, unless you're afraid to learn. Have it for me tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!
Dame chanza!
” Thumb was indignant.

“Hey, was that ‘Give me a break?'”

Thumb nodded. Jack Liffey could see he still hovered on the edge of rebellion.

“I'm learning, too. Let's go do the back yard.”

He could tell by his cranky reaction that a little too much was being asked of Thumb at one go. But the boy had taken that first step now, and he seemed resigned to accepting Jack Liffey's authority, which, of course, was the point.

* * *

Thumb was negotiating the mower around the plum tree, and Jack Liffey was building the rudiments of a compost pile inside a chickenwire ring against the cinderblocks at the back corner when Gloria came down the back stoop with the cordless phone. She mouthed “Maeve,” and he took it from her. She watched the boy with an unreadable expression for a moment and then went back inside, while Jack Liffey retreated around the side of the house for an extra margin of privacy.

“Hi, hon,”

“Hi, Dad. What's going on there?”

“A kid's helping me mow the lawn.” He wondered what sort of reaction she'd have if he told her about Thumb, but he decided that would be stupid. She was so good-hearted she would undoubtedly forgive the boy eventually, probably want to help him herself, but there was no sense pushing it while she was still healing. The ostomy bag was still there as a constant reminder.

“Physical labor getting too much for your advancing age?” she teased.

“I'm always ready to help the underprivileged with some pocket money.”

“I miss you, Dad, and I miss Gloria. Mom won't let me come there. Can you visit me?”

“How about tomorrow? We could go for a drive up PCH.”

“Wicked.” She loved the Pacific Coast Highway, especially where it ran right along the water in Malibu.

“How you doing with your apparatus?” He glanced up at a terrible fingernail-on-chalkboard noise as the boy wrestled the mower over some pavers that stuck up from the crabgrass.

“Apparatus. That's a new euphemism. You mean my shitbag. It actually came in handy last week.”

“How's that?”

“We've got some tough girls at Redondo High, believe it or not. They try to corner you and go for your lunch money and stuff. I was in the head to empty the bag and this J.D. girl came in to smoke and started hassling me through the door. When I laughed at something she said, she kicked open the stall door, but all I had to do was turn around and fire Oskie at her. Man, did she run away, gagging and screaming.”

Jack Liffey laughed. “Glad he's your friend and protector. I'll see you tomorrow. I love you a lot.”

“Met, too, Dad. Bye.”

When he rang off, he could feel the heat behind his eyes, he was so proud of her cheerful bravery in the face of the disability. He watched Thumb wrestle the mower with powerful biceps and wondered how brave Thumb would be with an ostomy bag. Maybe—who knew?—given that portrait gallery of the maimed and dead at the police gang substation, one day he'd have a chance to find out.

Luisa stood on the fieldstone patio out back looking at the ocean far below. The way the hills and canyons rumpled away from the patio, she could see only one wide slice of water between the tall windbreaks of eucalyptus trees and the shrubby yellow hillsides. But it was enough. A half dozen other houses were visible on knobs and ridges but none nearer than a quarter mile. She had a good eye for distance, because back home her world was measured in bicycle distance—to school, to Joseph's Bi-Rite market, to the health center and to all her friends' houses. When she got up to a good cruise on her old Schwinn, ass-banging hard because of the packed clay instead of air her grandfather had put into the tires, she could do a mile in three brutal minutes.

“All fruits be ripe here, dawta. You overstan'?”

She smiled privately, looking away from him. Neither of these guys had tried to sleep with her the night before, but she'd grown fond of the colorful up-and-down Jamaican music in this one's voice. It was as unexpected as a kiss and tickle, though she only understood about half of what he said. His confidence affected her, too, and the amazing colors of his wardrobe.

“What a great place,” she said. “I can smell salt water on the wind, it's different from creek water. And eucalyptus and sage. Those are easy.” She sniffed. “There's hawkweed out there, too, and goosefoot and some others that I only know the Paiute names. Ootoop' and Oos'eev.”

“Them some damn strange names. I guess every person, dem got dey words and dey knowledge. Jah rule. Tek de simple concep' ob live wid love for all man and woman. No need for waar and envy. You no see it?”

“Sure. How does kidnapping and cutting people's dicks fit into that?”

He grinned slyly. “Weall, naow, I-an-I got to protect from bad business. I-rie.”

Levine came out the sliding glass door with a cold six-pack of Jamaican beer and a Jamaican ginger beer. He offered the ginger beer to Luisa.

“Thanks, I'm already a little woozy from that hit of weed.” Remains of those giant joints were lying all over the place, like traffic cones.

Levine grinned. “Be careful. The ginger beer is stronger than the beer.”

“You mean stronger with alcohol?”

“The ginger will blow your head off.”

She took a sip and the liquid burned its way down her throat like acid. It was as if someone had grated fresh ginger into the drink, but she liked it. Terror took a beer and tipped it up, his Adam's apple bobbing until it was two-thirds gone.

“I-and-I challenge to domino, Mr. Big,” he said to Levine.

“I can't stand the way you play, Ter. I'd rather have my ears drilled out with a jackhammer.”

There was a table and chairs at the side of the patio, and the Jamaican beckoned to Luisa. “Woman no afraid, you see it? Mr. Big, bwai, you jus' one big damn coward naow. Boo-yah, oh don' be hurtin on me, Mr. Terror,
please
don'. Me sooo skeered, I got me a inferior complex.”

Levine burst out laughing and headed back to the house. “Eat me, Tyrone.”

Luisa sat down gently opposite the man and helped him turn a worn box of dominoes face down. She watched his long dry-looking fingers work deftly at it. “I think I know how to play. Do you and Levine own this house?”

“When time come, we forward out of hyere. We live on de earth, dawta, in no special place here in Babylon.”

“Please call me Luisa.”

She wondered who owned the lovely hill house and what had become of them. Maybe the two were house-sitting. She hoped there wasn't some rich couple in a shallow grave just beyond the patio.

“Dis de boneyard, Miss Lou,” he said, indicating the pool of face-down dominoes. “You tek seven cards, and don' be fret my talking trash at you, dat's just the way of the game. You some sorry ass likkle lost Indian girl.”

Luisa glanced up sharply.

“See, dat what I mean. You got to unnerve de enemy.”

“
Enemy?
There's no such thing as a friendly game?”

His forehead wrinkled up in mock perplexity. “Course not.”

“You dumb black cocksucker,” she said tentatively.

He yowled happily and slapped down the first tile so hard that the table jumped, and they had to pick up a few pieces that had bounced off onto the flagstones. “Dat de idee, Missie! You not so dim, least for a Red Indian whitetrash likkle bitch can't find her own pussy with both hans.”

Luisa picked out a tile with a three to match the one he'd laid down and slapped it onto the card table about half as hard as he had. She tried to remember some of the insults she had heard in the break room at Lovey-Dove, Inc. “I hear your mother was so ugly that when she went to the ugly contest they said, ‘No professionals allowed.'”

Terror Pennycooke threw back his head and howled.

“I know I've told you about this place, but somehow we never made it here until now,” Jack Liffey said to Maeve. “You sure it's okay to walk the best part of a mile?”

“We're out in nature,” Maeve said. “I can go off into the bushes if I have to. And I sure don't remember you telling me about a
waterfall.
”

Gloria was hiking along with them, dressed in jeans and a tidy safari jacket so clean that it looked like it had just come from Banana Republic. In fact they had used her purple RAV-4 for the trip up PCH, a pleasant enough drive in the fall when the beaches weren't crowded, but Gloria was still prickly and tense. They were just across the L.A. County line into Ventura near Point Dume.

“I'll believe a waterfall when I see it,” Gloria said.

“I know two others in Southern California,” Jack Liffey bragged. “But this is the nicest one, with a soaking pool at the bottom. Some other time, we can walk way up into the hills here, too. Not today, though.” And if they indulged him, on the way back he could check out a beach house where Chris Johnson had found out that the fixer/dealer/procurer known only as Keith was supposedly shacked up. As long as Rod Whipple was out of the picture, Keith was his warmest lead to Luisa Wilson, though he hadn't told either Gloria or Maeve about it.