The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (12 page)

They did a piece on me anyway, and thirty-seven seconds after it finished, my father called with another of his patented watch-out-for-danger speeches. I’d spoken to him a half-dozen times since the Lummox conversation. The exchanges varied little. Again, you get mixed up with bad people. It’s not like I planned it, Dad. You’ll be careful? I’ll be careful.

He asked to speak to Gina. I made an excuse. Two days after Thanksgiving, she’d said she needed some space, and gone to stay at her mother’s.

As the week went on I was vaguely aware of the promise I’d made to Mike. I really did think the cops, with their ace investigators, database networks, and microanalysis equipment, were going to nab whoever did it. As each day passed, the conversation outside the Kirk Douglas Theatre grew dimmer and less real. By the weekend I was convinced that Mike, with all he’d been going through that day, wouldn’t even remember it.

Tuesday morning, ten or so. I’d been sleeping alone, living alone, for three days. The phone rang. I picked it up.“Hello?”

“That you, Portugal?”

I recognized the voice. I wished I didn’t.

“It’s me,” I said.

“This is Vito. Mr. Santini wants you to have lunch with him tomorrow.”

Oh, boy, I thought. It didn’t take him long. He was going to call in his favor and have me … have me what? Rub out some Mafia rival? Carry drugs across the border in my underwear?

“Um …”

“He’ll pay.”

“That wasn’t why I was hesitating. I’ve just got a lot to do tomorrow.” Very convincing, I was sure.

“He’d really appreciate it if you could fit him in. He has to talk about something with you, and he doesn’t want to do it on the phone.”

“He doesn’t like to do business on the phone.”

“Now you’re catchin’ on. So how about it?”

Did I have a choice? “Where should I meet him and when?”

“Noon at Valencio’s.”

“I don’t know where that is.”

“Find it.”

“I’ll find it,” I told the dead phone.

I called Alberta Burns and offered to buy her lunch. We decided on the Thai Dishes on Manchester. It had a big fish tank near the front door. A blue-and-white specimen swam in our direction and seemed to be watching us. As the hostess led us to a table, I felt it was following our progress. But when we were seated and I looked up front, it was just disappearing behind a fake castle.

You’re going psycho, Portugal.

Clearly it was a possibility. Just as clearly, there was nothing I could do about it, so I turned my attention to the menu. We ordered lunch specials. The waitress walked away and came back not thirty seconds later with a couple of Asian-restaurant salads. Some bits of pale lettuce, a sliver each of cucumber and tomato, dressing that resembled semen.

When she was gone, Burns said, “I guess you didn’t get a chance to talk to Dennis Lennox about my project.”

“Well, I did, the minute I saw him. Right after I threw up. Except for being dead, he was very responsive.”

“Ass.”

“No. I didn’t get a chance.”

“Probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway. Not enough T
&
A. Okay, what do you want from me today?”

“You ever hear of a guy named John Santini?”

“Sure. You’re not a cop in L.A. long without knowing about John Santini.”

“What is he?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve gotten mixed up with him.”

“Now you’ve done it.”

“He’s in the Mafia, isn’t he?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means there’s other organized crime besides the Mafia.”

“But he is in organized crime.”

“Was.”

“He’s not active anymore?”

“Not exactly.”

“I know how that works. The ones who are really in charge act all retired, hang out with their grandchildren, and tend their grapes. Then when something important’s going down, they suddenly show up again, and everyone you thought was in power kneels down and kisses their ring.”

“I think that’s the pope.”

“Their cheek. Their shoe. Something. Why isn’t he in jail?”

“He still has his hand in a lot of pies.”

“Thus reinforcing the idea that he ought to be in jail.”

“Some of those pies have other hands in them. And those hands belong to people in high places.”

“Politicians?”

“Look, Portugal. What I know about Santini’s all urban-legend stuff. There’s half a dozen like him that you hear about on the street. You know they’re mixed up with something illegal, and you know it reaches into the halls of power.”

“Then why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”

“Because you know that if you try you’ll get nowhere.”

“Because there are people in the department who’ll stop you?”

“I’m not going to say any more about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s pointless. Look. You wanted to find out how dangerous a character you’ve gotten yourself mixed up with. The answer is, fairly.”

“Very comforting.”

“But if you play along with him, nothing’s going to happen to you. These guys, they protect their people.”

“I’m one of his people now?”

“He’s got a lot of people.”

“What if he asks me to do something illegal?”

“He won’t. These guys have other people for that. Here’s our food.”

I couldn’t get anything else out of her. Eventually I got tired of trying.

The blue-and-white fish watched me again as we were on our way out. I stared at him for a couple of seconds. He stared right back. Then, with a flip of his tail, he swam behind his castle.

The hostess was watching too. “Nice fish,” I said.

She nodded.“Very intelligent,” she said.“That fish knows many things.”

“Does he know who killed Dennis Lennox?” I didn’t stick around for an answer.

Dennis’s time of death was, best guess, nine-thirty on the night of Tuesday, November 25. Exactly one week later, my doorbell rang.

“Who is it?” I yelled.

“Mike.”

I let him in. He went right for the couch. I caught a whiff as he went by. “How you doing?” I said.

“You know. Okay, I guess.”

“That’s good.”

“So it’s been a week.”

“I guess it has.”

“So it’s time.”

“Mike, I—”

“What’re you going to do first?”

I gave it a second. “I don’t have what you’d call a plan.”

“Yeah, well, you and me, we’re not the kind of guys who plan things out a lot, are we?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not.”

“I mean, we just go with the flow. Ride the river of life, like the song says.”

Not any song I knew. “You’ve been drinking.”

“Drinking, smoking, toking, croaking … what’s the rest of the line?”

“Are you supposed to drink when you’re on antidepressants?”

“Yeah, well, what the fuck difference does it make?” He picked up the TV remote, pressed a couple of buttons at random, dropped it onto the carpet. “Whoopsie.”

“Look. I’ve been thinking. It’s kind of pointless for me to try to find who shot—”

“I really appreciate this, man. ’Cause the cops, you know, they got a lot to do, a lot of dead people to track down. No, wait, it’s not the dead people, it’s the people who make them dead.”

“What I was trying to say is—”

“While you, what else you got to do? So I figure that makes up for the fact that they know what they’re doing.”

“It—”

“So keep me posted, okay?” And he was up, and he was at the door, and he was out it.

I stood there for a minute, and then reason kicked in, and I ran after him. I needn’t have bothered. There was a car out front. The driver, young and long-haired and tie-died, leaned against the fender. A member of Mike’s Venice community. “Yo,” he said.

Mike turned and saw me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not crazy enough to drive around drunk. Got enough dead people in my family already.”

The two of them got in. The car pulled away.

The next day was Wednesday. Four days since Gina had gone to stay at her mother’s. I’d called a couple of times, got the machine, didn’t leave a message. I thought about going over there, declaring I couldn’t live without her, begging forgiveness on bended knee.

And yet … and yet, I was, in some small way, enjoying living alone. I’d noticed this when Gina was in San Francisco. Being king of my own realm again, not having to make accommodations to the way the other person liked to live— there was a certain attractiveness to it.

Another thing: I was entertaining thoughts of being with other women. Same thoughts I always had, now tinged with the possibility that at some point in the not-too-distant future I might be able to act on them. I felt guilty for a while; then I didn’t. No point to it. I knew as soon as Gina and I had things straightened out, my little masturbatory fantasies would resume their rightful place in that mess I call my mind.

And I was sure we
would
straighten things out. Absolutely positive.

Except for the other half of the time. When I felt doomed to a life of loneliness.

I looked in my closet. What do you wear to lunch with the Mob? There was the suit I had for auditions where I needed to look respectable. And for funerals. Or I could go in a ratty sweatshirt and holey jeans. Go into the bird room and get canary shit under my fingernails. Maybe if I looked terrible Santini would think twice about having me do whatever it was he wanted me to.

I took the middle road. I showered, shaved, and put on the kind of thing I usually wore to an audition when they didn’t ask for something specific. Dockers, denim shirt, the kind of Reeboks that look like regular shoes if you don’t look close.

I pulled up at the Hotel Chilton, home of Valencio’s, at five to twelve. In front of me, Santini was handing the keys to a silver-gray Mercedes to the parking attendant. He saw me and waited while I gave away my own keys and endured the attendant’s sneer over my choice of transportation.

Santini wore a white shirt, gray sport coat, black pants. “How you doing today?” he said.

“Not bad. Yourself ?”

“Good. It’s a good day. Sun shining, birds singing.” Very civilized, the two of us were.

It was dark inside and it had been bright outside and I couldn’t see a thing. I followed the host and Santini more by sound than sight. My eyes adjusted after we were seated at a table way in the back. Thick dark wood, old-time light fixtures hanging from low ceilings, red-and-white checked tablecloths. The scent of oregano.

A waiter came by. He was seventy or more, with thin hair and a narrow moustache. The kind where, one slip while you’re shaving, it’s cut in half. He said hello to Mr. Santini, nodded to me, poured olive oil into our bread dishes, asked what we wanted to drink.

“A glass of the Chianti,” Santini said.

“Do you have iced tea?” I said.

“Joe,” Santini said.

“Hmm?”

“Have the Chianti.”

“I’ll have the Chianti,” I told the waiter, who nodded approvingly, performed a perfect about-face, and made his exit.

Santini picked up the menu. I did the same.“Veal’s always good here,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. Just studied the menu.

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” he said.

“No.”

“But you don’t eat veal.”

“Or lamb.”

“That baby animal thing.”

“Yes.”

“Gotcha. Know what else is good? The chicken marsala. Let’s have that. Marco.”

The waiter appeared at my right shoulder. He put two big glasses of red wine on the table. “Yes, Mr. Santini?”

“Two of the chicken marsala.”

“Good choice, sir.”

He disappeared. Santini picked up a chunk of bread, dipped it in oil, took a bite. He chewed, swallowed, said, “Vito’s mother makes the bread here. You remember Vito, right?”

“At your place.”

“Yeah. Have some.”

We made small talk. The weather, sports, “that freak Michael Jackson.” Salads came, big ones with garbanzos and olives. I tried to be sneaky about avoiding the olives, but Santini saw what was going on, called Marco over, had him bring me one without them. “Life’s too short to pick stuff out of your food,” Santini said.

More nothing talk until the entrees arrived. Santini took a bite, then another. His face was blissful. “It’s the spices,” he said.“Without the spices, you got nothing. You don’t have to be scared of me, you know.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“Oh?”

“Okay, I’m scared of you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve heard some of your history.”

“You scared of your father?”

“Of course not.”

“Same history. Mine just lasted a little longer, on account of he got caught.”

“Forgive me, but I’m not convinced.”

“Who you been talking to?”

“Friend of mine on the police force.”

“A cop.”

“That’s what they’re known as, yes.”

“Try your food.”

I cut off a piece, put it in my mouth. It was good, all right. Without the spices, you got nothing.

“Your father killed a guy. I never did that.”

“I’m not sure my father really killed that guy.”

“Not hard to understand.”

“And if you never actually pulled the trigger …”

He was shaking his head. “You think I got a bunch of triggermen?”

“Maybe not a bunch. Just one or two.”

“Maybe I did. A long time ago. Now, things are different. Look …”

He leaned forward, with his elbows on the table and his fingers interlaced. “I tell you things, they stay between us.”

“I tell my wife everything.” In theory, at least.

“You trust her?”

“Of course I trust her.”

“Okay, then. I tell you things, they stay between us and your wife.”

“Sure.”

“Not your cop friend.”

“Of course not.”

“Not your father.”

“Not a problem.”

“Good.” He sat back, attacked his food again. The chicken had come with a small pile of pasta on the plate. He expertly used his fork and spoon to whirl some up and put it in his mouth without losing a drop of sauce.“Eat up,” he said.“We eat first, talk after. That’s how it works.”