Tinseltown Riff (30 page)

With this idea that would not go away, he'd gunned his supercharged six-speed Mustang and drove off. And only when he'd found no one manning the gate and smoke rising that he banged his horn. He'd arrived too late, yes, but just in time to give this cowboy some of what was coming to him. Now, the least he could do was to finish it, to make things right. Make it right for Ben, like he asked, and for C.J.'s own banda de locos, his Los Cobras clique. Make it right all way round.

Turning west onto Wonderland Avenue, C.J. settled on a simple plan. Connect enough dots to keep the cowboy under custody. Also see what spills over and how far this thing goes.

Snapping up the cell phone again, he hit the first number. It brought nothing, only an answering machine. The second and third try produced the same. On the fourth try, a low gravelly voice picked up, the kind you hear watching old gringo Westerns.

“What the hell, Deacon?”

C.J. drove on saying nothing.

“Come on, I got caller ID, I know it's you. You blew it, right? And find yourself  between the ol' rock and a hard place.”

Trying to imitate the cowboy's dry voice without giving himself away, C.J. faked a cough and said, “Uh-huh.”

“Tell you what. Since you crossed me, I've half a mind to feed you to that accountant whose leg you busted. Oh, yeah, I found out all about that. And he's got pneumonia to boot.  So, you call this number again and I'll put him on to you. Give anyone and everyone an anonymous tip where to find your sorry ass. You wanted to go it alone, well, pard, you got it. You are alone.”

A sharp click and the old rancher was gone. C.J. pulled over, snatched out his mini-recorder, dictated some notes and squeezed back into the traffic. If nothing else, the cowboy now had a first name. And more than that. The accountant was not just another loco nuisance caller. He was the cowboy's victim numero three.  

 

After a few minutes wait, this skinny Ray with the beak, blue goggles and silver pajamas, returned through the metal-mesh curtain. He was clutching a wire cutter and a handful of stainless steel strings. These he tossed by the dented Fender Stratocaster on the gaming table.  

“Unzip that jacket thing all the way,” said Ray, speaking through his nose. “How do I know you're not hiding a wire? The way things are shaking out, you could be working for anybody.”

Going along to get things rolling, C.J. unzipped his shirt jacket, flung it open to reveal his bare skin and zipped it back halfway.

“That's just for openers, man. You need to know something,” Ray said as he unwound the old strings off the posts. “And that something is this. True players are those who no one sees coming. But the downside is, they can screw you over faster than anybody.”

“Like this Deacon fellow, this cowboy.”

Ray didn't answer. He yanked at a thick string that wouldn't budge from the machine head, snipped it and tugged with the snub nose of the cutters.

C.J. drifted back to the aluminum cart in the near corner, pulled out the carafe and poured himself a cup of strong, hot coffee. While drinking it down, he realized there was no way he was going to bandy words with a toucan-nosed hustler with Vegas plates. Especially one who could abuse a white satin-lacquer Stratocaster.  Simple truth, C.J. did not have fast enough English. He could not even bandy words with that mensa Angelique. He could still see her through the sliding glass door, hunched over on the bamboo-screened porch, scribbling. Wearing that puta lace bathrobe that covered up nothing; a lit cigarette dangling from her lipstick mouth. His only chance was to shake up this Ray, force a slip of the tongue and be gone.     

“I see now,” said C.J., setting down his cup, “this was a mistake. You are a person who breaks guitars and loses things. You are a poor judge of people who hired this Deacon.”

“Oh yeah?” said Ray, flinging bits of guitar strings on the white Terrazzo floor. “If you weren't stuck in your barrio, if you hit the Vegas Strip and mentioned my name, mentioned Ray Shine, you'd eat those words. What I am saying is this. Ask anybody. Check the new slots at Bellagio, the pings and clinks that sound like cash falling. Check out the special effects that pull ‘em in deeper and deeper, from quarters to dollars, dollars to five dollars, ba-da-bing ba-da-bing. My idea. The shadow-dancing hotties. The bimbos in the sinking pirate ship outside the fabulous—”

“Which has mierda to do with this business.” Moving directly across from Ray at the edge of the gaming table, C.J. said, “This is about what I got and you want. This is about gran momento distribution.”

“This is about a shakedown, you mean.” Chewing on his tongue, Ray tried to thread the new strings, lining the first one through the chrome bridge to the headstock, through the hole in the machine head, looping it back underneath and tight against the post.

“Oye, cabron, you want to talk or play with your strings?”

“If I see some proof you took Deke out, plus got your hands on what I'm frickin' missing here.”

C.J. pulled the Velcro-bound flap of his lower left jacket pocket, produced Deke's cell phone and slapped it on the plush-green felt table.   

“Yeah, so, all right,” said Ray, swearing at himself for wrapping the string over itself and jamming the machine head. “So okay, that's how you got my number.”

“That is correct. Now my turn.” Taking a guess, C.J. said, “Why do you send this Deacon with a gun?”

Twisting one of the knobs so hard his pinched face turned red, Ray said, “Listen, whatever he did to your Mexican losers is on his head. What he did at the frickin' studio last night is on his head. My play, my only play is the front. I had it in place. I had it in place good.”                                                                                                                

“You mean some maldito movie thing.”

Ripping the string out of the post and starting over, Ray said, “Hold it. Whose shot is this? Let's see a sample or we got no business and I got no use for you or any of you Chicanos.”

Still holding his temper and assuming Ray Shine had never laid eyes on the shipment, C.J. casually lifted the flap of a middle pocket, dug inside and rolled out a few fat pink-and-white capsules. Ray peeped under his blue goggles, examined them carefully, slipped them in a drawer under the side padding and said, “Yeah, pink and white, it figures. So all right, so now we're talking.”

“Now I am talking. I want to know if you know how this is done.”

“Right,” said Ray, securing the string correctly this time, plugging the guitar into a set of Super Reverb amps and trying to tune it. “You want the name of the lab in Toronto too? And how about how the goods travel down the coast? Which leaves me where? Buried in the tar pits under La Brea, that's where.”

Making a twanging sound that would hurt anyone's eardrums and twisting away, Ray strained to find an A, fingering a fret on the lowest string.  

Yanking out the drawer and retrieving the capsules, C.J. yelled, “Then forget it. Es una perdida mi tiempo!”

Ray dropped the guitar. “What did you say?”

Hurrying toward the sliding glass door, C.J. yelled, “A waste of my stinking time!”

Ray scurried in front of C.J.  C.J. picked him up by his bony elbows, swung him around in the air and set him down on the gaming table as if he were a pesky child.

“Wait,” said Ray, sliding back to the floor, tugging on the back of C.J.'s shirt jacket. “You don't get what is riding on this. Nerds horning-in strictly legal, palaces zotzed with a wrecking ball, everything on shaky ground.”

Brushing Ray aside, C.J. repeated, “Es una perdida mi tiempo.”

“Listen to me, will you? If you don't cough up my collateral, there is no front, the pipeline is blown and I am dead in this town, dead in Vegas, dead on this planet. I am talking whacked.”

“Then what is your proposition?”

Ray walked back to the table, located a thick rubber band and began stretching and twirling it around his hand. “Okay, we go back to square one. I will tell Leo we got Pepe under wraps. No more cowboys, no more hired guns. Just us three amigos.”

“Leo? Orlov from the gym?”  

“From the gym, from Odessa, from under a rock.”

“He launders, si? This I can count on.”

“Gets the front money and produces. But, seeing how things have taken another U-turn, no more hack screenwriter and whoever was running him. We go back to the drawing board. You getting this?”

C.J. shook his head.

“No matter. Look, all you gotta do is fork over the high-jacked goods, so Leo cashes in, so his backers are no more the wiser.”

“His backers?”

“Banks in Eastern Europe or something—who knows? The point is, Starshine's dummy operation looks solid and it's nothin' for you to worry your head.”

“I see.”

“It don't matter what you see. The smoky barn thing blows over, you get your cut, the front—whatever--gets back on track. That's it!”

C.J. stared at this cowering idiota and didn't know how to answer. By force of habit he ran his finger across the cross-hatched threads of the other pocket. With nothing better to say, he came up with this. “You go back to your drawing board. You come up with something much better.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying, you will be called.”   

“When?”

“In a very few hours.”

“Sooner. Much sooner. I can't take no more frickin' waiting.”

“Lo siento, I am sorry. It is complicated. I must nail this down, comprende?”

Talking to himself again, Ray went back to his battle with the strings to find an A. Then cried out, “You have to cut a deal with me. You have to!”

C.J. slipped out through the glass doors and the sun porch, annoyed at himself for not sticking strictly to English. Then kept going past the bleached blond and the pool area.

She caught up with him a few yards before the high wooden gate leading out to the drive. Ordinarily he would have ignored her and kept going. There was something about her type--hard body, chewing gun, smoky cigarette butt between her fingers. But this time he noticed a look in her eyes and bruises on her face.

“What's the rush?” she said. “What happened? How'd it go?”

“Not good. People do not know what they are doing.”

Hesitating, unsure whether to waste time with this ridiculo pop singer, C.J. reached for the latch.

“Hold it, like don't judge it by Ray.”

“Oh?”

“You need reassurance?  I mean, if it's like really important ...”

“I get this from you?”

“Who else?”

“And why would you give me reassurance?”

“‘Cause I'm goin' outta my skull. ‘Cause after my concert gigs tanked, I thought I had a ticket back. My own reality show on cable:
Sex Kitten Chronicles
. My own brand of breath mints and body-bath. An exercise video, a Christmas album for Burger King. And then they smack me with ‘You're not girly enough'.” For emphasis, she dropped the cigarette butt on the pink cement and mashed it with the heel of her sandals.

With nothing to lose, C.J. said, “So what are you that I should stand here and listen?”

“The only one who knows the score,” she said, raising her voice over the racket Ray's tuning was making through the open sliding glass door.

“You know the score? I deal with you?”

“You bet your butt.”

Pulling out the capsules from the middle pocket, C.J. said, “If this is so, tell me what are these?”

“What are you, kidding? I knew it, I knew it. You have no idea what you got hold of, do you?” She snatched one of the capsules and held it up high. “They're my very own Starshine special,” she announced over the noise. “
Stardust.
My recreational drug, my design.”

“And what is so special?”

“Euphoria, no more chronic fatigue. I am talking long-acting time-released thingamabobs.”

Goading her on, C.J. rolled his eyes and reached for the latch again as the noise subsided.

“All right, all right. It's a ‘unique combo of mescaline, amphetamines, ecstasy and synthetics that sets you rolling and never lets you down'.” She said this as if answering an easy question on a quiz show. Instead of a drum roll, her answer was greeted by another blast from Ray's dented guitar.   

“So,” said Angelique, “you satisfied? You gonna fork over the shipment so's I can get back in gear?”

Pushing his luck, C.J. said, “Perhaps. But I would like also to know about this Molly person.”

“What is that, a joke? Supposed to deliver like always, no questions asked. Then comes up with this pigeon idea. Can you believe it?”

“She is in on this operation?”

“She is in on nothing. Wants a free ride, break into movies—you know the type.  But when push comes to shove, she gets cold feet, blows me off. That is so lame. I mean, what is this? Even that tall dude never got back to me.”

Angelique threw her head back, popped the capsule in her mouth and swallowed. Then dug into her flimsy robe, chomped faster on her wad of gum and came up with a bent cigarette. “Hey, you got a lighter or something?”

“I do not smoke.”

“Jeez, at least the tall dude had a box of matches.”

Remembering Ben's story, C.J. couldn't help smiling.

“So,” said Angelique, screwing up her face, “I say, hell with it, right?  Hell with everybody and let's get this show on the road.”

“But right now I must go.” For the third time C.J. reached for the latch.

“What are you, crazy? You got to hear the smoke screen.” Angelique flipped the bent cigarette into a hibiscus bush. Ray's electric guitar blasts resumed, sounding more and more like a jackhammer.