The wake-up Read online

  "Nothing wrong with white trash," said Cecil, coming out of the kitchen. "Elvis was white trash."

  Clark sagged, his head falling forward.

  "Betty B's column wasn't just an attack on who we are now; it's an attack on who we hope to become," Missy said to Clark. "It's like she's trying to ruin our future."

  "Clinton was white trash, too," said Cecil.

  Missy stroked Clark's face. He was growing a beard along his jaw-line, a half-inch extension of his sideburns that met at his chin, the look all the boy bands were going for. Clark was almost thirty, but he looked barely out of his teens. He said it was due to his drug cocktails, but Missy thought it was because he let her do all the worrying. Smart as he was, if it wasn't for her, they'd still be living in a cinder-block house in Riverside and percolating crystal on the kitchen range.

  "I love you, babe," said Clark, his eyes fluttering.

  "I love you, too. So, when are you going to kill Betty B? I want her done first."

  Clark pulled away.

  "It's a matter of survival," said Missy. "If we don't do something about the newspaper article, Guillermo is going to think we can be played. Then we're the ones going to get killed."

  Clark snickered. "You think Guillermo reads the Gold Coast Pilot?"

  "Maybe Guillermo doesn't read the Pilot, but you can just bet that someone he knows does," said Missy. "Some friend of his wife's, or maybe the man who sold Guillermo his last Porsche and wants to sell him the next one. Someone is going to tell him." She kissed him. "That's why you have to-"

  "Arturo and Vlad spend half their day keeping our dealers in line and beating back freelancers. They don't need any more assignments."

  "If we don't respond, Guillermo is going to think anyone can get away with-"

  "Arturo and Vlad taught him a lesson last time. You think he wants a replay of that?"

  Clark was interrupting her more often lately. Missy wondered if he was on some new brain scrambler, or just puffed up from all those people at the party telling him how talented he was. Not that any of them ever walked into one of their shops and bought some shorts or beach-wear. She let it pass. For now. "Clark, honey, I'm just saying this is an opportunity to remind Guillermo what happens to people who fuck with us."

  "You're not worried about Guillermo," said Clark. "You're just mad because you got embarrassed in front of a bunch of yacht club snobs who don't like us anyway."

  The phone rang.

  "Cecil, you pick up that goddamned phone, and tell them I'm out shopping." Missy's eyes never left Clark's. "I want them dead. I want Vlad and Arturo to run the route on both of them."

  "Dude gave you a full refund, Missy."

  Missy snatched the paper. She practically had the column memorized. " 'Douglas Meachum, the urbane owner of Meachum Fine Arts, took pains to assure me that the mistake was an honest one, and that restitution was immediately proffered and accepted. In all fairness, the authenticity of pre-Columbian art is notoriously hard to verify, but what lingers in the ears of this columnist is the raucous bleating of Missy Riddenhauer at her soiree, telling everyone within range of her voice that she had personally selected her precious artifacts, and how knowledgeable she was about their history. Doug Meachum made an honest mistake. What's Missy's excuse?' " She threw the paper down.

  "Spilt milk, babe."

  "If you won't order Vlad and Arturo to kill them, I will."

  Clark tried not to smile. "Come on, you know they won't take orders from you." He stood up, beckoned. "I'm going to hit the shower. You want to join me?"

  Missy watched him leave. A few minutes later, she heard him singing in the shower.

  "What about me?" asked Cecil.

  "What about you?"

  Cecil licked his lips. "Let me take care of Betty B."

  "You?"

  "What's the matter? You have something against a man bettering himself?"

  17

  The line in front of the Strand theater snaked down the sidewalk, a mix of stoners and surfers, freaks and fuckups, and movie buffs waiting to see the Tuesday showing of Curse of the Demon. A joint was passed slowly down the waiting line as a skateboarder rolled past the ticket booth. The Strand was fifty years old, an atomic age relic with sun-faded paint, cracked tiles, and neon marquee lights with half their tubes burned out. One screen. The theater showed second-run features daily, and classic films at midnight, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday.

  Thorpe drove on-he could hardly wait until Saturday. Four more nights and Shock Waves would be the late-night feature, replacing Twenty Million Miles to Earth on the playbill, a replacement that had cost Thorpe five hundred dollars. He would have paid the manager five thousand if he had asked for it.

  Downtown Huntington Beach was still going strong even at this hour, the bars and clubs rocking, the streets clogged with cruisers, the kids rubbernecking one another. Thorpe made a sharp left turn, heading inland on a two-lane road. He checked his rearview, keeping to the speed limit. There were three cars behind him at varying distances: a VW van, a Lexus with the windows blacked out, and a red Mustang with the top down. As Thorpe approached the green traffic light, he deliberately stalled his car. The Lexus was closest of the other cars, easing up right on his bumper. Thorpe started his car, popped the clutch, and stalled it again. The Lexus beeped. Thorpe started his car again as the light turned red, zipped across the intersection, narrowly avoiding a Chevy Suburban. Thorpe took the next right, quickly backed into a dark driveway, and turned off his headlights. He waited a few minutes, watched as the Lexus, the VW, and the Mustang passed through the intersection and kept going. Thorpe started the car, pleased. Old habits. Where would he be without them? A gray-white gob of bird shit splattered the windshield, a pelican dump, from the size of it, but Cecil didn't flinch. He was used to it. Lucky for him elephants couldn't fly. He turned on the wipers of the minivan, pressed the window washer. The washer motor spun, but it was out of fluid, the dry wipers smearing bird shit across the glass. Typical. He turned off the wipers, sat back, and waited.

  No matter how you looked at it, Cecil was overworked and under-appreciated. He had boosted the minivan in record time-slim-jimmed the door latch, cracked the wheel lock with a breaker bar, and popped the ignition in two shakes of a lamb's tail. You think Missy would be impressed? You'd be out of your fucking mind, you thought that.

  Cecil squeezed the steering wheel. The gardener's gloves were a little lame maybe, but he didn't have any of the cool surgical gloves movie badasses always wore. Cecil knew what he was doing. Gloves were gloves. He knew about cars, too. Missy would have given him a smack for boosting a minivan instead of a Hummer or a Mercedes, but those rides all had security systems and satellite monitoring units. No, if you were contemplating murder, a beat-up minivan was just what the situation called for.

  He pulled his baseball cap lower, one of those expansion teams from a city no one ever heard of. Another advantage of watching so much television was that Cecil had learned how to get away with murder. Gloves, that was the first thing. Then a hat, so you couldn't be ID'd from your hair, which in Cecil's case was red and thinning. Clark kept saying he was going to work on some kind of hair-growing formula, but all he seemed to do was come up with better ways to get fucked-up. Not that Cecil was complaining. Clark and his new and improved dope kept the money train rolling. Still, the guy could spend a little time and help out his brother-in-law. Cecil's barber suggested he get a crew cut, said short hair put less stress on the scalp, but that was probably just a way to keep Cecil coming back every two weeks for a trim. Everyone was a rip-off.

  Betty B had been inside the Rusty Pelican for almost an hour. Cecil had followed her to three other fancy bars this evening. She probably told everybody it was part of her job, gathering gossip, then wrote off her bar tab on her taxes, another reason the country was going down the shitter. Cecil had joined the National Guard about five years ago, but he washed out of basic training because of his bum ankles. He used to feel embarrassed
about it, but now he was glad it had happened. You put in your time defending your country, getting up at the crack of dawn, and some old drunk stiffs Uncle Sam for her fair share.

  Try as he might, though, Cecil couldn't bring himself to hate Betty B. Yeah, she had written some pretty rank things about Missy, but, like Clark said, it was just a newspaper. Twice tonight he'd had a chance at her, and both times he had waited too long, making excuses why it wasn't the right moment. He beat the steering wheel. It was just this kind of weakness that kept him fetching coffee for Missy and double-checking the pH balance in the swimming pool.

  Fuck it. This time, Cecil was going to take care of business. Cecil, not Vlad, and not that greaseball Arturo. Clark had told Missy no, said he was happy with the piece of the pie they had. Cecil had to admit it was a pretty fine slice, too-big house on the water, fancy cars, trash bags full of cash, but Missy had said how could you be happy with a slice when you could have the whole damned pie? Cecil didn't think Clark was scared of Guillermo, no matter what Missy said. He thought Clark was just… satisfied. Maybe after Cecil killed Betty B, he'd be satisfied, too.

  Cecil shifted in his seat, practically sticking to it. He could smell his own sweat. If Vlad or Arturo were sitting here, they'd be cool and calm, Vlad probably talking about some cartoon show he had watched that afternoon, Arturo going on about his stock portfolio.

  Cecil sat up as Betty B staggered out of the Rusty Pelican. She had to hold on to the doorman's arm, yapping away, breathing bourbon in his face, from the way he turned away. Cecil's chest was tight. He took short little breaths as he watched Betty B look around, probably trying to remember where she had parked her car. He eased the van out from the curb as Betty B started down the sidewalk. She kept patting her hair, as though trying to hold her head in place.

  Cecil tugged at his cap for reassurance, and the action reminded him of what Betty B was doing with her hair. Loser. He had stolen more cars than he could count, had rolled drunks, beaten up queers, even done a few B and E's. He had hit Gary Jinks over the head with a tire iron for stealing his girlfriend, and once he threatened a club bouncer with a starter pistol, but here he was, sitting in some minivan, thirty-one years old, losing his hair, and he had never killed anyone.

  Betty B started down the sidewalk in the cool night air.

  Cecil rolled down the street, lights out, accelerating. Thorpe drove back through downtown Huntington Beach, feeling so light-headed that he wouldn't have been able to pass a field sobriety test. He hadn't had anything to drink, but there was no way he could walk a straight line. He could barely drive a straight line. That's what happiness could do to you. He had spent so much time hating himself these last few months, blaming himself, but now he was doing something about it. Come Saturday, he and the Engineer might meet again, a Shock Waves rendezvous. Those saints who said revenge never solved anything had never lost anyone. Killing the Engineer wouldn't bring back Kimberly, but it would make the Engineer just as dead.

  For some reason, he thought of Claire, the two of them sitting on the steps under the stars, and her asking him why he had never hit on her. He would have liked to have told her.

  Thorpe slammed on his brakes as a man and a woman ran across the street, holding hands. He watched them disappear into a Dunkin' Donuts shop. It was the same couple he had seen walking through the alley behind Meachum's house that first day, two old hippies in tie-dye and macrame, teeth missing, hair everywhere. He wondered how they had gotten from Laguna to Huntington, and he wondered what had happened to the man's floppy hat. Most of all, he wondered how they managed to look so much in love. He drove on, shaking his head.

  The wake-up hadn't gone as smoothly as he'd thought. The column by Betty B in the Gold Coast Pilot had embarrassed Meachum, but it had been even worse for Missy. He had no idea how Betty B had found out. Billy had read the article and clucked about the law of unintended consequences, as immutable a law as relativity or thermodynamics. Thorpe had walked out of the restaurant, called the gallery a few minutes later. Gina Meachum answered the phone. He almost hung up, then asked to speak to Meachum. He wasn't there. "Frank? Is that you?" Gina said. She told him it was Nell Cooper who had fed Betty B the story. "Douglas was so upset, Frank. He said he had taught her everything she knew, and she betrayed him. She didn't even bother giving notice or leaving a forwarding address."

  Thorpe remembered the dismay on Nell's face at the party, watching Meachum working the room, the smile she stuck on her face when she went to join him. Thorpe wasn't sure about the law of unintended consequences, but he believed in the law of common courtesy. It wasn't just Statue of Liberty boilerplate. His most successful operations had been achieved by going through an angry wife, a put-upon chauffeur, a secretary who was never thanked, a gardener whose work was stepped on, a bodyguard made to take out the trash. A powerful man who showed contempt for the people under him was the easiest target in the world. Thorpe was sorry that Missy had gotten caught up in the wake-up, but he was glad Nell had broken free of Meachum.

  He took a right onto the Pacific Coast Highway, humming along to the radio as he headed back to his apartment.

  18

  Thorpe lay on his belly, squinting under the couch and wondering what he was doing here at 2:00 a.m. He had just gotten back from his trial run at the Strand when his phone rang. He jiggled around the golf club, a four iron, stirring up dust balls. "Are you sure it went under here?"

  "I thought so," said Pam.

  Thorpe looked back at her. Pam was perched on one of the end tables, legs drawn up, wearing only an XXL 50-Cent T-shirt and pale blue panties. He could hear Claire cursing nearby. "You did see a rat, though?"

  Pam nodded. "Big one. He hadn't brushed his teeth for a long time, either."

  "You two shouldn't leave the dog door open. You don't even have a dog."

  "We shut the dog door, how are we going to get in when we lock ourselves out?" asked Pam.

  "Keep the dog door closed. That's your problem."

  "The problem is the city's cut back on rat abatement for the last four years," said Claire, peering under the brown leather reading chair, her own golf club ready-a putter. She wore dark blue silk pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with Serena Williams's picture on it. Her butt was in the air.

  "He's checking out your ass, Claire."

  Claire looked over at Thorpe. They were both low to the floor. "Is that right, Frank?"

  "Guilty."

  Claire shook her head. "Men. You call them up in the middle of the night for help, and instead they scope out the goods."

  "Just kill the rat; then you two can flirt," said Pam.

  Thorpe got up. "Mr. Rat's not under here."

  Claire stood up, too, her short dark hair falling around her face. "Ditto."

  "Well… he's got to be somewhere," said Pam, still on the end table.

  Thorpe had been getting ready for bed when Pam had called, still exhilarated from seeing the crowd outside the movie theater, thinking of what he was going to do if he saw the Engineer in line Saturday night. He was going to let him watch the movie, catch him on the way back to his car, him and his bodyguard, catch them unaware. Thorpe imagined asking the Engineer how he'd liked the movie. Then the phone rang and Pam was yelling, and Claire was telling her to relax.

  Thorpe walked into the kitchen, yawning.

  "I already checked the kitchen," Claire called.

  "I'll check it again," said Thorpe. One of the cabinets was half-open. He bent down, started to open it with the golf club.

  Claire touched his side and Thorpe jumped. She laughed, clucked like a chicken.

  Still laughing, Thorpe opened the cabinet, gently nudged aside cereal boxes with the head of the golf club. The rat stared back at him, a big one, too, just like Pam had said, dirty brown and beady-eyed, his whiskers brushing the face of the white-haired Quaker on the cardboard oatmeal canister.

  "Do you see anything?" asked Claire.

  Thorpe shifted his weight. The rat follow
ed his movements, turned its head, and seemed to make eye contact with the Quaker. Thorpe whacked the rat with the golf club, but it was a glancing blow. The rat scurried across Thorpe's hands and onto the kitchen floor.

  Bam! Claire swung the putter, missed, and smacked the floor. The rat's legs slipped on the tile as it tried to get away, squealing, desperate now. She swung the golf club again, hit the rat a glancing blow, and sent him sailing. The rat bounced off the stove and lay stunned. Claire advanced on him, the putter raised high. The rat got to its feet, reared back, showed its yellowed incisors, snarled at her, eyes bulging.

  "I think he's in love with you," Thorpe said to her.

  The rat made a dash toward the living room, then cut back as Claire swung and missed, headed back toward the doggy door.

  Claire raised the golf club, but Thorpe grabbed her arm before she could take another try, and the rat raced out through the doggy door, out into the night. Claire shook Thorpe off. "That was stupid."

  Thorpe walked to the doggy door, slid down the metal locking plate over the entrance. "Tough guy like that, he earned his freedom." He leaned his four iron against the wall.

  Pam peeked in the doorway. "Is it safe?"

  Claire reached over, pinched Thorpe's bare nipple.

  Thorpe howled, rubbed his nipple. "That hurt."

  "It was meant to hurt. I wanted to kill it."

  "You're licensed by the state of California to offer psychotherapy?" Thorpe's nipple felt hot. The other one had stiffened in sympathy. " You need treatment, lady."

  "What a baby," said Claire. "And don't call me 'lady.' "

  "Are you guys gonna fuck right here on the kitchen table?" asked Pam. "And if you do, can I watch?"

  Claire looked at Thorpe.

  "I'm celibate," said Pam. "I have to have some fun."