The BOYS
Episode THIRTY-NINE
He sailed past Martinez, or Rodriguez,
at the gate, giving the guard a churchgoer's (or duffer's) wave... it was a
quarter to ten, and he was full of useful ideas: paint the den, install another
layer of insulation in the attic. Teach
Scottie the meaning of the meaning of the measure of a man, instead of his just
sitting at the table, slurping up some sort of hot, mushy cereal that the
corporations didn't usually bring out until winter.
Missy stood up from the kitchen table,
poured coffee, but didn't offer it to Walt... instead, she sipped it herself,
then looked at him, saying "Long night?"
"Yeah," he nodded, then put
on his game face, "You don't know
the half... no, the tenth of
it," he grinned. "There's a
property up north Mister Z's interested in, and then... hell, you know how those
people are, party 'round Hollywood like there ain't no tomorrow. So we stayed over, boss paid for the
room..."
"In Hollywood?"
"Yeah, well, you know... in the
flats, Z's crowd is, well... urban.
Open bar, hip-hop... all of that rap crap. Could've done cocaine, but I stuck with the Black Jack... hey!...
that rhymes, doesn't it? Sort of? Can't get the beat out of my head..."
Missy was wearing a pair of those
forest-green slacks she'd buy in the spring, intending to garden, but never
producing much more than a few scraggly vines of small, hard tomatoes... she
pulled a Walgreen's envelope from a back pocket, removed a deck of photographs
and lay them on the kitchen table like cards, fanning them out like the dead
man's hand.
"Hollywood?"
Walt picked up the nearest... it was
dark and the quality of the photography was wretched but he could see the Town
Car, his car... well a car, maybe
sort of like his, parked outside Louie's condo. There were two figures in the snapshot under that, they were blurred
but, in the next photo, his own face and Elle's were plainly visible, laughing,
high as a couple of kites (or the proverbial floating castle). There were a couple of views of the Town Car
as it turned and went East on Laemmele... some North County wag had been
inspired to rename a few of these parallel streets after famous actors,
directors and other show people... on the last of these, five of the six digits
of the Town Car's license plate were visible.
The next snapshot was of the car, parked in the mud at Precious fuckin'
Joy Estates, then two figures, still blurred, emerging. The last of the photographs simply showed
the Marcus/Slater family abode in all of its redneck glory, courtesy of the
bare bulb over the door...
What
a fuckin' dump!
"Wow!" Walt shook his aching
head, laying the photographs down on the kitchen table, fanlike. "May I ask where you got these?"
"I took them myself. Scott helped," Missy added, evincing a
little matronly pride, or else something different, altogether... "I got a
tip."
"A tip?" Walt chewed on
this...
"An anonymous tip. Some guy on the phone... but it's not about
me, this time," she said, voice rising.
"It's about you, and Hawaii, all over, again..."
"Hey, so I went to a party after
my shift, crucify me, why don't you? It
was the night boss' thirtieth birthday..." and his finger stabbed one of
the photographs, "I do the scene to maybe get ahead on the job, then I
give one of my co-workers a lift and..."
"I was going out with Elle Slater," Scottie said, miserably.
"What?"
"We were steadies! I gave her a ring
and all... I don't know, I even thought we might get married, someday..."
"I never... did you have sex with
that young lady?" Walter pointed...
"Did you?"
Missy coughed before her husband could
circle the table and smack some sense into the boy. "The Good Lord knows, I've put up with so much... I turned a
blind eye while you were cheating all those people, and let's call it what it
was... cheating!... and then going on all of those other so-called business
trips? Mary Dodge is a friend of mine
and so is Linda Baker..."
"Oh!" Walt threw his hands
up. "Oh... so what have we got
here, the bitter ex-wives of BCM, or is it the wives of the ex-BCM? No... it's... what's that show, Desperate
Women..."
"This desperate woman wants you
to leave this house. Now," Missy
added, "...I've already packed a few necessities in your suitcase;
Scottie, go get your father's suitcase... and I don't want to hear from you
again. Ever!"
"You can't do that! I'm not going anywhere... it's just as
simple as that. You're so all full of
get up and go, get up and get me some breakfast and then, since I don't have to
clock in until four, we are going to church... you, Scottie and I. We are
going to behave like a family again..."
"No..." Missy bawled,
"we are not a family, not
anymore... I won't just call the police, if you don't go, I'd call those men
from the government, I have their numbers," she threatened, and was there
an ever-so-thin vein of triumph in that wraithlike voice? "What would they think about a criminal
suspect who can't honor his marriage vows... what else would he
dishonor..."
Walt's voice dropped. "Now that would be, well, a
mistake." He raised a fist,
knuckles still scraped but beginning to scab as a consequence of the beating
he'd dished out to Davy Pearson.
"I put a man in the hospital with this," he warned...
"If you hit Mom, I'll have to
shoot," Scottie said from the doorway.
The suitcase that Walt took on short business trips was in his left hand...
he hadn't really unpacked it, even, since coming back from Inyo County... and
Walt's .38 was in his right.
"Are you fuckin' nuts... you
don't..."
And then Scottie raised the Police
Special and shot his father... well, shot at
him, Walt would tell Joe Sybco with regret and amazement, just a week later
(although he'd missed by so wide a margin it was probable that the kid had just
been screwing up his courage to do something else). The bullet passed through a honeydew melon that Missy had removed
from the fridge and placed on the kitchen countertop, then it had shattered a
bottle of vinegar behind it...
"Jeez... you want me to go that
bad over this... this miscalculation
is all it means, you're jumping to conclusions again. OK, I'll go, I... I'll give you awhile to cool off. But tomorrow, I am gonna call Sal, and this
crap has to get fixed... and I mean fixed, permanently... by the way,” he
scowled, “have you gone off your medication?"
"Three days, now," Missy
replied proudly. "If you were
working normal hours, you would've seen that special on Channel 12, those pills
are dangerous and they're being recalled... if I were the one who'd messed up
all of our lives, I could call one of those TV attorneys, they're already
soliciting clients for a class-action suit..."
"In-fuckin'-credible!" Walt
said, and Scottie dropped the suitcase, circling to his father's left like an
armed, but nervous felon in one of those cop shows. There were probably a few things he should've said, but the kid
looked wired... and he hadn't known that Elle's boyfriend, ("the prick", Lou Spicotti had
sneered) was his own goddam son...
So, instead, he threw the suitcase
into the backseat of the Town Car, and drove off.
ä ä ä ä ä
He
was back in military school, Walt dreamed, during their annual winter
excursion to that sad, shabby ski resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And he was stuck in the losers’ chalet, the
way he’d been stuck with losers all through adolescence: the fat kid, bad at
sports, the outcast clown. A loser,
even among the losers… locked out of the losers’ chalet while the rest of the
cadets lounged and gossiped by a roaring fire, drinking hot cocoa, roasting
marshmallows. Walt’s only possession…
his only friend, in fact… was the ancient wooden duck from his childhood that
he’d brought to this dreary mountain where the rich kids and clever kids were
being conveyed upwards to the top of the slope, as the outcast, beneath, looked
from fire to mountain, knocking the puppet’s wooden beak impotently against the
window. Suddenly there was a groaning
sound and a lurching – the lift swaying perilously as booming explosions
resonated from the skies. Tiny cadets,
some afire, plummeted downwards and, around the rim of the mountain, orbiting
cows floated and exploded… gobbets of bloody meat raining downwards as the
snowy slopes became a carpet of swarming ants…
“Let me in!” Walter cried out, banging
the window of the losers’ chalet even harder with his wooden duck…
Someone was rapping on the window of
the Town Car, shouting through the glass and metal - an angry young monster, Walter Fales recoiled, bemused and still
groggy with menacing dreams...
"You cannot sleep in my parking
lot. You can not remain here..."
Walt sat up in the Lincoln's back
seat. The shrieking spectre in
shirtsleeves and a skinny, brown tie had a deformed, swollen latex head with
warts and oozing lesions, an angry young man in a mask. Probably someone in management at the
Halloween shop, he now remembered... how could he forget?... the baleful,
fanged and caped iconic rodent of childhood loomed over the masked, leprous
retailer, white gloved fingers waving its sinister invitation in a hot, dry
wind.
Walt glanced at his wristwatch. Seventeen minutes past four... fuck!
After Missy had bundled up a few of
his things and Scottie had shot at him, Walter had driven around awhile,
lingering at places they'd been over the last few decades; little chophouses
and takeaway joints they'd driven through... Walter and Catherine Fales - and John,
Herman and Scotty. The Cracker Barrels
and Shoneys and Taco Bells, and, even, places gone to the great graveyard of
expired franchises, the Carl's Junior on Eisenhower, the Woolworth's and
Captain Ahab's and, even, that original Doggie Diner on the other side of San
Cris... a photo stand, now. He'd driven
past places they'd been to, places that he thought he'd known and everything
was strange, everything looked the same... finally he'd returned like the Good
Dog he was, parked and climbed into the backseat to sleep.
It was Sunday, he also remembered
gratefully, which meant that Barry was off-duty and Kenny was in charge. Kenneth Cohen, with his IC debtload, his
allergies and failed beard... good ol' Ken would back him up with Igor here, if
it came to a showdown. He scratched his
head, yawned and opened the backdoor, and the creep in the rubber gargoyle's
face thrust his mask into Walt's face, screaming that the parking spaces were
for customers and employees, not derelicts.
He was a shrimp, actually, and, as soon as the wakened hot dog janitor
stretched to his full height, realized his mistake and was already backing away
when Walter's careless shove sent him sprawling on the pavement between the
Lincoln and a new SUV with a beagle that some cruel housewife had inside
yapping through about half an inch of open window.
"I work here, you freak," Walter stepped over him, kicking the
freak once, on the thigh, and continuing towards the DP at a quickened pace
before the urge to Davy the guy welled up.
He clocked in at four nineteen... his watch still two or three minutes
fast... and Kenny was out of the office and all over him like someone's sneeze.
"Didn't anyone tell you not to go to Louie's
parties?" the floater barked, reminding Walt of the way Missy threatened
the boys when they were small enough to swat.
"When Barry sees your timecard, he's going to rip you a second
ass. Lev showed late and Weng called in
sick... Weng! And Louie's still not
here. What the hell went on, last
night?"
"Some of us have lives," Walter said,
ripping open a whole new roll of paper hats (though there were still a few
disheveled specimens nestling on shelves or the floor), "and some just
survive." He checked the angle of
the chapeau in the cooler door, tilted it upwards a little so that it resembled
a jaunty sailor's cap from a movie about the Second World War, and said
"...if Weng doesn't show, do you want me at a register or on the
grill?"
"I... you... take over from J...Joe,"
Kenny stuttered, "do the floors, windows... and don't forget inside the
cooler!" as if janitoring was the worstest, most depraved punishment he
could dish out. "All of the
surveillance cameras are running, and when Barry reviews them, I want him to
see that I left this place clean, and if it's a mess tomorrow morning, then
it's Spicardi's fault, not mine."
And then Kenny's bravado drained off, replaced by something akin to
sheer terror... "...you don't think he's just not gonna show, do you? I mean, without even calling... just leave
me hanging here until the middle of the night?"
"How would I know?" Walt shrugged. "He was pretty fucked up, last night,
it was his birthday, you know, hit the big three-oh. Maybe the thought of spending the rest of his life in fast food
made him enlist in the Army... but if he don't show, I'm sure they taught you
something in Barstow that'll help you deal with it..."
"Yeah, but..." and Kenny's fist flew up to
his own nose, his feet rotated preparatory to his making a run for the office,
"...oh shit, I think I'm gonna have another fit!"
And, while the Sunday manager sneezed all over
Barry's office... the desk, the files, the computer and monitor bank, even
Britney... the creaking wheel of the bucket warned of Joe Sybco's impending
arrival.
"Any chance that the Patron's likely to be
mustering up another little operation?" Walt greeted the downsized
codewriter as he wrung out the wet mop.
He'd only started processing the implications of the previous night, and
Missy's reaction, but already knew that he was going to need money, and
soon. A few more quick hundreds, no
questions asked, and he'd get through this (and he wouldn't be leaving any cash
on furniture, unattended, this time).
"Not for awhile," Joe said. "I think there's something up down
around the border... it always gets a little crazy around the holidays,
Mexicans sneaking home, sneaking back, place flooded with cops and La
Migra. Then there's the complications
with terrorists, put that together with Halloween and the elections, you got a
scene better left alone. Sorry! Speaking of the friends of jihad, Barry's
been making Achmed work since you went on nights... Pepe's training him on
fries and, you combine that with his natural greasiness, we're talkin' a
walkin' stick of suet, touch a match to 'im and Ahab goes up like one of them
oilfields in Baghdad..."
"Guy I knew went to Iraq," Walter
remembered Matt Baker. "Guess he's
doin' alright, makin' money..."
"More than us," Joe surmised.
"For sure!"