“Below Tijuana.”
“Been there?”
“Not really,” I said.
Sloane took his eyes off the road for a moment and gave me a look. “Larry…”
“I mean, no. I’ve been to Tee. Never got to Rosarita.”
“I’ll fly you down sometime. Rosarita Beach Hotel, they have an airstrip. Otherwise, it’s very rustic and romantic. Like L.A. was maybe in the last century. Usually I take my plane, but the weather was bad. When I go down to Agua Caliente — that you know?”
“I’ve invested a bit of money there.”
“You know what they say about Tijuana — the liquor’s cheap, the women cheaper, but the ponies… expensive.”
I was being patronized. I didn’t mind. It was better than threatened. It was better than ignored. Just as riding along toward the San Fernando Valley in a luxe coupe was better than walking. These last weeks before I had climbed back on EZ’s payroll, when I could walk that’s what I did: gas was up to ten cents a gallon, and the Ford, whether from engine-wear or a slow leak, drank it. I looked out through the spotless windshield of the LaSalle at orderly rows of orange trees, a noble but ragged stand of walnuts, then more citrus with big leaves, grapefruit maybe. Go ahead, patronize me, Mr. Sloane. But at least I’m not screwing another man’s wife. Of course, I had more than once screwed someone’s husband. “You were saying, about Rosarita?”
“Exactly,” Sloane said, the big car sailing silently along under his hand like a toy boat windborne on a lake in some quiet park. “We were down at the track, laid over at Rosarita, went fishing — you like deep-sea, Larry?”
“Never been.”
“You’d love it. Very satisfying, except to the fish. On the way back, a funny thing happens.”
“Funny?”
“Driving by the border, where they wave you through — you know where, the booths and all — Border Patrol stops the car.”
“This car?”
“A different one. We were six in the party. This one’s tight on space in the back. You can see that.”
“What happened?”
“I got arrested.”
“For what?”
“Entering the country illegally.” He paused. “You may not believe this, Larry. I hardly believe it myself, but it turns out I talk like an American, pay taxes like an American, dress like an American, look like an American, fuck like an American. But I’m not an American.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m a Russian, or maybe a Canadian. Do I look Russian or Canadian to you?”
“You look American.”
“Damn right, but the authorities — you know what that means, government by the rich people, of the rich people, for the rich people — they do what they want.”
Even I, who had bought wholesale into what by then I was beginning to suspect were the lies of the American Communist Party — Hitler and Stalin had signed a pact just days earlier; so much for the evils of fascism — would have to be a lot more stupid than to buy into the legitimacy of this view from a man wearing a hand-tailored cashmere suit, a $100 hat and driving one of the most expensive cars you could buy without having it custom-made by European elves. Any wise-guy could carry a gold cigarette case and lighter, but the car was no window-dressing. Nor was the set-up we now turned into.
It was a horse farm, a big one. On either side of the unmarked gravel road that wound from the highway were dozens of them, beautiful horses, some approaching the white three-board fence to get close to the car and others high-tailing across the green paddocks like so many studies in independence. Horses are like people: some are drawn to power, others run from it. At the moment I did not know which of these I was.
“What do you mean, a Russian?”
“Or a Canadian. Turns out I wasn’t born in this country. My parents — I didn’t know them a long time, a kid when they died, so I never got the real story — they left Russia, Minsk, White Russia, wherever the hell that is, and came to Toronto before they arrived in the US. Either I was born in one place or the other, Russia or Canada. Or maybe on the boat. The S.S. Savoie was the boat, that much I know, so maybe I’m a frog. All along, I thought I was American. Like I say, turns out I’m not. That means the FBI — and don’t kid yourself, but it’s the FBI; that faggot Hoover, no offense intended, has it in for me — wants to ship me to the Soviet Union. Would you want to go live in Russia, Larry?”
“They’re doing some really good things.”
“Yeah, sure. But I don’t see you picking up and moving to Moscow. Do me a favor, do yourself a favor. Don’t bullshit me. If you and your Commie friends really wanted to go live in the workers’ paradise you wouldn’t be here. You’d be there.”
“I’m an American.”
“Lucky you. You know, in Russia there’s no gambling. It’s not only illegal — hell, it’s illegal here — but there’s only one track you can bet at in the whole country, and no gambling action away from that track, which is understandable because placing a $2 bet anywhere else can get you twenty years in Siberia. Anyway, nobody has an extra ruble in their pocket. Larry, they don’t even have pockets. I heard that: they make coats without pockets to save money because nobody has what to put in them anyway. There’s no toilet paper in the whole country, just newspaper, and you have to be careful you don’t wipe your ass with Stalin’s picture because that’s a crime. Also it happens I don’t speak the language. I got a hope for Cuba, but the feds are already leaning on the top people there. You know how they got the Cubans to turn away that boat with the nine hundred Jews and they’re sailing around and nobody will take them, because nobody wants what they call refujews…”
“The St. Louis.”
“Because Washington doesn’t want them hanging around in Cuba waiting for a U.S. visa? Well, if J. Edgar Hoover doesn’t want Allen Sloan in Cuba, you think those greaseballs are going to say no? So what does that leave me, Panama? Nothing personal, but that’s practically an African country. The Canadians won’t take me. I’d accept going to Canada — how bad can that be? — but it seems as though the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, that’s like the FBI on horseback, got ahold of my jacket.”
For a moment I heard coat, not record. “Gambling?”
“Gambling, this and that. Nothing serious. You know, when I was younger I was more rough around the edges than I am now. I didn’t go to Harvard, that’s for sure.”
I took it as it came. I could stand on my head and explain how I’d been admitted to Harvard on my grades and because, long ago in another life, I’d been pretty good with an épée as a high-school fencer in Dobbs Ferry, NY. Despite my skin color, to the Sloanes and Shelupskys of this world I came from another one, and had to be punished for it. For crying out loud, my dad was a school teacher, and his was a dirt-farmer. And I can’t get a hotel room in most cities in this country. But saying that would be useless. They were dealing with a Harvard man, a whole other class. As if, despite what the Party preached, class meant a damn thing. It never failed to amaze me the kind of class money could buy. This house, for instance.
A crescent driveway led right to the front porch, from which hung a plank sign in faux western script: Dark Horse Ranch. California houses were big; this was sprawling. Long and low to the ground, it seemed to reach out to both ends of the horizon.
“You want to see the pony?” Sloane asked. “Or a cold drink first?”
A gin-and-tonic delivered by a Mexican servant in a white jacket over dungarees and cowboy boots hit the spot, but the horse was even better. Small for a thoroughbred at maybe fifteen and a half hands, this was a gray stallion with four white socks, a fine long head and ears that seemed to be in conversation with each other.