Once they find out about my record, the police get it in their heads that we were all in it together and it’s just that I lost my nerve at the last minute.
How did you know not to let them in? they ask me twenty different times in twenty different ways.
“I saw the gun,” I say, simple as that.
Mr. M ends up going to the hospital with chest pains, and his son shows up to square everything away. He keeps thanking me for protecting his father.
“You may have saved his life,” he says, and I wish I could say that’s whose life I was thinking about.
The police don’t finish investigating until after six. I hang around the store until then because I’m not ready to go back to the hotel. When the cops finally pack up, I walk home slowly, expecting Leon to come out of nowhere at any minute like a lightning bolt. There’ll be a gun in his hand, or a knife. He knows how it goes: if you’re worried about a snitch, take him out before he talks.
I make it back safely, though. Leon’s not waiting out front or in the lobby or on the stairs. The door to J Bone’s room is open, but no music is playing, and nobody’s laughing. I glance in, time sticking a bit, and see that the room is empty except for a bunch of greasy burger bags and half-finished forties with cigarettes sunk in them.
I lock my door when I get inside my room, open the window, turn on the fan. My legs stop working, and I collapse on the bed, exhausted. I dig out a bottle of Ten High that I keep for when the demons come dancing and swear that if I make it through tonight, I’ll treat every hour I have left as a gift.
I talk to the Chinaman at the desk the next morning, and he tells me J Bone checked out yesterday, ran off in a hurry. Youngblood is listening in, pretending to watch the lobby TV. We haven’t spoken since I lost my temper.
“What do you know about it?” I call to him, not sure if he’ll answer.
“Cost you five dollars to find out,” he says.
I hand over the money, and he jumps up off the couch, eager to share. He says Leon and Bone had words yesterday afternoon, talking about the police being after them, and “You stupid,” “No, you stupid.” Next thing they went upstairs, came down with their shit, and split.
“Where do you think they went?” Youngblood asks me.
“Fuck if I know,” I say. “Ask your friend Paul.”
“He ain’t my friend,” Youngblood says. “I put the word out on him. I’m gonna get you your money back.”
I’m so happy to have Leon gone that I don’t even care about the money. I ask Youngblood if he wants to go for breakfast, my treat. He’s a good kid. A couple of hours from now, after he takes his first shot, he’ll be useless, but right this minute, I can see the little boy he once was in his crooked smile.
He talks about LeBron James — LeBron this, LeBron that — as we walk to McDonald’s. We go back and forth from shady patches still cool as night to blocks that even this early are being scorched by the sun. Nobody’s getting crazy yet, and it doesn’t smell too bad except in the alleys. Almost like morning anywhere. I keep looking over my shoulder, but I can feel myself relaxing already. A couple more days, and I’ll be back to normal.
Mr. M’s son told me before I left the store that it’d be closed for at least a week but not to worry because they’d pay me like I was still working. The next Thursday he calls and asks me to come down. The old man is still in the hospital, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be getting out anytime soon, so the son has decided to shut the store up for good. He hands me an envelope with $2,500 inside, calls it severance.
“Thank you again for taking care of my father,” he says.
“Tell him I said hello and get well soon,” I reply.
The next minute I’m out on the street, unemployed for the first time in years. I have to laugh. I barely gave Leon the time of day, didn’t fall for his mess, didn’t jump when he said to, and he still managed to fuck up the good thing I had going. That’s the way it is. Every time you manage to stack a few bricks, a wave’s bound to come along and knock them down.
They run girls out of vans over on Towne. You pay a little more than you would for a street whore, but they’re generally younger and cleaner, and doing it in the van is better than doing it behind a dumpster or in an Andy Gump. I shower and shave before I head out, get a hundred bucks from my stash behind the light switch and stick it in my sock.
Mama-san is carrying more groceries up the stairs, both kids hanging on her, as I’m going down.
“No cooking,” I say. “No cooking.”
She doesn’t reply, but the kids look scared. I didn’t mean for that to happen.
The freaks come out at night, and the farther east you go, the worse it gets. Sidewalk shitters living in cardboard boxes, ghosts who eat out of garbage cans, a blind man showing his dick on the corner. I keep my gaze forward, my hands balled into fists. Walking hard, we used to call it.
Three vans are parked at the curb tonight. I make a first pass to scope out the setup. The pimps stand together, a trio of cocky little vatos with gold chains and shiny shirts. My second time by, they start in hissing through their teeth and whispering, “Big tits, tight pussy.”
“You looking for a party?” one of them asks me.
“What if I am?” I say.
The pimp walks me to his van and slides open the side door. I smell weed and something coconut. A chubby Mexican girl wearing a red bra and panties is lying on a mattress back there. She’s pretty enough, for a whore, but I’d still like to check out what’s in the other vans. I don’t want to raise a ruckus though.
“How much,” I say to nobody in particular.
The pimp says forty for head, a hundred for half and half. I get him down to eighty. I crawl inside the van, and he closes the door behind me. There’s cardboard taped to the windshield and the other windows. The only light is what seeps in around the edges. I’m sweating already, big drops of it racing down my chest inside my shirt.
“How you doing tonight?” I say to the girl.
“Okay,” she says.
She uses her hand to get me hard, then slips the rubber on with her mouth. I make her stop after just a few seconds and have her lie back on the mattress. I come as soon as I stick it in. It’s been a long time.
“Can I rest here a minute?” I say.
The girl shrugs and cleans herself with a baby wipe. She has nice hair, long and black, and big brown eyes. I ask her where she’s from. She says Mexico.
“I’m moving down there someday,” I say.
My mouth gets away from me. I tell her I was in Germany once, when I was in the army, and that I came back and had two kids. I tell her about leaving them just like my mom and dad left me, and how you say you’re never gonna do certain things, but then you do. I tell her that’s why God’s turned away from us and Jesus is a joke. When I run out of words, I’m crying some.
“It’s okay,” the girl says. “It’s okay.”
Her pimp bangs on the side of the van and opens the door. Time’s up.
I’ve seen enough that I could write my own bible. For example, here’s the parable of the brother who hung on and the one who felclass="underline" Two months later I’m walking home from my new job guarding a Mexican dollar store on Los Angeles. A bum steps out in front of me, shoves his dirty hand in my face, and asks for a buck. I don’t like when they’re pushy, and I’m about to tell him to step off, but then I realize it’s Leon.
He’s still wearing his suit, only now it’s filthy rags. His eyes are dull and dead-looking, his lips burned black from the pipe. All his charm is gone, all his kiss-my-ass cockiness. Nobody is following this boy anymore but the reaper.
“Leon?” I say. I’m not scared of him. One punch now would turn him back to dust.