Road Dogs

SIXTEEN

LATER IN THE EVENING FOLEY SAT WITH CUNDO IN THE front room of his white home, alone with him finally, photos of Dawn in lamplight watching him from three walls. Cundo had hugged him saying, "We made it, we got out with our lives, the way we want to be, to do what pleases us." They raised their glasses of table-red from Australia Foley had bought at Ralphs and Cundo said, "What's that bad boy Mike Nesi doing?"

"I had to take him to UCLA Medical," Foley said, "in Santa Monica. We were fooling around shooting hoops and he injured himself."

Cundo grinned. "You faked him out and he twist his ankle trying to catch you. I can see it."

Foley said, "Actually he's out of action for a while, couple of months."

Cundo wasn't grinning now. He said, "You decide I don't need him, uh?"

"Not anymore," Foley said. "I'll give you the parking ticket for his truck, at the hospital. I told them you were his employer and would take care of the bill. I asked if the white-power brotherhood had group insurance and he said he didn't think so."

Now Cundo was grinning again. "You still a smart-ass. You stop talking for a time looking at the thirty years, but now you back to life with the smart-ass things you say, but very quiet. I already tole you that. Miss Megan brought you back from the living dead. Listen, I hire the dum-dum because I don't know what you going to do."

"You knew you were gonna hit her. The painting had nothing to do with it. You came home to put on a show, hit Dawn in the gut and forgive her-what a sweet guy-but forgive her for what?"

"See, you don't want to start talking about that," Cundo said. "Tha's why I forgive her and is done. No more talking about it, okay? Ever again. Or thinking about it. Thinking too much can fuck you up."

"How's Dawn, she all right?"

"In good spirit now, very entertaining, yes, showing her love for me. Everything," Cundo said, "is now as it should be. Am I right? Tell me how you think about it."

"I'd like to know what you're gonna do with the white-power freak, Nesi."

"Can he drive?"

"I don't know. If both his arms are in casts it might be hard."

"Man, what did you do to him?" Cundo said, but didn't seem to care. "I'm not going to worry about him. I'll fire him, let him pay the fucking hospital. Listen, Dawn has an idea, how you can be in one of her skits."

"That's what she calls them?"

"Her shakedowns. Get a woman's dead husband's ghost to leave her alone, kick him out of the house and charge a lot of money for it."

"She mentioned it to me."

"I was going to be the ghost expert, but Dawn say you be better at it. Good-looking guy, the woman falls for you, she's happy again and pays whatever Dawn says."

"After that, I don't see her again?"

"The woman? No, is done, is over."

"She's back where she started."

"Yes, you broke her fucking heart."

"How old is she?"

"I don't know, I think she's middle age. Listen, you can't pull off this kind of grif', man, and feel sorry for the woman. This one I know has all kind of money to make her happy."

"But you say I break her heart."

"It can happen, yes, but she can find another guy. Her money, she attracts guys like flies."

"You ever work this with Dawn?"

"Man, where was I until today? We only talk about it. The woman was Cuban, Puerto Rican, sure, I could be the guy knows about ghosts, throw in some Santeria shit. This one Dawn say is tall. I forgot her name, very rich woman."

"I don't care much for the idea," Foley said. "I get her to like me and walk out on her?"

"You don't know," Cundo said, "she gonna fall for you or not. Maybe she's glad you don't come back."

"After I spent time being nice to her?"

"Man, you got some opinion of yourself. You believe the only thing can happen, you going to break her heart?" Foley kept quiet this time, but shrugged. "Your wife divorce you, didn't she?" "Yeah, but she's still, you know, fond of me."

"Man, what you need is a woman to leave you flat. Be good for you."

"You ever have one walk out on you?"

"One time, yes," Cundo said, "when I was fifteen years old. But I think it was her old man made her stop seeing me."

"Her father," Foley said.

"No, man, her husband."

"Now I'm your straight man," Foley said.

"When you want to be," Cundo said. "You listen to what I'm saying, and then you tell me something I have to think about. Is why I like you, you keep me thinking. My friend, is my pleasure to be with you again. You always make me feel good."

Cundo nodded his head.

Foley nodded his, thinking, Shit.

Thinking, You got to get out of here.

He took the VW to Ralphs to buy provisions for a few days, a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a case of beer. A fifth would last him three days, almost. He'd need another one or two if he had company, if he ever saw Dawn or Cundo, or if Tico happened to stop by. Or Lou Adams-have a talk with him, if he had to go out and find him. Tell Adams he'd be leaving soon and not say where he was going, since he had no idea. Or maybe tell him he was going back to Florida.

What Foley did, he picked up three fifths of Jack Daniel's he'd bring out for company. How about a glass of Old No. 7? He felt at home with it.

The third day of his return to the world Cundo crossed the footbridge and sat down with Foley for a drink and to give him Dawn's notes on observing and dealing with ghosts. "So you can become the expert."

"You believe in them?" Foley said.

"You die," Cundo said, "your body is no more but your spirit is still alive, is alive forever. Okay, it heads off to the light, the one I saw when that fucking Joe LaBrava shot me three times. Or the spirit stays for a while or comes back to tell you something or fuck with you. You learn a ghost has no power over you unless you give it an advantage, show you're afraid of it."

Foley said, "You aren't spooked by the idea of ghosts in your house, even if there aren't?"

"Read this, you'll know more than I do."

"But you believe in ghosts?"

"You look for them you find them."

"How?"

"Read what Dawn says, you want to sound like you know what you talking about. Listen," Cundo said, "the white-power asshole went home-lives somewhere on the Westside, but say to tell you he's coming back to teach you a lesson, when he gets his cast off."

"Just one?"

"For the fracture of his arm. The other arm is tape to his body so he don't move his shoulder. He say his hand sticks out the front of his shirt, so he can hold a piece when he comes to see you."

"I'll be gone by then."

"What are you talking about?" Cundo sitting up straight and frowning, telling Foley, "You got a cool place to live, all those rooms with high ceilings done up the way Dawn wants them that don't cost you nothing. Man, we out of prison, now we have a good time. Make some money you feel better."

"I don't think this grift idea, shaking down some old lady, is the kind of work I want to do."

"You want to stick up a bank?"

"I haven't had a good feeling about it lately," Foley said, "like I'd jinxed myself and wouldn't be good at it anymore. But I got over it. I could do a bank this afternoon and take five grand, but I wouldn't get the same kick I used to. I want to do something I can throw myself into."

"Some kind of robbery."

"No, it can be legal."

"I give you a gun," Cundo said. "Zorro holds mine for me. Do a bank with a gun, uh, what do you think? It would give you a different feel. But you don't want to be caught with a gun, anybody has done serious time. Tha's why this grif' could be what you looking for. Take this hex woman for fifty-k, you and Dawn split it down the middle. You think you break the woman's heart? Listen, you show her she can be happy again taking a stud like you to bed. You turn it on, man, put on a good skit and make twenty-five-k, or more than that, easy."

Dawn, a new Dawn, came to visit this morning of Cundo's fourth day home, Dawn in tan warm-ups and tennis shoes and stood in his doorway smiling.

"I'm dying to know if you feel you have enough of a handle on ghosts to play the expert," the new Dawn turning to glance across the canal. "I know what you're going to ask. Why are ghosts always portrayed as spooky when in fact the attitudes they affect are the same ones they had when they were embodied? And with much the same personalities. Unless of course you show evidence of being afraid. That gives them an enormous advantage and they may try to spook you out, even if it's just for fun." She smiled again.

Foley said, "No hugs and kisses?"

Dawn didn't move. She said, "Jack," and took a quick glance across the canal as he brought her by the arm into the house and closed the door and now he was holding her and for a few moments they were at each other mouth to mouth like a couple of kids until she got her hands against his chest and Foley let go of her.

"We're alone. He can't see us, even if he's watching the house."

"You know what will happen"-Dawn shaking her head-"we start taking chances. Once we think we can get away with it we get caught." She said, "You read my notes?"

"Every word."

"How can you tell a ghost is in the house?"

"You're gonna quiz me?"

"I want to see how much you know."

"Well, as soon as I walk in the door," Foley said, "and a spirit is in the house, I'll feel its presence. I don't have to be told about things being moved around, books on the shelf upside down, or a familiar scent in the air, a fragrance, I'll know if a ghost is in the room. Or more than one."

"That's not bad. You've been practicing."

"I've been practicing the art of detection for close to twenty years, since I was first certified as an Advanced Paranormal Investigator."

"No, you've been practicing your esoteric art for twenty years. Pour me a drink, one shot of bourbon, that's all. I don't want to lose my inhibitions."

"I didn't know you had any."

"You're sweet. Just don't make up anything when you're talking to her. It might be different from what I've left with her. I told her yesterday I'd be talking to a paranormal investigator who specializes in ghost appearance. I'm hoping," Dawn said, "you'll feel expert enough to see her in a day or two."

He watched her, the new Dawn back in business, trying to sound like herself.

"Did he hurt you?"

"My tummy's bruised. It's purple." He touched her face. "Can I see it?" "Jack, I don't want to start, okay?"

He saw nothing in her eyes that told him how she felt and let his hand fall to her shoulder, feeling her arm inside the cotton jacket before his hand slipped off.

"I'm ready as I'll ever be," Foley said. "Danialle Tynan-she's still making movies?"

"She's only made a few. Left the screen to become Mrs. Dani-alle Karmanos, wife of Hollywood producer Peter Karmanos. Last year he made her only hit, Born Again, about the stripper who's struck by lightning and becomes a faith healer with a televised tent show. Lays her hands on the infirm, lifts her eyes to heaven, cries out, 'Lord, heal this poor child from stuttering.' The little girl looks up at Danialle and says, 'P-p-p-praise Jesus,' and the audience goes wild."

"I missed that one," Foley said. "What happens?"

"I didn't see it either," Dawn said. "I'll get us a DVD. She and Peter were married only a few years when he had a heart attack and died on the set of the sequel they were making, Born Again and Again. It left Danny a widow at thirty-five with a ton of money."

"That's all she is?" Foley said. "I thought she was older."

"She's starting to let herself go. She's depressed, looking for love in the prime of life and can't find it."

"Come on-she's loaded and doesn't have a boyfriend?"

"She can have all the guys she wants. That gypsy fraud told her Peter Karmanos has put a hex on her from the other side, and Danny believes it. What she can't find is true love. Whatever that is."

Foley said, "You told her she has ghosts in her house and she believes that too?"

"I added the ghosts to make it more interesting. Then when you came on the scene I thought, You're not only the ghost expert, you could turn out to be the true love." "She's only thirty-five?"

"When Peter died, eight months ago. Since then she's been feeling sorry for herself. She sits alone in dim rooms waiting for a sound or for something to move. A rocking chair starts to rock. A door slams closed."

"She sees weird things going on?"

"Or imagines she does. Otherwise, she's intelligent, she's aware."

"You're saying there might be ghosts in her house?"

"That's what we're going to find out. Either way," Dawn said, "whether we discover ghosts or not, you'll make a show of getting rid of them."

Foley said, "You're up on all this ritual stuff-why don't you do it, and send her a bill?"

"Because the big part of this is the true-love thing. That's you, Jack. All you have to do is get her to fall in love with you and we're good for a hundred grand."

"Cundo said maybe fifty."

"He doesn't know Danialle. I'm counting on love at first sight, the way it happened to me." "You were horny."

"Well, she should be too. I'm seriously thinking now," Dawn said, "if she sees you the same way I did, my dream come true, asking two hundred grand wouldn't be outrageous. I think you'll like her, if you can get her to show some life. You'll love the house, it's in Beverly Hills."

"We split the two hundred?"

"I think anything over fifty, we'll have to give Cundo a cut." She said after a moment, "Unless we don't tell him. You'll need to dress up a little, and you have to be serious, very conservative, if you want to pass for an actual ghost hunter. Okay? And don't forget the smudge pot. We'll visit Danialle this evening."

A few minutes before noon Dawn set out on her exercise schedule, walking and running four days a week: walking till she saw a jogger approaching and she'd start running, lengthen her strides and nod as they passed, The Pretenders blasting in her headphones, Dawn wailing along with "Back on the Chain Gang."

Today she followed Ocean Front Walk up to Breeze, turned from the ocean and followed streets inland till she came to Broadway, and Tico's aunt's yellow frame bungalow at the north end of Oakwood Park: about two miles and a quarter she could do in thirty minutes, arrive sweaty for Tico.

He'd told Dawn his ah'nty's house, worth less than a hundred thousand anywhere else in America, would sell now for three-quarters of a mil in Venice, at least, his aunt smoking eighteen dollars' worth of cigarettes a day, six bills a pack. One day he stole two cases of Newports out of a truck and gave them to Tilly, Tico hoping before she'd inhaled the last one she'd be dead. He'd sell the house and get the fuck out of Venice for good.

The door opened. Dawn said, "Tilly's out?"

"For two hours. I gave her fifty dollars and pointed her to the bus stop, get her to Hollywood Park." Tico said to Dawn, "Lady, who you want me to be for today, Mr. Jigaboo or La Cucaracha, what Lou Adams calls Latinos. I'm already into being a jig for my ah'nty," Tico grinning at Dawn. "You nice and slippery-looking the way you sweaty, but you smell fine."

Dawn took off her warm-up top. Tico handed her a bath towel and watched her naked from the waist up drying herself, Tico saying, "You ain't drying the rest? Gonna leave the nether region gamey?"

Dawn said, "I'd like a tall glass of ice water."

By the time he was back from the kitchen with it, Dawn's running pants were on the floor and she was drying her lower half. She drank the glass of water and said, "One more, please."

She sipped this one sitting down, Tico watching her, admiring her pure white skin he was waiting to get at. He said, "We got a hour and twenty minutes left on the clock, time slipping away on us."

Dawn said, "You know what you haven't told me about, the times you were arrested for homicide."

"Three out of four," Tico said. "I told you about the one I was convicted on. The other two were like that. You join a gang, you got to pop somebody to show who you are. There was a war and I shot another dude."

"Black or Hispanic?"

"Latin. I was riding with the colored folks at the time. We all got hauled in but nothing came of it and they let us go."

"What was the one you got away with?"

"I musta told you. Was the dude work at Saks Fifth Avenue, wouldn't sell me a suit I wanted. Was a dark gray pinstripe I coveted, age sixteen years old, I had to have it."

"Why wouldn't he sell it to you?"

"I'm a skinny nigga kid. How could I have enough money? The suit went for six bills."

"Really."

"I went home and come back with a piece, drove all the way to Beverly Hills, the Saks on Wilshire. I say to the dude, 'You gonna let me have the suit?' No, he's about to call security on me I don't leave. I say to him, 'See, what I got?' Show him the Walther PPK three-eighty, beautiful piece."

Dawn said, "Oh," sounding surprised. "The same gun you gave me to hold?"

"How many you think I got? I told the Saks dude to put the suit in a hanger bag. He got one and now I'm twisting a suppressor on the barrel. Cost me six hundred with the piece, as much as the suit. The dude is all eyes watching me fix the silencer on this cool pistol. The dude say, 'Don't you want the tailor to fit the suit on you?' I say, 'No, thank you, I have my ah'nt fit it to my size.' I shot the Saks dude in the head and walked out."

"No one saw you?"

"Wasn't nobody there but me and him." "You were lucky," Dawn said.

"You don't think I was cool, I'm sixteen fucking years of age?"

Dawn came out of the chair raising her arms to slip them around Tico Sandoval's neck, telling him he was the coolest dude she'd ever known in her entire life.

"Cooler than the bank robber?"

Dawn said, "What bank robber?"