The Royal Family

| 76 |

You know what I like the best? said old Dan Smooth. It’s those rape cases, when you get to collect pieces of the pillow slip for yourself, and pieces of the bedsheet. If I find a likely stain, I just cut around it with my pocket knife. I have quite a collection at home. You should see ’em under the fluorescent light.

Tyler sighed. — Have another Bushmill’s, Dan.

Why, Henry, you’re the next best thing to… even if your manner may not be so attractive… Say, can I ask you something?

What?

Well, I’m probably being an asshole, but I always wanted to know. I like thinking up questions like this. It’s kind of my reason for being. What I wanted to know is, did you ever screw that sister-in-law-of yours?

Tyler was silent.

You know, the one that killed herself, said Dan Smooth eagerly, watching Tyler with a malicious smile.

I thought all I’d have to do to get some information out of you was buy you a few drinks, said Tyler. I didn’t know I was going to have to put up with your bullshit, too. You know what, Dan? It’s not worth it to me to get that information. And you know what else? I’m going to walk out of here right now and leave you with the tab for these drinks, and what are you going to do about it?

Aw, Henry, I told you I’m an asshole sometimes. I can’t help it. Listen, did I tell you I’m trying to get a whole new specialty created for me?

What’s that, Dan? said Tyler impassively.

Pediatric forensics, the other said proudly. It’s the up and coming thing. Little dead boys and girls. Marks, bruises, evidence. Sodomy holes are like snowflakes, no two alike. Get the picture?

You ought to be castrated, Dan.

Hee, hee, hee! Coming from you that’s quite a compliment, you old sis—

Don’t say it. I’m carrying, and you’re starting to really piss me off.

Oh, he’s carrying, he says! Pissed off, he says! Cocked and locked! And no luck with the Queen, either! Don’t think I don’t know all your woes, Henry Tyler! I’m the master of stains.

I do enjoy your company, Dan, but will you tell me where the Queen is or not? I know you know everything.

Even the answer to the question I asked you? Hee, hee, hee!

You’re not just sick, you’re boring.

And if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go. That’s Luke 22 something, or maybe 23. I could tell you a lot of things about Luke.

Get another hobby, like skinning rats. Here’s twenty for the drinks. I’ll come visit you in jail sometime.

Visit the sewers, whispered Smooth theatrically. That’s where her piss goes.

Lots of sewers in San Francisco, said Tyler, unimpressed. Lots of piss, too. Can you narrow it down for me a little bit?

Sure I can, Henry. You got a pen? I’ll draw you a map; I’ll write out a regular urinalysis. Hey, but didn’t that Brady take you off the case?

As a matter of fact, Dan, he did.

So what are you getting out of this?

Oh, let’s just say it keeps my mind off things, and you know which things, and the fact that you know ought to make you pretty gleeful, you sleazy old sonofabitch. Now, let me ask you something. Is there a Queen of the Whores and do you know where she is?

Yes to both, Tyler. Just call me the yes man. You see, she’s got her fingers in a lot of sex crimes. Got her fingers in all the holes. Here’s a photo of her. Full length, you see. An old photo. It was Halloween, so for a joke she dressed like a slut. With her that’s not usual. Likes to wear that baseball cap, but sometimes she wears a wool hat. And I’ll tell you something else. She uses so much perfume she stinks like a cathouse. Well, what could be more appropriate, eh? So buy me one more Bushmill’s before you go, and take this home with you and think about how you’re going to make it worth my while, and then give me a call up at the Sacramento number Saturday morning after ten —

No, not then, said Tyler. I’ve got to go to L.A. then for some business.

| 77 |

He sat with his feet on the bed looking at Dan Smooth’s photo and working up his details description sheet.

SEX Female

RACE African-American

AGE Approx. 45

HEIGHT Approx. 5’ 5’’

WEIGHT Approx. 120 lbs

COMPLEXION Dark

Well, that doesn’t help much, he muttered.

HAIR Color black; long, kinky.

EYES Brown, slightly bloodshot

FOREHEAD Vertical

EYEBROWS Bushy, same color as hair

NOSE Medium; nostrils small

CHEEKS Full, cheekbones not prominent

MOUTH Upturned at corners

LIPS Red, upper thin, lower puffy

TEETH Unknown

CHIN Curved

JAW Wide

EARS Oval, pierced (?)

NECK Medium, straight, no Adam’s apple

SHOULDERS Narrow

HANDS Long, rough

FINGERS Slim, tapered

FINGERNAILS Long, painted red, dirt under nails

CLOTHING Seen in red miniskirt or black low-cut dress; high heels, one heel broken

JEWELRY Large hoop earrings, bangles on left wrist

PECULIARITIES Round scar on right calf (bullet wound?), abscess marks on arms, tattoo of skull on left wrist, mole on left cheek, strong smell of perfume

ALIASES Queen, Maj, Africa Johnston

CONFEDERATES Domino [AKA Sylvia Fine], Strawberry [AKA???], Kitty, unnamed mentally unstable prostitute, Sapphire, Chocolate [AKA Brenda Wiley], others to be determined

| 78 |

He was late with his rent. Jumpy, maybe from coffee — a not unpleasant jumpiness, his fingers not quite twitching, like baby birds almost ready to fly across Valencia Street — he drove over to his landlord’s place in Menlo Park to deliver the check in person. When he rang the buzzer, nobody answered, which relieved him. He slipped the check under the door. For a moment he wanted to call Judy from RoboGraphix, but that passed, leaving him guilty and stained. He drove back home to the Outer Sunset where it was foggy again, and someone’s purple light was flashing in the apartment next door. There were no messages on his machine. But then the phone rang. First he thought that it might be business; then he decided that it was his landlord. When he put the receiver to his ear, a cheery male voice said: Hello! I’m a telecommunications computer specially selected to… — He hung up. An hour later, the computer called back. He hung up again.

That night he couldn’t sleep knowing that he’d be crying in his dreams, and listlessly opened the yellow pages, hoping that advertisements for fencing tools and chiropractors would swizzle him down into some murky sea of drowse, but those strange spiders of his called hands had their own ideas: ENTERTAINMENT… ESCORT… MASSAGE was what they sought out. It sounded blessed. But he didn’t feel up to driving anywhere, and he didn’t care to pay an escort girl to drop by. The next afternoon business was dead, as usual, so he got in the car, drove to the gas station, drove to the supermarket, and then drove to the Tenderloin, where he parked across the street from the Oriental Spa, vaguely supposing that one of the girls might look like Irene. Then he decided to try Jasmine’s Exotic Massage instead. The Mama-san, almost as wide as she was short, stood on tiptoe to view him through the chest-high window before she let him in.

Hi, she said.

Afternoon, said Tyler. How much for a massage?

Forty dollars for forty minutes.

All right, he said. He was pretty sure that she was Korean.

She took him down the hall to a small dark room with a single bed and a radio playing country songs. Then she left him.

The woman who came in next was definitely Korean. Her trick name was Patricia, and she told him to undress. For a moment he thought of the Vietnamese woman who liked wars. He had to give up the forty dollars first, of course, and the woman took that and went out while he stripped to his underpants. She was surprised that he kept those on. She said that she was divorced and that her son was nine years old. — That’s my child with Irene, he thought to himself.

The Korean woman knelt down on the bed and began to squeeze his back.

Your back is so big there must be a million dollars inside! she laughed.

Help yourself, said Tyler. If you can dig out any small change, though, I’ll keep that to buy myself a sandwich.

Pretty soon she was cracking his fingers and toes. She told him that he had nice skin, which wasn’t true, and that he looked young. He put his hand on her generous ass through her tights and she smiled at him. She asked whether he were married. Suddenly his arms were around her and his face was against the strange slick fabric of her dress just below her breasts and he began to feel happy and eased. He stayed like that with her for a long time. He needed comfort so much. What was he but a greyhaired old child? He slid his hand between her thighs and she made a mock-startled expression and shook her head, but she didn’t seem to be angry, so he did it again.

You want to stay with me? she whispered.

Now, how much would that cost? said Tyler.

Maybe too much for you. I’m sorry. One-twenty. I’m sorry so much.

Will you be able to get well paid out of that? I won’t be able to give you a tip then.

Thank you. It’ll be okay.

If you’d rather, I can just give you a fifty dollar tip and go now. The Mama-san doesn’t have to know.

If you can stay, I’m happy, she said. You’re so warm.

Where are you from?

Seoul.

Ann-yeong ha sim nee ka, he said, which means hello. Irene had taught him that.

She clapped her hands and kissed him.

He gave her the money and she went out and came back with no tights on. He took her underwear off and she took his off. — Oh, you not shy there! she laughed. She dimmed the light and lay beside him.

He put his hand gently but firmly on her cunt and began to suck her nipples. — Oh, I like that! the Korean woman sighed. After a while she was screaming with pleasure. Her hips slammed again and again against the bed, so hard that it almost broke, and love-juice drooled out upon his hand. That was no act, he thought, immeasurably grateful that he could please somebody. When her eyeballs rolled up and she ground her head against the wall, he began to need her urgently, and cunt-sucked, then mounted her, coming quickly and pleasantly, though not as ecstatically as she had.

Thank you, they said to one another at the same time.

You want to come see me sometime? he said.

I work very long hours, the Korean woman said glibly. I can’t get out much.

Never mind, he said. But I’m going to give you my P.O. box. If you ever need help or want to see me, write me.

Thank you, she said.

He was out of business cards, so he tore a scrap off one of the surveillance report forms in his briefcase and wrote the information down.

Well, he said, I guess I’ll never see you again then.

In another month I’ll be gone, she agreed flatly. I’ll probably be in Saint Louis.

How long have you been here? he said.

Oh, about one month.

Do you live with your kid?

No. He’s with my husband.

On the way out, she said: If I write to you and you ever see me again, don’t tell anyone we did this.

Okay, he said. Her words gave him hope that maybe she’d get in touch with him.

Don’t forget me, she whispered.

| 79 |

He could have deepened the case against himself, had he been of a self-torturing mind, by reminding himself that moments after he’d climaxed in her arms she was holding out his underwear and then (embarrassingly) putting his unclean socks onto his feet for him, and then before he knew it she was handing him his coat; his money, in short, had been spent; and yet, although he was far from young enough for his sadness to have been entirely alleviated by the sexual act, the generosity with which she’d given herself to him, the happiness and gladness of her body both in and out of sex (she said that she was always happy), the genuine tenderness and care he felt she’d given him as one human being to another suffused him with an even more fundamental kind of hope than that of seeing her again, which he now understood didn’t matter. If he could but trust and believe, not so much, or so carelessly, that the world could hurt him, but enough to open his soul to people like her, then maybe someday he too could be happy. There had been some sort of flavored gel inside her pussy; maybe he’d imagined that orgasm of hers; but whether that was true or not, the important thing was that she had tried to bring him joy.

How long will you stay here? she had asked him after explaining that she couldn’t see him.

I’m leaving town, he lied absurdly.

That didn’t matter, either. She had helped him. She had loved him, inasmuch as one stranger can love another. If there were a heaven, she would undoubtedly go there.

Two or three nights afterward, he dreamed about Irene. They were alone with each other in a valley which was very hot just like the cemetery in L.A., but they followed a creek upstream, and the creek kept foaming green and white with the shadowy reflections of alder branches bending like kelp, whirling deliciously cold breezes at them; and they found a bank of snow-white gravel on which to sit with the white rock faces reflecting starriness and sunniness down upon them. She sat upon his knee. Now it was almost evening, and the cliffs, crevice-speckled with trees, became as white as silver ore, as white as the beaches of glacier lakes. He slipped his arm around her waist. She leaned back against him, her head against his neck; he stroked her hair, which was as smooth and cool as a waterfall. He felt that she would be with him always. He awoke in a state almost of rapture. By mid-morning he had begun to wonder whether he would ever dream about her again.

| 80 |

A sad woman telephoned him. She suspected that her husband might be “seeing” another woman. The grief in her voice sent him plunging into those endless chambers of loss he now knew so well, and he lied: I only do insurance fraud, personal injury. I wouldn’t touch a divorce case.

Please, Mr. Tyler, the woman sobbed. I can’t bear not knowing. My friend Selena Contreras recommended you; you helped her…

Do you listen to your husband? he asked her.

What do you mean?

Do you make him feel good when he’s around you? Wouldn’t you rather—

I can’t stand it. It’s too late for that. I just need to know.

Have you ever discovered something about a person you’ve wished you didn’t know?

Stop it!

Well, are you better off knowing or not knowing? I’m trying to help you, ma’am.

I want to know. I need to know.

Well, then, you already do know. I’ll tell you why. First of all, if you suspect it, it’s probably true. Whether or not they’re having intercourse together, they’re doing something.

Oh, my God, wept the woman.

Think about it. If you still want me to check your husband out, call me in the morning.

The woman never called again. Tyler went to bed and for some reason dreamed of John’s angry face.

| 81 |

But after that, he began to have good fortune. He got two adultery cases in one afternoon, with satisfying retainers for each. Neither one made his heart ache. The landlord came over and fixed the toilet for the second time and it didn’t leak after that. On Monday evening he called Dan Smooth.

| 82 |

Well, are we ready to dot the i’s? said Brady. This is an obnoxious place. Who designed this place? I wouldn’t eat dinner here if you paid me. Well, maybe if you paid me. I’m not that particular.

John laid down the legal draft. — What’s the consolidated leverage ratio? he asked.

We’ll get to that.

John thought this red-faced entrepreneur to be a true original, a driven winner who did not need any other human being to make him full partner. Brady’s manner and his grand project exuded a sense of freedom which made John dream about someday trying his own luck in the financial jungle, of throwing up law and making millions by discovering or creating new desires in his fellow citizens. Was Brady playing a clean game? Well, in business how could games be clean? For that matter, weren’t all life’s gamepieces equally ordure-stained? How had Irene treated him? And that crooked Hank… Perhaps what really attracted him to Brady was the other man’s rage. (At the same time, of course, the man bored him, because everybody bored John.)

And another thing, Mr. Brady, he said. I’ll need a more thorough financial statement. Now, this revolving credit facility you’re talking about here, that’s fine, but I need you to break down these quarterly fees. That’s a lot of money right there.

I promise you this, said Brady. We’re going to keep a pretty goddamned low overhead expense to sales ratio. And we’re gonna keep our eyes on the gross margin returns.

Fine, but that has nothing to do with quarterly fees.

I honestly don’t know about that one, son. Let me find out.

No problem, said John making two tickmarks on the yellow pad. He was particularly fond of his mechanical pencil, which, slender, octagonal in cross-section, and gunmetal-hued, with inlaid lozenges of rosewood, had been a present from Irene. — And we still need clarification on some employee issues.

What issues? said Brady in surprise. What employees? It’s all going to be virtual reality, remember?

That’s fine, said John. But what about the bartenders, waitresses, hostesses, janitors?

Some day they’ll all be robots, Brady said dreamily. You know, I had lunch with that Alexis Dydynski, a very intimate lunch. Know who he is?

No, I don’t, Mr. Brady, said John, looking at his watch.

Executive Vice President at the Royal Grand. You remember when that place opened? Oh, it was a big brouhaha, but that’s another story. It’s not my policy to tell more than one story at a time. Anyway, Dydynski said to me: Slot machines don’t ask for raises, don’t get pregnant, don’t get sick, and always show up for work. — And I thought to myself, John: Here is one smart man.

All right, said John patiently. See if you can get a formal employee policy together. — And he made another tickmark on the yellow pad. — Now if you would, Mr. Brady, I’d like you to glance over clause three.

I don’t give a shit about that part, either, said Brady. That part is your job. Just make it all ironclad. This business is going to last hundreds of years. I’m thinking big.

What’s the working lifetime of your virtual staff?

Oh, five years. Maybe less. But in five years we’ll want to update the theme park with even more state-of-the-art experiences. Look. The theme park only cost three hundred and eighty-seven million. The real question is this and I hope you’re considering it: Who’s against us?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, John said.

Look. Every business venture has friends and enemies, right? So who are our enemies? Casinos? Department of Parks and Recreation? Gambling Commission? Women’s organizations? Rightwing Christians? Leftwing Christians? The Teamsters? I want this document to be enemy-specific. Do you see what I’m driving at?

You sound apprehensive, Mr. Brady.

Well, of course there’ll be various claims and actions against the company. But I don’t think they’ll have a leg to stand on. If they do, why, young John, you and I can kick that leg out from under…

Not my department. By the way, I think you ought to insist on the right to extend your leases up to at least fifteen years, John said.

At escalated rents?

Well, Mr. Brady, of course they’ll have to be escalated, unless you hold a gun to their heads. But that’s fine. If you lost the lease, you’d be paying escalated rents at a new site anyway.

All right, we’ll cut a deal. Let’s meet for breakfast at the Mark Hopkins on Wednesday, seven a.m. I’ll do my homework on consolidated leverage, employee guidelines and quarterly fees. You do yours on enemies.

John walked back to the office and told Mr. Singer that the Brady contracts were going to bring in many, many more billable hours.

I love the law, said Mr. Singer.