Romeo's Way Read online

  “All right,” I said, “what’s the big lie they’re telling about Mr. Johnson?”

  “They’ve planted a story about him having an affair.”

  “Politics and womanizing? The very idea.”

  Samuel Johnson did not laugh. “I have a wife, two children, and two precious grandchildren,” he said. “I’m most concerned about them.”

  “They with you on this running for office thing?” I said.

  “All in,” he said. “They knew it would be rough. They told me to go for it.”

  “Then all this goes with the territory,” I said.

  Steadman said, “We have to cut this off right here and now. We have to show they’re behind it.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “Oh, there’s a fake blog about Sam, but we all know Parsons is running it.”

  “Parsons?”

  “Griffin’s campaign manager,” Steadman said. “A sleazier customer you’ll never find.”

  “Politics and sleaze? The very—”

  “That’s enough, Mike,” Ira said. “Don’t mind him. He goes a little funny in the head sometimes.”

  “This isn’t a laughing matter,” Steadman said. “This is about the very existence of America.”

  My eyebrows must have gone up about four feet, with my eyes rolling behind them.

  “Oh, you don’t think so?” Steadman said.

  “You don’t want to know what I think,” I said.

  “I do,” Johnson said.

  “Uh-oh,” Ira said.

  “Man is doomed,” I said. “That’s the short answer.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Johnson said.

  “It’s the great lesson of history. We’ve been heading toward the end for a long time. We’ll all blow up eventually. The only question is whether there’ll be anything or anybody left.”

  “Do you believe there will be?” Johnson asked.

  “I’m on the fence,” I said.

  “I believe,” he said. “I believe in fighting for what’s good and right. If we don’t fight, we’re no better than the other side.”

  “Let’s put it this way,” I said. “America was an experiment in world history. It went pretty well there for awhile. But it takes an informed and engaged citizenry to make it work. Look at what we have now.”

  “It’s too great an idea to give up on,” Johnson said, and I could tell he meant it with every nerve ending in his body. It would have been cruel to call him a chump.

  “Why are you running,” I asked, “if you had to sum it up?”

  “To try to get people to see the truth.”

  “People have to want to see,” I said.

  “I know what you’re saying. People would rather believe in sweet lies, and then turn those sweet lies into a religion. They even have their own seminaries. They’re called universities.”

  “Stupidity is the new profundity,” I said.

  “I like the way you talk.”

  “But I’m not running for anything.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “People are naïve,” I said, “because they can get away with it. We used to call those people fools and wouldn’t listen to them. Now we give them their own talk shows.”

  “Shouldn’t we light a candle rather than curse the darkness?” Samuel Johnson said.

  “The darkness has taken over the candle factories,” I said. “But I wish you good luck. I’ll be rooting for you.”

  “We’d like you to do more than that,” Steadman said. “We’d like you to work for us.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “I mean for pay, actual pay.”

  “And I mean no, actual no.”

  They all looked at each other like they didn’t know what to say next.

  “I’m not your man,” I said. “Everybody’s got to believe something, but right now, all I believe is that I should get out of town.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Johnson said. He was looking at me the way a priest might look at a wayward boy. Like Spencer Tracy staring down Mickey Rooney in Boys Town, with all the idealism of somebody who thinks there’s good in everybody, if only you could dig it out. Maybe he really was a chump.

  “Mr. Johnson” I said, “I do wish you well. But politics is not my thing. Even if Honest Abe himself came back and said he wanted to take another shot––I guess that’s a bad choice of words––another turn on the scene, and wanted my help, I would tell him to find somebody else.”

  Steadman let out an audible and disappointed sigh. Obviously meant for me. “Well, Ira, I guess you were wrong.”

  “I guess I was,” Ira said.

  “Been talking behind my back?” I said.

  Ira shrugged.

  I stood. “A pox on every house in this whole country. All due respect, Mr. Johnson, but maybe you should get out before they steal your soul.”

  “Wait a second,” Johnson said. “May I ask about the tattoo on your arm?”

  My left forearm, on the underside. “Vincit Omnia Veritas,” I said.

  “Latin,” Johnson said. “Something about truth and overcoming.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you believe that, Mr. Romeo?”

  “My father did.”

  “He sounds like a wise man.”

  “He was,” I said. “But he’s dead.”

  I WALKED OUT of Ira’s feeling like jerk, like a petulant boy, and not caring that I did. Then feeling rotten that I didn’t care. Samuel Johnson was a sincere man, by all I could tell a good man. I wasn’t crazy about Teodor Steadman. He had slick handler written all over him. I wondered how long poor Johnson was going to last in the meat grinder of California politics.

  Then I realized I was walking without my duffel. Which meant I would have to go back to Ira’s one more time. I wonder what Freud might have thought of that.

  I wasn’t ready to go back.

  Then I found myself outside the Argo and wanting to see one more person before I left for good.

  The Argo is a used bookstore, one of the last standing in Los Angeles. The age of the digital title was laying waste to the world of print, and the number of used books was finite. I hoped the Argo would stick around, because it had a truly good collection and one salesperson I wished I could have known better.

  A skinny guy behind the counter in a faded Alice in Chains Reunion Tour T-shirt greeted me with the half smile of the barely committed.

  “Is Sophie here?” I said.

  His forehead furrowed. “I don’t think she’s coming in today.”

  A thudding disappointment hit me, harder than I thought it would.

  “Can I give her a message?” the guy said.

  “No, thanks. She brought some books to me a while ago. I wanted to thank her again.”

  “She should be in tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be gone.”

  “Taking a trip?”

  “Moving. Out of L.A.”

  “Bummer.” He caught himself. “Or maybe not.”

  “I will miss your bookstore. Great selection. Maybe I’ll give it one last browse.”

  “Do it, man.”

  A bookstore is the best place to be lost. There’s always a volume to grab, and inside there may be pleasures awaiting, wisdom to be gained, or at least something to make you mad. If you’re mad, you know you’re alive, which is a good thing to know from time to time.

  I browsed for half an hour, taking down random volumes—everything from Montaigne to Hunter S. Thompson. Talk about bending your mind. A rustic French essayist and a gonzo journalist whose body was a drug lab.

  Somewhere in the middle was an accurate view of humanity.

  To this mix I added a volume of Dr. Seuss from the children’s shelf. I parked in one of the soft chairs in the store, cracked open the Seuss, and started looking to find timeless wisdom. If not that, a laugh.

  Found both, in the tale of the young Zoad.

  It seems this Zoad came to a fork in the road
and had to figure out which one to take. He kept giving himself arguments for one, then the other. Couldn’t make up his mind. Kept stopping and starting, for thirty-six and a half hours.

  Finally, he comes up with the solution. He won’t be a fool and take one or the other. He won’t be a dunce … instead, he’d start out for both places at once.

  And that was how the Zoad who would not take a chance got nowhere at all, with a rip in his pants.

  That was why I had to go, get out, move on. If I stayed in L.A. I’d get a rip in my pants. Didn’t matter the direction I went, as long as I—

  “A little light reading I see.”

  She was there. Sophie. All six feet of her, athletic trim, black-rimmed glasses over bronze, gold-flecked eyes. And her long hair the color of red maple leaves on a New England fall morning––one of my vivid childhood memories.

  My blood pumped like I was about to go into a cage match. So I had a little humanity left after all. That and a couple of bucks could get me a cup of coffee for sure, but not much else.

  Churchill called his depression the Black Dog, and that rabid canine has been snapping at my heels for fifteen years. He was born the day my parents were murdered. I was seventeen and didn’t have any friends but them. Both were academic superstars, and I had been accepted into Yale at the age of fourteen, which put my psyche in a vise right there.

  Three years went by, but I was making it through, mostly lonely, finding solace in my books. I wrestled with Aquinas, got punched in the face by Nietzsche, recovered with Pascal, was thrown again by Hume.

  I enjoyed ancient history. The Greek city-states, especially Sparta and Athens. Rome and the emperors. The Mongols of the Middle Ages.

  At seventeen I looked up from my books and saw actual life starting to spread out before me. I had no idea what direction to take. My parents gave their best counsel, but you know how that goes. At seventeen you don’t want to hear it. There weren’t any big arguments. I didn’t steal a motorcycle or start smoking weed. We all thought it was a good idea for me to live in a rented room off campus. We saw each other a lot, especially when I needed clothes washed.

  Still, there was that slight but discernable tension in the air when a kid is about to become an adult and the old ways of talking don’t work. I saw disappointment in my father’s face, and in my mother’s voice, I sometimes heard a tinny note of sadness. It ripped me up, those two things. But I held it all inside.

  I wish now, and all the time I wish it, that I’d told them I understood.

  One day a student entered the building where my father’s office was. My mother was with him at the time. The student carried two automatic weapons and a belt of ammunition. He cut down staff and students.

  He killed my parents.

  He turned the gun on himself when the cops got there.

  I never talked about this except to Ira. But I haven’t told him everything. About what happened after, why I tracked down another man and killed him for all this. I don’t know if I can open up that door, even to Ira. I only know that back in New Haven, the cops want to talk to me. But I was Michael Chamberlain then.

  I’m living in that netherworld of existence, nowhere to settle, nowhere to rest. I keep holding out hope maybe I can get that black dog put down, but its teeth and saliva keep showing up in my dreams and sometimes on the street. So when there’s an offer of grace, like Sophie right now, I think maybe there’s a chance. But reality always comes back with a snarl. It makes choices a little dicey. It makes running seem like the only option. And when I get a chance like this, this woman standing here, I’m always like that Zoad.

  “Stocking up,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “For what?”

  “I’m heading out.”

  “Oh.”

  Was that a small sound of disappointment? And what if it was? What was I going to do about it? Stick around like a schoolboy hoping to take her to a dance?

  “I’m glad I got to hang out in your store awhile,” I said.

  “Well, I … if you ever come back to town, you know where to find us.”

  Find. That’s what you say to somebody who’s lost. Find your way out. We’ll leave the light on for you. Sophie flicked on a light, and there it was on the distant porch in the dark of night and all I had to do was walk toward it.

  She hesitated a moment, as if expecting me to speak. When I didn’t she smiled and turned and walked away, and I watched her walk, then I slapped my right cheek and took the copy of Montaigne to the front desk. Sophie was helping another customer so I bought the book for four-fifty from the Alice in Chains guy.

  And decided to give Ira one more chance.

  “YOUR OFFER STILL stand?” I said.

  “What offer?” Ira said, turning from his monitor.

  “To wait on me hand and foot,” I said.

  “I’m trying to recall.” Ira tapped his head. “Nope, not there.”

  “Then how about your place in Paradise Cove?”

  “Ah,” he said. “You want to live by the ocean, the life of a beachcomber.”

  “No combs. Just some quiet.”

  “Does that mean you want to stay after all?”

  “You’ve got one more chance to convince me,” I said.

  “It’s a moral argument,” Ira said. “Would you like some tea? I always prefer making moral arguments over tea.”

  “You will not coax me with civility,” I said. “State your case and make it snappy.”

  “I will make it whip-cracking. But if it is to be a truly moral argument, we need to agree on a standard. You, my friend, do not seem to have one. I don’t know where your compass is located.”

  “Maybe I’m just afloat,” I said. “The tide carries me wherever it will.”

  “I don’t think you believe that,” he said. “And I think you’re acting like a wimp.”

  “Is this a motivational speech now?”

  “I call them like I see them. You can decide what to do with it. You want to leave now?”

  Yes. And fast.

  “Finish your thought,” I said. “It may be the last time you see me.”

  “I respect Sam Johnson. He’s letting himself in for a tsunami of lies and abuse from the mob. I don’t like mobs, do you?”

  “No one in their right mind likes a mob, unless they’re part of a mob, in which case they are by definition not in their right mind.”

  “Well stated.”

  “But Samuel Johnson doesn’t have to run for office,” I said.

  “And you don’t have to walk freely on the street.” Ira said. “Are you really that obtuse?”

  “Did you just use the word obtuse on me?”

  “Would you rather I called you a blockhead?” Ira said.

  “No, obtuse is fine,” I said. “So why am I obtuse?”

  “You’re trying to live alone in this world and you can’t do it. You won’t be able to do it, because your conscience will grind you up.”

  “You assume I have a conscience.”

  “I know you do,” Ira said. “As fast as you run, you’ll never get away from it.”

  I shrugged.

  “Your sense of justice is too finely tuned,” Ira said. “And you feel in your gut what Edmund Burke once said about evil.”

  “Burke said a lot of things.”

  Ira said, “When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice.”

  With the most serious look I’d ever seen on his face, he said in almost a whisper, “You can be a sacrifice if you choose, Michael. But can you sit by and watch it happen to others?”

  When he said that, I thought about Henry.

  “Who would I be working for?” I said.

  Ira’s eyebrows went up in silent but sympathetic victory. “I’m a legal advisor to the campaign. You are my investigator. So officially, it’s me. But we take day-to-day orders from Steadman.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “He’s very good a
t what he does.”

  “So was Machiavelli,” I said.

  “Samuel Johnson trusts him,” Ira said.

  “All right! Anything else you want to hypnotize me with, Svengali?”

  “Jewish law puts a high value on honesty,” Ira said. “But there are exceptions. You will recall that Caleb and Joshua entered the land as spies and were protected by the prevarication of Rahab, who is honored among our people.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “And in the Talmud, there is the protection of honest property by making a vow, a vow mind you, to thieves and dishonest tax collectors, that the property is terumah, of little value but to priests. Or that the property belongs to the king. And why is this permitted? You know, for you say it yourself.”

  “You don’t owe the truth to people who lie.”

  “There is a robbery being committed by people who lie.”

  “What’s being robbed?”

  “A man’s good name. To lie about a man’s name is considered in our law to be worse than stealing property, for property can be regained, but a good name cannot.”

  “And all this means what?”

  “You are going to do some deceiving up in San Francisco,” Ira said.

  “Seems like a good city for it,” I said.

  “Welcome back to the world.”

  “Temporarily,” I said.

  “We’ll see,” Ira said.

  ON WEDNESDAY I met with Teodor Steadman at his office on Wilshire Boulevard. The political consulting business must have been good to him. His office was on the third floor, in the corner, and you could look out at Wilshire and the tony Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. His office was sleek and nicely furnished, with some 8 x 10s on the wall of Steadman’s unmistakable smile standing next to some other toothy fellows. I recognized John McCain in one and George W. Bush in the other. His desk was a clear glass top. Everything on the desk was neat, orderly. The thing that stood out was a skull the size of a grapefruit, grinning at me.

  I sat and stared at it.

  “That’s Osgood,” Steadman said. “He reminds me every day that all this is about death.”

  “That’s cheery,” I said.

  “I’m obsessed with death.”

  “Even cheerier.”

  “Death is what will happen to this country if we don’t win,” Steadman said.