Romeo's Rules Read online

  Natalia was about to say something else but I held up my index finger and she stopped.

  “Fear nothing,” I said. “That’s rule number one.”

  I USED DUCT tape on Tomás. Hands, arms, feet. Poor guy was moaning. There’s nothing more pitiful than the humiliated thug. The only thing he has going for him are his cajones, and when they are reduced to caraway seeds by another man, and in front of a woman yet, it discharges an existential angst your average hapless goon can scarce understand.

  But I’d tried to reason with him, after all. I was justified in wrapping him up like a summer sausage. I sat him against the magnolia tree.

  “I will notify the police,” Ira said. “But it may be some time before they arrive. Oh, this is for you.”

  Ira took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. It had an address in Hollywood on it. “This is the address where the Lexus is registered,” he said.

  “I’ll go check it out,” I said.

  “I want to go with you,” Natalia said.

  “Better not.”

  “Please.”

  Something told me it was not a good idea. But her pleading voice canceled that feeling.

  To Ira, I said, “Watch the fish for us.”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Ira said.

  LOS ANGELES IS the Heraclitus of cities. The old pre-Socratic philosopher was famous for saying, “You can’t step in the same river twice.” He would’ve been right at home in L.A. It changes, sometimes right before your eyes.

  Which makes it a good place if you’re running away. If you have a new name and identity and you don’t want to be found by the law on the East Coast, L.A. is your city, especially if you’re in the home of the one person in the world you can trust because you saved his life and he, in his way, was trying to save yours. But then one day, you look up and a church has exploded and a guy has been murdered inside it and a woman has lost her kids and it’s not the same river you’re stepping into. And if you don’t watch out, philosophy boy, the waters will cover your head and drag you down.

  In such circumstances, about the last thing you want to do is get involved with a beautiful woman whose husband—

  “Tell me why you married him,” I said. I was driving her Mercedes on Franklin, heading west.

  “Are you my shrink now?” Natalia said. I liked it that she was combative. She seemed to be coming out of the fright and despair of not knowing where her children were, and showing some moxie. That meant some inner strength that could be channeled in the right direction. If only I could do the same with Achilles.

  “You want to find your kids?” I said.

  “You’re not going to get very far making enemies of Mark.”

  “I don’t worry about that.”

  “You better worry.”

  “Worry is the polyp of emotions,” I said. “Serves no purpose and should be removed.”

  “You are so strange. What did you mean back there, that thing you said?”

  “What thing?”

  “It sounded like Latin.”

  “Delenda est Carthago. It means Carthage must be destroyed.”

  “I am having a hard time understanding you.”

  “Carthage was a rival to Rome in the Mediterranean world. They eventually went to war in the middle of the third century BC. Rome won and secured terms of peace. But Carthage got a second wind and there was another war from about 218 to 201. You may have heard of Hannibal?”

  “I think so.”

  “One of history’s great generals, used elephants to cross the Alps. Scored a lot of victories. But a brilliant Roman general named Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal in what is now Tunisia, and that was the end of Carthage as a superpower. Another war with Carthage broke out about half a century later. A Roman senator named Cato the Elder had enough. He stood up in the Senate and said ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’ He was saying, Let’s not let this happen again. So Rome completely destroyed Carthage.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “Books.”

  “College?”

  “I didn’t stay.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “That’s not important.” I felt my voice go low and quiet then, deep into the pit where those memories live. Natalia seemed to sense that. She gave me a quick look, turned back to the road and said nothing.

  “Anyway,” I said, “what I was saying to Ira was breaking that punk’s finger was to destroy him.”

  “But he won’t be destroyed.”

  “He already is. I’m in his head now. He won’t bother you or me again.”

  “He will.”

  “If he tries, the destruction will be made complete.”

  “You can fight and you can think,” she said. “What else do I need to know about you?”

  “I can catch a Frisbee in my teeth,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yep.”

  “You mean like a dog?” she said.

  “Better than a dog.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Used to practice it. Threw it up in the air so it’d come on back. Took some patience.”

  “Didn’t it hurt?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can I ask why you did that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then why?”

  “It took my mind off other things.”

  She shook her head. “You are so strange.”

  “No argument there,” I said.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  I didn’t answer, since I didn’t know, myself. But I did hear my father’s voice. You must learn to use well the gifts you’ve been given, Michael. You have a responsibility …

  And my mother’s. You’re smart, Michael, but don’t ever become a smarty-pants …

  THE ADDRESS WHERE the Lexus was registered turned out to be a classic, Tudor-style home set snug against the hills. It probably cost about thirty grand in 1940. It would go for over two mil now. Whoever lived here cared about it.

  There was no Lexus in the driveway.

  I made a U and parked at the curb across the street.

  “What now?” Natalie said.

  “We watch.”

  “What are we watching for?”

  “We don’t know. That’s why we watch.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “From a guy I used to work for.”

  “Who?”

  “You are a veritable fount of questions, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know if I can take you anymore,” she said.

  “That’s funny,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “Ira says he can’t take me anywhere.”

  We watched in silence for a few minutes. Then I said, “I’m going to see if anyone’s home. Wait here.”

  I got out and went across the street and knocked on the front door.

  Waited. Knocked again.

  No answer. I went to check for a side entrance. There was a gate, unlocked, on the south side. I went through it, listening for a dog. Nothing.

  In the back was a kidney-shaped pool, recently cleaned. I knew that because Santa Ana winds had blown through L.A. a couple of days earlier. All sorts of crud would have been in the pool if the pool man hadn’t stopped by.

  There was a sliding glass door to the house. It was wide open. I stepped in. To the kitchen. It had a sleek, Euro design.

  “Telegram,” I said, and waited.

  No response.

  “Water bill,” I said.

  The house was quiet.

  “What are you doing?” Natalia was outside the glass door.

  “Nobody home,” I said.

  “You can’t just go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t this breaking and entering?”

  “I didn’t break anything.”

  She frowned.

  I said, “I’m not here to commit a crime. If the guy wants me to leave, I’
ll leave. But I don’t think anybody’s home.”

  “Then why is the door open?”

  “Come help me find out.”

  She stepped inside. “What are we looking for?”

  “ID. Phone numbers. Pictures.”

  “This has to be illegal.”

  “I know a good lawyer.”

  “What if someone has a gun?”

  “I’ll talk them down or take it away from them.” I motioned her to follow me. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “See? This is criminal.”

  “Only if we get caught.”

  She sighed. There was a washer and dryer in the nook off the kitchen. And a door to the attached garage. I grabbed a towel that was sitting on top of the washer and used it to open the door.

  No car inside. The garage was neat, clean, organized.

  “Can we please leave?” Natalia said.

  “A quick look around,” I said. “Now I’m starting to think no one is here.”

  I was wrong.

  We went back through the kitchen and out into the front room of the house.

  He was naked and he was hanging from a rope secured to the second floor banister.

  HE WAS AROUND fifty or so, but it was hard to tell from the condition. His body was heavy-veined and buffed out, indicating massive workouts and maybe a regimen of HGH.

  Natalia gasped.

  “Call 911,” I said.

  She fished a phone out of her pocket as I circled around the body. He’d been on the cooling rack for hours. The ligature impression on the neck was deep. Mr. Gravity at work.

  His face was pasty white, lips purple. The mouth hung open and a bit of dark blue tongue hung juicelessly from the corner. His head was cocked to one side, and one eye was closed.

  About three feet from the body was an overturned chair. There were others like it around a dining room table to my right.

  The rope around the guy’s neck was yellow, polyester or nylon.

  Natalia said, “They’re on their way.”

  “Let’s wait outside.”

  “What about my kids? Why are we even—”

  “Maybe this gets us one step closer,” I said. “You don’t know this house, this man?”

  She shook her head. I took her arm to lead her out to the back yard. She took a step and froze.

  “Wait,” she said. She was looking at a framed photograph on the kitchen counter. Two smiling men. The one on the left could have been the corpse in happier times. The other was a younger man with spikey hair and a cool, look-at-me expression.

  “I think that might be Yance Perry,” she said.

  “How do you know him?”

  “He was on a soap opera for like twenty years. He was a doctor.”

  “Isn’t everybody on a soap opera a doctor?”

  I took her outside. There was a barbecue pit in the back, and deck chairs with an Asian floral design. So now we had a Tudor house with Euro kitchen and an American retro pool with Far East furniture. Truly, we were in L.A.

  I sat in one of the chairs. Natalia hesitated, then did the same. Just a couple of intruders lounging by the pool of a dead guy.

  “So this Yance was famous?” I asked.

  “In his way,” Natalia said. “Among soap fans. He was a big heartthrob early on, and sort of stayed that way. He kept in good shape.”

  “Too good.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Human growth hormone, the botox of aging male actors.”

  “He got killed off a few years ago, on the show. I think there was a contract dispute or something.”

  “He seems to be pretty well off.”

  “You can make a bunch on a soap. It’s steady work.”

  “Until you’re killed off.”

  “Why do you think he hanged himself?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Did you see the chair?”

  She shook her head.

  “It was turned over so the legs were sticking up in the air.”

  “So?”

  “A chair doesn’t fall in that position. Somebody put it that way to make it look like he kicked it over.”

  “Are you … how …”

  “It’s just odds. Everything in life is about odds.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Why can’t you tell me who you are?”

  “I’m not that interesting a subject.”

  “I think you are, and I’m the one who is sitting here with a total stranger. Don’t I have a right to know?”

  I was about to tell her that natural rights were few and information was not one of them, but that would only add to her confusion.

  So I said, “I used to do some cage fighting.”

  “Really?” She seemed halfway impressed.

  “It was a way to make money. And work off some steam.”

  “Steam?”

  “What the Greeks called Menis.”

  “There! Why do you know that stuff?”

  “Everybody should know that stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to go through life getting bounced around, or figure out how to live?”

  She shook her head. “What were you like as a child?”

  “Young.”

  “Please,” she said. “I need to talk, or I’ll go crazy. I can’t just sit here thinking about where my children might be. It’s like you came out of nowhere to help me, and I just want to know how you know so much.”

  “I read books,” I said.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Good ones. Ones that teach wisdom. Which means I don’t read Hollywood biographies or political memoirs by anyone younger than Churchill.”

  “You have any wisdom for me?” she said, almost pleading.

  “Fight. Do you have a good lawyer?”

  “I think so.”

  “All right then.”

  “It’s not all right. Mark will never give up.”

  “In the right circumstances, any man will give up.”

  She looked at me then with more than curiosity. “What was it you said, about the first rule?”

  “Fear nothing,” I said.

  “You have any more?”

  “Do unto them before they do unto you.”

  “Really?”

  ”And you don’t owe the truth to people who lie.”

  “I’ve never met anybody like you.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  She touched my forearm with her fingertips. “What does this mean?”

  “It’s Latin,” I said. “Something my father used to say to me.”

  “Your father spoke Latin?”

  “Fluently.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Truth conquers all things.”

  She said, “Do you believe that?”

  “I have to.”

  “Why do you have to?”

  “Because if I didn’t,” I said, “I’d end up like that guy inside.”

  I HEARD A CAR pull up out in front and then the sound of two doors closing. A moment later two LAPD officers, a man and a woman, came to the back. The woman had a box-clipboard. I told them about the body and the man went inside. The woman started to make out a report.

  I told her only as much as she needed to know. We’d come to the house on a private matter. She asked what that matter was. I said if I told her, it wouldn’t be private. She didn’t like that.

  Half an hour later, the homicide detail showed up. This time the main guy was named Umstadt. He looked like he lived at the gym. I gave him just what he needed to know and nothing more. I took pity and gave him Ira’s address so he could find me. He asked me for my phone number and I told him I didn’t have a phone. He asked me who lives in Los Angeles without a phone. People who don’t want to be called, I said.

  Then I handed Natalia over to him. I told Natalia the police would have to be the one
s to help her now, the police and her lawyer. I was out of it.

  She said, “Please, I want to stay in touch with you.”

  “It’s best that you don’t,” I said.

  I was about five miles away from Ira’s.

  I ran back.

  And filled Ira in on what we’d found at the house. Ira got that look in his eyes, the one that likes to unravel mysteries. Then he got that other look, the one that looks at me like I’m the biggest mystery of all.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m out of it now. The police can take it from here.”

  Ira steepled his fingers in front of him, as if about to render a Talmudic opinion. “I do worry about you, Michael. Until I know what you’re running away from, I shall continue to do so.”

  NEXT MORNING I walked to the bookstore near Ira’s house, the Argo. Hadn’t been there yet. I wanted to forget about yesterday, and Natalia. I didn’t like it that she was still on my mind. To forget things I like getting lost in the smell of old books, the scent of the gods.

  I started by browsing the biography section. I picked up a book about Groucho Marx. Groucho may have been the greatest philosopher of all time. He may have known the things we need to know and wrapped them up in a way that made them palatable.

  Think about it. I’d never join a club that would have me for a member.

  This is an existential warning.

  Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

  This speaks to multiple levels of existence, even those that cannot be directly experienced, only understood. I had to get the Groucho book.

  Next I scanned the philosophy section. It was like a game, seeing how many of the titles I’d already read. Even more, associating the titles with one another.

  John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.

  Robert Nozick’s answer to Rawls, Anarchy, State and Utopia.

  William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience poised against Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

  Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, duking it out with Pascal’s Pensees. Now that is a cage match of the mind. Something I’d pay to see.

  There were a couple of volumes on Hume and one collection of essays by Hume’s great critic, Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. I’d been meaning to read up on Reid, so I pulled that one down.

  For entertainment, I looked at the plays.

  The Iceman Cometh by O’Neill. Now there was a play for our times. Are we all in Harry Hope’s bar or aren’t we?