Romeo's Rules Read online

  A few steps after that was a bus stop bench. It had a sign on it that said Your ad goes here! and a website and phone number. This was surely one of the worst possible spots for an advertisement.

  But not for a homeless guy seeking to rest his feet.

  So I took up residence on the bench and angled right, so I could watch.

  And wait.

  OVER THE COURSE of the next couple of hours four busses came by, stopped, opened their doors. When I did not get in the drivers looked exasperated and drove on. In between the busses I tried to keep my mind from driving me crazy.

  When I was a kid I’d zone out when people talked to me, but that was because most of what was said didn’t hold any interest. My brain was always trying to explore places of thought that other people found strange and even disturbing.

  I called it philosophical rumination. The docs called it attention-deficit.

  So my father had me take up chess, to help me focus. It worked, almost too well. I could get hyper-focused on the game, to the point where the world would disappear around me.

  When I was ten I started hanging out at Washington Square Park, getting into chess games with locals. I hated to lose and if I did, I would replay the game in my mind, go home and set it up on a board, and study. I devoured books on chess and memorized the moves of classic games.

  My father even put me in some tournaments in New York, and I won a couple. Who knows? If things hadn’t happened the way they did, if my father and mother had survived, and I hadn’t killed that man in New Haven, maybe I’d be a grandmaster by now, eating fine food and traveling to exotic locations, instead of a guy on a bench without any money or home.

  So as I waited I replayed in my head Spassky-Fisher, Reykjavik, 1972, game 3. Fischer made a key move with Black, on move 17: Q-B3! That led to the first ever victory for the American over the champ, and eventually the world championship was his.

  Then for fun I went over my own game against Tolletson at the New York City Chess Club. I was fourteen and he was a grandmaster and I made an awesome queen sacrifice that totally threw him. We ended in a draw and it hacked him off so much, he refused to be in the club whenever I was there.

  After an hour of Memory Lane I got up and walked around the bench and replayed a few more games. No one had come or gone at the place across the street.

  The next hour was a fight for bladder control. That’s one thing they never show when a private eye is trailing someone. I thought of coming up with a small port-a-potty I could market to the private investigator population. I would call it the Travis McPee.

  Upon such matters does my mind dwell when I am without activity.

  A third hour went by, and I was in a Socratic dialogue with myself.

  And what will it achieve, young Romeo, if you exact revenge?

  It will bring balance to the universe.

  You can judge this?

  I can feel it.

  And what if feelings of another sort are felt by someone else? Will you then have to balance that? How many scales must you tip?

  I can only tip what’s in front of me.

  And how will you judge this tip?

  Why don’t you shut your mouth for a change, Socrates? Why don’t you go drink some Hemlock?

  As I got into the fourth hour I was going to burst. So I vacated the bench and went inside the gate of the restaurant supply place. They had an open storage space, full of crates.

  I looked for anything human moving around. Saw one by a forklift. He was big, built and busy. Shouting something into a cell phone.

  Trying to appear calm, I approached.

  When he saw me he looked like I’d just violated presidential air space. He told his caller to hold and put the cell phone on his chest.

  “What are you doing in here?” he said.

  “Beg your pardon,” I said, “would you mind if I used your facility?”

  “What?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m asking you for a favor.”

  “Get out.”

  I noticed he wore a wedding ring.

  “I’ll show you how to make your kids laugh,” I said.

  He blinked. “How do you—”

  “Trust me.”

  He shook his head in disbelief, then laughed and motioned with his thumb. I took the general direction and made my way to the far corner of the warehouse. It was a little bathroom but to me it looked like Valhalla. You know what I’m talking about.

  When I emerged I found the fellow again. He was off the phone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “How’d you know I had kids?” he said.

  “A stab in the dark,” I said. “I’m guessing a boy and a girl.”

  “Whoa!”

  “Under ten?”

  “Seven and nine,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Watch this.” I stuck my left hand out, fingers spread. I pretended to grab my thumb with my right hand, but slipped my right thumb between my first two fingers. The illusion is that I’m fully grasping the left thumb, but then I slid my right hand up, with my thumb tip showing. It appears that I’m stretching my left thumb to three times its length.

  A simple trick I learned from a magic shop in New York.

  The guy broke out in a big smile. “You’re right,” he said. “My kids’ll love it.”

  I showed him how to do it. I said, “Practice it first. Then have fun. Now I have to go.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just a guy from downtown.”

  “Come back anytime you need a bathroom,” he said.

  I jogged back to my bench.

  It was getting to be twilight in Los Angeles.

  I noticed that the steel garage door was now open.

  I WALKED ACROSS the street. I looked for security cameras. Didn’t see any. Didn’t mean there wasn’t a hidden eye, but I wasn’t going to worry about it. You can’t give an anxious thought to that which you cannot control. I was going to remain a happy guy.

  I slowed as I got to the open entry. The inside was like the place I’d just come from, only without anything inside. Except a car.

  Remaining happy, I stopped on the other side of the entry, waited a moment, watched, and when I didn’t see anyone moving I ducked inside.

  The air was cool and the space dark. The same empty warehouse look.

  And the car? It was the same one. It was empty, parked parallel to the steps that led up to the door with the keypad.

  The fact that the garage door was left open told me that the car wouldn’t be here long. It could be that Bald Guy and Stocky would be emerging soon.

  They’d be armed.

  I’d have to move fast. My plan was to incapacitate Stocky with a blow to the esophagus and, in one motion, take down Bald Guy and get his .38.

  If there were more than two, I’d have to improvise.

  There was an indented wall to the left of the door. If I put my back to it and sucked in, I’d be out of sight for a second or two when the two guys poked out.

  I put my back to the wall and started playing out scenarios in my mind. Like I used to do before matches, I constructed an imaginary cage and started watching possibilities on the movie screen of my mind.

  They all involved total victory, because the mind does not distinguish between reality and what is vividly imagined. It puts all of that stimuli to work in shaping your reality and your future.

  So it’s a good idea to think right.

  I played scenarios that involved one, two, and three people.

  One option would be to do nothing. I had the license plate number now and Ira could help me locate the car. But one thing I had going for me in here was the surprise element. There might never be a better time to get this fellow into a meaningful conversation.

  The waiting was about ten minutes. I heard the door click open and then slam shut.

  Bald Guy was alone.

  “HI, BALD GUY.”

  He clutch
ed. I took his nose between my index and middle finger and twisted it thirty-five degrees.

  Bald Guy howled. He tried to dislodge my hand. I let go of his nose then grabbed his throat and put my thumb over his esophagus.

  “You have two choices,” I said. “I can end your life now, or we can go somewhere and talk.”

  His eyes looked like a rat’s when it smells poison.

  “Blink if you want to talk,” I said.

  He blinked. I turned him around and thumped his head on the roof of the car. “Don’t move,” I said. I patted him down, got his key fob. Unlocked the car doors.

  “You drive,” I said. “And at the first sign of trouble I am going to drive something hard into your brain. Are we clear on that?”

  He said nothing.

  I pushed his head onto the roof again.

  “We clear?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I held the back of his neck with one hand, opened the driver’s door, pushed him behind the wheel. I got in behind him.

  “Remember,” I said, “I have nothing to lose. I can send us both to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

  Pause. “What are you talking about?”

  “Drive or I kill you,” I said.

  He started the car with a button push.

  “Carefully,” I said. “Not too fast now. Just get out to the street and turn right.”

  He did exactly as he was told.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” I said. “Your personality or the fact that you don’t know Hamlet.”

  “Take it easy, man.”

  “Don’t talk until I ask you to.”

  He started to say something and I squeezed a nerve in the soft part between his neck and shoulder. He squealed.

  “Don’t!” he said.

  I squeezed again. He yelped again.

  “No talking until I say. Drive out of the garage and don’t get stopped by the cops. You do, those very same cops will be calling the coroner. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Good” I said.

  I guided him to the freeway, heading north.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You’ll know when you get there.”

  “Come on, man. We can work this out.”

  “Is that what you were doing when you were practicing on my face? Working it out?”

  “You going to kill me?”

  “There are several options. I might buy you a sandwich. That’s an option. I might make you listen to me sing Gilbert and Sullivan. That’s an option. All of life is full of creative options.”

  “You really talk weird. Just get this over with.”

  “We will.”

  “You’re going to kill me. You’re going to work me over and then let me have it.”

  “Let me have it. That’s sort of a pulp fiction phrase, isn’t it?”

  “Please don’t kill me. It wasn’t my idea, what happened to you.”

  “Take the 5,” I said as we approached the freeway split.

  “Where?”

  “Just do what I tell you.”

  ONE OF THE first places Ira introduced me to when I got out here was Griffith Park. It’s practically in Ira’s back yard. Named for a man who left no doubt about his name—industrialist Col. Griffith J. Griffith—the land was donated by him to the city in the late 1890s. This apparently made him hard to live with, as he later disfigured his wife.

  It was one of the first celebrity trials in Los Angeles. The defense lawyer was a young upstart named Earl Rogers, who many still say was the greatest trial lawyer who ever lived. He convinced a jury that Griffith J. Griffith was suffering from the ill effects of the demon whiskey. Two quarts a day will do that to you. He was convicted only of assault with a deadly weapon.

  He did two years in Quentin.

  Which is not to say that the park that bears his name is in any way haunted by this man’s ghost, if your mind runs to that sort of thing. But it is to say that Los Angeles has its own patina of crime or criminals that seems to cover every square inch of the place.

  Thoughts of which were on my mind as I made Bald Guy drive into the park and onto one of several dirt roads that take you to some of the last remaining undeveloped land in the City of Angels. Roads upon which I liked to run. Few cars, and the land here is all chaparral and canyon, Humboldt Lily and Bigberry Manzanita, and a rare type of cactus they call Parry’s Cholla.

  You can learn a lot just by reading the brochures the rangers pass out. You can also get creative with the indigenous plants, as I was about to do.

  IT WAS NEARLY dark when we got to the little turnout I was thinking of. There are no guardrails here, nothing but air between you and the steep canyon drop. Isolated and private for the most part. And a prickly patch of Parry’s growing just off the side of the road.

  I had Bald Guy kill the car and get out. I controlled him with a simple Chin Na armlock. I made him open his trunk and found all sorts of goodies there, including a holster with a .38 in it and a gym bag unzipped to reveal, unfortunately, gym clothes.

  But off to the side was a clear package with double-looped plastic items. Wrist restraints. Maybe the exact kind Bald Guy had used when he worked me over.

  And a beautiful Maglite, perfect for light or bashing a guy over the head.

  Still holding his arm, I ordered him to remove one of the restraints and hand it to me. I secured his arms behind his back, grabbed the Maglite, and closed the trunk.

  “You about ripped my arm off!” he said.

  “Now what would I do with an arm?” I said. “Turn around and sit.”

  “What, on the road?”

  “Right here on the road.”

  I helped him by kicking him behind the knees. He sat rather harshly.

  Once I had him positioned I took off his shoes and tossed them over into the canyon.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  I took off his socks and did the same thing.

  “Come on!” he said.

  “I am a lie detector,” I said. “I look into your soul when you talk.”

  “Oh, jeez,” he said.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “Part of you believes it. The other part doesn’t want to. How’m I doing?”

  “I was just doing what I was told.”

  “How about I ask a few questions? Would you like that? Say yes.”

  He looked into my eyes and said nothing. The moon was full in the twilight sky. In other circumstances it might have been romantic.

  I turned on the Maglite, leaned over and plucked a couple of thorns from the Parry’s cactus living nearby.

  “What’re you doing?” he said.

  “Come,” I said, “let’s reason together. There’s no need for this to go any further.”

  “Further?” There was a catch in his voice.

  “Let’s start with Lucy Liu,” I said. “What’s her real name?”

  “Lucy who?”

  “The nice lady who gave you orders.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know her name.”

  I looked deep into his soul. Or at least his eyes, what I could see in the moonlight. I held up the thorn.

  “You know about Parry’s Cholla thorns?”

  In a tired voice he said, “I don’t know nothin’, man.”

  “They have barbs on it. Little barbs up and down, makes them very hard to get out if they get stuck in your foot.”

  “Come on, man. I don’t know her name. They don’t want us to know any names.”

  “You’re lying again.”

  “No!”

  I waved the thorn like a little baton.

  “Don’t stick me,” he said.

  “Do I look like Torquemada to you?”

  “You freaking freak me out! Why do you talk like that?”

  “Name?”

  He shook his head.

  I pressed the
thorn into his right big toe. He screamed like a three-year-old on a long flight.

  “Where do you keep your license?” I said.

  “Please.”

  I yanked the thorn back out. The little barbs grabbed just below the surface, and he screamed again.

  “License,” I said. “Now.”

  “My coat! Jeez!”

  I fished his wallet out of his inner coat pocket. Opened it. Took out his driver’s license, looked at with the Maglite.

  “Arvand Andandi,” I said. “Is that your real name?”

  “Of course it is,” he said.

  “Now listen, it’s easy to fabricate a name.”

  “It’s real,” he said.

  “I believe you.” I slipped the license into my shirt pocket.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You own your home, Arvand?”

  “What?”

  “Your home. You own or rent?”

  “Own. What the … give me my license.”

  “We’ll get back to that,” I said.

  Arvand Andandi said nothing.

  “You married or divorced?”

  “Don’t, please.”

  “You have to answer, Arvand. I’ve got lots of thorns.”

  “This is between us.”

  “And as I recall, you have a boy. Seven? Baseball player.”

  “No way! You don’t even mention his name!”

  “I don’t know his name, Arvand.”

  He said nothing.

  “Look, I’m not going to do anything to your boy. At least I don’t think I am.”

  “Wha … wait. You don’t think?”

  “We can’t make exhaustive decisions about future events, now can we.”

  “Please, man, get this over with.”

  “Was this an indie contract, what you did to me?” I asked. “Or are you on retainer?”

  “It was a job, just a job.”

  “Why didn’t you guys snuff me? Why take me all the way to Phoenix?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, I gave him a playful poke with the thorn.

  He yelped. Then said, “I don’t know! I do what I’m told. That’s all!”

  “You ever work for this woman before?” I said.

  “One time.”

  “How’d you get the call?”

  “We have a contractor,” he said.