Haiku 2

January 13, 2010

 

 

 

 

Extinguished flame cold

And dark, your eyes no longer

In love, nor shining

 

 

 

 

 

 

Movie Reviews: Sherlock Holmes v. Avatar

                                                             

                                                      January 9, 2010

 

 

in re: Sherlock Holmes v. Avatar

 
 

 

I preferred Sherlock Holmes. Both these movies are tremendous, painstaking works, but Holmes is easier to take in that it’s far more lighthearted and cheerful as against the grim, irritable humorlessness and embarrassing preachiness of Avatar. Additionally, Holmes is activated by a more traditional moral compass (more reassuring to me in this) as against the radically PC and gullible moral compass of Avatar. Both these movies degenerate into a pretty gratuitous fight at the end, with good (according to the respective scripts) pitted against evil.

 

In Holmes, civilization, settled history, and tradition are the bases of decency, and the villain Blackwood is brought to grief eventually for his transgressions after an extended battle royal. But in Avatar, on the other hand, civilization and its drill sergeant, American capitalism, are the enemies of decency. This is the chief difference between the two, and after the dust settles, thus I cannot prefer Avatar.
 

Now, it was a great idea to jazz things up a bit in Holmes from the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, in much the same way Star Trek was jazzed up in 2009. It was fully justified to rock the boat in both these movies. Good idea. And in general, this boat-rocking does not get out of control in Holmes, to its credit. The familiar theme of one man determined at all personal cost to go up against evil on behalf of good is intact. That’s the whole point, for me, of mystery stories: that someone would do something noble, unasked. This cinematic Holmes is true to the spirit of the original stories, and is very well-read in the stories. It’s a fantastic movie.
 

But I have one small criticism of this movie, though. There is an entirely unnecessary scene in which Holmes and Watson are bickering about “our dog, our rooms,” etc. I didn’t mind the bickering, but merely that Watson was made effeminate. He plays the wife to Holmes’ husband. But Dr. Watson of the original stories is in no way effeminate — he is, rather, the precise opposite. Fortunately, this unfortunate scene is mercifully short. The end of the movie leaves things open for a sequel, which I would await enthusiastically. Keep all the good (talking to Guy Ritchie now, our director) and just jettison that one stupid, disrespectful mistake.
 

 

Avatar is a mixed package. It’s the problem child. On the one hand, there is an extremely moving love story as a subtext to the main plot, and I admit freely I got choked-up all through the movie, so evocative it was at times. This is really a tear-jerker, no kidding. Also, there is an exhortation running throughout this work to “become who you are,” and this exhortation emerges as the main strain or theme of the film. This exhortation, too, is extremely moving and inspiring. You have to be a block of wood not to be affected by it.
 

The problem here, though, is that you have to take sides against civilization in order to find that true self of yours. Writer, director, producer James Cameron gives us a completely over-the-top caricature of American capitalism and its depredations so as to justify his surprisingly radical agenda of absolutely shredding anything that isn’t completely of nature. The result is that the protagonist, Jake Sully, a former marine now working for the Company, starts shooting and killing his former coworkers in the last half-hour of mayhem the movie descends into. The momentum of all that went before sort of dictates this. But I felt considerably disconcerted that the script here equates becoming who you really are, that is, finding your true self, with a rabid, blood-thirsty, anti-Americanism. Isn’t there any other way to nail it? I think Cameron is taking the hyperbolic rhetoric of the environmental movement a tad too seriously.
 

 

Another concern I have with Avatar is the encouragement it provides to develop a victim-based identity. The movie is relentlessly telling you that you are a victim, your true self has been stolen from you through brain-washing and profit-motive, and that you must get it back through the exhilarating, stirring acts of courage that are your natural lot in life. This movie clearly seeks to persuade the heart rather than to convince the mind. And fair enough, nothing wrong with that a priori. But the disingenuousness, the appeal to gullibility, is definitely culpable. At times this film appeals to the base instincts of revenge and petulance.
 

Avatar reminds one, naturally enough, of Dances With Wolves, given the get-back-to-nature motif. But Avatar is far more virulent in its irritability and irascibility. The occasional humor, the life-loving heart in spite of it all of Dances, is completely gone by the time we get to Avatar. Also, that scene in Dances With Wolves towards the end, where Kevin Costner is slowly riding away with his wife up the mountain trail, a man who is a double exile now from nation and tribe, is unbelievably moving, and Avatar does not ever rise that high. In that scene, the Indian brave, who previously had given Costner’s character a lot of trouble, is now yelling up at him as he goes: “Dances With Wolves! Do you know that you are my friend? Do you know that we are brothers? Do you know…..” I couldn’t hold back the waterworks watching that scene if I tried. As a get-back-to-homeboy movie, Avatar is not the equal of Dances With Wolves.

Ironic, too, that this movie, Avatar, which harnesses the most spectacular technology in movie history, actually has the nerve to advance an anti-technology message. Huh? We’re all grown-ups now, though. We all know that there are many movies with an anti-American bias. This one is just one more, and I can easily live with it. I’ll pull through. But, in the end, to be sure, Avatar certainly captures the imagination, certainly stirs the blood and the circulation, certainly causes the yearning heart to soar, and surely dreams a beautiful dream of a perfect world. I’ll just remember those parts and simply forget the remaining nihilism.  
 

Haiku 1

January 4, 2010

 

 

 

 

Hibernal sunrise

Ignites flames in the rose clouds

Only to perish

 

 

The Taciturn Hottie: Part Four (finale)

 
 

December 16, 2009

 
 

 

 

A Joe Downing Mystery

 

The following is only fiction

 

 

The

 Taciturn

Hottie

 

 

Part Four

 
 

 

I wish that I may never consider the smiles of the great and powerful sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty.

–David Ricardo

 
 

 
 

THE PICO/UNION DISTRICT OF L.A. IS NOT for the squeamish. Aggressive, dishevelled types beseech you for money, lying through their teeth, or fangs, rather, and ridiculing you, unbelievably, if you give them money, and making the sign of the cross at you if you don’t. Dirty, stained sidewalks once, briefly, pristine white, stretch out meaninglessly before the eye, sprawling forth into the urban malaise. Beat-up cars, so many chitty-chitty bang-bangs, chug past, smoking, and wild-eyed, smelly people look daggers and mad dog at you for existing. Dingy storefronts look out past the wide sidewalks onto four lanes of loosely-organized mayhem.

 

Well, it was still hot, and it was still L.A., with the asphalt busily shimmering waves of rage up into the darkening, silky ether of early evening. The sky tonight was a precise cobalt blue, one iridescent and evanescent at once, of breathtaking beauty, and the scrawny, motley trees sprouting out of the cement were set sharply in intaglio against the gradient hue rising heavenward. So ugly below, so gorgeous above.
 

Ingrid had given me Pancho’s address. I pulled up to a nondescript, bland place, an apartment building, set back from Olympic Boulevard a few dozen yards down a residential street. Pancho had his mitts into the endowment money to the tune of hundreds of thousands per year, so why does he live in a cockroach dump like this? Maybe he owns this outhouse, who knows. It reminded me of my neighborhood back in Gorge — many, many decent people lived here among the others.

 

Some short little creep, about early thirties, sat on the stoop, eyeing me as I approached on the quiet sidewalk. Keep that in the singular, too — one of his eyes didn’t look too good. He had the manner of a wounded animal about to come out of its corner and attack. Looking just barely over five feet tall, with black, unruly hair, gnarled fingers, and old, dirty clothes defying description, he had ugly teeth and parted lips, those perpetually parted lips, to let you know he disapproved of you. Well! Hello there…..

 

“Pancho around?” I asked. This Napoleon looked at me as if to say, ‘you dare speak?!’ but he remained silent.
 

“I wanna do some biz,” I continued. Nap just stared, his fingers loosely interlaced, his forearms resting comfortably on his thighs. He sat on the top step, the third step up. He was the picture of calm, like the koi. His tanned, slender neck tilted up at just the right angle: he couldn’t believe this. A sneer formed and glistened in the vicinity of his nostrils and mouth, like he had a summer cold, or maybe like he was really a dog, disguised as a human.
 

 

“I heard this asshole has something big to sell, and I wanna fuckin’ buy it. Get it? I ain’t got no time to fuck with you! Where is he?” Nap stood up slowly, arms to his sides. He came down the three steps serenely, regally, and got in my face. I could smell him. I mean it. He glared, unspeaking. Silent staring would do all the communicating necessary. I scowled back at him, I knew I had time. I scowled at him like he was an annoying office secretary preventing me from seeing Mr. Big. I relented a little, playing the drama out.
 

 

“I need to see him, little homie. Now why don’t you just run along and go find him for me?” Nap sighed some, like a headmaster with a truculent pupil. He looked down, then up. Finally, he spoke:
 

 

“Pancho’s gone, bro. So why don’t you just run along now and leave like a good little whiteboy mouse? You’re all insulting and shit.” We stood about two feet apart. I towered over him by at least one of those feet, too, and he did his level best to look up at me, eye-to eye. He looked me up and down.
 

 

“All right, homeboy, sir. I got a little, tiny bit insulting. But I’m on the edge, bro. Where is he? He knows me. I’m Bobby D. Where the fuck is he?” I put my hands out, palms up.
 

“I can’t tell you.”
 

 

“Did he leave the country? Is he in Guatemala?” Napoleon looked at me in amazement. Maybe this guy does know him. He considered. He contemplated. He decided. Abruptly, he says:
 

 

“Come with me.” We went back over to Olympic, waited for a break in traffic, then crossed gravely over, diagonal to the left. Some cars had headlights on by now, and Napoleon was illuminated in their beams eerily as he strode across. Sort of a ghost. Street lights were just coming into play, making everything look yellow, like that disease. Napoleon looked like the idea of a man, not really flesh and blood. We turned left on arriving at the sidewalk, and rambled a few, about a click. We came to an old place, a small shop, called The Donut Dungeon. Preteen Latino kids looked at us as we came in, bell ringing hideously, and they got out of our way, quick. Wide-eyed, astonished stares were glued on me. I was He-of-the-Other-Land, or something like that. A glass case before me was full of donuts: the maple ones, the sprinkly ones, the puffy, glazed ones — I think I just might indulge my—
 

 

“Who the fuck is he?” A burly, hairy man was on the other side, the proprietor side, of the case of donuts. About fifty years old, experienced. His black hair leapt in a suicidal crescendo down onto his forehead, and his dark eyes, well, yes, they were full of malice. His hirsute forearms worked a white towel, wiping his hands. The sugar glaze, no doubt. He wore a very dark blue polo shirt, short-sleeved, and unimaginative white stripes made their boring way along his broad chest. I couldn’t see any more than that. Napoleon broke the silence and indicated me with a thumb.
 

 

“He knows Chi Chi.” I looked up from the pecan bars, smirking infuriatingly, or so I hoped. The Donut Man stared me in the eye, skeptical, not speaking. Letting me know who had the reins of power at his disposal. It ain’t you. He took his time. It was his shop. He spoke contemptuously:
 

 

“Bullshit. This motherfucker is a cop, undercover. Are you fuckin’ stupid, or just plain dumb, Sleepy? He knows Chi Chi?! Are you serious?” 

 

“He knows him. Bobby D.” Sleepy opened his hand, waving at me, like he was imploring Donut Man, like he was defending his proposition now.
 

 

“How come I never seen you before?” the proprietor asked me, adding, “I know everybody Chi Chi knows,” as he sized me up.
 

“I’m his boy in the Rockies,” I replied.
 

“On the Rockies? You’re on the baseball team?” Maple Donut looked uncertain now, the confidence wavering.
 

“No, in the mountains. The Rocky Mountain distribution area,” I clarified. The Donut regained confidence now:
 

 “Prove it, motherfucker. And be a nice motherfucker.” I then proceeded to slowly pull the medallion and chain out of my holy jeans.
 

 

“I’m kinda religious,” I joked, feigning sheepishness, as I passed a hand over the holes in the fabric. No reaction from the Jelly Donut or from Sleepy. They both gazed at the medallion and at the chain in my mitts. I passed them from hand to hand, methodically, as if that were some necessary, clued-in procedure of proper handling.
 

 

“What’s that?” Sleepy queried me.
 

 

“It belongs to your boy,” I said. “I gotta see him. I gotta give it back to him.”

 

“Just give it to me,” the donut meister said, reasonably. But I then stepped back suddenly a few steps into the corner of the little shop, my feet swishing past those donut wrapper things, and I simultaneously pulled a Sig Sauer pistol from out my crotch. I stopped smirking. I spoke in a guttural tone now as they raised their hands slightly. 

 

“Come get your rent, asshole,” I said. The kids were scattered all around the shop, but as far from me as they could get. Donut and Sleepy were open-mouthed, and couldn’t keep the anxiety off their faces.
 

 

“Chill, bro. Put the gun down.” Sleepy talked in a hushed voice, with a nuance of cinnamon. Donut Man started in:
 

 

“Look, take it easy, man. There’s no need for that. There’s kids here. Relax. So your name’s Bobby D.?” Donut talked like a father-figure now, soothingly and rationally, his hands extended in supplication.
“I am relaxed. So just tell me where Chi Chi is so I can give him his fuckin’ property back and so I can buy his goddamn fuckin’ shit! What is it with you people?!” Sleepy and Donut stole a glance at each other, incredulous. There was a pause. Cars went by on Olympic, heedless. No one passed on the sidewalk. Time was on their side, time was on my side. They didn’t speak. I came around the other end of the display case and got a donut.
 

“Call him,” I said, eating. They didn’t move.

 

“Call him!” I repeated. Donut at last moved and fumbled with his Blackberry, scrolling for Pancho. He finally managed to dial. He surveyed me with the phone to his ear.
 

 

“It’s ringing,” he said sparingly. A few more seconds of silence among seven people, six of them fixing their shining, gleaming eyes on me. Then Maple Donut spoke into the phone:
 

 

“Chi Chi, it’s me…..got a guy here says he knows you. He’s got some sort of chain and locket he says is yours. Whattya want me to do with him?” A voice in reply could be discerned on the other end, but not the words. Donut looked down, concentrating on his instructions. It seemed he was also waiting for a conversation behind the scenes on the  other end to finish. At a certain point he gazed at me and said into the phone:
 

 

“He’s about six feet, I guess, wearing faded jeans with holes and a white tee-shirt.” He then leaned to the side a bit, turned his gaze down at my feet, and continued, “Black tennis shoes, or sneakers, whatever. Those Converse Chuck ones. Pretty old and beat-up, too. This guy doesn’t dress too good.” There was more talk in that other conversation waiting in the wings. He looked over at me again and asked,
“Are you Joe Downing?” 

 

“Fuckin’ A, motherfucker,” I replied, deadpan. He turned back.
“Yeah, it’s gotta be him. The same little shit you’re talking about.” Donut listened into the line some more, his eyes darting around. I could see everyone’s hands from here. Everyone was poised as if someone had yelled, ‘Stop!’ Jelly Donut pointed his chin at me, relaying a question. 
 

“What’s written on the peace sign?” he asked me. Without averting my eyes from him, I said smoothly, without stuttering,
 

“‘From IMB, con amor, to PR. ELD 4eva.’” Sprinkly Donut started to repeat this into the phone, but was stopped by an irritable voice. He listened, then spoke into the phone,
 

“Okay, yeah…..I will. Right now. It’s okay. Yes! I will! I said I would! Damn! This shit is crazy!” Donut signed off, put the phone in his Dickies pocket. He took a deep breath, composing himself. He smirked at me now. Slowly, unctously, he says to me,

 

“Chi Chi wants you to come on down. He wants to see you, home, real bad.” A badass grin played over Jelly Donut’s face, like a rattlesnake emerging fom hungry hibernation. He liked this outcome. He continued speedily:
 

 

“I’ll write the address for you, bro. Guatemala City, Guatemala, motherfucker.” He extended it over to me, after having bent over the opposite counter with a pad and pen. I motioned with the Sig to the top of the glass case. He complied. He stepped back suavely, watching me like I was the end of a good movie. I moved in for the long slip of cream-colored paper, aware of Nappy over there. I checked the note to see if I could read the handwriting:

 

  

Hotel Caribbeano

303 Avenida Bernal Diaz

G.C., Gua.  Room #101

 

  

I looked up, satisfied.

 

“Okay…..I’m leaving now. Don’t nobody fuckin’ move.” I came back around to the middle of the shop, brandishing my Sig with a warning face, eyes alert like a merciless hawk. I reached without looking into the pocket of my glorious jeans, got a dollar bill out, glanced it, then tossed it, spiral fashion, onto the floor among the wrappers. We all stood there motionless in the lurid light one final moment.

“Good donut, man.”
 
   

************************************************

 
 
 
 

I WAS DISTRACTED ON THE PLANE DOWN TO GUATEMALA CITY, or Guate, as they called it. I shoulda been thinking about the task at hand, though: get Ingrid. Get her lazy ass back to L.A. Reggie was unable to go with me, since the LAPD had named him as a ‘person of interest’ in the Gomez killing. The part about the endowment money was gonna come out now. Reggie, it turned out, had been given 10k annually by Pancho to zip it. But now he was gonna unzip it. He arranged Mrs. Biddleman’s funeral, but I had to miss it. I didn’t want Pancho to have time to get any readier than he was already gonna be. No gun, since the Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX had dissuaded me from that idea. I was walking into a buzzsaw.

 

Now, Guatemala City sits in the Valle de la Ermita, underneath a haze of smog generated by millions of cars and the tropical humidity. I had come in from the noisy, chaotic airport into the gargantuan Main Square, with the National Palace bordering it. A street kid with a baseball cap in the plaza sold me bananas. There were lots of these entrepeneurial kids. They were sleepy-eyed, though, as if on something. It was morning.

 

The square was a city in itself, including an enormous, elaborate fountain, and rose and black-colored smooth stone pavement creating wide walking lanes of perpendicular geometric patterns. It was like a giant, teeming open-air market, if you could walk that far. Mestizo families avoided the European-descended ones.
The Avenida Bernal Diaz, on the other hand, had no lane markers, no white or yellow lines, just dusty asphalt in between dilapidated housing. This last was hastily put together, sorta gray, with basically patchworks of tin for roofs. Off in the distance, nevertheless, more presentable high-rises soared like beehives into a sky of purple-dark clouds. The temperature was pleasant, but those clouds looked about to pour.
 

I found myself in a rattling taxi shuddering through noisy, perilous streets. I came to number 303, the Hotel Caribbeano. I paid the silent, gruff taxi driver, who glanced back with a scowl. I took my small bag with me, and the taxi unceremoniously took off flying. I was left standing solo in front of this thing, more like a deli than a hotel. I went in through the glass doors, and was approached immediately by several men with handguns. Glocks. They stood all around me. They all wore white, brushed denim jeans: Snazzy. They had on various short-sleeved, floral pattern shirts, and I felt underdressed.
 

 

“Hi. I’m Joe. Chi Chi called me in for a meeting. Yo soy Joe,” I said, ridiculously. One of them motioned, and they walked with me without reacting much through the uncarpeted stone lobby to a flight of stairs. The boys led me up a lazily curving staircase to Room 101. One of the guys knocked a couple of times, footsteps approached, and I was in.
I walked into a large room, with white, plush carpeting underfoot. It was pretty soiled from lots of shoes and not much cleaning. There were several black leather couches up against the walls, and a large picture window looking out onto the mountains. All eyes on me, they gave me a minute to take it all in, curious about me. Long, narrow glass tables sat in front of each of the couches, white powder piled high and messy.
A lean, young, crisp-looking dark man in a skin-tight, clean black tank top, those white jeans, and white leather loafers without socks, sat regarding me steadily from the corner of one of the couches. He was about early 30′s. His legs were crossed comfortably, not with his leg directly across the other thigh, but that cosmo way men used to do in the 40′s. His ankles were as skinny as a woman’s. The long, slender fingers of his left hand held a cigarette, the smoke rising calmly into the humid air. His moderate-length black hair, splashing down just right onto his ears and neck, had a studied casualness, an accidently-on-purpose look. His sharp, classic facial features were bemused. He did not in the least appear violent. “ELD” was tatooed smartly and competently on the side of his long neck, in thin green letters that just barely stood out from his smooth, brown skin. He nodded curtly to his men, and they all sat. His brown eyes blinked languidly as he raised his cigarette for a long, glamorous draw. I had to think that this was surely Pancho ‘Chi Chi’ Rodriguez.

 

Ingrid sat next to him, ignoring me but still sneering hatred at me. She had seen me before I saw her. Was I in the wrong for doing this? She leaned over defiantly to the table, and inhaled prodigiously, a mother lode of her white medicine. She appeared as a corpse would, escaped from the coffin. She sat back, and shook her dark hair.
 

“Hi, Ingrid,” I said.

“Fuck you,” she replied.
 

“What’s wrong now? I’ve just come to take you home,” I said in rejoinder.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.
 

“Your mother’s dead, and the funeral’s in a couple days. She died in her sleep two days ago. Thought you’d like a ride back. Aly needs you, Reggie needs you, your father needs you — you’re the head of the household now. It’s time to go.”

“Give it a rest, asshole. I live here now. And Reggie’s a bigger idiot than even you,” she responded.
 

“Your mother really is dead, I’m not lying,” I persisted. Ingrid reached for a pack of cigarettes, some mysterious brand I didn’t know. She lit one with shaking hands. A Vespa or something hummed by outside. There was some pushing and shoving going on in front of the hotel. One of the guards went over to look.
 

 

“Silencio!” he shouted, “silencio ahora!” It grew quiet outside. It was about noon. Ingrid crossed her legs like Pancho, who still hadn’t spoken. He looked down into his lap, smiling enigmatically and kindly. Ingrid didn’t inquire about her mother or about anyone at all. She just stared at me briefly, then looked away, dismissing me. Pancho understood her, and then spoke to the entire room in a low, breathy voice:
 

“Our work with the Mestizo children is urgent. They face a crisis. The construction of the school is underway, and the education of these children is in our hands. We have set-up temporary housing and classrooms, and Ingrid is indispensable to the administration of our Institution. She cannot possibly return to Los Angeles.” He finished his speech.

 

“Her mother is dead. Ingrid is needed back at home. In Pasadena, not L.A.,” I corrected him. Pancho countered thus: 

 

“Pasadena is where Ingrid was dying, sir. Can’t you see that? Mr. Downing, Joe, if I may, perhaps you would like to join our little community. Hmm? We’d be delighted to have you. Maybe a man of your caliber can see the good we’re doing, and will continue to do, and would like to be a part of history changing.”
“No thanks, Chi Chi, I’ve got a date with reality.” Pancho smiled at me pityingly, pursing his lips. He would indulge me this far at least. A wave of anxiety then swept over me. What if I was wrong? Ingrid was twenty-eight, it was her life. My original client was now dead. Who am I to be doing this? Pancho droned on, so fucking boring:
 

“Social justice depends on leaders. It depends on sacrifice. If we are not willing to step forward into the coalition of the willing in order to bring change, that change will never materialize. The white man has taken as he pleased, and now we must put it back right. Ingrid understands that. I’m surprised you do not seem to get it — a man of your ability. Joe, please. Join us. Help us bring change to these people.” I sighed. I was getting tired of being on my feet. Pancho added, smiling cattily:

 

“I’m sure you could also find a beautiful wife here. I understand you’re single.”
 

“Yeah, I’m single, but I got a girlfriend back in Gorge.” Ingrid glanced up at me, surprised. This loozer has a girlfriend? I chuckled at that, and so did Pancho. She glared at him, incensed, upbraiding him for turncoat behavior.

 

“Joe,” he continued, extending a hand in a friendly way, “let me show you something.” He walked with me over to the glass doors which looked out onto the long, uniform range of mountains ruminating below the moody clouds in the smoggy distance. He avoided getting too close to the middle of the wide window, though, keeping to the periphery. We stood at the corner of the glass doors. He motioned to one of his men and said,
 

“Apra la ventana, por favor. Apra las puertas.” A man with teardrop tatoos the size of a quarter directly under each eye, and a huge “ELD” fashioned similarly on his forehead, threw open the doors onto a little balcony. He stepped out, looked down and all around, then stepped back, nodding.

 

“Muy bien,” quoth Chi Chi. Pancho and me went out onto the balcony. I was less than a foot away from him, this whacker of Gomez and this leader of the supply for a good part of the western U.S.
 

“You see those mountains, Joe,” he began, turning to me. “My people come from them. But I myself, on the other hand, come from the barrio in East Los, and you know that, I’m sure. And as hard as we had it in the barrios, in Wilmas, in Lomas, in Harbor City, or in East L.A. itself, with the poverty and the racism and the discrimination, those people up there, Joe, they’ve got it worse. I want to help them. I want to educate them, to feed them, to clothe them. It’s my mission in life now, as one of those more fortunate.” He lowered his hand to his side. I started in, irritated:

 

“Those aren’t your people, Chi Chi, those are Indians. Those are Mestizo. You’re European, man.You don’t care about them at all!” Pancho shook his head sadly, pretending shock, and turned heavily back into the room. He was disappointed in me. 
 

“What’s the name of those mountains, Chi Chi?” I asked. He shot a look at me, open-mouthed, a little vulnerable. It happened so fast, maybe it didn’t happen. He grinned sheepishly.

 

“A rose by any other name, Joe,” he said, recovering quite nicely. I didn’t push my luck. I didn’t need confirmation any more: he was a fraud and I knew it. I smirked again, like in The Donut Dungeon, infuriatingly. Ingrid then said to me angrily,
 

 

“You think you’re a genius just because things pop into your head?” I responded by changing the subject: 

 

“I saw your yearbook picture the other day. Nice picture, too. Pasadena High, yes, sir!”
“What?! Are you stalking me? Asshole! You pervert! Get outta here!”
 

“Aly showed it to me, I’m not stalking you.”

 

“Well, then I’m gonna have to take that little bitch over my knee. You’re scum, Joe!”
 

 

“I’m trying to help you. If I’m scum, then how come Chi Chi Rodriguez over there wants me on his little golf team?” Ingrid looked over at Pancho, wondering the same. Pancho gazed down, smiling that enigmatic smile. Finally he turned his gaze up at me and spoke in a huskier tone, not so effeminate as before:
 

“You know I’ll never let you leave here, Joe. You’re mine now. You belong to me. I need a man of your skills to adminster this enterprise, and I’m not giving you away just so you can rat me out to the LAPD. The Diablos are absorbing Saliciamon now, and we need new, capable people,” he proclaimed, staring at me darkly: “like you!”
 

 

“Where’s my peace sign?” Ingrid demanded. Distracted, I slowly pulled the medallion and chain out of my pants pocket, and tossed them to her. I hadn’t yet given them to the fuzz. She dropped them awkwardly, picked them up unathletically, and fawned over them.
 

“Let’s take a drive. I want you to meet them,” Pancho said.
 

 

“I did meet them. In that big plaza,” I retorted.
 

“Not the ones I’m talking about, Joe. Or Bobby D., whichever is your name.” (I had that one coming, I guess.) He went on: “let me show you the real ones. Let me show you how full their lives are, and how full mine is in helping them.”
 

“I never doubted their lives were full, it just seems to me that you’re just full of complaints. I don’t care about your ego — your ego pretending to be justice. Same old, same old.” Pancho gave me a look. 

 

“I’m going, too,” Ingrid declared loudly.
 

“No, you stay here,” Pancho said. ”It’s best. I want you safe here. I love you so much I want you safe at all times. There could be trouble with those outsiders.” Pancho then looked gravely at Teardrop, and so long, and so steadily, it was unnerving. Teardrop nodded finally. My blood ran cold at the thought of what had just been communicated, and I shuddered. A double whacking? Me in the mountains and Ingrid in the hotel? Why give the command in front of me? Is he showing off, incompetent, or giving in to a fit of emotion? Ingrid’s response at least started quietly:

 

“I’m going with you. I don’t want this Downing spreading lies about me. I’M GOING WITH YOU!” she shouted. Pancho winced.
 

 

“It’s okay with me if Ingrid goes,” I intervened, “the more the merrier. I’d like to see her touch with ‘the people.’ Prove to me you’re on the level and maybe I’ll forgive the past, and join your circus down here in banana country. I won’t rat you out to the brass boys in El Norte. If all goes well, that is.” I spoke in a warning tone, but I was acting. Pancho considered, looking at me hard. He glanced over at the wreck on the couch named Ingrid, and he saw, as I did, traces of the former transcendent beauty he had ruined. He turned back to me, pensively. He paced leisurely and at length around the dirty white carpeting, keeping everyone waiting in the silence. He was calculating the proposed changes to the jigsaw puzzle of business, seeing if it would all work. At last he came back to us from his reverie, all eyes on his face.
 

“All right,” he began, “Ingrid can go. But you’re on a short leash, Joe. You’re my dog. Just watch and listen and learn. Learn, Joe, learn about the people you ignore. Learn about their lives, learn about their grievances. Like in U.S. History class, right? Except there will be no lies from the teacher this time.” He was imploring me now, leaning forward from the waist.
 

 

“I am so Ready Freddy,” I replied.
“Good.” We then descended the curving staircase of the Hotel Caribbeano noisily. We passed through the lobby. It was good to be going outside again, although for what purpose, I was uneasy. There were about eight of us in this motley entourage plodding forward, and I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do: kidnapped, basically. Outside, we piled into three white Beamers, with some more guys standing by, not going with us. I was in a car separate from Pancho and Ingrid. They were the lead car, I was in the middle car.
 

 

Our driver started up our engine, and pulled up a few feet on the dusty way close behind them. They got in, Pancho behind the wheel and Ingrid next to him, adoringly. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Our driver playfully honked the horn at them, as if to say, ‘c’mon, man, vamonos, baby!’ I wasn’t the only one glad to be outside again. Pancho put his shades on, reached for a pack of cigarettes, and glanced at himself vainly in the rearview mirror. He turned the key. The car promptly exploded into a ferocious fireball, and shot twenty feet straight up into the air like a helicopter. The car became a furious blast and inferno, with flames and propulsion engulfing the entire vehicle. The car bounced, finally, after an eternity aloft in the air, back onto the pavement in a horrific and cacaphonous heap. It had twisted 180 degrees in the air, since the placement of the force had been just so, and it landed partly on the hood of our car, as if to look at us.

 

Our windshield shattered in all this, spraying glass, flame, and hot smoke at our faces. Our heads bounced savagely against the ceiling of the car. We exited the car in a messy panic, my right arm on fire, my face and lungs burned and filled with glass shards. I hobbled out, and stumbled over to Ingrid. She was dead, long past saving, and cradling the peace sign in her fingers. Both Ingrid and Pancho were shattered, motionless, and overtaken utterly. They lay limp on the tan seats of the Beamer, their shoulders pressed together, their bodies aflame.
 

I was desperately trying to figure out how to retrieve Ingrid’s body and put the fire out, so I was circling round the car when a mighty hand grabbed me by the shoulder. It spun me round, took hold of my neck, and then shoved me viciously to the ground.

“Chinga tu madre! Fuera, puto, fuera! Yanqui, fuera! Kaiyete! Son muertos! Y tu tambien! Fuera! Via!” There was then a ferocious wall of guys blocking me from the car, their Glocks out, pointed at my torso. After I hobbled to my feet, I just kept going. The case was over. Nothing more I could do here, except get myself killed. I took off, reluctantly relinquishing Ingrid’s body. They let me go. I was irrelevant. I started to run after awhile, more dead than alive, my heart beating wildly, my spirit sick with anguish and feeling sorry for myself, back to that big crazy plaza where the kid sold bananas.

Behind me, the billowing smoke cloud langourously weaved and meandered its way towards the green foothills of the lush mountains we never got to. The smoke mingled sensuously with the purple rainclouds and was absorbed therein. Me, Pancho, and Ingrid had been in so far over our heads we had no idea. Dazed and disillusioned, I saw now who had had the real power all along, and what had taken place. Gomez, probably discredited down here for some botched job and not wanted any longer, and therefore ripe for discarding, had probably been set-up as a sacrificial lamb for Pancho, to get Pancho mad enough to leave his perch and expose himself. Pancho had walked into their snares, totally fooled. He had thought he was taking over, but he was actually being summoned for a whacking. He had been played. The consolidation of the East Los Diablos within Saliciamon was now complete. 
 

 
 

*******************************************************************

 
 

 

  

Aly stayed with friends, at least avoiding the fate of most orphans. As the years went by, she attended Pasadena High, excelled at volleyball like her older sister, and generally got along. In a deeper sense, though, she was an indifferent, troubled student. She shunned the limelight. The other kids liked her, and Aly could even be described as popular, but there was an omnipresent something at the edge of her sensibility, a presence of some sort on the periphery of her psychological vision. It could be that a permanent sadness, an hibernal frost, had taken root in her soul. She smiled and she laughed, but there was an unconscious roadblock to happiness that her experiences had put up.

She got married at nineteen to a decent guy (she had grown into a ravishing beauty), but the marriage had its trouble spots. Aly’s mental scars, seared into her mind with a hot brand, precluded her from trusting even the most trustworthy.  Her natural courage was what she drew upon to give life a whirl, in spite of it all, but she had really lost everything already to Pancho’s world and that white powder, which lay like a voracious, remorseless spider at the center of its web, waiting with infinite patience for its guileless prey. That white powder and its inevitable consequences were the real reason that Aly had become known behind her back as “The Taciturn Hottie.” 
 
 

 
 

THE END

 
 

 
 

 
 

The Taciturn Hottie: Part Three

 

December 2, 2009

 
A Joe Downing Mystery

 
The following is fiction:

 

 

The

Taciturn Hottie

 

 

 

 

PART Three:

“DID YOU LOSE THIS, MISTER?” A child of about five years of age came toddling over through the grass to me, her hand extended with a bracelet in it. A thin gold chain, broken at the hasp, hung down from her fingers. The now-useless chain was meant to secure within its circumference the peace-sign medallion which lay in the palm of the little girl’s hand. The gleaming medallion was also of gold. Well, now, if you’re still with me, I can let you know that now I was standing in Macarthur Park, L.A., about three in the afternoon. After lunch at Hal’s and visiting Ingrid, I had been here combing the grass, walking slowly, head down, eyes alert, just outside the murder scene — luckily the LAPD was finally pulling up stakes in their CSI, so I could see precisely where it was (the murder). I had waited discreetly and “inconspicuously” until the boys had departed, then I had begun.

 

I reached out for the chain and medallion from the little girl’s hand as she neared. I looked it over, frowning. I felt uncomfortable standing alone, as a stranger, with a little girl: anybody could accuse me of anything they wished to. My dream of last night flashed in my mind, painfully. I didn’t look around. I spoke quietly:

“Well, I don’t know, but maybe a friend of mine did,” I said to her, and smiled briefly. I then took it from her hand gently, ready to yield her the victory if she resisted.

 

She looked up at me innocently. She allowed me to hold the prize. On the arms of the flip side of the peace sign the medallion read: “from IMB, con amor, to PR. ELD 4eva.” Obviously, the thought that now shot through my mind like quicksilver was: ‘It’s from Ingrid.’ I looked down at the little girl patiently standing there, standing there as if I had to give her leave before she could go. Her brown eyes sparkled with a child’s uncertainty.
 

“Where did you find this?” I asked her carefully. She turned her hips promptly and awkwardly around 90 degrees and pointed her little index finger at a palm tree that stood twenty feet away.

 

“In that tree?” I queried her again. She nodded. I walked over the few steps without speaking and looked closely at the palm. The fronds were recently cut. They were close to the trunk, cropped very short, so they formed many small, upward slanting shelves for whatever tiny object you please. Tiny objects like peace-sign medallions, say. I circumnavigated the tree, speculating, then asked the girl, who had comically followed me in the circle,
 

“In here? In one of these pocket things?” She nodded her chin up and down solemnly, arms held at her sides, and pointed to the exact spot where. Again, she didn’t speak. She stood there waiting for an answer. So, I gave her an answer:
 

“You know, I think I know who this belongs to…..” I stopped for emphasis, and for her reaction. I then turned the thing over and continued, pointing:

 

“You see here? This writing? It says: ‘IMB’ — that means ‘Ingrid Maureen Biddleman.’ And here: ‘PR.’ That means ‘Pancho Rodriguez.’ I know them. I can give this to……the right people. Is it all right if I give this back to the right person?” The girl again nodded her head up and down in affirmation. I expressed my gratitude:
 

 

“Thank you, very, very much, I –” I was smiling at her assistance appreciatively when I was curtly cut off by heavy, brisk footsteps approaching in the grass and the sound of an uncompromising, unyielding, forbidding voice:
 

“Crystal! Vamonos! Mi amor, we’re going! Stop talking to that man and ven aqui! Ahora! Nina, come!” I lifted my palm with the chain in it and smiled my best benevolent-guy smile, and began explaining to the youngish mother, just a few steps off by now, but she glowered at me, and she even momentarily considered giving me the finger, I think. I ceased to persuade at that point. Sometimes you just simply and suddenly lose all sympathy for a person. Crystal pointed at me as if to say to her mother, ‘I’m doing something,’ but then she trotted off nervously and laboriously to her mother. (I woulda been nervous, too — what a face on that chick! Ugh!)

 

I didn’t say anything. But I now had a piece of evidence that put Pancho in the park, close by where the murder of Gomez had taken place. So Gomez, no wallflower, had possibly ripped the chain off Rodriguez during the fight and melee, and it somehow had flown off and ended up in the palm tree. The cops had missed it. Only a little girl, with her detailed inner world, could have had the patience or imagination to look, for whatever reason, in those little palm-frond pockets. (Not to mention the short stature.) I proceeded to look in all the pockets of all the neighboring trees, after Crystal and her mother left, but I found nothing further. After a bit of this, I heard bicycles arriving on the gravel path of the park and a young voice behind me. A group of boys had arrived. Their tires made a crunching, sliding sound as they came to a stop. They looked at me.
 

“Are you religious?” one of them queried me.

 

“What, kid?” I responded, a little puzzled, but not too: I knew it had to be some asshole comment.
 

“You’ve got holy pants,” he continued, looking at me. I then noticed a couple of slight holes in the knee of my jeans. 
 

“Are you looking for Pancho in there?” the kid went on. A gaggle of preteen kids had gathered, all sitting insouciantly on their little bikes. They laughed some at the continued wittiness of the kid. He was on a roll, let me tell you that at least. He was a brown, skinny, shirtless thing, and he looked boldly into my eyes. But I fought back, intrepidly:
 

“You never know, little homie, maybe he’s got some super blinged-out office in there.” I waited expectantly…..no response. Just deadpan looks. (I thought it was funny. My jokes don’t count, I guess.) I continued:
 

“How come the Diablos off’d Gomez?” I looked up from the palm tree I had been inspecting. I had just about given up on that score. A pause, and then, 
 

“What?” the kid asked.

 

“How come the Diablos killed Gomez?” I repeated. The confidence in the kid’s countenance was somewhat diminished as awareness dawned. He then proceeded to blurt out:
 

“Cuzz he’s a punk-ass bitch! He’s a whiteboy motherfucker! He was trying to take Pancho’s park!” I nodded in appreciation of these well-considered words. I proceeded to absorb these perspicacious observations carefully and pensively.

 

“All right,” I finally said, nodding, “but Pancho usually doesn’t do it himself. Why this time? Why did he personally do Gomez?” The kid had this prompt rejoinder:
 

 

“Cuzz fuckin’ Gomez is a bitch! I told you chicklit, aren’t you listening?” The kid looked saucily into my eyes. The others giggled uncertainly. A spike of anger went through me. I stared at him, pretty pissed off. The kid wavered a bit. I walked over to him. I wasn’t gonna hit him. I put my face down by his. I spoke gravely, patiently, my hands on my knees.
“What’s up with you, little homie?” He gazed at me silently, still pretty confident. No response forthcoming. The others were all motionless and quiet. I raised up in exasperation, my face somewhat flushed from leaning down. I sighed disgustedly. It wasn’t my place to fix the world, just the small part of it that I had been entrusted with. I had three basically worthless summer kids staring at me, but I was finished here. At least I had a double confirmation now that Pancho had done it himself.

 

I walked away without a word through their bikes and out of their lives over to the Corvette parked on Wilshire. No reverse-Parthian shots from the kids, at least. Just then I noticed a big, brown, shirtless, tattooed guy in flip-flops and shorts staring at me implacably as I departed, and he approached the kids leisurely and had a conference with them about me. Some laughing. They weren’t exactly on my side, no indeed. Gotta protect those murderers, you know.
 

“Hey!” the guy said ominously when I was fully twenty-five yards away. I felt a spike of fear, but I knew I could handle myself if it came to that. It was overwhelmingly likely that I was in much better physical shape than he was. He was a lazy asshole. I glanced back, but kept going slowly and steadily, at my own pace, and didn’t respond. Anyway, as I always say, you can swallow your pride a little bit now or a lot later on. I wanted to talk to Aly, in any case, ASAP. ‘Mr. Hey’ can take a number and maybe someday I’ll get back to him. He can fuck off.

 

 

*****************************************************************

  

The back garden of the Biddleman place was really nice: roses, a blonde, gravel walking path, a neatly-trimmed lawn, a small, well-done statue of David with a sling about to smite the hell out of Goliath, and a gently muttering, red-granite fountain overflowing into a pool of meandering koi. Magnolia and coral trees meanwhile formed a dark green canopy overhead that the fierce sun could only partially shoot through even as late as four PM. This garden was the picture of serenity, cool and quiet, as the fish wandered about the pool calmly. Flapper came bounding up to me happily as I let myself in the old, creaking wooden gate and approached Aly. I petted the friendly dog and went over to Aly. She was just hacking around the garden, killing time. Mrs. B. saw me through the sliding-glass door, and I waved without coming nearer. She waved back pleasantly and we both smiled. I gave her a thumbs-up to show that the afternoon’s efforts were going well. I petted Flapper again on her back and then proceeded to query Aly as I produced the necklace.

 
 

“Recognize this, Aly?” She looked at it knowingly, and with some disapproval.

 
 

“It’s Ingrid’s present to Pancho.” She took it from my hand as I offered it. She continued:

 
 

“She gave it to him because he’s her boyfriend.”

 
 

“Oh, yeah? Is he over here a lot, then?” I asked.

 
 

“A little. Not a lot, though. He’s like, over here at dinner.” I was incredulous.

 
 

“Pancho actually eats dinner here?”

 
 

“No, just Ingrid. He leaves when we eat. My mom hates him.”

 
 

“Oh, really?” I said coyly, then continued, “Now, Aly, tell me this — do Pancho and Ingrid talk about doing things together?”

 
 

“What things?”

 
 

“Oh, I don’t know, anything at all.”

 
 

“They talk about movies.”

 
 

“Movies? Is that all they talk about? Do they talk about doing other things?”

 
 

“Like, bad things?”

 

“Yeah.” 
 “No, they talk about going away. They don’t talk about bad things. They want to go away. Is that bad?”

 
 

“Of course not. Now, do you know where Ingrid was last night, Aly?” Aly paused, and then responded matter-of-factly, her milky nose crinkled up:

 
 

“Here.”

 
 

“And is she always here, every night?”

 
 

“Yes. Just to eat, though. But sometimes she stays and sleeps.” (She’s here every night for dinner: good. No irregularities lately: good again.) Now for the big question:

 
 

“Okay…..so how did they meet, Ingrid and Pancho?”

 
 

“What?”

 
 

“How come they know  each other?”

 
 

“School….. at some dumb game. Pancho’s stupid team came over here. Her picture is in this book.” Aly motioned to a pile of newspapers strewn over a pebbled, mosaic-topped table by the pool of orange and white koi. I looked under the newspapers since Aly didn’t move. There was a high-school yearbook sitting underneath. I couldn’t believe it.

 
 

“Can I please look inside, Aly?” I asked, and Aly nodded wordlessly in the affirmative. She looked me and the book over. The yearbook was from Pasadena High School, class of 1999. I opened it to look for the big color senior pictures, past the photos of tennis and football and faculty. I did some flipping around, and soon there she was: Ingrid Maureen Biddleman, in fine feather, indeed. Quite a resume, too: Principal’s Honor Roll; Folksingers Club; Car Rally Club; Meditation Society; Sierra Club; Frosh/Soph, JV, Varsity Volleyball; California Scholarship Federation; Homecoming Princess. Not too bad, not too bad at all. 

 
 

Her photograph, on the other hand, in contrast to the cluelessness of the boys’ photos, was uncommonly evocative, as only a sensitive, intelligent, and proud high-school girl could manage. Her shoulders were turned demurely away from the camera, but her neck and face looked past her shoulders to the viewer in 3/4 profile. Her shapely chin was slightly upturned. She was unsmiling, but nevertheless not dour or unpleasant: she simply knew that smiling would distort her not inconsiderable beauty, and she was having none of that. A quiet, elegant, serene confidence radiated from her lovely face, and an infinite confidence in her knowledge of what was tasteful reposed upon her stately, uncorrupted features.

 
 

She wore a black sweater that completely covered her neck, and which complemented long, romantic, reddish-brown tresses. A delicate, feminine, silver necklace, ending in a small white pearl, was suspended from her neck and lay gently upon her upper chest against the sable-colored wool of the sweater. This was as far as possible from the gossipy, cacophonous girl of study hall as you could get. One discerned, though, gazing at the picture, that young Ingrid here had no idea what was about to slam into her. I couldn’t believe that all the F-bombs I had heard earlier in her apartment had come from this same person. But I felt reasonably confident she wasn’t in the gang, first because of what Aly had said, and also because I doubted Ingrid could have survived the jumping in. I hoped against hope that she had known nothing beforehand about the whacking of Gomez.

 
 

“Did Ingrid go to college after this, Aly?” I asked.

 
 

“I don’t know,” she replied. Guadalupe then came out into the garden, and spoke to Aly:

 
 

“Mi amor, ven, come inside. It is dinner.”

 
 

“It is dinner? Is The Simpsons on, Blanca?” Aly asked in response.

 
 

“No, mi hija, it’s too early, and your mother wants you inside.” Blanca now turned to me and said, “Mr. Downing, Mrs. Biddleman would like you to stay to dinner.” I looked at my display: 5:00 PM. That’s some early dinner.

 
 

“She has something to discuss with you,” Blanca added. I shrugged, thinking my thoughts, and then said aloud,

 
 

“All right, I’d be glad to stay, thank you very much.” (I still wanted to visit Pancho, posing as a buyer, but it was still pretty early, so I’d have plenty of time.) Inside, then, the dining room was extravagant. A long, dark, wooden table ran through the center of the big room and the ceiling reached up to about twelve feet high. A thick wool carpet ran underfoot, sporting red geometric patterns: sorta Florentine this time, but a Renaissance flair once more. A thick white linen tablecloth, finely woven, covered an underlying cloth, and beautiful plates and silverware were arrayed carefully and glistened, squeaky-clean, below a fabulous chandelier of small, angular bulbs illuminating the room. The room opened onto the kitchen. The chairs were comfortable and elaborate at once.

 
 

A big cabinet of rosewood stood up tall against the white wall behind me as I sat down, and as I turned on my torso, I could see through the delicate glass of the bulky thing. Lots of stacked-up plates, and some nicely framed, wholesome pictures of Aly and Ingrid from years gone by, looking like maybe they were in Europe. The two sisters pressed their shoulders against one other affectionately and naturally, both of them delighted to be alive, and smiling with inner joy. Happier times than the present. A volume of the Old Testament lay quietly beside, in its own space, and it didn’t look dusty, if you know what I mean. I thought the old girl said she was a Buddhist.

 
 

Blanca soon brought in chicken cacciatore, wine, water, baked potatoes, green salad, vegetables, orange slices, apple sauce, sheep cheese, and a pitcher of lemonade. We sat chatting idly and stuffing our pieholes sedulously. Aly was ferocious, and she held her lead throughout. Flapper quietly set about on patrol for scraps, bumping your shoe or leg every so often.  Mrs. B. started in:

 
 

“Mr. Downing, no doubt you spoke to Ingrid this afternoon.”

 
 

“Yes I did, Mrs. Biddleman. I went to her place in L.A. — it’s not in South Pasadena.”

 
 

“No matter. She moves so often I can’t keep up. Nevertheless, I would like to broach a subject with you that I’m sure Ingrid was only too happy to do herself.”

 
 

“That’s fine. Broach away,” I responded, and continued eating.

 
 

“Very well. You may have learned from her of certain improprieties in the administration of the foundation funds we are so fortunate to receive from the Living Trust.”

 
 

“Yes, I did. But it’s only ancillary to the case, Mrs. Biddleman, if that. I don’t care, frankly. It’s none of my business. I have no plans to do anything about that situation.”

 
 

“Still, Mr. Downing, I will not have you believing Ingrid’s version uncritically, without rebuttal. The truth is that we have certain deadbeat buyers for that part of the collection which is for public auction, and we must recover the shortfall, somehow. People sometimes don’t pay what they owe. Times are difficult, and one does what one has to. It’s only fair. My husband gets no retirement pay whatsoever, other than a little social security, and that is wholly inadequate to our needs. To absorb the failure of our buyers in addition is just too much to ask.”

 
 

“I understand, and I sympathize, Mrs. Biddleman, and, I repeat, this is a side issue. Getting Ingrid away from Pancho is the real issue. Nailing him is what I’m about, not a few funds falling through the cracks. I’m not judging you, since who am I, for God’s sake? I’m concerned only about Ingrid.”

 
 

“Thank you, Mr. Downing, I appreciate your discretion.” Mrs. Biddleman smiled and sighed with relief.

 
 

“Oh, I’m all discretion, Mrs. B.,” I shot back with a smile of my own.

 
 

“I do like you, sir. You’re a good man.” I nodded graciously (I hope). A human figure, unspeaking, then appeared in the archway of the dining room entrance. He was a rather sturdy fellow. His rounded shoulders seemed to fill most of the opening, but his face was ashen, however, as if he had just become privy to some final calamity somewhere. He was not a tall man, but was fairly husky and thickly-built, about late thirties. He wore dirty flip-flops under his big, wide feet, and from his shoulders hung an incredibly tacky old yellow tank-top with a Jose Cuervo ad on the front. “Discover wildlife, throw a party,” it turned out, was written on the back, with a cartoon of a drunk bear, feeling no pain.

 

The man’s natural brown hair was very short and flat against his head, and his sun-reddened cheeks betrayed a three or four day stubble. Cigarettes reeked from him like from here to Kansas City. White, soiled, canvas-style shorts extended to the bottom of his knees, perfectly in fashion, and he was also very tan, obviously outside a lot. He looked like the type of guy who would say “brewsky” quite a bit, comfortably, and without irony. He seemed, all in all, very likeable, sporting a guileless, somewhat confused, self-deprecating mien. 

 

“Reggie!” Aly sang, and trotted up to him, running into him like a middle linebacker. She flung her skinny arms around him in a death grip, smiling up at him. He grinned down at her in return, kissed the top of her head, and said in a bright voice,
 
 

“Hi, Aly! How’s my best girl?” Blanca came in and set a place for Reggie. Mrs. B. smiled benevolently: she liked Reggie, too. After a bit, she said gently, groaning a little,

 
 

“Aly, let Reggie sit down.”

 
 

“Thanks, Blanca,” Reggie said, as Blanca finished and departed from the dining room. She nodded sweetly at Reggie.

 
 

“I’m Joe,” I said to Reggie, and extended my hand.

 
 

“I’m Reggie Colombo. Nice to meet you, sir.” He inclined his forehead toward me smartly and pleasantly. Mrs. B. turned to Blanca, who had reemerged into the dining room from the kitchen.

 
 

“Blanca, we’ve detained you long enough, mi amor. Please take the rest of the evening off for yourself. Thank you so very much, my dear, as always.” Blanca beamed and said,

 
 

“Gracias, señora, gracias. Yo voy a casa ahora.”

 
 

“Yes, my darling. Use our phone to call your husband.” Mrs. B. gestured toward the black landline, and leaned in her chair to kiss Blanca on the cheek, who nodded beatifically, and went to the phone to call her hubby to pick her up early.

 
 

“Where’s Ingrid?” Aly abruptly asked, looking at Reggie, as if he would know somehow just from being outside. He looked down at his plate, disconsolate and troubled, avoiding eye-contact.

 
 

“Uh…..well, I can’t say right now.” He gazed significantly at Mrs. Biddleman. She took up the signal, and inquired no further about Ingrid.

 
 

“She’s your real girlfriend, Reggie,” Aly said and laughed at him, rubbing it in.

 
 

“Reginald, have some wine with your chicken cacciatore.”

 
 

“Thanks, Liz, I think I will. I need a drink, after what I saw today. Or heard, rather.” Mrs. B. deftly interrupted his train of thought, sensing danger:

 
 

“Reggie is the curator of the Pasadena Old Heritage Museum, Mr. Downing,” she said proudly. She smiled happily, and Reg blushed, I think. This man was as far as possible from the effeminate, prickly, metrosexual type you would ordinarily expect in his job as can be.

 

“That’s great,” I said amiably, just to participate a little.
“You started with us just after you finished your Ph.D., wasn’t it, Reggie, dear?”

 

“Yes, it was,” he laughed nostalgically, “good ‘ol UC San Diego. Those were some good times, oh yeah, just studying art history all day. I loved it, man. Simpler times, yes, indeed, sports fans, simpler times. But we need to talk about something, Liz, about today.”
 

“Yes, Reggie, I know, I know: the budget, or the Founders Room, or the Selection Committee, or the maintenance people, or the new installation, or the ‘whatever:’ on and on endlessly.” Mrs. B. feigned exasperation playfully.
“Well, no, not exactly those things this time,” Reggie replied and knitted worried furrows on his high forehead. He shot a glance gravely over at Aly.

 

“Why is everybody looking at me?” Aly then asked, looking around a bit of her own. Her chicken cacciatore was utterly vanquished, defeated, and vanished from her plate.
 

“Aly, sweetheart, come here. Come to your mother.” Aly rose obediently, as did in unison the ever-alert Flapper, and the lithe girl slipped smoothly behind me and Reggie sitting elbow to elbow, to the arm of her mother’s chair. Mrs. B. stroked her daughter’s hair tenderly and kissed her affectionately.
“Would you like to watch The Simpsons now, my love?”

 

“Blanca said it’s not on yet ’cause it’s too early.”
“But that was awhile ago, wasn’t it? Possibly it’s on now. Go and watch with Flapper.” Aly then suddenly and unceremoniously reached down to snatch poor Flapper wholecloth from the rug, and skipped happily out of the dining room into the capacious living room. Flapper meanwhile licked Aly’s face vehemently, her eyes an inch from Aly’s, and Aly in return cooed sweet nothings at the little dog flying backward through space. The faint, distant sound of the T.V. came on. Flapper barked once in anticipation of the emerging picture. The Simpsons music could be heard.

 

Reggie hesitated. He glanced at me briefly, then looked down again. Mrs. B. said reassuringly,
“Reggie, Mr. Downing is in my employ. He’s a private investigator. You can speak freely before him concerning Ingrid. In fact, I would encourage it. Now, what happened today? What happened to your love?” Reggie blushed sheepishly, totally busted. He apparently had had a hopeless, unrequited crush on Ingrid for some time. He lowered his forehead at me graciously, as if in apology for hesitating earlier.

 

“Well, it’s not good, I warn you.” He shook his head sadly, then went on briefly: ”It was only a matter of time…..” Reggie stopped to collect himself, then began once more: ”Well, Pancho came by the museum today for a…..for a…..you know…..and we got to talking, him and me alone.” Reggie stopped again at this point and looked down at his plate, again collecting himself, and then continued: “Fasten your seatbelts,” he sighed, “because, well, Ingrid has…..uh, Ingrid has…..well…..she’s gone with Pancho to Guatemala to root out Saliciamon,” he blurted out finally.
 

“Oh, dear Lord,” Mrs. Biddleman exclaimed and put her hand high on her chest in alarm. “Oh, dear Lord!” she repeated. She gradually put her head in her hands. Her upright posture slumped. “My darling is lost! Mr. Downing! What am I to do? What’s to become of my Ingrid?”
 

“We’ll get her back. Don’t worry about that. So Pancho obviously went there, to Guatemala, to follow up on the murder?” I asked. Reggie nodded in affirmation, at first without speaking, then said quietly,
 

“Yeah…..he feels vulnerable about this one, from the LAPD, I mean, and he wants to take care of business down there anyway. He’s nervous about Saliciamon now. They’re not allies anymore. They hate each other now. He wants to take them out. He thinks he’s Al Pacino in Godfather II, going away to Sicily after blowing somebody away. But he can still be extradited from Guatemala, though, I think. The OAS or something.” Reggie grimaced in disgust and shook his head. I began speculating:
 

“I’ve been trying to figure out why the anomaly this time, though, why Pancho did it himself this time. Anything out of the ordinary is gonna have significant reasons behind it. Before I go down to Guatemala for Ingrid I better get this.” Reggie was then almost overcome with emotion. He must have known why, from his reaction. His fists balled up in frustration and moved in close to his body, as if about to strike. Some unbearable emotion, some unbearable thought haunted him.
 

“But if the Diablos and Saliciamon are battling over the distribution, and over the rights to the park,” I continued, “why not just send a foot soldier to whack Gomez?” Reggie stared at me ominously. I looked back at him innocently, not understanding. He turned away and sighed deeply. He twisted in his chair. He put his bulky forearms on the tablecloth, pushing his empty plate up against the glass pan of chicken cacciatore in the middle of the table. A clink sounded thereupon, hanging in the air. He sighed once again quickly, as if drawing strength sufficient to get something horrible over with. He then intoned heavily,
 

“She got raped,” he whispered, and looked down. “Ingrid got raped by Gomez and so Pancho had to personally take care of him. That’s why.” Reggie turned to me slowly and stared daggers. I looked away in astonishment. Mrs. B., grievously wounded, and motionless but for the trembling, simply clasped her eyes shut against the world. She was done. No one spoke, no one dared speak. The shocked silence was as thick as thieves. None of us dared even to move. Aly stood in the archway, watching us uncertainly and expectantly. Fear was inscribed on her face with a chisel. Her mother, Elizabeth Anne Biddleman, anguished beyond endurance, died in her sleep that same night.
 
 

…..to be continued….. 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

Movie Review: Hollywoodland

November 7, 2009
 

 
 

I really love this movie. It’s a period piece (which I love to begin with) set in 1959, and revolves around the death of the actor who played Superman on TV, George Reeves. This work gives us an ultimately sad portrait of the Hollywood lifestyle, in spite of the unholy fun, and even asks us solemnly, and convincingly, to grow-up by the end. All the performances are great, the sets are perfect, and the script is a labor of love, so detailed, so rich in inspiration, so nicely paced, so intertwined in its plot like a Jane Austen novel, it can only be marveled at.

 

Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), a private investigator, is hired to look into the death of George Reeves. But while the official story called it a suicide, certain irregularities have been unearthed by Simo and lead him to the conclusion it was actually murder. He encounters considerable resistance for this conclusion along the way from the LAPD and the studio executives. It’s tough going: he gets beaten up a couple of times, his girlfriend cuckolds him, his ex-wife shuns him, his young son of about five withdraws further and further from him, and a separate client in a separate case murders his own wife, leaving Simo shattered emotionally. It’s a constant struggle for Mr. Louis Simo against the world.

 
 

Brody plays Simo as an in-your-face tough guy, a gum-chewing, gum-spitting-out, cigarettes-addicted, wife-cheating, seedy, 24-hour-stubbled sharp-dressing rogue with a heart of gold. Brody pulls it off perfectly, and captures the imagination. Ben Affleck, too, is great in his portrayal of George Reeves. Affleck gives us a very moving, evocative, poignant, and even elegant picture of an actor who never made the really big-time and who despises himself for it. Affleck’s portrait is plausible and well-done.

 
 

Diane Lane plays the September half in her May-September romance with Reeves. She provides a perfect illustration of the insecurity and pain of loving someone completely who unfortunately doesn’t feel quite as passionate in return. Lane gets the jealousy and the anguish of romantic abandonment just right. For example, in one scene, she’s arguing about career stuff with Reeves, and she tells him basically that he’s out of shape. She then taps him under the chin to demonstrate his growing portliness, and she does it a little harder than necessary to make the proximate point. If Reeves so much as talks casually to another woman, Lane writes that pain on the face of her character.

 
 

The movie ultimately belongs to Simo/Brody, however. His investigation leads him further and further into a cascade of revelations that disillusion and embitter him. Even the very purpose of the investigation loses its meaning: his original client in the case has made an utter fool of him. In addition, he suffers several emotional upheavals in his personal life during the case. Every so often, Simo runs through in his mind another of the various possibilities as to the manner of Reeves’ death. By the end, however, he seems to consider that suicide, in spite of the murderous depravity of the Hollywood world he finds himself in, is actually just as plausible an explanation as the several murder scenarios. He realizes he’ll never prove the corrupt studio-head (played perfectly by Bob Hoskins), has murdered Reeves in some kind of bizarre revenge for Reeves’ having left Diane Lane.

  

Simo has become a more sober and better man by the end. He overcomes self-absortion and its convincing lures, and gets in touch with the reality of how deeply he’s been hurting people he cares about by his manner of living and attitude. He realizes, in spite of his ability to charm women, that he has not even begun to live up to the responsibilities of manhood. He realizes that he is a part of the very decadence that he’s investigating! His reward is that he finally regains innocence through these insights into himself and the world.

 

In this regard, then, this movie is a bit like The Hustler, wherein Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) finds grim redemption in solitary, unbearable suffering and moral reformation after the grisly suicide of his girlfriend. For this commitment to growth, both these movies are valuable and irreplaceable. Hollywoodland, however, is ultimately not as tragic as The Hustler, since the protagonist hears the voice of doom in time.

Roman Polanski

 

October 1, 2009  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time for Roman Polanski to come in and take care of the situation. He has an opportunity here to show great moral leadership, and to show that he considers himself subject to the law. Otherwise, he’s out in the wilderness, and can’t be taken seriously as a moral agent. Socrates was given a chance to flee, but didn’t: he couldn’t accept a life of moral wandering and rootlessness. None of us is an unconditioned being, and therefore it’s only just that we not act in such a way that implies it.  
 

Polanski has been given great things by civilization and has also given great things in return, but the accord we all strike with that settled life is that we obey the strictures if we want the benefits. It’s disingenuous to proclaim the right to possess the good things of life, yet flaunt order. To be fully a member of his civilization, Polanski must demonstrate his commitment to the flip side of the coin.    

 

No one is morally perfect, myself included, but what he did was so lacking in moral compass, such an act of depravity, that it must be addressed, and not swept under the rug, even if Polanski is a genius. He must come before his society and face the punishment appropriate to his actions. I am certain that Polanski is no longer the man psychologically who committed the original crime, but he is definitely still the man who hasn’t come in from the moral cold.  

 

He needs to show us he feels remorse about what he did: you can’t unring the bell, to be sure, but you can absolutely ring the bells that still can ring (as Leonard Cohen wrote). That is, Polanski can ring the bell of mea culpa, and submit himself to the bar of justice. Those fighting extradition on his behalf, or signing petitions for him, or making this into a cause célèbre, portraying him as a victim, do him no favors. They feather their own nest at his expense.  

 

Some say he should be left alone because it’s been thirty-two years, and enough is enough. But I don’t believe Polanski has that argument available to him. The reason why this has gone on so long is simply Polanski himself, remaining voluntarily in the outback of moral life. To say Polanski should be left alone is to claim that none of us should be morally noble, and that we should, rather, just do what we wish and avoid the consequences. To aver that Polanski should be left alone is to have a certain moral vision of humanity, sure, but a vision asserting only the smallest of human motives as its zenith.

 

 

The Taciturn Hottie

 

    
 

 

 

 
 

The following is fiction, kids:    

 
 

“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.”

– Raymond Chandler

 

 

PART ONE:

 

SOME PRETEEN KIDS WERE PLAYING TENNIS. I knew them from around the club, the Portuguese Hills Racquet Club. I had even hit with them and their parents a few times. We had played doubles. Now I just idly passed the time watching their game. They swung mightily at the ball, concentrating so fiercely, so sincerely – and then whiffed. They burst into laughter at the other guy’s mistakes, rubbing it in for all they were worth. No, they didn’t argue about line calls very often, only every two seconds.
 

One in particular of these four kids would toss the ball up for his serve, and it was so bad it would spray out ludicrously at a 45 degree angle. Unhittable. He bravely swung at it, though, to no avail. He didn’t have pockets, so he’d come up to serve with two tennis balls, as you’re supposed to, but he very carefully would place one of the two down at his feet so seriously, so solemnly, it was unbearable. The racquet was almost as big as he was, I’m required to say at this point. Then the crazy ball toss out to the side fence, and the other kids, anticipating this now, erupting into a riot of drunken laughter. They were absolutely drunk on laughter. Sometimes they didn’t like me, my solitariness unnerved them, or they thought I was putting the move on their mother. I dunno.

A guy in a fancy suit came up to me. He drove up in a sleek red sports car over the gravel parking lot, a car so new it was perfectly immaculate, sexy red, red, red. It gleamed low to the ground, as it should have, and it must have been a Ferrari or something else properly Italian. It looked like it was fast – yeah, somewhat. Anyway the guy gets out ceremoniously, comes up to me, smiling, and pulls out quietly what looked like a regular old ball-point pen. He shows it to me for some reason. He still didn’t say a word; he never spoke the whole time. He wore a dark and rather expensive suit that shimmered in tandem in the bright sun with the shiny, hot car.

He was younger than me, and he wore a ridiculous pink tie, without self-consciousness, without irony. He had a white flower in his lapel, a pathetic daisy. He proceeded to flip open the front end of the pen, and it rotated down on some hidden, mysterious hinge. I just stood in silence observing this, the tennis game forgotten for the moment. He pulled a dart out of the tube of the pen, and showed it to me, smiling more maliciously now. It had a tip that looked so sharp as to be lethal, and a somewhat fat middle for stability in flight. It, too, looked fast. It looked as balanced and as well-formed for killing as a Cheetah.

He put the dart back into the tube, opening up the other, closed end. He then gestured briefly with his hands, European-style, towards the children. It was self-evident what was to be done now. He handed the instrument over to me carefully, slowly, even elegantly, his game-face on at this point. We stood there on the grass picnic area outside the high chain-link fence that surrounded the courts. The kids’ distant voices came back into my ears now, and one of them hit a high ball over the fence, and it dribbled crazily up to my shins. I fielded it awkwardly, with the instrument in my right hand, and I threw the ball back to the kids over the twelve-foot high fence with my left.

They then started arguing about the score, making spectacles of themselves, easily heard throughout all the club. They provided four straining, high-pitched voices, all competing against one another. Absolutely piercing, believe me. They were just about to appeal to me to play referee in their dispute. But I raised the blow-gun thing wickedly, aimed, and shot the dart hard at little Derek through the chain-links of the fence. It traveled magically, like a beam of light, not hitting anything but the side of Derek’s nine-year-old neck.

The dart pierced the peach-fuzz on his skin viciously, and dug several inches in. A stream of blood trickled down. Derek grabbed at his neck immediately, of course, whirling in pain and confusion. The other children grew quiet and afraid as the situation unfolded. Derek went down on the court, crying, sad plaintive sounds emanating from his young, gasping lungs. He looked at me eventually, as he sat on the court, miserable, through the circle of the other three kids.

He looked right into my eyes, his whole face, in its disbelief and in its forlorn, betrayed state, wordlessly forming the question, “Why?” I squirmed inside. And then I suddenly awoke with a shudder. It was just a dream. I propped myself up in bed, my distraught senses straining wildly in the silence. The clock ticked…..Thank God it was just a dream, it hadn’t really happened. Thank Goodness I wouldn’t have to face Marie, Derek’s mother, with that same question “Why?” on her face, too. It had seemed so real, amazingly real now that I had awakened. In the moments when I had seen Derek reeling, I had felt like a walking corpse. At that moment, I would have given anything to un-do it, given even my life, gladly given it, to un-do it. But I didn’t have to – I hadn’t hurt an innocent child. Thank God that’s not who I am. It hadn’t happened, I kept telling myself. Thank God I was still a man.

I sat up on the couch where I slept, swung my bare feet to the floor. It was about 4:30am, and I was drenched in the sweat of the horrible nightmare and in the heat of the season. I breathed deeply to prove to myself it was really true, it was just a dream. I wanted all the confirmation I could get. I almost wept with relief. I knew, though, dream though it was, that I was still walking on the edge of a razor — perdition on one side of me and oblivion on the other. That part was not a dream. That was waking life.

A bundle of questions occurred to me, making their presence known from the much-ballyhooed periphery of consciousness. Who am I that I would so much as dream a dream like that? I got up, walked across the bare, wooden floor, and looked out the old window, down into the dirty, empty, nasty streets of the City of Deep Gorge, CA: “The City of Good Neighbors.”  I looked down at the urban scene before me. That’s who I was, that’s who I was becoming. The courtyard of my building below was still and shadowy, as the full moon shone through the patchy clouds, casting long geometric shapes of darkness as the light hit the steps, that little Greek archway at the entrance, and then a sauntering black cat from next door. Who will I choose to be? I thought. But, then again, was this all just self-dramatization? Isn’t a dream just a bunch of crap in the brain? I dunno.

It was about 5:00am by now; first light and sunrise were less than an hour away since it was early July. They would surely bring the moral epiphany with them I sought. I climbed back into bed. It’ll come clear in the light of day, right?

…..to be continued…..

No Country for Old Men (movie review)

 

 July 18, 2009        

The Coen Brothers specialize in being confusing and exciting. This movie is no different — in fact, it’s tailor-made for the purpose. Thus, in one sense this movie is a sincere lament on the tragic self-destruction of human moral choice, but in another, competing sense, it’s an empty academic rumination on the role of chance in our lives. This tension in the movie between moral choice and chance is resolved in favor of chance, to the detriment of the film. On the other hand, it’s a thriller of great achievement at times, but with an unsatisfying ending even there.    

Echoes of Ancient Greece reverberate throughout this movie, but unfortunately, those echoes don’t ring true: it’s a case of misinterpretation. That is, in the old Oedipus plays of Aeschylus, our royal protagonist is prophesied by the oracle at Delphi to kill his father and marry his mother. In response, Oedipus flees, so as to make it flat-out impossible for the prophesy to come true: just don’t show up, and then it can’t happen. But it does happen anyway, he does fulfill the two prophesies, doing both unwittingly by wild chance.    

But the point in these Oedipus plays is not that mere blind chance wholly rules our lives, that chance is a dragnet one can’t escape. The point is rather that the logos, the rationality of the moral system underlying the chance occurrences, is the really decisive part. Since Oedipus has answered the riddle of the Sphinx correctly, something no one else had ever done, Oedipus has thereby put himself outside human society and outside human morality, and he is manifestly a prodigious moral freak beyond nature.  

The ineluctable logic of moral consequences, then, will bring it about that Oedipus will live a truly monstrous life, as Nietzsche pointed out, since he is a man without compass psychologically. He can see what’s behind the veil of nature’s secrets, he can see behind the riddle of nature’s mystery, and therefore he is beyond the pale, not one of us. So it is not precisely chance that makes him do monstrous things so much as the grinding wheel of punitive comeuppance, the Furies, that is. (Don’t mess with them!)  

To return to our movie, it is, in short, a misinterpretation of all the Greek stuff, to the point of farce. The Oedipus-like character here, Anton Chigurh, compared to Oedipus, is about what a candle is to the sun: not much. The Coen Bros. are experts in this type of brilliant vapidity. Their movies are very entertaining, to be sure, lavish, sumptuous, a feast for the eyes and ears and sensibility, but ultimately they’re empty due to their failure to stand for something besides barren, wandering intellectuality.   

Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, the old sheriff who is worn down and eventually broken by a world increasingly violent and out of control. It could be said his character is a good candidate for the central consciousness of the movie, since the plot spins out his inability to live up to his opening voice-over, wherein he pledges to keep on fighting the good fight. But the sheriff’s defeat in the plot represents the defeat of moral choice’s efficacy, and the defeat of responsibility and accountability. He must lose so the movie can have some fun with juvenile profundity.  

Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a welder, out hunting pronghorn in the middle of the day for some reason, when he happens upon the very bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. He finds dead bodies galore, and, wouldn’t you know it, two million bucks in a big black satchel. (We learn a new vocabulary word, too, the word “transponder,” which device tracks the whereabouts of the satchel.) Fatefully, Moss decides on the spot to take the money, and by so doing he puts himself outside of conventional ethics.  

His grisly outcome is to be eventually killed by the dealers who want the money back. (He had no idea what he was up against.) It is blind chance, of course, that gives him this opportunity, as has happened in so many previous movies (Treasure of the Sierra Madre, A Simple Plan), but it is still straight forward moral consequences that deliver him to perdition. So the treatment of his character by the plot is one of the bright spots of the movie, since chance is here relegated to its true place as a triggering cause only, not promoted foolishly to an underlying cause. That latter type of cause in this case is provided by Moss’ choice to take the money.  

Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, the most bizarre creation in the plot by far. He carries the chic haute couture of the movie on his shoulders, he’s got the cachet. He is vaguely Asian, or Native American, or Eastern, or…..something — something vaguely out-of-this-world, in sum, not Westernized. This L’Etranger aspect of Chigurh gives him a sense of moral authority (according to the movie-makers, that is), but it fails miserably in the artistic long run. It degenerates into the usual and tiresome Coen weirdness-gratia-weirdness. Chigurh’s dialogue is peevish, irritable, confusing, purposely self-contradictory, and full of half-baked Sartrean existentialisms to snare the unsuspecting. He does everything but wink at the camera. It is definitely funny at times, the Coen Bros. know a good joke when they see it, but the pretentiousness of having a retarded psychopath claiming to know something profound is ludicrous and cliché. Chigurh delights childishly in intimidating the down-to-earth Red State types with his Socratic banter.   

The movie opens with a beautiful, evocative montage of desolate, pure, lonely, deserted countryside, accompanied by a magnificently gravelly voice-over by Tommy Lee Jones talking about the good old days. But he is confused about these bad new days, and the growing level of violence, and he vows naively to continue to do his job in this brave new world of mayhem, that “he’ll be a part of this world.” In fact, though, the plot will spin out his inability to live up to those words: the forces of disorder win in this script, and Ed Tom Bell, the symbol of order, loses. There’s very little music in this movie, but there’s plenty of moody sound effects: lonesome wind rustling through the sage, ominous, crunching footsteps, lightning, and cars whizzing by past the various roadside motels, like so many harbingers of something or other. There’s also a lot of silence, evoking yet more moods. The narrative gets under way and switches cleverly back and forth between Bell, Moss, and Chigurh.  

Moss finds the money and puts it away at home, and then implausibly goes back to the scene of the drug war to give water to one of the drug-deal guys who had been asking for agua. The guy is gone when Moss gets back. (No kidding?!
Didn’t see that one coming!) Is this Moss’ attempt to remain within conventional ethics? It certainly bespeaks a contradiction within him, and an innocence in believing he could survive the excursion. There are many implausibilities like this in the plot: another is when Moss forgets that his mother is dead, and has to be reminded by his wife. He comically stops to think about it, as if he’s realizing, “Oh, yeah…..that’s right!
You know, you’re right!” There are too many pointless things like this in the movie, apparently designed to give it a little psychological texture.  

But most of the crazy stuff is for Bardem/Chigurh, though. At first, he’s being arrested; somehow a cop has got the better of him. (That’s implausible right there, given the preternatural powers the movie ascribes to him.) In the station a little later, the cop foolishly turns his back on him to make a phone call, and just as the cop is saying, “I’ve got it under control,” Chigurh walks over and strangles the cop with the handcuffs manacling Chigurh’s hands. The motif that everything is now out of control in our civilization, despite our best efforts, is thus introduced. We are put on notice that the forces of disorder are stronger than the forces of order. The camera slowly pans over the murder scene, revealing to us a million or so black scuff marks on the floor from the shoes of the sheriff as he desperately struggled against his assailant. This is a portrait and image (like a Jackson Pollack painting) of the violent randomness that emerges victorious in this movie — the Coens are giving us an emblem of the Dionysian limitlessness that joins battle with, and defeats, order and measure.  

Later, on the trail of Moss and the money, Chigurh pulls out a quarter at a gas station, and demands of the station owner that he call it. The man delays. This eventually prompts an irritable, and pointless, “You’re a bit deaf, aren’t you?!” from Chigurh. The man, being normal, is confused by the unprovoked aggression, and by the opaque, shell-game style of conversation Chigurh engages in. The man finally calls the coin-toss out of fear of the consequences if he refuses, and he fortunately gets it right, thus saving his own life.  

Chigurh then says to him, “Don’t put that back in your pocket — it’s your lucky quarter. It’ll get mixed in with the other coins, and then it’ll just be another coin…..which it is…..” This confusing, back and forth philosophizing demonstrates the tension in the plot between chance and necessity. The quarter should be saved, since it saved the man’s life, and is thus a non-contingent, necessary thing. But, on the other hand, it’s still just a random quarter, a contingent, non-necessary thing. The whole scene is too cute by half, though, and is characteristic of the whole movie — having fun being sadistic, juvenile, and intellectually superior towards decent, non-insane, country folks. Moreover, there’s a curious elegance to Bardem’s portrayal of this remorseless murder, an elegance which can only be made up, not taken from real experience, and which can only be explained by the script’s conscious desire to make an innately antipathetic character look sympathetic and chic.  

There’s lots of strange interludes in the movie, too. For example, Chigurh at one point is driving alone across a bridge out in the bright emptiness of nowhere, whereupon he slows down to shoot at a crow he sees sitting on the railing, but misses somehow, and then continues his driving back at regular speed. Oh…..I get it…..this is heavy stuff…..back at the gas station, while he’s torturing the owner with fear, he munches on some snack, like peanuts or something, and puts the squished cellophane wrapper back down on the counter — then the camera, in all seriousness, focuses solemnly and luxuriously on this stupid, irrelevant candy wrapper re-opening and uncoiling. This was a close-up. What are we supposed to do with that? Do these film artists just put a bunch of stuff like that into the movie because they feel like doing so, and then we have to figure it out for them? There’s a lot more of that type of stuff, not worth going over.  

Woody Harrelson arrives in the plot, tracking the money, but the hunter becomes the hunted. At first, Woody finds the money in a not-believable way, yet another major implausibility in the sometimes sloppy script. Somehow Woody has tracked Moss to a hospital where Moss is recovering. Then Woody is outside after the  interview with Moss, walking over a bridge and looking around at random, and just happens to look down at the right moment to see the satchel far below on the ground where Moss threw it earlier for safekeeping. (That’s how it works when you’re a pro, kid.)  

But Chigurh is also in town, and he knows Woody from before. By ESP, evidently, he knows where Woody’s hotel is, and gets the drop on him in the lobby, and they adjourn to Woody’s room. He’s going to kill Woody, but he has to torture him first with philosophy: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” (…..indeed.) Chance rules all, you see. No sense in trying. This is an example of the sophomoric nature of this psychopath the movie seems to think is a cool guy. Woody suggests a deal whereby they go to an ATM (in 1980?), take out $14,000, and “we all just walk away.” (Can you take out $14,000 from an ATM in one visit? I don’t know about y’all, but my bank limits me to $20 a day.) Chigurh looks off into the distance beatifically, and says, like a half-wit, “A-T-M.” Then he kills his friend Woody.  

Towards the end of the movie, Moss is dead, too, at the hands of the original drug dealers, and Chigurh has gone to see Moss’ wife, because he made a promise to Moss. He tries to make Carla Jean feel as though Moss wanted Chigurh to kill her, but she doesn’t fall for it. In fact, Chigurh has a lot of trouble throughout the movie getting people to fall for his philosophizing. He pulls out a quarter again and demands that she call it, which she refuses to do. She says, “You don’t have to do this,” quite intelligently introducing the concept of moral choice into his empty life. He responds with his usual self-deceit by scoffing and saying, “People always say the same thing. They say ‘you don’t have to do this.’ But I got here the same way the quarter did.” He means to say that his being a murderer is just a chance occurrence, like a coin-flip, or just like the quarter being in exactly that spot, instead of somewhere else. The script seems to take this seriously. But then Carla Jean says, “It’s just you, the quarter ain’t got no say.” That’s the most intelligent line in the script, but he kills her anyway.  

Chigurh gets admonished finally, and by his own principle of chance. He’s driving away after killing Carla Jean, driving very safely, in fact, when he gets hit by a reckless driver. He makes a sling for his broken arm from a kid’s shirt and walks off, remorseless as always. He has suffered a minor injury compared to the fatal ones he inflicts. Why is he made so fashionable?   The penultimate scene in the movie is the worst. Bell the sheriff goes to see his lawman mentor, who tells him about the old days, as if Bell is some kind of rookie cop when he’s actually a crusty old veteran. The mentor does a lot of looking off into the meaningful distance as he speaks, a lot of pauses for silence to catch up, a lot of baritone voice, a lot of respectful deference. It’s a masterpiece of crap, totally unspontaneous and phony.  

The last scene has Bell in retirement, at the breakfast table with his cheerful wife, who knows nothing about what goes on in the world. The contrast is extreme. He tells her about his dreams. They had his father protecting him. Then we hear the inexorable sound of a ticking clock, so profoundly, as the screen goes black. Now, this movie is very entertaining most of the time, to be sure, but it needs to stand for something clearly. The purposely confusing nature of the moral sensibility of this work is a major flaw.

Movie Review: “Groundhog Day”

June 30, 2009

This movie is very high both in quality and in purpose. It has a sweet, but exacting plot: it gets its pound of flesh in the end. It deserves a detailed treatment. Bill Murray plays a sarcastic, resentment-addicted T.V. weatherman who must cover the tiresome (for him) Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA. Initially, his character is overwhelmed with contempt for everything human – no mortal foible goes unnoticed, no peccadillo is forgiven. Cynical disdain governs his attitude.

Once he gets to Punxsutawney, it’s established that he can’t escape. Groundhog Day repeats endlessly. The same things happen, the same words are spoken. He lives the same day over and over. Only he knows it’s happening, only he remembers the previous cycles. He has been chosen by fate for this trial because of his repeated encroachment upon decency, and Groundhog Day becomes the venue of the courtroom since he has become a groundhog himself in his blind tunnel-vision and cave-like life of chewing on others. (His name is Phil, just as the official groundhog.)

Interestingly, in ancient Greek myths, an abiding theme of many stories was the purification the soul undergoes in the travails of psychological suffering. The main moral text of this movie is precisely this unfolding of Phil the Weatherman’s suffering, and his various reactions to it. He can’t be allowed to leave the nightmare until he has earned it and gone beyond.

Back on the first day in Punxsutawney, as the crew of three (Phil, Andie MacDowell the producer, and the cameraman) had finished its work, and was starting out to return to Pittsburgh, a blizzard starts. Phil gets out of the van to talk to a state trooper. “What’s going on?” Phil asks. The trooper responds with the utmost in stern replies: “Nothing’s going on! I’m closing this road! You can go back to Punxsutawney or stay here! What’s it gonna be?” Phil has been found guilty – caught in his getaway. You will not be allowed to diss Punxsutawney and then just take off. Thus starts the Eternal Recurrence of the Same for poor Phil the Weatherman.

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche developed a concept he called “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same.” Put briefly, it was a gloomy test: could you live your life over again, the same details, infinitely many times? Of course you couldn’t, I’ll help you out here. That’s why it’s the supposed supreme test for Nietzsche of life-affirmation. The only way to approach the task would be to free yourself completely of all and sundry resentments, and thus you will have maxed your will-to-power, baby. Nietzsche saw the human race as shooting itself in the foot with its pettiness.

Now, Phil the Weatherman has been put in exactly this test of overcoming resentment, disdain, and contempt. He can’t leave Groundhog Day until he so overcomes. But he has been put into this trial by his own attitude, it’s a self-imposed catastrophe. The course of the movie spins out his various attempts to escape.

First he has fun with the situation, once he figures it out, by stealing money, driving crazy, trying to snag some free tush,etc. He also finds he can set himself up in previous cycles for the subsequent cycles: in other words, since only he remembers the cycles, he can blatantly seek useful info from people for use against them in the next cycle. But his wittiness mostly goes awry – he rarely hits a home run because his attitudes are obnoxious and off-putting. So, in despair after awhile, he tries to commit suicide. It turns out he can die in a current cycle, but then he’s magically alive again at 6:00am the “next” day, the new repetition of Groundhog Day. Nothing he does matters or has meaning since he has put himself outside the code of decency.

But eventually, as he notices things and remembers them from the previous cycles (in order to navigate better in the current cycle), he also begins to notice the suffering of others, prompted in this by his own suffering. He turns to good works. For example, he buys an old homeless failure a humongous dinner, and later even gives him mouth-to-mouth when the old man collapses in the snow. Phil’s emotions have evolved from the self-absorbed to the noble. He starts to use his not inconsiderable talents and powers to enrich others’ lives. They are enormously grateful to be taken seriously by such a man, and also prove themselves quite capable of appreciating his elite ability.

Finally, the new sincerity impresses Andie MacDowell’s character, and they become lovers again. The first time, though, she had been swept away fatefully and had disappeared at pumpkin time, 6:00am, when the clock radio alarm went off, playing Sonny and Cher’s “I got you, babe.” The song was meaningless to Phil, alone in bed. It was just another cycle beginning, another Groundhog Day. But now, this second time, 6:00am arrives, and she’s still there. It’s not Groundhog Day any longer, since fate, life, and the Furies have allowed him now to move on from the nightmare. He has paid his debt with the currency and coin of decency and sincerity.

This movie has a real redemption on offer, as did “Memoirs of a Geisha,” given that the protagonist has to go through real trials, with all the human mistakes made, before reaching true life. This is in contrast to the epically abysmal crap of “The Da Vinci Code,” where the protagonists are mollycoddled by the script into believing themselves victims of an arbitrary totalitarian society that they must overcome with their badass “courage.”

The cleverness of “Groundhog Day” is that the plot allows Phil to do things differently in each of the successive cycles, keeping alive the idea of new moral choice. This movie is funny all the way through, too, another bit of cleverness: if Phil was funny only when he was a jerk, and boring when he became a good man, we’d have a problem. The point of this movie is not that people are never contemptible, but rather that a life of petty, posturing superiority is a lie beneath all of us.

 

 

Tony Downing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Scary Smart: Part 6 (finale)

May 28, 2009

A Joe Downing Mystery

The following is fiction:  

 

 

 

 

Part 6: 357 Sig Reloaded, or, Street Cred to Burn

FRAYED NERVES WERE TAKING OVER. That rope was just about to snap. Strands separated off gradually and curled up insolently. I spun and twisted slowly, agonizingly in the tension. Getting your ass kicked and then shot twice doesn’t do much for your Christmas. You’ll take my word for it, I’m sure. Well, we were in St. George, Utah, holed-up. It was now Monday morning, the 28th of December.  

 

Me and Johansen had picked St. George for getting sewn up and mended in since it had a central location, and it wasn’t in Nevada. Early Saturday morn, the 26th, about 3am, we had abandoned the Mercedes in the parking garage of the hotel in Vegas, and had taken only the Corvette, the unknown car to the populace of Las Vegas. We took off in the middle of the night. Already paid. We had gotten the endless bleeding to stop when the blood coagulated, and we had contacted, through the motel in St. George, a doctor to fix us up Saturday morning about dawn or so. We had gotten back a clean slate to a certain extent. No questons asked about the lead, fortunately, but that couldn’t last for long. Hiking accident, maybe? There’s a whopper, kids! I called Tom Wilkinson to sound him out. He was home in Rancho Verde. I walked outside to make the call.  

 

“I think she’s got Stockholm Syndrome,” Tom said.  

 

“Yeah, I think so, too. Feelings of sympathy for the kidnapper. But it’s obviously even more than that. If they’re blogging pals, then I’m sure she went voluntarily, and like you said, the dog never protested the initial escape. She doesn’t consider herself kidnapped.”  

 

“Maybe not, but the Mann Act does.” I looked up at the rugged walls of red rock towering above my head. The sun shone from a white sky. The air temp was brisk and refreshing, not bad at all.  

 

“So, how do we shake her out of it?” I asked.  

 

“You can’t. She has to make that choice on her own. It’s up to her. Nothing you can really do but show her an alternative example. Break her faith in this Jones character.”  

 

“It seemed there was a chink in her armour when she saw her father shot. Like she wasn’t sure of Jones anymore. Like she was feeling, ‘who is this guy shooting my father?’”  

 

“Good. That’s a first step. Play on that. It’s your best ally…..I found their blogs on the Web, too. Jonesy is all about radical politics and the coming revolution. Idiotic stuff. But very slick and polished, nevertheless, the guy knows what he’s doing. The actual writing, though, is sophomoric, embarrassing, even. Check this out: 

‘These counter-hegemonic narratives provide historical transformation from the Colonialist symbologies, and supercede ineluctably the Euro-American, neo-liberal perspective.’

“How’s that for gobbledy-goop?” Tom asked. 

 

“Pretty damn good,” I said. “Ya gotta keep a soft spot alive for those counter-hegemonic narratives, c’mon. So what’s Chelsea’s blog like?”  

 

“It’s all about photos and friends and being social. It’s a chick flick, all the way. Not any politics at all. It’s more like a MySpace page than anything else. She’s very handy, though, she also knows what she’s doing. It’s like a scrapbook.”  

 

“Yeah, I get what you mean. Any recent postings on either site to give us a clue where they are? Any chess clues?”  

 

“No,” Tom answered, “neither one has posted for several days — the 23rd for him, the 24th for her. That’s unusual, it looks like: they both seem to post 3 or 4 times a day.”  

 

“Okay, just trying…..but now — any ideas about how to get the drop on him?”  

 

“You could blow his head off his shoulders with a Smith and Wesson.”  

 

“Yeah, I could. And go to jail. Any non-jail ways you can think of, amigo?”  

 

“Not really. But how’s this — I e-mailed the publisher of Chess Life magazine, since Jones’ blog has some chess postings. Apparently Jones was pretty good. U.S. Top 100, the publisher said!”  

 

“Top 100?! His resume said Top 25!”  

 

“Really? Well, I guess he’s lying on his resume, then. Anyway, he was gonna be the next Bobby Fischer or something, get the crown back for the United States. Tactical genius, nerves of steel, great preparation, stuff like that. But he lost some chance in 2002 to enter some challenger tournament for the world title. He was going for the gold, the whole enchilada. But he got DQ’d, and he felt there was some unfairness from the U.S. chess head honchos. A bourgeoise organization, don’t you know.”  

 

“Ah, I see it all now. Chess is so known for those flagrant fouls…..well…..all right, Tom, gotta go, thanks for the narratives, and let me know if you find anything out. Later.”  

 

“Be careful, Joe.”  

 

***************************************

 
 

 I went alone to the grocery store to get us some food. It was about 8am. Johansen was on the phone with Julie. I also bought a small chess board in anticipation of the next clue from Jones. Moving around slowly, the stitches held. When I got back, Johansen showed me the latest text from Jones, just in:

 
 

Pe4     Pe5

Re3     Re6

Qe2     Qe7

Ke1     Ke8

North, POS

 
 

“What do we do with that?” Johansen asked, exasperated, gesturing towards the display. His hair was unkempt, his slacks travel-worn, his appearance disheveled. Worry and strain bit at his face.

 
 

“We figure it out, that’s what,” I answered.

 
 

“Figure what out? This crap? Why can’t the weasel just come out and face us?”

 
 

“He’s a sadist. That’s why he’s doing this. He doesn’t think about the future — only in a chess game, not in real life.” We set out the pieces on the board.

 

 King

Queen

Rook

Pawn

Pawn

Rook

Queen

King

 

“Now — these are all pairs of chess moves in the text message. Four pairs, to be precise. The first move of each pair is white, the second is red. I don’t know if he’s white or if we are, or if it matters. Let’s set out the moves.” As it turned out, we decided to just clear the board of all pieces except those mentioned in the text. All the pieces were on one file, the ‘e’ file.
 

“Well, what does this do for us?” Johansen asked.

 

“Everything’s on the ‘e’ file, or column, for some reason,” I ventured. “It looks like an invitation to a final battle. A makeshift formation for a special game. Look, he’s got pawns leading the way, then the castles, or rooks, then the Queens, then the two kings last. All these pieces are capable of moving in a straight line, straight ahead. This set-up is like a head-on collision, an Armageddon scene. He’s asking for a shoot-out to the death.”

 
 

“We’ll be glad to give it to him.  But how do we know where to show up? And what does he mean by this ‘North, POS?’” Johansen queried.

 
 

“‘North’ might be telling us what direction to go from Las Vegas. ‘POS’ might mean ‘position,’ of course, but who knows?”

 
 

“It might mean ‘Pile of Shit,’ too. He seems to enjoy that particular phrase,” Johansen suggested.

 
 

“Yeah, it probably does mean that, come to think of it. We already know the pieces are in position, why mention it? He wouldn’t miss a chance for an insult. So, then, why the ‘e’ file? What’s ‘e’ mean?” I asked.

 
 

“Entrance?” Johansen proposed.

 
 

“Maybe,” I said, “what else?”

 
 

“Equine. Equality. East. Everywhere. Enema.”

 
 

“A place, yeah! It might be a place, like the other clue. And it’s out in the middle of the board again. Going vertical, like a freeway going north on a map. This formation is a map!” I said.

 
 

“We’re supposed to drive on this map? On the ‘e’ freeway? Or east?”

 
 

“Yeah, it could mean east, but he put ‘north’ down probably to make sure we didn’t go east. The ‘e’ then might not be a compass direction. He wouldn’t put two compass directions in one clue, I don’t think. It would be too confusing,” I said.

 
 

“So what’s a place that’s out in the middle of nowhere, that’s north of Vegas, that involves a straight shot on the freeway, and has something to do with an ‘e’?” Johansen summed up.

 
 

“The initial of a city, you mean? It could be the initial of the city we’re supposed to meet him at. What are some ‘e’ cities?” I asked. Johansen paused, thinking.

 
 

“North of Vegas?” he clarified.

 
 

“Yeah, north of Vegas,” I repeated after him. We sat and thought in one of the dumpy, seedy rooms we had rented. Traffic outside began to pick up, people driving to work. Not much occured to us.

 
 

“We need a U.S. map.” I went to the manager’s office, found a man already started in on another day of marathon T.V. watching, got him to get up out of the chair somehow, bought a map from him, and returned to the room. We opened it out on the floor. We pointed to Vegas.

 
 

“Okay, north of Vegas means the 15 freeway. Any cities beginning with ‘e’?” We traced a route up the 15.

 
 

“Enoch, Utah; Ely, Nevada; and Evanston, Wyoming,” Johansen said. “Which one?”

 
 

“Enoch is right on the line of the freeway, and Ely is to the west. Only Evanston is really fully to the east of the15,” said.

 
 

“So?” Johansen replied.

 
 

“It could be the ‘e’ file represents two things: the initial of the city, like we said at first, and also the compass direction.”

 
 

“But you said he wouldn’t put two compass directions in one clue. Too confusing,” Johansen declared.

 
 

“Yes, I did say that. But what if he could embed the second directional clue within an already existing clue? In other words, the clue telling us to go east of the 15 might be embedded within the same clue for the city-initial. That would satisfy his need for efficiency. So the ‘e’ file clue does two things. It says first: ‘a city that begins with an E.’ Then it says secondly: ‘go east of the 15 to get there, not west.’ If it’s really Ely or Enoch, then he hasn’t finished the clue — he hasn’t gotten us off the 15. He has to break the tie somehow between the three cities. If it’s not Evanston, then he has to let us know it’s either Ely or Enoch. But he didn’t do that. He just left it. That means Evanston.” Johansen became studious.

 
 

“Yeah…..yeah, you’re right. He has to break the tie. I guess that’s why I’m the stock broker and you’re the P.I.” (I promise you I didn’t say anything or laugh at this point.) Johansen continued: “Well, I’m ready whenever you are, Joe. Let’s get the hell outta here. Let’s go get Chelsea. And let’s not mess it up a third time.”

 
 

********************************************

 
 

 IT’S MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED MILES from St. George to Salt Lake City. We didn’t stop much except for a pitstop here and there. Johansen drove the Corvette part of the way, and handled it pretty good. But we didn’t stop much on the way to SLC. And we left it pretty quick, too. We took the Interstate 80 East, straight outta SLC. But we had to be so very careful. The fuzz seemed to have some sort of joint task force out on the highways, a combined job of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Now was not the time to get pulled over by the state troopers, not with a shooting just past in Vegas, trumpeted on the T.V. news, and not with the two of us plum full of stitches. No, indeed. Now was not the time to go over the speed limit. So we kept it down to 85.

 
 

Evanston, Wyoming is about eighty miles east of SLC. The highway in was mostly dry all this time, a pale sun had boiled off the ice crystals. When we hit some occasional treacherous parts that had gotten little sun, we slowed a bit. We turned the car backwards once, but no injuries. You can’t expect too much from Southern Californians. But, all in all, we were fed-up with this Jonesy, fed-up with cross-country driving, fed-up with being shot at, fed-up with kidnapppers, and fed-up with being far from home in the cold without the right clothes.

 
 

Finally we pulled into Evanston, which is just 6 miles in from the border with Utah, at about 3pm, still on Monday, the 28th. We took charming little Harrison Street down from the 80, and went along that winding way below to Front Street, a more serious and industrial looking set-up, with store fronts (some abandoned), a police station, and the sturdy, still-functional, old railroad tracks that old man Evans himself had used so long ago. Front Street was the main drag of the place. Sunset was getting close, and the sky was losing light fast. Descent into a storm of darkness once again, just like back on Friday, Christmas Eve, when I first met Johansen.

 
 

Snow was everywhere. Looking down perpendicular to the right as we tooled along the gradual slope of Harrison, we saw, at the shoulders of the residential streets, snow piled up two feet high by the snow plows, or even waist-high in spots, almost shoulder-high. A good place to hide behind, come to think of it. All the streets sloped precipitously and icily down from Harrison, as if they wouldn’t let you back out if you only had 2WD. Just take a wild guess what the Corvette had. These streets were motionless and silent, as if painted on a canvas. Illumination glowed cheerily from within the neat, upright houses, soft spots of light behind curtained windows. The omnipresent snow perched lazily on the rooftops, and icicles, 6 or 8 feet long and as fat as your arm, hung down from under the facia of the tall school building on 10th, like so many Swords of Damocles poised above thy head.

 
 

On Front Street, going-home traffic nudged along. Some drivers had their headlights on even at 3pm. There was the occasional, brief whoosh! as a car’s tires had momentary trouble gaining traction. Everything was white save for a narrow and black asphalt strip in each direction on Front. Sound was muted from all the snow. We turned left on 9th and then left again immediately into the Mavrik gas station. Snow piles, 6 feet high, and just as wide, were pushed off to the side of the small payment shack. Huge monoliths of snow. Hide and go seek.

 
 

We pulled up at a pump and got out. The chilly air bit savagely and ferociously at our skin through our thin cotton and wool clothes. A slight breeze added its force. Nerves were worn. Anxiety nibbled at our thoughts, and the cold aggravated it a thousand-fold. There were three parallel rows of pumps, it was a big boy of a station. We were in the outermost row, at the back pump, right on Front. Off to the furthest right side, and at the front pumps, my eye caught something. Hadn’t noticed at first. The fatigue, the altitude, the whatever-factor had prevented me. The view to over there was blocked a bit by the pumps and by a pillar holding up the sun roof. I moved a step and leaned to see better. It turned out there was an old, blue, beat-up Volvo station wagon pulled up at the pump.

 
 

 My blood stirred. I peeked casually around the corner and saw a ‘Free Tibet’ bumper sticker on the Volvo. Lightning shot through me. He had managed Wyoming plates, too. I pulled back, out of sight, behind our pump at the rear. I looked at Johansen, who hadn’t yet seen. I motioned him over to the driver’s side with me, and reached for the Colt and the Sig. I looked down at the snow and at my black shoes, trying to summon strength. Something inside told me that I didn’t really have to do it. Not now, not this fast. My heart beat wildly. I could let this pass, no one would know but me. Johansen hadn’t seen. I could make something up. I was freezing, shaking, trembling with anticipation and fear. Johansen came over to me, wondering what was up. I had to make a decision.

 
 

“…..to the right…..forward pump…..” I said quietly, with my head and eyes down. Johansen listened, alarm on his face, swallowed hard, and then looked over like a rifle shot. It was his daughter’s life at stake. He grabbed the Colt out of my hand, practically taking my wrist with him. People went nonchalantly in and out of the mini-mart. The double-doors slid open and revealed the interior: potato chip racks, sodas, post cards, people milling around. The doors slid shut.

 
 

“Only Chelsea’s in the car,” Johansen whispered vehemently, “he’s not in there.” I nodded.

 

“…..all right…..” I said, “we go over there slowly…..then you bring Chelsea over here…..watch your back at all times, 360 degrees! He could be anywhere, watching us right now, right this second. This guy is Houdini. I’ll block him from getting at her while you put her in the Corvette. I don’t care if he shoots me, I don’t care if I leave this stinkin’, ugly world. Let’s make one thing right.” We spoke in fierce undertones.

 
 

“I’m gonna get Chelsea, and I’ll kill that psycho if he interferes,” Johansen declared.

 
 

“Good,” I agreed, “let’s saunter over there carefully, and keep your gun concealed, for God’s sake!” We snuck up to the back of the Volvo, on the side of the pumps away from the car, as if we were looking for the squeegee (the ruse didn’t have to work for long). We saw a blonde head bobbing around inside the Volvo, on the passenger side. No one was on the driver’s side. We slid over to the other side of the pumps. We stood in back of the car, so close as to touch it if we wanted. Our gaze took in everything, but still we didn’t see Jones at all. That meant, of course, that he had seen us.

 
 

Johansen didn’t need any prompting to go around to the right side of the Volvo, and up to the closed, frosty window on the passenger side. He appeared at the car window in front of his daughter. The window was worked down very laboriously and slowly, like something was making it drag. A sad voice spoke to him from the depths of an intolerable purgatory.

 
 

“Dad…..help me…..get me away from him, take me home, please, Dad, please…..” It was the most plaintive sound I had ever heard. Johansen responded without hesitation:

 
 

“Of course, my love, right now, we’re going home, we’re going home to mom right now…..I love you Chelsea, I love you more than anything in the world…..” Johansen reached over and opened the door of the Volvo just as a shot rang out. His eyes dulled and rolled back, and consciousness departed from them. He slowly fell forward against the car, his body weight shutting the door again. He slid woodenly down the car body to his left, hitting his face repeatedly, and ended up face down on the concrete of the pump bay. Red oozed from a hole in his neck. His spinal chord had been ripped by the bullet, and death had been punctual. Chelsea recoiled in speechless disbelief, and climbed out of the car awkwardly, whimpering and sobbing. Her wrists were bound in filthy duct tape, and red friction marks were evident.

 
 

I turned towards the origin of the shot, behind one of the snow monoliths. I saw a man in a trench coat and fedora looking at me from behind wraparound sunglasses. His left arm was in a sling, and he leaned to the side, favoring the left ankle. Dried blood stained the sling dark brown and red. He looked like a mad man escaped from the dead house. His timing had been impeccable: as I had turned towards Front Street to shoot a glance, he had stepped from behind the monolith and fired from 15 feet. We shot at each other immediately, without any discussion now, a mutual shoot-on-sight policy, and we pulled the trigger at the same instant. Reverberations rolled through the air. People scattered again, just as in Vegas. Both of us hit the other in the core area. We stumbled back in odd unison and onto the snow, clutching our stomachs. We stared at one another wordlessly as we fought strenuously to regain our feet. We both got up and stumbled forward to engage. He shot again, missing me, hitting something loud. The gloom of late afternoon gave his features a hideous aspect. I shot back with the Sig, hitting his thigh. I slipped on some hidden ice beneath the snow, and I dropped the Sig, which went flying to the side. Jones approached and put me in the crosshairs of the Colt carefully, and also walked towards Chelsea. His eyes darted everywhere.

 
 

 He suddenly slapped Chelsea with the back of his hand, and shot me through in the stomach again. Enraged, he yelled:

 
 

“Get back in the car, whore!!! And shut-up, why doncha, bitch?!” Chelsea wept uncontrollably, and he shoved her in. He hobbled into the car and drove off.  I labored to my feet eventually, got the Sig, got Johansen’s Colt, and gave chase, leaving Johansen’s body there. I was his daughter’s last chance. We raced and fishtailed down Front Street, away from Harrison now. We got on the Interstate 80, passing the Wal Mart where Jones must have gotten some ammo. We went east towards the Bridger Valley. For almost 35 miles we raced each other towards an early death. The Corvette was still low on gas, so I had to do something quick. Up and down we went on the Three Sisters, the long, steep slopes of the Rockies. The beauty of the mottled scenery made a mute, curious contrast to the ugliness of human affairs.

 
 

Jones got off finally at the Fort Bridger exit and started down the extended, 2-lane ramp road to Bridger. Deer startled and ran. After about 6 miles of this he turned left at the Urie Crossroads and headed frantically out onto State Highway 414. We were the only customers on the roads. I was about 10 seconds behind him at this point. Perpendicular dirt roads under the snow passed by every so often, risng up to mesas from the 414. Then, far up ahead, in the shadowy light, I saw his brakes lights go on, and he stopped altogether in the middle of the road. Then he got out alone. He shot at Chelsea through the open door, and started off to the left, tramping and hobbling over to the dirt road on his bad ankle and with bleeding thigh and core. Heavily he climbed over the metal gate, clutching himself, and limping as he started off again. He slumped forward from the waist as he struggled, an insane, hopeless portrait of a lost human being.

 
 

I reached Chelsea, my eye on Jones as he plodded up to the top of the mesa through the snow. I relieved her wrists of the duct tape. She cried and spoke incoherently, tragedy etched on her face. She shivered with the cold and with the violence,  and paroxsyms shook her body. I gently put her in the Corvette, gave her the fully-loaded Colt in case things didn’t go as planned up on the mesa top, and locked the doors. I started out after Jones. This was gonna be the last time I followed this guy.

 
 

Darkness vied with me to get to the the top of the mesa first. After a minute, I arrived at the top at last, breathing hard, feeling dizzy, wet, exhausted, and freezing, looking all around. Snow was everywhere for miles. Undulating snow covered the rugged, scrawny sage for scores of miles in every direction. The sky by now was a deep blue, the sun just down but still glowing a bit from beneath the distant horizon. Footsteps crunched in the ice off to my left. I saw a dark, familiar figure 2o yards away, standing, strolling, loitering off the road, arms to the side, a gun in one hand, pointed down. The figure stopped and spoke as if an old acquaintance had arrived.

 
 

“Hey…..Downing…..Downing, my friend, tell me something, old pal…..do you know what it’s like to be loved…..?” The heavy silence was broken by his hacking voice, and silence reconvened as he fell into reticence. We stood looking at each other in the quiet murkiness and isolation. I looked at him, he looked at me. Alerted Pronghorn suddenly appeared, ran off, and disappeared into the gathering night. Only we were left. Jones’ voice was tired:

 
 

“Hey!!!…..Downing!!! I’m talking to you, man! Do you know what it’s like to be loved?!!!…..asshole…..” I stood staring at him. He stood staring at me. We were now ten yards distant. He raised the gun slowly at my face.

 
 

“Answer me, asshole! Because I don’t know what it’s like! And I know you’re just like me…..you don’t know either…..” He began to laugh in triumph, rocking his head back, but keeping his eyes on me. His laugh was a bitter, disappointed, joyless sound. He shot at me with the Colt I had lent him. I fired at him with the Sig. We both missed, and he burst into laughter again. He fired yet again, missing yet again. I approached for a closer shot, hobbling and tripping in the snow and sage like a wounded zombie. I held the gun sideways, looking down my extended left arm at him, protecting my face. We fired simultaneously, and we both were hit. I fell with a wound to my side, Jones fell with a wound to his forehead. The sound of the shot cleared. He fell back on his head in the snow, making a final, heavy, padding sound in the snow as he left this life. He was dead. The silence recommenced its long reign. I crawled over and took my gun back from him. I saw the white crystals of snow on the ground change hue as his blood stained them red.
 

All the shooting and all the killing were over. I collapsed down into the snow in the dark to wait for the sheriff. I lay down flat on my back, next to Jones, looking up at the sky as it gave itself to the winter night. A light snow began to fall on my face, melting as it hit the blood on my clothes. The snowflakes floated and drifted down from the darkening ether, as if a curtain was falling on a play. My eyes closed.

 
 

************************************************

 
 

Three months later, I was having lunch at Hal’s with Tom, Lorraine, and Alicia from the law firm in my building. We saw Chelsea and Julie. Both of them gave me a solemn hug, and shook hands with Tom. Their somber faces said it all. Julie spoke first.

 
 

“Joe…..I’m so glad to see you. I wanted to thank you in person for coming to the funeral…..David knew you were the only one who would see it through…..without you, Chelsea wouldn’t be here…..” She hugged her daughter. “That’s why he picked you. I’m so grateful to you.”

 
 

“I wish I could have done more, Julie, I feel like I failed you…..your husband…..was very noble…..” Chelsea hugged me again, burying her face in my tee-shirt, fighting back tears. It was spring again, no need for trench coats now. The mustard plant was making a brilliant, magnificent, yellow splash all over the Southern California hilltops. Johansen was dead and buried. We were alive. His duty was done. Ours was not yet done. We had to march forward and soldier on for him and for all those before him who had given everything to assist the victory of goodness and secure the defeat of malice.

 

THE END

 

Tony Downing

 

Mr. Scary Smart: Part Five

May 18, 2009 

A Joe Downing Mystery

Nota Bene: Thank You to Patrick Sperry, of  the Conservative Libertarian Outpost, for his expertise and advice on nomenclature concerning firearms.

The following is fiction:
 

(caution: extraordinarily strong language)        

 
 

 
 

Part Five: Sweden, Here We Come! or, We Got Waxed  in Vegas!

Me and Johansen got into a fight with some guys practically as soon as we got to Las Vegas. We had just barely checked-in to the brand-new Hotel Cosa Nostra and Casino on the strip. Really nice. It was about 6pm, still Christmas of course, and we had come back down from our rooms and were kicking back in their lizard lounge with a quick beer and burger. We planned to trowl every casino they had, in search of Chelsea. Anyway, a leather-jacketed biker didn’t like the looks of Johansen, who happened to be wearing preppy, cream-colored slacks, reddish penny loafers, and a white, collegiate-looking, long-sleeve dress shirt. His features seemed especially sharp and his hair especially blonde under the soft lighting cascading down from recessed fixtures in the black ceiling. The man accidently on purpose bumped Johansen as the latter held his glass of beer at the bar, and a little beer splashed innocently on the back of the man’s hand as he leaned forward to give his own order.  

 

“What the fuck?!!!” the man demanded of Johansen, and stood back in utter amazement, palms up, arms out in consternation. He turned briefly to plead to the jury, a couple of other bikers at a nearby table, who smiled at him, obviously his companions. As he turned his back momentarily, we could see clearly the rockers on the back of his jacket. The top one proclaimed: Round Hedz, the bottom one: Hayward. So they were from northern California. They weren’t Angels, though. Not that high in rank. Small fiefdom, these guys. Two skulls with wings hectored and glared at each other in the no man’s land between the rockers.  

 

“Can’t you see someone’s standing here, ding-dong?” The biker looked steadily at Johansen.  

 

“I…..I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see you. I apologize.” Johansen nodded nervously, but pleasantly, and moved over some.  

 

“You apologize?! What about my cut?! It’s got your damn beer all over it, man! Look at this!” He appealed once again to the jury of his peers. I got the feeling the view of the back of his jacket was for our benefit. Maybe we hadn’t caught it all in one go.  

 

“I…..I said I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”  

 

“You assure me?” He leaned forward gravely. “You assure me of what? That you wouldn’t screw a skanky-ass whore to save your mama’s life?” The gigling from the backround, which had started as an ambient drone, now could not hold its banks, and spilled out and over into laughter, like the Nile river during its busy time.  

 

“It won’t happen again, sir, I’m sorry,” Johansen stammered, and then concluded, “I don’t know what else to say.”  

 

“Hey, do I look down and out to you?” the biker queried angrily.  

 

“…..no…..” said Johansen defensively, a little nonplussed now.    

 

“Yeah? Well, I know all about guys like you. Guys that would never serve their country.” Johansen, in spite of feeling fear, scoffed a little at this last claim, whereupon the man grabbed that collegiate-looking shirt he was wearing, and shoved him hard, off the bar stool. I tried to pry the two apart, but the man reared back quick and decked Johansen. He then swung at me and missed. I shoved him in turn with both hands hard in the chest, pushing him back a bit.  

 

“Enough, dude!! Get away from us!!” I shouted. He rushed at me to grab my neck, and I grabbed his, too. We reeled and whirled like two drunks locked in battle, locked in stalemate, squeezing each other’s necks for all we were worth, eyes bugging out at each other. Around and around we spun, wordlessly. Finally my foot caught in one of the legs of a barstool, and I lost my balance and fell to the side, hitting my head on the runner of the bar. I ended up on the floor. Drunk with laughter, the others surrounded us. I got up, furious. I commenced raining blows down on the guy’s forearms as he covered up his face against my onslaught. I tried to put more and more height in my punches, to sneak them in from above, over his defenses. He felt it, and adjusted his battlements accordingly. I kept hitting his arms, I kept hitting nothing more than bone. An iron forearm closed anonymously around my neck from behind, and a knee crashed a few times into the small of my back. A fist exploded on the back of my neck, and I think I got one more kick in the rear. I leaned over the bar, dazed. The blows stopped. A voice said, “C’mon, Bob, leave ‘em alone. Let’s go. C’mon…..”  

 

************************************************

 

Back upstairs, as we were licking our wounds, my cell rang. It was Larry Vaughan of the Gorge P.D. He spoke in a friendly, jovial way.

   

“Hey, Joe! Detective Vaughan here of the P.D. How’s it going, man?”

   

“It’s going just absolutely fuckin’ peachy-keen!!! Whaddya think, Larry?!!!”

   

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s all this? Where’s the respect, Joe? Where’s the respect?”
 

“We just got rolled, Larry!! We’re shittin’ bricks over here! Some bikers from Hayward!”
 

“That sucks. The, uh, the Hedz, the Round Hedz?”

   

“Yeah.”

   

“Don’t worry about those boys, Joe, they’re just out for some fun.”

   

“Well, they just got plenty with us, that’s for damn freakin’ sure!…..man!”

   

“Get over it. Listen up — we informed the Vegas P.D. about this Chelsea Johansen gal you’re lookin’ for, and I told ‘em you were in town over their way. Go see ‘em. Check in. Also, this Jones is wanted for sex offenses in D.C. and in New York state. He likes the young ones. FBI is on it, too. This guy put an NYPD uniform in the hospital with a gut wound with a Glock. Almost died.”
 

“Great news, Larry. What would I do without you?…..any leads over your way?”
 

“Well, this Jones has also violated the Mann Act now, if they’re really in Vegas — transporting a minor across state lines. Chelsea’s mother says she’s heavy into computers — so is Jones. This guy is a real Houdini — squirms out of everything. Have you seen ‘em?”

    

“No, not yet. We’re gonna start looking now. We just got here.”

   

“Okay. Good. Keep me in the loop, Downing. Don’t drop the ball again. Mick is counting on you.” I made a face into the phone after hanging up, right there in the hotel room. Neither me nor Johansen was bleeding much, Johansen a little from the nostrils, so we just splashed our faces with a little water from the sink. He came back out into the room.

   

“God! Does that always happen? Is it always like that?” Johansen asked, aghast.

   

“Uh, well, it can be. But, no, we just got a little unlucky. I mean, sometimes, it happens.”

   

“That makes a lot of sense,” Johansen replied. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been hit. At least it’s the first time since that Joey Johnson did in fifth grade, or whatever it was. I guess I done-real-good,” he quipped.
 

“Look, those guys were pretty out-there. They’ve got some chip on their shoulder. Let’s shake it off, there’s no worries.”
 

“I was pathetic, Joe!” He glared at  me. “How am I gonna get my daughter back if I can’t even handle myself with a guy without a gun?” He shook his head in disgust at himself.
 

“You didn’t really do all that bad. You didn’t run out of the bar, you held your ground. You didn’t expect somebody to shove you off the stool, you just weren’t ready.”

   

“Well, I better get ready in a hurry. That was just the minor leagues.”

   

“Let’s get out there now. Get some fresh air. Look for Chelsea. We had a bad first inning, so what? Plenty of game left. And, speaking of guns, you take this little beauty: the Commish, if you will.” I handed him my other 22 LR Colt. He took it out of my hand slowly.

   

“I thought this was lost?” He looked at me, confused.

   

“I got two. Our trenchcoat boy has probably got the other. On the other hand, I’ll use this.” I showed him the 357 Sig a well-to-do client had given me long ago. Johansen appeared as if he felt unworthy so much as to touch it.

   

“Wow…..that’s a double Commish,” Johansen declared, smiling. “I’m glad I’m on your side” was written on his face. The incoming text alert sounded off just then on Johansen’s Blackberry. The text read:

   

Qe4 Qe5

BTW: DJ=Cap Pig   
 

“I guess he means me,” Johansen said. “I’m  a capitalist pig, you know. What’s this other stuff?” Johansen gestured towards the message.

   

“It looks like chess notation. I pointed at it. I guess the creep is saying he’s moving his Queen to the fourth rank of the King’s file.There’s two moves here, though. One for him, one for us.”

   

“What?”

   

“He’s giving us a clue where to find him. He’s playing chess with us.” I stared down at the citation. “He knows we’re in Vegas, since he’s the one who told us that he himself was here, and so now he’s telling us where in Vegas.” The notation implied a game in progress, which was appropriate enough, if you thought about it, since a Queen in chess has got pawns in front of her initially, and she can’t move, she can’t jump over people. The way has to be cleared for her first.

   

“But why would he move precisely the Queen?” I asked Johansen. He stared at me in disbelief. “What’s he mean by that?” I continued.

   

“What Queen?” he snapped. “What are you talking about, Joe?”

   

“Somebody’s the Queen, David. The Queen has moved. Both of them, actually. I assume the other Queen in the text message is ours.” I gestured. “What does he mean? Chelsea, maybe? Is Chelsea the first Queen?” Johansen looked away, then warmed to the task.

   

“Yeah! She is! She is the Queen! She’s moving away from the King, out onto the board! She hates him! She hates his guts!” I glanced around for a chessboard, to no avail. But I glimpsed the bathroom floor. It had small square white tiles, about an inch long on each of the four sides. Dozens and dozens of white squares, a red one every eighth one: perfect. Chessboards are 8×8. Four red squares marked the four corners of our chessboard. I took a napkin that was lying around and tore a few pieces off. We then used the tiles as a chessboard.

   

“Okay, let’s say this is the back row, or ‘rank,’ as they call it. That first rank is represented by the number 1. And let’s say this piece of napkin is the Queen — she starts here, in the fourth column over from the left, or the fourth file, as they call it.”

   

“I don’t know any of this really, I don’t play chess,” Johansen said.

   

“Well, let’s just go with it. So —  the first Queen in the notation on the Blackberry has moved out to the fourth rank, that is, the fourth square out on the board. But she’s on the King’s file, though, on the King’s path, so to speak. That’s the ”e” in the text message, the fifth file over, since “e” is the fifth letter of the alphabet. In other words, she’s moved over to the right one file.” I put a bit of paper out on the fourth rank of the “board,” in the “e” file, to represent her.

   

“So she’s right in line with the King now.” Johansen said.

   

“Yeah, she’s paving the way for him, if he wanted to come out.”

   

“She’s protecting him? No, no…..”

   

“That’s what he’s saying, at least!”

   

“All that? Really?”

   

“Now, the second Queen is ours, I’m assuming, and she’s in the same file as his Queen, one rank away. They’re staring at each other in the middle of the board. Staring each other down.”

   

“Why so far out on the board? Why not keep her closer in?” Johansen asked.

   

“She’s in the middle of the board, that’s right. She’s got more control of the entire board from out there. Maybe the board represents Las Vegas, and the middle of the board represents the middle of town. It’s where you have more power, if you pull it off.”

   

“Could be. He’s saying he’s coming out with her to the center of town, and that we should meet him for a showdown there? And that she has taken his side, since she’s supposedly paving the way for his entrance?”

   

“We’re gonna find out. What’s the center of town?” I asked.

   

“The strip, I would say, Las Vegas Boulevard.”

   

“Okay. At what casino, then, it’s gotta be a casino, I would think.”

   

“Mandalay Bay.” Johansen suggested.

   

“Maybe. Keep going.”

   

“The Egypt one?”
 

“Luxor? Yeah, it’s possible. What else is there?” I persisted in driving him.

   

“The Flamingo…..or the MGM Grand.”

   

“That’s it!!! That’s gotta be it! The MGM Grand! Jones wouldn’t have it any other way than that! He believes himself to be some sort of new type of man, someone who avoids the pitfalls of the past, but he really has a deep desire for tradition. Let’s try the Grand first!”
 

**************************************************

    

Bright, dazzling lights of every imaginable kind twinkled and blinked and went on and off in an incessant display of hue and color. The lights followed one another in mathematical patterns, like dominoes in some elaborate scheme to trick the eyes into an admission of inferiority. Beautiful, gorgeous, absolutely sexy women strolled heedless in the finest, most elegant, most exciting clothes ever designed for the purpose of enslaving men in female pulchritude. It was working pretty well. Music escaped like fugitives from open doorways. Fountains splashed away in reponse. Wandering eyes and glances were the rule, and the two of us were no exception to it, in spite of the task we faced. We tooled towards the MGM Grand in Johansen’s Mercedes.

   

“This place is something else,” Johansen said.

   

“It is definitely a piece of work,” I agreed. We pulled in and parked and started walking. Past hordes of the faithful we walked. Suddenly, Johansen stopped, and he stared straight ahead. He was open-mouthed in astonishment. His face became a canvas written with anguish. The incredulity made him slack-jawed, the vivid evidence before his eyes made his heart break. He stood motionless, gazing, gazing. He looked unblinking, steadily, obsessively, into a picture so very familiar and yet so very unknown, so unanticipated. It was the logical conclusion of a nightmare. He couldn’t look away.

   

I tried to see what he saw. I looked along his line of sight to get a glimpse of that same infinity, that same black hole of nothingness, that his tortured, thousand-yard-stare perceived, and climbed into. I was unable to catch on. It was just a random agglomeration of meandering humanity to me. But finally I suspected what he had seen immediately. Far away, through a thicket of mingling, walking people, two figures did not walk. Two figures leaned against a wall and against each other, flirting, laughing, touching. She, on the one hand, was maybe 5’5″, with bell-bottom jeans and a black leather jacket. She had short blonde hair, and was willowy, energetic, and lithe, a classic Scandanavian beauty. She wore Converse Chucks, and big hoop earrings bobbed about her neck. She carried two bags, both slung over her left shoulder. She was a teenager. It could only be Chelsea Johansen. The very picture of health and loveliness, she was caught in a moment of happiness. The man, on the other hand, was only a little taller, and wore a full-length black trenchcoat, black work shoes, a dark, felt-looking fedora, and black wraparound shades. As he turned his head about, looking at Chelsea, looking at people, one could see a gray ponytail tumbling onto his upper back. He was middle-aged. It was William Jones, none other.

   

His hands were in the pockets of the coat. A smile adorned his grizzled face, and he looked like the past president of the avante garde club. His clothes were somewhat dirty, and were so out of sync with the bright Hawaiian shirts and rayon fabrics of the mid-Westerners, that he elicited a naive look or two from some. He was the very picture of cynical self-absorption. I spoke to Johansen:

   

“All right. We’ve arrived. Let’s play our hand right, it’s Vegas, after all. Let’s approach calmly, so we don’t make them run. At a certain point, they’re gonna see us. Let’s not make them run. First objective: don’t make them run.”

   

“Okay,” he replied mechanically, earnestly.

   

“We’re gonna talk to them. Make them come on in, come home. The game’s over, it’s time to quit. If Jones runs, I’ll go after him, you stay with Chelsea. He’s wanted for everything in the book. You got Chelsea, I got Jones. Okay?”

   

“Yeah.”

   

“Don’t forget your little peacemaker, either…..he’ll make a mistake. He doesn’t like reality.” I looked over at Johansen. He nodded. We started up again, inexorably. First into the light, then into the dark, then back into light. We got ever closer, never wavering as we applied our sight to the vision. About 15 yards away, I saw Jones’ face suddenly go limp. He had seen us. He might not have expected us to pick up on his little chess game. He was clearly surprised. Perhaps they had thought to make merely a token appearance in the middle of the board, to confirm we were too stupid to show. He darted glances around, looking to flee, looking for avenues of escape. People were everywhere. He decided ultimately to hold his ground, have some fun. The joy of combat, that sort of thing. The smile returned to his face. He took his hands from his pockets, took off his fedora, revealing thinning hair, and then took something quickly from the lining of the hat. He grasped the thing, replaced the hat on his head, and put his hands back in his coat pockets.

   

About 5 steps away, 15 feet or so, we stopped our pacing in unison. I was diagonal from Chelsea, Johansen diagonal from Jones. The four of us faced off like chess pieces. Chelsea’s chin darted petulantly, defiantly, sensuously about as she saw her father. She had no reaction to give but that of a teenaged girl. Some Iowans, or whoever, were about to walk in between us and them, so I closed one step towards our quarry. The Iowans politely went around us, wondering what-the-heck. Two versions, two layers of reality swirled and intermingled. It was time to speak:

 

“All right, Jones. Time to quit. Queen to King four, or whatever. Chelsea, it’s time to go back to your family…..” Jones laughed some.

   

“Go die, Downing. Take your pig friend with you. Leave us alone or suffer the consequences.” He smirked all the while, brushing up against Chelsea, as if to grab her if she bolted. She evinced no inclination to do so. His hands rose a bit inside the pockets of the coat, as if getting something into proper alignment.

   

“You didn’t get your promotion at Microsoft, so now you’re taking it out on her?” I asked. He tilted his head back and laughed sadistically, bitterly, knowingly, but not taking his eyes off me or his hands out of his pockets.

   

“What a precious little freak you are, Joey Boy, I didn’t even want that chicken-shit job. Your capitalist pig friend here might want it, though. Just put your application through, accompanied with resume, to Human Resources. We’ll get back to you. Does that sound good, Davy?” Johansen finally managed to speak through the shock of realizing Chelsea had been acting for three weeks, had been lying to him for just as long. He spoke nevertheless in a tone of infinite affection for her:

  

“Chelsea…..honey, come home. Come home to your family. Come home with your father. We love you so much, darling, your mother is so worried she’s about to die of heartbreak. Chelsea, sweetheart, leave this man, and come home to us. Come home to where you belong. Please, Chelsea.” He started towards his daughter.

   

“Get away from me, you asshole!!! You’re not my father!!! You little lying, chicken-shit motherfucker!!! Fuck off and leave me alone!!! I hate you!!!” The horror written just then on Johansen’s face is simply not describable in words. The Roman Empire wouldn’t have been enough. His face blanched, his shoulders slumped, his entire frame was about to buckle under the stress of so much at once. Everything he lived for had been taken from him in one moment. He stared blankly, not believing, not feeling, too numb to function. Jones laughed in triumph, an ill, sickly sound.

   

“You heard it, boys, now fuck off. Let’s do dinner sometime, Joe Baby, but get lost at the present time. Scram, asshole.” It was my turn now to cross the Rubicon. We weren’t gonna budge.

   

“You know, Kid Dropper, you’re gonna play one too many games of chess. Just quit now while there’s time. Give it up. The Bureau has got a file on you even fatter than you are. There’s nowhere to go. Give it up.” A dark rage seeped into Jones’ face from within at being called that name. It was as if he was suddenly possessed. A threatening, hideous aspect came over his features. His love of resentment was out in all its glory. People glanced over at the spectacle of a rabid, motley, sick dog. From behind his shades you could sense his yellow, sickening eyes. The colored lights of the square shone on the lenses of the shades, and his mouth formed into a grimace. The nightmare had developed further.

   

“Downing, pile of shit, that is, you’re gonna end up dead with a pick-axe sticking out of your head. And this guy here is gonna end up like that yapping dog. I’ll do the same thing to him. Leave me alone, idiot. Just refer to me as: ‘Above It All Demolition and Deconstruction.’ Better stay out of range, little boy…..asshole.” I responded thus, pawn takes pawn, so to speak:

   

“Did you know that, Chelsea? Your dog is dead. Spark is dead because of this guy. He killed him. He broke Spark’s spine with that club, or whatever it was. Your dog died trying to protect you from this thing. Did you know that? He broke Spark’s spine.”

   

“Who the fuck are you, creep? I don’t know you! Fuck off!” Johansen then said:

   

“Chelsea…..this man is evil. He killed Spark, and he’ll kill you, too, when he’s had enough…..do you remember, you got Spark when you were just twelve, Chelsea, remember all the fun we had, chasing each other around? Remember how Spark would pretend he was real mad, and pat his paws on the lawn? Remember how he loved to make us laugh? Remember how he loved our attention? This guy here killed Spark! For no reason! He’ll kill you, too! Chelsea–”

   

“That’s not true! It’s not true!!! Spark’s not dead, you piece of shit! He just pushed him out of the way! Spark is alive!” At this point, Jones had only one possible response to a situation no longer under his control. He slowly and steadily pulled my Colt out of his jacket and fired at my core, hitting me twice. The crowd scattered in panic, shrieking. A knife appeared in Jones’ other hand. I got out the Sig almost simultaneous and caught him in the shoulder, knocking him down, stumbling, and turning on his ankles. From the ground, propped up, he shot at Johansen and put two rounds into him, too. We both rocked back, reeling under the barrage of shots. Jones got up, grabbed Chelsea by the arm, and fled desperately through the terrified crowd, which parted in fear as they went through. It was just like the night before on the slope at the Johansen place: they had disappeared into the night. But Chelsea looked down at her father this time. She looked down at the man who had paid for that Versace bag and the gold jewelry, the haute couture hair-style, and even the Converse Chucks with the rainbow laces. The man who had brought a small puppy named Spark home to a twelve-year-old preteen girl. She looked down at her father, David William Johansen, and a look of dismay and regret came over her face.
 

Me and Johansen staggered off to avoid the cops, too weak to pursue Jones, trying to hold our blood in. We reached the Mercedes and finally the hotel, and snuck up to our rooms. Sorry, Vaughan, we never did check-in with the Vegas P.D. We had to get these plugs out, get sewn up, and then get out of town. We were gonna track Chelsea and Jones some more, after the next chess clue, for surely there would be one with this guy. His ego had to be burning right about now.

   

“How long is this gonna go on?” Johansen asked.

   

“Until somebody’s dead,” I replied.

   

…..to be continued…..

   

Tony Downing

The 3 Strangest Things Ever Seen at a Rock Concert

 
 February 20, 2009  

 In descending order:

(3) The Jesus and Mary Chain, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California, about 1985: the world’s shortest concert.   The lads from Scotland came out on stage in their best alienation-look: dark clothing, hair covering their eyes, heads down. They positively exuded “how does it feel?” Obviously, with attitude like that to burn, they were hot-as-a-pistol with the avante garde set. They began to play. Then they stopped (after about twenty seconds). They got together in a huddle. No explanation to us, three or four thousand new fans.  

 

They got back into position, and restarted. Restarted a different song, that is. Forget that first one, apparently. They would play a song at most for about a minute before it broke down, then they’d go into huddle, remerge, and play a different song. This happened several times. The last time, however, they were in the instrumental part of a song, when the singer, leaning on the microphone stand, started to lean not merely forward, but also started listing to his right: slowly, slowly, slowly, down to the sea in ships, he got more and more diagonal, until finally he just collapsed outright on the stage in a heap.  

 

The song stopped, and his mates pulled him up, groggy, off the floor; they proceeded to consult with him about his high-protein diet, and then they all just walked off the stage. Without a word. House lights: On. Explanation: None. Elapsed time of “concert:” about 12 minutes, maybe? Refund: Dream on. That was it, I’m not kidding. Go home.  

 

(2) The Rolling Stones, at then-Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim, California, about mid-80′s.   I was with a friend along the first-base line, and the stage was in center field. Mick and the boys in the band were rockin’ out, in fine feather, but every so often a lone shoe would sail from the crowd up to the stage. Curious…..Some of the shoes fell short, mere pretenders to the throne, and some sailed over the Stones’ heads to the back. This went on for several songs, one or two shoes per minute. After about ten to twenty shoes had been thrown at him, a miffed Jagger, in between songs, says into the microphone, leaning forward to better school us, “All right, I want all your shoes!” He pointed down at the stage as he said this. Now, it could be stated at this point that the crowd complied with the order. Chaos descends! The heavens roll! The tragedy begins! Thundering hordes of shoes start zipping up onto the stage, end-over-end, sideways, it didn’t matter, the crowd had responded with a criminal vengeance. It was like a buffalo stampede through the air.  

 

Hundreds of motley shoes, spinning furiously, went flying through the sky towards the stage, the band members ducking for all they were worth, Mick and Keith included. And then finally, under the sustained onslaught, the Stones relinquished the stage all together. They ducked their heads ignominiously and scurried like ninnies as they hurried off. Shoes were making it to the stage from incredible distances, seemingly from the infield area all the way to center field. And yet still it did not stop. On and on it went, sorties into the night. The Stones counterattacked, but to no avail! They were outflanked! The shoes were launched like rockets, shooting up fiercely out of their tall, narrow silos, on their way to annihilate the enemy, The Rolling Stones.  

 

The stage was soon covered with shoes. It was three or four deep. A rummage sale. Roadies had to start clearing it, and even they had to duck. They were allies of the dread opposition, they were the hired help! The Stones were off-stage for a full ten minutes, while the music lovers savored their unequivocal, unembarrassed, ultimate victory over The Rolling Stones, The Greatest Rock Band in the World. The Stones came back and behaved themselves.  

 

(1) Johnny Rotten, at the Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood CA, about 1987. This was a punk-rock reunion concert, and Rotten was no longer a Sex Pistol full-time. He was quite the composer, too, with all sorts of intellectual stuff. Not a good idea. This was a hard-core punk audience, and they had no use for fancy stuff. He came out playing this new stuff. There were some boos in the front of the pack, on the ballroom floor. But he kept on playing his newer stuff, ignoring the old Sex Pistols songs.

 

And then suddenly an arm whipped forward like a baseball pitcher’s. Something zoomed by. A missile of some sort. It came from about ten feet back. Wham! A huge, sloppy tomato smacked square into J. Rotten’s face. His face was gloriously soaked with tomato puree. Totally covered, dripping, it was a shot from hell, a career shot, a magnificent display of marksmanship! Johnny stopped dead. Motionless and speechless with rage. He couldn’t react, he couldn’t begin to react. For a full 7-8 seconds he didn’t budge an inch or move a muscle, there was just an ugly grimace emanating from his pasty face, eerily illuminated under the lights. He stalked off the stage, his back bowed with anger. The musicians followed apace.  
 

They were gone for several minutes, and we all thought we were done. “He’s fed up with us now, we really did it this time!” We hung around a little, though. You never know. Some buffoon spilled beer on my arm. I wiped it off on him. Only fair. We lingered around, musing, laughing. Then Johnny and the boys come back! At that point we witnessed a sight that no mortal heretofore can claim to have seen: Johnny Rotten, sheepish. He was downright apologetic. His manner was fully remorseful at playing the intellectual stuff. He had seen the error of his ways.

 

I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it. It was a bit disillusioning to see Johnny Rotten unsure of himself. Are there no verities? The King of Brash? He then said into the mike to the crowd that he’d play the old stuff, and when the band did so a second later, the punks erupted with happiness and exploded into mayhem all around. Paradise regained, the mosh pit unbound.  

 

Tony Downing