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 movie gives us an ultimately sad portrait of the Hollywood lifestyle, in spite of the fun of the hanky-panky, 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, looks into the death Reeves. While the official story called it a suicide, certain irregularities, however, have been unearthed by Simo and lead him to the conclusion it was murder. He encounters considerable resistance for this conclusion along the way, thereby sparking our suspicions, from the LAPD and the studio executives. 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 tough, 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 stubble sharp-dressing rogue-charmer with a heart of gold. Brody pulls it off perfectly, and captures the imagination. Ben Affleck, similarly, captures the imagination 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 nails it. His portrait is plausible and at ease, a portrait of a public figure sharing the same profession.

Diane Lane plays September in her May-September romance with Reeves. She provides a perfect depiction of the insecurity and pain of loving someone completely who unfortunately doesn’t feel quite as passionate in return. Lane hits the perfect note of jealousy and the horror of romantic abandonment. 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 — Reeves understands she’s making another point all together: she’s too young for you, come back to me. If Reeves so much as talks casually to another woman, Lane etches the 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. Weaving through the plot periodically, in moody, atmospheric scenes, the organizing leitmotif wends its way: Simo runs through in his mind the various possibilities as to the manner of Reeves’ death, and at the end 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 bizarre revenge for Reeves’ having left Diane Lane’s character.

Quite often, mystery stories end with the male detective disillusioned, roughed-up, and angry at having been played by his female client. That happens here, too. Simo believed goodness existed in the world outside, and that with courage and determination, he could humbly assist its victory in his own way. Not to be. Goodness can only be found in oneself, by moral reformation. Don’t go looking for it outside in the world, ready-made. Simo comes to this conclusion through suffering, and has become a 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 lived up to the responsibilities of manhood. He finally regains innocence through these insights into himself and the world. In this regard, this movie is a bit like The Hustler, wherein Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) finds grim redemption in 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.

October 16, 2009

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The Lost One

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LAST NIGHT I WAS CROSSING CRENSHAW BOULEVARD on foot to go back to Ralph’s from the bank ATM for some ice cream. A little boy, about four years old, totally and incongruously alone, was hopelessly distraught on the other side of Crenshaw, standing on the sidewalk close to the street. He looked about ready to run right into the ferocious, unyielding traffic. He was yelling continuously and incomprehensibly in a loud, guttural outpouring of anguish, made all the more poignant by the ghoulish lighting of the street lamps. I thought he had lost his mother, but it turned out to be his father. It was just plain bizarre to see so young a child alone like that in so dangerous a place.

I jogged across the crosswalk when I had the green to get to him before he did something rash. It was a spacious, well-lighted area up on the sidewalk, safe enough if you stay put, but I’ve never felt someone as dependent on me in my life as I did in that moment. One felt as though any second he would be dead. He looked in every direction as if ready to start running. I arrived and asked him if he had lost his mother. He nodded “yes” and kept up the outpouring.

“It’s okay,” I said, “we’ll find her.”

“Okay,” he said, but didn’t quiet down; he kept up that unceasing, heart-rending wail. He held a cup of forgotten ice cream in one hand, and the white stuff was all over his face.

“Is she in there?” I pointed down at Ralph’s, fifty yards away. He responded with a long, tortured syllable, shaking his head and pointing the other direction up Crenshaw, saying “he” was over there. There were houses up there, to be sure, but the access to them wasn’t. Maybe he was trying to get rid of me with a red herring. But maybe not: it could just be the direction in general where they lived. I looked through the darkness in the direction he pointed, but only saw a woman on the other side that waited to cross towards us. It wasn’t the likeliest chance that she was the mother, since she was of another race than the boy.

I was trying to think fast about how to reunite him with his father. I looked all around. The boy never stopped the incredible, inconsolable caterwaul. In the midst of all this, I looked down the wide, sloping sidewalk along Crenshaw leading back to Ralph’s. Suddenly, and thankfully, a man and a young girl emerged past the thick green hedge parallel with Crenshaw and which lined the parking lot. They were about fifty yards away. They were laden with those white plastic grocery bags. I felt it was a match, like Coriolanus.

“There he is!” I said to the boy. He shot a look in the direction I was pointing, turned silent for a moment, then recognized his dad and older sister. He ran weeping and yelling in a scolding tone towards the advancing figures. He didn’t drop the ice cream. The woman in the crosswalk had arrived by then, and she was as unnerved as I was.

“I thought he was going to run into the street,” she said to me, astonished at the whole thing.

“I know, I thought he was gonna have a heart attack,” I responded. I was a bit shaken up by the experience. It had taken less than a minute, but it was heartbreaking to see a child so unhinged and vulnerable as to be scared out of his mind, seemingly on the verge of suicide. Fortunately he hadn’t run into traffic to get away from me. I could only take a deep breath with the woman, both of us shaking our heads in disbelief, half-nervous, half-chuckling.

Afterwards, I felt sure I had had a significant experience. I felt I knew clearly what really mattered in life, and that I had inadvertently found myself – this is what’s important to me, so this is who I am. Who’s to say I was wrong about that? In the end, I just went to Ralph’s and got the ice cream I had been angling for. Then I jotted this down.

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October 10, 2009
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A LOT OF HOT AIR? The sidebar reads: “Bomb kills 49 in Pakistani market,” while the big color photo shot through the window of the Oval Office shows Obama on the phone smiling broadly. This is the front page of today’s L.A. Times here in La La Land. But what could better exemplify the cluelessness of the Scandinavian Nobel Committee and of Obama’s foreign policy than this above-the-fold juxtaposition?
 

Obama’s “post-American-world” foreign policy, along with his apology tour and the misguided Cairo speech about Islam, all evince in the mind the image of a man who has little contact with the world’s reality. The world is far more dangerous, violent, incorrigible, and totalitarian than he is willing to admit, and his A-mea-rica culpa philosophy will help those renegade forces. I feel apprehension about a global shift in power during his administration, much as we saw take place during the administration of Jimmy Carter.

The Nobel Committee (not a group of people known for detailed contact with reality, mind you) has done something cheap and irresponsible in awarding the Peace Prize to someone for what he merely intends to do, or for what the Committee would wish him to do, as if the prize were a bribe for future services rendered. (Jean-Paul Sartre won the Nobel for Literature in the sixties, but refused to accept lest he be compromised in his future work.)

Well…..it’s obvious that the Peace Prize is now completely motivated by a political agenda, and that the Committee has given a tawdry, discredited patina to their own once-magnificent prize. First they give it to Rigoberta Menchu, a clear fraud who made things up, and now they give it to a man simply because they want him to grow into it, to deserve it in the future. I think the Land of the Midnight Sun needs to start wearing a hat.

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October 3, 2009

I wrote this a few years ago:

Comes the sunset of my soul,

With heavy gloom and heavy toll.

I plow my share in rage,

My unfeeling heart think not to gauge.

My sandy footsteps are effaced by the tide,

Just as time imperils vanity and pride.

Can I ply my oars with unlamenting will,

Or is invincible resentment never to be still?

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.

September 29, 2009  

A Joe Downing Mystery
 

The following is fiction:  

PART THREE: I STOPPED IN FOR SOME LUNCH AT HAL’S 24/7 BURGER TEEPEE IN SOUTH PASADENA AFTER THE MEETING
WITH MRS. B. I looked around as I entered into the icy air. This Hal’s was nicer than the one in Rancho Verde — more neon, more shiny stuff, more babes. The sound of plates clinking importantly and silverware tinkling merrily filled the whole busy, hurrying place. Young men and ladies in yellow or white long-sleeve dress shirts continually whisked plates laden with hot food off the raised counter under the heat lamps, taking them to their ultimate destination and ultimate fate of your table and your big pie-hole. The front window of the place boasted an “A” grade from the County Coroner as you came in (whoops! I meant to say the County Health Department, sorry…..).  

Good to know the place was clean, though, all kidding aside. A long, straight, pristine white counter for the single people ran longitudinal to the main axis and then took a ninety-degree turn, whereupon it crashed neatly into the wall. I sat down there so I could lean back lazily and look out onto California Boulevard. (I’m so enthralled with traffic continuously going by, you see.) I ordered a bowl of chili and lemonade from Uma Thurman and sat back and waited.  

Presently an older black man appeared, but not quite like the black man who was the witness in The Great Gatsby, however, and he was slowly making his labored way through the two sets of double doors. He was clearly a regular (what a sharp eye!), and was picking up some take-out stuff, like burgers and onion rings. Gwyneth Paltrow was cheerfully taking his order for a free cup of coffee while he waited.

This gave me a chance to see him: he was gray and wizened, but perhaps not unlike like a sturdy, battered, hollowed-out old oak tree refusing, steadfast in the drear wood, to surrender to the depredations of Father Time. He wore a dusty, grimy, sable-colored old Stetson rather jauntily, having it pushed back, Clark-Gable-in-The-Misfits-style, upon his white hair. He sported a full grayish-whitish curly beard, stark and low against his smooth dark skin, making him appear like a Greek god about to reach yet again for a thunderbolt or two to hurl down at the mortals on the Peloponnesus. Long navy-blue pants of the Dickies type covered his legs, and these were complemented nicely with rugged black work boots and white socks.  

Furthermore, his dark green, opened, waist-length nylon jacket partially covered a soiled, brown-and-white checkered flannel shirt, which was itself opened to about the fifth button, just above his navel, and which consequently formed an unfortunate big “V” across his hairless, flat chest. One noticed that he was extraordinarily cheerful. Amiability oozed from him like molasses from a Maple tree in Canada…..or something. He had a life-loving, melodious voice, and he used it to spread goodwill to all. Then he noticed me.  

“I ain’t seen y’all here befo’ — I’m Lester. Good to meet ya, sir.” We shook hands melodramatically as he sat down on one of the swiveling seats. Racial goodwill and all that.  

“I’m Joe. Yeah, I’m not here too much…..first time actually.”  

“Is that right? First time?…..well then, Joe, welcome to Hal’s. Whatcha gonna have?”  

“I ordered some chili. Then I gotta get back to work.”  

“I understand that only too well, young man,” Les chuckled in a friendly, ironic way, and looked down at his cup of coffee. People came in and went out all around us, paying at the cash register, going to the restroom behind us to the right, leaving through the double doors out into the brilliant light and torrid heat of South Pasadena. A dry whoosh of hot air (hopefully it wasn’t from me) hit us whenever the doors opened. Stylish white people mostly, not dressed up exactly, but very California Casual and blinged-out. Quite a curious contrast to the family atmosphere of the Hal’s in Rancho. I continued:  

“Yeah, I gotta get back to the grind in a minute: Macarthur Park.”  

“That killing?”  

“Exactly. Making sure it’s all done right, above board.” Ms. Thurman arrived with my chili and set it down, then refilled my lemonade.  

“Would you like a taste?” I asked Les.  

“Nooo, thank you, sir, I got burgers coming.” After a pause, I said:  

“Guess it was the Diablos.”  

“Yeah, Joe, I guess it was, too. I’m with that.”  

“Some kind of turf war with Saliciamon, I bet.”  

“Yeah, yeah, that would be my thinking.”  

“67 stab wounds, must’ve been crowded.”  

“Yep, musta been.”  

“And the guy was strangled, too — why would you strangle a dead body? Unless that came first and went wrong, so that a bunch of ‘em had to gang up on him and go at him like piranha. So it was probably pretty messy.”  

“That’s good thinking,” Les averred, then turned in his seat towards me and went on, “Yeah, maybe the guy gets on top of the strangling, and got the guy what was sticking him. Maybe wounded him. Man got back what he was giving out.”  

“Yeah…..that’s my hunch…..” I replied, then added, musing, “but I thought they were in cahoots, the Diablos and Saliciamon.”  

“Not no more. They was. It’s the distribution — the Diablos done it a long time, but now Salicia do it themselves — got the soldiers up from Guatemala. No need for no Diablos no more: big trouble.” Les nodded grimly.  

“Gotcha…..but I wonder now where I can meet this Pancho Rodriguez cat?”  

“Not in the park. And he ain’t went to the killing, neither. Never do go. Try Pico/Union. But watch yourself, boss, he’s a live wire, a real live wire. Be very, very precautious.”  

“Thanks, Les, I will. I appreciate your take on all this.”  

“Forget it, man.” I offered to pay for both our lunches, but Les declined and offered to pay for mine instead. In the end, after some awkward and uncomfortable racial jockeying, we both just paid for our own. Fictitious moral redemption was not to have its say this day. I then made my way over to the address Mrs. B. had given me for Ingrid. I decided I would save Pancho for later — I didn’t have my gun.  

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 WELL, SOUTH PASADENA MY FOOT. The address that Mrs. B. had given me was in downtown L.A. in some high-rise crapshoot of a building. It was dingy, to say the least, and tall. It was residential, to be sure, but it looked like an industrial animal. Not very inviting, not very savory. Drug dudes loitered and lurked around the front of the entrance, looking like death-warmed-over. They avoided eye-contact, as if not knowing you were there, yet still managed to be threatening. The still heat did not dissuade them from wearing coats. The park was nearby, too, how very convenient.

A sleek new black BMW was parked at the curb, shiny in the sun to the point of eye-pain. A bumper sticker on it read: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, we will all know peace.” I remembered then that the Dalai Lama meditates six hours a day: goodness gracious, six!

I entered the eye-sore, and walked over to the directory to confirm that Ingrid lived there on the fourth floor. She did indeed. I approached the elevator to go up, since I couldn’t find any stairs. The small lobby was like something out of a pretentious whiteboy art movie, pretending to be street-smart: very self-conscious, cool tackiness. A glowering, tall man then came over to me like he wanted to tear me limb from limb. He was dressed in a dirty white tee and old trousers, not jeans like me. He had work shoes on his large feet, dirty white socks easily showing. Flood pants, basically.

“You here for someone?!” he said, as if to kill the intruder.

“Yeah, I’m paying a visit on the fourth floor.”

“I’ll just bet you are, buddy. Wait a minute!…..” he said sternly, as if I had made a sudden move to kill him, whereupon he walked over and looked up at the top seam of the elevator door and shaft, as if he could see through into the dark, cool emptiness there. He pushed the button precisely, like he was invoking some secret knock, to summon the ancient old conveyance.

“Gladys!!!” he yelled in through the crack in the elevator doors, “Are you up there?!” He fell silent and motionless and listened to the fascinating interior of the elevator shaft. No sound forthcoming. Then another loud sally to Gladys, but again to no avail. He was just about to assay a third go, when I stopped him by glancing around and asking,

“Are there any stairs?” He responded to me by pointing irritably at the corner of the lobby, around the corner. I saw for the first time that stairs were there. He surely felt defeated that the elevator hadn’t worked — he slumped, and watched me as I departed. Possibly he had done some maintenance, but it hadn’t taken.

I exited the stairs on the fourth floor, emerging into a hallway through a creaking door: dark, shadowy interior scene. I walked down the carpeted hallway, ancient with smells from before the war. (Any war, just name one.) I soon stood before a smoky brown door, number 444, Ingrid’s. It was about 1:00pm by now. No sounds from within, but I knocked intrepidly, nevertheless. No response. Big surprise there. Druggies aren’t known for jumping up to get the door unless it’s healthy time from the poppy fields of Asia.

I knocked again, not so intrepidly this time, and waited in the silence of the moist, dark, Gothic hallway of the old building. Finally something shuffled forward. Was it a dog? After about a century, there was some fumbling with the doorknob. I felt half-inclined to help from outside. Was she retarded? (Sorry…..that’s just anger talking. Won’t happen again. But wait to see how I get my comeuppance in a minute!) The deadbolt turned, the door opened, sticking, and then the chain jangled taut. A sleepy face peered out at me. I could discern enough to figure out who it was.

A tawdry, yet magnificently beautiful young woman was slouched before me. She had short and chic black hair covering her pale forehead, and shapely ears tilting out elegantly from within her unruly locks. She had sharp features. She wore faded jeans with holes in the knees, dirty pink socks without shoes, and a tight, filthy white top exposing her waist. She looked up at me, bored to death. Then she looked down, chagrined, as if to say “how long is this gonna take?” And then she looked up again, and spoke first.

“Are you ‘Mr. Downing?’” she asked, emphasizing my name sarcastically. I nodded courteously and added,

“Yes, Ingrid, I am.”

“Yes, Ingrid, I am,” she repeated instantly, even more in-your-face. She made a grimace at me, then went on: “Well, yeah, my fuckin’ mother told me you were coming, but why don’t you just do me the favor of just fucking off instead, you little bitch? Huh?! Why doncha? You little fuckin’ wussified, emasculated, neutered, cuckolded little fuckin’ idiot! Huh?! Are you listening, motherfucker? Do thine eyes see?! Just go away, asshole! You bourgeois oppressor of the proletariat! You tiny fuckin’ imperialistic Nazi motherfucker! You neo-fascist Hitler moron! You Nazi motherfucker — go away!!!” She stared bullets at me like a cornered animal. She leaned forward menacingly. There was a pause as she fell into a sullen silence. The potential tenor of my inevitable response hung in the air. Well, I guess, in retrospect, I can now say I was somewhat taken aback: I had really expected that charming Hawaii thing with the lei.

But beyond all doubt, this girl was simply a comedy show. First of all, she looked so coked-out as to be incapable of lifting those proverbial two stamps. I think a new-born kitten could have won a Smack-Down against her. Her pallor was white and wan, a sickly hue that could come only from a long period of ill health. Her sharp nostrils, sculpted originally out of beautiful white marble, were now red and irritated, and looked likely to bust out into pus at any moment, so scintillatingly and painfully abused they were. Her voice was a bit hoarse and strained, but still musical like her mother and sister’s.

Her long elegant arms were slender to the point of evincing in the mind the image of toothpicks. Her feminine hands shook violently with longing for her white medicine and perspiration glistened on her delicate forehead. She finally let me into the place in a resigned way, and shuffled over to a tatterdemalion couch and collapsed tiredly. Her knees bobbed up and down ceaselessly as she sat, her hands all the while moving up and down the length of her jeans nervously, even desperately. Her nails were spotted, shattered, and brittle, her hair dull and a little frizzy. She threw her head back to breathe, closing her eyes. She was the very picture of degradation and sickness.

After the initial shock, though, I could hear a brave noise wandering within her voice, a misguided, ludicrous posturing somehow suggesting indirectly a just-discernable and forgotten sincerity underneath the hypocrisy and the F-bombs. “Make life mean something to me,” the tea-leaves in her tone implored. I could see she was Aly’s sister, too: a demonic determination exuded from her every pore. But she was obviously destroying herself, and one took no joy in that. Mrs. Biddleman was right to be worried, but what had taken her so long to act? Her daughter, Ingrid Maureen Biddleman, was on the edge of obliteration.

“So, Ingrid, how long have you known Pancho?” I asked, as I sat down on an upright chair across from her.

“About a year, not that it’s any of your business, asshole.”

“Oh, yeah!!!” I shouted, “I think I could do without any more abuse, little girl, so wise-up, would ya, dumb female!!!” I glared at her. She was somewhat admonished, she knew I had a point. A family picture was in a nice frame on the pine bookcase against the greasy wall. It showed Ingrid, Aly, Mrs. B. and a man, probably the father, Phineas, all standing together and smiling broadly. Phineas had a yarmulke on his head and a prayer shawl on his shoulders. A Menorah was in the background.

“If you’re so smart, why are you addicted to that stuff?” I gestured at the personal stash she had on the low, unpretentious coffee-table. “Your mother can’t stand it that you’re on it,” I added.

“I don’t care what that thief thinks, she can go to hell. I’ve got Pancho, and that’s all I need. I love him. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Downing.”

“Did Pancho order the murder of Gomez?”

“No! Of course not! He’s not a murderer, he’s a proletarian entrepreneur, not a capitalist business man thug. He brings justice to the people, not mayhem. But did you order the murder of Gomez?”

“Yeah, I did, I just picked up the phone and said, ‘giddy up!’”

“That’s it, Murderer! Get him! Get him! Hey everybody, I caught him!!!”

“Why did you say your mother was a thief?”

“Because she is. That bitch skims 20k a year from the endowment.”

“What endowment?”

“My father,” she pointed at the picture in the bookcase, “Phineas Biddleman, founded the Pasadena Old Heritage Museum in the sixties. It now has an annual endowment of $4 million. Mostly from the John Jakob Jones Living Trust. My mother has been skimming her 20k for years. To make ends meet, she says.”

“Does your father know?”

“He’s got Alzheimer’s, dude. He can’t tie his fuckin’ shoe.”

“You were once a close family,” I said, motioning to the picture, “what happened?”

“Mind your own business, dude! What are you here for, anyway? Are you a chaperone, baby? Mind your own business!”

“Your mother thinks Pancho is in on the murder in the park, and wants me to find out. That’s why I’m here. The rest is up to you and your family.”

“Oh, boy, isn’t that touching! She wants Pancho gone for my sake! What maternal care! What familial bliss! But Pancho cares far
more about me than she does! He’s the best thing to ever happen to me! She, on the other hand, is full of shit! Pancho bought me a Beamer! How’s that?!”

“Isn’t that a capitalist pig car?” I joked.

“No!…..it’s a…..it’s a…..it’s a ‘People’s Justice’ car!”

“Oh, I see. But let’s do move on, nevertheless. Do you see any of that 20k mom skims?”

“What?” her voice cracked nervously, her manner a pretense of being appalled. She sat up straight on the lumpy couch, staring at me, astonished. Her hands spread out on the couch like a sprinter’s on the track in the 100 meter final.

“How much do you take?” I persisted.

“What!!!” she shrieked, ”What are you saying, mister?!”

“I’m saying $4 million is a lot of white snow off the top of Mount Baldy. How much do you get, if your mother gets 20k?” She was at a loss as to how to respond. She looked around the apartment, one resplendent with dirty dishes piled up in the sink of the small kitchen, a mottled cat sleeping curled-up in an old easy chair of the same color, stupid “people’s justice” slogans written by hand high on the wall:

“When they kick in your front door, how you gonna go? Shot down on the pavement, or waiting on death row?”

(That’s The Clash, I believe.) Meanwhile, Ingrid squirmed uncomfortably. She glanced enviously at the cat. Lying didn’t sit well with her.

“Nothing! I get nothing! I mean, just….just a little…..like her…..how did you know that, anyway?”

“How much does Pancho get?”

“Oh, now, wait just a damn fuckin’ minute, mister! Where you going with this? Are you some lawyer creep?”

“How much does Pancho get?” I asked again, deadpan.

“What?” she asked, irrelevantly, a little scared.

“Pancho. How much?”

“He…..he gets some…..” she said, looking around for solace. After a pause she then blurted out: “He gets more than us. He sort of gets Reggie to do it for him.”

“Who’s Reggie?”

“Reggie Colombo, the curator of the museum. Pancho has him siphon off the funds from the endowment.”

“I’ll have to talk to him at the museum. So how does the war between the Diablos and Saliciamon come into all this?”

“I don’t know, who says it does?”

“I dunno, I guess I do. Did Saliciamon find out about the endowment skimming, and want in on it, too? Just like Pancho found out about it?”

“Now how in the blue fuck did you know that, dude?! Is there anything you don’t fuckin’ know? God!!!”

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

The meeting drew to a close after more revelations, mostly not very enlightening. Ingrid had to go out somewhere, so we went down together. She briefly disappeared into the bedroom, then re-emerged wearing some orange, hideous hat.

“I guess you couldn’t find your hat,” I kidded her, “but what is that thing on your head, a pair of old socks?” She stopped to stare, incredulous at my rudeness.

“Very funny! How timely! But what’s that in your pants, a Kool-Aid push-up Popsicle? Oh, yummy! I know you’re glad to see me, dude, but chill.” We exited the apartment out into the hall, which was unaccountably still there. I moved over to the stairs. She looked at me quizzically.

“There’s an elevator.” She motioned at the thing.

“It’s not working. The Commish tried to get it to work, but it wouldn’t,” I said, and she laughed.

“He’s a blithering idiot. Didn’t you see that, Downing? It works perfectly well. Everybody knows it but him. It’s just the contacts in the switch downstairs on the lobby level. Up here it works fine — the switch is intact. Watch.” Ingrid summoned the elevator, and soon here it was. It worked perfectly, she was absolutely right. Then outside, on the sidewalk, there was an awkward moment between us. We were parting allies, I think, she had cooperated, but there was indecision in the air. Just then an old, rattling, yellow car heaved by. It looked just about to die on the spot. It was a ramshackle relic of another era. I grimaced playfully at it as it passed and laughed. I made the following observation:

“It’s okay to have an old car — no problem,” I said, smiling a bit and gesturing significantly, “but just don’t have a yellow old car.” Ingrid threw her head back and laughed fully, a beautiful sound emanating from that beautiful neck. You had to be there. Next stop: Pancho.

…..to be continued…..

September 16, 2009

That’s what the headline said on the cover of Sports Illustrated long ago, back in the days of John Wooden and Sidney Wicks on the basketball team. I was probably still a preteen, and I worshipped athletes, so of course I had my little subscription to the magazine. I loved UCLA basketball.

But I didn’t know what “unprecedented” meant. My dad was in the garage, one particular Saturday morning when the issue in question arrived, so I went over to him with the magazine and showed him the cover. “What does that mean?” I asked, pointing at the obstreperous but fascinating word. (It better be something good, if they know what’s good for them, since they were talking about UCLA basketball.)

His eyes lit up with rapture that I would want to know, that I was clearly interested in words even at a young age. I can still see him standing there, delighted, from 40 years ago. “It means it’s never happened before, that it’s the first time,” he answered, leaning forward over me in anticipation of my reaction. I looked silently at the magazine cover (with that deadpan, unself-conscious concentration only children have), which showed Sidney Wicks holding a basketball and smiling pleasantly, as if inviting one into that cover for a little game of Roundball. He was the very picture of youth and health. I didn’t say too much, but I understood for the moment that the word was something good. But I was too young to confirm or deny the mysterious word or the mysterious answer that went with it.

I walked away, satisfied, without saying thank you, glad to have a father who could clear up the various mysteries of childhood dilemmas. I think we watched the UCLA game together later on T.V. We both loved to see our guys annihilate those poor Big Ten teams.

August 31, 2009        

A Joe Downing Mystery 
 
 

The following is fiction:

Synopsis: In Part One, Joe had a dream in which he was easily manipulated by a stranger into hurting a nine-year old child. Joe was relieved to realize it was only a dream, but now he unconsciously doubts his own moral strength.  

The steets were dark with something more than night.

– Raymond Chandler

Part Two:

I HAD TO GO TO PASADENA FOR AN OLD WHACK-JOB. She was pretty decent in the end, though, and pretty smart, too. I awoke unshaven and grungy: no surprise there — it’s called being a bachelor, folks. I was just on my way to the shower, hands laden with soap, shampoo, comb, mirror, shaving cream, razor, and towel, when the landline rang in the office. With all that stuff, I was handcuffed comically as I tried to turn the knob to go back in: to no avail. I couldn’t mange anything except to let the soap and mirror and razor fall from one hand with a nice plop onto the dark, florid carpeting of the hallway. A really white, soapy, liquid, oozing mess ensued thereupon.  

“Is that how you treat the shampooed carpet, boy?” Sammy queried me calmly, slowly coming up behind me (since slow is about as fast as he can go), already at work: 77 years old.  

“Oh…..” I said stupidly, “I’m sorry, Sammy, I got a call right when my hands were full of all this. I’ll clean it up in a second.”  

“That’s all right, Joe. I didn’t mean nothing by it…..go answer the phone; but you know you’re killing me, Joseph, and I refuse to die.” I laughed, and Sammy hobbled away, saying to himself,  

“I been trying to figure that sucker out…..that white dude…..”  

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

The San Gabriel Mountains run on an east-west axis and sit patiently behind the patios of L.A. and Pasadena like a backdrop to a puppet show. The puppet show called “L.A.” that is. La La Land, Hollyweird. Or, maybe, they’re just a backdrop for the big palm trees and the baseball games in Chavez Ravine — or, maybe, for the skyscrapers of L.A. they dwarf (the Art Deco numbers included, of course).

But they make a backboard, too, for all those foul balls ejected out of the city — those hills, those tall, brawny, scratchy, darkish, scrub-oak dense and Manzanita-monopolized hills, they do know where all the bodies were buried in the glorious founding of the City of Angels.

You see the slate-colored rivulets running down from the summit of old Mt. Baldy (so named for its white top), like so many seams in a forbidding, steel door? Oh, do inquire within — no experience necessary. And welcome to the hotel: check-out time is never. Ya gotta lie to get in, ya gotta bungee jump off a basketball floor to get out. And oh, yes, I almost forgot: Baldy isn’t white on top cuzz of snow — it’s white from something more than just regular snow. Shall we say it’s “powdered snow?” You catch my drift, I’m sure.  

I picked up the L.A. Times at Bristol Farms in Pasadena after getting off the freeway, or rather, after the freeway turned into California Boulevard under my tires. It was a still, warm, pleasant morning in July. I sat outside at a heavy silver table for breakfast, with my four strips of bacon, hash browns, and four eggs (scrambled, Cayenne pepper in abundance).

I stretched my legs and my jeans out and glanced over the paper. The Metro-Link train came clanging by from Claremont and from even further away, come to think of it, San Berdu County. Now, on page two — what’s this?  

Body of Saliciamon member found

Grisly, mutilated state

Located in dumpster downtown: Macarthur Park

“The Times learned early this morning that the mutilated body of Ramon Gomez-Gonzalez, a reputed member of the Honduran drug cartel ‘Saliciamon,’ was found yesterday morning by a homeless man digging through the trash of a dumpster in Macarthur Park. 

“The LAPD spokesman, William Braxton, did not immediately respond to questions whether the apparent homicide was gang-related, pending the investigation. He did speculate, however, that the steady, six-month trend charting increased violence downtown was most probably due to the recent influx here, studied by the University of California Los Angeles, of illegal immigrants from cartel-controlled areas in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

“The county coroner issued a preliminary report giving the time of death as approximately 72 hours ago as of 2am this morning, and the cause of death as strangulation and multiple stab wounds, 67 in all, to the stomach, back of the neck, chest, and the small of the back…..”

Meanwhile, in the sports section…..But it’s a small world: I had just passed by the park on the 110 freeway. Not the place to be at 2am. At the cashier I paid the lady in the funkadelic glasses and the Jimi Hendrix tee, got back in the Corvette, and proceeded to the old Biddleman place in the heart of old Pasadena: Elizabeth Anne Biddleman, nee Astor, 60.

This gal was the whole nine yards — the big hair, the horrible breath from six feet away, the suffocating fragrance, the clothes from about 1842, the fake elegance in her voice, the make-up, ugh! – she was all that, I warn you. A quiet woman, dressed all in white (let’s call her “Guadalupe”), let me into the dark, muffled, huge interior: I was expected (but for what, though?!).

The outside of the house, not to get ahead of myself, was tall and dun, with second-story windows peering down at you implacably (without revealing themselves, however), and there were several inset granite pillars holding up the medieval facade. A wide, neat, broad lawn stretched out in the front and in the back garden, too, with yellow, white, and red roses climbing six feet high and more on prickly, skinny, slanting, tensile vines. The house was set back from Colorado Boulevard a good thirty yards. You could have a scrimmage.

You were out of breath by the time you finished climbing up the steps to the porch. I walked up to that porch on a walkway of wide, blonde-colored stones, like so many trapezoids, under the sycamores and eucalyptus, which made sketchy patterns on the immaculately manicured lawn. Practice my putts? No! Not now! So dive putts, down to my soul!

A medieval light structure thing hung down portentously on a long electric cord from the porch ceiling. The light was still on at 10am, feeble against the light of a hot day in July. But once in, Lupe led me down a gloomy, long, silent, carpeted hallway. My eyes were still full of the dazzling, splashing sun of L.A., so I didn’t catch a lot: some Renaissance-style paintings of some old honchos in suits, beautiful Asian earthenware poised on delicate, curving, gold-leaf tables which were themselves poised under humongous mirrors — things like that — a general sense of clueless old money, in short. The air, too, must have come wrapped up as an addition from medieval times — a bit stuffy and sickly.

Lupe led me into the library and motioned me to a chair: I thanked her and sat. She nodded pleasantly, half maid, half nurse, and went out without a sound. The library was barely illuminated, with bookshelves crammed with hard-cover stuff all the way up to the top of the high ceiling. They looked carelessly put away. I twirled my neck around, looking. Dark wood was everywhere. Rugs with Middle Eastern designs were all over the floor of the comfortable, capacious room, giving a curious impression of being in a bazaar.

This house must have been built just after WWII — it had an aura of the long-ago. A very quiet, humming sound, like a swarm of polite bees, became evident to me. It “emanated,” let me put it that way. It wasn’t the traffic out on Colorado. As my eyes adjusted to the dim, I thought I beheld Miss Havisham herself perched in front of the cloistered window which looked out upon the front lawn. She sat behind a gargantuan wooden desk, which was stained dark brown. Her eyes were closed. Then they opened.

“Mr. Downing, I should like to thank you for arriving so very promptly, and on such short notice, too. It’s very kind of you,” Miss Havisham said pleasantly.

“Not at all,” I responded, “it’s easy as pie, Mrs. Biddleman. I’m sorry, though, for intruding upon you, and that I didn’t speak up. I didn’t know you were in the room at first. The sun; my eyes weren’t used to the dark yet. A very stupid start to the case for a detective.” I looked down at my hands in my lap and chuckled sheepishly in self-deprecation.

“On the contrary, Mr. Downing, I must beg your pardon — I was the one who neglected her manners. I was meditating overlong, I fear. I apologize. You see, I’m a Buddhist. It calms my nerves. But you needn’t worry, Mr. Downing, I don’t really believe it all. But you no doubt perceived my efforts?”

“Well, yes, I did, Mrs. Biddleman,” I replied, “and I really was taken by your meditating. Maybe I should learn it myself! Got to relax sometimes, that’s what I always say!” She beamed and smiled beatifically. I think she liked me.

“Indeed yes, young man! It works wonders for the spirit in these times of trial! I feel eminently serene after my morning effort. Do you know, the Dalai Lama meditates six hours a day? Six! Goodness gracious!” Effulgent praise, to be sure, but “eminently serene?” She continued, the kindness in her eyes turning to a more serious gaze:

“Mr. Downing, now I’ll relate to you why I called. I’m concerned for my daughter, Ingrid. I’m concerned for her safety. She’s twenty-eight, but she has a wild streak, shall I say, and she also has an awful boyfriend, this Rodriguez fellow in a drug gang downtown. He’s horrid, Mr. Downing. I think he’s a murderer and a drug-sniffer. I want you to investigate him, and discredit him so Ingrid will forget about him. I believe he committed the murder in the park, and I want you to gather the evidence and give it to the police.” This was unusually detailed for any client to be.

“Well, Mrs. Biddleman, that’s a tall order, you know. I’m sure the LAPD homicide unit and forensics team have already gathered all the evidence and will move to make an arrest. They probably already have a good idea of who it was, or at least of who is close to who it was. There aren’t a lot of different patterns that come up. It’s surprisingly uniform. They know who they’re up against, I would bet, and it’s just a matter of playing a little chess game, to make it come out clearly.” I sat back and waited. She sighed, and then countered:

“Mr. Downing,” her tone evincing a little impatience at this point, “we both know the police have always had their own reasons for what they do. If they find out it’s a gang-fellow, and how could it be otherwise, they’ll just arrest anyone they wish in the gang. It doesn’t matter to them which one. But it does to me — Ingrid is in love with this wretched Rodriguez. I want you to supplement them so they arrest the right one. They’ll believe you. It’s Pancho Rodriguez — that is the one who did it.” I lifted myself up in the chair from slouching. 

“How do you know so certainly it’s exactly this Pancho guy?”

“Because he’s horrible, Mr. Downing — believe me, sir. And because he had to be in on it: it’s his gang, he’s the chief of it, he’s the chief of the horribles.”

“The ELD — the East Los Diablos?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr. Downing, the very same. I do believe that is the correct name of those hideous people.” She crossed her legs in her leather chair for the first time, pronouncing “correct” by trilling the r’s. She went on: “I want to rid my dear lost Ingrid of him since she is too far gone to manage it herself. You see, she, too, is a cocaine addict.”

I gazed out through the white, lace-covered window onto Colorado Boulevard and its traffic. Things seemed so normal out there, in contrast to what I was listening to now. Traffic went by, on its way somewhere innocently in the bright, friendly sunshine. In a few months the Rose Parade itself would come meandering by — but not now, not in the heat of July and gang war. Mrs. B. grew quieter, and adopted a confidential tone:

“Mr. Downing, my husband, Phineas Cadwallader Biddleman, came to Pasadena in 1933, during the Great Depression. He was a child of three years of age. His father, Asa, was an oil man in Wyoming, and Cad followed in his father’s footsteps. We became rich, and we lived well. Life was wonderful. Southern California was the jewel of the country. Everyone wanted to come here. Then came these times, this violence. My husband was unable to compete with the bigger companies, and he foolishly refused to sell or merge.

“We have fallen on leaner times, I concede, but I expect you to bring a little justice to us at least. I want this man’s head on a platter! I want Ingrid free of him!” Mrs. B. glared a bit. Eventually, after a little more back and forth, I agreed to see what I could do for Ingrid. I agreed to investigate this Rodriguez dude.

We were just about to close the meeting. Behind me, though, as I sat on the dark embroidered cloth of the walnut masterpiece of a chair, the great oak door to the library cracked open a tad. In slid a small, lithe cat, except that it was not a cat at all — it was a very young girl, doing all she could to look older than her twelve years, unsuccessfully (if you’re twelve, you’re just gonna have to live with it).

She kept to the walls, moving laterally, eyeing me relentlessly. She already knew what her mother looked like. A very small, white, Bichon Frise had come in with her, quiet, cute, and worshipful. The girl knew every inch of the library, easily avoiding, without ceasing to stare me down, the green Byzantine-patterned chair up against the mahogany panels. The panels rose to the fourteen-foot high ceiling, which depicted a dreamy reverie scene of the blue sky, beyond the hopeful, sunny, cream-colored battlements.

The girl looked at me a ton, implacably. I glanced at her a tiny bit, quickly. She was slender, about five feet tall, athletic and svelte, wearing pistachio Capri pants, flat shoes, and a short-sleeved white top. She had long, long mahogany hair, straight as a string, like the long grooves in those mahogany panels against which she stopped, fifteen feet from me. Her delicate, fluffy dog, plodding along like a walking bathroom slipper, followed her everywhere, looking up at her from her ankles. Mrs. B. was indulgent, but not too.

“Are you talking about my sister?” the girl queried, calmly, like a grizzled, experienced trial lawyer. She took five steps towards me after speaking, looking deep into my eyes. (The Magic Johnson look-off pass was decidedly not her style.) I looked at Mrs. Biddleman briefly, then replied,

“I’m sorry, Miss, that’s confidential. But may I please know the name of such a pretty girl?”

“Aly, don’t bother Mr. Down–”

“What’s ‘conn-fee-den-tal’?”

“Oh, no, please, it’s OK; she’s not bothering me at all. She’s perfectly charming, in fact.” (Did I really say “perfectly charming?”) I smiled benevolently, trying to smooth the rift between mother and daughter. I went on: 

“But you know what ‘confidential’ means, Aly,”  I said amiably, then made the mistake of adding, “Don’t give me that, Cat Girl.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Aly!”

“All right, I’m sorry. You’re right — I thank you for pointing that out to me…..but do you spend a lot of time with your sister?” I continued.

“No!” she said abruptly and decisively, as if everyone knew something so obvious, then walked fully up to where I sat, put her hand possessively on the arm of the very chair, leaned down to my face, and, in a manner that can be plausibly described as “clinical,” put her eyes about two inches from mine, like she was an eye doctor now. She looked at the sides of my eyes as I looked over, amused, at Mrs. B., who sighed irritably at the interruption.

Aly was so serious and so painstaking as she gazed at my faculty of vision, totally deadpan, I couldn’t help chuckling. Then she had both hands on the arm of the chair, in single file, still searching my eyes, and presently she leaned forward even more with the grave news:

“You’re outside a lot.”  

“Oh yeah? How’d ya know that?”

“Your eyes aren’t completely white anymore,” she answered with finality. Her eyes were mischievous and confident of their wisdom.

“Well,” I smiled, “you’re right about that, Aly. You’re smart to notice that. Are you a detective?”

“Yes,” she promised, “I read Encyclopedia Brown.”

“Yeah?! I did, too, when–”

“Aly! Leave us! We’re discussing business, and this is no time for a young girl’s shenanigans! Take Flapper out in the garden and be a good girl, please!” Mrs. B. was a little bent out of shape. Aly slumped a little, for the first time, and her posture flagged a bit, but she shot me another deadpan, conspiratorial look as she slid her hands over the cloth of the chair upon exiting: “Don’t betray the cause!!!” her eyes said to me. I nodded in assent to the silent imperative.

Aly thereupon picked up Flapper and went out unceremoniously. Flapper barked a little out in the hallway, in excitement at going outside, presumably. Then I had to bark a little out in the car as I got back in: the sun had made the steering wheel super-hot to the touch. I had to go talk to Ingrid, and to Aly, too. Mrs. B. didn’t mind. Well, South Pasadena, so chic, so haute couture, so nouveau…..so…..so…..I’m at a loss for words…..anyway, it was now South Pasadena or bust.

…..to be continued…..

August 22, 2009

Conventional wisdom asserts the Palestinians are suffering from an Israeli apartheid in much the same way as the blacks were in South Africa under the apartheid regime there. Moreover, it’s fashionable to further hold that Israelis are racist like the Nazis, and that Israel, alone among all nations of the globe, has no right to exist. It is additionally asserted, incredibly, that the Jews are perpetrating a holocaust upon the Arabs of Palestine such as the Jews themselves had inflicted upon their own lives by the Nazis.

Thus, Richard Corliss of Time magazine recently reviewed the new movie District 9. It’s set in South Africa, so the proximity to the former scene of apartheid is built-in. Corliss points out that the extraterrestrials in the movie are being deprived of their rights similarly to, according to him, the Gazans in Palestine and the blacks under apartheid. But it is outrageous in the extreme to make an analogy such as this, given the implied correlative, that Israel and the former apartheid regime are morally equivalent. They most certainly are not.

Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace Not Apartheid, has apparently given currency to these tragic beliefs. But Alan Dershowitz, in his book, The Case Against Israel’s Enemies, tears Carter’s book apart, exposing in Carter’s book what Dershowitz sees as sloppiness and disingenuousness. One has to feel that Carter has it coming for the distortions in just the title of the book. Also, Dershowitz shows how Carter works for the so-called Arab lobby, which funds the Carter Center generously. But Dershowitz’ denunciation of Carter is of no avail, sadly, if even a distinguished, senior writer at Time, albeit an organ for liberal policy positions, can so cavalierly take it as settled, established fact that one may imply with impunity an apartheid nature to Israel’s government.

In the world of truth now, not fiction, Arab leaders have been attacking the Jewish national revival since the 1920’s. For almost 100 years, Middle Eastern despotisms have been lying to their “constituencies” about their motives concerning Israel. But the “catastrophe” that the Arabs suffer from in Gaza, the deprivation of rights they experience, is very much one imposed upon them from within — their own leaders have brought it about. That is, the violence in the Middle East is not because Israel has no right to exist, but indeed does; rather, the violence is inherent in one version of Islamic, Koranic teaching that a present-day totalitarian movement, born from Hitler and Stalin’s ashes, insists upon. That teaching, in conjunction with the disturbed totalitarian ideology of a fictitious world conspiracy that must be stopped, would promulgate the same level of violence even if the Jews had not conceived and realized their fully-justified Zionist project. The violence has nothing to do with the Jews or Israel.

If the Arabs had accepted Israel’s existence immediately, in 1920 or so, both Israel and Palestine would now be much the better for it: both countries would be rife with economic development, intellectual development, athletic and artistic achievement – anything you can think of that’s good. Accepting Israel’s existence wouldn’t have been very hard (without a totalitarian ideology in the way of doing so), and would have involved no shame to the Arabs or injustice to them. It would have been all to their benefit. It was only ideology that motivated the rejection of Israel. The Arab leaders have always known that Israel would make itself into a Euro-American style democracy, and so they wouldn’t have it.

To claim the dispute is over a piece of land is as outlandish as saying Israel is the aggressor. Why would Israel wish to be the aggressor? Israel wants to pursue development, whereas most Arab capitals wish to prevent a democratic neighbor from taking root close by. It’s an inversion of truth that accuses Israel of the chief wrongdoing – it’s an overemphasis, to the point and beyond of indefensibility, on the last frame of the story. Israel is desperately attempting to defend itself against the pathological, murderous, and anti-Semitic assaults upon its existence. The willful blindness on campus that denies this obvious fact is arrogant, naïve, clueless, and deeply troubling, at least. It could even be coming from a vague, poseur sympathy with pseudo-Marxist stances.

It can only be fatuous, vast ignorance (and simple laziness) that unwittingly falls prey to the pernicious new anti-Semitism taking up residence so confidently in Europe and America. This new anti-Semitism trendily and casually posits a criminal nature to Israel in supposedly oppressing the Palestinians. But it is the Arab countries, those superannuated despotisms, those quasi-totalitarian regimes of the Middle East, that spin this fable, and that actually deprive the Palestinians of their right to accept Israel, to work in Israel, to run for office in Israel, to reject medieval autocracy, and to live freely and productively. Israel an apartheid state? Only if you’re bought and paid for, too, like Jimmy Carter.

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 Italiano. 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 my heart like a weasel. Then I awoke with a shudder. It was just a dream. I propped myself up in bed, my senses straining acutely 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, his 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, even my life, I would gladly, with great relief, have given my life 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 a 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 almost wept with relief. I knew, though, that I was walking on the edge of a razor, perdition on one side of me and oblivion on the other. That part was not a dream.

And 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.” That’s who I was, that’s who I was becoming. The courtyard below was still, and shadowy, as the full moon shone through the patchy clouds, casting long geometric shapes of darkness as it hit the steps, the little Greek arch at the entrance, and a sauntering 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, kids. Onward, Christian soldiers.

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

…..to be continued…..