The Smack Read online

  He thought about Tinafey, wondered what she was doing, wondered how long she’d hang around now that she knew he was broke. He thought about Sam, his daughter. He couldn’t believe it had been seven years since he’d seen her, five since they’d last talked on the phone. It was crazy how time got away from you. Maybe he’d give her a call while he was in town, ask his mom for her number.

  His foot fell asleep, and he stepped out of the car to stretch his legs. While he was wiggling feeling back into his toes, a black F-150 drove up and parked in the loading zone in front of the party store. A short, sturdy Mexican kid in jeans and a white T-shirt got out. His gait was a little off as he walked into the store. There was a wobble there, a hitch.

  Petty slid back into the Benz and started it up. He drove past the store, made a U-turn at the next corner, and parked again half a block behind the truck, facing in the same direction. The Ford’s license plate caught his attention. There was a little blue wheelchair on it along with the letters DV. He got on the Internet and found out the DV stood for “disabled veteran.”

  Five minutes later the kid limped out of the shop and climbed back into the truck. Petty waited until he got moving before pulling away from the curb and slipping into traffic behind him. They spent the next hour touring the neighborhood. Petty cooled his heels outside a supermarket, a barber shop, and a Burger King. Their last stop was a two-story stucco apartment building on a noisy street lined with stucco apartment buildings. The kid turned into a driveway that led to a garage beneath the complex. He stuck a card into a slot, a steel gate rose with a sound like a clanking chain, and down he went, out of sight.

  Petty circled the block twice before he found an open spot. The Mercedes stuck out among the banged-up, Bondo’d, beat-to-shit Nissans, minivans, and gardeners’ pickups, but Petty was more worried about the trail going cold than about his car getting jacked. He opened the trunk and took out a yellow safety vest he kept there. He buttoned the vest over his black T-shirt and added a baseball cap and a clipboard. The costume came in handy when he was working real estate scams and needed to get access to properties he was planning to bid on without revealing his interest to a Realtor. He could pass as a meter reader in the getup—a cable installer, a delivery guy, whatever.

  Most of the apartment complexes he passed on his way to the kid’s building were barely holding together. Broken windows had been boarded over instead of replaced, bare wires dangled where light fixtures had been stolen, and graffiti climbed walls like ivy, as high as an asshole with a spray can could reach. Yet not everyone had given up. Here and there you saw pushback. A pot brimming with flowers, a well-tended shrine to the Virgin Mary, three shades of pink paint where someone had repeatedly covered the local gang’s tags.

  On this Saturday afternoon, it seemed that everyone who lived on the block was out and about. Children pumped scooters past Petty, volleyed soccer balls in dirt yards, and hollered from driveway to driveway. A group of women were gathered around a panel truck, out of the back of which a vendor peddled vegetables, tortillas, and bags of rice. A man squatted in the shade of a sagging carport to let a pit bull puppy lick the condensation off his can of Bud Light and cracked a joke that made his friends laugh.

  Petty checked the directory for the kid’s building, but most of the numbers didn’t have names next to them. The steel security gate had been propped open with a cinder block, so he stepped inside for a look around.

  Two stories of apartments ringed a central courtyard landscaped with palms and banana trees in lava-rock planters. It was a nice touch, but the bars on the windows put Petty in mind of a prison cell block. Petty figured the kid, being crippled, lived on the ground floor. He began a slow circuit of the courtyard, peering into the windows of apartments while pretending to inspect the plumbing. The curtains in 101 were drawn tight. Through the open door of 102 he saw an old man lying on a couch, watching TV. Nobody was in 103. A crib and an air mattress took up most of the living room, and a Jesus calendar hung on the refrigerator.

  The kid was in 104. He came limping out of the bathroom, where he’d changed from jeans into cargo shorts. His right leg was a complicated metal-and-plastic prosthesis. Petty scanned the room and glimpsed a USMC flag and a sixty-inch TV, but no safe. He moved on before the kid noticed him. If he actually had the money stashed in the apartment, he’d be skittish, and Petty didn’t want to spook him. Better to take things one step at a time. Now that he knew where the dude lived, he could put together a real plan.

  A pair of vatos in a lowered Caddy slowed to stare at him as he was walking back to his car, mad-dogging the pinche gabacho. He ignored their glares, kept his eyes on the clipboard. The Benz was right where he’d left it, all four tires intact. He got in, started it up, and only then noticed that his T-shirt was soaked with sweat.

  9

  PETTY DROVE BACK TO HOLLYWOOD WITH THE SETTING SUN in his eyes. He squinted behind his shades until the fireball dropped below the horizon just as he reached the hotel. The orange glow left behind faded quickly, and night rushed in with bared teeth.

  Petty crossed the lobby to the elevator with a smile on his face, feeling good. He’d tracked down Tony, found his apartment, and made all the right moves so far. And even if the rest of Don’s story turned out to be bunk, at least he was out from under Avi’s thumb and doing his own thing again.

  Tinafey was lounging on the bed in a white bikini. She’d spent the day by the pool, and her skin radiated heat when Petty ran his hand up her leg.

  “Eighty degrees in almost December,” she said. “You believe that?”

  He felt like jumping her bones right then, to burn off some nervous energy, but he didn’t want her to think she was only there to ball him whenever he got the urge. He took a quick shower, and the two of them walked over to the open-air mall next door at Hollywood and Highland.

  “What’s that supposed to be? Egypt?” Tinafey said, pointing up at the three-story arch engraved with winged monsters and the two enormous pillars topped with plaster elephants that towered over the plaza. Petty found a plaque that explained they were re-creations of a set from a silent movie about ancient Babylon. The plaza was already decorated for Christmas. A giant tree stood next to the fountain, Santa and his elves cavorted in window displays, and carols warbled out of hidden speakers.

  And still the hordes of tourists were disappointed. Petty could see it in their eyes: they’d been had, and they knew it. They’d come expecting movie stars, palatial homes, and fancy cars and instead found themselves dragging their bored kids around another goddamn mall exactly like those they’d slogged through in Vegas and Orlando and Nashville.

  A sweaty daddy carrying a sweaty baby bumped into Petty and didn’t say “Excuse me,” and his sweaty wife almost knocked Tinafey down in her haste to get to a booth where a girl was passing out free tickets to a game show. Petty took Tinafey’s hand and started looking for somewhere to have dinner. The mob eventually spit them out in front of the Hard Rock Cafe. That’d do, they decided.

  As soon as they sat down Petty wished they’d kept looking. The restaurant was too dark and too crowded, and he could barely hear Tinafey over the music. He felt like as much of a sucker as the tourists outside. He and Tinafey both had ribs, and Petty nursed a second Scotch afterward while she walked around looking at the memorabilia on display. Jim Morrison’s leather pants, Eddie Van Halen’s guitar, a drum set used by the guy in Metallica. She came back from the gift shop with two T-shirts, one for her and one for Petty.

  They stood out front for a while and watched the Saturday night circus on Hollywood Boulevard. A drunk girl lay on the sidewalk by Michael Jackson’s star and couldn’t get up after her friend took her picture. Down the block, Spider-Man and Freddy Krueger went at it, shoving each other and swinging wildly.

  “Kick his ass, Freddy!” Tinafey shouted, then clapped her hand over her mouth like she couldn’t believe the words had come out of her.

  “You want to get a drink?” Petty asked her
.

  “I’m sorta tired,” she replied.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And they’re showin’ Beauty Shop on TV.”

  “So we’ll go back.”

  They stopped at the store where Petty got his coffee that morning and bought Fritos, bean dip, and Diet Coke for the room.

  Ten minutes into the movie Petty knew he wasn’t going to make it through the whole thing. His mind kept wandering, and Tinafey, lying beside him on the bed, asked him twice to please stop shaking his foot; it felt like an earthquake. He got up and put on his coat and told her he was going out for a nightcap.

  A raucous birthday party had taken over the bar in the lobby—a pack of young, stylish people dressed like all the young, stylish people you saw on TV. Petty kept going and ended up on the Boulevard again. He poked his head into a few places, but they were too loud and too crowded. So back to Musso & Frank. The same smiling gnome was tending bar, and he had Petty’s Johnnie Black in front of him almost before he’d finished ordering it.

  Petty turned at the sound of a familiar laugh: Beck, chatting up two women who were overdressed just enough to show they didn’t get out much.

  “This one’s on him,” Petty said to the bartender, pointing at his Scotch, then at Beck.

  The bartender moved down to where Beck was regaling the ladies and whispered to him. Beck turned to Petty with a frozen smile, recognized him, and lifted his glass.

  A few minutes later he swaggered over.

  “We even now?” he said.

  “Just about,” Petty said.

  “It was an honest mistake, you know. I lost count.”

  “It happens.”

  “Where’s Memphis?”

  “She had a hard day hanging out by the pool.”

  Beck finished his martini and called for another. He was drunk tonight, or deeper in his cups than he’d been last night, anyway, his ragged edges showing.

  “You know anything about this place?” he said.

  “What’s to know?” Petty said.

  “Charlie Chaplin came here, William Faulkner, Steve McQueen.”

  And then it hit Petty where he’d seen Beck before, something that had been nagging at him since last night. “Hey,” he said to him. “Say something in puppy.”

  Beck looked confused for a second, then it came to him. He smiled. “You remember that?”

  It was a commercial for a fancy brand of dog food that ran on TV when Petty was a kid. A much younger Beck played a snooty fucker in a turtleneck and a beret. Leaving his apartment building, he said good morning to the doorman in Russian. Then you saw him in his office, talking on the phone in French. On his way home he chatted in Chinese with the grocery store guy and in Spanish with his cabdriver. Back in his apartment, he opened a can of the dog food, dumped it into a bowl for his cocker spaniel, turned to the camera, and said, “And I also speak fluent puppy.”

  “I must have seen that thing a thousand times,” Petty said.

  “Well, laugh all you want,” Beck said. “But that spot paid for my first Corvette.”

  “I’m in the wrong business.”

  “You’re a good-looking dude, got sort of a slick thing going on. You should give it a shot.”

  “I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” Petty said. “A lot of ‘who you know, who you blow,’ that kind of thing.”

  “Who you blow?” Beck said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “That I’m a faggot?”

  “‘Who you know, who you blow.’ It’s a figure of speech.”

  Beck’s face reddened, and his chest swelled. The bartender brought over his martini. Beck downed half of it, set the glass on the bar, and squared off like he was preparing to throw a punch.

  “Hey, man,” Petty said. “Relax.”

  “Relax?” Beck said.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “You called me a faggot.”

  “I did not.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  Petty stood and balled his own fists, confused by Beck’s sudden anger. Beck glared at him for a few tense seconds, breathing heavily through his nose. Then his face broke, and he burst out laughing.

  “What the fuck?” Petty said.

  “I was just playing around,” Beck said.

  “Seriously?” Petty said.

  “Seriously,” Beck said.

  Petty gulped his Scotch. He wasn’t used to being fucked with, and Beck had already gotten him twice, first with the drinks last night and now with this. Never again, though; never again.

  Beck picked up his martini and used the napkin under it to wipe a tear from his eye.

  “You should have seen your face,” he said.

  “Did you go to school for that?” Petty said.

  “For what?”

  “For what you just did.”

  “Acting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I took classes when I first got here from Milwaukee. Introduction to the Method, Acting for the Camera. But you know what really got me my first gig?”

  “What?”

  “Being able to take a punch. I was at this audition for two lines in a TV show, and it was down to me and two other hippies who looked just like me. The director said, ‘Let’s try the punch,’ which was how the scene ended. A stuntman buddy had taught me how to fake a fight, so I was the only one who sold it, and that’s how I got the part.”

  Petty thought about telling Beck how he’d fooled Tony’s mom today and put on the show with the clipboard and safety vest, but then he remembered the two million dollars that might be in the kid’s apartment and decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “What are you doing right now?” Beck asked him.

  “What’s it look like?” he said.

  “Finish your drink and let’s get out of here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Up to my place. It’s right off Mulholland.”

  “Why would I want to go to your place?”

  “To see my wife’s Oscar.”

  “Your wife’s got an Oscar?”

  “And an Emmy, too,” Beck said. “The family jewels. Come up and see them. I hate drinking alone.”

  Petty clutched the dash of Beck’s Jaguar as the dude whipped out of the restaurant’s parking lot and sped north toward the hills, away from the carnival on the Boulevard. Even though the night had turned cold, Beck put the top down, cranking the heater to compensate. Petty still wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to accompany him. If anything, it’d be a story to tell—the time I ran around Hollywood with the “I speak puppy” guy.

  They drove up a dark, narrow canyon lined with big houses that glowed like jack-o’-lanterns through the trees. At one point a deer bounded out of the underbrush and froze on the road in front of them. Petty braced for a crash, but Beck swerved around the animal without so much as tapping the brakes.

  Higher and higher they climbed, until they popped out of the canyon and onto a road where each curve revealed a new vista of the endless orange grid of the city. The sprawl thrilled Petty. All those streets stringing together all those people. Somewhere down there was the one-legged Mexican kid and maybe the money. Somewhere down there was Tinafey, watching her movie. And somewhere down there was Sam, his daughter, unaware.

  Beck swung into a driveway and stopped in front of an ornate wrought-iron gate.

  “You want to wrangle that?” he said. “The thingy’s burned out.”

  Petty got out of the car and swung open the gate. They proceeded up the driveway to a big Spanish-style hacienda with a tile roof and arched verandas. The inside of the house was dark, but spotlights in the yard lit up the exterior so that the place gleamed against the night. Beck drove past it and parked in the shadows in front of a second structure, a three-car garage in the same style as the house.

  “This way,” he said to Petty and motioned to stairs leading to an apartment above the garage. An owl hooted nearby. Petty turned to look for it in a silvery
eucalyptus tree, then had to hurry to catch up to Beck.

  “My wife and I split five years ago,” Beck said, “but instead of divorcing me and having to give me half of everything, she offered me a deal where I live here free of charge and get an allowance for keeping my mouth shut. The queen bee, you see, likes to keep her private life private.”

  Beck continued his monologue as he unlocked the door of the apartment and walked through the tidy living room to the tidy kitchen and grabbed two Coors Lights out of the refrigerator.

  “Is it degrading? Yeah. Do I feel like a fucking parasite? At times. But then I remind myself that they-who-have-not sponging off they-who-have is a tradition here. In fact this might be the only city in the world where ‘estranged husband’ is a legitimate job description.”

  He handed Petty one of the beers.

  “At least it’s a nice pad,” Petty said.

  “Kind of a comedown from the big house,” Beck said. “But what are you gonna do? You close your eyes and hang on.”

  Petty sat on the couch in the living room, Beck in a worn recliner. There were lots of pictures of Beck and various movie stars on display, but the one that got Petty’s attention was a big black-and-white photo of a younger Beck and his wife that hung on the wall. Petty recognized the woman but couldn’t come up with her name. She and Beck were at a party. He was in a tux, she was wearing diamonds, and they looked happy. Petty used to have photos of him and Carrie looking happy, but one night after she left he tossed them all in the kitchen sink, soaked them with lighter fluid, and burned them to ash.

  “So what do they teach you in acting class?” he asked Beck.

  “The mysteries of the universe,” Beck said.

  “Is it like, ‘Hey, look, a bear. Pretend to be scared’?”