Shooting Elvis Page 12

  So I brought it up, a hundred pounds one stair at a time, not sure Ben missed the point intentionally or really thought it was better I bring it up than he come down. I rolled the case into the office, set it on its side, eased the thing out of its nest and unwrapped the blanket. Ben didn’t bother to get up, just peered at it over his desk.

  I said, “So what is it?”

  He cleared his throat, smiled, said, “You being a woman, you wouldn’t know about these things, but what you’ve got here is a urinal. When you go into the men’s room, they got several of these lined up for men to, you know.”

  “I know what men do when they go to the men’s room.” At least generally I did. “But the question I’m asking, is this just a urinal?”

  Ben pushed himself out of his chair, walked around the desk, looked down at the thing, asked, “You have any reason to believe it’s not a urinal?”

  “My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend I mean, he gave me this case to watch, said be careful, it’s really valuable. Then he disappears, I haven’t seen him for a week, so I open the case and this is what I find.”

  “Your boyfriend, he do a lot of drugs?”

  “Sure, he does some,” I said, just what I was thinking.

  “Has a history of mental instability?”

  I got down on my knees, lifted the top of the thing and shook it around, said, “No, you got the wrong idea, I was thinking there was something inside it.”

  Ben got down on the floor with me, took a pencil off his desk, tapped around the porcelain, listening for something neither of us knew what, said, “If this was a client situation ...”

  “This is not a client situation.”

  “Then get a hammer is the fastest way.”

  Somehow I didn’t think I should be breaking the thing to pieces just yet. I said, “Maybe it’s an antique, look at this here.”

  Ben turned the urinal around, looked near the base where I pointed. There was some handwriting there, said “R. Mutt 1917.”

  He said, “I’ve seen people graffiti just about everything, but first time I’ve ever seen anybody write their name and visit date on a urinal.”

  I held the top of the crate up so he could see the lettering.

  He said, “Greek huh, what you’ve got here is a Greek toilet?”

  “Russian.”

  “You already know what it is, what you ask me for?”

  “I was hoping you might know what it said.”

  “I don’t even know what language it is, you want me to tell you what it says?”

  Like most men, Ben didn’t like being shown wrong about anything. I said, “Ben, stop giving me so much shit, you know everything about this kind of business and I need some help here. How do I find out what it says?”

  He looked shocked for a second, hearing me say he knew everything. He took the top of the crate, looked at it, said, “Second rule of detective work, you wanna know something, ask a librarian.”

  He pulled himself up by the corner of the desk, had none of that fat-man grace I’d always heard about, always moved slow and stumbling, which is one reason I guess he rarely moved at all. He lowered himself into his chair, dialed a number from memory. Then his voice dropped a couple octaves and he started talking funny to whoever it was answered, called her good-lookin’, said he made about a hundred calls a day, but when he found himself dialing her number, a special little chill ran down his spine, asked if it was possible for souls to travel the phone lines, connect as blips of energy in the telephonic paradise of the AT&T switching network. He laughed at what she said back, sounded sexy doing it, said he had something written in Russian, could she help translate. Then he hung up, confided, “That was Rachel. Absolutely crazy about me. She’s the closest thing to real sex I’ve got.”

  “How long you been seeing her?”

  “Never actually seen her. Works at the main library downtown. Said she doesn’t speak much Russian, but has a dictionary probably can help you figure it out.”

  I was confused about something, asked, “You like this woman?”

  “Like does not begin to express. I asked Jerry to check her out once, he took a picture for me. She’s about thirty-five, best age for a woman, seasoned but still young, you know? Wavy black hair, a nose that’s a little too big, but still, it’s got character. And her eyes, her eyes are liquid midnight, dark and full of Jewish soul.”

  “Why don’t you go see her, ask her out?”

  “Because she’s crazy about me. I’m a Humphrey Bogart hardbody when I talk to her on the phone.” Ben gestured at his body like an unwanted costume. “I show up to her in this, and the fat lady sings, the game is over.”

  15

  I came home late afternoon to rich scents of paint and canvas and male sweat, Billy b’s smell, it settled like warm food in my belly. Didn’t see Billy b around, everybody sounded gone. I leaned against the case, rested up a minute, thought about taking him inside me at the same time I could smell and feel him outside, was sorry he was gone, wished I could close my eyes and have him there, not saying anything, just inside and all around me.

  I rolled the case into my room, parked it next to the first case, got ready to fall into bed, a long lonely sleep. A letter rested on the pillow, “LACE” stamped on the upper left corner. I ripped open the envelope, read the letter inside, studied details of wording for any indication it was a joke. But the letter was straightforward, its meaning clear. My heart accelerated, the blood raced through my veins so fast I could feel the friction on my arterial walls. I had to move. I strode out of my room and into the kitchen, poured a glass of water from the tap, drank it down. I jumped straight into the air and was surprised that I landed on the kitchen floor, that I landed at all. I splashed water on my face, dried off, read the letter again. The words didn’t change. I was in the show.

  I went into Cass’s studio, found her sleeping face down on the sheets, a book by Linda Seger just beyond her out-flung arm, something about screenwriting for Hollywood. I leaned over her, said, “Hey, wake up,” but she didn’t move. I went into Billy b’s studio, handled his brushes, read the exotic colors of his paints. Cadmium. Vermilion. My head was light with joy. Everything I touched brought shivers of pleasure through my fingertips. Dust floating in shafts of light sparkled brilliant like diamonds. The creak of my feet on the floorboards, the metal chime as I set down the coffee can of Billy b’s brushes, sounded like music echoing down from the ceiling spaces. I stroked a sable-tipped brush with my forefinger, watched a dry fountain of dust plume from its edges. A light surrounded me, nothing I could see, but there, crackling over my head.

  Somebody like Billy b or Cass would take the news as the birthright of superior talent. Their sense of self and destiny was like granite. They stood firmly in their self-appointed spots, dared the world to move them. I was more like water, flowing this way and that in trying to understand who I was, what I wanted. Water can be a stream, a river, a lake, an ocean, a drop of rain. It can be held by rock, mud, glass, air, the slender stalk of a reed, the human body. Water is everywhere the same and everywhere different. Water is what shapes it. I’d always taken photographs, but it wasn’t until that moment I thought of myself as a photographer.

  The floor creaked with shifting weight. I didn’t move, heard getting-up noises behind the screen of Billy b’s sleeping corner. I was happy, more than happy, because I sometimes think happiness is nothing but empty-headed contentment, I was full of joy, it looked like Billy b was here, and I was going to jump all over him, only it wasn’t Billy b who staggered around the corner of the screen, it was a nude woman. She said, “I hafta pee. Where’s the toilet?”

  Nothing I could think of to say to that. No snappy retort or even simple directions. She looked like a rock-and-roll tramp. Black hair with purple highlights, heavy silver rings, a rhinestone nose stud, pendants, earrings, and beads dangling from both earlobes. When I flicked a stunned forefinger in the direction of the bathroom, she turned and revealed a green and red dragon on
her left shoulder blade, tail coiling down to meet her tail.

  I thought, Cool tattoo, bitch. Walked to the corner of the screen. The only way I wasn’t going to kill somebody was if Billy b wasn’t there. But he was, sitting up in bed, gazing out the window at the financial-district skyline. I stood at the screen, stared at him.

  It took him a while to notice me. He said, “Any coffee?”

  “If there was, I’d throw you a cup. About ninety miles an hour.”

  “I warned you before, women like to watch me paint.”

  “Just thought you had better taste.”

  “I don’t know anything about taste. I’m into anti-taste.”

  “Makes me feel real special, that does.”

  “If you judge how I feel by my fidelity, you’ll never get it. Most women come and go. I like you for other reasons than just sex.”

  “Because I’ll make you famous.”

  He said, “You got a registered letter from LACE.”

  His stare was amazing. No guilt at all. I wondered what forces of ego were required to forge a conscience such as his. Still, I couldn’t get away from how compelling he was. Nothing more dangerous than a man who has lost the potential for self-doubt, whose certainty is so vital and magnetic that those of us who still question our place in the world are drawn into awed orbit.

  He said, “Bobby told me you got in the show.”

  “How did Bobby know?”

  “Bobby knows.”

  “Did Bobby pull strings?”

  “What do you care how you got in?”

  “He rigged it, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I’m sorry you walked in when you did. I thought you worked afternoons. I didn’t sleep with her to hurt you. I slept with her to get laid. We had no agreement to be monogamous. You knew I was the type to sleep around.”

  I said, “You want to sleep around, fine, just don’t go thinking we got any special kind of romantic relationship. Now or later, when you talk to the press.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing ever happened between us. You’re a liar, a shallow fame seeker if you ever say it did.”

  That worried him. He said, “I know your look, your car, the details of your false I.D. If I want to hurt you, I’m in position to do it.”

  “You going to call the police?”

  “You going to lie, say we weren’t lovers?”

  That’s the worst thing about love relationships. Your partner always knows the weak spots. I said, “That was the wrong thing for me to say. I won’t lie.”

  He pulled the sheet back, stood up, moved toward me, said, “Things are going well. You’re in a major show. You have a new identity. You have to relax and let things happen. You have to trust a little bit.”

  Seeing him naked was the worst provocation. I didn’t think about it. I planted my back foot and let it rip, a short right hook like I’d learned from my pop. It caught Billy b flush on the jaw. I wanted to knock him down. A rush of satisfaction flushed through me. My knuckles tingled from the hit. I wanted to hit him again. Got ready to, pulled my fist back, stopped when I saw the look on his face. Shock. Fear. I knew the look from ever since I could remember, saw it a thousand times on the face of my mom, my brothers, my sister, myself in the mirror, wondered if maybe the same thing in my pop wasn’t in me sometimes, part of my blood, making me do things more like him than me.

  When Cass found me at Gorky’s, she was wearing shoes, designer jeans, silk shirt, black leather bag, the kind of sunglasses you buy for a hundred dollars, even wore lipstick, though she was careless putting it on, looked like a seven-year-old playing dress-up. Even when Cass tried to look normal, she couldn’t. She said, “I heard you and Billy b had a fight.”

  “I didn’t have to hit him.”

  “He was happy you hit him.”

  “How so?”

  “When I left, he was taking Polaroid pictures of his lip, said he wanted to do a painting of that exact moment.”

  I should have hit him twice, I should have broken his painting hand. Cass asked me if I wanted more coffee, maybe some dessert, she was buying. I should have been suspicious then, but I was distracted, didn’t connect it with her sudden image change, thought she was just being nice. I said sure, cheesecake would be fine, watched her take the wallet from her big black bag go up to the counter to order. I had to admire Billy b, always making art out of what happened to him, reminded me of this pillow my mom had on her bed, bright yellow with needlepoint letters that read, When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade. I looked at Cass’s bag on the table, looked like a doctor’s bag, sturdy leather with a brass clasp on top. I opened it up, saw Cass had her video camera inside with some other stuff. I set the camera aside, emptied the stuff out on the table, got a penknife from my camera bag and started cutting.

  Cass got back with the coffee and cheesecake, shouted, “What are you doing? That bag cost over a hundred dollars!”

  I finished cutting out the hole, about three inches up from the base, got some black tape from my camera bag, said, “You ever heard of a photographer named Walker Evans?”

  “What does Walker Evans have to do with you cutting holes in my bag?”

  “He used to have this trick, where he’d take pictures of people on the New York subway without them knowing a picture was being taken.”

  I took Cass’s video camera, set it in the bag so the lens looked out the small hole, wrapped the tape around so the camera stayed in one place. I had to catch Fleischer out. I knew my past and current lives were bound to meet at some time, the longer I prolonged that moment the greater the speed and force of the collision. It was that Einstein thing about E=MC2, which I figured applied to personal problems as much as physics. I said, “I need you to get some things on tape for me.”

  Cass said, “You wreck my bag and now you want me to do you a favor?”

  I led her to the phones in back, always try the obvious first, looked up Fleischer in the white pages, found a listing under Fleischer Security Services. I flipped over to the yellow pages. Fleischer had a quarter-page ad said he protected companies from burglary, embezzlement and terrorism.

  I gave the company a call, asked for Mike Fleischer. Said to the secretary I was a friend of Viktor Kabyenko, Fleischer would know the name. I waited on hold. Fleischer came on line, all he said was his name, waited for me to start explaining things. He wasn’t going to say anything over the phone, he was going to let me do the talking. I said I was soliciting donations, told him another friend would drop by his office in about an hour to talk it over, hung up.

  Cass asked, “Other friend? Who’s this other friend?”

  “You,” I said.

  We drove surface streets Hollywood to downtown. Fleischer Security Services occupied a suite of offices in a downtown bank high-rise. Nice-looking building, business must have been pretty good.

  Cass said, “I’ll do it if I get full dramatic rights.”

  “Rights to what?”

  “Your life story.”

  “Are you crazy? What good will that do you?”

  “I was talking to a friend of mine, a development executive at Paramount. We went to film school together. She thinks you’re worth a small fortune.”

  “You told her about me?”

  “Of course I didn’t. I just mentioned a few hypotheticals.”

  “Like what if I knew that woman blew up the airport?”

  “Sure, something like that. She’s a smart woman. Knew it was you right away.”

  I stared at Cass, wanted to see if she was kidding. She wasn’t. Seemed like every day somebody new was figuring how to make money off me. I took another look at the bag, decided even I couldn’t tell where the lens was hidden if I looked at it from more than three feet away.

  I said, “You have thirty minutes. If I don’t see you in thirty minutes, I’m calling the police.”

  “Then we have a deal?”

  I kicked her out the door, said, “What we hav
e is to get moving.”

  On the videotape we made, this is what happens. Cass’s shoes jut in and out of frame as she walks down a long carpeted hallway. The carpet looks clean, new. The camera jostles, pans up to a door marked Fleischer Security Services. Cass’s hand reaches in, turns the knob, pushes open the door. A receptionist glances up from behind a desk sand-bagged across the entry, answers the phone, makes notes, hangs up, answers the phone again. Cass finally speaks up, says she’s a friend of Viktor Kabyenko, Mr. Fleischer is expecting her. The receptionist looks doubtful but picks up the phone. She whispers something the microphone doesn’t pick up, nods a couple of times, says in a surprised voice, “Mr. Fleischer will see you now.”

  Fleischer himself is too busy writing something to acknowledge Cass when she enters his office. He’s a big man, football big, with a busted nose spread flat above his lips. His eyebrows are wormed with scars, the kind men get from taking a punch. My pop’s eyebrows look the same way. Pop used to say he’d take a shot above his eye if it gave him an opening to the other guy’s jaw. He would take one look at Fleischer, call him a bar-fighter and whore-fucker. Fleischer and my pop would probably get along just fine.

  Fleischer says, “I get all kinds of lunatics in my business. You might be surprised how many people think they can extort money out of my clients. I say you might be surprised, because I suspect you might be one of those lunatics.” Fleischer smiles broadly at his punch line, shows offense was meant.

  “I believe you knew a friend of mine,” comes Cass’s voice from behind the camera. Cass knows she’s a lunatic, doesn’t mind when accused of being one.

  “Your friend?”

  “Viktor Kabyenko.”

  “Can’t say that I do,” Fleischer replies, doubtfully.

  “But he knew you. Spoke fondly of you just moments before he died. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Maybe he had me mixed up with somebody else.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Fleischer,” Cass says, with just the right tone of assurance.

  Fleischer’s eyes drop from Cass’s face, stare directly into the lens.