“You wanna taste, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Butch had something wrong with his back. His chest jutted forward and his stomach hollowed back toward his spine as if someone were trying to tickle him. He wore a tattered T-shirt and striped boxer shorts.
“You could leave me a small one and go on,” he said. “An’ when you come back around I’ll buy what you got left — if the one I et is tender.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll cook it for ya. Just show me the stove an’ I’ll burn it right now.”
Butch had a two-burner Phillips-Regent gas stove. It was so crusty and greasy I was surprised that the jet caught the flame from my match. I had to fry the steak because the oven was beyond repair.
“Smells good,” Butch said as he inhaled fumes of burning flesh.
“You live here long?” I asked.
“’Bout six months. But I’ll be gone two weeks after the first.”
“Eviction day?”
Butch grinned and cocked his head.
“Say,” I said. “Tell me, did Roman Gasteau live here?”
“Still do. Or maybe so. I ain’t seen’im in a few days.”
“You know’im?”
“To say hi. Hey, hey, why’ont you flip it ovah, you know I likes my meat bloody.”
“Uh-huh. You got some garlic powder?”
“Naw, man.”
I followed the crippled man’s gaze over to the kitchen shelf. There I saw a crumpled-up handkerchief, a can of Barbasol shaving cream, an uncovered jar of Skippy peanut butter, and a loaf of Wonder Bread.
“I used to run with Roman a while back,” I said. “He give some bad parties.”
“Yeah?” Butch wondered. “He ain’t never asked me. But he live down in one-B if you wanna run down there an’ see ’im.”
“Uh-huh. But if he ain’t there you think anybody ’round here might know how I could get in touch wit’ him? You know I could use a party after pullin’ all’a this meat around after me.”
“Ridley an’ them know’im.”
“He live here?”
“Up in three-A.”
I could tell by the way Butch was looking at me that he was suspicious of my questions. But the main thing on his mind was steak.
I put the pan of fried and bloody meat down in front of him. It smelled good.
I was impressed at the way Butch made Mr. Hong’s tender aged steak seem tough. He chewed and chewed, frowned and grimaced.
“Hey, brother,” he said through a mouthful of meat. “This shit here ain’t prime.”
He wanted to play, and so I gave him a show. I banged on his tile counter and swore at him and all his relations. After I got through yelling I stormed out of his apartment leaving the partially eaten steak in his frying pan.
He’d earned the tip.
Ridley McCoy was a nondescript man. His hair was wavy and his eyes tended toward brown. He had a small nose and dark skin. His pants could have fit with a sports jacket but he could have also worn them to work; they went perfectly with his thin-strapped undershirt. Ridley wouldn’t look me in the eye but I knew that he was interested in cheap steak.
“Where you get’em?” he asked my chin.
“From a guy I know.”
“Could you get some more?” Here he hadn’t even tasted one steak and he already wanted a dozen.
“Maybe I could. Why? You wanna be a regular customer?”
Ridley looked from side to side and then said, “Why’ont you come on in outta earshot.”
His furniture, I was sure, was stolen from a motel. The console TV still had the markings from where a coin box had been attached. There was a small Formica-topped table that stood on a single chrome stalk in the corner. The battered Venetian blinds were levered shut and there was only one lamp, leaving the room uncomfortably dark.
One half-open door led from the room. Maybe that was a bedroom, or maybe he slept on the couch.
“How many steaks could you get?” he asked in a whispery little voice. It was the kind of voice that got you mad because you had to strain to hear it.
“I cain’t hear you, man,” I said loudly. “Somebody ’sleep in there?”
Ridley looked at the door and then back at my chin.
“Girlfriend,” he said.
“Well, maybe I better come back later.”
“Naw, man. That’s okay. She could wake up,” he said. Then he shouted, “Penny! Penny, come in here!”
I heard a rustling and then a thump; a few seconds passed and then came a groan. Soon after that the door opened. A young brown woman wearing only a man’s dress shirt came into the room. When she saw that Ridley wasn’t alone she brought two fingers to the base of her throat — I guess that was all the modesty she had left.
“Wha?”
“This is Brad, Penny. He got some steaks he wanna sell.”
“So? I was ’sleep.”
Ridley went to his roommate and gave her a big unfriendly hug. The tussle pulled the shirt far up enough for me to see that she didn’t have anything on underneath. Neither of them seemed to care what I saw.
“Why’ont you bring out some wine, baby,” Ridley said to her.
Penny went back into the bedroom and turned on a light. I could see her, through the now open door, go into another room. She returned with a quart of Black Wren red wine and a small stack of Dixie cups. She set the cups and wine on a small motel coffee table and sat down on the couch, pulling her bare feet up under her thighs.
There was a time I would have walked across fire for a woman like that. I could still feel the heat.
“Come on, girl,” Ridley complained. “Cain’t you pour it?”
“Pour it your damn self,” she replied. “I was ’sleep.”
Ridley did the honors and said to me, “Sit’own.”
I perched myself across from the man and his mate. Penny had a broad face and hair that would never let you know where it was going. Her lips were there to curse, kiss, or complain. And her widely spaced eyes saw a spectrum of light that most men never suspected existed.
“Mr. Koogan here is sellin’ steaks,” Ridley said to Penny. Then to me, “How many more steaks can you get?”
“How many can you eat?”
“I was thinkin’ that I could sell some. I know just about ev’rybody in this buildin’. The one across the street too. Maybe I could go partners wit’ you if you could get enough steak.”
That was business in L.A. An opportunity comes and you make a grab for it. Ridley didn’t know a thing about me, or my steaks, but he was willing to cement a partnership anyway. He was on me faster than I got to Idabell.
“Well, that sounds good,” I said tentatively. “How many you want?”
Ridley’s eyes almost met mine, he was that excited. Penny yawned and I wondered if there were any black dentists in L.A.
“I bet I could sell fifty’a them, if they really prime, in two, three days.”
“Fifty?” I was impressed.
“Yeah,” Ridley said.
Penny’s gaze rolled across me. She had no idea what we were talking about but she was still an important part of the negotiations.
“Well,” I said, doing the numbers in my head. “You gimme thirty-five dollars an’ we got a deal.”
“Thirty-five dollars!”
I was surprised that he could shout.
“Yep,” I said. “That give you a profit of fifteen when you sell’em.”
“Uh-uh, man. I’m the one gonna be doin’ all the work. I should get at least half.”
I tried to look like I was upset but at the same time greedy to have a man out there doing my sales.
“Okay,” I said. “Fifty-fifty.”
“When could you bring’em by?”
“I could get’em by tomorrow. But I’ma need my money.”
“What money?”
“Twenty-fi’e dollars for fifty steaks.”
“You get that when I sell’em.”