I glanced at the bartender and realized he was watching me with a tight expression. Maybe I didn’t look like the trustworthy type. He only had one other customer: a rumpled-looking guy who must have run out of shampoo a month before. He was also watching me, but at least he tried to be subtle about it.
I walked farther into the room and saw him.
Arne sat in a back booth just beside the fire exit. He had a cup of coffee and a smart phone in front of him. He wore a black button-down shirt and chinos, and his curly blond hair was cropped short. Near as I could tell, he was alone and he wasn’t surprised to see me.
I started toward him. Lenard suddenly stepped out of a wait station that had been built like an alcove. Before I could react, he had his hands on me, shaking me roughly as he patted me down. I tensed up but held myself rigidly still. I wasn’t here to fight.
Time had not been kind to Lenard. He had smoker’s wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and his whole body had gone pear-shaped. “Well, well, Raymundo,” he said. “Imagine seeing you here.” I looked down at the shaved stubble over his scalp; he was going bald in little patches near his forehead.
He finished by checking for an ankle holster. Of course he didn’t find anything. He stood and shrugged to Arne. I was cleared to go.
“Good to see you, Lenard,” I said.
He looked at me sidelong as he backed into his alcove. “You look like shit, baby.”
“I know it.”
I walked by him. Arne was sitting in his booth with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t even going to shake my hand.
“Arne,” I said. “You don’t look surprised to see me.”
He smiled without a trace of good feeling. “You always had a pretty good sense of direction, Ray. How’d it take you two years to get from the gates of Chino to me?”
“I got on the wrong bus.”
“The bus to Seattle. I heard. I’ve been following your name in the news. It’s very interesting, all the scrapes you’ve gotten into. What happened in Washaway? You can tell me, buddy.”
“Caramella said you were in trouble.”
He didn’t like that I’d changed the subject. “Do I have to remind you? You used to be smarter than that. I spent two hundred and fifty a month on you while you were inside. Every month, I sent a check to a sweet little lady in Boyle Heights so her son and his pals would babysit you.”
And now he was challenging me. The funny thing was that I didn’t feel like playing that game anymore. I’d seen too much to be afraid of Arne, and he knew it.
“Arne—”
“Because I knew prison would break you.” He was letting his anger show openly now. “I knew you couldn’t handle the misery. You were never tough enough up here for that.” He tapped his temple with his index finger.
I let him have his say. After he finished, we stared at each other for a second. Then I said: “Caramella said it was my fault.”
Arne laughed. There was something desperate and helpless in it. “Jesus. Ray. Ray.” He looked at the phone on the table, then slipped it into his pocket. “Okay. It’s time. Come on, Ray. You’re going to do a job for me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Lenard came up behind me. “You’re taking him?”
“He’s here and Ty isn’t,” Arne said, “so yeah. I sure as hell can’t take you. Stay here just in case. He only has to drive a car—as long as he doesn’t point the grill at Seattle and take off, he’ll be fine. Besides, if I show up with you, they’ll probably make us mow the lawn or something.”
Lenard laughed. “Fuck you. Those guys have Japs do their landscaping. They’d make me patch the roof.”
“I’ll be two hours at least. Probably three. Go into the kitchen while I’m gone and wash some dishes. Make yourself useful.”
“Hey, I was born in this country, just like you. I’ll do a day’s work when I see you do one.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Arne said. “No shit, Lenard. Be careful.”
“Always.”
Arne turned to me. “Let’s go for a drive, Ray. You owe me.”
He started toward the front door, and I followed. I’d always trailed after him, going from one place to another. It felt natural to let him lead me around, and the feeling—that if I did what he wanted he’d eventually give me what I needed—was startlingly familiar.
And he was right. I did owe him.
We went into the street. Arne was more watchful than he’d ever been, and I wondered why. We walked to a Land Rover, and he circled it carefully before he got in. I sat in the passenger seat and aimed the air-conditioning vents at my face. He pulled into traffic.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
“No. Seriously. Where?”
“You know what I always liked about you, Ray? Timing. You always had good timing. For instance, here you are today of all days. Remember Rufus Sceopeola?”
I did. He was a weight lifter and amateur boxer who’d tried to take over the Bigfoot Room some years ago. He was used to intimidating people with his size, but he wasn’t as tough as he’d thought. “Of course.”
“You remember how you took him out?”
“A couple punches.”
Arne laughed at me as he swerved onto a freeway on-ramp. “You don’t even realize you do it, do you? Anybody can throw a couple punches, Ray. You threw the right punches. Rufus thought he had defenses—I ran into him later, and he talked about you. He said he’d never been taken apart so fast, in the ring or out. He said you had a good eye. When I told him you were in jail, he dropped into a deep funk. I think he wanted to invite you to his gym.”
None of this interested me, but I asked anyway. “What ever happened to Rufus?”
Arne slapped his hand on my chest, then crumpled my shirt. I couldn’t feel anything where the tattoos covered my skin, but I didn’t like being searched anyway. “I’m not wearing a wire, and Lenard already checked me once.”
He finished searching anyway. “The asshole is doing a stint at Corcoran. Some bastard took his gun and mailed it to the LAPD in a shoe box. Funny thing. They had his fingerprints on file, and the gun matched a shooting in North Hollywood from the year before. Attempted homicide.” He glanced at me. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”
I didn’t answer right away. For Arne, asshole had a specific meaning. Assholes were criminals who liked to hurt people—or who tried to mess with his business—which was pretty much every criminal we met.
Arne hated assholes. He had always kept us low-key—we dressed like college students and did “safe” jobs—but there was always someone who heard about the money he was making and tried to muscle in. Arne hadn’t blustered or threatened, but those guys generally never came back a second time. We’d always wondered what he’d done to drive them off. Had he been turning them in to the cops? The idea made me a little sick.
But I hadn’t come here to talk about old times. “Arne—”
“No questions, Ray. You don’t have the right.”
“Yes, I do. I’m in this car. I came down here to find you, and I can help, maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said. And laughed to himself. “Do you know why I asked you to go to the bar with Mouse that night?”
That startled me. I’d forgotten that he’d asked me to watch Mouse’s back. “No.”
“Okay. Do you know why I paid that protection money for you while you were inside?”
“Because you thought I would try to make a deal for a lighter sentence.”
“Ray, Ray. You’re such a beautiful idiot. And now I’m glad you took off for Seattle. At first my feelings were hurt, but now I think it’s better you weren’t around when everything went to shit.”