“Dedicated,” I said.
“Well,” Henry said. “He’s living right here, got no money, nothing else to do.”
“What a motivator,” I said.
Henry shrugged.
“Business is tough, you gotta be able to motivate yourself.”
Z stopped and walked over to us, breathing very hard.
“Can you talk?” I said.
“I... talk,” Z answered. “Got... nothing... to say.”
“When you are breathing again,” I said. “I’ll show you a new move.”
“Any... time,” Z said. “I... ready now.”
I grinned.
“Sure you are,” I said. “Just let me rest up a little.”
“You... think you... need it,” Z said.
“I do,” I said. “While you’re waiting for me to stabilize, why don’t you sit on that stool.”
Z sat.
I took my gun off my hip, opened the cylinder, and took out the bullets. I put the bullets in my pocket.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s unloaded. We’ll play with it on this mat, so if it gets knocked loose and hits the floor, it won’t get too banged up.”
We waited. Z’s breathing became calm. I glanced at the clock. Pretty quick recovery time. He had gotten himself in shape.
He stood.
“Okay,” he said.
“Sometimes a guy has a gun,” I said. “If he’s smart, he stays out of reach with it. Stand five or six feet away and point a gun at me, and there’s not much I can do, but come in close...”
I stepped close to Z and handed him the gun.
“Put it against my forehead,” I said.
Z did as I said.
“Now,” I said. “The minute I move, pull the trigger.”
‘Like I’m trying to kill you,” Z said.
“Just like that.”
“Okay,” Z said.
I waited a moment, then suddenly thrust my left hand up under his gun arm, grabbing the wrist, and fully extended my arm.
Click!
“Where was the gun pointing,” I said to Henry, “when it clicked.”
“Straight at the ceiling,” Henry said.
“Try again,” Z said.
We did, and two more times.
Each time, Henry called “ceiling.”
“What happened next?”
“Probably try to pull your windpipe out of your neck,” I said. “We’ll go through it slow... See where my hand is on your wrist?”
We stopped and looked at it. Z nodded.
“Here’s another reason not to get too close. Point the thing at me from a foot or two away, say chest level. Pull the trigger first move I make.”
Z pointed the gun.
I made a crisscross motion with both hands, and the gun fell to the mat unclicked.
“Jesus Christ,” Z said.
I picked up the gun and handed it to him.
“We’ll go through it slow,” I said. “Right hand comes in against the inside of the gun-hand wrist. Left hand comes from the other side and hits the back of the gun hand. It scissors the gun out, even if you know it’s coming. Ready.”
“Go,” Z said.
I made my crisscross, and the gun hit the mat again.
“You need to assume you got nothing to lose,” I said. “Before you use either maneuver.”
“Nothing to lose all my life,” Z said.
Zebulon Sixkill VIII
Z’s time with Jumbo was a swamp of disjointed images.
Besides his movies, Jumbo had a weekly one-hour variety show that retroed to the fifties. The show went on air at eight p. m. Eastern time, out of Burbank, taped at four in the afternoon, Pacific time, in front of a live audience. Z would sit with Jumbo in the dressing room while Jumbo drank vodka on the rocks and studied for his opening stand-up. Then the orchestra intro started, and he ’d open the door for Jumbo, and Jumbo, in one of the six custom-made tuxedos he owned, would go to the wings and wait for the announcer, Art Maynard, to say, “And now... Heeeeeeere comes Jumbo.”
Jumbo did a stand-up routine. There were some sketches, some guest stars, a band, some dancers. While all this went on, Z used to watch from the wings. Late in the show, he’d wander out into the audience and marvel at the number of people who thought Jumbo was swell. He also marveled at how nice Jumbo seemed onstage. It was as if the official Jumbo took over during the taping. Rollicking, good-natured, self-deprecating, quick, witty, knowing, and grateful for their attention.
At the end of each performance, Jumbo walked to the very front of the stage, bow tie loosened, and gazed down at the audience. With the camera zoomed in for a close-up, he would say, “ I love you all... each... and every... one of you.” And he would hold the stance as the shot pulled back and widened. They’d freeze the shot. The credits would roll, and it was over for that week. Usually Jumbo would have picked out a woman in the audience, and as Z started down the center aisle toward the stage, Jumbo would point her out to him. As the audience began to leave, Z would give her Jumbo’s card and tell her that Jumbo was dying to meet her. If she was dying to meet Jumbo, Z would take her backstage. Sometimes they’d consummate their relationship in the dressing room, while Z leaned on the wall outside to make sure no one entered. Sometimes the woman would require more dignified circumstances and Z would drive them to Jumbo’s house, and sometimes late at night, sometimes early in the morning, drive the woman home.
“I ain’t spending the night with her,” Jumbo said. “I’ll fuck anything. But I sleep alone.”
Jumbo never solicited young men in public. But now and then Z would have to get up in the night and drive one somewhere, usually West Hollywood, or Silver Lake.
In the morning, before Jumbo got out of bed, the houseboy would bring him a lowball glass of sherry on the rocks. At breakfast he would have Irish coffee. Usually before he went to the set, Jumbo would have a couple of purple-colored pills. He called them Violets.
“Sets you up good,” he said to Z. “Try a couple.”
So Z did. And it did set him up good. At lunch they’d have martinis first and wine with, and in mid-afternoon a couple more Violets. Evenings were martinis and champagne and more Violets and whatever young people Z had been able to collect for Jumbo during the day. Sometimes there were too many, and Jumbo shared some girls with Z. Z had no interest in boys.
“Stupid,” Jumbo told him. “Go both ways, doubles your chances to score.”
One night they were so overbooked that Z spent half the night with three teenage girls.
Better get them first, he thought. ’Fore Jumbo’s been there.
He didn’t have much to do to protect Jumbo. Push away an occasional autograph hound. Block the shot of some paparazzi. Mostly he was Jumbo’s driver, booze buddy, and pimp.
30
If the trees weren’t blooming, you’d think it was late November. It was slate-colored and cold, with a hard rain falling as usual, and some wind. I sat inside in my office with my chair swiveled around and my feet up on the windowsill, and looked at the weather. I had a legal-size yellow pad of bluelined paper on my lap and a ballpoint pen in my hand, and while I watched the day unfold I tried my hand at thinking.
I had made a list of people I’d talked to during the course of the Jumbo business, and I was checking it to see if I might have missed something. I didn’t do a lot of scientific clues. Since nearly all the crimes I looked into were done by humans, it followed that nearly all of the clues I ever came up with were human. Something someone said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do, or even how they acted when they did or didn’t. Whenever I was stuck, that’s what I did. I made a list on a long yellow pad, of everybody, however peripheral, that I had encountered during the investigation.