“I had an outstanding dinner there one night, not too long ago: twin fillets with a peppercorn sauce, and some very good red wine. Their house red was outstanding. You know something about wines, don’t you, Larry?”
Farrow said, “Why do you ask how I know Lee?”
“I was wondering if you knew him before he came to Edwardtown. From his past.”
“I don’t know anything about Lee Toomey’s past, Reverend.”
The Reverend’s thin lips turned up in a gaseous grin. “So you like Edwardtown.”
“Yes. How about you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve lived in New York and some other glamorous places, too. But it was always my dream to come to a small town like Edwardtown to build a congregation from the ground up.”
And to fleece the local hayseeds for everything they have.
“I moved around a lot,” said the reverend, “searching for I didn’t know what until I came here.”
Failure.
“And because I never had a wife or children of my own —”
Faggot.
“ — this congregation has become my family. I’d like very much for you to become a part of that family.”
Salesman.
“You mentioned donations,” said Farrow. “What could I contribute? I’m unskilled labor. I don’t see a kitchen here, so you surely don’t need me to wash dishes. As far as dollars go, I have next to zero.”
“We don’t ask for much. Whatever you could afford would be appreciated. Most people think they have nothing, but if they cut here and there… Take you, for instance. You must have a little extra something, Larry. Maybe something tucked away beyond your dishwasher’s salary?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just happened to be talking to my friend Harry, the gentleman who owns the Wine Shoppe out on the interstate. He tells me you come by a couple of times a week to buy, what did he tell me it was, some reserve California cabernet he stocks. What does that go for, Larry, thirty dollars a bottle? Now just think if you cut out one bottle a week, what it could mean to the people we reach out to in this town.”
“That’s not very Christian, is it?” Farrow said genially. “I mean, asking around about my private life like that?”
“I didn’t have to ask,” said Reverend Bob, his tone thoughtful and sincere. “Tell me, Larry. Where were you incarcerated, exactly?”
Lewisburg. San Quentin. Whittier and Preston reformatories before that…
“You’re wrong about me, Reverend. I’ve never been incarcerated in my life.”
Reverend Bob’s voice went velvet. “I have no interest in your private affairs, Larry. If you have money, where you got it … I don’t care. What you’re doing here in Edwardtown is no business of mine. Neither is your past. Remember what I said: atonement and forgiveness. Now, I admit I tend to be overzealous at times. It’s just that I’m so committed to building this church. I could use your help.”
“I understand.” Farrow forced a smile. “Give me a few days to think things over. We’ll talk about this again, though. That’s a promise.”
“Take as long as you wish.”
Farrow stood. “Take care, Reverend.”
The reverend spread his hands and said, “Praise the Lord.”
Farrow opened the door, closed it softly behind him, and walked from the church.
Farrow sat at the bar of Linda’s, a long, deep tavern on High Street that catered primarily to tourists and the town’s lesbian population, sipping a Snow Goose Winter Ale. Farrow liked to come here early in the evening, before the live folk and jazz bands took the stage, when there were very few patrons. In this hour he could drink quietly and without conversation. He was careful not to overtip the bartender, a prematurely bald graduate student, as this would only encourage the young man to talk.
Farrow took his beer and walked past the billiards tables and shuffleboards to the rest-room enclave in the back of the house, where a pay phone was mounted on the wall. He dialed a two-one-three exchange and got Roman Otis on the line.
“How we doin’, man?” said Otis.
“A situation came up here that I have to take care of. After that I’m ready to roll.”
“Then I’m ready, too.”
“You flush?”
“I’m about busted flat in Baton Rouge and waitin’ on a train. Supposed to see a man about that this afternoon. Man owes me some money. Gonna do that thing and then I’m clear. Could use a temporary change of scenery and some new prospects. How about you?”
“I’ve been living like a monk,” said Farrow. “I’m doing all right, but it’s time to leave.”
“Where you want to meet, man?”
“You still got that cousin of yours likes to talk too much, did that Lorton jolt?”
“Yeah, Booker’s out and livin’ up there in southern Maryland, outside D.C.”
“We’ll meet at his place.”
“Ain’t we still hot up that way?”
“No. I read the D.C. paper every day. They’ve never had a thing. We’ve got unfinished business there, Roman.”
“If you say we do, Frank, then we do.”
“You mail off that photograph I sent you?”
“Did it. Listen, Frank…”
“What?”
“Remember my sister’s husband, Gus? Tall guy on the white side?”
“Tall, hell. He’s a giant. Polish guy, right?”
“Some shit like that. He played professional, Frank, long time ago. ABA ball. Was the backup center for the Spirits of St. Louis.”
“What about him?”
“When I came out here, I was lookin’ to invest some of my hard-earned cash. Gus had the idea we should loan out some of my money to those unfortunate citizens got themselves burdened with bad credit ratings.”
“You got in the vig business. What did I tell you about that?”
“You were right. Didn’t work out the way Gus planned. Gus feels real bad about it, Frank. Plus he and my sister Cissy need to put a little country between ’em for a while. So Gus is riding with me right now.”
“He’s all right?”
“Gus is solid. See, he couldn’t play ball for shit, Frank. Oh, he could grab a rebound or two if the ball bounced right into his hands. But they used him for something else. The coach would tell him that a certain player had been ridiculing him before the game. Basically, they’d put him in the game just to fuck motherfuckers up. This is the man who made Artis Gilmore have bad dreams. Gus sent some starters to the hospital for real, ended a couple of careers. He’s tough.”
“Bring him along.”
“Right.”
“When can you be at your cousin’s?”
“Gonna take me about a week to make it across country in my short.”
Farrow said, “I’ll see you then.”
Farrow walked back into the bar. Grace, the waitress from the Royal Hotel, was sitting on the stool beside his and working on a vodka tonic. He slid onto his seat and lit a cigarette.
Grace smiled. “Thought I’d find you here.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You left your Kools on the bar. Not many white men I know smoke Kools, and in the five years I’ve lived in this town I have never seen a black in this place.”
“They’ve got their own bars on the north side of town.”
“Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it? That’s why I moved to the Eastern Shore from Baltimore. People stay with their own down here in Edwardtown. It’s the way things ought to be.”
“Your idea of paradise, right?”
“Well, it’s not perfect.” She lowered her voice. “A perfect world would be no niggers at all.”
Grace laughed shortly while Farrow finished his beer and thought of his friend Roman. He noticed Grace studying her thumbnail. He said, “You all right?”
“I did this today at the restaurant. Sliced the nail halfway down to the cuticle. I haven’t had a chance to cu
t it down or put a Band-Aid on it.”
“You oughtta take care of that.”
“I will.”
“So, you about ready?”
“Where we going?”
“My place.”
Grace swallowed the rest of her vodka, placed the glass down on the bar. “I was watching you this afternoon, Larry, standing over that hot sink. I like to see a man sweat. I like the way it smells.”
“That a fact.”
She leaned in to him so that her cheek touched his. She had a cheap permanent with damaged ends, and her hair smelled of chemicals.
Grace whispered, “Looking at you made me all wet.”
Farrow stabbed out his cigarette. He signaled the bartender and said, “Let’s go.”
Farrow lived in a stone house fronting the Edward River. His efficiency was on the third floor at the rear of the house and held a double bed, bathroom, and porcelain kitchenette. The room’s one window gave to a view of a cobblestone alley.
Grace sat naked on Farrow’s bed, drinking red wine from a goblet. Her breasts were huge and heavy, with pink nipples as large as English muffins. She sucked in her stomach, watching him walk toward her in his underwear.
“You stay in shape,” she said.
“Sit-ups and push-ups,” said Farrow. “Every day.”
“How long you been doin’ that?”
“Long time.”
“I gotta start doing something to break a sweat.”
“Start right now.”
She giggled and licked her lips clumsily. “This wine is yummy.”
“You like it, huh?”
“I don’t know good from bad, to tell you the truth.”
He stood before her and said, “Really.”
“I hope it’s not expensive wine,” she said. “ ’Cause I’m gettin’ ready to waste a little. Hope you don’t mind.”
Grace got up off the bed. She took a long sip of wine and spit it out onto Farrow’s chest. She put the goblet on the nightstand. She got down and licked the dripping wine from his stomach up to his chest. She licked his nipples and pulled down his underwear and played with his balls. He had an erection now, and he pushed her down on the bed.
Grace’s head bounced on the mattress one time, and her eyes grew wide. “You like to play rough? I like it rough, too, Larry.”
He pulled her to the edge of the bed so that her legs hung off the side. He fucked her like that, watching himself slide in and out of her, keeping his eyes there, imagining he was banging one of the many trophy wives he had seen walking through the lobby of the hotel. Thinking of doing those rich women the way he was doing Grace made him go even harder. He flashed on the reverend’s pale face and got short of breath. He took Grace’s hand in his own and worked his thumbnail under hers. His thrusts lifted her back off the bed.
“Shit, yeah,” she said, spittle forming around the edges of her mouth.
When she came she sounded like a woman giving birth, and in the middle of her spasms Farrow ripped her thumbnail clean off. As she screamed, Farrow shot off inside her with a violent shudder.
He withdrew and stood over the bed. Grace was crying, thrashing her head from side to side. Blood snaked down her meaty forearm.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Grace, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize what I was doing, I was so excited…”
“Aaaah, God,” said Grace. “God, God, God…”
“I’ve got some medical tape and disinfectant in the bathroom,” said Farrow. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll fix you up.”
In the bathroom, Farrow could hear Grace muttering the word “fuck” over and over again. He looked in the vanity mirror. Tears had formed in his eyes. His lips were twitching, and he put his hand over his mouth.
Farrow turned the bath spigot on full so that Grace could not hear him laugh.
ELEVEN
ROMAN OTIS DROVE south on Sepulveda, past gas stations, pager shops, drive-throughs, and big box retailers. The people weren’t beautiful here, not like the blondes and moussed boys of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, and trash littered the gutters and the small squares of worn grass fronting the boxy apartment units and Spanish ramblers along the boulevard. Otis passed beneath the freeway and drove into the lot of a garden apartment complex situated beside a dry drainage ditch with old tires and discarded toys lying in its bed.
“Be right back,” said Otis, smiling, checking his gold tooth out in the rearview.
Gus Lavonicus watched Otis step along the walkway toward the apartments, not too fast, and not like he didn’t have somewhere to go, either. He wore reverse pleated slacks, a lightweight sport jacket, a nice black polo shirt underneath, soft Italian loafers, those shades of his that adjusted their tint to the light, that ID bracelet with the funny inscription, and a previously owned Rolex watch. Otis had style.
Lavonicus looked down at his plain blue pants and the black size-eighteen work boots he ordered special from the Real Man Big and Tall catalog. It wasn’t like a guy his size had many choices.
Maybe Cissy would look at him with a fresh set of eyes if he dressed sharp like her brother Roman. Probably not. It seemed lately that nothing about him could make Cissy happy. She was having a change of life. Her periods seemed longer, and when she was having them she was meaner than any woman he’d ever known. He had asked her to look into some of that period medicine he’d seen at the drugstore, and at the suggestion she threw a fit. She screamed at him like his mother used to scream at him back in the mountains of Eastern Europe. Ah, his mother was a real screamer, too — he’d sworn he’d never marry a woman like that.
When Lavonicus played for the Spirits of St. Louis, Cissy would wait for him outside the locker room with all the other basketball whores. But Cissy was different — she had love in her eyes for him then. He guessed he was never happier, playing ball and getting paid for it and falling in love with Cissy back in 1975.
Those were a nice bunch of guys on that team, crazy but nice. They knew how to get him pumped up for the game. The coach would tell him that a player on the opposite team had laughed at him, called him Retard Man or something like that. A hard feeling would develop in his stomach, and he’d tell the coach he was ready to go into the game. He’d find the player who’d laughed at him and submarine that player as he went up for a rebound, step on his knee, maybe, when he was down on the court. Sometimes he’d just go ahead and drive a hard elbow into the player’s Adam’s apple if he could get away with it, or knock the player into the scorer’s table when he was trying to save a ball from going out of bounds. After those things happened he would often be sat down, and upon his return to the bench his teammates would slap him five, laugh about it, pat him on the back. By then he’d feel a whole lot better. He’d look for Cissy in the stands — the Spirits were only drawing three thousand fans a game then, so it wasn’t hard to spot her — and she’d give him a broad wink. Those were really good times.
He smiled and felt his eyes grow heavy. When he opened his eyes it was to the sound of the car door opening and closing, and Otis was beside him in the driver’s seat.
“Got ’em,” he said, tossing a small gym bag over his shoulder.
“Where to now?”
“Back across town to Silver Lake,” he said. “Lonnie Newton’s crib.”
Lonnie Newton was a small-change coke dealer who had experienced a run of good luck in the past six months. Roman Otis had staked the original thousand that had put Newton in business, but as yet Newton had not repaid the debt.
Newton lived in a two-bedroom rental house set on a hill in Silver Lake, at the top of Cumberland Avenue. Otis drove the Lincoln over the crest of Cumberland, took it down where the road snaked along and narrowed for the next fifty yards, parked behind an old import with Jersey plates. A dark-haired woman got out of the import and gave Otis the fish-eye as she walked to her house.
“Whatever, baby,” said Otis, taking a .45 from the gym bag, checking the load, and slipping the gun inside his jacket. He
waited
for the woman to enter her house. He waited for “Ladies Night” to end on the radio. He said to Lavonicus, “Come on.”
They walked back up Cumberland.
“Here it is,” said Otis, nodding at a narrow set of concrete steps that pitched radically up the hill and ended at a small house.
“I can only do this one time,” said Lavonicus. “My knees, bro.”
“Only gonna do it once,” said Otis. “I promise you that.”
They went up the steps, passing hibiscus and pine and a huge avocado tree whose top rose twenty feet above the roofline of the house. As they stepped onto a wooden deck they could hear the thump of bass coming from behind the side door.
Otis knocked on the door. He waited and knocked again. The door opened, and a tall, lean young man stood in its frame. The young man frowned first, then smiled.
“Lonnie Newton,” said Otis.
“Roman. Heard you were lookin’ for me.”
“Guess that pager of yours don’t work so good.”
“Aw, I left that old pager in a club, man, with some freak I was doin’ at the time. Got a new pager now. Got a new freak, too.” Newton looked Lavonicus up and down and said, “This your partner I been hearing about?”
“Gus.”
“Aha, ha, ha,” laughed Newton, stamping one foot on the floor. “Ssh, ssh, ssh…”
“You gonna ask us in, Lonnie?” said Otis.
“Better not. I got company.”
“We won’t be but a minute.”
“Look here, man, I ain’t got what you’re lookin’ for. Not here.” “Go ahead and ask us in.”
Lonnie Newton shrugged and stepped aside. Otis went in, and Lavonicus followed, ducking his head to avoid the top of the door frame.
A small shapely woman in a short black skirt sat on the living-room couch, bobbing her head to the music coming from the stereo. The track featured a vocalist rapping languidly over an easy, scratchy wah-wah guitar with some popping bass behind it. The woman was hitting a blunt and did not look up as the men entered the room.
The living room fronted an open kitchen. A bedroom was set off to the right, and a stairway before it led down to a second bedroom. A bay window ran the length of the living room and offered a panoramic view of the city and mountains beyond.