CHAPTER 36

Someone buzzed her inside. Bento, feeling helpless as his simple errand expanded, reminded himself that he was doing a favor for Phil. Although the street was lined with apartments, he saw no one about. Three or four long minutes later she came back out carrying a dark plastic garbage bag. He switched on the door locks and rolled up the passenger window, leaving it open only a few inches. “You’re not putting that thing in my car,” he said.

“You kidding? It’s my laundry.”

“I don’t see any laundries.”

At this point Bento noticed someone coming up behind her. He’d apparently followed her out of the building. He was about forty, a pasty-faced white man, almost as tall as Bento. Brown dirty hair hung straight and oily to his shoulders. He was clean-shaven, and the long straight hair framing the plain pale features made him look like a homely woman. He wore new, expensive basketball shoes but was unkempt everywhere else. His eyes looked crazy. “Who’s this asshole?” he said.

“Just a friend,” said Sonia.

He peered inside the car, front and back, as though it were something both peculiar and repulsive. “Well then get the hell outa here,” he said.

“Okay, okay,” she said.

He glared at Bento, turned around and headed back to the building entrance.

“What the fuck, dude, let me in. C’mon,” Sonia pleaded. She set the bag on the hood, still grasping it with both hands.

“Sonia, that guy doesn’t do laundry, okay?”

“It’s his old lady. God, you’re just like my dad. You both must have Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m going,” he said.

“You crazy or something?” He turned on the engine and was about to pull away when he saw Sonia look over her shoulder, frightened. The man with the dirty hair was coming toward them again, this time carrying a ball-peen hammer.

“I told you to get the hell out of here!” He banged the hammer three times on the roof. Dent, dent, dent. “Beat it, bitch.” Sonia’s stony-stoic face showed real fright. Bento couldn’t leave her with the madman, and if he got out to confront him, the situation would get uglier fast. Someone might already be calling the cops. The hammer man went into a crouch, moving toward a retreating Sonia, which created a silent, slow-motion chase around the car. He held the hammer like he meant to use it. Bento, waiting for the right moment, unlocked all four doors with one click and got out fast, inserting himself between the hammer man and his prey. When the pursuer got close, Bento pointed toward an upper floor of a building across the street.

“Jesus, don’t you see that?” he shouted.

Hammer man looked up and Bento slammed him with a one-two, remembering to turn his body into the right. They were both good shots. Meanwhile Sonia slid into the front passenger seat and slammed the door behind her. Blood poured out of the man’s mouth, but he otherwise didn’t seem affected. He struck the hood with a thundering hammer smash. “You wanna play, motherfucker? You wanna play?”

Bento faked a kick to the nuts and stepped in with a left forearm to the head. The swinging hammer glanced across his biceps. Hurt like crazy. Bento stung him with a jab. He couldn’t get his hands on the hammer. The man pulled it back in a two-handed batting stance. Bento tried to open the rear door, but Sonia had locked the car. “Unlock the doors!” he yelled. The bloodied hammer man advanced, still in his batting stance. Bento became the prey in another slow-motion chase. He could take off down the block, but he couldn’t leave Phil’s daughter with the madman, who was trying doors as he followed Bento around the car. “Unlock the doors!” Bento yelled again. She must have heard him because this time the madman got a rear door open and started to enter. Bento made it over in time to slam the door on his ankle. Two, three, four times. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” shouted the hammer man. Sonia was screaming now too. She sounded like a crazed three-year-old. The madman stumbled back grasping his ankle but still held the hammer. Bento made it around to the driver’s door, jumped in, and pulled away. The madman tossed the hammer at the car. It missed and skidded down the asphalt.

Sonia was still screaming. “Shut up!” Bento yelled. He wanted to turn the corner before throwing her out, but the block was a long one. When he finally made a right turn, he stopped and reached over to open her door. Her makeup and tears were smeared into a kind of gray mud as she pulled on her hair with both fists.

“Please, please, don’t leave me here, please.” He pulled away and headed toward the freeway. “Thank you, oh thank you, thank you.” Three or four blocks later he heard a quick burst of siren. Red lights flashed in the rearview mirror. He stopped and waited. “Shit!” said Sonia. It was only then that Bento noticed she still had the big trash bag. It sat under her feet.

The cops were in an unmarked vehicle, the portable red light on the roof still flashing. They took a full minute to do anything, keeping Bento and his passenger in suspended animation. She was wiping her face with her sleeve. Bento didn’t think his arm was broken. Finally the driver got out and approached them on Bento’s side. He wore khakis and a polo shirt with a little golfer silhouette on it and held up a badge and an ID. Peering inside, he snorted a big breath through his nose and scrunched his lips as if to say he smelled something interesting. He checked out the ashtray that held Sonia’s roach, then stood there looking at them, as though thinking what to do next.

“All right,” he said finally, “you’ll be getting out of the car one at a time. You first,” he said to Sonia. “Keep your hands high. No sudden moves.”

There was a time when if you hit some legal snags you could ride west and start again somewhere elsewhere. Choose a new name if you liked. What a sweet, lucky time that must have been. But this could still be a small thing. Bento had to stay alert, stay cool. He’d done nothing wrong, so don’t act guilty.

Now a tall cop in jeans also approached. He had a long face and really was blue, just as Philyaw had described him. Asking for driver’s license and registration, he had a strange way of speaking, as though the words had to fight their way out of a resisting mouth. The first cop sat Sonia down on the curb.

Ever since hearing about him, Bento had been keeping an eye out for the blue cop, actually hoping to make a sighting, like seeing a shooting star or a mountain lion. How wrong he’d been. It was more like recognizing you’d picked up the clap. The two cops quickly established that Bento was a parolee. They needed no excuse to pull him over and search. Regular rules didn’t apply. After patting him down they sat him next to Sonia on the wet curb. It hadn’t occurred to Bento yet to wonder why Hermosa Beach cops were operating in LA. No handcuffs. So far so good. It was drizzling a little harder now. Their lights dancing, more police cars showed up.

“What’s this?” said the blue one, leaning into the front seat. “The bag, what’s in it?”

Bento thought this might be a nice time for Sonia to speak up. She sat impassively. Her makeup was still smeared just enough to make her look like one of Fellini’s low-rent hookers. As even more patrol cars showed up, the blue cop’s partner cuffed Bento behind his back and sat him down again, this time about ten yards from Sonia. He could no longer see or hear her. Two cops stood over him: a pudgy female and a tall Asian man. The woman, looking pleased, said, “You wouldn’t happen to have prescriptions for all those substances, would you?” The bottom fell out of Bento’s insides. “My, my, so much OxyContin, thousands of pills. And a pound of what will no doubt test out as crystal meth. What’re you running? A delicatessen? Wait, how silly of me. There’s no such thing as a prescription for crystal methamphetamine, is there? It’s like getting caught with a barrel of dead babies, except you might have an excuse for dead babies. But if you can show us prescriptions for the pills, well hey, you might only have to do about a thousand years.”

Controlling his voice, he told this comedienne that he had no idea what she was talking about. “That’s not what we’re hearing,” she said. Closing his eyes, he imagined he’d gone home after seeing the dentist, that he hadn’t returned to the office and none of this was happening. He could be in some unmapped dimension he’d soon escape, just as Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey got his lovely life back in Bedford Falls exactly as he remembered it in It’s a Wonderful Life. He opened his eyes to the dancing lights.