Live Bait

The work I’m not too proud for turns out to be riding a bike with an igloo cooler mounted on it, restocking Bondo Bob Lopez’s “Live Bait” machines all over Long Beach. A live-bait machine is, if you haven’t seen one, pretty much like a Pepsi or Coke machine, except that it’s stuffed with live worms and live shrimp. It’s also a bit of a misnomer, since there’s some dead lumps of mackerel and mackerel chunks on dry ice. The mackerel are apparently good if you want to get the big fish. According to Bondo Bob, these chunks make the halibut and the tuna go nuts—they forget what was on that little dust-speck brain of theirs once these mackerel are dropped in the water. You’ll need another bucket for your fish. You’ll need to hire a helper, hell, you’ll need to rent a backhoe to carry them home, the way Bob tells it.

But here’s how the machines work:

You’re out driving, out in the world, and it hits you that you need live bait.

You drop in a dollar, and you get a squirrelly handful of live bait. He’s got ten machines all over town, usually outside of liquor stores.

The worst part isn’t, as you might suspect, the loading of the live-bait machine. It’s the unloading of what Bondo Bob calls, in between spits of tobacco juice, “spoilage.”

“Spoilage, that’s the problem,” Bondo Bob had said. “Live bait ain’t live forever—if it were, I’d be a millionaire.”

And so I spend most of my morning scooping out handfuls of dead, stinking worms and piles of translucent, pinkish greasy shrimp. I wipe the compartments clean with some blue fluid called Fabuloso, replace the dead, scummy fish with scoopfuls of writhing masses of live bait. The shrimp are jumpy, they hop around like summer crickets, jumping so fast you have to close the door as soon as they’re in, or they’ll come flying out. Their little legs thrash in my hand, and they’re ticklish and I’m getting some kind of funky rash in both palms. The shrimp make a squishy wet crunchy noise when you accidentally step on them. They make a noise like a scream and they disturb the hell out of me.

The worms are slow and kind of gentle the way they loll all over one another and, if you forget what they are, comforting to watch. Kind of hypnotic, but then I haven’t eaten or slept in a while. I’m bent over, dividing worms into a compartment that they live in until their number’s punched. From behind me, a car blares its horn and I jump up and hit my head on a sharp edge of the machine. I turn around and see Sergei’s SUV. He leans out from the driver’s side. The sun glares on the windshield, so I’m guessing that Maggot Arm Joe is with Sergei, but I can’t quite make him out.

“Nick Ray?” Sergei says. He gets out of his car, not bothering to pull fully to the curb or close his door. Cars swerve and honk and he gives them the finger. Maggot Arm Joe gets out of the SUV.

I’m rubbing my head, stars are swirling, and I hear a high-pitched scream that I’m not sure whether it’s coming from the shrimp or inside my head. I feel sick. The ground’s swelling, people are changing shape.

Sergei steps up beside me. “What the shit is going on?”

I try to clear my head by shaking it, but I just end up on my knees throwing up. My puke smells like stale tap beer and Chinese food.

Sergei sidesteps the puke without moving his arms and he looks like the guy from Riverdance. “Be careful. These six-hundred-dollar shoes.”

I nod and it takes most of my strength to stand up and avoid falling.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “Shit, Nick. What’s wrong with you?”

I tell him, the general story—lack of sleep, lack of food, a vicious headache, the whole tainted-bait thing. Sergei tells me I should have come to him. I tell him I did. That I looked for him in several places.

“No, Nick Ray,” he says. “You couldn’t have. Home all day—all you need to do is ring, I answer.”

He’s lying, but I don’t have the energy to pursue why.

Maggot Arm Joe helps me up. “You okay?”

“I’ve got to eat,” I say.

Sergei says to get in the car, he’ll buy me breakfast. Then we have work to do.

“Throw bike in back,” he says.

Maggot Arm Joe starts to load the bike in, but Sergei makes a face. “What smell?”

“Bait,” I say.

“No bait in Sergei’s car,” he says. He tries to take the cooler off the bike, but it’s held in place with thick strips of metal that look like the earthquake bracing they use on water heaters. He struggles with it for a moment, then he lays it down in the street and starts kicking at the cooler. He kicks at it for a while, but that doesn’t seem to do much. I’m leaning up against the SUV, and I feel awful, it’s like I can feel my organs doing their work, they’re knocking and pinging like a bad engine, begging for attention. My stomach rumbles like old pipes in a wall. I think I could be dying. Maybe I’m overreacting, but how do people feel when they’re dying?

Sergei’s pissed off—breathing hard and ready to lose it. He’s stubborn as a tick—not ready to give in once he starts. I file this away, memorize the way he looks right before the steam valve blows. He takes his nine-millimeter out of his shoulder holster and he shoots the bracings off the bike. The bullets ricochet off the pavement and end up God knows where. I flinch. People die this way. I think of the kid killed up north in L.A. last week—some clowns were shooting up into the air, into nothing, and one of the bullets came down on a kid walking home from school. This happens. There are repercussions to this. There are families, haunted mothers, a world of sadness and lost hope and memories.

The cooler explodes and worms and shrimp and mackerel pour out the top and funk up the asphalt. There’s a fishy burning smell and I start to get sick again.

Sergei picks up the bike and puts it in the back. He tells Maggot Arm Joe to get me in the car. Maggot Arm Joe tosses me in the backseat like a bag of laundry and gets in the front. He says to Sergei, “I wish you’d knock that off.”

“What?” Sergei says.

“That fucking gun,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “Guns are—no need to be using that gun.” He pauses. “On a fucking cooler.”

Sergei waves him off. “Guns not to be scared of. Gun like people—except gun have no legs.”

I’m wondering if I heard that right. Voices aren’t reaching me. I’m driving in the mountains and the signal’s weak. I close my eyes and pass out.

My guess is that I’ve been out a couple of hours. Across the sky, halfway up instead of overhead, which is how you tell it’s winter in California, the sun’s knocking on noon. We’re in a parking lot outside of the Long Beach Diner on Ocean Boulevard. Sergei’s sitting next to me smoking a cigarette. He’s wearing another lace shirt, forest green, with what looks like black leather pants that make a wet farty noise as he moves in the leather seats of the SUV. I look around—-Maggot Arm Joe’s gone and the bike’s not in the back anymore. Sergei gives me a Pall Mall.

“We have much work to do, Nick Ray.”

I light the cigarette, thinking it’ll settle my stomach, but I take one hit and it flubbers its way down and back up. I swallow hard. There’s an acidy puke burn eating its way into the back of my throat and nose.

“Much work to do. Cannot have sick and throw up people.” Sergei takes a knife that’s wide as a credit card out of his belt holster. He’s got a loaf of Wonder bread next to him and he takes out a slice and carves off the crust, or what passes for a crust in Wonder bread. When he’s got it cut down to just the white part, he packs it in his palm until it’s the size of a golf ball. He holds it in front of my face. “Suck, Nick Ray.”

I look at him.

“Good for you. Good for stomach, Wonder bread.” He shoves it in my mouth and, oddly enough, I start to feel better. “Don’t swallow,” he says. “Suck like candy.”

I do as he says, the bread gets sugary, and we sit quietly for a moment. He sighs like an old man, like a dog. “This very big deal. Very big. You need to be better.”

“I’m feeling better,” I say. “Need some food.”

“Suck bread.”

“I need food,” I say.

He gives me three twenty-dollar bills. I take them and thank him.

“You cannot be a puke man,” Sergei says. He says it as if he cares and I think for a moment that maybe I can trust him. Then it flashes on me that he wasn’t in this morning when he said he was. Or maybe he was—who the hell knows?

“I’m okay,” I say. “Tired—but okay.”

“We have to meet man. You can’t be puking bait.”

“I hear you.” I pause, looking around. “Where’s Maggot Arm Joe?”

“Setting up meeting.” Sergei points across the street and I see Maggot Arm Joe on a pay phone at a Chevron station. He’s writing something down.

“With who?” I say.

“Mr. Fudge.”

I pause. A small bug zips by my face and I swat at it. “Mr. Fudge?”

“That his name.”

“That’s the name the government gave him?” I say.

“Government not name Mr. Fudge.”

“He’s not a relocated witness?”

Sergei shakes his head. “Oil tycoon. Very rich man.”

Maggot Arm Joe begins to walk back across the street. He’s got a nice suit on, black pants and jacket with gold silk shirt with a darker shade of gold tie. He looks like a movie star, like Denzel Washington, maybe, and for the first time I get a glimpse of his pre—junkie/lawyer life. I look at Sergei. “How does this Mr. Fudge fit in? If he’s not on our list?”

“I told you,” Sergei says. “He very rich man.”

“So?” I say. The bread ball is getting gooey, so I swallow it. “So’s Bill Gates—we’re not meeting Bill Gates. Lot of rich people we’re not meeting. Why him?”

Maggot Arm Joe gets in. Sergei gets out of the backseat and into the driver’s seat.

“What is story?” Sergei says.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “We’re on. The man wants to meet at the observation bar on the Queen Mary at five.”

I’m getting frustrated. Shit has been going on behind my back. “Who the fuck is this guy and why are we meeting him?”

Sergei looks at me in the rearview. He looks as stoic and self-important as a head on Mount Rushmore. “Maybe if you don’t have bait side business, you keep up better, Nick Ray.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “He’s Mr. Fudge—his daddy made a fortune in oil.”

“That much I know,” I say.

“But not enough of a fortune for Mr. Fudge—who got involved with some very bad people. Major-level real estate fraud and such. S&L shit—white-collar bad boys. Some of said bad people turned on the man and he did a stint at some Club Fed jail in Connecticut. Leona Helmsley Mike Milken, and this Mr. Fudge all played golf on taxpayers’ nickel, right? Anyway—now the man’s out, he’s still rich, and he wants to pin some people to the wall for talking about him’to the feds.” Maggot Arm Joe shrugs. “Problem is—he can’t find these people.”

“How do we fit in? How do we even know about this guy?” I say.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “My firm defended him.” He looks out the window. “I defended him. I got him a choice deal. Man should have been put away for ten lifetimes. He loves me.”

“You defended him against what?” I say. “What charges?”

Maggot Arm Joe shakes his head. “We don’t have time for the list. Mr. Fudge has his fingers in a lot of pies. He’s got more pies than he’s got fingers, this guy.”

“We agreed we’d sell the witnesses the lists.”

“We didn’t agree on shit. We can make one score and leave the nasty business to the nasty men, this way.”

“No,” I say.

Sergei says, “We did one Nick Ray’s way. We do one Maggot Arm’s way. We see what works better, no?”

I need for this to not last very long—there’s a temptation to go for the quick money. “I’m not comfortable with him buying names from us,” I say.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “We’re not even sure we have the folks he’s looking for. Remains to be seen—me and you gotta check. For now, the man’s checking us out—see if we’re doing business. Tonight, we’re just talking, but we’re not talking. He wants to meet on the Queen—he’s some sort of boat nut—only does business on water or something.”

“Why can’t we just blackmail the people on the list?”

“What difference?” Sergei says.

“The difference is when you go to the people who want the list—you’re getting the people on the list killed.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “Not necessarily.”

“Pretty much,” I say.

“How do you know?”

And that’s true. What the fuck do I know about these people?

“Fuck them,” Sergei says. “I businessman. Businessman go where money is. People who want the people have more money than people who want to hide.”

“We can get rich without anyone getting killed,” I say.

“You don’t like terms, you sell fish in machines, Nick Ray. That good life.”

“Fuck you,” I say. He glares at me from the rearview and I try my best to stay tough and not back down.

Maggot Arm Joe looks at both of us and leans over the seat. “Look—this guy’s loaded and we don’t even know if we’re going to hook up here.” He looks over at Sergei and then back at me. “So let’s all calm down, okay? Nothing’s been decided. Plus—this guy’s not some mobster—he’s an oilman. He’s not going to kill anyone.” He pauses. Sergei nods and I look away. “Are we all cool, now?”

Sergei lights a cigarette. “Sergei cool. Never not cool.”

I feel trapped. Claustrophobic and prickly. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m cool.”

“Good,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “Now we got some time to kill.”

Sergei puts the SUV in gear and barrels out into the traffic without looking. “Look out, little fucking people,” he says calmly.

I look at my watch. It’s right around noon. “I need a shower.”

“You certainly do, my friend,” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“I love supply and demand,” Sergei says, and he looks genuinely happy, as if he’s forgotten the tension of a minute ago, which is, in its own way, as scary as the anger itself.