The Garage People Revisited

We’re sitting deep and fat in the soft white leather of Sergei’s couch while this yellow-and-green bird Sergei picked up at Pet Partners chirps away by the balcony. He doesn’t have a name yet, Sergei calls him Mr. Bird and talks to him like he talks to everyone else.

“Don’t talk baby talk to Mr. Bird,” he says. “Animals hate this.”

Sergei puts peanuts between his lips and lets Mr. Bird pick them out. He hasn’t been cut yet.

Maggot Arm Joe has compiled a list of the names we have on our computers, plus my hard-copy list, that match the list of names Harry Fudge wants to suffer. The total of relocated names we have is eighty-eight. The overlap is twenty-two names, which is $440,000, which split three ways is enough to move me out of this life. It’s not, as Hank Crow says, “Fuck-You Money,” but it’s leave-the-Lincoln-behind money, and for now, that’s plenty for me.

Sergei smiles. “Many thousand money.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “We got a problem.”

I ask him what the problem is and he tells me it’s Mr. Frank Carr, who has become Mr. Timothy Shay and who’s on both lists.

“What problem?” Sergei says.

“We sold Frank Carr back his name.”

“Right,” Sergei says.

Maggot Arm Joe shrugs. “So we deal him square? We keep him off of Harry Fudge’s list?”

“We have to deal him square,” I say. “We told the man he had a deal. Unless he reneges, that’s the deal. So Harry Fudge gets twenty-one people to kill instead of twenty-two. What Harry Fudge doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him. Or us.”

“That’s where there could be a problem,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “These names are all there for a reason, right? These are all men that fucked with Harry Fudge—they may have something to do with each other. He may know that Frank Carr should be on this list-and he may wonder why he wasn’t.”

“He’ll just have to wonder, then,” I say. “We made a deal with the man.”

“You do not fuck with people like Harry Fudge, or Spencer Durrell, Nick.”

“Who’s fucking with Spencer Durrell?” I say.

“We all are,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “And the longer this goes on, the more things that can go wrong. Fucking Frank Carr could have called the FBI by now.”

I say, “What’ll they do for him?”

“They’ll relocate him, asshole,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “And then the FBI will know they’ve been compromised with their witness relocations.”

It hits me that they could move everybody, and then our names could be worthless.

“Frank Carr supposed to pay by now, no?”

“It’s Thursday, right?” I say.

The two of them nod and I say, yeah, he was supposed to have paid tomorrow.

“Cannot wait,” Sergei says. “Must collect now.”

I hadn’t wanted to tell them about his calling me out to TC’s—was hoping it wouldn’t be relevant, but it looks like it could be and so I say, “Mr. Frank Carr called me the other night.”

“And?” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“And he said he’d pay us—he gave me this talk about how we were in over our heads and he said if we fucked him over, he’d send Durrell after us.”

“And this is why you don’t want to screw him?” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“No. I don’t want to screw him because that would be wrong. I just thought this might be a little extra incentive not to screw him.”

Sergei says, “Why send Durrell? Durrell kill Frank Carr. He have nothing to negotiate with.”

And I tell them what Mr. Frank Carr said. That he’d take off and make a new life with a new name far away from Spencer Durrell.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “When were you going to tell us about this?”

“I didn’t think it was important,” I say.

“Well, it just so happens it is fucking important,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “And who left it for you to decide?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “The guy called me and didn’t say anything that altered the deal, so I let it pass. I would have said something if he screwed us, but he hasn’t.” I pause and he doesn’t say anything. “If I fucked up, I’m sorry.”

“You did fuck up, Nick,” he says. “Screw this guy—let’s just give his name to Fudge. Fuck him—threatening us.”

“He knows bad people,” I say.

“He turned on bad people—he doesn’t want to be in touch with them. I don’t accept that.”

Sergei shakes his head. “Get tiring, this.”

“We still owe him the chance to pay us,” I say.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “What the fuck are you—Opie Taylor? We owe him jack—the man should have paid us.”

“Let’s give him a chance.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “I hate Orange County.”

“It’s worth ten grand if we go.”

“It’s worth twenty if we don’t.”

Sergei stands. “We go. Nick Ray right. He pay, we get money. Doesn’t pay, get more money. Still good situation.”

“We could call,” I say.

Sergei says, “Call on way. Element of surprise.”

“Dude could not be home, too,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “How’s that for a surprise?”

Sergei says, “Let us go.”

We get up and Sergei goes over and takes the birdcage off its stand.

“What are you doing?” I say.

“Mr. Bird first night,” Sergei says. “Can’t leave alone. Mr. Bird must come.”

“You’re joking?”

“Be in backseat,” Sergei says. “Not problem.”

We’re on the 22, heading down south and toward the Anaheim Hills.

On the way down Sergei calls on a cell phone and gets the answering machine.

“Want to turn around?” I say.

“Maybe screen calls,” Sergei says. “This last chance—make him explain why he hasn’t paid us.”

Nobody talks much in the car. The bird chirps now and again. I turn on NPR and they’re talking about more end-of-the-world talk and terrorism and the world falling apart. They talk about the way people went flippy at a bunch of other times in history and how this just seems to be the way people are. Give them a major date or cut-off point, the fortieth birthday, the end of the millennium, 9/11, whatever, and they start acting like loons. Things take on a significance they may or may not have. Stuff that’s without meaning is taken as signs. Pseudosciences crop up around the turn of new centuries, last time around it was phrenology, now it’s the pseudoscience of the savant, which the guest describes as an ignorant distrust of all empirical sciences. This, in turn, leads to cults, like Scientology and all the apocalyptic cults.

“And Christianity,” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“Stop with bad-mouthing,” Sergei says.

The people on the radio are talking about end-of-the-world cults and apparently one of the big ones is here in Long Beach. They recruit at yard sales; that’s their technique. The man on the radio says, “So it behooves you to be very careful at Long Beach yard sales.”

None of this ever means much to me. If the world’s going to end, my guess is that it will be very quiet and very unannounced and it won’t fall on some date and time that a preponderance of lunatics have agreed on.

Sergei’s nodding as we listen. “Good thing we have meat, no?”

Maggot Arm Joe stares out the window and sounds bored when he says, “Yup: A lifesaver.”

Sergei digs in his pockets and comes out with a couple of key rings with a key on each of them. “Have key made.” He tosses one to Maggot Arm Joe in the backseat and puts one in the breast pocket of my flannel shirt. I look at him.

“Bomb shelter,” Sergei says. “No end of world for us.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “I’m telling you, let’s blow this clown off. He’s had his chance to pay off.”

Sergei says, “One chance more.”

We pull into the guest slot up around Mr. Frank Carr’s place in the Anaheim Hills. The guest slot is near the bank of mailboxes and this old guy in his garage waves and says hello as we get out of my car. There’s a woman in the garage, too. She’s seated in a folding chair, but she’s not at the table with the guy. There’s a coffee table with a phone next to her. The guy is at one of those folding card tables that peppered suburbia in the sixties and seventies. He sits there with an ashtray and an open notebook. Behind him is a big roll-down map of the world, the kind you see in high schools. There’s a video camera in his driveway that seems to be pointed at him and the woman.

Sergei waves. “Hello, garage person.”

The guy looks confused, but friendly. He looks beyond his camera and points a handheld remote that shuts off the tape. “Hello.”

We keep walking to Mr. Frank Carr’s town house and the garage person says, “Are you fellows looking for the Shays?”

The Shays? Yes, it clicks in, that’s Mr. Frank Carr’s name now. “Yes,” I say.

He shakes his head. “They had a death of some kin in Arizona.”

I’m thinking, Did he say kin? Who says kin?

Maggot Arm Joe says, “When did he leave?”

“They,” the garage guy says. “They left this morning. I’m watering the plants, that’s why I know.” He gestures around to the other town houses. “I’m pretty much the waterer around here. It’s an issue of trust.” He sticks his hand out and says his name’s Gordon Wright.

I know that name.

He points to the camera, then the woman. “You’ve probably seen the show. The Wright Report.”

I think I have seen this show. Local-access cable, the guy sits at his desk and reads the passages he could get from Operation Blue Book. He reads first-person accounts of UFO sightings. His wife sits in the back and waits for phone calls of sightings. I say, “You’re the UFO people?”

“That’s right,” Gordon Wright says. “So you’re a believer?”

I’ve watched his show with the same sort of interest I reserve for infomercials. I wouldn’t call myself a believer. I tend to think people like Gordon Wright are as loopy as Deuteronomy, but not as dangerous. I’m not sure what to say, it’s like talking to God-people, you can tell them you’re not on the same page, but it’s flat-out not worth the trouble to disagree, ultimately.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “When do you expect the Shays to be back?”

The phone next to the woman in the back of the garage rings. Gordon holds his finger up and says, “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen—we have a call.” He puts his finger to his mouth and points the remote at the VCR. He says to the camera, “We have a sighting.”

The woman in back picks up the phone and listens for a second. She says to Gordon, “A sighting in Borrego Springs.”

Gordon gets up and walks over to the side of the garage with the map and with a pointer indicates a place in Southern California. “What kind of sighting?” he says.

The woman listens on the phone for a moment and says, “A silver lipstick object that hovered in an otherworldly way before speeding away.”

Gordon nods in that maniac true-believer way and says directly into the camera, “Speeding away too fast to be from this world.”

Maggot Arm Joe looks at me and rolls his eyes. He checks his watch and shows it to me. It’s 5:20 and I need to get moving if I’m going to meet Tara at the Dry Martini.

Sergei leans over and whispers, “Always to desert, the UFOs—always.”

Gordon Wright says to the camera, “Borrego Springs, eighty-five miles northeast of San Diego, lies in the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. This is not unusual. We’ve had several calls and, no doubt, we will get many more. We shall pay attention.” He looks over at the woman. “Thank you, caller. Thanks for all the eyes on truth.” He holds a plastic look of sincerity at the camera for a moment and points the remote at the video camera.

Once the camera’s off, Maggot Arm Joe says, “Any idea when they’ll be back?”

Gordon shakes his head. “Could be a while. There’s an estate to clear. The kids are out of school. They left a hundred pounds of dog food.”

The three of us start to walk back to our car.

Gordon Wright says, “Keep your eyes on truth, friends.” He waves in that picket-fence way that people do around here and we get in the car and pull away.

“Lunatics,” I say.

“Yard sales. Garages,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “Is nowhere safe?”

I say, “Do you think the man really had family die?”

“No fucking way,” Maggot Arm Joe says. “We need to get this taken care of before everyone on that list is moved.”

“How fast FBI act on something like this?” Sergei says.

“Too fast,” Maggot Arm Joe says.

And I don’t say anything, but something seems off. If Mr. Frank Carr wanted to pay us, wouldn’t he have called and tried to make arrangements? And if he didn’t want to pay us, why isn’t he worried about what we’d do? He must have told someone about the computers, but if he told the FBI, wouldn’t they have already contacted us?

“You okay?” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“Sure,” I say.

“Nick Ray worry man,” Sergei says. “Cannot change worry-man habits.”

I’m tired. I don’t know what to think and I would close my eyes and relax, but I need to keep this car on the road, and right now, that’s taking more energy than it should. The image of Mr. Frank Carr telling me that no one would miss crap like me floats into my head and needles me like a collection agency. Stay positive, I tell myself. Thoughts like this are inevitable, they don’t mean anything.