Dead-End Blues

We’re winding through the rich neighborhoods of Orange County, where the lawns all look like golf greens and the people still have enough money and ignorance and bad taste to think a lawn jockey is a cool thing in the world.

I take a right on this street that looks familiar, and ask Maggot Arm Joe where I make my next turn.

“What am I?” he says. “A fucking Sherpa?”

“I just thought you’d know,” I say.

“Take right at sign,” Sergei says.

I take a right and then I see the road that winds its way up to Harry Fudge’s mansion, which has several lights on in the windows that glow at the top of the hill. When we get to the gate, I roll down my window and Sergei says, “Do not pass go.”

The guard at the gate says, “That’s not today’s password, sir.”

We all look at one another for a moment.

Sergei says, “Must see Mr. Fudge. Very important business.”

“Mr. Fudge is at the hospital, sir.”

“Why?” I say.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he says.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. The paramedics took him away on the last shift—all I know is it’s pretty serious. You’ll have to call the house for more information. Now please back out, sir.”

He steps back into the booth and there’s no more talking to him, so I do as I’m told and roll the car back and turn it around and head down Harry Fudge’s hill back to the public roads.

“Fuck,” Maggot Arm Joe says.

“It could be nothing,” I say. “The man could be fine.”

Sergei has Harry Fudge’s assistant Paulo’s phone number back at his condo, so we head back north. The trees and billboards all whiz by and I don’t pay much attention to anything except the fact that our plan is blowing up in our faces. But I try to focus on potential good news—people go to the hospital all the time and they walk out with a smile. This doesn’t have to be bad. Still, my chest is tight as cling wrap and my breath comes in narrow shards as we get off the freeway and drive through town on surface streets.

When we get to Sergei’s condo, the news isn’t good. Sergei talks on the phone for a few minutes and it’s impossible to read his blank face, but then he hangs up and fills us in. It turns out Harry Fudge has slipped into a coma and he doesn’t look like he’s coming out anytime soon.

“Looks like probably die,” Sergei says.

“That’s it,” I say. “No chance he’s coming out?”

Nobody says anything.

I say, “People do come out of comas.”

Sergei nods in a distracted sort of way.

I go to the fridge and get a beer and look out at the lights over the marina and out onto the water. A bunch of boats are on the water, it looks like a regatta, like they should be wheeling Rose Kennedy herself out to wave hello before they put her back to her darkness. The little sailboats bob and wobble in their controlled way, well-off people getting in place to be beneath the fireworks celebration later tonight off the Queen Mary, which is where I met Harry Fudge less than a week ago when he looked strong enough to kill me with his hands.

Harry Fudge has to be seventy years old. That’s seventy years with 365 days in them at twenty-four hours a clip and then all added up and the fucker couldn’t have hung on for another twenty-four hours, another single day to pay us? I down the beer quickly and put the empty on the table.

I tell Sergei and Maggot Arm Joe I need to take off, that I’m overdue at Tara’s place, but that I’ll call over later.

Neither of them says anything, maybe later there will be back pats and keep-your-head-ups and a series of Plan Bs, but for now they’re looking like sad-faced kids. Even Sergei looks drained, all the toxins in the world can’t block his disappointment. Some’ illegal fireworks pop out on the water. My feet clump on Sergei’s deep carpet as I go to the door and head out.