Delicately I bit the head off the yellow chili pepper, earning two mildly hot seeds on the tip of my tongue for my effort. I spat those out and shook the pepper’s juice on the temporarily topless pastrami burger. This is a concoction that is exactly what it sounds like, slices of steamed lean pastrami layered on a charbroiled patty. Heaven.
Putting my lunch back together, I took a healthy bite, savoring the mélange of tastes. Wiping my mouth with a paper napkin, I happened to glance at the other cat sitting near me at the side counter. He was sitting slightly sideways on his stool. Something piqued his interest and he swiveled around to look toward Adams Boulevard behind us, parallel to the outside counter of Johnny’s Pastrami.
Turning to also take a gander, I spied a late-model oxblood red Mercedes SLK 55 glide to an empty space at the curb. Frowning, I took another bite, smaller this time, and again wiped at my mouth as I chewed and swallowed my food. Sure enough, Alicia and her significant other Markie got out of the car and walked toward me. Alicia looked as she always did, rockin’ some sort of designer skirt and shirt, heels audible across the cracked sidewalk, a Hermès bag or its dupe, tucked neatly under her arm. Markie, the butcher one, was dressed as usual too, in worn jeans, flats, and an Oxford cloth button-down shirt.
“Your girlish figure is going to go all to hell eating like that,” Markie cracked.
“You two come to put my claim to the test?”
Markie snorted. Alicia frowned, then her pretty, alert face composed itself again. “Oh right, that time you said the pastrami here was better than at Canter’s.”
“What can I do for you, ladies?” Me and Alicia were related but it wasn’t an obvious thing. An eavesdropper on our infrequent phone conversations probably wouldn’t have a clue as to how. The fact she’d tracked me down and not called me told me something was up, something she needed me for and was pissed at herself because of that.
“Can we talk?” Alicia nodded toward her car.
“Okay, hold on a sec.” I got off the stool and got a paper bag from the lady behind the sliding window screen where you got your orders at the stand. Wrapping up what remained of my sandwich, I bagged it and walked over to the Mercedes. I had to hand it to Alicia. For a chick who rarely journeyed east of La Cienega, she didn’t look the least discomforted leaning against her ride here in the ’hood.
Conversely Markie would be relaxed at a pit bull fight. Alicia now stood apart from us as I leaned against the Mercedes, having placed my bag on the roof of that sweet sled just to get a rise out of her. A tic twitched at the side of her mouth but she didn’t object. She must really need me, and got right to it.
“Stu is meeting with Kleener Lockhart tonight.” Alicia stood close to me, a hand on her hip.
“Why?” I made no effort to hide my irritation.
She leveled her patented “how retarded are you” glare on me.
“Specifics would be helpful.”
“I can’t say for sure, but the point is what good can come of it?”
My partially eaten lunch gurgled in my stomach. “Great, you want me to try and stop him?”
She hunched a shoulder. “I already tried that.”
Like a direct attempt from me would be useless was her implication— being only the half-brother. But we both knew that was bullshit. She’d been worked since middle school that Stu and I were close. But why prick at that now? I took a different tack. “How do you know this is going down, Alicia?”
A lowrider ’67 Impala rolled west on Adams and the eses in it wolf whistled at her, ignoring Markie. Alicia almost grinned wearily. “He bragged about it to me, of course.”
He would if they were having one of their arguments. As our old man stepped further back from the business, each of them made more aggressive moves to show they were the one to inherit. It sure as shit wasn’t gonna be me. “Where’s the meet?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Shit. Why not put the bag over my head and let me loose in the room with knives sticking out of the walls.”
Markie muttered something but I didn’t catch it.
“Come on, Ellis, don’t be like that. You’re the only one that can find out.”
“Yeah and to quote the sage, that’s why black men tend to shout.”
She gritted her uneven yet appealing front teeth. “Really, we’re going there now?”
A dry chuckle escaped my throat. “You doing this for the righteous reason or just to knee-cap Stu?”
“I can’t believe you talk to me like that.”
“He’s a grown-ass man, Alicia. This might be his chance and you want to make sure the works get gummed up.”
She gave me the finger and the two of them started to get back in her Mercedes.
I gave it a beat or two. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Then what?”
“Could you, you know, spy on the meet?”
I made a face. “It depends where it’s going to be.”
“Do what you can.”
Shit, she knew I would. I wouldn’t let Stu sit down with that big bad wolf without watching his back. Still. “If this goes south, you’re riding this beef with me.”
“Naturally,” she smirked.
Alicia got behind the wheel. I moved to let Markie into the passenger seat. We exchanged a nod and for the briefest of moments, she seemed to be considering saying something but didn’t. She got in the car and they drove off, probably to their shop I figured.
Thereafter I returned to the store. It’s one of a chain of eight Kingman Mattress stores that stretch from the Los Angeles area to San Diego and Palm Springs. We sell a good deal of mattresses to the gays and old folks out that latter way. I sometimes daydream various scenarios as to why that is. But today is not the day for such speculation. The one I manage is on La Brea in a strip mall not far from Rodeo where further south past that you got into middle-class Baldwin Hills. The street was pronounced like what you’d call a horse event. Not Row-Day-Oh like that other street, the tony one in Beverly Hills. We occupied a big space and took up a corner of the shorter end of the ell shape of shops. Next to us was a nail salon and in the long part of the shank a rent-to-own.
I came in and waved at a couple of our deliverymen bringing in a shipment of the new memory foam mattresses. They were selling like we had billboards up of Miz Beyoncé rolling around butt naked on them. Now that would be an ad. I made for Lola Estrella’s office. She was our finance person, among other talents. Like all of the Kingman stores, there were a few staff members who walked in two worlds—the civilian one and the underground economy. I supposed if things kept going the way they were, Wall Street shafting Main Street, those distinctions might disappear altogether when it came to folks trying to keep beans and bread on the table. I knocked on her door, which was ajar.
“Negro, you just have yourself there at eight, understand?” She stopped speaking and I assumed she was listening to the man on the other end of the line. I was pretty certain who it was from her tone and words. “Uh-huh, never mind all that drama,” she soon said. “I don’t care nothing about that silly twist you think is in love with your old ass. Be there on time.” With that she cradled the handset and said, “Come on in, El.” Her window looked out partially on the showroom and she’d seen me coming.
I did so and closed the door behind me. I sat opposite, my serious face in place.
Lola, in a silky rayon top, a hint of her ample cleavage in evidence, transmitted a wary look and placed both her hands flat on her desk top. Her silver-colored nails damn near pulsed under the overhead fluorescent lights. She was a Chicana by way of Pico Rivera and had kids by two baby daddies.
“Yes,” she said.
“You still seeing that dude, Alonzo?” He was not one of the baby daddies.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s up, Ellis?”
She used my full name to show her displeasure at where she knew my line of inquiry was heading. “Would you mind asking a favor of him?”
“He’s out of that now.”
“It’s not that kind of favor. No errand on his part. I just need a little info.”
She was not in the mood. Why couldn’t I have gotten to her before her call with Melvin, one of her kids’ fathers? Mel was black, well, half-black like me and more light-skinded, the kids say, than me. ’Course we were both black enough when the cops stopped us. The other cat she had a kid by was a carnal from Michoacán who no one had heard from or seen around in some three years now.
I told her what was up. “I’ve got to get a line on the meet without, you know, tipping off the parties. I don’t want to come at Stu direct on this less he gets his hackles up.”
“And I don’t want Alonzo running in those circles no more,” she said with conviction. I could understand she wanted to keep him away from me, from whatever nefariousness might arise from dealing with Kleener Lockhart. I guess it was kinda cliché, but maybe she figured if she could save Alonzo, she could save herself.
“This one’s a keeper, huh?”
“I look to make him so.” The tension in her upper body finally abated. “Look, let me see if I can make some calls for you, El.” She snapped her fingers. “Like what you call it, discreetly.”
“I appreciate that, Lola.” I smiled as I walked out but didn’t think her getting on the phone, if she did, would amount to much. I’d wanted to get to Alonzo because he used to be a kind of high-end drug dealer, supplying his candy to upper-tier rappers, B movie actors, producers, and such. Among them was this knockout would-be starlet who liked running with bad boys—specifically one of Lockhart’s main arm-twisters, Tony Bones, real name Tony Bennett. Yep, just like the man who left his heart in San Francisco, only this Tony was six-four and built like a mobile meat locker. It was a good bet that he’d be with Lockhart doing bodyguard duties at this meet. My idea being if I could get to her through Alonzo, I might sweet talk something useful out of her.
That plan was bust but there was another move to make. If I couldn’t get to an ally of Lockhart, there was always a rival. Her name was Sylvia Hayden and once upon a time she’d been married to the Kleener. I took care of the paperwork in my In box then drove over to her place of business, a funeral parlor on Vermont not too far south of USC. The Hillman-Hayden Mortuary, nicknamed the Double H, was where luminaries like local city council and state assembly members were laid to rest. When LA native, rhythm and blues great Jack “Jump” Thornton passed, his service there had folks lining up three blocks deep to see him lying in state in his silver and gold coffin.
One of our commercials was playing on my Dodge’s stereo. It was the one where pop is a genie and grants the wisher the miracle of sound sleep. “You shall slumber like no other,” his voice echoed assuredly, his accent a cross between a Lou Costello bit and what white actors would do playing an American Indian on a TV western. He loved doing those ads. I got to the mortuary and went upstairs where the public isn’t directed.
“Mr. Culhane. Long time no see.”
“Good to see you too, Edie.” I gave the older lady a peck on the cheek. “Could you buzz the boss to see if she could give me a few minutes?” Sylvia’s office was located in the rear of the second story. It was last decorated in the eighties but was of the sort of understated furnishings one expected of this sort of outfit. The alluring aroma of a stand of fresh flowers in a vase buffeted the room.
“Yes, okay,” Edie Colliers was saying into her phone’s handset. She cradled it gently, the diamond on her finger complementing her tailored outfit. “Go on in, young man.”
I thanked her and stepping past her, opened one of the darkly varnished double doors into Sylvia’s inner office. Here the decor was of a more modern slant with chrome and leather and a built-in bookcase. The proprietor was up from behind her large desk at the other built-in, the wet bar.
“Cream soda, Ellis?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She was pouring herself some into a coffee cup. Her favorite beverage, I recalled. She was a handsome woman in her forties who once was svelte, but a few too many cream sodas over time had added some weight. In a gray business skirt and Donna Karan blouse, she had what my pops would call a zaftig quality.
She sat lightly on her couch and I joined her there. We made a little with the chit-chat, then I got down to it. “I’m trying to find out what your ex is up to with my brother, Stu.”
“Hmmm,” she proclaimed. “And you came to me why?”
“I don’t have time to play coy, Sylvia. We both know you keep tabs on what Kleener does.”
“Not always.” She had another sip of her soda and placed the cup on a coaster with the mortuary’s name on it.
“If this is happening I can’t believe it wouldn’t have appeared on your radar.”
“Is your brother fronting for Jacob?”
I shook my head to indicate negative. “This is his initiative.”
She held up a finger. “But unlike him.” She regarded me with her heavily made-up chestnut colored eyes. “And not turn to his little brother for help on the black tip in forging the cross town alliance … if that’s what it is.”
She tantalized with that hint while also holding back. That’s why I hadn’t been all that eager to come here. It wasn’t about money. She liked to horse trade. “Okay, what’s the khesed, the favor you want me to do?”
Her grin was like what a lioness must display closing in on an antelope. “I thought you Jews only did favors asked at weddings?”
“Teachings talk about putting yourself out for others.” Not that I was an adherent of such. “What do you want done?”
She feinted with her hand in the air as if listlessly swatting at a fly. “There is a dear friend of mine, we go back many years. She has this wayward niece of hers. Meth head, tweaker I think they call them.” She fixed me with a look. “Just the other day I was commiserating with her about this. Very sad.”
Already the muscles in my stomach were doing the watusi. “Those types can’t be helped until they want to help themselves.”
“This is so. But if she could be extricated from her present circumstances, the niece might be afforded the opportunity to get on the right path again. My friend has some means.”
Then why the hell didn’t this friend go and get her? But I said, “What’s the boom?”
“The boom?”
“What is it about her present circumstance that presents the obstacle?”
“Ah,” she said, as if it just occurred to her at this moment that there was danger involved in this retrieval. “My friend has good reason to believe the niece, Gladys, is at a house where these sort congregate. Out there near Lynwood off the MTA line.”
I almost cursed aloud. “That would be Four Trey Dalton territory.”
She nodded her head. “I believe so.”
Kleener Lockhart before he parlayed his drug monies into semi-respectable white-collar gangsterdom had been a Four Trey Dalton. Was this just coincidence or had I been led by the nose by my willful sister to this exact situation? That seemed like too many moving pieces, but at this stage I was hooked anyway. I had to see how it played out. I got as much detail as I could from Sylvia, including a couple of snapshots of the wayward twenty-two-year-old sent to my smartphone, and left the Double H.
On the way to the meth house on the Watts/Lynwood border, I made a stop at a hardware store to make a few purchases. I then got over there and first drove past the crib to give it a look over. It was one among countless 1940s era California Craftsman to be found in the poorer parts of the Southland. This part of town had been mostly black back when and was now majority Latino. The house needed a paint job but it wasn’t dilapidated and the lawn was dying but not overgrown or trashed up.
But as I feared there was an indication that not just faded-out meth heads were inside. There was a late model white with gold flake trim Lincoln Navigator that screamed attention parked in the driveway with expensive rims. That meant some Four Trey shot caller was in there getting his freak on with one or more of the female druggies. He got to sex ’em up in exchange for some tina, the shaboo, or whatever the hell they were calling it these days.
My first idea had been to set the back of the house on fire and grab a hold of Gladys when she ran out with the rest. But meth heads tend to be in stupors when they’re on the downside of the shit, so burning up a few of them might not be a loss to humanity but still, I was no psycho. The good news was, having had some experience with meth users, I knew they came and went at all hours—some to go rip out copper wire from street lights to sell for more drugs or otherwise get their hustle on.
I got my purchases together and stepping to the Lincoln, let the air out of one of the tires by pressing the point of a key into the valve stem. Two middle-aged women, one of them pulling an old-folks type of wire basket cart full of groceries, walked past speaking in Spanish. They didn’t eyeball me, knowing better than to involve themselves with whatever foolishness was about to go down with this house. I then went onto the porch and listened for a moment at the door and sure enough, the latch gave when I pressed it.
Inside was gloomy and dank; musty body odors and the air heavy with layers of past fried food. A dude sitting in an easy chair looked over at me then back to the Dodger game playing on low over a portable radio atop an upturned plastic milk crate. He glared at it as if visualizing each play being described by the announcer. There was some activity in the kitchen through the open door at the rear, I heard two male voices arguing. To my right was a large padded chair next to an entrance to a hallway. Being over six feet and not lacking in the shoulder department helped me to not get challenged—at least just yet.
At the doorframe to the hallway, a noise startled me and looking behind me first, saw no one charging. I then looked down at the padded chair. Due to the semidark, I’d assumed it was empty. But I could now discern a form curled up on its wide seat, seemingly folded in on itself. It was a woman so I bent down and turned her head some. She was a pretty Latina, but not Gladys, who was black. The girl moaned and I left her to her narcotized dreams.
Down the hallway I peeked into a room. A man with one leg and half the other rested on his back on a bed damn near buried among junk from compact appliance motors to plastic garbage bags stuffed with who knew what. His prosthesis sat upright on a nightstand.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing in my house?” he demanded.
“Inspector,” I said, but not too loud. I’d heard a baritone coming from what I figured was the house’s other bedroom. Coming from in there was a deep male base rumble of pleasure. I grinned. I’d been known to make that sound my damn self. At the door I took in a breath, held it, then barreled inside, the door giving away to my hurtling body.
“The fuck,” the Dalton exclaimed. His pants were down around his ankles and he was standing at the rear of a bed in his woven Ralph Lauren boxers. The girl on it, Gladys I was happy to see, had been polishing his knob with gusto, I lasciviously imagined.
He whipped around and bent to reach the Glock he’d put atop a mini-fridge. Fortunately his pants situation impeded his movement just enough for me to reach him and crack him on the skull with the Mag flashlight I’d bought earlier. It was the type the cops used to open up a fool’s cranium; made that more efficient what with the D batteries I’d also bought and loaded in it. He sagged some, getting his arms around me, cursing a streak. He smelled heavy of marijuana. I hit him again on the head. This time he dropped like a Kardashian on a free diamond.
“Come on, Gladys, your auntie sent me.” She was fully dressed so there was that too in my favor.
“Okay,” she said. I liked that about meth heads. They could be reasonable and compliant depending on what phase of their high they were in. Deny the addict their want, now that was a different matter. Naturally I had the concerned homeowner to deal with back in the hallway.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” He was using a crutch to get around. Where the hell had that come from?
I beamed the light on his haggard face. He might not have been older than me but it was hard to tell. “Didn’t I tell you I was inspecting?”
Before he could get further I took hold of the crutch and yanking it from under his arm, upended the man. I then hit him with his implement a few times, busting it apart. Yeah, what a motherfucker I am, beating on the handicapped. But I didn’t have time to be PC.
“I’m’a get you, nigga,” he whined but didn’t get up as we hurried past him.
Nobody else messed with us as the curious invaded the hallway. We got outside and back in my car. I had duct-taped over the plates, my other purchase at the hardware store. There might have been an energetic druggie up in here and I didn’t want to tempt fate. We blew out of there. A few blocks away, I stopped, took off the tape so as not to draw a sheriff deputy’s ire—as they patrolled this part of the county—and got back in my car.
“Can we get some spaghetti? I haven’t had any in a long time.” That was the first words she’d said after sitting in the Challenger for several minutes.
“Sure, we can get some spaghetti, Gladys.” And we did. I also delivered her to Sylvia and the grateful aunt—who turned out to be a well-known state rep, a congresswoman who was a leading member of the Black Caucus. Not an hour later, I was on the other side of town as rush hour arrived. I parked at a meter near the modest storefront of Carthy Watch Repair and Sales on Beverly Boulevard a block and a half west of Fairfax Avenue. This was the edge as it were of the Fairfax District, the traditional Jewish section of Los Angeles. These days, not too many miles south on that street it became the Little Ethiopia section. Too, the Farmer’s Market and the conjoined Grove were nearby. The former was an old school establishment of open-air stalls ranging from kosher butchers and Mexican eateries to wine and beer bars. Old timers and hipsters would gather in the middle near the tables and chairs to eat and shoot the breeze. The Market led into the Grove. It was one of those sprawls of numerous anchor stores, paeans to consumerism. Their facades had the look of small-town America by way of Disney, made complete with a trolley that tooted past the stores.
Stepping to the shop, I reflected that over the years I’d heard of the proprietor, Mort Weisinger, now and then but hadn’t met the man. I’d also heard his mother had been among the six thousand or so Lithuanian Jews that had been saved in World War II by the Japanese ambassador to that country, Chiune Sugihara. Apparently, defying his government’s orders, he and his wife had put in all-nighters for a period of nearly a month in 1940 as the Nazis took power to fill out exit visas for as many of that country’s Jewish population as they could. Over in Little Tokyo, there was a life-sized sitting metal statue of the cat. What else I knew was Weisinger didn’t expect or desire a statue, plaque, or proclamation about his accomplishments. He liked to remain behind the scenes. Rumor was he owned this whole block of buildings through dummy fronts. The only reason he’d agreed to the meet was because Sylvia vouched for me.
“I’ll have it for you by next Tuesday, Mrs. Ramirez,” the seventysome-thing Weisinger was saying to a customer, a handsome heavyset Latina, as I entered. A clock like what you’d see on a crowded mantle under a glass dome was next to them on the shop’s glass counter. All sorts of timepieces were inside the counter on display. Unexpectedly, I heard no clocks ticking anywhere, even though there were more along the walls and shelves, all running silently.
She thanked him and left. I stepped over to the counter as he extended a knobby hand. “You must be the other son of Jacob Kingman.”
“Ellis Culhane.” We shook hands.
“Hold on a second.” He moved from around the counter and in the middle glass of the front door, turned over one of these plastic signs that have a clock dial with plastic watch hands on it. This announced to passersby he’d be back in twenty minutes. He came back toward me, pointing at a curtain behind the counter.
“Let’s have some tea.”
I followed the spry older fella in his baggy pants behind the curtain into a softly lit back area where there was a cot, a workbench, tools, clock pieces, and the like. There was already a kettle, which looked to be of another era vintage, heating on a hotplate that was so battered and worn it was a wonder it hadn’t shorted out and caught the place on fire. He steeped the tea in the kettle and poured the liquid over sugar cubes suspended across old world–style tea glasses in metal holders. He handed me one and took a seat on the room’s only chair, me sitting on a stool he’d dragged in.
I said, “I appreciate you seeing me, Mr. Weisinger.”
“Did you know I know your mother? Knew I suppose since I haven’t seen her once she retired to Vegas.”
I was genuinely surprised. “I did not.”
“Me, her, Sylvia, we were part of that fabled collation that brought Bradley to office.”
“I’ll be damned.” Tom Bradley had been the only black mayor of Los Angeles. He was first elected in 1973. Well, second if you counted the partially black Pio Pico from way the hell back.
“Oh yes. Black folks out of the Ninth and Tenth Districts mobilizing, and us raising the money on the Westside.” He sipped, a faraway melancholy enwrapping him momentarily.
“You ever drop around to her club?” I placed my tea glass on a nearby shelf.
“I did now and then. Great place.”
Mom had run a joint called Hill’s Hideaway where the likes of Redd Foxx would drop by to hear Ernie Andrews or Jimmy Witherspoon sing. There had been a husband, Hilly Bledsoe, but he’d dropped dead unexpectedly from a heart attack one day while stacking cases of beer.
“Did you know Hilly?”
“We went back a long way. When we were kids, we ran errands on the east side for the Solly Davis crew.”
Solly Davis had been a lieutenant of Mickey Cohen.
He went on. “When it came to it, I’m the one who brokered the investment package for the club. No white bastard banker on Wilshire was going to give a brother like Hilly a legitimate loan. Shit,” he sneered. “Now this was before he met your mother,” he added.
Jake Kingman hadn’t been an investor. But he’d dug that kind of music and journeying into the “jungle” made him never no mind back in the early eighties. I was the product of their affair together, even though dad was married at the time. I wound back to the present. “That’s why you agreed to see me.”
“Yes, among other reasons.”
He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press it. “I believe Sylvia mentioned I’m trying to find out if Kleener Lockhart is making moves to create his own off-the-books brand of the black-Jewish alliance.”
“With whom?”
I told him and had more of my tea. It had cooled to tepid.
Weisinger was quiet for a time. He had one leg folded over the other and held his glass of tea in a relaxed manner. He finally spoke. “I do not believe this is so. Oh, I know Kleener is a man with vision, of that you and I will agree. But, and this is no offense to you and your family, young man, but he would not be doing such with Stuart Kingman. I suspect you know this too, deep down.”
He spoke with the certainty of an oracle. Maybe he wasn’t, but he’d convinced me. “You suggest I question the source?”
He stared at me evenly, crinkles appearing at the ends of his eyes. Those lines were like glyphs etched into his face before Pluto went cold. “More tea?” he finally said.
I had another cup and back outside I first called Stu’s number. It buzzed but didn’t pick up nor went to message. I next dialed Alicia’s number. That went to voicemail and I didn’t leave a message. I called her shop, the inner line, and also got no response. I called yet another number. Alicia and Markie, with seed money from our pops, had an enterprise that currently resided in Koreatown. It was a swap shop, one of those no-name places you had to know somebody who knew somebody to know where it was—as by necessity the secret location changed from time to time. They sold knockoff Kate Spade and Louis V bags, belts, scarves, and those sorts of accessories. They used quality material and seasoned craftspeople. They sold stuff like that Hermès bag sis was sporting this morning. The real ones went for twenty grand and they sold theirs for a few grand and still made bank.
Kingman Mattress trucks had been known among a select few to move contraband around, sometimes hidden in the goods. And now the daughter was making that contraband. There was something synergistic about that, I mused.
“Deedra, it’s Ellis,” I said when the line connected on my fourth call.
“What up, dog?” Deedra worked the swap shop along with Alicia and Markie.
“Have you seen Alicia around?”
“About an hour ago she was here. We had a new shipment of Oscar D to go over. But she left after that.”
“Any idea where she was heading?”
There was a momentary pause. “Yeah, she talked to Markie over the phone about picking up something from Canter’s and meeting at her father’s house. Oh, I mean—”
“That’s okay.” Being the bastard son elicits awkward responses sometimes. “Thanks, huh?”
“Sure.”
Our pops lives in a modest house on a narrow street in an area that’s not quite West Hollywood and not the Fairfax District either. His wife, Rosie, passed more than two years ago and except for the commercials he still enjoyed doing, he wasn’t involved too much now in the day to day of the Kingman Mattress empire. The street is permit parking and it was full up anyway. I parked a couple of blocks away and walked back. I heard female voices from the kitchen as I eased along the shrub-lined walkway toward the rear of the house. I came through the unlocked rear door. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a key.
“What are you doing here?” Markie snarled at me.
“Kiss my ass.” I glared at Alicia. She held a plate with a pastrami sandwich on a kaiser roll set on it. The take-out container from Canter’s was on the kitchen table. A small mound of coleslaw was heaped next to the sandwich.
Markie moved toward me. “Go home, Ellis.”
Alicia looked from her to me. She swallowed hard. What was wrong with this picture? The dutiful daughter bringing dinner to her old man. Buttering him up, sure, that made sense.
Markie had her hand on my chest. “Didn’t you hear me, motherfuckah?”
“Be cool,” Alicia said.
Markie was efficient in the roughhouse department. She’d been an MMA fighter once upon a time before she got too banged up and became an EMT. But something about her trying to give me the rush rankled me. Too, we never did get along much. Before she could get that other hand on me and put me in a headlock or kick my shins out from under me, I took out the pistol from under my Calvin Klein windbreaker. The one Alicia got me last Christmas. The roscoe was the one I’d liberated from homeboy at the meth house.
I cracked her on the head with it, twice. I was getting to be a good head whupper. Sheeet.
“Dammit,” Alicia said, sliding the plate onto the kitchen table. Markie had taken a knee, her elbow on the table for support.
“You guys okay in there?” our dad said from the front room.
“It’s just me, pop.”
“Oh, hey, Ellis.”
“We’ll be right in,” Alicia said.
“If you try anything, I’ll be happy to shoot you,” I said to Markie stepping past her and taking a piece of pastrami hanging from the sandwich. They both stared at me as I ate it. I didn’t think my sister would try and poison the old man outright. But this is where the bit about Markie being an EMT kicked my imagination into overdrive. Maybe they looked to give him a heart scare or something. Sprinkle a little digitalis or what have you on his chow. Hurry up his exit from the business so they could take over.
I didn’t fall over or cough or anything like that once I swallowed. I did though take a couple of strips of the meat and put them in a plastic baggie. I’d have them analyzed later at a lab. I put the doped pastrami in my pocket. The other hand still held the gun. I figured just as they’d come up with a cock-and-bull story to keep me occupied, they’d told Stu some wild tale to keep him chasing his tail as well. They didn’t want one of his sons dropping by tonight unexpectedly to say hi.
“Dad,” Alicia called out. “They messed up the order. I’ll have to get it redone.”
“Sure, honey.”
“I’ll visit with you till they get back.”
“I’d like that a lot, Ellis. Seems to me you and I haven’t talked, really talked, like we should in some time.”
A sullen Markie was at the back door and I took Alicia by the upper arm and squeezed hard. I leaned in and breathed, “From here on out, the old man gets the sniffles and I’m looking at you two. And don’t think just ’cause we’re related that will stay my hand.”
For the first time in her life, Alicia saw me for who I was.
They went to get him untainted food while my dad and I had a real nice talk.