WHEN I GOT TO Hollywood around 4:30, what I really wanted was another bath, while smoking a joint, and because I’m a terrible pothead and had caused a lot of death that night, I went to the house to get some more weed, my medicine, before going back to the motel.
I parked on the street instead of in my garage, figuring I’d be in and out, and I climbed the stairs, having to brush away the tree branches, still heavy with water.
I went in the front door, flicked on the lights, and Poole and Venturi were standing there, waiting for me, guns out.
Déjà vu from Mexico.
They looked like shit but were alive.
On the table where I eat my meals, I saw an iPad. Venturi’s iPad, which had been in his bag. I knew in that instant that he had used it to track his cell phone, which I had left on, in my house, leading them right to me. Before I could reach for my baton, Poole shot me in the leg: his gun, a .22, had a silencer.
It didn’t put a huge hole in my thigh, it was only a .22, but it still hurt like hell, and I went down to my knees. Venturi then kicked me in the head, and I collapsed onto my stomach. Poole put his foot on my neck—twice in one night this had happened, weird how things go that way sometimes, like a run in cards—and Venturi grabbed my wrists and cuffed my hands behind me, pulling the zip real tight. He said, “Not going to make that mistake this time, you fucker. Three days in a fucking Mex hospital because of you, you bitch.”
I was in a lot of pain but managed to say, “Welcome to my home, fellas.”
Venturi then yanked me to my feet, and I was able to stand. The wound in my leg wasn’t that bad. Poole, his scar livid on his cheek, spit in my face, then said, spitting some more, “We’re going to throw you in the trunk, give you a taste of what you put us through.”
So I was right: my time in Sebastian’s trunk hadn’t been equal measure, not bad enough karma, but now I wondered about their karma. I had told them if they escaped from the trunk that they weren’t to do this, that their karma would be twice as bad, but I figured I must have been wrong. I said, “How did you get out?”
Poole’s answer was to hit me across the face with the .22, but Venturi said, “A friend of the doctor’s showed up the next morning. You left the keys, you idiot.”
I hadn’t thought to take them, it was true, and they marched me out of the house, not wasting any time and not knowing that their money was two feet away in the kitchen wall, money intended for Felix’s widow. They clearly hadn’t gone home yet. They had come straight from the border.
We started down the steps—I was in front of them, limping from the bullet in my leg—and I said, “Where you taking me?”
“Kunian,” said Poole. “He’s gonna pay nicely for you, you sick fuck.”
“He doesn’t know we’re coming?”
“Not yet. We wanted to make sure we had you.”
“Makes sense,” I said, and I thought of how I had watched Kunian die ninety minutes ago, and as for me, this was it. No illusion of reprieve. I was out of Houdini moves. I just hoped George and Walter would be all right, that the manager at the motel would read my note. But I knew I was getting what I deserved: the terrible punishment I had been waiting for all my life.
Then, halfway down the steps, there was the most incredible noise, a great explosion of some kind. I had never heard anything so loud, and I was suddenly flying through the air, in tremendous pain, and I thought, Poole shot me in the back of the head, that’s what’s happened. I’m dead.
A few hours later, I came to, and it was no longer night. There was sunlight, though it wasn’t quite reaching me. I was flat on my face at the bottom of my stairs, covered in tree.
The mighty hundred-foot eucalyptus, after thirty-six hours of rain, had had enough. It had become too waterlogged, snapped at its base, and toppled. The tree had missed my house but had slashed across my yard and went down my staircase, and as it died, it had screamed, a scream that had been building for a hundred years.
At the end of its fall, it had knocked out my wooden fence, sent it into the street, and so I slithered on my belly out from under the enormous eucalyptus until I hit the ground ivy and weeds that are at the front of my property. From there, because the fence was gone, I was able to roll down to the road.
It must have been around 6:30 in the morning, and the sun was magnificent.
Los Angeles is at its most beautiful after a rain.
I managed to get to my feet. Somehow, I was still alive. But that was me in a nutshell. Like when I was in the ring in the Navy: easy to hit, hard to put down. That should be on my gravestone. If I ever have one.
I went to my closest neighbor, on the left, and kicked at their door, since my hands were bound behind me. I woke them up and they saw me through the peephole and wouldn’t come out. Later, at the hospital, I would see my face and understand why. But they at least called the police. And all the services arrived.
The firefighters found Venturi and Poole beneath the tree. Venturi had died during the night, but Poole, both his legs broken, was still alive, barely, and was put next to me in the back of the EMT van. We were both on stretchers and our eyes met and a pink blood bubble rose from his lips, like a kid with chewing gum. I think he was trying to tell me something. Probably not anything nice.
A few minutes later he died. Karma. I had tried to warn him.
All told, it was estimated that the storm had taken eighteen lives, and I was never sure if Sebastian Calderon, Lucas Poole, and Marco Venturi were part of that tabulation.
But I knew that the storm had killed them. With my help.
I was out of Hollywood Presbyterian by noon—I left against medical advice—and I rushed to the motel. But George, being the hero that he is, hadn’t done anything in the room! I quickly leashed him and took him for a walk, and he relieved himself copiously, without a single complaint.
I was limping from my gunshot wound as we walked, but I wasn’t in pain. They had given me a shot of morphine at the hospital, which was better than any joint I could have ever rolled.
When we got back to the room, I looked at myself in the mirror.
It truly was a miracle that I wasn’t killed—maybe the eucalyptus tree, as the guardian of the slope, had come to my aid—but, nevertheless, I had landed on my face quite forcefully, and all the doctor’s work back in Mexico had been undone.
I had broken my nose, both eye sockets, and my left cheekbone. My puffed eyes were weird, bloody slits, and my very swollen face was many colors—green, yellow, red, black—but I could see beneath the massive swelling and strange coloration that when I healed this would be an entirely new face. Maybe closer to the original. Which made sense. Things always come full circle in life. You end up where you began. Maybe you never leave.
I put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, stripped off my clothes, and got between the crisp motel sheets. I was desperate to sleep, but it was the middle of the day and even with the curtains, it was still very light in the room.
So I wrapped a towel around my eyes, like Oedipus, to help block out the light, and thinking about Oedipus brought Dr. Lavich to mind, and I thought maybe I would give her a call after all. Maybe I wasn’t beyond repair and could resume my treatment.
But I quickly dismissed that notion. She would still have me arrested. Analysts have firm boundaries. Then I thought of Monica. After my face healed, I’d go to the Dresden for that drink. I could be her barfly again and maybe… maybe…
But I knew that was the morphine talking, and so I got all snuggled in the cool bed, my eyes bandaged from the world. It was time to rest, and George was by my heart, and Walter was above my head, like a crown.
And I felt happy to be alive.
Then that feeling passed, but it was nice while it lasted.