Underbelly Page 7

  He lunged for Magrady, who immediately dropped to the ground and went into a fetal position. He yelled, “Oh my God, he attacked me. Help! Help!” His plastic bag of strawberries smashed into gooey red pulp beneath him.

  Boo Boo was dependable. “Shut the fuck up,” he bellowed, aiming the points of his too-clean Jordans towards Magrady’s stomach. Anticipating such, the other man had X’d his forearms in front of his body. Three of the VA’s security guards who were weaving about in the farmer’s market ran over.

  “He just went crazy,” Magrady avowed, “I’m a veteran and he hates vets, he said.”

  “Hey wait,” Boo Boo started as one of the guards, who’d recently taken the Sheriff’s exam and was anxious to learn the results, tackled him.

  Magrady scooted out to the way. He had to give Boo Boo his props. At first as the guards swarmed him, he went on instinct and fought back. But even in what passed for a mind atop the hoodlum’s thick neck understood the hole he’d been placed in, and further action on his part was only sucking him down deeper. He became compliant.

  Problem was the guards were amped and as Double B declared, “I give,” the would-be deputy Tasered him in the side of his neck. His legs and arms convulsed and he swore a string of profanities, with some particular illustrative language aimed at Magrady and his kin. They got him to his feet, his legs the consistency of overcooked pasta.

  “Mister, you okay?” one of the earnest young protectors asked. He was taller than Magrady with a country-boy Norman Rockwell look about him.

  “Yes, I think so.” Magrady iced the cake. “For some reason he singled me out. I think he’d seen me here before, he knew I was a Vietnam vet.” That would set him in solid with these guys. “Walking around mumbling about how the marines wouldn’t take him ’cause of some sort of criminal charge.”

  “You lying shitfaced bitch-ass punk,” Boo Boo screamed. “I’ll fix you for this.”

  “Keep quiet,” the deputy hopeful said as he used metal cuffs on the bargain-store gangster. They bent him over a table with boxes of mushrooms on it and patted him down.

  “Look, we’re going to take him in and see if he has any priors,” the embodiment of all-Americanism said. “We saw him attacking you.”

  “So did I,” a woman in pedal pushers holding a plastic sack of tomatoes said. “He simply went Rambo on this poor man.” She looked about, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t say that right.”

  The guard continued, “Look, you might have to swear out a complaint for the police, so we’ll need to get in touch with you.”

  “Not a problem.” Magrady gave him the address and phone for the Urban Advocacy offices. He shook the earnest guard’s hand and went in search of Floyd Chambers. At the start of the trouble, he’d wheeled away. Magrady figured they’d come in Boo Boo’s car, and that he’d be able to track him on foot in the vicinity. He hoped too that Boo Boo did have unanswered charges or bench warrants for traffic tickets so the cops would keep him locked up at least for a few days. Once he got out… well… that was once he got out. Too bad the roughneck hadn’t brought his heater with him. Guess he wasn’t that stupid, Magrady concluded.

  Huffing it out to Wilshire Boulevard, Magrady spotted Chambers on the other side of the street heading east, away from the VA and the soldier’s graveyard where several of Magrady’s comrades were buried. This part of the thoroughfare was wide and given the entrance and exits of the 405 freeway, the traffic was steady with assorted vehicles and buses. “How the hell did he get over there so quick?” Magrady mumbled.

  Neither a stoplight nor a crosswalk were immediately available. But he couldn’t let him slip away now so he timed it and darted into the street. Drivers braked and swerved and gave him the finger or cursed him.

  He went around the rear of an accordion bus and made it to the other side, a motorcyclist blaring, “Idiot grandpa. Get back to your rest home.”

  Chambers’ arms were churning and he wheeled swiftly under the overpass. Magrady jogged after him, aware he was breathing harder than he’d like to be. He slowed his pace but kept on as Chambers worked his wheels with a practiced flourish. On the south side of Wilshire east of the overpass was the Federal Building where such offices including passport and the FBI were located. There was a contingent of protestors in front, which was not unusual, except this was a weekday in the mid-afternoon. Who the hell would be out now?

  Magrady had to assume it was anti-war stalwarts. But as he dashed through the smattering of people he noted a sign with a cut out of a lazing polar bear on it with the words “Save Them” printed on it. Another read, “Stop Global Warming. More Ice for the Bears.” Swell sentiment, he reflected as he watched Chambers roll to the other side of the true believers. Did they expect the Bureau to drop their current caseload and build rafts for the polar bears?

  He felt guilty for being a cynical asshole, but there would have to be another time to save the glaciers. Magrady took some deep breaths and got his arms and legs pumping … The one thing Magrady could do to close the space was cut across the huge lawn of the Federal Building. Chambers had to stick to the sidewalk for better traction.

  “Come on, Floyd,” he yelled, running across the grass, “hold up. What’s the deal, man?” He prayed that there weren’t twenty-four-hour snipers on duty on the roof just waiting for some nut to sound vaguely threatening so they could relieve their boredom by misting his brains.

  The disabled man glanced at him then kept on trucking toward Ohio Street. Magrady could feel his burst of energy dissipating and laughed inwardly at those who said age was just a number. Shit. Age was your body letting you down and sweat pouring out of you like a bucket with a hole in it. Fuck if he wasn’t going to get away from him, a chump in a wheelchair. Okay, he admitted, that wasn’t being touchy-feely either. But getting pissed gave him focus and renewed energy. Magrady, never one for the treadmill, put all he had left in a last effort to catch his fleeing friend.

  “Watch it, lady,” Chambers hollered as he went off the curb and tried to cross in the middle of the street. A young woman illegally talking on her handheld cell phone, Mariah Carey rockin’ on her car’s sound speakers, had turned onto Ohio from the far corner and roared toward Wilshire in her late model Mustang. She was too wrapped up in her conversation to see Chambers until she was on him.

  She slammed to a halt. Floyd’s gloved hands locked on his wheels and he fishtailed his wheelchair into the side of the driver’s door. Chambers fell over. The young woman, a strawberry blonde with heavy mascara scolded, “Dude, look what you did to my door.” She was staring down at Chambers, on his side, in the street next to his downed wheelchair.

  “What he did to you?” Magrady said, running up, out of breath. “You just ran over a disabled man, miss. We need the police to test you for marijuana or ecstasy or something.” Gasping, he continued, “I saw everything. You never once slowed down, and you were illegally talking on your cell phone. No hands-free set.”

  The pretty woman screwed up her face at him then looked past to the bear lovers who’d also come over. “Wait, what are you saying?”

  “You know damn well what I’m saying,” Magrady helped Chambers, also breathing hard, sit up and righted his chair. “You’re going to jail. You’re a menace.”

  “Maybe I should call my lawyer.”

  “Yeah, I do think you should call mommy and daddy’s lawyer. And I’ll get some witnesses’ statements while you’re at it.” He got Chambers into his wheelchair. “How are you, sir? Can you understand the words coming out of my mouth?” He over-enunciated, stealing the line from that comedy movie with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

  He muttered to Magrady, “Crazy motherfucker.” He rasped out loud, “I think I’ll be okay.” It didn’t escape him that Magrady had a grip on the handle of his chair.

  “Well, your medical bills should be added to the lawsuit,” he said louder than necessary. “You’ll need to get checked out thoroughly.”

  The driver had put a sandal-
clad foot on the ground preparing to step out of her car but froze at that statement. “He’s all right,” she insisted, looking from Chambers to her dented door.

  “Really?” Magrady challenged. “We better let a doctor determine that.”

  She sat in the car again, closing the door. It creaked. Several drivers slowed to rubberneck then went around them in the street. “There’s no need for that.”

  “Aren’t you going to get your mouthpiece on the phone? I want to talk to him,” Magrady said authoritatively. He hedged this behavior would have her backing down.

  “He’s okay, right?” the young woman asked.

  “I’m not saying that,” Magrady answered.

  “I’m asking him,” she retorted irritably.

  “I can make it,” Chambers said.

  She started the Mustang. “So let’s just call it even.” Putting it into gear, the vehicle slowly crept forward as the onlookers watched her go.

  “I’ve got her license number,” one of the good citizens shouted. She looked to be the same age as the driver, but tanned, wearing a short T that exposed her taut belly and the jewel stud in her navel. She stepped forward and handed Magrady the information on the back of a crumpled receipt. He thanked her and she displayed very even teeth. She was cute. Magrady got back on task.

  Mustang Sally took all this in but continued going. She got to the corner and then turned east into the afternoon flow.

  “I’ll make sure he gets home okay.” Magrady said and half-waved to the concerned.

  “I can take him to a doctor,” the nice tanned lady said. “He might have internal injuries or who knows what.”

  Magrady squeezed Chambers’ shoulder blade, grinning.

  “Thank you, but I’m fine. It’s okay.” Chambers got the message. Doubtless too he didn’t want to be hung up at some emergency room or clinic for several hours. He and his lowlife buddies were hunting in the tall grass, Magrady reasoned, and he intended to find out what kind of game they were after.

  “Now I’m going to wheel your ass over here,” Magrady was close to his friend’s ear, pushing him at a normal speed across the side street, away from the bear patrol.

  Chambers licked his lower lip. “How come you’re all up in this, Magrady?”

  “Why’d you try to vamp on Angie?’

  “It’s not like that, man. She’s been straight with me. I just wanted—” but he didn’t finish.

  They got to the curb and Magrady turned the chair around and cocked it back to pull the wheelchair up and onto the grass strip of the sidewalk. Behind him was a row of grey and white apartment buildings.

  “Then why are you and Boo Boo making like Starsky and Hutch?”

  “I had no choice.”

  The two moved further into the residential section. “You need to let me know what the hell’s going on, Floyd.” They went along some. “This has something to do with your sister, doesn’t it?”

  Chambers looked off to one side. “You talked to her?”

  “No. But I know she works for that division of SubbaKhan.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “That my sorry self has a possible murder beef hanging over me.”

  “They can’t make it stick. You know that.”

  Magrady said, “I know that Stover will be giving it the ol’ college try.” He stopped pushing him and coming around in front, clamped his hands on both of Chambers’ shoulders, leaning into him. “What the hell are you up to, Floyd? You know me, I don’t give a fuck what kind of scam you’re setting up or trying to run.” He let go of him. “But you ain’t gonna make me your goat. You got me involved in this shit when you used me to go up against Savoirfaire then all of a sudden he winds up dead.”

  “You sayin’ I did that?”

  “I’m saying that’s a mighty funny coincidence.”

  Chambers worked his wheels back and forth, his face downcast. “It’s not like I don’t think you’re down, Magrady. But this, this could be big.”

  “Big how?”

  He smiled, his eyes lit up like he was faded on weed. “The rainbow, baby.”

  Magrady was tired of this bullshit. “I’ve got your magnet card and the cassette tape, Floyd.”

  That deflated his balloon. “I need that tape, Em. I guess you haven’t played it yet, huh?”

  “What if I burn it?”

  Chambers held up a hand. “We can work something out.”

  “What’s the play, Floyd?”

  For a moment it seemed he might try to bolt again. Instead, he took in a deep breath. The two had stopped partially up the incline of a rising street, the kind where the garages were set below the house and cut into the hillside. He motioned with his hands. “It’s, you know, it’s what they dug up.”

  “Like lost treasure?” Magrady almost laughed.

  His friend nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

  Now he did laugh. “Come on, Floyd. You’re after Blackbeard’s treasure chest?”

  “The item was dug up at the Emerald Shoals. Only they didn’t know what they had. Not exactly.”

  A tickle feathered Magrady’s spine. “But your sister found out what this was and she told you?”

  Chambers shook his head. “It’s wild, Magrady, wild as sin.”

  “The hell, Floyd? What are you going on about?”

  Chambers adopted a cagey look. “I’ve already said too much.”

  “Uh-huh. So what’s this have to do with Savoirfaire getting iced?”

  The disabled man hunched his shoulders. “I figured that was Boo Boo’s and Elmore’s doing. But now I don’t know for sure.” He frowned.

  The two were moving along the residential street, fine particles of ash dusted the parked cars and trees. Magrady sniffed the air but detected no burnt smell and wondered what had produced the residue. Was there a fire somewhere or was this some kind of sign portending coming events? The image of the young man reading the Philip K. Dick novel on the bus floated through his head. This caused him to softly panic, imagining he was really some sort of character wrought from Dick’s meth-addled mind. That he merely dreamed he was real while trapped in a time loop forever doomed to repeat this futile search over and over again, while not gaining any insight whatsoever in any of his incarnations.

  Magrady asked, “Then why’d you go all subterranean?”

  Chambers steadily pumped the wheels of his chair, his hands fluid and seamless in their repetitive motion. “I figured those two were moving in on his territory and would be taking over Savoirfaire’s book.” He glanced up. “I know you see yourself as six ways to bad, Em, but those two are money crazy.”

  The explanation sounded plausible but Magrady knew his friend was holding back. Savoirfaire had attacked him with a hook knife, and if that wasn’t a demonstration he was as homicide happy as the Wonder Twins, then what did? But he played along by saying, “And what made it different when our boy Boo found you? And by the way, where have you been keeping yourself?”

  They’d come to a corner and reflexively, both turned north toward Wilshire again. “I got associates all over town, man,” Chambers joked. “Maybe I was laying up with the even finer cousin of Eva Mendes ’cause she likes to get her freak on with a dead leg’d man.” He leaned back and did a 360-degree donut, laughing.

  Dryly Magrady said, “Anything you say, Floyd.”

  “Friend of a friend, okay?”

  “How’d butthead find you?”

  Chambers grinned. “I guess I need to enlarge my circle.”

  Magrady grabbed the wheelchair’s handles, causing Chambers’ gloved hands to skid on his wheels’ high impact rubber. “Answers, Floyd. Stop fucking around. Or I dump you out here and take this thing with me.” He shook the wheelchair, gritting his teeth. They were in the middle of the block leading back to the main thoroughfare.

  Chambers stared at his angry friend, deciding if the other man was bullshitting or not. He took in an audible breath. “I was staying at a few places where I could beg a night, e
ven had to sleep out at the beach a couple of nights.” He did a quick head jerk to the west.

  “Not only is it nasty when you’re stuck in a chair, but you don’t know what fool that’s off his meds is sneaking around out there up to devilment. Wound up in a kind of shelter near there, Santa Monica I mean. It’s actually just some rooms above that church run by that lefty pastor that has those meetings out there. Met him through Janis.”

  “I know who you mean,” Magrady said, “Reverend Conn.”

  “That’s where that sadistic mufu Boo found me. Seems him and his crime partner put the promise of product as reward on the street, and you know them crackheads would sell their mama’s left titty for some rock.” The two reached Wilshire. “One of them sported me and dimed me out. Next thing I knew homeboy showed up demanding the money I owed Savoirfaire.” He gestured feebly with his hands. “I tried to tell him you cleared that up but he wasn’t having it.”

  “So you were gonna have him knock Angie in the head, man?”

  Chambers evidenced a pained expression. “I ain’t that low, Magrady.”

  “Then what was the deal?”

  “I was buying time. He was gonna hang back like you saw and I’d get the mag card from her.”

  “What did Boo Boo think you were going to take him to? This mysterious windfall you keep hinting at?”

  Chambers rolled on thoughtfully then, “I had to do something, man, you know how he gets. I told him there was cash that I could get by using the card.” Continuing along he added, “But I made sure not to say shit to him about the cassette tape and what it, well,” he paused, not wishing to say more, “what it was.”

  “Even homeboy can’t be so gone on his chronic that he believed that a big company like SubbaKhan kept money lying around.” Magrady decided to keep Chambers focused on the procedural stuff rather than press him on what this grail of his was. He hoped to angle back to the mysterious prize at some point once he got his friend talking.

  “He didn’t know what kind of door the card opened. I convinced him my sister worked at a finance operation of SubbaKhan. So, you know, he just assumed there’d be money in a strong box or something.”