The Zen Man, page 2
I’d had hours to adjust to Wicked being here, and I suppose I might’ve done a better job adjusting if I hadn’t seen her doing the head-to-head thing with various CrimDefs, obviously sharing dark, tawdry details about my worthless self based on the furtive, wide-eyed looks in my direction. Therefore, I’d decided pitching my services was better done at another time, like months after this retreat ended. In the meanwhile I’d hang, play host, and set a living example of how I’d transcended my reputation
Honey-lavender tinged the air. Laura had sidled up next to me, wrapped her arm through mine. She batted those Grace Slick eyes, and suddenly the seventies didn’t seem so bad.
“Hey,” she said, raising her voice to compete with the music.
“Hey.”
“Pitching your services?”
“Yes.” I smiled tightly. “No.”
I hated lying to Laura. Plus she always knew when I was, so why bother?
She bobbed her head in time to the music as she perused the room. A mirrored ball spun slowly overhead, splattering the gloom with sparkles of light. But even in this bad-flashback lighting, I caught the concerned look in her eyes. Probably wondering if she’d done the right thing by forcing me to hob-nob with people who, for the most part, wished me dead or at least severely maimed.
When the music stopped, she leaned close to my ear and whispered, “We could use more hors d’oeuvres.”
There was a flash of light to our left. A guy with a digital camera was taking pictures of several drunk female CrimDefs lesbo-kissing. I’d call it real lesbo if they looked as though they were into it, but considering their butts were sticking out as though some other body part might accidentally touch, it was definitely pretend lesbo. Wonderful. The retreat was devolving into a warmed-over Studio One 70s bi-experience. Only thing missing was a gay guy in Liza drag. Time for the Zen Man to chop veggies.
“I’m on it.”
With great relief, I crossed into the foyer, exhaling a pent-up breath as I exited the seventies and re-entered the present through the room that doubled as our kitchen and den.
The left side of the room was your basic kitchen, with a nod to being green with its recycled glass countertop. The colors varied from the warm amber of beer bottles to the cobalt of my former favorite vodka bottle. Next to the counter was a door to the outside, which we preferred to use over the more formal entrance in the foyer.
In the center of the room sat a sturdy oak table over which hung an assortment of pots and pans. This was where we cooked—or Laura cooked and I occasionally chopped. Thanks to her culinary skills, this could truly be a bed and breakfast. Left up to me, it’d be a bed and beer nuts.
The rest of the room was more like a den with comfortable chairs, one of which was my worn leather recliner that Mavis had claim-jumped the first week after we brought her home from the rescue. Set in the far wall was an impressive rock fireplace, in front of which sat a small, portable wet bar where Laura concocted her nightly martini. The pièce de résistance was an entertainment center that boasted a forty-eight inch flat-screen TV that Laura thought was overkill and I thought should be bigger. Which said a lot about our different views on life—she dug the details while I grooved on the big picture.
In the back was a door to a small bathroom and stairs leading to the rooms on the second floor. If we could’ve crammed a bed into the kitchen-den, we’d live here twenty-four-seven. As it was, we slept in a corner room upstairs with an awesome view of the Rockies foothills.
I pulled out a tray of washed veggies and a can of root beer from the fridge—a silver, monolithic number that looked like stainless steel on steroids—and laid the tray on the oak table. After popping open the soda, I fished around in a drawer for a knife, then turned on ESPN and began chopping a carrot while watching the Patriots trounce the Saints.
“Hi Rick.”
Wicked stood in the doorway, her hip thrust out at an unflattering angle. Her face was flushed, strands of blonde stuck to her shiny forehead. She’d been working up a sweat dancing, and I guessed that glass of wine in her hand was her fourth or fifth. Back in the day, she’d go through a bottle as though it were an aperitif.
“Mad I showed up?” She was over-enunciating to compensate for the noticeable slur.
And to think I’d been relieved to escape to the kitchen.
“Let’s see,” I said, ignoring the little voice that warned me to keep my trap shut, “showing up at my place uninvited, driving the car I loved and lost, trashing me to anyone who’ll listen is kinda…oh…in your face, wouldn’t you say?”
Her chin shot up. “Who says I’m trashing you?”
I didn’t answer.
“Sam thought I should come.”
“And you offered to drive Mellow?”
She blew out a snort of disgust. “God, you and that car. What does it matter how I got here?”
According to Sam it hadn’t been his idea for her to come, but I didn’t say anything. The last thing I wanted to do was tangle with an inebriated Wicked. Been there, done that. Chop chop chop.
She moved closer. “Remember my grandmother’s diamond and ruby necklace?”
I looked up, frowned. “What?”
She repeated the question.
“No.”
I glanced past her at the door, wishing to hell the ghost of Christmas past would float in here and whisk Wicked back to the seventies.
“Thought you’d remember.” She spilled some wine on the black-and-white patterned linoleum as she gestured. “I used to wear it with that red velvet dress to our firm partish.”
Ah, our firm. Levine & Levine, LLC. I scraped the knife along the side of a carrot, recalling the blood, sweat, and even a few tears I’d poured into making that two-person firm a success. Which it might have been if more than one of us had actually worked. Her idea of being a partner had been to play dilettante lawyer doing lunches, going shopping, taking spa treatments. Not that she’d say that’s what she was doing—her M.O. was to make unexpected, critical announcements like “God, that fax machine sucks, I need to buy us a new one” or “We ran out of staples, darling, be right back” and off she’d go to la-la-pamper-me land. Oh, she had clients, but her idea of legal representation was to talk them into taking plea bargains instead of actually negotiating well or even trying their cases.
I wondered if she were trying to talk me into something right now.
“What about that necklace?”
“It’s missing.” She took a sip of wine, her eyes fighting to focus on mine over the edge of the glass. She lowered the drink. “I think you shtole it.”
Shtole. I gave my head a slow shake. “I haven’t lived with you in what—seven years?—haven’t even set foot in our former home for at least five of those seven, and you’re accusing me of stealing your jewelry?”
“You know where I keep the key.”
I had to think about that for a moment. “You keep the key in the same place you kept it seven years ago?”
She nodded.
“That’s crazy. Even if I’d known that, for starters that’d be the last place I’d break into. Even if I went temporarily insane and thought it’d be a good idea, we both know breaking and entering would set me up for four to twelve and destroy any chance of my getting relicensed as a lawyer.” I hadn’t practiced law in almost six years, but I could still rattle off penalty chart stats. Furious and agitated, I chopped the hell out of piece of carrot. “Not to mention if you just happened to be home during this hypothetical psycho adventure, you’d likely grab that Saturday night special you probably still keep in your closet and shoot me, citing the Make My Day statute.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but decided to take another sip instead.
I tossed the decimated carrot aside, grabbed a celery stalk. “Even if I had known where you kept your grandmother’s necklace, what would I have done with it? Pawned it? C’mon, you’ve handled dozens of theft cases and know the police nail fifty percent of unique, antique stolen property hawked at pawn shops, so I’d have been caught and tossed in jail.” I was clutching the celery in one hand, the knife in the other. “Now, please go back to your party because I have important chopping to finish.” I went at the celery, slicing off its green bushy head with a loud whack.
But Wicked didn’t move. Knowing her, she had something else on her mind. It’d always been her style to attack on one issue that ran parallel to the real one. Although what the hell ran parallel to that damn necklace was anybody’s guess.
I set down the knife, picked up my root beer and took a long swig. The carbonation made my eyes sting. Setting it down, I met her gaze and resisted the urge to burp.
“Anything else?”
She swiped at her forehead, as though releasing whatever held back her thoughts. “You fucking addict loser thief…lazy worthless hippie…sucking off your girlfriend…stealing from the rest of us.”
“You’re trying to pick a fight. Well, I’m not the whacked-out guy I used to be. Don’t do drunken, messed-up anymore. The only person you’re embarrassing is yourself. Please…just leave.”
The flush in her face deepened, her features shrinking into a tight mask of ugly. Her pudgy red-tipped hands tightened into balls.
“Deborah, you don’t have to—”
Too late. With a guttural screech like a raptor on crank, she lunged. The wine glass smashed against the butcher table, wine and shards of glass flying.
For an instant, I couldn’t move, too stunned at the hysterical drama unfolding before my eyes. But as she raised her hand with that jagged glass, fear jolted me into action. I scrambled back several feet, putting more distance between us before that glass ended up embedded in my flesh.
Wicked stumbled forward, slashing the air with the broken glass. Backed up against the rock fireplace I held up the knife in self-defense. Mavis was up on all fours, standing on the seat of the recliner, barking. Once in the kitchen on that damn chair, the dog refused to leave it. This time, I was glad. Didn’t need to be protecting both of us against Wicked.
“You sonofabitch,” she screamed, blindly waving the notched glass. “That was my grandmother’s necklace, worth thoushands! You junkie, you stole it for money for your drugs!”
That tune was old, but it was falling on fresh ears that crowded the doorway—an ensemble of criminal defense lawyers ogling what might be a potential case. From the other room, the bass-thumping, horn-heavy “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang swelled. I was starring in a bad remake of Pulp Fiction.
“What’s going on?” one of the CrimDefs called out. Another yelled, “You okay, Deb?”
Nice. Watching out for good ol’, pure-as-driven Deb.
Her back to them, she hadn’t been aware she had an audience. But now that she did, somebody start polishing her Oscar. Half-turning, she dropped the glass. It hit the floor with a solid thunk, a shiny piece breaking off and scuttering across the linoleum. She raised a trembling hand to her face and began crying softly.
Jungle Boogie.
“Rick, please put down the knife,” she said between sobs, “you’re frightening me.”
I was pressed so hard against the rock fireplace, a jutting piece of stone threatened to separate my shoulder. I kept holding up the knife, stained with celery and carrot juice, unsure if I was shocked or impressed with her performance. With talent like that, she’d missed her calling by pleading out all those cases instead of trying them in court.
Then, like a hero to save her day, Sam stepped through the crowd in the doorway. He’d lost the jacket and tie. His blue-striped Hugo Boss shirt sleeves were rolled up, a shiny Rolex on his wrist. He scanned the scene, his gaze halting on my knife.
“Can somebody please escort Ms. Levine out of the room,” he intoned in a take-charge voice.
A woman I recalled practicing with back in my public defender days—Iris? Irene?—scurried across the room to Wicked as quickly as her Birkenstocks would let her. With that khaki skirt, Lennon glasses, and frizzy gray hair, I half-wondered if the seventies feminist movement had come alive in the other room as well. I called out to watch for broken glass. Iris-Irene flashed me a go-to-hell look as she wrapped a skinny, but surprisingly toned, arm around the over-wrought Wicked. Sisters saving sisters.
As Iris-Irene and Wicked shuffled and sniffled out of the room, “Jungle Boogie” ended with a funky grunt and a tripped-out bass.
Three
Nick Charles: Now my friends, if I may propose a little toast. Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Nora Charles: You give such charming parties, Mr. Charles.
Nick Charles: Thank you, Mrs. Charles.
—The Thin Man
“Want to tell me what the fuck all that was about?” Sam settled his tall frame onto one of the bar stools at the oak table. His legs were too long to bend comfortably so they bent at hard angles, the jointed appendages giving him an arthropodan look.
In the few minutes since the nominee for Best Actress had been helped out of the room, the hangers-on had vacated their watch at the entranceway, leaving Sam, myself, and the wannabe security dog Mavis alone in the kitchen-den. I’d been sweeping wet shards of glass off the floor, not sure if I felt more confused or pissed at Wicked’s accusation that I’d stolen from her, but definitely embarrassed by the resulting drama. That’s the thing with having made a train-wreck of your life—sooner or later you have to face the debris of your past. The trick is putting the pieces back together so the locomotive can chug along life’s rails again.
“Ignoring me?” asked Sam.
“Nah, heard you.” I stepped on the pedal to the trash can. The silver lid yawned open. “Not everything that counts can be counted…and not everything that can be counted counts.” I tipped the dust pan. Pieces of glass clattered down the bin.
Sam made a disgruntled noise. “Should’ve known the Zen Man would answer with a fucking Zen quote. Got any scotch in that bar?”
“For the record, that was Einstein.” I released my foot—the lid shut with a thump. “I believe Laura stashes some scotch in there, and to answer your other question, I have no idea what the fuck that was about.” As I hung the dust pan in the utility closet and washed my hands, Sam poured himself a drink.
“Look,” Sam said, sitting back down, “I had no idea she’d carry on like that. If I’d known she was prone to alchy rages, I’d never have brought her.” He glanced at Mavis, curled up in the recliner. “Some dog. Greets unarmed guests snarling, refuses to get off that chair when people are wielding deadly weapons.”
“Yeah, she’d probably benefit from some reverse psychology.”
“Where’d you get him?”
“Her. Rottie rescue.”
I returned to the table and took a swig of my root beer. Under the fluorescent lights, Sam’s face looked gray, haggard. Almost felt sorry for him that he’d hooked up with Wicked.
“Has she mentioned a ruby and diamond necklace?”
He frowned, which deepened the stress lines between his brows. “No. What about it?”
“Wicked thinks I stole it.”
“Who?”
“Deborah.”
He did a mild double-take. “You call her…Wicked?”
“For Wicked Wench of the West, but after tonight’s incident, I’ll ask you to keep that to yourself. I’d really like the rest of this weekend to be incident-free.”
“Wicked Wench of the West.” His mouth twitched in a grin. “Only you, Zen Man.” His gaze dropped to the knife on the table, back to my face. “Menacing with a deadly weapon can get you one-to-four.”
“If I was menacing anything it was a celery, not a person.”
“Right, I know.” He took another sip. Setting down his drink, he continued, “You’re a big bad PI now, so what do you carry for protection?”
“Besides my rapier wit, a stun gun. Keep it under the front seat of the car.”
“Use it often? I mean, the stun gun?”
I feigned a laugh. “I see dating my ex hasn’t damaged your sense of humor. I waved it once at some punk kids to scare them off, but that’s it. Been dormant for so long, probably doesn’t have any charge left.”
“Never carry the real thing?”
“Never.”
“Some Sam Spade you are.”
“Think Rockford. Kept his in a cookie jar. Don’t need to carry a big stick to be a tough boy.”
Sam swirled his drink, the lines in his face waning. “Shouldn’t have made that menacing comment. Just watching your back, Rick.”
This was the old Sam I knew. He could be an arrogant, insulting bastard, but underneath that scaly shark skin he had a soft spot for his pals. Years ago, after my marriage had crashed, I’d moved into the Bates Motel—named after Katharine Lee Bates who wrote America the Beautiful for Pike’s Peak. Most people thought Bates stood for the Hitchcock thriller, and for that reason alone you’d think the owner would’ve changed the name, but he never did. So at the macabre-sounding Bates Motel, I lived on matzo crackers, cheese, vodka, and enough ganja to stun a moose. Sam would show up with take-out and encourage me to get my act together, partly because I was his law partner, but he also didn’t want my life to unravel. It did anyway.
“If we’re watching each others’ backs, RoofTop, I have to admit I’m surprised you got involved with her.”
“Nobody calls me that anymore.”
“Yeah, well, Zen Man was news around here, too. So, how long you two been happenin’?”
From the other room pounded “Play That Funky Music, White Boy,” punctuated by drunken, loud whoops. How quickly the CrimDefs recovered from homicide attempts in their midst.
“A few weeks.” Sam’s face seemed to lengthen before my eyes, as though some external force was weighing him down. “Fern and I are separated.”
“For how long? A few weeks?”
“Look, I’m technically single, things happened with Debby, and my only crime in bringing her here was I didn’t tell you first.” He paused. “You’re pissed about Mellow Yellow.”
