The Mentor (16 page)

"Doesn't
help.  Still don't know it."

"Big
charity.  Remember that guy, Marion Bluth, he went into China and started
up that microprocessor business back in the nineties.  Government poured
dough in-- the Chinese government-- and he was the big project manager."

"Do
you
know
who you are talking to?  This is stuff that was, like, on
the news or something?"

"Yeah,"
I said.  The burrito shifted in my stomach, trying to get away from the smell
of the phone, my best guess.  The handset looked like someone had used it
to beat someone else to death and neglected to wipe it off.  "Bluth
made billions and built China’s version of Silicone Valley."

"Hey, silicone! 
That's what they put in tits, right?"

"Yeah,
something like that," I said and couldn't help but laugh.
 "Christ, man, when was the last time you got laid?"

He growled,
and then laughed.  "I'm saving myself 'till marriage."

"Fine."

"Doesn't
have to be
my
marriage.  In fact, if a married lady wants to do it, that's
fine, too."

"Upstanding
young man.  Glad to call you my best friend, Pavan."

"If
you're my best friend, you should take me to that Valley of the Titties for my
birthday!  That sounds awesome!"

"Okay,
anyway-- so now Bluth just sits back and counts his billions but the
government-- the U.S. , this time-- they have some questions about whether he
brought some of American tech know-how over to the Chinese, now threatening the
American chip dominance."

"Sure."

"So,
he starts up a philanthropic trust… that's a charity, and--"

"I
know what that is.  My sister used to play clarinet."

Somewhere
in the ether, to my friend, this line of conversation totally made sense.
 I let it go.

"Now,
Solomon-Bluth is his charity.  Big on fighting AIDS in Africa, T.B. in
Cambodia."

"Why'd
they pay for your ride to Hawaii?"

"Dunno.
 Maybe my guy stole an account number or, hell, just got on without the
pilot knowing who was going where.  That's something we'll have to find
out."

"Check,"
Pavan said, enthusiastically.

"At
some point, you or I have to get a computer."

A tone rang
over the phone that said we'd been speaking for a couple minutes.

Pavan
asked, “Man, how much is this costing me?”  I’d called collect.

“Okay, I'll
talk fast then.  Shoot me a Western Union note of what’s left in the bank
and—“

“There’s
about seventy bucks left in your checking, Dex.”

Closing my
eyes, I rubbed my face.  “Yeah, well send what’s there.”

“Okay,” he
said.  “Listen, I was a kind of a dick, you know, before.  I was a
little drunk.”

“It’s
okay.”

“But,
still… I meant what I said.”  Silence for a moment or two, then he said:
“You know, I could sell some stuff.  Lend you the dough.”

“Nah, man.
 Thanks, though.  That means a lot,” I said.  “Just send what I
got in checking, and I’ll work it out.”

Pavan
cleared his throat.  “I, uh, spoke with Laura.  She called here looking
for you.”

“Jeez.
 How’d that go?”

“She’s pissed
you didn’t call.”

“I didn’t
have a dime.  I mean, really.”

He
hesitated.  “Well, you called
me
collect.”

“I know,” I
said, embarrassed to admit that I’d forgotten my alleged girlfriend’s number.
 “Not sure what I’d say to her honestly.  I have no idea what’s going
on.”

“Well,” he
said and laughed.  “You gotta long walk home to work it out.”

“That’s the
truth,” I said.  

“How long
you think it’s gonna take you to get back to Georgia?”

I was
flipping through the yellow pages.  “My guess, about two days, maybe
three.  By that time, I should have something worked out.”

“Three
days?”

“Well,
maybe not
worked out
but at least I should have, at least, an idea of
how to come at this guy."  

I asked
Pavan to check the library computers and see what he could find on
Solomon-Bluth.  Accessing the Internet is free, but they charge you for
print outs.  He told me one of his cousins was dating a girl at the
library and if he went when she was there, he'd get the printed stuff free,
too.

Worked for
me.

We both
were quiet for a moment.  Then he said, “What the hell does this dude want
from you?  Kidnaps you in the middle of the night, does all this weird
shit?  What the hell is all that about, Dex?”

I looked
down the road, people wandering aimlessly in the steely Los Angeles street
light, looking as though they’d lost something but couldn’t quite remember what
it was.

“Man, it’s
either me or him.  That’s all I know.  Me or him.”

Pavan said,
“Then, if we’re gonna take him on, I almost feel bad for the guy.”

A smile split
my face, and I hung up the phone.

WHEN YOU'RE
BROKE, YOU talk about being rich.  Not so much about how to get rich
(although there is some of that) but mainly just
being
rich.  One
night when me and Pavan were putting out our inner fires with beer foam at
Wicked
Lester’s
, this cranked-out chick who sold tiling was talking our ear off
about how the Kingsford family—the charcoal people—had some house in north
Georgia.  She said it was worth, like, two hundred million.

I'm told one
of the greatest attractions of my current home state is the low price of real
estate.  What would cost you three million in San Diego would run you
about two hundred thou’ in Georgia.  No joke.  

A house
that costs 200 million in Georgia better be the lost temple of Solomon.  
With
Solomon working a carnival-style Answer Booth, still inside.

Anyway,
tile girl told me about how the woman of Charcoal House was all big on
Made
in Japan
™ china.  Hell, the name alone was worth a long, protracted
gut laugh.  But, apparently, the rather rich and super rich in Georgia
were all about this
Made in Japan
™ china.

Now, as one
could probably surmise, this particular china comes from one particular
country.  No, not China.  And a lot of it comes to Georgia now.  Maybe
because of the Easy Lite lady.  

Well, that
stuff has to go west to east via truck from L.A.  Too expensive to go by
plane and west to east rail can be bumpy.  China no likey.

So great
big, beautiful rigs had to carry the
Made in Japan
™ china to the bored,
wealthy housewives of the southeast.  I planned on being on one of those
rigs.  Or at least one headed in the same direction.

After
spending the night pool side-- where I'd simply slipped into a hotel and gone
up to its swimming deck, covered myself in towels, and slept until a very old
guy in a speedo got the fright of his life after reaching for a towel following
his early morning swim-- I headed south of the city.

The Port of
Los Angeles is like a large, sprawling city.  There’s even stores.
 If you ever fly into L.A. during the next port strike (because how can a
filing clerk friggin'
live
on 112k, seriously?), you should look down as
you circle for LAX-- witness the sea freight backed up for miles off the coast.
 It's surreal.  From the air, it looks like massive skyscrapers have been tipped
over by some petulant, infant giant and each have fallen into the ocean
shallows.

There are a
lot of trucks lining the east and south walls of the port, but the cars that
wheel up each morning, those are in gated lots.  That’s because it’s full of
BMWs, Infinities, Audis and some flashier muscle-car stuff.

See, port
workers make more than a hundred grand a year.  But you've got a better chance
of collectively cobbling together a full set of teeth at a Larry the Cable Guy
concert than getting a job at the Port.  It's all union and from what I've
heard of it, gigs go to family of those already working there.  That said;
don’t ever think you’ll get the nod if you showed up one day a sack over your
shoulder and a tool belt around your waist looking for work.  It
stays
in the family.  That’s how it’s been, how it is, and how it will be when
we’re dead (note: their funerals will likely be catered.  So, if you get a
chance the grub's probably good).

Now, the
rig driver with the blood-shot eyes who rambles up to the docks to load up
makes considerably less than said port worker.  

This
disparity is handled in the most respectful way possible there-- which is to
say, not at all.

So, in
L.A., truckers there hate the port rats and vice versa.  It’s a symbiotic
relationship and you may easily guess which sees itself as the host and the
other as the necessary parasite.  I was looking to use this prejudice to
my advantage.

Since the
attacks of September 11
^th
, 2001 it’s far harder to get into
airports, loading docks, and Dairy Queens.

So, the
Port Authority does not take kindly to interlopers, you might say.  The fence
is high, capped with razor wire.  The guards have guns and the authority to
use them and, frankly, have been looking to shoot someone for a very long time.
 

Sure, there
were easier ways of finding a trucker going all the way east-- like thumbing it
on the interstate, hoping to flag down a rig heading through the high desert and
up to Interstate 40.   From there, it's straight on 'til morning (or the
morning after the morning after that).

Problem is,
I'm not Jack Kerouac. 

And
, if you were profiling (or, more germane
here, if you were sizing someone up to give them a cross-country ride), yours
truly falls into that mass shooter/Unabomber/peckish serial killer/clock-tower
sniper category:  Misanthropic, twenty-something, pasty-white dude whose hair
never looks combed quite right.

So,
breaking into the U.S. Port of Los Angeles seemed like the most promising
alternative.

Surprisingly,
the water route is the simplest point of entry.  Gotta come up from the
south because of the prevailing current, but if you can float low (thank you,
fat
!)
and avoid the little boats with high seats and binoculars, you might get in.

It took me
more than an hour to drift to where I’d be able to get up onto the dock.
 There are maintenance ladders where crews climb down to service the
underbelly of the seagoing vessels.  By the time I got to one, I felt like
one of those pelicans that were in the paper after the BP gulf oil spill.
 At least, the pelican had some nice woman with hairy legs trying to towel
them off.

I wouldn’t
have access to any sort of manifests that could tell me if there were any
Made
in Japan
™ china shipments heading east nor could I go around asking too
many questions.  Didn’t want to attract attention.

I assumed
that just about everyone on foot had a visible badge, but I’d already planned
for that when I got the hairy eyeball from a hairy dockworker.

“Hell you
doin’?”

“What’s it
look like I’m doing, asshole,” I said.

“Looks like
you don’t got a laminate, that’s what it looks like.”  Hearing the words
laminate come out of this guy's mouth was like watching a blue tick hound squat
and push out a gold brick.  

“You got a
fishing pole, I’ll get it back,” I said, slapping my jeans, the grimy water
splattering around me, close to him.  He took a step back.

“Ain’t my
fault you fell in, you idiot.  Lucky you didn’t fall too close to a hull,
or you’d be crushed when the first bubbly wave blew by.”

Theatrically,
I took my shirt off and rang it out, the water splattering and splashing at my
feet, the disgusting oil slick quickly enraging my new friend.

“Don’t do
that here,” he wailed.  “You go up and talk with Roger in the blue booth
up there.  Get a temp pass and a couple rags and get that up.”

I held my
hand up to him for a moment, gave him a half-hearted wave then headed to find
Roger.

The rags
ol’ Roger had got to me quickly.  I think he hoped I might change into
them, worried I was dripping oily water onto his floor.  The “booth” was
actually a utility trailer stuffed top to bottom with filing cabinets.
 The ceiling tiles might have been white once, but now sagged, covered in
a sticky yellow film.

The same
color as Roger’s teeth.

Pulling out
a pad of blue temp passes, he poised his pen above it.

“You
stink
,
you know.”

I said,
“You mean in a smelly way or are you attacking my character.”

He blinked,
face dead.  “Let me see your I.D.”

I lifted a
hand toward the door.  “It’s drying with my cash, some expired condoms and
your sister's phone number on a picnic table.”