The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (18 page)

At five minutes before three we were sitting in
Chantal's rented car at an intersection a half block away from
Nathanson's house. A maroon Peugeot was parked out front, probably a
patient's; the green van was parked in the back. We didn't say
anything, watching the digital seconds tick off on the dashboard
clock. At approximately two minutes to the hour, a woman with dirty
blond hair emerged, got into the Peugeot, and drove off. Almost on
cue, a blue Volvo wagon drove up and a woman of about sixty got out
and entered the house. Chantal wrote her description and license
plate number on a note pad. I shifted in my scat. I was feeling
uncomfortable, as if I were doing something that wasn't quite right,
like spying on a parent.

Nothing happened for the next twenty minutes. I
turned to Chantal.

"This is surveillance," I said. "You
can't read and you can't sleep and it can go on for days like this.
Pretty glamorous, huh?"

"
I find it interesting."

"Really? Tell me in about a year."

I took advantage of her presence, closed my eyes, and
pushed the seat back. In a few minutes I had gone off to sleep. I
didn't notice a thing until I felt Chantal elbowing me in the ribs.
It was eight minutes to four and the older woman was exiting from
Nathanson's and crossing to her Volvo. She was a stout woman and her
face betrayed no emotion. Over the course of months I had experienced
a variety of reactions and I wondered how she felt, coming out of her
sessions. Was she angry, depressed, elated? Did she think it was
worth the money? Or was she so rich it didn't matter?

I didn't have much time to cogitate on this because
barely had the Volvo driven off when a side door to Nathanson's house
I had never noticed swung open and a beefy black-haired man in a
white surgical coat emerged, walking slowly backward. He was
balancing Nathanson himself on his wheelchair, easing him down a ramp
onto the blacktop driveway. He turned the psychiatrist around, pushed
him toward the van, and stopped, opening the doors and lifting him
onto the front passenger seat. Then the orderly shut the passenger
door, got into the driver's seat, and headed off. I slumped low like
a disobedient child as he drove past within five feet of our car.

I waited for them to make a left at the intersection,
then made a U-turn and followed. What was I doing? I wondered. Was
this idle curiosity? So what if he canceled a session? That wasn't so
extraordinary. What did I expect? That he would get on the freeway
and head downtown for another hotel tryst with Emily Ptak? And how
could this relate to the epidemic of murder and/or suicide that had
struck Malibu and points east the last few weeks? Probably he was
just going to the store, off to park in one of those handicapped
zones that were always infuriatingly empty in the busiest of shopping
center lots. Whatever it was, it was probably a delay of game in the
ever-urgent eyes of the likes of Nick Steinway anyway.

I followed him up Entrada to Ocean Avenue, where he
continued along the Santa Monica Palisade, its Old World graciousness
teetering precariously on the imminent threat of a Pacific slide. He
turned on Colorado, then again on Fourth, making a left onto the
Santa Monica Freeway and heading downtown. Maybe he was going to the
Bonaventure. I stayed two cars behind as the van sped under the San
Diego Freeway, passing the off ramps at Overland, Robertson, La
Cienega, and La Brea. Just as the Bonaventure was visible in the
distance, its silver—mirrored tubes looming like designer missile
silos against the darkening sky, he veered off at the Crenshaw ramp,
heading north toward the hills.

We crossed Pico and the signs started changing from
English to Asian, the shopping centers from flat-roofed Middle
American to blue-tiled, ersatz Oriental with funny little pagodas
sprouting from traditional California stucco. We were in Koreatown,
the fastest-growing neighborhood in Los Angeles, so fast-growing, in
fact, that it seemed to double in size every few weeks; but not in
the charming ragtag manner of the Chinese or the aesthetic
Zen-orderliness of the Japanese, but in the simple land-devouring
eagerness of typical American materialism. In more ways than one, the
Koreans were our Seoul brothers.

Nathanson pulled to one of the larger shopping
centers and parked, in the handicapped zone, in front of a huge
garishly painted restaurant called the New Inchon. I stopped across
the street and waited as his bearlike, driver emerged, withdrew the
wheelchair, opened it, and carefully deposited the psychiatrist on
the seat. Then, after making sure Nathanson's feet were properly
situated in the loop of the footplate and releasing the wheel lock,
he guided the doctor up a ramp and through the carved wooden door of
the restaurant.

"Okay. I admit it," said Chantal. "We're
wasting our time. He's just gone out for dinner."

"Possibly. But let's see."

I nodded to her and she followed me out of the car.
We crossed the lot to the restaurant and I opened the door slowly,
making certain we didn't run straight into Nathanson on the other
side.

I was confronted by a wall-size map of a mythically
unified Korea beneath a portrait of the South's present leader,
General Chun Doo Hwan. I stepped in, motioning for Chantal. We stood
in the entry room, looking past a bronze Buddha into the restaurant
itself. It was well lit and noisy, divided into a series of rooms for
sushi, tempura, and Korean-style barbecue called bul-go-kee that was
cooked at tables on individual grills. I searched through the crowd,
which was almost entirely Korean, well-dressed bourgeois types who,
except for their Mongoloid faces, could have been from the Valley or
the Marina. Some of the men even wore the requisite open-throated
shirts with gold chains. Their women were similarly clad in expensive
fashions, ready for a night out in a determinedly upwardly mobile
society. The food smelled good and I had half a mind to sit and
sample some myself when I noticed Nathanson, two rooms off, being
pushed through a doorway that, it seemed, led out the back of the
restaurant. A tall, lean Korean in a leisure suit was showing the way
for the driver.

We waited a couple of minutes, then, ignoring the
maitre d'
who was
trying to seat us, continued after them. The doorway gave onto a
corridor that led past the kitchen. We walked along, doing our best
not to answer the curious stares of the cooks and dishwashers, to a
fire door. I pushed through it into an alley just behind a Dempster
Dumpster. Chantal joined me, and we looked down to the end of the
alley, which was blocked by a graphite Mercedes limousine. Nathanson,
still in his wheelchair, was facing the rear of the limo, where a
gray-haired Korean in a blue suit was sitting with the window opened.
I could hear them talking to each other, but I couldn't distinguish
the words. I was about to move closer, when I heard the sharp flick
of a blade.

"Hey, smart dog, we meet again."

It was the Chu's Brothers. With all their knives and
chains.

"Get inside," I yelled to Chantal. She
didn't move. "I said get inside. " She still didn't move.
She was frozen.

"
What ya doin' here, smart dog? Come to see the
Reverend?" He started backing us toward the dumpster while his
partner edged between us and the door.

"Reverend?"

"Don't play dumb with me, smart dog. I know why
you're here. Jesus Saves, right?"

"Right."

"And talk in tongues. I know you can talk in
tongues, right, smart dog?"

"Sure." I looked over from the two Chu's to
Chantal. Down at the end of the alley I could hear the sound of a
motor turning over.

"Do it," he said.

"Do what?"

"Talk in tongues. I wanna hear you talk in
tongues. You're a religious person. You're here to see the Reverend,
get his advice and counsel. Talk!"

He moved toward me, grinning and pushing upward with
his knife. A door slammed. I glanced down the alley. Nathanson was
being loaded into the limousine next to the gray-
haired
Korean.

"What's the matter, smart dog? Cat got your
tongue? Can't speak in tongues and the cat's got your tongue. I think
they're Satanists, Brother Chu. I think they're on the wrong side!"

The silent Chu pulled a chain from under his leather
jacket and started advancing on Chantal.

"I can speak tongues," she blurted
suddenly, clasping her hands in front of her and talking a mile a
minute. "I'm a Catholic girl. Raised in a convent. In Quebec. By
nuns. Strict nuns. And mean Jesuits. With rulers. Made us pray every
fifteen minutes. On our knees. Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Body and
blood. Holy Communion. Feel the stigmata. Feel the presence. Mary,
Mary, full of grace."

"That's not tongues. This girl's bullshittin'
us, isn't she, Brother Chu? That's sacrilege! Get that sister of
Satan!"

The silent Chu started whipping the air with his
chain, swirling it within inches of Chantal.

"
Help! Help, police! " she screamed.

The Chu's whirled around. I kicked the verbal Chu in
the stomach, stunning him just long enough to chop his partner in the
neck and grab Chantal, pulling her back into the restaurant.

"Holy Mother of . . ." she shouted and ran
like a gazelle down the restaurant corridor, nearly knocking over
some busboys and a patron waiting to use the pay phone. I slammed
through the front door after her and dashed across the parking lot.
She didn't say another word until we had reached the car, I had
locked all four doors, and we were out of the parking lot.

"I quit," she said. "I can't do this.
I'm a coward. I'm afraid of flying. I'm afraid of the dark. I'm
afraid of snakes. I'm afraid of goddamned spiders. What the hell do I
want to be a detective for?"

"That's a good question." I was driving
around the block, looking for the graphite limousine, but there was
no sign of it. "Actually, you didn't do too badly under the
circumstances. You kept your cool."

"Yeah, but right now I feel like I'm ready for
the intensive care unit . . . I'll need a gun," she said.

"
A gun?"

"We're gonna deal with creeps like that, I'm
gonna need a gun. For self-defense. A thirty-eight."

"A thirty-eight will take your arm off. You'll
be feeling the recoil for a month. Besides, most people can't hit an
elephant at five yards with a gun like that."
 
"Then I'll get one of those little derringers
like Miss Kitty had on Gunsmoke. And I'll go out for target practice
every morning until I can hit all the tin cans off the garden fence.
Who were those guys?"

"The Chu's Brothers."

"Them again. What were they doing around here
with Nathanson and that warlord in the limo? Is he the Reverend? And
what was that about? I feel like I'm in the middle of an episode of
Terry and the Pirates. Are those guys punkers or Jesus freaks or
what?"

"Beats me," I said. She was starting to
smile now, in spite of herself. "Maybe they're born-again
bikers. B again B just like Nastase's thing."

"Wasn't that B for B?"

"Right. B for B. Brains for billions. Beans for
Boston . . . Wait a minute—Bibles. There were boxes of Bibles in
Nastase's house. Boxes for Bibles. That doesn't make much sense."

"How about Bibles for Billy? He's an undercover
agent for Billy Graham."

"Or Bibles for Bonzo. It's a remake of the old
Reagan movie."

"
That's it," said Chantal, grinning. "The
crazy chimp starts ripping pages out of Deuteronomy until Nancy gets
wind of him and locks him up with Mike Deaver and Betsy Bloomingdale
at the Santa Barbara ranch .... Wait a minute. Where are we?"

"Santa Monica and Western."

She checked her watch. "I've got to be at the
Fun Zone in five minutes."

"The Fun Zone?"

"Yeah. I'm on tonight at nine-thirty and twelve.
I've got to be in makeup. If you don't mind dropping me off, I'll
..."

She stopped, noticing my expression. "Hey, look,
we're not exactly Interpol yet and entertainment is my business."

"Is this your idea of partnership? We're in the
middle of a case here."

"Hey, I know. But a girl's gotta keep all her
balls in the air. You don't expect me to give up my shot at the
Carson show for a little cops and robbers. I mean it's not
interfering or anything. And I won't stop thinking about it for a
second. I promise."

"Uh-huh."

There was an uncomfortable silence as I hit the
freeway, getting off at Highland and jogging over Sunset to the Fun
Zone. I dropped her off at the club with a quick peck on the cheek.

"See you later," she said. "And don't
worry. We'll lick this thing." She ran straight to the stage
door without looking back.

I sat there a moment, staring over at the Albergo
Picasso, the image of Ptak flying over the penthouse wall describing
a parabola in my mind. It seemed less and less like suicide, but who
had pushed him over? Not Nastase, that was clear. More likely someone
who had been using the poor slob and thought nothing of removing him
the minute things got hot, someone bloodless enough to send that
contra retread chasing me all over New York. I sure hoped it wasn't
Nathanson. I started to pull out of the Fun Zone lot when I heard a
tap on my rear windshield. It was Koontz. He walked around and let
himself into the passenger side without waiting for an invitation.