Time Bomb (62 page)

Below that, a shot of a heavyset man in wading boots, his arm around the same boy. A string of fish hanging from the other arm.

Dinwiddie saw me looking, “We used to come up here a lot. Dad owned lots of the land around here. Bought it up after the war, thinking he’d combine growing with selling, avoid the middleman, become serious-rich. A couple of cold years killed off the profit margin in citrus but the mortgage stayed the same. The big outfits could wait it out but it dampened Dad’s enthusiasm, so he sold a lot of his acreage to the Sunkist co-op. We continued to come up for a couple of weeks each year and fish, just the two of us. Lake Piru used to be jumping with rainbows and bass. Last few years the rains have been weak and everything’s dried up—they’re not releasing anything out of the Fillmore hatchery until they can be sure the survival rate’ll be high. I’m sure you saw that, coming over the Santa Clara. The dry beds.”

Milo and I nodded.

“Can I get you coffee or something?” said Dinwiddie.

We shook our heads.

He said, “In the early sixties Dad got into another cash-flow problem and sold off most of the land he still owned in town—like the bungalows in front of us, the plot where the school is now. All of it gone, fast and cheap. He kept only this house—guess he was more sentimental than he’d ever have admitted. When he died I inherited it, started bringing my own boys up here. Until the drought. I figured it would be a good place—who bothers to come out here except truckers? Lots of Mexicans and old people—the two of them wouldn’t stand out.”

I said, “Makes sense.”

“I did it because I had to. There was no choice. Not after Ike raised my consciousness.”

He stopped, waited for a challenge, and when none came, said, “He’d talk about the Holocaust, how so few people had hidden Jews. How only the Danes had stood up as a country. How the whole thing could have been prevented if more people had stood up, done the right thing. You hear that, you start to wonder. What you would have done. The depth of your own principles. It’s like this psych experiment they did years ago—I’m sure you know it. Telling people to shock other people. For no good reason. And most people did it. Just to obey. Shocked total strangers, even though they knew it was wrong, didn’t want to. I’d always told myself I’d be different, one of the noble few. But I was never really sure. How can you be when it’s all theoretical? The way my life had gone,
everything
was theoretical. So when Ike called me, middle of the night, so scared, told me what they’d tried to do to him, I knew what I had to do. And I know I did the right thing. I’m sorry if it caused you—”

Milo said, “You pick up the old lady too?”

Dinwiddie nodded. “Both of us did that. She wouldn’t have gone with me alone. Ike was taking a chance, coming back to town, knowing they were after him. But he loved her, was worried about what might happen to her—especially worried because of the way she’d become.”

“What is it, Alzheimer’s?”

Dinwiddie said, “Who knows? She won’t go to a doctor.” To me: “Her age, it could be anything, right? Hardening of the arteries, whatever.”

I said, “How long has it been going on?”

“Ike said just a few months. Said she was such a bright woman—before the change—that most people didn’t notice anything different. Because when she talked she still made sense. And she’d always gone on about conspiracies—cossacks, whatever. So if she did it a little more, who’d notice? The way she is now, of course, you’d notice, but that’s just been the last few weeks. Maybe it’s the stress. Of hiding. I don’t know.”

He lowered his head, rested his forehead in his hands.

“So the two of you came back to town and got her,” Milo said.

“Yeah,” said Dinwiddie, talking to the hooked rug. “When she wasn’t home, Ike figured she’d either be at the synagogue or walking around. She’d always loved to walk, had started doing it even more—since the change. In the dark, when it wasn’t safe. We drove to the synagogue, saw there was some kind of party inside, and waited until she left. Then we picked her up and brought her here. She didn’t want to come, was yelling at us a lot, but Ike managed to calm her down. He’s the only one who seems to be able to calm her down.”

He looked down again, knitted his hands and swung them between his knees. “There’s something special between them. More than just family. The bond of survivors. He’s not even twenty, has been through way too much for someone that age. For anyone. So bear that in mind. Okay?”

Ike came back into the room and said, “Bear what in mind?”

Dinwiddie sat up. “I was just telling them to keep things in perspective. How’s she’s doing?”

“Sleeping. What kind of perspective?”

“Just everything that’s been going on.”

“In other words, coddle me out of pity?”

“No,” said Dinwiddie. The boy looked away from him. “Ike, about the shotgun—”

“Forget it, Ted. You ended up saving your own life. What could be better?”

Generous smile, startling in its suddenness. But largesse tainted by bitterness. Dinwiddie picked up on it, knew what it meant—an immutable change in the bond between them—and his expression turned to misery.

Milo said, “You ready to tell us what happened, son?”

Ike said, “How much do you know?”

“Everything up to Bear Lodge.”

“Bear Lodge,” he said. “Rural nirvana, some pipe dream, huh? All
I
know about that is what I’ve been told. By Grandma.”

“Where’d you live afterward?”

“Where’d I live?” The boy smiled again and ticked off fingers. “Boston. Evanston, Illinois. Louisville, Kentucky. I was a regular ramblin’ man.”

Another smile. So forced it was painful to look at.

I said, “Not Philadelphia?”

“Philadelphia? Nope. I’m with W. C. Fields on that one.”

“Terry Crevolin said your father’s family was from Philadelphia.”

“Family.” The smile opened and twisted and turned into an angry laugh. “My father’s
family
was wiped out fifty years ago. Except for one distant cousin. In Philadelphia. Fat-cat lawyer, I’ve never even talked to him—couldn’t imagine he’d welcome me with open arms.” Another laugh. “No, Grandma wouldn’t have sentenced me to Philadelphia.”

I said, “Those other places—was that your mother’s family?”

He cocked a finger at me. “You guessed it, smart person.
You
get the rubber duckie. A progressive series of nice middle-class
Negro
neighborhoods, where I wouldn’t stand out like chocolate syrup in milk. Nice hospitable relatives who tolerated me until they got sick of me, or got scared of what it meant putting me up, or things just got too crowded—the middle class likes its comforts.”

Dinwiddie said, “Why don’t you sit down, Ike?”

The boy wheeled on him. “What, and
relax
?” But he did lower himself into an armchair, stilt-legs stretching out onto the hooked rug.

A long silence. When Milo didn’t break it, I said, “Any reason you chose a Spanish surname?”

“Spanish? Oh yeah, that. I’d been using Montvert—some of my mom’s family were Creoles, so it seemed appropriate to go French.” Another joyless smile. “Then when I moved here I needed a new one. Covering tracks. I thought of Russian, for Grandma. But who would buy that on me? I didn’t want to attract attention. Then one day I scoped out Ocean Heights—it had been in the news, Massengil’s Jim Crow bullshit. I wanted to take a look at the place, see what KKK territory looked like in the eighties, took a drive through. Beaver Cleaverland. But I noticed they had all these Spanish names for the streets. Stone hypocrisy. So I thought, why not? Do ’em one better, go for Español. Which would be
Verde
. But that sounded wrong—like it wouldn’t be someone’s name. So I checked out a Spanish-English dictionary.
Green
. Slang for ‘novice.’ Which I was. An L.A. novice—go west, young man.
Novato
. Had a cool ring to it. The rest, as they say, is Will and Ariel Durant territory.”

Milo had started to squirm halfway through the speech. He said, “How’d it happen? The alley.”

“Boy,” said Ike, “you’re a real master of subtlety.”

“Fuck subtlety,” said Milo. “Let’s aim for truth.”

The boy’s turn to be startled. Then a genuine smile.

He said, “By the time they told me to meet them in the alley, I’d started to suspect something weird. Latch was
too
nice. I mean, the guy was an elected official and we were talking about murder, blowing things up. Him being really casual. As if it were no big deal. As if he were still a revolutionary. Not that I ever really trusted him in the first place. Grandma didn’t trust him—said the fact that he’d gone into establishment politics said plenty about him. So when be told me about the meeting, new information, I said sure, faked being all gung-ho. But I was suspicious from the outset.”

“Why down there? In Watts.”

Ike nodded. “Exactly. That bothered me too. Latch’s story was, the source I was going to meet was someone who lived there. From Mom and Dad’s past, the Black Liberation Army. Someone still wanted by the authorities, needed the cover of Watts, couldn’t afford to leave home territory.”

“Latch give you a name?”

“Abdul Malik. But he said that was just a code. He liked codes. Like some kid playing
I
Spy
. I never really bought it.”

“The real reason for Watts,” said Dinwiddie, “was that a black body there wouldn’t cause the police to blink an eye. And that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

Milo ignored that, said to Ike: “So in spite of it smelling bad, you went down there.”

“I had to know what was going on. I figured if they were going to pull something, they’d do it another time, another place. Might as well be prepared, see what was going on. So I showed up early, hid my bike in the next alley, and found a hiding place next to this garage, behind some garbage cans. The bulb was out and that part of the alley was really dark. And
rank
. Something out of a nightmare.” He grimaced, remembering. “Junkies sneaking in and out, all these low whispers, deals going down, people shooting up, snorting, taking leaks, taking dumps. I started to get scared, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. But as it got later, closer to the time I was supposed to meet this Malik, the action started to slow.”

“When was that?” said Milo.

“About three a.m. I heard somewhere that’s the killing time of day, time the life forces are weak. Hiding in that place, you could really feel it. Everything going dead. Anyway, the junkies and dealers started to go home, only a few stragglers. Real losers nodding off, not caring if they were sitting in dog shit or whatever.”

He gave a sick look. Stopped.

Milo said, “Go on.”

“One of them—one of the stragglers—was about my size. Maybe a little shorter but almost the same size. And really skinny, like me. I noticed him because of that, kind of identified with him, thinking about what led him to get that way, there but for the grace of God, and all that kind of stuff. I mean this guy was really pathetic—totally wasted. Walking back and forth, muttering, stoked on God knows how many different kinds of poison.

“I’m watching him, watching all of this, the smells seem to be getting worse, and the darkness starts to get really heavy—crushing down on me. I know now it was my anxiety. I start thinking anxiety-thoughts, like is someone going to steal my bike and am I going to get stranded here? Who knows who’s out there. Watching. Then the guy they sent to do the job shows up. He’s early too. Half hour early. I can tell ’cause he’s dressed in black, wearing this long black coat even though it’s summer—that’s one thing that tipped me off, though by itself it didn’t mean much. Junkies get cold. But he stepped under a garage light and I saw that he was a white guy. Real cracker face, turned-up pig nose, but with stuff on his face. Greasepaint. To make him look black—like a minstrel act. In the darkness it almost worked. The few junkies who were left never noticed—they just wanted their dope. But I was looking out for it, so I caught it right away.

“This guy just kind of saunters in, walking cool, head-bopping, trying to look as if he belongs there. But overdoing it.
Playing
black. Then, when he saw no one was paying attention to him, looking at his watch, showing how jumpy he was. I stay behind the garbage cans. Then this tall thin junkie spots him, says, “Yo, bro,” and starts ambling up to him. Talking really slurred—stoned out of his mind. Maybe he was trying to buy or sell or just hitting the white guy up for a handout. The guy in the coat says my name—‘Yo, Malcolm?’ Like that. And the junkie mutters something back, doesn’t say he’s not me, and keeps coming at him. Maybe he even wanted to mug him or something, I don’t know. He was pretty big, must have looked pretty scary to old Whitey. So old Whitey pulls something out of the coat. Sawed-off shotgun. And blasts the tall guy, from right up close—maybe he was two feet away, if that. I could see him fly back, as if he’d been hit by a hurricane. Just fly back and fall. The other stragglers started running—it was weird, no screams, no one talking. Just silent running, like rats. Like they were used to it—this was no big deal. Then the white guy in the coat runs away and I hear a car start at the end of the alley and drive off. I wait awhile, scared out of my mind but knowing I should go over to the junkie, see if there’s anything I can do for him. Even though I know there isn’t—the way he was thrown back, the way he exploded. But finally, I do. When I see what the shotgun did to him I get really sick. For him and also, I guess, because I know this is what they meant for
me
. I’m dizzy, I feel like throwing up, but I know I’ve got to get out of there before the police show up, so I hold it in. My stomach’s really killing me, churning, I need to go to the bathroom. Then I think of something—some way to take something good out of this. Make the junkie’s life meaningful. I put my hands in his pockets. It’s disgusting—they’re all wet. With blood. And empty except for some pills. No ID. I slip
my
ID in and split. Hoping the way he looks—what the shotgun did to him—us being around the same size, no one will figure it out. Later, riding away, I get real paranoid about it, start to shake. Tell myself it was the most idiotic thing I
could
have done. What if they
do
figure it out? There’s my ID right on the body—I’m cooked. I could be busted for
murder
. So I call Ted from a pay phone. He gets out of bed and drives me here. And I wait, scared out of my mind. Out here in Nowheresville. For the cops to come looking for me. For Latch’s Nazis to come looking for me. The next day the cops do come around talking to Grandma, asking about my involvement with dope. Accepting the dead body as me. So I’m officially dead.” Smile. “Never thought it would feel so good.”