The Jehovah Contract

as he must have been around when they coined the word

burly.

Two beefy hands hung from his sleeves like chunks of rock laid across his lap. His face looked like a Teamsters' strike.

'You know Joey, right?' Bulldogs have barked more politely.

I pulled out a cigarette and made a big deal of lighting it.

'Knew,' I said for the second time that day.

'I knew him, too.' A little grief flickered in the man's eyes. Not much, but it seemed real enough. He unfolded his legs and got his arms in position to slide off the Formica cube. He stepped toward me, a much shorter man than I'd expected. He stared up at my eyes. Straight ahead, he'd have been gazing at my Adam's apple.

'Take the man's hat, Tom.'

'That's not necessary,' I said, blowing smoke in Tom's direction.

The beautiful face didn't wrinkle its nose or emit any prissy noises. His dreamlike blue eyes blinked twice, and a muted laugh snorted out of him with the sound of a distant drum.

I kept my hat on because I didn't want my current abstract hairdo to detract from my image.

'Your name's Dell Ammo,' the short bear said. 'Your business license lists you as a P.I.-which I don't suppose means Perfect Initiate-and I hope we've both proven we're tough and cool and can get down to brass tacks.'

'You haven't proven much yet,' I said. I was feeling wise. The smart guy. Dell Ammo-hard man.

Shortly after his fist connected with me, I was relocated to the hallway. He'd aimed for my solar plexus and hadn't missed. I made the sounds a drowning man makes and clutched at my guts. My right hand reached instinctively toward my waistband.

Seeing that, he turned to stroll back to his altar.

'Tough guy,' he said through the thick buzz in my ears. 'Has to pull heat at the first jab.' He climbed up on the altar and folded his beefy legs with a yogi's agility.

I staggered back inside, feeling less the smart guy.

'Joey and I were friends in Berkeley,' he said. 'I was a right-wing conservative sort. Buckleyite. He was a Trotskyist. We met once when we both happened to be beating up some Larouchites. We found other interests in common and became friends, sort of. Over the years, he started reading a lot of Russian literature. I started reading Christian heretic and Gnostic writings. Joey got hooked on Tolstoy, started edging toward religious pacifism. One quarter, I see him come to class in a priest's getup. He'd quit the Trots to join the Russian Orthodox Church. Changed his major to religious studies. Same as Tom here.'

Tom laughed. It wasn't quite the musical laughter of Apollo or whomever, but it had a note of carefree joy in it.

The grizzly voice continued. 'Joey's folks were Mexican Catholic, so you know how they greeted him at home. When he came to L.A., he started working in the barrios. I don't know how he met you.'

'We got drunk in a bar together once,' I said. 'He dragged me home.'

'He was good conversation, Ammo. Same as Tom here. Good conversation is hard to find. Joey had a good mind-muddled sometimes, maybe a little naif...' He looked down at his hands.

I used the silence to scan the room for an ashtray. The butt ended up on the floor, ground beneath my heel.

Tom looked at me with a resigned smile.

'Joey apparently respected you.' The fellow's voice had taken on a soft, far-off quality. That he knew me but didn't bother to give me

his

name was beginning to annoy me. His face, which looked as if it had been used to tenderize sides of beef, lost its tough, street wise edge. 'He was worried about you after a couple of big boys from his archdiocese paid him a visit.' He shifted his weight around to take a grunting breath.

I closed the office door, though direct experience indicated that it wouldn't prevent eavesdropping.