Ignore him.
“Of course you are. Buy you a drink?”
Maybe not ignore him.
Benny brings the guy another Bud and pours another double for Doc.
“Thing is, I know you, man. I’m from Tucson. You used to take care of the vatos from the racetrack. Few years back, you patched up my brother after a bank job. Noel Guzman? Wiry and tall? Bleached hair?”
No way he remembered. He’d treated dozens of them in his day. Back in the day, as they said now-and found himself wondering again where that came from. Back in the day. Up in here. You’d never heard these phrases before, then suddenly everyone was using them.
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“Neither does my brother, now that he’s dead.”
Doc threw back his scotch. “I’m sorry.”
“He wasn’t much, mind you-just family.”
Benny was there with the bottle. Be hard for the young man to do other than approve a pour. He watched with something akin to horror as the six-dollar charge came up on the register, then with a shake of his head accepted it. Benny tucked the tab under an ashtray on the bar by them.
“Went down trying to knock off some gook mom-and-pop store. Little guy was over the counter before he knew it, the police said, had him on the floor half a second later, blood supply to his brain shut off. Not the end he imagined for himself.”
“When’s it ever?”
“Not that anyone else was surprised.” He drained his beer and obviously wanted another. Hesitant because that might imply another six-dollar scotch as well.
“This round’s on me,” Doc told him. Benny took away the highball glass and set a shot glass before him, poured. Doc’s hand was steady as he lifted it.
“Same?” Benny asked the kid.
“Whatever you want,” Doc said.
“Bud’s good.”
Benny brought him a can. Doc bumped his empty shot glass against it and the kid drank.
“So…You living up this way now?”
Doc nodded.
“Doing what?”
“Retired.”
“Man, you were retired when I first met you.”
Shrugging, Doc signaled for a drink. Got a little extra in this one, since it was the end of a bottle. It reminded Doc of Sterno. Once as a kid he’d gone out behind the house, into the wilds of pecan trees and hedges and, following a night zipped into an army-surplus unsleeping bag, had attempted to fry bacon over a Sterno can, managing only to cook his thumb.
“Thing is, I have this sweet deal.”
Of course he did. Guys like this, came up to you at a bar, knew you or claimed to, they always had a sweet deal, wanted to tell you about it.
“Not following in your brother’s footsteps, I hope.”
“Hey, you know how it is. Some families turn out doctors, some produce lawyers…”
The kid took off his shoe, pulled back the insole and fished out two hundred-dollar bills, which he laid on the bar. Part of the stash he’d use to make bail, as proof against vagrancy charges, for bribes, or just to get by-an old convict’s habit.
Doc glanced at the bills.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Eric. Eric Guzman. Think of that as on-call pay.”
“You expecting to need medical care soon?”
“Nah, not me. I’m careful. Plan ahead.”
What the hell, maybe this kid’s whole life was a non sequitur. Beer couldn’t have hit him that hard. Not Bud, and not in the couple hours he’d been sucking at it. Doc looked up and saw the kid’s pinpoint pupils. Okay. Now it makes sense.
“Planning ahead’s what I’m doing. Something does happen, I’ll know where to come, right?”
Kid didn’t know shit. None of them did these days. Fancied themselves outlaws, every one of them. Up in society’s face, down for anything that went counter.
Doc suffered another half-hour of Eric Guzman before making excuses and hauling his own sorry ass off the barstool and back home. Long enough for Guzman to tell him about his sweet deal. They were taking out an electronics store on Central, but way out at city’s edge where the street kind of petered out, with mainly warehouses and the like around. Place was having a blow-out weekend sale, and Guzman figured by Sunday there was going to be one hell of a pile of money on hand. Security guards were all about a hundred and ten. Had his crew together, all they needed now was a driver.
Miss Dickinson was waiting for Doc, complaining, when he came up the driveway. She’d wandered in his door a year or so back when he’d had it open late one afternoon, and he’d been feeding her ever since. A mixed breed in which Russian Blue was most evident, she was missing half her left ear and two toes on the left front foot.
“How many meals is this today, Miss D?” he asked. There was a troubling regularity to her visits; he suspected she made rounds from house to house all over the neighborhood. But he opened a can of albacore tuna and set it in a corner where she could get to it and didn’t have to chase it all about the room, though she would anyway, long after it was empty.
He hadn’t cleaned up from the night before. Strips of blood-soaked cloth, four-by-fours, bowls of peroxide and Betadine. Bleach, stainless steel sewing needles, bottles of alcohol.
Good to be useful again.
Before he finished the clean-up, Miss Dickinson downed the tuna and came over to see what he was doing, wrinkling her nose at bleach and cleansers, steering wide of peroxide and Betadine, but showing great interest in blood-soaked cloth, cotton and gauze. She kept trying to paw these out of the serving bowls and plastic bins into which he’d tossed them.
His new patient was coming back for a check-up on Friday. Worried about infection, Doc had told him. Now he was wondering if infection was the lesser danger. He should warn his patient about Eric Guzman.
Chapter Eighteen
For a long time after Standard’s death he didn’t take on any more jobs. Not that he wasn’t approached. Word gets around. He watched a lot of TV with Benicio, cooked huge meals for and with Irina. “Learned out of self defense,” he’d said when she asked how he’d found his way to cooking. Then, as he grated fresh Parmesan, Italian sausages laid out on the cutting board to warm, he told her about his mother. They clicked glasses. A good, inexpensive sauvignon blanc.
Day or two a week, he’d go off to the studio, give them what they wanted, be back before Benicio got home from school. The checks Jimmie sent him each month grew. He could go on like this forever. Nothing gold can stay-he remembered that from a poem he’d read back in high school.
Not that in L.A. you could easily tell without consulting a calendar, but fall had arrived. Nights were cool and breezy. Each evening, light flattened itself against the horizon trying heroically to hold on, then was gone.
Home from her new job as ward clerk at the local ER, Irina refilled their wineglasses.
“Here’s to-”
He remembered the glass falling, shattering as it struck the floor.
He remembered the starburst of blood on her forehead, the snail of it down her cheek as she tried to spit out what was in there in the moment before she collapsed.
