I didn’t stay settled in for long. After about three minutes, four men walked through the gate toward me. The one in the lead was a white man of about fifty, with a bull neck and a face like a plate of lumpy mashed potatoes. One of the men behind him looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was a black man, my height but bigger in the shoulders. His broad forehead was furrowed with a resentful scowl.
I rolled down the window a few inches. Potato Face crooked his finger at me, signaling me to come with him. There was nothing bullying or arrogant in his expression, but I didn’t like being treated like a misbehaving first- grader.
“Why?” I asked.
Mr. Familiar didn’t like my question. He tried to come around Potato Face at me, but the old man laid a hand on his chest to stop him, and Familiar stopped. Nice to know who was in charge.
Potato looked at me again. “Your buddy needs your help.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but I opened the door and climbed out anyway, mainly because I could see they’d force me out if I didn’t. There was no sense in scuffling in the street.
Potato walked toward the house, and I fell in behind him. Familiar walked on my left, and the two other guys, both bulky, pale-skinned, and as expressive as boulders, flanked me on my right and from behind.
“I recognize you,” Familiar blurted out. “You’re the Flower.” Suddenly I recognized him right back. He was Wardell Shoops, a former wide receiver for the Chiefs. He’d been drafted out of UCLA and, during bye week of his rookie year, he’d flown home to have dinner with his mother and to beat the hell out of his business manager, who’d lost half his money on a Louisiana alligator farm. He’d pleaded guilty and did a year in Chino while I was there.
I looked at him and at his aggressive smile. He looked at me like I was an apple about to be plucked and eaten. I didn’t like that look. “I remember the man you used to be,” I said. “What happened to that guy? He was something else.”
Wardell’s smile vanished. He cursed and stepped toward me, but Potato stopped him with one backward glance. We all walked up the driveway while the gate rolled closed behind us.
The inside of the house was bright with natural light. Nearly everything was white—the carpet, the chairs, even the narrow hall tables with white princess telephones. White picture frames with no pictures hung on the walls. The ceiling was made of squares of glass with black framework in between.
Potato led us into a sunken living room at the back of the building. Arne was there, standing by a pair of French doors, with two more heavyset creeps next to him. Through the doors, I could see a broad lawn with a flower garden along one side and a little Jacuzzi on the other. Two men were on their hands and knees digging in the garden, but I couldn’t see them well enough to tell if they were Japanese, Mexican, or something else.
“Come on,” a man said impatiently. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Potato led me down into the room, and there, seated on an overstuffed couch in the corner, was the man who thought I was frightened of him. He was narrow-shouldered and as thin as a boy, and just about as tall, too. His face was weathered by sun, but his two-hundred-dollar haircut and open-necked linen shirt suggested he’d gotten his tan in a deck chair. His blue eyes were watery, and his thin hair was the color of sand. A tall, bony Asian woman in a purple bikini lounged on a couch beside him, a magazine in her hand.
Potato jerked a thumb back at me. “This is him.”
Linen Shirt was about to speak when Wardell said: “I know him. His last name is Daffodil or something. Something flowery. He was in Chino a couple years back, and someone on the outside had to pay for his protection, ’cause he couldn’t do it himself.”
Linen waited for Wardell to finish. Everyone else was silent, and I had the impression that Wardell had stepped on his boss’s line, and not for the first time. Then he glanced at me. “What are you doing here, Mr. Daffodil?”
Arne spoke up. “I needed someone to drive my car.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” Linen said, his voice sharp. He turned away from me. “Well? Is this him?”
The Asian woman regarded me with a sleepy, careless self-confidence. Her skin was dark and her face broad and beautiful. “Nope,” she said. She took a swizzle stick off the table beside her and began moving it through her hair as though she was stirring her scalp. “I told you it was a spic.”
Linen sighed. “Don’t say
“I told you before,” Arne said, “I didn’t steal your car. I thought I knew who’d done it, and I was right. I took a real risk retrieving it for you.”
Another one of the interchangeable beefheads came into the room. He held up a DVD inside a paper sleeve. “It was right where you left it.”
Linen opened a cabinet, revealing a little screen. The beefhead loaded the disc and pressed PLAY.
Swizzle Stick found the energy to stand and look at the screen. We all watched the video of her and Linen naked and grunting on a white bed in a white room—probably one right upstairs. No one seemed the least bit embarrassed or awkward.
“I look hot,” Swizzle said.
Linen sighed again and turned the show off. “Did you see this?” he asked Arne.
“No, I didn’t.” Arne sounded very casual.
Linen turned toward me. “You?”
“No, but maybe if you play more, I’ll recognize it.”
Arne laughed suddenly. It felt so good to have him smile at me that I almost laughed with him. We had been friends once.
Linen turned to Potato Face. “Make sure.”
