"Good kid! You're a clean-plater!" Fred said.
"Call Jenny," Robert said, reminding himself. He stood and staggered through the offal toward the phone. Nausea swept over him and he bounced back through the trailer's narrow hallway and fell into the bathroom, where he retched into the toilet until he passed out. The Breeze called it "talking to Ralph on the Big White Phone. " This one was a toll call.
Five minutes later he came to and found the phone. It seemed a superhuman effort to hit the right buttons. Why did they have to keep moving? At last he connected and someone answered on the first ring. "Jenny, honey, I'm sorry. Can I-"
"Thank you for calling Pizza on Wheels. We will open at eleven A. M. and deliveries begin at four P. M. Why cook when-"
Robert hung up. He'd dialed the number written on the phone's emergency numbers sticker instead of his home. Again he chased down the buttons and pegged them one by one. It was like shooting skeet, you had to lead them a little.
"Hello. " Jenny sounded sleepy.
"Honey, I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. Can I come home?"
"Robert? What time is it?"
He thought for a moment then guessed, "Noon?"
"It's five in the morning, Robert. I've been asleep about an hour, Robert. There were dogs barking in the neighborhood all night long, Robert. I'm not ready for this. Good-bye, Robert. "
"But Jenny, how could you do it? You don't even like the desert. And you know how I hate saltines. "
"You're drunk, Robert. "
"Who is this guy, Jenny? What does he have that I don't have?"
"There is no other guy. I told you yesterday, I just can't live with you anymore. I don't think I love you anymore. "
"Who do you love? Who is he?"
"Myself, Robert. I'm doing it for myself. Now I'm hanging up for myself. Say good-bye so I don't feel like I'm hanging up on you. "
"But, Jenny-"
"It's over. Get on with your life, Robert. I'm hanging up now. Good-bye. "
"But-" She hung up. "Nobody lives like this," Robert said to the dial tone.
Get on with your life. Okay, that's a plan. He would clean up this place and clean up his life. Never drink again. Things were going to change. Soon she would remember what a great guy he was. But first he had to go to the bathroom to answer an emergency call from Ralph.
The smoke alarm was screaming like a tortured lamb. Robert, now back on the couch, pulled a cushion over his head and wondered why the Bre
eze didn't have a sleeper button on his smoke alarm. Then the pounding started. It was a door buzzer, not the smoke alarm.
"Breeze, answer the door!" Robert shouted into the cushion. The pounding continued. He crawled off the couch and waded through the litter to the door.
"Hold on a minute, man. I'm coming. " He threw the door open and caught the man outside with his fist poised for another pounding. He was a sharp-faced Hispanic in a raw silk suit. His hair was slicked back and tied in a ponytail with a black silk ribbon. Robert could see a flagship model BMW parked in the driveway.
"Shit. Jehovah's Witnesses must make a lot of money," Robert said.
The Hispanic was not amused. "I need to talk to The Breeze. "
At that point Robert realized that he was naked and picked an empty, gallon wine bottle from the floor to cover his privates.
"Come in," Robert said, backing away from the door. "I'll see if he's awake. "
The Hispanic stepped in. Robert stumbled down the narrow hall to The Breeze's room. He knocked on the door. "Breeze, there's some big money here to see you. " No answer. He opened the door and went in and searched through the piles of blankets, sheets, pillows, beer cans, and wine bottles, but found no Breeze.
On the way back to the living room Robert grabbed a mildewed towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around his hips. The Hispanic was standing in the middle of a small clearing, peering around the trailer with concentrated disgust. It looked to Robert as if he were trying to levitate to avoid having his Italian shoes contact the filth on the floor.
"He's not here," Robert said.
"How do you live like this?" the Hispanic said. He had no discernible accent. "This is subhuman, man. "
"Did my mother send you?"
The Hispanic ignored the question. "Where is The Breeze? We had a meeting this morning. " He put an extra emphasis on the word meeting. Robert got the message. The Breeze had been hinting that he had some big deal going down. The guy must be the buyer. Silk suits and BMWs were not the usual accouterments of The Breeze's clientele.
"He left last night. I don't know where he went. You could check down at the Slug. "
"The Slug?"
"Head of the Slug Saloon, on Cypress. He hangs out there sometimes. "
The Hispanic tiptoed through the garbage to the door, then paused on the step. "Tell him I'm looking for him. He should call me. Tell him I do not do business this way. "
Robert didn't like the commanding tone in the Hispanic's voice. He affected the obsequious tone of an English butler, "And whom shall I say has called, sir?"
"Don't fuck with me, cabron. This is business. "
Robert took a deep breath, then sighed. "Look, Pancho. I'm hung over, my wife just threw me out, and my life is not worth shit. So if you want me to take messages, you can damn well tell me who the fuck you are. Or should I tell The Breeze to look for a Mexican with a Gucci loafer shoved up his ass? Comprende, Pachuco?"
The Hispanic turned on the step and started to reach into his suit coat. Robert felt adrenaline shoot through his body, and he tightened his grip on the towel. Oh, yeah, he thought, pull a gun and I'll snap your eyes out with this towel. He suddenly felt extremely helpless.
The Hispanic kept his hand in his coat. "Who are you?"
"I'm The Breeze's decorator. We're redoing the whole place in an abstract expressionist motif. " Robert wondered if he wasn't really trying to get shot.
"Well, smart ass, when The Breeze shows up, you tell him to call Rivera. And you tell him that when the business is done, his decorator is mine. You understand?"
Robert nodded weakly.
"Adios, dogmeat. " Rivera turned and walked toward the BMW.
Robert closed the door and leaned against it, trying to catch his breath. The Breeze was going to be pissed when he heard about this. Robert's fear was replaced by self-loathing. Maybe Jenny was right. Maybe he had no idea how to maintain a relationship with anybody. He was worthless and weak - and dehydrated.
He looked around for something to drink and vaguely remembered having done this before. D??j?? vu?
"Nobody lives like this. " It was going to change, goddammit. As soon as he found his clothes, he was going to change it.
RIVERA
Detective Sergeant Alphonso Rivera of the San Junipero County Sheriff's Department sat in the rented BMW and cursed. "Fuck, fuck, and double fuck. " Then he remembered the transmitter taped to his chest. "Okay, cowboys, he's not here. I should have known. The van's been gone for a week. Call it off. "
In the distance he could hear cars starting. Two beige Plymouths drove by a few seconds later, the drivers conspicuously not looking at the BMW as they passed.
What could have gone wrong? Three months setting it all up. He'd gone out on a limb with the captain to convince him that Charles L. Belew, a. k. a. The Breeze, was their ticket into the Big Sur growers' business.
"He's gone down twice for cocaine. If we pop him for dealing, he'll give us everything but his favorite recipe to stay out of Soledad. "
"He's small time," the captain had said.
"Yeah, but he knows everybody, and he's hungry. Best of all, he knows he's small time, so he thinks we wouldn't bother with him. "
Finally the captain had relented and it had been set up. Rivera could hear him now. "Rivera, if you got made by a drugged-out loser like Belew, maybe we should put you back in uniform, where your high visibility will be an asset. Maybe we can put you in P. R. or recruitment. "
Rivera's ass was hanging out worse than that drunken jerk in the trailer. Who was he, anyway? As far as anyone knew, The Breeze lived alone. But this guy seemed to know something. Why else would he give Rivera such a hard time? Maybe he could pull this off with the drunk. Desperate thinking. A long shot.
Rivera memorized the license number of the old Ford truck parked outside The Breeze's trailer. He would run it through the computer when he got back to the station. Maybe he could convince the captain that he still had something. Maybe he did. And then again, maybe he could just climb a stream of angel piss to heaven.
Rivera sat in the file room of the sheriff's office drinking coffee and watching a videotape. After running the license number through the computer, Rivera found that the pickup belonged to a Robert Masterson, age twenty-nine. Born in Ohio, married to Jennifer Masterson, also twenty-nine. His only prior was a drunk-driving conviction two years ago.
The video was a record of Masterson's breathalyzer test. Several years ago the department had begun taping all breathalyzer tests to avoid legal-defense strategies based on procedural mistakes made by arresting officers during testing.
On the television screen a very drunk Robert W. Masterson (6 ft. , 180 lbs. , eyes green, hair brown) was spouting nonsense to two uniformed deputies.
"We work for a common purpose. You serve the state with your minds and bodies. I serve the state by opposing it. Drinking is an act of civil disobedience. I drink to end world hunger. I drink to protest the United States' involvement in Central America. I drink to protest nuclear power. I drink. . . "
A sense of doom descended on Rivera as he watched. Unless The Breeze reappeared, his career was in the hands of this tightly wound, loosely wrapped, drunken idiot. He wondered what life might be like as a bank security guard.
On the screen the two officers looked away from their prisoner to the door of the testing room. The camera was mounted in the corner and fitted with a wide-angle lens to cover anything that happened without having to be adjusted. A little Arab man in a red stocking cap had come through the door, and the deputies were telling him that he had the wrong room and to please leave.
"Could I trouble you for a small quantity of salt?" the little man asked. Then he blinked off the screen as if the tape had been stopped and he had been edited out.
Rivera rewound the tape and ra
n it again. The second time, Masterson performed the test without interruption. The door did not open and there was no little man. Rivera ran it back again: no little man.
He must have dozed off while the tape was running. His subconscious had continued the tape while he slept, inserting the little man's entrance. That was the only viable explanation.
"I don't need this shit," he said. Then he ejected the tape and drained his coffee, his tenth cup of the day.