read Installment 08

Installment 09

"The hell, Floyd? What are you going on about?"

Chambers adopted a cagey look. "I've already said too much."

"Uh-huh. So what's this have to do with Savoirfaire getting iced?"

The disabled man hunched his shoulders. "I figured that was Boo-Boo's and Elmore's doing. But now I don't know for sure."

The two were moving along the residential street. Fine particles of ash dusted the parked cars and trees. Magrady sniffed the air but detected no burnt smell and wondered what had produced the residue. Was there a fire somewhere or was this some kind of sign portending coming events? The image of that young man reading the Philip K. Dick novel on the bus floated through his head and he softly panicked, imaging that he was really some sort of Dickesque character dreaming he was real while he was in a time loop forever doomed to repeat this search over and over, while not gaining any insight whatsoever in any of the incarnations.

Magrady asked, "Then why'd you go all subterranean?"

Chambers steadily pumped the wheels of his chair, his hands fluid and seamless in their repetitive motion. "I figured those two were moving in on his territory and would be taking over his book." He glanced up. "I know you see yourself as six ways to bad, M, but those two are money crazy."

That sounded plausible but Magrady knew his friend was holding back. Savoirfaire had attacked him with a hook knife, and if that wasn't a demonstration he was as homicide happy as the Wonder Twins, then what did? But he played along with, "And what made it different when our boy Boo found you? And by the way, where were you keeping yourself?"

They'd come to a corner and reflexively both turned north toward Wilshire again. "I got associates all over town, man," Chambers joked. "Maybe I was laying up with the even finer cousin of Eva Mendes 'cause she likes to get her freak on with a dead-legged man." He did a 360, laughing.

 Dryly Magrady said, "Anything you say, Floyd."

"Friend of a friend, okay?"

"How'd butt head find you?"

Chambers grinned. "I guess I need to enlarge my circle."

Magrady grabbed the wheelchair's handles, causing Chamber's gloved hands to skid on across the chair's high impact rubber. "Answers, Floyd. Stop fucking around. Or I dump you out here and take this thing with me." He shook the wheelchair, gritting his teeth. They were in the middle of the block leading back to the main thoroughfare.

Chambers stared at his pissed friend, deciding if the other man was bullshitting or not. He took in an audible breath. "I was staying at a few places where I could beg a night, even had to sleep out at the beach a couple of nights." He did a quick head jerk to the west. "Not only is it nasty when you're stuck in a chair, but you don't know what fool that's off his meds is sneaking around out there up to devilment. Wound up in a kind of shelter near there, Santa Monica I mean. It's actually just some rooms above that church run by that lefty pastor that has those meetings out there. Met him through Janis."

"I know who you mean," Magrady said.

"That's where that sadistic mufu Boo found me. Seems him and his crime partner put the promise of product as reward on the street, and you know them crackheads would sell their mama's left titty for some rock." The two reached Wilshire. "One of them sported me and dimed me out. Next thing I knew yesterday homeboy showed up demanding the money I owed Savoirfaire." He gestured feebly with his hands. "I tried to tell him you cleared that up but he wasn't having it.

"So you were gonna have him knock Angie in the head, man?"

Chambers evidenced a pained expression. "I ain't that low, Magrady."

"Then what was the deal?"

"I was buying time. He was gonna hang back like you saw and I'd get the mag card from her."

"What did Boo-Boo think you were going to take him to? This mysterious windfall you won't tell me what it is."

Chambers rolled on thoughtfully, then, "I had to do something, man, you know how he gets. I told him there was cash that I could get by using the card." Continuing along he added, "But I made sure not to say shit to him about the cassette tape and what it, well," he paused, not wishing to say more, "what it was."

"Even homeboy can't be so faded on his chronic that he believed that a big company like SubbaKhan kept money lying around." Magrady decided to keep Chambers focused on the procedural stuff rather than press him on what this Grail of his was. He hoped to angle back to that subject at some point once he got his friend talking.

"He didn't know what kind of door the card opened. I convinced him my sister worked at a finance operation of SubbaKhan. So, you know, he just assumed there'd be money in a strong box or something."

They'd halted on Wilshire, both near the busy intersection of Westwood and the large boulevard. A group of young women walked by them, one in loose sweatpants with Juicy in pink Gothic letters arched over her bouncy butt. Two of them had earplugs in leading to their iPods that they thumbed selections on while maintaining a conversation with the others. He found it hard to believe that Boo and Elmore had chased Chambers all over town just to shake him down for, what? A few hundred dollars at the most? Sure those two were swap meet special gangstas, but were they that hard up?

Magrady asked, "What did you mean that you don't think they killed Savoirfaire?"

Chambers squinted up at him. "Your good buddy Boo was talkin' too much like he does and was saying to Elmore he figured you for Savoirfaire's killer. That yeah, they took advantage of a good situation from their viewpoint, but it sounded like they were as surprised as anyone else that he got done in."

Magrady considered this and said, "We gotta come to an understanding, Floyd."

The paraplegic rolled his chair a few feet forward, then back, his version of pacing. "You give me the tape back and I tell you about what was dug up?"

"That's about right."

"I'll have to get back to you on that, M."

"I guess that means you'll talk this over with your sister."

Chambers nodded.

Margady had already calculated that it didn't seem like it had been cash or jewels from some long-ago robbery that had been recovered, as even a child would know such was valuable. Assuming it was a construction worker on the Emerald Shoals project who initially unearthed this thing. Too the dingus may not be in the brother's and sister's possession from the way Chambers was acting. Or it had been but wasn't now. The tape possibly some clue to getting it back? And from whom? This detective shit could make a man weary, he sighed inwardly.

"I don't hear from you in two days, Floyd, then maybe I have to make other arrangements."

Chambers' muscular upper body stiffened. "Jesus, Magrady, why you got to be an asshole about this?"

He pointed at him. "Because you're playing me and the Sunshine Boys for chumps, Floyd. Now them that's fine, but we've been through some shit. I don't deserve this." He was surprised at his emotion about this.

Chambers held up a hand. "Look, man. Just let me talk to sis and we'll get straight on this. Just don't mess up that tape."

"You better get back to me."

"Where can I catch you?"

Margrady told him to leave a message at the Urban Advocacy offices. Chambers rolled west and Magrady walked east. He found a pristine pay phone—figured on this side of town—and made a call to Gordon Walters, the mouthpiece assigned to his case at Legal Resources.

"Yo, G," he said after amenities, "you know any particulars about how Savoirfaire was killed aside from him getting his head beat in?"

"Not that I can recollect, but let me go through my notes. The deputy D.A. on this case is not fast tracking, which can be good. But that also might mean they're looking to gather enough to make the charge stick against you. Anyway, why all of a sudden you have such a keen interest in this? When me and Janis bailed you out, you certainly didn't seem to give a damn then," he said in his evenly modulated tone. Long as Magrady had known the man, he could count on one hand when he'd heard him raise his voice. Nonetheless he was forceful and compelling when he needed to be before a jury.

"It means something to me now. Do you know if there was, what do the cops call it, at least on TV, forced entry?"

"No, that I remember. Plus Mr. Savoirfaire believed in his security. He had bars on his windows and subscribed to an alarm service. Whoever did him in had been invited in, I know from my initial round of give and take with Stover. That why he liked you for the deed, as he assumed you and the late street entrepreneur had business together."

That was somewhat different than what Stover had barked at him, but that just meant he was trying out a few theories to see which case jacket he could fit Magrady with, the motherfucker. "If you can, Gordon, please could you check your notes by today? That would be cool."

"I will. But I must warn you not to interfere with an ongoing investigation et cetera, et cetera. You know the consequences for messing around in the LAPD's sandbox."

"Understood, counselor."

"Yeah, okay," he said without much conviction.

Magrady added to put him at ease, "How the waves treating you?" Walters was in his fifties yet still continued to pursue his avocation of surfing since his days as a teen growing up in Gardena. One of a select group of the Southland's black surfers. He had plenty of stories to tell of incidents where the mantra of "locals only" being spouted at him by the stereotypical blue-eyed, blond-haired beach boys had double and triple meanings when he showed up to shred.

"Going down to Mexico for this tourney next month."

"Surfing forever, baby."

He chuckled deep in his throat. "Talk to you."

"Righteous." By the time he got back downtown, an orange glow tinged the bottom edge of the sky to the south. He and several other pedestrians gazed at this. Was it a fire or some new form of mutant smog?

"Que lastima," a heavyset women balancing a plastic basket of freshly dried clothes on her head intoned. They exchanged wan smiles and he walked on.

Passing by a corner liquor store, he heard on the radio newscast from inside that an as of yet unidentified aircraft had crashed in the Cleveland National Forest. The 130-mile swath of nature butted up against Riverside with the most of it down into the San Diego area. The exploding plane had ignited a massive fire that several fire departments from Riverside and San Bernardino counties were responding to with all urgency, as the fire was nearer to them. Magrady had a fond memory of being totally ripped one time on blow and beer. He'd been fishing for mermaids at the reservoir there with some Army buddies. 

At Urban Advocacy Bonilla eyed him with a bemused look on her face as he entered. "You look worn out. Maybe you better take a nap, grandpa."

"I'm the one the Energizer Bunny comes to when he needs a boost."

"Sure you are. Look here," she said, indicating a desk with a cassette tape machine on it. "Ain't I good to you? It was in a desk we'd put in a back room. Carl had remembered seeing it there."

He was already over at the player and inserting the cassette tape he'd swiped from Chambers' sister. "Now we're getting somewhere." He depressed the play button and bent to listen. Bonilla came over too.

First there was a female voice saying, "Test, test," then blowing into the microphone. Then a measure of silence on the tape, then a male voice said, "It's quite remarkable, actually," as wind buffeted the mic.

The woman asked, "So who was Tamock, Professor Langston?"

"Well, you see," he began, clearing his throat, "The Chumash had what we might call a sect of craftsmen. These were men who passed on their skills at making and waterproofing the canoes, the various uses of whale blubber, preserving hides and so forth to their sons and so on. But they kept their methods close to the vest, as it were."

"Meaning they didn't share their knowledge with the rest of the tribe?"

"Correct. Obviously a way to control the flow of information and to exalt their positions. Therefore their skills would always be in demand because not everyone had purchase of same. Which as we know is unusual for American Indians. More like Old World guild members," he noted. "Also the Chumash also had female chiefs."

"How advanced for them," the woman said, and you could tell she was smiling.

Magrady clicked the tape off. "Great, a history lesson."

"Quiet. Let's keep listening." Bonilla put the machine back on.

More was said about the lifestyles of the Chumash, the Indian tribe that had been located along the California coast, inland to a degree, and out into the Channel Islands. The Q&A wound back to Tamock.

"He was quite something," Professor Langston was saying, "both shaman and chief. He was said to have led a village of some five thousand people, a town really. Very unusual, for at the most their villages were no more than a thousand people and even that is something when you think about it. He seems to have openly had a wife and several concubines as well."

"The Mayor Villaraigosa of his day," Magrady cracked.

Bonilla shushed him.

There was more conversation. The woman said at one point, "So finding Tamock's mummified head is remarkable, as you pointed out."

"Indeed, as the Chumash did not practice mummification of their dead. Though we know the Aztecs did."

"Bolstering the speculation that Tamock possessed knowledge from other regions," the woman added. "And why it was he was both chief and shaman.".

Langtston made a contemplative sound. "And of course there's the reputed magical properties of Tamock's head."

Magrady and Bonilla stared open-mouthed at each other.

read Installment 10