Herbie's Game Read online

  Kathy had met me at the door, taken one look at me, and said, “What’s wrong?” and I’d told her, and she’d thrown her arms around me and said, “Come in, come in. You poor thing.”

  I’d underestimated her again.

  Now I was in the living room—a room I hadn’t sat in since the day I toted my suitcase to the car—and Rina was at the other end of the couch, her hands clasped, palm to palm, between her knees, a glass in front of her. To my amazement, I’d been invited to dinner. Kathy was rattling things in the kitchen, refusing offers of help so Rina could work her magic on me, and I’d already blinked away tears twice.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Rina said. In front of me, on the marble-topped coffee table, was a thick envelope made of a heavy, creamy paper so swell that trees probably competed to be pulped for it. The upper left-hand corner proclaimed in incised type that the envelope had sailed proudly into the world from the offices of Wyndham, Twistleton, & Pine, Attorneys at Law, in Century City.

  “No hurry,” I said. “Lawyers, even lawyers named Wyndham, Twistleton, ampersand Pine, never send you good news. Jesus, I wonder which of them wears the whitest shoes.”

  Rina said, “I just read a book in which a poor young girl gets a letter from a lawyer telling her she’s inherited half the world and a castle, too.”

  “The castle is a nice touch.”

  “It’s a dumb book. But it’s got a kindly lawyer in it. Sort of grandfatherly, but not like my grandfathers.” Neither Kathy’s father nor mine was likely to be shortlisted for Grandfather of the Year.

  “That’s a fictional lawyer. They’re different from real lawyers.”

  “How?” She was drinking something made with tomato juice. I averted my eyes because tomato juice has always given me the creeps. It’s just too arterial.

  “Let’s say you’ve been hurt,” I said. “A fictional lawyer, say a TV lawyer, would comfort you, maybe fold his suit jacket under your head as a pillow and murmur eloquent encouragement to keep you going until the ambulance comes. A real lawyer would represent the ambulance company when it sues you for payment.”

  “You think that might be a little sweeping? People say bad things about burglars, too.”

  I said, “And they’re right.”

  A brief pall settled over us. Rina dispelled it by asking, “How’s Ronnie?”

  I looked around my old living room, everything pretty much where I’d left it three years earlier, although the pictures had changed. I wasn’t in them. “You want the truth? I have no idea how she is.”

  “How who is?” Kathy had a Bloody Mary in her hand. More tomato juice.

  “His friend,” Rina said.

  “Miss Motel?” Kathy sat in the chair she always sat in, which I noticed had been reupholstered in what had undoubtedly been sold as natural leather, as though nature was rife with powder-blue animals. She put her Bloody Mary on the little square mahogany table that had belonged to her mother and said, “Sorry sorry. I’m sure she’s a very nice person.”

  “She is,” I said. “And the motels are one of the things I like about her. Her name is Ronnie, by the way.”

  “Short for Veronica,” Rina put in.

  “I know, dear.” Kathy said with just a tiny edge. “And what do you mean, the motels are one of the things you like about her?”

  “She doesn’t have to live in them. She’s got a perfectly nice apartment in West Hollywood, big and airy and full of books—”

  “What does she read?” Rina said. Rina wanted to know what everybody read.

  “Mostly history. A little science.”

  “So she has an apartment,” Kathy prompted.

  “Right. And she never goes there unless it’s to pick up some books or some new clothes.” I looked at their tomato juice and wondered why I wasn’t drinking anything and then remembered the vodka at Dippy’s house. “I mean it’s a really nice place, and this month she’s sleeping at Bitsy’s Bird’s Nest. A few months back, it was Valentine Shmalentine.”

  “It wasn’t,” Kathy said.

  “Afraid so. Before that, the North Pole. I don’t know why she does it.”

  “Daddy,” Rina said, “it’s because she likes you.”

  “I suppose,” I said, trying not to sound morose.

  “You know what it is?” Kathy said. “You know why she likes you?”

  I said, “Um.”

  “I can say this because I was married to you,” Kathy said, with the certainty of someone who’d been asking herself a question for a long time. “It’s because you’re decent.”

  “Me?”

  “I?” Rina corrected me, making the lifetime Grammar Gotcha score 1,139 to one in my favor.

  “That’s what it is,” Kathy said. She sometimes shook her head side to side, in the negative, when she was saying something positive, and she was doing it then. “There aren’t that many decent men around. Nice men, sure, funny men, always. You’ve got some of those things, too.”

  Rina said, “Even hot men. There are plenty of hot—”

  “Lots of them,” Kathy said, “even if so many of them are stupid. But decency, it’s something people don’t think about. The people who have it usually don’t even know it. You know if you’re smart, you definitely know if you’re handsome, but if you’re decent you never give it a moment’s thought. And you know why?”

  It wasn’t a rhetorical question, so I said, “Why?”

  “Because decent people assume everyone else is decent. They don’t see it as anything special. Just like liars always figure everyone is lying.”

  “No shit, Mom,” Rina said. “I mean, that’s totally true.”

  “You’ve got it, too,” Kathy said, “despite your language. That’s one of the ways you’re his daughter.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “But thanks.”

  “So if you don’t have any idea how—Ronnie—is doing, what do you think that means?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” I sat lower. “I’m just sour today.”

  “Well, you’ve got a reason,” Kathy said. “But don’t duck it. You’re the one who opened the box.”

  “We don’t seem to be going anywhere,” I said. “I don’t even know where she comes from.”

  Kathy lowered her drink and shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “Yeah, but you know, it’s sort of fundamental, like whether she’s right- or left-handed.” I couldn’t believe I was talking about this with Kathy, but there was no stopping now. “If she can’t even tell me where she comes from, what else can’t she tell me?”

  “Well. Apart from your conviction that she’s—I don’t know—keeping secrets from you about the past, and I can think of lots of reasons for that, how are things from day to day?”

  “It’s—nice, okay? We get along, we like each other, we can be together in small rooms without bumping into each other or carefully stepping around each other. We amuse each other.”

  “That’s important,” Rina said. “Tyrone can always make me laugh.”

  “Doesn’t sound very thrilling, though,” Kathy said.

  “You know, I’ve stopped asking for thrilling.” Kathy was looking straight at me, and I had to lower my eyes to continue. “I think thrilling is pretty exclusive to the first few months. After that, I’m happy with comfortable. And happy, I’m happy with happy.”

  “And are you happy?

  I had an overpowering urge to leave the room. Still, I’d started it. “It just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

  “You already said that,” Kathy said. “Who’s at the wheel?”

  “Sorry?”

  “She’s abandoned her nice apartment and she’s living in these dumps with you. Sounds to me like she’s given you the wheel. Maybe she’s waiting to see where you want things to go. When we were married—”

  Rina said, “Mom.”

  “He knows what I’m talking about, sweetie. Don’t you?”

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about. But
when we were married, it wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t take the wheel. It was that I wouldn’t steer it where you wanted me to.”

  “Where you should have wanted to go, too.” She blew out and waved her hand side to side, like someone dispelling smoke. “I didn’t say that. Getting back to you and Ronnie, which is probably safer than you and me, maybe what you’re seeing is an enormous amount of patience, someone who has faith that you’re not going to be content to float aimlessly through space with her, like a couple of marooned astronauts. Maybe she preserves the quaint idea that a woman should give the man a chance to define how the relationship is going to be, even if it’s only because it gives her a clearer negotiating position.”

  Rina said, “I am so going to write that down.”

  “Ease up, Rina. And maybe, Junior, she’s the same species as you are, and I don’t intend that to sound mean. You and I, we were different sides of a coin, do you know what I mean? If one of us was up, the other one had to be down. But maybe you and her—”

  “She,” Rina said. Then she said, “Sorry.”

  “You and she,” Kathy said. “Maybe you and she are more natural partners than you and—you and I were.”

  I said, “I’ve always loved you.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rina look down at her lap.

  “I know that. But it’s not enough, not when we’d be on opposite sides of any fight in history. I mean, if you were a cowboy, I would have been a sheep-herder.” She laughed and touched her index fingers to her eyes. “Maybe you and she are more like each other. Maybe even each of you is a little better than the other, in, in different ways, so you can—I don’t know—improve each other.”

  “That’s my mom,” Rina said.

  “And he’s your dad, and he’s half the reason you’re who you are, and don’t you forget it.” She knocked back a good whack of her drink and sniffled and said, “So take the lead, for Christ’s sake. Push her a little. What’s the worst that can happen, that she’ll leave you? If things don’t get better, you’ll leave her.”

  “When a man needs help with a girlfriend,” I said, “he doesn’t usually think about going to his ex-wife.”

  “If you’d done it yesterday, when you weren’t in such a sorry state, I probably would have cut your head off. Speaking of knives, let’s eat dinner.”

  To: Mr. Junior M. Bender

  If “Junior M.” strikes you as odd, the “M” stood for Merle, my father’s name. He’d wanted to name me after himself, but by the time I was born he’d had thirty-two years of telling people that, no, Merle wasn’t always a woman’s name, and would you like to talk about it outside, so he named me Junior and squeezed Merle into the middle, where it could peek safely from around an initial, and then he abandoned my mother for another woman and left me, middle name and all, with my mother.

  From: A. Vincent Twistleton, Wyndham, Twistleton, & Pine

  Re: Herbert Arthur Elgar Mott, Deceased

  Dear Mr. Bender

  Unfortunately, it falls to me to inform you of the death of Herbert Arthur Elgar Mott, who has been a client of this firm (and, I may add, something of a personal friend) for many years.

  I write to you in accord with two instructions given to me by Mr. Mott several years ago. The first of these is to inform you that you are a legatee in Mr. Mott’s will and to invite you to the reading of that document, which will take place this coming Saturday, September 22, at four P.M. in my office, the address of which will be found on this letterhead. I add a formal request that you either attend the reading in person or arrange to meet me face-to-face in the near future, as your bequest comprises a substantial portion of Mr. Mott’s estate, and I would be reassured to confirm that this letter has found its way into the correct hands.

  It causes me some pain to explain to you why I must carry out the second of Mr. Mott’s requests. At the time he last revised his will, he gave me the enclosed envelope and instructed me to put it into your hands with all haste in the event that he should not pass away from normal causes. So it’s necessary for me to tell you that I learned less than an hour ago that Mr. Mott died either directly or indirectly at the hands of others.

  On a closing note, please let me say that lawyers meet a great many people from all walks of life, and I have been a lawyer for a long, long time, but I never met anyone like Herbie Mott, and he led me to believe that you felt much the same way I do. You, like me, were fortunate to have him in your life.

  I look forward to meeting you and I am deeply sorry to be the one to give you this news.

  Best personal regards,

  A. Vincent Twistleton

  He’d signed it, “Vincent,” and beneath his signature, he’d written “Courage!”

  “I take it all back,” I said to Rina. “There are some good lawyers.”

  “Some good burglars, too,” she said.

  “He sounds like an okay guy,” I said. “Herbie wouldn’t have a jerk lawyer. Boy, Herbert Arthur Elgar Mott. No wonder he changed his name all the time.”

  “Do you want me to leave? While you read his letter?”

  “No. In fact, I’d rather you stay right where you are.”

  “Here I am,” she said.

  The envelope had two of those stiff cardboard button-things on it, one on the flap and one on the body, and a length of string that you wound in figure eights around the two buttons to fasten it. Very nineteenth-century. As I tugged at the string, I saw that my fingers were trembling. I said aloud, “Breathe deeply,” and unwound it the rest of the way.

  The letter was printed in a sans-serif font on heavy paper, probably two sheets of the bond paper Twistelton printed his letterhead on. It had been folded twice and was written only on one side, although it was single-spaced. For some reason it was in italics, which gave me a vague image of Herbie writing it fast, before someone else came into the room.

  Hey, Junior:

  If your reading this, somebody got me. I hope the news got broke to you gently, although your a pretty tough kid.

  Sometimes I’m sorry that I helped you get into this business. You could have had a good life on the straight. But, you know, guys like us have to come from somewhere. When I took you down to Du-par’s that night I was going to give you a lecture and get rid of you. Sort of catch-and-release, like fishing. But you were already smarter than I was, and the only way for any game to get better is if it attracts smarter players. You probably know what I mean. So if your life hasn’t worked out the way you thought it would, I’m sorry. Maybe it would have been better if you hadn’t met me.

  Also I want to say that you’ve got the greatest eye I ever saw in fifty years. You can look at ten pieces of jewelry when one is worth more than all the others put together and you’ll pick that one every time. Not bringing you in would have been a waste of talent.

  But I’m sorry about your wife and kid not wanting any of it. Boy, do I know how that can hurt.

  Look, there are two things I need to say. First is, if it isn’t obvious why I got killed, I mean, if I didn’t get killed for something I did just before it went down, there’s a guy who would kill me seven days a week if he could ever find me, and if your reading this, maybe he did. He’s the main reason I disappeared like I did. His name is Ruben Ghorbani. He’s a knee-breaker who worked for a while for Trey Annunziato’s dad, the one she killed. I think Wattles may have used him some, too, and old Burt the Gut used him for collections back when Burt was making loans. So Ghorbani went after a friend of mine who owed Trey’s dad a bundle and my friend was flush so he paid it all in cash and Ruben stomped him really bad and pocketed the cash and told my friend he’d be back to get it again. He broke both of my friend’s arms at the elbow and told Trey he’d taught my friend a lesson and that she’d get her money real soon. So I got Harmon Huss, I think you met Harmon, he used to wrestle pro, and we grabbed Ruben and took him up to the Angeles Forest, and Harmon held him down while I took a ball-peen hammer to his nuts, one for each of my friend’s arms he broke. I gue
ss it hurt pretty bad because he threatened to kill me once he could walk again, and a couple of people have told me that he looks for me every now and then, so he might have found me.

  So Ghorbani is half Persian and half Mexican. He’s got dark skin and black hair, a lot of it on his arms, and a square face with a flat nose that looks like a cricket’s and green eyes. About your height but twice as wide because he’s bulked up. And he chews steroids for the muscle, so he gets angry kind of fast. Please don’t take this as an order or even a suggestion, but if it turns out Ruben is the one who did me, and you can either put a bullet through him or get someone else to, well, it would make an old man happy wherever he is.

  But I mean this, only if you can do it easy and get away with it. Otherwise, walk away. It’s not like it’s going to bring me back above the ground.

  Second, and this isn’t an order either, but second, I’ve got a son. His name is Edward Mott but he goes by Eddie. He lives straight. My ex-wife just hated me and she made sure that Eddie did, too. I’ve tried to talk to him a hundred times, but he won’t say a word to me. I just want someone to tell him his father wasn’t a total asshole. Mostly an asshole, maybe, but not total.

  I don’t know what Eddie does now but he lives in the Valley, I’m pretty sure, and last I knew he was selling Hondas in Van Nuys. You’ll probably meet him at that thing where they read the will because your both in it. I left you the John Sloane picture, which you obviously shouldn’t let the LA Times take a picture of.

  So that’s it, Junior. Kill Ruben for me, if he’s the one who did me, and you got some free time, and try to make my kid think a little better about me. If you can only do one of those things, try to find Eddie. Somebody will get Ruben sooner or later anyway.

  If I fucked up your life, I’m really sorry. But I’m proud of you.

  Herbie.

  “Can I read it?” Rina asked.

  “I’m not sure that would be—what’s the word?—appropriate. No, I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t be appropriate.”