Clandestine

We walked the four blocks in the hot summer sun, three generations of American males united by darkness and duplicity. The dog trotted behind us, stopping frequently to explore interesting scents. I walked in the middle, with Doc on my left on the street side. Michael walked to my right, closed in against my shoulder by the hedges that ran along the sides of the homes on Beverly Boulevard. He leaned into me, seeming to relish the contact.

I queried Doc on his nickname, and he laughed and said, "Med school dropout, Fred. It was too bloody, too abstract, too timeconsuming, too literal, too much."

"Where did you attend?"

"University of Illinois."

"Jesus, it sounds grim. Were there a lot of farm boys wanting to be country doctors?"

"Yes, and a lot of Chicago rich kids out to be society doctors. I didn't fit in."

"Why not?" I asked. It was a challenge.

"It was the twenties. I was an iconoclast. I realized that I'd be spending the rest of my life treating smug, small-town hicks who didn't know shit from Shinola. That I'd be prolonging the lives of people who would be better off dead. I quit in my final year."

I laughed. Michael did, too. Michael's prematurely deep voice went up a good two octaves in the process. "Tell him about the dead horse, Dad."

"That's the Colonel's favorite," Harris laughed. "Well, I used to have a racket going in those days. I knew some gangsters who ran a speakeasy. A real third-class dive where all the rich kids from school hung out. Cheap booze and cheaper food. The joint had one distinction: big juicy steaks for a quarter. Sirloin steaks smothered in onions and tomato sauce. Ha! They weren't steaks, they were fillet of horse. I was the butcher. I used to drive around the countryside with a stooge of mine and steal horses. We used to lure the nags into the back of our truck with oats and sugar, then we'd drive back to town to this warehouse and inject the nags with small quantities of morphine I'd stolen. Then I'd sever their neck arteries with a scalpel. My partner did the real dirty work, I had no stomach for it. He was the cook, too.

"Anyway, as events came to pass, business went bad. The owners tried to stiff me on my rustling dues. This was about the time I decided to give med school the big drift. I decided to go out in style. I knew the goombahs would never pay me, so I decided to give them a good fucking. One night there was a private party at the speak. My stooge and I got ourselves two broken-down old nags, put them in the truck and backed them up to the front door of the joint. We gave the password and the door opened and the nags ran right in. Jesus! What a sight! Tables destroyed, people screaming, broken bottles everywhere! I got out of town and Illinois and never went back."

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"I went on the bum," Harris said. "Have you ever been on the bum, Fred?"

"No, Doc."

"You should have. It's instructive."

It was a challenge. I took it. "I've been too busy being on the make—which is better than being on the bum, right, Michael?" I squeezed the boy around the shoulders, and he beamed at me.

"Right!"

Doc pretended to be amused, but we both knew that the gauntlet had been thrown down.

We took seats inside the Tiny Naylor Drive-In on Beverly and Western. It was air-conditioned, and Michael and Doc seemed to crash in relief from the heat as we all stretched our long legs out under the table.

Michael sat down beside me, Doc across from us. We all ordered root beer floats. When they arrived, Michael gulped his in three seconds flat, belched, and looked to his father for permission to order another. Doc nodded indulgently and the waitress brought another tall glass of brown and white goo. Michael chugged this one down in about five seconds, then belched and grinned at me like a sated lover.

"Michael, we have to talk about your mother," I said.

"Okay," Michael said.

"Tell me about your mother's friends," I said.

Michael grimaced. "She didn't have any," he said. "She was a bar floozy."

I grimaced, and Michael looked to Doc for confirmation. Doc nodded grimly.

"Who told you that, Michael?" I asked.

"Nobody. I'm no dummy, I knew that Uncle Jim and Uncle George and Uncle Bob and Uncle What's-his-face were just pickups."

"What about women friends?"

"She didn't have any."

"Ever heard of a woman named Alma Jacobsen?"

"No."

"Was your mother friendly with the parents of any of your friends?"

Michael hesitated. "I don't have any friends."

"None at all?"

Michael shrugged. "The books I read are my friends. Minna is my friend." He pointed to the puppy, tethered to a phone pole outside the plate glass window.

I kicked this sad information around in my head. Michael leaned his shoulder against me and gazed longingly at my half-finished root beer float.

"Kill it," I said.

He did, in one gulp.

I opened up another line of questioning: "Michael, you were with your dad when your mother was killed, right?"

"Right. We were playing duckball."

"What's duckball?"