Justice Served, fiction by Vinnie Hansen
Ray Ray’s feet swept onto South Mission Beach without the rest of him.
“He had huge feet,” his sister Samantha said. She perched on the metal chair in front of my desk, her hands stretched apart. “All the rubber in the soles of his shoes made his feet buoyant.” She scooped up blond hair and draped it over her shoulder to hide a teal strap that didn’t look like it could support a fishing lure.
“Police tell ya that?”
She toyed with my desk plaque: Serving Justice Since 1966.
“Maybe a great white got the rest of him,” I said.
“Ray Ray wasn’t a surfer.” Samantha inspected her split ends. “He was a peanut vendor at SeaWorld.”
“There you go. Didn’t the original Shamu nearly bite off a trainer’s leg?” To my way of thinking, a satisfying story. People who caged up animals deserved what they got. I reached for my Marlboros parked by a glass ashtray.
“Shamu’s an orca; great whites are sharks.”
“Right,” I said, squinting, “but orcas are killer whales, right?”
A stone fox like Samantha showed up on lower Broadway for only one reason. Adult entertainment. No doubt how she knew about my establishment gripped in a chokehold between liquor store and strip club. “So you want me to look into what happened to your brother?”
“Bingo.”
Sassy, I liked that, but she looked barely legal. Even if she was an “exotic” dancer, did she have the bread to pay? “What about your folks? The police?” I tapped a smoke from the package.
“My folks?” She snorted. “They can’t function. Ray Ray was their baby.” She whipped hair back over her shoulder with such force one breast nearly dislodged from her sundress. Without a blink, she wiggled it into place. “It’s been three days and the cops are clueless.”
I slid a contract across the desk. If clients wanted to part with their money, that was their business. Keeping Don’s Discreet Detection afloat was mine.
As she popped turquoise peepers at my fee, I said, “SeaWorld’s a big place. Where did Ray Ray hawk peanuts?”
“Around the lagoon with the volcano in it.”
“Where the divers shoot out?”
She dipped into a little macrame bag and pushed two C-notes across the desk. “Where they ski around on top of two dolphins.”
“How about in the bleachers around Shamu?”
“There too.”
So, I thought, the whole 200 acres of schmaltz. I parked the unlit cigarette in the corner of my mouth and picked up the bills. “You must’ve liked your kid brother.”
“He was a dork.” She handed me a photo.
Ray Ray. Three-quarters portrait shot, the kind taken for a yearbook. Shaggy hair. Rebelling against his parents? If he liked groomed hair, seems like he would have gotten a cut for his school picture. Self-conscious, smirky smile. Granted the opportunity to escape adolescence, he might have become good-looking in a Ryan O’Neal sort of way.
I lit my cancer stick and shook out the match. “Why you forking out dough for a dork?”
“It’s not mine.”
Hoo boy. I tipped back in my chair. First rule of detecting—make sure the client is legit. Up in a corner, cobwebs clumped.
“It’s Ray Ray’s.”
I blew a smoke ring. “So he wasn’t working for peanuts.”
Samantha’s lips were fuller than her brother’s but she had the same lifted-lip smile. “He stashed the bills in his bowling ball bag along with his Playboy. Thought he was sneaky.”
“And you figure this is good use of Ray Ray’s money.”
“His ill-gotten gains?” Her eyes pinned me like thumbtacks. “Since I suspect the money relates to his death, yeah. I’m giving it to you,” she pointed at my chest, “to figure out how his feet got separated from his body. Maybe locate the rest of him.”
I took a stab at the source of Ray Ray’s cash. “Any drugs in the bowling ball bag?”
“Nothing else.”
She shifted in the chair. Played with the thin strap of her dress. Lying.
I tapped the desk. “What else?”
“Just this.” From her macrame whatnot, she plucked a sheet of blotter paper, the colorful image of Alice in Wonderland jagged around the edges from torn off tabs.
“LSD.” I stubbed out my Marlboro. “Mind if I take that?”
“What for?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Might be useful in getting witnesses to cooperate.”
“Oh, geez.” For the first time, she sounded as young as she looked. “But I’m not giving you the whole thing.” She carefully pinched off three tabs. “Bad enough Ray Ray’s dead without mom and dad learning about this shit.” A world-weary shrug from a dewy fresh shoulder. “Then again, maybe it’s time they found out he wasn’t so perfect.”
#
As soon as Samantha sashayed onto the sidewalk, the wind whipping her sundress against the main attractions, I landed a hit of lysergic acid diethylamide on my tongue. I sighed with new-found respect for Ray Ray. High was the only way to spend time at SeaWorld.
Samantha had filled out a second form, the same one I used for missing persons, listing Ray Ray’s particulars, known associates, and hangouts, but since Ray Ray apparently dealt drugs at SeaWorld, and his feet were found in the water, I’d start there.
Outside my office, the Santa Anas blistered the world with grit and stirred sheets of yellowed San Diego Union in the gutter. I slung my World War II canteen around my shoulder and kickstarted my Harley. With twenty minutes before I started to trip, I roared off to the park.
Everything was decked out in patriotic red, white and blue, from the flag flapping from the sky tower to the dress of the performers, the effect exacerbated by the Bicentennial. The Fourth of July had come and gone but a poster at reception still screamed that you could see Shamu in her star-spangled Yankee Doodle Whale show where she’d sign the Declaration of Independence and crack the Liberty Bell. I wanted to vomit but maybe that was the LSD kicking in. The thatched roofs of cabanas brightened into distinct, elongated bits of straw. Swaying palms brushed the sky with colors.
Shamu was closer to the entrance than the Dolphin Lagoon. A trainer dressed in an outfit resembling riding breeches was bending over sticking his head in Shamu’s open mouth. The audience in the bleachers collectively held its breath. I rooted for the sleek black and white orca to slam shut her jaw. The indignity of this magnificent creature performing for a few mackerels.
But hey, wasn’t that what schmucks like me did day in and day out?
A vendor, way too old for his job, shuffled along the side of the bleachers to hawk cotton candy. I blocked his path.
“Whatchawant?” He looked up at me. I was a solid six feet in black leather vest. Sweat dripped from my face.
“Know this kid?” I dangled the photo in front of his face which had gained an elastic, fun-house-mirror quality.
“What’szamatter wid you?” he said. “Hold it still.”
In no condition to figure out where the vendor’s eyes were, I plastered the photo against my chest and let his focus come to the image.
He leaned forward. “Sure, I know him. Ray Ray. Used to work here.”
“Selling peanuts?”
“’Mong other things.”
“Like drugs?” I asked.
The vendor lowered his voice and his eyes conducted a side-to-side surveillance. “Lookin’ to score?”
“Sure.”
The old guy beckoned me under the bleachers where I viewed a row of Nike sneakers and big-heeled sandals dancing like a chorus line.
Gnarly fingers snapped me back to attention. “Weed, ’ludes, speed, poppers,” he whispered.
“Were you and Ray Ray in business together?”
“You take me for an idiot?” He pulled out a false bottom on his vendor box.
“So you were competitors?”
“Shit or get offa the pot,” the old man said. “I have cotton candy to sell.”
“Seems like you didn’t care for Ray Ray.”
“Little dipshit had no respect for animals.”
“Does anyone here?”
He scowled at me. “Whatchamean?”
There was not enough time in the world to explain. I passed over a baggie for a doobie, paid, and stuck it in my vest pocket. “Who should I talk to about Ray Ray?”
The vendor pursed his lips and turned away. I’d made a tactical error. He’d finished his transaction and now had no incentive to talk to me. “Wait. I need another. For a friend.”
He swung back around already pulling out the secret drawer.
“First a name.”
“Gina,” he offered. “Rides the dolphins. Your boy had a hard-on for her.”
I paid, stashed the Mary Jane, and headed toward the Dolphin Lagoon on the red brick walkway, following a group of squares in button-down shirts and white socks. They bounced like they were on pogo sticks.
It was intermission at the Dolphin Lagoon. I sidled up to the first person who looked like an employee, a surfer type in short red swim trunks. “Gina?” I inquired.
He pointed his chin to a woman about twenty-five and way out of Ray Ray’s league. She dangled long gams into crystal blue water. Her hair spilled in masses of curls down her back, Farrah Fawcett style. Gina even wore a red one-piece bathing suit. No wonder Ray Ray had a hard-on for her. Every teenage boy in America spanked the monkey to the new Fawcett poster.
I squatted beside Gina. “Heard you ride dolphins.”
She twisted toward me. “Who are you?”
“Let’s just say a friend of Ray Ray’s.”
“Ohhh,” she said sarcastically. “Like that makes it okay for a greasy old biker to talk to me.” She glared at the surfer-type employee in annoyance, like how had he allowed me to get within six feet of her, like in one minute she’d wave him over to escort me to the exit. Then she squinted at me, seeming to realize that wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
“You know Ray Ray’s dead?”
Her gaze darted away. Not surprised. Guilty?
I told her about his feet washing up on South Mission Beach, embellishing Samantha’s tale with bits of gore.
She angled away from me and splashed her feet in the water. “Talk to Shamu’s trainer. Not me.”
“The guy in the breeches?”
“Huh?”
“Guy dressed like a circus ringmaster?”
“Him.”
“Name?”
“Charles.”
I threaded my way back to the Shamu show where the crowd was emitting oohs and aahs and laughs as the orca held her head out of the water, mouth obligingly open as the trainer brushed her teeth.
Beside my ear, at the end of the bleachers, a small lady said to her friend, “Did you know Shamu’s latest baby died?”
Smoke rose from her gray hair. I was tripping good now and looked away, not wanting her to combust before my eyes.
“Oh, that’s so sad,” said the friend, “but I thought all her babies were stillborn.”
My hatred of zoos and cages and animals-as-entertainment roiled inside me. The babies knew this wasn’t the world for them.
“No,” the little woman said. “This one lived a couple months.”
For a second, I thought she’d crawled through my ear canal into my brain.
“How did it die?” the friend asked.
“They don’t know.”
I whirled. The two ladies jumped a bit in their seats. “When did this happen?” The tears in my eyes didn’t alleviate their fear of a burly man suddenly talking to them.
The small woman next to my head warbled, “Four days ago.”
Hmmmm. Four days ago, Shamu lost a rare living baby. The next day, the feet of a “little dipshit” who “had no respect for animals” washed up on South Mission Beach.
Beware of false cause and effect, I told myself. Just because one thing follows another doesn’t mean they are related.
The trainer, Charles, finished brushing Shamu’s teeth. He reached into a bucket and rewarded Shamu with what might have been a squid. The sleek orca arced into the water. The audience clapped. Charles bowed.
I stayed transfixed. The contents of the bucket writhed, crawled over the rim, and slithered across the concrete in my direction.
“Excuse me.” The gray-haired lady spoke forcefully into my ear.
I offered my hand to help her from the bleacher seat but her friend was sliding in the opposite direction. She decided to follow suit. Fine with me as fingers squiggling from the bucket beckoned me forward. Tiptoeing through wriggling entrails, I peered into the pail. There wasn’t actually a hand in it.
The bleachers emptied. Charles cleared his throat. “The audience is not allowed in this area.” He had a British accent that sounded fake.
I remained where I was, staring down into the bucket. The contents weren’t actually squirming, but they weren’t actually squid, either.
“Well done,” I said.
“I’m glad you liked the performance.”
“I mean that.” I nodded to the bucket.
“Those bits and bobs of seal for Shamu?” He turned his back and sauntered toward the equipment cabana.
“Look like human guts to me.”
“And you look high to me.” He wheeled around wielding a liberty bell over his head. Surely not the one Shamu was supposed to crack. This appeared to be hard plastic decor Charles meant to crack over my skull.
I slipped the canteen off my shoulder and cinched the strap tight in my fist. Charles lunged. I moved into his attack, throwing an open palm into his line of vision and swinging the full canteen hard up under his chin. Effective as any sap.
When Charles’ head snapped back, I brought the makeshift blackjack down, smashing into his clavicle. My movements fluid as an out-of-body experience.
The liberty bell tumbled to the concrete. I finished with a backhand slap of the canteen behind Charles’ knees. He folded to the concrete.
Eyes raised, Charles clasped his hands before his chest like a child ready for bedside prayer. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Let’s say that’s true.”
“It is true.”
“Why’s he dead?”
“He gave Shamu’s baby LSD.” Tears leaked down the trainer’s face.
A lump blocked my throat. “And the baby died.”
He bobbed his head.
Beware of false cause and effect I told myself. None of Shamu’s babies had survived so maybe the LSD hadn’t killed it.
Didn’t matter to me. Ray Ray had fed drugs to an orca calf. I no longer cared who’d hacked him up or why they’d let his feet wash away.
#
The next afternoon, after I’d come down from my acid trip, I pushed the two hundred smackeroos across my desk to Samantha. “Can’t do it,” I said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”
“Because?”
“See that plaque?”
“Serving Justice Since 1966?” she said.
“Yup.” I thought of the smirking Ray Ray slipping drugs to the baby orca. Of Shamu, the magnificent creature leaping to entertain people even after she’d lost her calf. The trainer plucking glistening treats from the bucket. Feeding them to Shamu.
“Justice has been served,” I said.
Entertaining read as usual, Vinnie. Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDelete