Purgatory Gardens Read online

  So as far as Sammy Dee was concerned, he had bigger problems in his life than mold in the laundry room. He was about to express this opinion when Marcy Gray declared that she was joining the Mold Busters faction, along with the African. Sammy found his hand shooting up when Ethel Esmitz asked for a show of hands to support the dues assessment to deal with the mold.

  There went a couple of hundred dollars he’d never see again. He’d try to think of it as a bad bet on a horse, and forget about it.

  But Marcy Gray he couldn’t forget about. She had gotten his dormant juices flowing. Even before he was relocated, when he was living alone in the house in Roslyn and had the money and the inclination, he hadn’t bothered much with women. The business of taking them out to dinner, telling them their hair looked good or that they had a nice smile, just to get laid, didn’t seem to be worth it.

  He had just turned sixty when he and Joyce split up. It got easier to do without as he got older. By sixty-five, his testosterone was down a quart and his blood vessels were constricting. Performance had become an issue.

  “Relax, Sal, it’s normal,” his doctor told him. “If God wanted guys your age to be having kids, he would have done something about the vascular system in the penis. You’re lucky we got things to treat it now. Our fathers and grandfathers were shit out of luck.”

  He gave Sal a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. He hated the term: it sounded like an abstract problem, like mold. Sal didn’t like the flushed feeling and the sense that he was artificially dilating his blood vessels, and he used it grudgingly, hoping that someday, miraculously, it would all start working again without it.

  There had been the occasional $500 hooker in Vegas, or the tipsy divorcée he’d pick up late at night at a bar out on Sunrise Highway. He could spot them as soon as he walked in, perched precariously on a bar stool, too much eye makeup, wearing a skirt a size too small, and smoking lipstick-stained cigarettes. All he had to do was buy them a drink and avoid taking them to his place, so he could leave afterward when they were out cold snoring.

  And since he had been living the life of Sammy Dee, retired cement contractor, in Palm Springs, it had been cold turkey. Abstinence had proved to be a lot easier than he would have thought. In spite of the availability of well-heeled widows, he found it easier to spend his evenings watching ball games or old movies than dropping a pill and going at it with some predatory middle-aged woman with a tummy tuck.

  And then, lo and behold, just when he had decided to pack it in, the unexpected occurred. The first time was in the exercise room, as he was pedaling his stationary bike and watching Marcy Gray’s Spandex-encased rear bounce up and down on the treadmill. He wrote that one off as a freak short circuit. But then at the Olive Garden, when she bent over the table and he saw the swell of what looked to him like reasonably firm breasts and got a whiff of perfume, the blood vessels started dilating again, without the benefit of pharmaceuticals. His first unassisted hard-on in years.

  He was eager to go for a test drive and had been counting on the night of the mold meeting to get behind the wheel, when the fucking African entered the picture. It was clear that he now had a rival for Marcy Gray’s attention. Someone who was six inches taller than him and spoke French.

  In his Salvatore Didziocomo days, he would have just had a couple of gorillas pay the guy a visit and make sure he knew that she was off-limits. Sammy Dee didn’t have any goons he could call to pay the African a visit. He didn’t even own a gun. It was against WITSEC rules. His new name was on a national no-sell database. If he got so much as a parking ticket, they could revoke his protected status and leave him out there exposed for Finoccio’s people.

  Sammy was thinking, more or less idly, about who he could safely contact for a referral to someone in LA—not taking the thought seriously or, at least, indulging in the notion that he wasn’t taking the thought seriously, when his eye landed on a man leaning against the wall across the room.

  The guy was wearing a cardigan and Hush Puppies and looked like he had better things to do. He was a former movie producer named Charlie Berns, who had actually won an Academy Award. Sammy found himself wondering why a guy who had won an Oscar would be living in a dump like this, but then what was a made man who’d had a split-level on the north shore of Long Island, a Cadillac Sierra, and ten grand worth of suits in his closet doing there?

  In the spongy recesses of his memory, Sammy dredged up the title of a film that Charlie Berns had produced, something called The Hit, or The Hit Man, or The Big Hit. He had seen it on television late one night. It was about a mob contract man who falls in love with one of his targets.

  He’d drop by for a cup of coffee. Find out if he had done any research to make the film. You never knew. What else did he have to do with his time?

  “I’m sorry about this, Sammy. But my hands are tied.”

  “Your hands are always fucking tied.”

  “It’s ten percent across the board. Everyone in the program.”

  They were sitting, Ernest Dylan and he, in a non-descript Mexican restaurant in a shopping mall in Cathedral City. The marshal was dipping nachos into the guacamole and dabbing at his trim mustache with a napkin.

  “What about you? They cutting you ten percent?” Sammy glared.

  “Different budget.”

  Now he was going to have to stretch things on fifty-four grand. The krugerrands had gone for his car and the $397,000 he paid for the condo. The government money was supposed to be subsistence. Food, gas, and lodging. Try living on five fucking grand a month. Taxable, no less.

  “They just raised my monthly charges. We have a mold problem in the laundry room.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Do you really give a shit, Dylan?”

  The marshal looked up from his refried beans, a hurt look in his eyes.

  “Actually, I do, Sammy. I want you to be a happy camper.”

  “Or what? I break cover and get whacked by Finoccio’s people?”

  “We don’t like to lose people.”

  “Not on your watch, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sets a bad example. You’ll have trouble recruiting more of us to spill our guts.”

  “You are free to drop out at any time. You know that.”

  “Oh yeah, I know that. You never fail to remind me.”

  “Look, Sammy, I understand. There’s a lot of stress involved in living a new life. If you want, you can see a psychotherapist. We have several that work with us.”

  Sammy imagined himself on the couch. I’m living in purgatory with a mold problem, doc. I can’t get it up without pharmaceuticals, and I’m thinking of having a guy whacked because he’s coming on to a woman I want to fuck. Apart from that, it’s all good.

  He looked at the marshal in his Banlon T-shirt and wash ’n’ wear slacks, thinking of James Arness in Gunsmoke with the big hat, and Dennis Weaver saying, “Yes, Mister Dillon . . .” as he shuffled out of the marshal’s office.

  “Get out of Dodge,” Sammy muttered, laughing.

  Ernest Dylan wasn’t even born when the show went off the air.

  “Listen, Marshal, you don’t happen to know where I can hire a good hit man around here, do you?”

  The guy didn’t crack a smile.

  “What about Craigslist?”

  “I think we’re done here.”

  “The least you can do is pick up the fucking check,” Sammy said to Ernest Dylan’s retreating back. He watched him grab a toothpick, walk outside, get into his car, and drive away, dissolving into the 102-degree heat.

  That night, sitting in his unit listlessly watching a ball game, Sammy did something he wasn’t supposed to do. He dialed his daughter’s number in Philadelphia. Even though the government had given him an untraceable cell phone, it was against the WITSEC rules to use it except in the event of one of a small and carefully enumerated list of emergencies. Missing your daughter was not on the list.

  “Dad?�
�� She made his voice on the first bounce. Nearly two years in California hadn’t bleached out the Long Island accent.

  He looked at his watch, and realized it was after eleven on the East Coast. Howard had them all in bed by ten.

  “Sorry. I forgot about the time change.” They hadn’t spoken since he’d called to tell her that he was going into witness protection and would be unable to visit or talk to her for the foreseeable future.

  “You okay?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  There was a long silence. Neither knew what to say next. Finally, Sammy flipped into autopilot. “How’re the kids?”

  “Good.”

  “They . . . ask about me?”

  “Sure.”

  He could hear the lie in her voice but was grateful for it.

  “I . . . met a woman.”

  He didn’t know why he said that. Maybe it was just something to say.

  “Great. What’s her name?”

  “Marcy.”

  “Nice name.”

  “Yeah. She’s nice.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad you’re with someone.”

  “We’re not actually together yet,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of dates.”

  Then he heard Howard’s voice in the background, undoubtedly asking her who she was talking to, or maybe knowing it was him and telling her to hang up, and she asked if she could call him back.

  “It’s okay. I know it’s late. I’ll call you some other time,” he said, and hung up quickly before she could protest.

  As he lay on the couch, listening to the air conditioner wheeze, he wondered whether he’d hung up because he didn’t want to cause problems between her and Howard, or because he’d had nothing more to say.

  The thought upset him enough that he took an Ambien with his nightcap of nine-dollar cabernet. And, as he did more and more frequently of late, he fell asleep on the couch with the television on.

  “Sammy, good morning.” Her voice penetrated the sleeping pill fuzz. He could barely hear it over Katie Couric.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” Sammy lied. “Been up for hours.”

  “You said you wanted to have French lessons with Didier and me . . .”

  Oh fuck.

  “So I thought we could start today. We can have lunch. My place. Twelve-thirty?”

  “Uh . . . sure.”

  “Terrific. Anything you don’t eat?”

  “Escargots,” he said, and she laughed. If he could make her laugh and she could make him hard, they would have a good thing going. All he had to do was get the African out of the picture.

  He showered for twenty minutes to wipe out the cobwebs, made himself some espresso (the last Italian thing he permitted himself), and took care in selecting an outfit, settling on a pair of cotton slacks and a Mexican peasant shirt that effectively camouflaged his expanding gut. He shaved, gargled with Listerine, slobbered his armpits with deodorant, and showed up a respectable seven minutes late to find his rival sitting on a kitchen stool with Klaus, Marcy’s brown and black dachshund, in his lap.

  The African was wearing a colorful native top over Bermudas with a pair of flip-flops. One of his wrists featured a Rolex, the other a gold bracelet. He reeked of Old Spice.

  The French lesson, it turned out, amounted to learning the French word for everything they ate: a crevette salad with endive and concombre.

  Marcy’s place was modestly furnished. There were framed glossy photos showing her in her younger days with Hollywood people—her arm in “Sly’s” and “Jimmy’s,” poured into a strapless gown, circa 1975, smiling at the camera.

  With lunch she served a bottle of vin blanc. The African drank most of it, but it didn’t seem to affect him. He maintained a serious demeanor except when he laughed, and then it was in a giggly, adolescent manner, and mostly at his own jokes.

  He revealed nothing at all about himself, dodging Sammy’s leading questions and keeping his attention fixed on the hostess, who seemed susceptible to his flattery.

  It was clear that they were auditioning for the same job. It was like the finals of fucking American Idol. The prize was visible through the open bedroom door, where a Californian king bed was topped by a collection of fluffy pillows. One of them was going to have the pleasure of tossing those pillows to the floor.

  Klaus glared when Sammy looked through the bedroom door. Don’t even think about it, you fuckin’ wop. The dog, she told him, was a trained attack dog that she had gotten from a former German intelligence agent who had a security business in Rancho Cucamonga. There were certain commands that only she knew which, when uttered, would instantly turn the dachshund into a killer. The dog was trained to go for the gonads or the jugular—two distinct commands. To avoid her inadvertently using one of the attack commands, the words were in German.

  “I had him in the car once at the Volkswagen dealer, and one of the mechanics said something in German, and Klaus almost went through the windshield. So don’t speak German in front of him. Just in case.”

  “No danger of that,” Sammy said.

  “So, Monsieur Dee, you are in the cement business?” Didier said, in a tone that implied that Sammy spent his life digging ditches.

  “Retired,” he responded, meeting the African’s eyes.

  “And what do you do now?”

  “What I feel like.”

  “Of course.” This with a Maurice Chevalier toss of his head.

  “And you?”

  “I am in the import/export business.”

  “Didier deals in African art,” Marcy said.

  “Benin bronzes, and the like,” the African elaborated.

  Sammy had no fucking clue what a Benin bronze was, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were AK47s in the crates with the bronzes. The guy looked like Idi Amin’s kid brother.

  “You would perhaps be interested, Monsieur Dee, in some Nigerian statuary? They are reputed to restore virility.”

  “No problem in that area . . .” Sammy lied with a big smile on his face.

  The conversation lurched forward with this kind of limp repartee, each of the two suitors waiting for the other one to leave first. Finally, Marcy said that it was time for her and Klaus to take their afternoon nap and kicked them both out.

  Back in his unit, Sammy lay down on the couch and turned on a ball game. Tomorrow, he resolved, he would pay the movie producer a visit. See if the guy could put him onto someone to do the African. The sooner, the better.

  Charlie Berns’s unit had no air conditioning.

  “Can’t stand it,” he explained, as he led Sammy to an armchair near an open window. An overhead fan made little headway against the heat. He brought a pitcher of iced tea from an asthmatic refrigerator and poured a couple of glasses.

  The producer was wearing a faded T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. He didn’t seem to be sweating. Sammy was already dripping from his armpits.

  “You from New York?” Sammy asked, picking up on the East Coast accent.

  “New Jersey. But I’ve been out here since the seventies.”

  “Movie business, right?”

  “If you can call it that. It’s actually a crap shoot.”

  Sammy smiled. He might get to like this guy. Most of the people at Paradise Gardens had had their sense of humor bleached out by the sun. Charlie Berns looked like life still amused him.

  “You made a picture called The Big Hit or The Hit, or something like that?”

  The man thought for a moment, as if trying to remember the names of his children.

  “I made a lot of pictures, most of them not very memorable.”

  “This movie, The Big Hit or whatever it was called, was about a hit man who falls in love with his target.”

  Charlie Berns’s eyes screwed up, trying to focus, and then came out with, “Right. The guy decides not to kill her, and then they go after him, and the two of them run away, and then something else happens. The movie crashed and burned right out of the gate.
Never made back its costs.”

  “I saw it on TV the other night.”

  “Shit. I probably owe somebody a residual. Goddamn Writers Guild is going to be on my ass.”

  “Did you have to do research on how contract guys work? You know, like to get the story right?”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . The writer and I talked to an actual hit guy.”

  “How’d you pull that off?”

  “If I remember correctly, it wasn’t easy. It was like applying for a bank loan.”

  “Huh?”

  “These guys had a routine, you know, to protect themselves. You called this number and there was a recorded message, asking you to leave a mailing address. A week later they sent you an application form. I’m telling you, it was like qualifying for a mortgage. You had to provide a social security number and bank references, and tell them the dimensions of your patio. These guys were very thorough. They had two covers apparently—patio decks and vermin. I didn’t use that for the movie, though. Who would believe it?”

  “Did you actually meet them?”

  “We chickened out. I mean, we would have had to come up with a target, and though we both had a number of people on our shit lists, I wasn’t sure I wanted them snuffed. So we decided to tell them the truth, that we were doing research for a movie. They told us to try the Internet.”

  “Do you know what they charged?”

  “No idea. We made up a figure for the movie. Twenty-five grand. It sounded right.”

  “Well, at least you know where to go if you ever need someone rubbed out.”

  Charlie Berns uttered a short, dry chuckle, more a cough than a laugh.

  “You know, I’m thinking about writing a book.”

  “Oh yeah, what kind of book?”

  “A novel, maybe.”

  “About the cement business?”

  “Who would buy that? No, some kind of crime thriller. I read a lot of them, and I’m figuring how hard could it be? Maybe I can come up with something good, and they’ll make a movie out of it and I’ll get rich.”

  “Why not?”