Ross Thomas - Chinaman’s Chance

The top was down on the convertible, and if his thumb hadn’t throbbed so much, and if he hadn’t been brooding about the fact that he wasn’t still in the Corps and stationed at the embassy in either Paris or London or Bonn, which was where he could have been if only he’d kept his nose clean, McBride might have been able to admire or at least notice the tall green pines and the handsome eucalyptus trees that lined either side of the lane.

But preoccupied as he was with both fate and pain, McBride noticed nothing, not even the pothole. He hit it at twenty miles per hour. The resulting jolt made the front wheels start to shimmy. Without thinking, McBride grasped the steering wheel with both hands. When he did, the pain from his bandaged left thumb flared up, and the hot tears that filled his eves almost blinded him.

“Assholes!” McBride screamed. It was a broadside indictment, aimed at the world in general, but in particular at the U.S. Marine Corps; Tony Egg and Icky Norris; McBride’s landlord, who wanted to evict him; the young doctor at the free dope fiends’ clinic in Venice who had reset and taped up his thumb, but who had refused to give him anything for the pain, implying that McBride had probably broken the thumb just to get himself some free dope; and finally, the last asshole on the list, the management of Paradise Cove, whose clearly culpable negligence had created the pothole.

At one time, back in the ’20s, Paradise Cove had been a rumrunners’ haven. But now it was a trailer park that boasted a seafood restaurant, a pier where you could either launch your boat or rent one, and three-quarters of a mile of private beach that you could spend the day on if you could afford the price, which that year was $3 a car. McBride’s immediate objective was to talk his way past the guard at the gate without paying the $3.

At the end of the lane McBride braked his car and waited for the guard to come out of the small office.

“I’m going to see Mr. Durant,” McBride said.

The guard, a tall, skinny man with disappointed eyes, swallowed something, and McBride got to watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. The guard shook his head. “Durant, huh?” He shook his head again. “Durant.” The name meant nothing to him.

“He lives in that small yellow house at the end of the parking lot,” McBride said.

“Oh, yeah, he’s the guy that the Chinaman comes to see all the time.”

McBride nodded. “That’s him.”

“Du-rant,” the guard said slowly, stretching the syllables out. “Durant. I guess I better try to remember that.”

“Work on it,” McBride said. He let in his clutch and pulled away, heading toward the beach. Directly in front of him, about a hundred yards away, was the pier. To his right was the parking lot that served the restaurant, which was a white, one-story structure built for some reason along faintly colonial lines, perhaps because it sold a lot of what its menu described as New England clam chowder. To the left of the pier was another large parking lot, about the size of a narrow city block, and at the end of that was the yellow house with the green roof.

McBride drove to the end of the parking lot, pulled into a space, switched off his engine, and listened to it as it kept on running for a few moments. The engine hadn’t done that before, and McBride automatically took it as a portent of awful things to come.

He pot out of the car, remembering not to open the door with his damaged left hand, and walked up the driveway that led from the parking lot to small garage that was attached to the yellow house. Guarding the driveway were some signs that read, KEEP OUT, PRIVATE PROPERTY and NO PARKING, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AWAY. Ignoring the signs was a large green Chrysler station wagon that McBride recognized as belonging to Artie Wu. He needs it for all those kids of his, McBride thought, and tried to remember whether the Wu clan numbered four or five.

When he reached the half-glass door, McBride knocked and waited until Artie Wu opened it. Wu nodded, and McBride went in. He followed the slightly limping Wu into the living room, where they turned and inspected each other’s damage.

“I tripped over a dead pelican,” Wu said. “What happened to you?”

McBride looked down at his taped-up thumb. “I owe a couple of guys a little money. This here’s the past-due notice.”

“They break it?”

“They broke it.”

“The bastards,” Wu said, and McBride was a little surprised at how much compassion went into the comment.

“Sit down some place while I go get Durant.” Wu turned to leave, but stopped. “You want a drink?”

“Got any beer?”

“In the fridge. Help yourself.”

Wu left, and McBride went over to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out a can of Schlitz. He popped it open, took a swallow, and then moved over to the newsprinter which was still clacking away in the corner. He glanced at what was coming off the printer, found it dull, drank some more beer, and inspected the titles of several of the books that lined the wall. They looked dull too. There were The Emperor Charles V by Brandi, George Antonius’s The Arab Awakening, The Age of the Reformation by Preserved Smith, and the U.S. Government Printing Office’s Investigation of Senator Thomas J. Dodd — Part I.

McBride decided that the books were there for decorative purposes. He was almost sure that nobody would ever read them, not unless they were forced to. On the other hand, Durant might have read every one of them. McBride found Durant hard to figure and had to remind himself constantly not to “sir” him when they spoke. That’s what eight years in the Corps’ll do to you, he told himself. Make you wanta say “sir” to any asshole who’s ever cracked a book.

He turned when Wu and Durant came into the living room. Durant was still barefoot and wearing his sawed-off jeans, but he had a shirt on now, a frayed blue oxford-cloth one with a button-down collar, although the buttons were long missing. He wore it with the tails out and the sleeves rolled halfway up to his elbows. Artie Wu, also barefoot, wore white duck shorts and a guady green-and-gold shirt that was big as a tent, but still not big enough to conceal his gut.

“Artie told me about your thumb,” Durant said. “Does it still hurt?”

“Some,” McBride said.

“Want some painkiller?”

“You got any?”

Durant nodded. “I’ll give you a couple when you go. Just don’t take them before you drive and don’t mix them with booze.”

“I’ll take ’em tonight,” McBride said. “Things always hurt worse at night.”

“Sit down,” Durant said.

McBride sat down on the Eames chair, but didn’t lean back. He sat hunched forward, his arms resting on his knees, the can of beer in his right hand. He watched closely, trying to read something into the way Durant chose the couch and Wu the suede chair. Nothing to read, he decided. Just two guys sitting down, one of them fat and the other one skinny.

Artie Wu produced a long, slim cigar from a shirt pocket, cut off its end with a tiny knife, stuck it into the left side of his mouth, and lit it with a kitchen match that he struck with his right thumbnail. He looked at McBride as he blew some smoke out, and McBride noticed that he inhaled.

“No deal, Eddie,” Artie Wu said. “Sorry.”

“Shit,” McBride said.

Wu and Durant watched as McBride took a long draught of his beer. “Well, shit,” he said again.

“You were counting on it, I suppose,” Durant said.

“Yeah, I was counting on it.”

“We checked it out,” Durant said.

“If you checked it out, then you know it’s there.”

“That’s not the problem,” Wu said.

“You guys could do it,” McBride said.