Don Winslow: While Drowning in the Desert

Nate just stood there and stared at the Jeep.

“What?” I asked.

“An army truck?” he said.

“A Jeep.”

“You want me to ride all the way to Palm Springs in an army truck?”

“Actually, I wanted you to fly all the way to Palm Springs in a civilian aircraft,” I said. “But you wanted to drive.”

“Not in an army truck.”

“You’re a Quaker now?”

“Bouncing,” Nate said.

“Bouncing?”

“You think my kidneys are made of steel?!” he hollered. “My bladder is what, a rock? My back, my spine, my neck? You want from the bouncing they should snap?”

Yes.

“I’m not riding in that,” he said.

“How about if we get a rope and I tow you behind?”

“Funny guy.”

“Get in,” I said.

“Forget it.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Just get in,” I whined.

“No.”

“I’ll give you money.”

“Money I got,” Nate said. “But you can never replace your health.”

So I tried one of the things I’d seen parents do with four-year-olds. I got into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and said, “Okay, I’m leaving.”

“So go.”

“I’m leaving now,” I said in the same singsong tone I’d heard send the little rug-rats sprinting for Mommy and Daddy’s departing heels.

“So leave already,” Nate said.

I put the Jeep into drive and started to ease out of the parking circle. I could see Nate in the rearview mirror leaning on his cane, staring resolutely into space, his little knees wobbling.

“Good-bye!” I yelled.

He didn’t answer.

After a pleasant hour in the rent-a-car line I was rewarded with the keys, unlimited mileage and a full tank of gas. I grabbed Nate from the lounge where he was… well, lounging, and dragged him out to the parking lot.

“So what kind of car did you get?” he asked.

“Blue.”

We walked out to slot A-16, where was parked a lovely blue sedan with big cushioned seats. “This is a Japanese car,” Nate said.

“I guess so.”

“What?” he snapped. “You never heard of Pearl Harbor?”

The nice girl behind the counter said, “Back already?”

I nodded.

“Don’t you like the car?” she asked. “I can upgrade you to a BMW for only eighteen extra dollars a day.”

“BMW,” I mulled aloud. “That stands for Bavarian Motor Works, right?”

“You want it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A Lexus?”

“No Japanese cars,” I said. “No German cars.”

“Huh?”

“I cannot rent any car made in the former Axis powers.

She looked on her computer screen.

“How about a nice Jeep?” she asked.

An hour later I walked Nate out to a Chevy Cavalier and said, “Sit in it.”

“What did you think, I was going to stand?”

“No,” I said. “Sit in it now.”

He sat down.

“Do you like the seat?” I asked. “Are you comfortable?”

“It’s nice.”

“Made in Detroit,” I said. “Any problems with its city of origin? No beef with the General Motors corporation? The color? It’s red, you know. No hang-ups there? No unfortunate associations with the Bolsheviks?”

“Are we going to go, or what?”

“We’re going to go,” I said, and hustled into the driver’s seat before he could change his mind. I turned the ignition and shifted into reverse.

“Go ahead,” Nate said. “And back up.”

I love the desert.

The desert is not boring, as some would have you believe. Although I am, as are most private eyes, a connosieur of boredom. Boredom is our business, as we spend most of our time waiting for other people to do interesting things (boring), or poring over paperwork (boring), or writing post-investigation reports (very boring). But I basically like boredom, because in this business if something boring isn’t happening it usually means that something scary is. So boring is good.

So is the desert, even though it’s not boring.

Normally a long desert drive is a thing of joy and beauty to me. I love the colors-the muted, subtle shades of tans, browns, and lavenders. I revel in the enormous expanse of open blue sky. I worship the sheer, vast emptiness, the solitude, the quiet.

But after one hour on this particular drive on Interstate 15 through the Nevada desert I was ready to reach down my throat with a pair of pliers and pull my own lungs out. If I’d had a gun I would have shot myself so I wouldn’t have to live with the memory of an hour trapped in a car with Nathan Silverstein, aka Natty Silver.

It started about five minutes into the drive when he said, “Ask me who’s on first.”

“No thanks.”

“Ask me who’s on first!”

“No.”

He started to pout.

Now, I know about pouting. Not for nothing has Karen been known to refer to me as The Incredible Sulk. I am a marathon pouter, a deep Celtic brooder of the darkest sort. But I was a piker compared to Natty Silver. Natty Silver’s unhappiness hung in the confined air of the car like a thick gray cloud. No-not a cloud, something more solid. It filled the car like some sort of toxic Jell-O that hardened around my feet then jiggled up to my neck until I was choking in misery.

Natty could pout.

I broke.

“Who’s on first?” I asked, hating myself for the craven, belly-up dog that I was.

“Right,” he answered happily. “Right’s on first?”

“No, who’s on first,” he said triumphantly.

I chuckled appreciatively and stopped.

He said, “So what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“So?”

“So nothing.”

“What, you don’t know the bit?”

“I know the bit,” I said. “It’s an old Abbott and Costello routine.”

“Abbott and Costello didn’t invent that sketch,” Nathan said contemptuously. “Phil Gold and I were doing ‘Who’s on First’ when Lou Costello was shitting his diapers!”

“Okay.”

“I taught Lou Costello ‘Who’s on First’!”

“When he was in diapers?” I asked.

“When he was so wet behind the ears he needed a towel,” Natty said. “It was at Minsky’s. Minsky’s, now there was a burlesque house. Those Minskys knew burlesque. They knew naughty from dirty. Until the Decency League shut them down Minsky’s was the cleanest burlesque house in the world. A classy place, and the girls were not hookers. But speaking of hookers, you heard the one about the hooker who says to eighty-six-year-old Mr. Birnbaum, ‘I’m here to give you super sex.’ Birnbaum says, ‘I’ll take the soup.’”

I was doing about seventy. If I opened my door and rolled out now, how badly could it hurt?

“Now, Arthur Minsky loved good pastrami,” Nathan said, “and he knew deli. You could not put inferior delicatessen in front of Arthur Minsky, who by the way, was a gentleman. A refined man. Arthur Minsky would not allow filth in his theaters and he knew the difference between naughty and dirty. I remember one time Eileen the Irish Dream wanted to respond to an unkind review which intimated that she was not a natural redhead, with a visual display that she was, and Arthur put his foot down.

“Of course, Eileen was a nasty piece of work. A tramp. Kept company with a no-goodnik mobster from the Schultz gang named Benny the Blade. Wore spats. Trash.

“So one day Arthur sends out the new kid, an Irish kid. Stupid like you. Arthur sends the kid to Wolffs to get him a pastrami on rye with Russian mustard. Wolff’s had great pastrami, wonderful pastrami. Wolff knew delicatessen. In those days you could go to a deli and get a sandwich would choke a horse for twenty-five cents and it was good deli. Not this trash they serve you today. They just opened a deli in Palm Desert. Two Jews from Los Angeles open a deli and charge seven bucks for a sandwich which is trash. Stringy fat. It got caught between my teeth, right here. I was with Murray Koppelman. Do you know Murray? Had a for-shit comedy show on CBS? ‘Murray, Murray, Murray’ they used to sing? Murray would come out surrounded by shiksas with legs to their chins and roll his eyes. Audience would scream, I don’t know why. I do know why, free tickets, that’s why, and some boob holding up a card says Laugh. We didn’t have these cards in burlesque. Our audience was waiting to see girls take off their clothes. We had to be funny. If you held up a card that says Laugh in a burlesque house, they would throw garbage at you and they would be right.