Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

Candyman had been a major heroin dealer in Venice during the 1970s-Cadillac, fur coat, condo, and all. Cured off smack in the penitentiary, he confined himself now to sweet wine and marijuana. His main obsession was his ex-wife, who divorced him while he was in the pen. She lived nearby in a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica and the two of them maintained a complex love-hate relationship. Candyman was always on the verge of either suing her for something or getting back together with her.

“Heard from Shoshana?” I asked, to see which way the wind was blowing.

Candyman’s coffee-colored face, which had been relaxed and wreathed in smiles, making him look like the young boulevardier he had been twenty years before, sharpened and shrunk into the visage of a bitter old man.

“That bitch,” he said. “She s’pose to come over and take me to the doctor yesterday afternoon and never showed up. Same old shit with her. Always callin’ a man no-count and shiftless if he don’t do what she thinks he should, and have three jobs like her daddy always did, but she can do whatever she feel like. When you s’posed to take a man to the doctor to see about some medicine, you goddamn well ought to show up, right, Rob? Don’t you think so?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“Not Shoshana. She call fifteen minutes before my ‘pointment and say she can’t make it ‘cause her sister got a headache. What’s her motherfuckin’ sister’s headache got to do with anything? I was thinking about getting back with her, but after that shit she pulled yesterday, she’s gonna have to get by without my black ass. I mean, ain’t that some bullshit, Rob? Say she gonna come for sure and then don’t show up? She tell everyone else how to act but don’t act right herself. She getting fat, too.”

He had worked himself up into a state of righteous anger, striding back and forth in front of the couch where Budge was sitting, waving his arms and looking from one of us to the other. Then, when he could see that we were about to agree with him that Shoshana was a bad actor, he reversed himself completely. As usual.

“Course, you won’t find a better woman,” he said, stopping and looking at me with his eyes bulging as if I had asserted the contrary. “Do you know she sent me twenty dollars every week for six years I was in San Q so I could buy candy and cigarettes? And she’s always takin’ care of her family, her sister and her daddy.” He shook his head and gave me another confrontational look. “She’s a good woman, Rob. Bitch just don’t know how to show up.”

Conveniently, since there was no rational response to his remarks, Pete and our landlady, Mrs. Sharpnick, chose that moment to enter the room from opposite sides. Pete came in from the kitchen with half a sandwich in his hand and the other half in his mouth. He was two steps into the living room when Sharpnick burst through the front door. She was a tall, skeletal woman with a terrible temper who dressed in men’s work clothes. Underneath it all, I’m sure she was a very nice woman. But it was way underneath. The only person I’d ever seen her be kind to was the street kid, Ozone Pacific, who she let camp in the house next door, which was too run-down to rent out. Pete wheeled and dodged back toward the kitchen as she came in, but she froze him with a harsh cry.

“Where’s my rent check, you son of a bitch?”

Sharpnick addressed her inquiry to Pete, but Budge got a stricken look on his face. He had been homeless several times and dreaded going back on the streets.

Pete turned around, gulped down the wad of white bread and bologna in his mouth, and counterfeited a smile with his thin lips.

“Ahoy, Mrs. Sharpnick, I didn’t see you come in. We’ll have that particular check for you by the close of business on Monday.” He handled the rent for the downstairs trio, keeping a portion of Budge’s and Candyman’s wages when they worked.

“It was due on the fifteenth,” Mrs. Sharpnick said in a cold, threatening tone. “I want the money now.”

“Negative,” Pete said. “No can do. Don’t have it. But you have my personal guarantee you’ll get it on Monday.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “I saw you going in Antonio’s yesterday at dinnertime. A meal in there costs twenty. If you got the money to eat there, you got the money to pay me my rent.”

Budge shifted his gaze from Sharpnick to Pete, his expression changing from fear to suspicion.

“I wasn’t eating in there,” Pete said, as if that was the most ridiculous suggestion he had ever heard. “I was talking to Gianni about some work he wants done. Reference to the rent you’re requesting, we’re still waiting to get paid for that demolition job we did last week. The man says he’ll have our money on Monday for sure.”

Mrs. Harriet Sharpnick did not answer. She had just noticed the mess in the living room and was swiveling her head slowly, taking in the details of the disarray with a furious expression on her face.

“What’s this?” she said. “You dirty bums had another party, didn’t you? What did I tell you about that?” She looked at Budge, who licked his lips and tried to grin.

“It whudn’t a party, Miss Sharpnick, just a couple of-”

“This is a respectable house,” she screamed, cutting him off. “And you bums have it looking like a pigsty. I’ve got the city on my back about this place twenty-four hours a day, complaining about the condition of the building, and you bindle stiffs go and make it worse.”

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” Pete said, shaking his head. “You two know Mrs. Sharpnick doesn’t allow any parties.”

“Wait a minute, now…” Candyman started to object.

“Come on,” Pete said, bustling around the room, picking up beer cans and empty wine bottles. “Let’s get this place shipshape. Budge, look alive and help me clear the deck.”

Pete’s identity centered chiefly on his concept of himself as no-nonsense businessman and his supposed service in the U.S. Navy. He told me when we met that he had retired as a chief petty officer after twenty years at sea, but Candyman later contradicted that in a stage whisper, telling me that Pete had been dishonorably discharged for selling government supplies on the black market during his second term of enlistment.

Budge lumbered into action, picking up a full ashtray and the newspaper he had just thrown down and heading for the kitchen.

“Everything’s under control, Mrs. Sharpnick,” Pete said briskly, giving her a series of quick nods meant to drive her out of the room. “I’ll have that check for you by seventeen hundred hours on Monday.”

“You better,” she said, then stalked out the front door, banging it shut behind her.

Pete went over to the front window and peeked through the curtains for a few seconds. When he turned around, the earnest expression he had used on the landlady was replaced by a contemptuous smirk. He dropped the beer can in his hand on the floor and walked over to the couch, where he flopped down, clasping his hands behind his head.

“That bag of bones is messing with the wrong seaman,” he said, nodding. “She’ll get what she’s got coming to her before long.”

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

“Nothing. It’s just business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Not yours,” Pete said.

His rude remark surprised me. During most of the six weeks Reggie and I had been in the house, Pete had been friendly and respectful, always trying to buddy up and find out where our cash came from. But in the past week or so he had become more careless and self-confident, taking a higher hand with the other two stooges and showing less deference to me and Reggie. Now he was being downright confrontational.