Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue

Having laid aside their frogged jackets this once in favor of the drab and Day-Glo splendors of the Jones Memorial Leisure Suit Library, Bomp and Circumstance cut loose. They played “Nearer My God to Thee.” They played “The Old Rugged Cross.” Their order was good as they led the caravan along Piedmont Avenue to the cemetery gates. Perhaps the brass sounded a touch pallid, like the headlights of the cars in the cortege. Maybe the drumbeat got lost in the heat and hum of the afternoon. But once the casket had been fed by the belts into the ground, they turned from the graveside, the bass trombone taking up the opening groove of “Redbonin,’” which had gone to number thirty-two on the R&B charts in July 1972, and began, as promised, to swing.

They were like the kids in that newspaper comic, white nerd, black nerd, pretending at the bus stop on this fine Sunday morning that they were Jedi knights, samurais. Lost so deep in the dream, they didn’t have the sense to be embarrassed. FoxTrot : Bankwell read it sometimes, though the light had pretty much gone out of the funny papers for Bank Flowers back when the Chronicle got rid of the strip with the English basset hound.

Shorties rode the bus downtown, got off by Fourteenth Street, walked down to Franklin Street, where there was a donut place, egg roll place, the decor Chinese but the calendar by the telephone printed in some alphabet of snakes. Bank had long since incorporated the house bear claw into his ongoing survey of donut shops from Fremont to Richmond; this one was a notch above the run of the mill. If you were downtown and couldn’t hold out for the Federation or, farther north, the mighty Dream Fluff, Loving Donut would do.

White nerd, black nerd got off the bus and, for once with no swordplay, waited on the empty sidewalk in front of the donut shop as if something real was about to happen. Playing some kind of classic rock, had a flute in it, out of that old green-and-orange shoulder-strap eight-track the white nerd carried everyplace he went. Waiting for another bus to come along, tornado drop a house on them. After a minute or two with no tornado, the black nerd, Titus, said something out of the side of his mouth. Then they waited awhile longer. Titus was built lean, harder than the glasses and that retard bounce in his step led you to expect. Still growing, bound to work out to be tall like his father, maybe not as chesty. In response to whatever Titus said, the other one took out a plastic wallet, yellow and blue. Nestled it close to his chest as if it held magic ducklings, tiny orphan bunnies he was nursing back to health. He tweezed out a bill and passed it to Titus, who went in and returned a minute later holding what appeared to be a dead puppy.

“I see you a bear claw man,” Bankwell said to Titus through the windshield of the hearse, not the brokedown Cadillac or the borrowed Olds 98 but the Flowers & Sons workhorse, a 1984 Crown Vic. No fear or hope of Titus hearing him, kitty-corner away and through the safety glass. “Interesting.”

“You mean ‘nasty,’” said cousin Walter. Prince Walter, the favorite nephew, more like a son to a man who never had any sons of his own. In trouble, now, though. “What you always get.”

“It’s a longitudinal study,” Bank said. “Bear claw is my, what you call, control.”

“Uh,” Walter said, hand to his belly. “Like eating a deep-fried sock.”

“That is why bear claw have to be the control,” Bank explained patiently. “You want to see how much love and affection the chef put into the bear claw. If the bear claw’s good, the standardize donuts be even better.”

“You already had your donut for today,” said Feyd.

“Feyd, shut up.”

“You his conscience now?” little Walter said. “Fucking little Jiminy Cricket motherfucker.”

Walter in a pissy mood, squeezed into the front seat between Bankwell and Feyd. For many of the more reluctant passengers obliged in the past to occupy that spot, the back of the vehicle had come to seem preferable. But Prince Walter only saw his position, no doubt, for the indignity it was. Walter had graduated from the hearses years ago, from handling the dead, washing their horrible feet. Ushering crazy old ladies, keeping an eye on the gang-bang element, enduring the gusts of drama that caught people up, women especially, whenever funerals came along. Then from time to time, like today, paying a visit on behalf of Chan Flowers to somebody who did not want to be found, was not necessarily in the mood for visitors. Walter had left it all behind years ago, moved down to L.A. to work in the record business, come back from time to time showing off pictures of himself with Tupac, Jada Pinkett and Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg. Finding his way into Gibson Goode’s circle of love. Now here he was, back riding a hearse, not even driving it. Stuck between two cousins he used to know only as likely vessels for the downflow of family beatdowns.

“Feyd keeping track,” Bank said. “Everything I put in my mouth. Sometimes I see him writing that shit down. Boy is spying on my food.”

“Uncle Chan said put him on a diet, one donut a day,” Feyd said. “He said, uh, ‘Big bank,’ you do realize that’s just a figure of speech, right?’”

Walter laughed his scratchy laugh, Ernie from Sesame Street , working something loose at the back of his throat. Feyd took out his pocket vaporizer. He and Walter were well and fully vaped, deep into a fresh, veiny hank of Vineland County kush bought with Feyd’s auntie’s glaucoma prescription. Bank did not imbibe. Didn’t drink or eat swine, either. Seventy-five percent of the way to a five-percenter and thus enjoined to respect his elders, try not to violate Uncle Chan’s rules, which definitely included No Partying in the Funeral Vehicles. Also, No Profane Music, and here they were with Ghostface Killah playing on the CD, softly but the music so soaked in the world’s profanity that it bled like a saturated bandage.

“Shit,” Bank said. “You just a damn food spy.”

They watched white nerd watching black nerd ingest the bear claw, an alien feeding in a horror movie, even its teeth had teeth. White nerd looking duly horrified. Then it was his turn to go into the shop, but when he came out, he was holding a pink box tied up with white string.

“Bringing somebody a present,” Bank observed.

“Oh, shit,” said Walter happily. “No. Oh, no. It’s her, here she come.”

Here came Candyfox Brown, whatever her name was in the movies, that highjacked, big-titty mature, muscling past the boys on her Preakness haunches. Walking right past them without a glance.

“Valletta Moore,” Walter said, praying it. Sounding like he was feeling sorry for her or for himself. “Damn.”

White nerd black nerd swung their heads to watch the tick-tock of her bodily clockwork as she made her way past them. The motion of the two heads, whup-whup, so uniform, so abject, like those dogs they used to feature at the station breaks on Channel 20, whipping around with their tongues hanging out whenever somebody off-screen waved a pork chop.

“Why she didn’t stop?” Walter said. “Seem like she don’t know them.”

“She know them,” Bankwell said. He put the car into drive and turned right at the intersection, away from the boys and the donut shop. “She being careful. She going to come back around in a second, long as she doesn’t see us sitting here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Around the block.”

Somebody had speculated that Valletta Moore and the man, Luther, were most likely geeked up on crack, that it was just a matter of finding whatever hole they crawled into. But they had eluded Uncle Chan for some time, and obviously, she, at least, was capable of taking basic precautions. Maybe she was not as far gone as rumor had it, or maybe chronically paranoid. In any case, a hearse was by no means the ideal surveillance vehicle. Usually, by the time Uncle Chan sent Bankwell and Feyd around in the Crown Vic, the point was not about concealment. If Batman wanted to observe the thug life of Gotham City, he would not dress up in black rubber and drive around in a Batmobile; he would send Alfred in some poot-butt Daihatsu. The Crown Victoria was intended to make a Batmobile statement, a message of intent. But Uncle Chan, up against it, woke this morning willing to take his chances.