Underbelly (20 page)

On Great Jones Street among too-cool art galleries, he located the new-age type restaurant and bookstore called Zambroso. The place was owned by Kang Fu. Magrady entered and pretended to browse. The ex-girlfriend had shown him a cell phone picture of the supposed Kang Fu taken at a book launch at this store. The shot was of a lanky youngish man, smoothly bald, who looked like he was either a light-skinned black man, Middle Eastern or East Indian. Magrady didn't expect to simply stumble into him here. He'd been informed by the ex that Kang Fu had other concerns, and wasn't much in the store in the afternoon hours—if at all.

There was a pretty young woman in a bright print dress behind the counter. Puerto Rican and something else he estimated. She finished talking to a customer who'd bought a picture book about bridges and bats. He came over.

“Hello,” Magrady said, reaching for the digital print he'd brought with him.

“And you,” she answered, a pert smile illuminating her face. Her eyes briefly went to his bandaged ear then back to his face.

“Let Kang Fu know I have Talmock's head.” Magrady placed the print before her on the counter. “I understand he appreciates one-of-a-kind items.”

She picked it up, studying the shot. “He'll know what this is about?”

“It's really about my son, Lucas, Luke Magrady,” he said evenly. “My number is on the back.”

“Okay,” she said, not promising anything. But she put the shot aside and not under the counter.

A little more than two hours later, Kang Fu called Magrady on his cell.

“You claim to have the shaman's head?” the unhurried voice asked.

“I do,” he answered. “In exchange for getting me to my son, I'll negotiate a price for it.”

“You're going about that all wrong, aren't you, hombre? Isn't it the head in exchange for your son?”

“I'm pretty certain he hasn't been kidnapped,” Magrady said. “Just hard to find.”

“For you.”

“Precisely.”

There was silence, then, “Well then,” and he hung up.

Nothing to do but wait. Magrady bought two prepackaged portobella mushroom sandwiches and some juice at a D'Agostino supermarket. He ate them in his prison cell of a room at a hotel on East 44th that Bonilla had found for him on the cheap via one of those internet specials. He was laying on the bed, watching CNN when he got the return call.

“The Aparo Club. Tonight, after ten. A car will be sent for you,” a female voice said. Magrady told her where he was but he had a notion she might have already known that. The call over, he stood for a few moments at the window, arms folded, trying to decipher just what his son was involved in and how deep.

He chuckled dryly. He recalled several times cajoling his then teenaged son to help him balance the books when he had the distribution business. How the hell would he possibly know what Luke was up to given it involved high finance and who knows what else now? Magrady barely knew his multiplication tables and that was fast eluding him. Luke was now, thirty-one, no, thirty-two. He was a grown man and was, he hoped, capable of falling down the rabbit hole and climbing back out on his own.

Still, a man's son is a man's son. He showered, shaved, and put on the sport coat he'd brought with him, purchased at the Goodwill store in Culver City.

The car that came for him was a customary black Navigator. Wes Montgomery on the sound system, and eschewing the scotch offered by the female driver, they rode languidly over the bridge. The vehicle arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a development on the waterfront signage informed Magrady. They parked near an unmarked building and the driver opened the rear door for him.

Dressed in the male fantasy chauffeur's outfit of tight, short skirt and double-breasted tunic complete with the requisite cap, the copper-hued driver with the dynamite legs escorted him to a metal door.

“Enjoy,” she said and returned to her vehicle.

He looked after her and back to the door, which slid open quietly. He entered an elevator car and rode up several stories and was let out on a vestibule furnished in antique wares, all polished wood and plush rococo chairs. There were blue velvet curtained archways on either side of the vestibule.

A statuesque bronze blonde woman in a tiger skin breech-cloth and little else entered from the right and took his hand. “This way,” she said, and led him through the curtain on the left. Magrady entered an area where he expected all manner of debauchery to be taking place. There were some goings on, but understated. He saw two men dressed in superhero costumes playing chess, several women in business attire or stylish underwear sitting on pillows sharing a hookah, each with violet hair cut in radical hairstyles, and a knot of nude men and women dancing. He didn't hear any music, but each of the dancers had a
single wireless ear bud. He could smell marijuana but didn't see anybody toking up.

They went up a short flight of stairs and he was deposited in a small upholstered alcove.

“How do you wish to partake?” the blonde asked neutrally, cocking her head and smiling.

“Lemonade or juice is just fine,” he said.

“That's all?” She stepped into his space, not breaking eye contact.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. The blonde was making him damn uncomfortable. He felt he could have asked for a bj and she would have obliged. Damn Kang Fu and his tests.

Magrady sat while techno music emanated softly from hidden speakers. His lemonade arrived and he sipped and grooved along with a remix of more Wes Montgomery, this time on his rendition of “Eleanor Rigby.” Soon he was dozing.

“Hey, Dad,” his son said and he opened his eyes.

“Luke,” Magrady said getting up and hugging him.

“Good to see you too,” the younger man said, patting his father's back as they separated. He was two inches taller than his father, lean as he remembered him, and favoring his mother in his facial features. His hair was cropped bald short as was the modern style, and a small gold hoop earring hung from his left lobe.

“You've lost some weight,” Luke Magrady said, sitting down. He was dressed in dark slacks and a ribbed sweater-shirt that highlighted his athletic frame. “And who you been boxing?” He pointed at his father's bandaged ear.

“Long story.”

“We got time.”

They sat and Magrady told him about Floyd Chambers, his sister, Nakano, and Talmock's mummified head. He also told him he'd returned the head though he joked he'd been tempted to keep it as a paperweight.

“Damn,” his son said appreciatively.

Magrady sat forward. “Look, I came because me and your sister are worried about you. Also, your mother—”

“I know about Mom.” He sliced the air with a hand. “That's covered.”

“Okay, but what about you? I know it's been hit or miss with me as your old man, but I can help. I want to help.”

“There's nothing to help with, Pop. Everything's under control.”

He shook a finger at him. “I used to say that right before I'd go off on a binge.”

Luke Magrady laughed warmly and touched his father on the shoulder and squeezed. “You're getting by on that crap disability check? You don't have to, you know.”

“Your boy Kang Fu gonna break me off something?”

He sat back, tenting his fingers. “It's complicated.”

“But you could go to jail.”

“For what?”

“For whatever bullshit you're mixed up in, Luke.”

“You see the cops come busting in here? I look like I'm not getting my winks?”

Magrady shook his head. “I didn't come to argue.”

“Neither did I.”

“I just hope you know what you're doing.”

“What do you think I'm doing, Em?”

It bugged him when his children called him by his nickname. “Some kind of credit default swap Wall Street Lehman Brothers hocus pocus.”

“I assure you, what I'm doing is … kosher.”

“Said the rabbi before he bit into his pork chop sandwich.”

“You want one? I know you ain't converted to the crescent and the star.” Luke smiled devilishly.

One slip was okay. “Sure. Got some potato salad to go with that?”

“No doubt, and greens too.”

The two enjoyed their meal of pork chop sandwiches done fancy with the broiled meat having been rubbed in chili powder and some savory herb Magrady couldn't identify. This between thick slices of toasted sourdough bread with tomatoes and grilled onions. He shouldn't have been greedy in front of his son, but it took little encouragement for him to have a second one. He did, but ate it slower this time.

While they ate, their talk revolved on sports, world politics and their never-ending comic book debates on all things comic books.

“Really, you're telling me Gil Kane's run on Green Lantern stands the test of time and Kirby's '60s Captain America doesn't?” the father incredulously asked the son, his sandwich partway to his mouth.

Luke Magrady spread his arms wide. “Come on, Pop. Kirby and his clunky anatomy have been way overrated. Kane was all about grace and composition.”

“Pretty poses that's all,” the elder Magrady said, swallowing, and drinking more lemonade. “Kirby was about the action, just one of his drawings of someone dialing the phone was dynamic.”

“That's 'cause he was too damn dramatic,” his son quipped, having some of his beer.

“Next you're gonna tell me Mike Esposito was a regular Neal Adams.”

“He had his strengths.”

“Sheeet.”

His son laughed. When Magrady had come home from Vietnam he'd brought back some comic books that had been sent over to the GIs by the various companies, mostly DCs and Marvels and a few like the Jaguar and the Fly from the company that published Archie. For a while he kept collecting them as reading those stories, and digging on the art of Kane, Kirby, Wally Wood, Marie Severin drawing the Sub-Mariner, and the others, was four-color therapy. The stories of flawed good against titanic evil, and what with being able to read what was on people's minds, via the thought balloons, that was comforting.

Even their foibles spoke to him. Like Daredevil being torn between the Black Widow and Karen Page in his love life.. Magrady had reasoned then, what man in his right cotton-picking mind wouldn't be all over that fine-ass widow? Still, those comics made a kind of sense he couldn't quite sync up to the real world. Those stories helped him ease back to the world.

So when Luke was born and began reading, and the older Esther wasn't much into these boys' adventures, he'd given
his trove to his son. Luke Magrady bought and traded comics until fifteen or so, then switched his energies toward girls and basketball.

Magrady stretched and sank back into the upholstery. “That was great, Luke. All of it.” His eyes misted up and he coughed to cover his wiping them.

His son touched him on the knee. “Sorry we can't hang out more, but some of the sorts I deal with are getting into their offices now.” It was two in the morning. “I've got you a suite at the Plaza, not the hovel you've been staying in.”

The father was on his feet. “Thanks, Kang Fu.”

His son looked up at him, squinting with one eye. “When did you know?”

“Not right off, though the name did nag at me. And having somebody else be you on the phone threw me of course. But when we were talking about the comics artists it flipped on that Kang Fu was one of the mystic elders who advised Lionhead Mose, your superhero, in that story you wrote and drew.”

His son was also standing, smiling broadly. “Good to see that booze and dope didn't destroy all your damn grey matter.”

The two walked out to the front of the club, the navigator waiting for Magrady. The elbow Wakefield Nakano had smashed with his mallet ached in the cold.

“Call your sister, will you?” Magrady said as he gingerly massaged his tender elbow.

“Okay, Pop.”

They hugged each other tight. Magrady stayed for three days and nights at the Plaza, enjoyed room service, saw the city, and talked to Luke over the phone, though didn't see him in person again. He flew back home in first class for his first time thanks to his generous son—a son he hoped wasn't heading to the hoosegow.

Back in L.A., he started work as a community organizer for Urban Advocacy.

How'd
The Underbelly
come about?

The Underbelly
was initially written as an online serial a couple of years ago for the
fourstory.org
site because Nathan Walpow, a fellow mystery writer, asked me if I wanted to contribute to the site. Because Nathan had a background in fiction, he was also looking to add to the site, to augment the nonfiction with fiction, to broaden the site. Not just dry pieces about housing and homelessness. In fact nowadays the site runs stories about issues like housing, sustainable living and transportation, riffs on pop culture, to other fiction and even pieces on Cuba based on a trip the FourStory staff took to the island nation not too long ago. So, really, honestly, they're not dry pieces.