PATAMON,
PRINCE OF EL PORTO
PART
TWO
by
J.
E. Marshall
“Be check’d for silence, but never
tax’d for speech.”
~ All’s Well That Ends Well
Raymond
Chandler’s red wind was at it again. The Santa Anas scooped up smut from the
refinery then kicked sand in El Porto’s face. It composed a deafening dirge for
the seven corpses strewn on the foundation of a Spanish mansion in the
bulldozed town of Surfridge. It bent and amplified the constant roar of LAX jets
into an eerie whooshing pulse. The devil wind nabbed thousands of blue
butterflies and turned them into dive bombers. They closed their wings to avoid
being blown out to sea, landed like darts, covered the men like fish scales and
held on for dear life.
It
was the day after Thanksgiving. Patamon’s daughter, Maribelle, had married the
shy FBI agent Benjamin Curtis and needed a break from their lively twins, Bunny
and Stevie. She put on her Jordache jeans and went for a burger with her girlfriends
Susan, Veronica, Julie and Cynthia. The girls groaned when they entered The
Curtain. A drunkard was hogging the jukebox, playing Robin Trower’s “Bridge of
Sighs” on repeat because his wife tried to kill him with a skillet. It was a
challenge to get a quarter in edgewise. Cynthia hollered that there was a call
for him on the payphone outside. He fell for it.
“What
did you play?” Veronica asked Cynthia.
“I
dunno.”
“What
if you picked “Bridge of Sighs”, you idiot!” Susan gasped.
“We
came to dance, not to bury Caesar again!” Maribelle muttered.
“It’s
The Outlaws!” Julie yelled.
“Green
Grass and High Tides” was hell to dance to, but the girls did their worst. They
moved like a school of fish in a tank full of trouble, reacting in unison to
each and every outlaw sound. They tightened their spacing, about faced, froze,
then flash expanded, scattered, polarized, then reunited as if by magnetic
force and zigzagged in unison, riding the extreme waves of tempo without
missing a beat.
Pool
players scratched, dart throwers missed by a mile, jaws dropped as the song picked
up speed.
Outside
a naked man ran by chasing a yellow cab. The cab kept rolling while the award-winning
journalist, Lester Flint, hobbled barefoot after it. His feet hurt like hell. His
trademark tweed suit was burning in a firepit on Dockweiler Beach.
The
cabby threw out an unclaimed gym bag and sped off. Flint slumped when he saw the
contents.
Lester
arrived at Patamon’s house a day late. He’d been adopted by the family of the famous
sculptor when he saved Patamon’s life after years of investigation that culminated
in the reunion of the family that presumed each other dead.
Pat’s
wife Birdie was in the backyard removing sheets from the clothesline before the
wind could grey them. The sheets cracked like whips, broke the sound barrier
and created mini sonic booms. The twins were darting in and out, pretending the
sheets were curtains and they were stars on stage.
“Uncle
Lester! Uncle Lester! I SAID: ‘ta-da’! You’re supposed to clap!” Stevie hyperventilated.
Bunny
stayed behind a sheet and inhaled it into her mouth until she sounded like Lili
Von Shtupp in “Blazing Saddles”.
“Why
aren’t you crapping, Wuncle Wester?” She’d been practicing. There were peanut
butter and jelly rings on most of the sheets.
“We’re
going to the drive-in!”
“We’re
going to see “Invasion of the Snotty Scratchers”.
Lester
had trouble walking in roller skates. Birdie didn’t comment on his outfit.
“I
know a disreputable exorcist.” Lester stated.
“Give
me his number. The men folk you seek went to the dunes after they got slam
dunked here. They said the wind would reshape the waves. They might as well
have stayed home and jumped off the roof all day.” Birdie removed a clothes pin.
The sheet engulfed her.
“Can
we!?” The twins begged to jump off the roof.
“No.”
Birdie didn’t remove the sheet. “I’m Cross-Eye the hungry ghost! I’m going to
eat you on toast!” She could see the sheets were a lost cause.
The
twins screamed and ran from their grandmother.
“Birdie?”
Les called out.
“What,
Lester? What are your last words, because you know I’m going to have to eat you
too? These two are just hors d’ouvres.” Birdie burped.
“Are
you happy?”
“Ecstatic.
Run for your life if you know what’s good for you!”
Les
found skating downhill wasn’t the relief he thought it might be. He picked up
too much speed, but not enough to outskate the eggs the little bushwhackers on
skateboards were throwing.
“Mustangs
suck our eggs! Eagles rule!” They crowed.
“You’ll
need dentures after you eat my skates, you little windbags!” Lester grabbed a
tree branch and spun around.
Seconds
before what would have been an awful showdown, the yellow cab appeared and got hit
by an egg meant for Lester. Roger Pierce stepped out of the cab waving a pistol
and fired five warning shots. The teens scattered.
“I
might have known you would be involved in something like this!” Pierce squinted.
“This
wouldn’t have happened if you’d given me a ride.” Lester refrained from hissing
that with three trillion dollars up his arse he damn well could afford a cab.
Patamon,
Edison, Harry and Agent Curtis were limping towards the jeep when they saw a
silhouette of a man in a miniskirt atop a sand dune draped in the red orange
light of the grimy sunset. Les slid down the dune.
“Major
overcorrection.” Patamon studied the sleeveless green and gold V-neck sweater
with the M block letter and pleated miniskirt.
“We
said to lose the tweed. This is overkill.” Curtis agreed.
“Where
the hell have you been old man?” Harry slapped Lester’s back.
“Yeah,
we expected you last night,” Edison added.
“I
got tied up tying up loose ends up in Lassen Volcanic Park.” Lester replied.
“Working
a cold case?” Curtis quipped. Curtis arrested Senator Thaliard, Patamon’s
Grandfather the day Les rescued Patamon.
The senator was on his deathbed in prison and the case was considered closed.
“Nah.
It’s closed. Just satisfying my curiosity.” Lester worried Curtis might detect
he was lying.
“You
going with us to San Pedro? Body Snatchers is playing at the Drive-In.” Patamon
asked.
“Raincheck.
I have a hot date tonight. Can you loan me a suit and a vehicle?” Lester asked.
“I
have a grey silk suit.” Curtis offered.
Lester
and Patamon fell back a bit on the way to the jeep.
“Are
you happy, Pat?”
“Yeah.
I still have nightmares. Birdie holds me and sings to me until I come around.”
“Yeah?
What does she sing?”
“Roy
Orbison. ‘It’s Over’. Wakes up the whole neighborhood. We’re crazy as hell but
we’re happy, Les, we’re damn happy.”
“That’s
good.”
Lester
arrived at the LA County Museum early enough to close the case before his hot
date. He tossed the gold coin into a La Brea Tar Pit. He’d scouted volcanos,
but it felt wrong. Who was he to destroy a historic relic that made the three
gold EDI MAR Ides of March coins look like chump change? The tar would preserve
the coin.
Lester
met Coral Leann at the museum the first time he scouted the tar pits. She was
having the King Tut box lunch. He wandered with his box lunch like a lost kid. There
wasn’t an unoccupied table.
“You
can sit here, if you promise to behave,” were her first words to him.
They
so much enjoyed their lunch together. It was hard to say goodbye.
“I’ll
be here next Friday for movie night,” she winked.
“You
flirting with me?”
“I
didn’t promise to behave. You did.” The retired movie star smiled.
He
was so happy to see her again. He told her she was beautiful. She liked how he didn’t
use the word “still”.
“Do
you wanna come with me? The plane leaves in a few hours.” He’d booked non-refundable
stays in Hawaii and at the Excelsior Palace Hotel in Taormina, Sicily, reservations
leftover from his aborted volcano shopping venture.
“You
promise to behave?”
“I
do.” They would both be saying ‘I do’ soon. Finding such happiness so late in
life was a miracle. It seemed random but in protecting the happiness of Patamon
and Birdie, he’d found his own.
He
told Coral Leann how Patamon was not the sculptors real name, how Patamon had
been kidnapped as an infant and presumed dead. His father, King Tomas Dovico
and his mother, Margaret Thaliard Dovico, the American actress and daughter of
Senator Thaliard, died in an avalanche that derailed their train. He didn’t
tell her that only he knew the kidnapper was Margaret’s father and that the
senator dynamited the train. The mountain top country of Dovico, located between
Italy and Switzerland, was .40 kilometers, smaller than Vatican City and became
inaccessible after the avalanche.
Lester
didn’t tell Coral Leann that Margaret paid the ransom with a priceless gold
coin. On his deathbed the senator ordered his henchmen to retrieve it from
Surfridge. Money couldn’t save the vengeful senator, but it could ruin
Patamon’s life to be declared the world’s first multitrillionaire, to be hounded
and trapped in endless legal battles.
Lester
was the only one left who knew about the coin. Sometimes you want to tell a story,
but you just can’t. It wouldn’t be right to do so.
On
the other hand, one night Coral Leanne asked, “Who the hell is Roger Pierce?”
“Huh?”
“You
talk in your sleep. Something about Pierce could kiss your three trillion-dollar
ass.”
###
