Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [22]
“All of the above.” He flapped his cape, while he tap-danced in his running shoes. “Works like magic. How do you want it, Goddess?”
“I don’t need magic,” I grumbled. “I need a detective.”
Very early the next morning, while I was still asleep in my Corolla parked under a pigeon-free tree on a foggedup block just south of Haight Street, a film company showed up with a convoy of trailers. Frankie never told me what bullies film crews on location are. They push real people from their homes on real streets and think you’ll be happy being a part of some fantasy you’ll never see. This film crew operated as though location shooting were military conquest. Longhaired guys rang doorbells and ordered sleepy car owners to please move their cars because the film company had paid the city for permits to park their semis and their Range Rovers instead. They told store owners not to open, people not to come out until the all clear was sounded. Funky young assistants put up police barricades. A smart aleck rapped on my papered-over back window. “Hey, man, time to haul ass,” he commanded in his mellow way.
I stepped out of the Corolla. Stoop Man, Duvet Man, Tortilla Tim, Beamer Bob, Snorting Sam, Pammy Whammy, everyone in the neighborhood, were already gathered behind one of the barricades on the far sidewalk. They weren’t looking my way; they were interested in the food table. The laggards, people I recognized from soup lines and doorways, were being encouraged by a woman in purple tights and yellow tank top to drag themselves and their supermarket carts and their milk crates and garbage sacks out of the crew’s way.
The woman fixed a friendly eye on me. “Hi, need help moving your car?”
“Who do you think you are?” I said.
“Locations PA,” she said. “We do have the city’s permission, you know.”
I held my hand out. “Devi,” I announced. “Also known as Goddess.”
The woman gave my fingers an air-shake. “We need you to cooperate.”
“Why?”
“Hey, nothing personal.” She flashed a tense smile. Her lips had been given a collagen workout. “The city permit—”
“You don’t have a permit from me,” I interrupted.
“That’s true”—the woman backed away from me—“very true.” She signaled the tow truck I hadn’t noticed before, because it was parked around the corner. “Look, I don’t make the rules. I’m not the bad guy here.”
My fists clenched up on their own. “Well, I do! I make the rules! So beat it, Ms. Loc!”
The woman looked down at her shoes. They were Mary Janes in purple suede. I began to enjoy myself. PA ponders power play versus penitence. I could still miss Frankie at the strangest times.
“Look, could you like move your car out of here for now, and maybe, like take it up with the mayor or something?” She sent an anxious glance to where Stoop Man was lecturing a longhaired man. “Ham?” she spoke into her walkie-talkie.
The longhaired man raised a walkie-talkie to his lips. “I just learned about inner-city problems in other solar systems. This dude’s a perfect extra. See if you can get me Sarah. Or any of the casting munchkins.”
“Ham,” the locations PA pleaded, “can you spare a minute? We have a situation.”
The man with the gray hair to his shoulders had to be in production. Some sort of desk job in the entertainment business, anyway. He wasn’t crew, and he wasn’t talent. I Sherlocked that from his clothes: a dress shirt and tuxedo jacket, white slacks, white loafers, pale panama hat on an oversized head. The white slacks had double pleats, the loafers gilt buckles that didn’t glint in the sun. Pretty cool himself. Not too many guys can wear white shoes and white slacks with wit or style. The shirt was authentic Jazz Age twenties, not shopping-mall knockoff. I’d worked at the expensive Love at Second Site too many summers in Saratoga not to know vintage from junk. Smooth, I decided.
Ham maneuvered Stoop Man behind the police lines, then ambled to where I was giving his assistant a hard time, all the while nodding to gawkers and shaking hands. Money changing hands as Ham advanced. He didn’t doff his panama, but he did scoop up my left