The Straight Man - Roger L Simon Read Free Page A

turned the other way. "What in hell for?"
    "Spray paint."
    "What're you gonna do? Hit up on somebody's
garage door so I have to bail you out of the sheriff's station like I
did two weeks ago?"
    "Nah, we got permission." He nodded behind
him where three of his teen-age buddies were leaning against the
corridor wall, trying to look like surly gang members but not quite
making it. It was his regular crew, the KGB—the Kings of Graffiti
Bombing. For a middle-class white kid, Simon was heavily
ghetto-identified and spent his time break dancing, practicing black
and Chicano slang, or spray painting graffiti. Mostly the latter. The
weird thing was, he was very good at it.
    "Look, your mother gets child support for this.
Besides, you know the law—if I give you the money, they still can't
sell it to you. You need an adult to buy spray paint in California."
    "Yeah, that's why I thought maybe you could come
with us."
    That was it. I took him aside. "Listen, schmuck,
can't you see I'm busy? I'm working."
    "Dad, I know .. . but you gotta understand. We
got special permission to throw a bomb on a wall by the Pan Pacific."
    "Who gave you permission?"
    "The Parks Commission dude. And if we don't do
it now, we—"
    "Did your friends try their parents?"
    "They can't find 'em. Dad, graffiti's art. You
said so yourself. Besides, this is a contest. The dudes who do the
best pieces get beamed up to New York for the nationals!"
    " All right. All right. What a con job! Just wait
in the lobby till I'm finished."
    " Thanks, Dad. You're fresh." Simon gave me
a big hug and rushed off to join his friends. I turned back to Emily.
    " Sorry. I got a kid with an identity crisis. He
thinks he's a member of the Third World."
    But Emily was now sitting back down on the sofa,
staring off into space. I walked over to her.
    " So what is it?" I said. "You think
Otis King is responsible for his own partner's demise?"
    "l don't know."
    "It doesn't make much sense, considering what's
happened to Otis, his good fortune."
    "That may be. But whatever happened, I know it's
not suicide. And if I don't do something about it ..." She
stopped, biting so hard I could see a drop of blood forming at the
top of her lip. " . . . I don't know how I'll answer to
Genevieve when she grows up." She looked over toward my bedroom.
The little girl had stopped watching television and was standing in
the doorway staring straight at us in a macabre, unblinking way that
reminded me for an instant of The Exorcist. "How much do you
charge, Moses?" But before I could answer she said, "Never
mind. I trust you. Just bill me."
    All my clients should be that way, I thought.
    "How do I get to Otis King?" I asked.
    "Not easy. He's trying to kick his drug habit
and he's under twenty-four-hour-a-day therapy with Dr. Carl Bannister
in the Malibu Colony. Until he's cured, Bannister's keeping him in
total isolation. Nobody can get in."
    God. Another shrink.
    3
    "The hidden purpose of psychotherapy is to
brainwash people into accepting society as it exists, accommodate
them to what is wrong so they can be comfortable with themselves and
not want to change things. Isn't that right, Moses?"
    "I have the feeling I'd be uncomfortable in any
society."
    "That's because you're so self-involved. If
you'd try to contribute to the welfare of others, you wouldn't spend
so much time walking along with a face as long as your arm. Think
about the freedom fighters in South Africa, El Salvador . . . the new
resistance against fascism in Chile . . . the strugglers against
Soviet social imperialism in Afghanistan .... By the way—how's your
sex life?"
    "About half as alive as the Democratic party."
    I was with my aunt Sonya, driving east from Venice
along Pico Boulevard. It wasn't my normal procedure to bring a
septuagenarian on casework, but I had broken my last two dates with
her, and I knew if I did it a third time, I'd never hear the end of
it.
    "And let me add," she said, "that by
the welfare of others I do not mean