Gods Go Begging by Alfredo Vea Read Free Book Online Page B

twenty-four hours he was on the bus to Atascadero State Hospital. Can you imagine that bus ride? Three hundred miles, two cheeseburgers, a Coke, and hour after hour of invisible sodomy.”
    “That’s nothing,” said Newton Lam, with a tone of mock disdain. The Chinese lawyer laughed as he wiped dribbles of coffee from his chin. “I once had this guy who decided to break into a house up on Pacific Heights.” The laughter around him subsided as another story began to unfold. “One of those huge, thirty-room mansions near upper Broadway. Anyway, this guy had five prior residential burglary convictions, all hot prowls—you know, the husband and wife asleep in the next room. So here he was, a five-time loser on the second-floor landing of a mansion, breaking the antique latch on a set of imported French windows. If he gets caught this time, it’s a mandatory life sentence.
    “Now, when I first saw the initial police report, I thought that the owner of the mansion was a real tightwad, because he had neglected to install burglar alarms on the second floor; all of the sensors and magnetic switches were down on street level. The alarm company he hired hadn’t installed motion detectors. I decided at the time that he had figured no one was going to bother with climbing up to the second floor. I guess he’d never heard of a second-story man.
    “So my boy is feeling real good about this job. He’s cased the place thoroughly and he knows the alarm system is only on the ground floor and he knows that there’s no guard dog on the premises. He’s checked out that, too. He looks around for a dog run and he lifts the lids on the garbage cans. There were no sacks of dog food anywhere, just a big pile of bloody butcher paper near the service entrance. This time no one is going to catch him. He could get in and get out in ten minutes, go sell the stuff to a fence, buy some heroin, and still have enough time to see his parole officer in the morning for his monthly urine test.”
    Cigarettes were snuffed out and coffee spoons were stilled as bodies leaned forward to listen closer.
    “So he cracks open the window and steps inside. Now my boy is smiling from ear to ear, because the place is pitch black and quiet as a church. There are no lasers, no pressure sensors. This job is gonna be a cakewalk. But when he turns his flashlight on, what do you think he sees?”
    No one responded—not even a shrug was ventured. There was anticipation in every lawyer’s face, but no attempt to hazard a guess. Over time, each of them had learned better. Irony is delicious and distasteful, soft and savage. Irony is not to be trifled with. Its very essence was that it could never be predicted.
    “There on the Persian rug in front of my man is the biggest cat he’s ever seen… and that was just the cub! He lifts his flashlight a little higher, and behind the cub is a huge pair of crimson eyes, as big as the taillights on a Harley. The owner of those eyes is a four-hundred-pound Bengal tiger!”
    A groan of believing disbelief went up around him as he continued. On noticing that the cooks in the kitchen were smoking, Newton lit a cigarette for himself.
    “So here’s my homeboy staring at this enormous cat! She’s sitting on the rug with a whole bloody sheep’s leg in her mouth. Now he knows why there’s all that butcher paper in the back! By now, he’s so fucking scared that all of his tattoos are sliding off his body. There are ink stains on the carpet. His stomach lining is turning into menudo, and he is so petrified that he doesn’t even hear the cub crying. It seems my boy had his right foot planted right on the cub’s tail.”
    “Oh my God!” someone moaned.
    “The supplemental report said that the cops located my client in a Dumpster across the street by following a clear trail of feces and urine, not to mention blood. The mother cat had torn off most of his right leg… and the all-important middle finger of his right hand. Seven