by Rex Bolt
He compared the scene to Petaluma for example, where he lived once, bigger than this place but also a family community so not totally different, and there you could do stuff outside all year, so consequently there was no thrill in it, no incentive, and you didn’t run across anything like this.
The big thing tonight in Dakota though was the high school prom. It always seemed early didn’t it? April still? Chris remembered his own being in June, about a week before they got the heck out of there for good, but times were different apparently.
Again, like with the kid Pike in Beacon, Chris found himself envying the whole shebang -- the event and the kids both, so much ahead of them, life (hopefully) not having dealt any big blows so far, your stress level centered on having the right friends and getting invited to the right parties.
At the moment there were clusters of the prom kids milling around Main Street, some getting in and out of limos, but you assumed the official prom wasn’t underway yet, but then again it seemed about that time.
Chris asked an older couple sitting on a bench. “They go to a hall, right? Or the school gym or something? Before the night’s over?”
The husband shook his head. “Used to,” he said. “That dried up. Going back, I’ll say 6 years.”
“Sorry,” Chris said, “what dried up?”
“Way it worked, they had an in-surance up-tick. The school said forget it, we can’t afford it.”
“He means,” the wife chipped in, “they had to cancel using the gymnasium because the liability folks made it impossible.”
“Right,” the husband said, “so they scrambled and . . . you know where the Grange Lodge is?”
“No sorry,” Chris said, “I’m a visitor.”
The guy said, “Welcome to town then. It don’t matter anyhow, about the Grange, other than they held it there instead, and it didn’t work out.”
“Ah,” Chris said.
“Eldon’s referring to the underage drinking,” the wife said. “The lack of appropriate supervision. It got out of hand, the police came, there was an altercation. Sergeant Wayne got his skull fractured.”
“Maybe,” Eldon said. “They played it up big. The fact was, the man spent a night in the hospital, under observation. Take it however you like.”
“But you’re saying,” Chris said, “it never recovered? The traditional prom?”
Eldon nodded. “Everyone whining, that point forward, both sides. The school worked out the in-surance finally, but now they let the kids take a vote, and like I say, last 4 or 5 years, they been voting it down. They’d rather mess around on their own, as you can see.”
“And save 75 dollars of course,” the wife said.
“Screw that,” Eldon said. “You only come around once . . . But it’s all different today. The kids, they got no ties to tradition. They don’t give a crap.” Eldon spit, which was a bit unexpected, but you could see his point and appreciate his passion.
Chris said, “What happened to the officer who got assaulted? Is he still on the job?”
“That’s the other part,” the wife said, “Sergeant Wayne committed suicide, three Christmases ago. It’s left a sour taste all around.”
“You’re kidding,” Chris said.
“Martha,” Eldon said, “will you stop with that please, for once? There was mental health issues the man was dealing with, you know as well as I. Way more deep rooted than some kid hitting him side of the head with a beer bottle one night.”
Martha looked at Chris and upturned her palms slightly. “It’s something we agree to disagree on,” she said.
They watched the continuing action for a while and Chris said, “Let me pose something to you out of left field, if I might. If it throws you off, please feel free to leave it alone.”
“Son,” Eldon said, “nothing throws me off.”
“Well,” Chris said, “if you got robbed one day. Not your house, like a break-in, but you directly, face-to-face . . . and I don’t mean you, specifically -- but if this happened to someone.”
“You ain’t given me much to work with so far,” Eldon said, “though you haven’t quite lost me either.”
Chris smiled, you had to like him. He said, “What I’m getting to, should this guy just let it go?”
“So I’m clear,” Martha said, “someone was robbed of their belongings, but not injured?”
“He’s telling you that,” Eldon said, “if someone got strong-armed on the street . . . Like we got going on in Toledo, when the floodgates opened and that place went down the tubes.”
“Pretty much that’s it, yeah,” Chris said. “Let’s say the guy gets a weapon stuck in his face?”
“Firearm?” Eldon said. “And he got away with it, you’re saying?
“Yes, I think so. Both those.”
“I’d string him up,” Eldon said, “long as someone didn’t get to him first. Mind you those types, plenty of enemies already in the loop.”
“Eldon,” Martha said, “please don’t lash out irrationally.”
Chris said, “You’d take it into your hands, you’re saying though? You wouldn’t . . . let the system do its job?”
“What system?” Eldon said. “What are they going to do about it? Some poor guy looking up a hollow barrel seeing his life flash before him? Your system gonna make it up to him?”
“I don’t think so,” Chris said, “not necessarily.”
“Except,” Eldon said, “you’re not sure. Son I can see right through you. Pardon me, but you and I’s crapping on opposite shitholes.”
“All right honey,” Martha said. “The man is simply posing a . . . what’s the word I’m looking for? A chance encounter?”
“A hypothetical, maybe?” Chris said.
“Thank you,” she said, “that’s exactly it. Certainly nothing to get worked up about, in real life.”
“If you say so,” Eldon said, smiling for the first time, and pinching Martha’s cheek, and Chris wondered, the way it was in the old days, the high school prom business, if they were an item back then too . . . but you left it alone for tonight.
***
The old guy Eldon had freaked him out a little bit about these unknown big cities. Not that a place like Toledo was a real big city, or particularly scary. But that was the point. Detroit was both those things.
Why would Marlon select there, when you had the whole country to work with, to settle down?
Of course Chris’s lasting images of Detroit were the photos of the burned-out sections, and it had been a while now, and he supposed if they were successfully gentrifying places like Flatbush in Brooklyn, where you once assumed there was no hope . . . then why not Detroit. Perhaps.
Back in the motel last night he’d spent a little time on Gedmatch, the genealogy site that was the center of all this current law enforcement commotion and which Mark had likely been tearing his hair out over -- until he figured out Chris’s deal, which unfortunately was still a work in progress.
One thing Mark had reminded Chris -- he, or anyone, could log on with a fake account and roam around, search. Not for DNA, not that deep a search, but simple non-DNA family tree stuff.
So you had Marlon Studebakker, 56, Detroit, Michigan . . . and in Gedmatch there were a bunch of other connected Studebakkers, most of them in the upper midwest as well . . . and Chris committed three or four to memory so he’d hopefully be able to talk his way into Marlon’s door.
He rolled into Mo-town Saturday before noon, the first couple sections not great, but frankly a step up from even the Tenderloin in San Francisco . . . and Marlon’s neighborhood, son of a gun, was actually pretty okay.
And luckily pinpointing his address had been a piece of cake, a simple white pages search and there he was front and center and the age matching to cinch it . . . and no surprise, that someone who offers their DNA to the world as public fodder, wouldn’t check a box that kept their name and address out of the old-fashioned phone book.
The guy lived near Greektown, a lively stre
tch not far from old downtown, and in a high-rise building that was probably considered luxurious in its day, say the 1970’s, and now was rougher around the edges, metal windows that could use the upgrade to double panes, shabby terraces, a fountain down below not working currently and with big rust stains in the pond. But you had a doorman, and underground parking it looked like -- and what more did you need?
Chris announced himself as Rich Studebakker, and the doorman did the intercom thing and buzzed Chris no problem through the main door. The apartment was 6 stories up, most of the units overlooking a central atrium, and that thing had seen better days as well.
A guy opened up and Chris sure hoped it was Marlon and it was -- and a weird thing happens . . . when they shake hands, instead of letting go, Marlon pulls him in and embraces him.
“I apologize for that,” he said, “but it’s not every day I meet a new Studebakker. Damn! . . . How on earth did you find me, Rich?”
Chris’s first thought was wow, maybe there really is a Rich Studebakker out there that this guy’s been waiting on -- and that he should have reviewed that Gedmatch family tree a bit more carefully and chosen a better first name. But oh well.
Marlon sits him down and right away is bringing out the schnapps and the little glasses, oh boy, shots now . . . and Chris could see he’d have to go along with it . . . and would there be a chance to distract this guy?
They talked about politics and lifestyle issues and fortunately Marlon never asked where he was from, since if Chris answered Duluth for example that might not go over as well if Marlon was assuming he was the Rich Studebakker from Champaign, Illinois. Or maybe it would have made no difference, and Marlon never knew of a specific Rich, but just enjoyed all family dynamics, as the more the merrier.
They talked a little business and finance, and dang . . . this guy was retired already from the auto industry. 31 years at GM, the last 12 with a corner office and a personal secretary, and Marlon matter of factly told you he started there right out of high school, in the mail room.
This was all interesting enough, and Marlon was admittedly someone you could admire, but that wasn’t why we were here. We were here . . . Chris reminded himself . . . to see about me avoiding possible arrest and prosecution and implementation of the electric chair.
“Changing it up for just a second,” Chris said, “you wouldn’t have a computer handy would you? By chance? . . . I mean it doesn’t have to be right now, no emergency. I’m going to Scottsdale next week is all, and I want to confirm a couple things, which I hate doing on my phone -- being on the road and all.”
Marlon said of course he did, and to come here, and please make yourself comfortable . . . and Chris followed him into the bedroom . . . and the son of gun, being acutely polite it was turning out, closes the door to give him privacy and says shout if you need something.
You weren’t surprised Marlon might be old school, and yep you had to turn on the computer and wait for it to warm up and load, which wasn’t breaking any records, and finally Chris got on and went to Gedmatch . . . and now, the moment of truth, the only reason he diverted himself the 400 hundred odd miles to get here . . . could you log on.
Meaning as Marlon. So there was the sign in screen, and you stuck the cursor into the username box, and hovered, and then clicked the blank white . . . and you’re waiting for autofill to do its thing . . . and it’s not looking good.
Chris reloaded the page and tried it again -- and zip. All blank. Nothing showing up, now even a tease.
He thought of one more thing, that had bailed him out once, when he was trying to buy a spec tennis paddle off ebay once, and couldn’t hook up his PayPal account -- that in Google Chrome, which Marlon did have going -- if you were lucky, there was a way to find this stuff, your saved passwords.
Chris google how to accomplish that . . . and you had the usual 8 steps at least . . . settings, and advanced, and security, yada yada -- and that still got him nowhere, but in the search results someone pointed to an updated method, and he messed around with that enough to where it actually worked.
And Marlon’s password for Gedmatch was showing as:
BiggestHam1964
Wow. So Chris hustled back onto the Gedmatch screen, forgetting just one important component, that you of course need the goddamn username as well.
Let’s see . . . maybe just try Marlon, or marlonstudebakker all one word, but that was going to be silly . . . and Chris thought of Google itself, that people are often signed into that, if they’ve been working their gmail or whatnot . . . and Chris angled the cursor to the M in the purple circle in the upper right corner of that screen . . . and he held his breath and hovered, and there was Marlon’s email address.
So for God sakes plug that in -- and he did and added the discovered password and he clicked Enter . . . and there was that ultra-satisfying moment where the web server was doing something -- positive, on your behalf -- and Chris was in.
It wasn’t user friendly in there, it felt more like a high school class project in the infancy of the information superhighway, lots of raw data floating around and crude links that were straight out of the earliest HTML days . . . but Chris had done a dry run back in the motel last night under his fake account . . . and he knew his way around -- sort of.
The main thing, he remembered you find your user profile first, you click around in there until get to your DNA profile (all the you and yours meaning Marlon’s now obviously) -- and then you do 6 things.
1 You locate your DNA kit in your profile.
2 You highlight said DNA kit
3 You check a box next to your DNA kit, indicating you are the authorized representative of said DNA kit and you want it deleted.
4 You answer yes when it asks are you sure?
5 You hit Enter . . . and delete the motherfucker.
6 You log off and sign back in, and make sure it worked.
Marlon called in from the other room when Chris was taking care of Step 4, would he like club soda and some Ritz crackers and cheese, and Chris called back that he’d love some in a minute and was almost done reviewing the Scottsdale itinerary.
Step 6 was a success, and if Marlon had offered champagne at this point as well, that would have been more than fine . . . and he shut the computer back down and went back in the other room and spent another hour and a half with the guy.
He wasn’t even sure he had it straight what Marlon was -- in relation to the real him, Chris Seely -- forget the Rich person -- but he thought it was third cousins or worse, he (Chris) and Marlon.
And now that he could relax and concentrate better he tried to size up this guy -- were there any Seely (or Weeding, his mom’s side) family traits evident in him -- and Chris honestly couldn’t see anything there, but again, he was a nice man and someone you might look up again, who knows.
Chris did feel bad double-crossing him with the computer and Gedmatch stuff, and he asked Marlon if he could donate to his favorite charity.
Marlon said what for, and Chris didn’t want to get into a thing, and he was getting itchy to get back on the road, and he put a couple hundred bucks on the coffee table and told Marlon whichever charity, or whatever, period, don’t worry about it, it’s all good.
Chapter 16
It looked like 2300 miles and change, Detroit to Seattle, so, not how you would do it normally if you were headed back to the Bay Area, but Chris figured you know what, 10-12 hours a day for three days isn’t going to kill you, and he’d never been that way, so why not.
It was pretty easy driving, you combined 94 and 90, and you stopped in -- or zoomed past, depending -- some interesting spots. Such as St. Cloud, Minnesota; Fargo, North Dakota; Missoula, Montana; Yakima, Washington. And he found a good old Super 8 off the interstate in Tacoma, and in the morning you’d be on Highway 5, where you’d barely have to think through Washington State, or Oregon, or even California until you got to the junction near Sacramento where you wanted you make sure you went right instead of that left -
- which would leave you screwed up.
At a rest stop near Gold Hill, Oregon -- Jackson County -- Chris gave Chandler a call. This was Thursday afternoon, April 26th, two weeks since he’d picked up the DNA memory stick at the lab in Gardena and left L.A.
He’d balked on bothering Chandler on that earlier thing, but he could use his help here and tried not to feel guilty about it.
“Uh-oh,” Chandler answered with.
“That bad, uh?” Chris said.
“It’s all relative,” Chandler said. “If you were in town -- which I take it you are not, in fact I hear traffic rushing by and wind as well, I believe -- that would be better.”
“More predictable, you’re saying. Likely as innocent a call, as ‘do you want to hit a few balls’.”
“Exactly. And you know something, we should. I won’t have you do those drills any more, we’ll just play.”
What Chris interpreted here, was Chandler must have lost a couple tennis partners recently. No way Chris was on his immediate radar before. That last guy for example, when Chris dropped by the courts and Chandler was putting a beating on this guy and sort of celebrating it too -- that guy for sure wasn’t coming back.
“More to the point,” Chris said, “and I know you’re getting tired of this . . . and I don’t blame you . . . but can you possibly procure a bit more information for me? One more guy? Maybe two actually, together?”
A big demonstrative exhale from Chandler into the mouthpiece, but he asked what did you need, and Chris said there were these two guys up in Marin County, young black dudes -- and he wanted to at least inform himself, were they wreaking havoc all over the place.
“Or,” Chandler said, “was it just an isolated experience?”
This guy had a way of making you feel pretty small, seeing through your decorative BS in about half a second.
