by Tom Pitts
“That’s my point. The more I think about it, the less I believe they belong there. Arrangement, my ass. You better find out what’s really going on.”
“Me?” Gary got up from the table with his empty wine glass and went to the counter for a refill. “Why should I? It’s really not any business of mine—of ours.”
“You didn’t say that when you felt the need to go over there and knock on her door.”
Gary shook his head. In disgust more than denial. He was happily married, lucky to have Linda. Jealously didn’t boil up in their relationship often, but when it did, Gary felt helpless. If Linda’s mind was set in that darker place, nothing he could do would convince her that she fulfilled all his needs. He was as happy with Linda as the day they tied the knot. They’d been through too much, after losing the baby, after San Francisco. She was his anchor, weighing him down to the present, keeping him from obsessing on the tribulations beyond his reach, hammered into their history, but unchangeable, and unmalleable as anyone’s past.
He glanced through the kitchen window at the house across the street. Juliet was gone from the doorway, but there was someone else on the block. A big lumbering man walked toward the house, his feet pounding down on the cement sidewalk like he was trying to break it. He was huge and his head hung down, giving the overall impression of an enormous hunchback. An enormous, drunken hunchback.
“Is that the guy?” Gary watched the man clomp toward the Perkins. “Is that the guy you saw moving stuff into the garage?”
Linda came up behind him and peeked over his shoulder at the man.
“No, that’s not him. Look at that guy. He’s some sort of monster.”
They watched as the man turned off the sidewalk and crossed the lawn to the Perkins front door. He opened the door without knocking and walked right in.
“What the hell’s going on over there?” Linda asked.
“I dunno,” Gary said. “I don’t know.”
As they lay in bed that night, Linda listened. With autumn settling in, it was cool enough to have the air conditioner off and the windows open. She heard the distinct rasp of the beater car she’d seen earlier that day and the garage door opening and closing. She rolled over to look at the alarm clock. It was 4:33 a.m.
Chapter Four
Jason’s father’s voice bellowed from the next room, the bass of his baritone giving slight vibration to the glassed-in picture frames. His mother’s voice scorched back, catlike and fierce. Their fights would last hours with tense intermissions, followed by abrupt flare-ups of screaming. Insults were hurled and obscenities shouted, but to Jason, in the cottony womb of the TV room, it all blurred into a symphony cresting with sharps and underscored with murmurs, a wallpaper of background noise he subconsciously drowned out each time it started.
When the fight had climaxed, either with slamming doors or screeching tires, he’d come out of the TV room to find his mother crumpled and exhausted.
Maureen DeWildt was a travesty of beauty. A ruined flower that once was vibrant and flourishing. It took a union with Stephan DeWildt to deplete her spirit and cause her to wither into the weedy apparition Jason saw before him now. He often looked at the wedding photos of his parents on the mantel, clasped together in matrimonial bliss, a fogged-in image that was foreign to him in both emotional weight and familiarity of their faces. Who were these two people? His father looked the same, maybe a little thinner with his face framed with sideburns, but his mother, she looked like someone else entirely. Someone happier. When he was a toddler, he thought it was someone different altogether in the photos, perhaps an aunt. He liked to think it was a babysitter he’d forgotten but still retained a deeper memory of. A warm and happy woman who’d coddle him when things were dark.
He pointed the remote at the TV and clicked it off, letting the echoing silence, evidence of his father’s absence, ring through the house. He crept, not out of fear but for reverence to his mother, out to the kitchen. She sat, folded onto the kitchen table with her head cradled in the nook of her arm, muting the soft sobs that made her body gently convulse. He tiptoed over the marbled floor and touched her knee.
“Mommy?”
She wasn’t startled. She never flinched when he approached her like this. If it was his father wanting her attention, there’d be no tiptoeing, no soft tap on her knee.
“Yes, baby?” She looked at him with red-ringed, puffy eyes welled with tears.
“You wanna play?” It was the best offer he had. It made him feel good, to pretend, to escape. He wanted Mommy to join him and leave the sorry kitchen, leave whatever hurt her.
“I can’t, sweetie, I need to lie down.”
She was always lying down. Late in the mornings, early in the afternoons. It’s what taught him how to pretend, the loneliness of her naptime. Minutes stretched into hours while he waited for her to wake, either from the couch or from her bed. Days that started with her being happy, full of energy and plans while she poured him heaping bowls of cereal, were dowsed with the pills she took to make her sleepy enough for naptime. To Jason, sleep was the focus of her day. She’d worry over his comfort and amusement only long enough to make sure he was well occupied so she could pad out on the living room sofa. Sometimes she rested in the TV room while he watched soap operas that bored and confused him. That was his favorite place for her to nap, the TV room, his sanctuary. He’d often pretend she was awake while he played, acting as silent partner to his fantasies, a sleeping beauty to his prince charming.
He tugged at her sleeve. “No, Mommy, not today. Let’s play. Fire chief or army. Let’s go outside to the park. To the swings.”
“It’s cold outside, baby. Too cold to play. Let me lay down. Maybe we can do something fun when I get up.”
Sunlight streamed through the kitchen, keeping it bright and warm, and Jason wondered if his mother was sick. He sometimes felt cold when he was sick, even when she kissed his forehead and said he felt hot. He touched the skin on her hand now, testing its temperature. It was cool, almost clammy. Maybe it was too cold for Mommy after all.
“You’re a private detective.”
Gary sat at his desk at work, a makeshift cubicle in the larger warehouse space for an air-conditioning supply company. They had front offices, but Gary’d been relegated to the warehouse in back where he had easier access to inventory and the workers. The usual midday business buzzed around him: vans rolling in and out of the large garage bays to load or unload parts, repairmen in their blue jumpsuits shooting the shit by the coffee machine, the lights on his phone bank winking incessantly at him.
“No. I never said I was a private detective.”
“Yeah, when you were living on Cole Street.” Gary spoke in hushed tones, but he was fairly certain no one there had ever been interested in anything he had to say. “You were calling yourself a private dick.”
“I said I worked for a private detective. There’s a difference. I never had a license. I was with that guy for about eight months. I didn’t do shit. I sat outside of people’s houses and gained about fifteen pounds eating donuts. What you’re talking about is something completely different.”
“All I’m asking you for is a little help. You know how this shit works, I got no idea.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know shit about it. I sat in a car. When the subject left the house, I called the guy I worked for. That’s it. That’s all. You’re asking me to track down someone who’s missing. This ain’t TV. If you really want to do this, why don’t you go to a real PI?”
Gary heard Richie taking long slow drags off his cigarette. It sounded good, even through the phone.
“Because, Richie, I can’t afford it and this isn’t really something I want to spend money on. I just want to know if they sold the house or if it’s sitting empty. I think these fuckin’ kids, or whatever you call ’em, are squatting.”
“That’s all? It’s really not that complicated, Gary. All y
ou gotta do is call the county, or check online. There’s some real estate sites that’ll tell you the same shit.”
“Do me the favor, please. Just look in to it and see what you find out.”
Sounding annoyed, Richie agreed. Gary gave him the address along with what he knew about the Perkins and Richie said he’d call him back.
“If the people you saw are there illegally, what’d you care?”
“Are you serious? This is a nice neighborhood, a house full of scumbags across the street isn’t going to help anyone. Soon they’ll be digging through our recycling, growing weed in the front yard, breaking into cars. Hell, I don’t know. I just want to know what the hell’s going on over there.”
Between fielding calls and complaints from customers regarding their AC parts or repairs, Gary did some googling himself. He looked up squatter’s rights in California. The basics were a little dense for him to read while he worked. Every time he started a paragraph, the phone would ring or Rothschiller, who they all called Rooster, would come and give him a task. Ductless mini-splits, compressors, relays, worm clamps, and thermostats. Anything going in or out of the warehouse had to be checked off and double-checked. The meaningless minutiae slowed the clock as Gary worked on autopilot.
True to his word, Richie called within the hour.
“Donald F. Perkins. The loan is held by Bank of America. No sale pending, it’s not even on the market. Anything else?”
“Not yet. Thanks, Rich. I’ll be in touch.”
“Hey,” Richie said before Gary could hang up. “You could’ve easily found this stuff out online.”
“I know,” Gary said, “but I’d rather have a professional do it.”
Richie laughed and Gary hung up. Four more hours left in the day.
Calper spent his first day in the room. After a greasy breakfast at the diner downstairs, he went back upstairs and unfolded his laptop. Jason DeWildt’s online history aligned with everything Ashton Taber had told him. He was born to Stephan and Maureen DeWildt at Cedar Sinai in LA in 1991 and was coddled and cocooned like all the other silver spooners. He was a spoiled rich kid who wound his way down to the needle and was now bouncing along the mean streets as a lowlife hype. At twenty-three years old, he already had a decent criminal record—drug possession, traffic, assault, commercial burglary. But a lot of what he’d done was sealed in juvenile records. There was a haphazard trail from boarding school to boarding school and finally to juvenile hall, but the teen years pretty much ended there. It wouldn’t be too hard to unearth a lot of that stuff. Calper had a detective friend who used to be a policeman in Los Angeles County, and he’d been helpful before in exposing records that’d been sealed, even expunged. The list of private schools and underage rehabs read like a money map of California. The kid had been bounced around plenty, just like every other fuck-up he’d crossed paths with. They call ’em stereotypes for a reason, thought Calper.
Of course, Calper recognized Jason, even from his school pictures. The last job Taber had given him was to find a girl named Juliet Forester. That was all the info they gave him. The name, a picture, and a possible location. It didn’t take long and the work was easy. When he found the girl in question, she was shacked up in an Irvine motel with Jason DeWildt. He didn’t know who Jason was at the time, only that he was the lowlife boyfriend of this girl Juliet’s.
Calper reported his findings and Taber instructed him to stay close to the girl in case she fled. So he stayed close. On the second day, he was made. She walked right up to his car and told him his name. That was it. How she knew his name he never found out, but it spooked him. He was on the road back to Hollywood ten minutes later. The job was over and he was going to get paid. He figured that was the last he’d hear from Ashton Taber.
Then, weeks later, Taber called with this job. He knew the two were related. Taber didn’t mention the girl, but he knew before he laid eyes on her. The boyfriend, Jason DeWildt, he was the real target all along. He felt foolish not figuring it out the first time, but he wasn’t on the case long enough to learn the young man’s last name was the same as his employer’s.
When he loosened the search terms, it took a while to dig through the slush of information on the DeWildts. Their holdings were so extensive, the tide of links so great, it was hard to disseminate any personal information on the man who’d hired him or his enigmatic family.
He stood and stretched. His eyes burned from a few hours of staring at a screen. He decided he’d get out of the room for a while, take a quick drive past the Perkins’ house, and scout it out in person instead of relying on the internet’s map. That’s why he was in Sacramento, after all. First, maybe he’d pick up a six-pack and order a pizza and watch some bad cable TV. Motel life agreed with Calper.
Linda thought she’d beat Gary home that day, pulling up to their driveway about twenty minutes after five, but his car sat idle and cool in the space beside hers. As she climbed out of her car, she saw a scrawny young man with a long-handled pair of bolt cutters hunched over a hole in the Perkins yard. He squatted, motionless, focused on the hole. He didn’t look up at Linda or her car.
Linda went inside and walked into the living room. Gary was perched on the couch, leaning over the laptop that he’d set on a TV tray, a small notepad beside him and a pen tucked behind his ear.
“Looking at dirty pictures again?”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t even lift his head.
“Really? Nothing? C’mon, Gare, that was funny.”
“What was funny?”
She rolled her eyes and walked into the kitchen.
“I told you,” he called after her. “Richie says the Perkins still own the place. He did some checking up and the house isn’t even for sale.”
“You called your brother?”
“Half-brother,” Gary corrected.
“Whatever. Being half a brother doesn’t excuse the fact he’s a complete fuck-up. Maybe the half of him that’s always screwing up is your half.” She got a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and stood at the carpet line that separated their kitchen space from the living room. She eyed Gary over the top of the can while she took a long swallow. When she was done, she kept the look trained on Gary.
After a few moments, he looked up from the laptop screen. “What?”
“Why’d you even call him? Anybody can look up information like that online. It’s not that difficult.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t Richie tell you?”
Gary emitted a low rumbling growl, the sound that’s supposed to simultaneously signify disgust, annoyance, and resignation.
Linda knew the sound well. She let the subject drop for the time being, but as she traversed the room on her way to get changed, she added, “Next time, ask the smartest person you know.”
Gary let the comment pass but smiled to himself. She was right. By the time Richie had gotten back to him, he’d already figured out how to get the information he needed. The question was: what to do with it now?
After discarding her purse, jacket, and shoes in the bedroom, Linda came back into the living room and took a seat beside Gary on the couch. “What’s this?” she said, nodding toward the laptop.
“I’m looking up squatter’s rights. I figure that’s what we got here, some squatters. That’s what Richie thinks anyway.” As soon as Gary’d said it, he regretted pulling Richie’s name back into the conversation.
“Richie, huh? Well, he’d know. Doesn’t he have some personal experience in taking up space where he doesn’t belong?”
He’d set himself up for that one. While they were in San Francisco, Richie had stayed with them for what was supposed to be a couple of weeks. It turned out to be six months. That’s when their trouble started. That’s when everything fell apart.
Linda reached over Gary’s lap for the remote control and clicked on the TV. “Maybe you should try staring out the
window instead of at the computer. There’s some skinny little rat-faced kid trying to cut the county bolt on the water supply.”
Brows furrowed, Gary looked up. “Where?”
“At the Perkins’, Gary. What the hell are we talking about?”
He got up and went straight to the widow. The kid was still there, struggling with the oversized bolt cutters. They dwarfed him, the handles appearing longer, and thicker, than his arms.
“How do you know what he’s doing?”
“Because, remember two months ago when they shut off our water? That’s how they do it. They come put a padlock on the little tap in the hole by the front of the yard. You cut the thing and you can have water again. It’s a big lock, though, tough to cut.”
As she spoke, Gary watched the kid struggle. Christ, he thought, the kid looks like he’s twelve years old. Gary peered up and down the street to see if anyone else was watching the boy. Down the left, on the opposite side of the street, he saw a man watering his lawn with a hose. He was a neighbor Gary had never spoken to. Most of the neighbors, Gary had no contact with. He had no real reason to. They all went about their business on this block. Sure, they’d nod hello when they were loading groceries or taking out the trash, but that was about it.
Gary walked out the front door and crossed the street. The man nodded hello as Gary approached.
“Hey, how ya doin’?” Gary said by way of interrupting him.
“Hello? Good night, how are you?” The man’s accent was thick, but Gary couldn’t quite place it.
“You seen anybody coming out of the Perkins’ house?”
“Perkins?” The man clearly didn’t know the names of his neighbors either.
“The one right there,” Gary said, pointing. “Three houses down from you. You see that kid in the front yard?”
The man nodded, but the boy held no special significance for him.
