The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  “Shar—”

  “No, it’s settled.”

  Rae looked relieved, a smile crinkling her upturned nose.

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost time. Why don’t you ask for a paper cup for that Coke and we’ll head back to the pier.”

  Most of the office gang and their companions were already gathered on the sidewalk by the great arching mouth of the pier when Rae and I pulled in: Ted and Neal; Anne-Marie and Hank and their foster daughter, Habiba; Jessie Coleman, their legal secretary. I let Rae off to join them, then drove inside and parked the MG. As I got out, Mick came down the stairway from the offices, accompanied by Charlotte Keim.

  Mick was big like his father, blond like his mother, and in the past year he’d matured into a handsome guy. Keim was a petite curly-haired brunette whose eyes sparkled saucily, hinting at what was a truly bawdy sense of humor. In spite of my reservations about their seeing each other—she was twenty-five to his eighteen, and he was currently living with another woman—I had to admit they made an attractive couple.

  Keim waved and came over to me. “Mick claims he knows what the surprise is, but he won’t tell me.”

  “He just thinks he knows.”

  My nephew smiled smugly.

  “Well, maybe he does know,” I conceded. “Would you excuse us for a minute, Charlotte?”

  “Sure.” She started toward the mouth of the pier, then called, “Oh, Sharon—Hy said to tell you he’s running late and not to leave without him.”

  “Thanks.” I waited till she was out of earshot, then asked Mick, “Where’s Maggie?”

  His mouth pulled down sullenly. “Working.”

  “Look, I’m not upset because you brought Charlotte. I just wondered.”

  “Well, that’s where Maggie is, just like last night—working at the damn nursing home. I asked her to try to get off, but she said no. They’re depending on her, and she doesn’t want to ask for special consideration.”

  Maggie Bridges, the woman Mick lived with, was a premed student and tended to approach life very seriously. When he first met her I’d been glad of that quality, hoping she would steady him, but now that his life was more or less under control, I could understand how he might find her single mindedness stifling.

  “Well, just have a good time with Charlotte, then,” I said.

  “I always do. She’s easy to be around; she likes to party and she doesn’t make any demands. And she doesn’t make me feel guilty for wanting to kick back and enjoy myself now and then. I like her a lot.”

  “So do I. In fact, I’m hoping to hire her away from RKI one of these days.”

  “You just might succeed.” He glanced toward the front of the pier. “Should we be getting out there?”

  I nodded and we walked along, waving good-bye to other tenants who were leaving for the weekend. When we stepped onto the sidewalk a white stretch limo was pulling up to the group assembled there. Joggers and other passersby stared.

  Rae said, “A limo! I’ve always wanted to ride in a limo.” Hank said, “I think I know what’s going on.” Anne-Marie said, “Uh-huh.” Nine-year-old Habiba forgot she’d decided she was a grown-up and jumped up and down, while Jessie, Ted, and Neal looked puzzled. And Charlotte, bless her, clapped her hands and shouted, “Hoo boy!” in the Texas accent she’d labored years to lose.

  Mick smiled smugly at me. “I knew.”

  “Suspected.”

  “Knew.”

  Ricky got out of the limo and started across the sidewalk toward us.

  Rae exclaimed, “My God, it’s Ricky Savage!” and dropped her cup of Coke on her foot.

  And I, perpetrator of this moment, grinned at all of them. Sometimes the torture of keeping a secret for two weeks is worth it.

  While a red-faced Rae—who endures more than the average amount of spills and stains—mopped up, I made introductions and explained that we’d be attending Ricky’s benefit concert in Sonoma County’s Two Rock Valley as his guests. He shook hands all around—laughing at Rae’s sticky one—urged them to make free with the refreshments in the limo’s bar, and waved them on board. After much confusion and changing of places, the driver finally was able to shut the door, but before they pulled away Mick lowered a window and stuck his head out.

  “Hey, Dad,” he called, “aren’t you and Shar coming? I mean, she organized this and you’re kind of the main event.”

  Ricky grinned. “I’ve got another car on the way. Shar, Hy, and I’ll ride up together.” Then he regarded his son with mock sternness and added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  Mick gave him a thumbs-up sign. Before the opaque glass rose a champagne cork popped, followed by another Texas-accented whoop.

  My brother-in-law stared moodily at the limo as it edged into traffic. “How come he’s not with the one he brought home last Christmas?” he asked. “As far as I know, he was living with her last week.”

  “And he still is, but I think they may have run their course.”

  He grunted. “Isn’t this one too old for him?”

  “She’s twenty-five, but your son, as she puts it, plays older than eighteen.”

  “Yeah, so did I.” He turned to me, eyes troubled. “Why’s it ending with Maggie? We all liked her.”

  “She wants him to settle down, but now that he’s figured out who he is and what he wants to do, he’s looking for a good time. I don’t blame him.”

  “Neither do I.” Ricky’s gaze moved from me to the massive support of the Bay Bridge on the other side of the boulevard, then scaled it to the heavy span that hung over our heads. “Shar, I want Mick to have all the good times I missed. When I was his age I’d been on the road with my first band for two years. Never even bothered to finish high school. I was driven—totally driven. And then all of a sudden I was a husband and a daddy. Wasn’t easy.”

  “You regret it?”

  “Not for an instant. Your sister and those kids are the best people who ever came into my life. They were what kept me going. Compared to the look on Charly’s face when I told her I’d signed with Transamerica, everything that’s happened since is just icing on a beautiful cake.” The words were sincere, but the melancholy that underlay them detracted from their import.

  I waited, hoping he’d tell me what had gone wrong between the two of them, but he fell silent, his eyes still on the bridge span.

  “Ricky,” I said after a moment, “I found out where the line in those notes came from.”

  “Already? Charly told me you were the best in the business, and now I believe it.”

  “I just have good contacts, that’s all. The words’re from a song titled ‘My Mendacious Minstrel,’ and the artist’s Arletta James”

  “Letta? I’ll be damned. Of course—those ballads she’s been resurrecting.”

  “You’ve heard the song, then?”

  “Sure.”

  “You recall the story it tells?”

  “Only vaguely.”

  I filled him in. He paled and compressed his lips, making the same leap of logic—or perhaps illogic—that I had.

  “I’ve got to ask you,” I added, “have you ever had a relationship with Arletta James?”

  “You mean sexual? Not hardly. Letta’s a lesbian, in a long-term relationship. She’s not interested in me.”

  “But you do know her well. She acknowledged you in her liner notes.”

  “Well, yeah. We went to school together in Bakersfield. She’s a nice person and a terrific singer. Incredible voice, one of a kind. And she’s finally getting the attention she deserves.”

  I wasn’t willing to let go of the idea that there might be some connection between James and the notes, though. “I’d like to talk with her about the ballad. Do you know where I can reach her?”

  “Not offhand, but I can find out from her manager. We’re negotiating with him to sign one of his other clients.” He took a cellular phone from the inner pocket of his suit coat, unfolded it, and punched out a number. Two minu
tes later he broke the connection and said to me, “You’re in luck. Letta’s manager says she’ll be recording at TriStar Studios in Sausalito tomorrow.”

  “Great. I’ll contact her there.”

  “I don’t understand what you think she can tell you.”

  “You never know what information people might have till you ask them.”

  “Jesus, it’s good to get away from the office,” Hy said as we sank onto the backseat of a second limo. “Today was one of those days.” His craggy face was so weary that even his mustache drooped; he ran a hand through his shaggy dark-blond hair and yawned widely. “I’m not cut out for a desk job.”

  “I hear you.” Ricky climbed in after us and sat on the facing seat, shrugging off his suit coat and kicking off his boots. “I spent half the afternoon cooped up in my hotel suite with my partners and a team of lawyers from Winterland Productions. Winterland’s doing the T-shirts and other stuff for the Midnight tour, and my manager came up with the idea of licensing a bunch of other crap with them.”

  “What kinds of things?” I asked.

  “Sweatshirts, hats, mugs, you name it. Fans’ll buy anything, and it’s a good way to get a quick infusion of cash—which is always nice when you’ve got six kids and a household that sucks up money as fast as you can make it.”

  Ricky was not and never had been the stereotypical naive artist who gets taken by everyone from his record label to his manager. He kept a sharp eye on contractual and financial matters, and when he wasn’t able to see to them, Charlene did. Between them they had the acumen of a staff of MBAs. In fact, my sister had recently received a degree in finance from USC.

  “So anyway,” he went on, “we’re in this meeting with Winterland’s attorneys, and they’re all talking, but I’m kind of distracted and not paying real close attention. And then a word makes me sit up and listen, and I realize that what my asshole lawyer really has in mind is to license Ricky Savage condoms.”

  “What!” Hy and I exclaimed.

  “Yeah, can you believe that? Oh, I know a lot of rock groups allow it—personalized condoms with their likenesses or the name of their new release on them. Told you fans’ll buy anything. But my God, all I could think of was how I’d feel if one of my kids got hold of a condom with old dad on it!” Ricky’s nostrils flared indignantly.

  Hy looked aghast. “That’s awful.”

  Preposterous images were dancing through my mind. I fought down a giggle and tried to look properly outraged.

  “Awful’s the word for it.” Ricky nodded. “Of course I said no. Said it in no uncertain terms. And then my lawyer’s arguing with me. Think of the profits, he says. Profits! All I could think of was my face… well, you get the picture.”

  I said, “I don’t know. How’s this for a slogan? ‘You’ve heard of rough sex? Now try Savage sex!’”

  Hy and Ricky stared at me.

  I tried to repress a laugh, but it welled up violently. I clapped my hand over my mouth; what came out was a snort—followed by another.

  The two of them exchanged looks.

  “Listen,” I said to Ricky, “if the kids got hold of those condoms, it’d keep them from doing anything. Can you imagine? You’re all hot to trot, and suddenly there’s your father’s face staring at you… Oh, God, I’m sorry!” I snorted again.

  “You want a beer?” Ricky asked Hy.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Ricky pulled a Beck’s from the bar, handed it to him, and took one himself. “I had them stock champagne for her,” he said, “but I don’t know if she should have any. She’s behaving peculiar enough as is.”

  “Ah, go ahead and give her some. Maybe it’ll sedate her.”

  I indulged in a final snort. “I’ll be good, I promise. But what is it with you men? Don’t you see the humor in this?”

  Ricky popped the cork on a bottle of Korbel. “You wouldn’t think it so funny if it was your face—” Then he seemed to be entertaining some preposterous mental images of his own.

  I glanced at Hy; his mustache was twitching.

  Ricky started laughing, so hard that after a few seconds he spilled champagne over his fingers.

  I took the glass from him. “I assume you… er, deflated the idea?”

  “Of course I… Oh, shit!” Still laughing, he leaned back and closed his eyes. “Lawyers!” he said. “God help me.”

  I sipped champagne and watched through the tinted glass as we merged with rush-hour traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. None of us spoke till we reached the Sausalito exit and then I, reminded of Arletta James, got back to business.

  “Ricky, now that we know where the wording of those notes most likely came from, do you agree that the situation is potentially dangerous?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  “Then I think we’d best retain Hy’s firm to provide security and give you and the family a crash course in preventative measures.” To Hy I explained the problem that had brought Ricky to me. “Can you see your way to handling this personally?”

  He hesitated. For two weeks he’d been working out of RKI’s San Francisco offices on a special project—one that had made it possible for us to spend a good deal of time together—but he’d wrapped it up today and was anxious to get back to his ranch in the high-desert country near Tufa Lake. He planned to fly there Sunday night, spend a few weeks, then meet me at our shared cottage on the Mendocino coast—the place where we were most relaxed and at our best with each other.

  I waited, braced for a refusal. Hy was fond of my large and eccentric clan, but he had no family of his own and liked the freedom that a lack of blood or marriage ties afforded. I wouldn’t have blamed him for declining; security work was a far cry from the high-risk missions he enjoyed. But at the same time I needed to have him behind me on my own high-risk case.

  He seemed to sense that, because he said, “Sure. I’ll contact our best domestic security man, have him at the house in San Diego in…” He checked his watch. “In less than two hours. Fortunately, he works out of our world headquarters in La Jolla, so he’s close by.”

  Ricky started to protest.

  “No,” I told him, “let Hy handle it his way.”

  Hy took another beer from the bar and leaned forward, rolling the bottle between his long fingers. “Rick, every minute that you delay in getting my people there is a potential threat to your family. You’ve got to place their safety in our hands. My man’ll arrive tonight, assess the situation, set some ground rules. Tomorrow morning he’ll bring in any additional people he thinks he needs, and I’ll fly down and consult with him personally. Then I’ll make my recommendations.”

  “Such as?”

  “We’ll probably put on a few guards, work with your family and household employees on routine precautions. We’re also going to have to take a look at your patterns of travel—where you have to be and when. Two things concern me: the upcoming tour and the recording studio over in Arizona.”

  “On the tour, security’s provided by the concert venues. And I don’t have any plans to record for at least two months.”

  “We won’t worry about Arizona, then. But standard security at the concerts may not be enough.” Hy reached behind us for the phone that sat on the rear window ledge. In minutes he’d made his arrangements. Handing the receiver to Ricky, he said, “Call Charlene, let her know what’s happening.”

  Ricky looked dazed, as though by wresting control from his hands we’d shaken the foundations of his day-to-day life. Hy had told me of seeing similar reactions from other RKI clients. As my brother-in-law punched in his home number, I felt better about the situation; RKI’s people were the best in the business.

  To the public, RKI was simply a firm that specialized in high-level corporate and personal security for people who were particularly vulnerable, usually to terrorists. Hy was a partner, but only loosely affiliated with their normal operations, mainly using the company as a resource for the one-man human-rights crusade he’d launched last year, after harrowing
circumstances had forced him to reevaluate and restructure his life. But neither he nor I—who had twice worked with them—was a stranger to RKI’s methods, and we knew better than anyone that the glossy public image concealed a darker side.

  High risk-taking and semilegal practices were commonplace at the firm. The murky pasts of many of its operatives and all of its partners—including my lover—were open knowledge within the company. The clandestine activities directed from its thirty-some offices throughout the world would have been the envy of the CIA. Within the corporate-security industry rumors about RKI abounded, but no one had proof of the proportionately few but tragic instances in which the risk-taking hadn’t paid off. I, on the other hand, had heard enough about them to make me want to keep my distance.

  Lately, though, I’d had a sense that the distance was shrinking, as if I stood on the edge of a cliff whose ground was eroding beneath my feet, forcing me to repeatedly step forward. I’d come to rely on their data-search section for information that I myself couldn’t access through legal channels; I’d hired one of their operatives for an especially sensitive job and not looked too closely at how he accomplished it. On good days I told myself that I could use them and still maintain my integrity. On bad days I wondered. And in the dark hours of the night, when my misdeeds preyed upon my wakeful mind, I became convinced that I’d already evolved into the kind of investigator I detested. It was during those nights that I wanted to scrap it all and flee with Hy to the cottage on the coast that we’d christened Touchstone. There, I would tell myself, we’d find ourselves again, find peace.

  Of course, I knew it wasn’t that easy. Nobody can slip the reins of the past and run away.

  Ricky’s voice interrupted what could have turned into a world-class brooding session. “Hi, Jamie… Of course it’s really me. Happy birthday, honey… You already opened it?… Well, you’re welcome… Listen, hon, is your mother there?… Let me talk to her, would you? And you have a good one.”