“Look, take it and try out the listening device the next time Howard gets on the phone, and let me know what he says. But not through the office computers. Let’s use a code word. If one of us sends it to the other one, we’ll know to come to this bathroom.”
Code words? Little Miss Spy? Invisible ink? Bertie could feel the atmosphere growing very “Get Smart.”
“Could I be Ninety-Nine? I always wanted to be Ninety-Nine,” she said.
Confusion and impatience chased each other across Tiffany’s face. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Never mind. We should at least synchronize our watches,” Bertie said, taking the bag.
“A watch? Who wears a watch? You can just check the time on your phone if you have to,” Tiffany said, and Bertie wondered if Tiffany could actually tell time if there was a clock face and hands involved.
“Never mind, Tiffany, I’m just joking. How about Boop as a code word. You know, as in Betty Boop?”
“Who’s that, someone you used to work with?” Tiffany asked.
Bertie felt like banging her head against the wall.
“Umm, no, she was a former first lady. Don’t worry about who she is, just use the word Boop when you want to talk to me, OK? And I’ll take Little Miss Spy home and practice over the weekend, how’s that?” she said.
“Cool. I’ll see you Monday then,” Tiffany said, nodded knowingly and opened the door, checking both ways before she slipped out the door.
“Little Miss Spy,” Bertie said out loud. “Sigh.”
Back at her desk, Bertie couldn’t get the idea that Howard was the perfect candidate to be Rowley Poke’s murderer out of her mind. He was perfect mostly because he was a jackass of a boss, but “c’mon Bert, he does have a motive, too,” she thought.
Howard had an office with a perfectly good computer, but he’d told Dillard Johnson that he wanted a desk out on the floor, too, so that he could be with “his people.” When Bertie heard that, she wanted to gag, the brown noser.
His floor desk was directly in front of Bertie, only a chest-high cubicle wall separating them. If Bertie moved her head slightly left or right, she could see him at his computer, although she couldn’t hear him on the phone if he spoke softly enough. And he always did.
That afternoon she started peeking over the cubicle wall to see what he was doing. She’d type for a few minutes, lean to one side and peek. He didn’t seem to notice for the first two hours or so, but then he started looking up when she leaned.
At least twice he caught her staring directly at him, and Bertie had to hastily avert her eyes. Maybe Tiffany’s Little Miss Spy periscope was the way to go. She could bring in a big bouquet of artificial flowers for her desk, put the periscope in it and keep an eye on him that way. “Ahoy, matey,” she thought.
She felt better with a plan, but the good feelings dissipated when, typing in the endless list of upcoming social events, she realized she’d missed a charity fashion show that weekend: The Pooches Against Poverty doggie fashion show was on Sunday and – oh no! – it was being hosted by Mrs. Dillard (Annabelle) Johnson and her dog, Miss Bling.
Good catch, but bad timing. In the world of newspaper features, there were no “emergency” social events. Pages were often planned out several days in advance, including Monday’s page, which is where and when the PAP story would have to run.
That meant tearing up the page that had already been designed and throwing out several hours of work late on a Friday afternoon. Bertie felt sweat forming in icy trickles between her breasts. She had to bite the bullet, though.
There was no way a fashion show hosted by the publisher’s wife could go uncovered.
“Uh, Howard …”
Howard Schompe’s storm was full of sound and fury, but in the end, Bertie was going to the Pooches Against Poverty fashion show Sunday afternoon and her story would be in Monday’s paper.
She managed to score some points by offering Cully as the free-lance photographer to shoot the fashion show. When Howard looked up Cully’s work at the L.A. Times on the Internet, he almost hugged Bertie.
Before she left for the weekend, Bertie wrote a note in invisible ink and left it on Howard’s desk:
Howard Schompe sniffs elephant butts.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bertie sat on a small patch of grass, surrounded by neatly fenced-in piles of leaves and other debris. Almost thirty compost heaps lined a path that led its winding way to fields of corn, husk-swathed ears sporting Mohawks of corn silk, tomato plants in neat rows, strawberry plants hugging the ground, red berries popping out into the sun. Groups of workers, most wearing large, straw hats toiled in the fields. It was a pastoral sight, a picture worthy of Van Gogh if he’d lived in Los Angeles in the new millennium.
The End’s produce-growing complex wasn’t too far outside of L.A., a half an hour when there wasn’t any traffic, which was never. Bertie and Cully had left the apartment at 6 a.m. and made it there by 7:15, pretty good for a Saturday. With a persistent heat wave still embracing Southern California in its sweaty hug, physical work had to start early before the temperature started its relentless climb. At 9:30 a.m. it was hot, but not as hot as it would be at noon.
Sweat stained the armpits and neckband of Bertie’s gray T-shirt a darker shade. Her hair hung in lank octopus tentacles and her face was a red that almost matched the ripe tomatoes in the field. She was hot and cranky.
“Hey, Bert … whoa, you don’t look so good.” Cully walked over and flung himself on the grass next to her, stretching his body into a long exclamation point.
“Well, thank you, Cully, that really makes my fucking day.” She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and hugged her knees.
“Sorry. I guess you haven’t been exercising as much as you used to… I mean, I guess this is harder work than you’re used to.”
“I’m still recuperating from a head injury, more or less, and I sit at a desk most of the time, and I … oh, hell, I’m really out of shape.”
“How can you more or less recuperate from a head injury?”
“Don’t go there, just don’t go there, Cully, I’m too tired and sweaty and dirty to talk about semantics.”
Bertie had assigned Cully the task of coming up with a bucket of approved compost material – lettuce leaves, orange rinds, apple cores, etc. – as their admission ticket to The End’s garbage fest today. He’d managed to come up with a whole bucket, as assigned, which they’d been keeping in the miniscule backyard that was part of her apartment.
“Where’d you get the garbage?” she asked, incredulous that he’d managed the feat.
“I knocked on a couple doors in the neighborhood, asked whoever answered if they had any garbage I could have.”
Bertie burst into laughter. “Wow, welcome to the ’hood. ‘Hello, I’m new on the street. Could I borrow a cup of garbage?’ How did that go over?”
“Not too bad when I explained what I wanted it for. People were pretty cool, actually. The woman next door might join The End, too.”
A woman, that explained a lot, Bertie thought. She was pretty sure the woman was more interested in getting to know her tall, good-looking ex-husband than doing what Bertie had been doing so far that day: dumping and raking buckets and buckets of wilted lettuce, corn husks, leaves, and other compostable detritus into piles that would melt into dark, rich dirt in a month or two.
“Dumping and raking garbage is some introduction to The End,” she said, fanning herself with a blue bandanna she’d worn around her neck. As she cooled, the color in her face was fading from on-the-verge-of-a-stroke red to peach. A faint sheen of sweat gave her a dewy look. She looked like a sun-kissed California girl.
Cully turned to her and then just stared, struck by how beautiful she looked. “Umm, yeah,” he said eventually, “but I don’t think weeding and hoeing is much better. But at least we’ll get some free veggies out of it. Eventually.”
They sat quietly for a moment or two before Bertie stood up, dusting off
the seat of her plaid shorts. “Come on,” she said, “I’m hungry. There’s nothing like digging in rotting garbage all morning to build up an appetite. And besides, now that we’re ‘in,’ I’m not wasting all my time actually working when I could be working … you know, checking out Buddy Laird.”
There were several well-built sheds at the top of the field that housed hoes, rakes, replacement parts for the irrigation systems, and other equipment. Someone had rung a metal triangle that was a staple in all the bad Western movies Bertie had ever seen, calling the workers in from the field for a meal.
Long tables full of food were set up in the shade of the sheds. “Where did all the food come from?” Bertie whispered to Cully as they took a place in line.
“I asked. They either glean it from restaurants that are throwing away perfectly good stuff, or volunteers bring it in like a potluck supper. The fruit is the excess that’s harvested from peoples’ backyard trees. There’s a lot of food that goes to waste in this country.”
“Good job,” she said. They filled their plates and wandered over to old plastic yard chairs that looked as if they’d been salvaged from the streetside garbage pickup and sat down to eat.
Drew Corwin, formerly known as Dreadlocks, came over and sat on the ground with a plate of food. He had his shirt off, showing muscles that bulged and rippled with each move. He was no former governor of California, but he was buff. Bertie didn’t know stock brokers came in this version. She stared surreptitiously between bites of tomato in a sweet vinaigrette and potato salad.
“Hey guys, I was hoping I’d see you,” he said, taking a large drink of iced tea. “So, what do you think?”
“I think it’s a lot of hard work,” Bertie said, still grumpy. She hastened to add, “But so worth it, in the long run. I mean, The End Justifies the Green, right?”
“Have either of you seen Buddy yet?”
“Ummm, no. I was going to ask you the same thing,” Bertie replied.
“I haven’t seen him today. He spends a lot of time in the corn fields and that’s where I worked this morning, but I must’ve missed him. Oh, well, he usually talks to the troops before we break up for the day. Unfortunately, we’ve had to leave earlier than usual the last few weeks because of the heat.”
“So tell me about Buddy,” Bertie said. “Where’s he from? Does he live around here?”
“I don’t know much,” Drew said, knocking a ladybug off his jeans into the dirt, then scooping it up and depositing it on a blade of grass. “No one seems to know much about him. He’s not from around here, you can pick up a Southern accent every now and then, but that’s about it. I heard he was hot to take over from Rowley Poke, but I don’t know how true that is.”
“So is everyone broken up about Poke’s death?”
“Not so that I can tell. There was a memorial and all the right stuff was said. You know, what a visionary he was, that he wanted to save the world from itself, that kind of stuff, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of people shedding any tears. He spent a lot of the last year working on his political career. I never saw him come out in the field and get dirty; he left that to Buddy. Hey, maybe Buddy killed him so that he could drive the group’s cool truck.”
“Huh?”
“Just kidding. There’s a truck with ‘This Is The End’ on it. It’s a real step up from the heap Buddy was driving. Bad joke, don’t mind me. I’m hot.”
Bertie thought, “I’ll say.”
Cully, who’d been stuffing his face up to this point, put his empty plate down with a satisfied sigh, and asked, “Is he married? I mean, it’s gotta be kinda hard on the wife, working out here all day with hot, sweaty women.” He laughed, and looked at Bertie when he said it.
“Nope, not married, and not involved with anyone here that I know of,” Drew answered. “Hey, you know, you guys are making me curious. Why don’t you ask around and see what you can find out. Now I want to know, too.”
“No, not us. Why don’t you?” Bertie asked. If she could get Drew to do some of the ferreting around, it would save her some work.
“I’ll see. Maybe we could all ask questions and pool our information.”
“Sure,” Bertie said.
The metal triangle clanged again and Drew stood, pulling Bertie to her feet with one hand. Cully frowned, but stood, too.
“Let’s go. Buddy is going to address the troops.”
The three of them gathered with about thirty other hot sweaty Enders in front of the largest shed where Buddy Laird stood, waiting. As he turned to say something to his assistant, Arial, who seemed to be glued to his side most of the time, Bertie noticed a line of dark … something? on the back of his neck. “Ewww,” she thought, “wash your neck, dude.”
“Hello. Thanks for coming. I hope you all signed in today so that you can qualify for your quota of the harvest in a month or two. You know we’re always trying to find better ways to solve old problems, so I’m looking for some volunteers to work with me on a pest control project this week. Let me know before you leave today if you’re interested.”
He continued to blah, blah, blah on, but Bertie tuned him out. Pest control sounded yucky, what kind of pests? She hoped it wasn’t tomato worms, she hated those things. Actually she disliked anything creepy or crawly, or even worse, slimy, but the chance to work with him on something opened up all kinds of possibilities.
“I’m going to sign up,” Bertie said to Cully.
“Huh? How come?”
“The chance to work with him … you know,” she said, waggling her eyebrows meaningfully.
“Oh, yeah. OK, I guess.”
When Buddy finally stopped blathering, Bertie maneuvered through the dispersing crowd to get next to him.
A beautiful young girl was waiting to talk to him, but Bertie waited till he turned his head and then moved up beside her, bumping her out of the way with a well-placed hip.
“Hi, Buddy, I’d like to sign up to work with you,” she said when he finally looked around again.
The younger woman was now a couple of feet away, trying to regain her balance.
“Do you have any experience with rats and mice?” Buddy asked Bertie.
“My last boyfriend was a real rat.” Bertie laughed, trailing off nervously when Buddy didn’t join in.
“Huh, yeah,” he said. “Well, can you meet me Tuesday here at the field? I want to try out a new technique. It requires a little bit of time, so can you stay for a couple of hours?”
“Sure,” Bertie said, hoping Howard didn’t give her a hard time.
“OK see you here about 9. What was your name?”
“Bertie. Bertie Mallowan.”
“OK, see you then, Bertie.”
As he walked away, Bertie got a good look at his “dirty” neck. It was a tattoo. She did a quick scurry to catch up to him and saw:
If you can read this
you’re too close
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bertie had been looking forward to her day off on Sunday, but that wasn’t to be. She had to cover the Pooches Against Poverty fashion show.
She dragged herself out of bed at 10 a.m., still tired from her stint on the compost heaps the day before. Grumbling, she said out loud, “So if I write a bad story about the show, is that a PAP smear?” Grumble, grumble.
She and Cully had come home and she’d managed to do a couple of loads of wash before they both settled down to watch TV. She’d fallen asleep in front of the tube at 9:30 and Cully had finally shooed her to bed.
She’d have to be careful about getting too comfortable with Cully, that kind of cozy scene was definitely a no-no. They were not getting back together, they were not developing a new relationship, they were not even going to have sex.
She told herself.
This was Cully’s debut as a Beacon-Banner photog and she was determined that he’d be presentable. She knew his photography was excellent; she just had to keep his flaky tendencies in check.
“No watermelon hats, right?�
��
“Bert, come on. Of course not.”
Uh-oh. Her bullshit alert clicked on. Men always said “of course” when they were waffling. It was like looking into someone eyes and lying your guts out. Men weren’t sufficiently sophisticated enough in lying to know that casual was the way to go. They lied a lot, but they just didn’t get the subtleties of doing it well. It was why they were always getting caught.
“Do not tell me ‘of course’,” Bertie said. “Promise you won’t act like a jerk.”
“Cheeze, Bert, OK.”
“Say ‘I promise’.”
“I promise.”
“I promise I won’t act like a jerk – say it!”
“I promise I won’t act like a jerk.”
Bertie thought, “Men! You have to tie down all the loose ends so there’s no wiggle room.”
Cully had dug into the bottom of his duffel bag for a pair of khakis and a relatively nice shirt to wear that day. She’d washed them for him when she done her own loads, but drew the line at ironing anything. If he hadn’t been smart enough to buy wash and wear, he was out of luck. There wasn’t much she could do about his shoes, those tatty sneaks, she just hoped no one looked down.
They arrived early at the hotel and followed their ears to the first floor staging area. The sound was deafening, even in the high-class lobby where the clerks were doing their best to ignore the yelping of high-strung rich women and the barking of high-strung rich women’s dogs.
The scene that greeted Bertie and Cully was chaotic – a small fuzzy dog trailing a pink cape trimmed in white fur was running through the legs of well-dressed women, chased by a young woman in black. “Come here, Twinkie, and finish getting dressed. Here, Twinkie, here, Twinkie.” Her voice was coaxing but Bertie felt that she was on the edge of a flying tackle that would either rein in Twinkie or squash her like a fuzzy pink pancake.
The women milling in the space were mostly holding their own dogs, which were in various states of undress, and mostly yapping at a high pitch that only small, annoying dogs can reach.
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