by Cal Moriarty
It was dark now. Clark was on his second cup of coffee when he looked up to see two guys right outside the site. Dougie and Sanford. Finally. He got up fast, left a ten-dollar bill, and jaywalked fast out into the street, weaving through the lanes of stationary traffic. When he reached the other side of the road one of the guys was already in a car, lights on, the second guy, taller and burlier than the other one, was just getting in. It wasn’t Dougie and Sanford, just a couple of construction workers. ‘Hey man, I’m waiting for Dougie. He inside?’
The burly guy shook his head, no. Looked to his buddy. The buddy shook his head.
‘I’ll just wait. When’s the build get finished?’
The second guy was in the car now. ‘Probably eight months.’
Dougie had told him three to four months.
‘What’s the delay?’
The man looked at him, what’s it to you. Shrugged. ‘That’s the schedule we have.’ He grimaced at Clark, closed the door, and the car joined the traffic.
Clark almost flipped them the bird.
He went across the street and paged Dougie with the number of the payphone and then waited by the phone. The rain was getting worse. It was six o’clock by the time he realized he must have made a mistake. They were going to meet at Sanford’s place first, then head over to the site later, take a peek inside. It would be better without all the work going on around them. That made more sense. The rush-hour traffic, red and white light trails, was backed up East and West. Great. In this traffic it was going to take an hour’s drive to get to Sanford’s.
He had the Peter Pan in the trunk of the rental, that and a few other pieces. He’d spoken to Dougie on the phone. Dougie was pretty cool about it, especially when he explained to him that Lomax had some problem on his site. Soil or something. Dougie said he could probably give him $100K of his money back for the Peter Pan and the others. Then, once he had done his ‘big deal’ – he hadn’t told Dougie what it was – he could pay the $100K back into their store investment account so he still had $500K invested. That way he wouldn’t lose out. Clark had said to Lomax he’d have the money for him within a week. Lomax didn’t say it, but it was obvious some of his investors must be leaning on him, trying to shoehorn their money out of him. That meant they had an inkling that things were not going to pan out too good on that development. Maybe that’s why Gudsen had left the firm earlier that summer. Clark was glad he hadn’t invested in that scheme.
Clark couldn’t have Lomax working himself into a frenzy, panicking. He could ruin everything. Lomax was starting to become the meltdown type. A man whose reason could soon desert him. Hadn’t he married that cheerleader, barely out of high school? Want, want, want over reason.
The other day when he’d called to try and get some of his money urgently back off Clark, Lomax had told him he thought his ex-wife might have reported him to the Feds. Clark figured that was probably revenge, but whatever it was he didn’t want the Feds at his door. And if they were at Lomax’s then it would just be a matter of time before they were at his.
Almost an hour later, and a couple of wrong turns, Clark was over the other side of the canyon, outside Sanford’s. He still hadn’t gotten a page back from Dougie, but through the railings and shrubbery he could see lights on downstairs, so someone was home.
The pedestrian gate was closed, although the gate to the drive was wide open, but there were no cars in the drive and none out on the street except for Clark’s. Shit, don’t say they’d headed down to Hollywood just as he was coming here? He knew he should have paged them he was en route. He wasn’t driving back down to Hollywood, not in that traffic – he’d only miss them again. He’d ask the house-boy, Raoul, wasn’t that his name, if he could just wait inside, maybe use the phone and page them again. Besides, Sanford might even have one of those portable phones Raoul could reach him on. Clark would have loved one of those. It would have been so useful when he was standing out in the pouring rain.
Even over this side of the canyon it was raining. Hopefully the sun would be shining tomorrow. What’s the point of LA without sunshine? Clark didn’t want to wait in the car in case the security patrol came past. He wanted to keep as far below the radar as possible. He was a few feet from the house when he noticed light bleeding out onto the path from the slightly open front door. Clark didn’t want to just push it open, so he rang the bell. It sounded like a jackhammer. He listened. No one was coming. He pressed it again. When it had drilled through his head one more time, he heard a strange moaning. Deep moaning, coming from somewhere near the door. Clark pushed the door open a tad, peeked around it. Sanford was lying there in full tennis whites, feet towards the door, face down in a pool of blood that ran out from his head onto the white glossy floor.
‘Jesus, Sanford! Sanford?! It’s Cliff. Don’t move. Don’t move.’
Sanford tried to move.
‘Just stay still. You got a towel in here, man? I’m just gonna get a towel . . .’
Clark yanked open the zipper on Sanford’s sports bag, pulled out packs of tennis balls, half-empty bottles of Evian. At the bottom he could see some small tennis towels. He pulled them out and scooted over on the floor towards Sanford’s head.
‘Sanford, you got to stay awake.’
Clark pressed the towels, one after the other, onto Sanford’s skull until they were too soaked with blood to use.
‘You’re gonna need some stitches in that, man. We gotta get you to a hospital.’
‘No hospital.’
‘You need the hospital.’
‘No hospital. Dentist.’
‘Dentist! Sanford, you need to get checked out. You’re not making any sense.’
Sanford was pointing off into the living room. ‘Book.’
‘What book? I need to dial 911.’ Clark was already making his way over to the hall phone. ‘Did you trip, coming in? Hit your head on this?’
Clark looked at the marble hall table. There was no blood on it, no signs of it having moved, or anyone having struck it with their head. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something sparkle. He looked closer now. There was a short trail out of one of the doors off the corridor. A trail of glass.
He was over at Sanford again now, phone in hand, pulling the cable out as far as it would go, so he could call and sit next to him in case the dispatcher asked him any questions about his condition. ‘Did someone hit you with something, Sanford? A vase? A glass vase?’
Sanford shook his head, splattering blood everywhere. ‘Dentist.’
‘OK. OK. I’ll call them.’ Clark moved to the living room. On a side table, next to another phone, was a large address book. Maybe they were a relative or something. He flicked through to D, Dentist. Eric Davies. It was the top entry.
He went back out to Sanford, who was still clutching the towel to his head, but he was sat up now, cross-legged, like a Buddha in the blood. ‘I’m calling the dentist. And when I do, I’m gonna call 911 right after. See if they’ll send an ambulance, and maybe the cops.’ Clark thought he’d peel away if the cops were coming. Just leave Sanford there. ‘Where’s Raoul?’ Sanford still had blood running down his head and into his mouth. ‘Press harder.’ He pushed Sanford’s hand down harder against his skull. His face was getting paler. Jesus. Clark grabbed the box of tissues from the hall stand and started wiping Sanford’s face clean, see if there were more injuries under all the blood.
‘Raoul, day off. Thursdays. Off.’
‘What the hell happened here, Sanford?’
Sanford was staring off, following the trail of glass.
‘You’re lucky I came back this way. I was waiting for you and Dougie. Now I know why you weren’t there. Where’s Dougie? He’s not at the building site.’
‘Building site?’ Sanford’s body started shaking. First his shoulders, then his torso, so much so he started rocking back and forth. Clark thought he was crying with the shock and then a great laugh, accompanied by yelps of pain, rose up from deep inside Sanford’s Buddha
belly.
‘Stay still, buddy. We don’t want to make this worse.’
‘There is no building site.’
‘What do you mean? I was just there. I met two of the construction guys. There’s definitely a building site.’
‘Not ours.’
‘Sanford, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you should just keep quiet for a while.’
‘Not ours! They took my money. Took yours.’
‘Took our money? What do you mean? Who took our money?’
‘Dougie.’
‘Dougie?’
‘And Travis!’
‘Sanford, you should really rest.’
‘And they stole Alice.’
‘You’re just messed up, Sanford. Talking nonsense.’ Clark didn’t want him to talk any more, didn’t want to hear.
Clark’s gaze followed Sanford’s towards the door off the corridor. Broken glass crunched underfoot. Oh no.
Sanford pointed to his head, ‘Who do you think did this?’
Clark was getting a real sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. ‘Dougie and TJ? How do they even know one another enough to do something like this?’
‘Juvie.’
‘Juvie? Dougie and Travis?!’
‘Thirty years ago. Ow.’ Sanford pushed the towel into his head.
‘Thirty years? Why didn’t you warn me?’
‘I thought they’d gone straight.’
‘Jesus, Sanford. What the fuck were you thinking? Obviously, they’re pretty fucking far from straight!’
‘They’ve got Alice.’
‘Fuck Alice, Sanford! Just fuck Alice! They’ve got my money. All my money.’ Clark took a breath. Now his head was hurting. ‘Really, Sanford? Really? All of it?’
Sanford nodded, wincing. ‘All of it.’
‘You don’t have any? Nothing?’
Sanford shook his head. ‘They got mine too. Cash. A mil.’
‘Jesus. Where do you think they’ve gone?’
Sanford shrugged. ‘They took my cars. Both of them. That’s why they hit me. To get the keys for them and Alice.’ He stared at Clark out of glassy eyes, as the blood kept dripping down his head. He grabbed Clark with his other hand, pulled him in close. ‘They stole Alice!’ And then he started to sob, deep heartbroken sobs.
Clark sat staring at him, unable to believe what he was hearing. And then he thought back to the auction, TJ showing off his address on the outside of the catalogue, but he was an auction regular who should really have known better. Never kid a kidder. It wasn’t Clark who had conned TJ, it was Clark who had been conned. The way Dougie just appeared like that, from where? Clark had been watching the room. But they had obviously been watching him and Dougie must have been stood behind him in the auction room, or even on the payphone outside running up the price of first Clark’s lot and then TJ’s, the one Clark had bid eighty K on. Eighty K! It was too much of a coincidence that TJ got up and moved away like that at the end of bidding on Clark’s item. So theatrical. ‘Peter Pan, the little boy that never grew up, like all of us.’ Isn’t that what he’d said? The douchebag. Clark had been a fool, a total fucking fool. He had made himself a mark, even dog-earing the catalogue page and wandering around the auction house with it open on that page and gazing at the Peter Pan lot in its glass case just a few feet away from his own lot. The way Dougie had drawn him back to Sanford’s. Shown him how the other half live, high on the hog. Showed him Alice. That was Dougie’s prompting. It hadn’t been Sanford’s idea at all.
Want. Want. Want. Over reason.
Clark just wanted to scream at Sanford, smash him over the head with something else. How could he not have warned him? The only good thing about the sorry mess was that Sanford Winkleman, for whatever reason, perhaps loyalty to his crook of a brother, or maybe because he’d bought Alice with money he didn’t want the IRS to know about, whatever the reason, didn’t seem too keen on involving the authorities. Clark just had to ensure it stayed that way. But he had to get out of there and fast whilst keeping Sanford placated and totally on side. No one back in Abraham City or in the books world could ever hear about this. If they did, Clark was as good as finished. This was bad, but not unsalvageable: he would hear from the Faith in the next forty-eight hours to confirm their purchase of the Letter of Accession, and the collection of accompanying letters. They had agreed a tentative price of $2.2 mil. But if Clark got embroiled in the mess Dougie and TJ had left behind, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that news would travel back to the Faith and kill that deal dead. The Faith did not embrace scandal.
He would do what Sanford wanted.
He picked the address book back up out of the blood and tapped out the dentist’s number on the dial pad.
39
November 4th 1983, 8am
Abraham City
Last night, after Patricia’s little top-of-the-news story which featured select footage of Judge Laidlaw’s warrants being executed and a seemingly impromptu interview with lead Detective Sinclair, somehow, against the Captain’s yelling, Marty had managed to calm him down. Told him that he was working a plan, there’d be a result in twenty-four hours, or he’d die trying. The Captain looked a little disappointed the latter might not come true. Marty had told him that the past thirty-six hours without a bomb was pretty good news. And then the phone rang. The Governor. It had been almost a week since the first bomb. He’d want answers. The Captain, face still set on growl, shooed Marty out of the office and reached across to pick up the call. Marty was glad of the interruption. He wanted to go downstairs to the basement and work on putting all those pieces of paper together. Al was already down there, helping search the fingerprint records, get it done quicker. The fingerprint on the Lomax/Hartman IOU was their best lead yet in finding Hartman. If that didn’t work, Marty knew they’d have no choice but to contact the Feds to find its owner and once the Feds were involved they’d take over the entire case and give the Captain the chance to fire Marty out of the department.
The deli had repaired their window. Outside, a decorator was sketching out DAILY DELI onto the window, preparing for it to be filled in with paint. Clark watched as they entered, polite smiles. They must be curious. They had been respectful on the phone, but they knew detectives didn’t tend to call people at 7 am. Not unless it was urgent, or fatal. It was only just 8 am, but they were meticulously turned out. Gloves, tweeds and those long green waterproof overcoats you see in J. C. Penney marked ‘English Country Style’. It was almost as if they’d been fully dressed and ready when the phone rang, not long after dawn.
‘I’m Rod.’
‘And I’m Ron.’
They sat down. He remembered them from Mission when they were younger, maybe twenty-five or so . . . and he was just a teenager. They didn’t shake hands then either. But they smiled politely. Still did.
The Rooks each ordered a glass of hot milk and a slice of banana loaf. They told Marty how good it was. How they got it every morning on their way into work. They looked out the window over to their store. It was boarded up. ‘We have to leave it like that, for security.’
‘So many valuable things inside,’ said Ron.
‘It must be very difficult.’
Both men nodded sadly. ‘Our father’s store,’ said Rod.
‘And his father’s before him. Our family’s been here since before the city even had a name.’
‘You’ll have it back together soon.’
Rod clamped his hands together. Closed his eyes.
Ron leaned forward. ‘Your summons intrigued us, Detective. How can we help you?’
He had called them just as soon as he’d finished piecing it all together. He and Al had worked through the night, taking it in turns to get some shut-eye while the other one kept working on it.
‘Is it about the bombings?’ said Ron.
It was about the bombings but he didn’t want to tell them that just yet. He had a few questions to ask them first.
‘We gave
a statement to the detective who spoke with us, while we were waiting for the paramedics to tend to us,’ said Rod.
‘We weren’t badly hurt or anything, not like poor Mr Angel. We could wait a while.’
‘Hobbs?’
‘Yes, that was his name.’
‘We told him that we hadn’t seen anything that morning,’ said Ron.
‘Yes, thank you. I’ve read your witness statements.’
‘We hope it was of help?’ said Rod.
‘We’d really like to help catch whoever did this. They damaged so much of our stock, wrecked the store,’ said Ron.
‘What I’d like is your expert opinion on something,’ said Marty.
‘Is it a coin?’ said Ron.
Marty shook his head. Ron looked disappointed.
‘He’s coins. I’m documents. Manuscripts. Books. All of it,’ said Rod.
‘Not that I don’t know anything about them.’
‘No. It just makes it easier for people to tell us apart, if they know what we sell. We split the store right down the middle, to make it even easier.’
Marty thought it might be impossible to tell them apart, except for their speech patterns which were just a tiny bit off-rhythm from one another. But if they didn’t speak they were identical.
Marty pulled the large sheets of card up off the floor, from where they were propped between the table and the wall. He’d sat at a six-seater table, just so he could spread these out all over it. He could have asked the Rooks to come to the station, but he wanted to keep it under wraps for now. He knew the deli wouldn’t get busy until the other stores opened at nine.
