Time Control

by Rex Bolt

  “Oh my God,” Pike said. “ … Anyways, this lab person, how shall we handle it, do you think?”

  “Good question. I tend the favor the direct approach, until proven otherwise.”

  “Fine,” Pike said. “Hopefully it won’t take long, and I can get a move on back home. My girlfriend is curious.”

  “I thought she knew.”

  “Naw, this is a new one. Not going to make the mistake of telling her too. Or anyone else, hopefully.” He was thinking about Dani, but didn’t bring that up.

  Mitch said the guy lived on Chelsea Avenue, a block off Wilshire Boulevard, not too far from UCLA. They took the coastal route from Manhattan Beach, up through El Segundo and Marina del Rey.

  It took them a half hour to get there. “Okay now let me do the talking,” Mitch said.

  Pike said, “Fine. Provided we’ve got the right guy, and he’s home, and he doesn’t slam the door in our face.”

  “Yeah, a lot of ifs,” Mitch said, looking a little nervous as they got out of the car and crossed the street.

  It was a fourplex, you went into a lobby that didn’t require a key and then your found your apartment. They didn’t see a bell for A-2, so Mitch knocked.

  A little girl opened the door, about eight years old, which didn’t seem responsible, but a woman was right behind her. “Can I help you?” she said, pleasant.

  “Uh, yes please, and I hope I have the right address … I was looking for Wayne?”

  Wayne appeared, in sweats and slippers, holding a coffee mug. He recognized Mitch, Pike could tell, but he pretended not to.

  “Yes, Wayne,” Mitch said. “Mitch Corrigan? From the other day?”

  Wayne kept the pretense up for a moment and then said, “Oh yes, I believe I remember you … A customer, correct?”

  “Yep,” Mitch said.

  “It gets quite hectic at times, which I’m sure you can imagine,” Wayne said. “At any rate, is there something I can do for you?”

  Mitch said, “There is actually … We have some more information on that sample … We’d be glad to share it with you, if you can spare a few minutes.”

  Pike was hoping Wayne wouldn’t invite them in, though that’s where Mitch seemed to be going with it.

  Wayne deliberated a moment and said, “Well, I suppose, if you feel this is so vital … Please give me a second.” He closed the door, and Pike figured he was changing and getting ready to come outside, that he didn’t want his family involved in this, and Wayne did just that.

  “We could take a ride, I can show you where I’m going with this,” Mitch said.

  Wayne said, “How about a walk?”

  Mitch said that would work also, and the three of them went to the end of the block and turned left.

  “This is my nephew by the way,” Mitch said to Wayne. Pike smiled and shook hands with Wayne, going easy on him but still making sure he screwed up a finger or two.

  Pike said it was good to meet him.

  Wayne looked alarmed, and in quite a bit of pain, no doubt about that. Mitch said, “You okay?”

  Nothing from Wayne. “See here’s the thing,” Mitch said. “What happened to that filling?”

  Pike took a step closer to Wayne. “I had nothing to do with that, I swear on a stack of Bibles,” Wayne said. “All’s I did, I reported it to the head office … which we’re required to do … when something doesn’t add up.”

  Mitch said, “And then they swooped in, middle of the night, and stole it … When you came to work in the morning the filling was AWOL.”

  “Yes,” Wayne insisted, “that’s pretty close to what really did happen!”

  “You know what?” Mitch said. “You’re a piss-poor liar.”

  “What was in it?” Pike said.

  “Excuse me?” Wayne said.

  “Well you got mercury, silver … what else … tin, and copper, if I remember it right,” Pike said. “Under normal circumstances.”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Wayne said. “And we determined those elements to be present.”

  “What else was present,” Mitch said. “According to your very professional … determination?”

  “That was the spectrum,” Wayne said.

  Pike grabbed Wayne by the right earlobe. Not much there in the way of nerve endings, but Pike figured he could pull Wayne’s ear off if he gave it some downward effort. Of course then you’d have a mess, and the police sooner or later.

  The idea, Pike was deciding on the fly, was to make Wayne think he might pull his ear off.

  “All right, please now!” Wayne said. It hadn’t taken long, and Pike let go.

  “So you had something to add?” Mitch said.

  Wayne was sweating quite profusely, and holding his right hand with his left. “There was something we couldn’t identify,” Wayne said, very quietly now.

  Mitch and Pike let that one settle. It was what they both suspected, even Pike by now. But there was something about hearing it this way, having it verified, that was a heavy load to process.

  After a minute Mitch said to Wayne, “Enjoy your day. And when you find it, I’ll be waiting to get it back.”

  They watched Wayne kind of stagger down the block and turn the corner out of sight.

  “Anyhow,” Mitch said, “you hungry again yet? There’s a Chinese place on Wilshire that I always like.”

  “You want to know the truth,” Pike said, “yeah, I’m starved out of my mind.”

  Chapter 36 Not A Muscle

  Driving home, Pike was thinking it didn’t matter really, did it (?), whether Mitch ever got the filling back, or to what to extent the guy may be lying.

  Of course it mattered if there was actually something (Pike hated to admit it but was having trouble avoiding the real possibility now) that was unworldly in the god dang thing.

  But the fact that Wayne admitted there was something in there they couldn’t identify … That was a nugget you had to deal with, whether you had the filling back or not.

  Also, if Wayne never produced the filling, Mitch would have to figure something out with the Texas guy, and if he had to give him more money to settle things Pike would try to pay that, if he could. He could scramble and try to work more Sundays for Mac’s Dad.

  The main thing now, if his dentist and Dani’s and probably Reggie Riley’s brother’s one … and the Texas’s guy’s and the Florida and Utah people’s … if all those dentists stuck the same shit in each of their mouths, where did it come from?

  Pike stopped for gas and called Mitch. “I’m with you,” Mitch said. “And I’m ahead of you … I’m working on it, where dental offices get their amalgam … Is there one standard source, a hundred sources—what?”

  “And to take it a step further,” Pike said, “maybe, was the Texas person’s source the same as my source … in Albuquerque, I mean.”

  “You’re preaching to the converted,” Mitch said. “Which I appreciate. But go back to football and school and girlfriends. You have enough on your menu … I got this.”

  Mitch was right, but when Pike got home he texted Dani. He felt like catching her up, plus it was an excuse to say hello. She didn’t answer or get back to him the rest of the night, at least not by 10 when Pike hit the sack. He was more than shot from the day’s festivities, and barely moved a muscle for nine hours.

  Chapter 37 Acceptance

  Monday Pike was talking to Marty Clarke at lunch in the main quad when his phone rang and it was Dani.

  “You caught me off guard,” he said. “How are you?” Pike turned his back on Clarke and waved him away, trying to show he needed privacy.

  “I have a 20-minute,” Dani said, “and I’m returning your message.”

  “Yeah … well I appreciate that … I need to fill you in on something … it’s private, now’s not the best time.”

  “That’d be fine,” Dani said. “Please don’t think I forgot about you last night.”

  “No big d
eal at all. I was wiped out anyway, so I went to sleep.”

  “The reason,” she said, “is I’m dating someone. I’m very excited.”

  “Oh no,” Pike said.

  “I know what you’re thinking … please don’t go there?”

  “I won’t … this other thing, you’ll want to hear it about it I think.”

  “Fine. Call me tonight. The best time’s around 9:30.”

  “I will. I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Me too. Have a good rest of the day … I miss you, by the way.”

  “I miss you too,” he said, and got off.

  “That sounded interesting,” a girl’s voice said, from off to the right. It was Audrey, unfortunately.

  Marty Clarke had left, and Audrey had shown up now, giving him space, and patiently waiting while he finished his call. Things would have been better if he knew she was there.

  Pike fumbled around, starting to talk and then stopping. Finally he just said, “That wasn’t what you think. Not even close.”

  The bell rang, and Audrey was in no hurry to get inside, nor was Pike.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “The funny thing is, I believe you … or at least I wish to believe you.” Her voice went up high on the second you, Pike thinking that’s all the poor girl needs right now.

  He said, “This is an older woman … sort of a long-lost cousin … She’s going through some stuff, it’s hard to explain.”

  “I see … How old exactly,” Audrey said, “if I’m not prying too deeply?”

  “26.” Pike remembered it from the newspaper. There was no point in lying about it.

  Audrey was giving it some thought. “Was this … cousin-person, part of your recruiting trip? Where you flew out to the college and such?’

  “Sort of,” Pike said. He wanted to disappear. If he could tell her the whole thing … not an option though.

  “I did wonder a bit, why you didn’t return my text.”

  It took Pike a second to place this, and then he remembered he never got back to her from the Saturday football game out there. He was so focused on Dani that he forgot. Maybe that was part of why she’d picked up again with Hannamker when he got back from Utah.

  These things didn’t take much to go sideways. It was all about communication, obviously. And unfortunately.

  “That was my fault,” Pike tried, “not answering you from out there … There was no excuse for that, but can you please accept that this person had nothing to do with it?’

  To his shock, Audrey smiled and said, “I accept,” and she put her arms around his back and locked her hands.

  Pike looked down at her and ran his fingers through her hair.

  “Jeez, what a relief,” he said. “And pretty amazing actually. I wouldn’t have accepted it, that’s for sure.”

  Audrey shot him a slightly mischievous look, but she was still smiling, and they kissed each other goodbye and hustled to class.

  Chapter 38 Something Funky

  That night at dinner there was something funky going on between his mom and his dad. Bo and Jackie were goofing around like usual, grabbing each other’s food and popping up and down for no reason, and playing a version of tag right in the middle of dinner.They had all this energy they needed to burn. Pike remembered those days, but was glad he’d slowed down, and was acting more like a man now. At least some of the time.

  But the thing here was, his parents were ignoring his brother and sister’s shenanigans, which was not their typical MO. They seemed detached tonight, not upset exactly, more like doped up. Reacting slow, kind of going through the motions.

  For an instant Pike was sure they’d found out his secret, and were dealing with it in a disbelieving fashion. But common sense said that wasn’t realistic. No, that wasn’t it.

  Much as he hated to even think about it, he wondered if their marriage was okay … Maybe there were other signs lately … he’d been so dang wrapped up in himself that he wouldn’t have noticed if there were.

  There was that one thing his dad said, that didn’t mean anything at the time, at least on the surface … But could there have been something more to it? … When his parents were going to the barbeque, and his dad seemed to be preaching to him just a bit, to enjoy yourself now because there’s not much to do in this town.

  Pike finished up pretty quick and went upstairs to his room. He needed one more thing on his ‘menu’, as Mitch called it, like he needed a hole in the head. Hopefully his mind was running away from him and was imagining the whole scenario downstairs.

  Mitch called around 9:15. Pike hoped he wouldn’t be long-winded because he didn’t want to screw up getting to Dani at 9:30.

  “I been working this business all day,” Mitch said. “We got somewhere.”

  “You didn’t go surfing this morning even?” Pike said.

  “We got a comedian. Okay, all day after I got out of the ocean … that work?”

  Pike said it did, wanting to hear something earth-shattering from Mitch, but at the same time not sure he needed to know any more

  “Took quite an effort to narrow it down,” Mitch said. “So many variables.”

  Pike was looking at the time. “If you could please bypass the details, and give me the bottom line,” he said.

  “It was fascinating actually,” Mitch said. “I started to feel like a detective … It didn’t hurt that I used some of the … strong arm tactics … you employed on Wayne.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pike said.

  “Nothing physical of course, all transacted on the phone, and online. Bottom line, we kept it simple, compared your filling with the Texas one.”

  “Come on please,” Pike said.

  “Two different manufacturers, it turns out. And kind of funny, the Texas supply company is actually in New Mexico, Las Cruces.”

  “Oh my God, you’re going to turn this into a two-hour lecture.”

  “Fine … so your Albuquerque dentist got their amalgam from a company in Louisiana … Now you remember what the composition is.”

  “I’m going to have to go,” Pike said.

  “Okay hold on. Just bear with me here … We got mercury, copper, silver and tin … Like I said, a full day’s work, not taking no for an answer, waiting on hold for the key people.”

  Pike again asked if he could please speed it up.

  “So finally, the Louisiana outfit, they fax me a bunch of paperwork. And it’s all there, in the fine print … The New Mexico company was a lot rougher. I had to pull out my hole card, which was threaten to expose them for hiding something, if they didn’t break it down for me … Bottom-bottom line? Only the silver came from the same source.”

  “Oh,” Pike said.

  “Yep … The mercury was Japan and China, the copper, one was Peru, the other Montana. And the tin, one was from Tasmania, which is an island off Australia, and the other mine, not sure which is which but it doesn’t matter, is in Canada.”

  “So the silver, you say?” Pike said, trying to keep Mitch focused. He’d given up on calling Dani tonight.

  “Yes, now we’re down to it … The specific silver—that both manufacturers used to produce their amalgam—it came from a mine in the southestern part of the state. New Mexico … Specifically a little town called Hillsdale.”

  Pike tried to absorb what all this meant, if anything.

  “Are you there?” Mitch said. “Still with me?”

  “Sort of … let me jump around with a couple questions. How come, with probably thousands of people getting this same shit in their cavities, from these same two factories or whatever—we only got a few like me?”

  “What was your other question?”

  “Only that, yeah, so what? … You’re saying there’s some special shit in that silver then?”

  “Believe me,” Mitch said, “I’m on it. That’s next … On your first concern, yes, there may absolutely be other unique similarities to the test group
.”

  “Test group now,” Pike said.

  Mitch said, “What’s your blood type?”

  Pike said he didn’t know and had to go.

  He didn’t like to be late when he told someone he’d do something but he tried Dani anyway.

  “Oh, hi there,” she said. Uh-oh, not the best greeting.

  Pike said, “Everything’s running together on me. But there have been a few developments.”

  “Well, yes, I appreciate your thinking of me in that regard,” she said, a little too politely.

  “The hell is that?” It was a man’s voice in the background, gruff, and slightly muffled.

  “I need to go,” Dani said. “And I thank you for your time sir.”

  Pike sat there picturing how it might play out. No matter how he tossed it around, it didn’t end well. Not for Dani, and certainly not for the latest Mr. Gruff.

  He thought of something that Mrs. Hopper, the sophomore English teacher he liked, would say, when they discussed themes in books. Which Pike was learning you could apply to a whole lot more, too. The expression his teacher used was “Cultivate your own garden”.

  I mean what else could you do?

  Chapter 39 Poking Around

  They were getting ready to play Ramsey Tech in the sectional semifinal. Guys were fired up at practice Tuesday and a few skirmishes broke out, which Coach didn’t try to stop. He liked the players on edge, didn’t care for them being best friends with each other with the most important game of the season on the line. He thought some healthy brawling built character, was how he put it, though Pike thought that was a bunch of crap.

  Part of the reason for the excitement was the Sectionals were doing something different this year. They were putting the semis of Hamilton’s division alongside the semis of the Central Coast Section, which would run all day Saturday at Bulldog Stadium, on the campus of Fresno State University.

  So their little team from little Beacon would be playing in a Division 1 college building that seated 40,000.

  There’d been more news about Mr. Foxe and Mr. Milburn. A reporter for a Bay Area newspaper had been in town poking around, and then now there’s this big article he writes on the whole situation that has everyone talking.