Starvation Mountain

by Robert Gilberg

  “That, or Durango would be great. Durango has a better strip that handles regional, commercial jets. But Farmington is right on your route, so we can plan on that and use Durango as a backup if the weather’s bad.”

  “Yeah, I know. I used to ski at Purgatory in my wilder days,” Jim said. “But the ruins and the shamans will be around Farmington and Aztec. We should do it near there.”

  The trip and wedding details were planned, re-planned, re-planned again, and then lost in the descending evening mist. But the four of them now had an adventure to share.

  Fourteen - Daggett

  “Hi Jim. Here’s Daggett’s phone number. He lives down in Baja these days, at Rosarito.”

  “Rosarito! Why is he down there?”

  “Says his money goes three times farther. And he likes the people.”

  “Doesn’t he think it’s dangerous, with all the drug activity?”

  “Says he knows how to handle it. He said, ‘Been there, done that. Don’t worry about me.’”

  “I want to believe him, but, man—it’s risky.”

  “Yeah, I know. Call him. He said he’s looking forward to talking to you after all these years.”

  “I will. Thanks, Steve. I’ll let you know more about the trip as soon as Penny and I have the details worked out.”

  “Hi, Paul. It’s Jim Schmidt. Long time, old friend!”

  “No kidding. Hey, I hear you’re getting married. Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, I guess even old guys get lucky now and then.”

  “You’re not old, and it wasn’t luck. You finally met the right one.”

  “Karma. It’s all about karma. But, what can you tell me about Mack Allen? I’m worried Penny has some bad people after her. Do you know anything about him, or what’s going on?”

  “Only a little. But, there may be multiple things happening.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let’s start with that cabin and avocado grove on Starvation Mountain. It has a history you and Penny need to know about. It was the scene of a murder that was never solved a long time ago. A woman who’d been shot was found in the cabin after a neighbor smelled something dead and called the sheriff. This was in the summer of 2005. The case was never solved, and the victim was never identified. The place’s ownership was hidden by a bunch of shell companies scattered around various places in the Caribbean. Whoever owned it stopped paying the taxes after a few years, and it sold in a county auction. Mack’s dad bought it, but died soon after and the property went to Mack, along with a warehouse up in Ramona. There were traces of marijuana all over the place at the time of the murder, but no inventory; it had been cleaned out. The sheriff’s detectives figured it was a gang-related deal and kept their ears and eyes open for any leads, but never got to first base with it. There’s so damn much drug stuff going on in East County, you can’t keep track of it all. Even though they’ve kept an eye on the place for years, they don’t have anything new.

  “The drug story doesn’t surprise me. I smelled weed everywhere. But, I thought it smelled like weed smoke, not raw weed.”

  “So, someone’s been tokin’ up there; not surprising. But it could be more than that, too, considering that place’s history. What about Penny?”

  “I asked her, and she said she hadn’t had a hit in weeks. I believe her. She’s a straight shooter, Paul.”

  “Probably Mack, then. Or some of Mack’s friends. He has his own story you should know about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Okay. He’s in jail on attempted murder. At least that’s the charge. I hear they amped up the charge to try to roll him into talking about some other people. They think that even though he’s a small player in drug circles, he knows a lot. And that’s why the prosecutor set bail so high; to keep him in so they can work him. They’ve got a little nickel and dime stuff on him, too, to help hold him.”

  “What’s the attempted murder about?”

  “He assaulted a guy down in the Gaslamp district and beat the hell out of him. Security cameras caught it and he was easily identified. They have a simple case to win an assault with intent to do grievous harm charge, but they’re hitting him with a plausible attempted murder charge to try getting something out of him. But that’s a stretch.”

  “What do they think he knows?”

  “He’s been suspected of being a mid-level drug dealer for quite a while, but they’ve never been able to pin anything on him. The guy he beat up was a member of a well-known syndicate that operates both in Baja and our side of the border. There had to be a drug-connected thing going on in that fight, but they don’t know what it is: deal gone bad, money due, a territory thing, maybe other.”

  “Do you think this ties into the raid on the cabin when Penny and I were on a cycle trip that weekend?”

  “Could be. Question is: Were they raiding the cabin to find something of Mack’s and unrelated to Penny, or did it have something to do with Penny?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we want to know. Look, I believe she’s straight and not involved in any of Mack’s doings. But I’m worried they don’t know that and think she’s got something they want.”

  “Keep her hidden, Jim. They don’t know about you, right? So, you should do like you’ve been doing; stay at your place and lay low. Or, take a trip? Get married and go on a long honeymoon!”

  “We’re going to do that, as soon as next week.”

  “Good. Where are you going? Can I reach you if I get more information?”

  “We’re riding our bikes on the ‘Easy Rider’ route, you know, old 66 and new 40; California to wherever we decide to stop; not sure we’ll go all the way to New Orleans since Penny hasn’t been riding long distances for years. We’re going to get married along the way somewhere that we haven’t figured out yet.”

  “How cool is that? I love it, Jim. That’s keeping right with my image of you.”

  “So look, the only way you can get in touch will be by my cell phone.”

  Daggett scribbled the number on a piece of scrap paper as Jim spoke the numbers into the phone.

  “Okay, take care of yourselves,” he said, “and kiss the bride for me. Stay in touch, I’ll keep nosing around on this. I’ve still got good connections at SDPD and the prosecutor’s office.”

  Fifteen - Mojave

  Mid-April 2013.

  “Okay, hon. I have a full-size Dodge van with air, captain’s chairs, and deluxe interior to pick up tomorrow morning. It has plenty of tie-down points to rope the bikes to, and ramps to get the bikes up into the back.”

  “Great! I can’t wait to make this trip. Just the two of us and the open road. Penny smiled and sang: “Get your motor running, head out on the highway . . . .”

  Jim picked it up from where Penny had left it, “Lookin’ for adventure, and whatever comes our way . . . . I’d never claim we were born to be wild, but, Like a true nature’s child, works for me,” Jim sang in his one-note, monotone.

  “Me too. But, on the mundane side, do you have us set up for a motel and van rental return in Needles?”

  “Done. We leave the day after tomorrow, bright and early.”

  They were somewhere in the Mojave Desert east of Barstow, cruising along Interstate 40. Her feet on the dash, Penny asked Jim, “Will you tell me about your life in northern California?”

  “That’s not a short story, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.”

  “We’ve got lots of time. What? Two or three hours, yet?”

  “Yeah, probably. Why do you want to hear about it?”

  “Because I want to understand the person sitting next to me who I’m about to marry. And you said you’d tell me about it at the right time.”

  “I guess it’s as good of a time as any. But the story doesn’t start there. It started in Indiana in 1955.”

  “So, start there, if you want.”

  “Just another Midwest farm-town kid story. Watching the world from long distance through binoculars. Everything that was happe
ning was happening a long way off.”

  “That last part is true for most people. So why did you want to start there? What do you remember most? What was happening right around you?”

  “Just like I said. I was watching everything from a long way off, even though most of it was right around me, in my own home town.”

  “What does that mean? What about your friends and family?”

  “I always felt like I was an outsider there. I wasn’t close to anyone.”

  “No close friends? No girlfriends?”

  “I wasn’t interested in their interests, and vice versa. And I was too shy to reach out and try bringing them into my world.”

  “Okay, oh weird one. What were your interests?”

  “Science stuff. Building radios. Doing stuff with ham radios.”

  “Aha!” Penny laughed. “I get the picture: science whiz-kid sitting in his room late at night, twirling radio dials and trying to reach someone in Australia or New Zealand, or some other far off place. Master of the ether . . . .”

  “Yeah, that’s the picture. I was a tech-geek before there were tech-geeks.”

  “Ok, but I still don’t get why you wanted to start your story there. It’s not very informative.”

  “Because that’s what took me into the Marines. They were looking for people with radio and electronics skills. The Marines brought me out here, and from there I went to UCSD to get my Ph.D. in computer science—it was called computer engineering then—and after graduation I moved up to Silicon Valley.”

  “Okay, so that’s where I wanted to start fifteen minutes ago. Go on, oh techy one.”

  “I will. When I was up there, I was still, maybe even more so, a tech-geek with poor social skills.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I didn’t date anyone or have a girlfriend—all the way through college and into the first years of my career.”

  “I can’t believe that. You’re a pretty normal guy as far as I can tell.”

  “It took years—and a special girl. After I moved up there, nothing changed. I worked long hours—which was a way to deny my problem, rather than a reason for my problem—and spent my spare time with other engineers. Some of them were bikers, and that got me into motorcycling.”

  More interested now, Penny asked, “What finally changed things for you?”

  “I met a girl named Annie. Our chemistry just turned out to be right for each other, we could talk and I wasn’t clumsy or embarrassed with her. It might have been because she had been a software engineering student at Stanford and we had things in common to talk about.”

  “An engineer to engineer thing: the romance of electrons and math and stuff? Where did she work?”

  Laughing, Jim said, “You would say that. But, this is the part that will sound hard to believe for you. I met her where she was working in a restaurant up in the Santa Cruz mountains. The place was famous for its fantastic view of the San Francisco Peninsula and most of the bay through the huge window behind the bar. It was a great place to do a bike ride for happy hour or dinner.”

  “She was a waitress? This girl with an engineering degree from Stanford?”

  “No, a bartender.”

  “Okay, waitress or bartender, what’s the difference? A Stanford grad!”

  “She never worked using her degree.”

  “That’s strange. Why?”

  “Money. She could make more money doing what she’d been doing to pay her way through college. . . .”

  Penny cut him off, saying, “You’re not going to tell me she was—”

  Jim cut Penny off, saying, “Dancing—up in North Beach.”

  “A stripper?”

  “Yes, a stripper. She didn’t do the full nudity thing, though.”

  “That’s what they all say. Pardon my skepticism, but I don’t think leaving a G-string on would get it done in those joints.”

  “She said she did well enough that she didn’t have to go all the way. She claimed she knew how to tantalize men so they were throwing big bills at her while she still had her bottom on. And she never seemed to be hurting for money when I knew her after she stopped dancing; she always had nice clothes and a new car.”

  “For that to be true, she must have been a knock-out.”

  “She was pretty, but I don’t think that was it. I never saw her act, mind you, since that was before I knew her. I always guessed it was more because of her personality. She could charm the skin off a snake, and that’s the thing that got her the job in marketing later on, after her time at the Bella Vista as a bartender.”

  “So, she eventually got into a real profession, then?”

  “Yes, and that’s what led to our falling out, years later.”

  “But hold off on that. I want to know more about her before that happened. Look, I don’t want to be a skeptic, but girls like that usually have a money-honey, or do a little moonlighting for extra bucks.”

  “Not Annie. She was a straight arrow. I never saw or had a reason to suspect she’d done anything like that. There were no mysterious hushed phone calls, or unexplained disappearances. She told me that when she first started dancing, she drew a line where things stopped. Too many girls, some of them other Stanford girls she knew, stepped over that line and never came back. It was a road of no return.”

  “Hard to believe, but more power to her for staying true to herself.”

  “As I said, I didn’t know her in those days. But she didn’t hide it. In fact, she wanted me to know all about it. She didn’t have to tell me, but she wanted to. We wanted everything to be open between us.”

  “Okay, this is a good time for you to tell me about your time with her—if you want to. But you don’t have to, Jim, if it’s going to be painful.”

  “Her full name was Barbara Anne Parsons. But she wanted to be called Anne, or Annie, because she hated how people—mostly guys—would start singing that Beach Boys song when they found out her full name. Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann, you know? She hated Beach Boys songs—California bubble gum rock she called it—and she especially hated that song: take my hand, Barbara Ann . . . and ‘Little Surfer Girl,’ and ‘Little Deuce Coupe,’ and all that. She even left the stage when one of the joints played ‘Barbara Ann’ after the bar’s DJ found out her full name. She moved to another joint after that.”

  “A statement of her principles? Sorry, I didn’t mean to be cynical, I just couldn’t resist.”

  “I’ll admit I thought the same thing when she first told me the story. But she was so serious about it, I realized she meant it. She was as serious about it as that line she wouldn’t cross. She didn’t want to be anyone’s joke.”

  There was a short, awkward silence, Penny looking pensively out her side window before she turned back to look at Jim, “I apologize, Jim. You had a long and deep relationship with her, and I respect that. I’m not going to make any more wisecracks.” She turned back to the window, seeing nothing other than empty desert racing by in a blur. Why did I do that?

  “Okay, I accept that. I met her after she’d left that world one day when I’d ridden alone up to the Bella Vista on a beautiful fall evening with a full moon. I was looking for a quiet meal and the view out of that window, by myself at the bar. It was an unusually quiet night there. No customers at the bar, and only a few diners in the restaurant. Annie was the only one working in the bar, and had her back to the door, looking at that view under the moon. I walked in, pulling my jacket off and trying to hold my helmet at the same time. I dropped the helmet onto the floor, and it made loud crashing noises as it bounced around off table and chair legs. She whirled around to see what the racket was, saw me, and said, ‘That you, Grace?’ Then she cracked up, and I cracked up, and after we stopped laughing, she asked, ‘Anyone ever tell you that you look like Kris Kristofferson?’”

  “So, she’s the one?”

  “Yes, the first to say that. You’re the second.”

  Feigning worry, Penny said, “So she’s the act I’m
going to follow? And now I’m going to be worrying about competing with her talents from her dancing days, too! Can I compete?”

  “Oh, stop putting me on. You know there’s no reason to think like that.”

  “But those girls know all those moves . . . .”

  “I’m sure we were very unremarkable.”

  “I was thinking you’d have some new things to show me.”

  Jim’s silence made Penny uncomfortable, realizing she’d carried it too far. She removed her sunglasses, “I’m sorry for sidetracking your story, it was thoughtless of me to say that. I’ll shut up and just listen.”

  “Look, I’m okay talking about it with you. It was a long time ago, and it’s best to get all the questions between us answered now.”

  “Okay, please go on. I want to hear more.”

  “She recommended the Bella Vista Abalone with red sauce that night. It was the specialty dish that made the place famous. That started a routine between us that went on for several weeks. I went up every Tuesday evening and had the abalone with red sauce at the bar. She always waited on me, no matter how many people were there. We both could feel a natural, easy warmth between us. On one of those evenings she said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but I liked you the minute I turned around and saw your face that first night.’ After that, I took her motorcycle riding around the Santa Cruz Mountains every Sunday morning, and then we’d spend the rest of the day together. She was commuting up to the restaurant from her apartment in Sunnyvale and hated it. I had been renting a house in the hills behind Los Gatos and wasn’t enjoying the commute down 17 either. So, I proposed that I’d rent a house I’d found in nearby Boulder Creek and we’d live together. No commitments, no splitting rent and house expenses; we’d just live together as long as it worked for both of us. Her commute to work would be a piece of cake, and mine wouldn’t be any better, or worse.”

  “That was a pretty good offer. Did she accept?”