Seems like men did that to her. First his dad, then him, and Stan was no prize. But that was her life, and not Denny’s, and he didn’t have any control over her choices. He wished he did, not that he was any genius at making life decisions, but he wished her well in his heart and in his mind. He thought of her in the long dark of the night when he was the loneliest, and he vowed to send her a postcard. But then the sun came up and life became a completely different story that took up all his time and all his concentration, and he forgot about her until the next time he was awake in the night, listening to the darkness play music upon his guilt.
If he was smart, he’d go home, make his peace, get a good job, or maybe go back to school. Become a regular member of society.
He longed for it, but he couldn’t exactly imagine it. He didn’t even know how to start.
~ ~ ~
“Mr. Ashton, please, Milo Grimes calling.” Milo couldn’t even sit at his desk, he was so agitated. He stood behind it, having kicked his big black leather chair out of the way, and tapped the end of a pen on the desk. He wanted to drive the pen right through the desk, but he restrained himself, because the desk and the pen both had been very expensive.
“I’m afraid Mr. Ashton isn’t in the office today,” said the secretary on the other end. “May I take a message?”
“I’ve left messages,” Milo said, feeling the reins of restraint slip through his fingers. “I have deadlines. Where is he? Where can I call him?”
He heard her cover the phone with her hand and then background voices. Then another voice came on the line. “Mayor Grimes?”
“Yes.”
“This is Eva Long, Mr. Ashton’s personal assistant. Mr. Ashton had a heart attack yesterday afternoon. He’s in intensive care at the cardiac unit in the hospital in Sacramento.”
This was bad news indeed. “Who’s taking over his duties?”
“Well, nobody at the moment. We’re in a little bit of turmoil here until we can figure things out.”
“Well, figure this out,” Grimes said. “Ashton has papers to sign and the deadline is tomorrow. We have business to transact, dammit, business that won’t just sit still while he takes a little vacation in the hospital.” He paused, his blood pressure skyrocketing, but there was no response. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mr. Grimes,” Eva Long’s cool voice replied. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Ashton that you send your best wishes for his speedy recovery.”
Grimes slammed down the phone. “Jesus Christ,” he said. The city council was meeting the next morning at ten a.m., and he had several things to accomplish before then. First, he had to get Ashton’s signature on Oshiro’s papers, because in a weak moment, a rare weak moment, Milo had included Ashton in the deal that Golim Corp was putting together with Oshiro. Ashton would make a ton of money by doing nothing but cooperating. Apparently, he couldn’t even do that.
Then Milo could assure the city council that the property had been sold, the railroad line was going east, it was all a done deal, signed, sealed, delivered and legal, so nobody would feel obligated to go poking around. Otherwise, the damned railroad still had an option to renew, and if Ashton’s second in command took that option as a safe way out, as a way to buy a little time while somebody did a little investigating, Grimes would lose everything—everything—in one swell foop, because he’d already sold the property to Oshiro, who had a mall to build. Second, he had to get that dump cleaned up down by the tracks. Third, he had to get Steve Goddard to arrest somebody for the murder of Ashton’s flunky, which got Ashton’s attention and convinced him to get on board with Milo’s plan. And fourth, he had to do something about Susie Marie and her bedroom Olympics, although that didn’t necessarily need to be done before the council meeting.
But the sale had to be a done deal before the council meeting, because it was on the agenda.
He called his secretary and asked her to send some cubic zirconium earrings to both the escrow officer, who was finessing the simultaneous closings on the land, and the city manager’s wife, so the manager would keep his trap shut during the council meeting, and make sure the earrings got delivered before the council meeting. A little grease for the important wheels. “Gold settings,” he told her. “I want them to look like real diamonds.” Then he called to make certain that Fletcher was taking bulldozers down to York’s dump in the morning. The receptionist at his construction company came back within minutes saying the job order had been processed, and the appointment was confirmed. Six a.m.
That, at least, was a good thing. York and his cronies would be gone, and his creepy little rat hole would be nothing but freshly scraped soil and a dump truck full of trash. The city mothers and fathers would be loving all over him for that, and that was nothing but votes in his ballot box come November.
He turned his big chair around, sat in it and tried to think what he could do to fix the Susie Marie problem. She’d pushed it in his face until he could no longer avoid dealing with it, damn her.
~ ~ ~
“Got luggage?” the bus driver asked as Clover stepped down off the big bus. She shook her head no, the driver closed his door and pulled away. She pushed open the doors of the Bonita train station and stepped into its cool, cavernous interior. She’d never seen so much gray granite. She thought she could even hear her breath echo. One old woman wearing a red suit, with matching hat and white gloves sat on a burnished pew with a small suitcase at her feet. A teenaged boy slept on another bench, his head on his backpack and his sleeping bag covering him. There was an overflowing trash can next to the vending machines. Other than that, the place seemed deserted. Nobody was in line at the ticket counters, which had long black ropes to keep the crowds orderly.
She walked up to the front counter. “Hello?” she called, and a man came out from the back, wiping mustard from his mouth with a napkin. He was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, and very cute. She felt herself perk up a little bit. He wore his blondish hair cut short and he was blue eyed and clean-shaven and looked fit and muscular in his gray uniform with the red piping.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She looked down and twisted a little bit, unsure, suddenly, of how to proceed. “I have a little problem.”
He sat on a stool and leaned toward the glass. “How can I help you?”
She looked up and saw him smiling at her, and that made her blush. She felt giggly and childish, and was surprised at herself for feeling like that. But this guy was really cute. He looked like a surfer. Like a surfer aerobics instructor. “Day before yesterday a guy was killed on the Western Express,” she started.
He pulled back. “Yeah, I know,” he said.
“The police been here about it?”
“No, but they talked to railroad security and some executives in Sacramento. I heard about it.”
“Nobody came down here to investigate?”
He shook his head.
She noticed that his silver nametag said Mr. Warrenton. “Should I call you Mr. Warrenton?” and then a giggle escaped her before she could stop it.
He leaned back toward the glass again. “Depends. Are you buying a ticket?”
She shook her head no.
“Then you can call me Trey.”
“Tray?”
“Trey. As in the Third. I’m the third, you know, after the junior? Nicholas August Warrenton the Third.”
“Wow.”
“Trey.”
She smiled, then got back to business before she got herownself derailed. “Friends of mine are being accused of the murder,” she said, “even though everybody knows they were just standing by the tracks when the guy got pushed off the train. I was hoping to find out who killed that guy so they could stop getting hassled.”
He smiled. “Yeah, you and the cops and the FBI and everybody else.”
“Don’t you think it would be a good thing if you and I figured it out?”
“And how would that happen?”
“I do
n’t know,” she said. “Maybe if we looked at a passenger list . . .”
“Sorry,” he said, and pulled back again into a more professional posture. “That’s private information.”
“I know,” she said. “But what could it hurt for me to look at it? I’m nobody. I might recognize somebody’s name is all.”
“You think you might know the killer?”
“No. But I don’t know what else to do. York’ll die if he has to live in some old-folks’ home, and they’re going to evict him, the stupid mayor and his idiot Deputy Dawg. Denny’ll leave because he’s got no place else to go, and I don’t know what’ll happen to Sly, he’s not quite right in the head sometimes, you know, Vietnam.” Clover felt her face grow hot again, and a ball of emotion that she hadn’t allowed herself became lodged in the back of her throat.
“Whoa,” Trey said. “Hold on, now. This isn’t worth getting worked up over.”
“I’m just trying to save them,” she said, and she heard the little hic in her voice when she said it.
Trey looked beyond her at the empty lobby. “Come around back here,” he said, and nodded toward the baggage door, then got off his stool to go meet her.
Clover couldn’t believe her luck. She walked around and was there when she heard the electronic lock click open and he held the door for her. She slipped in, and into the back room where a half dozen suitcases and some freight boxes waited.
“Sit here,” he said, and she sat on a big rolling cart and waited for him.
A minute later he came back with a piece of computer printout paper and said, “You never saw this here, okay? You’d get me fired.”
“I promise,” she said, and accepted the paper. It was just a list of names and symbols she didn’t understand, so she concentrated on going down the list of names. Right in the middle was Norman Cheston. Norman Cheston? She knew a Norman Cheston. Clover had gone to high school with Sylvia Cheston, and she had an older brother named Norman. A gang banger. Now there was a possibility. She kept going down the list, but saw nothing else that was familiar.
She handed the paper back to the cute guy, and put her finger on the name Norman Cheston. “What about this guy?” she asked.
Trey looked where she was pointing. “Got on in Sacramento, got off here in Bonita,” he said. “It’s pretty common.”
“He lives in West Wheaton.”
“Train doesn’t stop in West Wheaton, so there’s a bus. Lots of people go to Sacramento for, you know, doctor appointments, or dentists or something like that, shopping, financial stuff, and they take the train.”
“Huh.”
“You live in West Wheaton?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You seeing anybody?”
“Sort of.”
Trey looked down. “My luck.”
“What are you doing here in Bonita?” she asked.
“I’m just here for a while, working on my seniority. This is a good gig, working for the railroad. I can transfer to anyplace, work a while, transfer again, and I get unlimited travel for myself on my days off or for my vacations, and there’s good benefits, too. Problem is, I’m stuck in Bonita for a year, and there’s pretty much nothing going on.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“You could come visit me again.”
She looked up at his shiny clean face with his white teeth and his clear blue eyes and a little something twanged in her heart. “Maybe I will.”
He stuck his head out the door, and looked both ways before he held it open. “Remember, this is our secret,” he said.
She nodded, and swore to herself later that as she passed by him, he’d sniffed her hair. She would indeed come back to visit him, but first, she had a busy afternoon ahead of her, and time was getting short.
~ ~ ~
Steve Goddard pulled his cruiser into the circular driveway of Milo and Susie Marie Grimes. He radioed to dispatch exactly where he was and that he didn’t expect to be there more than five minutes. He got out, leaving the engine running. If somebody stopped by, Milo Grimes, for example, he didn’t want anybody thinking he was boinking the mayor’s wife on the mayor’s own sheets. He was there for one short verbal exchange and that was it.
He pushed the doorbell and heard it chime throughout the cavernous house. Then, while he waited, he looked around at their manicured grounds, at the beautiful view of the hills and the sky. It was quite the location. Mr. Mayor didn’t score this kind of a place on mayoral salary, that’s for damn sure.
Susie Marie opened the door, wearing a white tennis dress. Her hair was done up in a ponytail and she looked ready to hit the court. On the floor in the foyer was a gym bag with a pink towel folded neatly on top of it.
“Hi, Steve,” she said brightly, batting her eyes in complete innocence. “What’s a big hunk of a guy doing coming over to visit me in the middle of the day?”
“You know exactly why I’m here, Susie Marie. You keep your insults to yourself.”
“Ahhh,” she said, nodding coyly. “Mrs. Sheriff got her feelings hurt, did she? Poor thing.”
“Leave her alone, Susie Marie. You and I both know what happened between us was over long before high-school graduation. And I’m not running for mayor. What the hell is that about?”
“Milo needs some . . . stimulation, let’s say,” Susie Marie said with a suggestive flip of her head. “I thought if you ran for mayor, it might be just the thing for him. Somebody had to suggest it sometime. I know thoughts like that don’t just float around in your pretty little head.”
“Fuck off, Susie Marie,” Steve said. “I mean it.”
“Now you’re hurting my feelings.”
He walked back to his cruiser, got in, put it in gear, and drove around the horseshoe drive. She was still standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb when he turned out onto the road. He could see her in his rearview mirror. He wasn’t quite sure, but he thought she blew him a kiss. What a skank. The thought of him throwing his magnificent Athena away for a tumble with Susie Marie was laughable. He picked up his radio microphone to let dispatch know that he had left the premises, and it hadn’t even been five minutes.
But just because she was skanky didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. She’d showed a little of her true self to Athena, and Steve knew he had to watch those two, Susie Marie and her weaselly little husband.
Sheesh. Maybe he should run for mayor. It would be an improvement, having a little honesty in the office.
~ ~ ~
“So what do you want me to do with this?” York asked. He held up the wrist rocket and little plastic bag full of steel peas.
“I don’t know,” Denny said. “Sly told me to get it for you.”
“First thing, I don’t engage in no conflict,” York said. “Second of all, I can’t see nothin’.”
Sly came down the path, feeling jumpy and anxious. He walked right up to Denny and before Denny could ask him about the slingshot for York, Sly said, “What the hell are you doing with two women when I don’t even have one? And what about York?”
This took Denny by surprise. “Hey, wait a minute. Those women have their own minds, and in fact, Brenda liked the looks of you.”
That stopped Sly cold. This was not news he expected to hear. He didn’t really expect anything from his confrontation with Denny—he just felt like confronting someone about something. “Really?” he said.
“Really. I think if you play it cool, she might come around to see you, you know, the way Clover comes to see me.”
This sounded suspicious to Sly, like Denny was bullshitting him, setting him up, putting him off, salving the wound, keeping the peace. Conspiring to put him off his guard. And yet, he couldn’t help but be intrigued.
“But, listen,” Denny went on, “York can’t use no wrist rocket tonight. You and I can, but what’s he going to do? He doesn’t want to fight.”
“I got an idea about that,” Sly said, and walked Denny over the pile of railroad ties, stepping on shreds
of yellow plastic crime-scene tape that had been left, and they sat down together, by where the dead guy used to be, and Sly told Denny his new idea, and what Denny had to do to make it happen.
Denny liked it, and once they had their plan thoroughly thrashed out, they told York, who agreed. Then Denny went five-finger shopping to score their one last piece of warfare equipment. This, Denny thought, was going to be a night to remember.
“We’re going to kick some governmental ass,” Sly told York as Denny scampered up the path.
This will all be over soon, York thought. The moon will go back to a normal size, I’ll be dead and that’ll be good.
~ ~ ~
Golim Corporation, as Clover discovered at City Hall, had a post-office box in West Wheaton, and was owned by a dozen other corporations. They all had California addresses, but Clover had never heard of any of them. Wait. Fletcher Corporation. Was that the same Fletcher Corporation that picked up the trash every Monday morning and handled the little blue recycling bins? They had to be local.
She checked the address on record, and sure enough. West Wheaton. So Fletcher was part of Golim Corp. Who owned Fletcher?
She went back to the records desk and asked a few more questions of the clerk, and took another big black tome to the reading table.
Closed corporation, no information of ownership on record. But Milo Grimes was the corporate treasurer. Well, hell, that made more sense than anything else she’d come across all day.
So Milo Grimes probably owned Fletcher, and Fletcher was part owner in Golim Corp. For all Clover knew, Milo Grimes owned Golim Corp. There was some sort of notation in the ownership records, and it looked as if something were incomplete.
This was all too complicated. Clover could give this information to Steve Goddard, but for now, maybe she ought to concentrate on solving the murder.
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