“One hundred.”
“Jasmine, you sure put a dent in a thousand-dollar bill!” He handed her the whole roll of $250, which left him with the $15 that had been in his wallet before the bank run. She flipped through the bills, nodding, then slid them into her clutch. “Come on. I hope he’s still at the shop. It’s right around the block.”
“Better be a short block, Ted. These shoes aren’t rated for actual walking.”
Ted could see the red, white, and blue neon sign flashing down Oak Street. Cade’s Bel Air, sleek and gleaming, stood near the entrance of Pride Auto Repair. He took her hand and hurried her across the parking lot. At the front door window he cupped his hands and looked in. Through the open double doors of the repair bay he saw Cade sitting alone on the old paisley sofa, reading from a tablet of some kind open on his lap, the lamp casting a cone of light down onto him. Ted remembered Jed and Ellen Magnus. The front door was unlocked and he held it open for Jasmine to enter.
“Cade? Ted here! I’d like you to meet someone.”
There was a short silence. Then, “All right, Ted. Be right there.”
Cade came through the double doors. “Hello,” he said. But his tired-looking eyes went to Jasmine and stayed there. “I’m Cade.”
“Jasmine.”
“Jasmine’s my companion tonight.”
“You’re a lucky man,” said Cade.
Ted looked at her proudly, saw her smile at Cade in a way that said she’d heard that line several hundred thousand times. “We just had a real good dinner at the Café des Artistes. Except Mayor Anders was there and she mistook me for Patrick again. Made another one of her scenes.” Ted winked at Cade.
“Again.”
“You’d think after twenty-six years in this town they could tell us apart.”
“You would. Jasmine, can I get you something to drink?”
“Just some water would be nice.”
Cade went back into the bay. Ted told Jasmine that this place had been here since he was a boy, but he didn’t say anything about what had happened to Cade Magnus’s mother. “Cade’s dad is Jed Magnus. Jed is very well known in political and racial circles. He’s a patriot-philosopher. He moved away ten years ago and now Cade’s back to continue his work.”
Cade returned with a bottled water and two beers. He set them on the counter and motioned for his guests to sit. Ted pulled out a stool for Jasmine and she settled in gracefully. Cade stayed on the other side of the counter, leaning back against the wall, a Fallbrook Classic Car Show poster from 1985 on one side of him and the 1986 poster on the other. They talked about the arrest of Ibrahim Sadal and the evidence found at the gas station where he worked. Ted said he felt relieved. Jasmine had seen the TV news report that showed the suspect being hustled from the mini-mart to the plain white van. What a spooky-looking guy. She said terrorists should be shot. After a fair trial, of course. Cade smiled and raised his beer to her and Ted joined in.
Cade said it was no surprise they caught the raghead, what with all the law enforcement descending on Fallbrook after the fire. What a bunch they were, Cade and Ted agreed. Ted told Jasmine of the very weird Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Max Knechtl, who thought he could wear suits in Fallbrook and not be noticed. Cade had been questioned by two DHS-HSI special agents, Chennoweth and Landsea, who allowed that Knechtl was “different.” Cade had also been visited by an FBI duo out of San Diego, but they’d seemed more interested in Jed Magnus than in the Fallbrook fire. Cade’s friend Trevor had been detained and interviewed by FBI National Security Branch Counterterrorism Division special agents out of San Francisco. Cade said that these hardworking agents had discovered Las Brisas taqueria and were usually crammed into a booth there every time he went in, hiding behind their sunglasses, raiding the salsa bar over and over. Jasmine laughed and asked them how they remembered the initials for all of the departments and agencies and bureaus. Cade said all she really needed to know was that DHS was all the people who couldn’t get jobs at the post office.
For Ted, the time shot past like a bullet train with him in it. It was like getting glimpses of himself and Jasmine and Cade through the windows. Just a smear, a streak. Jasmine excused herself for “the sandbox” and Ted told her it was through the double doors and back on the left. As she walked away the men watched her glistening body and the lazy sway of her knit dress, and heard the clop of her heels on the polished concrete floor.
“Patrick as your crazy twin brother? Now that’s genuinely funny.”
“I had to say something.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Ted?”
“I want to be friends again. With you and Trevor and everyone. I want to be a Rogue Wolf. I want another chance.”
“But all you bring us is suspicious feds and your pissed-off ex-Marine brother. You flub up an easy thing with the Mexican, get yourself stabbed instead. What do you want from me?”
“Just a chance to prove I’m good enough.”
“Prove away, then, Ted. Please. Surprise me. Impress me.”
“How?”
Cade sighed and looked at him, eyebrows raised as if in exasperation. He drank some of his beer, then crossed his arms, and fixed Ted with his blue eyes. “How about something with the mayor at the concert? She’s giving one of her little speeches before the show, the paper said.”
“I’m ready for anything after what she did tonight. What did you have in mind?”
“That’s what I want you to do, Ted! Figure out something on your own. Show me the distance you’re willing to go. Until you can do that you’ll continue to be a nobody. But, if you want to impress me, really write your name big on the wall of history—how about you taking Mayor Anders to the next level when she’s making her speech?”
“I thought of doing that. I swear I did. Before you even said it. I dreamed it once, too. I was able to do it.”
“I’m talking way next level. Think the representative in Tucson. I know you have the tools. But do you have the balls? The concert is Friday, three nights from now. Three nights to think hard about it, Ted. About who you are and who you want to become.”
Ted said nothing. He’d certainly imagined such a thing. Ever since trying to apologize to Mayor Anders in her office, and being rejected and dismissed by her, the idea had been inside him, looping endlessly along like a bass line, just barely audible. Then tonight, after being assaulted by her husband, the sound came stronger and more clearly. “Tucson. I can do that.”
Cade looked toward the sound of Jasmine’s heels coming toward them across the high bay concrete. “Which service?”
“Edie’s in San Diego.”
“Sweet. Maybe I underestimated you, Ted.”
“Everyone does.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Patrick got to Warrior Stadium early Friday evening to help Iris with the concert. He had not seen her since the dinner party and they had talked just once on the phone in the last six days. She had sounded calm but distant. Kenton was Kenton. Best friend Carrie was getting married. Family was good, friends fine. So far as the Cruzela Storm show on Friday went, she could use some help and get him a seat. But nothing about herself or what had happened. Was she furious? How furious? Or, by some miracle, was she pleased by his work? She gave no hint nor clue. Patrick wanted to do as he was trained—to take the fight to the enemy—but how exactly do you do that to a woman you’re in love with?
None of his old clothes fit because he’d lost so much weight in Sangin, so on Thursday his mother had taken him shopping in Escondido. Away from home and alone with him, Caroline was light and forthcoming and she bought a new scarf and took Patrick to lunch in the swanky café at Nordstrom. She said she enjoyed shopping much more than filling sandbags, but not to tell Archie. Patrick noted that she drew looks from men of different ages and she seemed both aware and impervious.
As they roamed the crowded mall she took his arm and told him a story about herself at eighteen, one week out of high school, the same week that Patric
k had joined up. “My father was vicious when he was drinking, which was always. He disliked women. They were sexual things or nothing at all. He treated my mother like a child, and in some ways she was. Their fights were violent. My older brothers were his life and future, and I understood this, on paper anyway. I was invisible. In a way it was a relief. But I tried extra hard to please him. I was class valedictorian. I played varsity volleyball. I learned Spanish and French and I learned to dance and sing and ride a horse. I tried to be beautiful. I kept my, um … honor. The Sunday after graduation he took me to brunch. Santa Monica, upscale place. He told me he was proud to have done his part with me. He said I wouldn’t amount to much but if I could marry right I’d be okay. And if I married right a portion of his fortune would follow me. He leaned in close and whispered something in my ear.”
Caroline leaned over and whispered in Patrick’s ear: “He said, ’Caroline, remember, there’s a hot little fuckdoll in every profitable marriage. Practice up and learn how. If you don’t believe me ask your mother.’ Well, Pat, he and Mom had given me a new red BMW convertible for my Stanford career up north. Two hours later, and with my best worldly possessions, I was speeding due south from L.A. to San Diego, which I knew to be party central. I said nothing. His comment at lunch wasn’t the only reason I left. It was the least of them by some measures. Just the last straw. Well, once in San Diego I searched hard, and it only took me a few days to find the worst boyfriend any virgin valedictorian could wish for. Just like Dad, but meaner. Not only alcohol, but drugs, too. A little physical, that boy. Let’s just say I happily morphed into my opposite and within a year I was a very serious wreck. But I was putting the screws to Daddy all right! I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t stumbled into a biker bar in Oceanside one day and been spotted by your father. I truly don’t. Archie was my blessing and my miracle, staggeringly undeserved. And that, Patrick, is how you got your mom. That is why I’m so careful in what I do. Why I control everything, from the way I knot my scarf, to what I read, to how I hold the book. What I say and how I say it. From the way I set a water glass in the sink to the way I rinse it. It’s not composure or serenity, certainly not vanity. No. Control is my vaccine against becoming that way again, the way I was before Archie. Which I know I am … prone to.”
Patrick was speechless past the shoe store, the cell phone kiosk, the luggage store, and the food court. He felt like hiding behind a Hesco block and smoking cigarettes.
“Did I embarrass you, Pat?”
“No. Some. I’ve never seen you blush, Mom.”
“I don’t exactly tell that story every day.”
“Um, did your dad know you did all that?”
“I tortured him with it.”
“That’s a story, Mom.”
“I’m glad Archie opened it up with you. Regarding Ted. I love you, Patrick. And I hope you love me. That was the whole point.”
At a young person’s store with suggestive posters and throbbing music she bought Patrick a new outfit that was expensive but looked cool, he thought. He showed his ID and handed the clerk the money himself in order to get the 10 percent military discount. The new sport coat fit well and the shirt was cotton but smooth as silk. Hundred and fifty dollar jeans!
“If you don’t melt Iris’s little wooden heart in that outfit, you’re going to have to find greener pastures, Pat.”
“We’re just friends, Mom.”
“Ho-ho. Don’t tell her that.”
Later at the mall hair salon—Messina had told him not to go to barber shops unless he wanted to look like an ex-jarhead forever—Patrick was pleased to find that his hair had grown just long enough to be styled. And to mostly cover the patch where his stitches had been after the beach brawl with the MPs. He looked at himself in the salon mirror as the stylist made tiny snips, itemizing his recent bad behaviors. He wondered if the world might be better off with him back on patrol where he knew what he was doing. A structured setting. It sounded good in many ways.
* * *
Now he walked across the parking lot toward the stadium entrance, saw the little band of protesters near the gate with their signs: WALK THE WALKS WE HAVE! NO GIFTS FOR ILLEGALS! SUPPORT POLICE—NOT JAYWALKERS! There were some ELECT WALT ROOD signs, too, though Patrick didn’t see the candidate. The people and their energy unnerved him and he was tempted to turn around and go home or to a quiet bar. He wondered if the loud concert music would set him off. He thought how Ted always said that things just got into him against his own will, and now Patrick saw how that might happen. Things are big, he thought. They have power. You can’t turn everything off. The guns of Pendleton started pounding away to the west, Patrick flinched but steeled himself, and his control held.
He went around to a side entrance and squeezed through the loosely chained gate, then ambled on to the Warrior Stadium turf that he’d last played on just four years ago. Wide receiver, decent hands. The turf was the same vivid green and the yard lines straight and white. He stopped midfield near the fifty and remembered catching a pass right here in the homecoming game, to no avail in their narrow loss. He looked at the scoreboard with the Warrior in the headdress, and the snack bar and press box painted barn red with white trim. He’d always liked the bright stadium lights. It was easy to wander back into that past. It seemed so small now, but safe and pleasant, like a small nest he’d jumped from. Could it be only four years? But down by the goal line everything was different—he saw the elaborate scaffolding and stage, and the big amplifiers, the drums and congas, the keyboards and the colorful guitars in their stands, all twinkling in the stage lights.
He found Iris talking with a group of volunteers setting up VIP chairs near the stage. She had on a blue silk blazer over a navy blouse, and jeans and knee-high boots, and the sight of her made his heart ache and his mind wobble. He stood there in his new clothes, feet together and back straight, waiting. The evening was cool and breezy and the sky was a heavy, fretful gray. Finally she turned. She studied him, curiously, as if she’d never seen him before, or perhaps had known him once and forgotten almost everything about him. A strange look. He felt skinned. She approached and Patrick smiled, but inwardly he wasn’t sure whether to meet the threat, hold his ground, or retreat. Please nothing bad. He’d never been this unsure of what to do, not even in the chaos of combat. She came up close and he saw the emotion in her eyes but couldn’t identify it. Just could not. “We can help set up these chairs,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. We can talk later. I love the horses. Let’s get this done.”
Patrick worked with the energy of the hopeful. Natalie and Mary Ann joined them but neither of them offered him more than a wave. Natalie took pictures of Iris and Mary Ann working for the Village View. It was dark by the time they finished. A few minutes later the crowd was filing in. Iris gave him his ticket and pointed out their seats, a third of the way back and in the middle. She excused herself to follow Natalie toward Cruzela Storm’s trailer for a brief interview and photo shoot. Evelyn Anders fell in behind them. Iris turned and looked at Patrick, and again her expression was inscrutable to him—his twenty-two years of worldly experience no match, he sensed, for millennia of female evolution resulting in Iris Cash. He waved lamely.
* * *
Evelyn followed Iris and Natalie, squeezing past two bodyguards, into Cruzela Storm’s trailer. It was roomy. Cruzela sat on a love seat with an acoustic guitar propped on the cushion beside her. In her daring stage clothes Cruzela no longer looked awkward and uncomfortable, but strong-limbed, sexual, and dangerous. She made Evelyn feel neither young nor particularly attractive anymore, but these were not bad feelings. It was good to see a woman who was all of that and more. Cruzela’s hair was a shiny copper mane, her face heavily made-up, her lips black. She rose and shook their hands formally, half a head taller than tall Natalie. “Help yourself to the food and drink.”
Evelyn backed away and stood near the food, unsure of whether to offer her
self a seat in the presence of a star. Iris sat down across from Cruzela and started in with her questions. Natalie began shooting. One of the bodyguards, well muscled and his black hair in a ponytail, carried a chair over to Evelyn with one hand, and it seemed to weigh no more to him than a glass of wine. Boy, could she use one of those. She disliked public speaking, but half an hour from now she’d be up there in front of two thousand plus people, trying to thank them for doing the right thing. They sure weren’t here to listen to her.
“Glass of wine?” asked the bodyguard.
“Oh, please, yes.”
“You look like a red wine woman.”
“You’ve read my mind twice in ten seconds.”
She pulled her tablet from her purse and brought up her speech notes. She read through them, half tuned to the interview, half aware of the flashes of Natalie’s camera. “When I heard about Georgie Hernandez half my heart broke and the other half just got pissed off,” said Cruzela. Evelyn heard the crowd outside burst into applause but had no idea why. She couldn’t believe there were protesters out there. Now, she told herself, when you get up there, just let them know the basics, then get off stage. The basics were: welcome, sold out, will raise more than fifty grand, which will pay for Fallbrook’s share of lighted crosswalks and then some. Also, remember to thank bigger sponsors: the Village View, Major Market, Pro-Tire, Martial Arts Concepts, Rotary, American Legion Post 365, Democratic Club, Soroptimists, Kiwanis, Fallbrook Wood Carvers, Gem and Mineral Society, AAUW, the synagogue, the many churches, and the many charitable groups. She knew that the people she didn’t thank by name tonight would complain to her, but that is public service now, isn’t it?
She took a drink of the wine and listened to Cruzela talking about growing up in Barrio Logan. She watched Natalie shooting her pictures, trying to be unintrusive. She studied Cruzela Storm and wondered what it would be like to have a talent. As she spoke to Iris, Cruzela’s emotions seemed to crash right through the heavy makeup and on to her face. She doesn’t have only talent, but heart, too, thought Evelyn. For a moment she felt good, knowing that she had helped her people help themselves, and that everyone had come together here to do a good thing that needed doing. Well done, Mayor Anders, she thought, and drank a toast to herself and thought a brief prayer for Georgie.
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