Blood Money

by Doug Richardson

  The old pal never returned.

  Rey, who had come to enjoy the fluid hours and working outdoors, was happy to inherit the business. Over time, the business had expanded from that of cleaning and caring for pools to the installation and repair of filtering equipment, heater upgrades, hot tub additions and renovations. Wasn’t long before young Rey had his contractor’s license and was at the helm of two-ton excavators, digging holes in backyards from Burbank to Calabasas. From Rey’s perspective, it was a boom business. He was a pool and spa designer and builder, living the dream in the San Fernando Valley, an area code boasting an average mean temperature of seventy-eight degrees and a minimum of three hundred days of sunshine per year. Swimming pools were the right of every Southern California homeowner. Backyard lagoons and the men who built them would always be in demand.

  Or so Rey imagined.

  In the Granada Hills home he had mortgaged to the hilt, Rey employed his own unique filing system. His bills were spread across the large dining room table he had made himself from Indian teak. Invoices from various lenders from subcontractors to power and gas to his local cable provider. Ordered from left to right: late, later, and latest. Rey’s system was designed by himself and for himself. Much the way some think heavy books too overwhelming to read, Rey viewed piles of unanswered paper as mountains so massive he couldn’t possibly scale them. Thus, the system. Tiny bites of the elephant. He had initially employed the system to organize his jobs—from present to future—size to pay scale.

  And that dining room table, built for the large family Rey had only dreamed of, seemed permanently employed as a flat-topped filing system, forever relegated to office furniture. If Rey didn’t find a way to pay the bills that littered the table, he’d have to face a bankruptcy judge.

  The air conditioner kicked on, sending a mild gust of cold air that made the bills ripple. It reminded Rey of the night not too long ago when he had received the phone call from a man named Greg Beem, who had identified himself as an old army pal of Danny’s. Beem insisted that he and Rey had met, only Rey couldn’t put a face to the name. There were condolences offered followed by thanks and a moment or so of small talk. Eventually the conversation turned to the subject of shipping. Greg Beem, it appeared, had confused Rey with his older brother, the Long Beach mogul who specialized in refrigerated exports. Confusion led to Rey offering his assistance. In turn, Greg Beem, promised the significant fee of thirty-thousand dollars. Enough money to clear a significant amount of paper from Rey’s dining room table.

  After Rey hung up, he had barely weighed the specter of illegality against the debt that threatened to destroy him. Why the hell not? he had asked himself.

  Why shouldn’t I get a break for once?

  That, of course, was the grief talking.

  “Less than twenty-four hours after the triple murder in Kern County, the FBI has thrown its hat into the investigative ring,” said the Channel 2 news anchor. “Sources say that in the murder of television actress, Pepper Ellis, her boyfriend, and a deputy, the FBI is on the lookout for this refrigerated long haul truck…”

  When Rey was home alone the TV was always switched on and tuned to a news channel, the volume leveled to act as background noise. So why Rey turned his attention to the news story was anybody’s guess. On the living room flat screen played the stop-framed video of the black, tractor-trailer rig passing by the filling station just minutes after the murders. In what felt like a finger-snap later, the über-tanned news anchor had moved on to the next story about the record heat that was smothering Southern California.

  Rey had a momentary thought of grabbing the DVR remote. If he had wanted, he could have reversed the broadcast and replayed the murder story about the actress he had never heard of. But that wasn’t what had spiked his interest. It was the ghostly image of the black refrigerator truck that the FBI was searching for.

  The FBI?

  Greg Beem didn’t come to mind at that exact moment as Greg Beem was already pretty much all Rey was thinking about. And how in the world Rey was going manage the situation he had created. He was all done cursing his older brother. Though the anger remained just beneath the surface, pissing and moaning about a brother he couldn’t control wasn’t going to solve a damn thing. He had tilled his brain from every dark corner, searching for a palatable delay to offer Greg Beem. Nothing came. Zero. He had even stopped by his neighborhood Catholic church—St. Euphrasia’s—and lit candles for Danny, praying to the Lord for guidance out of the mess he’d made.

  But which mess, Rey?

  There was no overt connection between the TV news story about the FBI and Rey’s problem with Greg Beem. It was something moving inside of him. A gut feeling? But instinct wasn’t Rey’s greatest asset. He had pretty much lost every bet he’d ever made—be it a horse race at Santa Anita, blackjack at the Rio in Las Vegas, or even when given a generous point spread on his beloved UCLA Bruins football team—Rey seemed to always be on the losing end.

  At some point Rey transferred his stare from the television screen to a photo collage hanging above an antique arts and crafts buffet table. The handmade frame built from tongue depressors and Elmer’s Glue had been a gift from Rey’s live-in girlfriend, Mayako. It held a hodgepodge of maybe a hundred snapshots, each depicting a frozen moment in Danny Palomino’s life: the father and son sharing moments from infancy to adulthood, Danny in a variety of colorful uniforms—school, Little League, AYSO, Scouts. The boy always showing off rows of youthfully perfect, pearly teeth with a mischievous look in his eyes. The photographs were wreathed around a larger Marine Corps graduation portrait of a nineteen-year-old Danny without the usual grin. In the photo Danny Palomino was square-shouldered, humble, and oh so proud.

  “You’re right,” said Rey aloud. As if that portrait of Danny had made some kind of ghostly suggestion. He sought the cellphone that lived holstered to his hip, and dialed four-one-one. When the recording asked for the city and state, Rey said, “Los Angeles, California.”

  “Listing?” asked the information operator.

  “I’d like the local number for the FBI.”

  “Connecting you with the number. Thanks for using Verizon Connect.”

  Then came a ring. Then another recording with menu options. Rey hated menu options over the phone. He, like most people, preferred speaking to human beings. The instant he called a number and got any kind of voice menu, he wanted to hang up out of sheer protest. And Rey nearly did with his call to the FBI. Then he heard an option that would allow him to speak with an operator. Rey pressed zero and waited as the line rang and rang and rang.

  “FBI operator. May I help you?”

  “Yes. My name is… Uh… I might have information about the three murders.”

  “Which three murders are those, sir?”

  “Murders on the news. Just now. I forget where. Um…there was someone famous? I think?”

  “Please hold.”

  Rey was left listening to a monophonic selection of pop hits from the nineteen-eighties. It was a long enough wait for him to wonder if the music was chosen demographically, or more likely, by someone within the national bureaucracy who was still a fan of Tears for Fears and Flock of Seagulls.

  A voice broke in.

  “This is Agent Dulaney Little,” said the baritone, clearing his throat as if woken from a nap.

  “Yeah. Hello. As I told the lady on the phone, I think I might know something about—”

  “The Kern murders,” said Dulaney. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Not sure about where. There was a famous girl and a black reefer truck?”

  “Yes. That’s the one,” said Dulaney, polite but fully aware that the odds of the call bearing actual investigative proof resided somewhere between slim and none. “First. May I have your name?”

  Rey hesitated. He hadn’t thought so far ahead that he’d have to give his identity.

  “Yeah,” said Rey. “My name is Rey Palomino.”

  “And
where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in Granada Hills. That’s in California.”

  “Hey. I live in Reseda. We’re practically neighbors.”

  Neighbors? Rey wondered. His brain scanned back through whatever former client list he could assemble, searching for “Dulaney Little.” Rey figured he must have sunk twenty-five swimming pools in Reseda. What were the odds that he had built a pool for Special Agent Dulaney Little?

  “I build pools. Lots of ’em in Reseda. Maybe I built yours.”

  “Easy answer,” said Dulaney. “And that’s no. We don’t have a pool. Would love a pool. But not on this year’s salary.”

  “Maybe I can make you a deal,” said Rey, instinctively in sales mode.

  “Not today, I’m afraid,” said Dulaney. “Let’s get back to why you called. What do you have for the FBI?”

  Once Rey gave up his address, driver’s license and social security number, Dulaney greenlit him to tell his tale. The story of Rey’s deceased son Danny. The contact made by Danny’s former Marine Corps acquaintance, a man going by name of Greg Beem. Rey’s shipping connection with his brother. And his poor excuse for nearly aiding and abetting the felonious crime of export fraud—what else but the lousy damned economy?

  All the while, Dulaney listened and responded with his most professional affect. Flat. Nonjudgmental.

  “So whaddayou think?” asked Rey. “Could this be your guy?”

  “If it connects up. But we won’t know for sure until we get a closer look. First thing I’m going to do is run the name you gave me.”

  “Greg Beem?”

  “See if there are any wants, warrants, suspicious associations. Name sounds pretty common so we won’t know anything until we run ’em through a filter.”

  “Okay. How do we do that?”

  “Not a ‘we’ thing,” said Dulaney. “That’s my job. Your job is to be the contact. He’s expecting you to call and tell him his products will ship tomorrow.”

  “Right, right,” said Rey. He hadn’t thought any further ahead than passing responsibility on to the FBI. “Can’t you just listen into my call to him and then trace him that way?”

  “For that we would need a judge and warrants and more evidence than, what is now, only a story told by you. And no offense, you’re just a guy who dialed one-eight-hundred FBI.”

  “I understand,” said Rey again. He should have known, having spent hours and hours using cable TV to fight his insomnia. His favorite channels were Discovery ID and A&E. His addiction: true crime shows.

  “So here’s what I suggest,” continued Dulaney. “While we run this name through the grinder, you reach out to this Greg Beem fellah. Tell him your brother is ready to receive his cargo tomorrow. Sometime around midday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Once he’s out in the open, we won’t need a warrant to pull him over, check out any suspicious cargo. If he’s our guy, he’s going down.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Aside from the good citizen award? Whaddayou want?”

  Up to that point, Rey’d thought little more than hoping the authorities were a spatula that could scrape him off a sticky hot plate. He twisted his head to look at that dining room table covered with unpaid bills.

  “Could there be some kind of reward?” Rey listened to the crackle on the other end of the line. He could practically hear his credibility sink to the bottom of the FBI’s informant list. “On second thought, no. Forget I said anything about a reward, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the government man, barely containing his sudden misgivings about Rey's motives and virtue. “Let’s focus on what we’re both going to do. And what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  “Okay. So all you need from me is a time and place for the meet.”

  “Time and place,” repeated Dulaney. “But don’t make it too early. My day to drive the kids to school.”

  “I hear that,” said Rey.

  16

  Beemer flicked the gnat from his right ear, then leaned back in to the window screen. He wanted to make certain he had overheard enough syllables of Rey Palomino’s conversation with the FBI.

  If he had been more emotionally chilled, Beemer would have been grateful for the luck of it all. To have stumbled up at the moment Rey had called the FBI. Proving that sometimes the difference between success and failure is merely the randomness of timing. But the steam under his shirt was already preventing calculated thought.

  He crouched just beneath the sill of the powder room, its door wide open to Rey’s den. The tile wainscoting of the bathroom acted like an acoustic funnel, directing pieces of Rey’s voice through a double-hung window, permanently cracked open at the bottom for ventilation.

  The quick Mexican meal hadn’t settled well. After catching the news broadcast mid enchiladas, Beemer had paid cash, guzzled the balance of his frozen concoction, and returned to the stolen Honda. That creampuff news reader had referenced the FBI’s interest in the Kern murders. Beemer needed to postpone his much required sleep, find his way to Granada Hills, force a face-to-face with Rey Palomino and put the pool man back on his heels just to read him.

  Beemer easily found the residence in the hillside development circa 1979. At first glance the Granada Hills neighborhood set north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway reminded him of scenes from movies like Poltergeist and E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial. Had he taken the opportunity to ask Rey, he would have discovered his memories to be quiet accurate. Not only had both pictures been filmed on these very streets, but at the time, producer and director Steven Spielberg had chosen this particular suburb because he felt it best represented his idea of modern Americana.

  Rey Palomino’s house was a traditional split level home fronting a sidewalk. Tudor-esque in design, only the stucco work looked dated, applied with a rough texture and painted a sandy vanilla color. Two large white birch trees in full leaf obscured some of the view from the street. There was landscape lighting, all of it low-voltage and dim. The nearest streetlamp was three properties to the east.

  After parking the stolen Honda in the shadow of an overgrown pepper tree, Beemer set the brake and assessed the neighborhood for no less than fifteen minutes. He counted two dog walkers and a male jogger wearing a reflective vest and a headband bearing a blinking red safety light.

  Safety first, thought Beemer.

  Rey’s pickup truck was in his driveway, the bumper nearly touching the garage door, leaving room for another car to pull in behind it. Beemer presumed this was an accommodation for Rey’s sometime live-in girlfriend, Mayako, who appeared not to be home. Rey was probably alone. Or so Beemer hoped. Only by performing a brief recon could he be mostly certain. Beemer eased himself from the car, quietly closed the door, and made his way through the shrubbery along the property line. At the side of the house, there was a simple wooden gate that required nothing more than pulling a knotted piece of twine to release the latch. The hinges barely squeaked. There was no sign of a dog. The path alongside the house was a mix of dirt and pea gravel.

  Had Beemer taken the time to assess the backyard, he would have been impressed at the beauty of it. A mix of exotic grasses, plant life, and custom stone hardscape framed an elevated swimming pool and deck along which flowed a gentle waterfall. Paradise on a third of an acre. Beemer was counting on the sound of the waterfall to cover his footsteps when he rounded the corner near the powder room and heard the warble of Rey’s television.

  Beyond the powder room window was a covered patio with furniture built of weathered teak. Behind was a set of French doors through which Beemer spied Rey standing over a large dining room table covered in short stacks of paper. For the longest time, Rey organized, then rearranged the different slips of paper. Were those receipts? Beemer wondered if he had caught Rey prepping for the tax man. Then Beemer observed the moment when Rey’s attention was trapped by something on the TV. Whatever it was, Beemer couldn’t see. Beemer was there when Rey addressed the portrait of his dead son, Danny. An
d when Rey withdrew his cell phone and dialed, Beemer returned to the corner spot where he’d heard the TV through the cracked powder room window. From there, he had heard most of Rey's side of the conversation. The sum of which was a wholesale betrayal. Beemer broke out in a sweat. As if every pore in his body opened a floodgate of perspiration. His clothes instantly dampened, trapping the moisture. The slope on the back of his neck turned into a slick. His fists were clenched.

  The next five minutes of Beemer’s life played like a home video across his inner eyelids.

  It began with him rotating back around to the patio. He hefted one of those heavy teak chairs and swung it through the French doors. He heard the sound of broken glass crunching under his feet. Rey, his legs stuck to the floor, stood frozen, saucer-eyed, too shocked to put up a fight. Beemer raised his pistol, sighted across the top of the barrel and, without halting a step, quadruple-tapped his target. Four successive gun shots in one-point-five seconds, each bullet piercing Rey’s skull before his knees could so much as buckle.

  But that was just the initial fantasy—the preamble in his mind that Beemer needed to imagine the action prior to the actual execution. It was another training trick, a lesson learned from the private security firm that had recruited him upon his exit from the Marines. Some exit. The government contractors had immediately U-turned the young gun and returned him right back into the darker heart of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  Beemer forced himself to hit his own pause button. To breathe and see if he could ease his heart rate to an operational rhythm.