The Escape
Rolly ran out towards the pool, spotted a shadow moving across the patio, Fender, above, looking down from the balcony. Rolly ducked back under the door and ran down the hallway, turned into the living room, ran out through a large glass door onto the front deck, then down the stairs to the lawn. A cool wave of damp air rose up from the edge of the cliffs in front of him, a salt tingle inside of his nostrils. The incoming fog had covered the moon and much of the sky, making it hard to see anything.
He stopped, crouched on the lawn, hoping his eyes would adjust to the light. It was dangerous to go any farther. He turned his head back to look at the house. He heard Fender calling.
“Rolly, I’m sorry. That was an accident. I’m sorry. You scared me.”
Rolly crouched lower, noticed how heavily his sides were heaving, how the speed of his heartbeat raced in his ears. He tried to slow his breathing, pull the air down into his diaphragm. A figure appeared in the living room doorway, the light from upstairs just enough to create a silhouette. Rolly flattened himself on the lawn. The dew on the grass soaked through his shirt. If he moved, Fender might see him, but flat on the ground he might not be visible. The light was behind Fender. It was darker out on the lawn.
“Rolly, why did you do that?” Fender stepped out of the doorway onto the lawn, slow, almost dainty. He held the gun in his right hand, stroking his forehead with his left. He moved forward two steps.
“Rolly?”
He was ten feet away now, turned away from where Rolly was hiding. Rolly held his breath, willing himself into absolute silence. His eyes had adjusted. He could see Fender more clearly. He had only seconds before Fender would see him as well.
Fender took another step out on the lawn. Rolly heaved himself forward, rolled over like a big beach ball, and rose to his feet just as Fender turned towards the noise. Rolly’s shoulder came up under Fender’s side, near his ribs, slid up to his armpit. Rolly kept moving, pushing forward as hard as he could. Fender’s body gave way and they fell to the ground. Rolly landed on top of Fender with a grunt.
“No!” Fender screamed. “You can’t!” Rolly reached up and grabbed Fender’s right arm, pinning it to the ground. Fender struggled, but Rolly outweighed him by a good thirty pounds, kept him pinned. Soon there was no fight at all. Fender gave in. His body went limp. Rolly moved his left hand up along Fender’s right wrist until he felt the revolver. He grabbed it out of Fender’s hand, let go of Fender, sat back in the grass. Fender lay on his back, gasping for air.
“They’ll take away my office. They’ll fire me,” Fender said.
“That’s the least of your problems, right now.”
“I’m going to jail, aren’t I, Rolly?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
Fender’s gasping breaths turned to short little laughs. The laughs turned to sobs. Rolly heard a sound like a car door slamming, out on the street, or maybe in the driveway. They didn’t have much time left to themselves.
“Fender, I’ll try to help you. I’m your friend. It doesn’t matter what I said to you after the accident. I can get you a lawyer, but you’ve got to tell me the story straight. What else do you know about Gibson?”
“Nothing. Nothing besides what’s on that disk. He just showed up one day and met with Ricky. The next week he had his own office. Ricky told us he was a financial genius.”
There was Ricky throwing that “g” word around.
“That’s it?”
“I swear, that’s all that I know. Until I saw that stuff Curtis put on the disk.”
“How about Alesis?”
“She came a week after Gibson showed up.”
“Anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Any kind of personal relationship between her and King?”
“Like sex? No. I didn’t see anything. Somebody said she slept with Curtis.”
“How about you?”
“No. We’re only friends.”
“How about that night that you and Alesis came to see me at the club? Whose idea was that?”
“King suggested it. We were just talking, you know, after you came to the office that day. I told him I was going to hear you at Patrick’s and he suggested I ask her to come along.”
“Did she know that I had the Magic Key?”
“I didn’t tell anyone, not even her.”
“Gibson called you at the club, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He had my security card. Little Walter found it when he pulled Curtis’ body out of the pool. He gave it to King.”
“So King suspected you of stealing the Magic Key.”
“Yes, he threatened me. That’s when I told him you had it.”
A distant doorbell rang from inside the house. Rolly looked back at the hulking mansion. He saw the quick beam of a flashlight flick through the windows, off the walls by the pool.
“Rolly. Rolly Waters,” someone shouted. Bonnie had decoded his message. Fender sat up.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s a police detective, the woman you met this morning. I called her before I came out here.”
“Rolly, I can’t go to jail. I know what happens to people like me.”
“What do you mean?” said Rolly, trying to play stupid.
“They’ll kill me. Those guys there. They’re criminals. They’ll make me their slave. They’ll rape me every day. They’ll stick me with knives.”
“You won’t go to any jail like that.”
“Yes, I will. I’m a loser. Just like you said. Just like my wife said. And Ricky. And Curtis.”
“You’re not a loser. You made a mistake.”
“You said I was a loser, remember, a loser who’d be better off dead?”
“I was a loser when I said that. I was messed up.”
“But that’s what you think. That’s what everyone thinks.”
“Rolly, I know you’re here!” Bonnie called. Fender stood up. Rolly held the gun up in front of him.
“Fender, don’t move,” Rolly said, then he yelled, “Bonnie, out here! In the front!”
“I’m not going to jail.”
Rolly couldn’t see Fender’s eyes in the dark, couldn’t see where Fender was looking. He hoped Bonnie would find them soon. He hated the feel of the gun in his hand. He knew he wouldn’t use it. Fender moved slightly to Rolly’s right, away from the house towards the darkness.
“I’m not going to jail, Rolly. I’m not.”
“Fender, stop moving.” Rolly stepped towards him, but Fender was pulling away. One step, then two. Then out of sight. Rolly heard a terrible scream, like a soul descending to hell. He stepped forward, felt grass under his feet. Another step forward.. The grass turned to dirt at the edge of the cliff. He knelt down, reached to feel for the place where Fender had vanished, found nothing but air and the smell of the ocean.
The Coda
It was early Monday morning at Patrick’s Club, one-thirty a.m. The place was still crowded, considering there was a workday coming up. The band had just finished playing “Wrap It Up,” the last song of the night. Rolly slipped his guitar into its stand and stepped down to the bar, got a club soda with two limes from Harry, went to sit with Moogus and Bruce on the back patio. They’d wait for the crowd to thin out before breaking down the equipment. If you went back in too early, there was always some drunk screaming at you to play one more, yelling for some stupid song like “Freebird” or “China Grove.”
“Hey, wasn’t that your girlfriend there in the back?” Moogus said.
“My girlfriend?” Rolly replied.
“Yeah, you know, the one from the video, Alexis or something like that?”
“I didn’t see her. Where was she?”
“In back, at the table by the door. You can’t mistake a well-tuned bongo like that.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well, if you’re not talking to her, maybe I should.”
Rolly stood up. Just knowing Moogus wanted to
hit on Alesis was enough to get him up and moving.
“I thought so,” said Moogus. “Still carrying a big hard-on for her.”
Rolly walked into the club, stood in the back hallway where it was dark, looked out towards the door. Alesis was there, at the front window, sitting at one of the little round bar tables. She nursed a drink, something in a tall glass. There were a dozen customers or so still milling about, but she didn’t seem to be with any of them. He stood there a minute, watching, half wishing she’d leave, but she didn’t. He walked down the stairs and out towards her table. He paused to shake hands with a patron who greeted him, an enthusiastic young drunk who wanted to say something about the band, but seemed to have a hard time getting farther than, “That was fucking awesome, man,” and improvising some air guitar moves.
Rolly nodded, separated himself from his admirer, walked up to Alesis’ table. She smiled at him, a little sad smile, just like the one he’d fallen for last time. He wondered what she wanted now. He didn’t have a Magic Key. She wasn’t going to get rich and neither was he. The company known as Eyebitz.com was out of business, shut down.
The end had come swiftly. Curtis’ email had gone out to the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the San Diego Police Department and Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union-Tribune. The local paper had jumped on it first, then the rest. Of course, Bonnie had been at the house to hear the whole story from Rolly. Like the good trooper she was, she tried to run the investigation according to the rules.
The IPO was suspended, King Gibson arrested and publicly revealed to be Anthony Kaydell. He was in jail now, waiting for the government to put together its case. If Kaydell had lasted one more month, through the IPO date, the statute of limitations would have run out on his earlier crimes. The whole investment in Eyebitz.com had been a desperate bid to spin his dwindling resources into new gold. A stockbroker the paper interviewed estimated Gibson would have received a forty-to-one payout on his investment had the IPO gone through as planned. But it hadn’t.
Kaydell’s arrest revived bitter memories among those he had swindled fifteen years ago; hope that they might get some of their money back. But Kaydell had nothing. Even the house, the BFH, was worth nothing. Kaydell had borrowed against it, under the name of G. Tesch. And now he was just a lonely old man, sitting in a federal jail cell, inspecting his fingernails, eating crummy jail food like the rest of the prisoners. There weren’t any tournedos of beef on his menu.
Nothing stuck to Ricky. He got his get-out-of-jail-free card by claiming ignorance, told the authorities anything they wanted to hear about Gibson. It was Gibson, Kaydell, people wanted to nail. Ricky left town, went on a long surfing trip to Bali. He claimed to be researching new markets, making plans to have his motivational tapes translated into Korean and several forms of Chinese.
Alesis got to be famous for a couple of weeks. The papers and TV couldn’t resist running her band’s old publicity shot, as well as some blurry scenes from the video, usually when referring to Gibson’s previous life as Anthony Kaydell, Ponzi schemer and pornographer. No charges were filed against her, either.
But that had been a couple of months ago. Rolly’s life had returned to something approaching normal. He still played a couple of gigs a week, took on cases for parents or grandparents who hired him to help find their lost sons and daughters.
“Hi,” Rolly said, flashing a smile at Alesis. He couldn’t help himself. He wished he could learn to act more hardhearted.
“Surprised to see me?” Alesis said.
“I’d have to say yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, just surprised. I guess I didn’t think this was your kind of place, if you weren’t on assignment, that is.” Rolly looked away. He still found her attractive, found himself imagining forgiveness scenarios.
“I thought I’d come by to hear you play. I really was a musician once, you know. Not like you. I wasn’t that good. But I had a real band.”
“I know. I’ve got your record.”
“You do?”
“I was at the swap meet a couple of weeks ago. I always look through the old records people are selling. And there it was.”
“You couldn’t resist.”
“No, I guess not.”
“What’d you think?”
“It wasn’t bad.” Rolly paused to consider. It wasn’t a bad record, more mediocre really, like most of the records that ever got made.
“What are you up to these days?” he asked.
“Not much. I got a new job.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
She pulled out a card, handed it to him. It said, “Executive Matchups.”
“I’m working for a dating service. In La Jolla. It’s very high class, for professionals.”
“What kinds of professionals?”
“Executives, vice presidents. Corporate types who work a lot of hours. Guys who don’t have time to get out and date.”
“Rich guys?”
“Well, yes. A membership isn’t cheap. We prescreen the women and men. They have to fill out an extensive form.”
“Oh.”
“I know what you’re thinking. But this is legit. It’s a real service.”
“If you say so.”
Alesis looked into her drink, stirred it around with the straw.
“You don’t like me much, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Because I wasn’t completely honest with you?”
“I don’t know anyone who’s completely honest.”
“That’s a sad thing to say. Ask me something. I’ll be completely honest this time.”
“That’s okay,” Rolly paused.
“Go ahead. Shoot. Anything you want to ask.”
“Okay,” Rolly said. “That night, at my house, you moved my guitar case.”
“Yeah. In the morning before I left. I was looking around for a pencil so I could write you a note.”
“Completely honest, huh?”
“Completely honest. You have absolutely no writing utensils in that house, you know. You have almost nothing except for those guitars. I stubbed my toe on one of those damn things trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night.”
“You weren’t trying to find the Magic Key?”
“No. Tony just asked me to make friends with you.”
“Gibson?”
“Gibson, Kaydell, Tesch. Whatever his name is. I call him Tony.”
“Do you always make friends with someone if Tony asks you to?”
“He’s asked me for a lot of things. I listen to him, then I do what I want. It’s always my decision.”
“So Kaydell dumps you, fakes his own death while you’re out touring Japan, and when he shows up again fifteen years later, you jump into bed with him, start working at Eyebitz.com?”
“I didn’t jump into bed with him. Not this time. That was over. And he didn’t ask me to work for him at Eyebitz.com.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. I made him give me a job.”
“What?”
“I was having a drink at the Hyatt one night, six months ago. I was leaving the bathroom when I saw him get on the elevator. I knew it was him right away, even if he was older and bald. I watched the elevator, followed him up to his floor. You should have seen his face when he answered the door and saw me standing there.”
“What happened?”
“I kicked him in the shins. He fell on his ass. I walked in, took a seat, and told him to make me a drink.”
“Then what?”
“Oh, you know how cool he likes to play it. He asked me in. We talked. I told him I knew he was planning a scam. He told me about Eyebitz.com. I told him I’d blow his cover if he didn’t find a way to cut me in on the action, get me a job. I read the paper. I knew how these Internet companies were making people rich. I read about a guy in the mail room one place who was worth two million dollar
s.”
“So you blackmailed him?”
“He told me the statute of limitations had run out, which was a lie, I guess. But he knew I could make things pretty hot for him. There are still people in this town he owes a lot of money to. We made a business arrangement.”
Rolly watched a bead of water run down the outside of his glass. He looked out the open window behind Alesis to the sidewalk. Two men were passing, giving Alesis the once over, then twice. Alesis pulled out a cigarette, apparently caught herself, put it back in her purse.
“I meant what I said, you know, that night at your house.”
“About what?”
“You are a nice guy. I don’t know many nice guys.”
Rolly smiled. “What about the other part?”
“You weren’t bad at that either.” She winked at him, a wink that meant nothing, but still gave him a buzz.
They were silent for a few moments. Gina chased the last of the patrons out of the club. She started counting the cover charge at her table by the door while Harry cleared the floor, set stools up on top of the bar. Moogus, Gordon, and Bruce had returned to the stage and were packing their gear.
“I’m sorry about Fender,” Alesis said. “He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
“It’s okay,” Rolly said. He looked down into his soda, the clear bubbles clinging to the bright green rind of the limes. Had he and Fender been friends? Thirty years was a long time to know someone, but did it make that person your friend? If he thought you were friends and you never told him otherwise, did that mean you were friends? If he stuck around after you’d called him a loser, wished out loud he was dead, was he a friend? A friend was whoever was willing to be with you. A friend was someone you missed after he left. He couldn’t say if he missed Fender or not.
“I was hoping we could be friends,” Alesis said.
“I’m not sure I can afford you.”
“You can’t. Not if that’s what you want.”
“What do I want?”
“A woman to take care of you, bring you your slippers. Someone to slide under you whenever you’re lonely.”
Black's Beach Shuffle: A Rolly Waters Mystery Page 19
