by Thomas Lewis
My hesitation sort of told the story.
“I do, but she’s at her folks’ for the holiday.”
More hesitation.
“I thought I sensed a little sadness in you. You miss her.”
“More than she’ll ever know, Kevin.”
This kid was pretty insightful, well beyond his years.
“Psychology major, right?”
Kevin laughed. “Just out of pre-med.” Of course. “But psychiatry wouldn’t be out of the question.”
“Yeah, I’m just some guy standing here clinking two billiard balls together, and you’ve already shrunk my head a couple of hat sizes.”
Kevin smiled knowingly. Suddenly I felt as if I were in a confessional.
“I just … we had a real knockdown dragout before she left. She’s insistent I stop smoking.”
“Well, some doctors are beginning to think it may not be all that good for you.”
“Really? My friend who has asthma started smoking, doctor’s orders. I saw one of those commercials, I think they call them, on that television set in the bar that day. A doctor in a white lab coat said smoking was good for you. Calms the nerves. He had one of those stethoscope things draped around his shoulders and everything. Gunnin’ a butt himself, took a giant drag.”
“Did he mention a particular brand?”
“Camels, I think.”
“He might have been paid for the testimonial, I’d imagine.”
“… Hmm. Could be you’re right.”
“But she wants you to stop.”
“She’s adamant. Is that the word?”
Kevin nodded. “Never made much sense to me. Buy something to put in between your lips, and then go ahead and set it on fire.”
“I only smoke a pack or two a day, but, yeah, and not really helping my nerves much.”
“Would it help you two if you quit?”
“Yeah, I guess so. You know what, Kevin, I think that’s a good idea. Maybe I’ll quit as a goodwill gesture. Those cartons are over a buck now, anyway. Gone inside a couple weeks. Quitting should be pretty easy; I’ll finish this carton and never buy another. Easy peasy.”
“It seems like you’re willing to compromise, and are pretty connected. She’ll come around.” This kid was reading my mind. How could he know … suddenly, I really needed a smoke.
“You’ll come around, too, Jack. I can tell.” Hopefully prophetic, as well.
Speaking of smoke, next, we moved into the den, where we bumped into Professor Thorne and Kate, sitting in leather chairs sipping brandy by the fire, like a couple of old-world old farts. Thorne was lighting a huge stogie for Kate. More likely a $2 Cohiba BHK rather than a stogie, I guess.
In hushed tones,
“There just seems to be something off about Mr. Waldheim, Howard.”
“Mmmm, I guess I see what you mean. We should–”
“Kate, what are you …”
I guess I’m old fashioned. It didn’t seem quite in character for her to be ‘one of the guys’ like this, so the look of consternation on my face only made everyone laugh, her giggle being particularly musical.
Through a cloud of blue smoke,
“Kate’s a part of our family, Mr. Daniel.”
“I do enjoy a good cigar once in a while.”
But she demurely laid it in the ashtray, maybe a tiny bit embarrassed.
“But … you’re a girl.” More laughing.
Before I could reckon with all of this, we were summoned to the dining room for dessert. Which was pretty great, by the way.
◆◆◆
Looking back, this random Thanksgiving meal honestly turned out to be a seminal moment in my life, an experience that showed me my jaded concept of family might have been totally upside down. This day changed my view of Thanksgiving Day for the better, forever.
It started me thinking, which gave me real insight into my ‘Parker’ issue, for the first time in a long time. Thanksgiving was now, and once again, my favorite holiday, and I think it always will be.
Unfortunately we had to cut it short, because we, I, needed to be back at sundown. I pleaded with Kate to stay with the Thornes and explain to them why, while I went to face the music. But she would not hear of it, and she insisted on coming along.
“This is my battle.”
She’d made a point, and is so charismatic that even a weak point such as this seemed pretty important at the time coming from someone with those baby blues.
Reluctantly, I felt I had no other choice but to accept. I make a lot of wrong choices. The Thornes, picking up on the gravity of our conversation, seemed concerned. As we drove over,
“But you are staying in the car!” I ordered, as if I could control what she might choose to do.
I fool myself a lot like that.
PART SIX
Sweet Feathery Christ
The sun, what there was of it, had peeked under the clouds and illuminated everything briefly, just before sinking into the Pacific moments ago. Civil twilight, they call this. We pulled up and parked in the same location as earlier.
Wait. Where’d they go?
I hung my head. I slammed my hands on the steering wheel too hard, which startled Kate.
“I’m sorry, Kate, I just … I knew we shouldn’t have let them out of our sight.”
She put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“It was either that or we starve to death.”
“Yeah, but this was stupid. I should have …”
Just then, headlights glowed from behind as a car turned the corner. In my mirror, I saw what could be them. The headlights grew larger.
“Quick! Get down!”
We scrunched down as far as we could, my hand on her shoulder, our faces two inches from each other. Wow, is this girl even more gorgeous this close up. She smelled like lilacs.
The car drifted slowly by, its headlights extinguishing as it puttered past. Sure enough, the rats were returning to the scene of their proposed crime, and they parked once again in their old spot, two pointy little heads still occupying the front seat.
“I guess they had a Thanksgiving dinner of their own to attend.”
That made me smile and released some of the tension. I took a deep breath, then exhaled audibly. I was ready. Not happy about what might come, but ready.
“So, you’re only going to try to ask them why they’re here?”
“That’d be one topic. I might have to not ask gently, but yeah. We need to know who sent them so we can find Elle. It might be the only way. I think the only way to do this is to catch them in the act, then confront them.”
“Maybe they aren’t here to break in and do … whatever.”
“Kate, you’re really smart. Tell me a different reason why these fu … why these large scary strange men might be lurking outside your house in the dark.”
Kate nodded, now with a look dismissing any state of denial she might have been in.
“You’re not going to hurt anyone.”
“Not if I can help it.”
So then we waited. Kate was very quiet.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find her. And we’ll stop all this madness.”
◆◆◆
Just before leaving the Thornes’, Kate’s eyes had widened alarmingly as I double-checked the virtual arsenal in my trunk, including a war hammer, an Indian chakram, which you can throw like a buzzsaw blade, my backup .38 OP, and a sawed-off double-barrel, bordering on illegal. I think the Chinese crossbow might be what put her jaw on the pavement.
“What in the world …” as she picked it up.
“A Zhuge crossbow. It’s like an automatic weapon. You can fire fifteen bolts in ten seconds or less. Called a repeating crossbow, been around since the year 200. This one’s pretty old. Not that old, but … yeah, hold it just like that, then you pull this little lever, and a new bolt gets loaded.”
Kate slowly swung it around. I guided it back in a safer direction.
“Careful. Don’t shoot the n
ice detective now.”
As she put the crossbow down, “Are these … fireworks?” peering into a bag in the corner of the trunk.
“”Uh, yeah. Left over from the Fourth. I might need a distraction once in a while. Get folks to look the other way and stuff.”
Kate looked at me incredulously, mouth open.
“You might want to close that thing. Something could fly in there.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“You are an interesting fella, Jack. I think I hired the right guy.”
“Damned right. Young Bessie, here agrees,” as I loaded two shells into the sawed-off.
Why didn’t I take the shotgun the first time, dummy? Oh, yeah. Too much collateral damage. The last thing I’d want would be for Kate to be in the line of fire. This time, if needed, I wanted to cut a bit wider swath than I could with a seven iron.
As things typically go, many of these items could likely come in handy. Well, maybe except the crossbow; I’d leave that one behind.
◆◆◆
Nautical twilight was upon us. We might have to wait most of the night, but it was an ever-darker, empty street, UCLA-adjacent on a Thanksgiving night.
The goons, as well as us, were parked strategically where they had line of sight on Kate’s bedroom window. We’d cleverly set a timer, cutting-edge tech, on Kate’s bedroom lamp to go on right about now. Click. And there she went, and it would shut off again about six, shortly before it was fully dark, all hopefully in concert with the goons knowing that Kate has been working a two a.m. shift lately to get precious lab time.
This part of the engineered false reality was a strategy Kate dreamed up and implemented herself, between me ‘leaving and driving away’ earlier, and her scurrying through the alley to rejoin me. Always a step ahead,
“I’ve got something to make them think I’m still home,” she’d said to me as we pulled up there earlier in the day, but it didn’t really register until she explained this to me as we sat and talked just before our Turkey Day feast.
Now, growing darker,
“Your fancy timer doo-dad seems to be working.”
Kate nodded. Still a bit too quiet for me. The corner street light blinked on.
It seemed the best evil plan would’ve been for our visitors to show up here at 1:30 in the morning and attack Kate as she walked the half-block to campus. But it also seemed if they’d chosen that option, they would not be parked waiting nine hours to execute such a plan. So since they didn’t drive away after verifying Kate’s ‘bed time’, there might have been pressure on them to complete their sordid task as soon as they were able.
Assuming this was their plan, it gave us some time to sit quietly and contemplate, Kate and I in the front seat, dangerous loaded weapons in the back seat. The quiet was making me antsy, so I tried to restart our earlier lively discussion. We chatted for a long time. Again, a good conversation, but we both grew more nervous with anticipation as the sky grew darker and darker.
“Not much moon tonight. Patchy clouds. About the only light we’ll have will be coming from the big Hollywoodland sign … er, ‘Hollywood’ …”
“Jack, I think the Parks department took all the light bulbs off the sign.”
“They did? Why those …”
“It’s a few miles from here, anyway. It was so pretty at night … but … things change.”
That they do.
Thinking ‘bulb’, this inspired me to reach up and remove the bulb from the DeSoto’s dome light as a precaution. It was nearly dark enough for us to not be able to see each other. The timer Kate had set went off, and Kate’s bedroom window shade went dark.
“That’s a cool doo-dad. I need one of those.”
“Cool?” What do you mean, ‘cool’?”
I laughed. “My Navy buddy Lester Young’s a tenor sax man. He said ‘all them cats say that’ to mean ‘keen’, or ‘hunky-dory’.
Kate snickered. “Hunky-dory. How about ‘doo-dad? Do all ‘them cats’ say that?” smiling at me wryly.
“Oh, now you’re just playing with me.”
That broke the tension, and we both were smiling now.
Then it got even quieter. Kate seemed unsettled. Finally she spoke.
“Why would you do this?”
“… Tell me what you mean.”
“You’re putting yourself in danger. You’ve done this already, today. I … I can’t even afford to hire you. I can barely pay my rent.”
“Pay me once you’re rich and famous.”
All I got was a weak smile.
“Kate, you’re my client. I accepted a retainer.”
I fished the one out of my shirt pocket and held it up, then pocketed it again.
“I made a promise to you about Elle. We’re going to find her.”
She looked at me.
“All you need to know about me, Kate, is I’m a man who wants to keep his promises. I know what it’s like to break them. So I never will.”
I scrunched around partly facing her.
“I need two things. I need to always keep my promises. And I need you to trust in me.”
She nodded. It felt as if she believed in me. That was all I needed.
I looked back towards the sedan lurking up the block.
“If these two are smart, they’ll wait until it’s fully dark and they think you’re sound asleep.”
She nodded again. “Did they seem smart when you spoke with them earlier?”
“Mmm, not ‘grad school’ smart. Doubt they know their way around campus.”
Kate scoffed a little nervously. It was too quiet again. I tried to distract us with more small talk.
“The Thornes are really something. That was a load of fun.”
“I love them so much. They’re like family to me. Howard was so good to me when Dad died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“They’re all so great. Kevin’s so cute. I had a huge crush on him in Junior High.”
“You don’t say. He told me he’d had a crush on–uh oh, I think it might be time to meet the neighbors.”
Seeing that window shade go dark, and the skies now perfectly stygian minutes later, both thugs had exited the dark sedan and were now creeping stealthily towards the house. Astronomical twilight had ended, and the starless sky was now onyx-black. Supposed to be a full moon up there somewhere, but it was fully behind thick clouds, it seemed. Likely a good thing.
I sighed deeply. Sweet feathery Christ, my life wasn’t really working out the way I’d expected. Kate put her hand on my arm as I opened the car door.
“Jack, please be careful. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“That’s true. But we need to neutralize this threat, one way or the other. What we really need are answers. We need to know who keeps sending these goons after you, and why.”
She squeezed my arm a bit more.
“Right now, these are the only guys with answers, Kate. It looks like these two are armed, just like the first two, and they mean you bodily harm. I won’t shoot anyone, God willing, unless they try to shoot me first.”
