“Got your life together?” asked Gonzo, not really buying it.
“Straight up,” affirmed Stew.
“How about contacts from the old days? Know anybody who might be able to help?”
“Nobody knows where to find me or what I do. And that suits me just fine.”
Gonzo bent slightly at the waist, leaning in just a fraction closer.
“Well... I found you,” said Gonzo with the thinnest veil of incrimination. The words hung in the air like a piñata waiting for a bat. All Stew had to do was swing. Instead, his tone turned sharp.
“Next time I’ll use the crosswalk.”
“So no talk about the old days. Over and out?” asked Gonzo.
“Oh, I talk about it,” said Stew. “In AA meetings. Call it sharing. That’s when we talk about the shit we used to do that fed our abusing behaviors.”
“How’s that working?”
“Just had my tenth birthday.”
“Sober ten years. Pretty good.” Gonzo nodded and breathed deeply. “Congratulations, then. And I’m sorry for the intrusion. Good luck with the knee.”
But as Gonzo turned to exit, Stew squeaked out a question. “What was your name again?” asked Stew. “In case I remember something?”
The question galled her. It was full of attitude and wholly insincere. But Gonzo returned two steps and made absolutely certain Stew Raymo clocked her name.
“Detective—Lydia—Gonzalez,” she said.
“And what division are you from?” he pressed.
“Unsolved Cases,” said Gonzo. “Have a nice day.”
As it turned out, there was no actual Unsolved Cases Division in the LAPD. But Gonzo’s story already had plenty of cover. If Stew Raymo wanted to track her down and charge her with harassment, the furthest he would get would be her boss, Lieutenant Bigelow of the Gang Suppression Unit. And Biggs had Gonzo’s back. Not to mention, all LAPD detectives had the proxy to dip into the seemingly bottomless bin of unsolved crimes. They were encouraged to do as much. If investigated, Gonzo’s hospital appearance was well within department protocol. She had merely sought advice from a former expert in the field of home invasion robbery.
Gonzo’s educated prediction was that Stew Raymo would do what most ex-cons would do after such an encounter. Not a damn thing. Engaging the LAPD in anything head-on was a losing proposition. All Gonzo wanted was to rattle Stew’s cage a bit. And she had shaken the man enough to convince her that Stew was guilty of something.
But triple homicide?
“Hey,” said Romeo. “I know her.”
Gonzo was exiting the post-op room with Romeo when her partner stopped hard and heel-swiveled as Pam Raymo whisked past him in the opposite direction.
“That doesn’t impress me,” answered Gonzo.
“No. I mean I’ve seen her.”
Then Romeo snapped his fingers.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “She’s like this actress.”
“Are you coming?”
“Misty Something.”
Romeo stared as Pam disappeared behind the curtains.
“Misty Fresh,” said Romeo, at once pleased with himself for remembering, yet slightly sickened that the fantasy girl was visiting the ex-con.
“Sounds like a porn star name,” joked Gonzo.
“Is a porn star name,” said Romeo. He unglued himself and quickstepped his way to meet Gonzo at the elevator.
“You know a porn star?” asked Gonzo, holding the elevator door for Romeo.
“Know her like every other guy knows her.”
Romeo made an obscene pumping gesture with his empty fist.
“I hate when you do that.”
“Do what? This?”
Romeo grinned and made the pumping gesture again.
“You’re hopeless.” Gonzo let the elevator doors slide shut.
“Damn right, I am,” explained Romeo. “How else would I know her freaking name?”
When the former Misty Fresh returned after her failed search for a nurse who would administer headache meds, she found Stew both agitated and remote. He lied that it was due to the enormity of his headache and added that, given access to an ice pick, he would consider driving it through his own ear until it quelled the pain.
Pam didn’t care for Stew’s description. She calmly informed Stew what the nurse had said. His headache was likely a temporary reaction to the anesthesia. The nurse, though, promised Pam she would page the doctor.
“Think I need to sleep some more,” Stew said.
He then closed his eyes and let go of her hand.
“Why don’t you go buy a magazine or something?” he said.
“Okay,” said Pam.
A little worried about Stew’s sudden change in manner, Pam nodded and withdrew. Then she let it go, rationalizing that his mood was in concert with the anesthesia that was still in his bloodstream.
“Close the curtains, too, will ya?”
Will ya?
There was a false ring to the way Stew capped his request. Pam obliged anyway.
His eyes closed, Stew listened to the curtains glide along the runners until Pam had given him total privacy. He waited until the sound of her heels faded. He opened his eyes, raised his heavy hands over his head and balled his fists so hard he could hear his knuckles pop.
“Motherfuckers!”
Stew’s teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. He wanted to move. He wanted to swing out of his post-op straightjacket and kick something until he bled. His long arms swung around him involuntarily, like those of an octopus, fingers splayed and stretching to grab at anything. All the while he thought about nothing but cigarettes. A cigarette would calm him. One fucking puff, he thought, would chill him enough so he could think through the clanging in his skull.
Stew found a handful of the curtain. He pulled, slowly retracting his arms until all slack was gone. He heard a POP—POP—POP—POP. One grommet at a time, Stew tore the curtain from each ringlet. And when the slack returned, Stew merely twirled his arm counterclockwise, wrapping the fabric around his wrist. POP—POP—POP. With each simple snap came the slightest satisfaction. Soon, Stew’s left arm was bound in yards of white muslin. A mummy’s arm, ripping harder, twirling again, then pulling harder and faster. The ringlets’ pops sounded like a rapid-fire machine gun until, suddenly, all tension was lost and the curtain fell.
Stew opened his eyes. There was, indeed, some small measure of satisfaction in hauling down his entire wall of privacy. He exhaled heavily, then listened to his heart pound.
“Must be some nasty headache,” said the doctor.
Stew’s eyes shifted down the line of his nose. At the foot of his bed was the surgeon who had operated on the injured knee. He wore green surgery garb and his hair was still netted. And though Stew recognized the man’s voice, the face was foreign, distinctly Asian in origin, and resembled that of the sensei guy in The Karate Kid. Stew bet himself he would remember the name of the movie character before he would remember the name of his surgeon.
“Sorry,” was all Stew could think to say at the moment.
“No worries,” said the surgeon. “As long as you don’t screw up my work.”
“I’ll pay for it,” said Stew.
“I’m sure it’ll show on your bill,” said the surgeon. “Now, let’s talk about your rehab.”
“Rehab,” repeated Stew.
Stew’s last rehab was on the thirteenth-floor prison ward of County USC Hospital. Twenty-eight God-awful, gut-puking, days of hell. But Stew had survived. Kicked his drug habit in the ass and begun anew. Yet Stew didn’t care for the sound of the word.
Rehab.
But the surgeon was so calm. This after he had just witnessed the beast in Stew. He had merely stood there and serenely watched his patient rip the entire curtain from the railing, loop by loop. Then it came to Stew. A voice in his head. A memory. Words with both sound and image attached.
“Daniel-san,” said the voice.
“Mister Miyagi!
” shouted back the boy.
Success, thought Stew. And he smiled.
****
In 1992 the odds of a young American male losing his spouse in a violent crime were higher than a million to one. The risks were twice as elevated for the same man to suffer the murder of a child under the age of eighteen. Two children? The odds climbed. As a pure safety issue, these were numbers Ben had never calculated. Had he ever crunched the numbers, combining both his wife and children into a single, life-shattering, triple homicide, he would have found the odds were so great that he would have a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice while standing in the middle of New York’s Central Park on a nearly cloudless day.
But Ben wasn’t standing in Central Park when the cloudburst happened. He was tending bar.
As Ben would later come to understand, odds, long or short, weren’t important to most Americans. Otherwise, Americans wouldn’t foolishly invest billions into their state lotteries. Nor would they routinely stuff themselves into ugly Aloha shirts and vacation in the gambling Meccas of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Gaming was way up in America. To interview Joe Citizen was to hear countless tales of habitual losers who had cashed their paychecks at the local Indian-owned casino only to lose everything on twenty hands of blackjack.
In fact, Ben would sometimes pontificate, Americans by in large ignored any and all odds, astronomical or otherwise. They consumed too much fast food, abused alcohol, and helped tobacco companies stuff their vaults with cash despite the obvious and heavily publicized betting lines against their own personal benefit. Americans drove cars without buckling seatbelts, owned and stored loaded guns in unsafe places, smoked cigarettes in bed, operated machinery while tanked on cold medication, polished off bottles of wine while soaking in hot tubs, and engaged in millions upon millions of sexual liaisons without asking for proof of a single AIDS test.
Hell, thought Ben. Soldiers in Iraq played life safer.
Americans clearly didn’t make choices based on odds. But cook the very same probabilities into a monetary context and most of those same Americans would listen. Example: What if Ben were to explain to a convenience store owner that the mere installation and display of a closed circuit video system would not only decrease the odds of an armed robbery, but increase sales by creating an environment that made the customer feel safer? The profit motive alone would convince the convenience store owner to open his checkbook.
The very same formula worked for most businesses. Ben would work the same odds that most men or women would find reason or rationale to ignore. Except he would turn the numbers into dollar signs. Clients would always see the advantage and pay Ben well. This was Ben’s unique and true talent.
A talent born from loss.
As Ben sat in his car, engine idling, parked across the street from what was once his precious Prague ’88, he couldn’t help but calculate the cost versus benefit in his life so far. With astronomical odds in his favor, he had still lost his family. But from the ashes of that gruesome loss he had eventually found what he considered his true calling. He knew there was nobody in his business that was as good as he at diagnosing danger, prescribing caution, and profiting from other people’s fears.
Ben was the best at what he did. And he hated the ego-driven side of himself that knew it. The cost of becoming the best had been too high.
At dawn that day he had rolled from bed, called Josie and had her scrape his schedule clean. He had driven in the half-light to the downtown Los Angeles flower mart and crafted his own bouquets—three in all—then set a course for Live Oak Memorial Park in the City of Monrovia. The grass was wet and the sky, pale blue and utterly cloudless. It was a sure sign of a scorching day to come. Despite the years that had ticked away since he last visited the graves, Ben needed no assistance whatsoever in finding his way through the small knolls and valleys of rolling green and live oaks.
Lord, Ben. The things you never forget.
As he set the flowers down, Ben was momentarily dumbfounded when he saw the grave markers. The flat stones were three in a row, each daughter flanking Sara. But Ben was struck by how small his daughters’ stones were—no more than six-by-eight inches compared to their mother’s ten-by-twelve inch plaque. His girls would have been nearly full grown by now, he thought. Young women. It shamed him that their grave markers would forever be so diminished.
Ben prayed the Lord’s Prayer, cried a little, then prayed again from guilt that his first recitation sounded too indifferent, too damned monotone.
Once back on the road, he called Gonzo on her cell phone and left a voicemail message. It was only 7:30 A.M. Ben stopped at a nearby Denny’s for breakfast, tried to read a newspaper, but couldn’t help wondering if and when Gonzo would return his call. Shortly after nine, he called Gonzo again. He left his third message close to ten. Ben made sure not to plead. Each message was nearly identical.
“Gonzo. It’s Ben. I’m on my cell phone.”
Ben checked the clock. It was 1:48 in the afternoon. He had been parked in his car outside the former Prague ’88 for nearly three hours. And Gonzo hadn’t returned a single call. He could reason that she had other responsibilities, primarily her child and her job. And when she had something to pass along to Ben, she would as soon as humanly possible.
But something heavy had shifted inside of Ben. As if his emotional components had been rearranged without his consent. Deep down, he knew he wouldn’t be at all right until Gonzo called him with some kind of information. Anything, he hoped. Any tangible bit of intel to assist him with that plaguing question:
What to do next?
In that moment, Ben re-attacked the question more specifically.
What to do about Stew Raymo?
The mostly brick, one-story space that had once been Ben’s restaurant was plastered with a large, orange and green Grand Opening sign strung over the pub’s unsubtle name, The Sham Rock. And for a minute there, Ben thought the three pedestrians ambling toward the door were the proud new leaseholders and their pinstriped banker. He even had a thought of getting out of the car and joining them for the walk-though. Only the pedestrians kept walking.
Ben picked up his cell phone and speed-dialed Alex. After four rings, she finally picked up her mobile phone.
“Hey, there,” she said.
“I’ll pick up the girls today,” Ben said.
“You sure about that?” asked Alex. “I’m right around the corner.”
“Of course, I’m sure,” he said. “I want to.”
“Slow day?”
“No,” said Ben. “I just want to be with my family... if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course, it’s okay.” Alex’s voice warmed. “Maybe we can all go out to dinner.”
“Fine by me. I’ll see you at home,” said Ben.
“I love you,” she said.
“Love you, too.”
“How’s it goin’, Boss?”
“Surgery is easy. But rehab is a cunt!” bitched Stew.
Despite the sketchy cell phone connection, Stew could hear his site foreman quietly laugh then cup the phone and say something in indecipherable Spanish. He imagined that square head of Henry’s parked atop equally block-like shoulders with no discernible neck to speak of, big grin on his face while translating Stew’s foul mood for the rest of the amused crew.
“Will be okay. You’re tough man, Jefe,” said Henry.
“Tough men eat morphine,” replied Stew. “You forget, asshole. Once an addict always an addict. One bite of that shit and I’m back to where I was.”
And I’m sure as shit not ever going back there.
What’s the use? thought Stew. Sure, Henry was supposed to be his most trusted employee, but he was also known to knock back a couple of semi-cold Buds at lunch. So why the hell would or should Henry Lopez give a crap about a man’s daily bout with sobriety? Better keep the information simple, thought Stew. Henry didn’t need to know the painful details of enduring ACL rehab without drugs stronger th
an shelf-worn Ibuprofen, not to mention the emasculating necessity for Stew to wear medical support hose in order to increase circulation to the knee and cut down the risk of blood clotting.
“Sounds bad,” said Henry.
“You know, I don’t hear hammers,” said Stew.
“Inspector came by this morning. Said we had to pour new foundations.”
“What inspector?” asked Stew. “The OSHA guy?”
“I don’t know that guy,” said Henry. “The guy for the pool. Came by to sign off on the rebar job.”
“So what does the rebar in the pool have to do with the foundation on the house?”
“That’s what I asked. But he looked at the pilings anyway and said we have cracks in all of ’em.”
“Did you see the cracks?”
“Maybe, I think.”
“And you didn’t think to fill in the holes with dirt?”
“They already pass inspection once, Jefe.”
Stew wanted to hurl the phone. He imagined the device fast-balling across the bedroom and busting a hole in the television tube, effectively wrecking Judge Judy’s TV courtroom. In that instant of rage, Stew hated everything he could see. He hated the perfectly fluffed pillows that propped his knee, the custom wrought-iron bed he lay in, the tartan pajamas that Pamela had purchased and altered to suit his needs, the fake French pine armoire that was really just a free-standing TV closet, not to mention the Sheetrock walls on which his wife had painstakingly applied a faux fresco, powder-blue finish with Napoleon white trim.
Where the fuck does she think we live?
Stew hated so hard that the kind of pain most men would treat with prescription narcotics became totally secondary to his getting out of bed and figuring how to put on a pair of Levi’s.
“I’m coming down there,” Stew said into the phone before hanging up on Henry.
Pamela caught Stew struggling to climb down the steps into the backyard. The French doors leading down from the master bedroom were wide open. Stew’s left hand gripped the railing while the other held a crutch under his right arm. He had but three stairs to negotiate, but the precise tack to coordinate the crutch, the handrail, and his single good leg had momentarily escaped him.
The Safety Expert Page 10
