“Sorry,” she had said innocently. “We don’t use it for a car. It’s like my own filing cabinet for stuff that doesn’t have a place.”
“You should have a garage sale,” Ben volunteered.
That may have been the first time Ben had really looked at her. Or soaked in what a decadent, fuckable beauty she truly was. This woman, Stew Raymo’s wife, sans any kind of makeup or come-hither clothing—was flat-out dazzling. The circumspect Pam he had met at the front door had cast off her armor to reveal sparkling, blue eyes underscored by a galaxy of Irish freckles.
“That open space over there’s where I was going to move everything from the office,” she had volunteered.
“What’s going in the office?”
“I wanted it to be the nursery. Not that I’m pregnant or anything. My husband and I are in the process of adopting, though.”
As Ben hurried from the supermarket to his car, he wrestled with both his rage and his jealousy. He hated Stew Raymo for all the atrocities the man had committed against himself and God knows whom else. Ben was also sick with a begrudging resentment. How dare Stew Raymo possess a human unicorn such as Pam, a woman so fresh and funny and earthy and sad. A woman who desired a child so badly that she was willing to adopt and make evil Stew the father.
Ben surely loved Alex. Alex was Ben’s wife, his partner in rebuilding a life, not to mention the mother of his adopted children. But Ben hadn’t been truly moved by a woman since meeting Sara, his first real love, whom he had married and with whom he had openly shared his heart. The twin baby girls were a gift. A double helping of joy that had ended in horror.
It was if as in destroying Ben’s first family, Stew Raymo was about to be rewarded with a real family of his own. With Pam, a real woman not unlike Ben’s Sara.
“The fucker!”
Ben kicked the side panel of his car door, leaving a Nike-sized-nine-and-a-half dent.
For once, Woody's dream had ended differently.
It had begun as always, filled with more memory than fancy. There was the cacophony of adolescents’ laughter, shouts, and taunts. The hundred-degree heat blasting from a scorching, summer sun. And the dizzying spectacle of Woody’s own pool viewed from the single-story rooftop. The tar and sand roof tiles were sticky hot and could burn the bottoms of the most well-calloused feet. The trick was to throw water from the pool up onto the torrid roof before a quick climb up the trellis. Hop-step into position, then run, jump, leap, or dive into the cool of the Bell family’s swimming pool.
Woody had done this a million times, or so it seemed. His wild splashdowns were famous and in his friends’ schoolyard accounts, usually scored the highest.
But in the dream and just like the day it happened, Woody didn’t jump. At least not right away. He started, then stalled, changing his mind about the trick he wanted to perform. He had planned to run, push off his right leg, pivot, and spin his patented Double-Daffy-360 into the deep end. Instead he pulled back, regathered himself, then crept to the edge of the roof and let his toes curl over roof tiles made pliable by the heat. In Woody’s dream, he could both see the steam rising from the last bit of water splashed upon the roof, feel the scorching heat through the thickened pads of his feet, and smell the tar as if the roof surface itself were freshly laid asphalt.
Then came the shouts.
C’mon! Jump! Hurry the hell up, Wood Dick!
Woody could usually see the faces, naming them as if it were the day. Johnny, Rufus, Kyle, Stevie, Jack. Then there were the dreams where the faces were different, a brew of friends, acquaintances, or clients. Each waiting, either patiently or not, for thirteen-year-old Woody Bell to perform his next, death-defying jump.
This was when the new trick had revealed itself to young Woody. He even had a name for it. The Death Drop. He could actually see it in his mind’s eye, as if he were observing himself from a seat at the shallow end of the pool. Woody would first turn around with his back facing the pool. Like the Olympic platform divers, he would balance at the edge of the roof on the balls of his feet. Next, holding his arms out in the form of a cross, he would stiffen his body, lean backward and allow himself to tip. This would create the awesome illusion that Woody was sure to pancake against the wet, stone pool deck. In his head Woody could even hear audible gasps as he was falling. But before going totally horizontal, Woody would push off the edge of the roof, tossing his head and finishing with a feet first, back layout.
The second part of the dream never changed or was the least bit different from the awful reality. Woody stuck out his arms, leaned back, felt the rush of gravity taking control, looked up and saw wisps of clouds in an otherwise blazing blue sky. Then he began the push-off to his back layout. Only young Woody hadn’t correctly factored in the speed at which Newton’s Laws of Motion operated. By the time Woody fired with his legs, he was past horizontal and on the inescapable path to spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. There was no time for prayers. The impact came quickly and without even the mercy of his blacking out.
That’s where the dream would almost always end.
Occasionally Woody would remember added flashes from other moments—the explosion of young vertebrae, T12/L1. X-rays, MRIS and surgical photographs of a mangled spine, pins and screws protruding from bones like barbed wire wrapped around a broomstick.
Woody would usually wake up in an icy sweat, overworking his lungs, eyes swirling in their sockets until he had found a point of focus and what little relief came upon realizing he had only been dreaming.
Woody would never know why the nightmare had changed. Perhaps it was because of the unconsciousness brought on by the head trauma. Or from spinning nearly a hundred-and-eighty degrees when he and his wheelchair were catapulted through the listing gate, his chair’s wheels eventually catching in the gravel, sending him tumbling backward. After nearly twenty years of the same dream, ending when his body slammed into the deck, Woody finally finished his trick. He tipped, pushed off, tossed his head backwards, and laid his body out in a perfect, backward fall. The Death Drop. Woody splashed into the deep end of the pool feet first, submerging all the way, embraced by the coolness. From the depths, Woody could hear traces of his friends’ cheers. He couldn’t wait to surface. Because maybe this was the moment he had always hoped for. That this was the day he would find out that his years in the chair were the nightmare. And that all he would have to do was kick off the bottom of the pool, break the plane between water and air, suck in a lung-full of San Fernando Valley atmosphere, and he would be thirteen again.
So Woody breathed in.
Only his lungs hurt like hell, a broken rib stinging him sharply just below his left armpit. Consciousness returned in a heavy-lidded haze. Woody lifted his chin and recognized his tree-shrouded backyard. He saw his swimming pool stretch out before him in all its decrepit glory. Gone were the crystal clear water and polished tiles. The pool was empty, the plaster either cracked or chipped down to the Gunite. Residual water from the sprinklers and recent rains had made a rusty, brown puddle at the bottom.
Woody coughed deeply. The broken rib dug deeper and he howled. Or at least tried to. His scream was muffled by the balled-up rag jammed into his mouth. The rag smelled of turpentine, but tasted like gasoline.
“You’re a fat fucker, aren’t you?” asked Stew. “If you weren’t seat-belted all tight into that rig, don’t know what the hell I’d have done with ya.”
Woody twisted his head to the right. The stranger was seated on the pool’s coping, his feet dangling over the edge. Only he didn’t appear so strange all of a sudden, aside from the stained pair of heavy-duty, lumberjack’s gloves he was wearing.
“You look at me like you know me,” said Stew. “But guess what? Now, I know you. Not that it didn’t take a little work. All I had to go on was some camel jockey sayin’ Woody Somethin’. Had to look for private detectives named Woody. And, maybe you already know this, there’s a coupla private detective fellahs around named Woody. Go figure.”
Stew rose to his feet somewhat awkwardly, rotating his left knee just-so until he heard a couple of satisfying pops.
“Still wasn’t sure you was the guy until I staked out your little mailbox place. But the second day I showed up, here comes the black shag-wagon with the flames. Then I knew, dude. I remembered those dumb-ass flames.”
Woody noticed his right sleeve had nearly been shorn off and that his skin was scuffed and bleeding. Both his upper limbs were secured with duct tape to the armrests on his super-chair, the joystick and brake levers just out of reach of his chubby fingers. The chair itself was perilously close to the edge of the pool. In fact it was perched atop the coping, hanging over the edge of the deep end. Panicked, Woody swiveled his view every which way until he saw the 220V cable. It snaked all the way from his bedroom window to the power receptacle underneath his left armrest.
“Yeah,” said Stew. “So the hard part was getting you from over there—where you wiped out—to over here—where I could plug you in. Like I said, you are one fat SOB.”
Was it the concussion that made Woody feel as if he were picking up only one out of every three words uttered by the stranger? And what kept him from fully recognizing the man standing only ten feet away from him? Yet Woody’s vision had been restored in Technicolor. His contact lenses remained intact. It was just that everything seemed like one of his nightmares. Reality hadn’t completely set in yet. At least not until Stew asked, “Why did you have men following me?”
“Following you?” repeated Woody. Only Stew couldn’t hear Woody’s words because they were trapped by the rag balled in the fat man’s mouth.
“Followed me and my wife,” continued Stew. “Was it your thing? Somebody else’s thing?”
“Stew Raymo!” blurted Woody, sounding like there was a pillow over his face. “Oh, Christ...”
Jesus! thought Woody. His chest began to rise and fall as his breathing turned rapid. As if the identity of the man in front of him had entered through a back door in his memory banks. There, only feet away from Woody, was a walking mug shot. A murderer. And he was live, in 3-D! The man whom Woody had paid those two hairy Anton brothers to follow. The man whom Woody had staked out himself at the Studio City construction site. The man who had coldly murdered poor Ben’s first wife and twin girls.
Between those quick, painful breaths, Woody felt his heart thumping like a jackhammer from his insides.
“Oh,” realized Stew. “Think you just put it together. Not until now did you figure who I was. Or are you still too dinged in your melon to know up from down?”
Woody shook his head.
“You paid for the camel jockeys,” said Stew. “Now, who paid you?”
Though Woody’s body went surprisingly slack, he sucked in air through his nose while his eyes widened in an obvious admission of guilt.
“Easier to talk if I take off the...” Stew gestured to the duct tape which secured the rag ball in Woody’s mouth.
Woody nodded.
“Before I do that, I wanna show you somethin’.”
Stew approached, stiffly extending his right arm all the way down to his gloved index finger that was aimed at the joystick that operated Woody’s super-chair. Woody’s view instantly swept back to the emptied pool and the sharp drop from where his chair stood, to the concrete bottom. Next, Woody bucked in his chair, straining to wrest his arms from their bindings.
“Uh uh,” cautioned Stew, gently allowing his fingertip to rest atop the joystick. “Gimme a straight answer, fat man rolls back an inch. Lie to me, fat man rolls forward an inch. You get that?”
Woody nodded violently.
“And fuckin’ scream? Shout out? Any shit like that? It’s the skaters’ pit for you.”
Tears streamed from Woody’s eyes as he rocked his head up and down in implicit understanding.
Pinching the corner of the tape between his thumb and forefinger, Stew peeled it slowly from Woody’s face with little disregard for any pain it might induce. He then removed the spit-soaked rag from Woody’s mouth.
Instantly, Woody began to wheeze and cough at the onset of an asthma attack.
“It’s okay. Hack it up, first,” said Stew. “Now, you ready?”
Woody nodded, then rasped a simple, “Yes.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know his name... Some dude on the phone who—”
The chair bucked ahead as Stew gave the joystick a forward prod. The audible gasp from Woody’s mouth was caught by Stew’s other glove, clasped across his face.
“Told you the rules, fat man. Need me to repeat ’em?”
Stew was so close that Woody could almost taste the flavor on his breath. A mix of sugar and whiskey. Stew slowly pressed the joystick forward while Woody shook his head.
“Alright,” said Stew. “Who?”
“Guy named Ben.”
Stew filed through the names in his head, quickly coming up with nothing at all.
“Ben got a last name?”
Woody’s eyes remained fixed and unblinking on Stew’s index finger as it tap-tap-tapped the top of the joystick.
“Keller,” said Woody. “Ben Keller.”
“Good,” said Stew, reversing the joystick a lick until the chair jerked two inches backward.
“Where’s Ben Keller live?”
“Simi... Simi Valley.”
Once again, Stew pulled back a little on the joystick, moving the chair another few inches away from the pool.
“And why does Ben Keller from Simi Valley want to know about me?”
“Something you did to him.”
“Really? Guy I never heard of says I did something to him?”
Woody nodded.
“You drove by my construction site, right? I know you did. You in your fuckmobile with the red flames and the noisemaker muffler. That was you. I remember.”
“Sure. That was me.”
“Then you saw what I do. I build homes. Homes for families. I’m a good guy, now. That means I am on the right side of things in this world.”
“G... Gotcha,” stammered Woody. “M... Maybe... maybe I can tell him that.”
“Tell the Ben guy?”
Woody nodded.
“Oh, I think I’ll tell ’im myself.”
Stew tapped the joystick over and over again.
“Yes?” Woody asked.
“What’s this guy think I did to him?”
The reflex was to gulp. But Woody’s mouth was so dry he felt as if he might swallow his own tongue.
“I... I wasn’t there so I don’t know if it’s true or nothing...”
Stew fingered the joystick and bumped the chair forward.
“No, please!” begged Woody. “Okay... The guy...”
“Said his name was Ben.”
“Ben, yeah. Ben Keller,” repeated Woody. “He says... He says you killed his family.”
The heat sprayed up from Stew’s feet, starting at his toes and spreading throughout his nervous system. A harsh surge that climbed his entire frame, radiating into his face and down all the way to the receptors in his fingertips. He straightened from the waist and unconsciously turned around in place while shifting his mind into recall. He remembered the recovery room and the surprise visit from that Amazon-sized Mexican cop. Then as if he had totally purged recent acts from his brain, the memory of visiting Old Jerome at the Stink Hole returned. The bathroom. The fire. He had killed Jerome, yes. And the Mojo Potato Cook, too.
Damn, thought Stew, thirsty for another sip of Jack and Coke.
“Killed the guy’s family?” asked Stew.
“Like I said, I wasn’t there...”
Stew shook his own head. Not in denial of the act. But because as much as he tried, he couldn’t quite access a single image of the crimes he had committed prior to his life-changing stay in rehab. He knew he was a murderer. But knowing one did the crimes and being able to visualize the events from memory, were two completely different animals.
While Stew was
twisting over his lousy memory, Woody made the desperate choice to give up any and all information in order to save himself.
“Do you want his address?” asked Woody.
“Where is it?”
“On my BlackBerry. Seat pocket right there.”
Woody tipped his head in the direction of the pouch just inside his right armrest. Stew stepped over and reached in to remove the device. At the first touch of a button the screen came alive.
“Everything I have for him is on there. Just take it, please. Take it and go.”
Stew scrolled and scrolled through the hundreds of names in Woody’s electronic Rolodex.
“Don’t see anybody named Keller.”
“How about you let me?”
“There some kinda search function?”
“Yeah, okay. Button to the left of the scroller.”
Stew had to take off a glove to type B-E-N on the tiny keyboard.
“Got cash, too,” added Woody, trying like hell to sound businesslike and not like the panic-stricken, torture victim he was.
“Hey. How about I give you everything I’ve been paid so far...” begged Woody. “Plus some kind of vig, you know? For your trouble.”
“Got three Bens in your list.” Stew stuck the BlackBerry six inches in front of Woody’s face. “See there? You got three Bens. Ben the Roto-Rooter guy with the North Hills address. Ben Washburn from up Bakersfield way. And... wait, I just had it... there it is. Ben Keller of Burbank. No Ben Keller from Simi Valley.”
“Sure. Sorry. Made a mistake. It’s Ben Keller of Burbank.”
“You said Ben Keller of Simi.”
“I don’t know why I said...”
Woody’s whole body went into a full-tilt shudder as he involuntarily emptied his bladder into a leaky colostomy bag.
“Really, really sorry, okay?” said Woody. “It’s Ben Keller. He lives in Simi but I don’t know where. That’s his office. Burbank office.”
“Wouldn’t lie to me?”
“I’m just scared, okay?”
“Real scared?”
“Def... def...”
The Safety Expert Page 22
