The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  She sensed Lindsay might be crying, or on the verge, but the line was quiet. If her daughter was affected by what she’d heard, she wasn’t about to give her mother the satisfaction of letting her know it. Nor, obviously, was she prepared to let her off the hook just yet.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” Lindsay said abruptly. And then Mariah found herself listening to dial tone.

  Brilliant sunshine blinded her as Mariah left the federal comcenter. She paused for a moment at the door to let her eyes adjust and rifled through her purse for her sunglasses. The air was warm and desert dry, typical of all the southern California days she could remember from the time she’d spent growing up here. Logic told her there must have been some rainy days, but she couldn’t recall one—as if her subconscious, like some kindly charity lady, was trying to compensate for the bleakness of the past by offering candied recollections of nonstop sunshine and balmy breezes. Nothing but gorgeous days like this.

  Dark glasses found, she slipped them on and started across the wide esplanade in front of the Federal Building, heading for the parking lot. She’d called a cab to take her to the restaurant where Shelby Kidd was hosting the luncheon in honor of the visiting Russian foreign minister.

  The government complex was the sole occupant of a large square block of prime Los Angeles real estate, the high-rise set well back from surrounding streets. Around the perimeter of the block, concrete posts stood closely ranged like stout little soldiers, a first line of defense against the prospect of a fanatic with a truck bomb. A row of needle-nosed Italian cypress trees posed like backup sentries against the white tower. The esplanade was crowded with civil servants taking outdoor smoke breaks and a steady stream of visitors coming and going to the passport and immigration offices and other federal agencies warehoused in the big building.

  At one end of the wide plaza, a row of folding tables had been set up, covered with potted greenery. A hand-painted wooden sandwich board propped in front advertised herbs and houseplants for sale, grown by the rehab patients of the Veterans Administration hospital across the street. Two men were working the tables, dressed in casual pants and sport shirts. A third, sitting on a stone bench behind them, caught Mariah’s eye as she approached. He was a big, bearded bear of a fellow, with a long, graying ponytail and rimless glasses. Attractive in the rumpled, unselfconscious style of some old folksinger or poet, he was feeding bread from a bag to sparrows dancing around his feet, looking up occasionally to check on his two friends.

  Mariah had just about decided he must be a social worker or psychologist from the VA hospital, sent to supervise, when one of the others said something to him. The big man slowly put down his bag of bread crumbs and picked up a green tin sprinkler can. Rising laboriously, he shuffled along the row of plants, muttering under his breath as he watered.

  She was taken aback. Human beings had a million cruel and capricious ways of wounding one another and themselves. What was his story? she wondered. He was too old to be a Gulf War veteran. A holdover from Vietnam, still, after all these years? Poor man. How many people who’d loved him had had their dreams shattered by whatever accident of fate had befallen him?

  Her taxi was nowhere in sight yet, so she paused at the table, looking over the plants, lifting a pot of basil to inhale its sweet fragrance, the scent prying an image out of some forgotten corner of her mind: her mother at the kitchen stove. An odd memory, since her mother had never been much of a cook. Homemade spaghetti sauce had been one of the few recipes in her limited repertoire, and every once in a while, Mariah recalled, guilt over serving too many meals from tins would send her mother into a frenzy of production that she’d divvy up into margarine pots and freeze, resolving to serve healthier meals in future. But with the long hours she worked to support herself and two young daughters, they soon slipped back into old habits.

  Suddenly, the rumpled man let out a bellow. “Incoming!” His shoulder slammed into Mariah, knocking her sideways, and the potted basil went flying. She grabbed the table’s edge to steady herself. “Incoming! Duck!” he yelled again. His watering can clattered to the sidewalk, sending water splashing over her shoes as he threw his arms out in a protective reflex.

  “What the—?” Mariah cried.

  The man shouldered her back as a helmeted bike rider connected with one of his big, outstretched arms. The cyclist wobbled in place, sunlight glinting off his opaque black wraparound glasses. The two of them locked in a brief wrestling match, and then, as the big man let out a cry, the cyclist shook him off. He stood high in his stirrups and bore down on the pedals, weaving between shouting pedestrians as he streaked away, bumping down the half-dozen steps to the driveway. The last Mariah saw of him, he was careening off to the left and disappearing down a side street like some mad messenger from hell.

  “Martin!” one of the other plant sellers cried, running around the table as the big man dropped to his knees.

  “Incoming,” he gasped, weakly this time, wrapping his arms around himself, tucking his hands under his arms.

  “No, just some idiot on a bike,” his friend said. He turned to Mariah, grasping her elbow to steady her. “Are you all right?”

  Her purse had fallen to the ground. She gathered it up and hooked the strap over her shoulder. “I’m fine. Where did that bike come from?”

  “God knows. Just appeared out of nowhere.”

  “What about him?” she asked. The man was almost prostrate now, covering his head with his arm. “He was trying to shield me.” She crouched beside him and reached for his hand, but he recoiled from her touch, pulling into himself into a tight ball. “His hand’s bleeding,” she said, looking up anxiously.

  His friend squatted beside them. “Must have scraped it on the can. Martin,” he said quietly, “it’s okay. It was just some nut on a bike. Let me see your hand. You’ve cut yourself.” The man called Martin lifted his head. His glasses were askew, and he peered around, owl-like and skittish. “It was just a guy on a bike,” his friend repeated.

  “Are you all right?” Mariah asked.

  The big man’s darting gaze settled on her for a split second. “Enemy incoming,” he said, his voice vibrating like double-bass strings. He wavered for a moment, then his eyes flickered, and he crumpled to his side on the pavement.

  “Oh, shit,” his friend said, studying him closely. He looked up at the other man at the table. “Better call the clinic, John, and tell them to get over here. I think Martin’s on something.”

  “Can I do anything?” Mariah asked.

  “No, we’ll handle it. He’s got a bit of a problem.” The man crouched lower, raising his voice a little. “Martin? What are you on, buddy? Where’d you get it? Come on. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you took. What was it?”

  The big man’s bleeding hand rose to cover his face, hiding from the insistent questions. The other man pulled his hands away. Martin resisted for a moment, then slumped onto his back, eyes rolling up into his head so that only the whites showed.

  The other man at the table had a cell phone. He snapped it shut and slipped it into his pocket. “The ambulance is on its way,” he said. He shook his head sadly. “Oh, jeez, Marty! What do you want to be doing this for?”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Mariah asked. “He looks so pale.”

  “’Fraid not. He’s gotten his hands on some drugs. I don’t know how—or why. He was doing so well in rehab.”

  “I really think he was trying to protect me from that crazy biker,” she said.

  The guy on the ground nodded. “That’d be just like Marty. He’ll save everyone but himself. Look, ma’am, there’s really no reason for you to feel you have to hang around here. The ambulance is on the way, and we’ll take good care of him.”

  “You’re sure?” Mariah said. Down in the driveway, she noticed, a cab had pulled up to the walkway, and the driver was looking around impatiently. She glanced at her watch. She was running late. The last thing she needed was to lose her c
ab, hard as they were to get in this city. “If you’re certain there’s nothing I can do…?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. We’ve been here before, believe me.”

  “Well, when he’s better,” she said, “could you tell him I said thank you?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Mariah got to her feet and watched a moment longer, reluctant to walk away when her erstwhile protector was lying prostrate on the ground. The man seemed to be slipping into a drugged stupor, his arms lying limply at his sides now, his legs sprawled at bent angles. She heard the sound of an approaching siren as she turned reluctantly and headed for the taxi. Selflessness and self-destructiveness, she thought, reflecting on what his friend had said. What a tragic and lethal combination that was.

  And then it hit her. Maybe it was because she’d been thinking about her mother just before being knocked out of the cyclist’s way, but as Mariah started down toward the waiting taxi, a realization slammed into her like a Mack truck seen coming but impossible to avoid—the real source of the rage that had simmered inside her for as long as she could remember. Something her mind had never allowed itself to admit.

  Neglect is easier to forgive than self-sacrifice.

  It wasn’t just her father, she realized—how being abandoned by him at seven had screwed up her head, leaving her slow to trust and quick to anticipate betrayal. It was her mother, too, and that blind, stupid, selfless loyalty of hers. The way she’d handed over her life to Ben, then watched him throw it away—throw them all away—like it meant nothing. The way she’d allowed him to steal her youth and her light, easy laughter. And then, to cap it all off, her refusal to ever, even once, allow a bad word to be said about him in her presence.

  You got a raw deal, Mom! Where was your pride? Where was the anger? Why did you always have to defend him?

  Even as she thought it, a wave of guilt washed over her. How could she blame the poor woman? Andrea Larson had been eighteen, only a couple of years older than Lindsay, when she’d met Ben at a coffeehouse on the University of Chicago campus. Dazzled by his glib charm, she’d dropped out of her freshman year of college and run off with him a week later, to the horror of her staid parents. For the next eight years, she’d supported him while he produced the bulk of the work for which his adoring fans remembered him to this day—only to find herself ultimately abandoned and left to raise two young children alone.

  For all her belief in Ben’s talent, Mariah realized, her mother had never lived long enough to see the extent to which he would be lionized by the world. Never knew how his work would stand the test of time, so that now, thirty years after his death, he was more read than ever, while she, who’d made it all possible, was utterly forgotten, except by her one remaining child. And even then, Mariah thought, her memories were mixed with frustration as much as love. Nothing about it was remotely fair.

  Her mother had been a lovely woman. Other men had come courting after Ben left, but she was like some rare orchid that needed just the right conditions to thrive. The removal of Ben from her life caused her to wither away, as if deprived of some essential nutrient. Even if the official cause of her mother’s death was ovarian cancer, her spirit had died long before that final insult to her body.

  Mariah flagged the cab, and the crunch of its tires kicked up loose stones on the roadway as it pulled forward to meet her.

  Why now, after all these years, did the thought of that self-sacrifice make her so angry? Blinking away tears, she looked up at the stunning azure blue of a sky unmarred by a single cloud. How could anyone have a bad thought, let alone a bad day, under a sky so beautiful?

  The past was past, she resolved. She couldn’t change her parents’ lives. She could only move forward, paying close attention to the foundation she, in turn, was laying for Lindsay’s life. Her father’s behavior had run true to what he’d probably learned growing up, abandoned by his own parents, shuffled between dour, demanding relatives. Maybe that was what her mother had responded to—the sad little boy inside the brilliant writer. The world always made allowances for genius. So, apparently, had her mother. For her sake, Mariah just hoped Ben had been worth it.

  She climbed into the car and gave the driver directions to the restaurant. He moved out into traffic just as the VA ambulance entered the lot, screeching to a halt at the entry to the plaza. Mariah glanced back as white-coated attendants jumped out and headed for the ambulance’s rear doors to pull out a stretcher.

  And then she saw the dark sedan again—the same one, she thought, that had been outside her hotel the night before, its windows tinted black. It pulled up close behind the taxi, too close for her to see its plates. When the cab turned down Wilshire Boulevard, it was still following close behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Mr. Lewis? Can I offer you some champagne before lunch?”

  Frank Tucker tore his gaze away from the rounded green slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, thirty thousand feet below the aircraft. The big Rolls-Royce engines had throttled back to a cruising drone. From the galley at the rear of the cabin, warming food smells were already wafting forward. A blond, ponytailed flight attendant stood over him, holding a tall glass flute. He caught a hint of grassy perfume as she bent lower to show him the label on the opaque black bottle resting in the palm of her other hand. Her fingers cradled its neck, her thumb expertly hooked in the deep, concave depression at its base.

  He nodded. “Why not?” The man named Frank Tucker would probably be in handcuffs and leg irons for the return flight, squeezed into a seat way back in Economy with a couple of federal marshals on either side of him. But Grant M. Lewis was an executive who flew first-class in wide leather seats more suited to his oversize frame. Might as well enjoy this fictive life while it lasted.

  “Are you heading to Los Angeles on business or pleasure today?” the attendant asked as bubbles cascaded into the goblet.

  “Business, mostly.”

  She handed him the glass. “Business, hmm? Let me guess. I’m usually pretty good at this.”

  She leaned an elbow on the seat back ahead of him, a crease of a frown appearing above her pert nose as she checked him out. She’d taken his sport jacket and hung it in the closet at the front of the cabin when he’d boarded. Tucker, feeling self-conscious under her intense, blue-eyed scrutiny, was grateful that his black knit shirt was new—a birthday gift from Carol, who kept trying to counter the effects of her old man’s self-neglect. And middle-aged hulk though he might be, living alone these past months had dropped his weight closer to Navy trim than he’d been in years. Some people were intimidated by his size and black-eyed looks, he knew, but this young woman didn’t seem remotely nervous.

  “Entertainment?” she guessed. “An agent? No, wait…you don’t look like somebody who’d be happy stuck behind a desk. Something more active.” A pink-tipped finger tapped her chin as she thought about it. Then her face lit up. “I know! A stunt coordinator! Explosions and car chases and stuff. Am I close?”

  Amused, he debated how to reply. She was wrong, but not totally off-base. Although the circumstances of his family life, and his wife’s long illness in particular, had arranged things so that he’d ended up stuck behind a desk for most of his career, his restless nature had never really been content there. And he had certainly set off a few explosions during his time in the service.

  On the other hand, he reminded himself, that was Frank Tucker’s reality. Who was Grant Lewis today? “I’ve pulled a few stunts in my time,” he told her, “but I’m more into headhunting right how.”

  “Aha! A talent scout. Well, just the same, it was a pretty close guess, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded, letting her continue to draw her own conclusions.

  “I told you I was pretty good at this,” she said happily. “I’ve been flying for six years. You meet all kinds of people. After a while, you get to the point where you can just tell what line of work someone’s in, you know?”

  “Uncanny.”

  “Isn�
�t it? So,” she asked, settling companionably on the arm of the empty seat ahead of him, draping her arm over the back, “are you with one of the big studios?”

  There were only a couple of other passengers in the first class cabin on the L.A.-bound flight, and none of them seemed to require her ministrations at the moment. Or warrant her undivided attention, Tucker noted, bemused. It was a rare day when he got to enjoy the company of so many pretty young women. First Carol and Lindsay, now this nice girl.

  “I’m more of a free agent,” he said.

  “That must be nice, running your own business. My boyfriend wants to do that, too. He’s a software developer with Microsoft right now, but he’d like to start up his own company. Do you like working for yourself?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’m not real good at taking orders, I guess.”

  A soft beep sounded overhead, and she grimaced, glancing at the cockpit and rising with a reluctant sigh. “I hear you there,” she said. “Duty calls. Can I get you anything else before I go? Maybe a video player? We’ve got a good selection of movies on board.”

  “No, thanks.” Tucker nodded at the briefcase on the empty seat beside him. “I’ve got some work to do. Is it okay to use the laptop?”

  “Sure, no problem. You should be fine until we start our final approach into LAX.” Her smile enveloped him once more. “I’ll check in on you later, Mr. Lewis. We’ll be serving dinner soon, but if you need anything, just let me know, okay?”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

  Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder, and then she left to answer the summons from the front of the plane. Tucker closed his eyes, basking in the residual warmth of her touch, hardly able to put a name to the longing it stirred deep inside him. It had nothing to do with that young woman in particular, and it was far greater than a simple desire for sex. The need to connect and belong somewhere had him operating on instincts so primal he hardly knew what he would do next. He sensed only that he was moving in the direction he needed to be going. He also felt more alive than he had in years.