The California Roll: A Novel

by John Vorhaus

  His other problem, he didn’t hear someone call shenanigans.

  We were Brownian motion, a Heisenberg uncertainty principle, bouncing and jouncing and flinging mud like chimpanzee dung. Some hurled insults with the mud. Vic seemed to have had enough of Billy’s mockery. Allie aspersed my manhood. Me, I just sang. Hines thought we were nuts. It made him lower his guard.

  Our random movements finally brought all four of us to our feet at the same time.

  That’s when we rushed him.

  It was a clumsy charge, not exactly a pro blitz, but it had its desired effect. In a second we had him face down in the guck, with the weight of four bodies and a considerable quantity of mud holding him there. I saw one gun go flying, but the other was … where? Underneath him? Lost in the mud? And where was the key to the padlock? In his pocket, I supposed, but how to get at it without maybe giving him the chance to gun someone down? It was an odd little impasse. One that I apparently could have bought myself out of with thirty seconds of plain honesty somewhere back down the line, but the next sound you hear will be the barn door slamming behind that particular cow. I didn’t even have the Hackmaster, which meant I’d lost my leverage. I supposed I could vamp about backup files on hidden hard drives, but see above: barn door; cow.

  I was starting to think that honesty was a surprisingly powerful card, and one I should really try to play more often.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Vic. “Just lie here till we all freeze?”

  “That could take a while,” a voice said. “Maybe I’ll just put everyone out of their misery now.”

  I looked left, and there were the no-nonsense black boots of Detective Constable Claire Scovil. She bent into my field of vision and scooped Hines’s pistol from the muck. “Let’s see …” she said, brushing off the snow and mud, “Milval’s gun. Milval’s bullets … I’m thinking murder-suicide,” she said. “How does everyone fancy that?”

  30.

  the hot tub of truth

  I ’m saying I didn’t fancy it at all. All my life I’ve tried to (well, had to) hold on to things fairly loosely. Homes, cars, possessions of all kinds. The way grifters roll, they need to be ready to drop everything and run. I thought I held on to life the same loose way. It was a fine party and all—the best I ever crashed—but every party ends, and anyone who doesn’t acknowledge this is just not being realistic. You can fantasize that you’re immortal. You can hold out the hope of heaven, if you like. Me, I was always just enjoy the ride, and turn in your ticket when you’re done. But finally staring death in the face—or from this prone perspective, staring it in the chunky Doc Martens—I found that I wasn’t holding on so loosely any more. Why the change of heart? My something to lose, of course, sprawled there beside me in the mud. Having finally found love, I would be royally pissed off not to get to enjoy it and cherish it for the next sixty or seventy years.

  Want to hear something really weird? Much as I couldn’t bear the thought of me dying and her living, I couldn’t bear the thought of me living and her dying even more.

  Nobility from a grifter? A genuinely selfless act? It was beginning to look that way—if I could pull it off.

  I tried to roll over, but I was all cabled up against Billy’s back and couldn’t gain leverage. The mud caked on my face was starting to harden. I felt like Quest for Fire. “Claire,” I said into Billy’s shoulder blades, “you don’t have to kill us all. Just kill me. I’m the one you want, right?”

  Scovil settled down on her haunches and brought her eyes level with mine. “Nobility, Radar? Really?” See? She didn’t buy it either.

  “It happens,” I said, trying but failing to shrug. “People change.” She just shook her head. “Anyway, what about the money? Don’t you want that, too?”

  “Honey, I want it all. But first I want an explanation.” She thwacked Billy on the nose. “Mate. Why was I knocked out for two hours, and why do I have such a headache?”

  “Ah, that would be the flunitrazepam,” he said.

  “The what?”

  “Roofies. Surprisingly easy to get in this country.” He had that right. At the Blue Magoon, they practically sell them over the counter. “You’re right lucky I only gave you a half dose.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ll only kill you half dead.”

  “It was my idea,” I chimed in.

  “More noblesse, Hoverlander? What are you, applying for sainthood?”

  “Nah, mate. I’m just trying to buy my friends’ lives.”

  “Since when do you have friends?”

  “I know, huh? It surprises me as much as it surprises you. But look, you know … the Penny Skim … plenty enough to share.”

  For reasons that beggar imagination, she kicked me quite hard in the ribs. “I don’t want to hear any more about the bloody Penny Skim,” she said. “I made it for woffle the first moment I heard of it.”

  “I don’t know what woffle is,” I said, gasping for breath, “but I assure you—”

  And she kicked me again! Now that was uncalled for.

  “Radar,” said Allie, “let it go. You can understand why she doesn’t believe you.”

  “Yeah, I can,” I agreed. “I’ve learned a valuable lesson in credibility through all this, I’m telling you that right now.” A thought crossed my mind. “But tell me something,” I said. “How did you find us here?”

  Scovil hooked a thumb at Hines. “He told me where he’d be. In case he needed backup. Which, to the look of things, he does.”

  “So you were in it together?”

  “From the start.” She smiled in mock surprise. “What? You think you’re the only one who can spin a yarn?”

  “And the bit about killing us all with his gun?”

  “Don’t tell me you can’t take a joke.”

  “Some joke,” muttered Mirplo. “I think I crapped my pants.”

  Scovil waved the gun lazily back and forth. “Right. Get off him now. Wrestling hour is over.”

  We rolled off of Hines. With a fair amount of bruised dignity, he rose to his feet, wiped off what mud he could …

  … then popped Scovil in the jaw.

  I’m not sure Hines could’ve taken Scovil in a fair fight, she was that staunch, but sucker punched as she was, she went down hard. The gun flew up out of her hand. In one smooth motion, Hines caught it on the fly by the barrel and gonked Scovil on the skull. Lights out.

  “She …” started Allie. She didn’t get any further.

  “She’s my partner?” mocked Hines. “Guess she’s not the only one who can spin a yarn.”

  Yeah, I guess. In my mind I quickly restacked the facts. If Scovil and Hines weren’t together (and judging from the heap of Scovil lying at his feet, I think you could take that as read), then from the start, all she was to him was a problem to solve. But which kind of problem? Honest cop or competition? Even at that moment, I couldn’t confidently say, but I realized that from Hines’s point of view, it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t stand to let her shine a light on his operation, and as for sharing the take, well, let’s just say that sharing wasn’t his strong suit. Now, of course, it had all gone to hell, and Hines had the haunted look of a bunny in a leg trap wondering, Well, how much of this will I have to gnaw off?

  Hines positioned himself near me in the mud. He picked my nose with his gun muzzle. I could smell the acrid scent of its recent discharge. I wanted to sneeze, but thought maybe I wouldn’t. “This is your last chance to be honest,” he said.

  “I’ll take it!” I cried.

  “The dash cash. Is it real?”

  “I …” I hesitated. Honesty did not come naturally to me. “I may have overstated the exact amount.”

  “Is there five figures?”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  “It’ll have to do.”

  So here was the new play. Hines and I would leave everyone here, locked up. We’d go back to my place and dig up the dash cash. If it was there—at least five figures—Hines would give me the key to
the padlock, and I could come and fetch my friends at my leisure. “Or not,” he said. “That’ll be up to you.” I have to tell you that I found this statement very offensive, which was a measure either of how far I’d come or how far gone I was. In any case, I didn’t hesitate to take the deal. Anything that made space between Allie and Hines made sense to me.

  Hines unlocked the padlock and extracted me from the Möbius cable. He rolled me over in the mud and held me, prone, at gunpoint, while the others locked themselves back up, adding the limp Scovil to the chain. If she ever woke up, there’d be a fourth for bridge. Then he bound me and hustled me into his car.

  All the way back down the mountain, I tried to make chitchat with Hines, but he wasn’t in a gabby mood. It was night now, and though I knew vaguely where in the mountains we were (I saw a sign for Cedar Springs) I feared I’d have a bitch of a time finding the others in the dark.

  Once again, and for what I hoped was the last time, I tried to play the game from Hines’s side of the board. He’d be disappointed, no doubt, at finding only ten grand in dash cash, but it’d be enough at least to get him to whatever offshore nest he had undoubtedly feathered in advance. What he needed was a head start, clear transit through some airport or across some border. It wouldn’t serve him for me to send up a signal flare the moment he was out of my sight. I suppose he’d feel he had to tie me up or something. I could live with that.

  I know what you’re thinking. I should have been thinking it, too. But every time I thought my head was starting to clear, it turned out that it wasn’t.

  So when we got back to my place and Hines had me dig up my ammo case from its hillside home, I stood there feeling rather grand as he counted out the money. At least I’d told the truth about that. Honesty? Best policy? Yeah!

  “That’s it?” asked Hines.

  “It,” I agreed. The rain was really pouring down again, and the hillside was shot through with rivulets of flowing debris. “I have some vintage baseball cards if you want those, too.” I slipped on the slanty slope as I turned and headed back up to my place.

  “Stop right there,” he said.

  “No baseball cards?” But before I turned around, I knew he’d pulled his stupid gun again, and speaking of stupid, I guess I get the prize for that. I should have realized on the car ride down from the mountains that Hines didn’t need a short head start but a long one. Just tying me up was not going to cut it. But murdering me and leaving me on a wet hillside … yeah, that’d do.

  “Oh, what is this?” I asked tiredly.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Look,” I said, “all I want is to walk away. I won’t drop a dime. Really. You can trust me.”

  We both knew how ridiculous that sounded.

  And you know what? I was kind of ready to go. After all, I’d saved Allie, right?

  Right? Sure, right.

  Except after he’d done me, what was to stop Hines from going back up the mountain and finishing the job? Once you get into murder, the actual body count becomes somewhat moot.

  Well, that just completely and utterly burned my bacon. Here I’d made a reasonable deal with the man (giving up $10,000 is not nothing!), and he’d treated me like some kind of schoolyard mark. Which, I guess you’d have to say, I was.

  So there we stood on the hillside, rain pouring down, mud covering our shoes, one guy holding a gun on the other. A real noir moment. Far below I could see the glowing lights of the Java Man. I thought of all the times I’d been up and down the hill to that place. I knew that slope pretty well. I knew how treacherous it could be, even when half of it wasn’t draining away in the rain.

  I also knew how many neighbors’ windows looked out on that tiny slice of urban verdance.

  “On your knees,” hissed Hines. “Now.”

  “You know what? No.” It was the hiss that gave him away. He wanted to keep this whole thing nice and quiet: another skull-gonk, say, then a smother in mud or similar silent demise.

  Hiss notwithstanding, Hines wasn’t ready to concede the point. “Do it,” he said, “or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “Shoot,” I said. “Go ahead. And everyone will hear, and you won’t even make it out of this neighborhood, much less on the last flight to Wherethefuckistan or whatnot.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The grift is like poker; when you’re down to deuces, deuces is what you play. And when you think the other guy is bluffing, you go with your gut, and raise.

  I turned and took a single step uphill.

  Blam! A single shot rang out.

  Okay, not bluffing.

  I suppose I owed it to rain or bad light or uncertain footing that Hines didn’t hit me. He came close, though; I actually felt the slug whiz through the negative space above my shoulder and beside my head. At that moment, time stood still, and it seemed like I had forever to think things through. Either that or you get so used to playing nothing straight that in times of stress a certain rote behavior takes over. In any case, I whirled around (as if shot), fell to the ground (as if shot), and howled bloody murder (as if—well, you get the gist).

  Hines labored up the hillside to finish me off. He grunted as he neared, losing his traction in the softening earth. I rose up with a feral roar and hurled myself at him. He outweighed me by a fair amount, but I had elevation on my side, and my momentum toppled us both into the mud. Then gravity (“not just a good idea, it’s the law”) took over and sent us both rolling and tumbling down the hillside, clawing and kicking and punching at each other as our bodies slammed against roots and rocks and wet nasty pricker bushes. Somewhere along the way we hit something big, started cartwheeling, and didn’t stop until we slammed into the back wall of the Java Man.

  My head hit cinderblock with a thud that I’ll just go ahead and describe as sickening. Man, I thought as consciousness swam, twice in one day. That is just not fair. But then I looked left and saw Hines crumpled at the base of the wall with his head more or less at right angles to his neck, and I thought, Well, things could be worse.

  The Java Man’s manager came running out. “What the fuck?” he asked, more or less rhetorically.

  I tried to answer. Instead, I took a nap.

  I woke in a hospital. A doctor stood over me, peering into my eyes. He asked me to follow his finger, which I did, and this pleased him, I thought, a good deal more than it should. He turned to the primly dressed woman standing nearby. “He’s going to be fine, Mrs….” He paused to consult his chart. “… Rook. Your husband, Geen …” He did a double take. “Is that correct? Geen?”

  “Yes,” answered Allie in a perfect South African accent. “Geen Rook. It’s Afrikaans.” *

  “Very well,” said the doc. “He should be clear in a day or two. In the meantime, he’ll be well cared for here. He has excellent health insurance.” Of course I do. That’s what the Geen Rook identity is for. Clever of Allie to dig it out of my files, and bonus points for dealing herself in as my wife. Maybe she’d like some cosmetic surgery while she waits.

  No, you know what? She’s perfect how she is.

  Two days later, I left the hospital with the whole welcoming committee there to greet me: Allie, Billy, and Vic. They were well, despite having spent eighteen rough hours in the elements until some hikers found them the next day. I was so happy to see them. My team … my friends … they’d executed the gaff perfectly, mooking Hines into thinking that they’d all betrayed me and, especially, staying with it when I got whacked on the head and forgot that Allie was in on the twist. Solid performers. Even Vic.

  At that, I confess, I was a little surprised to see them walking around so … free to be walking around. Hadn’t the cops asked embarrassing questions about the whole chained-to-a-tree situation?

  “What cops?” asked Allie.

  “Well, I mean, didn’t the hikers notify someone? That was a pretty funky state you were in.”

  “Too right, mate,” said Billy. “So we told them it was a bondage game gone wrong, and
they cleared out fast.” Ah. Couldn’t blame them for that. I would, too.

  But what about Scovil?

  Apparently, she’d come to before dawn, aching and angry, but a lot less rattled in her cage than I’d been. Her first thought had been to blow a big whistle, bust Hines, me, them, and anyone else she could think of.

  They had many hours to persuade her otherwise. All it took was a little attentive listening and a whole big pile of cash.

  As it turned out, Scovil’s family had been taken in by my tropical island scam, and pretty well wrecked on it, too. This had propelled Scovil into a law enforcement career, with a particular ax to grind for the grift. But a fascination, too, the way anti-gay crusaders are sometimes the ones who end up in the men’s room stalls. So she’d always had a love/hate relationship with Billy and, by distant extension, me.

  Poor Scovil, so deeply conflicted. Was she a contrite law officer trying to unflaw her flawed judgment by bringing Billy to justice? The aggrieved daughter of swindled victims on a revenge tip against me? Or a formerly straight cop trying to become bent and get what the other half has? In the end, I don’t think even she knew, and that’s what made her play so erratic. Try to have your cake and eat it, too, you often just drop it on the floor.