No one said anything while Abe stood there, recalculating, reducing the dimensions of this fracas to the ridiculous waste of resources it represented. Rudy watched the man ponder and glance behind him, Gus staring back, stony, obstinate, and stupid. "Fuck," Abe swore. He glared from Rudy to Carlo to Lydia, furious, finally getting it, putting everything in perspective, but still trying for an obstinate fragment of dignity. "You expect me to believe you're not in this together?"
Carlo chortled at that one. "If we were, you'd be dead by now. You honestly think I'd use these feeble old geezers to take out your operation?" Carlo approached Sam and held up his friend's wrist with the ruined Sarajevo camera hanging from his hand. "The only thing this loon's connected to is the electric toaster in his bath."
"Thanks a lot," Sam snorted and wrenched away his arm.
Carlo held up his hands and laughed. "Hey, buddy, just calling it like it is." He turned to Abe, his patience evidently beginning to wear. "Like she says, Abe, this is one petty little fucking spat, you and Mister Photographer here. You're putting your entire business on the line to duke it out with a half-dead old fart and a little old lady for no fucking reason anyone else can see."
"Little old lady?" Lydia snorted.
Carlo threw up his hands again. Wasn't it obvious? Rudy felt Sheri's stranglehold on his waist start to relax. The so-called adults stood there, patiently waiting for Abe to work it out. His brother might have been the dumbest muscle in town, but no question Abe was the brains. "Fuck this," he finally swore and leaned down to retrieve his revolver. The motion set everyone to thinking, but he didn't give a shit. "You people," he snorted with disgust. He holstered the weapon and pointed back at the limousine in the road. "You mind moving that thing? And ain't nobody touching my networks."
"Of course not," Carlo agreed. "Hollywood's where the future is for you anyway. And don't worry about your Western operation. Sam here has a basement full of cash to pay you for any inconvenience the other night might have caused you."
Smullen and Carlo both frowned at Sam, as if expecting a disagreement. The old bastard made a show of reluctance, but then shrugged the concession. Rudy had seen the filthy, neglected boxes full of money in Henry's basement arsenal. Why would Sam give a shit about anything in this godforsaken house?
Carlo nodded, pleased with himself, and continued to Abe, "Just stay the fuck out of the south side. And that includes Redondo or wherever down there these old folks retire. I want them alive, although I have no idea why."
Abe nodded, his face as saved as it was going to be, his already waning enthusiasm for this showdown visibly drained. He glanced from Carlo up at Lydia. Much as he tried, he apparently couldn't prevent a thaw from wrinkling in his gaze. "You are one good looking woman, Mrs. Spaulding—"
"Thank you."
"And I'm almost ready to believe we're better off with people like you around. But if any of these assholes shows up anywhere near one of my businesses again... Know what I'm saying?"
"Of course."
Abe stood there, staring at them a beat longer. Rudy had seen this sort of thing before, the sonofabitch ghetto hustler letting them all know that no one had scared him off, that he was a man who made his own suicidal fucking decisions. But when no one challenged Abe, he nodded again, retreated to his car, and waited for his grumbling brother to climb in. "Shut the fuck up, Gus," he said. "You're costing more than you're worth." He signaled to the rest of his troops, and they piled into the two cars and backed off down the street.
Carlo turned to Lydia, still holding her rifle up to her shoulder. "You done with that?"
But Lydia was still sighted on her husband. "I'm thinking."
Carlo glanced quizzically between Sam and Lydia, then across at Rudy. "Don't ask me," Rudy said. A part of him couldn't believe it was over, that they were all just going to return to their normal everyday lives. Because, of course, they weren't—those lives had vanished, his more than anyone's. And dimly though he grasped what had happened, Rudy finally understood how little it would matter if Abe Smullen got home that day and let his brother talk him into another round of mindless violence. Because what could threaten more pointless violence than a hurricane or a boat-hijacking Baja smuggling ring? What could take a life more thoughtlessly than a cancer gene run amok in an aging man's body?
So Rudy might have shrugged at Carlo now, but he understood perfectly well why a woman and the old man she pointed her rifle at would be grinning and glaring at each other like a pair of psychotic bi-polar idiots. Because in themselves and each other, they now felt pulses where before they had felt nothing.
Chapter 43
"Hi, everybody. My name is Lydia, and I'm an alcoholic." Lydia beamed at the group, and they returned the ray of ersatz sunshine, especially Group Leader Bob. This was his kind of night. "As of yesterday," Lydia added, drawing it out in her smoothest Louisville drawl. "As of yesterday, I'm six months sober." The group clapped, and Lydia clapped along with them. Bob reached into his pocket and handed her the treasure of a medallion.
"I just wish Johnny was here to share it." That cast an unintended pall over the bare room. The boy hoodlum had hit his parents' Scotch closet three months before, stolen his mom's SUV, and driven it over the cliffs of Abalone Cove. If only Lydia had then stood where she stood tonight, she couldn't help thinking she might have done something for the boy. The way he had tried to touch her some other distant night.
"Is there anything else you want to share?" Bob asked.
This was all part of the hackneyed ritual, but tonight Lydia leapt at the chance. "Yes, there is. I've discovered my cure. I don't mean for the physical disease, but for what brought me to it. I think I've discovered the thing in life I'm really good at."
"Pray tell," Bob prompted, knowing the answer.
"Well, my son—not literally, but you know, adopted, I guess—more or less anyway—he just landed his first photography job with an LA paper. My husband's retired, but he's been working with Rudy, helping him get started. Both of them are so talented. They look at the world and expose themselves to the most surprising and wonderful visions of what they find around them. As Sam keeps saying, they absorb and interpret for the rest of us. And my daughter Sheri has turned into a blessing too. She's taught me more than I could ever dream about loyalty and commitment."
Empathetic nods all around, Bob speaking for the group with, "So what do you bring to it?"
"I used to think I brought nothing," Lydia confessed. "But now I'm not so sure. I don't know how to put it that doesn't sound trite or sentimental, but the thing I'm really good at is love."
"Love?"
Lydia couldn't prevent the blush in her cheeks, but continued gamely, "Yes. I've discovered a talent for loving and caring about people and somehow getting it to matter to them. I can't explain it exactly, but it seems to do wonderful things for them."
Bob happily added, "And for you."
"Especially for me. I haven't felt helpless or lost—or lonely, for that matter—in months."
Bob nodded, the group applauded dutifully, and Lydia sat down, pleased but just a little deflated. After all, she had just announced her membership of the human race—not the most earth-shaking revelation, and too bad it had taken her so long to get around to it.
Rudy and Sheri had begged her to bring them along tonight for her triumphal six-month march, but there were still limits on how public she wanted to take these nascent realities. That was what made the AA group work for her—the anonymity, the ability to talk out her thoughts and feelings in front of strangers. But they weren't strangers anymore, where they? And now she proved her point about her newfound talent for love, by putting away thoughts of herself and concentrating on the others' stories. And found more and more of them speaking to the beacon of her smiling, empathetic face, eagerly sucking up the hope and encouragement she laid out for them. Bob had even suggested that she consider coming on as a volunteer, and she had decided to do so, as soon as she was able to truly help. S
he could do anything these days.
Afterward, Lydia walked out into the cool night air and found her husband standing by Rudy's convertible. Sam's hair had started to grow back in, and he was back to driving and working with the boy. He could still be a handful—especially for poor Rudy, whom he goaded mercilessly down Pulitzer lane. But when had the old Sam ever given enough of a damn about anyone to goad them anywhere? Even Rudy recognized how lucky he was, and had taken to bypassing Sam's worst tirades with a smirking, resilient affection.
If there was anyone Sam no longer dared to test, it was Lydia. The others had watched in something like awe, as he once and for all caved into her uncompromising demand that he return to a life he had never entirely lived in the first place. And Lydia had rewarded Sam's so-called surrender with a generous affection and respect that still allowed him to play the fearless veteran climber atop the private Everest of his sickness. Standing there, waving his flag of a colostomy bag like the proof it truly was of just how tough and durable a sonofabitch he was. Just the night before, they had finally broken out the nurse's outfit, the one without the panties, and in spite of all the clumsy stumbling, the bruised elbows, and that damn bag, they had at last found the upward curve of that long neglected slope. Sam and Lydia were as in love as the day they met, and maybe more so. No one talked or thought any longer about going anywhere.
They hugged and climbed in, and Sam put the top down. He blasted the hot air out at them to ward off the chill of the night, but Lydia wouldn't have noticed. Only when they got to the top of the vast Vincent Thomas Bridge, with the wind swirling around them, did she realize where they were going. "But I have to get my things first," she protested.
"Don't worry, I packed you."
"Sam Spaulding, if you packed me, that means I've got a bikini and a toothbrush."
"Damn! I knew I forgot something, but at least your teeth will gleam."
Lydia laughed. With the alcohol receding into distant memory, she looked pretty damn good for an old girl. And with the two of them walking every day, Sam looked pretty good himself. She planned on spending every waking minute the next two days sunning herself on the back deck of Rudy's new boat and not-so-secretly driving her husband's newfound libido wild.
And speaking of boats, that was yet another shocker for Lydia—the new Rudy and the new Sheri on the new version of Mischa's old yacht. When Rudy announced his intention to leap back into the water—metaphorically at least—both Lydia and Sam had expected Sheri to fly off into a delirium of guilt and fear. But the girl literally leapt aboard, and the two of them made a happy, if much too competitive, sailing duo. Sheri had already survived the worst the ocean had to offer, she explained, and she was a damn fine and talented sailor—if she did say so herself. Even when Rudy brought aboard the thoroughly illegal shotgun and skeet trap, to give Lydia something to do, and to keep at least one of the women out of his wild sailing hair.
Sam was talking now about Rudy and some complicated harness he had devised to climb the mast during the regatta and shoot from the top.
"But that sounds horrible!" Lydia said. "Does Sheri know about it?"
"Yes, and we're not bringing it up, all right? It actually just looks dangerous. The kid knows what he's doing."
"Well at least she won't have to kick him out of the way to get control of the steering wheel."
"The helm."
"Whatever. Just give me a bottle of lotion and leave me out of that one."
Passing over Naples Island to the Alamitos Bay Marina, Sam grew quiet, concentrating on the driving. Or so Lydia thought, until he pulled in a mile from the boat slip and turned off the engine.
"What?" Lydia asked, alarmed.
"Before we get there..."
"Before we get there what?"
"Abe and Gus Smullen were hit last night on the PCH south of Malibu."
"Oh God."
"They pulled in to buy gas, and a drive-by artist shot all of them. Abe, Gus, their driver, a bodyguard, and the kid working the counter."
"Carlo?"
"I have no idea."
Lydia couldn't help it, she started to cry. Sam freed her seat belt, picked her up, and pulled her awkwardly past the gearshift into his arms. But it didn't help. All she could picture was the beauty of Abe Smullen as he went about his ugly, vicious life. It was all so wrong, so inexplicable, so hurtful to her, personally and individually, in a way she couldn't begin to express.
Just a week earlier, Sam had told her that Abe's life and living were a time bomb waiting to go off. Lydia supposed that it was true for all of them—not just for the Smullens, nor for the Rudy she had first met, nor for the lost boy Johnny from her AA group, but for her husband with that faulty gene ticking away inside his tough old wonder of a body. In caring for Sam, Lydia had befriended other cancer patients. Her first thought was to wonder how they managed to get through the day, knowing their time was limited. But now, she understood how irrelevant the question was. We were so all limited, one way or another, and all we had to get through it was the love we gave each other.
Lydia wiped her eyes and felt the mascara smear, but let it go. Her husband held her, waiting patiently for her to pull herself back together, and for her, that was enough. For now, anyway. Even in the cool night air by the marina, she had never felt so warm and protected. And of course, this was their unspoken secret. Because Rudy had rescued Sheri, and Sheri had rescued Rudy, and both of them had rescued Sam and Lydia, and Sam and Lydia had rescued the children and each other, and they were all so lucky, so full of gratitude for finding each other. And why not? Because, as far as Lydia could see, that was the way it was supposed to work for a family of human beings. Trite or not, she no longer gave a damn. The only word to describe what they all felt about each other, what they had done for each other, was love.
Speaking of Lockhart...
James Lockhart Perry was a Texan born on Valentine's Day in 1892 into the wilds and woolies of East Texas. Daddy Jim, as he came to be known, never worked the oilfields that erupted all around and became so potent a symbol of the crude, brash, lawless state the rest of us recognize. Instead, he patiently farmed the rice fields, married the fine-looking Missouri-bred schoolteacher Dora Mae, and built a beautiful yellow house in the tiny hamlet of Markham for his three lovely daughters Adrienne Lavonne, Audrey Louvelle, and Anita Lorraine. He also built a legend in his lifetime for tireless inner strength and placid outer humility.
So the author's use of Daddy Jim's name for a pseudonym serves as homage as much as anything to the towering gentle spirit of that pioneer and his brave people. The only historical connection Daddy Jim and the author share is that Daddy Jim died on the author's twelfth birthday, thirty-three days before John Fitzgerald Kennedy set off with Jackie of the pink pillbox hat for Dallas. And the fact that both author and rice farmer have loved Daddy Jim's granddaughter to distraction.
The smartest thing the author ever did, apart from forcing the granddaughter to marry him, was to buy her a camera. Since then the couple has stretched the meandering, shutterbugging progression of their lives around the globe, until twenty years ago when they finally settled down on the beach south of Los Angeles, California. Where the surf rolls in with the same steady, timeless rhythm of the rice waving in the breeze of Daddy Jim's long vanished fields.
Lockhart's Other Stuff
Cat Flight From Birdland
90 Days of Lies, Love, and Self-Discovery
The beautiful courier Mathilde Durand never baked cookies for her son Alec, but somewhere along the way, she must have taught him how to cover his tracks and flee from trouble. Handy skills for a Hollywood B-movie producer who responds to his partner's double-cross by stealing their $9,999,900 in seed money. Especially when the Bulgarian mobster who provided the funds comes looking for him. And when the Bulgarian's masters in The Consortium lose patience and start murdering everyone involved.
Daddy's Girls
A Near Thriller
All George du Plessis wan
ts to do is daydream about his late wife Izzie and not make a hash of raising their two beautiful daughters, Gisela and Adelaide. Yet for that plan to work, George would need a far less violent and convoluted family history. One thing George does know—he'll be damned if the sins of the European fathers and mothers will be visited upon these American children. And so he might...
The Expatriate
A Novel
Mac Macleod always assumed that the grandiose dreams he fulfilled would define his life, that he would live on past his time. Not on a Napoleonic scale, but in terms of companies and factories built, workers employed, generations educated, all that wonderful-sounding stuff. But now he's not so sure. And all it takes to turn his world upside down is a kidnapped 15-year-old daughter and a ridiculous princessly ransom of $200.
The Mike and Tuesday Comedy Hour
Book One
The Messenger
A Philosophical Fairytale
Meet Mike Miller, Messenger Extraordinaire, the man with the tightest lips in America. Mike has made millions in the hyper-secret, slightly seedy Messenger business. His gorgeous wife Tuesday is the hottest TV News personality in Los Angeles. Life bumps and grinds along, until Mike's paid too much money to deliver a message to a Wyoming beauty queen who's been dead twenty years. But posthumous message delivery turns out to be the only halfway sane assignment in this convoluted and dangerous job.
Book Two
The Quotidian
A Second Wave of the Wand
Three years later Mike and Tuesday are at it again—except as far as Tuesday's concerned, they're not at anything together. She's ditched her husband and moved on to national network TV. When her reporter nose gets her in trouble—again!—Mike grumbles off to the rescue. And finds himself caught in a loony triangle between meddling saints, murderous mobsters, and his alleged ex-girlfriend Frankie, the kindest, sweetest killer-for-hire on the planet.
Exposure Page 21
