One Hot Mess

by Lois Greiman

  “Was it… like a gift?”

  I scowled, not really sure how to answer that. “I guess so.”

  “Then yeah.”

  “It’s quite a sizable check.”

  “Then hell yeah,” she corrected.

  “What if there are strings attached?”

  “Are those strings likely to land you in the maternity ward with a baby the size of a watermelon stuck in your woo woo?”

  A bevy of questions screamed through my mind, but I tried to remain focused. “No.”

  “Killed?”

  “I hope not.”

  She squinted her eyes at me.

  “No,” I corrected.

  Her heavy brows lowered. “You can’t keep peeing in the backyard.”

  I started. “How did you know—”

  “Seven kids. I’ve seen everything.”

  “I do need a new septic system,” I said, “but maybe it’d be wrong to take his money.”

  “Honey…” she said, and, standing up, came around the corner of the desk like a road mender on a mission. “You got a good head and you got a good heart. I’m sure you’ll use the money wisely.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. Besides, if it’s from some man, he probably deserved to lose it anyhow.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Cash the check,” she said, “then go get yourself some sleep.”

  I took her advice. Well, I cashed the check. But then, when I least expected it, my car missed the turn onto Sunland Boulevard and sped west toward Sespe.

  Happy Daze Pub looked like any other bar anywhere in the country. It was small, dingy, and quiet, even for a Tuesday night. Christmas lights were strung haphazardly above the door. I took a stool near the corner, where I could get a panoramic view of the place.

  The occupants were a manila lot. Blue-collar workers mostly, with a businessman thrown in for color. The bartender was a woman. She had good-sized arms, which flexed mightily as she leaned against the hardwood.

  “What can I get you?” Her voice matched her arms. My guess was steroids and a good healthy disgust for anyone sporting testicles.

  “I’ll have a strawberry margarita.”

  “No blended drinks,” she rumbled.

  “A vodka cranberry, then,” I said.

  She nodded and moved away. I was a little insulted at her haste. I mean, I’m a firm heterosexual, but at least she could have flirted a little.

  “A margarita?” someone said, and I turned.

  The man who approached the bar was carrying a drink of his own. He was twenty soft pounds overweight, had curly hair, and wore a diffident expression.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  I gave him one haughtily raised brow. I’d learned while serving drinks to the inebriated populace of Schaumburg, Illinois, not to take too much guff. “That I like strawberries?”

  “I think they serve them at the Dairy Queen. Do you mind?” he asked, and indicated the stool beside me.

  I shook my head and he sat, setting his drink down in front of him. It looked like a gin and tonic.

  “This isn’t the kind of place with fruit?” I asked.

  He took a swig of his drink. “This is the kind of place where people come after their shifts at the plant.”

  “To get drunk?”

  “By the shortest possible route.”

  “You work at the plant?”

  “For twenty years.”

  I looked him over. He couldn’t have been much older than thirty. “That’s a long time.”

  “I’m generally the first one here,” he said.

  “Hey, Mac.” A man in a khaki work shirt gave him a nod in passing.

  “Hey,” answered my companion, and took another swig.

  “Your name’s Mac?” I asked.

  “That’s what they call me. How about you?”

  “They call me Mac.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I were,” I said. “So, you’ve lived in Sespe a long time?”

  He shrugged. “Old man loved work boots.”

  “So you do, too?”

  “Took too much effort to love anything else. How about you?”

  I glanced around the room. California had gone smokeless in the ′90s, but judging by the haze, Sespe might not have gotten the memo.

  “I’m a cocktail waitress,” I said.

  “Yeah? You meet Lyda here?” he asked, as the bartender returned with my drink. She set it in front of me and nodded.

  “Hey, Mac,” she said, then to me: “Four-fifty.”

  “I got it,” he said, and lifted his almost-empty glass in a well-understood signal. She gave him a near smile and moved down the bar to fulfill his wishes.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Friday’s payday.”

  “No point letting all that potential money go to waste.”

  “Almost be a sin,” he said. “Where do you work?”

  “L.A.”

  “Yeah?” He jiggled his ice. “I heard of that place.”

  I smiled and tasted my drink. It wasn’t bad, maybe a little heavy on the vodka.

  “What are you doing here!” he asked.

  Honesty may get you to heaven, but a couple of handy lies will get you answers. “I was visiting my brother. Just on my way home.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I took another sip. “What?”

  “Your brother. Could be I work with him.”

  “Oh. No. He lives in Santa Barbara. Just had a new baby.”

  He smiled a little. Lyda replaced his drink. “Babies are nice. New life and all that,” he said, and gazed with melancholy at the bottle-lined wall in front of us.

  It seemed a perfect segue. “I heard a guy drowned here the other night.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Weird.”

  I felt my stomach cramp. “How so?”

  He took a swig. “Manny liked the water. Could swim like a fish, or so he said.”

  “So you knew him.”

  He shrugged.

  My heart was racing. “Did you work with him?”

  “He got himself fired a few months back.”

  His answers seemed strangely succinct after his former verbosity.

  “I’m sorry. Were you two close?”

  “Me and Manny?” He glanced at me. He had kind eyes, pale green, a little sad.

  “Evening,” said an aging man in a sport coat.

  “Hey, Milt,” he said, then sipped some more and shrugged. “Actually, I don’t think he liked me very much.”

  A blue-jeaned man in a sweatshirt paused in passing. “Hey, Mac. Me and Garrett are goin’ to Burley’s come Friday. Wanna come?”

  He nodded. “I’m driving this time, though.”

  Garrett’s friend laughed and moved on.

  “You seem like a pretty popular guy,” I said. “Why would anyone dislike you?”

  He sighed, glanced at the bottles again, then looked at me. “You must be tired of listening to peoples problems all day.”

  I drew back a little, wondering wildly how he had known my true occupation.

  “Delivering drinks,” he said.

  “Oh, yes. Well…” I tried to relax, but tense was becoming so comfortable. “I like talking to people. It’s kind of…therapeutic.”

  He smiled. “You get a lot of drunks where you work?”

  “It’s not uncommon.”

  He nodded. “Manny was an okay guy.”

  “Just okay?”

  He took a sip of gin. “Were your parents really mean or do you have another name besides Mac?”

  He seemed like a nice guy. But other guys did, too, and sometimes they tried to kill me. “Truth is,” I said, “I’m a little uncomfortable about giving out my name.”

  He watched me for a minute, then: “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For…”

  “Whatever made you skittish. Sometimes life kind of sucks.”

  It was one o
f the wisest things I’d heard in weeks. “Sometimes.”

  “Manny’s wife left him ‘bout a year back.”

  “The guy that died?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think it was suicide?”

  “There’s talk, but…” he said, and shrugged.

  “He got fired. Lost his wife. Sometimes people get depressed.”

  “They do indeed.”

  “But you don’t think that was it.”

  He shrugged again.

  “Why?”

  “Word was he might be expecting some money.”

  “Money? What kind of money?”

  “He was suing Ironwear for a …” He nodded at his unspoken thoughts. “A hefty sum.”

  “For what?”

  “Racial discrimination.”

  “And he had won the suit?”

  “Guess it’s a moot point now.”

  “A hefty sum should have put a smile on his face.”

  “It’s the last thing he needed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Sorry. What do I know?”

  “Mac,” someone said in passing.

  “Woods,” he responded, lifting a hand.

  “I thought everyone needed a… hefty sum,” I said.

  He smiled, but the expression was grim. “Maybe some people know how to spend it better than others.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “Some guys are sweet as puppies when they’re drunk,” he said. I wondered if he was one of them. If you listened closely, you could hear his words beginning to slur.

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Maybe we could talk about you for a while,” he suggested.

  “I get weepy when I drink,” I said.

  “I pass out.”

  “Often?”

  “Not as much as Manny,” he said.

  “He was an alcoholic?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “I’m trying not to talk about him.”

  “Sometimes it’s just best to get it out of your system.”

  “I thought women liked to talk about themselves.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe it’s the cocktail girl in me. Tell me about him.”

  He examined his drink. “He really was an okay guy” he said. “Worked for Ironwear for a bunch of years. Always had a new joke. Some of them were even funny. Liked to talk politics. But usually didn’t let it get sticky.”

  I felt my heart lurch. “Usually?”

  “He could get pretty steamed up sometimes. Heard he used to campaign for some senator.”

  My gut cramped. I took a drink and tried to remember to breathe. “Some senator?”

  “Yeah. The Latino one.”

  I felt a little sick to my stomach, but I felt excited, too. “I’m afraid I don’t know—”

  “The good-looking guy with the great voice,” he said. “Roberto. Remono.”

  “Rivera?” I said.

  “Yeah, that was it. Rivera.”

  14

  Sex is all right, but a hot fudge sundae don’t never ask if the baby’s really his.

  —Shirley Templeton

  HRISTINA.” The senator did have a great voice. Even better in person than on television. It was Thursday afternoon. He was manning the mashed potatoes at Caring Hands again. “What a wonderful surprise.”

  “I was hoping to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Of course,” he said, and glanced toward a young woman who stood a few yards to his left. “Thea, could you take over for a minute?”

  “Certainly,” she said, putting napkins near the flatware and hurrying over.

  She was, in a word, sickeningly gorgeous. Okay, that might be more than one word. But you couldn’t look at her and think in monosyllabic terms.

  She was wearing nondescript blue jeans, a carameltoned cami, and a simple Western shirt, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d donned an apple barrel and frying pan. She still would have looked like royalty. Her hair was a long, wavy sweep of amber and her skin was creamy perfection, but it was her body that made me want to trade my genes in for a pair of sweatpants and a shotgun.

  The senator met her gaze. She smiled shyly. He smiled back. I held my breath, wondering if they would fall into each other’s arms, but he just murmured his thanks and stepped out from behind the table.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, voice innocent.

  “Who? Thea?” he said, glancing down at me.

  “Yes. She’s …” A host of superlatives streamed through my head. “Rather pretty.”

  “Yes.” He glanced back at her for a moment, but his face didn’t light up like a tinseled tree. Instead, a shadow of worry flitted through his eyes. “Yes, I suppose she is.”

  Suppose! That was like saying you supposed L.A. had a gang problem. And why the worry? Did he think he had finally found a woman too young for him? Did he think he couldn’t get her? Did he, perhaps, finally worry about the moral implications of seducing a woman younger than his last meal?

  “Who is she?” I repeated.

  “Thea?” he said again.

  I stared at him. “Is there another woman here?” I asked.

  He laughed and focused fully on me. “Well, there’s you, Christina.”

  “Like I said …” I let the sentence fade.

  “Thea Altore is rather an amazing young woman,” he admitted. “She’s been giving of her time here at Caring Hands for more than a year now. She’s very selfless. Bright.” His attention wavered again, and he stared through me for an instant, as if seeing someone else. “Idealistic.”

  “And gorgeous,” I added.

  “Yes, that, too, I suppose,” he said, seeming to shake off the mood as he closed the office door behind us. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “You can explain why you didn’t tell me about Emanuel Casero.”

  I watched him blanch, but, honestly, I couldn’t tell if his pallor was real or faked. Senator Rivera could make Anthony Hopkins look like a community-theater hack.

  “I should have known you would find out,” he said.

  Because he had wanted me to? I wondered. Because he’d dropped hints? “He worked on your campaign,” I said.

  He didn’t respond but stood with his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, staring out the window. “A long time ago.”

  “As long ago as Kathy?” I asked, and sat down in the green plastic chair.

  He closed his eyes for a minute. “Time rushes by so quickly. It all seems like a recent dream.”

  “How recent?”

  He shook his head, sat. “Ten years or more.”

  “What did he do for you?”

  “Manny helped coordinate volunteers.”

  “So you knew him well.”

  “Quite well, yes. I like to befriend my workers. The victory is really theirs, after all. One cannot forget those who help him—”

  He seemed to be gearing up for a gusty speech. I felt the need to drag him off the soapbox before things got too slippery. “Did you forget him?”

  “What?”

  “I hear he was a staunch Republican but he had gotten out of politics. I was wondering if it was because of some rift between the two of you.”

  He sighed. “There are always some bumps during a campaign.”

  “Was this bump more like a mogul or a mountain?”

  “Manny thought I should take a firmer stand against abortion. But I felt it was not necessarily my place to make that decision for a woman.”

  Sadness was in his eyes again. Which made me wonder rather uncharitably if there would be a whole host of little senators on the planet had abortion not been legalized.

  “Is that when he quit?” I asked.

  “No.” He glanced out the window again. “It was some time later.”

  “Another conflict?”

  “Not at all. I won the senatorial seat. He moved on.”

  “So there were no other problems.”

  “
Mr. Casero was a good man, Christina. I would rather not besmirch his name.”

  “How do you feel about being dismembered with a band saw?”

  He paled this time for real. I was sure of it. “So you think their deaths are somehow connected.”

  I didn’t address that directly. “Do you know of anyone who might have had some grudge against them?”

  “No. No campaign is without conflict, as I have said, but they were both fine, upstanding people.”

  “Did Kathy drink?”

  “What?”

  “Manny liked the booze. How about Kat?”

  He shook his head, looking a little peeved that I was aware of Casero’s bibulous nature. “Not that I remember.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “She was a good person. Solid. Quite devoted to her family.”

  I caught his gaze. “In other words, she wouldn’t sleep with you.”

  He drew a surprised breath, then gave me a wounded expression. “Christina, I cannot tell you how your low opinion saddens me.” He put his hand to his chest. “It is like a dagger to my—”

  “It must have been rather soothing when you learned the truth,” I said, stepping carefully, wondering how much he knew of her.

  “The truth?”

  I rose to my feet. “Why ask me to investigate if you intend to lie to me at every turn?”

  “I have not lied.”

  “There are those who believe the omission of truth to be a lie.” I turned toward the door and didn’t tell him I was not one of them. Does that make me a liar?

  “Wait, Christina. I’m sorry.” I glanced back. Hearing a Rivera apologize was something of an epiphany for me. He was on his feet. “I was quite attracted to Ms. Baltimore. That I will admit, but I am not the kind to—”

  I put my hand on the doorknob.

  “I have made mistakes,” he added hastily. “I freely admit it.”

  I turned back.

  His chin was held high, like a persecuted saint. “But she was unhappy. I could see it in her eyes.”

  “And you thought infidelity would make her ecstatic?”

  “She was an amazing woman,” he said. “Not just beautiful. But intelligent and kind and—” He shook his head. “It is hard to believe that she is dead.”

  “Did her husband know you thought her this paragon among women?”

  “You make me sound quite despicable.”

  I didn’t address that statement. “He worked on your campaign, too. Isn’t that correct?”

  “It is.” His mouth pursed a little.

  “You didn’t like him.” It seemed I was beginning to read the good senator.