by Pat Henshaw
I guess I nodded to him, but I’m not sure. I was still wondering if I was hallucinating. It was dark outside. I could be imagining things.
“Jimmy?” Guy asked, his tone saying he was unsure, uneasy even. “Is it okay?”
I nodded because I still couldn’t speak.
“Jimmy, I think Bobby has a crush on you. He looked stunned at first, then happy, then mad as hell.”
“Meaning?”
“I think he suspected you were gay, which I confirmed, then he was happy you were, and then pissed because me instead of him was with you.” Guy looked at me and took a deep breath. “I think he was hoping he had a chance with you.”
“But he’s in high school. I’d never….” My eyes swiveled to his. “You told him you were my boyfriend?”
He nodded, the look in his eyes wary. “Yeah….” It was nearly a question.
“It’s the best news I’ve had all day.” We were out. Boyfriends in public. Take that, world.
Except when he had to shift gears, we held hands the rest of the way to Tommy Thompson’s Genuine Roadhouse.
Thompson’s Roadhouse was built maybe twenty years ago, definitely not one of the historic buildings in the town center. Stonewall, the bank where Penny’s Too was going, and maybe five or six others were original, some even with historical register signs on them.
However new it was, the Roadhouse hadn’t been redecorated since smoking was outlawed in California, so it retained the dank, dreary interior of most places, including Stonewall, from that era.
A crowd of a dozen or so couples at individual tables and one table of six or eight were chatting, so the noise level was going full blast when we walked up to the reservations desk. The place wasn’t packed by any means.
“Reservation for two,” Guy said to the maître d’.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the small twenty-something answered. “We’re full tonight.”
Guy turned to me and grinned.
“Ah,” he said. “Then we’ll seat ourselves.”
He grabbed my hand and walked around the man, pushing him slightly with his shoulder.
I trailed after Guy, giving the man a little smile.
“But, sir,” he began. He stopped talking when Guy turned on him.
“Jase, are we really going to do this?” Guy asked, shaking his head.
“Look, Stone, Tommy said to ignore your reservation when I asked him about it.” Jase shrugged. “I want to keep my job.”
“Ah, guilt. I see,” Guy answered, stepping into Jase’s space and letting go of my hand. “So you’re siding with your boss? Interesting, considering two of your brothers work for me.”
Jase swallowed and looked at me, his look pleading with me to do something. Since I had no idea what he expected me to do, I shrugged.
“Is there a problem here?” Tommy asked, coming around a corner near the front door.
By this time, all the diners were silent, some blatantly watching us, some looking out the darkened windows, others down at their tables.
“No, no problem. I called for a reservation, and Jase here says there’s no tables available.” Guy swept his hand at the room. “I was just pointing out there seems to be a lot of open seating.”
Tommy adjusted his stance in front of Guy.
“No, there’s no space for you,” he growled. I could feel his need for a fight. His body was taunt and ready to snap.
Guy’s gaze swept Tommy, his eyes contemptuous.
“We’ll be sitting right over there,” Guy said, indicating a table next to the windows. “I can call the sheriff and see if he thinks this is discrimination.”
Tommy again adjusted so he was blocking Guy.
“It’s posted that we can refuse service to anyone for any reason,” he said.
“Ah, so you’re refusing us service?” Guy asked, his head tilted. Unlike Tommy, Guy wasn’t tense and didn’t exude malice.
“Besides,” Tommy answered, rounding on me, “you’ve got somewhere else you need to be tonight.” He looked at his watch and suddenly grinned at Guy. “Right about now.”
I looked at Guy, who seemed as confused as I was.
My phone rang. I answered it.
Felicity was screaming and sobbing, two things I’d rarely heard her do.
“You have to come here!” Her voice broke. “They trashed the place. You have to come.”
“Where?” I asked, eyeing Tommy’s shit-eating grin.
“Penny’s. It’s…. You’ve got to come. I need you.”
Guy evidently heard what Felicity said, as did the couple sitting near where the three of us stood.
Guy grabbed my hand, and we turned to walk out.
“And don’t come back!” yelled Tommy behind us.
The noise level rose as we walked to the door. We nearly sprinted to Guy’s car without a backward glance.
When we got to the mall, a sheriff’s deputy was taking a statement from a sobbing Felicity. She had her arms wrapped around herself as if she were holding herself up.
I stood behind her and pulled her into a hug.
“What happened?” I asked the deputy as I eyed the broken glass and upturned tables and general shambles of what had been Penny’s.
“Somebody vandalized the place,” he answered. “And you are?”
“I’m the co-owner with Felicity here,” I told him, wondering how someone could do so much damage and get away without being immediately caught. Where was mall security? “What happened, Felicity?”
“I went upstairs and left Jason and Evie down here during the lull between the dinner hour and movie start-up.” She gulped, and I gave her a squeeze. “Then I heard all this noise. I mean, really loud noise. When I came down, Jason and Evie were all cut up and bruised. And the shop looked like….” She waved her hand at the shop.
I looked up at the deputy.
“Where are Jason and Evie?” I asked.
The deputy shook his head, and all I could think was what a dumb shit he was. We had a major crime here, and he hadn’t called for an ambulance or backup. Moron.
Guy walked up behind the dipshit and tapped him on the shoulder.
“You call for an EMT or backup?” he growled.
The deputy, eyes wide with fear since Guy loomed over him, again shook his head.
“I’ll handle this,” Guy said to me and Felicity. He patted Felicity on the shoulder. “You know where the two kids went?”
She started crying again and shook her head.
“What’s their names again?” Guy asked.
“Jason and Evie,” she sputtered.
“Jason and Evie!” Guy yelled.
For a moment I thought even the canned mall music stopped.
From the back room of the shop, we heard Jason yell, “Here!” Then a pause. “Evie’s hurt. Get help.”
Guy bounded after the voice, but the deputy, as if in a stupor, stood his ground, appearing even more scared.
“Got ’em!” Guy yelled. “You have a bunch more towels somewhere?”
I gave Felicity a quick hug and ran into the shop, trying not to step on glass or touch anything. If there were real deputies around anywhere, I wanted to leave enough evidence so they could investigate. Even though both Guy and I knew who’d been indirectly responsible.
AT AROUND 3:00 a.m., another deputy had taken the last of the preliminary statements, the security gates were down, and we’d visited the hospital where Jason and Evie were being held overnight for observation.
Guy moved Felicity into his guest bedroom. The teens were all right, but their parents were pissed—not at Felicity and me, but at “whoever” had trashed the place.
Evie’s parents were the most vocal. Well, at least her mother was. Guy and I both got the idea Evie’s dad suspected who was behind the destruction and was pissed his daughter had been caught up in it. He was closemouthed, but fighting mad. Just as I was.
“If you set up somewhere else, Mr. Patterson,” Evie’s mom said to me, “just tell
me where it is, and I’ll get all the moms and kids there. I don’t want you to lose everything over this.”
I tried to reassure her Felicity and I were insured to the hilt and a little over since Felicity was a true believer in insurance of every kind, but Mrs. Evie, like her husband, had taken on the attitude of fighting cocks.
“Just tell me. I won’t let anybody do this to you and get away with it,” she said in parting.
“She means it,” Felicity said. “She’s the high school PTA president, and she’ll get together a text-tree or a Tweet-tree or something.”
I looked at Guy, and he shrugged. I didn’t understand what Felicity was talking about, but there seemed to be as many people on our side as Tommy had on his. Maybe more on ours. Nobody liked to see nice, hardworking high school kids, who only worked a few hours a week, traumatized and cut up on the job. And the two who were caught in the crossfire were well-liked, wonderful kids.
“SO YOU got a guess tonight, Jimmy?” Guy asked me as he tucked me closer to him in bed.
I’d almost forgotten about the bet. Acquiring a motorcycle was the last thing on my mind.
I thought about the evening, how Guy had taken command. At one point, he’d said, “Let me take care of this. Fights happen at the bar all the time. I know who to call and what to do to get this cleaned up.”
At that point I’d nearly thrown my arms around him and declared, “You’re my Prince Charming!” But we’d been surrounded by chaos from sheriff’s deputies, EMTs, and maintenance people, so I’d just stood there, still stunned.
I couldn’t remember any of the names I’d been mulling over before all this happened.
I had to come up with something, however.
“Mister Clean?” I asked, rubbing his bald head.
He laughed.
“Yeah, okay, it’s a bad given name, but, no, thankfully, you’re wrong.”
I nodded, sighed, snuggled, and—listening to his heartbeat—fell asleep.
7
THE NEXT day was Chaos Central.
After only a few hours of sleep, we got a call from mall management asking us to come down ASAP to figure out what we wanted to do next.
I got Felicity up, and Guy and I let her shower first. She tried to use as little hot water as possible, but I think Guy, who showered last, got a lot of cold water or at least tepid. He didn’t complain, and as we left, he said he’d see me later.
After listening to all the management options, Felicity and I agreed to open a smaller version of Penny’s down the row of stores and across the walkway. It would be a temporary location while the original Penny’s was cleaned up and put to rights.
“Do you want to call Fredi and redecorate?” Felicity asked as we sat in one of the booths and scanned the destruction around us.
“Not really. People seem to like the primary colors, so why would we change them?”
She nodded. I could tell she was beat and hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, just as I hadn’t.
“Want to go take a nap while I wait for the assessors to show up?” I asked her.
She folded her arms on the table and her head gravitated downward.
“No, no, Felicity. Not here. At your place,” I said, rousing her.
“I don’t think I could drive there safely,” she mumbled, not raising her head.
“Okay. You just stay here until I talk to the assessors and get their estimate. Then I’ll drive us to your place.”
“Okay,” she whispered, moving as if to settle more comfortably on the torn-up booth bench.
So there we were, when a group of bullies entered with their baseball bats and bad attitudes.
“Oh, lookee here, we missed some stuff,” the largest of the group of four twenty-something men said, sailing through the hole where our front door had been.
He was looking at the light sconces on the walls. With a shaking hand, I took out my phone and filmed him and his friends destroying them. He seemed to be searching for something else to trash when he spotted me and Felicity.
“Hey! Who’re you?” he asked, walking up to us.
“The documentary film maker and 911 caller,” I answered. I’d mailed the film to Guy and called the sheriff’s 911 number at the end of their batting practice on the sconces.
“Gimme the phone,” the tough guy leader growled, raising his bat as if he’d take my head off if I didn’t.
“Come get it,” I answered, handing the phone to Felicity and standing.
He reared back and swung at me. I waited for the bat to pass by my face, then reached for it, my hand moving in the same arc it did. I grasped it and pulled.
The bat slid out of the guy’s hand, the end ridge pulling him forward toward me. My other hand shot out as I stepped aside, and I helped him slam face down on the table.
Just as he started to rear up to attack me, mall security showed up, their guns raised. I didn’t have time to use my karate. Damn.
“Hold it right there!” one of them shouted.
The other three vandals were still standing and gaping at their leader and me.
“Put the bat down, Jimmy,” Wendell, head of mall security, said to me.
I dropped the bat as the attacker stood up.
“Arrest this guy,” the bully shouted. “He hit me.”
“No,” Felicity said before I could get a word in. “Jimmy didn’t hit you. You came in with your friends, smashed the lights over there, said something about missing some stuff, and then you tried to hit Jimmy in the head with your baseball bat.”
The guy started to sputter.
“Save it.” Felicity started to sag. “We videoed it all on this phone.”
Wendell’s partner had put twist-tie handcuffs on the main man’s friends and had them corralled in the corner.
“You okay, Mr. Jimmy?” Wendell asked me.
I nodded.
“We’re just going to wait here for the sheriff,” he added.
“What? No! We didn’t do nothing!” the batless slugger yelped. “I can’t do jail. My old lady’ll never take me back.”
“Something to think about,” Wendell said, doing his Charlie Chan impersonation.
He herded the punk into the corner with the other three and told them to shut up until Sheriff Campbell got there.
I looked down at my phone, where I found three messages from Guy, all of them in panic mode.
No problem. Campbell’s on his way. Felicity and I fine. Little damage, I texted back. I laughed as I typed the last line. Other than torching the place, which I hoped they wouldn’t do in the middle of the mall, there wasn’t much left to break or smash. I didn’t know why they were stupid enough to come back.
Huddled in the corner booth, I studied them as they sat on the torn seats at the scarred table. None of them looked familiar. They definitely weren’t regular Penny’s customers.
Sheriff Campbell and Guy walked up at the same time. They were chatting and didn’t look like they were in too much of a hurry to get to the crime scene.
I was a little perturbed at Guy. He’d said he had a full day of bar business, so I really didn’t want him to drop everything and come over here. On the other hand, it was really nice to see him.
“I already showed Lloyd the video you shot,” Guy said, putting his arm around me and giving me a kiss on the cheek. “You okay?”
I nodded.
“It’s Tommy, right?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Don’t know. These aren’t his guys.”
“His guys?”
He shrugged again.
“Tommy’s been known to send some of his dumber friends to make a statement,” he said. Then he laughed. “The last time he did something, a splinter group of the Clampus crowd who meet at Stonewall decided to make a statement of their own.”
“Clampus?”
“Yeah, there’s this social club of bikers, meets every once in a while. Do stuff. E Clampus Vitus? You never heard of them?”
Oh, yeah,
I remembered them rumbling down Main Street a time or two. Since they weren’t mall customers or even Penny’s customers, I’d just tried to stay out of their line of sight.
I guess I’d shivered, because he tightened his arm around my shoulder.
“Hey, they’re good ole boys. Lot of fun, actually. Nothing to worry about.”
“If you say so.”
“I wouldn’t kid you about this.” He gestured to the punks in the corner, who were arguing with the sheriff while a deputy seemed to be darting back and forth trying to keep the guys corralled. “Those guys? Not Clampus material. They’re too stupid.”
It took the better part of an hour, but finally the four were hauled away by the deputies and the sheriff had talked to all of us.
“I don’t think it’s Tommy,” the sheriff told us. “They say they got the job through an employment board at the rec center. They thought they were doing demo for the mall and decided as long as they were drinking and ‘in the mood’ they’d come down and bust the place up some last night. They were told all they had to do was break stuff up and another team would come in for cleanup.”
He and Guy shared a look and then shook their heads.
They both laughed.
“Who would believe their bullshit? But the leader says his wife Linda’s got the note with the phone number on it down at the Marshall’s where she works. I’m going to stop by and get it from her. And check with the center.” He turned to me. “Don’t worry. We’ll get this wrapped up right away.”
He pointed at the deputy, who was talking to mall security.
“Danny there is going to watch the place tonight. We’ll have somebody around while it’s boarded up after the stuff you’re going to use at the other site is moved.” Then he looked back at me. “You got any questions?”
I shook my head. “Thanks,” I added.
“No problem. Mack says the kids love this place. We’ll get who did this.” He looked grim and determined.
“Oh. You and your wife have children?” I asked.
He and Guy exchanged a look.