Montecito Heights

by Colin Campbell

  The official line was that the armed robbers who had infiltrated the location shoot had used it as a perfect cover for the robbery. The producer had been cleared of any involvement. No mention was made of the suspected abduction of Senator Richards’ daughter or the blackmail-by-sex-tape of the chief of police. The choice of bank tied in with Los Pueblo’s involvement with the Dominguez Cartel, a happy coincidence that resulted in a major victory in the war against drugs.

  There was a knock on the door, and the aide poked his head in the room.

  “Five minutes, sir.”

  “Okay.”

  The aide closed the door.

  Gillespie squared his shoulders.

  Grant pushed off from the window.

  “Time to honor your men. Retired cops who never forgot the job.”

  Gillespie winced and clenched his teeth.

  “Nobody ever forgets being a cop.”

  “You did.”

  “No. I forgot to keep my dick in my pants.”

  “There but for the grace of God go many of us.”

  Gillespie picked his dress cap off the desk.

  “One thing, though. If I hadn’t fallen from grace, you wouldn’t have come to Los Angeles. If you hadn’t come to LA, then you wouldn’t have foiled the bank robbery, and the Dominguez cartel wouldn’t have fronted you there. So, really, destroying the biggest drug cartel south of the border was down to me.”

  Grant crossed to the main door.

  “There goes the politician in you.”

  Gillespie put his hat on and pulled the gold-braided peak down over his eyes.

  “No, there goes the cop in me.”

  “Once a cop, always a cop.”

  “I hope so.”

  Grant opened the door for Gillespie. The chief of police walked through. The hubbub of voices quieted, and dozens of flash cameras went off. TV news reporters read the lead-ins to their stories, and five retired cops stepped up to the podium. Grant closed the door behind the chief, then quietly blended with the crowd. Robin Citrin stood at the back of the room and waited. Grant kissed her on the cheek, careful to avoid the bruises, then joined in with the applause.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The sun was high in a cloudless blue sky when Grant came out of the wooden cabin on Coldwater Canyon Drive. He stood on the porch and soaked up the fresh air, his orange windcheater unzipped and flapping in a gentle breeze that dulled the afternoon heat. He took a deep breath, then turned back toward the open door.

  “Bet this is a bit of a comedown after your other place.”

  Maura Richards stood next to her daughter and shrugged.

  “It’s only temporary while we sort out the divorce settlement.”

  She moved to put an arm across Angelina’s shoulders, but the girl pulled away. This wasn’t the Lassie moment at the end of the movie where everything worked out fine and they all smiled at the dog that had saved the day. It would be a long time before Angelina Richards let her mother put an arm around her again. There was a lot of hurt that needed healing first. Moving in together was a start, though.

  Mrs. Richards covered her embarrassment by joining Grant on the porch.

  “The announcement comes out tomorrow. The press release will say he’s stepping down to concentrate on running the business.”

  “He’ll need to work extra hard to cover paying you, I guess.”

  “We’ll both need to work hard to pay back what we owe.”

  She spoke to Grant but the words were meant for her daughter. Angelina shifted uncomfortably in the shadows. Grant took all the judgment out of his voice.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Doesn’t make you a bad person. You just made bad choices, that’s all.”

  There was an awkward moment when they didn’t know whether to shake hands, hug farewell, or simply say goodbye. In the end it came down to a shared look and a half blink of the eyes. Mrs. Richards glanced past him down the porch steps.

  “She has been very patient.”

  Grant followed her gaze to where Robin Citrin stood leaning against the minivan in the dusty turnaround. Without another word, he walked down the sturdy wooden steps and joined her.

  They didn’t kiss until Grant heard the cabin door close behind him. Citrin pushed off from the side of the car, her hand freshly bandaged in that curious shape that all amputees had. He took her gently in his arms and kissed her upturned lips. She kissed him back, the defining moment of forgiveness for being shot in the chest with a shotgun condom.

  Grant drew back and looked into her eyes.

  “You get all that?”

  “I got it. You’re off the books now, though.”

  Grant nodded toward the bushes that surrounded the house with the swimming pool at the bottom of the hill.

  “You sure he’s not pretending to be a tree down there?”

  Citrin opened the passenger door and handed Grant the keys.

  “L. Q. wouldn’t mind treating you like a tree. Thinking of doing a lumberjack show—you’ll be the first thing he cuts down.”

  Grant helped her onto the passenger seat and closed the door. He climbed in the driver’s side. The lack of working hands meant he was driving.

  “He still mad at me?”

  “It’s business. You always said you were a cop, not a TV star.”

  “Didn’t believe me, though, did he?”

  “He does now. Footage will cut together for a great one-off show.”

  Grant closed the door and started the engine. The windshield had been replaced, and there was no evidence left of the violence that had taken place. Not on the minivan anyway. Citrin would carry the scars forever. He didn’t allow himself to feel guilty about that. The things he had done in his life, the people he had hurt, were history. He would probably do the same again if necessary.

  “Yeah, well. Seagal can have the limelight. I’ve had enough.”

  He set off down the slope, leaving a cloud of dust swirling behind him. The hills rose up beyond Coldwater Canyon Drive, dried grass and stumpy trees covering the place where Batman had once escaped from a crashing car and Saturday Western posses had chased bank robbers on horseback. It seemed that Los Angeles had always been the bank robbery capital of the world.

  Citrin put her good hand on Grant’s thigh.

  “Forget Seagal. L. Q. is looking at Julius Posey as the next reality TV star.”

  “Posey? What you gonna do, follow him around while he robs banks?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Posey’s going straight.”

  “Yeah. Straight back to jail.”

  “No, seriously. We’re going to do a bounty hunter show.”

  “Thought they already had one. That biker guy with the long hair.”

  “Dog, yes. But Posey gives better footage.”

  Grant snorted a laugh.

  “Now where have I heard that before?”

  Grant stopped at the bottom of the drive, then turned left toward Hollywood and beyond. He never dwelled on the past and rarely looked to the future. He lived for today. Today he had a beautiful woman on his arm and money in the bank. What more could a man ask for?

  acknowledgments

  As I’ve mentioned before, writers write, but it takes a lot more people to bring that writing to the reading public. I won’t go into Oscar-speech meltdown, but I can’t go without thanking at least a couple of them: Terri Bischoff for believing in Jim Grant and the Resurrection Man novels, Rebecca Zins for once again doing a bang-up job of polishing the Englishman’s prose, and Donna Bagdasarian for not only being an excellent agent but also for being my friend.

  The following excerpt is from

  Adobe Flats

  the forthcoming book from Colin Campbell.

  Available September 2014 from Midnight Ink.

  Steam hissed up from
Jim Grant’s lap as scalding hot coffee shriveled his nuts and turned the front of his jeans into molten lava. At least that’s what it felt like when his efforts to peel back the lid of his latte tipped the king-size paper cup over his nether regions and threatened to melt his gonads. Hot coffee in his lap and a swirl of white foam down the front of his T-shirt like a question mark. Not the best start but par for the course considering his reception since arriving in Absolution, Texas. About as friendly as the one those Mexicans got who visited the Alamo.

  Grant’s frosty reception began even before he arrived. On the train from Los Angeles. Not the main line express but the third change after leaving the city of angels. The parched scrubland passing outside the window reminded Grant of that other place—the one where devils ruled and angels feared to tread. When he asked the conductor how long before they stopped at Absolution, the conductor’s reaction set the tone for all that was to follow.

  “This train don’t stop at Absolution.”

  “That’s not what my ticket says.”

  The conductor examined Grant’s ticket. The printout gave his journey as Los Angeles, California, to Absolution, Texas. The railroad official frowned and scratched his head.

  “We ain’t never stopped at Absolution. That’s a request-only stop.”

  “Well, I’m requesting it. How long?”

  The conductor handed the ticket back.

  “Next stop after Alpine.”

  He pulled a pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket. More for effect than necessity. Grant reckoned this fella knew exactly how long before the place the train never stopped at.

  “Half an hour. Bit more, maybes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Grant settled back in his seat and watched Texas drift by through the window. Dry and brown and dusty. He couldn’t remember the last patch of greenery he’d seen since changing trains. He didn’t expect to see any more up ahead. Considering why he was here, that seemed appropriate. He glanced at the leather holdall in the overhead rack and thought about what was inside. Then he turned his attention to the scenery again.

  Absolution wasn’t anything he was expecting either.

  Steam didn’t rise up from the engine as the train pulled in at the one-stop bug hutch of a town. It wasn’t that kind of train. This wasn’t the iconic steam engine of the Old West with its cowcatcher grill and enormous chimney. It was the squat, bulky diesel of the Southern Pacific that hadn’t changed shape since the ’50s. Grant felt like Spencer Tracy stepping down from the streamliner at Black Rock. That was another place trains never stopped at.

  Heat came at him like he’d stepped through an oven door. Dust kicked up from the boards of the platform. Calling it a platform was an exaggeration. A raised section of wood and nails with three steps at one end that led into the parking lot. Parking lot was an exaggeration too. The hard-packed sand and gravel might have been a parking lot once upon a time but nobody parked there nowadays. The ticket office was boarded up and closed. No wonder the conductor had looked nonplussed as he pulled the portable stairs back into the carriage. The door slammed shut. The engine roared. There was a hiss from the brakes, then the huge monster eased forward. It slowly built up speed as it nosed into the desert, and a few minutes later Grant was alone in a landscape so bleak he wondered why anybody wanted to build a town there in the first place.

  He took his orange windcheater off, slung it over one shoulder, and walked to the ticket office. The boards creaked underfoot. He felt like he should be wearing spurs. Dust puffed up around his feet. The office was just that, a small, square garden shed in the middle of nowhere. There was no waiting room or restroom or any other kind of room apart from enough space for one man to sit inside selling tickets. Back when anyone caught the train from here. Grant guessed that was a long time ago.

  He glanced over his shoulder toward the town.

  Absolution was just a row of uneven rooftops breaking the smooth lines of the horizon. Not as far away as they seemed. Not close enough to pick out any detail. Just flat, featureless buildings among the scrub and rock. He squinted against the blazing sunlight. Even the blue sky looked bleached and unfriendly. When he looked closer, Grant could see there were more buildings than he first thought. Smaller and lower than what passed for the main street. A couple of water towers in the distance. A few weather vanes beyond them.

  Nothing moved. There was no sound apart from the wind coming in off the flatlands. Then Grant heard pounding footsteps from the other side of the ticket office. He stepped to one side so he could see. A cloud of dust broke the stillness. A man was running toward him. He didn’t look happy.

  “What you think you’re doin’ here, fella?”

  The man was out of breath. His words came out in a rasping voice that sounded like a smoker’s but was probably just desert dry from a hard life. He carried a key to the ticket office but didn’t offer to open it. Grant was visiting, not leaving. He didn’t need a ticket. He held the leather holdall in one hand and nodded his head toward the departing train. Explaining the obvious seemed the way to go.

  “Just got off the train.”

  “I can see that. How come?”

  Grant could see this was going to be hard.

  “Well, it just kinda stopped. Then I got off.”

  “No need to be flippant, young man.”

  The man spat on the boards to prove he could spit.

  “This ain’t no place for getting shirty.”

  The parchment face looked like it was shaped from stripped hide. It was lined and cracked and as dry as the voice. There was no twinkle in the eye to soften the harshness. It was impossible to guess his age but Grant figured somewhere between old and ancient. Running from town hadn’t helped. When he got his breath back, his voice leveled out.

  “Sunset Limited hasn’t stopped here in years.”

  Grant tried a smile to lighten the atmosphere.

  “That’s a step up from never.”

  The man looked puzzled.

  “What?”

  “Conductor said it never stopped here.”

  “Weren’t far short. Seems like never.”

  Grant let out a sigh. This conversation was going nowhere. He glanced along the rails at the disappearing train. The long silver streak was banking to the right as it took the long, slow bend around the distant foothills. He turned back to the man with the ticket office key.

  “Looks like never was wrong and the years have rolled by, ’cause it sure as shit stopped today. And here I am.”

  The eyes turned to flint in the parchment face.

  “Yes, you are. And that begs the question, don’t it?”

  Grant waited for the question it begged, but it didn’t come. This fella was as inscrutable as Charlie Chan but not as friendly. The black trousers, white shirt, and faded waistcoat suggested an official position, but if his job was to sell tickets he must have been on short time. He was no great shakes as a meeter and greeter either.

  “You’re not much of a welcoming committee.”

  The parched skin tightened.

  “Who said you’re welcome?”

  Grant nodded.

  “Nobody, I guess.”

  The town was only a short walk from the station but it felt like miles away. The buildings were gray and dull, without any hint of life or color. No smoke from the chimneys. No glints of sunlight from moving vehicles. Place was as barren as a long-shit turd. Dried up and dead and full of crap. The station attendant pressed home his point.

  “Nobody asked you to come here.”

  Grant kept calm but couldn’t leave that one unanswered.

  “How do you know?”

  Then he set off walking toward town.

  The main street was a long stretch of nothing much. A dozen buildings at most on one side of the road, a couple more across the street. Grant stopped on the dir
t track from the station before stepping onto the wider dirt track that was First Street. Swirls of sand blew across the road and he realized it was tarmacked, but the two- lane blacktop was so faded it looked like cracked earth. The center line was unbroken yellow stained brown with the passage of time. A smell of mint drifted on the wind, and Grant noticed the first piece of greenery since getting off the train. A straggly plant behind a low picket fence surrounding a low-slung bungalow. Like a gatekeeper’s house guarding the track to the station.

  Grant stepped onto the sidewalk. Nobody was out walking. A handful of people were dotted about across the street. Some sitting on chairs outside the only two-story building, leaning the chairs back on two legs against the wall. Couple more standing in shop doorways farther along the street. Two or three staring out through plate-glass windows coated in dust. Nobody moved. Nobody raised a hand in greeting.

  The building he wanted was obvious. He ticked off the others anyway. Standard practice when entering hostile territory. There was a pharmacy, a grocery store, the ever-present hardware store, and some kind of eatery. The Famous Burro. Grant wondered if that should have been burrito, then remembered a burro was a donkey. He didn’t fancy eating donkey. A bit farther down the street there was a US Post Office and a clean-looking shop marked Front Street Books. There wasn’t anything that looked like a bank. He turned the other way. More of the same, not amounting to much. The town petered out. A few dried-up houses, a gas station, and a railroad car diner beyond them.

  He turned back to the two-story building. The Gage Hotel. The place with the two fellas leaning back in their chairs. Cowboy boots and faded blue jeans. One had a cowboy hat pulled low to shade his eyes. The only thing missing was a piece of straw hanging out the corner of his mouth. Or maybe chewing a matchstick. Neither man spoke. They just stared.