Single Jeopardy

by Gene Grossman

  “Peter, Peter, don’t worry about it. She knows what shape it’s in, and she doesn’t care.”

  I’m still a little cautious. “I don’t know, Koontz, if she’s not happy with whatever she wants it for, I don’t want her coming back to me with a lawsuit.”

  “Not to worry Peter. Tell you what I’m going to do… we’ll put it right in the agreement that she’s taking the boat on an “as-is, where-is” basis, with no intention of getting any money out of you for repairs that might be needed, no matter how serious they might be.”

  Hmmmn. This sounds too good to be true, and I know what they say about things like that.

  There must be something going on that I don’t know about. “Listen, I’m in a motel now on my way to Sacramento, so I’ll call you when I get back the day after tomorrow. And don’t worry; you’ll get my answer within five days.”

  “I certainly hope so, because she’s already got a towing service on stand-by waiting for instructions to tow if from your slip to the yard. I’ll fax you the agreement, for you to look over.”

  “Yeah, okay… fax it over, when I get back in town I’ll look at it and let you know whether it’s a deal or not.” I hang up, count my ears and send a message to Melvin’s office to watch out for Koontz’s fax to. I had my fax line call-forwarded to his boat’s fax line while I’m out of town.

  Plenty of things are going on now and it feels good to be back into a little action. L. Martin wants to help with my petition for re-instatement, Myra wants the boat, Laverne wants me, and Robert Palmer, the mystery man from the Marina City Club, may be involved in some domestic intrigue. One item about him was quite interesting: his real name isn’t Palmer – it’s Pearlstein. I’ll never know why most people insist on changing their names.

  Maybe it’s understandable if you’re a professional wrestler: Dwane Johnson became “The Rock” and Terry Eugene Bolea is now “Hulk Hogan.” Of course there’s ‘legitimate’ show business where Bernie Schwartz is Tony Curtis, and singer Steve Lawrence was Sidney Liebowitz. It seems that even authors don’t want to use their real names: John LeCarre’ was David Cornwall and Eric Blair became George Orwell. Ellery Queen was really two people: cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee. Hardest for me to understand are the animals: Eddie, the dog on that popular TV show “Frasier,” was played by a dog named Moose, who even had his own book published. I guess anyone can get a book out nowadays. I still can’t figure out why a dog needs a stage name. Lassie didn’t use her real name – in fact, she was a male dog named Pal, who Rudd Weatherwax the trainer was forced to substitute in at the last minute when the original female Collie picked for the first movie balked at going into some rapidly moving water. Instead of ethnicity being something to avoid, sometimes it’s the desired result: Karen Johnson, a good enough name to use in show business changed hers to Whoopi Goldberg, and Dana Owens is now Queen Latifah.

  Robert Palmer’s name change isn’t the most interesting thing about him. Searching deep enough reveals that in addition to owning the two restaurants that are next door to and across the street from the Chinese one, he also owns controlling interest in the valet car parking service that competes with the Chinese place’s valet service for parking spaces. Although the other two restaurants each have more square footage for interior eating space, the people coming for Chinese take-out orders raise their dinner total to more than both of Palmer’s restaurants combined, and because the to-go customers are usually in and out in less than ten minutes, the Chinese valet that parks their cars makes several times more than the other two services due to the high turn-around of parking spaces. A conspiracy nut could probably make a good case against this Palmer. He tries to muscle the Chinese place’s owner for a bigger portion of the parking lots, and when he can’t get his way, he has the Chinaman wacked. It’s an interesting theory. Good thing I don’t have to prove it.

  If my ex-wife hadn’t turned into a super-shrew, I might consider cluing her in on my theories, because I’m sure that nailing a local big shot would be a feather in her cap and a definite career booster for her. But she’s going to have to be a little nicer to me for a gift like that.

  I take my time getting back from Northern California, and after dropping off the rented Hummer and picking up my own car, I stop at the Jr. Market around the corner from the Marina to pick up some things. There are some sirens in the area, but that’s to be expected because the local fire station is less than a mile down Admiralty Way, and the trucks have to pass by here to get to this side of the Marina.

  Looking around this place I finally figure out what the meaning of a ‘Jr. Market’ is… it’s a liquor store that also sells milk and bread. Never having learned to cook anything but pasta I eat all my meals out, so the Marina’s Junior Market is just fine for me. Another good point for it is that they carry Laverne’s favorite boxes of wine.

  After a six-day trip involving four days of driving, it’s good to know that I can now go to my yacht, relax, have a snack, finish another Nero Wolfe mystery and unwind from my road trip. Driving down the access road that leads to the boat docks I see a huge cloud of black smoke in the air and three large red fire engines blocking my way. I park and walk over to the gangway where the action is and look out towards the end-tie to see what’s going on. A fireman is bringing up some equipment as I approach the gate. When I ask him what’s happening, he sums it up for me. “Some old wood boat burned up.”

  A watched pot doesn’t boil, but an unwatched boat does burn. That wiring I never got around to fixing must have given up and started to short out. Unbeknownst to me, the boat was probably smoldering when I left town. If you love boats nothing looks worse than one that’s burned out, especially if you own it. All that’s left of mine is the hull from the waterline down. From there up, it’s gone. There’s absolutely nothing left of it but a flagpole on the rear of the boat and enough of that back end so that the name of the boat is still legible. It’s sickening for me to look at. I now have nowhere to live, my Nero Wolfe book is probably nothing but ashes, and seven years of my labor of love have been totally wasted. The Foghorn Hotel is around the corner next to the Market, so I guess I’ll just go over there and check in for the evening. Just as I’m about to go into a deep depression, I manage to do the only thing that a sane person can do at a time like this. I pick up my cell phone and dial a number. When it answers, I calmly say: “Hello Koontz, this is Peter Sharp. We’ve got a deal.”

  My fax line was call-forwarded to Melvin’s boat while I was gone, so Myra’s agreement is saved. I quickly sign it and fax it back to Koontz’s office. He must have been sitting next to the fax machine, because in about fifteen minutes I see the towboat coming down the channel towards our dock. Boy, she must really want this boat. I don’t know why, but it’s probably for some sneaky reason.

  The towboat guys pull up, and burned out hull or not, they don’t miss a beat. After verifying the slip number and seeing the name of the boat on what remains of its stern, they ask me to sign their release form. They then hook up the towlines and slowly pull the still smoldering hull out of its slip and down the channel towards the boat yard. From a distance, it looks like they’re dragging a huge black whale through the water.

  Before leaving, the tow guys mentioned that Myra and her attorney are waiting for their prize to be brought to them at the boat yard. I wait a couple of hours and then call over to the boat yard to hear about what happened. Art, the boat yard manager, is a serious type of guy, but he and I have gotten along quite well in the past. When the boat was originally trucked over there from my back yard, he was the one who helped me select the proper bottom paint to be put on before lowering the boat into the water. I remember him telling me that the brand of bottom sealer he suggested would outlast the boat. I can’t wait to tell him how right he was.

  After a few minutes of having him paged over the yard’s loudspeaker, he finally gets on the line and proceeds to tell me about the scene at the yard. Myra and her attorney arrived at the yar
d just as the towboat company radioed ahead that they had the cabin cruiser in tow and would be needing dock space near the yard’s crane. They both heard the radio call and then began to smile, laugh and happily high-five each other, like they had just won the World Series. Everything was fine until about five minutes later, when the towboat came into view. Their looks slowly changed from glee to horror. People have told me that they’ve never seen Art crack a smile over the past ten years, but when he tells me about ‘that lady beating the guy in the cheap suit on his head with her briefcase,’ he can barely catch his breath from laughing. It was definitely a Kodak moment, and exemplifies that old saying, “to the victor goes the spoils.”

  After a night at the hotel, I go to see Melvin. He’s fumbling with his computer, trying to get it to boot up so that he can check his e-mail. He had read Koontz’s fax to me while I was out of town and in his twisted mind he created a scenario that turns me into the Marina’s Dr. Evil. He thinks that I engineered the whole chain of events, from talking my ex-wife into taking the boat, to having it burned up just before she had it towed away. He looks at me like I’m his new hero.

  Maybe that’s why he’s so understanding of my present situation, and probably why he goes so far as to make me an offer that must be the nicest thing he ever did for anyone other than his ex-wife Jasmine: L. Martin Unger decided to buy a condo and spend the rest of the year in Thailand, so Melvin got his permission to let me stay on the fifty-foot Grand Banks until I can get another place to live.

  This really blows my mind. That fifty-foot fiberglass Grand Banks trawler yacht has always been my dreamboat and now I’ll actually be living on one. I can’t stop thanking Melvin, who only says “hey, what’re friends for?” Somehow I can’t help but think that Melvin has another agenda. Kindness isn’t in his bag of tricks unless there’s something in it for him. But this has to be a good sign. I went from being suspended, divorced, evicted and burned out, to living on my dream yacht. And now when George walks by he’ll see me in a different light. The deal apparently also includes the Asian Boys as a maintenance crew and I’m told that they’ll clean the boat at least twice every week. The rest of the time that crew will no doubt be working on the other boats on our dock, including George’s, Laverne’s, Melvin’s and the retired ophthal-mologist, ‘Snatch Adams.’ They’re also night busboys at that Chinese restaurant around the corner.

  --------------

  I haven’t seen Melvin for the past week or so, but the faxed and e-mailed assignments keep coming in from his office. But where is this ‘office?’ It isn’t at the mailbox place around the corner, because that was only a box in the wall. It can’t be on his houseboat, because all that’s there is a small laptop computer, a fax machine and the dynamic trio. This is starting to get interesting. There was never a need for me to visit his office, so I think it would be a little out of line for me to question him about it because if I did, he would be justified in answering “what’s the difference, your checks keep getting delivered on time, don’t they?” And that would be a good answer, because the checks do arrive on time, usually within one day of my leaving an invoice in his boat’s mailbox.

  Somehow I have a feeling in the back of my mind that the little girl knows all the secrets, but would it be proper to talk to her? Does she even speak English? All questions that I’d love to have the answers to.

  Over the next week or so I arrange my schedule so that I can be around the Marina at the same times of the day that the little girl and her ‘gang’ do their traveling in the electric car. I see that a pattern is being followed. Every day like clockwork, they go to the mailbox place to pick up the incoming mail. At least twice a week, they drive up to the outside ATM at the Wells Fargo Bank around the corner, where she uses the walk-up ATM that’s lower than the others, probably installed for use by people in wheelchairs, but the perfect height for her to reach from the e-car, and a good thing too, because making deposits would have been too tough a trick to teach the Saint Bernard. Another stop is the rear alley kitchen entrance to the Chinese restaurant. They always go there before lunch time and I never have the time to sit and wait until they come out again, but they’re always back on the houseboat before it gets dark.

  So far I have their schedule down pat, with only one morning a week missing from my calendar of their regular stops, but that missing piece gets filled in the following week when I make a visit to the Courthouse. On my way back to the parking lot I see their e-car illegally parked by a back entrance to the building, and there’s no parking ticket on it, even though it’s less than twenty feet away from the Police station’s entrance and uniformed cops constantly pass by it. There’s no mistaking it for another e-car just like it, because the odds are astronomical against finding a similar vehicle that contains a Saint Bernard sitting behind the wheel, and a cat sleeping on the back seat.

  Their once-a-week visit to the court house bothered me for a while until I poke my head into the Courtroom of the Municipal Court where almost all of Melvin’s cases are handled. The Court isn’t in session at this moment because the judge is probably in chambers negotiating and trying to settle cases with opposing counsel. Behind the railing is the person who runs the courtroom – the clerk, an extremely attractive Asian woman who looks vaguely familiar, and she should. I’ve seen her eating dinner at the Chinese restaurant many evenings.

  It’s a funny thing about remembering people. You can see the same face several times a week in one particular place, but when you see it somewhere else outside of its normal surroundings, all it looks like is a familiar face. For several years I went to the same market three times a week to pick up stuff my wife wanted brought home in the evening. The clerk there wore his usual apron and we exchanged the same small talk each time about the weather, the Lakers, Cubs or Dodgers, yada yada. One time I bumped into him in a department store. I saw his face but for a while couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. It wasn’t until in the car on the way home that I realized it was the clerk from the market. The same thing happened one time when I was in a criminal arraignment Court, where the criminal defendants all appeared with their attorneys only for the purpose of making a plea. A case was in front of the judge, who looked down at the defendant and said “you look familiar, sir – have you appeared before me on other matters?”

  The defendant said “no.” The judge wouldn’t give up, and over the defense attorney’s objections he kept badgering the guy as to why he looked familiar. Finally the judge’s patience gave out and he gave an order to the defendant.

  “I know I’ve seen you somewhere before, so either you tell me where or I’ll throw you in jail for contempt of Court!” The defendant looked at his lawyer, who grudgingly nodded an assent.

  The defendant looked up at the judge and reluctantly spoke. “Judge, I’m your bookie.”

  The clerk isn’t the only familiar face in this courtroom; the uniformed bailiff looks familiar too. He isn’t Asian, but I still know that I’ve seen him around somewhere, but can’t put my finger on where. He’s probably one of the many uniforms that frequent the Chinese place for lunch every day. I really don’t give it much thought because after years of appearing in courtrooms, all the uniformed bailiffs start to look the same.

  After the kid leaves through the court’s private rear exit, I go up to the clerk’s area and see the reason she was there. It was to bring in a check for court costs and to pick up the cards of attorneys who made appearances for Melvin during the week. She probably comes in once a week to pay the accumulated costs and get stamped receipts for the case files.

  The Asian clerk must be new here because she mistakes me for an attorney. When I tell her that we have the same restaurant in common, she becomes a little friendlier, explaining that she has a few minutes until Max returns. My look tells her I didn’t know who ‘Max’ is, so she explains that it’s Maxine, the judge recently assigned to this Court, who is usually either in chambers approving settlement deals, or down the hall running the Sm
all Claims Court. Cutbacks in the court’s budget require her to do double duty.

  This courtroom is like a lot of them, where the judge hardly ever takes the bench, preferring to clear up the calendar by doing all the business in chambers. Still under the impression that I’m on active status with the State Bar, she asks if I would like to make an occasional appearance for an attorney who is disabled and can’t make it to court. She mentions that his name Marcel’ Bradley, and lets me know that any attorney in the courtroom who temporarily fills in for Mister Bradley by making a special appearance (which means not being put on the case as attorney of record) will be sent a generous one-hundred dollar appearance fee by his office.

  Not wanting to deceive her, I confess that at the Bar’s request, I’m taking a brief leave of absence from the ‘appearance’ scene. She appreciates my honesty. To show my gratitude for being offered the appearances, I offer to buy her a drink at the restaurant next time I se her there. She blushes and turns back to her duties.

  On my way back to the parking lot, I realize that Melvin doesn’t have to come to Court. Hell, he doesn’t even have to exist, because the clerk helps out by hiring attorneys to make any appearances that attorney Unger can’t cover, and the kid sends out the checks. In fact, Melvin probably doesn’t even know most of the things that are going on in the practice, but someone has to be running the whole show. Could it be that little Girl? And if it is, does she do it all from Melvin’s houseboat?

  Life aboard the Grand Banks is a dream come true. Beautiful parquet floors in the main ‘saloon,’ which is what the real boaters call it, not ‘salon.’ It has a full gourmet kitchen, called a ‘galley,’ plus an island bar and raised pilothouse. Now that I’m living on a real yacht I’m starting to learn the proper vocabulary, being helped out by some old fart down the dock that lives on his fifty-foot Columbia sailboat.