by Rita Lakin
Tori, probably for the first time in her life, is speechless.
Below and in front of them, other horses will race, horses will win and horses will lose, and handicappers will choose their next bets, and the crowd will shout and wave their arms, but for this group of four, time stands still.
Lila Woodley speaks, ‘Can we help you, dear? Are you lost?’
Not anymore, she thinks. Tori smiles, with irony, and finds herself recalling when Gladdy taught her how to correctly dress for the track, and how she would be laughing right now. Here Tori is, at the most important moment of her life, in dirty, smelly clothes, and desperately in need of a bath. She’s a mess. She runs her fingers though her tangled hair. Oh, well, there’s nothing she can do about it.
She takes a deep breath and fully enters the box and turns to Fred. She can barely get the word out. ‘Daddy?’
Suddenly all three sit straighter, alert. Staring at this piteous creature.
‘Gloria?’ Fred’s eyes light up, joyfully.
Tori nods, feeling the tears that begin falling down her cheeks.
‘I can’t believe you found me.’
She can’t believe it either. She runs into his outstretched arms. He hugs her tightly. His streaming tears mingling with hers.
She doesn’t know what to say, so she blurts out, ‘Nobody calls me Gloria. I’m Tori. Please, I’m Tori.’
Fred grins. ‘Tori, that’s a nice name. Let’s go with that.’
More hugging, with the Woodleys watching; they’re also in tears.
‘You’ve grown up so beautiful,’ Fred says to his daughter.
Tori says to her father, ‘And you’re really real. Sometimes I doubted it; it seemed so crazy that you were alive. But, I just knew Mom was telling the truth. I wanted, so badly, for Mom to be telling the truth. I wanted to find my daddy.’
‘She has your eyes,’ Mrs Woodley says softly.
‘And your curly hair,’ adds Mr Woodley, grinning.
‘What’s left of it,’ Fred laughs.
They beckon Tori to sit down. She does, but doesn’t let go of her father’s hand; as if it were a dream, she didn’t want it to end. ‘I’m sorry I’m dressed so badly … It’s a long story.’
‘You look beautiful to me,’ says her smiling father.
‘How did you know us?’ Harvey Woodley says, wiping the tears from his eyes.
Tori pulls the well-worn photo out of her pocket and holds it out to them. ‘I recognized you all from your photo.’
Lila Woodley glances at it and laughs. ‘From a thirty-year-old black-and-white snapshot, you recognized us?’
She nods. Bumbling, trying to think straight, Tori asks, ‘You called me Gloria. How could you know my name?’
‘We named you long before you were born. Mother and I.’
The Woodleys add, ‘Your romantic parents. Named their three children after movie stars. So cute.’
Harvey Woodley says with humor, ‘Then he made us name all our horses after you. Insisting you would figure it out eventually and find us.’
‘I knew you would recognize the clues sooner or later.’ Grinning, Fred takes a photo from his wallet and hands it to her.
‘This is me as a baby. What? How?’
Fred says, ‘Your mama had our lawyer send it to me. It’s all she had. The only photo Ida took of you. Unfortunately, my parents never took any.’ He pauses. ‘I’m so sorry, my parents treated you so badly.’
For a moment Tori thinks of the Steiners. Sad, now. Tori berates herself. Maybe if she’d been nicer to them, things would have been different. ‘But how did you know?’
He reaches over and takes her hands for a few moments, smiling shyly at his daughter. ‘Our lawyer kept me in touch all these years.’
Tori continues to glance around, searching, and worrying. Dix must be here, somewhere. Please, God, keep him away.
As Fred holds her closer, ‘You must have so many questions.’
She leans into his chest. ‘I do, Daddy, I do.’
‘Then let me tell you.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Fred’s Story
The rain wouldn’t stop. The sky had opened up and from it poured unending sheets of water. Nothing was going right. The plan had been to get into the bank, grab as much money as they could and get out of there. Fast. The bank customers, tellers, the bank manager, even the security guard wouldn’t get down on the floor quick enough to suit edgy Dix who was demanding they get down. Now!
Fred was sorry he’d ever teamed up with these guys. Dockson and Hicks came along, without Dix telling him he had partners, too. His guys were too nervous, and Dix had a hair-trigger temper. Fred was afraid of how they might react in a situation that called for being icy calm.
Annoyed at the group’s slowness to obey him, Dix lifted his shotgun, meant to just scare them, and started shooting wildly in the air. Which got Dockson yelling and Hicks starting to run for the door. People panicked, thinking he would kill them; were screaming, crying, and begging. Fred was terrified that Dix would shoot at them next.
Fred glanced quickly out the window where his pregnant wife sat waiting in their station wagon with the motor running. At that moment, Fred realized he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. He should never have gone along with Chaz Dix’s wild idea of bank robbing! More important, he should have insisted that Helen not come, she was too close to giving birth; but she’d argued they were in this together, and the plan needed her to be driving the car. Desperate as they were in their rush to get money, he now realized this was not the right answer to solving their financial problems. Dix and his two clowns were going to get them caught.
Finally Fred ran out the door behind Dix and the others. Getting soaked by the rain as he dumped the duffle bag through the open back window and climbed into the station wagon’s passenger seat. The other three guys jumped into their jeep.
They were all to meet as soon as possible at their chosen rendezvous at an old barn in a wooded area of the valley and divvy up the loot.
As Helen drove, the rains worsened. Visibility was almost impossible. To her horror, she suddenly felt the baby kick too hard. She shuddered in fear. ‘Not yet, baby, not now!’ she said aloud.
Fred reacted in dismay. ‘Is the baby coming?’
Helen didn’t know, doesn’t know, she can’t think. Suddenly she’s feeling as if something is happening in her body. ‘Fred,’ she screamed his name. ‘You better drive!’
She pulled over to the nearest curb and they both got out, getting drenched, so they could change seats.
The water was nearly up to their knees!
The streets were flooding rapidly; the wind was whipping the water into frenzy. Helen almost lost her footing; Fred saved her with a desperate grab and pushed her into the passenger seat.
As Fred got behind the wheel, the car abruptly stalled. Helen’s eyes widened in fear, her shock was so great that she couldn’t even speak. She started to stutter. ‘No, not now. Not here.’
It took him a while, the gears complaining, but finally Fred whooped wildly when he got the car re-started. The old station wagon skidded back onto the middle of the street as the water just kept rising.
Fred turned to Helen. They had to find a different way to get to the rendezvous point! But how? In terror, he realized Helen had her eyes closed, her hands circling her pregnant belly, as if trying to keep the baby from kicking its way out.
Fred made a decision. He spotted a small alley to his right and, whipping the wheel around, barely making the turn, suddenly losing his side mirror as it scraped against something, a mailbox, another car, he wasn’t sure but it was gone. He could hardly see. The station wagon’s windshield wipers were practically useless. Up ahead he suddenly spotted what looked like another wall of water flowing toward him!
There was only one way out.
Another turn. A blind turn to the left.
Fred had no choice. And suddenly Fred, Helen, their unborn baby, the bag of money he no longer cared about
, and their crappy old station wagon were floating, carried by the force of the water down some kind of sluice, carried downward like some Disney ride from Hell, into the section known as The Wash, the thirty-foot-high concrete channel of the Los Angeles River, which cut through much of the city. A river wash that was always barren; now it was a flooded runoff trench from the storm, filling up with water. How did he end up in there?
They were going to die!
Both of them. And his baby.
His fault. His.
Helen suddenly yelled. ‘Tree! Tree!’ Fred could only stare, frozen, as the car smacked into the carcass of a tree which, felled by the wind and rain, had fallen into the Wash. The station wagon thunked into its thicket of dead and mangled branches, stopping the forward motion of the car. They were now in the middle of a raging river, caught in the arms of a broken tree.
It probably saved their lives.
The water pushed the tree, and shoved the car, higher up onto the banks of the Wash where they came to a stop. Helen pointed: ‘There!’
Six feet from their car was a drainage tunnel. One they could reach on foot. A way out. Maybe.
Fred managed to open his car door, then to open Helen’s door, and the two of them practically crawled to the dry lip of the drainage tunnel where, just like a prayer answered, they found a safe place to sit and catch their breath.
The tunnel was big enough so that they could stand in it without stooping. And both Fred and Helen could see that it led to a covered overpass, which towered over the flooded streets.
Fred held Helen close. Helen took his hand and placed it on her belly. The baby was now kicking mercilessly. ‘Up a storm,’ she joked, to lighten their situation. Then, followed by a sharp pain.
‘We’re okay now. Let me get to the car.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to get the duffle bag out, spread a little of the cash in the car and push it downstream. That way, when they find it, they’ll think all the money has been lost in the flood.’
‘Be careful and hurry.’
When he got back minutes later, he found Helen hunched over, grabbing her belly harder.
Feeling pressured by time running out for them, he started to lift her up.
She cried out, ‘No, stop! I can’t move.’
Police sirens were heard coming close.
Helen gasped, ‘You’ve got to get out of here. Now!’
‘Help me lift you up.’
‘No, not possible. No time.’ Helen could hardly get the words out through the pain. ‘You have to take the money and go!’
‘I’m not leaving you here.’
‘You have to. I can’t be moved.’
The siren sounds grew ominous. Coming almost to them.
‘They’ll be here in minutes. I don’t want them to catch you.’
‘Helen, no!’
‘They’ll see a poor, pathetic pregnant woman. Alone. They’ll feel sorry for me. I’ll be all right. Get out. Get out of town. If something happens, whatever happens, you have to promise me, you’ll escape. And never come back. When I can, I’ll find you.’ In her severe pain, she cried out, ‘Promise me! For my sake and the sake of this baby who wants to come out now, get out of here. I swear, I’ll be all right.’
‘You promise some day we’ll be together again.’
‘I swear it. I’m begging you! Run and don’t look back!’
With a last hopeless kiss, Fred climbed up and out into freedom. With a suitcase full of money.
His wife ended up in prison. Where their baby was born.
FORTY-EIGHT
Meanwhile Back in the Stands
‘… That’s what happened. I left Helen, coward that I was. I hid out for days, not knowing what happened to her. Finally, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I called my old friends in Florida …’
Lila finishes it, ‘And we told him to get on the first flight to Fort Lauderdale.’
‘And he’s been with us since then.’
Harvey, ‘The first three years he was here, we practically had to chain him to the bed, so wouldn’t run back to Helen and also end up in prison.’
Lila, ‘He was so ashamed of what he did.’
Fred, ‘For good reason. I was stupid and reckless.’
Harvey, ‘Very true, but what would be the point of your being imprisoned, too?’
Tori, ‘But, Daddy … all these years, you lived so close, you never told Grandma Ida that you were here.’
Fred, ‘I didn’t trust her, I didn’t dare. She deserted you and your mother. I never forgave her.’
Tori, ‘You have no idea how she suffered, too. How sorry she’s been for leaving us all those years ago. We all suffered, and maybe it’s time for forgiveness. I’ve forgiven her and you should, too.’
Fred looks at her lovingly. ‘Then I shall follow my smart girl’s advice.’
She looks behind her, anxiously searching. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police about Dix and your other partners?’
Fred. ‘Supposing those three were the ones who landed in prison and we’d both escaped. We would expect them not to rat on us. We had to do the same.’
Fearfully, Tori thinks of those partners so close, with murder on their minds. If the opposite had happened, Dix would not have done the same for them. Dix would have turned them in to save himself.
‘Your poor mother, still in there, but maybe not for much longer. When she gets out we’ll be together again. Please, God.’
‘Really? Is that possible?’
‘I’ll know more very soon. Our lawyer … But it hasn’t happened just yet.’
Harvey Woodley comments, ‘It all has to do with your father returning the bank’s money years ago.’
Fred adds, ‘Helen knew you would be coming. She knew you’d figure out where I was. And by God, here you are!’ He reaches over and takes her hands for a few moments, smiling shyly at his daughter. They exchange small kisses.
Suddenly Tori stiffens. She was afraid this would happen.
She grabs at her father’s arms, pulling at him.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ All three glance at her worriedly.
Tori. ‘You don’t understand. They’re here! Dix, Hicks and Dockson.’
Fred is startled, trying to understand what she is saying. ‘You know them? My partners?’
‘They used me to find you. They followed me from California. Dix wants the money and revenge. I think he intends to kill you!’
Harvey Woodley, ‘Here? Right now?’
‘We’ve got to hide!’ Tori insists, as she keeps pulling at them with growing fright.
Tori found them! I’m a good Spotter, after all! I can observe her far down below me, excitedly talking to a well-dressed, handsome middle-aged couple and their partner. She did it – she located the Woodleys and surely her father!
But I can see what they don’t see. Dix and his guys are in their section, racing up the steps to reach her. They have found Tori and now realize they’ve found Fred Steiner.
Though Hicks is lagging behind, a man fighting his demons.
Tori sees them. She’s trying to get the three of them to run in another direction!
Morrie and Jack are far away.
I panic. I jump up, but what can I do? I can’t get to them. But, even if I reached them, how could I help? These guys have guns.
I remember the borrowed cell phone. I must alert Morrie and Jack. With shaking hands I dial Jack’s number. I stop short. I can’t remember it. The phone numbers I once memorized are no longer necessary; the speed dial remembers for me. So one tends to forget. Which is happening to me now. But, more to the point, this isn’t my phone. It won’t be my caller ID. That’s a bigger problem. Jack won’t know it’s me calling. I dial twice, the numbers jumbled. I calm myself down and think, until I have the digits in the right order.
This time I get through to Jack’s cell. And it just keeps ringing. I was afraid this would happen. He’s too busy with Morri
e to answer a phone number he doesn’t recognize. I hang up and dial again. Let it ring twice. Hang up and dial again. Over and over again, I repeat. It works. This gets his attention. He answers, curious, ‘Hello. Who is this?’
I practically whimper. ‘Dix is catching up to Tori and her dad.’
Jack is quick. He knows it’s me and he hears my fear and doesn’t waste time with small talk. ‘Where?’
How can I tell him? He won’t understand what I know, thanks to my racetrack-lover Dad. ‘Jack, they’re halfway between the sixteenth pole and the finish line! Ask someone!’
Jack doesn’t know what that means, but he recalls where he left me. I see him waving to me and I jump up and point down and across the seats, and point some more, hoping he gets what I’m desperately signaling.
And he does. Because I see him grab Morrie’s arm. Morrie signals to his men to stretch out and follow. They run zigzag through the stands; bettors are watching them with interest, sensing some drama taking place. They are torn between their curiosity – why are cops running about and what’s going on? – and following the next race, hoping for winners.
I continue to indicate, trying to hold back the dread I feel. Will they get there in time?
The horses are lined up at the starting gate for the next half-mile stretch, waiting for the signal to take off. The race in the stands competes with the race on the track – almost funny to watch, in an unfunny situation. Like a Keystone Kops silent film.
Dix sees the cops coming his way. He moves faster.
Tori becomes aware of the distracted shuffling of people around them. She turns to see what they see. The moment she spots Dix, she pushes at her threesome and points. ‘Run faster!’ she shouts. ‘They’re closing in on us!’ They do the best they can, twisting their way up through the miles of people in their seats.
Dix is breathing hard. They’re fifty feet away. Dix smiles, smelling success.
Hicks says, ‘You’re too far off, you’ll never get them.’
‘Shut up.’ Dix doesn’t want to hear from him. He aims his gun, ready to take a shot at Fred. ‘I’m gonna kill the bastard!’
Hicks laughs, ‘Now seventy-five feet. You’re losing ground.’