Courage Stolen

by R. Scott Mackey

  This time he did blink, and his face colored. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “You may think you’re doing society a great service, awakening the impassive masses, or whatever misguided theories you operate under, but blowing up a dam and firebombing an academic building is nothing less than a cowardly, criminal act. So I’m warning you to stop now.”

  “You’re warning me? Who the fuck are you to warn me about anything? I don’t know what you think you know, or how you came to think it, but to come into my classroom and accuse me of terrorism is the height of insolence. I should call campus security.”

  I wanted to tell him about the dynamite I found at his home and watching him and Seeger’s dry run the night before, but I didn’t want to reveal myself. Leaving him wondering how I knew about his plans gave me an upper hand I didn’t want to relinquish.

  “It’s bad enough you’re planning to blow up the dam, but to involve a student in your scheme is horrific. You have no right to involve a kid in something that could ruin the rest of his life.”

  “I have no idea what or who you are talking about.”

  “Seth Seeger.”

  Again, he blinked and shifted his weight.

  “Did you help him set up S-SOP as sort of a minor league team for your Stone Creek Saviors? Kind of like a development squad so you could teach him the fine art of bomb making and radical rhetoric?”

  “I’m not sure what world you’re living in,” he said, picking up his briefcase. “But it sure as hell isn’t connected to reality.”

  “I’m warning you. If you try to go through with your plot, I will stop you.” I moved down the row of seats until I was less than two feet from him. “I’ve already called the FBI. If the dam blows, they’ll know who did it.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” His voice lacked its usual defiance.

  “Don’t test me on this.”

  “If I was going to blow up Nimbus Dam like you said, how in the hell would you stop me?”

  I didn’t know the answer to his question. I’d hoped telling him what I knew would stop him. If it didn’t, I would need to go to Plan B, whatever the hell that was.

  twenty-seven

  Fulton Avenue was Sacramento’s “Auto Row,” home to most of the major automobile retailers in the area. All three of Danny’s dealerships resided on Fulton within one mile of each other. Cashmore Lexus was his crown jewel, the one he’d battled three ex-wives to retain. I met him on the showroom floor. My car was getting long on miles, and Danny promised me a deal if I was interested in a Lexus.

  “This one’s loaded, of course, so it’s a bit over your budget,” he said. “But I could knock five grand off the price if you really want it.”

  He was right. The RCS 350 was about ten grand more than I wanted to spend. I’d never been much of a car guy, but this thing was gorgeous, loaded with luxury and safety features I’d never considered before, but which now seemed required in my next car. The new car smell was intoxicating, and I took in a big breath of it as I grasped the polished wood steering wheel.

  “Man, the chicks would go crazy for a good-looking guy like you driving this thing.”

  “I’m fifty-two years old,” I said. “There’s not a lot of ‘chicks’ in my life, let alone ones going crazy over me.”

  “This baby could jump start your world, Ray.”

  “I can see why you’ve made millions selling cars. It’s not about the machines. It’s about the ego. Especially when it comes down to sex.”

  He laughed. “The formula’s worked for thirty years. No reason to change now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind test driving one of these, even if you are manipulating the hell out of me.”

  Danny had called me to ask if I’d completed my investigation of Jolene. I tried to stall by saying I needed to double-check a few facts, hoping in the meantime Jolene would break up with him. But he insisted on learning what I had so far. Now I didn’t want to go through with it. I wanted to keep talking cars to avoid the inevitable awkward conversation about his girlfriend.

  “So?” he said. “Are you ready to spill or what?”

  “What?”

  “Your report on Jolene. What did you find out?”

  “Well…so how close are you to popping the question to this woman?” My report on Jolene? What did I want to tell him? She was a good kisser? She was planning on breaking up with him?

  He pulled out a ring box from his jacket pocket, opening it to reveal an engagement ring with a diamond that had to be three carats. “She and I are having dinner tomorrow at The Kitchen. If you give me the green light today, then that’s when I’m springing this on her.”

  I climbed out of the car and shut the door with a solid thump. Danny and I stood face to face. “You sure she feels the same way you do? No offense, Danny, but sometimes you can be a bit impulsive. I mean, you married your first wife because her dad said he’d give you his ’57 Chevy.”

  “What a sweet car.”

  “But Sherry not so much.”

  “Not a match made in heaven, no,” he said.

  “Maybe you should take things slower, just to be sure. You know, give it some time.”

  “Ray, thanks for looking out for me. But I’m the same age as you. We’ve both been around the block two or three times. I’m not entering this relationship blind. I can also tell when a woman is into me. I think she and I are right for each other.”

  “What kind of mileage does a car like this get?” I turned towards the car.

  “Like the sticker right in front of you says. Mid-twenties overall between freeway and city driving. Why are you stalling me? Did you find something about Jolene?”

  “No. Everything checked out fine. Her work history has been great. Credit scores are above solid. Owns her home with good equity. The whole nine yards. You knew she’d been married, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. Her husband died years ago.”

  I opened the door to the car and stuck my head inside to get another whiff of the new leather seats. I knew the right thing to do was to wait for Jolene to tell Danny herself the relationship was ending, but Danny was leaving me little choice. I needed to tell him his feelings for Jolene were not reciprocated. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he needed to know the truth. I already made up my mind not to see her again, even though I wanted to. It wouldn’t be right. And if I did date her, how would it look if she and I ran into Danny? No, Danny was a friend, and even if I could justify dating Jolene after she broke up with him, I wouldn’t feel good about it. Jolene and I were not going to happen. Unfortunately, neither were Danny and Jolene. I took a deep breath and prepared to tell him exactly that. As I was about to pull my head out of the car, I heard Danny’s voice boom.

  “Baby! What a great surprise!”

  “I came to give you a little treat. I know how much you love the desserts from Rick’s, so I thought I’d bring you something. I thought maybe we could talk, too. I need to tell you something.” It was Jolene.

  Keeping my head stuck inside the car for the duration of her visit was not an option. Neither was climbing in the driver’s seat, closing the door, and locking it. I backed my head out of the car and shut the door. I could feel my face reddening before she and I even made eye contact.

  “Jolene, I’d like you to meet one of my best friends,” Danny said. “We go all the way back to college. This is Ray Courage.”

  I stood there speechless, busted, my face a mask of shame. The color drained from her face the second she saw me. Her mouth double-clutched as she tried to process the situation in front of her and come up with the appropriate response. Then a calm crossed her face, as if she just then comprehended how Danny, she, and I found ourselves together.

  “I believe we’ve already met,” she said.

  “Yes, we have.” We didn’t go through the charade of shaking hands there in front of Danny.

  “You’ve met?”

  “I was going to let you know, Danny,” I said. />
  “Let him know what? That you came to Sacramento Oaks to spy on me? That we had lunch together?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, though it was like that.

  “I should have put it together once I learned you were a private eye. You lying low-life. How dare you lead me on when it was all in a day’s work for you. Were you in it for the sport, or was it to show up Danny?”

  “Look, this is a bit complicated,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I understand what’s going on,” Danny said.

  “Goddamn, Danny, you prick. I can tell you what’s going on. You hired one of your quote-unquote best friends to look into me, to see if I was worthy of your companionship. I’m not sure what your plans were, but what are you afraid of? Did you think I was going to marry you like your other bimbos and then take over one of your fucking car dealerships?”

  For the first time I can remember, Danny’s face grew red and he was speechless. “What did he do to make you so angry, Jolene?”

  “Jolene,” I said, hoping against hope to save this moment. “Danny did hire me. But it was purely precautionary. He’s told me how much he cares about you. You have to understand, in his situation he has to be careful. Please try to understand.”

  “Jolene, I’m sorry—” Danny started.

  “Did you tell him I asked you out to lunch?” Jolene asked, turning to me. “Did you tell him that?”

  “No. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to work it into my report.”

  “She asked you out?”

  I gave him a pained look.

  “Yeah, I asked him out. And we had a nice lunch. A couple of drinks. A nice hot kiss. How do you feel about that, Danny? Are you angry? Does it make you feel justified in sending a private eye snooping after me?”

  “What did you do to make her ask you out?” Danny asked me.

  “Be my usual charming self?” The attempt at humor fell flat in the auto showroom.

  “Did you fucking hit on her?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “You arrogant son of a bitch,” she said. “You had been flirting with me all morning at the country club. You didn’t have the balls to ask me out when we were saying goodbye, so you left me little choice but to do it myself.”

  “And you kissed her, Ray?”

  I gave him a slight nod.

  “Well, this is all wonderful news,” Danny said. “My girlfriend turns out to be a two-timing slut, and my friend turns out to be a backstabbing horn dog. Great, just great. Ray, you can forget about a deal on the car.”

  Danny stormed off the showroom floor for parts unknown. Without even a parting dirty look, Jolene hustled off in the other direction, leaving me alone with the Lexus and the knowledge I was the biggest jerk in Sacramento.

  twenty-eight

  The lunch Danny and I had planned after our meeting in the Lexus showroom never happened once he decided to disown me as a friend. Lacking a lunch companion and an appetite, I left earlier than planned for Cache Creek, an Indian casino about forty-five miles west of Sacramento. The drive gave me ample time to reflect on the past few days, though I had trouble getting past the day’s most recent events. How had I managed to alienate a smart, beautiful woman who had been attracted to me, while destroying a thirty-year friendship with a man I would do anything for? I wanted to make things right with both of them but feared I had damaged both relationships beyond repair. Even worse, I had ruined their relationship. Even if Jolene had planned to break it off with Danny, the two might have maintained a friendship. They might even have worked things out. Now, thanks to me, those prospects seemed remote at best.

  Once I drove past Davis, the route became one rural country road after another as I traversed almond and walnut orchards, horse ranches, sheep ranches, and monotonous wide-open spaces. Cache Creek Casino had become a destination resort about ten years before, with a world-class golf course, weekend entertainment headliners rivaling those in San Francisco, and a hotel and three-star restaurant drawing people from hundreds of miles away.

  I parked on the fifth level of the high-rise garage and walked to the elevator. The first thing to hit me when I exited the elevator onto the casino floor was the smoke. The noxious fumes of cigarettes caused me to cough and put a palm over my nose. California’s indoor spaces had long ago become smoke-free; Indian land had its own sovereignty, meaning they had the right to set their own smoking laws. Gamblers tended to be smokers. Indian casinos needed gamblers. End of story.

  For mid-week, mid-afternoon, the crowd was larger than expected, consisting mainly of older Asian men and women, many of whom had no doubt been transported by the several tour buses I noticed parked in front of the casino. A steady racket filled the cavernous room, punctuated now and then by shouts and whoops and the clatter and clang of slot machines. And everywhere, cigarette smoke.

  It took about twenty minutes of walking the casino floor to spot Seth Seeger. In a black vest and white shirt, his curly hair tamed by a stout hair product, and his usual truculence quelled by the job, he projected a different image than the young man I’d encountered a few days before. His blackjack table was empty, and he busied himself by examining the six-inch stack of cards in front of him.

  “Hello, Seth,” I said, settling into a seat opposite him at the blackjack table.

  He didn’t seem to know who I was at first. But when recognition sank in, his face darkened. “What do you want?”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “How did you know I worked here?”

  “A friend of mine has a Facebook account and looked you up. You know, if you’re planning on a career in eco-terrorism you might want to rethink your relationship with social media.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Aren’t you going to deal me a hand?” I dropped fifty dollars worth of chips on the table in front of me.

  Seth looked up at a spot above and behind me. I followed his gaze to a smoked plexiglass sphere mounted to the tall ceiling, no doubt security cameras watching every move of gamblers and dealers alike. With his bosses watching, Seth had no choice but to play cards with me.

  I anted in five bucks. He dealt our cards. I had a ten of spades and a seven of clubs. He had a blackjack. Game over.

  “It’s your lucky day,” I said as he collected my five dollars in chips.

  “I get paid the same whether I win or lose.”

  “This seems like an interesting job for someone of your persuasion,” I said.

  “What do you mean? My persuasion?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a socially conscious young man. Not that there’s anything wrong with gambling, per se, but I’d have thought you’d be working at a soup kitchen, building solar box cookers, or petitioning to save the whales.”

  He ignored me and dealt the next hand. I was glad no one else sat at the table because I wanted to talk to Seth, but also because I didn’t know much about playing blackjack other than the goal was to get as close to twenty-one as possible without going over. I knew there were strategies for doubling down, splitting cards, and so on, but I didn’t have a clue about any of that. This time my cards totaled fourteen. “I’ll hold,” I said.

  His cards totaled seventeen, which I read on the rule board on my way in meant he had to hit if it was a “soft” seventeen, meaning one of the cards was an ace. He drew a six of hearts, which with his six of spades and ace of clubs gave him thirteen. He hit again and drew a queen of hearts, putting him over twenty-one. I won back my five dollars.

  “I know you didn’t come here to play blackjack,” he said.

  “You’re right. I came here to talk about Thomas Chan and the twenty million dollars you stole.”

  “Thomas Chan? The dude who just got offed? And what are you talking about? Twenty million dollars?”

  “You didn’t threaten Chan in an e-mail to stop dealing with the Chinese?”

  “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. Either way I’m not telling you.”

  I was tired of get
ting stonewalled by each and every person I’d talked to about Thomas Chan and Monarch. I didn’t even have enough to determine if there was a connection between the dead man and the stolen project. I knew Seth Seeger wouldn’t help me, so I needed to change directions.

  “Let me make this simple.” I looked around to make sure no one had drawn within earshot. “Do not go through with you plans at Nimbus Dam.”

  He started to reach for the next set of cards, but my words stopped him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I thought you’d say that. And I’m not going to go back and forth with you about it. I know what you and Forrester have planned, and I’m warning you to stop. I’ve called the fibbies and given them a detailed description of your entire operation.”

  “You don’t have any idea what you are talking about.”

  “Even if you don’t go forward tonight like you’re planning, they’ll have eyes on you. If you get anywhere near Nimbus Dam, you’ll be arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “For the three little bundles Forrester made.” I wasn’t sure whether casino security had listening devices in the blackjack pits, so I tried to keep my comments vague.

  He didn’t say a word for the next three hands as he proceeded to take fifteen bucks from me.

  “You’re a young man,” I said. “I think your idealism is commendable. I do. But there are better ways to act on your ideals than the methods Forrester promotes. He’s a criminal, Seth. Don’t associate with him. If you want to enact change, do something positive. Lobby your elected officials. Hell, get yourself elected. Write articles about your beliefs. I wasn’t kidding before about the petitions. Generate positive energy.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “You’re a piece of work. From what old movie did you get that speech? ‘Generate positive energy.’ Oh my god.” He rolled his eyes and gave a derisive snort.

  “Too much soapbox for you, huh?”

  “Maybe you should find another table.”

  “Maybe so.” I knew my pep talk would prove futile but figured it was worth a shot. Two and a half decades teaching college students gave me a sense about students who could be reasoned with and those who could not. Seth Seeger had so bought into Forrester’s worldview I might just as well have told him the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy would be joining us for a round of blackjack. I put my remaining chips into the middle of the table. “One more hand.”