The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  Charlene and I had also agreed it was time for the three older kids to be told exactly what was going on. Knowing how serious the threat was would encourage Chris and Jamie to exercise the security precautions Hy had briefed them on, as well as make Mick more alert and able to defend himself when he returned to San Francisco. “Yes,” I told him, reaching for the fax, “I was about to call Kurt to ask where he got it.”

  But Mick was rereading it, more slowly. His eyes stopped partway down and he said, “This ‘attractive redhead’—that’s Rae, isn’t it?”

  Why had I left the fax in plain sight on the desk? I was tempted to say I didn’t know who the redhead was, but the lie would do more harm than good. It was obvious to me that Rae had slept with Ricky; she wouldn’t be planning to stay in La Jolla with him unless she had. All Mick would have to do was go to see his father and he’d know everything.

  “Isn’t it?” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “She was packing a bag when I left your house for the airport yesterday afternoon. Did she go to Little Savages to be with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all you can say today? Yes, yes, yes?”

  “Mick—”

  “I should’ve known.” He balled up the fax, tossed it on the desk, and went to stand by the window, his back to me. “The phone at your house kept ringing on Saturday night and Sunday. She’d grab the cordless and take it into the guest room. Afterward she’d come out all distracted and kind of edgy. And she talked to him a long time yesterday before she put me on. Then she made a bunch of calls and seemed to be avoiding me.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, no wonder! She was afraid I’d find out she was fucking my father.”

  “It wasn’t quite that way.”

  “No? You didn’t see her during the concert Friday night. She made the most heated-up groupies seem like ice maidens. And when he sang ‘The House Where Love Once Lived’ and dedicated it to Mom—nice way of letting me know they were splitting up, wasn’t it?—when he sang that, she got the old look in her eyes.”

  “The old look?”

  “Come on, Shar—you must’ve noticed the way women look at him. Even our waitress at dinner Thursday night was doing it. I just never expected something like that from Rae. But when she decided to hitch a ride home in the limo with you all, I should’ve figured things out.”

  “She didn’t sleep with him, Mick. They just talked.”

  “Of course that’s what she’d tell you.”

  “I know for a fact.” I explained about the incident in the stairwell at Coso Street.

  Mick was so fixated on his father’s relationship with Rae that he didn’t seem to recognize the implications of what had happened. He said, “Okay, so she didn’t fuck him on Friday, but you can’t tell me she went to Little Savages just to talk.”

  “It’s none of our business why she went—or what they did.”

  “You don’t really believe that. I can tell by your voice that you’re as upset about this as I am.”

  “I’m not happy about it, no.” Understatement, McCone.

  “Then why didn’t you stop her from going down there?”

  “How the hell could I have stopped her?”

  “I don’t know. You’re her boss, he’s our client. You should’ve done something!”

  I knew he was shocked and hurting, but all of a sudden I was fed up with the Savage family’s internal problems. The externals were more than enough to handle. More tartly than I intended, I said, “I didn’t know I’d inserted a morals clause in your employment contracts.”

  Slowly he turned to me. “Don’t tell me you approve of what that little home-wrecker’s done?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! This home was wrecked long before he ever laid eyes on her!”

  “You do approve!”

  “I said I wasn’t happy about it. But it’s not my place to judge them, any more than it’s my place to judge your mother and Vic.”

  Spots of color appeared on his cheeks. “You can’t compare the situations. Mom was driven to Vic.”

  “Nobody is driven to have an affair. Your mother made a choice to have one. So did your father.” I paused. “So do you, every time you see Charlotte while Maggie’s working.”

  Mick sucked his breath in sharply and turned back to the window. He was furious with me now, I could tell that much from his posture; it took him a minute to get his anger under control. Finally he said, “Nice shot, Shar.”

  “Hit home, didn’t it?”

  Another long silence. “Okay, maybe I’m my father’s boy in more ways than one.”

  “In many ways. You have his generosity and levelheadedness and determination and capacity to love. You can’t lose sight of all those qualities in him just because he’s made mistakes. Any more than he can lose sight of them in you when you make mistakes.”

  After a moment he turned, mouth twisting wryly. “I’ve been acting like an asshole, is that what you’re saying?”

  “You think you’re bad? You should’ve seen me when Ma told me she was leaving Pa. Grown woman in her thirties, and I took it so personally that I shut myself in the bathroom and cried.”

  “No kidding?” He studied my face, seeing a whole new side of me. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll try to cut him some slack. But I’m never going to forgive Rae for what she’s done. Never.”

  His reaction was exactly as I’d expected, and I wasn’t any too sure about Hy’s contention that eventually he’d come around. This was going to create complications at the office—major complications.

  “Never,” Mick repeated.

  I shrugged. “That’s up to you, but I hope you won’t let it interfere at work.”

  “Oh, hell, give Rae a week and she’ll have quit her job and be living off Dad.”

  He didn’t know Rae, then. She was fiercely independent and always paid her own way. And she loved her work as much as I did.

  Mick changed the subject. “What about this note that Kurt faxed?”

  It was a relief to get off the personal for a while. “Let me call him.” I punched the automatic dial button for Girdwood and put the phone on speaker. When the manager came on the line, his angry voice boomed so loudly that both Mick and I winced.

  “Sharon, how could you let a leak like this happen?”

  “There was no way I could’ve prevented it, short of putting everybody who was here yesterday under house arrest and ripping out the phone lines. I believe in this state that’s called false imprisonment and punishable by—”

  “Don’t get smart with me! And what the fuck is this other thing?”

  “How’d you get hold of it?”

  “Was slipped under the office door before my staff opened up this morning, addressed to Rick.”

  “So you opened it.”

  “Of course I opened it! I’m his manager, for Christ’s sake!”

  I sighed.

  “And while we’re on the subject of him—is he still sulking at the studio?”

  “He’s on his way back.”

  “He and Charly going to patch it up?”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Shit. What’s this about a redhead?”

  I glanced at Mick. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, when he gets in touch with you, will you for Christ’s sake tell him to call me at Zenith headquarters this afternoon? We’ve got a potential problem with this new single that Transamerica’s releasing, and we’ve been waiting all weekend to talk to him. Time’s getting short; we need to decide on a course of action.”

  “What problem?”

  “Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about. You just tell him. And tell him he better come clean with me about why he’s got those guards swarming all over the place. I’m his manager!”

  “Yes, Kurt, I know.” I broke the connection. “More problems,” I muttered.

  “Shar,” Mick said, “what can I do to help?”

  “With the investigation? Nothing. Your dad doesn’t want you w
orking on it and, frankly, I don’t think it would be appropriate.”

  “Because I’m family? You’re family, and you’re working on it.”

  I couldn’t think of an adequate response for that, but I knew I couldn’t involve him. On the phone, Rae had sounded guarded about what Ricky had to tell me—so guarded that I suspected it was extremely bad. I couldn’t jeopardize Mick’s future relationship with his father for expediency’s sake.

  “That’s different,” I said lamely.

  My nephew regarded me with narrowed eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “You’re up to date on what’s happened.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s something you’re afraid I’ll find out. I’ll bet it’s got to do with a woman.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, Shar, come on! I’ve known for years that Dad’s no saint. Is that what this is all about—some woman who’s stalking him?”

  “… Maybe.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “You’re not handling his sleeping with Rae too well.”

  He repeated my earlier statement: “That’s different.”

  I had to agree, but in the interests of fostering at least a surface harmony between Rae and him, I did’t comment. “Your dad doesn’t want you on the case, and I have to respect his wishes.”

  His lips tightened and his color flared. “Fuck his wishes!”

  “Mick—”

  “You can’t just shut me out!”

  “If you want to remain employed, you’ll have to go along with my decision.”

  He went rigid, hands balling into fists. “Well, fuck you, too! Fire me. Go ahead—fire me! But you can’t stop me from investigating on my own.”

  “Mick, you’re not licensed yet.”

  “Nobody says you need a license to research by computer. Nobody says you need a license to ask your own father questions. And you can damn well bet he’ll answer them, after I tell him exactly how much damage he’s done to all of us.”

  That was not what Ricky needed to hear from his son at this point, and I certainly didn’t want Mick lurching off on an out-of-control personal investigation. Maybe if I used him in a limited capacity…

  “Okay,” I said, “you want in on the investigation, you’re in. I can use your expertise, anyway. But I’ll have to clear it with your dad first.”

  “If he won’t agree, I’ll set him straight damn fast.”

  “He’ll agree.” I’d see to that.

  “So where do I start?”

  “At the moment there’s really nothing to do. I’m meeting your dad in La Jolla in a couple of hours, and after I talk with him I may have something to go on. In the meantime, why don’t you hunt up Hy for me? He’s going to have to pull the guards off Little Savages and put others on the hotel where your dad’ll be staying.”

  “Staying there with Rae?”

  “Yes.”

  He compressed his lips and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  I sat down at the desk and rested my head on my arms, unsure whether I wanted to cry or scream.

  I’d spent yesterday afternoon helping mop up the aftermath of the morning’s explosive events. First the band had to be dealt with. Girdwood called them into the office and explained that Ricky had taken off to think things over. They were understandably angry until the manager told them they’d be paid a bonus for the time they’d spent waiting around. Heartened by that, they made plans: Pete to return to his pregnant wife in Santa Monica; Norm to spend some quiet time on a ranch he owned near Santa Barbara; Forrest and Jerry to stay at Jerry’s condo in Palm Springs and play some golf. Girdwood looked at the latter three as if he thought them insane; the manager only felt comfortable in the steel-and-concrete canyons of big cities and had confided to me that the estate unnerved him because of “bugs and whatnot crawling around in that goddamn wilderness outside.”

  After the band left, Girdwood and Amory took off, too. Rattray was still convalescing in one of the guest rooms and being whiny and demanding enough to put a fierce scowl on Nona Davidson’s normally pleasant face. Mrs. Davidson, who had arrived at noon to find a living room full of broken glass and bloodstains and a boarded-up window wall, set to work with quiet efficiency—calling a heavy-cleaning service and a glazier who would come out on a Sunday, and repeating to them with the glibness of a pathological liar Hy’s fiction about a stray shot from a deer poacher. In between, she fixed special tidbits to entice us all to eat and even managed to coax a laugh out of Jamie.

  Mick arrived mid-afternoon, and Charlene asked me to come to the den and sit in on her conversation with the three older children. Mick was noncommittal at first, and Chris and Jamie seemed relieved that something had finally been settled. But by the time Charlene explained exactly what had prompted the tight security, emotions were running high—and against Ricky. My sister held her ground, refusing to say anything bad about him, and when Mick commented bitterly on her bruised face, she replied with some humor, “You haven’t seen the damage I did to him, young man.”

  When the three of them finally drifted off to other parts of the house, Charlene and I sat in silence for a while. Then she got us wine from the bar, curled up in her big chair, and sighed deeply. “I do believe I’ve accomplished everything on my list.”

  “What list?”

  “I’m a list maker, you know that. After I calmed down this morning, I decided that from now on I was going to handle things properly, so I got out the old legal pad and started one.”

  “What was on it?”

  “Talk to Jamie and Chris about drug use, ground them, and take Chris’s car keys. Ask Nona to get the mess in the living room cleaned up and see about new glass. Call Vic and let him know what happened. Explain the truth to all three kids, once Mick got here.” She paused. “There’s another list, a long-term one: never badmouth Ricky to the kids; try to eventually be his friend; make the divorce as painless on all of us as possible; have a good life from here on out.”

  “Well, you checked off everything on the first list, so…”

  My sister raised her glass to me. “Here’s to list-making.”

  That evening, after a swim and foraging on the cold buffet that Mrs. Davidson had left in the dining room, I curled up in bed with the bios of the band members that I’d taken from Ricky’s files the night before. The grounds were quiet; Hy was at RKI headquarters in La Jolla. The bios were short—thumbnail sketches worked up by Ricky’s publicist—but still I had trouble concentrating and had to keep rereading.

  Curtin, Forrest D. b. Austin, TX, 5/25/69. Educated Austin public schools, grad. 1986. Bass and keyboards player with various bands, notably Texas Rangers and Montana, Austin 1987–90. Session musician, Nashville 1990–93. Member American Federation of Musicians, Academy of Country Music. Unmarried. Interests include golf, sailing, and snorkeling. Hired, 1993.

  Jackson, Gerald R. (Jerry) b. Shreveport, LA, 2/12/65. Educated Shreveport and Bossier City public schools, grad. 1983. Enlisted U.S. Army, 1983; honorable discharge, 1985. Drummer for Grass Roots, 1984–86; same for Crompton Culver, 1986–94. Member American Federation of Musicians, Academy of Country Music. M. Tracey Rogers, 1986 (div. 1991), one child. Interests include golf and stock car racing. Hired, 1994.

  O’Dell, Norman T. (Norm) b. Missoula, MT, 3/13/48. Educated Powell, MT, public schools, grad. 1965. University of Montana, Missoula, 1965–66. Guitarist and concert promoter, Missoula, 1971–77. Session musician, Nashville, 1977–90. Concert promoter, Albuquerque, NM, 1990–92. Session musician, Los Angeles, 1992–93. Member American Federation of Musicians. M. Jeanne Webster, 1965 (widowed 1970), one child. M. Yolanda Smith, 1972 (widowed 1985), one child. Interests include horticulture and animal husbandry. Hired, 1993.

  Sherman, Peter W. (Pete) b. Oklahoma City, OK, 10/5/65. Educated Bartlesville public schools (did not graduate). Session musician, Nashville, 1983–88. Keyboard player for Callie Collins, 1988–90. Member American
Federation of Musicians, Academy of Country Music. M. Patty Smith, 1989 (div. 1992), no children. M. Emily Watson, 1993, no children. Interests include songwriting (rights to four have been purchased by Savage Music Publishing) and hunting. Hired, 1990.

  All in all, it was pretty dry stuff. My mind kept drifting—to the shooting, to Charlene and Ricky in the kitchen, to the ugly scene in front of the house. In spite of the disturbing quality of my thoughts, my eyes kept closing. In the morning, Hy told me that I’d been so deeply asleep when he returned shortly after ten that he’d been able to watch an entire made-for-TV movie, replete with pyrotechnics and car chases, without waking me.

  Toward dawn, though, I awakened myself from a dream in which a couple hurled hateful words and lashed out to strike each other. Only the couple wasn’t Charlene and Ricky, it was Hy and me. I sat up and looked at my sleeping lover. He lay on his side, arms hugging the pillow as he often did.

  I sensed Hy had been avoiding me the previous afternoon and evening, and that the trip into La Jolla had been less for business purposes than to get away from this oppressive household and knock back a few drinks with his partners, Dan Kessell and Gage Renshaw. I couldn’t blame him; it must not have been easy to cope with the rampaging emotions of people he knew only on a superficial level. And I had to admit that I hadn’t been keeping my own feelings under control, especially when alone with him. Still, I missed him, and now it struck me as odd that he hadn’t wakened me when he came in.

  God, I hoped this job wasn’t driving a wedge between us!

  Suddenly I felt afraid and reached out to touch his hair. Love was so fragile and often so quickly over.

  I lay down again and pressed against his warm back for comfort. I thought of Rae, alone in the Sonoran desert with Ricky. I thought of Charlene, alone in the bedroom she and Ricky had once shared, but secure in her love for Vic. I thought of Chris, Jamie, and Mick, whose lives had been forever altered. And of Brian, Molly, and Lisa, who had no idea that their family had been torn apart.