by Lee Baldwin
I tell him yah yah sure and hang up. Well that blows. I’m staring at my congealed eggs and asking myself again, why was Montana so easy about coming to meet me last night? What the hell could she possibly get out of helping me with an alibi? And why did she lie, to me then Wolfe? Then I get a bit of an ah-hah moment. Maybe she wants an alibi for herself, for something else. If she is lying to Wolfe about her location, then what? Business meeting? She isn’t married. Multiple jealous boyfriends? How did she get to my place so quick? And why was she so surprised to hear me on the phone?
What stinks though is that the cops have caught us in a lie, and my alibi has gotten worse not better. Thanks to her. She’s a cop, practically, and she lied to another cop, Wolfe, who will rightly think she is ass deep in something with me. Old school chums. God damn it. But then I think, why the hell would she be in Santa Cruz, tell me she was in San Jose when I called her? Makes no sense. None.
So after that phone convo with Wolfe, this day is a distracted blur. I teach a lesson at the gliderport and head over the hill to my place. Feeling paranoid, I take the battery out of my phone before I leave. Screw Wolfe, there’s too many freaking eyes on me now. Driving slow past my place I check out the fact there’s an unmarked car halfway up my driveway, beside the Grant’s house. Empty. I take a side road up through scattered houses and park at a familiar trail head.
I unlock my beater bike in the El Camino’s bed and ten minutes later I’m riding slow past the swimming pool, giving it a good look. In a secluded location I open a plastic cover on a hidden panel that shows a few colored lights. All the lights are normal. Shows no one is inside, meaning the twins are gone, and no one but me is in the area. Back at the swimming pool, not a pool anymore since I disguised it with a fake top, I open the door real quick, slip on paper coveralls booties and hood, and step into my underground concrete grow house. The lights are on, which is right. The place is noisy with fans and blowers, things that go drip. Sixteen tall green plants reach up to bright lights that shine 12 hours a day. A brief note in pencil tells me where I can find my last payment. Also that things are fine, we can talk when I want to, and what was all the commotion at my place last night?
I close up, wad the paper coveralls and note into a container of solution that will soon dissolve them, ride to a spot where there’s a certain flat rock, take out a Ziploc bag containing a fat bundle of cash, and make a mental note to stop by my Union Bank safety deposit down on Graham Hill Road.
Several stops and errands later it’s getting on toward evening, and I’m back in San Jose. I stop for some Thai takeout, pick up six entrees and some rice, etc. The battery is back in my phone and there are the usual messages but nothing from Montana, so I don’t call her I just go there.
A short brunette with a neck tat answers the door. She eyeballs my armload of white food bags.
“Are you guys sure about the address? We didn’t order anything.”
I laugh. Now I’m a delivery driver. “I’m Hanna’s friend. I knew Tharcia had some friends so I brought lots.”
She opens the door for me and yells out “Guys, Thai food!”
Montana calls out from her office, “Back here Clay.”
It’s like swimming upstream getting there, because Tharcia, Twyla and the neck-tat girl are stampeding toward the takeout on the kitchen counter as I’m trying to get into the hallway. Montana sits at a desk in her office working on her laptop. She has a glass beside her.
“Come in and shut the door.” She sounds light and happy, maybe a little snockered.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Oh just some Gin. Want one?” She has her flirty-sexual look for me.
The office is nice, organized and professional. Gleaming dark oak desk, bookshelves, a file cabinet that locks, a framed print of desert rock formations on the wall. I remember her bedroom at the family home was always neat. We banter back and forth a bit, a couple of long kisses. My hand under her sweater, no bra. Nipple pinches, blood flows in us. She sighs, eyes closed, savoring my mouth.
“Something we need to talk about,” I tell her, hating that I have to say this now.
She pulls back looking kind of dreamy and superheated, like why talk now. “Oh yea, what?”
“Wolfe.”
She is instantly all business. “That sodding prick. I told him I had a good reason for being in Santa Cruz when you called me but he didn’t buy it.”
“Well then what’s the deal? I based my whole alibi on you being in San Jose. Like you told me. If he puts me close to Felton for those two hours then he’ll try to hang Roswell on me. Motive, he tried to kill me. Method, anybody can get a gun. Opportunity, those two hours you fucking well tarred me with.”
She snarls back, not the least bit daunted. “And everything was fine until you came into the picture. Loser.”
“Montana that is all your doing. You’re the one transferred my case.”
There is more like that, back and forth, same old logic-free shit we used to sling at each other. Meanwhile through the light sweater her nips are standing at attention. She may be the enraged female, but her body has another agenda.
Maybe I should take time out and explain the undercurrent here. She is hiding something. We both are. Back in the day, for reasons I’ll get to later, I was planning to pop a guy. You might think of it as urban kid stuff, but it was a paying job from a major dealer. Montana knew what I was up to and insisted on coming along to watch.
How did she know about it? Because like any hormone-addled machismo teenager, I felt that bragging to my fave babe was totally appropriate. Came down to it, she was popping uppers that day and there we were in our secret perch waiting for the guy to show and she insisted on pulling the trigger! I’d never seen her that way, totally lit up, nostrils flared, wired, ready to kill someone for sport. So I’m just taking careful aim and she tries to help by grabbing the gun then it fires and misses, The guy yelled really loud then ran off. Imagine me, age 18, thinking I’ll be a hit man. Then Montana goes and fucks it up. Not that I wanted to kill anybody and it did bring me to my senses. We yell back and forth at each other for a while but get nowhere.
“Get the fuck out of here,” she hisses. “Tell Thar to come in. And you stay away from her!”
“Anything. You’re certifiable, you know that?” I walk out steaming. Whatever she says about a secondary alibi being better, it is worse for real and our cred with Wolfe is shot. Hell, he could arrest me tonight, right here, simply for lying.
In the kitchen, Tharcia, Twyla and their friend have done a job on the food. Growing girls. I hope there’s some left.
“Your mom wants to see you,” I say to Tharcia. “Take her some of this.”
The look she throws me says it all, Your lover’s quarrel wasn’t private. Keep it to yourselves, you’re supposed to be the grownups here. Tharcia walks off with a bag and some chopsticks. Watching her body move, I find myself thinking, a friend’s daughter, bad juju.
I peer in the bags and find one still has food in it. Settle on a stool, deciding I should just leave, drop in on a friend over the hill.
The two friends are giggling about something. I get the impression they are younger than Tharcia, or maybe less grown up. Twyla has flirty eyes tonight. What she’s wearing also helps, short shorts and a light silk top with nip bumps. They get into telling jokes, which go from bathroom to bedroom, doctor, parrot. Cute enough. She’s looking in my eyes when we all laugh, that kind of thing. But she’s getting kind of obvious and it pisses me off. Because I am figuring maybe Montana settles down, we get physical later. This Twyla chick is way out there tonight. She can’t know I’m on pro, and even if she’s not a minor it would be idiotic to mess with her.
This is when I inwardly lament for the millionth time the face I was born with. It was too pretty in grade school, at least until half the football team decided to adjust it my soph year of high school. But even after, some things have been too easy, the I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this-with-you kind of
too easy.
What’s killer is psychological stuff, make ‘em feel unattractive and therefore insecure. Doesn’t work with the plain ones, they’re already insecure. Looks have zippo to do with that. Wade was great at it, I learned it from him, and he is basically normal looking.
For example when I see a chica knows she’s hot I won’t give her the smallest notice. Because that’s what beautiful women are used to. Conditioned to it. If they don’t get it there is something wrong, the world is all of a sudden off its axis and they begin to tilt crazy. Women get insecure they hit on you. First they hate you, then they have something to prove. It’s like an equation. Last few years I begin to feel it is not healthy. Like, where’s the actual relationship? Lots of friends lots of action. But the way my life is planned out right now I can’t afford anyone close.
Twyla pushes by getting to the fridge, grazes her hip against my leg, kind of falls against me with a laugh, doesn’t pull away, quietly offers me something to get high. Shall we blast a stick, she whispers close, a couple blades, some dank, a roofie. A little Ecstasy? Pink or brown?
Her neck-tat friend has seen this behavior before and her eyes roll. We share a wink, she gets it. After a minute she walks off, into Tharcia’s room. While I note mentally that I have a lesson tomorrow, and therefore cannot do any drugs tonight, that is no part of any calculation about partying with this little wet spot. And not to forget the fact that the police will surely be talking to me again and will do any manner of random drug tests on the slightest suspicion I’m using. Montana as well. She will throw me under the cement mixer if her professional cred comes in the crosshairs. Even though I have my shiny new probation officer, oops, Parole Agent, in a compromising position, namely Missionary, I know she’ll turn on me in a second. Because she hates me. From somewhere deep down the years, she finds me lacking.
What is taking Tharcia and Montana so damn long? This Twyla chica will not take no. Jail bait for sure and all my red flags are up. She is totally blazed, oblivious, probably sampling everything she mentioned, but finally it soaks in that I am refusing her. She sighs, and says, “OK, want another beer?”
So I say sure and she says, “Thar and her mom are coming out. I’ll bring it in to you.”
“Whatever.” I saunter off to the living room.
I’m flipping through an iPod plugged into the stereo looking for a tune I halfway recognize, finally find Werewolves of London and it starts playing. Twyla comes in with the beer takes a swig out of it says whoops thaz yerz and hands me the bottle with a smirk. Sheesh.
So the girls are not leaving, apparently they are having a sleepover, which harks back as very much like my life as a high school kid, laughing and telling dirty stories all night. My life, before Wade left and our dad got killed.
Finally Montana comes out with a couple shouted reminders over her shoulder, the girls all pile into Tharcia’s room, door slams and we can hear the music from in there. Loud, but I figure I can sleep through it. Hidden advantage is, me and Montana won’t have to be too quiet while enjoying ourselves later. That is if we are on any kind of speaking terms. I half expect her to tell me to take a hike, meaning take the couch or adios. But Montana has swung back into her this-is-ok mood and is sitting close on the sofa, kind of cuddly.
“You have a wonderful girl,” I tell her.
For a second she smiles. “Thank you. And you need to stay away from her.”
“How come?”
“You just do, that’s all.” Female logic, what did I tell you?
I try another tack. “I felt good yesterday when I saw you in your office. You’ve got it all.”
“I really hate that job.” Dismissive, like she doesn’t want to talk, her mind seems far away. I kiss her, Soft kisses on her delicately open mouth. My head starts to explode. She pulls back, looking at me.
“I haven’t forgotten how things were, Clay. It was nice. But.”
But what is my unasked question. I want to ask her why she disappeared back then but at this moment I’m too stupefied to form the words. Now she’s off on something else.
“Who was that guy? The one you found at your place?”
I shake my head. Question of the decade. She looks away.
“Too sad. He was only some nobody showed up somewhere he didn’t belong.”
“He was there for a reason. He tried to kill me,” I suggest for maybe the hundredth time. “He was coming to make sure he finished the job.”
“Do you have anything worth stealing?” Soon as she says that, her face gets this look of regret. “Oh Clay, I’m sorry, of course you do. I meant, are you in business with anyone?” The way her voice lilts over biz-ness clearly says, What have you fucked up in your shady and nefarious little life that would make someone want to pop you?
I’m not answering that. She is still my Parole Agent. Then out of nowhere she adds, “I felt bad about that guy.”
“You felt bad.”
“Oh, you know what I mean. He must have a family, a wife.” Undertone in her voice is remorse, not pathos. Pathos for a stranger I almost get, but remorse? Definitely not.
“Ah.” I am feeling all limp and ropy, wondering if I am catching something. I pull her in and she lets my hands wander to her heavy breasts. She kisses me, nice and slow, and says go on in. She has to feed the fish.
It takes her a while to come to bed. Feed the fish, yah right. I can hear her yakking on the phone out there, her soft laugh. Through the wall, from Tharcia’s bedroom, a sharp yell of pain then laughter. What the bleep are those three doing in there? For a second I’m thinking I’ll tell Montana she can see her friend if she wants, start to get up but can’t control my muscles. Except for one, which is quite the opposite. If she talks to that guy as much as she seems to, why doesn’t he come over? And, why would she want me here? That’s all I can muster for logical thinking. I am getting delusional, as I do when I get real sick. Dozing off, drifting in and out of fevered dreams. It’s been ten years since I’ve had the flu, so why now?
Montana finally comes in and by then I can’t move. Or even talk all that well. I can grunt my likes and dislikes, which is okay with her. She slides into the sheets, gets us both naked and does the driving, seems to like it just fine. Apparently I’m OK as a fixture. Sometime before the end I lose track of events. We drift off, or at least I do.
Deep in the night Montana’s phone goes. I am vaguely aware of her talking, business, work. After a while I’m thinking I hear a car start up outside. Montana’s not in bed. Room is dark. Then I vaguely recall her getting dressed a while ago. I zonk out. She’d whispered something about a parolee got arrested. So fine, it’s her who’s on call not me. I drift back into my delusions.
Sometime after that I feel a smooth bare rump pressed against my stomach. My limbs are too relaxed to respond to any conscious thought I might have. I am thinking in the back of my mind I have to cancel tomorrow’s lesson. The regs say I can’t fly when I’m sick. The womanly derriere pressing against me is moving though, and does so very nicely. Her hand takes mine and slides it up to her breasts. While part of me stays with the program in that hot insistent grip, my mind goes tripping, except for the bit at the end. When I wake again it’s light, Montana is lying close with a leg thrown across my hip. Her face in sleep seems peaceful.
She gets out of bed, I hear the shower running. Then she is dressing in the room, fun to watch, and talking to me. She is all business though, no echo of the all nighttime fun and games. I am trying to follow her but it’s tough going, my brain is not exactly tuned in.
Thrown in with her chitchat, which is mostly about how dumb Wolfe is, there’s some advice about leaving as soon as I get up. She hurries out the door. I drag myself into a vertical posture.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing my face, intending to get up. My phone on the bedside table goes. Wolfe. I struggle to listen.
“Mr. Clay, the police have finished searching your house.”
I wait. I don’t ask whet
her they found anything, what would be the point? If they had found something they wouldn’t be calling, they would be banging on the door, handcuffs, perp walk to a car out front. I realize I am actually hung over, not sick, but on three beer?
“So I can go home.” I’m staring absently at the bedside table. Montana’s costume earrings there with the matching necklace of five pinkish stones.
“Yes, Mr. Clay you can go home. We would like it if you stay between your home and your work for the next week.”
“Am I under suspicion for anything?”
Wolfe ignores this question and throws me a good one. “Why would Mr. Roswell want you dead?”
“I am fresh out of ideas on that one, detective.”
“Indeed. We would be fascinated by any hints you may give us as to why anyone might be targeting you.”
“You’ll be first to know when I get a clue.”
“Ah. I have something else of interest. We spoke to your neighbors.”
“The Grant kids?”
“Actually no. Their house guest.”
That, I think, is weird. The main house was dark both times I drove past it that night.
“Any help?”
“Perhaps. The guest said that three cars used your road before I arrived. One car drove in between 7:40 and 7:50 and left a few minutes later. Then twenty minutes after eight, two cars drove up and stayed. Then the police arrived.”
I think about this a minute. “You are saying someone drove in and out before I got there with Agent Harrison.” I have to be careful. I know that the first car was probably me, but don’t want Wolfe to think that. The next two cars were me and Montana. This is getting dicey. But it also means that Roswell did not arrive by car. I’m sure Wolfe doesn’t know this.
Wolfe is silent for a while. “Also, this witness thinks they heard someone hurrying down the road on foot around 6:20.”
“Any abandoned cars, rental cars? The house guest see anyone?” I want to know who the heck that person is but don’t want to ask.