The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  But, frankly, the thought of having wheels again… it was starting to grow on me. Even if the thing was originally meant to be my coffin, this could be a part of my restart at living again. It could be symbolism. Or irony. Whatever—it was a free vehicle and didn’t even have to go on Oprah to get one.

  “You’re getting that stupid look on your face,” Pavan said, breaking my spell.

  “What stupid look?”’

  “Like you’re really proud of some thought you have, and you’re gonna tell me about it, but it’ll be some bullshit I don’t get.”

  “I do that?”

  Pavan nodded slowly. “Enough for me to remember that look on your face.”

  I shrugged. “Just gas.”

  “Do that out here then, not in my car,” Pavan said picking up his hoodie. “My little rearview mirror pine tree is sorta beat down by now, can’t fight that stuff so good.”

  IT WAS THE SECOND time I’d been to a cop hive in a week. It’s not that I don’t like the police, but they always make me feel that any minute, they’re gonna look at me sideways, then squirrel me away into a backroom somewhere, put my butt in a metal folding chair with a naked bulb overhead, and hit me with a ton of questions I couldn’t answer.

  Watching the sergeant on the phone, as he tapped at the oldest computer terminal in the world, it occurred to me my hesitation just being there could have to do with my father. I have some faint memories of the man, but one that stands out pretty clearly is his unwarranted fear of police.

  My train of thought was interrupted: Pavan kept elbowing me in the ribs because this very hot woman, tapping away on her Blackberry, had sat down next to me in the waiting area. She had one of those electronic cell-phone roaches stuffed in her ear, but I don’t think she was talking to anyone at the moment.

  I can’t stand when people do that. If you’re not using it, Uhura, take the bug outta your ear.

  Back to my passed-down police willies: My father was always afraid he’d be busted by the cops for a crime he didn’t commit. Seriously, he'd vocalize this. His crippling phobia sounded like the plot line of some shitty, low-rent cable TV movie.

  Which was stupid to begin with. My father never did anything, never went anywhere, and didn’t have any shady friends who’d show up in the middle of the night with a handgun wrapped in a bloody dishcloth. Hands down, he was the most boring man I’d ever known.

  And, okay, don't think because I've just set that little tableau now I'm going to suddenly reveal later he was some heretofore, yet unknown to me, super-cop/spy-who-didn't-come-in-from-the-cold and that-- huzzah!-- explains why The Mentor was screwing with me all this time, because mine was a family of super-assassins that blah blah blah f'ing blah.

  Nope. That's the whole thing. He was a boring but paranoid dude. End of story.

  But I wondered if his copbusted-phobia, maybe uttered aloud every so often as I hung in the doorway hopping up and down in my favorite bouncy swing as an infant, somehow had seeped into me.

  “Dude, I can see into her blouse when she turns,” Pavan whispered into my ear.

  I nodded. The woman was wearing a charcoal gray blazer and skirt, bone white shirt, and shiny, black heels the color of volcanic rock (a shade I’d only recently become familiar with).

  The paper stick of a lollipop poking through her red lips was a nice touch, if not trying a little too hard. But you can’t blame a girl for tryin’, and it was the sexist thing I’d seen all day. Not that waking up with Pavan next to a ton and a half of garbage and a ride over in his junky car to the Fulton County impound lot could compete with an attractive businesswoman enjoying a sucker.

  “William Sterrett,” the cop at the counter barked, not looking up. A guy in his twenties and already losing his hair, stood up from a seat on the far wall. Everyone was here to get their car out of impound, for whatever reason.

  Young Master Sterrett looked like he wasn’t the sort that ended up in the belly of a police station. Probably had something to do with a girl. Or someone like yours truly. I haven’t been in trouble much myself but that mostly because I have a sixth sense about clearing out before badges start flashing. Sterrett, obviously, did not possess this trait and it would likely get him back within these walls at least one more time before he decided “the edge” wasn’t exactly the place for him.

  “She is not wearing a bra, man.” Pavan’s mouth was way too close to my ear, and I wiped the spittle away. As he pulled back, I glanced over at her, then shoo, my head.

  He nodded, insistently, but I shook my head again, this time adding a frown.

  “Yes way, man,” he said in a low growl.

  At the counter, the sweaty William Sterrett was signing papers. Nearly done.

  After a moment more, it was our turn. The adrenaline in me pumped a little.

  The thought that maybe some answers to my crazy week might be that much closer if I could simply poke around my former watery prison. I was just moments from getting the van.

  “No way I can give you that van,” the desk sergeant said, staring down a large bulbous nose with pores large enough for June bugs to play hide-and-seek in.

  I looked at Pavan and he had his game face on. Staring straight ahead. This was his showdown face. He doesn’t win many arguments with it, as he adopts the tactic of actually not making an argument—instead just staring at his adversary.

  Surprisingly, it works more than you think.

  Sizing up Sponge-knob, however, I knew it wasn’t going to win him over.

  “Says right there, though,” I said leaning in and pointing at the screen. “It belongs to me.”

  “You don’t have a title. You don’t have proof of insurance. You don’t even have a set of keys for the vehicle.”

  “Left them in the van.”

  “After you drove into the quarry?”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t really need them. Van being under a hundred yards underwater and all.” I had a thought. “Um… is my house key on there? Any other—“

  “No,” he said reading the screen, happy to interrupt me. “Key was in the ignition. No key chain—” he slammed a ledger closed in front of him— “NO other keys.”

  I turned to Pavan, who was whittling away his opponent’s resistance with his stare of doom.

  Frankly, my heart wasn’t dead set on getting the vehicle, but it was the only link I had to my part-time abductor. I really doubted the VIN number would do us much good but at least the van was some kind of link. Maybe there was something there.

  “What do I need to get my… van back?”

  The sergeant sighed. Either because he felt sorry for me, the idiot, or who knows?, maybe Pavan had really mad skills, he said, “You have insurance on the vehicle, I hope.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Bring the card in. You pay the fee, fill out a proper title, and the van is yours.”

  “Fee?”

  “Two hundred fifty bucks,” he said. “Maybe more because we had to drag it out of the quarry. They fished for your van for an hour before the diver showed up. You know how deep that quarry is? Our guy's had to do down in case there was somebody still in that shitty van of yours.”

  “Sure do,” I said and started to turn away. “Can I at least get my Stones’ tape back?”

  “What?”

  “It’s my grandmother’s,” I said. “Or was. She gave it to me.”

  Sergeant Spongy said, “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Seriously, it’s all I have of her,” I said. “She knew the guys, you know. It’s a studio issue, Keith gave it to her.”

  A shake of the head, but he was listening.

  “Grandma was a looker, a groopie,” I said, trying to lock eyes onto the sergeant. “She was… um… with all the guys. Except, Charlie the drummer. Not at first.”

  “No kidding,” he said, not excited. I didn’t know if he was humoring me or if he was so completely devoid of humor that he was actually incapable of it.

  “No kidding.
She said he frightened her… something about him not even needing a pedal for that base drum of his, he could just swing—“

  “ALL right,” the desk sergeant barked at me. Pulling a pen out, he scrawled something on a pad. “After being underwater, your tape’s gotta be wrecked.” He handed me a slip of paper.

  “After Charlie Watts, so was my nana,” I said and he pointed to a door that led to the lot, his face looking as if he’d swallowed a bug.

  I'D NABBED A PENCIL in the waiting room and now handed it to Pavan.

  He whispered: “What do I do with this?”

  A tall skinny cop walked us through the lot, leading the way several paces ahead of us. He said we could go in: get the tape but nothing else.

  “VIN number,” I said and eyeballed the pencil and paper. "You get the number while I fiddle with the radio.”

  Pavan’s face twisted for a second then it finally hit him. We didn’t have to have the van to get the number. Just access to it.

  My friend hopped in spot for a second throwing his hands in the air like Rocky at the top of the steps, and I smiled and pushed his arms downward, trying to calm him a bit.

  “Rock, dude!” he whispered.

  SURE, I MAY HAVE been able to call Detective Clower or even just pop by the Department of Motor Vehicles but that would trigger too many questions with no firm guarantee I’d come away with a name. Also, the DMV is bureaucratic and ritualistic torture. You can witness clear violations of the Geneva Convention three steps into the place. Even Comrade Stalin didn’t commission a DMV to be built in the Motherland— true. Too extreme. So, no way I was going there. Instead, Pavan got the vehicles I.D. number to his half brother in Texas.

  “Gary said we owe him a case of beer for the guy’s name,” Pavan said.

  He’d smoked in his crappy car so long that when the sun was out and shining bright; it looked like you were driving through the third act of a John Carpenter horror movie.

  “How can you see, man?”

  Pavan reached between the seats and grabbed a tissue, trying to rub away a clean area to peek through. He was just smearing the smoke residue around, making rainbows in the glass.

  “Pull over here, next right,” I said.

  “I’m good on gas.” Pavan pulled up to the convenience story and when he stopped, I jumped out. “If you’re going in, get me a Yoohoo, man.”

  Ten seconds later I was back with a squeegee from the pump island. Popping open the passenger side door, I put the spongy part of the squeegee on the inside of the glass—

  “HEY MAN, what the hell?”

  --and scrubbed away at the grime on the window. Droplets of water fell like fat, lazy rain onto his dashboard, which only collected into dustballs from the silt. Gray water oozed down the window into the vents and down my arm.

  “Here,” I said, tossing a handful of blue paper towels his way. “You rub on that side, I’ll do this side.”

  In about three minutes, we had the window and dashboard mostly clear. I took the squeegee back to the service station island and threw away a disgusting handful of paper towels.

  Pavan was a bit steamed but he sometimes gets like that. I’ve lived by the maxim that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than it is permission. In most cases, it gets things done and the consequences are minimal. Most. Not all.

  “Sorry, man.” I said and popped my door closed.

  “Look at my dashboard.”

  I ran my hand across it and snapped my fingers. “It’s called clean, dude.”

  “Yeah,” he said firing up the car again, pulling out. “But now I gotta clean the whole car otherwise it don’t look right.”

  Texas Gary had gotten us the address of the van's previous owner from the VIN number. He worked at a low-rent insurance company—life insurance, house insurance, car insurance. Pavan pushed him to get me a card that said I had insurance, and he reluctantly said he’d work on it. Wouldn’t be a big deal, get insurance for a day, and cancel. You still have the card but you don’t have the big check to write. Or insurance, for that matter. But I would have the card and hopefully that would be enough to get the van. Gary said he’d have it for us the next day and, we could head to the library and get the scan out of my email.

  Then it would be the small task of getting the two-fifty together. But, one insurmountable task at a time.

  “Where’s your brother Gary live?”

  “Dallas. Not actually in Dallas, just north of there,” Pavan said, watching the signs as they whirled past the crystal clear windshield. “What was the street this person lives on again?”

  “Durham Hill Trace,” I said. “You ever live in Dallas?”

  “Nope.”

  Ah, sore spot. Pavan’s not the one-word answer type. So, since it would be a few minutes before we got to Carroll McGaha’s home, I thought I’d press him.

  “So how is it you have a half-brother in Dallas?”

  “My father was a sperm donor.”

  “No way.”

  “Yep,” he said, nodding to the street sign. “Durham Hill Road. That is supposed to take us to Durham Hill Trace.”

  “Sperm donor?”

  “Yep,” Pavan said and looked at me from behind his K-Mart shades. “One client at a time.”

  “Bet he even did free of charge,” I said.

  “He did.”

  “Helluva guy, you’re dad. He’s a giver.”

  “Mom, she had a different opinion.” Pavan said. “And, good thing for Dad, bad aim.”

  I watched the streets go by Durham Hill Circle, Durham Hill Avenue, Durham Hill Road… the neighborhood was lower-middle class and seriously lacking in street-naming moxie.

  “Gary have anything more on Carrol McGaha?”

  “Nah,” Pavan said stubbing out his cig. “He only put in for the vehicle information. Coulda gone after more on this McGaha chick but, he said that you can’t just look up people’s records like before.”

  “This is something you’ve done before, Pavan?”

  “I refuse to answer that question until at least the statue of liberations expires.”

  It was possible McGaha was the Mentor’s lady friend, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. A lead, though, is better than nothing.

  The street came up on the left and a minute later we pulled up to the house. It was two stories, brick face, and green wooden shutters. Of all the houses on the street, this one had the most trees in the front. Only brick in front, the other walls had yellowed but most of that was hidden by four or five massive trees in the front yard. You couldn’t tell where one began and the next ended.

  Pavan pulled up into the driveway. The garage door was uneven and looked as though it didn’t close all the way anymore. A lot of junk but no car in there.

  Very quiet street. No kids in the street or yards. Either this was an older neighborhood or the kids of the neighborhood were glued to videogames or violent cartoons or whatever is at presently zombifying the current generation.

  Nearby, there was the pleasant smell of someone burning leaves and branches. There were a ton of sticks and limbs in the McGaha front yard. In fact, the lawn looked like only downed branches and dirt. The trees kept most of the sun away so any grass that would take a shot at poking its head out likely had no chance.

  Stepping from the car, I made sure Pavan’s CD player was secure, clipped to my hip. Thumbing the ear bud deeper into my ear, some nasally woman was talking about southwestern foliage.

  There was a walkway running from the driveway to the front door, and as I stepped to the path and into the shade the temperature dropped about ten degrees.

  “There’s an old crazy lady looking at us from across the street,” Pavan said, walking on the balls of his feet.

  “Probably part of the neighborhood watch program.”

  “She was eyeballing me when we pulled up, the whole time in the drive and now… you’d think, I dunno, you’d try and be less obvious about staring at someone.”

  I looked over and w
aved. “Well, she’s got sunglasses on.”

  The house was in okay shape but about thirty years old, like most of the homes on the block. Mrs. Snoopitysnoop across the street has obviously had her home painted three or four times in the time Carroll McGaha had done it. Here, the shutters were less paint than wood, like the garage, and the exposed bits had turned stone gray.

  “Whoa! Dex, stop!”

  I spun around to see what had spooked him and Pavan pointed about four feet in front of me.

  The web stretched from the large pine just off the sidewalk to the front of the house. This close, it looked thick like fishing line. In the middle, well, was the sort of thing that made you instinctively take a step in an opposite direction.

  “Holy cats,” I said.

  “That spider’s gotta be big as my fist,” Pavan said, his voice rattling in his throat.

  “Yeah, but you got small hands,” I said and looked to the door, then up at the big red and black and yellow spider. This low, there were only thick anchor lines to the larger web above. But we’d have to walk underneath; the crab spider would be about two feet above our heads.

  “No way, man.”

  “Come on,” I said moving forward slowly, keeping both eyes on the bug.

  “I’ll wait by the car.”

  “Pussy, I’ll knock it down. You’ll be fine.”

  A voice from the screen door said, “Leave Harry alone!”

  The darkened doorway made it difficult to see who’d called out. After a moment, he moved closer to the screen, giving us the full view of his scowl. The tall, old man hunched forward, possibly being pulled forward by his faded suspenders. His t-shirt was stained, but it was what he held in front of the t-shirt which made me pause. Through the dirty screen, the rifle I saw very clearly.

  “Listen we’re looking for Carroll McGaha.”

  “What for?”

  “We… I bought a van from someone who bought the van from her.”

  “Her?”

  “Mrs. McGaha.”

  He opened the door and leaned on the butt of the rifle, barrel digging into the grit of the cement steps.