A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Feeling so chipper is nice but disconcerting to a man who understands averages. Then again, luck and good cheer favor the receptive mind. On the bright side, a financially challenged man depending on his friendship with a uniquely wealthy woman has hope, which is all a salesperson ever has, really.

  With logic secure, kind of, Mulroney ambles through the storybook gate at Pooh’s cottage and follows the adorable stone walkway to the gingerbread entrance of the sprightly Ms. B’s place. She’s just inside awaiting a friend in need, maybe. Mulroney tap, tap, taps on the door. God, she would have been fun thirty years ago. Not that she’s not fun now, and you never know; she could have been stiff-necked and dull back then, by design.

  Mulroney listens for the pitter-patter of flat feet.

  Give an old gal a chance. They move slower at that age. She could be primping or having a bowel movement—a certain bonus for an elderly person that could assuredly ease her into the spirit of giving. He feels good about Betty Burnham and their blossoming friendship, which is what it comes down to; so honest and open. He can even imagine bodily function in a person of her maturity.

  He knocks again. Still nothing. Mulroney steps back before sidling around to the narrow path between the hedge and wall that runs to the back, where she must be tinkering in the herbs, probably stringing beans or filling her hummingbird feeders or fooling around frivolously. Maybe she dropped dead in the chrysanthemums—he’d hate to be the guy who finds her, but croaking in the garden would be better than indoors, and she’s probably trussed up in a bikini and Ma Kettle’s sun bonnet, so she checked out happily …

  Then again, he should not be the person who discovers the body. Dots could connect unfortunately on that scenario, what with incidents and observations of the recent past. The Tweedle brothers could gnaw on that bone for a mile or two.

  She’s not here. Seems like old Betty must be out at the grocery or the Lawn ’n Garden, getting a jump on early tomatoes or late shade plants. Older people enjoy that sort of thing, and they do tend to rise early because they can’t sleep anymore. Maybe they’re scared. Maybe they think they’ll beat the reaper if they get up early and keep moving. Maybe they’re amazed at waking up at all. Mulroney can only imagine, but it won’t be long. She’s a great gal, but he doesn’t want to see her at the grocery or the garden place, resolution notwithstanding. She’d glom on with the feelies, pressing her bosom and big hips into him so everyone could see how chummy neighbors can be. Why would she do that? Maybe she wouldn’t, and even if she did, Mulroney can handle the bubbly bullshit in small doses, like by-ee, but public displays are foolish. It’s embarrassing and, he assumes, intentional. Is she not Breaking News already?

  She’s not here. Let’s see. Hey … What’s this?

  Better judgment would send Mulroney back around the way he came and back up the road or farther down and into the real world because a door ajar sends two possible messages. One possibility is that the door was left open carelessly. The second is more foreboding. Will a tiptoe inside find Betty Burnham in flagrante delicto, flailing away with the mailman, the meter man or, what the hell, the meter woman, after all? Or murdered, her elegantly humble bungalow a scene of mayhem? Maybe the little minks rebelled and ganged up and chewed her to pieces. Get a grip.

  The police and media will storm the ramparts on this one, polluting the stain samples, walking all over the clues, smearing the blood and/or odd fluids. Betty B’s dough should get the Feds in too—this woman is a ripple on the national economy …

  Mulroney steps in to see what there is to see. Initial shock hits like a Louisville slugger on a line shot to the jaw.

  Correctamundo on theory three: it’s a Murder One that looks written for a low budget. The gore and gristle are beyond the scope of a wizened closer. Bleach blonde Betty Burnham with platinum highlights is belly up on the sofa, blotches purpling across her face. Faint twitches in her thoracic region can’t hide the fact that she’s racing down the white highway to Deadville. What can he do? Cardiopulmonary resuscitation? Mouth to mouth? He knew the drill years ago but forgot it. But how tough could it be? He’s seen it on TV. You blow down the throat twice and then pump the chest double time. He could do it wrong, but how wrong could he be? That’s what they taught—that you can’t very well fuck up CPR on somebody going dead anyway. It must be coming back!

  Okay, one step at a time. You take it easy to get it right. Okay, she’s sprawled on the sofa, but it’s not right. She’s too twisted and curved, so he pulls her ankles to stretch and align her legs. He straightens her head and sticks a throw pillow under her neck to give it a small arch. He finds a suitable position to climb Hazel Dell one more time because this could take a while. With palms overlapping on her sternum, he presses, but the harness clasp is up front these days, so he unbuttons the blouse and removes it. The chest looks different, bluing, veining, slagging—never mind. He rises to near vertical and pumps. What was it? Sixty pumps to the minute? That’s too slow. One twenty sounds too fast but feels right. Fuck it. He hangs around ninety cadence and counts a minute.

  Then comes mouth-to-mouth in the clutch, which will be their first kiss, kind of, and an act of love. He pries the jaw downward, clasping the tongue with a handkerchief and clearing the airway—what the?

  Oh, fuck. Somebody dropped a load in here, unless she was snacking on a dollop o’ Smetna when she keeled over. It’s translucent, maybe like spinal fluid—he checks the neck for breaks, knowing they’ll call it Mulroney fluid at the inquest, which will be a drag, but he can beat the rap easy on a DNA, and that may be what it’ll come to because spinal fluid doesn’t leak internally from a broken neck, and this stuff smells like jizz …

  Mulroney speaks internal: You gotta get outta here …

  Okay, wait a minute. This is Betty Burnham, never mind the billions; she’s a game gal who kills furry little creatures, but only because she doesn’t understand. What can he do? Let her die? Give her mouth-to-mouth on a load? Wait a minute …

  No! A minute may well be a luxury even Betty Burnham can’t afford!

  Wait, if he cups his fingers over her lips and holds her nose with the other hand, he can … Fuck. It’s leaking …

  Air.

  Man, mayo …

  Wait …

  Okay, that’s better, but not enough. We’re not getting enough in there. The chest has to rise, but not too far, but more than that. Oh! He remembers! Get a plastic bag and make an air hole!

  So Mulroney races to the kitchen where everyone saves their plastic bags and finds billionaire Betty Burnham’s plastic bags under the sink. He snatches a handful and pokes a finger through one on his way back to the living room sofa and lines up the bag hole with the mouth hole and covers that with his own mouth and blows—that’s it! The chest rises.

  It falls in exhalation, which reeks of pecker nectar, telling the emergency medical stand-in that he has yet to clear the airway, that resuscitation requires free flow. He sets the plastic bag aside and grabs the tongue again and pokes around with the hanky, trying to soak up the throat yogurt, but it’s not happening. Fuck it. You can’t stop CPR like this. So he pumps the chest another minute and feels a twitch, unless that was himself. But he gives her the benefit of the doubt and dives onto another blow—oh, fuck.

  He forgot the bag. Worse yet, Betty B convulses and hurls the load—oh, fuuuck—Mulroney moves aside but not far enough, not quite clear, and while most of the blown flecks graze his cheek, several find their way into the air passage—his air passage—as the most perseverant spermatozoa will do to be first across the line—any line—in their eternal race to fertilize.

  Nothing will be fertilized here but Mulroney’s past, present, and future. Not a minute will pass again, ever, without recalling the first hot moist contact of pecker juice on the soft membrane of Mulroney’s mouth.

  The scene lurches back to normality, or in that general direction, as he spits, hocks and spits while pumping the chest again. Fervor is fueled by Betty B’s struggle
to rejoin the living. Purple recedes to blue, navy to sky and then gray, like first light, easing to pink, like sunrise.

  She’s coming to, and her eyes open on shock and solitude—and on curiosity; who could possibly be in the kitchen gargling and hocking? And why?

  It’s only Mulroney, not singing but gargling disinfectant, because the perpetrator who overpowered this elderly woman and dropped a load down her blowhole could be an extreme risk for sexual contact. He could have been a former inmate of a federal penitentiary where anal and oral penetration with no prophylactic or discretion whatever go hand in glove. It would be a fifty-to-one shot 24/7 in Vegas that the perp is a carrier of diseases known to deform cells and shorten life, and that he’s disgusting to boot.

  Back in the living room, wincing from 409 aftertaste, Mulroney welcomes his hostess back to the world of the living. Wait a minute—409 disinfects, doesn’t it? Or does it just clean? Fuck it; it’s got to kill something. It feels like it’s killing Mulroney. Man oh man, to think what some people would do to a nice lady who isn’t hurting anybody but only trying to make a life for herself in the upper-middle-class suburbs.

  Dazed and confused, she takes a moment to sort the scene and the players, and soon she squints into thin air, seeing again the events of the hour just past. Soon she says yes, that man was here, that muscular, handsome man who looks so rough and hostile but seems familiar—“You know, that man at your house. That Juan Valdez … I walked in the back door, which I never do, really. I don’t know why I did—oh, it was because I stepped in some, you know, dog doodoo and needed to wipe my shoes. Anyway, I can’t remember coming in, except that he was in the gallery. You haven’t seen the gallery. It’s where I keep the … Oh, dear! You have spunk on your chin!”

  Mulroney thrusts both paws chinward as if to grasp the bloodthirsty beast attacking him and remove it forcefully, two-handed by the neck. “God, that’s disgusting!”

  “Really, Michael. I could say the same thing. But it’s not, once you relax. It’s full of amino acids, you know.”

  “Yeah. I heard that before. You don’t mind if I think it’s disgusting, do you?”

  “You’re such a kid … You know, I’m not feeling so well myself.”

  “I think I should call the police.”

  “Yes. Why don’t you.”

  XVIII

  The Facts, Ma’am, Just the Facts

  Detective Sergeant Ryan has not seen it all before, but he’s seen most of it. His years on the investigative end of law enforcement have inured him to the shock and outrage commonly affecting your inexperienced detective. That is, a 513 break-and-enter with a 429 grand-theft-intent, leading to a 111 assault-with-deadly-intent, compounded by a 110 rape-including-but-not-limited-to-forced-oral copulation with a woman of grandmotherly stature, vast personal wealth and a household word for a name, could not raise an eyebrow on said Detective Sergeant Ryan. Which isn’t to call it a ho-hum situation but rather to underscore Detective Ryan’s commitment to procedure, by the book. Does he sense more than meets the eye?

  Indicators point to yes. He is not prone to camaraderie, Hibernian kinship or exchange of the blarney when he asks, “So you’re Big M?”

  Mulroney grants the half nod, what an international celebrity and candidate for the United States Senate musters for the well intentioned at appropriate times.

  Jotting details such as full name, address, phone, social, date of birth, place of employ and so on, Detective Sergeant Ryan rechecks the list and then turns to Mulroney. “What happened?” Mulroney successfully constrains the mirthless smile often afflicting those in the chagrined phase of life. He further represses his honest answer: Fuck if I know. As if gathering his thoughts, Mulroney delivers his chronological account, beginning with a blue-sky morning and excellent conditions for a walk down to the flats, moving right out to a stop at Betty Burnham’s on the way.

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Why did I stop?”

  Detective Sargent Ryan waits, pen poised over paper.

  “She’s my friend. I stopped to say hello.” She blew me a few days ago, making said friendship well established, and I stopped to see if she’d loan me a few bucks, less than a million or maybe three million but not more than that, really.

  Detective Ryan takes note, as if a friend stopping to say hello is noteworthy—or possibly potentially a suspect behavior.

  Never mind. Mulroney proceeds with the approach, the easy pass through the gate, leaving the perfect picket fence behind on the way to the knock, knock, the brief wait and call out: Hello! Betty! Are you home! Mulroney waited a tad longer, wondering what, thinking her gone to the Lawn & Garden or the farmers’ market, but then he rounded the corner and headed along the path between the house and side hedge to the back door for another knock, knock but saw the door ajar. He entered, to where he shrugs, because Detective Sargent Ryan, knows the rest of the story—beyond the point of Mulroney’s involvement, if you can actually call it that.

  Detective Ryan jots and murmurs, and into that quiet industry Mulroney then relates what Betty shared verbally, including Juan Valdez’ in flagrante apprehension in a heist—make that a mega-heist of obscenely valuable art. She walked in on him—walked in on Juan Valdez, that is. And now poor Betty is in shock with possible traumatic residuals, as she already debriefed to her friend, Mulroney, when the action was still fresh in her mind. Mulroney cannot speculate on the dollar values of a Monet, a Manet, a Titian, a Holbein—“Or that other guy. What’s his name, Betty, does the Spanish towns that look like they’re on acid and downers …”

  “El Greco,” Betty whimpers tearfully.

  “Yeah, that guy. El Greco.” Mulroney nods to affirm his grasp of Spanish art, and he proceeds: Betty B had Juan V red-handed when the painting fell from his grasp, already cut from the frame and rolled up. Or maybe he dropped the frame to better take her to the mat. “You know, like to whack her in the head with it, maybe. I’m not clear on that.” Nor was Mulroney clear on the part where Juan Valdez, that son of a gun, forced his schwantz—make that his peepee or his dingdong or whatever you want to call it, you know, into her gob and flooded the pie hole with iffy lemon custard, such as it was, which was entirely too much, interfering with epiglottal function. “She choked. It ain’t rocket science. You must see it all the time, in your gay community and so on.”

  “I thought you didn’t get here till he was gone.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So how do you know?”

  “Betty told me. How else could I know? Give Betty a few minutes to gather her wits, and she’ll tell you too.”

  Lying on the couch, Betty breathes deep, holding the oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. The medics wait outside. Detective Sergeant Ryan takes a step toward her. “Ms. Burnham?”

  She lifts the mask, “Please. Call me Betty.” As the informality settles, she underscores it with a sigh and a resigned smile. “What I can tell you is that Michael is correct. All that ‘lemon custard,’ as he calls it, can indeed interfere with normal breathing function. I suppose it can kill you. Anything clogging your throat passage can. Unfortunately for Michael’s theory is that the only spermatozoa in my throat since Alfred passed has been Michael’s own. Some people might find that disgusting. They don’t love him like I do. They don’t know him like I do, for that matter.” She laughs with the sanguine insight of one who has gained perspective on life and love at last. “To say the least, and I really have no choice but to express my love. He’s such a caring man, really.”

  At long last an eyebrow rises on the hitherto bored visage of the detective sergeant. Then up comes the other. “Are you saying … ?”

  “I can’t say it any more clearly,” she says, just as a clatter and clamber come along the path between the side of the house and the hedge, announcing the arrival of the media, beginning with the local newshounds from the Sentinel, the Chronicle, and the Happy Daze.

  “He’s such a man. Anybody can see that. But he’s unhappy
in his current situation, and that’s where I come in, a friend in need and in love I might add, offering support and facilitation so that—what is it they say? So that these two people may be joined together.”

  The trio in the parlor pause for a moment as a voice outside the window says in passing. “I think she said she blew Big M.”

  “I thought she said they’re getting married.”

  “He’s already married.”

  In unison: “Oh, God …”

  So in hardly half a turn of the great wide world on its axis, a second long story is made short—or shorter at any rate. The headlines say it best, or bray it most succinctly. The local daily adheres to tradition, stating the situation with no prejudice but with objective ambivalence. Vague meaning may motivate potential readers to drop quarters into the slot and buy the damn paper, to see what happened after:

  PERV SAVES HEIRESS—NOT!

  —Can You Hear Wedding Bells?

  Also consistent with historical pattern, the Chronicle spices facts with gossip, which is more fun and entertaining, so why not:

  ART HEIST GOES AWRY ON FORCED ORAL!

  —Used Car Intrigue, Patrimony Not Likely, Yet!

  The Happy Daze, supporting and reflecting its name, achieves bliss with minimal inhibition and journalistic aplomb:

  BETTY B BLOWS BIG M BEFORE BURGLE BUNGLE!

  —Who’s Your Daddy?

  Not that anyone in modern California gives a snit who’s blowing whom, though this match is most amusing, given the snooty neighborhood/corporate/big-dough overlay. Most ironic is that all three print media reporters on the scene miss their deadlines, causing a two-day lag in the breaking story, which palliates personal pain on the one hand but re-opens wounds on the other.

  In the meantime, the day after Betty B’s art/asphyxiation challenge, buried on Page 12, Section C, is a two-paragraph political bellwether, announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to examine candidacy viability on Michael “Big M” Mulroney relative to the United States Senate from California. Sure it would be a goof in the best of times—the M might be phoning in from Hawaii—but who wouldn’t love the action and fun?