House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  It takes a few minutes to locate it.

  “It was drawn on Santa Barbara Bank and Trust,” the woman tells her, handing the copy over for Kate’s perusal.

  The bail check for Wes Gillroy, the sole survivor from the bust on the boat, was also a cashier’s check drawn on Santa Barbara Bank and Trust. Sure, it’s a coincidence, probably nothing more; SBB&T is the city’s most popular bank, and whoever bought that check could have paid for it in cash, they wouldn’t even have to have an account there; still, given the overstimulation her antennae have recently undergone, the congruity jolts her like a sudden injection of adrenaline.

  She drives to Miranda’s office, parks on the street, goes inside. Celeste, Miranda’s executive secretary, flinches as she sees Kate—she knows the identity of this woman with a plastic guard covering half her face, the bandages underneath not doing much of a job hiding her swollen and misshapen parts.

  “Miranda Sparks,” Kate states in a firm don’t-fuck-with-me tone. “I need to see her. Now.”

  Celeste ducks into Miranda’s office, emerges almost immediately “Mrs. Sparks is finishing an important call. Please wait,” she implores Kate. “Mrs. Sparks very much wishes to speak with you.”

  Kate leafs through a back issue of Architectural Digest that’s lying on a side table. She feels hyper, she can’t sit. Twenty thousand dollars. Serious money—real serious. Somebody slips you twenty K, they want something substantial in return, it’s not like tipping the parking attendant a buck. Even if they don’t tell you they’ve given it to you. You find out sooner or later, there’s no way you won’t, and then you’re obligated. Bought and paid for. She doesn’t want to be a bought woman, not under circumstances she hasn’t agreed to.

  Miranda opens the door to her office. “How are you?” she asks. The face guard causes her to wince in spite of herself.

  “Better. I was at my office earlier today.”

  “Are you back to work already?” Miranda seems surprised.

  “No, I’m not working. I was cleaning up old business. I won’t be able to work for a while.”

  “Yes. You should take as much time as you need.”

  She takes Kate’s arm and leads her into her private office, closes the door. There is a pause as she smiles at Kate, taking her measure, trying to put her at ease.

  “Tea? Coffee? Something cold?”

  “How about a glass of Montrachet?”

  Miranda looks at her strangely. “Wine? At this time of the day?”

  The woman has a short memory—conveniently. “Nothing. Thank you.”

  “Have a seat,” Miranda offers, moving to the chair behind her desk.

  “No, thanks. I’m only here for a minute.”

  “Are you calling on me about something specific?”

  “The deposit into my account. Twenty thousand dollars. Last week. And my paid-up hospital bills.”

  “Yes?”

  “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  The answer comes right away. “Yes, it was me.”

  “I told you I didn’t need anything,” Kate reminds her.

  “It isn’t a question of need. We are obligated to you. My family—all of us. We have to meet our obligations.”

  This statement angers Kate, it’s so lacking in feeling, in heart. “I did not obligate you,” she insists.

  “We obligate ourselves. It comes with our territory.”

  Don’t fight city hall. “I guess that makes us even,” she hears herself saying.

  “No,” Miranda contradicts her. “You saved my daughter’s life. Money can’t be an equal in that equation, no amount of money.”

  “Then I’d better keep it,” Kate tells Miranda; understanding now that she’d intended to, before she laid bare the issue. Her own woman, not someone who can be bought—a nice conceit, but this is the real world here.

  “I did earn it,” she stoutly avows. Okay, so there’s a little self-bullshit there. More than a little—so what?

  “You most certainly did.”

  “And I can use it.”

  “Then I’m glad to have been of help.”

  “Well …”

  Now that it’s over she isn’t comfortable here. Her skin feels hyper-dry; she realizes where the expression “making my skin crawl” comes from. In the future, if there have to be further encounters with Miranda Sparks (she hopes there won’t be), they’ll be on neutral ground, not on Miranda’s home turfs.

  “I found out what I wanted to know,” she declares.

  “As you say, you earned it,” Miranda says as she stands, a clean act of dismissal. This conversation is finished; maybe their entire relationship, as short and exciting as it was.

  She walks Kate to the door, opens it. “I know you don’t like my saying this, but if there’s anything I can do for you …”

  “You’ve done enough already,” Kate tells her. In more ways than one.

  “Good luck then.”

  “Thanks.”

  She leaves, feeling Miranda’s eyes on her back all the way until the front door is shut behind her.

  Good luck to you, too, Mrs. Sparks. I know I’m going to need my share and then some.

  Maybe, down the line, so will you.

  Twenty big ones in the bank. That changes things. The pressure is off—for at least four months, more if she’s frugal, she can do any damn thing she wants. Twenty thousand dollars. What the Mexican Mafia guys offered her, to the dollar. Coincidence, or something more sinister? That will be one thing to find out. One thing of many. Don’t trust anybody. That’s going to be her mantra, from now on.

  “You’re as stubborn as an ox,” Carl tells her with a halfhearted feigned anger, too old and infirm to be convincingly outraged anymore. Under the crusty-shell hard-boiled persona that’s evolved over more than fifty years of get-down detective work, his true colors show, and in them there is admiration for her tenacity and guts. She knows it, he knows she knows it, it’s part of their ritual. She also knows that his days of being useful to her are numbered.

  He’s changed since she last saw him not long ago. More shrunken, more bent. It is a subject never broached by either of them, but it’s there. Well, she thinks, I’ve changed, too. Is he looking at her any differently?

  Someday, maybe pretty soon, Carl will die.

  They’re outside, in their usual gathering place. The day is cool, overcast. Carl wears an old-man’s button cardigan to keep his fragile bones warm. He doesn’t—or won’t—comment on the way she looks.

  “I don’t have a choice.” Her voice is sodden with resignation. “In my shoes, you’d do the same thing.”

  Any answer in the negative would be bullshit, so he doesn’t give one. He looks out at the horizon, to the oil rigs reflecting what little late-afternoon sun there is, and past them to the islands, obscured by clouds.

  “What do you want me to tell you?” he asks her instead.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want advice?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s just sit here a while till you figure out what it is you do want.”

  They sit in quiet. The sound of the breakers hitting the beach down below echoes in the wind.

  She wants strength. She wants to leech some from him, but she can’t tell him that. He doesn’t have that much left that he can spare.

  Carl is her touchstone, her family. She doesn’t have a family anymore, not at the moment and not in the near future. There is pain in that which she cannot deny. That’s why she keeps going back to him, over and over again—for the great relief of having someone to talk to, and to try to bottle his wisdom, his memory. He knows how it’s done—he’s always known.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he pronounces out of the blue, as if reading her mind.

  “What do I have to worry about you about?” His statement startled her, put her on the defensive. One of his favorite ploys.

  “Nothing. That’s why I’m telling you not to.”

 
He’s opened the door. She’ll be insulting him if she doesn’t walk through it.

  “I have to find out who did this to me.”

  He says nothing.

  “Who gave the orders to do it.”

  A slight nod: I hear you. Continue.

  “I feel it’s got to be connected to the Sparks family somehow, like you said. All my instincts tell me that. But I don’t know how. I keep running down false trails.”

  “You’re playing their game,” he says.

  “How do you mean?” Talk to me, you’re the expert, compared to you I’m a neophyte at this. “What am I doing wrong?”

  “You’re reacting.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “Someone hires you, you do their bidding, yes?” he asks rhetorically.

  “Yes.”

  “They set the agenda. You follow it.”

  “I’m for hire. Isn’t that how it works?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then what?”

  “Don’t be for hire.”

  She stares at him.

  “You’re a person with a problem,” he elucidates. “Generic you, not specific you. You need to have it solved. You hire an expert to help you, to do the work this expert is trained for. Does that compute?”

  “Yeah, that sounds right.”

  “They tell you what they want and you get it done,” he goes on, patiently. “You try to, anyway,” he continues.

  “Yes.”

  “Like this girl. She hired you to find out if her boyfriend was murdered or else killed himself. You found out he was murdered.”

  She nods yes.

  “You did the job you were hired to do. You fulfilled your contract. You did a professional job.”

  “If you put it that way, I did, yes.”

  “She didn’t come to you to find out who it was. Just what it was. And you did.”

  She nods. He doesn’t need her to actually answer, because there is no question in these questions.

  “But your problem was, you did too good a job. You got too close to who it was, when what was all that was needed.”

  “I didn’t look at it that way,” she responds. “It’s not something you can separate.”

  “Precisely,” he tells her, pouncing like a kitten on a ball of yarn. “That’s the problem in a nutshell, the whole damn enchilada. You can’t compartmentalize these things, because the world out there isn’t neat enough. The world out there doesn’t understand the difference between the who and the what. And that’s why you get your tit caught in the wringer.”

  She winces at the metaphor.

  “So how do you get around this problem?” he queries.

  “You tell me.” Like try to stop him. It would be like trying to stop a runaway train.

  “You be the client. You hire yourself,” he posits. “You set your own agenda.”

  “I know that,” she says. That’s obvious.

  “Then why are you here?”

  She exhales, a deep heavy breath. “Because I’m chicken. I almost got killed. I don’t want to be in that position again.”

  He nods. “Well, you don’t,” he tells her.

  “Well …”

  “You don’t. You can walk away from this, like I told you before. It’s a different situation now, but you can still walk away.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Well, you can’t.”

  “Then what’re you talking about?” she barks out in exasperation.

  “Technically you can. Emotionally you can’t. So you can but you can’t. Elementary, my dear Blanchard.”

  “I can’t sleep,” she confides in him. “I jump out of my skin at every sound in the night.”

  He leans forward so they’re close, reaches out and takes her hands in his. His are liver-spotted and twisted with arthritis, but they’re still strong enough to grip hers like vises.

  “You need to find out who these bastards are,” he instructs her vehemently. “And then you need to take whatever steps are necessary to eliminate them from your life forever.”

  The guest of honor at dinner at Desierto Cielo is Blake Hopkins. It’s a small gathering, so they’re eating in the informal dining room, which is adjacent to the swimming pool and has a 180-degree view of the ocean, from Ventura County all the way up the coast.

  Hopkins is seated across from Dorothy. Frederick is at the head of the table, Miranda at the far end.

  “Thank you for inviting me up here,” Hopkins tells them.

  “The least we can do is feed you a decent meal,” Miranda quips. “After what your company has pledged for us.”

  She raises her wineglass in toast. “To a wonderful partnership.”

  “Hear, hear,” Frederick seconds.

  “To a beneficial partnership between environmentalists and business,” Hopkins adds.

  “Yes, that will be refreshing for a change,” Dorothy notes, unable to keep the tartness from her tone. “Is your family with you, Mr. Hopkins?” she adds politely; the man is, after all, their guest, one is always civil with one’s guests, even if you don’t care for them and despise their policies. “Have they moved down yet from San Francisco?”

  “Tiburon,” he gently corrects her. “And please, call me Blake.”

  “That’s a pretty area … Blake,” Miranda notes pleasantly. As far as anyone in her family is concerned she has never laid eyes on this man until a few days ago, when they met to discuss his company’s incredible endowment.

  “It’s pretty here, too,” Hopkins answers, comfortably making small talk. “And I’m single,” he explains to Dorothy, “so I have no family.” He resists glancing at Miranda; this old dame is sharp, she’d figure them out in a second if given the slightest reason to.

  The servants have been given the night off. Miranda serves. They eat a simple cold dinner: filet of salmon, asparagus vinaigrette, stuffed artichokes. The food is accompanied by a nice Santa Ynez chardonnay made from their neighbor Cecil Shugrue’s grapes.

  Dinner is over. The sun has set. They sit outside by the pool under the heat lamps, drinking a second bottle of wine.

  “What are your plans, Mr. Hopkins?” Dorothy asks. “Rather, your company’s plans?” It’s difficult, having a civil conversation with someone from big oil, but she was brought up that way.

  “Why do you ask?” he smiles.

  “Because I don’t see them sending someone as capable as you down here just to hand over large checks to environmentalists,” she says forth-rightly. “You must have an agenda.”

  Hopkins turns to Frederick. “Is your mother psychic?” he asks.

  “I’ve always thought so,” Frederick answers. “She’s always been able to read my mind, even when I haven’t wanted her to.”

  “So, Mr.—Blake,” Dorothy presses. “What are you really down here in Santa Barbara for?”

  He blows out his breath, steeples his fingers, sits up straighter in his chair.

  “I’m here for change,” he says, looking directly at her.

  “What kind of change?” she asks, equally directly.

  “Change for the better, I hope,” he parries. He’s enjoying this informal colloquy.

  “You weren’t really serious when you said your company is planning on pulling your platforms out of our channel, were you?” she asks, smiling as she does at the absurdity of the question. He’s a nice enough man and his company did give them a fortune, but he’s oil, a fact not to be forgotten. “That was politics as usual, wasn’t it? I don’t mind,” she continues airily, “developers say all kinds of outrageous things when they want to get on our good side. It’s part of the game, we’ve been playing it for decades.”

  He pauses for a moment. The smile leaves his face. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we’re planning to do.”

  “Are you serious?” Miranda says, acting for all the world as if this pronouncement has stunned her.

  “Yes. Very.”

  “That’s … remarkable,” Dorothy says.
Hopkins has thrown her off balance.

  “Yes and no. Pulling our platforms up and giving up our oil rights are not the same thing.” He leans forward, his body language all business now. “We want to replace all our offshore rigs with onshore slant-drilling ones.”

  “Like Mobil,” Dorothy says. Now her suspicions are way up. She’s a charter member of every anti-oil organization in this county.

  “Same technology, different goals.”

  “How?” Her tone has taken on a note of belligerence. She’s as blunt as she can be; impolite, almost.

  “Mr. Hopkins is our dinner guest tonight,” Frederick softly reminds his mother, trying to defuse an argument before it catches fire.

  “No, that’s okay,” Hopkins says. “I don’t mind talking about this. We, meaning Rainier Oil, have nothing to hide.”

  He exchanges the slightest of glances with Miranda as he says that.

  Frederick watches, amused and detached. Big oil is the ever-looming heavy in this community, for the past three decades. Now here is this man in his house, debating with his mother, the grande dame of local environmentalism.

  “Mobil wants to improve on what they have,” Hopkins says, looking at Dorothy. She’s his target—if he can sell her, the rest of the opposition will follow.

  “And yours?” she asks, as if cueing him from a script.

  “We don’t want to rewrite the present book, patch here, modify there. We want to write a whole new book, starting from page one.”

  “Unfortunately, you are not the only writer of this book,” Dorothy reminds him.

  “That’s true. But we’re the biggest in this area.” He pauses to gather his thoughts. “We want to take all our rigs out—not a select few—and replace them with slant drilling, every last one. We want to be the forerunner. If we’re successful,” he goes on, “our plan is to persuade the other oil companies to come along with us; to convince them that this is the way to go for the future. No more platforms, no more offshore spills, a cleaner environment.”

  Dorothy regards him skeptically. “Your gift to the oceanography project,” she says. “You said there were no strings attached, but this seems to tie in awfully closely. Am I missing something? Is this all of a piece? Are you using us?”

  “No,” he says, “there are no strings. Our donation stands alone, as I’ve promised.” He pauses a moment, taking a judicious sip of wine. This has to be played out exactly right. “But there is something we want from you.”