Chapter 27
Offices of Consolidated Security
Thursday, October 20, 1955
Half past 4 in the afternoon
"Um, Mr. Williams?" That was Miss Schepps. She was my new secretary. She had curly blonde hair and was slightly stout but wore a cute outfit that accentuated her curves. She had been a meter maid in Rochester, New York, until she'd been fired. Her girlfriend, Bev, had decided to go to the papers about all the meter maids who were frequenting the local lesbian club. Bev had taken the five grand the local paper had given her for the exclusive and had absconded for the warmer shores of Nicaragua, a place I'd heard about but had no clue where to find it on a map.
Miss Schepps had packed her bags and taken the train to San Francisco. A woman she met in Oakland had suggested she call us. Mike had offered her an investigator's job since he was always looking to hire more gals. But Miss Schepps decided a desk job suited her for the time being. Being a meter maid was, from what she'd said, hell on her corns.
I looked up from the huge pile of mail on my desk. I hadn't realized Marnie had been sorting my mail before I ever saw it. Miss Schepps didn't know the office well enough to do it yet. I was trying to make a dent in the stack and wasn't very far along. "Yes, Miss Schepps?"
She smiled tightly. She always smiled tightly. I wasn't sure why. "Mr. Halversen is here to see you."
I grinned and stood up. "Bring 'em in."
She nodded and pulled the door open. "Come in, Mr. Halversen."
I walked around my desk. Sam bounded in, all smiles, and said, "He's back."
Ike Kopek, who had been released from Soledad State Prison early that morning, walked in right behind Sam. Ike was about my height. He had blond hair and green eyes. His cheekbones sat high on his face and were as sharp as razors. He had a generous smile and was covered in muscles. He was wearing a very tight short-sleeve pull-over shirt with a collar that was light green and showed off his biceps. His trousers were just as tight as any that Carter and I had picked up in Australia. I wondered where he got the new clothes. I figured Sam must have brought them so he could change out of whatever he'd worn when he was sent to prison.
With a huge grin on his face, Ike walked up and pulled me into a tight hug. Kissing me right on the lips, he said, "It's damn good to see you, Nick. How the hell have you been?"
I patted him on the back and pushed him away so I could see his face. He looked just as handsome as ever but there was a wariness in his eyes that I hadn't seen before. When I had first met him in December of '53, he had been living with a man more than twice his age. He'd been a hustler, plain and simple. But after almost being tried for murder and then dealing with the death of his father, Ike had gone legit, or so we'd thought. I'd staked him to buy a gym south of the Slot and he'd done well until he'd been busted for production and distribution of pornography. I knew that prison was hard, even at a place as modern as Soledad. I was hoping he'd learned his lesson, but I wasn't holding my breath. "I've been good. Had a lot of adventures while you've been gone. You ready to get back to the gym?"
He nodded and playfully punched me in the arm. It hurt but I tried not to grimace. "Thanks for taking care of things, daddy-o."
I smiled. "Sure. Did you see your mom?"
Ike nodded. "Yeah. She's the best. Sam arranged everything."
Sam piped up. "I left way early and drove down and picked her up in Monterey. She was with me when Ike walked out at 8 this morning."
"I bet she was happy to see you."
His smile faded. "She was. I really fucked everything up, didn't I, Nick?"
I shrugged. "Keep your nose clean. You'll be fine." I reached over and found a small folder of documents. It was all the paperwork related to the ownership of Sugar Joe's #2, the gym Ike had started. When he went up the river, he'd signed everything over to me. "Kenneth Wilcox pulled all this together. I signed everything I needed to sign for you to get your ownership stake back. If you—"
He pushed the folder back at me and shook his head. "No. I'm gonna work. Maybe in a few years, after I put away some dough, I might ask you to sell me the gym. But, for now, I'm gonna go work at Universal Construction. I've been writing letters to that gal who owns the place."
"Pam Spaulding." Pam had been our neighbor on Hartford Street in Eureka Valley. She and Diane Jones were a "lady couple," as Carter liked to call them. Pam was half owner of Universal. I owned the other half. Building was booming and the company was doing great.
He nodded. "That's her." He looked over his shoulder. "Sam put me in touch with her. I've got a job and she's told me no special favors even though you and I are pals. I start at the bottom and work my way up."
I looked at him. "Good for you, Ike." Looking over his shoulder, I could see Sam beaming with pride. "But let me buy out your share, at least."
Ike folded his massive arms and shook his head. "Nope. I probably owe you for all the trouble I caused."
I decided to pursue the matter. "The gym wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for you."
"Nope."
"Fine. It'll be there when you're ready to buy back in." I put my hand on the kid's shoulder and said, "In the meantime, you let me know if you need anything. Promise?"
He nodded and grabbed me into a hug again. As I patted him on the back again, I saw Carter walk through the doorway.
He said, "Ike Kopek you better let my husband go before I come over there and knock your block off."
Letting me go, Ike spun around and jumped over to where Carter was standing. They hugged tightly for a long moment.
I looked at Sam, who walked over to me. "Proud?" I asked.
He nodded and sighed. "Proud and happy." He then whispered, "And horny as hell."
I laughed at that.
. . .
Carter was leaning against my desk and at eye level. Ike and Sam had just left to go see the rest of the guys in the building. I was standing close to Carter's face and in between his outstretched legs. We were holding hands like teenagers. I kissed him on the lips and then said, "Did you ask Mike about the latest on the Grossman case?"
He shrugged. "What case?" We both grinned. "There's nothing. Lieutenant Thomas isn't talking. He's still claiming national security. Andy's checked in with his guys inside the Bureau but they claim to know nothing about the matter."
I nodded and looked into his green eyes. I was about to kiss him again when there was a knock on the office door. Miss Schepps opened it and said, "Oh, I'm sorry."
Staying where I was, I said, "I hope this doesn't bother you, Miss Schepps." Without waiting for her reply, I asked, "What's up?"
"Um, Mrs. LeBeau is on the phone and she sounds upset."
"Marnie?" I asked as Carter picked up the receiver off my desk and handed it to me. "Hello, doll. Are you OK?"
"No, Nick, I'm not." I could tell she was crying.
"What's going on?"
"They're taking them away from us." Her voice wailed in anguish. I'd never heard her talk like that before.
"What? Do you mean the kids?" Carter leaned in and I pulled the phone away from my ear so he could listen in.
"Yeah." She sniffed and took a deep breath. "That Captain Cross just called. They found some relatives in Texas." She sniffed again. "Hold on."
After a quick moment, I heard Alex's voice. "Nick?"
"Yeah. What's going on?"
"They found a cousin of the father. They live out in the middle of nowhere. The—"
A female voice said, "This is the operator. I have an emergency call from a General O'Connor. Will you release the line?"
Alex said, "Of course, operator. Nick, we'll call you back."
I handed the phone to Carter who put it back on the hook. He pulled me in close and said, "This is awful."
I nodded into his neck. "It sure is."
. . .
"What happened, Alex?"
"That was the commanding general at the Presidio. He was very nice. He said that he got a call from Lackland yes
terday afternoon. They tracked down a cousin. Jeanine Hollister. She and her husband have a cotton farm south of Lubbock."
"Where's that?" I asked. Carter was leaning in and listening.
"It's in West Texas. Near New Mexico. Do you think you could fly us there on Saturday?"
"Of course. We'll take care of everything."
Alex paused. "I hope you don't mind but I already told the general that. He said he would square things with the welfare services people since, you know..."
"I know. Don't worry, Alex. If they don't want us on that flight, you can still use the plane." I sighed. "Is there any way you can keep the kids? Can we get a lawyer involved?"
"No. And to give the general some credit, he said he tried to work it out. That's why they just now called us. Seems like the Army and the Air Force want us to keep the kids, but the states don't. The general at Lackland even called the governor's office in Austin. But it's the law. In both Texas and California."
"I'm sorry, Alex. I really am."
"Thanks, Nick."
"Of course. Let us know what the plan is as soon as you can."
"Will do."
Chapter 28
Offices of Consolidated Security
Thursday, October 20, 1955
A few minutes past 7 in the evening
"That's awful. I just can't believe it." That was Michelle. We had just finished telling her the news about Marnie and the Chapman kids.
It was her turn to cook dinner that night and she had settled on spaghetti and meatballs. Carter, Kenneth, and I were sitting at the kitchen table. With all the staff gone, she and I had been taking turns cooking. I'd offered to help but was told not to.
We'd asked them to stay until Saturday and, even though Jimmy would have to make up his schoolwork and Kenneth had to call in a favor from someone at the bank where he worked, they'd agreed to. And I was glad they did.
"How much trouble will you get into for stealing this bottle?" asked Kenneth as he sipped a glass of the red wine he was pointing to.
I shrugged. "Whenever my father gets upset with me, I call in the big guns." I looked over at Carter who grinned and took a sip of his Burgie.
Kenneth frowned. "Big guns? You don't mean you send Carter in to rough up the old man, do you?"
Carter and I both laughed. "No," I said, "Carter did that once. Kinda like when he took Bobby outta the Tonga Room on Friday night."
"What Nick meant," added Carter, "was that I seem to have the ability to charm all the Williams men."
I nodded. "Even Lettie noticed it."
Michelle, who was stirring the pot of spaghetti sauce, said, "Speaking of the Tonga Room, that's where I want to go after we have dinner at the Top of the Mark tomorrow night."
"Are you sure?" asked Kenneth, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
"Yes," answered his wife. "We need to go back and enjoy ourselves. I loved that place. It was so festive."
I said, "We have to take Peggy, unless you plan on dancing with all of us."
Michelle nodded. "Maybe she'll meet some nice guy."
"Don't worry," said Kenneth as he had another drink of his wine. "Peggy can take care of herself."
"Do you think Bobby will give her a hard time once y'all get home?" asked Carter.
Kenneth shook his head. "He'll crawl into a hole somewhere."
Michelle turned and looked at her husband. "Ken! He is your own brother, after all."
Kenneth spread out his arms. "Shouldn't I know how much of an ass he can be?"
Trying to head off trouble, I asked Michelle, "Where'd you learn how to make meatballs?"
She smiled at me. "From a little restaurant in Cambridge. I asked the old lady whose son owned the place to show me how. And she did. It's one of my favorite things to make. Jimmy loves them."
Carter asked, "Speaking of Jimmy and the kids, I wonder how Lettie is making out?"
With a snort, Kenneth said, "That woman is a force of nature. I couldn't believe it when she came over to pick up Jimmy. When she explained what she was going to do, I had half a mind to stop her."
Both Carter and I laughed at that. "Fat chance," I said. "Besides, they'll be fine. She knows what she's doing. She's never been wrong yet."
Carter added, "I think it's good. She has a way of telling people what they're going to do and then they do it. She's the right person to break the news to the kids about going to Texas."
Michelle turned back to the stove and said, "Now, Carter, are you sure you want just tomato sauce and salt and pepper?"
I answered for him. "Yes. That's all he wants."
Michelle shuttered. "It just sounds so—"
"Boring," said Carter. "I know. I've heard it all before. You could stir a little bit of your sauce into mine, if you want. But not too much, if you don't mind. I never acquired the taste for garlic."
Kenneth drained his glass. "I can't imagine eating Italian food without garlic."
Michelle asked, "Didn't your mother use it when you were growin' up? Mine did. Not much, but we always had it with some dishes, like her shrimp gumbo."
"My mama didn't use it," replied Carter, "because my daddy didn't like it and if daddy didn't like it, we didn't have it."
I looked over at my husband and asked, "Do you remember that first meal I cooked for your mother?"
He took a long drink of his beer and nodded with a wink.
Turning to Michelle, I said, "I had made two sauces, as always, and Louise came into the kitchen and saw what I was doing. I thought she was gonna be furious that I was cooking with garlic in her kitchen. Instead, she started crying."
Carter added, "That was the beginning of my mama's long love affair with Nick. She really thinks he hung the moon."
"How is she with, you know...?" That was Michelle.
"You saw it yourself," said Carter. "When they came over on Friday night, I was holding Nick's hand. Mama saw it and didn't bat an eye."
"It's Dad," said Kenneth.
"How so?" I asked.
"He told me he sat down and explained to her what your mother had explained to him." For some reason that sent chills up and down my spine. "He told you, right?"
I nodded. "Sure."
"What?" asked Michelle.
"It's what he explained to me when we were in college and there was that one kid in Pirates of Penzance... You remember."
Michelle nodded thoughtfully. "What was his name?"
"Wes Easterbrook."
Michelle laughed. "West East. How could I forget? Poor kid. I can't believe his parents gave him that name."
Kenneth grinned and poured himself more wine. "Wes, well, he let me know he might be interested in a roll in the hay. He was reasonable about it but it left me confused. So, I asked Dad about it and he explained to me about how all that worked and how it was perfectly normal." He looked at me. "This was before Kinsey." He took another sip. "Later, he told me he was just repeating what your mother had told him."
"Speaking of my mother, did Jimmy have any more dreams about her?"
Michelle turned and looked at me. "Yes. Every night. Just like she promised. And those weren't dreams."
I grinned. "You're not serious, are you?" I hadn't made up my mind about it, even with all that had happened with my father and the perfume in my office.
Michelle nodded and looked at Kenneth. He said, "On Saturday night, after you two were already in bed and we tucked him in for the night, we waited outside his room. It took about ten minutes, but we could both hear him talking to someone."
I could feel goosebumps go up and down my arms. "Could you hear her?"
Kenneth shook his head. "Nope. But we could smell that perfume."
Michelle said, "We've asked him every morning. And he has a different story every day. They all involve you and your sister. And they're the usual thing. How you went to India and rode some elephants or how you went to Australia and saw some kangaroos."
Kenneth said, "This morning, he told me last night's
story was different. It was about you and Carter and some island with chickens and monkeys."
Carter and I both looked at each other. Carter said, "You're kidding, right?" He looked over at Michelle. "You're making all this up, right?"
They both shook their heads. She said, "No, we're not."
I asked, "Didn't we tell you about the island in the South Pacific that we went to just the week before we met you?"
Michelle thought for a moment. "I remember you telling us about Australia and the poor woman who was murdered. But you never said anything about an island."
I nodded. The goosebumps were back. "Yeah. We met an old man in Sydney. He took us to this island out in the middle of nowhere. He'd built a house there and planted roses and bamboo and banana trees."
Carter added, "And he had all these chickens and monkeys that ran wild. It was something else. I sometimes wonder if we just made the whole thing up."
"It was magical," I said.
"Yeah." he sighed. "Magical."
Michelle shrugged. "All I know is what Jimmy told us. He's talked to her every night."
I thought about that for a moment and wondered why she'd never talked to me.
Chapter 29
Municipal Airport
Lubbock, Tex.
Saturday, October 22, 1955
A quarter until 4 in the afternoon
We'd had a tearful parting with our out-of-town guests at the airport in San Francisco earlier that morning. Kenneth and Michelle, Jimmy, and Peggy all climbed aboard The Laconic Lumberjack and flew off to Boston at around 8 that morning.
The Lumberjack would stay in Boston until Peggy was ready to leave. She was going to take a couple of days to pack up the things she wanted before heading back to the City. The plane's pilot, Captain Morris, and his wife, Christine, had decided to drive up the coast of Maine for a couple of days and enjoy the fall weather.
Carter and I had spent the next hour inside the little coffee shop in what was, essentially, the private terminal at the airport. After about thirty minutes, we were joined by Captain Ramon Ortega and Captain Harvey Reynolds, who would be taking us to Texas on our other Constellation, The Flying Fireman.
The Childish Churl (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 15) Page 24