Running Cold (The Mick Callahan Novels)

by Harry Shannon

  More memories returned. Wes had found a card game, and used his new stake to try to get back in the saddle. The booze had taken over by that point. Poker is a game that takes patience and guile, and a beat up drunk tends to offer tells. Naturally, he'd accused someone of cheating. Or maybe they'd accused him. Or maybe it was some Marine talking shit about the Army. It was hard to remember. One thing led to another, and it had come to blows. Wes remembered being outnumbered, and landing in a pile of garbage in an alley. He'd walked the strip for miles before hitching a ride to the train station. Wes had spent the rest of the night struggling to sleep, cheek on an old newspaper that smelled of coffee beans; tall body stuffed awkwardly onto the hard plastic bench.

  He patted himself down with paper towels and went back out into the lobby. A passing businessman sat a tall cup of fast-food coffee down in an ashtray to check his watch. He jumped a bit and hustled away to make the train. Wes walked past the ashtray and in one smooth motion stole the coffee. Fortunately, it was strong, black and still pretty hot. His stomach didn't like it, but his head felt better. Wes sat on the bench again. He closed his eyes, leaned back and groaned and thought: Oh, Jesus. Dad, what the hell are we going to do now . . . ?

  Someone snapped fingers. "High school."

  He'd been asleep for a while. One minute? Two? A woman's voice, this time right above him. Wes sat up, looked and registered long legs, a great figure and amazing eyes. Ms. Hot. She went down on her haunches. Her breath was sweet and smelled of caramel and fresh coffee. Wes saw her cute nose wrinkle at his stench. He cringed.

  "Come on," she said. "I'm Jessie Keaton."

  Wes smiled ruefully. He looked down at himself, and then responded to her question. "Sorry."

  "I was a year behind you at Notre Dame," the girl said, ignoring his embarrassment. "Of course, I probably had a mouth full of wire, really tiny boobies and an even smaller personality."

  "Most likely," Wes replied. He rubbed his face. His tongue searched scummy teeth for particles. "If you had looked anything like this, a man would remember you. Even in my condition."

  "Which is like, as they say, maybe forty miles of bad road."

  "More or less."

  Ms. Jessie Keaton sat next to him, not quite touching his filthy clothes. Her perfume was intoxicating. Wes wished he'd won instead of lost, now more than ever. He also prayed fervently for the hangover to pass. He gulped coffee, burned his throat and coughed. She slapped his back, which inadvertently set his stomach muscle ablaze.

  "Easy, Wes."

  "Huh? You actually remember my name?"

  "I had a major crush on you. I thought you looked like the lead singer of Whiplash."

  "A skinny, long-haired tenor in tight pants? Gee, thanks."

  Her smile widened. "Hey, I wear contacts now, too. My eyesight wasn't that good. To me, you were a rock star. In fact, you were my first big crush."

  Wes sipped carefully. "Hope I was nice to you back then."

  "Not really. You were kind of an asshole."

  He nodded. "I see. So I suppose you just woke me up to let me know what I missed. Well, you picked the perfect day for that. I'm running cold as an Eskimo's toilet seat."

  "Excuse me?"

  Oops. "Having a run of bad luck," Wes said. "Running cold."

  "Really?"

  He indicated the torn clothing, the scrapes and bruises, impulsively lifted his shirt. Jessie winced. Before he could react, her fingers trailed lightly across his bare abdomen. Wes felt his skin twitch and tingle. Hormones flooded his brain. Some were surprisingly effective painkillers.

  "Looks like you're paying off some bad karma."

  "Maybe."

  "I heard you went into the Army and shipped off to some faraway desert."

  "True dat."

  "And now you're back."

  "That's true too."

  He encircled her fingers and gently moved them away, dropped the shirt, shook her hand. "I'm back but this morning I'm in a pretty foul state. Hey, so can we just start over?"

  An even bigger smile. Damn, she has beautiful teeth. "Hi, I'm Jessie Keaton. Nice to meet you, Wes McCann."

  "Nice to meet you, too."

  An elongated, awkward silence followed, one that brought a flush to their faces in equal measure. A Goth girl went by, a specter in black, dumping a generic cigarette from a weathered soft pack, looking outraged by all the NO SMOKING signs. She headed for the exit. Her tall, muscular boyfriend, a huge mass of chains, spikes and nose rings, trailed behind her as if hoping to suck up some second-hand smoke. His hair was yellow, high and tight. It made him look a bit like a Goth Sponge Bob.

  Someone announced something over the intercom, a garbled call for passengers bound for Riverside. Jessie cleared her throat. "Wes McCain. So, wow. You have a yearbook out in the garage?"

  "Maybe."

  "Ever look at it?"

  "Haven't in years."

  "Take a peek one of these days, just for fun. You might be surprised." She stood up. "Anyway, I'm off pretty soon, the Amtrak to Thousand Oaks."

  "Really?" Wes began to get his hopes up. Maybe his luck was changing for the better. "We don't live all that far apart. I'm on the 8:40 to Burbank."

  "You have a while to wait, then."

  He stared at her. "Maybe that's a good thing."

  Jessie reddened again. Wes thought, she really likes me. "Okay, then let's stay in touch," she said. "Are you ever online?"

  "Now and again."

  "My email is easy," Jessie said. "Just my name, JessieKeaton@Raygun.com."

  He cocked his head. "Just like AOL or Yahoo. It's a new one nobody ever heard of, web stuff and cell phones and so on, but everything it does is either dirt cheap to free, so I figured why the hell not."

  He gave her his email address, almost begged her to use it but stopped himself. When a man looked like dog crap warmed over, it paid to display patience. "Jessie, you wouldn't have a cigarette, would you?"

  Jessie shook her head. "I quit."

  Wes sighed. "Me, too."

  Jessie giggled, shrugged and dipped her head to indicate the Goth girl. "She's got 'em." Before Wes could respond, Jessie strolled past the hulking boy to have a whispered conversation with waxen girl, who had been pushing at the exit door. Grudgingly, the Goth gave up two precious coffin nails and then strolled outside into the alley to smoke. Watching her go, Wes realized, for the first time, that it was still pretty dark outside. Jessie came back to the bench and handed him a smoke. Wes eyed the cigarette carefully.

  "What's the matter, chicken?"

  "It's just that I think there's such a thing as just one and I'm off and running again, you know?"

  "You talking smokes, or other stuff?"

  "Hell," he said, "guess I'm talking damned near everything worth doing."

  "Life's a bitch."

  Wes nodded, miserably. Jessie Keaton twirled her cigarette like a miniature baton. He liked the image of her dancing a short skirt. "So, you going to pass?"

  He handed over the smoke without further comment. Jessie tucked the extra into her purse. "I'm sorry you're having a bad day. You seem like such a nice guy."

  He forced a grin. "Anyone ever tell you you've got poor taste in men?"

  "My mom. All the time."

  She held his eyes. Wes felt his blood pressure rise. This girl was something. She looked down and away. "So . . ."

  "So I really want to see you again, if that's okay."

  Jessie raised her face. Almost blushed. "I'd like that."

  Wes thought, what's kind of scary is how much I meant that.

  "I'm going to pee and grab a few puffs. You want to come along, or maybe just stay here and watch my stuff?"

  One medium-sized green, black and white plaid suitcase crouched by his right leg. Reflections from some very bright hardware assaulted his eyeballs like a solar flare. The throbbing pain returned with a vengeance. Wes grimaced. "I'll wait by your stuff, if you want."

  "Okay, be right back."

&nb
sp; He nodded, rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands down, Jessie was already halfway across the terminal, those lovely butt cheeks swaying. Despite his exhaustion, Wes took in the view. She vanished into the ladies room. He leaned back on the plastic bench, swung one foot up onto her green plaid suitcase and decided to grab a few more winks. He kept repeating her email address over and over instead of counting sheep. His mind drifted.

  "All aboard!"

  Did they still say that anywhere outside of the movies? Wes woke up. He'd been out, no idea how long, and they'd suddenly called his train. His foot was flat on the floor. Startled, he sat up. He moaned from the abdominal pain. His heart kicked, wondering if someone had ripped them off. No, the green plaid suitcase was still there, just laying on one side, maybe like he'd kicked it in his sleep. He looked around the terminal but saw no sign of Jessie Keaton.

  Annoyed, he struggled to stand, grabbed the suitcase with one hand and went over to the ladies room. Knocked. "Anybody in there?"

  A nun came out, eyed him up and down like he was stalking the schoolyard in a raincoat. "Sorry, just looking for someone who went in there a while ago." And he described Jessie. The nun shook her head. They called his train again, last call.

  Wes beat feet to the side door and looked outside. The sun was clawing up over the desert to the east. His eyes complained. There was no one in the alley. He looked both ways. Now, why the hell would the girl just up and leave without her luggage? He searched the terminal, no sign of Jessie in the coffee shop. "Lost and Found" was locked tighter than a gnat's pussy.

  Fuck it, Wes thought, gives me an excuse to track her down, maybe see her again. Hopefully all of her.

  He took the green plaid suitcase with him. Wes made it to the train just in time. The car was half empty, and no one wanted to sit near him anyway. He didn't smell too good at this point. He pulled down the shade and did his best not to panic about the two grand. I'm going to have to figure out a way to take it on me, so Roth doesn't send Quinn after Dad. And then find the money somewhere, somehow. That's my only move.

  Wes kept his foot on the suitcase, since he was running cold. Just in case. The morning sun bounced shattered mirrors off those silver locks. It boiled the moisture from his reddened eyeballs and punished him all the way home.

  SIX

  Wednesday morning

  Once more Callahan dreamed about Nevada, this time the Burning Man Festival. Both experiences, overlapping. In one reality he was stoned out and brawling, barely out of the Navy Seals, young and spoiling for trouble. The other time was dead sober, with Jerry and Darlene, hunting for a girl they'd found horribly murdered. The truth was no matter how long Callahan lived in California, Nevada owned him. The desert infected his soul in childhood, so barely a night passed without a visit to its arid, thirsty flatness. In the darkness, hot wind caressed his face, whispered evil in his ear and he woke up to face his own drooling shadow, its red eyes glaring, hunkered there on the nightstand disguised as an alarm clock.

  Callahan's eyes popped open around 3:30. He was sweating. Small bumps ran up and down his skin in gibbering waves. He was not sure what he was dreaming, if anything. Headlights flowed like lava through the closed curtains and crawled across the ceiling. He heard tires hiss on pavement damp from timed sprinklers. The air was thick. There are moments when another reality seems to break through to ours, one that knows the future, perhaps from somewhere psychologist Carl Jung would have called The Numinous. Callahan doubted it resembled what we would consider moral or immoral, it was neither vindictive nor benign. It just existed. And occasionally it exploited a crack in our dimension to whisper mournfully something is about to happen . . .

  Callahan padded out into the kitchen in his underwear to get a glass of ice water. There was enough moonlight to see, and he didn't want brightness though the dark was closing in. Story of his life. He got a few ice cubes and some bottled water and stood at the counter. Yawned. Behind him, the fridge hummed like a pet expecting a treat. What the hell was wrong? It wasn't 'dry drunk' stuff; he didn't feel angry or at all self-righteous, and drinking hadn't even crossed his mind. He just found himself both afraid of the daemon around the corner and plagued by that burning life is in session feeling, that time was passing, slipping away. The present was a bear trap, the future the bear.

  After tossing and turning for a while, Callahan turned on his computer and pinged his friend Donato, an ex-cop who now ran a personal security agency, a man who supplied bodyguards for movie stars and wealthy businessmen. Jerry had made him pretty high-tech, but Donato's instincts and personality were the real reason for his success. He'd taken a bullet intended for Callahan a ways back, just borrowed Callahan's jacket, stepped outside to go home and walked into some really bad luck. Callahan mentioned a bit about Calvin, and asked Donato if he had, or could possibly create, a job opening. Maybe the first step was to get this guy too busy to brainstorm new ways to lose money. Then Callahan would have a talk with his son.

  Callahan made some strong coffee and considered the hardest part of what needed to be done. Calvin's bookie was a guy named Marvin Roth. Callahan opened the email from Jerry and downloaded the file. Roth was born in the Bronx in 1971. His mother was a school teacher, the father in and out of prison. Roth got in some trouble, had a juvenile rap sheet later expunged. Jerry, with his customary artistry, had managed to find and include the charges. Petty stuff, breaking into some cars, doing drugs, in essence hanging out with the wrong people.

  After a deuce in the joint for fraud, Marvin Roth had moved to Los Angeles. He did some grunt work for the all-too-Caucasian coterie of attorneys and businessmen who truly owned Indian gaming in California. Worked on a business degree but never finished. He'd been charged with a few things, but nothing stuck. Going back ten years, he'd been keeping his own book and a fairly low profile, working largely with mid-level gamers, not the high rollers or the kind who end up dead. Just the ones who got broken ankles and fingers and ended up in an ER lying about having fallen down a flight of stairs. In other words, it didn't sound that dangerous. Still . . .

  Trouble was shambling closer, grinning daggers. Callahan recognized an eerie feeling of being pushed from behind into moments both messy and loud, but he wanted to do something. He hated feeling helpless. Some of his dumbest moves had resulted from anxiety created by inertia. Just the not knowing. Sometimes the best defense was a good offense.

  At dawn Callahan went for a long run through the neighborhood. His house had plunged in value during the financial crisis. Poor government lending programs: Two wars funded off the books, unprecedented tax cuts during wartime, war profiteering, corruption in business and politics. Neither party seemed to truly represent the people. Callahan felt despair for the future of his country, which now seemed triumphant and glorious only in the history books. As he ran, Mick pondered the mindset of what had been referred to as "The Greatest Generation," the unflinching and cooperative patriotism of World War II, which may have had its genesis in the despair of the Great Depression. Wondered if days like that lay ahead of them. The tragedy of 9/11 hadn't done the job. If anything the divisions seemed deeper than ever. And since he was a fan of critical reasoning, it seemed to Callahan that pretty much everyone was responsible, from a semi-illiterate electorate to the political parties who perennially controlled the broken system.

  Callahan jogged down Oxnard past the high school and turned up Fulton. Cars were out, people were watering their lawns and cranking up for a day's work. He waved at a couple about to leave their driveway in separate cars, twin coffee mugs in their hands. They ignored him.

  He ran home. Callahan went out back, stripped naked and fell face forward into the swimming pool. The water was still cold from the night air. He forced out several laps, got out and let the sun dry him off. He needed to find Calvin a job, get his son to understand the concept of enabling, perhaps that he was an addict and periodic alcoholic himself, and deal with the bookie who was putting the pressure on . . . not necessarily
in that order.

  Still feeling the lack of sleep, Callahan got dressed, grabbed his briefcase, left the house and stopped at the local breakfast joint for eggs, tomatoes and dry wheat toast. Callahan took a long look at the house newspaper, already showing signs of wear and coffee stains. The headlines seemed so grim he opted to ignore them. He closed his eyes and reviewed his clients for the day. Three men in various stages of marital stress, one with cold feet a month before the ceremony, one having an affair and one whose wife was divorcing him to run off with the gardener. Lunch and maybe a quick nap to clear his head, then two couples back to back. One, a screenwriter and his long-time partner, had become a real joy. They had repaired many years of fractured communication and after seventeen years together were planning to tie the knot for real. The other couple was a difficult case, a child with serious learning disabilities, a mother with depression and a dad with an anxiety disorder of his own. Add the financial pressures of the troubled economy, and their situation was a recipe for trouble. The final client was brand new, referred by an endocrinologist.

  Callahan figured Marvin Roth the bookie could wait until dark. His kind didn't come out from under the rock until then.

  For some reason, spaced out and annoyed with the morning traffic, Callahan drove right past his exit. He had to pull off the freeway, turn around and take surface streets back. It was setting up to be hot again. An air conditioning truck was parked in the driveway to the building, and three of them shooting for nine sharp had to hook around it to get into the garage. Sandy, a therapist from the other end of the building, rolled his eyes at the idea of roasting through sessions and went into the stairwell. Callahan went for the elevator, stopped first to check for mail, and rode up one flight to go to work.

  Some days counselors just have a rhythm. The ability to read between emotional bandwidths shows up, comes into focus and hangs around effortlessly. Those days don't appear to have much to do with a personal life, one way or another. You can be in a pile of excrement as a human being and be an extremely effective counselor, or on another day be in a wonderful spot and be mediocre at the job.