Along with drinking, Louie liked to talk philosophically. During our tiptoe through the underbelly of Santa Barbara, he infused me with his many insights on life.
“Listen, Rhino, just remember they can kill you, but they damn well can’t eat you! You’re doing a great job on this case. I couldn’t do what you do. I would just tell ’em to fuck off if I were you.”
I unloaded on him, too. “Hell, man, I just don’t get it. We shake all the bushes, and nothin’ falls out. Nothin’! I get my ass chewed by that prick Walters ’cause the fuckin’ TV bitch lies, and I’m the one who gets boned for it. Ain’t right, man. Ain’t fuckin’ right.”
“Dude, just keep doing what you’re doin’. Teddie talks to me, you know. He says you are a great partner. He likes you. Hell, we all like you. But lately, you haven’t been yourself, dude. You look like shit—anyone ever tell you that?”
I eked out, “You been talking to my ol’ lady, Louie.” I chuckled a little and then realized I was drooling a bit.
Luis cocked a blurry eye my way and said, “You got a problem only God can help you with, Rhino. God and a shrink, I think. Hey, that rhymes: Shrink I think!” He belched and laughed. “No, really, you need someone to talk to, and I want to be that guy. I love you, man. Just know that.”
In some strange, drunken way, I knew Louie did.
At about ten o’clock, after we did a couple of tequila shots to level us out, I had an epiphany. Suddenly, I came to the realization that I was about to hurl. Up I shot from my stool, and holding the gag reflex back, I quickly walked (trying to be cool), zigzagging toward the doorway marked “Restrooms.” It began inching its way up my esophagus, and as I started to crest the entryway to the men’s room, one of the biggest guys I’ve ever seen came out and stopped right in the doorway, blocking my path. He was humongous. I looked up, and without even flinching, I fired a full shot of boozy vomit right into his face! I was a veritable booze canon, and his giant face was the target.
Once it was over, I waited for death. I deserved it and was ready to willingly suffer for my sins, but nothing happened. He took his huge, bear-like paw and slowly wiped off his face. He then grunted and stumbled past me. Turned out this dude was one shade further gone than I was. Thank you, Jesus.
After my brush with death at the door to the crapper, I returned to my stool. As drunk as I was, I still immediately knew I was now on a self-imposed tequila sabbatical. Just the smell of that shit made me want to head back to the porcelain altar. I had ordered a beer to relevel me out, when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning, I saw Ted Banner.
“Teddy, pardner, how the fuck are ya? Funny meetin’ you here, bud. Wanna drink?”
Ted was on a mission—one I found out later had been prearranged with Louie.
“Actually, Kev, I’m you guys’ DD. I’ll be taking you both home.” Although I objected, just a little, boy, was I ready. We piled into Ted’s SUV, and that was about all I remembered before I was awakened by an ice-cold wet rag being thrown into my face—hard. I was slumped into my recliner at home, and I had a not-so-tiny amount of vomit all over my shirt and pants.
“OK, this is it, Kevin. I told you before I wasn’t taking any more of your shit. I’ve had it!”
Trying to cut my losses, I came back with, “Hey, babe, I just had a couple drinks with the guys. No big deal. Sorry, I forgot to call.” My blood alcohol level was dropping fast as I stumbled through my apologies. Even though I was still shitfaced, her words managed to cut through to my inebriated brain.
Julie’s face was contorted in anger. “You keep me up at night, and now you have me worrying about you getting drunk. No more breaks, Kevin. You take care of whatever is bugging you, or Jimmy and I will be at my folks’ house until you do.”
That was the last thing I remembered before waking to the alarm the next morning at 7:00 a.m. My head felt like two hundred pounds of shit in a two-pound bag! Aspirin, coffee, Clear Eyes—repeat. Julie noticeably avoided me as I got ready for work. My son, Jimmy, left conspicuously early for school. I had finally screwed the pooch.
Chapter Six
Outside the Circle
Stanley Blivins was a recently separated employee of the Telford Corporation in Goleta, situated just north of Santa Barbara. Telford was one of the largest defense contractors in the United States. They specialized in the fabrication of parts related to missile-targeting software and hardware. Their products were an integral part of 90 percent of all our military’s attack aircraft systems. Their contracts took in an average of twenty and a half billion dollars a year. Their plant in Goleta employed three hundred and fifty people, and until his accident two years ago, Stanley was working on their D125 assembly line. We never found out what they manufactured on D125. Telford management said they could have told us, but then they’d have had to kill us. Top-secret shit, you know.
Blivins’s job was to put one small widget into the slot of a larger whatchamacallit. He did this all day long, eight hours a day, five days a week. For this, he was paid twenty-nine dollars an hour, plus double overtime. One afternoon, while steadfastly engaged in said insertion of the widgets into the thingamabobs, Stan must have looked away, because the left sleeve of his long-sleeved shirt got caught in the conveyer belt that brought the parts past him. Of course Blivins was supposed to be wearing tight safety coverings over his long shirt sleeves, but this afternoon it was warm on the assembly line, and he decided to leave the safety equipment in his locker. His supervisor hadn’t been by that position on the line yet, so Stan was getting away with this little indiscretion—until the passing conveyor belt track grabbed his loose-fitting corduroy shirt sleeve and jerked him airborne next to the assembly line. The belt twisted the heavy sleeve around his left arm, which was hoisted up and pulled behind him as Blivins was lifted ten feet up and off the ground along the rising conveyer belt. Luckily for him, the shirt material was old and finally tore loose, allowing Stanley to drop to the floor before his head was crushed by an approaching gear mechanism. No matter how you sliced it, Stanley Blivins was one lucky son of a bitch. He could have lost his arm or his life, but he didn’t.
Telford HR sent Mr. Blivins out for workers’ compensation medical treatment after the nurse provided some first aid. They failed to adequately document his minor injuries with photographs before sending him off on his merry way. It was also fortunate for Stan that they hadn’t asked him to provide a urine sample, because he smoked a joint right before starting work that morning. Telford did not send him away so he could seek the advice of an attorney, but Stanley saw dollar signs right away, though, and after getting bandaged at the factory, he left and checked the phone book at the closest gas station. He made this pit stop even before going for secondary medical treatment. Stan was so excited that he completely forgot he was supposed to be in pain. He came up with the name Robert Richardson, an attorney in Camarillo, located in Ventura County. Richardson’s Smart Page ad said, “You deserve monetary compensation for your injury. I’m attorney Robert Richardson. Let me get you every penny you are entitled to.”
Blivins needed help in realizing his lifelong dream of never having to work again, and that catchy part of the ad page (about getting every penny) caught his eye. When Stanley called that day, Attorney Robert Richardson was specific. “Mr. Blivins, you need to go see Dr. Marvin Redbone in Solvang. He is an associate of mine and knows exactly how to take care of you.” Blivins was to make sure that Redbone was given Richardson’s name as the referral.
Ted ran a check on Stanley Blivins, and we drove to his last known address in the outskirts of Goleta. The witness had been convicted of shoplifting ten years earlier and more recently had been hooked for a DUI (drugs). We found his single-wide trailer in the Paradise Found trailer park. Weeds grew tall all around it, and the place looked rather trashy in comparison to his neighbors’ well-manicured coaches. There were no vehicles parked under the rusty, faded carport awning. Oil stains, like bloody remnants of crime scenes, were the only mar
kings of where a car had been parked. Peering inside the place from outside the dingy sliding-glass door, we spied only filthy, urine-and-feces-soiled carpeting that we assumed had been damaged by pets. No furniture dotted the grimy floor coverings. We got the lowdown from his next-door neighbor as to where we might find Mr. Blivins. The two must have been very close…
“Shitbird Stan is too good for us common folk now. We heard he’s living high on the hog after he won that judgment up there in Santa Barbara. Go find him in his new digs and tell him to go fuck himself. Remind that asshole he still owes me a hundred bucks.”
Two hours later, Ted and I managed to track down Stanley Blivins at his suite in the Hilton Inn of Santa Barbara. He answered the door holding an open Coors beer can.
Blivins’s bloodshot eyes widened when we badged him and asked to speak to him about Dr. Marvin Redbone. He gave us a blank stare and hesitated when we asked to come in, but he eventually opened the door in a quasi-welcoming gesture. We came in, and he directed us to a separate sitting-room area of the suite. About fifteen feet away, in the kitchen, I spied a large bag of “green leafy substance” on the counter. He had about half a pound of good sinsemilla bud sitting there, with a two-foot-tall glass bong next to it. A full-color depiction of Tweety Bird was emblazoned down the glass pipe. Nice touch! I thought. The place reeked of demon weed and filthy bong water. It about gagged me. Perhaps this was the reason Stanley didn’t want us around. Although I tawt I taw a puddy tat, we didn’t give a shit about the grass. We were there investigating a murder and couldn’t care less about a little cannabis.
Stanley Blivins was the embodiment of almost every alcoholic-doper-druggie I had run across in my career. Thin, with receding mousy-brown hair, his face was gaunt under a week’s worth of unshaven beard. Scabby pockmarks dotted his face. I knew from running him that he was thirty-six, but he looked at least fifty. He was a real piece of work. I didn’t like him right off the bat, but I had to make him feel comfortable with us—at least for now.
Blivins did his best to sober up, and after nervously looking around to gauge our reactions to spying the narcotics and paraphernalia staring us in the face, he came to the conclusion that we were giving him a pass on his dope. He calmed down a bit but stayed curiously nervous and fidgety.
Blivins knew that Dr. Redbone had been murdered. He claimed it all happened over a month after his last office visit to the esteemed doctor and that he was very sad to hear about it, because he liked the guy. We began questioning him about his relationship with Redbone, and he gave us a brief history of how he came to know the doctor after going to him for treatment for his industrial injury. When we asked him follow-up questions about his treatment and the subsequent civil trial over the injury, though, his reaction was like a mousetrap slamming shut.
He blurted out, “That’s privileged, and my attorney has told me not to speak about any of that stuff. There’s some kind of gag order on my settlement. You gotta talk to my mouthpiece, er, my attorney, Robert Richardson.”
Blivins claimed to know absolutely nothing about who killed the doctor or why, and midquestioning, he suddenly stood up, clearly signaling it was the end of our interview. He claimed he had a “lady friend” coming over and that we should leave now. We figured it had to be a hooker, considering the flyer for Fantasy Escorts we had previously spied lying on the entryway table. He ushered us to the front door. As we started to walk out, I turned and said, “You might want to clean up that mess over there,” pointing toward Tweety Bird.
He smirked and said, “I’m legit. I have a medical card ’cause of my injury.” He then slammed the door loudly behind us.
Banner and I left the hotel, and after climbing into our unit, we shot quiet looks at each other as I audibly blew air out of my clenched teeth. Ted broke the silence. “That boy has a lot more to tell us. We need to squeeze him like a zit—until he pops.”
Up in his suite, after throwing the half-full beer can into the trash, Stanley Blivins picked up the telephone and rapidly dialed a familiar number.
“What the fuck, man? The cops were just here, climbing all up into my shit, asking all sorts of questions about Redbone.”
Chapter Seven
The Bitch and the Barrister
“I’ll see you when I see you.” I headed for the door. The air was, suffice it to say, still a bit frosty, even a couple of days after my evening tour du jour of Santa Barbara with Louie.
“Kevin, have you had breakfast?”
“Naw, I had coffee. I just gotta to get to work.”
Staring at me, Julie continued, “Look, you’ve been going ninety miles an hour, twelve hours a day. You haven’t been sleeping much, and you have to eat. Jimmy has been asking about you since the other night, OK?”
“Sorry, honey. I’ll get something to eat, I promise, but this is week three of this case. If we can’t get something going soon, Walters is pulling me off. I need to stay on this. It’s important. I’ll grab something when I get to the office. Love you.” I left before the discussion could turn into another argument.
This had become a daily pattern with me, and it wasn’t a good one. I felt like crap, and the stress was almost unbearable. I had gained five pounds, all table muscle. The booze didn’t help either. I got to the station and had more than two hours of paperwork waiting for me. Ted and I were frustrated because we had been struggling to arrange a meeting with Robert Richardson, Stanley Blivins’s attorney. That guy always seemed to be in court or in a deposition, and his staff said he could only meet with us during normal business hours. We had to squeeze ourselves in there, somewhere, and apparently there was no time to speak to us about something as trivial and mundane as a murder case involving one of his associates.
At my desk, I remembered Julie’s concern about my not eating breakfast. The only food available at the station was the standby vending machine in the lobby, which I knew well. I thought, Snickers is a great source of energy! Those delightful bars of concentrated chocolate, sucrose, and protein (translation: processed sugar and fat) had become an altogether too-familiar part of my mornings as of late. God, don’t tell my wife! I dropped my dollar into the machine and took breakfast back to my desk.
Luis’s workstation was next to mine in Santa Barbara, and he was standing at attention next to it, waiting anxiously for my return. Louie looked at me with those longing eyes. I knew he liked Snickers, almost as much as he loved tequila.
“Hey, Kev, how about you give me a little bite? You owe me one for the tour.”
I chipped back, “Boy, do I owe you. Get your own damn candy bar.”
“No, really, Rhino, I only want a little…C’mon, I don’t have cooties.”
This little negotiation for the first bite of the bar went on for a minute or two. Finally, I succumbed. “Here, but don’t bite off much. It’s not that big.”
I handed the freshly opened bar, cradled in its wrapper, to Louie. He immediately licked the whole thing. He ran his big, gnarly tongue up one side of the brown log and then down the other. He then took a very small bite and extended his hand out to give the contaminated sugar loaf back to me. I felt like sticking a hazmat placard on it. In a low voice, I surrendered. “Keep it, Louie. You can thank me later.”
The morning got much better about twenty minutes later. Chief Walters called Ted and me into his office. My gut knotted up. This was probably it: I was out. I was toast. Naw, I couldn’t be that lucky.
“Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Ms. Rachael Storm. I believe you’ve met. She’s a reporter with KCMP, and I intend to embed her with you while you work the Phantom case.”
I could almost hear Ted’s thoughts, as both our brains silently screamed out, Are you fucking kidding us?
In his most officious voice, Walters continued, “I have told Ms. Storm that she is entitled to shadow you as the team works this case. This will give her a flavor for how much work is being dedicated to finding this killer. You’ll be working with her daily, but you’re not to put h
er in physical jeopardy or reveal any sensitive information that could compromise the investigation or the prosecution in this case. Am I clear, gentlemen?” I think I was actually trembling, and I realized that my right hand had formed into a sweaty fist. I did my best to calm down, but it wasn’t working. Ted’s mouth was agape as he glanced my way. We nodded acknowledgment like bobbleheads handed out at a Dodgers game.
Walters then turned to our new shadow. “Ms. Storm, you must agree to abide by the detectives’ wishes to hold sensitive information confidential as long as necessary, and to avoid publicly revealing important details if they feel such release would adversely affect their ongoing investigation. Will you agree to that?”
Rachael Storm looked at the chief, and then glancing back toward us, she said she agreed. Sure, lady. We didn’t trust this newsie as far as we could throw the chief. My crappy day had just gotten much crappier.
Rachael Storm was, despite being a bitch, strikingly good-looking. Standing five feet eleven inches tall in her high heels, her long auburn hair and makeup were always impeccable. She was flat-out beautiful with ample breasts that simply jumped out at you. She was the kind of chick who would elicit catcalls from construction workers wherever she walked. It took everything in their tool kits for the deputies at our station (and for some of the ladies as well) not to stare as she walked with us back to the bureau. I had a hard time not sneaking a stare in myself! Interestingly, Bob Roberts looked away quickly as we entered the room. The second I saw this, I knew he was aware of what the chief was doing to us. He had sold us out. He knew better than to clue us in beforehand. What a puss.
Ted and I introduced her to our two secretaries and to Biff and Louie. They each politely shook her hand, but I could read their thoughts as well. This was not going to be a rewrite of the fucking Castle TV series. She was not going to interfere with us, at least as long as I had any breath left in my body.
Slice of Greed: A Kevin Rhinehardt Mystery (BOL Mysteries Book 1) Page 5