by Louis Barr
Raoul grinned. “We’re opposite sides of one coin. You’re alpha, and I’m omega. It’s my role to keep your ass baffled.”
“Speaking of ass, when the hell did you pull these alpha omega roles out of yours?”
“On the day you hired me to remodel your colonial.” Raoul laughed and chucked my chin. “You’re gaping.”
I yawned hard.
Raoul raised his voice. “Get into the far right lane or you’ll cruise past the frigging restaurant.”
I didn’t miss the turn. I did chirp the tires. And got honked at by the tool who’d been riding my bumper.
Inside Fat Boy Benjie’s Gourmet Burgers, we found an empty table for two close to the kitchen’s swinging doors. Our waitress appeared. We each ordered a Fat Boy burger with the works, fries, and a beer.
Raoul’s good looks, green eyes, athletic build, and perfectly aligned teeth, either the result of genetics or an upscale orthodontist, turned heads when he walked into a room. I knew the film and TV industries well. Raoul would, sooner rather than later, become a star. My thoughts got interrupted as the waitress brought our drinks.
I sipped some beer.
So did Raoul. He set his pilsner glass on the table. “Whoever invented beer should be canonized and adored by all.”
I thought I saw Sierra standing behind Raoul. Then I believed I heard her speak my name. I closed my eyes. When I opened them a few moments later, she hadn’t disappeared.
Her form brightened as she tousled Raoul’s hair. “Don’t you love this managed mess look he has going with his mop?”
I’d heard another new comment, not an echo of an old conversation. I didn’t reply.
Raoul patted his hair down. “Someone must’ve opened the kitchen’s door to the alley.” He stared across the table. “Clint…CLINT…CLINT!”
I jerked awake. Lifting my beer, I looked at Raoul over the rim of the glass, my face a study in innocence. “Yeah?”
“Moose, you got that faraway look in your big blues again.”
“Sorry, my mind wandered.”
What the hell else could I say? I’d slipped into dreamland again. I wondered if it was my insomnia or some type of mental breakdown. Maybe it had something to do with my abstaining from sex for over two years. Maybe it was a combination of all the above.
I stopped pondering as the waitress slid our dinner plates on the table, cracked her gum once, and asked, “You gentlemen need anything else?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
Raoul smiled at her and shook his head.
She jetted off, leaving a minty-fresh vapor trail in her wake.
“Del, my agent, wants me to audition for a national TV ad for a new line of men’s grooming products,” Raoul said. “I told him I needed to think about it.”
“For fuck sakes, what do you need to think about?”
“I’d speak a couple of lines while standing in a shower shampooing my hair.”
“C’mon, it’s not as though you’re doing a porn shoot. TV viewers will see you from your chest up, and imagine the rest of you.”
Raoul chuckled. “Well, the commercial’s something damned close to porn.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Del said there’ll be a one-frame nude shot of me in the ad.”
“Ahh, the old subliminal message trick. You wait and see. The product will fly off the shelves, and people won’t know what motivated them to try something new.” I raised my brows. “And you’ll become an overnight TV ad sensation.”
Raoul exhaled a laugh. “My psychiatrist father would fall out of his golf cleats should he learn my fame began with TV viewers getting a flash of la verga y las pelotas.”
I laughed. “Your cock and balls aside, have you heard from your parents?”
“I don’t hear from Mom and Dad. They let me alone as long as I keep my humble carpenter’s career and my queer-assed acting ambitions out of Cleveland.”
Raoul had grown up in the Cleveland suburb of Pepper Pike, in a Catholic household with five brothers and two sisters. All of Raoul’s siblings emailed, texted, and called their youngest brother regularly—his parents, not too often.
Raoul ate a couple of fries, then bit into his burger. He chewed, swallowed, and chased the grease with a swig of beer. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been wanting to ask you when you knew for certain you were bisexual.”
“I knew I liked both girls and boys by the time I’d turned eleven. But I didn’t test drive my bisexuality until I got a little older.”
“How much older?”
A chuckle rumbled in my chest. “At sixteen, I sometimes let the college varsity quarterback next door fellate me, while also playing fuck master to my father’s twenty-six-year-old female production assistant.”
Raoul raised an eyebrow. “You had two adults going after your sixteen-year-old prick? Can you say statutory rape?”
I shrugged. “What can I say? Both of them had noticed I was awfully large for my age.”
Raoul grinned and shook his head. Then he took a swig of beer.
We continued eating, talking, and laughing with all the comfort and camaraderie of close friends.
Glancing to my right, I saw Sierra sitting at the bar, winking at me and lifting a tumblerful of scotch in a toast. I rubbed my eyes with both hands and looked again. She’d disappeared.
“Buddy, you got that faraway look in your eyes again. What’s wrong?”
I forced a smile. “Nothing’s wrong. I thought I saw someone I used to know sitting at the bar.” I checked my watch. “It’s time I get home, hug my little boy, and relieve Stella.” Knowing the menu and the prices, I set cash on the table plus a tip.
We shot the shit as I drove toward Raoul’s neighborhood. Seeing flashing lights ahead, we fell silent.
Fire trucks, EMT vans, and LAPD squad cars formed a barricade along the street.
A cop I knew stood nearby, watching a crowd of rubberneckers. Killing the engine, I stepped out of the car with Raoul right behind me.
Raoul’s beautiful Craftsman had been reduced to one wall and mounds of smoldering rubble. Strips of clothing, paper, pieces of furniture, cabinetry, major appliances, wiring, and everything that fills a home lay scattered along the block. A smoke and dust haze still hung overhead as firefighters hosed down hot spots.
LAPD officer Ella Parson approached us. “Steele, I know you don’t live here.”
Raoul introduced himself and handed her his Class A commercial driver’s license. “Officer Parson, it’s my house. What the hell happened?”
She studied Raoul’s CDL, glanced at him, then shifted her stance to something more relaxed. “One of the firefighters said it looks like a natural gas explosion.”
Raoul’s shoulders dropped. “Was anyone injured?”
“Was anyone in your house?”
“No,” Raoul told her.
“That’s good news. Some of your neighbors’ homes sustained damage, but everyone is fine.”
“All that’s important is nobody’s injured or dead.” He gave Officer Parson a hopeful look. “How about getting my car?”
She handed his commercial driver’s license back to him. “You’re lucky the detached garage butts up to the alley. After you speak to the fire investigator, it’s my guess you can get your vehicle and leave,” Parsons said.
Raoul forced a smile. “Moose, you don’t need to wait around. After I get my car, I’ll check into a hotel.”
“The hell you say.” I put my arm across Raoul’s shoulders and led him to my car. “You know I have a five-bedroom house. You’ve only got what you’re wearing, your pickup and car. You’re welcome to stay at my place and regroup.”
I saw Raoul frowning, trying to think beyond the smoke and rubble that had once been his house and home. “Thanks, but I couldn’t impose on you.”
“We’re friends. It’s no imposition. Mi casa es su casa.” I squeezed his shoulder, then drop
ped my hand. “I’ll give you the time and space you need to put your life back together.”
Raoul looked at his feet, lifted his head, and tried to smile. “Thanks, Moose.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dirty Deeds
Jud Tucker, Tuesday Night, May 1
With my degree in fire science and my firefighting training, I know how to extinguish a blaze. I also know how to start one without leaving a trace of evidence.
Arsonists using accelerants often get caught. But I use what’s naturally there at the scene. The old meter on the rear of Raoul Martinez’s house made it child’s play to increase the gas pressure, causing the pipe’s welds and joints to crack, and the leaking gas to explode. It took me a couple of minutes to turn the renovated Craftsman into burning chunks of rubble. That, and blackened pieces of Raoul’s body. Hey, natural gas disasters happen all the time.
But that had only been dirty deed numero uno for the day.
I’d also been trained in the usage and effects of all types of pharmaceuticals. I can knock someone out for hours with an IV injection, or I can kill my captive. Firefighter-paramedic, man, what a great calling.
Now at 2330 hours, I waited in the dark near Tom Andrews’s crumbling bungalow. Distant headlights appeared in my van’s side view mirror. I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk and silently closed the door. I squatted out of sight beside the right front fender. Tom Andrews parked his pickup in his bungalow’s carport and killed the engine.
Walking along the driveway’s grass line, I saw the dome light come on as Andrews opened the driver’s side door and stepped out of his pickup. I let him get as far as the tailgate before I Tasered him. His keys and knees dropped onto the driveway’s concrete. I’d set the weapon to cause neuromuscular incapacitation, as well as some agony—only because he’d been such a fucking pain in my ass.
I pocketed his keys. Andrews lay on his back, unable to speak or move. But his eyes followed me. Holding a penlight in my mouth, I slipped the needle of a syringe loaded with a fast-acting barbiturate into the major vein in the crook of his arm. He fell unconscious in about twenty seconds.
I cuffed his hands and ankles, and loaded him into the back of my van.
I drove away.
Chapter Seventeen
Turn the Page
Clint, Santa Monica, Wednesday, May 2
When Grant Stenton was twenty-one, a quarterback sack in the final minute of a university home game changed his life forever. In a heartbeat, he went from a blond, blue-eyed NFL draft prospect to a blond, blue-eyed person with paraplegia.
Twenty years later, Grant owned a successful psych clinic and had a beautiful wife and an adorable two-year-old toddler.
I tapped on Doc Stenton’s open door and returned his smile.
I crossed Grant’s office and sat in the chair fronting his desk. With the exception of emergencies, I knew people sometimes waited weeks for an appointment with one of the therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists at Grant’s clinic. “Thanks for squeezing me in.”
Grant smiled. “I usually don’t see patients on Wednesdays. I let people assume I join my brethren and sistren on the links.”
I laughed at his joke.
Grant’s voice turned as soft as a summer night. “I’ll always make time for you.”
About three years ago, Grant’s wife became the victim of a stalker. I caught the asshole en flagrante delicto, strong-armed him into an alley, backed him against a dumpster, and pressed my Glock under his chin. I told the fuckwad if he ever came within five hundred feet of Mrs. Stenton again, he’d neither see me nor hear the crack of my kill shot.
He pissed his pants.
And he left Mrs. Stenton alone. Sometimes an overt threat and a piece of Austrian weaponry work wonders in influencing douchebags.
“Do you need a profile?” Grant said.
“No, this one’s personal,” I said.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
“All right.”
“On a rainy February evening, I was reading in my recliner while waiting for Sierra to get home from teaching a night class. Ian had fallen asleep on my lap. I vaguely heard the paperback I’d been reading thump onto the floor.”
Grant dipped his head.
“I woke up, hearing Sierra’s voice. I saw her kneeling beside me. She picked up my paperback and set it on the recliner’s armrest.”
“I see.”
I paused, shaking my head. “Grant, I know I saw and heard my wife that evening as clearly as I’m seeing and hearing you now.”
Grant moved his head a fraction of an inch.
“Sierra told me while on her way home, the driver of a Hummer veered into her lane and hit her car head-on. Then the doorbell woke me.”
Grant’s soft blue eyes didn’t leave mine.
“I opened the door to a couple of Highway Patrol officers. I let them tell me what I already knew.”
“I see,” Grant said.
“Ever since Sierra’s death, I dream of her most nights.” I shifted in my chair. “These dreams go beyond sight and sound. I smell the skin lotion she always wore to bed. I feel her warm body pressed against mine. We make love. I know I’m only dreaming, but it all seems so goddammed real.”
“Yes,” Grant said.
“I don’t know, maybe these dreams are a byproduct of the prescription sleeping pills I take.”
“Which sleeping pills are you taking?”
I told him the name of the pharmaceutical. “I’ve had chronic insomnia since Sierra’s death. Even with the pills, some nights I get three or four hours of restless sleep, other nights, around two…sometimes less.”
“While sleeping, have you ever woken gasping for breath?”
“No. About a year ago I spent a night in a sleep clinic with electrodes stuck all over my body. I didn’t get a diagnosis as to the cause of my insomnia, but I learned I didn’t have either sleep apnea or narcolepsy.”
“You’re having pleasant dreams of Sierra,” Grant said.
“Yes. Dreams are one thing. What concerns me is I’ve started seeing, hearing, and talking to Sierra while I’m awake.”
“Talking…as in conversations?”
“Yes, but these talks are echoes of conversations she and I had in the past.” I paused to choose my words. “As of yesterday, I began having new conversations with her.” I gave him a couple of examples. “Have I gone screaming at clouds insane?”
Grant tilted his head slightly. “What do you think?”
I almost flinched from my friend going all shrink on my ass. But then, that’s why I wanted to talk to him. “I’d like to believe I’m sane. I don’t think I’m seeing and talking to Sierra’s…” I shut up.
“I’m no expert in the field, but I believe parapsychologists use the term ‘apparition,’” Grant said.
I leaned closer to Grant. “Whether awake or asleep, do you think it’s possible I’m seeing and talking to Sierra’s apparition?”
“Parapsychology as a science has always been robustly disputed. But proponents have vigorously defended their research data and conclusions.” He smiled. “You’re an educated, well-read, open-minded guy. I’m only an ex-jock with too many diplomas and a few licenses.” He shrugged. “I can’t deny the possibility that some people possess sixth senses, giving them either clairvoyant gifts, or precognitive capabilities, or the ability to see apparitions.” He sighed. “The skepticism comes with fitting these phenomena into our limited understanding of the universe.”
Looking at the floor, I nodded.
“You mentioned not sleeping well, and seeing vivid images of Sierra both day and night. Do you sometimes fall asleep for a few seconds either while at work, or during a conversation, or while driving?”
“Yes to all three.”
“Extreme daytime sleepiness and micro sleeps may be the first symptoms of several medical conditions.”
“Such as?”
“Bacterial or viral infections, or a chronic illness such as rheumatoid arthritis, anemia, or congestive heart failure. I think a physical exam and blood tests are in order to eliminate those illnesses.” He looked at me firmly. “What we must not ignore is extended periods of sleep deprivation can result in hallucinations. It’s been over two years since Sierra’s accident, correct?”
“Two years, two months, and five days.”
“I see you’re still wearing your wedding band.”
“Yes.” I saw no reason to mention I didn’t want to take it off my finger because I missed my wife every day.
“Most psychologists and psychiatrists agree that people go through five phases of grief following the death of a loved one: denial, bargaining, fear, anger, and finally acceptance. Which phase best fits how you feel right now?”
“I think I’ve gotten beyond most of my anger.” I raised my voice, “Even though some fuckhead saw nothing wrong with texting while speeding along a two-lane highway on a rainy night.” I forced myself to calm down and lowered my voice. “He’s found guilty of manslaughter, gets a two-year sentence, and is paroled after serving seven months. I’m still furious at that brainless sonofabitch for leaving Ian motherless and me without my best friend, lover, and the love of my life.” I pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I also felt some anger toward Sierra for teaching a night class that wasn’t her responsibility.”
“Oh,” Grant said.
“She agreed to fill in for a colleague who often challenged her comments during faculty meetings, forcing her to back the bastard against the wall with empirical data. Sierra used to say university politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low.” I paused at length, finally saying, “I keep what remains of my anger to myself.”
“Anger turned inward can result in depression, which feeds insomnia. Do you think you’re depressed?”
“No…maybe…shit, I don’t know.”
Grant said, “Only you know whether you’re depressed, and only you know the reason or reasons why.” He sat motionless, looking directly at me. “As an educated guess, I’d say you may have a mild form of depression that can be treated with talk therapy.”