Everyday People

by Louis Barr

  Ian and Sage’s sleepovers always included both Friday and Saturday nights. Heathcliff lay curled up in the entry hall’s big ceramic bowl. Beneath the table, Sammy slept with his muzzle under his tail. (It’s something Samoyeds do, along with digging holes in the yard to lie in.) Both pets stirred, opened their eyes, and granted me talking and petting time before going back to sleep.

  I went upstairs to my bedroom, emptied my pockets, and set everything on the nightstand except Brennon’s handwritten invitation for dessert. I crumpled it and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. I’d let Flynn have him, as if. Then I went to the walk-in closet and stripped down to my skivvies, leaving my clothing on the floor.

  The ambient glow of the street lamps cast my bedroom in twilight. Thanks to Jud Tucker’s atrocities, I hadn’t slept well for over three weeks. And tonight, I felt it.

  But tonight, I fell asleep without the crutch of pharmaceuticals.

  And I dreamt of Sierra.

  “You are the most bullheaded, my way or the highway pain in the ass I ever knew,” dream Sierra said.

  “Tell me how you truly feel.” I shot a crooked grin at Sierra who, after weeks of no-shows, made her appearance wearing the black bikini and the Prada flip-flops I’d boxed up and donated to Goodwill.

  Pulling off one of her pricey flip-flops, she whacked me on top of my head with it.

  “That stung, dammit!” I rubbed my head. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  She frowned and folded her arms across her chest. It was body language she reserved for hate groups, anything championed by far-right wingnuts, and one student who’d forcefully argued in his first semester macroeconomics class that trickle-down would work only when all the goddammed screaming liberals and whining poor got a one-way ticket to Mexico.

  And yes, I used to find myself on the receiving end of that same body language whenever she thought I’d done something painfully stupid…as if.

  “I whacked you for two reasons. First, you made me leave the top deck of a ghost cruise ship where I was sitting poolside, chatting with two nicely muscled Aussies, each having a large basket tucked in minimal swimwear.”

  “As if you’ve never seen and experienced a big crank and large balls before,” I said. “Without hitting me, what’s reason number two?”

  Sierra whacked me again. “My second reason for hitting you on the head is to capture your attention. Before I’m assigned to the next string of my life’s continuum, I must resolve the greatest concern of my former life.”

  “Which is?” I asked with interest.

  “Your happiness. I’d hoped to be granted the time to recruit, fully research, interview, analyze, and train my replacement.” She paused, then said, “How about you and Mars?”

  “Mars and I are doing fine—better than we did during our West Point years,” I said. “Didn’t you think I could find your replacement on my own? I mean, I’m the one who found you.”

  Sierra snorted. “No, I could’ve dropped dead waiting for you to talk to me at that second-rate coffee shop.”

  I chuckled. “If that’s how you recall it, you go right on believing. Why do you think I kept returning to a place where the baristas learned the craft of coffee brewing at a frigging truck stop?” I exhaled a laugh. “When you finally looked at me and smiled, I came straight to your table and started talking fast before you changed your mind.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  I grinned. “Oh?”

  Dream Sierra sat on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Clint, we’re no longer on the same playing field, but you still bring back such wonderful memories.”

  She stood and ran her hand over her hair, an unconscious habit she had whenever she’d become uncertain about something. But this time, blue and silver sparks crackled above her dark auburn locks.

  “One day soon, you need to marry again because you’re a commitment kind of man.”

  “You know I will.” Looking into her eyes, I asked, “Do you know what’s next in your life’s continuum?”

  “I hear rumors.”

  “Such as?”

  She sighed. “One of the sprites gave me a wild-assed story about the next string of my life’s continuum.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This sprite said I’d return as a baby boy who becomes a con man.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’ll return as a Southern televangelist whoremonger with a depressed, alcoholic wife and ten children, all of whom have become utterly fucked up over Old Testament fairy tales.” She affected the marginally prissy tone she often used during faculty meetings. “The good news being one can’t believe anything a sprite says. As you and I used to remark, never let it be said that all the gods and goddesses don’t share the same sick sense of humor.”

  My phone rose off the nightstand and dropped onto the head of my cock. “Ouch, dammit.”

  Sierra winked. “I know Mars is a great match for you. I’m fine with your partner replacement choice.”

  She whacked me on the head again. “The next thing you must do is stop being so damned bullheaded, and check your home email for May twenty-third.”

  I rubbed the sore spot on my head. “You know I never check my home inbox. It’s nothing but spam. All my friends and clients know to contact me at my office email address.”

  I felt a cool fingertip touch my lips.

  “Check your home email now, sweetheart. You won’t see me again.”

  Her visage became fainter as she walked away.

  “Good-bye, Sierra, a piece of my heart will always belong to you.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The Fourth and a Fifth

  Clint, The Flats, Saturday Night, June 16

  Sitting on the edge of the bed with my phone in hand, I pulled up my May twenty-third home email.

  I scrolled past spam for Russian hooker mail-order brides, a plea for assistance from exiled Queen Latisha of Kwabena in retrieving her family’s stolen fortune; Girls, Girls, Girls waiting for your call; and Trump University’s Big Pop-up Book of Jelking Exercises (JFGI).

  I wondered who came up with this shit. Were there people dumb enough to buy it? I recalled the words of H. L. Mencken: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the American public.”

  I stopped on an email from Jtuck, MCC Security Director. It had a cryptic subject line: The Fourth and a Fifth. I opened and read Jud Tucker’s message.

  You won the game, but not the war—not yet anyway.

  The cops got it right when they concluded four people invaded your parents’ house. I was that fourth man. The other three men, all Special Services soldiers dishonorably discharged for snorting too much Colombian marching powder, were dead a few hours after the murders of your parents and their guests—mind you, those military boys are long dead, but not wasted. Their hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys saved the lives of many, their corneas returned sight to the blind, and their skin soothed patients in hospital burn units.

  I know Shane is your half brother because the Danning tramp likes to pillow talk. She told the fifth man the name of Shane’s father. And it was that fifth man who told me of your father’s bastard son; he also told me about the gold bars, cash, bearer bonds, and jewelry your father kept in his home safe. It seems Liam Steele liked to talk about his holdings with Vona in her office.

  You know this fifth man well. He’s behind it all. Find him if you can and ask him why he hired me to kill your parents and their guests.

  Still sitting on the edge of the bed, I read the message again and sent it to Captain Flynn.

  Then I called Flynn.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Thus Always to Tyrants

  Clint, Hollywood, June 16

  I saw him sitting alone in his boxers, gently rocking the swing and staring into the night. I sat on the top cap of the porch’s white picket railing and waited for him to speak.

  He said, “I’ve been expecting you to drop by unannounced one of these days.” He scooted o
ver on the porch swing. “The railing’s paint is chalky. Before you ruin the seat of your jeans, come sit beside me like you used to do.”

  I sat beside him and waited for him to speak.

  He went back to staring into the night, softly chortled, then said, “I don’t need to be a private investigator to guess Jud Tucker somehow contacted you.”

  “Before Tucker got arrested, he sent a message to my home email. I didn’t find and open it until this evening,” I said.

  “You didn’t read it for weeks,” he said. “What the hell motivated you to open it tonight?”

  I didn’t tell him my late wife prodded me. “My friends know to email me at work. I finally got around to cleaning out my home inbox tonight.”

  He shook his head and sighed. “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no fucking luck at all.”

  “If a jury finds you guilty of conspiracy, you’ll win a long, all-expenses-paid vacation to one of California’s one-star crowbar hotels.”

  He exhaled a laugh. “Nah, a prosecutor couldn’t even hang an indictment on me, and you know it.” He nudged me with his elbow. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about one felony or a dozen. The cops have nothing on me because I’ve never done anything illegal in my fucking life.” He faced me. “Thing is, your daddy liked to talk to Vona in her office, telling her about everything he kept in his home safe.”

  “Where you could hear everything they said by keeping your headset on and Vona’s intercom open,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Guess your lotharious daddy never heard the one about loose lips sinking ships.”

  “How do you know Jud Tucker?” I asked.

  “Jud and I met in high school. That poor sonofabitch looked and dressed like a war orphan. Everyone shunned him, but I didn’t. Jud was malnourished and slowly starving to death.” He shook his head. “We’d sit together in the cafeteria, and I’d give him my lunch, then go buy another tray for myself. He’d eat some of that too.” He added, “Thing is, Jud is fucking smart. He won several scholarships. Then he and I spent four years at the same university.”

  “So, Jud Tucker was your best friend in high school and college,” I said.

  “You could say that.”

  I suspected he’d given me only part of the story, the part I’d told Captain Flynn we were missing. Flynn thought I was full of shit.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He let out a low chuckle. “It’s one of the oldest tales known to mankind.” He stared into the night. “I wanted Diana Danning. Christ, I loved her, and she worshipped my crank. I would’ve married her in a New York minute.” He looked straight into my eyes. “Diana slept with lots of men and women, but she truly loved one man and one man only: your fucking father.” He angrily shook his head. “Did you know all six of Diana’s husbands were gayer than the robins in springtime?”

  “No,” I said.

  “To hide her long-term affair with your father, Diana tied the knot now and again. But she only married very butch, deeply closeted actors.”

  “Who wouldn’t ask her for sex,” I said.

  “Yes.” He said offhandedly, “I’d lay odds you personally know Diana never saw a handsome man with a low-hanging basket that she could resist.”

  I didn’t take the bait. But I’d bet Devin had been the man who’d kept calling Diana and hanging up without saying a word, prompting me to go to her house to check things out.

  He said, “Not one of her marriages was consummated. But none of her husbands needed to stay with her for long. They each signed a contract promising to be seen around town exclusively with Diana. After six or eight months, Diana divorced them, paid them, and cut them loose.”

  “I see.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “From the day Diana met your father, she went head over heels, deep into all-fucked-uppery over him. But she had me as her backup dick when your daddy couldn’t get away from a shoot or your mother.”

  “I recently learned about Dad’s extramarital relationship with Diana,” I said.

  He said heatedly, “Diana was barely sixteen with all that youthful beauty and big-eyed innocence when your father first fucked her and knocked her up. Did you know that?”

  “No.” But I’d done the math. Diana mentioned Shane had recently turned thirty. She still would’ve been sixteen when she gave birth to Shane. Disgusted by my famous fucking father’s pedophilia, I changed the subject. “I’ve seen Diana’s first movie. She was a knockout.”

  “You bet your ass she was beautiful then and still is. But Christ, she believed your dad would someday leave your mother; then he’d marry her, they’d raise their son together, and live happily in love and laughter ever after.”

  “I guess no one told Diana family men don’t always divorce their wives to marry their mistresses,” I said.

  “I tried to tell her, but everything I said blew in one ear and out her lovely ass.”

  “So you knew Jud Tucker who needed cash, and hired him to rob and kill my father,” I said.

  “Hold it right there, goddammit. I never hired Jud to kill anyone.”

  He returned to looking into the night. “Jud would’ve known without anyone telling him that emptying the safe, ransacking the place, and killing everyone in the house would look like another home invasion.”

  He turned back to me. “After your daddy died, Diana wouldn’t let me near her. She didn’t return my calls or reply to my email messages.” He let out a long breath. “Diana finally told me she wanted nothing to do with me, and to let her the fuck alone.”

  “Sic semper tyrannis,” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Thus always to tyrants,” I translated the Latin phrase. “It’s what John Wilkes Boothe shouted after he shot President Abraham Lincoln. It’s also Virginia’s state motto.”

  He chuckled. “Using all them fancy wordages, are you calling your father or me or both of us tyrants?”

  Captain Flynn and two Hollywood Station officers stepped onto the porch. Flynn flashed his gold shield, introduced himself, and said, “Devin McLean, I’d like to talk to you about an unsolved home invasion and six homicides. Would you mind coming to the Hollywood station with me?”

  Devin McLean, Aunt Vona’s executive assistant, said, “Sure, but I know nothing about any crime.” He stood. “Do you mind if I get dressed first?”

  “Is anyone in the house?” Flynn asked.

  Devin told Flynn there wasn’t. Flynn got Devin’s okay to check the two-bedroom bungalow.

  The two cops returned to the porch in less than three minutes. “Clear,” one of the officers said.

  “Go ahead and get dressed,” Flynn told Devin.

  With their gun holsters unsnapped, the Hollywood officers shepherded Devin into his dimly lighted living room and up the stairs.

  “Are you all right?” Flynn asked.

  Looking at the smoggy night, I turned to Flynn and said, “I’ll work through it.”

  I’d known since I was seven that my parents had neither the time nor the inclination to nurture their only child. I loved Devin for all the hours he spent listening and talking to me. He, not my parents, attended my high school baseball, football, and basketball games. He had been here for me right up to the day I boarded a jetliner for New York and the U.S. Military Academy.

  Our lives had been woven together. Now he needed my help.

  Regardless of Devin’s innocence or guilt, he had a constitutional right to a competent defense and a fair trial, if it came to that.

  I would retain one of the best criminal defense attorneys in California—Anna Acerbi—the San Francisco lawyer. It was the least I could do for Devin.

  Male voices began shouting inside Devin’s house. The sounds of three gunshots followed.

  Flynn ran for the door. I followed him. We rushed up the stairs.

  In his bedroom, Devin lay supine on the floor, bleeding and gasping from the three bullet holes in his chest. A gun lay on the floor.


  The gun looked real. But I instantly recognized it as a goddammed stage prop.

  I’d spent enough time in war zones to know Devin was mortally wounded and didn’t have much time left. Something visceral pulsed upward, making me feel as if my chest would split in half. I knelt beside Devin and held his hand.

  Devin looked at me, and only for a heartbeat, I’d swear I saw that mischievous gleam return to his eyes. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. His lungs drowning, blood began to trickle out of the corners of his mouth.

  I said, “Don’t try to speak. Help is on the way.”

  He weakly squeezed my hand, shuddered, and let out a rattling breath.

  As I heard the medical techs pounding up the stairs, Devin McLean’s eyes went blank.

  The techs tried to revive him. But he was gone.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Cast-Iron Certainties

  Clint, One Month Later, Sunday, July 15

  Jud Tucker claimed he knew nothing about a home invasion, robbery, and mass murder. He did not point a finger at his old friend, Devin. He asked the guard to take him back to his cell. He’s still remaining silent.

  Officially, the robbery-homicide case of my parents and their guests remains closed-unsolved.

  Captain Flynn, Vona, and I thought Devin McLean may have passed information to Tucker about the contents of my father’s home safe. But with his fake gun and “suicide by cops” kiss-off, Devin was innocent in the eyes of the law, and would forever remain innocent. After all, you can’t arrest, try, and convict a dead person…not even in Los Angeles.

  Maybe I knew the truth. Maybe I only thought I did and was full of shit.

  Even a bottom-of-the-barrel defense lawyer could’ve pulled all kinds of reasons out of his or her ass why Devin was innocent. The email I got pointing at Devin McLean could’ve come from anyone. With Tucker’s silence, the state of California had nothing on either Jud or Devin’s involvement in the robbery and murder of my parents and their guests.