by Hal Ackerman
Matthew had never jousted. He had raced quarter horses and played polo.
In a glance he appraised his opponent. He saw the separation between horse and man. Saw the gaps in the knight’s armor. Pictured his lance driving through his opponent’s body as a needle goes through still water. He let the man come at him, parried his weak thrust with a flick of his wrist, unseated him from his horse, and with the dazed knight sitting on his armored ass, rode at full speed off the course and in pursuit of the agents’ car. The PA corroborated what everyone had seen. Evil had fled the field. Virtue had triumphed.
Matthew urged his willing steed down and across the hillside. They leapt the moat and raced along the edge of the property that bounded the road. He could see the headlights of the agents’ car on the other side of the six-foot-high fence. A hundred yards in front of him the property line turned to the right, presenting the barrier of the fence directly in front of him.
When Matthew was six years old he had witnessed an eruption of Mauna Loa. Ever since, he had craved the powerful forces of nature underneath him. He had won a silver medal for luge in the Junior Olympics. He had skydived. But his recurring dream had always been to surf down the lava flow of an active volcano. This was the moment. He leaned over and gave his horse a word of encouragement. It had seen the fence in front of them and its equine eyes had widened to marshmallows, but it relaxed under its confident rider. Still, as it approached the fence at top speed, Matthew felt the horse’s impulse to shy. He would not let it lose heart. “Now!” he urged. His mount took flight and vaulted over the fence, hitting the main road at a hard gallop.
Once Angie had been ensconced in the back seat of the agents’ car they had unhooded her. She saw her knight-errant appear a mere thirty yards behind the rear window. She impulsively screamed out his name, giving her captors warning. With the sight of the galloping knight in the rearview mirror, Church hit the pedal. The Buick rocketed forward. One great horse driven by a great horseman was no match for the internal combustion of three hundred. The distance between man and machine increased. Matthew never gave up until he reached a crossroads. His horse’s chest was panting and heaving. Clouds of steam blew from its nostrils. Matthew looked down the roadways in both directions. There were no trailing red lights visible down either way.
The horse questioned its rider’s command to abandon the chase, but obeyed. They began the long, slow, hobbling walk back to where they had started. The bitter taste of defeat rose up into Matthew’s throat for the first time in his life. He spat it out. It was not for him.
***
As Matthew commenced his doleful walk back, Stein and Ruth Ann set out for the party in Lila’s car. Stein permitted Ruth Ann to drive. She was more skillful and knew the roads so it made sense on that level. Plus he hoped it would shut her up. Maybe it was a delayed physiological reaction to murder, but she had not stopped yapping. It wasn’t crazy talk that could be tuned out. She was bright and well read and had passionate views on the disproportionate distribution of wealth and the corruptive power of power. It was like getting a mega dose of himself. He could see why people found that trying.
But Stein’s only thought was of his daughter. They had played back her previous phone messages where she had told him that maybe they were wrong about the land grab, since none of the parcels were anywhere near the almond groves. He had dismissed that thought; there was no doubt in his mind what was going on. But the only sound that echoed in his mind was that last one-word cry. He tried speed dialing her again but the result was the same as the past five times he tried. The call went straight to voice mail.
They made the right turn into the security gate within ninety seconds of the dark Buick carrying Angie Stein having made its right turn out of the gate. The Raggedy Andy guard duly noted his name, as the security staff had been alerted to do, and upon assigning his car to another clown valet with instructions to boot it, he deferentially bedecked Ruth Ann’s wrist with a VIP bracelet. Before he could do the same for Stein, an alarm went up. There was a disturbance across the Great Lawn. The TV security monitor on the booth showed an errant horseman running amok across the grounds.
Raggedy Andy instructed them to wait there a moment, but Stein had no patience for waiting and he scooted Ruth Ann in front of him, losing themselves in the commotion. The shuttle train was still running. In an effort to keep the partygoers calm, the disturbance was quickly announced to be a part of the night’s festivities. Magicians and jugglers roamed the hill. The LA Phil played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” In front of the orchestra, four striking blond women in black cocktail dresses were doing Rockette kicks to the music, thereby demonstrating it was not their statuesque Swedish bodies nor the thirty-year age differences that their multimillionaire husbands married them for, but their irrepressible creativity.
The train deposited Stein and Ruth Ann at the food court. The theme was cheeses of many nations. The excess got Ruth Ann railing that they spent more on Camembert than most people make in a year. Stein caught sight of the main house and said he was going to try to find their host. He was not unglad to get away.
A man with short gray hair tipped his hat to Ruth Ann and told her he spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. She called after Stein, now at a distance, “Thank you! I found somebody who can bore me in five languages.”
Stein reached the velvet restraining line outside the mansion. In the wake of Angie’s previous incursion, there were security guards not in clown suits now patrolling the perimeter. Stein was told politely that the party was down the other way.
“Would you tell Mr. Brickman that Harry Stein is looking for him?”
“Harry Stein is looking for him? That’s funny. Because he’s been looking for Harry Stein.”
“Do you know if by chance my daughter is here?
“Would that be Angie Stein?”
“Yes!”
A gigantic weight tumbled off Stein’s shoulders. They knew her. She was accounted for.
Brickman appeared on the portico. He was wearing a white suit and a Gatsby hat, and welcomed Stein like Caesar. Stein followed a trail that Angie had blazed the hour before, past the rowing machine, in through the comedy room, and into the smaller unmarked crowded office where Richard had found Angie. “I believe this is what you have been looking for,” Brickman said, and presented the room to Stein with everything it contained.
“How so?”
“The office of the Boysenberry Pi Land and Water Cooperative.”
“Ah! I see.”
Stein saw nothing. Except that there was something here to see that he wasn’t seeing yet.
One thing he had learned from all the antics and antiestablishment guerrilla warfare of the sixties was that the best way to gain control of the situation is to piss off your opponent. So, very disarmingly, he mentioned how flattered he was that Brickman paid homage to Stein’s old bit by naming his corporation Boysenberry Pi.
“That was my bit,” Brickman laughed.
“Barry. Come on. We’re not in school anymore. You don’t have to glom on to other people’s material.”
“What are you talking about? Boysenberry Pi was mine all the way. You didn’t even think it was funny.”
“Not everything I make up is A-list material. You’re welcome to it if you want it that badly.”
Brickman was practically shrieking. “I remember exactly when I thought of it. It was in Bio class. Sophomore year!”
Stein relented with a dismissive wave of the hand. “So what have you been doing here, Barry? Buying up all the good orchard land?”
Now it was Brickman’s turn to be smug. “No, my friend. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.”
“Is that so.”
“If you’d done your homework, you’d know that all the parcels Boysenberry Pi has purchased are … here.” He indicated a place on a topographical display.
It was the exact locale that Angie had described in her message. “That’s desert,” Stein s
aid. “Unless I am missing something, almonds don’t grow in the desert.”
“But cities do.” He led Stein’s eye to the model city display. A gleaming downtown. Sprawling suburbia. Green lawns. Flowering shrubs.
“I’m growing a city, Harry. Twenty years from now, Greater Greater Los Angeles.”
Stein disparaged the entire notion. “The Colorado River is already pillaged to feed LA. Where are you going to get your water?”
“Harry! You should be my straight man.” He illuminated the deep blue aquifer. “The Boysenberry Pi Water Cooperative.” He turned a dial that simulated a flow of water out of the aquifer to the new city, and replenished its contents from the dammed rivers all through the Central Valley. The technology was so cool it made him giggle.
“You’re deluded, Barry. That water basin is a public resource. You can’t just expropriate it for your own pleasure.”
The dam holding back Brickman’s glee burst at the seams. He practically levitated with the rising swell. He flipped open his Rolodex. “You see this, Harry? It has the home numbers of all one hundred senators of the United States. I contributed a hundred thousand dollars to every one of their campaigns. And to their opponents. I was on the committee that picked Al Jansen and Leroy Beckons to be the secretaries of agriculture and interior. I could call them right now and get the results of a state environmental impact study reversed, and thereby divert eight hundred thousand gallons of water away from the Sacramento Valley and to me, to the water bank that I just purchased. In fact, I think I’ll do that right now, just for fun.
“Oh, no, wait. I already did! The papers were filed yesterday at the Calvin Coolidge Courthouse. Signed, yes, by the very same secretaries of agriculture and interior. Barring any complications, the governor signs them into law tomorrow. It’s all about water, Harry. In the Middle East, it’s not religion. Well, okay, yeah, it is religion, but it’s water. It’s not even land. Well, yeah, okay, it’s land too. But it’s water. What you saw on that map, what you looked at but couldn’t see, is the new Los Angeles. Two hundred thousand new homes over the next decade. And you want to know the best part? While I lease the water to my neighbors to irrigate their orchards, the state reimburses me for every gallon. So all the land I’ve bought … is paid for out of state money. Now that’s what I call funny.”
“Here’s what I think is funny, Barr. Your ‘new city’ is two thousand feet higher in altitude than your aquifer. Last time I looked, water flows downhill to gravity.”
“Look again, Harry. Water flows uphill to money.”
Stein was exhausted from fighting and losing a bout he thought was an easy win. He needed to regroup in safer territory. “Your centurions out there seemed to know where my daughter is. I’d like to bring her home.”
“I could not be happier to hear you express those sentiments, Harry. The one other asset of Boysenberry Pi not shown on this board, Harry, is—yes, I see you getting upset. And of course you’re correct. It would be inconsistent with currently acceptable accounting practices to show your daughter on our balance sheet as an asset. She would be more appropriately designated as collateral, wouldn’t you say? As a kind of security deposit, a kind of a preemptive strike against any rash actions that you still mistakenly believe can obstruct the flow of the inevitable. So yes. As crude and obvious as it sounds, I do have her. And presuming that everyone just relaxes and enjoys the party, she’ll very likely be returned to you unscathed at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Although, Harry, I’ve got to say, what she did to poor J. J. Bancroft—I don’t know if she gets it from you or your ex-wife—but she’s shown she’s got a real mean streak in her. Can I get you a beer?”
Stein was speechless, which delighted Brickman more than owning the valley.
“The last laugh goes to Barry, not to Harry. Now that’s funny.”
He was beaming, absolutely beaming, until Stein’s fist caught him flush in the jaw. It was the first time in Stein’s fifty-one years that he ever punched someone in the face as hard as he could. Brickman toppled like a ton of his namesakes. The rush of adrenaline made Stein want to punch someone else. Anyone in his path. He burst out the door and stormed down the hill in a blind, desperate search for his daughter.
Chapter Nineteen
Stein stumbled down the grassy knoll, trying to keep his speed down and not yield flat out to gravity. He nearly tripped over the model railroad tracks. His sport jacket wings flapped out to the sides. Three-quarters of the way down his lungs were squeezing through his rib cage and the blood in his temples was beating out the rhythm: aneurysm, aneurysm. An indignant voice assaulted him. “Hi. Do I look familiar?”
“Shit. Ruth Ann.” He had forgotten she existed.
“Nice greeting.”
“I’m sorry. They have my daughter.”
“Who does?”
“Mr. Stein!” A haggard young Don Quixote called out to Stein from under a cluster of overhanging trees just inside the perimeter of the fence. “It’s me. Matthew.”
“Matthew?”
“I know where they have her, Mr. Stein. I tried to catch them.” He gestured apologetically to his ragged Rocinante, tethered to the fence.
Stein tried to calm and reassure the exhausted boy, though he was far from calm and assured himself. “Where is she?”
“I heard them say they were taking her to an insane asylum.”
“An insane asylum?”
“Pinecrest,” said Ruth Ann, quite knowingly. “It’s way down by the coast.” Then added, “I’m strictly outpatient.”
Stein told them both to wait right there while he went to get the car.
To fill in the awkward silence, Ruth Ann said to Matthew her name was Ruth Ann.
Matthew said, “Matthew.”
“My husband is taking over the spurious operations of the man I murdered.”
“My stepmother had sex with my uncle who gave me this black eye.”
“Glad to meet you.”
“You, too.”
Stein found his car. Booted. “The fuck,” he complained into the hollow exhausty infirmament. He returned to the surface where he had left Matthew and Ruth Ann to find Captain Caravaggio with his left python slung around Matthew’s shoulder, leading him toward his squad car.
“Hey. Hey. Hey!” Stein became amazingly winded running fifteen strides uphill. “Captain. It’s okay. The kid’s with me.”
Caravaggio turned around to see who was giving the ringing endorsement.
“He’s telling the truth,” Ruth Ann attested.
Caravaggio looked at her askance. “Who are you?”
“I’m Hollister Greenway’s wife.”
“There’s another stunning testimonial.”
“The girl in the courthouse with me,” Stein gasped.
“She’s my daughter. Brickman and possibly Bancroft and this kid’s uncle Richard are holding her hostage.”
“We think at Pinecrest,” said Ruth Ann.
Stein, with more lung capacity, managed to say that there was a gigantic scam going on. That people were getting paid off big time.
“So that’s not just a rumor?
“Hell, no. They’re bragging about it.”
“Well, that breaks it!” He threw open the doors to the squad car and told them all to get the hell in.
“I see they’ve offended your morality,” Stein observed.
“Goddamn right! Who the hell do they think they are, handing out kickbacks and not to me?”
Ruth Ann called shotgun.
Caravaggio blasted out the gate and careened to the left.
“They went to the right,” Matthew said.
“This way gets down to the coast,” Caravaggio growled.
“I followed them on horseback.”
“The other way goes up into the hills. Pinecrest is on the ocean. Now shut up.”
“Okay.” They flew around some bends in the road. “I never actually heard them say Pinecrest,” Matthew said. “Just that they were talking her to
the nut house.”
Stein jumped forward in his seat and grabbed Caravaggio’s massive shoulder. “Stop the car. They’re not taking her to the nuthouse. They’re taking her to the nut house.”
Caravaggio knew exactly what Stein meant. He wheeled around the other way. His face became etched in painful thought. “You know who we need to talk to? That friend of yours with the helicopter.”
“Why? Do we need an airborne assault?”
“He rents machinery to them. Look, Stein. There’s no good way to tell you this. The place they have her stashed … They crush eight thousand tons of nuts every day.”
“This is why I’m never having kids,” said Ruth Ann.
Amid the litter of notes and napkin fragments and government documents in his wallet, Stein found Spade Wilson’s business card. “It’s late, though. He’s not going to be at his office.”
“Cell phone technology,” Ruth Ann clucked at him. “Get into the twentieth century.”
The news was not good. Wilson confirmed Caravaggio’s apprehensions that he had leased to Brickman’s company the very top of the line TGM Series Super Pressure Trapezium Mill.
“We need to disable the equipment,” Caravaggio said.
“What kind of operation are you launching? It sounds like something we pulled off in Tripoli.”
“How busy are you tonight?”
“I can get there before you.”
***
The “We Crush Your Nuts” building looked even more sinister at night than it had when Brickman had driven Stein past it. Harsh, ultrabright exterior lighting rendered the network of gleaming PVC tubes a garish radioactive white, that slid and bent and curved around each other like external intestines.
Wilson was waiting for them outside the gate of the processing plant. Stein insisted on listening to the description of the mechanisms inside. “Material goes into the jaw crusher between rollers and shovels, and is sent into the grinding chamber. All that’s left is powder. From there it’s sent into the cyclotron and sucked into the centrifugal blower.”
Stein tried to picture somebody’s cat in the predicament Wilson was describing, not his daughter.