Backman pursed her lips, her forehead creased and nostrils flared in distaste. “Alright,” she said. “Close it back up. We’re still taking it.”
Alonzo shrugged, shut the door to the pod, locked it and replaced the caution tape with care.
“I assume we will be compensated for our loss,” he said.
Backman ignored him.
Mitzy had slunk back into the front hall, and laughed loudly, arms wrapped around her waist. There had been some choice bathroom fixtures in the home, both in the working bathroom and the rank basement. The Feds were welcome to search them for clues to Cold War era illegal immigration. It would save the inn’s budget a dump fee at any rate.
Mitzy was exhausted. They had painted and argued about the future tram until almost midnight. If she hadn’t been out of milk she would have gone straight home. It was a chilly early fall night, overcast and very dark.
The Miata was locked. Mitzy stood under the lamp light in the grocery store lot and muttered. She shifted the weight of her grocery sacks onto her hip and attempted to open her purse with her teeth. Her keys were in the purse. She had to shift again, the thin straps of the plastic bags biting her hand. Her reusable bags were in the car, forgotten again.
She felt a touch on her shoulder. “Need a hand?” A young man wearing an apron from the store asked.
Mitzy took a step closer to her car. “No,” she said, backing away from him a little bit.
“Sure you do,” he said quietly. He put both of his hands on her shoulders and pushed her against the driver’s door of her car. He leaned close, his breath hot on her ear, “They know you have it,” he whispered.
In an instant she dropped everything she was holding. The milk jug broke on the asphalt and splattered her shoes with icy milk. She brought the sharp heel of her dress boot down hard on the bridge of his foot. She was glad she wore her heels.
He looked down at his foot cursing as she brought her knee up to his stomach, and then the palm of her hand to his nose.
“Get out here now! I know you are here!” she yelled in violent anger into the night. “You’ve been following me all week so get out here now!” She pushed the thin, greasy grocery man away from her sending him to the ground.
“Agent Backman! Officer Kent! Right now! If you didn’t see what just happened you need to turn in your badges!” She spun around searching the dusky parking lot for the Feds who had been trailing her all week.
The man on the ground cursed her, and called her crazy. He scrambled to his knees, ready to run and she kicked him in the shoulder, knocking him back to the pavement.
The round spot of a flashlight bounced off of his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry Mitzy. I should have been quicker,” Agent Backman said. “I really thought he was just going to help you into the car.”
“I’m pressing charges,” Mitzy said looking at the perp.
“Of course you are,” Detective Backman cuffed the guy while her partner read him his rights. “Meet me at the station.”
Mitzy shook with anger as she followed the detective to the station. She was followed at almost all times by officers but they were useless. She was overwhelmed with an anger that tasted bitter in her gut. The man hadn’t been a real threat. But he shouldn’t have been able to get to her. She could still feel the warmth of his sour breath on her ear. What had he said? They know? Well, if “they” know, they are the only ones, was all Mitzy thought. Figuring out if it mattered was the Feds’ job.
She pulled into the police station behind the Detective and followed her inside.
They took over someone else’s desk.
“No thanks,” Mitzy said as Detective Backman offered her coffee.
“Yeah,” Backman said. “It’s pretty awful stuff.” She sat down opposite Mitzy on the business side of a day clerk’s desk. “I think we need to work together, Mitzy.”
“Of course we need to work together. We’ve been trying to work with you. We’ve offered compromise after compromise and you’ve rejected them all.” Mitzy said.
“Why won’t you just give us what we want? It can’t be just because you don’t have to.” Backman asked.
“Of course it’s not just because we don’t have to. But it does all boil down to that, doesn’t it? If we gave you a list as long as the dictionary you could refute it all. None of the reasons would ever matter. But in the end, we have rights and one of them is to maintain our legal property as we see fit. And the way we see fit is to fulfill our contractual obligations by delivering the furniture to the people whose good faith deposits we are holding.”
“How can you not see that this situation is bigger than your business? We are talking about national security here.” Backman shook her head in frustration.
“We are talking about furniture that has been thoroughly searched already. No. Like you said. It’s bigger than that. We are talking about the private information of individual citizens of this country. This info you all want may or may not be important. It may or may not be accurate. It may or may not be current. Dust the furniture for fingerprints, run the prints through your machines. Take the names. Do what you have to do, I guess. But in the end you risk criminalizing innocent people.”
“Innocent people like Maxim Mikhaylechenko? The man who attacked you in the basement of your hotel? Do you think the Mafia is done with you because one little guy is locked up? Do you think the trouble is limited to little Portland, Oregon? I hope you don’t think that. Because that wouldn’t be safe for you.” Detective Backman said, her voice even and her face stern.
“And now you are worried about my safety. Interesting timing.” Mitzy stood up, took her coat and her purse and turned to leave.
“Getting felt up in the parking lot is the least of your worries Mitzy,” Backman said with an ice cold voice. “And we aren’t here to protect you.”
“No?” Mitzy asked in a tired voice.
“We’re here to protect the evidence.” Backman stood up to leave.
Mitzy watched the detective leave. She knew working together meant giving up all of her rights. She stood up slowly and looked around the police station. It was quiet, as though the town was small and innocent.
Mitzy drove straight to Alonzo’s. She let herself into his house and ran into his arms.
“Hey, wait, what’s wrong?” he asked, stroking her rumpled curls.
She told him the story in breathless haste. His arms tightened around her waist. “Wait—the agents were there the whole time and they let him knock you around?
“Yes,” she whimpered.
He squeezed her narrow frame tightly one more time and then released her. He had a smirk on and a glitter in his eyes.
“What?” she asked, doe eyed, lips trembling.
“Tell me again what you did to the guy?”
“I don’t really know. I stamped his foot and palmed his nose. I got my knee up in his gut. He tried to run off so I kicked him again, once or twice maybe. I don’t remember.” She was still shaking.
“Did he really stand a chance, babe? I mean, you’re no pushover.” Alonzo said, admiring his tall, strong girlfriend.
She turned her tear-filled blue eyes up at him again.
“I know. You were scared to death. But darling, you’re lucky he didn’t press charges.” Alonzo grabbed her again and kissed her forehead and her eyes before he let her go again. “You need something to eat.”
Mitzy sank into the brown leather la-z-boy. “Thanks.”
“Momma brought over some lasagna. That okay?”
“It’s heaven,” Mitzy said.
“What do you think; did this guy have an agenda?” Alonzo asked as he dished up the food.
“Um, yes. I would say he did.” Mitzy said.
“Let me rephrase that. Did the police indicate that this man’s actions might have been related to the suspected mafia connection with the house?” Alonzo put the dishes in the microwave to warm up.
Mitzy sighed. “They think he was just
a pervy little man trying to get his kicks. This is his first offense. But he whispered something when he grabbed me, ‘They know you have it,’ or something like that. Do you think it has a connection with the house?”
“They didn’t give you any idea?” Alonzo asked. He passed her a plate of lasagna.
“They aren’t taking the ‘incident’ very seriously.” Mitzy took her food. “Should we just give them the furniture?” she asked.
“We have plans for the money.” Alonzo said.
“So we don’t give it up.” She took a bite of lasagna but found she couldn’t swallow.
“Can we find the money somewhere else?” Alonzo asked.
“You aren’t going to tell me what to do, are you?” Mitzy said, her plate resting on her knee.
“Things seem to be getting dangerous.”
“Feds say it’s unrelated.”
“Maybe it was. But next time?”
“Next time I’ll kick him in the balls instead of the stomach.” Mitzy said. “Next time I’ll do what I did this time. What else can I do? It was related, or unrelated. Either way, I need to be able to take care of myself.”
“Mitzy, I can get the money if we let them have the furniture. Now that I’m building the Huddington Community Center my credit is golden.” Alonzo said.
“You do not need to get more debt when we have a perfectly good opportunity to raise the cash staring us in the face.”
“You call defying the fed’s a perfectly good opportunity?” Alonzo asked.
“Alonzo, the borrower is slave to the lender. We do not need to borrow to be successful in business.” Mitzy said, yawning.
“We aren’t in a ballroom and this isn’t a financial reformation conference. This is serious business. They could take the whole place from us if we don’t play nice.”
“That’s God’s honest truth, Alonzo. Not a flip remark. I don’t go into debt and I wish you hadn’t either. We do this inn my way or I am out.” She set her plate of lasagna on the coffee table, and stretched her arms over her head.
Alonzo’s spine stiffened. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, feed her lasagna and never let her leave his eyesight again. He wanted her to stay with him tonight and forever. And he wanted to throttle her.
“I don’t do ultimatums, Mitzy. And you shouldn’t either.”
She slumped back into the chair, her eyes and nose reddening. “I know. I shouldn’t.” Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. “I shouldn’t issue ultimatums. It’s just that it means so much to me.”
“Okay.” Alonzo said. He rested one hand on her other knee. “I won’t take out a loan. But I think we should give up everything they want. We can just scale back the plans. It won’t hurt to take things slowly.”
She turned her head away from his earnest face. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Alonzo stood up and took his plate back to the kitchen. He wasn’t hungry.
“Stay here for awhile. I don’t want you going home alone this late. It’s already after one.”
“The longer I stay the later it gets,” Mitzy said.
“Then just stay the night. You shouldn’t be alone,” he said from the kitchen.
“Please don’t,” she said, looking up at him through her long eyelashes. “I want to stay with you.”
He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and looked at her, face red from crying, hair deflated from his caresses. Her clothes crumpled from the fight. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. Can I take you to Sabrina’s tonight?”
Mitzy smiled ruefully from her chair. “I don’t know how well Bruce would like that.”
“He’s not still over there at this hour, is he?” Alonzo asked.
“Most likely.”
“Then let’s go. That boy needs to know when a gentleman goes home.”
Mitzy knocked on Sabrina’s door and Bruce answered it.
“Hey,” he said, as he let them in. Bruce was not a talker. He was taller than Alonzo by a few inches and outweighed him by about twenty pounds. He was mostly muscle, but from lifting and laying stone rather than working out in a gym. He gave the impression of usefulness and reliability though he was only 25. He looked at Alonzo with a question on his face but didn’t say anything.
Sabrina was in the kitchen washing up the dinner dishes. “Hey!” She called from around the corner. Mitzy went to her friend and told her about the incident in the parking lot. When they were done exclaiming and hugging they sent the men away.
Walking down the cement steps from Sabrina’s apartment, Bruce opened up a floodgate of words, for him. “So. What about Mitzy?”
“What about Mitzy?” Alonzo asked.
“You’re spending a lot of time with her, Al. I want to know you are serious,” Bruce said.
Alonzo stopped on the bottom step. “What?” He asked.
“You’re an adult. You know what I mean.” Bruce continued to his car at his slow steady pace.
“I’m a serious man, Bruce.” Alonzo emphasized man. He was closer to 40 everyday and hadn’t been expecting a relationship lecture from a kid like Bruce.
“You’re not really, you know.” Bruce shook his head and then looked at Alonzo. “Mitzy is important to Sabrina and you are my friend. I think you need to make a decision if you are going to keep seeing her.”
“Have you ‘made a decision’ about Sabrina?” Alonzo asked.
“Yes. But Sabrina is young. I’m not going to rush her into anything.”
As Mitzy was more than five years younger than Alonzo he thought she was pretty young too. But 31 probably seemed ancient to people like Bruce and Sabrina.
“I’m serious about Mitzy. We’ll see what happens.” Alonzo started his pick up with his keychain remote.
Bruce sighed and shook his head. He got into his Land Cruiser FJ40 and started it up.
Alonzo sat in his truck for a while. It was true that he wasn’t a child anymore. And Mitzy wasn’t either. What did she expect from him? What did he expect from her? He pulled out of the apartment parking lot asking himself a number of questions that he hadn’t wanted to think about yet.
Inside the apartment Mitzy had her feet up on the coffee table and a cup of tea. “I don’t think I really needed to come over. Gilbert is home after all.”
“Gilbert is a puppy,” Sabrina said, sitting down.
“Yeah. But I’m a grown up. It was a scare, to be sure. But I certainly wasn’t vulnerable. I should have gone home.”
“Well, you still can, but don’t. Redeem the time and quiz me for my test.”
“I left my car at Alonzo’s,” Mitzy said.
“I’ll take you over there tomorrow.” Sabrina set a stack of papers on Mitzy’s lap. “Please quiz me?”
“No, yes. Of course. Um…” Mitzy shuffled the papers until she found a question she liked, “Okay. Define Deed.”
Sabrina sat up and closed her eyes, hands clasped in front of her, “A written instrument which when properly signed and accepted gives title to real property from, um, one party to another.”
“Close.” Mitzy coaxed.
“Oh yes…um…that should be when properly executed and…and…delivered.”
“Yup. Good job. But you knew that already. Just know what you know and don’t worry about each question,” Mitzy said. “Here’s another: define Fee Simple”
“That is when a property is owned completely, it is unencumbered. Someone has an unencumbered right to the piece of property.”
“Well done. And what is an SAI?”
“That’s easy, Statement of Additional Info. I’ve typed enough of those for you.”
“You sure have. Here’s another one. Lis Pendens.”
“Oh yeah, that’s one of the Latin ones…um…Pendens is pending. It’s when there is a lawsuit pending or the title to the property is under litigation.”
Mitzy sighed and leaned her head back on the couch. “We may have to name the inn Lis Pendens. I’ve never known a piece of property that was encumbered wit
h so much trouble before.”
Sabrina had had stars in her eyes for like a month now. She was more than in love; she still had a crush on Bruce too. Mitzy, trying to have a romance and a business start up at the same time found the stars in Sabrina’s eyes irritating. But this morning back at the office it was worse still. Sabrina looked like the cat who’d been in the cream.
“Oh, what now?” Ben said. He had his own romantic disappointments. Since putting the ring on her finger, his Jenny had turned into bridezilla. No more watching football games and eating pizza together. Now every minute of their time was to be spent wedding planning.
Sabrina grinned and laid a white covered paperback on her desk. “Bruce got one too,” she said.
Mitzy picked it up. “From Spoons to Spooning?” she asked. The book had a teaspoon on the cover, but no subtitle.
“Ummm hmmm. You’re supposed to read it together to take your relationship from the fun and games stage to the stage of intimate communication,” Sabrina said, blushing pink.
“Spooning being a form of communication?” Mitzy asked.
“Gag me,” Ben said.
“You and Alonzo should read it. It’s great. Bruce’s pastor recommended it.”
“We’re a bit busy right now,” Mitzy said. She wasn’t sure she was the “Spoons to Spooning” kind of girl. She could already hear the derisive laughter if she even suggested it to Alonzo.
Upstairs Bruce sat in the spare chair in Alonzo’s office, eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into the wastepaper basket.
“Well?” Alonzo said, tapping his pencil on the desk.
“The other night you and I talked about your intentions,” Bruce said.
“Mitzy has a father,” Alonzo said. “And a brother.”
“Yup,” Bruce said.
Alonzo shuffled some papers. “Okay. Fine. What do you want to say to me?”
Bruce clicked open his steel lunch box and pulled out a couple of white books. He set them on Alonzo’s desk.
Alonzo looked at them and then looked at Bruce again, brows drawn over his black eyes.
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