Dead Ringer

by Ken Douglas

  “She wrote and told him, but by the time the letter caught up to him, he was in a VA hospital in Hawaii, I was already born and she was dead.”

  “Dead, your mother died?” Tomoko said.

  “Yeah, her name was Belinda Moorehead. She was nineteen years old, estranged from her parents and living in this motel in San Diego. Two weeks after she got out of the hospital, she flew off with some Marines in a small plane to see a Grateful Dead concert in Santa Barbara.

  “They never made it. The plane went down over the ocean. The bodies were never recovered. I had a twin and till the day I die, I’ll never understand why Belinda took her and left me.”

  “Why would a woman leave a two-week-old baby behind?” Tomoko said.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said. “But that’s what she did. The authorities took the surviving baby, me, to Belinda’s parents. But they’d written their daughter off and didn’t want anything to do with her child and since it wasn’t possible to get a hold of my dad, they contacted his wife, my mom. She grabbed right on to me. She couldn’t have kids of her own, so I was like an answer to her prayers. When my dad found out, he took care of whatever had to be taken care of and he and his wife raised me. So you see, I’ve had a Japanese mother ever since I was two weeks old.”

  “Your mother must have been pretty special, most women wouldn’t accept a baby born like that, the product of a husband’s affair, even if she couldn’t have kids.”

  “They didn’t even know each other when he had the affair, remember? But, yeah, she was special, my dad too. They met on a Monday and were married on Friday. It really was love at first sight.”

  The drinks came.

  They picked them up, held them to toast. “Kanpai,” they said and sipped.

  “They sound like exceptional people, your parents.” Tomoko set her drink on the table.

  “Oh they were. My dad was a geologist and worked in Libya and Saudi Arabia while I was growing up. His work schedule was usually three months on, three off, so we lived in Europe. Majorca when he worked in Libya and Paris when he was in Saudi. We came back to California because Dad wanted me to go to high school in America.”

  Tomoko sipped at her drink, looked at Maggie with liquid brown eyes. “I had three brothers, they all went to Too Dai, Tokyo University. For me they found a husband. One didn’t waste money on girls back in those days.”

  “They married you off?”

  “Yes. Oh how I hated them for that. I suspect my husband wasn’t so fond of me either. He was the youngest son of four brothers. His siblings also went to Too Dai, but Kendo wasn’t considered bright enough. However, we learned to love each other and together we worked, bought a small business and turned it into a giant electronics firm.” She paused, took another sip of her margarita, licked some salt off the rim. “Now, tell me, did you go on to college? Did your father ever find oil? What happened to your mother?”

  Maggie found herself laughing as she thought of her father. “Yeah, he found oil, lots of times, in Libya, but every time he did, some young Libyan right out of college took credit for it. It would make him so mad. He’d tell me and Mom about it and we’d think his head was going to burst, he’d get so red and puffed up.” She ran a finger through the salt on the rim of her glass, but didn’t drink.

  “Mom and I had our first real fight when it came to college. I wanted to go to the Sorbonne in Paris and study art. She wanted me to go the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, because they had a program in Japanese Studies where you spent two years studying in Japan. She wanted me to know my heritage.”

  Maggie smiled at the memory. “Every day of my life I was my mother’s child, as Japanese as she. If anybody ever said different, they met the full force of her wrath. You didn’t mess with my mom, let me tell you. She was hell on wheels.”

  “So, you went to Hawaii?” Tomoko said.

  “We made a deal, get the degree from U of H, then, if I still wanted, they’d send me to France. So I got that degree, but I never went to Paris. By the time I graduated, I was pretty tired of school. Besides, I’d met this great guy from Nevada in my senior year. He’d come to Hawaii on a two week vacation and stayed till I finished school. He could drive like nothing you’d ever seen. He had oil instead of blood in his veins and he taught me how to race a car in the dirt. He was an off road racer.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Tomoko said.

  “He raced cars off road. You know like the Paris-Dakar race, or the Camel Trophy. He raced in jungles, deserts, the bush, you name it. Sometimes the races last less than a day, sometimes they’re as long as a couple weeks-grueling conditions-mud, rain.”

  “You can make a living doing that?” Tomoko said.

  “If you’re good and Bobby was. We lived together for three years and I became his co-driver and navigator, till I caught him in bed with a couple racing groupies. I was supposed to be at a co-driver’s meeting, getting the route for a race, but I forgot my phone, so I went back to get it.” She laughed at the memory. Bobby in their hotel room in Mexico two days before the Baja Five Hundred. Shocked as he was at being caught, he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. The girls were beautiful and couldn’t have been older than eighteen. What was it about men?

  “I went out on my own after that, got my own sponsors and my own car, a Mitsubishi Montero. I have an overactive imagination and I imagined myself famous, on television doing the talk shows, a woman at the top of a man’s sport. And it was starting to happen. I was starting to get coverage, my sponsors we’re paying more. I fell in love with and married the guy on the local news here. I was on top of the world.” Then Maggie told her new friend about the accident and why she’d given up racing.

  “So, I got a job at a magazine and started to live a normal life, till now.”

  “And now,” Tomoko said, “we get to the reason why you’re telling me all this. A stranger who can’t speak English. Someone you can trust won’t tell your friends, or worse, your husband. It’s not his baby, is it?”

  “No.” Maggie didn’t ask how the woman figured out she was pregnant, how she knew it wasn’t Nick’s. She just picked up her drink, held it up. “Kanpai.”

  “Kanpai.” Tomoko said. They both drank.

  “We’ve been married for three years,” Maggie said. “He can’t have kids. He had, you know,” she made a scissors out of her fingers, “snip, snip.”

  “Ouch,” Tomoko said.

  “Usually men say that,” Maggie said.

  “I have an imagination too,” Tomoko said.

  “Anyway, I met this man, boy really, from Ireland. He was a young race driver I was interviewing for the magazine.”

  “This boy is the father?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, now you are in itabasami.”

  “Yes, I’m stuck between two walls, between a rock and a hard place. I lose no matter what I do.”

  “And you don’t think your husband loves you as much as your mother loved your father? I’m not surprised, women love more deeply, suffer more pain.”

  “Of course Nick loves me. What are you talking about?”

  “Your mother accepted you. Loved you before she knew you, because you were her husband’s child. But you are not willing to give your husband the same chance with your baby. You assume he’ll reject it.”

  “The situation’s a little different. My father wasn’t cheating, I was. My mother wanted kids, my husband doesn’t.”

  “I still think you should tell him. Maybe you’re underestimating him.”

  “He has this stupid pride.”

  “Pride,” Tomoko said. “Maybe men should be gelded after their wives give birth. That would take care of their pride.”

  “Yeah.” Maggie laughed, despite how she felt.

  “You should tell him.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Isn’t that why you told me? So you could get an honest opinion about what you know you should do anyway.”

  “He�
�ll divorce me.”

  “Not if he loves you.”

  “If he does, what would I do?” Maggie couldn’t imagine living without Nick. He was the rock she counted on. He was always there for her.

  “You’d do what a lot of other single mothers do. You’d raise your child.”

  The taco plates came and they ate in silence. Maggie thought about what Tomoko had said. She wanted to tell Nick. Wanted to keep the baby. But could a man with his pride live with another man’s child? She didn’t think so. As much as he loved her, he’d leave her. It was the way he was.

  “Maggie,” Dick said from behind the bar, “phone call for your friend.” Maggie translated and Tomoko got up to get the phone. It was her husband telling her he wasn’t going to make it after all and could she take a cab back to the hotel.

  “Meishi onegaishimasu,” Tomoko said. Here’s my card. Maggie took it. She didn’t have a card of her own, so she scribbled her phone number and address on the back of her gynecologist’s card, then gave it to her new friend. Tomoko promised to write. She wanted to know what Maggie decided to do about the baby. Maggie promised she’d let her know.

  She took her place back at the bar after Tomoko left and ordered another rum and coke. Maybe she could get the baby drunk. Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so much when they killed it.

  The DJ had just finished setting up his stuff behind the dance floor when Maggie heard, “Hey, good looking.”

  “Gordon!” She turned toward a handsome man dressed in corduroys and a yellow Polo shirt. He was wiry, graying at the temples, had a dimple in his chin that set off his wicked handsome face and a smile that could light up the Forum.

  “Nick said he had to stand you up, something about a hot story he was working on.” Gordon took the stool next to her. “It was too much for me, a lady waiting for a man, I had to come.”

  Maggie laughed. Gordon Takoda was Nick and Maggie’s downstairs neighbor and landlord. Their duplex on Ocean was across the street from the beach.

  “I’ve decided to let the pet store have the bird,” Gordon said. “They promised to find him a good home. Besides, they say they can get me over a thousand bucks for him.”

  “Aw, Gordon, not Fred, you’re gonna miss him.”

  “I miss Ricky, I won’t miss his bird.” Ricky, his partner, died of leukemia six months after she’d moved in upstairs with Nick. Gordon and Ricky were fun to be around and in no time they’d become fast friends. And she’d grown closer to Gordon since Ricky’s death. If asked, she’d have to say he was the best friend she’d ever had.

  “I guess he must be a handful.”

  “Damn bird attacks me every time I feed him.” Fred was a yellow-naped Amazon, twenty years old, a loquacious talker and at times meaner than a Rottweiler with a hot poker stuck up its ass.

  “Yeah, I can see why you’d wanna get rid of him.”

  “How long you been sitting here sipping those?” He nodded toward the drink.

  “Too long.”

  Gordon turned to the DJ.

  “Hey, Brian, you got the Rolling Stones handy? A fast one, ‘Start Me Up.’ Something like that?”

  “Got the one you want.” Brian was a six foot five weightlifter. When he wasn’t doing the music, he was the bouncer. He put on the song Gordon requested.

  “Come on.” Gordon pulled her from the barstool to the dance floor and she started to work up a sweat.

  Two hours later they were still dancing, only now to Elvis singing the slow one Maggie loved the best, ‘Love Me Tender.’

  Several hours and several cups of coffee later and the woman was still in the bar. What was she doing, drinking the place dry?

  “You gonna be okay here, Virge, because I gotta go over there and do my job.”

  “I think so,” Virgil said. He looked alright now and Horace felt a little better about leaving him.

  “Just remember, don’t leave till I come back.”

  “I won’t.” Then, “Can I have some more pie?”

  “Sure.” Horace motioned for the waitress, then eased out of the booth.

  The woman had been over there for ages. All of a sudden his ass puckered up. He hadn’t thought about why she’d been shopping so far from home. Could the police have been following him? Could the meeting in the store have been a setup? All of a sudden he didn’t want to go into that bar. But he wasn’t a coward. Besides, it’d be dark. If there were cops there, he’d see them first and slide right on out, slicker than rat piss.

  He jaywalked across the street, turned toward an afternoon breeze, a slipstream of cool air on this miserable hot day. Ma would say it was a good sign. Horace sighed, Ma was nuts.

  He stepped into the bar and saw the woman straight away, dancing with some guy. They were the only couple on the dance floor. She had her head on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed. It looked like she was at peace, in love. Striker was supposed to know everything about her, how come he didn’t know she had a boyfriend?

  He passed through the crowd and took a seat at the end of the bar, careful to keep the mingling people between himself and her, in case she opened her eyes. He didn’t think she’d recognized him in the Safeway, probably because she’d been concentrating on Virgil, but his brother wasn’t with him now and he didn’t want to take any chances.

  “You come in here often?” A girl’s voice.

  “What?” Horace turned to the woman on the stool next to him. She looked like a hippy from the ’60s. She had waist length hair, parted in the center and she was wearing a kind of flower power skirt made out of that thin Indian tapestry material.

  “I said, do you come in here often?” She had a voice like music.

  “No, first time,” Horace said.

  “I’m Sadie.” She had a boyish figure, small tits, but lips like a sexy model. Her mouth was all Os when she talked.

  “Nice to meet you, Sadie, I’m Horace.”

  “That’s your name, Horace? Really?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I like it. It rhymes with romance. You look romantic.”

  “It doesn’t, you know, rhyme with romance,” Horace said.

  “It could if you wanted.” She leaned into him, graced him with the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen, a cross between an O and a pout. She was the hottest thing that had ever come on to him in all his forty-four years.

  “I’ve been romantic,” he said.

  “I bet you have. I saw you watching them dance. Do you?”

  “What, dance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I do, but not now.”

  “Why not?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m working.”

  “At what?”

  “I’m a private detective. I’m watching the couple on the dance floor. They’re married, but not to each other.”

  “Oh.” Then, “If you took me out there you could watch up close.”

  Horace thought about that for a second, leaned closer to her. “I’m wearing a shoulder holster. I wouldn’t want it to frighten you.”

  “Why would it do that?”

  “If we danced and you felt it against your, you know, your chest.”

  “Come on.” She hopped off the barstool, took his hand and pulled him along as she wound her way through the crowd.

  Horace sighed, felt a surge of relief when another couple followed. The woman was still slow dancing with the older guy, still had her eyes closed. Horace turned away from her as Sadie wrapped her arms around his neck. He put his hands around her waist.

  “I feel it,” she whispered into his ear, “your gun, up against my, ah, chest.”

  “Look,” Horace whispered back, “I might have to leave quick like. You know, if they go. I gotta follow them.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t want you to think I was running out on you. I’m working, it’s my job.”

  “You could call me when you finish. Sadi
e Sanders, I’m in the book.”

  “It might not be tonight, tomorrow okay?”

  “When you can. It’s okay.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

  The DJ played another slow song and another after that. Horace had trouble keeping an eye on the woman as more couples took to the dance floor. Soon most of the bar was dancing and he was tempted to forget her and concentrate on Sadie. But then he remembered Virgil across the street. He had to be getting plenty worried by now.

  “Do you believe in fate, Horace?” Sadie whispered.

  “Yeah,” Horace said.

  “I think there might be something for you and me. Maybe not right away, but I think we’re destined for a relationship.” She pulled him in close. He felt the heat of her and it caused him to shiver. “You don’t have be afraid,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Sure he’d had beautiful women in his time, but he’d always had to work at it and in the end they’d always left. For a time, he blamed it on his family. After all, who in their right mind would want anything to do with Ma? And then there was Virgil. But as he got older, he had to admit the fault was within himself. He’d never been able to commit to anyone. It didn’t take women long to figure that out.

  But there was something about Sadie. Something different.

  “It’s kinda quick,” she said. “But you know when it’s right.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “They’re going, the ones you’re supposed to be watching.”

  “Damn, I forgot.” He pulled away from her.

  “Just a second.” She still had her arms around his neck. She pulled him in. Kissed him hard. “Just so you don’t forget to call.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Go.” She kissed him again, quick.

  “See ya.” Horace backed away.

  Outside, he saw the couple turn the corner and head down toward the beach. He sprinted across the street. Inside the diner, he dropped a fifty on the table. “Keep the change,” he told the waitress. Then to Virgil, “Come on, we gotta go.”