by Ken Douglas
Two hours after ducking into the theater, Jasmine went outside to a dark night. She was out of money now. The sandwich and cake at the Surf Shop and the movie had taken it all. But she couldn’t think of a better place to hide then the fourth row center. Besides, the movie took her mind off her father.
She crossed Pacific Coast Highway at the Main Street light and continued on to the bike trail that ran through the beach. She still had Mrs. Emerson’s key card, so getting in would be easy.
“Hey, look out!” Someone shouted and Jazz jumped aside as a couple of older kids flew by on mountain bikes.
“Watch where you’re going!” she shouted after them, but they didn’t hear. She watched till they were out of sight in the dark, then she was alone on the bike trail. Spooky. And there was no moon. Real spooky.
She’d lived by the beach all her life and she’d been on the trail lots of times after dark, but never alone. When she was alone, she always came home the front way, straight across PCH at Main Street, then past the guard shack. She looked through the chain link fence when she reached the condos. Everything inside seemed normal. No sign of the Ghost. And no sign of her dad. It looked safe. She ran her hand along the fence till she got to the gate. She keyed the gate and slipped in without a sound.
She dashed to C building, was about to take the stairs up to the clubhouse, when she heard footsteps. She leaned back against the building, arms at her sides, palms against the stucco wall. Her hands were cold, her feet sweating in her running shoes. She inched along the wall till she was under the stairs.
Someone was just the other side of the building. Then all of a sudden that someone was in front of her, standing at the foot of the stairs. The outside light from an apartment on the second floor shone down on Gay, making her face glow like an angel’s.
Gay dropped to her knees and held her arms out. Jazz burst into tears and ran into them.
“It’s okay. I’m here.” The child looked like she’d been living on the run, like a homeless waif. She was scared.
“Don’t let him take me away. Please don’t let him.” Jazz was trembling, covered in cold sweat.
“Don’t worry.” Gay hugged her tight, killing the shivers. But could she kill her fears?
“He’s horrible, promise!”
“I promise, Jazz.” Gay hated to say it, but she agreed with Jasmine. Her father was horrible. She wondered what Margo had ever seen in him.
“You mean it?” Jazz pulled back, looked into Gay’s eyes. “Really?”
“Really. Now let’s get inside and get you into a hot bath.” Gay broke the hug. “Okay?” She led her to the safety of her living room. Sonya was waiting, sitting on the couch. The TV was on, a video, but the sound was off.
“You’re staying with us till your mom gets back. No one’s gonna take you away.” Gay was worried about how long Margo was going to be. She’d said she’d be back on Saturday before noon. The woman was a cuckoo clock without springs, but she was usually punctual.
“Not even my dad, you promised.”
“Especially not him.” Bruce Kenyon didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting the girl, no matter how long Margo took to get back.
“Thank you.” Jasmine jumped up on the sofa next to Sonya, the bath apparently forgotten.
“But I gotta tell you, I’m worried about your mom. She said she’d be back this morning.”
“No way,” Jasmine said. “She’s starting back at midnight. She said so, so she could be back in time to take me out to breakfast tomorrow morning.”
“I could have sworn she told me today before noon.”
“She probably did,” Sonya said.
“Yeah,” Jasmine said. “That’s my mom, sometimes she messes up.”
She messes up a lot, Gay thought, but she wasn’t going to say it. She crossed her fingers, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl.
“Why are you doing that, Mom?” Sonya said.
“For luck, wishing Margo a safe journey home.” The girls crossed their fingers, too. Both hands.
Chapter Five
Maggie opened her eyes and was surprised to see that the dance floor was crowded. A slow song was playing, the Beatles’ ‘Yesterday.’ She saw Horace with the ferret face dancing with a woman wearing a long dress. Except for a quick memory flash of his large friend, she didn’t think anything of it. The Lounge was crowded as it was every Saturday, like all the popular pickup places in the Shore.
“You ready to go?” Gordon pushed away from Maggie, met her eyes. “It doesn’t look like Nick’s coming.” Maggie saw tension wrinkling his forehead. His lips were tight. His hand was quivering.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing?” he said.
“Don’t give me that, you’re the original Mr. Poker Face. Besides, you’ve been Mr. Smooth all afternoon, what’s up?”
“Mr. Smooth, Mr. Poker Face.” Gordon laughed.
“That’s better. Now, what is it? You’re worried about something. What? And why all of a sudden?”
“The thought of taking Fred down to the pet store just flashed through my mind. It kind of gave me the shivers for a second there.”
“I can understand that, Ricky loved that bird. You probably feel giving him away is like giving away a part of Ricky.”
“Maybe.” He sighed loud enough for her to hear over the music. “You wanna get outta here?”
“Yeah.” Maggie looked at the Budweiser clock behind the bar. It was almost 7:00. They usually left when it started to get crowded. Maggie liked to dance. Gordon did too. So that’s what they did while Nick, who thought dancing was something pygmies did in Africa somewhere, played at being Mr. Important at the bar.
She usually walked home laughing and joking between the two of them, but not tonight. Was Nick out somewhere with that redhead? Was she making that drug buy? Did he have a film crew with him? Or was he in another bar somewhere buying her a drink? Was that why he hadn’t come back to the Lounge as he’d promised?
She linked an arm with Gordon and started for the door. Outside, the darkness covered her mood like early evening fog. The sun had been blazing when she’d gone into the Lounge. Now it was gone. There was no moon.
“We really went to town tonight,” Gordon said. “It kind of made me feel young.”
“You are young,” she said. He wasn’t, but he didn’t seem old. She started down Corona Avenue toward the beach. She wanted to tell him about the baby, but she’d already made her mind up about it, so there didn’t seem to be any point.
He squeezed her arm as they turned at Ocean Avenue. The gentle surf, tamed by the breakwater, lapped up onto the sand on the other side of the street. A car went past, slow cruising, then another. At first Maggie didn’t get it, then she saw the Whale up ahead.
“I’m going in alone tonight.” Gordon was tense. He seemed eager.
“Really?” She was uncomfortable and now she knew it wasn’t just giving away Ricky’s bird that had him tense earlier. He’d been thinking about going into the Whale by himself.
“Ricky’s been gone for over a year, it’s time.”
“Sure you don’t want me to come in for a bit?” She’d been in so many times with him she was a regular. She’d have a drink or two with Gordon, meet some of his friends. Maybe dance to a couple of slow tunes. But tonight he wasn’t going in for a drink and to meet friends. He was after something more and it bothered her. It shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help her feelings.
“No, I’ll be alright.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” He smiled at her, started for the bar, turned back at the door. “I’ll be fine, really.” Then he was inside and she was alone with the night.
“Damn,” she muttered. She was more than uncomfortable. She was jealous and that didn’t make any sense. She stared at the door, half expecting him to come back out, but he didn’t.
She should go home, she told herself, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to face an empty house i
f Nick wasn’t there and she didn’t want to face him if he was. Thoughts of the baby filled her head, then the thought of it dead crept in. Abortion, she sighed, the coward’s way out. Was she going to give up on her baby the way she’d given up on racing?
She wrapped her arms around herself, hugged herself and told herself it was the chilly night making her shiver and not the thought of losing her child. But she didn’t believe it, couldn’t and never would be able to convince herself.
The sound of the soothing surf on the other side of the street seemed to seep beneath her skin, drawing her like a wondering child to a magician. She loved the seashore, loved running in the hard, wet sand, loved the way the runner’s high cleared her mind and if ever she needed a clear head, now was the time.
“The guy’s going into that faggot place.” Horace put a hand on Virgil’s arm, stopping him. “The way they been acting, I thought they were lovers, dancing cheek to cheek, walking so slow, whispering.” Wrong about that, not lovers. Something else.
“She didn’t seem like the kinda woman would go around with them.”
“How do you know what kind of woman she is? God damn, Virgil, sometimes I think you are a retard.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Sorry.” Maybe he wasn’t a retard, but he wasn’t Einstein either. “But you gotta think more before you talk.”
“Yeah, okay,” Virgil said and Horace chuckled. He didn’t have to see his brother’s face to know he was smiling. He was always smiling.
Up ahead, the woman was standing outside the fag place, like she was unsure what to do next. Then, all of a sudden, she started across the street toward the beach. Horace held Virgil back until she was a safe distance ahead, no homes on that side of the street to give them cover.
“I wish we had the van,” Horace said.
“I could get it.”
“Maybe.” Horace grimaced at the thought of Virgil driving his van. It wasn’t that Virgil wasn’t a good driver, but the van was new. It usually took Virgil a while to get the hang of a new vehicle. However, the van had been in the Safeway parking lot since noon. How long before they’d tow it away? He thought about it for a second and decided not for awhile. The supermarket was open till nine, so it was probably safe till then. Still, he’d feel a whole lot better if it was close by.
The woman bent over, pulled her shoes off, then tossed them onto the sand like she was throwing a Frisbee or something. Then she tucked her shoulder bag into her side, like a football, stepped off the sidewalk and started to run.
“Stupid woman.” Horace sucked his mustache into his mouth, chewed on it. “She’s gotta come back for the shoes.” Horace spoke the words the instant the thought came to his head. “Think you can get to that store and get the van back before she does?”
“Really?”
He handed Virgil the keys. “Go.”
“I’m gone.” Virgil took off at a dead run.
Maggie took quick breaths. The sand, starting to cool now, sluiced between her toes as she found her rhythm. She was a runner. Throughout the course of the afternoon she’d had five or six drinks. Not that much considering she’d eaten, but too much for her. She’d always been a lightweight, a cheap date.
The water lapping against the beach seemed to be calling her name and she turned toward it. She ran at the very edge of the surf, feet splashing through the water as it rolled up onto the beach. Cold water, cool breeze, gentle waves, almost paradise.
She passed the enclosed Olympic pool on her right and was closing on the Belmont Pier when she stopped to catch her breath and do a few stretching exercises. Here, with the pool complex blocking off the cars on Ocean Avenue on one side and the Pacific on the other, she could imagine she was alone on a Caribbean island, but a horn honk in the distance reminded her she was pretending. She sighed. She couldn’t escape the city any more than she could escape her own depression.
“Damn him,” she muttered. “He’s with that redhead.” She bent down, legs straight, grabbed onto her toes. She held the position, the back of her legs burning. “How could he?” She bent lower, feeling the burn. She straightened up, sucked in a deep breath. All of a sudden, she was angry. Mad at Nick. And he hadn’t done anything. Not really. She was the one who’d strayed. The one who got pregnant. No good blaming him. But where was he? Where had he been tonight?
She bent to the ground again, finished her stretches. She saw two lights far out at sea, green and white, a sailboat on a starboard tack. It had been four years since she’d been on a sailboat, the last time she’d seen her father alive. They’d let her mother’s ashes fly in the wind. Two days later he was dead by his own hand. He just couldn’t live without her.
“Oh, Dad, we could’ve worked through it.”
She’d been too depressed to spread his ashes. Instead she left the job to his brothers. She was depressed now, like she’d been then and it was taking her down. She raised her eyes to the stars. “Oh, God, I want to keep this baby.”
But she knew she couldn’t and it made her heart ache.
She sighed.
Metal against metal clanged up ahead. A city truck was parked at the end of the pier. They were locking the gate, keeping the Belmont Pier safe from the homeless who might spend the night out there. She used to fish the pier with her dad till all hours of the night when she was in high school. Now no children fished with their fathers at night. The pier was locked off. The fish, like the pier, safe till morning.
She sucked in a lungful of air, one more deep bend, knees straight. She dug her palms into the sand. Her legs screamed. She exhaled and eased out of the bend. A chill rippled through her, she felt herself being watched, she stood still, an elk exposed, looking for the wolf. Slowly, she moved her eyes around the night, then bit back a gasp as something moved under the pier. There was someone there. She’d been right, somebody was watching her.
She grabbed another quick breath, then sprinted back the way she’d come, legs pumping, determined to run till exhaustion pushed all thought from her mind.
Ripples curdled up Horace’s spine as he stood on the beach and watched the woman run toward the pier. Something sinister churned his stomach. To do a woman whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed a sin, evil.
But she’d seen his face and maybe Striker’s too, certainly his car. That’s what really worried the man and there was nothing Horace could do about that. Striker called the tune, paid the bills. Horace held a hand out in front of himself. Not so steady.
Any minute Virgil would be back with the van and he’d have to make a decision. He was supposed to kill the woman, make it look like an accident. It was going to be hard enough doing her. Horace fought the vomit that threatened when he thought about it. How in the world he could do it with Virgil around was anybody’s guess.
“Stupid,” he muttered. No way should he have his brother with him, but Ma had insisted. She thought he was a process server. Maybe if she knew what he really was, she’d have kept her darling at home. But she didn’t and she didn’t. Virgil needed to spend time with his brother, she’d said. He needed to know what it was like to work for a living. The man was thirty-nine years old for fuck’s sake and now she wants him to see what it’s like to have a job.
He closed his eyes. A cricket chirped in the distance. It reminded him of Yuma, where he’d grown up. He used to make up games with big brother Virgil outside in the dry desert air. Make something up, that’s it. An idea started to take shape.
He opened his eyes, looked around, felt the night. The gay bar across the street was quiet. Every now and then cars came by, but their occupants wouldn’t be looking out to the beach, not at this time of night, and they’d most likely have their radios on.
Tires screeched around a corner.
Horace turned toward the sound. Damn, Virgil had the brights on. Was he trying to wake up every cop in Long Beach? The breeze picked up, tickling the back of his neck. The blue-grey light of a television flickered
in the house next to the bar. The porch light came on as Virgil pulled up to the curb.
“The fuck’s the matter with you?” Horace said when he got in the van.
“You said you were in a hurry.”
“Turn off the brights.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“You made so much noise, you got some couch potato across the street to get off his ass and turn on his porch light. Probably watching us right now.”
“I won’t do it again. I’ll be careful. You’ll see.”
“Okay, okay.” He paused. “Look, I gotta get the woman with her husband, so I can serve them the subpoena at the same time, otherwise it don’t count. But she knows that, see. That’s why they never get together.” Horace was making up his story as he went along.
“So, what are we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna grab her, handcuff her and put her in the van. I got cuffs in the glove box. Then we drive to her husband’s place where I serve them the subpoena.”
“Isn’t that kidnapping or something?”
“Not really. Process servers got special powers. We’re allowed to do stuff like that, because we’re acting for the law. Without us, nobody could ever get sued, then where would America be? All the lawyers would be out of work.”
“How we gonna get her?” Virgil didn’t even think of questioning what Horace said. He believed it just as if he’d seen it on TV.
“You get down to the water and scare her, so she goes the other way. Think you can keep up with her?”
“She’s a girl, Horace.”
“Right. Chase her back to the pier. She’s gonna have to turn right after she passes the pool. I’ll be waiting there with the van. Then we got her.”
The effects of the alcohol seemed gone now. Sweat rippled through her hair, down her neck. She was a train, her bare feet on the wet sand the wheels going over the tracks, her breath a steam engine chugging through a canyon. She could go forever.
Someone was up ahead. A man. She noted his size as she closed the distance between them. The white of his T-shirt stood out like a beacon even on this dark night. All of a sudden she knew who it was. She flashed on the image of the big man in the supermarket. Ferret Face coming into the Lounge had been no coincidence.