by Sean Lynch
“DA’s office,” Paige said. “Deputy District Attorney Callen speaking.”
“How’s the fucking whore this afternoon? I see you made it to work after our little rendezvous on the beach.”
Paige’s heart rate instantly skyrocketed as she recognized the raspy voice of her dawn attacker.
“Who is this?”
“Like I’d really give you my name. Just called to say ‘Hi’ and see how you’re doing.”
“What do you want?” Paige tried to control the tremor in her voice. She hoped it wasn’t audible to the man on the other end of the phone.
The caller ignored Paige’s question and continued. “Bet you thought you were going to get fucked this morning, out there in the surf, with your face in the sand and your butt in the air. I wanted you to know I had a hard-on, but I didn’t fuck you on purpose, even though I could have. Wasn’t that considerate of me? But you aren’t the kind who fucks on the first date, are you, Paige?”
Paige wanted to slam the receiver down but was frozen. Each word he spoke plunged her deeper into revulsion and anger. She gripped the receiver so tightly her hand trembled.
“What’s the matter, Paige; not in the mood to chat?”
“What do you want?” she repeated.
“I’ll let you know on our second date, slut,” the voice crackled. “Maybe I’ll fuck you then. Ciao for now.”
The line clicked dead in her ear. She sat, ashen-faced, staring at the telephone as if it were a coiled serpent.
It was several seconds before Paige snapped out of her state of fury and fear. “Carmen, get me Sergeant Wendt at APD right away,” she barked, unable to moderate the strain in her voice. “And hold all my other calls.”
Timothy Potter, hearing Paige’s elevated tone, reappeared in the doorway of her office. “Who was that on the phone? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Go to hell, Chaz,” Paige said, putting her face in her hands.
“Moody fucking broads,” Potter said under his breath as he slunk away.
CHAPTER 7
“Raymond, what in the hell are you doing in my bathroom?”
Ray Cowell winced at the sound of his mother’s voice and looked up from where he was crouched on her bathroom floor. He was rummaging through the cupboard beneath the sink.
“I asked you a question. What are you doing in my bathroom? Is your toilet backed up again? You need the plunger? I told you before, you wipe with more than one sheet of tissue and sure as the sun shines, you’ll have a backed-up toilet. Raymond? Are you listening to me?”
Ray found the object of this search; an industrial-sized can of hair spray. Shaking it, he was pleased to find it more than three-quarters full. He stood up and looked down at his mother.
“Relax, Ma; no need to throw a hissy fit.” He held up the can of hair spray. “I need to borrow this for a while.”
“What are you gonna do with my hair spray? You ain’t sniffin’ that stuff, are you? I know that’s what kids today are doing; I seen it on Geraldo. You sniffin’ chemicals, Raymond?”
“Jesus, Ma, of course I’m not sniffing your damned hair spray. I’m working on a model airplane,” he lied. “You spray this stuff over the paint so it won’t run.”
“Sounds pretty strange to me. Boy your age, still playing with model airplanes. Whyn’t you get a girlfriend, Raymond? You oughta have a girlfriend. Ain’t natural, fella your age without a girlfriend.”
“Ma, I’m going to be thirty-three years old next month. I’m not a boy anymore. I’m a man. And you know I don’t like it when you call me ‘Raymond’. I like ‘Ray’.”
“Raymond is your God-given name and I’ll use it whenever I like. If you’re such a grown-up man,” she nagged, following Ray out of the bathroom, “how come I still cook all your meals? And do your laundry? And how come all you do is sit in that room of yours and read those foul magazines. How come you ain’t got a girlfriend, Raymond? Answer me that, Mister Grown-Up Man?”
“Leave me alone, will ya?”
“Sure Raymond, I’ll leave you alone. Next time the UPS man comes with one of your packages, I’ll be sure and tell him you want to be left alone.”
Ray stopped in his tracks. “Ma, did something come today?”
“I don’t feel like telling you. But you might want to look on the back porch.”
“Goddamnit, Ma,” Ray cursed, “how many times do I have to tell you? Don’t let the delivery people leave packages on the back stairs. You know what this neighborhood’s like.”
“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain,” she admonished.
“Go to hell, you drunk old bag. Leave me alone.”
Ray stormed through the kitchen and down the back stairs. He’d heard every one of his mother’s lectures countless times before and was not in the mood for another round of her biting tongue. If he’d missed a package because of her foolishness…
He had not. Plopped on the back porch was a large, flat, and relatively heavy cardboard box. The label read ARMO-TECH and bore a Sacramento address. Ray scooped up the box and scurried to his basement apartment. He kept the door locked at all times, and he fumbled with the key as he juggled the cardboard box and the can of hair spray.
Ray lived in the basement apartment of his family home; the same place he’d lived since his birth. The house was a small, one-story bungalow on Pacific Avenue in Alameda, and sat among many others just like it. Since Ray’s youth, the once-quaint neighborhood of exclusively single-family residences had degenerated into a series of run-down, ramshackle homes that were now mostly segregated into low-income apartments, overpopulating the narrow street.
Ray remembered how the neighborhood looked as a kid: freshly mowed lawns and gleaming white picket fences. He remembered playing catch with his dad in McKinley Park, only a block away, and coasting the flat streets on his homemade skateboard. He remembered his neighbors, all family men like his dad, working at the Alameda Naval Air Station or in one of the factories across the estuary in Oakland. In those days, everyone in the neighborhood knew each other and would wave as he and his dog Skipper made their afternoon deliveries on his daily paper route.
Ray’s dad was especially well liked in the neighborhood, and his memories of his father were always cluttered with images of him chatting with a neighbor about politics, or the weather, or helping someone with a do-it-yourself project. Ray recalled the times he loaned out his push mower, or helped his buddy across the street rebuild the engine of their old Chevy. Those days were the best ever for Ray Cowell.
Ray’s mom was thin then and had long, pretty red hair. In those days, it seemed she was always smiling and content to be doing her duty as a wife and mother. She kept busy with decorating projects, or cooking experiments, or playing bridge with the other wives on the block.
It had been an idyllic life on Pacific Avenue, back in the late Fifties and early Sixties of Ray’s childhood. But now, as the Eighties drew to a close, the neighborhood had become transformed. Ray’s house, like most on the block, was going to pot and desperately in need of roofing work and a coat of paint. The neighborhood itself was no better. Battered cars lined both sides of the street, and chain-link barricades and burglar bars had replaced the white picket fences. The neighbors, too, had changed. Welfare recipients of African-American or Hispanic origin had replaced the largely working-class Caucasian residents of his childhood.
Ray’s mother had changed as well. Her once-striking red hair was now gray and matted, and her svelte figure had ballooned over the years to a grotesque parody of her former silhouette. It seemed all she did anymore was drink vodka and yell at him.
Ray hated it when his mother berated him. He was a loyal son and deserved better. His father, had he still been alive, would have been proud. Ray’s salary as a shipping clerk at the Port of Oakland had kept the family home from foreclosure all these years. If his mother did his laundry or cooked him a meal once in a while, she should be glad to do it and grateful she had such a hardworki
ng son, a son who kept a roof over her head, food in her belly, and the liquor cabinet stocked.
Ray pushed open his door and went inside. Hanging from the ceiling was an armada of model airplanes suspended by nearly invisible filament. There were Stukas, Messerschmitts, B-17’s, Zeros, Spitfires, every conceivable type of civilian or military aircraft from the dawn of aviation to the NASA space shuttle Challenger, which exploded only three years back. There was even a balsa wood replica of the Wright Brothers’ famous craft included in the collection.
Ray switched on the light and closed the door. In one corner of the room was a large drafting table, complete with a telescoping lamp. On the table lay the to-be-assembled components of a scale model of the Spirit of Saint Louis. There were X-acto knives and paint brushes of various sizes scattered on the table also, as well as an assortment of epoxies. More than a hundred tiny jars of modeling paint stood at attention in neat rows on a shelf over the desk.
In the opposite corner of the sparsely-furnished room was a sofa bed. Next to it was a nightstand with another lamp, a clock radio, and an ashtray.
Magazines, too many to count, were scattered everywhere throughout the small basement apartment. There were copies of Scale Modeler, Airpower, and Aviation Weekly. There were issues of Popular Mechanics, Guns & Ammo, and Soldier of Fortune. And in a milk crate buried under a stack of soiled laundry in his closet were stacks of Hustler, Screw, and his father’s faded Playboy collection.
The water-stained walls were adorned with posters of aircraft in flight and framed black-and-white photographs. Each of these pictures depicted a tall, balding man standing alongside an anemic-looking boy. In one photo, the boy held up a sand shark for the man’s inspection. In another, both the boy and man wore scouting uniforms and Native American headgear. In yet another, the boy stood drenched in water and sported a grin. A soggy dog appeared to be struggling in his soapy arms as the man aimed a garden hose at the pair.
Ray tossed the box and hairspray on the floor amidst the scattered periodicals and sat down cross-legged to open the box with a penknife. The first thing that greeted him when the carton opened was an invoice. The document acknowledged his money order and listed his purchase as a “size medium, Class IIA Kevlar vest”. The owner’s manual with the vest described it as “an improved, lighter, stronger Kevlar armor”, which would “defeat .45 ACP, .357, 00 Buckshot, 9mm projectiles, and all lesser threats to National Institute of Justice IIA Standards”.
Ray slipped the vest on and fastened the Velcro tabs to adjust the garment. He pounded on the stiff armor with his fist a couple of times and checked himself in a full-length mirror affixed to the inside of his closet door.
Satisfied, Ray slipped off the vest and set it down alongside a number of other items he had laid carefully out on his sofa and covered with a blanket. He checked the other items, taking a mental inventory.
There was a handgun, a Glock model 17, he had purchased the year before at Trader’s in San Leandro. Wearing a pair of cotton gardening gloves, Ray had fieldstripped the weapon as described in the manual and thoroughly cleaned and oiled it. Then he loaded the semiautomatic’s two magazines to their capacity of seventeen nine-millimeter cartridges each, still wearing gloves to eliminate the possibility of leaving fingerprints on the brass cases.
In a similar manner he’d fieldstripped his father’s old M1 carbine, smuggled home from his service in Korea, and lovingly cleaned and oiled the military arm. Like the pistol, Ray meticulously loaded the weapon’s multiple fifteen- and thirty-round magazines with fresh .30 carbine ammunition purchased from a gun shop in Fremont months ago. Ray had taken the time to purchase a paratrooper model folding stock for the weapon at an Army/Navy surplus store in San Jose, and had replaced the standard full-length wooden stock on the M1 rifle with the shorter pistol grip. He’d also modified the rifle’s canvas sling by shortening it and securing it to the butt of the pistol grip by means of a swivel. This allowed Ray to hang the semiautomatic military carbine over his shoulder like a purse. Concealed under a coat, the weapon could be hidden from view but ready for instant use.
Ray had a pocket-sized police scanner with an earpiece. He’d customized it himself by installing the crystals for the Alameda police radio frequencies.
Among the other items on the sofa bed were a blue nylon windbreaker, several pairs of cotton gardening gloves, baseball caps of assorted colors, two pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a box of replacement guitar strings. Ray Cowell did not play guitar.
There was also a fanny pack containing several small tools, which included a flashlight and a Philips screwdriver. A paintball pistol, designed and manufactured to resemble a Colt Python .357 magnum revolver with a six-inch barrel, lay on the sofa as well. Next to it were an opened package of phosphorescent orange paint balls and compressed CO2 cartridges to power the gun.
Ray packed all of the items, including the new vest and hairspray, into a green US Army duffel bag with the name PASCOE, ARNOLD R. stenciled in faded block lettering on the side. He put the bag into his closet and lay back on his now vacant sofa bed to light a cigarette.
Exhaling smoke, Ray contemplated the past. He thought about his mother and what she’d become. He thought about Paige Callen and her father, a smirk spreading slowly across his thin features. Mostly, though, he thought about his own father and what might have been if not for Sissy, and that terrible summer.
The summer of 1964.
CHAPTER 8
Bob Farrell followed Judge Callen into the house’s interior.
“Thank you for coming,” Callen said over his shoulder as he led Farrell into his study. “I apologize for the lateness of the hour.”
“No apology necessary,” Farrell said. “Sandy said you wanted to see me about a job. He told me it was urgent.”
“It most certainly is.” Callen motioned to one of several large armchairs. “But not so urgent as to preclude being a good host. May I offer you a drink?” The Judge thrust his chin at a well-stocked wet bar in one corner of the expansive room. “You look like a thirsty man.”
“I’ve been known to take a drink,” Farrell acknowledged.
“That’s a good sign,” Callen said. “I find it difficult to trust men who don’t imbibe.”
“A sentiment we share,” Farrell said. “Why don’t you take a load off and permit me the honor of pouring you one.” He could see the Judge leaning heavily on his cane.
“You are a considerate man, Mister Farrell. It’s been a long and exhausting day.” He slumped into a well-worn, high-backed leather seat. “Scotch over rocks, if you please. And don’t spare your elbow.”
“I won’t.” Farrell strode to the bar.
“Sandy speaks very highly of the work you did for him, Mister Farrell.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were both effective and discreet,” Callen said. “Qualities I admire.”
“Sandy’s a good man. And the name’s Bob.” He busied himself pouring two drinks, a Dewar’s for Callen and a Kentucky bourbon for himself.
“He was most grateful for what you were able to accomplish for him,” Callen added.
“I was glad to help. So, what can I do for you, Your Honor?” Farrell asked once he had delivered the Judge’s drink and sat down.
“This morning at dawn, a man assaulted my daughter. She was jogging on the beach here in Alameda. The assailant called her by name and made it clear he would be back.”
“Was she–”
“No,” Callen cut him off. “She was not sexually assaulted. But he took pains to let her know he could have. He struck her in the head with a pistol, which I’ve subsequently learned was something called a ‘paintball’ gun. Then he shot her with it.”
“I can only assume your daughter didn’t know it was a paintball gun?”
“You presume correctly. She believed she was going to be executed.”
Farrell nodded to himself. “Does your daughter have any idea who this guy is?”
&nbs
p; “No. She didn’t recognize the voice.”
“The police have anything?”
“Nothing.” Callen shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“That’s not uncommon this early in the investigation. Of course, it could mean this guy is good, the cops investigating him aren’t, or both.”
“I agree,” Callen said.
“Is your daughter employed?”
“Paige is an Alameda County deputy district attorney. She’s assigned to the DA’s office here in town.”
Farrell’s brow furrowed. “Paige? Paige Callen? Your daughter wouldn’t be a tall blonde, late twenties, would she? Lots of freckles; takes herself real seriously?”
It was Callen’s turn to wrinkle his eyebrows. “She is. How did you know that?”
“We’ve met before,” Farrell chuckled into his drink.
“You two haven’t–”
“Hell no; nothing like that. I’m practically old enough to be her father.” As soon as he said this, Farrell winced. “No offense, Your Honor.”
“None taken,” the Judge said sternly. “If I may be so bold, how do you know Paige?”
“I really don’t; she knows me.”
“Please explain.”
“About a year ago, I found myself in some hot water with the Feds. Some of the trouble had to do with things I did here in Alameda. The US Attorney’s office was looking to lock me up and throw away the key. I brokered a deal, and all the charges went away. I gather the Alameda cops, and your daughter, who was the deputy DA reviewing those charges, were none too happy I was getting off.”
“I’m aware of your past troubles with the federal authorities,” Judge Callen said. “I didn’t realize Paige was involved from the Alameda County DA’s end of things; she never told me.”
“How do you know about me?”
Callen smiled. “I may be retired, but I keep my fingers in the game. The senior superior court judge in Alameda County at the time you ‘brokered a deal’, as you called it, with the federal, state, and county prosecutors, is a protégé of mine. I would call what you ‘brokered’ more like blackmail and less like a deal. Not many legal settlements of that magnitude are negotiated in this county without my knowledge.” He paused for effect. “Then or now.”