Part III Chapter 19. The End of the Beginning

The beginning of this tale started with a phone call from the Fu. Yes, she owned her own phone, a land-line and, fancy that, a cell phone. It was also true that her husband had his own phone and he too had a cell phone. She owned a house on a hill far away and down the coast. Her husband lived with her there but everything belonged to her. She was incredibly wealthy but was not averse to having a bottom-feeder like me as a friend and, for an oh-so brief-moment, as a lover.

All the while I was married I longed for a relationship with a woman that could drink like I did. Celeste was one of those people who’d have a few drinks; wine with dinner, maybe a cocktail or two after dinner, but walked away leaving half a glass when she felt a buzz coming on.  I assumed that this was a character defect of some sort because losing control was what I loved about booze. It seemed to me that her moderation was based on fear of her loss of control. I saw her do that but once in the nine years we were together. It was at her cousin’s wedding that she had one too many glasses of champagne and suddenly developed an English accent. I got a kick out of her bouncing around the reception and interrupting conversations, to talk about merry old London. She never did get good and drunk after that nor had she ever been in merry old England.

Man, that Fu was the first woman I’d ever hooked up with that drank worse than me. Even Nunnie didn’t hit it as hard as the Fu did. The Fu moved into town and bought a house on the Riviera to separate from Nick. He was still with her but their relationship was disintegrating. He spent most of his time going back and forth between Buellton and Santa Barbara, leaving the Fu alone in her place to do as she pleased. My job-site happened to be a remodel on a house just up the hill from hers. After work, I stopped by her house and we messed around in her studio. If I wasn’t in love with her before, I most certainly was in love with her after she bought that house.

Her house was modest by Santa Barbara standards but it was worth more on the market than I could earn if I had fifty working years left. There was a music room with a baby grand and French windows on three sides at the end commanding a view of the city all the way to the Channel Islands. It was full of light, tastefully, and sparsely, decorated. We spent most of our late-night hours in that room. Hardwood floors in all the rooms were covered by distinctive oriental carpets of a unique and simple design. She said that they were Tibetan in origin and I haven’t seen anything the likes of them since then.

The master bedroom upstairs opened up on one side through double doors to her art studio. The other side had French doors that seemed to invite us out onto a balcony for breakfast. We spent considerable time in the studio. I stretched her canvasses, or pounded out poetry on my Remington, while she worked on her jewelry or just stood nude for my appreciative attention as I sketched the contours of her lithe body. Her studio overlooked a terraced garden that arose to a Koi pond midway up towards a raked Zen garden overseen asymmetrically by a huge granite boulder she called “The General.” The whole garden could be seen and appraised best from the studio but, when down there in it, the whole picture revealed itself enticingly like a first-time lover disrobing.

The house drew me in as much as her sleek gymnast’s body. My apartment was a dark and mildewed place and Homer was my only companion most of the time. I tried to stay away but a combination of my reticence, and her fear of getting close enough to be hurt by anyone, drew us together like the opposing poles of a magnet. This last round started one night, after a few hours in Pal’s. We found ourselves in an embrace that ended after a few hours of rolling around in her bed, talking about her marriage and how she loved me and how she’d grown to loathe her Nicky.

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked, hoping for the right answer.

“Max, I love you but I don’t know. I’m confused. I haven’t felt like this about anyone since… oh, I don’t know.” Her eyes darted like sparrows from phantom to phantom across the ceiling as we lay on the bed, twisted in the sheets, sweating from love-making and smoking a bit of herb.

“I want you, Adrienne,” I was surprised at my words and knew that more powerful ones were to follow had she not pressed a hand to his lips.

“Please, Max, I know what you are going to say.” She brought her hand down to his chest. “You have a good heart. I know that you love me but it is useless. I am a … oh, what’s the use? I’m a drunken junkie and can’t have love in my life.”

“What if we quit drinking and help each other?” I was willing to go to any lengths for her; even the suicide of sobriety.

“Oh, yeh, that will work out real well… look at me now. That’s what Nick and I were doing when we got married.”

If a stake were driven through my heart it wouldn’t have been any less painful, “But Adrienne, this is our chance to be real with our feelings.”

“Yes, maybe you are right, Max.” She held me desperately. That embrace was so much like that last embrace from Ariel, I could’ve wept. A horrible knot dammed up inside my throat and chest but still no tears… no release.

“Please, go to sleep, my dear eccentric American friend, my Max.”

Her affection was infused with a passion that faded into the oblivion of slumber.

A nudge pulled my consciousness out from that void. It was the Fu shaking me saying, “Max, wake up. Wake up, Max.” she whispered urgently.

“Uh? Wha…”

“Nicky’s home. He’s downstairs in the music room.”

“Does he know I’m here?” I grumbled. Then the fear, the realization of what she was saying stirred me to full alert.

“I don’t know. I went down to feed the dogs and I saw him sitting there on the couch with that damned pistol. I couldn’t tell if he was awake.” She was out of the bed and putting on a pair of jeans.

“What do you want me to do?” I wasn’t so sure of myself now and wanted nothing more than to be far away from Nick and his forty-five automatic and back in my place with Homer.

“Go, you can get out through the kitchen… go Max, I’ll call you later.” She gathered my briefs and socks from the floor where I’d thrown them. I stepped lightly down the stairs, slipped out through the kitchen and put on my jeans and boots without socks while hiding behind a fern in the garden.

She called that night and it was final. That is where this story had begun. Again, I entered that purgatory of “just friends”. She’d come to my place to smoke a joint and beg some pot to bring to her latest lover… but that was all. She had finally kicked Nick out of the house. Having done so, I harbored some remote hopes. Her pattern of drawing me in and pushing me out had been completed. I was out now and she was getting it on with an ex-Navy SEAL. I had to admit that I couldn’t compete with that.

She was still leading me on by complaining about her Seal, like she had done with her Nicky. She said she was in love with the SEAL but the SEAL wasn’t in love with her. She resorted to espousing nothing but contempt for him but, regardless of her contempt, she still bedded down with him whenever she could.

The SEAL drowned in a diving accident: a yacht had ignored his diving buoy and the propeller cut off his air. She mourned the SEAL like a widow at his beach memorial along with several other women who were in love with him. After he was gone I thought once more that I might have another chance with her but she hooked up with Rod, an unemployed construction worker.

Construction was booming in Santa Barbara at that time and it was impossible to be unemployed unless one’s reputation was shot. That was one of the benefits and curses of a town the size of Santa Barbara in the construction trades. Reputation was everything. If you worked well, showed up when you said you would, fairly conscientious about your work, and maybe even got along with people, you never went without a job unless there were no jobs to be had. If your reputation was like her latest beau, you sat at the bar in Manuel’s all day waiting for a call or someone like the Fu to show up.

She did show up one day and the free loader did move in with her. They started doing heroin together as a way to stem her alcoholism. Two months later she complained to me that she couldn’t get rid of him.

She still wouldn’t have me though she came by to smoke a joint and complain so I asked her, “Am I such a loser that you prefer a free-loading junkie to me?”

She didn’t answer.

I demanded, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Where else was she going to cop her junk?

I should have known. After all, wasn’t she doing exactly what I’d been doing since Celeste packed the Audi and took what was left of me away?

“What are you guarding your heart from, girl?” I turned to the Remington, with my back to her, and put a blank sheet of paper in the roll. I waited to hear the screen door slam and looked out the window to watch her walk away.

I took some time off to go on vacation for a Labor Day annual get-together with family and friends at Priest Lake Idaho. The afternoon before I left for Idaho, the Fu stopped by my place. I saw her coming towards the door with a six pack of beer. She had been crying and, though I’d rarely seen her wearing make-up, her cheeks were streaked with mascara. I let her in the door hoping she would tell me that the Freeloader was out of her place.

“Is he gone?”

“Who?” She said as she passed me an imported beer. She drank imports but I had no use for paying more for anything I was just going to piss away. Still, I appreciated the gesture.

“Rod, the Freeloader.” I was getting impatient with her and was ready to get rolling. The van, I’d dubbed, Furthurmore, was packed and Homer was already boarded at the Cat Palace.

“Oh, him,” She sat on my couch and cracked a beer.  “Yes, he is still at my house. When he isn’t at Manuel’s, he’s drinking my vodka, smoking my pot, shooting my dope, and eating my food.”

“So, why is he still with you?” I could taste the bile rising in my throat and washed it back down with a sip of beer. This crap was getting old. My heart was breaking with the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do about her bullshit and that I was doomed to forever being the sounding board for whatever jerk had put his hooks in her.

“He is like a fungus… a parasite.” She spat out in disgust.

“Well, the parasite has found a host in you,” I countered.

She bent her head down and sobbed but there was something I sensed was fraudulent about her remorse.

I continued, “I wouldn’t be so upset with you had you not rejected me for someone I could respect but… to take up with… with this sad excuse for a man… this toy-boy!”

She motioned, patting the cushion, for me to sit next to her on the couch. I cursed myself for following her summons. I put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head to my chest, “Fu, you know I love you and you know I care for you more than anything…”

“I know, please stop saying that…” she put her forefinger to her lips, “Shhh…,” and nuzzled closer into my chest.

Her affection stirred my longing but it also cemented my resolve, knowing she would pull back as soon as the hunger gripped her.

I threw down the gauntlet, “I can’t take this any longer. I’m leaving for Idaho in an hour and, when I come back, he has to be out. You have to choose.”

“But, Max, whatever I choose, it won’t be you.”

“Then take your imported beer, your spoiled brat impulses… take ‘em out my door and leave me alone,” I tugged her by the arm off the couch, picked up the six-pack, and towed her to the door.

She turned towards me. Our lips met. I jerked away. She cried out, “Max, don’t do this. You know I love you but I can’t be with you.”

“Then good-bye Fu. It has been Hell knowing you.” I broke away from her and closed the door.

I watched her walk out to her car, “Why GAWD, why do you put these women in my face only to have them ripped away?”

I hadn’t really cared one way or another about any woman after I’d packed my little Ariel and the dogs into the Audi to be driven away by Celeste over a decade ago. This was the one time I’d given my heart so completely to anyone since then. To suffer the indignity of having it stomped on and trashed was more than I could handle. I was prepared for the run to Idaho and hoped to sort things out… to get my priorities straight on the long ribbon of asphalt.

Before I met the Fu I felt my soul had been a roach that prowled in the dark for a scrap of hope and scurried away, back into hidden crevasses, from the light. Now that I had laid my heart bare, the Fu stepped on it as though I was the cockroach an annoying and insignificant bug... and, in the vocabulary of the exterminator, a pest.

Chapter 17. A Rude Awakening

Less than an hour later a knock on my door brought me out of a good nap after a tiring ordeal. The door was open a crack.

A plainclothes cop that stood on the stoop pushed the door open, “Police: Are you Max McGee?”

“Yeh?” sitting up, I wiped my eyes.

“Officer Ryan, do I have your permission to come in?” he flashed his badge.

“Sure,” I put on a shirt.

“Do you know why we’re here?”

‘I have a good idea,” I wondered what kind of story she’d told, “but not exactly.”

“Does Beatrice Brenner live here?”

“No, I just kicked her out today.” I was still a little buzzed from a few hours ago and had to clear my head.

“How long did she live here?” Ryan asked.

A young rookie; in uniform, who’d followed Officer Ryan in the door, was scanning the room looking around for evidence. He spotted the tomato soup that had spilled over some papers during our ruckus. “There some blood here,” he pointed out to Ryan.

Ryan could see the bowl turned over, “Tomato soup?”

I assured the Rookie, “Yeh, she spilled it last night.”

“Can you tell me, in your words, what happened?”

“Sure,” I wondered, who else’s words were going to come out of my mouth? But I disregarded that tautological blunder because I wanted to get this right, knowing it would all go into the report. I thought that if I explained it Ryan would just go arrest Bea and they’d be done with it. I told him about the bruises and the stab wound as Officer Rookie looked over the knife she had pulled.

“When was the last time you two had sex?” Ryan skipped to the meat of the matter.

“Let’s see. Today is Saturday? … Two, maybe three nights ago.” I counted on my fingers, “Yeh, Thursday, I was too tired after work and went to bed early… no, it was Wednesday night.”

“How about last night?” his eyes riveted… reading my face… but not to intimidate… they were asking, what really happened?

“I told you already that she didn’t come home ‘til three in the morning. I made her sleep on the couch after she pulled that knife…”

“This knife?” Officer Rookie probed, slipping it into an evidence bag.

“Yeh, that knife, Officer Rookie.” I read the name on the rookie’s name tag, Dan Richards, “I mean Richards.”

“Did you at any time have physical contact with Miss Brenner?” Ryan asked.

“Yeh, I had to take the knife from her?” I explained.

“And did you stab her with it?” Officer Richards asked as though he was talking to a child.

Richards was really starting to get on my nerves. “No, I told you, she came in the door already banged-up with a stab wound on her shoulder.”

“And you haven’t had sex with her since last night?” Richards continued with an air of pompous righteousness most experienced cops won’t display.

“Wednesday, not last night, damnit!” I glared at Richards.

“That wasn’t last night but did you have any physical contact with her today?” Ryan was an experienced detective and his tone was non-committal.

I knew Ryan was fishing and I was going to be hooked if I wasn’t careful. Still, I was getting impatient and could see this interview wasn’t going well for me, “And it was fucking Wednesday, fa-Chrissakes! And, see that broken window? She did that and I had to push her from my door.”

Rookie sneered when he asked, “How hard did you push her, hard enough to bang her up?”

“I told you, she already had the bruises,” I sighed. I was resigned to whatever was going to happen.

“But you did push her?” Ryan asked again.

“Yeh, but I didn’t,” I mildly protested, knowing there was nothing I could say that would get me out of this mess… it would have to run its course.

“Please step outside with us, Mr. McGee,” Ryan sighed.

I stepped out the door and Officer Ryan put the cuffs on me.

Rookie read the Miranda rights from a card and I was put in the back seat of the squad car.

“What are the charges?”

Richards said flatly, “You are being charged with spousal abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and rape.”

“Rape?”

Ryan turned to look me in the eye, “Yeh, sorry Max, I have to. It’s the law. She’s claiming it and I’ve seen her do this at least a-half-dozen times. If I were to choose between the two of you… well, it is always the same. She moves in with some sucker and… you know the rest.”

“If you know that, then why am I in cuffs?”

“Once the charges are made and, if there is any evidence whatsoever, we have to make the arrest. You should have protected yourself by filing a restraining order first thing today.”

“I had a hunch,” I realized that she would have access to my place as we were pulling out of the driveway. “Say, can you guys stop a minute so I can get my wallet and tell my neighbor to padlock my door? I don’t want her getting back in there… my wallet is…”

“No, but you’ll most likely be out by tonight if you don’t have any warrants… and the judge will throw your case out once he sees it is about Beatrice Brenner.” He added apologetically, “the rape charges will be dropped because she refused a semen swab at the E.R.” Ryan went back to writing his report and Rookie drove to County Jail. I learned something that day about the criminal justice system.

I learned to never say anything hoping to keep from going to jail. Don’t say a word without a lawyer present because jail is the destination anyway.

A concrete pour was scheduled for the next week and I didn’t want to miss it. My boss told me, after I was hired on regular, that once I started working for him, I wouldn’t be fired unless I missed a concrete pour.

The law, the police, the custody officers, the DA, or the courts don’t care about things like concrete pours. They’re primarily concerned about convictions. Time is irrelevant to them and, whether you are Charlie Manson or as innocent as Baby Jesus, it is a meat-grinder and it just plain doesn’t matter at all. You might lose your gig, or your digs, over a false accusation, but it doesn’t matter what happens to you. It doesn’t matter to them and they lose no sweat over it if you are cut loose or sent up shit-creek. The meat-grinder will take away the paddle, and canoe, to chalk you up on their scorecard either way.

The bench warrants from the Juan Carlos action came up so I couldn’t be released on O.R.

It was the week of the Bronco chase scene with O.J. and, when my mates in the cellblock asked me what I was in for, I just answered, “I did O.J.’s ole lady.”

They didn’t ask any questions after that.

Monday morning, I was taken down by bus to the courthouse. That day I waited in a holding cell all day without being called. One Banger, covered with West Side Boys tats, stuck out his tongue for my benefit to show his pierced tongue adorned with a diamond stud. He boasted, “See, I kept this… got past them with it.”

Getting past the booking search with such contraband was his way of putting it to the system. But, hell, by this time I could see where any impotent gesture would give a Banger the illusion of power against the castrating clockwork of the institution.

Letting the Banger know I recognized his tats, I asked him, “You know Bea Brenner?”

“Oh, yeh, I know her. We grew up together, eh? What, you know her?”

“Yeh, she had me busted.”

“I bet it was rape, huh?’ he wagged his head ever so slightly appraising me and said, “You know, that girl used to be a fox, man. She still looks good but you should have seen her back in her prime.”

I didn’t want to hear any more of her and wondered whether this, jailhouse-buffed West Side Boy, might feel obligated by his gang colors to get even for her sake.

“Hey, don’t worry, you’ll get cut loose. She’s pulled this shit before. They all know her… know what I mean.”

At this point I was more concerned about dealing with the Banger than the courts but his friendly assurance did offer me some respite on both accounts.

We were marched down in a file from the bus in chains to the courthouse where I could breathe the fresh air and hope… hope for what? Then have that hope crushed on the way back to the bus?

Back in jail, in time to be filed down to the mess hall, I sat at the table staring at my meal. The Banger offered, “Hey, Max, what? You don’t want any of this shit?” I let him scrape the shit onto his tray. I knew that, after a period of time, the chow would be agreeable to me… but not then. What the hell, I’d made a friend at any rate.

The night passed ever so slowly as I lay on the bunk. I had this urge to pray but   couldn’t think of what to pray. I knew that one of those jailhouse deals, “Get me out of here, God, and I will do whatever…,” wouldn’t do. I wondered, my life had been up and down but I hadn’t been this low in years. Even when I was homeless I’d always felt I had a chance. What kind of strange karma had me perpetually spinning my wheels? The debate was on between my ears as I’d think about all the times I’d gotten so close to having a life of meaning I could be proud of. Then, as I thought my mind would spiral down. I’d get pissed at whatever this God business was about for causing things like this to happen to me. The thought that came immediately after that one was, shit; this is all your own doing, drugs, booze, and chasing pussy.  Marley’s and Celeste’s words about my luck nagged at me, “but you always manage to fuck it up.”

Morning finally came and the jailhouse dogs were filed down to the bus again. My name was one of the first called for arraignment. The judge pulled out a big file and thumbed through it before he read the charges out loud to the stenographer. I heard the words rape and spousal abuse… assault or something like that. After hearing the word rape, I couldn’t focus on what was being read. I was asked if I could afford a lawyer and was told I’d be assigned a public defender and sent back to the holding cell to wait the rest of the day. Returning to jail on that damned bus hooked up in chains crushed what was left of my spirit.

There was no hope left for me. I’d probably lost my job and apartment, as well as my freedom. I’d gone a few days without a drink and everything was fine along those lines but the depression was unbearable. I thought back to that day when I’d prayed before Laura showed up out of the blue. How much of a coincidence was that? I looked around the cellblock where everyone seemed to be asleep. What would happen if I got on my knees and prayed? It wasn’t all that dark and I was sure to be seen. What the hell, I might as well… from the top bunk? What would it hurt to at least make the gesture, get on my knees up there? It would work or it wouldn’t. George Carlin once said that all prayers are a fifty-fifty proposition. The answer is yes or no… the odds are… would it matter to God if I was on the floor or prone on my bunk?

“I don’t see a way out of this one, Big Guy. Have it your way. I’ll go along with it. I just need somebody to help, some more direction here.” I tucked in and fell asleep.

The Sheriff’s bus ride downtown was the usual noisy affair. Jail as a whole is, in fact, a noisy affair. The concrete and steel all around amplifies the noises of the inmates and guards. Everyone is either yelling or a TV is on full blast. The only quiet comes a few precious hours at night. I was led into the holding cell and just sat down when I was called and led to a closet-sized room with a window separating me from a guy with receding hair and frayed jacket over his blue shirt and yellow tie. He had a file in his hand and he looked as though he would rather be at home in bed than shuffling papers for one plea bargain after another all day.

He read the charges before he said anything, “So, how are you Mr. McGee?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Peeking over his cheap reading glasses he introduced himself, “I’m Jeffrey Connelly, Mr. McGee, I’ll be representing you.”

I raised a hand towards him as though I was going to shake hands but stopped, mildly embarrassed, at forgetting a glass barrier separated us, “Okay, good, can we get going on this?”

“Do you know the charges against you?”

“Vaguely,” I wanted badly to get this interview over with and get on with the court proceedings, “but we have a concrete pour on our job site this week and I need to be there.”

“The good news is that the rape charges have been dropped and…”

“Great, then, can I just plead guilty to the rest… or you could plea them down to the lowest… er, you know… to minor charges? Maybe I can do community service or weekends for my jail-time… anything… I’ll take anything to get out of here.”

“Are you kidding? These are still serious charges.” Looking down at the file opened in his hand he looked worried, “You know that spousal abuse and assault with a deadly weapon can send you to prison?”

What I’d been told sank in after a few minutes. I’d been so worn down by the anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen, and so worried about stupid shit like my job and apartment, that I was ready to cop any plea just to get it over with. I remembered the prayer from the night before as a surge of confidence welled up, “Yeh, you’re right, counselor, I’m not guilty,” then I added, “but, in all honesty, I’m may not be entirely innocent.”

“I hope you don’t mean that last bit.”

“I do mean it.”

“That is why I’m going to do the talking when we go before the Judge,” Jeff said. His tone was stern enough to convince me that he knew more than I did about how to navigate through the courts. We parted and I went back to the holding cell.

With that understood, we went before the Judge by late afternoon. The changes in the charges were cause for more consultation and the assistant DA requested that the arraignment was postponed ‘til the next day. The Assistant DA was a hard-looking woman whose three-piece suite made her look determined enough to send this rapist off to the Graybar Hotel and Spa for as long as she could.

The attorney and I met in that glass partitioned cubicle afterwards, “May I call you Max?”

“Sure, if I can call you Jeff.” I was still miffed that I wasn’t on the streets already. “Man, you can just call me screwed if I don’t get back to that job site.”

“Don’t worry, I had a talk with your boss and he said that the concrete pour was delayed until you get back.” His grin was disturbing. It bordered on glee.

“Whew, that takes a load off my mind.” I was beginning to think this guy was alright… like it wasn’t just another case to plea bargain down.  “Did you talk to my landlord and neighbor, Teddy?... he saw everything.”

“Yes, Mr. Larson says you were the sole occupant of the apartment and your neighbor witnessed most of it.” I became more relaxed, “You have people backing you on this. Miss Brenner was seen at Jon’s with a known gang member that night. She even tried to cash in the Greyhound ticket at the Sportsman. You have a lot of cab drivers, waitresses, and bartenders, for friends. Your story checks out.”

“Thanks.”

My throat constricted and I tried to hold my face but a tear betrayed the mask.

The next day I was with a couple other inmates in a row of chairs behind a glass partitioned room where I listened to the assistant DA make an offer to reduce the charge of assault with a deadly weapon, assault and battery to misdemeanors. She kept the charge of felony spousal abuse on the table. We refused that offer. The assistant DA consulted with another attorney from her office and came back with an offer to reduce the drop the deadly weapon charges keeping the assault and battery but insisted on the felony spousal abuse.

Jeff said something about how the fact that they are backing off might mean they will take a misdemeanor charge on the spousal abuse. I was getting some vigor back and contended, “Besides the fact that I didn’t do it, she wasn’t even my spouse. She’d only lived in my place a few weeks”

Another round came after lunch break. The judge consulted with the assistant D.A. … and Jeff. The judge looked perturbed and the assistant D.A. scowled indignantly all the way back to her desk. She then determined to drop the spousal abuse and reduce the rest to drunk in public.

Jeff refused the offer saying that there was nothing in Detective Ryan’s police report saying that I had been drinking and, had I been drinking, I was in my home and not in public at the time of my arrest.

The Judge called the opposing attorneys to the bench and after a few minutes sent them back. Speaking to the assistant DA he said, “For all of this, I don’t see a crime here.”

Looking at me for the first time he called for me to stand, “Though I don’t see a crime I do see an incredible lack of judgment on your part Mr. McGee.” He shuffled some papers around on the top the file he was holding, “You have a bench warrant for failure to complete sentencing… at, let’s see here, Zona Seca? three years ago? Is this true Mr. McGee?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why didn’t you complete the sentence?”

“I lost my job and had no way to pay for it. I was homeless until three months ago.” That was all I could have said because it was true.

“For failure to complete your sentence you are sentenced to a year in county Jail. But, with consideration for time served, the sentence is extended another three years’ probation for that time and during that time you are to have no contact with Miss Brenner. Is that agreeable to you, Mr. McGee?”

There was more but it was all blah… blah… blah to me from there on. I was free and that was all that mattered to me.

Chapter 16. Greyhound Soup

After midnight the Shadow People
are on the move and out of sight...

Major trouble did come along… in spades.

Jimbo had quit driving a hack and left town a few months after my stand-off with Juan Carlos. While passing through he stopped by for a few days. Jimbo was the only man I would allow on my couch by then. Having been at Pal’s all day, I had a load goin’. I’d just gotten home when Jimbo knocked on the door. It was an occasion for breaking out a bottle of Jack Daniels as we caught up on stuff.

“Say, you’re doin’ some writin’?” Jimbo pulled a sheet of paper from the roll of the Remington.

“I just pound out a few words here and there. Had a gig once.”

“You told me about Nicaragua. Not bad,” Jimbo read and added, “You oughta publish this shit. Make some money.”

“Say, speaking of cash. I have a day labor job I’m supposed to be at in the morning. They need a-half-dozen hands on the job and it’s good for about a week.”

“Shit, Max. Day labor? What about your back?” Jimbo was aware that I received a VA disability check for a back injury from way back but he knew nothing about the gut wound.

“That’s what my bottomless script for Codeine Tylenol is for.” I knew I could get through one day if the job wasn’t that hard. “Gotta crash now if you want to try it.”

Jimbo and I got to the job site that morning, two sheets to the wind, and were put to work digging out a nine-foot-deep hole through hardpan and boulders for footings. It was hot out of the hole and hotter in it. The booze was flushed out by sweat through our pores and the grime and dust of our labor. It was the hardest eight hours I had ever worked since I was a teen. All the other laborers slacked off when the foreman was out of sight but Jimbo and I swung our picks and shovels with everything we had in us.

John, the head carpenter on the job, approached us after we’d been paid, “You two want to come back tomorrow? We could use a couple of workers like you.”

“No way,” Jimbo started to turn the offer down.

“Sure, we’ll be here.” I interrupted.

Jimbo lasted a few more days in that hole and left for L.A. while I stayed on. The one week turned into two and two into three. I became a permanent member of the crew working on several job sites with John. Happily, for me I was in my own place for the first time in over a decade and had a regular paycheck. I was no longer subject to paying a weekly rate at the Virginia Hotel and no longer couch-surfing.

My place was a rundown hovel by anyone else’s standards. Nothing was up to par with the building codes. The roof leaked and the drain to the kitchen sink was permanently clogged by something too far down the line for a snake to clear it. If I used the kitchen sink, the grey-water dumped into a five-gallon bucket under the open drain. But it was my castle and I was going to defend it from there on. From then on until, along came a Trojan horse named Beatriz.

Bea had been shacking as a Care-Giver next door with my neighbor, Bobby, who’d suffered a stroke and couldn’t even wash himself. I was to learn through Bea that there was a whole industry in Santa Barbara of so called Care-Givers. I was to discover that this bottom feeding industry was run by Social Services but, from what I gleaned from Bea, it would have been more aptly called Care Predators. The people that were hired were paid a little over minimum wage but enhanced their paychecks by extorting; jewelry, cash, and whatever they could, from their victims. Of course, they siphoned off whatever they could get by with from the stock of pharmaceuticals prescribed to their wards. These parasites preyed on disabled seniors having no mental capacity or physical ability to object to their treatment. This was done so discretely I only had an inkling of what was going on next door.

Bea was among a group of these people that were orchestrated by Papa Joe. Papa Joe was an old-school gangster who had mentored kids from the West Side in his business enterprises for quite a while. He just figured this racket was a safer one than dealing coke and damned near legal although he didn’t shy from moving a few kilos of coke for personal use and sales among friends… his West Side Bangers. Papa Joe’s folks could be called a gang but they didn’t wear colors. No, they could be seen wheeling their wards to doctor’s appointments and welfare offices. They didn’t wear baggies or hoodies.  They dressed neatly in street clothes that covered their tats, drawing little attention to themselves and to make a good show at the agencies in order to insure that the checks kept coming.

The day was soon coming when Bobby had to be moved to a convalescent home and Beatriz would have to find a new ward. I shared the bath and hallway with Bobby so, with that link to familiarity, I had become friendly with Bea. She had previously introduced herself as Beatriz.

“Are you the Beatrice of Dante’s affection?” I kidded.

“You know Dante? He’s doing time in Soledad,” she answered, oblivious to the literary reference. “We had a thing goin’ years ago but, say, how’d you know about him?”

“It was a joke. Where are you going to go now that Bobby’s gone?” I asked, not wanting to know except to make conversation. She was wearing only a bath-robe and I was thinking that maybe I’d offer a bed a night or two for a little of that yabba-yum she barely hid under the robe.

“Joke? I don't get it. My mom lives in Santa Maria but I have friends,” she paused, letting the robe open ever so little to reveal some skin. She smiled a cute little whore smile… “Say, you look like you could use a haircut, I can cut your hair for ya’ if ya’ want.”

“Sure, how much? How much do you charge?”

“I usually get twenty bucks… but, I’ll cut yours for ten.”

“Whew, ten bucks.” I hadn’t had a female touch in a while and Master Libido encouraged me to get bold, “Ten bucks would get a sailor a haircut and blowjob in Olongapo.” I didn’t care how she responded to that suggestion.

“What’s Olongapo? Sure, I’ll blow your… what, longa-pole?”

She moved in with me that night. It didn’t matter one way of another to me at the time. Since I’d been jilted by Nadya it seemed that I would never get laid again if I didn’t take whatever came along. Remember Nadya? The affair with her started my blue balled experiences.

Bea was in the place but a few days when she began tidying up everything while I was at work. She acquired new sheets and a comforter for the bed. She even got pillow covers and little doilies for the ragged arms of the couch. She’d apparently taken most of this stuff from Bobby’s place, or wherever else she could plunder. But I didn’t mind it at all that she did all this domestication business. She even washed all the dishes in Bobby’s vacated apartment’s sink. This newfound activity inspired me to hook up a grey-water line out from the sink to a row of rose bushes in front of the place.

I began wondering about the girl, however, as we got to know each other. I knew of Papa Joe from my cab driving days. I knew of the coke dealing and how Papa Joe always had a group of young women hanging out at his house on the West Side, some of whom I knew to be turning tricks. A good graveyard cab driver in those days had to know where to find drugs or whores for fares and Papa Joe’s was a one-stop-shop for those purposes.

Santa Barbara was a curious little city in those days… just big enough to be called a city but run by a small town police force and city council. You could be sitting, after the bars closed, in a booth next to where the mayor had coffee and made deals at Carrow’s. In the booth on the other side would be the president of the local Bikers gang making other kinds of deals.

Besides the bikers, who controlled most of the drug traffic in the bars, Santa Barbara had two other gangs sharing territory in a couple of the Mexican taverns like Los Conchos or mixed bars like the Mecca: they were the West Side Boys and the East Side Boys. The Crips, or the Bloods, (not sure which) had a little action but most of the black community was moving to Lompoc or Oxnard in that period of transition for our fair town. Mexico and the local home-boys were taking over what they’d left.

I started to get the point that Bea was not an ex-gang member but an active West Side, i.e., a Papa Joe, girl. Sometimes, when on State street, we’d run into some of her pals from the West Side Boys and I’d catch her flashing signs. I could’ve overlooked it had I not been getting put-off by her mildly gansta appearance too; i.e., penciled in eyebrows and gaudy make-up. I’d accepted being seen in public with her though I caught her lifting a pair of ear-rings in one of State street shops. I called her on it after we left the store, “Hey, you want to get us busted?”

“It’s just shop-lifting, no big deal, white boy,” She sneered. “A misdemeanor at worst. I’d only get a month or two shacking up with a big dyke in County for that.”

“Yeh, well, I have a bench warrant out for me and I can’t afford to even chat-up a cop.”

I hadn’t completed the judge’s order to go to Zona Seca for the Juan Carlos show and I thought I would have had to do up to three years in County Jail if I was ever busted for anything. Needless to say, I stayed low key, figuring I would eventually straighten out that mess. I would regret mentioning my situation all too soon. But, regardless, someday never seemed to come around and I never did straighten it out until it was too late.

She’d been in my place a few weeks when I’d also begun noticing a few dollars missing from my wallet. My phone bill came and I found that she’d run up eighty bucks in calls to Sacramento, Santa Maria, Bakersfield and Fresno while I was at work… and that was in her first week. I didn’t say anything at first; but, when I started missing twenties and tens, I confronted her about it.

She shrugged her shoulders, “My cousin was in trouble. It was an emergency… a family emergency. I had to call around.”

“What about my cash? Every time I open my wallet a twenty or a ten is missing.”

“Oh, I took a buck or two for … you know, for household expenses. But I didn’t take no twenties.” she put on a belligerent face.

I was getting laid but loathed seeing her in my place when I got home after a hard day of digging holes and hauling timbers across the yard. No, Bea was not Dante’s Beatrice by any means. One night, a week after I caught her lifting bills from my wallet, she didn’t come home until after three. She stumbled in the door, stripped off her clothes and tried to get in bed with me. I pushed her out of bed and turned on the light. She had a black-eye, bruised arms and ribs, accented by a puncture wound from a knife on her shoulder.

“Where’ve you been. Who the fuck did this to you?” I demanded.

She was mute… Didn’t say a thing… very drunk… She tried to pull me back in bed. She was drunk alright… she knocked over a bowl of tomato soup I’d half finished before going to bed. I wasn’t sure what to do.

I held her by both shoulders, “You can sleep on the couch until you’re ready to tell me what happened.”

She squirmed out from my grasp and pulled a long knife out of the drawer. “You get away from me or I will fuckin’ stick you!”

I stood in front of her, lifted my T-shirt and, called her bluff.  I made her an offer, “Go ahead, do it if you have the guts.”

“I’ll do it, I swear. You’re fucked… you have a bench warrant… I’ll tell the cops you stabbed me first!” she put a hand on her wound.

“You’d snitch me out on a lie? For what?” I’d never felt so helpless. The idea was so vile and incredible I was stunned. She was drunk enough that grabbing the knife wasn’t all that hard.  I snatched it away, “You can stay on the couch tonight but you have to leave first thing in the morning.”

She passed out.

Bea was on the couch snoring loudly when I woke up. It was Saturday morning so I put on a pot of coffee as I always did and, after it brewed, I shook her awake. She sat up looking a mess with a sheet wrapped around her. Giving her a mug of coffee I asked, “Are you going to tell me how that happened,” pointing at her bruises, “or, where you were last night?”

I hoped that maybe she might be clearer about it by then and given me some answers. But she covered herself and put on that belligerent face again, “You did it. Don’t you remember?”

“What do you mean?” I pulled back the sheet, exposing her shoulder and fresh knife wound, “you came in at three all bruised up with that.” I said as calmly as I could.

“With what?” she glanced at her wound, “Oh, that.”

“Yeh, that,” I was getting impatient. Either she couldn’t remember or she was feigning a black-out.

“You did that.” She parried defiantly.

I couldn’t tell if she believed herself or not but I couldn’t let her stay, “I want you out of here by the time I get back. I’m getting you a bus ticket to Santa Maria and it’s sayonara baby.”

I bought a ticket at the Greyhound and went back to the place without stopping at Pal’s. It was a Saturday morning and I sorely needed a drink but wanted to get rid of her a.s.a.p.

She was gone when I got home and I was relieved because I didn’t need to deal with her any longer than possible. I hurried about, collecting her things and putting them in a spare piece of thrift-store suitcase I’d never used. I kept padlocks around for such emergencies and locked the door to the shared bathroom as well as the front door. You never know, she might have made a copy of my keys. Just in case she returned while I was out she wouldn’t be able to get in. Leaving the suitcase on the stoop, I pinned a post-it note to it reading; “Bea, I’ll be gone all day.  Your bus ticket is at Pal’s. I’ll leave it with the bartender. DO NOT come back here.”

I knocked on the door of my neighbor upstairs to let him know what went down and that he should call the police if she should show up. I took off for Pal’s for a well-deserved shot of Jack and more than few bottles of Bud.

I always stopped by the Farmers Market on Saturdays to bring some red gladiolas for Claire. These crimson flaming stalks colored up the bar and kept me in good standing with her no matter what.

“So, how’s lover boy doing with his little gangsta?” She wasn’t smiling. She was protective of me and any woman that she saw as dangerous merited her fair warning. Whenever I’d been on a roll for bad choices, she’d given me notice before each disaster. I hadn’t seen her this adamant about my choices since Nadya.

“Claire, if you can do this for me… can you hold this ticket for Bea if she comes in. I don’t want to talk to her if I’m here,” I passed the envelope to her; “know what I mean?”

“This calls for a celebration, Max.” she mixed a woo-woo for herself, passing a snifter of Glen Livet and a bottle of beer over to me, “It’s on me, buddy.”

I told her all about what had gone down the night before and how I’d bought the Greyhound ticket to send her off.

“Did you get a restraining order?” she asked when I finished.

“No. Don’t want to deal with cops, I still have a bench warrant for that Juan Carlos bit.”

“It doesn’t matter, you should get one anyway,” she was experienced with these things and I should have listened.

Bea had been at the place before I got back. The suitcase was still on the porch with the note missing. I should have stayed at the bar but how could I have known what would be coming down. I’d only been home a few minutes when she tried barging in the door.

“What are you doing here, bitch!” I stood, blocking her way.

“This is my place now, you’d better get goin’, Max! I’m having you arrested for raping and stabbing me,” she put her belligerent face on at full force.

“You’re joking. I already told a dozen witnesses about your scheme.” I pushed her out the door and closed it. Glass shards from the door’s window came flying in with the suitcase lodged in the window frame. She pushed in the door and I pushed back while trying to use the phone to call the cops.

She fell to the ground. Holding up her elbow with a slight scrape, she shouted back, “That’s spousal abuse, gimme that phone, I’m callin’ the cops.”

My neighbor, Jack, was leaning on the railing at the top of the stairs that went up the back of the house above the place.

“Don’t worry, Max, I saw everything. I’ll back you on this.” He was grinning, “Hell, every cop in town knows her action.”

She spun around and stomped away.

Thinking better of it, I put the phone down, pulled the suitcase out of the window frame, and shouted after her, “Hey, you left your suitcase!”

Spreading out on the couch, I fell asleep… proud of defending my castle and thinking that this was the end of it.