Flood Abatement Read online

  Rhonda spoke from the doorway behind him. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Oh, God.” This morning he had started out his 2,894th day clean and sober. Well, at least he knew he hadn’t fallen off the wagon, he’d been thrown under the wheels. Still, he would try. “Let me think. Ah, no.” But, Rhonda Lapinski was heroin.

  “I’m sorry that ….”

  “Rhonda, why don’t you just stay the hell away from me?” Bernie looked at the coffeemaker and did that little trick where he pulled the pot out and let the liquid flow right into his cup. Good, didn’t spill much.

  “I … I didn’t know you worked for Sam. But, I’m not sure that would’ve made a difference.”

  “Leave me alone. You’ve been good at doing that. Why don’t you just keep it up?” He plucked the mug from the machine and replaced the pot. The first sip burned his mouth, but he needed the coffee - black and strong and the smell and the wonderful biting taste. Gotta update that resume.

  He knew that if he so much as glanced at her in that white silk blouse and taupe bellbottoms he’d turn to stone, or maybe jello. With a death grip on his coffee mug, he walked right past her. She was blonder than she used to be. How long would it be before the bank repossessed his car?

  “I need your help.”

  He turned toward her. Death, death, run away! She looked good, no wonderful. Better than the last time he’d seen her. More polished, better clothes, less makeup. A lotta money goes a long way. “No, you may need help, but you don’t need my help.” Her face was lovely - mostly symmetrical, on the long side, the jaw tapered to a square chin and the mouth was too wide.

  “Bernie, I wouldn’t have looked for you.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Now that I know you’re here, I think you are exactly the man to help.”

  He smiled and looked down. Fight! Fight! “No thanks, Miss Lapinski. You are an extraordinarily dangerous person to help.” Yeah! Victory!

  She seemed startled by a memory and the corners of her mouth sagged out of a smile. That didn’t stop her. “It’s my grandmother.”

  Sweet baby Jesus. She had him. He’d known Rhonda and her grandmother since they were ten. Run! Run now! You can make it to the door! He liked the old woman. Damn it. Run! Stop thinking. On top of it, if his mother found out that he didn’t helped Nana, she’d kick his ass. Nooo! He touched the knot of his brown tie. It felt greasy.

  In a pointless effort by the condemned to delay the unavoidable, he stopped at the receptionist’s desk to pick up his messages before entering the conference room.

  Without looking up from her typewriter Helen handed him six pink slips. “Your mother called.”

  Bernie stiffened ever so slightly in a way that he hoped Helen didn’t notice. “Okay, thanks.” A single bead of sweat trickled down form his left armpit.

  “She said you should call her if you came in before nine, otherwise after four.”

  The pain was like a needle being stuck between his shoulder blades. Man, oh man, he was thirty-two. He should not have to lie to his mother about the hours he kept. Get a grip.

  No reason to hurry. The Milwaukee Sentinel on her desk blazed the headline “New York Blacked Out.” He pointed at it. “What do you think of that?”

  Helen turned and glanced over her reading glasses. “Can’t be any fun, but I’ve got plenty of my own problems to worry about.”

  Bernie nodded. Okay, good. Maybe that attitude of forgiveness would help the Bar Association look leniently on his activities. He would think positively. After all, the only people who knew about the contribution to the judge’s campaign weren’t likely to talk.

  Procrastinate. There was a grease spot on his sleeve. He rubbed the tan fabric.

  “Hey, Bernie. Some time this year,” Rhonda said from the conference room door as she went inside.

  As her cousin Sam entered, he adjusted the thin, gold bar under the knot of his French tie. “Rhonda, we don’t have to use Bernie.”

  She smiled over her tented fingers. “No, we’ve had a little talk and I definitely want him.”

  Sam looked at Bernie slumped in a chair. “You sure?”

  “Oh, yes.” She turned her chair to face Bernie. “Because I know he’ll give a damn.”

  “What do you think?” Sam twisted his gold pinky ring.

  Bernie stared back at her. “Sure, why not?”

  Sam nodded and touched a turquoise cuff-link. He guessed that if this arrangement didn’t work out he’d get to defend one of them for murder. “Okay, could you go over the situation again, Rhonda, but this time with all the details?”

  She kept her gaze fixed on Bernie as she began her tale. He looked out the window.

  When she finished Rhonda stood with her arms crossed, breathing smoke. “So that’s it. Whose ass do I get to kick?”

  Sam smiled his most lawyerly smile. “I’m glad to see you’ve calmed down some.”

  Bernie wiped his glasses with a tissue. It was a good story and she told it well. The outside might be more polished, but inside she was the same old Rhonda. He held the specs up to the light. A really good lie has lots of truth in it, but the most dangerous parts are those left unsaid.

  Chapter 7

  The Stoutman brothers, Todd and Jake, worked on a case of lukewarm Olympia and planned their bow-hunting trip while they drove up the two-lane canyon road in their low pressure gas delivery truck. Three-quarters of a mile up the canyon, they turned off into a large cul de sac where four identical cottages had been built in the late thirties. Jake gunned the truck around the gravel road and honked the horn at old lady Masters, the only year round resident. He stood on the accelerator as the old truck fishtailed over the lawn toward the gas storage tank behind Knickerbocker Smith’s place. Jake swerved to avoid a pine tree and bounced the truck off a corner of the clapboard cabin before they stopped.

  He walked back to see if there was any damage to the building. The truck and cottage traded paint where a pipe came out of the ground and entered the cottage.

  Todd opened the passenger door and put his foot on the top of the tank. Flipping up the fill cap cover he said, “Cheap little asshole didn’t even pop for one of those new safety valves,” and began to laugh. “Hey pop, valve, get it.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” mumbled Jake. “Get out the adapter so we can fill this thing and get to huntin’.”

  Todd reached behind the seat for a pipe wrench and proceeded to put the safety adapter on the old style filler valve. “Wouldn’t even pay the one-hundred and eighty-four bucks to have this tank fixed.”

  “Yeah, I got it the first time.”

  Sweating heavily, Todd got the adapter onto the rusty tank. “Hand me the hose and I’ll fill’er up.”

  Todd continued the conversation about hunting while Jake opened the valve on the truck. As the tank filled, Todd brought out two beers, mentioned that it was taking longer than usual to fill the tank, then shifted the conversation to last night’s events at the Dew Drop Inn and Ellen Morgan. Todd reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

  “Christ,” said his brother. “Don’t light that here.”

  “Course not. What do you think I am, a dummy?” Todd walked over to the cottage, sat down against the wall, lit his cigarette and disappeared in a ball of orange flame. The shock wave blew out every window of the remaining three cottages. The high wind blowing up the canyon fanned the flames and eliminated the rest.

  Chapter 8

  When Nick pulled up, a sheriff’s car blocked the turnoff to his canyon road in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From inside his car he could smell and taste the smoke. Outside he shielded his eyes from the dust as he questioned the deputy standing next to a squad. “What’s goin’ on? I have to get up to my place.”

  “In a little while, sir. The fire fighters are just packing up. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours.”

  “Whose place is burning? How’d it start?”

  “I don’t know, but old Mrs. Masters saw it all. She’s over in the ot
her car.” The deputy pointed to an antique Jeep with Kaiser stamped on the tailgate. Nick’s panic grew as he walked the few yards to the seated woman.

  Before he got close she called out, “I’m so sorry about your house.”

  Nick stopped two feet from woman. “What?”

  “Those idiot Stoutman brothers were drunk when they came to deliver your LP gas. They drove in makin’ all kinds of racket. Hit your house with the truck. One of them must have made a mistake fillin’ your tank. The explosion knocked me on my keister and broke all the windows in my house.”

  “Explosion!”

  “Yeah the second, no, the first one did that and flipped the truck over. Might’a killed those two idiots too. Sorry about the cabin.”

  Nick turned to run back to his car. Two Forest Service trucks rolled past the barricade. “When can I get up there,” he called to the deputy.

  “Fifteen, maybe thirty minutes.”

  Mrs. Masters walked up behind him. “When they pulled me out, your house and the next one up the road were burned to the foundations. With this wind the fire burns hot and fast. There’s not much left. Sorry.”

  It was close to five in the afternoon when Mrs. Masters and Smith were able to go back to the cul de sac. He parked in the gravel drive next to his ruin. After surveying the damage he walked to where the truck lay on its side. Hunks of his field stone chimney lay scattered around the foundation. He mumbled to himself. “First find the box.” Who the hell would ever think a solid field stone chimney could be smashed like that? “Where’s the box?”

  The old lady came close to him as he stood in the ashes. “Can I help you?”

  Nick continued to scan the rubble. “I’m looking for a box - one of those fireproof jobs. Maybe two feet by two feet.”

  “Oh, that’s over there.” She pointed back toward his car. “You went right past it.”

  From where he stood, Nick could see the blackened container. He smiled and broke into a lope through the debris. Reaching the object, he turned it right side up and lost hope. The top was sprung and open.

  He sat down hard on the sooty ground and gawked into the burnt interior. Nick pounded the ground with his fists and yelled “Fuck” over and over again. Mrs. Masters decided to go and investigate what was left of her own cabin.

  His rage burned. What to do? Where to look? Something might have survived. Get up and look. He spent hours digging in the debris house and searching the immediate area. The double handful of charred paper and celluloid that he collected represented his ten year career as a pornographer and blackmailer.

  At dusk he began his drive back to LA. He was covered in soot and smelled like the inside of a wood stove. Rhonda had his primo list of porno clients and the remaining copy of his masterpiece. $40 million!

  Chapter 9

  Rhonda waited for Bernie as he stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor of Sam’s building. She walked right up and grabbed his arm. “What are we going to do first?”

  He shuddered as if a snake had bitten him and pulled his limb from her grasp. “We aren’t going to do anything. I’m going out to the police station and get their take on this morning. You can do anything you like, except come with me.” He stepped outside.

  Rhonda yapped at his heels. “I’m coming with you.”

  He whirled and put a finger in her face. “You got me into this, but I get to do it my way. I don’t have to look at you or talk to you or listen to you. Go visit your grandmother.” He walked away.

  “Hey, Bernie,” she called.

  Like a sucker, he turned to face her.

  Rhonda walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Where’d ya get that suit?”

  Reflexively he smoothed the chalk-striped cloth of the wide lapels and smiled.

  She grinned. “…the Salvation Army?” She turned back to the building. “You still living with your mother?”

  He remained silent. A response would only encourage her. He skulked to the curb past a smiling man who mowed the four feet of lawn in front of the building. Bernie turned to the gardener. “I don’t live with my mother! I haven’t for almost a year.” It was more like seven months. The guy shrugged.

  Chapter 10

  Screw Bernie, Rhonda thought. She should follow him, but no. He was being a jerk, but he was a smart jerk. And, she believed that he would try to do the right thing for her grandmother. She would go and see how Nana was doing. If Bernie was going to be a shit about this whole thing, well, he was going to just have to get over it.

  On the drive to the hospital, Rhonda reviewed her conversation with Bernie and Sam. She did leave a few things out, but she hadn’t lied. She rarely did because she found it counterproductive. Better to tell people exactly what they asked for, then let their assumptions do the rest. If you lied then you needed to keep track of the things you said in relation to the facts and that was complicated. The best approach, if she was forced into an outright falsehood, was to use as much of the truth as possible. For the most part, a lie was overkill.

  She remembered the exact incident during her sophomore year of high school when this approach crystallized for her. Her father moved the family to Los Angeles to start a trucking company. When he went away on business, he never told her where he was going, because he said that way she wouldn’t have to lie.

  This tactic proved to be a lifesaver when two large black men accosted her demanding to know where her daddy was. She was truly frightened, but could not tell them. After one of the men slapped her twice, the other said, “Stop, stop. She don’t know shit, and she’s too fine to be smart enough to lie.” However, she was fast and ran from the men while they argued if raping her was permissible under the instructions from their boss, a person called Big Larry. It still stood the hairs of her arms on end.

  Today she’d left something out of her story to Sam and Bernie. Not that it was any of their business, but Sam probably would have liked to know.

  Chapter 11

  The stage manager at the Flamingo had given Rhonda another message when she came in the backstage door that previous afternoon. Written in a neat feminine hand, it read, “Mr. Standish would like to see you.”

  Hiram Standish ran the Flamingo and took quite a shine to her. His infatuation was the reason she danced at the casino instead of stripping off down the street. It started in LA when he first saw her do the nun routine, eight years ago, in ’66. He was so overcome with lust for Rhonda that he attempted to accost her and was tossed out on his ear. After three such incidents, Hiram was banned from the place, which was extremely unusual for that establishment.

  In her current circumstances, Rhonda would have rushed up to Hiram’s office, but she was running late and needed to dress for the first show. Business was business and he understood that better than anything. Between shows she went to his office wearing a short robe that almost covered her costume.

  The fat, bald man in glasses sat behind his oversized wooden desk using an adding machine to double check a list of numbers. She took a seat in a red velvet client chair as he worked his way to the end of his calculations. Dressed in blue sequins and feathers, she was a stark contrast to the deep reds of the office rug and wallpaper.

  He finished with a grimace. “Crap.”

  “Anything wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just need to make a few changes on the floor.” He looked at her and smiled. “But, look at you. You look terrific.” He walked around the desk and took both her hands. “Stand up. Let me see the new costume.”

  Rhonda knew he had seen her costume at least fifty times before he authorized its use in the show. He just wanted to see her tits. Hell, Hiram could stand in the wings on any performance and see all he wanted. Still, she was here to ask a favor, so why not. She stood slowly like the dancer she was and moved to the open area of the office. She struck a pose then dropped the robe to the floor. She was naked except for a blue sequined thong, matching hosiery, four inch pumps and a large amount of
blue glitter and feathers pasted to her body. With arms extended, she walked in a large circle giving the big boss a full view of the attire and her.

  Hiram clapped with enthusiasm. “You look wonderful.”

  She agreed and arched her back slightly for emphasis. “Thank you.” She smiled.

  He came over, took both her hands again and led her back to the guest chair. He never let go as he took the opposite one.

  Maintaining her smile she asked, “What’s up, besides your dick?” She knew she shouldn’t dig at him in that way, but she couldn’t resist.

  The bald man frowned in a smiley way. “Actually, I was hoping we could have dinner after your last show.”

  “Hiram, we said business was business and we were going to keep it that way. Besides, I have a problem with my grandmother in Milwaukee. I have to catch the red-eye tonight.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “Not if you don’t count the local cops and the feds.”

  He dropped her hands. “Really?”

  “It’s an eviction.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Not directly. I just have to get up there. So, I need some of that money we talked about.”

  “No problem. How much do you think you need?”

  “Five grand.”

  Hiram smiled. “Take ten, you never know.”

  Right, ten is twice the hook five would be. “No, five is fine.” Now for the big favor. “And, I need you to talk with Elizabeth about my sudden departure and eventual return.”

  He stood and walked back around his desk. Rhonda got up and walked behind him. When he stopped she put her hands on his shoulders. She could feel the tension through his Brooks Brothers suit. It was understandable. She just asked him to talk with his mother about another woman. The money was nothing. This was parting the Red Sea.

  He sighed. “Okay, but we’ll have that supper as soon as you get back.”