This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by James Scott Bell
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: July 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59995-142-3
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Chapter 162
Chapter 163
Chapter 164
Chapter 165
Chapter 166
Chapter 167
Chapter 168
Chapter 169
Chapter 170
Chapter 171
Chapter 172
Chapter 173
Chapter 174
Chapter 175
Chapter 176
Chapter 177
Chapter 178
Chapter 179
Chapter 180
Chapter 181
Chapter 182
Chapter 183
Chapter 184
Chapter 185
Chapter 186
Chapter 187
Chapter 188
Chapter 189
Chapter 190
Chapter 191
Also by James Scott Bell
Try Dying
TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN D. MACDONALD
1
THE NUN HIT me in the mouth and said, “Get out of my house.”
Jaw throbbing, I said, “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“This is my house,” she said. “You want more? Come on back in.”
Sister Mary Veritas is a shade over five and a half feet. She was playing in gray sweats, of course. Most of the time she wears the full habit. Her pixie face is usually a picture of innocence. She has short chestnut hair and blue eyes. I had just discovered those eyes hid an animal ruthlessness.
It was the first Friday in April, and we were playing what I thought was some friendly one-on-one on the basketball court of St. Monica’s, a Benedictine community in the Santa Susana mountains. The morning was bright, the sky clear. Should have meant peace like a river.
Not a nun like a mugger.
Backing into the key for a spin hook, I was surprised to find not just the basket but a holy Catholic elbow waiting for my face. I’m six-three, so it took some effort for her to pop me.
“That’s a foul,” I said.
“So take it out,” she said.
“I thought the Benedictines were known for their hospitality.”
“For the hungry pilgrim,” Sister Mary said. “Not for a guy looking for an easy bucket.”
“What would the pope say to you?”
“Probably, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
“For a smash to the chops?”
“You’re
a pagan. It probably did you some good.”
“A trash-talking sister.” I shook my head. “So this is organized religion in the twenty-first century.”
“Play.”
Okay, she wanted my outside game? She’d get it. True, I hadn’t played a whole lot of ball since college. A couple of stints on a lawyer league team. But I could still shoot. I was deadly from twenty feet in.
Not this morning. I clanked one from the free throw line and Sister Mary got the rebound.
Before becoming a nun, she played high school ball in Oklahoma. On a championship team, no less. Knew her way around a court.
But I also had the size advantage and gave her a cushion on defense. She took it and shot over me from fifteen feet.
Swish.
Pride is a sin, so Sister Mary tells me. But it’s a good motivator when a little nun is schooling you. I kicked up the aggression factor a notch.
She tried a fadeaway next. I got a little bit of her wrist as she shot.
Air ball.
Sister Mary waited for me to call a foul.
“Nice try,” I said.
“Where’d you learn to play,” she said. “County jail?”
“You talking or playing?”
She got the animal look again. I hoped that wouldn’t interfere with her morning prayers. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour we talk smack.
I took the ball to the top of the key. Did a beautiful crossover dribble. Sister Mary swiped at the ball. Got my arm instead with a loud thwack. I stopped and threw up a jumper.
It hit the side of the rim and bounced left.
I thought I’d surprise her by hustling for the rebound.
She had the same idea.
We were side by side going for the ball. I could feel her body language. There was no way she was going to let me get it.
There was no way I was going to let her get it.
I was going to body a nun into the weeds.
2
WE WENT DOWN. The brown grasses at the edge of the blacktop padded our fall.
I had both hands on the ball. So did Sister Mary.
She grunted and pulled. By this time we were out of bounds.
I started to laugh. The absurdity of a frantic postulant and a macho lawyer in a death grip over a basketball was hilarious.
Sister Mary didn’t laugh. She wanted the ball.
I had to admire her doggedness. She’s the type who’d go to the mat with the devil himself if she had to.
But I still wouldn’t let her get the ball.
Then I was on my back, holding the ball to my chest. Sister Mary was on top of me, refusing to let her hands slip off the ball.
Her body was firm and fit and I looked at her face thinking thoughts one should not think of a woman pledged to a life of chastity.
I stopped laughing and let her have the ball.
She took it and rolled off me.
Neither of us said anything.
Then a voice said, “Now, isn’t that a pretty picture?”
Father Bob stood at the other end of the court, hands on hips.
One displeased priest.
I shot up, helped Sister Mary to her feet. “Nothing to see here,” I said. “Just a little hustle and flow.”
“Or grab and go,” Father Bob said.
Sister Mary said nothing. Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard.
“A friendly game of one-on,” I said. “You see? I’m doing my part to help the community stay in shape. You want a piece of me next?”
Father Bob, who looks like Morgan Freeman’s stand-in, said, “I know a few tricks even Sister Mary hasn’t learned yet.”
“I have to go now,” she said. Without her characteristic smile, she dropped the ball in the grass and jogged toward her quarters.
Father Bob motioned me over. “Tread carefully,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?”
“What’s not to know?”
He picked up the ball and spun it on his finger. Like a Globetrotter.
“Not bad,” I said.
“God created the world to spin on its axis,” he said. “Perfectly. And he created man to be in perfect communion with him. Only man messed up. He messed up the way things are supposed to spin.” He grabbed the ball with both hands. “In the garden, you know the story.”
“A snake got Eve to eat an apple.”
“Don’t know if it was an apple,” Father Bob said. “It just says ‘the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.’”
“Was that such a bad thing to want?”
“If a serpent’s offering it to you, it is. Now, we’ve come a long way trying to get things to spin right again. That’s the reason for the church. That’s the reason for people taking holy vows. And that’s the reason you have to tread carefully around here.”
I took the ball from him and tried to spin it on my finger. It fell to the ground and bounced.
“See?” Father Bob said.
“Fine.”
“Then are you ready to earn your daily bread?”
3
THE WOMAN CAME in holding hands with a little girl. The girl was maybe six years old. They were both dressed in thrift store casual. The woman had shoulder-length brown hair and a face that would have been nice if you could take the pain out of it. Her expression was grim and resolute, as if she’d been hit a few times and knew she’d get hit some more.
She was about thirty-five but carried an extra decade around like a peasant with a load of bricks.
The little girl had dirty-blond hair worn in a ponytail fastened with a green rubber band. The rubber band matched her eyes. She held a small backpack with a pink unicorn on it.
Father Bob got up and greeted them, showed them to our table.
We were at the Ultimate Sip, a coffee bar in a strip mall on Rinaldi. The Sip is an inspiration in our Starbucks-saturated world. A wholly owned independent subsidiary of the mind of one Barton C. McNitt. He’s a Vietnam vet, a little older than Father Bob. Father Bob affectionately refers to Barton C. McNitt as “Pick.”
“Because if there’s a nit, McNitt will pick it,” Father Bob told me. “He likes to argue.”
Pick McNitt had been a philosophy professor at Cal State Northridge until he went crazy. He spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob met him by walking into the wrong room.
They argued then and have been friends ever since.
I pay McNitt a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a p.o. box in the franchise McNitt owns next door.
“This is Reatta,” Father Bob said, introducing the woman. She nodded at me. “And this is Kylie.”
The girl looked at me, then put her head behind her mother.
“Garçon,” I called out to Pick McNitt. “How about three specials and a hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream for the girl?”
McNitt was behind the bar. He wore a billowing red Hawaiian shirt to cover his substantial girth. With his white beard and bald head, he was a perfect department store Santa, but for one thing—he’d scare the kids.
“All glory is fleeting,” McNitt called back.
“Can I color?” the girl asked Reatta. Reatta nodded. The girl plopped her unicorn bag on the table and took out some paper and crayons.
“Reatta came to me when I was doing some rounds downtown,” Father Bob said. “She’s just gotten a room at the Lindbrook Hotel on Sixth. But she’s facing life on the street again.”
“They won’t take my rent for next month,” Reatta said.
“What are they charging?” I asked.
“Four hundred a month. For a hundred and fifty square feet.” Her brown eyes scanned my face. They were searching, maybe for somebody to trust.
“And they’ve told you that you have to move out?”
She nodded.
“Why don’t they just take the rent money?” Father Bob asked me.
“It’s called the twen
ty-eight-day shuffle,” I said.
“Sounds like a dance.”
“It’s a dance around the law, is what it is. Here’s how it works. Downtown hotel owners shuffle their people in and out, to try to establish that they’re a commercial tourist hotel, not a residential hotel. That way tenant protection laws don’t kick in. So they say to people like Reatta here that she has to move out, stay out for a week, and then she can come back.”
“So this is better financially for them?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So why do it?” Father Bob asked.
“Because, my mass-saying friend, a commercial hotel property can be sold to a developer with very little red tape. Said developer can then turn said hotel into fancy lofts for sale to downtown professionals. That way, everyone makes money. Except the people who used to live there. They end up on Skid Row.”
“Very nice. And you say this is illegal?”
“If you can get somebody to do something about it.”
“What about the DA or the city attorney?”
“They’ve sued a couple of owners. But that’s it. The downtown developers have a lot of power. So it’s left to public interest law firms to try to take up the cases. But the hotels have big firms behind them. I know. I used to work for one of those firms.”
“Is there anything you can do for her?” Father Bob asked.
I looked at the girl who was busy coloring her paper. To Reatta I said, “Do you have anyplace to go if they don’t accept your rent?”
She shook her head. “A shelter is all. I hate those places.”
She had good reason to.
“How many more days do you have?”
“Seven.”
McNitt delivered the drinks. The little girl perked up at the sight of a cup with a mound of whipped cream on it, a Pike’s Peak of delight.
The other three coffees were McNitt specials. He called them Gandhi lattes. Said they promoted nonviolent resistance.
Kylie took a lick and got a little whipped cream on her chin.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll take a trip down there later this afternoon and talk to the manager. See what I can find out. But if I do this, I’ll need a retainer.”
Reatta frowned.
“I’d like to have that picture Kylie’s been drawing,” I said.
The girl looked at me and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But it’s a secret.”
“I can keep secrets,” I said.
She pushed the paper across the table to me. It showed two stick figures, one big and one small, holding hands in the upper part of the paper. My razor-sharp mind figured that to be Kylie and Reatta. A squiggly line came out from them and snaked all across the page, down to the right hand corner. In this corner Kylie had drawn several items of what I took to be candy.