Warren Lane Read online

  “Nice to meet you. My name is Omar.” He pointed to the name embossed on his shirt.

  “You a mechanic?” Ready asked.

  “I fix elevators. How ‘bout you?”

  “I housesit for this rich guy when he’s out on his boat,” Ready said. “When he’s back on land, I live on his boat.”

  “So you’re like his little hotel maid,” Omar joked. Ready hadn’t thought of it this way before. “You like doing that?”

  Ready shrugged. “It gives me plenty of free time.”

  “That ain’t always a good thing,” Omar said. “He pay you?”

  “Enough for food and gas and beer. Actually,” Ready added, “I’m doing some detective work on the side.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I just sort of fell into it.”

  “How do you fall into detective work?”

  “This woman came up to me in a coffee shop asked me to follow her husband.”

  “Did you know her?” Omar asked.

  “No.”

  “And you just said OK?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  Omar looked at him thoughtfully, and then said, “Hey man, I don’t mean to be rude or nothin’, but you don’t seem real bright. You just go around sayin’ yes to strangers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Life is gonna fuck you up, man.”

  Ready shrugged. “A few weeks ago I had a moment of enlightenment. I was out on the boat, and I took some acid, and I had this realization: ‘Say yes, and the world will open up before you.’”

  Omar stared at him for a moment, and then laughed. “So now you just walk around sayin’ yes to everyone?”

  “Yeah, man. You wouldn’t believe all the things you discover when you start living life like that.”

  “Oh, I can imagine,” Omar said. “And that’s how you got mixed up with this woman? That’s how you became a private eye?”

  “Yeah,” Ready replied. “But with her, I don’t know. I think I would have said yes anyway. I mean, when I said it, it wasn’t even a conscious decision. I just heard the words come out of my mouth.”

  “So now you got all her problems to deal with.”

  “I guess so,” Ready said.

  “Do you know how to carry out an investigation?”

  “No,” said Ready.

  Omar nodded. “I guess you just start following people.”

  “I guess so,” Ready said.

  “Well you watch it with the yesses, man. A detective has to be cautious.”

  “I don’t think I have much caution in me right now,” Ready said.

  “Right. You’re the enlightened guy floatin’ around on the borrowed boat, sayin’ yes to everything. What do you got to lose?”

  Ready knew Omar had said the words in jest, but he felt their sting. He’d been adrift for years. During his occasional bouts of sobriety, he’d try to get his bearings, but he found himself always at sea. He invariably returned to drink, and every day began with a pounding headache and seasick dread.

  “I’m not an enlightened anything.” Ready stared sadly into his beer. “I’m actually kind of a loser.”

  Ready thought about all the women who stared at him. When he was sober, he avoided them because he knew at some point they’d peek behind the pretty face and find a man without skills, direction, accomplishment, or ambition—a man not worth keeping. And in that moment, he wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore that his life was OK.

  He remembered the cash in his pocket and asked Omar, “Hey, do you like coke?”

  “Cocaine? No. I don’t touch no drugs.”

  “Well I need a little pick-me-up.”

  “It’s about time for me to get goin’,” Omar said, rising from his barstool.

  “I got the tab,” said Ready as he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket.

  When Omar saw the stack of hundreds, he said, “Damn. Yeah, you can get this one. And watch what you say yes to. With all that money, you’re lookin’ for trouble.”

  Thirty minutes later, Ready was in a messy apartment, purchasing seven grams of cocaine from a trust fund kid named Larry who dressed as if he had just stepped out of an REI catalog.

  “If you want a really good time, take some of these.” Larry rattled a small bottle of pills. “The good times are right in here.”

  “What’s that?” Ready asked.

  “A hundred bucks and they’re yours.”

  “OK,” said Ready.

  Larry handed him the cocaine and the bottle of pills.

  On the way back to the house, Ready picked up some beer and a bottle of bourbon.

  Chapter 10

  The following morning, Ready dragged himself out of bed at 11:30 and drove downtown. He parked a block from Will’s office and waited. The cocaine had kept him up past 6:00 a.m., and his hangover was much worse than usual.

  He looked down the street toward Will’s office, his eyes drooping almost to sleep every now and then. Will emerged at twelve fifteen and drove off slowly. Ready followed him into the parking lot of a retirement home. He watched Will walk into the building and decided to wait for him to come back out. The sun was hot, Ready’s mouth was dry, and his head was pounding. He found a bottle of water behind his seat and took a sip. Then he picked up a bottle of ibuprofen from the floor in front of the passenger seat. He dropped five pills into his hand, tossed them into his mouth, and washed them down.

  Wait a minute, he thought. Since when is ibuprofen blue?

  He opened the bottle and dumped out two more pills. Squinting at the word etched into the front of the pills, he read “Pfizer.” That’s Viagra, he thought. He recognized the bottle as the one Larry had sold him the night before with the cocaine.

  “Fuck me!” he said slowly. “I’d give a hundred bucks right now for some real ibuprofen.”

  After fighting sleep for twenty minutes, Ready watched Will return to his car and drive away. Then Ready went inside.

  “Can I help you?” asked the woman at the front desk.

  “Do you have any aspirin or ibuprofen?” Ready asked.

  “I’m sorry sir, we can only dispense medication to our residents. Are you here to see someone?”

  “Uh, Mr. Moore.”

  “You mean Mrs. Moore?” the woman asked. “Lucille. She’s in the group activity room.” She pointed down the hall.

  With its polished linoleum floor, white paneled ceiling and fluorescent lights, the activity room looked like a middle-school cafeteria. One wall was lined with windows looking out on the parking lot. Another was lined with stackable chairs, and in the middle of the floor were several foldable cafeteria tables with attached benches.

  Scattered about the tables were a dozen or so elderly residents. At the far end of the room, a band of musicians, looking almost as old as the residents themselves, stood tuning their instruments.

  Ready wandered through the room looking at the inmates.

  “You lost?” a man asked.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Moore,” Ready replied.

  “That’s her,” the man pointed to a woman sitting by herself at a table a few feet away.

  “Did I hear my name?” Lucille Moore asked in a stern cranky voice. She sounded like an elderly drill sergeant. Then looking at Ready, she said, “It’s about time you got here. Who are you?”

  “Warren Lane,” said Ready.

  “I don’t know you,” Lucille barked.

  “Are you Will Moore’s mother?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “May I ask you some questions?”

  “You seem to have already begun. Why don’t you take a seat? You don’t look so good.”

  Ready sat on the bench next to Lucille and rubbed his eyes.

  “Looks like you’re ready to check in here yourself,” she said.
“How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven,” Ready replied.

  “A fine age,” Lucille said. “When I was twenty-seven, I was still single. That was unusual in those days. My mother was worried. The fellas who used to chase me were such a bunch of dunces, I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying any of them. But I liked the attention.”

  She leaned in close and whispered, “We girls like to play the field too, you know.”

  “Ohhhh,” Ready moaned. “If only I could puke.”

  “Got a little hangover, have we?”

  “More than a little.”

  “If I had my flask with me, I’d give you a swig. I hate to see a man suffer. Especially one as handsome as you. Now what did you want to ask me?”

  “I was going to ask a few questions about your son.”

  “Well, I’m not talking,” Lucille snapped. “Any man comes around here asking about Will, I assume he’s an investigator. What’s he up to now? Embezzlement? Adultery? Oh, hell, why not both? It costs a lot of money to keep a wife and a mistress. Have you met his wife? She’s a lovely woman. Lovely.”

  “Does he have a mistress?”

  “I told you I’m not talking,” she barked. “Nosy little thing, aren’t you?”

  Lucille stood up as the band began to play. “Won’t you dance with me?” she asked. “I never have a partner, and you’re such a handsome man.”

  Ready reluctantly agreed, and they began to dance.

  After a moment, Ready felt a tingling in his crotch. As the sensation intensified, he remembered the Viagra and he said half aloud, “Oh, shit!”

  “Watch the potty talk, mister,” Lucille said sharply. Ready looked at her, and she smiled politely.

  “Hey, um, I gotta get going,” Ready said.

  “Oh, come now,” said Lucille. “We’ve just begun to dance.”

  She pulled him closer, and when she felt his erection pressed against her hip, her eyes lit up and her smile showed a set of bright white dentures. She draped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. “When I was a girl,” she said, “we had a special way of dancing when things like this arose.”

  She moved her hands to his hips and pulled him tightly against her. Then she began to rub her thighs and stomach against his crotch. He tried several times to pull himself away, but each time she pulled him back. He realized that from a distance it must look like he was humping her. When he noticed the other residents staring at them, Ready abandoned his resistance and resigned himself to following her lead.

  She spoke loudly into his ear. “Of course, our parents never knew we carried on like this. That was during the war, and we girls wanted to do our part for the country. So when the boys were on leave, we did what we could to boost their morale.

  “Now, if I could still move my hips the way I could back then, I’d have you wetting yourself in a minute or two. But I’ve got arthritis now, so you’ll just have to take what you can get.”

  Ready’s mouth and throat were dry with mortification. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a mighty fist, and time slowed to a crawl. “How long is this song?” he asked.

  “Long enough for us to get to know each other,” Lucille said.

  As the song ended and the next began, she refused to let him go.

  “You have very strong arms,” Ready observed.

  “Oh, now look at poor Elmer over there,” Lucille said. “He’s jealous.”

  As they turned, Ready saw an elderly man sitting alone at a table twenty feet away, arms folded tightly across his chest. His thin frame was lost in light-blue slacks and a checkered shirt that were several sizes too large. If he had ever fit into those clothes, he must have shrunk considerably. His oversized eyeglasses magnified his eyes so that he looked like an owl. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was fixed in a sour frown.

  “Elmer’s a war hero,” Lucille said. “Crimean War, judging by the looks of him. He likes to think he’s my boyfriend because I sit in his lap on movie night. He kisses well enough, but his equipment is shot. I couldn’t get a rise out of him if I put a bicycle pump up his ass. Now you, on the other hand… You have that youthful vigor. Sends a tingling all through me.”

  Ready now added to his list of woes the image of Lucille trying to inflate the withered Elmer with a bicycle pump. He let out an involuntary sigh, which caused Lucille to pull him closer and say, “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  They danced for one more song. When at last she let him go, Ready glanced up through the windows and saw Will’s silver Mercedes returning to the parking lot.

  Ready walked Lucille back to the table and took a sip of water to wet his throat so he could speak. “Your son is coming back,” Ready said.

  “Oh, good,” said Lucille. “I sent him out for chocolate. The nutritionists here aren’t big on sweets, so you have bring your own.”

  “I really have to get going,” Ready said. Then, not knowing the proper etiquette for parting from an elderly stranger who’d just been dry-humping him, he extended his hand for a handshake and said, “It was nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  Ignoring his hand, Lucille grabbed his cock, gave it a shake, and said, “You’ve got a real champ there.”

  Ready ran out through the far exit just moments before Will walked in.

  He sat in the parking lot for ten minutes before Will returned to his car. Ready followed the silver Mercedes to a residential neighborhood in northern Goleta. He parked his Toyota and watched Will walk into an expensive Italian-style villa of light grey stone. Then he fell asleep.

  Chapter 11

  When Ready awoke an hour later, his headache and his erection throbbed in unison. A little girl of seven or eight stared at him through the passenger window. Her features and expression were unusually serious for a child of her age.

  “Are you homeless, mister?” the girl asked.

  “No,” Ready said. “I’m just trying to sleep off a hangover.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s what you get when you grow up to be a dumb-ass coke-sniffing alcoholic,” he said.

  “My Daddy used to drink,” the girl said. “Mommy made him go away.”

  “Good for her,” Ready said. “Say, do you know who lives in that house?” He pointed to the house Will had walked into.

  “Miss Ella,” said the girl. “She’s very nice.”

  Ready heard the girl’s mother call. “Josie! Get back in here and clear this table.”

  “I gotta go, mister.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Ready said.

  “I hope you stop being a dumb-ass and feel better,” said Josie.

  Ready got out of his car and walked around the side of the grey stone house. The first floor window was a few feet above the ground, so he stepped onto a little slanted ledge and pulled himself up by the drain spout to get a peek inside.

  Will was speaking to someone Ready couldn’t see. “You know what I like about you?” Will asked.

  “What?” asked a bright clear voice.

  “You’re like sunshine.”

  Then she glided into view, graceful and lithe in her white skirt and blouse. With her blonde hair, blue eyes, and clear smooth skin, she struck Ready as a vision of summer and light.

  Will pinched her behind, and her face momentarily darkened.

  “Don’t pinch my ass, Will,” she said. “You know I don’t like that.”

  He pinched it again.

  “Now you’re just being rude,” she said, and turned away from him.

  With a single motion he pulled her back by the shoulder, spun her around and planted a crude unwanted kiss on her mouth.

  She stepped back and wiped away his kiss. “Go to work, Will. Get out of here.”

  Will pointed at her and said, “This... this, I don’t like. You’re not pretty when you’re ang
ry.”

  “Then don’t make me angry,” she said.

  “But she is pretty, angry or not,” said Ready quietly.

  A pebble struck the back of his head and he turned to see Josie scowling at him from the yard next door.

  “It’s not polite to look in people’s windows, mister.”

  “It’s not polite to throw rocks at people’s heads,” Ready replied.

  She threw another rock and it hit him in the forehead.

  “Cut that out!” Ready said.

  Will had left the house and was walking to his car. In a moment, he was gone.

  Ready looked back through the window and saw Ella sitting on the couch. Her expression changed slowly from irritation to thoughtfulness. The little girl threw another pebble, and this one hit the glass. Ella glanced up toward the source of the noise, and her eyes fixed on Ready for a moment with a strange expression of recognition and surprise.

  Her grace and smile returned as she crossed the living room, opened the window, and asked, “Are you the painter?”

  “Yeah,” Ready replied. “All this trim needs to be scraped before I can paint it.”

  “Why don’t you come around front?” she said.

  She met him at the door, and he was impressed by the expensive furniture and rugs. “Nice place,” he said.

  “Welcome to my cage,” she said. Then looking at his face, she asked, “Are you feeling OK?”

  “Too much sun,” Ready said.

  “Uh huh. That would explain why you’re so pale. Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll get you some lemonade.”

  She led him into the living room, and he took a seat on the pearl-colored sofa. At the back of the room was a dining table with a single chair, and a side table with liquor bottles and glasses.

  “Do you have any bourbon?” he asked.

  “I have Scotch,” she said.

  “Oh, that’ll do just fine,” Ready said.

  She poured a glass of Scotch for him and water for herself then went into the kitchen for some ice. In a moment, she returned and handed him the drink. She sat on the coffee table just opposite him. Their knees were almost touching.

  Ready took a sip of his drink, then sat back and spread his arms wide across the back of the couch.