Chapter Twenty Eight
Bernard had sent the recording of Peck threatening our lives to the district attorney of Newport, to the Oregon gaming commission, to the Oklahoma City police department, and to two dozen news organizations. In the parlance of modern communication, the video had gone viral and had made front page news on several prominent newspapers. It doesn’t happen too often that someone with Peck’s level of wealth and influence is captured on film threatening to murder people. Sandy mentioned to me that one of the news articles said that the investment syndicate behind the casino was looking for someone besides Peck to run the project.
Peck hadn’t been seen in public in several days. Eric told me that he thought Peck might have gone to another country to avoid prosecution. I asked Eric what he thought about Peck’s thugs taking another run at me, and he said that he thought Peck was so tainted that the thugs would likely look for new leadership. “Peck’s a sinking ship,” Eric said. “Rats need something that floats when the surf gets rough.”
I wondered if Peck really would disappear, and I also wondered if Peck’s investors would want to do more to Peck than just fire him for bringing such bad press to the casino operation. I thought about the chances of Peck coming after me one last time, but I also felt relieved somehow. In a way I’d thrown my best punch, so if I still lost the fight I was okay with that.
That is not to say that Peck and his goons hadn’t made things hard for me. Peck’s pals had trashed my house in Oceanside in my absence. Bernard, Eric, Sandy and I spent a full day putting the house back in order, but I didn’t mind. Cleaning my house was, in the larger scheme of things, a very small problem.
When I’d first returned to the house with Sandy, I’d been shattered to see the destruction, and I’d felt violated like any homeowner does when someone breaks in and smashes prized belongings.
The doors on my much-worn Mustang GT had been open when I’d gotten home, and the glove box had been rifled. I lifted the hood and saw that the spark plug wires had been pulled loose so the car wouldn’t start. If that was all they’d done to the car, I’d gotten off easy.
Sandy could see how upset I was when I saw the damage to the interior of the house. She’d picked the binoculars up off the floor, handed them to me, and ordered me to go out on the deck while she triaged the damage. A few minutes later, I’d watched the bald eagle circling Three Arch Rocks before it landed. It lifted off the rock heavy with the prey it had caught, and then flew back in my direction. I watched the bird as it flew back over my house before landing in one of the Douglas Firs at the top of my hill. A few minutes later it flew to a second nest a hundred yards to the north, and I realized that it was trying to keep several sets of eaglets alive long enough for the young birds to take flight and survive on their own. Seeing that the eagle wasn’t just killing for the sake of killing settled something inside me that had felt jagged and out of place for a long time.
“That’s really what it’s all about,” I thought. “Isn’t it?”
Sandy came out onto the deck. She said “We need painter’s mud and tape to fill the holes they punched in the walls, beer, wine, steaks, mushrooms, green beans, onions, and a chocolate cake. Get enough food for four people.”
“You sound like you’re throwing a party,” I said.
“In fact, I am,” she said. She kissed me before handing me the keys to her car and telling me to go into Tillamook for the supplies. I hesitated, but she put the shopping list in my hand and told me to get moving.
“I didn’t realize what a ‘take charge’ person you are,” I said.
“We’re going to put this place right, Del,” she said. “Go on. Get going and I’ll start picking up.”
It’s hard to refuse a direct order like that.
I’d gotten in Sandy’s Camaro and headed towards Tillamook. The reflection of the sunshine on the Pacific Ocean never looked prettier. The roar of the engine sounded just right as I accelerated through the gears on the twisting roads. I felt a kind of freedom and joy that made me appreciate just being alive.
When I’d gotten back to the house two hours later, Eric and Bernard were there with Sandy. Eric had a big toolbox on the kitchen counter, and he and Bernard were talking about a ‘punch list’ for fixing everything that had been done to the house. They both nodded at me when I arrived and then went back to their conversation.
Sandy took a beer out of the grocery sack, twisted off the cap, and handed the bottle to me. “Enjoy,” she said. “We’ll get this place sorted out.”
“I’ll get the furniture if you’ll get the stereo,” Eric said to Bernard. Bernard nodded and said “Can do.” Those two made a good team.
I’d gotten the vacuum cleaner from the front closet and was rolling it into the kitchen when Eric sorted out the upturned sofa. He picked up the sofa by one end, tucked it under his arm as if it were a giant loaf of bread, rotated it against his hip, and then laid it down gently in an upright position. Sandy and I watched from the kitchen, dumbfounded at Eric’s feat of strength.
“Christ, Eric,” I said. “How did you do that?”
Eric said “What? It’s cheap furniture. If it had a fold-out bed inside there’s no way I could do that.”
Sandy had picked up the silverware and plates from the floor and dunked them in soapy water before scrubbing them with a sponge. She washed. I dried. We stood at the sink together in comfortable silence, each appreciative of the other’s presence.
One of Peck’s thugs had pulled my record albums from the shelves and scattered them across the floor. Most of the albums were still in the cardboard sleeves, including my Miles Davis Kind of Blue album. Bernard’s excitement at seeing that the album was still intact almost brought me to tears.
Someone had tipped over the big McIntosh speakers and left them face down on top of the record albums. Bernard put the speakers back where they belonged, reconnected the speaker wires, and powered up the Marantz amplifier. The first strains of So What filled the interior of the house. “It seems okay, Del,” Bernard said. “Still sounds really good.”
Eric turned out to be very good with mud and tape, and the holes that had been punched in many of the walls were soon just big white splotches against the Royal Blue paint. One of the holes was actually just a dent. It seemed that the puncher had hit metal beneath the surface. There was blood in the dent, and a trail of dried blood started on the floor beneath the dent and continued through the rest of the house like markings on a treasure map.
Once we’d sorted out the interior of the house, we’d gone out onto the deck to enjoy the view. I’d started the grill going as evening fell. Sandy turned on the Christmas lights that hung over the deck and she brought out the steaks that she’d been marinating for an hour or so. The steaks made a satisfying hissing noise as they hit the hot metal grate on the grill.
Bernard announced that he was taking a week’s vacation before he went home. He planned to drive down the coastline to San Francisco and catch a flight back to Oklahoma City from there. He took a swallow of India Pale Ale and pronounced it to be sweeter than honeysuckle nectar on a summer day.
Eric was in the kitchen cooking the vegetables in a big frying pan. He came outside and said that the vegetables smelled like they might be burning, so I handed Bernard the spatula I’d been using to flip the steaks, patted him on the back, and told him that he was in charge of the meat.
“If there’s one thing a cowboy knows how to do, it’s how to get the most out of a piece of beef,” Bernard said.
“I have to ask you something,” I said. “Have you ever actually ridden a horse?”
“I was one of the best rodeo riders in Tulsa when I was in high school,” he said. “Got thrown into a fence one time and nearly paralyzed. Decided law enforcement would be a safer bet than the rodeo, so I studied criminal justice in college. Not sure it’s been safer, but I’ve definitely had a longer career. And I can still walk.” He gave me a big smile before picking up the spatula and turning t
he steaks with practiced ease.
I went inside and turned down the heat on the vegetables. I added a little seasoning and mixed it in with the vegetables while Eric finished patching the dent where the blood trail started. Eric smoothed the tape over with wallboard compound and then used a sharp edging tool to make the surface as even as possible. “You can paint that tomorrow if you want to,” he said. “Sand it gently, and then put a little primer on it before you paint it, and it’ll look even better.”
“I will, Eric,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said. I turned back to the stove and he came over and squeezed my shoulder for a moment. “Anytime, Del,” he said. “Anywhere too, for that matter.” Then he got a beer from the refrigerator and went outside onto the deck.
I slid the mushrooms, green beans, and diced onions from the Sauté pan onto a dinner plate and carried the plate outside.
Eric, Sandy, and Bernard were seated at the picnic table. Sandy had put a bedsheet on the picnic table as a substitute tablecloth and laid the place settings. We passed around the plates of vegetables and steaks, savoring and appreciating the moment. Sandy was on my left, and she was sitting close enough to me that our hips touched. As the evening wore on, Bernard, Sandy, and Eric told stories about some of the misadventures in their careers. I laughed and sometimes cried along with them as they told story after story about trying to do the right thing but failing miserably. Sometimes their attempts at upholding the law had turned out so badly that they wished they’d chosen different careers.
Dusk turned to darkness, and we decided to move indoors. We stood in the kitchen and talked for a few minutes before Eric and Bernard said their goodbyes. “You’ll be hearing from me soon enough,” Bernard said. “You’ll have to testify under oath about what happened between you and Randall Burton, but it won’t be so hard.”
I nodded. “Looking forward to it,” I said.
Bernard said “Happy trails, Del.” Then he shook my hand and Eric’s hand, nodded bashfully at Sandy, and headed out the front door. I think that Bernard had a crush on Sandy. I didn’t mind. I had one, too.
Eric squeezed my hand in a bone-crushing grip and told me to try to stay out of trouble for once. I held up three fingers and said “Scout’s Honor.” Then Eric went out through the front door. I heard him say “Hey Bernard, wait up.”
Sandy closed the front door and then it was just the two of us in the little kitchen with the Formica countertops and the Royal Blue paint and the small hurricane lamps on the walls. I walked over to the big picture window that fronted onto Oceanside Beach. I could see running lights on a chain of fishing boats heading south. I felt that sense of things being right again.
Sandy came over to me and put her hand on my back.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Better than okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“For what?” Sandy said.
“For everything. For caring about me. For wanting to protect me from myself.”
“It’s not that hard,” Sandy said. “I sensed the specialness of your whole package. At that point I was a prisoner to my own biology.”
“Right,” I said. “I suspected that was the case.”
It was quiet in the house. “We forgot to eat the chocolate cake after dinner,” I said.
She shook her head. “That cake is for you and me, Del.”
She slipped a hand around my waist and pulled close against me, the sensation of her body against mine producing a feeling as satisfying and whole and right as any I’d ever known. She rested her chin on my shoulder. The only sound in the cabin was the distant sigh of the surf exhausting itself on the shore.
I wrapped my arms around her and locked my wrists at the small of her back.
“We’ll take it slow,” she said.
I kissed her gently in the hollow at the base of her neck.
“As slow as you want,” I whispered.