The Sticking Place Read online

  THE STICKING PLACE

  A Luke Jones Novel

  T. B. SMITH

  THE STICKING PLACE

  ©2011 T.B. SMITH

  Published by hellgate Press/Fiction

  (an imprint of L&R Publishing, LLC)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information and retrieval systems without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Hellgate Press Fiction

  PO Box 3531

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.hellgatepress.com

  Editing: harley B. Patrick

  Cover design: L. Redding

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, T. B., 1955-

  The sticking place : a Luke Jones novel / T.B. Smith. --1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-55571-676-9

  1. Police--California--San Diego--Fiction. 2. Street life--California--San Diego--

  Fiction. 3. San Diego (Calif.)--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.M5945S75 2011

  813′.6--dc22

  2010040432

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  First edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Ben Limoli, the teacher that mattered and,

  as with all things, for Miranda, my bridge to forever…

  “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.”

  — Lady Macbeth exhorting her husband to murder the King of Scotland

  Macbeth, Act I, scene vii

  1

  San Diego

  Summer 1978

  PHILLIP MCGRATH WAS ON HIS WAY TO KILL SOMEBODY.

  He turned toward a home at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac where rusted children’s toys lay scattered in a puddle of oil in the driveway. A dusty motor home rested near the stained stucco of the house and a basketball hoop drooped over the crumbling asphalt.

  The Toyota truck rolled to a stop beneath a tangle of power lines.

  Sweat dripped down McGrath’s neck, under his armpits and along the sides of his protruding belly as he hobbled toward the door. He slid the key from under the welcome mat and eased his way inside. A huge German shepherd stood in the entryway, his tail thumping against the door frame.

  McGrath patted the shepherd’s head and ran his fingers along its muscular back as it panted along beside him. Dropping to his knees at the open door to the study, McGrath muttered words of affection to his only friend as he scratched the dog’s massive chest and pulled gently on his ears.

  Struggling to his feet a moment later, McGrath blocked Max with his knee and locked the door behind him to ensure privacy in case someone came home. He limped to the stereo, pulled a record from its jacket and set the needle into the groove. Walking behind a large oak desk, he opened a closet door, lifted an afghan and clutched the Winchester rifle beneath it. Sinking backward into a heavy chair, he pushed against the floor with his feet and scooted toward the middle of the room.

  Nothing could stop him now.

  He swiveled to face the door and listened to the strains of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. As he closed his eyes, he envisioned the pianist’s movements as Jarrett’s chin slumped toward his heaving chest and his nimble fingers played a run of notes that peaked and waned in a series of mini-crescendos.

  Where was the passion that used to drive McGrath’s life? As he relived Jarrett’s sweetly tormenting performance for the last time, a run of ecstatic moans escaped the pianist’s lips and floated up to dangle in congress with the music.

  As Jarrett’s music filled the room, McGrath spread his legs, propped the rifle between them, swallowed the barrel and pulled the trigger. With no regard for who would deal with the mess.

  2

  TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD POLICE TRAINEE Luke Jones, was one person who would deal with the mess.

  None of his academy instructors had figured out what to make of him before graduation. His physical presence both impressed and confused them, but that was only part of it. His chin was as squared as pushed together bookends and his prominent brow made him a Dick Tracy look-alike. His chest looked like two anvils held together by builders’ rebar that bent downward to join with an old fashioned washboard. He stood half a hand more than six-feet tall, could obviously bench press a bull elephant, and had barged into the academy classroom like his instructors owed him an accounting for all the world’s injustices.

  His hair covered half of his ears and touched his collar, stretching the limits of department regulations. So did his turned-down mustache since it crept past the edges of his mouth and sneaked onto his lower face. But the Shakespeare thing made him really stand out in the police crowd. He could quote the Bard faster than they could read a suspect his Miranda rights. He knew the sonnets better than they knew the California Penal Code and loved skewering them with an on-the-nose quote from Hamlet or an obscure tidbit from Coriolanus or Titus Andronicus.

  The academy was as much a ghost as Hamlet’s father now, though, and Luke had to impress his training officer to keep his job. The pair were talking in a police car in the parking lot of Jack Murphy Stadium when their call sign rang out over the radio.

  T.D. Hartson interrupted his opening day spiel, acknowledged the call and stomped on the gas pedal.

  Santa Ana winds bullied brittle blades of straw-colored grass on the surrounding hills and muscled their way into the cab that had no air conditioning. As Hartson sped toward the crest of the ravine, the engine pushed invisible plumes of heat through the open vents and whipped the officers’ cheeks.

  Hartson pulled to the curb and stepped into the gutter next to a row of dilapidated trash cans.

  Luke waited for a break in radio traffic before announcing their arrival to dispatch and joined Hartson in the street.

  A pale woman approached, the sharp wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening with the effort it took to smile. On the far side of seventy, she twirled fingertips through a mat of gray hair that stood out from her head in a spray of snarls. Trembling hands lowered to pick at a small patch of lint on the faded legs of her polyester pants.

  “I got home and found the den door’s locked,” she said. “I think my husband’s in there, but he won’t come out, and he won’t answer when I knock.” Her volume trailed off. “Ever since he retired, he just sits in there and broods. But he never locks the door. You don’t think he could’ve hurt himself?”

  Hartson stepped onto the curb and supported the woman by her elbow. “What’s your name?” he asked as he led her toward the house.

  As they walked through the door, Luke heard her answer. “Martha McGrath,” she said. Then she commanded Max to his blanket.

  It surprised Luke that Hartson stood only a few inches taller than the squat woman walking beside him. Hartson’s orientation speech in the stadium’s parking lot had communicated a no-nonsense training officer who would demand his trainee’s best efforts. The confident performance had made Hartson seem bigger. His full head of wavy white hair, moving in unison with Martha McGrath’s gray mane, could have been the opening of a vaudeville act. His pudgy body dominated his skinny legs, but his self-confidence drew attention away from the avuncular physical attributes. Luke had to get down to business before Hartson mistook him for a typical first phase trainee.

  He pushed through a swinging wooden gate to the backyard to look for a way to see inside the den. Sun glared off the glass as he leaned to
ward the window. An orange tree pushed pointed shards of shadow into the room, obliterating some of the room’s contents. Luke made out the back of a chair and a pair of trousers stretching from the seat onto a circular rug in front of a large desk. Squinting allowed him to see the butt of a rifle before his gaze moved upwards. Shadows obliterated everything above the seat of the chair.

  Luke had seen enough to know this encounter with Martha McGrath wouldn’t have a happy ending. “I think we need to kick the door in,” he said as he walked into the house. “Can I have your permission to do that?”

  Martha McGrath processed Luke’s request, appearing to come to grips with its meaning. She closed her eyes and nodded, the muscles in her neck twitching noticeably.

  Luke’s boot splintered the door and exposed a super-heated den packed with the surreal sight of a partially headless man and the sickening stench of heat and gore. Darts of pain pricked the base of his skull and settled behind his right ear. Shooting sensations turned into an iron fist that squeezed and twisted in his neck. He kneaded a growing knot with his fingers.

  Hartson brushed past him looking every bit like a man on a rescue mission.

  Luke couldn’t let Hartson think of him as some punk trainee who needed coddling. A muscle jerked in his jaw. He fought the urge to bolt from the room as chunks of vomit spewed into his mouth. He swallowed hard.

  Hartson pulled on Martha’s elbow to turn and ease her from the room. “Is there somebody you’d like to call?” he asked.

  Martha turned to Luke instead. “When I got home, his dog was standing right there, chewing on a piece of bone.” She pointed toward the floor in the hall a little past where the shattered door used to stand.

  Luke fought against his gagging reflex and reached for his radio. “It’s an 11-44, self-inflicted,” he said. “Notify the coroner and make sure they have the phone number.”

  The fist of pain at the back of Luke’s head twisted and squeezed. As he headed toward the outside door to get the camera, he heard Martha’s thready voice and turned to see her speaking into the telephone. “Son, your daddy’s killed himself.” Her legs gave way as she said it and she plopped in a heap to her knees, the telephone slipping from her hand.

  Hartson lunged too late to stop her. He squatted close, rested his palm on her shuddering shoulder, lifted the phone and told her son to come home. “We’ll take care of your mother until you get here,” he said.

  Martha kept talking; apparently unaware she’d already dropped the phone. “He’s in the den and, oh, it’s such a mess.”

  Luke stepped onto the welcome mat, sucked in a breath and looked up to the clouds punctuating the blank blue expanse of the sky. Then he remembered the box of cigars in his equipment bag. He needed one now. It couldn’t smoke out the stink of the situation, but his roommate—a Viet Nam vet—had told him smoking cigars helped a little against the stench of heat and death.

  Luke stepped over the forlorn dog stretched across the threshold as he reentered the house. Hartson kept Martha busy making coffee as Luke lit his White Owl and steeled his resolve to go back into the den for the photographs.

  With the cigar smoke almost making him gag, Luke did what he always did in stressful moments. He searched his memory for something he’d read to reflect against his real life experiences.

  Shakespeare’s description of Macbeth’s “weird sisters” stirring a pot in a dank cave matched the madness in McGrath’s den. Luke puffed insistently on the cigar as he circled the chair, snapping photographs, his thoughts swirling in unison with his body’s movements. The stench clung to his uniform and crawled up his nostrils. He remembered the witches’ chanting as they circled round the spewing cauldron:

  Round about the cauldron go;

  In the poisn’d entrails throw…

  Fillet of a fenny snake,

  In the caldron boil and bake;

  Without realizing it, he started muttering the words out loud.

  For a charm of powerful trouble,

  Like a hell-broth boil and bubble…

  A noise behind Luke jerked him back to reality.

  “Martha’s son’s here and wants to see his dad,” Hartson told him. “I need you in the living room to keep him busy until the coroner gets here.” Hartson shook his head. “And for Christ’s sake, don’t say any of your weird shit to him.”

  Luke crossed the hallway, wiping the rolling sweat from his mustache, his shoulders brushing the sides of the doorframe as he stepped into the living room. He awkwardly stretched his hand out for the introduction before sitting on a flower-printed sofa that rested beneath a faded Hudson Valley print.

  “I should’ve known he’d do this,” Phillip McGrath Jr. told Luke. “We actually didn’t fight when he called me at work today.”

  Luke slid his department-issue notebook from his hip pocket, pulled a pen from his shirt and doodled, trying to find the words to engage the dead man’s son while Hartson sat with the widow in the kitchen.

  “Tell me about your father,” he said. “What did he do for a living?”

  A pause followed. “He was an engineer.”

  “What kind of engineer?”

  “He worked at General Dynamics designing jet propulsion systems. He was a genius,” McGrath said.

  “How so?” Luke asked, hoping the topic would give McGrath a pleasant moment.

  “He had seven patents to his credit,” McGrath said, a tremor infusing his words. “But the company threatened to fire him if he insisted on keeping the profits. He hated himself for letting them get away with it. They kept all the money that should’ve made him rich in exchange for guaranteeing his job.”

  “Was he angry about not getting what he deserved?”

  McGrath slumped into the couch. “It destroyed him. He wanted to buy a big house in La Jolla. Instead . . .”

  “Instead of what?” Luke prompted.

  “Instead of this.” McGrath waved his arm to encompass the room and its contents. “He put all four of us kids through college and two of us through graduate school.” McGrath’s head and neck trembled.

  “But our going to the best schools wasn’t enough for him. He drove all of us until we hated him. Then he started in on his grandkids. That’s when we stopped coming around to see Mom.”

  “Why do you suppose he did that?” Luke asked.

  “He gave away his greatness thinking it guaranteed our success. And he hated himself for it. He retired last week and couldn’t talk about anything but his worthless life.”

  Luke wanted to comfort this man whose father was doing the ugly imitation of the Headless Horseman in the other room and wondered what Hartson would advise. The answer came in an instant. Just do your job, he would say, and stay out of the way.

  The sound of his call sign on the portable radio came as a relief, but its message did not. The coroner would be delayed.

  Luke scoured the room, looking for some relief. The youthful face on the portrait of Phillip McGrath Senior looked identical to the sorrowful face of his son on the couch.

  The hot room magnified the pain twisting at the base of Luke’s skull and the intensity pushed his chin to his chest. He tried focusing his gaze on the throw rug under the coffee table. It matched the one in the den.

  Luke wanted to scream, get me out of here!

  He doodled in his notebook. He wanted to drive the freeway with the windows open, to snort fresh air into his lungs. The next radio call had to be better than this one, but he found himself stuck in this suffocating house waiting for the coroner who wouldn’t show for more than an hour.

  His doodles turned into words as he wrote a note and put quotation marks around it.

  “What’s done cannot be undone.”

  Lady Macbeth was right about that.

  3

  TOM PLANTMAN SETTLED INTO THE RED LEATHER BOOTH at Bully’s Steak House. He sucked his gut in, gazed at the velvet portraits of naked women above the heads of the two men across the booth, lit a match, and sucked hard agains
t the end of his Macanudo cigar. He jabbed the ashes forward, each movement punctuating his point as he pushed the burning cigar tip closer to the chest of the man sitting opposite him.

  Charles Henreid lifted his elbows from the table and pulled back into the booth. His crew cut carried the colors of coarse ground pepper. The gray flecks at his temples gave the illusion of wisdom, but the pronounced cheekbones that started where his sideburns ended and narrowed into a thin chin, created the noticeable contradiction of projected strength and weakness at the same time. It was the eyes that broke the tie and gave away Henreid’s vulnerability.

  “I’m not a guy who sells generic information,” Plantman said. “Larry there’ll tell you, that’s not who I am.” He nodded toward the beaver-toothed man who’d set up the meeting. “I’m a silent partner in a few racehorses who’s just trying to take care of his family.” Plantman settled back into the booth. “We’ve got a horse going today that can make us some serious money.”

  White wisps of smoke formed into exclamation points above Plantman’s fingers as he poked the cigar forward. “We both win in this situation. You pay me the five hundred and bet as much cash as you can get your hands on.” He took a puff and mirrored Henreid’s posture.

  He thought his injured horse would hold up for one race, but Henreid’s five hundred, combined with the fifteen hundred he got from the three other guys would cover his own action. “Look. It’s up to you. I’ll only say this once. You can ignore the posted workouts and today’s field is as weak as they come. Our horse’ll go gate to wire at a good price.”

  “I don’t have that kind of cash handy,” Henreid said. “Why can’t your share come out of my winnings?”

  “Larry here says you could use a break, which is why I had him call you.” Plantman pushed his glasses over the bridge of his nose. “I believe him when he says to trust you, but I got to look out for myself too. I’ll end up with nothing to show for the work we’ve put into the horse if something happens. Besides, you know as well as me, whatever money you put down lowers my odds.”