The Sticking Place Read online

  Henreid leaned forward.

  Plantman dragged on the cigar, blowing a cloud into the cleavage of the waitress who leaned across the booth and poured another frosted Michelob into a sweaty mug. He found a direct view into Henreid’s eyes.

  Henreid would be back with the money.

  4

  HENREID TOSSED HIS NAVY BLAZER ONTO A NOTEBOOK with material about how to get rich on the real estate boom and pushed them across the bench seat of his half-ton pickup. There was an hour until the race, just enough time to withdraw the money for Plantman, get the name of the winning horse and make the bet that would give him his life back. But what if the horse lost? Losing that kind of money would destroy him.

  He made up his mind. He wouldn’t do it.

  Still, what could it hurt to have the cash handy just in case?

  No, placing the bet would turn him into a gambler again. How could he justify that? The solution turned out to be simple. He quit trying. This was an insider business decision. It was investing, not gambling.

  Henreid parked beneath a towering palm. The pungent scent of ocean breezes hung strong in the air as he pulled open the glass door of the San Diego Trust and Savings Bank.

  A series of bounced checks had prompted the bank to close his accounts, but he had a plan to come up with the cash. He handed over his MasterCard and asked for an advance.

  “I’m sorry.” The teller shifted nervously on spiked heels behind the counter. “It looks like you’re at your limit.” She fumbled with a pen and looked at the clock on the wall.

  Henreid pulled his VISA Gold Card from his lizard-skin wallet and fipped it onto the counter. “There should be a couple grand available on this,” he said as he twisted his wallet against the parquet counter. “Let’s try for twenty-five hundred.”

  The teller disappeared into an inner office.

  Henreid leaned against the counter with an unperturbed expression on his face and a pounding in his temples.

  The teller reappeared a few minutes later and reached for the drawer. The smile playing across her lips relieved the tension for both of them. “Would you like large bills for this?”

  “Large bills would be great.” Henreid put the money in his pants pocket and pivoted on his heel.

  He looked at his cowboy boots and pulled in a relieved breath as he stepped into the sunshine. His final credit card was now maxed out and he was on the verge of losing his business, but everything would be different after he put the two thousand down on a sure thing. The winnings would make everything wrong in his life right again.

  He pulled the Chevy pickup into the valet parking area at the racetrack and handed his keys to the attendant with a five-dollar bill for parking. The crashing of the waves a couple furlongs to the west would’ve been audible on a quieter afternoon, but this was the middle of a seven-week meet at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, the place “Where the Turf Meets the Surf.”

  It was “Heaven by the Pacific” and had been since Bing Crosby and Pat O’Brien had founded it in 1937. According to legend, Bing and Bob Hope had come up with the road picture idea while clowning in the paddock between races.

  Now, it was the place where Henreid would put his life back together.

  The announcer introduced the horses with information about the owners, trainers and jockeys as mini-skirted women with manicured hands clutched shiny purses and ogled the thoroughbreds coming out for the post parade. The crowd of impeccably dressed socialites who needed to be seen, serious horse players, and the let’s-go-to-the-races-one-day-a-year variety, had one thing in common. They all took the time to gaze at the photographs of Dorothy Lamour, W.C. Fields, Paulette Goddard, Edgar Bergen, Ann Miller and Don Ameche. The movie stars were denizens of the past and harbingers of the future.

  The loud speaker boomed Bing Crosby’s version of the Del Mar anthem as Henreid pushed his way toward the turf club.

  He handed Plantman the five hundred dollars, learned that his horse’s name was Wage Earner and muscled his way through the throng. He stepped up to the cashier at the large transaction window, heard the loudspeaker announce, “The horses are approaching the starting gate,” and handed the cashier the last of his money. “Give me two-thousand to win on the eight-horse,” he said.

  The tote board flashed seven-to-one odds on Plantman’s sure thing as the gates opened. The two horses vying for the lead with Wage Earner clipped heels rounding the first turn, giving the eight-horse an uncontested advantage as the rest of the field ducked in toward the rail or veered wide to avoid the trouble.

  Perched on the concrete brim running along the base of the rail a few feet from the track, Henreid could feel the surging power of the speeding eight-horse as it ran by, its chest heaving and its hooves thundering into the dirt, each stride accompanied by a magnificent grunt. His chest pulsed with a thunderous pounding of its own as Wage Earner widened her lead to six lengths as she ran past.

  The hot wash of the sweltering Santa Ana winds seemed to whip through the billowing manes of the other horses as they desperately tried running down the horse that would make Henreid’s life right again. He tasted the salt in the air and could almost feel the pockets of his Van Heusens swell, momentarily forgetting that the $16,000 represented a pittance compared to what he’d already lost. He’d split the payoff between his late mortgage payments and his maxed out credit cards.

  His reverie shattered as the crowd gasped.

  “No!” Henreid shouted.

  The right foreleg of the eight-horse had collapsed, sending her tumbling and rolling over the thrown jockey who lay in a heap on the track. Wage Earner was in a tangle, her leg splayed in the air like a turkey wishbone on a Thanksgiving platter.

  “No!” The cry imploded in an internalized scream this time, a wail against the lost money and against being sucked into gambling again. The blood rushing to his head deafened him. He shredded his tickets and tossed them into the wind, his chance to start over as dead as Wage Earner would be when the vet administered the lethal injection. Adrenaline pounded his system and blood rushed through his brain, making his eyesight a red haze of confusion as he stumbled through the turnstile.

  “You are such an asshole,” he said to himself, more worried for the moment about the five-dollars he’d blown on the valet service than about the cash advance he couldn’t repay.

  Tipsters waved multi-colored selection sheets that promised future winners as Bing Crosby’s voice crooned the Del Mar Anthem’s lyrics over the loud speaker again. Henreid spit on the ground. “Fuck you Bing,” he mumbled and climbed behind the wheel. The truck’s tires pushed out a billowing cloud of dust and gravel in their wake.

  Henreid pushed through the door of a liquor store on Camino Del Mar a few minutes later and snatched a pint bottle from the shelf. While the clerk busied herself with customers, Henreid stuffed the bottle under his jacket and walked out the door. It was the first time he’d ever stolen anything, but he had no money and he needed a drink.

  He twisted the top off, tipped the Jack Daniels to his lips and stomped on the accelerator. The front bumper scraped pavement as he pulled into the street and lowered the electric windows.

  For a fleeting instant he understood that nobody else carried the blame for destroying his life and swore to work hard and quit betting forever. Rational thoughts quickly got swallowed up by his growing hatred for Tom Plantman though, the man who’d seduced him into gambling again and taken his money from his pockets. “Damn, damn, damn.” The obsessive damns turned into a resounding mantra as Henreid sped south on Interstate 5 toward downtown San Diego.

  He turned on the radio.

  Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” faded away on station KCBQ as the talent’s mellifluous voice launched into a familiar sign-off. “Rod Paige here, glad to have spent this time with you right here in beautiful San Diego, our very own Camelot by the Sea, old friend.” The “old friend” dragged out in a long drawl that intermixed with Bing’s crooning and Henreid’s obsessive round robin of
thoughts. Get your hands on some cash, you can win tomorrow, you can win tomorrow and everything will be all right where the turf meets the surf in Camelot by the Sea, old friend.

  Flashing blue and red lights in his rear-view mirror interrupted Henreid’s mantra. He pulled to the freeway shoulder a few hundred yards from the exit that led to the heart of downtown San Diego and squeezed the wheel as one police officer eased his way toward the driver’s window and another took up position outside the front passenger door.

  “May I see your driver’s license and registration, sir?” the officer asked.

  Henreid fumbled in his wallet for the license before plunging his fist into the glove compartment for the expired registration. A few months before, he’d stopped at the track on his way to mail a check to the DMV and threw it in the trash can along with the three losing tickets.

  “Sir, are you aware that this registration has expired?”

  Of course Henreid was aware, and wasn’t that a stupid fucking question anyway? Yes, he knew it was expired and this arrogant bastard knew that he knew it. “Really? I didn’t get any notice in the mail,” Henreid said.

  “Would you step out of the truck please, Mr. Henreid? Walk over there.” The officer nodded toward the bank of ice plant near where the other officer stood. “Away from traffic please.”

  “Mr. Henreid, we intend to put you through a series of field sobriety tests. If you fail the tests, we’ll place you under arrest. Please pay close attention to everything I say because part of what we’re evaluating is your ability to comprehend and follow instructions. Do you understand?”

  Henreid understood, or at least he thought he did. The instructions were simple enough, even if they were delivered by this highfalutin’ son of a bitch who stood like he had a stick shoved up his ass.

  “Mr. Henreid, I need you to count from seventy-five to fifty-five backwards. Begin now, please.”

  “Seventy-five, seventy-four, seventy-three, seventy, sixty-nine, sixty-eight,” Henreid continued counting with no more mistakes. This was easy. “Fifty-five, fifty-four, fifth-three, fifty-two… how far did you say to count?” Henreid asked.

  Luke Jones flipped a page in his notebook and started writing. He kept up the tests until Henreid stumbled against the police car while trying to balance on one leg. “Mr. Henreid, that’s enough. Please put your hands behind your back with your palms together. You’re under arrest for section 23102(a) of the California Vehicle Code, driving on a public highway while under the influence of an alcoholic beverage.”

  Hartson told Luke to handcuff their prisoner and escort him to the back seat of the police car.

  Henreid watched from behind the cage as Hartson directed Luke to search the truck. Luke snatched the passenger door open, leaned across the length of the bench seat, put a knee on the floorboard and looked under the driver’s area. That was where he found the mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Then Hartson directed Luke to call for a tow rig, to start filling out the tow report and to give the plate information to dispatch to check for wants and warrants.

  The dispatcher’s response resonated throughout the car a little later. Eight hundred dollars worth of warrants for failure to pay parking tickets waited at the Marshal’s Office.

  Luke handed the truck driver the tow slip just before the two officers piled into the car.

  After they picked up the warrants Hartson eased the patrol car into the front lot of the police station as Henreid made up his mind. And this time he meant it. He’d go back to Gamon for sure and put his life back together, just like he’d done it before. He knew his screwed up life was entirely his fault.

  Then he examined the real reasons for his predicament. First there was Plantman and then these two cops who thought they had the right to poke around in his truck and throw him in jail. They were why his life was all fucked up. No—not really—it was his fault.

  He remembered the first time he’d stood in front of a group at a GA meeting, clutching the back of a hand-carved pew, forcing a smile. “My name’s Charles Henreid and I’m a compulsive gambler.”

  A chorus rang out around him, “Hello Charles.”

  “This is my first time admitting I have a problem.”

  A new chorus of the voices of informed understanding sounded exactly like the holy-roller congregation of his childhood church, the ones that shouted Amen to the preacher’s hell-fire and brimstone sermons.

  “Sometimes it feels like killing myself is the only way to get control of my life back.”

  He was struck by how much this crowd understood and accepted his helplessness. They actually cared about him and listened to what he had to say.

  Henreid was jerked back to the present when Luke started asking him the personal questions for the report top sheets while Hartson disappeared into an office near the front of the car. But Henreid had a few questions of his own. “What’ll happen to my truck?” he asked.

  “It’ll be impounded,” Luke said.

  “How can I get it back?”

  “I don’t think you can get it out until you pay the parking fines and there’ll be impound and storage fees tacked on,” Luke said.

  “I can’t afford to pay. You’re taking my livelihood away?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Luke said. “I don’t have any choice.”

  “Mr. Henreid,” Hartson said as he eased back on to the driver’s seat. “You need to submit to a chemical test. The test can be of your blood, breath or urine. You have the right to choose which test, but not to refuse to take a test. If you do refuse, you’ll go to jail and your driver’s license will be suspended. Which test would you like to take?”

  “Whatever. What difference does it make?” Henreid asked in disgust.

  “Obviously, you have to pee in a bottle for a urine test and someone will stick a needle in your arm for the blood test,” Hartson said. “Either test would have to be analyzed by the lab in the next day or two. The breath test isn’t intrusive and you get the results right away.”

  “Can I think about it for a while,” Henreid asked.

  “We have reports to write,” Hartson said. “We can wait a little before we book you, but the longer it takes to decide, the higher your blood alcohol level will go since you just stopped drinking a little while ago.”

  Henreid blew an exasperated sigh, pushing a cloudy fog against the window. “Breath,” he said.

  Then he blew a .18.

  Once at the jail, Hartson held his palm over Henreid’s head, protecting it from the top of the doorway as he slid out onto the concrete of the sally port. Henreid heard a loud click. A metal door slid open and the trio walked into the jail where Luke searched the prisoner for weapons one last time.

  A second click reverberated. A grated door opened and Henreid stepped into a holding tank where a dozen other prisoners drooped lazily on the bolted metal benches or lay on the floor as far from the single toilet as possible.

  As the heavy door slammed shut, leaving Henreid surrounded by hardened criminals and disheveled drunks he swore a silent oath never to do this to himself again. He’d decided to accept responsibility for his own predicament.

  5

  “OH, OH, OOOH, OOOOOOOH, OOH, MY GAWD…” Denny Durango’s love-efforts generated a breathtaking moon-howl. It started deep inside the quivering belly of the woman writhing underneath him and scrambled out her pouting lips to echo throughout the lengthy hallways of the three-story apartment building.

  Denny glanced at his Seiko runner’s watch and let out a yelp as the moan subsided. He disengaged abruptly and rushed into the shower. “Let yourself out,” he shouted above the sound of the water sputtering from the spigot. “I’m late for work.”

  Steamy water mixed with the creamy Dove soap that rolled along his legs, washing the sexual juices down the drain.

  Once dressed, he slipped the badge pin into its clasp at the breast of the shirt. Putting on his uniform ranked right up there with an orgasm. “God!” h
e said into the mirror, watching his lips pucker as he formed the words, “I love being a poooooliceman.”

  His lean body resembled a bamboo shoot. A Boston Blackie mustache rode under his aquiline nose, and his four-inch afro looked like the bristles of a barbecue brush. As he formed his words into the mirror’s reflection, he recalled his triumphant phone call to his mother in New York City to tell her he’d been hired and he smiled at the memory of her jubilant response.

  He exulted in the prestige the uniform brought to a former street urchin who’d grown up prowling the alleys and rooftops of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He snatched a windbreaker to cover his shirt and bounded for the door. He’d find a locker when he got to the station.

  He knew he faced a harrowing day, that every training shift loomed as dangerous as a La Salsa dance along the edges of a second story disco floor with the railing missing. If he didn’t watch his step, his career would last about as long as a Donna Summer song.

  Among those who’d graduated from the 89th San Diego Police Academy, Denny’s test scores ranked dead last. But he took pride in knowing he stood out from the thirty-seven classmates who’d washed out during the six-month academy. Luke Jones, his up-tight bookworm of a roommate, had promised to keep tutoring him in report writing and Denny knew he’d be good enough at the paper work to survive by the time he finished his field training. He could really strut his stuff then.

  He didn’t know books, but he knew the streets. He could handle people. He could handle himself, and he exuded confidence as he scooted into the lineup room looking for the name tag of J.R. Shimmer. He found his man, extended his hand and announced, “I’m your new trainee, sir.”

  Shimmer stuck out his hand. “Don’t sir me. I hate that shit. Sit over in the corner and we’ll talk after.”

  6

  THE THUD AND WHIRR OF MECHANICS’ TOOLS surrounded Denny and Shimmer as they carried their equipment through the fleet garage. Denny surveyed Shimmer’s hair from behind. It looked like Floyd from “The Andy Griffith Show” had cut it since it had the odd angles of a haircut from a shop where conversation was more important than how you looked when you got done.