

Beautiful Lies

Rob Loughran

Published on Smashwords by

BUBBA CAXTON BOOKS,

Portland Oregon

Copyright Rob Loughran, 2013

Formatted by eBooksMade4You

* * *

All rights reserved

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of excerpts used in reviews.

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Beautiful Lies © Rob Loughran, 2013

This is a work of fiction. The events described are

imaginary; the characters are entirely fictitious and not

intended to represent actual living persons.

* * *

For John Lucanic

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

* * *

Chapter 1

The bartender poured Darren another Dewars without being asked. The dimly lit bar at LAX resembled every executive bar in every airport in the world: while intending to be exclusive and fashionable it succeeded at being only pretentious and overpriced.

Darren nodded to the bartender and returned his attention to the raven-haired thirty-something perched two stools down. She balanced sleek and sassy, showing precisely enough leg and cleavage to have someone else spring for tonight's champagne and perhaps, if needed, next month's rent. Darren continued, "Pinot noir should have hints of cherries, berries, and earthiness. Cabernet sauvignon should contain elements of tobacco, briar, cassis, and cedar. Chardonnay should flirt with citrus, flint, butter, and pears."

She leaned over, showing Darren that she wore a black lace bra and patted the bar stool between them. Darren slipped onto the stool, sliding his Dewars along the bar. She drained her champagne and then asked, "How long have you been a winemaker?"

"I was born into it. MZ Vineyards is my family's business. We've owned and nurtured the land for generations."

"Exceptional," she said. "Tell me more about pinot noir?"

Darren smiled. "Pinot noir is a temperamental, thin-skinned grape that lacks the tannin profile of, say, a cabernet sauvignon. But all grape stems are loaded with tannins. That's why winemakers ferment pinot noir in a process known as 'whole cluster' where we leave the grapes on the stems. This releases the stems' tannins into the wine and results a broader, more supple feel on the palate."

The bartender made a move to refill her champagne flute but Darren waved him away and said to her, "May I, if you don't mind, ask you a question first?"

"Certainly." She gazed down demurely.

Darren said, "Are we gonna fuck tonight?"

She looked up and her lips formed a sudden surprised O before she recovered and said to Darren, "You asshole." She gathered up her purse and left, her heels snick-snick-snicking across the hardwood floor.

The bartender said, "You kind of blew that one, dude."

"I have some back-up pussy at home." Darren sipped his scotch. "That, and the tax break, is the reason I'm married."

The bartender pointed, "That was a world-class piece of ass. Even for LA."

The bartender said "LA" as if the angels truly resided there.

Darren read the bartender's name tag: Colin engraved black on gold. "When you get right down to it, Colin, I mean when you're in the saddle and your eyes are closed they're all pretty much the same." Darren drained his scotch and motioned for another. "And the only ones we ever want are the ones we haven't had."

"That's pretty cynical," said the bartender as he refilled Darren's glass for the third time. "Even for me."

"But I'm not a cynic."

"What are you?"

Darren smiled and said over the rim of his glass, "I'm a failed romantic."

Colin studied Darren, then looked around the room at couples nestled into booths, nursing their drinks. He poured four ounces of beer into a coffee cup from an opened bottle of Heineken he kept in the ice. While waiting for the foam to reside he said, "I'm curious."

"We all are."

Colin said, "So, dude, if you've got some at home and you're bored getting busy with a hot little piece of ass like that, what do you want?"

There is a familiarity that springs up between clients of taxi-drivers, whores, and bartenders: the customers, knowing they will never see the service-providers again, tend to tell the truth. That dynamic, and the scotches that Darren had already consumed caused him to state calmly, "I want to feel what it's like to kill someone."

"Of course," said Colin, "you'd want to get away with it."

Darren rattled the ice cubes in his glass and said, "Absolutely."

"The odds for getting away with murder are actually pretty decent."

"What do you mean?"

"According to the US Department of Justice one-third of all murders go unsolved. In California it's forty-six percent: nearly fifty-fifty."

"Why the hell would you know that?"

"I'm the bartender, dude. I gotta know all sorts of shit: sports, politics, religion, celebrity gossip, anthropology, dirty jokes—"

Darren raised his glass and the bartender tinked it with his icy coffee cup. "So how do you get away with murder?"

Colin sipped beer from his coffee cup, "Most murderers get caught, for one of two reasons. One: disposing of the body. Or two: they're suspected because they know the victim. That's it. If you really wanna kill someone and get away with it, pick a random victim, do the deed, and leave the body where it lays. Simple. As long as no one catches you during the lethal endeavor the odds are almost in your favor. But then comes the hardest part."

"What's that?"

"You have to keep your mouth shut about it." The bartender returned to his station to pour a shot and a beer for a harried businessman who looked late for a flight but more in need of the booze. He collected cash for the man's drinks and walked the room to see if the various other couples in the sedate and gloomy bar had precisely what they needed. He returned to Darren and motioned at his Dewars.

Darren shook his head.

"Now," said the bartender, "where were we?"

"Getting away with murder," said Darren.

"Pick someone you don't know. Kill them and leave them be. That's how you should do it. Quite a rush actually—"

"You're speaking from experience?"

"Hell yeah." He pointed to a small Globe-and-Anchor tattoo on his upper left forearm that just peeked out beneath his partially rolled-up white shirt. "First Recon Marines, up to our eyeballs in shit with the Republican Guard in Nasiriyah while the cameras were showing Saddam's statue come a-tumblin' down in Bagdad."

Darren reevaluated the bartender. The glib California-surfer-dude exterior may have fooled him. "What's it feel like?"

"Some guys in my squad got a hard on."

"What about you?"

"I usually came."

Darren laughed. "Let me buy you a drink?"

The bartender raised his coffee cup, "I drink for free all night long, but thanks."

"I gotta get going anyway." Darren tossed his American Express card onto the bar. "Cash me out will you?"

"I'll need a photo ID," said the bartender. "For your protection. What with these things turning up stolen."

Darren looked at the bartender, then shrugged. He fished in his inside coat pocket for a wallet and pulled out his driver's license. The bartender made an exaggerated show of comparing the cards' information. "For the card holder's protection?" said Darren

"What other reason?" said the bartender.

"Thanks," said Darren. "Write yourself in twenty percent."

"I will," said the bartender.

* * *

Chapter 2

Darren's plane arrived on time at SFO. His Mercedes was tucked exactly where he'd left it in Short Term Parking. Since he always traveled with just a carry-on—screw these airlines with their extra baggage fees: Darren would travel light, buy whatever clothes he needed and throw them away rather than pay the airlines' greedy tariffs—he was on the freeway and headed north to San Francisco within a half-hour of having landed. There was sparse traffic at 2:31 AM and he zipped through San Francisco timing the lights on 19th Avenue, then crossing the Golden Gate Bridge north on Highway 101, homeward, to Healdsburg.

The heart of Sonoma County's wine country.

The highway hosted a steady stream of semis and cars in both directions. In Santa Rosa, after seeing his second In-and-Out Burger and fifth Starbucks from the freeway he pulled off onto Old Redwood Highway. "What's the difference," said Darren aloud, "between the United States of America and a hooker with a yeast infection?" He passed a battered VW microbus and said, to no one, "The hooker has more culture."

Darren had chased his LAX scotches with two beers on the plane. He wasn't drunk, nor was he quite sober. Driving slowly along Old Redwood Highway past Cardinal Newman High School, a dive bar, and the odd assortment of small private businesses suited his mood. If he had cared to label that mood, he would've called it mindlessly introspective. He culled through some ugly childhood memories and chased those away, as he usually did, with thoughts of more recent events: his just completed and quite successful business trip to a variety of upscale restaurants along the Southern California coast, the relief he always felt about returning home to Healdsburg, but more importantly he focused on his recent conversation with the bartender. He had surprised himself with his suddenly stated—yet completely honest—desire to know what it's like to commit murder.

And get away with it of course.

Where the hell had that come from?

He'd stated that he wanted to kill people before: but everyone had declared that they'd wanted to murder a parent, a spouse, a boss, a teacher, a sibling, and any multitude of assholes who had cut them off on the freeway. It was a figure of speech, for Christ's sake. But when he had told that bartender that he wanted to kill someone he had meant it. Why had he told Colin the complete and unvarnished truth? And why had it felt like a confession and catharsis; a triumph and a breakthrough? Darren wasn't concerned so much with why he had blurted it out, but rather why it had taken so long for him to verbalize it. After he'd stated the desire he knew it had been a goal, shit—a lifetime ambition—to kill someone. And then gloat at the world after he had done so. He'd ignored his lethal desire for decades; then sublimated it through his business success, but even there, look at the business vocabulary:

"Hostile acquisition."

"Takeover."

"Make a killing..."

Darren continued north on Old Redwood Highway to the town of Windsor. Sleepy little tract houses containing myopic people who lived spoiled lives of contented fat-assed American distraction. He reached for the radio, and then decided against turning it on. He wanted to be alone.

More than that: he wanted to be isolated.

He was tired of all the bullshit: his job, his wife, the vineyards and winery. It was all just fake-ass and pretense. All of it so rote and predictable and expected: even the success and the money and the little acclaim that had come his way. All hollow and ultimately disappointing. Perhaps this is where his fantasy of committing murder had re-originated. Darren decided that the only thing real for him, as spoiled and jaded as he had become, would be dabbling in death.

Someone else's.

From Old Redwood Highway he turned right on Pleasant Avenue and picked up Chalk Hill Road a mile later; one of his favorite bicycling routes. He knew every bump and twist and pothole in Chalk Hill Road. Driving up through a grove of eucalyptus Darren turned off his head lights and savored the deep Sonoma County darkness. He rolled down his window to breathe the menthol purity of the eucalyptus leaves that littered both sides of the road. He slowed the Mercedes and breathed deeper. Eucalyptus berries crackled beneath the car's tires. Darren thought about stopping in town for a drink, and then considered dropping by Ellen's for a quick blow job. But Ellen might want to go out for breakfast and chit-chat afterwards.

He decided it would be less trouble to just go home and fuck his wife.

He relaxed and tugged at his jacket lapels. Darren looked forward to sleeping in his own bed, waking reasonably early and lifting weights. Then Darren remembered he had promised Bridget he'd help set up that benefit for AYUDA tomorrow night.

That's when Darren spied a sharp, sudden glint of metal in the road in front of him.

He instinctively jerked the steering wheel to the left. In the center of the right hand lane was a chubby, stoop shouldered man—dressed in dark clothing—peddling an ancient bicycle with no lights or reflectors up Chalk Hill Road. "Get off the fucking road," yelled Darren out the window. In his rearview mirror Darren watched the man, both hands tight on the bicycle's drop handlebars, fade away into the night.

Enraged, Darren flicked his head lights on and stomped the accelerator.

The Mercedes crested the top of the hill at seventy-five mph and Darren braked immediately, knowing the road curved sharply to the left and then headed straight down: a potholed and deteriorating ribbon of county road. Through the curve Darren coasted, without touching the brakes, then he pumped the brakes while bumping down the long pitched hill that he climbed twice a week on his carbon fiber Cervelo racing bike.

At the bottom of the hill he slowed and once again turned off his head lights. He hit the button to close the driver's side window. In the dark he continued by scant moonlight, knowing that in another quarter-mile or so, the road would cant slightly upwards to the bridge that crossed Pool Creek. Immediately past the Pool Creek Bridge Darren abruptly pulled off the road and turned off the ignition. The thought hit him: "I almost killed that stupid shit head on the bicycle. I mean, really killed him dead-ass dead."

He sat for a moment, appreciating the darkness and quiet.

Darren opened the car door and stepped outside. The Mercedes' interior light spilled onto the pavement. Darren double checked to be sure the door was unlocked and closed it quietly. As always, Darren was awed by the darkness of a Sonoma County night. A porch light, maybe half-a-mile distant burned, barely bright as the stars. He felt the night wind and smiled.

He actually began considered murdering another man for fun a viable possibility. Right here, right now. Like the bartender said, most people get caught disposing of the body or because they are related to the victim. Darren breathed deep and thought, "What's the difference between my killing him now with my hands and killing him four minutes ago—joyriding after scotch and beers; no lights—with my car? Why does the stupid piece of shit ride a bicycle in the middle of the night? What is that if not asking to be killed?"

Darren squatted on the roadway like a catcher, picked up a piece of broken pavement and tossed the asphalt shard into the bushes. His knees popped. He lowered his ass and stretched his Achilles' tendons. Darren realized he was actually considering killing this stranger on a bicycle. After wondering why, Darren stood and said aloud to the night, "Because I want to."

He heard the bicycle, trundling and jouncing over the potholed pavement, but it was a full minute before he saw it. In those sixty seconds, Darren alternately flexed and relaxed his shoulders. He exhaled, and for the first time in years, decades, perhaps ever: he felt calm.

The rattling of the bicycle grew louder.

Darren squinted to see the chubby brown-jacketed man crank the bicycle up the slight incline, his work boots thrashed at the pedals. The cyclist slowed, sat up in the saddle and nodded at Darren as he approached. Darren raised his right hand in greeting and the man mumbled something in Spanish. As the Latino coasted past the Mercedes Darren launched his right forearm and clothes-lined the campesino across the throat. The force of the sudden assault unseated the rider from the bicycle. The man's round bulk, combined with the brute and sudden impact of Darren's forearm, thudded them down in the precise center of Chalk Hill Road. Darren heard the man's breath exit with a whoosh and winced as the Latino's head bounced twice off the concrete roadway with two sick and solid thunks.

There was no resistance as Darren wrapped his hands around the man's throat. He applied pressure and straddled the man's chest. Darren hunched his shoulders forward and leaned: hard. He surged and felt his forearms bulge with the effort. His victim didn't fight back—the fall from the bicycle must have knocked him out. Darren forced himself to breathe deep, deep. He realized that this task may take a while.

Darren thrust and squeezed until he felt the man's throat cave with a papier-mâché crackle. The victim now kicked and convulsed. Darren increased the pressure until his shoulders and biceps throbbed from the exertion.

Darren continued breathing deeply. He focused on the man's eyebrows. Black and bushy they almost touched above the bridge of his nose. Beads of sweat condensed and ran across his victim's forehead as Darren rocked back and forth while bearing down with all his weight. The man had ceased to breathe but Darren continued to exert pressure. He felt the grit and dirt on the man's throat turning to mud from the spittle and snot bubbling from mouth and nose. Darren noticed that a crucifix on a chunky gold chain had fallen outside the campesino's shirt and lay on his jacket's collar.

Still throttling his silent victim, Darren looked to the left and right; they were absolutely alone. He felt in control, ennobled; victorious and exalted. It was, Darren realized, not an act of violence he had committed.

But rather a consummation; a triumph.

Again Darren looked to the left and right and began bouncing the man's skull, progressively harder, against the pavement. In the feeble moonlight, he saw black blood pooling on the road. He breathed deeply and again re-tightened his grip. Darren forced himself to count to one hundred before he relaxed, rose, and stood over his victim.

Darren nudged him, gently, with his right foot. The man was barely five feet tall and covered with a light dusting of dirt. He smelled like livestock: the acrid stink of cow or horse piss. "Or maybe you just pissed yourself, you poor dumb unlucky shit head," said Darren.

As if in reply, the man rolled to his left and croaked, "¡Ay, Dios Mío!" Then he inhaled and started coughing; curled up like a worm on the pavement.

Rather than shock or surprise at the man's resilience and recovery, Darren felt challenged. He was mildly astonished that his heartfelt attempt at murder had failed. But he was actually relieved to know that the act of choking the life from a fellow human being was not as quick, simple, or easy as every movie he'd ever seen made it out to be. But he couldn't stop now; he had to finish it.

He kicked the man repeatedly in the kidneys.

The victim's breath rasped and the man rolled away from Darren's repeated kicks. He traversed the roadway toward the ditch. When he had rolled completely to the shoulder, Darren kicked him one last time in the stomach and flipped him to his back. Once again Darren wrapped his hands around the now sobbing man's throat. This time, for leverage, he sat higher on the man's chest. Darren pinned his victim's shoulders to the gravel with his knees—he wanted to avoid being punched or gouged by fingernails. He pressed with all his weightlifter's bulk and thrust repeatedly until he felt something collapse: much like a garden hose made of reinforced straw. Darren realized that it must have been structural cartilage that he'd heard earlier: this time, he'd crushed the actual windpipe. The man's neck shrunk under Darren's increasing pressure but the murderer applied yet more force. Without releasing his grip he re-centered his knees on the man's chest for more leverage. Darren resolved to maintain the pressure for a full count to three hundred.

A solid five minutes.

As he counted, he noticed the roadway had become slightly moist with dew. It wasn't moisture that was falling, but rather it was just appearing. For a moment, Darren thought he could smell the ocean, and then thought that perhaps it was the metallic smell of this unlucky Latino's blood. That was when he realized that his victim was no longer bleeding. His heart had stopped. He was dead.

He had been killed.

Murdered.

Darren hesitantly relaxed his grip. The natural elasticity of the man's throat caused his larynx to pulse outward. Darren considered choking the man for another three hundred count, but instead, tenderly laid two fingers of his right hand against the man's carotid artery.

His unbeating carotid artery.

Darren then slapped the man's face three times.

Hard.

Not a wince or a response.

Darren smiled, then stood and stretched. He towered, composed and satisfied, above the dead man as if he had just finished a challenging upper body workout. He grabbed the man, who looked somehow bigger in death, by his ankles and flung him—head and shoulders first—into the ditch. The corpse landed and rolled; then rocked back and slid, settling splayed into the dry trough filled with late summer's fallen leaves, dust, and detritus.

Darren thought for a moment that the body moved.

He double checked, nudged the still-warm Latino with his foot, and smiled at the trick his brain had played. The man was dead; killed by Darren's own hands. There would be no more flinching or twitching or breathing: just cooling off and an eventual, ineluctable, putrescent return to the earth.

Darren unbuttoned his shirt-cuffs and pulled his tailored Oxford shirt down past his jacket cuffs and over his hands. Aware of the fresh blood on the road Darren walked circuitously to the dead man's bicycle. Using his shirt-cuffs as gloves he grabbed the campesino's bicycle: a 1970's vintage Schwinn Varsity. He dumped the bike into the ditch on top of its owner. "How the hell," he said to the corpse, "could you pedal that piece-of-shit Schwinn up and down these hills?" Using the same makeshift gloves he opened the Mercedes driver's door. In the dome light, he examined his hands and forearms. The victim had bled, but none of it—none, not a smidge—had gotten on him. He removed each shoe and checked the soles for blood.

There was none. He had successfully avoided his kill's fresh blood.

But the right knee of his pants had been torn. He checked his right knee through the frayed fabric. There were abrasions but no bleeding. He re-buttoned his shirt cuffs before he noticed that both elbows on his suit coat were also damaged: probably when he and his victim had first fallen to the pavement. Even though it was late and his wife was probably asleep he couldn't arrive home with scruffy, torn, dirty-ass clothes. Bridget was fastidious to the point of being anal, and she'd want to know Where? When? Why? and How? his suit had been destroyed. That's when Darren looked at the Mercedes' clock: 4:17 AM?

"It was three-thirty when I turned off Old Redwood Highway," said Darren. "How could I have spent over half-an-hour choking that little fucker?"

Darren felt a cold dread in his stomach knowing that a car could've trounced down Chalk Hill Road—head lights blazing—and busted him. Even if they hadn't stopped, and they probably wouldn't, they'd have cell phoned 911 and ruined his party. Darren reached in to pop the trunk and grabbing his shoes he hustled to the rear of the Mercedes. He felt, through his socks, the roadway moisture he had noticed earlier. He opened his carry-on and removed his running shoes and blue-and-white jogging suit. He stripped off his pants and stepped into the jogging suit. He transferred a money clip and change from his suit-pants to his jog-pants pockets. He double checked his jacket pocket for his wallet, removed that and slipped it into the other jog-pants pocket, zippering them both shut. He removed the Bill Blair jacket and Oxford shirt and felt the pullover's sweat-wicking fleece against his naked sweating torso. He rolled his suit coat, shirt, and pants into a ball and stuffed them back into his carry-on. Darren tossed his dress shoes and jacket into the trunk and sat on the bumper to slip into his jogging shoes. A lone oak tree fifty feet off the road caught his eye. He sat on the bumper, peaceful as a picnicker on a sunny Sunday afternoon. He felt the cool night wind and surveyed the distant oak. The tree dripped with lichens and stood silent sentinel: the only witness to Darren's senseless and self-indulgent act of violence and slaughter.

Darren smiled: You can't subpoena an oak tree.

That's when Darren was backlit by head lights coming up the hill from the opposite direction. They lit up the tree: in the bright unearthly glare of the approaching lights Darren saw the oak was diseased, rotted, and nearly leafless.

* * *

Chapter 3

"Be calm," said Darren to himself as he bent and tied his jogging shoes. "Just be calm. Calm." But his incessant internal conversation raged: "Who else would be out here but the sheriff at this time of night? The friendly fucking Sonoma County cops. They'll stop. They'll stop. What do I do if it's a cop? 'I was falling asleep Officer. So I pulled over to change into my workout clothes and run a mile and do some push-ups to recharge me for the ride home. Safety first, Sir.'"

A quartet of over-bright lights washed Chalk Hill Road in brilliance. Darren glanced to his right; the bike and the body were safely hidden deep in the ditch and the shadow of his Mercedes. "Be calm," repeated Darren. "Be calm."

But he wasn't calm. He was hyped and ready for anything. The vehicle was slowing; Darren could tell by its approaching outline that it was a truck with extra fog lamps or whatever they're called mounted in the grill. He raised a hand to shade his eyes; also to conceal his face. The truck rolled up even with his car, and Darren heard a voice, "Howdy."

Darren didn't lower his hand, "Good morning."

"What the hell are you doing there? Camping out?" The driver lit a cigarette. The lighter's flame illuminated his gray-bearded and craggy face.

"No. I'm changing a tire."

The driver flicked off his extra running lights and only his head lights stabbed into the darkness. "Your car's sitting okay. Sure you got a flat?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I heard a noise. The car wiggled."

"Wiggled? Shit, wiggled? That is serious. Hop in, I'll drive you into town. Somebody's gonna come down that hill, run your ass over and leave you dead in the ditch. Come back in daylight and fix your precious Nazi sled."

Darren shook his head and decided to change the subject, "Why are you driving around at this hour in the morning?" He got a sour taste in the back of his throat, suppose he had been here fifteen minutes earlier? Five minutes?

"I'm going to work, asshole," said the driver. "Why are you slipping into exercise duds to change a tire?"

"Because I don't want to ruin a three thousand dollar suit." Darren reached in the trunk and pulled out his suit coat. "Know what I mean?"

"Not really," said the disgruntled Samaritan, grinding gears as he downshifted into first, "You see this here is a three thousand dollar truck. Good luck with your tire, asshole." The insulted predawn commuter drove away, almost resisting the urge to extend his middle finger.

Darren lifted his feet alternately to the bumper and tied his shoes. But before opening the door to the Mercedes he walked over to the ditch and kicked at the old Schwinn hoping to prod it lower into the ditch. He succeeded by sitting and kicking it off the dead body. It now laid almost flat, its rear spokes pressing into the murdered man's face.

He wondered how long it would be before somebody found his conquest, his victim.

Darren drove slowly, cozy and comfortable in his jogging suit. He anticipated the road's esses and gently guided the solid and nearly-silent Mercedes through the corners. He followed Chalk Hill Road to its junction with Highway 28 and turned left. A half-mile further on 28 he turned right on a newly paved single-lane private road that led him through his neighbor's Christmas tree farm, then up the hill to his house and winery. The moon had gone; stars were fading and fragile purple-pink sunlight edged the valley. The houses—estates, rather—in this section of the Alexander Valley were massive, but designed to be unobtrusive. Each dwelling was placed so that their owners had an unobstructed view of their own personal slice of Wine Country Paradise. The estates were spaced out of sight from each other, and huddled alone, most painted in earth tones, surrounded by fields of grape vines, yellow-brown summer fields, and heritage oaks. Although the vineyards and wineries buzzed with almost daily activity there were, generally, no people in sight near the houses. Darren always got the feeling that the Alexander Valley had become an affluent and well-tended ghost town. Except every weekend—rain-or-shine—when it was overrun with the wine-tasting-public that vintners courted for their cash and denigrated for their ignorance and bad manners.

Darren's sprawling Mediterranean-style home, stucco-ed a light terra-cotta nestled between two hills with a natural creek running unfettered beneath a four-car cantilevered garage. But Darren didn't park in the garage. He stopped between the kitchen and his twenty-five meter lap pool, slipped out of the Mercedes and silently closed the driver-side door. He unlocked the kitchen entrance and without turning the lights on, walked across the kitchen to the freezer. He opened the freezer and removed a bottle of Stohli. He held the ice cold bottle against his right cheek, left cheek and then his forehead. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the brisk coolness for a full two minutes. He grabbed a wine glass and splashed in two ounces of vodka. He sipped and silently left the kitchen. He walked to the pool and drank his vodka slowly, standing, watching the sunrise. Physically his body was warm, not unlike after a demanding workout. But usually after a workout he had a feeling of calm contentment: a post-workout high.

But right now, Darren tingled.

And it wasn't the cool morning air, his fatigue, or the vodka. It was the realization that he had, for no good fucking reason, just killed a fellow human being.

He felt sublime and satisfied.

Darren dropped the empty wine glass softly onto a cushioned chase lounge, sat on the foot of the white, wrought-iron lounge, and removed his shoes and socks. He stripped off his jogging suit and underwear. He sat naked on the edge of the pool and dangled his legs in the cold, refreshing water. He and Bridget swam nearly every day, and they kept their swimming pool clean, clear, and cold. Darren slipped into the pool and swam half-a-lap underwater. He noiselessly broke the surface, gulped air, and segued into a smooth breaststroke. Up-and-down the pool Darren swam until the sun was high enough to cast shadows across the pool: long thin shadows from the Italian cypresses planted both for shade, and a windbreak along the pool's southern edge. Darren stopped in the shallow end of the pool and sat on the steps. Shivering slightly he meticulously examined his fingernails. He dug painfully beneath each manicured white crescent to remove any of his victim's inadvertently acquired flesh. He couldn't remember scratching the cyclist, but he couldn't remember not scratching him either. So he burrowed beneath each cuticle until they glowed pink and ached. He scrubbed the back of his hands and wrists to remove any snot or spit that may have bubbled, gurgled, or been ejected his way. Even though he had been wearing a shirt and coat he scoured his forearms up to the elbows.

He dunked his head and kneaded his scalp clean; thinking perhaps a drop of the man's blood might have been splashed there. Darren then massaged his abraded knees to remove every little bit of grit and gravel. They weren't badly scratched and, he supposed, the pool's chlorinated water would facilitate healing. He smiled and reflexively massaged the old scar on his abdomen. He had told everyone the scar was from an emergency appendectomy. Despite the fact the scar was too jagged, meandering, and close to the midline of his body to be from an appendectomy no one had ever questioned his explanatory lie. Darren thought as he fondled the faint and residual scar: with all the forensic cop bullshit these days you had to assume that anything could be used as evidence. But how many cars would pass the site, at forty or fifty miles per hour, covering up any trace of his having been there before anyone stopped and discovered anything? Even if some junk collector, noticing the front wheel of the Schwinn glinting in the ditch had stopped for the bike and found the body, how the hell could the tragic and brutal death of an itinerant, piss-smelling farm worker possibly be connected with Darren Elmore?

The chances were slim and none.

Even if the man in the truck were located and asked to testify what would he say? Darren had held a hand in front of his face for the entire conversation and in the darkness his burgundy Mercedes would've appeared dark blue, gray, or even black. Despite these reassurances Darren performed his entire grooming ritual, once again, like a soggy, shivering, finicky cat.

Then he kicked off from the edge and swam more laps, ticking them off like a metronome: this time in an efficient but splashy freestyle. He stopped in the deep end and caught his breath before he vaulted up and exited the pool in one nonstop motion. Darren swiped water from his arms and shook his head briskly. He smiled and left his sweat suit and wine glass where they lay. Still dripping he entered the kitchen and left splishy footprints and diverse splatters across the kitchen through the hall and up the carpeted stairs. He slowly opened the bedroom door and stood at the foot of the bed.

Bridget always slept face down.

This morning her right arm beneath her head, her left curled in the small of her back: creating half of a sensual, sexy swastika. She wore a rosy-pink, diaphanous, see-through ensemble from Victoria's Secret. The panties had twisted halfway around her torso and the pink thong meandered up and across her left butt cheek. Darren fondled himself and watched his wife sleep. He listened to her breathing. He watched her back rise and fall beneath the sheer pink fabric. His eyes traced the tan line above her twisted panties.

He was overcome with lust for his wife.

Darren smiled and realized he didn't lust for his wife. He simply lusted and his wife happened to possess the nearest pussy. He grabbed her ankles and flipped her over. He pulled her to where he stood at the foot of the bed. He spread her legs, then lifted her knees and inserted himself, rubbing right past her off-center thong. He grabbed the thong's waistband and tried to rip them off, but they just dug into Bridget's flesh. Her mouth popped half-open and Darren relished the fear and surprise he glimpsed in Bridget's pale, sky blue eyes.

"Darren, it hurts, go down on me a minute. Okay?" said Bridget. "Please put a condom on?"

He cupped his right hand over her mouth and continued his with his wake-up call.

She was dry, but Darren pumped away. Bridget tried to pull his hand away from her mouth; but it was useless. She closed her eyes; breathed raggedly through her nose, dug her nails into the bed and endured her husband's assault. Darren caught a glimpse of his torso in the bathroom mirror. He slowed and observed himself. Muscles taut, he arched his back while thrusting deeply. He stood on tip-toes and closed his eyes. He removed his hand from Bridget's mouth and grabbed the bodice of her negligee. Thrusting harder and holding it, grinding against her pubic bone he spasmed to a finish.

Then he ripped the sheer and lacy pink garment in half and pulled it roughly from her shoulders. He unfurled the torn negligee and waved it like a flag. He winked at Bridget, withdrew and wiped his cock clean with the frilly garment. She watched him as he turned, dropped her soiled Bedroom Sensations from Victoria's Secret on the carpet and exited the bedroom. Bridget perched herself up on her left elbow and yelled, "Was it good for you honey?"

Darren sat in his study, dressed in his blue-and-white jogging suit, barefoot with another wine glass half filled with almost pure Stohli. He sipped, set the wine glass on his desk and walked across the room to his bookcase. His index finger tapped spines of books on the top shelf: Machiavelli's The Prince, Awaken the Giant by Tony Robbins, and The Kabbalah. He found the leather volume he was looking for, but had never opened: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He returned to the desk with the book and sipped his cocktail. Darren traveled on business quite often, and he had found the perfect antidote for jet lag. Whether he had flown ahead to the East Coast or Europe or back to Hawaii, Japan or Australia he would disembark, set his watch to local time, and go about his day. He'd drink coffee and pop ginseng to stay alert and when he needed to sleep he'd simply make himself a drink like the one he now sipped: choral hydrate and chilled vodka. The knockout drops were illegal in the United States so Darren stocked up when he visited Great Britain, New Zealand, or Australia. The local Chemist Shoppes in those countries had a wondrous assortment of over-the-counter drugs: all of which were easy to smuggle back into the US in unmarked bottles.

He had the dosage down to a science: so many drops in a slug of Stohli for a four, six, or an eight hour siesta. You'd wake up feeling slightly hung over, but nothing a quick jog, swim or weight workout wouldn't cure. He sipped his Sleeping Beauty Potion and opened Crime and Punishment. The binding crackled and he smelled leather: the scent actually melded nicely with the Stohli. He sipped again and read a random passage: "Raskolnikov had, in short, a great deal to attend to."

Darren sipped, thinking the passage referred to him personally.

How much had Darren attended to since last night? How much had he been changed since last night?

Bridget, wearing a white T-shirt that barely covered her bare tushy, entered. "Crime and Punishment? Hasn't this month's copy of Muscle and Fitness arrived?"

"Good morning," said Darren.

"You said good morning to me upstairs," said Bridget as she walked to the desk. She picked up the wine glass, examined it and sniffed, "Go easy on that stuff. We have the AYUDA benefit tonight."

"You can't smell choral hydrate when it's in vodka."

"I was holding it up to the light when I sniffed. It gives the booze a slightly oily, viscous appearance."

Darren set the book down, picked up the wine glass and swallowed off its contents. "I'll be up by two this afternoon. No worries."

Bridget tapped Crime and Punishment, "I love that scene with the horse."

"What?"

"You'll know what I mean when you get there."

"I hate when you do that."

"Do what?"

"What about the horse?"

"There's this farmer with a wagon that his exhausted horse can't pull anymore. So he gets off the wagon and in a rage he beats the horse to death. I've always loved that scene. A display of violence that borders on the transcendent." Bridget turned and lifted her T-shirt. There was a ragged purple bruise across the top of her ass where Darren had yanked her panties taut. "Just like you this morning."

"You didn't like it?"

"Could you maybe get me ready a bit? Maybe spit on your dick next time?" Bridget dropped her T-shirt back down and turned to face Darren, "Your trip went so well you decided to come home and rape your wife?"

"You're welcome." Darren yawned and nodded. His cocktail and the morning's activities—sex and death—were beginning to extract a toll.

"You're just charming this morning."

"Thank you."

"And you'd better be charming tonight."

"Just wake me before two. I've got some shit to do before your big soirée."

* * *

Chapter 4

After an hour on her treadmill and a banana with a bowl of Grape Nuts for breakfast Bridget showered. She loved her morning shower: in her custom-built tempered-glass stall with seven heads that could pulse, jet, mist, or spray. Bridget stood right now with the detachable spray head that she referred to as "Mr Microphone". She held Mr Microphone—set to "gentle pulse"—between her legs. She always insisted Darren wear a condom during sex, but last night, this morning actually, had been so sudden. She was asleep and then she'd been spread-eagled, pinned to the mattress, and penetrated. "I guess," said Bridget, "Ellen wasn't home last night. I really should send that young lady some flowers. She so consistently distracts that brutal narcissist's attentions."

Bridget smiled and increased the intensity of the pulsing water jet.

She closed her eyes and gyrated—jilling, in time to the pulse—against the teasing stream of warm water. Birth control had always been crucial to Bridget. She'd seen too many of her high school friends made pregnant by their first steady boyfriends, who in turn became their first ex-husbands. She had always been determined to maintain a strict NO CHILDREN policy. She had actually turned down two marriage proposals—both from nice guys who would've make decent, loving husbands—because they required children. They were adamant about their wife providing plentiful, preferably male, offspring. Both of her suitors possessed that overwhelming, self-indulgent necessity to pass their DNA on to a subsequent generation. But Bridget had learned as a child, mostly from her mother's example that children were not for her. If you breed young and often, you'll have sacrificed your body, worked like a dog and then died young. All because your man subscribed to an outmoded way of thinking and living; and you subscribed to the belief that you should unflinchingly obey your man. Bridget mused aloud, "Tammy Wynette was wrong." Nevertheless, Bridget closed her eyes and enjoyed both the water's warm throbbing pulse and the irony of masturbating while humming, "Stand By Your Man".

One century ago a woman had to pump out eight, nine, or ten kids to help on the farm or in the factory and so broad-hipped fertility was praised—by men—as the ultimate feminine virtue. Now with the world egregiously overpopulated, greenhouse gases and oceans rising, and the human race grown beyond its ability to feed and shelter itself Bridget saw herself as somewhat of a saint or martyr—at least a visionary—for adhering to her principal of being born alone, living alone, and dying leaving nothing and no one behind.

Life is for me and for me only was Bridget's philosophy. She looked to attain nothing less than wisdom, perhaps even grace, through her intelligently aware and self-indulgent lifestyle. But if she failed in either grace or wisdom she'd at least have comfort, no stretch marks, personal health, and a good night's sleep. Living true to this philosophy she had always been adamant about birth control: complete abstinence in high school, the pill after college, the condom today. During college?

Ah, during college. She smiled and reminisced: the blow job.

Bridget gyrated against Mr Microphone and chased Tammy Wynette out of her head by purposely misquoting Lady Macbeth: "Out, out damnable sperm!" She laughed: "I couldn't get pregnant anyway, I haven't started my cycle."

She laughed again and calculated years: twenty-eight years since she had been in the clutches of nuns—BVMs to be precise, order of the Blessed Virgin Mary—and she could still calculate the percentages of pregnancy using the rhythm method. Or, as they used to call it: "Vatican Roulette."

Bridget hung up Mr Microphone but stayed a minute longer in the hot tingling all-around spray, planning her day. After a full morning in the office checking invoices, coordinating shipments, and posting her weekly blog for wine club members she had to hit the phones and remind everyone how important it was to show up for tonight's AYUDA benefit at Villa Chanticleer: with their checkbooks open; pens poised. At some point during the day she would also have to wake up her husband which was always a tricky proposition when he'd been hitting a tincture of vodka and choral hydrate. "Oh well," said Bridget honestly and loudly, "I could easily be married to a horny asshole who didn't have money."

Bridget switched off the shower heads and stretched languidly. But old habits die hard. She switched the shower on again, turned Mr Microphone to full pulse and re-rinsed her muffin until the warm throbbing water—and two thoughtfully placed fingers—provided the comforting climax her husband hadn't. A woman, Bridget believed, is always and ultimately responsible for her own orgasms.

Bridget's office was small, orderly and built for effectiveness.

Her computer and printer nestled together on a small black desk against the far wall. The desk was uncluttered and unornamented. She sat in a black armless, castored office chair. Webster's New World Thesaurus and Dictionary—both well thumbed—lived on the left-hand side of her desk with a single pen and an opened Day Planner. Professional journals: Vineyard and Winery Management, Wines and Vines, Wine Entrepreneur were all stacked neatly on the desk's right hand side: relevant articles tabbed with neon Post-It notes. The only wall decoration was a calendar with each past day of the month neatly X'ed off with a black Sharpie. It was an office built for no-bullshit-efficiency. But its most important feature was its view.

An unobstructed view of MZ Vineyards' loading dock.

Nothing—bottle or case—left the warehouse without Bridget's signature or scrutiny. That's the way both she and Darren wanted it.

Darren: the beneficent owner who expected loyalty above all else but would tolerate and forgive mistakes.

Bridget: the stone-cold-bitch who expected perfection and abided no slip-up, mis-step, or oversight.

She had always worked for a living: waiting tables for years, hustling at mall kiosks, cold call selling, secretary, and personal assistant. She had won an academic scholarship to attend a prestigious Catholic college-prep high school. Bridget had worked for that scholarship so she could get the grades to earn a college scholarship. She knew what it was to have a job, and she knew that running the administrative side of a winery was nothing more than that: a job. Leave the glamour of the industry to asshole celebrity winemakers, wine writers who didn't know diddly squat about either wine or grammar, and tasting room dilettantes who worked for minimum wage and all the free alcohol they could drink or steal. She remembered what it was like to be poor and hungry and she'd be godamned if some lazy knucklehead cellar rat or smart ass distributor was going to take this silver spoon out of her mouth.

Bridget accepted no excuses from her employees but the only ones who feared her were those skaters every business employs: the hot chick, the know-it-all college boy, the struggling artist, the jaded veteran. Yearly, with the zeal of an Inquisitor, she fired all those who goofed and bluffed and floated their way through the work day—and she had the respect of every good employee in the company.

That's precisely how Bridget and Darren met.

She worked for the architect who had designed and built Darren Elmore's house and winery. Darren was your typical rich prick who thought his money entitled him to an opinion on everything from load bearing beams to fluid dynamics. When Darren pissed-off the electrical contractor with questions he was sent to Bridget for his answers. The same with the plumbers, roofers, and pavers. "How come," he asked her one day, "I always end up talking to you?"

"Because," she said, "the bullshit stops here. And you, maybe, look smart enough to follow that to its logical conclusion."

"Meaning I'm the bullshit?"

"Not all of it; eighty-three percent tops."

"Do you always insult the boss?"

"You're not my boss."

"Now, you're playing the Iron Princess."

"I'm not playing anything. My job is to derail, placate, stall, or distract the guy who writes the checks. That way the men who actually do the work can actually do the work without interference."

"And I'm the check writer-guy?"

"Yes," said Bridget. "And a moment ago?"

"Yeah?"

"Right then I was playing, maybe a little bit, the Iron Princess."

Darren thought for a long moment and said, "What are you doing for lunch?"

Bridget checked out Darren from top-to-toe.

Twice.

She consulted her watch and said, "If I'm not mistaken, after we eat I think I'll be doing you."

Bridget had fucked self-centered fun-loving pretty-boys before (always with a condom; always) so she thought, On the clock or on the cock—it's still a paycheck. The remainder of the construction period breezed by for Bridget's architect boss and his construction minions because Darren was wining and dining Bridget: north to The Benbow Inn in Garberville and south to Le Mistral in Santa Barbara. Darren was cute and certainly sexy, though in an over-muscled and self-important way. And he enjoyed, a little too much, Bridget thought, screwing over other people while at the same time needing to be admired by those he trampled.

Bridget had wondered, from the first, why he had never gone into politics.

When the house and winery were finished, three weeks early, Bridget received a plump bonus and resigned from the architecture firm. Three months later, she married Darren Elmore.

Though no love match for her, she liked him well enough. Plus he didn't want kids and the pre-nup he had her sign was generous enough for the match to make sense from a purely business point-of-view. She had eight years on him, but that didn't seem to matter to either of them so it was never really discussed.

Even though she'd let her husband's libido roam during their twelve years together she held a tight rein on MZ Vineyards' day-to-day operation. What began as a meal-ticket job had evolved into her avocation.

And she loved her commute.

Fresh from the shower, dressed in a blue-on-gray, spaghetti-strapped gingham sundress and flat-soled Italian leather sandals, Bridget walked the quarter-mile down the hill—in the shade of mature oaks—to her office. Toting a stuffed paper sack she unlocked the building and entered the foyer.

MZ Vineyards didn't have a public tasting room—it was appointment only, with the assumption that anyone who called for an appointment would plunk down a Platinum AMEX card for two cases of wine and a subscription to the wine club's quarterly shipments—and those private tastings took place in this foyer. Bridget had learned design theory during her stint with the architect and she applied that knowledge to this space. A bar with four stools stood sentry to her office door and the room was ringed with dusty and rusty—but completely functional—hand operated relics of winemaking's past: a basket press, woven cylindrical grape baskets for pickers, foil spinners, and Italian floor corkers. Ancient red-wine-stained French oak barrels served as tables and decoration.

Bridget had just walked behind the bar, but before she could open her office door the winery's foreman, Ramon Camarillo entered with a worker she didn't recognize. "¿Señora?" asked Ramon. "¿Un momentito, por favor?"

"Sí, Ramon," said Bridget. "¿Que quisiera?"

They continued in Spanish:

"We have a big problem," said Ramon. "The county inspector comes today and the leech line is still clogged and pooling sewage near the road."

"I thought Darren—"

"Señor Darren said he would fix it, but..."

"I see," said Bridget. She motioned toward the other man.

"This is my cousin. His name is also Ramon."

Bridget shifted the paper bag from one hand to the other and shook hands with the new Ramon.

Foreman Ramon continued, "My cousin can fix it. Right now. He's a gardener but he has a tractor—"

"A Kubota. Small, but it has an attachment," said new Ramon.

"A backhoe attachment," said old Ramon. "We can fix it now."

Bridget nodded and considered a moment. "Will we be paying your cousin by cash or check?"

"Since it's only a few hours..." foreman Ramon shrugged and stared at his feet.

"I would be happy to arrange for a cash draw. I'll be in the office until about two."

"We'll be done by then, the inspector is scheduled for noon."

"Stop by, later." Bridget smiled at new Ramon. "Thank you."

"Certainly," they said.

"Pleased to meet you," said Bridget. She unlocked her office and left them standing in the foyer—tasting-room—museum.

"Your beautiful boss speaks equally beautiful Spanish," said new Ramon.

"She says she learned at the university. But..."

"But, cousin, you don't believe her?"

"The only place you learn to speak Spanish like that is in the cradle."

Bridget sat at her desk and, through her big window, surveyed her fiefdom.

Pre-harvest activities seemed trivial but were essential. Hoses were being rolled out, sanitized, and checked for leaks. Electrical connections were checked and mended. Nitrogen tanks were being delivered and stored safely. All the winemaking equipment underwent an exhaustive pre-harvest inspection. All the seals on MZ's array of stainless steel tanks were being scrutinized, evaluated, and repaired. When the crush began the grapes had to be picked, transported, and then processed immediately. Any glitch—mechanical, electrical, or otherwise—would certainly cut into profit margins and perhaps endanger the entire harvest. She watched the two Ramons walk down the hill to the leech line and observed several employees, because they knew she was watching, try to appear enthralled by their dirty, boring, tedious, but essential jobs. She placed the paper sack near her keyboard. Right now was the most important time of day for her. Before she booted her computer and began work she exhaled and closed her eyes. For twenty minutes—every day—Bridget sat and repeated slowly, word-by-word, the beginning of the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

Bridget repeated the words silently and slowly; not so much concerned with their meaning as with her utter concentration upon them. If a thought intruded, and it generally did, she would calmly return to the first line. Bridget repeated this formula, chasing stray thoughts and concerns away until only the words fell silently and singly like plump drops of water into a quiet pond. Some days she'd shoo thoughts and distractions for the entire twenty minutes without relaxing entirely. Other days she'd slip into a meditative timelessness and journey to another world. Today she struggled with the passage before slipping just momentarily into that mute landscape beyond all language. She opened her eyes, and as she had learned, so long ago, didn't judge or rate her experience. She merely smiled and appreciated her fleeting flirtation with the eternal.

Then she opened the paper sack and dumped out the contents on top of her keyboard. She folded the paper bag perfectly along the seams before placing it flat in the bottom of her empty trash can. Then she folded her torn Victoria's Secret negligee and stained stretched-out panties and tucked them into a desk drawer containing envelopes and printer paper.

Bridget praised her Creator everyday by praying the small Prayer of St Francis but she never lost sight of the fact that she lived in a dirty, competitive, and mercantile world.

She knew these torn bedroom garments might someday, perhaps, be used as leverage.

Or even currency.

* * *

Chapter 5

Darren slept deeply, without dreams.

This business trip hadn't taken him out of the Pacific Time Zone so he was tired, wired and a little bit frayed, but not jetlagged. After his vodka and chloral hydrate, right before he went to bed he mixed an Emergen-C packet into twelve ounces of water and chugged it down: a bulging bladder in four hours would be much more reliable than his alarm clock's insistent buzz.

Like biological clockwork, Darren's plumbing summoned him awake shortly after eleven o'clock. He rolled out of bed stiff-kneed, and then duck-walked to the bathroom. He drained his purposely overfilled bladder, decided to skip a shower and get to the matter at hand. After splashing water on his face and chest he toweled off and dressed in jeans, running shoes and an untucked purple polo shirt. From the upstairs master bedroom window, as he dressed, he watched Ramon Camarillo—his gossipy, busybody foreman—direct a worker operating a Kubota along the edge of the road. Probably fixing the leech line that Darren'd promised Bridget he'd get done. He should have fixed it last week: in this downturn-recession-depression Sonoma County had jacked the fines so high that even rich assholes like Darren were having to obey an environmental law or two, or pay through the nose.

Then Darren thought of Bridget.

Sexy as hell, pinned against the mattress. Dominated and helpless; that was hot, but he had to make it up to her. He made a mental note to buy her another Victoria's Secrets selection and have it delivered: all gift-wrapped and pretty-pretty the way that girly girls like.

As soon as humanly possible.

But other things first. He remembered the line fortuitously culled from Crime and Punishment: "Raskolnikov had, in short, a great deal to attend to."

First thing: he had to get rid of his torn suit. "Exhibit A" he supposed it would be referred to in a court of law. Or maybe "A" would be the old Schwinn and "Exhibit B" would be his suit. "Exihibit C" would be a tire track or some incidental DNA left at the scene. Darren replayed the murder in his mind. It would take an avalanche of incidentals to connect him with a stranger's choked-to-death body in a ditch off Chalk Hill Road. And this morning, right now, he had to dispose of the one link existing between him and that body.

Darren stopped the Mercedes just short of the junction of his unnamed and unmarked private driveway and Highway 28. He waved to Ramon and watched for a minute as the tractor, like a giant orange insect, dug and snorted and darted. "The small businessman's contribution to the health of the American economy is invaluable," said Darren. "I wonder what this fucking tractor's gonna cost me?" He waved again, this time ignored as Ramon the foreman jumped into the just-dug ditch with a shovel to remove a rock or root that had impeded the tractor's progress. He pulled his foot off the brake and let the car roll forward to the road. Darren sat there for three minutes, knuckles white on the steering wheel. It was all he could do to not make a left-hand turn and retrace his route back down Chalk Hill Road. He simply wanted to drive by the spot to see if it was real: that he'd really attacked and killed another person for simple shits and grins.

The detective shows and movies said the murderer always returned to the scene of the crime. Though they never said why, it was implied that the impulse was guilt and the secret need for punishment. He always thought that was bullshit.

And Darren now knew why.

It wasn't guilt that prompted a return to the crime scene: it was pride of accomplishment. The deed was something important that you had done. It was what set you apart from the rest of sniveling, complaining, servile humanity. The site was a place of personal triumph. He exhaled and turned to the right knowing that Alexander Valley Road, a few miles further on, would bring him directly past the Sonoma County dump. Darren relaxed and enjoyed the Alexander Valley's landscaped and well-trod scenery: Mount St Helena, gray and granite loomed to the north with rolling golden hills in the foreground. Vibrant swatches of green grape vines, like thick shag carpet, covered the valley floor. He passed his neighboring wineries: Fieldstone, Alexander Valley Vineyards, Soda Rock Winery, White Oak, and Stonestreet. He stopped longer than he needed to at the arterial stop sign on Pine Flat Road. Darren was preoccupied, savoring his recent lethal act, but you never would have known it by the pleasant way he waved to two cyclists and drove cautiously, even leisurely, turning onto Alexander Valley Road. He cruised smoothly at forty-five miles an hour and actually had his turn signal indicator on and was braking to turn left into the Public Refuse Disposal Area when he realized he was making a fundamental mistake.

All day long, the guy who sits in a booth at the dump, collecting fees and directing customers to the proper, environmentally proscribed disposal areas dealt with pickup trucks and SUVs trailing U-Haul fifth wheels full of rubbish and offal. Then at lunchtime in broad daylight, a guy in a purple polo shirt, Vuarnet sunglasses, driving a less than year old burgundy Mercedes with custom wheels, pulls up and pays cash to fling a single, brand-new zippered carry-on into the dump. Perhaps that might raise a flag. Darren flicked off his turn signal indicator, checked his rearview mirror and stomped on the accelerator.

He drove to the Safeway in Healdsburg and had purchased a box of Hefty trash bags before he realized that would also be a miscalculation, if not a mistake. He had planned to pop open his trunk, unzipper the carry-on, transfer his suit to a Hefty bag and toss it into one of the garbage cans in back of Safeway. But as he approached his car he noticed surveillance cameras on light posts covering every square meter of the parking lot. Again, he didn't know how often the cameras' footage was checked or for that matter who checked it or why. But in this age of digital surveillance and forensic aptitude he had to assume that everything he did was being watched, and every item that had come in contact with the murdered man was potential evidence. That's when he saw the white and blue St Vincent de Paul kiosk. He unlocked his trunk and tossed in the hefty bags. He opened the carry-on and removed the suit—still rolled into a ball with the shirt—walked across the parking lot, double-checked all the pockets for receipts, parking stubs, or any possible, no matter how oblique or improbable, identification. He opened the donation slot, dropped the suit in and gave the lid an extra flip to make certain the clothes had been dropped into the charitable bowels of the receptacle.

He brushed his hands on his thighs, smiled and returned to his Mercedes. Before starting the car he sat and critically reviewed what he had done in the last nine hours. With his bare hands he had murdered a man for no apparent reason.

No, that was wrong.

He had a compelling reason.

Despite his success and money and lifestyle he felt he was missing out on something primal and essential. That's why he acted on the urge to murder: he had felt lost. Darren examined his brown eyes in the rearview. They were the same eyes; but there was something different—something defining had changed—he had acted on the primordial urge for blood. Stepped past society's boundaries.

He felt silently and secretly fulfilled.

Darren continued his emotional inventory: He had driven home and scrubbed away any possible trace of DNA, covering his trail in the assumption that he would—somehow—be pursued. Following his ablutions he roughed up his wife sexually and used her torn nightgown as a dick hankie. Then he had calmly and thoughtfully considered several avenues to dispose of evidence. He had chosen the most innocuous and effective: a man placing a used suit in a St Vincent de Paul donation kiosk. "I suppose," said Darren, "it's time to get on with the rest of my day and the rest of my life."

But he sat there in the car, replaying last night's murder.

Brutal. Sudden. Violent.

Vibrant and fulfilling in his recollection.

He had chosen someone he didn't know, but who he supposed was someone's son, brother, husband, and father. And for no reason, he had destroyed him. Choked the life out of him with his own hands. He didn't question why he felt exhilaration instead of guilt.

Darren didn't even consider that his feelings might be depraved or abnormal.

He just knew that he'd never been happier.

* * *

Chapter 6

Villa Chanticleer was classy, modern, tasteful, and chic.

Forty-nine years ago.

Today it was antiquated and drafty but not quite old enough to be a cherished landmark. However it could accommodate one hundred and fifty people, was located in nearby Healdsburg, and rented relatively cheaply. All three of the AYUDA Foundation's annual Summer Festivals had been held at Villa Chanticleer.

Bridget had hounded and harangued local restaurants into catering—simple salad, antipasti, meatballs and shrimp on toothpicks—her AYUDA benefit for free. Darren's job was to phone local vintners and arrange for mixed cases of red and white to be donated. Bridget arrived at four o'clock to begin arranging tables and chairs and to her amazement, not only had Darren wrangled the wine donations, he was already there and had begun setting up the bar.

He'd also picked up the donated wine himself and bought ice. Bridget made him stop polishing glasses, kissed him and said, "Thank you. Do you know what this benefit means to me?"

"Apparently," said Darren, "I do."

Bridget worked arranging bottles on the silent auction table. For the past year she'd written letters to local vintners soliciting not rare and expensive; but unusual and quirky bottles of wine for her auction. She knew the cork-dorks who attended the affair would rather overpay for a conversation piece than bid competitively for a true treasure. This year's auction table included mixed cases of RyMe Cellars "His and Hers" Vermentino, Sheldon Graciano, and the intentionally hard to find Lost-and-Found Pinot Noir.

Darren buffed glasses, swept, guided the various philanthropic caterers to the proper banquet tables and laid out the Villa's sturdy dinnerware. They had the room set, including a sound check on the microphone, by 5:30 PM.

For an hour Darren and Bridget sat on the Villa's back porch, overlooking the county dog park. They sipped chardonnay and watched as dogs pooped and people scooped. "If Martians visited earth and saw that," said Darren, motioning at the park, "they'd think dogs were the masters and we were their slaves."

Bridget nodded. "You okay?"

"Frickin' great. Why?"

"You seem happy."

Darren, not insulted, thought a moment. "I am happy. Not laughing bullshit happy. Just contented happy."

"You had a good trip?" She sipped her wine and set it down. "We actually didn't talk much when you got home this morning."

"Yeah, a good trip overall. A great trip. Weaseled my way onto several stuffy and outlandishly overpriced wine lists." Darren whipped out his phone and dialed. "Gimme a minute. I gotta call Kent Rodgers."

"Do we need a bartender?"

"No. I'm tending bar, but I've been working my phone list all day. Reminding people that the benefit is tonight. Asshole Kent is dodging me." He placed the phone to his ear and held up a finger to Bridget: "Voicemail....Hey Kent, you'd better get your ass down to Chanticleer for the AYUDA Summer Festival tonight. And you'd better buy at least three bottles of wine at the auction or I'll email those pictures of you fucking that third-grade boy to your wife. See you later, shitweasel."

"That was charming."

"That, my dear," Darren kissed Bridget, "was an effective sales call. For your benefit."

"You're so clever."

"Ain't I though."

The benefit's guests showed up in a predictable fashion: the richer they were the later they arrived. The earliest party goers accepted glasses of wine and attacked the food table, determined to recoup at least a portion of the hundred dollars—tax deductible— they'd spent on their tickets. Then they'd eat; conspicuously avoid the silent auction table and bow out early, leaving the bulk of the fundraising to their richer, tardier, more casually attired neighbors.

But Bridget greeted each guest—early or late—with genuine appreciation and affection: a cheek-kiss for the men and a hug for the ladies. Bridget thanked them profusely and sincerely, and then pointed them toward the wine: knowing that nothing loosens the wallet like four or five glasses of "free" wine.

The emcee for tonight's affair, as it had been for the last three years, was Sonoma County Sheriff Frank Hernandez. Sheriff Frank began this year's affair in precisely the same way: he stood at the microphone, stiffly and in uniform, and said: "Years ago in Stockton, California, damn near the exact center of the state, there lived a man much like myself—a third generation Californio, named Miguel—who owned the local auto body and custom paint shop. He tooled around town in a fifty-nine Chevy El Camino: chopped, lowered, and louvered, with a custom paint job. Flames on the hood, down the sides, and across the top of the cab. This truck was a mainstay of every parade and civic function in the greater town of Stockton. Then one Saturday, around noon Miguel called the cops, 'This is Miguel Gonzalez,' he said, 'and my El Camino is missing.'

'Ah hell, Miguel,' said the police officer. 'We all love that truck. When was the last time you saw it?'

'I got home around midnight last night. Woke up at ten this morning. Puttered around the house, and I just now noticed it was missing.'

'Miguel, that's twelve hours. The thieves could have it to the border by now.'

Miguel shook his head, and muttered, 'I hate those damn Canadians.'"

Laughter rippled through the room; heavier from the bar area where Darren poured glasses of donated cabernet, chardonnay, and zinfandel. Sheriff Frank continued, "That joke is funny because it reminds us of the fact that the only true border we have is the one we share with Canada. The names of our cities, Santa Rosa, San Jose, Sacramento, are Spanish names and were founded by Mexicans. In this room tonight, we have what I like to call the BVWP: the Beautiful Vineyard and Winery People. And, Ladies," he bowed toward the gaggle of females surrounding Bridget, "you are all exceptionally beautiful tonight."

Bridget blew him a kiss, and he continued, "But each and every one of you here are dependent upon the labor of hundreds of local and itinerant farm workers of Mexican descent. That is why I'm so proud to be a part, not only tonight but year-round, of the AYUDA Foundation. Ayudar is the Spanish verb to help. Ayuda is the familiar command—perhaps the plea—Help. Every dollar from each criminally overpriced bottle of wine you purchase at the silent auction stays in this town and is directly applied to health care and literacy programs for the farm workers who make this little corner of the Garden of Eden bloom and bear fruit, year after year. My great grandparents arrived here from Sinaloa, Mexico not that long ago, chasing the dream that has come true for myself and my children. Your attendance here tonight shows me that you put your money where your mouth is; it's so easy to be a limousine liberal, bitching and complaining about injustices done both to our environment and to those people less fortunate. Tonight, as you sip wine, this is a great and good thing that you do. I would like to thank you not only as a board member of the AYUDA Foundation. But as a person. I am proud to be associated with such generous, thoughtful, and giving people. As always, special thanks and may God's blessings shower down upon the founder of, and the continuing impetus behind AYUDA: Bridget Elmore."

Bridget set her wine glass aside and waited until the applause had died down before walking forward and accepting the microphone from Sheriff Hernandez: "Gracias, Frank. But is this the third-year in a row you've used that joke? My dear, no offense, but you need some new material."

Frank, who had already reached the bar and finished half a glass of wine, saluted with the remaining half. Bridget continued, "This will be short, because the point of tonight's endeavor is not to listen to speeches or pat each other on the back. We're here because we have an opportunity. A legitimate and viable opportunity to reach out and help someone. So dig deep my friends. Tonight, dig deep. You can become a better person, by simply parting with some of your hard earned cash. Don't you wish that PBS would just come on like that, once a year with a ninety-second spot and spare us those eternal, boring fund drives?" Bridget waited for the murmured assent to fade. "That's it for me. Except for this: Assuage your consciences about being rich by giving some of it up tonight. Enjoy the festivities and please drive safely."

Bridget rattled the microphone noisily back into its stand. She walked across the room kissed Frank on the cheek, and accepted another glass of white wine from her husband. "I'd love to stay and chat," she said to Frank, "but I have to go separate some shekels from the Philistines." She wore the same blue-on-gray, spaghetti-strapped gingham sundress and sandals that she'd worked in all day, but the addition of a single pearl on a slender gold chain around her neck turned her comfortable, casual work clothes into an elegant, sexy and understated evening ensemble. Bridget's sky blue eyes surveyed the room and she scurried over to couples who were attempting to leave. Her sandals clacked on the hardwood floor and her ass bounced beautifully.

"That," said Frank, "is one hell of a woman you got there Darren."

"Ain't she though?" Darren topped off Frank's wine glass. But before Frank could answer, Darren wandered off down the bar to replenish drinks. The irony of his making small talk while tending bar made him smile, considering the topic of the most recent conversation he'd had with a bartender.

Darren returned and offered Frank another refill, but was waved off. "Gotta work later, Frank?"

"Of course." He indicated the uniform.

"What's up?"

"The god damnedest thing."

"What?"

"I got a call at seven-thirty this morning. Out to Chalk Hill Road. Some god damn early morning health nut jogger found a god damn dead body in the god damn ditch."

"Really?"

"Yeah really. Somebody killed this poor Mexican on a bicycle. And it wasn't robbery."

Darren replied slowly, "They didn't take the bike?"

"They left the bike, and also eleven-hundred dollars in the money belt wrapped around the guy's waist. Man, it was ugly. Massive contusions on the throat. From where he was strangled. The killer also smashed his head in on the road for good measure." Sheriff Frank swilled his wine. "Then tossed his sorry brown ass in a ditch. With his bicycle on top. We dusted the bicycle for prints and got about seventy-seven smeared sets. So that's an absolute nowhere."

"What are you doing about it?"

"I called Valance's funeral home. They have him iced there. Bud Warhol's coming down from Mendocino County to have a look at the corpse early tomorrow morning, but there's probably nothing he can tell me that I didn't know. Somebody killed the poor dumb fucker for no apparent reason. There's already been a shitstorm about it on the internet: police priorities being skewed against poor Mexicans. Darren, I live in a house full of poor Mexicans: we were all born here and speak English, but shit, we all work two jobs. How does crap whiz around the godamn web so fast?"

"I don't know," said Darren slowly. "But it sure seems to."

"I've already prepared a statement, and there's an AM press conference tomorrow morning that the Sheriff Department's Publicist will post on the website to address the issue."

"What are you going to say?"

Frank slipped automatically into his best Channel Twenty-Two interview-response-voice, "This crime will be solved. We will use all of our resources to resolve this heinous assault, bring the attacker to justice and blah blah blah." Frank pointed a finger at Darren. "But there's one thing that you can do for me."

"What's that?"

"The victim was a wetback, no green card, just a California ID."

"So?"

"He had some personal effects on him along with the money. A crucifix. A prayer card with the address of a church on it, you know how religious these old country beaners are." Frank pulled a baggy from his shirt pocket and tossed it onto the bar, "Here's the holy card or whatever they call it. Catedral de San Antonio de Padua. Obviously from someplace in Mexico."

Darren drank some chardonnay and took a long time before he said, "What do you want me to do with it?"

"Give it to your wife. She is in contact with government and church officials all over northern Mexico. We're not gonna find the asshole who killed this little mestizo, but I'd like to find out who the victim was and get the eleven-hundred dollars back to his family. I considered sending it off to the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco but the consulate would take the money, make three phone calls and have a fiesta on the proceeds. And you know what?"

"What?"

"Those stingy chingados wouldn't even invite me." He smiled. "I honestly think that Bridget is my best bet getting the money back to his family."

Darren nodded., "I'll give this to Bridget."

"Thanks."

Darren and Bridget arrived home shortly after midnight. Bridget was moderately and delightfully buzzed. The silent auction had raked in a record amount of cash, despite this year's attendance being slightly subpar. She was giddy with emotion and accomplishment, and she was charmed to see a gift-wrapped package waiting for her at the front door. Darren nudged the silver-foiled, bow-festooned package with his toe, "Secret admirer?"

"I hope so. You're a jerk."

"That's true, and you have enough admirers already." He kissed her forehead and scraped both spaghetti straps off her shoulders. His hands wandered down to her hips, then cupped her ass, "You looked smokin' hot tonight."

"Can we go inside or are you planning to screw me on the doorstep?"

"For what I'm planning, we had better go inside."

Darren unlocked the door and made hot brandies while Bridget opened her package. When he had returned to the living room, Bridget reclined on the couch, legs slightly spread showing off her new black silk ensemble. Darren noticed, even as she had prepared for spontaneous sex, her dress and undies had been flawlessly folded and placed on top of her perfectly side-by-side sandals. The single pearl on the gold chain lay safely atop the dress.

Bridget ran her hands over her silk-clad breasts. "This is nice." She propped herself up on an elbow. "It's also the least you could do after attacking me this morning."

"So, are we even?" Darren handed her a hot brandy and leaned over to kiss her.

Bridget smiled, and then slapped him hard across the right cheek without spilling a drop of her drink. But Darren, recoiling from the blow had slopped hot brandy over his hands and onto the carpet. He licked his fingers, touched his face, and stared at his wife: Cleopatra-esque, reclined, regal, and resplendent on the couch. "Now," she sipped her hot brandy, "we are almost even."

"Okay," Darren massaged his face. "I can live with that."

"Have a big sip of your drink and lose my panties. Then use your tongue. Take your time; remember you owe me." Her thighs spread slowly, like a butterfly warming its wings in the morning sunshine. Darren sipped his brandy, set it down, and removed the black silk designer slingshot that didn't even come close to covering Bridget's bottom. She smiled at him; slipped her new camisole top down, exposing her breasts.

He began making up for the morning's attack.

Darren slurped and gobbled and tickled and fingered for fifteen minutes and Bridget moaned, squirmed, and whimpered. Then he lay down and Bridget returned the favor with lips, tongue, fingers, and not so tender teeth. When she finished Bridget ripped open a condom and slowly applied the sheath.

"Do you carry those around with you?" said Darren.

"You know my rules."

"Too many rules," said Darren softly as he stood. "That's why I enjoy breaking them."

"Just shut up," said Bridget as she reclined and once again spread her thighs. "Shut up and give me some."

When Darren entered Bridget, he was as gentle, thoughtful, and patient as he had recently been brutal, harsh, and quick. After a silent and tender sequence of mutual gyrations they moved from the couch to the floor where they segued into some serious pounding; then returned to the couch where Bridget mounted him like a featured ride at the annual carnival. If this were a movie from the 1950's the camera would have panned to a darkened window and shown fireworks in the blue-dark distance.

But it wasn't a movie.

She bucked against him; used and milked him. He was happy being used, but suddenly she stopped grinding and looked him in the eyes.

"What?" said Darren.

"How many times have I told you," Bridget motioned over her shoulder to their drinks on the coffee table, "to use a coaster?" Darren grabbed her shoulders and bent her roughly backwards. He was pissed, but she cooed, then caterwauled as he banged repeatedly against her.

After he finished he withdrew and examined his gorgeous wife: a grown woman with the tight, hot body of a college girl and a necessity for neatness and control that rivaled his need for success and dominance. She reached up and touched his face, "That was hot."

Darren slapped her hand away, "But you still felt you had to mention the coaster?"

"That's only because I was on top," said Bridget. "If I was on the bottom I'd have been thinking of what color to paint the ceiling."

"You're impossible."

"How's this?" She reached down and cupped his balls. "Oh my studly-stallion-steed. No one has ever fucked me quite so thoroughly as thee."

Darren wrested away and sat on the couch.

"Finish your drink and chill out," said Bridget. She handed him his now-lukewarm-brandy. "What do you expect? If I'd had time I'd run out and buy a card, but I don't think Hallmark makes one that covers moderately rough sex concluding in multiple screaming orgasms. Dear."

"You make me crazy with your godamn rules," said Darren. "Sometimes, I swear I could kill you."

Bridget retrieved her drink and snuggled next to him on the couch. "Back at you, asshole."

They clinked glasses. Naked; glowing and sweating, they drank.

* * *

Chapter 7

Sheriff Frank Hernandez arrived at Valance's funeral home shortly after dawn. He walked in the front door with two to-go coffees and made his way to the back. Bud Warhol sat calm and assured on a lab stool with hands folded neatly in his lap. Frank handed Bud one of the large cups of 7-11 coffee and said, "They're both black. All they had was that fake powered cream. I hate that clumpy shit."

"Valance has half-and-half somewhere," said Bud. "But I'm always afraid to poke around in these refrigerators."

"Good point," said Frank. "I'll just take mine black."

Bud sipped his black coffee. "Yikes, I need cream." He hopped from the stool and searched in a fridge for half-and-half.

"Thanks for meeting me, Bud. I know this isn't strictly your job description."

Warhol, still slightly stiff with sleep, sorted through flagons, carafes, and flasks of chemicals and said, "California State Police, Sonoma County Sheriff? What's the difference?"

"Your benefits and retirement package?"

"There is that, lucky me." Bud discovered a pint of half-and-half. He opened the carton, sniffed the contents, and doctored his coffee. Bud blew on his coffee, replaced the lid, and sipped. "You ready?"

Frank nodded.

Bud slipped on two latex gloves, walked directly—with his coffee—to the first door and pulled the wheeled gurney from the body locker. He walked around the naked body slowly, twice. Steam from his coffee cup trailed in the chilly draft from the cooler. Bud sipped his coffee then set it on an empty stainless steel examining table. "Late thirties; early forties. Hispanic male. That goes without saying." He palpated the man's throat. "Bruised from manual strangulation, no signs of ligature. These contusions were applied with some grim intent and considerable violence. This wasn't accidental or incidental or inadvertent. The windpipe appears to be crushed; and that takes some determination. And a modicum of strength." Bud then flicked on a penlight and examined the victim's open and unblinking eyes. "If the compacted throat weren't enough, there is also petechial hemorrhaging"

"Explain, please?"

"Simple: busted capillaries in the eyes. Generally caused by, and indicative of, strangulation." He reached beneath the man's head. Bud palpated and probed. "Let's also factor in a severely fractured skull. He'd have to be hit—violently—multiple times to crush his gourd like this. But the size and circumference of the wound would indicate smashing the skull, probably against the pavement. Maybe a wall. If it's important I could possibly extract some dirt or gravel—"

"It's not. He died on Chalk Hill Road. His blood is all over the godamn road."

Bud examined the man's toenails with the penlight, "Kidney problems as well for Señor," he read the toetag, "Sanchez, Candido. How'd you know his name?"

"California ID card in his wallet."

"He wasn't robbed?"

"No. His wallet wasn't touched." But Frank didn't mention the eleven-hundred dollars in the money belt. He had entrusted that task to Bridget. She'd get it right, no one else needed to know.

Bud nodded and scanned the naked body. He palpated the flab swathing the victim's abdomen. "Candidate for heart disease and diabetes. Maybe even gout. Terrible diet. High fat; high sodium."

"You can see that just by looking?"

"Yeah. The dropsy and edema. Preponderance of body fat around his middle. All indications." Bud wheeled the body back into the refrigerated locker. He clicked the door shut and removed his gloves before he retrieved his coffee from the table. "There's something else I can see just by looking."

"What?"

"Synderesis."

The sheriff sipped his coffee, "That a skin condition?"

"No. It's a Greek word coined by St Jerome about two thousand years ago. It means the innate ability to sense the difference between good and evil."

"So?"

"There's been no robbery. No apparent motive. The body abused and unceremoniously tossed aside." Bud shook his head. "A lack of synderesis that indicates one thing."

"What's that?"

"Evil," said Bud. "Pure unadulterated evil."

* * *

Chapter 8

"DARREN," said Bridget.

"Wha-wha-what?" Darren sat up in bed. Bridget always rolled out of bed bright and cheerful and ready for the day. Her high-strung personality amped up her metabolism and, apparently, also gobbled up all the alcohol while she slept. She was rarely, if ever, hung over.

"Where's your dark blue Bill Blair suit?"

"In my carry-on. It's still in the trunk of the Mercedes."

Bridget exited their walk-in closet. "I got the carry-on from the Mercedes, but there's no suit. How could you lose a tailored Bill Blair suit?"

"Ah shit," said Darren, "I must've left it at the hotel in LA."

"How could you forget your suit?"

"I don't know. I just left it hanging in the closet."

"What did you wear on the plane?"

"My jeans and a sweatshirt."

"But your dress shoes are here? And the suit is missing? Did you wear your Bruno Magli's with jeans and a sweatshirt?"

"Yes, I wore dress shoes with jeans. I was in LA. It's the fucking uniform."

"How could you—"

"Jesus Christ, Bridget. Calm down. I forgot a suit. Some maid's boyfriend is wearing it right now to a job interview. I'm helping the Mexicans just like you." Darren checked the time on the nightstand's alarm. "I've got to get going. I got shit to do today." He jumped out of bed, pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt.

"Darren?"

"What?"

"Thanks for last night. The benefit I mean."

Darren walked across the room and kissed his wife, "You're welcome."

"I'll see you after your workout."

"No. I'm off to see Loody about that fucking Mackey."

"I wish you'd let that go. I think it's quaint that our neighbor runs a Christmas tree farm."

He grabbed his New Balance cross trainers and a pair of socks from his top drawer. "A run-down piece-of-shit eyesore. With that southern exposure I could put in more cabernet. Don't you take that fucking Mackey's side."

"Someone has to. Every grower in the valley wants his place."

Darren kissed Bridget again and tucked his shoes and socks under his left arm, "But we're gonna get it." His footsteps pounded down the stairs and echoed across the entryway, the slapping of his bare feet didn't dissipate until he had reached the kitchen.

"I've never known Darren to be so casual about clothing," said Bridget. "I'll have to call the hotel. Bill Blair suits just don't disappear."

Darren loved to work out on an empty stomach.

Four ounces of hot black coffee with a teaspoon of un-sulfured black strap molasses, and he was ready to go. The caffeine got him revved up and there was enough sugar in the molasses to keep him percolating. He sipped this concoction while standing in front of the War Board: a rectangular white dustless chalkboard mounted to the kitchen wall. He was an obsessive goal setter. First thing every morning—EVERY MORNING—he wrote down what he needed to do that day on the far left of the War Board. Today he wrote:

workout a.m.

meeting with loody about THAT FUCKING MACKEY

lunch with bridget?

nap

bike ride before dinner?

dinner???

phone call to cisco about u.s.a. northeast distribution

Darren swirled his coffee and stepped back to look at his daily goals. He rarely used capital letters while writing them because the most important thing about goals is that they be flexible and easily altered. Lower case printing accentuated their actual insignificance: achieving the daily goals was secondary, they were important only in so far as they helped him achieve his intermediate, and his future goals, which occupied the center and the right hand columns on the chalkboard. There were numbers and dollar signs in the center and right hand columns: the only thing all three columns had in common was one name, the only words always written in upper case: THAT FUCKING MACKEY.

Darren finished his coffee while studying the War Board and said, "Mackey. You shitweasel."

He placed his mug in the sink. Bridget would get her pussy lips in a twist every time he left an unwashed item in the sink, and he enjoyed goading her. He'd hired housekeepers, both freelance and corporate, but she harried them until they quit so it served her right if she had to clean up after him.

Godamn Bridget.

The holy card Sheriff Hernandez had given Darren was stuck to the fridge with a magnet. Darren had placed it there last night while the water for the brandies heated in the microwave. Darren removed the card and examined an old painting of a pale-skinned, young man on the front. He was brown-robed and had one of those cereal-bowl haircuts: bald on top and long on the sides. He held a fat-assed, haloed, naked little baby boy: Jesus, Darren supposed. Or maybe it was the devil in disguise. Who knew what these religious crazies believed? He flipped the card over and ignored the Spanish that would have told him that the baby was, indeed, the Christ child being held by St Anthony of Padua. There were also some indecipherable scribbles and an eleven digit number. A phone number Darren supposed. Any tragic irony associated with Bridget being in charge of his victim's funeral arrangements was lost on Darren.

He'd given the card to Bridget in the car last night. She'd chase down the family like a bloodhound and they'd get their money, probably with interest courtesy of the AYUDA Foundation. Darren sat on the kitchen floor and performed a hurdler's stretch. He slipped on socks and laced up—tight—his cross trainers. He cranked out twenty crunches. Flipped over and banged out twenty pushups. Bridget hated him exercising and sweating in the house. "That's precisely," she constantly reminded him, "why you built yourself a gym."

Darren popped up and did twenty jumping jacks while reviewing and modifying his daily goals. He spit in the sink and purposely didn't run the water after it. As he walked up the hill to his gym he delighted in the hissy fit Bridget'd have when she found his fluid lugie in the sink.

Darren had purchased his property in 1999 with ill-gotten, rolled-over, highly-shady earnings from a dotcom company he sold a month before it went bankrupt and was investigated for mail fraud and malfeasance. But Darren had been legally insulated and untouchable. He purchased the old Wilson & Sons Vineyards for pennies on the dollar—it was in receivership and heartily neglected during a protracted battle over inheritance—when Darren acquired it and bought out the clashing siblings for two signatures on two dotted lines.

Contrary to popular opinion, owning vineyards and a winery does not mean automatically earning a fortune. You are first and forever, a farmer: therefore subject to the vagaries of weather and nature. It might be a great year for cabernet, but you're planted in pinot noir. So you contract to buy ten tons of cabernet. Twenty new French oak barrels from a cooper in France (at thirteen-hundred-dollars a pop) were ordered months in advance to take advantage of a favorable dollar-to-euro exchange. Then the cabernet vineyards were hit with a heat wave or stripped naked by a rapacious flock of European Starlings and you end up with two tons of usable grapes. You crush, ferment, age, and bottle those two surviving tons of cabernet grapes—which fits nicely into five of your lovely bought-and-paid-for new barrels—just so you can pay your expenses and break even. Never mind a profit or anything for your time and effort. Then someone notices the government warning about getting drunk while you're pregnant has two misspellings and the ABC won't let you sell your wine at retail outlets.

It ain't as easy as it looks.

Anyone who has fun in the wine business does not spend nearly enough time on the bottling line, dealing with compliance, or on the phone with distributors. Anyone who profits on their wine venture either inherited the land or, like Darren, purchased it with a shady windfall or stolen money.

The first two years, he read and studied; asked questions and picked brains about grape growing and winemaking. He did his homework. He learned that it was too much work and a giant pain in the ass and he'd much rather play the CEO and pay professionals to do it. Best decision he'd ever made.

Because Darren loved the winemaker's life.

He loved the legitimacy and had worked hard at re-inventing his persona. His personal lie became: He was the latest in a long line of family growers and vintners who respected both the land and the winemaker's art. At every opportunity—as with the long-legged, champagne-sipping hoochie in the LAX bar—Darren perpetuated his personal myth: Genuine Gentleman Vintner.

But his first, illegitimate, step toward owning a legitimate business with a house on the proverbial hill was in seventh grade, when he and his cousin Eddie beat the shit out of an older, pudgy neighbor kid, took his baggie of pot, rolled individual joints and sold them for fifty-cents each. Darren took that money and bought a bigger bag of pot. And so on and so on and so on.

Until the day after Darren had been kicked out of the University of California Berkeley for selling pre-marked (number two pencil, of course) answer cards for an Organic Chemistry final: eighty-second percentile guaranteed. Later that same day Darren and that same cousin Eddie sat sipping coffee in a truck stop diner, off Highway 80 near Woodland, California. They were on their way to Reno for some fun; Darren had been paid for the pre-filled-in test cards. It wasn't his fault that the students got caught cheating. All they had to do was take the test and hand over the smuggled in test cards at the exam's conclusion. But one guy couldn't sit there faking it for the requisite two hours, handed in his pre-filled-in test card after half-an-hour and the proctor busted him and rescheduled the test.

For everyone.

But the money was Darren's so fuck the cheaters: no refunds. Of course someone squealed and Darren was expelled which prompted this trip to Reno which is why they were at a truck stop diner in Woodland.

They watched from the counter as an indie trucker pulled a gas tanker marked Standard Oil of Richmond into the parking lot. Darren sipped his coffee and said, "Why's an indie trucker pulling a Standard Oil tanker? Doesn't Standard have their own fleet of trucks?"

"The only reason," said Cousin Eddie, "an indie would be pullin' a pressurized gas tanker like that is if he stole it, or he's hauling it for someone who stole it."

"What would be in a pressurized gas tanker like that?" asked Darren.

"If it's not marked 'Propane'—"

"It isn't."

"—then it's probably one of petroleum's oh-so-useful by-products: benzene, toluene, or ether." Cousin Eddie was fascinated by chemicals: reading about, ingesting, and distributing them.

"He pulled off heading east and crossed over the overpass," said Darren. "Which tells me the stolen goods are coming from the west. Perhaps the refinery in Richmond?"

"So after we steal his truck," said Cousin Eddie, "do we head east or west?"

"We head south."

The trucker, bloated, bearded, bleary, and jean-jacketed, wearing a Chicago White Sox cap, sat at the counter, ordered lunch, flirted with the chubby cheerful waitress and slurped some coffee. When he got up to go to the bathroom, Eddie followed him into the facility. Only Eddie came out. The cousins paid their check and left the cheerful chubby waitress a generous, but not memorable tip. They left together, walked across the parking lot, where Eddie climbed into his powder blue 1972 Plymouth Road Runner and Darren busted the wing window of the dingy and aged Kenworth cab, reached in and swung the door open. Within a minute, the rig was hot-wired and heading east to Sacramento, where they would pick up I-5 South. If they drove the speed limit they'd be fine. No way would the Kenworth's owner ever call the cops to help him locate a gas tanker he had himself probably stolen from Standard Oil. Both Darren and Eddie worked their phones trying to find the guy who knew the guy who knew the guy from Long Beach.

The guy from Long Beach who knew the Colombians.

The Colombians who would use the tanker's contents—whether benzene, toluene, or ether—in the process that extracted cocaine from sheaves and bundles of coca leaves. Following a placid, boring, speed-limit, eight-hour drive south and a nerve-racking hour waiting in "The Guy's" swanky residence overlooking the Pacific Ocean the cousins accepted, then equally divided twelve-thousand dollars. Cousin Eddie took his share, purchased a nine millimeter Glock and five-thousand dollars worth of cocaine from "The Guy". He has been one step ahead of the law ever since.

After being dropped off at a Motel 6 by cousin Eddie, Darren took his six grand and opened a bank account. Then he visited the library at Long Beach State University. This was February 2, 1998. He studied the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange holdings ten hours a day for two weeks. Coupling his six grand, with the thirty-five thousand he'd saved by squirreling away money from dope deals and other various and sundry scams he purchased a publicly traded meatpacking company from Bend, Oregon that was another bad quarter away from bankruptcy. He renamed the failing company ModZap.com and announced its entry into e-commerce. Its new business paradigm was, quote: "To function as an Internet portal, facilitating online sales."

Sales, of course, implies profit and anything dotcom equals cash for investors so news of ModZap.com's entry into the exciting and brave new world of online marketing, sales, and finance drove shares of the company up ninety-eight percent.

The first week.

Darren, working online at the Long Beach State library with a UC Berkeley student ID number (stolen from an old girlfriend "just in case") spent countless hours visiting financial chat rooms and message boards, dropping cryptic hints about ModZap.com's profitability and future earning potential.

Three months later he sold the venture, pocketing one-point-two million dollars.

The following year, after Darren had been exonerated, by a reluctant but somewhat bemused judge, from all accounts of fraud (Darren argued: ModZap.com didn't even have a business plan, letterhead, or even a physical location. It wasn't his fault that greedy people jumped on the bandwagon and tried to profit from the renaming of a failing meatpacking company) he purchased Wilson & Sons Winery.

The first thing he did was rename it MZ Vineyards; in honor of those greedy, hopeful, unsuspecting investors who had backed ModZap.com.

The second thing he did was build his gym.

The building was sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide with a high peaked roof. The antique structure had formerly been a hop drying barn: an oast. And Darren's gym was Spartan: no machines, no running water or shower, no music or air conditioning.

He jogged the half-mile from the house up the hill to the gym. He opened the unlocked door and set a manual—tick-tick-tick—kitchen timer for thirty minutes. Removing his shirt he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror and did a set of one hundred old-fashioned jumping jacks. Then he skipped rope to further elevate his heart rate.

So much for the warmup.

Darren used much lighter weights than most people thought a man of his bulk would lift. He performed each exercise and variation slowly, high repetitions and to exhaustion. He would pace in front of the mirrored wall between each set while catching his breath. He wouldn't begin the next set until he had recovered, usually about three minutes. In his thirty minutes he'd only perform six or seven different sets: and he never repeated the same workout twice. When his timer would ding he'd discontinue whatever exercise he was performing and walk to the chin up bar. He'd jump up and perform one set until his muscles failed. Then he'd immediately jump back up and perform another, shorter, set to failure. Then once again; and he was done. There were no lights to turn off, thermostat to set or lock to secure. And usually, while walking back down the hill he'd leave two or three little pools of mocha-colored, molasses-scented vomit in the dirt.

He'd learned this workout years ago during his one and only stay in jail: thirty days in the San Mateo County jail for a DUI that he was too broke to lawyer up for. In jail they'd done chins on kitchen doorframes and used sacks of beans and number ten cans and jugs of bleach to lift. They'd do one set to exhaustion by necessity because inmates were forbidden to work out at county jail and you'd work out on the buddy system: one guy would bust out a set while the other would keep an eye out for guards or trustees. Darren had discovered in his thirty days that this short and intense workout gave better results in less time (while eating shit food) than any program he'd ever used so he stuck with it. Coupling this workout with proper nutrition insured Darren of a constantly improving body and he'd learned that the most important meal was the first one after a workout. So following each session he busted out the blender, nonfat milk, vitamins, some bananas and various protein powders. He had just added some ice to the mix and flicked on the blender when Bridget entered—dressed for work but barefoot—and turned it off. "You left your coffee cup in the sink earlier. And something else."

Darren looked at the empty sink and grinned, "Thanks for taking care of it."

"That's not the point." She motioned at the blender, "Please clean up after yourself, darling."

Darren nodded and whirred the blender until his smoothie was ready. He drank from the glass pitcher and smacked his lips.

"I called the hotel," said Bridget.

"What hotel?"

"The Redondo Beach Radisson. Where you stayed down south."

"Why?"

"About your suit."

"Jesus, Bridget. Let it go."

"They didn't have the suit. I spoke to the general manager."

"I'm sure you did." Darren drank again and shrugged.

"That was an expensive suit."

Darren finished his smoothie and started rinsing the blender's pitcher in the sink. "Easy come, easy go."

"You're impossible." She stood on tiptoe, thought about kissing him, then said, "I gotta get to work."

"Yes, you do."

"Don't leave me another mess in the sink." Bridget left.

Darren finished his clean up and then, with a wet hand, wiped "lunch with bridget?" off his War Board. "Screw her, I'm taking a nap."

There are several varieties of sleep: Fitful, Deep, Dream-Filled, Restorative.

After Darren had removed his cross-trainers and reclined—in his sweat-soaked workout clothes, in violation of yet another of Bridget's house rules—on the same couch he and Bridget had sweat-moistened last night he fell into a sleep that could only be described as Divine.

Darren opened his eyes and remained motionless on the couch. He savored the feeling. He didn't feel refreshed or renewed; he felt reborn. He hadn't dreamed: he had sunken utterly into the unconscious and returned a new man. He sat, then stood and for perhaps the first time in his life he didn't feel compelled to automatically check himself out in the mirror. Darren felt so revitalized and singular that he truly thought he might not recognize the man in the mirror's reflection. He stretched and glanced at the clock: 4:11 PM.

He had snoozed—profound and peaceful—for nearly seven hours.

Darren now raised his eyes to the reflection in the mirror. It was him, but he was somehow different. He felt sublime. Quietly, feeling each footfall on the carpet he climbed the stairs and changed into jeans and a new white vee-neck t-shirt. He trod silently back down the stairs, re-laced his cross-trainers and re-checked himself in the mirror: again, the same guy but somehow different. He walked to the kitchen, made himself another protein and banana smoothie. He drank it carefully so as not to drip on his spotless t-shirt. This time Darren left the dirty blender, spoon, and two banana peels in the sink.

The Bar, as it is known to the locals, is located in a strip mall along with a Safeway, a bicycle shop, a Bank of America, and a dry cleaner. There is no sign, except for the mandatory one declaiming that the possibilities of birth defects are greatly enhanced by drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy. The Bar doesn't even have an OPEN sign but it does have three entrances: one in front, another in back, and the main one inside the common service corridor with Safeway and the bank. It's open daily from nine AM to two PM and caters solely to locals. The beers are Bud and Heineken on tap. A jukebox that's heavy on the Hanks: Snow, Lockland, and the Williams (Sr.&Jr.). The only mixers are soda, seven-up, coke, and water. The only decoration is a dry, cracked twenty gallon fish tank that appears to be filled with poker chips, but on further inspection, they prove to be AA chips. At The Bar anyone, anytime, can exchange an AA chip—one month or twenty years—for a free drink, no questions asked: just toss it in the tank and step up to the bar. There is no wine by the glass, but probably fifty percent of the local wine business is debated and finalized in its ill-lit confines.

Darren didn't know for certain if Ellen were working at The Bar tonight and found himself surprised at how happy he was to find her there. Usually he liked seeing her because it meant an enthusiastic hand job or a sloppy-satisfying blowjob in the bathroom before he left. But he hadn't seen her in over a week and he felt invigorated by her smile, her wacky mismatched earrings, and the way her apron hung low across her poochy tummy and wide heart-shaped hips.

But first things first.

Darren saw Loody alone at the bar—surprise, surprise—methodically lifting a pint to his lips. He sidled up onto the stool nearest the bearded behemoth and held up two fingers to Kent Rodgers. Owner/Bartender Kent nodded and delivered two pints, Budweiser for Loody, Heineken for Darren. He picked up the twenty Darren had laid on the bar, rung him up and returned with the change silently. The Bar didn't run tabs and didn't take charge cards. Cash and carry only. The men tinked pints and drank in silence until Loody said, "Ain't seen you around much."

"Been down south awhile."

"Business?"

"Always."

"Business good?"

"Real good. You okay?"

"Been better. Been worse."

They sipped in silence until Darren said, "What you got on for tonight?"

"Drinkin' with you, asshole."

Darren held up two fingers and two more pints appeared. They tinked again and drank, "Want to do some drinkin' out by my place tonight?"

"But not at your place."

"That's right. Just nearby."

"With some friends?"

"The more the merrier."

"The more the thirstier."

Darren nodded, "Your friends have trucks?"

"Wouldn't otherwise be friends, would they?"

"So I'm thinking," said Darren, "I give you—"

"Give me what?" Loody finished his beer and straightened his greasy Dallas Cowboys cap.

Darren pulled a slim roll from his left rear pocket and peeled off three one-hundred dollar bills. "That enough for a party tonight? At a Christmas tree farm?"

"Ho ho ho." Loody picked up the cash and said, "It's a Christmas fucking miracle in September."

"Happy holidays, Loody."

Loody clapped Darren on the left shoulder, then punched Darren's bicep and said, "You're looking ripped for an old fucker. Solid."

"Thanks," said Darren. He waited until Loody had exited before he reached up and brushed off his shirt where Loody had touched him.

"Fearful of cooties?" said a voice from behind Darren.

Darren turned and stared into Ellen's green eyes. "Cooties is the least of what I might catch from him."

"Don't worry," said Ellen. "Stupid usually ain't contagious, just hereditary."

Darren leaned over and kissed Ellen square on the lips. She pulled away, "What was that for?"

"I missed you."

She held her empty tray in front of her breasts like a shield. "That's crazy talk."

"I've been out of town. Didn't you miss me?"

"Not really."

Darren looked hurt.

"Don't get all pussy-whipped on me Darren," said Ellen. "I got my life and you got yours. I mean, you've got to spend some time at home with your bitchy, skinny-ass wife, right?"

"Right."

"And you ain't the only cock in this town. And by 'cock' I mean 'rooster', of course."

"Of course."

"You're just the richest and prettiest." Ellen winked and returned to her tables.

Darren held up one finger and Kent delivered a single beer. "You get my cocktail waitress pregnant and I'll eighty-six you, Darren. I mean it."

"I didn't see you at the benefit last night, Kent."

"I had to work."

"So you mailed in your donation?"

"With my overhead," said Kent, "I can't afford no bullshit beaner charity."

Darren glanced around the room, "One cocktail waitress at minimum wage, one dart board and the decor is last year's Walmart patio furniture."

"It's cozy."

"What do I owe you for this beer?"

"Four bucks."

Darren unfurled a hundred and placed it on the bar. "What if I said, 'Keep the change?'"

"I'd say the beer's on the house."

"Then," said Darren, "keep the change."

Kent reached for the hundred but Darren snatched it up: "Bridget thanks you for this donation and I thank you for the beer."

"You're an asshole."

"Tell me something I don't know." Darren took his beer to an octagonal picnic table and ogled Ellen's cleavage as she served the local yokels.

Thursday night had been slow at The Bar and Ellen had been cut by 7:15. She had a beer with Darren and by 8:02, after they'd locked the men's room, she was holding onto the rail in the handicapped stall with her panties down around her ankles. Darren stood behind her, thrusting and biting his lower lip.

While observing himself in the streaked and dirty bathroom mirror.

He grabbed Ellen's hips with both hands and watched himself slide slowly in-and-out. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"Almost"

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Darren."

"Okay, okay. Now."

He pulled out and Ellen, on her knees on the cold tile, eyes closed and purring finished Darren in her mouth. He clasped the sides of her face and leaned over on top of her. She pushed him upright and reached under his shirt and traced his ab's ridges. She spat him out and kissed his stomach leaving little tendrils of their commingled juices. "The first time I saw these muscles," she said, "I thought they'd play music."

"When you touch them, they do," said Darren kissing the top of her head. "But only I can hear it."

Ellen stared up at him, "What is wrong with you tonight?"

"What do you mean?" Darren waddled to the sink to rinse off. Bridget probably knew he fucked around, but no sense pissing her off by showing up in semen-smudged bikini briefs.

Ellen stood beside him at the sink, tucking her blouse in, "You've kissed me twice and you said something nice."

"I just feel different today." He finished drying off and zipped up.

"Why?"

Darren, for a terrible moment, felt like telling Ellen the entire truth about the incident on Chalk Hill Road: how liberating and exalting it was to step outside the limits society placed upon you. "I just feel different," said Darren. "Great workout this morning."

"You have a great workout every morning. It's what you live for." Ellen untucked her blouse, examined herself in the mirror and retucked it. "I hate this blouse, do I look thinner with it in or out?"

Darren smacked her hard on the ass and shoved the hundred he'd promised Kent between her breasts. "Doesn't matter. As long as you swallow no one cares if you're fat." He slapped her ass again and exited without another glance at her.

"That's more like it. You were starting to worry me." She tucked and untucked her blouse one more time, rolled the hundred in with her tips and washed her face. When she returned to her place at the octagonal table Darren, as always, had already left.

After Darren started his car he knew that he would, he had to—tonight—return to Chalk Hill Road. He drove south on Old Redwood Highway and turned left on Pleasant Avenue, up to Chalk Hill and drove the loop. It was the same strip of road but his recent antisocial actions had sanctified it for him. Made it a special and a sacred place. He slowed as he passed the precise spot. He didn't know what he expected to see—a makeshift cross decorated with bright baubles perhaps—but there was nothing but three fluttering strands of yellow police tape. No sign of a scuffle. No blood on the roadway visible in the darkness. Nothing noticeably disturbed on the shoulder or in the ditch.

Nothing.

Nothing except for the memory of his triumph.

Earlier he was tempted to tell Ellen. But now, by visiting the site he knew two things: He'd never be caught. The investigation was over and done with. The spot had—in fewer than twenty-four hours—returned to what it was, an insignificant site on a lonely country road. He also knew that he'd never again be tempted to talk about this exploit. It was a quiet, profound, and personal rite-of-passage that, unlike anything else he'd ever done, stood above all he'd ever dreamed or expected of himself.

He drove home slowly, automatically; transcendently. Last night when Bridget pissed him off during sex and he—as he always did—raged on the inside, Darren thought he might like to kill again. But he realized, by this trip past his personal holy site, and his stifled desire to tell Ellen, that he'd done it once. He'd done it right.

He will never talk about it; he'll never kill again.

Apparently, he had gotten away with murder.

Darren parked the Mercedes and entered the house, as he usually did, through the kitchen. He heard happy cocktail voices and smelled barbequed chicken, and assumed it was probably some of Bridget's AYUDA crew celebrating the success of last night's fundraiser. Darren put on a polished, sociable smile and turned the corner into the living room to see Bridget on the large sofa laughing and balancing an empty glass on her knee. On the short sofa, also laughing and holding an empty water glass was a familiar face in a suit and tie. Out-of-context, Darren didn't place him until Bridget said to the visitor, "Here's Darren. I told you he wouldn't be long, Colin."

"Ah yes, Colin," said Darren. "Colin." The fucking LAX bartender, right here drinking with my wife.

* * *

Chapter 9

Lloyd "Loody" Ludwig probably wouldn't live to be thirty. Although he was twenty-four Loody had been smoking and drinking since sixth grade, ate fried food three times a day and put gravy and salt on everything except whiskey. He took the first of the hundreds Darren had given him and nearly filled his Chevy's gas tank. He spent the second hundred on beer and ice. After stopping at KFC for dinner (the family ten piece special with fixins served Loody nicely) he made a few phone calls and arranged for a late night party at Mackey's Christmas Tree Farm. The third hundred he slipped into his piggy bank: a fireproof floor safe containing cash, weed, and several unlicensed handguns.

Mackey was a cousin of Loody's older brother's second ex-wife, so he was practically family, and he didn't mind them getting together for some loud music, a bonfire, drinking, target practice, and open-air screwing at the Christmas tree farm a couple of times a month throughout the summer.

As long as Loody called first and invited Mackey down for a couple of cold ones.

And if this asshole Darren Elmore—who shaved his chest, arms, and nutsack from what Ellen said around The Bar—wanted to pay for the parties that was fine with Loody.

Asshole Darren had gotten it in his mind that if Loody and his idiot friends whooped it up a few times a month at the Christmas Tree Farm Mackey would sell and he could plant that portion of land with his pissant wine grapes.

Loody hated wine and the snots that both made it and drank it. His granddad talked about growing up here in the 1960's and riding dirt bikes along the Russian River, hunting quail in fall, and actually having steelhead in the river and deer in the hills to poach year round. Then the fucking grapes came in and turned the Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys into virtual gated communities. Maybe one of these days Loody would divert the party from the Christmas Tree Farm to one of Darren's precious vineyards and see how he liked it.

But Loody would never do that.

He'd just keep taking the prissy bodybuilder's money and drinking for free.

* * *

Chapter 10

Darren bent and kissed Bridget on the lips. He stood and gestured at Colin, "I see you two have met."

"Colin arrived around nine," said Bridget.

"I didn't see a car out front," said Darren.

"Taxi," said Colin.

"All the way," asked Darren, "from SFO?"

"I flew into Santa Rosa." Colin rose smoothly, empty glass in his left hand, and glided across the room and clasped Darren's shoulder. "Beautiful place. The website doesn't capture its splendor."

Darren grabbed Colin's empty glass, "Let me get you a drink."

"I'm fine."

"I insist." Darren nodded at Bridget, "And you?"

"We were," said Bridget, "having martinis."

"In these tumblers?" said Darren. "Bridget, we have stems."

"I didn't think—" said Bridget.

"That one of my dear friends would appreciate a martini in a proper glass?" Darren gathered up the glasses. "You two chat. I'll be right back with drinks in the appropriate glassware. Dry for Bridget and I'll make them dirty for me and Colin. Right?" Darren placed a hand in the middle of Colin's chest and shoved.

"Right," said Colin, barely moving. "Since you insist, I'll wait right here."

Darren returned with three full-and-frosted martini glasses on a tray; a smile on his face. Colin sat next to Bridget. After the drinks were distributed Darren sat and all three sipped to Darren's toast, "To old friends."

"Skoal," said Colin.

Darren stared. Then gulped his martini. "Colin?"

"Yes?"

"Of course, you'll be staying with us?"

"I've booked a room in Healdsburg."

"Cancel it," said Darren. "We've gotta talk."

"Sure it's no trouble?"

"None at all."

The men drank in silence, staring at each other over their glasses' rims. Bridget studied their taut and pensive body language. She placed her drink on a coaster and said, "Where did you two boys meet?"

"Interesting story," said Darren.

"It sure is," said Colin.

Darren reclined and crossed his arms, "But I love the way that Colin tells it."

"Funny story, actually." Colin nodded at Darren, sipped his martini, smiled, and said, "Believe it or not, Bridget, I was tending bar at LAX. One of those plush, dark, classy airport bars. Darren and I strike up a conversation: you know, sports—guy stuff. Darren had just missed a flight or had a layover or something so I invited him to the Twenty Four Hour Club to work out. He had a couple hours to kill and I love lifting weights at night after work. That was three years ago—"

"Somehow it doesn't seem nearly that long," said Darren.

"—and I've moved on, recently, from tending bar, but we've stayed in touch. I've always admired Darren's business acumen and I'm up here to run a business plan by him."

"That's it?" said Bridget. "No cocaine or hookers? One workout and you're best buddies? That does not sound like my husband."

Colin finished his martini and set his empty glass on a coaster, "Should I tell her, Darren?"

Intrigued, Darren shrugged, "Why not?"

"The truth?" asked Colin.

"It's been rumored to set you free." Darren motioned at Bridget's full martini glass. She took a tiny, final sip and surrendered the drink to her husband.

"So we're at the Twenty Four Hour Club. We're about the same size; he's in great shape for someone his age—" Colin glanced at Darren: no reaction "—so we spot each other on set-after-set of squats and bench press and we are tearing it up. I mean, we just met, but we're sympatico, you know?"

"Testosterone twins?" said Bridget.

"Something like that. We finish the workout with some ab work and a coupla wind sprints on the basketball court and then we take a sauna and chat a little. So we shower and I'm getting dressed and I see him at his locker. Darren reaches in—I'll never forget this—and pulls out a frilly pair of black silk panties. Women's panties; little eyepatch in front; worsted black dental floss in back. And he wiggles his junk right up into them."

Darren leaned forward, drink balanced, elbows on knees.

"So he finishes getting dressed and he thanks me for the pass and the workout and I say, 'You're welcome, but dude, I've got to ask, how long have you been wearing women's underwear?' And he says, 'Ever since my wife found them in my glove compartment.'"

Darren screamed in laughter, punched Colin on the leg and slammed the remainder of Bridget's martini.

"I should have known better than to take you two seriously," said Bridget. "How many people have you fooled with that set-up story?"

"Believe it or not, Bridget, you're the first one," said Colin. "Sorry. Just having a little fun."

Bridget offered her hand to Colin who shook it gently, holding it perhaps just a moment too long. She kissed Darren on the neck and said, "Good night. I'll make up the spare bedroom for Colin."

"Thank you," said Colin, "but only if it's no problem."

"Pish," said Bridget.

"Good night Bridget," said Darren.

She padded gracefully, noiselessly across the room to the stairs and ascended like smoke. Colin sat back on the couch and nodded at Darren.

"Three things," said Darren.

"Yeah?"

"First, great story."

"Old joke actually. Modified to fit the circumstances."

"Second, you scored some serious brownie points with Bridget by using a coaster."

"Good to know."

"Third, what the fuck are you doing in my house?"

* * *

Chapter 11

After leaving Bridget and Colin in the living room Darren placed their dirty glasses in the sink and removed three stems from a low cupboard. He placed ice cubes in the stems, retrieved his bottle of Stohli from the freezer and rummaged in the refrigerator for a jar of green olives. Then he whipped out his cell phone. He speed dialed Loody. While waiting for the drunken lug to pick up he stared at the old kitchen wall phone. He never used it; Bridget only occasionally. It had become an anachronism, a quaint decoration.

Loody had been drinking and would be worthless to Darren as muscle tonight. Loody was also on an assignment to bug the hell out of that fucking Mackey, so Darren covered by pretending he was calling to see if he needed any more beer money for the night's festivities. Maybe he'd call him around noon tomorrow, see if he's awake and free for some more work.

Darren opened the bottle of Stohli and had a tiny bracing sip. He began to assemble the drinks and while munching on an olive it hit him: Cousin Eddie. So he snapped open his phone and dialed his slightly shady cousin, "Hey Eddie, it's Darren. I might have a job for you."

"I'm always up for some interesting and remunerative employment. What's up?"

Darren didn't reply right away and Eddie waited patiently, silently, for an answer. "Can you make it up to my place tomorrow, around noon?"

"Absolutely. What you got?"

"Some guy's trying to shake me down. I want you to scare him a little bit."

"Who's the guy?"

"Some asshole I met in a bar."

"You should stop hanging out at bars. That's where assholes tend to congregate."

"I'd also have to stop using toilet seats."

"That's a simple, inconvenient fact."

"Can you meet me at my gym around noon tomorrow? We'll talk. You know which building the gym is?"

"Yeah, the long skinny one at the top of the property with no locks on the doors."

"Exactly."

"I'll be there."

"Thanks."

"So is this going to involve our going on a road trip, like the good old days?"

"No. The guy is staying with me."

"Is he there now?"

"Yes."

"He's staying with you, like a sleepover?"

"We're not having popcorn and watching cowboy movies, but yeah, he's in the spare bedroom."

"Why don't I just tool up there now and scare some sense into him? Roust his ass in the middle of the night. Catch him off guard."

Darren thought for a moment. He scraped the icy bottle of Stohli with his fingernail and mindlessly ate the frozen curlicue. "That might work. I'll pour a couple of more drinks into him, and then tuck him in. You show up, say four o'clock in the morning, beat the shit out of his ass, and he'll be back on the plane to LA in the morning."

"I love beating the shit out of LA fuckers."

"So we'll do a little drinking up here, then off to bed and I'll conveniently forget to set the house alarm. The door off the pool deck into the kitchen will be unlocked and you know where the spare bedroom is, right?"

"Of course, upstairs, the nearside of the master bedroom," said Eddie. "So this guy big or what?"

"He's a big guy, about my size—"

"I thought you said he was big?"

"— funny. Real funny stuff, cuz."

"Is he tough?"

"He looks like a surfer dude, but he has a USMC tattoo on his forearm."

"USMC, you know what that stands for?"

"United States—"

"You Suck My Cock. Most Marines are fags. It's been proven. Scientific."

"I honestly didn't realize that was the acronym." Darren had another nip of Stohli, "Another question?"

"What?"

"Do you still have that pistol you bought on our long ago field trip to Long Beach?"

"Absolutely."

"Bring it. Just in case."

"I'll remember to pack it."

"Good. I want this guy scared, hurt, and gone."

"Later." The phone clicked dead.

Darren finished preparing the cocktails. He placed them on a dark hardwood serving tray and smiled as he exited the kitchen. "'Splendor'? What an asshole."

* * *

Chapter 12

"Third, what the fuck are you doing in my house?"

Colin glanced around the sparsely furnished, soft hued, tastefully appointed living room, "I was enjoying a cocktail with your lovely wife, and now, as you alluded to earlier, we are going to talk some business."

"So talk."

"You are looking fit, dude."

"Cut the horse shit. What do you want?"

"I'm here to cash in on a dead Mexican named Candido Sanchez."

"Good luck with that."

"I Google mapped your address; I got it from your drivers license, remember when I asked for ID at the bar?"

"Yeah," said Darren. "I remember."

"Then I read an online version of the local newspaper, the Press Democrat, right?"

"That's right."

"And I found a little story about a dead illegal Mexican farmworker who was brutally and senselessly beaten to death about seven miles from where we're sitting. Killed for no apparent reason. With no apparent motive. The newspaper didn't use the term, but it sounded like a 'Thrill Kill' to me. Just a few hours after we had our own little chat about just such an activity."

"Nonsense. You're talking shit as far as I'm concerned."

Colin stood up. He stretched, and then put his hands on his knees, leaned over and whispered to Darren, "You did it. You acted. That night."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Colin stood and spoke down at Darren, "But you do. I could see it in your eyes that night. You were bored and crazed at the same time. I know you did it."

"You know shit."

"I know this. You stay in shape; real good shape. And I know that poor dead Mexican fucker was overpowered and strangled: it takes real muscle to control someone who's fighting for their life, dude. I know the conversation that we had and I saw how it engrossed and affected you. But more importantly, I saw the way you bragged to that little piece of ass at the bar about what a cock-swinging ball-busting business-stud you were. You're out to prove something. Perhaps your little business conquests don't provide enough juice for you. You need something more primal and physical: something actual and real. I knew you'd be ready to act. I think you killed that poor little man."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Plausible denial? That's all you got? I was expecting a little rage." Colin performed a slow and precise karate kick to the left, the front, and then the right. His movements were compact and exact. Controlled and practiced. Looking just like fat, white-leather Elvis must have imagined he looked when he performed the same movements on stage decades ago. "Here's my shit, dude. I'll come clean with you: I've been tending bar and I am bored most of the time. I listen to the woes of fat, rich, harried, asshole businessmen: all of them overworked and underpaid and carrying the burdens of upper-middle-class capitalism and the global economy upon their shoulders. I got tired of hearing it. So about a year ago, I started laying that shit down about 'How it feels to kill a man' with drunk assholes like you—even though you're the one who brought it up—a couple of times a month. But, after all my thrill-kill chats, I would always ask for an ID, and then for shits and grins, I checked the local papers—Toledo, Ohio; Cary, North Carolina; Henderson, Nevada—to see if anyone had the balls to act."

"This is fun for you? Like moonlighting while working your full-time job?"

"It's fun, but more like playing Powerball Lotto. You know that probably nothing will come of it, but then again, maybe you'll hit the jackpot."

Darren stood, toe-to-toe, and said, "Get out of my house."

Colin crept closer, their chests nearly touched, "What will you tell your wife in the morning if I'm not here?"

"She won't miss you. I've got deals brewing all over the world with little wannabe shitweasels such as yourself. I'll tell her I refused to finance your dumb-ass proposal and you crawled back to the rock you live under."

"What are you going to say to the cops?"

"What are you gonna tell the cops: 'Arrest him, dude, he won't comply with my blackmail scheme?'"

"You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

"I wouldn't tell the cops to help me cash out; I'll just tell them to fuck you over if I don't cash out." Colin thought a moment, then re-examined the living room's spare and tasteful luxury. "Seriously, Darren, this is a sweet set-up you've got. I just want a slice. I'm not going anywhere. You fucked up. You're going to pay." A palpable silence filled the small space separating the two men. Snippets of loud music and V-8 engines drifted up from Mackey's: Loody's bought-and-paid-for party was raging. "All it's going to take is scribbling a few numbers on a check, Darren. Let's have a few drinks, talk some hard figures and we can both get on with our lives in the morning. What kind of wine you make around here anyway?"

Darren was silent.

He considered bringing a knee up into Colin's groin but he figured that a smarter course of action would be to open a couple of bottles, drink and bullshit with the snake and let Eddie beat the shit out of him in his sleep. Meanwhile, treat it just like another business deal. Darren smiled and said, "Pinot noir, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon. A little zinfandel." They still stood toe-to-toe only slightly separated. "Sit down, I'll get us some clean glasses and we'll do a tasting."

Colin settled onto the couch and Darren proceeded to do a vertical tasting: 2007, 2008, 2009 MZ Chardonnay, all from the same vineyard. Darren explained a vertical tasting is the only way to assess a vintage's true quality: all the other factors, terroir and winemaker being equal, the best year would become apparent. Colin listened, drank, nodded and asked several relevant, pertinent, and intelligent questions. But during the entire civilized ritual of decanting, smelling, swirling and sipping the men eyed each other like wild creatures; probing for a weakness or an opening in the other. After nearly two bottles of wine had been consumed Darren rose and said, "That is what I do for a living."

"Not bad work if you can get it."

"Your room," said Darren, "is up the stairs. First door on the left. Very first door. The bedroom has a bathroom—please don't go wandering around the house."

"A reasonable request." Colin nodded, "Good night."

"Good night."

Colin took the stairs easily, two-at-a-time and turned left at the top. Darren waited until he heard the bedroom door shut and the toilet flush. He considered cleaning up the mess, but decided to leave it for Bridget. That'll teach her for letting that shitweasel Colin into their house. Darren locked the front door and drank a large glass of cold water in the kitchen before he made double certain that the kitchen door was unlocked and the alarm system disabled. In bed with Bridget—she slept skewed, face down, in her new Victoria's Secret outfit—Darren lay on his back, eyes open, listening to the faint strains of bass, drums, and electric guitar that wafted up the hill from that fucking Mackey's place. He fell into a light slumber while calculating what getting rid of Colin might cost him. A grand to Cousin Eddie tonight. Maybe a couple of hundred to Loody—the low-priced local—to beat the shit out of Colin tomorrow if he didn't get the hint tonight. Maybe, if it came to it a fat, tax deductible contribution to Sheriff Frank Hernandez' re-election campaign might jumpstart an effective, sanctioned, and low-key program of official police harassment.

Colin, twenty feet away, also fell into a light slumber while wondering how he could turn up the heat and leverage the admittedly scant and speculative evidence he had on Darren into some cash. He slept fitfully with this idea and came to the conclusion, upon waking an hour later that he didn't have to do anything: Darren's fear and vanity would give him all he needed. Darren needed to be the big man, any threat to his image would cause him to reflexively vomit up some money. Colin popped out of bed and stood at the window of his room overlooking the pool, private driveway, and winery buildings: Darren's domain; Colin's potential piggybank. He listened to amplified snippets of Jason Aldean's "Hicktown" rising up from the raging redneck rave at the bottom of the hill.

Colin liked the new young country music guys. He stood at the window and smiled, wishing the music were louder. Although Colin couldn't prove it, he knew Darren had strangled that poor little Mex and that would be enough. He knew that Darren would give in. Every guy he'd ever met who cultivated and valued his image as much as Darren did was vulnerable. Straining to hear the opening notes of the next song Colin had another, disturbing, motivating, pervasive thought that he just had to verbalize: "I wonder what it be like to fuck Bridget?"

* * *

Chapter 13

Cousin Eddie entered the kitchen and went straight for Darren's frozen bottle of Stohli. He had a small sip and removed his shoes. Then he quoted a slightly misremembered line from Macbeth: "If done, when done, 'twere best were done quickly." He left the bottle of Stohli on the cupboard and walked, slowly and silently to the base of the living room stairs. He stopped at the stairs for a full three minutes and listened until the unfamiliar house sounds became a steady static against which he could hear anything odd or unusual. Riffs from a country song Eddie couldn't recognize sounded sporadically from the bottom of the hill, near that godamn Christmas tree farm. There was no noise from the wind. No sounds from the plumbing or the bedrooms. Eddie blissfully wiggled his toes in the thick padded carpet before he double checked the Glock in his waistband to be extra-doubledog-certain that the safety was on. From his right rear pocket he pulled a homemade leather sap. Close stitched, with alternating bands of brown and black leather it looked like a large pear-shaped hacky-sack. But one whack upside the temple with the steel-shot and sand-filled sap would knock a Neanderthal unconscious. A blow to the wrist or the knee would render those joints inoperable. But Eddie's favorite ploy was a sharp, sudden unexpected blow to the kidney: left or right. It didn't matter. The victim of such a kidney shot, young or old, male or female would immediately be reduced to a quivering gasping incapacitated lump. Plus, the kidney-shot could be done safely from behind.

Like a cautious hunter whose prey was in sight Eddie paused on each step and listened for any sound that would seem out of place. He took a full six minutes to negotiate the nineteen stair steps. On the second floor landing—his eyes now quite accustomed to the dim light—he laid his hand on the doorknob and held it there counting to a hundred. He turned the knob and counted again. Slowly, he eased the door open, slipped noiselessly into the spare bedroom and closed the door. Yet once again, he counted to a hundred while listening for the LA fucker's breathing. The SoCal fucker slept almost silently. Eddie's eyes, having adjusted to the darker bedroom, advanced toward the blanketed figure on the bed. The sap's loop fitted perfectly snug around his right wrist and he cradled the head of the leather weapon in his left palm. At the foot of the bed, within striking distance, again Eddie stopped and waited: patience yields rewards. He smiled, knowing that the ambush would be a complete surprise to his victim. Gauging where the kidneys would be he wielded the sap quickly and viciously. Three times.

All three times the sap compressed the wadded up blankets and bounced off the empty bed's mattress. Eddie spun around. Panicked, he spun back towards the bed. He saw no one. Eddie said, "Oh shit."

That was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

Chapter 14

Darren awoke to an odd sound. We are all familiar with the idiosyncratic creaks and whispers of our houses and bedrooms, but this was a sound he'd never heard before. It was like a small dog barking: if the dog's throat had been made of cheaply welded metal.

Bridget sprawled beside him snoring with a deep snarl that belied the lankiness of her frame. As usual, she'd managed to twist around in her sleepwear. Tonight her brand-new Victoria's Secret's creation had one silken strap wrapped around an elbow and the other nearly looped over an ear. Darren listened, between Bridget's snores, to the odd metallic sound and quietly pulled back the covers. He placed both feet on the floor and stood slowly so as not to disturb Bridget. He slipped into the Levis he had discarded in a lump at the foot of the bed and, barefoot, shirtless, exited the bedroom.

Walking past the guest bedroom's closed door he heard no noise from within, just the insistent mysterious metallic snicking-sound that had awakened him. Following the noise he headed down the stairs into the kitchen, through the open kitchen door and out to the pool deck. Between the starlight, the arc lights over the four car garage, and the feeble dawn Darren could see two figures—one standing, one seated—near the deep end of the pool. He walked slowly up to the stationary figures until he recognized his cousin Eddie, strapped to a wrought iron chair with a heavy-duty orange extension cord, and Colin standing calmly at parade rest with a pistol in his right hand. Eddie, wrapped tightly in the chair, hopped up-and-down trying to extricate himself: the wrought iron chair legs producing the metallic scrunch-scrinch that had awakened Darren.

Darren surveyed the situation, plopped down onto a dewy, cushioned chaise lounge and said, "Good morning, gentlemen."

"No it isn't," said Colin.

"Sure it is," said Darren. "I love this time of day. Early morning. Everything so fresh and clean."

"Who's the punk?" Colin sat on a wrought iron chair identical to the one Eddie was tied into. He placed Eddie's Glock on a low table.

"He's my cousin," said Darren. "Good morning Eddie. How you doing?"

"I'd be doing better if you told me he was a fucking ninja," said Eddie.

"What are you tied up with?" asked Darren.

"I unplugged some machine down there," Colin waved at the winery, "and used the extension cord."

"Eddie?"

"Yeah Darren?"

"What were you doing while he was searching the grounds for an extension cord?"

"I was," said Eddie, "sort of unconscious."

"Really?" Darren leaned forward and directed a question to the two men, "How did that happen?"

"He put me into a chokehold of some sort," said Eddie. "I was standing by the bed when I felt his arm snake around my neck. And the next thing I knew I was all wrapped-up poolside."

"Dude, that's pretty much how it happened," said Colin.

Darren nodded, "So where do we go from here?"

"This asshole can untie me, you can pay me," said Eddie, "and then I'm going to Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast."

"I don't think that's gonna happen," said Colin.

"Then, I repeat, where do we go from here?" said Darren.

"Last night," said Colin, "I was going quote a figure, have you write me a check, and I was going to get out of your life. You'd never see me again, but you know something?"

"What?" said Darren.

"I like Sonoma County. I want to see a little more of it. In the daylight."

"What's with the shakedown anyway?" said Eddie. "What's this dickhead got on you, Darren?"

"Nothing," said Darren. "Nothing at all."

Colin nodded. "We'll talk about all that later, but for now: Darren, what's this asshole worth to you?"

"Nothing much," said Darren.

"Thanks," said Eddie.

"No problem," said Darren.

"Okay then," said Colin. He skipped forward and with a smooth piston-like motion of his right leg Colin kicked the bound Eddie into the deep end of the pool. With not much of a splash and nothing more than a gurgling "slurp" Eddie rolled over, once, and weighted by the wrought iron chair sunk to the bottom of the pool.

Darren stared at Colin.

Colin extended his right hand and motioned at the pool as if he were opening a door to the palace restroom for the Queen of England. Then he sat down to watch.

Bubbles rose from the bottom of the pool. Darren hoped they were from pockets of air in Eddie's clothes and not from his lungs. He rose and said to Colin, "You are in deep shit."

"Actually," said Colin, "I've got the gun, a comfortable seat, and your piece-of-shit cousin is drowning."

Darren shook his head and dove into the pool.

It was a struggle getting Eddie and the chair to the shallow end. Darren had to drag the wrought iron chair along the pool's bottom and then propel his burden upwards until Eddie's head broke the surface. Eddie gagged, coughed, and spit snot as Darren held him above the water. "You okay?" asked Darren

Eddie nodded Yes.

"I'm gonna carry you to the steps. Then I'll set you down, hop out and get you up on the deck. You'll only be under for a moment."

"Just fucking do it," said Eddie.

Darren just fucking did it and Eddie sat soaked and dripping in the brightening morning sun.

"Quite an impressive dead lift," said Colin.

Darren smiled and quickly had Eddie untied and sitting safely on the edge of the pool. Shivering with rage and cold, Darren walked to Colin grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him from his chair. Colin quickly, automatically, bent back Darren's wrist and applied the precise amount of pressure: just enough for Darren to realize that Colin was in charge.

Darren stepped back.

"That's better," said Colin. He released Darren's wrist. "No reason to get excited. Dude, like you said to your hot-ass little wife, last night, we got some business to discuss. After breakfast I'd love to see more of your place, Darren. I think you'd better get into some dry clothes. You're shivering." Colin slapped him on the shoulder and began walking toward the kitchen.

"Hey asshole," said Eddie, "what about my gun?"

Colin returned to the low wrought iron table and picked up Eddie's Glock. With a smooth, practiced motion he checked the chamber for a shell and ejected the clip. He handed the clip to Darren and tossed the Glock into the pool. "It's there when you need it," said Colin. "But be careful. Those things are dangerous, dude."

Darren and Eddie stared at Colin as he strutted slowly, casually, and entered the kitchen. Eddie waded to the deep end, took a deep breath, and dove to the bottom like a pudgy portly pearl diver. Darren slapped the nine mm clip repeatedly against his right thigh, each concussive little bounce producing a little halo-spray of water.

None of the men had seen Bridget, wide-awake, her Victoria's Secret négligée's straps reset precisely into place, watching intently from the upstairs window.

* * *

Chapter 15

"You want some dry clothes?" asked Darren.

"I want my money," said Eddie.

Darren scanned his property. He didn't see Eddie's Road Runner. "Where did you park?"

"Down by the fucking Christmas tree farm. The Road Runner is so loud I didn't want to wake anybody up. The element of surprise, you know."

"Yeah, that really worked out for you. What happened?"

Eddie sat down on the chair he had formerly been bound to. He took off his shoes, poured the water out, wrung out his socks and replaced his shoes. He stood, removed his shirt and wrung that out. "I took my time. I did everything right. Snuck up on the motherfucker—he had spare blankets and an extra pillow assembled under the covers—like he was a teenager sneaking out for the night. He knew I was coming, Darren. He expected me."

"I didn't tell him. I couldn't; I didn't know when you were coming."

Eddie held out his fist for Darren to bump. Darren, thoroughly tired of and embarrassed by yet another black ritual hijacked by white boys, limply completed the fist bump. "I'll get your money and walk you down to your car. Sure you don't want a sweatshirt or something?"

"Yes, please. Freezing my ass off here."

"I'll be right back."

Darren walked to the front door of his house. He wiped his bare feet, entered, and tip-toed through the living room and down the hall to his office. Behind a faux edition of Shakespeare's Collected Works was a small office safe. He quickly spun the dial, returned to zero, and worked the combination. The small, fireproof safe contained documents, cash—mostly hundreds—and an ancient, fully loaded, thirty-eight caliber five-shot police special that Darren hadn't fired in nearly a year. Darren looked at but resisted touching the gun. He quickly counted out seven one-hundred-dollar bills, closed the safe, and spun the dial. He replaced the faux Shakespeare and retraced his steps down the hall, then up the stairs to his bedroom. "Bridget?" he said as he entered.

No response.

He quickly dressed in his workout clothes and grabbed an extra long-sleeve sweatshirt, one he didn't mind never seeing again, for Eddie. Darren purposely left his wet Levis on the rug so they'd leave a wet spot: just to piss off Bridget. He set the seven-hundred dollars on the bed and as he bent over to lace up (no socks) his cross trainers he had to smile. In the last two days Darren had, perhaps, for the first time in his life felt; what was the word, not happy, contented, or satisfied. Lost in thought he wiggled his toes leaned back on the bed and drifted: what exactly was he feeling? He felt "filled up". Darren, hadn't felt the need, a need which he had given into his whole life, to fuck with people. Frankly, he enjoyed being an asshole. A shit disturber. The dickhead everyone dreaded. But for some reason none of that was important to him right now. And he didn't know why and he didn't have a word to describe it.

Then he thought of the sodden pants he'd just left for Bridget to find and realized that yes, he was, and always would be an asshole.

But since he had killed that poor filthy little fucker; had taken a life with his own hands; had stepped outside the bounds of society and morality he had for the first time in his life been at peace. He knew Colin was up here in Healdsburg to shake him down. To fuck with him just like Darren fucked with others: for a little cash, sure; but mostly for bragging rights. Darren knew that Colin was a dangerous guy. Both the way he had handled Eddie, another dangerous, albeit stupid-and-bumbling guy, and by the slight but specific bend he had given Darren's wrist, not to injure, just to cause pain and show both of them who was in charge physically. Yes, this would be a formidable challenge. But a challenge that Darren anticipated and looked forward to with a childish delight. Darren smiled and indulged in a simple activity, one he had performed since he was a child, and had always brought him pleasure. He untied his shoes and completely loosened the laces. Starting from the bottom he pulled tightly on the shoe laces and, aglet by aglet, removed all the slack until the shoes had been firmly and incontrovertibly strapped to his feet. He stood and felt the security his extra tight shoes provided; and realized, since the murder, that's the way he felt inside: Secure. He picked up the money from the bed, smiled at himself in the full length mirror, and exited the bedroom.

Darren walked slowly down the steps, Eddie's sweatshirt in his left hand, the money tucked into the front of his sweatpants' waistband. He savored each footfall on the steps: his feet as snug as possible in his shoes. As he crossed from the stairs to the front door, he heard from the kitchen:

"No," said Bridget, "I couldn't take a day off of work. I've got invoices, the harvest is before we know it, and—"

"Are you sure," said Colin, "you couldn't get away for, say, two hours?"

"I probably could," said Bridget. "But I don't think my husband would like it."

"There might be a few things happening around here that your husband might not like."

"If you're considering some sort of buyout or takeover of MZ there's one little item that you should not overlook."

"What's that?"

"Me."

Darren smiled and nodded. But then became confused, as Bridget and Colin began laughing; and then, the laughter suddenly stopped. Darren exited the house closing the door softly behind him.

Eddie sat on the ground outside the pool's fence shivering like a soaked Chihuahua. Darren tossed him the sweatshirt and all the way down to the car Eddie spouted profanity and puffery. He refused to admit he got his ass whupped by a professional. No shame in that; nor is there shame in admitting it. Darren opened the car door and counted the seven bills into Eddie's opened hand. Then he watched as Eddie recounted it right in front of him before starting the car and gunning it, as if the sound of the 383 would mend or at least salve his recent personal humiliation. Darren appreciated the Road Runner's classic American guttural V-8 thrumble, but vintage cars are just an unnecessary nuisance. Always breaking down. Needing out-of-stock or specially machined parts; a general pain in the ass.

Just like cousin Eddie, who stomped on the accelerator and peeled out onto Highway 28. Darren stood in the dust and waved good bye to Eddie.

And his sweatshirt, which he knew he'd never see again.

Darren began jogging slowly up the hill. He examined that fucking Mackey's adjacent property. A perfect southern exposure in one of the world's famed winegrowing appellations and it was planted in fucking Douglas fir and Colorado blue spruce. Darren jogged to the edge of his property and hopped up onto a low stone fence, "Just looking at those trees is like sandpaper on the back of my nuts." Darren continued jogging, slow 10K pace, up the hill.

He entered the kitchen door to see his wife sitting at the table with Colin. They were both silent and smiling. Bridget rose from the table and poured a cup of coffee for Darren. She provided a spoon and his bottle of black strap molasses. Darren poured the viscous blackened sulfured stream into his cup and stirred. "That's Darren's pre-workout special," said Bridget. "Caffeine and complex carbohydrates and iron."

Darren raised his cup to Colin, "Breakfast of champions."

Darren stared at his wife. She leaned indolently against the kitchen counter. Her top consisted of the Victoria's Secret nightie tucked into her belt less, formfitting jeans. As she breathed you could see her nipples rustling beneath the silk. "So what do you boys have planned for today?"

"Darren's gonna show me around the vineyards and give me a little insider's tour of Sonoma County wine country," said Colin.

"Then Colin has a plane to catch."

"I'll get out of your hair," said Bridget. "It sounds like you have a busy day in front of you."

"And hopefully profitable," said Colin.

"We'll see about that," said Darren.

* * *

Chapter 16

"It makes me nervous as hell," said Jedediah Campbell.

"What's that?" said Sheriff Hernandez.

"Being here. In your office." Jedediah fumbled in his red and black plaid wool shirt for a pack of unfiltered Pall Mall 100's. He extracted one cigarette and returned the maroon-and-white pack to his shirt, carefully buttoning the pocket. "The law makes me nervous. But don't worry, I won't light up."

"I would have to arrest if you did."

"Are you kidding?"

"Yes, I am." Hernandez nodded at the cigarette and said, "I didn't know they made those unfiltered coffin nails anymore."

"Yep. Unfiltered, with double tar and extra nicotine," said Jedediah. He sniffed the cigarette and smiled. "But you have to sign a waiver to buy a pack."

"Really?"

"Now I'm kidding."

"Actually, it wouldn't surprise me." Hernandez leaned back in his desk chair and said, "What do you want to see me about, Mr Campbell?"

"I'm not what you call, Media Savvy. I watch a little TV news, I detest the radio, but I do subscribe to the Press Democrat."

"The key to a successful democracy is an informed voter."

"Don't worry Sheriff, I'll be vote for you. Again. But that's not what I'm here about."

"Enlighten me."

"I only read the paper once a week. I take the entire stack of six or seven and go through them in reverse order very quickly: Saturday, Friday, Thursday, etcetera. That way, if I read, on Saturday, that they got the fucking baby out of the well I don't have to read the stories Monday through Friday about how the fucking baby fell down the fucking well and the whole fucking community tried to get it out."

"Seems to be a novel and effective approach."

"It is, but that's why I'm here a few days late."

"Late for what?"

"To tell you that when I was driving to work in the wee hours of Wednesday morning I pulled over, a good Samaritan just like the Good Book preaches, to help a stranded motorist on Chalk Hill Road."

"Whereabouts on–"

"I'll get to that."

Hernandez nodded, leaned back and motioned for Jedidiah to continue at his own pace.

"When I returned from work, about eleven hours later, there was police tape at the precise spot where I saw this guy pulled over. But it wasn't until this morning, over the newspaper, strong coffee and my wife's delicious French toast—she uses nutmeg and cinnamon—that I realized I had passed a crime scene. The murder of that poor Mexican bloke. Candy-toes."

"Candido," corrected the Sheriff mildly.

"What you said, I ain't disrespecting no dead. But I can't pronounce those Mexi names."

"Like Hernandez?"

"Don't gimme that shit. You're whiter than my ass, Sheriff."

Hernandez smiled, shrugged, and then sat forward in his desk chair. He opened the side desk drawer and fumbled around. A moment later he came up with a palm-sized digital voice recorder. "Do you mind if I record this next part?"

"Hell no," said Jedediah Campbell. "Fire away."

Hernandez started the recorder and said, "One. Two. Three." He played it back. Satisfied he placed the recorder midway between he and Jedediah: "Interview with Jedediah Campbell, Friday, ten twenty-three AM. Sheriff Frank Hernandez: Mr Campbell, the time and day you passed the parked car in question?"

"I hate the way you cops talk."

Frank motioned at the recorder.

"It was Wednesday morning shortly before or after five AM."

"You can be certain of the time?"

"Yes. I commute along Chalk Hill Road every morning at that time."

"What did you see?"

"An almost new Mercedes, one of the big jobs. Dark colored. It was before dawn so it could have been blue, green, or black. It was pulled over to the far side of Pool Creek Bridge. As you know, it's a frigging skinny-ass, bumpy-ass road and there are very few places to pull over. That's why I remember. So I asked this guy, who by the way was out of his car and standing at the open trunk changing his clothes, if he needed help. He replied he was changing a tire and he was just fine. Curious-like, I asked him why he was changing his clothes to change a tire. And he said, snotty-like, that he didn't want to ruin his, and I quote three thousand dollar suit unquote. So I pointed out to the smartass that it didn't look like he had a flat tire. The car was sitting flat level on all four wheels."

"And then what did you do?"

"Drove away. The asshole don't want my help, what can I do?"

"You stated that you passed the scene again on your return trip and it had been taped off. And you didn't realize that it was a crime scene until you read a day old newspaper this morning?"

"Correct. But that's not what really stuck in my mind. You see, most of the people driving these big new Nazi sleds are either trophy wives, or business guys my age who push pencils for a living and whose physiques generally resemble two hundred and forty pound pears. This guy, changing clothes was all sweaty—like he just got done working out. And he sure weren't no banker nor business man."

"How could you know that?"

"Because he was built like a godamn linebacker. A fucking brick shithouse, you know what I mean?"

Sheriff Hernandez clicked off the recorder and leaned back in his desk chair. He rocked and stared up at the ceiling. Jedediah Campbell calmly fondled his cigarette for nearly two minutes before he said to the Sheriff, "Can I go now?"

"Sure," said Hernandez. "Would you mind leaving your contact information with the officer at the front desk?"

"Hell no. I told you I came in here to help."

"I thank you for that."

"I knew something was up: changing clothes and lying about a flat tire." Jedidiah waved farewell with his unfiltered Pall Mall. "Why would anyone lie about having a flat tire?"

Frank Hernandez leaned back in his chair. Why the hell would Darren Elmore be stopping on Chalk Hill Road in the pre-dawn to change clothes that close to his house? The Sheriff decided he would have to manufacture a casual and credible reason to question Darren.

Or perhaps he should just call Bridget.

* * *

Chapter 17

Darren and Colin both stood as Bridget left the kitchen. They remained standing and watched her stride down the hill to her office. "Man, that wife of yours must drive the help crazy. Dressed like that. Looking like she does."

"Let's cut the bullshit," said Darren.

"Let's."

Darren sat down, "What exactly do you want from me?"

"Like I said at the pool: last night I would have simply settled for some cash. But since you called out your geriatric attack dog, it makes think you have some hidden assets to protect."

"None of my assets are hidden," said Darren. "What do you want?"

"I like this place." Colin thought a moment, sat, and said, "How much of it can I finesse you out of?"

"'Finesse'? You're a blackmailer, asshole. You're finessing nothing. We're adversaries." Darren leaned against the kitchen counter, "Here's what you got: hearsay conversation between two drunk guys over bullshit macho stuff, in a piece of shit bar."

"That bar is classy, dude."

"So are you." Darren shook his head.

Colin ignored the jibe and looked around the kitchen. He spread his arms in an expansive gesture that encompassed Darren's entire territory. "You've done well for yourself. Incredibly well. You don't want to lose it all. I wouldn't mind a small piece. That's all."

"All I know," Darren stared at the younger man with malice, "is that you'll be leaving soon."

"I will be leaving when and with exactly what I want. Here's why: I know you are a cheater, a thief, and a liar. A crook. Knew it the moment I saw you in my bar. That's why I tried my line on you. That's why you fell for it. And I know you killed that little fucking Mexican."

"You know shit, you got shit. You are shit."

"No." Colin shook his head, "My security is your insecurity. You got the car, the big house, the thriving business, the classy wife. I don't know how, but I know you scammed your way into it and your future depends on your image and your standing in the community. Because even if you've got the money, it's not the money that's important. You could get money any number of ways—selling drugs or guns or whatever—the rush is knowing you beat the square fuckers at their own game. That you made it on your terms, not theirs."

Darren shook his head, "You don't know me."

Colin continued speaking, but in a softer voice that caused Darren to lean forward, "I know you because I'm just like you."

The men sat silent and listened to the winery come to life: the Kubota rumbled by the pool: phrases in English and Spanish floated up the hill.

"I had my doubts about you," said Colin. "But when you called your hitman 'Cousin' I knew I was right about you."

Darren, despite himself, felt either intrigue or curiosity: perhaps both, "What?"

"Because, dude, I got a glimpse into your gene pool. Genteel, quasi-intelligent white trash. Talented enough to make a fortune in any number of endeavors, constitutionally incapable of not pissing it away."

"What do you mean, pissing it away?" Darren pointed down the hill to the winery for emphasis.

"Oh, your business is successful. But I think that might be more Bridget than you."

"You're not making sense," said Darren. "What do you mean?"

"I mean like you killing that little Mexican for no good reason and putting it all at risk. That's you showing your true punk-ass colors."

Darren began to speak, then drank his now cold coffee and molasses.

Colin continued, "But, like I said, you've done well for yourself."

Darren pointed to the kitchen phone: "Just go to the cops and let's get this over with. I'll give you Sheriff Hernandez's phone number. You call him. It'll get you nothing."

"They may not be able to prove anything, but I know cops and you know cops."

Darren tried not to smile. He failed.

"If I called the Sheriff and told him," said Colin, "that late Tuesday night you were in my bar and we talked about gratuitous manslaughter and then that precise type of gratuitous manslaughter happened Wednesday morning in your own backyard, the law might not pin anything on you. But here's what it would do: the Sheriff would start looking a little closer at you and everything you do or have done. Maybe dig a little into this deal or that deal, begin chipping away at your precious legitimacy. And where would you be then? You'd be exactly where I am now, shaking someone down."

The men were quiet for a moment. The whine of a forklift wafted up from the winery.

"And that, my friend," said Colin, "is exactly what I have on you."

"Then," said Darren, "give me a number."

Colin stood and walked to Darren's dry erase War Board and picked up a blue marker. He thought a moment, then scrawled a lopsided dollar sign in the bottom right-hand corner. He pondered and then wrote, with blocky fourth grade penmanship, a number. He recapped the marker and placed it in the dry erase board's tray. Darren poured another splash of coffee. He added a dollop of black strap molasses and, while stirring, pretended to study the board. He sipped and offered a coffee refill to Colin who declined with a barely perceptible shake of his head. Darren placed his coffee cup down, walked to the board, then used his right index figure to erase four zeros.

Colin laughed.

Then Darren laughed. "I've got a great idea."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to pretend that you are not a giant pain in the ass intruder in my house and life. I discovered, out by the pool, that you can kick my ass, so I'm not even gonna try that."

"Semper Fu."

"What?"

"My martial arts technique is called Semper Fu: they teach it in the Marines."

"Whatever you say." Darren held up his hands in mock submission. "I'm even going to avoid the urge to get my pistol and shoot your balls off. Instead, for the rest of today I'm going to pretend this is a legitimate business deal. I'm going to give you the grand tour of my place and Healdsburg. Does that sound okay to you?"

"Sounds just fine to me," said Colin standing up, "But we are going to get this deal done, right?"

"You bet."

"Bridget mentioned that you have a gym on the property."

"Yeah. Nothing fancy. Free weights. Chin bar. Jump rope."

"Since we'll be pretending that we are two good old boys simply out to close a deal, why don't we pretend that we met the way I said we met."

"You mean working out?"

"That's the way I told the story. No need to be all nasty and confrontational about this is there?"

Darren smiled. "None at all."

"Good," said Colin. "Let me borrow some sweatpants and you can go slip into some ladies' panties."

"That is the way you told the story," said Darren.

Several things can happen when men work out together. They can chat about women, sports, and weather. Or they could talk about how good they used to be: how they could have gone pro if it weren't for: 1) The knee they blew out their senior year in high school, 2) The coach who benched them during the second half of the big homecoming game and fucked up their college scholarship, 3) The little bitch who had the audacity to become pregnant and ruin their future professional career. For there is not a single American male who has laced up high-tops, picked up a bat, or squeezed his head into a football helmet who consider the professional athletes who tackle, pitch, or dribble for a living not as more talented, but simply luckier than they.

Or men can work out like Darren and Colin did.

Differences are forgotten. Grudges are buried. Problems are non-existent: except for the problem of how to lift that weight just one more time while maintaining faultless form. Both Colin and Darren were adept enough to realize that the other man did not need their coaching, guidance, or encouragement. They set about their own workouts with the grim, silent, determined glee that is the emotional precursor to increased testosterone production and muscle growth. They chinned themselves repeatedly, until another repetition was literally impossible. They jumped rope until their anaerobic thresholds were broached and shattered. They huffed and hefted dumbbells: grunting and sweating, while maintaining that elusive, perfect form. They spoke not a word until after thirty-five minutes, mutually exclusive of each other, they simply achieved a sublime exhaustion and ceased exercising. Sweating buckets, they walked down the hill gingerly, rotating shoulders, flexing fingers and stopping occasionally to stretch their legs and lower back in what a yoga student would have a recognized as the Rishi posture. They reached the pool before Darren broke the silence, "Let's swim. I'll get us towels. Then we'll eat."

Colin, who was already naked to the waist, kicked off his shoes and unabashedly stripped naked. He stretched in the warm morning sun, his junk flopping free and easy. He entered the pool and swam a nearly silent breaststroke until Darren returned with the towels. As Colin exited the shallow end Darren stripped and dove into the deep end. He swam two quick but splashy laps before exiting for his own towel. At opposite ends of the lap pool they sat: silent and naked; proud and preening on the pillowed, white wrought iron chaises and dried their hair. "You hungry?" said Darren.

"Always, after a workout."

"After we dry off here, we'll have some protein shakes, then I know a great place for lunch." Darren stood to finish drying and wrapped the towel around his waist. "You don't need a shower, do you?"

"No. The pool's fine," said Colin. "But, dude, what's your scar from?"

"Appendectomy."

"It's so jagged. Was the doctor drunk?"

Just then, cousin Ramon and foreman Ramon putted by on the Kubota tractor. Foreman Ramon raised his hand in salute to Darren and the unknown naked white man. The gesture was acknowledged with two polite nods. Cousin Ramon said, rather loudly to be heard above the chug-chug-putt-putt of the Kubota, "¿Que son, primo? ¿Maricones?"

"Tal vez," replied Foreman Ramon, "pero no sé."

Cousin Ramon crossed himself rapidly and maneuvered the little orange tractor down the hill to begin his third day of labor—paid cash by Bridget at the end of each day—on the job he and foreman Ramon thought they could knock out in a couple of hours.

"You'll love this place," said Darren.

"But it's a vegetarian joint," said Colin.

"It's cool, we had our protein shakes. It's time for some phyto-nutrients and roughage." Darren bounded up the front steps of the aged yellow and white farmhouse-turned-restaurant. "Read that sign. It's hilarious."

Colin leaned over and read, in halting English, "The Green Frog Café. Vegetarian Cuisine. Reservations required. All misbehaved children will be given a double espresso and a puppy. That's funny shit, dude."

"The food is so freaking good."

"Let's eat."

The boys devoured two salads each—one egg and escarole, the other pear and endive—then had two French onion soups, and two entrées each: polenta lasagna with roasted vegetables and a mushroom cassoulet for Colin; eggplant parmigiana and a spinach and cheese omelet for Darren. Both sipped iced green tea and were quiet, almost shyly reserved, throughout the leisurely and tasty lunch. Darren paid with his American Express card and scribbled in a twenty percent tip. Colin tucked two five-dollar bills beneath the signed charge receipt and said, "I'm sure you left her enough. I always tip extra big. Professional courtesy, you know."

Not in the least offended, Darren nodded.

They were the last to leave the dining room which had been almost filled to capacity. The waitress—her flowered nametag read: Hilary—a nubile, fresh faced, local girl, approached the table and picked up the charge receipt. She pocketed the two fives before she noticed the other tip included in the American Express' total. She nodded and smiled, then reiterated the question in English that the tractor driving cousin Ramon had articulated in Spanish, "I wonder if they're gay?"

The Green Frog Café's driveway crossed River Road and merged into Wohler Road, which meandered through chardonnay and pinot noir vineyards until it crossed the Russian River at Wohler Bridge and became West Side Road. This bumpy, rutted, shoulderless ribbon of concrete was maintained as if it existed in a Third World Country, but every two miles or so of bad road revealed tasting rooms pouring oh-so-tiny-little-sippy-shots of world-class wine. Porter Creek, Arista, Rochioli, Hop Kiln, Donatello: all of which Darren and Colin stopped at. They tasted and were offered, from tasting room personnel, various facts about oenology and viticulture that ranged from the slightly erroneous to the egregiously flawed. Darren had been recognized at three of the tasting rooms and offered VIP tastings but had declined saying, "Today the goal is to hit is many different tasting rooms as we can."

At Donatello, Colin purchased a bottle of their most expensive pinot noir. Without being prompted he said to Darren, "It is a gift for Bridget."

"She doesn't," said Darren as they walked to the car, "particularly enjoy pinot noir."

"That's not the point of the gift," said Colin. "If she doesn't drink it she can auction it off at next year's AYUDA benefit."

"You've done your homework."

"The Internet is a wonderful tool."

Darren thought of his ModZap scam. "Indeed it is. You wanna go get something decent to drink?"

"Like what?"

"Beer and whiskey."

Colin opened the passenger door and tossed the bagged wine bottle into the back seat. "Sounds like a plan to me."

The Bar, as usual, was about one third full.

Loody, as usual, was also about one third full and seated in front of the taps. Darren and Colin entered through the back and sat at a picnic table against the far wall. Kent the bartender ignored them and a cocktail waitress wasn't on duty yet, so Darren approached the bar and ordered two shots of Old Crow and two Heineken. He paid, cash, tipped, and slopping just a little beer, made his way back to the picnic table with the four grain based beverages. Darren and Colin silently lifted the Old Crow to their lips and dispensed with it. After their shot glasses had been returned to the gouged and stained table they sipped their beers in silence.

Both of them knowing that the negotiations, now, had officially begun.

But the silence continued. They flexed and hunkered over their drinks, almost preening for one another as they attempted to gain a mute advantage before the speaking portion of their summit began. They were both aware of the maxim: He who speaks first loses.

Twenty minutes later, Colin bought the next round. It was consumed in precisely the same silent manner. They sat and sipped while watching the businessmen, soccer moms, clergy, professional educators, and just plain boozers stop by The Bar for their mid-afternoon bracers. All the while Loody brooded in inebriated silence and solitary redneck angst. When Darren returned to the picnic table with their third round, Loody followed him over and sat straddling the bench, facing Colin. Darren placed the shots and beers on the table and settled, alone, onto his side of the picnic table. Loody grabbed Colin's Old Crow and downed it. Colin stared at Darren, who sat tense but unresponsive. That's when Colin realized what was about to occur. He turned to Loody and said, "You're welcome, dude."

Loody burped, spraying flecks of spittle across the table: "You two been bugging the fuck out of me."

Darren snorted down his Old Crow and watched the tableau across him with intense interest. "Loody," said Darren, "we two been sitting here drinking. Quiet. How could that possibly bug you?"

"You just do," said Loody.

"Get lost, Loody," prompted Darren.

"Dude," said Colin, tensing his thighs and rising almost imperceptibly off the bench, "don't you have a sister or a sheep to fuck?"

In Loody's left hand a knife suddenly appeared. But he glanced at Darren just before he slashed from left to right across where Colin's thigh had recently rested on the bench. But Colin was no longer on the bench.

As soon as Loody had shifted his balance forward, Colin had rolled backwards, landing on his feet. Before Loody had finished his lunging, jagged slash Colin had maneuvered behind the big drunk man, placing the elbow of his knife hand in an arm bar. The knife clattered to the floor and Loody said, "Okay, okay, okay." But that didn't stop Colin from following through with his arm bar and dislocating Loody's left elbow with a crunch that caused everyone in the bar to wince.

Except Loody.

He howled like a wounded animal; but only for a moment until the edge of Colin's right hand snapped up into Loody's throat. The muffled, gurgling, strained noises emanating from the injured man now caused the bar to empty—except for Kent and three regulars at the bar to whom the knife fight was simply a leisurely distraction. Colin bent to pick up the knife. He examined the Kershaw spring-blade and stuck it into the picnic table next to his still full Heineken. "Call a cab," he said to Kent, "to get this asshole to a hospital."

"You broke him." Kent casually went back to polishing glasses. "You take him."

Colin shook his head. "Come here, Darren."

Darren finished half his Heineken and walked over. "What?"

"Get him up on the bench. I didn't break anything." Colin removed Loody's grimy Dallas Cowboys hat and spoke to the big man softly: "What's your name?"

"Loody."

"Okay...Loody. I can snap it right back in, dude. The quicker the better. It's only been out, like, twenty seconds."

"It hurts. It hurts like. Darren you didn't pay me—"

Loody never told Darren what he hadn't been paid for because Colin had, with one smooth oiled motion yanked, extended his palm against the big man's elbow and popped the joint back into place. Colin sat on the bench and placed his arm around Loody. He pulled the knife from the table and shut it, dropping the illegal-in-California apparatus into Loody's shirt pocket. "We're gonna help you to your truck; I'm assuming you drive a truck?"

Loody nodded.

"You're going to drive home. Then you're going to wrap your elbow in ice. For an hour. It's important for the first hour to ice it down. Do you understand?"

Loody nodded.

"You'll be okay. Ice for a couple days, then ace bandage it. Tight. It was a clean dislocation and it'll heal just fine. Okay dude?"

Loody nodded again.

"Come on Darren, grab his jacket and let's get this poor dumb sonuvabitch on the road." Darren helped Colin pull the whimpering redneck to his feet. They shuffled through the bar and out into cloudless, perfect, September wine country weather. Darren fished in Loody's denim jacket pocket for the truck keys, and then pointed out the white Chevy to Colin. He opened the driver side door and helped Colin wedge Loody behind the wheel. Colin reached across and around the steering column, inserted the keys, and after Loody had pumped the gas pedal, turned the ignition. The truck started. "You're fine to drive, dude," said Colin. "Just pretend that it's closing time and you gotta make it home with a cop on your ass. Close one eye and concentrate. I know you done it a million times big man. You're okay."

Loody actually smiled as he drove from the parking lot and made a right hand turn on Mill Street.

"He'll be fine," said Darren. "His house is about three miles away."

Colin nodded and said quietly, "Did you call him from the bathroom?"

"What?"

"Did you call Loody from the restaurant at lunch? When you went to the bathroom, did you call him and tell him to meet us here?"

"No."

Colin stepped close to Darren and said in a soft, almost intimate voice, "I fucked up your cousin this morning. I just finished fucking up your goon. The next time something happens," Colin reached out and snagged Darren's right bicep. He dug with his thumb and said, "The next time you send somebody for me, I'm gonna skip them and just fuck you up."

"I didn't pay Loody to knife you. I paid him to scare you. He just took a natural disliking to you."

Colin twisted his thumb deep into Darren's bicep.

Darren winced but wouldn't give his adversary the satisfaction of squirming away. "You not having any fun in Healdsburg?" he said through thin tight lips. "Maybe you should hop on a plane and get your ass back down south. Dude."

Colin released Darren's arm and walked toward the seldom used front entrance of The Bar. "Are you coming? We got some shit to settle." Colin had to strain so as not to end his sentence with yet another automatic, "Dude".

Darren's right arm was dead and numb, from shoulder to fingers. He followed Colin back into The Bar, trying to shake some life back into the fingers of his right hand.

* * *

Chapter 18

Two things happened in quick succession to Bridget. If either had happened alone, the singularities could've been dismissed as a disjointed coincidence. But the juxtaposition of the two isolated events made her think, long and hard, about her life and the state it was in.

First: Shortly after Bridget saw Darren and Colin drive away in the Mercedes she returned from her office to the house to shower and dress properly for the day's business. Today she was interviewing for a new position at the winery. For over a year she and Darren had discussed adding a "Customer Service Liaison" to the payroll. The position would include various and diverse responsibilities: off-site events and sales, managing pre-booked tasting room and winery tours, and general public relations. Ideally, the applicant would be self-starting, self-motivating and the income would be supplemental. MZ winery didn't have the on-site sales to warrant a full-time position so the income would grow as the new hire defined and worked the job. Bridget had interviewed six or seven candidates, rejecting all but two. As she slipped out of her gauzy top and jeans she thought about today's interview. Richard Dade was sixty-two years old and a retired English teacher from the Santa Rosa school district. He was also a poet with fourteen chapbooks in print. But Bridget favored Richard because he was bilingual and he worked as a part time volunteer in AYUDA's literacy program.

Bridget stared at herself in the mirror as she brushed her hair and decided against any makeup other than an application of lip gloss. She also decided: she'd hire Richard today, but she'd have to conduct the final interview with the other job seeker in order to avoid possible repercussions or lawsuits. Decided and done. She nodded at herself in the mirror, and decided to wear her blouse untucked so she wouldn't need to find a belt to match her maroon, open-toed sandals. She exited the bedroom and skipped down the stairs, actually looking forward to Richard's interview. It would be nice to be the bearer of good news for a change. The kitchen phone rang as her left foot hit the tile entryway and her hand was on the doorknob before she decided she'd better take the call. She strode into the kitchen and answered the phone, "Hello?" Darren had been bugging her to get rid of their landline, but Bridget truly enjoyed standing in her kitchen and talking on an honest-to-God phone with an honest-to-God cord while pacing and looking through the window at the pool and the distant vineyards.

"Hola, Bridget. It's Frank Hernandez."

"Hiya Frank. What's up?"

"I am calling you about Candido Sanchez's body. Have you contacted anyone in Mexico about returning the corpse?"

"I've called the local church in Sagrado and spoke not only to the priest but also with the local bishop. I've got an address to ship the body to, and of course they would love to see pobrecito Candido buried in his beloved native soil, and of course they have no money to help with either shipping or burial."

"Of course."

"His place in the family plot, however, has been paid for. So there's that."

"Thanks for doing that. The Mexican consulate wouldn't have done as much, as quickly."

"Would the consulate consider picking up the tab for shipping?"

"To be honest with you, with the overtime that the Sheriff's Department would incur filling out bilingual paperwork in triplicate for the Embassy, it would be cheaper if we put the body in a taxi and sprang for the one-way fare." Frank sighed. "What do you think about using the money I found on Sanchez to pay for his final trip home?"

"I know how important religion is to these old-country people. I know it's essential for the extended family to have him buried, properly with Catholic rights, in the family plot. I think it would be worth it to them. But I'm certain they need the money and I'd hate to waste it. I'm sure there are mouths to feed."

"Yeah," said Frank, "I know what you mean. The poorer they are the dumber they are and the more this superstitious Catholic mumbo-jumbo means to them. I'd hate for the man's hard work and legacy to be spent planting him in the ground."

It was Bridget's turn to sigh. "Tell you what Sheriff—"

"Shit, it must be serious. You never call me Sheriff."

"—I'll find the money for shipping the body somewhere in the AYUDA Foundation's budget. We kicked ass the other night at the silent auction."

"Bridget, I can't ask you to pay the entire freight," said Frank.

"I started the foundation not to create a bureaucracy but to help people," said Bridget quietly. "This will be a proper and effective use of funds. If it costs too much I'll just have Darren write a check to the foundation for the balance and we'll deduct it as a charitable donation in the winery's name."

"God bless you Bridget."

Bridget said, "I've been thinking about getting out of town before the crush. Our month of madness. I'll have the foundation pay for shipping, but I'll pay my own way. I will accompany the body and return the money, all the money, to the family. Does that sound okay?"

"It sounds like the most elegant possible solution. I'll have one simple voucher for you to sign before I give you Sanchez's money and personal effects. I'll arrange for the shipping and take care of the international red-tape-bullshit, the foundation picks up the tab and we're in business. Right?"

"Sounds good. I could use a little down time anyway."

"I'll buy you dinner when you get back."

"It's a deal, Frank." Bridget saw her job interviewee pull up and park his aging silver Saturn in Visitors Parking. He was dressed in Retired Hipsters Formal: vintage bowling shirt, clean Levis, new black canvas Chuck Taylor high-tops, and a brand-new blue suit coat; of course no tie.

"Bueno," said Frank. He continued in Spanish, "I have something else to tell you, Bridget. And it might be easier for me in Spanish."

Bridget, stretching the phone cord to its limits, sat on the bottom step of the stairs and replied in Spanish, "You are scaring me, Frank. What is it?"

"Bridget, where was Darren two nights ago?"

"Home." Bridget thought a moment. "No. He arrived home late that night, early that morning. Came back from LA. Sales trip. Two or three days. You know the deal. Why?"

"Was he acting funny that evening, or morning, when he got home?"

Bridget recalled Darren's sudden sexual assault, but said, "Not particularly."

"I shouldn't be telling you this, but—"

"You're not telling me anything Frank."

"—shit. Shit, shit. I have an eyewitness who puts Darren precisely where Candido Sanchez was murdered. At precisely the right time."

Bridget, confused, said slowly, "Did they see Darren driving by? If so he was on his way home."

"Driving, no. This eyewitness has Darren parked on the side of the road. Right where we found the body. He was standing with the trunk of his Mercedes open. He was changing clothes. He also lied to the witness about changing a flat tire."

"You should check Darren's trunk. Check the tires Frank. If he said he was changing a tire, then he was changing a tire."

Frank switched back to English. "You're right Bridget. I maybe jumped the gun on this. Is Darren home? I'll drop by; pop the trunk. That will clear this up. Is he home?"

"No. He is showing a business prospect around Healdsburg today. He will be back here later, but if you need to talk to him before then try The Bar."

"I might do that. Sorry to bother you about this. Just a cop being a cop."

"I can think of worse things Frank."

"Me too. Thanks for doing right by this poor dumb murdered sonuvabitch's family."

That was the first thing that happened.

Bridget greeted Richard with a firm, formal handshake. "Sorry I made you wait, there was a call I had to take up at the house," said Bridget.

"No problem. I was a little early," said Richard.

"Shall we, as they say, step into my office?"

"Certainly." Richard turned and located Ramon. The foreman was checking out a loaded forklift. Richard waved and said, "Gracias, amigo."

Ramon returned the wave and nodded slightly, twice, at Bridget.

Bridget opened the door for Richard and ushered him through the combination tasting room-museum and, again, opened the door to her office. She pulled a straight backed chair from the wall and set it next to her simple, armless black leather desk chair. Richard sat without being asked, tossing the tails of his jacket backwards while settling onto the chair, looking much like an incongruously attired concert pianist ready to begin his performance. Bridget settled primly on to the edge of her seat and said to Richard, "Unless you say something really fucking stupid this job is yours."

"Then I'll take it."

"I still owe the remaining candidate an interview, both ethically and legally. But I doubt if there's anything she could say or do to change my mind."

"That's good to hear. I am genuinely excited to get started here. Is there anything else you need to know about me?"

Bridget pondered a moment, "Where'd you learn to speak Spanish?"

"Six years in the Army."

"Where were you stationed?

"Central America: Nicarauga, Guatamala. During those messy Noriega, Iran-Contra years."

"Must have been fascinating."

"If I weren't in the Army it would have been. But I learned the language and made two good friends."

"Only two?"

"I thought I was ahead of the game coming out of the service with two. How many really good friends do you have?"

Bridget thought a moment and didn't like the result of the quick mental survey she'd conducted.

"I'm sorry," said Richard. "Was that the 'Really Fucking Stupid' thing you alluded to?"

"No, it was a good point. Welcome aboard."

Richard stood, "If you don't mind, I'd like to hang out in the warehouse with Ramon. He was gonna go over a little inventory and some procedures with me."

"Fine. But one more question?" Bridget stood and touched Richard's lapel.

"Shoot."

"Do you always dress like that?"

He snapped his lapels proudly, then opened the left side of his jacket to reveal a monogram on his bowling shirt that read: Mickey~The Pin Tigers. "This shirt, circa early nineteen-seventies, apparently belonging to a man, perhaps a woman, named Mickey who rolled for and with a group of bowlers known as the Pin Tigers. Every time I put this classic shirt on I wonder who Mickey was. Was bowling with the Pin Tigers the highlight of his week? Did he hang out at the bowling alley to escape the drudgery of a boring marriage or the danger of a volatile one? Was he, or again she, forced into bowling by peer pressure and hated every moment he spent in this shirt? This isn't just a shirt. It's a slice of living history: perhaps a modest piece of functional art."

"I can see why you have fourteen books in print." Bridget smiled, sat, and settled back in her chair. She rocked gently, cozily, side to side.

"You can probably also see why I don't sell very many copies. Self-indulgent, introspective, social commentary that strives, however vainly, for universal connections just ain't selling too good these days."

"I don't think it ever has. Or will."

"That's encouraging."

"Sorry, but at least you've got the new job." Bridget sat forward in her chair, "Tell me about your coat?"

Richard removed the suit coat. "I just got it. I mean last night. My wife volunteers at the St Vincent de Paul Society. She is in charge of two north county collection sites: one at our Lady of Guadalupe in Windsor, the other at the Safeway here in town. Twice a month, once a week during December, she borrows the neighbor's truck and does a pick up at the two sites. The first thing she does, right there in the parking lot, is get rid of the junk. Some people use the donation box as a garbage can. The second thing she does is sort through the donations for vintage or valuable clothing. These items she brings home to me. I sort through them to see if there's anything unique, wacky, or valuable. I purchase any item that catches my eye—top dollar, of course, for the charity—and the rest I sell, again for top dollar, to several vintage clothing outlets in San Francisco. It's fun for me—living history, functional art, as I mentioned—and I donate all the money to the St Vincent DePaul." Richard handed the jacket to Bridget. "Every once in a while a brand-new, eminently wearable piece of apparel is donated. Check that jacket out. Bill Blair label, maybe a year old. Just a bit scuffed at the elbows; my wife's gonna sew on some professor patches. It's a trifle too big for me, but it completes the ensemble don't you think?"

Bridget nodded. "Did it come with pants?"

"Yes. But the knees on the pants were scuffed up and torn out. I considered cutting them off and wearing them for summer shorts, but the waist was just too big. I can pull off wearing the bigger jacket but one's pants really must fit. At least for my generation."

Bridget checked the backside of the Bill Blair label. In black Sharpie, as she had done with every piece of clothing she had owned since high school, she had placed three black dots. Out of habit she had also done this with Darren's clothes. She calmly turned the label and saw three black dots. Her new employee was wearing her husband's old, ostensibly lost, coat.

That was the second thing that happened.

* * *

Chapter 19

"Now," said Colin, "I think it's time for you to write me a check."

"That number you wrote on the board this morning was ridiculous," said Darren.

"If anything, I thought it was a little low."

Darren and Colin had reentered The Bar, re-ordered drinks, and sat at the same picnic table. Kent and the trio of drinkers who had witnessed the scuffle acted as if nothing at all in the world had happened. Darren and Colin sat in silence across from each other: mirror images with shots and beers set before them like chess end-game pieces. "Let me explain to you," said Darren, "how this wine business works." It took two beers for Darren to explain about the unreliability of crops, the high cost of environmental compliance, ABC compliance, a fickle marketplace, a Byzantine bureaucracy that complicated and codified and confused every aspect of shipping and interstate commerce. He explained how a label that was worth, say, three million dollars, had most of that capital tied up in land, equipment, and previous vintages that were being cellared.

Colin paid strict and close attention to Darren's soliloquy. When Darren had stopped speaking Colin said, "Sounds like a piece of shit business to me."

"Like any business, I suppose, it always seems more glamorous from the outside looking in." Darren picked up his shot glass and gazed at the amber liquid. "I have to tell you the truth here, Colin. I prefer beer. Or whiskey. Or vodka. The only reason people drink wine is because it has alcohol in it. It is our socially accepted soporific; served at weddings, New Year's, birthday parties, gala dinners, and funerals. It's a legal drug that has positive societal implications."

"What's your point?"

"You work out a lot. When you're done what do you crave? The sugar and caramel taste of a Coca-Cola or the lemon lime zing of a 7-Up. You don't want sour berries and cherries with bullshit hints of oak and juniper and earth. It's not natural to crave those things. Nobody would drink wine if it didn't have alcohol in it. It is a bullshit business that produces a product that causes as much or more cirrhosis, car wrecks, fetal alcohol syndrome than beer and hard liquor. And yet winemaking is referred to as an Art. Grape cultivation is farming: fucking pure and fucking simple, just like growing radishes or almonds or peaches, but it is treated as a divine gift that the vintner mysteriously practices for the benefit of the great unwashed masses. In Sonoma County, green and environmentally conscious Sonoma County: where you will see more Prius hybrids per square mile anywhere outside of a Toyota dealership; where you see bike commuters; where we are building a godamn train to take people from downtown Santa Rosa to downtown San Rafael to help keep cars off the road: in the middle of all this recycling, mulching, organic, green, sustainable, holier than thou environment there are thousands of acres of vineyards. These vineyards have been planted on hillsides which, denuded of their natural cover, erode topsoil which makes its way into the Russian River, fucking up the salmon's environment. There are hundreds of wells, legal and illegal, used to water these vineyards that are lowering our irreplaceable water table. For every acre of organic biodynamic grapes there are thousands more acres that thrive and produce as a result of their inundation with industrial herbicides and pesticides which, of course, make their way, again, into the Russian River. Then into the Pacific Ocean. And ultimately, into all the fish in your local supermarket. What is said about the environmental impact of vineyards in Sonoma County? Fucking nothing. It is our sacred cow." Darren raised his shot glass again, "Long live the sacred cow."

Colin nodded thoughtfully and said, "So what are you worth, asshole?"

"I didn't impress you with my speech?"

"Nope. But you use a lot of big words. That's always impressive. To shitheads." Colin sipped, "Too bad I'm a dickhead."

Darren stared across the table at Colin and realized the fucker wasn't going away. "No bullshit? Cards on the table?"

"No, dude, lie to me some more."

Darren stared at Colin. The younger man's eyes were bloodshot; he seemed edgy, perhaps vulnerable. Darren spoke slowly, "Including all assets and futures, probably five-point-two million."

"And why is the number I wrote on the board so out of reach?"

"Out of that five-point-two million I'd be lucky to scratch up fifty grand in cash." Darren pushed his shot glass across the table and grabbed Colin's un-tasted beer. "Trade you?"

Colin nodded.

"Then I'll take the fifty grand." Colin inhaled the shot. "That's twenty percent of what I asked for this morning."

Darren shook his head. "I don't know if you noticed, but I don't live alone in that house. That shiny fussy little piece-of-ass I live with might notice a few dollars missing."

"I bet she would at that. Bridget seems to have an eye for the details."

"That's putting it mildly."

"If a lump sum is out of the question," Colin drank, "maybe we should think about a payment plan."

"No." Darren sat back and shook his head. "Go to the cops. Tell my wife. I don't give a shit."

Darren and Colin stared at each other, each trying to read a weakness in the other's gestures, eyes, or posture. At that moment, Ellen walked up and put her hand on Darren's shoulder, "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend, Darren?"

Darren smiled, "Ellen, this is Colin."

"Pleased to meet you." Ellen collected the empties from the table. "Another round boys?"

"Why not?" said Darren.

Ellen smiled and said, "Be right back."

"We'll be right here," said Darren.

Before she was out of earshot Colin said, "What a hog. A wide load like that could spoil someone's appetite, dude. Shit, in LA we would make her work in the kitchen."

"That's enough," said Darren. "We're gonna settle this. Come with me."

Colin followed Darren out the door. Ellen's "Bye-bye" wasn't heard or acknowledged.

Bank of America was walking distance from The Bar.

The boys marched there in a surly, vigorous silence. Once inside Darren motioned for Colin to sit and wait in the roped-off lounge with the brochures and six hour old coffee. Darren waited patiently in line. At his turn, he exchanged pleasantries with the teller, produced the necessary ID, and signed a withdrawal slip. The teller smilingly counted out a stack of bills. Darren recounted it quickly and without bothering to even put it in his pocket walked past Colin and held the door open until the younger man got the idea that they were now leaving. Colin stood and followed Darren out into the late afternoon sunshine. Once inside the Mercedes Darren started the car to get the A/C running. He turned to Colin, held up the money, and said, "You don't deserve anything."

"But you're gonna pay me anyway."

"To get you out of my life, yes."

Colin looked in the rearview mirror. The late afternoon traffic along Vine Street had increased, and it seemed all of it was streaming toward the Safeway parking lot. He noticed the odd mix of cars in Sonoma County. New, big four-wheel-drive trucks were everywhere. And most of them were spotless. Apparently, the prestige vehicle up here in wine country was a seventy thousand dollar turbo diesel, four-by-four mini-monster truck that you really didn't need. With the exception of Darren, Colin had only seen women driving newer luxury Mercedes, Audis, and BMWs. Of course there were soccer moms, with screaming little kids in the back, driving vans. The majority of the traffic, as it is everywhere, were the working grunts driving their, new to them, five to seven year old sedans, imported and domestic. The working stiffs appeared to be an equal mix of grousing and overweight lower middle class white folks, and equally chubby, happy to be employed Latinos. As in Southern California, it seemed only the rich could afford to be thin. "Forget the money for a minute," said Colin. "Okay?"

"Okay."

"Just tell me, Darren. Did you kill him?"

Darren shook his head, but not out of frustration.

Darren hated the fact that he couldn't help but like Colin. He saw and felt something admirable and companionable in the younger man. There was even a grudging regard for the balls it took to conceive and follow through with a scam on a guy that you'd only met once. Darren's ModZap scheme essentially took advantage of hundreds of investors, none of whom Darren actually met, but he was thoroughly acquainted with their type: fat, vain, greedy, self-involved businessmen who were ripe for this precise type of rip-off. Darren wondered, as he waited his turn out of the almost gridlocked Safeway parking lot, why he felt this way about Colin. The only other person Darren had ever tried to impress was his abusive, drunk-ass father. At the tender age of eleven he learned to steal booze, not an easy feat, it's the one thing that stores actually keep a vigilant eye on. But Darren would always come up with a half-gallon of Finlandia vodka stolen from a neighbor, or a case of beer lifted from the back of the pickup truck at the bait shop. Darren was so inured to his father's abuse and perverse morals that he pursued the spoils of theft the way most children his age labored for straight A's or a starting spot on the baseball team. Darren supposed that this was why, like everything else in his life, the purchase of MZ vineyards was sweeter because it was made with stolen cash. For some reason, Darren couldn't fathom why he felt the need to impress this young man in the same way he had impressed and won favor with his father.

Darren looked out at the swirl of traffic leaking into the parking lot from all sides. He put the car in gear and drove slowly along the rear of the Safeway complex. He held the sheath of newly withdrawn bills firmly against the steering wheel in the palm of his right hand. He drove past dumpsters and loading docks; employee parking spaces and stacks of broken down cardboard boxes. He pulled out onto Mill Street, which led under the freeway to West Dry Creek Road. They drove in silence past oaks, scattered residences, and the occasional bed-and-breakfast until they emerged on Dry Creek Road and headed east. Through the pristine postcard beauty of the Dry Creek Valley they viewed wineries that resembled faux châteaux, modern churches, severe industrial chic boxes, and redone farm houses. He drove the long, scenic way around to Alexander Valley Road. After twenty-three minutes of silence Darren said, "Yes. I killed him."

Colin laughed. "Now that surprises the hell out of me."

Darren was insulted. "Why didn't you think I do it?"

"Dude," Colin laughed again, "you shave your forearms."

"Fuck you," said Darren. Then, "What?"

"When you were hitting on that skinny bitch at my bar, I noticed that you shave your forearms. I can see doing a little manscaping, keeping everything neat and tidy for the ladies, but to shave your forearms? That's just vain, dude."

"What about you? Checking out where and how other guys shave?"

"I was playing a game. I was on the hunt to hustle up some easy cash. The fact you shave your arms all smooth and pretty shows you were hollow enough to be, possibly, exploited. You think I run that game on everyone? You simply fit the profile."

Darren slowed the car, coasting along the empty road. He removed his right hand from the steering wheel and tossed the sweat stained roll of cash into Colin's lap. "Here's nine thousand dollars pain-in-the-ass money. It's more than you deserve; you—"

"Nine thousand dollars?" Colin laughed. "Nine thousand? What an odd number; besides not being nearly enough."

"I told you I don't have ready cash. And any bank transaction over ten grand must be reported to the feds. You know that."

"All I know, my friend, is that you are living the life I want." Colin took the nine thousand and jammed it halfway down into his right pants pocket. "But this'll do for a start."

Oblivious to the well-tended vines and world-class view that drew tourists from all over the world, the men seethed in silent hatred and perverse esteem for the other. Colin coveted Darren's property and lifestyle. Darren longed, once again, to be on the hustle like Colin was. He hated to admit it, but "having it" was boring; he wanted to go out and steal it again. The high he felt after killing the Mexican—what was it, nearly three days ago—confirmed that: he was in it for the thrills.

So in silence, as they rode in German engineered comfort, speed, and safety they both formulated a plan. Incidentally, both their plans would involve the tragic, violent, and sudden death of the other man. But both their plans hinged upon Bridget's unavoidable and unknowing collusion and participation. And perhaps, if necessary, her death as well.

* * *

Chapter 20

The boys maintained an uneasy, contemplative, and mutually scheming silence as the Mercedes lapped up the few remaining miles of Highway 28 between Healdsburg and Darren's property. Each of them knew the other was plotting and both of them were already considering preemptive or defensive tactics and exploring the creation of plausible alibis. Colin felt confident, almost smug. He felt, actually, he knew in his soul, that replacing Darren was his birthright. He was at home up here in wine country and wanted to stay.

Darren felt alive and alert and fearful. Just afraid enough to make him even more careful and effective. He knew that he had no chance, physically, against Colin. If he had had any doubts—which he didn't—the way Colin had fucked up Loody would've erased those. But it wasn't going to come down to a fist fight or any type of a physical confrontation.

Darren had long ago seen a movie on late-night television, he couldn't remember the film's name, but it was about a medieval English King played by Peter O'Toole who was struggling against his wife, played by Katharine Hepburn, and three sons to retain his crown. There were plots and counter plots; feasts and ceremonies; intrigue and betrayal. There was one son, the smart offspring, not the warrior son, or the favorite child, played by that actor who ended up being James Bond for a couple of movies. Darren couldn't remember the actor's name but he felt, right now not like the King but like the smart and scheming, calm and confident son. Darren was on his home turf and knew that Colin would have to try something outrageous in order to leverage more than the nine thousand dollar payout from Darren. All Darren would have to do is to wait for Colin to make his move and then shoot his ass in self-defense.

That was the beauty of a bullet.

And the right of a homeowner to protect his goods and chattels.

Darren felt so confident and at ease that he turned and was ready to ask Colin, "So, what do you think of Sonoma County?" But that's when he saw the Sheriff's red lights in his rearview mirror.

Darren was going to ask, "Why the hell did you pull me over?" But instead he said, "Hey Frank, what's up?"

Frank said nothing. He looked into the car and nodded at Colin. The stranger's tenseness and dangerous bulk, as well as the roll of bills slightly protruding from his right pants pocket did not elude the Sheriff. Colin returned the nod and noticed the easy, almost conspiratorial camaraderie between Darren and the Sheriff.

"We're just a few miles from the house," continued Darren. "Want to stop in for coffee? I know you and Bridget always have something to talk about: the AYUDA foundation and the plight of the poor, put upon, migrant Mexican farm worker."

"I appreciate the offer, Darren. But I'm up to my ass in paperwork." Frank took a step back, once again admiring the car. He stepped up parallel to the rearview mirror and bent forward slightly so he could see both Darren and Colin through the windshield, "You boys wouldn't happen to know anything about a fight this afternoon at The Bar?"

Darren looked at Colin. He turned back to Frank and said, "As a matter of fact, Colin here and Loody got into a bit of a scuffle." Darren smiled, "Forgive me. I haven't even introduced you two. Sheriff Frank Hernandez this is Colin...um. Colin this is Frank, the local fucking law man."

"I think perhaps both of you should get out of the car," said Frank.

"Sure enough," said Darren. He smiled at Colin as he turned to unbuckle his shoulder belt.

Colin exited and walked around to the front of the car. Darren closed the door and leaned against the car. Colin and the Sheriff shook hands silently. Sheriff Hernandez nodded at Colin's USMC tattoo and said, "Where did you serve?"

Colin rubbed his tattoo and squinted, "Nasiriyah. Early days of O-three."

"My nephew Rodrigo was in the Marines up there then. First Battalion, Tenth Marines. Artillery."

"Tenth Marines artillery," said Colin, "was actually about five or ten miles south east of Nasiriyah. They were lobbing shells onto Sadaam's precious Republican Guard, according to the coordinates we were giving them. They did a hell of a job. Shot the shit out of those towel-head motherfuckers. Saved a lot of American lives."

"Coordinates," Frank said suddenly, "then you were—"

"First Recon Marines," said Colin. "Or as we like to call ourselves: The Tip of the Spear."

Frank reached out and shook Colin's hand again giving it a beefy squeeze which Colin returned. "Pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine, Sir," said Colin, in a deferential military tone. "Now what did you need to know about my scuffle with Loody?"

"Actually" said Darren, "Loody—"

"Ah shit, Darren," said Frank. "Kent told me what happened: you two were drinking. Loody was being the asshole that Loody is and got fucked up by Colin here."

"That's pretty much the way it happened," said Darren. "Are we done here?"

"Not quite." Frank stepped back and admired the Mercedes. He walked slowly, clockwise, once around the car carefully kicking each tire and noticing they were all the same brand, age, and faultless condition. "What kind of warranty do you have on this?"

"It's got the standard four year, fifty-thousand mile coverage."

"Roadside assistance?"

"Yeah. They also give me a loaner and detail it every time I bring it in for an oil change."

"Did it come standard with a full sized spare?"

"A full sized spare in the trunk. But you're right," said Darren. "Spare tires are optional nowadays on a lot of new cars. The dealer was careful to point out the Mercedes' had a real tire, not a donut. Why?"

"I've been thinking of buying one for the missus. As a Sheriff, or as you say, The Local Fucking Law Man," Frank stared at Darren, "I have to drive American iron, but she was admiring your car the other day at the benefit and I just thought I'd ask."

"Buy one used, Frank. Nearly as good, save some scratch," said Darren.

Colin slapped Darren on the back, "Maybe you should sell him yours, Darren."

All three men laughed; Darren the loudest.

"You know," said Frank, "I will stop by the house for a cup of coffee."

Even though coffee was the beverage offered and accepted, it was never for a moment the actual intended beverage: it was only a moment before the three men were seated by the pool with Stohlis-and-tonic; fresh lime. They sipped and nodded; nodded and sipped. The sun, still hot, had just dipped behind the hills. A pleasant swirling breeze swayed the oak branches and blew stray leaves into the crystalline blue pool. Darren watched Colin mindlessly and restlessly thrum his fingers on his thigh. He was aware of Frank observing the both of them. To break the silence he asked, "What other cars do you have in mind for Anna?"

"None really." Frank set his drink on a wrought iron table and placed his hands on his belly. "Like I said, she was admiring your car at the benefit the other day. That's all."

"So are you really going with a Mercedes?" said Darren.

"Maybe, but maybe not. It might be a bit flashy for a Sheriff's wife to be driving. You know how fucking people talk. Especially about elected officials," said Frank. He motioned with his index finger at Colin, "What do you drive?"

"A beat-to-shit old Subaru wagon. A lesbian couple that owed me some money when I got out of the Corps signed it over to me. But it goes. Change the oil and keep pumping it full of premium and the thing will get me to the apocalypse and back."

"What year is it?" said Frank.

"Don't really know," said Colin.

"She drives a Dodge SUV right now," said Frank. "I couldn't tell you what year either. I think it's time for her to trade up."

Darren placed his drink on the concrete between his feet and leaned forward in his chair, "You didn't come here to talk about cars, Frank. What's up?"

The Sheriff unclasped his hands and retrieved his drink from the table. He sipped, "What do you make of this Candido Sanchez murder?"

"It is," said Darren over the suddenly gusting wind, "a tragedy."

"For sure," said Colin.

"It was bad enough that the poor man was beaten to death," said Frank. "It's simply barbaric that he was beaten and not robbed."

"What do you mean?" asked Colin.

"We cops always withhold the key element, or elements, of the murder from the press report. What we accidentally, on purpose, withheld from this case was that Candido wore a money belt containing a sizable amount of cash. Whoever did him in had no motive whatsoever. Or any that a person with a conscience might understand."

"That's fucked up," said Colin. He tasted his drink, leaned back in his chair and gazed at the still-splashed-in-sunlight vineyards.

The men drank in silence until Frank said, "Colin, in Iraq, where you were at that particular time, you killed some people right?"

"Certainly." Colin drank. "It was my job. I couldn't waste the taxpayer's money. They gave me a perfectly good gun, plenty of ammo, and a Humvee to go hunting in. Shit, it would have been stealing not to kill somebody, and stealing's a sin."

All three men smiled. Frank asked, "Did you ever feel badly, afterwards?"

"Not a bit," said Colin. "But the guys I greased, at that particular time, were Saddaam's Republican Guards in Iraqi uniforms and helmets with AK-forty-sevens, grenades, and anti-personnel weapons. It wasn't like the bullshit war they're fighting right now. In a fucking urban environment, against guerrilla soldiers dressed like the general populace. And it certainly wasn't beating an unarmed man to death for shits and grins."

"No," said Frank. "I suppose it was different. What do you think, Darren?"

"I think," said Darren, "that I'm happy being a civilian. Unlike you or Colin, I've never had any desire to become an armed warrior."

Frank stared at Darren. "Me either. That's why I became a cop."

Darren raised his glass in salute.

Frank ignored him. He finished his drink and rattled the ice cubes at Colin, "Why don't you, please, get us another round?"

Colin stood slowly and waited for Darren to finish his drink. He collected all three glasses, holding them securely by the base in his left hand. "Fresh lime for everyone?"

Darren and Frank nodded. Colin weaved through the wrought iron furniture and disappeared off the deck into the kitchen. "What's up, Frank?"

"I have a witness that places you at the scene, Darren."

"The scene of what?"

"Candido Sanchez's murder."

Darren laughed. "When was he murdered? Where was he murdered?"

"Early Wednesday morning. Seven miles from here. On Chalk Hill Road."

"I was sleeping early Wednesday morning." Darren pointed to the house, "About fifty feet from here."

"Darren," said Frank, "shit Darren. I have a witness that says he saw a Mercedes just like yours parked exactly, right past Pool Creek Bridge, where Sanchez was killed. The witness is some old guy with no reason to lie. He was reluctant as hell to come forward. Says he was on the way to work and he saw a car like yours—"

Darren remembered the truck with the fog lamps and calmly said, "Do you know how many newer Mercedes there are tooling around Sonoma County, Frank? I can name five of my neighbors, maybe more, up and down this road who drive dark, late model Mercedes."

"That's true," said Frank, "but most of them are skinny MILFs or bald fat fuckers. This witness kind of described you, Darren."

"What does 'kind of' mean?"

"He said you were standing with the trunk open, changing out of a suit into jogging clothes. To change a tire."

Colin carrying the same three glasses cradled in his left hand, now filled and garnished with slices of lime, exited the kitchen. Simultaneously, Bridget, carrying a sheaf of papers pressed against her chest approached the pool from down the driveway. Darren and Frank both stood and waved at Bridget. Darren said, calmly and quietly, "Why would you think it was me, Frank?"

"The witness said, 'The guy by the Mercedes was built like a linebacker.' That's all."

"You know, Frank," said Darren, "I'm flattered."

Frank almost laughed, but he stepped closer to Darren and said, "Just tell me one thing?"

"What's that?"

"That you didn't kill him, Darren."

"I didn't kill him, Frank."

"That's all I wanted to hear."

Frank and Darren stepped apart and accepted their frosty Stohlis-and-tonic. All three clinked glasses and had sipped twice before Bridget made it up the hill. She smiled and said, "Hey guys, where's my drink?"

Frank looked at Colin and Darren, "I think the war hero makes a fine cocktail, don't you, Darren?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," said Darren "if he decided to make a career of bartending."

Colin looked at Darren through narrowed eyes, then said, "I'd be happy to make this lovely lady a drink." He nodded and smiled at Bridget as he stepped, once again, off the pool deck and into the kitchen.

"What's this," said Bridget, gesturing at Colin, "about him being a war hero?"

"While we've all been slumming in wine country," said Darren, "apparently Colin and his Marine Corps buddies have been making the world safe for democracy and the interests of big oil."

"It seems that Colin," said Frank, nodding toward the kitchen, "has spent some time in a few of the more unsavory neighborhoods of Iraq."

"Really?" said Bridget.

"That's what he says," said Darren.

Frank sipped his drink. "The fact that he was reluctant to talk about it, in my experience, probably makes it more likely to be true."

Darren remembered Colin speaking about Nasiriyah, not at all reluctantly, when they first met at the bar. He picked up the pool skimmer and began fishing leaves out of the water. Bridget and Frank watched in silence until Colin returned and handed Bridget her drink. She did not join the men on the pool deck. "You are all invited for dinner." She sipped, smacked her lips, sipped again and said, "This is a yummy cocktail. Now go back to talking about girls, cars, and football." Bridget turned and left, with three pairs of eyes monitoring her graceful retreat to the kitchen.

The men sat in silence until Colin said, "What were we talking about?"

"Murder," said Darren. He finessed another oak leaf into the skimmer's net.

"Naw," said Frank, "we're done with that subject."

* * *

Chapter 21

"Sonuvabitch, that's good food," said Frank. "Those tamales were perfect. And black beans with queso fresco. Shit, for a skinny white girl you can cook, Bridget."

"Thanks," said Bridget. She got up from the table and slapped her left butt cheek, "But who are you calling skinny?"

Darren noticed that Colin didn't even try to not stare at Bridget's ass.

So did Bridget.

"That was perfect," said Frank. He switched to Spanish, "Una chica perfecta. Comidas perfectas y aún mejores nalgas."

"Gracias." She laughed, slapped her rear again, and continued in Spanish, "I make up a batch of these tamales, always chicken—Darren's low fat muscleman diet you know—about once a month, then vacuum pack them and pop them in the freezer. Same with my black beans: soaked overnight and then cooked, portioned, and frozen. I used to make my own queso fresco, but the stuff I buy at Castaneda's Market is beautiful."

"Great. Authentic. So good," Frank nodded at Darren and said in Spanish, "There is no need to speak to Darren. About why I called, you know, this afternoon?"

"That's a relief. And, I'm glad you called, because if you told me in person I would have kicked you unceremoniously in the balls."

"Hey you two," said Darren, "stop talking about testicles."

In English Frank said to Darren, "That would be the one word of Spanish you know."

Bridget, in Spanish, continued, "When did you speak to him?"

"At the pool right before you arrived."

"Ah, I thought I had smelled testosterone."

Frank laughed and switched back to English, "Thanks again for dinner, Bridget. I better get my ass home." He shook hands with the men and gave Bridget a peck on the cheek.

"Say hi to Anna for me," said Bridget.

Darren and Colin were silent as the Sheriff exited. The trio sat at the table stuffed and listless until Colin said, "Look at this mess, dude. I can't believe you two don't have a housemaid."

"We've tried," said Darren. "But none of them quite live up to Bridget's high standards of etiquette or sanitation."

"Funny." Bridget placed a solitary, perfectly cooked black bean on her left index fingernail and flicked it at Darren. It hit and adhered, briefly, to his left cheek before falling to the table. Darren grabbed a slice of avocado and smeared it against her forehead. "That's it. Peace," he said. "End of food fight."

"When we were first dating," said Bridget to Colin, "we had a food fight in a restaurant. You wouldn't believe—"

"It was this French place in San Rafael. Le Etoile. Small place." Darren smiled. "She flung a piece of brie. I retaliated with a marrons glace and the battle was on. There was extensive collateral damage to nearby tables. Instead of medi-vaccing out the casualties I just bought champagne for the house. Cost me about two grand."

"Sounds like fun," said Colin.

Bridget carried plates to the sink and stacked them. "So how did your business work out today, boys?"

"I think we made some progress," said Darren.

"But I think Darren's a bit more optimistic than me about any ground we gained," said Colin.

"At any rate," said Darren, "Colin will be heading back to LA tomorrow."

Bridget shrugged. She'd seen the dance before: two big macho assholes pretending that a business deal was just another business deal when in reality it was as crucial and critical as a sword fight or a dual with pistols had been to their great-grandfathers. Profits meant as much to these modern-day, self-serving fops as souls had meant to persecuted Christians. They could fool themselves all they wanted, she would simply allow them to play their games and make do with the windfall. In this regard profits meant precisely the same to Bridget as they had to her great-grandmothers. "I'm setting all these dishes on soak cycle and taking a shower. It's been a long day and I have another interviewee tomorrow morning."

Darren checked his watch, "I've got some business in town tonight."

Bridget said, "Colin, make yourself at home."

They both exited the kitchen. Colin heard one set of footsteps echo across the entryway to the back of the house and the other, lighter set, pad quickly up the stairs. Colin sat at the table and finished his drink. A few minutes later he heard the front door slam, the Mercedes start, and Darren, tires squealing, speed down the driveway. Moments later, as if she were waiting for Darren to leave, Colin heard the water from the upstairs shower start. He listened to the running water for a minute, and said, "My, my, what a unique and charming couple."

The first thing that Darren did after leaving Colin alone in the kitchen was walk to his study. He locked the door and then opened the safe. He removed the stubby, old, five shot, thirty-eight caliber police special. A small and simple, deadly weapon that Darren had accepted, years ago, in lieu of drug money owed him. Darren had only fired it a few times. Most recently, last winter, in the vineyards above his gym. After lunch one day he decided to teach Bridget how to shoot a pistol. They walked up the hill, Darren holding the gun properly, pointed down at the ground. Instead of targets they aimed at three ancient, gnarled, stumpy zinfandel vines: like shooting at dark, evil dwarves. Darren shot first, reloaded, and handed the pistol to Bridget. He instructed her how to flick off the safety and aim down the pistol barrel, legs wide and arms extended. She was surprised by the POP and the small pistol's sudden kick. Darren reloaded and had Bridget shoot again. They squeezed off a total of fifteen shots from about twenty feet away; zero hits. It seemed as if all the rogue and fugitive zinfandel vines in the Alexander Valley would be safe from any thirty-eight caliber gunfire that came from the direction of the Elmore household.

He hadn't cleaned the gun after he'd used it last, but it wasn't a complicated automatic and should work just fine. Darren, alone in the locked study, spun the pistol cylinder and said, "Work? Work for what?" He only had a foggy notion that the gun might serve some purpose in convincing Colin to take his nine thousand dollars and head back to the fucking City of Angels.

The second thing that Darren did after leaving Colin alone in the kitchen was drive to The Bar. Ellen had been there earlier that afternoon and Darren needed to know how late she worked. Darren left the pistol locked in the Mercedes' glove box; he had no need of it now and only a vague conception of how it might be used, later, as self-defense. As soon as he walked in Kent motioned him over to the bar and said, "Just so you know, your knucklehead friend is eighty-sixed from here and you are not far behind him."

"Yeah," said Darren, "I know. But Loody—"

"Loody my ass. Loody has nothing to do it. Have your beer, Ellen is off at ten." Kent waggled a finger in his face, "Watch your step."

"Forget the beer. Tell Ellen I'll see her at her place."

Darren let himself into Ellen's apartment with his key. The small two-bedroom was quaint, cozy, and pinky-lacey-girly. There was an army of crystal unicorn and fairy knickknacks dispersed around the place: Darren broke, always accidentally, about three a week but they seemed to regenerate magically and exponentially. Ellen's kitchen calendar featured cute and cuddly kittens frolicking. Her bathroom featured decorative soaps and smelled like lilac and gardenia. Darren poured himself a weak bourbon and water, then managed to turn the TV on and put his feet up without destroying a single crystal creature.

He felt like shit.

Not physically, there he was fine—a little frayed from the shots and beers—but he'd worked out well that morning and his stoked metabolism always helped burn off the booze. But he had both Colin and Frank on his ass and didn't know what to do. Darren sipped his drink and thought: Colin really doesn't have anything on me. And Frank, did he believe that I didn't kill that Mexican or is being cool some sort of investigative technique designed to catch me off guard?

But what could the Sheriff possibly have? Someone saw Darren parked at a crime scene, ostensibly changing a tire. Nothing that nobody can prove. Darren understood that if he were calm and didn't freak he'd be fine. So he finished his bourbon and fell asleep on Ellen's couch.

He was awakened by a caress. His head was in Ellen's lap. She was barefoot and wore only panties and a pink and white cotton sleep shirt. She smelled, not unpleasantly, like gin and toothpaste. "Where the hell—"

"Easy. Easy, it's me," said Ellen. "I don't think you have ever fallen asleep here before."

"Me neither." Darren made no effort to get up. He noticed she taken off his shoes; for some reason this simple, thoughtful, unasked for gesture touched him. He relaxed and enjoyed Ellen's company. They sat in silence for, maybe, ten minutes enjoying their bodies' mutual warmth and the sound of their breathing. Darren said, finally, "Did Kent give you any shit about the fight today?"

"Not much of a fight," said Ellen. "Loody pulled a knife and got his ass kicked. But no, Kent wasn't any bigger an asshole than he usually is."

"That's good."

Ellen turned Darren's head so she could look him in the eyes, "Where do you know this guy from?"

"Ironically, another bar."

"Where is he now?"

"At my house."

"What's he doing there?"

"With any luck, he's getting ready to fuck my wife." Darren sat up and laughed.

"You're such a strange man," said Ellen. "You sound like you want him to do, ah, to be with Bridget."

Darren reached out and touched Ellen's breasts. He kissed her nipples through the sheer natural fabric. "I do. You know why?"

"No."

"Because I want to go home later tonight and shoot him."

"Darren, you really know how to sweet talk a gal."

A couples' lovemaking invariably falls into predictable patterns. Romance or masochism; sweetness or degradation; experimentation or boring repetition: sexual behavior, like water, even if the participants are blissfully unaware, finds its own level. For Darren and Ellen it was simple. She loved to see him naked and she refused to disrobe except in the dark. Tonight Ellen knelt on the couch and slowly removed Darren's apparel. She kneaded his shoulders, lowered him onto the couch—lights ablaze—then touched, kissed, and caressed him. When she was ready, but not until she was ready, she walked into her darkened bedroom and stripped naked.

Then they made love.

Usually after they'd finished, she'd tell Darren how great he was; and he would generally agree. Then he would dress, sometimes loiter over a drink, but he always left within twenty minutes of his orgasm. He'd also leave some money: beneath a glass fairy, folded onto her laptop's keyboard, even once beneath the butter dish in the refrigerator. The more whimsical the better, to avoid admitting that he was indeed paying for sex. It was the sexual equilibrium Darren and Ellen had reached: he had more than enough money, and she was a stocky girl with a slight weight problem who craved the attentions of a handsome, albeit vain and sometimes crude, almost brutal, older man. And she was certainly smart enough to take the money. What was she supposed to do, date some college guy her age with mommy problems, a skateboard, and acne? But tonight Darren did not bounce out of bed and split. For the second time ever, he fell asleep in Ellen's apartment.

Darren awoke and knew that Ellen's soft, willing body was in the bed with him. He felt cozy, safe, and oddly at ease. Perhaps that is why he said, in the darkness, "Do you know how I got this scar?"

"It's an appendectomy scar, that's what you told me."

"My mom, about a year before she left me and pops—I was sixteen when she split for good—had a surprise for me. She was a nurse, you know."

"You've never mentioned that before." Ellen placed her left hand on his shoulder and he shrugged it off.

"It was late at night, dark when she woke me, and she insisted on taking me for a ride. Dad was passed out drunk on the couch, as usual. Snoring like a motherfucking walrus."

"Darren—"

"Don't interrupt. Before we left for our 'Surprise' she insisted that I finish drinking a sixteen ounce bottle of Pepsi. Insisted. That woman didn't give a shit about what I ate or drank, but tonight, before our little ride she had an ice-cold bottle of Pepsi all opened and ready for me. After I finished the bottle, she kept nervously checking the kitchen clock, we played two or three hands of Crazy Eights and listened to my dad's drunken snoring escalate. It was almost fun. Playing cards at the kitchen table with my mom. A nearly normal childhood memory." Darren remained silent for several minutes. In that time he and Ellen had collapsed toward each other and lay with their faces inches apart near the center of the mattress. "She insisted, again that word, that I go to the bathroom before we took our ride, so we played a few more hands of Crazy Eights. Finally, I peed and we left the trailer. I can't remember how long or short the car ride was because I suddenly felt sleepy. I remember being helped from the car and into what I realized later was a wheelchair. The next thing I remember was waking up on an operating table. A doctor stood over me, masked. The nurse, also masked, I recognized as my mother. I never found out what she put in the Pepsi. Either Seconal or Dalmane, we always had plenty of both in the house."

"Darren, I don't know what—"

With uncharacteristic tenderness Darren raised a finger to her lips and continued, "I said something—I don't know what—and the doctor said something like, 'We're almost done here, son' or some patronizing crap like that. I tried to move my arms but they were strapped to the table. There was one of those flimsy green sterile cloth things, like a tent, over my knees and my mother and the doctor went back to work to finish whatever they were doing to me. Not knowing what was happening; I arched my back and kicked out with my legs. They were also strapped down but I busted one leg loose, my left one I think, and nailed the doctor on his right arm. The scalpel he was holding sliced my abdomen. Before I knew it dear old mom had a needle in my arm and it was nighty-night. When I awoke the shitweasel doctor was stitching me up. First the accidental wound in my abdomen—my scar—and then the incisions in my nutsack where he had performed a vasectomy."

"A what?" Ellen's whisper echoed in the room.

"My own mommy dearest had me sterilized." Darren was suddenly drenched in sweat. "I woke up the next morning sore as hell. My balls ached and my abdomen; that wound was swollen and oozed pus. The good-nurse-mommy gave me enough pills to keep me quiet and comfortable and a rotation of ice packs to keep on my nuts. The swelling went down quickly and ten days later she removed all the stitches and pronounced me, 'All better'."

"I can't believe this."

"It gets better. I knew she cut me open for a reason, but I was so used to beatings and bizarre punishments from my dad: having to sit in an ice bath, holding my hand over a candle, all that crazy shit; I really didn't think much of it. Shit, I was a kid: maybe I was sick and didn't know it, and she did it to save my life. But I got to stay home from school and watch television and munch pain pills all day. I suppose this proves how sick my childhood was: I enjoyed all the attention I got from her during that week-and-a-half."

"How old were you when she did this?"

"Like I said, she left when I was sixteen, so probably a year before that. Maybe two."

"Jesus Christ."

"Before mom left for good she sat me down—no Pepsi this time—and told me that she had sterilized me for my own good. That I had a Demon Seed inside me and it was her duty to make certain that I didn't pass it on. At the time I didn't know what she was talking about: 'sterilized' and 'duty' and 'Demon Seed'. She was convinced it was her obligation to fix me before she left: God had apparently told her it was her duty. I never figured who the doctor was or why he helped. Her boyfriend, maybe? Who knows." Darren smiled, "Anyway, on the day she told me she seemed slightly hurt and disappointed that I never thanked her for the kindness."

"Darren?"

"What?"

"You're not nearly as fucked up as you should be."

"Thanks."

"I mean that."

"I know." Darren kissed Ellen, "Good night."

"Good night."

Darren walked naked from the bedroom to the living room couch. Ellen could hear him dressing and watched his elongated shadow in the doorframe of her bedroom. His smell: cologne, alcohol, and sex permeated her apartment. She heard the front door close and then rattle as Darren double-checked the lock. She didn't want to get out of bed. She wished she could just leave this apartment and never return to this town; this life. Because, after tonight, after Darren had opened up to her, if she walked into the other room and saw money placed playfully beneath a figurine or partially hidden between the couch cushions it would break her heart.

Darren drove past The Bar and after deciding not to stop there he went next-door to Safeway and bought a big can of Foster's lager. He opened the can and sipped as he drove south on Old Redwood Highway. He flashed back to a time when he and Eddie were in high school. They had been drinking and driving, tossing the empty sixteen ounce Coors cans out the window as they cruised the back roads. They weren't looking for a party; they weren't looking for anything. They just enjoyed driving, smoking a little weed, and sipping some beers. The Road Runner's piece of shit a.m. radio wasn't even on. They were just quietly cruising and working on their buzz.

Until Eddie saw the red lights in his rearview mirror.

The cop seemed vaguely friendly but maybe it was just that smarmy happiness that cops have when they know they can bust your balls without risk of personal danger or legal recrimination. Of course, the cop shined the flashlight into Eddie's eyes, temporarily blinding the driver, and then into Darren's. Taking a quick sweep of the backseat he located a beer can and said, "Boys, is that an open container?"

"Technically officer," said Eddie, "it's an empty container."

And then the strangest thing happened: the cop laughed. He smacked the Road Runner's roof and said, "You little peckerwoods just made my day. Godamn, that's some funny shit. So why don't you toss that 'empty container' out the window and get your pimply little asses home while I am still somewhat amused."

"Yes sir," said Eddie.

They drove away.

This recollection brought a smile to Darren's face as he sipped and drove; and thought. He thought about Ellen, about the feelings he had just experienced with her. It was odd. He didn't care about her but she now seemed more worthwhile to him because of what he had confessed. She was, he decided as he turned left on Pleasant Avenue, cherished precisely to the degree that he needed and used her. And tonight, as always, he needed her for sex: the willful and pleasant release, the enjoyment and appreciation she always showed. But there was something different tonight as she lay breathing softly and listening to his story with barely an interruption and no corrections. Darren finished the Fosters, crumpled the can and tossed it, bag and all out the window just before he turned onto Chalk Hill Road. He wasn't used to thinking about feelings. The only way he could make sense of what he felt for Ellen was that she was like an affectionate pet who could somehow understand English.

This was acutely different from Bridget who was more—despite her obvious female charm, attributes, and abilities—like a worthy opponent. Living with her was like a constant, zealous competition. Everything was adversarial. Their business was performance: her side management, his side sales.

The insane tidiness that she maintained.

The fucking AYUDA foundation.

Even the placement of knife and fork between bites was a constant controversy. Employee parking was an additional, continual maelstrom of organization, confrontation, and dispute. Living with her was like River Dancing on an electric high wire, but when it came down to it Darren loved living with his wife. Not only for what she brought to his life—passion, loyalty, precision—but for what he gave to her. God knows she looked rich, acted rich, and seemed to think it was her destiny to be rich but when he met her she was working for an architect as a personal assistant. A glorified gofer. The greatest skill she had was her hunger. There was more to her than she had let Darren or anyone else know, perhaps even herself. But he knew that there was a difference between a born-rich bitch thinking she deserved it and a born-poor woman doing anything within her power to attain it.

Darren admired that.

And he enjoyed being able to give it to her.

Lost in thought Darren nearly drove past the site where two nights ago he had strangled a man to death. He barely gave it a thought as he barreled past. He had only one thought on his mind: it was time to get Colin out of his life. On a straight stretch of road he unlocked the glove box and removed the pistol. He stroked the barrel of the five shot revolver as if were a powerful pagan talisman or a consecrated Christian crucifix. He'd seen the looks Colin had given his wife; he'd seen the way Bridget had been flattered. With any luck he'd left them alone long enough to initiate some hanky-panky. He drove in silent thought until everything that had happened since he'd left his house had been erased. His vulnerability; his confessing to Ellen in the dark, revealing something he'd never told anyone; and would never mention again. All of this was subjugated until it faded and had been replaced with the new goal he needed to pursue. He touched again, reassuringly, the pistol and repeated to himself that the only reason he left the house tonight was to give Colin an opportunity to fuck his wife, so Darren could come home—the aggrieved and betrayed husband—and solve, permanently, at least one problem.

Maybe even two.

* * *

Chapter 22

Colin started carrying condiments and various sized casserole dishes to the refrigerator. Then he opened the dishwasher and began racking dirty dishes and glassware. He quickly and efficiently cleaned up the kitchen. Still hearing the water from the upstairs shower he explored the house's first story. Off the hall to the right, just past the living room he entered a room and flicked on the light. He smelled pine-scented disinfectant and saw a bright-white room with a state-of-the-art treadmill and a rowing machine. Both centered perfectly on spotless rubber mats. Nothing decorated the walls. "This," said Colin, "must be Bridget's little gym."

The next room on the right was an extensive wine closet: bottles racked on each side, floor-to-ceiling. A red digital readout blinked the temperature: 52 52 52. The last room on the right was obviously Darren's office; even more apparently decorated by Bridget. Too many books and a computer that had probably only been used for downloading porn and scores from ESPN.com. Colin retreated to the living room and sat patiently with a big, clunky illustrated coffee table book: "The Impressionists".

He turned the pages robotically, looking forward to being alone with Bridget.

She, barefoot, walked silently down the stairs. Even though he had heard her approaching, Bridget was in the entryway before Colin looked up from the book. She wore jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and a towel wrapped around her head as only a woman can wrap it. She pointed at Colin and then to the kitchen, "Wine?"

"Sure."

"Red or white?"

"Surprise me."

Her feet still sounded wet as she slap-slap-slapped to the kitchen. She reappeared almost too quickly with a chilled bottle of MZ Chardonnay, two glasses, and an opener.

"Did you," said, Colin, "have that all at the ready?"

"Yes," said Bridget. "Many social opportunities turn into business tastings, and vice-versa."

"What's this? Business or social?"

"I don't know yet." Bridget deftly opened the wine and quickly sniffed the cork. "Do you?"

Colin shrugged and closed the art book. Bridget splashed sizable amounts of chardonnay into the glasses and approached Colin. Before she handed him a glass she blew him a kiss, and said, "Thank you for doing the dishes."

"The least I could do. Your dinner was simply wonderful."

"Thank you," said Bridget as she sipped her wine. She motioned at the coffee table book, "Do you enjoy the Impressionists?"

Colin set his wineglass, once again utilizing a coaster, on a table and re-opened the book. He held up Manet's Luncheon on the Grass for Bridget to see. She nodded and studied the nude woman picnicking with a fully clothed male as Colin compared Manet's subject to Bridget: toweled, glistening, and barefoot. "Yes, but I much prefer the women of this century."

Bridget sipped her wine and sat in the precise center of the couch; directly across from Colin. "What a sweet thing to say."

"It's the truth." Colin drank. He closed the book and returned it exactly to the spot where he'd found it. "The twenty-first century will go down in history as the century of the beautiful woman. You all are liberated and smart and spunky and working out and looking good."

"On behalf of women everywhere, I thank you." Bridget propped her left arm up on the couch cushion and turned slightly sideways extending her long legs. She dropped her right hand, still holding the wineglass, alongside her hip and fluttered her feet slightly, knowing precisely how inviting she looked.

"Seriously," said Colin, "I can't go to the gym anymore. It's impossible for me to walk by a spin class or the hot yoga room without—"

"Without what?"

"Without embarrassing myself." Colin tossed back half his wine. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"How old are you?"

Without embarrassment or hesitation Bridget said, "Forty-six."

"See, that's what I mean. Two generations ago, forty-six was considered old. Now you sit there all calm and in control and smart like a grown woman, and I swear, you have this rocking body."

Again without embarrassment or hesitation Bridget said, "We have time, you know."

"Time?" Colin finished his wine and placed the empty glass, again, on a coaster.

Bridget finished her wine and centered her own glass on another coaster. She removed the towel from her head folded it quickly in thirds and then in half and placed it at the foot of the couch. She stood and tied the front of the white T-shirt into a floppy knot, exposing her navel and most of her midriff. She reached down languidly and undid the top button of her blue jeans. She sat on the couch with her knees tucked under her and toyed with wet tendrils of her hair. "Yes, time."

"What business does Darren have in town tonight?"

"No business. With that look on his face I'd say he's off to fuck one of his little girlfriends."

Colin perked up, "You know he has a girlfriend?"

"Are you surprised that he has a girlfriend, or that I know he has a girlfriend?"

Colin reached for the wine bottle and refilled their glasses. Both of them left their glasses on their respective coasters. Colin smiled, almost shyly, "It surprises me that you know. We guys tend to keep that stuff secret."

"Though he tries to keep it secret, a small town is a small town is a small town." Bridget picked up a wineglass but didn't drink. "Not that I hold it against him."

"You don't get jealous?"

"Of the girls that Darren beds?" Delighted, Bridget sipped her wine. "Now that's a hoot."

"How could you not be jealous?"

"Because Darren doesn't select a girlfriend just to have sex with her, even though he screws the shit out of them and probably slaps them around a little, he chooses and keeps a girlfriend in order to be worshipped." Since Colin didn't respond or comment, Bridget continued: "Since we've been married he's had several, shall we say, steady-squeezes. He tends to choose the youngish, cutish, chubby, but eternally grateful type. You know, the slightly homely girl, perhaps knock-kneed or with crooked teeth who always headed up the dance clean-up committees in high school and, since, has never had a sober, good-looking man glance her way twice. Darren notices her. Conquers her. Dazzles her with his physicality. Like you, he has a body that you only see in a museum chiseled in marble or at an upscale gay strip club."

"Upscale?"

"Yes, a place in San Francisco with a marquee and ushers. A cabaret that sports gorgeous bodied men. A nightclub that caters to curious Midwestern tourists and girls' nights out. Not some tawdry little blow-and-go suburban strip-mall gay bar. Anyway," Bridget rolled her shoulders, "I am trying to compliment you."

"You have. Thank you; I think." Colin sat forward on the edge of his chair, "I am intrigued by your insight into your husband. Most wives aren't so—"

"Realistic?"

"I was going to say clinical."

"I'll take that as a compliment. Like you, I think." She smiled at Colin and noticed the color of his eyes for the first time: the soft slate gray of the Atlantic Ocean. Almost feminine in their thick-lashed beauty and starkness. "Shall I continue?"

Colin nodded.

"Sex is sex and fun and wonderful but Darren, when he's not with me, is not in it for the orgasms, but for the adoration. God knows he doesn't get, want, or expect that from me. He'd hate me if I adored him. The other girls provide that necessary stroke to his ego. I provide a much more essential and crucial set of functions: Sex of course; legitimate window dressing; a patina of professionalism; a business partner; and a bit of arm candy."

"That you are."

Bridget ignored Colin's blithe comment. She was no longer speaking to Colin, she was simultaneously stating and exploring her truth, "No, no. That's all wrong. Not wrong, but secondary. Darren ultimately keeps me around because I appeal to the part of his psyche that harbors a small, powerful, motivating tendency towards self-loathing."

Colin poured the remainder of the chardonnay into his glass and finished it in one gulp.

Bridget said, "Still think it's the century of the woman?"

"Believe it or not," Colin nodded and said, "now more than ever."

"Good." Bridget knelt primly on the folded towel and pulled her hair back behind her ears. "Now get over here so I can suck your dick."

When they were first married Bridget and Darren had decided that their marriage, per se, would not be of the "open" variety. They both had had friends who tried the blatantly "open" style of wedlock. Every attempt at such a polyamorous adventure ultimately ended in disenchantment, jealousy, and divorce.

Not to mention an enhanced risk of STDs and/or bodily harm at the hands of an enraged spouse.

But neither Bridget nor Darren expected the other to adhere strictly to the, duck-like, one mate for life rule. God knows what Darren had bedded on his many business trips, but as long as he used condoms Bridget really didn't care. His local nookie bothered her a little because it was unseemly as a local businessman, to, as the saying had it: "Shit where you eat." But through the years Bridget had quietly, casually and surreptitiously, probably accumulated (always, discreetly, on her own out-of-town business trips and when her husband was away) a greater number of extramarital partners than Darren. She enjoyed the thrill of the chase: an interested first hello, the obligatory and ceremonial cocktail, and the joyful, zany abandonment that sex with a total stranger afforded. Bridget also enjoyed the variety of different men's always surprising sexual predilections. She'd been tied up, and upon polite request had bound and gagged several partners. She'd been spanked and tickled and had returned the favors. She'd been asked to use various sized and shaped sex toys, again, upon herself and if asked in a reasonable tone of voice, on a willing partner's clenched crevice. She'd never entered into a three-way, either FMM or FFM, but she'd fantasized about it and if the other two participants were giddy, good-looking, and persuasive she could see herself saying yes. But the best thing about having sex with a stranger is that, occasionally, she would feel wanted. Darren made love the same way he went about acquiring a new vineyard or marketing last year's bottling: he was staking a claim to what he considered was rightfully his.

Like a grizzly marking his territory with piss.

Tonight, as she flopped and frolicked and fondled the exceptionally considerate Colin, Bridget lost herself in a way that simply wasn't possible with Darren. Foreplay downstairs lasted a long time and Colin was too eager, too quick, after having been sheathed and inserted. But that was okay; they had almost all night. After a refreshing sip of wine they gathered up their clothes (Bridget placed the wrinkled and soiled condom on her bath towel) and carried them upstairs.

They recommenced in the guest bedroom.

Colin initiated the upstairs foreplay and repaid Bridget for all the attention, spittle, and keenness she had expended on him. Then, as happens most often on one night stands, the lovers relaxed the second time around. They explored and appreciated the way the bumps and angles of their bodies fit each other. They grimaced and grunted a little less; smiled and enjoyed a lot more. Colin exhibited a tenderness and solicitude that seemed almost at odds with the breadth of his shoulders and weight of his body. He teased, withdrawing frequently, and teased some more. Then sensing not what they, but what the other needed they finished in a loud, frenzied finale.

He rolled off of her and she immediately removed the moist and still-warm-from-shared-body-heat prophylactic. Colin asked, "Do you collect those things? Recycle?"

"No, I actually thought I'd run them out to the trash before my husband gets home."

"Oh yeah. Husband."

"My 'Territorially Challenged' husband might be upset if he found them."

"Territorially Challenged? I though he was a Failed Romantic."

"He used that line on you?" Bridget punched his arm. "Usually he saves it for the ladies."

"I'm flattered, I guess."

"Flatter me, for a moment."

"You're beautiful and—"

"By telling the truth."

"It's true. You're—"

"What were you doing at the pool this morning with Eddie and Darren?"

Colin hesitated, then said, "Splash aerobics."

"Men are assholes."

"You knew that before you fucked me."

"And I chose to fuck you anyway," said Bridget. She dropped the second condom onto the neatly folded bath towel and stood.

"Why did you 'fuck me anyway'?" Colin rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes.

Bridget gathered up her clothes and placed the towel on top. "It's a character flaw, and, I think, the only reason I bother keeping you guys around." Bridget pointed at his penis, still invitingly plumped.

Colin said, "Oh." Then he rolled over and fell asleep, snoring slightly.

"And probably because I enjoy disappointment almost as much as I do sex." Bridget listened to his sonorous wheezing for a few minutes. Then she set her bundle on the bed and slapped him on the ass.

No movement or response; he was out.

She walked to the chair where Colin had laid his perfectly folded clothes. She found his wallet and examined it. No credit cards. A California driver's license. A Jamba Juice card with two purchases needed for the free medium juice of his choice. A Gold's Gym membership card for the club in Santa Monica. There was three hundred and twenty dollars in cash; all well-worn twenties. Bridget had waited tables long enough to realize these un-faced bills were a roll of tips. In that "Men's Top Secret Hiding Place" behind the driver's license Bridget discovered nine crisp, new thousand dollar bills wrapped around a single United States Marine Corps dog tag. She returned to the bed with the wallet and sat down. She opened the nightstand and removed a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen. She wrote down the numbers from the dog tag and the driver's license. She turned to the sleeping Colin and asked, "Why would Darren give you nine thousand dollars?" She took the sheaf of thousands and brushed them softly against Colin's back.

He still didn't move.

Bridget returned all the money and double checked that all the cards were tucked in snugly. She returned the wallet to the pants. Folded neatly, he'd never suspect she had snooped. She picked up her clothes, and the towel containing the two latex love trophies. Bridget blew Colin his second kiss of the evening and said, "I'll happily let you fuck me. But you'll never, ever fuck with my business. Splash Aerobics my ass."

* * *

Chapter 23

Bridget had barely been on-line twenty minutes when she saw the head lights from Darren's car illuminate the front of the house. She had left the front door unlocked and had been working at the kitchen table on her laptop. Within five minutes after having entered the sequence of numbers from Colin's solitary, souvenir dog tag she had ascertained that the closest that the war hero—or whatever he had told the boys that afternoon—had been to Iraq was a whorehouse in Ensenada called "The Baghdad Café". It was a whorehouse mostly frequented by Marines. He had been arrested there by the Shore Patrol for an altercation with some locals and escorted north to the brig at Camp Pendleton.

But that is not why he was dishonorably discharged from the Marines; after all, beating down little brown non-English-speaking foreigners was an essential part of his job description. Following his release from the brig Lance Corporal Colin Mosley had an exemplary service record, until he was called up before a military court for fraud and malfeasance. Apparently, Colin had married a female Lance Corporal and began collecting the twelve-hundred dollar a month, off-base housing stipend a married Marine qualified for. And so, for eighteen months, his military career continued. But it turned out that his "wife" was a lesbian who was living off-base with her female lover and splitting the housing stipend fifty-fifty with Colin who still resided on base. He might have gotten away with the deception and progressed happily up through the enlisted ranks of the Marine Corps had the Sapphic bliss of the sublet, lesbian couple endured. But a misunderstanding grew into a fight which escalated into a breakup which culminated in a tell-all resulting in the dishonorable discharges of both Lance Corporals. Bridget's background check on Colin's driver's license netted nothing except a spotless and exemplary history of motor vehicle operation and the fact that Colin was not an organ donor.

She had switched off her laptop and gently closed the top when Darren entered the kitchen. He leaned against the refrigerator. "Isn't it funny," said Bridget, "that we have a six thousand square foot house and spend most of our time in the kitchen?"

"Perhaps you should've mentioned that to your former boss, the architect, before he soaked me for the design and construction of this here unique and sprawling edifice."

"I didn't have," said Bridget, "such an interest in your finances back then."

"That's true," said Darren. He opened the refrigerator, "You want a beer?"

Bridget didn't answer. She appeared lost in thought, contemplative, until she said: "The hotel called earlier today."

"What hotel?" Darren opened two beers and stood leaning against the counter with one in each hand.

"The hotel where you stayed in LA."

"Redondo Beach Radisson?"

"That's the one." Bridget stared at him and said, "They have your suit."

"Suit?" To cover his confusion Darren sipped from the beer in his left hand.

"Remember your blue Bill Blair that went missing? I called. Apparently you forgot it in the closet. They have it."

"Oh, that one." Darren studied Bridget: arms folded on top of her computer, legs linked behind the legs of her chair; stiff, defiant, interrogative.

"Yes, that one. I arranged to have it shipped."

"Great," said Darren. "I always liked that suit."

"You always looked great in it," Bridget motioned for her beer.

"Thank you," said Darren. He reached across the table and handed the opened bottle to his wife. They both drank.

"You're welcome," said Bridget, wiping her lips. "Now that we've settled the problem with the suit you can lie to me about the nine thousand dollars you gave to Colin Mosley."

"Who?"

"Asshole Colin." Bridget pointed upstairs. "I can't believe you don't even know his last name."

Darren ignored the accusation and said blandly, "What's this about nine thousand dollars?"

"The nine new crisp little thousand dollar bills that are tucked into his wallet," said Bridget.

Darren set his beer on the counter, "How do you know what's in his wallet?"

"Because I went through it."

"Where was he?"

"Asleep." Bridget sipped her beer. "Snoring like a little baby."

"Why'd you go through a friend's wallet?"

"He's not a friend, Darren. Yesterday, remember yesterday? When you walked in you didn't know who he was. You smiled at him with that silly stupid polite little grin you use with cops, children, and drunk strangers. You had that stunned look; a true Alzheimer's moment. Then, when you did recognize him, you two sized each other up like barnyard roosters."

Darren waved away the objection and said, "Why did you go through his wallet?"

"To, obliquely, find out what you and your new BFF are up to," said Bridget. "He knows shit about wine. Less about business. He has three hundred and twenty dollars to invest and you're showing his ass around like he's a visiting foreign dignitary or health inspector. You never tell me shit so I went through his wallet just to see what I could see."

"And what did you see?"

"The wallet of a lonely, dangerous man is what I saw. But I smelled blackmail. What's he shaking you down for?"

Darren finished his beer and took a long time, deliberately opening the cabinet beneath the sink, then placing his empty bottle and the two caps into the proper recycling bin. He closed the door slowly and softly, trying to think of a lie that even if Bridget didn't believe, would stop her from asking other immediate questions. Darren needed time to think. But before he could speak Colin entered the kitchen. He was barefoot and bare-chested wearing only his skintight Levis and a smile. He nodded at Darren.

Darren said, "Been listening long, Mosley?"

"Long enough," said Colin. "'Lonely and dangerous'? Bridget, I'm appalled."

"Be what you want. I'm just curious about what you have on my husband," said Bridget. "I told you tonight that I don't care if Darren sleeps around, so it's not a woman. Tell me, are you two seeing each other?"

Darren laughed, "Why does everybody think that?"

"Who thinks that?" said Colin.

"The waitress today at the Green Frog Cafe. The teller at the bank—"

"Fuck this town," said Colin.

"Nothing wrong with this town," said Darren. "I think you—"

"You two even argue like a couple of narcissistic queens," said Bridget. "You're kind of a cute couple, actually. Just think; if you two moved in together you could wear each other's clothes. You'd double your wardrobes and wankable erections."

Unconsciously and automatically Colin and Darren, almost as if to confirm Bridget's assertion that they were narcissists, checked each other out. The trio was silent until Colin said, "You two have a dangerous and predatory relationship with each other but, oddly enough, you seem to be able to handle reality. Bridget, I'm shaking him down for murder."

Bridget laughed, "Whose murder?"

"Some poor dumb unlucky fucking Mexican," said Colin. "Beat him to death just to see what it would feel like."

"How would you know," said Bridget, "were you there?"

"I didn't need to be," said Colin. "I know his type. I know he did it. I'm cashing in. I'm not leaving until I do. Period."

Bridget stared at Colin; then fixed her eyes on Darren. She couldn't believe that Darren actually reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a pistol. That old revolver that they had fired in the zinfandel vineyard last winter. It seemed both tiny and treacherous in his shaking hand. She was even more amazed when he raised the gun, pointed it at Colin, narrowed his eyes and yanked at the trigger.

* * *

Chapter 24

Bridget witnessed what happened next in the proverbial slow motion.

Darren's hand moved as he jerked the trigger and the bullet missed Colin and thumped into the wall, dislodging paint and plaster. Before either Darren or Bridget could react Colin had scooted—rolled, then slid—across the kitchen floor and brought Darren to the ground with a tackle. In a continuation of the movement Colin's left hand covered Darren's right, and Colin's right hand went to Darren's face. Applying torque to the wrist caused the pistol to drop from Darren's hand and skitter across the kitchen floor. A quick thrust of Colin's right palm to Darren's chin smashed Darren's head against the cabinet. Almost leisurely, as Bridget sat stunned and fascinated, Colin released Darren and bear-crawled across the floor to retrieve the little pistol. He sat for a moment and checked, visually, his torso to see if he'd been shot, as Darren writhed silently on the floor, head cradled in his hands. Colin placed the gun on the floor between his legs and palpated his thumbs; both left and right simultaneously, on his fingers, index to pinkie, and back as if self-administering a field sobriety test. Satisfied that he hadn't been wounded or impeded in any way he stood and glared at Bridget. Holding the pistol in his left hand he slowly and deliberately raised his right leg over Darren and brought his heel down onto the ribs directly above Darren's heart. The heel's thud was covered up by the wheeze of Darren's breath leaving his chest cavity. After the vicious and beautifully stylish movement, Colin regained his balance and stood over Darren with his feet spread wide, as if claiming new territory.

Darren whimpered, bleeding slightly from the mouth.

Bridget didn't move to help her husband; she had observed the men's scuffle placidly, more aware of her ringing ears and the burning gunpowder smell than anything else.

Colin, still standing sentinel over the injured Darren, explained to Bridget the men's meeting in the LAX bar. Their existential, self-indulgent conversation about murder. Colin explained how he had had the same conversation with a dozen other men in the previous two years, always scamming their home addresses from drivers' licenses and following up by checking the various local papers. Colin then said, "I can't believe he took a shot at me."

"I can't shoot worth shit," said Darren.

"It takes practice," Colin extended his hand to Darren and helped him to his feet. "You thrash at the trigger and it throws your aim off."

"I can't believe," said Bridget, more to herself than to the men, "that Darren beat somebody to death."

"Believe it," said Darren. "Colin and I talked about it. I did it, but I didn't beat him: I choked him. Felt great. Empowering." Darren actually smiled, leaned over the sink and spat. He turned the tap on and drank straight from the faucet, breaking another of Bridget's kitchen etiquette rules. He rinsed and spat twice again as Colin examined the firearm. Then, as if on cue, they both joined Bridget at the table. Without asking, Darren snatched Bridget's beer and drank it half down. The trio sat in silence until Darren said, "Now that I've admitted it in front of a witness, how much will it cost me to make you go away?"

"Since you're being reasonable," said Colin, placing the little pistol in front of the empty fourth chair, next to Bridget's shut laptop, "I don't think we need this anymore."

Darren exhaled, finished Bridget's beer and said, "Agreed."

"My, my," said Bridget, "aren't we the happy, unholy little Trinity."

* * *

Chapter 25

Darren and Colin picked up the negotiations where they had left off that afternoon. The men spoke as if Bridget were not present. They proffered and rebuffed. They spoke loudly at first, until their hearing had returned to normal. Then, in normal tones, they bluffed and postured. Darren promised percentages of future profits without, again, even glancing at Bridget. Colin rejected these offers and demanded more. The negotiations, going on an hour, varied from heated to convivial to confrontational. Bridget, in that hour, had moved twice. The first time she had risen from the table and opened the freezer. She removed a packet of frozen peas and tossed them to Darren who promptly nodded his thanks and pressed the cold pack against his swelling lower lip.

The second time Bridget moved is when she reached abruptly across the table for the pistol, flicked off the safety, and shot Colin—directly, quickly—twice in the heart.

Colin didn't fall backwards. He sat up straighter. Then he looked down and seemed, not pained or distressed, but confused and incredulous. He looked at neither Darren nor Bridget; he just stared at the small, neat, nearly bloodless holes in his naked chest. Then the ex-Marine slumped forward and died, silently and somewhat anti-climactically.

It was over that quickly.

Bridget held the pistol in front of her, much as a choir girl would hold a hymnal. She said, too loudly, "That solves that."

Darren thought a moment, then said, again too loud, "I'll call Frank." He picked up the frozen peas from where they had fallen and placed them back on his face. "We'll say that he assaulted you. You shot him in self-defense. Then I came home."

Bridget stared at Colin's limp dead body slumped on her kitchen table. Her custom made kitchen table. She was in her dream house's kitchen; and upon it laid the dead body of a man she had, not long ago had sweaty and rollicking sex with. And now she had shot and killed him. She, once again, was amazed not only by the gun's lethality, but by its smell. So strong; prevalent and pervasive. A smell she would remember forever. She switched the pistol to her left hand, then turned and said to Darren, "I should have known when I saw you open that book."

Darren didn't know whether to ask, "What book?" or "Should have known what?"

He decided to ask, "What book?"

Bridget said, "Crime and Punishment."

Darren still confused, exercised his second option, "Should have known what?"

"You killed him didn't you?"

"No," Darren pointed to Colin's body, "you killed him. We have a story. I'll call Frank."

"Candido Sanchez, the 'poor dumb unlucky fucking Mexican'. You killed him, didn't you?"

"Of course not." Darren smiled and pointed at Colin. "It was something he dreamed up. Bullshit on toast. Do you want me to call Frank now?"

Bridget thought about Colin's arrival. About Darren's missing suit coat and pants; lied about. About Frank's call and the description of a linebacker standing behind a Mercedes at the site of Candido Sanchez's murder. "No," said Bridget. "I'll call him. Later." Bridget stood and, just like her husband had instructed her last winter, placed two hands on the gun to steady it. Without a word she fired, again twice, this time directly into Darren's heart. He grunted reflexively and raised his eyes in surprise. Then, alongside his blackmailer, once again in Bridget's dream house, he died quickly and quietly. Both men sprawled forward across the table, arms entangled, as Bridget held the murder weapon. But she thought neither of crime nor punishment. She thought only of how nimble and adept people were at complete self-deception: because it wasn't until after she had pulled the trigger that Bridget realized how much she had always despised Darren.

* * *

Chapter 26

The final leg of Bridget's journey was aboard a surprisingly new and comfortable Volvo diesel bus. The bus ride began in Ciudad Santa Clarita and continued east into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to a village called Sagrado. Like the bus, the road it traversed was surprisingly modern and contemporary. Unlike in the movies, the local Mexican bus line transported only people: not a parrot, chicken, or a single goat were aboard. Once seated on the bus Bridget, la norteamericana, had drawn the inquisitive stares of both men and women, until a young girl addressed her and Bridget replied in her faultless Spanish. After that she was accepted by the local people: their acceptance taking the form of ignoring the slim, obviously rich stranger in their midst. The night before, from Ciudad Santa Clarita, Bridget had made two phone calls to Sagrado. The first to Father Esteban Espinoza who helped arrange a meeting, the following day, between herself and Candido Sanchez's wife Maria. The second phone call was to the Banco de México branch in Sagrado where Bridget established an account in Maria Sanchez's name and deposited, by wire, nine crisp new thousand bills she had recently discovered in a dead ex-Marine's wallet.

Padre Esteban Espinoza accompanied Bridget to the Sanchez house. Like the other houses in town it was whitewashed adobe: squat, simple, colorful, and clean. Several children, with chocolate brown eyes, were introduced to Bridget by Maria. After small talk and cinnamon sugar cookies the children were shooed outside and Bridget told Maria a sanitized version of her husband's death and presented to the widow the eleven-hundred dollars and the gold crucifix with which Sonoma County Sheriff Frank Hernandez had entrusted her. After tears and hugs and protestations of gratitude Maria Sanchez asked Bridget how was it possible that such an elegant American lady from Northern California spoke such flowing and beautiful Spanish?

Bridget almost replied, automatically, with the lie that she had manufactured and lived with for years. That she had attended a progressive bilingual high school and majored in Spanish at the University. But over the crumbs of cinnamon cookies she spoke, for the first time ever, the truth. "My mother," said Bridget, simply and quickly, in Spanish, "told me when I was ten years old that her prayers had been answered when I was born. We lived, my mother and my three older brothers, in a small house with various," Bridget smiled, "aunts and many cousins; all who had occasional, temporary uncles."

It was Maria's turn to smile.

"My mother's prayers," said Bridget, "were answered when she gave birth to a daughter who had blue eyes and light brown hair. Her prayers were to have a child she could put up for adoption. She told me this the night before I left for my new home. She told me to forget the mother who worked two jobs and didn't have enough time, or money, to give her daughter an education and a future. Forget your brothers, she told me. The men will always be okay, because they will find women who are just like their mother: Women who will work two jobs and raise a family and treat the men like the spoiled children they are."

Maria also smiled at this; knowing it to be true.

"She told me that her life was now my life and what I did, where I went, what I learned: this I would be doing for both of us. So my mother abandoned me to a better life with a rich white family. Like that, my mother sent me away to a better life in a completely different world." It was Bridget's turn to smile, "That foreign world I was re-born into, as it turned out, was only fifteen miles away."

Following Bridget's confession there were more hugs and tears. Bridget was glad that she had arranged for Padre Esteban to tell Maria Sanchez about the nine-thousand dollars in her new bank account: Bridget doubted she could hold up under any more of the woman's simple, expressive gratitude. Bridget declined an invitation to stay for lunch and only after an additional ten minutes of hugs and good byes from the children was she able to leave. It wasn't until Bridget had left Maria Sanchez's house that she realized they were both recent widows. Maria widowed by the brutal and mindless actions of Bridget's husband: Bridget, in turn, widowed by her own deed.

After Bridget had shot Darren she placed the empty five-shot pistol on the table and, for the first time in her life, confronted her equally empty soul. She had married for money, property, prestige, comfort. She loved her work at the winery but hated herself for how she had attained her career. Here, vividly, at her kitchen table were the results of marrying and living with a scoundrel and thief. Bridget knew it all along: she knew what she was getting into. Friends and fellow employees at the architectural firm warned her that Darren was at best shady, probably larcenous. But she had entered into the relationship wholeheartedly. The trade-off, for Bridget, had been worth the moral compromise. But this is how it ended; this is how she should have known it had to end.

But always the practical and resourceful gal, Bridget, on the night she killed two men, immediately came up with a plan. She placed the empty revolver on top of her laptop and walked upstairs. She retrieved the two condoms she had yet to toss out. In her anger and haste to research Colin on-line she had left them in the bottom of her bathroom waste basket, hidden beneath wadded toilet paper. Without turning on the lights in the guest bedroom she flung the used condoms into the dark and disheveled room, where they would be discovered, later that night, by the Sheriff. Then, beneath the September moon, she walked down the hill to her office and opened the desk drawer containing printer paper and envelopes. She retrieved the torn Victoria's Secret ensemble and returned to the house: a house, oddly, no less comfortable for Bridget because it contained two dead bodies. Upstairs in her bedroom Bridget calmly and silently removed her clothes, folding the pants and shirt neatly before, as usual, centering them perfectly on the chair. She shuddered slightly as she slipped into the clammy, wrinkled, torn, rosy-pink lingerie. She checked out her appearance in the bathroom's lighted full-length mirror.

Something was wrong.

Her hair was too neat. She mussed it. And, if Colin had raped her, as she would tell Frank Hernandez he had, there would be scuffle marks on her body. She slapped her face repeatedly to redden her cheeks, then took a pointed emery board and scraped, diagonally, three times across her abdomen, twice on her left shoulder, and twice again deeply across the top of her ass. She thoroughly rinsed and dried the emery board before returning it to the proper caddy.

Bridget walked downstairs and dialed 911 from the kitchen landline. She told the operator that she had been raped by a houseguest. That her husband had returned home and fought with the rapist. After their altercation the men had sat at the kitchen table and continued their argument. Bridget, dazed, removed the household's lone weapon that was kept in the safe and returned to the kitchen. In the ensuing confusion she couldn't remember precisely what happened but the houseguest wrestled the gun from her and shot her husband point blank as he sat at the table. She somehow got the gun back and killed the houseguest. But Bridget only faked her confusion about the story; she did not have to fake the tears.

She stood shaking in the kitchen when her friend, Sheriff Frank Hernandez arrived. Uniformed men and women scurried, evidence was gathered; lab work ensued. The trio of fingerprints on the pistol were consistent with Bridget's story, as was the blood type of the semen recovered from the condoms. Frank was suspicious that a rapist would use condoms, but seemed satisfied when Bridget offered, "I don't know why, Frank. Fear of HIV?"

Again, Bridget had been fuzzy on the details but her generalities were supported by Frank Hernandez and Bud Warhol's interpretation of the crime scene's facts. That's how it must have happened.

Bridget wasn't suspected; arresting her never even occurred to the Sheriff.

Her confessed shooting of Colin Mosley was obviously in self-defense: he had just raped her and murdered her husband, what else could she do? She was lucky not to have been shot herself. Sheriff Frank Hernandez insisted she spend a few nights at a motel. A few nights turned into a week until the authorities decided not to press charges against Bridget. That's when Frank suggested she leave town, just to get away from the mess her life had become. When Bridget suggested a vacation in Mexico, after accompanying Candido Sanchez's corpse to his home town of Sagrado, the Sheriff encouraged the idea.

And so Bridget visited Sagrado.

After saying good bye to Maria, Bridget walked the length of Sagrado's main boulevard, which ended, as it does in all small Mexican towns, at the Catholic Church in the Plaza. Sagrado's church, optimistically called a cathedral, was open on this Tuesday afternoon and Bridget entered. Her merciful mission to the Sanchez family accomplished, she sat in a pew. She smelled candle wax and incense. She felt the pew's smooth, worn wood and wondered how many people, how many prayers it had taken to wear and burnish the surface to such a luster. Bridget considered closing her eyes and reciting her meditation, The Prayer of St Francis, but then decided against it. She sat quietly and let her mind roam. Bridget revisited her first childhood: happy and impoverished. Then her second: middle class and insecure. And now: free, but gnawed not by guilt, but a lack of remorse.

Bridget examined the statues of the saints that ringed the church, remembering their names from high school: Theresa of Avila, the Divine Infant of Prague, and the cathedral's patron, St Anthony of Padua: the patron saint of lost causes. She saw the gaunt, gruesome, hanging figure of Christ above the altar and thought suddenly of Colin and Darren. All three men, all three of their punishments: terrible, final, yet fitting also.

As Bridget sat in the church—cathedral—of Saint Anthony of Padua she experienced, for the first time, ten days and a thousand miles removed from the shootings, sorrow and horror at what she had done. But already, even as she relived the violence in her mind, she was putting the deaths behind her. The violence was apt, she reasoned: how else was she to remove herself from a marriage to a thug and escape the threat of blackmail?

The languid hours and the warm afternoon progressed as Bridget's mood mellowed and deepened. And on that placid Tuesday in the mountains of Mexico, before she left the cathedral, Bridget felt healed. Not by the glory of God, but at the wonder and resilience of humankind. Already she had begun fashioning the ugly truth of these two deaths into yet another one of life's indispensable and beautiful lies.

The End

