To Chase the Dragon:
(Idiomatic expression) To chase after the promise of a continually fulfilling high from an addictive substance.
She was the fever that never left.
Gliding towards me. Ms. Burberry 2020: lithe elegance—in pump flats—and through my door.
Asleep and awake, this was twenty years of something dreamt; but today, now, something real. Made even more so by her taking the wooden chair in front of my desk.
I looked at her looking around. Sweet disdain for the meager: a nine hundred square foot bungalow, my new home. Sunday morning in a frat house provided a better stage.
She was amethyst in mud, cleaner even and present beyond sight: a hint of citrus came and went with her slightest move, competing with the sea air from the window.
It was March and spring and morning.
I kept studying as she brushed back still raven strands from once freckled cheeks.
I went first.
“St Dymphna’s Prep.”
“Your memory!”
“You only lived down the street. Your brother was hero of the block, same one that hosted your fan club. The Eastern Shore’s favorite daughter.”
“Last time we saw each other was…”
“Your Dad’s funeral.”
“He liked you.”
“If only you and Eve…he’d say.”
She turned her head quickly. “I’d say you were a hard find.”
“A pair of decades, two thousand miles.”
As isolated as one could be in coastal California—I was a newbie twice: place and position were changed by an afternoon visit from a lawyer with a short stack of life-altering paper guaranteeing possession of a beachfront residence with a forty-yard private walk; all from an uncle I’d never met. Years of city life and railroad security work guaranteed my answer.
I stared at her mouth.
“’Saw the sign on the door. What is UUprite.com?”
“I help with balance issues.”
She narrowed her eyes.
I leaned back slightly, fidgeting against a primal flush. “I try to keep people from falling.”
“Can you catch?”
“We on solid ground?”
“I’m being followed—a man in an expensive car with tinted windows.”
“From back home?”
“The desert’s home now, Nevada for a while, then here. It’s where I do what I
do–”
“And well.”
She was irked at the interruption then caught herself.
“Properties,” she smiled “high end—but I don’t mean it that way.”
“Call the police. I don’t do…”
She shook her head once and commence with hand wringing.
“A rival seller, a soured prospect?” I moved it along. “Someone not work related: the jilted, an ex?”
“No relationship’s perfect.” She demurred. “You never married?”
I shook my head and glanced behind her at the parting of the a.m. fog. “The probable culprit here, not even a name?”
“Probably Alphonse Brown.”
“Alphonse Brown?”
A stream of patchwork vulgarity ended with a particularly nasty expletive. She wasn’t finished: “And no hairier goat.”
“So he’s shaggy?”
“And vile aggressive. Worse. He’s following me because of a week-old sale. It was an “As Is” estate, east of Palm Springs, a desert Mansion from the 30s—some Hollywood guy had it. Property and possessions included. After the first showing, we went to paper. No final walk requested. Now he says the sale’s fraudulent and I’m being threatened.”
“This is lawyer stuff, restraining order stuff…”
“I’m scared for my life.” She mentioned the property’s sale price.
Glossy eyes met my offer to go with her to the police. We listened to the waves for too short a time.
I stood: “I’ll give it a day or two.”
“You’ll start now?”
I spread my hands in a “what else” gesture.
Up from the chair, her face was an inch from my ear: “Help me.”
I felt it in my heels.
She gave me not a business card but some crude origami of ripped stationery with a penciled number. She was about to turn when we looked to one another quizzically. A waft of burning clove oil invaded the room.
“It’s a long, the-guy-who-came-with-house kind of story.”
She managed a half-smile then turned to leave. I kept loosely in tow and settled a shoulder on the door jam, rapt in aesthetic survey as she got into her car.
“Bro, you got it nasty.”
“Cal.”
I acknowledged the smellable proximity of Pascal Tovar and his clove cigarette on my back deck. The pony-tailed millennial and failed botanist was allergic to invitations. I should have expected him, this being his off day from the video game store. It was also the day–and night– he poached a space with his sleeping bag on the sand under my house. Somewhere in his free time, he had memorized the most famous work of his namesake and displayed the erudition for my welfare. His hands left his poncho to uphold some imaginary weight:
“Could it be that the soul is too noble a subject for its feeble understanding?”
“Very apt.”
“We’ve all the one that got away, Roan…with you its extra: the haze of lost love’s all over you, man; that unrequited, certain torment thing’s stamped your aura. Leave it alone, brother.”
“All this from eavesdropping?” I threw him a glance then stepped out onto the deck, spotting a second car, waiting and then pulling out behind hers.
After an evening split between search engines and the phone, I was on the 101 South at sunrise; the heat and the sun’s ascent made for a brooding road trip.
Truth follows biography. I needed both. Easier said. Truths about human nature, to the one, defy a lone version or single path. Complexity reigns. It requires context. I had to make connections, account for nuance, and judge. This wasn’t the worst of it: judgments require action–so act I would: a certain desert residence would be my third stop.
The parking spaces for the offices New Beauty, New Life Health Services, just south of Santa Barbara were only half- full by seven-thirty. The space for Dr. Lancaster Stamms, DO was empty as was the adjacent one I took. Forty minutes later a metallic gray sedan pulled in. We glared at each other through car windows.
Even our doors opened in unison.
“You’ll have to move it.”
He was neo- glam and fiftyish, a gaunt narcissist with an iron gray comb-over and style-points stubble. He was also poor at pretense.
“Only a word?” I shrunk my shoulders and smiled. I also let out my client’s name.
“Its history. And toxic.”
I stepped towards him with my card. “A character reference, but a minute?”
“Less. Lawyer?”
I shook my head. “How would you describe your ex-wife?”
He started to wave me off then laughed. “Today, I don’t really think of her in those terms; it was only for five months and that was ten years ago. You see, ah, Mr. Roan, I used to believe the happiest day of my life was the day we met. I can now confirm the day the divorce went through ranks as nirvana in comparison.”
“Like that?”
“You’ve seen her?”
I nodded.
“No bluer eyes.”
“And?”
“No ‘and’ to her. Just mean. As hell…Still bothers me…” He ran his hand over his semi-beard and looked off in the distance before looking back at me. “Through the whole of the whirlwind that was us, what I remember most was an argument—there were loads—but this one was in the car and she was driving. I told her that we probably weren’t going to last and the next thing I know she jumps a lane into oncoming traffic. The violent dodging and weaving seemed like forever until she pulled into a strip mall, stopped the car and disappeared into a phalanx of shoppers. ‘Haven’t seen her since.”
He paused to sigh. “I’ll never forget the faces of the other drivers we passed.”
“Why’d you marry?”
“You’ve some university, or?”
I shrugged.
“In long ago Greece there was this blind guy who liked to sing of the unforgettable. Once he sang about a sailor at sea who wanted to hear no more beautiful singing, from mysterious women on a mysterious island. The sailor also knew the songs were lethal seduction—all ships would be brought to the rocks. Before sailing past said island, he handed out wax for the ears of those on aboard and then had himself bound to the mast—so he could listen…With my ex, with her, I wished to God I’d had a blindfold.”
I left for my second stop with him reminding me there is no second chance at a first impression: crows’ feet and striations of every sort were his specialty.
Two hours east, the traffic funneled into a two-lane highway and the city of San Alonso. A three-stoplight town, the lone complex of Suntopia Mobile Home Park lay sprawled on the city’s southern end. I slowed into the life clutter as a van in front of me kicked up dirt clouds. The complex was treeless, and I was eyed from polyester folding chairs by those under brimmed hats and ripped umbrellas, beverages in hand. Making my way deeper into the park, a faded soccer ball bounced in front of the car giving me time to study the residence numbers. Just as the van turned off, I parked in front of the second to the last number in the complex. From the car, I looked around, before settling on the staring face in front of a screen door.
She was tallish and sunburnt. A barefoot home-dyed blonde in a pastel top and cloth shorts. She could have been forty or sixty. Either way, she’d once been the belle of someone’s ball.
“No need to get out.”
“Says you.” I opened the car door. The longer the drive the longer the stretch.
The flash of heat was less bothersome than the sight of the Dad bod in a straw hat with a polo shirt and carpenter shorts. Shoeless, he walked from behind the home to lean on the other side of my car.
The woman folded her arms and gave me the once over twice.
“Quit, Marshall.” At her insistence, I watched him shuffle back behind the structure.
“We spoke on the phone. I just want your side—“
“–You want to come in?”
The place was furnished in expensive leather and extravagant antiques. It also stank of cigarettes and liquor. From ceiling to the floor, every corner hollered maid.
She asked me to sit.
I stood.
“OK.” She lit a cigarette. “Like that, then. ‘Met my former husband Drew when I was twenty-six and holding down two jobs, one of them at The Sweet Meet—place you passed coming in. He was the lawyer for a friend who’d won a local lottery. He helped people plan things, was good at it; After we met, he started planning for us. I couldn’t have been happier; never had much of a family or what came with it. With Drew, well, that’s all I wanted, so we had to have a home. That’s where she came in. The realtor. ‘Purveyor of Dreams’ she called herself. Right. Showed us only the real pricey stuff. I hated everything we saw; ‘would’ve been happy in a sty. But she talked Drew into some million-dollar villa thirty miles off, and the talking was done in every motel between here and Barstow. I caught on only after the sale went through. By then, he was too far gone; she was just gone—with the commission. When Drew came around and figured things, he tried to take his life.”
“I am—“
“—Don’t be. Took six months but I found her.”
“With garden tools, duct tape and accomplices.”
“She had a back-up alarm in the house. Cops were scary quick. The boys got probation. I got a year in county and a parole officer who wants to wreck my life.”
She put out the cigarette on a dirty paper plate on a marble counter top then gestured to the door.
I made it to the front step without her following. But she wanted me to know more.
“She stole everything I had. Bet mister, that her last minute on earth’ll be with me.”
I waved to a glaring Marshall as I drove off.
It would be at least another two hours to the desert city of Santa Casilda. From what I had learned the night before, not an altogether different environment.
My first call yesterday had been to Youngstown and to none braver. Once a heralded crime reporter, he was by distant relation linked to some of the same men he outed as murderers. In the past, we exchanged information on a few cases—even worked on a rail heist in person. I knew that he collected information on organized crime figures like first graders hoard Pokemon cards. I had a hunch on a name.
“Alphonse Brown was once Armand Dak,” he offered.
“Re-branding.”
“Never works.” He continued without so much as a pause for memory: “Bit player for the cordite crews of the neon era; would launder anything and tried, from Hot Springs to Henderson. Being an outsider bred paranoia. Moved about with no gaudier entourage. Liked to be known as ‘the guy who kept his word.’ Retired years back—somewhere out near you. Too many enemies.”
“Any around?”
“Guy’s in his ninth decade, so…” He paused and I heard a train sound through the phone. “There’s street talk that a few years ago he had a go at some incorruptible cop on a cold case. It failed.”
“Got an address for our light sleeper?”
“And have your sad carcass on my conscience? Pass.”
We both knew differently.
Santa Casilda was twenty degrees hotter and with the windows down, I felt the variation on the half hour. The two acres of the Brown residence was a color riot for the eyes: faded cantaloupe-colored walls under a chipped Spanish-tile roof; flora left wild or dead. A famished canary mastiff roamed the grounds. I pulled in front of the six-foot entrance gate with a “For Sale by Owner” sign.
The stretch of painted aluminum rods opened. I shut off the engine. A white-haired security guard ambled towards me. He was dressed in a maroon blazer and khakis. Given the state of the place, I reckon he moved solo as perimeter watch.
“Drive in…Boss wants to meet.”
“I’m good.” He could not have been over five feet four or less than two hundred and fifty pounds.
“C’mon. Can’t park on the street.”
“I started the engine and parked less than twenty yards inside– behind the second car I recognized from the night before. The guard left the gates open to lead me through the obstacle course of moving boxes that was the interior of Brown’s home. Ancestor worship, or portraits in oil, lined the walls down a flight of stone steps that led into a dining room. An octogenarian in a velour warm-up suit with a plate of halved pomegranates sat at the end of a table. He motioned for me to sit. Next to the fruit, he had an open perfume bottle. The room smelled like an orange grove. He sized me up then shot a glance at the guard to leave.
“I don’t know you, but I know her.” His voice had an eerie tremble to it. “So, I’ll listen.”
“I have a friend who, for some reason, thinks she’s being followed….”
“A friend or girlfriend?”
“That’s a weak read.”
“Look, I invested all the money I had in a place. It would’ve been everything anyone could’ve ever wanted. I trusted her and now everything is gone.”
“The gone being more who than what.”
He went scarlet, fighting composure.
“I’m not here about a sale, I want to help save your life.”
He dabbed a napkin in the perfume and put it to his nose. Mumbling something about being threatened, he lifted his head to roar for the guard.
I was on my feet when the bodyguard entered the room. I sidestepped his first haymaker. He fanned even more air with the second. Brown was struggling to get up from his chair.
“Sale? We were miles beyond that. She’s mine.”
“Don’t even wish it.”
“Ask about, you…you no one,” He had a finger in the air. “I’m a man who keeps his word.”
“Like you tried with your new brother-in-law, detective Bobby Deegan? You know, same guy who looks into cold cases—yours.”
The duo froze. I stared back at Brown before backing out of the room. I took the steps two at a time and found the first exit to my car.
More orders came from behind, as did the mastiff. I made it to my car only to sit in front of a closed gate. In a few long minutes, the guard was before me with the dog at his side, both breathless.
“It’s the stay,” he pointed at me.
I began to put down my window and heard yelling behind us.
“Over here.”
On the other side of the gate, posted up against the driver’s side of an older Impala was a muscular six- footer in a white T-shirt and field khakis. Wild, winding ink covered both arms and ran up the right side of his neck. Three others sat low in the car, windows down.
The guard looked at him then back at me. He took a few steps back.
The driver approached the fence. “Choose.”
The other three began to get out of the car.
“Him out, or…”
I exited slowly and made it a hundred yards before the Impala stopped alongside. I shouted at their car from the window.
“I should thank you and the man in Ohio.”
“You should stay away.”
I watched them pass me and then headed for the only place I could go. It was half an hour to the Sheriff’s substation. It was another thirty minutes regaling the Sergeant, Ben Vellez, with my story and then that much longer to get him back to Brown’s.
He insisted we ride together. Half the trip was in silence, navigating the surreal hues of dusk. Fifteen years younger, Vellez possessed the gravity earned from surviving unusual adversity. As he brought both hands to wheel of the squad car, I noticed a military motto on the inside of a forearm.
“Things are as you say, the way she’s playing it, the commission on the sale to Brown is already hers, and soon, same for the spousal inheritance. You fit only if it gets to court, the credible confidant of an estranged spouse. She and Brown were married when?”
“Two weeks back, in Vegas: Eve Stamms and Armand Brown.”
“The last piece is the older brother—and whether he’s still around…to share.”
“What else?”
“Just this.” He parked behind the carousel of lights from the squad car in front of Brown’s still open gates.
As we got out of the car, Vellez asked me what I thought Bobby Deegan would look like today. The Sergeant walked past the beginning of a scene, with the ambulance arriving, more uniforms, a crowd of cars. He began to canvass the street.
I walked to the gate and stood.
The first deputy came out onto the driveway shaking his head. A second followed, escorting her from the driveway. She was bent and feigning grief, as if her freedom and millions depended on it. I went over.
“Thorough: first his money, then his life.”
She straightened only to leer: “He fell.”
“That’s enough, Mrs. Brown.”
From behind, a tall man in a tie-less suit that half of the country would recognize announced himself as counsel. He gently took her elbow, the two making their way to a late model SUV and private security detail.
My eyes on them, I began to back pedal, wanting the night wind for myself. Sergeant Vellez came over and tilted his head towards the street:
“In the pick-up.”
From across the street I spotted a man I hadn’t seen in decades. He sat in his truck, taking it in. But I wouldn’t be moved. I would stand all night to watch them drive off, to blend to black, my memory of her needing fast to go the way of every mirage.
