The Big Con Read online

  “Stop,” she said, her eyes closed and head resting against the passenger window.

  “Stop what?”

  “Looking at me. I’ll be fine.”

  I was prone, just like everyone else, to revert to the emotional clichés reserved for the sick—equal parts pity for their suffering and admiration for their courage. That usually manifested itself in hollow statements about a “brave fight” or some other pugilistic reference. Rebecca had made it clear early on that that kind of talk was both unwarranted and unwanted: “There’s nothing brave about wanting to stay alive.”

  This last statement revived a memory of my father’s end with the disease. He chose to fight it but it wasn’t much of a battle. If anything, he was just some guy waiting for the referee to stop the fight.

  I let her sleep on the long drive into the San Joaquin Valley. The I-5 was a major route for semis bringing crap from China north and fresh produce south. The result was a challenging drive with big rigs lugging tons of cargo up a hill at thirty miles an hour while anyone with a V8 blew by them going eighty. My sensible sedan nestled in behind one of the rigs like a pilot fish finding safety among a pod of migrating blue whales. Two attempts to venture into the dark waters of the passing lane sent me scurrying back when pickups appeared in my mirror with flashes of high beams signaling me to get out of the way, quickly.

  We crested the summit with the dying sun filtering through ominous rain clouds. Signs warned of dangerous driving conditions and reminded drivers to use headlights and to not venture further unless one’s trunk contained snow chains. I ignored these warnings and left the safety of a pod of semis to glide down the long grade through the Tejon Pass, past the handful of runaway truck ramps and farther into the Grapevine until we finally hit the bed of the San Joaquin Valley and cruised our way toward Bakersfield.

  Rosedale Village RV Park sat on the far edge of town and featured a stunning view of nothing. I marveled at the vastness of a landscape so perfectly flat that even a steamroller couldn’t achieve that level of perfection. Scanning the area, I suppressed the urge to ponder just why anyone would want to live here because the second part of that question contained the answer—if you didn’t have to.

  I drove through the main entrance, where four shedding pine trees framed up the park’s only landmark, a giant billboard advertising no-questions-asked personal loans at usury rates. An office and bank of resident mail-boxes funneled me into a cemetery-like level of plotting that made Fitch’s trailer surprisingly difficult to find. Every white box could be the right white box but wasn’t. An overall disdain for house numbers and porch lights didn’t help. I eventually found the correct trailer and parked on the quiet lane fronting it.

  The silence roused Rebecca from her sleep.

  “We’re here,” I told her. “Let me go look around first.”

  The side entrance was carpeted with old-school artificial turf that looked like someone had pulled it up from an abandoned mini-golf course. I took a step up and knocked on the flimsy door. Only then did I notice the police tape that partly sealed the gap around the door frame.

  I took out my car key and cut through the tape. One big tug on the door accomplished nothing save causing me to fall back on my ass as my hand slipped from the knob and I made the humiliating tumble off the step. The Astroturf was about as soft as the windmill hole it came from. I dusted myself off and rose to make another attempt.

  “Sitting down on the job?” came a deep voice to my right.

  I stared into the darkness at the back of the trailer, where a short figure stood in shadow. Every few seconds a small blip of orange flared brightly as the figure took a deep drag on what smelled like a menthol cigarette. My eyes adjusted to the night and I realized he or she was holding something long and heavy in a free hand. As I studied the shape and recalled the voice, my eyes widened.

  “Julie?” I called out into the darkness and took a step toward the figure.

  “I’ll be anyone you want me to be, honey,” came the response. “But I’ll ask that you stay where you are.”

  The long, dark, heavy object was raised and pointed in my direction.

  “There’s no need for that,” I said.

  “That’s for the person holding the shotgun to decide. Let’s walk ourselves out to the street where there’s some light.”

  I backed my way out to the lane where my car was parked under a skimpy streetlamp.

  “What’s the matter?” Rebecca called out, then saw the shotgun. “Oh.”

  Once in the light, I got my first look at the woman holding the gun. She had a smoker’s face well past the point that quitting cold turkey could reverse the effects of years of bad decisions. But smoking couldn’t change her eyes. They were very soft.

  “Did you hurt yourself trying to pry open that door?” she asked.

  “Just my pride.” I smiled.

  “What do you want with Fitchie’s place? You know he’s dead, right?”

  “Yes, I know,” I told her. “I found his body.”

  That thankfully lowered the gun, which now was probably pointed at some unfortunate gopher a few feet underground.

  “You a friend?”

  I shook my head.

  “Thanks for not lying. He didn’t have any friends. No real ones, anyway,” she reflected. “How’d you come about finding him?”

  “I was looking for someone else.”

  She quickly picked up on the inference in my words.

  “They the ones who killed him?”

  The gun came up slightly. Rebecca and I shared a look.

  “Someone close to me might be involved in his murder,” Rebecca answered. “I’m looking for answers, too.”

  That kind of honesty was a curious tack while talking with someone holding a shotgun. But it seemed to work. The woman softened as she recalled her friend.

  “Poor Fitchie, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Probably didn’t even know what he was getting into.” She spoke of a man with a good heart, overly trusting of others who always found himself on the wrong side of a deal. “Not a lot upstairs,” she reminded us. The third time she muttered a similar dig, I realized her affection for the dead man was far deeper than I had initially thought. Rebecca had made this realization long before I had.

  “We sure know how to pick ’em,” Rebecca mused.

  “You got that right, sweetie.”

  “You made a comment about Fitch getting into something,” I said. “You know anything about what it was?”

  “He came into money, blabbering on about it being just the start. Mr. Big Shot.” She laughed, but it quickly faded. “They got it all,” she said, gesturing to the immensity of the night sky. “I never saw any of it.”

  She caught my look.

  “I manage the place. Fitchie wasn’t a fan of paying his bills.”

  “So he was behind on his rent?”

  She spared me the “dim lightbulb” quip. “Pick a unit. Everyone’s behind.”

  “Did he ever say how he came into this money?” Rebecca asked.

  “He might have but I can’t remember. He always had some scheme going. None out of nothing were legit.” She explained that Fitch really had only two moods. He either had the world figured out (and bragged about how he did) or he whined about how that same world was out to get him. “There was no in between with him.”

  Or any of us, I thought.

  “Where did he work?” I asked.

  “He did his best work on a stool,” she said, smiling. “His office is about a mile down the road. You can’t miss the big red sign.”

  “Did he have a family?” Rebecca asked.

  “He had a sister, but she’s dead.” After a moment she added, “Murdered.”

  Rebecca and I shared a look. There was something odd in the way the old woman said it.

  “Why did you say it like that?” Rebecca asked.

  “Because it wasn’t true. I learned never to believe anything that came out of Fitchie’s
mouth.”

  “He’d make up a story about his sister being murdered?”

  “You don’t know Fitchie,” she explained.

  The woman took a deep inhalation of night air that I took as a signal that she was done reminiscing. As Rebecca and I got into the car to leave, I heard her mutter one final reflection about her friend.

  “The big dummy got himself into something serious this time.”

  SOUTH OF SOMETHING

  What kind of beers do you have?” I asked.

  The woman behind the bar did her best Helen Keller impersonation and languidly shifted her eyes from me to the tap handles right next to us. She apparently didn’t have the energy or will to read them off to me. I ordered a domestic. The dirty line it traveled through, or the dirty glass it was served in, added a slightly rancid aftertaste to an otherwise unimpressive flavor profile. And being served on a chilly day in February in Bakersfield counteracted the beer’s only virtue—the fact that it was cold.

  SOHAR was a barfly’s kind of bar. A handful of patrons worked the stools spaced far enough apart for ease of conversation and ease of detachment. There was neither great joy nor great sadness on any of their faces. They were all just content to have a warm, comfortable place in which to get systematically obliterated every night.

  We listened in on the bar chatter, waiting for an opening. This crew covered a wide range of topics ranging from twin-cam fathead engines (best Harley ever produced) to zoology (lions are color-blind) to medieval history (Martin Luther had a foot fetish). The primary source of their knowledge was a mounted TV over the bar. Countless hours watching off-hour programming had given them just enough information to be truly insufferable on a wide array of topics.

  I discovered a newfound empathy for the bartender. I had only been in the bar for five minutes and the blabbering was already grating on me. I’d pretend to be a deaf-mute, too, if I had to work there.

  “Are you going to ask someone?” Rebecca said impatiently while pretending to sip a ginger ale.

  “These sorts of things are delicate,” I whispered. “I have a lot of experience in this area,” continued the lecture. “Let me take the lead.”

  My approach was to engage someone on a harmless topic in order to establish rapport. I casually asked the gentleman next to me about the curious name of the bar—SOHAR. It worked. He took my question and launched into a detailed breakdown of famous NYC acronyms: SOHO stood for south of Houston, DUMBO—down under Manhattan Bridge overpass, TRIBECA—triangle below Canal.

  “So what’s the HAR stand for?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “SOHAR,” I repeated. “Stands for south of what?”

  “Oblivion,” someone muttered several seats down.

  I chuckled but no one else did.

  Rebecca grew tired of my approach and tried the direct route.

  “Does anyone know James Fitch?” she asked.

  The room quickly got quiet.

  “What you want with him?” the acronym expert asked.

  I watched the man’s posture on his stool. Everyone’s a tough guy in front of someone who is weaker than them, and this drunk was clearly feeling his oats in front of Mr. Corporate Casual and his sick sidekick. HR had honed my skills in evaluating people, and as I studied him, I safely assumed this guy was all hot air. It was my turn to do some pushing around.

  I took a long, confident gulp of my beer.

  “Never mind what we want with him,” I said. “Just answer the lady’s fucking question.”

  I don’t know if the welt on my head came from the actual punch or the dramatic tumble I took after it. I do know that the front of my shirt was soaked in beer from the glass I had been holding, but how the back of my shirt got wet was a mystery. I remained conscious through the entire fight—if one punch could be deemed a fight—but it was all a blurry recollection of snippets, the most embarrassing one involving an attempt to get to my feet that only succeeded in knocking over the popcorn machine. The floor becoming littered with three-day-old popcorn seemed to be the one thing that angered the patrons the most.

  “You’re going to have to clean that up!” the formerly mute bartender shrieked at me.

  She was joined by a chorus of murmurs, and I soon found myself with a broom in my hands. I managed to get a fraction of the popcorn into the dustpan. The rest I ground into an already sticky carpet. The bartender mercifully put an end to my cleaning duty with the exasperated words, “Just leave it.”

  I sheepishly returned to my stool, where I found a freshly poured glass of rancid beer, courtesy of the man who put me on my back. We spent the next five minutes trying to out-apologize each other and finally agreed that we were both at fault.

  Now that we were best friends, he and everyone else unlocked the vault on James Fitch. It was almost too much information, bordering on inappropriate. Rebecca and I endured a litany of failed jobs and the long periods between them, his problems keeping tequila down, his propensity to constantly readjust himself, particularly in front of the ladies. Any attempts to provide structure to the dialogue went unheeded.

  “Let’s all try to stay on point,” I tried, reminding them to keep their comments to the one or two important things about Fitch, at which point they provided twenty things at two levels below trivial. Several times I interjected: “That’s great information…very helpful…more than we could ever use.…” And yet they continued to a point where I wished we could return to the topic of color-blind lions.

  But in the deluge was a handful of useful information. Arizona featured prominently in the narrative. Fitch was raised there and still had some family outside Phoenix, they believed. A sister was mentioned several times who Fitch had repeatedly claimed had been murdered, but from the comments I heard it didn’t sound like the folks in the room had believed him. I got the sense they believed a small fraction of the stuff Fitch said but didn’t necessarily begrudge him for it. They all seemed to think he was a decent man.

  When Rebecca questioned them on what the trailer park manager had said about Fitch coming into some money recently, the room got a little quiet.

  “It wasn’t much,” my combatant finally said, “though Fitch kept saying ‘it was only the beginning.’” It was yet another claim that no one seemed to believe, but I remembered the wad of cash Lois Hearns’s ex-husband had pulled out of the freezer and wondered if they might be wrong on this one.

  “Couldn’t have been too much,” I offered. “I saw his trailer and his landlady said he was always behind.”

  There were some furtive glances, very subtle, but I caught them.

  “We, uh, helped him celebrate,” was how someone explained where the money went. The guilt lingering after this admission was a nod to the two non-barflies in the room of a standard barfly code—one person’s good fortune is everyone’s good fortune.

  “It’s what we do,” he added.

  The conversation shifted to something lighter, yet no less pathetic: Fitch’s love life. This topic got everyone quite excited as they recalled the long list of hags, skanks, and decent girls who all eventually figured out they were better off without Fitch. By this time I was half-listening, but then a remark recaptured my interest.

  “Remember chai tea lady?” someone asked, laughing. “She was a piece of work.”

  “She used to bring her own organic tea bags,” the bartender explained in response to my quizzical look. This all sounded familiar.

  “Short, white hair? Talks like a man?”

  “Not even close,” the bartender replied. “Really long hair. Blond. Down to her ass.”

  So I was wrong about Fitch rendezvousing with Julie, but he did meet the caricaturist Lois with some regularity.

  “Remember she wanted to draw my picture? Too weird,” said the man on my left. “I don’t get naked for nobody.”

  The group collectively agreed something was strange about the woman and her relationship with Fitch. Apparently they were very secretive, always talking pri
vately in the back booth. Some believed their relationship bordered on “kinky.”

  “What makes you say that?” Rebecca pressed.

  “There was always another guy with them.”

  I recalled the man in the hotel room looking for Fitch, the man who I thought had followed us in the Coupe DeVille.

  “Short and bald,” I filled in for them. “Looks like a big bowling ball.”

  “Tall and thin with a ponytail.” They all laughed at me. “You’re terrible at this game!”

  Maybe it wasn’t the mystery man but it was someone I recognized—Lois’s husband. It appeared he was much more aware of what his ex-wife was up to than he let on.

  A rainy, nighttime drive over the Tejon Pass loomed larger with each glass of beer and meaningless detail about Fitch’s life. But despite all attempts to extricate myself from the conversation, I couldn’t make it very far from the stool. This group seemed impervious to every disengagement tactic I threw at them.

  I must have checked my watch ten times but no one picked up on the cue. None of my repetitions of “Well, we should be hitting the road” seemed to work. At one point I started requesting they put their thoughts in an email—a classic corporate technique to combat people’s propensity to discuss topics endlessly rather than actually work on them. Those requests went unheeded. Finally, a distraction in the form of a new customer offered us a break to run for it. They all turned to see an unfamiliar face pad into the bar. He was unfamiliar to all of them but not to Rebecca and me.

  Short, bald, and stocky, the bowling ball of a man looked around the bar in the same manner he had surveyed Rebecca’s hotel room. He wasn’t holding a gun, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t under his coat. My theory about tough guys proved true in this instance. Everyone rightly assumed he was the toughest in the room, and in a single swoop he accomplished something I had tried to do for two-plus hours—he got them to be quiet.