Cash Out Page 4

  “We do?”

  “Yeah,” Kate says, “the plan is, you’re going to find an employment lawyer ASAP.”

  Lawyer? Who, some greasy guy in a wood-paneled office above a pawnshop? I don’t want to deal with a lawyer. Who does? But as I head north on El Camino, I realize she’s right: I do need one of these people—pronto. Any other option—contacting FlowBid security, HR, even the FBI—will lead to immediate devastation. Who but an employment lawyer can give me an accurate reading on the how-fucked-am-I scale?

  Kate says, “You know anybody who knows a good lawyer?”

  “Isn’t Larry a lawyer?”

  Kate laughs. “Crazy Larry? Across-the-street Larry?”

  “They say he’s brilliant.”

  “They? Who’s they?”

  Good question. “They just say—”

  “Dan, the man was disbarred. Like, ten years ago. He walks around in a skin-colored Speedo and heaves buck knives at his garage door.” She’s almost yelling. “You want go to Crazy Larry for legal advice?”

  “No, no, no. I’m thinking he can refer us to someone who’s practicing. They say he’s brilliant, and we all know brilliant people know other brilliant people.” I pause. “Plus, you know he’s sweet on you.”

  Kate says, “Well, I’m not asking him.”

  “Fine, all I’m saying is it’s better than Googling ‘Peninsula employment lawyer.’ ” I pause. “Plus, he’ll want to help. His eyes twinkle when I mention you.”

  She moans. “What is it with you and freaks?”

  “They’re not freaks. They’re just interesting people.”

  “All right, fine. You can check with Larry when you go see Calhoun.”

  Calhoun rents a granny unit in Larry’s backyard.

  “Calhoun? I don’t want to deal with him right now.”

  “Well, you have to.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. He came by again, just as I was pulling out of the driveway. I just rolled down the window and said you’d come see him, and just kept backing out.”

  I cuss.

  “Hey, you’re the one who said you like ‘interesting’ people.”

  I shake my head. “When I get home with the boys, I’ll go see Crazy Larry, then check in on Calhoun.”

  “See what Larry says. But we need to get other references before we pick one, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “In fact, why don’t you do that now? This whole thing with the geeks is freaking me out. I’ll call Stacey at the park and have her walk the boys home.”

  “Fine.”

  Kate says, “I’ll pick up something for dinner. Meet you at home.”

  “Fine.”

  “Just don’t mention me to Larry, okay?”

  “You think that’ll stop Crazy Larry?”

  “Yeechh,” she shudders, and hangs up.

  Crazy Larry lives directly across from us. And Kate is right; on most days, he does saunter around his yard in a skin-colored Speedo.

  And flip-flops.

  And cocoa butter—lots of cocoa butter.

  Back in the 1980s, Larry traveled the world designing power plants—until, according to Larry, “they made me stop.” At which point he went to law school, passed the bar, and eventually practiced corporate law at several software companies—until, according to Larry, “they made me stop.”

  That was then. Now, Larry turns off the lights at night and sits on his covered porch facing our house, smoking and drinking, listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks on an ancient tape player. We can’t see him, just the glowing red ember of his tobacco pipe.

  I’d like to make him stop.

  When I pull up to the front of my house, Larry is sitting on his porch, staring at me, his face stoic as always, his dark brown eyes peering into me, it seems, observing me the way a lab researcher might study a confused mouse. For a man pushing sixty, he looks pretty damn good in the Speedo—deeply tanned, fit and trim, and spry.

  I can feel him watching my legs as I approach.

  “Hi, Larry.”

  Larry is silent. He glances at me and gazes into space.

  “Kate and I were wond—”

  “Kate?” He cocks his head, like he’s picked up a radio signal.

  “Yeah, Kate. We were think—”

  “You will tell Kate I said hi.”

  “Of course, Larry. My pleasure. It’s just that—”

  “Dan?” His eyes twinkle. “Tell her I said hi.”

  “I will, I—” I stop myself, count to five. “I mean, sure, Larry, I’ll definitely tell her you said hi. For sure.”

  He loosens, turns his head, and smiles into space. “There we go.”

  “Good,” I say. “So we were wondering if you could recommend a good lawyer.”

  Larry turns his head, looks at my feet. “I don’t practice law anymore.” He looks up, gazes into space. “They made me stop.”

  “Yeah, I know, Larry. We just thought you might know of a good employment lawyer we could contact. You know, a reference.”

  Larry turns and examines my mouth. “Try the Internet.”

  And suddenly I recognize the idiocy of going to Crazy Larry for a legal reference. I can string sentences together okay, but at times I have the judgment skills of a squirrel monkey.

  “Okay, Larry. Thanks anyway.”

  “Yeah.” Larry picks up the hardcover book beside him: The Paradigm Shift of Radical Granularity. “Bye-bye,” he snaps.

  “Oh,” I say, and wince. “Is Calhoun back there?”

  Larry looks up, stares at me in silence for a real long time.

  “Okay, well, I’ll just go see if he’s in.”

  Larry squints into his book, snaps, “Yeah, bye-bye.”

  I take the narrow path leading to Calhoun’s granny unit.

  Larry’s backyard is packed with cactus. Tall cacti. Short cacti. Skinny cacti. Plump cacti. Covering the rest of the yard is a thick layer of jagged gravel. Larry likes his cacti and his rocks.

  In the far corner of the yard is a little structure, painted yellow with white trim. Two large wood-frame windows with panes. A solid-oak door in the middle. All of it under a generous overhang. It’s tiny, but nearly cute—which always surprises me, considering what lurks inside.

  I tap on the door, and it moves a little.

  Then comes a singsong voice, stretching each word extra long, making it obnoxious. “Come ih-nnnnnnnn.”

  With the back of my hand, I push the door open. I step in, trying not to breathe through my nose, trying not to pick up his trademark scent of baby powder and boiled-egg-gone-bad. There sits Calhoun, in his ripped-up recliner, wearing his red threadbare sweatpants and the same old brown sweatshirt, decorated with smears and hardened crumbs across the chest. I stand there looking at Calhoun, eyeballing the belly hanging over his crotch, glancing at his light brown Bozo-the-Clown hair, looking at his enormous tits. We’re probably talking three hundred pounds—three hundred pounds of jelly.

  His voice is delicate and precious. “This is a nice surprise.” When he snickers, his tits jiggle. “Mr. Wonderful coming to see little ol’ me.”

  I force a straight face. One must never encourage Calhoun.

  “You have something urgent to tell me.”

  Calhoun’s eyes have turned to slits, and his entire body is shaking and jiggling from silent laughter. He sighs, long and happy, examines his overgrown fingernails.

  “Mr. Danny, Mr. Danny, Mr. Danny.” Another exaggerated sigh, still enjoying his fingernails. “What are we gonna do with you . . . you little . . .”

  I look at him, wait for more.

  “. . . rascal?”

  He wheeze-laughs.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well . . .” Long pause. “Well, little ol’ me sa
w something kinda weird on your property this morning.”

  Suddenly, my mind races.

  Shit—the geeks? I try to stay calm. “Oh yeah?”

  “But first . . .” He looks away. “We need to talk about what I do.”

  My brow crinkles. I’ve never seen Calhoun do anything. “What you do?”

  “Yes.” His face reddens, and his mouth puckers. “What I do to antisocials?”

  I stiffen. “Just tell me what you saw.”

  He closes his eyes, nearly smiles. “I need to tell you what I do to antisocials, Danny.”

  “Antisocials.”

  “Yes.” He says it like an angry five-year-old. “Antisocials who fail to invite their sweet neighbor to their backyard barbecue party.”

  “What?” I squint, grit my teeth. “You’re talking about last Saturday?”

  He folds his arms, puckers his lips, and nods.

  “Calhoun, that was Harry’s birthday party. You know? For six-year-olds.”

  He’s not listening. “What I do is . . . Someday, I’ll be visiting with my big mug of creamy coffee, and at some point, silly ol’ me will need to use the lavatory. And silly ol’ me—well, I will have chowed down on lots of carnitas and beans, and I’ll just have to visit your upper deck.”

  “Upper deck?”

  “You see, Mr. Danny.” Closes his eyes, sticks his chin into the air. “I like to teach antisocials a lesson. So I visit their upper decks.”

  Freaking loony tunes.

  “You see . . .” He returns to his fingernails. “I just gently remove the lid to the upper water basin of the toilee, and I pull my sweats down and I just work it until my little rump is practically falling into your exposed water basin, my feet planted firmly on the toilee-seat lid, my hands reaching out for stabilization, and then—oh, Mr. Danny, the exquisite exaltation—I release a nasty little guy into your upper deck . . .”

  He studies my face, waiting for a reaction.

  “. . . where it will do one of two things.”

  I try not to grin.

  “It will either wreak immediate havoc on your flushing system, or it will simply reside unnoticed for months on end.”

  “Dude, it was a party for six-year-olds.”

  “I don’t care.” Folds his arms, looks away. “I like balloons and party favors.”

  I’m laughing now. “Calhoun, c’mon.”

  “Before I tell you what I saw, I want a promise from Mr. Danny Wonderful.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  He folds his arms. “No more antisocial behavior.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes, yes. I promise.”

  He sits back and closes his eyes again. “Okay, then.” He pauses as he fails to fully suppress a burp. “Now I can tell you about the beefy little bald gentleman I saw prowling around your house this morning . . .”

  He examines my stoic reaction.

  “. . . when your wife and children frolicked inside.”

  A jolt of pain goes straight to my crotch.

  I turn left onto Brittain.

  Kate again. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Lunardi’s. I’m just gonna get one of those chickens.”

  I’m nearly breathless. “I’m going to get Stacey and the boys.”

  “What? . . . Dan, I just called and told her to—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  I stop at an intersection, and Calhoun whizzes past me on his little moped scooter, his body dripping over the seat, his Bozo hair dancing in the wind.

  What the . . .

  “What’s going on, honey?”

  I pull a left onto Cedar and slow down, approaching the park. Calhoun motors past the park, pulls a right, out of sight.

  “I talked to Calhoun.”

  “And?”

  “And he saw a guy.”

  “What?”

  I’m scanning the park, the sidewalks.

  “Dan, how many pills have you taken?”

  I look for familiar faces. My breathing is still shallow. “Calhoun saw a guy outside our house.”

  “What? Who?”

  I peer over to the fire-truck play structure. No one.

  “Sounded like the guy who kneed me over at Safeway.”

  Kate drops the phone.

  “Kate?”

  When she comes back, her voice is high. “Danny, what’s going on?”

  “Okay, I’m here.”

  I look toward the giant sandbox and see Stacey standing with the boys—and a guy. A short and beefy bald guy—playing with Ben, squatting beside him, showing him how to dump sand out of a giant Tonka truck, a big smile on his face. I hit the brakes, lower my head, and squint for a better look.

  “Dan?”

  That’s him. The Safeway guy. “I gotta go.”

  I’m at least fifty yards away, and his blazer is gone, but I know it’s him. The compact little body. The giant shoulders and the calm, confident look on his face, that face with the strong jaw and the little eyes too close together.

  This guy, with my kids?

  Blood races to my face. Rage shoots through my body.

  I slip into autopilot. I dash out of the car, stopping traffic on Cedar, striding toward the giant sandbox of Burton Park, cell phone in hand, staring at the back of this guy’s bald head as he plays with my kids.

  What the hell is he doing with my kids?

  God help him.

  I call Stacey on her cell.

  She giggles as she picks it up. “Little tender today?”

  “Stacey, don’t say a word. I need you to grab Ben and Harry and walk away from that man.”

  “What? . . . Dan? Where are you?”

  Thirty yards away. Closing in.

  “Stacey, get my kids away from that man. Get them out of here. Now.”

  Then, from the opposite end, I see Calhoun.

  Crap.

  He’s doing an exaggerated tiptoe routine as he approaches the bald guy and the kids, pressing an index finger to his pursed lips.

  “Stacey,” I whisper into the phone. “Take them. Now.”

  Stacey gets it. She slips her cell into her back pocket, says something to the man, and snatches my sons with a half twirl, tugging them away. Ben protests; Harry drags, twisting for one final look at this unusual new friend.

  Calhoun closes in from his side. I quicken my pace.

  Stacey sees me and I wave her away, sending her in the opposite direction. She obeys and pulls the boys so their backs are to him, just the way I want it.

  This guy. This fucking maggot, screwing with my life, handling my kids. This violent psycho with his back to me as he makes one final comment to Stacey, something light and friendly. This guy standing there as Stacey, her face drawn and cold, turns back to force a smile but can’t resist glancing at the movement behind him, at the crazed daddy preparing for impact, this daddy coming at him, jaw clenched, elbow out.

  When Calhoun announces, “Surprise, surprise!”

  The bald guy looks up at Calhoun, turns, and sees me. He smiles, reaches behind his back, and pulls out a switchblade.

  Flips it open, starts toward me.

  I’m frothing. “My kids.”

  Calhoun darts from behind, whacks the knife out of his hand, and falls on him. Baldy groans and squirms. Calhoun wheezes, looks up at me. “Maybe he’s a relative, Mr. Danny. Maybe he’s a long-lost uncle to your kids and he wants to say hi.”

  Baldy struggles under Calhoun, who starts to laugh, wheezing. “No tickling.”

  People yell for their kids.

  Finally, Baldy pushes Calhoun off, rolls and jumps to a stance, facing me. I come straigh
t at him and somehow land a roundhouse to the side of his head.

  We go down.

  Calhoun is on his back, trying to get up, yelling, “Stop it, you little rascal.”

  Baldy’s reaching for me as I get to my knees and grab hold of the Tonka, this giant metal dump truck, and whip it around as hard as I can, nailing him across the face, a nasty sound echoing across the park. That puts Baldy on his back.

  “My kids,” I pant.

  Calhoun staggers toward him, spreads his arms out, wheezes, “Belly flop.”

  Baldy yelps and rolls away just before Calhoun crashes into the sand.

  I gasp. “Don’t . . .”

  Baldy struggles to his feet.

  “. . . you . . .”

  Calhoun rolls over, props himself up on his elbows.

  “. . . ever . . .”

  The man bolts for the parking lot.

  Sirens.

  “. . . come near my kids again.”

  Calhoun fingers the leather string around his neck, pulls a whistle from under his shirt, blows loudly, yelling into the air, “I’ve fallen”—tits jiggling from laughter—“and I can’t get up.”

  Of course, not until I’m sitting in the back of the squad car, handcuffed, coming down from the rage, regaining a ration of logic and reason, do I realize how much shit I’m in.

  Calhoun is outside with the detectives, telling his story, loving every second of it. He’s got that stupid look on his face, and his little arms are flapping about as he sings God-knows-what into the air. The detectives glance at each other and take notes.

  Why am I the one in cuffs and he’s out there making nice with the cops?

  Then I realize: I have assaulted a man. I have hit a man with a Tonka truck—for playing with my kids in the community sandbox. This will not look good to the San Carlos Police. And it might look worse to some ambitious county prosecutor. At the moment, it doesn’t really matter that the “victim” was the same guy who attacked me a few hours earlier in a Menlo Park grocery store, the same guy Calhoun saw prowling around my house.

  No, what matters is that I’m facing a night in jail. From my days as a crime reporter, I know that much.

  I look over at Calhoun, who’s got his shoulders pulled back, no doubt mocking my attack stance. And now my boys are standing there looking at their daddy sitting handcuffed in the backseat of a squad car, everyone watching, and I know this will be a memory they’ll never shake.