Justice Rain (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 11) Page 9

  “Times have changed. UNA has become a popular destination . . . But more significantly, I wanted better for Sabrina.”

  “So . . . let’s get down to it. You’re not going to tell me you consulted with the guy in the paper?” And Chris had done a bit of reading last night after Reba left, the LA Times with quite a series of articles on it actually, the service in Orange County offering college perks for cash. And things went south from there.

  “I haven’t,” she said. “But there was a gentleman in Tucson.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  “And? Bottom-line me. You paid him something.”

  “28 thousand dollars.”

  “28? That’s a funny number.”

  “There was a list of services. I picked some . . . You think this is funny, keep being an asshole.”

  “I don’t. Sorry about that . . . So the service -- you’re going to tell me they helped your daughter get into UCLA.”

  “Actually we had a choice, we were told, the way it shook out. Which included Wake Forest, the University of Texas, one or two others besides UCLA. Not USC, which would have been our first pick.”

  “She’s better off at UCLA,” Chris said. “People don’t think of it, they get caught up watching the Trojan marching band on the TV football games, launching into their signature piece: ‘Conquest’ -- but the fact is, SC’s in a tough neighborhood. I wouldn’t want my daughter driving in and out of there.”

  “That’s your uneducated opinion.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Chris said.

  “Mind you, I didn’t ask a lot of questions. What I do feel likely happened . . . well there were two main areas. The gentleman claimed connections at the schools, and my money ostensibly was earmarked as a donation . . . the other area, the service claimed to have someone who could correct Sabrina’s SAT’s.”

  “Better, you mean.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Chris said, “Correct the tests better. Than if a normal corrector was was correcting them.”

  “Correct. Jesus, we keep repeating ourselves, but right . . . The normal corrector typically being, in my understanding, a computer.”

  “Don’t they have essay questions now too though?”

  “Jeffrey, do you have to nitpick here? Computer, no computer, partial computer -- the service . . . indirectly . . . offered the ability to fudge her scores. Is that plain enough?”

  “What’d she get?”

  “She got a 1490. That apparently counterbalanced her GPA, which was barely a 3.0.”

  “Hmm. That wouldn’t have done it alone, I don’t think,” Chris said. “My neighbor’s kid? When I was in Petaluma? He said you needed at least a 4.0 for the UC system these days, regardless of your SAT scores.”

  “Fine . . . that further demonstrates the value of the service, does it not?”

  Chris said, “Dang, I can’t say that it doesn’t . . . even myself -- I’m getting off track here, but I had a friend I was trying to get accepted there, under special circumstances -- and in hindsight I guess it was a pipe dream -- but I had a guy helping, influential alum, connected up the wazoo -- not just at UCLA but other places -- and that didn’t work.”

  This was Rosie of course, and Chandler the one trying to help out, though admittedly Chandler told Chris in the beginning that it wouldn’t work, unless Chris possibly went through a service that was helping some people over the hurdle, the way Chandler understood it, and that he couldn’t recommend the service pro or con, didn’t know enough about it, but suspected there was some risk involved . . . and son of a gun, this would have been right in the middle of the Orange County scandal when it was still quiet, before the indictments came . . . and man, that’s all Chris would have needed.

  He said, “What I’m hearing, you forked over cash in good faith, to a legitimate enterprise . . . You didn’t bribe anybody . . . You didn’t enlist anybody to score your daughter’s exams . . . It’s not your business, how the enterprise handled it from there.”

  Karolina said, “That was my thought. All along. What’s the basketball expression -- no harm, no done?”

  “No harm, no foul. I get the idea.”

  “And,” she said, “as you’ve been seeing for yourself, in the news, that’s not good enough.”

  Chris knew she was right of course, and no doubt if he racked his brain he could think of cases he’d heard of, or maybe even knew someone involved in -- where ignorance doesn’t count for jack, defense-wise.

  He said, “But whether it should have been your business or not, this place is in southern California, right? The one in question, that’s all over the news?”

  “Yes. So again, I’m flying under the radar at the moment . . . And I don’t expect you to be able to relate this. But have you ever tried sleeping at night, fearful that it’s only a matter of time before the law puts two and two together and closes in on you?”

  Ouch. You got that right lady. If you only knew the half of it. But Chris said, “No. When you put it that way, I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

  “Thank you Jeff. Can you help me?”

  “Whoa. Just like that?”

  “You already told me, Reba considers you an idea person.”

  “Yeah, well. I appreciate you running it by me. I guess. I mean, that at least demonstrates a connection beyond the pickleball world.”

  It wasn’t much of a joke, and either way she didn’t get it. “The worst thing?” she said. “What one might term, your ultimate irony?”

  “Oh boy. What?”

  “Sabrina doesn’t even like it there.”

  “Umm.”

  “A lady friend? Who I play in a 5.0 tennis league with, over in Anthem?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Her daughter is friendly with Sabrina. She told her mom, Sabrina pulls no punches, on social media, that it’s not her cup of tea.”

  “Give her time, probably,” Chris said. “Where are we here . . . coming up on the end of her first year?”

  “You say that,” Karolina said. “You’re not the one’s gonna need to put a gun to her head, get her to go back.”

  “Don’t anticipate. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

  “My friend’s daughter, she said Sabrina posts videos from her dorm room. Complaining . . . The nerve. It’s not enough to whine, she has to show the world, as well? . . .You can the see the furniture in the background, even the poster on the wall that I gave her as good luck, when we moved her in.”

  “What is it?”

  “What difference does it make? It’s an old black and white photo, skyscraper construction in New York City.”

  “Wait -- the guys on the open beam? Taking a break? Sitting there smoking and yakking away like they’re on a picnic? Except they’re 60-some stories up?”

  “Yes, that one . . . So we confronted her over spring break, Victor and I. All she tells us, she has this boyfriend, off campus, he’s an intern in the movie business, in Culver City. Her mission -- should she decide to accept it -- is move in with the clown, and veg out.”

  “Now you’re joking around. The line from Mission Impossible . . . I’m older than you, by a long shot, but when I was a kid, the tail end, did you know that guy also played on the Saturday morning western show Fury?”

  “I thought I read that was his brother.”

  “Wrong. The brother was on Gunsmoke . . . what you’re saying though, your daughter, they go through that. The grass is greener somewhere else. And you know what? It might be, for now. Why not let her figure it out?”

  Karolina said, “Why not, you ask? How about, because I’m going to jail either way? -- and I might as well get my money’s worth? Does that work?”

  Chris said, “As an answer? Not really. Because you need to calm down and think clearly. You’re not going anywhere. You’re not under the radar, you’re off it . . . if you even remotely should have been on it. Which is dubious.”

  He put his index finger under
her chin, and gently guided her to look him in the eye. “Okay?” he said.

  “Do you promise?” she said softly, kind of breaking your heart now actually, like a little girl talking, being tucked in by a parent, reassured that there was no boogey-man in the closet.

  Chris said, “Now you’re putting me on the spot.”

  “Speaking of spots,” Karolina said, “we’re meeting this evening. You know, the extended group. In case you’re interested. Spa No 4. To ease the joints and so forth.”

  “Same time, same channel?” Chris said.

  “That’s the plan,” Karolina said.

  Chapter 9

  Chris went back and showered and took a deep nap and when he woke up he was real stiff, no getting around it, and he did end up in a couple hot tubs that afternoon, the main one by the diving pool and later No 3 behind the rec center, which offered a nice view of the 8th fairway of the golf course . . . if you used your imagination and considered any of that natural.

  The bottom line being, he wasn’t going to join the crew for the apparent liaison tonight that you’d assume was being kicked off again by the warm up act Karolina mentioned in Spa No 4.

  That shit was just too weird, honestly. Even though everyone looked fine, a relatively friendly and wholesome bunch, at least on the surface.

  Chris remembered picking up a hitchhiker one time near Klamath Falls, and it wasn’t a long trip, the guy was more or less local, and Chris dropped him within an hour, but the guy was a talker and by the time they got there Chris had the guy’s life story, and the guy’s girlfriend’s too, whether he wanted it or not. There were a few people out front on a porch when Chris said so-long to the guy, and the women were not unattractive, and Chris put it together that it was some kind of communal situation, like an extension of the free love movement out of the 60’s.

  Which may or may not have qualified as swinging, the Klamath Falls people’s particular lifestyle, but it was certainly creative.

  Chris hadn’t thought about picking up that hitchhiker in years, but then a reality show came on, an ordinary looking suburban neighborhood in Cincinnati, regular-enough humans populating it -- but then there were a couple of designated houses where some of them congregated from time to time, and the lifestyle flourished.

  The show didn’t quite go R-rated on you, it mostly chronicled the build up -- the before and after, Chris supposed, the couples’ normal lives in between -- but then there was something in the news that the show got pulled because of complaints from normal neighbors who didn’t participate in any of that and weren’t fans of the new characterization of the neighborhood.

  And who knows, the whole thing may have been staged anyway, there was a bit of an improbable element to it, wasn’t there.

  After the first episode -- not the TV one, but the hot tub one the other night right here in the Rancho Villages Spa Number 4, the appetizer part of them heading back to Waylon’s -- out of curiosity Chris looked up the subject of swinging -- who wouldn’t at that point?

  It was semi-interesting. As he suspected the practice stemmed from a free love revolution in the heyday of the ‘60s.

  As you might expect, the movement justified itself in a few ways that seemed shaky. One was some couples saw swinging as a healthy outlet, a means to strengthen their relationship.

  Chris started thinking what the current hot-tubbers were doing may not be technically ‘swinging’ after all, since none of them were apparently in relationships with each other. In fact to make it ‘swinging’, you’d assume for example Karolina would bring Victor, and then of course pass him around.

  But whatever.

  Another interesting theory was that swinging got going among Air Force pilots and their wives during World War 2. The thought being -- the mortality rate of those pilots was high, and therefore tight bonds developed between pilot families, with the unwritten understanding that the male pilots would take care of the other wives -- emotionally and sexually -- if they were to lose their husbands.

  Chris was thinking, with all due respect to the military, this sounds a bit crackpot, like a sneaky way for a guy to get his hands on another guy’s wife. But who knows.

  A recent study was cited as well, where 60 percent of the time swinging improved the relationship -- and Chris figured how could that be -- but he did wonder if he was taking too prudish a view of the real world.

  There was also a movie ‘Swingers’, a semi-comedy out of the ‘90s which Chris never saw, but hey, you might take a look sometime.

  The rub there was: you had a guy who gets dumped in New York, moves to LA, is badly depressed and misses the dumper . . . so his friends coax him into an impromptu trip to Las Vegas, where he succeeds in picking up two waitresses. But his obsession with the dumper gets in the way.

  He finally connects with someone on ‘swing night’ at a Hollywood night club, and when the dumper calls him out of the blue, he finds he doesn’t miss her anymore.

  Hmm . . . after reading the little blurb, Chris was thinking they should let me help ‘em with these scripts, that fine, maybe the movie made money, but Jeez, where’s the punch line here?

  Though he couldn’t resist, he took a peek at Netflix just in case, and no, ‘Swingers’ wasn’t listed . . . and he did find it on YouTube but they wanted $4.99 from you, so Chris said forget it, and decided -- what was going on at the Ranchos, not withstanding -- that he’d learned more about swinging by now than he needed to know.

  ***

  There was of course another reality show Chris enjoyed a few years ago, this one good, wholesome G-rated material.

  What it was, you had one specific family struggling with the changing economy -- which Chris was guessing was around 2010? -- but the point being, that one did feel real, every moment of every episode. Or at least Chris wanted it to be real. He got swept up in the emotions of the characters, the dad especially, and he cried once or twice along with the guy when a scene undeniably did call for it.

  That family drama -- Chris supposed that’s why he was here right now. The family lived nearby, allegedly, north of Phoenix, different suburb but the set-up was the same, a similar planned community with pools and golf and the other amenities -- though the difference was the family was renting now because they’d gotten foreclosed on their booming property up in the hills someplace, and likely on their vacation house too.

  You had to give the dad his due, he’d been a high-end builder and the bottom dropped out of the market almost overnight . . . and the guy was reduced to walking around the neighborhood knocking on doors and asking people if they needed any handyman services.

  At one point the transmission goes in the family vehicle, and there’s the guy out in the garage in the middle of the night laying on his back underneath it, trying to figure out how to install a new one.

  So yeah, Chris admired these people, and the lifestyle out here made an impression on him too, so not a huge surprise out of the whole 50 states that he ended up here back when Ned stopped by that first time and suggested they lay low for a while. Chris knew it was a long shot, but that time out here he hoped to somehow run into the reality show dad, but apparently the family had moved by then to Texas, the home-building economy in better shape down there and the dad apparently making a comeback.

  All that aside . . . bottom line tonight, despite the generous offer from Karolina of Spa 4 and undoubtedly someone’s condo to follow . . . Chris went back after his double hot tub treatment and stretched out with a little Netflix . . . and sure, part of you missed being around the action on a Saturday night, but the flip side, Eclipse was also teaching you that doing nothing was okay too -- if you didn’t compare it to anything.

  ***

  Sunday morning Chris almost forgot that he had to work today, the golf course gig. But worse, they were having a charity event, and you’d have to figure it was on account of Waylon.

  Chris’s boss, nice enough guy otherwise named Gibbs, who admittedly did a fine job maintaining the golf situati
on -- but he was one of those guys who was enamored with celebrities, no matter how slight their status.

  There’d been a guy and his wife renting here for a couple weeks last December, and Gibbs found out the guy once briefly played keyboards for Bruce Sprinsteen on the road in the late 70’s when the main guy couldn’t make it -- and that main guy might be Danny Federici, who Chris had heard of.

  At any rate, Gibbs rolled out the red carpet for the guy, and it sounded over the top and the guy was apparently embarrassed by it. After all he just wanted a little R and R. But Gibbs first of all gave him free golf and food and beverages for the whole stay, and he got a Phoenix TV station involved, and then there was an autograph session and a luncheon with a bunch of local dignitaries -- and when it was over the keyboard guy was probably never so relieved to get out of Arizona.

  So today, yep, you had an NFL charity golf event, that anyone could enter for a hundred bucks, and there were handicaps and a complicated format, but the gist was you could also opt to pay relatively big bucks to be in a foursome with one of the ex-NFL stars.

  And you would use the term stars loosely, like with Waylon, who fine, lasted the 8 years in the league, but was a career backup.

  Today Chris was reading the event brochure on his way over there, and you had Carlton Webb, a defensive back/kick returner who played with Kansas City in the 90’s. You had Mal Bolton, a wide receiver with the Saints maybe 15 years ago, who, okay, Chris did remember making a big catch in a playoff game that Chris had a little money riding on. But again, that may have been the highlight of the guy’s career, you never heard much about him before or after that play. Frank Fritsckie, a nose tackle with the Lions in the 90’s, pretty obscure. And Joaquin Washington, a running back with the Bears in the early 2000’s.

  Washington was the first guy Chris spotted when he got to work, and the guy did look pretty dang good, like he could still play. He was horsing around with Bolton and Waylon in front of the rental table that Chris typically manned, and the guy moved with an easy grace like he was floating and could change direction on a dime -- which was ironic because this guy of all of them could have been a true star but suffered a devastating knee injury on Monday Night Football and tried to come back but was never the same.