Stephen Cannell - The Pallbearers

… all kinds of things."

She looked right into my eyes. "The higher the RCL, the more the state pays. It can go from as low as four thousand a child per month to in excess of six."

She struggled again to hold back her tears. "Walt was such a dreamer," she continued. "Like him telling you we were gonna get that Astroturf, or rubberized grass, whatever the hell. That was gonna cost us over two hundred thousand to buy and install. There was no way we could afford that.

"We'd been getting almost six thousand per child, but then we lost Dr. Logan to a better job, and our clinical psychologist quit to have a baby. We were running short of money from the state. I know six thousand a month for each kid sounds like a lot, but there's a lot to maintain. There's plain overhead-staff salaries, insurance, food, schoolbooks, medical… it goes on and on.

"Anyway, we didn't want our RCL lowered, so we stupidly didn't report the drop in staff positions to the CDSS. Two of the staff we lost had doctorates and that figured big in our high RCL rating. At the same time, we lost one or two other people, so our staff-to-child ratio took a big hit as well. We were trying to keep it a secret 'til we worked our way out of it.

"Then, last Christmas, they retroactively lowered our RCL and the state auditor came after us. They demanded a repayment check of almost half a million dollars. We didn't have it. Worse still, with our lowered RCL, we went from six thousand to four thousand per child. This place just couldn't run on that.

"Like I said, Creative Solutions is a nonprofit and didn't want to take the loss. They were thinking about closing the home. Just a few days before Pop died, the California Department of Social Services notified us that because of us not telling them the truth about our staff changes, they'd become suspicious of everything and CDSS was about to do a full audit. Walt knew there were even more problems that a state audit would discover. He just couldn't deal with it."

"And that's why he burned the office before he committed suicide," I said. "To destroy the records?"

"Maybe." She wiped another slow-moving tear away. "I don't know. I don't want to believe he'd burn this place. I also don't want to believe he'd kill himself."

"Me neither."

"But what can we do about it?" she said, shrugging her shoulders in a gesture of defeat.

"Let me mull it over. I'll come up with something."

Good-bye Waikiki.

Half an hour later, I found myself on the second floor of Sharon Cross Hall, looking into my old room at a scowling black kid who was about nine. He was sitting on a bunk holding a first-basemans glove and wearing his Little League uniform. Across his chest, it said "Astros."

"Looks like you had a game," I said.

"My team had a game. I didn't get there 'cause all the vans were at the funeral. They wouldn't let the young kids go to the church to see Pop off. Some county shrink thought it was bad for our emotional development."

I wandered into the room and he stood up immediately. He didn't want me in here. His posture was confrontational, even menacing.

"This is my crib, Chuck," he said. It wasn't quite a threat because I outweighed him by a buck fifty. Call it a statement of fact, fiercely delivered.

"This used to be my room a long time ago," I told him, trying to ease the tension with some common ground. "Lemme show you something." I walked over to the painted wood cabinet. I opened it and looked for some words I'd carved in the paint on the back of the door over a quarter of a century ago. Of course they weren't there anymore. I looked over at the Astros' first baseman. "Guess it got sanded off," I said stupidly. "It used to say, Tuck everybody. S. S.' S. S. is me, Shane Scully."

"Fact that you lived in this room ain't nothing to brag about," he said sourly. "Just tells me you're another fucked-up loser like the rest of us."

I let that go and turned to face him. "So how 'bout you?" I asked.

"How 'bout me, what?"

"You think Pop killed himself?"

"No way."

"You seem sure."

"Hey, Scully… That's what you called yourself?"

I nodded and he continued. "Only cowards take that ride. Pop was no coward. 'Sides, he's been helpin' me look for my real people. My mom and shit. Two years we been doin' it. He even spent some of his own money on a lawyer guy who wrote up some papers. We were gonna make the court tell us where I came from. He wouldn't check out, leaving me holding dirt."

I nodded. "Probably not."

I turned to go, then stopped in the door and looked back. "What's your name?"

"What's it to you?" he scowled. "'Cause I don't need no new-friend. Friends are just people who hang on ya and drag ya down."

I left the little cynic standing there. He was a living, breathing example of my own anger when I was his age. The Little League player in my old room had finally pushed me over the edge. I was now absolutely ready to get away from here.

I started looking for Vicki Lavicki to take me home and found out from Diamond that she'd received a call and had to leave.

"How do I get home then?" I wondered aloud. "She set up another ride for you before she left," Diamond informed me. "Who's that?"

"That'd be me, dude," a voice said.

I turned and found Jack Straw standing right behind me, grinning insolently.

I followed Straw into the parking lot and over to his red and black Harley Softail.

"You know how to ride one of these?" he asked.

"I've ridden Harleys," I told him.

"No helmets. Sorry, but with you being Kive-O, I'm figuring, we don't get busted."

"That what you're figuring?"

He smiled, giving me another look at the boxed front tooth.

"Venice, right?"

"Yeah."

"Lotta freaks live in Venice," he said, straddling the bike and straightening the ape hangers as he stuck the key in the ignition just above the gas tank.

"They got worse freaks in CCI," I replied. "At least in Venice you don't have to shower with your back to the wall."

"What makes you think I was in California Corrections?" he asked, smiling slightly.

"Don't tempt me, Jack."

He laughed and said, "Okay. Hop on then."

I got on the bike behind him and told him, "Quickest way is to take the 110 to the 405 and get off on Venice Boulevard."

"Just hold on and try not to fall off. Til get us there." Then he jacked the starter.

He ignored my instructions completely and took side streets almost all the way to Venice. The Pacific Ocean stayed on our left, winking in and out of view as we headed northwest. I leaned back on the chickie stick to keep his long hair from flapping in my face and tried to enjoy the ride. But Jack was having fun with me and kept swerving abruptly to pass cars so I had to grab on to him or the seat rail. Occasionally when he turned the ape hangers, I could see him in the handlebar mirror. He was either smiling or trying to catch bugs in his teeth.

We finally made it to my house in Venice. He pulled into the alley in back, then shut down the bike and dismounted. I climbed off and straightened my rumpled suit jacket.

"How 'bout a beer?" he said, inviting himself in.

"What'd you do your time for?" I asked.

"Home invasion. Couple a armed robberies. I pled them out and both got kicked down to straight burgs."

"And you think I'm gonna invite you into my house?"

"Listen, Scully. If I was gonna rob a place, I wouldn't choose some clapboard shoe box on a sewage canal."

I could see that Alexa hadn't made it home yet because the MDX wasn't in the drive. She was still at Parker Center polishing her already-clean desk. She's compulsive about her job. Even so, I didn't want to invite Jack Straw inside. I'd had more than enough of him already.