Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

“But I need you to go through with the main event Markus. It’ll be a classic ticker tape parade, as good as Stagger Bay can give you. We’re going to have live network coverage, TV bigwigs are going to host it, and some heavyweights from Sacramento and Washington are planning to show up, hand you some awards and medals, and use it for a photo op for themselves as well. This is very important for everyone involved. Important for you, Markus.

“When you join up with us, I admit we’ll pimp your celebrity to buy a little more credibility, have you front for us doing meet-and-greets with potential investors. You’ll pump some hands and pretend to laugh at some pretty corny jokes – but you’ll also be well taken care of, I promise. You’ll be part of the payday, son – part of the family. You’ll be on the inside for once, and I think you’ve come to realize just how big a stick we swing around here.”

I considered his words as I watched the flickering sidelong glances of the murmuring people keeping their distance. I’d rolled in here wanting to hate and despise these people. Maybe I’d expected them to be clutching cigars in their trotters and oinking together in glee like the hogs in Animal Farm, I couldn’t tell you.

But now that I was face to face with them? Just like with the cops at the deposition, I couldn’t deny our common humanity.

Maybe these club members were on the other side of the tracks from where I’d spent my entire life. Maybe they were disconnected from the lives and concerns of the middle class blue collars dependent on them for a paycheck. Maybe they looked the other way whenever they saw anyone living on the rock bottom of the American underbelly.

But they were as worried about their income as anyone on their payroll. These club folk had as much to lose as anyone in the Gardens, and further to fall if the current development failed.

If they weren’t in with the Driver, they weren’t automatically my enemies. But just how many of these club folk knew about the Driver, and thought he was good for business?

I turned to study Tubbs. Jim and the others were afraid of this hillbilly kingpin. Just why did these people kowtow so hard to him?

Tubbs grimaced at my assessing expression. “You keep looking at me like you’re judging,” he said, coming close to breaking his stated rule against complaint.

He kept his voice low, and his eyes tracked all the others in the room as he spoke. “Grow up, Markus. You think I don’t know they’re buying Stagger Bay from under us? You saying we should just give up without getting our end? The newcomers are gonna own it all anyways. We just need to make sure we’re not out in the cold when it’s over. You either rule here or you serve; there’s no middle ground in Stagger Bay anymore. It’s time to make your choice which one you’ll do, son.”

I looked around the club house, keying in on the signs of dissolution that hadn’t been apparent when we first walked in: a halo of flies buzzed in the void just below the high vaulted ceiling. Beneath the splendor of that Persian rug, the hardwood floors were cracked and sun-faded despite their wax and polish. A background sense of gimcrackery and decay wafted from beneath this club’s expensive, tempting veneer.

“You’re being selfish here, Markus,” Tubbs accused quietly, mistaking my meditative expression for the default stubbornness I’d gotten him accustomed to since our first meeting.

“There’s others you might want to be thinking of besides your own stiff-necked self.” He looked away from me out the window, jerking his chin toward Sam’s Lincoln across the street. I followed Tubbs’s gaze to see Sam staring right at me, white-faced.

But Sam couldn’t really see me in here, could he? No, I thought, stepping back away from the window – the sun had to be reflecting off the pane to conceal me; I had to be invisible to my son.

“Think about it, Markus,” Tubbs said, sounding like he was pleading. “You could buy Sam’s way out of his current sorry financial position. You could put your child through college, help him kick start a business, help him buy a house when he starts his own family.”

Oh God, that one hit me right where I lived, I’ll tell you. Tubbs might as well have punched me in the solar plexus.

Right now me and Sam were two drowning men; but I could let my son step up on my shoulders and thrust me down into the watery depths so he could have his chance at gulping air in the sunlight for a little while longer. Sam could maybe even get a leg up into the boat of prosperity, where he’d be sitting pretty as he and his fellow passengers watched the rest of us tread water around them.

So what if me sinking to the bottom was the price for my son’s salvation? Who cares Sam didn’t like me?

But after he turned his back on his friends and me, my son would live alone with whatever pile of money he managed to scrabble together after I gave him his jump start. He’d have no people to care whether he lived or died.

“I want to sincerely thank you for putting things in perspective Mr. Tubbs,” I said.

He continued to radiate some kind of pseudo-familial fondness at me, as if he wished me and mine no harm at all. If he hadn’t aimed my gaze out the window at Sam, he just might have had me.

But this club was built on sand, built ofsand. The Club could no more protect these people from meaninglessness than the tool boxes on the pickup trucks driven by Stagger Bay’s construction workers could manufacture salvation. These people were as deeply trapped in this world as anyone else, and there was no escape for any of us.

This club was a gang just like any other gang I’d ever seen, either as a young blood or inside. And just like any other gang I’d ever encountered, once I got in the car with them I wouldn’t belong to myself anymore. I’d belong to them.

This wasn’t where Angela would have wanted me to wear that fancy suit anyway – and Sam would despise me all the way if I ever called this place my own while the Driver was still at large.

“We’ll be talking again later,” I said.

“You are a stubborn stiff-necked fool,” Tubbs said, realizing he’d muffed the sale even if he didn’t know exactly how. “You’ll never really step through this door all the way with me.”

I’d been about to leave but the paternal disappointment oozing from his voice irked me no end. So this withered son of a whore wanted to use Sam to work me? He wanted to keep playing like some sort of surrogate daddy to me?

“I suppose you’ve talked to whoever switched Kendra and Reese’s tours, right?” I asked, keeping my own voice as low as Tubbs was keeping his.

“What do you mean?” he asked, cocking his head.

“Answering a question with a question – go on playing dumb why don’t you? Kendra wasn’t on her normal patrol when she died, I’m sure you know that at least. In case you didn’t know though, about the guys who killed your daughter? A little birdie told me the guns and grenades they murdered Kendra with came from the SBPD evidence locker – the drugs they were high on too. They made a grand old party out of your daughter’s homicide, huh? And it all came from you and yours.”

For the first time that poker face cracked – he went pale. He tried and failed to be impassive, cranking down on his facial muscles hard enough his features twitched.

Still, I leaned in closer, spoke even softer and quieter so he’d have to listen hard and focus exclusively on my words over the hum of the Club. “Kendra was set up. It was a hit. And you know who murdered her.”

Tubbs trembled as both Meshbacks robotically approached, awaiting their master’s command.

“You will tell me who told you that. Now,” Tubbs gasped, his voice harsh and low.