32 Cadillacs

Chapter thirty-two

If it isn’t raining in Seattle, it’s overcast. In fact, a publisher who wanted an aerial panorama for a book jacket once had to wait eight months just to get a clear day for the picture.

Take today: overcast, moist, but not raining; none was forecast until after the weekend. Which suited Big John Charleston right down to the waterlogged ground. Scraped out of the piney woods by his bulldozers here southeast of Seattle on Maple Hill Road, Big John had a subdivision he’d figured for a sure thing. Urban refugees fleeing California for the good life in God’s country, what did they care about a few trees got axed to give them space? How could he miss?

But despite a hell of a lot of money paid under the table to various officials, the permits and zoning and environmental impact studies had taken so long that the goddam recession had its claws in when he’d been ready to roll. So Big John had fifty lots all platted out, sewer and utilities in, roads dozed and graded for blacktopping — but no buyers. Not even Californians.

He needed loan extensions from the banks, but to show the project was viable he had to pre-sell lots, which meant paved streets. And now the goddam envirofreaks were double-dipping for a second share, and there was an injunction against him getting any more work done until some other goddam study had been made. Well, screw that. He’d do it anyway — except that all the local contractors, knowing he was broke, wouldn’t work on the cuff.

“We got assets.” Little Johnny was Big John’s son by his first wife, and, sadly, a mere sliver, not a chip, off the old block. “We got this model house done and three others framed, and the lake and the park and the golf course staked out—”

“We got dirt fucking streets is what we got.” Big John was the size of the late John Wayne, whom he would have resembled if Wayne had worn Jay Leno’s outsized jaw. “It starts raining and the streets turn to mud and we turn to mud.”

“Joe Adams Road Paving, Inc., is really big down in Los Angeles, Pa. Really big. He’s got prospectuses and photographs of jobs he’s done, ten times the size of ours. His specialty is getting in and getting the job done before the environmentalists can get a restraining order. He says even after they got one, like with us, it’s awful tough to tear up paved streets once they’ve been laid. He’s just moving into the Northwest, that’s why he’s willing to give us such a good deal.”

“But he wants the whole sixty thousand cash money up front,” said Big John, “and we got thirty thousand eight hundred sixty-one dollars and twenty-two cents in the corporate account.”

“Maybe offer him half down, Pa, give him the rest after we get the bank loans renegotiated. Meanwhile, all the streets in the subdivision will be blacktopped and ready for buyers—”

“Shut up. Lemme think.”

Big John heaved himself to his feet with a grunt, went to stand in the open doorway of the sales office in the model house. Overhead was the huge illuminated billboard Little Johnny had insisted would catch the eye of motorists passing on Highway 169:

He rubbed Jay Leno’s massive jaw. Southern California road contractor. Designer jeans and dark glasses, prolly driving some shitty little foreign bug a real man couldn’t hardly get his butt into. But here Big John was, with an unfinished subdivision would belong to the bank if he didn’t get those streets paved. So his kid’s $30,000 down wasn’t such a bad idea.

“We’ll see,” he said at last. He had no other options.

A filthy mud-spattered pale blue Cadillac Seville STS, the new one winning all those auto mag best-car-of-the-year awards, swung in from the highway. California plates, on the door the silhouette of a big black bird with the tips of its spread wings going off into ribbons of blacktop road. Below that:

A very fat man got out of the Seville. He wore a stained blue workshirt with the arms cut off above the biceps and khaki work pants riding low under a balloon belly. The bottom two buttons on the shirt had strained open, showing a tepee of hairy skin with a navel deep enough to hide a golf ball. His neck was thick and his arms enormous and sweat stood on a face too shrewd for one so fat. He stuck out his hand.

“Joe Adams.”

Big John took the hand. “Big John Charleston,” he said.

Truth be told, Big John liked everything he saw. Even drove American, not Japanese. No flash — hell, construction game, a man needed a heavy car to drive around in — not afraid to get dirty, not afraid to put a sign on the door of his car. But Big John crossed belligerent arms over his own wide torso.

“That’s a substantial amount of money you want. Ain’t any way I’m gonna pay the whole contract off up front in cash.”

Adams had a heavy, almost guttural voice that went with his massive physique. “There’s reasons I’m askin’ for that.”

“I’d like to hear ’em.”

Adams gestured at Little Johnny, hovering behind his pa like a family dog waiting to be told whether he’s going to be allowed to ride in the car or not.

“I thought I made ’em clear to your boy there.”

“Make ’em clear to me, too.”

“Primo, you’re in trouble with your bank.” Big John swung around to glare dangerously at his son; Adams put up a detaining hand. “Not him. I got connections, even up here in Shitburg.”

“You mean God’s country,” chanted Little Johnny in the Northwest’s knee-jerk mantra about their heavenly land.

“Yeah? All God does up here is piss on a flat rock.”

“No rain’s slated ’til Monday,” said Big John literally.

“Good. I can finish the job by then, and our work is guaranteed. In writing. Second, you got the Greenies breathin’ down your neck. But Joe Adams, Inc., Contractors, we just do it — and once it’s in, it’s hard to tear out. That’s why we can undercut anyone else’s bid by fifty percent. And that’s why we get our money up front.”

Unfortunately, Big John still had only half the needed cash. But then Little Johnny surprised him with, “It isn’t good business to pay you up front for a job you haven’t even started.”

“Tell you what,” said Joe Adams. “Thirty thousand Monday morning, the other half in sixty days. Fair enough?”

Yes indeed! Big John was proud of his son for the first time in the kid’s miserable weak-kneed life. All he had to do was figure out a way to hold this guy off on the second $30,000 until he could scratch up the dough. He stuck out his hand.

“Couldn’t be fairer,” he rumbled.

As Joe Adams drove away from BIG JOHn’s BIG BUNGALOWS up in Seattle, down in L.A. Ken Warren was turning his company car into the Sherman Oaks Inn on Ventura and Coldwater. Ignoring the office, he went down the sloping drive and turned left, as Kearny had instructed, to check the under-the-building parking stalls.

“There they are,” said Trin Morales.

Next to the end wall was Dona Dulcinea’s Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. In the stall this side of it was Adam Wells’s Seville. They’d flip a coin to see who had to tow the company car back up north. But Morales spoke abruptly.

“I’m staying over.” He dug an elbow into Warren’s ribs. “Just came down ’cause I got a little chiquita lined up, ’course I couldn’t tell Kearny that. You drive one Caddy back up, tow the other — I’ll keep the company car. Got it, dummy?”

Without answering, Ken Warren got his towbar from the trunk and tried the key Kearny had given him for the Seville. It worked. Kearny’s other key worked in the Fleetwood. Only then did he turn back to Morales.

“Hndon’ cat’th AIDTH,” he said.

The others had already left when the nigger showed up. Wasn’t nothin’ wrong with niggers playin’ wide-out for the Seahawks, say, goin’ long for them bombs and them Hail Marys. But not around Big John’s subdivision. Hell no. Niggers was lazy and couldn’t keep their eyes and hands off your women.

This one was a little feller, couldn’t go over 160 pounds, but had the widest shoulders Big John’d ever seen on a man his size. Stood looking around the staked-out subdivision under the lowering skies, clipboard in hand.

“Looks like you’re going to have some road-paving work done,” he said pleasantly. “All graded and ready to go.”

Big John fisted his hand around the roll of nickels he’d gotten from the desk drawer before coming down the steps.

“Ain’t any work, that’s what you’re after.”

“Not looking.”

“They’re all sold, closed escrow on the last one yestiday.”

“Before the streets are in,” marveled the nigger. “Before the houses are even framed up. In a recession economy. You’re a hell of a salesman, Mr. Charleston.”

“You gettin’ wise-ass with me, boy?”

The nigger just shook his black poll and said, “Wouldn’t know where I could find your paving contractor, would you?”

“Joe Adams? Try his office.”

“Which is...” Ballpoint poised.

“In Seattle.” Big John chortled at his own wit, then demanded abruptly, “What ya wanna see him about, boy?”

“I’m with the State Contractors Licensing Commission...” Big John put a hasty hand in his pocket to deposit the roll of nickels there. “Question of whether he has the necessary permits and has paid the necessary fees.” He was looking into Big John’s eyes for the first time, and there was unexpected steel in his gaze. “We don’t want him to do any road paving here on your subdivision until it’s cleared up. Do you understand?”

The nigger obviously didn’t know about the Greenies’ injunction against any work being done on the subdivision.

“I most surely do,” said Big John evenly.

He’d keep away from the job over the weekend, in case this guy did come around and catch Adams paving without a permit. And just to be sure he’d... But he stopped his hand on its way to his money clip. The nigger somehow looked like a bribe offer might not set too well with him. And hell, wasn’t no need. No gov’ment pussy’d ever worked the weekend in the entire history of bureaucracy, and the paving would be done by Monday.

Which gave Big John his really brilliant idea.

Make sure this pansy coon came around with his pansy little clipboard on Monday, after the job was finished, so he’d arrest Adams, at least shut him down for operating without a permit. Maybe Big John’d get himself a $60K job for zero K bucks.

“Mr. Adams plans to start work on the project first thing Monday morning,” he said. “You can catch him here then.”

Bart Heslip drove away satisfied. Josef Adamo indeed was in Seattle, calling himself Joe Adams. And would be out here at this subdivision Monday morning bright and early in his Seville.

But as he headed north on Empire Way, Bart got thoughtful. Big John Charleston had been too cooperative. What if the work was going to be done over the weekend, not next week?

Considering that rain was forecast for Monday, and considering what he’d learned that day going around to recyclers and paint wholesalers in the greater Seattle area, he’d hold off until Monday. He laughed aloud as he jinked over to the I–5 skyway that would take him all the way up to Seattle Center.

Monday was going to be a whole lot of fun.

Bart didn’t like bigots any more than bigots liked him.

“Sir, you can’t leave those cars there fastened together like that... sir!” Ken Warren, already out of the Fleetwood, just waited. “You’ll have to uncouple them to park them here.”

Fair enough. Ken bent to the task of getting the Seville off the towbar. He had taken U.S. One up through Big Sur to see firsthand the post-quake repairs they had made on the highway. Had seen HIGHLANDS INN, below that, Pacific s Edge Restaurant, on a sudden urge had snaked the linked Cadillacs up the one-way blacktop drive to the restaurant looking out over the vast sweep of Pacific. He’d always wanted to eat in one of these fancy places, and Kearny had given him a raise and promised all his expenses on this trip would be paid besides... So why not?

The trouble was his towbar. New, it had cost him $396.83 including sales tax, and he just knew every son of a bitch in the world would like to steal it. So he wrapped the towbar in an old horse blanket he found in the trunk of the Seville, left the keys with the blond-headed car-parker, and sauntered across a tiled patio filled with fragrant flowers and green sprays of foliage and small carefully tended trees in great terra-cotta pots.

Inside Pacific’s Edge were thick carpets and a two-tiered dining room with low redwood-beamed ceilings and slanted skylights of tinted glass. He paused at the reservation table. A beautiful brunette with Betty Boop curls dancing beside her cheeks stared up at him in undisguised astonishment.

Seeing heavy boots, blue-check shirt, thick moleskin trousers resistant to the battery acids often encountered when hotwiring under the hood. Smears of grease on his face and hands. Cradling something metal and lumpy wrapped in a horse blanket as if it were a baby rescued from a Dumpster.

To her, Ken Warren looked big, dumb, and dangerous.

And sexy. She asked faintly, “May I... help you, sir?”

“Hndinna,” he got out.

She shivered slightly. She could just feel this inarticulate tree falling on her in the night, but Ken didn’t notice. He was staring out over the tops of the down-slope trees outside, awed by the incredible sunset dying on the Pacific rim.

“Dinner for one? Very good, sir. Ah... would you like to check your...” She wasn’t quite sure what sort of metal monster he was clutching to his chest, but it looked vaguely automotive. Ken shook his head, so she added brightly, “I’m sure your, um, will be safe at your table, sir.”

Heads turned, heads were shaken, as Ken followed her down to the very front corner of the lower level in front of the wide picture windows. She didn’t care. She was feeling a tingle in the loins very like that felt by Pietro Uvaldi after Ken had slapped him in the face and wrenched the shotgun away from him.

A waiter in crisp black and white showed up to hold Ken’s chair for him. Before sitting down, Ken put his towbar very carefully in the chair facing him across the pastel tablecloth.

“Would you like something from the bar to start, sir?”

Ken shook his head conscientiously. He was driving. The waiter nodded and handed him a menu. “Enjoy your meal,” he said.

Ken did. The kind of meal he hadn’t known existed. His appetizer was a seafood carpaccio served with Chinese black beans, his entree a brochette of scallops and shrimp on a spicy cilantro parsley beurre blanc. The salad had flowers in it — actual flowers! His raspberries were the best he’d ever tasted.

When he finally left the restaurant, he gave his last $20 bill to the hostess. He didn’t get home until four in the morning, making it only by siphoning gas from the Seville into the Fleetwood’s tank — the dinner had taken his cash, all of it.

Maybelle woke up when he dragged into the apartment; they sat up until dawn as she extracted from him every last bit of his adventure. Then a crazy thing happened. She threw her big fat mammy arms around him and hugged him close and wept down his shirt. Good tears. The kind they cry in romance novels.

Craziest of all, Ken found himself crying right along with her.