On a Morning from a Bogart Movie

On a Morning from a Bogart Movie

by

Richard Russell

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Sangraal Books

on Smashwords

California Tumbles Into the Sea

Copyright © 2009 by Sangraal, Inc.

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On a morning from a Bogart movie


In a country where they turn back time

- Al Stewart & Peter Wood -Year of the Cat

Prelude -Briefing

Chapter One

Kat jumped on Larry, wrapping her arms around him and making him follow in her dance.

You wiped out and I didn't. You owe me. I want the giraffe at the crossbow shoot.

Larry was rather impressive in trunks. He tried as best he could to get away from that impression dressed. His muscles were defined and the fat in his body was minimal at two hundred and ten and six-four.

Kat was a waif in a tight black one-piece suit. She'd added about ten pounds over the previous month but she hadn't seen quite a hundred yet. Still the suit was tight, and that had only been for the week or so.

Kat was an enigma. For years she functioned as an adult. Even though she wouldn't be fourteen until December. Child of a prostitute who spent her life in a closet when Mom was doing her business, a prostitute herself for almost a year, she had knowledge no child should ever have.

Joey, Larry's wife walked up behind them and grabbed Kat, There may be one more set. You hang five against my ten. If I lose I'll make Larry shoot twice.

Tori, my wife chimed in. I'll take that bet too, I'll hang ten and if I lose Nicky shoots four.

Hey, can we get in on this, like maybe double or nothing, I said. Larry and I hang ten and if we wipe and the girls wipe it's double. I looked over at Ted and Donna, You want in on the last set?

Ted's the worst shot in creation. He and I hang ten or I shoot six, said Donna.

Kat said, All I have to do is hang five? No fair, I hang ten. Larry still shoots and Nicky owes me one, the rest is on me. Come along if you want to it's the last chance and I've got my heroes. If I hang ten, everybody shoots twice.

We all went out, Joey actually hung ten next to Kat trying to help and Larry wiped out trying.

Kat was ecstatic, I hung ten, she yelled.

Several surfers came toward her and she ran back to me.

I picked her up hugged her and spun her around, and whispered, This is surfing Kat, every surfer on the beach is going to hug you. No fear Kat. Love happens the first time you hang ten. I'll watch.

They almost lined up to hug her. One young fellow in a Stanford tee-shirt put a necklace of pull tabs over her neck, dropped to his knees and yelled : All hail the Princess of Steamer Lane.

Kat was flying as we drove to the boardwalk.

On the boardwalk at Santa Cruz there is a carny booth where you get three bolts to shoot from a crossbow at a paper target. If you can shoot out the bull's eye, you win a six-foot tall stuffed giraffe. Of course it takes four perfect shots to shoot out the bull's eye completely so the game is really won a bit differently. You have to be a Johansson.

The carny trick is universal, but you have to get to the owner of the booth to work it initially. The owner of the crossbow booth was Glenn Hernandez, who also owned the Ingemar's Bar and Grill on Neptune. It was best known as the hangout for local Ham radio operators, it got it's name from the fact that some of the radio operators got together and rigged an antenna and a television set to intercept the broadcast aimed at theaters across the country of the first Johansson - Patterson fight. When Johansson won, the Beacon Bar became Ingemar's and the name Johansson the con for the carny booths that had allowed Hernandez to buy the bar.

Gwen, my researcher in New York had given me the information, not only on Santa Cruz, but also on carny cons generally and how they work. So I was prepared when we walked up.

Janine saw us coming, we'd been pigeons all month, every Saturday and Sunday we'd blow ten bucks trying and failing to win a giraffe.

I walked a bit faster and got there in front of everyone. I looked at Janine and said, When does Johansson come on?

She seemed mildly surprised but answered, 'Bout an hour.

I handed her a fifty-dollar bill. The con was now set. What went on is simply that I was a Johansson, someone who was Okayed by the boss as a winner, and basically a shill. The price was determined by what Janine said. Half an hour was a twenty, and two hours was a hundred. I knew the price before I walked up.

I bought the first batch, why don't you start Larry, I said.

Larry had had a bad month. Kat had caught onto surfing like she was born to do it. Larry, an athlete most of his life, had too many bad habits to overcome. He was catching on, but basically was wiping out trying to hang five, and Kat had just hung ten. So even though Larry knew the con, he appreciated me raising his stock with Kat, along with Donna and Ted, the other members of the group who hadn't approached Gwen with the problem at one point or another.

Larry put all three bolts through the bull's eye, as he had done several times before. He was a natural shot and had cultivated it. In Southeast Asia, where we first met, he used to pick up a few extra bucks challenging sharp shooters to tests of marksmanship.

Janine pulled in the target, I watched closely and even then almost missed the switch. She made a show of it, as we had drawn a small crowd. We tend to do that on the beach, especially with the men. Joey is a big girl with white blond hair and everything in perfect proportion; a bronze/gold California surf goddess. Tori was shorter, Italian and looked it, actually like a young Monica Vitti with big blue eyes. And Donna, Ted's wife and the youngest was a petite honey blond with striking hazel eyes. Being with any one of them you got used to men staring. Being with all three, you drew a crowd.

Looks like we've got a winner, Janine yelled so as to be heard up and down the boardwalk. Which one would you like sir? she said to Larry.

Larry reached down picked up Kat and set her on his shoulder. Which one princess?

The yellow one with the pretty eyes, she pointed and Janine got it down for her.

Kat hugged it, I've already got an Aunt Jo, so the giraffe is Joey, like Nicky and Tori call Aunt Jo.

Kat had six stuffed toys on her bed, one for each of us. Aunt Jo was a mermaid with golden hair as long as her body.

We had gotten Kat scuba lessons three days a week. Like surfing, she took to it. She couldn't get certified until she was sixteen, but in every other way, she was a diver, as well as a surfer.

This had caused Tori and I to rethink our honeymoon. We had planned to take my Bronco south, as far south as we could get in two weeks, along the coast, down into Mexico, towing a trailer with our gear and sleeping in my Bronco. But Kat was progressing so well that we started thinking about taking her. Joey and Larry were entertaining similar thoughts for their honeymoon in August, but sleeping in the Bronco raised questions.

Kat was very delicate in this area. About every possible perversion had been practiced on her young body. We were working with two psychologists from the school she would be going to in September, my friend Dr. Ben Cooper and Donna's therapist Adele Jefferson, who Kat saw weekly with Donna.

Physically, Kat had only one problem left over. Malnutrition had her on a special diet for about two weeks until she responded and she was eating normally. She had lived through two cases of venereal disease, but the sadistic lesbian lover of her pimp had scratched the inside of her vagina with a fingernail as a punishment. She was on several pills for three weeks and even now used a daily suppository.

An odd circumstance had arisen when Kat mentioned that both Joey and Donna made noise when they were having sex in a session with Adele Jefferson. No one had realized she heard. We pursued this with all the doctors involved; it frightened us at first that we might be damaging her. Ben Cooper came up with a solution that everyone thought might have benefits. Whenever either couple had sex and it was at all noisy, they would check Kat. If she were awake, they would bring her into bed with them and sleep on either side of her. According to Adele Jefferson, this seemed to help her.

We had discussed the ramifications of her being next to us in the Bronco. Ben seemed to hang it on how she accepted it. If it didn't bother her and she was brought into it afterwards, sleeping between us, it might be a beneficial next step. For most children this would scar them for life. But for Kat, it might be therapy. She needed to see and to accept that two people in love had sex, that it was an expression of love, and that the perversions she had endured were not what sex was.

Larry and Joey had related the first time they tried it.

Once they were all comfortable with Kat between them Kat asked, Why do you do it? It hurts.

Joey said, No it doesn't princess, not when you do it with someone you love.

Larry said, When you really love someone, it's a way to get closer to them, to share between you.

Kat said, Like we're doing here? Close, like this? Because this is the best thing there is. The very best.

So after dinner, we sat in the living room in Ted and Donna's half of the our shared duplex. We all had wine, Kat half a glass. It still bothered Larry, but the rest of us, born and raised in California wine country, out-voted him. I had been shanghaied to open the subject.

Kat, would you like to come with us next week, in the Bronco? You'd have to sleep in the back with Tori and me. Would that make you uncomfortable?

Why? she answered. You and Tori never even have sex.

Tori almost choked on her wine, Why in the world would you think that? she sputtered out.

When Aunt Jo and Uncle Larry or Teddy and Donna make love they make noise. Aunt Jo and Donna make noises and Donna says it is because they're so happy. After that, they come in and get me, and take me to bed with them. And it makes me feel happy and safe. So I listen and hope I hear them. And I hope I hear you, but you never make any happy noises Tori, so you and Nicky don't have sex.

I make happy noises, little one, just not loud ones. Nicky always makes me very happy.

Then it's a gyp. You're supposed to come and get me.

Then it wouldn't bother you to be in the back of the Bronco, if you heard the happy noises I was making with Nicky?

And you'd let me sleep between you, and hold me? And I could hold your hands all night so I'd feel safe?

You can do that in the Bronco every night, princess. You just may have to wait a bit some nights.

Kat ran over to Tori jumped in her lap and hugged her. I think that would be about the best thing ever.

Then she got a shy, crafty look on her face. Gwen told me that Mr. Reilly said he put in something with the court so you and Nicky would really be my mommy and daddy.

I said, We told you that Kat. That Mr. Reilly's lawyers were trying to get your permanent adoption papers.

Well, would that mean I couldn't go in Bronco with Aunt Jo and Uncle Larry in August?

No Kat, said Joey, if it works out with Nicky and Tori, you'll come with us too.

And would it mean I couldn't stay with Donna and Teddy?

Ted answered, No little sister, no matter what happens, you can always stay with Donna and me.

She smiled. Then turned to me. You promise me Nicky, 'cause I won't hear. You promise me that after Tori makes her happy noises, you'll come and get me like Teddy and Uncle Larry.

That night Tori and I tumbled to the center of our spavined twin bed and made love. Tori left the loose giant tee shirts we bought to sleep in after Kat came, because if Kat had a nightmare we didn't want to go in naked, on, she stopped me from taking mine off. She experimented with them to get her breasts against my chest, to move them around to get the most skin to skin contact.

We lay in our normal position afterwards, tangled a bit with her legs grapevineing mine.

What was that about? I asked.

In the Bronco we won't be able to take these off. Now, I seem to remember a promise you made.

It's eleven, she's asleep.

Tori untangled a leg and kicked me in the shin. You promised.

I went into Kat's bedroom, she looked sound asleep, hugging the neck of Joey, the giraffe. I turned to go and heard a little voice behind me: Tori made happy noises.

I turned back and she had her arms out. Carry me like Teddy, she said.I picked her up. Her lightness always surprised me, and hit me in the gut. I'd never really wanted to kill anyone. Even in fire fights, I hoped the enemy would get back to a hospital or somewhere, and survive. But when I picked up Kat, when I realized the pain and degradation forced on this beautiful little girl by one man, former Senator and freelance sicko Robert Prescott, death seemed light, and an easy way out compared to what I would have done to him.

I put Kat in the middle of the bed; Tori and I had to lie on our sides. I raised an eyebrow at Tori and she glared back. Maybe a full size in New York, but well used, she said.

Kat pulled our hands up to her chest and squeezed them. She made a sound, sort of like Hawooo.

What's that princess? I said.

One of Aunt Jo's happy noises.

Chapter Two

We all worked together for Confidential News and World Report. Larry (Lawrence if you believed his door and our boss Harold Reilly who has a phobia against nick-names) Harmon was the west coast editor. My door said Nicholas Carlson - Contributing Editor/Correspondent. Tori Carlson and Josephine Harmon were our researchers, Theodore and Donna Raselli our interns for the summer before beginning San Jose State University. Geraldine Gonzalez was our receptionist/secretary.

A murderer had brought us all together. His name was Ivan Gunnerson, the papers called him the Wine Country Ripper. He had been paid by Robert Prescott to kill the little under aged girls Prescott had used to satisfy his sick perversions when they threatened to reveal his secret. Ted had been convicted of one of Gunnerson's murders, Donna's sister Sheila. I had come back from Southeast Asia after five years as a correspondent, a total burnout when my researcher at Confidential, Gwen Mulrooney arranged things for me to get the story. Tori was Ted's sister, my ex-girlfriend and a girl had been carrying a torch for, in fact, in the words of a friend in Vietnam, a forest fire. Joey was a childhood friend, who had married my best friend in Vietnam, Don Early, Don unfortunately hadn't made it home. Donna was Ted's girlfriend. All of us except Larry had been born and raised in the little wine country town of Annandale, where the Ripper plied his trade.

Kat, who called herself Kimba, had been interviewed by Larry in the series on the Ripper and Prescott. She had run to Larry when threatened by her pimp. Her interviews with Larry broke everything open. In one climactic afternoon in Napa, Joey kicked the hell out of Prescott, and Tori clouted Gunnerson with a jack handle.

With the help of Harold Reilly we sort of communally adopted Kat. Reilly had supported a specialized girl's school in Connecticut for years, a school for bright, psychologically troubled teenage girls. Kat with an I.Q. of 169 was enrolled in the Fall, when Tori and I were slated to come to New York for training, Tori in research, me in management. That being the case, we were chosen to adopt