When I got back, I made an anonymous call from a payphone by Newport to the PD that drug dealing was going on at Wilkes’ address, then returned home and checked my messages.  The news wasn’t promising.  Bill, my lawyer, said he’d hit some roadblocks on restoring my PI’s license.   He wanted to know, by the way, if I had made any enemies lately?  He said he was still working on it, but that it might take a while. He said he would need all my credentials, but he was pretty sure he could get me a temp until it was sorted out.  I breathed a sigh of relief, but not a very deep one, then sat down to plan my next move.  I was going to put on a pot of coffee, but my slate was clear for the evening, so I went for another cold one and wondered about this new habit I was developing.  I’d cracked a second and was thinking about a nap, when something from the night at Wilkes’ little get together jumped into my mind.  That new girl.  One guy had said he couldn’t wait to try out that new girl.  Prostitution.  Maybe worse.  This might be an angle.  I took another swig of beer.  It might be a way for them to make sleazy friends in high places.  Or hold something over somebody’s head.  Or both.  I took a look from my futon couch over to the file cabinet in the corner.  My credentials.  Luckily, several years on the force, plus an anal-retentive wife, had led me to keep careful records.  At this, my cell rang.  I looked at the caller ID and picked it up.  It was Susan, the bartender who’d hired me to help her with her stalker ex.  She’d gotten the names of all the guys from their ID’s the night before.  I told her to keep it up.  Write down when they come in, when they leave, how much they have to drink, and any anti-social behavior they exhibit. We have to establish a pattern. She thanked me, and I thought I could hear a smile cross her face from the other end of the phone.  I told her to call me in a few days, then we said goodbye.  At that, I drained the rest of my beer and went into the bedroom for a nap.  Gray, who’d gotten a bit more clingy of late, curled up near my head to join me. I closed my eyes and tried to think positive thoughts. I had work to do in the next couple of days, and it was going to be far from pleasant.

I awoke from a deep sleep two hours later to banging at my screen door and jumped up with a start. It was Hope, the last of the evening sun fading on the street behind her, bottle of wine in hand.  I blinked at her a couple of times, my holster in one hand, my pistol in the other.  She was wearing faded jeans and a slate blue striped cotton button down that was unbuttoned enough so I didn’t immediately look into her eyes.   She looked good in those jeans, too, and when I’d had time to make a mental note of that, I was awake enough to suddenly be worried.

“What’s wrong?  Are you OK?” I blurted, my words catching in my throat a bit.

“Everything’s fine,” she answered with a reassuring smile that should never have reassured me, but did anyway.  “I decided to forgive you.”  She continued to smile and lifted the bottle toward me, giving me a good view down her shirt.   “Care to join me?”

“I just woke…from a nap. It’s been a long day,” I croaked, but not convincingly, and took the bottle from her hand.

“No problem,” she answered and walked in past me, brushing her hip with mine and giving me a peck on the cheek.  My hand went to my face and I realized I hadn’t shaved.  I excused myself and went into the bathroom where I splashed some water on my stubble and did my best to smooth down my hair.  When I came back she had two glasses and was on the couch pulling the cork out of the bottle.  I took a breath, sat down next to her and found myself smiling. It was bad that she meant so much to me, and I knew it, but I put my hand on her leg and leaned over to kiss her. 

“I’m glad you forgive me,” I said, as she turned to me and our lips touched.  It was all downhill from there, but it was a good ride.  I took a sip of wine, our hands together, and asked her to tell me more about what she’d been doing earlier, but she said to talk about it would take away it’s power.   All she would say is that she felt good about what she’d done and wanted to celebrate.  She asked me about how things were going on my end.  I told her I couldn’t really talk about it, either, but that there was always hope.

She laughed.  “What a pair we are.” She looked so beautiful then, a moment of beauty in the middle of all the darkness, the light Hope, the one that used be, shining through.  I knew the moment wouldn’t last, and I wanted to wring every bit of light it had out of it.  I drained what was left in my glass and leaned in to kiss her again, and got no resistance.  As we fell back onto the couch and my hands went to her shirt buttons, I thought of the last time we’d done this and how it had been filmed.  I’d found the camera, but as I was cupping my hands over her breasts, I wondered if there might be another.  What the hell, I thought, echoing the last words of many of the well-intentioned, but long since gone. Let’s give them a show.

When we were done, we lay there for a few minutes, then she got up and started to get dressed. I lay there for a moment longer, watching her. I felt the hot, dry September air flutter against my bare back through the curtains as I made my way into the kitchen. Hope went into the bathroom, and when she came out, I was standing shirtless, drinking a glass of water, staring through the window into the evening, feeling as if the breeze was pushing me, driving me on, way past where it could ever be safe, out to where I might never come back from.  She touched my arm with her hand, and we kissed goodbye.  I didn’t ask her when I'd see her again.  It wasn’t going to be that kind of relationship.

When she’d left, I showered, poured myself another glass of wine, and settled in for what I guessed were going to be a difficult couple of days. I put on one of my old favorites – Pet Sounds.  I know it’s corny for a SoCal boy to like the Beach Boys, but I love them anyway.  My ex-wife didn’t, but with Hope’s touch fresh on my body, and maybe a touch of hope, too, or the illusion of it, anyway, it was nice to put on something old and familiar.  As I heard the first chords of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” chime, Gray jumped up in my lap, and I felt, though I probably shouldn’t have, reassured that things might work out. When I was most of the way down to the bottom of my glass of wine, there was a knock at the door.  Gray scrammed into the bedroom, and I put my glass down and took a step toward the door, leaving my holstered revolver on the table, then changed direction and went back and strapped it on.  There was another rap, this one more insistent.  I stepped in front of the screen door to be greeted by a man in a cheap suit flanked by two uniforms.

“Expecting trouble?” asked the guy in the cheap suit, flashing me a detective’s badge.

“As a matter of fact…” I began, but before I could finish, he turned to the two uniforms.

“Get the gun,” he ordered, and in thirty seconds I was face down on the ground, my hands pinned behind my back.  I didn’t resist.  There didn’t seem to be any point.

“You got a permit for this?” asked the detective, leaning over into my line of vision.

“Yes, I do,” I smiled back at him.

“Can I see it?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Mr. Sapphire!” he growled.

“Are you going to let me up so I can get it for you, detective?” I asked, ignoring his advice.

“Let him up,” he growled again, “Slowly.”

I felt the pressure release from my shoulders, got to me feet and brushed myself off.  “It’s in there,” I said, pointing to my bedroom and began walking toward it, with the one of the uniforms right behind me, hand on his gun.  I pulled the permit out of my wallet, which was sitting on the dresser, reminded myself that I still had to get all my credentials together, and walked back out to the living room and handed the permit to the man in the suit, ignoring the outstretched hand of the uniform next to me.

“So, Mr. Sapphire,” said the detective, “Mind telling me why you’d come to the door with a gun?”

“I’ve made some enemies,” I replied flatly.

“That may be true,” he said thoughtfully, then a bit louder, “We received a complaint about you harassing a certain William Wilkes.”

“Really?” I replied, “Don’t know a thing about it.”

The detective licked his lips thoughtfully, then said, suddenly in a very business-like tone, “We know you’ve lost your license, Mr. Sapphire. Mr. Wilkes is a respected member of this community. Any more complaints and you’ll find yourself in trouble. We don’t expect to hear any more complaints about you.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” I responded, then walked to the door, catching another whiff of that still burning fire out East.  “Are we through?”

“Let’s go,” said the detective to the two uniforms, and they filed out.  I stood there for a moment, watching them get into their two cars respectively, and staring, like I was peering out past the surf into the horizon, searching the flat line of the distant water for ripples that would give me a clue of the next wave to come.  After a long moment, when the wind seemed to shift for a second and the ocean breeze reached and touched my skin, I went back inside and poured the rest of Hope’s wine into my glass. I was free until the next evening, and a plan was forming in my head. The Santa Ana’s were still calling softly through the window curtains when I downed the rest of that cheap white wine and grabbed for another beer.

Chapter 21 coming 6/1 (or so…)!!!