Prologue
Dave Marks, Esquire, came up behind his wife, while she was applying make-up at her antique vanity early on the morning of their son’s baptism. She had been in the gym for four months, and she had her pre-baby body nearly back. Though she had been up at five to first bathe and then nurse Jeremy, her breasts still had milk. She had been giving him rice cereal in the evening so he would sleep through the nights and had supplemented his breakfast so he wouldn’t get cranky during his baptism, Chrismation, and holy communion that morning. They were Byzantine Catholics, and their babies received all the mysteries at once. It was to be a long ceremony, exorcism included.
She was only in a panty, a nursing bra, and a baby blue, baby-doll robe. Dave came dripping from the shower and slipped her robe off. He unhooked her bra to remove it. Her dark hair was long and soft. The large curls she had just ironed in were luxurious. He could not resist.
He cupped solid triple C’s, approaching D’s, in his large hands. He leaned forward and tasted his son’s milk. It tasted sweet. He wiggled his towel from his hips and pressed his erection into and through her hair, parting it, moaning a little, “Come back to bed with me, Mrs. Marks,” he said, through his own freestyle hairdressing attempts in the early morning light. Her hair felt like – crushed velvet.
“When the baby stops nursing, what do you say we get double D’s, sweetheart? A little present for you and me? We’ll be all done with babies. Frankie’s wife had hers done when she was done with kids.”
“She also had her nose and her face done; did you notice?” She barely looks human. Che went from arousal to feeling nauseated and she didn’t want her clean hair to smell like Dave’s cock to the priest. “Can you just help me get the kids ready, Dave?” Che said, and she stood, shaking him off her, dabbing at her breasts with tissues, then replacing her bra. She put on her baby-doll robe and spritzed Gautier perfume through her hair.
“Won’t you at least think about it, babe?”
“What, paying one man to take a knife to my breasts to please – no, no, to turn other men on? Hmm… I think not.” She quipped and clipped out of the master bedroom.
Dave followed her into the nursery where he almost bumped into the scaffold for the mural being painted of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys in Neverland. It made Dave shudder every time he saw it. Their son had come home on an apnea monitor and still quit breathing up to twenty to thirty times a day. Che had him and their daughter by Cesarean, but his cord had still been damaged, and hence his uncooperative medulla oblongata. That’s how you get a perfectly healthy baby boy who forgets to breathe … morbid fucking mural, Dave thought. He had a gift in his hand he had plucked from his valet after he had put on his own robe.
“By the way, Frankie sent this for the baby. He didn’t want you to open it at the party.”
“Why not?” She reached for the package and was surprised at its weight. “What is it, the tomes of St. Augustine bound in what -- lead?” Their daughter Mary Madonna Marks hopped out of her Secret Garden side of the nursery and grabbed her daddy’s hand, “Take me potty, Daddy.”
“Open it carefully, Mommy.” He said.
Che carefully unwrapped the elegant paper with embossed angels. She opened the black and gold box. Inside was a small .22 caliber pistol with the Mother of God painted on mother of pearl grips. A matching rosary swaddled itself around the small weapon with biwa pearls. Che was horrified. A small card was inside. Printed upon it was the message: To Jeremy Franklin Marks, From your Uncle Frank, on your baptism.” Che fumbled the items in her hands and dropped the box on the hardwood floor, and the weapon went off. Che froze. The infant screamed. His father came running. As the gunshot resonated, Che thought, Don’t punish me today, God. Don’t take my son BEFORE his baptism. Don’t You Dare hurt him. Don’t let Dave find out today.
Chapter 1
It’ll Cost You Your Head
It was March of the year B.C., before Che, as Jack Bettencort referred to it. It was the sleepy purple twilight of dusk in the desert, and a full moon was rising. Jack walked out the back door of his fancy, furnished condo and into his garage. The hot young woman he’d been sleeping with for several weeks followed him. He passed through the narrow walkway, then halfway through the structure, and turned to look around. Someone had knocked hard on his backdoor and run.
As he turned around to speak to his bedmate, he saw her lift her hands, as if to surrender. The hair rose on the nape of Jack’s neck when he noticed urine running down her pretty tanned legs from her shorts with silky sunflowers sewn all over them into a little pool around her feet.
“Walk back here,” said a man stepping out from the corner where he had been hidden. Jack returned. “You too, give me all your jewelry. Now get back in the house.” The man had a Glock pointed in her face.
Fuck me. This asshole sounds like a kid. He removed the sparse jewelry he had on and handed it to the male in the ski mask.
“Back up, now.” The gunman looked Jack square in the eye.
Here we go. I am being robbed. Again. Jack walked between her and the gunman into his small entryway.
“Face down on the ground,” the man said. She obeyed. He knelt on her back with one knee and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the back of her head. His hand was shaking. Jack feared he may pull the trigger on accident and rob the girl of her face instead.
“Now you give me your cash.”
“You’re robbing the wrong house, friend.”
“The fuck I am. I paid a lot of money for this information, and I haven’t been wrong yet. I want your cash now.”
“You’re scaring the girl. Point the gun at me.” Jack began to meander toward a gun he had hidden in the couch.
“I know where you play cards Friday nights, ya’ stupid fuck. Give me your money.”
Okay. He knows I have what he wants. Now what?
“Give me your money or the girl dies first, and you die next -- stop moving. Where’s the cash?”
Jack looked down at the girl. She was so scared. Shit, Jack was unnerved, but he noticed the girl had again wet her pants.
Enough is enough. I have four kilos in my safe. I can recover from this financially. He just needs money. He didn’t come for my life.
“Let me walk into the kitchen. The dough is on the counter. Point that gun at me. Quit scaring the girl.” He motioned toward the kitchen, and there was all of Jack’s cash, fifteen grand and change. He had intended to make an extensive buy of hallucinogens, including mescaline and magic mushrooms tonight. Who fucked me and opened their mouth about this buy? Probably Rico and his big-mouthed buddies. Shit. I would have had enough for my own Burning Man.
Jack motioned the young man to the counter. “Take the money. Just take it and get out of my house. This is your exit. Nobody wants to hurt anybody else. Listen, this is a nice haul for a short day’s work. Why don’t you let the girl keep her jewelry; by the time you pawn it, it’s not much to you. Will you let her keep it?”
After collecting the cash, the gunman began walking out of the kitchen backward, away from Jack towards the door. He threw the jewelry back toward Jack on the counter. “Count to a hundred before you move.” he said as he backed out of the house.
The moment he was gone Jack grabbed the girl by the hand and yanked her up to her feet, “Come on, baby. Come with me. No time. We have no time.” He ran with her to the upstairs bedroom, grabbed his .45 and shoved it into her hand. “Point that at the door,” he said. He slid the window open and looked for the robber through the sites of the .9 millimeter. He couldn’t find him anywhere. He exhaled. “Well, honey. That’s what it’s like to get robbed. Stay here while I go lock up.”
“Aren’t you going to call the cops?”
“Ah, no, baby. That’s the price of doing business. I don’t need the cops in my world. I do wish Fyodor had been home. I’m going to go get him.”
“You’re leaving me alone here?”
“I’ll have my phone. Don’t worry. This is the safest house in town for the next seven days. Nobody gets robbed twice in a week. It’s like being in two plane crashes. You and Fyodor can hang out. Don’t be scared. First, I’ll help you bathe.” He spent a half hour calming the girl, helping her clean herself up. “Now, you wait here. If you’re scared, just keep the .45 nearby. There are hollow points in it. You blow a hole through anyone who isn’t me or Fyodor. Okay? You’ll be fine. The bad man isn’t coming back.” He tucked her into the bed in a pair of his boxers and one of his t-shirts before he left. He took her picture and smiled at her. As he turned around to say goodbye, she put pills in her mouth.
“What the fuck did you just swallow?”
“A couple of Xanax.”
Jack returned to the bed suddenly sick to his stomach. “Okay. Hop up and lean forward,” he told her. “You have been drinking a lot today. Hurry, get your fingers down your throat.” Jack pleaded with the girl who half-heartedly complied, before forcing himself on her. He shoved his long fingers down her esophagus until he found the wet pills and dragged them up and out of her. “I’m sorry if it hurt.” he began to say as she gagged and vomited bile into a t-shirt in his other hand. “There, there. You can’t do pills with anything else. Not at my house, sweetheart. Whatever you do, you don’t drink with pills.” he warned her. “Sweet, stupid thing,” he said as he kissed the top of her head. “You scared the shit out of me.” Then Jack left.
He was back soon to drop Fyodor off.
“He’ll keep you company. I need to see some people. You’ll be fine with him here with you. Don’t worry. Just don’t fucking OD while I am gone, please,” he said, and he took off to the party house, an apartment he and several other drug dealers rented in order to buy and sell easily. Jack palavered with his associates and did what he could to recover from the robbery both financially and emotionally. A three-day party ensued. He texted the girl he left at his condo as often as he remembered.
When it ended, it was still March of the year B.C., and he was driving his black Trans Am home wasted in a blackout. It was four in the neon morning and he had an open bottle of Jack Daniels between his legs. His long, dark hair was blowing in his blue eyes. He could see his breath in the cold in the car. The hard rock band Tool blared full blast on his new speakers, “Why can’t we just be sober,” as he blew the red light at Flamingo and Cambridge -- doing seventy-one in a thirty-five -- and t-boned a truck.
Two days after the accident Jack lay with eight stitches in his head, a broken arm, fourteen staples in his leg from the shattered whiskey bottle, and he was minus his spleen. Gillian, his older sister, sat next to him, caressing his bruised forehead. She grimaced. The hematoma was ugly. “Jack, open your eyes. It’s your last chance for today. My boys need me. I have to leave.”
Jack moaned and forced his blackened left eye open by raising his eyebrow. His right eye was swollen shut. “Who put the fucking jackhammer to my head?” He went to raise both hands to his forehead and found one handcuffed to the bed. “Ah shit.”
“He lives. Will wonders never cease. I called a lawyer for you,” his sister said, as she got up to leave. “You’re in deep, Jack. This is your third DUI. Don’t talk to anyone about the wreck. Do you hear me? Your lawyer will come by hopefully before they take you in. You can talk to him.”
“I hear you. What’s the lawyer’s name so I know who to talk to?”
“Dave Marks. He’s the king of DUI’s, little brother, and you’re going to need him.”
“Where’d you get the money from? Dr. Jaz wouldn’t give you lawyer money for the dope fiend.”
“You’re right. I didn’t even bother to ask my husband, and it was a lot more than I could muster any other way. Don’t get pissed.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I went by your apartment. I used my key and took the coke out of your safe. I found an old friend to sell it bargain basement cheap in North Town. Then I took the twenty-grand to the lawyer for his trial retainer.”
“ALL of it?”
“Yeah, all of it.” Gillian shook her head in disgust.
“I gave you my key and combination in case I croaked or got locked up. Shit. That’s damn near everything I own.”
“Well, you are locked up. By the way, the guy you hit is going to be all right. He was driving a tank and was wearing a seatbelt. By the grace of God himself, you didn’t kill anybody. You ought to think about your life, Jack. You are thirty-four-years old, and you’re all screwed up. Again. If you stay out of prison this time, it will be a miracle.”
“Or a four-kilo lawyer,” Jack retorted, as he cracked a smile. He didn’t know how to tell his sister he couldn’t remember anything about the accident or the twenty-four hours that had preceded it. He hadn’t known he hurt someone, until Gillian told him. “Holy – tell me Fyodor wasn’t in the car with me.”
“No. I have your dog. I took him when I went by the apartment. I also gave the poor girl that was there a ride home.”
“Shit. Sorry, Gillian, about all of this.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow, and remember, don’t open your mouth to anyone.”
“What was my BA?”
“How would I know, Jack? Get some rest.”
“Hey, Gillian, thanks, girl.”
“See you,” his sister said, as she walked out the door.
Jack closed his eyes and felt his stomach flip and his gorge rise in his throat. You complete dick. You almost killed someone. Again. The bile rose as the guilt went down. He reached for the buzzer to call a nurse, but she didn’t get there in time. When she walked in the door, he was already covered in puke.
“Mr. Bettencort, there is a Mr. Marks here to see you,” she said, breezing into the room. Before she saw the vomit, she scrunched her nose at it. “Maybe we better clean you up first.”
“It’s vile. I’m sorry. I tried to call you,” Jack said, and he held his handcuffed hand out toward her.
“That’s all right. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Do you know how the guy I hit is doing?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
As she went into the bathroom to get the basin and towels, the lawyer appeared, filling the doorway. “Hello there. I am your lawyer, Mr. Bettencort. Pleased to --”
“Fuck,” Jack sighed and shook his head. “I just got sick. Can you wait a minute?” So much for first impressions.
Before leaving the hospital, Dave Marks finessed it so the handcuffs were removed from Jack. He also arranged for Jack, once released from the hospital, to be walked through on the arrest and released on his own recognizance without spending one night in jail.
“Definitely a four-kilo lawyer,” Jack told his sister on the phone that night.
A week later, the lawyer called Jack on his cell phone. “You are one lucky bastard. Are you sitting down?”
Jack was spending his last days in his fancy condo. He turned the stereo down, wrestled Fyodor, his German Shepard, onto his leather couch and said, “Yeah. Are they dropping the case?” The dog licked his face.
The lawyer’s voice became sarcastic and a little surly, “Yes, Jack. They decided to drop the case, and buy you a Cadillac, and let you live at Caesar’s Palace for free. Now, would you like to hear what I have to say or go back to la-la land?”
Jack rolled his eyes, “Sorry. Why am I lucky, besides having you for a lawyer?” Though Jack was a drunken drug dealer, he knew when an ingratiating remark was due.
“Well put, sir. Your blood alcohol was three point one. You tested positive for cocaine, amphetamine, codeine, and marijuana. You should have been in a coma instead of operating a motor vehicle. You ran a red light and t-boned a truck. The person you hit suffered significant injuries and was, in fact, hospitalized for five days. Luckily, your victim is an illegal immigrant, who, ostensibly in fear of deportation, left the hospital and has since disappeared. In addition to all of this, Jack, this is your third DUI within ten years, which means, as I am sure you are well aware, that you are prison-bound.”
“Is that the good news?” My karma is completely fucked. The poor guy I creamed is running for his life from ICE when he should be suing me for everything I’m worth, and I am prison-bound? He pushed the dog away.
“Very funny, Jack. No. The good news is the D.A. -- besides having no victim to testify, which doesn’t actually matter because they have the hospital records -- the D.A. is somehow unaware of your California conviction, as of this moment. That is why you are going to put on a suit, cut off some of that hair, and go to court in the morning. You will plead straight up to a DUI second, take whatever the judge gives you, and kiss my ass for the rest of your life.”
“Excellent,” Jack laughed out loud, “But no haircut, my friend. I’ll tie it up in back.”
“Well, tuck it into your shirt then. Be at my office at seven a.m. sharp. Court’s at seven forty-five. We’ll go over the plea and go to court together. It’s on the early calendar so don’t be late. Otherwise, we will all run into Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.”
The next morning Jack showed up on time. Gillian dropped him off, since he had no driver’s license and, of course, no car. His black Trans Am had been totaled. He had won the car in the private poker game that had led to his latest robbery. Mr. Marks was inserting cufflinks into the cuffs of his crisply pressed sleeves, as Jack walked in the office.
“Come on in. You look good, hell of a lot better than the first time I met you,” and he laughed quite rudely.
What an asshole, Jack thought, but he said nothing. He just looked at his lawyer.
“You want some coffee?” Mr. Marks asked.
“Sure. Thank you.”
“How do you like it?”
“With cream and in a cup, please.”
Mr. Marks walked out of his office to the kitchen across the lobby. While he was gone, Jack studied the furnishings and decorations, the awards, degrees, certificates, and shooting trophies – oh, and there was the grand prize, a large portrait of the lawyer’s wife, mounted on black velvet.
“Beautiful,” Jack said aloud to himself.
Mr. Marks crossed the threshold with the coffee as Jack spoke. “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” he said, pausing. It seemed to Jack he deliberately puffed his chest and arms.
“Your wife -- I presume it is your wife -- looks like a young Joan Collins.”
Mr. Marks smiled, missing the inappropriate inflection, the subtle degree of lust, as he stepped into the room and said, “I suppose she does, and she’s as uppity as Joan Collins and then some. That, Jack Bettencort, is the fair and elusive Che, and she is as bitchy as she is beautiful.”
“Che?” Jack said, and that eyebrow of his went up again. He took his coffee.
“Yes. Her mother, apparently, was some kind of pinko hippy who had a crush on Che Guevara. When Che was born, she had a mop of black hair, so I end up with a wife named after a Cuban revolutionary.”
“Argentine.” Jack corrected.
Jack raised his eyes again at the visage, this time undressing the image as he did. “Fascinating,” was all he said. The little girl standing next to Che in the portrait must be Dave Marks’ daughter -- the golden hair, green eyes, and apricot skin. The baby was also a Marks. It seemed crude to Jack that his lawyer displayed his family the way he would a prized fish.
They went over the plea and then went to court. The judge read Jack the riot act and meted out the maximum sentence for a DUI Second, minus incarceration. Then the Judge added onto the sentence five mandatory AA meetings a week, monthly sponsor reports, and random body fluid and hair tests from the Department of Parole and Probation, just to be sure.
Jack went through the sentencing waiting for the other shoe, or maybe for a bomb to drop. Never in his life had he been so nervous, at least not without a gun to his own head. This is my third, three means prison. Hell, a DUI with substantial bodily injury is a prison sentence on its own. I’m so mother-fucking lucky. He was relieved for a minute. He even voiced a little prayer to the universe for his runaway victim. He hoped he was all right. It wasn’t so bad. He had gone through a DUI Second a few years before in California, but he was indignant about the AA thing.
Oh, he had gone to some meetings in Cali to meet the requirements before he figured out how easy it was to forge the report cards, but that had not been anything like five meetings a week, and he had not been required to submit to random urine tests by P&P, nor had he been required to supply sponsor reports.
As a result, Jack Bettencort grew increasingly annoyed and not at all elated, as he should have been, as they walked out of the courtroom. As they reached the escalator, he was already calculating how he would fake the signed court cards and sponsor reports, but the sobriety, he thought, could be a problem, until he had a revelation. I’ll buy some piss. Hell, in Vegas you can buy anything.
When they got back to the office, Mr. Marks was whooping it up. Being a former prosecutor, he truly loved getting one over on the D.A.’s. It delighted him to no end. They discussed the particulars of Jack’s sentence.
Mr. Marks was stern with his clients. He detested making court appearances with clients who were remiss in their duties. He considered it a direct affront to the Court, but more so to himself. It gave the appearance he lacked client control, and he was a man who needed control the way other men need air.
“Jack, have you ever been to AA before?”
“Yeah, Dave, I’ve been. Have you?”
“I wasn’t just sentenced to five meetings a week, now, was I?” Mr. Marks remonstrated, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe you should think about sobering up, Mr. Bettencort. No one, and I mean, no one, will be able to save you from prison again. I certainly hope you don’t take offense to this, but you are not exactly an intimidating presence.”
Jack winced. Jack’s father was a big man, and Gillian took after him, dark-eyed, ash blonde hair, taller than himself by inches, a little thick, curvaceous, a knock-out. Jack took after their mother. It was the only thing Gillian never forgave him for. Jack was a little over five-nine. He was thin with long, well-defined muscles.
He had his mother’s high cheekbones and distinctive jaw, with large, wide-set blue eyes. He had long black lashes and an expressive brow. His hair was dark and long, parted down the middle. A little silver showed at his temples.
After he had left the Air Force, he pierced his ears and put a strange green and pink tattoo on his left breast he designed himself. It was of an open wound below his nipple, dripping green and pink blood down his ribs. He was the bad, brilliant son who never lived up to his potential. He was the daydreaming, drug-dealing dropout, and prison was the only paternal prophesy he had yet to fulfill.
While the lawyer lectured, Jack stared, seemingly attentive into Mr. Marks’ face. He heard every word but discarded each sentence like instructions for toothpaste. Jack was far away, remembering his father, Jack Senior; his favorite hometown – not counting Munich -- Bangor, Maine; and high school; “Space, the Final Frontier,” his friends used to call him. He was suddenly aware he wanted a drink, not to get drunk, but to celebrate.
The lawyer continued, unaware of Jack’s departure, “At Indian Springs, you’ll be punked, no matter how tough, cool, or smart you think you are.”
Jack’s mind was now on his father, degrading him for his size, accusing his mother of sleeping around before Jack was born, insinuating Jack was a bastard. No matter how many German philosophers or Russian classics Jack read, no matter how many gorgeous women he screwed, still it smarted when his size was pointed out. He was only enduring the lecture to be polite and because his ride wasn’t there yet. He also was waiting to ask how much of a refund he was getting, seeing that he didn’t go to trial.
“So, Mr. Bettencort, if I were you, I’d make an effort and do the deal. The alternative is not very attractive. Besides, I’ll tell you something I don’t go around telling folks. My wife Che goes to AA. It helps a lot of people. For God’s sake, you act like it’s a death sentence.”
Now, that captured Jack’s attention. He looked over at the portrait and wondered. She didn’t look like some uppity, bitchy alcoholic to him, but then you never know with ravishing women. You just never know.
“Don’t worry so much, Dave. I’ll go to AA. I’m wondering, though, how much I’m getting back.”
“From what?” The lawyer asked, shifting his weight in his chair.
“From you.” Jack answered.
“Are you asking for a refund? I get you the deal of a fucking lifetime, and you want a refund? Is that it? Do you want your ass kicked?” Dave asked, and then he guffawed.
“No, I do not want my ass kicked. My sister gave you twenty-thousand dollars. You made one court appearance. I fail to see how I am being unfair.”
The lawyer began to seethe, “Well, Jack, I tell you what, I’ll withdraw as counsel from your case. We’ll go back and withdraw the plea, and you can start over; because by Monday morning, the D.A. will have your California conviction on scope, and you can go straight to hell from there. How’s that, you ungrateful bastard?” which was, of course, all bullshit. Mr. Marks would bill it out on his end as a typical DUI and then pocket the fifteen-grand left over from his trust account. Jack knew it was bullshit, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it, not in his reality. Dave’s statement had the desired effect.
“So, basically, I’m fucked.”
“You’ve been fucking yourself all your life, my friend,” Dave said dismissively. A quiet moment followed.
Jack looked up at the portrait again and pointed, “So your wife, she doesn’t drink anymore?”
“Not a drop.”
“She doesn’t look like a drunk to me,” Jack said, as they both looked at the likeness.
“No, she doesn’t, but then that picture wasn’t taken when she had a bottle of merlot and four shots of Black Sambuca in her. It’s amazing. She’s my little Jekyll and Hyde.” The lawyer looked away from his wife and began scribbling on the legal pad in front of him.
“Are you sure she’s bitchy and not just frustrated?” Jack said, and then it was he who laughed.
Mr. Marks looked up at him from under his eyebrows. “Mr. Bettencort, it would serve you well in our relationship not to broach the subject of my wife again. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said sincerely, but inwardly he chuckled. He had hit the nail on the head, and he knew it.
Henceforth, the money was not mentioned between lawyer and client, and neither was Che, but Jack never forgot about either one.
I’ll get you back one of these days, Jack vowed as he left the office.