Passionate Plea

By Thomas Bryant

Outlaw Sammy Page has no recollection of his life before waking in The Buckskin Canyon nudist camp, being nursed back to health by the voluptuously sexy camp founder, Dr. Alexandria Rose, after she found him unconscious on the property. He's unaware that he has a wife and daughter waiting at home. He doesn't know that authorities discovered a man and wife brutally murdered in a house with a lonely light burning after he drove off with their luxury liner. He doesn't yet know that there's been a nationwide all points bulletin issued to shoot on sight. He's heard the developing story on the radio, but he doesn't even remember his own name.

Sammy's past starts to creep into his subconscious and he becomes intrigued with a beautiful goddess in his dreams and visions of her interfere with the intimate advances from the shapely nudist camp founder, Dr. Alexandria Rose. When Sammy finally recognizes that the goddess in his vision and dreams is his wife, Marla, it opens the floodgates of memories of his past life.

Sammy quickly regains his wits and sophistication, easily slipping past the authority's surveillance on his home to spend time with Marla. Law enforcement, including three detectives Sammy has known since childhood, become increasingly desperate to make an arrest. They trump up charges to incarcerate Marla for obstruction of justice and seek a court order to remove Anita from the home. The thought of his girls apart and suffering drives him to turn himself into authorities on the condition that they release them from custody. "To say I love her doesn't quite cut it, when I would give my life many times over for just the touch of her hand." His attorney fights for him in a court of law while Sammy is behind bars and fighting just to stay alive to stand trial, where the state seeks the death penalty against him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Bryant
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301206780

Thomas Bryant

Thomas Bryant received his education at Cal Baptist University in Riverside, CA. While studying political science, he began a love affair with books and discovered a passion for writing. Coming from humble beginnings with economic demands, he took an internship in the service industry as a heavy-duty diesel mechanic, which left him little time for books or writing. He sought challenges, including baseball, football and wrestling as a young man and loved speed on the water in a flat bottom race boat called BORN to be WILD. Two weeks before he entered Arizona Bail Enforcement Academy to become a licensed Bounty Hunter, he was involved in a near fatal crash. Disabled and facing his toughest challenge, he returned to his first love of writing and found a whole new world in print and writing suspense thrillers. He lives in the Ozarks of Missouri.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Awakening 1982

Marla nervously twists at her wristwatch. It's a little after seven in the morning and Sammy should've been home hours ago. By now, he would be lifting the covers to welcome her to bed. He's always here so its easy to rationalize that how he makes his living is not so different than other men. Once she slips between the satin sheets, feeling his strong hands reaching out and softly caressing her while kissing her tenderly. His powerful arms securely wrap around her as he pulls her in close. His long fingers, she could feel every one of them, rolling over her. From her back to the roundness in her sweet little derrière, as if he could never get enough of her while their legs mesh like two very sexy puzzle pieces fitting together so perfectly and securely as if made for each other. She never considered coming home to an empty bed or that anything could ever happen to him.

He'd wake to find out how her night went while massaging her back and shoulders to help her unwind and a little sexual teasing, while she talks about her shift in the ER. Sammy is such a giving husband and father; he always shows genuine concern while she explains the stressful events that had gone on during the early morning hours at the hospital. She can never picture him in any other role and he never discusses or complains about the stresses or the pressure involved in what he does, but lately she's been able to see it in him. Subtle changes in his personality or a far-off stare in his eyes. Sammy jokes everything off while he searches for solutions rather than dwelling in problems, so she naturally thinks the worst when he resembles any warning signals for stress because his personality type is so difficult to read. He'd never let her in. He'd never want to burden her and the last thing he wants is for her to worry about him when he's away and when they're together he is so generous with his affections it's easy to see that he worships her.

She's managed to keep the long and lean body she had to play center on her high school basketball team when she was, affectionately, known as Sugar for her sweet jump shot, innocent shy smile and loveable demeanor off the court. Sammy keeps his favorite picture of her with him at all times. The one that shows off her silky smooth caramel mixed with honey skin color pored over her tight shapely frame.

She thought she had adjusted well to their lifestyle, until this morning, and he's still not home. 'What if he doesn’t come home?' The thought brings chills up and down her spine. She vigorously polishes the appliances in the kitchen, waiting and praying to get a glimpse of him.

She feverishly scrubs countertops and waxes cabinets. Her mind races and she panics, dawning on her. 'Oh my God, what about Anita, she'll be devastated! She was so young when her real dad left, she never knew him, but Sam I am is Papa. She thinks the sun rises and sets with him.'

She repeatedly marches to the big picture window in the living room with every passing motorist, whenever she hears an engine or a car door trying to calm herself with enjoyable memories of her family having the times of their lives. 'Anita watches him when he's not looking. How happy she is, all smiles, when they're playing together just like a couple of kids whether it's tossing the softball back and forth, bowling or who can eat the most pizza or tacos. They are both so competitive they can make a competition out of anything. They make quizzical games while watching TV, anything to be involved with each other and no matter how busy he gets, he drops everything for her high school softball games.

The past can only stall off the inevitable when this morning hits her right between the eyes. She imagines, 'an angry cop who gets trigger-happy and drops the hammer, leaving their lives mortally wounded and dying in the street as she waits on the call that he's never coming home.' Her fear and stress red line and tears begin to trickle down her face…

We’ve been looking all night for a Corvette. The paper work calls for a Silver Anniversary Edition 1978 L88. We're pressed for time, so of course the units I had spotted and filed away aren't home and time is running out. We have until 9 o'clock in the morning to deliver this thing or it’s just one long dry run. I don’t know what the hurry is, I didn’t ask and they didn’t offer. However, they did offer more than three times the going rate, so at three times money is not just talkin', its fuckin' screamin'!

Karl's getting impatient. He's also about to be pitched out of a moving car. This is just a straight delivery, right Sammy? All we have to do is get the piece of shit, drive it down the road here a little ways and make a phone call. We're talking an hour’s work, right Sammy? Yet here we are it's almost daybreak hauling ass down the interstate drawing all kinds of attention to ourselves. Now we've got the whole damn night wrapped up in this fuckin' thing with nothing to show for it.

Just say the word you big headed bastard and I'll drop you off at the next exit. Karl glances over at the road signs we're passing like picket fences. You're going so fast that by the time you say next exit you've already passed the next exit, see there goes another one, Karl says, chuckling. Well quit yakking and keep watching.

We move in and out of cars as they mope along in their metal coffins going to the same old job, doing the same old thing day after day as if they could just record one day and keep spinning it out repeatedly through the course of their lives until they're dead.

I'm dragging everything I can get out of this sled speeding towards the golden glow on the horizon already spilling enough light to shut off the low beams no longer visible on the road. Go for it Sammy! Its all clear, Karl says, never taking his eyes off the smatter of traffic behind us.

I hold the throttle down until seeing the sign: Carbon Canyon next right. Once we exit the expressway, we quickly whip into a thrifty gas station and a mini mart on the corner next to a Pine Tree car wash with a sign blocking the driveway: CLOSED for REPAIRS. The station is already starting to fill up. The customers are lining up at the pay window and the gas pumps.

The tires squeal on the slick cement, driving around behind the little store at the back of the station. Karl reaches in the glove box and pops the trunk so I can grab the gloves and the tools. No words are spoken, passing at the rear of the car. We have done this so many times we are almost of one rapid heartbeat. Time for idle talk is over. It's all business now.

After putting the tools inside the gloves, I shove them under the passenger seat and get in as Karl jumps behind the wheel. We still have a few miles to go so we must obey all laws now. We don’t want to draw any attention with the tools under the seat. If we were to be hassled now we could draw jail time just for having burglary tools in the car. Shoved inside the gloves are tools that have been lathed and milled to exact specifications along with some wire cutters and a short screw driver. Individually they are just tools, but collectively they are a felony.

We avoid the incoming cars by taking the road behind the station. We pass the large round barrel shaped brushes and hanging rags of a dormant and silent car wash, leaving long empty lanes that pass the gas pumps and vacuum cleaners like giant pachyderm with hoses hanging high overhead. It's strange the things you imagine when you've been out all night and suddenly receive a crack of dawn jumpstart and the ol' ticker really starts kicking on this little service road where it catches up with Carbon Canyon.

The dark has completely disappeared and so has its shelter that insulates and protects, leaving only the light. It's like pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger. With darkness, you are covered, but with clear light, you're naked for all the world to see, nothing to mask the offense, nothing to mask the sin.

Who said that, Sam?

I did, now stay right on this road till I tell you to turn. He takes a quick glance at me, then back at the road. He shakes his head shivering, you are one crazy mother fucker, he says and musters a nervous chuckle. This broad daylight shit has my blood pumping like a jackhammer and you’re over there reciting poetry.

Nah, piece of cake, you see where that trucks coming out? Turn left there. We approach a lowered short bed Ford pick up truck on a little side street.

This tract is mostly tri-level homes with brown stucco walls and Spanish-style red roofs. The roads look freshly paved and the sidewalks are clean with holes cut in the cement to accommodate small trees that are tightly trimmed and manicured to take the shape of lollipops lining the road, creating a storybook welcome as we enter the tract. I don't think this humble greeting is meant for people like Karl and me.

The neighborhood is stirring. A little old man wearing a red handkerchief folded to form a bandana, sleeveless shirt and sweat pants is jogging on the side of the road. He stares at us long and hard as if our intentions are obvious. I shrug off the notion, knowing my guilty conscience is just playing me, although lately it’s getting harder to separate the warning signs from sheer paranoia.

I put the tools inside my jacket and pull on the gloves while continuing to give directions, keeping my voice even and calm as if I'm telling him how to get to a birthday party, not letting on to a heartbeat that is thumping fast and hard in my chest.

Make a right up here and it’s on the second street on the right. I said, Pass that street. It should be the second or third house on the left. We approach a stop sign and Karl signals and slows. A silver Corvette roars around us and slides sideways in the intersection. He almost hits the curb on the other side of the road, fish tails with white smoke billowing from the rear tires when he stands back in the throttle. Look at that shit, Karl says. That's it, wait right here, let him go, I said, sitting at the stop sign and watching him fight to get under control for two blocks before skidding around the corner out of sight.

So long, I said, reading the personalized plate aloud while we're heading down the smoky road, Karl cracking up at the irony of the license as if it's spelling out our intentions.

I can't believe you're doing this. Karl says, his brows rising with the octaves in his voice, while his eyes grow to the size of saucers. The garage door is open! What do you want to do Sam?

Let me out. I don’t want you to have to pass this street again, once I leave, so turn around and find a place to park on the other side. I said as I grab for the door handle. He drops down to a very slow roll so I can jump out in the middle of the road. I close the door just until the latch clicks before Karl drives away. I hide my gloved hands in my front pockets while I step up on the sidewalk next to a block wall and quickly turn the corner towards the Vette.

This is just pure uncut adrenaline. Those poor slobs out there on the highway idling along have no idea how this feels. You can't drink it, smoke it or jab a vain for it. The hair is standing on the back of my neck, now to harness my energy to stay smooth in rhythm and work fast.

The street is calm and quiet except for the musical messages sent back and forth from tree to tree as the birds seem to be passing along songs of my intrusion. Nothings moving, so far so good, no one's in sight, a little further. My heart begins to redline. Using the added boost of energy to pick up my steps, shifting gears from observer to predator and my focus narrows to acquire my target sitting with the warm engine ticking in the driveway.

Blocking out everything else I go right to work. For me there is no turning back, once I'm in motion. I push the Vise Grips forward until the shaft in the door pops up. I already have the ratchet out of my jacket pocket, snapping the socket on the ignition and pulling back on its handle until the flanges on the socket drop-in to the notches on the lock. I keep pulling until the buzzer buzzes, bells chime and the idiot lights in the dash burn. After a loud, pop the stereo practically blasts me out of the seat and the interior door in the garage flies open and crashes against the wall.

I don’t have time to look, but I know it's not good. A siren screams into the neighborhood as the engine fires on the first spin. I stomp hard on the throttle and the rear tires lose traction, boiling smoke and barking as they bounce through the gutter between the driveway and the asphalt, turning the wheel until I see the mouth of the street. Something flashes in the corner of my eye before he lands on the hood of the car. He has a head like a pumpkin, a cul-de-sac haircut and a thick black mustache. His round face is beet red and his chubby hands desperately reach for something to hold, but only clutch air as his speed and momentum carry him off the other side of the car. A glance in the mirror shows him back on his feet and running. 'He's pretty quick for a fat guy.'

The tires hook up, launching me towards the corner and I prepare to go head to head with the screaming siren coming fast. The rear tires chirp when I move the shifter and allow the transmission to change gears, spinning the tires again as they search for traction, getting sideways in the turn, narrowly missing a wailing ambulance, red lights flashing and spinning with the horn blowing the sound of an amplified goose.

After making short work of the rest of the neighborhood and rolling out on Carbon Canyon, I drop my speed to blend into the flow of traffic while lowering my hands on the wheel below the level of the windows to hide my gloves and turn down the blaring radio. Just as I start to relax, a blinking red light on the instrument panel catches my attention just before it goes solid next to the fuel gauge and the needle is well below E. The hits just keep on coming, says the radio disc jockey. 'Boy you got that shit right.'

This bitch is on fumes and the cops are already on their way. The bulletin may or may not have reached the air waves yet, leaving me no choice but to whip back into the station where we stopped on the way in, quickly pulling around back to check for a locking cap before Karl angles into the air and water lane. He tosses me a large bent screwdriver nicknamed Big Ben, before pulling down an air hose and starts jabbing me. Piece of cake, huh? He says, chuckling while he's squatting down next to his front tire. Wasn't that THE POLICE you were blasting on the stereo when you smoked out of the neighborhood? He says, cracking himself up and singing the lyrics. Every breath you take every sound you make, I'll be watching you. He raises two fingers to his eyes before pointing them at me. I shove the flat end of Big Ben in the key slot of the locking cap, while giving him the finger with one hand and cranking the handle with the other while Big Ben destroys the tumblers. I throw it back at Karl like a metal boomerang and I'm the one laughing now while he's diving out of the way.

I’m feeling extremely lucky cause there are three islands and they are all four deep in cars. There's a long line in the Mini-Mart up to the cash register and I got the last spot next to a pump. That feeling lasts long enough for me to get back to the car after paying for the gas. There is a black-and-white radio car sitting on Carbon Canyon stopped at a traffic light with Chino Police Department written in big block letters across the door. There is no one in the slow lane, so he is staring right at me. That has to be the longest light in history.

The fuel makes a metallic splash, hitting the bottom of the tank so it's a good thing that I stopped because I am way low on gas. Unsure of what to do with all of this nervous energy, I nod to the cop still waiting in traffic, continuing to stare at me as if he's very interested in everything that I'm doing or worse yet everything that I've done. It's unsettling the way he's watching me when I know that call is going to come through any second. It's like waiting for the floor to drop out while standing on the gallows.

Godfrey Daniels, can this gas pump go any slower?

DON'T MOVE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD! The cop says, screaming at the top of his lungs while he rests his arms across the roof of the squad car just behind where the red blue lights are flashing. HOW AM I TO PUT MY HANDS ON TOP OF MY HEAD, IF I CAN'T MOVE, I said, yelling back at him while I'm rounding the back of the car. That should go over big. DO IT SMART ASS! He says, hollering across the road watching me down the sites of the gun trained on me.

Loud squealing brakes and howling tires, jerk him around to face a wall with a grill, mirrors and blaring air horns seem to paralyze him as the train with smoking tires grows larger and larger, hopping, twisting, and growling, filling up both lanes, hurling towards him. He makes a desperate attempt to dive back towards the squad car, but slips in oil, losing the grip on his pistol, slinging it into the oncoming lane where it's kicked from car to car, speeding past.

Through the large truck’s windshield, I can see the driver's eyes are wide, holding the large steering wheel with one hand while he yanks on the chain uncorking the air horns, every muscle tense and tight bearing down on the cop. The massive howling trailer fills up both lanes while the enormous eight-wheel tandem hops the concrete curb and destroys the roadside landscape, coming for the down and defenseless cop lying helpless in the road. All I can do is watch with my hands clenched as if I can help him bring it to a stop by digging my nails into the palms of my hands.

Chapter 2

A Mother's Love

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been raised to be an outlaw. My mother was excited with the constant turmoil and drama that goes along with a criminal's life. She revered men who were unafraid to take chances and looked down on those who feared the consequences, labeling them as weak, if they were absent the ability and cunning to sidestep the law. Once my dad left, she would make negative remarks about him because he believed in walking the straight and narrow. She wanted the juice. She wanted the excitement and once he was gone, it became very commonplace in the middle of the night to hear the whispering chatter through paper-thin walls of a deal gone down or a deal gone bad. Somebody busted and needed bailing out. Somebody needs a place to stay, just for a few days. At any rate, my mom was in her height of glory and right in the middle of it. Quarterbacking the likely moves of the crime detectives and speculating about what the cops must be thinking and so, what would be the best tact to take. It would be hard to argue the cover of the sweet little mom in a station wagon with five children, four girls and one boy. In a million years no one would ever question the possibility that the clean little 64 Chevy station wagon was hotter than her waffle iron.

I twist the knob on the radio, once I hear some hard-driving rock that fits the way I'm feeling, so now I'm taking the sound system for little bit of a road test while I'm kicking back and enjoying the ride as the Vette’s dual exhaust growls. I stand in it a little on the transition ramp to the Interstate freeway, but fight off the temptation to open it up, as it hugs the road and holds tight in the turn.

My mother used the word cops as if it was a punch line, but I came within a whisker of watching an officer die this morning and I would've been the killer as if I had pulled the trigger myself and that's not funny. I've spent my life running against the wind. I've never really known anything else, but, this thing certainly isn't worth a human life. Especially a cop, I don't know what they make but it's not enough. We would be in a world of hurt without them. That could've easily been one of my friends, about to become a greasy spot in the road?

I can already see the high-rise building of the Holiday Inn Hotel, long before getting off at the Waterman exit. After making a right turn at the end of the off ramp, it's another quick right into the huge parking lot. The picture windows around the bottom floor reveal a lobby that's empty and quiet, one girl at the desk. The parking lot is about half full, so finding a spot on the back row is not a problem. The Vette will be inconspicuous between a hot looking little black Carrera parked at an angle to take up two lanes and a pearl white Beemer sitting low to the ground. It will go unnoticed comparatively speaking. I pull up to the car stop short of a chain-link fence with a hill of hibiscus shrubs on the other side below the humming freeway above.

I quickly go through the glove box and console to remove the registration or any papers to give up the car’s residence. There’s a brown leather camera bag on the passenger floor. As I lean for the bag, there's Karl rounding the building before passing behind me. He’ll be finding a place to park on the other side of the lot.

Throwing the bag over my shoulder, I toss the scraps of paper in a garbage can on my way across the lot. Karl smiles curiously and eye balls the case when he sees me. There's a little souvenir for you, I said, slinging the camera case in the back seat of the car. Karl's eyebrows rise to his hairline, Awe you really shouldn’t have, he says, putting the car in gear.

No shit!

Chapter 3

The Boys and Me

My name is Sammy Page, but occasionally I'm referred to as Cowboy because my daddy's Texas accent rubbed off, even though I was born in Southern California. I'm 32 years old, but on nights like this, I feel much older. I've been making deliveries like this since before I was old enough to drive a car.

Clarence Parker, a friend of my dad's, talked with a slow southern drawl and usually cleared his throat before he began to speak. He was long, lean and habitually twisted the ends of his tapered mustache. I had seen him, but I never really got to know him until after my father was gone. We had no place to live, so he let us move into a tiny little two room rundown shack on the back of his property, rent-free. The street was Stichman in Baldwin Park, three houses from the corner of Pacific, but we had no address and all the utilities piggybacked off the front house. Most did not even know it was there and with our crew 'free' was all we could afford. Well, it wasn't totally free, nothing ever is.

Clarence, who lived in the front house with his wife and his son Karl, was interested in my oldest sister Cheryl, who was only 16 years old and he wanted to continue building cars on the rear property with Torch and Duffy. In other words, we lived in the middle of a chop shop. Because of my mother's desperation for money, it also became an after school and weekend job for me, until it fazed school out altogether. Whatever Clarence wanted me to do, that's what I did. He treated me like a man when I was just a boy. I guess some might not realize how enticing that is unless they're the only boy in a house full of women.

I will never forget the first time I heard those two thundering V-twins roaring down Pacific Avenue. Torch kicking back with his long lean legs propped on the pegs of a chopped and raked bright purple chromed out pan head and Duffy riding next to him on a full-dressed heritage hog. Neither ever wore a helmet, just dark black shades.

I ran for all that I was worth to get the big white gates open so they could idle into the backyard. Both motors loping as if they were turning fast enough to stay running. The big bad bikers, wearing leather vests and Levi's, headbands and black boots, giving me a respectful nod, cruising into the backyard before cutting their engines, rolling to a stop and swinging out the long chrome kickstands.

They always flew their colors back then. Vagos was on a patch under their emblem. Duffy said it was some kind of Norris God and of course, Torch clarified that the God on the emblem was Loki and that Loki would assist the other gods and, sometimes caused trouble for them. He was the god of mischief, he explained in detail.

Torch had long blonde hair, tied in a ponytail hanging out from under a welder’s cap. Today it’s gone to a silvery grey but it’s still under the cap. It might be the same one. He still has the smirky smile and you can never miss his unmistakable cackle when he laughs. He’s kind of a beatnik intellectual, a real deep thinker with thoughts and philosophies that range from politics and psychology to women, none of which he knows anything about, but that never stops him from rattling on.

When he’s stoned, he is exceptionally profound and has the answers to all the ill in the world. Duffy passes him a joint first thing in the morning before they start work and the shit slinging starts and doesn't stop all day. Occasionally they'd try to bring me into the fray, by siding with one or the other. I avoided that at all cost. I might've been young but I wasn't no dummy. Torch always tries to come off as a wise philosopher. Duffy and Clarence would usually just laugh at him. You are so full of shit, Duffy would say and Torch usually calmly replies, Well Duff, that may very well be, but you just sit back and watch it happen, fat man.