Letter From a Fictitious Person

By Leo Cohen

Charlie Kenway and Frank Duckworth spent their first two years together in the same babysitter's crib, and then grew up, first, next

door to each other and then in the same trailer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although not brothers in blood, it was the only connection

they were missing. Then fate in the form of bad luck deprives them

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Books, LLC
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985549218

Leo Cohen

Leo Cohen has a fairly lengthy history in the early computer industry and published on program generators and database.Not the stuff of bedtime reading. And now, he writes; fifty or more political screeds published in local Colorado newspapers, a few short stories, some poems and six novels to date.

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Letter From a Fictitious Person

Letter From a Fictitious Person

Novels by Leo Cohen

The Autobiography of a Lesser God

Letter From a Fictitious Person

Tracking Shadows

An Almost Perfect Murder

Running From Tomorrow

Computer Dreaming

Letter From a Fictitious Person

Leo Cohen

Joshua Books

Yucca, California

Joshua Books, LLC

7446 Chippewa Trail

Yucca Valley, CA 92284

joshua-books.com

Copyright©2022 Leo Cohen

All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed are fictitious.

Book and cover design: RSBPress, Waitsfield, Vermont

Cover photo: Vladimir Yaitskiy, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Tradepaper ISBN 979-8-9855492-0-1

Ebook ISBN 979-8-9855492-1-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901557

Vista View—1959

Shine was still in the city on I-40 and so far as anybody could tell, on his usual route west to Flagstaff along with all the new traffic since the Interstate had been punched through to Las Vegas. A nice Southwest morning, the new sun pointing his shadow West, cars zooming around him, everybody but Shine in a hurry. He had time, plenty of it. Nothing behind him in the Hog’s mirrors looked suspicious, although the vibration of the big bike was always enough to raise questions about the view back there. But he wasn’t worried, Shine was too careful, too smooth to let anybody pick him up. Besides which, none of them—Tino, Dumper, Kink—was any way smart enough to figure out his gig. He pulled off at the next exit, almost at the western edge of Albuquerque, and headed north, staying in traffic, then riding neighborhood streets to see if anything familiar turned up in the mirrors.

Nothing. As usual. Until Griegos Road.

There was a faded blue pickup back there. Maybe he’d seen it on Rio Grande, maybe not. He picked up the pace and it dropped back. He got a few cars between his bike and the pickup, timed an upcoming intersection for its red light, turned right and then immediately cut across traffic into an alley way. He gunned the bike to the end, turned right onto the street and worked his way through the neighborhoods in the same general north east direction. Easy.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up to the key box at the storage facility entrance, pushed in his key, dialed the number of his mini-storage and rolled in as the gate pulled back. He turned at the first row, parked the bike on its kick stand, motor running, and walked back to peek around the corner.

Just somebody in a Chevy working the box. No pickups, blue or otherwise. Back on the bike he rode to the next to last row and then to his mini storage, set the combination and lifted the overhead door.

The storage room was ten feet by ten feet. It held an old, well-used card table with a folding chair beside it. There was a packet sealing machine on it and a medium-sized cardboard box half filled with empty plastic packets. On the floor against the back wall was another box packed with plastic bags, a pile of plastic ties next to it and a ratty satchel with a buckle flap and looking a little fat. Two battery lamps that he turned on, completed the furnishings. He rolled the Harley in and pulled the door down. This was his office. It felt cozy.

Shine hung his jacket over the chair, took a reefer out of a cigarette pack in its breast pocket and lit up. Then he opened the right side saddle bag, pulled out a large waterproof bag, brought it to the table and went to work. About forty-five minutes later he had taken a half teaspoon full of white stuff out of each of fifteen packets and replaced it with a half teaspoon full of flour. He made new packets with his sealer, repacked everything and put it all back into the saddle bag it had come from. The cocaine in the left bag was all okay, so he could be selective as to which dealer got the slightly altered packets, and spread the lighter bags around among his thirty or so clients.

Anyway, Shine reasoned, dope heads would never know the difference, and if they did they’re too stupid to complain.

Well, okay, maybe there was a complaint here and there. So what’s the fuckhead going to do? Call and tell him he wants his money back? How un-fucking-likely that was. He told all his dealers he didn’t want to hear any shit. Their stuff was a hundred percent. Give him grief and he, Shine, would ball them up like horse turds, and that would be the last snow they would see from him. You don’t fuck with Shine.

Shine was about five feet nine, thin as pipes and muscular with almost no fat on him. His face had wide cheek bones with a narrow chin only slightly widened by a somewhat ragged goatee. The effect was to draw his cheeks in to the edge of sunken, and to accentuate the eye sockets. His eyes were coal black, the same color as his hair, overall the look of a dangerous person.

Which he was not. Mostly strut and chuff. But his gang was pretty well known, especially Dumper who had a killer’s rep, and it provided Shine with an aura he could work with. Women were a different story, and when he got far enough that they saw the big scar across his right hip and down to the leg, he would just say ‘Nam, a couple years ago’, and turn on a faraway look. That scar, however, was actually the result of a fancy operation at around age five to lengthen a leg that had come out of the oven a little undercooked.

Time to go. It took Shine just a few minutes to get under way, and not long after that he was back on the Interstate headed west.

Vegas, man.

He had rolled the Hog slowly along the Boulevard to the west side of town and a low key neighborhood bar. All the winking glitz, all the gorgeous skanks for the picking, all the money. Someday, maybe, but he was here on business, no screwing around. Three stops in Flagstaff yesterday had worked just right, two deliveries and an interview. Their business was good and getting better, and the skim was filling the old briefcase back at the storage. But six and a half hours on the bike from Flagstaff entitled him to a beer or two and some relaxation, and that’s what he was doing now. He had a first delivery in about an hour and two more tonight, a new guy tomorrow morning. Then two more stops at Bull Head City and Lake Havasu, and back in Albuquerque in two days.

It made him think of Blondie. She was so lean he could feel her bones when he banged into her. That would get it started and then there was no stopping her. But the kid; damn! He was okay, just in the way, like a piece of furniture you bumped into when you weren’t looking and it pissed you off. Shine was sitting at the little table in the kitchen trying to figure his counts and cash, never easy for him, when the kid comes over and looks at all the numbers and asks what it’s for, and Shine says its a message that says ‘mind your own fucking business’, and slaps him backhand, not hard, and says, that means the same thing, kid, and Blondie comes all over him with that knife up his ass shit.

Okay, she could be tough. Well, he’d have to show her who was boss, that it didn’t do to mess with Shine. The bar wasn’t busy but he sent a scowl around the room just in case someone was thinking about fucking with him.

Across the street, a faded blue pickup pulled away from the curb. They knew where he was going next.

What I’m saying, Marty, is everything you say means something. Even if you can’t explain it… to yourself, even… it means something. Words mean something. She was standing at the sink in the area that passed for a kitchen in the cramped trailer, unloading a small bag of groceries. I keep telling Charlie that. Words mean something. You should know what your words mean before they come out of your mouth.

Blondell Kenway was only halfway through her twenty-sixth year, but it was a youth that a rough life was starting to wear on. Her hair, originally a light brown-nearly-blond and suited to her nickname, Blondie, was now fading into something weary looking. It carried on in her face, thin, taught, possibly pretty given some color and a little heft. Overall she was five-seven and thin, not quite bony, except for her hands, which she would hide behind folded arms across her chest when she talked with strangers.

Come on, Blondie. Carney had his mouth open and something came out, is all. Half the time he doesn’t even know he’s talking. I mean, the man’s mostly a robot, a good robot, but, you know, a robot. Martina was sitting on a tired looking, uneven, faded brown couch in the erstwhile living room, which seemed to meld with the kitchen. The couch was on the trailer’s back wall and it was only twelve feet to the front wall. Two mismatched chairs on that side and the couch on the other shrank the floor space between them to not much more than a long stride across a rug that had faded to match the couch.

Marty, Blondie said, the man says to me, ‘Hey Blondie, move your ass.’ I mean I’m already cleaning tables. He says, ‘move your ass Blondie and get the dishes off nine’. She put a package of hamburger, another of sliced cheese and a small bottle of ketchup into the half refrigerator sitting on top of a cabinet to the right of the sink. ‘Move your ass,’ he says. What the Hell is that supposed to mean?

I was there, serving a guy at the counter. I remember it, the special, with OJ. Martina was a full-bodied woman, straight black hair, round face but a nice face, black brows over black lashes and black eyes, something warm and open about it. Her skin, the color of coffee with a lot of cream suggested Latina, probably from her mother, the daughter of a Mexican Indian. Some gene somewhere in her father was Irish, but none of that had turned up in Martina. I mean, OJ with meatloaf and mashed, absolutely weird. She was paging absently through a local tabloid. Anyway, I heard him say it to you, and all the time, you know, he’s crashing the dishes around in the pre-wash the way he does, like if you smack them together they get cleaner or something. But the thing is, Carney wasn’t thinking about you when he said move your ass. I mean, it wasn’t your ass he was talking about, you know? Not Blondie he was talking about. He was just talking about table nine and getting it clean. The place is jammed with lunch time and the Indian kid is no show and we’re running out of dishes. I could see where he’s coming from. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I guess. There was a small sliding window over the sink that looked out over four or five feet of space, all dirt with a wispy scruff of weeds, held back from the dirt street by a low curb, incongruous, as if the paving people had left for lunch and forgotten to come back. The window was open now to the light afternoon temperatures of a southwestern spring. Anyway, here come the boys. The shoe-box shape of the mobile home was angled to the street so that Blondie could see down it to the end where Volcano Road sliced it off. A school bus, yellow cutout against the empty tan space beyond it, had just let out a bolus of children that immediately spread and flattened into individual shapes. One of them was her kid, Charlie Kenway, another was Martina’s, Frank Duckworth.

The bus had stopped at the entrance to the Vista View trailer park, marked by a desultory sign that had suffered too many years of wind blown sand. This entrance split immediately into the four north-south streets that reached into Vista View to cross the three east-west streets, dividing it into blocks that held four trailers on the front avenue, four on next avenue back, each within ten feet or so of each other. Blondie’s trailer was on Street 2, Avenue 1. If there was ever a letter, that’s how it was addressed; Vista View, Street 2, Avenue 1. Only a name would differentiate the letter in its row, leaving it up to the experience of the postman.

Most of the eight or nine children in the group had scattered, but Frank and Charlie and two girls were coming down the street towards the trailer. Blondie watched Charlie dart left behind the small grocery at the end of the street and come up with a pole about the length of a baseball bat.

Nine years old and they’re talking to the girls already.

Martina joined Blondie at the sink. It wasn’t too long ago, she said, they thought girls were some kind of mistake.

Some kind of mistake, Blondie repeated half to herself. That’s good.

What the Hell are they doing now? The two girls had gone off and Frank was winding up to pitch a stone at Charlie standing at bat with the pole. Jesus, they could blind each other, Martina said.

Probably, Blondie said. She pulled a can of Spam out of the bag and turned to put it into a narrow cabinet.

Do you ever worry about their growing up? Martina said.

Did anybody ever worry about you growing up? She had finished with the groceries and went to the couch.

That don’t mean you shouldn’t, Martina said, taking one of the chairs across from her.

Ahh, what good does it do? You still end up here. You end up with a guy like Shine. And finally you end up being okay with what you got. Maybe seventy-five or so take home if the tips are good, and Shine.

You could do better than Shine.

I don’t know. Maybe. But he puts in another fifty a week. And the guy’s got a pile driving ass. I need that every now and then. And anyway, he’s mostly gone. It’s not so tough. I think it’s harder on Charlie. Charlie just doesn’t like him.

I’m not surprised.

I told Shine, he ever smacks Charlie again I’ll run a knife up his ass. That seemed to back him off. He even apologized in a way. Gave Charlie a silver dollar. Not really a silver dollar. It’s one of those, what do you call them?… commemorative coins. For Alaska becoming a state, I think. Called it a lucky buck.

Charlie’s a tough kid. He’ll weather it.

Yeah, he is. But he shouldn’t have to weather the guy I’m living with. Blondie looked away for a moment, and then said, I’ve been thinking a lot about Charlie Joyce lately.

Charlie Joyce? You still getting the post cards?

Oh, sure. Smartest thing I ever did. He lets me know when he’s going to run out and I send some more.

It’s been about ten years, now. He should be up for parole soon.

Pretty soon, Blondie said. He thinks in the next month maybe.

What do you think you’ll do?

I don’t know, Marty, I don’t know. Blondie sighed heavily. I really hate to move Charlie… my Charlie, I mean. This is the only place he’s lived. It’s not much but he’s happy here and I don’t know what’s in LA any more. So I don’t know.

Joyce’d be really surprised he’s got a nine-year-old baby. I mean, it’s a kid he’s never even seen.

Right. It’s a big part of what I got to figure out.

Blondie had gotten home from the Daybreak Diner at her usual mid-afternoon time, arriving with a headache that she immediately took to bed. She was in a half dream, half snooze when a low rumbling that seemed to vibrate the air around her opened her eyes. One of the rumbles was coming closer and developed into the idling grumble of a big motorcycle engine. She looked out the bedroom window just as a very fat, very scruffy guy in a denim jacket ready to explode at the seams dropped a rough looking Low Rider on its side stand and turned it off. Then she heard another one circling the trailer on the other side and it seemed to stop out back somewhere.

There were more of them out front, and still a little disoriented, Blondie pulled herself off the bed and went to the front door. She pulled it open and was totally puzzled to see five more bikes, some idling some off, sitting on the dirt patch in front of the place. Just behind them, parked in the middle of the street was a faded blue pickup. Possibly the largest person she had ever seen was standing by the open passenger door, and a tall, lean guy was coming slowly around from the other side, carrying some kind of leather bag, right hand in his pocket, casual, like he was here for a friendly visit. They stood side by side for a few moments, staring at Blondie, apparently sizing her up. Then the tall one started toward her, the monster followed and a smaller, bent over guy got off his bike as they passed and brought up the rear.

The one in front was wearing a red bandanna polka-dotted white. Blondie could see that the straggly hair sticking out at the sides was a reddish brown and matched what looked like more than a week’s growth on his face. The man was powerful looking, broad shoulders, arms filling out his tee shirt sleeves, and something in the steady approach said he wasn’t used to hearing ‘no’. He came right up the step, took Blondie by an elbow and into the trailer. The big guy followed, turning slightly to fit through the opening. He wasn’t as tall as the first one, but big, easily three hundred pounds or more, with an enormous chest, and completely bald. Blondie involuntarily took a breath and held it, as if he would displace most of the air in the small room. The little guy in back parked himself at the door, leaning against the jamb.

You’re Blondie, the head guy said. I’m Tino. His voice was flat, dry, without inflection. These are my associates, Dumper and Kink. He didn’t indicate which was which, but Blondie could guess. Shine is an employee of our firm…

Former employee. It was the bent over guy by the door. Probably Kink. He was mostly hidden behind the monster, but Blondie thought he smirked as he said it.

…Former employee, Tino repeated. He was carrying a beat up satchel with a buckle closure. He had it in his left hand and held it up, right hand still in the pocket. He gave us this. The man’s stare was unblinking, relentless, the eyes glinting and cold like ball bearings. It made her very uncomfortable. Look familiar? She was suddenly self-conscious of her hands and folding her arms across her chest, hid them there.

Nothing like that’s been in this house. Blondie said. And Shine, I haven’t seen him for three days. He comes and goes, and he don’t tell me where.

Before he left our employ we had the feeling there was maybe more of what was in this bag here in his house. So we’re here to look.

Well that won’t take long. Clearly Blondie had no choice, this was not a negotiation. Be my guest.

Nobody moved while Tino stared at Blondie. After a few seconds he dropped the satchel, nodded his head and the other two moved off toward the bedrooms. Tino reached out and took Blondie’s arm and placed her on the stoop outside the front door. After a few moments she could hear drawers banging and the rumblings of a careless search.

Goddamned Shine. The stupid little prick skimmed these guys, and now he’s probably dead. Held out on me for almost a year. A lousy fifty bucks a week. Jesus, I can sure pick them.

There was a lot of unemployment in Vista View which made for an available audience, now watching from the presumed safety of their own front steps and dirt patches. Martina was in the street and as soon as Blondie came out she started toward her, but Blondie warned her off with a shake of the head. She was pretty sure there was more bad news coming. After about five minutes Dumper and Kink came through the door, pushing past her.

Then Tino came out. Standing next to her but not looking at her he said in his dead voice, We’re short about two grand, but I’m reasonable. I’ll take a thousand. Twenty-five a week. Kink’ll be by on Saturdays. The hidden hand came out of his pants pocket with a pack of cigarettes and the other produced a battered looking Zippo from somewhere. Blondie could see the right hand was missing a few fingers and it distracted her from the impact of what he was saying. It made it easier to be this close to him knowing he was vulnerable about something. And then she realized that up to the point where he had announced what was to be the equivalent of her slavery, she was a woman, a real person. But after that she was a nothing, a piece of machinery he owned, an ‘it’ with no opinion about his hand, or anything else.

Tino stood silently for nearly a minute looking around him slowly at the ten or so neighbors watching, the cigarette drooped from a corner of his mouth. People began turning away and retreating. Finally, Tino walked back to the truck, the bikes started and they all rode up Street 2 and away in a threatening cacophony of hammering exhausts.

Then it crashed in on her and Blondie went numb. This wasn’t a great life but it was what she had and she had adapted to it. She was sure her home, such as it was, was a shambles. And now she was supposed to live on just her own income, and pay these bastards twenty-five bucks a week out of that. Not possible.

Blondie never cried, she vibrated. Ever since she was small and the long train of disappointments started coming her way she had never cried. Instead, some combination of frustration, anger and failed expectation would wring a trapped energy from her that clenched her teeth and made the neck muscles rigid. Then the vibration would start up inside. It would last for a minute or so before she would be done with it, another sadness, another failure packed away, more life-junk to be lugged around. Her Vista View street was flat, silent, lifeless, a perfect reflection of her mood.

Blondie didn’t want to go back inside, she knew what waited for her, and she didn’t want Charlie to come home to any of this dirty business Shine had left them. There was nowhere to turn, except to Marty who was wrapping her arms around her, clearly understanding this was not a good time for Blondie to go back into the trailer. After a long embrace Marty led her next door to her place.

She had been sitting quietly for close to ten minutes on a chair in Marty’s living room, head in her hands and staring at the throw rug on the floor. She was feeling totally bleak. Marty had made her a cup of tea sitting now on a small table beside her, untouched and already cooled, and then busied herself in her kitchen, peeling potatoes, opening a can of green beans. The boys wouldn’t be home from school for another hour, but she wanted to keep busy and let Blondie be. She would be there when Blondie was ready to talk.

Marty’s trailer was identical to Blondie’s in its physical aspects except that Henry had built an extension for Frank’s bedroom with a smaller room attached to it, while the extension was already on Blondie’s when she had rented it. The real difference was in the furnishings and the way it was kept up. The real difference was that Henry was Marty’s husband, and he cared what the place looked like. So Marty cared. Shine, and none of the guys before him, had cared much about Blondie’s trailer outside of the bedroom.

She finally rousted herself from the desolate plain she had been in with her future in tatters at her feet, and looked around her. The furniture wasn’t stylish but it all matched, there was a presentable rug on the floor, a television set with rabbit ear antenna, a toaster oven in the kitchen and a car that was younger than their kid. It was clear having Henry not only made a difference in the money, but in the quality of their life. Yes, Vista View was a dump, not quite the asshole of Albuquerque but close to it. But Marty, this place, her life all said you could do okay, be satisfied, if you had just enough, if you had a Henry.

She suddenly felt a wistfulness wash over her and sighed heavily. You’re doing okay, Marty, Blondie said. I envy you having Henry, I really do.

It’s luck, Blondie. She shrugged her shoulders. Just luck. He loves me, he loves Frank and it makes working at Germsers okay for him, and makes working at the Daybreak okay for me.

Blondie was quiet for a while, and then she said, This guy… his name’s Tino… he says Shine owes them two thousand. She dropped her voice and said, half aloud and mostly to herself, That little turd. Christ, all he was good for was getting me off. She took a moment and then continued, So this Tino, he says I got to pay it back, the two grand, but he’ll give me a break, I only have to pay him a thousand. Twenty-five a week he says, on Saturdays. That’s his break. Twenty-five a week. Jesus, how many weeks is that?

I don’t know, Marty answered. A lot.

Which means I’m down to about fifty a week. And with Shine gone, that’s fifty period. Oh lord, it’s not possible.

I don’t know what to say, Blondie, I wish we could help.

Marty, don’t say it. I’m not asking for anything. I know you’d help if you could. You and Henry got a life. And Frank.

Both women were quiet for a while, Blondie padding round in silent circles of frustration, Marty at a loss for words, for ideas, for anything that would help.

Blondie, maybe you have to tell him it’s impossible, you can’t do it. You know, he just has to suck it up. And anyway you didn’t know what Shine was doing and Shine didn’t do much more than pay his way.

Oh yeah. I can see that, Marty. Appeal to the man’s sweet nature, his softer side. She shook her head slowly from side to side, lips pursed, look grim. No, not with this guy. I’ll tell you what would happen, they would take it out in trade. Yeah, I can see it now, blow jobs and being passed around. And then coming home stinking of them, and probably some bruises and no explanations for Charlie.

Jesus, Martina said.

A slave’s life, Marty. I wouldn’t last very long. She sat back in the chair, shrinking under the weight of relentless despair, looking backward, the only safe direction for her thoughts.

It had taken her just about twelve years to get to Albuquerque, New Mexico from Bloomington, Illinois. Blondie was 15, a sophomore, and with the exception of Charlie Joyce, a senior, hated everything about her life. That included her parents, especially her father, a mean bully who had reduced her mother to a lump almost too fearful to breathe in his presence. And then one night her father had made it clear that she was in his sights, that he had something dirty, really dirty, rolling toward her.

I was an early spring that year with warm evenings and her father had suddenly taken to wandering around their apartment in boxer shorts. He’s got a big dick, she said to Charlie Joyce, and you know, it peeks out every now and then and he doesn’t do anything about it. It’s like he’s showing it off to me, like maybe he thinks it’ll get me hot. Christ knows what he’s got in mind.

I think I know what he’s got in mind, that son of a bitch, Charlie had answered. Charlie was nineteen and smart, knew how the world worked and loved her. When she was with him, when they made love, life was beautiful, she was safe and nothing could scare her. You got to be careful.

Then one night her father made it very clear what he had in mind for her. He was in her room, silent, watching her, masturbating. It was the low light from the hallway blanching the moonlight, changing it so slightly, that had slid her gently out of sleep, and through slitted eyes she had seen him, a darkness moving against the lighter darkness of the room. The next day, instead of going to her homeroom she pulled Joyce into the hall from his.

Holy Christ, Blondie, what’s up? You look like shit, like… like, I don’t know, like you’re scared.

I am, Charlie, I am. He was right there, last night, my father, in the corner of the room by the door. It had to be maybe two, three in the morning. Can you believe it? I could smell the beer and the cigarettes. I could see him in the moonlight.

Your room? I mean, he’s your father! Jesus!

I know. And doing it, you know? I mean, jerking off. Right there. In my room.

And you asleep? In bed? Unbelievable.

Yeah, but not asleep. I heard him come in and pretended I was sleeping, because I’ve always been afraid of him.

I know, what he does to your mom.

"Right. Man, I imagined him slapping my tits; it makes me shiver just to say it. And then me, if I cried, like he does her. Jesus, what am I going to do, Charlie? I am so scared. I can’t go back there, I can’t stay there."

And Charlie Joyce came up with this great plan. Bobby Dean was a year out of high school and working at Hall’s In-town Auto, and after a year of putting up with Harry Hall’s bad moods he was ready for something else. So Bobby could get them a car, and he knew how to get them others once they were on their way. Debbie was Bobby’s girl and Blondie’s best friend. All Blondie had to say was that Bobby was in, and Debbie was included. Then there was Ronnie manning a shovel for a road crew and couldn’t wait for someone, anyone, to come up with another idea. When Charlie said Los Angeles, Ronnie thought Hollywood and was ready to go. Mr. Tough Guy Ronnie with his gun. Officially it wasn’t his gun, it was his father’s. His old man didn’t believe in banks, kept a safe at home and had the gun in case someone tried to break in. Ronnie knew the combination for the safe. He had told Charlie about it, which is why Ronnie was part of the plan, the part that provided the starting-out money for gas and food and maybe a beer now and then. Ronnie had grabbed the gun on the way out of the house. His first thought was that maybe his old man wouldn’t come after them if it was gone; and who knows, it could be useful on the road, or in LA. Anyway, it was there for the taking so he took it.

There were