The Very Least: Hickey Family Crime Novels

By Ken Kuhlken

(San Diego, Tijuana, Lake Tahoe): A dear friend of Clifford Hickey's cousin Bo crosses the border on the run from a charge of molesting children in a church nursery school. Because Bo believes him innocent, journalist Clifford agrees to investigate. Soon he has made enemies of gangsters, politicians, and tycoons on both sides of the border. That's the bad news. The good news: he meets Jodi McGee who helps him discover his purpose and write this story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hickey & McGee
• Release date: Apr 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370680016

Ken Kuhlken

Some of Ken’s favorites are early mornings, the desert in spring, kind and honest people, baseball and other sports played by those who don’t take themselves too seriously, most kids, and films he and his Zoe can enjoy together. He earned degrees in literature and writing including the Master of Fine Arts from the Iniversity of Iowa. His books, which include the HIckey Family Crime Novels and the For America Collection, have gotten honored by Poets, Essayists and Novelists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Private Eye Writers of America.   

Book preview

THE VERY LEAST

a Hickey family crime novel

Ken Kuhlken

Hickey and McGee, Publishers

hickeybooks.com

Also by Ken Kuhlken

The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles

The Good Know Nothing

The Venus Deal 

The Loud Adiós

The Angel Gang

The Do-Re-Mi

The Vagabond Virgins

Midheaven

The Answer to Everything

Praise for the Hickey Family Crime Novels

K en Kuhlken writes about characters most authors wouldn't touch. Author Raymond Carver

... brings a great new character — and a fresh voice — into the mystery field.  Novelist Tony Hillerman 

Kuhlken is an original, and in these days of cookie-cutter fiction, originality is something to be prized. San Diego Union Tribune

... brings the social and cultural scene of the period vividly to life. Publisher's Weekly

The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles is ... a  tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed.. Kirkus Reviews

The Venus Deal ... takes readers into dark experiences and deep understandings that can't help but leave them changed. Novelist Michael Collins

... entertains in a grand and thrilling manner. The Drood Review of Mystery

With The Loud Adios Kuhlken weaves a complex plot around a complex man, a weary hero who tries to maintain standards as all around him fall to temptation. Publisher's Weekly

The Angel Gang presents a stunning combination of bad guys and angels, of fast-moving action and poignant, heartbreaking encounters. Novelist Wendy Hornsby

The Do Re Mi ... captures the history and atmosphere of the 1970s as well as the complex dynamics of a fascinating family. Booklist

... a  tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed ... Crime, punishment and redemption. Kirkus Reviews

The Vagabond Virgins, ... fast-moving adventure, effectively combines mainstream historical fiction with the conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel.  Booklist

A wonderful, literate, and very ambitious novel that does everything a good story should do. It surprises, delights, it jolts and makes you think. Novelist T. Jefferson Parker

"The pace, clarity and assurance of Midheaven make it a pleasure to read." Novelist Anne Tyler

Elegant, eloquent, and elegiac, Kuhlken's novels sing an old melody, at the same time haunting and beautiful. Novelist Don Winslow

Copyright 2018 by Ken Kuhlken

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Hickey and McGee, Publishers

8697-C La Mesa Boulevard

La Mesa, CA 91942

hickeybooks.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Cover art by John Dawson

The Very Least, Smashwords Edition. October 2018

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A note to music lovers

Because the Hickey’s are a musical family, you will find mentioned herein songs that inspire or elucidate passages. If you too are musical, consider listening to them.

They are (along with some good performers): 

There is a Fountain, Lindsay Taylor

Here Comes the Sun, The Beatles

Hearts Courageous, The Maranatha Singers

I Tried Him for Myself, Edwin Hawkins Singers

Tutti Fruti, Little Richard

St. Louis Blues, Louis Armstrong

Someone to Watch Over Me, Frank Sinatra

Over the Rainbow, Judy Garland

Men With Broken Hearts, Hank Williams

For Cliff Torrey, beloved friend

Contents

Also by Ken Kuhlken

Praise for the Hickey Family Novels

A note to music lovers

Chapters:

Clifford: One, Two,  Three,  Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Jodi: Eleven

Clifford: Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-one

Jodi: Twenty-two

Clifford : Twenty-three, Twenty-four, Twenty-five

Jodi: Twenty-six

Clifford: Twenty-seven: Twenty-eight, Twenty-nine, Thirty

Alvaro: Thirty-one

Clifford: Thirty-two, Thirty-three, Thirty-four, Thirty-five

From the Answer to Everything

All Ken’s books

About the Author

THE VERY LEAST

CLIFFORD

ONE  —  MY cousin Bo had a summer cold and decongestants went straight to her bladder.

She was on stage with the rest of the choir, performing a new arrangement of There Is A Fountain when an undeniable urge struck.

At least she was in the back row. She slipped away and out the stage exit to the foyer across from the nursery for ages four to six. In the nursery, she would find the closest restroom.

Her friends Dolores and Archie were in the nursery showing twins where to place the angels on an Easter flannel-graph. Bo tiptoed through the maze of children and toys, to the washroom.

The knob turned. She opened the door and screamed.

REDEEMER’S Grace Church welcomed the lost, which included ex-cons, the penniless, the homeless, and Bo, who landed there following her mom’s death. Right away, she felt wanted. She made new friends of all sorts, including Archie Akin, a shy and homely fellow Bo considered funny and sweet.

A year ago, Archie proposed marriage. Bo attempted to decline gently. When Archie recovered, he turned his affections to Dolores.

Now he stood accused of molesting kids in the church’s nursery. And though the DA hadn’t yet filed charges, The Sentinel, San Diego’s daily, was reporting ever more sinister accusations.

THE Saturday Archie’s photo ran on City page one, I was on the beach behind our family’s bayside bungalow when Bo came running. I looked up from reading a J.D. Salinger collection I thought might work into the syllabus of the community college class I would teach next fall. Bo thrust The Sentinel, open to Archie’s portrait, between me and the book.

The photo showed his bent nose, lipless mouth, and offset chin as though his lower face had gotten knocked sideways. A cameo scar crossed his cheek from the corner of his mouth to the right earlobe. His eyes were inset an inch or more, black dots imbedded in flesh, beneath a forehead swollen and creased like an old fellow’s. He was twenty-seven, six years younger than Bo.

Looking flushed as if she had sprinted the half-mile from the bus stop, Bo shifted her weight back and forth and lifted her feet as if the warm sand burned through the soles of her budget running shoes. As always, she carried a tote bag large enough to hold a cart of groceries. It hung in front of her. Both her hands squeezed the strap.

Sit down, I said. Rest a minute. Watch the sailboats and skiers.

She let the bag drop to the sand and knelt beside it. It’s my fault, she moaned.

Bo, all you did was scream.

No, I told the police what I saw. Should I have lied?

You don’t lie.

Since the scandal broke, she had written letters to editors and phoned radio talk shows, overcoming her timidity and proclaiming Archie’s innocence.

I reached for Bo’s hand. Cuz, there’s more evidence than just what you saw.

She yanked her hand away from mine and covered her eyes as if she’d just entered the sunlight. After a minute, she folded her hands and pressed them against her chin. Archie loves kids. He would never hurt them. She wheeled toward the bay where an armada of Hobie cats with matching crimson sails appeared to bear down on a fallen water skier. A speedboat came leaping to the rescue. Bo scooped a fistful of sand and pitched it hard at the bay. The breeze threw half of it back at her face.

She reached into her tote bag, pulled out a pack of tissues, a small jar of Rolaids, a sleeve of aspirin, a bandana like cowboys wear, and at long last a letter-sized manila envelope. She clutched it with the fingers of both hands and stared a long while at me as though studying my eyes for a cold or heartless tell.

At last she held the envelope out. 

It was sealed. I lifted a corner of the flap, managed to peel without tearing, and opened it far enough to see the contents: two rings. A pair of silver bands, each set with a single diamond. The engagement diamond was tiny, the wedding diamond as large as a shelled peanut.

In a hushed voice, as though revealing the key to a magical secret, she said, Archie gave them to Dolores.

"Okay. And you stole them from Dolores, right?

To my shame, I enjoyed teasing Bo. The horrified looks she gave in return might’ve gotten her cast in silent movies. Little Nell inches from the buzz saw.

Today, she only shook her head. Dolores hopes you will give them to Archie’s mom and ask if she’ll sell them and hire a good lawyer. Her eyes lit. Maybe even X?

X was our nickname for my brother Alvaro, middle name Xavier.

Oh, I forgot to mention, she said. Archie’s mom lives in Lake Tahoe, really close to your cabin.

Since I intended to leave for Tahoe in a few days, I nodded. Only what’s the deal? Do the rings belong to Archie’s mom?

Well, she gave them to Archie and he gave them to Dolores.

Then Dolores can just sell them herself.

But Archie wants her to ask his mom if it’s okay to sell them.

So Dolores ought to call and ask her. Right?

No, Clifford. You don’t know Archie’s mom.

That’s a fact, I said. Do you?

Only from pictures and stories. She’s scary, Clifford. You’ll see. Every time Dolores mentions her, she shivers.

THAT same evening, shortly after dark, Bo walked through fog across the Piedras Valley between her church and her apartment. Though she had survived treks through creepier neighborhoods, tonight the valley looked like a setting for The Undead.

She didn’t consider herself a likely target for robbery, in her K-mart pleated skirt and sweater and carrying her shopping bag purse. Rapists, she supposed, would attack prettier women. She had buckteeth and a figure so bony her friend Rosa, a counseling therapist, watched her for signs of anorexia.

Down the bank to her right, the fog was like swamp water filling Agave Park. An eerie, rhythmic thumping, maybe a dribbled basketball, sounded from below. A child screeched in one of the apartments across Mango Street. A staccato bass line pounded from a stereo. Bo stepped cautiously, watching for obstacles, along the sidewalk overhung with eucalyptus. To soothe her nerves, she mumbled lyrics the choir would perform that Sunday. Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above ...

She pressed her shopping bag tight against her ribs, although if one of the homeless folks who slept in the park had dashed up the hill and grabbed it, she might’ve let go. The most valuable object inside was her Bible. Bo would’ve given a Bible to whomever asked, and given most anything if they asked nicely.

A motor raced. Tires thudded over something. A gray truck skidded to the curb just ahead of her. Doors whooshed open and banged shut. Bo peered into the fog and caught sight of two shadowy figures. The boxy one had come around the bed of the truck and was stalking closer. The lanky one sidestepped from the passenger door to the sidewalk and stopped squarely in Bo’s way.

The lanky boy rushed, lowered his shoulder and drove it into her belly. She flew, landed on her back on ice plant and flashed down the ten-yard slope with the boy clinging to her waist like a tourist wave-riding on a boogie board. The boxy boy followed them down, slipping and sliding. All three crashed into the block wall of the restroom building. Creation turned red and kaleidoscoped while fists and boots pounded her. In the neck. The hips. The chest and shoulders.

"You make us mad next time, we kill you, puta, a boy shouted. Slut, you best zip up that skinny mouth of yours."

And a man’s raspy voice howled, Police. Call the police.

The howler was on the roof of the restroom. The boys jumped, clutched at the block wall and cussed. One boy yelled out, Borracho, you gonna die.

The other said, "Listen up, ese. A siren."

The boys scurried on all fours up the bank tearing away bunches of ice plant, some of which flew like tossed bouquets. A bunch smacked Bo’s forehead.

FROM the last Monday in June until Labor Day our family’s bayside bungalow would become a vacation rental. Soledad Rent-by-the-Week, Inc. would collect and pass along ninety percent of $1000 weekly while my kids, Feliz and Tommy, and I spent the summer in our other place, a small cabin on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Pop — Tom Hickey, a retired detective and musician — had left the cabin for us while he stayed in Newport Beach with my half-sister Elizabeth. He’d gone there to dissuade her third ex-husband from visiting and knocking her around. At seventy-nine, he was still plenty tough.

With a couple weeks before my kids’ school let out, and with a renter for the bayside place due to arrive the day after tomorrow, I planned to turn the lakeside cabin’s utility room into a bedroom for Feliz who was rushing into puberty.

Bo called from a pay phone outside Cutler’s Natural Foods, a few blocks from Agave Park where the boys jumped her. She barely had the wind to ask for help.

I raced to Piedras, made her lie down in the back of my Chevy wagon, and delivered her to University Hospital, sixteen miles away. She chose that facility because she worked there. 

The nurses wheeled her to a 12th floor private room where she lay groaning while I plotted revenge against the punks who had thrashed her. Men who abused the innocent turned my heart into a vigilante’s, and few adults were as innocent as Bo. 

Her actual name was Beatrice Garfield. The adopted child of Pop’s sister, my angel aunt Florence. Mother and daughter used to live together in Hollywood, until Bo crept her Oldsmobile across an intersection and an Alpha Romeo driven by a coke powered tv series writer broadsided them. In one abominable instant, dearly beloved Florence passed to the next world.

For a month or so, Bo could do nothing but weep and eat when forced to. After she cried and repented long enough, she sold the Olds and turned to walking.

I considered Bo a miracle. A file clerk who didn’t complain of boredom. Though she delighted in the church choir, she’d never dreamed of a solo. She barely earned minimum wage, yet she spent and labored more over my recent thirty-fifth birthday than had all other humans combined. Bo had managed to avoid buying into the mood of the times, the Reagan years, in which the world got bisected into winners and losers, the score tallied in cash and possessions. By those terms, Bo was a loser. But she usually appeared charged with joy. And she never, at least in my presence, showed bitterness. 

When worldly stuff troubled her, she came to one of her cousins. Usually to me. My brother had less unscheduled time, between his law practice, his music, and his Lothario ways.

The punks had cracked one of her ribs, chipped three teeth, and bruised her in places she would’ve hated to show even to a woman doctor.

When the nurse led police Sergeant John Montoya into Bo’s hospital room, I stood to greet him. Montoya, Alvaro, and I used to practice Tae Kwon Do under the same master. My brother had convinced me to join him. His pitch line was Master Oh teaches peace and self-control, and your temper could use tempering.

Bo squirmed beneath her sheets, embarrassed to be observed in her condition by a possibly eligible man. 

I repeated what she’d told me. When Montoya asked her for details, she croaked, I didn’t see hardly anything.

You’re sure there were two of them.

Uh huh. One boy was hefty, like a milk carton, only bigger, but the other one wasn’t so big, thank God.

Why do you think they were boys, not men?

From their voices.

What about their voices?

Sort of giddy.

What’d they say?

Mostly called me names.

What names?

Slut, Bo mumbled. And puta. I know what that means.

That narrows the suspects, I said.

Montoya added, To couple million, and that’s on this side of the border.

He promised to question neighbors and cruise Agave Park frequently, on the lookout for rough looking young Latinos most locals called cholos, in a small pickup. Also for the homeless fellow who had vanished, probably with the wallet that fell out of Bo’s tote bag.

After Montoya said goodbye, I followed him to the hall and past a trio of boys in letterman’s jackets waiting outside a room and tossing around a Nerf football.

What do you think? Montoya asked.

It could be about Archie Akin.

The creep that molested the church kids?

He’s a friend of Bo’s, and she’s sticking up for him. Somebody doesn’t like it. Maybe one of these punks is a father.

Montoya nodded and scowled. You’re not planning to investigate or make like her bodyguard? You’ll leave it to us, right?

Right, I said. 

"What I’m saying, Clifford, is for second offense manslaughter, the best you could hope is to get cut loose just in time to die. That’s if you draw a bleeding heart judge and jury. And if the bikers in your cell block at Pelican Bay don’t know who the first guy you killed was, and the cholos don’t catch on who was the latest.

TWO  —  THE next time The Sentinel ran Archie Akin’s photo, it monopolized the front page, under the headline AKIN CHARGED WITH TIJUANA MURDER. 

The article contended that Archie fled from arrest on molest charges by crossing the border. The bartender in a strip club recognized him from his portrait in The Sentinel and alerted a beat cop who summoned the federal police. As a federale attempted to cuff him, Archie snatched a .45 out of the federale’s holster and fired, the witness claimed. The witness was a stripper.

After I threw down the paper, for an hour I tried to sweat away my vexation. I ran up Pacific Beach Drive, across Mission Boulevard and along the sea wall to Crystal Pier. On a bench beside the lifeguard tower, while I watched a pack of surfers rise and dip on swells that never broke, I tried to imagine Bo’s shame and disappointment. The little man she championed was now a cop murderer. I ran home, checked for messages, and returned her call. She answered during the first ring. As soon as she heard my voice, she yelped, Why are they doing this to Archie?

Who are ‘they’?

That’s what we need to find out, I guess.

Bo, probably your friend shot the cop, like they say. All this trouble got to him, fried his common sense. Then the federale hassled him and he panicked. Any guy backed into a corner might do the same.

No, she yelled. Archie wouldn’t. Clifford, I’m going to phone X. He’ll make those people tell the truth won’t he?

My brother, Alvaro Xavier Hickey, was a native of Nayarit, Mexico. He’d been orphaned, lived as a Tijuana street kid, then picked the lock on the trunk of Pop’s car and smuggled himself across the line. Twenty-some years later, he became an attorney.

I said, Please don’t call X. He’s on orders not to cross the border. At least two of the meanest big shots in TJ would kill him on sight.

THE evening before I needed to vacate, after a day of replacing faucet washers, scrubbing floors and all, I sat down to read. I was starting A Perfect Day for Bananafish when the phone rang.

Clifford, Bo implored, I have to meet with another police detective tomorrow, about Archie. What do they want with me?

The detective will probably offer you tea. He’ll give you a nice chair, tell you to relax and spill everything you know about the guy. What groups you attended together. Comments, wisecracks he made. Peculiar stuff you might’ve noticed. About what goes between Archie and Dolores. You’ll get the chance to explain why you think he’s innocent.

But how can they say he snatched a gun from a policeman? He’s so weak I beat him arm wrestling. And he’s such a chicken that when we pushed him into the swimming pool at a church singles’ party he screamed and whined like a baby.

Adrenaline can turn a wimp into a Hulk. Anyway, the shooting charge is in Mexico. This detective wants to get statements about Archie that’ll help nail him on the molest counts, up here. Trust me, it would be better for him to get jailed on this side. Shall I go downtown with you?

No, I’ll be okay.

I said, Look, Bo, I could stick around here a week or so. I could sleep on your couch, keep you company.

Well, Sergeant Montoya’s afraid you’ll kill the boys if you catch them. And besides. She paused a long moment and sighed. Archie’s the one that needs help.

From the pause and her inflection, I knew she was hinting that I could somehow deliver Archie, at least from the Mexican authorities. I said, Cuz, if you imagine I can spring Archie out of Agua Caliente prison, you’re mistaking me for somebody who wears tights and a cape and who can bend steel bars and fly.

You mean X?

Not a chance, I said, and again reminded her that our family had enemies in Mexico, ever since 1942 when Pop and a gang of Indios liberated a cache of gold from Santiago del Monte and his Nazi collaborators. And only a few years ago, Alvaro conspired in an attempt to bring down the PRI, Mexico’s ruling party. Of the three Hickey men, I ranked a distant third on the del Monte and PRI hit lists. If one of us needed to go to Mexico, I was the one.

I COULDN’T shed the fear that the cholos had declared a vendetta, if not because of Bo defending Akin, then over some other offense she’d committed. Maybe Bo had a dark side, like my wife Ava did. Maybe she led a double life.

My assignment, I decided, was not to liberate Archie Akin, but to protect Bo. To lie in wait for the cholos to strike again and then to humiliate them before I called Montoya and declared, I kept a cool head, John. They’re still slightly alive. Tomorrow night I would spend at Bo’s.

I WOKE up restless at seven and phoned my cousin. Neither she nor her machine answered. I worried a minute, but convinced myself the electrical power had failed and she had forgotten to reset the gadget.

After coffee and cereal, I walked the edge of the bay in ankle deep water, to Santa Clara point and back, watching the rainbow sails and thinking.

Maybe Archie did molest those kids, and maybe he shot the federale too. Or maybe he didn’t. But who would challenge what seemed obvious when they had a prisoner as ugly as him? They’d say he proved he was wicked enough to molest children by shooting a policeman and he proved he shot the policeman by molesting the kids. Suppose he was innocent, nobody except Bo might believe him.

At home, I phoned Augie Quartilho, an amigo of Alvaro’s and a connected Tijuana attorney. After a minute of polite queries, I asked if he might represent Archie Akin.

The little gringo with the big head, bumps off federale Inspector Ruiz?

That’s the one.

Quartilho paused long enough to jot the reasons for and against and add them on a calculator. First you tell me whose side he’s on.

Whose side?

Politics. One sure thing, this Archie killed Ruiz, he made friends with a lot of cabrones. Or either he’s on their payroll.

"Which cabrones?"

He named a half dozen Tijuana crime bosses and oligarchs. Whichever ones hit Grihalva.

Daniel Grihalva had been the front-runner among opposition candidates for Municipal Governor. In the devil’s game of Mexican politics, Grihalva had been a beacon of hope until his campaign got defeated by a car bomb. What, Ruiz knew too much?

"Sure, could be. Or he cared too much. Ruiz had a sister took care of Grihalva’s kids. I figure it goes like this: Ruiz won’t let the investigation go away. Say he gets evidence but his boss tells him ‘Never mind that Grihalva murder, it’s all over.’ So Ruiz is going to try a different way, run the story in Libre, or why else did he meet la mosca. I’ll tell you, Hickey, the little gringo, maybe he shot Ruiz, maybe he didn’t, but he sure isn’t the one who made la mosca disappear."

La mosca, the fly, was the name people gave a crusading journalist I admired.

Don’t tell anybody where you got this, Augie said.

"Got what?"

"What I am going to tell you."

Yep. Nobody.

"Okay, La mosca goes to the Chi Chi Club, meets Ruiz. The federale gets shot, la mosca disappears. Tell you what, you find la mosca, dead or alive, I’m going to represent this Archie Akin. Else, no deal."

After we hung up, I sat still and rubbed my temples, hoping to God I could find a better way to get the truth about Akin than by creeping into the fetid labyrinth of Mexican politics. For minutes I catalogued murders, betrayals, rigged elections and honest folks terrorized into silence. And those were only the ones I knew about.

Then I sat up tall, recalling that Quartilho had included the del Monte’s in his list of suspects and regretting I failed to ask for specifics about why our family’s most bitter enemies might’ve murdered Grihalva.

BRIGHT and early, I packed for a week in Tahoe and crammed into the storage shed beside the bungalow a few crates of stuff for which the renters would have no use. Then I drove east on I-8 during early rush hour, speeding on the good side of the freeway past the tourist motels, sprawling malls full of fashionable junk beside what used to a riverbed. On cranky days I sometimes hoped all that commerce would soon get washed out to sea because some rascally bomber eliminated a dam or two.

I used the Piedras off ramp and drove straight to Bo’s, knocked on the door and the window, peeked in and saw no damage. Bo’s goldfish frisked in her bowl.

After I slipped under her door a note ordering her to call and leave my voicemail a message, I drove back west. Past the state college, I left the freeway and took the scenic route through Hillcrest with its vegetarian restaurants, metaphysical bookstores, antique salons, used bookstores and men who strutted, looking chic in Stetsons, boots and fanny packs. In Mission Hills, haciendas were getting re-roofed in synthetic tile by Mexican laborers, probably illegal, without whom the comfortable citizens wouldn’t be nearly so comfortable.

As I drove off the mesa toward the harbor, an Air West DC-10 descending to Lindberg Field swooped so low that, crossing the freeway, it left skid marks atop the trailer of a Mayflower rig. 

I parked on India Street in Little Italy, in front of a plumbing supply store next to the office of The Epitaph, a weekly tabloid dedicated to entertainment and outrage. The publisher was my friend Patrick Tarantino. We had roomed together our senior year at Pacific Christian College. Patrick was a big guy with ruddy skin, wooly black hair and a gray-flecked beard.

I told him about Dora Akin and my decision to look into Archie’s role in the Ruiz murder.

I asked for a printout of everything The Sentinel had run on Akin, the church, or Bo. The Epitaph had avoided the Akin saga, as the weekly’s motif wasn’t news but in-depth features. But Patrick kept a record of everything his competition published for reasons both laudable and shady.

I hope you drove a semi, he said. You’re going to need it to carry everything the fish-wrap’s done on Akin. Out of all the people to cross, he’s got to pick A.J. Peale. My God, the only way he could’ve gotten more press is by sneaking into Iran and converting the Ayatollah to Pentecostal Christianity.

He reached for the phone, pushed a button and commanded somebody to run a copy of everything The Sentinel had published that mentioned Akin or Redeemer’s Grace. Oh yeah? he grumbled into the receiver. Then skip lunch. He let the receiver drop. You know how much Peale’s worth?

A housing tract, a shopping mall or two. Wasn’t he the contractor for the trolley line?

Which one? He’s done trolley and bullet train lines all over the world.

According to Bo, I said, Redeemer’s Grace couldn’t have built that palace of theirs without him.

Hey, the man makes King Midas look like that old cartoon guy the dark cloud follows around.

Joe Btfsplk, I said, with the pronunciation the cartoonist suggested, by giving a raspberry.

"So that’s how you say it. Anyway, I’d trade you my houseboat and Edsel for Peale’s good