Dire Means (32 page)

Working on the new computers reminded Mark of the phone message left by Jared McCrane. Tonight was Neva’s deadline for returning the computers, and a good night for Mark to pay the shelter a visit.

After six hours of focused work, he said good-bye to a grateful Jaffey Melugin. As he walked back to his car, he dialed the shelter, hoping to get Tory. She answered and confirmed that the computers were due back within the hour.

“She came in and was going crazy this morning,” Tory said. “She threw some vegetables across the kitchen and was screaming ‘how dare he this’ and ‘how dare he that.’ I was sure she would hit one of us.”

“Did she?”

“No, but she’s not finished. She’s looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“She asked me if you were coming into the shelter any time soon. I said I didn’t know.
Are
you coming back?”

“Absolutely. If she asks you again tell her that I’ll be verifying the return of the computers tonight.”

“Mark, you better be careful; this woman is vicious.”

“I’m not afraid of her.”

He thanked Tory and agreed to talk with her after the night’s dinner service.

If Pop had a vendetta against people he perceived to be cruel to the homeless, then what would he think of Neva—a person who took resources designated for homeless people and used them for her personal gain? She would be a tremendous prize for Pop. If Pop had been following Mark’s comings and goings, then he surely knew about the Soft Landing Shelter House. And even if he didn’t before, his intense surveillance of Mark would give Pop an earful of Neva’s self-aggrandizement and exploitation.

For the rest of the afternoon, Mark managed to squeeze in four visits to clients to set up remote access for yet more employees afraid to commute into Santa Monica and to install Internet security cameras to record every movement on his clients’ premises twenty-four hours a day.

When he got home he took a shower and ordered Chinese food for pickup. He would eat it on his way to Soft Landing. The dinner he would serve was for the guests not the volunteers, and he wouldn’t want to stay for the snacks that were served at Neva’s Happy Hour. He didn’t imagine that Neva would be in the mood to invite him this time.

§

At Soft Landing, parking was tough as an unusually large number of cars lined the street in front. Mark saw a line of people that stretched from the porch of the shelter out to the sidewalk and then turned down the street. There must have been two hundred people in it. He found a spot two blocks away, and then he made his way back via a shortcut through a back alley to the shelter.

On the shelter’s back entrance, a temporary sign made of a paper plate read, “All volunteers enter in front.” As he rounded the corner to the shelter’s front door, he realized that the line wasn’t for people waiting to be fed. These were volunteer novices, offering their time to help the homeless after having seen Pop’s movies. Many of them wore business attire and talked on phones. A second line, parallel to the first, ended at the shelter’s exit door. This was the only line Mark had expected to see. It contained a group of less than thirty homeless people, and was not long enough to reach the sidewalk.

He scanned the people in both lines, hoping to spot Uncle Leon, but could not. Feeling emboldened by Jared McCrane’s message to him, he decided to skip the wait in line and go to the front to verify the return of his donated computers.

As he stepped past the waiting volunteer hopefuls, they watched him—looking for a badge or shelter uniform—or something to explain his audacity to cut in a line in front of people who were suddenly eager to help the homeless.

A woman put her phone to her shoulder and hollered, “Hey, the line starts back there!”

Mark ignored her and continued climbing the steps to the shelter’s closed exit door. Two men in suits and ties headed the line and pressed up against the door, blocking it.

“Excuse me,” Mark said.

“They said to wait here until we’re called in,” one man said.

People behind them leaned out of line to watch Mark’s progress.

“Excuse me,” Mark said again with more authority, and he reached between the men and pushed the door open. The men moved aside and Mark tripped on the door jam as he stumbled through.

Off to one side of the dining room sat yet more volunteers. With chairs arranged in the circle, they faced Neva, who stood professor-like before them. Mark wondered why Neva had let some of the volunteers in already. She had no doubt hand-picked them for some self-serving purpose. They all turned to Mark’s commotion. Neva leaned on her lectern and smiled.

The man who had tried to prevent Mark’s entry leaned in and yelled to Neva, “I told him you said to wait, ma’am.”

“He’s okay,” Neva said, waving the man back outside. “It seems that heroes who visit this shelter get their every wish granted, isn’t that right, hero?” Neva drummed her fingers on the lectern.

Mark checked the back wall of the dining area. The computers he had set up were there. “They’re all back in place, hero. Do you want to inspect them closer to make sure I haven’t gutted them for parts?” Neva asked.

The volunteers panned their heads back and forth between Mark and Neva. A few whispered to one another.

Mark nodded at Neva and said, “I’m glad to see them back where they belong.”

Neva patted the back of her hair and her smile faded. “I think you all know the naked hero who saved the bum on the rooftop last week, don’t you?” The volunteers gawked at Neva, surprised by the word “bum”.

“Heroes deserve a hero’s welcome,” Neva said as she began a slow clap, her eyes scanning each of her brand new volunteers. The claps of a few volunteers trickled in to join her in anemic applause. Neva waved for Mark to come over, and then motioned for the volunteers to stand to join in her sarcastic ovation for Mark. At the back door, the men peered in at him still trying to understand who he was and why the director had allowed him in.

Mark expected that Neva might throw him out after he had confirmed the presence of the computers. It was, after all, a great opportunity for Neva to flaunt her status, imprinting her power on the minds of a new group of volunteers. But he could see that he was in for an evening of Neva’s scorn he preferred to avoid. He began to leave, but Neva called out, “Mark, please wait.”

He stopped and turned back.

“I would appreciate it if you would stay with us tonight,” she said. “You are, after all, an honored guest of the shelter.”

Confused at first, he remembered how quickly Neva’s personality changed. He also considered that there was a possibility that Uncle Leon could still show up. He pulled a chair from a nearby table and added it to the back row.

Neva smiled, satisfied with her persuasion. She pulled a cell phone from atop the lectern and addressed the volunteers. “Will you all please excuse me for a moment?” Then, without leaving the lectern, she dialed. “Yes, I’d like to place that order we discussed, thank you,” she said, and hung up.

Mark and the other volunteers were puzzled, but Mark chalked it up to another of Neva’s self-serving, egomaniacal games. It struck him then that Neva was on time for the first time since he had volunteered at the shelter. Tonight she had skipped her fashionably late entrance.

“Frank!” Neva yelled. A small man in a white cook’s uniform scurried out from the kitchen with some wet carrots and a knife still in his hands.

“Yes, Ms. Boyston,” he said nervously.

“I’m increasing the number of volunteers who will serve us tonight,” she said. “Let twenty more in and then tell the rest that we are full and to either arrive earlier tomorrow or to consider better treatment of the homeless.” She laughed, sending a piercing cackle throughout the dining room as Frank put the carrots and knife on a nearby table and speed-walked to the front door. He opened it tentatively, made the announcement, and counted off twenty more volunteers. Like Mark, the volunteers took chairs from tables that were set up for dinner service.

Neva put her phone into her purse and then pulled out a pocket mirror and began to apply lipstick. Completely absorbed in her makeover, she ignored the volunteers as they filed in to fill coveted seats in her audience. Outside, the line of disappointed would-be volunteers disintegrated.

“Places everyone!” Neva yelled. “We’re about to begin service.” She rubbed her lips together and made a loud pucker sound as she squatted to tuck her pocket mirror back into her purse. When she came back up she met Mark’s eyes. He smiled at her and her eyes narrowed. Why did she want him to stay if the sight of him angered her so?

The chefs’ hats moved and spun beyond the serving counter. One was Tory’s and eventually she stood up on her toes to peek over the counter. Mark saw her and she pointed to the hallway where the shelter restrooms were located and mouthed, “Go!”

Mark stood and began toward the hallway, but Neva stopped him by clearing her throat. “Just a minute, hero,” she said. She left the lectern, heels clicking toward him, dragging the interested stares of volunteers with her. She stopped close to him and said, “Where are you going?”

“To the restroom.”

“You’re a big boy. I think you can show us the courtesy of holding it until we finish our introductions,” she whispered, and pointed to the group of volunteers who looked on, wishing they could hear the conversation.

Mark felt a surge of anger. “You just announced that heroes can do anything they want at the shelter,” he said loud enough for the volunteers to hear. “Now, I’m using the restroom.”

Neva smiled, masking her rage. “Let me tell you something, computer hero boy,” she said, leaning to within inches of Mark’s face. “You can come in here and get away with being some sort of celebrity after your roof act, but don’t you dare think for an instant that you or your new best friend, Jared McCrane, can tamper with how I run my shelter.”

She turned and held her stare on Mark as she clippity-clopped back to her lectern. “Where were we?” she said, gripping the sides of the lectern tightly.

In the hallway, outside the restroom doors, Mark paused. A moment later Tory came through another door not visible from the dining area. She ran to Mark’s side and whispered, “Watch out! She’s up to something.” Tory’s brow furrowed and her voice was tight and hushed.

“What? I told you she doesn’t intimidate me,” Mark answered.

Tory pulled his arm, leading him further down the hall to ensure that Neva would not hear her.

“Don’t worry about me,” Mark said. “I contacted Jared McCrane and told him the computers were an example of her fleecing the shelter. He called a special board meeting for next week. They want to discuss her handling of the shelter’s resources.”

“No wonder.”

“What?”

Tory tilted her head back and exhaled.

Just then they heard Neva’s heels clicking from right around the corner and her voice much closer than they expected. “I’m sure we have some t-shirts; everyone wait.”

Mark turned to run to the men’s restroom about fifteen feet toward Neva’s voice. Tory knew Mark wouldn’t make it in time so she grabbed his arm. “In here,” she whispered as she pulled him into a closer storage room.

The light from the hall revealed two rows of racked shelving in the middle of the room. The door closed behind them and the room went pitch black. Tory led Mark through the darkness, dragging him by the arm deeper into the storage room. They heard the sound of Neva’s heels approaching outside. As they neared the rear of the storage closet in total blindness, Mark’s shoulder bumped something that fell with a thud to the floor.

“Get down!” Tory whispered.

They both squatted and the door opened. Neva hit a light switch and the contents of the storage room appeared. Shelving lined the walls and held blankets, dishes, boxes of pamphlets, and an array of other shelter supplies.

Mark saw that Tory had led them behind the metal racking that stood in the center of the room. The racks were loaded with enough boxes to conceal them, as long as Neva didn’t approach the rear of the storage room. Mark peered through an opening in the rack and he saw Neva from the waist down about twenty feet away. She stood by the wall facing their direction, and for a moment Mark thought she might have spotted them.

Tory bit her lip and raised her head upward with her eyes squeezed shut as if praying. Neva’s heels clicked five steps closer and she turned to a shelf.

There was a loud crash as boxes of plastic cups fell to the floor and spread to every corner of the storage room. Tory jumped and squeezed Mark’s hand, but made no sound.

“Who the hell organizes this pigsty?” Neva mumbled. She shuffled sideways two more steps toward Mark and Tory before another box crashed that sent pens, pads, and holiday decorations all over the floor. “Oh for the love of all things holy,” she said. She pulled two more boxes from their shelves, and dropped them to the floor when their contents didn’t satisfy her.

Tory pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.

Neva pivoted and moved back to the door. Relief swept over them as she opened it, but she only leaned out and screamed for Frank. She waited with the door open, and after a few moments, a nervous Frank appeared beside her.

“Where are all of our Soft Landing t-shirts?”