The Reckoning

THE

RECKONING

DAN THOMAS

THE RECKONING

by

Dan Thomas

KHP Publishers

http://khpbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.

The Reckoning Copyright (c) 2011 Dan Thomas

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Publisher, except for short quotes used for review or promotion. For information address the Publisher.

Cover art by K.H. Koehler

For Olivia, Patricia, Jack and David

You gave me your faith and your love.

1

First Encounter

Halfway through the Baltimore Now awards ceremony, and at the overextended ebb in Chamber President Alan Hart’s speech, Royce McCulloch couldn’t hold it any longer. He gently squeezed his wife’s hand.

“Be back soon.”

Leslie’s pretty browns flared. “But they’re about to call you,” she whispered.

Royce nodded, assuring her he’d make it quick, then discreetly shoved his chair away from the banquet table. Standing now, head slightly bowed, he saw Tony Garza flash a knowing smirk at him from across the table.

It’s that sonofagun who got me into this state, Royce mused, carefully winding his way between the tables toward the exit. Leave it to Tony to take him to a bar with Samuel Adams on tap for happy hour.

Before Royce reached the exit, a periscoping hand demanded his attention. He grasped the palm.

“Hey, Gary,” he whispered. It was Gary Ames, CEO of Carrollton Banks.

Gary showed a lot of white teeth. “Congratulations, Royce.”

He heartily squeezed Gary’s shoulder. Before he could move on, another hand, this one slender, female, with sharp, highly glossed red nails, rose for his attention. He palmed it, the fingers closing talon-like around his hand. A firm grip for a woman. No rings, he quickly noticed, and felt ashamed for having done so.

“No one deserves it more,” came a soft, throaty gush. His nostrils flared with a strong musky odor as he made visual contact with a stunning redhead, her blue eyes (
so vivid—contacts?
) almost stroking him. Damn, if she didn’t wrinkle her cute button of a nose at him. His glance avoided the heat of her eyes and hovered at her plunging d‚colletage, quite daring for this crowd. The drop-dead cleavage was shockingly ample, brazenly presented in all its voluptuous, freckled magnificence. He pegged her for early to mid 30s, with a buffed bod most 21-year-old girls would kill for. Damn, he couldn’t place her.

And he had to stop staring at her chest. These weren’t the old days, when flirting in the corporate world was acceptable, even, god forbid, fun. The Politically Incorrect Police could bust him at any moment. He wrenched his eyes away from the bosom and gazed submissively into the woman’s blues again, reading for signs of admonishment.

But none were forthcoming. She, in fact, mouthed a silent, “I will be calling you.”

He nodded. Aroused, Royce lumbered heavily on out the ballroom exit. Who the heck was she? He had the marble-and-brass restroom all to himself, which gave him enough respite to ponder the lady with the big you-know-whats’ identity. He rolled the cummerbund up, unzipped his fly and went trolling for his dink (in the dim past, a
cock
?). The organ wasn’t, given his present frame of mind, difficult to snare. Was she on the mayor’s staff? No. Too flashy. A political consultant? Maybe. Certainly a Democrat, not a Repub. But then again, some of those politically conservative ladies were far from conservative in the boudoir.

And she said she would be calling him.

Hey, you’re happily married. Remember, old chum?

Then he remembered his bladder was in pain. Burning, anxious moments passed before he started to urinate. That’s what came from drinking too much beer and holding it too long. He grinned slyly. It hurt to keep it; it hurt to get rid of it.

“Ahhhyess…” Royce sighed.

His hackles rose. There was another presence in the restroom. From one of the closed stalls came the sound of an animal in pain, the wail of a creature giving birth. Then unbridled flatulence and a heavy splash.

Suddenly Royce’s nostrils were overwhelmed by a sulfurous stench.

A toilet flushed. Royce heard the man rise off the toilet stool with a moan. A zipper zipped, a belt buckled. The stall door was thrown open—maybe kicked?—and nearly rocked off its hinges.

A man swaggered out and went to the urinal to Royce’s left. Royce caught a whiff of pungent body odor and leather, craned his neck ever so slightly.

Hadn’t this joker already peed?

Royce was put at ease by the dude’s stature, barely coming to Royce’s shoulders. The man’s scalp was shaved, and his head was attached to a thick neck, veins bulging. The eyes were cloaked by dark glasses. His bulky, obviously pumped-up torso was wrapped in a black leather vest or jacket. My God, one of those killer skinheads, Royce thought. Or a psycho bodybuilder. You weren’t even safe in the Hilton!

“You see the jugs on that bitch? What a rack!”

“No,” Royce said, smiling awkwardly, shocked by the man’s bold rudeness. He flexed his bladder muscles, but his stream showed no sign of diminishing. It bothered him, this stranger taking the urinal next to him when there were ten others to choose from.

And why hadn’t he accomplished number one when he did his number two?

“Guess I wasn’t done yet,” the man said and unzipped. “Funny how that is, when you get older. Maybe my prostate is on the fritz.”

Baldie began to tinkle, a heavy stream Royce could smell as well as hear. My God. This dude must have eaten a ton of asparagus or something, Royce surmised. Whew.

The fellow farted, whistled, hummed. Spurt. Splash. Fart.

Come on
, Royce urged his urinary tract.
Empty.

Finally, he was done enough to hurriedly zip up and flush, just missing a painful snag of his foreskin. If he dribbled some, it was okay. The tux pants were black, and the cummerbund would cover.

Royce should have left the restroom right then, but his overpowering sense of propriety drove him to the bank of sinks to wash his hands. He, after all, didn’t want this horse’s behind to think he was a low life or something.

The stranger, and his B.O., followed Royce over to the sinks. He walked like his testicles were the size of billiard balls as he arrogantly violated Royce’s space. Making quick business of washing his hands, Royce couldn’t help staring into the mirror for a closer look at this turkey.

But the man must have moved out of Royce’s reflected line of sight, because there was no image of him in the mirror. Startled, Royce spun, colliding with the man’s bony forehead.

The creep took a step back for an awkward face-off between them. He had a fortyish, pasty white face with a smattering of youthful pimples across his cheeks and forehead. Numerous piercings in his ears and nostrils made Royce flinch. The sunglasses gave him a machine-man look. He was sweating like a sow on a treadmill.

Royce noticed the jerk’s split and dirty fingernails, a Gucci watch with a cracked crystal. The Gucci clashed with the motorcycle boots.

Something familiar about that watch and the Ray-Bans.

Royce, with an edge of fear swelling inside him, pulled a paper towel and marched resolutely towards the exit.

“Just a sec.”

Royce turned back, finished wiping his hands and defiantly wadded the towel into a ball and pitched it into a sink. Maybe if he acted tough this bozo would back off. “Yes?” he snapped, jutting his jaw and flaring his nostrils.

“Hey, old buddy,” the cretin said. “What’s a Big Swinging Dick like you doing running with the putzes?”

Royce felt a twinge of nausea. So that was it: aberrant sex. He exited posthaste, fully prepared to summon hotel security if necessary.

He was reassured to see Tony waiting for him at the ballroom door.

“Hey, bud, where you been?” he asked. “The mayor is about to shit a crab cake.”

“Sorry.” Royce sped it up.

Inside Mayor Schmoke was well into his presentation speech for the Golden Trowel Award.

“This year’s award recipient has given a great deal to the vibrancy of our new Baltimore,” Mayor Schmoke spoke from the dais. “Not in the mahogany-lined board rooms of our top corporations, but in helping small businesses, many of them minority-owned, take root in our city, survive and flourish.”

The mayor cast a sharp glance, made eye contact with Royce and rolled on. “The man we honor tonight has been in Baltimore only four short years. But in that time he has made an indelible mark on the texture of our community, unselfishly contributing long hours and his vast expertise. He is a pragmatist, and yet he is also a dreamer. As our city embarks on the new millennium, it owes its undying youth and forward thrust to people like Royce McCulloch…Royce, get up here!”

Royce managed to lope to the dais in good shape, only to biff the mayor’s handoff of the Golden Trowel to him. Royce frantically clenched his fingers around thin air and impotently watched the gold plated garden spade spin out of control.

Both men, mayor and small business consultant, bowed to reach for the errant trowel, their foreheads cracking together like bola balls. The mayor’s fingers were the first to reach the trowel’s handle. He retrieved it, holding his left hand to a bruised forehead. “I forgot to add that Royce’s enthusiasm can be a real headache sometimes,” the mayor quipped into the microphone.

That got a real rise out of the audience, who had been bored to tears up to then. While the laughter reached its climax, Royce stared out and saw Leslie. Dear, sweet Leslie. Her smile sent him understanding, warmth and love. The consummate cheerleader, she gave him the thumbs up sign.

Schmoke now relinquished the dais. Royce’s mouth timidly approached the mike. He swallowed, cleared his throat, then flinched as he felt the ring of sweat gathering beneath his tuxedo shirt at his cummerbund. Royce exhaled.

“Thank you, Your Honor. I…uh…I…”

He took a deep breath, exhaled again. Nothing. He had forgotten every word of his acceptance speech.

The crawlies paid him a visit: not sharp, like the nagging feel of a full bladder, but dull like the cut of an ornamental envelope opener on bully beef. All this unsettling activity was centered in his stomach.

Royce’s left hand slipped under Leslie’s light flannel nightgown, along the hard muscled ridge of her left hip to her flat stomach and onto her almost flat chest. He lightly palm-whipped the large nipples.

Leslie stirred, pressing her firm buttocks into his crotch. Last night they made love spoon fashion, her backside grinding into his groin.

Grinding
was the word for it, as he struggled to maintain even a modicum of an erection, his libido indulging in shameful fantasy. He’d never achieved orgasm, snapping his rubber hand of a penis from her still hungering vagina. It was rare for him to not perform in this department.

“You’re just stressed out,” Leslie had soothed him. As for his fumble at the award dinner, stress was also the culprit, she assured him.

“Remember, you’re an old fart now, Royce,” she said, giggling. “You need to take it easy.”

With each sign of his slowing, it seemed Leslie loved him even more. Loved him fat, satisfied, domesticated. But darn, he wasn’t that old—just forty, tomorrow. In his father’s time that represented middle age, but now the commonly held belief, at least among aging baby boomers, was that real life, living in earnest, didn’t begin until forty.

His hand gently squeezed his wife’s delicate right breast. The fragile bulge easily fit in a pocket created by the length of his forefinger and thumb. Leslie sighed, lightly tapped the wrist of his left hand with her fingertips. She now squeezed the wrist, reassuring him that everything was okay, just as it should be.

Everything was okay, except he had failed her last night, first by making a royal ass of himself at the award ceremony, then the sex part. She was too good for him. Maybe he should check out that drug Viagra.

The crawlies bore deeper into his innards. He released his wife, rolling to his left out of bed. Royce eased off the mattress.

“Up early, Mr. R?” she asked, eyeing the alarm clock, which read five-thirty-five.

Mr. R.
She’d coined the nickname for him when he’d first brought up the difference in their ages (she just turned thirty last July) on their third date.

“Didn’t you take a stinky pill?” she asked, referring to the Valerian herb pills she’d given him for his recurring insomnia. They smelled like horseshit and gave him nutty dreams.

“Yes,” he lied. “But you know what they say, Les. The bladder is the first thing to go.”

She liked that, giggling again. “Then you’d better go do your tee tee, old fart.”

In the bathroom he lifted the seat, managed an intermittent stream and flushed.

“Don’t forget to put the seat back down,” she called into him.

“Yes, honey bun,” he said, giving her his best rendition of Mr. Henpecked. He came out of the bathroom and declined her invitation to come back to bed.

“I’ll start the coffee,” he said.

“Do you want me to get up with you, do some sympathetic listening, reach out with my caring point of view?”

He shook his head. “Nah.”

She beamed. “Good.” Leslie pulled the covers up around her neck and snuggled deeper into bed.

He buttoned the fly of his pajama bottoms and walked down the hall. On the way to the kitchen, he peered in on Craig. His stepson had gone to bed leaving the TV of his Nintendo game on. The screen glowed bright orange, but Royce made no move to turn it off, not comfortable intruding on the boy’s space.

At the kitchen counter he punched the Mr. Coffee on, then retrieved the
Sun
from the front porch. First thing, he pulled the business section from the paper and quickly scanned it. Too soon for any coverage of the Golden Trowel award. God, he hoped his little
faux pas
at the dais would be overlooked by the business press.

Now, he turned his attention to the front page. The terrorist thing seemed to have calmed down. Earth tremors were again shaking up prime southern California real estate (
poor babes
, he thought, and immediately felt ashamed). He turned to the metro section. Locally, Baltimore was still enraged by the shooting death of a black high school choir boy, killed on Halloween night while escorting his younger siblings trick or treating (two boys, ages thirteen and fourteen, were being held). Royce’s eyes glommed onto a story about a hooker’s body found in a vacant lot. Details were scanty, but the police feared Baltimore’s ladies of the night were in jeopardy. The words jumbled in his brain. All he could really focus his thoughts on were the vagaries of ten-year-old boys. One in particular.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. Part of his focus was drawn to the woman from last night, the woman with the big boobs. She said she was going to call him.

“Switch gears,” he told himself, hoping the signal would reach points south. The problem at hand was Craig.

Not that he didn’t get along with Craig. On the contrary, they got along extremely well. Too well, no doubt. And that’s where it ended between them, a genteel standoff between a middle-aged man with no parenting skills and a resentful kid with a chip the size of a Chris Craft on his shoulder.

“Some jump starter, but just half a cup, Mr. R.”

She was by the refrigerator, stretching her supple, rangy beauty. The nipples of her small breasts made pencil eraser sized bumps in her nightgown as she bent forward at her hips. Then she hugged herself, shivering. “Brrrrrrrr.”

“Yeah, I know, the furnace,” he said, pouring her half a cup and passing it to her. She sipped cautiously and went for his paper, pulling the style section. She scanned the front page, eyes suddenly brightening.

“See,” she said, proudly displaying the story just above the fold, “I guess I do have a future as a hack.”

“It’s flack, not hack. And no one ever said you didn’t have a future at it.”

She smirked. “Just checking.”

He snatched the paper from her. Joanne Davidson had given Leslie’s charity benefit for terminally ill children top billing in her society column.

Royce beamed. “Bravo.”

“Look,” she said, filching the paper back, “they mentioned First National Bank twice, and yours truly three times.”

“Very impressive. Even spelled your name right.” He scowled. “But no mention of your adoring hubby, I see. The little man behind the great woman.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “You get enough publicity already, thank you. Without even sending out one news release.”

“Yeah,” he had to agree. “I hate it. Maybe I should hire you to keep my name
out
of the papers.”

“You should be so lucky, Mr. R.” With that she rolled the paper and lovingly swatted him on his pajamed rump.

Before Royce could retaliate with a butt slap of his own, he caught Craig staring at the two of them with large, inquiring eyes. “Craig,” he said awkwardly, and stepped away from his wife.

Leslie rebounded by setting the cereal bowls out and retrieving the milk and orange juice from the refrigerator. Royce made toast. The three of them ate accompanied by forced small talk, most of it having to do with Royce’s efforts to pry from Craig how the boy was faring in school.

Craig could only manage sullen grunts of “Okay” and “Fine.”

Leslie chimed in, “Craig is getting straight As in English, just like his mom. But he’s slipping in math. Right, honey?”

“Yeah,” Craig said indifferently.

“I could help you there,” Royce offered. “Math was my best subject. Percentages and margins, that’s what I excelled at.”

The boy’s face screwed up. “Margins?”

Royce grinned, eager to open a door. “Well, it’s usually the difference between the cost of what you paid for something and what you can sell it for. It can also mean the difference between wholesale and…” He caught the strained look in Craig’s face, and Leslie seemed perplexed as well.

The boy said, “My dad said he’d help me with my homework tonight.” He glowered at Leslie. “Don’t worry, Mom. He said I could call collect.”

His mother said, “That’s very generous of Tom, Craig. But if you really want some math help, I’d go with Royce. Tom was a lot better with footballs than numbers.”

Craig flared at his mom. “You sayin’ I can’t call him?”

“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just that maybe you should give Royce a chance. That’s all.”

Yeah
, Royce thought.
That’s all. Just a break. Please!

Craig pouted. “No, I want my dad to help me.”

Royce smiled. “Sure, I understand,” he said diplomatically. “But if you want some help, just ask. Okay?”

The boy plopped his spoon down in his bowl of sodden Wheaties and said, “I got to get ready for school. Mom, you gonna take me?”

She offered Royce’s services as a chauffeur. But Craig looked like he was about to throw a fit, so Royce stepped in, saying, “That’s quite all right. Your mom will take you.”

When the boy had left the table, Leslie scowled at her husband. “You shouldn’t have let him get away with that. It’s not fair, certainly not to you.”

“I know. I guess he just needs more time.”

“He’s had nearly two years to adjust. I’m tired of it.”

Royce laughed. “Hey, I think that’s supposed to be my argument.”

She gently grasped his wrist. “You’ve been a fine husband, and I know you’re trying to be a fine father. I just think you deserve more recognition in that department.”

“Thank you.” He lightly kissed her on the cheek. “Say,” he added, looking at his watch, “we’d better be rolling if we’re going to continue our masquerade as the most successful working couple in Baltimore.”

The “shift showering & grooming” got underway in the McCulloch bathroom (the “quaint” bungalow in the city’s very Yuppified Towson area had but one). And after much customary jostling for the steamy bathroom mirror, Royce managed to meet Leslie and Craig at the alley garage on schedule. Grunting, Royce lifted the rickety garage door (attached to a tiny, equally rickety garage) so Leslie could deftly maneuver out her Honda Civic. He waved goodbye (Craig responded to his stepfather with a sullen glare) then eased the door down.

He headed around the front to his 1993 Chevy Cavalier parked in the street. All in all, I have a very good life, he concluded, as he drove downtown.

Royce parked in a five-bucks-a-day lot near Camden Yards (a baseball’s throw from the wondrous Oriole Park) and hiked the eight blocks up Pratt Street to the old Equitable Building and his fifth-floor office. A modest, low-profile enterprise, McCulloch & Company was headquartered in a tidy space that comprised a reception area and one office, Royce’s.

His secretary, Brenda Rollins, was already hard at work at the keyboard of her computer. He owed much of his success to the diligence and wisdom of the graying black woman, who, without benefit of a husband’s support, managed to put in four back-breaking hours a day at McCulloch & Company, attend law school at the University of Maryland, and successfully rear three children.

She didn’t smile much, but that suited his needs just fine.

“I’ll have the first draft on the Montoya SBA document for you in half-an-hour,” she said, and handed him his messages.

“Thanks.” He shuffled through the pink phone slips with a hint of anticipation, stopping at one. “What’s this?”

“A Cliff Wells called to confirm your one-thirty lunch at Spago. He wouldn’t leave a number. Wasn’t very pleasant.”

He shrugged uncertainly. “Okay.”

“New client, Royce?”

“No. A joke, I guess. Anyway, Spago isn’t open for lunch.”

“Where’s Spago? I’ve never heard of it.”

“West side.
Far
west side.”

“Anyone else call?”

“I gave you the message slips. You expecting an important call, Royce?”

“No.”

He went into his office, suddenly feeling on edge. This business with Craig just had to be resolved. Maybe if he offered to seek counseling with the boy.

But something else was bothering him, a feeling akin to the tingly sensation of dragging a rusty nail across a freshly sutured wound. First the encounter with the stranger in the men’s room last night, now this phone message about Spago.

But it just couldn’t be.

And she hadn’t called.

Brenda put through a call from Tony.

“Hey, bud, you put that little gold shovel to good use yet?”

Royce laughed uneasily. “What’s up?”

“You’re not forgetting our little rendezvous at Club Pussycat tomorrow afternoon are you?”

Damn, Royce
had
forgotten Tony’s invitation to buy him a birthday beer. He said, “Look, I’m not sure. I get the distinct feeling Leslie is planning a little intimate party for me at home.”

“I’ll have you home by seven.”

“But I’m really not into strip bars. To be frank with you, they embarrass me.”

Tony dry chuckled and said, “Hey, this isn’t just any strip bar. These ladies are walking wet dreams, the baddest girls on the Block. And I’ll be there to show you the ropes. Don’t worry, I won’t let you make an ass of yourself. Everyone needs a little pussy, now and then. Even old duffers like you.”

Royce winced, offended by such vulgarity.

“Five-thirty, then?” his friend pressed.

“Okay,” he relented. “Okay. Five-thirty, then.”

“Say, Royce?”

“Yes.”

“What do lawyers use for birth control?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“Their personalities.”

“Har har har. Bye.”

The morning passed without event. He fielded calls from two clients—a Vietnamese restaurateur anxious about a bank loan Royce was working on and a Puerto Rican electronics retailer looking for investors—and finalized the Montoya proposal for presentation to the Small Business Administration.

Shortly before noon, Leslie called to announce she’d been promoted to an assistant vice president at the bank.

“I’ll be moving up to the executive suite on the sixteenth floor,” she said matter-of-factly. “My own office. Tiny, but my own.”

“Congratulations!” he said heartily.

“My PR coup might have speeded it up a bit,” she said modestly.