Danny, wearing his new contact lenses, his hair combed back, made money plans at thirty-five thousand feet.
The problem with cash was it attracted attention. Even relatively small amounts consistently deposited in a bank would arouse suspicion. Most successful laundering schemes involved other people. Setting up a cash-and-carry business, falsifying books.
Danny wasn’t interested in trusting other people. Or lugging “twenny bricks” to the Cayman Islands.
He would fix up houses. He would write. And slowly.
SLOWLY. Very slowly, he would take weekend trips to casinos. He’d just play the slots at first. The long-odds megajackpot slots. He’d invest thousands of quarters and dollars. Until he hit a jackpot.
It might take years. But once he did, he’d have a legitimate income. He’d pay taxes. He could invest. He’d become known as a professional gambler who was expected to deal with large amounts of cash.
How long did it take to drive from Santa Cruz to Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas?
Danny smiled and hugged his worn brown parka.
Twenny bricks. Flying with the sun. He pictured the barren cistern in the woods, above Highway 61, under a featherbed of fresh undisturbed snow.
He shut his eyes and imagined walking through the doors of the Sands. The sounds, the smells, the coin-song of the trays.
From the window seat, he watched the great plains pucker into the steep, shadowed wrinkles of the Rocky Mountains.
Two more deputy marshals, who had taken vows of silence, escorted him to San Jose. The jet wallowed down through about a mile of clouds and landed with a splash in rain puddles under an overcast early afternoon sky. Sunny California had the El Nino flu.
In the small terminal, the escorts turned him over to a tanned man with a confident smile. Early thirties, he was part bodybuilder, part cowboy, in a lightweight sports coat, black T-shirt, faded jeans, cowboy boots and sunglasses.
One of the escorts said, “He’s all yours, Travis.” And they ambled away.
Travis smiled, displaying perfect California teeth. A tiny stud twinkled in his left ear, and his styled hair had been ir-radiated to the color of ash by the sun.
“Inspector Joe Travis, pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out a brown muscular hand. Danny saw a strap when the collar of Travis’s coat shifted. Wearing a gun in a shoulder holster.
“Danny Storey,” said Danny, shaking confidently.
“Prove it,” challenged Travis, tightening his grip.
Danny froze, explored Travis’s merry prankster smile and resolved to show no fear. “Hey, what is this?” he demanded.
“Ground zero orientation. Survival lesson number one coming up-where is the center of gravity in your new world?”
Danny studied this young, assured, armed weight lifter.
Caught the drift. “You are the center of gravity.”
“Good,” said Travis. “You feel the slightest vibration, the tiniest temblor, you get on the horn to Travis. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Hell, pardner.” Travis slapped him on the back. “This is going to go off slicker than whale shit.”
They were walking out of the terminal toward the parking lot. Danny asked, “You’re from the West, right?”
“Snowflake, Arizona.”
Danny took a Power Bar from his pocket and tore off the wrapper. Made a joke. “Are there any marshals from, say, the Midwest or East?”
Travis’s hand shot out and intercepted the energy bar wrapper. “Gotta watch that out here. You can’t litter or smoke anywhere anymore. Not even beer joints. You drop a butt or a wrapper anywhere outside and it’s a two-hundred-dollar fine.”
“Jesus,” said Danny, as he devoured the Power Bar.
“Fine his ass out here, too, they catch him littering in public. You’re in California, man,” quipped Travis. After several steps, he asked, “Now, what were you saying?”
Danny shook his head. He had just discovered how won-derful the blase air tasted. Under luminous clouds he strolled through an open-air greenhouse. “When’s the last time it snowed here?”
“Oh, that’s good, I like that.”
Travis led him to a mud-spattered Chevy pickup. Under the thick coat of dirt it might have once been maroon. New tires, though. The box was piled full of sawhorses, scaffolding and several large plywood, pad-locked boxes.
They got in, Travis turned it over and the engine purred.
“Like the ad says. Like a rock.” He wheeled from the lot into traffic and onto a freeway. A small portable cooler sat on the seat between them. Travis popped it open and took out a can of diet Coke. “Help yourself,” he said.
Danny selected a Sprite and leaned back while Travis dodged through lanes of congested traffic. They passed an orange Kharmann Ghia, a mustard Volvo, an eggshell blue Saab; makes and colors more exotic and expensive than Danny was used to seeing on Minnesota highways.
“Trying to beat the rush to the hill,” Travis explained. “All this around here is Silicon Valley. Right over there.” He swung his pop can at a jungle of vegetation and buildings.
“That’s Cupertino, where Steve Jobs did his thing. You into computers?”
“Sure,” said Danny.
“Only way to go. Everywhere you look it’s Startup City, people out in their garages working on the next software coup so they can be bought out by MicroSquash.
“Problem is, a lot of the gearheads work here but live with the potheads, over the hill in Santa Cruz. And there’s only one road over the mountains. Highway seventeen. Accurately nicknamed the Highway of Death.”
Travis wasn’t exaggerating. The tortured road snaked through cuts in the hills. A steel guardrail fortified the center line. There was no shoulder. And no room to escape between the rail and the stark rock, both of which were scarred with auto paint. Tiny galaxies of shattered glass sprinkled the edge of the pavement.
“See what I mean,” admonished Travis. “I was you, I’d stay put on the other side of this damn mountain.”
Crossing the peak, Travis identified where the San Andreas fault came through. Then they started to descend into the Pajaro Valley. Danny had a contact high-hot metal, gasoline, cooked rubber, rain-plump vegetation, all marinated in the delicious air.
Travis interrupted his travelogue. “Hey, you’re a college graduate, right?”
Figuring he was being tested, Danny responded, “Nah, I went a few years at Wayne State in Detroit.”
“No. I mean really. You graduated.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“University of Minnesota. Journalism.”
Travis grinned. “I’ve handled twenty-three people, counting dependents, in WITSEC. You’re my first college graduate. Also the first one who had a workable plan for their future. I’m fucking amazed.”
They were winding through rolling foothills, and soon the land broadened out. The air thickened, spongy with mist.
There were orchards, fields, and more swarthy people in jeans and straw Stetsons. Mexicans. Mexicans with muddy boots. The Pajaro was soggy this season. Travis stopped for a red light and then put on his left turn signal.
“This is Scotts Valley. I know a guy here. We’re going to get you a haircut.”
Not suggesting. De facto. Danny shrugged. They pulled off in front of a rundown strip mall of storefronts. One had a crude barber pole painted on the plate glass. Inside there were two chairs, both empty. A short Mexican guy in a white smock was sweeping the floor. A quick smile creased his brown face when he saw Travis.
“Buenos dias, hair ball,” said Travis. “Those papers come through yet?”
“Hey, Travis. Good, man. Finally got it.”
They shook hands ritually, locking thumbs, cupping fingers, then clasping both hands.
“Great. Ah, this is a friend of mine. Danny Storey. Meet Hector Sanchez.”
Danny took the guy’s hand. After a more conventional handshake, he discreetly wiped a patina of Vitalis off on his pant leg.
Travis said, “Danny needs a haircut. He looks like he just crawled out of a blizzard. Fix him up so he looks at home eating fish and chips on the Municipal Wharf.”
“Could you cut it like James Dean?” asked Danny.
Hector squinted. Vacant. But he winked and said. “Yeah, sure, sit down.” Travis laughed and said, “I’ll do my best to stage direct.” Hector unfurled an apron like a matador and whipped it around Danny’s neck as he sat in a chair.
Travis gave pointers as tufts of Danny’s hair collected on his shoulders and tumbled down into his lap. Hector massaged some fix in Danny’s new hair and worked him over with a hair drier.
Travis paced, arms folded, squinting. “Yeah, I think so.
James Dean for the 1990s.”
The chair spun and Danny studied his new head in the mirror. His hair was full on top and short on the sides. Kind of lightning-struck.
“Get you some sun, maybe a little body piercing, you’ll look like a native,” approved Travis.
“I’ll skip the earrings,” said Danny.
“No problem, I just do it to blend in with the gazelles up in Frisco.” Travis handed Hector a roll of bills, they did their elaborate routine with the hands again. Then Travis and Danny left the shop. The soft late afternoon light was a cool haze around Danny’s ears. They got back in the truck.
“So what do you think?” asked Travis.
“He’s one of your success stories,” said Danny.
Travis gave him an appraising look. “You got it. I’m trying to help, but he’s sucking wind, one day at a time. Maybe I can swing him a better location in town, that’d help. But basically he’s fucked. He’s an almost illiterate Mexican dude who sold dope all his life. And now he’s the one thing he was raised to hate: a rat, a squealer. Guy never heard of James Dean.” Travis sighed. “What are you gonna do. Most of my clients are up north in the Bay Area. I don’t get down here a whole lot.”
“You put him through school to cut hair?” asked Danny.
“Nah, he picked that up in the joint.”
“Life is not fair. And anything that can go wrong, will,” he observed.
“A-fucking-men,” said Travis. They drove in silence for a while, entering a built-up area. Travis whipped into another strip mall, but this one was broad, paved, land scaped, full of late-model cars and devoid of Mexicans.
“What is this?” Danny balked as Travis walked him into a tanning salon.
Travis spun on his Spanish heels. “Hector just got his new birth certificate. It took nine months. Yours is in the glove compartment of the truck. Along with a new Social Security card. Tomorrow when you get a driver’s license, they take your picture. Right now your face looks like veal. Comprende?
“After you get your temporary license, we go to the bank and you open a checking account. Then I sell you this truck and the tools in it. Then we take you to look at the house you’re going to buy from us on a land contract. You’re getting it at a steal because of a stipulation we write into the contract, that you rehab it. You with me so far.”
“What about the computer, printer, modem?”
“In the works. The best money can buy.”
Danny pushed past Travis into the salon and walked up to the receptionist. “How long is the wait to get into a booth?”
An hour later they were strolling past an open fish market on the Municipal Wharf that jutted into Monterey Bay from downtown Santa Cruz.
“You don’t need that jacket, it’s warm,” said Travis.
“That’s okay,” said Danny, hugging his jacket.
“See that.” Travis pointed at a large mound of fish flesh on ice. “That’s a bonito, that fish rode El Nino from Hawaii.
Everything here is upside down this winter.”
Danny smiled; the idea that things were upside down put him on top for a change. Soon they were, as Travis had predicted, sitting outside at a picnic table, eating fish and chips.
Lassitude wrapped Danny. He watched the twilight play on his newly grilled arm. His reflection in the restaurant window stared back at him. Tanned, the contacts, the shorter, swept-back hair. Eerie.
“See that big hotel over there on the boardwalk,” said Travis. “That’s where we’ll stay tonight. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the house.”
Danny swung his eyes, saw a lot of hotels. Yawned. There was a beach, but nobody was swimming. And the Coney Island fretwork of an amusement park. And sailboats. Some tourists, Japanese maybe, were tossing shreds of hot dog buns off the pier to sea lions that roared hollowly below them among the pilings. A pelican perched on the railing in back of Travis, and behind the pelican the setting sun smelted the smoky sky and the ocean into a sheet of burning amber chrome.
He had been trained to ruthlessly excise cliches from his writing. But right now, he couldn’t improve on: today is the first day of the rest of your life.