39P: a sequel (about a $10 bill)

The Game Room
41

… buy a bottle of Vitamin C to stop the cold before it got started. She bundled up Dorisia and the two trundled off to the bus stop to wait for Dorisia’s school bus. Dorisia had been clingy the first few weeks of kindergarten, but was now a pro at the whole process and barely even waved goodbye to her mom before climbing on board.

Tawana would have happily spent 39P at the corner store for her Vitamin C, but she couldn’t find any, and settled for a small Dayquil instead. 39P assisted this transaction, and remained in the store when Tawana left. It was shortly given in change to Sarah Cohen, who had run in to buy throat lozenges and decongestant, cold and flu symptoms not being unusal in Boston in January. Sarah was particularly stressed over her sniffles, because she has just landed a gig as a local production assistant on the second unit filming a picture called “Edge of Darkness,” starring Mel Gibson, and she had gotten the job despite saying glibly during the interview that she loved Mel Brooks. She had frozen in stunned silence for a second after that utterance, but then both she and Jamie, the second unit director doing the interviewing had cracked up laughing, and she was in. She had just finished a film degree at NYU, and her parents were dead-set against her moving to L.A., so the chance to work on a major film in Boston had been a godsend.

Sarah reached that day’s shooting location with the sniffles barely under control, and the next twelve hours were a blur of barely suppressed confusion that resulted in several exterior and establishing shots completed, and not one glimpse of Mel Gibson, who she came to find out had finished his on-location shooting some weeks ago. With the craft services table in full supply, she had no need to pay for lunch, and when several of the young production assistants suggested hitting a bar after work, she was all in favor of it. A very attractive young lady, Sarah didn’t pay for a single drink that night, and she didn’t touch 39P again until the next morning, when she awoke with a splitting headache, a completely clogged nose, and as she blinked warily and looked at the space in bed next to her, the feeling that maybe she shouldn’t have …

42

taken antihistamines as a chaser for her sloe gin fizzes. She felt like pan fried shit and now she was hearing the sound of her shower running.

“Bastard better be good looking and have a job,” Sarah thought. "At least one or the other, " she silently mouthed. She looked over on the nightstand and saw a condom in the ashtray. Nasty fucker, but at least he used protection.

Sarah lit her first of the day, dragged deep and began to hurry to get dressed. She wasn’t modest, but she knew she was attractive, and being naked in the morning may give Mr. Right Now the idea that she was up for seconds. All she was up for right now was coffee, Day-Quil, and a priest to preform last rites. She got a baggy sweat shirt over her head as the shower stopped. She pulled pj bottoms over her bare ass as the door opened.

The man was a bit older than her. She was sure that if she taxed her aching head she could figure out where she knew him from. He was wrapped in a towel. Long brown hair spread down to his shoulders. He was not unattractive, but he was not anyone she would normally look at twice. Not fat, not tall, just a nobody that she was sure she had seen somewhere.

“Sarah,” the naked man said, “I hate to ask, but you said you would cover the cost of the cab if I took you car to your home last night. The cab should be on the way, I asked for a 9:30 pickup…”
*
OH, SHIT, though Sarah, it is after 9:00 *

“…and I really have to get home to my kids.”

Shit, Shit, what did I do!!!

“Get dressed while I get my purse,” Sarah said with much better grace than she felt. She hoped he lived up the street, because 39P was all she had left in her wallet and she didn’t have time to go to the bank. She removed the bill from her wallet and discovered her guest’s name, it was Hank, at least that was what it said on the nametag he had on the Waffle House uniform he was wearing.

“I fucked the Waffle House guy?” she said, unfortunately aloud as she handed over the bill…

43

to Hank, whose face clouded over briefly in anger before he snatched the bill from her fingers and stormed out the door without another word.

Hank O’Shaughnessy had some serious anger issues, he knew from hard experience, and at that moment it was better for everybody if he just left. He asked the cabbie to drop him off outside the apartment building of his girlfriend, Rebecca “Sunnybrook” Ferguson, the film production company’s Goth-wannabe gofer, who had introduced him to Sarah the night before. Rebecca had a great rack and legs that just wouldn’t quit, and was surprisingly open-minded about her boyfriend not only having a wife but also playing around on her, if he was careful. Hank looked at his watch. She was probably still asleep, although he thought she might be amenable to a little predawn roll in the hay.

He still had the energy for it, that was for sure. Despite Sarah’s parting insult, he smiled as he remembered all the things they’d said and done - especially done - the night before. It had been fun, no doubt, surprising and uninhibited in all the right ways, but at the moment he wouldn’t mind never seeing her again. Bitch.

Ah, but there was always Rebecca. He used his key to let himself into the building, took the elevator up and entered her apartment, quietly undressed and slid into bed next to her. Soon her snores turned to sighs, and then to giggles, and then to moans. Life was good, he thought.

Meanwhile the cabbie, Yuri Medvedyev, had no way of knowing he’d been paid twice with 39P within days. A cold, drizzling rain was now falling. After dropping off Hank, he took out his cellphone and dejectedly punched in a number he knew by heart.

44

“Hello?” answered a male voice with a jocular grumble.
“Hello, Stan,” said Yuri. “I just thought you might want to stop at Ernie’s for a beer.”
“Sounds good,” said Stan Brown. “My rig’s parked across the street.”
Yuri drove across town to Ernie’s Bar & Grill and, sure enough, saw Stan Brown’s 18-wheeler parked on the east side of Plummer Street. Ernie’s was right across the street. Most of the patrons were watching a hockey game on the bar TV but the bartender Ernie greeted Yuri when he came him. He recognized the husky, bearded Stan Brown–and the petite, Velma-like woman next to him, his wife Louise. They exchanged greetings.

“You saw Arizona cream Carolina last Saturday, didn’t you?” Stan asked. “Remember our agreement…”
With feigned irritation, Yuri took out his wallet and handed 39P and another tenner to Stan, who gave the money to Louise. She put it in a fancy hand-tooled wallet she’d bought in Mexico City.

“That reminds me, Stan,” Yuri said, still feeling down. “Did you…”

45

“…ask your guy about what action he’d take?”

Stan frowned. “Yeah,” he began reluctantly, “I did.”

“And?”

“And he’ll take the Eagles and six points this Sunday.”

“Six?” fumed Yuri. “That’s ridiculous! The line is only…”

“Yeah, I know what the line is,” Stan said irritably. “The question is… dude, what the hell? I don’t mind fun bets between us, but you’re talking about…”

“…About five thousand. Yes. You’re damn right,” Yuri said tightly. “What’s wrong, mother? I can’t spend my allowance that way?”

“It’s just a lot of money, Yure. I don’t know.”

“Fuck that,” spat Yuri angrily. He knew Stan was right, and he knew the only reason he was pushing for this was that he had had a string of bad luck all over town. First those idiot Chargers couldn’t cover the spread, then the fucking Steelers screwed him, and he had dipped into his bank account a bit more than his wife Svetlana would be comfortable with. OK, a lot more. But all he needed was to hit one big score, and she’d never know the difference. Then he was done with betting on football, for good. He’d stick to hockey, where a man with a system like his could REALLY make some money.

“So you going to introduce me, or what?” Yuri pressed.

Stan sighed. He knew he shouldn’t, but …

46

he agreed to make the call. He knew he’d regret it.

A few minutes later, Louise took out 39P to buy a cup of coffee. She couldn’t believe these guys were drinking beer so early in the morning. Actually, yes, she could. The server, a borderline alcoholic and secret crossdresser named Barry Rumley, made change with 39P half an hour later for E. Philip Chesterton, who came in to have breakfast.

Chesterton was the neighborhood crank. He had four cats, five parakeets, eight different online identities, and always wore one red and one blue sock. He was convinced that the CIA bugged his phone on even-numbered days, and the Mossad on odd-numbered days. He did not believe in Daylight Savings Time. He doubted that Elvis had ever died. He considered Fox Mulder, featured in what he called “the documentary series The X-Files,” a courageous visionary. He had long ago sworn to kill Henry Kissinger if he ever met him. He always checked his locked door three times, never two and certainly never four, upon leaving his tiny, ill-smelling apartment every morning. Perhaps more importantly for our purposes, he also kept a huge, battered, leather-bound journal in which he wrote down everything that happened to him every day, including the serial numbers of all the currency which passed through his hands. This morning he did so for seven bills, including DG83798039P.

Chesterton ate his breakfast very carefully, chewing each bite ten times just as his mom had told him to do 60 years earlier, and left no tip before leaving.

Once on the sidewalk…

47

…he met a like-minded kook mamed Ofeen Rhex (a self-coined name; he was born Murgatroyd Schnickelfritz). Rhex assured Chesterton he had a survival plan which centered on boxes of orgone, which Chet already know about. Still, he invested some money in Rhex’s orgone box, including 39P,
Rhex, for his part, forgot about the orgone investment for the rest of the dasy (Chet would remind him at a precise time the fiollowing morning). But now Ofeen went to see The Cigar Band, a foursome that smoked cigars on stage. This itinerant combo consisted of the six-foot-tall superbuxom Jeanette Strong, the contralto vocalist who also played lead guitar; her boyfriend, the singing manager Johnny Goss; her other bioyfriend, the pudgy, balding drummer Jeremy Britton, and the left-handed, married bass guitarist Phil Ramirez.
The band wowed the audience, first with Jeanette’s version of Edith Piaf’s “Milord.” Then before their second number, Rhex, in the front row…

48

was surprised to see Chesterton sitting down next to him. Chesterton said quietly but intensely, “I’ve decided I don’t like the nickname ‘Chet,’ and I can’t invest my money with anyone who calls me that. Nobody’s called me that before. Never. So…I want my money back now.”

Rhex just stared at him.

“Now,” Chesterton said, an undercurrent of menace to his voice.

Rhex fumbled through his pockets, pulled out a wad of cash including 39P as well as a bus ticket, a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet and a week-old losing lottery ticket, and thrust them all into Chesterton’s hand.

Chesterton nodded, mumbled “Thanks,” and wandered back outside.

49

He couldn’t think of anything to do at the moment, so he went in to a nearby Starbucks–which happened to be the same one mentioned earlier in this story. The same barrista accepted 39P with Chesterton’s order, for iced cappuccino (he was normal to that extent), and recognized it. She put it into the till, meaning to exchange it for one of her own at the end of her shift–since Mr. Obama had given it to her originally.
But she forgot. A few hours later, their performance for the night ended, The Cigar Band came into the shop–Jeanette with one boyfriend on each arm and Phil behind them. They ordered tall cafe espressos and Jeanette paid with a hundred-dollar bill; the barrista gave her 39P in the change.
Jeanette sat with Johnny and Jerry (two old friends who shared Jeanette in bed) and put the tenner in a plain wallet in her huge red purse. She noticed the nondescript Ofeen Rhex and Chesterton wandering around outside, and commented to her boyfriends, and to Phil:

50

(That’d be a hell of walk. The earlier Starbucks was in Washington; we’re in Boston now. :wink: )

Jeanette …commented to her boyfriends, and to Phil:

“Those are some weird-looking guys, aren’t they? I wonder when they last bathed.”

“Or if they did it together,” Phil joked.

They all laughed, and then talked about the Cigar Band’s performance that day. Everyone was pleased, perhaps even a bit complacent, and looked forward to the group’s next show. After an hour or so of chatting and drinking coffee, they went their separate ways. Jeanette, who was otherwise unemployed, went to the South End Library and passed the rest of the day looking through big coffee-table books on French Impressionism. She went home when the library closed and spent 39P on a gallon of milk at Barb’s Friendly Grocery. The bill was added to the day’s receipts and sent to the First Bank of Boston, where it was again sorted, counted and bundled. A week later, it was given by the bank’s ATM to the very wealthy and well-traveled Cynthia Prescott of Beacon Hill.

It remained in Cynthia’s purse for four days, unspent, and went along with her when Cynthia and her emotionally-fragile husband Samuel flew British Airways on a bright Thursday morning from Logan to Heathrow. The weather deteriorated as they next flew direct to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Samuel exchanged 39P and several other bills at a ruinous exchange rate - not that he had much choice in the matter - for Russian rubles, just for walking-around money. The Prescotts had a wonderful trip, with visits to Red Square, the Hermitage, three little galleries they loved, and a memorable night at the Bolshoi followed by an exquisite late supper in their favorite Moscow restaurant, before returning home, having relied on credit cards most of the time anyway.

39P was sorted and bundled by the Russian State Central Bank before being disbursed to the FSB, the Federal Security Service (and successor to the KGB). The FSB issued it three days later as part of $2,000 in U.S. paper money and a considerable sum of other nations’ currency, all carefully logged, to Oleg Suvorov, a veteran FSB field agent who had been assigned to take a sealed briefcase from Moscow to Panaji in the Indian state of Goa. Suvorov was given his contact’s name and phone number in Panaji, and ordered to call her within an hour of arrival. He was told in no uncertain terms that he was not to open the briefcase under any circumstances, and that he should die rather than let it leave his possession until he turned it over to his contact.

Suvorov, 53, pudgy and balding, and now under cover as a businessman from Anapa, boarded an Aeroflot plane for New Delhi and Panaji by way of Tashkent…

51

… and took his seat next to one Dimitry Lusinikov, who by the oddest of circumstances was the only uncle of Svetlana Medvedyev, who had at this point just finished a screaming tirade in the best Russian tradition at her husband Yuri some 7,000 kilometers away. The two men nodded briefly at each other in the time-honored tradition of airline seatmates, and no further conversation passed between them.

Suvrov was looking forward to his trip. He had delivered such briefcases before, openly to KGB station chiefs and surreptiously to deep cover agents all over the world during the years the KGB had existed, and his rumpled, soft “everyman” look made him a natural for such assignments. He had an almost supernatural ability with language, though, and spoke five well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker. His Hindi was passable, although not in the ultrafluent category he brought to Russian, Polish, English, French, and Spanish. Armed with these languages and a healthy array of accents, Suvrov had passed himself off as a dozen different nationalities, never drawing a second look from bored customs and immigration officials. He was simply too unassuming, too boring, too… fat and sweaty… to be a spy, and thus was an excellent spy.

There were times, though, that this cover worked too well, and such was the case outside the airport in Panaji. His unthreatening appearance attracted the attention of Jamir Parrikar and Kerala Nidhi, two successful pickpockets who signaled each other by eye and moved in on Suvrov. In a move they had practiced thousands of times, they loosely bracketed Suvrov, and then Kerala stopped suddenly, a distraction that would pave the way for Jamir to briefly bump Suvarov and make off with the tourist’s wallet.

For the first time in their professional lives, though, the pair were stymied. Jamir’s feather-light touch was the stuff of legends amongst the local pickpocket gentry, but quick as a striking snake, Suvrov reacted, grabbing Jamir’s wrist and twisting painfully. The wallet dropped from Jamir’s suddenly paralyzed hand and he gasped in shock.

Suvrov moved …

52

…away from the pickpockets, turning the air blue with choice Russian expletives.

He met a contact named Dilip Gohil, a native of Jubbulpore who was an agent of an American entrepeneur named George Galloway, himself now in India on business.
Suvrov was short on rupees at the time–the places he wanted to shop at didn’t accept dollars or rubles. So he gave Galloway $100, including 39P, for the equivalent in Indian rupees at the current exchange rate and went first to sample some hot curry; he’d developed a taste for Indian food.

Mr. Galloway had not; in fact, he was on his way to a restaurant that catered to American tourists, although red meat was not served. He ordered a vegetarian dish which looked and tasted very much like American Hamburger Helper (!) and paid his bill in American money, including 39P.
The headwaiter, Sadwan Al-Rashid, noticed the bill in the till and replaced it with a tenner from his own billfold. A couple of days later, while Galloway was still in Asia, Mr. Al-Rashid…

53

hopped an Air India flight to Washington, D.C. His brother Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, lived in Laurel, Md. with his wife and three sons, and had agreed to put him up for the Obama inauguration. Both had very high hopes for the new administration and wanted to be part of the celebration.

On Inauguration Day, Sadwan and Mohammed rose at the crack of dawn and took the Metro downtown together; Sadwan used 39P to pay for all-day passes for both. A Metro staffer, a very serious young man named Leroy Barnes, took 39P and several thousand dollars worth of other bills out of the automated Metro ticket machines at the end of his shift. Sadwan and Mohammed had gotten no closer than six blocks to the West Front of the Capitol and had an obstructed view of the ceremony, to say the least; Leroy listened to bits and pieces of it on the radio as he worked. Although he was essentially apolitical, he felt like he’d sort of been a part of history, to have been in Washington that day and helped people get where they needed to go. He took a quiet satisfaction in his work, and January 20, 2009 was no exception.

39P was bagged and tagged with almost $1 million in other cash late that afternoon and deposited under armed guard in the Thomas Circle branch of PNC Bank. The next morning…

54

…the shipment arrived at the bank, precisely on time. The receiving teller, named Forrest MacKenzie–who happened to be a first cousin of Greorge Galloway–unwrapped the shipment and distributed the currency to individual tellers’ tills.
39P wound up in the last till at the end of the counter, staffed by a cute young lady named Patricia Duncolle, MacKenzie’s crush (he had his eye on her from the first time she walked into the bank). Ms. Duncolle opened her window at 9 A.M. that day and gave 39P to a teenager making a deposit, but asking for $10 in cash out of the deposit. This kid, a callow and nearly guileless boy named Mike Stanhouse…

55

…used 39P and some of its monetary brethern to buy the Wii game Pokemon Battle Revolution at the closest Game Stop for his little brother’s birthday. Mike was theoretically doing this under pain of death from his mother, who had warned him that he had to give his brother something nice… although secretly Mike was kind of interested in seeing Gen IV Pokemon on the big TV screen; he himself was weaned on the Game Boy versions and although he’d hotly deny it amongst his friends, he still thought Pokemon were kind of cool.

39P remained in the cashiers drawer for all of 45 seconds before it was handed out in change to Brandon Volso, who coincidentally enough was also purchasing a Nintendo Pokemon game, this time Pearl for the handheld DS. Brandon kept 39P for almost an hour before using it at McDonald’s on a six-piece nuggets, and it left McDonald’s ten minutes later as change to Mrs. Loverna Adams, who had never so much as heard the word Pokemon in her eighty-six years of living.

Mrs. Adams slipped 39P into a birthday card for her great-grandaughter, who was turning eight, and within two days that young lady had talked her mother into using it at Toys-R-Us (although, it must be said, she too had no interest in Pokemon; 39P brought her the lion’s share of a Bratz doll). Through the vissitudes of luck, 39P spent less than an hour there before being handed to …

56

Virgil Webb, who until a month earlier had been an IT staffer at Hendershot, Tadler & Thorpe, a major Washington stock brokerage. Webb didn’t buy anything at Toys R Us; he just got change for a twenty. The big-hearted sales clerk, Claudette Wiley, knew it was not store policy to give change unless someone actually made a purchase, but Webb looked so sad and downcast that she decided to help him out. Impulsively, she called out, “Take care of yourself!” to Webb as he left the store, and he turned and smiled wanly at her.

Webb had been at Hendershot, Tadler & Thorpe since his graduation as a Computer Sciences major from Georgetown University twelve years earlier. He had enjoyed his job and had been paid well, but he had no money-management skills, and had borrowed and spent far beyond his means. When HT&T began shedding jobs in the aftermath of the Wall Street meltdown, he had been among the first to be let go, and was in equal measures hurt and baffled by his firing. Never having had the strongest sense of self-esteem to begin with, he took the news hard and began a downward spiral into depression. He had no family in the Washington area and no support network to speak of outside of the firm. Ms. Wiley was, in fact, the first person to look at him kindly in far too long.

Webb was almost entirely broke and was deeply in debt, but he wanted two $10 bills so that he could send one each to his beloved young nieces, Clara Webb of East Liverpool, Ohio, and Sharon Johnston of Fairbanks, Alaska. He already had the cards into which he inserted the bills; 39P went into Sharon’s card. His hand shaking slightly, he wrote a warm message of avuncular affection, apologized for the late New Year’s greetings, wished each well, then stamped and dropped the cards into the nearest mailbox. Then he went home, took an overdose of the prescription sleeping pills he’d been hoarding, and quietly brought his lonely days in this world to a close.

The U.S. Postal Service very efficiently delivered the card and 39P to Sharon, age 9, in Fairbanks three days later, just hours after Sharon’s mom broke the news of her dear uncle’s death to her. The little girl…

57

… was having trouble understanding just what this meant. She knew that people died and went to Heaven, but she didn’t quite understand how Uncle Virgil knew he was going to Heaven ahead of time, which she thought was the import of the card.

After thinking about it for a day, she decided she wanted to plant a tree. That way, she thought, Uncle Virgil could see the tree from Heaven and maybe even ask God to help it get rained on if it needed it, and when they looked at the tree they would remember him. Lucy Johnston (neé Webb), Sharon’s Mom, had to blink back tears herself as her daughter explained her plan, and agreed it would be a wonderful idea. So the next day, on the way home from school, Lucy took the Johansen Expressway and stopped off at Home Depot to buy a tree, complete with root ball, that they could keep indoors until spring and then plant. It was a tad over sixty-five dollars, and Sharon insisted on paying with her ten dollars, so 39P became the property of Home Depot and the tree, along with mother and daughter Johnston, passed out of the ken of this story.

39P remained in the till overnight, narrowly missing being part of the bank deposit, and was given in change next afternoon to Alaska State Trooper Ted Sentret, who had just been reassigned to the Fairbanks area after three years in Ketchikan assigned to the Major Crimes Unit. His reassignment was not entirely voluntary; Sentret had been having an affair with the wife of a sergeant in the Ketchikan Police Department, and after her husband discovered the real reason she had developed an sudden interest in evening crafting classes, remaining in the area would have been uncomfortable indeed. Fortunately, Major Crimes happened all over the state, and he could be based in Fairbanks just as easily as Ketchikan.

He viewed the loss of that situation with an equitable aplomb, for Sentret had been practicing the horizontal mambo with other men’s wives since the age of fifteen, where in Spokane as a newspaper boy a lonely neighborhood wife gave him a reward for good service that far exceeded the norm. Since then he had become a stereotypical hounddog, ever alert for opportunity amongst the female half of the population. Nor was Sentret overly picky about his conquests - as he explained to a friend over several beers one evening, “You don’t fuck the face.”

He had, in fact, gotten some hopeful signals from Melissa “Call me Missy” Hass, the waitress at the local Denny’s. She wore a wedding ring and about thirty extra pounds in the midsection, and neither was a stopper in his mind. They had been trading playful banter and increasingly charged looks the past few weeks, and he had the idea that he might seal the deal this afternoon. With that in mind, he invested 39P in …

58

…cab fare, his car having gone in for a 5,000-mile checkup and it being infra dig for him to take a bus to his illicit rendezvous.
The cabbie, Alfonso Guzman, was going “off-duty” for a week as he went to visit relatives in the area around Lodi and Stockton in California. One of these was his cousin Lupe, who was, as luck would have it, employed by Eloise and Jack Sharp, as a cook!

Hector arrived at the Sharps’ mansion about an hour after George–who had sold 39P on eBay–got home from his classes at the local college. He was in the kitchen already when Alfonso came in, and just happened to be close by when the cabbie told his cousin that he got a well-traveled $10 bill from a fare in Alaska. George peeked over Alfonso’s shoulder and recognized the bill as the one he himself stole from Katherine and put up for sale online.

While George reacted silently to this, Alfonso gave his cousin the bill in exchange for two fivers. George knew that getting something away from Lupe, the cook, was usually as successful an endeavor as pulling teeth with a pair of tweezers, but the 20-year-old fourth son of Eloise and Jack was already known in the family for his sneakiness and underhanded ways of getting something he wants. So, when Lupe was relieved the next Saturday morning by the Sharps’ other cook, Armand, George…

59

…had a plan and set it in motion.

Lupe was tired and ready to get some rest, and already on edge because Mrs. Sharp’s dinner guests had been raving over the bearnaise sauce and Eloise had implicitly accepted the compliments and promised to provide the recipe in her offhand way. Lupe had stood silently during these exchanges, fuming in the kitchen, thinking that La Fiera, as she called Eloise privately, could at least mention that she hadn’t picked up a cooking pot since 1982 and couldn’t cook bearnaise sauce to save her life.

So it was an already irked cook that climbed into her car and turned the key, only to hear the whirring of a starter motor but no engine catching. George had disconnected her distributor wire, hoping to stop her from leaving until he could separate her from her purse long enough to snag The Bill.

“¡Coño! ¡Coñazo eso!” she cursed. She sighed, for while there was very little she couldn’t create in a kitchen, cars were a complete mystery to her. You get in, you turn the key, you go. Except when you don’t.

But Lupe’s father had been one of eleven children from a good family in San Pedro de Macoris, in the Dominican Republic, and that meant she had many cousins besides Alfonso… and several of them lived in the Stockton area… and one of them was Rosario Estrella, who had married Enrique “Ricky” Estrella and come to live near her in Stockton. Ricky Estrella was a mechanic, and Lupe had not the slightest compunction about picking up her cell phone and calling Rosario, because by happy coincidence Ricky’s garage was a mere three miles away.

George was hovering just out of sight, thinking that any second now the Mex cook would get out of the car and come back to the house to ask for help. (George did not have many strong points, and geography was not an exception to this rule; he viewed anyone who spoke Spanish as a Mexican and was not even sure in what hemisphere the Dominican Republic was). But the bitch just sat there, and when he risked a closer look, she was yapping away on her cell phone. While he fidgeted in indecision, debating what he should do next, she put away the phone and got out, leaving her purse in the car. Perfect, thought George. Now just walk over to the house, and…

But it was not to be. She merely leaned against the car for a bit, looking down the driveway as though waiting for something, and sure enough a moment later a tow truck pulled in. George was stunned - how could she get a tow truck in five minutes? He figured it out after the driver got out – he was a Mex too, they all stick together. He fumed impotently as the driver raised the hood of Lupe’s car and she got in again and cranked the engine, and cursed himself for not taking the distributor cap off and stomping on it. The tow truck driver reached under the hood, and George knew exactly what he was doing. Sure enough, a moment later the engine turned over again, and this time it fired right up.

The driver jabbered something to Lupe, and then they both looked around suspiciously before Lupe returned to the car and the driver to his truck, and both left.

George cursed, and decided that “sneakiness and underhanded” wasn’t working too well for him. Naturally, the lesson he took from this was that even more sneakiness and underhandedness was needed to be successful.

Lupe had thanked Ricky for his help, they had promised to get the families together soon, and she drove off, stopping only briefly at RiteAid to buy some female necessities. When she left, 39P was in the cash drawer tended by Janie McAllister, whose mind was on the fact that last night she attended a kegger by the river and (totally by accident) ended up making out with her best friend’s boyfriend. She barely noticed either accepting 39P, or giving it in change several minutes later to a thin middle-aged blonde lady who looked vaguely familiar.

The reason Ann Johnston looked slightly familiar to Janie was that she had just finished a six-way race for mayor of Stockton, and won; she’d been sworn in earlier this month and was looking forward to the challange of juggling mayoral responsibilities with her ownership of a mid-size party goods store in the city.

Johnston took 39P…

60

…and bought some female necessities herself. Then, after fumbling with a balky car, she drove away.
The clerk, a 15-year-old (working with a school-issued work permit) named Susan Bradley, accepted the bill. Susan had a figure that would make Anita Ekberg jealous; most of the time she couldn’t see her own legs or feet past that ample bosom. She also had something else: an exaggerated sense of sympathy for anyone and everything.
Her mother Jane came into the store, to pick Susan up; her shift was about over. Jane was as stacked as her daughter, or maybe more so; both mother and daughter reached the height of 5’10" and by sheer size they became fearless.
As Jane was standing near the counter, an older man named Donald Secord came by. The sight of these two sexy females caused him to sprout an instant erection and ejaculate fully, making an obvious stain on his gray slacks.
Jane couldn’t hrelp smirking; Susan, too, knew what had happened and told the man where the restroom was and said the hand towels, and the hand-drier, would get rid of most of the stain. He thanked her, but bought a roll of paper towels to use; he paid Susan with a $20, and in the change she gave him 39P, a few minutes before her shift ended and she left the store with her mother.
Secord returned to his car just as the store closed for the night. When he started out on the road a familiar ring tickled the ear his Bluetooth hung on. Secord pushed the button and said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Donald,” the voice said. “This is Frank. Where are you?”