The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (76 page)

Apart from the suggestion that he might not have lost his leg in Iraq, Milton heard other stories that called his honesty into question. The most troubling concerned his professional reputation. During his time at the hospital, there had been a serious road crash on the interstate outside of San Mateo. A truck loaded with diesel had jacknifed across the 101, slicking the asphalt with fuel so that a series of cars had ploughed into it. The resulting fireball had been hot enough to melt the metal guardrails that ran down the median. Brady had been forced to resign in the aftermath of the crash after local reporters suggested that he had embellished his role in the recovery effort. He had claimed that he had driven himself to the scene of the disaster, and badging his way past the first responders, he had made his way into the heart of the inferno and administered first aid to survivors as they were pulled from the wreckage of their vehicles. The fire service later denied that he had been present at all and stated that he would never have been allowed to get as close to the flames as he had claimed. In another incident, Brady recounted the story of being on his boat in Richardson Bay when a yacht had capsized and started to sink. He boasted that he had swum to the stricken boat and pulled a man and his son to safety. It was subsequently found that there was no record of a boat getting into difficulty that day and no father and son to corroborate the story. An anonymous source even suggested that Brady had not even been on the water.

He had not taken another job since his resignation, and the suggestion had been made that there had been a large pay-off to get rid of him. He had retreated to Pine Shore and made himself busy. He took it upon himself to act as the resident physician, attending neighbours and offering help that was sometimes not welcome. He rather ostentatiously attached a police beacon to the top of his car and monitored a police scanner for the barest sniff of an emergency so that he could hurry to the scene and offer his help. He had assisted locals with minor ailments and had attended the owner of a chain of delicatessens in the city when he complained of a soreness in his arm and a shortness of breath. He worked hard, seemingly intent on gaining the trust and respect of the community, but continually told tales that were simple enough to debunk, and when they were, they damaged the good that he had done. He suggested that he had worked with the police. He boasted that he was a qualified pilot. He spoke of having obtained a degree in law through distance learning while he was in the army. He seemed almost too eager to resolve any given crisis, no matter how small.

It seemed to Milton that Brady was intent upon making himself the centre of the community. His role as the chair of the residents’ association seemed particularly important to him, and there was grudging acceptance from many that he did good and important work to make Pine Shore a better place to live. But not everyone felt the same way. More than one person confided to Milton that there was bad blood when it came to the committee. The chairmanship was an elected post, and it had been contested when the previous incumbent had stood aside.

The other candidate in an election that was described as “pointlessly vicious” was Victor Leonard.

Trip opened the passenger door and slid inside.

“How did it go?” Milton asked him.

“Got rid of all of them.”

“Learn anything?”

“That this place is full of crap. You?”

“The same.”

Milton told him what he had learned about Brady.

“He told others that he worked in Washington after coming out of the army. Homeland Security. He’s full of shit, Mr. Smith. How can we trust anything he’s told us?”

“I’m not sure we can,” Milton admitted.

“So where does that leave us? You ask me, Madison was in there.” He stabbed his finger angrily against the window three times, indicating Brady’s house.

“I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

ONE OF THE CAMPAIGN BOOSTERS was a big wine grower, exporting his bottles all over the world for millions of dollars a year, and one of the benefits of that largesse was an executive box at Candlestick Park. Arlen Crawford could take it or leave it when it came to sports, but his boss was an avid fan. The 49ers were his team, too, so the prospect of taking in the game against Dallas was something that had kept him fired up as they approached the end of the week. It wasn’t all pleasure, Crawford reminded him as they walked through the busy stadium to the level that held the luxury suites. Plenty of potential donors had been invited, too, not all of them on board with the campaign yet. They needed to be impressed. Robinson needed to deploy that beguiling grin, and his charisma needed to be at its most magnetic.

They reached the door, and Robinson opened it and stepped through into the box beyond. There was a long table laden with cold cuts, beers and snacks and, beyond that, an outside seating area. The governor’s smile was immediate and infectious; he set to work on the other guests, working his way through the room, reaching out to take hands, sometimes pressing them between both of his, rewarding those who were already on the team with jovial backslaps or, for the lucky few, a powerful hug. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the front of the box and the open French doors that allowed access to the outside seats. Crawford stepped down to the front of the enclosure and allowed himself a moment to breathe.

The field was brilliant green, perfectly lush, the gridiron markings standing out in vivid white paint. The stadium PA picked up the intensity as the teams made their way out through an inflatable tunnel in the corner of the stadium. Fireworks shot into the air, flamethrowers breathed tendrils of fire that reached up to the upper decks, music thumped, cheerleaders shimmied in formation. The 49ers’ offense was introduced by the hyperbolic announcer, each armoured player sprinting through a gauntlet fashioned by the defense, chest-bumping those that had made the procession before him.

Crawford turned away from the noise and the pageantry to watch the governor deep in conversation with the multimillionaire who owned cattle ranches all the way across the south. Two good old boys, Crawford thought to himself. Winning him over would be a slam dunk for Robinson. They would be drinking buddies by the end of the afternoon, and a cheque with a lot of zeroes would be on its way to them first thing in the morning.

Suddenly tired, he slid down into a seat and closed his eyes. He thought about the sacrifices he had made to get them as far as this. Robinson was the main draw, the focus, but without Crawford and the work that he did for him, he would just be another talker, high on star-power but low on substance, and destined for the level he was at right now. If Robinson was the circus, Crawford was the ringmaster. You couldn’t have one without the other. It just wouldn’t work.

He opened his eyes as the home team kicked off, the kicker putting his foot through the ball and sending it high into the air, spinning it on its axis all the way to the back of the end zone. The return man fielded it and dropped to one knee. Touchback.

The others settled into their seats. Robinson saw Crawford, grinned, and gave him a wink.

He hoped that all this effort was going to be worth it.

TUESDAY NIGHT’S A.A. meeting was Milton’s favourite. He stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought two jars of instant coffee and three different types of cookies. Yet more mist had risen from the ocean and was beginning its slow drift across the town. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon. The streetlights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing from the signage of a bar on the opposite side of the street from the church. Milton parked and left the engine idling for a moment, the golden beams of the headlights glowing and fading against the banked fog. He killed the engine, got out and locked the door, and crossed the street. He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and descended into the basement of the church.

It was a tired room, with peeling beige paint and cracked half-windows that were set far up towards the ceiling, revealing the shoes and ankles of the pedestrians passing by. Milton filled the urn with water and set it to boil. He took the coffee from the cupboard and then arranged the biscuits that he had brought on a plate, a series of neat concentric circles. The mugs hadn’t been washed from the last meeting that had used the room, so he filled the basin and attended to them, drying them with a dishcloth and stacking them on the table next to the urn.

Milton had been coming to meetings for more than three years. London, all the way through South America, then here. He still found the thought of it counter-intuitive, but then the complete honesty that the program demanded would always be a difficult concept for a man who had worked in the shadows for most of his adult life. He did his best.

It had been more difficult at the start, in that church hall in West London. There was the Official Secrets Act, for a start, and what would happen to him if it came out that he had a problem. He had hidden at the back, near the door, and it had taken him a month to sit all the way through a meeting without turning tail and fleeing. He had gradually asked a regular with plenty of years of sobriety and a quiet attitude if he would be his first sponsor. He was called Dave Goulding, a musician in his late forties, a man who had been successful when he was younger and then drank his money and his talent away. Despite a life of bitter disappointment, he had managed to get his head screwed on straight, and with his guidance, Milton had started to make progress.

The first thing he insisted upon was that he attend ninety meetings in ninety days. He had given him a spiral-bound notebook and a pen and told him that if he wanted him to remain as his sponsor, he had to record every meeting he attended in that notebook. Milton did that. After that, a little trust between them developed, and they worked on his participation in the meetings. He wasn’t ready to speak at that point—that wouldn’t come for more than a year—but he had been persuaded to at least give the impression that he was engaged in what was going on. Dave called the back row at meetings the Denial Aisle, and had drummed into him that sick people who wanted to get well sat in the front. Milton wasn’t quite ready for that, either, but he had gradually moved forwards. Each month he moved forward again until he was in the middle of the action, stoic and thoughtful amidst the thicket of raised arms as the other alcoholics jostled to speak.

He had found this meeting on his first night in ’Frisco. It was a lucky find; there was something about it that made it special. The room, the regulars, the atmosphere; there was a little magic about it. Milton had volunteered to serve the drinks on the second night when the grizzled ex-army vet who had held the post before him had fallen off the wagon and been spotted unconscious in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven near Fisherman’s Wharf. Milton always remembered Dave explaining that service was the keystone of A.A., and since taking care of the refreshments was something he could do without opening himself up to the others, it was an excellent way to make himself known while avoiding the conversations that he still found awkward.

He opened the storage cupboard, dragged out the stacked chairs, and arranged them in four rows of five. The format of the meeting was the same as all of the others that Milton had attended. A table was arranged at the front of the room, and Milton covered it with a cloth with the A.A. logo embroidered on it in coloured thread. There were posters on the wall and books and pamphlets that could be purchased. Milton went back to the cupboard, took out a long cardboard tube, and shook out the poster stored inside. It was made to look like a scroll; he hung it from its hook. The poster listed the Twelve Steps.

Milton was finishing up when the first man came down the stairs. His name was Smulders, he worked on the docks, he had been sober for a year, and he was the chairman of this meeting. Milton said hello, poured him a coffee, and offered him a biscuit.

“Thanks,” Smulders said. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve had better days.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Maybe later,” he said, the same thing he always said.

“You know what I’m going to say, right?”

“That I shouldn’t brood.”

“Exactly. Get it off your chest.”

“In my own time.”

“Sure. Mmm-hmm. Good cookies—gimme another.”

Milton had already begun to feel a little better.

IT WAS a normal meeting. The chair arranged for a speaker to share his or her story for the first half an hour, and then they all shared back with their own experiences. Smulders had asked one of the regulars, a thirty-something docker that Milton knew called Richie Grimes, to tell his story. They sat down, worked through the preliminaries, and then Smulders asked Richie to begin.

“My name is Richie,” he said, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

Milton was dozing a little, but that woke him up. Richie was a nice guy.

“Hi, Richie,” the group responded.

“I’m pleased I’ve been asked to share tonight. I don’t always talk as much as I know I ought to, but I really do need to share something. I’ve been holding onto it for the last six months, and unless I deal with it, I know I’ll never be able to stay away from coke and the bottle.”

The group waited.

“I’m grandiose, like we all are, right, but not so much that I’d argue that mine is an original problem. You know what I’m talking about—money.” They all laughed. “Yeah, right. Most alkies I know couldn’t organise their finances if their lives depended on it, but if I’m not the worst in the room, then I’d be very fuckin’ surprised, excuse my French. I lost my job a year ago for the usual reasons—attendance was shitty, and when I did turn up, I was either drunk or thinking about getting drunk—and instead of taking the hint, I decided it’d be a much better idea to get drunk, every day, for the next month. By the end of that little binge, the savings I had managed to keep were all gone, and the landlord started making threats about throwing me onto the street. I couldn’t work; no one would even look at me not least give me a job. If I got evicted, it was gonna get a hundred times worse, so I thought the only thing I could do was borrow some money from this dude that I heard would give me credit. But he’s not like the bank, you know? He’s not on the level, not the kind of dude you’d want to be in hock to, but it wasn’t like anyone legit was about to give me credit, and my folks are dead, so the way I saw it, I didn’t have much of a choice. I went and saw him and took his money, and after I dropped a couple of Gs on a massive bender, the one that took me to rock bottom, then I found the rooms, and I haven’t drunk or drugged since.”