Five Fortunes (26 page)

“I’m so sorry…” She gestured at her blue jeans.

“Don’t be silly, it’s your day off. They’re very becoming. Would you like some champagne? Walter can get some glasses.”

They declined to drink, with much thanking and embarrassed shaking of heads.

“Please sit down, then.”

They chose chairs side by side, facing the fire and perched on the edge of their seats.

“Is the baby safe with Cook?”

“He is sleeping.”

“Good. Well, we’d like to talk about your future,” said Rae. They nodded.

“Have you thought about it?”

They both nodded again. They were serious now, shy and quiet.

Walter said, “You might like a place of your own. You can start to think about more suitable jobs. You might want to start your own business.”

James and Doreen looked at each other. Doreen looked at her sneakers. James said, “Doreen is planning to go to medical school.”

“When we save enough money,” she added quickly.

“I always wanted a doctor in the family!” said Rae. “So you have university credits?”

“Four years at university.”

“You’ll probably have to take some courses here, to get the premed requirements squared away,” said Walter. “Once you have your papers, you can have your credits transferred. Or maybe you don’t need them. Maybe you just have to take entrance exams. And there’s UCSF right here. Or Stanford, of course, if you don’t want to stay in San Francisco.”

“So expensive,” said Doreen, shaking her head.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Rae said. “Mr. Strouse set up a fund to educate our children and grandchildren.” She suddenly laughed, then settled herself down. “I don’t think the trustees will object, do you?” she asked Walter.

200 / Beth Gutcheon

“Not a bit. It’s set up for all your descendants.”

Doreen’s eyes widened and she and James looked at each other.

It was as if they had been talking like kids of their wildest dreams, but not really until this moment understood that something was going to happen.

“I think you’ll be a wonderful doctor,” Rae put in. “And what about you, James? I don’t suppose you want to go into the diplomatic corps?”

“No. I want to work for justice in China. I want to help those who are trying to change things. More fairness. More freedom to choose your own lives, like here. I have many friends in China who are doing this work. They need support. They need money. And they need United States people to understand what they are trying to do.”

“I like the idea of a democratic firebrand in the family,” said Walter, “but this doesn’t sound like a job description.”

“No, of course,” said James. “I would like to go on working here, if that’s all right. If you would like me to. I will need money while Doreen is in school.”

“You don’t want to move out?”

“Oh no!” they cried together. “It’s so pretty here, and so quiet…safe for the baby…”

“We’re used to big families, both of us,” said James. “All ages, living together. We would be very lonely if we moved out, just by ourselves. We would miss Cook. We would miss you.”

“Well, I’d miss
you
. I couldn’t be happier,” Rae said, and her smile was very broad. James and Doreen stood, wanting to be alone and talk to each other.

“We better…”, “The baby…” they said at once.

When they had gone, Walter began to laugh.

“So you’re not losing a houseman, you’re gaining a doctor.”

“She should finish her training right about the time I’ll be ready for her,” said Rae. “I hope she goes into geriatrics.”

They sat enjoying the fire and drinking champagne.

“Not to change the subject, but we better talk about Albie’s letter,”

said Walter.

Five Fortunes / 201

“Yes.”

“It’s fairly clear that he’s left you free to give the money in ways that institutions can’t. To find where there’s need that isn’t being served by other programs.”

“
That
shouldn’t be hard.”

“No, I agree, not to find the need. But how to do no harm. I can’t help but think of the boy who won the Hero medal.”

“What boy?”

“Funny—I thought you told it to me. Must have been Albie. It’s this: A young man in Cleveland. He was walking on the beach of Lake Erie one evening when he saw somebody drowning. He dove in and saved the man’s life, and got his picture in the paper. Then he was given a Citizen Hero medal, and flown to Washington to meet the President. It ruined him. He quit his job and spent all day every day wearing his medal, pacing up and down the beaches of Cleveland, waiting for somebody else to start drowning, so he could do it again. True story, I checked.”

They sat silent for a while, watching the fire.

“According to Maimonides,” Walter said, “the truest form of charity is to help someone to help himself.”

“I’m all right so far,” said Rae, with a slight tip of her head toward the kitchen wing of the house. “I hope.”

“The second highest is to give in secrecy. The ideal would be that the giver doesn’t know who received, and the one who received doesn’t know who gave.”

“But how do we do that?”

“What if we look not for people who need help, but for people who are helping? There’s a pair of young doctors out in the Sunset giving away medical care. They have supplies to buy and rent to pay…”

He handed her a clipping.

Rae read it. “I
like
this,” she said.

“It’s going to take some research. And it’s got to be done discreetly.

Whatever you decide to do, you’re going to need a front man. If anyone finds out the money is coming from you, you’ll have every con artist in America on your doorstep with a begging bowl.”

202 / Beth Gutcheon

This Rae already knew. Forget Maimonides. She’d seen plenty of that at the Strouse Foundation.

“I was hoping
you
would…”

“I’d like nothing more,” said Walter. “
The Millionaire
was my favorite show. I used to practice writing John Beresford Tipton all during high school math.”

“I know you did, I saw your notebooks. Did you put Albie up to this, by the way?”

Walter laughed. “I didn’t have to. But we both agreed, the person you really wanted to be was Michael Anthony, who knocks on the door and says…”

“You must have laughed your head off when you read the letter,”

said Rae.

“I cried, actually. The point is, I can’t be your Michael Anthony, I’ve had my picture in the paper too many times. No, you’ve got your man. James.”

“James!”

“He’s a diplomat. He’s discreet as a tomb. He’s a raging human rights champion, he’ll love this.”

D
uring the third week of December, somebody broke a stained-glass window at the Good Hope Baptist Church.

Plywood was nailed up, and on Sunday the collection plate overflowed with money to replace it. Carter decided the night shift should work in pairs, with one to pick up the stash on foot, the other to pace along in the car in case of trouble.

One night just before Christmas, Carter was reaching into the wheel well of a pickup when DeeAnne, driving slowly up the street with her lights off, turned on her high beams and leaned on the horn.

Carter wheeled around to see a little fat boy freeze in his tracks, exactly like a deer in headlights. Carter began to run toward him and DeeAnne followed, leaning on the horn. The boy ran for his life.

In the car, sweating, Carter said, “I bet you made that poor little bugger shit his pants.”

“I better go back and switch cars,” DeeAnne said. “Every enforcer in ten blocks will be looking for this one.”

“I’ll stay here. Give me the cell phone.”

“You sure? It will be quiet for a while, after all that racket.”

“Customers are paying for an eight-hour shift. I’ll be all right.”

DeeAnne gave her the phone and promised to be back in an hour with coffee and food.

Carter was walking toward the avenue when her pocket began to ring.

“Carter? Shanti. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. We were just giving you your money’s worth.”

203

204 / Beth Gutcheon

“You want a cup of coffee?”

“Do you drink coffee at this hour?”

“I drink it anytime.”

“I’d love it. Thanks.”

She walked around the park to Shanti’s house. When she rang, Shanti turned off the porch light and opened the door. She had Flora on her hip. She led Carter into the living room, which was bright with kente cloth and crowded with ferns and cactus.

“Miss Flora! Are you awake?” Carter asked.

Flora was in her jammies, and awake was not really the word for it, but she nodded.

“The sitter just left,” Shanti said. “I left her home tonight because she’s had a little sniffle. But Miss Watchdog always hears me open the door, no matter how deep asleep she is. Because I missed you all evening and you knew I needed a hug, isn’t that right?” Shanti nuzzled her daughter.

“Did I wake you up with all that honking, Miss Flora?”

Flora looked across at Carter, her eyes wide. Shanti laughed. “You heard that honking, didn’t you, little bear?” Flora nodded.

“I’ve got to get you back to bed, little bear. Can you say good night to Carter? No? You can’t say good night?”

“Can you give me five?”

Carter held up her hand, and the little girl gravely reached out and gave it a slap. As she was carried away, Flora peeped at Carter over her mother’s shoulder.

When Shanti came back with two mugs of coffee, Carter was looking out the window.

“Look at that asshole,” she said. There was a white man wearing a tan suede jacket and loafers with tassels walking into the ruined playground. He stopped under one of the few functioning streetlights, uncertain what to do. Out of the darkness two large dark figures started toward him, walking purposefully, as if to music.

The tasseled loafers went to meet them.

Five Fortunes / 205

“He come in the Jag?” Shanti asked, settling down beside her.

There was a vintage XKE parked halfway up the street.

“Good guess,” said Carter. There weren’t a lot of $70,000 cars in this neighborhood. They drank their coffee and watched as the white man moved into the blackness across the playground with his two escorts.

A phone rang. Shanti stood up. “No, it’s mine,” said Carter. She reached into her pocket. The call was from a watcher one block over on a side street. A kid had just left his stash in a wheel well and gone off running, probably to make a delivery to the park. If she could get there fast, she could pick it up before he got back.

“See you later,” Carter said to Shanti. She was on the street, moving quickly through the darkness, around the corner and onto a quiet street of bungalows. Some of the yards were well kept; others were weed filled and littered. She could see some lights on behind window blinds, but most of the houses were dark. Behind at least one of those windows was her watcher.

The car where she was to look for the stash was parked in front of a house covered in tar paper that had an imitation brick pattern printed on it. One of the front windows was boarded. There was a stereo system playing somewhere with the bass thumping,
pump-pump-pump
. Carter walked quickly, all senses alert. Nothing was moving on the street in front of her, but she had a fleeting sense of footsteps behind her. She stopped suddenly. The sound, if there had been any, stopped too. She figured it must have been a sort of echoing off beat from the stereo, an illusion caused by her own footsteps against the pulsing of the drum machine.

She reached the blue Oldsmobile and, without stopping, swept her hand in under the right rear fender and pulled out a paper bag.

She scooped it into a long inside pocket sewn into her jacket. The bag felt soft and heavy. This could be quite a haul.

The next thing she knew she was belly down on the sidewalk with blood pouring out of her nose. Someone huge was on top of her, pinning her hands to the sidewalk. She could smell sour sweat. She 206 / Beth Gutcheon

whipped her head straight backward as hard as she could, bashing the back of her head into his face.

With an angry scream he drew away from the source of the blow, shifting his weight enough to allow her to flip onto her side. This threw him further off balance. Moving with speed and force, Carter brought the toe of her shoe up between his legs and smashing into his groin right behind his testicles. She barely heard the howl as his body whipped into a protective ball; she was springing to her feet.

It was a big guy wearing gang colors. The heavily muscled upper body suggested a lot of time spent on weight machines, and she doubted it was at Jack La Lanne’s. Everything about him suggested a recent sojourn at one of the charm schools run by the penal system.

She found her tear gas canister and gave him a shot in the face.

“Bitch!” he roared as the pain spread into his eyes and nose, rendering him blind and agonized.

“If I were really a bitch, I’d have broken your leg, asshole.” She searched him for weapons as he writhed and wiped at his eyes; she found a huge switchblade. “That’s cute,” she added, putting it into her pocket. Surprisingly, he didn’t have a gun.

“What’s the deal, your parole officer took away your piece?”

He didn’t answer. She suspected that the unflattering truth was that he hadn’t expected to need it. She was a woman. He probably thought he was born with all the equipment necessary. She reached into a pocket for her handcuffs, and realized with horror that they were in DeeAnne’s car. Fuck. Maybe she
should
break his leg.

“Stop wiping your eyes, asshole, you’re making it worse.”

The guy was in worse pain from the tear gas than from anything else that had happened. She could see now, accustomed to the light level, that his nose looked mashed to one side, and blood was pouring out. No wonder the back of her head hurt. Not to mention screaming pain in her chin and elbows where she had hit the pavement. She hoped she hadn’t cracked anything.

“On your feet, stud,” she yelled. She held the gas canister aimed at him with two hands, as if it were a pistol. It was probably empty, but