Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

 

67 - LIKE A FLY ON THE WALL [cont’d.]

The click of stiletto heels echoed against the hard marble floor.  The key slipped into the locked door.  Maggie Gato entered the splendor of her outer office.  Her secretary, Chad, was not in yet.  Behind her the Minister’s Son hopped along, bound and gagged.

“Come on, sister.  Move it.  Okay, now hop on over this way.  That’s right.”   Maggie unlocked the inner door.  “Hop on over to that chair.  Come on, you can do it.  It can’t be more than twenty little hippity-hops.  Or you can just fall down and die right there.”

The Minister’s Son struggled to bunny hop to the chair as he was ordered.  His wig was held firmly in place by the duct tape circling his head.  Duct tape also tightly covered his mouth.  His legs, firmly taped together, made his movements more difficult than one might imagine.

Not wanting to overdress for the occasion, Maggie had picked out a very short skirt for this morning’s meeting with Ol’ Jack.  She sat like a seductive sentinel at the edge of her oak desk.  She glared at the Minister’s Son, who had clamped his eyes shut while she teased him by massaging her inner thighs through the thin silk material.  She enjoyed watching him squirm while gentle cries escaped both their lips.  She enjoyed being in control.

A knock came to the outer door.

“Don’t move.  Your Sugar Daddy’s just arrived.”

With clenched eyes the Minister’s Son could hear Maggie slide off the desk.  He heard her hard stiletto heels stab the floor.  He felt the touch of her hand running over the nape of his neck as she walked by.  He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut.

“We’re in here, Jack,” Maggie called out.  She intended to sit back in her chair with the confident smirk of someone holding all the cards.  She thought she knew Jack, but she couldn’t help registering shock when he entered the room.

Ol’ Jack Philpot was a handsome man of a certain age, tall and decidedly well-built, and dressed in fine clothing.  His wavy black hair was thick and shiny, a coif perfectly offset by a thin mustache.  The pencil-drawn mustache was more than a mere accent or decorative stripe of hair on an upper lip; it projected a sensuous and rakish aura, like vintage film male movie stars.

Maggie rose from her chair slowly so as not to create much of a sucking sound.  She came around the desk and extended a moist hand in greeting.  “We meet at last, but I feel I already know you.”

His eyes ran up and down her body, giving her the impression that he felt the same.  He took her hand.  She couldn’t help noticing how soft and smooth his palm felt.  She found herself imagining what this hand would feel like pressed against other parts of her body.

Jack instinctively felt he had the upper hand.

“I’m never quite sure about the first impression I make,” he bowed ever so slightly.  “Would you say it’s my good looks, or my fabulous style?”  He paused to admire his manicure.

In response Maggie blurted, “Would you care for some coffee?  There’s a Warbucks in the lobby.  Well, there’s a Warbucks in every lobby, isn’t there?  It’s no trouble, I’ll have my assistant get whatever you’d like.”  She was gushing and she knew it.  Maggie never thought of herself as a gusher.

Jack flashed a courtly, malignant smile, as he sat down and dramatically crossed his long legs.  His clothes draped perfectly.  “Marvelous.  I’ll have a non-fat double chai, and oh hell, get me biscotti.  Hips be damned.”

Maggie’s smile evaporated.  She picked up the phone to place the order with her assistant now sitting in the outer office.  Maggie then turned to Ol’ Jack with a renewed determination, and more than a trace of disappointment.  In a cool and even voice she began, “Well, Jack, I think it’s time we got down to business, don’t you?”  Maggie rocked back in her chair.  “First,” her eyes rolled toward the Minister’s Son, “I don’t appreciate your better half turning up unannounced in my bathroom.”

Jack glanced over at the Minister’s Son.  The boy’s pleading eyes continued to run with streaks of tears mixed with stains of black mascara and blue eye shadow.

“He’s a sight to behold, you’ve got to admit that,” Ol’ Jack sighed.  “The dress must be new, I don’t recognize it.  And how’d you know duct tape is his favorite?  Leave him like that for a couple of hours and don’t let him go potty, and he’ll be like a pretty butterfly trying to escape from its cocoon.”

“Yeah, yeah, but why’s your boytoy trying to snuff me?”

“I can only provide you with conjecture.  He knows I’ve been investigating you for some time now.  I suspect the little puss-puss just got jealous.  I think that’s all there is to it.”  Jack turned toward the boy.  “Is that it, puss-puss?  Did you think Papa had a roving eye for some Tijuana tramp?”

The boy vigorously shook his head in solid affirmation.

Maggie’s back instinctively arched.  “You’ve been investigating me?  Well here’s a bulletin,” she hissed, “I’ve been investigating you.”

Jack cracked a crooked smile that turned his dimples into creased parentheses.  His mustache bristled.  “Really?  Investigating moi?  Do tell.”  Tapered fingers brushed expensive suit lapels.  “Oh damn, a broken nail,” he noticed in elegantly exaggerated shock.  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he batted his eyes.

Maggie shot back, “I paid for the chai, you first.”

Jack casually stroked his mustache.  “I had to ask myself, Who is this girl?  I mean, one day she’s a mere administrative assistant to a dimwitted invalid, and the next day she’s financial advisor to an equally dimwitted but fantastically rich client.”

Maggie masked her emotions with a faint grin.

Ol’ Jack’s gaze was transfixed above Maggie’s head as he recalled the details.

“Margarita Teresa Gato, third daughter of Ernesto and Dolores Gato, from somewhere south of the Rio Grande.  Ernesto and Dolores ran a fortune-telling business that, although lucrative, kept the family on the move.

“Daughter Margarita graduated with honors from Sam Shepherd High School.  She worked her way through DuVal Tech with a degree in office management.  After receiving her diploma, she was hired by a group of wealthy potato farmers who called themselves The Chuck Dookie Boosters Club.  They put up the money to move that moronic jock to Bakersfield, and you were paid to keep up the fiction that Dookie was in business.  He was a charlatan, and it was all an elaborate charade.

“Then something happened.  Something changed, eh?  Margarita decided if she could manage a fake business so well, then why not try her hand at a real business?”

Maggie snickered, “What those rubes were paying me, plus what I skimmed from Chuck’s investments, was easy money.  Maybe too easy.  Maybe I got bored, who knows?  Anyhow, Chuck was never really able to stay interesting for me, if you understand.”

Jack’s eyes locked with Maggie’s.

“Oh, yeeessss.”  He pulled at his mustache.  “After money, your greatest passion is men, isn’t it?  Oh, yes.  The male of the species.”  He laughed.  “You are restricted to just the one species, aren’t you?”

A shadow of hardness fell across Maggie’s lovely face.

“And your greatest fear?” his voice trailed higher at the end of the last word.  “Aren’t you afraid someone might look too closely at your ID?  Ha! Truth is, Margarita, you’re what’s commonly referred to as a wetback.  Oops, sorry, an illegal alien.”

Ol’ Jack was triumphant.  He turned his attention to the squirming Minister’s Son, who had little beads of perspiration dripping from beneath ragged hair extensions.  Jack pursed his lips and spoke like a child to the boy, “Can you say immigration authorities, puss-puss?  Of course you can’t, puss-puss.  Not with all that sticky tape over your precious little puss-puss mouth.”

Jack returned to the matter at hand after taking another sip of his chai.  “Dookie couldn’t find his own asshole using both hands and a roadmap.  So propping up the cripple's life provided you with enough creature comforts, that is, until you saw the opportunity of getting really rich.  And you didn’t hesitate for a second.  No, not you.  It was all as easy as dropping a kitten in a sack off a bridge, wasn’t it, Maggie?”  Jack’s eyes glittered.  “But tell me one thing.  How did you ever get mixed up with that Owen Purty jerkoff?”

Maggie answered, “It was at that bar they hang out at, The Stardust.  Chuck had passed out, as usual, but I wasn’t tired yet and decided to have a little more fun.  So I thought I’d try The Stardust and see if I could find some action, maybe something a little rough around the edges.

“I’d just ordered a Manhattan when Owen Purty came up to me and asked me what sign I was born under.  I told him a Stop sign.  He told me he was a Virgo until he was 16 years old.  He wouldn’t take the hint and go away.  Then he asked if I needed any gerbils neutered.  I was sort of intrigued until he went into the gory details.  So I started for the far side of the bar when Purty asked me if I wanted to see something special.  I told him I wasn’t above taking a peek at something special, but I wasn’t prepared for what he pulled out.  The biggest damn stock certificate you’ve ever seen.  He told me he was keeping it safe for his partner, who was over in the corner stuffing bills down some bimbo in a judge’s robe.

“I worked the whole thing out in ten seconds.  I told Purty for a modest fee I could make him a very rich man if he’d throw some business my way and pretend Chuck was an old friend.  I gave him my card and instructed him what to say.  Purty agreed to everything.  Then I went home and told Chuck a version of the story, and as you can guess, the rest is history.”

Jack’s eyebrow lifted, “Did you tell Chuck you planned to kill him?”

“Kill Chuck?”  Maggie’s eyes widened wider.

Jack sneered, “Yes, kill Chuck.”

“That’s a damn lie.  I never killed Chuck.  He died in a car accident leering at some Balloonitae girls.”

“So it said in the papers.  But you know that’s a lie.  I know that’s a lie.  Even a car mechanic I hired named Louie knows that’s a lie.  I had Louie check out the cables on the brake system of Chuck’s specially outfitted car.  They’d been sliced…ever sooo sliiightly sliced…but sliced nevertheless.  Now, tell me who’s lying?”

Maggie sank deeper into her leather chair.  “Okay, so I lied.  I’ve always been a liar.”

“Ohhhhh, puh-lease.”  Ol’ Jack flexed a bicep under his stylishly tailored suit.  “Now, just what is it you think you’ve got on moi?”

Now it was Maggie’s turn.  She glared at Jack and spoke in cold, measured tones.

“John Mervin Philpot.  You were the only son of Reggie and Bunnie Philpot of Beaver Creek.  You would’ve finished prep school in the usual four years if you hadn’t kept getting expelled for sexual misconduct.  That, and the bother of having to find new schools willing take you, kept you in prep school well into your twenties.

“You were enrolled in night classes at the Woodward Culinary Academy when your family home unexpectedly blew up.  It was said the explosion was due to mysterious and unexplained circumstances.  Mysterious?  Unexplained?  Ha!  Both of your parents died after suffering terrible burns in the explosion, but you were consoled with the life insurance proceeds.  After years of spending your windfall on wasted living, you ran short of cash.  To raise money, you went around from job to job blackmailing fellow Woodies.

“You finally landed a job as Curator of Antiquities at the Loma Prieta Museum of Fallen Objects.  You resigned over so-called artistic differences with the board, and in your letter of resignation you wrote:  If it’s not worth selling, it’s not worth digging up.  After leaving your position at the museum you accepted a managerial post at the Broken Heart Park franchise in Bakersfield, which you held for a only few months.  You walked off with the improvement funds and everything else that wasn’t nailed down.

“The sister you supposedly went up north to be near is actually one Muffy VonHooter, whom you pressured, with something I have not yet been able to determine, into financing your plan of buying that damned trailer park.

“But the Kartone cartel wasn’t selling.  Now, do you want to fill in the blanks?”

“Miss Gato, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”  Jack was being coy.

Maggie wasn’t.  “Try me, Jack.”

Ol’ Jack chewed a bite of his biscotti before he replied, “Somewhere under those trailers,” his tongue now darted from his lips, “just yards from the interstate and bordered by irrigation ditches, is one of the world’s great buried treasures:  Montezuma’s Reserves.”

Maggie almost keeled over, “Montezuma’s what?”

“Montezuma’s Reserves,” Jack repeated with obvious excitement.  “There is a legend about when the conquistadors first arrived in the New World the Aztecs thought they were deities, because the non-natives possessed fire-sticks and smelled like nothing that was still alive.  But a small group of Aztecs remained unconvinced, fortunately.  It was these skeptical Aztecs who persuaded the empire’s money managers to hide some of their assets, just in case the Spaniards turned out to be less than honorable.  The legend says the Aztecs hid over 500 pounds of pure gold from their conquerors.”

Jack paused for dramatic effect.

“That’s right!  I said over 500 pounds of pure gold!”

He paused for even more dramatic effect, before going on.  “During my time at the museum I ran across some documents on the subject.  The legend claims the Aztecs found a spot so remote and desolate that no one would ever go there on purpose, and that’s where the treasure was secretly buried.  The primitives all perished before they returned home, but the legend says they made a map to the buried treasure.”

Maggie crossed her arms skeptically.  “Let me guess.  You think Montezuma’s Reserves is buried somewhere under a trailer in Broken Heart Park.”

“I’m positive,” Jack replied.

Maggie abruptly swung around to face the Minister’s Son.  “And you!  Stop that squirming!  You’re driving me nuts!”

The Minister’s Son froze.

Turning back to Ol’ Jack, she asked, “What’s your proof?”

Jack Philpot pulled a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his coat and laid it all out on the desk.  “Here,” he smugly pointed to a large letter X at the center of the page.

Maggie’s face lit up with amusement.  “You know where the gold is from this?  It’s a Tic-Tac-Toe game.”  She laughed.

“It is not a Tic-Tac-Toe game,” Jack’s right index finger punctuated the air.  “I took these measurements off a map I found with some other documents in the basement of the museum.  I laid down the grid lines to help measure distance.  The lower right section with the O is modern-day Mexico City.  On the original map there was an ornate symbol drawn where Montezuma’s Reserves were buried, but I’m no Pre-Columbian artist so I used an X to mark that spot.  The O beneath that is where the last member of the group died and where the original map was found.  I triangulated the distance from O to O to O to X, and my calculations showed the treasure was buried under Broken Heart Park.”

Maggie asked with a little more interest, “You’re sure of this?”

“Can you name a place more desolate, where no one would ever go on purpose?”

“Go on.”

“Listen Maggie, the Kartone Gang can’t find out about the Aztec gold under Broken Heart Park, and I can’t persuade them to sell.  The cheap bastards will never sell as long as they suck a couple thousand a month clear from that hellhole.  Not unless you can convince your stooge to leverage his shares in RobbinsYUZ to my…I mean our…advantage.  Can you help, Maggie?  I’ll give you a quarter of everything I find.”

Maggie smiled demurely.  “I’m afraid, Jack, this kind of assistance is a 50/50 deal.”

Jack’s grin twisted.  “Not if you’re going to attempt to pass off Chuck’s baby as your Numero Uno client’s offspring, while I know the truth.  Huh?  What do you think of that?  I say you’ll take a quarter, like I offered, and you can keep the stock certificate and be happy.  Just help me get to Montezuma’s Reserves, and keep your trap shut like a good little girl.”

“Damn you!” Maggie snarled through clenched teeth.  Then she quickly regained her steely composure.  She decided to change the subject, however briefly, to give herself a chance to think about her next move.  “Okay, Jack, we can work something out, something mutually beneficial.  But I just have one last question for you.”

“Fire away.”

“Why did you bother stealing the bicycle from that poor little stripper girl, Lorleen Littlesum?”

Jack rolled his eyes.  “Oh, her?  I just hated her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know why.  I just hated her, that’s all.”

Maggie started to say something when there was a commotion outside her door.  They could hear Chad shouting.  “Wait!  Wait!  You can’t go in there!  She’s got someone in the office with her!”

The door to her outer office flung open.  Everyone felt a cold draft.  All three heads turned to see what was coming, and three pairs of eyes witnessed the semblance of a man slump against the doorjamb.  The distinct aroma of booze announced his presence.