Marshland

  D. R. Bell

  ALSO BY D. R. BELL

  The Metronome

  The Great Game

  The Outer Circle

  Marshland

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2016 by D. R. Bell.

  This book is intended for personal use only, and may not be reproduced, transmitted or redistributed in any way without the express written consent of the author. You can contact the author at drbellbooks.com or drbell2022@gmail.com.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events portrayed in it are the work of author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events or entities is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

  Milton Freedman

  “Be aware that you can drown in a swamp, marsh, or bog as easily as in any other body of water, even if it’s shallow.”

  From WikiHow

  CONTENTS

  PART 1: DEATH ON A QUIET STREET

  PART 2: SECRET LIFE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD

  PART 3: HOW NOT TO SELL YOUR HOUSE

  EPILOQUE

  COMMENTARY

  PART 1: DEATH ON A QUIET STREET

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2018

  The stage is set against the ocean bay, with cliffs framing it on both sides. The beautiful timbre of a singer’s voice fills me up. The sound carries higher and higher and my soul feels like it’s about to overflow beyond its physical confines.

  “Ben, Ben …” someone shakes my shoulder.

  Damn it! Leave me alone! I want to scream but contain myself and remove a pair of VR goggles with built-in headphones. I am back in the old study where I sleep now.

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “There is someone here to see you,” says Dad, his voice barely above whispering.

  “Who?”

  “Your high school friend. Alex … Alex …,” Dad is struggling to remember the last name.

  “OK, Dad.”

  Alex Martinez is a couple of steps inside the open front door. A year behind me at Franklin High School, my top wide receiver back then, now a detective with LAPD. I am tall at 6’1” but he is even taller, my eyes level with the thin mustache under his hawk-like nose. Alex’s dark hair had receded quite a bit since the last time I saw him.

  “Hi, Ben. Didn’t know you’re back in the old house.”

  “Moved back three weeks ago, after Mom passed away. What brings you here?”

  I feel stupid as the words leave my mouth. The rectangle of the open door is filled with flashing red lights. Sounds of helicopters circling above.

  “I am sorry, I didn’t know about your mom,” Alex instinctively raises a hand to his chest. “I must have missed …” his voice trails off.

  “You didn’t. Dad was not up for a big funeral.”

  “She was sick for a long time, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Alex senses that I don’t want to talk about this.

  “Ben, it’s Evan.”

  “What about Evan?”

  “Looks like he killed himself. Right after he killed Rose.”

  Dad gasps behind me. I turn around, help him into a chair. I sit in another one myself and point Alex to sit across from us. Last time Alex and I saw each other was at Evan and Rose’s wedding three years ago.

  “Have you seen Evan recently?” asks Alex.

  “No, not since the wedding.”

  Alex looks at me questioningly and I feel necessary to add a meaningless:

  “I was planning to.”

  Hard to explain why in three weeks I have not gone to see an old friend living a few doors away.

  Alex nods.

  “Are you sure that’s what happened?” I struggle to comprehend what Alex just told us.

  “From the look of it, Evan shot Rose, blew a hole in his computer, then shot himself.” Alex rubs his chin and adds, “Of course, it’s all subject to investigation.”

  “Why?” whispers Dad.

  “Don’t know yet. I am going around talking to neighbors. I told you more than others, so …”

  “We don’t talk to neighbors much,” Dad shakes his head. “Most people we knew, they moved away.”

  “Yes, the street seems different now,” agrees Alex. “I knocked on doors and nobody answers. Well, if you think of anything …”

  He gets up to leave, then turns around and points to an old school picture on the wall. Four of us in football uniforms: Evan, Deion, Alex, and I.

  “Evan had the same picture on his desk. May have looked at it before … before …”

  I stand up, walk to Alex, put a hand on his shoulder.

  Alex grabs me in a tight hug. We stand like this for a minute, then gently separate. Alex fishes a card from his wallet.

  “Ben, I am not sure if you have our address. We are not far, in Ladera Heights. Come for dinner on Friday, Mai would be glad to see you.”

  I demur: “Thank you, Alex. I am not sure; have to check my schedule …”

  “Well, just show up around 6:30 if you can. It’s easy for us to put another plate on the table.”

  Not sure Mai would agree with that, I think.

  “Why don’t you go?” says Dad after Alex leaves. “All you’ve done for the three weeks you’ve been here is go to work and then come back and sit around the house or hide in your room with that thing on your head.”

  “That thing? You mean the VR goggles?”

  Years of Arizona sun leathered his face, when he closes eyes in frustration the skin of his forehead tightens into a brownish map of wrinkles.

  “Whatever. Wake up, you’re starting to get on my nerves. These were your best friends.”

  “Many years ago, Dad.”

  “Friends are friends. It’s not like you acquired many others.”

  I toss and turn into the early hours of the morning. Alex, Deion, Evan and I – the four musketeers. We all lived in “Three Fingers,” we played together, we partied together, we even dated together. Thirty-four years ago, we brought Franklin Cougars the only division championship in the school’s history. Which for a while displaced Franklin’s main claim to fame of having the most elaborate high school yearbooks in the city, if not the state or the country as some claimed.

  Since I moved back, I kept planning to go see Evan. Just could not quite bring myself up to it. Too late now.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 2

  “Did you see workers downstairs?” greets Ernie as I walk into our office.

  It’s a warm morning and beads of sweat already glisten on his round face, while dark semi-circles formed in the armpits of a light blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves. I think he has five of these shirts, one for each day of the week. Unless he washes them daily.

  Ernie Burstein is my officemate. He is in his sixties, portly and bald, our resident computer security expert and philosopher who’s been around Space Systems for almost ten years. Ernie is smart and cynical and, while good at designing secure software and fixing project problems, is prone to reminding the people in power which of their bad decisions led to these problems in the first place. Ernie can’t advance in the company but he also can’t quit because he has three ex-wives and four kids, two of which are in college and one still in high school.

  Years ago, I had hired him when he ran into difficulties at two of his previous jobs and had no references. He returned the favor by helping me get this contract at Space Systems when I burned bridges at my job of fifteen years and no one would touch me. Ernie is the kind of a guy that pays his debts. Which is more than I can say for many of those I considered friends: when things got rough for me, they gently disappeared.

  “I did. So what, Ernie?” I ask. “Probably installing a new advertising display.”

  “But we never had one here, in R7!” exclaims Ernie. “They are not supposed to make any improvements here.”

  R7 is the official designation of our building in the company’s directory. The great advantage of R7 is that it has no executive management of any kind. The building was supposed to come off the lease in December of 2016 and all managers hurried to get themselves offices elsewhere. But there was not enough room for all the worker bees and the building’s owner offered a good deal on a lease extension. Now R7 is half-empty and largely forgotten. Nobody with any ambition wants to move here and be away from the centers of power. Which is a bonus for misfits like Ernie and myself that have no aspirations for advancement and welcome having a healthy distance from the management. So we abandoned our assigned cubicles elsewhere and found ourselves a large executive office in R7 to share.

  The R7 situation is somewhat of a secret that people find out through word of mouth. Ernie is always concerned that the management will rediscover it.

  “Aren’t you off tomorrow?” I change the subject. “Going away with Bao?”

  Bao is Ernie’s new girlfriend. Why a gorgeous Thai woman would be with Ernie, who is 25 years her senior, broke, and not a looker, is a mystery. But they’ve been together for six months now.

  “Yes!” Ernie lights up and I wonder whether it’s this boyish smile that got her. “Heading north for a long weekend.”

  “Someone starting the weekend early … I am jealous!”

  Kenya Jordan chimes in from the doorway. Kenya and Ron Takano share the other executive office across the way, with two secretarial desks in-between. Secretaries long gone, together with the executives they worked for. Our two offices and the secretarial space –
which we call “DMZ” – form a nice private area where the four of us congregate to discuss projects, management, politics, and our love lives, not necessarily in that order. In violation of company’s rules – and because all of us hate the Keurig cups coffee - Ron plugged in a coffeemaker where we brew our own stuff.

  Space Systems is a very casual place. But Kenya does not do casual. Today she is wearing a nicely tailored knee-length light grey suit with white blouse. Shiny black high heels compensate for what she lacks in height. Her hair parted on the left and a longish straight jet-black bob rests slightly on the right shoulder. Old-fashioned glasses that she doesn’t actually need complete the serious business look.

  Ernie doesn’t buy it. “There is a devil inside Ms. Jordan,” he wags a finger. Not to her face, of course.

  Most of our time at Space Systems is spent in meetings. In my first month here, I pointed out to a certain project manager that perhaps calling so many meetings was counter-productive. She cut me off with “That’s teamwork!” Obviously, one can’t be against teamwork, so that was the end of discussion.

  I have a document that’s due today, so I beg off from three different meeting requests and focus on the document. Ernie and Kenya are out most of the day and Ron is on the business trip, leaving me to work in peace and quiet. Thoughts about Evan intrude constantly and I try to chase them away. Back in our Franklin High days, he would usually block for me on passing plays. He was a good blocker, throwing himself at blitzing linebackers and defensive ends. And when someone would get past him and level me, Evan would be the one helping me up with a guilty: “I am sorry.” Someone leveled Evan for good and I did not block for him.

  In these three weeks we’ve been together, Dad and I have fallen into a bit of a dining routine: one day he cooks, the next day he orders takeout and texts me where to pick it up. Today it’s takeout from a local Thai restaurant.

  When we are done eating, Dad says:

  “I want to move out some of Mom’s things. John said he does not want them. Can you help me?”

  I follow him to the master bedroom. Ours is an unexceptional one-story ranch style three-bedroom house. They built them cookie-cutter style back in the 1960s, as the aerospace industry just south of the airport was taking off and required housing for engineers and technicians. The master bedroom is large and airy, the other two are smallish and dark. I am in the one that used to be the office. Joshua’s room is closed. Even though his things are gone, I stay out. The memories of our lives are mostly in boxes in the attached garage, except for various sports awards that for some reason now sit in my room. I am still dislocated with being back, the house feels like a foreign country. It took me four years to get used to not being here.

  It’s the first time I enter the main bedroom since the day when hospice took the special hospital bed away. A smell of death still lingers in the air. They could not close her mouth and she lay like that for hours. Indignity in the end.

  “It’s just … well … it makes it harder to have them … her things here,” stumbles Dad. “You know, where I see them every day. Just the clothing and shoes. I brought some empty boxes.”

  “Dad, do you want to put them in the garage?”

  “No, no … Garage is full. And what’s the point of keeping them there? Let’s pack and take them to Goodwill.”

  I try not to look at individual items. Put a box together, grab a handful of clothes, then drop them in the box. I’ve done this once before, four years ago, and the process is awfully familiar.

  Dad suddenly stops, sitting down on the bed with a shoe in his hands. It’s a bright green sandal.

  “I think that’s the last pair of shoes she bought. She liked shoes.”

  I stop, watch him.

  “OK,” he gets up, avoids looking at me.

  After we are done, I take boxes to my car to drop off at Goodwill later.

  When I walk back into the house, Dad studies the view out of the kitchen window.

  “When did you move out, Ben?”

  “Come on, Dad, you know it was same time when you and Mom moved back in.”

  He ignores the tinge of irritation in my voice.

  “Indulge me, Ben. My memory is not what it used to be.”

  I get up, pour myself another cup, and remain by the counter.

  “OK, Dad. I moved out in May of 2014.”

  “Right. Mom and I lived here for just over a year this time,” he nods matter-of-factly. “We bought the house in 1975. You were nine. And you and June and Joshua lived here from 2002.”

  I pick up my plate from the table, and throw away a pile of half-eaten noodles.

  “Where are you going with this, Dad?”

  “I am sorry. What I mean is that we, Feldmans, lived here for over forty years except for the time it was rented after you moved out and before we moved in. But it doesn’t feel like the same neighborhood.”

  Our neighborhood is locally referred to as Three Fingers. It really is three streets. The one we are on, Illinois Ave, is the longest. It’s sandwiched by shorter Idaho Ave and Nebraska Ave, forming a badly shaped triangle. 33rd Street forms the southern border with Rochester of which Three Fingers is technically a part of, while Pantano Wetlands stopped the builders from spreading north, east or west. On the map, it looks like a hand that’s missing a thumb and a little finger. The joke is that the neighborhood is one fat finger pointing at Santa Monica to the north.

  “I don’t know, Dad,” I shrug. “Seems like pretty much the same old neighborhood. Well, perhaps not quite the same … Coffeehouses instead of local markets … Things change, people change, neighborhoods change. ‘The circle of life,’ right?”

  “Sometimes people go back thinking they can recapture the good things that live in their memories, but I am not sure there is anything here.”

  Dad gets up, shuffles to the kitchen sink, washes his plate. We used to be roughly the same height and weight. Now he is much thinner and a couple of inches shorter. His cheeks have fallen in and his nose sticks out even more prominently than before. But the old engineer’s mind is still as sharp as a knife.

  “How long do you plan to stay here, Ben?”

  “Dad, I just moved in three weeks ago.”

  “I know that you’re worried about me now that your mother is gone. And the money is tight. So thank you. But you have to find a way to live again. Fresh start might do us both some good. You’ve been sleepwalking ever since …”

  He lets the words hang in the air without finishing, shuffles around the kitchen.

  “Ben, have you thought of talking to someone again? To a psychologist or a rabbi?”

  “Come on, Dad, not this again.”

  I turn around and go back to my room.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 3

  This morning Kenya is doing a presentation on her project, the one I was supposed to work on with her. I am late and I have only a few minutes so I quietly sneak into the conference room and lean against the back wall. She smiles imperceptibly when she sees me, does not skip a beat in her talk.

  She is working on improving marketing and recommendations targeted at twenty million customers of our systems.

  “We have a data warehouse with billions of records of our consumers’ purchases, viewing usage, calls to customer care centers, etc. And we have mined it for years to try to improve their experience, tell them what new movies they might like, upsell them on new packages, offer incentives, and more. But there is a whole other dimension of their lives that we have not integrated. Until now.”

  Kenya switches to the new slide with a graph of interconnected network nodes of different colors and sizes.

  “People exist within their communities, their social networks. They interact, they talk, they recommend, they share. By detecting their communities and piecing together data from these different domains, we can create a more complete intelligence picture of our customers. We can determine who and what influences their decisions. And then, we can better message and market to them.”