Shawn stared at him as if he"d just said he couldn"t name all the Goonies. "He"s only the reigning champ of Extreme Handball in all of Santa Barbara. And I"m playing him next. Do you know what this means?"
"That you"re going to miss your game," Gus said. "This is life and death."
"You think Extreme Handball isn"t?" Shawn said, hurling the ball against the wall, where it dislodged three pictures and a clock before returning to his hand. "It"s a desperate struggle between two men, an existential battle on a concrete court. Kill or be killed. And by killed, I mean these things really sting when they hit. Headhunter Hank Stenberg is going to feel like he"s the guest of honor at a jellyfish convention by the time I"m done with him."
"Headhunter Hank can-" Gus broke off, finally recognizing the name. "Hank Stenberg? You"re going to play against Hank Stenberg?"
"Someone"s got to take that killer down."
"You mean the kid who lives down the street from your dad? I doubt he"s even twelve years old."
"That"s what they said about all those Chinese gymnasts, and they still walked off with the medals," Shawn said.
"We have work to do," Gus said.
"That"s for sure," Shawn agreed. "My serve is strong, but there are a couple of moves I haven"t quite mastered yet. I was thinking we could head down to the handball courts and I could try them out on you."
"We are not going to the handball courts."
Shawn glanced around the office. "I guess we could do it here, but it"s going to be dangerous with all this broken gla.s.s lying around."
"We are not going to the handball courts because we have a case," Gus said. "It might be the biggest, most exciting case we"ve ever had."
That got Shawn"s attention. He stopped bouncing the ball. "The biggest?"
"It might be," Gus said.
"Got it," Shawn said. "Who died?"
"No one, if we can get there fast enough."
"Get where?"
The phone rang once. Then Gus" cell started ringing as the call forwarding kicked in. "There."
Shawn s.n.a.t.c.hed the cell out of Gus" hand and hit the SPEAKER b.u.t.ton. "Psych Investigations," he said.
"Help, he"s killing me," the rasp whispered harshly. But not quite as harshly, or as whispery, as it had before. There was a hint of tone, a smidgen of voice-not a lot, but enough for Gus to realize he knew the speaker from somewhere.
Shawn stared at the phone. And then spoke one syllable that chilled Gus to his liver.
"Dad?"
Chapter Three.
The drive from the Psych offices usually took fifteen minutes, twice that at rush hour. But Gus kept his foot jammed down on the gas, blasting through stop signs and red lights, screaming around traffic, and violating every precept of the state vehicle code that didn"t involve the transportation of livestock. In the pa.s.senger seat, Shawn desperately dialed and redialed his father"s number, but every call went direct to voice his father"s number, but every call went direct to voice mail.
As he hurtled past a bus full of nuns on their way to a local convent, Gus cursed himself. How could he have failed to recognize Henry Spencer"s voice? He"d heard it almost every day of his life since he was in single digits. He knew it as well as his own voice-better, actually, since he always covered his ears and hummed loudly whenever he was forced to listen to a recording of himself.
Logically he knew that part of the fault was Henry"s. If he"d only identified himself, or even just engaged a little more of his vocal cords, there"s no way that Gus wouldn"t already have been there to help him. But that only made Gus worry more. Henry had been a cop for decades. He knew better than anyone how important it was to identify yourself clearly in an emergency. That meant there was only one reason he didn"t-because he couldn"t. Whatever danger he was facing, it was bigger than anything Gus could imagine.
Gus took his eyes off the road for one second to sneak a glance at Shawn. His best friend was ashen faced as he listened to his father"s voice on the outgoing message.
"Shawn, I"m so sorry," Gus said for what must have been the hundredth time.
Shawn shook his head tightly. No need for apologies. He knew how much Gus cared about Henry.
Gus yanked the wheel hard and felt the Echo rise up on two wheels as it screamed around a corner. The car slammed back down on all fours and Gus jammed the gas pedal even harder. He could see Henry"s house straight ahead.
Two more seconds and they were out front. The Echo screamed to the curb and Shawn and Gus leapt out, tearing up the walkway to the front door. Shawn twisted the k.n.o.b. It was locked.
"Stand back," Shawn said, raising his leg to kick the door in.
"Hey, I just painted that!"
Gus and Shawn wheeled around to see a man emerging from the garage. It took Gus a moment to realize that this was indeed Henry Spencer, because he"d spent the last eight minutes visualizing him covered in blood, his ears and hands cut off, and set on fire. The fact that he was dry, intact, and completely unflamed simply didn"t make sense.
"Dad?" Shawn"s face seemed to be torn between relief and disbelief.
"We got here as fast as we could," Gus said.
Henry checked his watch. "Did that include a stop for doughnuts along the way?" he said. "Because if it didn"t, eight minutes is pretty pathetic."
He walked past them to a corner of the house where red paint was beginning to peel after simmering through another summer of Santa Barbara sun.
"You said it was an emergency," Shawn said.
"Good thing it wasn"t," Henry said as he pulled a paint sc.r.a.per out of his back pocket. "Three phone calls before you guys figured out who I was? I could have been murdered a dozen times over."
"The day"s still young," Shawn said, relief turning to anger.
"Wait a minute," Gus said. "This was all some kind of test?"
"Not exactly," Henry said. "I do need help."
"You want us to sc.r.a.pe the paint off your house, you call like a normal human being and ask politely," Shawn said. "That"s the way human beings do it."
"If I called and asked you politely to sc.r.a.pe the paint off my house, you"d invent some ludicrous excuse for not coming over immediately, promise to drop by in a couple of days, and then I wouldn"t hear from you until the rainy season started," Henry said.
"Exactly," Shawn said. "That"s the way human beings do it." He turned and headed back toward the Echo. "Come on, Gus."
Gus was frozen, if only by the desire to find exactly the right parting shot for Henry. Finally he realized there was nothing he could say that would sum up everything he was feeling. He gave Henry a look he hoped would convey a bevy of emotions, then turned and followed Shawn.
"Okay, hold on," Henry called after them. "I"m sorry if I scared you two little girls."
"Way to apologize, Dad," Shawn called over his shoulder.
"But I really do need your help," Henry said. "And it doesn"t involve sc.r.a.ping paint, and it is kind of an emergency."
"What kind of emergency?" Shawn said.
"The kind that"s best discussed over pizza," Henry said. "Fortunately, Giuseppe"s took a lot less time to get here than you guys."
By the time the three of them had finished two large pies, a family-size chopped salad, and a side of buffalo wings, Gus found his anger had been drowned in a sea of carbohydrates. That"s when Henry consented to discuss the nature of his crisis.
"It"s about Bud Flanek," Henry said.
"What is that, some kind of skin disease?" Shawn said. "Because if you"re hoping I"m going to donate my flesh to you, I"m still using it."
"Bud Flanek," Henry said irritably. "You remember him. He was on my bowling team years back. Tall guy, one shoulder lower than the other, always wore bib overalls."
"Let me guess," Shawn said. "He"s been accused of a crime against fashion, and you want me to get him off. Sorry, Dad, I don"t think I can help."
Gus admired the way Shawn could continue to hold his grudge even when he was stuffed with pizza, because he couldn"t fight against the warm feelings his digestive system was sending through his body.
"Is your friend in trouble?" Gus asked.
"In ways he can"t begin to imagine," Henry said."He"s about to get married for the first time at sixty-two."
Shawn stifled a bored yawn. "And you want us to investigate his fiancee and prove that she"s actually some floozy who"s going to steal all his money and break his heart."
"Why would I want that?" Henry said. "I think it"s great that Bud"s finally found someone who makes him happy. And she hardly needs his sewer department pension. She manages a very profitable bakery in Summerland. Not bad for a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe."
"Then what do you need us for?" Shawn said. "Or did you drag us up here just to make us listen to the joyous news about one guy I barely remember marrying some woman I"ve never met? Because if that"s what"s going to make your life worthwhile, you should start a blog, and then you can bore complete strangers, too."
Henry pushed off from the table and wandered out of the room. When he came back, he was carrying a brightly wrapped box about the size of a mediocre dictionary. He tossed it on the table in front of Shawn.
"That"s really special, but didn"t you get anything for Gus?" Shawn said.
"It"s not for you," Henry said. "I"m in charge of Bud"s gag gift. I need you to deliver it to his bachelor party tonight."
Gus and Shawn stared at him, not understanding.
"That"s the emergency?" Shawn said finally.
"Maybe "emergency" was a little strong," Henry said. "But it"s important to me that Bud get this tonight."
"Just not important enough that you would bother going to his bachelor party."
"I have my reasons," Henry said.
"Like what?" Shawn said.
"When a man is preparing to declare lifelong fidelity to one woman, it seems morally wrong to celebrate that by spitting in the face of those vows," Henry said.
"First of all, vows don"t have faces," Shawn said. "You"re thinking of cows, which do have faces, but you really don"t want to spit in them, because they can spit back."
"Those were llamas," Gus said, remembering that one long afternoon when their elementary cla.s.s field trip had taken them to a farm. "And the teacher warned you about five hundred times not to taunt them."
"Second," Shawn said, "I can"t believe I"m hearing this from a man who organized a bachelor party in Vegas for Earl Mountlock that was so insane the wedding had to be postponed for a week because the judge refused to let the groom out on bail."
"That was before I started listening to Dr. Laura," Henry said. "She has a lot of wisdom on the subject. Are you going to do this or not?"
Gus recognized the look on Shawn"s face. He was trying to figure out what was really going on here.
"See, if you gave me this present and asked me to carry it onto an airplane for you, I"d understand that there was a bomb in it and you wanted to make your insane political point without dying in the process," Shawn said. "But you"re handing it to me and asking me to carry it into a trendy nightspot filled with naked women pouring free drinks, and I can"t see the rationale behind it."
Henry pounded the table in frustration. "Can"t you just do me this one small favor without turning it into some grand inquisition?" he growled. "I can"t go to the party. I"d like Bud to open his gift in front of his friends. It"s not that big of a deal. And there aren"t going to be any naked women. It"s a cash bar, and no one would use the word "trendy" to describe the Fort-"
Henry broke off in midsyllable, his face reddening.
"What fort?" Gus asked. "There"s no fort in Santa Barbara."
Henry sat still, grim faced. Baffled, Gus glanced over at Shawn to see if he had any idea what his father was talking about. Apparently he did, because his face was split by a wide smile.
"Please, go ahead and finish your word, Dad," Shawn said, taking a pleasure that Gus couldn"t begin to understand.
"Look, if you don"t want to help me, you don"t want to help me," Henry said. "I"ll ask one of the guys to drop the present off."
"Drop the present off where, I wonder," Shawn said. "Oh, yes. The Fort. Which I believe is an abbreviated version of a longer word. What would that be again?"
"Fortress?" Gus guessed.
"Don"t worry about the dishes," Henry said, stacking the plates on top of the empty pizza boxes. "I can take care of them on my own."
"Ah, yes, fortress," Shawn said. "As in Fortress of Magic. Would that be where Bud Flanek"s bachelor party is being held?"
"It wasn"t supposed to be," Henry grumbled. "But the d.a.m.n health board shut down the Beef "n" Fish Barrel two nights ago, and Bud"s best man, Lyle Wheelock, managed to book that dump."
"And I guess he didn"t ask you first." Shawn beamed. "Or maybe he did, and you were just too embarra.s.sed to tell him the truth."
"What truth?" Gus asked.
"Dad can"t go to the Fortress of Magic," Shawn said. "Not since he took me there when I was a kid. He was banned for life."
"But that was twenty years ago," Gus said. "They can"t possibly still-"
"They renewed the restraining order six months ago," Henry snapped, then turned to Shawn. "Are you happy now? Have you humiliated me enough?"
"Not nearly enough." Shawn picked up the package and spun it around in his hands. "Not to make up for what you did to us today. But once I tell everyone at that bachelor party exactly why it is you"re not there, I think we"ll be even."
Henry glared at Shawn. Then he marched the plates and pizza boxes into the kitchen. When he returned, he slammed a printed invitation on the table in front of his son.