"TROUBLE IN TEMPLETON"
Out at the airport on a stock-still dead hot Sunday afternoon during an off season heat wave, this GQ handsome guy around 40 with one of those $100 haircuts and burnished tans that belong only to those who have it all and don’t know how to spend it, leaned into my window as I worked a crossword and issued me a long appraising look. He was tennis-trim in pleated Cotton Dockers and Izod polo shirt and Oakley sunglasses. He took off the sunglasses. His gold wristwatch matched his wedding ring and his fingernails were trim and clean.
“Do you know this area well?” he asked me in a voice and tone that was used to getting immediate results. He carried no baggage or brief case, only himself.
“I’m a cabbie. Of course I know the area.”
“Are you familiar with a place called Templeton?”
I put down my crossword. “I’ve been there.”
As he continued sizing me up, there seemed something going on in his mind. I needed a haircut. My uniform after 4 straight shifts was rumpled. One of the stems of my aviator sunglasses sagged from the paper clip holding it on. I wore my soiled Irish linen drinking cap purchased on a pub crawl through Ireland over a decade ago. This was my last day before two off and all I could think about was getting out of here and going to my bar in Cayucos.
“How far is Templeton?”
“About twenty four miles from here.”
“How much up and back?”
“Around sixty, maybe a little more, depending on where you want to go. It’s rural and spread out. It also depends on how long we stay. I can give you a deal if it’s up and back quick.”
“I might need to stay an hour or more. Maybe I should rent a car.”
“That would be cheaper and give you more mobility, depending on what you want to do. Why do you want to go there?”
He walked around the front of my cab and got in the front seat, which meant he was on some kind of mission and needed help. He nodded at me, buckling up.
I drove through San Luis Obispo to get on the freeway. “Ever been here before?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been meaning to come up here, though.” Now that he was seated I recognized his cologne as top shelf though I never used it.
“It’s a college town, very quaint and wholesome.”
We passed two pretty very shapely co-eds on 10 speeds in spandex riding shorts and tight sleeveless jerseys. I told him this was cycling country.
He was watching me. “You like it here?”
“I live near the beach, about twenty miles from here, Cayucos. I like it just fine. Where you from?”
“La Jolla. San Diego.”
“Nice spot.” I commented as we entered the freeway north.
“What’s Templeton like, besides rural?”
“Small. Sort of like the old west on the main drag. Lots of ranches and horse farms out in the country. It’s headquarters for that breed.”
“I’m looking for my sister-in-law. My wife and I haven’t heard from her in over a year. She’s always kept in contact with us before. Always comes down for Christmas. But she didn’t show up this year and her phone’s been disconnected for two months and we can’t get much information on her whereabouts. We’re worried. This is not like her.”
“Well, we can ask around.”
“You know anybody in Templeton?”
“Not a soul. Got any idea what might be going on with her?”
“None. She’s never been in any kind of trouble. Always had it together. A really sweet, down-to-earth girl with no bad habits.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s in real estate, but she’s no longer with the firm that employed her in Templeton. They don’t know what’s going on with her either.”
“Was she living alone?”
“She moved up here with a building contractor named Brett Strong. He had a big job.” He was staring out at the rolling hills north of Cuesta Grade as we shot downhill toward Atascadero, where there are over 30 churches and only 2 bars and a lot of religious repression. Stands of gnarled oak trees peppered the dried out sun-blasted dun-brown landscape. “I feel this might be a crapshoot, a needle-in-the-haystack deal. She might not even be here.”
“You got her address?” He nodded. As I drove, he informed me he owned a software company and had two kids in high school. He was worried sick something grave or tragic might have befallen his sister-in-law, who was very close to his wife, like twins. I began to see my passenger as a decent happy upbeat guy sent on a dirty, thankless mission. I wondered was he packing.
We arrived in Templeton, which was half a mile off the 101 freeway a few miles south of Paso Robles, formerly redneck farm and ranch land now converted to the wine capitol of the Central Coast. During the almost 2 years I’d driven a cab, this whole area had grown rapidly with tracts sprouting up on the fringes of the original grids of older homes and into the countryside. On Templeton’s main drag were an upscale destination restaurant, coffee house, market, liquor store, antique shops, real estate offices, law and professional services lodged in old classic wood-frames, a bar, and an ancient deserted granary for authenticity. A high school stood just off the freeway, their football team notorious for big white linemen.
I quickly found the neighborhood of her address. The house was a 1960s tract model, up for rent. We pounded on the door. No answer. We agreed nobody lived here anymore and drove to the real estate office on the main drag where she had worked. My fare, Rick, introduced himself to a fashionably dressed over-friendly woman at a desk and asked her questions while I stood in the doorway. When we returned to the car he handed me a strip of paper with a new address. We found the address a few blocks away—one of those nondescript, cheaply constructed 2 story apartment complexes with door-less, street level garages. A dusty truck was in one garage, a van in another, and beside it a dusty Firebird. A guy was working under an old clunker in a driveway. We got out and Rick checked the mail box of the address on the paper. It was locked.
“That’s their Firebird.” I told Rick.
“How would you know? Brett didn’t drive that when he left. He had a big truck with a tool rack.”
“I just know.”
We found the stairway to the second floor and Rick knocked on a door. No response. It was very quiet. Birds chirped and flies buzzed. It was oppressively hot. Rick knocked a few more times and when there was no response or sounds from inside that could be detected we walked downstairs and over to the grease monkey under the jalopy.
“Excuse me, sir,” Rick said.
The guy didn’t move, continued tinkering. He wore heavy black boots.
“Excuse me, could I have a word with you, sir.” Rick’s tone became firm, and as I looked him over I was pretty sure he was a Martial Arts guy. It was in the way he moved. There was no excess on him.
The grease monkey slid out on one of those planks with rollers. He was bearded, tattooed heavily about the neck and arms, grease-smeared, thick-necked, nasty looking. “Whattaya want?” He gazed at Rick, eyes openly hostile. Still on his back.
“Do you know if a Laura and Brett live in this complex?”
He shook his head, just barely.
“Do you know them?”
He shook his head, just barely.
Before Rick could continue the guy issued him a forbidding glare and rolled back under the clunker. I peered up at the window of the apartment. The blinds were drawn. I picked up a large pebble and fired it at the window. It plinked off, causing a surprising racket. I picked up a handful of pebbles and hurled them as hard as I could and they clattered off the window. We stood staring. We started to walk away but I glanced back and saw a blind move, perhaps a quarter of an inch. But then again, maybe I was seeing things, hoping.
When we got to the cab, I said, “Rick, I think I saw a blind move. I’m not sure. But they could be cooped up there.”
“You think so?” His polo shirt was splotched with sweat at the armpits and his face glazed. We stood by the cab looking up at the window. It was dead quiet, a near deserted Sunday, a time when most people around here were headed to nearby lakes to water ski or fish, or to the beaches. Why hang around a hot, stifling, boring little town out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do?
“Rick, if they haven’t paid their utilities their AC is probably out, so it doesn’t make sense for them to be cooped up there, unless they’re too broke to go anywhere, or they’re hiding out.”
“Got any ideas?”
We got in the cab and headed back to the main drag and found the only bar in town, where there were around a dozen people hanging out, most of them looking like cowboys. They played pool and browsed at the bar, serenaded by country western music from the juke. They all ceased what they were doing and stared at us in unison as we stood just inside the doorway. They kept their eyes on us as we approached the barmaid, who wore tight jeans and a strip of a blouse revealing a pile of cleavage.
Rick very politely asked if she knew Laura and Brett. A scabrous prison face at the end of the bar stared at us and I returned his stare. The barmaid lit up a cigarette and leaned on one hip and shook her head and then glanced at the prison face and then put the cigarette in a tray after a good exhale and began mopping the bar. Nobody else had anything to say. One of the big, lean cowboy types had an especially rancid look. I nudged Rick, nodded toward the door. We walked out, got in the cab.
“They all know Laura and Brett,” I said. “There’s a hardcore drug element in that bar. On a day like this, nobody would be in there unless they had nothing better to do than get drunk and high and score. That’s a bad crowd. Cranksters and tweakers. I’m sure they think we’re narks with a cab front. I think your sister-in-law and Brett are holed up in that apartment strung out on something like rock cocaine or meth. If they’re on heroin, we can handle ‘em, they’ll be docile, like vegetables. But if they’re cranked up, they’ll be a big handful. They’ll be amped and desperate and Brett might be packing.’
“Dammit, I should’ve brought my Glock,” Rick said. “I thought about it. But you can’t bring a gun on a plane anyway.” He looked at me. “Cocaine? Crank? Jesus.”
I drove back down the main drag. “We can break the door down,” I said, feeling excitement boil in my blood. “I think they’re in there.”
“Let’s go,” he said, slipping off his watch and stashing it in his trouser pocket. “I’m accomplished in the Martial arts. Brett’ll be no problem.”
“If he’s not packing. If he’s desperate enough, dealing big, with people after his ass, he’ll be armed, believe me.”
As we turned the corner of the street of the apartment building, the Firebird was outside the garage spewing smoke from its tailpipe. The grease monkey was talking to a man in a T shirt and cowboy hat, a lanky, scraggily guy with long hair. A girl tramped down the stairway with a suitcase. She was skeletal and white as snow and wrapped in winter coat.
“Jesus, I think that’s Laura,” Rick said, tensing.
The grease monkey pointed at us. The couple jumped into the Firebird and tore down the street laying rubber. I pealed out, on their tail. Brett drove like a wild man, swerving around residential street corners, emerging on the main drag and power-shifting, drawing away from us. My Ford LTD had no guts. I followed the Firebird onto the freeway and it began pulling far ahead. I floored the gas pedal and tried to stay on their tail. Rick coaxed me to pick up speed. They turned off the freeway and kicked it into gear on a country road. I asked Rick if he wanted me to contact the police through my dispatcher. He shook his head. The Firebird had to be going at least 100mph. The Firebird became smaller and smaller as we passed horse ranches. We were groaning at 85. We came to a crossroads among ranches and farms and there was no sight of them. We sat there, the engine ticking and wheezing in the blazing heat, both of us pouring sweat in the no AC cab.
“Shit,” I heard myself mutter bitterly. “Sorry, Rick. This car’s a pig. They’re strung out on something real bad, probably crank. They looked pretty far gone.”
“This is going to kill my wife.” He smacked the dash. “If I could just get her away from that scumbag…that piece of human excrement…and get her into a rehab place down in San Diego.”
“My guess is they’re broke, behind in rent, got bad checks all over the county. They don’t care about anything anymore. It happens.”
“Shit happens, as they say,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s go. No use hanging around here.”
We drove back to San Luis in silence. I did not run the meter, only charged him for the trip to Templeton and the idle time and the miles of the chase. It came to around $80. He paid me at the airport with a hundred dollar bill, kept the twenty and tipped me with a fifty. He thanked me for all the help and we shook hands and I wished him luck and gave him our company card with my name on it in case he needed further help at another time, but he was subdued, miserable with failure as he headed into the airport lobby.
********
That was my last ride of the day and without stopping at home or eating. I went straight to the local saloon with a pocketful of tips and had an instant shot of jack and a beer. I’d been up since 6 in the morning and was bushed. I had another round. The bar was crowded and I was familiar with more than a few regulars as bar associates but too distracted from the eventful afternoon to engage in and maintain any continuity in a conversation with them and felt no inclination to talk to anybody, which was strange after my recent experience. I had another shot and was suddenly light-headed and properly buzzed. I had all these drinks within approximately 20 minutes and suddenly, like a thunderbolt, I felt an anti-climactic emptiness coupled with an out-of-nowhere crushing loneliness take hold of me like a vise.
The bartender, Tag Morely, who looked out of central casting as a surfer with his long blond hair, Hawaiian shirt and OP’s, got off, and after counting his money we met in the empty restroom and I handed him the fifty Rick had tipped me for a small packet. He left and I stepped into the stall and sat down on the toilet. My heart raced and bonged. My hands trembled as I opened the packet an withdrew from my pocket the bar straw I’d filched. I gazed at the sparkling flakes and, for the first time in years, snorted up a good pile of cocaine, trying not to make too much of a racket as the door to the restroom opened and I sat quietly while two guys laughed and talked drunkenly as they urinated into one of those wide bowls.
“Do you know this area well?” he asked me in a voice and tone that was used to getting immediate results. He carried no baggage or brief case, only himself.
“I’m a cabbie. Of course I know the area.”
“Are you familiar with a place called Templeton?”
I put down my crossword. “I’ve been there.”
As he continued sizing me up, there seemed something going on in his mind. I needed a haircut. My uniform after 4 straight shifts was rumpled. One of the stems of my aviator sunglasses sagged from the paper clip holding it on. I wore my soiled Irish linen drinking cap purchased on a pub crawl through Ireland over a decade ago. This was my last day before two off and all I could think about was getting out of here and going to my bar in Cayucos.
“How far is Templeton?”
“About twenty four miles from here.”
“How much up and back?”
“Around sixty, maybe a little more, depending on where you want to go. It’s rural and spread out. It also depends on how long we stay. I can give you a deal if it’s up and back quick.”
“I might need to stay an hour or more. Maybe I should rent a car.”
“That would be cheaper and give you more mobility, depending on what you want to do. Why do you want to go there?”
He walked around the front of my cab and got in the front seat, which meant he was on some kind of mission and needed help. He nodded at me, buckling up.
I drove through San Luis Obispo to get on the freeway. “Ever been here before?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been meaning to come up here, though.” Now that he was seated I recognized his cologne as top shelf though I never used it.
“It’s a college town, very quaint and wholesome.”
We passed two pretty very shapely co-eds on 10 speeds in spandex riding shorts and tight sleeveless jerseys. I told him this was cycling country.
He was watching me. “You like it here?”
“I live near the beach, about twenty miles from here, Cayucos. I like it just fine. Where you from?”
“La Jolla. San Diego.”
“Nice spot.” I commented as we entered the freeway north.
“What’s Templeton like, besides rural?”
“Small. Sort of like the old west on the main drag. Lots of ranches and horse farms out in the country. It’s headquarters for that breed.”
“I’m looking for my sister-in-law. My wife and I haven’t heard from her in over a year. She’s always kept in contact with us before. Always comes down for Christmas. But she didn’t show up this year and her phone’s been disconnected for two months and we can’t get much information on her whereabouts. We’re worried. This is not like her.”
“Well, we can ask around.”
“You know anybody in Templeton?”
“Not a soul. Got any idea what might be going on with her?”
“None. She’s never been in any kind of trouble. Always had it together. A really sweet, down-to-earth girl with no bad habits.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s in real estate, but she’s no longer with the firm that employed her in Templeton. They don’t know what’s going on with her either.”
“Was she living alone?”
“She moved up here with a building contractor named Brett Strong. He had a big job.” He was staring out at the rolling hills north of Cuesta Grade as we shot downhill toward Atascadero, where there are over 30 churches and only 2 bars and a lot of religious repression. Stands of gnarled oak trees peppered the dried out sun-blasted dun-brown landscape. “I feel this might be a crapshoot, a needle-in-the-haystack deal. She might not even be here.”
“You got her address?” He nodded. As I drove, he informed me he owned a software company and had two kids in high school. He was worried sick something grave or tragic might have befallen his sister-in-law, who was very close to his wife, like twins. I began to see my passenger as a decent happy upbeat guy sent on a dirty, thankless mission. I wondered was he packing.
We arrived in Templeton, which was half a mile off the 101 freeway a few miles south of Paso Robles, formerly redneck farm and ranch land now converted to the wine capitol of the Central Coast. During the almost 2 years I’d driven a cab, this whole area had grown rapidly with tracts sprouting up on the fringes of the original grids of older homes and into the countryside. On Templeton’s main drag were an upscale destination restaurant, coffee house, market, liquor store, antique shops, real estate offices, law and professional services lodged in old classic wood-frames, a bar, and an ancient deserted granary for authenticity. A high school stood just off the freeway, their football team notorious for big white linemen.
I quickly found the neighborhood of her address. The house was a 1960s tract model, up for rent. We pounded on the door. No answer. We agreed nobody lived here anymore and drove to the real estate office on the main drag where she had worked. My fare, Rick, introduced himself to a fashionably dressed over-friendly woman at a desk and asked her questions while I stood in the doorway. When we returned to the car he handed me a strip of paper with a new address. We found the address a few blocks away—one of those nondescript, cheaply constructed 2 story apartment complexes with door-less, street level garages. A dusty truck was in one garage, a van in another, and beside it a dusty Firebird. A guy was working under an old clunker in a driveway. We got out and Rick checked the mail box of the address on the paper. It was locked.
“That’s their Firebird.” I told Rick.
“How would you know? Brett didn’t drive that when he left. He had a big truck with a tool rack.”
“I just know.”
We found the stairway to the second floor and Rick knocked on a door. No response. It was very quiet. Birds chirped and flies buzzed. It was oppressively hot. Rick knocked a few more times and when there was no response or sounds from inside that could be detected we walked downstairs and over to the grease monkey under the jalopy.
“Excuse me, sir,” Rick said.
The guy didn’t move, continued tinkering. He wore heavy black boots.
“Excuse me, could I have a word with you, sir.” Rick’s tone became firm, and as I looked him over I was pretty sure he was a Martial Arts guy. It was in the way he moved. There was no excess on him.
The grease monkey slid out on one of those planks with rollers. He was bearded, tattooed heavily about the neck and arms, grease-smeared, thick-necked, nasty looking. “Whattaya want?” He gazed at Rick, eyes openly hostile. Still on his back.
“Do you know if a Laura and Brett live in this complex?”
He shook his head, just barely.
“Do you know them?”
He shook his head, just barely.
Before Rick could continue the guy issued him a forbidding glare and rolled back under the clunker. I peered up at the window of the apartment. The blinds were drawn. I picked up a large pebble and fired it at the window. It plinked off, causing a surprising racket. I picked up a handful of pebbles and hurled them as hard as I could and they clattered off the window. We stood staring. We started to walk away but I glanced back and saw a blind move, perhaps a quarter of an inch. But then again, maybe I was seeing things, hoping.
When we got to the cab, I said, “Rick, I think I saw a blind move. I’m not sure. But they could be cooped up there.”
“You think so?” His polo shirt was splotched with sweat at the armpits and his face glazed. We stood by the cab looking up at the window. It was dead quiet, a near deserted Sunday, a time when most people around here were headed to nearby lakes to water ski or fish, or to the beaches. Why hang around a hot, stifling, boring little town out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do?
“Rick, if they haven’t paid their utilities their AC is probably out, so it doesn’t make sense for them to be cooped up there, unless they’re too broke to go anywhere, or they’re hiding out.”
“Got any ideas?”
We got in the cab and headed back to the main drag and found the only bar in town, where there were around a dozen people hanging out, most of them looking like cowboys. They played pool and browsed at the bar, serenaded by country western music from the juke. They all ceased what they were doing and stared at us in unison as we stood just inside the doorway. They kept their eyes on us as we approached the barmaid, who wore tight jeans and a strip of a blouse revealing a pile of cleavage.
Rick very politely asked if she knew Laura and Brett. A scabrous prison face at the end of the bar stared at us and I returned his stare. The barmaid lit up a cigarette and leaned on one hip and shook her head and then glanced at the prison face and then put the cigarette in a tray after a good exhale and began mopping the bar. Nobody else had anything to say. One of the big, lean cowboy types had an especially rancid look. I nudged Rick, nodded toward the door. We walked out, got in the cab.
“They all know Laura and Brett,” I said. “There’s a hardcore drug element in that bar. On a day like this, nobody would be in there unless they had nothing better to do than get drunk and high and score. That’s a bad crowd. Cranksters and tweakers. I’m sure they think we’re narks with a cab front. I think your sister-in-law and Brett are holed up in that apartment strung out on something like rock cocaine or meth. If they’re on heroin, we can handle ‘em, they’ll be docile, like vegetables. But if they’re cranked up, they’ll be a big handful. They’ll be amped and desperate and Brett might be packing.’
“Dammit, I should’ve brought my Glock,” Rick said. “I thought about it. But you can’t bring a gun on a plane anyway.” He looked at me. “Cocaine? Crank? Jesus.”
I drove back down the main drag. “We can break the door down,” I said, feeling excitement boil in my blood. “I think they’re in there.”
“Let’s go,” he said, slipping off his watch and stashing it in his trouser pocket. “I’m accomplished in the Martial arts. Brett’ll be no problem.”
“If he’s not packing. If he’s desperate enough, dealing big, with people after his ass, he’ll be armed, believe me.”
As we turned the corner of the street of the apartment building, the Firebird was outside the garage spewing smoke from its tailpipe. The grease monkey was talking to a man in a T shirt and cowboy hat, a lanky, scraggily guy with long hair. A girl tramped down the stairway with a suitcase. She was skeletal and white as snow and wrapped in winter coat.
“Jesus, I think that’s Laura,” Rick said, tensing.
The grease monkey pointed at us. The couple jumped into the Firebird and tore down the street laying rubber. I pealed out, on their tail. Brett drove like a wild man, swerving around residential street corners, emerging on the main drag and power-shifting, drawing away from us. My Ford LTD had no guts. I followed the Firebird onto the freeway and it began pulling far ahead. I floored the gas pedal and tried to stay on their tail. Rick coaxed me to pick up speed. They turned off the freeway and kicked it into gear on a country road. I asked Rick if he wanted me to contact the police through my dispatcher. He shook his head. The Firebird had to be going at least 100mph. The Firebird became smaller and smaller as we passed horse ranches. We were groaning at 85. We came to a crossroads among ranches and farms and there was no sight of them. We sat there, the engine ticking and wheezing in the blazing heat, both of us pouring sweat in the no AC cab.
“Shit,” I heard myself mutter bitterly. “Sorry, Rick. This car’s a pig. They’re strung out on something real bad, probably crank. They looked pretty far gone.”
“This is going to kill my wife.” He smacked the dash. “If I could just get her away from that scumbag…that piece of human excrement…and get her into a rehab place down in San Diego.”
“My guess is they’re broke, behind in rent, got bad checks all over the county. They don’t care about anything anymore. It happens.”
“Shit happens, as they say,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s go. No use hanging around here.”
We drove back to San Luis in silence. I did not run the meter, only charged him for the trip to Templeton and the idle time and the miles of the chase. It came to around $80. He paid me at the airport with a hundred dollar bill, kept the twenty and tipped me with a fifty. He thanked me for all the help and we shook hands and I wished him luck and gave him our company card with my name on it in case he needed further help at another time, but he was subdued, miserable with failure as he headed into the airport lobby.
********
That was my last ride of the day and without stopping at home or eating. I went straight to the local saloon with a pocketful of tips and had an instant shot of jack and a beer. I’d been up since 6 in the morning and was bushed. I had another round. The bar was crowded and I was familiar with more than a few regulars as bar associates but too distracted from the eventful afternoon to engage in and maintain any continuity in a conversation with them and felt no inclination to talk to anybody, which was strange after my recent experience. I had another shot and was suddenly light-headed and properly buzzed. I had all these drinks within approximately 20 minutes and suddenly, like a thunderbolt, I felt an anti-climactic emptiness coupled with an out-of-nowhere crushing loneliness take hold of me like a vise.
The bartender, Tag Morely, who looked out of central casting as a surfer with his long blond hair, Hawaiian shirt and OP’s, got off, and after counting his money we met in the empty restroom and I handed him the fifty Rick had tipped me for a small packet. He left and I stepped into the stall and sat down on the toilet. My heart raced and bonged. My hands trembled as I opened the packet an withdrew from my pocket the bar straw I’d filched. I gazed at the sparkling flakes and, for the first time in years, snorted up a good pile of cocaine, trying not to make too much of a racket as the door to the restroom opened and I sat quietly while two guys laughed and talked drunkenly as they urinated into one of those wide bowls.
