Campbell_Book One

Chapter 19




December 2002

Pasadena, West



Tal climbed over the railing of the Colorado Street Bridge and peered into the darkness below, gulping back air in short bursts. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was her smile. Her airy laugh filled every silence. He let out a sob, unable to hold it back any longer.

It was his fault.

She’d asked him to come outside with her, to go for a walk. All she’d wanted was to get out of the house for a bit. It wasn’t safe. It hadn’t been safe for a month, ever since supplies started drying up in a real way and the price of the things everyone really needed went through the roof as everyone attempted to trade up to get ahead.

Eventually, the kids without conscience just took what they wanted. Bartering went out the window.

They’d put their heads down, himself, Leah, and Rachel. They had supplies, and the connections he’d made through his work with Connor had afforded them privileges not many had. The last thing he wanted to do was draw any attention to them. He’d stopped keeping up the front yard.

All she wanted was to get out of the house. A week later, he could still smell her blood on him, still feel it, hot, sticky, and metallic.

It was too much. It hadn’t been before that day, not losing his brothers, his parents, everyone he’d ever known that had the answers. Nothing had been his fault before that. He felt so heavy with loss that the only thing he could think of was tipping over.

He sat down on the ledge and let his feet dangle over, which was deliciously freeing. The dream of not feeling anything clouded his mind, and he imagined falling, falling, then nothing. He snapped out of his fantasy when a flashlight shone in his face.

“Jesus, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Connor called out. “Come on back over the edge.”

Tal ignored him and swung his legs a little, reveling in the rush it created.

“You’re not doing this. It sucks, what happened. It really sucks, but don’t do this. We didn’t live, work for everything, for you to do this. I…need you.”

Lights in the distance drew Tal’s attention and he continued ignoring Connor, which was impossible under any other circumstances.

“We’ll do things your way. We’ll do good things. Make sure this didn’t happen for no reason. Come on, buddy. Please,” he pleaded. “I…don’t have anyone else.”

“It’s not about me,” Tal mumbled. “And you have lots of people.”

“Not like you. Not who will tell me how it is. So you made a mistake. You’re not going to make it again—”

“My six year old cousin is dead!” Tal screamed, standing up on the edge, feeling the weight of the night breeze holding him back. “She’s dead because of me.”

Connor held his arms out, beckoning Tal towards him. “She’s dead because some stupid kid fired a gun. We all make mistakes. We’re more than our mistakes, but you won’t get to see that if you don’t come home with me.”

“Get out of here, Connor,” Tal grumbled. “I didn’t come here to hug it out.”

“I did,” he said, hopping over the railing and standing about a foot away from him. “How’s this sound? You jump, I jump.”

Tal looked over at his friend, and wiped his eyes, embarrassed that he was crying. “Go home.”

“I mean it. You want that on your head too? We’re a two for one deal, Tal Bauman.”

“You don’t need me!” he roared. “Go!”

Connor shook his head. “Don’t tell me what I need. So, come on. Are we doing it, or are you going to get over yourself and realize that there are people out there who need you, and will need you in the future?”

Tal closed his eyes and felt the breeze against his face. He gripped the smooth metal railing with his hands.

“Come on, and I’ll never tell anyone we were here,” Connor whispered. “No one will ever know.”



October 2012

Los Angeles, West



The kids were up, bathed, dressed and fed, playing happily in the backyard by the time Tal left at nine the next morning. He was amazed by Rika’s multitasking abilities.

“Let me talk to my people and we’ll touch base tonight?” she cocked her head at him. “You sure you don’t just want to crash in the spare room—”

“My cousin will worry. She’s probably already worrying. We had a fight, sort of.” Tal rubbed his eyes. “I’ll come by—”


“After nine.” She pulled her glasses down from the top of her head. “We’ll see if we can’t figure something out fast.”

Connor was parked at his house when he got back and Tal shoved his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie and put on a smile.

“I’m going to Irvine,” Connor said brightly, after rolling down his window. “Thought you might want to come along.”

As soon as he spoke, Tal was torn between bludgeoning him and telling him to f*ck off. He knew Connor wouldn’t kill him if he went, not yet, anyway, and Tal wanted to get more of a read on him, but he hated him, hated him more than he’d ever hated anyone. He hated his face, his dumb, fake-innocent smile, the way he vainly glanced in the rear view mirror of his car. He’d determined Connor’s guilt through the circumstances that had unraveled in his head over the days preceding, but a part of him needed to know it with certainty so he could finish him confidently. “Why Irvine?”

“Something’s wrong with the projector at the big theatre. I said I’d go look at it.”

Connor loved the technical aspect of playing movies just as much as Tal did. They’d learned together. If he wasn’t trying to make amends for something, he sure as hell seemed like he was, because Tal knew any other day, he would have sent someone. This was an attempt to appeal to Tal’s nostalgic side, probably since he’d tried to have him killed, unwittingly involving him in a multi-territory war, and manipulated and f*cked his cousin, not to mention having their mutual friend killed and widowing one of the smartest women Tal had ever met.

The list kept growing.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” Tal said, opening up the passenger side door. “Just let me tell Leah.”

Telling Leah really meant grabbing his pocketknife. Tal caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror by the door, and for the briefest moment saw a reassuring face.

His father’s.

“So you’re adjusting okay to being back?” Connor asked, after they pulled out of the driveway. “You seem a little down.”

“I took Juan’s ashes over to his house a couple of days ago. That was pretty hard.” He looked wistfully out the window, in an attempt to keep his fury in check as he watched the city fly by. “That was hard.”

Connor nodded deeply. “I meant to go see Rika, bring some flowers or something, but it’s…” He swallowed, and furrowed his brow sympathetically, much like his father had in a dozen or so romantic comedies. “It’s just hard, you know? And I’ve been so busy with all this Vegas shit that the time wasn’t right. Sorry you had to do that.”

What chilled Tal to the bone was how sincere he sounded. If he hadn’t already firmly decided on Connor’s guilt, he would have questioned it. Connor was a master manipulator, and a better actor than he got credit for.

“It was all right. She’s okay. He’s got lots of family to look out for her and his girls.”

“Cute kids, huh?” Connor smiled thinly. “They were an unlikely couple.”

“Those are always the best ones, my grandpa used to say.” Tal looked at Connor expectantly, knowing he’d bring up Leah sooner or later.

“Listen, I don’t know if you talked to Leah…” Connor raised his eyebrows and attempted to look remorseful.

“I did talk to Leah,” Tal muttered, trying to focus on the bigger issue of Juan’s death and his own attempted murder. He’d let Leah’s stupidity go if it bought him some time to plot. “Not cool, man.”

“I know,” Connor nodded sincerely. “It goes against all the man codes. We really didn’t think you were coming back—”

“And the first thing that comes to mind was to put your dick in my cousin?”

“What happened with you and Lucy Campbell, out in the middle of nowhere, when we were worried sick about you and you couldn’t even call us?” Connor snapped back.

“Don’t turn this around on me.” Tal shook his head, thinking of Leah, seething on the inside as he flashed to what it would feel like to snap Connor’s neck—a thought compounded by what Tal was sure Connor had masterminded for himself, Lucy, and Juan. He remembered Lucy, blood on her mouth, on the ground after he’d murdered her attacker. “We’re not doing that.”

“You didn’t call for days. She called her people.”

Connor did technically have him there, but what Tal knew after the fact made it clear that he’d made the right call. “Nothing happened with me and Lucy Campbell.”

“You seem awfully keen to start handing her over property now. I don’t think we had to give her Seattle. Not if we’re leaving her alone while she deals with her East problem. I hope you at least got your dick wet, so then you being so p-ssy-whipped would make sense—”

“What did you tell Leah, Connor? Did you tell her she’d end up some whore somewhere if you weren’t around to help her out? Did you tell her you’d take care of her?”

Connor’s nostrils flared. “I didn’t have to tell her anything.”

It was all Tal could do to retain his calm facade and remember that it wasn’t smart to go to war without a plan.

Nothing was said for the next twenty minutes as both men seethed.

“I won’t again, with her,” Connor muttered. “Since it obviously bothers you.”

“You’re f*cking right, you won’t,” Tal muttered.

“Do you remember when we were kids and we used to play Lego in your basement?” Connor asked thoughtfully. “And everything you made was perfect and orderly with the right colored blocks, and everything I made was so tall it almost fell over?”

Tal nodded.

“It’s why we’re a good pair. Vision and order.”

“I certainly wouldn’t be arming the Nevada border.”

“What would you do?”

Tal thought about it. “I’d see what they wanted.”

“And if it wasn’t what you wanted?”

“I’d try and understand why, and learn something from it.”

“And that’s why you’re not the vision guy.”

“Vision will only take you so far—”

“It’s taken us both very far,” Connor boasted as he pulled into the empty theatre parking lot. “Things could have turned out very differently.”

They both knew exactly what he was getting at. It had been the reason Tal had put aside his feelings for a long time. The reason he felt indebted to a man who he was sure his friendship would have otherwise naturally run its course with way before they made it out of junior high school. Connor had saved his life; literally pulled him off the ledge. Tal had paid his debt, however, through the unnecessary blood he’d spilled in Missouri, and a hundred times before that.

“But they didn’t.”

“No,” Connor shook his head and gave him a knowing look. “They didn’t.”

Fixing the projector took about an hour. Wordlessly, the two boys worked together to clean each piece before reassembling it, and doing a quick test run with the closest reel they could find.

Gladiator.

“This was a kickass movie,” Connor noted. “Epic.”

Tal nodded in agreement. “Yep. We’ve never made anything that good.”

“Yet, my friend,” Connor said, with a determined grin. “We’re not even twenty-five and we’ve made what? Two hundred movies? That’s pretty impressive.”


“We’ve got the market cornered,” Tal agreed.

“No one’s even tried to compete.”

Connor dropped Tal off around three and he spent the afternoon stretched out on the couch in his dad’s old office, trying to decide what his next steps were. He knew he wanted to call Lucy. He wasn’t sure it was the best plan of action for any number of reasons, the most important being how she’d react to what he’d figured out the night before. He didn’t have any proof though, he realized. Instead of calling her right away, he decided to head upstairs to take a nap, in the hopes of waking up with a little clarity.

Clarity was not what he got when he woke up with Leah curled up beside him on top of the blankets.

“Are you going to forgive me?” she asked when he opened his eyes. “You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

“I’m not mad at you, exactly. I’m disappointed,” he grumbled, moving away from her. “You made things more complicated.”

Her lip wobbled and she swallowed hard. “I…that week, I wasn’t myself. I’d take it all back, if I could.”

“Well, you can’t. What’s done is done,” he said, more gently than before. “And we move on.”

He wanted to trust Leah. He wanted to think that everything they’d struggled through together necessitated that very basic truth. But he wasn’t sure he could. There was no way she knew that Connor had plotted his kidnapping, but he wasn’t sure if it came down to risking it all for Tal or saving herself who she’d choose.

She’d have to prove herself, he just wasn’t sure how.

“Do you want dinner?” she asked carefully, giving him his space on the bed. “I’ll make something.”

It was too early to go, but he didn’t want to stay and say something he’d regret, and he wanted the walk to clear his head. “I’m going over to Juan’s house. I’m going to take them something.” He sat up. “I’ll be back later.”

“Is that where you went last night?”

“Yep,” he replied, wishing desperately that he could trust this person he’d gone through everything with. “She’s a nice girl.”

“Oh,” she said curtly, her expression blank. “Well, have a nice night, I guess.”

When Tal arrived with pizza from the place in the old farmer’s market, he was surprised to see that he wasn’t Rika’s only visitor. Her driveway was packed with five classic cars and a few motorcycles.

Once he saw the type of cars in the driveway, he wasn’t surprised to see who was inside. He’d met a few of Juan’s cousins over the years, usually when they were trying to shake him and Connor down for free movies to play at one of their theatres. Most of them had gotten very rich off their backs.

“It’s the Jew,” a big kid said, flashing an artificial smile Tal’s way from the couch. “You got taller.”

“Cutty, shut up,” Rika hissed, glaring at him, before smiling at Tal. “I wasn’t expecting you for a while. It’s poker night here, and you’re welcome because you have pizza and that just happens to be the cost of admission. Our standards are very low.”

Tal’s attention was drawn to the table set up in the middle of the living room where the rest of her guests sat. “Oh.”

“Juan wouldn’t have wanted us to stop playing because he wasn’t here. Wherever he is, he’s probably happy he’s not able to lose his grocery money anymore,” a smaller kid, maybe about fifteen said, sadness behind his eyes. “You play?”

Tal had no idea how to play. Still, in the interests of fitting in where he didn’t, he took a seat.

“Sure. I’ll play,” he said, settling into a folding chair to Rika’s right.

He hadn’t meant to wipe the floor with the extended Vargas family, but to everyone’s surprise, most of all Tal’s, he had a natural affinity for poker. When he handed Rika the proceeds, his stock rose considerably.

“Did you tell them?” he asked her when they were alone in the kitchen on a beer run.

She shook her head thoughtfully. “The fallout from that might not be the desired effect I’d like to see quite yet.”

“We may need them.”

She nodded. “And we’ll have them if we do. They don’t need to know the details of when we figured it out. My people are better.”

“You’ve worked something out?”

She nodded, a sly smile on her face. “We’ll talk after they leave.”

Somewhere between the time Tal arrived and the time a rather slovenly crew of drunk Mexicans sauntered out of her house, Rika managed to successfully put her seven- and two-year-old children to bed, sort the Vargas cousins into cars with drivers that weren’t as drunk as their passengers, and dispose of all the garbage from their evening. Her command over her household duties was indicative of her impressive overall abilities, Tal determined. He decided it was wise that he’d opted to tie his fate to hers, even though he hadn’t seen other parts of her skill set yet.

She sat on the couch and lit up a cigarette. “I only smoke two a day. One in the morning and one in the evening.”

“Why?”

“Because my parents would hate it. Did Juan ever tell you about how I got pregnant with kid number one?”

Tal shook his head, fairly certain there was only one way that happened. “No.”

“It was my first time. Our first time. We waited a while; longer than most. I insisted, because, well, I didn’t want to get pregnant, and then I got pregnant.”

He remembered when Juan had told him he was going to be a father. He’d dented Connor’s SUV with his foot. “Oh.”

“The point is, you can wait until something’s perfect, but chances are whenever it happens, you’ll be able to make the best of it. I think we go to Vegas.”

Tal scoffed at her suggestion. “What would we do with Vegas? Those kids are a*sholes.”

“If they know they have support here, they won’t back down. While he’s dealing with their shit, we gather support here, and by the time he’s aware it’ll be too late for him to do anything about it. I have friends that can kill phones and cut power to the city and make it seem like his fault—so people turn against him. Then we step in, turn the power back on and we’re the shit.” She smiled and exhaled. “Then, I will kill him.”

He had to admit, it wasn’t a bad plan to start. “You will kill him?”

“I’m a twenty-one-year-old widow with two kids. I’m angry about this. I think it would make me feel better.” She swished her wine. “Or you can kill him, but I want a say in how it goes down.”

“I have to call Campbell and tell them. They’re going to war with East thinking they grabbed Lucy. She could have died. If it’s not on East, they shouldn’t be warring with them. They wouldn’t be.”

“Call them then. Don’t let them tell you what to do though.”

“Okay?” He looked at her curiously.

“You’re in love with her. The Campbell girl.” She smiled mischievously. “I know that look. It’s the ‘what the f*ck am I thinking, but yeah, I’m in love with her’ look. When I was an awkward bony thirteen year old with an affinity for acid and a bob that grew out to look like a too-long mushroom cut, Juan used to live with that look on his face. Don’t let her manipulate you.”


He shook his head and frowned. “I don’t really know her.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Sometimes, you know just enough. Anyway, I hear she’s gay, so you probably don’t have a shot, but don’t let how you feel be your weakness, that’s all. I’m not going to let you get in the way of me getting my revenge.”

“How do you know about her?”

“I don’t live under a rock. I’ve got cousins in Vancouver. Everyone knows about her.” She reached over the arm of the couch and grabbed an old rotary phone. “Go ahead. Call.”

“What do I say?”

“Whatever’s not going to end with them showing up here with a misfit army from the north. They’re not much of a military force, are they? More resources?”

“I have no idea,” Tal admitted. “We didn’t do our research.”

“I bet Connor did,” she muttered. “He’s smarter than he looks.”

Tal felt the blood drain from his face. He’d assumed they were naive about Campbell together.

It was time for him to stop making assumptions.

The number at Lucy’s house rang and rang, and finally, as Tal was about to hang up, a breathy voice answered.

“Yeah?”

Zoey. Tal tried not to imagine what he’d interrupted.

“Is Lucy there?”

The voice on the other end exhaled loudly. “She’s not taking calls—”

“Zoey, I need to talk to her,” Tal said firmly. “It’s important.”

Rika gave him the thumbs up.

“Talk to Bull,” she muttered, handing the phone over.

“Who’s this?” was the not so friendly response Tal got.

“Tal Bau—”

“Tal is enough,” he muttered. “Listen, we’ve kind of got our hands full here at the moment—”

“I…we have a theory. My…friend and I.”

“What do you want? A f*cking prize? Bauman, we’re—”

A female voice in the distance told Bull to f*ck off. If Tal had to guess, it was his sister. Bull sighed, and a door closed behind him. “Go.”

“Why do you have your hands full?”

“Why don’t you tell me what I need to know first.” A chair creaked. “Seriously. Tell me so I can get back.”

“Where’s Lucy?”

“Didn’t you call to tell me something?” Bull grumbled.

“I called to tell Lucy something—“

“She’s unavailable.”

“What does that—”

“Her brother is dead. And not in that nice, dying in your sleep sort of way we all aspire to. What do you need to say?”

Tal felt nauseous as his words sunk in. “What? He’s—”

“Yeah. He is. No body, but pictures. Pictures she never should have seen. What do you want?”

“I think Connor was responsible for having us kidnapped.”

Bull paused. “You think or you know?”

Tal sighed. “How would I ever know?”

“Andrew Campbell just burned down half of Washington and the White House this morning. Unless you know, we’re balls deep into a war here, and we can’t really go on assumptions,” he said, his tone low. “Call back when you know—”

“How will I know?”

Bull sighed and the line went quiet. “Jesus. That’s a pretty heavy accusation to make without proof.”

“He has everything to gain from you at war with East. He’s in trouble.”

More silence. “I’m planning to come down and finalize Seattle with the kids there. Can we meet?” Bull asked.

“When? Where?” Tal asked. “Can you come here?”

“Next Friday is the earliest. Gather any evidence you have. We’ve already started with East. We don’t have the resources for two—”

“I’ve got resources,” Tal said confidently. “You’ll come here?”

That got him another thumbs up from Rika.

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “What’s your address?”

Tal quickly gave it to him and hung up. “I guess he’s coming, but he says we need evidence.”

“Who?”

“Lucy’s second, Bull. Her brother is dead.” Tal exhaled and rubbed his forehead. He hadn’t known Cole well, but as his mind processed what he’d learned minutes earlier, he felt awful. Losing his own brothers had affected him greatly, but he couldn’t imagine having it happen in such a jarring, awful way. He thought about what Lucy was doing and he had a hard time wrapping his head around what her reaction might have been. He wasn’t sure if it would break her or make her even angrier. “I guess East was tired of waiting for them to disband.”

“That was their demand? For one person, give up everything? That’s a little unrealistic.”

It was, Tal thought to himself. “They burned Washington, or something,” he muttered. “Her other brother is crazy.”

“It’s on now, I guess,” Rika said. “Shame it came to that.”

“You’ve heard what East is like. They don’t exactly negotiate.”

Everyone knew the stories of East’s barbaric behavior. Tal had always thought West above that until faced with the reality of his best friend Benedict Arnold-ing him.

Tal decided that Bull’s visit was a good chance to test Leah’s loyalty, since he had no intentions of telling Connor about the visit. He waited a few days, while he carefully monitored her before he told her that someone from Campbell was coming, and much to his relief, she was enthused at the prospect of helping out however she could once he revealed parts of his plan with Rika to her.

He talked with Lucy’s second when he was in Seattle and agreed that Bull would drive down, but park up the road and walk in to escape detection. He would stay with Leah and Tal while they met and finalized the terms of their alliance. It was all very covert and well organized.

As was the trend in Tal’s life, nothing went according to plan.