Hard Cold Whisper Read online

  The blow to my head hurt like a motherfucker.

  The guy I was serving papers to, Pablo Martinez of Chula Vista, California, had one of those twenty-one inch steel collapsible batons in his pocket—I had one too but didn’t think a baton duel would be on the agenda—and he whacked me across the side of my head before I could touch him with the court papers and say the usual words: “You’ve been served.”

  The papers fell out of my hand and I went to the ground and things got black for a while.

  I opened my eyes and a brown-skinned angel glanced down at me.

  And her name was Gabriella.

  And she said, “Are you okay, mister?”

  “It hurts when I laugh,” I said, the old joke.

  She knew that joke. “Then don’t laugh,” but she was serious, so maybe she didn’t. She seemed awfully young, a teenager. She helped me up. “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Let’s get you fixed up.”

  I’m a process server, and a damn good one. I specialize in hard-to-locate defendants, the ones who know they’re getting sued or evicted or divorced or have a judgment lodged against them. They avoid the Sheriff or other process servers who do not do what I do: trespassing into dangerous areas and sitting long hours on stakeouts.

  I was tasked to serve Pablo Martinez a restraining order from his ex-girlfriend who was terrified of him. Problem: Mr. Martinez was an apparent gang member and he lived in gang-territory in Chula Vista, which is just south of San Diego and north of the international border with Mexico.

  The girlfriend had four days left to serve him to make the temporary restraining order valid.

  “Perfect for you, David,” said my boss, Allen Marshall, who used to be a private investigator and, I suppose, you can say he was my mentor, because I was hoping to one day be a gumshoe myself.

  Instead, I became a criminal.

  “I’m a process server,” I told Gabriella, “I specialize in stakeouts and those who are hard to serve.”

  She was cleaning the blood off my head with a wet towel. We sat in the kitchen of the shabby house across the street from where Pablo Martinez lived. The place smelled like mold and cooked chicken; the interior looked like it hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since the 1950s; the windows were dirty and dusty; the carpeting looked like it had been installed in the 1960s and not vacuumed since the 1970s.

  “Sounds dangerous, from the looks of it,” said the young woman attending to my blood.

  “Do you know Mr. Martinez?” I asked.

  She made a face, curling her bottom lip. “Not really.”

  “He’s in a gang?”

  “Most of the guys around here are. You’re lucky he didn’t use a gun.” She had a thick Hispanic accent, the kind people who grew up south of the border have. Her English was impeccable, though.

  “I feel lucky,” I said.

  “What did he do? Why were you ‘serving’ him?”

  “Threatened his ex-girlfriend.”

  “Figures.”

  “Typical?”

  “I saw you sitting in your car yesterday,” she said. “Thought you were a cop or something.”

  I smiled and tried not to laugh. “I’m not as invisible as I thought. I’ve been staking him out two days now. He finally showed his ugly face.”

  “There,” she said, examining my head with dark brown bedroom eyes. The wet towel was stained with some blood, not a lot. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “It still hurts when I laugh and I like to laugh so I’m in a quandary. Thank you.”

  The witty attempt didn’t work here.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gabriella.”

  “David Kellgren.”

  “Gabriella Amaya,” she said.

  We shook hands, and I suddenly pulled her to me and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t resist. Her mouth was warm and moist the way a lover’s mouth should and could be.

  I stepped back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know why I did that.”

  She touched her lips. “It’s all right. Just don’t do it again.”

  “Really. I don’t know why I -- ”

  “You got hit in the head. You’re batty.” She blinked her eyes like she was holding back tears.

  “I’ve never done that before,” I said.

  “You’ve never kissed a girl?” She was amused.

  “Not one I just met.”

  “Well,” she said, “I never have either. But,” and she licked her lower lip, “it was a nice kiss.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  She was annoyed.

  It was awkward now.

  I said, “Better go.”

  She looked down at her feet. “Kiss me again,” she said.

  I did and I held her close.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Not too old.”

  “You?”

  “Just turned nineteen.”

  “Nineteen? You’re a kid.”

  “I’m no kid,” Gabriella said, her voice hard.

  I didn’t want to let her go. “Do you live here alone? With your parents?”

  “I take care of my aunt,” she said. “She’s bed-ridden and old. I’m her caregiver.”

  “You’re a nurse?”

  “I’m not licensed or anything. Just her niece, a niece nurse.” She thought that was funny.

  “Where is your aunt?”

  “In bed.”

  I kissed her again.

  “You just don’t stop,” she said softly.

  I reluctantly released her from my arms. “I better go, Gabriella, before I do something wrong.”

  “Maybe you should. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Sometimes ‘wrong’ can be a lot of fun.”

  We stood there staring at each other. I knew that anything could happen in a single moment, the sort of moment that could, and should, change your life forever.

  It was a hard choice.

  I left.

  Outside, I found the papers for the restraining order on the street, where I had dropped them.

  I looked at the house Pablo Martinez lived. Old, falling apart, grass growing high, weeds everywhere. No lights on inside.

  I doubt he’d come back tonight. He knew he was being watched.

  I’d return later. I had to. The papers had to be served in two days and I always get my target. I pride myself on that promise. I liked my perfect record and didn’t need Martinez to tarnish it.

  I got into my car and looked at the house where Gabriella Amaya lived. It was in a little better shape than where Martinez lived, but not by much; this was a rundown neighborhood where visual property values didn’t matter much.

  I spotted her standing by the window, watching me like a sensual sentinel, or a siren from the sea.

  She waved and I waved back.

  Nineteen years old.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  2.

  My ex-girlfriend, Meghan Lynn, was waiting outside my apartment building in Ocean Beach. I lived two blocks from the sea, near the pier. She was sitting in her blue Mazda Miata.

  She was staking me out.

  The irony of it didn’t elude me, but the thing is: I didn’t want to see her, not right now, not at all. We had broken up five months ago and she wouldn’t let go. I started to think I might have to get a restraining order on her myself, have one my fellow process servers handle it.

  “David.”

  She got out of her car. Her door squeaked loudly when she opened and closed it, the sound echoing down the street, all the way to the ocean.

  “Meghan, not tonight,” I said. />
  She noticed the dried blood and the bump on the side of my head.

  “Jesus Christ, David,” she said, “you okay?”

  She tried to touch me and I flinched. “I’m fine.”

  “Keep telling you, your job is too dangerous,” she said.

  “So is crossing the street, but we all do it.”

  “Not if you’re locked in a room and the key has been swallowed by the troll who guards the castle.”

  Meghan always said stuff like that, so I had to think about it and figure out what it meant.

  “True,” I said.

  She stood in my path. “We need to talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “We have the whole universe to talk about,” Meghan said, “because soul mates always do.”

  I hated it when she started to get metaphysical and talk about soul mates, past lives, alternate realities, and all that other New Age bullshit I didn’t buy into.

  “Meghan,” I said, “I’m tired . . . need sleep.”

  She got close. “I’ll keep you warm.”

  Coldly: “Like you keep other men warm.”

  She glared. “How many times do I have to tell you that it was all a mistake?”

  “Fucking some guy for three months is a long mistake.” It was the main reason why I broke up with her. Three years together, all that talk of soul mates and devotion, and she’s out getting some on the side while I was a good boy, monogamous and serious about it.

  She said, “Can I come inside, boo?”

  “You know the answer,” I said.

  “Five minutes to talk,” she said, “please.”

  I knew she would not get out of my way, and she would grab me and scream and cry and wake up my neighbors and someone would call the cops. That was the last thing I needed right now, next to her being here.

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  Inside, I got us both a bottle of Heineken from the fridge and when I returned to the living room, she was standing there half-naked, wearing only a black thong and long blue socks.

  I said, “Get dressed.”

  “How can you resist this body?”

  It was difficult; she was slender and pale and had some great tattoos on her flesh: a snake running up the right side of her body, the tail curled at her navel; a dragon on her shoulder and an eagle on the small of her back; an apple above her pubic hair and a knife on her left breast.

  We had been living together for almost three years and she always roamed about the apartment half or fully naked, so this wasn’t anything new or unexpected.

  I sat down on the couch and she sat next to me. She touched my head. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I cry.”

  “I can make it feel better.”

  “You’ll kiss my booboo?”

  “I’ll kiss more than that.”

  “Stop it.”

  She pouted.

  “Your five minutes are up,” I said.

  “They haven’t even begun.”

  “Okay, go.”

  “I only said that so you’d let me come inside.”

  I knew.

  She played with the curls of my light brown hair. “So why did you let me, David?”

  “Would you have gone if I asked?” I asked.

  “You know me: I’m persistent.”

  “I just want to go to bed.”

  “So let’s go,” and she took my hand.

  “No,” I said.

  “The man who said no,” and she laughed, “who would have figured?”

  “I need sleep.”

  “I’ll hold you, baby booboo.”

  “Meghan.”

  “No sex. Who needs sex? Sex is for the weak and horny. I’ll hold you, just like you like.”

  She knew my weakness: cuddling. Maybe my mother never held me enough, or she held me too much, I don’t remember that far back. But my weakness is to be in the arms of a woman, and fall asleep that way.

  And that’s what happened. I allowed her naked body into my bed, and she held me, and I forgot all about the pain Pablo Martinez gave me, but for some reason I was thinking of Gabriella, nineteen-year-old Gabriella Amaya, and what it would be like to have her hold me in her arms and peacefully drift off to sleep with her dark brown naked skin pressed close to my pale, freckled Caucasian flesh.

  In the morning, Meghan and her tattoos were gone. This was unlike her; she liked to sleep till noon. I woke up dreading how I would get rid of her. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with the drama.

  3.

  Went into the downtown San Diego office of Westlake and Marshall Process Serving at eight a.m. sharp, like I always do, and went through the high priority and low priority boxes for legal documents that day. High priority were unlawful detainer for evictions or thirty day notices to quit, as well as restraining and protective orders that the Sheriff was unable to serve; writs of attachments and outstanding processes with time limits. Sometimes we’d get a subpoena but the Sheriff or Marshall’s office usually took care of those. Low priority: recently filed lawsuits and dissolutions of marriages, discovery questionnaires, money demands and levies.

  I worked with five other process servers and we handled most of the greater San Diego area, but not North County. I didn’t care for North County.

  There’s no Westlake at this company, I don’t know why the name was there, maybe because it sounded better on the tongue. Allen Marshall was a former private eye who ran the office and distributed the work. I didn’t know why he had stopped the gumshoe work; it’s the kind of work I wanted to do and I envied his past. I had plans on getting my private investigator’s license and starting a business, once I had enough money saved.

  I got a cup of coffee and a donut from the break room and wondered what the hell I was going to do about Pablo Martinez. I could go to the cops and swear out a complaint—physically attacking an “officer of the court” on court business was a felony, but I knew the cops weren’t going to put much effort into tracking down a known gang member in Chula Vista (often referred to as Chollo Vista) when I was having my own problems locating the dude. Plus, I hate the cops; don’t trust a single one of those corrupt jerk-offs. And I had no desire for people to know I had been taken by surprise and I was having trouble serving a target. Failure was not on my resume, but if I didn’t get this restraining order to Mr. Martinez in the next forty-eight hours, I would have to admit that the guy out-smarted me.

  I could lie, could sign a Proof of Service and claim I touched him with the papers, or threw them at his feet; that his surprise attack never happened. Process servers sometimes lie if the target is elusive or the server is lazy; they rely on the fact that 95% of the public are too afraid, or don’t know how, to fight an improper or illegal serve; and in the case of a restraining order, most people never show up to court anyway. This is what they call “gutter service”—lying or just leaving the papers at the door, hoping that the target doesn’t know legal procedure or have a lawyer to claim a violation of due process. You get caught in a lie, it is perjury, you lose your license, and the target goes after your insurance bond. I’ve seen it happen and I wasn’t going to let it happen to me. I’ve seen servers keep working with a pulled or expired license and getting a heavy fine and some jail time.

  Was tempted, though, because I had a score to settle with Mr. Martinez.

  My head still hurt.

  The first one for the day was easy: a thirty-day notice to pay rent or quit. I didn’t have to personally serve anyone for that. I taped the notice on the door of the apartment and then mailed a copy to the address. A quick $35 earned.

  The second one was a little tricky. It was a malpractice suit. I’d had this one sitting in my To Go box for a week. I had an 11:30 a.m. appointment with the doctor, who specialized in men’s sexual health issues. He probably thought I was just another guy in his twenties looking for a prescription of Viagra. He was in his forties, tall with a beard. He seemed pretty surprised and pissed off wh
en I handed him the summons and compliant and said, “You’ve been served.”

  “Asshole,” he said, “I ought to serve you my knee in your nuts and see if you ever have kids down the line.”

  They’re always like that.

  “I’m just the messenger,” I said.

  “What a lousy way to make a living,” he said.

  “Have a nice day, doc.”

  I don’t make a lot of friends in this business, but sometimes, just sometimes I meet a new friend . . . like Gabriella Amaya.

  The third one on my list was another restraining order; the target didn’t present a problem. He was an awkward, overweight man with thinning red hair who owned a pet store in a part of the city called Hillcrest. Apparently, he’d been stalking another man he met on Facebook, so the petitioner’s affidavit stated. They had mutual interests in Lord of the Rings and online gaming. The pet storeowner declared his love for this other man and the other man said, “I’m not gay, are you crazy?” Pet store owner wouldn’t accept that and has been bugging the other guy day and night to try pitching for the other team, sending flowers, hanging around the apartment building, and all that other good stuff stalkers like to do.

  When I handed the pet storeowner the papers for the temporary order and the date of the hearing, he smiled and said, “How nice.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Have you met him?” he asked me.

  “Afraid not,” I said.

  “He’s a darling.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Sexy.”

  “I bet.”

  “Hey,” and he glared at me, “he’s mine.”

  “Take that order seriously, dude,” I said, “or you’ll see yourself in jail, and you don’t seem like the kind of fellow who’d like jail.”

  He giggled. “It could be fun, me a criminal, what would my mom say?” He leafed through the papers. “At least I know he cares. I’d go to jail for that.”

  “He doesn’t ‘care,’” I said, “he wants you to leave him alone.”

  “He wouldn’t go through all this trouble if he didn’t care.”