Chapter 10

Driving up the winding driveway Pete stopped in front of the sprawling ranch house. There was a car in the driveway, a red Lincoln Navigator. The idea flashed through his mind do all the women in this family drive Navigators. Nah, she wouldn’t be involved. But it was one of those déjà vu moments. Why would I be thinking of her?

He knew the door wouldn’t be locked, Dotty had originally told him, “There’s no reason that I would have to fear any trouble in THIS community,” so he walked in just as he had before. Walking into the living room he spied Dotty, who was already on her feet coming toward him. Giving him a warm hug, she whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry to interrupt your day this way Pete but the woman on the couch, my mother has something to tell you that you need to hear. I’m sorry.” How could I have known it was her?

The older, elegant-looking woman on the couch gave him the idea she might have been the wife of a highly placed business executive. He had never seen her before but, any male traveling the circles he did in and around Rio Branca considered this woman a legend that was only spoken of in awe. Considering Dotty’s urgent phone calls and her sincere expression of remorse the sinking feeling that shrouded him as he entered the room made him think this has got to be some serious shit.

“Pete Santori,” Dotty said, “I would like to introduce you to my mother Marney Nixon.”

Marney Nixon, the woman who runs the River Ranch Brothel. Jesus, Dotty’s mother!

Standing, the woman scanned Pete up and down, her expert eyes hesitating at his middle and then moving back to his eyes. Offering her hand she smiled and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you from my daughter and granddaughter, not to mention Clay Burnett. Old Grover thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas. Her grip was powerful.

Sensing the woman was not to be toyed with Pete returned the handshake strongly, unflinchingly returning her gaze. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Nixon.”

“Marney. Nobody even recognizes me here as Ms. Nixon Pete.”

“How IS Clay Marney? Grover says he’s seriously ill.”

“Clay’s got terminal cancer Pete; his doc has given him no more than a year before checks out.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete said. “He seems like a nice man.”

“Nicer than Grover, but that’s not hard to achieve. He’ll be here in a few minutes. We’ve all got serious business to talk with you about young man. Take a seat beside me on the couch and put your boots on the table like a cowboy.” With a questioning countenance, Pete eyed Dotty who was on the verge of tears. With raised eyebrows, she nodded as if she was helpless in the situation.

Pete’s eyes were drawn outside by the movement of a red sixties-era Ford pickup truck that pulled up next to the Red Lincoln Navigator in the driveway. Clay Burnett got out.

“Just so you know Pete not only is Dotty my daughter, but Thornton Brockmeyer is my son.” JESUS, Pete thought, what else is happening in this incestuous town with all these different names.” Clay tells me that Grover has made you an offer that would knock most men your age off their feet.” She looked up as Clay opened the door and walked in. “Here’s Clay now.”

Pete had already seen Clay getting out of his truck. As Burnett walked into the room he stood up and said, “Nice to see you again Clay,” something he didn’t truly feel. Grover had told him, that Clay, was “ill” and he’d just learned that he was dying. He began feeling like he had been caught amid a palace coup. He genuinely liked Clay though despite his being Grover’s lap dog.

“So how did the meeting go Pete?”

Giving him a sarcastic snort, he said, “How do you think it went?”

“So, he’s got you by the balls too?”

When he first met Dotty and Silk then Clay, he had no idea these people were just characters in Grover McClintock’s lifelong drama, shills used as pieces in fixed chess games. But the venom he felt simmering in Dotty’s living room reminded him of Sidney Lumet’s movie Network where Howard Beal said on his TV news broadcast, “I’m mad as hell, and I am not going to take this anymore!”

What bothered him, even more, was how he felt the need to be defensive when he recognized how powerful his greed was. Rolling his eyes and shrugging he said, “You have to admit Clay it’s one hellofanoffer.” He feared that what might happen here could affect the future Grover had just offered him. Then there was the unsettling telecon with his wife.

Clay said, “You probably have not had enough exposure to Grover to understand how that man can invade your life.”

Reviewing how Clay had been implicit with his involvement with Dotty and Silk Pete thought “that man” was not a kind assessment of McClintock.

“I’ve known him for most of my life, Pete. He’s been a friend, a business associate, and a great supporter. But like a dying man I owe it to you to say if you get involved with him, you will be selling yourself to the devil. You’ll find yourself doing things that will be contrary to your morality until you’ll come to a point where you are no longer in possession of what normal people would consider morality. He will do wrongs to you that you will have become so inured to that you will just accept them as the way life should be. At this very moment, you are unaware of what he has just done to defile your life.

As Pete tried to decipher Clay’s meaning of Grover defiling his life Marney jumped in and began telling her side. She related the story of a whore who had been “rescued” by Grover McClintock and became Madam of the River Ranch brothel. That Grover while sending his wife away to be a playmate for other men married kept Marney as his mistress who had two of his illegitimate children. He sent Dotty away to boarding school and when she came of age married her off to a “well respected” man, who was a no dick wimp, away most of the time: hunting, fishing, or womanizing. “Whenever Grover got tired of screwing me, he screwed Dotty, his daughter ... made her pregnant with Silk who was born with the McCord name. Then even before Silk was of age Grover was screwing her as well. Thornton, who you know, was adopted by Clay’s sister Annie and her husband Bevo Brockmeyer. Before that Grover got Annie pregnant with another child and made Brockmeyer marry her. She lost that child before I birthed Thornton. As wonders sometimes happen Annie and Bevo had an idyllic marriage which is a good reason for Thornton not ending up completely berserk.