David Handler - The Sweet Golden Parachute

THE SWEET GOLDEN PARACHUTE

ALSO BY DAVID HANDLER

F EATURING B ERGER & M ITRY

The Burnt Orange Sunrise

The Bright Silver Star

The Hot Pink, Farmhouse

The Cold Blue Blood

F EATURING S TEWART H OAG

The Man Who Died Laughing

The Man Who Lived by Night

The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Woman Who Fell from Grace

The Boy Who Never Grew Up

The Man Who Cancelled Himself

The Girl Who Ran Off with Daddy

The Man Who Loved Women to Death

F EATURING D ANNY L EVINE

Kiddo

Boss

D AVID H ANDLER

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
ST. MARTINS MINOTAUR
NEW YORK

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS .
An Imprint of St. Martins Press.

THE SWEET GOLDEN PARACHUTE . Copyright 2006 by David Handler. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

ISBN 0-312-34211-X
EAN 978-0-312-34211-1

First Edition: March 2006

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

T HIS ONE IS FOR D AVE AND J O D RAKE ,
WHOVE ALWAYS TREATED ME LIKE ONE OF THE FAM

THE SWEET GOLDEN PARACHUTE

P ETE WOKE WELL BEFORE DAWN and sat up in his sleeping bag and tried to remember what day it was. He had his regular morning routes and it really did matter. Knuckling his eyes, he tried to recall where hed been the day before. The Historic District, thats where. So yesterday must have been Tuesday. And today Wednesday, which meant Route 156, upriver from the Big Brook Road business district.

There, that wasnt so hard.

Shivering, Pete reached for his pint bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and drank down several thirsty gulps, peering around in the dark at the dented, moldering Silver Streak that he called home. The old trailer sat out behind Dougs Sunoco in the empty lot where Doug stashed the beaters he rented out by the day to folks in need. Dougs was an old-time service station. Two licensed mechanics on duty six days a week. A twenty-four-hour towing operation. Doug even employed acne-encrusted high school kids to pump gas.

Aside from Doug, none of the guys there had anything to do with Pete, since everyone knew he was crazy and you were supposed to stay away from him. They didnt even know his real namejust called him what everyone else in Dorset called him: the Can Man.

Still swaddled in his sleeping bag, Pete shuffled his way over to the tiny kitchenette, where he kept his cans of chili and Beefaroni and the like. He kept his Crown Pilot crackers and Wonder Bread inside an old saltines tin or the mice would tear into them. He opened some pork and beans and ate them cold right out of the can with two slices of Wonder Bread. Washed it all down with more Captain Morgan and six aspirin. Then, slowly, Pete wriggled his gaunt self out of the bag, groaning from his aches. He pulled on his wool hunting shirt, heavy wool pants and pea coat, fingers fumbling from the arthritis. Stepped into his cracked, ancient work boots. Ran a hand through his iron gray hair, which he trimmed himself with shears; likewise his beard, which was mostly white. His blue eyes were deep set, his nose long and narrow. He had once been quite handsome. The girls had really gone for him. But it had been years since theyd looked at him that way. Or at all.

He was invisible.

This was perfectly okay by him. As long as people stayed away from him, Pete was fine. He just wanted to live his life his own wayno drivers license, no credit cards, no bank account, no phone, no keys. He was a free man. Didnt need the hospital. Didnt need his medication. He had his trailer, his Captain Morgan and his morning rounds. He got plenty of exercise. Kept his mind busy with his numbers. He was fine. Hell, he was probably the happiest hed ever been.

He hobbled inside. It was barely 6:00 A.M. but Doug was already filling the till and turning on the pumps. Pete rinsed his face in the work sink and drank down a cup of Dougs strong, hot coffee. By then it was time to saddle up.

Pete made his morning rounds on a mountain bike that hed found at the dump. It had only one serviceable gear, but it moved. His trailers, a pair of rackety grocery carts that hed liberated from the A&P, were chained to the book rack behind his seat, one behind the other. Doug had put red reflectors on the back of Petes trailers and installed a battery-powered headlight on the front of his bike. The beam was feeble, but it gave the early morning drivers some indication that he was there.

It was still dark out when Pete started his way along the shoulder of Big Brook Road. Pete was not quiet. People could hear him and his empty trailers coming from a half-mile away in the predawn country silence. He pedaled, wool knit cap pulled low over his eyes and ears, jacket buttoned up to his throat. It was maybe a degree or two above freezing, and the headlights on the occasional passing car revealed a dense early morning fog. It was supposed to turn warm today, maybe warm enough to melt some of the hard, grimy snowbank that the plowman had built up along the shoulder.

When he reached the river he turned right onto Route 156, a narrow, twisting country road that ran its way north of Dorset into gentlemens farm country. He pedaled along through the foggy darkness, a half-pint of Captain Morgan snug inside his jacket pocket. His right knee still throbbed despite the aspirin. He tore cartilage in it playing rugby a hundred million years ago. And his left hip never stopped aching. Hed broken it when he flipped his Porsche late one night in the Italian Alps. The girl with him hadnt made it. Pete couldnt remember her name. Didnt want to remember her name.

He was happy that winter was passing, because the snow hadnt stopped falling last month and a lot of roads had been plain impassable. Pete got edgy without enough work to do. Mostly, he sat in his trailer all day poring over his personal bible, The World Almanac . Pete just loved The World Almanac . He had studied the bushel production of ten different agricultural products for all fifty states. Charted the distances by car between various cities. From Amarillo to Omaha it was 643 miles. From Cincinnati to New Orleans 786. Pete was very into numbers. As long as he kept his head crowded with numbers he could keep his demons shoved inside of a box, his full weight pressed down on top of the lid. The demons would try to pound their way out. But they were locked inside as long as he concentrated on his numbers. It was only when people started talking to him, asking him things, that the box would spring open and out would pop the demons.

As far as Pete was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this world that could not be solved by staying away from other people.

He pedaled. Dorsets recycling truck made its rounds by around eight. Pete would have come and gone by then. The town picked up bundled newspapers and flattened cardboard, which were of no interest to Pete. It was the empty beer and soda cans that were. The bottles, too. Each one carried a nickel deposit on it. And a lot of the rich folk put them out for the Can Manknowing that this was how he fed himself. Some of them even bagged them separately for him.

He pedaled, steering his little vehicle onto Bittersweet Lane, a cul-de-sac of million-dollar homes that had been built a few years back in old man Talcotts apple orchards. At the foot of the first driveway he came to, Pete stopped to pick his way through the plastic recycling bins. He left the sardine cans and milk jugs. Took only the soda pop and beer empties, computing the nickel valuations in his head as he stuffed them inside his black plastic trash bags Ten, fifteen and one more thats twenty. Twenty-five, thirty.