He told Soto, “I hear you,” hoping that would get Soto to put out some extra effort, get him totally clear of the traffic warrants as well as the failure to appear.

Soto yawned through the trial and Bob ended up with a massive fine and ten days at County Jail, cut to five. Then reduced to an overnight stay because of overcrowding but, man, one day in that hellhole was enough.

The fine was a more enduring problem. Thirty-five hundred bucks that he needed to come up with in sixty days and none of his landscaping jobs had come through and he was already behind on his rent. Not to mention the child support. If Kathy decided to make trouble for him, he was screwed.

He missed the kids living in Houston with Kathy’s folks.

Truth be told, he missed Kathy.

His own damn fault. Screwing around with women he didn’t even care about, he still didn’t understand why he kept doing it.

He’d borrowed five hundred dollars from his mom, telling her it would go toward the fine. But the city wouldn’t take partial payment and he needed something to generate income so he could square up his rent as well as the fine.

Yesterday, the tree-moving company out in Saugus had called back, told him to come in, fill out forms, maybe that would pan out.

Meanwhile, he was doing what he could.

Up at four a.m., making sure he’d sail on the drive from Alhambra to Playa Del Rey, be at the storage facility when it opened.

He’d read about abandoned property auctions on the Internet a few months ago, forgot about it until being slapped with the fine. Not stupid enough to think he was going to come up with one of those treasures that made the papers-a Honus Wagner baseball card or a rare painting-his hopes were pinned on eBay.