Marked Man

by William Lashner

  “Chantal,” I said.

  35

  It was the movies that finally determined it for me. The home movies, Super 8s unspooling on a projector Mr. Adair pulled out of the closet, the images splashed upon one of the living room walls. After I brought her name up, the Adairs seemed only too willing to talk about Chantal. They reminisced about her sparkling personality, told fond stories, recounted again the great day when Chantal danced on television on the Al Alberts Showcase. It was all sweet enough to make of me a disbeliever. Is there anything more dubious than someone else’s happy childhood? But then at one point, Mrs. Adair clapped her nervous hands and said, “Let’s see the movies,” and only a moment passed before the projector was whirring and the memories were flickering.

  It took me a moment to get my bearings as the past unreeled for me on the living room wall. That young woman with the short black hair and sexy smile, with a body lithe enough to get me to thinking, the woman clapping her hands in delight at her children, oh yes, that must be Mrs. Adair. You could see now where Monica got her beauty. And that arrogant young buck with the muscles bursting proudly from beneath his tight shirt, that was Mr. Adair, when life still was full of electric promise. And that kid there, laughing and tossing leaves into the air, towheaded and pink-cheeked. Richard? It couldn’t be, could it? Yes it could. Richard. Gad.

  I looked away from the images and scanned the room, the parents staring raptly at a time when life was perfect, Richard with his arms crossed, unhappy to be there but unable to look away. And Monica, sitting next to me, leaning forward, her face suffused with some strange nostalgia for an era that ended brutally before she was born. Something had turned the past of the film into the withered present, something more vicious than the mere passage of time.

  “She just never came home,” said Mrs. Adair. “Went out one day to play and never came home.”

  “We went door-to-door,” said Mr. Adair. “Had the police out, put up posters, walked every inch of the parks. The whole neighborhood came out.”

  “Her picture was on the news for a solid week.”

  “Nothing. And it’s the not-knowing that’s the worst of it, like we’re still in the middle of it. The ache, it never leaves. It started in my chest before creeping into my bones. My doctor says it’s arthritis, because he doesn’t know.”

  “Did she have friends?” I asked.

  “She was very popular,” said Mrs. Adair. “Miss Personality. But none of her friends had seen her that day.”

  “Who saw her last?”

  “Richard saw her leave,” said Mr. Adair. “But it’s not his fault, it’s our fault. We let her go out, always. We trusted her, and we trusted everyone else.”

  “Any idea where she was going, Richard?” I said.

  “I told the police everything,” he said.

  “Detective Hathaway,” said Mrs. Adair. “What a wonderful man, what a sweet man. He did everything he could.”

  “He kept the case open for years,” said Mr. Adair. “Never gave up.”

  “What did you tell him, Richard?”

  “That I didn’t know where she went. Can we get back to the race?”

  “Sometimes still, I get so angry,” said Mr. Adair, “angry at myself, at the world, at my own helplessness. Sometimes I still try to put my hand through the wall.”

  Chantal Adair. My breath caught in my throat the first time she showed up on the screen, my chest throbbed. The name had been scrawled into my flesh and engraved deep in my consciousness, and now there, in front of me, in light and color and shadow, there she was, oblivious to the tragedy rising already behind her, moving to some jerky, otherworldly rhythm. To see her on that wall was to see a legend, a mythic hero come to life, like watching old movies of Babe Ruth or Jack Dempsey, of a young Willie Mays loping like a leopard in the outfield.

  “Oh, my sweet Chantal,” said Mrs. Adair.

  Whether she was sweet or not, little Chantal, you couldn’t tell from the sun-drenched images in the movies. Her dark hair, flashing eyes, the glittery dance shoes she loved, the way she laughed, hugged, mugged for the lens. Already there was something self-conscious in her pose, something of the ingenue in her movements, like she knew already at age six how to turn and twist for the camera.

  There was a little blond girl in many of the shots, about the same age as Chantal, throwing snowballs and laughing as she roughhoused. She marched and ran while Chantal pranced.

  “My cousin Ronnie,” said Monica. “Uncle Rupert’s daughter.”

  “Uncle Rupert. He’s the guy who looks like Grant.”

  “Who’s Grant?”

  “The guy with the beard in the picture in my office.”

  “That’s the one. My mother’s brother.”

  “Was Ronnie close to Chantal?”

  “They were like sisters,” she said.

  “Thick as thieves,” said Mrs. Adair. “They were nothing alike, but they were together all the time. The loss really hit Ronnie hard.”

  “Did Detective Hathaway have any ideas about what happened to Chantal?” I said.

  “He had ideas,” said Mr. Adair. “Nothing that amounted to nothing, but he sure had ideas. And most of them centered on something he found in Chantal’s room.”

  “What was that?”

  “Strangest damn thing. A lighter. How she got hold of it, none of us could figure it out, but there it was, hidden in one of her drawers.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No, he took it as evidence, but I still remember it,” he said. “A gold lighter, well worn, with the initials W.R. engraved on its case.”

  “Do you have a picture of Chantal I might be able to take with me?”

  “We printed up tons for the search. A head shot. We still have them somewhere.” Mr. Adair pushed himself out of his chair with a soft moan. “Wait a minute and I’ll get one for you.”

  And that was what I had in my pocket, that photograph, as Monica and I drove away from her girlhood home. The lighter with Wilfred Randolph’s initials was evidence of a possible connection between the disappearance of Chantal Adair and the robbery of the Randolph Trust. And if a connection really existed, then my client, definitely involved in one, most likely knew something of the other. Next time I saw him, I’d have to give him the third degree. But something else was tugging at my sleeve.

  “That was nice of you to come to my parents’ house,” said Monica. “It seems to help them to talk about it. It’s almost like when they talk about her, or watch the movies, she’s still there.”

  “I liked your parents.”

  “And they liked you, I could tell.”

  “Your father scowled at me.”

  “Only at the beginning. Later he warmed up. You’re the best fake boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

  “There have been others?”

  “Usually they’re gay.”

  “Which must lessen the complication.”

  “You would think. But my parents don’t show the movies to just anybody.”

  “Are you sure? I got the sense they corral Mormon missionaries and Fuller Brush men to see the movies and hear the tale.”

  “Not true. And my mother told me approvingly that you sure do know your Chex Mix.”

  “You’re going to have to tell them eventually that we’re not dating.”

  “We aren’t?”

  “No, Monica. This wasn’t a date.”

  “I brought you home, you met my parents.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Yes, I’m kidding. Oh, my mom will ask about you for a while, and then I’ll say we broke up, and that will be the end of it. Maybe I’ll fake-date a doctor next. They always liked doctors.”

  “Why don’t you date someone for real?”

  “Fake dating is so much easier. You should try it, Victor.”

  “Why not? I’ve faked everything else. Tell me about your brother, Richard.”

  “What’s to tell? He’s a little sad, a little lonely, but
he’s very smart. He’s my older brother. I used to idolize him.”

  “What kind of work does he do?”

  “He doesn’t. He just plays on the computer or watches TV.”

  “No friends?”

  “It’s hard to find a friend when you haven’t stepped outside the house in twenty-five years.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He doesn’t leave the house. He can’t step through the doorway. He’s stuck, and he’s been that way since before I was born. He has that thing.”

  “Agoraphobia?”

  “That’s it. First time I heard it, I thought he was afraid of sweaters. But what it really means is he can’t go outside or to public places.”

  I thought then of the home movie projected onto the wall, not the parts with Chantal posing or playing with her cousin Ronnie, not the parts that held the rest of the family in thrall, and not the images of the parents either, at the start of their lives when the world held nothing but hope. No, I thought of the boy, laughing and tossing leaves into the air, towheaded and pink-cheeked and full of promise. The palpable sadness in that house had burrowed like a parasite into his heart, turning him into some grotesque creature. I had come on all hard-boiled with him, and maybe he had asked for it, but it wasn’t right, and I felt ashamed. He had deserved better from me, better out of life. Whatever evil had happened to Chantal had happened to him, too, it had happened to all of them. And my client’s involvement was enough for me not to be able to ignore it.

  “I’m going to find out what happened to your sister, Monica,” I said.

  “You’re taking the case?”

  “No, I can’t take it on as a case. No retainer, no fees, no expenses. And believe me, it hurts to say that, more than you can imagine. But I have a conflict with another case I’m involved in, so I can’t take it on professionally. But I’m going to find out all the same.”

  “For me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why, Victor?”

  “I don’t know. Because her name somehow got tattooed on my chest and I’ll be staring at it in the mirror for the rest of my life. Because what happened to her was dead wrong and it pisses me off. Because of your brother.”

  “My brother? I didn’t think you liked him.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe neither do I, but still. My apartment is trashed, my partnership is cracking up, I’m drinking too much, flirting with reporters, sleeping with Realtors. Frankly, I’m in desperate need of something hard and clean in my life, and finding what happened to Chantal is all I have.”

  “That is so…Victor, that is so…so…” She leaned over in the car and kissed me on the cheek.

  “We’re still not dating,” I said.

  “I know. I’m just so happy. It was a message, wasn’t it? The tattoo, I mean.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “From her.”

  “From someone. Let me ask you, is anyone in your family a tattoo artist?”

  “No.”

  “I’m still trying to figure out who gave it to me.”

  “She did. You’re fighting hard not to admit the truth, but it will come to you. So when do we start?”

  “We?”

  “Sure.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going to let me help you?”

  “Monica,” I said, “I work best alone.”

  “But I want to help. Can’t I help? Please, Victor. I need to do this.”

  “Monica, there is no way that—” And then I stopped.

  My first impulse is always to be a lone wolf. One of the reasons Beth might have been dissatisfied at the firm was my penchant for pushing her away and going it by myself. And here was Monica, whose life had been as altered and bruised as anyone’s by Chantal’s disappearance, asking me if she could help find out what happened to her sister. I didn’t know what aid she could give, but maybe I was being selfish, maybe she more than anyone deserved the opportunity to be involved in the search. Or maybe I was kidding myself and simply still felt the soft touch of her finger on my chest.

  “Okay,” I said. “You can help.”

  “Really? You mean it?”

  “Sure. We’ll start in a couple days. Maybe you and I, we’ll go together to visit an old friend of your parents’.”

  “Why don’t we start right away? Oh, Victor, this is so fabulous. I’ll take a few days off from the club, buy some black leather pants, clean the gun.”

  “No gun.”

  “But, Victor, I like my gun.”

  “No dog, no gun, no heels sharp enough to penetrate flesh. That’s not the way I do things, at least not professionally.”

  “All right, all right, don’t get your tie into a twist. What about the black leather pants, are they okay at least?”

  “Why black leather pants?”

  “Emma Peel, from The Avengers.”

  “Sure, the black leather pants are fine.”

  “But why aren’t we getting started right away?”

  “Because first I have to meet someone in New Jersey, and that I have to do alone.”

  36

  This time I was dressed to blend: sneakers and jeans, red baseball cap, a garish yellow Hawaiian number hanging open over a white T-shirt. I had thought of wearing shorts, but my legs were so white they glowed, which didn’t quite fit the image of a sun-worshipping Jersey boy, so jeans it was. When I reached my perch at Seventh Street on the Ocean City boardwalk, the sun was setting and the sky over the ocean was turning Kodachrome. I did a quick peruse. No Charlie, no goons who might have followed me, just the usual crowd swarming and laughing in the thick salt air, flirting and ignoring the flirts, whining, strolling, dripping soft ice cream onto their shoes. I thought some ice cream might fit my disguise.

  I was standing in line at the Kohr Bros. Frozen Custard stand when I heard a hiss from the T-shirts in the store next door. Behind a scrim of shirts, I could spy the top of a round bald head, ugly plaid shorts, sandals over socks.

  “I’ll have a small vanilla,” I said to the pretty Russian woman behind the stand. “And a large vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.”

  With the ice creams in hand, I sauntered over to the T-shirt store and held out the large sprinkled cone. Through a collection of shirts and sweats, a hand reached out.

  “Thanks,” said Charlie. “I love the custard.”

  “Who doesn’t? You want to talk here?”

  “I’ll meet you at the waterline in five minutes.”

  “Just don’t spill your custard on the steps this time.”

  I waited on the beach, breathing deep the salt air. A wide stone jetty was just ahead of me. The evening was breezy and clear, the sea glinted orange, the surf was angry. I stood at the crest of the sand, where the shoreline started slanting toward the sea, and watched the waves swell and froth before pounding themselves into oblivion. Quite a show. They ought to sell tickets. The fate of the universe in six-second tableaux. Appearing nightly. Try the veal, and don’t forget to tip your waitresses.

  The beach was open to the left, closed in by a music pier on the right. In the reddening light, I could spot a few silhouettes climbing along the jetty or strolling across the sand. I kept track of them all, checking to see if any were a little too interested in anything I was doing. As usual I was being completely ignored, which was, as usual, fine by me. Especially when I was meeting with a client who was wanted by a bunch of gangsters, a hit man from Allentown, and the FBI all at once. I turned toward the boardwalk, spotted a giant toddler with an oversized head and splayed legs coming my way.

  “You alone?” said Charlie Kalakos.

  “Sadly, that’s my condition in the world.”

  “Were you followed?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I drove slowly with one eye on my rearview mirror. Because I stopped on the side of the highway twice, and no one else stopped. Because
I parked on Seventeenth and walked the ten blocks on back streets and spotted nothing. But I’m just a lawyer, Charlie, not a spy. My training is in torts, not tails. I’m doing my best.”

  “Your best might get me capped. How’s my mom?”

  “She’s fine. She’s even seemed to perk up a bit.”

  “So am I heading home?”

  “Before we talk about the negotiations, I’ve got some news for you. Remember you told me about your friends, and one of them was a Ralph?”

  “Why?”

  “He was shot in the head a few days ago.”

  “Ralphie Meat? My God. How’d it happen? He get caught with someone’s wife?”

  “It looks like a professional hit. The killer got inside his house, popped him in the leg, wrapped it up and asked him some questions before shooting him in the head.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “The questions were probably about you, Charlie. Right after our negotiation hit the papers, I got a visit from some of your old friends in the Warrick Brothers Gang. One of them said he was chasing you fifteen years ago, a hood named Fred.”

  “That fat bastard still around?”

  “In the flesh,” I said. “And he’s got some homunculus helping him out. He told me to give you a warning. Apparently they put some hit man on your tail, someone from Allentown.”

  Suddenly Charlie’s head swiveled and his eyes widened.

  “You know this guy from Allentown?”

  “I saw him once,” said Charlie slowly. “An old bull with a flattop, cold eyes, and huge, gnarled hands. He was a soldier who was trained too good and learned he liked the killing.”

  “What war? Vietnam?”

  “Korea, from what I heard.”

  “What, that makes him well over seventy.”

  “You didn’t see them eyes, Victor.”

  “He left a note as a warning. It read ‘Who’s next?’”

  Charlie seemed to shrink at the words. I scanned what I could of the beach. Nothing out of the ordinary, the same uninterested runoff from the boardwalk, a group of kids at the far end of the jetty, laughing.

  “Charlie, do you still want to come out of hiding?”