Asking For Trouble

by Simon Wood

“He looks how I expected him to look.”

  “The three of us should go out together.”

  “I’d like that,” Nick said and meant it. It would be a good opportunity to show this guy how happy he made his sister. If that didn’t work, he doubted Jamie could keep a lid on his jealousy, and he’d expose himself for the person he really was. Either way, it’d be a win-win for Nick. “Jamie doesn’t have to play third wheel. He should bring his girlfriend. Make it a double date. I haven’t double dated in years.”

  “Jamie doesn’t have a girlfriend. I don’t know why.”

  I do, Nick thought. “Maybe he doesn’t put himself out there,” he suggested.

  They skipped dessert and hooked up with some friends at a club but left early to go back to Melanie’s condo. They fooled around, and Melanie wanted him to spend the night, but he couldn’t get Jamie off his mind. He went home, his head full of Jamie. Goddamn the guy for thinking he could destroy his relationship with Melanie. Well, he wasn’t going to stand for it. Jamie’s threatening ways might have worked with Melanie’s past boyfriends, but they wouldn’t with him. His blood was up when he went to bed, but it turned icy cold when he picked up the newspaper off his stoop the following morning. The Chronicle had been turned to the third page. The headline read: MAN KILLED IN SENSELESS MUGGING.

  ***

  It took Nick a minute to realize the newspaper wasn’t current, but six months old. The story detailed the botched mugging. A Wells Fargo employee, Miles Talbot, twenty-six, had been returning home after a night out in the city. He’d been stabbed repeatedly on the Embarcadero, and his wallet and valuables had been taken. His body had been dragged from the main thoroughfare and dumped under the archway of Pier 26. After Nick read the story, a vague recollection of the incident filtered through. The cops had never found the person responsible.

  There were no prizes for guessing who’d left this piece of San Francisco history for him. It was a cheap and tactless attempt to intimidate him. It was also vague. Was Jamie saying that if he didn’t stop seeing his sister, he’d end up in the same condition? Christ, it was as pathetic as it was infuriating. Nick went to toss the newspaper in the trash, but a second thought struck him. He’d taken the news story for a veiled threat. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Talbot’s murder was an example of what happened to Melanie’s boyfriends who didn’t take a hint. The strength went out of his legs, and he flopped into a chair at his kitchen table.

  Had Melanie’s brother killed this guy? It seemed incredible that he would resort to that. Nick couldn’t bring himself to believe it, but an itch at the back of his skull believed it was not only possible, but true. There was only one way to find out.

  He googled Miles Talbot’s murder. The hits revealed various incarnations of the story he’d read in the Chronicle. There were a few more column inches dedicated to announcing when the investigation went cold. None of the hits revealed the one fact Nick looked for—the name of a girlfriend. He called Wells Fargo and asked for Talbot’s extension. He received the expected awkward silence before the switchboard operator said, “I’ll transfer you. Hold one moment.”

  Nick was connected to Julia Chastain in the Private Clients Department, who spoke in a hushed tone. “You wanted to speak to Miles Talbot?”

  “Yes. Is he there?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave a message.”

  “You don’t know, then.”

  “Know what?”

  Julia gave him the CliffsNotes version. He acted suitably shocked and tossed in the factoid that he’d been an old college buddy of Talbot’s, which took him closer into her confidence.

  “How did his girlfriend take it?”

  “Melanie Lassen? I don’t know. I imagine she took it hard. Do you know her?”

  Nick sagged under the weight of the confirmation. It was as if his flesh couldn’t support the immense weight of his bones. It was an effort to speak, but he forced the words out. “Yeah, I know her.”

  Julia said something, but he wasn’t listening anymore. He thanked her and hung up.

  The guys in his office wanted to hit Gordon Biersch for lunch. He possessed the desire to drink, but not the thirst. He hit the streets instead. He stood in line at a SUBWAY but walked away before his turn came. He was wandering along Spear Street when a voice interrupted him from his thoughts.

  “Looks like you’ve read some bad news,” Jamie said.

  He had a smug look plastered over his face. Nick would have loved to wipe it off for him, but this wasn’t the time or the place, so he bottled his disgust.

  “Ha, ha, very funny.”

  Jamie fell in at Nick’s side. “I take it you’ve worked out the meaning.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be getting out of Melanie’s life.”

  “You can’t control her like this. She’s a woman, not a child.” Nick failed to keep his anger in check. “And you’re not her father.”

  “From that, I assume you’re going to continue with the relationship.”

  Nick didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t abandon Melanie. He guessed this was the decision Miles Talbot had come to and he had paid the ultimate price. Still, Nick couldn’t walk away.

  “The murder of a man isn’t enough of a deterrent for you?”

  “No. Not even if it was a dozen.”

  Jamie shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t make out if you’re dumb or brave, but I’m leaning toward the former.”

  Nick grabbed Jamie by the throat and slammed him up against the smoked glass windows of a faceless building. Jamie made no effort to fight Nick off. “You can’t break us up.”

  “It’s looking that way,” Jamie said with sincerity.

  A handful of people streamed from the office building. A couple of guys puffed themselves up to look more foreboding than they were. “We’ve called the cops,” one of the men said and held up a cell phone.

  Nick released his hold on Jamie and wiped his hands on his pants. “Just leave Melanie and me alone.”

  Nick backed away from Jamie as Jamie’s unwitting supporters closed in around him, asking him if he was okay.

  Nick turned his back on them and walked away.

  “Ask her about the others, Nick,” Jamie called out after him. “Talbot wasn’t an isolated incident.”

  ***

  Nick lay in Melanie’s bed. A sheen of sweat glistened on his chest. He’d made love to Melanie like it was the last time. It left them breathless, but for totally different reasons. He couldn’t get Jamie’s parting remark out of his head. What had he meant? He’d killed for Melanie before? How many times? Two? Five? A dozen? How did anyone get away with that many murders, and how did Melanie cope? She’d have to think she was some sort of kiss of death with a trail of dead boyfriends left in her wake. That was if she even knew they were dead. Melanie said her boyfriends had run out on her, not died on her. Christ, he should go to the cops, but with what? He needed something concrete to give them. If he went to them half-cocked, he’d achieve nothing beyond alienating Melanie and blowing any kind of future with her.

  “Wow, don’t look too depressed.” Melanie returned to the bedroom with a glass of water in her hand. She slipped between the sheets and pressed her naked body up against his. She offered him the glass and he sat up and took it. “You can’t be sad after all that.”

  “No.” He sipped the water. “I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Stuff.”

  She pinched his arm playfully. “Come on, spit it out. What’s eating you?”

  “I was wondering how important I was to you.”

  “Very.”

  “Really?”

  She took the glass from his hand and placed it on the nightstand. She took his face in her hands and stared directly at him. Her eyes shone with a brightness that blinded him. “At this very moment in space and time, you are the most important person to me.”

  “At this very moment.”

  She s
miled. “Yes. What’s all this about? Are you feeling insecure?”

  “I feel I know you and at the same time, I don’t.” This wasn’t a line. He really did feel this way. He hadn’t realized how much he felt this until Jamie had come on the scene. She was an open book to him. It was just that the words were written in a different language.

  Concern clouded her expression, but the remark pushed her away from him. She retreated to her side of the bed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything.” He took her hand in his. “Everything.”

  A single tear leaked from her right eye. “What do you want to know?”

  ***

  They held each other for a time, not saying anything. Then she told him to get up. He showered, and when he returned to the bedroom, she wasn’t there. He found her in the living room surrounded by boxes.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Get dressed and I’ll tell you my life story.”

  The boxes contained photo albums dating back to her baby years. She introduced him to twodimensional images of family and friends, past and present. It didn’t matter which photos she showed him; Jamie was always there, lurking in the corners, glued to her heels like an unwanted shadow.

  “Who’s that?” Nick pointed to a good-looking boy no more than twelve dressed in a Miami Vice sport jacket over a pastel tee and white pants. Melanie was at his side. The photo had captured some sort of school dance. It was the first picture that failed to feature Jamie.

  Melanie flushed and turned the page.

  “No secrets.” Nick turned the page back. He tapped the boy’s image with his index finger. “A first love, perhaps?”

  “Yes,” she conceded. “His name was Mikey Pryce. We went steady for six months.” She slapped a hand over her face. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

  “So how did Mikey break your heart?”

  She pulled back from him. The temperature in the room plunged. “He died.”

  Nick’s stomach clenched as a sense of foreboding overcame him. He forced out a single word. “How?”

  “Drowned during a family vacation.”

  Nick turned the pages. He pointed out something that lightened her mood, then steered her to a picture of another boyfriend. This sparked a long conversation about the boyfriends and girlfriends they’d both had. He pumped her for everything he could get, names, places, dates. His mind was on fire. He committed every detail to memory. Ask him to do this at any other time and he’d have never managed the feat, but tonight it was all about saving his life, and every nugget of data was stored. There’d been seven great loves in Melanie’s life, including Mikey Pryce and Miles Talbot. Each of these guys had skipped out on her. She didn’t make it clear whether they’d all been killed, but they’d all broken things off abruptly.

  “All my boyfriends have a habit of walking out on me one way or another.” She turned the page on Miles Talbot.

  Nick took the album from her. “I won’t. You have my word on it.”

  ***

  Seven people. It didn’t seem like a lot of people, but digging up seven life stories consumed time like Nick wouldn’t have believed. He possessed a newfound respect for the police. It took hours just to come up with one single facet of someone’s life. But Nick persevered. If he was going to serve Jamie up to the cops, this was how it would happen.

  He used every spare moment researching Melanie’s old boyfriends. This came at the expense of time with Melanie. He saw her twice a week, if he was lucky. She complained, but he blamed a big project at work for his absence, vowing to spend more time with her soon. On the plus side, Jamie stopped pestering him. If he was daring Nick to learn the truth, it looked as if he’d get his wish.

  Nick’s first break came with Mikey Pryce. He found a newspaper story detailing that the boy had drowned at a watering hole in Sacramento where the Sacto and American Rivers met. The competing currents had swept him away. Melanie had neglected to mention that she and Jamie were there too. Jamie had provided the eyewitness account to the police. Was he just thirteen when he’d committed his first murder?

  Looking for a pattern, Nick tracked down Melanie’s high school boyfriend, Trent Barber. Unlike Mikey Pryce, Trent was alive and well. He hadn’t strayed far from his Orange County roots. He was a sound engineer for the movies. Nick used the movie angle to get Trent to speak to him on the phone, but Nick soon found he was out of his depth when the movie talk got technical.

  “I hear we have a mutual friend,” Nick said.

  “In this business you need friends. Who is it?”

  “Melanie Lassen.”

  “Who are you?” The question came through gritted teeth.

  Nick saw no point in lying. “Melanie’s boyfriend.”

  “So what are you doing—checking up on her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you want to know about STDs, ask for a blood test.”

  “I’m more interested in her brother, Jamie.”

  Nick got the feeling Trent was about to hang up, but the mention of Jamie stopped him. Trent’s tone changed from anger to concern.

  “So, he’s given you the speech.”

  “What speech?”

  “Don’t fuck around. You wouldn’t be tracking down her high school sweetheart unless he’d given you the no-one-is-good-enough-for-my-sister speech.”

  “And what did you do about it?”

  “I blew the freak off. What do you think?”

  “I think he convinced you to stop seeing his sister.”

  Trent went silent for a good minute before speaking again.

  “I was a good tight end in school. Could have gotten a scholarship.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Jamie broke my hand with a hammer. Happy? Now, would you mind doing me a favor and go to hell?”

  Nick received similar accounts from Jonathon Tripp and Tommy Frist, both college boyfriends. Both took Jamie’s hints before bodily harm was involved. Matthew Warner wasn’t so lucky. He was an intern at a San Francisco architecture firm when he dated Melanie. They’d gotten real close, according to Warner’s sister, Penny. He was found at the Marin Headlands across from the Golden Gate Bridge with his throat cut. The police theorized the murder was a product of a carjacking, since his car had been found abandoned and burnt out in San Rafael. The only odd factor in the case was that Matt was discovered stretched out on a picnic blanket. When Nick hung up on Penny, she was crying.

  Mark Bale proved to be the exception to the boyfriend rule. He’d dated Melanie nine months before Miles Talbot did. He lived in the city, and he agreed to meet Nick at a bar on the Embarcadero.

  “Did you ever get a visit from her brother?”

  Bale turned his nose up. “Not really. He called me once but that was about it. He tried some line with me but I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “So, he didn’t scare you off?”

  “No.”

  “Then why’d you break up with her?”

  “Why’s this so important to you?”

  “Indulge me,” Nick said. “Call it a commitment thing.”

  Bale grinned. “She’s done it to you, hasn’t she?”

  If he meant made him fall in love, then yes. Nick grinned back but shrugged.

  “If you want the God’s honest truth, the reason Mel and I didn’t last was the plain fact that she got weird. I was ready to settle down, but then the vibe changed. I didn’t like it, so I called it quits.”

  ***

  Nick’s roommate yelled out, “Phone.”

  Nick answered it.

  “Good, I’m glad you’re in,” Jamie said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Melanie decided we should have a night out. I’ve got reservations for three at One Market for Thursday at eight.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d appreciate if it you didn’t make it.”

  “I would hate to disappoint Melanie.”

  “It would be the kinder thing to do.
”

  Nick ignored Jamie’s request and met them at the restaurant. Melanie’s face lit up when she saw him approach the table, but Jamie just scowled. Nick kissed Melanie and shook hands with Jamie. To Nick’s surprise and relief, Jamie chose to keep the dinner cordial. He and Nick may have exchanged penetrating stares, but that was as far as it went. Melanie led the conversation, choosing to reminisce about her childhood. As Melanie told it, every day had been a Norman Rockwell painting. Mikey Pryce’s drowning never even featured. Nick fought the urge to resurrect the ghosts. If Jamie was playing nice, so would he. Despite the circumstances, Nick was having an enjoyable time.

  After they finished their entrées, Melanie excused herself and retreated to the restroom. The two men in her life watched her go.

  “I told you not to come,” Jamie said. “This would be a good time to leave. I’ll provide excuses.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? I’m here for the long haul.”

  “Haven’t I shown you what’ll happen to you?”

  “Jamie, I have enough on you to go to the cops right now.”

  Jamie smirked.

  “I know about the others. All the way from Mikey Pryce.”

  Jamie’s smile faded.

  “I don’t want to turn you in because Melanie means so much to me, so I’ll give you a break. You leave now, and I don’t just mean the restaurant. I’m talking about the city, the state, the country, I don’t care. Just go. Leave us in peace.”

  Jamie picked up his glass and polished off the rest of his wine. “I can’t do that.”

  “Then this one is going to get messy.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Melanie rejoined them. “You two seem to be getting on like a house on fire.”

  “Truer words were never said,” Jamie remarked. His eyes sparkled with the irony of Melanie’s statement.

  “We’ve got so much in common.” Nick reached over and kissed Melanie. “Like you.”

  When the check came, a brief fight over who would pay for the bill ensued. Jamie won. Nick couldn’t help but feel he’d been provided his last meal. While Jamie waited for the waiter to return with his credit card and receipt, Nick took his chance.

  “I’ll check in with the valets for our cars.” He snatched up Jamie’s ticket stub.