Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  When he answered my knock, the look on Eddie’s face triggered my fight-or-flight instincts because he looked ready to deck me. I even took a defensive step back, clearing the way if I had to throw up a block.

  Instead, Eddie hit me with a glare that only felt like a punch. “What do you want?”

  “To make amends.”

  “More pity. You can keep it.” He started to close his door.

  I braced it open with my foot. “I want to take your case, Eddie.”

  I could see the smoke as he thought about it, mouth set to the side like when he entered the High Note the night before.

  “I’m good,” I said. “If there’s anything to be found, I’ll find it.”

  “You still don’t believe me.”

  “I’m kind of like a defense attorney. I don’t have to believe you to do my job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s up to me to dig for information, not make assumptions.”

  He shook his head. “I mean, why do you want to help me all of a sudden?”

  Because you’re my salvation, Eddie Arndt. You’re the guy that can keep me from worrying about my own problems. I didn’t say any of that. I threw out my usual excuse for taking a case when I had no other reason. “I’m bored.”

  That got a chuff out of him, even a little smile. “Least you’re honest.”

  “Best policy.”

  He swung his door open. “Good enough. Come in.”

  Not much to his apartment. A sofa. A flat screen TV. A coffee table with a glass top. An end table with a lamp. None of it matching in the least, a hodge-podge of consignment buys. With no other seating besides the sofa, I figured Eddie didn’t have much company to impress anyway.

  “Have a seat,” he said as he went into the kitchenette. “You want a beer?”

  “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “I don’t. But my cousin comes over to watch UFC a lot. His wife doesn’t let him drink at home.”

  I laughed and sat on the side of the sofa by the end table. A picture frame with a coat of dust on the glass stood beside the lamp. I recognized a younger Eddie, maybe by five years or so. His pallor looked better, his hair not so thin. I guessed the pretty blonde he has his arm around might have had something to do with that.

  Eddie came out of the kitchenette with a folding chair. He flipped it open and set it across from the sofa on the other side of the coffee table, sat down. Hands folded in his lap and a slight pinch to his face, he looked like a Catholic school student waiting for Sister Mary to rap his knuckles with her ruler. “So how does this work?”

  Ah, if I had five cents for every time I heard that question from a client, I could spend a week in Vegas on the nickel slots. “Simple. I charge a retainer. I track expenses. If the case stretches out past the retainer, I check in to see if you want me to keep going. From there it’s an hourly rate.” I ran over specific figures for him and watched his face grow all the more pale.

  “That’s expensive.”

  He was right. I charged unnecessarily on the high side, not because I needed the money. Obviously not. But I wanted to make sure my clients were serious. How much they were willing to invest on a case told me if it was worth investing my own time. The money I earned I donated to a cancer research organization.

  “It’s what I charge,” I said.

  He looked around him as if taking stock of all his possessions. The corners of his eyes crinkled. He worked his hands together in his lap.

  I spared him some agony. “What do you do for a living?”

  His gaze snapped back to me. “What? Oh. I work as a porter at the Honda dealership.”

  A porter? That was the kind of job kids picked up during summer break.

  I don’t know what Eddie saw in my expression, but I think he felt like I was judging him.

  “I wasn’t always a porter,” he said. “I used to work at Microplane as an engineer. I designed switches, mostly for cars. But with the auto industry tanking…” He shrugged one shoulder. “You know how it is.”

  Only I didn’t. I knew the state had fallen on hard times, but it was hard to see from the lofty heights of North Hawthorne. Those of us with money had to get our taste of the failing economy by watching cable news.

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  He waved a hand in a no-big-thing kind of way. “I have a job. Lots of people aren’t so lucky.”

  Now I looked around his apartment, a new kind of appreciation for what he’d managed to pull together on a porter’s salary. But if he used to work as an engineer, he couldn’t have always lived here. I thought about asking him, realized that might only salt an already sore wound. I had a better idea. “It’s customary for PIs to work pro bono every now and then.”

  His eyes lit. “Really?”

  Not really. But he didn’t need to know that. “Consider it done.”

  He raised his hands. “I don’t want to put you out.”

  I could just hear Bobby Quinn’s voice railing at me. Are you a bone head? Do you need a head X-Ray? Lucky for Eddie, I hadn’t worked with Bob in a long time. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like I need the money.”

  Wrong thing to say. His face darkened. “So helping me is what? Part of your hobby?”

  He nailed that pretty close to the head, didn’t he? Not a hobby, maybe, but something to do in your spare time to keep your poor tortured soul occupied. I squeezed the voice out of my head. It was only half right. I didn’t do PI work as a hobby, a distraction, or a job. I did it because it’s the only thing that makes me feel like me. Running the High Note, managing my inheritance, hell, living in Hawthorne—none of that was the true me. I might have a responsibility to honor my parents’ wishes, no matter how rough our relationship in the past. But that didn’t mean I had to give up the very thing that defined me.

  “That was insensitive,” I said. “I just meant that I want to help you. This isn’t a job to me.”

  He gave me a curious look. “What is it then?”

  The words came out of my mouth without much thought. “A calling.”

  I knew it sounded cheesy, but he didn’t scrunch up his face or laugh in mine. Instead, he nodded sagely as if I had passed some test. “Okay. Where do we start?”

  “We start with questions,” I said. “Lots of questions.

  I ran through all the standard questions—friends, romantic relationships, finances, job history—all the while thinking I was wasting my time. It didn’t much matter what his current life was like. I had taken on a case to investigate a crime more than twenty years cold. I did, however, get a fuller picture of how Eddie had evolved since high school. Graduated with honors from the University of Michigan. Got snatched up working for a big-shot engineering firm outside of Detroit. Then the economic explosion that blew him out of his comfortable life and into one that had drained all his assets and investments. He had even lived in North Hawthorne until he lost his job.

  What interested me most, though, was his romantic relationship with the blonde in the photo by the lamp.

  “Her name was Elizabeth,” he told me. “We were together almost four years before…” He hung his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Is this important? I mean, I didn’t meet Liz until way after high school.”

  Curiosity more than a need to know pushed me to nod. “You never know where a detail, no matter how insignificant it seems, can lead.”

  He looked up at me, his eyes red. He pressed his hands flat onto his lap to steady the tremors. “Liz was killed.”

  I hadn’t seen that coming. I fumbled for words, not sure how to follow up. Just kept thinking, Damn, has life kicked this guy in the balls or what? Tragedy seemed to chase him like a hungry puppy.

  Eddie didn’t say any more.

  Which left it up to me to get my shit together. “How?” I hated how obvious that question was, but what else could I say?

  His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. The wetness in his eyes made the
m shine in the lamplight. “We…oh, Christ…” He broke into sobs.

  My muscles tensed even as my chest ached. I thought again about how the proximity of disaster could suck a person in like a vortex. I didn’t want to get sucked in. I wanted to bolt out the door. Hence the tensed muscles. I had to lock myself down. After all, I had invited this into my life my taking his case. Taking a case meant making a promise. No turning back now.

  I felt like I should say or do something. Pat him on the back. Tell him it was okay. There, there now. I don’t know. I just sat there, though.

  Eddie got control quickly. I got the feeling he had had a lot of practice putting this pain back in the box he kept it locked in. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, drew them back across his face to smear the tears away. “Sorry about that.”

  “No need.”

  He chuffed. “You must think I’m pretty pathetic. Nothing but bad news, right?”

  “I think you’ve had it rough. No doubt. But you’re not pathetic. None of this was your fault.”

  “Liz…I shouldn’t have left her alone. It feels like my fault.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  He nodded, took a second to collect himself. While he did, I noticed a smell I hadn’t picked up right when I came in. A stale, earthy smell. Marijuana to be exact. So he didn’t drink, but he smoked weed. Guess everyone needed a way to drown—or choke—their sorrows.

  “We were on a cross country road trip,” Eddie said, voice wavering. “I planned on asking her to marry me on the beach in Los Angeles.”

  I wasn’t sure how Eddie’s life story could get any more depressing. Then he kept talking.

  “We stopped at the Grand Canyon. There’s a section you can stand at, no railing or anything. I don’t know why they let people go near there.”

  I felt as though my blood drained down to my feet. I could see where this was going.

  “I had forgotten the camera in the car. Liz wanted me to take a picture of her standing by the edge. When I came back, everyone was screaming and shouting, pointing over the edge. Somehow I knew. Before I even looked around to find Liz, I knew.” He pounded a fist on his knee. “It’s like I’m fucking cursed.”

  I didn’t believe in curses, but if he pushed, Eddie might have gotten me to change my mind. Once again, he left me speechless.

  “I shouldn’t have left her,” he said.

  “You couldn’t have known that would happen.”

  “I replay that day in my mind over and over. I feel like if I can just picture it clearly enough, I might somehow get back there, change things.” He jostled his head. “Stupid.”

  I felt like a jerk for making him go through all that. It didn’t have anything to do with his family’s deaths except for his incredibly bad luck. Still, I hadn’t entirely lied to him. Every detail paints a broader picture, each brush stroke a whole story on its own. You don’t know what can help with a case until it connects with something else.

  My keen detecting skills came up with one possible solution—Eddie really was cursed. He’d pissed off some Gypsy in his youth and had paid for it ever since.

  Marvel at my inductive reasoning. Sherlock Holmes, eat your cocaine addled heart out.

  While I tried to comfort myself with smartass humor, Eddie stared at me expectantly.

  I knew what he was waiting for. I felt like a shit for having to drag him through even more horrid memories. But we’d reached the crux. No more tap dancing allowed.

  I shifted on the sofa, my body torqued and restless. “We have to go back now.”

  The tip of Eddie’s tongue poked out and slid along his top lip. He screwed his mouth to one side again, an exact copy of the expression he wore into the bar the night before. “I’m ready.”

  “Let’s start simple. Why?”

  “Why do I think my dad is innocent?”

  I nodded.

  “Because I know him. I know he couldn’t do something like that. He loved us. Loved life.” He tossed up a hand and grunted in disgust. “I don’t care what it looked like. Dad didn’t do it.”

  “That’s all you have to go on?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  “No, Eddie. It isn’t. My job is to peel back at loose corners, find out what’s underneath. I’ve got no corners. I need a corner.”

  His puckered mouth shifted sides. His gaze drifted out of focus. His fingers tapped on his knee. “I don’t know. There’s nothing. I can’t think of anything.”

  “Think hard,” I said. “Go through that day in your head. I know it sucks. But if we’re going to get anything, I need you back there. I need you to find my corner.”

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, then let it hiss out between his tight lips like a failed whistle. He listed ever so slightly from side to side, on a boat traveling the ocean of memories.

  He stayed that way a good five minutes. The smell of the pot smoke seemed to thicken while I waited. The sofa was permeated with it. Not sure why it stood out so much now. I wondered if a toke or two wouldn’t help straighten Eddie’s nerves and help him remember. I wouldn’t object. I didn’t smoke, myself, but I wasn’t in any position to play judge when it came to others’ choices.

  Eventually, his eyes opened. I expected more tears gleaming there. He stared at me with dry eyes and perfect clarity. “Cops said nothing had been stolen. But there was something missing.”

  A cold shot in my chest. Did I hear a corner peeling up?

  “I told the cops back then, but they didn’t think it was a big deal. I didn’t either. It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  His reticence set my teeth on edge, but I kept my cool. It was just a buzz I got when a case started to move—even a little budge—that killed my patience. “Go on.”

  “A sticker.”

  “A what?”

  “A sticker. On my bedroom door. It was peeled off, left some of the backing behind and a sliver of the sticker itself.”

  A sticker? From a kid’s bedroom door? Not exactly the clue of the century—or even the day. Still, a professional asks for every detail, no matter how utterly mundane. “What was the sticker of?”

  He looked at the floor, hunched his shoulders. “A Guns N’ Roses sticker with art from the Appetite for Destruction album cover.”

  I loved Guns N’ Roses, even all these years after high school. This was the first hint of any commonality between us. Not much, but enough to make Eddie Arndt feel a little less foreign to me. Unfortunately, the sticker didn’t seem to signify much else. “Where did you get it from?”

  “A music store in North Hawthorne.”

  “A music store. I remember when those existed. Back in the good ol’ cassette tape days.”

  My levity didn’t reach Eddie’s side of the coffee table. He kept his head down and his shoulder nearly up to his ears. “Doesn’t help any, does it?”

  I didn’t want to lie, so I didn’t bother answering his question. “There isn’t anything else you remember? Anything out of place? Sounds? Smells?”

  “The smell. I remember that perfectly. I still smell it sometimes. I’ll catch a whiff while I’m driving or taking a walk outside. Once, I smelled it when I opened the fridge. I threw up for an hour afterward.”

  I knew what smell he meant. The stink of death.

  “The clock radio was on in my parents’ room. I even remember the song. ‘Heart Shaped Box.’”

  Nirvana. A grim coincidence considering how Curt Cobain had exited this world with a shotgun in his mouth. Strange how music had tied a theme to that day for Eddie. The sticker. The music on the clock radio in his parents’ room…

  Hold up a second. “You said Nirvana was playing on your parents’ radio?”

  His Adam’s apple bulged for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, a little choked.

  “Your mom or dad listen to alternative rock often?”

  His brow creased. “No.” He looked up at me, eyes full of the wonder of a child who had witnes
sed a magic trick for the first time. “You think it means something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a weird inconsistency.”

  “Like maybe the killer had left the radio tuned to that station.”

  I held up a hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “But you’re right. They hated that kind of music. My mom forbid me to play anything like it in the house.” He snorted. “I just used headphones.”

  “It’s odd, but so are the circumstances of your family’s murder. Who knows what was going through your father’s head—”

  “See? You’re still assuming he did it. You won’t look at anything because you’ve already come to your decision.”

  “I phrased it wrong. If your dad did it, he wouldn’t have been of sound mind. We can agree on that, right?”

  His curled lip told me he didn’t want to go there. He didn’t exactly nod, but he jerked a hand as if telling me to get on with it.

  “All I’m saying is, don’t pin your hopes on one little thing. It could mean nothing. Hell, maybe your dad secretly loved bands like Nirvana. You get me?”

  “Sure. Yeah.”

  Which meant, go to hell with your stupid theories, Ridley. I could deal with that. I got the same attitude from the folks who hired me to see if their spouses were cheating. When I showed evidence that they were, all of a sudden I was the bad guy for even suggesting such a thing. Never mind that they had hired me to find exactly what I had given them.

  “I have one more question,” I said. The big one. The one I had obsessed over since I woke up that morning. “Why now?”

  He started as if I’d shouted Boo! Not a good sign.