Dr. Jillian DeMarais—called Jilly by those of us who have slept with her—had a two-room suite on the twenty-third floor. There were four paintings hanging on the walls of the outer room—Degas, Matisse, Chagall, and van Gogh. The few times I had been there, I had always been attracted to the Degas. This time I stared at the van Gogh. It was a print of one of Vincent’s swirling color-and-light shows, and for a moment I felt I actually knew what he was going for.
How crazy is that?
“May I help you?”
The voice came from the inner room, Jillian’s office, and the place where she actually did her headshrinking. A moment later she was standing in the doorway.
“Rushmore McKenzie,” she said slowly.
“Hi, Jilly.”
I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.
“I don’t know what to say, McKenzie. The last time I saw you, you were telling me what a nasty person I was.”
“I’m very sorry about that,” I said, and I meant it. Yet it was hardly my fault. Jill had hypnotized me to help me recall a license plate number. While I was under, she asked why I had broken up with her several months earlier. I told her the truth.
“I never meant to hurt you,” I said. “I tried to avoid hurting you.”
“You did anyway.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Truly I am.”
“Tell me. If I’m such an unlikable human being, why are you here?”
“Jill, the dream came back.”
Her hard face softened. Not much—you had to look closely to see it, yet it was there.
“I told you it would,” she said.
“I know.”
“Come in.”
Jillian led the way deep into her office. She maneuvered around her impressive desk and sat down. She told me to do the same with a gesture of her hand toward a wingback chair in front of the desk.
“Is the dream exactly the same as before?” she asked.
“It started that way, but now . . . I see it in slow motion. Other elements have been added, too. Things that occurred after the shooting.”
“But all dealing with the shooting.”
“Yes.”
“When did the dream return?”
“The other night, when I was in jail.”
“Jail?”
“It was a bogus charge. I was in and out in just a few hours.”
“But that’s when the dream returned?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do to get thrown in jail?”
“It was nothing—a hassle with a young cop who was out of line.”
“He was out of line?”
“Yes.”
“Not you?”
“Well. . .”
“Well?”
“I could have handled it better.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because I don’t.”
Jill pressed her fingers against her temples and sighed. “I should never have allowed you to quit therapy,” she said. “I should never have agreed to date you.” She closed her eyes and shook her head at the memory of it. When she opened them again, she reached for a notepad. “I’ll give you the names of a couple of therapists I know. They’re good men.”
She emphasized men.
“Can’t you help me?”
“Not this time.”
“Can’t you—Jill, I dream the dream when I’m awake now. I dreamt it just a little while ago in the elevator.”
“McKenzie, I can’t be your therapist anymore.”
“Why not? You know my history.”
“It’s unethical, and this time there’s no pretending that it isn’t.”
“Jilly. . .”
“Ahh, Mac. Don’t call me that. Those days are over.”
“Jilly, I need your help.”
“I can’t be the one to help you.”
“That’s silly.”
“Those are the rules.”
“Rules are made to be broken.”
“Are they, Mac?”
“Some are.”
“Some?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you shoot Benjamin Simbi?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you shoot him?”
“He had a gun.”
“What else?”
“What else? He was going to shoot me. Maybe the others as well.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You already know what happened.”
“Tell me again. Tell me what you see in your dreams.”
“I see him coming out of the convenience store. He’s carrying a gun. A Smith & Wesson .38. I tell him to drop the gun. He doesn’t drop it. Instead, he raises his hands to shoot me. I shoot him first.”
“Go on.”
“What else is there?”
“What happened after you shot him?”
“I made sure he was disarmed.”
“What else?”
“I called it in.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else happened?”
“You mean the two people who witnessed the shooting? One of them called me a racist.”
“Why?”
“Because he said I executed the suspect. He said Simbi was raising his hands to surrender when I shot him.”
“Was he?”
“Jill, I did everything right. I did everything the way I was taught to do it, the way I was trained. I did everything according to the book.”
“According to the rules.”
“Yes.”
“And you never break the rules.”
“Not those rules.”
“Why not?”
“Break those rules and people die.”
“Someone did die.”
“I know. Don’t you think I know that?”
“Simbi had a gun.”
“Yes.”
“You told him to drop the gun. He didn’t.”
“That’s right.”
“Instead, he raised his hands.”
“Yes.”
“The gun was in his hand.”
“Yes.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Was he trying to surrender?”
“Yes . . . I mean . . . I don’t know.”
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The silence was filled with the shouting in my head.
You didn’t know. You didn’t. He could have been raising his hands to surrender. Only you didn’t wait to find out. Instead, you shot him. You shot him because that was what you were taught to do. You shot him because those are the rules. A man has a gun. You tell him to drop it. He raises the gun, you don’t take that chance. You shoot him. Period. There’s no room for argument here. No discussion. You shoot first and ask questions later, because if you stop to ask questions first, you could be killed. Others—civilians, the people you’re paid to serve and protect—they could be killed, too. So you discharged your weapon. A righteous shoot. A textbook shoot. Everyone agreed. Everyone that mattered, anyway. But everyone wasn’t there, were they? You were there. And you don’t know. He could have been giving up. It only would have taken a second to find out for sure. Except you didn’t have a second. A second’s too long. A second is an eternity. It’s the difference between life and death. That’s how you were trained to think, and you were trained well. All sevens all the time. If only he had dropped the gun. You gave him a chance to drop the gun. No, not a chance. A choice. It’s stupid to give them a chance. They could kill you if you gave them a chance. So you say, “Drop the gun. Or die.” Simbi didn’t drop the gun. He raised his hands. And that was that. Except, what if. . . You never thought about that, did you? The great what if. You never considered the possibility. Not in all these years. The possibility that you were wrong. You only pretended to deal with it. Even when you first went to Jilly you were more interested in her intelligent eyes and athletic body than you were in dealing with the truth of that lo
ng moment in the convenience store parking lot. The truth that you might have made a mistake. An error in judgment. And when the dream went away, well, out of sight, out of mind, right? Only it wasn’t out of mind, was it? And now. . . .
“Fuck.”
I noticed for the first time that Jillian was on her phone.
“I’ll send his file right over . . . No . . . I appreciate this, Doctor. Thank you.”
She hung up the phone and wrote on a notepad printed with her name and address. After a few flourishes of pen against paper, she tore the top sheet off of the pad and gave it to me. I stared at it dumbly while she spoke to me.
“This guy is the best. Dr. John Ridge. You have an appointment with him at 10:00 A.M. next Tuesday. I’ll arrange to send your file over.”
“Jill—”
“Promise me that you’ll keep the appointment.”
“Jill—”
“Promise me, McKenzie.”
“I did the right thing when I shot Simbi, Jill. It was the right thing to do.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
A few minutes later, Jill was leading me to her door. My cell phone rang, and I paused to answer it.
“Got a pencil?” Bobby Dunston asked.
“Just a sec.” I took a pen from my pocket. “Go ‘head.”
Bobby recited Richard Nye’s current address. I wrote it down on the back of the sheet of paper that Jillian had given me.
“Thanks, Bobby,” I said.
Jill was staring at me when I deactivated the cell.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “Tuesday morning.”
“I’ve been such a prick to you, Jilly, yet twice now you’ve been there to help me. Why is that?”
“Don’t worry about it, McKenzie. You’ll be getting a bill.”
11
I took a deep breath, let half out, and began marching down a long corridor on red carpet that looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed since Bill was president. I halted at an apartment door, made sure it matched the address Bobby had given me, and took another deep breath, steeling myself, getting ready. I was nervous, but I was also happy—happy to be out and doing. I didn’t want to think about my conversation with Jillian. I didn’t want to linger over the experience at all.
A murmur of voices came through the door, but no words could be understood. I stopped listening and knocked. A shadow passed over the spy hole and the door was yanked open. At the same time, a TV studio audience erupted into frenzied applause.
I took him in all at once, tall and husky, with imposing muscles—prison gym muscles. My first thought was that they were so big they would get in the way if he should ever attempt to throw a solid punch. He was wearing a white tank-top undershirt and jeans, both noticeably snug. He was tanned, but it wasn’t a healthy color. There seemed to be a tinge of green mixed with the gold. As advertised, his hair was blond and cut close to the scalp so that he resembled a Nazi officer in a World War II movie. Self-indulgence was written in his eyes.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“Mr. Nye?”
“Come in, come in.”
“Don’t you want to know who I am first?” I asked.
“Why?” Nye smirked as he examined the bruises on the side of my face. “Do you think I should be afraid?”
I didn’t say.
“I know who you are,” Nye said. “You’re McKenzie. I’ve been expecting you.”
Expecting me?
I entered the apartment. The room smelled of stale beer, old food, unwashed sheets, and dirty socks and underwear. I could see the kitchen from where I stood in the hallway. The sink contained dozens of encrusted spoons, forks, knives, pots, and pans, but no cups, saucers, or plates. Instead, next to the refrigerator was a wastebasket overflowing with paper plates and plastic cups, as well as TV dinner trays, pizza wrappers, and empty beer cans.
“This way.”
Nye led me deeper inside a living room that contained an ancient overstuffed chair and a TV set mounted on a stack of newspapers three feet in front of it. One of those daytime group-hug programs was being broadcast—I didn’t know which one. Nye moved to the set and reduced the volume to a dull roar while I glanced around. There was no other furniture, only small piles of rubble, mostly beer cans and empty chip bags. Compared to this mess, I figured my house looked like the Taj Mahal.
I gazed out a pair of sliding glass doors that led to a small balcony. A courtyard lay beyond. A young woman reclined on a lounge chair on her balcony directly across from Nye’s. The harsh sunlight made her bikini-clad body shimmer like gold.
“Nice view,” I said.
“Bitch doesn’t even close her drapes, you believe that?” he said.
That’s when I noticed the binoculars resting on the top of the TV.
Nye had a jailhouse smile, insincere and off center. I had no doubt that he would shove a shiv in my back for the change you could squeeze out of a parking meter. Or a turn with the woman he had been peeping.
“You said you were expecting me,” I told him.
“You’re workin’ for Merodie. Yeah, I figured you’d be around.”
“How do you know I’m working for Merodie?”
“I have my sources.”
Nye’s eyes moved away and began slithering about the apartment, taking a nervous survey of windows and doors with the watchfulness of a paranoid. Then they came back to me.
“So, what do you want?” he asked.
“When did you last see Merodie?”
Nye stuck his thumbs in his belt and swayed side to side, but slowly. He nodded his head while I spoke, like a boxer taking instructions from his corner, all the while staring straight ahead at his opponent, giving me the mad-dog. Despite the air-conditioning, a light film of perspiration glazed his forehead.
“I haven’t seen her in over a year, and it ain’t been long enough, that’s for sure.”
“A year?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why? What did Merodie say?”
“What makes you think Merodie said anything?”
Nye was angry. He moved in close. You could have covered us both with a small umbrella.
“You want a piece of me?”
My hand drifted to the opening of my jacket. The butt of the Beretta was only inches away, and in my mind’s eye I could see Nye on his knees begging my forgiveness, begging for his life. I was sorely tempted by the image, wanted to see it played out in real life, and would have pulled the nine, yes, I would have, if not for a second image that immediately replaced the first—the disappointed visage of Dr. Jillian DeMarais shaking her head and admonishing me: See what comes of playing with guns?
I let my empty hand hang loosely at my side and stepped back, putting space between us, giving myself plenty of room for hands and feet should the need arise.
Nye laughed it up. No doubt he thought that moving away from him meant I was frightened. My temper started to beat a high-tempo riff deep in my throat, but I swallowed it under control.
“You lived with Merodie for a long time,” I reminded him.
“Too long,” Nye said.
“You beat her up.”
He gave me a smile that knew both humor and cruelty. He chuckled when he said, “I wouldn’t want it to get around, but the truth is, she beat me up. She put me in the hospital.”
“You were in the hospital for a day. Merodie was in for over a week.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was in jail by the time she got out.”
“How did you like jail?”
“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
Nye thought that was so funny he laughed for a good half minute. It annoyed him that I didn’t join in.
He asked, “So, what you want, McKenzie?”
“You were busted for dealing meth.”
“What of it?”
“Who do you think ratted you out?”
“Coulda been lots of folks.”
“Could have been Merodie.”
“Coulda been. If it was, I gotta tell ya, it was the best thing she ever did for me.”
“Is that right?”
“Dealin’ meth was a good living, I ain’t gonna lie to ya. Before I got boxed, I moved a whole pound of methamphetamine every month. At a thousand to fifteen hundred per ounce, that’s a lot of tax-free coupons, baby! And I wasn’t just dealing to speed freaks, neither. My customers, I had yuppie businessmen, bored housewives, college kids on a rave—anyone who wanted a two-, three-hour ride. Basically the same customers who made cocaine such a big thing. One customer, a woman, bought a quarter gram of crank the last Friday of every month cuz that was when she cleaned her house, one of those big Victorian mothers with three floors and eighty rooms. She’d swallow the meth and then go into a Speedy Gonzales routine, cleaning that sucker from top to bottom in a single day.
“Only between the Mexicans and the fucking bikers, it wasn’t exactly a healthy lifestyle, you know? Besides, crank is bad, man. Messes you up real good. Makes you paranoid, makes you think everyone’s out to get you. ‘Course, in my case, that turned out to be true, didn’t it?” The laugh again. “ ’Cept I don’t know who dropped a dime on me. Coulda been Merodie. Coulda been the Mexicans. All I know is all of a sudden the county cops were all over my ass, searching my car until they found my stash hidden behind the hubcap. Eleven months, three weeks in the Anoka County Correctional Facility, doin’ nothing but pumping iron and watching cable.
“But I got clean. I got outta the game. And I ain’t goin’ back. That ain’t no lie. You could say I learned the error of my ways. I didn’t get religion, okay? I didn’t turn into no pussy in eleven months. Only meth, man, that ain’t no way to live. Don’t need no building to fall on me to learn that, no sir. And if Merodie is responsible for that, well, thank you, Merodie.”
Dead Boyfriends Page 19
