The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He dropped the book as if he’d suddenly discovered that he was holding a poisonous snake. He grinned. “Sorry to give you a scare. I couldn’t resist it. I’m not I ghost. I’m your brother.” I didn’t say anything, so he kept on. ‘Yeah. It kind of surprises me, too, reading this book. I mean, you’ve done a lot of research. I don’t know how you could have missed me.”

  I fished around for something to say. “Dad never mentioned — ”

  “Damn right, he didn’t. Christ, would you go around rubbing your kid’s nose in your dirty laundry?” He laughed high and nutty, more like Richard Widmark than Dad. “But maybe the old man told you that kind of stuff. Maybe he bragged about the little actress he knocked up in ’58. Maybe you just forgot to put that in the book. If that’s the deal, it’s a shame, because you make the dirty stuff sing. Like that part where Dad kills your mother’s boyfriend? Smashes the little Frenchman’s head against the kitchen counter until the tiles crack? Man, I felt like I was there.” He cracked his knuckles. “Man, I could almost taste it.”

  “I did a lot of research,” I said. “Court transcripts. Crime scene photos. Things people hadn’t taken time to examine.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I get that.” He glanced at the book. “But you’re in there, too. I mean, I’m a slow reader. I’m only a hundred pages or so into it. But the old man has already smacked you around a good dozen times. That part where he puts on the gloves and says he’s going to teach you how to box? That was brutal. And Dad did throw a mean left hook. Remember the way he took out that pretty boy in Wrong Turn?” He stopped, looked at me kind of funny. “Amazing how you’ve still got that cute little nose after the beatings the old man dished out.”

  “Look,” I said, knowing I had to change direction. “What do you want?”

  He didn’t answer. In the bedroom, the phone rang. We listened as the answering machine picked up, heard the tinny voice of a producer leaving an eager message. The producer had been after me for weeks, following my book tour trail. He wanted to remake Dad’s best-remembered movie, Wrong Turn, and he wanted me to star.

  When the producer finished, the man who claimed to be my half-brother pointed a thumb in the direction of the phone. “I guess I just want in on the action. I mean, we’re family. We ought to look out for each other. Maybe you don’t want to make that movie. Maybe you could put in a good word for me. You got the book out of Dad. It seems like I should be due for something.”

  I stood on the stairs, and my hands became fists, and I couldn’t stop shaking. He was pressing my buttons, just dancing over them lightly, pressing just hard enough. The way people used to press Dad’s buttons in the movies, bip bip bip, time after time until he finally smiled his little smile and exploded.

  The way they pressed Dad’s buttons in Wrong Turn.

  “I think you’d better go,” I said.

  He was smirking, staring at my fists as if they were no more dangerous than feather dusters. He cracked his knuckles again. Thick ridges of scar tissue the color of spoiled meat seemed to swell before my eyes. “You’d better slow down.” He rubbed his nose, which was flatter than Dad’s, mocking me, and for the first time I noticed the net of bone-colored scars under his thinning eyebrows. “See, I’ve followed in the old man’s footsteps, too. Oh, I haven’t been in front of any cameras, unless you count cameras that shoot mug shots. I haven’t made any dog food commercials, like you have. I’ve followed the other path. I’ve bashed heads against kitchen counters. But just like you, I haven’t quite lived up to the old man’s example. You haven’t made a movie; I haven’t cracked any tile.”

  I couldn’t help it. His battered nose and scarred knuckles suddenly didn’t matter. I started toward him, wearing Dad’s smile.

  And I was surprised by how quickly he moved away and opened the door. “You think about it,” he said. “I don’t need an answer today. You think about family.”

  “I don’t need to think about anything.”

  “Oh yeah you do.” His gaze found the book. “Because there’s more to this than you and me. There’s our darling sister, too.” He shook his head. “Remember the things Dad used to do to bad girls in the movies? Remember how he’d get them to do the things he wanted? Remember what he did to that two-faced piece in Wrong Turn? And our sister… what you wrote about her… oh, man, she’s one bad girl.”

  He had finally pushed the button that stopped me cold. The best I could do was whisper, “You leave Jo out of this.”

  “Now Tommy m’lad, you didn’t leave Jo out of this, so why should I?” He stopped in the doorway for a moment, completely confident, not sparing me a backward glance. “Anyway, you think about what I said. You get in touch with that producer. I’ll give you today to get it done, and I’ll call you tomorrow. And then you’d better tell me what I want to hear, or else I’ll be driving down to San Francisco. I don’t like long drives, and I’ll be thinking of our darling sister the whole time.” He laughed. “And thanks for the free roost. This has been a relaxing three weeks.” He started across the pine porch. “Your mail’s on the kitchen table. There’s beer in the fridge.”

  I just stood there. Dad pressed down on me. Whispered in my ear. Told me what to do.

  But I didn’t do anything.

  My brother was gone.

  There was another phone in the kitchen. I had to look up Jo’s number in San Francisco. We weren’t on the best of terms. Hell, that was sugar-coating it. We hadn’t talked in five years, not since Jo got into trouble for smacking around her live-in lover. The incident made the papers, and the woman took her revenge in the courts. Lesbian battery case. The bastions of political correctness in S. F. seemed shocked by the very idea — like gay couples were immune to that kind of trouble.

  Jo came to me then expecting a sympathetic ear, and all I could do was make smart remarks. “Like father, like daughter.” The girlfriend hit Jo for a good bit of cash, and Jo got off with probation and counseling. The last I’d heard she was involved with one of San Francisco’s gay theatre companies, both acting and directing.

  That was pretty much it with us. Until now. I dialed her number and was rewarded with an unfamiliar voice which informed me that Jo and Gabrielle weren’t at home; I could leave a message at the sound of the deafening applause.

  Theatre people. Tres cute. But this wasn’t something to do on tape, no matter how anxious I was. Who knew what Jo would do if I came at her out of the blue with a sixty-second warning? She’d most certainly seen Killer Cassady. By now, she’d probably read the chapter where I connected her propensity to violence to the old man. If that were the case, I figured that my sister would be ready to eat me for breakfast.

  I told myself that Jo was tough. She was indeed like the old man. She could take care of herself.

  I cradled the handset. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know just what. I looked across the room to the place my brother had stood. Just doing that scared me. I made my way to the door, cautiously, as if I expected him to jump out at me. I closed it, locked it, remembering the steel in his eyes and his scars.

  Maybe he wasn’t my brother. Half-brother, I should say. Maybe he was just a nut. But even as the idea took hold, I knew it wasn’t true. He had the look, all right. He had the genes. And I had twenty-four hours to figure out how much he knew, and what he could do with that knowledge.

  I opened the fridge. The six-pack he’d left me was waiting. I popped a brew and sat down at the table. The key to the drawer I rented at the post office lay on the unfinished pine, along with a large stack of mail.

  The bastard hadn’t been kidding. He had picked up my mail.

  And, looking at the envelopes, I could tell that he’d opened it.

  Three weeks worth of mail. Not much for someone who lives as quietly as I do. I don’t go in for magazines and catalogs, mainly because my work involves travel. With the drawer, which is fairly large, I can miss a couple of weeks and still not have to notify the P. O. and
everyone who works there that I’m out of town and my place is ripe for burglary.

  Go ahead, call me paranoid.

  Hurriedly, I flipped through the mail. Mostly bills, junk. But there was a letter from the producer which had been forwarded by my agent, and a quick once-over told me that two things were missing from the large package — a contract and a script for the Wrong Turn remake.

  That set me to thinking. Maybe my half-brother hadn’t known about the movie. Maybe he had come here with a simple shake-down in mind. I cursed myself for leaving the key to the post office box where someone could find it. My mistake had probably given the idiot ideas.

  I sorted through the rest of the mail and found nothing else of interest, but I wasn’t finished. I wanted to be thorough. I dumped the garbage can in the sink and sifted through the trash.

  Hamburger wrappers. Beer cans. Crumpled cigarette packages. And, finally, another envelope.

  It bore no return address. I sifted through more junk and found a torn chunk of a letter from my credit card company. I remembered my drive from the airport, the clerk at the gas station informing me that my card had expired.

  The torn letter promised that “my new card was enclosed.”

  But the card wasn’t in the garbage.

  I knew where it was — in the wallet of a guy who thought that he was one step ahead of me.

  So, my credit card had been stolen.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. My half-brother was that stupid. He had fallen victim to the old man’s genes, all right. Punch your way out of problems. Snatch the easy opportunity. Don’t think ahead.

  That was the propensity that always got Dad into trouble. He’d snatch the fast answer because he couldn’t think ahead, and then he’d end up sinking deeper into trouble. It happened to him in Wrong Turn. In that movie, he kept the dead guy’s wallet because he was afraid of a murder rap. And then the shrewish hitchhiker entered the picture and tried to force him into assuming the guy’s identity so they could make a fast buck. Dad couldn’t think at all after she came into it. Just like that night in the kitchen when he caught my mother with that French dandy who specialized in playing the smartass kind of guy Dad loathed. He couldn’t think at all, seeing that guy with his wife. He could only react.

  That’s what my half-brother was doing. He was reacting, running the Wrong Turn playbook, but he wasn’t thinking.

  I was thinking, and fast. I called the credit card company’s 800 number and asked for a rundown of my latest charges. Several local restaurants turned up. Soule Domaine at Crystal Bay. Bobby’s Uptown Cafe at Incline. Better joints than I figured my doppelganger for.

  He was staying at the Cal-Neva Lodge on the north shore, the place Sinatra had owned before he made the mistake of inviting Sam Giancana to be his guest. It was a nice place, a tourist place. That didn’t seem to fit my half-brother, either.

  He’d had a room at the Lodge for two weeks.

  I hung up the phone. I had more questions.

  And the answers were just eight miles away.

  I stood in the lobby of the Cal-Neva, staring at the stuffed bobcat on the big granite fireplace, wondering if the big cat’s last memory was sticking his nose somewhere that it didn’t belong.

  I wandered over to the main desk. An old man was trying to weasel a couple of comp rooms out of the desk clerk. The old man’s young squeeze was busily tapping her toe. The trouble threw me off. I didn’t want to deal with a surly clerk.

  “Mr. Cassady?” A young woman stepped behind the desk. “Tom Cassady?”

  “Yes,” I smiled, playing it simple.

  “I just want to say… ” She blushed. “I think it was great what you did to that ass on television. I’ve been waiting for something like that to happen since the first time I saw him.”

  I kept the smile. “I just thought it was the right thing to do.”

  She nodded. “Well, it’s great to have you as a guest. If you need anything, my name’s Cheryl. You just ask for me.”

  I explained that I was picking up the tab for some relatives who were staying at the hotel. They were registered under my name, and I’d forgotten their room number. One fumbling description of terminal absent-mindedness later, I had a key. Obviously, Cheryl hadn’t run into my brother during the two weeks he had been registered. I began to wonder if he was really staying at the Cal- Neva, or if he had indeed stayed at my cabin, as he had claimed.

  I detoured past the bar — a round room paneled with rich wood. Mirrors above reflected the room’s harsh artificial glow and a stained glass dome high in the ceiling filtered the early afternoon sunshine, so that the bar was a strange mixture of hard and soft light. I heard a high-pitched Richard Widmark laugh rise over a chorus of clinking glasses. Saw the blushing cocktail waitress a second before I spotted the man in the hammerhead-colored suit circling her, his hard little eyes trained on her ample breasts, a long-neck beer bottle with a well-peeled label clutched in his right hand.

  I turned on my heel and didn’t stop moving until I hit the elevator button.

  I was about to slip the key into the lock when the door to Room 602 swung open.

  She was wearing a white robe and holding an ice bucket. A smile almost crossed her face, but she spotted my nose before it could take.

  “How did you figure it?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t hard. The Cal-Neva seems a bit toney for our friend. And the bills he rang up at Soule Domaine and Bobby’s Uptown were pretty extravagant for a guy who seems to subsist on hamburgers and cheap beer when he’s practicing his home invasion skills. It looked to me like he’d had some serious help with the wine list. Just domestic, or did someone named Gabrielle lend her expertise?”

  My sister took a step backwards. “You’re still a smartass.” She turned away. “Gabrielle didn’t work out, if you want to know. Just like the smart little Frenchman didn’t work out with mom. I mean, after a while all that quick wit shit just wears one down, y’know?” She shook her head, and a strand of dusky blond hair fell over her eyes, confident eyes that betrayed not one ounce of surprise. “I guess that was one thing you got right about me in your weighty tome. No one ever quite lives up to my expectations. I outgrow people. I outgrow habits. I move on to other things.” She slipped a slim tie from a lampshade, curled it between her fingers as if it were an exotic snake. “I like to push the envelope.”

  I followed her into the room and slammed the door. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Jo laughed. “Me?” She pointed at a copy of Killer Cassady which lay open on the nightstand. “I’ve got some explaining to do?”

  I wasn’t going to let her pull me off course. “I want my movie contract. And the script. I want my credit card.” I sucked a deep breath. “I’ve made some money lately. Sure. I’m not ashamed of it. I’ll pick up the credit card tab. We’ll call it square. You and Mr. Wrong Turn won’t have to worry about wasting any time in court.” Jo looked at me, Dad’s lips twisting on her pretty face, Dad’s eyes hard and unamused beneath her carefully plucked brows. “Did you really think you could get away with it, Tommy? Did you really just think I’d let it be?”

  “You’d better,” I said.

  She laughed at that. Her laughter was just like Dad’s, a hissing bray that branded me the most pathetically stupid thing on two legs. “I’ll tell you how it’s going to be,” Jo said. “Because we had it all set up, Tom and me. That’s his name, too, you know.”

  I let it go. Best to let her get everything out of her system.

  “I was the one who hooked the producer,” Jo said. “I met the guy at a party in San Francisco — he’s gay, but discreetly so. Anyway, I convinced him to remake Wrong Turn with my half-brother in the lead. I’d play the hitchhiker, because that would really push the envelope. A little taste of incest couldn’t hurt the box office. He thought that was real sweet.”

  “And then my book was published.”

  She nodded. “Right. And suddenly my little incest angle w
as very five-minutes-ago?” She ran a rough finger along my nose. “Maybe the producer thinks your nose is cuter than my Tom’s.” She reached for the phone. “But you’re going to change his mind; aren’t you, Tommy?”

  I stared at the phone, at my sister. Jo’s pouting lips twisted into that signature grin that always spelled trouble in Dad’s films, the same expression my half-brother had worn when he rose from my living room couch with a copy of Killer Cassady in his hands.

  I hated that look, even when I saw it in a mirror.

  “Do you know the number, Tommy?” My name hung there in the quiet room, dripping with sarcasm. “Or do you need me to dial it for you?” I didn’t move, and Jo lifted the handset. “And you thought you were so smart. Thought you’d come up here and set what’s left of your family straight, buy them off for the price of a couple dinners.” It was dark in the room, but her eyes were shining laser-bright.

  “Hey now… let’s think about this,” she said suddenly, replacing the handset. “Did you ever think of becoming a producer, Tommy? Just how much money did you make from that book, anyway?”

  Jo’s eyes burned with confidence. She was trying to cut me down to nothing. My hands were shaking. I smelled my own sweat.

  And then my world went black and white. I entered the world of Wrong Turn. I entered Dad’s world. I was in some cheap whore’s apartment, and I was beginning to understand that a complete idiot had outsmarted me once again. Jo’s eyes were slicing me to ribbons while her laughter marked me a sucker.

  And then Jo wasn’t laughing anymore. My fingers locked around the phone. The cord bit into her neck, and I tugged on the phone like a fisherman playing a big one on a whispering reel. A tight smile bloomed on my lips as I tried to cut off my father’s hissing laughter. The phone was hard and reassuring in my hands and I couldn’t wait for the cord to do its work because then I was going to smash the whole thing against my sister’s face, my father’s smile.

  Her eyes weren’t shining now. They were almost empty, nearly colorless. And she wasn’t laughing anymore. She couldn’t laugh; she couldn’t even scream.