Long Shot

by Paul Monette

  Greg took it all in, but he already knew there was nothing here. The narrow bed unmade, a pair of disheveled wicker chairs, a bamboo table stacked with a week’s dishes. What Greg was after was a well of details—things that, taken together, showed Harry Dawes completely whole, before the story of Jasper Cokes consumed him. Greg wanted clues. The signs of a struggle, or maybe a trail of popcorn starting here and ending up at Steepside. He picked up a pair of shorts from the floor, folded them once, and laid them on the bed. Then a T-shirt balled in a knot, still hot with sweat from an afternoon’s run. He shook it out and draped it over the back of the chair. It seemed these bits of life could break his heart, but they couldn’t prove a thing.

  He sat on the edge of the other chair and tried to give it up. He was nobody, after all. So what if he turned up evidence that somebody’d kidnapped the modest man who lived in this bare room? Who would he ever take it to? The years of brush-offs had taught him one thing over and over: If you have no bureaucratic recourse—no producer’s desk to put it on, no agent’s name to drop—then whatever it is you’ve come up with doesn’t really exist. And if Greg was a crummy detective, Harry Dawes was a crummy victim. Nobody really cared. It was Jasper Cokes who got top billing. Any one of a thousand unemployed actors would have done fine as the young male drifter. No one was going to bother much with why this Harry Dawes had ended it all in his twenty-fourth year.

  He picked at the props for blowing dope that littered the wicker-table top. The eight-year gap between them figured forth wherever he turned. As a general rule, Greg wouldn’t allow a man in his life unless he could prove he was thirty-two. More or less was a whole other generation. It was as if he had no patience with people who hadn’t been through what he had. He ought to have known that a kid wouldn’t leave any interesting secrets lying about. Twenty-four wasn’t nearly eccentric enough. It took years. How could you track down the thread that led to their pimps and killers? A kid didn’t leave any traces at all.

  He and Harry had kept it clean from start to finish. Nobody lied to. Nobody scored on. The one night they spent in each other’s arms had barely brought them out of hiding. If love was what you called it, Greg had only been in that far for a little under an hour. It seemed the moment he said the word, Harry Dawes was gone. No wonder he was pissed. Like anyone else, he’d lost a hundred men in his time, but he never lost one to death before. He’d always supposed that loving and dying went on in countries that didn’t share borders.

  Now the walls were closing in. There was nobody good to blame it on. He knew he had no other choice but to let it go.

  The book was half under the telephone in the middle of the floor. He never would have noticed it if he hadn’t wondered, as he walked away, what the hell the number was. He probably ought to have it, he thought, in case he found it written in somebody’s book who swore he never heard of Harry Dawes. He knelt and peered at the dial, committing the seven digits to memory. He saw the phone was resting on a book, and he picked it up to read the title. No particular reason. When he saw it was Walden, he realized just how close he’d come. He probably would have been quite content to watch the rest on NBC, like everybody else.

  Walden was money up front.

  He crouched there testing the heft of it. Then peeled the back cover at the upper edge to check out the number of pages: 271. Print like a prayer book. Lucky for him, he didn’t much need the inside part. He knew the gist of this old book from a C/ C+ in American Lit: the shorefront cottage, the four pretty seasons out of Currier & Ives, and a man has to beat his own drum. When it came to reading, he preferred a thriller’s pace and a Hollywood angle. Still, he liked the serious feel of it in his hand. He’d have to give it a shot some day, for Harry’s sake. Then, suddenly, he saw his own name on the flyleaf. Dated today. And as he read the sentences meant for him, he felt himself grow oddly naked.

  April 3rd. To my friend Greg. I can’t find it right now, but he says somewhere how you can’t pull up a single flower without the whole universe coming up with it. Maybe, after you read this, we ought to go pull one up together. You say when. Love, Harry.

  All day long, he’d been acting just like Edna said, as if he was in a movie. Then, tonight, he passed across some time zone, out of one story into another. April third was a double feature. From the moment Harry left this morning, to buy him this book and go running, Greg had played at the failed writer. All afternoon, if he thought of Harry at all, it was purely carnal stuff. Two men twined like creatures underwater, rolling through the chambers of a coral sea. But that was all in the background, waiting till after dark. Greg was much too busy feeling failed to get all wrapped up in the simples of love. He had no idea he would end the day as a friend of Harry Dawes. Now that it was so, he had to dog this story down. He had to find his way through all the contradictions, all for the sake of a small affair that had lasted twenty hours. Maybe it wasn’t a movie at all. But if it were, there was one thing sure: A man didn’t die without a reason.

  He closed the cover on the final words and stowed the paperback Walden in his back pocket. Without another look, he left his friend’s apartment forever, determined to find just one good reason why they had to kill two men to get rid of Jasper Cokes. He’d done this much for Harry Dawes already: The cops would stop and think twice when they found the door of 2C blown open. Meanwhile, Greg came down the hallway, looking kind of sleepy. No one could have guessed what speed he had stored for the days ahead. To anyone looking out, he was doubtless much the same as ever. Lost in a dream and vaguely alarmed. By the time he got into the elevator, the pain in his eyes was faded into the general air of wistfulness. By the time he got off at the eleventh floor, he looked like anyone else.

  Vivien threw the door open and strode in ready to fight. The parlor was empty. She ventured in a couple of feet and drew a breath to shout. The bucket had cramped her arm, and the breeze that blew through the cottage shivered the skin on her naked back. She meant to bellow something like “Get out!” But even as the first sound broke, she froze. A burgundy leather briefcase stood by the Adam desk. A putty-colored trench coat lay on the chair. And a fear like a fit of madness knocked the anger out of her. “Jasper?” she whispered across the room, but not because they were Jasper’s things. They were Carl’s. What she wanted from Jasper was why.

  Then Carl himself came out of her bedroom, his Brooks Brothers suit all out of place. He was zipping up a garment bag that he cradled in one arm. His steely eyes hid out behind his tinted glasses. He wore a bush mustache that wasn’t there two months ago. Vivien had kept her distance from this man for the whole of her married life. The terror that had her by the throat, that kneed her in the belly till she thought she’d puke, came down to this: Carl Dana had finally cornered her.

  “Oh, Viv,” he said when he saw her—a trifle absent-mindedly, it seemed. As if he were surprised to see her. “I’ve started you packing. There isn’t much time.”

  “Put that down,” she ordered him tightly. Amazed at how little she cared for keeping up appearances. “In fact, why don’t you fuck off? Your twenty percent doesn’t cover me.”

  “Can we argue later? We got a plane waiting.”

  “I guess you better hurry, then. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She decided to act as if nothing had happened. She walked across the parlor toward the kitchen, seeming to forget she was numb with fear. It didn’t appear to get in her way that she had nothing on. She’d got it into her head that Carl was here to bring her back for another round of publicity. A special appearance at the Oscar ball, with her and Jasper together again for the first time in over two months. If she’d stopped to think, she would have realized the show was over. At the earliest, they were seven hours’ flying time from Hollywood, even if they started right away. But she was too scared to think. She only knew how sick she was of the stories Carl put out. She wouldn’t play wife to Jasper Cokes. She wouldn’t sit for pictures.

  “Hey, Viv,” he said as she passed abreast. The vo
ice was so gentle she could have screamed. “Didn’t Artie call you?”

  “There’s no phone.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. It’s Jasper.”

  Of course she knew. But she kept on walking forward into the kitchen. She heaved her bucket and tipped it into the sink, till the clams all clattered out. Then she turned to the white tin cabinet. She jerked the warped door open, filling the room with a sound like cymbals. Years ago, these shelves were crammed with all the kitchen necessaries. She put out an automatic hand to the spot where the clam knives used to be. But no. She’d lost the thread of this whole idea. She stood there, rubbing the purpled crease in the crook of her arm, and started to cry at last, as if to palm the crying off on a patch of local pain. There wasn’t any doubt she was naked now.

  “How did you find me?” she asked him, still not turning around.

  “He slit his wrists in the bathtub,” Carl replied, as if trying to get what he could into just a few words. “Him and this other guy.”

  What other guy? The last she heard, he was unattached. They both were. Still, they’d only talked by telephone these last two months, and maybe Jasper never found the moment ripe for naming names. If he thought he had to keep her in the dark, it must have been awfully serious.

  “Me, I’ve been in New York,” Carl said. No time to wait till she asked him. “I figured, since I had the plane, I better pick you up. Otherwise you’d have to wait till morning. The press’d be all over you.” When she didn’t nod or say a word, he took another step and threw the blame on someone else. “It was Artie’s idea,” he said. “He promised to call and break it to you.”

  The name shot through her like a pang of relief. She realized all she had to do was hang on now till she got to Artie. He’d know. Whereas Carl, whose trade was hype, could only talk in lies. She turned around icy and dry-eyed, determined not to give him the satisfaction of watching her fall apart.

  “There’s no phone,” she said as she crossed to the bedroom. “I’m all ready. The bank can send my things. What bathtub?”

  “No, no,” he corrected, two steps behind her. Leaning in at the bedroom door. “I meant the outside tub.”

  This wasn’t at all what he said before. If he had, she would have asked him just how that could be. Carl knew as well as she did, surely. Jasper wouldn’t go near it. He said it made him queasy to sit in hot water. It turned his muscles to rubber. So somebody must have got it wrong. Unless—did people bent on dying get so they didn’t mind a bit of discomfort? Why was it she couldn’t stop looking for holes? She felt like she wanted to answer back, to everything Carl was telling her: “You’re wrong.”

  “What other guy?” she said out loud.

  She slipped on a white silk dressing gown. Then packed a dark knit suit in a carry-on—shoes and makeup and all. She’d dress on the plane. She listened to what Carl said about Harry Dawes with only half an ear, assuming it was lies.

  “You know the type,” he said. “Kid drifts in from nowhere. Finds he can’t make it. Gets attached.” But all of this could wait. He had another case to plead. “Viv, I know what you’re thinking. Me and Artie weren’t careful enough. I don’t say you’re wrong. But you got to understand, this whole last picture was a real bitch.”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” Vivien answered distantly.

  She flipped off the light and walked towards him. He shrank back as she zigzagged through the living room, dousing every lamp. The darkness fell behind her as she left. Carl had to move double-time to keep up. He’d scarcely retrieved his attaché before she was out in the drive. But she didn’t go forward toward the car—its headlights lost in the cedars, engine running high—until he joined her. She stood with her head turned up the hill. She looked to be checking the weather.

  “Aren’t you going to lock it?”

  “What?” she asked. Pulling away from the scent of lilies reeling down off the upland field.

  “The house. We have to close it up.”

  “Why?”

  Why, indeed. She walked across the grassy court to the waiting BMW. The driver, whom she knew to be the pilot of the Willis jet, leapt out at his side and held the rear door open for her. As she scooped up the long white folds of the robe, she might have been setting out late for a party. And Carl, who’d lost the lead the moment she walked in, got in beside her now without a word. He’d had his fill of trying to second-guess her. Or perhaps they’d reached the point where they could keep a proper silence. The car pulled out, and he fiddled with the latches of his attaché, as if he had plans to bury himself in work.

  “I never read the script,” she said. “It’s a western, right?”

  “The Broken Trail.”

  “And what’s it about?”

  She knew he wouldn’t pass up the chance to talk a picture up. The word-of-mouth was everything. Besides, he was more than glad to take a break from the other matter. If he thought she was acting oddly unaffected by it all, he gave no disapproving sign. To him, she probably wasn’t any odder than usual.

  “It’s about this loser,” Carl began.

  As to how she felt herself, she would have sworn she was going mad if she hadn’t been gripped by such a sudden fury. The grief was nothing yet, but all her pent-up terror had loosed its hold when the rage came on. Her moods were usually rhythmed like the tides, by forces off the earth, so she wasn’t much given to finding cause. But why this anger? What was wrong? Surely it was more than Jasper dying. She desperately wanted an enemy, and she wasn’t sure Carl was good enough. She’d have liked to be all alone just now. But the fact that Carl was here as well insured one thing: He wasn’t free to dispose of Jasper back at Steepside, changing around what didn’t work like so many cuts in a script.

  “So he follows this bandit’s getaway route,” said Carl, “from San Francisco all the way to the Mexican border.” Carl liked his stories two lines long, as tight as a joke. “He’s trying to find the guy’s last hideout. There’s supposed to be a fortune buried there. The thing is, it’s been lost a hundred years.”

  They reached the end of the cedar alley. The BMW turned off the dirt and tripled its speed on the main road. She thought how, in the days ahead, anyone peering in at her window would say she was only gone for a swim. She sat back now so the wind blew on her face. It suited her present air of disconnectedness that an aura of her lingered here. It meant she would return. When all the dying was over at home, she would bring the grief back here. For now, she let the whole thing go—the paradise bit and the island girl together.

  Then, without any warning, the wind was full of nothing but the sea. She couldn’t smell lilies, no matter how deep she breathed. It was as if they’d driven across a border where all one’s finer sentiments withdrew. If she remembered right, the lilies had always grown more and more faint when she drove off long ago. They vanished by degrees. Tonight, the perfumed air stopped cold, and she caught the rougher scent of the world at large—blurred and nameless and raw.

  “Well, does he find it?” she asked him finally.

  “You mean the loot?” He sounded like he didn’t know. “It’s hard to say. The ending’s kind of a trick.” At that, he seemed to struggle. She wondered if he had his doubts as to whether he ought to tell the trick. He cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “we still have an awful lot to decide.”

  “Later,” she retorted sharply.

  It must have killed him to yield to her, but he had no say unless she asked, at least till Jasper was in the ground. By common consent, a widow still ran her own show, whether or not she had a publicist in residence. With Vivien, it was something even more. Her whole life long, she’d had this fear that came on her like a fever, such that she always failed in the maze of death at the first or second turning. Tonight there was none of that. The fury she rode would not be stopped. It made its own road over anything put in its way. Especially the likes of Carl.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Vivien brightly. “You just wait
till we’re over the Rockies. We’ll still have a whole half hour to decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “Who to put the blame on, you or me.”

  “Vivien darling,” Carl replied with a weary sigh, his temper razor thin, “don’t you know a thing like this is never someone’s fault?”

  “Shove it, Carl,” she snapped at him—meaning to tempt him further if she could. “You save that shit for the cover of Time.”

  They made the run to the airport. Far down the fields on either side, she saw the blue of landing lights. She could scarcely wait to be airborne—all locked up for seven hours, and nothing to do but fight. She looked across at his shallow profile in the dark. If she had it her way, they’d be rolling in the aisle—biting, pulling hair—before they reached the mainland. She burned to make him suffer it more than she. Burned to be, as between the two of them, the one who would survive it.

  “You act like you’re the only one got left behind,” he said. “You think I don’t hurt? I feel like I just lost a brother.”

  “What you just lost,” she said, “is a job.”

  They came in under the wing of the Willis jet. A steward stood on the tarmac, a fat white towel over one arm—as if someone was just coming out of a bath.

  “And I don’t need you,” said Carl, with a finger triggered as if between her eyes, “so lay it on someone else.”

  “What you’re going to need, Mr. Twenty Percent, is an alibi.”

  The pilot opened Vivien’s door. The steward opened Carl’s. For a moment, no one emerged from the back of the car.

  “An alibi for what?”

  “Whatever’s been done,” she said with a shrug, and gathered her things and left him there.

  The night air all around was empty of every island flower. The breeze was soft. The sky full-domed. Vivien hurried across to the waiting jet as if she were in an awful rush.

  She didn’t know what she meant at all.