Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  Think positive, Ayres thought. All good things come to those who wait.

  42

  JACK FLOORED THE ACCELERATOR and fishtailed through the traffic, almost causing a major accident with an ice-cream truck on the 405.

  Oscar thought about saying something, but he could see there was no point to it. Jack was obsessed.

  “Try Julie,” Jack said. “I want to see if Kevin has come home.”

  Oscar punched in the buttons, waited as they headed south, past the Getty Museum.

  The phone rang, once, twice, a third time. Then Julie picked it up.

  “She’s here,” Oscar said, handing the phone to Jack.

  “Hello, Julie.”

  “Hey, baby.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “At your place. Sitting in the dining room, grading papers.”

  “You heard from Kevin?”

  “Not yet. They’re a little late. Guess he and Charlie stopped at 7-Eleven to get a Slushy.”

  “Jesus!” Jack felt electric anxiety shooting through his arms and legs.

  “Julie, listen, if Kevin does show up, you get him out of there. Right away. And if Charlie is with him, don’t tell him where you’re going.”

  “What? Jack, what are you saying?”

  “Go to your sister’s place, and don’t tell anyone. But especially, don’t tell Charlie.”

  Julie gnawed the end of her eraser.

  “Jack, what is this all about?”

  Jack felt a wave of nausea pass over him. There was no use hiding the facts any longer.

  “It’s Charlie Breen, Julie. He’s our guy.”

  “Jack,” she said. “C’mon. That’s crazy. Why, if Charlie would have wanted to hurt Kevin or any of us, he could have done it three times over by now. And he was beaten up by whoever is the real bad guy.”

  “That was a ploy,” Jack said. “His brother Terry stole our computer while we were out and Charlie was at the baseball game with Kevin. But he didn’t find what he needed because it was on my old computer, which is stored up in the closet.”

  “Jack, you’re sure?” she said. “Charlie? Good God!”

  “I know,” Jack said. “It’s a shock. But trust me, this is how it is. I’ll tell you the rest later. Just make sure you get Kevin away from him.”

  “Jack, they must be together right now.”

  “I know,” Jack said, feeling like he was going to puke. “If he does have Kevin, he’s going to call me. If he does call home, switch him here at once. And try to sound normal. We can’t spook him.”

  “Okay, Jack,” Julie said. “I love you.”

  “Me, too,” Jack said.

  They both hung up and Jack tore down the freeway.

  “Where the hell would he go, Osc? Christ, he wouldn’t take Kevin if he didn’t have a hiding place all picked out. But where the fuck is it?”

  Oscar said nothing, only stared straight ahead, lost in thought.

  43

  THE OLD WAREHOUSE in San Pedro was a ramshackle dump, with tiles falling off the roof, and rats and mice scampering around the nearby docks. Ayres had owned it for years. Originally, he’d thought of building Charlie Breen’s Deckhouse right here in funky old working-class San Pedro. But certain business transactions in the diamond trade during his years in South Africa had left him a wealthy and wise man.

  So he was able to “convince” a real-estate mogul in Malibu — who had owed a tremendous amount of money to Roy in gambling debts — to let him have the Malibu property for a song. So that was where The Deckhouse ended up being built.

  Roy had planned to sell the San Pedro place, but for some reason he wasn’t even aware of — not back then, anyway — he knew that he had to hang on to it.

  Now, of course, he knew why he needed it.

  Jimmy had filled him in.

  Jimmy always told him what to do — not always right away (which was sometimes more than a little frustrating!), but eventually he’d let Roy know by calling him on his cell phone.

  Take now, for example. It had just been a little over two years ago when Jimmy had contacted him on his cell phone to let him know what his plans were. Charlie hadn’t expected to hear from him, was in fact at a Dodgers game with the very boy he had in the trunk right now. Kevin Harper.

  Then the call came on his phone and he looked down at the screen and saw it, just like a trailer for a movie.

  Exactly like that.

  The trailer for Jimmy’s great, unmade movie. Of course, he didn’t tell anyone how the movie flickered to life on the screen, how only he, Roy Ayres, could see it.

  If people had heard about such a thing, they would have thought he was stone nuts.

  But they were wrong. Very wrong.

  They didn’t know shit about the movie. No, not at all. They didn’t know how it had come about, exactly two weeks after he’d buried his son. Buried brilliant, soon-to-be-great movie director Jimmy in the ground, up near the Angeles Crest.

  What they didn’t know was that two weeks after he’d been buried there, among the pine trees and the great boulder — exactly two weeks later — Roy had received his first motion picture on his cell phone.

  At first it was just a kind of blur of images: a tree, a rock, something with claws that scurried across a parking lot.

  And some sounds, which again the uninitiated would have thought were nothing more than some kind of random chatter. Things that sounded like static, or some kind of rebel radio signal sent through the phone.

  Hell, at first Roy/Charlie (sometimes he forgot which one was his real name and which his fictional one) had sort of written it off as some kind of fugitive bullshit, or maybe some kind of hideous grief aftertaste.

  But then the weird sounds and weirder pictures kept coming, and strange voices could be heard like a voice locked in an iron box somewhere, and speaking through a megaphone with maybe the artificial larynx of a throat-cancer victim.

  Roy thought for a week or so that he was cracking up. Thought about putting a gun to his head.

  But then the voices and the pictures got clearer.

  Someone was making nervous little movies in there and sending them to him.

  Little movies with strange hissing sound bites that only he could understand. And what he could finally understand from the little pictures and the snake sounds was that — well, of course it seemed nuts, insane, goofy — but that it was Jimmy, still making movies from beyond the grave.

  They say talent is like a force. Like energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed. They say it seems to live independently of the people it inhabits. How many times had he read about ordinary people who didn’t even have much of an education, somehow being able to paint masterpieces, or pick up a guitar and play something amazing, or, in Jimmy’s case, start to make movies at three years of age.

  It was almost as if — no not “almost” — it was really as though Jimmy’s talent had existed before his birth, and could live after his death, as well.

  Yes, that was it.

  Jimmy was mortal, but his talent was immortal. That’s what the messages were telling Roy/Charlie. (And who was he to have had such a kid? A businessman, talented, of course, in his own way but merely clever, far from a genius.)

  And then it started to happen.

  Jimmy’s dead genius seemed to coalesce. Yes, that was the word, wasn’t it? Whatever. It came together, and he saw an image of a dead man on his phone; yes, he did. The man was Agent Zac Blakely, and he was lying near a school bus, a big yellow school bus that said Wonderland Elementary School on its side. And Blakely had sailed through his own windshield and was lying half on the fence and half among the bricks of the ruined school cafeteria.

  Yes, he was. Jimmy had made the movie of Blakely’s death before it even happened.

  And then Ron Hughes. That was even better. On his phone he saw a picture of a railroad train, and he knew. He knew . . .

  And Paul Wagner as well. Wagner lying in a cactus garden with
a barbed-wire garotte slicing into his throat.

  And now there was a picture of Kevin Harper, hanging from a pipe in a filthy room somewhere. A room with little lights shining in between the slats from the streets.

  And then Roy saw that his role was now a starring one. Yes, he was the star of the picture while his dead son (or not-so-dead son) was the director.

  Yes, that was how it would be.

  And so it was Jimmy who led him to Tommy Wilson, who drank every night at The Deckhouse and threw all his money away on hookers and blow. It was Jimmy who told Charlie/Roy/ Dad to kidnap both of Steinbach’s kids and threaten to kill them unless Steinbach played along.

  And it was Jimmy and Roy who had acted like such good friends, a couple of lightweights Karl didn’t have to worry about at all. In fact, he was such a “good guy,” Karl let his kids run with Charlie wherever they wanted to go. They had met long ago in South Africa, a meeting which Steinbach thought happened by coincidence. At a soccer match where Charlie just happened to be a coach.

  But there were no coincidences in Charlie’s life. Not anymore. Because Jimmy had it all scripted out and showed it to him on his telephone every single day.

  It was Jimmy who had suggested that Charlie become Karl’s “best friend.” Oh, yeah, he had the “best friend” thing down pat.

  Used it on Karl, along with some diamond deals.

  Used it on Jack.

  And it was Jimmy who told Charlie how to handle Alison Baines, too.

  Yes, Jimmy and Charlie had worked it all out together. Karl was into diamonds, but he was also a drug smuggler: Sometimes he paid for his drugs with diamonds, and sometimes he paid for his diamonds with drugs. All things Charlie relayed to Alison/Maria, who told Jack. Beautiful Alison, the whore actress who didn’t care what any of it meant as long as she could be part of a story of some kind — any kind — so as not to have to face the rest of her days knowing she was outside the main story and would never be a player. Never.

  That was all that any of them wanted. To be a player in the story.

  To not be gone like Jimmy (who was not, it must be remembered, gone at all).

  And it was Roy/Charlie/Jimmy who supplied all the little leaks about Tim Andreen and his partner, Mr. Wink.

  Maybe Jimmy even gave Mr. Winky his name. Why not?

  Could have been that way.

  His dead/not-so-dead son Jimmy who gave him the movies, which he then acted out in real life.

  Yes, it was Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy who never would die. Or so C/R thought. Thought: “Death has not parted us. Death has not separated us. We are not alive and dead, we are one in the spirit, we are one in the life, we are one in the talent, Jimmy’s immortal talent which I will carry out for him forever. Once we kill all

  the people responsible for making him lose his body (but only his body, only his feet, hands, arms, head, neck, eyes . . . oh, how I miss his eyes, miss touching my son’s thick hair), maybe, no surely, we will escape and there we will live (but where, didn’t know yet, no signal from Jim yet, could his talent be out hunting for the right place even now, can his talent sail through the known world, through trees, without disturbing leaves, through the wheat, past the blinking cows, can his talent survive water, dive deep down and live among the coral, in a reef of sun- fish) . . . and from there, wherever we live, myself and Jimmy’s talent, we shall send our movies back to the world, astounding movies of Beyond the Dead. Movies which will show the world there is nothing to fear from death, that there is only failed promise, cut down in his youth . . .”

  No, not that. There is only promise fulfilled in the land of the Not So Dead.

  Except first there was a job to do . . . a job he had to do . . . now, and then talk to Jimmy again. (And why hadn’t Jimmy been in touch on the cameras today? He didn’t understand it.)

  It had been such fun showing Jimmy the movies he’d made, back in the editing room.

  Those were the Golden Hours, when Jimmy was literally there. So much so that Roy would ask him to come out on the “shoots” with him. But Jim couldn’t do that. He had to stay behind, though Roy wasn’t sure why. Maybe he used up his ability to appear if he stayed too long. Maybe he could appear in the flesh only when the movie was on. That could be it. There was that magical connection, the Hollywood Thing, that made it possible for Jimmy to show up in the editing room at Roy’s house in the Palisades.

  That was the mystical connection which only Jimmy understood.

  Too far out for Roy.

  But he understood, and was grateful, so grateful for the time they had together in the editing room.

  Father and son working together.

  Like it should have been in the real world.

  Like it should have been except for the Feds and their deal.

  Jimmy accepting the Academy Award.

  Dinner at Spago.

  All of it should have happened. To Roy and Faye and Jimmy.

  For Jimmy The Immortal.

  How he hated them all. He had lived on his hate/fuel for all these years. People said hate died over time, but this was yet another lie.

  Hate was like a fine wine, aging, becoming deeper, more resonant.

  He felt a stronger hatred for the Feds every year.

  And now he was close. So close.

  Finish off the last one, Billy Chase, then deal with Jack and his kid, a normal everyday kid, not gifted like Jimmy, not a friend of Spielberg, not an intern with a career people compared to Orson Welles (but would have been better even, because not a wastrel like fat Orson).

  No, nothing really compared to his son Jim.

  But here, here with hands, and eyes, and hair, and a smile, and a baseball, and a mouth which talked, and a hand which held Charlie’s . . . and it killed him so that even though The Talent was still alive, that he could never touch, hug, kiss The Talent. Never hold his hand.

  The brilliance of the kid. Using total immunity to get Karl out. But to also “play fair” with Jack. Yes, if Jack was smart enough (which he wasn’t), he could have seen that the immunity scam was the same one that had gotten Jimmy killed.

  Fair is fair, no? Billy Chase gets total immunity and Jimmy dies.

  Karl gets total immunity and all the Feds die.

  It was a game he and Jimmy played with them. To see if they were smart enough to nail them.

  Which they weren’t. The morons.

  None of them saw it. They had been taken in by Karl, by the total-immunity scam.

  And now Act Three of their movie. When Jimmy’s movie, Total Immunity, ends in Total Fucking Disaster for the Feds.

  Their greatest victory.

  But also, Charlie was beginning to feel, their last victory.

  And what would happen to Jimmy when they had avenged his murder? Would he be gone then?

  Tell me you’ll come back, Jimmy. Tell me you’ll come back in your body so I can touch you and hug you again.

  Charlie dragged Kevin out of the car (Kevin, the untalented, not like Jimmy. How could they kill Jimmy and not Kevin!) and carried him into the old boat factory and down the dark steps toward the boiler room.

  And there they were, the two of them sitting there, waiting for him, all drugged out. Steinbach’s brats.

  Asleep. Yes, asleep and dirty, but alive.

  All three of them, beautiful children, but alive. (Not like Jimmy.)

  Alive, yes, for now, but not for long, not for much longer at all.

  Charlie came out of the old factory in about an hour. It was dark outside, and he looked down at the rolling sea and felt suddenly at peace. He knew Jimmy was somewhere out there, too, watching things with him, maybe getting ready to make a transmission on his cell phone.

  He started back up to the car, opened the door, and got inside. Then he backed up, turned around, and headed for the 405.

  There was much to do now that his trap was laid. He had to get started immediately.

  Get in touch with his brother, for one.

  Important for every
one to stay focused now.

  He pulled out onto the freeway and started north.

  Then he noticed something and panic swept through him.

  He’d left his coat in the factory. When he’d taken Kevin inside and tied him up with the others, he’d taken his coat off because it was stuffy down there.

  And left it there.

  Christ, there were probably credit-card bills in there from where he’d last gotten gas, or bought food from Ralph’s. He had to go back. What an idiot he was to forget something that crucial. Nobody would come in, of course. But on the outside chance that someone did . . .

  Jesus, he hoped Jimmy hadn’t seen him. He didn’t want his son to think of him as a fool and a clown.

  He had to get off at the next exit, cross over, and come back down south. Jesus, what an idiot he was sometimes.

  Forrester couldn’t believe his own eyes.

  His plan was to follow Charlie because he was sure Charlie would lead him to the money.

  He was sure of it. Charlie had to be in on the stolen bank money. That’s the only thing that made any sense.

  So Forrester figured he would follow the clever bar owner and find out what kind of secret life he was leading.

  He’d seen Charlie over at the Little League field, pulling out. He had one of the kids with him. Almost lost him as Charlie turned off , and must have stopped for a moment to drop the kid off . Forrester almost panicked then, but soon Charlie had come back on the road. Yeah, must have dropped the kid off because he wasn’t sitting in the shotgun seat anymore.

  Charlie had picked up the 405 and driven south.

  Maybe Charlie might be headed for the beach house that the three of them bought with the stolen money from the bank job.

  But Charlie didn’t go to a beach house. Instead, he went to this crummy factory down in crummy San Pedro. And even though Forrester couldn’t see everything from where he was parked — or Charlie Breen could have seen him — it looked as though he had taken something out of the trunk. No, not something. He’d just caught a glimpse of whatever it was as the door to the old factory closed, and it looked like a kid.

  A kid in his trunk? The kid he had picked up? The kid he’d thought Charlie had dropped off .