Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  He saw the master bedroom, and having gotten close enough to Billy Chase, after all these years, he suddenly forgot the whole plan again, the bit about taking out the daughter first.

  He’d become blood-crazed and couldn’t wait to go through with the whole ritual.

  He just wanted Billy-boy on the end of his knife. All the rest was gravy.

  He opened the master bedroom door and slipped inside. Trained his vid cam at the bed.

  There — in the bed — was a figure. Waiting, lying there sleeping.

  “It’s Bill, Jimmy,” he said inside his head. “It’s the man who ended your life.”

  And in that moment, he forgot the whole deal about killing them one by one. It was Billy he wanted, it was Billy Jimmy wanted.

  He moved forward and raised his knife. Balanced the cam on his shoulder.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Billy-boy,” he said, as he plunged the knife down toward his sleeping target. “How about this?”

  He stuck the blade into the back of the sleeping figure.

  He’d worked himself up to a fine rage, saliva flying from his mouth, and he raised the knife to plunge again, but then realized he’d been robbed.

  Robbed of the essential pleasures of a scream from the victim and the even finer satisfaction of feeling the knife cut through tissue and bone, and perhaps a pink piece of lung.

  He reached down and snapped back the covers.

  Pillows! Pillows stacked up.

  He heard himself give a meek little laugh, a whimper, and immediately felt a red blush spread over his face.

  Then he turned and found Jack Harper behind him, a pistol in his hand.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Jack said.

  “Jack,” Charlie said, for a second unable to say anything else.

  “That was good, Charlie,” Jack said. “Your brother almost had us fooled with his ‘breakdown’ and his fake call to L.A., which you had forwarded to your cell phone in Portland. Almost worked. But after I thought about it a little, I realized you’d never let Terry kill Billy. It was too personal for that. It had to be you.”

  Charlie felt a sense of personal shame and failure, which led him to a rage-storm. He wanted to ram Jack’s face with his head, smashing his nose. He wanted to bite into Jack’s neck. But he suppressed his rage, stayed calm.

  “You were very smart, Charlie. You kidnapped Karl’s kids and held them hostage so he had to help you. But why all the drama?”

  Charlie laughed.

  “That was Jimmy’s idea, Jack. After all, it’s his film.”

  “Your son?”

  Charlie nodded and gave a knowing little grin.

  “Jimmy came up with it all. He tells me, and I carry it out. He loves big twisting stories where the hero is suckered in by his own confidence. We got you good, Jack. You gotta give us that.”

  “You and Jimmy,” Jack repeated. And in spite of himself and all that Charlie had done, Jack began to feel a deep sorrow on his old friend’s behalf.

  “That’s why the camera, Jackie. I’ve been filming it all — with Jimmy. When I finish with this, we’ll have our masterpiece. By the way, you should know I decided not to kill you. You and Kevin get to live, for now, as long as you don’t make any real trouble.”

  “Why, thank you, Charlie,” Jack said. “That’s kind of you.” “It wasn’t my idea, Jack. It was Jimmy. He liked you and

  Kevin. He wouldn’t go on with the film unless he had certain assurances.”

  “That’s very nice of Jimmy, then,” Jack said.

  “Don’t talk to me in that patronizing tone, Jack,” Charlie said. “I know Jimmy’s not here in a physical way, but his talent . . . you couldn’t kill that. That’s a spiritual thing. The talent stays alive because it comes from Jimmy’s immortal soul.”

  He nodded as though he were reassuring himself that it was true.

  “I know you’re laughing at me. You think I’m nuts. But you’re the one that doesn’t understand. A guy like you has no understanding of the connection between me and my son.”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” Jack said.

  “It’s amazing,” Charlie said. “For every one of you that died, Jimmy came more and more alive. Now I can see him, talk to him almost all the time. You’re going to love the movie, Jack. After all, it was you and your pals who thought of the title.”

  “What is it?” Jack was interested despite himself.

  “Total Immunity, of course,” Charlie said. “You gave total immunity to Billy Chase. That’s what got the whole project going.”

  “You’re a sick man, Charlie,” Jack said. “You gotta come with me. The premiere of Total Immunity is postponed indefinitely.”

  “I don’t think so, Jack,” Charlie said. “See, you’re always one step behind me.”

  Charlie opened his left hand and showed Jack a tiny detonator.

  “See what I have here, Jackie? Even if you pull the trigger, I can blow up the truck outside, the one with Kevin in the back.”

  Jack stared at him for ten seconds. Then:

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Go ahead, Charlie. Push it.”

  “You think I won’t? It’ll be a fair trade, Jack. Your son for mine.”

  “Push it!”

  “All right, Jack. You asked for it. Look out the window.”

  He pushed the button. A second later, there was an explosion which rocked the house.

  Jack looked down at the street, saw the flash. He felt numb inside.

  “Now things can get right again,” Charlie said. “I was going to kill you, Jack, but now I think it’ll be much better to let you live. To suffer like I did for the rest of your life, knowing you couldn’t protect your son. Finally, you and I will be dead even.”

  Jack smelled the smoke and saw the fire outside.

  Then he smiled at Charlie Breen.

  “I don’t think so, Charlie. Take a look.”

  Charlie looked outside and saw two federal agents using hand extinguishers to put out the fire.

  A few feet away from them, three other agents surrounded an untied Kevin Harper, whom Oscar covered with an Indian blanket.

  Three local cops were walking toward the house, their guns drawn.

  “You son of a bitch!” Charlie said.

  In one smooth motion, Charlie threw the shark-handled knife into Jack’s left side. The pain was blinding, but Jack managed to get off a shot which hit Charlie’s right shoulder.

  Ordinarily such a shot would push a man backward, but Charlie Breen was so pumped up with adrenaline and hate that he lunged forward, pulled the knife out of Jack’s body and tried using it again, this time to cut Jack’s throat.

  Jack felt weak, dizzy, and knew that within seconds he’d be lying on the floor bleeding out.

  He resorted to the oldest and most effective trick he knew in combat.

  He kneed Charlie Breen in the groin.

  Charlie groaned and fell back, but didn’t go down. Instead, he picked up a chair and threw it at Jack, then turned, ran to the side window, and plunged through the glass.

  Jack followed him, watched Charlie hit the parking-garage roof, then roll down it. He fell on the other side of a chain fence, which cordoned off the house from the trailhead in the dark woods.

  All of the federal men and local cops were on the house side of the fence. If Charlie got into the forest, there was no telling where he might go.

  Jack took the leap, rolled down the rooftop, jumped over the fence, and took off after him.

  Jack saw Charlie disappear into the forest. There was no way the older man was going to outrun him.

  But in front of him Jack saw two trails, both of them chewed up by hikers. It was impossible to tell which path Charlie Breen had taken.

  Both of them led up to Multnomah Falls . . . and the deep forest beyond.

  Jack decided on taking the less steep path, reasoning that Charlie would want to get as deep into the forest as possible in the shortest amount of time.

  He ran up the path, his side
leaking blood.

  He touched his side as he ran and came away with a great gob of blood.

  But there was no way he was going to stop.

  The path stretched out in front of him, illuminated by moonlight, and he suddenly saw the two of them in his mind’s eye, like cameo figures racing back in time, from the so-called civilized world into the primitive society of wild beasts, and giant lizards with great scales and sharp teeth.

  He ran on, turned a corner at full speed, and barely stopped in time to avoid falling off a two-hundred-foot chasm.

  On the other side of it stood Charlie, surrounded by mist.

  “Coming, Jack?”

  “You jumped this?” Jack said.

  “Yep,” Charlie said. He seemed to be reverting to his friendly, folksy coach persona. “You have to back up a bit there, then run like hell and leap. Bet you can’t do it.”

  “How much?” Jack said, pointing his Glock .22 at Charlie’s head.

  “A hundred bucks,” Charlie said. “I don’t think you’re motivated enough.”

  “But I don’t have to jump,” Jack said. “I can shoot you right here.”

  “No,” Charlie said. “You can’t, Jackie.”

  He opened his arms wide. It seemed to Jack that he was calling forth a mist from down at the base of the waterfall.

  A waterfall, just to their right, which Jack hadn’t even noticed.

  He tried to sight Charlie through the mist, but the moon played tricks on the water, and suddenly Jack wasn’t even sure if he’d spoken to Charlie at all.

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes, tried to see, but Charlie seemed to have disappeared.

  Then his voice came toward Jack, and in a canyon of moonlit water, it might have come from anywhere.

  “You killed my son,” Charlie said. “Were you ever sorry for it?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jack said, and he was. He felt — suddenly — as if it had happened just now, that he had been watching the boy and turned away, and Jimmy had fallen over the falls.

  “You should pay for it,” Charlie’s deep, echoing voice said again, and it was the voice of somebody’s idea of God, spoken from bushes, rocks, and dripping trees.

  Jack said nothing. It occurred to him that in some universal way Charlie had been right all along, that all of them deserved to die for wanting too much, for making a deal — not with Billy Chase, but with evil.

  The devil, Jack thought, was always painted as huge, red- robed, with menacing horns and a pitchfork, but he seldom presented himself that way. If such a devil promised you endless riches, or a life of ease, anyone with half a brain would run in the opposite direction.

  So he presented himself to you as a harmless small-time crook who could give you total immunity. Immunity from fear, immunity from death, immunity from robbery. A small, bright little bug of a man who could give you Adam Moore — the devil himself — on a platter.

  You offered him immunity, and he offered you the same, and yea, there was joy and happiness in the kingdom.

  Only one small, very bright boy had to pay. That was in the small print that none of them had bothered to read.

  And now Jack knew that there was no immunity, there was no freedom — only deals which ground up a child, unhinged a decent man, killed police, and terrorized his own child, perhaps forever.

  In the seductive moonlight, on the edge of the Multnomah Falls, it was Jack who was lost. He felt that it was his own cowardice that had set off this chain of events, his own timidity, trying to do well for his career when he knew what he was doing was wrong.

  Could he have changed the way things turned out? He didn’t know for sure. What killed him now was that he hadn’t even tried. He had gone along with the others, even as he worried that it could somehow backfire.

  And somehow, knowing that changed things. Now Jack knew that even if Charlie appeared out of the mist again, he couldn’t just shoot him.

  He had to jump, give Charlie a chance. He owed him that much for taking his son.

  He backed up and breathed in deeply, then started running for the gorge and leaped off into the mist.

  He flew, flew across, and looked down at the gaping slash of open air, the roaring water rising up to pull him down.

  And then he was there, landed on the other side, and Charlie was rushing toward him, like a bear, a huge branch in his hand.

  “You’re going to fucking die, Jack.”

  He swung hard, and Jack felt the branch smash into his chest. He saw a flash of pain and fell backward, rolling toward the edge of the cliff . The world slowed to a crawl. He caught himself by grabbing a bush inches from the edge but now Charlie was coming at him again, this time with his leg kicking into Jack’s head, screaming, “Here he comes, Jimmy. I’ve delivered them all to you, son.”

  Jack felt his head snap back, and then there was another stabbing pain as Charlie kicked him in the ribs.

  Jack rolled even closer to the precipice. Charlie came closer, kicking out his foot again and again. Jack felt something in his ribs give way. He tried to get to his feet, but slipped. Then Jack waited, waited for Charlie’s final blow. But as Charlie got set to deliver it, Jack slashed out with his own foot and caught Charlie off balance, mid-kick.

  Charlie screamed a short, staccato burst, and fell over Jack, off the edge of the falls. He flailed wildly and grabbed Jack’s right wrist.

  Jack pulled with all his fading might.

  But Charlie looked up at him and shook his head.

  “I’m going to Jimmy now, Jackie,” he said. And smiled in his warm way, like Charlie Breen always did. A warm, encompassing smile. And in spite of all Charlie had done, Jack felt as though he was looking at his own father.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” Jack said.

  Charlie nodded twice, and then opened his hand.

  Jack watched him go down, fast, giving out a yell, not a scream, more of a warrior’s battle cry. He watched Charlie plunge into the roaring river seventy-five feet below. His body bounced off two big boulders, and then disappeared.

  50

  JACK STOOD with his arm around Kevin, who was still trembling. Around him, the other agents were cleaning up the mess.

  Oscar walked over and patted Kevin on the head.

  “I heard you were very brave. You saved the two Steinbach boys.”

  Kevin shrugged.

  “I had to do something,” he said.

  “And you did,” Oscar said. “Good boy!”

  He turned to Jack.

  “Down in the basement of The Deckhouse, he had a screen and an Avid editing machine. He was putting together the film of the murders.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “All that time, he held that anger and fury. All that time.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “He made audiotapes, too. Only heard a couple of minutes. But apparently making the movie kept his son alive in his head. He’d talk, consult with him.”

  “Man!” Kevin said. “And all along I thought Charlie was like my uncle or something.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “Instead, he was muy loco.”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “You know, when my dad died, I went out and bought old radio tapes.”

  “How come, Dad?”

  “’Cause I missed him, and as a kid he listened to them with me. So there I am driving all around L.A. listening to old tapes with dead actors on them: Alan Ladd and William Conrad, and the whole time I’m feeling my dad sitting there next to me, commenting on them. At night I wrote a diary, too, putting all the things down that my dad used to say to me. I wrote stuff about camping trips we took, and how he used to come see me play lacrosse, and all of that stuff . This went on for almost two years. Your mother . . . she thought I was out of my head. Having conversations with a ghost about old radio shows in the car, writing for hours every night. She wanted me to go see a shrink.”

  “You do that, man?”

  “No, Osc. I didn’t. Eventually, one day I just didn’t play the tapes, and
soon after that I stopped writing. It was over. Not all of it, but enough so I could face the fact that he was really gone. What I’m saying is that Charlie or Roy . . . he didn’t lose his dad, he lost his young son. And he didn’t lose him through normal circumstances. He lost him because we fucked up. It took me two years to get over losing my dad, so maybe it’s not that far out to think of him being destroyed by losing his son. Wanting revenge. Making the movie with ‘his son.’ It was his way of getting even and not facing his son’s death. The whole fantastic plot was what occupied him, kept him in denial of his son’s death.”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “But I thought he really cared about me. I could have sworn he wasn’t faking.”

  “He wasn’t,” Jack said. “He did care about you. But also, your presence made him enraged. That you should be alive, the son of the man he held responsible for his son’s death.”

  “But you weren’t responsible, Jack,” Oscar said.

  “Yes, I was. At least, partially.”

  Kevin looked at his father with a world of confusion, pain, and love on his face.

  “Really, Dad?”

  “Really,” Jack said. “It’s a long story, though, and we’ll have to talk about it.”

  As he finished speaking, the retrieval team shone a light from the woods. The three of them looked over at the path and saw them bringing Charlie’s body down on a portable gurney.

  Charlie was covered with a white sheet. His right arm fell out to the side and dangled there.

  Jack felt an intense pain in his chest and put his arm around his son.

  “Funny thing,” Jack said. “He was obsessed with the immunity deal. That’s why he structured his whole revenge around it. It was like he was reminding us of it the whole time.”

  “Almost like he wanted us to catch him, bro,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah, and if we had,” Jack said, “he would have probably come up with some deal to try and get himself immunity. Charlie knew a lot of people and, who knows, the way the world is now, he might have even thought he could really get it.”

  Kevin looked down at the stretcher as the team brought it through. The sheet had fallen off a little, and he could see part of Charlie’s gray, waterlogged face, with a chunk taken out of his forehead where he’d hit the rocks.