The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  “That’s okay, I was almost too afraid to light it.”

  The reasons that originally drove Gloria to my apartment produced an undercurrent of sadness that threatened to escalate into full-scale depression as Holmes traced the history of their relationship. A teacher/student love affair fragmented with bouts of guilt, recriminations, and self-doubt. Although they maintained contact after Dr. James graduated, they apparently hadn’t resumed their friendship until after he married. His wife seemed to protect them from themselves. At least Holmes thought so.

  After Holmes stopped talking, Gloria, her throat tight, continued, “What Eban says about our relationship is true. While I was with him I felt loved and taken care of. A part of me never felt better. But I had no need of Yvonne’s protection. Once we finished that part of our relationship,” she looked at both of us defiantly, “it was over.”

  Undertones of a deeper, more complicated conflict punctured their differing perceptions, but I’d had enough of Dr. James without her professional clothes. “You don’t have to tell me all this.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes. “Please, this is difficult enough without interruptions. You see, Eban is a genius in my field.” She stopped, opened her eyes, bit her lower lip and continued in a soft even voice. “I care a great deal about my work. For as long as I can remember, work has been a source of pride and identity. If he and I were together, my work, my ambitions, would necessarily take a back seat.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “As wonderful as our relationship made me feel, there was too great a sacrifice.”

  The three of us sat there; they with their memories, me with my own history of four-card flushes. It was one thing to fire my therapist, another to be confronted with her shattered dreams.

  “So you were afraid Holmes graduated from fucking students to fucking clients.”

  The hostility shredded the atmosphere. I stood, grateful for my sunglasses. “Look, I gotta go. If there were any doubt,” I opened my hands toward the two of them, “that last remark clinches it.”

  I walked toward Dr. James and tried to make up. “Dr. Holmes is right about my needing some protection. Why don’t you give me a dollar like they do on television. You know, then I’ll have a client.” I smiled but she was still stung by my big mouth.

  “I wouldn’t give you a quarter. Your body may hurt but I think I’ve taken a fair beating myself today. There was no need for you to act like a shit.”

  I took off the glasses. “You’re absolutely right. And so was he,” I jerked my thumb toward Holmes, “before. I think it’s probably the right thing, but changing our relationship is harder than it looks.” I stared directly at her. “I am going to keep looking into this with or without your dollar. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure whether I’m better off with or without a client.”

  “Which raises another question, Matt.” Holmes was stroking his beard thoughtfully, but his eyes were hard and filled with something I couldn’t recognize. There was a side to him that I hadn’t yet met. “Your intent is clear, but you might be in over your head.” He couldn’t resist, “I suspect the other fellow won the fight.”

  Who could blame him? None of us had had it easy today. He’d just done a busman’s holiday, stuck his ass on a clothesline, and had his fantasy about his and Gloria’s relationship slapped. But I wasn’t going to back off now.

  “I was in over my head the minute I said I’d get involved. It’s a consensus. But now that I’m in, I’m staying. It’s not a feeling I often have and,” I bowed stiffly, very stiffly, toward Dr. James, “thanks to her help, a feeling I don’t intend to ignore.” I looked back toward

  Holmes and was surprised to see him struggling to rid his face of a twisted, hostile expression. “The other fellow only won the round,” I said starting for the door.

  “Wait.”

  I was glad it was her voice. She was opening her desk drawer. “Here’s a couple of dollars. We will discuss real payment some other time.”

  There was no accounting for the sense of exhilaration I felt when I pocketed the singles. I shook hands with Eban, who had bounced up from his chair and was trying to generate his earlier warmth and friendliness. After his look of a moment ago it didn’t square, but he didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I had trouble walking out the door, but by the time the elevator deposited me in the lobby I was admitting the obvious: I liked what I was doing.

  The weather outside was beautiful. One of those days when the sun and blue of the sky reach out and cradle you, insulate you from the people and activities which surround you. For a moment even my body, though in need of a hot bath, felt like mine and not some alien graft to contend with. Although I needed to make sense out of all that had occurred I wasn’t going to do it now. There weren’t too many days when I noticed the weather, and even fewer that I liked. Sometimes you just had to smell the flowers.

  I decided on a long ride home. As I drove around the city I found myself thinking of the family without the usual gravel-in-my-face sensation. I felt badly that they were buried in Chicago; I wanted to visit their graves. Instead I drove to Author’s Ridge, a cemetery in an outlying town where a number of famous literary figures lay. I walked to the point where you could see both Emerson’s and Thoreau’s graves; Emerson’s was marked with a large round monument, Thoreau’s a small modest plaque. As they lived so they will be remembered. It bode well for the memories of those who were mine.

  The drive back was quiet. A slight drop in the temperature gave early warning to the onset of evening. I was amazed at how quickly the day had winged by. I thought about talking to Phil, but time had lightened my ambition and I didn’t want an injection of cynicism. It was time to put things in perspective, comfortably, at home.

  Only there was more left to the day. I noticed the door leading to the basement was slightly ajar. The calm I’d felt since leaving Dr. James’s office evaporated in the face of another potential visit from last night’s friends. I forced my body to walk the hall quietly to my apartment. The sound of the television drifted out from behind the closed door. I thought about leaving and returning later but there seemed no point. Whoever it was, was making himself right at home. I bunched my body into a tight, painful ball, grabbed and simultaneously twisted the handle of the door, thrust my way in, and scared the shit out of Lou who was lounging on the recliner watching the tube. He jumped to his feet and looked wildly around the room. I just stood there panting with fear and pain. Neither of us said anything for a moment.

  “Jesus Christ, boychik, do you always come home that way? What the hell happened to you? I thought your days of picking on bartenders were over.” He stood with his hands shaking.

  I finally caught my breath. “Lou, how are you? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? What are you doing in town? How is Martha?”

  “Slow down, Matty.” He lowered his bulk onto the chair though he kept the back upright. “Sit down, will you? You’re acting crazy.” He looked at me carefully. “Why are you wearing sunglasses? Are you high on something? Are you drinking again?”

  I walked over to the couch. “Now you slow down. I’m not drinking and I’m not high. I’ve had some trouble lately and I’m jumpy about it.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  I waved my arm. “I’ll tell you later, first things first.” I took off my glasses and looked him over. “You’re looking fat and sassy.”

  He grimaced. “Fat yes, sassy I’m not so sure about. What the hell happened to your face?”

  “Broken nose, no big deal. I promise you we’ll get to it. What brings you to town?”

  “Got to check on my investments, right?” He smiled. So did I. “Right.”

  “The mayor sent me to feel out whether it makes sense for him to initiate a national campaign.”

  “You mean you want to find out whether it makes sense to run the mayor, don’t you.”

  “You’ve always thought I was more of a kingmaker than is true.”

  I nodded and smiled. H
ere was the last relic of Chicago’s Daley years, a guy who managed to land in a new era with his local clout intact, and he was still pretending to be a political hack. We both knew that the high point of his life had been handing Illinois to Kennedy in ‘60. Every time a national election rolled around Lou looked to repeat the experience.

  “How long are you in for?”

  “Just ‘til the morning.”

  “Lou.” I was disappointed.

  His face set. “I can’t leave Martha alone too long these days.”

  “Is she sick?”

  His hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “Not really. She’s having trouble remembering things. The whitecoats have some fancy name for it but I call it age.”

  “What do you mean by whitecoats? Is she hospitalized?”

  “Not now. She has to go once in a while.”

  “When did this begin?”

  “Oh, it’s not recent.” He didn’t want to talk but my silence seemed to push him into it. “It’s been coming on for a long time. Hey, it was even pretty funny for a while. We sometimes would sit around and laugh about some of the shenanigans she used to pull.”

  “When did it stop being funny?”

  He looked at me sharply. “Still not one for tact, are you?”

  “I guess not.” He was one of the very few people who could still make me feel sheepish.

  “It got bad about a year ago.”

  “Jesus, Lou, I didn’t know.”

  “How could you? I didn’t tell you. You’ve got enough tsouris of your own.”

  “Sure.”

  “Look, don’t sure me. All telling you would do is worry another person. It seemed like a dumb idea.”

  “Do you stay home with her?”

  “Most nights. I got steady help in the day.”

  He pushed himself to his feet with his large powerful arms. “Enough with this. By the looks of it you got some problems yourself. Anyhow, I don’t want to talk about mine or even hear about yours. I want to eat. Then I’ll want to listen.”

  I felt relieved about not talking. I also felt hungry. “Sounds like a great idea. Name your fancy, my treat.” He shook his large head and grumbled, “I’ll name the place but you leave your money home.” “We’ll work it out. Where do you want to go?” “Where I always go. The joint that doesn’t have a name. The one by the ocean.”

  Wednesday morning brought a return to physical normalcy: my head hurt worse than the rest of my body. I think it was light when Lou left but I wasn’t sure. He has the capacity to drink through the night and wake up friendly and energetic. An early career as precinct captain trained him well. I couldn’t have gotten up even if I hadn’t matched him drink for drink. For the first time since the accident we had talked about the family. I had felt comfortable during the conversation, but my sleep was less benign. Lou’s goodbye awakened me from standing hunched over and picking through the splattered remains of a Volkswagen camper, and the sound of his voice filled me with an almost uncontrollable sadness. My goodbye grunt came with my teeth clenched on the pillowcase.

  I forced myself out of bed and walked over to the mirror above the dresser. The shades in the room were drawn but even in the shadows some of the facial swelling seemed down. I knew there was some reason to continue inspecting my face, but it wasn’t until I was at the bathroom mirror, looking at the pale green circles under my eyes, that I remembered why. Tonight was Simon and Fran’s anniversary party.

  I headed back to bed with a pit stop in the kitchen to put up coffee. I felt thrust into a tempo I used only in emergencies and disasters. I grabbed my head and felt my right temple pounding. I heard Star Trek’s Scotty shouting, “She canna take much more, Captain, she’s gonna blow.”

  Everything was coming at me too fast. Snippets from the last six days danced in my mind as I tried to create order out of chaos, but the confusion just grew worse. I couldn’t push the sinister sense of Holmes’ twisted face from my memory. If Holmes authored the beating, it was possible that my unwillingness to back off the case might invite worse. On the other hand, I was probably taking my antipathy to his Volvo much too far.

  If they were police. The coffee was perking so I got back out of bed and plodded into the kitchen. My range and comfort of movement had increased since yesterday. I nodded to my reflection in the coffee pot. Welcome back to the land of the ambulatory.

  If they were police. It made sense to talk to Phil, and see if he could provide more information, but the idea of seeing Simon and Fran after my Aquarium visit, layered on top of an uncomfortable social situation, made any additional work unthinkable. During my second cup and third cigarette I considered blowing off the party, but knew I hadn’t recently heard from Simon because he expected to see me tonight. I could never answer the phone again if I didn’t show.

  I thought I’d sleep the five or so hours before getting ready, but sleep came in snatches or not at all. That the world I had so carefully constructed over the past four years was in shambles clearly contributed to my restlessness. And I didn’t have a shrink to talk with about it.

  The time crawled while I fought about whether to get out of bed. I felt guilty about not seeing Phil and promised myself I would visit tomorrow. If I stopped investigating I’d end up adding the past week to my refuse bin of unfinished business; only there wasn’t much room left.

  I reached under the bed where I picked up an unfinished roach and smoked, then I got up and blasted myself with a shower. The hot water felt good as I stood there with closed eyes. The grass didn’t hurt either. As usual, there were limits to my ability to tolerate a good thing. I dried off and walked to the closet, pleased with the way my body felt. I turned on the light, opened the closet door, and thought about calling Simon or Fran to find out what to wear, but I doubted whether I could be anything but undepressed anyway. My house had its late afternoon quiet grayness and I had mine: dread about make-nice conversation with people I didn’t like, in a place where I didn’t belong. Conversations with people who were on their way up, or already there. “You manage a building? How many do you own?” No one quite knew what to make of me and who could blame them. Most of the time I didn’t know what to make of myself. I did, however, know what to make of most of them. I wondered if calling myself a detective and wearing the gun would help, but I didn’t want to risk shooting assholes just because I couldn’t stand them.

  Eventually the clock’s rhythm grew stronger than my own and I prepared to leave. When I opened the door to the alley to check the weather I saw a pile of neglected newspapers. Besides an invitation to thieves it was more evidence of my life’s unsettledness; I hadn’t even been reading the sports pages. I sat down at the kitchen table and opened them. For an instant I again thought about bagging the evening’s entertainment and catching up on spring training, but the phone began to ring. I stood back up, resisted the desire to smoke more dope, grabbed my jacket, and started out of the apartment. The only thing worse than dealing with shmucks you don’t know, is dealing with shmucks that you do.

  By the time I reached the exclusive small town where the Hirshes lived, I regretted my decision not to come with Simon and Fran. High on a hill behind a miniature forest of oak trees, Alex and Lena’s mansion was always difficult to find, and tonight I had little motivation to look. Although it took longer than usual, I was finally able to locate the half-hidden entrance of the winding private road. Reluctantly I aimed my car up the hill toward the house.

  It was difficult to think of this as just a house; its palatial grandeur was too intimidating. Despite Alex and Lena’s typical hospitality, it always felt as if I were stepping into a strange and uninviting world. After you emerged from the woods the driveway deposited you onto a large rotary in front of the mansion’s pillared porch entranceway. During the day you could walk to the rear of the house, look down the back of the hill, and see the river that divided the estate from the campus of a fancy women’s college. Tonight, however, all attention was focused on the house its
elf, bathed by ground lights embedded along the inside edges of the oversized brick walk.

  As I started around the circle a large dinner jacket approached the car. I pulled over to the edge of the designated parking area, stopped, and rolled down my window.

  “Do you mind getting out of the car, sir?”

  I looked out my window and stared into a large expanse of black cummerbund. The man’s tone had been polite but he was only looking for one answer. I nodded and opened the door and slowly began to exit. I felt better than I had yesterday, but maneuvering my body in and out of a car was still tricky business. The man watched while I grabbed onto the top of the door and pulled myself up. He made no offer to help, but stood there and ran his eyes up and down my body. I was glad I hadn’t brought my gun. My car, clothes, and sunglasses were enough.

  “Your business, sir?”

  I stood and watched as a stretch limo slowly drove past and headed in the direction of its parked relatives. No one waved it over to the side. It struck me that I wasn’t dealing with a servant, but with security. If this joker pegged me for garbage, what were the guests going to think?

  “No business. I’m invited.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind waiting for a moment?” He reached inside his jacket pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. I decided I didn’t want to watch him read with his lips so I started walking toward the house. “Jacob. Without an s.”

  I guess he managed to find my name because no one tackled me from behind, and the Oddjob standing at the huge doorway with a hand-held intercom just grimaced when I walked by. At least he didn’t hold his nose.

  The directly lit exterior segued into an indirectly lit grand foyer replete with a grand stairway that brought you to a grand greenhouse that usually served as the grand gathering place for intimate social occasions. Tonight, however, guests were politely funneled into a great ballroom off to the left of the hall. I had never been in this room before and stood mesmerized by the scene in front of me.