The letter was from Simon, typewritten and businesslike. He thanked me for my work, and expressed appreciation for my doggedness. He was aware of the medical report and was relieved that I’d be all right. He regretted he wouldn’t be around during my recuperation.
He and Fran were going away right after the funeral and didn’t know when they would return. Although he knew the house project would keep me busy, he had taken the liberty of doing the paperwork for my detective license’s renewal. He was sure I would receive it in the mail in due course. He assured me that Lieutenant Clifford would return my gun and fill in any missing details, and that Clifford had been a huge help in organizing the mess.
He was also sorry that I wouldn’t have an opportunity to be much of a hero, given the cover, but he was sure that I would understand. Both he and Fran appreciated my flexibility and hoped I could live with the story they and Clifford had arranged.
On the back was a handwritten postscript. “I know things are lousy between us and I’m sorry we can’t talk face to face. But right now I need to be with Fran. I know it’s irrational but Fran, and to some extent I, can’t let go of the feeling that you torpedoed our marriage. You were right about the costs of spying. Of course it was Alex and I who wreaked the havoc, but Fran needs time to rearrange her heart. It’s difficult to imagine that someone clinging to a sentimental souvenir of a child that he had no interest in could ignite such a wholesale disaster.
“I’m hopeful that when Fran and I have an opportunity to work things out, the three of us will return to normal. I really do appreciate all that you’ve done, I just haven’t been able to get over my shock. Before we left, Fran and I met with Boots to explain things. Although she understands why you did what you did, she is so protective toward Fran I’d leave her alone if I were you. I’m sorry. Simon.”
I might have gotten it without the letter, but I doubt it. A few days to realize and another couple to believe, but it finally sank in. Maybe he wanted me to know. Less than a week later I finally reached him at his office. He wasn’t prepared to drop everything to visit a friend.
“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t checked in, but I’ve been swamped. Believe me, I know what I owe you. I want to see you but I won’t be out of here until late tonight. Can’t we wait for a better time?”
“No. I’m tired of waiting. I don’t care how late you show, just let yourself in the alley door.”
There was a silence, then, “I don’t like being away from home right now.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be much of a delay. I’m not planning a party.”
“Matt man, you’re angry and you have reason. Hell, first I wouldn’t speak with you and then I’m out of town during your recovery, but you’ve never held a grudge before …”
I chuckled and hung the receiver gently on its hook.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when I heard the crunch of tires on the alley’s gravel. The apartment was dark, but my bottle of Wild Turkey and the single-shot glass glistened in the amber anti-crime security light seeping through my window from the grocery store’s parking lot. My gun lay in the gloom next to the bourbon.
I heard the rattle of the knob and watched as he quietly pushed the door open.
“Matt, Matt, are you awake?” His voice was low. I didn’t think he wanted to disturb me if I were sleeping. He was out of luck—I was already plenty disturbed.
“Right in front of you, Simon.”
“Oh, there you are.” He sounded disappointed. “What’s with the dark? The doctors never mentioned vision problems.”
“I don’t have any problem with my sight. I just don’t like what I’m seeing.”
He started to open his mouth, shut it, and dropped into the chair across from me. He pointed toward the middle of the table, “You have another glass for that stuff?”
“That one is for you.”
“Since when do I drink alone when we’re together?”
“Since your letter. Check that, since I understood your letter.”
He pulled his already loose tie a little further from his neck. “I just needed a little time to be alone with Fran. I told you that.” He reached for the bottle and glass, poured, drank, and poured again. He stuck his hand inside a pocket and pulled out a cigar. “You have a light?”
I flipped the matches across the table and watched him fire up. I held on to the mad that had kept me afloat the past week. “I thought really smoking those interfered with your climb to the top, Simon.”
He stared at me. “What’s wrong, Matt?”
“The little things, buddy, the little things. See, Alex was right when he said he could afford Starring. Why kill when all you have to do is pay? Then there’s the guy who whacked Gloria around. Why would Alex hire scum when he had someone good like Clifford in his pocket? Fact was, he didn’t hire him. You did. My guess is Dr. James mentioned her duplicate record to Fran and you found out. It was easy enough to gild Alex’s lily by adding them to his collection.
“The lock was the line about ‘sentimental souvenir’ in your letter. I never talked about the birth certificate with anyone. Anyone. I figured Alex had it destroyed, until I understood your letter. I had Alex and Clifford figured wrong, didn’t I, buddy? You were jerking me around from the start.”
Simon shook his head, drained his drink, and poured another. “You’re still figuring wrong.”
I felt my anger begin to crackle. “Don’t lie to me, you bastard. You wanted Alex out of your way and found an almost foolproof way of accomplishing it. You were tired of being ‘Simon the second fiddle.’ Tired of being the boss’s son-in-law. Tired of waiting. You wanted it all.”
He sucked furiously on his cigar, his other hand trembling. “That’s not it, Matt. What do you take me for?”
“Since I realized you killed Starring, I haven’t known what to take you for.”
Simon pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “You have an ashtray?”
I got up, walked to the counter, then slammed one down in front of him. The headlights of a car in the parking lot shone through the window momentarily, adding a milky paste to the amber. I went back to my chair and pulled it deeper into the shadows.
“I wasn’t jerking you around. My marriage was coming apart, I just didn’t know why. When I discovered that Fran had withdrawn a large amount from her account, I guessed blackmail.” His voice dropped lower. “I just didn’t know who, or why. As soon as I got Starring’s name and address from Boots I went to his dump to get him off Fran’s back. I wanted him to stop, I wanted the bleeding to end. He just laughed and waved that fucking birth certificate in my face . . .”
Simon’s face contorted. “But that wasn’t enough for him. Blackmailing Fran wasn’t enough, blackmailing Alex wasn’t enough. He rubbed my face in Fran’s adultery, and then tried to get money from me to keep quiet.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Money from me.”
Simon breathed deeply. “Matt, he had pictures. He showed them to me and I exploded. All the torture he’d already put us through wasn’t enough. He wanted to put us through more. I didn’t think there would ever be a way to stop his leeching. I didn’t know what I was doing. All I could see were the damn pictures, the damn birth certificate. I lost it, Matt. When I first got there he waved a gun in my face, then put it down. I grabbed it and …”
Even in the dark I could see the tears run down his face. “So you shot him and decided to frame Alex.”
“Matt man,” his voice begged for understanding, “nothing was going to happen to Alex. Bad P.R., that’s all, a law student could get him off. Ten million don’t do time.” He ran his handkerchief across his face, breathed deeply and said, “Fran hasn’t been the only one with nightmares.”
My fingers snaked out and rubbed the cold metal of my gun. I could feel electricity where I touched it. “You used me to bloodhound the kid and you used Fran’s dreams to point me toward Alex. I saved you a lot of worry, didn’t I?”
“Damn
it, no one asked you to kill Alex, you did that on your own!”
The night in the solarium flooded my head, and the crease in my scalp felt raw. I gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes. Somewhere I’d harbored a secret hope that I had gotten it wrong, that it had been Alex after all who was responsible for Starring’s death. Desperately I had wanted to wash some of the blood from my own conscience.
When I opened my eyes Simon was staring at my hand, the one pointing the gun.
“Are you planning to turn me in?”
I shook my head. “Like you said, Simon, ten million don’t do time, and right now you are the one with the ten.”
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
For a very long moment the idea seemed appealing. My unnecessary slaughter of Alex had shoved me out further than I’d ever been from civilization. My finger began to tighten, then stopped. I placed the gun back down on the table. “No, I’m not going to kill you, Simon.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing.”
For a second relief flooded his face. It almost made me change my mind. He stood up and held his hands apart. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.”
He took me at my word. He gulped the last of his drink and turned toward the door. Before he was out he looked back and opened his mouth, but I shook my head. He shrugged and was gone.
I listened as the sound of his car’s engine grew faint, then disappeared. Still I didn’t move. I wasn’t mad, didn’t want a drink or any dope; my belly was full of betrayal, and there just wasn’t room for anything else. I sat deep in the dark and waited for the depression to hit. But all I felt was the tug of disappointment. I didn’t know if more of me was dead or I was just older.
I sat until gray cracked the pale amber and erased the room of shadows. I stood, stretched, and felt the pain in my leg and the tightness of my muscles as I walked to the sink. I splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection in the kitchen window. The glass needed a good spring cleaning. I wandered into the living room and lowered myself down on the couch. I hoped there was a decent dawn movie—I had time to kill before I could explain things to Boots.
Lots of gratitude to Herb and Nancy Katz for their regard, commitment, and effort on behalf of my novel. Their work turned a manuscript into a book and a dream into a reality. Thank you. And a special thanks to Herb, who turned Miles to Go into Still Among the Living.
I learned much of my writing craft from Susan Goodman and Sharon Singer Salinger. Without their generous time and teaching, Still Among the Living would be still inside my head.
Thanks also to Bill and Bonnie, Ron, Dr. J., Jeff, Pav, Eddie, Eric and Nancy and Anjsan. Your support and enthusiasm eased many a blank and anxious moment.
And thank you Larry and Eamon for a wonderful welcome to the business of book writing.
To Susan, who has seen me through the worst of times.
It’s my pleasure to share the best.
The alarm sounded and I awoke already depressed by the day’s invitation to brain death. I reached under the bed, pulled the ashtray onto my stomach, lit a cigarette, and eyed the leftover roach. It was too early for grass; better to shower and give last night’s high a fighting chance to dissipate. The cigarette triggered my thirst, so I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed and trudged down the hall past the living room, past the office, and into the kitchen. By the time I arrived I had given up on the shower. I’d need one to slice through the numbness when I returned in the evening. One thing worse than doing something you don’t like is doing it twice.
I splashed cold water on my face, returned to the bedroom, and lit the damn roach. I considered calling in sick, but I had turned down this particular mall too many times to fuck with them again. Also, I really didn’t want to lay dead at home: before I’d hired Charles, a tenant, to replace me as the building’s manager I could always find something to fiddle with or fix, but when I did that now he panicked.
I looked out the window and watched the cold, nasty November rain puddle on the gravel in my back alley. Just beyond, the supermarket was stirring, its amber crime lights bathing the morning delivery trucks with a pale yellow glow. The scene resembled an aging photograph discarded in the street, abused by the elements. Unfortunately, the picture lost its poetry when I remembered I had to join it.
It took a patient explanation and the photostat of my PI license before the mall’s exterior security pronounced me fit-and-official. For yet another day I was a Mall-man. The show-and-tell at the mall’s back door rain-logged my container of coffee, and I traipsed through the deserted shopping womb sharp-nosing chainlinked doorways, looking to smell something brewing.
My interest in the coffee turned sour after a sip, so I walked upstairs to an out of the way john and dumped the stuff. Enveloped by pastel-tiled lavatory quiet, I squeezed into a stall and sucked on my personal public concession to the raging war on drugs: a single toke, smokeless pipe. Fortified, I ambled toward the detaining room, idly hoping that someone from administration couldn’t sleep and was on time, ready with my assignment.
Someone was there but he wasn’t from admin. Fat and balding, a tie squeezed up against layers of chins, he sat like a dangling-legged Buddha on the desk at the far end of the room.
“Turning yourself in? I didn’t think there was anything open to steal from.” He enjoyed his joke and laughed along with my grimace.
“Warren here?” I knew better, but felt uncomfortable just wearing a painted grin. “Are you kidding? You a new dick?”
“No, but I could use one.” I saw him get ready to laugh so I quickly added, “I fill in occasionally.”
“Another hired gun?”
“I don’t think of it that way, but yeah.” “I call myself a consultant. You?” “Matt.”
I was treated to another ripple of belly, jowls, and chins as I moved across the room and tried to twist my body into the one-armed wood-and-metal elementary school desk.
“Well, Matt, you’ll never get comfortable in one of those. They don’t want the sticky fingers to relax. That’s why I’m parked here.”
He was right. I stood up and wandered around the room until I came to the bulletin board.
“Listen, my name is Harry. Check out that board. Lists assignments. They figure if they do it the night before they can sleep guilt-free and we’ll be good little drones and take our spots. I say, fuck ‘em.’”
I read my location and looked back at Harry. “Beats waiting around.”
“I suppose.” He pushed his way off the desk and waited for his belly to stop bouncing. “How much you getting”—he paused—“if you don’t mind the length of my beak?”
“I don’t mind,” I lied. “Forty.”
He looked at me with a little surprise. “Forty, huh?” He winked. “You’re either good or you know the Old Man’s wife?”
“I know the wife.” But I should have known better as his laugh squeezed the air out of the room.
“Matt, huh, you’re all right!” He peered at me intently. “You look sort of familiar. You got a face that reminds me of someone.”
I nodded. “I get that a lot. Usually it’s the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”
Everything in his clothes started to shake, and we waited until he caught his breath. “You’re a funny guy. Don’t usually find a sense of humor in our line of work. You remind me of some dead actor. One of those English guys.” His voice dropped and became conspiratorial. “I get paid by the head.”
“For every collar?”
“That’s right.” He puffed out the top half of his belly. “Not many consultants do that. You either, I bet?”
What we had here was a True Believer. “I like to eat.”
He walked toward me rubbing his belly. “Hell, does it look like I miss many meals? They didn’t hire a one-eyed Dick Tracy when they hired you, did they?”
I smiled at his lousy joke. “Not one-eyed, but not twenty/twenty either.”
&n
bsp; He chuckled, reached up, and patted me on the shoulder. “That’s okay. In this racket no one is.” He yanked at his pants in a futile attempt to get them up over his belly. All he got for his effort was a flash of white socks. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of here. I’ll see this room enough today.” He strode out the door and called over his shoulder, “No one showed you the holes, did they?”
“The holes?”
“I never show ‘em either, but hell, I don’t usually start my day laughing.”
Harry led me to the upper floor. I hoped the dope pipe had worked as advertised since we walked through the same bathroom door. Just in case, I lit a smoke. “Want one?”
“Nah, that shit’ll kill you. Finish it and I’ll show you the holes.”
I threw the cigarette into the toilet, flushed, and watched as Harry opened what looked like a closet door in the back of the bathroom. He motioned for me to follow. “Stay close. There’s not much light.”
For the next twenty minutes I followed him through a labyrinth of connecting tunnels, pausing occasionally to look through one-way mirrors into the stores. At one stop a clerk was preening in front of the mirror. Harry gave him the finger. “I hope to Christ he don’t pop that fucking pimple on my window.”
“Let’s keep moving, Harry. How come they didn’t tell me about this?”
He bellied through the dark corridor past a few more mirrors. “They think it bothers the yuppies to see someone walk out of the wall holding handcuffs. Not classy enough.” He yanked on my leather jacket. “Look at this one,” and pointed toward another mirror.
I looked, but all I could see were early morning customers browsing around a lingerie shop. “Who are you looking at?”
“That tall lady fingering the panties. She’s warming up for someone, and I guarantee it ain’t for the little mister at home.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “You work the holes long enough you see what life is really like because no one knows you’re watching. That’s the fun part of this job. The busts are for the money.”
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 29
