The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  There was irony here. I’d spent the entire case trying to find out how I was used. At the moment, I knew most everything but that.

  I could walk. Drive away from this shithole, go home, shower, get high, watch TV. I could stuff my face with Fritos and call the malls. I could never ask another question, say another word.

  I had done it once before.

  But different ties bind in different ways. This situation was part of a pattern that extended beyond any single explosion. If I was right, it was only the second act in a lifetime drama.

  I leaned forward and started the engine. No matter what other role I might have played, if this was a street opera, it was my job to close it down.

  I passed a phone booth and stopped the car. I looked him up in the book, which was miraculously intact and stuffed in its slot. Unfortunately, it didn’t cover his home town. Ma Bell figured no one from The End needed to call the rich.

  I had better luck with Information. I dialed the number and spoke the moment I heard his voice. “I have a couple of questions to ask you about that party.”

  “I told you we were through.” His quiet voice was strained. “And I’m telling you we’re not.”

  “You forget who you’re talking to.” He hung up.

  I was too cold and too wired for that kind of crap. I re-dialed the number; when he picked up his receiver I shouted, “You can have my legs broken, my heart cut out, and my ass cemented to the bottom of the fucking harbor. But you can’t get it done before I get to your house and find out what I want to know. In front of your fucking family, you understand?”

  My intensity froze him. Hell, it surprised me. I took a deep breath and held my steam while he decided what to do.

  “Where are you?” he finally said. “We can do this over the phone.”

  “I don’t want to do anything over the phone. Now where are you?” “In The End.”

  “Do you know the Wagon Wheel?” “Yeah.”

  “I’ll meet you there in a half hour.”

  I drove around until a parking spot opened with a view of the front door. I didn’t think Prezoil was going to bring anyone with him, but I wanted to be certain. Despite my outburst, I valued my legs.

  He was early, overdressed, and alone. I waited another five minutes to see if any of his gladiators would follow. All I saw, however, was the usual scum who patronized the joint. As I left the car, I realized that tonight anyone in the Wagon Wheel could break my legs.

  I spotted Prezoil in the rear of the cavernous room and cut a path to his table. The stripper’s cage was empty. The jukebox’s twang was background to the cacophony of raucous, slurred conversations.

  He scowled when I sat down at his table. “You need some new clothes, Jacob.” I waved for the waitress and said, “For this barn?”

  “Don’t like my little club, eh?”

  Before I could answer the waitress came by and took our order. I was perversely pleased that it was a double, straight night for him too. “Club?”

  “Nothing official.”

  “Nothing special either.” Now I knew why Blackhead was allowed to sit here without drinking.

  A look of impatience crossed his face. “I didn’t come here to listen to your wise mouth. What is it you want?”

  The waitress returned with our drinks and I took a hefty slug. “Lonny, why did you tell me that Emil, Peter, and Melanie left the party together?”

  “That’s the way I remember it.”

  “I told you I don’t like loose ends.” “You dragged me out for this?”

  “I didn’t drag you anywhere. I was willing to ask you about your fucking under-age girls anywhere.”

  He stared right back at me. “You don’t mind pushing it, do you? You were right about the things I can have done to you.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “I’m not suicidal. I know better than to cause you any trouble. I want to know what happened that night, that’s all. Only this time I want the damn truth.”

  “Your curiosity has nothing to do with me?” “Right.”

  “No shakedown when you’re out of work and get a little hungry?” “I don’t want proof, just truth.”

  “You want to tell me why?” “No.”

  I watched his smooth tilt. “You do got balloons. Okay, she didn’t leave with the other two.” He stared at me impassively. “I made it with her. If it’s truth you want, it wasn’t much fun. You ever fuck a corpse?”

  “She spend the night?” My voice was calm, but it was nutcracking time at the Wagon Wheel. “Hell no, she didn’t spend the night. More like half an hour. Then out of there like she was late for a fix.”

  Lonny kept speaking but I hardly heard him. I hardly heard anything. The bar’s noise buzzed into the background and the room faded white. I returned to the sound of my name.

  “Jacob, Jacob? Jesus, are you all right? What the hell are you involved in? What’s going on?” He was annoyed but I was through with him. I drained the last of my drink and stood up. I gripped the back of the chair until I could negotiate my way to the door. “Thanks, Lonny, that’s all I needed to know.” I turned and started for the exit.

  “Hey, shamus,” Lonny called to my back, “aren’t you going to pay for the drink?” “Lay it on the house,” I said without stopping.

  Outside, my semi-faint retreated in the nasty weather. I was bone-tired and thought once again about going home. By the time I reached the car I knew I couldn’t. “The dread had already occurred.”

  For me, that is. The dread had already occurred for me. With one eye, his house looked dark and desolate. With the other, quiet and peaceful. Both eyes knew which it was going to be once I got inside. I rang the bell long and hard and, for a second, had the uneasy sense he had moved. I rang the bell again and saw a light flash on the second floor. A few minutes later Jonathan opened the door a quarter of the way, and stood baggy-faced in a red tartan robe.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Damn, you look terrible,” he added before I could reply.

  “We have to talk.”

  “Now? I was sleeping. Can’t it wait until morning?” It probably could, but I couldn’t. “No.”

  He heard the despair in my voice and stepped aside. “I’m not sure what to offer you at this time of night,” he said as he led me down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Bourbon. And pour one for yourself.”

  He looked at me; his eyes were suddenly bereft of sleep. “You discovered something?” “Pour the drinks,” I repeated.

  “That bad?” He pulled a bottle from one of the cabinets. “Worse.”

  It took a hard twenty minutes to lay everything out. He interrupted me in the beginning. I answered his questions and protestations as calmly as I could. The longer I continued with my story, the fewer the interruptions, until he fell into a shocked, stricken silence. I had expected to feel guilty for tearing the remains of his life apart. Instead, I felt a terrible concern for a man who, in his own ragged way, had given so much to so many lost causes.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said at last. “I hardly know you but you expect me to believe your monstrous theory? That’s all it is, you know, an outrageous theory.” His arms moved in a dismissive motion, as if to make my “theory” disappear.

  Deep within was the horror of having heard the truth. He hadn’t yet realized it; mostly what he realized was that the life he had so carefully constructed was over. I kept quiet and gave him plenty of time and heart to take the hit.

  “What kind of evidence do you have?” he demanded, his denial taking center stage. I just shrugged. “I’m a detective, Jonathan, not a lawyer.”

  “I think you’re the insane one,” he half-shouted as he slammed the kitchen table. “Not this time, Jonathan, I’m sorry.”

  He gave no sign he had heard. “Ever since you’ve returned to The End there have been nothing but disasters. Nothing!” His face was red, and his eyes
bulged. “Now you show up in the middle of the night and expect me to accept this?”

  I waited while his outrage played itself out. He had just finished burying one and I was burying the other. The sadness of it all was that Jonathan knew what I said to be true. He had to know; he had lived with her. He might be blind, but he wasn’t stupid. He would have seen signs; but his love, his need, wouldn’t let him understand. I knew what that was like; more than once other people had to show me my self-deceptions.

  He paced around like a caged animal. “I ought to throw you out. You’re nothing but trouble. Are you trying to punish me because of who I am? Maybe you’re one of those people who think

  I can’t really love her because I’m just an old queer.” Barrie walked over to the table and slammed his fist down again, this time shaking the glasses enough to spill some of their contents. “I ought to throw you out,” he repeated, but his voice had lost its tempest. I watched silently as his years of love and loyalty spat him in the face.

  Finally he turned to me and demanded, “What do you want from me? Do you really expect me to throw the one person I have left into Titicut Follies? Toss her into Hell for the rest of her life?”

  “You can’t ignore this anymore, Jonathan.”

  He interrupted me as an idea crossed his mind. “Are you trying to get money from me? To keep quiet?”

  “I’m not a blackmailer,” I said gently.

  His temper took over again. “You haven’t any proof, goddamnit. You’ve said as much. What if you’re wrong? You can’t destroy someone’s life on speculation. Why the hell come here anyway? A damn courtesy call?”

  “I came here because you love her and, in her own way, she loves you.” I stood, retrieved the bourbon from the counter, and poured some into both our glasses. “I came here because I can’t walk away from this.”

  He strode to the table and swallowed from his glass. “Why not? Why not go home?” “Melanie’s sick, Jonathan. I think you know that. I don’t think you knew how much.” I held out my palms. “Maybe her depressions and withdrawals frightened the questions out of you. Maybe it was the intensity of her rage. But you know people too well not to have suspected.”

  He grunted a short, harsh laugh. “Right, I know people so well. Like Peter, like Darryl and now, you tell me, Melanie.”

  “That’s exactly right. You weren’t blind to their flaws; you were attracted to them. That’s almost worse than blind. You didn’t love them the same way, or even for the same reasons. And you certainly didn’t make them who they were—that was fated by the first generation of their family that couldn’t find good reason to live.” I paused, then added, “I believe you bought them time.”

  I watched the lines in his face shift, his anger replaced by wracking sobs. He sunk onto his chair, buried his head and cried deeply, the anguish muffled in his arms. Melanie’s time was up.

  I had no tears. Instead, I waited patiently until he regained control, then asked quietly, “What really went on between Peter and Melanie?”

  I expected another flare-up, but he spoke in a voice resonate with sadness and deep resignation. “They were incredibly close. Bonded. It was one of the reasons Peter was willing to move in. He thought it might separate them a little. Though he never said, I think he felt burdened by their relationship.”

  He stared at me, his face a ravaged set of features and lines. “She had no identity of her own. She’d spent her entire life in Peter’s footsteps.”

  I thought of my first night with her. “Was sex part of their bond?” I asked.

  Barrie turned his face away, but the question didn’t shock him. He lifted his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Peter never said, and I’d never ask Melanie.”

  I sat with my melancholy, thinking of what was in store for Jonathan and Melanie. And me. Eventually I reached across the table and placed my hand on his shoulder. “I came here because Melanie is going to need her father.”

  He lifted his head and stared at me with bleary, guarded eyes.

  “You’ve been good to her, Jonathan. A good father and good friend. There aren’t many people who’ve been lucky enough to have that. Her years with you were the best years of her life.”

  My words squeezed through his sadness. He raised his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes as if some ugly view might go away. But I didn’t go away. I watched as he struggled to regain his breath. “Go get dressed,” I said gently.

  “Why?” he asked. “What’s supposed to happen now?”

  I pushed my gut-ache aside and tried to rouse the troops. “As bad as you feel, you’re better off than Mel. She needs you in her corner, now more than ever. You need each other.”

  He rose and left the room as if in a trance. I didn’t want him gone long. We would both be spending too much time alone once this was through. I poured more alcohol into my glass, lit a cigarette, and waited for his return.

  He reappeared dressed, but shaking his head. “I still don’t know what you expect. I won’t lie to you. Even if what you say is true, I won’t turn her over to the police.”

  “I don’t have a blueprint but Melanie’s very sick. She needs help, not benign neglect. We’re in a mental and legal minefield that someone’s got to navigate.”

  “I don’t understand what you want me to do?”

  I took my wallet out of my pocket and rummaged for Simon Roth’s card. “I want you to get him. I’m going to speak with Melanie and I want both of you to meet me there. If there is one lawyer in town who can jerry rig the legal end, it’s this guy.”

  He glanced at the card I put in front of him. “This is a business card. No one’s going to be at an office this time of night.”

  I picked up a pen and the card and scribbled Simon’s home address. “Tell him I sent you. Then tell him everything. Everything. He’ll come and I don’t think he’ll need persuading. If he does, remind him that he owes me a big one.”

  He waved the card but shook his head. “I don’t know why we have to do this now. Maybe if we sleep on it, it will look different?”

  I waited a moment, then said, “Melanie once called herself a shadow person. I thought I understood what she meant, but I didn’t. Now I do. It’s better that we take care of this. She’d prefer the night.”

  We sat there for a painfully quiet time. He kept shaking his head and I kept drinking. When the glass ran dry I didn’t bother with a refill; I just drank straight from the bottle. Eventually, I found the guts to move and started down the hall.

  “Matt.”

  I turned and watched him fiddle with the card. I waited until he quietly asked the question Boots had only stabbed at. “Do you love her, Matthew?”

  “I don’t know, Jonathan. I’m afraid I have no love left.”

  My head felt heavy as I dragged it up the stairs. Despite the hour, light streamed from her apartment. I rapped softly on her door. For a brief second I felt eyes stab the back of my neck. I sprinted down the steps, peered up and down the street, but saw no one. I knelt quickly and looked under the row of parked cars, but again came up empty. I jogged back to the door when I saw Melanie standing behind the wood and glass. She opened it and signaled me inside. She wore a pair of white jeans and a yellow tank top. Her hair was swept off her face—her fresh lipstick, mascara, and eyeliner a surprise. Melanie’s ease at my arrival caught me short. It was as if she had been waiting.

  “A funny time of year for those clothes,” I said, passing through the doorway. “I hate the winter. Tonight I’m pretending it’s summer, my favorite.”

  I smiled grimly. The heat in the apartment was turned up high.

  For the first time in the long night, my bones began to thaw. I unsnapped my jacket and thrust away a fleeting moment of desire as I caught a whiff of her perfume.

  “Did you come to dry off?” she asked.

  It took a moment before I remembered our telephone call. The telephone call. “No Mel, I’m still working.”

  “
I thought so. Would you like a drink?” “Bourbon would be fine.”

  “You drink on the job?” she teased over her shoulder. “On some more than others.”

  “And this is one of those?” She held the drink toward me with an outstretched arm, eyes clear and tranquil.

  I took the glass and nodded.

  She smiled placidly. “You’re definitely not here for another night of love.”

  I sipped at the whiskey and sat down on the couch. She waited until I was seated before moving to the plastic recliner. “We were reversed the last time you visited.”

  The image of her riding my lap jump started my libido. But I just couldn’t afford desire. “Why did you lie to me?”

  For an instant she looked like a mischievous teenager. “Why did you lie about the coke?”

  She shrugged. “It was time. And habit.” “Habit?”

  Her playfulness evaporated as she leaned forward in her seat. “I’d never admit to a personal relationship with Darryl.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She stood and smiled down at me but her eyes glanced toward the clock on the mantel. “I want a drink.”

  As she walked to the liquor cabinet I said, “You expected me to come here tonight.”

  She poured her drink and turned away. “I didn’t know when, but I hoped it would be tonight. I wanted a chance to talk to you before…”

  Her words trailed off to a stop. She swiveled her body back toward the couch and spoke into her glass. “It took you longer than I thought. For a while I imagined you were going to leave everything the way it was.” She smiled at me. “I would have been surprised, but it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “What wouldn’t matter?”

  She shook her head and lifted the bottle. She poured into her glass, but brought the bottle back to her seat anyway. It was time to cut to the bone.

  “Melanie,” I said softly, “you need help.”

  She stared at a point somewhere over my shoulder. “I’ve already taken care of that.” When she saw the question on my face, she frowned. “But you wouldn’t know that.”