The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  Simon nodded. “I hoped that was yours. Basically, it’s the same story that Jonathan told me?” “With a different ending. I had him get you to help her with the cops and to get her treatment or something, I didn’t guess this was coming.”

  Talking helped clear my head. Somehow the words distanced me from the pictures, the smells. I thought for a moment then asked, “Can we leave her killings out of it? Say she went nuts about Darryl’s death? That it drove her into memories of her brother’s accident and she couldn’t take it? Or just make something up? The cops have the drownings as accidents, anyhow.” I felt Jonathan look at me, but he didn’t let go of my hand.

  Simon searched my face. “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Respect for the dead. For all the dead. The less anyone knows, the better they’ll be remembered.”

  I felt Jonathan squeeze my hand. Simon shrugged and said he could try. He asked if we would rather go inside, but neither of us budged. He stayed with us in our silence until the house was awash in blue and red flashing lights.

  Suddenly there were swarms of people everywhere. Blues, plainclothes, medics, and Suits from the coroner’s office. Simon steered everyone away from us and, almost as suddenly, Jonathan and I were left by ourselves. Out in the cold.

  I expected to go downtown, but eventually Simon reappeared alone, holding my jacket, and told us we could leave. They all had questions but understood we were still in shock. Simon had called a couple of his contacts; the cops would leave us alone for at least forty-eight, though they would hang on to my gun. Simon added that they’d bought the double suicide. He suggested we call him early the next day to get the story straight. I tried to grin and nod my head—it was good to see him.

  Simon went back inside, and I stood up. I didn’t want to be there when they dragged the bodies out in plastic bags. Despite a look of apprehension, Jonathan got up as well.

  “I don’t think I can be by myself right now,” he said.

  I nodded and said I’d take him home. He held my arm all the way to the car, reluctant to let go, even to open the door. I sort of pushed him inside and drove to his house, where I parked across the street and shut off the engine.

  He made no move to leave. The car smelled like death and I rolled down my window. Tonight there would be no escape from the cold. We sat in the silence of our private horrors for a very long time. Finally Jonathan said, “I don’t understand why she is dead.”

  I expected him to cry; but he sat there rock-faced, waiting. Waiting for what? I couldn’t make it any better. “Melanie knew she was out of control. She was afraid she might kill again. Melanie did what she believed needed to be done.”

  He raised his hands in helpless bewilderment. “I don’t understand how she could live with what she did to Peter and keep it secret.” The skin on his face was drawn tightly over its bones, magnifying the raw guilt that shone from his eyes.

  I reached across the seat and took one of his shaking hands.

  “She never really understood that she had killed someone else until she killed Darryl.” His mouth was open and I wasn’t sure he got what I said. I tried again, for the two of us.

  “Peter wasn’t another person to her; he was something she couldn’t, then wouldn’t, find inside. The night of the party, when she followed Peter and Emil to the quarry, she thought she discovered, in Peter’s street life, what she most hated and feared in herself. She thought she found her mother. She had no boundaries with Peter. He was an extension of her insides, the piece of her she couldn’t let exist.”

  I flashed on Melanie’s dead body dripping dark red on the floor. “The hot summer night at the quarry started what she finished tonight.”

  Someday, with somebody else, I’d finish what happened at the party.

  “She didn’t trust me to help her at all.” Though forlorn, his voice was calm.

  “She trusted you as much as she could trust anyone. She might have finished killing herself twenty years ago if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “It might have been better that way,” he said bitterly.

  I thought for a moment. “Not better, different.” I kept guessing. “If we pushed deeper into what really went on when Peter and Melanie were still living in their home, we’d find it was worse than we know.”

  “Should I push, Matthew?”

  I grimaced. “It’s over. You were the only separate person she ever really loved. Her desire to stop herself, as insane a way as she chose to do it, came from what little self-respect you gave her. It’s time to leave the dead alone; we have our own mourning to do.”

  I pulled my hand free and lit two cigarettes. Jonathan’s face was still midwinter white, but some of the shock had drained. Tears were edging down, but the hand that held the cigarette was steady. I suddenly felt the cold draft, but kept the window open. “Maybe she knew there was no recovery from what happened to her? That she couldn’t have that much of her childhood stolen by poverty and abuse, and expect to get well?

  “She had no hope for herself or Therin. But she had hope for you. I said it earlier—you were a good father to her, Jonathan. Her years with you were the best and only years of her life. To the end, she knew you to be a good man.”

  Jonathan sat next to me sobbing. I looked past his head, across the street, to his house. It stood large and gloomy, the porch light scant welcome. I thought about offering him my vacated office couch, but he suddenly reached across and threw his cigarette out the window. “I have to go in there some time, don’t I?” he asked.

  “Not right away,” I replied. “You can stay with me until you’re ready.” He shook his head. “No. I’m grateful for the offer, but I want to be alone.” “Are you sure?” An anxious thought skipped through my head.

  He looked at me and smiled grimly. “You don’t have to worry. There’s been too much death.” We sat breathing quietly until I lost all track of time. Finally he sighed and opened his door. He had one leg outside before he swung back in, reached over, and kissed me hard on the cheek. “You did right by her. I know that,” he said.

  I resisted a desire to grab him by the shoulders and pull him toward me. I too was afraid of being alone. He looked at me, made an effort to smile, and pulled himself out into the cold. I rolled up the window.

  He was halfway across the street when he turned around and came back. I rolled down the window. “I want to thank you, Matthew,” he said, his voice thick. “And to tell you that you don’t have to wait around, I’m okay,” he said.

  I started to tell him he was more than okay, but he was already gone.

  This time there was no hospital in which to recover. No extra-strength painkillers to blot out my memory, dull my interior. No gruff but friendly nurses; no friendly but hostile doctors. No wanted or unwanted visitors. This time there was only me.

  I wish I could tell you I drove home, tied one on, tallied the cost of that two way toll, and continued with the rest of my life. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t. It was going to be a long, hurting time before I finished the math.

  Drugs and alcohol moved me through the first few days of blurred shock but shortly thereafter they lost their charm. There were always limits, even to trusted old friends.

  Simon walked me through the legal system unscathed, our lies intact. We never got much of a chance to talk about the old lies between us, but we would. Hell, what I’d discovered about myself left little grip on any moral high ground. It was a relief; we could become friends again.

  Even more astonishingly, I no longer suffered breath death when I thought of Lou. With the ache of my history staring me in the face, with Melanie’s homelessness ground into my heart, I wanted what little family I had. Like Boots had said, Lou was family; I wouldn’t have felt as if I were suffocating if he wasn’t.

  It still took a while before I called. “Lou.” “Matty.” His voice was warm, sympathetic. “You got grounds to be angry.”

  He brushed away my suggestion. “You don’t need any more
chazarai from me. You’ve been through enough.”

  “I sound that bad?”

  “You sound plenty bad, but I heard about what happened from Shoes.” “Boots.”

  “You call her what you want. I call her ‘Shoes.’”

  I was glad that someone had called her at all. “Regardless, Lou, I acted like a shmuck. I’m sorry.”

  “So, Boychick, you acted like a shmuck. It wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last.”

  His chuckle eased my embarrassment and I started to speak, but he interrupted. “Look, when things get difficult for you, you close down, refuse to talk. Usually that only makes everything worse.”

  “I know.”

  “And I know that you think it’s impossible to be open when you feel torn up.” “I’m afraid if I let go I’ll just get violent,” I admitted.

  “Nah. You’re way past that. Now the hate comes because you keep everything inside.” “Are you sure you’ve been talking to Boots and not Gloria?”

  He laughed. “I don’t need a shrink to understand this, Boychick. I live on the other side of that fence. When something’s bothering me I can’t stop talking. Even when I don’t know what it is. Or how my mouth is affecting people.”

  A trace of sadness had crept into his tone by the sentence’s finish. An ache of compassion for the loneliness of his life, for my life, burst into the air. “I want you to move out here, Lou,” I blurted. “There’s no reason for you to be alone in Chicago. Or me to be alone here.”

  I ignored his gasp on the other end of the line. “Hell,” I added, “if you’re going to be a real-estate tycoon in your old age, you oughta be able to inspect the property.”

  The invitation was as much a surprise to me as to him. Despite the spontaneity, I had no regret. It was what I wanted.

  It took a few more telephone conversations—none of them particularly easy. We hashed through the antagonisms of the recent months and finally cleared the air. Lou would move into our building’s first available apartment.

  The charred rubble of the past few weeks had somehow become foundation stones for relational resurrections.

  For some relationships.

  I retired the Mall-man. Occasionally I wondered whether the decision reflected a stubborn refusal to repay Harry the Mole for handing me Blackhead, or a gift to myself for being alive. Either way, the malls were history.

  But what parts of me were alive? What was my history? Had my attraction to Melanie been a leftover from the me who had stampeded after Megan, attracted to her contempt? Melanie’s love had been hotly packaged hate, and I’d run after it, run after it damn near as hard as I’d run after Megan.

  Or did the tears I’d been unable to check after Melanie and our first lovemaking reflect a better side of me? The side I’d believed gone since Chana’s and Becky’s deaths?

  Maybe someday, when the shame of who I might be settled into knowledge of who I was, I could talk it over with Boots. When the math was done, the toll tallied and paid.

  Sometime deep in the winter bleak, I drove to The End. I hung around on the streets and walked every single block. When I passed Hope House I thought of visiting Jonathan but turned away at the door. I just kept walking until I could bring myself to leave.

  To Michael Paul Smith, who once again created a wonderful book cover and Sherri Frank Mazzotta, whose help has been invaluable turning this project into a reality. Thank you both.

  To Susan. Always a source of strength and reason. And more so during turbulent times.

  When the telephone screams at four A.M., you can make book it ain’t the State waking you into an instant million. I wide-eyed the shadow-mottled ceiling and thought hard about letting my 1940s black Bakelite model cry itself back to sleep. But bad news always gets through the door so I shoved my hand toward the receiver and grabbed hold.

  “I’m glad you didn’t use my last check for an answering machine.” The joke was forced, Simon’s voice tight with fatigue.

  “You don’t pay enough. Damn, Simon, the only time you’re supposed to see four in the morning is when you party on through.”

  “Believe me, this is no party,” he muttered. “What’s with you, Matt? Why aren’t you yelling at me? You sound awake, almost chipper. Julius bring you a batch of uppers?”

  I glanced at the bedside table and realized I had fallen asleep before I’d smoked the usual lullaby pipe. “You didn’t call to practice stand-up,” I snapped, suddenly annoyed. “Who died?”

  “Reb Dov.”

  I had a momentary vision of birds falling from the sky. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Rabbi Dov Horowitz. It was a prime-time murder. Turn on your television.”

  I took another look at my full pipe. “I don’t want to turn on the television. I want to go back to sleep.”

  “Matt-man, I just got back from Cop Central. Come over and I’ll explain, but goddamnit, don’t do any drugs. I gotta have you alert.”

  His urgency was unusual. Since Simon and I reconnected, he’d been my major source of work, which meant I worked regularly but never really urgently. When Simon originally bought me my PI ticket, he was teamed with his father-in-law Alex on the briefcase-and-Bimmer side of the legal fence. In those days I did his corporate research inside libraries. After Alex’s death, Simon’s practice evolved and my work became a little more interesting. Now he chewed on some of those same companies, especially the ones that inflicted serious hurt on their neighbors and workers. When Simon got involved, poisoned people pocketed serious green in trade for their shortened lives. And I pocketed mine for doing interviews, research, and legwork. Sometimes it felt like blood money, but I enjoyed collecting the Suit’s donations.

  I squinted toward the clock which still read the wrong time for my kind of corporate headhunting. “You want me to come to the office now?” I knew he wasn’t inviting me to his home. We’d moved on together, but Fran, Simon’s wife, still had trouble with me. That was all right, I still had trouble with me too.

  “Since when do you do homicide?” I joked.

  “When I have to,” he said guardedly after a moment’s hesitation. “Look, I don’t want to kibitz. I’ve been working all fucking night, and the sooner you get here the sooner I’ll be able to leave.”

  I had regretted my homicide remark right after I’d said it but, before I could promise to show, the line went belly up. I slipped the heavy black receiver back into its cradle, stretched across the bed, and plucked the pipe from the ashtray.

  I fired up on the way to the kitchen where I fixed half espresso, half French. The coffeepot perked despite the unreasonable hour. I dressed, found the remote lurking under the couch, located my cigarettes, and marveled at my energy. It was hours before dawn and I was charged, smoking, mon. Then I yawned watching the gray tendrils from both the cigarette and pipe float upward, interlocking over the brown glass ashtray. No doubt about the smoking.

  I fished the electronic ocean until I hooked the news: bearded Jews wearing calf-length black coats, fur-trimmed upturned hats and flowing earlocks running panic-stricken in every direction. Cries of disbelief and wails of keening prayers accompanied their frantic movements. The news director let the tape roll without voice-over or explanation. Four-thirty in the morning was television art time.

  I jacked up the anguish and retreated to the kitchen. The coffee was ready and so, mercifully, was the announcer. The leader of an ultra-Orthodox sect had been shot and killed by a member of an anti-Semitic gang called the White Avengers. He shot the Rabbi while the congregation danced in the street during their Simchas Torah celebration. I initially guessed that Simon had been retained by the gang, but the late night commentator kept talking. One of the dancing Rabbis had demanded an immediate “eye-for-an-eye,” dropping the anti-Semite with a bullet to the chest. That left Simon with the Rabbi.

  Which made more sense. Hard to see my friend losing sleep over a New Age Nazi. The TV announcer promised an in-depth background report on the Jewish s
ect and its neighboring Irish community following a dog food commercial. I slapped at the remote. I wasn’t hungry and didn’t own a dog.

  I dumped the ashes from my pipe, smoked another cigarette, and looked at my sorry reflection in the kitchen window. I belonged in bed. What the hell was Simon doing working a criminal case? Worse. What the hell was I doing up?

  During shut-down time, Simon’s office was an easy walk through the city’s underlife. By now junkies were home nodding happily in their cribs if they had scored, sniffling and sweating miserably if they hadn’t. Hookers, grifters, and pretty boys dragged tired cheeks away from the Boylston Arch oblivious to anyone but themselves. A tall, pockmarked cracker in a cowboy hat and imitation zebra boots smiled menacingly and herded three of his girls into the all-night deli. I hesitated, saw another two doxies flop inside a candy-apple Mustang, and listened to its engine’s roar—the only musical accompaniment to the night’s chilly grim tableaux. I tried to guess which suburb the two women called home; almost nobody wants to live in the city.

  Simon’s office was the top floor of a commercial building near Copley Square. He could gaze down from his double windows and watch well-heeled, blow-dried pedestrians stride eagerly to their next score. Or, he could focus on the old dirtballs who shacked on the steps of the main library. Just enough distance to comfortably view his life or contemplate his ancestry.

  Simon and I had become friends while mutually suffering the First Wife Blues. We had known each other through remarriages: his successful and continuing; mine golden with an abrupt and terrible conclusion—my wife Chana and my daughter Becky slaughtered in a senseless car crash.

  Simon and I had known each other through despair, hatred, therapy, rebirth, and betrayal. Still, the early years had been our friendship’s best—the only real opportunity to play on the same side of a crumbling ‘60s street. Since then, our relationship had been colored by Simon’s intense upwardly mobile escape from his family’s alcoholic past. My folks worked the other side of the bar so I never had his ambition.