“You seem to be the kind of cop I thought I was going to be,” Lutz said.
He stopped and studied the surface of his whiskey again, as if there were something to be learned from it. Jesse waited. He was an exterior observer of a private unraveling, and he didn’t want to intrude.
“But then I met her, and then I met Walton Weeks, and then I got really fucking smart. Or she did. He’s the brass ring, she says. He doesn’t want people to know you arrested him for public fucking. Make him hire you. And I say as what? And she says as a bodyguard. He’s a big deal. He needs a bodyguard.”
Lutz stopped talking and drank.
“So I’m his bodyguard,” Lutz said. “And we’re getting along. He’s a pretty good guy, and I’m not demanding too much, and it sort of works, even though it shouldn’t and I’m fucking blackmailing him, you know?”
The air got heavier as it cooled in the darkness and settled. The smell of the ocean thickened.
“Well, he’s a cockhound, you know that. And after a while I think he’s getting the munchies for Lorrie, and sure enough she tells me one day he made a move on her. And I’m saying I’ll kick his ass, and she’s saying wait a minute, don’t be foolish. We can have the whole thing. And I say what whole thing and she says Walton Weeks, the money, the show, the whole thing. All she got to do is fuck him a little. And I say hey, and she says don’t be a fool. I fuck him 2 8 0
H I G H P R O F I L E
doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I’ll be doing it for us, and we need to be a little creative here, and I can’t say no to her, never could, and now I’m standing by and she’s fucking Walton and then Walton wants her to leave me and marry him and she reminds me I gotta be creative, and it’ll all be ours and we’ll be together, but let’s play this thing while it’s paying off and . . . six weeks in Vegas and she gets to be Mrs. Walton Weeks, and I’m by myself stroking it, except now and then when he’s not looking we get together. And she keeps reminding me it’s all for us, and we’re all that really matters, and in a while she’ll get it all.”
Lutz drank some whiskey.
“I used to be a tough guy,” Lutz said.
He shook his head and looked slowly around the room, still shaking his head. On the low table where the phone sat was a picture of Jenn.
“That her?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good-looking,” he said. “They’re always good-looking.”
“She’s good-looking,” Jesse said.
“And you’re still hanging on,” Lutz said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I love her,” Jesse said.
Lutz gave a low, humorless whiskey laugh that sounded as much like a cough.
“There they got you,” he said.
He nodded his head slowly.
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“There they got you,” he said. “So I hang around and she married Lutz and I stay on as his fucking bodyguard, sort of keep an eye on the investment, you know? And things are developing good until here comes Carey Longley, and Walton knocks her up and wants a divorce and everything is going to go to the kid. . . . The shit hits the fan.”
“All that time and work and investment,” Jesse said.
