“Gimme an hour. I’ll make some calls.”
While I was on the phone with McDonald, part of me must have been trying to figure out where the missing credit card statements had got to. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember paying those last few bills or ever having seen them. Yet, I hadn’t received any late notices or phone calls inquiring about overdue funds, and there was no old balance showing at the top of my new bill. I got a sick feeling in my gut as I thought about playing house in Brixton with Renee. “Mail’s on the table,” was her daily refrain. Renee would always smile when she said it, and her smile made me smile, but I wasn’t smiling as I reached for my checkbook.
I used to pre-sign checks for her to use at the local grocery store or the campus bookstore or to buy some clothes. I never really paid much attention to what she spent money on or used the checks for. It felt good to be good to her, to want to be good to her. When my life consisted of boning every adjunct in a skirt, I had such disdain for myself that it subverted any pleasure I might find in the bedroom. My sex life was a version of Groucho Marx’s famous line about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. I didn’t want anyone who wanted me, and when Janice Nadir and I were involved it was worse than that. I used her own love and desperation against her. So, yeah, when Renee came into my life, I was happy to do things for her. And she balanced my checkbook: a process as mysterious to me as quantum physics.
When I looked at the checking account register, I was heartsick. Renee had written checks for those two AmEx bills. The amounts weren’t outrageous given that I’d done some splurging since getting the book deals. I was no forensic accountant and without the actual list of charges to work with, I wasn’t going to be able to back my way into the toll bill amount. But there was no getting around the fact that Renee, in spite of having four months of unfettered access to my checkbook, had paid only these two bills. Was she covering Jim’s tracks or was it a coincidence that the accompanying statements were missing?
I guess I was pretty old-fashioned in some ways. Mostly, I used my computer like a fancy word processor. I never banked online or did any of the other sorts of things online the rest of the world did. But this was different and I was frustrated; so armed with my most recent bill, I typed in
“How long before this book a yours comes out?” It was Tom McDonald.
“Years, if ever,” I said. “Right now I’m just looking to see if there’s a book here at all. Why?”
“Because the caliber of the weapon used is part of the holdback and you can’t share this information with anybody, at least not yet.”
“The holdback. What’s the holdback?”
“It’s standard operating procedure for detectives to withhold certain details from any serious case. It’s so they can make sure a suspect isn’t bullshittin’ them or wastin’ their time. It’s a way to eliminate false leads or confessions.”
“I get it. A guy turns himself in and says ‘I used a.38’ when it was actually a.25. Something like that, right?”
There was a few uncomfortable seconds of silence on McDonald’s end of the phone. Then, “Why did you say that?”
“What? Hold on.”
I didn’t really hear what he said. No, I heard it, but it didn’t quite register because as I stretched my neck, my eye caught sight of something that didn’t belong. “Wait a minute,” I told him. I walked over to my door, the cell phone nestled between my right shoulder and ear. I popped on the floor lamp and froze. An envelope, not unlike the one the missing chapter had come in, had been pushed through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.
“Weiler, what’s going on?” McDonald shouted in my ear.
“Just a second.”
I forced myself to kneel down and scoop it up. This envelope was thinner, lighter, with nothing written on it. The flap was taped shut. I tried to pull it open, but that didn’t work. I retreated to my desk to find scissors or a letter opener.
“Hey, Weiler.”
“Sorry, McDonald.”
“About the gun,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Why did you mention a.25?”
“I don’t know,” I lied, finding an old X-ACTO knife. “It was random. Why?”
“Lead detective says your vic was killed by one shot to the back of the head. The bullet was pretty smashed up, but they’re pretty certain it was a.25, probably from a Ruger or a Beretta.”
My head was pounding, sweat once again rushing through my pores, my world wobbling severely on its axis. None of this, the toll bill or the caliber of the bullet, proved anything for certain. I told myself-even if I didn’t quite believe it-that Jim could simply have stolen my toll pass and run up my bill. That the police holdback wasn’t top secret. Hadn’t I just found out what caliber bullet had killed Haskell Brown without much trouble? Jim was a resourceful kid, more resourceful than me. I’m sure he could have found out the holdback information.
“Weiler!”
“Give me a second,” I barked, emptying the contents of the envelope onto my desk. And when I saw the item the envelope held, my world stopped wobbling and spun off into the void. It was the front page of the
MABRY LURED TO DEATH BY DARK-HAIRED BEAUTY
“Weiler! You okay?” I could not find it in me to answer. “Weiler, are you all right?”
“Far from it. Get Amy out of her apartment. Get her the fuck out of there right now and take her someplace safe.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
Forty-Eight
McDonald told me to sit tight, that he’d get back to me with their location after they’d gotten Amy safely away from the loft. I asked if he wanted me to call her to warn her he was coming.
“No, for chrissakes!” he screamed. “You’d only scare the shit out of her and make my job ten times harder. I’ll handle it. Go take a cold shower or knit a fuckin’ sweater and wait for my call. Should be a few hours.”
In spite of wanting to crawl out of my own skin, I heeded some of his advice and took a shower. Afterwards, I sat in the living room of my lightless apartment, waiting for whispers of dawn to shine through my windows- whispers that came as dark clouds and the pinging of rain drops. I barely moved. My mind raced. I’d been so diligent at rationalizing away the obvious that I never let myself fully entertain the possibility that what Jim had said on the boardwalk might actually be a factual accounting of what had happened. Addicts are superb at denial, but there was no denying it, not any of it, not anymore. The bloody symmetry of it came crashing down on my head.
If it was true-and it was-that I had been remade as a person and as a writer, it had been largely at Jim’s hand. There was no escaping it. I may have started the change to win back Amy’s respect of my own accord, but the rest of it was more easily traceable. All the red lines led back to that September day when Frank Vuchovich came to my desk to retrieve his first assignment and stuck a Colt Python in my face. Or did they? Did they lead back to the day Jim found the
