Blindside

TWENTY-FOUR

In my hotel room I checked my messages and drank a beer. The wind smashed invisible fists against the windows. For a time I thought about Erin, about how much I’d been in love with her and how, as I’d learned talking to her again, at least some of those feelings remained. Her dying seemed impossible. Not in this time continuum, not in this universe. She was too fiercely alive to ever not exist in earthly form. Then I thought of our daughter and what she was going through now. The same fears I had.

The surgeon had told us that David’s surgery had gone well. The evaluation would continue tomorrow with a neurologist brought in. I’d said my goodnights and come back here.

I needed to change the subject. Jenny’s cell phone rang several times before she answered. The clamor made me hold the phone away from my ear. Banging band, shouts, laughter, cries.

No point in trying to recreate the conversation. It was interrupted several times, once by somebody apparently trying to grope her. I had to repeat four times exactly what I wanted her to do. She finally seemed to grasp what I was saying and began to sound suspicious. Or maybe not. Maybe I was imagining it. Hard to say. She was in a club not far from my hotel. But she agreed. Half an hour. The bar downstairs.

The place was crowded. Another convention, this one of certified public accountants, began in the morning and the early arrivals had decided to throw back a few in the quiet, respectable way one would hope CPAs would conduct themselves. No one had barfed on the bar yet or goosed a waitress or thrown a punch. That might come later, but looking around it seemed unlikely. These guys didn’t even raise their voices when they drank. These people were downright un-American. Or maybe it was simply the fact that a good number of the CPAs were women, almost always a civilizing factor except on the dimmest of American Express cowboys.

She was twenty minutes late. The male CPAs paused in their quiet conversations to note the fact that a fetching young woman had entered their purview. She’d given up on Goth and now wore an expensive black coat and black heels. She began to take her coat off before she reached my booth, revealing a smart black dress. I wondered if Armani had a line of mourning clothes.

Only the hair and face were the same, a hint of fashionable street girl and Eastern college coed. The only difference now was the lack of luster in the dark eyes and the grave gray circles beneath them. Her sigh sounded weary when she collapsed into the booth across from me. ‘God, thanks for calling. I just couldn’t seem to leave that place. I hadn’t been there in a long time and all these creeps I used to hang with wouldn’t leave me alone.’

A waitress appeared. I asked for another Scotch and water. I expected underage Jenny to order Perrier or the like but she said, ‘A glass of merlot, please.’

The woman, at least as weary as Jenny, glanced at me. I shrugged. ‘I’ll have to see some ID, miss.’

‘Oh, sure.’ And from within a shiny black purse slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, Jenny’s hand secured a red wallet. She flipped it open and offered it up. The waitress’s eyes went from the ID to Jenny and back again. She returned the wallet with a ‘Thank you, miss.’ She took one more look at me, knowing she’d been bullshitted.

‘How much did that cost you?’

‘It’s a pretty good one. Two hundred and fifty. I haven’t been turned down yet.’ Jenny should have been sounding boastful, insolent, but not tonight. And it was just then that I noticed she’d started biting her lower lip; I also noticed the quick look of apprehension now filling the eyes.

She knew why I’d asked her to come over here.

‘I miss Jim. I even called his number a couple of times today just to hear it ring. Isn’t that crazy? I’m glad they haven’t disconnected it yet.’

‘We all do stupid things when we’re suffering. Right after my dad died I used to put on one of his sweaters and pair of shoes and walk around in them all day.’

‘That’s pretty sad.’

‘I suppose, but at the time it was comforting.’

The waitress was back with our drinks. As she set Jenny’s drink down, she said, ‘Honey, whatever you paid for that ID, you spent too much. But this is the only drink you’re going to get from me tonight, okay?’

After she was gone, Jenny said, ‘They never hassle me about it at clubs.’

‘They may have paid off the cops and don’t have to worry about it.’

‘You’re always so cynical.’

‘Practical. That’s how a lot of clubs operate, otherwise they’d be out of business.’

‘I thought I looked older, anyway.’

‘Not tonight you don’t. You look exhausted — and scared.’

The last word jolted her. She had been about to raise her glass of merlot but then stopped. ‘I don’t know what I’d be scared about.’

‘Sure you do.’

She gripped her drink hard enough to whiten her knuckles. ‘If you keep looking at me that way I probably will be scared. Are you drunk or something? The only reason I came here was because I thought you’d make me feel better.’

‘I’m trying to help you, Jenny. I called our old friend Pierce earlier and he told me something about the night before Waters died.’ I’d had to promise to mail him a hundred-dollar bill in the morning.

‘You believe anything that creep has to say? You know what kind of pervert he is.’

‘Yeah, I do. I’m not saying he’s a wonderful guy but I believe what he told me.’

‘Can’t we talk about something else? I just want to relax. This hasn’t been an easy time for me.’

‘Pierce said that the night before Waters was murdered, you and Jim had an argument so loud the other tenants called Pierce and complained. But you told me you hadn’t seen Waters for two days before he died.’

‘Did you ever think maybe I forgot? I’m not exactly thinking straight these days, you know?’

The Jenny I’d first met in Waters’ apartment wouldn’t have whined like this. She would’ve insulted me and smirked. But this was a whipped nineteen-year-old who seemed to have no serious defenses.

‘Listen to me, Jenny. I know you killed him. You may not have wanted to, but there was the gun in his car and you knew about it. You’ll feel better if you tell me about it.’

‘God, I can’t believe you’re saying this. Of course I didn’t kill him. I loved him.’

‘But he loved Lucy and you knew it. And you’re a woman who gets her way.’

‘Oh, I see, I’m some spoiled rich bitch who killed some comic book nerd because he was in love with somebody else. I know what this sounds like but I’m going to say it anyway. I loved him but I always felt I was doing him a favor. I’m not beautiful but I’m pretty good-looking, or at least a lot better-looking than the girls he would’ve been able to get. And he knew it. I scared him. He was afraid I’d dump him, that’s the only reason he started seeing that Lucy. I could’ve had him back any time I wanted him.’ The energy her bragging took impressed me. She was rallying now, the little girl lost behind her mask of arrogance. But it was over quickly enough. ‘I thought you liked me.’

‘I do. That’s why I’m trying to help you.’

‘By getting me to admit that I killed Jimmy? That’s a real big help.’

‘By telling the truth. Maybe one of you got that. 38 from his glove compartment and then something happened that neither of you meant to happen. Maybe he was threatening you with it to leave him alone — or maybe you were threatening him with it to take you back.’

It might have been a gag in a magic act, the way she produced her cell phone. It wasn’t there and then it was there. Where the hell had it come from?

‘I want to call my father.’

‘You’re not going to talk to me anymore?’

‘Not when you talk crazy like this.’

‘You know I’m not talking crazy. I don’t believe you killed him intentionally. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘My father will know what to do. He always knows what to do.’ The father she mocked? The father she at least pretended to despise? ‘You’ll be sorry.’ She was nine years old again now. She thumbed a single number.

I heard the phone ringing. Once, twice, three times, four times. ‘I’m sorry it’s so late. You need to help me, Daddy. This terrible man is saying terrible things about me.’

She decided to intimidate me with her master’s voice. She put it on speaker phone and held it up so I could hear him.

In the background I heard a sleepy woman asking what was wrong. ‘You hear that, Jenny? Now you’ve woken your mother. What kind of trouble are you in this time? Jesus Christ, what time is it?’

‘Is she in trouble?’ the woman said.

‘Just let me handle this,’ the father snapped. ‘Are you drunk or on drugs as usual, Jenny?’

‘I just had a few drinks.’

‘A few drinks. That’s what you’ve been telling us since you were fourteen.’

She realized now that letting me hear her old man talk hadn’t been such a good idea. He had one of those boardroom voices: manly, angry, definitive, as if he was God’s own representative here on earth.

As she started to cry, he said, ‘Oh, Jesus, don’t start that.’

‘What’s she doing?’ The mother’s voice was concerned.

‘She’s crying. She always cries. It’s part of her act when she gets into trouble and I have to take care of it for her.’

Jenny’s hand had lowered, the phone with it. It seemed to grow heavier the angrier her old man sounded.

I said, ‘Your daughter’s in trouble and she needs you to help her right now.’

‘Who the hell is that?’ he bellered.

I took the phone from Jenny’s hand. She offered no resistance. She slumped in the booth, placing both her hands over her face.

‘My name is Dev Conrad. I’m in town here for a few days working on the Ward campaign.’

‘The Ward campaign? What’s my daughter got to do with that bastard?’

‘She’ll tell you all about it when you come to the Royale Hotel and pick her up.’

‘I seem to remember buying her a very expensive Porsche about eight months ago.’

‘She needs a goddamned ride, all right? I seem to remember she’s your daughter.’

There was pain in the pause. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as he’d sounded at first. Leery now, he said: ‘What kind of trouble is she in?’

‘Nothing you want to talk about on the phone.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘What’s wrong, Tommy?’ the mother said, picking up on his tone.

‘Now we’re going to sit here and in twenty minutes go to the lobby where we’ll hope to see you in the drive-up waiting for her.’

‘Make it a half hour.’

‘Make what a half hour, Tommy?’

‘Will you shut your fucking mouth?’

I’d been wrong. I guess you couldn’t take the Tommy out of old Tommy no matter how hard you tried.

I handed the phone back to Jenny.

‘I really appreciate this, Daddy.’

Her mother was sobbing in the background. She didn’t even know what was going on yet.

After she closed her phone, Jenny said, ‘It really was an accident. I just hope somebody believes me.’ She shuddered. This time the dark gaze was timid, fragile. ‘You see what I mean about my father?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I see what you mean about your father.’

‘I shouldn’t have said that about Jimmy being a comic book nerd. That’s one of the reasons I loved him so much. He accepted me for what I am and I accepted him for what he was. We were really friends, too.’ Then: ‘You think that waitress would give me a bourbon and water? That’s what I drink when I get serious.’

The waitress was laughing about something with three people at a nearby table.

‘Probably not. But how about if I order it and you drink it?’

‘My father really isn’t as bad as he sounds sometimes.’

‘I’ll order you that drink now, Jenny.’

‘In other words, you don’t like him much.’

‘If I say I don’t like how he treats you and your mother, can we change the subject?’

‘Maybe I should get a double shot.’ She tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off. ‘It really was an accident, Dev. It really was.’