High Profile

62

As Jesse got out of his car in the parking lot, he could see someone sitting in the dark at the foot of his stairs. Jesse took his gun out and held it at his side.

“Stone?” the person said.

“Yes.”

“Lutz,” he said. “I need to talk.”

“Okay.”

They sat in Jesse’s living room with the French doors open to the deck and the night air coming in thick with the smell of the harbor.

“You got a drink?” Lutz said.

“Scotch okay?”

“Sure, some ice.”

Jesse got the whiskey and the ice and a glass and put them on the table.

“One glass?” Lutz said.

“I’ll pass,” Jesse said.

“I heard you were a boozer,” Lutz said.

He put ice in his glass and poured whiskey over it.

“Sometimes I’m not,” Jesse said.

He sat at the bar across from Lutz and put the gun on the bar top. If Lutz noticed, he didn’t care. He looked past Jesse at the big picture behind the bar.

“Ozzie Smith,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded.

“The best,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded again.

“My old man used to say Pee Wee Reese was the best,” Lutz said.

“Never saw him play.”

Lutz shrugged. Once when Jenn had been staying there, she had put small-wattage bulbs in all the lights. More romantic, she said. Hated bright lights, she said. When she left again, Jesse never changed them. So the room was dim. Only the light over the table where Lutz sat was on. And it wasn’t a bright light.

“Me either,” Lutz said. “I only know what my old man said.”

“He ever see Ozzie?”

Lutz shook his head.

“Died too soon,” Lutz said. “You ever play?”

“Yes.”

“Shortstop like Ozzie?”

“Shortstop,” Jesse said. “But not like Ozzie.”

“You any good?”

“I was.”

“Good enough?” Lutz said.

“Got hurt,” Jesse said. “Never got a chance to find out.”

Lutz drank some whiskey.

“Tough,” Lutz said.

Jesse waited. Lutz was quiet. He drank some more whiskey.

“Life’s tough,” Lutz said.

Jesse waited. Lutz poured himself some more whiskey.

“You ever been married?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“But not now,” Lutz said.

“No.”

“She still around someplace?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“Hard to cut it off,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded.

“You like this job?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“I heard you was on the job in L.A. before this.”

“Robbery Homicide,” Jesse said.

“You got fired,” Lutz said.

“Drunk on duty,” Jesse said.

“Wife troubles?”

“Some.”

Lutz drank some whiskey.

“They’ll drive you right into the bottle, you let them,” he said.

Jesse didn’t answer. Lutz didn’t expect him to. It was as if Jesse were barely there.

“So you ended up here,” Lutz said. “And started over.”

Jesse waited. Lutz drank.

“And starting over worked,” Lutz said.

“So far,” Jesse said. “Sort of.”

Lutz shook his head.

“Too late,” he said.

“For you?”

Lutz nodded. He was looking at his glass of whiskey. It looked good to him. He drank some.

“Bad mistake,” he said. “Bringing it here.”

Jesse was very still.

“Figured I had them up here anyway,” Lutz said, “I dump them here, small town, some fucking hillbilly cop would be stepping on his own dick trying to figure out what to do.”

Lutz added some ice to his glass, and some more whiskey.

“Drink enough, it doesn’t do any good anymore,” he said. “Doesn’t change the way you feel anymore.”

He drank again.

“Helps you talk, though,” he said. “Instead of a hillbilly, I got you.”

Jesse nodded.

“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 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.

“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.

“She says I gotta kill them. And, fuck, you get the picture. I do what she says.”

“You knew about the house in Paradise,” Jesse said.

“Sure, I was there a few times. So that night, I brought them up to do a walk-through,” Lutz said, “and talk about their plans, and where the kid’s room would be, and when they got there I shot them outside, on the beach, at low tide, and let them bleed out, so when the tide came in it would wash away the blood. But I fucked up, I guess.”

Jesse nodded.

“You found some blood in the cold room?”

Jesse nodded.

“Should have bled them longer,” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t care,” Lutz said. “I’m not sure I really cared then. It was the last thing. Then it was over and we’d be together.”

“And you kept them in the cold room to screw up the ME,” Jesse said.

“Yep.”

“And you hung him from a tree to confuse us.”

Lutz nodded.

“Figured you’d be chasing wild geese all over the place,” Lutz said.

He made the cough/laugh sound again.

“He was a public figure, you know,” he said.

“And the girl in the Dumpster?”

“Another fuckup,” Lutz said. “I wanted her to just go away. I covered her up, but some dump picker must have uncovered her and panicked and run off. Or sea gulls, maybe, or a dog... or maybe I was fucking up on purpose, you know? Like the shrinks say?”

He emptied his glass and stared at it and added some ice and poured more scotch.

“It ain’t working,” he said. “Scotch ain’t working. Nothing’s working.”

Jesse nodded.

“And then...” Lutz said.

He drank and made his choking laugh sound.

“Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water... here comes Hendricks.”

“And she needed to be with him to carry on the franchise and solidify your position.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lutz said. “I didn’t know we were both doing her the same day until you told me.”

Jesse nodded. Lutz drank.

“So that’s how it went,” Lutz said. “She was the brains and the motivation. I was the patsy.”

“And you killed a man and a woman and an unborn child.”

“Yep.”

“For her,” Jesse said.

“I’m glad you get that,” Lutz said.

“I get it,” Jesse said.

“Maybe you’re a patsy, too,” Lutz said.

“Maybe,” Jesse said. “But it won’t help you. You killed three people.”

“And you know what’s pathetic?” Lutz said. “Everything I told you about her won’t do you any good unless I say it in court, and I won’t.”

“You’ll take the rap for her?” Jesse said.

Lutz nodded.

“So why’d you tell me,” Jesse said.

Lutz shrugged.

“I needed somebody to know,” Lutz said.

He finished his scotch and stood up.

“Now I’m walking,” he said.

“You know I can’t let you go,” Jesse said.

“You got a gun,” Lutz said.

“What is this,” Jesse said, “suicide by cop?”

“I’m walking,” Lutz said.

“I can stop you without the gun,” Jesse said.

Lutz took a gun out from under his jacket and pointed it loosely at nothing.

“No,” Lutz said, “you can’t.”

Jesse picked his own gun up off the bar top.

“I’ll kill you if I have to,” Jesse said.

“Close your case for you,” Lutz said.

“I’ll stay after Lorrie,” Jesse said.

“Without me you got nothing,” Lutz said. “There’s no sign of her anywhere.”

Lutz began to back toward the front door, the gun still in his hand.

“I don’t want to do this, Lutz,” Jesse said.

Lutz nodded and smiled at him sadly.

“But you will,” Lutz said.

He raised the gun and aimed at Jesse and Jesse shot him in the middle of the mass, three times, his hand steady, his mind now empty, concentrating only on the shot. Lutz lurched a little. The gun fell from his hand. He went back another couple of steps and fell over, and lay on his side and bled to death on Jesse’s rug.

Jesse stayed where he was by the bar and looked at the body on the floor. The sound that came after gunfire was always paralyzing. After a time he put the gun on the bar and got off the bar stool and walked over to Lutz and looked down. Lutz’s face had lost all expression. His open eyes saw nothing.

“You goddamned fool,” Jesse said.

Then he went to the phone and called the station.