Live Bait

22

After the last of the mourners had left Lily’s, Marty found Jack slumped behind the wheel of his Mercedes, staring into the dark beyond the windshield, an empty silver flask dripping its last precious drops of bourbon on the buttery leather seat. Marty bent down to the open window and nearly passed out.

‘God, Jack, what the hell is that smell?’

Jack didn’t even look at him. ‘Sheep manure. You oughta air out the equipment shed, Marty. The place reeks.’ He sounded oddly sober for a man who had probably been drinking since sunrise.

‘What were you doing in the equipment shed?’

‘Just… taking a trip down memory lane, I guess. Pop used to take me out there when I was a kid. Let me hang out while he sharpened the tools. You know what? I think I’ve had a little too much to drink to actually start this thing, and I could really use a shower. Feel like driving me home, Marty?’

‘Not in that car.’

Twenty minutes later they were in Marty’s ’66 Chevy Malibu, top down to disperse the smell, heading west on the freeway past downtown Minneapolis. The traffic was light, the night air had an almost sexual warmth, and Jack was uncharacteristically quiet in the passenger seat.

Finally Marty said the words he’d thought would never come out of his mouth. ‘Okay, Jack. Start talking.’

‘No problem, buddy. Pick a subject.’

‘Let’s start with what you did to your mother.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Don’t give me that crap, Jack. You’ve got about as much interest in religion as a fern, and all of a sudden you’re filled with the spirit and decide to chuck the yarmulke and become a Christian? Bullshit. That stupid confirmation picture – and probably your marriage, too – was a direct shot at your folks.’

‘So?’

‘So it was childish and spiteful and damn near unforgivable.’

Jack sighed noisily. ‘You finished?’

‘No, goddamnit, I am not finished. So you had a fight with your dad. Lily didn’t even know what it was about, so why’d you shut her out?’

‘It’s complicated. And you don’t want to know.’

‘Yeah, I do want to know. I want to know what the hell Morey said that made you lash out like that.’

Jack straightened a little in the seat and looked at Marty with something like amazement. ‘You know what, Marty? You’re the very first person who ever thought I might have had a reason for what I did, that I wasn’t just being an asshole.’ He faced front again and shook his head. ‘Man, you cannot imagine what that feels like.’

‘Great. Glad I made you happy. So what was the reason?’

‘I really love you for that, Marty.’

‘Oh, for chrissake, I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’

‘Well that’s good, Marty, ’cause I didn’t want to talk about that shit anyway. Water under the bridge, spilt milk, bygones…’

‘Damnit, Jack, it isn’t any of those things, because it’s still hurting Lily. And you, for that matter. You gotta fix it.’

Jack shook his head strongly. ‘Can’t.’

‘Well then, tell me what it is. Maybe I can fix it.’

‘God, you are such an arrogant prick, which is pretty funny, when you think about it. What the hell have you got to be arrogant about? You can’t even fix your own life, so just leave it alone. I’m not going to talk about it.’

Marty’s fingers tightened on the wheel as he took the tight cloverleaf onto the freeway that led to Wayzata. ‘Fine. You don’t want to talk about that? Then let’s talk about Rose Kleber.’

Jack folded his arms across his chest. ‘I didn’t know her.’

‘Don’t give me that shit, Jack. I saw your expression when you were looking at her picture in the paper.’

Jack didn’t move for a minute, didn’t say anything, but Marty could feel him tense. ‘Okay, okay. So I met her once. So what? I meet a lot of people. Doesn’t mean I know them. I don’t think I ever even heard her last name. It was just a shock, that’s all. I mean, Jesus. Three old Jews get capped in three days, and it turns out I know all of them.’

‘How’d you meet her?’

‘Christ, I don’t know, what the hell is this? What’s with all the questions?’

Marty knew better than to give him time to think. ‘Well, it’s like this, Jack. The cops are looking for a link between the victims, and it’s starting to look like you might be it.’

‘That’s bullshit. I’ll bet you could find at least a hundred people who knew all three of them.’

‘They were close, weren’t they? Morey, Ben, and Rose?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘Because you DO, goddamnit. You were scared shitless when you heard about Ben Schuler getting shot, and Gino and Magozzi saw that. You think they aren’t going to wonder why? And they didn’t even see you freak out when you saw Rose Kleber’s picture. Jesus, Jack, you know something about these murders. Why aren’t you giving it up? People are dying.’

Jack turned on him. ‘What the hell is this? Yesterday you couldn’t have cared less who killed your own father-in-law, and today you’re Mr Cop again. What’s that about?’

‘Oh yeah? Well you forgot something, Jack. Yesterday you were all over me for not trying to find out who killed Morey, and now that I’m asking a couple of questions, you’re the one who doesn’t want to talk about it. What’s that about?’

Jack slammed his head back against the seat in frustration; read the big white-and-green freeway sign as they went under an overpass. ‘Goddamnit, Marty, that was Jonquil. You missed it. Take the next exit.’

‘You gotta talk to me, Jack. This isn’t going to go away.’

Jack was silent for a moment, then bizarrely, just as they were slowing on the freeway exit and about to hit the safer surface streets, he buckled his lap belt. ‘Take a right. Three blocks up, the road forks at a creek, and that’s where you bear left.’

Marty looked at his right hand curled around the steering wheel. It looked like a fist, and he wondered what it would feel like to slam that fist into Jack’s face. It took all his willpower to keep his voice calm and nonthreatening. ‘Listen to me, Jack. You’re not thinking straight. If you know something that might help the cops stop these murders, you have to tell them. Because if you don’t and somebody else dies, you might as well have pulled the trigger yourself.’

Jack turned to him with a strange smile that seemed to flash on and off as they passed under streetlights. ‘That’s not going to happen, Marty. Don’t worry about it. You still got that.357 you used to have?’

Marty looked at Jack in disbelief and almost clipped a parked car. ‘Goddamnit, Jack, you’re driving me crazy. I don’t even know who you are anymore.’

‘Yeah, me either. But what about the gun? Have you still got it?’

Marty slammed on the brakes, flinging Jack forward, and the car screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. ‘Yes, I’ve got the goddamned gun! You want to borrow it? Put a bullet in your head and save me the trouble?’

‘Jesus, Marty, take it easy.’ Jack shook the hand he’d used to brace himself against the dashboard. ‘You nearly broke my wrist. Good thing I had my seat belt on. Did you know that ninety percent of car accidents happen on surface streets? Everybody thinks the freeways are the killing fields, but it just ain’t so.’

Marty closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel.

‘Now, back to the gun. I want you to do me a favor. Go home, pick it up, keep it close, and stay with Ma for a few days. Can you do that?’

Marty rolled his head to look at him with an expression of hopeless resignation. ‘Jack, you have to tell me what’s happening.’

‘People are getting shot, that’s what’s happening. Old people. Jews. Like Ma. Just keep an eye out, that’s all.’

Marty sighed and moved the car slowly forward. Left at the creek, around the sweeping curves of a heavily wooded development, all the time feeling as if he were driving through a dream, powerless to change anything.

‘You don’t really think I’d let people die if I could do anything to stop it, do you, Marty?’

Marty didn’t even have to think about it, and that surprised him. ‘No. I guess I don’t. But I think you’re in trouble, and you won’t let me help you.’

Jack chuckled. ‘I’ve been past help for a long time now, Marty. But it was goddamned nice of you to offer.’ He leaned his head back on the seat and looked up at the golden bottoms of night clouds, reflecting the distant city lights. ‘Boy, Hannah used to love this car. Sometimes when you were working nights we’d take it down to Porky’s for hot fudge cake, then drive around the lakes with the top down. Those were really good days.’

Marty squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, thought that if he kept them closed, eventually they’d run off the road and into a tree and both die, and maybe the world would be a better place.

‘Her world turned on you, Marty, you know that? That’s the other reason I love you. You made Hannah happy.’

Marty pressed his lips together, went to that dark place he visited every day. ‘I got Hannah killed.’

‘No you didn’t, Marty. Don’t take that on yourself.’ Jack reached over and ruffled Marty’s hair in a strangely paternal gesture, and for the first time in over a year, Marty thought he might cry.

Jack stood at the end of his tree-lined driveway and watched Marty pull away. He waited until the taillights disappeared around a curve before gingerly pulling the gun from his pocket. He’d spent the whole ride home worried about the damn thing firing and blowing his dick off, because he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d set the safety back in the equipment shed.

He still had the gun in his hand when he heard a soft snick-snick in the trees behind him. Deer, he thought, or maybe those damn raccoons, but still, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.