The King of Lies

by John Hart

  “That’s it, then?” she asked. “Think hard.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay.” She started the car and drove me the rest of the way home. “Don’t leave town,” she told me as I stepped out of her car.

  “Ha-ha.” I said. “That’s funny.”

  “Who’s joking?” she asked, flashing that same troubling smile. Then she backed down the driveway and was gone. I lit a cigarette and watched the empty spot in the road where her car had been. Then it occurred to me—why her smile troubled me. I’d seen it before, in court, right before she pulled the rug out from under whichever defense lawyer had the misfortune of underestimating her.

  CHAPTER 13

  I had a client early on, my first murder case. I was young, still idealistic, and even though he was guilty, I felt for him. He’d killed his neighbor in a drunken fight over a shared driveway. He didn’t think the gun was loaded. He just wanted to scare the guy, a common enough story, until a bloody hole appeared in the man’s chest.

  The trial took eight days. I beat the murder charge, but the jury came back with manslaughter. My client bought seven and a half years, not bad in the big picture. Two hours after the verdict, I got a call to come to the infirmary at the county jail. My client had chugged half a gallon of cleaning fluid in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. The guards were laughing about it at central processing. The jail, they explained between smiles, used nontoxic supplies. My client would shit green for a week, then be okay. Happens all the time. Wink, wink, ha-ha.

  I found my client in the infirmary. He was fetal and weeping, oblivious to me and to the guard stuck with suicide watch. It took him five minutes to meet my eyes and another five to respond.

  “Don’t you get it?” he pleaded.

  I was speechless, clueless, I didn’t get it.

  “Look at me.”

  I shook my head to show I needed something more.

  Then he screamed, veins like cords in his neck. “Look at me!”

  I turned to my eyes to the impassive guard, who shrugged. “He’s a bitch,” the guard said. “Just look at him.” My client was small and well formed, with fair skin and straight white teeth. He was attractive, maybe even beautiful.

  Suddenly, in a sickening, visceral way, I got it.

  “I can’t go back to prison,” he finally told me. “I’ll die first. I’ll fucking kill myself.” He swore it to me. “One way or another.”

  Eventually, the story came out. He’d done time before, which I knew. Here’s what I didn’t know. There was a group of them. Sometimes only three or four. Sometimes seven. They’d tape a centerfold to his naked back and take turns—a screwdriver in his ear to keep him docile. He showed me the scar from the one time he’d fought back. He was still deaf in that ear.

  He described it between choking, gut-wrenching sobs. That’s what he was going back to. Sometimes for hours at a time.

  “I can’t do it, man. I just can’t.”

  The next day, he was transported to Central Prison in Raleigh. Two weeks later, he finally managed to kill himself. He was twenty-seven years old, same as I was at the time. I’ve never forgotten him, for his was the most horrible display of utter despair that I’ve ever witnessed. Since then, I’ve skirted the prison system with something like morbid fascination, safe behind my briefcase, yet close enough never to forget what I saw in that young man’s eyes.

  So, yes. Mills scared me. Terrified me, in fact. I was playing a dangerous game, the stakes brutally real. But Ezra was dead, his shadow as tattered as his flesh, and I was finally learning a few things about myself.

  I gave Mills two minutes to disappear, then threw myself into the truck. I had to talk to Jean, to warn her about Mills. Tell her to keep her mouth shut. And if she wouldn’t listen, I’d make her. One way or another.

  Powerful words.

  I raced up Main Street but was stopped by an approaching train. So I cut right to Ellis Street and shot across the bridge, the train beneath me a black snake of chattering coal. I didn’t know if Mills had talked to Jean or not. She could be en route, even stopped by this very train. So I drove with one eye on the road and dialed Jean’s house on the cell phone. I got a busy signal, waited, and hit redial. Twice more I got a busy signal and then it was ringing. I was halfway there, doing fifty in a thirty-five, and the phone kept ringing. I counted fifteen rings, but no one answered. I slammed the phone down, tried to calm myself, but failed. I was near panic. Suddenly, the tension and fear were upon me, hot on my face, like sweat. I pictured Jean in prison and knew that she couldn’t make it; it would kill her, sure as the bullets in Ezra’s head.

  Traffic began to fall away as I moved off the heavily traveled streets and onto the narrow ones where the houses dwindled onto small lots. Children played on the pavement, and I had to slow down for fear of killing one. I passed more and more dirt driveways as the tracks again drew near. Cars littered yards like derelicts and rust streaked the tin roofs of mill houses in their second century. The curbs fell into crumbled ruin and then I was on Jean’s street. A tiny boy dangled from the tire-swing in the yard opposite her house, and he watched blank-eyed, his feet trailing in the dust. A face appeared at the window behind him, two eyes and a hint of mouth, then vanished behind mustard yellow curtains that flicked closed as I turned my head away.

  I parked in front of Jean’s house and turned off the truck. Alex Shiften sat on the front porch, tipped back in a rocking chair, feet on the rail. A cigarette hung from her mouth and she watched me from behind her glassless frames. The corners of her mouth dipped as I got out. I heard the train in the distance, and wind moved the tree-tops, but I couldn’t feel it. The kudzu was still on the banks of the track.

  I pulled myself taller and walked into the yard, twigs snapping under my feet. Alex never took her eyes off me. When I got closer, I saw that she had a knife in her hand, calmly shaving down a piece of wood. Her hair was uncombed, sticking up in spiky tufts, and the hard muscles of her arms moved as she whittled. She stood before I got to the steps, barefoot and wearing tight faded jeans.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” I shot back.

  “Caller ID,” she said, and smiled coldly.

  I put one foot on the stairs and stopped. Her smile grew into a smirk as she folded the blade away and put the knife into her pocket, as if to say that she didn’t need it to deal with me. She leaned against the pillar, and I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. “I need to talk to Jean,” I said.

  “You always need to talk to Jean.”

  “Is she here? It’s important.”

  “Gone,” Alex replied.

  “To work?”

  Alex shrugged and looked away, smoke exploring the air around her head.

  “Damn it, Alex! Is she at work?”

  She stared down at me and slowly gave me the finger. An unrecognizable sound escaped my throat and I pushed past her, into the house. She didn’t follow, which surprised me. I’d expected a fight.

  The screen slammed behind me and I was in shadow, breathing musty air that smelled of cabbage. Alex’s voice followed me. “Look all you want. It won’t change anything. Jean’s not here and she’s got no use for you. So take one last look and then get the hell out.”

  The rooms were small, with low ceilings, the furniture old and shabby. I moved across the sagging floor in light that fingered through dusty windows to play upon my feet and the thin green rug. I passed the television, saw a framed photo of my mother there, and continued into the kitchen, knowing better than to look for one of me or of Ezra. Pots were stacked in the rack to dry, two places set at the narrow table under the window facing the backyard and the tracks that ran straight into the distance. An African violet was on the windowsill, its purple blossom a bright splash of lonely color.

  I called Jean’s name but knew already that Alex was right; I knew too well the feel of an empty house. I looked into the bedroom with no real hope and saw
the single neatly made bed. I noticed the neat stack of catalogs on the table next to it, the face-down novel, and the water glass on its coaster. I remembered how I used to sit by Jean’s bed at night and talk of childish things. Even then she used a coaster. She’d said that wood, like people, needed protection. I understood now that she’d been talking more about herself than about the table. I didn’t get it—not then.

  Suddenly, I missed her. Not the idea of her, but the intimacy we’d once shared, back when the world was smaller and sharing secrets was an easier thing to do. I put my fingers on the table, looked around the room, and wondered if they shared laughter here, if there was joy in their lives. I hoped so, but I doubted it. Alex was all about control. And Jean, she wanted direction, needed it desperately, and she’d take her cue from anybody.

  I searched for some sign of our shared past, anything to indicate that she thought of those days or missed them at all, but there was nothing. My eyes traveled over the bare walls, the bookshelves, and then back to the bed. I turned to leave as the train passed so close, it shook the house; it screamed its mournful scream and was past, fading like memories of childhood.

  I was almost to the door when it registered. I stopped and turned, walked back to the tall, narrow bookshelf in the corner, and stooped, my knees popping like an old man’s. Wedged into the corner of the bottom shelf, almost as if hidden, was a tattered copy of The Hobbit, my gift to Jean on her ninth birthday. The cover was creased, the spine broken and fragile under my fingers. I’d put an inscription on the second page. I still remembered it: “For Jean—because little people can have adventures, too.” I opened the book, but the second page was gone. Torn out or fallen out, I didn’t know.

  I put the book carefully back on the shelf.

  Outside, I found Alex in her chair. “Satisfied?” she asked.

  I fought to keep my temper down. Angering Alex wouldn’t get me what I wanted.

  “Do you know when to expect her?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I removed a business card from my wallet and extended it to Alex. She looked at it but didn’t take it. I placed it on the porch rail. “Will you ask Jean to call me when you see her? My cell-phone number is on the bottom.”

  “She won’t call you, but I’ll tell her.”

  “It’s important, Alex.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Please. Just tell her.” Alex hitched her hands behind her head. “If she calls me, I won’t need to come back and bother you,” I said. “Think about it.”

  “What’s it about?” she asked.

  “That’s for me and Jean,” I told her.

  “I’ll find out anyway.”

  “That’s fine, but not from me.” I stepped off the porch, turned, and gestured at my card on the rail. “It’s the number on the bottom.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I moved into the yard, anxious to be away from Alex and her quiet smugness; then I heard the knife blade click open and the sound of a small laugh. “I know what it’s about anyway,” Alex said. I kept walking, tired of her bullshit. I was almost to the truck. “‘You have the right to remain silent. . . . ’” she said, and I froze.

  “What did you say?” I asked, stepping away from the truck, keys dangling in my hand. Her smile spread like a cancer.

  “‘Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.’” She was on her feet, hands on the rail, hips thrust against the wood, leaning out, taunting. I walked toward her and she leaned farther out over the rail, her mouth open beneath shiny eyes; she was enjoying herself.

  “‘If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.’” Then she laughed, either at my expression or at her own cleverness. Both perhaps.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  She looked down at me and I up at her. The moment drew out. “We met a very pretty lady,” she finally said. “Me and Jean.”

  “What?”

  “A very pretty lady. A very curious lady.” She waited, as if for me to speak, but I couldn’t. “A very well-armed lady.”

  “Mills.” The name tunneled past my lips.

  “She had lots of fun questions,” Alex said.

  I knew that Alex was toying with me, twisting this in my guts for her own amusement. I shrank beneath a terrible sense of failure, of impending doom. I should have spoken to Jean immediately after I learned of Ezra’s body. I should have warned her, used my law degree for something good for a change. But at first, I’d been scared, that day at Pizza Hut, scared that she would walk away, leave me forever. Scared that I would see the truth in her eyes, that she had killed him. Scared that my suspicions would be made irrevocable fact. Scared of how I’d handle that. Then, for days, I’d been drunk and full of self-pity. I’d said nothing, and opened the door to ruin. What had Jean told her? How far down the road had she traveled while I wallowed in the trough of my fetid marriage and wasted life? I tasted despair like bile. Mills was no fool. Of course she would investigate Jean.

  “Questions about you,” Alex continued.

  I felt the return of a certain calm. “Why do you hate me so much?” I asked.

  “I don’t hate you at all,” she said. “You’re just in my way.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what I want to know, are you? About Mills?”

  “Like you said . . . that’s for you and Jean.”

  I saw in her face that she was done. She’d had the last word and was content. She settled back into her chair and picked up the piece of whittled wood, gestured to my truck with it. “Go on,” she told me. “I’ll tell Jean you stopped by.”

  I walked away and didn’t look back until I was in the truck with the engine on. She didn’t know it, but she’d given me something. More than what she’d intended. I was in her way, she’d said. That meant that Jean still cared for me, one way or another, and that was better than nothing.

  I called Pizza Hut as I drove away and was told that Jean was not working today. For the next hour, I drove around town, looking for her car. I checked the mall, the movie theaters, and doughnut shops. She was nowhere. Finally, in quiet desperation, I called her house again. No one answered.

  At five o’clock, I left for Charlotte to meet Hank Robins. Traffic was unusually light on I-85, so I made good time. By six, I was ensconced in a deep leather booth at the back of the bar. The place was dimly lighted, and there was soft music that sounded vaguely Celtic. I found a half-empty pack of Gitanes cigarettes next to the glass ashtray and shook one out. I tore off a match, lit up, and dropped the pack onto the lacquered wood table as the waitress weaved through the room. She reminded me of Jean, something in the way she walked. The smile she offered was tired. I wanted a Manhattan, something strong, but I ordered a beer instead, a Beck’s.

  For all intents and purposes, I had the place to myself, so I sipped my beer and blew smoke rings through the dim shaft of light that speared my table from above.

  “Nice,” a voice said, and Hank Robins slid into the booth opposite me. He pointed at the ragged remains of the smoke ring. “Good form.”

  “You’re late,” I told him.

  “Sue me,” he said.

  He took my hand and pumped it a couple of times, smiling through the smoke. “How are you, Work?” he asked, then went on without a pause. “I’m real sorry about all this. I know it’s got to suck.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “That bad?”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s a guy got to do to get a drink around here?” he asked, then raised his voice. “Waitress. Two more.”

  Hank was an anachronism. He stood five eight, weighed about 140, yet was the most fearless man I’d ever met. I’d never seen it myself, but word was that he’d take on guys twice his size and come out on top. He had thick black hair, merry green eyes, and a chipped front tooth. Women loved him.

  We’d worked a dozen cases together and I knew he was good. We got along, because neithe
r one of us labored with illusion; we were realists, although he managed to do it without giving a damn. To him, the world would never make sense, so he just went with it. Nothing surprised him, yet he found humor everywhere he looked. I admired that about him. The world I saw was ragged.

  Our waitress appeared with drinks and the same tired smile. She kept her eyes on Hank, so I studied her. Midforties, I guessed, with heavy features and bitten nails. “Thanks, doll face,” he said, and gave her his dazzling chipped-tooth smile. She looked embarrassed, but she swept away with a livelier step.

  “Do you ever piss them off?” I asked.

  “Only the smart ones.”

  I shook my head.

  “Hey,” he said. “Everybody likes a compliment. It’s a cheap way to make the world a better place.” He sipped his beer. “So what’s up with you? You look like shit.”

  “Where’s my compliment?” I asked.

  “That was your compliment.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, man. How are you?”

  Suddenly, my eyes felt heavy. I couldn’t pull them up from the bottle they stared at so intently. There was no answer for his question. Because no one wanted to hear the truth of how I was.

  “Hanging in there,” I finally said.

  “I bet you’re tired of giving that answer,” he said, letting me know that I wasn’t putting one over on him. Then he smiled to show that he was okay with that. “If you change your mind . . .”

  “Thanks, Hank. I appreciate that.”

  “So,” he said. “Let’s talk business. I assume you want me to help figure out who killed your father.”

  My surprise must have shown on my face. But of course that was what he’d think; I should have seen it coming. I had to be careful. Hank and I were colleagues and occasional drinking buddies, but I had no idea how far his loyalty would extend. He was clearly puzzled.

  “I never liked him much,” I said. “The cops can handle that one.”

  “Okay,” Hank said slowly, obviously at a loss but not wanting to push. He drummed his fingers twice on the table. “So . . .” He waited for me to fill in the blanks. So I did. Somewhat. It took a while. Then I told him what I wanted.