by Chris Jordan
TOLLIVER: Hope you don’t mind. Couldn’t resist the Padron. [sound of puffing, groan of pleasure] Ah! Scotch tonight, though, not the cognac. Figured your boss would spring for the single malt, considering.
JACK: Yeah? Considering what?
TOLLIVER: My continued cooperation.
JACK: Oh yeah. That.
TOLLIVER: You sound a bit snippy, my son. What’s got you down? I hope it’s not having to shoot that low-life Killdeer. You did the world a favor, Jack. You should stand proud on that one.
JACK: I’m fine with that. Just wish I’d hit him sooner. I’d have been there in time if you hadn’t decided to haul me in for questioning that morning.
TOLLIVER: Can’t be helped. How was I to know?
JACK: Naomi has a theory about that. Gatling’s outfit picked up Shane’s cell phone call to me, from his end, and let you know.
TOLLIVER: [laughing] That’s crazy talk.
JACK: Is it? Quite a coincidence, you having me picked up minutes after Shane called requesting backup.
TOLLIVER: That’s all it was, a coincidence.
JACK: Really? My boss has a theory on that.
TOLLIVER: Full of theories, ain’t she?
JACK: Yeah, and this particular theory is, if something impossible is supposed to have occurred, look very deep, because the impossible doesn’t happen. That’s why it’s impossible.
TOLLIVER: Very profound. Almost as deep as that old wisdom dude in The Karate Kid.
JACK: Excuse me?
TOLLIVER: Pat Morita. Popular character actor. Probably croaked by now. Great movie.
JACK: We’re discussing movies?
TOLLIVER: Don’t get your boxers in a twist. Have a malt. Relax. Damn, these are great cigars!
JACK: As I was saying, we looked deep. And guess what we found?
TOLLIVER: Go on, astound me.
JACK: The bloody shirt. It was completely impossible for Shane to have returned to his motel room and left the bloody shirt behind, because by the time he got back to the motel it was already under surveillance.
TOLLIVER: So you say. But they found the shirt on the premises, so I guess it wasn’t impossible.
JACK: The motel was under surveillance by your men. Dispatched by you, as it turns out.
TOLLIVER: Sure. Just passing the word from Homeland. You knew that already.
JACK: There was no word from Homeland. The order originated with you. You dispatched your men to stake out the motel, and you went in with a warrant when it arrived. You were the first one through the door. The first one to discover the bloody shirt. Which, as we’ve already established, was impossible. Therefore we’re left with one really unpleasant conclusion: you planted it, Piggy.
TOLLIVER: Hey, son, watch your mouth. And that’s bull, about planting the shirt. Why would I do a thing like that?
JACK: Don’t ask a question you don’t want answered, Piggy, my boy. My brother. My son. You planted the shirt—handed to you by one of Gatling’s operatives, I’m guessing, because they had the professor under surveillance and were the first to be aware of his death, and because Gatling couldn’t pass up a chance, a gift, at revenge on Randall Shane. Or maybe they gave you a vial of the victim’s blood, and you used that on an item of Shane’s clothing. However you did it, you risked a felony conviction because you’d applied for early retirement so you can take a job with, drum roll, Gatling Security Group.
TOLLIVER: You’ll never prove none of that. It’s just a bullshit theory cooked up by some private investigator.
JACK: She didn’t make up the part about you retiring to take a high-paying job with GSG. Right there in your jacket. You put in your papers a month before Keener was killed.
TOLLIVER: So? No crime in that. It’s all legit. I got a daughter, a smart little angel, she deserves to go to a good school.
JACK: She deserves an honest father. Too bad she didn’t get one.
TOLLIVER: Screw you, Mr. Fancy Pants.
JACK: She deserves someone who didn’t try to frame an innocent man, for money. Who didn’t, in effect, delay the return of an abducted child to his rightful mother.
TOLLIVER: I never did that!
JACK: Sit down before you fall down, you big fool. Sure you did. Your actions helped Gatling put Shane out of commission. Left to his own devices, Randall Shane would have recovered Joey Keener while he was still being held in Prides Crossing, and at least one and possibly two human beings would still be alive.
TOLLIVER: No way. You can’t lay that on me.
JACK: I just did. Have a nice retirement, Piggy. I hope your little girl gets into a good school, I really do.
TOLLIVER: You’ll never prove it!
JACK: I’m not going to try. Why bother? You’re already dead to me.
TOLLIVER: Jack, come on.
JACK: The tab is in your name, by the way. I made sure of that.
You have to admire the style. That whole “you’re dead to me” thing reminds me why I’d never want to get on the wrong side of Jack Delancey. And unfortunately it’s true that we can’t prove Piggy planted evidence, even though he was the only one to have the opportunity. Dane Porter has explained the difficulties, no doubt she’s correct in the legal sense, but still it irks, knowing a high-ranking officer betrayed his oath and got away with it, and caused incalculable harm in the process.
It burns me, it really does.
Naomi says I need to cultivate a belief in karma. She invites me into her studio one afternoon to chat while she attempts her daily watercolor, and so far it is going remarkably well. The watercolor, I mean. It’s just an average still life, a Chinese vase with flowers, but she’s getting the light just right, a beam of late-afternoon sun that catches one particular blossom, a white lily, making it look illuminated from within.
I’m holding my breath, hoping for once she’ll accept the inevitability of imperfection she mentioned and let the pretty little painting survive.
“Piggy will find his own karma,” she says, wetting her softest brush. “Think of it this way. He gets the money, and whatever further corruption his new career provides, and we get the music.”
“The music is good,” I say.
Mozart trills airily from the soft echo chamber of the Zen garden, the next room over from the studio. The keyboard kid is practicing under the watchful, grateful eye of his mi ma. The mother and child have been offered sanctuary until Naomi can set them up with a new life in the homeland, the U.S. homeland. We’re thinking New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, where it will be easy for a talented Eurasian boy to blend into the local culture and also have access to the best music teachers. No rush, though. It’s a treat to have them in the residence, especially Joey, who is really something special, even aside from his genius for music. He knows what happened to Kathy, and mourns her in his own way, which includes writing a long, lyrical piece he’s calling “Brave Lady Sonata in C Minor.” She’d love it, I’m pretty sure. It’s beautiful and sad and brave, just like she was.
Naomi says, “Taylor Gatling found his own karma, too. If not in this life, then in the next.”
“He’s coming back as a cockroach.”
“If that’s his karma,” Naomi says, amused. “Which of course we can’t know.”
“Apparently you’re coming back as a fortune cookie.”
Naomi puts down her brush and laughs so hard her eyes tear up. Blotting away the wetness with a tissue she says, “You’re a treasure, Alice. You keep me centered, do you know that?”
“Don’t go all gooey on me, boss lady.”
“No chance,” she says. “I don’t do gooey.”
Naomi Nantz peels the gorgeous watercolor from the easel, holding it up to the light, as if to compare to the real thing.
“Almost perfect,” she says.
Then she tears it up.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8051-9
MEASURE OF DARKNESS
Copyright © 2011 by Rodman Philbrick
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