You're Next

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Mike says, ‘I thought it was your son’s.’

  The grandfather laughs. He has a white mustache, impeccably maintained. ‘That would have made it okay?’

  Mike stares down at the wooden table. Someone has etched into it, POINT OF NO RETURN, MOTHAFUCKA.

  ‘I grew up in the Depression. You know what that means?’ The man waits for a response but, getting none, continues, ‘If we spotted roadkill on the side of the road, my pop used to pull over so we could cook it for dinner. For a time we slept in the car. We went two long years without a roof over our heads.’

  Mike says, ‘You can’t have everything.’

  The grandfather spreads his hands. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. People like us, we don’t get to.’

  ‘People like us?’

  ‘Like me and Shep.’

  ‘How about me?’

  ‘You have a Saab.’

  ‘I see.’ The grandfather folds his hands across his old-man’s paunch and nods. ‘How do you think I got that car?’

  ‘How would I know? That’s the first time I’ve been within ten feet of a car that nice.’

  ‘You’re the predator here, not a victim. Let’s be clear about that.’ His eyes are hard now, and Mike is awed by the force of his conviction.

  Mike looks down at his hands. His thumb has a sticky blue streak from the Bomb Pop. He pictures that beautiful, spotless Saab (WINGATE DEALERSHIP: WE HAVE WHAT YOU WANT!), and for a moment the car and the man before him become of a piece; they become two elegant, polished parts of the same whole. Shep’s words come back to him: You can be whatever you want to be. Mike rethinks the question posed to him a moment ago – How do you think I got that car? – and he is speaking, softly, before his brain can catch up: ‘When I get out of juvie, I will work to pay you back for wrecking your car.’

  The grandfather closes his eyes, his face beatific and soft, and Mike doesn’t understand his reaction at all. Then the man says, ‘No. You won’t. I’m not pressing charges. And you won’t be held responsible for the damages.’

  Mike is certain he is being mocked.

  ‘I will pay to fix my car,’ the man says. ‘But I’m buying something for that money. Would you like to know what it is?’

  Transfixed, Mike nods.

  ‘I am buying your not getting to feel sorry for yourself about this.’

  Incredulous, Mike asks, ‘What’s that accomplish?’

  The man says, ‘Wait and see.’

  Mike and Shep walk out free men, and from that day forward Mike sees things a little differently. He and Shep remain thick as thieves, closer than brothers because they are all parts of a family to one another, though this remains unspoken. Because Shep did not bend and repent in that interrogation room, he has to work off the price of the boy’s bicycle by bagging groceries; he does this in double time by peddling cigarette packs he boosts from behind the counter.

  As they grow older, they run liquor stores with fake IDs, get bulletproof drunk, and raise hell, but Mike is spending more time with his nose in textbooks – Michael dear, you’ll be my first to go to college – then studying for the SATs, taking practice tests, scoring somewhere between retarded and stupid. But slowly, over his junior year of high school, he has brought his scores up to average, and when the acceptance letter arrives from Cal State L.A., he doesn’t even tell Shep right away; he goes out to the backyard when everyone is sleeping and sits with it beneath the golden glow of the security light, reading and rereading it, cherishing it like hidden treasure.

  For a few blissful months, the path ahead seems illuminated. The Couch Mother is proud; his plans for college reflect well on them both. Dubronski and Tony M, never deep on originality, start in with the nickname – Hey, College, you gonna grow a mustache like Alex Trebek? – and Mike recognizes their mocking as a form of flattery.

  Every year more kids have come, young and damaged, but for the first time Mike realizes that he has become, oddly, a role model. And Shep has, too – a role model of another kind. As an almost-adult, Mike gains a different understanding of the workings of the foster home. How the Couch Mother gets money from the state for every kid under her roof. How on occasion she gets a birth certificate fudged with a little help from well-placed women of like minds and body type to ensure that her children are protected from abusive mothers or molester uncles. It strikes him how fortunate he is to be a cog in the wheels of this particular system.

  For a high-school senior, he is young at seventeen. Shep has taken advantage of his first four months as an eighteen-year-old to rack up two strikes under the California penal code. A third felony will land him in jail for twenty-five to life, which seems a bit much for a stolen VCR and beating up some snot-nosed private-school kid who welshed on an arm-wrestling bet. But Shep, as ever, is not worried – Two strikes is nothing. You’ve seen me play ball.

  One day Shep walks into the shared bedroom carrying what appears to be a wall safe, his substantial biceps bulging under the weight of it. Mike is rereading his worn SAT practice book, because he is convinced that he will arrive at college next fall and not know how to communicate with kids actually smart enough to be there. He hopes against logic that knowing words like ‘bedight’ and ‘acetate’ might help close that gap.

  Incredulous, he looks up from the vocab section at Shep. ‘Where’d you get that?’

  Shep says, ‘A wall.’

  Mike conveys another bite of SpaghettiOs from can to mouth, using the flat edge of a butter knife since all the forks and spoons are dirty. ‘Shep,’ he mumbles around the mush, ‘you can’t do that shit.’

  ‘You get half of whatever’s in it.’

  ‘I don’t want half.’ Mike rolls up the workbook and smacks it against his forehead. ‘I want to know what “flagitious” means.’

  ‘Of or like a flag.’ Shep sits Indian style on the floor, knocks on the safe at various points, then removes from his back pocket folded graph paper and an actual stethoscope. Mike watches with fascination. Shep ducks into the earbuds and twists the dial, listening with medical interest. Given his hearing, he seems to be having trouble perceiving the clicks. The EKG line of his graph doesn’t progress beyond a few peaks and valleys. He sets the stethoscope aside, goes out, and returns a moment later with a hammer and chisel.

  Mike’s mouth comes slightly ajar. ‘Really?’

  Round Two. Shep starts beating the hell out of the safe. The ringing of course does not bother him. The others are all ostensibly at a Dodgers game, so Shep and Mike enjoy relative privacy.

  Until the Couch Mother, who has been groaning through a bout of colitis in the mephitic fog of her bedroom, calls down the hall, ‘Michael dear, what’s that noise?’ She has learned not to shout to Shep.

  Shep says quietly, ‘I’m fixing a carburetor.’

  Mike shouts, ‘He’s fixing a carburetor!’

  Shep does not have a car.

  ‘Don’t make a mess!’ Couch Mother bellows.

  ‘He won’t!’ Mike has set aside his workbook. ‘What are you gonna do with your share?’ he mocks.

  ‘Vegas,’ Shep says. ‘Hookers. You?’

  ‘A house. Thirty-year mortgage, fixed. A yard. I want a garage workshop with tools.’

  ‘How old are you again?’ Shep sits back on his heels, arms sweat off his brow. ‘Look,’ he mutters, not really talking to Mike. ‘Look at that. Hammering off the hinges doesn’t do shit. I need to find where the lock-in lugs slide into the sides of the frame.’ He leans over, tongue poking from the side of his mouth, and jots something onto the back of the failed graph.

  A few hours later, the safe looks exhausted, and Shep has sketched what amounts to an engineering diagram. He has been hammering at the seams, meticulously marking the lug locations and projecting new ones. Mike has watched this venture evolve from whimsy to science.

  Sometime later Shep has created a hole in the back wall of the safe and peeled up the sheet metal. Beneath is a layer of concrete, which crumbles under
the hammer, then sheet metal again. This is Round Eleven, and maybe Round Twelve as well.

  From down the hall, the Couch Mother’s voice sounds exasperated and dehydrated. ‘Aren’t you done fixing that carburetor yet?’

  Shep says softly, ‘Just about.’

  After another flurry of force and leverage, the back wall finally gives way. Shep tosses the loot, a bunch of old coins, aside. He is not interested in them; he is interested in the safe. He mumbles to himself, checks the lugs he hadn’t guessed at, writes down the brand and make of the safe. ‘The concrete’s for weight,’ he mutters.

  Mike asks, ‘Don’t you want your priceless coins?’

  Shep chews his lip, marveling at the reinforced door. He says, ‘What?’

  The next day they are walking past a pawnshop and Shep pulls one of the coins from his pocket and hands it to Mike.

  Mike says, ‘Why don’t you?’ and Shep says, ‘They got my picture behind the register.’

  Mike hesitates a moment. He thinks of that grandfather’s admonishment years ago and recalls his own wavery reflection in the unblemished forest green paint of the Wingate Dealership Saab, but it’s one old coin and it’s Shep, so he takes it and goes inside. The security camera behind the bulletproof glass makes him antsy, but he writes a fake name and address on the invoice ticket and tells himself again, It’s one old coin and it’s Shep. Mike comes out with twenty bucks, which he stuffs into Shep’s large hand. ‘That was worth it,’ he smirks.

  Shep hands him ten back.

  That night the cops roll up on 1788 Shady Lane. The senior officer brings a still shot from the pawnshop security camera, and this time the set of handcuffs he wields are adult-size.

  NOW

  Chapter 8

  There was no front-office woman, just a front office. No sign, no venetian blinds, no noir stenciled lettering announcing HANK DANVILLE, P.I. Mike stepped past the bare wooden desk, tapped on the inner office door, and opened it.

  Hank was behind his desk, pants dropped, withdrawing a needle from the pale white skin of his thigh. He looked over his shoulder, grimaced, and barked, ‘Goddamn it!’

  Mumbling an apology, Mike skipped back and closed the door. A moment later Hank yanked it open again. Tucking in his shirt, he returned to his desk, Mike shadowing him across the room on a cautious delay, both men avoiding eye contact. Hank slumped into his chair and gestured at the worn love seat opposite, where Mike had sat many times over the past five years.

  Hank had an old-fashioned build, the kind they don’t make anymore – tall and lanky, scarecrow shoulders broad enough to hang a linebacker’s frame on. He was balding pleasantly and evenly, his hair receded midway on his head, which extended, turtlelike, on a ropy neck. It was an intellectual head – academic, even – built for peering at dusty tomes and longhand letters. It matched neither his powerful forearms nor the taciturn cop’s demeanor he’d perfected during the thirty-some years he’d spent behind a badge before going private to limited success.

  Hank’s dry lips wobbled as he tried to come up with an explanation. No easy task, given what Mike had walked in on. Hank cursed under his breath, shoved back from his desk, and stood, cuffing his sleeves. Mike noticed that he was wearing his years a bit more heavily than when they’d last face-to-faced. Hank never gave his age. He was old enough to wobble here and there but young enough to get pissed off if you tried to steady his elbow.

  He crossed to the window, shoved it open, and leaned on the sill, his suspenders drawing tight across his back. He’d quit smoking but still forgot sometimes, leaning out windows as if to exhale. His cat, an obese tabby, looked up from the radiator at him with indifference.

  Mike cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I wanted to apologize for yesterday when—’

  ‘I’m dying,’ Hank said. He remained leaning over the sill, staring off at the Hollywood sign in the distance, the fabric of his shirt bunching between his shoulder blades. ‘Lung cancer. I gave ’em up, hell, fifteen years ago. Thought I was in the clear. Amazing how something like that can boomerang back on you.’

  He strode over and tapped the little needle kit on the desktop. ‘That’s what this poison is for. Neupo-something. Supposed to stimulate my last two white blood cells.’

  Hank eased down into his chair, his gaze shifting, unsure where to land. At closer glance he looked not just slender but downright gaunt. Mike had never seen him uneasy, let alone floundering. Empathy left Mike tongue-tied. It was always hard to find the right words when someone parted the curtains like that, when you were given a glimpse into the inner workings of a life. So Mike said the first thing that came to mind: ‘What can I do?’

  Hank sneered a little. ‘You gonna start coming by the house Wednesdays with baked casserole?’

  ‘If I baked a casserole,’ Mike said, ‘it would kill you for sure.’

  Hank tilted his head back and laughed, and Mike recognized him again. That quiet dignity, the wise-man smirk in the face of it all.

  ‘Aw, hell,’ Hank said. ‘Your expression when I had my pants around my ankles just about makes dying worth it.’

  ‘Maybe—’

  ‘We stopped chemo. Last week. It’s in the bone now.’ A wry grin lost its momentum, flared out on Hank’s face. He swiveled slightly in his chair, bringing into view a wallet-size school photo of a young boy, maybe six years old, thumbtacked to the otherwise blank wall behind him. Mike had politely inquired during an early meeting, and Hank had made clear: Any discussion about the photo was off-limits. That Hank was unmarried and had never mentioned children only added to the photo’s curiousness. The picture was worn, wrinkled with white lines. The boy’s striped, snap-button shirt had late sixties written all over it. Something in the shrinelike placement of the picture – so low as to be a private reminder – suggested that the boy was dead. An estranged son? A victim from an unsolved case that Hank couldn’t let go of?

  Mike averted his focus before Hank could key into it. Hank read Mike’s face, then broke the mood by floating a hand Fonzie style over the remaining strands straggled back on his shiny scalp. ‘Least the new-generation chemo let me keep my hair.’

  Mike leaned back, shot a breath at the ceiling. ‘Shit, Hank,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well, everyone’s ticket gets punched sometime. I know better than to take it personally.’ Hank tugged a fat file from a bottom drawer and thunked it on the desk, causing the cat to leap from the radiator and stalk along the baseboards. ‘You came by to pick this up?’

  Mike regarded the file like an artifact, giving it its due before reaching over and pulling it into his lap. It held the record of the private investigator’s search for Mike’s parents. Its girth was impressive, given that Mike remembered so little to set Hank on his investigative course. John and Momma. Approximate ages. No last name to work with, no city, no state. Abandoned-child investigations back then weren’t what they are now. Nor were computer records. Half of what Hank had dug up was on crumbling microfiche, and none of the missing-person reports on record fit what little Mike remembered. For decades he had lived with the gnawing conviction that it was his mother’s blood that had darkened his father’s sleeve that morning. Maybe he’d have to live with it forever.

  He leafed through the file, memories and possibilities rising from the print. The geographic spread of the search was large, since he didn’t know how far his family home had been from the preschool playground he’d been left at; his father could have driven a few blocks or all through the night. There were investigation reports and phone transcripts, crime blotters and clipped obits from small-town papers. Mug shots of scowling men named John, all of an age, all of whom were not his father. By now he knew most of these strangers’ faces by heart. The sight made him cringe, made him wonder what children these men had left behind, what women they had destroyed. But what really put a hook into his gut were the morgue photos, a Technicolor parade of women who’d been murdered in 1980 and unclaimed bodies that had turned up for years after that. He’d bec
ome acquainted with a virtual dictionary of shrug-off terms for corpses – floaters, crispy critters, headless horsemen.

  He closed the file and tapped it with a fist. A scrapbook of a failed investigation. Years of dead ends. Years of high hopes and corrosive disappointments, a deep-seated yearning running through each day like a habit you can’t quite quit.

  It occurred to him that this file, with its cop-house chicken scratch, bluing flesh, and flashbulb misery, had become all he had of his parents.

  Hank drew a hand across his face, tugging his features down into a basset droop. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do better by you, Mike.’

  Over the years there had been quite a few other investigators, but none as committed.

  ‘I didn’t come by today for this,’ Mike said, tapping the file again. ‘I came to apologize. I was up against it when we talked. I know how to handle stress better than that. Things have been good long enough that I forgot what it’s like to be graceful when they’re not.’

  Hank studied him. Gave a nod. The tabby jumped up into his lap, and he dug his fingers into its scruff, the cat going limp and squint-eyed. ‘You gonna be all right with this pipe business?’

  ‘It’s my own goddamned fault. I liked the price and didn’t perform due diligence, and now I’m a liar and a cheat.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  Hank was still regarding him curiously, but Mike just shook his head. No use getting worked up. He’d made a decision, and now he had to put it in the rearview mirror. He stood with the file and offered his hand across the desk. ‘You always did fine work for me, Hank.’

  They shook, and Mike left him there, staring out the window, the cat purring in his lap.

  Jimmy was waiting in Mike’s truck, passenger window rolled down, elbow stuck out, radio blaring. Mike had brought him along because they needed to select rock for the fire pit, and Hank’s office was en route to the stone yard, a good drive from the site.