Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  Terry was a guy who really only lived for Big Scenes. Action stuff .

  Like the night he pretended to run over Jack Harper and let Roy/Charlie “save Jack,” which took any suspicion off Charlie.

  Or the time he knocked Charlie in the head at Jack’s house, which was so cool.

  Like a movie. Terminator or Die Hard.

  But this was the greatest role of all.

  Shooting the guy that killed Jimmy The Genius.

  Jimmy who had a million ideas for horror films and was going to be the next Steven Spielberg, was going to make Scar, in which he would play an action hero.

  He ran through the whole plot of Scar again, imagining girls lining up outside of Mann’s Chinese Theater, all of them down on their knees with their perfect collagen-lipped mouths open, ready to suck him off .

  Yeah, there was no business like show business.

  And now the guy was almost across the field and it was his job to cut him off , right there by the tree line (wonder what they were called . . . Jimmy would know if he wasn’t dead).

  The idea was to cut him off and to shoot him in the face.

  Why in the face?

  Because in his pocket Terry had a picture of the guy Billy Chase, and he had to be sure it was really him and not a decoy guy.

  That’s why. He had to remember that.

  He loped down the hill with his Winchester in his hands. There it was: the perfect little hillside spot.

  Chase would have to come through here.

  And when he did . . . well, then, blotto.

  Red-mist city, yessir!

  And years of pain, missing being a star in Jimmy’s movie Scar (in which he was the star, this cop guy with a scar who . . .).

  He sat on a tree limb to steady the barrel and waited for Billy to come up the trail; waited, waited.

  And then, out of nowhere, the trees around him seemed to be alive with what at first seemed like walking branches.

  Holy shit!

  Things — no, not things — people coming out of nowhere, and all of them with big guns trained on him.

  Like he was Scar, and the cops were after him, but this time there was no redemption, no “saving the day” and no fucking parade.

  They had him.

  But he was smart for once — very smart — and gave up pronto, laying his rifle down on the ground and then falling down next to it on his knees, his hands clasped at the back of his head.

  They had him. Shit! He’d really hoped he would get to shoot that guy Chase in the face. Wotta drag!

  46

  TERRY AYRES SAT ACROSS the interrogation table at the Portland Central Police Station from Oscar and Jack. Terry drank a Coke and, while they were hammering at him, he tried to trick them by thinking of product placement.

  If this was Scar (the movie he was going to be in if Jimmy hadn’t died and . . . blah blah blah), they would probably be getting a fee from Coca-Cola for showing their product on the screen — a fee he would never get a piece of because Jimmy was dead and these guys let the guy go who . . .

  “Wake the fuck up!” Jack screamed, pounding the table so hard that the Coke spilled all over Terry’s already-wet pants.

  “Hey, watch it,” Terry said, shaking.

  Jack got up from the table and slapped Terry’s face with the back of his hand. Terry fell off the chair onto the cold floor and looked back up at his tormentor.

  “Hey, hey,” Oscar said, jumping from his chair and grabbing Jack. “C’mon, partner. That’s not the way.”

  Jack sat back down, breathing hard. Of course, it was their usual good-cop/bad-cop act, but this time, Oscar thought, Jack might have gone over the top. He was pretty sure that if he’d left Jack alone in here with Terry Ayres, the guy would come out a piece of meat.

  Terry got back in his seat and took a sip of what was left of his Coke.

  “You’ve had a pretty rough time,” Oscar said.

  “Not really,” Terry said, looking straight ahead at Oscar, trying to avoid Jack’s bullet gaze.

  “Yeah, you have,” Oscar said. “Looking over your sheet here, I see you been in and out of jail four times since you were first in juvy, when you were, what was it, twelve?”

  “Yeah, so?” Terry said. He tried to set his jaw like a tough guy, but it hurt his ears.

  “So, I see your dad abandoned the family. Mom died when you were ten. Means you had no one to look after you. No one to help you. ’Cept your brother, Roy.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Terry made his jaw even firmer, jutted it out like The Joker, but now his ears and his throat hurt. It was painful, being so tough.

  “He’s a guy you really depend on. Right? Guy you’re loyal to?”

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “Which is why I’m never gonna give him up to you guys.”

  “You cocksucker!” Jack started across the table again, but Oscar grabbed him and shoved him back.

  “Maybe you ought to go outside,” Oscar said.

  Jack’s face was twisted in pain and fury.

  He got up, walked by Terry Ayres, and went out the door. He walked around to the side entrance and went inside the observation corridor.

  Two Portland Feds watched. They said nothing to Jack.

  Inside the interrogation room, Oscar leaned across the table to get closer to Ayres.

  “That’s good, being loyal,” he said, in a soft, kind voice.

  Terry looked up at him with a puzzled grin. “You think so?”

  “Yeah. Most of the time. But sometimes it can be stupid, too. See, so far we have nothing on your brother, but we’ve got you for attempted murder, and I imagine it won’t be too hard to pin the other killings on you, too.”

  Terry Ayres bit his lower lip and blinked like a nervous bird.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “Well, who else? It won’t take a rocket scientist to see how this went. Roy wants revenge on people who killed his son, but he’s too chickenshit to do it himself. However, luckily for him, he’s got a very loyal but not-too-bright brother. He talks him into doing the killings, then sets him up to get caught.”

  Terry took a deep breath and blew it out, as if he was trying to blow away thirty-five years of stupidity.

  “You’re trying to trick me,” he said. Just then an old TV voice floated through his head. It said, “The Rolli Mop. It’s the only mop you’ll ever need.”

  Oscar patted Terry’s arm in a fatherly way.

  “No, Terry, I’m trying to be straight with you. You’re all set up, and if you don’t call your brother by seven thirty, he’s going to kill a kid. Apparently, that’s all he has the balls to do. Slit an innocent kid’s throat.”

  “No,” Terry said. “That’s not right.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Oscar said. “Then after he kills a child, he’s going to disappear. Which leaves you to take the rap as an accomplice to first-degree murder. How lenient do you think the jury is going to be toward you, Te r? I see you getting the lethal injection with or without him.”

  Terry looked like someone had lit his feet.

  “But . . . but . . . You’re asking me to give up my own brother.”

  “He gave you up,” Oscar said.

  “But they killed his son. Hey, James was a genius. He said I was a great natural actor.”

  “Focus,” Oscar said. “What happened to his son was terrible, but it was an accident. You can use your acting skills now to help us bring in the right guy, and you won’t end up on a steel gurney with poisons running through your arm.”

  Terry’s straight tough-guy jaw began to quiver, and tears ran down his gaunt cheeks.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll call him and do what you want. Bring me the phone.”

  Oscar nodded and patted Terry on the head.

  “Now you’re playing it smart, kid,” he said.

  On the other side of the glass, Jack slumped forward, then started to breathe again.

  47

  JACK SAT AT a gray insti
tutional desk, a cold coffee cup in his hand. Oscar leaned against the wall next to him, humming a song over and over.

  “What the fuck are you singing?” Jack said.

  “One of the great songs of my Mexican heritage,” Oscar said.

  “Which is?” Jack said.

  “This Old Man.” Oscar began to sing, “This old man, he plays three. He plays knickknack on my knee, with a knick knack paddy whack . . .”

  “Jesus!” Jack said. “If you sing that fucking song one more time, I’m gonna slam my head into the wall.”

  “Promise?” Oscar teased.

  Suddenly the phone rang and Jack’s head jerked back. He let it ring once more, then picked it up.

  “Harper,” he said.

  “Jackie,” Charlie Breen said. “You did such fine work. Really, you ought to be commended. Jimmy tells me it was a walk in the park.”

  “That’s right, Charlie. Billy Chase is dead and gone. Now tell me where I can find Kevin.”

  Charlie gave an odd little laugh on the other line.

  “Why, right where you left him, Jack. In the old gym at Brent- wood Park.”

  “Brentwood Park?” Jack tried to imagine the old gym. In his mind, the park ended beyond the right-field wall. But no, now he saw it: the battered old brick gym. A place that was there but invisible because no one ever used it anymore. How could he have not seen it?

  “Look in the boys’ locker room,” Charlie said.

  “He better be all right,” Jack said.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Charlie said, as he ate a brisket sandwich he’d just bought from Carter’s.

  “Yeah, he’s ready for a nice day on the field. I really am gonna miss coaching him, Jack. Going to miss all the kids. Maybe you can take over the reins, Jackie. I think you have a real talent for coaching.”

  Charlie wiped some of the barbecue sauce off his lip, and hung up.

  Jack looked over at Oscar, who listened in on the second phone.

  “They’re already on it,” he said.

  “Fucking Brentwood!” Jack said. “Oh, man . . .”

  He slumped on the desk, sweat pouring down his neck.

  Within a half hour after the phone call from Portland, an LAPD SWAT team arrived at Brentwood Park, in three black, unmarked vans. They quickly broke into two columns, surrounding the gym from both the north and south exits.

  One column of men kicked in the back door to the boys’ locker room and, using their flash-lit rifles, headed inside.

  The columns hurried down the aisles of old rusted lockers, kicking aside the old stools, which were still there.

  The secondary group looked through the hallways and the basketball court.

  Finally they searched through the girls’ locker room, and five men went into the bowels of the old gym. They went into the furnace room, the janitor’s bedroom, every nook and cranny in the gym basement.

  All they found were about fifty rats scrambling through the hallways and a pile of old Hustler magazines.

  Other than that, nothing.

  No sign of Kevin Harper.

  Jack and Oscar got the call five minutes after the search was completed.

  Jack’s face had become reddened and he felt a pressure in his temples, as if there was a hand inside his head, desperate fingers thrusting out.

  His heart felt the same way and, as he sat at his desk with his head hanging, he suddenly understood the term “broken heart” for the first time.

  He had always thought it was some kind of metaphor, but now he knew otherwise. He could feel his heart breaking. Cracking inside his chest like an ice floe breaking up.

  Soon, he thought, it would crack open, but instead of water rushing out, it would be his own blood.

  And yet, in the unbearable pain he felt without his son, there was some consolation in that. For if anything had happened to Kevin, he wouldn’t want to go on living, anyway.

  Now he felt a rough push on his back. He ignored it, not even sure if it was real or some phantom pain, commensurate with his agony. But there it was again, a kind of poking, which enraged him. He looked up, snarling.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  He looked at Oscar’s broad, strong face, his brown eyes wide open, determined.

  “C’mon, man. This game ain’t over yet. Get up off that chair.”

  “I can’t,” Jack said. “I can’t . . .”

  He wanted to say exactly what it was he couldn’t do or think . . . but there was nothing else.

  “You got to,” Oscar said. “We’re going to get Kevin back.”

  Jack gritted his teeth and imagined choking Charlie Breen to death, slowly, until his eyes popped out.

  Oscar reached down. Jack took his large, powerful hand, and his partner pulled him to his feet.

  48

  IT WAS A DARK NIGHT at Benson State Park and the giant firs and cedars were illuminated by the brilliant moonlight. High up, only a few hundred yards away from Multnomah Falls, there was a home made out of logs and cedar shake. All the lights were off inside the place except one, a porch light shaped like an acorn.

  A block away sat a simple panel truck with the words Department of Parks stenciled on the side.

  Inside the truck, Charlie Breen, dressed like a khaki-clad forest ranger, sat looking at the acorn-shaped porch light and spoke to his fellow traveler, Martin J. Black, the real ranger who sat in the passenger seat, minus his clothes.

  “Look at the acorn light. That’s the kind of thing you get at Ikea,” Charlie Breen said. “Can’t you just see the happy family winding their way through Ikea on a Saturday afternoon? Happy little family with their happy kids, chatting about all the nifty furniture, and maybe thinking about the great deals on hot dogs and pizza they have as you leave the store with all your swell items. Can’t you just picture that, Marty?”

  Martin J. Black said nothing.

  Charlie looked over at him and laughed.

  “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” he said. “I read all about you forest rangers a long time ago in one of those Jack Kerouac books. The lonely sentinel high above the treetops in his manly lookout, kind of like a priest up there, communing with nature, watching out for fires, keeping all of nature safe. I admire that, Marty, I really do. But, unfortunately, you were also keeping a murderer safe. They thought they had me fooled, but, of course, I knew they’d catch my brother. And then I followed Billy Chase home.”

  Charlie/Roy (which one was he now, sometimes it was so hard to remember) laughed and stuck his flashlight in Martin J. Black’s gaping neck wound. Blood coagulated on the bulb and made weird patterns on the windshield.

  From the back of the truck there was a kicking noise, and Charlie got out and walked around to the back doors. He unlocked them and looked inside. Kevin Harper was hog-tied but had managed to slide himself over to the truck walls. He kicked the wall one last time as Charlie stepped inside and hit him in the side of the head with the flashlight, opening a wide gash.

  “I told you not to make me come back here,” he said. “Now let’s keep it down back here, son, ’cause we’re almost home.”

  He found his little parental joke amusing and began to chuckle to himself.

  Now, he thought, it was time to finish this job.

  He would go into the house and kill Billy Chase and anyone else he ran across. Well, wait . . . he still hadn’t decided. Would he kill Billy first? No, he thought not. Best to kill Billy’s daughter and make him watch. Of course . . . how could he have not thought of that?

  Then he remembered. He had thought of it, but then forgotten it.

  This short-term-memory thing had him worried. After he got done killing the Chase family, he’d have to get on a new diet regimen and see his doctor. Back in Munich.

  A lot of this bad-memory shit, he thought, as he relocked the panel truck’s doors, was due to the stress of having to plan this revenge over and over, reworking the script with Jimmy.

  “But we’re almost there now, Jimmy,”
he said to his son. “We are almost there.”

  He waited until he heard Jimmy’s voice in his head. A soft whisper, like a boy who is going to sleep.

  “Good job, Dad.”

  Roy felt a rush of satisfaction. It was always important to get Jimmy’s approval. They’d made their film every step of the way, and now they’d finish it. He was glad Jimmy had decided to come with him on the final act of the production.

  He stood there in the pleasant cover of dark for a minute and went over the story again:

  First we kill the kids, then the wife. Then . . . The Big One. Billy himself.

  On that one, he would have to get Jimmy’s help.

  He stopped and looked up at the moon.

  And thought, for a second, that he saw handsome Jimmy coming down on a moonbeam, riding a trail of silver dust. His son coming, bright eyed, handsome, the genius. The filmmaker, not just some movie guy. The filmmaker.

  The auteur.

  That was going to be it.

  The final scene in their movie.

  The Big One.

  Tonight was the night.

  He reached into the backseat and picked up his camera.

  49

  IT TOOK HIM only seconds to cut the security lines, up on the side of the house. In another fifteen seconds, he’d opened the sliding door and was inside.

  He walked through the living room, which he was surprised to find was very folksy. There were folksy Hummel figures — a whole shelf of them — cute little chubby kids all lovingly huddled together, just adorable; he couldn’t wait to show Jimmy those.

  “Look at these, Jimmy,” he said. Billy Chase had terrible taste. Yet another reason to rid the world of him.

  He took out his bone knife, the one with the polished shark- cartilage handle, and walked quickly up the stairs.

  Stuck in his waistband was his .45.

  He didn’t intend to use the gun. There was no fun in that.

  When the knife went into the man who’d killed Jimmy, he’d twist it and turn it, and make him squirm and beg.

  Oh, yes, squirming and begging were essential.

  He went down the hallway, thankful for the carpet, which muffled the sound of his footsteps.