The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  It was, and the two of us relaxed into comfortable domesticity. We spent a long time talking about the Verizon troubleshooting—a trip made extremely unpleasant by an obnoxious middle manager unable to accept her expertise or rank. Boots had spent her work life climbing hand over hand up the corporate ladder; from operator to national vice president of operations, so catching male hostility was hardly an isolated phenomena. This, however had been worse than usual.

  “What kills me is I go back to the hotel and obsess over my part in it. An outright misogynist acts like it’s the Middle Ages and I end up feeling guilty. As if I never left the fifties.”

  “You weren’t alive in the fifties.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s the Lenny Bruce routine about the kid raised by wolves, then found by humans.”

  “I told you that story.”

  “No, you played the record... the boy graduates college cum laud...”

  “And gets killed chasing a car after the party,” I finished.

  Boots leaned across the couch resting her head on my shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we spent a night like this,” she murmured.

  “Well, Lou’s situation has really thrown a curve. Clifford just threw beanball.”

  “I’m not criticizing, just enjoying.”

  Despite my kneejerk reaction, so was I. So much so that when the topic inevitably returned to Lou, Lauren, and Lauren’s extended family, I was able to talk without much tension. But as many times as we reviewed the situation, I kept coming up short. No new ideas about any of it.

  “I don’t know, Matt. I certainly don’t want you to annoy that fascist Gestapo, or even this small town police Chief, but what if Lauren, or even Lou are actually in danger?”

  “I agree—though for all intents and purposes, I’ve been fired.”

  “That’s a problem,” Boots admitted with a small chuckle. “Hey,” she raised her eyebrows, “you never rolled that joint, how about doing it now?”

  A surprise. Two, actually, since I suddenly realized I hadn’t been pining away for a drink. Our time together had quieted my jones. Raised a question I hadn’t considered in the shower—maybe I was just a goddamn fool.

  I rolled the joint while Boots massaged the back of my neck with her strong fingers. “Let’s pretend we don’t know anyone involved,” she suggested, her mind stuck on Lou and Lauren. “What would you think then?

  “Less worry, but not much different than what I think now. After all, the cops are guarding the house. But I’d still be pretty suspicious about Biancho’s decision to sic Wash on me.”

  “Not ‘Wash,’ goddammit.” Boots yanked her hand away from my neck so I lit the joint. “Call him Clifford or call him an asshole, but don’t call him ‘Wash!’“

  “We weren’t supposed to know these people,” I replied, my mind still working her question. “If I didn’t want to mess with the law but stayed on the case, I’d work the other side of the street. Investigate Lauren’s life, drag a net through the people she knows. Long odds, but better than no odds at all.”

  Boots inhaled on the joint before handing it back. I toked a couple times then began to drift. The feeling reminded me of when I was around twenty—the days when I believed in a world without war. Reminded me of the times I’d flop down on the floor, head between two cheap loudspeakers, letting Dylan, Motown, and Aretha carry me through strawberry fields.

  I pulled myself upright, offered Boots the joint, and placed it in the ashtray when she shook her head.

  “Are you planning to do that?” she asked.

  Somehow I thought she was talking about the music. I’m too old for the floor. Hurts my back. Dope’s different these days, more like feeling normal.”

  “What are you talking about?” Boots asked, a lopsided grin underneath fuzzy eyes.

  “Getting high,” I answered realizing Julie’s rent was a winner.

  “Well, you’re there,” Boots said, her jaw losing some of its customary jut. “This stuff is very strong, isn’t it?”

  I lit a cigarette. “I was floating.”

  Boots sipped her wine, “Are we going to work that side of the street?”

  I shook some of the float out of my head. “Not we, not easy, not safe. Lauren won’t cooperate and if word gets back to Biancho...” Clifford’s beating was still too fresh to leap at another. But even before Boots’ comment, I knew what I had to do. Fired or not.

  “Does Lauren have to find out? You made friends with her daughter, maybe start there. Let her provide you with the basics and ask her not to tell.”

  More helpful suggestions like that and our great night was gonna disappear. Very fast.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Matt.”

  “It will get back to Lauren if I start questioning her family.” Taking Boots’ suggestion felt like I’d be admitting my desire to see Alexis.

  “Don’t interrogate. Frame it in a way her children will appreciate. Tell them the truth. You’re making certain of Lou and Lauren’s safety. Even if that got back, how angry could Lauren get?”

  I guess Boots knew me well enough to realize I wasn’t going to quit. “Plenty. She told me to leave everyone alone.”

  “I’m a little confused, doll,” Boots replied, the high sliding from her eyes. “You complain about being locked out, but you’re not showing much enthusiasm for sneaking back in.”

  What could I tell her? I was frightened to see Alexis?

  Boots caught a distorted glimpse of my thought. “I’m telling you Matt, the daughter is the place to start. She owes you after spending all that time talking about her problems.”

  I wanted to pass on her comment, but decided it might seem suspicious. “Alexis doesn’t strike me as the grateful type.”

  “What type is she?” Boots asked after a long inhale on her cigarette.

  “Pushy, ambitious, hungry for success.” I focused on Lauren’s criticisms, “She has a real thing for her father.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Somewhere in her thirties?”

  “Well, you better be careful,” Boots smiled suspiciously. “You’re almost old enough to pull her daddy trigger.”

  “Boots, the way my body feels, I couldn’t pull a trigger on a gun. Come back to earth, okay? I agree it makes sense for me to keep working,” I said, hauling us back to safer ground.

  “I don’t know how much sense it really makes, but I know you. You’re not going to quit. I’m just afraid you’ll do something stupid and confront this Police Chief, or even Clifford.”

  I found it easier to listen to her fears about Clifford than her suggestions about Alexis. “You’re not worried I’ll deliberately light a fire under Lauren?”

  Boots smiled and rearranged herself on the long couch, her head on the armrest, her calves across my lap. “Didn’t enter my mind. You’ve made peace with Lou and Lauren’s relationship. I can easily imagine you pulling a bonehead macho man with the cops, but at the same time I know how accepting you can be.”

  “What’s worse, doll, being a schizophrenic or loving one?” I asked running my finger down her smooth, tan calf. Now that we’d gotten past Alexis, I felt a resurgence of my high and a whole lot of relief.

  “I can always count on a joke at a moment like this.”

  “You gotta have something to rely on, Boots.”

  Boots shook her head, “You’re hopeless.”

  I lifted her legs, slowly slid out from under, and stood. “You want another slice?” I asked.

  “You mean there’s something left? You snarfed those pizzas like an animal.”

  “Receiving end of an old fashioned whopping does that to me. I stood in place and carefully bent over until my palms were close to the floor.

  “Your body is killing you, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted straightening. I walked stiffly into the kitchen and chased four Ibuprofens with a shot of Turkey and the last slice.

  “Well, honey, we won’t add to the damage,” Boots called.
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  “Hmm,” I said returning to the living room, standing over her horizontal body, certain I never looked as good on the couch. “How are we going to do that?”

  “Gently,” Boots whispered taking my hand. “Very gently.”

  She kept her promise. Boots’s warmth and tenderness elicited a nervous pleasure. Pleasure in the knowledge we actually had about each other. Nervous because I couldn’t stop flashing on those psychedelic hours in the lighthouse where sex existed free of baggage and replaced by perverse.

  We took our time. Time to know moments when Boots’s gentleness pierced me with guilty distaste for my confused hypocrisy.

  As our excitement grew, my interior felt torn between her caring and my shame. For an added treat, I came to the image of a naked, snarling Alexis.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I had expected to jump out of bed, kiss Boots on the cheek, then Bimmer my way north. But I awoke so far south, the john looked like the arctic. In Boots’s place, a note on my dresser apologized for having left so early.

  I felt a pang of loss when I realized she was gone. But then, my relief at finding myself alone quickly flew its flag. And the moment it unfurled, I knew my restless slumber had delivered me to Trouble City. I tried to motivate myself into clothes, but the closet seemed too far away.

  The day threatened to plunge into serious bleak. A day to drug myself to oblivion. My only regret: I hadn’t saved any pizza for breakfast.

  Actually, there was more regret than the pizza. Much more, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. Not until I self-medicated and crawled into a cocoon. That’s how days like this worked. I lit a cigarette, found a bag of Fritos, and grabbed my stash.

  But the Bakelite rang before I tumbled horizontal and I forced myself to hoist the receiver. I figured Boots and figured if I didn’t get the phone before the couch got me, it might be a long time before we spoke. After yesterday and last night, that just didn’t seem right.

  Only all my figures were wrong and my dick knew it at her first silky note. “Remember me?”

  Disgusted by my instantaneous reaction, I threw the cigarette into the ashtray. “You’re impossible to forget, Alexis.”

  For the first time since awakening I felt the pain from Clifford’s beating. I suppose that meant I was coming alive. Terrific. I dragged the phone along with my body to the kitchen table, sat, and lit another smoke. I left the stash in the living room but didn’t go back to get it. I wasn’t that alive.

  “It was good between us, wasn’t it?”

  “A helluva night,” I slid, caught on the line like a deer in headlights. “How did you get my number?”

  “Lou gave it to me.”

  “Lou?”

  “Don’t fret, darling,” Alexis chuckled, “I told him I wanted to thank you again for our wonderful evening, that’s all. It might be difficult for them to appreciate us sleeping together. You know, semi-incestuous.”

  “Tactful,” I managed.

  “It would be difficult for you as well, if our night wasn’t kept undercover, wouldn’t it?”

  I exhaled a lungful of smoke, “It’s already difficult.”

  “Learning new things about yourself always is.”

  I felt myself grow embarrassed, “I wasn’t thinking of, of...”

  “Our dance,” Alexis finished with another easy laugh. “You were thinking about your girlfriend.”

  “I guess.”

  “Well,” she said in a teasing tone, “if the time we spent together is so troublesome, let’s chat about your detective work.”

  “My what?”

  “That look-see you gave the Hacienda when I left the other morning. You know, both of us have family staying there.”

  Surprise, surprise. Concern for Lou’s safety hadn’t been completely trumped by my depression. Or maybe anything was better than talking about the lighthouse. No matter; Alexis opened the door and I eagerly followed which somehow seemed too familiar. “Living there is more accurate.”

  “Lauren makes that crystal clear,” Alexis snorted angrily.

  “What’s with you and that house, anyway?” I asked. “Your mother thinks you want it for your father.”

  “Of course she thinks that. My mother can’t stand my relationship with Dad. It drives Lauren crazy to play second fiddle. To anyone, but especially her daughter.”

  “You’re forgetting about Anne.”

  Alexis paused, “Anne’s not much competition to anyone.”

  Her answer sparked my curiosity, but I remained silent as she continued talking.

  “It’s exactly what I told you the other night. I despise watching the house decay. If I could afford it, I’d fix it myself. But I can’t. What I can do is find a buyer. Believe it or not, I’ll be able to set up both my dad and Lauren with money in the bank and a little left over for me.”

  Mother and daughter had decidedly different views of the same situation. Of course, I didn’t know how much Alexis meant by ‘little.’ “Lauren really doesn’t want to sell.”

  “Sooner or later she’ll have to,” Alexis said grimly. Then, in an abrupt change of pace, her voice became light and teasing. “You’re slick, Matt Jacob. I’m doing the talking even though I asked about your job.”

  “I don’t have a job, Alexis,” I answered carefully. “I didn’t find anything the other morning and now the police are guarding the Hacienda. What’s your interest?”

  “Concern. I know you were looking for my mother’s mythical stalker and wondered if you made any headway with the people who did the drive-by.”

  “I’m not involved,” I lied. “Chief Biancho doesn’t want me mixing in.”

  “I spoke to Teddy and he says the shooting was a gang initiation.”

  “That’s what he told me too.” Part of me wanted to get off the phone as fast as possible, but I’d become interested in Alexis’s ‘concern.’ “Teddy say anything else?”

  “Just that the two of you talked.”

  “Yeah, we had a pleasant conversation,” I said, rubbing one of my many aches. I’d begun to think of Biancho and Clifford as one. Time for more Ibi’s.

  “He wanted to know how long I’d known you, that sort of thing.” Alexis paused then added, “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him about the lighthouse either.” Alexis laughed into the phone, “You did it again! I’m doing the talking.” She paused then added, “You are a tricky bastard.”

  “Just my personality.”

  “Your multifaceted personality,” she whispered seductively before reverting to matter-of-fact. “Anyway, Teddy is serious. He doesn’t want anything screwing up this investigation.”

  “He doesn’t have to worry about me,” I said, wondering about their relationship and whether Biancho enlisted Alexis as well as Clifford in his mission to keep me from nosing around. “I know better than to cross a cop.” Had the scars to prove it.

  “Good, because Ted was really intense. I don’t want anything to happen to you that I don’t do myself.”

  Too late for that. “Listen, Alexis, before you hang up...”

  “Clairvoyant?”

  “That’s your mother’s specialty.”

  The mutual laughter covered an awkward moment before I asked for her address and telephone number. I told myself it was for work and hoped to hell I meant it. Alexis acted flattered and gave me the information for both her home and office. I pressed my luck and asked for the rest of the family’s. Explained that I wanted to leave Lou and Lauren alone, but felt weird not knowing where people lived.

  “That’s the least of your weirdness,” she jabbed, but gave them to me anyway.

  Any hesitation I’d had about getting out of the house was gone. Rather than hurtling me deeper down the sinkhole, Alexis’ call reignited my worry about Lauren and Lou as well as my angry questions about Clifford’s visit.

  I downed the Ibi’s with bourbon, retrieved my stash and rolled a good sized joint. I was never too angry to do my head. Boots hadn’t been rash with her concerns. I di
d want to confront Biancho. Demand to know why he felt it necessary to contact Washington Clifford and possibly send another message through Alexis. I wanted to lean on the son of a bitch until I got some answers. Hammer him because I had no answers of my own.

  Armed with Boots’s warning, the smarter me prevailed. Instead of writing my own invite to the slammer or more slaps, I grabbed all my old taxi street guides and began to place the Browns and Rowes where they belonged. I didn’t have, and didn’t want, a computer. Hell, my flip-top cell phone still annoyed me.

  Except for Stephen, they all belonged on the North Shore. Stephen lived in town.

  I sat back in my chair leafing through the Boston guide until the hair on my neck bristled. I quickly found my building-by-building city map and forgot about my growling stomach. Stephen’s home was catty-corner from Lauren’s car trash.

  Why hadn’t Lauren simply waited inside her son’s apartment instead of the street?

  I’d asked a ton of questions since I’d learned about Lou and Lauren’s relationship—mostly about myself. But this one wasn’t and I wanted an answer. It pulled me away from the couch, but not toward Alexis; for some of us, any port in a storm—though apparently not so for Lauren Rowe.

  Once I parked across from Stephen’s address, my little question mushroomed. It appeared impossible for anyone living in his building to have missed the car party.

  I stubbed the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and walked to the converted brick warehouse. Climbed a couple of steps, leaned against an oversized gray door, and stepped into a medium-sized, refinished oak anteroom with a corridor leading toward the back. Each side of the hallway had a tinted gray glass door and a gallery name. Both large rooms were dark and empty.

  I walked the corridor to a freight elevator where I found a buzzer and intercom built into the opposite wall. There were also two wooden boxes stuffed with junk mail and art catalogues.

  It took me a moment to push the button, steeling myself for Stephen’s whiny, sardonic greeting. But what I heard was just a weak hello.