Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

His room was decorated hurricane-style. Bed unmade, clothes all over the floor. Magazines, video games, everything arranged helter-skelter. The walls were plastered with movie posters. 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Dance of the Dead, Zombieland, Dawn of the Dead .

I was definitely picking up a theme here.

On the floor next to the bed, atop a pile of clothes, was an open laptop. Roman picked it up, looking for something to wear. The motion made the screen, which had been asleep, come to life. I caught a glimpse of text, arranged in what looked like play format.

A script.

He tossed the laptop on the bed, found a black T-shirt he liked, and pulled it on. It was a couple of sizes too small and just barely covered his stomach. Across the front it read.

I pointed to it. “I don’t know that place. It’s not from around here.”

He gave me a “duh” look. “It’s the pub where they’re trapped in Shaun of the Dead. You’ve seen it, right? It’s only one of the best zombie movies ever made. It’s scary, but it’s also funny as fuck.”

“Sorry,” I said. Now I pointed to the laptop. “You writing a zombie movie?”

“Maybe,” Roman said.

“What’s it about? Haven’t zombies been, forgive me, kind of done to death?”

“You just have to find a new angle. I’ve got one.”

I waited.

Roman took a breath. “Okay, most zombies, it happens because of a plague or an experiment or something like that. But what if people were turned into zombies by aliens? A mash up of two different genres. My hero is this guy named Tim who knows what the aliens are doing and tries to stop them.”

I nodded. It sounded dumb to me, but when had dumbness ever kept an idea from being turned into a movie?

“You might have something there,” I conceded. “You got a regular job, Roman?”

“This is my job. I’m a screenwriter.”

“So, then, how much do you make, I don’t know, on a weekly basis, writing your scripts?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It’s not like some job stocking shelves in a fucking grocery store where you get some stupid paycheck at the end of the week. You write a script, and then you shop it around and sell it. So you don’t make money for a long time, but then you could get, you know, a few hundred thousand or a million or something.”

I nodded. “Oh, okay. I don’t understand how Hollywood works. So how many scripts have you sold?”

“I’ve had some nibbles,” Roman said. “I had an e-mail the other day from Steven Spielberg’s office.”

“No shit?” I said. “When’s your meeting?”

“Okay, the e-mail wasn’t exactly — it was more like thanks for your inquiry, but— Did you just come here to bust my balls?” he asked. Wouldn’t have been hard, given what he was wearing. “’Cause if you’re here about who gave shit to Scott, I swear to you, it wasn’t me.”

“I’m not here about that,” I said. “You’re more into beverages. That’s what supports you while you write your scripts.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, busted. I buy beer and drive around and sell it. Big deal. I’m a fuckin’ terrorist.”

“You had Sean and Hanna doing the deliveries for you, didn’t you? Is that why you were out last night, because they weren’t exactly available?”

“I didn’t know anything about that. I called Hanna earlier and got no answer, and when I called Sean he didn’t pick up, either. Fuck, I didn’t know she was dead or anything.”

“Did you know they’ve arrested Sean for it?”

His mouth dropped open. He plopped down on the side of the bed. Quietly, he said, “No way. Sean’s my friend. There’s no way he’d do that.” Roman shook his head in disbelief. “Sean was really into Hanna. Really loved her. Son of a bitch.”

“If Sean didn’t do it, who do you think did?”

He shrugged. “I can’t think of anybody who’d do something like that. That’s just — that’s fucked-up, man.”

I moved some rumpled jeans off a computer chair over by the desk and sat down. I noticed a phone sitting on the desk.

“Did you like Hanna?”

“Oh yeah, sure, she was nice. I mean, she kind of pissed me off sometimes. She was late with money she owed me. But, you know, it was no big deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d buy, like, two dozen cases of beer, load it into Sean’s Ranger, right? And they’d go around delivering. Sean drives, Hanna looks after the money. And there’s a markup, right? So at the end of an evening, or a weekend, Hanna’s got enough to pay me back everything they owe me, and still have money left over. We’d usually meet up the next day.”

“But sometimes she didn’t have it?”

Roman rolled his eyes. “If she passed the mall on the way to see me, sometimes she’d get distracted. Buy herself something. And a couple times, people tried to pay her in something other than cash. I am strictly a cash operation, you know?”

“What do you mean? You’re not telling me some kids want to write you a check.”

Another eye roll. If he did it again they might get stuck looking at his brain.

“No, no, like, if someone didn’t have enough cash, they’d hand over some weed or something to Hanna. I had to lay down the law on that one. I don’t want that stuff.”

“Hanna ever owe other people money besides you?”

“Beats me. Not that I know of. I don’t know why you’re asking me so many questions about how I make a few bucks. Nobody cares about that, and it’s got nothin’ to do with what happened to Hanna.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, like maybe he was trying to stop himself from crying. “I’m tellin’ ya, there’s no way Sean woulda done that to her.”

“That’s why I have to find Claire,” I said. “She may know what really happened. But you weren’t exactly helpful to her father on the phone last night.”

He blinked. “What — how do you—”

“We talked this morning. You said, quote, you didn’t fuckin’ know and didn’t fuckin’ care, unquote, where she was.”

“Okay, you have to know a coupla things. One, my mom did not tell me Hanna was dead before she made me call him. And two, that guy Sanders never liked me. He never thought I was good enough for Claire.”

Point, Sanders .

“How long did you and Claire go out?” I ran my finger along the edge of the cell phone sitting on the desk.

“Like, four months or so, till, like, July.” His lips compressed. “Till she met Dennis.”

Now we’d reached the main reason for my visit. “Tell me about Dennis.”

“Well, his last name is Mullavey, and he’s a black guy, and he’s from someplace like Syracuse or Schenectady.”

“Those are very different places.”

He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. He was supersmooth, you know. Thought he was real cool.”

I picked up the phone.

“Leave that alone,” Roman said.

“You take pictures with this?” I asked.

“Every phone takes pictures. How old are you?”

“This the one you used to take the picture of your cock you sent to Claire?”

“What did you say?”

“Is this the photo app here?”

He shot forward and grabbed the phone from my hand. I didn’t make any effort to hang on to it.

“Is that what makes you cool, Roman? Texting hard-on pics?”

Roman stood before me, almost shaking.

“Claire and I would goof around sometimes, that’s all. Just having some fun.”

“She send you naked pictures of herself?”

“Claire’s a little more uptight about that kind of thing. But she thought it was funny.”

“Even after she’d broken things off with you?” I asked. “Did she think it was funny to get a reminder of what she was missing? Did Dennis find out about that picture? Did he come after you for it? Did something happen between you two that made him leave town in a hurry?”