Ryan Jahn - Low Life

‘Oh. Okay. What time is it?’

‘Half till ten.’

‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘Also,’ the guy said – and Simon could tell from the tone that this was the real reason he’d called – ‘and I know this ain’t none of my business, but if you’re wanted by the coppers, they found you.’

Suddenly there was no heartbeat in his chest, just silence and a sound like a desert wind. He swallowed. His heart started again.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Guy in a black Cadillac’s been parked out front watching your car all morning. Looks like the fuzz to me.’

‘Okay.’

He set the phone in its cradle.

He knew the man in the black Cadillac hadn’t tailed him. He thought he knew that. He’d lost him last night before he was even half a mile from his house.

He pinched his eyes closed, and then opened them again.

The room didn’t have its own shower – a hundred and forty bucks and no fucking shower – just a toilet and a sink. He needed to head back to Pasadena and get cleaned up and change clothes. He hoped Samantha was out. He didn’t want to have to deal with her right now. He needed time to figure out what was happening. He also hoped the cops weren’t staking the place out. Stabbing a guy in the arm wasn’t murder. Nor was breaking into a business. Hopefully the cops had more important things to deal with. This wasn’t a small town. Ten million people called Los Angeles County home. Out of that ten million people, thousands of them were surely capable of making much more trouble than he had created. Hopefully the cops were busy with them. Still – if it looked sketchy he’d forget about the shower and the change of clothes, but he needed to check it out.

But what was he going to do about the black Cadillac?

The guy wasn’t a cop. The only reason for a cop to be following him before last night – before he’d stabbed Dr Zurasky and broken into his office – would be because the police knew he’d killed Jeremy Shackleford, and if the police had known that, they wouldn’t have been following him. They would have been arresting him. Which meant the guy was working with – who? Not Zurasky. Zurasky wanted him in police custody, so if the guy was working for him, and he knew where Simon was, the police would be close behind. And since they weren’t – well, who then?

Fuck it. For now he wasn’t going to worry about it. After a few hours’ sleep, it was less intimidating than last night. He’d let the son of a bitch follow him and see what happened.

As he drove he thought about seeing the dead walk. That didn’t fit in with the Zurasky hypothesis. Unless somebody had drugged him and he’d hallucinated Müller and the dog. He’d seen them earlier and they’d stuck in his head because of their violent deaths and later he’d hallucinated them. Samantha had handed him pills she claimed were Tylenol. Perhaps they’d been something else altogether. He couldn’t remember now if she gave him the pills before or after he’d seen the dead walking. Or maybe someone had replaced the blood thinners he had to take daily with something else – but then he last took those two nights ago. And if someone had replaced his blood thinners with some other drug, they’d done it before he had stepped into the role of Jeremy, and they’d known about his heart murmur, his caged-ball heart valve, the fact that he had to take pills daily, and that the best way to drug him was to slip those drugs into his bottle of blood thinners. But then whoever was orchestrating this had already demonstrated a thorough knowledge of both him and Shackleford, and the ability to get things done.

He simply couldn’t wrap his brain around all this, he couldn’t connect the dots. Maybe if he drank less. He’d had whiskey and wine and vodka throughout the day yesterday.

But this was making him feel panicky and lost and the booze calmed him. He hated this. He didn’t know what to do at any moment, didn’t know where to turn. He just had to take it one step at a time and hope he could untangle things – unfortunately they seemed to be more tangled than ever.

He parked two blocks from the house and walked the rest of the way. If cops were there, they might be looking for his car. The Cadillac pulled to the curb several car lengths behind him. The man behind the wheel did not step out into the sun. He just sat. Good.

Simon shivered as he walked through the sunshine of early fall.

After he turned the corner onto his street he paused. He looked down the length of the quiet suburban neighborhood and saw just that – a quiet suburban neighborhood. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on. Houses sat, lawns were green, and a gentle breeze ruffled eucalyptus leaves. That was all.

Samantha’s car was not in the driveway. Maybe she was out at the police station filing yet another missing person report – or being questioned about where he might be as a result of last night’s activities. Whatever she was doing she wasn’t doing it here, and that suited Simon just fine.

As he keyed open the front door, someone behind him spoke.

‘I really need that hammer, Jeremy.’

Simon jumped and turned around. The fat guy whose hammer Jeremy had – apparently – borrowed was jogging in place and looking at him.

‘Now’s a bad time.’

‘I’m building a bookcase and I really need that hammer. That was my plan for the weekend.’

‘What’s today?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Then it’s not the weekend.’

Simon pulled open the front door and went inside without another word. He slammed the deadbolt home behind him.

The living room was cool and quiet. He had a strong urge to stretch out on the couch. He was still incredibly tired. He’d managed almost six hours of sleep, but that didn’t seem to be enough. It took everything he had not to do it. Instead he walked down the hallway, through the master bedroom, and into the bathroom. He peeled away the layers of bloody sweat-stinking clothes and let them fall to the tiled floor, then stepped naked into the shower and turned on the water. It felt good to wash away the filth. The gauze covering his right hand got soaked, and he ended up pulling it away and dropping it to the shower floor. His wounds were no longer bleeding, anyway.

After drying off he walked to the bedroom and put on a gray suit. He put on a green tie, and the overcoat, and, still feeling cold, he wrapped a scarf around his neck.

Once dressed he walked to the living room. Since he was here he figured he might as well feed Francine. But she was gone.

After a moment’s thought Simon decided he knew exactly where she was – and he wanted to go there anyway. There was a trunk he wanted to pry open.

The Volvo was gone. Maybe the police had taken it. Maybe they had gotten a warrant and taken it and were now searching it. Maybe they’d already searched it and had found Jeremy Shackleford’s body in the trunk – his bones, anyway.

He shook his head at that thought. He didn’t think that was it.

If the police had the car, and if Zurasky or someone working for him had planted Shackleford’s body in its trunk, he wouldn’t still be standing here. There’d be a dozen cops on him by now. Instead there were none. Someone else had the car.

Who?

He closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead just above his left eyebrow. It throbbed with pain. He exhaled. After a moment he opened his eyes again, decided he couldn’t worry about that right now, and turned toward the back alley. He had locked the door last night when he left – creature of habit that he was – and had to break in.

He jumped up, grabbing for the ladder, but missed. He looked around for something to stand on. A broken cinder block leaned against the wall ten feet away. That might give him just enough added height. He grabbed it and set it beneath the ladder, stood atop it, and jumped again.