Ryan Jahn - Low Life

‘I’m not a junky, Mr Shackleford.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I’m in constant pain. My eyes. This relieves it.’

‘Ever think of Tylenol? It’s a little less extreme.’

A pause. Posniak licked his lips.

‘Why are you here?’

Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes and lighted one with a match.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

Posniak pushed a glass ashtray across the desk toward him. It was half-filled with cigarettes already, most of their filtered ends smeared with various shades of red.

Then he grabbed a handkerchief from his desk – yellowed by sweat – and dabbed at his forehead.

‘Why are you here, Mr Shackleford?’ he said again.

‘I wanted to talk.’

‘I’ve already informed your wife that I’m off the case.’

‘That’s not what I want to talk about.’

‘Well, sit down,’ Posniak said. ‘It’s your party.’

Simon sat down in the padded wooden chair that faced the desk, dragged off his cigarette, dropped ash in the tray.

‘Cold in here, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Let’s get to the point. What did you want to talk about?’

‘The night you followed me to the train station.’

Posniak actually blushed.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘research I can do – I’m actually very good at it – but when it comes to tailing people, I don’t know what it is, I have never been able to do it subtly.’

‘You’re awful.’

‘You’re not here to discuss my trade, are you?’

‘Tell me about Kate Wilhelm.’

‘The conversation would probably go better if you told me about her. I have no idea who that is.’

‘The little brunette you saw me with that night.’

‘What night?’

‘Monday. The night you followed me to the train station.’

‘Night before last?’

‘Night before last.’

‘Little brunette?’

Simon nodded.

‘You mean the photographer, Marlene Biskind?’

‘You saw—’

‘I was there. Then I followed your cab back to the house.’

‘Where a little brunette was sitting on the steps waiting for me.’

Posniak shook his head.

‘There was nobody on the steps.’

Simon tongued at his cheek and looked at the man, trying to figure out why he’d lie to him. If he was off the job there was no percentage in lying – or in telling the truth.

‘Is it money?’

‘Is what money?’

‘Do you want money? Is that why you’re not being honest with me?’

‘Like I want you to pay for information?’

‘So it is money.’

‘Listen, Mr Shackleford. I’m not withholding information. I’m in pain. I want to tell you what you want to know so you’ll leave and I can get back to what I was doing. I don’t care about scoring a twenty off you.’

‘Then tell me about the brunette.’

‘I’m telling you what I know. There was no brunette. You got out of the cab, you walked to the steps, you paused a moment, did some strange little move with your arms like you were reaching out to grab something with both hands, and then you went into the house. You came out twenty minutes later, stood on the porch muttering to yourself – I don’t know what about; listening to your conversations with yourself wasn’t part of my arrangement with Mrs Shackleford; she just said she wanted to know where you were at all times – and after a while you went back inside. An hour or two later Mrs Shackleford came home and an hour or so after that you left again. You spotted me and managed to lose me by getting on the train. You came back some time later and got your car. I tried to follow you but you spotted me. It was late, I was tired, and in any case there was a transponder on your car. I figured if you wanted to lose me, fine. I’d catch up with you in the morning. I went home and went to bed. That’s it. That’s the whole night. Now can you please go? I’ve got shit to attend to.’

Simon’s chest felt tight with fear, though he had no idea what he was afraid of. Was it possible he’d hallucinated—

How was he supposed to figure this out when he didn’t even know which pieces of evidence were real and which were hallucinations? What if he wasn’t even sitting here? What if he was in a rubber-walled room with—

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said finally.

‘I don’t care.’ The guy pulled his hand from his desk drawer and there was a little silver .25 in it. He laid it on his desk with a surprisingly heavy thunk , keeping his hand atop it. ‘I have been more than patient with you. I’ve done my best to tell you what I know. Now I’m telling you to leave. Now.’

After a final drag Simon butted his cigarette out in the glass ashtray and got to his feet.

For a while he just drove around. He knew it was stupid. He should be on the road as little as possible – any place he could be identified was a dangerous place. But he didn’t know what else to do. He was barely aware that he was driving at all – he was on automatic pilot while his mind tried to untangle this mess – and when it was over he remembered nothing of where he had gone or how he had ended up in front of the library. He had no recollection of traffic signals or other cars on the road or pedestrians or anything, but here he was parked on Grand just past Fifth Street. And he was glad.

With a stack of microfilm on the desk to his left and one roll stretched between reels on the reader before which he was sitting, Simon scanned through old newspaper archives. April or May of last year was when it would have happened. The accident. Jeremy Shackleford had been a professor and Kate Wilhelm had been his student; a late-night car accident involving both of them might have been controversial enough to get a few inches of newsprint. The papers could milk it for drama – what were they doing together, this man in his mid-thirties in a position of authority and this college freshman who still lived with her father in Burbank? They could insinuate that alcohol was involved without out-and-out saying it. They could quote anonymous sources who heard such and such from their own anonymous sources. Or perhaps—

Then he found it.

A picture of the wreck was included with the news story, taken from above. The car was upside-down on top of a tree which the car had, apparently, tipped over with its weight. It was still burning when the photographer snapped his shot. The piece read:

LOS ANGELES – Famous for dangerous hairpin turns since its completion in 1924, raced upon by famous speedsters such as Steve McQueen and James Dean, and the end of the line for many who thought they could outsmart it at any speed, Mulholland Drive has claimed one more life, and pushed still another to the very edge.

Two nights ago, April 23rd, at 11:47 p.m., police responded to several reports of a car accident on Mulholland Drive, half a mile from Cahuenga, just past the Universal City Overlook. When they arrived police found a guardrail had been driven through, and on the mountainside thirty-four feet below an upended 1967 Chevy Nova lay in flames.

There were two people in the car at the time of the accident: Katherine Virginia Wilhelm, 18, a student, and Jeremy Shackleford, 33, a faculty member at Pasadena College of the Arts, where Ms Wilhelm was majoring in set design. Ms Wilhelm was pronounced dead on arrival at Cedars Sinai, and Mr Shackleford remains in a coma.

Police believe that it was burns which caused Ms Wilhelm’s death but are waiting for a full autopsy. Mr Shackleford was thrown from the vehicle on impact or he would have met a similar fate.

Ms Wilhelm is believed to have been driving at the time of the accident, but police made no statements as to its cause. They are investigating ‘every possibility’, but have given no indication as to what those possibilities might be.