Linwood Barclay - Bad Guys

Sarah glared. “If Magnuson wants to talk to you, he won’t settle for talking to anyone else, believe me.”

I sat down at the kitchen table, leafed through the first section of The Metropolitan , and my eyes landed on a car ad. “Oh. Nearly forgot.” I told her Lawrence and I still intended to attend a government auction later in the day where it might be possible to pick up a car for a song. He was going to pick me up from the house before lunch.

“We had this discussion yesterday,” Sarah said, putting in some toast. “We don’t have money for a new car. And I don’t want us to throw money away on some old clunker. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“If we absolutely had to get one, what could we afford?”

“I don’t know. Seven, eight thousand, maybe? But there’s no point in even having this conversation.”

Paul, strolling into the kitchen, had evidently heard at least some of what we’d been talking about. “A government auction?” he said. “I’ve heard you can get cars for like nothing at those. Get a Beemer.”

Paul had his learner’s permit. I didn’t even want to think of the damage he could do to an expensive German sports car. “And get a standard. Only pussies drive automatics.”

I didn’t see any need to get dragged into a debate over transmissions for a car that I was not even going to buy. I put my nose back into the paper, my eye catching a headline next to the car ad. It was an Associated Press item, out of California, about a teenage boy who’d shot several of his classmates, supposedly his friends, at a neighborhood park.

“Color’s not important,” Paul said. “Unless it’s like some bright yellow or something, but I don’t think BMW makes cars in bright yellow. Their little convertibles, maybe, but not the 5 series or 3 series. You get something too bright, the cops are just going to pull you over all the time for speeding tickets. If they’re auctioning off cars that belonged to drug dealers, there should be lots of Beemers. Drug dealers love Beemers.”

It said in the story that this boy, who was seventeen, spent most of his time parked in front of a computer in his bedroom, hacking into places he shouldn’t be sticking his nose into, checking out websites that told you how to make your own bomb, how to kill people with nothing but a pencil, that kind of thing.

“We’re not getting a Beemer,” Sarah said. “We’re not even getting a car. We can’t afford another car.”

“What if Dad’s last book gets made into a movie?” Paul asked.

Sarah made a dismissive noise. “Your father’s book did not do well enough to get made into a movie, Paul.”

I glanced up from my paper, decided to let it go. Angie wandered into the kitchen, dressed, but her hair wrapped in a towel.

“What’s this about a car?” she asked.

Paul brought her up to speed.

“Get a Hummer,” Angie advised. In my head, I could see the headlights of the Annihilator, like eyes on a dragon, filling the Buick with cold, cold light.

“If there’s one thing I won’t be getting, ever,” I said, “it’s a Hummer, or a Suburban, or an Annihilator. They run over other people’s cars, pollute the atmosphere, get a mile to the gallon, you can’t see around the damn things, they-”

“Okay, Dad, we hear ya,” said Paul. “SUVs, bad. Little cars, good.”

According to the AP story, this boy in California was pretty reclusive. A loner. Obsessed with counterculture, not particularly good at making friends. Liked to take pictures of people without their knowing it, post them on a website. He’d had a crush on some girl, but she’d rebuffed him, and something snapped. He finds his dad’s revolver in a drawer, takes it to the park one night where he knew his classmates went to make out, drink underage, and smoke a few joints, and shoots three kids from his class.

Everyone interviewed had said that yeah, he was kind of weird, they weren’t totally surprised by what he’d done, but no one had reported his behavior to anyone. No one thought it worth mentioning. Not until after he’d killed three of them.

I said, interrupting the conversation at whatever point it happened to be in, “Has this Trevor guy called you anymore?”

Angie glanced over at me, deciding, I guess, whether she was speaking to me these days, other than to tell me not to answer the phone. The Pool Boy incident was several weeks old now.

“A couple times. Five times last night my cell rang in one hour. I was hanging out at Deb’s? And it’s going off in my purse every ten minutes. And I have to check it every time, because it might be-”

She stopped herself.

“Might be who?” Sarah asked.

“Just anybody. It could be somebody I actually want to talk to, and not him. But he’s got this thing, so his number doesn’t show, so I don’t answer any calls unless I see an actual number. So I guess he figures this out, and he goes to a pay phone, I don’t know, and calls me, and this time I see an actual number, so I answered.”

“I hope you weren’t mean to him,” I said, scanning the rest of the story.

Angie sighed. “I was… pleasant. So he asks me where I am, and before I can think up a good story, I tell him I’m at Deb’s house, and he says Deb Chenoweth? And I go yeah, and he goes, oh I know her, have we been friends a long time? That kind of thing. So, I tell him I have to go, and Deb and I decide to go over to Jennifer’s, and we go outside and there’s Trevor walking along the street.”

She paused and we all waited.

“You don’t get it?” she said. “Deb’s place is like, nowhere near here, or where he lives, but it’s only been a minute since he hung up, so he had to know that I was already there. He must have followed me. Deb lives just around the corner from the 7-Eleven, where there’s a pay phone, and we figure he must have called from there.”

Paul said, ever so casually, “He’s psycho.” He shrugged. “I heard he boiled a live rabbit once, like that woman in the movie?”

“That’s bullshit,” Angie said. “You made that up.”

“Okay, maybe. But I bet he’s the kind of guy who would boil a rabbit. Did you ever see that movie? Where Michael Douglas does that woman, right in the kitchen?”

Sarah shot our son a glance. It was just as well that Norman Rockwell was no longer with us. He would never have done this family’s portrait.

Paul continued, “But he is strange. Maybe that’s why he likes you .”

“Knock it off,” I said.

“You should consider yourself lucky,” Paul said. “Lots of girls think he’s really hot. They’re into this whole mysterious loner thing he’s got going. And he is kind of hot. I’m speaking strictly hetero here.”

“He’s not my type,” Angie said. “Maybe he’s more your type, Paul. You seem to like him enough to let him get things for you.”

“What are we talking about here?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Paul. “Shut up, Angie. I don’t go ratting you out.”

“What are you talking about?” I said again, trying to force some authority into my voice.

“It’s nothing, forget about it,” Angie said. “I’m just joking.”

Deciding to let this part go for now, I returned to the issue of Trevor Wylie and security. I said, “Maybe I should speak to him.”

I can’t begin to tell you how wrong that comment was.

It was as if Angie exploded. A grenade went off inside her head.

“Great idea!” she shouted at me. “Brilliant! Just like you did with Irwin!”

That was it! The Pool Boy’s name was Irwin.

“Just a fucking brilliant idea!” And with that, she stormed out of the kitchen.

It was very quiet in the kitchen for a few moments after that, until Paul said, “Actually, it would be kind of funny if you did.”