Robert Ferrigno - Scavenger hunt

Walsh looked away. "Our hero never hears from her. She doesn't call him, he doesn't call her. What's he going to say? 'Sorry, I missed you so bad I fucked a stranger, than beat her skull in because she wasn't you.' No, our hero keeps quiet. Talking isn't going to help, it's only going to drag her into the mess, and our hero would do anything to avoid hurting her." He cleared his throat. "Did I mention that he loves her?"

Jimmy watched him.

"The prison sequences go fast, because the audience has already seen all the prison movies they want to see. Now we replay that opening scene, where about a month before he's due to hit the street, our hero gets a letter-a letter from her." Walsh closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the memory. "All that time without any contact…" His voice trailed off, and it took him a while to find it. "He lies on his bunk for an hour, staring at the envelope, enjoying the curves and valleys of her handwriting. The things that run through his head. He actually thinks she's going to say she has divorced her husband, that she'll be waiting outside the gate, her hair smelling like fresh-cut flowers.

"That's not what the letter says, though. I bet you figured that out. The wife wrote to tell him that she just found out that her husband knew about them. He had known almost from the beginning. He had known and never let on, never said a word to her. He kept quiet for the whole seven years our hero was inside. When our hero's name came up in conversation at a party, the husband never reacted. He kept the secret."

"Just like our hero."

Walsh glared at Jimmy. "Our hero kept quiet to protect her. Maybe the husband kept quiet to protect himself."

Jimmy turned that one over for a while. "You think he set you up?"

"I don't know. I don't remember killing Heather, but there was plenty of evidence. All I'm saying is that if the husband knew about the affair, maybe he did something about it. I know I would."

Jimmy had heard crazier stories. Once or twice anyway. "How did the wife find out?"

Walsh looked at him, the sunglasses on his forehead like a second pair of dead eyes. "She… heard us."

"What does that mean?"

"She heard us. You deaf?" Walsh was angry again, shifting emotional gears more often than a Grand Prix racer. "She takes pills sometimes to help her sleep, but a few months ago she woke up, and her husband wasn't beside her, which is no big deal, because he often works all night. So she gets up to get some water, and she hears… voices downstairs, and she's curious. She goes down and listens at the door where he works, and the voices are fainter now, so faint that if it wasn't her voice coming from inside the room, she wouldn't have recognized it. There's my voice too and now she's got her ear pressed against the door, listening. The two of us are inside that room, the sound of us making love, so clear that she actually remembers the afternoon that we said those things. I'm a talker, Jimmy, I got things to say when we're going at it, and so does she. Her husband has a tape of that afternoon-he probably has a tape of all the other afternoons, all the other evenings and mornings. Tell me that's not sick. This was the first time she had caught him listening to the tapes. Maybe it's a special occasion, or maybe the fact that I'm going to get out soon has made him want to take another listen, to remind himself what I did to him. That's the first two acts, Jimmy. What do you think so far?"

"Good pitch, but it's a big stretch from knowing your wife is fooling around to orchestrating a homicide. That's why there are more divorce lawyers than hitmen."

"This guy knew for months that his wife was cheating on him, and he never said a thing," said Walsh. "The man who could pull that off, kissing her on her way to an exercise class, knowing she's really going to see me, but letting her go, sleeping beside her night after night, and never giving it away-a man who could do that, he could do anything."

"What does the wife think? Is she still living with him? If she is, that has to tell you something."

"It tells me she doesn't know what to think. She still loves me, that's all she knows for sure. Those seven years that I spent thinking of her, she was thinking about me too."

"What's her name?"

"Not yet." Walsh patted the manuscript. "I got it all down here: names, places, dates. I just don't have the third act finished yet, the part where the hero nails the husband and wins the girl back." He thumped the table, then tried to stand, but his legs were rubbery. "I'm going to need proof," he puffed. "Then you'll see it. I'll give you an exclusive."

"You can't even find your balance. How are you going to find out what really happened at the beach house all that time ago?"

Walsh nudged the bulging file folder beside the table with his big toe. "My legal team hired a private detective to investigate Heather Grimm. The plea bargain short-circuited things, but I got their raw notes here. Some interesting possibilities too." He glanced out the window, shivering now, hearing voices in the wind, screams in the trees. "The husband's not done with me."

"You're overselling it, Walsh."

Walsh's smile caved in, his confidence as fake as the rest of him. "I made phone calls. The studios don't know what the screenplay is about, but I told them it was based on a true story. The husband-he has to have heard what I'm working on. I need you to tell my story, Jimmy. He wouldn't have the balls to do anything to me then."

Jimmy shook his head.

"This scavenger hunt of yours-I played that game when I was a kid. Knocking on doors, asking for treasure and trash, and it's all the same. Well, open your eyes, tough guy, you stumbled on to something big here." Walsh clawed at Jimmy's arm. "Put me on the cover of SLAP, play it up big."

Jimmy shook him off. "I've been hustled by the best, Walsh, and this ancient mariner routine of yours is stale. Hire a press agent if you want publicity." He saw Walsh shudder, and Jimmy eased up on him. "Look, finish the script, and I'll read it."

"I don't have time. All those years in the joint, I can tell when shit's coming down. You need to write about me now."

Jimmy's phone beeped. He listened to Rollo shouting that they had won, that they were going to be famous, all of them. He heard the twins crowding around the phone, laughing, and the sound of glasses clinking.

"You're killing me." Walsh stared out the window, his face slack. "You're killing me, and you don't even know it."

Sugar grabbed the phone on the second ring and dropped the receiver, still watching the seagulls floating overhead, looking for lunch.

"It's me."

"Been a long time," murmured Sugar, glancing around. Nothing and no one who didn't belong there. He adjusted his Dodgers cap, pulled it low over his eyes. "You're not calling me from home, are you? Not from the house or the office, remember?"

"I remember."

Sugar went back to watching the seagulls, squinting into the sunlight as the largest one swooped low, its beak sharp and cruel against the sky. Most folks liked birds, thought they were cute, and Sugar had to admit they did look graceful on the wing. But they were predators, every one of them, built to rip and tear, to gulp down life and not think twice about it. People who fed seagulls-it was an insult to Mother Nature.

"Sugar?"

"I'm here." Sugar smiled as the big gray gull came up with a fish, flapping across the water, the scales of the fish rainbowing in the sunlight as it wriggled in the gull's beak.

"I-I was expecting more surprise on your part."

"He's out. Sooner or later you're going to call. Why should I be surprised when you finally do?"

"What are we going to do about him?"

Sugar turned away from the seagulls, staring now at the three girls lying face-down on fluffy white beach towels, munching at small bags of French fries. They had their tops off. He didn't know what the big thing about tan lines was; they were sexy, if you asked him, innocent somehow. The thong bikinis that the girls were wearing-Sugar still hadn't decided about that.