Jan Burke - Nine

“He dropped my name? Jesus, what nerve this kid must have!”

“You ought to meet him and find out for yourself.”

Alex shook his head, then took a sip of coffee.

“All that bullshit that happened with you and Miles and Clarissa,” John said, “none of that was Chase’s fault.”

Alex frowned. He kept drinking the coffee.

“You agree with me?”

“I’m not blaming him.”

“So you’ll give him a ride home?”

“I’m loading up on caffeine, aren’t I?”

“So you think you might want to try to develop some kind of relationship with your only nephew?”

“No, you old geezer, I don’t. But I finally realized that you were going to sit out here blowing more hot air than the damned Santa Ana, and if I have any hope of getting even an hour’s sleep, I’d better take Miles’s juvenile delinquent home. So wake the little bastard up and get his criminal ass out here before I change my mind.”

John laughed. “Caught on, did you?” he said and hobbled back inside.

Fifteen minutes later, a sleep-tousled but wary young man came out of the house. He was tall and thin, blond and blue-eyed-the “Brandon blue” as John called it-and had his father’s good looks. Alex had seen photographs of Chase before now-John made sure of that. But beholding the flesh-and-blood version of Miles’s son was another matter altogether. For starters, he looked a lot like Miles did at his age, and Alex found himself thinking of those difficult years, of how hard Miles had taken their father’s death, how afraid he had been. “What’s going to happen to us?” he had asked again and again.

And now, at fifteen, his son Chase was scared, too.

The thought struck Alex suddenly, as he watched the boy approach, and he wondered what the hell this kid had to be afraid of. Chase’s eyes looked so much like Miles’s at nearly that age, held that same uncertainty-it was as if all Miles’s DNA had passed his fear along with all his other traits.

But Miles had lost that old fear before he turned eighteen. Alex didn’t much like what had replaced it-a level of ambition that would have been admirable if it hadn’t been so damned ruthless. Was that hidden somewhere in this kid, too?

Alex couldn’t see much of Clarissa in Chase’s features, and he was grateful for that.

Chase took one look at Alex, then nervously glanced back at John. John hobbled forward and put a hand on Chase’s shoulder. “Alex, allow me to present your nephew, Chase.”

Like they were at a damned cotillion, Alex thought.

Chase put out a hand.

Alex, not even bothering to look at what he knew would be a commanding stare from John, shook hands with the boy.

Chase glanced down at the rough and abraded hand that grasped his own. Not his father’s smooth and manicured paw, Alex thought. The boy said nothing.

“You two better get going,” John said, not hiding his pleasure. “Chase, your uncle Alex has had a long night already, so behave yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” Chase said. He paused and added, “Thank you, Uncle John.”

Nothing rebellious.

“You’re welcome. You call me anytime you need help.”

“Yes, sir.” He got into the car.

Alex handed the empty mug back to John and said, “What’d you tell him that’s got him so scared of me?”

“What makes you think you’re the center of the universe? He’s not scared of you.”

“Then what?”

“Not your problem, Alex, remember?”

“You’re an evil old man,” Alex said, and got into the car.

Chase was studying the interior of the Taurus with the look of someone who finds himself in a cheap foreign hotel bathroom, unsure of how to operate the toilet. Alex figured the department-issued sedan was probably the least expensive vehicle the kid had ever been in. If he had any derisive comments in mind, though, Chase didn’t say them aloud.

They didn’t, in fact, say a word to each other until Alex hit traffic. At three in the morning, when the worst thing about traffic should have been dodging the occasional drunk, he had come across another Caltrans repair crew.

“Shit,” he said. Why did this kid have to pick this, of all nights, to show up on his doorstep?

“Sorry,” Chase said.

“Not your fault,” Alex said, in spite of what he had just been thinking.

“Can’t you-you know, like, put on a siren or something?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

They were stopped near a lamppost a moment later. Chase, looking at Alex’s hands on the wheel, said with no little awe, “Were you in a fight?”

Alex saw what the boy saw in the yellowish lamplight. Skinned and swollen knuckles, broken nails, abrasions here and there. “No. I went climbing on Sunday.”

For a moment, Alex was sure that Chase would pursue the topic, but they moved again into darkness, and he fell silent. Alex saw the Sepulveda off-ramp and took it.

“Uh-Uncle Alex?”

Uncle Alex. It sounded strange to hear it.

“You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?” Chase asked anxiously.

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Well, anyway, this isn’t the way to my house.”

“You still live off a little private road in Rameriz Canyon?”

“Yeah.”

“I grew up in that house. I know how to get there.”

“You grew up in our house?”

“Your dad didn’t tell you that?”

“No, but he doesn’t talk to me much about…”

“About me?”

“No.”

They rode in silence for a few more minutes, then Alex said, “We lived there until I was twelve. Your grandfather lost a lot of money, and we moved to another house, in Bel Air. Your dad tell you about that?”

“Is that where my grandfather killed himself?”

Alex saw it as clearly as if he had just stepped through the door-the room, the body, the unholy mess of it. “Yes,” he said.

“My dad said you were the one who found him-Grandfather Brandon, I mean.”

“Yes. And after that we went to live with John,” he quickly added, heading off further inquiry about suicide by shotgun.

Chase seemed to pick up on his discomfort, though, and said, “So you lived in our house? That’s so crazy. What room was your room?”

Alex described it.

“No way!” Chase said, laughing. “That’s my room!”

Alex was a little surprised by this. He would have suspected that Miles would have given his own former room to his heir. But he only said, “What do you know.”

And he began to wonder what the kid did know.

He considered his options, made a decision, and turned onto Sunset and headed west. He ignored the voice of reason, the one that told him there were shorter routes to the Coast Highway. He ignored some other impulse that said there were longer ones.

“Your dad ever tell you why…why we aren’t close?”

Chase shrugged. “He said you just didn’t get along so well now. That sometimes that happens.”

“Yeah, sometimes it does.”

“Well, isn’t that kind of stupid? Like, I mean, I never had a brother-but, you know, if I had one, I don’t think I’d act like you guys do.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t.”

Chase heard the rebuke in it and stayed silent.

The road began to wind, curving its way toward Pacific Palisades. The sky was darker here; the homes larger and farther apart. Concentration on the road was not distraction enough, though, and Alex found himself not liking the silence.

“What school are you in?”

“School’s out for the summer,” Chase said. Alex heard a return of anxiousness in his voice.

“When it’s not out for the summer, where do you go?”

He took so long to answer, Alex thought he wasn’t going to reply. “My dad says they’re going to send me to Sedgewick.”