Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“You have to promise not to tell my mom,” he said.

“Come on, Jeremy, don’t make me promise something I might not be able to do. You tell me, or we carry on south.”

“My dad lives here,” he said. “Like, close. Yeah, turn here.”

I made a right where the ramp ended. “Okay,” I said. “So we’re going to visit your dad. That would upset your mom?”

He shrugged. “Kinda. Probably. She doesn’t like him.”

“That happens a lot when people split up.”

“Yeah, but this is different ,” Jeremy said.

“Different how?” I glanced over, tried to read his face, but came up with nothing. “Was your father abusive to your mother?”

Gloria’s own father had been abusive, and sometimes people went with what they knew, even when it was bad for them, because it was all they knew.

“He never hit her or anything,” Jeremy said. “Nothing like that. You make a left up here.”

“Didn’t you say your dad’s a teacher?” I asked.

“Yeah, high school.”

“Why do you want to drop by?”

Jeremy gave me a look that suggested any faith he might have had that I had half a brain had been misplaced. “Because he’s my dad,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “Point the way.”

He directed me into an old neighborhood and told me to stop out front of a modest storey-and-a-half brick house with a couple of dormer windows poking out of the roof. While the house was small and unassuming, the yard was immaculately kept, with spring flowers that looked as though they had just been planted.

“Don’t freak out or anything,” he said, getting out of the car before I had a chance to ask about what.

I followed him to the door. He rang the bell, and ten seconds later it was answered by a balding man in his mid-fifties wearing glasses, a pullover sweater and jeans.

“Oh my God, Jeremy,” the man said with what struck me as limited enthusiasm. They faced each other awkwardly for a moment, then the man put his arms around the boy and hugged him. “What are you doing here?”

“We were just kind of in the neighborhood,” Jeremy said.

The man was looking over Jeremy’s shoulder at me, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “And this is?”

“This is my bodyguard,” Jeremy said. “Dad, this is Mr. Weaver, Mr. Weaver, this is my dad.”

I extended a hand. “Cal,” I said.

“Jack Pilford,” the man said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Bodyguard?”

“Not really,” I said. I managed, in three sentences, to explain my presence.

“Okay,” he said, dubiously. “Listen, Jeremy, you know I love to see you, and it’s great that you’ve dropped by. Without, you know, calling ahead. But this is not really the best—”

The door opened wider and another man, slightly older than Jack, appeared. He looked at Jeremy, took a moment to register who he was, then said, “Oh, wow, look who’s here. America’s worst driver.”

“Jesus, Malcolm,” Jack said. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Malcolm set his eyes on me next. “And you must be Bob.”

“No,” I said. I identified myself.

“Mr. Weaver’s been hired to protect Jeremy,” Jack said.

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Malcolm said defensively.

“Not from you.” Jack shook his head. To Jeremy and me he said, “I’m sorry about this. I was trying to tell you, this isn’t a very good time.”

“Lovers’ quarrel,” Malcolm said.

“Maybe we should go,” I said to Jeremy, who had the look of a kid who’d been picked last for a team.

“Why didn’t you come?” Jeremy asked.

“Jeremy, we talked about this,” his father said. “You know—”

“Because of your cunt mother, that’s why,” Malcolm said.

Jack said, “Enough.” He gently pushed Malcolm back into the house. Malcolm allowed it to happen, even showing some satisfaction that his behavior had brought about that reaction. Jack closed the door and stepped outside.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “And Jeremy, you know I wanted to be at the trial, I wanted to be there for you, but Gloria, your mother—”

“You don’t have to do everything she says,” Jeremy interrupted.

“She said to me, and these were her exact words, ‘We don’t need a couple of gaylords turning the trial into a circus.’ That’s what she said.”

“You could have ignored her.”

“It wasn’t just her,” Jeremy’s father said.

Jeremy said, “Who?”

Jack Pilford hesitated. “Madeline called me. She said she’d been talking to Grant Finch, who more or less agreed with your mother. That they had a defense worked out, that bullshit about you not understanding the consequences of your actions. They didn’t want to complicate the message with stories about your father — about me — being gay. I guess Finch and Madeline thought gay was the same thing as sensitive, and if that’s what I was, how come none of my influence rubbed off on you while your mother and I were still together. It was all a crock of shit, far as I was concerned, but if they had something worked out, I didn’t want to mess it up. I didn’t want to do anything that might work against you. Not that the world didn’t find out about me anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

Jack tipped his head back in the direction of the house. “That’s what’s got Malcolm riled up. I’m sure it’s just a fraction of what you and your mother are dealing with, but we’ve been targeted, too.”

“Targeted?” I said.

“Harassing phone calls, being mocked online. I’m the Big Baby’s faggot father who didn’t teach his kid right and wrong. How could I, half of them say, considering I’m a sick, twisted pervert.”

It was like a cancer, all this social-media shaming.

“Malcolm’s furious that I’ve had to endure this,” Jack said. He smiled wearily at his son. “But I’ll survive it. One day, when it all blows over, we can do something, get together. How does that sound?”

Jeremy looked at me. “I guess we should be going.”

I said, “Okay.”

“No, wait,” Jack said. “Maybe we could go somewhere, get a cup of coffee.”

“I hate coffee,” Jeremy said, already walking back to the car.

We lost about half an hour detouring to Jeremy’s father’s house, so making it to New York tonight was no longer an option. As we neared Kingston, I felt it was time to start looking for a place to bed down. There was a Quality Inn we could see from the highway, but there were plenty of other hotels to choose from if we were willing to drive a mile or two.

I pulled up in front of the Quality Inn. “Wait here,” I said to Jeremy. He’d been pretty sullen since we’d left his father’s house.

I took the car key, and parked close enough that I’d be able to see my Honda from the registration desk. I wasn’t convinced Jeremy wouldn’t make a run for it if the mood struck him. So far, he’d seemed pretty agreeable to the whole road trip idea, although he had to be thinking dropping in on his dad had been a bad call. Then again, he could be setting me up. Maybe he’d figured out a way to get a message to his girlfriend Charlene, and she was waiting around the next bend in her Miata.

I went to the desk and asked if they had a room available with two beds. Single, double, queen, didn’t matter. While the woman was scanning her computer for availability, a young couple came through the main doors.

I could hear their conversation as they walked through the lobby in the direction of the elevator.

“That was him!” the woman said.

“That was who?” the man asked.

“From the news. The Big Baby kid. That was him in the car.”

“Seriously?”

They slowed, the man craning his head around to look back at my car.