Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

I couldn’t help it. His battered nose and scarred knuckles suddenly didn’t matter. I started toward him, wearing Dad’s smile.

And I was surprised by how quickly he moved away and opened the door. “You think about it,” he said. “I don’t need an answer today. You think about family.”

“I don’t need to think about anything.”

“Oh yeah you do.” His gaze found the book. “Because there’s more to this than you and me. There’s our darling sister, too.” He shook his head. “Remember the things Dad used to do to bad girls in the movies? Remember how he’d get them to do the things he wanted? Remember what he did to that two-faced piece in Wrong Turn ? And our sister… what you wrote about her… oh, man, she’s one bad girl.”

He had finally pushed the button that stopped me cold. The best I could do was whisper, “You leave Jo out of this.”

“Now Tommy m’lad, you didn’t leave Jo out of this, so why should I?” He stopped in the doorway for a moment, completely confident, not sparing me a backward glance. “Anyway, you think about what I said. You get in touch with that producer. I’ll give you today to get it done, and I’ll call you tomorrow. And then you’d better tell me what I want to hear, or else I’ll be driving down to San Francisco. I don’t like long drives, and I’ll be thinking of our darling sister the whole time.” He laughed. “And thanks for the free roost. This has been a relaxing three weeks.” He started across the pine porch. “Your mail’s on the kitchen table. There’s beer in the fridge.”

I just stood there. Dad pressed down on me. Whispered in my ear. Told me what to do.

But I didn’t do anything.

My brother was gone.

There was another phone in the kitchen. I had to look up Jo’s number in San Francisco. We weren’t on the best of terms. Hell, that was sugar-coating it. We hadn’t talked in five years, not since Jo got into trouble for smacking around her live-in lover. The incident made the papers, and the woman took her revenge in the courts. Lesbian battery case. The bastions of political correctness in S. F. seemed shocked by the very idea — like gay couples were immune to that kind of trouble.

Jo came to me then expecting a sympathetic ear, and all I could do was make smart remarks. “Like father, like daughter.” The girlfriend hit Jo for a good bit of cash, and Jo got off with probation and counseling. The last I’d heard she was involved with one of San Francisco’s gay theatre companies, both acting and directing.

That was pretty much it with us. Until now. I dialed her number and was rewarded with an unfamiliar voice which informed me that Jo and Gabrielle weren’t at home; I could leave a message at the sound of the deafening applause.

Theatre people. Tres cute. But this wasn’t something to do on tape, no matter how anxious I was. Who knew what Jo would do if I came at her out of the blue with a sixty-second warning? She’d most certainly seen Killer Cassady. By now, she’d probably read the chapter where I connected her propensity to violence to the old man. If that were the case, I figured that my sister would be ready to eat me for breakfast.

I told myself that Jo was tough. She was indeed like the old man. She could take care of herself.

I cradled the handset. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know just what. I looked across the room to the place my brother had stood. Just doing that scared me. I made my way to the door, cautiously, as if I expected him to jump out at me. I closed it, locked it, remembering the steel in his eyes and his scars.

Maybe he wasn’t my brother. Half-brother, I should say. Maybe he was just a nut. But even as the idea took hold, I knew it wasn’t true. He had the look, all right. He had the genes. And I had twenty-four hours to figure out how much he knew, and what he could do with that knowledge.

I opened the fridge. The six-pack he’d left me was waiting. I popped a brew and sat down at the table. The key to the drawer I rented at the post office lay on the unfinished pine, along with a large stack of mail.

The bastard hadn’t been kidding. He had picked up my mail.

And, looking at the envelopes, I could tell that he’d opened it.

Three weeks worth of mail. Not much for someone who lives as quietly as I do. I don’t go in for magazines and catalogs, mainly because my work involves travel. With the drawer, which is fairly large, I can miss a couple of weeks and still not have to notify the P. O. and everyone who works there that I’m out of town and my place is ripe for burglary.

Go ahead, call me paranoid.

Hurriedly, I flipped through the mail. Mostly bills, junk. But there was a letter from the producer which had been forwarded by my agent, and a quick once-over told me that two things were missing from the large package — a contract and a script for the Wrong Turn remake.

That set me to thinking. Maybe my half-brother hadn’t known about the movie. Maybe he had come here with a simple shake-down in mind. I cursed myself for leaving the key to the post office box where someone could find it. My mistake had probably given the idiot ideas.

I sorted through the rest of the mail and found nothing else of interest, but I wasn’t finished. I wanted to be thorough. I dumped the garbage can in the sink and sifted through the trash.

Hamburger wrappers. Beer cans. Crumpled cigarette packages. And, finally, another envelope.

It bore no return address. I sifted through more junk and found a torn chunk of a letter from my credit card company. I remembered my drive from the airport, the clerk at the gas station informing me that my card had expired.

The torn letter promised that “my new card was enclosed.”

But the card wasn’t in the garbage.

I knew where it was — in the wallet of a guy who thought that he was one step ahead of me.

So, my credit card had been stolen.

I breathed a sigh of relief. My half-brother was that stupid. He had fallen victim to the old man’s genes, all right. Punch your way out of problems. Snatch the easy opportunity. Don’t think ahead.

That was the propensity that always got Dad into trouble. He’d snatch the fast answer because he couldn’t think ahead, and then he’d end up sinking deeper into trouble. It happened to him in Wrong Turn. In that movie, he kept the dead guy’s wallet because he was afraid of a murder rap. And then the shrewish hitchhiker entered the picture and tried to force him into assuming the guy’s identity so they could make a fast buck. Dad couldn’t think at all after she came into it. Just like that night in the kitchen when he caught my mother with that French dandy who specialized in playing the smartass kind of guy Dad loathed. He couldn’t think at all, seeing that guy with his wife. He could only react.

That’s what my half-brother was doing. He was reacting, running the Wrong Turn playbook, but he wasn’t thinking.

I was thinking, and fast. I called the credit card company’s 800 number and asked for a rundown of my latest charges. Several local restaurants turned up. Soule Domaine at Crystal Bay. Bobby’s Uptown Cafe at Incline. Better joints than I figured my doppelganger for.

He was staying at the Cal-Neva Lodge on the north shore, the place Sinatra had owned before he made the mistake of inviting Sam Giancana to be his guest. It was a nice place, a tourist place. That didn’t seem to fit my half-brother, either.

He’d had a room at the Lodge for two weeks.

I hung up the phone. I had more questions.

And the answers were just eight miles away.