1 Breakfast at Madeline's (24 page)

Rob laughed harshly, then once again stopped abruptly. "Well, let's not cry over spilt milk. Drink up, asshole. And don't try waiting for the cavalry to rescue you. I locked the front door and Madeline doesn't get here 'til eight."

Where was Marcie when I really nee
ded her? If I had known I would di
e so soon, maybe I'd have had sex with her after all. I grimaced at my coffee and asked, "What's in this anyway?"

"An O.D. of pure metherolamphethamine."

Keep him talking. "What the hell is that?"

"Designer speed. Souvenir from L.A. Very popular among screenwriters." Rob's face twisted into a grin, and his eyes gleamed. "I used it to help me write. And when they autopsy you, they'll figure that's why
you
were using it—to break through that writer's block of yours. Same with Penn, if those idiots ever get around to doing an autopsy on
him
. Your deaths will be attrib
uted to overly pure street drugs. Happens all the time. Smooth, huh?" Withou
t waiting for an answer, he con
tinued, "Don't worry, it'll be painless, just like it was for Penn. No sweat."

"I still don't get it. Why did you kill him?"

"Because he wanted my computer."

"That's a capital offense?"

Rob stepped close to me, and before I knew what was coming he swiped at me with his gun. It crashed into my right ear, an
d all sorts of police sirens ex
ploded inside me. If only those sirens were real—but they weren't. "Now drink, motherfucker, or your son will regret it." He aimed his gun toward the other room to emphasize his threat.

Gritting my teeth ag
ainst the pain, I lifted my poi
soned cup like I was about to drink it. I needed to think up some good dialogue for myself, and fast. Heck, I'd written enough screenplays, I ought to be able to hit on
something
. But the best I could do was, "Okay, Rob, I'll drink your little concoction, but before I die, I'd like to know why."

Rob looked exas
perated, but answered me. "Fuck
ing Penn got turned down for some fucking grant to buy a computer, and then he heard I was trying to sell mine. So he came in here early one morning when I was all alone, and tol
d me I'd better give him my com
puter for free or else he'd tell Madeline about
me hav
ing sex with Marcie. I said no, and he gave me three
days to change my mind." Rob snorted angrily. "Fuck that, I knew the sonufabitch's reputation. If I said yes, he'd be sucking me dry for the rest of my life. And I'd be standing at the counter there, watching him do it."

"Why didn't you just tell Madeline? Maybe she'd forgive you."

"Yeah, right. Madeline is, like, 1800s. Jane Austen and shit."

I darted a furtive glance at the clock on the wall.
Damn, 7:15 still.
I'd have to hope Madeline came in early—like, way early. "But even if she broke up with you, so what? There's other women. You had your whole life ahead of you."

If I was trying to provoke him even more—which I wasn't—I succeeded. His nostrils flared, his eyes flashed, and his voice turned shrill. "You don't get it, dickhead. If Madeline breaks up with me, my life is over!"

"But—"

He slammed me again with the gun, and my head whirled; I was seeing Rob in triplicate now. But it didn't blur the viciousness in his face, which was so close to mine I could smell his coffee breath.

His eyes—all six of them—held mine as he snarled furiously, "I spend
five years
in Hollywood trying to break in, working as a
goddamn waiter
even though I'm a million times smarter than any of those airheads. So I give up and come back here, and the best job I can find is minimum wage at some lousy coffee shop." He was so out of control with rage, he was spraying spit all over my face as he
talked. "If I don't marry Made
line, I'll be doing this kind of pissant job 'til
the
day I fucking die."

I snuck another quick glance at the clock: 7:16. Time crawls when you're not having fun. I hoped all the noise Rob was making wouldn't bring Gretzky back in
from the other room. "But you could still go to grad school or law school—"

He barked out a sharp angry laugh. "Bullshit, I could never pay back the loans, even if I could get 'em in the first place. T
here's too many damn lawyers al
ready. And what would I do with a Ph.D.—wipe my ass with it?" He bared his teeth at me. "See, what you jerkoff baby boomers
don't get, the Land of Opportu
nity is deader than disco music. Welcome to the Land of Fucked Up Service Jobs. A rich bitch like Madeline is my only way out!"

7:17.
Shit
. "Hey, I understand it's hard—"

"Yeah, and I understand you checking that clock, but you better check this for a change." He waved the gun in front of my eyes, then pressed the barrel to my forehead.

If ever there was a good time to shit in my pants, this was it. Jesus, what a way to die. Shot in the face by a demented Generation Xer.

My eyes crossed as I watched Rob's finger on the trigger, and his face right behind it. His lips moved. "If I have to shoot you, I will. But I won't shoot Gretzky." I was baffled—was Rob trying to be nice to me?—but he quickly corrected that impression by sneering at me and whispering, "Your son will spend his whole life remembering how his daddy got shot while he was in the next room, playing with monkeys."

I stared at Rob in terror.
This was almost the exact same thing that happened to Donald Penn.
Would Gretzky end up as lonely and miserable as Penn was? My brain went numb, except for some grief-stricken corner that kept thinking two names, over and over:
Penn
...
Gret
zky
...
Penn
...
Gretzky
...

I don't remember lifting the cup. And I don't re
member it reaching my mouth. But I felt myself start
ing to drink. I felt the bitter coffee trickling between my lips—

"Daddy, Daddy, I made peepee again!" Gretzky shouted, racing in.

Rob, startled,
waved his gun away from my fore
head for a moment.

The same moment I flung my cup of coffee at his eyes.

He jerked his gun arm toward his eyes, then saw what he was doing and
jerked it away. But in the mid
dle of all that jerking, I slammed his arm. The gun fell away from his hand.

Unfortunately it fell closer to Rob than to me. Trying to gain time, I shoved the table in his gut. He gasped, the wind knocked out of him, and went sprawling. But before I could leap around the table and get the gun, he managed to crawl across the floor and reach out his hand.

Out of nowhere, Gretzky swooped down and got to the gun first. He picked it up. "Here," he said, and started to hand it to Rob.

Why'd the kid have to be so goddamn
polite
all of a sudden?
"No! Don't give him the gun!"
I screamed. Gretzky stared at me in confusion, but when Rob grabbed for the gun, he pulled it away just in the nick of time. Pleased with himself, he burst into a huge grin. Then Rob got to his feet, and Gretzky backed up. "Throw it here!" I shouted.

Giggling, Gretzky put his little arm back, getting ready to throw.

Rob put his arms up to block it, getting ready to lunge straight at him.

Then Gretzky feinted a throw. Rob dove to his right.

Gretzky feinted another throw. Rob dove to his left.

"Monkey in the
Middle!" Gretzky called out joy
fully.

If he didn't throw that frigging thing soon, I'd have a heart attack.

The problem was, Gretzky was into hockey, not baseball. If only that were Babe Ruth throwing the gun, he'd have lobbed it right over Rob's head, no problem. Fathers, here's yet another reason to play catch with your kids.

"Gretzky, throw it already! Throw it high!" I yelled.

Rob couldn't take the waiting anymore either, and lunged forward right as Gretzky finally threw the gun.

Just as I feared, it went low, hitting Rob's knee and then bouncing at his feet. But Gretzky's feinting had made Rob overeager; he couldn't stop his lunge, and it carried him away from the gun. Meanwhile I was lunging too, and it carried me toward the gun.

But not close enough. When I landed on the floor and reached out my arm, the gun was still a foot away and Rob was coming back for it.

Desperately, I sl
ithered forward while Rob scram
bled back. His hand stretched out, and so did mine. My fingers grabbed half of the gun just as his fingers grabbed the other half. W
e both tugged frantically—
but he had the handle and I had the barrel, so he had a better grip. I felt it slipping out of my hand.

"Go, Daddy, go!" Gretzky cheered, laughing. His voice must have given me an extra surge of strength, because that's when I gave one more desperate yank and the gun came out of Rob's hand. I quickly aimed it at his face. He stared at me in shock as I stood up slowly, keeping the gun pointed.

"Yay, we won!" Gretzky shouted.

Rob jumped up. "Easy," I said, praying that there wasn't any particular trick to shooting a gun. It seemed like it would be
easy, but I'd never done it be
fore. Then all at once Rob ran toward me.

I started to squeeze the trigger.

At the last moment he swerved and ran past me into the front room.

I dashed in there after him. I couldn't let him get hold of a knife or some other kind of weapon. If he tried to, I'd kill him.

Meanwhile Gretzky dashed after me, singing, "We Are the Champions."

Rob was behind the counter, but when he saw me he ducked down out of sight. Shit, now what? I pointed the gun at the spot where I'd last seen his head. But by now he could be anywhere behind there. Gretzky's singing covered any noise Rob might be making. I shifted my aim to the end of the counter, in case he leaped around it with a weapon. I waited, my hand shaking, my finger quivering on the trigger.

Suddenly Rob stood up again in the same spot where he'd ducked
down a moment before. I franti
cally swiveled the gun back at his face. But he didn't seem to be paying me any attention. He was focused on something in his hands.

A small plastic vial. Half filled with some kind of white powder.

Gretzky saw it, too. "Is that candy? Can I have some?" he asked.

But it wasn't candy. It was the poison. Rob opened the vial and raised it to his lips
...

Good,
I thought,
go ahead and die.
He tilted his head back, about to pour the poison down his throat.

Then, for no reason
, a phrase from The Penn's pref
ace somehow shot into my head:
"Every man has his clister, his 151 proof, his dreams."

I still don't quite g
et it. Why did I suddenly remem
ber those words right then? And why did remember
ing them give me a wave of compassion for the murderously unhappy young man with broken dreams standing there in front of me?

But that's what happened. It's strange when I think about it, but The Penn's preface, which he labored on for so many pathetic and seemingly pointless years, turned out in the end to have a powerful impact.

That preface saved a man's life.

Because with The Penn's words ringing in my brain, I reached over the counter and wrenched the poison
-
filled vial away from Rob. He watched in horror while I put the vial safely away in my pocket.

I thought he'd jump out at me from behind the counter and do his best to tear the shit out of me, gun or no gun. Once again I got ready to shoot. But Rob surprised me. He put his head down on the counter. Then he started to weep.

Gretzky was impatient at this latest turn of events. "Can we play hockey now?" he asked me.

I nodded slowly. "Let me just make one phone call first."

This time I remembered the last name.
Mackerel
.

28

The morning sun shone brightly through the window as I carried my java and
Daily Saratogian
to the front table of the coffee shop. Not Madeline's, Uncommon Grounds. I'd been steering clear of Madeline's for the past week, ever since Rob got arrested there.

Rob was still in prison, but I heard on the grapevine he'd be getting out on bail soon. Madeline had broken up with him, but she decided to take the money for the wedding, and spend it on Rob's legal defense instead. A classy lady, that Madeline. There must be someone I could set her up with. Maybe Dave...

I wondered what kind of legal strategy Rob's lawyers would dream up. They'd have a tough row to hoe. The D.A.'s office had exhumed Penn's body and found speed in his blood that matched the speed in Rob's vial, so they had Rob cold on Penn's murder.

On the other crimes
, they hadn't yet found any evi
dence proving that Rob burglarized my house that first time, even though I felt sure it was him. But they did find a credit card receipt for some gasoline he bought the night that the Arts Council office, and Penn's apartment, burned down. He got four dollars' worth, the same amount that would fit into a plastic gas container they'd discovered in the trunk of his car, empty. I still didn't know whether Rob's main goal
with the arson was to kill me or destroy any of Penn's writings that were in the building.

As I reconstructed it, the reason Rob had talked about setting up a memorial service for Penn
was be
cause that made it look like he felt friendly toward the dead man. It would
deflect suspicion away from him
self, if the cops ever figured out Penn was murdered.

Or maybe Rob was just plain crazy, and that's why he wanted to hold a memorial service for the man he'd murdered. I'd been right that a frustrated artist gone berserk had killed Penn; I'd just been wrong about
which
frustrated artist. Further proof of his craziness was the way he'd watched Penn's funeral from behind the McDonald's sign, out of sick curiosity.

Or maybe he watched the funeral and planned the memorial service because in some way he felt guilty.

In any case, none of these unresolved speculations detracted from the main thing: Rob was stone busted. Unless, of course, his legal ea
gles came up with some
thing incredibly brilliant. Who knows, maybe they'd make history by inve
nting a new defense: the Genera
tion X Insanity Defense. Mental derangement caused by the stress of living in a dying civilization.

It was worth a shot. If Rob got a jury of his peers, maybe he'd get off.

More likely, the lawyers would plea bargain and Rob would get sent do
wn for ten to twenty-five, some
thing like that. And then one day, say five years from now, I'd walk into some barren, remote upstate prison to teach a writing class
...
and there in the corner of the room I'd spot a familiar face. And we'd give each other a sad little nod.

But hey, like Yogi Berra and about seven billion other people have said at one time or another, it ain't over 'til it's over. Maybe with all that free time in jail, Rob would end up
writing a modern cinema master
piece. And when they let him out, he'd hit Hollywood and hang out at the Viper Room with Quentin T. and the rest of the guys.

For some reason I put off opening the
Daily Saratogian
for a moment longer, even though there was an article in it I was eager to read.
I sipped my coffee and gazed out the window at the people passing by. One of them was Gretchen Lang. She saw me, pursed her lips, and turned away.

It seemed like a lot of people were pursing their lips and turning away from me on the streets of Saratoga these days: Gretchen, Marcie, the mayor, the grant panelists
...
H
opefully the bad feelings would ease up in time. Saratoga is too small a place for people to hold grudges.

Already my relationship with Bonnie Engels was improving. She'd approached me three days earlier, while I was sipping coffee at Uncommon Grounds. I'd risen out of my seat, half expecting her to punch me. But instead she wrapped her arms around me in one of her infamous hugs.

This particular hug wasn't as tight as usual, a fact that was explained by the big white bandages on her arm where I'd pitchforked her. She must still be tender there. Though when I say her hug wasn't as tight as usual, I mean she only broke two ribs instead of three.

Her eyes pierced mine as she said, "Jacob, I just want to thank you."

Huh?
This woman had a way of bringing out the
Huh?
in me. "For what?"

"For the other night. When you stuck the pitchfork in me."

"Oh." I didn't know
what to say. "Well, you're wel
come."

"It was so wonderfu
l. You forced me to finally con
front my steroid addiction."

I just stood there blinking.

Bonnie took my hand and held it. "Jake, it was awful. It got to where I was giving myself shots in the buttocks three times a day." She put my hand on her ass and squeezed, I guess showing me the spot where the needle went in. "That's why I was acting so weird. I mean, burglarizing people, throwing bricks through windows, trying to kill my dearest friends wi
th pitch
forks
...
" She laughed. "That's just not me."

"Glad to hear it." I gently tried to take my hand back, but Bonnie just held it tighter. Her eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

"I'm telling you, Jacob, I've been off the steroids for a week now, and I just feel so great. I'm even boxing better!" She pumped my hand up and down excitedly. "I'm thinking about making an educational video for kids about the dangers of steroids. It would only cost about ten thousand
dollars to produce, and the mar
keting possibilities—I mean, wow!"

I'll spare you the rest of the conversation.

As for myself, and
why I was leisurely sipping cof
fee instead of hunching intensely over my computer while inputting such deathless dialogue as: "Oh my God! It's
them!"
"No! No!
Not the beetles!"
well, here's what happened. First I had
fifty-five million trillion in
finity infinity zillion thousand (as Gretzky would say) hours of questioning
by the cops, during which I man
aged to leave out such irrelevant details as my various felonies, and the fact that the mayor was a crook and the grant panelists were sleazoids. Not to protect
them,
but to protect Gretchen. There was no way to tell about the mayor and the panelists without telling about her too, and I didn't feel she deserved to have her lif
e ru
ined.

After that I was questioned by Andrea for another fifty-five million trillion
infinity infinity zillion thou
sand hours, and I was lucky she didn't kill me when she found out all the risks I'd taken. Then I went to bed and slept for another fifty-five million
et cetera
hours, which as I mentioned earlier is not recommended for concussion victims, so kids, don't try this trick at home. I was lucky I didn't get brain damaged—or at least, I don't think I did.

In any case, between one thing and another I never quite got around to se
nding in that contract. The pro
ducers got tired of waiting, and I guess they figured out I wasn't exactly Mr. Gung Ho, so they withdrew their offer and went with another writer—some other flavor-of-the-week guy who'd just written a hot new movie about lesbian zombie serial killers.

Ah, well. I'll miss that 750 K, but bottom line, who cares? Solving Penn's murder—even by mistake—had reminded me there were better things to do with my life than rewriting movies I didn't even give a shit about in the first place. After last week's adventures I felt like a teenager again, like I could do anything: commit B and Es, kick politicians in the balls, hold crazed murderers at bay, all kinds of fun stuff.

Already I'd begun outlining a new movie, not some grade B horror flick, but not the kind of stuff I used to write either. In fact, as you may have guessed, the movie was going to be about Penn's murder. Just for kicks, I was thinking of fictionalizing it so that the main character, the int
repid detective, would be my fa
vorite nonagenarian Presbyterian minister. That way I could get in the scene with the crotchless Minnie Mouse underwear.

I had one more sip
of java, then unfolded the news
paper. And there it was: right on page one, above the fold. Judy had kept her promise and treated The Penn well. His preface—actually three of his prefaces, which I'd edited into one—was printed in full, in a large four-column box with a bol
d black border. Impressive look
ing. As for content, I flattered myself—and Penn—that between his writing and my editing we'd come up with a damn decent three pages. Better than Joyce, anyway. I skimmed it.
"Clister ..
. Ethiopia
n...
Paula Barbieri..."

I smiled. At long last, after thirty years of struggle, Donald Penn was an honest to God
published author
. I read through the preface to make sure there weren't any typos marring his immortality. Amazingly enough, there weren't.

Then I turned to the eulogy I'd written, which ran alongside the preface. Maybe I'd gotten
Penn immor
tality, but he'd done s
omething for me in return: Writ
ing that eulogy had busted my writer's block wide open. Judy had kept my headline:
"A Dead Man's Legacy."
The text began,
"For over thirty years, Donald Penn wandered the streets of our city, drinking Ethiopian coffee wherever he could find it, filling old notebooks and flattened milk cartons wi
th his scribbles, a strange, un
kempt, bearded little man, pi
tied by some, laughed at by oth
ers. But now that he is dead, the truth has finally come out: This odd little man was a true literary giant."

Okay, so I exaggerated a bit.

Somehow I didn't think The Penn would mind.