Follow Her Home (23 page)

I knew this much—she never did. I kept quiet.

“She tried to kill herself when Luke was a boy. Did you know that?”

I nodded.

“But I'll bet you don't know why.”

“Luke said—” And then I remembered that Luke had never confronted his father about the alleged infidelity. “Why?”

“She thought I was having an affair. I wasn't. But she'd heard this and that and gathered her own evidence, and by the time she asked for my version, she'd already decided on hers. When I denied it, she took that as further proof of my treachery.” He clutched at his heart. “What do you think she would've done if Greg Miller had gone to her with those pictures?”

I had never seen Cook act vulnerable, and in a basic human way I felt for him. Then I remembered why I'd come. I remembered the pictures, the presents, the suffocating force of the Red Palace. I remembered, too, that he was the same kind of man as the one who had raped my sister, plugged into the machinery that gave men license to possess the exotic woman. I remembered that in his pursuit of perversity, he had left men dead. I had no room to pity him. “People are dead because you couldn't keep your hands off that girl. You're a murderer, Mr. Cook.”

And as I uttered the words, I saw him harden. When he spoke again, he no longer seemed to care what I thought of him. “I'm a murderer because you think I'm having an affair with Lori?”

”Are you denying the affair?”

He leaned back on the precious stitched fluff of cushions behind him and pushed both hands through his hair in quick succession.

“Well, I didn't murder anyone over it.”

I felt a chill as I remembered Quinn's nervous manners, proclaiming his good intentions and sincere apologies. I never thought I would hate Luke's father, but I knew that I did.

“Who's your friend John?”

He lifted his eyebrows as if to say,
John Who?

“Blond, around yay high, dresses like a screen actor from the wrong decade. You made him a bouncer at the Red Palace to watch over your prized possession, remember?”

“How do I explain this?”

I waited.

“John is a very troubled young man.” This appeared to be his euphemism of choice for
turbulent, dangerous,
and
insane.
“He used to work for me and we were fond of each other, but he was a little, well, unstable for law-firm work. So I took him on as a personal assistant.”

“Someone who does your dirty work.”

“The thing about John is that he takes liberties. He thinks he knows what I want before I ask, and he does things to please me that are not always pleasing.”

“Are we talking about excessive dry cleaning or murder? Are you telling me that John took out Greg for a scratch behind the ears?”

“If that's how you want to put it, I can't say it's inaccurate.” He perched his brow on the heel of one hand and rubbed both eyes, side to side. “He was only supposed to intimidate Greg. I knew Lori wouldn't be working Friday night—”

“You sent her to Luke's party.”

“I suggested she go.”

“And what, you knew Greg would show up at the Red Palace to stalk her?”

“As he has done every weekend for all these months.”

“So you told your henchman to put the scare to him. Or maybe you were vague—maybe you told him to get Greg to leave you alone.” I looked at him coldly and wanted to spit. “Your troubled sidekick. You were hoping he'd go that extra mile, solve all your problems.”

“Greg Miller was a son of a bitch and I'm not sorry he's dead,” he snapped. “But I had no intention of seeing him killed. Jesus Christ, Song, do I look like all my problems have been solved?”

I thought about bringing up Hector Lopez, but I had a feeling it wouldn't serve me well to mention a missing person whose identity Cook had no reason to believe I knew. “Well,” I said.

“Well.”

I swirled that around in my head for a while, and he let me do so in airtight silence. I cracked my knuckles and let the dry pops resonate in our ears.

“I'd say, what now? But when I met Greg Miller he was a bit cold to me. Diego, on the other hand—I may be obliged to avenge him. Was that John too?”

“I don't know what happened to Diego. I'm having a hard time figuring out what he has to do with this whole situation.”

“I will eat every cushion on this couch if you're being straight with me.”

“I hope you like the taste of down.”

“Look, all I know is that Diego does not hang around Skid Row looking for trouble. He does not try to score crack for the first time in his life on the day that I find a dead body in my car. That was a clumsy setup.”

“Don't forget that I also knew Diego. If I were planting illicit substances on him, I would not have chosen crack. The man was an attorney. Powder would have been more convincing.”

“But then I would've known it was you.”

“Are you operating under some delusion that Diego's killer was thinking of you, Juniper Song, overeducated bum and bored civilian, in orchestrating the scene of the crime?”

“It's not that I don't notice you insulting me, understand. I just don't have the energy to care.”

“I'm telling the truth, in any case.”

“I guess that's all I get, then.”

We sat there like two people who've taken care of the check and missed the natural window to get up and leave.

“One more thing. Is Mother Dearest on your unofficial payroll?”

He stiffened. I had my answer, and it filled me with disgust.

“I had to wonder why your protégé hasn't put her on ice just yet. I guess that would probably piss off your girlfriend, huh? But the woman is crazy—you'd be doing Lori a favor. In any case, what happens now? I'd rather not leave in a box, if I can help it.”

“I really need you to understand that I am not the villain in your little adventure.”

“Stop talking to me as if I asked for any of this. I'm a reader, not a player. I find no pleasure in taking blows to the head, in being tailed and blackmailed, in losing people I love. There is not one painted fingernail of glamour to this entire enterprise.”

“Then stop. Go home. Convince Yujin that you'll mind your own business, then follow through. Remember it was you who showed up at her doorstep with a bundle of questions.”

“I can't do that, you know I can't do that. One of you psycho pieces of shit murdered the best person I've ever known. I wish I could believe you on this point, you know? It'd mean I didn't have anything to do with it either, but I'm not as blind as we wish I were.”

“Then I can't help you.”

“I didn't expect you to, but you're a fucking liar. Your crew of crazies would do whatever you asked them to. Now. Do I get a head start or am I riding home with your femme fatale?”

A shuffle of socks on tile and a cough that wasn't a cough announced my ticket out of the castle.

“Hey.”

Luke stood at the entrance to the room in yesterday's jeans and a green T-shirt. He looked like shit, eyes scarred red and chin spotted with dark wheat stubble.

The piano bench made a loud squeaking sound that provided the sole soundtrack for the next several seconds. I jerked up, walked over to Luke, and wrapped my arms around his chest. He brought one hand to the back of my head and we stood still as his shirt pocket filled with whatever tears I had left.

“Dad, I'm taking Song home.”

 

Thirteen

Marlowe never counted on anyone for rescue. Mona Mars saved his life in
The Big Sleep
—he hadn't expected her help and he fell half in love with her for it. Marlowe was a lone wolf, too dismayed with the world to make a lot of friends. It was only in
The Long Goodbye
that he ever found one, and that, like everything else, had ended in sadness.

Luke's car was parked in the massive garage between his dad's silver and black Ferraris. Cook didn't say a word and we turned on our heels with speed and silence. He didn't follow.

Yujin and Lori were standing in the driveway at attention, and as Luke's Porsche slipped by them with me in it, the older one flashed an expression of panic so pure and exquisite, I would've given her a gleaming smile or a straight-knuckled finger if I'd had the energy.

I was limp as a beanbag suspended in air and slashed down the belly, all of its insides dry and rattling on the floor.

The drive down the Highlands hummed with the retreat of menace into the breathing of evening palms. The clock read 7:42. I hadn't been unconscious more than four hours, but if four hours is enough time to watch
Citizen Kane
twice, it's enough to sap plenty of joy out of one girl's leaking life.

“Luke.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I have a thousand and fucking fourteen things to ask you.”

“Yeah.”

“But not now. Take me home with you. Please.”

He drove and I reclined my seat and curled up with my shoes off. I dreamed something foggy and stinking with cheap symbols. It evaporated when I woke up in Luke's garage to the approaching footsteps of my name.

“Song. Song. Song.” It was a metered chant, soft, dry, and withered. “We're here.”

And we were, back at the Marlowe, a turnstile at which some incompetent karma conductor had put me on the wrong train. For all my admiration, I never wanted to be Marlowe. He went around getting his heart broken every day, and I wanted none of it.

The elevator, etched with a giant, matte silver fleur-de-lis, pinged twice as it opened, pinged twice again as it dropped us off on the third floor, a brassy gong in an echoless hall.

He let us into his apartment and I walked to his bedroom door.

“I'm tired, Luke. Aren't you?”

He nodded.

I waved him into his room and labored under the covers with the slow, intuitive movements of the first person to happen upon a bed and know just like that to lie in it.

He followed like Adam, and we fell asleep chaste as children, dreaming of Diego and darkness and nothing at all.

*   *   *

I woke up at midnight with Luke's arm across the side of my face. My eyes snapped open like eyes sometimes do in first scenes and moments loaded with premonition. I tossed the arm behind me and got out of bed. Luke snored with the gentle susurration of a fairy-tale princess. The bedroom door was open and I stole out into the living room, aching for a smoke. I canvassed the room before wakefulness caught me like a wet blanket and I remembered that Luke didn't smoke cigarettes. I wandered to the fridge. He had stocked well for the party, at least. I opened a cold beer.

The next thing I needed was something for the headache, that new tenant in my brain, the one that played loud music at every hour, subwoofer barking. I made my way to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Next to the Advil was a white-capped container of candy-clear orange plastic filled with small white pills. It had no label.

I torqued open the Advil, washed down four capsules with beer and steady eyes, and closed the cabinet door. I had no idea what was in Luke's medicine cabinet and it wasn't any of my business—his cell-phone history over the last twenty-four hours, on the other hand, might just qualify.

He'd fallen asleep in his jeans, on top of the covers. He lay on his left with his arms in front of him and one leg curled into his stomach. The light washing in past me from the living room showed the bulge of a wallet in his right rear pocket, flat fabric on the other. His phone would be in his front pocket.

His breathing stirred the quiet, its volume increasing as I walked over and sat by him on the bed in the indentation I had left minutes before. I took a long drink and studied his face. He smacked dry, sleepy lips and moved an extended hand across the covers until it found one of my folded knees.

“Wake up, Luke. I need to talk to you.”

He groaned, a sound that turned from playful to mournful as waking up became waking to reality.

He stood up and switched on the light. When he came back, he sat with his legs crossed, elbows burrowed in knees, the heels of his hands supporting his eyes by their lids.

His voice rasped thick with sleep and sorrow. “Song, Diego—”

“Don't. It isn't real.”

“Song, he—”

“No, I know, I'm not naïve. I'm not saying there's some conspiracy and he's actually not—but you know. It happened offstage and I'm still running on whatever fumes are left from when I knew he wasn't. So I won't accept a damn thing until I figure out how and why he was killed.”

He slid his face in his hands and regarded me over tented fingertips.

“Okay.” He nodded. “Okay.”

“So.” My foot was falling asleep. I stood up and put the beer down on Luke's desk. I stayed standing, looking down at him on the bed. “Where the fuck did you go last night? Do you have any idea how many times I called you?”

“I'm sorry.” His apology hung in the ensuing silence like a single sheet on a long clothesline.

“You didn't answer.”

“I know, I'm being an asshole.”

“Luke, I need to know. I deserve to know. You left me alone on one of the worst days of my life. In a hostess club.” I sighed. “I was this close to snooping into your phone, but decided to be a good friend and give you a chance to tell me what's going on.”

“Thank you?”

“You're welcome.”

“I'm sorry I left you there.”

I stared at him and felt anger stir inside me like the pointed end of a feather poking around my nerves. He looked at one or another blank spot of cotton on the rumpled blanket, his green eyes the dry dull matte of old Christmas lights. We sat in ear-searing silence for over a minute, searching for the exit.

“I went home. My dad texted me, said it was an emergency, and I went home.”