Ultimate Thriller Box Set (121 page)

Carol apparently had no such hang-ups. She sat there on the floor, showing me her breasts and her crotch as comfortably as if she were wearing clothes. I was envious of her casual indifference to her own nudity.

“You haven’t said anything yet about how I fucked-up the case,” I said.

“Because you didn’t,” she replied.

“Three people are dead and I didn’t bring anyone to justice for it.”

She laughed. “Who do you think you are? Batman?”

It was the second time someone had said that to me since this all started, but it was the first time it made me feel foolish. Of course, when Cyril Parkus said it to me, I wasn’t naked.

“I didn’t accomplish anything,” I said.

“You wanted to find out why Lauren killed herself and make the guy responsible pay for it. You did both.”

“And I let Cyril Parkus get away with murder.”

“So what? Arlo deserved it. To me, that’s justice.”

“Maybe there’s still a way to catch Cyril without getting myself thrown in jail with him.”

“Why would you even want to try?”

“Because Cyril Parkus murdered Arlo Pelz,” I said. “I can’t just let him walk.”

“Why not?”

Because Travis McGee wouldn’t.

Neither would Joe Mannix, Lew Archer, Kinsey Milhone, Dan Tana, or Spenser.

But that’s not what I said.

“Because it’s wrong,” I replied.

“That’s not why,” she said. “Don’t start lying to me now, Harvey.”

At that moment, I hated her for knowing me so well. I don’t know how she did, since I never really talked to her before. Maybe I said more over the years than I thought I did. Maybe I’m just transparent.

“Because a private eye is supposed to solve the crime and catch the bad guys,” I said. “I only did half the job. The bad guy is still out there.”

The truth was, I felt cheated. I solved the mystery but I didn’t get to be a hero. The only people alive who knew what I’d done were Cyril and Carol.

I was hoping for wider acclaim than that.

I was hoping to get a friend on the force.

“The bad guy was Arlo, and he’s dead,” Carol said. “Cyril did a bad thing, but that doesn’t make him the bad guy. He lost his wife once and his sister twice and his life is shit. I have a lot of sympathy for him.”

“This just doesn’t feel right to me,” I said. “It feels unsettled.”

“Welcome to real life,” she said. “You don’t get tidy resolutions. People fuck-up and do terrible things, and if we’re lucky, like we are now, things sort of work out. Not everyone has to feel good about it. In fact, maybe it’s better for everyone if they don’t.”

She was right. I was looking for the TV ending, where the whole case is wrapped up nice and neat, the bad guys are all behind bars, and the PI gets laid.

Well, at least one thing worked out the way it was supposed to.

I came around the counter and let her see me naked again, though I think I will always be naked in front of her.

“So, where do we go from here?” I asked her.

“Wherever you want.”

“You’re looking at my penis.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And I think I have a pretty good idea where you’d like to go.”

It was a start.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I quit my job at Westland Security the next morning. I couldn’t go back to sitting in that guard shack, or any guard shack, again. I had a feeling if I did, it would always remind me of a cabin closet on Big Rock Lake.

I didn’t need the job anyway. If I added up my auto insurance settlement with what I had left from the Parkus job, I had about five thousand dollars. That would hold me for a few months, especially since I didn’t have to buy myself a car right away. Carol was letting me drive her Camry as long as I dropped her off at work promptly at nine a.m. and picked her up at six. I think she had an ulterior motive, since the arrangement almost guaranteed I’d be spending my nights with her.

She didn’t need to come up with the car arrangement for that, but I guess she was covering her bases.

The first few days I was back, I mostly lay around my apartment or hers, recuperating from my injuries, and getting used to the idea of being with Carol. I was the wounded bird in this story, though I didn’t have to scrub Carol’s floor or do her laundry.

I tried not to think about all the dead people. Lauren, Jolene, Arlo, even Esme. But they haunted me anyway. In my mind, they were all floating in the murky lake, all of them giving me the look that Lauren gave me before she jumped.

I can’t recall Spenser being haunted by anything except his own splendid competence.

I didn’t have the competence, I knew that. Still, I accomplished something, something more than writing courtesy tickets at Bel Vista Estates, even if I couldn’t point to exactly what it was. And I took some big risks to do it, too.

It pissed me off that I didn’t feel the euphoria and pride I felt I deserved for solving my first case and surviving.

The only thing I felt was different.

I know that’s not very specific, just saying different. But I knew I was not the same guy I was a couple weeks ago and that I never would be again.

So, who was I now? What was I going to do?

Those were questions I’d managed to avoid my entire life and I had a feeling that keeping Carol around, and continuing to enjoy all this sex I was getting, had a lot to do with not avoiding them now.

Although my experience as a detective wasn’t as much fun as I’d dreamed it would be, and I couldn’t exactly use Cyril Parkus as a reference for future work, I still thought I had a certain affinity for the job. It might even live up to my expectations next time, assuming I could snag another gig. So, I started looking into what it would take to go legit, to become a licensed private detective.

What I found out wasn’t encouraging.

In the state of California, you’ve got to take an extensive training course, log six thousand hours of investigative experience, and pass a two-hour written exam covering laws and regulations before you get a license. By my calculations, it would be about three years before I could set up shop as a private detective.

Legally, that is.

But there wasn’t any law saying I couldn’t go into business as an “investigative advisor” or “professional problem solver.” I knew it could be done. Travis McGee didn’t have a license, he just called himself a “salvage expert” and asked for half the value of whatever he recovered. I decided that could work for me, too, though I wasn’t sure how I’d figure out the salvage price for, as an example, following someone’s wife. I decided my task for the month would be to reread the books and make a detailed report of exactly how McGee computed his commissions.

So that’s what I was doing on that sunny Wednesday afternoon, about a week after I got back. I was on my way out to the pool in a t-shirt and shorts with one of the McGee books when I saw him, sitting on a chaise lounge, waiting for me.

Little Billy held the baseball bat across his lap, tapping it gently on the open palm of his hand, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses that were squeezed into place between his bulbous nose and his Neanderthal brow.

I was stunned and terrified and feeling incredibly vulnerable with only a used paperback and a yellow highlighter for protection. I didn’t think I could muster the same tough guy swagger that enabled me to survive our last encounter.

I suppose the sensible thing to do would have been to run back into my apartment, lock the door, and hope my call to 911 would go through before Little Billy broke inside and killed me.

But curiosity and a suicidal sense of dignity got the better of me. I surrendered to the inevitability of my violent demise, smiled, and walked right over to him.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Arlo said he had a deal going in LA.” Little Billy shrugged. “You gave your name to the Wades. I looked it up in the LA phone book. There was only one Harvey Mapes.”

He had a bright future as a private eye, certainly a lot brighter than mine seemed at that moment. Then again, it occurred to me that he hadn’t mentioned Cyril Parkus or Lauren Parkus. He’d only come looking for me. Which, I deduced, meant he didn’t know what Arlo’s deal was in LA. That gave me a slight advantage.

I motioned to the baseball bat with a nod of my head. “You brought that all the way from Deerlick?”

“I never go anywhere without it.”

I guess you could call the bat his pacifier. Perhaps he just used it to pacify others. “So, when do you intend to start hitting me with it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

That offered me some hope. Even so, my mouth was suddenly so dry, I could hardly swallow without gagging.

“Mind if I have a Coke while you decide?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“You want anything?” I asked.

“Dr Pepper,” he replied.

I went to the machine, and as I fed coins into the slot, I was struck by the absurdity of offering refreshments to my executioner. I never had experiences like this before I became a private eye and, despite the jeopardy, I wasn’t sorry. I might be later, though, after a few whacks of that bat against my skull.

I brought back the drinks, reclined on the chaise lounge next to him, and took a big sip of Diet Coke.

He downed his Dr Pepper in one long gulp.

I waited for him to smash the empty can against his forehead, or crush it in his fist, or just take a bite out of it, but he didn’t. He set the empty can on the ground beside him and burped.

“I want to know what happened to Arlo,” Little Billy said. “He went out to the lake to kill you and didn’t come back.”

“Are you here to finish the job?” I asked, hoping my voice wouldn’t crack and reveal my terror.

“Depends,” Little Billy replied. “Did you kill my brother?”

“No.”

“Then how come you’re still alive?”

“Lucky, I guess.”

“Why were you looking for him?”

“I can’t tell you that,” I replied, though if he hit me a couple times with that bat, I probably would have changed my mind. I think he knew it, too.

“I could make you,” he said confidently.

“I wish you wouldn’t.” I tried to say that without sounding like I was pleading.

“Do you know where I can find Arlo?”

I shook my head because I didn’t think I could say no with conviction.

“The police came around a few days ago. They’re looking for him, too. They say he killed Jolene. Is it true?”

I nodded. “He slammed her head into a big-screen TV and left her there to die. Lovable guy, your brother.”

Little Billy was silent for a moment. I was expecting the bat to come swinging my way at any second. When he finally moved, I cringed, but he was only getting comfortable on the chaise lounge. If he noticed my cowardice, he didn’t show it.

“Arlo wasn’t always the fuck-up,” Little Billy said. “That was supposed to be my profession. But he had the hots for this girl at the lake who then went and drowned herself. After that, he didn’t give a shit about anything.”

Little Billy picked up the Dr Pepper can, got up, and dropped it in the trash can, then turned around and stood over me.

He was in the perfect position to swat my head right off my shoulders.

“I’m not saying what he’s done is right or wrong, that don’t matter to me,” Little Billy said. “He’s my brother, and I’m supposed to look out for him. If someone hurt him, I’m going to have to hurt them worse.”

I couldn’t see his eyes behind those sunglasses, but I was pretty sure he was staring at me, trying to decide if now was the time to carry out his responsibility. After a moment, he rested the baseball bat on his shoulder like a caveman’s club and walked out.

I stayed on the chaise lounge for another twenty minutes or so, thinking about my encounter with Little Billy.

It occurred to me that he’d make the perfect psychopathic sidekick for my new business venture—as long as he never found out that I’d helped murder his brother.

***

I started staking out the gate in front of Bel Vista Estates the same afternoon I had my visit from Little Billy. I told myself I was doing it to protect Cyril Parkus in case Little Billy came after him, but the truth is, I didn’t really think he was in any danger.

I told myself I’d watch him for a week, and if nothing happened, I’d leave him alone, but that wasn’t true, either.

I still felt different from everybody else, like they all had secrets and it was my job to find them out. I felt such a strong compulsion now to play detective that, if I didn’t have Cyril Parkus to follow, I probably would have picked somebody at random instead.

I didn’t tell Carol what I was doing, though I suppose I would have told her if she’d asked. She was smart enough not to.

I’d arrive around ten a.m. after dropping Carol off at work, and would stay until about five. Cyril wasn’t going to the office anymore; I’d made a call there before I started and discovered he was “on sabbatical” indefinitely. And he hardly ever came out of his house, and when he did, it was just to go down to the grocery store or drive through one of the fast-food places.

Cyril didn’t look the same to me. It’s not that he let himself go or anything, it was the way he walked, like he’d suddenly gained a hundred and fifty pounds, and the vacant expression on his face, like he was sleepwalking. More than once I saw him bump into a person, or collide with the edge of a grocery cart, or stumble off a curb, and not even realize it.

He was in mourning for his lost wife, his lost sister, his lost love.

I wondered if in his grief, he ever thought about what he did to Arlo, and if it mattered to him at all.

I hadn’t killed anyone yet, but I thought a lot about the beatings I gave Arlo and the highway robber. I thought about how both of them were helpless at the time, and how I enjoyed that almost as much as delivering the kicks and blows. I thought about what that said about me and if I’d been changed by it.

I also thought about Carol, and I wondered if maybe, out of all the things I’d seen and done over the last few weeks, if she was what had changed me most of all.

I’d been parked outside Bel Vista Estates for five days, and was nearly finished with my list of Travis McGee’s fees, on the afternoon that Cyril Parkus drove out of the gate in Lauren’s Range Rover. I liked it best when he chose that car; it was much easier to see in traffic than his sleek Jag.