Bad Guys (22 page)

“A butter face?”

“Yeah. Everything’s great, but her face.”

Angie came in. She’d changed her clothes, refreshed her makeup, brushed her hair. She looked—and as her father, this gave me the usual sinking feeling—terrific.

“Oh sure,” she said, looking at her brother eat. “Start without me, why don’t you.”

“Hey, you owe me. Dad’s asking me questions about your personal life, and I’m refusing to testify.”

She glared at me. “Is that true?”

“No,” I said.

“I need a car tonight,” Angie said, deciding that my attempt to pry information from her brother was too routine an occurrence to get worked up about. “I’ve got an evening lecture. And I really want to take the Virtue. I want to drive down with the sunroof open.”

“I don’t know, honey,” I said. “Why don’t I just give you a lift down? I could pick you up after.”

“I don’t believe this. We have this huge discussion, about how we need a second car, about how you don’t want me taking public transportation home late at night from school, and we get a second car, and you want to drive me down? When Mom isn’t even here, and there’s no one else who even needs the second car but me?”

Paul stopped chewing, looked at me, smiled. “Yeah, Dad.”

How could I make my case, that it would be better if I drove her, if I couldn’t bring forward my evidence? Was I going to tell her that I’d spoken to Trevor a short while ago, had tried as best I could to intimidate him, suggested that he back off and leave her alone?

She’d kill me.

And what of this cryptic warning from Lawrence, that someone might be after me? Did that mean anything, really? And if it did, did it have anything to do with Angie? That seemed unlikely.

Okay, maybe I could tell her that I’d seen a black SUV cruising up the street, that it looked like a very mean SUV, just like the one used by those guys who—

I was going to sound like a crazy person.

“I guess you can have the car,” I said. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. It’s this story I’ve been working on, and I guess it’s got my danger radar working overtime.”

“Yeah, like we could tell the difference,” Angie said, sitting down. “But Dad, everything is okay. Honestly. You just need to chill.”

“I took the car into Otto today,” I said. “I think he’s fixed the starting problem. I haven’t had any trouble with it since he worked on it. But if you have any problems,
call me
.”

“Terrific,” Angie said. “Oh, and I need five dollars for parking.”

“Hold on, pardner,” I said. “There’s no way you’re getting parking money out of me. Not now that I know what I know.”

“Aw, come on, Dad. They may have closed off the walkway. I might actually need to pay to park this time.” Pleading.

“You showed Dad the secret way out?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Angie said.

“What a dope.”

I wasn’t denying her the money on principle alone. By not giving her the five dollars, it was pretty much guaranteed that she’d sneak out of the Mackenzie grounds by using the route she’d showed me the day before. Which meant she’d be pulling out onto Edwards Street.

I could wait for her there.

If her lecture started at 8:30 P.M., as the note on the fridge calendar seemed to indicate, it would let out around 9:30. I could be in position, around 9:15, making sure, just one last time, that Trevor was no longer following her around.

And if he was, even after my chat with him, I’d have to think of something even more drastic. Maybe even a call to Detective Trimble.

“So, you doing anything after your lecture tonight?” I asked.

“Maybe,” said Angie. “Might see some friends.”

“Hey,” I said, like I’d just remembered something, “you ever keep in touch with any of your friends in Oakwood?”

Angie gave me a look that seemed to suggest a bad smell was coming off me. “God, no. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from out there.”

I nodded. “I thought you kept in touch with some of your Oakwood friends. You did do two years of high school there.”

“No, Dad.”

“How about other than students? You keep in touch with anyone from out there?”

“Dad, when would I even get out there?”

“You don’t actually have to go out there. You could talk, in one of your chat huts.”

Paul and Angie looked at each other. “Chat huts?” they said.

“Rooms. Chat rooms. You know what I mean.”

This set them both off. Paul knocked on the table, said to Angie, “Hello, may I come into your chat hut?”

Angie was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. “Sorry, no, this is a chat
condo
.”

“Oh, excuse me!” He wanted to get off another line, but he was laughing too hard to do it.

“Okay, enough already,” I said.

Angie, pulling herself together, said, “No, Dad, there’s no one from Oakwood I keep in touch with through my chat huts.” Paul slid out of his chair and onto the floor, clutching his side.

Should I ask her flat out? Ask her why she’d been to visit Trixie? But if I asked her now, I’d have to come clean on the whole surveillance thing, and if I did
that
now, I wouldn’t be able to take one last crack at it tonight, to see whether I’d scared off Trevor for good.

So I let it go.

“I’ve got stuff to do,” Angie said, taking her plate to the counter. Paul managed to get up and followed her out of the kitchen.

“I have to lie down,” he said, still laughing. “I think I’m gonna die.”

Shortly before eight, Angie went downstairs, shouted, “See ya!”

I scrambled out of my study, where I still tried writing books but more often built models of spaceships and other science fiction kitsch, like my recently completed models of the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, and Gort, the iconic robot from
The Day the Earth Stood Still
.

“Hey,” I yelled down to her. “You be careful tonight, okay?”

“Oh!” Angie said. “I just realized. I don’t even have a key for the new car.”

“Two came with it,” I said. “Hang on.” I’d left the second one in a dish where I keep spare change on top of my dresser. “Come to the bottom of the stairs.” She did and I tossed it down to her.

“You look good, by the way,” Angie said, doing up the buttons on her blue coat.

“Huh?”

“Your clothes. I meant to say something at dinner, but got kind of distracted. They look good on you. Are you wearing new boxers?”

“Check it out,” I said, undoing my belt, turning around, and dropping my khakis halfway down my butt.

“Oooh! The ones with the chili peppers on them!” Angie said. “You’re hot, Dad, very hot. But please pull your pants back up.”

I obliged.

Angie had her set of keys out and was slipping the one for the Virtue onto her ring. She was having a bit of trouble with it, so I came down and got it onto the ring for her.

And then I gave her a hug. “Remember, call me if you have a problem, and don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Angie smiled. “You mean, don’t do anything you might do?”

“Exactly.”

She gave me a hug back. “I love you, Daddy.”

And then she was gone.

I WAS KEEPING AN EYE on the clock. I figured I’d head out a little before nine, be down by the university twenty minutes after that, at the latest. Paul was up in his room doing, to my astonishment, some homework. I popped my head in, told him I’d be going out in a few minutes.

“Where?” he said, still looking at something he was writing on his computer screen.

“It’s a work thing.”

“A work thing?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “I dunno. I think I need more details.”

I was heading down the hall when the phone rang. Paul grabbed the extension in his room, and when he didn’t call me immediately, I figured it was for him. But by the time I was down to the kitchen, he shouted, “Dad! Phone! It’s Mom!”

I grabbed the kitchen extension. “Hey,” I said.

“Isn’t it awful about Stan?” Sarah said.

“What?” I said. “What about Stan?” I assumed she was speaking of Stan Wannaker, the
Metropolitan
photographer. I don’t think either of us knew any other Stans.

“Oh my God, you haven’t heard? I’m up here, at this thing, and I hear about it, and you haven’t?”

“Okay, you’re connected. You’re plugged in. What happened to Stan?”

“Okay, you’re not going to believe this. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Stan. He’s dead. I just found out like five minutes ago. We’re all coming back home tonight. Nobody’s in the mood for any more of this touchy-feely management bullshit after something like this has happened.”

“He did that thing with me yesterday,” I said, feeling very cold. “That photo shoot at the car auction. What happened to him? Did he have an accident?”

“Someone beat him to death. Right behind the
Metropolitan
building, in the lot where the photogs park. Someone smashed his head in his car door.”

I didn’t say anything. I was numb.

“I mean, the guy goes all over the world, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, fucking Iraq, and he gets killed in our parking lot.”

“There was that guy,” I said.

“What guy?”

“Remember, when I called you from the auction, and Stan got in a fight with this guy? Uh, I know his name, Cheese Dick told me.”

“How would Cheese Dick know anything about this?”

“He was looking at Stan’s pics, the ones he took yesterday at the auction, and he said, he said, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s Barbie Bullock.’ That’s what he said. That’s what he said the guy’s name was.”

“Barbie Bullock?”

“Yeah. Stan wasn’t even taking a picture of him, I guess Bullock was just kind of in the picture, you know? And he tries to tear Stan’s camera away from him.”

“Did he know who Stan was?”

“I mean, I don’t know, it’s possible. Stan did tell him he was a photog from
The Metropolitan
. Told him to back off.”

“Did Dick Colby say who this guy was, this Barbie guy?”

“He works for Lenny Indigo, that guy that got sent up? That name mean anything to you?”

“Sure. We ran the trial coverage. Sears covered it. He ran half the criminal operations in town.”

“That was the guy.”

“I’m calling Dick, telling him this. He’ll be doing the story on it, he’ll need this info, he can pass it on to the cops.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “I mean, if it was Bullock, there’s no way he’d be able to get the film back at this point. He’d have to know Stan would have turned it in by now. It’s been a day and a half.”

“Maybe he didn’t want the film,” Sarah said. “Maybe he just wanted to get even.”

I glanced at the clock. It was after nine. I had to get going. “Listen, Sarah, call Dick, tell him what I told you.”

“He may want to call you, get more details.”

“He’ll have to call my cell. I’m going out.”

“Where? What do you have to do?”

“Look, I’ll explain everything to you when you get home.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “What do you mean, explain it to me when I get home? Whenever you say something like that, there’s something I need to know right now.”

“Honestly, things are fine.”

“Is this about Paul?”

“No.”

“Then it’s about Angie.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What’s going on with Angie?”

I took a breath. “First of all, I’m still worried about this Trevor Wylie. The guy’s been following her around.”

“Look, so he runs into her once in a while. That doesn’t make him a stalker.”

“No, Sarah, he’s actually following her around. In his car. When Angie goes someplace, he follows her.”

“Oh God. Angie told you this?”

“No, she—” And I stopped myself.

“If she hasn’t told you, then how do you know he’s following her? Zack? Hello? Are you there?”

“It’s a hunch,” I said.

Sarah got very quiet. “No, not with you, it wouldn’t be a hunch. Zack, how do you know Trevor’s following her?”

“I might have seen him, you know, following her.”

“How did you see that? Good God, Zack, have you been
following
him?”

“No,” I said, emphatically. “I have
not
been following him. Not exactly.”

“Then who have you been following?”

I said nothing.

“Zack? Tell me you’re not following your own daughter.”

I guess I must have hesitated.

“Oh my God,” Sarah said. “You’re unfuckingbelievable.”

“It hasn’t been to be nosy,” I explained. “I just wanted to be sure she was okay. It wasn’t like I was trying to invade her privacy, that was never my intention, you have to understand that.”

“Zack! Honest to God! I don’t believe you! I mean, sure, we need to know what our kids are up to, but we don’t trail them around like they’re common criminals. Why don’t we just put cameras in their rooms? Bug their phones? Open their mail? Get search warrants for their lockers at school?”

Actually, I thought there might be some merit in all those things, but didn’t mention it.

“I never meant to do it, to follow her around. In fact, in some ways, I wish I’d never started this. There are some things you simply don’t want to know.”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Finally, Sarah said, “Like what?”

“No, no, never mind, you’re right, it’s a violation of Angie’s privacy. Who she goes out with, who she goes to visit, that’s entirely her business.”

“Who’s she going out with? Who did she visit?”

“You hear yourself?”

“For fuck’s sake, Zack, what’s happening?”

What the hell, I thought. “Do you have any idea why Angie would go out to Oakwood to visit Trixie? Late at night?”

“She’s visiting
Trixie
? Trixie Snelling, of Whips and Chains Inc.?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember them being friends when we lived out there.”

“No, neither do I. You were the only one, having coffee all the time, being all neighborly. It got to where I wondered if I should be checking you for rope burns.”

I ignored that. “You think Angie’s getting career counseling? Because, you know, if she were choosing between, I don’t know, bank president and dominatrix, I’d probably go with bank president.”