Double Take (19 page)

When I wake up again, Joey is lying on the bed next to me, his head near my feet, leaning on his arms and watching TV. I lie there and stare at the back of his T-shirt, then look past him at the TV, where a giant chicken is singing and dancing. “What the hell is this?” I ask him.

“You've never seen
The Gong Show
?”

“I don't think so.”

“They're gonna gong this dude.”

A gonging sound issues from the TV and the chicken is led away in disgrace. “I like this,” I say. “Do you watch it a lot?”

“If I did, I wouldn't admit it. Now that you're awake, drink your hot chocolate.”

I notice a cup from Bob's Big Boy on the bedside table. “Wow, thanks. This is great. Can we do this forever?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Where's Michael?”

“He went home to change clothes, take a shower, whatever. He'll be right back.”

“Are you sure?”

“That's what he said. Of course, if it was me, I don't know that I'd come back. He was telling me how you didn't even answer his letters.” He swings around to face me. “That was cold.” He shakes his head.

“He told you that?”

“Yeah, it was interesting. Hearing the other side of the story and all.”

“What, are you guys like best friends now?”

“We male-bonded.” He gives me one of his charming smiles. “You know, you go and rescue a damsel in distress with someone, it kind of brings you together. It's a guy thing.”

“I'm happy to have been the instrument of your validated masculinity.”

“Don't be a smartass. Hey, check this guy out.” Someone in a gold lamé suit is doing a disco version of “My Way.” The judges give him a ten.

Somehow, we're having one of our back-room conversations again, and I feel like I should have a bottle of Old Style in my hand instead of cocoa. I'm trying to explain exactly how I ended up in Brunette's closet. I tell him about the burrito, and Elsinore Street. When I get to the part about noticing that his voice didn't sound like Fletcher's, I say, “I was always good with voices, you know. Remember the whole thing with Clay, and the pay phone at Casa? This guy's voice was wrong, and rough, like that voice on the phone that day at Casa.
Exactly
like that voice on the phone.” I suddenly have a terrible thought. “Did you have any idea Fletcher was really Brunette?”

“Fuck, no. Not until you said it on our way out of the house. Then it all made sense. I always kind of figured Brunette and Fletcher had bombed Casa Sanchez so that Sam could collect the insurance money and get out of there, but I didn't know why they were still fooling around with that shit when they had their accident. Unless they were making explosives professionally, like Sam had some scam going where he could front them while they sold bombs and no one could ever trace it back to him.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“I hope so. Anyway, it turns out that Brunette rigged this explosion thing because he wanted to blow up his house and disappear. He didn't intend to get caught in it, or to kill Fletcher—the bomb went off too soon. But when he realized what happened, he decided it would be a good idea to steal Fletcher's identity. The trouble was, Sam figured it out right away, while Brunette was still in the hospital.”

“How the hell do you know all this?”

“Because he left a note. It was lying right next to his body.”

“And you took it?”

“Hell yes, I took it. I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Isn't that against the law?”

“I don't know, Cookie, but my mama didn't raise no fool.”

“Mine did.”

“No argument from me, sugar.”

I try to smack his arm, but it hurts to move. “So Sam started blackmailing Brunette?”

“Other way around. Sam started giving Brunette money. Kept him on the payroll. Paid for all his surgery. Made Brunette completely dependent on him so there was no way Brunette was ever going to trick on him. Plus, of course, he had something else on Brunette.”

“The gun that killed Clay. Brunette told me that.”

“He told you?”

“We had a little chat.”

“Jesus.”

“And of course Sam knew who he really was.”

“Sam knew all kinds of shit. So Brunette was basically a hit man. He killed anyone Sam didn't like or wanted out of the way.”

Like Bando, we both think, but can't bring ourselves to say out loud.

“So he ends up totally under Sam's thumb. Just like before. He says in the letter that it made him crazy. He couldn't do anything without Sam's approval.”

“So he moved out here?”

“Yeah, but it wasn't far away enough. Nowhere was. That's what he said. So when you showed up he thought Sam was just fucking with him again, showing him who was boss—and he probably was—and he had been thinking for some time that he just wanted to die anyway, but before he did, he wanted to take Sam out with him. So the letter is a list of everything he had on Sam.”

“Wow. And now you're going to give it to the police?”

“Well, not exactly.” He looks away. “That's what I need to talk to you about. See, here's the thing. With that letter, we might be able to convict Sam for all those murders—Bando, Clay, Levar—”

“He killed Levar? I thought he died in a plane crash.”

“Clay and Levar were cutting Sam out, going into business on their own.”

“It says that in the letter?”

“No, I knew that. I always figured Sam had them killed, but I never knew for sure who did it, in fact I had no evidence at all that it was Brunette that killed Clay until you told me that thing about his voice on the phone. But I guess I always sort of knew. Anyways, Cookie, this is the problem.” He takes my hand and looks into my eyes.
“There's something about me in that letter.” Behind him, on the TV, a skinny woman in purple hot pants is tap dancing.

“I killed somebody,” he says. He is leaning on one elbow, studying the flower pattern on the bedspread like it has a message written in it. “I never told anybody this before. Nobody knew but Sam and Brunette.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. Here's the worst part. The guy I killed was a cop. Sam wanted me to do it—he paid me, like he did with Brunette—and I thought I was such a hard dude, I didn't know I would even mind. I thought it'd be just like on TV and I would pop the guy. I didn't know he was gonna cry and beg, and then I didn't know I would end up with his fucking brains all over me. And I didn't know I was gonna have nightmares about it for years, that it would make me so crazy I'd start doing heroin just to try to get this fucking guy out of my dreams. But every couple of nights, just when I was starting to relax and think, hey, I'm over it, he'd be back. I'd dream of him back where we buried him, in Dan Ryan Woods, and he'd be crawling out of the ground and begging me again, telling me about his wife and his two year old, and saying we were friends—”

“No,” I say. “No, no, no.”

“Yeah.” He stares down at his hands. I see a tear fall onto the bedspread. “I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry,” he says softly.

“Victor,” I whisper.

“He was a cop. An undercover narc. Just like me.”

“Oh God.” I take a painful breath that turns into a sob as I think of Victor and his spatulate thumbs. We sit in silence for a while. Then I ask him hesitantly, “Is that why you joined the force?”

“Yeah.”

“Paying your dues?”

“Trying. But you never can.” His voice breaks. “He was on loan from Detroit—they used to do that, send in dudes from other towns to go undercover. That's why he said he was from Canada—he had been there a few times. He was such a nice, dumb guy. When he set us up, it was so obvious it was him. But by that time, he knew all about what we were into. And that's why Sam wanted him dead.” His shoulders start to shake and then he starts crying hard.

I put my arms around him, gingerly, because my ribs hurt. He is still sobbing in my arms when Michael walks in.

“Oh, hey, I'm sorry,” Michael says, backing out the door.

“No, come on in, man,” Joey says, drying his eyes and trying to smile. “It's a whole bunch of shit catching up with me. See, turns out I ain't such a hard dude after all.”

As my eyes fall shut—Joey and Michael are watching football again—it occurs to me I was the person who told Sam there was something odd about Victor. I wonder if this is how guilt works, or maybe I mean complicity, spinning from you like a web you don't even know you're making. I feel all the connections I've made to people, deadly
gossamer threads I've been caught in. As I drift into sleep, this web shimmers on the backs of my eyelids, and in my mind's eye, I brush it away.

Bando is sitting on the edge of my bed. When I throw my arms around him, I feel once again how thin he is, how fragile. “I've missed you so much,” I tell him, trying not to weep, since he would not like that, and I hold his smooth hands and gaze at his face, which I see with perfect clarity, his porcelain skin and sarcastic mouth. He smiles at me with the same combination of shyness and arrogance he always had, and I know he has forgiven me for not saving him and that wherever he is now, he wants me to let go.

“Here's the thing,” Joey says. It's four in the morning, and Michael is asleep on the other bed. “If you want me to, I'll take that letter and give it to the police.”

“Why would I want you to?”

“Because you wanted to bust the person who killed Bando. That's what this has all been about, right? You wanted to talk to Fletcher because you wanted to know who did it. Well, the letter says it all, and while it might not be enough evidence to put Sam away, it would be enough to open an investigation. So if you want me to—”

“You think I'd do that to you?”

“I deserve it. I deserve that and more.”

“No way. What good would that do? So you'd go to jail, where you couldn't help people, or do your ombudsman thing, whatever that even means. I don't want that to happen. It wouldn't bring back Victor. I know you've suffered for what you did.”

“Suffering and paying are two different things, Cookie.”

“Throw the fucking letter away. I know that's what Bando would want. He wants this to end.”

“How do you know what Bando wants?”

“I just know.”

He thinks for a while. Then he says slowly, “All right. Okay.” He lets out his breath. “Well, ain't no way I'm throwing the letter away. I can use it to keep Sam where I want him.”

“Then use it. Do what you've gotta do. We've paid our dues.”

“Have we?”

“I think so. Now we're free.”

Michael and I are in a shiny red booth at Bob's Big Boy. It hurts me to sit upright so I am leaning against the wall. He has told me to order anything I want, and I am amazing him with the amount of breakfast I can put away. Over the past two days, he has heard the Brunette story in bits and pieces, so I've been trying to add the parts that got left out. It hangs together now in fragments, but he seems to get it. Our waitress's name is Rachelle, and she, like the other waitresses, has a beehive hairdo. When she brings us more coffee, I ask her if Bob requires hairpieces.

“There is no Bob,” she says, licking the end of her pencil.

“Was there ever a Bob?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, was there a guy named Bob who sold a bunch of franchises and then died or retired, or is the whole thing just a fabrication?”

She looks at me patiently and says, “I don't know.”

“How can you go on working here every day without knowing?”

“I don't know,” she says again. “You just do it.”

“What was that?” Michael asks when Rachelle has gone. “Restaurant metaphysics?”

“I guess,” I say.

Now that Michael is sure I will not be imprisoned by any more of my old criminal associates, his face is beginning to resume its new cool, impersonal look, and his voice once again has a polite, detached air I am starting to hate. I always teased him about the propriety of his upbringing, his family's heirloom crystal that was such a stark contrast to my family's gas-station glassware. His impeccable manners enable him to carry on a perfectly civil conversation, when almost certainly someone inside him would like to scream epithets at me, then leave me here to eat cold eggs alone while he goes back to his—oh shit, I had totally forgotten about her—girlfriend. Rachel.

I decide to change my name to Rachelle.

When we return to the motel, Joey is still not back. He has gone to the local police station to make a formal statement about finding Brunette's body. I get into bed, and Michael sits on the edge. Politely, he tucks the covers around me and asks how I feel. I want to tell him that I feel really weird and that I wish he would quit acting so formal and creepy, like we're strangers, but I just say I'm fine.

He says very casually, “Are you in love with Joey?”

I am so astonished by this question that for a minute I can't respond. Then I say, “Of course not. Why do you ask me that?”

“He's a great guy. He's very cool.”

“Yeah, he's very cool.”

“And he actually saved your life.”

“You both did.”

“But he's the one who knew where you were. I had no idea. So I figure maybe you should be in love with him.”

“Well, I'm not. We're really good friends, and I love him a lot, but it's not that kind of thing. Are you, like, jealous?”

This is a dumb thing to say. He says, “Why would I be jealous?” in a polite voice with a faint undercurrent of irritation. “It's not like we're still involved or anything.”

“It's not?”

“No.” His face is expressionless. “You disappeared.”

“So you went and found another Rachel.”

“Coincidence. Anyway, she's nothing like you.”

“She answers your letters? Stuff like that?”

“Yeah, stuff like that.”

“Look, I'm really sorry. That's all I can say. I didn't mean to—”

“Dematerialize?”

“Yeah. I got stuck somewhere for a while. But now I'm back. And I guess I expected that you would still be here.”

“Time passes. Things don't freeze when you're not there.”

“Tree-falling-in-the-forest kind of thing?”

“Exactly.”

“See, I thought—”

“I moved on,” he says in a gentle voice. “You need to move on, too. We can't go back to who we were.”

“But I have gone back to who I was.”

“And who was that?”

“Hey, Cookie,” Joey says as he comes in the door.

“I rest my case,” Michael says, patting my hand.

A monotonous recorded voice is urging us not to leave our car at the curb. We leave the car at the curb anyway and walk into the terminal at LAX. Michael and I stand there, not saying anything, while Joey goes to the counter. I consider fainting to make Michael feel sorry for me again but that sort of thing is beneath me. I guess. As I stare at his face, I find it impossible to believe that underneath this mask of civility, he's not still my Michael, the one I now see I have missed agonizingly.

“Shit,” I say out loud.

“Did you say something?”

Sullenly, I say no.

When Joey comes back, he tells us he's got to run because his plane is boarding, but I think he just wants to avoid a long goodbye. I say, “Yeah, Michael has to get his car away from that curb anyway.”

“It's okay,” Michael says. “I've left cars there for weeks. Take your time.” He says goodbye to Joey, who gives him a complicated handshake he seems to have no trouble following. “Hey, thanks for everything,” he says.

“You too, man,” Joey says. “Take good care of my friend.”

Michael just nods. Then he tells me he'll wait for me in the car.

“You saved my life,” I say to Joey as we stand with our arms around each other.

“What are old friends for?” he says.

“Really, Joey, thank you.”

“Yeah, okay. Thank you too.”

“For what?”

“Stuff. The letter. Tying up some loose ends for me.” He winks at me and says, “Hey, I'll see you when you get back. It's not like this is goodbye. Listen, good luck with Mike.”

“I think it's pretty hopeless at this point.”

“No way. You hang in there.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“He hates me.”

“He doesn't hate you.”

“How do you know?”

“You know me, I know shit.”

“Like?”

“Like when I told him you were missing, he totally freaked.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Okay, sugar. I'll see you when you get back. You take care.” He gives me a careful hug. “Take care of those ribs. I'll see you.”

“Bye, Joey.”

He smiles. “Bye, Rachel.”

“Bye, Rat,” I call as he's walking away.

He turns back and smiles. “Bye Cookie,” he says.