Eyes Wide Open (30 page)

Chapter Eighty

W
e flew back to New York. Max and Sophie, who had come up from school, were waiting at the house with Kathy's folks. Tons of hugs and grateful tears as we came through the doors.

Still, Dev's final words rarely left my brain.

And why had he let me live, when everyone else had died?

You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

I spent the next couple of weeks recovering. I went into the office a couple of times and checked up on my cases. I didn't know exactly when I would begin to practice again. Some of that related to my hand, which was slowly healing.

Some was related to my mind.

You know the jack of hearts?
You should. I think you might learn something from it.

It was like he was continuing to taunt me from the grave.

Gradually, things got back to normal. Sophie stayed a few days and went back to Penn. Max started up in school. Dev's threat seemed to pass.

“It's over, it's over,” Kathy would say, trying to calm me. No matter how many times I woke up in the night in a sweat.

Haunted by the same recurring dreams.

Coming to in the ambulance, Dev's words chilling me:
“We've got your son!”
Susan Pollack's gruesome death. Or Dev, coming at me with that knife. Getting closer.

But this time, no shots brought him down.

Each time, Kathy would wrap her arms around me and pull me back down, brush my sweaty cheeks with her hand, saying, “It's over, baby. It is.”

But I knew it wasn't over.

They'd let me live, for some reason.

You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

The jack of hearts. One day it's gonna give you a smile.

I knew I'd never be able to fully rest, or put it behind me, until I figured out why.

After about a month, I woke up with a start one night. The clock read 3:17
A.M.
I was breathing heavily. My heart felt like it had been given a jolt of epinephrine. Damp sweat drenched my back and sheets.

Kathy shot up next to me. Since we'd gotten back, she'd been telling me that I ought to talk with someone, and I'd begun to think that maybe I should. She reached across the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. “Another dream, honey?”

“Yeah. A crazy one.” I sat up in the bed and tried to clear my head.

This one had been about my father. That incident at the house in California, when Charlie, the producer dude, and Houvnanian had come up to see him.

The same dream I'd had out west.

Except this time, the “music producer dude” was Dev. His ratty clothes and wolflike eyes.

And it really wasn't a record they were talking about but somehow “making him pay.”
My dad
. For all the crap he had done to Charlie.

And instead of just smiling that creepy, probing smile of his and simply leaving, Houvnanian nodded to Dev, who took out this blade.

And suddenly everyone was screaming blazing, angry taunts, accusing my father of betraying them. And then they started to stab him. Like what I had read in Greenway's book. But it wasn't Riorden, it was my father. They were hacking away at him. Writing words in his blood. “Pig.” “Betrayer.”

And I was outside the glass window watching it all take place. Unable to do a thing. Or scared to. The three of them cursing and stabbing, until in shame and grief I had to turn away
 
. . .

And that's when I woke.

Kathy tried to calm me. “It was a dream, honey, only a dream.” She lowered me back to the covers. “Try to go back to sleep. It's okay.”

I closed my eyes again. “I'll try.”

But I couldn't get back to sleep. My heart was racing. I couldn't clear my father from my mind. I almost felt like Houvnanian's icy grip had me by the bones.

Like he was mocking me. Thousands of miles away. Taking his revenge.

Whatever the jack of hearts was about.

His revenge on me.

I waited until Kathy's breathing told me she was back asleep.

Suddenly I couldn't lie there anymore.

I crawled out of bed and went down to the basement in my T-shirt and shorts.

I wasn't sure what drew me there, just something urgent and incomplete related to my father.

There was a cabinet underneath the built-in bookshelves where we stored boxes full of old things. Albums, folders stuffed with items from when the kids were young, at camp and at school. My old papers from med school.

My father's artifacts.

His old photos that ended up with us—from when he dated models and was in the navy. At the beach. Playing tennis. His military records. Newspaper articles. A bunch of worthless old stock certificates from one of his business ventures that was long defunct.

There was also a box of things from the night he drove his car into the bay.

I'd never fully made my peace with what had happened. He always drank at night. Half a bottle of Cutty was his usual routine. Generally he was in front of a TV with a chicken he'd pulled apart. And sometimes in his favorite pubs. No matter how drunk, he always managed to find his way home.

He could do it with his eyes closed.

A new business venture he was gearing up to launch had fallen apart. The partners pulled out—this time, Russian Jews from Brooklyn who'd been implicated in insurance schemes. For someone who used to run with the glamour crowd, truly the bottom of the barrel.

He pretty much kept to himself in those last days. He'd driven out to the beach and had a couple of Rob Roys at one of his haunts there. I was told he'd tried to dazzle some woman at the bar without much success. He threw a twenty down as a tip for his guy behind the bar and waved, and made his way home.

I opened the box containing his things.

There was his death certificate, from the Suffolk County coroner.
Cause of Death:
Accidental drowning
.

A copy of the police investigation related to the event. It mentioned the tire marks heading into the bay. On a road he had driven a thousand times. A high level of alcohol in his system.

My father's adage was that you kept on turning corners. No matter what life dealt you. You never gave up.

I guess he'd turned one too many that night.

I sat on the floor piecing through his old effects. I'd never really looked through them. My dad had hurt so many people in his life. At the end, there were only a handful of people who even came to the funeral. I had just wanted to put it behind me then.

One of the photos I came across was of him and Charlie at my dad's beach house, taken in happier times.

At the bottom of the box, I found a thick manila envelope. From the Quogue Police Department.

It contained whatever he'd had on him at the time of the accident.

I recalled looking through it once, just after it happened. My dad's possessions at the end were minor. I'd given his Cartier money clip to my son as a keepsake. All we got were worthless paintings and penny stock certificates. I remembered being pissed off, even a little ashamed, at how his life had declined.

But now I was suddenly interested. I untied the envelope clasp and poured out the contents.

His oily, worn wallet, crammed with his stuff. His driver's license; I noted, laughing—
typical
—that it had expired the year before. His credit cards—what he'd been living on in those last days. Around sixty dollars in cash, dried out from the bay. Dozens of meaningless receipts—why he kept them I never knew. Probably so he could phony them up for his taxes, I surmised.

I was about to toss the wallet back when I noticed something.

Suddenly my whole body shook to a stop.

I was staring at something, but it didn't make sense. But more than not making sense, it made me rethink everything. In a flash.

Charlie. My father.

Houvnanian.

My life.

A thousand different memories
. Forty-five years.

It was a card. A playing card. Hidden among a stack of business cards, in the inside flap of his wallet.

I knew exactly which one before I even turned it around.

The jack of hearts.

The single eye—a circle had been drawn around it, just so there was no doubt.

And it was winking.

Winking,
as if to remind me just how foolish and blind I had been.

He'd left the restaurant pretty sober, the bartender had claimed. Yes, it had been a little foggy. But his was the only accident that night. The tire tracks suggested a moderate rate of speed. He'd made the same drive a hundred times. In far more drunken states.

My father could have driven to Canada after two Rob Roys!

You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

Winking, just as Russell Houvnanian had winked at me.

Because he knew the truth.

As if to say, all these years later,
No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner
.

Only the master will know.

Me.

I stared, a desperate plea of
No, no, it can't be,
clawing up inside me, as a word, a single, haunting word, formed in my brain.

Watch.

Epilogue

O
n the first weekend of the fall, Max Erlich bounded down the steps of the music shop onto Greenwich Avenue, lugging his guitar. He had found it on Craigslist, an old Gibson—for all of sixty bucks—and he was learning how to play. His dad had bought him a series of lessons on Saturday mornings at ten.

Down the hill, his mom was grabbing a latte at Starbucks or window-shopping at Richards while she waited for him.

Since what had happened, they never let him get too far away.

Outside the store, a guy was playing on the street. Kind of a grungy, older dude. Max checked him out—one suffering from a severe wardrobe malfunction. An old green army jacket and a crumpled cowboy hat.

Ever since he'd started messing around on Ryan Frantz's guitar at lacrosse camp, learning to play had become Max's new passion in life. He played in his room at night, on his bed, teaching himself little riffs from his favorite artists, Daughtry and Coldplay. He wasn't exactly musical—neither of his parents played anything or even pushed him in that direction. His sister used to take dance; that was about the extent of it.

But he liked how it made him feel, surprising himself with some new riffs. His teacher, Rick, claimed he had a knack for it. And besides, Samantha Schall thought it was kinda cool, and she was certainly texting him a lot more now.

The guy on the bench seemed like he was waiting for a lesson. But as Max listened, he was actually sounding pretty good.

He picked away at it—a vintage Martin—with nimble, worn-down fingers. It seemed to come naturally—he muttered some lyrics under his breath, not even looking at the instrument. It sounded a bit like country, Max thought. He recognized the tune.

The dude could play!

The guy finished, finally looking up from under his hat. His face was wrinkled, and he had a scar on his cheek. A couple of other people who had stopped uttered a few words of praise and moved on down the street. He didn't have his hat out and didn't seem to be looking for money, and truth was, on Greenwich Avenue, that wouldn't go over big.

Max grinned at him, impressed. “
Sweet!
”

The guy nodded back in appreciation, with yellowed, ground teeth and a mustache on his weathered face. He noticed Max's guitar. “You play?”

Max shrugged. “Learning. But I like what you were doing there. Neil Young?”

“Fogelberg . . .” The man shook his head. Then he smiled. “Maybe a bit before your time.” He strummed a few more chords. “I could show you, though.”

For a moment Max thought,
Sure, awesome!
He'd kill to learn how to pick like that. Then he remembered his mom, down the avenue.

“Sorry, wish I could,” he said. “I gotta go.”

“Responsibilities, eh?” The guitar player grinned. “I getcha.” He rested the guitar on his knee. “Listen, you seem a good soul. I could meet you here sometime. Maybe next Saturday. Show you a few things. Just you and me. How's that sound?”

It sounded good, actually. But then Max hesitated. “I don't know . . .” The guy seemed cool and all. Maybe a little old. Not much of a threat.

“I tell you what . . .” The guy dug into his pocket and came out with a scrap of paper. A matchbook, actually. And a worn-down pencil. “You can give me a call, when you're around. I'll meet you here. Nothing fancy. I'll have you picking like a pro in no time . . .”

He slowly printed out his name and his number in a shaky hand. He handed it to Max. “How's that?”

“Cool!” Max glanced at it, then looked around, suddenly a little wary. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

“No worries. I'm Vance, by the way,” the man said.

“I'm Max.” He folded up the matchbook, about to put it in his pocket.

“Nice to meet you, Max. You remember, next Saturday maybe? You let me know.”

“Okay.” Max put the matchbook in his pocket and had started down the hill when the guy called after him. “
Hey, Max!
”

He turned.

“Stays our little secret, right? No reason to involve anyone else.” He winked. “You know how parents are.”

Max grinned. “Yeah, I know.”

He headed down the hill, not sure if he would keep the guy's number or toss it into a bin. It all seemed a little weird.

Still, he'd sure like to be able to play like that.

At the bottom of the block, Max took a look at the matchbook, at what he'd written. The shaky letters,
Vance.

On the cover, there was a logo he was familiar with.

CBS, the television company. He'd seen it a million times. He stared, wondering where a guy like that would have come in contact with it.

That big wide eye.
Staring at him.

He'd keep it, he decided. Max folded it up and put it in his pocket.

Samantha Schall's smile was the kicker.

Man,
he said to himself,
I'd give anything to play like that.