Authors: Julie Smith
“All I can say at this time is that he remains in a coma.”
Coma!
the bastard said.
A fucking coma!
His mother-fucking worthless son wasn’t even dead, and he’d paid that asshole Lobo five thousand dollars.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit
, he definitely wasn’t paying the rest. He got up and kicked his desk. Kicked a chair and knocked it over. Kicked another.
Then he heard running footsteps, and there was that damn Tracie again, peeking in like she thought she was his guardian angel or something.
He beat her to the punch. “It’s okay, Tracie, I know I’m acting like a child. I’m just worried about Karen, that’s all.”
She nodded, looking frightened, and ducked out again, closing the door fast. He wondered if he looked like a wild man. He phoned her extension and left a message. “I’m really sorry for acting like a jackass. I think I better take the rest of the day off before I do something to embarrass myself.”
He was out of there like a shot. He hadn’t even gotten the car out of the garage before he’d called Lobo and left his pager number. It took an hour for the man to call back. “Yeah? You transfer the money?”
Mr. Right shouted, “
Kill him, you asshole! Goddammit, kill him
!” He threw the cell phone out the window onto the freeway. The car behind him screeched, trying not to hit it.
* * *
Skip waited till she got home to call Lovelace, hoping O’Rourke would get to her first, but evidently she hadn’t waited long enough. As soon as the girl heard her name, she said, “Isaac. Omigod! What’s happened?”
Skip wondered if her somber tone of voice had said it all, or if Lovelace had reason to fear for her uncle. She said, “It’s bad, Lovelace. He’s alive, but it’s bad. Some bastard shot him in front of his house.”
“Oh, shit.” She paused to catch her breath. Skip heard a couple of gulps as Lovelace fought tears. “How bad?” she finally managed.
“It’s a head injury. He’s in a coma.”
“Oh, shit. Omigod. Did they get the guy? He just called me this morning. He said he might have seen his father. Could my grandfather have done this?”
Seen his father?
Skip stood up and paced, her blood racing. This was big. This was the key to it all. She tried to calm down, to make her voice soothing. “We don’t know anything yet. He’s going to need you, though. Can you come?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.” Lovelace sounded dazed, as if traveling hadn’t occurred to her yet. “I’ll get on a plane as soon as I can.”
“I’ll pick you up at the airport. Listen, did he say where he saw his father?”
“Well.” She drew out the word and hesitated afterward. “You know Isaac, Skip. He wasn’t even sure he saw him. He was heavy into OCD mode.”
“I thought he was medicated these days.”
“I don’t know… maybe he got off the meds. But if the OCD ever went away, it came back— with a vengeance. He kept saying he couldn’t be sure.”
“Well, maybe he really wasn’t sure.”
“He even said it was the OCD. Listen, I’ve got to call the airlines.” Panic was starting to rise in her voice.
“Lovelace, wait. Did he call you, or did you call?”
“He did. He told me to be extra careful for a few days.”
“Did he give you any idea why the time limit?”
“To figure out if the guy was actually Errol, I guess. I don’t really know.” The line went quiet; she was apparently trying to remember the conversation. “Oh, I know! I asked if his father was in New Orleans, and Isaac said
he
wasn’t in New Orleans. But he kind of slid off my question.”
“So he didn’t say where the guy was?”
“No.”
“Okay. Is this a cell phone?”
“Yes. Do you have one?”
Skip gave Lovelace her number and made her promise to call when she had an arrival time. When she hung up, she debated whether or not to call O’Rourke. No need, she decided. He was perfectly capable of asking the same questions she had— so long as he had the sense to think of them.
She called Terri instead. “Listen, I need to come over right now.”
“I’m not home. I’m at the hospital.”
“Charity?” Charity Hospital was where gunshot victims were almost always sent.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll come there. Any word?”
“He’s still in the accident room.”
* * *
She found Terri twisting a tissue in the waiting room. She’d changed into torn jeans and a tank top with a skull on the front— an outfit strangely at odds with her neat haircut, as was the tattoo it showed. “How is he?”
Terri shrugged. “No news. I’m just… waiting.”
“Look, Terri, I spoke to Lovelace. She’s flying in.”
“Oh! Does she need a ride from the airport?”
“Maybe. I’ll let you know. She told me something really interesting. She said Isaac called her this morning and said he might have seen his father.”
“You mean Errol Jacomine?” Skip realized she still hadn’t taken it in that Jacomine was really his father.
She only nodded. “And that isn’t all. I think he flew to Dallas last night.”
“But—”
Skip nodded again, to indicate she’d already gone where Terri was headed. “There was enough time. He could have flown there and back this morning. What time was the show?”
“Seven o’clock. But why? Why the hell would he go to Dallas?”
“Let’s think it through. I see you went home and changed. Had he left any voice mails for you?”
Terri barked a laugh. “About ten of them: ‘Terri, it’s Isaac. Guess you’re not there yet.’ Pretty much like that.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.” Terri quit playing with the tissue and folded her hands, sitting quietly for a moment. “He sounded scared, though. I might not have thought that if I didn’t know what I do now. But I think it’s right; he might have been scared.”
“When were the calls made?”
“Oh.” She jerked her head, startled. “I didn’t pay attention, but I’m sure it says on the voice mail.” She looked at her hands. “I saved them. I wanted them. In case…”
In case he dies
, Skip thought. She understood. She’d have done the same thing in Terri’s place.
“You can’t think of any reason he’d have gone to Dallas?”
“Not unless it had something to do with me. But that’s crazy; I was coming right back home. And, anyway, he didn’t know where to find me; I’d left my hotel room, and I hadn’t called him.”
“Listen, I’m going to ask you to focus on something.”
“Sure.” Terri closed her eyes.
Skip’s cell phone rang. It was Lovelace, giving her flight number and arrival time, late that evening. Skip said, “Good. I might have to work overtime. If I can’t make it, okay if Terri picks you up?”
“Sure. Is she okay?”
“She’s here. We’re in the hospital, waiting.”
“Can I talk to her?”
It was another few minutes before Skip had Terri back. “Okay, here’s my question. I want you to think carefully. What, exactly, did you say on that show?”
“You think it had something to do with that?”
“If he’d seen his father, and he thought you were in danger, it might have been something you said. Did you say anything about Jacomine?”
She shrugged, as if the idea were preposterous. “No. Why would I?”
“Anything about Isaac?”
Terri closed her eyes again and thought. Finally she opened them and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s hard to remember what I said on and off the air.”
“You talked about Isaac off the air?”
“Just to the host. He interviewed me before the show.”
“The host.”
Terri nodded.
“Was anyone else in the room?”
“No. Why?”
The back of Skip’s neck was beginning to prickle. It felt as if the temperature in the room had gone down twenty degrees. “What does the host look like?”
“Oh! Handsome. Really attractive in an older-man kind of way. I mean, he grows on you. At first I thought he was kind of smarmy, but that’s just because he’s so nice. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met that really has charisma, you know?”
Skip was feeling chilled to the bone. “Terri. Could he be the man Isaac saw?”
Terri did a literal double take. “David Wright? Are you kidding? No way. Jacomine’s a dried-up ratty-looking little turd who talks like a redneck— I saw him on TV a million times when he ran for mayor. David Wright’s educated; he has this really cultured voice, almost British. You can’t change the way you speak.”
Skip was acutely disappointed. “I guess not.”
“And believe me, there’s no physical resemblance whatsoever. I mean none. I told you, this guy’s really kind of cool. He has this very worldly gray hair and… I don’t know, nice clothes and a sort of TV
presence
. Jacomine had a weak chin, remember that?”
“All too vividly.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s start over. I want you to tell me every word of the conversation you had, both on- and off-camera.”
Again, Terri closed her eyes. “Well, I told him about my troubles and my work, and how I have my own business.” She filled in the details, digressing briefly to complain that the host had stolen her lines. “He asked me if I had a boyfriend and… no, it wasn’t exactly that. He said, ‘I hope someone nice takes you out to dinner sometime.’ And I said my boyfriend was also a starving artist, so he cooked instead.”
Skip couldn’t sit still any more. She stood up and pretended to stretch. “Did you say Isaac’s name?”
“Let me think. Yeah. Yeah, I did. First name only, though. Isaac.”
That would be enough
, Skip thought. An artist named Isaac.
“And then he started asking me about Isaac.” She stopped talking. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Oh, shit. He made me tell him about Isaac’s art and define ‘outsider art’…
oh, shit!
I said The White Monk. I actually used that name. That would identify him, right?”
“You’re sure you didn’t do that on the air?”
“Positive because… oh, shit!”
“What?”
“The minute I said that phrase, he blew me off. Called Tracie, the producer, to come take me back to the green room.” She sat up straight and took handfuls of her hair in her hands. “Yes! And she was very taken aback. Asked him if everything was all right.”
Skip’s mind was racing. This was it, had to be it. And yet…
“All that’s suspicious as hell, right? The only thing is, he wasn’t Errol Jacomine. Absolutely wasn’t. That’s all there was to it. I mean, you’d have to see him to know what I mean.” She stopped dead. “Hey! Hey, you
can
see him. You absolutely can. I’ve got a tape of the show.”
Skip was practically salivating. “Terri. I have to see that tape. I can’t overstress the importance. I need to see it now. I know you think you can’t leave Isaac…” She stopped, trying to find a delicate way to insist that Terri play the tape for her immediately.
But Terri was shaking her head and rummaging in her backpack. “Oh, no problem. Why don’t I just give you the key, and you go to my place and watch it?”
“You sure?” Skip said, holding out her hand for the key. But the question was a Southernism; if Terri’d changed her mind, she’d have grabbed the key out of her hand. “What’s your address?”
Skip broke every traffic law on the books getting to Terri’s and nearly broke the door getting in, she was so impatient.
Poor kid
, she thought, rifling Terri’s unpacked duffel, as instructed. Terri had practically no furniture, and what she had appeared to have been picked up at garage sales. Her protestations of poverty were no joke. However, she did have a VCR, a gift, she’d explained, from her parents. Skip found the tape under a pouf of soiled clothing, popped it into the machine, and settled on the double mattress that evidently served both as bed and daybed. It had a faded purple cover on it, along with a collection of mismatched throw pillows.
The show’s theme music came up, David Wright was introduced. Skip braced herself— and let out her breath with disappointment. No way that nice-looking man could be Errol Jacomine, who looked like a weasel at best. She felt cheated.
She had to be missing something. Maybe it was something Terri said in the interview. She turned up the volume.
“Hello, I’m David Wright,” said the star, “and tonight we have an extremely relevant show, relevant to each of us who has a bank account, that is. And that’s all of us, isn’t it?” The audience applauded. “I mean, if we’re lucky enough.” He spoke the last part with modesty and sympathy, not ridicule.
Terri was right: His accent was slightly British, nothing at all like Errol Jacomine’s redneck twang. The man was actually somewhat likable. She wouldn’t go so far as “charismatic,” but she wasn’t repelled by him, and that alone indicated he wasn’t Jacomine.
She took a good look at the man’s neck— Jacomine’s neck was stringy and sinewy, old before its time. Could you change a person’s neck?
She knew the answer to that: Sure you could. This guy’s neck didn’t look anything like Jacomine’s. Did anything else? Yes! The widow’s peak. Jacomine had worn his hair combed to the side, evidently to tame it; had hidden the birthmark, though anyone who looked closely could see it.
Mr. Right wore his hair combed back, so that it looked luxuriant. And it was gray. Jacomine’s hadn’t been; could he have dyed his hair?
Certainly
, she thought, or, more likely, he could have let it go natural. But that didn’t prove anything.
She watched the way the man moved his jaw— kind of clipped and impatient. She saw the
shut-up
look that popped into his eyes when the attention went to Terri. But hell, he was a TV personality; that was what they were like.
She paused the machine, got up to get herself a drink of water, and when she looked again, she saw something. What, she wasn’t exactly sure, just something that made her go alert again. A gesture?
Maybe
, she thought.
She closed her eyes and listened, and the more she listened, the more she was sure she’d heard the voice before. A person could change his accent but he couldn’t really change his voice.
She started to get excited. There were plenty of Jacomine recordings; she could get voiceprint analysis.
Stop, fool
, she said to herself.
Voiceprint, hell! If that’s Jacomine, he just put out a contract on his son. You’ve got to move faster than that.