Total Immunity (33 page)

“And then Roy disappeared. Two days later, he was gone. The club was there, the Ranchero Bar was there, but he was gone. And when I asked about him, the guys who worked for him, they'd never say anything at all. It was like he'd vanished into thin air. And I never saw him again.”

“You have a picture of him, Faye?” Oscar asked.

“Yeah, sure. But better than that, I still have their old home movies. Come with me.”

They walked through the kitchen, with its filthy pots and pans sitting around like an old science project, and went out into the backyard, where Jack was surprised to see a small kidney- shaped swimming pool, with only three inches of water.

The water was green, and there was a fine skin of scum on the top.

They walked to the far end, and then to a small house . . . the pool house, Oscar guessed, back when Jimmy was alive and they had lunches out here and pitchers of lemonade.

They went inside; both Jack and Oscar were shocked to find the place immaculate.

There were five rows of old theater seats and a large screen. In the back of the room there was a projector, with a film ready to play.

“It's all ready.” Faye's voice was light and cheerful, as if the years and all the pain had fallen away.

“Jimmy never had a proper premiere, but in this theater his are the only movies we show. Of course there is usually a limited audience, myself . . . so today is very special. Sit down.”

As she said it, she gestured graciously with her arms, as if she was welcoming royalty.

They sat in the front row and waited as the leader film counted backward from ten . . .

And then, there it was in front of them, the title
The Deal,
a Jimmy Gregson production. Written and directed by Jimmy Gregson, Produced by Roy Ayres.

There was a fake thunderclap, and a shot of the tennis club. The club coat of arms — a palm tree crossed with a tennis racquet — appeared on the screen.

The camera trailed up the driveway of the club, where a boy was tending the lawn. He was a beautiful boy, with great green eyes and thick black hair. An older man dressed in black came toward him. The scene was shot from behind the boy, who looked up at the man, a sad expression on his face.

“What's wrong?” the man said.

“I want to play tennis,” the boy said. “But I'm not a member of the club.”

Jack sat still. The voice was scratchy, but somehow familiar. “You must come to see my master,” the man said. “He will

make it possible for you to not only join the club, but play like a champion.”

“Really?” the boy said.

“Really,” the man said.

On the reverse angle, Jack and Oscar saw the man's face. It was the bearded man . . . the one who had tried to run Jack over at the bar.

“It's our old friend,” Jack said. “Who is he?”

“That's Roy's brother Terry,” Faye Gregson said. “He and Roy were in a fire when they were young. Roy came out fine, but Terry . . . well, it was very sad. He has to wear that beard to hide the scars.”

Jack suddenly felt his stomach twist inside him.

It still made no sense . . . but suddenly he saw it coming.

“Speed the film up,” Jack said. “I've got to see Roy.”

“No need to,” Faye said. “He's in the next scene.”

And indeed he was. There in the very next scene, shot at the old Ranchero Bar, late at night. A man greets young Jimmy, a man dressed in a string tie and a cowboy shirt. A man who tells him that he can not only make him a club member, not only a great player, but a boy who will be immortal.

“You will live forever,” Roy Ayres, playing the mad scientist in his son's film, says, hamming it up like Lionel Atwill in an old Warner Bros. movie.

“You ride with me, Jimmy, and you will have life everlasting. Immunity to decay, to sagging muscles, to broken bones . . . to death itself. All you need to do is to come with me, now.”

And the boy smiles and says, “Yes, doctor, I'll do as you say.”

And Jack Harper sits there staring at the screen and feeling his heart sink in his chest.

41

JACK WALKED UP and down the road in front of Faye Gregson's place punching in Kevin's phone number, but it didn't come through.

“No service. Fuck!”

Oscar paced alongside of him.

“Come on. We've got to get our asses back there now. We'll call the playground when we get closer.”

Faye Gregson stood on the porch, smoking and looking at them as if they were people from another planet.

Jack looked at her standing there, all hollowed out.

And knew, just then, without a shadow of a doubt, how she felt.

Like him.

Like he would keep right on feeling if anything happened to Kevin.

They got in the car, turned on the motor, and took off , leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

• • •

At Brentwood Little League, the afternoon practice was breaking up. Kevin Harper, dressed in his jeans and Angels T-shirt, was walking off the field next to Charlie. As they headed toward the car, middle-aged mom Peggy Dent came walking toward Charlie with her daughter Kathy in tow.

“Coach,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for the year we've had so far. And the way you've watched out for Kathy this year.”

Ordinarily, funny and genial Charlie Breen would stop and chat, but today he barely slowed down.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I try to give all the kids time on the field. Kathy was great.”

“Thanks, coach,” Kathy said.

“You know, when I was a young girl, we never got a chance to develop that side of our personalities. The left side of our brain,” Peggy continued.

She smiled and blocked Charlie's way, thinking he was going to stop. But Charlie moved around her, and when she moved with him, she found herself being not so gently pushed out of the way.

“Excuse me,” she said with a shock. “You almost knocked me down.”

“I know,” Charlie said. “Sorry. I'm in a kind of hurry.”

He grabbed Kevin's hand and headed for the car.

“Well, thanks a lot!” Peggy Dent yelled. “You fat bastard!”

Her face contorted into a mask of rage. Charlie ignored her and pulled Kevin along with him to his car.

Charlie took a left at Ohio, right by the junior high school, and then a left into a little park adjacent to the school. He pulled over by a Dumpster and gave Kevin a worried look.

“I think there's something wrong with the back tire on your side. Can you look back there for me? We might have a flat.”

“Really, Charlie?” Kevin said, smiling generously at his coach.

“I didn't notice anything.”

“Just check it, will you?” Charlie said.

Kevin was surprised by the anger and impatience in his voice. He nodded and got out of the car.

He knelt down next to the rear tire and felt it with his hands. It felt as solid as a rock.

“I don't know, Charlie. It's seems fine. It's definitely not flat.”

Behind him, Charlie put his huge hand around Kevin's neck and pressed the ether-soaked rag against his nose. The boy twisted and turned, his eyes rolling wildly back in his head, but there was no escape. Within ten seconds, Kevin Harper was unconscious. Charlie picked up his limp body and pressed a button on his car key.

The trunk door popped open and he dropped Kevin inside, then slammed the trunk closed.

Then Roy Ayres went around to the driver's side, got in, gunned the engine, and drove away.

He turned on his new iPod and happily sang along with “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

He loved the Beatles. They'd helped him get over Jimmy's death, and now they were here for him as he avenged his son.

Think positive, Ayres thought. All good things come to those who wait.

42

JACK FLOORED THE ACCELERATOR and fishtailed through the traffic, almost causing a major accident with an ice-cream truck on the 405.

Oscar thought about saying something, but he could see there was no point to it. Jack was obsessed.

“Try Julie,” Jack said. “I want to see if Kevin has come home.”

Oscar punched in the buttons, waited as they headed south, past the Getty Museum.

The phone rang, once, twice, a third time. Then Julie picked it up.

“She's here,” Oscar said, handing the phone to Jack.

“Hello, Julie.”

“Hey, baby.”

“Where are you right now?”

“At your place. Sitting in the dining room, grading papers.”

“You heard from Kevin?”

“Not yet. They're a little late. Guess he and Charlie stopped at 7-Eleven to get a Slushy.”

“Jesus!” Jack felt electric anxiety shooting through his arms and legs.

“Julie, listen, if Kevin
does
show up, you get him out of there. Right away. And if Charlie is with him, don't tell him where you're going.”

“What? Jack, what are you saying?”

“Go to your sister's place, and don't tell anyone. But especially, don't tell Charlie.”

Julie gnawed the end of her eraser.

“Jack, what is this all about?”

Jack felt a wave of nausea pass over him. There was no use hiding the facts any longer.

“It's Charlie Breen, Julie. He's our guy.”

“Jack,” she said. “C'mon. That's crazy. Why, if Charlie would have wanted to hurt Kevin or any of us, he could have done it three times over by now. And he was beaten up by whoever is the real bad guy.”

“That was a ploy,” Jack said. “His brother Terry stole our computer while we were out and Charlie was at the baseball game with Kevin. But he didn't find what he needed because it was on my
old
computer, which is stored up in the closet.”

“Jack, you're sure?” she said. “Charlie? Good God!”

“I know,” Jack said. “It's a shock. But trust me, this is how it is. I'll tell you the rest later. Just make sure you get Kevin away from him.”

“Jack, they must be together right now.”

“I know,” Jack said, feeling like he was going to puke. “If he
does
have Kevin, he's going to call me. If he
does
call home, switch him here at once. And try to sound normal. We can't spook him.”

“Okay, Jack,” Julie said. “I love you.”

“Me, too,” Jack said.

They both hung up and Jack tore down the freeway.

“Where the hell would he go, Osc? Christ, he wouldn't take Kevin if he didn't have a hiding place all picked out. But where the fuck
is
it?”

Oscar said nothing, only stared straight ahead, lost in thought.

43

THE OLD WAREHOUSE in San Pedro was a ramshackle dump, with tiles falling off the roof, and rats and mice scampering around the nearby docks. Ayres had owned it for years. Originally, he'd thought of building Charlie Breen's Deckhouse right here in funky old working-class San Pedro. But certain business transactions in the diamond trade during his years in South Africa had left him a wealthy and wise man.

So he was able to “convince” a real-estate mogul in Malibu — who had owed a tremendous amount of money to Roy in gambling debts — to let him have the Malibu property for a song. So that was where The Deckhouse ended up being built.

Roy had planned to sell the San Pedro place, but for some reason he wasn't even aware of — not back then, anyway — he knew that he had to hang on to it.

Now, of course, he knew why he needed it.

Jimmy had filled him in.

Jimmy always told him what to do — not always right away (which was sometimes more than a little frustrating!), but eventually he'd let Roy know by calling him on his cell phone.

Take now, for example. It had just been a little over two years ago when Jimmy had contacted him on his cell phone to let him know what his plans were. Charlie hadn't expected to hear from him, was in fact at a Dodgers game with the very boy he had in the trunk right now. Kevin Harper.

Then the call came on his phone and he looked down at the screen and saw it, just like a trailer for a movie.

Exactly like that.

The trailer for Jimmy's great, unmade movie. Of course, he didn't tell anyone how the movie flickered to life on the screen, how only he, Roy Ayres, could see it.

If people had heard about such a thing, they would have thought he was stone nuts.

But they were wrong. Very wrong.

They didn't know shit about the movie. No, not at all. They didn't know how it had come about, exactly two weeks after he'd buried his son. Buried brilliant, soon-to-be-great movie director Jimmy in the ground, up near the Angeles Crest.

What they didn't know was that two weeks after he'd been buried there, among the pine trees and the great boulder — exactly two weeks later — Roy had received his first motion picture on his cell phone.

At first it was just a kind of blur of images: a tree, a rock, something with claws that scurried across a parking lot.

And some sounds, which again the uninitiated would have thought were nothing more than some kind of random chatter. Things that sounded like static, or some kind of rebel radio signal sent through the phone.

Hell, at first Roy/Charlie (sometimes he forgot which one was his real name and which his fictional one) had sort of written it off as some kind of fugitive bullshit, or maybe some kind of hideous grief aftertaste.

But then the weird sounds and weirder pictures kept coming, and strange voices could be heard like a voice locked in an iron box somewhere, and speaking through a megaphone with maybe the artificial larynx of a throat-cancer victim.

Roy thought for a week or so that he was cracking up. Thought about putting a gun to his head.

But then the voices and the pictures got clearer.

Someone was making nervous little movies in there and sending them to him.

Little movies with strange hissing sound bites that only he could understand. And what he could finally understand from the little pictures and the snake sounds was that — well, of course it seemed nuts, insane, goofy — but that it was Jimmy, still making movies from beyond the grave.