Total Immunity (36 page)

The thought made him laugh, which was not what he was supposed to do. Not out here in the rain. Not out here on this little hill looking down at the man in the sweatshirt with the Blazers written on it.

Terry wondered if the Blazers would be good this year.

Or if they would all get put in jail again.

The Portland Jailbreakers. Ha ha.

He shouldn't be thinking of that either.

He wished Roy was here with him. He liked to do things with Roy because Roy made him feel secure and happy. And competent.

Roy, for example, would know the names of the trees and would know exactly when was the best time to kill this shit- head who himself killed Roy's son, Jimmy, who was going to put Terry in pictures.

It was true, Terry thought. He already had a movie picked out called
The Scar,
and Terry was going to play this heroic cop who gets a scar and then turns bad because prejudiced people laugh at him but then who gets some kind of redemption at the end and saves a kid. Or the world. One of them. Terry liked the world better than the kid. But Jimmy had told him the world might be too hard on their budget for the movie, which was two hundred grand.

Still, either way, it sounded great to Terry, who had even tried reading the script but gave up two pages in. Print on a page was like angry bees buzzing in his head. He was a Valley guy who liked to look at pictures, and hear people make statements about how they'd found their true calling. How they redeemed their lost lives.

Terry was a Redemption Junkie.

Stuff you saw on
Oprah.

He'd found his, that was for sure. Doing jobs like this for his bro.

Thing is, Roy knew how to use him. And this was the way! Like in a movie. He was the action hero, like Arnie before he became Senator . . . or was it Governor? Yeah, Governor.

Terry was a guy who really only lived for Big Scenes. Action stuff .

Like the night he pretended to run over Jack Harper and let Roy/Charlie “save Jack,” which took any suspicion off Charlie.

Or the time he knocked Charlie in the head at Jack's house, which was so cool.

Like a movie.
Terminator
or
Die Hard.

But this was the greatest role of all.

Shooting the guy that killed Jimmy The Genius.

Jimmy who had a million ideas for horror films and was going to be the next Steven Spielberg, was going to make
Scar,
in which he would play an action hero.

He ran through the whole plot of
Scar
again, imagining girls lining up outside of Mann's Chinese Theater, all of them down on their knees with their perfect collagen-lipped mouths open, ready to suck him off .

Yeah, there was no business like show business.

And now the guy was almost across the field and it was his job to cut him off , right there by the tree line (wonder what they were called . . . Jimmy would know if he wasn't dead).

The idea was to cut him off and to shoot him in the face.

Why in the face?

Because in his pocket Terry had a picture of the guy Billy Chase, and he had to be sure it was really him and not a decoy guy.

That's why. He had to remember that.

He loped down the hill with his Winchester in his hands. There it was: the perfect little hillside spot.

Chase would have to come through here.

And when he did . . . well, then,
blotto.

Red-mist city, yessir!

And years of pain, missing being a star in Jimmy's movie
Scar
(in which he was the star, this cop guy with a scar who . . .).

He sat on a tree limb to steady the barrel and waited for Billy to come up the trail; waited, waited.

And then, out of nowhere, the trees around him seemed to be alive with what at first seemed like walking branches.

Holy shit!

Things — no, not things — people coming out of nowhere, and all of them with big guns trained on him.

Like he was Scar, and the cops were after him, but this time there was no redemption, no “saving the day” and no fucking parade.

They had him.

But he was smart for once — very smart — and gave up pronto, laying his rifle down on the ground and then falling down next to it on his knees, his hands clasped at the back of his head.

They had him. Shit! He'd really hoped he would get to shoot that guy Chase in the face. Wotta drag!

46

TERRY AYRES SAT ACROSS the interrogation table at the Portland Central Police Station from Oscar and Jack. Terry drank a Coke and, while they were hammering at him, he tried to trick them by thinking of product placement.

If this was
Scar
(the movie he was going to be in if Jimmy hadn't died and . . . blah blah blah), they would probably be getting a fee from Coca-Cola for showing their product on the screen — a fee he would never get a piece of because Jimmy was dead and these guys let the guy go who . . .

“Wake the fuck up!” Jack screamed, pounding the table so hard that the Coke spilled all over Terry's already-wet pants.

“Hey, watch it,” Terry said, shaking.

Jack got up from the table and slapped Terry's face with the back of his hand. Terry fell off the chair onto the cold floor and looked back up at his tormentor.

“Hey, hey,” Oscar said, jumping from his chair and grabbing Jack. “C'mon, partner. That's not the way.”

Jack sat back down, breathing hard. Of course, it was their usual good-cop/bad-cop act, but this time, Oscar thought, Jack might have gone over the top. He was pretty sure that if he'd left Jack alone in here with Terry Ayres, the guy would come out a piece of meat.

Terry got back in his seat and took a sip of what was left of his Coke.

“You've had a pretty rough time,” Oscar said.

“Not really,” Terry said, looking straight ahead at Oscar, trying to avoid Jack's bullet gaze.

“Yeah, you have,” Oscar said. “Looking over your sheet here, I see you been in and out of jail four times since you were first in juvy, when you were, what was it, twelve?”

“Yeah, so?” Terry said. He tried to set his jaw like a tough guy, but it hurt his ears.

“So, I see your dad abandoned the family. Mom died when you were ten. Means you had no one to look after you. No one to help you. 'Cept your brother, Roy.”

“Yeah, that's right.” Terry made his jaw even firmer, jutted it out like The Joker, but now his ears and his throat hurt. It was painful, being so tough.

“He's a guy you really depend on. Right? Guy you're loyal to?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “Which is why I'm never gonna give him up to you guys.”

“You cocksucker!” Jack started across the table again, but Oscar grabbed him and shoved him back.

“Maybe you ought to go outside,” Oscar said.

Jack's face was twisted in pain and fury.

He got up, walked by Terry Ayres, and went out the door. He walked around to the side entrance and went inside the observation corridor.

Two Portland Feds watched. They said nothing to Jack.

Inside the interrogation room, Oscar leaned across the table to get closer to Ayres.

“That's good, being loyal,” he said, in a soft, kind voice.

Terry looked up at him with a puzzled grin. “You think so?”

“Yeah. Most of the time. But sometimes it can be stupid, too. See, so far we have nothing on your brother, but we've got you for attempted murder, and I imagine it won't be too hard to pin the other killings on you, too.”

Terry Ayres bit his lower lip and blinked like a nervous bird.

“That's bullshit and you know it.”

“Well, who else? It won't take a rocket scientist to see how this went. Roy wants revenge on people who killed his son, but he's too chickenshit to do it himself. However, luckily for him, he's got a very loyal but not-too-bright brother. He talks him into doing the killings, then sets him up to get caught.”

Terry took a deep breath and blew it out, as if he was trying to blow away thirty-five years of stupidity.

“You're trying to trick me,” he said. Just then an old TV voice floated through his head. It said, “The Rolli Mop. It's the only mop you'll ever need.”

Oscar patted Terry's arm in a fatherly way.

“No, Terry, I'm trying to be straight with you. You're all set up, and if you don't call your brother by seven thirty, he's going to kill a kid. Apparently, that's all he has the balls to do. Slit an innocent kid's throat.”

“No,” Terry said. “That's not right.”

“Yeah, it is,” Oscar said. “Then after he kills a child, he's going to disappear. Which leaves you to take the rap as an accomplice to first-degree murder. How lenient do you think the jury is going to be toward you, Te r? I see you getting the lethal injection with or without him.”

Terry looked like someone had lit his feet.

“But . . . but . . . You're asking me to give up my own brother.”

“He gave
you
up,” Oscar said.

“But they killed his son. Hey, James was a genius. He said I was a great natural actor.”

“Focus,” Oscar said. “What happened to his son was terrible, but it was an accident. You can use your acting skills now to help us bring in the right guy, and you won't end up on a steel gurney with poisons running through your arm.”

Terry's straight tough-guy jaw began to quiver, and tears ran down his gaunt cheeks.

“All right,” he said. “I'll call him and do what you want. Bring me the phone.”

Oscar nodded and patted Terry on the head.

“Now you're playing it smart, kid,” he said.

On the other side of the glass, Jack slumped forward, then started to breathe again.

47

JACK SAT AT a gray institutional desk, a cold coffee cup in his hand. Oscar leaned against the wall next to him, humming a song over and over.

“What the fuck are you singing?” Jack said.

“One of the great songs of my Mexican heritage,” Oscar said.

“Which is?” Jack said.

“This Old Man.” Oscar began to sing, “This old man, he plays three. He plays knickknack on my knee, with a knick knack paddy whack . . .”

“Jesus!” Jack said. “If you sing that fucking song one more time, I'm gonna slam my head into the wall.”

“Promise?” Oscar teased.

Suddenly the phone rang and Jack's head jerked back. He let it ring once more, then picked it up.

“Harper,” he said.

“Jackie,” Charlie Breen said. “You did such fine work. Really, you ought to be commended. Jimmy tells me it was a walk in the park.”

“That's right, Charlie. Billy Chase is dead and gone. Now tell me where I can find Kevin.”

Charlie gave an odd little laugh on the other line.

“Why, right where you left him, Jack. In the old gym at Brent- wood Park.”

“Brentwood Park?” Jack tried to imagine the old gym. In his mind, the park ended beyond the right-field wall. But no, now he saw it: the battered old brick gym. A place that was there but invisible because no one ever used it anymore. How could he have not seen it?

“Look in the boys' locker room,” Charlie said.

“He better be all right,” Jack said.

“Oh, he's fine,” Charlie said, as he ate a brisket sandwich he'd just bought from Carter's.

“Yeah, he's ready for a nice day on the field. I really am gonna miss coaching him, Jack. Going to miss all the kids. Maybe you can take over the reins, Jackie. I think you have a real talent for coaching.”

Charlie wiped some of the barbecue sauce off his lip, and hung up.

Jack looked over at Oscar, who listened in on the second phone.

“They're already on it,” he said.

“Fucking Brentwood!” Jack said. “Oh, man . . .”

He slumped on the desk, sweat pouring down his neck.

Within a half hour after the phone call from Portland, an LAPD SWAT team arrived at Brentwood Park, in three black, unmarked vans. They quickly broke into two columns, surrounding the gym from both the north and south exits.

One column of men kicked in the back door to the boys' locker room and, using their flash-lit rifles, headed inside.

The columns hurried down the aisles of old rusted lockers, kicking aside the old stools, which were still there.

The secondary group looked through the hallways and the basketball court.

Finally they searched through the girls' locker room, and five men went into the bowels of the old gym. They went into the furnace room, the janitor's bedroom, every nook and cranny in the gym basement.

All they found were about fifty rats scrambling through the hallways and a pile of old
Hustler
magazines.

Other than that, nothing.

No sign of Kevin Harper.

Jack and Oscar got the call five minutes after the search was completed.

Jack's face had become reddened and he felt a pressure in his temples, as if there was a hand inside his head, desperate fingers thrusting out.

His heart felt the same way and, as he sat at his desk with his head hanging, he suddenly understood the term “broken heart” for the first time.

He had always thought it was some kind of metaphor, but now he knew otherwise. He could feel his heart breaking. Cracking inside his chest like an ice floe breaking up.

Soon, he thought, it would crack open, but instead of water rushing out, it would be his own blood.

And yet, in the unbearable pain he felt without his son, there was some consolation in that. For if anything had happened to Kevin, he wouldn't want to go on living, anyway.

Now he felt a rough push on his back. He ignored it, not even sure if it was real or some phantom pain, commensurate with his agony. But there it was again, a kind of poking, which enraged him. He looked up, snarling.

“What the fuck is going on?”

He looked at Oscar's broad, strong face, his brown eyes wide open, determined.