Total Immunity (38 page)

The path stretched out in front of him, illuminated by moonlight, and he suddenly saw the two of them in his mind's eye, like cameo figures racing back in time, from the so-called civilized world into the primitive society of wild beasts, and giant lizards with great scales and sharp teeth.

He ran on, turned a corner at full speed, and barely stopped in time to avoid falling off a two-hundred-foot chasm.

On the other side of it stood Charlie, surrounded by mist.

“Coming, Jack?”

“You jumped this?” Jack said.

“Yep,” Charlie said. He seemed to be reverting to his friendly, folksy coach persona. “You have to back up a bit there, then run like hell and leap. Bet you can't do it.”

“How much?” Jack said, pointing his Glock .22 at Charlie's head.

“A hundred bucks,” Charlie said. “I don't think you're motivated enough.”

“But I don't have to jump,” Jack said. “I can shoot you right here.”

“No,” Charlie said. “You can't, Jackie.”

He opened his arms wide. It seemed to Jack that he was calling forth a mist from down at the base of the waterfall.

A waterfall, just to their right, which Jack hadn't even noticed.

He tried to sight Charlie through the mist, but the moon played tricks on the water, and suddenly Jack wasn't even sure if he'd spoken to Charlie at all.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, tried to see, but Charlie seemed to have disappeared.

Then his voice came toward Jack, and in a canyon of moonlit water, it might have come from anywhere.

“You killed my son,” Charlie said. “Were you ever sorry for it?”

“Yes, of course,” Jack said, and he was. He felt — suddenly — as if it had happened just now, that he had been watching the boy and turned away, and Jimmy had fallen over the falls.

“You
should
pay for it,” Charlie's deep, echoing voice said again, and it was the voice of somebody's idea of God, spoken from bushes, rocks, and dripping trees.

Jack said nothing. It occurred to him that in some universal way Charlie had been right all along, that all of them deserved to die for wanting too much, for making a deal — not with Billy Chase, but with evil.

The devil, Jack thought, was always painted as huge, red- robed, with menacing horns and a pitchfork, but he seldom presented himself that way. If such a devil promised you endless riches, or a life of ease, anyone with half a brain would run in the opposite direction.

So he presented himself to you as a harmless small-time crook who could give you total immunity. Immunity from fear, immunity from death, immunity from robbery. A small, bright little bug of a man who could give you Adam Moore — the devil himself — on a platter.

You offered him immunity, and he offered you the same, and yea, there was joy and happiness in the kingdom.

Only one small, very bright boy had to pay. That was in the small print that none of them had bothered to read.

And now Jack knew that there was no immunity, there was no freedom — only deals which ground up a child, unhinged a decent man, killed police, and terrorized his own child, perhaps forever.

In the seductive moonlight, on the edge of the Multnomah Falls, it was Jack who was lost. He felt that it was his own cowardice that had set off this chain of events, his own timidity, trying to do well for his career when he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Could he have changed the way things turned out? He didn't know for sure. What killed him now was that he hadn't even tried. He had gone along with the others, even as he worried that it could somehow backfire.

And somehow, knowing that changed things. Now Jack knew that even if Charlie appeared out of the mist again, he couldn't just shoot him.

He had to jump, give Charlie a chance. He owed him that much for taking his son.

He backed up and breathed in deeply, then started running for the gorge and leaped off into the mist.

He flew, flew across, and looked down at the gaping slash of open air, the roaring water rising up to pull him down.

And then he was there, landed on the other side, and Charlie was rushing toward him, like a bear, a huge branch in his hand.

“You're going to fucking die, Jack.”

He swung hard, and Jack felt the branch smash into his chest. He saw a flash of pain and fell backward, rolling toward the edge of the cliff . The world slowed to a crawl. He caught himself by grabbing a bush inches from the edge but now Charlie was coming at him again, this time with his leg kicking into Jack's head, screaming, “Here he comes, Jimmy. I've delivered them all to you, son.”

Jack felt his head snap back, and then there was another stabbing pain as Charlie kicked him in the ribs.

Jack rolled even closer to the precipice. Charlie came closer, kicking out his foot again and again. Jack felt something in his ribs give way. He tried to get to his feet, but slipped. Then Jack waited, waited for Charlie's final blow. But as Charlie got set to deliver it, Jack slashed out with his own foot and caught Charlie off balance, mid-kick.

Charlie screamed a short, staccato burst, and fell over Jack, off the edge of the falls. He flailed wildly and grabbed Jack's right wrist.

Jack pulled with all his fading might.

But Charlie looked up at him and shook his head.

“I'm going to Jimmy now, Jackie,” he said. And smiled in his warm way, like Charlie Breen always did. A warm, encompassing smile. And in spite of all Charlie had done, Jack felt as though he was looking at his own father.

“I'm sorry, Charlie,” Jack said.

Charlie nodded twice, and then opened his hand.

Jack watched him go down, fast, giving out a yell, not a scream, more of a warrior's battle cry. He watched Charlie plunge into the roaring river seventy-five feet below. His body bounced off two big boulders, and then disappeared.

50

JACK STOOD with his arm around Kevin, who was still trembling. Around him, the other agents were cleaning up the mess.

Oscar walked over and patted Kevin on the head.

“I heard you were very brave. You saved the two Steinbach boys.”

Kevin shrugged.

“I had to do something,” he said.

“And you did,” Oscar said. “Good boy!”

He turned to Jack.

“Down in the basement of The Deckhouse, he had a screen and an Avid editing machine. He was putting together the film of the murders.”

Jack shook his head.

“All that time, he held that anger and fury. All that time.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “He made audiotapes, too. Only heard a couple of minutes. But apparently making the movie kept his son alive in his head. He'd talk, consult with him.”

“Man!” Kevin said. “And all along I thought Charlie was like my uncle or something.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “Instead, he was
muy loco.
”

“I don't know,” Jack said. “You know, when my dad died, I went out and bought old radio tapes.”

“How come, Dad?”

“'Cause I missed him, and as a kid he listened to them with me. So there I am driving all around L.A. listening to old tapes with dead actors on them: Alan Ladd and William Conrad, and the whole time I'm feeling my dad sitting there next to me, commenting on them. At night I wrote a diary, too, putting all the things down that my dad used to say to me. I wrote stuff about camping trips we took, and how he used to come see me play lacrosse, and all of that stuff . This went on for almost two years. Your mother . . . she thought I was out of my head. Having conversations with a ghost about old radio shows in the car, writing for hours every night. She wanted me to go see a shrink.”

“You do that, man?”

“No, Osc. I didn't. Eventually, one day I just didn't play the tapes, and soon after that I stopped writing. It was over. Not all of it, but enough so I could face the fact that he was really gone. What I'm saying is that Charlie or Roy . . . he didn't lose his dad, he lost his young son. And he didn't lose him through normal circumstances. He lost him because we fucked up. It took me two years to get over losing my dad, so maybe it's not that far out to think of him being destroyed by losing his son. Wanting revenge. Making the movie with ‘his son.' It was his way of getting even and not facing his son's death. The whole fantastic plot was what occupied him, kept him in denial of his son's death.”

Kevin shook his head.

“But I thought he really cared about me. I could have sworn he wasn't faking.”

“He wasn't,” Jack said. “He
did
care about you. But also, your presence made him enraged. That you should be alive, the son of the man he held responsible for his son's death.”

“But you
weren't
responsible, Jack,” Oscar said.

“Yes, I was. At least, partially.”

Kevin looked at his father with a world of confusion, pain, and love on his face.

“Really, Dad?”

“Really,” Jack said. “It's a long story, though, and we'll have to talk about it.”

As he finished speaking, the retrieval team shone a light from the woods. The three of them looked over at the path and saw them bringing Charlie's body down on a portable gurney.

Charlie was covered with a white sheet. His right arm fell out to the side and dangled there.

Jack felt an intense pain in his chest and put his arm around his son.

“Funny thing,” Jack said. “He was obsessed with the immunity deal. That's why he structured his whole revenge around it. It was like he was reminding us of it the whole time.”

“Almost like he wanted us to catch him, bro,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, and if we had,” Jack said, “he would have probably come up with some deal to try and get himself immunity. Charlie knew a lot of people and, who knows, the way the world is now, he might have even thought he could really get it.”

Kevin looked down at the stretcher as the team brought it through. The sheet had fallen off a little, and he could see part of Charlie's gray, waterlogged face, with a chunk taken out of his forehead where he'd hit the rocks.

“Well,” he said. “He's got it now, Dad.”

“What's that?” Jack said.

“Total immunity,” Kevin said. “Nothing can hurt him again.”

“That's right,” Jack said as they turned away. “Total immunity. Let's go home, son.”

He squeezed Kevin's shoulder as they walked together back toward the car.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Detective Frank Bolan (Retired) of the Wilshire Homicide Division. In addition to being a good pal, Frank explained to me all the ramifications of immunity cases, which got my imagination rolling. Frank, a born raconteur, and a legendary cop in the LAPD, is one of the many great people I met at Tom Bergin's Bar, including Chris Dolan, the writing and boxing bartender, who always brought me extra paper so I could almost keep up with Bolan's wild tales. Also best to Mike, Charlie, Lisa, and Rob.

At the FBI I got major help from Special Agent Laura Eimiller, who put me in touch with everyone I needed to know, and Special Agent Scott Garriola, who is not only a great agent, but also a hell of a storyteller.

Big kudos to my amazing agent Philip Spitzer, the master of not only the deal, but the world's greatest joke teller, and my Literary Manager Lukas Ortiz, one of the most amazing karaoke singers in the world, especially when it comes to Jim Morrison impersonations. In Hollywood, my thanks to agent Joel Gotler, who loves to riff and plays blues harp to rival Sonny Boy Williamson.

Love and respect to Otto Penzler, my buddy for many years, and now, happily, my editor. Thanks to Lindsey Smith and Judith McQuown for their help in the editing process.

Thanks and big love to my wife, Celeste Wesson, and my sons, Robbie, Shannon, and Kevin. And special kudos to my mother, Shirley Kauff man, the true Queen of Baltimore.

And, finally, all my love to Jason and his family.