Low Life (12 page)

He’d stopped at the cafeteria between here and the office and picked up a large cup of coffee, and he sipped it now, looking around the room, at the empty wooden desks with initials carved
into them, at the overflowing trash can in the corner, stuffed with donut boxes and orange juice jugs and coffee cups and muffin wrappers from whatever class was here at eight o’clock. Based
on the red writing on the whiteboard at the front of the room –

– Simon guessed first-semester French.

He walked to the whiteboard, used a stained cloth that was hanging from a nail in the wall to wipe the board clean, and then stared at the blank surface, fluorescent light reflecting off it. He
exhaled, wondering if he was crazy for doing this. Maybe he was – maybe he
was
crazy – but he had never felt more himself either. Of course, that might be a symptom of his
insanity. Probably was.

He turned to face the empty room.

‘Today,’ he said, ‘we’ll be discussing the development of geometry in ancient Greece.’

‘I already covered that chapter.’

Simon jumped, startled, and turned toward the door.

A man in a plaid yellow suit stood in the doorway. He was in his fifties with a trimmed mustache and white shoes with buckles on them. He was bald on top – the slope of his head shiny
enough to see your reflection in – but the hair he had growing around the back and hooked over his ears with sideburns was long and wrapped in a rubberband to form a ponytail. His eyes were
brown – except for the whites, which were very red – and cocked up on the inside to give him a permanent look of gentleness regardless of mood. His skin was bad. He wore several
bracelets for various causes – he appeared to hate cancer, AIDS, and orphaned children in equal measure.

‘How are you, Jeremy?’

‘I’m okay, Professor Ullman.’

Simon must have accidentally raised his pitch at the end of the sentence, making it a question, because Professor Ullman said, ‘Who else would I be?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Neither would I, Jeremy.’

‘Okay.’

‘And since when do you call me Professor Ullman?’

‘I’m sorry. Henry.’

Wrong answer. Simon could see it on the man’s face. What had Samantha said his name was? Don’t panic, just give him a deadpan and maybe he’ll let it slide.

But, of course, he didn’t.

‘What did you call me?’

‘What?’

Oh, goddamn it, what did Samantha say his fucking
name
was?

‘You called me Henry. Are you sure you’re okay to come back?’

‘I didn’t call you Henry.’

‘I heard you, Jeremy.’

‘Well, Howard – ’ there it was – ‘if I did I simply misspoke.’

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I’m fine. I had an accident is all.’

‘That’s what Samantha said—’ Howard put a finger on his own cheekbone and traced an invisible line down to his chin. ‘That’s what Samantha said, but that
doesn’t look like an accident to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you know.’

‘Well, I don’t. And anyways, I’m fine, Howard.’

Howard took several steps closer to Simon, examining him. Simon suddenly understood why his eyes were red and tired-looking. The stench of marijuana clung to his clothes and hung around him in a
pungent cloud. You could almost feel it sticking to your skin.

‘You just – ’ Howard exhaled through his nostrils – ‘you don’t seem yourself. I look at you and I think: this man isn’t Jeremy Shackleford. His face
doesn’t move quite right, his eyes don’t look the same.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t know. Maybe after what happened— Anyway, you’re back.’ He looked at
his watch. ‘We’ll talk later, and I’ll rip out your fucking heart.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘We’ll talk later,’ Howard said. ‘Your class is about to start.’

He sat at the desk at the front of the room as students walked in with backpacks strapped over their shoulders, thumbing cell phones off, listening to music through ear buds,
chattering.

He felt nervous and sweaty. Once the class was full – there were still a few empty desks, actually, but once it seemed no one else would be arriving – he got to his feet. He put his
palms on the surface of the desk and leaned forward.

‘All right,’ he said, hoping no one heard the nervous tremor in his voice. ‘Where did Professor Ullman leave off?’

A male student, thin and young – pale cheeks still smooth and free of stubble despite the fact that his hair was dark – raised his hand and, without waiting to be called upon, said,
‘Conic sections’.

Simon blinked.

‘Chronic what?’

Two hours later it was over.

He fell into the chair behind his desk, covered in a thin gloss of garlic-stinking sweat, his carefully combed hair now hanging in his face. He exhaled in a sigh and watched the students grab
their bags and strap them over their shoulders, turn their phones back on, pull cigarettes from their pockets and pack them against the backs of their hands, and shuffle out of there for the
courtyard or their next class or home or one of the fast-food joints that surrounded the campus.

He ran his fingers through his hair and then wiped his sweat-damp and pomade-oiled palms against the legs of his pants.

His thoughts were directed inward and he didn’t even notice the girl until she was standing directly in front of him, her knees inches from his knees, her breasts directly in front of his
eyes. He tilted his head up to look at her face. She was maybe eighteen, certainly no older than twenty. She was wearing a short skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was short and black. A backpack
was strapped over her right shoulder, and there were childish tchotchkes – lanyards and key-chain ornaments – hanging from the various zippers. But there was also something sensuous
about her that – combined with the childishness still clinging to her despite her tentative steps toward adulthood – made Simon uncomfortable. A woman’s body despite the young
face and something in the eye that said she knew a lot more than she pretended. Or perhaps she was pretending to know more than she did.

‘I was worried about you, Professor,’ she said. ‘Where did you get that scar on your cheek?’

‘I cut myself shaving.’

‘It’s kind of sexy.’

‘And you are?’

‘Is this some kind of game?’

Simon smiled out of nervousness, because he didn’t know what else to do.

She smiled back.

‘Kate Wilhelm,’ she said, and Simon saw by the sparkle in her eye that she thought it was indeed a game of some sort. ‘And I’m having an awfully difficult time learning
all the hard, hard math you teach.’ She sat on his lap. Simon saw something like nervousness flicker behind the eyes and realized that she was acting, playing a part she’d seen in
movies, or imagined herself playing while sprawled out on her bed, pretending to be all grown up. He could understand that: playing a role you had been assigned or had assigned yourself. It was
part of life, wasn’t it? Every day, in order to live with others, you pretended to be something just a little different from what you really were. That it was obvious with Kate, that the role
she was playing didn’t quite fit on her, made him like her. ‘Maybe you can tutor me. I saw in the paper that your wife has a thing tonight. Maybe I can come over and we can run through
some equations.’

‘She expects me,’ he said. ‘Tonight. To be there.’

‘So,’ Kate said. ‘Go but leave early. She has to stay all night. You don’t.’ She stood up and touched the scar on his face, ran a red-painted fingernail along it.
‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Oh, goody.’

She stood and pivoted on a shiny black shoe and swayed away, sparing a glance and a ‘See you later’ before she disappeared into the hallway.

Simon tongued the inside of his mouth and felt a heaviness in his gut like he’d swallowed a brick.

He ate lunch – which is to say he ordered lunch and picked at it without eating much of anything – at a Greek sandwich joint on Ventura in North Hollywood. Once
he’d tired of staring at the food on his plate – a gyro and hummus and tabouleh – he got back into his car. He took Ventura to Lankershim, and drove north toward Dr
Zurasky’s office.

Ten minutes later he pulled into a parking lot in front of a strip mall. The first floor was filled with standard businesses – a pizza joint and a dry cleaner’s and a barber shop and
a liquor store – but the second floor had quiet little businesses with no signs, or small signs that couldn’t be read until you were already upstairs. The kind of places you’d
never see unless you already knew they were there.

Dr Zurasky’s office was on the second floor between an aromatherapy place and a medical marijuana place.

He pulled open the fingerprinted glass door and walked into the cool blue reception room.

Ashley was sitting behind her desk, and when he walked in she glanced up. At first, there was a look of confusion on her face, and then she smiled.

‘Hello, Mr Shackleford.’

‘Ashley.’

‘How are you today?’

‘I’ve been worse.’

‘That’s thinking positive. I’ll let Dr Zurasky know you’re here.’

She got to her feet and walked around her desk. She did not have a pretty face – she was rather plain and her hair was dull and flat and colorless – but she had unbelievable legs,
long and muscular and perfectly shaped, and Simon was pretty sure she knew it. She took every opportunity to show them off. She could as easily have let Zurasky know Simon was here by telling him
over the phone’s intercom. She poked her head into Zurasky’s office and said something inaudible, pulled her head out, and closed the door.

‘He’s got a few more minutes with his one o’clock.’

Simon nodded and sat down on a vinyl couch.

There were several magazines spread across a coffee table, but he didn’t even consider picking one up. Instead, he sat there wondering where Zurasky fit into the picture. He had something
to do with this. Simon couldn’t figure out what though. He had been Shackleford’s doctor as well. It couldn’t be simple coincidence that two men who were nearly identical had been
seeing the same shrink. Never mind the fact that Simon hadn’t seen him in over a year. Los Angeles probably had more shrinks per capita than any other city in the world – it certainly
had more people who needed one – so it couldn’t be simple coincidence. Somehow Zurasky was involved.

That thought made Simon feel sick to his stomach. Had Zurasky been manipulating Shackleford? Had he been—

‘Hey, Jeremy.’

Simon looked up. Zurasky was standing in the doorway to his office and the glass front door was swinging shut behind a heavyset blonde woman who was wearing a pair of pink sweatpants and a
man-sized T-shirt.

‘Hi.’

Zurasky was a kind-looking man with a wild head of hair and round cheeks and glasses. He was wearing a pair of striped slacks and a blue shirt with one of the sleeves rolled up and a pink tie
with pictures of golfers on it. He had one bad arm, a stump which he said he was born with. It grew about six inches past the elbow and ended in a smooth rounded-off mound, but today the sleeve was
folded over it and pinned up so it wouldn’t flap about like a windsock.

He smiled a wide open smile.

‘Are you coming in?’

Simon blinked.

Zurasky suddenly seemed cold behind the jolly facade.

Simon stood up, took a step toward Zurasky, and then stopped.

‘You know – I’ve changed my mind.’

‘You’re already here,’ Zurasky said. ‘You can’t change your mind.’

‘But I have.’

‘Nonsense. Come on.’

He stepped aside and gestured for Simon to enter his office. Simon had seen it many times – blue walls and carpet, just like the waiting room, with a big oak desk and shelves lined with
books and a vinyl chair and couch that matched the one he’d just been sitting on – but somehow today it seemed incredibly uninviting. He didn’t want to go in there. He
didn’t want to go in there at all – not until he knew how Zurasky fit into this.

Simon shook his head and backed toward the glass door.

Ashley simply sat at her desk. The phone was to her ear but she was staring at Simon. He didn’t like the look on her face. She was probably in on it – whatever it was.

‘Jeremy,’ Zurasky said. There was a sternness in his voice, but he kept on smiling. Simon didn’t like it. His adoptive father, when leaving a car dealership, or flipping the
channel on a politician or a televangelist, had liked to repeat a saying he attributed (incorrectly, Simon thought) to Mark Twain: ‘Never trust a man who prays in public or one who smiles all
the time.’ While he hadn’t liked his adoptive father much, it had always seemed very good advice.

Simon shook his head again, turned around, and pushed his way out the door.

If he’d considered what Samantha had said this morning – that Jeremy Shackleford had been seeing Dr Zurasky – he would have realized sooner that he was
somehow involved in the break-in, even if indirectly. He had to be. It couldn’t be a simple coincidence. But he hadn’t thought about it. His mind had been focused on making sure
Samantha believed him to be her husband.

But now, knowing that Zurasky was somehow involved, Simon felt an intense urge to get the corpse out of his bathtub – what was left of the corpse. When he thought no one knew – no
one but Robert, who seemed to have kept his promise – holding on to the body seemed the safest course of action, but if Zurasky knew, well, there was no telling what he would do.

It was time to get rid of it.

Simon parked on Wilshire, waited for a patch of traffic to pass, pushed open his door, and stepped out into the midday sunshine.

He felt cold despite the heat. He didn’t know why, but he did. The sun warmed his skin but he felt cold inside.

He stepped up onto the sidewalk and headed for the Filboyd Apartments. But then he froze. Helmut Müller was walking by on the sidewalk in front of him, wearing his yellow cardigan sweater
and threadbare slacks, aged skin hanging loose from his bones. He looked skeletal but he was very much alive.