Low Life (18 page)

‘In what?’ Zurasky said. ‘It’s late. I’m not in the mood for mysteries.’

‘In what’s happening to me.’

‘What is happening, Jeremy?’ His voice was calm and his eyes were large and kind despite their sleepy redness.

‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’

‘You’re not giving me much to go on.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘How can I help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on?’

‘Help me? You think I believe you want to help me?’

‘What do you believe?’

‘I believe you’re part of this. What I want to know is how big a part – and why. Is Robert involved too? How long have you been planning it?’

‘Who’s Robert?’

‘You mean he’s not a part of it?’

‘Part of what?’

‘What’s happening to me.’

‘You’re talking in circles, Jeremy.’

‘You’re the only person connected with both lives.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Simon Johnson.’

Zurasky was silent for a moment, eyes looking up at the ceiling to his right. Finally he shook his head. ‘Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘He was a patient of yours.’

‘When?’

‘Up till last April – or maybe May, but I think April.’

‘For how long?’

‘Couple of years, on and off – mostly off.’

‘No. I would remember that.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Jeremy.’

‘He called you just over two weeks ago to make an appointment, then cancelled.’

Zurasky’s bottom lip stuck out, a thin layer of whitish skin coating it. He shook his head again.

Simon closed his eyes. He felt confused.

‘When we have sessions,’ he said, ‘what do we talk about?’

‘Whatever you want to talk about. You lead the conversation, Jeremy.’

‘What do I usually want to talk about?’

Zurasky shrugged.

‘Marriage troubles, problems at work, the accident. Speaking of which, I noticed you cut yourself again.’

He traced a finger across his own face from cheekbone to chinbone.

‘Again?’

Zurasky nodded, then said, ‘After the accident,’ as if that explained everything.

‘What accident?’

Zurasky sighed. ‘You know damned well what accident, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?’

‘You tried to kill me.’

‘I –
what?’
He looked genuinely shocked.

‘You’re playing head games with me. You’re trying to confuse me. But I know you did. You sent Jeremy to kill me. What I want to know is why. I’ll get it out of you one
way or another, so you might as well tell me.’

‘You’re not making the least bit of sense.’

‘My name is Simon Johnson. I live at the Filboyd Apartments on Wilshire. You know the place. A little over two weeks ago Jeremy Shackleford broke into my apartment and tried to murder me.
He failed. Jeremy Shackleford was a patient of yours. So was I – once. You’re the only human connection between us. What I want to know is why you did it. I want to know what
you’re up to. What I want, in short, is answers.’

Zurasky was silent for a very long time. His face was pale. He looked afraid. Simon thought that was a good thing. It meant he was on the right track. It meant he was getting to the good
doctor.

‘What’s the matter? You seem a little—’

There was a knock at the door.

Simon jumped to his feet.

‘Who is that?’

Zurasky set his coffee down on the table and stood up.

‘Calm down, Jeremy. It’s the police. I called them when I was in the kitchen. I was worried about you.’

‘You son of a bitch.’

Simon looked around frantically, trying to find a way to escape. Zurasky had set him up. He probably had the body stored somewhere. Maybe it was in the trunk of his Volvo. Maybe this had all
been part of it. Maybe Zurasky hadn’t even wanted Jeremy to kill him. Maybe he’d planned this step by step and this was what it had all been leading to – his arrest for the murder
of Jeremy Shackleford – his way of getting rid of both him and Jeremy. Hell, if it had happened the other way, then he’d be dead and Jeremy could be arrested for
his
murder. It
wouldn’t even matter who killed whom, as long as someone died. And Zurasky could get it done without bloodying his own hands at all – his own hand. But it was Simon who killed Jeremy,
and Zurasky had put the body in the trunk of the Volvo and then tipped off the police as to where it was. That’s what had happened. And now they were here and—

Zurasky reached out and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder.

‘Calm down, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘They’re here to help.’

Simon jerked away from him.

‘You calm down.’

He swung the pen in his fist toward the doctor, shoving several inches of it into the meat of his bad arm, right through his T-shirt’s short sleeve. Zurasky let out a scream. Blood poured
from the wound, into the cotton of the T-shirt, down his arm, and dripped from the end of it. The doorknob rattled – ‘Police! Open up!’ – but the door was locked.

Simon turned and ran toward the back of the house.

He heard Zurasky unlatch the door lock, heard hinges squeak in the living room.

In the laundry room he found a door leading into the backyard. He swung it open and the darkness greeted him.

He ran out into the night, leaping over a fence and into the next yard.

Half an hour later the police had left. As had Zurasky – in an ambulance. Simon had watched from a distance and no one had even glanced at the Saab. He got lucky
there.

He made his way to it and got inside. He started the engine and drove away. It was three o’clock in the morning and he was exhausted. He needed to find a place to sleep.

He took the 101 south and got off the freeway in Hollywood. He figured if he drove around he could find a dive that would take cash and wouldn’t ask too many questions. He stopped at three
seedy joints before he was proved correct. It seemed in this day and age even gray-market businesses expected some form of ID and a card with the Visa logo.

At first the guy behind the counter, a jowly fellow who looked like he might have insects living in his hair, wanted to charge him for thirty minutes and to see the girl Simon was bringing in
– he must have just had that whoremonger look – but eventually he convinced the guy that he wanted a room for sleeping purposes only.

The guy scratched a fat face beneath a gray beard, looked at what he’d managed to scrape off with a fingernail, flicked it away, and said, ‘Suit yourself. It’ll be a hundred
and forty,’ and slapped a key onto the stained yellow counter. ‘One thirteen’s around the corner, third door on the left.’

Simon thanked the guy, grabbed the key from the counter, and went to find room 113.

It stunk of misery. The threadbare yellow curtains seemed to be dripping with it. Rape and abuse and a thousand different sadnesses permeated the walls.

Simon closed the door behind him, locked it, and walked to the bed. He didn’t bother undressing. He simply laid himself down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling. He felt ragged,
but didn’t think he’d be able to sleep. He’d been through far too much today for that kind of peace to find him – for any kind of peace to find him.

Forty-seven seconds later he was snoring quietly.

He awoke to the sound of a phone ringing. It was daylight outside, sunshine splashing in through the curtains. His eyes stung. He felt like he’d just closed them. His
head felt like it was stuffed with broken glass and rusted screws – and now the phone was ringing. He cleared his throat and rubbed at his face and padded to the writing desk on the wall
opposite and picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Checkout’s in thirty.’ He recognized the voice. It was the desk clerk he’d met last night.

‘Oh. Okay. What time is it?’

‘Half till ten.’

‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘Also,’ the guy said – and Simon could tell from the tone that this was the real reason he’d called – ‘and I know this ain’t none of my business, but if
you’re wanted by the coppers, they found you.’

Suddenly there was no heartbeat in his chest, just silence and a sound like a desert wind. He swallowed. His heart started again.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Guy in a black Cadillac’s been parked out front watching your car all morning. Looks like the fuzz to me.’

‘Okay.’

He set the phone in its cradle.

He knew the man in the black Cadillac hadn’t tailed him. He thought he knew that. He’d lost him last night before he was even half a mile from his house.

He pinched his eyes closed, and then opened them again.

The room didn’t have its own shower – a hundred and forty bucks and no fucking shower – just a toilet and a sink. He needed to head back to Pasadena and get cleaned up and
change clothes. He hoped Samantha was out. He didn’t want to have to deal with her right now. He needed time to figure out what was happening. He also hoped the cops weren’t staking the
place out. Stabbing a guy in the arm wasn’t murder. Nor was breaking into a business. Hopefully the cops had more important things to deal with. This wasn’t a small town. Ten million
people called Los Angeles County home. Out of that ten million people, thousands of them were surely capable of making much more trouble than he had created. Hopefully the cops were busy with them.
Still – if it looked sketchy he’d forget about the shower and the change of clothes, but he needed to check it out.

But what was he going to do about the black Cadillac?

The guy wasn’t a cop. The only reason for a cop to be following him before last night – before he’d stabbed Dr Zurasky and broken into his office – would be because the
police knew he’d killed Jeremy Shackleford, and if the police had known that, they wouldn’t have been following him. They would have been arresting him. Which meant the guy was working
with – who? Not Zurasky. Zurasky wanted him in police custody, so if the guy was working for him, and he knew where Simon was, the police would be close behind. And since they weren’t
– well, who then?

Fuck it. For now he wasn’t going to worry about it. After a few hours’ sleep, it was less intimidating than last night. He’d let the son of a bitch follow him and see what
happened.

As he drove he thought about seeing the dead walk. That didn’t fit in with the Zurasky hypothesis. Unless somebody had drugged him and he’d hallucinated Müller
and the dog. He’d seen them earlier and they’d stuck in his head because of their violent deaths and later he’d hallucinated them. Samantha had handed him pills she claimed were
Tylenol. Perhaps they’d been something else altogether. He couldn’t remember now if she gave him the pills before or after he’d seen the dead walking. Or maybe someone had
replaced the blood thinners he had to take daily with something else – but then he last took those two nights ago. And if someone had replaced his blood thinners with some other drug,
they’d done it before he had stepped into the role of Jeremy, and they’d known about his heart murmur, his caged-ball heart valve, the fact that he had to take pills daily, and that the
best way to drug him was to slip those drugs into his bottle of blood thinners. But then whoever was orchestrating this had already demonstrated a thorough knowledge of both him and Shackleford,
and the ability to get things done.

He simply couldn’t wrap his brain around all this, he couldn’t connect the dots. Maybe if he drank less. He’d had whiskey and wine and vodka throughout the day yesterday.

But this was making him feel panicky and lost and the booze calmed him. He hated this. He didn’t know what to do at any moment, didn’t know where to turn. He just had to take it one
step at a time and hope he could untangle things – unfortunately they seemed to be more tangled than ever.

He parked two blocks from the house and walked the rest of the way. If cops were there, they might be looking for his car. The Cadillac pulled to the curb several car lengths
behind him. The man behind the wheel did not step out into the sun. He just sat. Good.

Simon shivered as he walked through the sunshine of early fall.

After he turned the corner onto his street he paused. He looked down the length of the quiet suburban neighborhood and saw just that – a quiet suburban neighborhood. There was nothing out
of the ordinary going on. Houses sat, lawns were green, and a gentle breeze ruffled eucalyptus leaves. That was all.

Samantha’s car was not in the driveway. Maybe she was out at the police station filing yet another missing person report – or being questioned about where he might be as a result of
last night’s activities. Whatever she was doing she wasn’t doing it here, and that suited Simon just fine.

As he keyed open the front door, someone behind him spoke.

‘I really need that hammer, Jeremy.’

Simon jumped and turned around. The fat guy whose hammer Jeremy had – apparently – borrowed was jogging in place and looking at him.

‘Now’s a bad time.’

‘I’m building a bookcase and I really need that hammer. That was my plan for the weekend.’

‘What’s today?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Then it’s not the weekend.’

Simon pulled open the front door and went inside without another word. He slammed the deadbolt home behind him.

The living room was cool and quiet. He had a strong urge to stretch out on the couch. He was still incredibly tired. He’d managed almost six hours of sleep, but that didn’t seem to
be enough. It took everything he had not to do it. Instead he walked down the hallway, through the master bedroom, and into the bathroom. He peeled away the layers of bloody sweat-stinking clothes
and let them fall to the tiled floor, then stepped naked into the shower and turned on the water. It felt good to wash away the filth. The gauze covering his right hand got soaked, and he ended up
pulling it away and dropping it to the shower floor. His wounds were no longer bleeding, anyway.

After drying off he walked to the bedroom and put on a gray suit. He put on a green tie, and the overcoat, and, still feeling cold, he wrapped a scarf around his neck.

Once dressed he walked to the living room. Since he was here he figured he might as well feed Francine. But she was gone.