“How do you figure that?”
“Paul saved your life in Iraq. Everybody knows that. Hell, you wrote a book about it. Yet you come back home, and what do you do? You start fucking your best friend’s wife.”
His words cut right through my meager armor, but I try not to let him see it. “Max, you don’t know what the hell—”
He stops me with an upraised hand. “Spare us both the indignity of denials. I just shot a nice snap of you two hugging out back. Zoomed in real good. These smartphones are amazing.”
So the “deer” that I thought Jet saw at the edge of the woods earlier wasn’t a deer at all. It was Max with his camera phone. “Let’s see it.”
He reaches into his Levi’s and takes out a Samsung Galaxy, then presses a button and holds up the large phone. Though I’m ten feet away, I can see enough to know he’s telling the truth.
“Hugging’s a long way from sex, Max.”
He laughs. “You’ve got a point, Goose. But I also watched you fuck her on the patio yesterday. That scene didn’t leave much doubt about penetration.”
His words drop into my mind like a paralyzing poison.
“Actually,” he says, “it seemed more vice versa, to tell the truth. You made Jet do all the work. Not much of a farmer, are you? Don’t like plowing?”
My feet feel nailed to the floor, but my heartbeat’s accelerating like a train gathering speed. As I stare helplessly, Max drags the chair from beneath the table to the corner by the back window. As he sits, the left leg of his jeans rises enough to reveal a black Velcro ankle holster. The burled handle of what looks like a nickel-plated .380 automatic juts from the holster.
“Keep it copacetic, Marshall,” he says. “Don’t stroke out on me. I could’ve shown Paul that fuck pic yesterday, and I didn’t.”
“You have pictures from yesterday?”
“Well, sure. Got a video. It’s a little blurry, but Jet’s clear enough. That hair, you know? And that dark skin. And that miraculous ass. You’re lying flat, so I don’t have your face, but it’s your house behind her, so it must be your cock she’s riding. I’m sure Paul will make that leap pretty quick.”
We’re dead, I realize, dreading the moment I tell Jet about this meeting. “Did you stop Jet on her way out today?”
“Nope. Let her strut right out of your woods in blissful ignorance. Dumb and full of come.” Max leans forward, sets his elbows on his knees. “Marshall, I’ve known you since you were a baby. I don’t want you buried out by that statue of your brother. That’d be a downer of an ending.”
“What do you want, Max?”
“I’ll tell you in a sec. First, you need to understand the bind I’m in.”
“I’m listening.”
He works his tongue around like a man trying to find a pesky sesame seed from his lunch sandwich. “My wife killed herself, son. That’s a plain fact, and a hard one, but I could’ve lived with it. But she also framed me for murder.”
“Why would Sally do that?”
He ignores the question. “She painted a target on my back, Goose. A big-ass target.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to nail me to the barn wall.”
“Because you were cheating on her?”
“Don’t worry about why. That’s between Sally and me.”
“What do you want from me, Max? Why are you here?”
“Sally wasn’t content just to frame me, Marshall. She left something behind that would ruin me. And my partners.”
Something splashes deep in my mind, like a pebble dropped down a well. “What did she leave?”
“Documents. Files, emails, recordings. Digital stuff. Sally was a hell of a lot sharper than I am about that kind of stuff.”
An image of Sally’s sapphire pendant rises in my mind, and Jet’s theory of the passwords stuck to the back of it. “What’s in these files, Max?”
“Business dealings.” He tilts his head forward. “Poker Club business.”
“Why are you telling me about it?”
He gives me the smile of a magician pulling a coin from my ear. “Because you’re going to find it for me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re fucking my daughter-in-law. And if my son finds out, he’ll kill you. You know that better than anybody.”
I stand mute, knowing I have no choice but to at least pretend to agree to his demands.
“It won’t be like that time when you were a senior in high school, either,” Max goes on. “Out at the country club? When Paul let you off without an ass-whipping?”
“How do you know about that?”
He chuckles. “Not much happens in this town I don’t know about, in the high school or the old folks’ home.”
This is probably true. “Why do you think I can find this stuff if you can’t?”
“Because people see you as a crusader, just like Jet. They’ll trust you, confide in you. They’ll think you’re lined up against me, when in fact you’ll be working for me.” Max straightens up in the chair. “So that’s the deal, Goose, plain as I can make it. I need that cache of digital dynamite degaussed and burned in a hot fire. And you’re gonna find it for me.”
“That’s all you want? Nothing else?”
“Well . . . there is one other codicil to this contract. Once I have what I need, you’re gonna move back to Washington. You’ve had a good romp with Jet, but you’ve boned that bitch for the last time. You can come back for your father’s funeral, but that’s it. I don’t figure moving back to D.C. will cause you much pain, since you never cared much for your daddy after your brother died.”
I look at the floor, trying to force my whirling thoughts into some kind of order. All I can see is a blurry path toward survival. “If I agree to find this data cache, you’ll destroy those pictures? And your video? All copies?”
Max smiles with good humor. “Well . . . I might keep one for myself, to beat off to now and then. Jet looks pretty damn good naked. Especially for her age.”
This is the Max Matheson I’ve always known, joking about “gettin’ pussy” when he coached us as twelve-year-olds, telling us bloody tales from ’Nam and reveling in all the na?ve hero worship that resulted. Max is the first man I heard say, “Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.” Knowing that this man has total power over Jet and me—
“Listen, Goose,” he says, like we’re still on a high school football field. “There’s nothing wrong with tasting whatever you get a craving for, long as you don’t get greedy about it. A slice off a cut loaf’s never missed, right? I think that’s in the Bible.” He laughs heartily. “At least I know a few preachers who think it is. Anyway, I tap quite a few wives around here nice and regular. I like to catch ’em in their late thirties, early forties. That’s the best age. They want it bad, and they know what they’re doing. They’ve finally put to rest whatever hang-ups their mamas stuffed into their heads. Of course this new generation ain’t got no hang-ups at all.”
Sometimes I wonder whether Max’s sexual obsession is genuine or part of a shtick he uses to distract people. Probably both. “Tell me about this data cache. Why can’t you find it? Where could it be?”
“If I knew that, would I be here? But I need to find it quick. If I don’t, I’m a dead man. Sooner rather than later.”
“That doesn’t sound like a negative outcome to me just now.”
He gives me a wolfish grin. “I bet not. But if I go down, you do, too. Rest assured of that.”
“Who would kill you, Max? Who would be so brazen?”
“Any of my more nervous partners. There’s a code in the Poker Club, unwritten but absolutely understood. You never put another member at risk. You never take food from another’s mouth. And you never fuck another man’s wife. That’s in order of priority. If I don’t neutralize this threat to the club, then one of my partners is going to neutralize me. It’s that simple.”
“If you become a target of your partners, does Jet lose the protection you’ve been giving her for the past few years?”