“Jet, calm down—”
“Me? Will you do all that?” she asks, her voice cold. “Swear to me you will.”
“Jet, I’ll deal with it. I’ll call you when it’s done.”
“Don’t do anything crazy, Marshall. Nothing noble. Think about Kevin. Okay?”
Unbelievably, my iPhone rings while I’m trying to get off the burner phone. The screen says arthur pine, atty.
“Jet, I’ve got to go. Pine’s calling.”
“Good. Tell Arthur to get Claude for you.”
I pocket the burner and answer the iPhone. “Arthur, I’m sorry. I was on another call, but I was about to call you.”
“I saved you the trouble.”
“Look, about the club’s offer . . . I need to talk to you about one issue in particular.”
“You can throw away your Christmas list.”
Pine took too much enjoyment in saying that for me to mistake his meaning. “What’s happened?”
“The offer’s off the table.”
“Because I took longer than an hour?”
“That didn’t help, but that’s not it. Circumstances have changed. Claude told you they might.”
“What changed?”
“We’ve become aware of a certain video.”
Oh, hell—
“A video that, if it were made public, could put a very close friend of yours in a homicidal state of mind.”
They think they’ve got me by the balls now. They think they don’t have to give up anything, or help anybody, to get their crimes buried. I can’t believe I even considered making a deal with these bastards.
“We still need that cache,” Pine says. “We need everything you have, as soon as you can get to the bank.”
“Go to hell, Arthur.”
“Listen to me, Marshall. This is life and death for you.”
The only coherent thought I can hold in my mind is that before I do anything else, I need to have the conversation with Paul Matheson that I should have had three months ago.
“Did you hear me?” Pine presses. “Where are you?”
“Go fuck yourself, Arthur.”
Chapter 33
It’s been a long time since I felt real fear. In our insulated lives we only brush up against it, usually when confronting medical symptoms that suggest a mortal disease process. Raw, paralyzing fear is something you forget as soon as possible yet instantly recall when it hits again. That’s what I feel when I approach my office at the Watchman, knowing Paul Matheson is waiting inside to question me about his wife.
The mere sight of his F-250 outside the building sets something thrumming in my chest—not merely the prospect of confrontation, which is certain, but of violence. I feel a sense of foreboding that Max spoke truly in my kitchen: that the fight we avoided on that golf course almost thirty years ago is about to happen. Why? Maybe because thirty years ago, Paul had betrayed Jet a dozen times himself.
Today he’s married to her.
The moment I enter the building, I become aware of an unusual quiet, which tells me that at some level my employees perceive some threat, if not outright danger. Ben Tate falls into step beside me at the pressroom door.
“Bad vibes in your office. Worse than those guys from this morning.”
I keep walking down the narrow hall. “And?”
“He asked me if I’d seen his wife in the building recently.”
Ben was never slow on the uptake. “And you said . . . ?”
“I thought I saw her here after Max was arraigned yesterday, but I might have been mistaken. She’s in and out a lot, talking to reporters. Did I screw up?”
“No. It doesn’t matter.” It’s odd how willing people are to cover for you, even if they’re not sure why they’re doing it. “Can you hold something for me, Ben?”
“Sure.”
I take out my burner phone, mute the ringer, then pass it to him. “I use this with only one source. If it rings, ignore it.”
“Got it.”
“One more thing.” I reach into the small of my back, then hand him my pistol.
His eyes go glassy, and both of us stand awkwardly holding the gun. “Shit, man,” he breathes. “Is it loaded?”
“Yeah, but there’s no round in the chamber. It’s all right. Just put it in your office.”
After staring at the ugly but functional pistol for a few seconds, he says, “Okay. Good luck.” He clumsily stuffs the Walther into the back of his pants, then pockets the phone and veers off toward his office.
I feel a primal urge to run as I reach for my doorknob, but that’s a childish impulse. The truth is, as I drove into town from the Indian Village, I felt more and more certain that further deception would be stupid, as well as an insult to Paul. Even if I manage to convince him that his suspicions are groundless today, the truth will eventually come out.
The moment I open my office door and see my old friend sitting slumped at my desk, I realize confession would be a mistake. Paul is forty-seven years old—one year older than I—but today he looks fifty-seven. Only two days ago, in the Prime Shot tent at the industrial park, he seemed to have the glow of youth. He was drinking then, of course, which probably gave him some color, and the midday sun cast a youthful glow. Maybe most telling, I never really focused on him long.
Today there’s nowhere to look but at each other. And what I see is a man deprived of sleep and peace, haunted by demons, doubting everything he’s ever believed or done. The contrast with his father hits me like a gut punch. Max always looks fifteen years younger than his age; Paul, a decade older. This has the unnerving effect of making them look more like siblings than father and son. More trenchant, though, is my sudden conviction that Paul has not come here to learn the truth, but to hear me deny that I’m sleeping with his wife. There is surely anger in him, but what I sense above all else is fear. Crippling dread.
“What’s going on, man?” I ask. “My editor texted me you were here. I’m so sorry about your mom. I don’t even know what to say.”
Paul waves his hand as though I’ve mentioned something of no importance.
“Does this have something to do with Buck?” I ask. “Or the Poker Club?”
He shakes his head and stands, his eyes cloudy with drink or confusion.
“Are you okay?” I press.
He laughs as he comes around the desk, but the sound contains no humor. “I’m fine. Not getting much sleep, is all.”
“You look rough. You want to talk about it?”
“Did Jet call you?” he asks, sitting on the front of my desk.
“When?”
“Last thirty minutes or so. To tell you I was coming?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He nods slowly. “Mind if I look at your cell phone?”
Maybe I misread his state of mind when I came in. “Not at all. Here you go.” I take my iPhone from my pocket and hand it to him. “My password is 052772.”
“Your birthday.”
“Yep.”
He enters it, then starts scrolling through my recent calls. “You ought to use a tougher one than that.”
“Nothing to hide.”
Another wretched chuckle. “We’ve all got things to hide, bro. Mind if I look at a few texts?”
Shit. “Knock yourself out.”
As he scans several text threads, I wonder if he’s armed. Of course he is, I think, seeing how his Levi’s ride above his left shoe. He’s probably carrying a small automatic in that ankle holster, just like his father. Not that Paul would need that to kill me. He’s quite capable of doing it with his hands. After about a minute of studying my phone, he straightens up and hands it back to me. “This your only cell phone?”
“Paul, what is this? You in the CIA now?”
He looks at the floor for a couple of seconds, then takes out his iPhone, presses a button, and holds it out so that I can see a photograph displayed on its screen. The image has the pixelated graininess that results from being zoomed to the maximum, but I can clearly see Jet hugging me on the edge of my patio. This is the image Max shot yesterday from the trees behind my house. Jet’s back is to the camera. One of my arms is wrapped around the small of her back, while my other hand cradles the base of her neck. It doesn’t look very platonic. If I weren’t several inches taller than she, the pose would have looked like a kiss.