TWENTY-FOUR
“Hello, sweetheart,” Jack Kantke said.
The wind off the water stirred the flame-vine over the door. The night air was cool. He stood in the doorway in a white short-sleeve shirt over black beltless slacks and black oxfords. There was a cigarette in his hand. The smoke curled up his arm.
He had aged. But not enough.
“Hello,” Jean said.
“Come in.”
The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room was of the ocean crossed by the light of the full moon. The large room was sparsely furnished with a nautical theme. There was a loud ticking from an unseen clock.
And a real live Jolly Girl stood in the middle of the room. Or so it seemed. The hair, the eyes, the heels, the sawed off pants they used to call Capri. Lynn Goreck smiled politely at Jean, her hands clasped in front of her.
Jean sat in a chair.
Her father sat across from her.
Lynne leaned on the arm of Jack Kantke’s chair, her hand on his shoulder, a possessive.
“Would you like anything?” he said.
Jean shook her head.
“Could you get me some water,” he said to Lynne.
The girl gave him a flip look and stepped away.
Jean couldn’t stop staring at her father.
“You saw me someplace, didn’t you?” he said.
She realized for the first time that he was very moved at seeing her. He looked as if he was about to cry.
“A year ago,” Jean said. “I was down at Balboa Island. I saw Carey. I thought he was still living in Arizona. I followed him. I was about to go up to him—”
“And you saw me.”
Lynne came back with a glass of water, no ice. She set it down on the arm of his chair. Kantke looked at her, a look meant to send her away. She turned and left the room.
“She’s Vivian’s daughter?” Jean said when she was gone.
Kantke nodded.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come see me,” he said.
“So Vivian knows? About you?”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t understand,” he said. “She thinks Lynne is involved with your brother. Vivian’s never seen me.” Kantke looked over at the doorway Lynne had stepped through. “I’ve found people of your generation more accepting of something like this,” he said.
He smiled that half smile.
“Or maybe she just thinks I’m insane.”
The ticking continued. Kantke looked at the source, a large ship’s clock on the wall, then back at Jean.
“I didn’t kill your mother,” he said.
They both listened to the clock. Jean didn’t let him off, offered nothing to help him.
“You look so much like her,” he said and it caught in his throat. “It’s not easy, seeing you.”
She said nothing.
He stood, stood over her for a moment. He seemed as tall, for a moment, as a father seems to a child.
“I don’t know what your investigator has told you . . .”
She waited.
He stepped over to the windows, walked toward his reflection, considering it from head to toe. It would not have surprised Jean if he had walked through the glass into the night, leaving the reflection to come forward to speak to her.
He stopped at the glass.
“How’d you find a detective who was a Sailor?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s what we call ourselves.”
“How long have you known I had someone looking into this?”
The way he smiled—she could see his face in the glass—made her wonder what powers he might have, how much he knew, what he could do, what they could do.
“I saw him on the bluff, yesterday, watching the house,” he said.
“How did you know that he was—”
“We can spot each other. What has he told you?”
“Not very much. Nothing about this.”
“How could he, once he was in love with you?”
He still looked out at the water, like Jimmy in Malibu.
“Maybe you should explain it to me.”
He took a cigarette from one pocket and a gold lighter from the other and lit it.
“Death,” he said, with the tone of voice fathers use to explain things to their children, “doesn’t end everything. Not always. Sometimes something is unfinished in a life and this happens. Someone is left behind until the unfinished thing is finished.”
He turned to look at her.
“I was executed. They buried my body. A few days later, I was walking the streets again.”
She could walk out the door, but she didn’t. She met him where he was, continued in the scene as if he’d just said he’d been sick, been treated, rose up off his sickbed, healed. In that way she surprised herself more than he’d surprised her. She felt very strong. So this was the kind of knowledge that made you stronger.
“Is that what’s been left unfinished,” Jean asked, “this business about Mother?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We never know what it is.”
He blew out smoke. “It’s not like we hear voices from the clouds, telling us what to do. There are rules. We just don’t know what they are.”
He smiled. But then it was gone. He walked back to his chair and picked up the glass and drank the water, all of it. He looked at the big clock again, seemed as if he had things to do, places to go. He put down the glass and stepped closer and stood over her again, casting a shadow over her, as he meant.
“You’ve inadvertently threatened some powerful people,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”
“They were responsible for Mother’s murder.”
“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“It was a long time ago, Jeanie.”
“They killed a woman who was living in the house,” Jean said. “Bill Danko’s daughter. They’re killing people now.”
Kantke lifted a hand to stop her.
“There are killings every day, every week, every year for a thousand years in all directions. You have to stop this, sweetheart.”
He looked at the clock again. “You should go. Go back to the house at Point Dume. You’ll be safe there. They won’t follow you out of the city. This all will be over soon.”
Jean stood, but not to leave.
“Why? What do you mean? What happens now?”
He held out his hand to her, pulled her close to him. With his touch, the reality of it hit her, unreal as it was. She felt as if someone had pulled the plug on her power source. She was in free fall. Maybe now the floor beneath her would open up and she’d fall through to some other unthinkable other world. Long seconds passed to the ticking of the ship’s clock.
“I remember your aftershave,” she said in his arms.
“Aqua Velva,” he said. “Your mother always hated it.”
Kantke held her tightly, as if he would never see her again, breathing in her scent, his eyes on the round moon out the window, which looked like the head of a hammer.
Now she had a secret.