The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel (14 page)

Then the instant passed and she closed the door behind her.

No wonder he didn’t need the pill bottles stacked right next to him. She carried them with her and handed them out one by one. She was the one who always had to watch the clock and give him his next dosage. I felt sorry for the lady even if there wasn’t enough of her left to sympathize with.

“Who do you want me to rob, old Crowe?”

“A movie studio.”

“What?”

“Co-owned by Will and myself.”

“Co-owned with whom?”

“With each other.”

I thought about Norman Rockwell, Ozzie and Harriet, and
Father Knows Best
. “You want me to rob your own son?”

“One of our ancillary companies is All Hallows’ Eve Films, a production company dedicated to independent horror films. Slasher fare, mostly. Half-naked teenagers being butchered by mad killers.”

My breath hooked deep inside me and wouldn’t come loose. I
shut my eyes and thought of Collie killing kids. I heard their voices and I heard his. I opened my eyes. I stared at my grandfather and understood that he knew all about me and all about my brother.

“Classy,” I said.

“Don’t be petulant. It’s unbecoming.”

“You’ve got odd notions of what’s becoming.”

“It’s a profitable business.”

“Sure. And John’s shot some movies there.”

Crowe frowned. The wrinkles in his brow looked like they’d been carved in with a nail file. “He fancies himself an auteur. He wants to be hailed as the new Godard, another Bergman, as if the world hasn’t long passed those dreary surreal depressives by long ago. But he’s compulsive and driven. And to some extent he has style. Will indulges him in these whims despite the fact that he knows the truth. That John is a fool.”

“I’m getting the feeling you didn’t take him to the circus a lot when he was a kid. Never spoiled him with ponies and puppet shows.”

Crowe’s strong hand came up and waved away what I said. “But it keeps him out of greater troubles, I suppose“It wasnplas. At least he has something he cares about, and his work is mildly popular so it gives him some professional satisfaction.”

“And you make money off him.”

“It turns a small profit.”

Crowe had another hacking fit. I reached over and patted him on the back. When I touched him he drew away like I was knifing him.

I retreated, crossed my arms, and waited.

“The company is currently managed by Erik Blake,” Crowe continued when he could breathe again. “He’s an affiliate partner who’s overstepping his bounds. Blake’s a former low-level studio manager who got in trouble with methamphetamines and lost everything in L.A. He was a poor choice to be put in charge but Will doesn’t always think these things through. Blake was readily available, talented, and
supposedly living a life of sobriety. And perhaps he is. But he’s also cooking the books and skimming off the top and the bottom. He’s assigned distribution rights he doesn’t fully own.”

“Sounds like something the accountants and lawyers could settle.”

“I prefer a more discreet and hands-on approach.”

“Easy to say when they’re not your hands.”

He laughed at that. It wasn’t a feel-good laugh. It grated.

“Why do you even care about any of this?” I asked. “It hardly sounds like your bread and butter.”

“A good deal of my money is already tied up in other ventures, investments, and business opportunities.”

I could vibe what he was really saying. His normal channels had dried up on him and he relied more heavily on the good old red-blood Americana B and C movies than he wanted to. I wondered what all his New York and L.A. cronies with him in the photos on the wall might think of that fact.

“And what would I be stealing exactly?”

“Whatever you can find of value. Cash, contracts, master tapes.”

“Are those kinds of movies still shot on video?”

“No. I’m speaking of the digital masters. The flash drives.”

“You can’t steal computer files. You can copy them but you can’t vanish them. Not unless you want to blow the place up.”

“There’s a half-dozen films that haven’t been released yet. It’s been his way of leveraging me. Find them. Get me the copies. As you say, once the copies are out he loses his control of the situation.”

“Why? If it’s really yours and Will’s, why not go in and just take it? Why this dirty business?”

“Blake is … unpredictable. He may be dangerous.”

“But not for a fighter like me? Not for someone smart enough to stay out of prison?”

“Take care of the problem and you’ll be paid well.”

I moved around the room. I wanted a new angle. I wanted to see him in a different light. I stepped to the footboard.

He still looked hard as steel. He still looked like he wanted to scrape me off his boot heel.

“Why do you care?” I asked. this many times beforeetp

“Pardon?”

“Why do you care about an ancillary C movie business when you’ve been a major name in Hollywood and television for decades?”

He pulled a face. He didn’t have much practice in explaining himself. He just said to do something and usually got people to jump. His top lip curled and uncurled. I waited. So did he. I figured I had more time than he did. I was right.

“Times have changed, Terrier. I do very little business on the West Coast now, and Will’s track record has been spurious at best in recent years. His last two films were significant losses. As were mine. In this business you’re only as good as your last hit. And even that is forgotten very quickly. My last show won an Emmy for writing and it was still canceled by mid-season. It remains a commercial loss that continues to taint me. We need steady income. AHE turns a profit without a substantial investment on our part.”

“Doesn’t it cost you credibility?”

“No. A success is a success. Credibility and awards count for little. Perhaps even nothing.”

“So the ancillary business has become the primary source of income?”

“It’s an important revenue stream for the time being, and it’s ours. Besides, I don’t allow anyone to steal from me.”

I moved in closer and hovered over him like the angel of death. “Shouldn’t you be busy making amends and begging forgiveness from the Lord and all that?”

His eyes got darker and he showed true anger for the first time. I’d finally gotten under his skin. Sometimes it took a while but I always swung it in the end.

“Is that what your brother did?” Crowe asked. “You were with him at the end. How did he handle his death? Did he supplicate himself?”

He hadn’t, not even to me.

“How much cash will be on hand?” I asked.

“We’ve only recently ascertained that Blake’s been liquidating assets for months. Perhaps as much as a quarter million.”

I scoffed. I rarely scoffed and it felt good doing it. “No one keeps that kind of cash around. Unless it’s drug money. Is that really what you’re into, old Crowe?”

“Stop calling me that.”

So his name could get to him too. “That’s your species isn’t it? Crow? Your feathered, winged, egg-laying type of vertebrate?”

His lips were deep red with his blood, his face mottled by irritation.

“Or would you prefer I call you Pop-Pop?” I asked.

“No.” He drew the back of his hand across his mouth. A smear of pink was left on his knuckles.

“So why the hell did you mention killing people?”

“He has a bodyguard called Nox. He’s usually armed.”

On the ride home my mother watched the side
of my face as I jockeyed aggressively through traffic. It looked like it had been raining off and on all morning long, but I hadn’t noticed inside that house.

She had something to say. I had a lot of questions of my own. I wondered if I should tell her anything about Dale and the Rogues. I was going to find the pricks who’d pissed on my brother’s grave and kick fucking hell out of them.

I finally turned and met her eyes.

“He asked you to steal something, didn’t he?” she asked. “Pull some kind of grift?”

“Yes.” in a bikini and high heels."> l

“My father brushes on being a criminal.”

“All rich men do.”

“He’s embezzled and taken kickbacks and been investigated a few times. More than a few times.”

“And always cleared himself, I’m guessing.”

She let out a deep, small sound of exasperation. She shook her head slightly. She was having an intense argument with herself and both sides were losing. I knew the heart of it. She would be thinking how foolish she’d been to say,
Of course it matters. He’s always been my father. He’ll always be my father
.

The car was full of barometric pressure, as if a hurricane were about to wash us off the highway. We are all meant to tell our mothers the truth. Being in old Crowe’s presence had brought out the evil little boy in me.

The pressure built. The defroster was on high but couldn’t keep
up with our hot breath. She looked sidelong at me, then glanced away, then looked back. She fumbled for my cigarettes but was too annoyed to light one. She threw it into the foot well with a groan of disgust. “Did you agree?”

She was breaking a cardinal family rule. We didn’t talk about our larcenies, petty or otherwise. The Rands didn’t discuss plans with each other, unless we needed help pulling off the filch.

“Not exactly.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I could almost feel that other guy in the car with me. The one I’d been when I’d worked on the ranch for five years, trying to escape my family. That time was a blur but at least it had been straight. My mother had never wanted me to come home.

“Don’t do it, Terry,” she said. “I know it’s your nature. The nature we gave you. But don’t do it.”

“Ma—”

“They’re not your family. They’re not even my family anymore. I was very foolish to go back.”

She began to cry so hard that I had to take the next exit, park on the edge of the service road, and hold her for a while. She hadn’t had any idea what to expect from those people but it hadn’t been this.

“What did he say to you, Ma?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The wipers thumped in sync with my pulse. My ribs were starting to hurt again. I could feel a fever rising with the pain. The windshield began to fog over. “Tell me anyway.”

“He said he loved me. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t love anything anymore. My mother used to be a vivacious woman. She used to have so many talents and hobbies and such capacity in so many ways. But you saw her today.”

“I saw her.”

“She’s a ghost of herself. She couldn’t even look at me. She said nothing. Nothing. That’s my worth to her. To them.” Thl. The inside

We pulled up at home and I went in first while
she fixed her face in the rearview mirror. In the kitchen I popped more Percs. We still had hours to go before Dale’s play. It was her big night, a chance to show off a talent that hadn’t been bred in the bone.

My father watched television with Gramp, crumbling crackers into tomato soup. He ate a spoonful and then fed one to Old Shepherd. He saw the look on my face and gave an understanding grin.

He said, “Can you believe that bastard thought a second-rate security system would ever keep me out if I actually the only one I had leftndor wanted in?”

It was a very rare showing of ego in my dad, but I thought he had plenty of reason. It hit me right and I let out a laugh that made JFK roll over and look at me.

“Why didn’t you ever boost him?” I asked.

“No point,” he admitted. “The damage was already done.”

“But you walked around his den at three
A.M
. a few times.”

“Sure.”

“And why didn’t you ever tell me you were a racer?”

He thought about how to answer the question. Twice his lips began forming words but he stopped himself both times.

He finally let out a half chuckle. “It was a long time ago.”

Sometimes my father’s reticence annoyed the shit out of me. He went on feeding his old man, a sign of things to come. I wondered if the Donepezil was helping at all or if it was just a daily reminder of his oncoming illness. I’d sworn I would never let it happen to me. I’d promised myself that I’d take the easy way out, but I wasn’t sure if I had the guts. Jumping off a ledge was one thing. Jumping off because
you thought you might lose yourself five or ten years from now was another. And if you waited too long, you’d probably forget you were on the ledge at all.

I thought we could sit on the porch and I’d give him the entire rundown on what happened at the Crowes’ Nest. And he could tell me about the good old days of dragging down Ocean Parkway with his brothers.

But when my mother appeared he took one look at her face, put the bowl down, and followed her into their bedroom.

I thought, Wherever he goes at night, he’s not cheating on her.

I finished feeding Gramp and sat there staring through the window at the sky starting to show some blue. When he finished the bowl I wiped his beard and flipped the station back to cartoons. Gramp sat up a little straighter. I was eager to move. The Percs were doing their thing. My ribs didn’t hurt. I was a touch high. I kept wavering on whether I should pull a big rip-off and fuck over Crowe good.

I went up to my room and lay on the bed. JFK came with me. He got up on the mattress and put his front paws on my chest. The tape job was holding. The Percs put me all over the place. I thought I should pay Simon Ketch a visit. I thought I should juke Erik Blake and his sidekick Nox before they finished cleaning the studio out and burned the place to the ground. Could there really be a quarter mil on the premises of All Hallows’ Eve Films? If I brought that much money home what would I ever do with it?

JFK’s tongue lolled. He kept ratcheting his head at me. I must’ve been talking out loud again.

I phoned Darla and got her voice mail. I said something about getting together for dinner. I had difficulty expressing myself because I kept thinking she was with another man. Or selling books or yarn. I imagined her shag haircut wet with sweat. I grimaced. I wanted her. I thought I wanted her. I wanted to hear her voice. I felt a short
sharp stab of guilt and thought of Kimmy. I mooned. I twisted in the breeze. It was stupid but it was human.