Beware Beware (5 page)

“My friend,” he said, halting suddenly, as if his tongue tripped against the roof of his mouth. “I found my friend Joe.”

He didn't have to tell me that something was wrong with Joe. The way he relayed the discovery was message enough. After all, finding a friend is rarely an unpleasant surprise.

“Jesus,” I said, gulping nothing. “Is he dead?”

Jamie clamped his eyes shut and matched his top and bottom teeth like puzzle pieces in a picture of pain. Without a word, he turned toward the elevators, and I followed.

I followed almost without thinking, and looking back, later, I realized that despite my premonitions it didn't occur to me to leave. I knew I was choosing to walk into something awful, and I knew that it wasn't a mess I'd signed up for. But Daphne had asked for a favor, and I wanted to shoulder the weight of her dependence. And then there was Jamie, a man who'd been kind to me once, who I'd watched from a distance until his life had brought him to this. He led the way into that elevator assuming I'd follow, not out of presumption, I thought, but because he would have done the same for anyone in need. I saw his shivering back and felt attached to it by a hundred little ties.

He forced the doors closed, clapped both hands over his mouth and dragged his cheeks down, revealing the wet red flesh in his eyes. He shook his head and for a second I thought he was going to cry. Instead, he lowered his hands and took a deep, gasping breath, a single cycle of hyperventilation. “I just found…” He let out a screech through clenched teeth, like he was working through an attack of sharp physical pain. “Everything is fucked.”

I wished I had a drink to dilute the flavor of his misery. “I know the feeling.”

He touched a key card to the elevator panel and pressed an unmarked button beyond the highest indicated floor. The ride up was swift and airless.

The doors opened to a short hallway and a grander set of doors. Jamie keyed us in, and for a moment, I forgot we were in a hotel. We stood in the foyer of a modern mansion, decorated like a multimillionaire's bachelor pad. White furniture, impractical and attractive; white, furry rugs on a varnished hardwood floor. It would have been some magazine editor's vision of edgy, stylish, moneyed, masculine interior design, if it weren't for the cans, bottles, and dirty glasses covering the numerous small tabletops. Several parts of the floor glowed ominously, glazed and mucky with spilled liquid of uncertain origin. There were traces of white powder on a glass coffee table. The room smelled of cologne and bodies and cigarette smoke.

“Is anyone else here?” I asked.

“No. They were all gone when I woke up.” He shook his head and rubbed his wrists against his thighs, started clawing at a small rip at the knee of his jeans. “Is it freezing in here?”

He was trembling, and I felt something sad and protective stir deep in my chest. I wanted to tuck him in and let him sleep for a long time. Instead, I asked, “Where is he?”

He crossed his arms and brought one shaking hand up to cover his eyes. His lips curled broadly into the shape of a rigid smile, and he sobbed. The sobs left his open mouth with the sudden ugly volume of new sneakers squeaking against a waxed floor, and they came faster and faster until he had to sit down to keep from falling.

I sat with him on a well-stuffed couch, moving clothing and crumbs and other detritus from the cushions. I hesitated for just a few seconds before touching my hand to his back, and he didn't shrink away, just let his body heave under my palm.

I thought of the strangeness of sitting here, watching a man I'd just met break down with the abandon of a child. It seemed fitting, somehow, like I was his dark guardian angel, accruing trust and familiarity in my two weeks of surveillance. I knew many things about him his own mother wouldn't know.

“Fuck,” he said. “I … everything is shit. Everything is fucked.”

I patted his back lightly, like I was coaxing a baby to sleep. “It'll be okay,” I said, and felt like a liar.

“I—I can't go back up there.”

“Are you sure he's dead?”

He rocked and made choked sounds of affirmation.

“Did you check his pulse?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Couldn't. Couldn't touch him.”

“Oh Jesus Christ. Did you call 911?”

“No, I—I called Daphne. She said you would know what to do.”

I cursed silently, the air of it breaking inside my cheeks. “Jamie, if he's still alive, we have to call 911. Have to, understand?” I stood up, willing courage into my every muscle. “I'll go check, okay? Where is he?”

He squeezed his eyes together and small wrinkles emerged all around them. “Upstairs,” he said. “There's—there's blood.”

That made me stop for a second, but before I could start following up, Jamie was sobbing again. I turned toward the stairs that led up to the rest of the penthouse. I steadied myself; I had seen dead men before, and I was in better shape than Jamie was, anyway.

I took the stairs slowly, gripping the cold metal of the rail. The penthouse was huge, and its emptiness rang in my ears like the soundtrack to a slasher movie. When the second floor came into view, I took it in with some wonder. Where the downstairs was trashed by the revels of many, the upstairs looked ready to show to any wealthy buyer: a glass coffee table weighted with magazines; a tremendous, expensive-looking modern chandelier. I studied the peaceful effects of this outer room, and walked in to see a set of silver curtains, parted but not tied back, hanging like a luminous gate, left open. Beyond them was a bedroom, the bed made.

I was looking for a movie star with more coke in his veins than blood. If he wasn't near the party, chances were good he was in a bathroom.

And that's where I found him.

He lay naked in the biggest bathtub I'd ever seen, a titanium gray free-standing novelty shaped like a deep soap dish. It was part of the master bedroom, no wall between, a bachelor-pad feature for the bold seducer. Tilley was very much alone—by the looks of it, that was the way he wanted to go.

I blinked hard and got closer. There was no smell of death, no smell of anything at all. The bathtub looked like a sterile thing, hewn from a block of cold metal. Only the blood told the story, the red in the water thick enough to mask his nakedness. His head and neck rose out of the water, his eyes frozen half open, casting a milky stare over the tainted bath.

This was no overdose, and it didn't take a Sherlock to deduce as much. I walked up to the body with unease growing in my belly. Halting, I lowered two fingers to touch the skin of his exposed neck and looked, with diligence, for a pulse. There was nothing there, no report of life, just cold skin going waxy with its own irrelevance. My fingers smeared with a film of death, I lowered my palm to the surface of the water. No heat rose, and with one dread-filled fingertip, I tested the bath. The surface broke, and the bloodied water wrapped around my finger. The temperature matched the room, and all at once I felt that the room was very cold.

I looked hard at the crimson water, tried to find the shape of the body inside, but the blood thickened the bath to a gruesome opacity. I swallowed hard and lowered my hand into the water, my breath skipping as I picked up Joe Tilley's dead arm. I heard myself let out a squeal as I extracted it from the water. It was heavy and rigid, and as I raised it diluted drops of blood dripped onto the tile floor. A deep gash ran from his wrist to an inch above his elbow. I stared at it with nausea and somewhere, a tingle of fascination.

I didn't need to know whether there was a twin wound on the other arm—the artery was severed, the blood loss from the one wrist more than sufficient. Jamie and I were hours late. It couldn't have taken long for Joe's life to pour out.

An open doorway led to a full bathroom, and I washed hands and arms with Shakespearean vigor, long after the watercolor strands had swirled down the drain.

I scanned the bathroom and without much effort, found pill bottles and traces of cocaine. The counter was otherwise undisturbed, the towels folded, the small hotel toiletries yet unused. I spent a few minutes searching for a note, but found nothing. There was no weapon in sight. Chances were, it was sunk inside the bath with the naked dead man. I felt little desire to find it.

*   *   *

It took Jamie another ten minutes to compose himself when I came downstairs. I smoked a couple of Lucky Strikes without asking permission, and when he was stable enough to communicate, Jamie copped one, too. What did cigarettes in the living room matter, after all, with a dead body upstairs?

“Are you high?” I asked. “Right now?”

He put his head in his hands and nodded.

I almost laughed. There was Daphne's answer, packaged in that sad little nod. Not that I'd needed it, sitting right next to him—it was clear enough he was high as a saint.

“Before or after you found him?” I asked.

“Before,” he wheezed through his fingers. “God, I'm so fucked. Everything is fucked.”

“Okay, calm down. When did you find him?”

“Half an hour ago? I don't even know, man. I called Daphne right after, and we talked for, maybe, fifteen minutes.”

I nodded. Tilley had been cooling in that bath long before Jamie had found him. “Where were you before that? Here?”

“I have my own room. We come here sometimes, to hang out, party and stuff, and it's big enough that I get my own room.” He looked around the penthouse with devastated awe. “He pays for it. Obviously,” he added, head sagging between his knees.

“And you woke up—”

“We were partying last night, and it went pretty late. I don't know when I woke up this morning, or afternoon or whatever, but I went back to sleep without leaving my room. I just woke up again and when I went to see how he was doing…” He broke off with a dry sob into his palms.

I watched his hung head and his trembling shoulders, collapsed in toward his neck. Part of me felt like I knew him, and something in me answered his grief. A lock of wavy hair bobbed up and down by his ear, and I wanted, quite badly, to smooth it away.

“I had a younger sister who killed herself.” The words spilled out, almost coolly. I heard them leave my mouth with something akin to surprise. “Almost ten years ago now.”

He sniffled, looking at me with mournful interest. “I'm sorry.”

“It's a terrible thing, I know. You can't blame yourself. It was his decision. You don't have to live with it.” I buttoned my mouth against the other possibility. “Jamie—to your knowledge, was Joe Tilley depressed?”

“I don't know. He had his problems, yeah, but I don't know.”

I sat down and closed my eyes, let the surreal texture of the afternoon settle around me.

“We have to call this in, Jamie. We'd better let the hotel know, too. This is serious.”

He turned so white I thought he'd have to faint or puke to go whiter. “Oh Jesus. I have to call his manager.”

He stood up and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. As the ring tone played in his ear, he looked at me with fear and nerves collecting in his eyes.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

“Oh God, please, no,” he said, and he grabbed at my shoulder like it was the only hold on a steep and dangerous mountain.

*   *   *

Alex Caldwell stood with his eyes closed and the bridge of his nose pinched between the fingers of a small hairy hand.

“Jamie,” he said, his voice muffled in his forearm. “Who the fuck is this?”

He'd been in the penthouse for fifteen minutes without acknowledging my existence. To be fair, he had other things on his mind. I thought he might cry at the sight of his famous client, dead and ugly, but he refused to look at the body. Instead of sadness, he projected a volcanic anger. Jamie shrank from him, avoiding its spew.

“Juniper Song,” I answered instead. “I'm a friend.”

I put out a hand, and he pretended not to see it.

He was a stocky man, about five-eight, barrel-chested, with two-hundred-dollar jeans bunched tight around the crotch in an intentional cowboy way. His hair was a pale butter blond, gelled into soft peaks by someone with expertise. He looked like the kind of man who could cook a good meal, but would only get started if there were no women around to do it for him. There was no ring on his finger—I guessed he was in his late thirties, and that his greatest love was a very nice car.

“Jamie,” he repeated. “Who is she?”

Jamie glanced at him with trepidation, looking small and childish before the shorter man. “She's a friend.”

“Yeah? And what's she here for?”

Jamie turned to me and gave me a helpless shrug. “I…”

I'd almost forgotten that I wasn't his friend at all, that I was a hired probe sent to watch him by his girlfriend, an entity somewhat hostile to his interests. It was true that I'd become fond of him, but that was my own doing. I shrugged back at him, let him know that he could say what he pleased.

“She works for a private investigator,” he mumbled.

Alex cupped a hand to one ear and blinked. “What?”

“A private investigator.”

“You're fucking kidding me.”

“It's a long story.”

Alex looked at me and put one pudgy finger in biting distance of my face. “What are you, working for some newspaper? Lawyer?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

He was so close and so angry I thought he might spit in my mouth. I felt my own ire rise to meet him. “None of your business. Would you please get out of my face?”

“Get out,” he demanded. “This is no place for an outsider.”

I looked at Jamie. He squirmed, but I knew he wouldn't insist on my staying. I didn't like bending to the will of this odious man, but he was right: Joe Tilley was nothing to me.

I went down to the lobby and sipped a rye while I processed the events of the afternoon. This job was turning out to be more interesting than I'd expected. In the investigation business, this was rarely a good thing.