Low Life (17 page)

He just had to hope that the Cadillac that had been following him was no longer there. He didn’t want whoever was driving it to be a witness to tonight’s activities. For all Simon
knew the guy worked for Zurasky. In fact, it seemed likely. Simon couldn’t think of anybody else who might want him followed.

If the Cadillac was there, Simon would have to ditch it before going to Zurasky’s office. He didn’t want to be followed, and he didn’t want to be stopped.

He stayed out of the light of the moon, sticking to shadows, as he walked through the night-quiet suburban neighborhood toward the Saab. As he slithered from shadow to shadow,
he kept an eye on the street, looking for the Cadillac. He didn’t see it.

He reached the Saab, used Jeremy’s keys to unlock the door, and slid inside. It smelled of stale cigarettes and flop sweat.

Though he’d merely been walking, he was breathing hard. Only a little over two weeks ago he had been a man who worked eight hours and then drank himself to sleep; he’d been a man who
talked to fewer than half a dozen people on any given day, and usually the same half dozen; a man whose days were so like one another that more than once he’d awakened on a Sunday – he
worked Saturdays – and driven to the office only to find it closed. And been disappointed. How was he supposed to fill these hours? The days and weeks changed, but his routine did not.

And now look where he was.

He slid the key into the ignition and started the car.

The radio blared at him, screaming out loud rock music, and he quickly shut it off.

Had he left it on? No. He didn’t like rock music. He only listened to acoustic blues. But still, maybe he’d been listening to—

It didn’t matter. He didn’t think it did. But then how could he know what mattered and what didn’t any more?

Everything couldn’t be significant.

Maybe there were messages for him in the rock song that was—

He closed his eyes. He breathed in and he breathed out. He opened his eyes and put the car into gear and drove toward the corner.

He was turning left onto Colorado when he saw the headlights come to life in his rear-view mirror. It was dark out, and the headlights were half a block behind him, but he thought they might
belong to the same Cadillac. It looked the same beneath the light of the moon. What light the thin sliver of the crescent moon refracted anyway.

After turning onto Colorado he watched his rear-view mirror to see what the other car did. It turned left a few seconds later, staying behind him.

He had to lose it before he started toward Zurasky’s place of business – if it was the car he thought it was.

A light in front of him turned red. He slowed the car to a stop at the intersection, found his cigarettes in his inside coat pocket, and lighted one.

The other car pulled up beside him on the right. It was definitely the same Cadillac.

Simon tried to get a look at the driver without being obvious. He stole several glances from the corner of his eye. He was a short man, his head a full six inches from the roof of the car. Simon
figured that made him about five and a half feet tall, three inches shorter than Simon himself. He had the build of a jockey. Simon put him at eight stone – a hundred and twelve pounds. He
was pale as a snake’s belly. He wore dark sunglasses despite the night. His greasy black hair hung down to his jaw, was cut straight there, and was tucked behind his ears. He looked straight
ahead, not even a glance in Simon’s direction.

A car horn honked. The light was green.

Simon gassed it.

At the next block Simon cut right and swerved across two lanes. He heard the Cadillac screeching to a stop behind him. He cut right again and found himself on another empty street. He pulled to
the curb and shut off his lights, letting the engine idle quietly while he sat in darkness, watching the street behind him in his side-view mirror.

The Cadillac drove by. The pale face of the driver hovered behind the side window, but the Cadillac simply went past.

After another moment of silence Simon made a u-turn and drove back out to the main street. Once he’d turned onto it, he flipped his headlights back on. All the way to the freeway he
glanced around him, expecting to see the Cadillac, but it seemed that he’d successfully lost it.

The strip mall was dark and the parking lot empty. Doors were bolted. Alarms were set. Simon didn’t know if Zurasky’s office was wired with one. He had never looked
for it and he had never seen one. Even if it was, he had thirty or forty minutes, unless a police cruiser happened to roll by or someone saw broken glass. Simon didn’t know how else he might
get inside; he was no lock picker. Unless he could get in through a window in the—

He got out of the car and walked around to the back alley, where several dumpsters sat. If he could get in through the back, that would save him the worry of witnesses. It looked like
Zurasky’s office window was half open. The question was whether he could get inside through it.

After a moment’s thought, he walked over to the dumpsters. It was tough work moving one of them, as the wheels didn’t roll very well and the thing was half-filled with garbage and
heavy. It reeked and when he started pushing it he put his left hand into something slimy and rancid-smelling. He pulled his hand away and shook off what was either noodles or maggots – it
was impossible to tell which – and then continued pushing. Once he had it against the wall beneath Zurasky’s open window, he climbed atop it. The plastic lids were slippery, and because
the dumpster’s back was higher than the front, he felt like he would slip backwards and fall. He didn’t.

Even on the dumpster, standing on tiptoe and reaching up, his fingers were nearly a foot shy of the window sill. He jumped up and punched through the screen and pulled it out. It fell on top of
him, a corner of the aluminum frame crashing into the top of his head before it clattered to the asphalt below. Fortunately the screen was light. Still, he slipped and fell onto his side on the
dumpster’s lid.

But the window was clear. There was no sound of alarm. He’d been worried there would be some kind of motion sensor attached to the window, but apparently not – unless it was a silent
alarm. He’d find out soon enough.

He got back onto his feet, jumped up, and found himself hanging from the window sill. The metal frame cut into the palms of his hands. His right hand started bleeding again and throbbing with
pain. He grunted and struggled to pull himself up. It was much more difficult than it looked. He hadn’t done any kind of exercise in years and his arms felt weak and thin. But he pulled with
his arms and kicked with his feet, scuffing the toes of his shoes. After a few minutes, his upper body was over the ledge, and he just lay there, breathing hard, window frame cutting into his
gut.

Once he’d got his breath back he climbed the rest of the way into Zurasky’s office.

He examined the window and decided there was no alarm attached to it, and then he pulled the shade closed and turned on the office light, illuminating the desk and the blue walls and carpet and
the vinyl chair and couch. He looked around for a file cabinet but didn’t see one. He thought it was probably in the front office, but his chest hurt from the physical exertion, so he decided
to sit down for a minute first. He looked through Zurasky’s desk. He found a bottle of vodka in the bottom right drawer. Vodka wasn’t usually his drink of choice, but it would do in a
pinch. Hell, mouthwash would do in a pinch – a little spearmint wine to pass the time. He unscrewed the cap, wiped the top of the bottle off with his overcoat’s sleeve, and took a
swallow. He closed his eyes.

Eventually his breathing went back down to normal and his chest stopped hurting.

After another swallow of vodka he got to his feet and went out to the front office. It was strange to be in here alone. It felt unnatural. There was no file cabinet out here either. All the
files must be digital. He walked to Ashley’s desk and sat down and moved the mouse around. The previously silent computer began to hum as its interior fan whirled, and the dark screen came
aglow.

After some clicking around he found what he thought were probably the patient files, but the folder was password-protected. He tried seven or eight passwords, guessing what Zurasky’s
thought processes might be for each, and each time he was wrong. He looked through Ashley’s drawer, hoping she had the password written down somewhere. He knew people often wrote their
passwords down so they were handy in case they forgot them themselves. He did the same thing at work, not that it would have taken a genius to guess 1910 – ‘s’ being the
nineteenth letter in the alphabet and ‘j’ being the tenth. Simon Johnson. He found a yellow notepad with the single word

written on it in red ink, and thought that might be the password, but when he tried it it got him nowhere. He was sure it was the password for something, but not what he
wanted.

Half an hour later – after more failed guesses and another swig (or three) of vodka – he climbed back out of the window. The only thing he had gotten out of it was Zurasky’s
home address.

He pulled his car to the curb in front of Dr Zurasky’s house. The windows were dark and only silence seeped through the walls.

He pushed open the car door and stepped out into the night.

Zurasky lived in a single-storey blue-stucco tract house that looked like it’d been built in the seventies. It was shaped like a cracker box on its side, and had thin windows with vertical
blinds, asphalt shingles on the sloped roof, and a flat yellow lawn with a small flowerbed butted up against the outer wall. The flowers in it were pink and purple and healthy despite the yellow
lawn. The sound of traffic hummed in the distance.

He walked to the front door, raised his hand to knock, dropped it, and raised it again.

He told himself this wasn’t like earlier. He would be asking the questions. This wasn’t a session – this was an interrogation, and he was in control. Not Zurasky.

He knocked on the door, and then listened, ear tilted toward the house. He thought he could hear an inner door squeaking open, then the sound of footsteps padding toward him.

‘Who – wha?’

‘It’s Jeremy Shackleford.’

‘Jeremy – oh.’ He was asleep still. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s—’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Don’t you think this can wait till—’

‘No. It can’t wait.’

‘How did you get my home add—’

‘Open the door.’

A sigh. The sound of various locks being unlatched. The door was pulled open and light splashed out onto the porch. Zurasky was on the other side. He wore blue pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His
hair was even wilder than it normally was. There were pillow creases embedded into the flesh of his right cheek. His eyes were red. He scratched at the end of his smoothly rounded-off stump, and
stepped aside, leaving the doorway empty for Simon.

‘Come on in, Jeremy. Let’s talk.’

The living room was long and narrow. A white couch sat in the middle of it atop a white carpet surrounded by white walls on which abstract paintings hung. The coffee table was
glass and had issues of psychiatry and science magazines sitting on it. Various wood sculptures sat in the corners – giraffes and elephants and something that might have been a monkey
climbing a tree.

‘How did you get my home address?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I’d like to know.’

‘I broke into your office.’

Zurasky nodded slowly, acting as if that surprised him not at all.

‘And your hand?’

‘Garbage disposal accident.’

Another slow nod.

‘Do you want coffee?’

‘Do you have whiskey?’

‘I have whiskey. I’m not giving you any. Would you like a coffee?’

Simon nodded.

‘Have a seat.’ Zurasky gestured toward the white couch. ‘I’ll be back.’

Simon walked to the couch and sat down. The cushions were firm and uncomfortable.

From the kitchen, the sound of the microwave running, and then a ding. A minute later Zurasky came walking out of his kitchen with two cups of coffee. He was holding them both by their handles
with his good hand and balancing them on the stump of his bad arm. It was the instant kind. There was a swirling scrim of half-melted crystals and milk foam on the surface of the liquid. Steam rose
from the cups. Simon’s cup was blue and Zurasky’s was red. There was a chip on the top of Simon’s, the white porcelain stained brown by coffee.

‘Thank you.’

Zurasky nodded. Then he walked to a white chair and sat down. He sipped his coffee.

‘What is this about, Jeremy?’

Simon looked down at the coffee mug, decided that he didn’t trust it, and set it down on the glass coffee table without so much as a sip. That surface scrim didn’t look right. He
picked up a pen from the table and thumbed at the button, making the tip go in and out of the plastic casing. The pen advertised an anti-depressant whose name Simon doubted he could pronounce.

‘Jeremy?’

Simon looked up.

‘I know you’re involved in this,’ he said finally.