Son of Destruction (17 page)

Where he was listening for footsteps, drawers being rifled,
something
, the sound he did hear was so subtle that at first he couldn’t identify it. It was . . . Walker shrank into the shadow of the fridge while his mind scurried here, there. It was . . .

The slither of glossy pages. Slowly, he emerged, silent and insubstantial: just one more ghost of the past in this old house. Poised in the doorway, Walker studied the intruder kneeling with his back to the kitchen where he stood, absorbing the set of the kid’s head, the whorl in his sandy hair, the concentration with which he studied the book on the floor in front of him. Like a high school time capsule,
The
Swordfish
lay open, disgorging the past.

Him
, Walker thought, riveted by an unaccountable pressure on the heart.
Me.

He caught his breath as if to speak.

There was no time for discovery and confrontation, no time for Walker Pike and this kid to face off and say what they had to say, because out there in the damaged trunk of Walker’s Beemer, Brad Kalen came awake. Walker’s mouth opened; looking down at the bent head of the stupendously vulnerable new person in his life, he was on the verge when the banging and howling began, fucking Brad.

The kid’s head came up.

The night cracked and Walker turned into something else. Fucking Brad. Fury boiled up.
Get out of here before
. . . He had to go! In a miracle of compression, Walker turned and left before the kid could turn and discover him.

Shit!
His heart shuddered.
Shit,
he thought, without being clear exactly what he thought he was escaping.
That was close.

They rode to the party in Chape’s Escalade. It made things easier for Bobby, coming in.

With Chape walking point and Stitch and Buck flanking him, it’s almost like the old days. He is aroused by the stir they create even now, after so long. Women Bobby used to know turn, touching dyed hair and rearranging their faces at the sight of him. The ripple swells into the wave he and his main men made back in senior year, stalking the corridors in torn football jerseys and jeans that had gone white at the knees and over the bulge at the crotch. Kids fell away like the Red Sea, making a path for the chosen ones because he and his cadre owned the school. Now here they are again, four good buddies – too bad about Brad . . . No. He’s glad he eluded them, given that Brad when he’s boiled is an ugly thing. And Bobby? There are times when he trips on one of the Twelve Steps but mostly he’s OK. Good, in fact.

Here in the grand ballroom of the Fort Jude Club, it’s as though the bad things in his life never happened. The grappling hooks release his heart and he forgets how old he is and how long it’s been. People he was afraid to see again light up. For the first time in a long time Bobby Chaplin is a kid again. He sizes up the women like an impulse shopper scanning soup can labels, thinking,
I can have any girl in this room
, the problem being that the ones he can have are no longer girls.

Oh, there are plenty of women. Dozens of foxy twenty- and thirty-somethings gift-wrapped in strappy little dresses sail past without seeing him. Like the surly teenagers with nose rings and tongue studs removed for the event and silky shifts designed to expose their precious tats, they’re all depressingly young.

Well
,
he thinks,
fair’s fair
.

Then there are the women he knows. Betsy Cashwell is as fit and cute as she ever was, but growing up in strong Florida sunlight isn’t just bad for these women, it’s a catastrophe. She looks like a white raisin now. Cathy Rhue’s put on weight and she’s not the only one. It’s sad! Guys have gone bald or run to fat like Stitch and Sammy Kristofferson, who did both, and the thin ones look wasted and insecure.

You’d think an atom bomb just hit Fort Jude and when these people walked out of the ashes they were old, cardboard cutouts of people he used to know. In high school he imagined rich inner lives for them, but now he has to wonder. Then he catches them squinting at him like photographers matching negatives to prints, and thinks,
Do I look that bad?
Does he?

‘Dude.’ Chape snags his elbow. ‘Meet the blushing bride.’

Poor kid! Patty Kalen and the fiancé stand fixed under the oleander trellis like plaster dolls waiting to be plopped on a wedding cake. Waiting for the F.O.B. Patty’s smile has been set for so long that the surface is about to crack.

‘Why Patty,’ Bobby says, noting that her hands are slick with the sweat of too many well-wishers, ‘you don’t know me, but I knew your dad.’

Reloading the smile, she says miserably, ‘Oh.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It just pops out. He covers his mouth.

Brad is famous, and not in a good way. Patty acknowledges it with a nod. ‘This is Stuart, my fiancé. He’s from Atlanta. And Stuart, this is . . .’

‘Bob Chaplin.’ His gift to the girl is not shaking her hand. ‘Your mother was a wonderful person.’ Young as she is, Patty is weary, weary. Her lips move in response, shaping a silent,
I know.

‘Chape Bellinger.’ Chape inserts himself with that smile. The fiancé is awed by the high sheen of prosperity, but by the time he extends his hand to shake, Chape has moved on to shinier pastures. To spare him embarrassment, Bobby takes it.

‘Bob,’ he says, shaking firmly. ‘Bob Chaplin. Goldman Sachs.’

The fiancé has one of those soft, smooth faces, like the mask of an unused baby. He says, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr . . .’ and hands him off as the bride’s sorority sisters strike. Worn thin by waiting, Patty whirls and falls into their group hug with a grateful shriek.

Damn Brad
, Bobby thinks, and not for the first time.
Damn him for everything.

He washes up in a stagnant corner near the bar, watching bartenders pour refills. He won’t deny that he’s getting off on the fact that he’s dry, has been for almost two years and, like Chape and Buck and everybody else here, Stitch is getting loaded.

Stitch downs his double. ‘Did I tell you I lost a million bucks?’

‘Shit,’ Bobby says. ‘At least you can cover it.’

Stitch grunts. ‘Not any more. Gonna have to go Chapter Eleven soon.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Don’t be thinking it happened overnight.’ He pats his empty pocket – he used to smoke. ‘It was the alligators. Supposed to make our fucking fortune.’

‘Alligators.’ In high school they drove out to the reptile ranch at three a.m. Brad made them wake up Earl Havens so they could make Earl wrestle the alligator, which he did for tourists on weekends to help his dad. Earl was humiliated. He didn’t want anyone at school to know. Bobby and Stitch made Brad back off before Earl lost it and broke down in front of the girls. Just remembering makes him sad.

‘Alligator backpacks. Alligator boots, bags, alligator skin wallets. Do you know how much people pay for these things?’

‘High-end,’ Bobby offers.
Vicious bastard, Brad.

‘They’re worth thousands,’ Stitch says mournfully. ‘You get a fortune for the hides. I went to Louisiana to see the ranch.’ He lights up like an inflatable Santa. ‘Bobby, I held that egg while my alligator hatched! It came to life in my hands!’

‘Oh, great.’
Oh God
.

‘I was in deep by the time we were done. Breeding, monthly charges, herd of vicuñas, feed ’em with the meat, sell the fleece for coats. It was a win-win, the ranch took care of everything, it would amortize when my gators grew up. We were close to the big payday when the lady called from the ranch. Thermostat busted in my sector. Do you believe my little fuckers all boiled to death?’

‘That’s terrible.’

Stitch brightens. ‘Shit, Katrina. I would’ve lost ’em anyway.’

‘Yeah well, we all have our losses,’ Bobby says.

Then Stitch’s grin splits wide open. ‘Fuck, it was a scam.’

Bobby turns, distracted by laughter – clear, a little too loud. Nenna is spinning on the dance floor. Her face hasn’t gone to hell and her body hasn’t either – the girl he could have had in high school, he realizes, if he hadn’t been wrecked in love with Lucy Carteret. Lovely Nenna, out there whirling on her own.

Buck sidles close enough to mutter in his ear. ‘Trouble in the marriage.’ He hocks and swallows. ‘Husband’s two-timing her with his sister or some damn thing.’

If there’s a moment, Chaplin, this is it. The way things are for her, the way she is tonight, he could probably start the conversation and she’d be his, but miserable as she looks, abandoned on the dance floor, he can’t.

Buck says, ‘’Nother drink?’

‘Not right now.’

He just can’t.

God he hates this. It will end the way these parties always do: personal disasters interwoven with thank-yous and reproaches, somebody crying in the coat room, everybody saying what a good time they had, an orgy of regret. God he wants to leave. Soon, he promises himself. When the band comes back from break I’ll go out front and have Marco get me a cab.

He would have, too, but a human infernal machine slams into the bandstand before he can give it a name. The fast-moving, flailing tangle scatters chairs and music stands, toppling the microphone in a rush of static and clashing metal with one man howling like a vocalist straight from hell, and Bobby shouts in relief. ‘Finally!’

It’s . . . It’s . . .

It looks like two bears grappling, like a baggy, snarling grizzly locked to a swift, lean black bear, the two bodies tangled and bucking so violently that the racket clears the floor. Men back away and their wives shrink behind them with little shrieks, leaving Bobby alone at the base of the bandstand as the struggle ends. The lean gladiator tries to haul the fat one to his feet and right the microphone at the same time, but it’s a losing battle.

Glaring, he lets go and his burden drops, wallowing and gargling spit. As he does so, Bobby recognizes that fierce, handsome head and his heart turns over.
You look the same. After all this time.

Blind to him, Walker Pike turns the body over with his foot and the room comes to life in a communal
Oh, no!
It’s one of their own.

‘The father of the bride.’ Walker’s rasp reaches even the clueless eddying at the fringes, laughing and talking as though nothing else is happening. ‘Say hello to the people, dude.’

Brad Kalen settles into a puddle of flesh with his tongue lolling and his body bulging through gaps in his stained dress shirt like parts of a ruined, badly stuffed doll. Disgusted, Walker prods the baggy mess with his toe, but Brad is beyond speech. Did Walker bring him here to make him do right by Patty? To make a spectacle of him? He doesn’t explain and Bobby doesn’t know.

Looking up, Walker Pike says in a tone roughened by contempt, ‘He’s sorry he’s late.’

Any other daughter might be in tears by now but hardship has made Patty Kalen strong. With a little nod of acknowledgement, she turns and leaves the room.

‘Be careful where you leave your garbage,’ he says to everyone present, and he is rigid with compressed fury. He turns and stalks out, muttering so only Bobby hears, ‘It’s a fire hazard.’

So it isn’t really Kalen’s fault that the fat drunk imploded at the Fort Jude Club, spilling Walker out in a treacherous place – unless it is.

There was too much history in that room, repeating like something bad he ate. It cracked his protective shell, exposing the man he used to be.

What was he thinking? That he could dump Brad Kalen and get shut of him? In one of those toppling domino displays, everything Walker did that day led to something worse. The collision at the 7/11. The detour to Pine Vista. Profoundly shaken by his near-encounter with the stranger who looks like him, he teetered in Chaplin’s kitchen, poised to speak. Then Kalen shattered the night, kicking and yowling, battering the interior of the Beemer’s trunk until he rocked the car.

Bad things happen when Walker goes out, and he knows it.

Hurry
, he told himself, fleeing the house
. Drop him at that fucking club. Vanish before you do something worse.

He should have burned rubber and rolled Kalen out on the steps of the Fort Jude Club, but the stink creeping into his car from the trunk told Walker that he’d thrown up. He was back there rolling in it. Walker despises him, but it was so appropriate that he laughed. He stopped at an all-night car wash to hose out his trunk. To silence Kalen and clean him up. Planning, he was relieved to find that he was no longer angry, just resigned. Get him there. Dump him and go.
You have disrupted me enough.

‘’Onna sue your brains out.’ Brad spat on his shoes. ‘Fucking Pierce Point trash.’

Walker just finished hosing him down.

‘Scumbag junkyard shit.’

Pathetic.

‘Your father licked assholes for a living, that fucking drunk.’

‘Take this,’ Walker said, throwing him the T-shirt he uses to wipe down his car after a rain. ‘Yours smells like puke.’

‘And your mother was a cunt.’

Walker handed him a comb. Pleased, maybe, that Kalen couldn’t make him angry. ‘Get the crud out of your hair.’

‘I know what you are,’ Brad snarled through a mouthful of spit, ‘and I know what you did.’

Not likely
. Nobody knows.

Walker gave him another blast with the hose. It wouldn’t matter what Kalen said or did now. It took years, but Walker has gotten comfortable with, OK, he doesn’t want to be pretentious, but. He’s gotten comfortable with what he is. He and it have come to terms. He threw Kalen a roll of toilet paper.

‘Wipe your face.’

‘She’d go down on a coon dog for a nickel.’

‘Get in.’

‘And your father’s a crap mechanic.’

‘My father’s dead.’ Belted into the passenger seat, Brad was too drunk to continue. In spite of the hose-down, he stank; it will take more than simple detailing to get the Kalen out of this car. Leaving the Fort Jude Club, Walker rolled down all the windows but his sweet vintage Beemer still stinks. It will stink for days in spite of the towel he put down on the passenger’s seat before he shoveled his captive in. Interesting, then, that he kept his cool. Intent on finishing the job.