And in turn, with those stares, Jac suddenly realized how alone he was, separate from them all. A day ago, even a few hours ago, he’d have enjoyed the ambience, smiled at the bonhomie around him, felt the beer chill and mellow him, finger-tapped to the beat of the music: Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was playing, and people had started to sway and foot-tap, one couple even attempting a close-clinches jive. But Jac felt cut off from it all, as if he was a world away, the throbbing beat simply fuelling the pounding of his heart and pulse, a nerve jumping in time with it just below his earlobe — one solid, deafening drumbeat that screamed, get out, get out!.. you don’t belong here…
Jac quickly knocked back the rest of his beer and stood up, started making his way back through the heaving, milling mass. The bar had become a lot busier in the past half hour, and Jac had to push and sidle his way through, the atmosphere suddenly hot, oppressive, the feeling that they were all closing in on him — we saw the way you looked at that policeman, and we’re going to keep you here until they come back for you — Jac knocking the arm of a satin-shirted young guy with a pony-tail and almost spilling his drink as he leant back into Jac. ‘Sorry… sorry…’ Jac sweating now, heart pounding, breath short as he burst through the last of the bar crowd and back out onto the street.
But the throbbing, swirling echo of the music and people still seemed to churn through Jac’s head as he paced along Bienville Street, crossing Bourbon this time… a police siren a block away suddenly screaming along with it so that he felt in that instant dizzy, his legs weak; the feeling that he might have to start fleeing again, but now had no strength left.
The siren faded after a moment, and he eased out his breath again, raising his hand to a cab as he saw it crossing on Dauphine Street.
‘Yeah? Where to?’
Jac had to think for a second. His mum’s place would now probably be too risky. ‘Mid-City, on the way to the airport. One of the motels around Tulane Avenue.’ He could make his call to John Langfranc from there and, as one of the city’s most faceless, transient-client hotel areas, it would hopefully be ideal for laying low for a while.
As they turned onto Canal Street, the driver asked, ‘You know which one?’
‘No. Haven’t booked one yet. Got any recommendations?’
As the driver threw up the pros and cons of a couple of motels he knew there, Jac was hardly listening, the throbbing beat, voices and sirens still ringing in his head, get away… get away… and even when the taxi driver had stopped speaking and a motel had been decided upon, it was still there for a while, until finally — Jac closing his eyes and taking slow, even breaths in the back of the taxi as the city receded behind him — it was just the sound of his own heartbeat and thrum of the taxi wheels on the road.
Steady rhythmic beat. Though now it was more from Jac’s fingers drumming by the phone than his heartbeat. The only sound — apart from the traffic passing a block away on Tulane Avenue, heavily muted through the thick glazing of his second-floor motel window — as Jac made his call to John Langfranc.
When Jac had first called, after the agreed two hours, there’d been no answer — then successively after five minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes. Still no answer, his finger-tapping by the phone heavier and more impatient each time. Now again after another three minutes. It answered late, at the start of the fifth ring, Langfranc slightly breathless.
‘I just got back in this second,’ he said to Jac’s Where the hell had he been?
‘I’ve been going crazy here… didn’t know what to think,’ Jac said. ‘What might be happening?’
‘I know… I know. It got a lot more complicated while I was there, unfortunately. You see, the thing is — ’
‘How was Alaysha?’ Jac was only half paying attention to Langfranc; his emotions so pent-up that all he could think of were the questions that had burned through his mind the past two hours. ‘How did she cope with the police questioning?’
‘She coped fine, Jac. But — ’
‘And had she said the right things before you got there, so that you were able to cover the bases okay?’
‘Yes, she’d covered well, hadn’t… but… but they found the gun, Jac.’ Langfranc blurted it out mid-sentence, as if afraid that if he got stuck in question-answer mode, he might never get the words out. Langfranc let his breath out heavily. ‘That’s our main problem now.’
‘But how? I hid it over half a mile away, and I — ’
‘You were seen burying it, Jac. A neighbour a couple of doors away, apparently.’
‘Oh God. God.’ Jac felt as if a trapdoor had opened beneath him, but it was Alaysha he saw tumbling into the abyss, her reaching one hand up desperately. Her gun. Her prints on it. He shuddered, his voice shaky, quavering. ‘How on earth is Alaysha bearing up with that news? I… I should be with her now.’ He realized something else too in that second. ‘And now I’ve made things far worse for her… trying to get rid of the gun. Made her look guiltier still.’
‘Jac, the problem is, it’s — ’
‘Jeezus… I’ve made a right pig’s ear of everything, I’ve — ’
Jac was wrapped up in his own thoughts again, only half listening as Langfranc tried to broach the subject delicately, gently, soften the blow; but, in the end, as if the only way to get the words across, they came out sharply, a hatchet swipe:
‘Jac! They’re not Alaysha’s prints they’ve found on that gun — they’re yours!’
Jac felt the words hit, but they didn’t sink home, as if Langfranc had said them to someone else. Then, hesitantly, ‘That’s… that’s not possible. I… I never touched the gun with my hands.’
‘The prints are there, Jac… they’re there. No question.’
And as it did finally sink in, Jac felt himself falling again, as if Langfranc’s words had held him in mid-air for a moment, suspended in disbelief, and now that the totality of the set-up dawned on him, he was in freefall again: Alaysha’s gun, his fingerprints on it — he should have deduced earlier that if they’d gone to the trouble of lifting it from her apartment, that’s what they’d do; after all, a part of him had questioned all along that he was meant to be the main target. The letter and restraining order, the argument, Mrs Orwin seeing him over the body, ‘You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him!’ And now, as if he wasn’t roped and tied enough, him fleeing and trying to dispose of the gun. He’d provided the final ribbon on top himself.
‘Uuuhhh.’ All Jac could manage; a half-grunt, half-wheeze as he felt all the air shunted out of him with the terrible realization. After a moment, ‘You… you know it’s all a set-up, don’t you?’ But Jac’s tone carried strong hesitance, doubt, as if with the sheer weight of evidence, even John Langfranc might have trouble believing it.
‘Yeah, I know.’ Though there was a slight pause, and the tone was that of reluctant concession. ‘But, like I said before, Jac — that’s only because I know you. With everyone else, it’s going to be tough. With the way everything’s stacked against you — a real mountain climb to try and convince them.’
‘What can we do?’ Yet even as Jac said it, with the hopelessness of the situation, it sounded rhetorical; Langfranc was a lawyer, not Houdini.
Langfranc took a fresh breath. ‘The first thing is — you’ve got to give yourself up to the police, Jac. Give them your side of things to back up Alaysha’s account. That’s the start point.’