“You’re starting to sound like Phil Rifkin, may he rest in peace,” I said.
“How do you know all this stuff?” Susie marveled.
“Did a lot of the electronics in the Special Forces.”
“How are you at PowerPoint?” I asked.
“You were in the Special Forces?” Susie said. “Like, the Green Berets?”
“No one calls it that anymore,” Kurt said.
“The guys who looked for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan?”
“Not me, but some of the SF guys, yeah.”
“Is it true you guys had him surrounded in Tora Bora but you had no orders to capture him so you had to stand by and watch as Russian helicopters landed and spirited him away to Pakistan?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Kurt said.
It definitely was my cell phone, and it was ringing again, a second or third attempt.
“He doesn’t have anything to drink,” Kate said. “Jason, could you go to the kitchen and get him a beer? We have Sam Adams, do you like that?”
“Just water. Tap’s fine.”
I went down the hall to the kitchen, and the wall phone rang.
“Jason? Jason-it’s Jim Letasky.” He sounded out of breath.
“Oh, hey, Jim,” I said, a little surprised that he was calling me at home. “Was that you on my cell just now?”
“Jason-oh, Jesus. Oh, my God.”
“What is it?”
“It’s-my God. My God.” He was breathing hard.
“What is it, Jim? You okay?”
“I was at this-this high-school gym in Waltham, I guess? Where Trevor and Brett play basketball? And-and-”
“And what? Something happen? Everything all right?”
“Oh, Christ. Jason, there was an accident.” He was crying. “Car accident. They’re-dead.”
“Dead? Who’s dead?”
“Trevor and Brett. He-Trevor was driving his Porsche real hard, and I guess he lost control-oh, man. This guy saw it happen. They went into the median strip and hit a guardrail and flipped over. The cops came and everything and…”
I felt unsteady. My knees buckled, and I sank to the kitchen floor, the phone receiver flying out of my hand, dangling on its cord.
After a minute or so of sitting there, in a state of shock, I got up unsteadily and hung up the phone. I sat on a kitchen chair staring into space, my mind racing. I must have sat there for five, maybe ten minutes.
Then I was jolted by Kurt’s voice. He stood in the kitchen doorway. “Hey, bro,” he said, peering at me curiously. “You okay?”
I looked up at him. “Trevor and Gleason were in a car accident,” I said. “Trevor’s car went out of control.” I paused. “They were both killed.”
Kurt seemed to take this in for a couple of seconds. Then his eyes widened. “You’re kidding me. This just happen?”
“They were on their way to basketball. Trevor was driving his Porsche. Car hit a guardrail and rolled over.”
“Oh, shit. Unbelievable.” His eyes were on mine. He didn’t glance away, nothing like that.
It felt like there was an icicle in my stomach, in my bowels. I shuddered.
That CD I’d listened to in the car about nonverbal communication. Kurt had recommended it to me. It was all about reading people’s faces to look for tiny changes in the facial muscles, little subconscious gestures we all make.
Even practiced liars.
It was the delay in Kurt’s reaction, a quick tightening of the muscles around the eyes. The way he lifted his chin, tilted his head back almost imperceptibly. A couple of rapid blinks.
He already knew.
“Huh,” I said.
Kurt folded his arms. “What?”
I smiled. A forced smile, but still a smile. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple of guys.”
Kurt watched my face, didn’t react.
I breathed in, breathed out. Kept the smile on. “Sometimes fate just lends a hand,” I said. “Kicks in when you need a little cosmic help.”
Kurt didn’t react.
“Couldn’t ask for a more convenient car accident.”
Kurt was watching my face, I could see that. Watching closely. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
He was reading me. Assessing me. Trying to determine whether I meant it. Whether I was really that cold-blooded.
Whether I was trying to manipulate him.
I relaxed my face. Didn’t want him to think I was trying to read him back. I looked down, wiped a hand across my forehead, brushed back my hair. Like I was deep in thought. “Let’s face it,” I said. “The guy was a cockroach, right? Both of them were.”
Kurt grunted. The kind of grunt that says you don’t agree, you don’t disagree.
“They could have caused me some serious problems,” I said.
After a pause, Kurt said, “Might have.”
“You watch out for me,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
“I don’t get what you’re saying,” Kurt said. I couldn’t read his expression.
“Are you absolutely positive,” I said very quietly, “that no one can ever find out?”
I didn’t look at him. I looked down, studied the tile.
Waited.
“Find out what?” he said.
I looked around the kitchen, as if checking to make sure no one was within earshot.
I looked up, saw the set of his mouth, a glint in his eyes. Not quite a smile, not a smirk. But something. An unspoken satisfaction. Irony, maybe.
“How’d you do it?” I said, even more quietly. Looked at the floor, then back up at him.
Five, ten seconds.
“You did something to his car, didn’t you?” I said. My stomach was flooded with something sour.
A bitter taste in my mouth. I felt something acidic rise.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kurt said.
I lunged for the kitchen sink and vomited.
Heaved, retched until there was nothing left in my stomach, and then kept going. The taste of acid and copper pennies in my mouth. Pinpoints of light hovered around my head. I felt as if I was going to pass out.
I could see Kurt standing beside me, his face looming grotesquely large. “You okay?”
Another wave of nausea hit me, propelling my head forward, down toward the sink. Nothing left in my stomach. Dry heaves.
I gripped the edge of the counter, the tile cold in my hands. Slowly I turned to face him, my face hot, everything around me too bright, tiny lights dancing in my peripheral vision. The stench of vomit rose up to assault my nostrils. I could smell undigested pad thai.
“You killed them,” I said. “You goddamn killed them.”
Something hardened in Kurt’s expression.
“You’re upset,” he said. “Lot of pressure on you, obviously. Now this.”
“You killed them. You did something to Trevor’s Porsche. You knew they’d both be in it on their basketball night. You knew he likes to drive it hard. My God.”
Kurt’s eyes went flat, dead. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’ve crossed the line there, buddy. Throwing wild accusations around like that. The only people who talk to me like that-”
“Are you denying it?” I shouted.
“Will you chill, please? Throttle back, huh? And keep your voice down. Now, you’re going to have to stop with the crazy shit. I don’t like to be accused of something I didn’t do. Upset or not, I don’t care. You’re going to have to hold it together. Calm down. Get hold of yourself. Because you don’t want to be talking to me like that. I really don’t like it.”
I just looked at him, didn’t know what to say.
“Friends don’t talk to me like that,” he said, an opaque look in his eyes. “And you don’t want me as your enemy. Believe me. You don’t want me as an enemy.”
Then he turned around slowly, and without saying another word he walked out of the house.
46
Should I have told Kate right then and there?
Maybe so. But I knew how upset she’d be when I told her my suspicions.
Neither one of us wanted to jeopardize the pregnancy. Maybe it was too late in the pregnancy for stress to cause her to lose the baby-I had no idea-but I wasn’t going to take that chance.
Kurt had denied it, of course. But I knew.
At some point soon I’d have to tell her. Or she’d find it out. But I wanted to get myself together, tell her in the right way. Calmly, reasoned. Having thought everything through. Sounding in control, a protector.
“Was that you throwing up?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think the food was bad?” Susie said. “Like the chicken or something? I thought it might have tasted funny.”
“No, the food’s fine. Just a case of nerves, I guess.”
“Stress,” Susie said. “Craig throws up every time he has to present a pilot to the network execs.”
“Yeah?” I said, wishing she’d leave already.
“Where’s Kurt?” Kate asked.
“He had to take off.”
“Did you guys have a fight or something? I thought I heard an argument.” She looked at me closely.
“No big deal. Yeah, we sort of had it out on something at work. Nothing important. Can I put the food away?”
“Jason, you look really upset. What happened? Who was that on the phone?”
“Really,” I said. “Nothing important.”
“Well, in the meantime, I just called Marie and told her about the gallery. And do you know what she said to me? She said something in Creole, I don’t really remember how it goes, but it means something like, You must remember the rain that made your corn grow. That was her way of saying she owed it all to me. Isn’t that just the sweetest?”
“I’m proud of you, baby. You did a good thing.”
“You don’t look right, Jason,” she said. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said.