"Thanks, Clancy."
Clancy nodded and watched while Cris opened the door of the Lincoln, started the engine, and drove off.
Cris didn't know where to go. He didn't have anybody he trusted. He drove around aimlessly for hours. He craved a drink, but instead made his mind blank and thought about Kennidi. Poor helpless Kennidi. He wouldn't let himself think about his hurt, his pain; he focused only on hers. He would seek vengeance for her. Several times he slowed as he saw bars. One had a neon sign, which pictured a glass that filled with neon liquor. He must have watched that glass fill twenty times. He almost went in, but forced his thoughts back to Kennidi. "Daddy, hold me. Daddy, it hurts so much." Cris slammed down on the accelerator and the Lincoln roared away, up the street.
At midnight, he found himself back at Stacy's apartment. He knocked, and after a long time, the light came on. The door opened and she was standing there in her bathrobe.
"Where have you been?" she said. "I called your house…"
"I… I had to go see a friend."
They stood looking at one another. She thought he looked different, weaker, even more unhealthy and fragile.
"I know we don't know each other very well," he said softly, "but I can't go home. It's a long story, but I need a place to flop. Could I use your couch?"
She stood there in the doorway for a long moment, hesitant.
"I've decided I want to help you get Admiral Zoll," he said. "I want to get him for what he did to Kennidi."
After a moment of appraisal she unlatched the door and let him in.
Chapter 24
He was carrying three loaves of baked bread; one was whole wheat, one was a rich brown multi-grain, and one was some sort of black bread the color of a Hershey's chocolate bar. Of course, he was on a no-carb diet and was strictly prohibited from eating bread.
His son, Mike, was walking beside him. They were going to look at a new house, and a Realtor magically appeared, opened the door, then disappeared. They walked into the place alone. The house had no yard; in fact, there was no property at all. It was artfully suspended between two high stone canyons. The living-room floor was a metal grate, perched thousands of feet above a valley. Somehow Buddy and Michael could walk on the grate without falling through, but the effect was unsettling. Below them stretched a horizon as far as the eye could see. There was also a pool that hung suspended, but it was empty, formed out of the same metal grates.
"Don't worry, Dad, it's a fixer-upper, but we can do it. Once we get furniture and some flooring, it's gonna be great."
His son was now standing next to him. Close to him. Buddy craved closeness. He craved unconditional love. Nobody ever loved Buddy. They tolerated him, or partnered with him, and sometimes slept with him, but love was never the reason. Money was the glue. Then unexpectedly, Michael put an arm around Buddy's shoulder and squeezed him lovingly, easing Buddy's longing, taking away the ache.
"A project for both of us. Aren't you gonna eat your bread, Dad?"
"My nutritionist says I'm not supposed to eat carbs," Buddy said. "Strictly off my diet."
They walked up to the "picture window," which had no glass, and stood on the heart-stopping grates, somehow not falling out of the house through the floor. They marveled at the spectacular view, but when Buddy looked down, his stomach lurched. Thousands of feet below, the green valley beckoned. It was fertile land, ripe with promise.
"Y'know, Dad, I bet if we worked on the house together, we'd learn to love each other… Aren't you gonna eat any bread?"
"All my life I've been on some diet," he told his son. "All my life, I've been hungry, trying to be what I'm not. Maybe that's why you and I could never find each other. I was always pretending to be an outlaw, a rebel. It's what I thought everybody wanted from me, but I was just acting." And then the difficult admission: "Underneath, I'm always scared, Michael."
"Call me Juan, Dad. I go by Juan now."
Buddy nodded. He was starving; he wondered what the rich black loaf would taste like. When Michael looked away, he snuck a bite of the bread It was surprisingly good, and tasted just as he'd hoped… a sweet, rich chocolate flavor. As he chewed, he knew he had been wrong. He never should have rejected his son. If he had loved Michael unconditionally, then Michael would be the one who'd naturally love him back. How could he have been blind to that before? After all, Michael was his son, his flesh and blood.
As he realized this, he felt tears of gratitude. Then he heard screaming, looked up, and saw that Mike was way too far out on the edge of the suspended pool. His arms were pinwheeling. He was falling forward, off balance. His screams got louder, more hysterical.
"Mike, what're you doing?" Buddy yelled, tears still welling in his eyes. He tried to run toward his only son, juggling the loaves of bread. He thought he could pull him back by grabbing his shirt using his one free hand, but he could not run on the tricky grates. Although before he had walked easily across them, now his feet fell clumsily between. He went down, almost plummeting through himself. His son was falling… falling out of the house, right through the grates in the bottom of the pool, getting smaller. Buddy couldn't move, but he could see Mike's diminishing form. The son he had never cared about but now longed for was screaming in terror, and for some unknown reason, he was screaming in Spanish. "Dios mio! Dios mioI" Mike wailed.
"I'm sorry," Buddy yelled to his disappearing son. "I'm sorry I couldn't get there. We could have fixed the house. We could have loved each other." His screams mixed with Mike's.
Buddy sat bolt upright. "I'm sorry…!"
He was on his bed in Malibu, screaming at the top of his lungs, tears wet on his face. For a minute he didn't know where he was. His arms were across his chest, still clutching his invisible loaves of bread. His heart was beating fast. Suddenly, he stopped screaming and was quiet, but he could still hear Mike crying out in Spanish. He was far away. Buddy's head snapped around toward the bedroom balcony windows. He was disoriented. His conscious mind was fighting to take control, as the distant screams continued.
"Mike?" he said softly.
Then he realized he'd been in an extremely vivid dream. The suspended house, the three loaves of bread, and his dead son were all gone. Only the distant screams remained. "Dios mio/' a woman's voice pleaded. He realized it was his Mexican maid, Consuelo. She was outside somewhere, out by the pool, screaming for somebody not to shoot. "No me dispare, porfavor!" she pleaded.
He got out of bed and moved uncertainly to the window. He could see Gary Iverson down by the pool. For some crazy reason, Gary had a gun in his right hand and was waving it at Consuelo, who was on her knees, begging him not to kill her. Gary pointed the gun at her head as Buddy snatched open the balcony door.
"The fuck you doing, Iverson?" he yelled.
Without hesitation, Gary spun and fired the pistol at him. The pane right next to Buddy's head shattered. Glass shards rained against his bare shoulders.
"Fuck!" Buddy yelled as he ducked for cover inside the house. Then he heard Gary screaming, and Consuelo pleading. "What the fuck?" Buddy whispered, his half-asleep mind racing to catch up with a shitload of adrenaline that had just hit his heart like a shot of ice water.
Buddy had one of the most extensive gun collections in Hollywood. He loved guns. He even had a gun dealer's license, which he got when he was in pre-production on Grunt, a Vietnam War epic he'd made at Columbia. He'd cherry-picked the prop department for the best ordnance. He had a U. S. M203, which was a single-shot pump grenade launcher, and five hot pineapples to go with it. He had an M60 machine gun called a "pig," and a selection of mini-lights, including the MP5, and the LMG version of the AUG machine gun. He also had a selection of Russian ordnance: the PKM-7 machine gun and the MG3. He had another whole case full of handguns: Glocks and Kochs, Brownings and Berettas. Although his war collection was mostly late-seventies stuff, he had sophisticated laser sights on a lot of them, and always kept his guns loaded.