Jackson’s old address was a tired building on the sand along an old road near Seal Beach, south of Long Beach. From the street I could see an opening for a double carport with one vehicle inside. As I approached on foot, a lamp shining through an upstairs window revealed living quarters over the carport which appeared to be that same size. A set of stairs went up the side of the building past a rusty metal mailbox that hung crooked just below a porch light filled with cobwebs, but no bulb. The stairs were gloomy, but the morning sun from the east had already cracked open the new day. The air still felt cold. The fog wet. A gull screeched as I put my foot on the first stair.
According to the restaurant manager, Cory Jackson didn’t live here any longer. Of course we knew that to be true. In point of fact, Cory now bunked in the County Coroner’s office. But someone was inside. I decided to proceed cautiously and avoid provoking someone who might be an innocent citizen. At least until I knew more.
The door bell didn’t work. I flipped on the tape recorder in my jacket pocket and knocked, loudly, which wasn’t hard. The screen door, warped from the damp air, and dried by the wind and salt, no longer fit the doorway, so it rattled and banged from a normal knock. My knock exceeded normal.
The upper third of the door was a filthy glass panel shrouded with what had once been a white curtain. After a moment, the silhouette of a man’s head blocked some of the faint light that made its way through the smeary coating on the glass.
“Who is it?” the blurry figure said through the door.
“Cory Jackson?”
“He’s not here. I don’t know the guy. Go away.”
For starters, this guy wasn’t too bright. He had begun talking before he finished thinking about what he didn’t want to say. “I’m not going away,” I hollered back. “And your door won’t keep me out.”
He pulled the door open. I didn’t hear any metal, so it had not been locked. He stood on the other side of the screen door wearing a pair of black drawstring sweatpants and a yellow v-neck t-shirt. I couldn’t tell if the color was how it came when he bought it, or had yellowed through a devoted avoidance of laundering. He wore dirty white athletic socks and no shoes. The way the sock fabric twisted in front of his toes told me he was right handed. People make hard turns with greater pressure on the more coordinated leg, thus the sock on that foot bunches up and twists more. He looked close to thirty, but beyond it. His left sleeve, rolled up on top of his shoulder, held a pack of smokes.
“Who am I talking to?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter-”
“It does to me,” I said interrupting him. “You know Jackson and we’re going to talk so don’t make this harder on yourself than you need to.”
“You the cops?”
“No. And that’s the good and bad parts.”
“What’s good about it?”
“The good part’s to my advantage. I don’t have to waste time doing things by the book or respecting your rights or any of that crap. That’s also the bad part. That part’s yours.”
I grabbed the little handle on the screen door and rattled it until he slapped the hook out of the eye screw and pushed it out toward me. I walked right at him until he gave ground and backed up into the clearing in the center of the main room. A sort of brown contemporary couch, liberally stained, stood against the far wall, fronted by an early American coffee table. A blue Naugahyde chair sat to the side. The light that had filtered through the window came from a milk glass up-lamp that sat in the corner behind the blue chair. His decorator favored the style of mix-and-match-nothing.
“How do you know Cory Jackson and where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is. He don’t live here no more. Lives alone in a studio unit a couple blocks from the restaurant he works at.”
“You were rooming with Cory back when he testified about seeing Eddie Whittaker kill his fiancee. Let’s start with why he lied about that.” In fact, I didn’t know if they roomed together then or not. I made it a presumptive statement. He didn’t disagree so it was true.
“Hey. He saw the dude. Least he said he did. No reason to lie.”
“What’s your name?”
“Quirt. Quirt Brown.”
I walked over to the table and picked up his wallet. His driver’s license confirmed his name, Quirt Brown. “Quirt?” I said, with an inflection that asked, where had that come from.
“My parents were John Wayne fans. Quirt was the name of one of his characters.”
“Hey,” I said while still looking in his wallet. “Look at the bright side. No one gets you confused with anyone else and it’s easy to pronounce and spell, well, pronounce anyway.” When I turned back he had moved closer and his right hand held a gun.
“Okay, pal. Who the hell are you and why are you here asking about Cory?”
Quirt wasn’t a big man but he had big hands with longish fingers, webbed together the way hands come, like linked sausages with transplanted fingernails.
I stuck my thumbs in my waistband. “Now why did ya wanna go and do that? We were having a friendly little chat. No reason to go hostile.”
“Now I ask the questions,” he said.
“Quirt, a man’s got to learn his limits, and when he knows them he’s got to live within them.”
“I don’t wanna hear that shit. Who are you and why are you here?”
“My name’s Carson. Kit Carson. I’m working my way through college selling magazine subscriptions. We got whatever you want. Mysteries, sci-fi, erotica, handyman mags, you name a hankering, I got a subscription fer ya.”
“Okay, wise guy. Let me see your wallet.”
I pulled my left thumb out of my waistband and reached around to the left side of my rump, my right thumb staying cinched in behind my belt. As I brought my wallet around slowly, I dropped it. When he reflectively glanced down, I thrust my right hand out from my waistband with maximum force and jammed the flat of my palm against the finger side of his gun. I also slammed my left hand against the outside of the wrist. The timing resulted in nearly simultaneous blows, each driving against the force of the other. He involuntarily straightened his fingers. The move also drove his hand away from me, which was good in the event he somehow got the trigger pulled. He didn’t. His gun was now in my hand.
“Okay. I’ve got the gun and everything you thought you controlled is now gone, or dripping down your leg.”
“What do you want from me?”
“All of it. Why Cory Jackson lied about Eddie Whittaker. And who paid him to tell that lie. That’ll do for starters.”
He just stared at me. Eventually, stupid fosters its own punishment. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go outside. Down by the surf.”
“I’m not going out there with you.”
I poked him in the belly with the barrel end of his gun. It was rude of me, but he brought the gun into our conversation and he might have planned to use it for more than stomach poking.
“If you plan to die defending your home, this place ain’t worth it.”
“Cory’s a friend.”
“Would your attitude change if you knew he was dead?”
“Dead?” He turned slowly in a circle, his head shaking, and his hands on his hips when they weren’t jabbing the air to punctuate what he said. “I don’t believe you. No. I just saw him last night. We had beers. He split around ten.” Quirt put his palms together and blew into the crevice between his hands as if they were cold. Then he turned back the other way as if unwinding his first turn. “No. He can’t be dead.”
I took out my cell phone and brought up the picture of Cory lying in the surf. Wet and cold, only Cory no longer felt the wet or the cold. The hole in his forehead meant nothing good other than the politicians would be leaving him alone because Cory Jackson would not be voting in the next election. I handed Quirt the phone.
He looked at it. His other arm dropped to his side. His chin touched his chest. “We was brothers, man. He’s my kid brother, different fathers.”