Chapter
1
Jeff
Vincent stands motionless in the shadows at the far end of the deck,
undetected, listening…
Nick
Grimmer gazes at a refraction of candle flame through blood-red brandy, brings
the glass close, lets the vaporized fruit hit his sense of smell before
allowing it to slide over his tongue. “I
wanna tell you what happened with Jeff Vincent.”
An
early-Autumn breeze stirs the long chimes hanging from the Tinkhams’s deck
rafters, mesmerizing in the gathering gloom, lulling in tune with the alcohol
and tobacco haze.
Alex
Tinkham takes a slow pull on his cigar, inspects the ash, pulls again. “You mean that time he pulled the guy’s head
apart, or is this something else?”
“That’s
the time I mean, only Vincent didn’t pull the head apart, Lex, he just tried.”
“Fucking
slim distinction, bro.”
“You
wanna hear it or not?”
“Pour
me another shot…thanks. God that is some
smooth shit.”
“Agreed. You wanna hear this story or not?”
“You
pretty much already told me this one, Grim.”
“You
just got the highlights, mostly how it ended.
Even that was just bits and pieces.”
“I’m
always up for a good story, but why now? This was a couple years ago, right?”
“Yeah. But it’s one of the few times I’ve been
involved in something that heavy when you weren’t there.”
“And
you wanna share.”
“Yeah.”
“And
you’re drunk.”
“That
too. And…I guess I don’t like it that so
much doesn’t make sense. I killed a man,
Lex, and I still don’t really know why.”
“You
did what you had to do, man.”
“See,
you can’t really know that because you don’t know all of it. Several people died during that shit and I
never…I don’t know, I guess I never got to do what we do, you know?”
Alex
took a slow sip of brandy. “That’s
because our job is to come in after and sift through the mess and try to make
sense of it all. You were in the middle
of it. You were too close to the thing
for the brass to call you in to investigate after it all went down. Besides, if I understand how it went down,
there was nothing to investigate. You
knew all the principles, what they did, why they did it. Right?”
“Yes. And no.
I just never understood it. Too
many loose ends, too much weirdness. And
you weren’t there.”
“So,
it’s a couple years after the fact and you want to do your job—our job—and see
what there is to see. Or was to see.”
“Maybe
that’s it.”
“Tell
it then. And, Grim, when you get to the
parts with Shelley…speak very slowly.
There aren’t too many women I would put up against my Lila—”
“Or
my Cassie…”
“Or
her. But my God.”
“I
know.”
“Yeah,
I know too,” he says from the darkness at the far end of the deck.
“God,
Vincent,” Alex says, “you scared the shit out of me. How long you been standing there?”
“Long
enough to know I got here just in time.”
Nick
hooks a chair closer with his foot.
“Sit.”
Jeff
Vincent pulls a glass from the small bar and sits, removing a bottle from a
coat pocket, stripping the seal and pulling the cork. “That’s my story you were about to tell,
Nick.”
Nick
eyes the newly opened bottle.
“Yeah. And it can stay untold if
you’d rather. It’s not mine to tell, I
just—"
“I
know what you just. I was listening, and
I understand, believe me. Not a bit of it makes sense, including the horribly
mean shit I did to set it all in motion.”
Alex
leans forward. “What are you drinking?”
“The
Macallan. You said it was the best
single-malt scotch to be had. Have
some?”
There
is just enough light remaining for Alex to see the label as he takes the
bottle. “Holy shit, I’ve only ever had
the twelve-year-old. This is
twenty-five-year.”
“So
it’s like twice as good, yes?”
“At
least. And probably five times as
expensive.”
Nick
holds out his glass. “Fill ‘er up.”
Jeff
Vincent tosses back his scotch, grabs the bottle and pours another, tosses it
back, pours a third.
“Damn,
Vincent, if you just wanna get drunk quick I’ve got some cheap tequila in the
kitchen. You’re not supposed to guzzle
the good shit.”
“You
boys got a head start on me. If I’m
going to tell the story the way it needs to be told…well, I need to catch up
with you.”
Nick
says, “No one needs to tell the story, man.”
“Maybe
someone does.” Jeff tosses back the
third glass, pours a fourth. “I’ve never
laid it out how it all happened. Maybe
it’s time. That shit changes a
person—everything about it changed me.
You can’t feel your thumbs pop through a man’s eyes and into the sockets
and not have it change the way you think, am I right on that score?”
No
one says anything, because there is nothing to say.
Jeff
sips at his fourth drink, the first three having done their job. “Your ladies due back anytime soon?”
“Gone
for the weekend. Took little Bella up
the coast to Mendocino. Show her the
ocean.”
“Good. We have all night. I don’t know what kind of half-assed story
you were going to tell, Nick, but with me you get it all, because I can’t tell
it halfway. This disaster is with me
daily, even two years later. Although, I
guess it actually began three years ago; that’s when I really got the karma
wheel turning, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it. Some details of what happened are lost to me,
or maybe suppressed, but I remember most of it vividly…too vividly. I suppose that’s my penance, the ability to
pull up the nastier scenes at will like my brain was a DVD menu. But once this mess gets rolling in my mind
there’s no skipping to the end credits—the devastation just unravels
chronologically behind my eyes, and people are dying all over again, and I
can’t even fucking pretend anymore that it happened to someone else.”
Jeff
takes another sip, stares at the amber liquid for a long moment. “Maybe it will help to tell it. Or maybe it won’t, I don’t know. But I will tell you what I do know. I will tell you what happened.”
Another
slow sip. “I’d been dead for a year,”
he begins, then he is gone from Now, from the deck, from Nick and Alex and everything
that is going right. It is two years
before, and he is alone again, remembering…everything.
