50

JACK STOOD with his arm around Kevin, who was still trembling. Around him, the other agents were cleaning up the mess.

Oscar walked over and patted Kevin on the head.

“I heard you were very brave. You saved the two Steinbach boys.”

Kevin shrugged.

“I had to do something,” he said.

“And you did,” Oscar said. “Good boy!”

He turned to Jack.

“Down in the basement of The Deckhouse, he had a screen and an Avid editing machine. He was putting together the film of the murders.”

Jack shook his head.

“All that time, he held that anger and fury. All that time.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “He made audiotapes, too. Only heard a couple of minutes. But apparently making the movie kept his son alive in his head. He’d talk, consult with him.”

“Man!” Kevin said. “And all along I thought Charlie was like my uncle or something.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “Instead, he was muy loco.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “You know, when my dad died, I went out and bought old radio tapes.”

“How come, Dad?”

“’Cause I missed him, and as a kid he listened to them with me. So there I am driving all around L.A. listening to old tapes with dead actors on them: Alan Ladd and William Conrad, and the whole time I’m feeling my dad sitting there next to me, commenting on them. At night I wrote a diary, too, putting all the things down that my dad used to say to me. I wrote stuff about camping trips we took, and how he used to come see me play lacrosse, and all of that stuff . This went on for almost two years. Your mother . . . she thought I was out of my head. Having conversations with a ghost about old radio shows in the car, writing for hours every night. She wanted me to go see a shrink.”

“You do that, man?”

“No, Osc. I didn’t. Eventually, one day I just didn’t play the tapes, and soon after that I stopped writing. It was over. Not all of it, but enough so I could face the fact that he was really gone. What I’m saying is that Charlie or Roy . . . he didn’t lose his dad, he lost his young son. And he didn’t lose him through normal circumstances. He lost him because we fucked up. It took me two years to get over losing my dad, so maybe it’s not that far out to think of him being destroyed by losing his son. Wanting revenge. Making the movie with ‘his son.’ It was his way of getting even and not facing his son’s death. The whole fantastic plot was what occupied him, kept him in denial of his son’s death.”

Kevin shook his head.

“But I thought he really cared about me. I could have sworn he wasn’t faking.”

“He wasn’t,” Jack said. “He did care about you. But also, your presence made him enraged. That you should be alive, the son of the man he held responsible for his son’s death.”

“But you weren’t responsible, Jack,” Oscar said.

“Yes, I was. At least, partially.”

Kevin looked at his father with a world of confusion, pain, and love on his face.

“Really, Dad?”

“Really,” Jack said. “It’s a long story, though, and we’ll have to talk about it.”

As he finished speaking, the retrieval team shone a light from the woods. The three of them looked over at the path and saw them bringing Charlie’s body down on a portable gurney.

Charlie was covered with a white sheet. His right arm fell out to the side and dangled there.

Jack felt an intense pain in his chest and put his arm around his son.

“Funny thing,” Jack said. “He was obsessed with the immunity deal. That’s why he structured his whole revenge around it. It was like he was reminding us of it the whole time.”

“Almost like he wanted us to catch him, bro,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, and if we had,” Jack said, “he would have probably come up with some deal to try and get himself immunity. Charlie knew a lot of people and, who knows, the way the world is now, he might have even thought he could really get it.”

Kevin looked down at the stretcher as the team brought it through. The sheet had fallen off a little, and he could see part of Charlie’s gray, waterlogged face, with a chunk taken out of his forehead where he’d hit the rocks.

“Well,” he said. “He’s got it now, Dad.”

“What’s that?” Jack said.

“Total immunity,” Kevin said. “Nothing can hurt him again.”

“That’s right,” Jack said as they turned away. “Total immunity. Let’s go home, son.”

He squeezed Kevin’s shoulder as they walked together back toward the car.