Jim’s foul mood didn’t improve as we headed west. Hungover, coming down from the speed and cocaine and whatever else we’d blasted, tired and annoyed at being implicated in a homicide—his weathered face, mean at the best of times, was twisted like an old tree disfigured by a storm.
“Can we go to my place?” I asked. I really needed fresh clothes.
He silenced me with a look.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked after a while. “Man’s gotta do what’s necessary to put food on the table, but you used my fucking car, Peyton. Fuck!”
I was getting a good read of his moral compass now. He wasn’t concerned about murder, just the fact I’d implicated him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t talking to Jim. I was apologizing to the ghosts of the innocent dead who lived within me.
They didn’t reply, but I could feel them there, judging me.
“Fucking sorry,” Jim said. He crinkled his nose. “You’re a sorry, stinking fuck, that’s what you are.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Just shut the fuck up,” he said.
Most people would be afraid of someone who’d put three bodies in the ground, but Jim Steadman wasn’t most people, and I wondered if he had his own skeletons buried somewhere. Why had he served time?
We rolled through LA, along the broad streets and boulevards, past the shiny skyscrapers, full of people with bright lives, toward the ocean that once inspired hope, but now made me think only of my own horizon. If it hadn’t been for Skye, I’d have walked beyond the coastal breakers and never looked back. But my life was hers. It wasn’t mine to give or take anymore.
Eventually we turned off Santa Monica Boulevard, a few blocks from the Pacific, which shimmered between the low-rise condos.
We navigated a run of twists and turns and came to Charters, a private school laid out on a lot that occupied two blocks. Charters is famed as a school for the children of the rich and talented. Movie producers, actors, and financiers use the place to imbue privilege and entitlement, so the next generation learn to believe the opportunities gained through their parents’ money and connections were earned by merit.
The school was busy for a Saturday morning, and when we pulled into the packed parking lot, I realized why. A huge banner hung from the side of the main building, and on it was a photo of Walter Glaze alongside the words Walter Glaze Memorial Fundraiser.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I said as an attendant in an orange vest waved Jim into a space.
“Why?” Jim asked as he swung his huge car into the spot. “I found out about it on Facebook. It’s a public event and there’s a ton of people here. We’ll blend in, find out who knows what. For charity, of course.”
He didn’t wait for a reply and got out. I had the feeling I should stay in the car, but I don’t think he would have taken that as any less than betrayal, so I followed reluctantly.
“I don’t know what I said last night,” I tried. “I was drunk. Wasted. I was probably talking trash. Spitting up garbage.”
“Right,” Jim responded, but he didn’t break his stride. “Don’t try to bullshit me now, Peyton. I’m no snitch, but I’m not going down for you or anyone else. I’m going to find out what I need to do to protect myself. And since you put me in this mess, you can help me clean it up.”
We were directly under the banner and Walter Glaze’s giant photo, in the shade of the main building, and I still felt waves of nausea lapping up my throat. More cars were pulling up, and they were disgorging somber family members, friends, and community-minded folk who were all heading for a gate not thirty feet from us.
I followed Jim like a condemned prisoner being led to the chair. He had his own gravity, and no matter how much my mind scream danger, my feet couldn’t resist his pull. Was I weak? Probably. But part of me also wanted to see whether I had put us at risk. I wanted to find out what the family knew.
We reached the edge of the main building, and through a chain-link fence I saw an outpouring of love. Food and activity stands lined the playing field, and dozens of families, hundreds of people, were taking part in a celebration of a man’s life. Pulling a trigger on another life was the only way I’d experience something like this, because no one I knew would inspire such emotion in so many. I certainly wouldn’t. I didn’t have many friends anymore. The engineering corps didn’t have the same spirit of comradeship as frontline combat units, and the few buddies I’d made had turned their backs after my conviction. I didn’t have much by way of family. Some second cousins still anchored in Skokie, living the same Lake Michigan life I’d escaped.
“We need to leave,” I said to Jim as we neared the gate.
A couple of high school students greeted people with photocopied maps of the stalls.
“There’s the family,” Jim said, pointing at a cluster of people at the center of the field. A dozen children and adults, all in black.
“Jim,” I said, grabbing his arm.
“Get the fuck off me,” he responded angrily.
A little too angrily, because kids glanced at us and then pretended not to have heard.
Jim pulled his arm clear. “You do what you want. But remember, traitors are made of wood, and they burn easily.”
“No,” I said loudly enough for the kids to hear. “You’re right. We should pay our respects.”
“Stall maps?” one of the kids said as we walked in.
“Thanks,” I replied, taking the sheet.
Jim brushed the other kid’s arm away and stalked on like an animal on grim business. How did he do it? I wanted people to like me. Even people I didn’t like. Jim couldn’t care less.
I went after him, feeling sicker with every step, praying he wouldn’t land us both in trouble, and wondering why anyone would frame a family man who’d inspired so much love. Why would someone pay one hundred grand to murder a guy who could fuel such an outpouring of devotion and grief?