Loren didn’t sleep much these days. It might be because he was getting old—he could remember his old man getting around three hours of snooze a night and functioning just fine, although Marvin Loren always said that any damn fool could turn wrenches and unclog drains on no sleep, especially a fool who’d been working as a plumber for most of his life.
“I don’t need eight hours to yank the nest of hairs out of the Sanborns’ bathtub drain once a month,” he’d said once over dinner, when he’d had one too many beers. “That whole family has black hair, but when I unclog that tub there are always blond ones mixed in there. White-blond long ones, and there’s only one person in town with hair like that, son, and she rings groceries down at the Big Bear Supermarket, and has lately been seen in the company of Gary Sanborn.” He snickered and kicked back another mouthful of beer, swished it around in his mouth before swallowing. “Sanborn, that sly ol’ dog. He thinks he’s fooling everyone, but let me tell you something, Ralphie. You might flush your shit down the toilet, you might think it’s gone for good, but your plumber could still find it. There’ll always be people like that, who can sniff out the bad shit everyone does, and they’ll ruin your entire life if they can. You’ve gotta be careful of those men. Remember that and it’ll save you a helluva mess of trouble in the long run.”
Loren did try to remember those words, and all the things Marv Loren used to say, stupid or not, especially lately. The old man had been dead for a long time now, but Loren could still hear his voice clear as day and sometimes even smelled the cologne Marv always wore—English Leather, that’s what men wear, English Leather or nothing at all—and today was one of those days when his father was muttering nonstop, the same way he would when he’d fall asleep in front of the ol’ boob tube, kicked back while The Dick Van Dyke Show was on. Those mutterings didn’t usually make sense, they weren’t much more than half conversations transmitted from dreamland, and little Ralphie Loren had learned to tune them out like background noise as he sat Indian style on the shag rug in the warm radioactive glow of the TV, but sometimes his father would say something that’d make the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up. You paid attention when a person said something in their sleep, you made note of it, especially when it was your father, and that rule still held true. He heard Marv Loren in his head pretty often these days, although Dr. Patel said it wasn’t actually his father but his own inner monologue or some baloney like that.
“You’re not crazy, Ralph,” Patel had said. “It’s your own thoughts you hear, only your mind is telling you these things in your father’s voice. There’s nothing wrong with you. Believe me, it’s perfectly normal. I find this is typically brought on by stress or anxiety, but nothing to worry about.”
Loren wasn’t so sure he bought into Patel’s explanation completely, but then he never did trust doctors. Of course, he never thought much about his father’s voice at all, although it was like radio static more often than not, nonsensical and irritating, but then there were the days when the station suddenly came in, usually only for a moment, like he’d been twisting the tuning dial and finally hit on a local channel, and Marv Loren’s voice was shouting in his skull, screaming to be heard.
And today just so happened to be one of those days when his old man’s voice was coming in loud and clear. And when his father was talking Loren made sure to listen. The old man had helped him before, whispering advice only he could hear. Marv should’ve skipped the shitty plumbing career—har, har—and become a cop.
There’ll always be people who can sniff out the bad shit you’ve done. Be careful of them.
Ortiz was one of those people, Loren thought. Always had been. Loren remembered his old man’s words and still hadn’t been careful enough, and now it might be ready to bite him in the ass.
“The lo mein here is pretty good,” Loren said. “Thick noodles, nice and greasy.”
Ortiz pushed aside the menu without giving it a single glance.
“I don’t get it, but maybe you can help me understand. No one likes you, Loren. No one has ever liked you. In fact, people seem to actively hate your ugly face. But they still won’t tell me anything. It’s like they feel some kind of loyalty to you.”
Loren laughed. He caught sight of his reflection in the glass wall behind the bar, moving behind the long row of white plastic cats with one paw up in the air, waving back and forth in unison.
“You’re still the same hateful, petty prick you were thirty years ago, aren’t you?” Loren said. The waitress came by and slid a bowl of egg drop soup in front of him and walked away. Ortiz had refused to order anything, but Loren wouldn’t let that affect his appetite. “I bet the only time anyone is nice to you is when you’re in the backseat of your car with a hooker, isn’t it? And then they’re done with your sorry ass once you open your wallet and pay.”
“I keep asking questions about you and what happened to Gallo, and no one will give an inch,” Ortiz said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. “I can’t figure it out. Why would anyone care about protecting your ass?”
“What if they’re not protecting me?” Loren asked. He slurped loudly at the soup, making Ortiz turn away in disgust. “Have you ever considered the fact that I’m innocent?”
Ortiz flicked the lighter a few times before a flame appeared. It was a cheap plastic one a person could buy at any gas station. It reminded Loren of his father, who’d smoked like a chimney for as far back as he could remember. Even in Marv’s last few years alive, when he was toting around a can of oxygen, he’d still smoke, left lit butts all over the house, balanced on the edges of ashtrays and propped up on saucers, forgotten, and the old man had constantly been misplacing his lighter. He kept a drawer of those cheap ones in the kitchen so he’d never be without, right alongside the silverware.
“You still smoke?” Loren asked.
“Yep.”
“Cigarettes are for assholes,” Loren said. Loren had smoked a few times before, but he didn’t like it much and the habit never stuck. Most men looked like complete idiots when they smoked anyway, pinching the filter between their fingers and then sucking so hard their cheeks looked hollow and pinched, like they were sucking down a big ol’ cock. Effeminate, that was the word for a man smoking. Cigarettes would kill you, they’d turn your lungs black and your teeth yellow, but they’d also make you look like a jackass while they did their work.
“Putting a bullet in your partner’s skull is for assholes, too.”
“I didn’t put a bullet in anyone’s head, jackass. Blast the wax outta your ears and listen for a change. You might surprise yourself.”
“You’re still going to keep up this charade?” Ortiz asked. He said charade all fancy, pronounced in a way that made Loren want to hit him, and Ortiz already had a punchable face. Sha-rod. “We both know it’s only a matter of time before this whole house of cards comes tumbling down around your head.”
“Did you love sucking Gallo’s dick this much? Enough to follow me across the country after thirty years? Get over it.”
“I’m not doing this for Gallo. I’m doing this because you’re a killer and I’m the police. It’s my job to arrest the bad guys.”
“That’s why you’re here now?” Loren snorted. “Because you think I’m a bad guy?”
“You’ve spent your entire career chasing down criminals,” Ortiz said. “Killers. The worst people out there. The irony doesn’t get to you? The guilt?”
“Guilt?”
“Yeah. The guilt of knowing that it’s your job to protect people from the scum of the earth, and you’re just another one of them. You’re a killer, Loren—you know it. And I do, too. And once I prove it, none of the guys back in Springfield will be able to protect your ass anymore. They all keep saying how nice you are, what a great cop you were. But Gallo told me all about you. How you were porking Connie, trying to take over his family. Ready-made wife and kid, all you would’ve had to do is step in.”
“None of that’s true.”
“That’s not what Gallo told me. You were his favorite topic.”
“Gallo was off his fucking rocker,” Loren said. The waitress had come by again with his plate of Kung Pao chicken, and he saw her raise her eyebrows at his language. He winked at her and she smiled. All the staff here knew Loren, they had gotten used to him. Plus, he was a good tipper. “He was always making up stories.”
“It’s funny you say that, because I’ve heard the same thing about you,” Ortiz said.
“Oh, yeah?” Loren asked. He turned the full brilliance of his grin on Ortiz. Loren wasn’t a smiler, never had been—a look of joy on his face had a predatory quality about it, something hard and glittering and dangerous. It was the smile of a shark, of a skull bleached white by the sun. In primary school Sister Mary Agnes had prayed over that grin, and his mother had wept over it. Later, the men Loren arrested felt their balls tighten up at the sight of it. There were only two people who’d never shuddered at his smile—his father was one. Connie Gallo was the other. “What kind of things have you heard?”
“I’ve heard about the crazy shit you do,” Ortiz said. “The way you act and talk to people. The way you make up bullshit and remember things all wrong. Twist it all up in your head. I heard you go hunting your suspects, start acting like them. Doesn’t that remind you of someone else?”
“I don’t have a clue, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“Gallo used to do that same shit,” Ortiz said. “You learned from the best, didn’t you? Then you killed him, and did you start turning into Gallo? I’ve heard of that happening. The murderer takes on his victim’s quirks.”
Loren’s fork paused halfway up to his mouth, the tines loaded up with chicken. The corners of Ortiz’s mouth were twitching with amusement.
“I bet people out here either think you’re a genius or some sort of freak for acting like that, but I’d also bet you never tell anyone you learned how to troll victims from the man you killed in cold blood,” Ortiz said. He leaned over, so the edge of the table cut into his chest. “Does anyone else know, Loren? Do any of them know you’re a killer? Has it been hard living with that secret for so long?”
Loren put the fork down slowly. He tried to keep his hand from shaking, but Ortiz saw, and it made him smile.
“I remember you swaggering around back in Springfield, all puffed up, a real Billy Badass. Just the same way Gallo always did. Did you think acting like that would help you win Connie over—and then she still didn’t want you?” Ortiz said.
“You don’t know shit,” Loren said roughly. “Do you know why cops like you get stuck working cases thirty years cold? Because you don’t have any imagination.”
Ortiz laughed.
“Imagination? That’s what you think I need?”
“Yeah. You know how much creative juice I think you got? None. Zero. Zilch. And without that you can’t even begin to understand what happened thirty years ago. You’re never going to find anything to pin Gallo’s death on me. You might as well be trying to catch a whiff of a fart that left my ass six months ago.”
Ortiz’s smile actually widened.
“Oh, we’ll find something,” he said. “It’ll take some time, but my team back home is thorough, and testing is much different than it was back when we were young pups. If you left one hair on Gallo’s body, one fucking hair, your ass is grass. So it looks like you’re wrong. I don’t need imagination, all I need is a little patience.”
He doesn’t have anything, Ralphie, his old man whispered. He came out here to poke at you.
“It sounds to me like you got a whole lotta nothing, Ortiz,” Loren said, as confident and mocking as he ever was, but the Kung Pao had turned to tasteless ash in his mouth. “Did you come all the way out to Colorado just to talk shit? That’s what it seems like. You should’ve saved those airline miles for a trip to Hawaii. What a waste.”
“I do have one more question, Loren,” he said. “Were you in love with Constance Gallo? Did you love her, and killed her because you couldn’t have her for yourself?”