The hotel switched my room to one closer to the lobby, with two police cars stationed below, and I slept with the door double-locked and the chain drawn – when I actually finally made it to sleep. I watched the clock strike two.
The next morning, I headed over to Charlie’s as soon as I showered.
Gabby opened the door. She was in a light green knitted tracksuit, stripes running down the sleeves. Her face seemed to have a new anxiety written all over it. ‘Come on in, Jay. Your brother’s not doing so well. Something happened last night. As if Evan is not enough …’
My alarm bells started sounding. ‘What?’
I went with her inside. Charlie was slouched over the kitchen table, his face in his hands, his hair straggly and unkempt. He barely even stirred when he saw me. ‘Hello, Jay …’
‘Your brother is a wreck,’ Gabby said, ‘and so am I. How could someone do something like this? How is it possible someone could want to hurt us in this way …?’
‘What happened, Gabby?’ I knew already I wasn’t the only one who had been warned.
She opened the back door to their tiny, fenced-in yard. There was a large plastic garbage bag set on the ground. Gabby’s face was pinched and somber. ‘Look, look what we found this morning …’
I hesitated for a second and peeked inside the bag. ‘She’d been missing. We couldn’t find her for two days. I thought she had finally run off. That she had enough of us for good. I opened the front door to get the mail yesterday afternoon and this is what I found …’
The harsh, acrid smell told me immediately what was in there. I peered in, wincing at the charred, black shape.
‘Who could do something so cruel, Jay? She didn’t harm anyone. The people here are filth. Drug dealers and meth heads. I am ashamed to have to live around them. People just want to hurt, that’s all! What have we done to deserve this?’
‘The people here didn’t do this, Gabby.’
I closed the bag, my chest filling with both sadness and rage. My warning last night was suddenly clear. The butt on my front door.
I turned to my brother, his eyes dull and glazed. ‘There’s stuff you’re not telling me, Charlie.’
‘What do you want, Jay? What do you want me to say?’
Gabby stepped in. ‘Your brother is a mess,’ she said. ‘He cannot tell you anything today. He’s been irrational all morning. The grief has done this to him. I tried to give him his medications to calm him down, but he won’t take them. Isn’t that right, Charlie? Tell him.’
He had a glint in his eye. ‘The people here are animals, Jay.’
‘He says he wants to leave.’ Gabby went over and sat next to Charlie. ‘He says he wants to go to Canada or someplace.’ She laughed derisively. ‘He is really crazy today. He thinks the devil is loose here. In Pismo Beach. Have you ever heard anything so stupid in your life? I keep telling him, we can’t leave. We can’t go anywhere in this godforsaken world. We’re stuck in this miserable, empty hole for the rest of our lives …’
‘Gabby, please …’ I went and sat down across from Charlie. His wild gray hair and beard were stained from the tears on his face. ‘The people here didn’t do this, Charlie. I think you know that, and that’s what’s made you scared.’
‘Scared? Who wouldn’t be scared, Jay? We’re all going to hell. And you know who’s the first person we’ll see there? Our own son – Evan!’
‘He thinks our son is damned and going to go to hell,’ Gabby said, ‘for killing himself. He can’t accept that.’
‘Charlie, I got a call last night …’ I leaned forward and put my hand on his wrist, and he tried to pull it away. ‘A threatening one. The caller told me to go back home. To get my nose out of where it didn’t belong. You know what he was talking about, right?’
‘I know my son’s in hell and I’m gonna go there too …’
‘Before he hung up, he asked me if I smoked. I couldn’t figure out what he meant, but now I know. I ran to the door, and there was a lit cigarette butt burning on the mat. Now this …’
‘You ought to go back home, Jay.’ His eyes were runny and confused. ‘You should listen to what they’re saying to you, little brother. I don’t want you here.’
‘Who is Susan Pollack, Charlie? Think back. You knew her, didn’t you? She was with you, wasn’t she, on the ranch?’
‘Why does everything have to relate to the ranch? The ranch is dead, Jay. It’s been dead for more than thirty years. I told you to go home too, didn’t I? Before it takes you too.’
‘I’m not going home, Charlie. Not until you tell me. You knew Susan Pollack – Maggie – back then, didn’t you? I need you to focus on this. I need you to tell me what she wants with you now. What she might have wanted with Evan. She was with Evan, I think. The day he died. As was Zorn. I think it wasn’t about Evan, Charlie. I think by killing Evan, they were trying to hurt you.’
He looked at me. One second his eyes sparked alive, as if with recall and clarity; the next they were as dim and dull as a lunar eclipse. ‘What does it even matter now, Jay? What if Jesus went down to hell? What if he went there and looked around and said to the Devil, “Hey, man, this ain’t so bad. I sort of like it here.” What if this is hell, Jay? Look around. This hole. It sure looks like hell, doesn’t it?
‘That big fucking rock – what if it’s all just a game, Jay, and everyone’s trying to make their way to heaven, thinking, This is the right way to salvation, but what if the Devil is already there – he’s beaten them to it! And he’s laughing at everyone, going, “Come on in! This way, everyone …” What hope is there then, Jay?’
I looked at my brother, the flickering patina in his eye. The way he was acting suddenly didn’t seem far from the crazed dropout ranting about Jesus and Lennon in my mother’s dining room forty years ago. It scared me.
‘This is how he gets,’ Gabby said, ‘when he doesn’t take his medications. Isn’t that right, Charlie? You know that.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ my brother chortled dismissively. ‘See, Jay, this is how I get.’
‘He’ll be better tomorrow,’ Gabby said. ‘Right?’
‘Charlie …’ I pushed my chair close to him. ‘Zorn tried to contact Evan and warn him about something. Maybe it was to warn you. A woman was with Evan when he went up to that rock. I’m sure it was Susan Pollack. You might be right, Charlie – about what you first said. That maybe Evan didn’t jump off that rock. But I need to know what they think you know, Charlie. Or what you did back then.’
‘What I did? What I did was send my only son straight to hell, Jay. So what does that make me?’
‘This is for Evan, Charlie.’ I squeezed his hand. ‘For him. What do these people want with you, Charlie? What did Walter Zorn know?’
‘For Evan …?’ He turned to me. ‘Maybe Zorn was the devil, Jay. What do you think? That gimpy bastard, he surely walked like the devil. That’s what they say, you know, how you can tell it’s him – the limp.’
Gabby came over to me. ‘There’s nothing you can do when he gets like this.’ She leaned over and draped her arm caringly around my brother’s neck. ‘He’s like his own son. You can talk to him all day – but he’s not here … He’s somewhere else.’
He took another sip of coffee and caught my eyes. ‘For Evan, Jay.’
I stood up and squeezed my brother softly on the shoulder as I went past him out to the narrow, fenced-in yard. I sank down in one of the cheap folding lawn chairs and looked up at the blue sky.
In my life, I’d never felt the fear of being in danger – or that I was putting others in danger. I knew the next time it might not be a warning. I thought about Evan, what he might have gotten involved in unwittingly, what might have happened up there, on the rock, and I knew I owed him something.
Two things drummed in my mind.
What if Jesus went to hell and said, it ain’t so bad here, and just stayed, my brother had said. What if heaven is hell?
I realized I’d read something like that before.
From Houvnanian’s ramblings. The other night, online. The End of Days.
But it was the second thing that really worried me. Not about Charlie but Zorn. The slight limp he carried.
Charlie had mentioned it. Miguel had mentioned it too.
What was worrying me was that in all the news reports and coverage, I was sure that had never come out before.