High Profile

“Figured I had them up here anyway,” Lutz said, “I dump them here, small town, some fucking hillbilly cop would be stepping on his own dick trying to figure out what to do.”

Lutz added some ice to his glass, and some more whiskey.

“Drink enough, it doesn’t do any good anymore,” he said. “Doesn’t change the way you feel anymore.”

He drank again.

“Helps you talk, though,” he said. “Instead of a hillbilly, I got you.”

Jesse nodded.

“You seem to be the kind of cop I thought I was going to be,” Lutz said.

He stopped and studied the surface of his whiskey again, as if there were something to be learned from it. Jesse waited. He was an exterior observer of a private unraveling, and he didn’t want to intrude.

“But then I met her, and then I met Walton Weeks, and then I got really fucking smart. Or she did. He’s the brass ring, she says. He doesn’t want people to know you arrested him for public fucking. Make him hire you. And I say as what? And she says as a bodyguard. He’s a big deal. He needs a bodyguard.”

Lutz stopped talking and drank.

“So I’m his bodyguard,” Lutz said. “And we’re getting along. He’s a pretty good guy, and I’m not demanding too much, and it sort of works, even though it shouldn’t and I’m fucking blackmailing him, you know?”

The air got heavier as it cooled in the darkness and settled. The smell of the ocean thickened.

“Well, he’s a cockhound, you know that. And after a while I think he’s getting the munchies for Lorrie, and sure enough she tells me one day he made a move on her. And I’m saying I’ll kick his ass, and she’s saying wait a minute, don’t be foolish. We can have the whole thing. And I say what whole thing and she says Walton Weeks, the money, the show, the whole thing. All she got to do is fuck him a little. And I say hey, and she says don’t be a fool. I fuck him doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I’ll be doing it for us, and we need to be a little creative here, and I can’t say no to her, never could, and now I’m standing by and she’s fucking Walton and then Walton wants her to leave me and marry him and she reminds me I gotta be creative, and it’ll all be ours and we’ll be together, but let’s play this thing while it’s paying off and... six weeks in Vegas and she gets to be Mrs. Walton Weeks, and I’m by myself stroking it, except now and then when he’s not looking we get together. And she keeps reminding me it’s all for us, and we’re all that really matters, and in a while she’ll get it all.”

Lutz drank some whiskey.

“I used to be a tough guy,” Lutz said.

He shook his head and looked slowly around the room, still shaking his head. On the low table where the phone sat was a picture of Jenn.

“That her?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good-looking,” he said. “They’re always good-looking.”

“She’s good-looking,” Jesse said.

“And you’re still hanging on,” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I love her,” Jesse said.

Lutz gave a low, humorless whiskey laugh that sounded as much like a cough.

“There they got you,” he said.

He nodded his head slowly.

“There they got you,” he said. “So I hang around and she married Lutz and I stay on as his fucking bodyguard, sort of keep an eye on the investment, you know? And things are developing good until here comes Carey Longley, and Walton knocks her up and wants a divorce and everything is going to go to the kid... The shit hits the fan.”

“All that time and work and investment,” Jesse said.

“She says I gotta kill them. And, fuck, you get the picture. I do what she says.”

“You knew about the house in Paradise,” Jesse said.

“Sure, I was there a few times. So that night, I brought them up to do a walk-through,” Lutz said, “and talk about their plans, and where the kid’s room would be, and when they got there I shot them outside, on the beach, at low tide, and let them bleed out, so when the tide came in it would wash away the blood. But I fucked up, I guess.”

Jesse nodded.

“You found some blood in the cold room?”

Jesse nodded.

“Should have bled them longer,” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t care,” Lutz said. “I’m not sure I really cared then. It was the last thing. Then it was over and we’d be together.”

“And you kept them in the cold room to screw up the ME,” Jesse said.

“Yep.”

“And you hung him from a tree to confuse us.”

Lutz nodded.

“Figured you’d be chasing wild geese all over the place,” Lutz said.

He made the cough/laugh sound again.

“He was a public figure, you know,” he said.

“And the girl in the Dumpster?”

“Another fuckup,” Lutz said. “I wanted her to just go away. I covered her up, but some dump picker must have uncovered her and panicked and run off. Or sea gulls, maybe, or a dog... or maybe I was fucking up on purpose, you know? Like the shrinks say?”

He emptied his glass and stared at it and added some ice and poured more scotch.

“It ain’t working,” he said. “Scotch ain’t working. Nothing’s working.”

Jesse nodded.

“And then...” Lutz said.

He drank and made his choking laugh sound.

“Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water... here comes Hendricks.”