The Wrong Man Read online

  THE WRONG MAN

  Matthew Louis

  The Wrong Man by Matthew Louis

  Published by Out of the Gutter

  Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Louis

  Cover by Outland Grafix

  This is a work of fiction in which all names, characters, places and events are imaginary. Where names of actual celebrities, organizations and corporate entities are used, they’re used for fiction purposes and don’t constitute actual assertions of fact. No resemblance to anyone or anything real is intended, nor should it be inferred.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without the written consent of the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts for the purpose of review or promotion.

  THE WRONG MAN

  1

  Maybe you’ve been to a party like this. The yard is dirt, the dog is locked away somewhere so he won’t go nuts but his house, built on a pallet, is there under the little oak tree by the fence, along with his water bucket and food bowl. The place was hard to find, on a long road that threads the hills between towns, and this is why a speed metal band can set up on the back deck. The band members have pushed the old Weber barbecue and the yard furniture aside and stacked up their hard-bought amplifiers and PA speakers, put the shining drum set in the back by the kitchen window, the microphones up front by the neglected flower beds.

  You watch them taking the stage for their second set, ducking under guitar straps, saying “check” into the mikes. They are ethnically diverse—well, white and Mexican—and look like heroin junkies. The vocalist, a skinny, vaguely pretty young man with shaggy black hair and a shoulder tattoo, scans the dozens of people assembled in the dirt, drinking Miller from red plastic cups. He comes out with a sentence or two of self-conscious banter before he gives the four-count and the band, called Slow Death, unleashes a prolonged, hammering explosion of noise and screaming that reverberates up to the clouds where it breaks up and dissipates over the countryside.

  It’s ten-thirty at night but you squint against the glare. Four or five flood lights are positioned around the yard, gleaming off people and objects, sending stretched, black shadows off in peculiar directions. A few of the drunker, more precocious attendees start a mosh pit, churning up a fog of dust that obscures your view of the band and causes everyone else to draw back and swipe their hands through the air. There are Mexicans, there are whites. There are longhairs, there are Mohawks, there are crew cuts. Some of the people have passed the point in their lives when it’s acceptable to be at a party like this—pushed onward into their late thirties, even—but they’re still waiting for adulthood to strike, for real life to kick in, and until that magic happens they’re staying high and spending their Saturday nights as they did when they were sixteen.

  If you haven’t been to a party like this you may not understand why I was so desperate to leave. I was closing in on thirty now and was, for my part, trying to assume the role of Adult. I had a pregnant fiancée at home and a daily routine that I took comfort in. I had, I felt, left behind this world of wasted, loud, arrogant small town heroes. I was attending Morse Junior College during the day, getting homework done while I cashiered at Vanguard Liquors in the evening and then driving back to my apartment and sleeping peacefully with Jill. I was going to get a degree in business administration, own a gas station or a Subway franchise, for fuck’s sake, and here I was at the hour when I would normally be flossing my teeth, watching over-the-hill teenagers stomp around in the dirt to an incomprehensible cacophony of shit.

  I narrowed my eyes at Rich Channing, coming toward me through the clouds of dust. He was supposed to check in with his friend, the drummer, so I could go, but I had watched Rich wander inside the house instead. He strode up now, positioned himself shoulder-to-shoulder with me and leaned over, his beery breath drifting past my nose. “I can’t talk to him until his set’s over. Anyway, I don’t think it’s gonna work out. Can you gimme a ride out of here?”

  I turned to him, made a face and said, “Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?” He had shown up as I was closing the liquor store and begged me for a ride. He said he’d get me some money for gas, said the band was badass and I’d like them, said the drummer was his bro and was putting him up and he wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep tonight if he didn’t get to this party.

  It was the last reason that made me sigh and say all right. Rich had looked like death under the fluorescents, his skin pale and waxy, blackened hammocks drooping under his eyes. He had been flying high for a few days, I could tell, and now the drug engine had sputtered and died and he was in freefall, beginning his screaming descent back to Earth. I figured I had to take him somewhere—it was that or deal with him begging to sleep at my place.

  Rich was one of those people you try to help against all your better judgment, one of those people you’re bound to from the past, who flaunt their blundering stupidity before you with such blank-faced sincerity that you think you can just explain the obvious to them and they’ll stop destroying themselves. We had a history of close friendship that spanned back to when we were both eleven and I had never quite been able to give up on him. Looking back, it was a form of insanity in me.

  Now, at this absurd party, he laid his gaze on me hard, trying to communicate with a look so he didn’t have to yell over the band. The glare of the floodlights had a dramatic effect, casting deep shadows off his prominent, straight nose, blackening the dips under his cheekbones. At twenty-nine Rich was a good-looking guy, dark haired, long-legged and well-proportioned. He brought his face close to mine and said, “Sam. Listen, dude, let’s get the fuck out of here. I’m serious.”

  I thought a moment, shrugged and said, “Sure, whatever.” We started out of the yard, saying goodbye to a few people on the way, then went around the house and back to where the cars were racked up on the shoulders of the long driveway.

  As we rolled down onto the public road Rich could contain himself no longer and said, “Check it out, dude!” and lifted the tinfoil out of the crumpled paper bag he had under his jacket and opened it so the damp reek of pot filled the car. The foil package was the size of a brick.

  “Where the fuck did you get that?”

  “In the back room of that house, by the pisser, dude! I could smell it from down the hall. It was right there waiting for me on the bed!”

  “You telling me you stole it?”

  “Fuck that. There’s fucking two hundred people there. The dumb fucks left the weed just sitting there. How they ever gonna know it was me?”

  I opened and closed my hands on the steering wheel. A bad feeling, something like a premonition, was creeping up my back, hardening my shoulder muscles. “There were maybe eighty people there,” I said. “And we’re the only ones who just showed up and left. This is dumb, man. This is no good. What do you think you’re gonna do, sell it?”

  “Not all of it!”

  “So think about it. You’re all of a sudden gonna be selling weed around town at the same time these people’s weed’s gone up missing, you fucking moron?”

  He was quiet. We were gliding down a black stretch of road bordered by thick clumps of trees on one side and tall hills on the other. I watched the headlights scudding over the asphalt ahead of us and tried to control my blood pressure with steady, deep breaths.

  “I’ll figure something out,” he said, and I glanced over and could make out his frown.

  I blew out a slow breath. “Listen, what you ought to do is get rid of it and deny everything. How much money you think that represents, Rich? People are deadly serious about this shit.”

  “How about this, Sam? We can go to San Jose—”

  “Fuck no. I’ve got nothing to do with
this, you hear me? Don’t even try to drag me into it.”

  He lowered his head and sniffed. “This is what? A thousand bucks? I’ll cut you in, man, fifty-fifty—”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it, all right?”

  I slowed and hit the turn indicator, put it into second while still rolling, let the clutch out and accelerated left onto San Gabriel road.

  “I’m just trying to think,” Rich said.

  I broke out laughing. “Little fucking late for that!” Then I narrowed my eyes at a car passing us and breathed, “Oh shit.”

  Your mind puts those pieces together fast and you see the cop car before you comprehend it, even on a long dark road late at night. It was coming toward us and my headlights shaped the lightbar on top, the glossy black hood and the car-pusher in front of the grill, and the slow horror of it rolled down onto my thoughts like a mudslide. I glared into my rearview and when I saw the cop’s brake lights ignite my blood got prickly cold. “We’re getting pulled over, man,” I said. “You roll down the window and get that fucking reek out of here and you chuck that fucking weed right now—”

  “No way, man!”

  “Rich, I’m serious. I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “No way.”

  “Rich, that much weed is a felony! Think about it. If I get arrested for this shit, I’m gonna rat your ass out, tell everyone what happened, I swear to god. Chuck it, man! You can come back for it later!”

  I could sense a light flick on in his brain and he said, “All right! All right!” His fingers flew, sealing the pot back in the foil and rolling the foil back in the paper bag. The window cranked down, filling the car with a whoosh of cool air. His hand reared back and he tossed it out toward the drainage ditch that parallels the road for six miles or so. I watched in my mirror as the cop completed his U-turn and fell in a quarter mile behind me.

  Nothing came of it. I wound up with a fix-it ticket for a taillight that wasn’t out but was so dim it didn’t count. The cop was improvising. He was disappointed by the prospects I presented, as I was clearly sober and denied having so much as a sip of beer. I didn’t even get asked to step out of the vehicle. We didn’t have seatbelts on, but my car was a ’64 Fairlane and I guess we were exempted somehow. The cop didn’t bring it up anyway.

  As the police cruiser slid past us and I started my car again, Rich said, “Let’s go back and get it, dude!”

  “Sure, guy.” I made the OK sign with my right hand. “We’re gonna go hunt for a pound of pot in a roadside ditch at eleven at night when we know cops are prowling around.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. That’s cool. I’ll come back for it tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Hey, Sam?” I was shifting into third and I could feel his stare bearing hard against the side of my face. “Can I crash on your couch? Just for tonight?”

  “Fuck.”

  “Just sleep, man. I’ll get up and leave early. You won’t even know I’m there. Come on. I’ll tell you the truth, bro, I haven’t slept in a couple days. I’m starting to come apart.”

  I let out a long breath. “My chick, Rich . . . you know, she’s not gonna like it. She’s already pissed at me for not coming home after work.” I threw him a look. “You better be dead silent and then leave when the sun comes up.”

  “I will, man. I swear to god. And watch, I’m gonna get that weed and make some money, and I’ll cut you in, real quiet-like. Nobody’ll know.”

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  I opened the door and stopped, turned and put my hand on Rich’s chest before he could trail in after me. “Just a minute, man.”

  Jill’s eyes flashed anger when she realized I wasn’t alone. She had been watching a talk show, waiting up for me, and she was in her sleeping outfit of panties and a filmy tank top. Now she huffed a little and stood, snatching up the blanket we kept on the couch and covering herself, then grabbing the remote and killing the TV with a vicious little thumb-punch.

  I let Rich in. “You guys ever met? Jill, Rich. Rich, Jill. Come on,” I said to Jill, “let’s go to bed, all right? I told Rich he could crash on the couch.”

  I closed the door and there was an awkward moment while Rich muttered greetings and Jill tried to stifle her irritation. Then Jill said, “Well, goodnight,” and hustled past, and I was suddenly seeing her through Rich’s eyes, seeing how far-off and amazing she must look to him with her breasts rounding out the front of the blanket, her long, delicate neck under the wedges of her blonde pageboy cut, her flushed cheeks and wide red mouth.

  All Rich said was, “Damn, your chick is cute, Sam.”

  “Rich, just don’t ever think about her, okay?” I said, surprising myself with my tone.

  “Nothing like that, bro! Relax!” He held up his hands in a whoa! gesture, then changed the subject. “Hey, you got a sleeping bag or something?”

  I found my old sleeping bag in the hall closet, tossed it to him, and went to brush and floss.

  Five minutes later, in bed with this warm incredible girl while that poor idiot stole a few hours of peace and safety on our couch, I tried to explain it to Jill, speaking just above a whisper. When I was eleven my parents were killed and I came to this town to live with my grandparents—this part she knew, of course, but my point was that, by luck, a kid who happened to be my age, Rich, had lived two houses down. “We were like brothers,” I said, halting, hearing how corny it sounded. “I mean, you know, we did everything together, night and day.”

  “You mean you were best friends?” Her eyes were wide and mocking.

  I knew she was in a mood about me not only coming home late, but showing up with this strung-out fool, and I said, “Yeah, I guess that’s it.” I reached over and snapped off the bedside lamp, then lay on my back, staring at the ceiling with my hand resting on the lush hill of her hip.

  “Goodnight, Jill.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I exhaled the last of my energy and closed my eyes, feeling the city of Blackmer stirring in its restless sleep outside, feeling my thoughts starting to succumb to the strange logic of dreams. Like brothers, I thought. What a joke. Like a couple of broken pieces of a complete human being. I was smarter, more emotionally balanced, certainly a better athlete, but Rich had the attitude. Rich was attractive to girls, knew how to talk, was an incurable smart ass, was cool. Right up into high school, whenever he cut or stayed home sick I wound up sitting there and watching the other kids. Eating lunch alone, slinking off and hiding out in the library.

  It’s been a problem my whole life, this goddamned timid streak. For most of my youth I had Rich to shove me or drag me into the mix, to get me into fights and, later, to make up for it by getting me laid. I used to need him, to lean on him, to seek his approval. But now I thought of the person out there on the couch and I felt nothing except a low-frequency disgust. Who gave a shit anyway? Nobody wanted to hear about Rich’s depressing life, nobody wanted to understand, so there was no point to any of it. The guy was broken. Too many years with nobody caring. Too many fucking drugs. Half the circuits on the board had been cooked.

  When I awoke in the morning around seven, the sleeping bag was rolled up and tied off, sitting on the end of the couch, and Rich was gone, out wandering the early morning streets doing god-knew-what—panhandling next to the McDonald’s or maybe already trying to get a line on another fix.

  I never found out if he went back for the weed. Probably some fieldworker or bottle-picker found it Monday morning and that was the end of Rich’s career selling pot.

  The way things happened, it didn’t matter.

  2

  I didn’t hear about it until I went back to work at Vanguard Liquors Monday afternoon. The guy who worked from seven a.m. until two in the afternoon, when I came on, sold pot himself, right from behind the counter, and he had an amiable relationship with most of the lowlifes on this side of town.

  He was called Sully although his last name wasn’t Sullivan
, but Sulazar. I liked him well enough and he seemed to like me––at least we had never had other than respectful words. He was a shrewd guy. His face was a Halloween mask, a wasteland of pimples and pitted scars, but he got by and got ahead and was in a leadership position in a crowd of guys who all thought they were world class thugs. He had learned the virtue of taciturnity. Unless he had something to say he tended to just listen to you and respond in clipped, monotone phrases, single syllables, or grunts.

  Today he watched me as I entered the store, kept his eyes on me until I was behind the counter with him, and said, “You heard about your buddy, Rich?”

  “No.”

  “He got killed—almost. You better watch your back.”

  “Me?” I felt my eyes go wide.

  “I’m just telling you what I heard. They say you guys stole some shit.” He put special emphasis on the word shit, as if he found this street jargon amusing. He had a way of speaking that made it seem he was always leading up to a punch line.

  I started to say no, but he said, “Know that dude, Owen Ferguson?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  “He fucked your buddy up is what I heard. Blackjacked him. Rich is in the hospital ’n’ shit.”

  “This has got nothing to do with me!”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard,” Sully repeated. “You guys gotta give ’em money or something. I don’t know. Owen lives over there,” he pointed to Rancho Bonita, the Mexican restaurant across the parking lot, “and he’s probably gonna come over and see you tonight. You might want to be ready. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I was trying to grasp it, my eyes losing focus as I stared at the diamond and gem-colored bottles of hard liquor in their neat shining rows on the far wall, watching them through the dust specks swimming in a ray of afternoon sunlight. “Hey,” I said, looking back at Sully. “Thanks for taking the trouble to warn me, man. I appreciate it.”