Three or four minutes of silence went by. The soap opera ended with Parnell getting another glance of the young lady. Then a “CBS Newsbreak” came on. Then some commercials. Richard didn’t seem to notice that neither of them had said anything for a long time. Sunlight made bars through the venetian blinds. The refrigerator thrummed. Upstairs but distantly a kid bawled.
Parnell didn’t realize it at first, not until Richard sniffed, that Bud Garrett’s son was either crying or doing something damn close to it.
“Hey, Richard, what’s the problem?” Parnell said, making sure to keep his voice soft.
“My, my Dad.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Richard looked up with his pale blue eyes. “He’s dying.”
“Jesus.”
Richard cleared his throat. “It’s how he’s dying that’s so bad.”
“Cancer?”
Richard said, “Yes. Liver. He’s dying by inches.”
“Shit.”
Richard nodded. Then he fell once more into his own thoughts. Parnell let him stay there a while, thinking about Bud Garrett. Bud had left the force on a whim that all the cops said would fail. He started a rent-a-car business with a small inheritance he’d come into. That was twenty years ago. Now Bud Garrett lived up in Woodland Hills and drove the big Mercedes and went to Europe once a year. Bud and Parnell had tried to remain friends but beer and champagne didn’t mix. When the Mrs. had died Bud had sent a lavish display of flowers to the funeral and a note that Parnell knew to be sincere but they hadn’t had any real contact in years.
“Shit,” Parnell said again.
Richard looked up, shaking his head as if trying to escape the aftereffects of drugs. “I want to hire you.”
“Hire me? As what?”
“You’re a personal investigator aren’t you?”
“Not anymore. I mean I kept my ticket — it doesn’t cost that much to renew it — but hell I haven’t had a job in five years.” He waved a beefy hand around the apartment. “I manage these apartments.”
From inside his blue pin-striped suit Richard took a sleek wallet. He quickly counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills and put them on the blond coffee table next to the stack of Luke Short paperbacks. “I really want you to help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Kill my father.”
Now Parnell shook his head. “Jesus, kid, are you nuts or what?”
Richard stood up. “Are you busy right now?”
Parnell looked around the room again. “I guess not.”
“Then why don’t you come with me?”
“Where?”
When the elevator doors opened to let them out on the sixth floor of the hospital, Parnell said, “I want to be sure that you understand me.”
He took Richard by the sleeve and held him and stared into his pale blue eyes. “You know why I’m coming here, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m coming to see your father because we’re old friends. Because I cared about him a great deal and because I still do. But that’s the only reason.”
“Right.”
Parnell frowned. “You still think I’m going to help you, don’t you?”
“I just want you to see him.”
On the way to Bud Garrett’s room they passed an especially good-looking nurse. Parnell felt guilty about recognizing her beauty. His old friend was dying just down the hall and here Parnell was worrying about some nurse.
Parnell went around the corner of the door. The room was dark. It smelled sweet from flowers and fetid from flesh literally rotting.
Then he looked at the frail yellow man in the bed. Even in the shadows you could see his skin was yellow.
“I’ll be damned,” the man said.
It was like watching a skeleton talk by some trick of magic.
Parnell went over and tried to smile his ass off but all he could muster was just a little one. He wanted to cry until he collapsed. You sonofabitch, Parnell thought, enraged. He just wasn’t sure who he was enraged with. Death or God or himself — or maybe even Bud himself for reminding Parnell of just how terrible and scary it could get near the end.
“I’ll be damned,” Bud Garrett said again.
He put out his hand and Parnell took it. Held it for a long time.
“He’s a good boy, isn’t he?” Garrett said, nodding to Richard.
“He sure is.”
“I had to raise him after his mother died. I did a good job, if I say so myself.”
“A damn good job, Bud.”
This was a big private room that more resembled a hotel suite. There was a divan and a console TV and a dry bar. There was a Picasso lithograph and a walk-in closet and a deck to walk out on. There was a double-sized water bed with enough controls to drive a space ship and a big stereo and a bookcase filled with hardcovers. Most people Parnell knew dreamed of living in such a place. Bud Garrett was dying in it.
“He told you,” Garrett said.
“What?” Parnell spun around to face Richard, knowing suddenly the worst truth of all.
“He told you.”
“Jesus, Bud, you sent him, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Parnell looked at Garrett again. How could somebody who used to have a weight problem and who could throw around the toughest drunk the barrio ever produced get to be like this. Nearly every time he talked he winced. And all the time he smelled. Bad.
“I sent for you because none of us is perfect,” Bud said.
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s afraid.”
“Richard?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t blame him. I’d be afraid, too.” Parnell paused and stared at Bud. “You asked him to kill you, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It’s his responsibility to do it.”
Richard stepped up to his father’s bedside and said, “I agree with that, Mr. Parnell. It is my responsibility. I just need a little help is all.”
“Doing what?”
“If I buy cyanide, it will eventually be traced to me and I’ll be tried for murder. If you buy it, nobody will ever connect you with my father.”
Parnell shook his head. “That’s bullshit. That isn’t what you want me for. There are a million ways you could get cyanide without having it traced back.”
Bud Garrett said, “I told him about you. I told him you could help give him strength.”
“I don’t agree with any of this, Bud. You should die when it’s your time to die. I’m a Catholic.”
Bud laughed hoarsely. “So am I, you asshole.” He coughed and said, “The pain’s bad. I’m beyond any help they can give me. But it could go on for a long time.” Then, just as his son had an hour ago, Bud Garrett began crying almost imperceptibly. “I’m scared, Parnell. I don’t know what’s on the other side but it can’t be any worse than this.” He reached out his hand and for a long time Parnell just stared at it but then he touched it.
“Jesus,” Parnell said. “It’s pretty fucking confusing, Bud. It’s pretty fucking confusing.”
Richard took Parnell out to dinner that night. It was a nice place. The table cloths were starchy white and the waiters all wore shiny shoes. Candles glowed inside red glass.
They’d had four drinks apiece, during which Richard told Parnell about his two sons (six and eight respectively) and about the perils and rewards of the rent-a-car business and about how much he liked windsurfing even though he really wasn’t much good at it.
Just after the arrival of the fourth drink, Richard took something from his pocket and laid it on the table.
It was a cold capsule.
“You know how the Tylenol Killer in Chicago operated?” Richard asked.