Page 54 of The Lie Maker

The tire iron caught Gartner across his right temple, and he went down, falling off to the right. He landed on his back, moaned, put a hand to the wound, blood already matting his hair and trickling through his fingers.

Michael got to his knees.

“You motherfucker,” Gartner said. “I’m going to ruin you and—”

Michael swung the tire iron across Gartner’s face, pulled back, swung again, and again, and again, denting the man’s skull, breaking all his teeth, crushing his nose. His face couldn’t have looked worse if the Charger had backed over it.

Slowly, Michael got to his feet and struggled to catch his breath. He was shaking. His clothes, his hands, his face were all splattered with Gartner’s blood.

Michael nudged the man with his foot, got no response. He walked back to the car, looked in the open trunk, spotted a rag. He used it to wipe down the tire iron, then threw it as hard as he could into a nearby vacant lot.

With the same rag, he wiped the handles of the passenger door and slammed it shut, then closed the trunk and took the set of keys that were dangling from the trunk lock.

He got behind the wheel, brought the engine to a rumble, and drove off.

Maybe Frohm was right. People don’t change.

Thirty

Jack

I did a double-take when I saw the text.

Got a minute? It’s Dad, and I’m outside.

Maybe, if I hadn’t been thinking of my missing father at that moment, I wouldn’t have been so taken aback by the words on the screen. I would have noticed, before I read the message, who it was from.

Earl.

He usually signed his emails or texts with his name—even though, with a text, you really didn’t have to identify yourself—but when he was feeling his neck, when he was trying to ingratiate himself with me, he used “Dad.” And there was a time, during my teens, when that was what I called him, often grudgingly and mostly at my mother’s insistence, so that he would feel accepted, really believe he was the new father figure in my life, that he had effectively displaced the man who had gone out of our lives that rainy night when I was nine.

Rather than reply, I left the apartment, descended the stairs, and went outside. There was Earl, leaning up against some shitbox foreign economy car that was probably worth even less than my torched Nissan. So he’d had to give up the Porsche. Whether he’d sold it or had it repossessed, I didn’t know.

“Hey,” he said. “Catch you at a bad time?”

“What’s up?” I said.

Seeing Earl again, this soon, was setting off alarms.

Looking sheepish, he said, “Can I... can I come up?”

I had to give that a moment’s thought. After a few seconds, I nodded and turned away, a wordless invitation to follow me.

Once upstairs, I said, “You want a coffee or anything?”

“Maybe something cooler?” he asked. “And stronger?”

I went to the fridge, found a can of beer, and tossed it to him. He almost fumbled the catch.

“Thanks,” he said.

He was looking at the two open laptops and my notepad. I’d filled about half the page with scribbles.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

I walked over, closed both laptops, and flipped the notepad over.

“I get it,” he said. “The great author doesn’t want anyone looking at his novel until it’s ready.”