After dinner, we sat around the living room, Charlie strumming on the guitar. "Evan was getting pretty good himself," he said with pride. "Even better than me!" He picked through versions of "Get Back" by the Beatles, the Byrds" "Mr. Tambourine Man," "White Room" by Cream, Rod Stewart"s "Maggie Mae."
"Jay . . ." His eyes lit up. "You remember this?" He sang, "Just when you say your last good-bye / Just when you calm my worried fears . . ."
I did recognize it. It was the song he had recorded back in L.A. More than thirty years ago. "One Last Thing."
"Just when the dawn is breaking / There"s always one last thing . . ."
He always played the same two verses. Only them. To this day, I wasn"t sure I"d ever heard the whole thing through.
Charlie cooed, happily. "Ooooh, girl, it"s always one last thing . . ."
He put down his guitar. "You know it got to number twenty-nine on the charts," he said with his ground-down grin. "In 1973. Of course I was crazy as a loon back then. Not to mention I was popping LSD like vitamins. I got to thinking my record company was trying to screw me. h.e.l.l, I thought everybody was trying to screw me then . . ." He cackled, a glimmer in his eye.
"Hey, check this out, Jay!" He went over to the chest against the wall and came back with a bulging photo alb.u.m. It was stuffed with artifacts from his past: pictures of him, of him and Dad in happier days at his beach house. Charlie growing up in Miami in the sixties, before his crazy hair and wild eyes.
He laughed, "I was so deluded on acid I told them I would burn down their f.u.c.king building if they didn"t send me out on tour. And you know what they did? They pulled the record! Right off the airwaves." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that! And you know what? I could hardly blame them. Who would put a nut job like me out on the road?
"But you know what, Jay? Maybe if I hadn"t been off my rocker back then, you might be sitting here with Rod Stewart. You wear it well . . . In a mansion in Brentwood, not this s.h.i.t hole here, right? Look . . ."
He opened the alb.u.m and pushed it over to me, a soft smile lighting his eyes.
It was a clipping from an old Billboard magazine. Yellowed, dog-eared, protected in a plastic liner. Top Singles for the week.
I noticed the date: October 1973.
At number one was "Angie" by the Rolling Stones. Midway down, I saw a red, drawn-in arrow marking number twenty-nine: "One Last Thing." Charlie Earl.
"Hey!" I grinned. I"d never seen this before. I never even knew if I truly believed him, all the times he talked about it.
Charlie winked. "Not bad from your loony older brother, huh?" Then his grin seemed to wane. "h.e.l.l, who"s kidding who, right? Biggest moment of my life, and I f.u.c.ked up the whole d.a.m.n thing. Guess that"s where all our similarities end, right, Jay?"
He picked up his guitar again.
"Charlie, what do you want me to do?" I asked him. I came over and sat across from him. "About Evan. You want me to find you a lawyer? You want to try and make a case against the hospital? You know I"m going to have to go back in a couple of days."
My brother nodded, scratching his scruffy beard, pushing his graying hair from his eyes. "We don"t want a lawyer, Jay. People like us can"t make waves. You go. Gabby and I, we appreciate what you"ve done. You just being here."
I patted him on the shoulder and got up. "I"m going to make a call."
I went outside and stood against the building in the cool night air. Their apartment faced a gra.s.sy courtyard. Beyond it was a darkened street. The light from a single streetlight cast a glow.
People were arguing loudly in an apartment across the courtyard.
I called the house.
"Hey, how"s it going?" Kathy answered, happy to hear my voice. "How are Charlie and Gabriella?"
"The poor kid should never have been released." I exhaled. "You should see where they put him." I took her through my day, my frustrations. "All the doctors here are just stonewalling us."
"You"re going to be coming home in a couple of days. What are you going to do, Jay?"
"All they want is an answer, Kath. Someone has to take responsibility. That"s what I"m doing." I told her about visiting the rock and the halfway house. Then the TV station.
"I warned you, didn"t I," Kathy said, a little in jest, but a little in truth too, "you"d get drawn in."
I was about to tell her she was wrong. This time I wasn"t being sucked in. I just had to help get them through some things.
That"s when I noticed something out on the street.
A car, black, or dark blue maybe, parked beneath a tree. A VW or a Kia or something. A hatchback.
And someone sitting in the driver"s seat. The person"s face was hidden under a cap. I couldn"t even tell if it was a man or a woman, but the window was cracked slightly and the person was smoking.
And they seemed to be watching me.
"Jay . . . ?"
Kathy"s voice brought me back. "Sorry . . ." I said, ducking back under the carport.
"I said that Maxie"s coming back tomorrow. I"m picking him up at school. And Sophie said she texted you . . . She"ll call them later today."
"Okay . . ."
I heard an engine start up and glanced back and saw it was the car I"d been watching.
The headlights flashed, momentarily blinding me. I was about to turn away when the driver"s window rolled down and the person behind the wheel, eyes still seemingly fixed my way, flicked their cigarette onto the street.
In my direction.
Then they rolled up the window and drove away.
The whole thing had the feel of some kind of strange warning.
"Jay, have you even been hearing me?" Kathy sighed, frustration in her tone. "You know, you"re not going to change them. You know that, don"t you?"
"Yeah, I know that, Kathy."
I stepped out from under the carport and watched the car drive away down Division Street. "But what happened to Evan was wrong, Kathy. And when I get back on that plane Thursday, what the h.e.l.l else have they got?"
Chapter Fifteen.
"That was nice," Gabby called from the kitchen after Jay had left, finishing cleaning up.
Charlie had picked up his guitar again. "Yes." He strummed a few chords distractedly. "It was nice."
"Here, do something . . . ," Gabby said to him. "You"re always in your own world. Make yourself useful." She bundled up a bag of trash and handed it to him to take out.
"All right." He put down the guitar and, without objecting, took the bag outside to the plastic trash bins on the side of their apartment.
She was right, of course, he decided-it was nice to have Jay out here. To feel they were close again. Like time had taken them back to a simpler and better day. Even if . . . Suddenly the reason Jay was there came back to him.
Even if it was because Evan had died.
He lifted the plastic trash cover and was about to drop in the bag when . . .
He barely noticed it at first.
It was just lying there, on top of yesterday"s trash. Staring back at him-as if alive.
And in a way it was alive!
"Gabby!" he tried to scream. "Gabby!" dropping the trash bag, but nothing came out.
Only a tsunami of shock and overwhelming confusion swept through him.
It was a black Nike sneaker.
His heart came to a stop. Evan"s sneaker.
The one he"d been wearing up on the rock the day he died.
The one they never found.
Hands tingling, Charlie gingerly picked it out of the trash bin. Yes, he was right-he was sure!
It was Evan"s sneaker.
What could it possibly be doing here?
At first his heart almost exploded. Overcome with joy. This proved it, didn"t it? What he"d felt all along? That Evan wouldn"t have killed himself.
He turned to shout: Look! Look what I found.
Gabby!
But then he stopped. The elation throughout his body shifted to fear. He scanned around, expecting someone to rush out of the shadows at any moment. But no one was there.
He held the sneaker like a priceless relic, tears welling in his eyes.
He knew he couldn"t tell anyone. Not Gabby-poor Gabby-who would die herself just to see this.
Not even Jay.
No, no one could see this. Because he knew who had put it there. The past had brought it. Just as he always feared.
The past.
That"s what it meant.
That the past had found him.
And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do to stop it now.
Chapter Sixteen.
I took Charlie and Gabby to view Evan"s body the next day, and it was one of the toughest things I ever had to do.
He had a deep gash in the back of his head. Some reconstructive work had been needed. He had a calm look on his face, that same little smirk, like he knew more than the rest of us, seeming finally at peace.
Gabby kissed him all over his face and hands and said her good-byes. Charlie seemed almost wary, saying once with his eyes wet, "I forgive you, son."
The decision was made to cremate him later that afternoon.
It was a long, quiet ride back to Grover Beach, and Gabby spent much of it in the back weeping. Charlie just sat there with her, holding her hand. I got off the freeway and drove down the hill to drop them back at their apartment.
A thick manila envelope was leaning against the front door. It was from the county hospital.
Evan"s doctor"s report.
I didn"t know if it was pressure from the TV station or from Janie, the nurse I had spoken with. I was just happy to see it there.
I asked to read it over first and Charlie and Gabby agreed. I took it back to the hotel, but instead of going to my room, I ordered a beer at the bar and took it out to the grounds in back that ran along the bluffs overlooking the ocean. People were always milling around, observing the gulls and pelicans that congregated on the cliff, scanning the waves for a meal. I"d sat out there to clear my head a couple of times before.
I found a bench and took out the thick report. Central Coast Medical Center. Patient: Erlich, Evan. Patient #3233A32.
It began with his admitting evaluation. August 23. It stated that the patient had attempted to purchase a gun and that his parents had called the police. That Evan had demonstrated violent behavior toward them. There was a box with various courses of action: Intent to harm self and Intent to harm someone else were both checked.
The report went on to say that "the patient was admitted in a hostile and agitated state and had exhibited extreme physical behavior toward his parents and resistance to officers on scene and was unresponsive to efforts to calm him." He was sedated: Risperdal, Klonopin, and Ativan. He was placed in a treatment cell and put under full observation.
Day two, Evan was still a mess: "Patient appears calmer, responsive, but remains agitated and depressed. Admits to depression, feelings of isolation, hostility toward family, but has not taken his medicine in weeks. He feels the need to get a gun to protect himself from them." There were further observations with comments like "agitated" and "anxious." "Still having thoughts of suicide." "Protective watch continued."
As well as the heavy doses of sedatives and benzodiazepines.
I put it down, my gaze drifting out to the congregation of gulls and pelicans on the rocks.
"Hey, friend, got a buck for an Iraq War vet?"