“It’s me, Max,” I said. “Devon. The door open?”
There was a long pause. He was home, I knew it. It just took him time to move around sometimes. I heard scuffling, and then a voice. “Coming.”
I waited some more. The wind picked up, making dead leaves slide along the patio in the courtyard, into the abandoned pool. An old guy came out of his door and leaned on the railing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Another door opened, and I was surprised to see a woman come out in a cop’s uniform, walking down the corridor to the stairs, probably on her way to her shift. What the hell was a cop doing in Shady Oaks? Just the sight of her in her uniform made my pulse jump in my throat, even though I’d done my time and I hadn’t done anything wrong. The convict’s automatic reaction, I realized. I wondered if I would have it for the rest of my life.
Max’s door swung open. “Are you nuts?” he said to me. “Of course I lock my fucking door. I hear there are ex-cons in this neighborhood.”
“Ha ha, asshole,” I said. “Nice to see you too.” I held up a ratty, yellowed book in my hand, years old and well-read. A copy of Stephen King’s The Shining. “Just returning the reading material you lent me.”
Max grabbed the book from my hand. “Come on in to my place, which is actually your place,” he said.
He was still as big and muscled as he’d been in the Marines, and he hadn’t shaved in weeks. He’d come home from Afghanistan four years ago with his right leg missing below the knee and a harsh case of combat PTSD. He’d taken therapy for it, but therapy was expensive, as was the physiotherapy and the fake leg and foot he’d had made. He’d worked construction for cash under the table since he’d been home, convincing the supervisors on job sites that he could still do the work with a partly fake leg. Since I’d been in prison he’d left LA and come here, taking over my Shady Oaks apartment and finding construction gigs here instead.
He seemed to fit right in in this apartment. I was glad I’d given it to him after his father died and he had nothing left in LA. Though, judging from the amount of lived-in mess, it looked like he rarely left the place.
He was wearing jeans, a Giants tee that showed the tattoos snaking down his biceps, and his foot was bare. His other foot, the synthetic one, had a sock on it. Anyone looking at him would think he was just a guy with a limp and one sock on, for reasons unknown. Only people close to Max Reilly knew the truth.
I looked at him, and suddenly I realized I was really fucking glad to see my best friend. I also realized that I could change his life. Completely fucking change it. I could make his worries go away.
He was frowning at me, in that pissed-off grizzly bear way he had. “You coming in or what?” he asked.
I followed him inside. The apartment had the same furniture I’d left in it—worn sofa, secondhand kitchen table and chairs. Max actually had food in his kitchen, since he was a reasonable cook, unlike me. He’d also added a bookshelf, which was so overloaded with old paperbacks that they piled over the tops of the shelves and additional piles were stacked on the floor.
I followed him as he headed toward the shelf to put The Shining away. “Don’t touch the shelf,” he growled at me. “I have a system.”
I held up my hands. “I would never.”
“How did you like it?”
“I think you’re a sick man to give a guy in prison a story about a bunch of people in a haunted place they can’t get out of.”
Max put the book away and smiled to himself. “Well, I had to give you something different. You didn’t like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“That’s about a guy trapped in a mental hospital he can’t get out of,” I argued. “It was even worse.”
He shrugged, but I could see he was amused. “Okay, so I was torturing you a little. Can you blame me?”
I shook my head. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yes, I am.”
It didn’t matter. Max had visited me every month in prison, always bringing me a new book to read. Since it was only medium security, visitors were allowed to bring books, as long as they passed the security inspection. I could have gotten books inside, but Max’s library was better, and I preferred to read his picks. I’d done a lot of reading over the past few years. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Give me some non-fiction this time,” I said to him. “I’m in the mood for something true.”
“Sure. I have just the thing.” He reached into a stack and handed me a book about the OJ Simpson case. When he saw the look on my face, he scowled. “Just read it. It’s really good.”
I sighed and put the book down. “Fine. Look, I have some news I have to tell you. But I want to know something first.”
“What?” Max asked. He walked over to the sofa, where he sat down and looked at me.
“Has anyone been bothering you?” I asked. “You seen anyone hanging around?”
“This is Shady Oaks,” he said. “I don’t think anyone’s legit here, except for maybe the girl across the way.”
Olivia. He was talking about Olivia. Max didn’t know about Olivia; I hadn’t told anyone. I’d been too scared for her safety. “There’s a cop living here,” I said, trying to sound normal. “A female one. I just saw her.”
“Yeah, she’s been around.” Max nodded. “It’s been interesting, having a cop in the place. She comes home from work, and half the residents scatter like cockroaches.”
“What about people who don’t live here?” I asked. “People who don’t belong?”
He looked away, thinking, and then he shrugged. “I’ve been threatened a few times.”
I stared at him. “Threatened how?”
“Small things. A guy made a comment when I came from the parking lot one night. You’re a dead man, it sounded like. I’ve had things thrown against my windows, and one guy tried to trip me on the stairs. Nothing specific. I think some guys look at a man with one leg and think he’s an easy target.”
An easy target. No one—literally no person ever—would look at Max and think him an easy target. He was an inch taller than me, and he was bigger, his shoulders and chest thick with muscle. He’d been a fucking Marine, which meant that before he lost his leg he’d done some of the hardest training possible, and since he came home he kept his training up at the gym. With that, and the tattoos on his arms, his shaggy hair and beard, and his perpetual don’t-fuck-with-me scowl, he was the kind of person you ran away from in a dark alley.
No, this was Gray’s work. Or Craig Bastien’s. They were backing up their threats.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting down across from Max. “The guy who set up the drugs in the TV’s that night. He wants me to come back to work for him. He knows we’re friends, and if I say no, he says he’s going to hurt you.”
Something flared in Max’s eyes—something deep and dangerous. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Let him bring it. I may have one foot, but I’m a fucking Marine. I’ll put his teeth down his throat, and I’ll enjoy it.”