“I wondered how bad it was,” Mr. Knowles said, his voice crackly and raw. He cleared his throat, motioning to the water pitcher on the bedside table where various pill bottles also sat.
Jonah poured a glass of water and handed it to him, and Mr. Knowles raised his head slightly to slurp in a few sips of the liquid.
“Now you know,” Jonah said, replacing the glass on the nightstand. Of course the bastard could have known a lot sooner had he ever visited him, even in the hospital after it first happened. But there’d been radio silence from his firm. Not a word. Not even a fruit basket. What would the card have said anyway? “Hey, sorry your face blew up. Enjoy this lovely banana.”
“I found Amanda Kershaw’s phone,” Jonah said. “I went through it.”
There was a chair near the bed and Jonah pulled it up, sitting down as Knowles digested that information.
“You want to know the truth, I imagine.” The old man let out a wet-sounding cough. “And as for me, I suppose it’s natural for a man to want to clear his conscience when he knows he’s about to meet his maker.”
“I don’t particularly care what your reasons are, but yeah, I deserve the truth.”
Mr. Knowles grunted, a small sound that seemed to carry agreement. “Tell me what you know so I can save what little breath I have left.”
“I went to the warehouse. The club, whatever it is.”
“Ah. Yes, well. I thought they should have shut it down after all that mess.” He sighed. “They didn’t listen to me obviously. Suppose there’s some extra turn-on in the risk of getting caught.”
“What is it exactly? Who were the girls? The men?”
“The girls are drug addicts and runaways who are only too happy to score a hit or two.” He paused. “Did you know that people will do anything for drugs? Anything. Women will give up their own children for a hit. Anything. They steal a person’s soul.”
As if the man lying in front of Jonah knew anything about having a soul. The low-level nausea Jonah felt increased.
“The members are gentlemen who work stressful jobs and long hours and want to let off some steam by participating in activities that their wives would be less than thrilled to know about. Applegate started it many years ago. He hand-chose the members, and it simply provided a very enjoyable extracurricular night now and again.”
Jonah watched the man, digesting the information, feeling sickened. “So basically a group of old pervs preys on the weakness and vulnerability of young girls who’ve taken the wrong path.”
Chandler Knowles laughed and for a moment, he seemed younger before his face collapsed in another grimace and he coughed, patting his chest. “So judgmental. Hence the need for privacy. Exclusivity.”
“Murray Ridgley was a member?”
Mr. Knowles made a distasteful sound. “I never liked that kid. Beady-eyed rat. I told them they should deny his application, but his father was a big to-do in the banking system. Some of the members had loans through him . . .” He waved his hand as if it was enough for Jonah to get the gist. Which, of course, it was. Jesus.
They’d known him. He’d been one of them, part of their sick little club. They’d accepted him because his father was valuable.
“They didn’t listen to me, though,” Mr. Knowles went on, his words broken up in a way that told Jonah, talking so much was taxing him. Just get through this, old man, Jonah thought. And somehow I will too.
He already felt sick, disturbed, overwhelmed. But he forced himself slightly outside his own mind so he could absorb the information, without absorbing the ramifications, and how it all related to him. Not yet. That was for later. He’d been a lawyer. He could compartmentalize with the best of them.
Mr. Knowles glowered. “And then it all went wrong. It was a rule that no one fraternize with any of those girls outside the club. But the little rat didn’t listen. He took them home. He got too rough, choked not just one girl but two.” He waved his gnarled hand. “Just runaways, junkies, but still, we had to cover it up.”
Just runaways, junkies. Jonah’s skin prickled. A tide was rising inside of him, and he tried desperately to hold it back.
“Murray was counseled, tossed out. But he waited for one of the girls to leave, offered her a ride. He didn’t have to be a club member to reap the benefits, see?” One of the girls. Amanda Kershaw. “But she sobered up, got away from him before he could do her any real harm, and that’s when the shit really hit the fan.”
Jonah remained speechless. He felt unable to form words. Mr. Knowles let out another loose cough and then settled back on the pillows. “One of the club members was a former prosecutor. We sent him in to talk to her. She threatened to expose us all, said she had proof, but we were able to talk her down, promise her things. Whores all like things, don’t they? She complied. Agreed to appear unstable on the stand.”
Jonah’s insides felt hollowed out. A setup. It’d all been a setup. “And then the firm stepped in to represent Murray Ridgley. You had to or he’d expose you too.”
Something that looked like ire came into Mr. Knowles’s eyes. “If they had listened to me, and denied that little rat’s application in the first place, none of this would have happened. None of it was my fault. I only stepped in to help after the fact.”
And yet, isn’t this a confession where you’re supposed to take responsibility for your sins? Jonah wondered. Isn’t this an attempt to wipe your soul as clean as possible, you sick bastard?
Mr. Knowles sighed, looking off behind Jonah as though staring into the past. “We told him we’d get him off if he cooperated. Told him we had an ace in the hole, a fiery young buck who was sharp as a tack in the courtroom and would make it all look legitimate.”
Me. Jonah’s chest constricted painfully. He’d been used. Lied to. He’d been a pawn and he’d played straight into their hands. God, he’d thought he was so smart, when all he’d been was an idiotic patsy. Blinded by self-importance and ego. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream, but he did none of those things. He’d done a fine job making Amanda Kershaw appear unstable, of convincing the jury, but she’d played right along. All of these years he’d carried that guilt, and she’d known exactly what she was doing.
“What happened afterward?” His voice sounded dull, dead.
Something that looked like guilt came into Knowles’s eyes. But quite frankly, he didn’t care. Knowles’s gaze flitted to Jonah’s ruined face and then away.
“He always was a loose cannon. We should have remembered that. See, our mistake was that we operated as though we were dealing with someone sane. Ridgley was not sane.”
So Murray Ridgley had held some kind of grudge toward Amanda Kershaw, the woman who’d gotten away from him, and he’d shown up that day to exact revenge. And Jonah had walked right into it.
“Where did my brother come into all of this?”
For a moment Mr. Knowles looked confused, but then his lips thinned. “Your brother worked in the neighborhoods where we found some of the girls for our club. He heard rumors, started asking some questions. Amanda told us he had called her and we told her not to talk to him.” Mr. Knowles shrugged. “Nothing came of it.”
Of course nothing came of it. Amanda had been shot, his brother had been shot, and Murray Ridgley had blown himself to bits. What a stroke of luck that must have been for all those high-status club members. And they still partied on as if lives hadn’t been destroyed that day. As if the innocent simply hadn’t existed.
It was merely collateral damage that Jonah’s face had been scarred beyond recognition, his life ruined. Jonah stood on unstable legs. “Is there anything else?”
“I’ll call you a liar if you say I told you any of this. If I’m not dead by then.”
Mr. Knowles peered at him from beneath bushy white brows. He suddenly seemed small, shrunken, lying there in his deathbed. But Jonah felt small and shrunken too, hollowed out.
He thought of the evidence he had, the blurry photos that could be of anyone, from the phone of a woman who had no credibility. Thanks in part to him. God, it might be funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.