BZRK: Apocalypse

And yet, Janklow thought glumly even as he affected many a grin in the face of the elements, he would much rather have been home with a spreadsheet on his screen and a scotch in his hand. Instead he was at the wheel, yelling instructions to the kid, Antonio, who sometimes crewed for a day.

And also seeing things. Definitely seeing things. He frowned and peered off toward the Golden Gate, open water ahead, trying to figure out just what he was seeing.

“I think I’m seeing things,” Janklow said. He forced a laugh. No one heard either the remark or the laugh.

No one heard him say that it was as if a window … no, two windows … had opened in his head.

Antonio saw him stagger back from the wheel and raced back to take over.

“You okay, Mr. J.?”

“I’m … Nah. Nah. Yeah. Oh, shit.”

And then suddenly Janklow was racing up the mast, hand over hand, like a much younger man.

Everyone saw this. The state senator’s assistant yelled something and pointed. All eyes turned to look at Janklow, now thirty feet up, his sparse hair flowing in a wind that was too strong for those below to make much sense of what sounded a lot like disconnected, wild ranting.

And then Janklow fell. Although it looked very much as if he actually leapt.

He plunged straight down into the sea.

Pandemonium. All the passengers jumped up and began yelling to Antonio to turn the boat around, turn the boat around.

But sailboats are not so easy to turn around when under wind power. So first Antonio—without help—had to lower the sail and start the engine. Only then, a quarter mile away from Janklow, could they turn back and effect a rescue.

Janklow could be seen. He was in the water, waving his hands wildly, but more as if he was a little kid splashing in the tub.

As the boat drew up alongside, the state senator had the presence of mind to throw a life vest to Janklow, while his wife berated him for being so careless.

But Janklow just laughed; a wild, manic sound that sent chills up his wife’s spine. And then, pushing himself along the side of the boat and refusing all proffered hands, Janklow went to the stern, dove down, and came up with his face shoved straight into the churning propeller.

It would be listed as an accidental death, not a suicide.

“I’m looking at the spreadsheet right now,” Lystra Reid said. She had a phone propped against her ear and a pad open before her. Tiburon police officers and California Highway Patrol detectives were milling around the marina of the Tiburon Yacht Club. They had taken statements from everyone on the Janklow boat. Lystra had little enough to say, and none of it useful, and the detectives had let her go.

But rather than take off immediately, Lystra savored a bourbon rocks and split her attention between the mild chaos of the investigation and the neat order of her spreadsheets.

“Yes, I am very much aware of some of my off-book expenses, and no, I won’t enlighten you further, Tom. One of the reasons I don’t take the company public, yeah, yeah, is because I like to spend my money without being second-guessed. It is, after all, mine.”

At the age of nine, Lystra had been sent away. Her father had finally decided that he could not raise her properly. His own business was falling on hard times; the carnival business was fading fast. Her father’s act—he was a trick shooter and put on an impressive if threadbare show with guns, knives, and hatchets—no longer drew enough of a paying crowd for the carny life to make much sense.

He’d sat her down and explained it all to her. She would be going to a good, decent family that would raise her properly, with school, and friends, and all of that.

“You won’t be my dad anymore?” She hadn’t cried. She’d felt sick with betrayal, but she hadn’t cried.

Her father, his lined face half hidden in the gloom of the Louisiana dusk, had said, “I won’t be with you. I won’t be seeing you, I … I have to find some way to make a living. But listen to me, Lystra. Listen to me. You’re a very smart kid. And better than smart, you’re determined. You’ll do fine. And if you ever need me, really need me, life-and-death need, I’ll be there.”

“What about Mom? Is she dead?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She knew he was lying. She couldn’t recall the exact moment when it dawned on her that her father had killed her mother. But once the idea had dawned, certainty soon followed.

Her mother had been a bit of a party girl. That was the nicest way to put it. Lystra’s mother liked a good time, and she had not found it in the life her husband gave her. She’d looked for comfort elsewhere. In booze, in drugs, in sex.

“I know,” Lystra had said. Nothing else. Just those two words.

Her father had said nothing. The two of them just sat there on the broken-down lawn chairs. Then her father had poured two fingers of bourbon into a paper cup and handed it to her.

God, it had burned her throat, but she had swallowed it and not made a sound.

“Bad things happen in this life,” he had said at last.

Lystra had held out her paper cup and said, “More.”

He shook his head. “That taste was enough. You’re still a kid.”

“You killed my mother. Now you’re dumping me. Okay. That’s all done. Yeah. Maybe I’ll never see you again.”

“Maybe.”

“But if I do, you’ll do whatever I ask you to do.”

“Will I?” He’d seemed almost amused, but seeing the look in her eyes he had flinched, looked down, and finally poured her a second drink. “I will,” he had said, and there was a sacredness to that vow.