Obsidian Faith

by Bev Elle

  “I was going to apologize while we were doing the dishes, but she went upstairs.”

  “She’ll come back down in a little while. You know she can’t stay mad at you.”

  Trevor hoped Isaiah was right, because it was just miserable having Shanice mad at him. They’d just finished loading the dishwasher when Shanice came back down, and Isaiah retired to the den. He said it was to watch CNN, but Trevor knew he was giving them some privacy.

  “‘Nice,” Trevor said. “I’m sorry.”

  Shanice didn’t respond. Not even to his nickname for her. She took her book and sat down at the dining room table then flipped it open.

  Trevor took a seat in the chair beside her and tried again. “‘Nice?”

  Isaiah yelled, “Shanice, put that boy out of his misery and accept his apology. You’ll learn later in life that as a gender collectively, we tend to sometimes say stupid things.” Trevor heard the TV turn off, then Isaiah headed upstairs, but not before he yelled, “I’ll drive you home when you’re ready, Trevor.”

  Trevor felt really stupid now, but he’d do anything to not have Shanice mad at him. “What you saw me doing earlier… I quit. I promise. And I won’t use bad words around you anymore. I don’t want Pastor Isaiah and Ms. Brenda to stop me from coming around.”

  Shanice put her book down and looked up at him. “You hurt my feelings, Trevor,” she said, and her bottom lip trembled. “Don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t,” he promised, not altogether sure he would be able to keep that promise.

  Chapter Ten

  It wasn’t until six months later, when Philip lost his job that he began to ask Trevor to do things that made him increasingly uncomfortable. Phillip took trips to Atlantic City and Las Vegas, whereas before he traveled the shorter distances to Hollywood, Florida and Biloxi, Mississippi. VIP cards from the casinos began to come in the mail. Then, rather than make up stories, Phillip just flat out told Trevor to take his clients’ money.

  “I need you to move the funds from the people on this list and make it where no one knows it’s you, just like David said you could,” Philip said.

  “Why? You know that’s not legal, Uncle Philip.”

  “Are you questioning my authority? I’m your guardian. I pay all the fucking bills around here, keep your greedy mouth fed, and buy you all this top-of-the-line computer shit. How dare you question me?”

  Trevor did it a few times more before he hacked into Philip’s personal accounts to see why he needed so much cash. A large chunk of the insurance money that David and Elena had left to take care of Trevor was gone, except his college fund. Philip couldn’t touch that, thank goodness. Trevor was looking forward to college as his opportunity to escape.

  Until then, unless he was working on something for Philip, he camped out at the Baileys’ house most of the time. Isaiah questioned him about Philip one evening after dinner. They were barbequing on the patio out back that overlooked the pool.

  “How are things with you and Philip?” Isaiah asked. “He’s gone an awful lot. I mean, we love having you here, but I just want to make sure you’re being properly cared for.”

  “Uncle Philip gambles,” Trevor said, no longer willing to keep Philip’s dirty little secret. “A lot.”

  “Oh?” Isaiah said. “I wonder how DCFS missed that little detail about him. I’ll make some inquiries.”

  “If they take me away from Philip, they could send me anywhere in the state. Please don’t do anything that will get me taken far away, so I won’t get to see you guys,” Trevor said. “Uncle Philip isn’t the worst foster parent I’ve ever had, and when I go away to college, I’ll never have to see him again if I don’t want to.” He didn’t want to tell Isaiah about the other illegal stuff he was doing, because he’d definitely call DCFS about that, and he didn’t know how much trouble he’d be in.

  “That may be true, but Brenda and I worry about you with him. David told me about Philip’s behavior when they were growing up, but I thought he’d matured enough to give you a stable home. Never hesitate to tell us if it gets too bad, okay?”

  “Okay,” Trevor said.

  Isaiah called DCFS anyway and a caseworker came out snooping around. It just so happened that Uncle Phil was on his best behavior that week. It was almost as if he’d been tipped off they were coming, because he hired a cleaning company to come out and give the condo a thorough once-over and even cooked dinner every day. When questioned about his gambling, Phil pretended to break down.

  “I had a problem,” he admitted. “But I’m going to get help.” He showed the case worker some information from his employee assistance program from his job. The caseworker though skeptical, left with a promise to return often until she was satisfied Phil was back on the straight and narrow.

  A few months later, Philip had worked through the rest of the insurance money. He decided then that people who allowed funds to go unclaimed didn’t care about their finances, and these people should be targeted, since they were so careless with their money.

  As gambling became Philip’s pastime and primary means of support, he kept going to loan sharks. The loan sharks were used to bankroll his gambling habit, and the thefts from unclaimed property accounts kept things going when he couldn’t pay the loan sharks. Trevor felt more and more trapped, but he knew if he went to the authorities, he could be taken out of Philip’s custody, and put back into the system.

  Hired muscle for the loan sharks came around and roughed up Philip when he couldn’t pay. Trevor always dreaded this, since right after a beat-down, Philip would make him do more funneling from the unclaimed accounts.

  “Hey Trev?”

  Trevor had grown to hate the pet name Elena had given him simply because Philip used it. “What?” Trevor was unable to answer with any respect. The man didn’t deserve it.

  “Watch your tone, son.”

  “I’m not your son,” Trevor said, unable to stop himself.

  “Thank God,” Philip said. “As long as you do as I say, I’ll keep a roof over your head and clothes and on your no-good back, but you’ll do what I tell you to do.” Philip handed him a list. “Hack into these accounts and take several thousand out of each. Clean up like you always do, because I don’t want the feds snooping around.”

  Trevor must have taken too long to take the list from his hand, because Philip pulled him out of his chair and held him up by the scruff of his collar. “When I tell you to do something, you will answer me in a respectful tone. Do you hear me?”

  Trevor wanted to push it, but all it would do was cause his uncle to punish him physically. At sixteen now, Trevor had stopped caring about his uncle and his tirades.

  “I’m going to tell Pastor Bailey and Ms. Brenda about this, so they can get custody of me. I’m tired of stealing for you.”

  Philip tightened his hold on Trevor’s collar, and his nostrils flared. “If you breathe a word to the Baileys, or anyone, about this, you’ll be sorry. As sorry as my dead brother and his wife.”

  That scared him. His uncle was intimating that he’d had something to do with David and Elena’s death. It sickened Trevor to hear that.

  “You know, it would be easy for me to hurt that little play sister of yours, too—.” Philip said. “She could disappear one day, and the Baileys would never see her again. You either, boy. So get your attitude together.”

  Trevor was really afraid of what his uncle might do. If Philip hurt Shanice, it would be all his fault, and he couldn’t live with that. For the first time, he hated how stupid he’d been to help Philip out the first time. He should’ve refused, because now he was trapped. Trevor was sure those guys his uncle was hanging with all were part of some organized crime outfit. He’d watched enough of the Sopranos to know about the mob. His uncle had told them about his computer abilities, and they brought him small jobs to do.

  The two tough guys who were around the most, the ones he’d nicknamed Frick and Frack, were sort of like the cartoon characters, Pinky and The B
rain. One was tall, lanky, and feeble-minded, and the other was a short, stocky, vicious schemer.

  “Hey kid,” the short one, Frick, said to him one day. “Our boss wants you to work on the program that runs his slot machines. He needs you to make it more difficult for anyone to win but leave a few loose, so we can keep the suckers coming. Can you do that?”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Trevor said. “I get caught, I’m going to Juvie.”

  The little man glared at him. “Phil told us how you cover your tracks when you take for him, so you do the same thing for us, or else you might get into that nice little car Philip’s giving you, and the brakes will go out, or a bomb might go off.”

  Trevor didn’t care. He’d almost prefer it, he was so sick of all of it. “You do what you want to me. I don’t give a damn.”

  Frick and Frack worked Trevor over that day until he passed out. They’d been careful not to injure his face so he could go to school, or his hands so he could type, but his gut felt like someone had put him through a meat tenderizer, and he was sure one of his ribs might have been cracked. Even that didn’t shake his resolve, but what did was coming to with pictures of the Baileys with bull’s-eyes drawn on them taped to the walls of his bedroom.

  Chapter Eleven

  Trevor decided then he would distance himself from the Baileys. He stopped visiting their home and didn’t stay with them when his uncle was out of town. The next time his uncle threatened Shanice, Trevor told him he didn’t care about her or anybody. He hoped it would be enough to keep Phil’s focus off the Baileys, especially if he could convince his uncle they weren’t important to him anymore.

  That hope was short-lived. Soon Phil owed the mob so much money, the state of Florida alone wasn’t enough. His uncle checked him out of school one day to share an ingenious plan he and Frick and Frack had cooked up.

  As Trevor approached Phil’s car that day, he saw the mobsters waiting in the car, one in the front passenger side and one in the backseat. Phil opened his door, but Trevor just stood there, wondering if he shouldn’t run.

  Where would he go, though? The Baileys were out of the question if he didn’t want to put their lives in jeopardy.

  “What’re you waiting for?” Frack said. “Get in the goddamn car.”

  “Trevor,” Philip said in warning.

  Trevor had no choice. He got in and Philip pulled away.

  “So, here’s the deal,” Frick said. “Back when Phil told us where he gets his money from, that got us thinking. If we expand this little operation to a couple other states, we could give Florida a rest while we fleece some new ones.”

  “You can do that can’t you, kid?” Frack said.

  “’Course he can,” Phil said. “My nephew is a computer genius.”

  Trevor was not in a mood to be patronized that day, so he decided he’d stall them. “I don’t have the inside access that I had when I started doing this for Phil. Going in blind trying to do this in another state is going to take a while.”

  “How long?” Frick said.

  “It could take months to hack into the list alone. Then I’d have to find out which banks they used, and that could take several more months.”

  Frack pointed a finger in his face. “Listen, you’re not jerking us around, are you, kid?”

  “No. I promise,” Trevor lied.

  “In the meantime, the Boss has got some more slot machines he wants you to fix for him.”

  Trevor got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He did the slot job, and he “started” on the other job, when in fact he was just farting around on the internet feigning the work for the other states. David once told him that when hackers did things across state lines, that was automatic federal time. He would try to stay within the confines of federal law a little while longer.

  “T-t-trevor... ”

  Shanice was crying so hard on the phone he could barely understand anything except his name. His resolve to stay away from the Baileys went out the window when he heard that little girl crying.

  “Hey, Shanice. What’s wrong?”

  There was more sobbing before she said, “It’s Mom... .”

  Trevor’s mind immediately went to Frick and Frack. What If they’d done something to Brenda to send him a message? “Okay, you need to calm down and breathe so I can understand what you’re saying. What happened to Brenda?”

  “S-she was in an a-accident.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At home with the twins. Dad’s at the hospital with Mom. S-she lost the baby, Trevor. It was a little girl.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Trevor didn’t care that he just had a learner’s permit. He took the car Phil promised him for his birthday that he wasn’t supposed to be driving alone yet, and drove the few miles to the Bailey’s home. Their neighbor’s dog began to bark like Trevor was a stranger, despite the fact he’d been a resident of that street when they got him.

  He called Shanice rather than use the doorbell to let her know he was there. The twins were probably in bed, so he didn’t want to wake them. A few seconds later, she opened the door and ran straight into his arms.

  “Trevor. I’m so glad you came. I’m so sad.” She was so overwrought she was trembling. “And I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I know, squirt. Let’s go inside so the neighbor’s dog’ll stop yapping.”

  When they got inside and sat on the sofa together, Trevor tried to get some further answers to the questions he had.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “We’d come home from lunch after church and Mom fed the boys and bathed them, but she said she needed something to add to the casserole she was making for dinner, so she went to the grocery store.”

  Shanice’s eyes got glassy as she was telling him the story. “She just went to the Publix around the corner to grab a few things. After she’d been gone an hour, Dad got worried and took his truck to go look for her.

  “He called me back ten minutes later and told me he was on his way to the hospital. Mom’s van was being towed when he got there, so he asked some of the folks standing around what had happened. They said a beat-up, black jeep with two men in it ran a red-light and hit her van on the driver’s side.”

  That was confirmation it was Frick and Frack. Frick owned an old black jeep that he called his fishing truck. He usually didn’t drive it when he was around Phil’s, but Trevor had seen it once when they went to work on their boss’s slots.

  “Dad called me an hour later from the hospital and told me Mom had lost the baby.”

  “Is Brenda okay, though?” Trevor asked anxiously.

  “Dad said she had a broken leg, and they were going to do something to stop her from bleeding from the baby.”

  “But she’s going to be alright?”

  “They think so.”

  Trevor breathed a sigh of relief but he was devastated for the Baileys over the loss of their child. No one loved children more than Isaiah and Brenda Bailey. And Shanice had been over the moon about having a little sister. The phone rang as he was contemplating what he should do about the current state of events. If he went to the authorities, there could be other members of the Bailey family targeted. If he told Isaiah what he knew, it would likewise put the rest of the family in danger.

  Shanice picked up the phone. Trevor could tell by the conversation it was her father. “Well, Trevor’s here right now.” She adjusted the phone and addressed Trevor. “Dad wants to know if you would stay here with us until my grandma and grandpa can drive over from Sanford.”

  “Sure,” Trevor said. He was happy to stay at the Baileys for now and help out. Although he wasn’t supposed to be there at all since he’d spent months trying to convince Phil and his cohorts the Baileys weren’t important to him.

  A fat lot of good that had done him because, apparently, Phil had made good on his threats and Trevor knew why. He’d been giving them the runaround regarding expanding their operations to other states. Now
it looked like he was going to have to relent and give them what they wanted.

  Trevor hated how his stupidity had hurt the people he loved most, and the least he could do now was to console Shanice and her little brothers until Isaiah’s parents came. He was in no hurry to get back to Phil’s in his present state of mind anyway. His anger would only put himself and the Bailey family at further risk.

  Chapter Twelve

  Of course, Trevor’s continued absence from the Baileys made them and Shanice suspicious and angry, in that order, especially after he went back to his plan of avoidance after the baby’s funeral. Brenda and Isaiah called often, a conversation that would go something like:

  “Hey Trevor, we’re worried about you. Did we do anything to hurt your feelings? Or something?”

  “No, I’ve just got a lot going on. You know, school, activities... and I’ve got a part time job now.”

  “Really? Where?”

  He scrambled for a quick response that sounded credible, given the nature of his true work. If you could call it that. “Um, it’s a work at home gig Uncle Phil got me. Nothing special, just a lot of busy work.”

  “Well, don’t let it overwhelm you. We miss you, and we’d love to see you whenever you have time.”

  “I know, and I’ll try to make it over sometime.” Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t. He wanted to steer Phil and his goons away from the Baileys as much as possible. Eventually, they stopped calling, but Shanice was another matter.

  When Trevor refused Shanice’s calls or wouldn’t return them, she would just show up. One Saturday, she got on her bike and rode the seven miles to Philip’s condo. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt on any of the several major streets she crossed to get there, and Philip was off to one of the casinos he frequented. Trevor answered the door expecting it to be either Frick or Frack checking up on him, which they did sometimes when Phil was out of town.