Karen put down the putty knife she was using, wiped her hands on a towel and went to crouch in front of her guest. “Can you tell me something?”
Shrugging, the girl waited expectantly.
“Is Reid as bad as Ryan and the others?”
“Ryan isn’t...” Her defense died unfinished. Because she suspected Karen had already decided to believe everyone else’s assessment of her boyfriend? Or because she didn’t quite believe the denial herself? “Nah. Reid’s a good guy—as much as anyone who’s been raised the way he has can be.”
“Why does he hang out with Ryan?”
“Because he doesn’t have anyone else. His mother doesn’t want him. Jamey doesn’t want him.” She shrugged again. “That’s what holds us all together. No one has anyplace else to go or anyone else to care about them. We don’t have anything but each other.”
“You have your baby,” Karen said softly, and Alicia’s face lit up.
“Yeah, I have my baby. And right now I’m going to get her and me home and get some sleep. It’s Friday, and Ryan always likes to stay out late on Fridays.”
“You know, you don’t have to stay out late with him. It’s perfectly all right for you to stay home and get some rest. Heavens, you’re going to give birth in three weeks. You’re entitled to a few quiet evenings at home.”
“Yeah,” she agreed mockingly. “Explain that to Ryan.” She scooted to the edge of the chair, then stood up. “You mind if I come back sometime?”
“Not at all.” Karen followed behind her to the door. “If you see Reid, ask him to come by, will you?”
“I’ll tell him, but don’t count on seeing him. His old man would raise hell if he saw him over here, and that’s something Reid tries to avoid.”
Karen watched her leave before wandering back into the parlor and picking up the putty knife. There were so many questions she would have liked to ask Alicia, about everything from her medical care to her plans for the future, about Ryan and Reid, about who it was that hadn’t wanted her. Who had failed to care about her? Who had left her so needy of affection that she accepted Ryan Morgan’s sorry version of it and allowed herself to be satisfied with it?
Parents. Many of Serenity’s problems came from poverty, crime and just plain bad luck, but a depressing number were caused by bad, absent or uncaring parents. Too many parents refused responsibility for their children but instead let them run wild, getting into trouble, breaking the law, using drugs, turning to crime and, all too often, ending up dead years before their time. As Jamey had pointed out, the kids around here didn’t talk about when they grew up but if they grew up.
Maybe some of the parents had tried. Maybe Ryan and Trevor Morgan’s father had given them a better example to follow. Maybe Vinnie Marino’s mother had done all she could to keep him on the straight and narrow. Maybe Alicia Gutierrez’s parents had counseled her to get away from Serenity, to get an education and make a better life for herself. Maybe the parents of every one of those lost souls who met in the park at night had done their very best to guide and support their children, but they had failed.
Or maybe they had found the job of raising children in a place like this too difficult and had given up. Maybe none of them had cared from the start.
Maybe Jamey didn’t believe it, but that was one problem she and her staff could help with. Parenting skills could be taught—always had been, back when the world was different, when most families stayed geographically close. For generations mothers had advised daughters on how to care for their own babies; fathers had taught sons by example to be fathers themselves. Too often now the family support system was gone, but that didn’t mean the support had to disappear, too. The women of Kathy’s House would provide the support, advice and assistance that had once been taken for granted, and maybe, when the next generation of Serenity teenagers came along, they would have a street full of parents who were more than up to the challenge.
And then, she thought with a stubborn scowl, maybe Jamey would believe in her.
It was a busy night in the bar and a busy night on the street. Jamey had seen the Morgans drive by a half-dozen times, the speed always as slow as a stroll. Trevor was driving, while Ryan sat beside him in the front seat, like a king surveying his kingdom. Jamey had seen Marino’s ugly face in the back seat on one trip by, but he hadn’t been able to identify one of the other bodies inside as Reid. He hoped none of them was Reid...but if they weren’t, then where was the kid?
After turning the last chair upside down on a table, he shut off the front lights, then stepped outside. There was a party going on in the park. Music filled the air, along with shouts and laughter and the smell of wood smoke. There had been only one bench left intact there; he assumed it wasn’t anymore. He could excuse the fire if it was seriously cold, but it was eighty-seven degrees tonight, the air thick with 90-plus-percent humidity. The punks had lit the fire out of sheer meanness, too stupid to realize that, in destroying the last bench in the place, they were not only depriving anyone else of a place to sit, but themselves as well.
He hated to admit that he shared any of Karen’s naiveté, but to some extent, on this subject at least, he did. He just didn’t understand why the kids insisted on trashing the park. Surely the little bastards could appreciate a nice place to hang out the same as anyone else on the street. Surely sitting around talking in a clean environment with benches, grass and flowers was more enjoyable than in a glasslittered dirt lot, and he knew for a fact that the more intimate pleasures they indulged in were definitely better with grass for a cushion and shrubs for privacy.
No one was asking them to stay out of the park, although, no doubt, the neighbors nearby would appreciate a quiet night once in a while. Karen just wanted them to leave it in a condition that could be enjoyed by others. That wasn’t too much to ask...or maybe it was. Maybe, when your life held no promise of a future, when you valued nothing but your own momentary pleasure, when you had no goals but to have fun right here, right now, showing respect for public property was out of the question. Maybe they trashed the park each night because none of them knew if they would be alive the next night to come back. Maybe living in the moment made looking ahead to the future impossible.
Down by the park the party had spilled out into the street. The Impala was parked there, right in the middle, its stereo system—worth more than the car itself—booming. In the buildings around it, there were lights on in different apartments, in spite of the late hour. No use trying to sleep when music was blasting through the walls. Across the street, though, the house was dark. Maybe the house provided enough sound-blocking material to Karen’s rear-facing bedroom that she was one of the lucky few able to sleep. More likely, she was sitting in the dark up there at one of the bay windows or...
He stared hard at the porch. It was deep in shadows, but he could make out a faint movement back and forth. That damned rocker. Awake and uncomfortably hot, she had decided to sit outside, where she would make a perfect target for anyone with a gun and a grudge. Too many Serenity residents had both.
He locked up the bar, then crossed the street, entering her yard through the driveway, ignoring the wide central steps for the smaller set at the near end of the porch. She was sitting there, all right, one foot propped high on the porch rail to keep the chair rocking. Worse, she wasn’t alone. Someone sat on the floor facing her, his back against the elaborately turned spindles, his arms resting on his bent knees. Reid.
The desire to send him away with one final warning was strong. He didn’t trust the kid as far as he could see him, which, right now, was about eight feet. He’d believed the worst of him far too long to give up all his suspicions, doubts and distrust easily. But he didn’t suggest Reid should get lost and, as far as Karen was concerned, stay lost. It was hard to resist, but saying anything would only offend Karen, and, honestly, he was no longer 100-percent sure that such a warning was necessary. Ninety percent, maybe, but not a hundred. Instead, he approached them, took a position ag
ainst the rail but facing the park and said, “This isn’t the best place to spend a late Friday night.”
“That’s what Reid said when he came,” she replied evenly. “I see you sitting out on the sidewalk often at night, three feet from the street and in bright light.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been spending my time making enemies the way you have.”
“You made your enemies a long time ago. Old enemies are no less dangerous than new ones.” She raised one hand in gesture toward the bench. “Sit down.”
“No, thanks. I’m faster on my feet.” Finally he turned his attention to Reid, sitting on the floor, pretty well hidden from the street. He couldn’t remember a time he had ever gotten within twenty feet of the kid that he hadn’t actually felt the anger and resentment radiating from him. Even the very first time they had met, it had been there; real, palpable. Tonight was no different. “Did she ask you?”
There was a slight shift of the younger man’s head, but he didn’t look at Jamey. “About the mural?” He sounded suspicious, antagonistic. “It’s a stupid idea.”
“He says Ryan would tear the back wall down before he’d leave a mural on it undamaged.” Karen explained.
“Maybe he’s right.”
“And maybe someone needs to tear Ryan down.” Her tone was conversational, as friendly as the expression he could see now that his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, even though her words weren’t.
“The only person Ryan Morgan is afraid of is Jimmy Falcone,” Jamey warned, “and Jimmy isn’t going to make him leave your park alone. If by some off chance, you do make a difference here, Jimmy will want to get rid of you as much as Morgan does.”
She smiled. “I think you underestimate the man. Falcone has money, power and every corrupt official in the state in his pocket. What he doesn’t have—and what he’s always wanted—is respect. Not from people like Ryan Morgan, but from people like us—the everyday, average, common people of Serenity.”
“He used to want respect,” Reid said derisively. “After barely avoiding prison a few years ago, he’s decided that more money, more power and more corrupt officials are a perfectly fine substitute. For all he cares, the everyday, average, common people of Serenity can go to hell.”
Jamey had no doubt about the correctness of Reid’s assertion—after all, he worked for the bastard from time to time. He was glad, though, to hear the contempt. He’d heard the Morgans and their buddies talk about Falcone before. It was Mr. Falcone this and Mr. Falcone that, in an almost reverent voice. They admired their boss. They all wanted to be just like him someday. Obviously, Reid didn’t. Thank God for something.
“So forget Ryan and Falcone,” Karen suggested. “If I get the paint, Reid, will you paint the mural?”
“It’s a waste of time and money.”
“So what better things do you have to do with your time?”
He looked away, down the street toward the park where his friends were gathered, where his part-time girlfriend Tanya was performing a provocative, inviting dance on the hood of the Impala, to the loud, lewd pleasure of the young men gathered around. When he looked back, there was a tension in his face that hadn’t been there before. “I don’t know what Serenity was like thirty years ago.”
“I doubt that it’s changed much,” she pointed out mildly. “Most of these houses and buildings are sixty to a hundred and sixty years old. But for any details you might need, you could ask your father. He lived here then. He probably remembers.”
Your father. A curious stillness followed those words. To Jamey’s best knowledge, no one had used them—at least not in front of both of them—since Meghan had walked into the bar and said, “There’s your father, Reid—the man who never wanted you.” He had wondered at the time if that was the way she had always referred to him. Reid’s go-to-hell response suggested that it had been.
With a sudden surge of energy, Reid got to his feet. “I’ll think about it. But it won’t last. They’ll destroy it.” He took the steps to the cracked sidewalk, then glanced back. “Around three-thirty or four, Ryan’s going to be drunk enough to get mean. I wouldn’t advise being out here when that happens.”
Jamey and Karen both watched him walk down the street toward the park. Before he got too close, though, he turned into the building where the apartment he shared with the Morgans was located on the second floor. Only a moment later, to the great disappointment of the punks in the street, Tanya slid off the hood of the car, adjusted her clothing and headed that way. Jamey didn’t realize how severely he was frowning until Karen spoke. “Maybe she’s not so bad one-on-one. Maybe this is all just an act.”
“Maybe her reputation is all fluff and no substance?” he asked dryly.
“A great deal of Reid’s reputation is without substance.”
So she insisted. He hoped she was right.
Stepping past her, he turned the bench around so he could lean back against the wall and stretch his legs out in front of him, then settled in. “Why are you out here?”
“It was too noisy to sleep, so I thought I’d come out and see what was going on. Then Reid came by. I had asked Alicia this afternoon to tell him that I wanted to see him.”
Jamey shook his head in dismay. “You’re determined to make this personal with Ryan, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
Her innocence, he knew, was an act, one that he wasn’t foolish enough to buy. Neither would Morgan. “You’ve already got Reid, who’s the closest thing to a best friend Morgan’s ever had, hanging around, and now you’re going after his girlfriend—the mother of his baby. If you win both of them away from him, you think he’s not going to take it personally?”
“I’m not trying to take anyone away from him. If Alicia finds other ways to spend her time and other people whose company she enjoys more, that’s not my fault. Ryan can’t blame me because he treats her like property and she doesn’t like it.”
“Darlin’, Ryan can blame you for the state of things in China. Even if you’d never met Alicia, if she dumped him, he would find a way to put it on you. Common sense and reason don’t enter into it.”
She twisted in the chair until she was facing him. “You worry too much, Jamey.”
“Go away,” he said with a scowl, “and cut my load in half.”
“Half? I’m flattered.”
“You’re foolish.”
“You’re a pessimist.”
“I’m a realist.”
“I appreciate your concern. I really do. It makes me feel safer. But it would help us both a lot if you’d just have a little faith.”
“You want to know who I have faith in down here? The Morgans. Vinnie Marino. Tommy Murphy.” He added a few other names for good measure: the Rodriguez brothers, Mitch Campbell, Tyrone Block, the Rossellinis, Pete Carletti. There were more, a couple dozen more if he chose to waste the time. “They’re the people who do what they promise. They’re the ones who stand up, who never back down, who never hide.”
“I haven’t backed down yet.”
“Only because they haven’t yet put you in a situation where you have no choice.”
Instead of further argument—or maybe just changing the angle of the argument—she remarked, “You didn’t name Reid.”
It didn’t pain him to answer. “I don’t know about Reid.”
“A week ago you were convinced that he was as bad as the others. Now you’re willing to admit that you may have judged him unfairly.”
“I’m willing to admit that maybe it’s not so black and white. Maybe he’s not just like the company he keeps.”
She rewarded him with a smile. “You’re making progress. Maybe next week you’ll see that a lot of his behaviors are defense mechanisms. He expects you to meet him with hostility and resentment, so he approaches you that way. If you were less predictable, maybe he would be a little more open.”
He did always assume the worst with Reid, he had to admit. Maybe part of it was simply taking the r
ealistic view. The kid had already been well on his way to juvenile detention when he’d come from Atlanta. But maybe the larger part was Jamey’s own defense mechanisms. He had never felt guilty or ashamed of anything...except his treatment of his own son. He had blown off the most important relationship in his life for his own convenience. He hadn’t wanted to be a father, and so he had accepted Reid’s disappearance with relief, even though he’d known Meghan wouldn’t be much of a mother, though he’d known the kid would need somebody. He’d felt tremendous guilt, although he’d denied it. By treating Reid like a punk, by convincing himself that he must be a punk, he had in some small way validated his failure as a father. The kid had been beyond saving and so there was nothing for Jamey to do, no responsibilities to accept, no guidance to try to offer.
But maybe, he acknowledged now, he’d been wrong. Terribly, irreparably wrong.
An angry shout from down the street drew his attention. The natives were getting restless. Someone’s temper had reached the boiling point. At least Reid was inside his apartment, removed from the crowd. It was time for them to retreat, too. Rising from the bench, he opened the screen door and held it, silently waiting.
Karen sighed. “I guess that’s my cue to go inside, cower and hide.” She stood up, leaving the rocker still rocking, and made it as far as the doorway before stopping. “A week from tomorrow I’m having a neighborhood party—probably around six, when it’s not yet dark but a little cooler. Maybe you could find someone to take over the bar—or, better yet, close it up and bring your customers over.”
“No one will come,” he warned.
“That’s what Reid said. You two are more alike than you realize. You certainly think alike.” She stepped inside, pulled the screen door shut and latched it. “You were surprised when Shawntae joined us at the park this morning. Maybe you’ll be surprised next Saturday when you see how many of your neighbors are willing to venture out for a little celebration.”
“We’ll see,” he said cynically. If even one showed up—Shawntae, maybe—he would be surprised.
Convincing Jamey Page 14