by A. J. Lape
Not wanting to ruin my euphoric mood, I tapped in the speed dial for brother number two. One thing about teenagers and cell phones: ours were always by our beds, charging with the power on. You never knew when you were going to get the invitation of your life or the gossip smorgasbord of all smorgasbords.
“Bonjour, Bella,” Finn answered in a French accent.
“Bonjourno. Do you remember when I hid you from whatever-her-name-is that I said it came with a price?” Scary those were the same words Juan used.
“Oui,” he said sleepily.
“I’m cashing in, big boy. Can you get a juvie record on Jinx King?”
Finn could hack into anything and was the perfect blend of deviant, cool-headedness, and looking-the-other way. As long as I didn’t ask many questions, he was my ticket to the land of the all-knowing.
“Bella, Bella,” he said, testily. “Can Valentine Vecchione sniff out a moon pie?”
I disconnected with a laugh. I must’ve nodded off into a narcoleptic stupor because next thing I knew I was talking to Liam. I didn’t know if I called him, he called me, or something supernatural happened and simultaneously placed the phones in both our hands. Finishing up a morning swim at Lifetime Fitness, he asked me to go to the library then catch a movie. Incredibly stupid move on his part since Murphy wanted to roast him and eat his entrails—what’s more, he thought I was the library-type. Whatever. If he wanted me to be the library-type, then by God, I was the library-type. Thing was, Liam said we needed to discuss something “serious,” and mentioned the word “confidential” three times. I told him I’d call back just as Murphy walked into my room at seven o’clock, on the dot. If anything, Murphy was a creature of habit. He left every morning, come heck or high water, at 7AM.
When I asked permission, he rolled his eyes, snorted, then demanded I change my cell phone number this afternoon. Call me a genius, but my interpretation was he vetoed the experience. Meant I’d have to do things...on the QT.
Murphy sat on the corner of my bed, rolling his light blue oxford shirt to his elbows. “Give me the 411, kid.”
Suuuuuuure.
Sitting up, I gave him lie number one: “I’m going to the mall with Justice; then to Target;” lie number two; “then onto the library with Rudi,” lie number three, because I was going with Liam. “How ’bout you?”
Murphy’s eyes squinted up like two raisins. When my father was happy, his eyes were devoid of slits. For that matter, when he was mad they pretty much looked the same. “I’m buying a lottery ticket,” he smiled.
Murphy’s adult way of gambling, I laughed to myself.
Murphy was a bookie in his younger years. Evidently he was so convincing, he could talk people into betting on how long it took an ant to cross the road or the Loch Ness to show its face. Obviously, he’d mellowed, but God only knew what atrocities went down in the man’s brain.
After we discussed the science behind his number choices, he reminded me I needed to buckle down and gather information for my term paper. No kidding...not to mention I needed a topic. The moment he opened his wallet to give me a twenty-dollar bill, Claudia stormed into the room, her face practically spitting flames and channeling Beelzebub. Why the possessed look? In her right hand was my mud-encrusted, sopping wet sneaker.
The missing one.
Returned-by-God-only-knows whom.
Time stretched to infinity, and my brain short-circuited. I opened my mouth to speak, and for a moment, I feared I’d stroked out.
“My shoe,” I somehow gasped, throwing my hand over my heart. “Wh-where...d-did you g-get it?” I was a stuttering fool.
“It in mailbox!” she screamed. This was too close for comfort. Whoever returned it knew it was mine. That meant they knew I was spying on them. That also meant they were in the driver’s seat...not me.
I needed to confess or dig a deep hole and hide. But how in the world could you word a confession that covered my rapidly multiplying offenses? I mean, it made sense to me, but to the average mind?
“Where you be, Niña?” she spat out accusingly. “These clean yesterdays. This morning dirties. You goes out at night, si?”
Claudia’s English was good, but she hadn’t quite mastered the verb tenses. I opted to give them the silent treatment. After a few beats of me swallowing, understanding dawned on them quickly.
“There by the Grace of God, go I,” Murphy grumbled, standing up to pace around. My guess was God’s Grace might not cover my current sins, but I was hoping Heaven graded on the curve.
“Sorry, Murphy,” I apologized.
His face turned murderous. “What exactly were you doing?!”
None of your business...Thankyouverymuch.
When he crossed his arms and dug in his heels, I finally sighed, “I went outside to talk to Frank Small.”
Murphy knew Frank was a picker because he and Oscar had backed over our landscaping several times. That didn’t endear you to the population, but once Murphy got a load of their lifestyle, he backtracked on his hypothetical wish to behead them. “You couldn’t have called Frank?” he asked, infuriated.
I gave him half a shrug. “I didn’t have his number, and I just feel sorry for him.”
Murphy snorted, narrowing his eyes. “I tell you what, kid; people need to feel sorry for you.”
Every survival instinct I had kicked into high gear. God love her, Claudia must’ve felt it, because her black eyes went frantic. She belted out, “I wearing shoe!”
This was classic Claudia. Squeal, then get upset when Murphy gets angry. Thing was, she always inserted her own brand of lying when it was too late. She should’ve taken ownership four sentences ago.
Murphy snorted louder. “I don’t know what upsets me more. The fact that my daughter plays nighttime ninja or the woman I hired is willing to lie for her.” He settled his eyes on me as Claudia started speaking rapid Spanish. “It was practically Noah’s flood last night. A sinkhole could’ve swallowed you up, and you’d be down there with the gosh-danged dinosaurs!”
I tried not to laugh, but when a squeal whistled out, Claudia jumped on the bed and slammed her hands over my lips. The woman needed a new support bra. One was higher than the other, and lefty fell out of her orange muumuu and bonked me in the chin.
Murphy continued to pace, oblivious to anything else. “I see it in my business all day long. There are people that are one-time stupid, and people that are two-times stupid. Kid, you might be three-times stupid and that’s just an extra value-add the Good Lord gifted me with.” He stopped to take a breath saying the word “stupid” three more times. “You’re grounded. You can’t drive, you can’t go out on dates, and you’ve lost your iPhone, iPod, iHome, and whatever other contraption the Apple people make.”
I threw my hand over my chest, gasping, “No more fruit?”
Murphy’s eyes were dark and unyielding. He bent down into my face, purposely crowding me with his big, angry body. “You’re off fruit altogether.”
My laughter burnt out. This was one of Murphy’s classic over-corrections. His discipline rivaled that of the Romans. All that was missing was the blood and gore.
“For how long?” I winced. “You’re going to throw off my vitamin C intake.”
He didn’t find the pun funny. “Until I say you can have fruit again.”
Yeesh, that was a real problem. I closed my eyes, ferociously kneading my temples. I couldn’t drive nor did I have a boyfriend, but take my phone and you might as well have cut off my right hand. How in the world was I going to have my morning wake-up call, talk to my friends, and entertain myself? Plus, finish everything I’d started??
Realizing my thoughts were growing scattered, I blurted, “But what about the library?”
Murphy stopped in his tracks. “Funny you act so concerned right now, kid. All you’ve been doing is diving in dumpsters, skipping school, and traipsing around at all hours of the night. That behavior isn’t going to get you anywhere, and it certainly isn’t going to get you
a passing grade. So, to answer your question, it’s the library only. But I tell you, Darcy, I’ve got spies everywhere. You’d better do right by me, or I’m going to make you pay. Speaking of paying,” he sarcastically grinned, “that’ll be $20 to the Stupid Jar.”
The MoneyGram broke me. The only $20 in my possession was the one he gave me five minutes ago.
Murphy turned on his heels, his light-hearted mood from earlier all but snuffed out. I looked at Claudia, tears instantly pooling in my eyes.
“I sorry, Niña,” she apologized. Claudia stroked my hand, offering a forced smile. What she needed to offer was a barf bag; I currently wanted to hurl.
Sometimes people commit egregious acts because they have no fear of reprisal. That wasn’t true with me—Murphy could scare the crap out of anyone—my problem was I had no self-control. Still curled up in bed, I dropped my gaze onto the photograph of Dylan and me by my bedside table. Times like these I’d phone him for backup. Today, I couldn’t do that. If he had but a mere inkling of my actions, he’d release his inner-caveman, and things would undeniably be worse.
I did my own DIY (do it yourself) pep talk knowing this would take some major creative thinking to outthink Murphy. Unfortunately, I revved the engine on my imagination and got nowhere. Immediately, defeat leeched onto me, and I had the urge to sob like a baby. Murphy was right. I’d been engaging in stupid behavior and dwelling on things that certainly wouldn’t help my academic nor intellectual futures.
Instead, they’d probably wind up shortening my life.
Right as my confidence flatlined, the house phone rang, and the caller ID flashed Valley Juvenile Detention Center.
My eyes were glued to the dial, my ears transfixed.
If the universe wanted me to be a good-girl, then why did it keep throwing temptation into my lap??
“Oscar?” I answered quietly, sniffling back tears.
He didn’t answer with a “Yes;” instead he exhaled a “Thank you.”
Talk about adding fuel to the dying embers of my resolve. “Are you okay?”
Oscar, normally-jovial-and-good-for-a-joke Oscar, expelled some humorless laugh. He’d changed, I shivered. I didn’t know what he’d encountered, but he’d already changed. We had your basic small talk about what he’d had for breakfast and how he was sleeping, but the conversation was bumping and careening along like a dying car. Oscar was too content on hearing my voice when frankly I was worried about the charge-per-minute for this phone call. How long would it take to blow through $200?
What did I have to cover anyway? First was, what do they have on you? What did you see Jinx do? What do you know about AVO and the copper industry? My God, did you know Annie Hughes? And even worse, have you heard about her death?
I said, “Oscar, we don’t have much time. Let’s start with the basics. What did you find out in Discovery?”
Discovery takes places after you’re arraigned. It’s when the Prosecution reveals what they have on the suspect so the Defense can prepare. In that phase, the defense attorney will send the prosecutor a list of questions that he or she will answer along with any documentation they may have. Once those are in hand, the defense will sit down with the defendant and discuss the specific charges and figure out how best to defend them.
Oscar sounded embarrassed but nonetheless told me they had his fingerprints, a ball cap that contained a strand of his hair, DNA on the hand (because he scraped his knuckles then bled onto the hand as he dumbly picked it up—only in the world of a picker), and of course, the eyewitness accounts of him being in the vicinity. The public defender never gave names, but a pretrial hearing was set for next week. That’s when a list of witnesses would be given out, and you’d discuss pleas. My guess was the prosecution was going to try and protect their identities, especially if they were minors. But what if those minors were the ones that framed him?
On a different note, was the Defense following up on what could be the works of a serial killer? Did Oscar’s attorney think the three deaths were mere coincidence? And hello, what about motive? Thing was, if it were the works of a serial killer, the FBI would take over and push everyone to the sidelines. My aunt said as much, so were the Feds already here?
“Tell me about Jinx King,” I said. “Frank told me about the copper business. Do you think Jinx could have anything to do with this?”
I told him Juan was seen on the premises and that I’d personally seen Jinx and Justin and suspected they were the culprits. I then added that I’d witnessed Justin threaten Jinx at UDF. Unfortunately, Oscar could only provide a positive identification on Jinx. He didn’t recognize the names of the other three.
“Jinx has everything to do with this,” he sighed out in answer. “I’m not clean, Darcy. Frank and I needed money, and it’s just what I do. Jinx and I fought over the same construction sites. I was better at getting a jump on things than he was.”
“So, this was basically over competition?”
I heard the shrug in his voice. “I don’t know. He hates me, I hate him, I saw that body, and that’s all I know.”
Everything I needed to cover was swimming around in my brain, dying to surface for answers. I opened my mouth two times, but Oscar cut me off.
“How’s school going?” he asked. “I never thought I’d miss something like school, but I do. I miss lunch, I miss my friends, and I miss being free.” My first instinct was to hold his proverbial hand through the emotions, but time was a luxury I didn’t have. Plus, his voice was nothing more than an emotional black hole. If I took one step inside, I wasn’t ever going to find my way back out. I recognized that sound. It was honed into me at an early age, and only something traumatic did that to you. And here I was going to add something else just as traumatic to the mix.
I had to bring up Annie, and hearing his voice descend deeper into despair wasn’t going to make it easier. For some unknown reason, he was keeping their relationship under wraps—even from his brother. Before I could formulate something sensitive and well thought-out, my overly stupid mouth blurted, “Oscar, do you know Annie Hughes?”
Nothing. More nothing. Then that nothing moment grew into such a loud, uncomfortable agony, it was obvious he was hiding the association for good reason.
“Um, yeah,” he said quietly. “I loved her.”
Cue the stomach cramps. Could this get any worse? Bile rose up my throat when I realized I had to tell him she wasn’t breathing anymore. How in the world did you do that? His life was already screwed up beyond all recognition. Then I realized he said the word “love” in the past tense. Could he mean in-the-grave past tense?
“Oscar, I—”
There was a bittersweet breath. “I know she’s dead, and no, I didn’t kill her; and no, there was nothing between us. It was just me occasionally talking to a married woman who had a horrible home life.”
Unrequited love was horrific, no objection from me there. I told him softly, “I heard Alfonso Juarez was thought to have died sometime Sunday, found Monday. Annie died Monday, discovered Tuesday. Did you happen to see her on Monday?”
Please say no, I thought. Please, please, please.
“I talked to her, yes,” he answered. “She was planning to leave her husband and go to Michigan. I gave her all the money I had on me...and yes, I know I’m a suspect.”
Death knell in his coffin; I heard it in my head. “Excuse me, while I cry a moment,” I almost said. Soft whimpers filled the dead space when I realized he was crying. I wasn’t equipped for this, but I was all he had. “I’ll fix it,” I said soberly, “I promise.”
I was a liar. A big, fat liar whose soul was going to rot in Hell if I blew this.
Scattered voices filled the phone as someone informed Oscar his time was up. After a simple “Goodbye,” I stared at my disconnected phone and willed answers into my head that didn’t come. We were cut off before I could ask about the third body, and that third body might be the key to everything. I crossed myself even though I wasn’t Catholic and
said, “Help me, Jesus” even though I never really prayed. It was barely eight o’clock, and I already felt like I’d scaled Mount Everest.
17 WINNERS AND LOSERS
I BLEW INTO my hand.
My breath smelled like one of those poop-throwing monkeys...compliments of four cups of coffee, half a chocolate cake, and two pickle spears. All of that bodily harm took place because I promised Oscar the moon and had an argument with my father. I had better odds of delivering the moon than defusing Murphy. That was going to take an Act of Congress.
I dropped my pajamas and stepped into the shower, shifting the spray from hot to volcanic, enjoying the pound of rivulets down my back. As I lathered up with some body wash, hot steam coiled around me like a snake, nothing visible but the sin that was festering in my brain.
Once I was sufficiently pruned, I dried off and pulled on some inside-out white sweats, wearing my favorite tie-dyed t-shirt. In black letters it said “I’m not crazy. My split personality is.” Finishing the ensemble with my I-don’t-care look, I sat in the middle of the closet wondering how I was going to salvage my day. My brain needed to slow so I could think. With the portable house phone in my lap (since mine was impounded), I put in the ear buds of Marjorie’s iPod, leaving it on shuffle at the highest setting. What relaxed some people—peace and quiet—often was the opposite for me. I needed loud, random noise, and lots of it. Thing was, her iPod was full of Disney tunes. Nothing against Disney, but there’s only so much Whistle While You Work a sane person can take.
As I arranged and rearranged my shoes on their shelf, the house phone started vibrating. A look at the number showed Mr. Do the Right Thing himself.
Aw, for the love...
I read somewhere if two people pass DNA, they’re cosmically connected forever. If you’re particularly intuitive, you feel their presence and emotions as if they’re your own. Mothers have known this since the beginning of time. It’s that maternal instinct you feel when your young are threatened or merely thinking of you.