As usual, such thoughts left her flustered, so she glanced away and hurriedly tugged on the street clothes, not glancing at the mirror again. Then she could focus on Carlos again and not her own worries.
He already had his daily toiletries at the house: razor, clippers, cologne, toothbrush, etc, and a few outfits. She knew he wasn’t ready to abandon the apartment completely – she wasn’t ready for that either – and that the big pieces needed to be left in place just in case…well, she didn’t like to think about the just-in-cases, but there wasn’t, she realized, much to take. Except his clothes and shoes.
The toe of one white sneaker was peeking out from under the bed, so she knelt to retrieve it and, she quickly saw, all of its friends. He wore only two types of shoes – sneakers and boots – but he had a wide variety. The plain whites, plain blacks, black and neon green Nike Shox for working out, a black and navy pair of Converse All Stars. Timberlands and Wolverine steel-toe work boots. Some old Air Jordans that made her smile. There wasn’t a loafer or dress shoe in sight – you had to love Carlos just based on his lack of pretention alone.
Alma’s fingers brushed what felt like the corner of a shoe box, so she leaned down low, her chest pressed to the carpet, and reached into the deep, dark recesses beneath the bed. It was a box, but as she patted along its side, she realized that it was metal and had a handle on top, sort of like a tackle box.
She knew she shouldn’t – he was entitled to his privacy – but she pulled the box out into the light. She expected dust and instead found the lid clean, which meant he’d been in it recently. It was indeed a tackle box, scarred and dented, and it wasn’t locked, so Alma breached one more rule of etiquette and opened it.
Inside, she didn’t find shoes.
The removable top shelf was full of peeling, yellowed photographs: Carlos as a child; Carlos and his Aunt Nadia – Sam’s mother – and a few of a dark haired Latina woman she didn’t recognize. Rosita, she thought, sadness tickling her belly. Carlos had spoken about his mother only once, and it had been haltingly, with sparse details. There were old wounds there. There was a tarnished silver locket that had once been a smooth oval on a long chain, some loose buttons, a woman’s pin in the shape of a Scottie dog. Family tokens.
Her heart squeezed with sympathy. As much as she bitched about her family, she did have one, and Carlos’s last relative, Sam, was dead. He was the last Morales…who wasn’t missing or in jail anyway.
Curiosity now thoroughly piqued, she lifted out the top tray, expecting to find more keepsakes and mementos in the space below. What she found instead sent her hands flinging away from the sides of the box. She sucked in a quick breath that left her dizzy.
Baggies. Little Ziploc baggies full of white powder. And two boxes of 9mm ammunition.
The ammo didn’t bother her: her dad had guns; Sam had always had guns; she was a decent shot with a revolver. But even though she shut her eyes, shook her head and prayed, there was no changing what was in the baggies. She’d watched enough TV to know it could only be cocaine. Or maybe heroin…oh, hell. She was too much of a goody-two-shoes to know which was which. But it was contraband, of that she was sure.
“Oh, Carlos,” she breathed. Her pulse thumped behind her temples. Some of her friends in high school had smoked pot routinely, she’d known people who did heavier stuff. But Carlos…she didn’t want to think about that.
She racked her brain, trying to decide if she’d seen his eyes bloodshot, if he’d been sweaty and clammy. He’d been acting odd, but hadn’t been high. That would have been too obvious to ignore.
Maybe it’s old, she rationalized. Maybe he just never threw it out. Young guys were entitled to their stupid moments. Maybe he’d turned to substances right after Sam’s death, when he’d been grieving.
With shaky hands she replaced the top tray, snapped the box shut, and shoved it back under the bed. But when she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, she saw the baggies again; they were stamped into her mind. People made mistakes, bad decisions – she knew that, had made plenty of her own – but she’d never knowingly done anything illegal.
Sam had always been daring, always took risks. Once upon a time she’d thought that was sexy. But finding cocaine under Carlos’s bed worried her. She had a baby to consider now.
“Don’t think about it,” she said firmly, and got to her feet. Determined not to dwell any longer, she began fitting his shoes into the duffel she’d brought.
**
Carlos lost track of how long he stood propped up against the brick building face, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching traffic. His mind had finally gone blank. With no more possibilities of gaining freedom, he thought he might have given up. He was going to sell drugs for this Sal asshole because he’d gotten himself knowingly into this mess and there was no escape route.
Finally, the two dealers emerged. Sal came out first, snapping on a pair of black leather gloves. He walked a half a block down to a parallel parked Mercedes. Sean walked past Carlos and headed the other direction, toward his Escalade. Carlos followed with leaden feet.
Sean’s driver Jerome climbed out from behind the wheel and opened the rear doors from them, then, with a wave from his boss, went around to lean against the SUV’s grill and pulled out a pack of smokes. The vehicle was running and the plush leather seats were heated, but Carlos may as well have been sitting on a block of ice for all the comfort it offered.
“Stop,” Sean said.
“Stop what?”
“Acting like a little bitch.”
Carlos shot him a glare and, for a moment, was struck by how unconventional this relationship was. If he based his knowledge on movies, he should have had his fingernails pulled off by now, or been worked over by a baseball bat. “Then why don’t you fire me already?”
Sean sighed, passed a hand over the top of his head. “Cause I can at least trust your bitch ass. That Collin guy I had working for me? Gone. Took the dope and fuckin’ disappeared.”
Carlos snorted. “I’m never getting out of this, am I?”
**
“Lord,” Alma muttered as she finally managed to wrench the closet door open. The cramped little space was overstuffed with clothes, and it smelled more than a little musty. She stared at the mess a moment, trying to formulate a plan of attack. She didn’t have enough room to take all of his clothes, but she could take a good many of them, and wanted to make sure she got the most weather-appropriate items.
Jeans were loosely folded and stacked on the floor in front of a series of Rubbermaid laundry baskets that held an assortment of bundled sweatshirts and long-sleeve tees. Button-ups and printed t-shirts were on hangers, and a few lightweight jackets. “I think you’ve got more clothes than me,” she murmured, but like with the shoes, it was all casual. He was more of a collector than a shopper.
She started by pulling out everything on the floor, sorting through the jeans according to newness and wash, putting the sweatpants and basketball shorts in their own pile. Then the long sleeve tees were separated from the hooded sweatshirts. It was tedious, but Alma, as always, liked the sense of being busy. Productivity made her happy. And the more she folded and packed, the less she thought about the cocaine under the bed.
Finally, she had a nice little pile to take back to her place. She’d sampled a good mix of shirts and pants, for lounge, dinners out, and work. Then she reorganized the laundry baskets and pushed them back toward the closet.
As she began to fit the first one back in the corner, her eye caught a wadded up garbage bag she hadn’t seen before.
Remember what happened the last time you pried? She reminded herself. But she’d spent a half hour straightening up the contents of the bottom of his closet, and she hated to leave what was likely an old bunch of receipts and gum wrappers behind. She leaned in and grabbed one corner of the bag, pulled it out of the closet and up against her knees.
The smell was what struck her first. An old, coppery tang that made her eyes water. It
was a heavy, organic scent, and for a moment, she almost closed the bag back up and tossed it into the closet again. But a flash of white material caught her eye, so she stretched the cinch ties wide and pulled the sides of the bag down so its contents were an exposed lump on the floor.
White and gray and so much crusty, stiff brown it took her a moment before she saw that she was looking at clothes. A once-white t-shirt and jeans, a zip-up sweatshirt. And all of it had hardened into a block because of the dried-up brown stain that covered all of it. Alma held the t-shirt up to the light and saw the splatter all over its chest: it had been thoroughly saturated.
Based on the smell and the look of it, she knew it was blood. But she blinked fifteen times anyway, muttering “no” under her breath.
Whoever had been bleeding, she knew they’d lost too much blood to still be alive.
20
After his shift at Flannery’s, Carlos filched a bottle of Jack and walked two laps around the block, letting the cool night air and the whiskey do a number on his head. He didn’t call Alma, hoping she’d be asleep when he got back to the house so he wouldn’t have to try and act perky and shit again. He knew that it was no longer the occasional dark mood that plagued him, but true depression, and it was getting harder to cover.
When he swung his Firebird up into the drive, he was relieved to see that the lights were off in the house. He was met by dark windows and only Alma’s truck beneath the carport, for which he was grateful.
He’d drunk more than he thought because he fumbled for his house key, tripped over a box as he made his way through the carport up the steps to the back door. He swayed as he turned the deadbolt; it was a bit of a miracle he hadn’t crashed into a telephone pole on the way home.
The kitchen was dark, blocks of yellow light the shape of the window panes stained the floor; the security lamp on the back deck reaching into the house. Carlos felt around on the counter until he found the little bowl where they kept the keys and deposited his with a soft jangling sound. He ditched his boots in front of the sink with a sloppy mental note to move them in the morning.
In the living room, the vertical blinds had been closed and the area was ensconced in a blackness so complete, it felt like stepping into a void. Down the hall, he could see the glow of the little plug-in light that helped them find their way into the bathroom at night, and it was like a beacon guiding his semi-drunk ass across the floor, down toward the bedroom.
The corner lamp came on and nearly blinded him. He staggered and grabbed the back of what had been Sam’s favorite recliner, bringing his other forearm up to cover his eyes Dracula-style. Though he squinted, he saw a slight figure seated in the corner of the sectional sofa. “Alma?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded strange. “It’s me.”
He rubbed at his eyes, blinked a few times. The glare was much too bright, but some of the fuzziness left his vision. He saw that she had her back pressed into the sofa, arms folded, legs tucked up under her in a posture that suggested she was cold, or feeling protective of herself.
“Why,” he shook his head, which wasn’t a good idea. “Why are you up?”
“I wasn’t sleepy.” Now that he could see her face, he saw the blank coldness in her features. She didn’t smile, didn’t frown, gave no indication whatsoever as to her current thoughts. And her voice matched.
“I had a few drinks after work,” he explained, as if the way he was weaving wasn’t indication enough.
“I went over to your apartment today,” she countered. “I brought some of your things back so you’d be more comfortable here.”
“Oh. That was nice.”
“Yeah.” She leaned forward, one arm held tight around her midsection, blocking the bump of her stomach from view. She grabbed at something that lay at her feet – a garbage bag – and it crackled noisily as she picked it up and tossed it at him.
He missed and it landed in the recliner with a soft thump. For a full five seconds, he stared at it, blinking, trying to decide what it held, and then he remembered with a great big flashbang that swept away every last scrap of fog in his brain. “Where did you…” but he knew where she’d found it. In the back corner of his closet, pressed in behind one of the laundry baskets, right where he’d shoved it the day Sam had died.
“Alma - ”
“What did you do, Carlos?” He’d never heard her sound like this: like she was made out of steel and stone. And her brown eyes had become so distant, he may as well have been looking at a stranger. “Cocaine and blood. A lot of fucking blood. What in the ever loving hell is going on with you?”
One lie begets another, and so on, and he’d lied to her from the beginning. Since the day of the funeral when he’d hugged her and told her how sorry he was. Since before then, when he’d come to deliver the news that Sam had been killed in a drive-by. But he didn’t have a lie for her tonight; there was no way to explain pints of dried blood and as much coke as he knew was in his lockbox. He wanted to be angry with her for snooping, but he didn’t have the energy for that.
“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” he said, shifting his weight, ready to leave it at that and go off to bed.
There was a soft rustling of cloth as Alma surged to her feet. “You have enough cocaine to kill a horse under your bed!” emotion crept into her voice for the first time. “And whoever did all the bleeding, he couldn’t have lived through it. If you’re living with me, if you’re with me, then I do need to worry about it!”
“It’s not your business.” He turned away from her. There would be no explanation suitable, so he wasn’t going to try.
She made an angry, frustrated noise. “If you’re bringing illegal shit into my home, it is my business.”
He ignored her, kept walking.
“Sam was right then, huh?” she shouted. “You’re just a proverbial fuckup!”
He halted, hand on the doorjamb of the bedroom. There he was again, her precious do-no-wrong Sam. She was so fucking naïve about that asshole. Even in death, the guy was revered as a Saint – here he was cleaning up Sam’s mess, and he, Carlos, was the fuckup.
Anger boiled up inside him, flooded his veins, mixed with alcohol and adrenaline in a dangerous way. What did it matter? Why was her protecting her heart anyway? She didn’t love him.
He felt like a man possessed as he turned around and charged back toward the living room. She was standing in the entryway and didn’t shrink back when he got in her face, eyes never leaving his. “You wanna talk fuckup?” Her lips pressed into a firm line and even as he registered her steely resolve, he knew what he was about to say was irreversible. It would change everything. But he was too tired, too bitter, and too tipsy to care. “You think that shit’s my idea? That was all Sam, baby.”
Her eyes widened.
“Yeah, your Prince Charming and his old buddy Sean had it all worked out; we were gonna deal blow and bring in a fuckload of money.”
“No, he - ”
“He did, Alma!” he felt his chest heaving, his pulse picking up momentum. “You think he was so goddamn perfect and he wasn’t! The drugs were all Sam’s idea. You really believe he was picking up night shifts?” Her eyes had gone saucer wide. “He was dealing.”
“He wasn’t.” The strength bled out of her voice. She brought a hand up to her throat. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“For Christ’s sakes! How do you think he died? You think that shit was random? He was making a drop-off!”
“You don’t know that.”
“I was there! I saw it with my own goddamn eyes!”
She recoiled as if she’d been slapped, putting distance between them until she stood with a hand on the back of the recliner. “There?” she demanded, face going ashen pale.
“He,” his voice broke and he didn’t care, “we were meeting a buyer and some guy in a mask put a bullet through him.”
“You…” she blinked a few times, and then her eyes fell over the bloody bundle of clothing in the chair beside her
. “Oh my God.” Her hands covered her mouth and her breath rattled between her gapped fingers. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh God…Sam…Sam’s blood.” She looked over at him and the last of her façade dissolved. Her hands dropped away like her arms had become too weak to hold them up and her face, her pretty face, was absolutely wrecked.
“This is Sam’s blood, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond.
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
The silence that hung between them was thick: it felt like it had its own pulse, its own insidious intentions. As the seconds ticked by, Carlos knew there would be no coming back from this long pause.
“I - ”
“You were there,” she spoke through her teeth because she sounded like she might start sobbing otherwise, “when he died. You knew what happened to him and all this time you let me think…”
“Alma - ”
“I was always supposed to be with you, huh?” her eyes flashed up to his, wounded to the core. “So you thought since Sam was gone, now was your chance? That it?”
“No, I - ”
“Get out!” she shouted. “Get out, get out, get out! Out of my house!”
**
It all made sense now: the whole tumultuous turn her life had taken. And how could she believe Carlos when he said Sam had been the one doing the dealing? That it had been his idea? After Carlos had lied to her this whole time.
She’d had him in her house, her bed. She’d let him in her body. With her baby. And what if his plan all along had been to get her alone: to find some way to get Sam out of the picture…
Alma couldn’t breathe. The blood on the clothes, Sam’s blood, had become a physical presence in the room, and it pressed on her chest until her lungs could barely function. A dozen bloody, violent scenarios raced through her head, and she wasn’t sure if she could believe Carlos that some user had shot Sam…or if maybe he’d just gotten tired of waiting for his cousin to give up on her…
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