“Well, you’re going,” said Ailis.
“Yeah, but this is my problem,” I said. “And things might get weird.”
“Then I should be there.”
“Yeah, except that you’re a girl.”
She glared at me. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Ailis, seriously. They might beat the crap out of us,” I said.
“Then they beat the crap out of us.”
“They might kill us.”
“They aren’t going to kill us,” said Ailis. “This is company business. And I’m in the company.”
“Listen, we haven’t exactly decided about that,” I said.
“I thought we had decided on that.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “We have decided. But we haven’t figured out the actual rules of things yet.”
“What rules?”
“Like situations like this!” I said, exasperated. “This is dangerous. You have parents. And people who…”
“What?”
“People who would miss you if something happened.”
“And you don’t?”
“No, I don’t. Who’s going to miss me, Diego? Strawberry?”
“Yes. Diego and Strawberry. I’m your partner and I’m coming.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I started this business and if I say it’s too dangerous, then you wait here.”
“Oh, you started the business? So you decide what I do? Last I heard partners means equal. And I have the car remember. It’s fifteen miles back to Venice from here.”
She had me there.
So we both went.
We got out of the car and crept slowly toward the bus. We didn’t have a strategy or a backup plan or any weapons to defend ourselves. We were just going to do this somehow. I replayed my conversation with Jojo in my head. He had promised me this was the best thing to do.
We walked along the side of the school bus, to the folding door in front. It was old and rusty. Ailis and I looked at each other for a moment. I took a deep breath. I knocked softly.
Nothing happened.
I cupped my hands around my face and stared in through the dirty glass of the door. All I could see was crap. Old paper bags and bottles and plastic crates and a bike tire and a busted birdcage and an old telephone…
I knocked again, harder. Finally a faint light came on somewhere. I heard a voice, then the sharp yap of the tiny dog.
Ailis was being brave, but the dog confused her. “These people have pets?”
“He’s got this little dog,” I explained.
A figure appeared in the front of the bus. I stepped back. The folding door began to shake. You could hear the rusty mechanism being worked. It finally folded over to the side. In the dim light, several feet above me, I could see the old man, with his white beard and an old baseball hat. A tangy, homeless-person smell wafted out of the bus.
The little dog appeared. He barked and bounded down the steps. He sniffed at us and jumped up against Ailis, his tail wagging wildly. Ailis was good with animals and immediately went into her routine: “Hey there, little guy! How ya doin’, little guy?”
The old man stared down at me. “So it’s you,” he said.
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
I listened then. I tried to feel the air, to sense if those other guys, the younger guys, might be in the bus too. But there seemed to be no one else present. The old man was alone.
“Who’s that?” he said, pointing at Ailis.
“This is Ailis,” I said. “She’s a… friend.”
“Nice to meet you, sir,” said Ailis, still playing with the dog. “And who’s this?”
“That’s Duke,” said the old guy.
“Duuuuuke,” gushed Ailis, patting the dog, which was loving the attention.
Once the formalities were done with, the man focused a tight glare on me.
I tried to remember Jojo’s advice.
“Sir,” I said. “I wanted to apologize for what happened on the pier. Stomping on your friend’s foot. And also for lying to you about Mugs. I told you that I wanted to talk to him about a puppy. But actually someone else was looking for him. And they asked me to help. They paid me.”
I was so nervous, I had to stop to catch my breath. Then I continued, “But I was also telling you the truth when I said I didn’t know where Mugs was. The guy who hired me didn’t tell me who was looking for him. I asked but he said he didn’t know. He thought it was family stuff.”
The old man’s lower lip began to tremble slightly.
“I feel really bad now,” I said, lowering my head. “I think about Mugs all the time. I don’t know where he is. I worry about him and I feel responsible for whatever happened to him.”
When I looked up, the man’s face had turned a deep shade of red. He looked deeply troubled, angry and confused. He opened his mouth to speak, but he kind of froze up.
And then he collapsed.
He didn’t actually fall. He couldn’t fall because there was so much crap in there. He leaned backward into a stack of stuff. A shoebox fell and bounced off his shoulder along with a shower of nails and bolts and screws and things.
Ailis was the first to react. She shot up the steps and grabbed him, helping him settle into a sitting position. I followed but it was a tight fit inside that bus, plus he was heavy and old and it was strange to be so close to a man like that. I guess if you had a grandfather you might be used to old people, but I didn’t have one, at least none that I knew of. Jojo would have said to treat this man like he were my grandfather. So that’s what I tried to do.
“Do you have any water?” Ailis asked him, as she held him upright.
He didn’t answer at first, but after a few seconds, he seemed to regain his senses. He waved his hand toward the back of the bus.
I took that job upon myself. I squeezed through the moldy books, the dishes, the plastic containers, the cardboard boxes. I managed to get into a slightly more open space near the back of the bus. This area was more practically arranged. There were little shelves with cans of food and a small stove/kitchen setup. It was actually pretty similar to my tree house.
I spotted a plastic gallon jug of drinking water and a coffee cup, and wormed my way back to where Ailis was. In the faint light, I poured the old man some water and held it to his mouth.
“Mr. Torres?” said Ailis loudly. “Can you talk? Do you need us to call an ambulance?”
“I… I’m fine…” he sputtered. He took a tiny sip of the water.
I looked over at Ailis. “Torres?” I said. “Is that his name?”
Ailis pointed at a medical bracelet around his wrist. “Lawrence Torres,” she said. “He has diabetes.”
I helped him drink more water. “Torres was Mugs’s last name,” I whispered to Ailis.
“What does that mean?” she whispered back.
“What do you think it means?” rasped the old man. “Mugs is my son.”
Eventually, Mr. Torres was able to get to his feet. He assured us he was fine. He wanted to go to Mugs’ trailer, to look for clues of what might have happened. “I’ve been afraid to go in there,” he told us. “But since you’re here, this must be the time.”
He lit an old kerosene lantern and we helped him down the steps. We walked across the parking lot to Mugs’ trailer. Lawrence didn’t have a key to the door, but with a couple hard tugs I managed to pop it open. The three of us stepped inside. It was small but clean and livable.
Lawrence set the kerosene lamp on the little table. We all stood there, studying the tiny space.
“The woman who owns this thing hasn’t been around for a while,” said Lawrence.
Ailis and I were afraid to touch anything. But Lawrence started opening drawers, looking for things.
Under the seat cushions, he found several storage compartments, which he and Ailis dug through.
I started looking around too. One thing about being a foster kid, you got to be a good “hider.” That’s often the only way you could keep anything
for any amount of time. But it also turned you into a good “finder.” That was what I did now. I opened some cabinets back by the sleeping area. I checked under the foam mattress. I tried the drawers in the very back of the trailer. One of them felt weirdly heavy. I looked more closely inside it. There were some papers, some old batteries, pieces of a flashlight. But it was heavier than that. I tried to pull the drawer all the way out. There was something blocking it. I emptied it and carefully worked it out of its compartment. Then I turned it over. Under the drawer, duct-taped to the bottom, was a small black pistol.
“Lawrence?” I said.
He came over. “I expected as much,” he said. Ailis and I watched while he carefully pulled the tape off the gun. He gripped it, inspected it, and in a quick, fluid motion, swung it toward the window.
Ailis recoiled behind me. I covered my ears. But he didn’t pull the trigger. He was just feeling it, testing its weight. He pushed a button and a metal clip dropped out of the handle. He studied this clip. He smelled it. He counted the bullets.
“What can you tell?” I said.
“It’s been fired. Three times.”
“By Mugs?”
“That would seem likely.”
“Maybe he was doing target practice,” said Ailis.
“You don’t shoot three rounds at target practice,” said Lawrence.
We all fell silent.
Lawrence placed the gun on the table. He sat down on the bench seat beside it.
“You kids,” he said. “There’s something you need to know.”
We were all ears.
“Mugs was bad news,” he said. “Bad news from the start.” He picked up the gun again and looked at it. “I don’t know what he did, but whatever it was, he probably did it for the wrong reasons and to the wrong people. And from what you say, it was probably those same people who came looking for him….”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Torres,” said Ailis. “We’ll find out what happened to him. We know people. Cali knows a detective in the police department. We’ll find out, right Cali?”
I smiled weakly at her. Lawrence looked away.
“Wait?” said Ailis, looking confused. “So we’re not going to find out?”
“You’re never gonna know,” said Lawrence, in a low voice. “And the police sure aren’t gonna waste their time.”
Ailis looked at me. But I lowered my eyes. The old man was right.
For a brief moment, there was no sound except for the hiss of the kerosene lantern burning on the table.
Lawrence spoke in a low voice: “I just hope Mugs finds peace. Wherever he is. He sure never had any on this earth.”
Lawrence got to his feet.. “Thank you for coming here,” he said, making eye contact with both of us. “I appreciate it.”
He took the gun and the three of us slowly made our way back to the school bus. At the folding door, he thanked us again.
“Sir?” I said, before he disappeared inside. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“What would that be?”
I pointed at the pistol. “Could you maybe sometime… when you’re not busy… teach me about guns? I want to be a private investigator.”
He stared hard at me for a moment. “Let me tell you something, kid,” he said. “No honest man needs a gun. It didn’t do Mugs no good. And it won’t do you no good, either.”
With that, he turned and went into his bus.
TWENTY TWO
I had no bad dreams that night. The next morning, I woke from a deep sleep to the sounds of birds in the trees around me. I rolled over and pushed my door open. The sky was blue. The air smelled like flowers and oranges and the ocean wind. Jojo had been right. I had done the right thing and now I was free again.
I sat up. I tossed my old Vans down into the grass and crawled down my ladder barefoot. I was hoping since it was late morning that Hope would be volunteering at the animal shelter and I’d have the house to myself. I could make some breakfast and blast Van Halen II, which I’d recently found at the library.
But Hope wasn’t gone; she was in the kitchen. She was talking to someone, I could hear them laughing. I could smell coffee brewing.
I didn’t want to disturb them so I went through to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Hope called out to me.
“Cali! Come in here. A friend of yours is here!”
I walked into the kitchen, unsure who it could be.
It was Reese Abernathy.
“Hello, Cali,” said Reese, smiling at me, her beautiful face glowing with morning freshness.
“Reese didn’t want to wake you,” said Hope. “So I made some coffee. It turns out she volunteers at the animal shelter too.”
“No, I want to volunteer,” said Reese. “I used to volunteer at a dog shelter at home. It was my favorite extracurricular.”
Hope had no idea who Reese was. I hadn’t told Hope about my private-investigator business and Reese was so attractive, and nice, and had such good manners that Hope had done what everyone did with Reese: She had totally fallen for her. She was utterly charmed.
“Uh… hi…” I said to Reese.
“You look sleepy,” she said. Then she smiled that smile of hers, and I was, just like Hope, completely under her spell.
Reese wanted to take a drive up the coast. Did I want to come? I did. Hope was late for her shift at the shelter so Reese offered her a ride. Reese had somehow got a car. The three of us went outside and Reese beeped the remote of a brand-new Range Rover SUV, with every imaginable luxury you could put in a car. Hope was a pretty down-to-earth person but even she couldn’t resist waving to her friends as we rolled up in front of the animal shelter. They were surprised and impressed with the car and with Reese, who waved to them like she was someone famous. She sure looked famous.
With Hope gone, Reese and I continued to the Pacific Coast Highway. I was now in the front seat. She explained that a friend of a friend was letting her use her car and stay at her house. She didn’t want to say much else about it. Which made sense. I didn’t ask.
We drove north toward Malibu. I amused myself by trying out the different gadgets, moving my seat around, getting a vibrating massage, adjusting a video monitor.
Reese put on some music and I stopped playing with everything. We just rode for a while. It was nice. The ocean, the sky. Reese put her window down. Warm air swirled through the car.
“So where are we going?” I said over the wind.
“I thought we’d go for a picnic,” shouted Reese.
“Sounds good,” I shouted back.
We drove through Topanga and I pointed out the Topanga Beach parking lot. You could see the school bus from the highway.
“See that old bus?” I yelled.
She looked down into the parking lot. “Yeah?”
“This old guy lives in it,” I said. “There’s a stove in there and a bed, and he has a dog and everything.”
“So he’s off the grid?” asked Reese. She had liked this expression when I’d used it before.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“So once you go off the grid, can you ever get back on?” asked Reese.
“Sure,” I said. “That’s what’ll happen to me. When I turn eighteen. I’ll become a real person again.”
“And that’ll be good?”
“Sure. I can buy a car. I can sign up for things. I can go to the dentist.”
“You can have a real life,” said Reese.
The wind was still rushing around. It was blowing Reese’s hair into her face. She put up her window, and it was suddenly quiet again. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?” she asked me.
“Me?” I said, embarrassed by the question. “No. Not really.”
“You’re going to like it,” she said. “Having a girlfriend.”
“I am?”
“Yeah. It’s great.”
“You’ve had boyfriends?” I asked her.
“Of course.”
“Like who?”
“Like my tennis inst
ructor.”
“Really?” I said.
“No.” She grinned at me. “Jeez, Cali. My life isn’t a total cliché!”
“Well, how would I know!?” I said.
She smiled at how gullible I was.
“So what’s so great about having a girlfriend?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Everything,” she said. She thought for a second. “Like at first there’s the physical stuff. You get super into each other. That’s really fun, obviously. And everything she says or does will seem like the most amazing thing ever. And then, as time goes on, you’ll get used to each other and the physical stuff will calm down a little. But that’s good in a way. You’ll start to notice other things. You’ll know what her favorite food is. What she thinks about. All her little mannerisms. And what she looks like when she’s eating or reading or sleeping.”
I nodded along with this. It did sound pretty good.
“And then one day you’ll do something together and it won’t be fun. The first time that happens it’ll scare you, but then you’ll see that it’s okay. You’ll trust each other like that. You can be bored together. You can have a crappy day. You can have any kind of day. It won’t change things.”
She signaled and changed lanes. “And then even worse things will happen,” she continued. “One of you will fart. Or do something really stupid or embarrassing. And you’ll be like, oh my God, she couldn’t possibly still like me after I did that. But that won’t matter, either, not in the end. And then eventually, gradually, you’ll come to know each other completely. Like all the way through. From head to toe. And that’s love, I guess. I think it is. I mean other people have different ideas. But to me, that’s love. That’s your first boyfriend. Or girlfriend. That’s the first one that really counts.”
I sat thinking about this. I had never heard relationships described like this before. But that was Reese. She made everything seem totally new and different and like you’d never even thought about it before.
“Has that stuff happened to you?” I finally asked.
“Parts of it have. Some parts. But all of it, start to finish? No.”
“None of it’s happened to me,” I said. “That’s for sure.”
She smiled over at me. “Well, you have something to look forward to then don’t you?”
The Prince of Venice Beach Page 12