by Bret Lott
She laughed.
“Not putting up with this secret shit much longer,” Five said from between us. But this time he didn’t sit back, only stayed right there.
“You need to learn to sign,” I said, and before I’d even finished the words a piece of me—a big piece—was sorry for it. I didn’t want him to learn this language. I didn’t want him working out words between them that only the two of them would know. I didn’t want his hand in her palm, or hers in his.
I looked at Tabitha. She’d seen what I said, and held my eyes for a second too long before she looked out the windshield.
I looked too. Nothing new out there. Only Unc somewhere inside. With Prendergast.
“Tried it,” Five said. “Signing.” And Tabitha turned from the windshield toward him, but just barely. She didn’t want him to see she was watching him, reading his lips. But she wanted to listen all the same.
I’d been with her a long time. I knew how she was.
“Ordered a CD with these songs on it and a book for the signs,” he went on. “Just couldn’t get the hang of it. But I know every word to the stupid songs by heart. ‘Who Knows the Alphabet?’ was one. ‘Opposites Are Out of Sight.’ ‘Up, down, big, small, young, old, short, tall,’ ” he sang, his voice bright but quiet.
He stopped. He took in a breath, let it out, and I could tell he’d heard himself carried away, singing inside a car while what was going on just outside was going on.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he whispered. “And I wonder who the son of a bitch is called this in. Who up on his porch watching right now called the cops on us. I don’t get it.” He paused. “Maybe Adkins across the street. Maybe Mrs. Herron.” He nodded ahead of us, as though I’d know which houses he was talking about and the people involved. “I mean, I know the cars out here every week are a problem,” he went on, “but Dad sends everyone in the six houses on either side of us and the eight across from us this monster thing of Omaha Steaks for Christmas every year.”
And now, with his bringing the whole thing up, I wondered about that too: why tonight this had been called in. I didn’t care who had done it. But it was the fact of it that bothered me. Why tonight?
I looked at Five, him leaned forward between us, and saw Tabitha with her eyes on mine.
She looked at me, held it. She blinked, seemed to swallow. She glanced at Five, then out the windshield, and back to me.
I looked. Officers moved back and forth along the driveway. The world pulsed blue.
I turned back to her, still looking at me. “Why are you back here?” I said. “Why are you home?”
“Long weekend,” Five answered, still looking out the windshield.
“No,” I said. “Tabitha.”
He glanced up at me, at Tabitha. He shook his head, looked forward again.
Tabitha looked down a second, then back up. She pursed her lips, signed, See my mom.
“She’s here for an interview,” Five said at the exact same moment. “She could tell you where but then she’d have to kill you.”
Tabitha, thumb still at her chin and fingers spread wide for the word mom, froze, her eyes on Five. He looked at me first, had this smile on his face and raised his eyebrows, and turned to Tabitha.
Her fingers snapped together right at her lips, a tough little move it wouldn’t take much for anyone to figure out: Shut up.
“I know that one,” Five said, and looked at me, the smile gone.
Tabitha turned from him to the windshield again. She crossed her arms, settled in her seat.
“An interview?” I said, but she was ignoring me or couldn’t see me, one. I reached across to her, touched her arm to get her attention, but she wouldn’t look, only sat tight with her arms crossed.
“She’s pissed,” Five whispered. “Best to leave her alone when she’s like this,” and he shook his head. “Shouldn’t have said anything.”
For a second I thought to tell him I knew when she was pissed, believe me. But I was still stuck on whatever this interview thing meant. And the idea she could be moving here for a job. Moving back home.
“Whose are these?” Five said then, like nothing had happened at all, like there hadn’t been any kind of turn just now for the possibility of her being home and why, no mystery to whatever she was here and interviewing for.
Because he knew things between them. He and Tabitha both knew about each other, and what could possibly be. I had nothing to do with either of their lives. He’d spoken out of line, she’d told him to shut up. Of course he’d moved on.
He reached between us to the console then, picked up the object of his interest: Unc’s wallet from the console tray. “If this is Leland’s,” he said, “then he’s …”
His words trailed off, and he set the wallet down, picked up Unc’s cellphone, all before I could tell him to leave those things alone, that they weren’t his to touch.
“Does he just have cash in his pocket when he walks in and when he heads home?” Five asked.
“Does it matter?” I snapped at him. “Leave it alone.”
But even as I said these things, I began to wonder at what it was he was touching: Unc’s wallet, his cellphone.
I thought of Unc climbing out of the cab after he’d told me about Mom, the hurry of it all while news of her life had pounded inside me, and the odd business of watching him pull out that wallet, set the cellphone there, and how nothing just then had made any sense at all.
He always had his wallet and cellphone with him. And even if he’d carried cash in his pocket and not in his wallet—which he never did—how else was he going to call me out here, like he did at the end of every poker night, to let me know to come in and get him, walk him back to the car?
“Doesn’t he call you when he’s done to tell you—” Five started, his voice low and with a kind of confusion to it.
But Tabitha started tapping hard at the dashboard in front of her right then, and I looked up from the console, and from Five’s hand still holding the phone, to see her nearly jumping in her seat, and I looked out the windshield, saw it all start.
The perp walk.
Here came one man, and another, and another, a line of them headed along the driveway and away from the house, beside each one a man in a black windbreaker and pants, a hand up and holding the upper arm of the poker player beside him.
Every player with his hands behind him. They’d all been cuffed.
Five let go the cellphone, wedged himself up even farther between us. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.
A parade. A real parade. Men drenched in blue and dressed in those Nat Nast shirts and Tommy Bahamas all moved along the drive, some with their heads down, some with chins high. And more of them, and more, all easing along the driveway. All of them right toward where the cameras were set up, those halos of light.
The clutter of vehicles out on the street made it impossible to see what was happening to each one as he came off the drive, but I knew they were being fed into the back of the big black UPS truck down there: a prisoner transport. A good old-fashioned paddy wagon.
“There he is,” Five said in the same moment Tabitha started tapping hard the dash again, jabbing at the air in front of her: Look!
Not Unc, or Prendergast, but Warchester Four. Five’s dad, doughy-faced even from here, but blue, like everyone else. He was smiling, I could see, head up, nearly strutting down the driveway. Then he disappeared behind the cars strung along in front of us.
“What an idiot,” Five said, and pulled away from us, his head and shoulders disappearing into the backseat. “You guys just wait here. Be back in a minute,” he said, and popped open the door.
“Wait,” I said, and looked down at the console, the wallet and cellphone, and pieced together, finally, what Five had been on the border of figuring out for himself.
You stay put, you hear? Unc had told me. Where I need you is out here, he’d said.
Unc had been the one to call this in.
“You think they’re going to let you stroll in and just take a wad of money out of a house in the middle of being raided?” I said. “And if your car is in the driveway, you think they’re going to drop everything and move all their vehicles for you?”
Stay put, Unc had said.
He’d known what was going to happen. That’s why he’d told me to stay here, why he’d dumped these things, too: the police would show up, and now they wouldn’t have anything of his, no ID, no cellphone, nothing but the book bag. And who knew if he’d even lay claim to that now? There was no ID in the bag either. As of right now, it was just something in the house when the cops had busted in.
And inside, when he’d walked in tonight, Unc had run into Five, and with him Tabitha. Two people who had nothing to do with anything. Two people who didn’t deserve to get busted along with the rest of the crowd, for whatever reason he’d decided to call in the cops on this, and now I saw Unc back at our house this afternoon, me asleep and him figuring Mom to be doing the same, her bedroom door closed.
I saw him in our house, and making a phone call to the Mount Pleasant Police Department, maybe three more after that, each to a news station to let them all know at 10:30 tonight an illegal evening of poker magic would be in full swing, and everyone involved—the MtPPD and all three stations—could take home a full cast net of big fish.
Among them a Navy commander, I realized, whose career would be tarnished big-time—whose ass would be kicked in marvelous new ways—were he to be paraded before television cameras, if he were to have a mug shot taken, if he were to have to make one phone call to get someone to bail him out.
All of this, I understood finally, Unc’s middle-aged means of walking up Prendergast’s driveway with his hands in fists to stomp, in a more public way, the shit out of him. Payback, I saw, for the story of Mom.
So what, I could see Unc reasoning, if he got arrested along with the rest of them? What did he have to lose, but the fact he’d been playing poker for years with a bad man?
And what did all these other people have to lose, too, I could see Unc thinking, if in this one evening of a pile of misdemeanor charges he could make a Navy commander who’d raped girls he’d drugged—my mom one of them, my own mom—do a perp walk in order to get him busted down a few ranks or even booted out altogether?
I felt, in a very small way, myself begin to smile.
Five climbed out the open door anyway, said, “I’m gone. Back in a minute,” and before I could say anything else to try and keep him here, to make him stay put with me and with Tabitha, he closed the door.
Tabitha felt it close, and turned from the windshield to look behind her, then out her window at Five moving past, and toward the house.
She turned to me, raised her eyebrows and shoulders: What is he doing?
“Going to try and get bail money out of the house. Maybe get his car.”
Her expression went from inquiry to utter puzzlement: her eyebrows came together, shoulders squeezed high, her mouth open. Huh?
“Go figure,” I said, and looked out the windshield.
Still the perp walk continued—there must have been thirty people escorted down the driveway by now—Five walking toward it all with his coat flared out for his hands in his pockets. He got to an officer standing perimeter, began talking to him, Five’s back to us.
Tabitha touched my arm, and I turned.
Unc told me, she signed. She tilted her head, shook it just barely. Inside. Took my hand, spelled fast POLICE COMING. HUGER OUTSIDE. GO.
I looked at her, nodded. I pointed to Unc’s wallet and phone. “He told me to stay put,” I said. “He didn’t tell me, but I figured it out.”
She nodded, looked back at Five, still talking, then back at me.
Why call in? she said.
“Forgot he knew how to spell,” I answered. No answer at all.
Because I didn’t want to go into it. There was too much involved with why he’d called it in, all of it stuff she didn’t need any part in knowing: a body in a marsh, a pair of goggles. My mom, and the story of her life.
“Forgot Unc learned how to spell so’s he could talk to you when you were a kid out to Hungry Neck,” I said, and made my eyes go to Five out there.
But she reached across to me, took my hand again, spelled out for me there so I wouldn’t have any choice but to know the question.
Why?
I looked at her. I took in a breath, swallowed. I felt the warmth of her hand yet one more time.
“To settle an old score,” I said, and looked out the windshield again.
Five still stood talking to the officer, who had his hands on his hips.
Tabitha took her hand from mine, and I glanced at her, saw her looking out there too, and I reached to her, took her hand. She turned again to me.
Do you love him? I spelled.
She tilted her head, blinked quick a couple of times, her eyebrows working again.
Unc? she spelled back. Of course.
I smiled. Five.
She took her hand from mine, seemed almost to flinch, a kind of reproach on her face, if you could call it that. As if I’d asked a question too intrusive to answer. Or one too ugly to acknowledge. She looked out the windshield again, her own way of avoiding the question I was asking her now.
But then I saw her look down, at her hands. I saw her take in a deep breath, then let it out, and she turned to me.
He was my lab partner, she signed. A good brain, and he was using it. She paused, looked down at her hands again, then up at me. He’s funny. And he’s moving ahead with his life.
The last part stung. I knew what she meant, and she did too. I blinked a couple times, then did the best I could: I shrugged. “You still haven’t answered my question,” I said.
One more time she looked down at her hands, held them out in front of her palm up, like she might be expecting something magical to happen, some answer to materialize that she didn’t yet know and that would surprise us both. Then she looked out the windshield, and slowly back to me.
He thinks it’s more serious between us than I do. But I have things to do. I have a life to make.
“But Facebook,” I said. “Your status and his both.”
She looked at me, sneered almost. Slowly she shook her head as she signed You believe Facebook? She paused. I just leave it so people don’t bother me. I see Five maybe twice a year.
She let her hands drop, turned in her seat without looking at me, faced forward.
Maybe, I thought, I could take her hands again, her words just now, I hoped, a kind of permission. I could spell out what it was I should have said back in Palo Alto, what had never yet changed.
I love you I could have told her.
But that was when she started tapping the dash again, and pointing, and I looked.
There now was Unc, hands behind him, moving out onto the driveway. Ball cap and windbreaker.
And Prendergast beside him, his hands behind him, too. He didn’t have on his uniform, wore instead his own silk shirt, dark from here, same as everyone else. But I knew it was him: even from here I could see his officer haircut, nearly shaved on the sides, thicker on top. Tall and thin and military.
They were walking side by side, between and behind them one of the policemen in black, holding the upper arms of both of them. It seemed odd, that here would be one man holding two when every player in the perp walk thus far had had his own escort. Maybe they thought Unc a low-enough flight risk not to need his own private cop, figured a blind man wasn’t going to run. Let’s just walk him next to this other dude out to the paddy wagon.
They were halfway down the drive now, and I could see two more perps a few feet behind them walking next to each other, too, one cop assigned between them, just like Unc and Prendergast.
These two were different, though.
One was a woman, short and squat, the other a big guy taller even than Prendergast. I could see, too, that they both had on long-sleeve white shirts, black vests, and I recognized them: the chunky Filipino woman who worked the chip cage, that closet with a half door at one end of the room. And the other was the bartender, the big tanned guy with biceps the size of bowling balls. The same guy who’d been present at my initial humiliation at the hands of Five, when I’d ordered the same drink he was having.
I touched Tabitha’s arm, and she turned. “I’m glad Unc sent you out here,” I said. “Wouldn’t want you included in this.”
Five was about to figure it out, she signed, her mouth in a kind of frown. She glanced down at the wallet, the cellphone, and back at me.
“If he gets ticked off,” I said, “we’ll let him know Unc got him out of there so he wouldn’t get arrested. If it’s any comfort.”
She nodded, and we both turned forward again.
Right as something started happening.
There stood Five at the edge of the property, his back still to us, talking to the policeman, who had his arms crossed now. Unc and Prendergast were almost even with them, almost hidden behind them as the one cop pushed them along the driveway. But right then they headed away from us, off the driveway and across the grass in front of the house, all three of them—Unc, Prendergast, and the cop—with their backs to us now. Headed somewhere other than the paddy wagon.
And I could see from here the letters across the back of the windbreaker the cop escorting them wore: CBP.
Everyone else—everyone—had on MTPPD windbreakers. Even Unc, I could see as he was led away. The same one he wore everywhere when it was cool like this.
And right then, as those three pulled off into the grass, the woman behind them, that squat chip-cage worker in the white shirt and black vest, tore from the grasp of the cop walking behind her, twisted herself free and bolted straight this way, across the neighbor’s grass and then driveway, right where Five and Tabitha and I had stood while I’d tried to get back my breath.
She bolted, and through the closed windows of the Range Rover I heard the short muffled word “Hey!” and again “Hey!” and saw the cop she’d wrested free of let go the bartender, and draw his sidearm.