by Loree Lough
Uttering an oath under his breath, he tried to remember where he’d left his cell. In the kitchen, charging? In the pocket of the shirt he’d worn to Tucker’s funeral?
The quick-witted Nestor put two and two together, and raced to the kitchen while Dusty turned back to the window. He was sweating, and his heart pounded as if he’d just run a marathon. His hands were shaking, too, he noticed as he parted the slats in the blinds. If he felt this frazzled—a guy who’d been on the front lines in battle, who’d wrestled armed killers and robbers into handcuffs—what must his boys be going through?
He took a deep breath and willed himself to calm down. He’d just exhaled when Nestor returned, cell phone in hand.
“Thanks, kiddo,” he said. He looked over his shoulder to add, “Say a prayer, guys, that if I can get a signal for a change, AT&T won’t drop the call.”
Dusty slid the phone open and dialed 9-1-1, and when the dispatcher picked up, he blurted out his name and address so fast that he hoped she’d understood him. “Somebody just threw a brick through my front window,” he told her, “and I think whoever it was is still outside.”
She promised to send the nearest patrol car, and advised him to stay inside. If he lived alone, that’s exactly what he would have done. But he’d accepted responsibility for eleven boys, and he aimed to keep them safe . . . or die trying.
He repeated the dispatcher’s advice, and even in the dark, he could see that fear and dread had widened their eyes. Until moving here, none of them had known any kind of stability. Violence, whether verbal, emotional, or physical was as much a part of their days as sunshine and moonlight. None of them had come from stable backgrounds. Would this propel one—or God forbid more—of them into a tailspin?
“How long will it take them to get here?”
“No idea, Dom. Just sit tight.”
“Oh. Right,” he complained. “Sit tight. In the dark. With a giant hole in the window. While that—”
“Easy, Dom,” Dusty said, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. “Maybe we can read the message without touching the brick.” He left his lookout post and got down onto one knee amid the shattered glass. It appeared to be an ordinary construction brick, emblazoned with choppy black letters, scrawled in what appeared to be a broad-tipped permanent marker.
Axel stepped up beside him. “What’s it say?” he asked, resting both palms on his knees.
Dusty didn’t know, but he would have bet his Harley that Gonzo had delivered it. Or, one of his minions.
“Well,” Jack blurted, “what does it say?”
Dusty didn’t want to know. At least, not now with all the kids standing around, doing their best to hide the fact that from the oldest to the youngest, they were scared stiff. He hadn’t told them about Gonzo’s middle-of-the-night visit. If he had, would they have been more prepared for this? But the kids had formed a tight circle around him. No point second-guessing himself now. No way out of this one, he thought.
“One of you guys grab a pen off my desk, will ya?”
Since Montel was closest, he ducked into the living room. “What you gonna do, man, write an answer even before you read the note?”
His attempt to lighten the tense atmosphere worked, as evidenced by the quiet ripple of chuckles that swept around the circle.
Dusty stuck the pen into one of the holes on the side of the brick and slid it slightly, so that it rested in the shard of light spilling in through the broken window. “You know what you have to do,” Jack read aloud. “What the—?”
It meant, Dusty answered silently, that Gonzo hadn’t been kidding the other night: his vague deadline for gaining control of the boys had come and gone. And that meant he’d better arrange a meeting with the little criminal . . . before he took his threat to the next level.
The strobes of a squad car painted red and white stripes on the room’s darkened walls. “Let me do the talking,” Dusty said, opening the door, “unless one of the cops asks you a direct question.”
“Why?”
“Because for one thing, you weren’t in the room when that thing came through the window.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Because I said so, that’s why.” Dusty flipped on the lights in time to see and hear Montel expel a bored sigh.
Two cops jogged up the steps and stood side by side on the porch. The taller one had one hand on his sidearm’s grip as he looked up and down the street. His partner asked, “What seems to be the trouble, sir?”
Dusty glanced at his name plate. CARTER. Stepping aside to let them in, he pointed at the brick.
Carter took a knee, and, his voice a near whisper, read the inscription. Standing, he stamped his feet to shake glass chips from his trousers. “How long ago did you receive your, ah, special delivery?”
“Fifteen minutes, give or take.”
Weise, the other cop, joined Carter in the foyer. “Los Toros de Lidia?” he asked, nodding toward the shadowy figures, lurking across the street.
Dusty nodded. “ ’Fraid so.”
“First time they’ve shown any aggression?” Weise asked.
Dusty considered taking the cop aside before telling him about Gonzo’s visit. But his boys were safer, knowing the facts. “Just the usual stuff, until a few nights ago. I was up late, paying bills, when Gonzalez let himself in.” He remembered the eerie feeling that came over him when he opened his eyes and looked into Gonzo’s cold, black eyes.
“Let himself in?” Weise added Dusty’s comment to his notebook, then looked up. “What? You have an open door policy around here?”
“Hardly. The kids don’t even have keys.”
“Tell me about it,” Montel grumbled, elbowing Guillermo.
But Dusty continued as if he hadn’t heard the discontent that ricocheted around the room. “He told me I had some hard decisions to make, regarding these guys.”
“Lemme get this straight,” Carter said, using his pen as a pointer. “You had a B and E, in the middle of the night, and you didn’t call it in?”
Good thing you aren’t as stupid as this guy thinks you are, Dusty told himself, or you wouldn’t know how to tie your shoes. “Seemed the lesser of two evils to keep you guys out of it. No point antagonizing him, if you get my drift.”
Arms crossed and feet planted shoulder width apart, the cops searched the boys’ faces. “Has Gonz ever approached any of you?” the tall one asked.
Nopes and nuh-uhs went around the foyer, and the officers looked to Dusty for confirmation. “Far as I know, he’s never talked with anyone but me.” So far. He hadn’t needed any help discerning Gonzo’s implied threat: get the boys on board, or suffer the consequences.
The cops put their backs to Dusty and the boys, and, head to head, muttered for a minute or so. Dusty picked up an occasional word: Threats. Missing. Fires. . . .
“Mind if we sit,” Weise asked, “while we get some routine info?”
Dusty invited them into the living room, where one cop sat on the couch and the other on the recliner. He offered them coffee or water, but they politely declined. It took all of ten minutes to fill half a dozen pages in their notebooks: Names and ages of each of the boys, Dusty’s driver’s license data, and even Mitch’s contact info.
“When we write up our report,” Carter said, standing, “we’ll see about getting more patrol cars over here.”
Weise stood, too, and as they pocketed their notebooks, Carter aimed a glare in Dusty’s direction. “But in the meantime, don’t try to be a hero. If that punk comes back—alone or with his soldiers—you call us, hear?”
As Dusty nodded, he found it interesting that while the older, supposedly more streetwise boys nodded right along with him—enthusiastically, respectfully even—the younger kids’ brows faces showed something midway between suspicion and contempt. He shouldn’t have been surprised, since they’d spent the least amount of time at Last Chance, but their postures and expressions made him more aware than ever how vulnerable they were to Gonzo�
�s promise of familia and all the loyalty and neighborhood prominence that went with it.
The cops were halfway down the porch steps when Carter turned. “You got something to close up that hole with, right?”
“Matter of fact, I do.” Good thing he hadn’t let Mitch talk him into hauling the leftover roof repair plywood to the dump.
“Good. Wouldn’t want moths and bats . . . or that bunch,” he said, his thumb reminding Dusty of the menacing shadows, still hovering across the way, “getting in here.”
No, Dusty thought, we wouldn’t want that. By the time he and the boys got the plywood cut and screwed into place, the clock said 5:52.
“Why don’t you guys go upstairs and turn off your alarms. By the time you’ve dressed and showered and made your beds, I’ll have a good start on a rib-stickin’ country breakfast.”
For the first time since the crash in the front hall, smiles lit their faces.
“Pancakes?” Nick asked.
“Sure. Why not.”
“Sausage or bacon?” Nestor wanted to know.
“Seems to me I saw both in the fridge.”
Dom offered to make toast, and Billy volunteered to butter it, while Axel announced that he’d set the table.
“Last one downstairs has to wash the dishes!” Tony bellowed. He’d barely turned the corner into the hall when the rest of them joined him in a mad race up the steps.
Guillermo pushed past him, hollering “I get dibs on the shower!”
They’d adapted quickly to having clothes and shoes to call their own, and dresser drawers and closet space to stow it all. Would they ever get used to the idea that he’d spent a considerable amount of time—and a huge chunk of his renovations budget—turning the smallest bedroom into an eight-by-eight foot tiled space that boasted eight shower heads?
Soon, the kitchen light fixture rattled, but the playful roughhousing wasn’t fooling him a bit. That brick through the window reminded every last one of them of the violence and turmoil that had been part of their everyday lives . . . lives that had taught them the only way to survive was to adopt a take-it-on-the-chin attitude. That attitude might fool the casual observer, but Dusty saw it for what it was. He slid two egg cartons from the fridge. It did his heart good to hear them, snickering and roughhousing. That didn’t mean it hadn’t rattled them. So he’d let them have their fun, because once they’d said the blessing and started filling their bellies, he intended to fill their heads with some much-needed information about Gonzo and his merry men, and follow it up with some well-disguised psychotherapy.
The plan brought to mind the first time he’d heard Jeremiah 29:11, as quoted by his cousin Flynn, eldest son of Uncle Brock and Aunt Anita. . . .
As boys, Dusty and Flynn had shared the attic bedroom. As men, they’d shared the graveyard shift at the 6th Precinct. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that his birthday surprise from Flynn that year—tickets to a Yankees game—had an ulterior motive. “Dunno what sort of horrors you saw during the war,” he’d said during the seventh-inning stretch, “but it’s high time you quit your brooding and got some help. You’ve got Mom all tied up in knots, worrying about you.”
He clattered a frying pan onto the front burner and scooped a dollop of butter into it. The flame, hissing, wasn’t unlike the brotherly dressing-down that made him realize that, just as his behavior after 9/11 had ended his military career, his crazy behavior of late could just as easily ruin his career as a cop. It made him remember a buddy, too, who tried to re-up after recuperating from IED-inflicted injuries. “The Marines told me it’d be cheaper to train a new recruit,” he’d said, “but the Army was happy to have me.”
Firing up the double-burner griddle, Dusty grimaced, because memory of the day after his birthday was still raw, even after all these years. He’d gone to the recruiting office down on Battery Avenue, fully expecting to trade his blue uniform for green. Instead, he got an earful of why the Army couldn’t use him, which turned him from a quiet brooder, who’d worried his aunt, into a brazen brawler. Nearly eighteen months had passed before Flynn got fed up with it all, and met him in the parking lot after a graveyard shift. He hadn’t said hello. Hadn’t asked how the night had gone. Hadn’t even commented on the weather. Instead, he’d filled his fists with Dusty’s navy blue shirt and folded him backward over the hood of his Jeep. “If you’re trying to kill yourself,” Flynn had snarled, “you’re going about it the right way.”
After cracking two dozen eggs into a big ceramic bowl, Dusty toweled egg white from his hands, much the way Flynn scrubbed both palms on his uniform trousers that night, as if trying to wipe off Dusty’s taint. Then he’d screwed a fingertip into Dusty’s shirt and said through clenched teeth “ ‘I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you . . . to give you hope and a future.’ You keep this up, cousin, you won’t have a future.”
He beat the eggs until they formed yellow froth and dumped them into the frying pan. The fork clattered against the bowl’s bottom when he tossed them into the sink. The memory shouldn’t have riled him. But it did. Big time. Focus on the good that came from it, he told himself. If not for that little set-to, he wouldn’t be here, scraping scrambled eggs from the edges of one frying pan while poking at the bacon in another. . . .
It hadn’t been so easy to turn in his badge and weapon that rainy morning after Flynn’s no-nonsense speech. And it wasn’t. It should have been scary, after all he’d been through to, enroll at City University and then the General Theological Seminary. Just thinking about it all was enough to make his hands shake as he flipped the pancakes, lined up in a tidy row on the griddle. He could’ve paid his tuition with funds that, thanks to his uncle’s investment know-how, had turned his parents’ life insurance policies into a tidy nest egg. But he hadn’t. Because if he failed at that venture, too, he could not forgive himself for squandering the savings made available by their deaths.
Steady thumps and snickers overhead reminded him that he hadn’t failed. The eleven boys up there depended on him for food and shelter, clothing, medical care, an education, and counseling of both the emotional and spiritual kind. With Mitch’s help, he was delivering all of that and more. Two degrees, earned by dint of hard work and dollars from his job as an executive security guard—and hundreds of volunteer hours at Baltimore’s bustling Strawbridge School, which proved the need for smaller facilities that could provide more concentrated interactions with kids in need. Prayer led him to the dilapidated, old house behind the Last Chance Church, and the minute he saw it, Dusty knew how to invest his savings. Since then, the generosity of parishioners and Mitch’s talent for drumming up donor monies kept the wolf from the door.
He was pouring the last of the orange juice when he realized that, after breakfast, they’d be out of bread and butter. Eggs, too. There was money enough in the checking account for this week’s grocery store run. But what about next week, and the week after that? His last sit-down with the bank statement showed black and white proof that Gonzo’s threat wasn’t his only problem.
It occurred to him that Gonzo might know that, too; he wouldn’t put it past the cold-hearted little gangster to have slipped into the house when no one was home to look for weaknesses in the foundation. . . .
“Somethin’ smells good in here,” Nick said. “Reminds me of weekends. When I was a kid. Before my mom got carted off to Jessup.”
When he was a kid? It had only been a week since he’d blown out twelve candles on his birthday cake. “How about washing your hands and finishing setting the table?”
“You’re kidding, right?” he said stepping up to the sink. “I just got out of the shower.”
Smiling, Dusty said, “You can’t be too clean.”
Montel rounded the corner, beaded braids clacking and fingers snapping. “Can’t. Be. Too. Clean,” he chanted, rap style. “Think I’ll write a song. And when I get famous,” he said, taking Nick’s place at the sink, “I’ll tell Dave Letterman how you inspired it, Dusty.”
He returned the kid’s playful smirk. “I’d rather see you on Letterman, talking about how your new surgical technique separated conjoined twins.”
“Yeah. Right.” Nick snickered. “Like he’s gonna be a brain surgeon.”
“You mean like what’s his name?” Montel asked.
“Ben Carson,” Dusty told them. “I read his bio. Believe me, if he can do it, so can you.”
Nodding, Montel mulled that over. Nick, on the other hand, seemed content to distribute forks and butter knives . . . upside down.
Montel had spent the past five years at Last Chance. Nick had been nine when he moved in. If Dusty had anything to say about it, this is where they’d all be when they turned twenty-one, and state regs required them to move out. By then, God willing, they’d have some college under their belts, and aspirations that didn’t involve rap music. He grinned. Or a talent for annoying flatware placement.
Like all of the boys who’d called Last Chance home, these two had come from tough situations. Most didn’t know who their fathers were, and those who did would rather not admit they were descended from murderers, drug dealers, robbers, and rapists. Those who had mothers pretended they hadn’t learned about addiction and prostitution at the feet of the women who’d consistently put drugs and men and booze ahead of their kids.
Thankfully, Dusty could pretend that pouring sausage gravy into a bowl without spilling a drop took all of his concentration, because of all the things he’d learned during his years of pastoring and counseling, hiding what he thought of their so-called parents wasn’t on the list. Every time a kid’s HIV tests came back negative, he saw the results for what they were: Nothing short of a miracle. If God could protect them from the deadly disease in environments like that, surely He could get them out of here with a few bucks in their pockets and a future to look forward to.