by Diane Kelly
Leandro was Portuguese-American, the second generation to be born on American soil. His ancestry gave him olive skin and dark hair. His drug use gave him an unpredictable, often explosive temper. This afternoon, he appeared to be in one of his rare good moods.
“Can you believe it?” Andro let Dub out of the headlock. “I ran into your mother Friday night. What are the odds of that?”
Pretty good, Dub thought, given that she’d probably gone looking for Andro at those skanky, piss-scented pool halls where he liked to hang out.
Dub took a look at the man who’d fathered him. His black boots were scuffed. His jeans were faded and worn through in places. His striped cotton shirt hung wrinkled and unbuttoned over a dingy white undershirt. Andro wasn’t tall, but at five feet seven he was still two inches taller than Dub. Dub guessed the man outweighed him by a good forty pounds, too. Not that Andro was overweight. He was in good shape. Some might even call him ripped. Looked like he’d been working out.
Dub wanted to kill the man.
Right then, right there.
But he knew he couldn’t take him.
Dub felt hot tears in his eyes. Rather than be called a pussy or a homo or a candy ass or whatever insult his father would throw at him, he went to the fridge, pulled it open, and stared into it until he could blink the tears away. He grabbed a burrito and hurled it into the microwave, jabbing the buttons to set the oven to cook for ninety seconds. God, he’d love to jab his finger right through his father’s eye.
“That’s my boy!” Andro laughed again, came over, and grabbed Dub by the back of the neck in a hold that felt like a death grip. “Always hungry!”
Andro got that right. Dub had been hungry. He’d gone hungry. A lot. But there’d been nothing funny about it.
Andro walked out of the kitchen, grabbed Dub’s mother, and pulled her into the recliner with him. She giggled like a girl. Sure, she was laughing now. But it was only a matter of time before those laughs would turn to cries of terror and pain.
The recurring nightmare.
How the hell could she forget?
When the microwave beeped, Dub removed the burrito and ate it standing at the kitchen counter, having to swallow hard to force it down past the tightness in his throat. It burned his tongue but he hardly noticed.
“Where you been all day, boy?” Andro called from the chair, where he sat with an arm around Dub’s mother, the two of them cuddling like longtime sweethearts.
Where I’ve been is none of your fucking business, Dub thought.
“He’s got himself some work,” his mother answered for him, her burden suddenly a source of pride. “He does odd jobs. You know, raking leaves and yard work and whatnot. He even got himself a van!”
“A van?” Andro’s head snapped back in Dub’s direction. “I gotta see this.”
Shit.
Andro unwrapped his arm from around Dub’s mother, got up from the chair, and came to the kitchen. “What are you waiting for, son? Show your dad your new wheels!”
A minute later, they stood before the old van.
“Suh-weet!” Andro ran a hand over the side and kicked one of the bald tires. “This will hold way more stuff than my car. I’ll get my tools. You and I have a house to hit.”
Andro always kept a toolbox in the trunk of whatever piece-of-shit car he was driving at the moment. Today, the piece of shit was a blue 1998 Subaru Impreza with an aftermarket spoiler welded on the back. After retrieving his red metal toolbox, he held out a hand. “Give me your keys.”
“I’ll drive,” Dub said. After all, the van belonged to him.
“Like hell you will.” Andro stepped up to Dub, got right in his face, so close Dub could smell the tuna fish sandwich he’d had for lunch. “Give me the goddam keys or I will rip that tongue right out of your mouth.”
So Dub gave him the goddam keys. Climbed into the passenger seat as he was ordered, too, even though he’d rather be anywhere than there, in that van, with Andro.
Andro stuck the keys in the ignition, started the van, and pulled what looked like a paper luggage tag from his pocket. He took a look at the address printed on it before tossing it onto the dashboard.
As Andro drove across town, Dub plotted ways he could kill Andro and never be caught. Too bad he didn’t have his brass knuckles. A couple of fists to the face and he could knock out every one of Andro’s teeth. Maybe Dub could put rat poison in Andro’s liquor, tie some cinder blocks to his arms and legs and dump his body in the Trinity River. Or he could take a screwdriver out of the toolbox and jam it through Andro’s ear, shoving it straight into his brain. Or he could grab the steering wheel right now and turn the van into the path of the oncoming dump truck.
Tempting …
“After all these years,” Andro said, pulling the van to a stop at a red light. “We’re back in business.”
“Business?” Dub snapped from the passenger seat. “Since when does robbing houses count as a business?”
The hand came out and smacked Dub upside the head. “Don’t get smart with me, boy.”
Smart? Andro wouldn’t know smart if it bit him on the ass.
Andro looked over at Dub. “You haven’t asked me what I’ve been up to since the last time we seen each other.”
’Cause I don’t give a shit.
Despite the lack of interest Dub had shown, Andro continued to speak. “I’ve been busy.”
Busy getting drunk and high on meth and womanizing, no doubt. Dub looked out the side window. Maybe I can find an anvil somewhere, drop it off a building, and crush him to death. He turned to Andro. “Do you know where they sell anvils?”
Andro scowled and ignored Dub’s question. “I got me a job at the airport. Handling baggage.”
That explained his father’s new muscles. Moving fifty-pound suitcases around the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport all day would be a workout. It was also a better job than the ones he’d had before, which had mostly involved delivering some type of food. Pizza. Chinese. Sub sandwiches. He’d worked all over the city. Dub remembered his father saying he knew the streets of Fort Worth better than any bus or taxi driver.
“I’m in a union now,” Andro added. “Got a card and everything. Nobody can’t hardly fire me, even if I screw around.”
Dub had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”
Uh-oh. Andro’s voice had taken on that familiar, unforgettable edge. Dub glanced in Andro’s direction, hoping it would be enough for the bastard. He hated that, at fifteen, he still feared his father, still let the asshole tell him what to do, boss him around. But he knew what his father was capable of. Until Dub was sure he could best him, he’d be an idiot to take on Andro.
Andro pulled forward when the light turned green. “I’ve saved up nearly two grand. I’m thinking about taking me a vacation to Hawaii.”
With any luck, Andro would get drunk and fall into a live volcano.
“Maybe I’ll take your mother with me.”
“She could use a vacation.”
Dub only said it because he knew it would never happen. Andro would never be so generous. Hell, Dub couldn’t remember a single time when Andro had taken his mother out for dinner or even to a movie. The only thing Andro ever did was bring his mother meth, and he only did that because she’d give him sex in return. Dub had figured that out years ago.
Andro consulted the GPS app on his phone, slowed down, and took a right turn onto 8th Avenue. “You remember the drill?”
How could he forget? From the time he’d been old enough to climb through a window his father had been forcing him to go along when he burglarized houses. Dub had hated every minute of it. Going into houses where photographs of smiling families hung on the walls, knowing they wouldn’t be smiling when they came home and found their televisions, game consoles, laptops, and jewelry missing. Funny, he’d never envied them for their valuables. But he’d felt a painful squeeze in his heart when he saw the children�
��s handprints in hardened clay sitting on bookshelves, bronzed baby booties on the mantle, perfect attendance awards and third-place field day ribbons proudly hanging on the refrigerator.
Andro turned onto Elizabeth Boulevard, driving past the tall columns at the entrance to the Ryan Place neighborhood. The area included several streets of nice, older homes with perfect yards.
The man’s lip curled back in a smile that looked more like a snarl. He patted the dash. “This van will make us look legit. Anybody sees us, they’ll just think we’re at the house doing plumbing work.”
Dub would love to do some plumbing work. He’d love to shove a pipe down Andro’s throat until the man choked to death.
Andro took another right onto Willing Avenue, driving slowly past the house he’d picked out, his head tilting first one way, then the other as he cased the place. “They’ve got one of them fancy doors with the glass in it. That’ll be a cinch.”
A cinch for Andro. He wasn’t the one who’d have to reach through jagged glass to release the deadbolt.
Andro gestured at the house. “These folks flew out to Paris, France. Ooh la la, eh?”
He must have obtained their address from the tag on their luggage. Probably he looked for tags with addresses in central Fort Worth. Andro had never liked to go out of his way for anything, even to commit his crimes.
Lazy ass.
“Don’t see nobody around. Looks like we’re good to go.” Andro backed into the driveway, pulling up so close to the garage door he nearly hit it. “Get out and do your thing, boy.”
Dub slid his hands into the work gloves he’d purchased, grabbed the toolbox, and climbed down from the van. It took everything in him not to take off running. But where would he go? Who would help him?
He had nowhere to go.
No one to turn to.
And if he ran his father would catch him and beat the shit out of him.
Dub stepped up to the front porch and rang the bell. Better to make sure the people who lived there hadn’t hired a house sitter to keep an eye on things while they were gone. The last thing he wanted was for someone to stumble upon him and Andro robbing the place. Dub would run, but Andro … Well, Dub didn’t want to find out what he might do.
Dub rang the bell a second time and, when nobody answered, used the hammer to smash the etched glass. He paused for a moment to see if an alarm would sound. None did. He reached through the opening, his new Mavs jacket snagging on the pointed shards. “Dammit!”
He felt around with his gloved hand until his fingers found the lock. He turned until it clicked, then opened the door. Stepping back to the driveway, he motioned to Andro that the house was open.
Andro hopped out of the van, leaving the keys in the ignition. “You go open the garage door and the back of the van. I’ll start looking around.”
As Dub went inside, he spotted an orange long-haired cat spying on him from behind a potted plant. “Hello, kitty.” He squatted down and held out a hand, but the cat skittered off down the hallway and ran into one of the bedrooms.
Dub found a door at the back of the kitchen that led to the garage. He stepped inside and pushed the button to raise the door. It slid up with a noisy rattle.
Ten minutes later, Andro and Dub had filled the van’s bay with a big-screen TV, an Xbox, two dozen video games, a laptop computer, a jewelry box, two mountain bikes, and an electric guitar and amp. Andro had even grabbed the family’s Keurig coffeemaker and their box of coffee pods from the kitchen counter. They carried everything through the garage to load it into the van’s cargo bay.
“Well, well, well,” Andro said. “Would you look at that?”
Dub followed Andro’s gaze. At the back of the garage sat a tall black cabinet with a built-in lock. Uh-oh. Dub had seen the damage his father could cause with his fists alone. He didn’t even want to imagine what his father could do if he had a gun.
Andro put a hand on Dub’s back and shoved him toward the cabinet, following after him. “Looks like these folks enjoy their Seventh Amendment rights.”
“The right to a jury trial in civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars?” Dub said.
“No, dumbass.” Out came Andro’s hand again, smacking Dub upside the back of his head. “The right to bear guns.”
Andro was the dumbass. The right to bear arms was the Second Amendment, not the Seventh. Dub had studied the Constitution in American History. Earned an A minus on the test, too. But no sense getting a concussion over it.
“If we take these guns,” Dub said, “the cops will come looking for them. They don’t care much about most burglaries but they’re going to pay extra attention if guns are taken.”
Andro mixed it up this time, backhanding Dub across the cheek. “Did I ask you what you thought?”
Of course he hadn’t. Andro didn’t give a rat’s ass what Dub thought about anything. And there was no use arguing about it.
“It’ll be easier to carry longways.” Andro put both of his hands behind the top of the cabinet and pulled it toward himself, moving out of the way as it toppled forward. It fell to the floor, barely missing Dub’s toes.
Dub grabbed one end of the cabinet while Andro picked up the other. The thing was heavy as hell, probably a hundred and fifty pounds or more, more than Dub himself weighed. Andro had no problem carrying his end, but Dub struggled, feeling a pull in his groin. He hoped he wouldn’t get a hernia. He wouldn’t be able to go anywhere for treatment. Luckily, they got the cabinet into the back of the van before Dub’s guts split open.
Andro climbed into the driver’s seat. “Close the garage door,” he said. “If the neighbors see it open they’ll get suspicious.”
Dub walked back into the garage and hit the button to lower the door, walking back through the house to exit. As he stepped out the front door, he heard police sirens in the distance. His heart ramped up to warp speed when he realized the sound was growing louder.
The cops were on their way.
Shit!
Dub ran toward the van. But Andro must have heard the sirens, too. He punched the gas, and with a shrill screeee left both tire marks and his son behind in the driveway.
FORTY
TWO DOWN, TWO TO GO
Megan
Derek and I took the men we’d caught to the station for booking. According to the driver’s licenses in their wallets, the Asian man was Lahn Duong and the Latino was Gustavo Gallegos.
Detective Jackson interviewed them one at a time, allowing me to be present. I sat next to her, twirling my baton in my hand, an exercise that both calmed me and allowed me to burn off excess energy. Swish-swish-swish. Brigit lay on her back at our feet, paws up, clearly seeking a tummy rub. I used the toe of my left shoe to ease my right shoe off, and ran my foot up and down her belly.
Jackson separated the men, speaking with Gallegos first. “Officer Luz says she saw you at the Bag-N-Bottle Saturday after the storm. You pulled a gun on her.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.” Across the table, Gallegos lifted his shoulders. “Wasn’t me.”
Jackson rolled her eyes. “You were selling liquor at the high school. The very liquor you looted from the Bag-N-Bottle.”
At least we assumed it was the same liquor. Neither of us knew for sure. Since the liquor store used a scanner, there were no identifiable price tags on the bottles. I supposed the only way to prove for certain that the liquor had come from the Bag-N-Bottle would be to check the glass for fingerprints and see if any of the prints matched the store staff who’d stocked the shelves.
“We found two guns in your car. Officer Luz said they looked just like the guns you pulled on her Saturday.”
They did. They were shiny and scary and had a hole at the end that bullets could come out of. Other than that, I actually had no idea whether they were the same guns. But police officers weren’t required to be entirely truthful with suspects. Though the law did not allow us to fabricate evidence for court, we could create all the
stories we wanted when interrogating a suspect, to see if it would lead a suspect to spill the beans.
“We’ve got video footage from the store,” the detective said. “Shows you and your buddies packing up liquor and cigarettes, hitting the cash register.”
Again, it was a lie. Jackson had informed me privately while the men were being booked that, per information relayed by the crime scene techs, the security camera at the store had been disabled when the storm knocked out electricity to the area.
A smirk crossed Gallegos’s face, almost as if he knew Jackson’s statement about the camera was untrue. “You got video? Show me. Bring me some popcorn to eat while I watch it. I like mine with butter.”
Jackson didn’t hesitate or bat an eye. “We’ll have to wait on the video just a bit. It’s being logged into evidence and has to be downloaded to the server.”
Wow. I hoped someday I could be as good as her at keeping a poker face while lying my butt off.
Jackson needled Gallegos some more, but he wasn’t biting. She called an officer to take him to the holding cell, and had Lahn Duong brought in. Once Duong was seated at the table, she gave him a smile and shook her head. “With friends like Gustavo Gallegos, who needs enemies? That boy sang like a canary.”
“Oh, yeah?” Duong said, looking nonplussed. “What did he tell you?”
“That you and two of your buddies looted a liquor store on Berry Street last Saturday, pulled guns on Officer Luz here.” She gestured in my direction.
His already hard eyes hardened even more, giving off a flinty glint. “Not buying it.”
I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. This guy didn’t seem to buy anything. He stole things instead.
Jackson angled her head, her expression calm and matter-of-fact. “Doesn’t matter to me whether you buy it or not. We caught you with the contraband from the liquor store and Officer Luz can make a positive ID. Plus we’ve got you for selling alcohol to minors and bringing alcohol onto a public school campus. Any one of those charges alone is enough to send you down the road for a bit. But if you give us the names of the two others were who were with you on Saturday, we might decide to go easy on you.”