“What up?” he said.
“You busy?”
“Always.”
“I need to know what kind of car Kevin Simmons drives.”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“I hate those. All right, give me a minute.”
I hung up and watched a group of girls heading to their cars. They didn’t look like the girls I remembered from high school. These looked like children—children who dressed like hookers. I felt myself sounding like an old lady and stopped the thoughts immediately. Every generation had their own style, and no generation was better or worse than any other. Then I saw a girl in a miniskirt and what could only be described as stripper heels and decided to revise my theory. Something was wrong with the current generation.
I got a text from Will: White BMW, followed by a license plate number. I drove around the lot until I saw a white Beemer that matched the plate. I parked across from it and turned on iTunes. In just a few minutes, I was nearly falling asleep. Fatigue crept up on me like that. The older I got, the harder it was to judge how tired I really was.
After half an hour, I got out of the car and lit a cigarette. The sun was shining and there were few clouds in the sky, but the cool air sent a chill up my back. I walked over to the football field. The cheerleaders or whoever sat on the ground gossiping while the boys showed off. Most of the cheerleaders I knew from high school who had hooked up with the popular athletes were now either divorced with several kids or, worse, stuck in a marriage that made them miserable. Marriage to someone you disliked was the American coffin that people willingly got into.
When I turned back toward the lot, several stragglers were still piling out of the school. I watched the Beemer. Someone was headed for it.
Kevin wore a beanie and white T-shirt. He had a girl with him, blonde and pretty and tan with vacant eyes. I approached and said, “Excuse me. Kevin?”
He looked at me but didn’t say anything.
“Need a few words with you, my man.”
“Who are you?”
“You’re gonna wanna talk in private.”
He unlocked the car and told the girl, “Hang on.”
Once she was in the car with the door shut, I sat on his hood and sucked at my cigarette. He looked nervous, but it was a nervousness that had backup: Will had included in his report that Kevin’s father was a big shot at a local detergent company and was loaded.
“That’s cold-blooded of you, man. Teddy didn’t deserve that.”
He folded his arms. “You a cop?”
“Why? What do you have to hide?”
“I already talked to the cops, and I’ve got a lawyer. He says I don’t need to talk to any more cops.”
“Seems weird,” I said, ignoring everything he was saying, “that Teddy would be the one to know the CI, a known drug dealer. Teddy doesn’t have any friends. Well, you. At least he thought so.”
He shook his head and looked away. “Talk to Teddy.”
“I did. He doesn’t understand.”
“He understands more than people think.”
“No shit? Could’ve fooled me. What about you? Do you understand more than you let on? Did your lawyer explain to you that you’re gonna have to testify against Teddy and that, if at any point, they find out you’re lying, you’ll be charged with felony perjury on top of your drug charges?”
“I’m not lying,” he said angrily.
I paused. His anger was genuine.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“I already told the cops like—”
“I wanna hear it from you.”
He looked at his girl and then turned his back on her and sat on the hood next to me. “We were just going to a buddy’s house, and he wanted to come play games.”
“How’d you end up in Richardson?”
“Teddy brought this, like, gym bag with him. He said he needed to drop it off. It wasn’t far from where we were going so I said yes—I help him out sometimes. He only told us what it was about when we got there. He was scared to go up, so I went with him.”
“Why’d you go along with him if you knew what he was doing?”
“I tried to talk him out of it. I don’t know if he understood what I was saying. It was, like . . . he got this idea in his head, and then he wouldn’t let it go. So we drove him down there, and he kept saying he was too scared to go to the door. The other guys wanted to leave as soon as he stepped outside, but I wouldn’t let them. He told us it was drugs, but, like, I didn’t really believe him, you know? I was gonna call his parents but he said not to. So I went with him to the door thinking the bag had, like, toys or something in it. Then Teddy and this guy traded bags and the cops were on us.”
“You just went along with a drug deal? No questions asked?”
“I didn’t believe him, and he wouldn’t let me look in the bag. We were headed up near Richardson anyway, so I thought I’d go with him and make sure he was okay, whatever he was doing. Like, we didn’t think he’d actually have coke on him. I mean, how could you think Teddy could do something like that?”
I stared hard at the kid, thinking that his lying soul would be revealed to me from the effort, but . . . Shit. I think I actually believed the little turd.
“Kevin, it doesn’t seem to me like he could put something like that together.”
“I know. It was really weird. Like he had it in his head that he had to do this and nothing would make him stop.” He looked back at his girl. “I gotta go.”
I hopped off his car and watched as they pulled away. Kevin seemed sincere enough to me, but if he was the type of sociopath to use a mentally disabled kid as a scapegoat, he could certainly be the type that could lie convincingly.
I tossed my cigarette on the pavement and stepped on it. I’d have to visit Teddy and get a take on him. As I headed to my car, a couple of young boys smiled at me.
“Got some condoms in my car,” one of them said with a grin.
“I’d break you,” I said, brushing past them.
I texted Kelly to send me Teddy’s address.
11
When I got to the Thornes’, the first thing I noticed was that the lawn sparkled in the sunlight, freshly mowed and watered, with flowers on either side of the porch. Not a single blade of grass was out of place. I parked in the driveway behind a Lincoln and got out. The car was probably twenty or twenty-five years old, but looked like it had just rolled off the assembly line. Not a speck of dust to be seen.
I knocked on the door and waited. The welcome mat said: “Bless This Mess.”
Riley opened the door and seemed surprised.
“Hey,” I said. “In the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by.”
“Did something happen?”
“Just thought I’d talk to Teddy for a little bit, if he’s here.”
“Yes, he’s up in his room. Come in.”
The home wasn’t much different from the lawn and the car: I could still see the wave pattern on the carpet from a recent vacuuming. Plastic on the furniture. Photographs on the mantel turned just so.
Riley led me upstairs to the first room on the right. Teddy sat on the bed looking through a photo album. He wore shoes with the laces tied and superhero stickers on them.
“Teddy, Danielle is here to see you. Isn’t that nice?”
“How are you, Teddy?”
“I’m looking for pictures, see. I’m looking for pictures.”
“Yeah? What kind of pictures?”
I sat on the bed next to Teddy and looked down at the photos. One was of Riley; her husband, Robert; Teddy; and two other little boys at a campsite.
“Do you have two brothers?”
“No those are my cousins, see. My cousins. But they don’t see me anymore. They said that because I have black skin I wasn’t really their cousin, but my mama said I’m their cousin in every way that counts, see. That’s what she said.”
I looked at Riley, who stare
d at us a moment. “I’ll give you two some time,” she said, and left the room.
“Teddy, I wanted to ask you about Kevin.”
“Kevin is my friend.”
I sat silently for a moment and watched him flip a page in the album. “Yes, he is. But I wanted to ask you about the night the nice policemen brought you home. Do you remember that night?”
“Yeah, I wanted to hear the horn and see the lights, see, and they wouldn’t do it. They said they wouldn’t do it.”
“Do you remember the house you were at? A man lived there. Do you remember him?”
He flipped another page.
“Teddy, did Kevin ask you to go see this man with him? The man that gave you the money?”
“I wanted to play games. Just to play games, see. And then the policeman drove me home. But he said I couldn’t see the lights.”
I exhaled and leaned back on the bed. He kept flipping through the album, and I looked around his room. On the nightstand was a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I picked it up. Several of the pages were dog-eared, and I opened it randomly to one of them and found a passage highlighted:
Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.
“Do you read this book, Teddy?”
“Yeah, Jim and Huck are friends, see. They’re good friends and Huck won’t write a letter telling them where Jim is. ’Cause they’re friends.”
I nodded slowly and put the book back. “Did Kevin tell you to hold the bag you gave the man that night?”
“Kevin’s my friend.”
“I know, buddy, but did he give you the bag? It’s okay—I saw Kevin today, and he said you could tell me.”
“Kevin said I could play games.”
“Did you know what was in Kevin’s bag?”
He looked away and began kind of rocking back and forth slowly. He kept his eyes on the photo album, and it seemed the conversation was over.
“I think it’s time for his nap,” Riley said, reappearing at the door.
I rose. “I’ll see you soon, Teddy.”
“I’ll see you soon, Danielle. Bye.”
I don’t know why, but the phrase cut me. It was so sincere. It had a tinge of hope to it, like he enjoyed my company and was genuinely looking forward to seeing me again. In most of the world, no one said anything so truthfully.
We got downstairs, and on the way out I said, “Does he read Huck Finn?”
“Oh, yes, it’s his favorite book. I don’t think he understands it, but he really enjoys it. I used to read it to him when he was a child.” She cleared her throat. “That was a lifetime ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just that . . . when your child’s a baby, you have so many hopes for them. You want them to have better than you did. And then one day someone tells you that it will never happen—that instead, your child will always need you. He will never be able to live on his own or do anything by himself. And then you realize that it would’ve been better not to have him. For both of you.”
“What about his birth parents? Ever tried to find them?”
She shook her head. “They abandoned him at the entrance of a hospital. No one knows who they are.”
We stopped at the door and I stared at her. “Did Teddy know the other two boys that were there with Kevin?”
“No, Kevin is his only friend outside of school.”
“What do you know about Kevin?”
“They’re wealthy . . . I don’t know. They don’t really have that much to do with us. We bought this house twenty years ago before this area went up in price and a lot of the neighbors look down on us because we don’t have much. We don’t know anyone around here really. But I will say that I once saw Kevin and his friends in his backyard when his parents weren’t home. They were smoking marijuana.”
I nodded. “Do you think Teddy could’ve had contact with anyone else that put him up to this?”
“No. He never leaves the house. The only person that could’ve possibly done this is Kevin.”
12
The day dragged on like an anchor through mud on the ocean floor. Every second had to be endured rather than enjoyed. I wrote motions; I answered client calls. One new client signed up: a Catholic priest accused of sleeping with a prostitute. Apparently he and the hooker were on the way out of the motel when she asked for two grand or she would call the cops. The priest refused—mostly because he didn’t have two grand—but the argument alerted the hotel staff, who called the cops. They were both cited for sex solicitation. It was an old hooker trick. They’d get cops, preachers or priests, school principals, politicians . . . whoever held positions where they shouldn’t be sticking their members in ladies of the night, and then blackmail them. Another trick was to solicit a john and then pull out a fake badge, and tell him if he didn’t want to be busted it would cost fifty, sixty, or a hundred bucks.
The priest paid me fifteen hundred bucks and said it was all he had. Who knew if that was true? He had just betrayed every vow he’d ever taken for five minutes of pleasure.
I didn’t get out of the office until darkness had fallen over the city. Every city was different at night. It was as if two separate sets of people lived there, and one only responded to the sun and the other only to the moon. I had always been a night person . . . until I had Jack. And then the days were my time, because they were his time.
He was smart from a young age, and well ahead of the other kids in his classes. I wondered just now how it would’ve been to raise a child like Teddy. Constantly depending on you, unable to do anything by himself. Watching your child fall behind as the other kids of the same age advanced . . . I suddenly felt saddened for the Thornes.
My cell phone rang as I walked to my car. It was Michelle.
“What up, you crazy honky?” I said. “I was just about to head down to the Lizard for a drink.”
“Forget that. Got you set up on a date.”
“What kind of date?”
“Best kind: blind date. It’s with my sister’s friend.”
I leaned against my car and stared up at the stars. It was a clear night, and I could see the twinkles of color from an airplane high overhead. “Michelle, I don’t feel like a date just now. I want a drink.”
“Go drink with him, dork. I need this favor. My sister’s goin’ out with her beau and she feels bad leaving her friend alone.”
“Why don’t you go out with him?”
“I gotta be at the Lizard tonight. The mayor’s coming by.”
I sighed. “Fine. But fair warning: I’m getting trashed.”
“Understood. Pick him up at the Lizard.”
I drove down to the bar and parked at the curb. I texted Michelle I’d arrived, and she and a man stepped out. He was skinny and white, with fine hair that came down to his shoulders and glasses that seemed too big for his face. He wore some rap group’s T-shirt. I didn’t like to judge people right off the bat, but he looked like an idiot. I could see it from a mile away: this was not a guy whose conversation would come sliding out, all lubricated and ready. It would have to be dragged out like nails pulled from wood. Also, he looked familiar.
Michelle opened the passenger-side door of my car, and he got inside and grinned before glancing away. She put her head in the window after shutting the door and said, “This is Chris. Chris, Danielle. Have fun, you two.” She left, and I sat staring at him.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” I said. “Like a Neanderthal with too many hormones.”
“Yeah, she’s great.”
I pulled away from the curb. We didn’t speak a word all the way to the next light. Then he said, “That was a minute and fifty-one seconds.”
“What was?”
“We were silent for that long. That’s a long time.”
“It certainl
y is. Too long.” I stopped at the red light. “So how do you know Michelle and her family?”
“Oh, her sister’s an old friend. I’ve known her and Michelle since we were kids.”
“Chris . . . wait, you’re not Chris Peterson, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Danielle Rollins. Do you not remember me?”
“Oh . . . um . . . Sorry. No.”
“You sat in front of me in Mr. Tate’s geometry class.”
“Oh really? Wow. Small world, huh?”
“Yeah. Small world.”
Now I knew why he looked familiar. Chris had been a part of a group of boys who thought they could harass girls to no end—they pulled down girls’ shirts, groped their asses in the halls, and were rumored to have gang-raped a girl they got drunk at a party. They were supposed to be the cool kids—played sports, drank, had nice cars, blah-blah-blah. All the crap that dimwitted fathers of high school sons forced their children to think was cool. Chris had once asked me to a dance, something I had never been to, and I was so excited I couldn’t concentrate all day. At the time, I was living in a foster home with a single lady named Mrs. Tanner, who had to be in her seventies. I told her I had been asked on a date and she was so excited she went out right then and bought me a dress. Secondhand, for five bucks, but still, it was the thought that counted.
I went to the library that night, my favorite place to be, and studied all I could find about modern dancing. I was there until closing time and then checked out a book on dating and one on the art of conversation with men.
The next day, I smiled at Chris in the classroom, and some of his friends giggled. He turned to me and said, “Hey, about the dance—I’ll only go with you if you give me a blow job. Like, right now, in the bathroom.” He tried to grope me under my shirt and I had to push him off.
I slapped his face and left school for the day, making sure no one saw me crying.
I glanced over to him and took in what twenty years had done. He didn’t look like the spritely athletic boy anymore. Time had a way of destroying those who were concerned only about their looks: the more someone cared about their outward appearance, the worse they looked with age. Some sort of universal principle granted dignity in old age to people who saw appearances as ultimately unimportant.
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