“You didn’t tell the police there was anyone there with you,” his uncle said—a statement, not a question, because, of course, his uncle had read his file.
Dooley just gave him a look. His uncle shook his head.
“I didn’t hear from Gillette the whole time I was in lockup. Then, after I got out, I bumped into him on the street. He looked kind of scared. Of me. You know?”
“Scared?” his uncle said. “He should have been grateful.” He peered at Dooley. “There’s more,” he said wearily.
“It was the wrong house,” Dooley said. “A guy I met inside told me. He heard it from someone who knew Gillette. The house we were supposed to be in—that one was empty. The people were out of town on vacation. Gillette knew which one it was. But he screwed up. We were in the wrong house. That’s why that woman showed up the way she did. I kept my mouth shut about Gillette. I figured if it had been the other way around and he had got caught, he’d do the same thing. Then I find out he screwed up and he didn’t even have the guts to tell me.”
“Did he know you knew?” Dooley’s uncle said.
Dooley nodded. “I told him.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
His uncle finally took a sip of his coffee. He was quiet for a few moments after that.
“Who else knows about this?” he said finally.
“The guy who told me,” Dooley said. “And the guy who told him, I don’t know who else. Nobody who would tell the cops, if that’s what you mean.” His uncle didn’t say anything, but Dooley had the feeling that was exactly what he meant. His uncle stared so hard at Dooley that Dooley couldn’t help it; he squirmed. Geeze, he wished things were different.
“Ryan,” his uncle said. “Is there any chance you did anything to Gillette the night of the party?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look at me, Ryan,”
Dooley met his uncle’s eyes.
“Did you do anything to Edward Gillette?”
“I don’t think so,” Dooley said again.
His uncle watched him closely. Finally he said, “Do yourself a favor. You didn’t give the guy up two years ago. Don’t do it now. Don’t bring him into it. Okay?”
Dooley nodded.
“I mean it, Ryan.”
So did Dooley. He could imagine what Graff would think if he knew about Dooley and Gillette: Dooley does time without giving up Gillette. Then Dooley finds out Gillette is the whole reason things went bad, the whole reason Dooley did what he did, the reason, when you got right down to it, that Dooley ended up doing time. So when Dooley gets out, he’s already got a reason to want to get even with Gillette. Then Dooley gets interested in a girl and Gillette is stupid enough to poison the girl against him. Yeah, Graff might think Dooley had more than enough reason to want Gillette dead.
“The thing Graff asked me about Everley,” Dooley said slowly. “You know, did I push him—why would he ask me that? I thought you said they decided it was an accident.”
His uncle sipped his coffee. “Maybe he was just trying to shake you up,” he said. “You know, try to scare you so you’ll give it up on that Gillette kid. Or maybe something else came up and they took another look at Everley. I guess we’ll find out when they’re ready to tell us.”
“What do we do until then?” Dooley said.
“We wait, Ryan. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Nineteen
That night, lights out, Dooley was in the bed in the room that he guessed at one time was his uncle’s guest room, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Gillette. He’d met him back in junior high. They hadn’t gone to the same school, but they hung out with some of the same people, and for a while there Dooley and Gillette had really hit it off. They fooled around together. They shoplifted stuff together—CDs and DVDs mostly—that they could sell for cash. They grabbed a few purses, but that was a pain in the ass. Too many of the women they went for, older ones who looked like they didn’t have much fight in them, turned out not only to be loud and aggressive, but strong, too, like they worked out or something. It turned out that some of them did. Dooley found that out when he got arrested on a purse-snatch and went to court and the woman, who had gray hair for Christ’s sake, looked all smug when she told the judge that she went to the gym almost every day, where she did a weights class and a pilates class. She sounded so proud of herself that Dooley was surprised she didn’t peel off her jacket and show them all her biceps. After that time, once Dooley was in the clear again, Gillette came up with the idea of breaking into people’s places when the people weren’t there. He said it would be easier. They could take their time. They could walk away with more stuff than they could ever get in a purse, only now with no witnesses and no more pissed-off, middle-aged women with wrinkled faces and buff biceps whose attitude was: Bring it on, punk.
The thing with going into people’s houses: you had to figure out when the people would be gone and roughly when they were likely to come back. You had to be careful, though, because the last thing you wanted was some nosy neighbor seeing you hanging around and getting suspicious and giving your description to the cops who eventually came to investigate the break-in. Gillette decided he was the expert when it came to that. He enjoyed scouting out places for them. He liked houses that backed onto ravines—nobody to see what was going on at the back of house like that—or that were located opposite parks or school yards, places where a couple of guys could hang out and fool around, you know, boys will be boys, without arousing too much suspicion and where they could keep an eye on who came and who went and when they came and went.
Dooley liked the rush he always got when he and Gillette were actually jimmying open a back door or a window. He liked sliding into a house he’d never been in before, keeping silent and praying there wasn’t a person or a dog in there somewhere that they hadn’t counted on. He liked moving fast through the rooms, looking for stuff they could take that would give them a decent return on the risk. He liked the adrenaline high he always got from wondering if, this very second, while he was scoring an iPod or some jewelry, the man or woman of the house was about to insert a key into the front door or back door and enter the house and hear something or see something and… Jesus, it was scary, but it was great, especially if, like Dooley, you were on something.
More than anything else, though, he liked the way each house was like a giant surprise package. Until you actually got inside, you never knew what you were going to find. You could tell from the outside if a place was freshly painted or if it needed a paint job. But you couldn’t tell if the furniture was going to be sparse and ultra-modern or if the rooms were going to be crammed full of old-fashioned, overstuffed sofas and armchairs. You couldn’t tell whether the kids’ rooms were going to be overflowing with toys and electronics or whether you’d find porn videos and magazines on the top shelf of a closet in some teenager’s room or, you never know, in the parents’ room. Some places were really nice—fresh and new, warm and cosy, the kind of place Dooley wished he lived in but couldn’t quite imagine himself fitting into. He liked to lie down on the beds that looked comfortable and was always pleased when they turned out to feel as cushiony as he’d hoped. He liked to check out the clothes in the closets and always wished he could take some of the stuff that was especially nice, but clothes were bulky and you couldn’t get much for them and you sure couldn’t walk around wearing them because what if the person whose house you had robbed saw you on the street, just by chance? It wasn’t worth the risk.
Every place he had ever broken into, he had broken into with Gillette—including the last place, the place where the woman lived. He hadn’t admitted it to anyone—not his uncle, not even Dr. Calvin—but that woman had kept him up more nights than Lorraine ever had. Gillette had picked the house. He said the location was perfect. There were a lot of old people who lived on the street, and they all went to bed early. By ten o’clock, he said, the street looked like it was blacked out. And the peo
ple who lived in the house he’d picked out were out of town. Gillette had watched them put a bunch of suitcases in the back of the car and drive away. He said with that many suitcases, they’d probably be gone for a couple of weeks, which was good. He said that if they went into the place sooner rather than later, it would be weeks before any even noticed that stuff was missing. They’d have it sold, he said, before the woman and her husband even got to where they were going. Gillette even slipped around back after they were gone. He pretended to be looking for his dog, in case anyway saw him. But he said he was pretty sure no one did. He checked the place out. He said they could get in a back window, easy.
They decided to go in the next night. Dooley killed the day by getting stoned. He didn’t say anything to Gillette, but the truth was, he was pretty wasted by the time they got to the place. Gillette was right about the street being quiet. There were no lights on anywhere. Gillette seemed to hesitate when they were standing out on the sidewalk.
“Come on,” Dooley urged him. He’d brought his baseball bat with him. He took it whenever he and Gillette went out together. His working theory at the time: he could always tell whoever wanted to know—like the cops—that he was on his way home from a pickup game in the park.
Gillette still didn’t move. Dooley glanced around. True, there were no lights on anywhere. But you never knew when some old lady was going to get up to use the bathroom and then look out the window on her way back to bed. Old people like that, they know who belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn’t. Gillette was looking around and frowning.
“What’s the matter?” Dooley said.
“Nothing,” Gillette said. He nodded down the street. “Come on.”
He led Dooley around the side of the house. They pried open a window, no sweat. And then they got to work. Dooley was in the dining room, checking the credenza, when he heard Gillette mutter a single word: “Shit.” Then Gillette yelled, “Look out!” which is when Dooley grabbed his baseball bat, which was propped up against the credenza. He saw a shadow coming at him, and he swung at it.
His lawyer asked him later, “What were you thinking?” Dooley didn’t answer. What could he say? He saw that shadow and everything in his head just went red, then it went black, and he swung.
The shadow turned out to be a woman who, if you asked Dooley, would have made a good stealth burglar. She was fifty-four years old and she walked like a cat, even in high heels. The bat connected with her head—no, that wasn’t right. Jesus, after all that therapy, after all those groups, he could at least say it right to himself when he was lying alone in his room in the dark, couldn’t he? He swung his baseball bat and he cracked her a good one on the head. He could still hear the sound the wood and the bone had made when they came into contact with each other. When he heard it that night, something lurched in his stomach, and he dropped the bat. He looked at the woman lying there on the floor. Even as out of it as he was, he couldn’t believe what he had done. Then he ran. Gillette was already gone. It wasn’t until Dooley was maybe ten blocks away that he realized he’d left the bat on the floor next to the woman.
The cops got prints off the bat and matched them to prints of his that they had taken when he’d been arrested a couple of months earlier for that stupid purse-snatching, that middle-aged lady body-builder. They arrested Dooley.
It turned out that the woman had suffered permanent brain damage and permanent motor damage. Her husband had sat in the front row during Dooley’s trial. Before sentencing, he told everyone that his wife was probably never going to walk again, might not talk either. He stared at Dooley when he said it.
At first Dooley had felt bad, about being caught, not about the woman. Now he felt bad about everything.
How do rumors get started? Who’s rumormonger zero, the one who sees something or hears something and decides he (or she) is going to take responsibility for putting it out there? Dooley wondered about that on Monday, when his uncle insisted that he go to school even though school was the last thing Dooley wanted to think about.
“You’ve got to hold it together,” his uncle said. “You’re not charged with anything. And you’re still on a supervision order. One of the conditions is you have to attend school regularly.”
“Even if I can’t concentrate?”
“Force yourself, Ryan. As long as they haven’t made an arrest, they’re still investigating.”
“What if they’ve already made up their minds? What if all they’re doing is investigating ways to make it stick to me?”
“Well, then you’re screwed,” his uncle said. Dooley couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
As soon as Dooley got to school, he noticed that people were looking at him a certain way, even his teachers. Also, people whispered behind their hands to each other, even his teachers. The only person who came up to him and said anything was Rhodes. He said, “They talked to me about Eddy. They talked to Bracey and Landers. They probably talked to everyone who was at the party.”
Dooley had the impression that Rhodes was trying to make him feel better. If he was, he wasn’t succeeding. Dooley was willing to bet that no one else had had a beef with Gillette that night, that no one else had history with Gillette, and that no one else had a record like Dooley’s.
“So what did they say to you?” Rhodes said.
“The usual,” Dooley said. “When did I see him last, did I have any problems with him, that kind of stuff.”
“And?” Rhodes said.
Dooley didn’t want to talk about it. Then he didn’t have to—the bell rang.
At lunchtime, Dooley walked down the street to the Chinese restaurant that he always went to. He ordered cashew chicken, steamed rice, and green tea. This time he didn’t read while he ate. Instead, he wondered what his chances were.
The first thing he thought about (and, boy, there were countless people who would have loved this one, from Calvin to Kingston to his uncle) was that he was in this mess because he had screwed up. If he’d stuck to ginger ale, none of it would have happened.
Maybe.
You could stick to ginger ale and someone could still slip something into your drink. But if he hadn’t been drinking, he would have noticed that, right? If he’d been behaving the way he was supposed to and someone had slipped something into his drink and he’d started feeling all loopy and weird, he would have known something wasn’t right (although he may not have been able to do much about it). But after a couple of glasses of champagne and (if he was being honest with himself) who knew how many other drinks, it was hard to tell what was what. So it was his own damned fault. No one had twisted his arm; no one had forced him to swallow any of those drinks. He had to accept responsibility for that.
The second thing: he wondered if they were going to arrest him, even if it was only on the smash-and-grab, and, if they did, what his chances were of staying out of custody. Probably not good, given that he was out on supervision now, the idea being he could stay out (and supervised) if he kept his nose clean, and he could expect to go back for the remainder of his disposition if he got into any trouble. The number one most important thing right now: pray he didn’t get arrested and, for fuck’s sake, don’t do anything else that would attract the attention of the cops.
He’d met a guy one time who had told him that being outside was always better than being inside, even if you were only out on bail. Dooley had been quick to agree. If you were out, you weren’t locked up. People couldn’t tell you what to do (although they could lay some conditions on you, tell you what not to do). They couldn’t tell you when to do it. They couldn’t stop you from having at least some fun. But, no, this guy meant something different. This guy said, first, if you hadn’t done whatever you’d been arrested for—which, frankly, had never been the case with Dooley—and you were outside instead of inside, it was good because, first, when you finally went to court, you didn’t come in as a prisoner, you came in as a free person, which influenced how other people looked at you and how you felt about
yourself and how you acted. Second, it was good because if the cops had arrested you, that meant that they were committed to you being the one who had done whatever it was. But—always assuming you really hadn’t done it—if you were outside, you could at least try to do something to get yourself off the hook. You could do things you’d never have a chance to do if they decided to remand you until your court date.
Take Dooley’s situation—Dooley chewed on his cashew chicken at the same time he was chewing on this—assume it came down to the cops (read: Graff) thinking that Dooley had had something to do with what had happened to Gillette. In that case, Graff would be working that side of it. Dooley, on the other hand, was pretty sure that he’d had nothing to do with it—he wished he could be certain, but he wasn’t. And there weren’t too many people who were going to be working Dooley’s side of it. So it was up to Dooley. If they arrested him, or if, for whatever reason (and there were plenty to choose from) Al Szabo decided to send him back, there would be nothing he could do to try to prove he hadn’t been involved (still assuming he hadn’t). But that hadn’t happened yet. He was still out, which meant he could do something. What, he wasn’t sure. But something.
He chewed some chicken.
He didn’t remember much about what had happened at the party after he’d had that second Coke and whatever-the-hell it was. But there had been plenty of people at the party—people who had seen things, people who had talked to the cops, people who might be willing to answer a few questions if Dooley asked them.
Who to ask? Who had been there? Who did he remember?
He started with the girl who had been with Rhodes that night, for the simple reason that she was the first person he ran into, almost literally. He was striding down the hall, running down the list of people whose names he remembered and trying to think of others whose faces he remembered, when she stepped right in front of him. It turned out she was coming out of the girls’ bathroom. She looked annoyed at first, like how dare someone be standing in the exact place she wanted to be, but as soon as she registered who he was, she lightened up. He saw for the first time that she had green eyes and a cute little nose. She was waiting for him to say something. So he said, “Hi.”
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