“Hi, yourself,” she said, offering him a little smile.
“Jen, right?” he said.
“Right.” She sounded amused by his uncertainty.
“Look, Jen, this is a little embarrassing—”
Her smile got wider. She had great teeth—straight as soldiers on parade, white as newly scrubbed porcelain.
“—but I was wondering, last weekend, at that party…” Geeze, he wished he’d never taken that glass of champagne from Bracey. “What do you remember?”
“What do I remember?” She laughed. “I remember everything. What do you remember?”
He met her sassy green eyes. Well, he told himself, it was hardly the first time someone had asked him that question. He told her more or less what he recalled (he left out the part about calling his uncle—how lame was that?—and the part about Landers and the maid—he didn’t know what she thought of Landers, so why complicate things?). He ended with shooting pool with Bracey after Landers had made his toast.
“After that,” he said, “it gets a little hazy.”
“You’re one of those guys, when they drink, they get aggressive, right?” she said.
Dooley waited.
“I saw you shoving Eddy around,” she said. He wondered if the cops had talked to her yet. He wondered how many other people had told Graff what she was telling him now. “Before that, you went after Peter.”
“Do you know what that was about?”
“Yeah,” she said. “First, he was pissed off because he thought you were hitting on Megan.”
“First?” Dooley said.
“Yeah. Then he started telling everybody you beat up Mark one time. That sure was news to Beth.” She shook her head. “She’s all broken up about him being dead. She’s doing that whole scholarship thing. But I get the impression she and Mark didn’t communicate much. Anyway, when she heard what Peter was saying, she freaked out. Win calmed her down, but she left pretty soon after that. That’s when you went after Peter. Win and Marcus had to break it up.”
Jesus. Rhodes hadn’t told him that. Dooley hoped that she was exaggerating. Hoped? Hell, he prayed.
“And after that?”
Jen shrugged. “After that I saw you shoving Eddy around.”
“Do you know what that was about?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t stick around to find out, either. It was getting boring, you know?” She looked hard at him, like she was trying to decide whether to tell him something. In the end she just said, “I gotta run.”
Dooley circled the schoolyard after school, approaching girls mostly. Some of them backed up a pace when he stopped to talk to them. Some of them looked surprised and a little interested when he went up to them. One of them finally told him where he could find Megan. It turned out she lived only a few streets away from Dooley’s uncle. She grinned at him when she answered the door and came out on the porch to talk to him.
“I don’t remember everything,” she said. “I was having fun, you know?”
He had an idea, but just so he was clear: “Drinking?”
“Yeah, that. And other stuff.”
“Drugs?”
“A little smoke,” she said. “I’m not into anything else.”
“Did I hit on you?”
She laughed. “I wish,” she said.
“But Landers… Peter thought I did,” Dooley said.
“Peter gets jealous,” she said. “Over nothing.” She stepped in close to him. “You have a girlfriend, Dooley?”
He stepped back. “Did you notice what time I left?”
She shook her head. “After that thing with Peter, I had to stick pretty close to him. I didn’t want him to hurt you. Or vice versa. Especially vice versa.” She winked at him, which made him wonder how much she had heard about him. “I lost track of you.”
“What about you? When did you leave?”
“Around two.”
“With Landers?”
“With Peter, yeah. Also with Marcus and Eddy.”
That was news. “Gillette left with you?”
She nodded.
“Did he go home?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “We got into a cab…”
“You and Landers and Bracey and Gillette?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, me and Peter anyway. I had a lot to drink and Peter was all over me. I think the cab driver threatened to throw us out.” She thought for a moment. “Or maybe Peter just said that, you know, kidding around. I think the cab stopped a couple of times. Maybe the other two got out along the way. You should ask Peter. I think he was in better shape than me. All I remember is he walked me to the door and then he took off. He’s afraid of my dad. My dad always blames Peter if I come home drunk or whatever.”
“Where did Peter go when he left you? Home?”
“I guess so,” Megan said.
“And you don’t know where Gillette got out of the cab?” It sounded like she didn’t even know if he’d got into the cab in the first place.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling up at him. If anyone else looked at him the way she was looking at him now, he’d have thought it meant something. But he was getting the idea that Megan just liked to put it out there for fun. She liked to play.
Before he left, she told him where Bracey lived. When Dooley turned to leave the porch, he saw Landers standing down on the front walk, his lip curled up like he was trying to avoid a bad smell. Dooley went down the porch steps. Landers blocked his way. He was as tall as Dooley and looked like he was in pretty good shape. Looked like a scrapper, too. Dooley thought about asking him the same questions he’d asked Megan, but decided against it. He was pretty sure Landers wouldn’t answer anyway. He was getting more and more sure about a lot of things to do with Landers. So instead of saying anything, Dooley met Landers’ eyes and let him see in them everything he had probably heard about Dooley. Then, holding that look, he stepped around Landers.
He went to Bracey’s house next, but Bracey wasn’t home. No one was. He checked his watch. Time for work.
Twenty
He ran into Bracey on the way to the video store.
Bracey was standing outside a pizza place, chewing on a slice that he had rolled up so that he could jam it into his mouth more easily. His face changed when he spotted Dooley. Bracey wasn’t like Everley or Landers. He was more like Rhodes, quieter, not a scrapper. He tossed what was left of his pizza and turned away from Dooley, trying to be casual about it but, Dooley guessed, eager to be on his way. When Dooley caught up with him and dropped a hand on his shoulder, Bracey stiffened, making Dooley feel like The Ice Man, a superhero who could freeze people solid just by touching them. Used to be Dooley would get off on a power like that. Now he just thought: shit.
“Hey, Marcus, I need to ask you something,” he said, pushing some jolly into his voice so Bracey wouldn’t wet himself. He circled around Bracey so that he could look him in the eye.
Bracey was as twitchy as a rabbit. “I heard they found Eddy,” he said.
“I heard he left the party with you,” Dooley said.
Bracey’s eyes widened. “What are you saying? Are you saying you think I had something to do with what happened to him?”
“You all went home in a cab together, you and Landers and Gillette and Megan, right? Where did you let Gillette off?” Dooley said.
“Eddy didn’t come with us,” Bracey said.
“But Megan said—”
“Megan was wasted. We walked down to St. Clair together. Peter, Megan, and I got in a cab—we all live in the same direction. Eddy said he was going to take the bus.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?” Bracey said, surprised.
“When did I leave?”
“How would I know?”
“So you didn’t see me leave?”
`“I saw you take a few swings at Eddy. And at Peter.”
“That’s it?”
Bracey nodded.
“But you saw
Gillette get on the bus?”
“Sure,” Bracey said. He thought about it for a moment and then frowned. “A bus was coming just as we got into the cab. So, yeah, he must have got on.”
Must have.
“You didn’t see him get on?”
Bracey looked at him.
“He said he was going home,” he said. “So he must have got on.” But Dooley could tell that he was wondering now. And that made Dooley wonder, too.
Mostly work was stupid and boring, especially on Monday nights. On Monday nights, the biggest challenge was to find some way to look busy (if you were on shift with Kevin, which Dooley was) so that Kevin didn’t drive you crazy with his Have you done this? Have you done that? and you didn’t, as a result, want to kill him. Dooley was walking the aisles, checking to make sure that the new titles were displayed face out and that everything was in the right section and, within each section, that everything was shelved so that the customers could find things right away, assuming they knew the title they were looking for (they didn’t always) and assuming they could spell (they couldn’t always). That meant a lot of re-shelving, some of it on account of customers picking things up and then changing their minds and putting things back down wherever they felt like instead of in the right place, and some of it on account of Linelle, who had her own system of shelving, based, Dooley believed, on her contempt for the alphabet, the film industry, and the customer—not necessarily in that order. Linelle put stuff where people would be least likely to look for it, like Pretty Woman in the Fantasy section or Natural Born Killers under Education/Self-Help.
He heard the electronic bong that sounded every time someone came through the door, but he didn’t turn to see who it was. Kevin was up front at the cash. Let him keep an eye out for potential shoplifters. Dooley continued with his alphabetizing. He didn’t stop until he heard a sound like a whoop, someone either thrilled about something or mad about something. He started to turn toward the sound when someone clamped his arms to his sides. What the—?
Oh.
It was her.
She hugged him tightly and beamed at him.
“Hey, Alicia,” Dooley said. “How’s it going?”
He glanced around, looking for the woman who had started coming in with her after the incident with Everley and Landers. Who he saw instead was the geek from school, Warren, standing halfway up the aisle gaping at him. Dooley gently pried Alicia’s arms loose. He looked at Warren, who came down the aisle now and took one of Alicia’s hands and pulled her away from him. He said something to her in a quiet voice and she said something back. Dooley walked up to the cash so that they could have some privacy.
“You finished straightening all the titles?” Kevin said, without looking up from what he was doing, which was reading some new inserts to the employee manual.
Before Dooley could answer, a voice behind him said, “It was you?”
Dooley turned to look at Warren. Alicia wasn’t with him. She was over in the documentary section, probably looking for the penguin movie that she had already rented half a dozen times.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Warren said. He sounded stunned.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dooley saw Kevin straighten up, his radar telling him that something was going on in his store.
Alicia came toward the cash with a DVD case. She held it out to Dooley, even though he was standing in front of the counter and Kevin was behind it at the cash register. Dooley ducked through the opening, nudged Kevin aside, and took the DVD case from her. He was right; it was the penguin movie again. He smiled at her as he scanned the case and told her how much it was. He waited patiently while she hunted in her pocket for the money. She had the exact change. She always did. Dooley put the DVD in a bag and passed it across the counter to her. Warren was still staring at him.
“Wait for me over there,” he said to her, pointing to the new releases. “I won’t be long, I promise.” She did what he told her.
“She usually comes in with someone else,” Dooley said.
“My cousin,” Warren said. “You’re really the one?”
“He’s the one what?” Kevin said. It was driving him crazy that he didn’t know what was going on.
Dooley slipped out from behind the counter and headed back to where he had been re-shelving in the Action/Adventure aisle, putting back the Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Steven Sagal movies that Linelle had shelved in the Comedy section. Warren trailed after him.
“Look,” Dooley said, “it’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, but of all the people—” He shut up when Dooley gave him a look. “What I meant was—”
“Forget it, okay?” Dooley said. Jesus, he’d done what any decent person would have done and this guy couldn’t get over it. What did that say about Dooley? “You should just buy her that movie,” he said.
“What?”
“The penguin movie. The number of times she’s rented that one, she could have bought it already, plus another one.”
“If she owned it,” Warren said, “she wouldn’t have to come here and rent it every week.”
“My point,” Dooley said.
Warren shook his head. “She likes coming here. She likes to come and see Ryan. That’s you, right?” Like he still couldn’t believe it. “One of the reasons they were giving her a hard time,” he said, “is because of me. They told her, no wonder she’s the way she is, she has me for a brother.”
Two days later, Dooley felt like a guy who had been holding his breath forever. He hadn’t heard any more from the cops. He got up every morning, as usual. He went to school every day, as usual. He did his assignments. He occasionally stuck up his hand in class but wasn’t ever called on, which was fine with him. He went home every day to change for work, he spent his breaks doing homework, and he reached for the phone maybe a hundred times to call Beth. But that’s all he did—reached out, maybe picked up the receiver, maybe looked at it, and then put it back down again.
He was up at the cash Wednesday night, telling a kid, sorry, no way, unless you can prove to me you’re eighteen, you are not renting that game, when he heard “Jesus H. Murphy!” and saw Kevin charge out of the store. Dooley turned to look through the window. Kevin was out on the sidewalk flapping his arms at a scruffy guy who had his hands on the glass and his nose pressed against it, peering into the store. The guy paid no attention to Kevin, whose mouth was flapping. Dooley made out a few words: loitering, vagrant, police. Whatever. Dooley snatched the game from the kid’s hand. “Come back when you’re eighteen,” he said, and seriously wondered what kind of boring excuse for a life you’d have to have at eighteen to want to rent that piece-of-crap game. Another customer approached the counter with a couple of DVDs. Dooley was reaching for them when someone thumped on the glass. Dooley turned to look. It was the scruffy guy. He thumped again, harder this time, when Dooley made eye contact with him. The glass in the window shook.
“If you don’t stop that, I’ll call the police,” Kevin said, his voice loud and clear even through the window.
It all came together in a nanosecond. The scruffy guy went from being just another drugged-up or cheap-liquored-up or maybe just plain fucked-up nuisance of a bum to being a drugged-up or cheap-liquored-up or maybe just plain fucked-up nuisance of a bum with a backpack slung over one shoulder—a red backpack with black trim and net pockets. Dooley scooted around the counter and headed for the door.
“Hey!” the customer said.
“Back in a minute,” Dooley said. He went outside where the first thing Kevin said to him was, “It’s not time for your break yet. Get back inside and watch the store.”
The homeless guy swung away from the glass so that he was face to face with Kevin, who wrinkled his nose and scuttled back a pace.
“Why don’t you let me handle this?” Dooley said.
Kevin looked from Dooley to the homeless guy and said, “You’ve got three minutes to get rid of him before I call the cops.”
Prick,
Dooley thought. He waited until Kevin went back inside the store before he said to the homeless guy, “Are you looking for me?”
“I heard someone was looking for this,” he said. He untangled himself from the backpack and held it out to Dooley. “I heard there was a reward.” He talked in a slurry mumble. Dooley had to listen closely to get what he was saying.
Dooley told the guy that he was the one who was looking for the backpack. He told him that all he had on him was fifteen dollars and change. He said the nearest ATM was a few blocks away and his break wasn’t for another hour. He gave the guy what he had on him and asked him if he could stick around until he got off. The guy just shrugged and handed Dooley the backpack. Dooley wondered if he was simple-minded or fogged; he’d handed over the pack without being paid in full.
“Where did you find it?” Dooley said. The guy gave him a blank look. “The backpack,” Dooley said. “Where did you find it?”
“On a kid,” the guy said. “He was dead.”
On a kid. Geeze.
“Did you see him go over?” Dooley said.
The guy shook his head.
“Did you see anything?” Dooley said.
The guy looked at him. “I saw you.”
Dooley wondered if he was the person he had seen going around the corner back there in the ravine that night. He said, “Wait here, okay? I’ll be back out on my break. One hour.”
Dooley went back inside the store. By then, Kevin was in the games section, harassing some kids. At least, that’s what it looked like. Dooley stashed the backpack in one of the cupboards under the counter. He looked out the window a couple of times and saw that the guy was still out there, standing patiently next to a utility pole, reading an advertisement that promised you could make Big $$$$ In Your Own Home!!! Then things got busy. Dooley rang up more rentals than he would have thought possible for a Wednesday night until, finally, it was time for his break. He looked outside again. The homeless guy was gone. Dooley went outside to look for him—he spent his whole break checking the neighborhood. The guy was definitely gone.
Dooley Takes the Fall Page 15