Guys, Lies & Alibis

by Kimberly Reid

  “Look, I need to be somewhere,” I say, deciding it might be a good idea to stay away from Brent, just like everyone’s been telling me. But I figure I’m in screaming distance of the basketball team just inside, so I turn back around to face him. “What does that mean?”

  “It means what I said. You’ve become a pain in my ass. You’re the reason my favorite player is gone.”

  “Who? Justin Mitchell? He sucked.” It was true. Dude was always high. I don’t know how he could have been anyone’s favorite player. Unless to Brent, player means customer.

  “I don’t care what Justin did on his own time, as long as it didn’t get in the way of business. Now you’re messing up my thing with Marco.”

  “You didn’t even give him time to get the money together.”

  “This isn’t about the money—”

  “First Marco, now you. If I hear one more lie how it isn’t about the money, I might have to hurt someone,” I say, cutting him off.

  “I’m glad to hear Ruiz knows what this is really about,” Brent says, unimpressed by my threat. I need to work on my crazy, hood-girl persona. MJ—even Tasha—would have totally sold it.

  “The wreck happened Saturday night after the round two playoffs. By Monday, you were in the cafeteria harassing him for a payment. How could he possibly pay you back in two days?”

  “The wreck? Okay . . . that explains why he was on the bus last week.”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re probably charging him some outrageous interest so he can never pay his debt.”

  “Damn. Ruiz has more problems than I thought. But you’re the biggest one. I told him you were bad for business, that he would be smart to keep you out of his.”

  “You’re the one who needs to stay away from him. I can make that happen,” I say, hoping I sound threatening and not like I’m so scared I’m about to have an unfortunate hygiene issue.

  “I actually believe you could, considering what you did to Justin. But I’m not Marco’s problem. It’s out of my hands now. Your boyfriend is screwed.”

  *

  It’s definitely time for professional help. I hurry back to Main Hall to get my stuff from my locker so I can make the next bus home and tell Lana everything. On the way, I pass Brent’s locker and remember him ducking into the nearby classroom just before his meeting with Thug Number One. I turn the knob and find it unlocked—the security guard hasn’t made his rounds for the afternoon yet.

  It’s the art room. Even though final bell rang over thirty minutes ago, it still smells strongly of paint. Along one side of the room are shelves holding rows of painted bottles. I go over to get a closer look, wondering how they get the paint to cling to the glass. I’m tempted to touch one of the bottles but I don’t want to wreck some poor kid’s artwork and ruin his grade. That’s when I detect another scent mingling in the air. It isn’t as strong as the paint, but it’s familiar, makes me think of my favorite art form when I was a little kid. I loved to make designs with glue and sprinkle glitter over it. Obviously I was no Rembrandt, but I could squeeze glue on construction paper and sprinkle glitter over it like nobody’s business. That’s it—Elmer’s glue.

  There’s a big supply closet in the back of the room. The art teacher must be very organized because all the doors are labeled with their contents. Behind the door labeled acrylic paints, there are several complete sets neatly ordered in rows, except for one tube sticking up from a set two rows back. I grab the tube and squeeze out some of the paint. It’s the same orange color as the paint bomb thrown at Marco’s windshield. Add a little Elmer’s glue to it and the consistency would be the same, too.

  What had Marco said that night? They weren’t trying to kill us. As though he knew it for a fact. As though he knew who “they” were. It turns out he did.

  Chapter 19

  Marco didn’t try to avoid me at school today. He just didn’t show up, same as the day before. At least he texted me to say he was out sick, otherwise I’d have spent the last forty-eight hours imagining all kinds of terrible things had happened to him. Now I’m waiting for him at our favorite table at Tastee Treets, at his request. Couples taking a break don’t have a favorite table. Even if he claims this break is only about keeping me safe and nothing to do with our relationship status, I still don’t like it. We didn’t make it past disapproving parents, jealous girlfriends, vengeful gangsters, and about-to-be-deported relatives just to have some small-time gangster keep us apart. Nope. I’m not having it.

  I was so eager to see Marco and ask him to decipher Brent’s threat that I arrived fifteen minutes early, which I now regret. I always feel exposed when I’m alone at a restaurant, like I’ve been stood up, even if it’s just Tastee Treets where I know everyone behind the counter because I worked right alongside them until last summer. When I need to do surveillance on someone, I can sit alone in a restaurant all day and think nothing of it. But when there’s no one to watch, it just feels weird. To pass the time, I create a target and make up a story to go with him. I’ve decided on a guy sitting in a booth at the front of the restaurant, perpendicular to mine. He’s alone, too.

  The man reminds me of Idris Elba, if Idris was shorter and not as handsome. Okay, maybe the guy only looks like his distant cousin. What he doesn’t look like is your typical Treets customer because he’s wearing a suit and drinking coffee. When it comes to burgers and fried fish, they’re the best, and the shakes are awesome, but it isn’t the kind of place you hang out and have coffee in. For one thing, it isn’t quiet, not on a Wednesday evening when Kids Eat Free! For another, the coffee is pretty weak. Unlike every other fast food place these days, Treets hasn’t tried to compete with Starbucks. You won’t find any lattes or espressos here; they serve plain old coffee, and it’s usually stale.

  I decide my target is also waiting for someone, but the suit is still throwing me off. It probably costs a few months’ worth of my paychecks when I had a job. The other strange thing about him is how he just stares straight ahead. I mean, other than sipping his coffee, the man has been stock still since I began watching him. Most people would glance up at someone walking in or standing at the counter, or look out the window at busy Center Street, but not this guy. I guess he isn’t as uncomfortable dining alone as I am.

  I’m staring at his profile when he turns to look straight at me and smiles. Startled, it takes me a second before I pretend to look out the window past him, hoping my face is showing exasperation, like, “Where the hell is my date?” He doesn’t buy it, and instead raises his coffee cup and nods the way grown people do when they spot someone they know. Except I don’t know him from Adam. I hope he doesn’t come over here, thinking I was making a move. He’s probably older than my mother.

  Just then, I actually do see my date coming through the doors, and I’m relieved I won’t have to explain to old dude that I wasn’t trying to pick him up. Marco gives me a quick kiss (something else couples on a break don’t do) but doesn’t take a seat.

  “I’m starving. Let’s go order.”

  “I already ordered and paid. Someone sent the order to the kitchen the minute you walked through the door. They’ll bring it over when it’s ready.”

  “You didn’t have to. It was going to be my treat,” he says, taking a seat across from me.

  “I didn’t want us distracted. You must have something important to tell me.”

  “Can we eat first?”

  “I won’t be able to enjoy it if I spend the whole time wondering what you’re about to tell me. Have you really been sick, or just avoiding me? Or maybe it’s Brent Carmody you’ve been avoiding?”

  “All right, let’s just get it out of the way. I meant it when I said you need to stay away from me for your safety, but it’s clear you don’t believe it. Brent told me how you went looking for him behind the gym, trying to get him to talk.”

  “Because you won’t. And if he’s so dangerous, why don’t you stay away from him?”

  �
��I can handle Brent, but this isn’t just about him.”

  “That much I figured out.”

  “Here’s the deal—”

  Just then, our food arrives with Tasha carrying the tray.

  “Um, you work here now?” I ask, because last I checked, Tasha worked at the movie theater.

  “I guess I do. Whadda you know.”

  “Well, you’ll have to tell me all about it later,” I say, hoping my tone conveys I don’t want to chat right now, but I should have known better because Tasha always wants to gossip.

  “Sooo, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Chanti?”

  Fortunately her supervisor walks by just then and tells her to get back to her station. When Tasha leaves, Marco focuses on the clogged ketchup bottle instead of finishing his story about the drug dealer/loan shark he’s pissed off. He’s over there shaking the bottle, banging it against the table edge, and basically driving me crazy. I grab the bottle from him, unscrew the top, and hand it back to him.

  “You were saying?”

  He doesn’t say anything, just drags a fry through a pool of ketchup but doesn’t eat it.

  “I know this goes back to before the wreck. You borrowed money long before that because it was Brent who paint-bombed the car.”

  “You really have figured it all out.”

  “Not all of it, and if you don’t tell me the rest, I’m getting up from this table and going straight to Lana.”

  Before he can respond, the man in the suit I’d been watching earlier is suddenly at our table. I must have been really focused on Marco not to have noticed his approach. If old dude is about to creep on me when I’m sitting here with a guy, I’m not going to be polite when I tell him to back the hell up, which I’m about to do when he taps Marco on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, what?” Marco says, looking up at him like he’s about to go off on the man, too. In Denver Heights, you just don’t walk up on people and start putting your hands on them, even if it’s just a tap.

  “Sorry to interrupt dinner with your girl, but I noticed when you pulled in to the parking lot.”

  “What about it?” Marcos asks.

  “I thought you might want to know there’s a cop out there in the parking lot writing you a ticket. Looks like you have a broken taillight.”

  “No way,” I say. “Denver PD has better things to do than write taillight tickets on private property.”

  “My taillight is fine,” Marco says.

  “We aren’t always able to see what’s behind us,” old dude says, all Confucius-like. “Or perhaps it happened after you arrived. You can’t always see what’s coming, either.”

  Old dude must work at a fortune cookie factory. It’s nice of him to let Marco know about the cop, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t a little strange, like if Dracula tried his hand at being a good citizen instead of a bloodsucker. I think Marco is picking up on the weirdness, too, by the look on his face.

  “Wait a minute,” the man says, looking out into the parking lot. “I know that cop. That’s Officer Duncan and he owes me a favor. Actually, he owes me three or four. I’m going to call one of them in and tell him to tear up that ticket.”

  Marco doesn’t say anything, just sits there. The man is odd, but he’s doing Marco a favor and there’s no reason to be rude, so I say, “Thanks. We appreciate it.”

  “No problem. It’s just a random act of kindness. You kids have a good evening.”

  Marco still hasn’t said a word. He turns to watch the man leave, and then stares at him while he talks to the cop in the parking lot. The man points toward the restaurant, and the cop turns to look at us. He must be lazy and trying to make his ticket quota for the day without working hard for it. I’m wondering if a ticket even counts when it’s on private property. I plan to ask Lana about it. A minute later, the officer and the stranger get into their respective cars and become part of the Center Street traffic.

  “That was nice. A little weird, but nice,” I say.

  “My taillight wasn’t broken.”

  “The cop must be desperate for some action, not that it’s so hard to find in Denver Heights. Still, he isn’t so bored he’d bust your taillight just so he could write you a ticket.”

  “Lesson for today? Not every cop is honest.”

  I’m probably the only person in the place with love for the police seeing as how they keep food in my stomach and a roof over my head, but even I won’t deny that one. Still, the dirtiest cop, even if he’s bored out of his mind, doesn’t have time for busting out taillights just so he can write a ticket. Poor Marco is becoming even more paranoid than I am.

  “True, but do you really think—”

  “I just had the car repaired from the wreck, including the taillight.”

  “That’s right, you did,” I say, grateful for the opening. “How? Borrowed more money from Brent on top of whatever you owed him before the wreck?”

  “I got a loan, but not from Brent. It was from Uncle Archie. He did the repairs and I’ll work it off at his shop over the summer.”

  “So you aren’t going to tell me the truth, then.”

  Marco doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window where the stranger and the cop had been standing, as if they were still there. He runs his hands through his hair before leaning over, head down, elbows on the table, his fingers locked behind his neck. He stays that way for a good minute before he looks up again. He stares at me for a second and I think the wall is about to finally come down.

  “I have to go. Are you okay walking the block home alone? Who am I kidding—you’ll be safer without me,” Marco says.

  “I’ll be fine, but you haven’t finished your food or answered my question. You might break up with me, you might even hate me, but I’ll go to Lana if I think you’re in danger.”

  “I said everything I wanted to say,” Marco replies, getting up from the table. “Do whatever you have to do.”

  He leans down to kiss me, like he did when he first arrived, and I can swear something about it feels final. A second later, he’s gone.

  Chapter 20

  After Marco leaves, I hang around Treets, not wanting to go home yet. Lana doesn’t expect me for another hour since I told her I’d be on a date, and I can always think through things better when I’m at Treets with a chocolate shake in front of me. All the food, barely touched, has gone cold, but I leave the full trays where they are while I go up to the counter to get another shake. It’s late for Not-to-Worry, my favorite neighborhood homeless person, to be out scaring up a meal, but I’ll bag it up just in case I run into him on the way home.

  When I get back to the table with my order (I had to get some fresh fries to go with the shake, of course), I find Tasha waiting for me, a tray of her own in front of her.

  “I’m on break,” she says. “Thought I was coming out here to meet your boyfriend but I see he’s gone.”

  “You didn’t think I’d left with him?”

  “You wouldn’t leave your trays on the table like this. Besides, I could see you putting in another order. They have me working in the back, on fries and onion rings.”

  “Everyone starts at the fry station. The question is, why are you working here at all? What happened to the movie job?”

  “I was tired of the bus commute downtown.”

  “It’s only one bus and twenty minutes. It takes me an hour to get to school and I have to transfer.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how you do it, and for school, no less. Besides, the pay is the same and I could spend that commute time working another hour. I didn’t tell you I’d applied at Treets because you’d try to talk me out of it.”

  “It was my mom who made me quit. I’d still be working here if we hadn’t been held up that day. I could definitely use a paycheck right about now,” I say, thinking more of Marco’s money problems than my own.

  “So, what’s the story on Marco? You haven’t told me anything, and you apparently forgot your home-training and didn�
��t introduce us. He’s fine, I know that much.”

  “I think he might be a drug-dealer,” I blurt out, surprising even myself.

  “Girl, shut-up!” Tasha says, dropping the onion ring she’d been dipping in horseradish sauce.

  I didn’t expect to say it, but I guess I’m about to explode keeping everything to myself. Normally this is the kind of thing I’d brainstorm with MJ Cooper, her being a reformed criminal and all, but she’s out of town and I don’t trust the phone for this kind of conversation. Tasha isn’t a player in all of this, and she’s my best friend, so I trust her and tell her everything I know, right up to my conversation with Brent outside the gym.

  “So wait—is he a drug dealer or in debt to a loan shark?” Tasha asks when I finish my story.

  “I don’t know. He can’t be doing drugs—I’d know. So why else would he owe a dealer? Either he’s working for him and didn’t pay out, or Brent had a side hustle as a loan shark.”

  “From everything you told me, what Marco wants most in this world is a scholarship to college so he can be an engineer. He wouldn’t mess all that up selling drugs just to get his car fixed.”

  “But he owed Brent money before the wreck.”

  “As far as dealing pot goes, why would they have to? There’s a pot shop within five blocks of here in either direction,” Tasha says, reminding me that Cisco said the same thing, and he ought to know.

  “Because we live in the Heights. Don’t expect to find them popping up in Cherry Creek anytime soon.”

  “You think all those Mercedes and Audis rolling up to Donnell’s old corner were from around here? Geography don’t stop a doper.”

  “If we rule out pot, I can’t imagine he gets much business at Langdon Prep or Milton Academy if his main job is selling loans. Rich kids don’t need a loan shark.”

  “Maybe Biggie Smalls was right, may he rest in peace. Mo’ money, mo’ problems,” Tasha says, sounding philosophical.

  Tasha and Biggie may be right. Marco and I worked for Justin’s father and I know he cut off Justin’s money when he found out he was getting high all the time. Maybe Justin did borrow money from Brent. We both stay quiet for a minute, me thinking through the clues while Tasha tries to finish her food before it gets cold. Then I think of another reason Brent could be dealing, not wanting to rule it out until I’m sure.