Mourn the Living

by Henry Perez

  “That came out wrong, it sounded condescending, and I apologize. But your brother’s death was a terrible accident.”

  “No accident,” Warren stopped him. His demeanor had suddenly changed and he now appeared resolute, certain, and sober. “My brother knew he was going to die, knew they were out to kill him. He warned me to keep an eye out for myself and to watch who I talked to if anything happened to him.”

  “Did you tell this to the police?” Chapa pulled up a stool and ordered two Newcastles.

  “Like I said, Jim told me to watch who I talked to. I got the feeling he didn’t trust the police.”

  The beer arrived quickly, along with chilled glasses and cardboard coasters. Chapa watched Warren take a long, cold sip from the bottle.

  “Or maybe, if he really was worried about something or someone, he was concerned you might implicate anyone you spoke to.”

  “And here I am now talking to you,” Warren said, smiled, and drank the rest of his beer in a single tilt. “Jim and me were supposed to go hunting this weekend.”

  “I didn’t know he was a sportsman.”

  Warren shook his head and signaled the bartender for another beer. Chapa shook him off, and slid his untouched bottle over to Warren.

  “He wasn’t. Jim just went along because I wanted him to. Probably just to keep me from accidentally shooting myself.”

  That sounded a lot like the Jim Chakowski Chapa had known. He wasn’t the sort of reporter anyone would ever want to hurt. He handled community news, did his share of feel-good pieces, and had been at the job for nearly three decades. But maybe he’d gotten himself into something.

  Chapa doubted it. The cops had this one right. An old house in an even older neighborhood. Bad wiring. Worse luck. But no crime. In a few days the cops would likely reveal that Jim Chakowski had recently installed a new appliance or a new printer, or had started plugging his electric razor into a different outlet. A dozen or more possibilities that made a hell of a lot more sense than someone blowing up a house to get rid of a reporter.

  Still, there was a look in Warren Chakowski’s eyes, an uneasy combination of desperation and determination that marked him as someone to be taken seriously.

  Chapter 14

  Chapa followed Erin back to her house, some three miles from his own, so Nikki could see where she would be spending parts of her days. After they all politely took off their shoes and got a short tour of the neatly kept ranch, the kids disappeared into the family room where the game system was.

  “Okay, are you going to tell me what that strange man at the restaurant wanted?” Erin asked the moment the children were out of earshot.

  As he followed her into the kitchen, Chapa explained who the guy was and dismissed Warren Chakowski’s theory about his brother’s death, but then added, “I’m meeting him tomorrow.”

  “Why? What are you trying to get yourself into now?”

  “I’m not getting myself into anything,” Chapa said, retrieving a cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator. “I feel I owe something to Jim Chakowski. He helped me out a number of times over the years.” Chapa downed a long swig. “Maybe I can help his brother get some closure.”

  Erin was putting pots and silverware away, wiping down countertops a second time, and doing a number of small things that told Chapa she was more than a little uneasy. The kitchen, like much of the house, was a nice mix of functional and decorative. Erin liked bright colors, and Chapa found her tastes charming, and in sync with her personality.

  He also got a kick out of seeing Mike’s drawings framed and hung on walls as though they were works of fine art. And there were so many photos of Erin and Mike, treated with the same reverence. Chapa was in a few of those, and it made him feel good to be included in that way, but he was also a bit uneasy about it.

  Erin had told Chapa that he was, “A man of grays and blues,” and that she hoped some of her would rub off on him. Deep down, he hoped it would, too, but feared it might turn out the other way around.

  “I thought you were supposed to just be following Jim Chakowski’s beat, keeping it all as simple as possible.”

  “I will, Erin. But I can still ask a few questions, fill in a blank or two. Basically, I’ll confirm the official report, and lay this to rest without any of it getting in the way of my work.”

  Erin turned away from the sink and walked toward Chapa. She had a face that he was sure he’d seen in an adolescent dream, and the legs of a runway model. Chapa liked those legs. Even now, hidden inside a pair of faded jeans, he knew how good they looked, how nice they felt every time she wrapped them around his bare waist. And that made him smile.

  She draped her long arms around his neck, pulled Chapa close to her, which made him smile more.

  “I just don’t want you turning this into one of those things.”

  “One of what things?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  He did. From the early days of his career Chapa had shown an ability to find the worst kind of trouble, and a willingness to rush head on into it. As a result, he was on a first-name basis with some very bad people.

  Chapa was about to reassure Erin that there was nothing to worry about this time. How at its core this was a fairly benign assignment and that he would not end up getting shot at, stabbed, or even punched. Not that she’d believe him anyhow.

  But the instant he opened his mouth she pressed hers against it. Their tongues tangled for a hot moment, then she slowly eased her head back.

  Erin gave Chapa’s lips one more quick flick with her tongue and said, “Mr. beer breath.”

  “Just pretend this is a bar pickup sort of thing,” Chapa said and gave her an exaggerated wink.

  Erin laughed. “I don’t think you’re the sort who ever went for the bar pickup scene.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean me,” Chapa said and slowly smiled.

  She smacked his chest, hard, but playful, then laughed and again wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Two rooms away, the sounds of their kids playing began to gradually fade, and then everything else went with it. For a perfect moment Chapa’s universe consisted only of Erin’s lips, her touch, and the warmth of her body pressed against his.

  Chapter 15

  Chapa had hoped to spend some time with Nikki when they got home. But she fell asleep in the car, and was still groggy when he walked her up to her room. It was the first time in nearly a year that Chapa had put his daughter to bed.

  He’d preserved the room exactly as it was when Nikki moved out with her mother, but now realized she had already outgrown many of the decorations and most of her toys.

  He pulled back the covers and guided Nikki into her white frame bed. Then Chapa gave her a few minutes to get back to sleep while he walked across the hall to his own room, which was quite a bit messier. He flipped on the lights, kicked off his shoes, and then softly walked back across the hall, the floor creaking under his heavy feet.

  Nikki had dozed off by the time he walked back into her room. Glancing up, he looked at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that covered the ceiling, and remembered when Nikki was much younger and believed it really was the night sky.

  “Those stars come out to glow just for you,” he’d told his daughter when she was barely three years old.

  They weren’t radiating much tonight, the light in her room had not been on long enough. Tomorrow he’d leave it turned on the entire day, and they’d be a whole lot brighter when Nikki spent her second night in her room.

  Sitting at the edge of Nikki’s bed, Chapa watched her sleep until she finally rolled over and faced the wall. For some reason, he thought she’d look more like her mother by now, but that wasn’t the case. Though he understood that everyone sees themselves or their close family in the faces of their children, Chapa couldn’t stop thinking about how much Nikki resembled his father. He remembered a photo of his dad standing by the side of a table during a birthday party. There was a smile on the man’s face
, a playfulness in his eyes that Chapa had seen in Nikki these past several days.

  That made him feel even worse for not playing a bigger role in her day-to-day life. But what could he do? There were only a few options, and none of those were particularly good.

  He heard the sound of a car start up and pull out, just a few houses away. Odd in this neighborhood at this time of night. He lifted a Dora the Explorer blanket up over Nikki’s shoulders, then walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Nothing. Probably a neighbor putting his car in the garage.

  Two decades of regular dealings with lowlifes or worse had made him a bit jumpy, and maybe a little paranoid. His bizarre conversation with Warren Chakowski hadn’t helped, and maybe Jim’s sudden death hadn’t either. He was also feeling more guarded with Nikki in the house. Chapa thought about how long it had been since he’d felt that way as he leaned across and gave her a soft kiss on the side of her forehead. The child responded by shrugging, curling her nose, and disappearing under the blanket.

  Chapa took one last look before closing the door to her room, then heading downstairs to make sure all the doors were locked.

  Chapter 16

  The man has been sitting in his car, parked under the crooked shadows of bare trees. He watched the reporter enter his house with his child. He saw that a few lights had been left on, though they had not been home for some time, and he was certain no one else lived there. He followed the path of movement through the house as the living room went dark, then a light went on in an upstairs window, but not for long. The girl’s room. Then, finally, the reporter’s bedroom. The man made a mental note of all this.

  As he drives away, the man begins to wonder if he’s made a mistake, if perhaps the reporter isn’t a danger to his child. The man doesn’t tolerate mistakes, especially his own. His hands tighten on the steering wheel until pain creeps up both of his arms. Releasing his grip, the man realizes he is speeding down dark, quiet neighborhood streets, and yanks his foot off the accelerator, then gently presses the brakes.

  Wouldn’t be good to get pulled over for speeding. A bad play anywhere, at any time, but even worse here and now. Sure, he could talk his way out of it. Was there a member of the force that he was not on good terms with? None that he can think of. But the man has a feeling he’ll be back in this area, back at that house. Wouldn’t be a good idea to let a cop remember seeing him there. Late at night. Driving too fast. Sweating. Anxious. Wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Besides, he has other, more important concerns. Nervous people to deal with, voices to silence.

  But the more he thinks about it, and the longer his mind lingers on the image of that reporter carelessly letting his child wander around a crime scene, the more his frustration swells. It begins to fill him up again, pushing against the man’s rib cage, crawling up his spine with sharp boney fingers. And soon he can feel the pressure behind his eyes threatening to break through, ready at any moment to expose him and destroy everything he’s worked to create.

  Once more, the man clutches the steering wheel in a death grip, though he fights and wins the battle to avoid accelerating again. He has business to attend to. People to bring into line and plans to carry out. The target he’s pursued for so long is now within reach, and he has to get all of it right, every detail, no matter how small. No room for mistakes. This is too important. First things first.

  But now, as the man leaves the west side of Oakton in his rearview, he knows—in fact he is certain—that he will come back to the reporter’s house. And the next time, he will come prepared to do a great deal more than watch.

  Chapter 17

  St. Louis, Missouri, 1975

  The child sits in a cheap chair that lost its padding a long time ago. Its narrow, chipped legs are uneven, and the chair creaks beneath his frail body each time he moves.

  He leans over a desk in the narrow room he sleeps in. Disgusted by the stains on the carpet beneath him, he tucks his feet up under his legs. The air is pungent with the smell of body odor and rotting food. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a thin mattress pressed against a paint-chipped wall that’s been badly cracked by time and violence.

  The child spends hours at that desk, filling page after page of a dime store drawing pad with stick figures. He draws the figures into stories and makes them do terrible things to each other. Then, once he’s covered every page with drawings, he slips the pad under the mattress, alongside all the others, and waits for his mother to bring home a new one. That can take weeks, sometimes. But the child doesn’t mind. He spends the time thinking of all the things the people in his next set of drawings will do to one another.

  But on this night, he still has more than half the pad to fill, and that brings as much joy to the child as he’s capable of feeling. He has so many good ideas tonight. So many important things that his stick figures must do to each other.

  The pimp and drug dealer who lives with him and his mother and likes to be called Gilley, wanders in to see what the boy is doing. The child can hear his mother in the other room going at it with tonight’s second customer.

  The child looks up for just a moment, then instinctively looks down at Gilley’s hands. He feels only a slight sense of relief when he sees they’re empty and unclenched. It’s a survival tactic the boy has learned without realizing he was learning it.

  Gilley is not the child’s father, and he’s not the first man in his life. Just the latest, and the meanest, at least as far as the boy can remember. The child looks up at Gilley’s face, not always a good idea, and notices that his stringy blond hair is shorter than usual. He’s made an attempt to shave, apparently cutting himself in the process, a fact that pleases the boy.

  “Hey little punk, those are some freaky people you drew there. Cool, though.”

  Gilley smells like he’s been swimming in stale aftershave, and for a moment his odor threatens to overwhelm the general stench of the two-bedroom shanty in one of the city’s forgotten neighborhoods.

  “Hey, maybe you’re an artist,” Gilley says and smacks the child on the arm, maybe a little harder than he meant to. Or maybe exactly as he wanted to.

  The child says nothing, but his thoughts are running zigzag sprints through his mind. And the child wonders what this man, a stranger to him by any decent person’s standards, would say if he understood that he was the subject of the drawings.

  Chapter 18

  When Chapa opened his eyes he saw Nikki staring back at him. She smiled, and her face captured every ounce of sunlight that was pouring into his bedroom.

  “I woke up more than an hour ago, Daddy.”

  “Of course you did.” Chapa sat up slowly. Most days he felt his age, forty-two, sometimes older. But not today, and not while Nikki was with him. “I need to get you some breakfast.”

  She nodded, then spoke in measured tones. “Yeah, I looked around in the kitchen, but I didn’t find much to eat.”

  Now Chapa remembered. He hadn’t planned on bringing his daughter home when he left for Boston a week earlier. There hadn’t been a clearly defined purpose to his visit beyond wanting to see his child. Something that had become increasingly more difficult for him to do as Carla had done all she could to force Chapa out of Nikki’s life. So the best he’d hoped for was a smile, a hug, some precious time together, and for his ex to understand that the rules of the game had changed. But then his attorney went to work.

  Chapa hadn’t thought about stocking the fridge or pantry, or even picking up a loaf of bread.

  “We’ll find something,” he said, feigning optimism.

  As he walked toward the stairs, Chapa glanced into Nikki’s room and noticed that her bed had been made. He turned to compliment her, and found that she was already smiling back at him.

  “Thank you for noticing,” Nikki said.

  He walked ahead of her down the stairs and into the living room, then started toward the kitchen, but stopped when he noticed that Nikki wasn’t following him anymore. She stoo
d in the middle of the floor, carefully scanning every inch of the living room.

  Chapa wondered how much of it she remembered. The downstairs looked nothing like it had when a family still lived there. Most of the photos were gone. Carla had also taken the furniture, then let Chapa know she’d given it away. The only thing that was the same was an old tan leather couch that Chapa too often slept in, and his tower of CDs.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Nikki said, doing her best to sound sincere.

  “All of the toys are up in your room, but you’ve probably outgrown them by now.”

  “Some, yes, but not all of them. It’s okay, I’ve got my PSP to play with.”

  As he led Nikki into the kitchen, Chapa made a mental note to pick up some games at the toy store in town. But as soon as he walked in and started looking around, Chapa knew he had more pressing issues than shopping for something to keep Nikki entertained.

  The pantry and fridge looked like they belonged in an abandoned house. But Chapa managed to throw something together, at least enough to convince himself that it resembled breakfast. Twenty minutes later, Nikki was treated to a scrambled egg, a handful of Tater Tots, and some nacho-flavored Doritos.

  “Interesting breakfast,” Nikki said, her lips gradually turning orange with each new chip she ate.

  “We’ll have better food tomorrow. Pancakes, and bacon, and cereal.”

  “It’s okay, I like this. It’s exotic.”

  She shoved two Tater Tots in her mouth.

  “You know what, those are like potato pancakes or hash browns, only smaller.”

  Nikki laughed.

  “Is this the type of breakfast you usually eat?” she asked.

  “I don’t eat breakfast all that often. I work late, get home even later, and I don’t always get up in time.”