Shadow Boys

by Harry Hunsicker

  Lysol smiles.

  Homegirl is in good shape, from the waist up at least, everything firm and tight.

  She stares at him for another stretch of time and then removes her bra, dropping it on the floor with her other garments.

  Her breasts are pale and firm, nipples the color of almonds.

  The funny thing is, by the way she moves and her facial expressions, Lysol is pretty sure she’s enjoying herself.

  Dallas, Texas

  2013

  Raul Delgado didn’t remember much about his father.

  The breath of a drunk man and a violent temper. A calloused palm slapped against a boy’s cheek.

  Carlos, ever the rebel, had taken the brunt of their papa’s rage. Beatings for talking back. For not cleaning their room. For not bringing a fresh beer from the kitchen fast enough.

  In Raul’s mind the memories of both father and brother were shadows, fading more and more as time passed. Events that seemed so important thirty-five years ago were just whispers now, snippets of time tucked in a closet, remembrances that might or might not be real.

  Papa had been deported back to Tampico in 1983; he died soon after.

  Raul wondered if his father and brother were together in the great beyond, if they acknowledged each other. If he still went to Mass, perhaps the priest could have told him.

  Raul had always vowed that if he had children he would not treat them badly, the way he’d been treated. He’d be like Bobby. Kind but firm.

  All of which made him very curious as to why he felt a burning desire to punch Tremont Washington in the mouth.

  He was a nice kid, but whiny. Deficient, as the doctors say.

  He fretted over the simplest things, opening and shutting a door a hundred times in a row, rearranging a stack of magazines in dozens of different combinations. Setting the table with a ruler so that all the utensils were equal distance from each other.

  At the moment, they were alone in Junie’s office, the large room at the back of the Victorian house in the Uptown section of Dallas.

  Raul sat behind Junie’s desk, going through the bills for the organization that employed her. More than a couple were past due.

  Tremont was playing with a Nintendo, humming and talking to himself. The noise grated on Raul’s nerves.

  A Wednesday morning. Junie was in the front of the building, arranging for a job placement with a client.

  Raul sighed and pulled some cash from his wallet, enough to cover the electric bill.

  Tremont’s game made a ringing sound, and he cackled with pleasure.

  Raul, who’d never had children or a wife, didn’t know how most people stood the banality of a family. And the noise.

  His politico friends urged him to get a wife and/or a baby, preferably both, and soon.

  Find a woman, any woman, and marry her. And if you played for the other team—you know, if you’re gay—that’s all right. Then find a man to be your partner. That narrative would work just as well as the traditional picket-fence scenario.

  What didn’t work, they said, was the loner bachelor who was a workaholic and, quite frankly, a little odd.

  Voters didn’t like odd, the politicos told him. They liked people they could have a beer with. And that’s not you, Deputy Chief Delgado.

  Raul wondered if he should ask Junie to marry him.

  They no longer had sex together. He’d caught her in bed a few months ago with a man fifteen years her junior.

  Strangely enough, the person most upset by the discovery was the young man. He was convinced that Raul was going to kill him.

  Raul had shrugged and told him to leave. Then he and Junie sat in her darkened living room and stared at the wall. Not talking. Not fighting. Just sitting, both lost in their own thoughts.

  He snapped back to her office, to Tremont on the couch. From the front came the sound of the door shutting. A few moments later Junie entered the room.

  “What are you doing at my desk?”

  “Keeping the lights on.” He tossed the cash so that the currency fanned out across the top of her work space.

  “You didn’t need to do that.” She took a puff from her e-cig.

  The Nintendo made a losing sound and Tremont whined. Both Raul and Junie ignored him.

  “Do what?”

  “Throw your money around. You think I’m impressed by that?”

  Raul didn’t reply.

  “I have everything under control.” She hurriedly picked up the currency. Made no move to give it back.

  Raul pondered the other women in his life. He was attractive and had a sizable net worth, thanks to the investments from his settlement with the city decades before.

  So there was no shortage of female companionship. But most were, for lack of a better term, whole people, and Raul realized that he was not. Parts were missing from him. Feelings and emotions that didn’t function in the same manner as in other people.

  So perhaps he was not the marrying kind. Unless his spouse was someone like himself.

  Like, say, Junie.

  What would a marriage with her be like? He couldn’t imagine.

  She’d become withdrawn and morose, bitter about her life and the choices she’d made. She continued to surround herself with people of means, nominally as part of her work at the Helping Place. The proximity to wealth was like salt to a wound, however, leaving her full of envy and regret.

  Then, there was Tremont.

  The boy worked at the Helping Place, in the office. When he was not playing games, he sorted files, emptied the garbage cans, picked up trash from the lawn.

  Junie (he could never get used to calling her Hannah) had warmed up to Tremont, taking an interest in him and his activities. She brought him along when she met with African American families who had disabled children. The boy was her passport into a world that would normally be shut off to a white woman from North Dallas.

  “Tremont and I have some appointments in Oak Cliff this afternoon.” She mentioned an address deep in gangbanger territory. “Will you give us a ride?”

  “Where’s all the money, Junie?” He pointed to the bills. “Why’s everything past due?”

  “Don’t call me that.” She held up her nameplate.

  “Where’s all the money, Hannah?”

  “We’re establishing a new program. Pre- and neonatal health care for low-income women.”

  “Your organization doesn’t have the resources for any new programs.”

  “What do you know about this place?” She pointed at him with the e-cig. “What do you know about the needs of children in economically depressed areas?”

  Her words sounded like they came from a brochure.

  “How much do you need to keep the ship afloat?” He crossed his arms.

  “I’m not dependent on your largesse.”

  “There’s a fancy word. Largesse.” Raul chuckled. “You fucking a college professor now?”

  “Nice language.” She nodded toward Tremont. “A great way to talk in front of a child.”

  “He’s heard worse. Let’s get back to the financial health of your organization.”

  They stared at each other. Raul imagined he was angry, but deep down he knew that was not the case. He was just tired. He wanted things to be normal. But therein lay the rub. What the hell was normal?

  “The finances of the Helping Place are none of your concern,” Junie said.

  “Really?” He stood. “Whose money do you use to balance the books every month?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Does the board know how bad it is?”

  The Helping Place was managed by a group of directors, all volunteers. Civic leaders and socially prominent individuals. People who would be aghast at the fiduciary mismanagement.

  “I looked at the financials.
” Raul pointed to a file. “It’s obvious there’s money being used inappropriately. Last week, what was the cash withdrawal for?”

  Tremont put the game down and stared at them, eyes wide. He always seemed to have a sense of when they were brewing up to have a big fight.

  “I needed a new dress.” Junie’s voice was soft. “For the Crystal Charity Ball.”

  “Of course.” Raul tried not to sound too sarcastic. “Everyone needs a new dress for the Crystal Charity Ball.”

  She shook her head, an angry expression on her face. From the desk she grabbed a nicotine cartridge and fiddled with her e-cig.

  “Who’d you take to the ball?” Raul said.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “It’s just a question.”

  “Sounds more like an interrogation. Always does with you.” Her voice rose. “Because you’re a cop and that’s the way you roll.”

  “So you don’t like cops now. You tell your dad that yet?”

  “Shut up, Raul.” She rubbed her eyes. “Just shut up.”

  From the couch, Tremont began to breathe hard, one hand scratching a leg continually, his usual reaction when they fought.

  “The charity ball. Let me guess,” Raul said. “You took the twentysomething douchebag.”

  “And you’re living in a monastery these days?” She looked up, voice angry.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I hear the stories,” she said. “If it’s got a pulse and votes Democrat, you’ve mounted it.”

  Tremont jumped up. He rushed over to Junie, pulled on her arm. “Stop it. P-please. Stop f-f-fighting.”

  She pushed him away.

  “How much do you need?” Raul asked. “What’s it gonna cost this month?”

  “How much do you have?” Her face was flushed with anger.

  He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t bail her out anymore, but they both knew this would be a lie. He was always there when Junie needed something. Always had been, always would be.

  He realized that at one point he had been in love with her, but he wasn’t anymore. He felt bound to Junie, however, a twin to her suffering for reasons he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, articulate. A dark secret that was buried in the black loamy soil of Bobby’s ranch nearly thirty years ago. A secret that ate at him every day.

  “I’ll pay you back.” She undid the top button of her blouse. “Maybe we can figure out a trade.”

  Her words were icy, movements and demeanor anything but enticing.

  Tremont opened the back door and went outside. He usually wandered off when they fought. Today was no different.

  No one spoke for a moment. Then:

  “Why are you so angry?” Raul’s voice was soft. He wished he could just hold her.

  She didn’t respond. Her breathing was labored. Eyes welling with emotion.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said. “You have so much going for you. I just don’t understand.”

  “Why?” She clenched her fists. Tears streamed down her face. “You are asking me why?”

  He took a step toward her, held his arms out. After a moment she accepted the embrace.

  They stood together like that for a while, the fight and the anger draining out of both of them.

  “Doesn’t it ever get to you?” Her voice was small against his chest. “What we’ve done. Who we are.”

  “Shh.” He knew that she was referring to Wayne. “We don’t talk about that.”

  She pushed herself away. “Why?”

  “Because we don’t.”

  She shook her head, expression flat and empty.

  “You came to my rescue, Raul. My knight in shining armor.”

  He didn’t respond. They stared into each other’s eyes for a period of time, long enough for more tears to trickle down her face.

  She said, “But did you ever consider that maybe I wasn’t being raped?”

  - CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE -

  The Trinity River ran along the west side of downtown Dallas, splitting the city in two. The muddy ribbon shadowed Stemmons Freeway for a few miles, the highway where moments before I found myself traveling in the back of Raul Delgado’s police Suburban.

  Levees kept the flood waters at bay, forming a large channel with the river itself in the middle.

  In many parts of Dallas County, the land between the levees was much like it had been for millennia—overgrown with post oaks and saw grass and honeysuckle. Swampy, guarded by a furry militia of beaver, nutria, and raccoons.

  In the middle of a major metropolitan area, the geographical center of nearly six million people, the Trinity River and accompanying lowlands were wilderness, remote yet easily accessible to the rest of the city if you knew the right roads to take.

  Which clearly Deputy Chief Raul Delgado did.

  I was still in the back, Piper in the front passenger seat.

  Delgado headed south on Inwood past a warehouse district that was slowly being gentrified as development pushed outward from downtown.

  The street ran across a four-lane bridge that spanned the river, headed toward West Dallas.

  Delgado stopped before getting to the bridge, pulling onto a dirt road that ran behind a warehouse, an alley of sorts, nearly invisible unless you were looking for it.

  The rear of the warehouse abutted the levee, and a gate blocked the dirt road.

  Delgado exited the SUV, unlocked the gate, and then drove us through. Once past, he got back out and secured the gate.

  Then he followed the road through a small grove of trees, and a few minutes later we emerged on the top of the levee, elevated above the city by about sixty feet.

  The river lay to our right, downtown to the left.

  No trees grew here. The mounded earth formed a small man-made mountain in a city known for its flatness, offering a particular view that few had ever seen.

  Delgado drove south on the elevated dirt track that ran atop the levee. He passed the jail and the courthouse, several blocks away and lower. A few hundred yards later he stopped.

  Below us, at the foot of the levee, sat the cop bar, Sam Browne’s, between a strip club and a bail bondsman’s office.

  A chain-link fence ran along the base of the levee to keep people out.

  Beyond the cop bar and Riverfront Boulevard, the buildings of downtown were visible. From our position the dominant structure was American Airlines Center, the original location of Little Mexico and the deserted field where the police killed Raul Delgado’s brother years before.

  Delgado stared at the view for a long while, the car idling.

  “Sam Browne’s,” I said. “You know the guy that owns that place, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He spoke without turning around, voice flat. “I know him.”

  An ex-cop, the bartender I’d smarted off to a few days before, when I met Piper there. His name wasn’t really Sam, though everyone called him that. There was a thread between the owner and Delgado that eluded me for the moment.

  “Bobby, that’s his real name, right?” Piper said. “He’s the guy that took care of you after your brother died.”

  No one spoke.

  “I remember the stories now,” Piper said. “I just never made that connection between that guy and Sam Browne’s before.”

  Delgado ignored her. He turned down a narrow track that led off the levee, toward the river. The SUV bumped and swayed over the uneven surface.

  “Bobby McKee,” she said. “That’s his real name. Retired as a captain, oh, maybe fifteen years ago.”

  McKee, I thought. The name mentioned by Mason Burnett in the back of the chopper.

  The road, if it could be called that, was canopied by hackberry trees, meshed together with a thicket of poison ivy and stinging nettles. Branches and thorns scratched at the side of the SUV.

>   After a hundred yards or so, he cut back on a slightly wider path that paralleled the river. Vegetation on the side opposite the water was as thick as a wall, impenetrable.

  The Suburban bounced along for a minute or two as the brush gradually became less dense. At a clearing by the river about the size of a tennis court, he slowed down to a crawl.

  “McKee?” I remembered where else I’d heard the name before. “Is he any relation to the woman who runs the Helping Place?”

  “Hannah J. McKee,” Delgado said. “The J stands for June.”

  He parked by an ash-filled fire pit and exited the SUV. He walked to the river and stared into the flowing water. The surface was brown and choppy. After a moment, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and appeared to make a call.

  Piper and I got out as well. The air smelled like dead fish, cut grass, and old ashes.

  Raul ended his call and walked back to where we stood by the Suburban.

  “Hannah’s missing,” he said. “Not at her home or office. Her cell phone’s turned off.”

  We stood in a loose circle near the back of the SUV.

  “She’s important to me,” he said. “I need to find her.”

  Piper cocked her head. “She’s more important than Tremont?”

  Raul didn’t answer.

  “What’s her connection to all this?” Piper said. “And to you?”

  “She’s like a sister to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  Chug-chug-chug.

  From down the road we’d just traveled came the sound of a sputtering exhaust, a vehicle years past its prime.

  A moment later, an elderly Ford pickup appeared out of the vegetation.

  “Speak of the Devil,” I said.

  The bartender from Sam Browne’s sat behind the wheel. Bobby McKee, known to most as Sam.

  The truck stopped behind Delgado’s SUV, and the older man got out.

  He wore khaki work pants, Roper boots, and a faded denim shirt.

  At first he appeared surprised by what he saw. Then wary.

  “What’s going on here, Raul?” He pointed to Piper. “What are you doing with her?”