Then again, it could be that whoever she’s telling doesn’t want to hear the truth.
She’s poured herself some more wine and started preparing another meal, frying onions and garlic in a pot, the start of some sauce she’ll probably bring to someone from the old neighborhood like Sophie, her friend who had a baby, or Bill, Dad’s friend who is going through a divorce. She’s always doing nice things like that, even though she acts like she has to, which kind of takes the nice out.
“Sometimes the signs are there,” she says, stirring the pot. “We just refuse to see them.”
Joel sneaks the rest of a hot dog to Butchie, then lures him out from under the table to lick the remaining cheese from his plate; after that, the dog follows him back upstairs.
But only as far as McKenna’s door. Butchie stops there, drawn to whatever he smells through the crooked gap. Could be the floor’s crooked, not the door, but whatever the case, there’s just enough space for his nose.
“What’s up, Mr. O’Hare? Something die in there?”
The door is locked, of course, but the locks in this house are easy to pick so long as you have a penny or a paper clip. And what can Joel say—being grounded makes a kid curious about what he can get away with.
“I’ll see.”
He takes off Butchie’s collar and uses his rabies tag to open the door and then recollars the dog and slips in without him; he knows better than to let an accidental dog hair get him busted.
Once inside, Joel maneuvers around the wreckage of her fashion hurricane and locates one source of stink: Mike’s perfume, an overpowering combination of vanilla cookies and citrus packed into a tiny diamond-shaped aquamarine bottle that sure doesn’t look like it could knock over a room, but oh boy, it does.
On the glass dressing table next to the perfume, Mike’s flat iron is still on, and its flashing red light should be an alarm; maybe it’s what Butchie’s careful nose picked up.
Mike probably wouldn’t be too broken up if the house burned down, she’s said as much, but Joel doubts she’d want to be the one responsible, so he unplugs the iron. He wishes he could unplug the perfume.
After he pulls a few drawers and discovers disaster is tucked in those, too, Joel’s interest wanes. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for, except maybe something to do.
Then he sees her computer. Asleep, its white light winking, come see.
He shouldn’t. He doesn’t need any more secrets to keep.
But. She’s the one with the life, and he wants to know what it’s like.
He opens the laptop and the screen comes alive.
He’s afraid to touch anything, any keys or the trackpad, but what’s there is a page headlined TWEETS.
In a glance, the rest reads like code, everything abbreviated and punctuated with @s and #s. Joel thinks he recognizes some names through snips, like Mike’s friend Heather Baum, listed by her nickname HBomb, and Tina Lipinski, Lisa’s gossipy senior-year sister, listed tipinski. He doesn’t understand much else.
But there is one thing at the bottom of the page that comes through, and all too clear:
Zack Fowler @ZeeFowler
“Oh.” Joel says. “No.”
He sets two fingers to the trackpad, scrolls down. Has to. The name repeats there, like this:
Zack Fowler @ZeeFowler 1hr
@Lil Cee hustle on over ha ha letz do this bitches we got the hookup #letzgetfuckedup
1 hour ago
And this:
Zack Fowler @ZeeFowler 1hr
Well look whoz here ladies its @John-Wayne wearing his bigass party hat bit.ly/lbvY3e
And this.
Zack Fowler @ZeeFowler 2hr
Hey @McKennaM we waiting u got the doggy treats or what? u know I luv u so #letzgetfuckedup
Mike. The garage: Butchie’s locker.
And Zack Fowler.
Joel’s got to do something.
He closes the computer, tramples over the mess on Mike’s floor and lets himself out to where Butchie sits, waiting.
Joel takes him by the collar.
“Come on, boy. I’m going to need backup.”
7
Pete is stationed on the balcony, stage left VIP, watching the kids on the floor watch the opening act. Actually, he’s watching, but the kids aren’t; they’re slamming beers or talking to one another or working their backlit phones. Used to be, the crowd watched the show.
“Murphy,” Rima radios from the other side of the balcony. She’s the one in charge tonight. She usually is.
“What’s up?” Pete asks, easily picking her out at the rail because for one thing she defines the word knockout and for another, she is completely bald.
She says, “This band sucks.”
“Roger.” Pete would not declare himself a fan, either, the music all in minor chords, the singer more of a sad mumbler. Rima isn’t giving him her opinion so much as her warning, though: when kids don’t like the band, they tend to drink more, get brave, and start shit. That last part is why Pete—and the other six guys working for Rima tonight—are here.
Actually, the only reason Pete is here any night is Rima. Some five years ago, when Pete was still patrol, he arrested her after she took down a guy at a west-side tavern. When Pete arrived on scene, the victim was in a rage: he was waiting outside, rabid and spitting about the “freakshow” who attacked him. Pete told him to take a seat, said he’d get some ice for his eye.
Inside, the freakshow was sitting at the bar, finishing her drink.
The bartender gave a statement. Said it took the victim two drinks to go from all thumbs to asshole and start offering ladies “Citron My Face” vodka shots. Said it was true, the guy was digging himself a hole; also true that Rima was the one who pushed him into it.
Witnesses’ recounts confirmed the bartender’s: the victim was intoxicated and asked everyone in a skirt if she’d sit on his face. Not surprisingly, the ladies declined—except the bald one, who rendered him unconscious while obliging.
When Pete asked for Rima’s version of events, her eyes were an even green as she held her hands out for the cuffs and said, “This place needs a bouncer.” He charged her with battery.
The victim was still hanging around outside when Pete escorted Rima to the squad and he had the balls to say, ice over his eye, “Get a wig, bitch.”
On the way to lockup, Pete checked the rearview and saw Ri back there, the shakeup from the fight finally getting to her, and he knew he had trapped the wrong animal. He wasn’t going to arrest somebody else over an asshole’s right to be an asshole. He pulled over, checked the ticket for her address.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Give me a break. I’ve been this way since I was seven.”
“That’s a little young to be getting into bar fights.”
It was stupid, but it got a smile.
“It’s alopecia,” she told him.
“I’m not going to charge you for that.” He ripped the ticket out of his book.
“Oh no,” she said. “I’ll take what’s coming to me. I don’t want to owe you.”
“It’s not a favor,” he said, tearing the ticket in two. “It’s what’s right.”
Pete drove her home and didn’t see her again until last year, when he heard the Metro was hiring security. He told Sarah a side job would give them a little breathing room, because what he didn’t want to tell her was that they were underwater on the house and what he really didn’t want to tell her is that they were going to have to sell it or default on the loan. When he showed up for an interview and it turned out Rima was the one doing the hiring, he felt like he was calling in that favor. Still, she put him on the schedule before he had his hat in his hand and said, “We’re even.”
Also to her credit, Rima hasn’t been in a fight since the night they met. And that’s because the asshole just happened to try his line on her the very first time she went out without a wig. She wa
s already defensive; she was ready to be picked out, persecuted. But after she took the guy down, she realized he’d hit on her like he hit on every other girl in the place; the only thing different about her was her attitude. She never wore a wig again.
Now she’s the most well-known bouncer in town. The Metro staff says she has good voodoo and it’s really something to witness: doesn’t matter if the offender is a scalper, a drunk, or a big name on the guest list; Ri shows up, her smile as undisguised as her beautiful head, and renders him completely incapable of bullshit.
“Hey, Petey,” Rima radios, messing with the black cord that spirals from her earpiece to her shirt collar as she starts to move, “there’s a problem at the door. You got eyes for a hot minute?”
“I got them,” he says as she disappears. Pete looks out over the balcony for Warren and then Hogue, the guys Rima has stationed along the stage lip. They watch the crowd, eyes hooded, bulldogs. It’s not too packed-in tonight, though that doesn’t change the potential for problems.
There’s one more security station and that’s where Pete finds Rocco, the kid standing guard by the sound booth. He’s skinny, not much to him, but his hair is long enough to cover his earpiece and also make him look like one of the sound booth guys. Ri puts Rocco there because the audience is more likely to listen to someone they think is responsible for the music than to someone who is supposed to control where they want to stand to enjoy it.
The openers start their next song, another downer, as Pete does a quick visual sweep of the place looking for any flipped cards in the deck: a guy who is a little too amped, or who thinks the price of admission includes bothering young ladies. Or a guy who simply makes eye contact. A guy like that is usually up to something.
Speaking of his eye: it’s been bugging him since he passed by a street sweeper on his way back from Goose Island. He killed the afternoon there in Wrigley Field’s shadow, watching baseball teams that didn’t stink on the bar TVs. He read the paper, too, found himself in a single-column brief in the Chicagoland section. It wasn’t much of a story, and he hopes it won’t be much more of one tomorrow.
Then again, he didn’t think the thing with Kitty was news last year and he still wound up on the front page, Oliver Quick’s photo, the headline wondering, CRAWFORD’S PERSONAL JUDGMENT: WORSE? The article claimed a nameless department source had firsthand knowledge that the judge was having an affair with the married cop sent to protect her. The rest of the piece recapped what everybody already knew about the Moreno case, none of which was the point. The point was to make the judge look bad.
Pete was beside the point, literally, but it didn’t matter. What also didn’t matter was the truth: that Kitty’s life had been upended by Trissa White. Her house broken into, trashed. Her courtroom media-galvanized. Her reputation routed. And like any other piece of gossip, once news of a personal transgression—an illicit affair!—was put out there, the possibility made it possible. Speculation kept it circulating. And denial made it worse.
The local press gave Kitty and Pete top billing for nearly three months. In that time, Pete passed the sergeants’ test and was conveniently passed over for the job. He put the house on the market and it didn’t sell. And the higher-ups moved him over to K9—what would be a cush detail for a patroller till pension, a family man, a dog lover. For Pete, it was a merit job for a cop who would never get a promotion, might not stay married, and no longer had a yard.
“Petey, what’s with your eye?” Rima radios.
“I’m good,” he says, blinking away tears. “Dust or something.”
“I thought the music was moving you.” Back at her mark, Rima winks.
“My bowels, maybe.”
“You need a break?”
“I was kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“I said I’m good.”
The singer says, “Hey … thankssfrcmnout. This sour lass song,” which gets a few underwhelmed cheers.
One cheer in particular that is not actually a cheer but a hey, yo! catches Pete’s attention. He looks over the balcony, locates the source: two boys, late teens, looking right up at him. Pointing. Waving. Laughing. The finger.
“Rima.”
“What’s up?”
“Two male teens on the floor, center, your ten o’clock. Don’t know who they are, but they seem to know me.”
“Seriously, Petey? You aren’t used to the attention?”
“Not here. You know that.”
“Then maybe you should ask the famous guitar player standing next to you to move.”
Pete doesn’t recognize the guy next to him, scrawny and ink-covered and not so disguised in a bright red fedora and Wayfarer sunglasses, but pretty soon Pete’s sure he’s the only one who doesn’t. “Hey, yo!” goes the crowd, nearly drowning out the onstage performance.
“Hey, yo!” the guitarist calls back, apparently his thing.
When a spotlight swoops over the stage to find the guitar player, Pete steps into his shadow. He tells Rima, “I think I’ll take that break.”
8
The lie was necessary.
When Joel’s mom put him to bed, she asked if he wanted anything. He wanted a lot of things, but he couldn’t say a word about the party so he closed his eyes, shook his head no and turned over. And as she double-checked about his headache—again?—and retucked his covers, Joel knew he had to lie: it was the only way he could save McKenna.
Well, not save her. But at least give her the chance to save herself, because this is one secret he’s not going to keep.
While he waited for his mom to clear out he kept picturing Zack Fowler, and Felis Catus. The idea of confronting that kind of terror again made his heart ball up but still, he felt the distinct pull of curiosity there, wedged in the folds.
He thought of White Fang as a cub, and when he left the safety of his cave where his own mother kept him. White Fang hadn’t yet experienced fear, but deep in his dog-being, he knew he would find it. Still, he went. Had to go. Because it was the world, and he would have to live in it.
And this is Joel’s world, now.
He stuffs a sweatshirt, the walkie-talkie, a tennis ball and Butchie’s leash into his backpack on top of White Fang. He puts on his shoes and pockets his wallet which holds his library card, one two-dollar bill and two one-dollar bills, his Game Planet credit card, and Owen Balicki’s school picture. Joel doesn’t really know Owen Balicki, but at the end of fifth grade, Owen’s mother made him hand out the photos like valentines. Joel felt embarrassed for him—it’s not even a good picture, his bad haircut and crooked smile, and who wants to hand out his own picture?—but Joel still carries it around. He likes knowing some people are nice for no good reason.
Especially since for no other good reason, some people are not nice at all, and one of them is currently in luv with his sister.
He straps on his old digital watch, the one he quit wearing when Molly said it was lame because it only told the time. It still works, though, and it reads 21:46 military time, giving him at least an hour to get there and back without either of his parents finding out since his dad will be gone until at least midnight and his mom is gone too, in a way, having washed the same old memories down with nearly a bottle of wine.
He’s ready to go when he hears the front door—his mom coming in from caging Butchie—and then, after a minute, the television. When it’s safely tuned to a courtroom show, Joel pulls on his jacket, straps on his backpack, and waits at the top of the stairs for a clean commercial break.
Outside, Butchie is waiting in his run, one ear up, a question mark as he watches Joel undo the lock.
Joel eases open the cage door. “Come on, boy.” Butchie’s ears press back as he moves forward, low and cautious, until he sees the leash. Then he winds up like a puppy, darting back and forth, front paws teasing, his tail on a big wag.
“Oh boy, Lieutenant: a walk. I know. Very exciting. Let’s go.” Joel ushers him out to the alley and leashes him when they hit t
he street.
It’s windy; leaves skitter across the pavement and newly bare branches fork up into the street-lit sky. Joel zips his jacket and they navigate by shadows, zigzagging six blocks east and as many south.
Their destination is the corner house where a party is in full swing; by the noise alone, anybody could find what Mike had called a couple of people hanging out. Electronica music gives the entire block its own pulse.
On approach from the back, Joel thinks the party must be in the backyard: though it’s fenced in, he can see flames from a bonfire lick the sky above. The fence runs from the two-story house back to the garage and has a swinging gate that opens out to the street ahead, but the party entrance appears to be around the corner, where cars are parked parallel, tight, both sides of the street.
Joel crosses the street to keep a safe distance and from there he can see kids as they go in and come out the house’s second-story porch door. He watches for a bit but doesn’t see Mike, so he walks Butchie up the block along a row of hedges and listens to the backyard’s sea of voices. It sounds like a gang of boys. No way his sister is there, unless someone taped her mouth shut.
When he turns to walk back down the block they’re met by a car turning onto the street, so Joel yanks the leash and cuts in at a break in the hedges before they’re caught in the headlights.
The car eases by, windows tinted, wheels chromed. Silver decal lettering stretches across the doors, back to front, and as Joel reads the words he remembers: MIZZ REDBONE. He’s seen this car before.
It was last year, their old house. Joel was in the driveway unloading groceries from the trunk when a man missing half his hair drove up in the car and asked if he was on Chump Street. Joel said no, it was Chase Avenue. Then the man asked if he was parannoying him, and Joel didn’t know the answer to that because he had never heard the word. But he wanted to be helpful and so he asked the man what the word meant but then his mom came outside and chased the man away. She was upset, and she asked Joel what had happened at least fifty-two times. Every one of those times he told her what happened and every one of those times she seemed to get more upset. She said he knew better than to talk to strangers. Joel said he wasn’t talking to a stranger, because technically the stranger was talking to him. Then she stopped being upset and started being mad, and she picked up an orange that had rolled into the street and put it back into one of the Jewel bags and told him to go to his room and do his homework. He solved all his word problems and factored all his fractions but he still couldn’t figure why his mom was so upset.
The Good Boy Page 10