“What time do you get off?” He turns his head, tries for air.
“Four o’clock.”
“Can you leave early?”
“I can try. Where’m I going?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I hadn’t thought it through. I live in the Loop. You want to come up there?”
“Oh no, baby. That’s too far.” She finds a tube of shimmering red lip gloss tucked god knows where and uses a pinky finger to smear it on her lips. “How about you get a room and I’ll meet you?”
“Where?”
“You wanna take me somewhere nice? I’m talking Motel Six–nice, not the Toledo or the Royal Castle. I’m talking clean sheets and a continental breakfast. I’m talking—”
“Wherever you like,” Pete says, because he wants her to stop talking, and anyway, he doesn’t plan on actually getting a room.
“You gotchyour phone?” she asks.
Shit, Pete thinks. “Why?”
“I’ma give you my number, and you call me, and then I gotchyour number, and I’ll call you, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, but the thing is, she already has his number, and if she just looked at her call history, she’d find it. He’d be busted.
His phone is in his pants pocket and her leg is right on top of it but she must not notice, or maybe she thinks it’s something else, so he rubs her thigh, trying to move her leg away, and hopes she can’t tell he’s lying when he says, “I left my phone in the Lexus.” It’s the first car that comes to mind.
“No shit? You got a Lexus?”
“I’m hoping for two.”
She smiles, and she seems to really like what he’s doing there on her leg, because she takes his hand and guides it up toward where he really doesn’t want to put it as she leans in and says, “I guess you’re gonna have to wait for me, then.”
He shuts his eyes, swallows hard. “Where should I wait?”
“The Six over on Ashland. Book a room under John Thomas and I’ll be there soon as I can.”
“John Thomas,” he repeats, removing his hand at the same time he feels her tongue in his ear.
“Can I get a twenty before you go?” she thinks she whispers.
He sits back and forks over the dough and finishes all the watered-down juice and is so glad when she has to get back onstage.
* * *
It’s midnight when he gets to the motel parking lot. There are a couple other hotels along this strip, so he figures Elexus must have a connection here. That, or she knows they’ve got a lax policy about johns.
God, this is fucked. Joel gone; Sarah and McKenna getting away. And Pete sitting here, helpless. Sarah’s right, he is lost. Worse, he feels locked out.
A memory keeps surfacing, some old summertime, out on the porch one evening, bug spray and cocktails, the radio going. They’d just put the kids to bed; Joel went splat, they’d said, because when he got real tired he’d go down with his arms and legs splayed, like someone dropped him into his crib from twenty feet. And McKenna, she didn’t go down after all: three storybooks and another glass of water and she still appeared on the porch, her long hair kid-scraggled, her smile missing most teeth. She heard the music and she wanted to dance. And so she danced. Into the yard she twirled, bare feet in the grass, the light fading. Her nightgown the most beautiful white. She wasn’t worried. She didn’t know worry.
And Sarah there, smiling about McKenna, smiling at Pete—the buzz from her gin and tonic flushing her cheeks. There was no worry.
Pete’s phone buzzes, and for a second he thinks it’s Sarah calling, and he feels like an asshole because he should have called her, to make up for earlier. Pete doesn’t recognize the number, though, so of course he feels like a bigger asshole, because it isn’t Sarah, and he should call her. Tell her the truth.
But first. “Murphy,” he answers.
“Is this Peter Murphy?”
“I just said.”
“I understand your son is missing. I can help you.”
“Who is this?” Pete recognizes the voice and he doesn’t like it but he can’t place it.
“Word about Joel is making the rounds since your wife called 911. Would you care to comment?”
The back of Pete’s throat goes dry. He knows: it’s Oliver Quick. “How did you get this number?”
“My colleague spoke to Sarah.”
“I have no comment.” You fucking parasite, is what he wants to say.
“Listen, Peter, it’s too late for this morning’s edition, but we’re going to run the scoop online right now and a banner on Monday. We just need clearance to run a photo of Joel.”
“I have no comment. You have no clearance. I’m hanging up.”
“Peter, a half a million people read our paper and twice that many see the front page.”
“And yesterday they all saw me there, your fucking tabloid.”
“Your son is missing. If just one reader—”
“You don’t care about my son. You want a byline. Don’t call me or my wife again.”
“Are you telling me you won’t let us circulate his picture because of a personal grudge?”
“I’m not telling you a fucking thing.” Pete ends the call and gets out of the car and walks up to the Marathon on the corner. He tries to buy a soft pack of Marlboros and a lighter and the Pakistani working the counter apologizes when his credit card is denied. Pete knows the card has a six-grand limit but whatever, maybe the magnetic strip, so he’s sorry, too. He pays in cash. He leaves the change.
He smokes two cigarettes on his way back to the squad, one after the other. He starts on a third, then stomps it out and does the same to what’s left, grinding the soft pack under his boot.
And before he gets back into the squad he looks up, city lights deadening the night sky. Wherever Joel is, he hopes Butch is, too, because it is the men who are the beasts.
24
Joel finally gets his eyes open just after nine A.M. Beyond the trees, a dirty-gray cloud cover sits way, way up in the stratosphere; it looks too thin to spill rain, but if it hangs around, there’ll be no sunshine today.
Joel clears his throat. He’d been in and out of sleep, the thrum and throttle of nearby semis and trains a soundtrack for his own dream-ride on Amtrak, feet dangling from the bench seat while farms and prairies slipped by outside the green-tinted windows, an ever-changing panorama.
During the dream, another passenger boarded and sat beside him; Joel half woke to find Butchie and hugged the dog, burying his nose, taking in the sweet and dusty feather-pillowy smell of his coat. Sometime later, the passenger got up, though the train kept on.
Joel sits up. His fever must’ve broken while he dreamed a downpour, his rain-damp clothes now sweat soaked. His arms feel weak, stomach hollow. He is wiped.
Butchie seems to be in about the same shape; stretched out on his side, he watches Joel from the corner of his eye, but isn’t roused to do much else.
Still, they have to go.
Joel looks out over the grounds. Since he fell asleep, twice as many cars have pulled up in the departing yard, waiting to be linked to a train. A control tower stands over the main lines; last night, Joel assumed its blinking red light sat atop a high-rise much farther off. Now that he knows there’s an eye in the sky, he hopes it hasn’t seen them.
He hikes the pack onto his shoulders and takes it right back off again when every muscle from his neck to his elbows screams torture. He can’t carry it all. He doesn’t have the strength left.
He takes everything out of the pack and weighs his options. He tears the page Molly wrote about Zack Fowler’s party from her notebook and he’s about to tear out the last map from Rand McNally when—
“Hurmm.” Butchie puts in his two cents. He hasn’t moved; he’s still a one-eyed watchdog. But he might as well be telling Joel no. And he’s right, because Rand McNally isn’t Joel’s to ditch. And Molly’s going to want her notebook back. And anyway, giving up even one thing is still giving up, isn’t it?
/> “I’m not giving up, Butch.” He shoves everything back into the pack.
“Happy now, Popcorn Feet?” He takes Butchie’s front paws, pulling them to his nose. “Yep, they still smell like you cooked ’em in the Whirley Pop.” Joel knows it’s pseudomonas, a bacteria that makes dogs’ feet smell that way, but: “They’d taste okay, with some butter and salt.” He is so hungry again. At least he feels better.
Butchie dips his head and rolls over, extending all his legs, a full-body stretch.
“There’s no need to fear,” Joel says, quoting an old cartoon his dad gave him last year for his birthday, “Butch O’Hare is here!”
Butchie gets up and does the old jaw stretch; Joel follows lead, yawning as he lifts one arm over his head and pulls on his neck, a warm-up exercise he learned at softball practice. After counting to ten, he switches to the other side, counts ten more, and stands up. He’s swinging his spaghetti arms back and forth for a final ten when he sees Butchie watching and he can’t help it: he grabs the dog by the ears and kisses the top of his head and closes his eyes against his soft fur and loves him so much, so says, “I love you, puppy.”
Butchie sighs.
When a train horn bleats, Joel says, “All aboard, Butch!” and together they double back along the trees, sneaking out the way they came in.
Back on the street, they follow the rise out to Western Avenue. It’s a busy road, but the only other way around the rail yard is all the way around—three sides instead of one—which can’t be any less risky. This is the way to go. Like second base to third. No hesitation.
He pulls on his hood and tethers the leash and they hustle all the way to the light at 18th Street: safe.
Once there, they return to Oakley to take the final blocks south. It might seem silly not to cut over, since the courthouse is to the west, but Joel gets anxious just thinking about crossing Western Avenue; from what his dad says, he imagines it’s going to be like entering another country.
Another country is exactly what it feels like, though, when they reach Oakley. White-wired holiday lights strung along A-frame roofs must be left over from last year’s Christmas. The houses don’t appear lived in so much as stayed at, the vinyl siding cracked, the junk piled up. Trash-swollen garbage cans choke the alleyways, and the whole area smells like a porta potty—that acrid combination of waste and sanitation chemicals.
Above the first street sign, Joel spots a blue-box police camera. Boxes like this are supposed to act as “patrol” in rough areas—although the film is used only for evidence, which means cops don’t watch the footage unless there’s been a crime. Still, a block that has a blue box is no place to hang around.
Butchie doesn’t know what the boxes are for but he doesn’t seem too thrilled about the neighborhood, either; he doesn’t stop to sniff at all, just looks back at Joel once in a while to whine.
“Ay, hijo de puta!” an Hispanic man yells at what’s under the hood of his broken-down pickup truck across the way, his clothes oil stained.
Behind him, two young boys kick a soccer ball in the street. It’s as good a place as any; there is concrete from curb to house, and only the occasional tree tries to hold its own inside a crumbling brick planter.
Joel leads Butchie past a street-side bedroom window where a statue of Mary is adorned with beads and prayers handwritten in Spanish, and the word that comes to Joel’s mind is subura, the Latin term for the district where poor, lawless Romans lived during the ancient empire.
Ahead, the El runs over the street, trains snarling past one another, and Butchie puts the brakes on—probably thunder flashbacks. An alley runs under the tracks, bloodred rust stains running down the bridge piers; everything else is covered in a colorless grime, like some kind of sci-fi underworld.
Joel coaxes Butchie under the bridge, where he imagines the garbage cans are set afire, come nighttime. “It’s okay,” he says, trying to convince himself, too.
Past the tracks, plastic grocery bags are tied to the top lines of iron fences, strange decorations. When he stops to investigate, Joel discovers an even more peculiar feature of the row houses here: behind the fences, downstairs, there are front yards. Like dugouts.
In one yard, a patch of grass grows around a birdbath and a blue plastic push-and-ride kid car that has been tipped on its side, wheels cracked. Another yard looks more like a storage area, rainwater pooled on a white tarp that partially covers a set of furniture. The next has L-shaped iron-railed steps running down to a door, like a basement apartment; the window’s curtain is a bedsheet.
At the corner, a grocery called La Potosina advertises ice cream, eggs, and school supplies. Joel can think of at least a hundred and one ways to spend the last bit of their cash—school supplies not one of them—but he’d sure like to see what else the market offers.
He’s daydreaming about lemonade and Snickers when Butchie pulls toward the street to angle around half-dozen empty forty-ounce beer bottles left on the sidewalk, blocking the walkway to someone’s front door.
And that someone could very well be the leather-skinned man in the cowboy hat who’s on his way up the walk.
The usual act-natural rules would be for Joel and Butchie to get out of the way, and that’s because naturally, when you’re trying not to be noticed, you don’t want to annoy anybody. The problem is, this man already looks annoyed, and when Joel pulls Butchie aside the man shifts course, his boot-steps heavy and certain and headed straight for them—right up until he gets a good look at Butchie and stops, leash-distance.
“¿Y ahora vienes a tratar de corretiarme con el perro del diablo?” It sounds like a question, but Joel understands only the word that means dog—
“Perro?” which he repeats like a question.
“A mi no me importa quien reclama esta esquina,” the man says, moving around them like a rodeo rider would a crazy horse, his eyes black with rage. “Ésta es mi casa. No me iré de este lugar.”
Butchie backs up to keep the barking man in front of him; Joel doubles up on the leash.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Joel says, and he realizes this is how Butchie must feel when people try to tell him stuff: he might know a word here or there, but he forms the gist from the tone, or the person’s expression.
“¡Puedes amar al diablo pero él no más te usa, discípulos ignorantes!”
The man picks up a beer bottle; Joel only realizes what he’s going to do with it when he winds up and whips it at them.
Butchie lurches forward as Joel pulls him back; the threat is real now, and so is the dog’s impulse to stop it. The bottle hits the street a foot from where Butchie’s front paws claw at the pavement. He goes wild.
“Fuss!” Joel commands; the dog won’t get away from him this time. He uses all his weight, his butt nearly touching the ground as he backs up, a step at a time.
The man throws another bottle and glass smashes on the street in front of them. “No me asustan,” he yells. “Todos ustedes son bestias.”
Butchie starts to bark back and Joel can’t get him to move though they’re in the middle of the street and there’s a car coming around the corner. Joel puts a hand up to warn the driver and falls, knees skinned, and it makes him mad—mad enough to find the strength to get Butchie by the collar and pull him to the curb.
The car stops. It’s a maroon two-door with gold wheels and a stereo system that makes the whole back end shake. The driver is a man, and he is alone. He wears a canary-yellow bandana and his eyes are set close, a marsupial’s.
The man throwing bottles quits barking. So does Butchie.
The driver rolls down the window and turns down the music. He looks over at Joel, a half squint like he’s due an explanation, and Joel thinks he should give him one but then a bottle hits not two feet from the front of the car’s hood and the driver parks right there, middle of the street.
He gets out of the car, takes off the bandana, and winds it around his fist. He’s not a big man but he is all muscle: the white
T-shirt under his Detroit Tigers jersey fits like plastic wrap and his jeans hang on his hipbones below the V-cut of his waist.
The glass crunches under his bright white sneakers as he makes his way toward the man in the cowboy hat. He says,“Tiene los huevos de un toro, viejo.” The tone sounds confrontational.
The driver glances at Joel, who has no explanation; it’s impossible for him to say it’s a misunderstanding when they don’t understand each other in the first place.
The driver turns back to the cowboy and says, “¿Va a limpiar eso, o le pongo a limpiarlo?” and then he reaches for the back of his waistband, finding his gun.
That’s when Joel decides they’d better get the hell out of there.
They run, Butchie matching his pace past a tavern called El Aguaje where another old cowboy stands in the doorway with a bottle of beer, shielding his eyes from the light of day. Butchie doesn’t see the man right away, and the startle revs the dog’s engines: he could run for miles, light-speed. Joel, on the other hand, can hardly keep up; he’s sucking air. He’s got to stop.
At the next alley, Joel turns off and they move in past four garages to take cover behind a row of bloated garbage cans and they are sitting there, both of them panting, when a teenage girl about Mike’s age appears in a garage doorway across the way. She has a pink-swaddled baby in her arms and a little boy hanging on her leg. She doesn’t appear to have a vehicle or to be on her way anywhere. Her eyes are brown and blank, like Joel and Butch are no surprise. The baby cries.
Heavy bass echoes from the maroon car as it crawls past the alley. The girl looks at Joel; he’s pretty sure everybody understands no, and so he mouths the word. Still, she sends the boy out to the street.
Pretty soon the boy comes back, the car following. The driver stops and kills the music.
“Hola,” he says to Joel and he sounds friendly. “¿Que barrio tiras?”
Butchie comes around in front of Joel and sits, on guard. Joel says, “I don’t understand you.”
“Where you from, pandillero?”
“I’m from here.”
“You’re not from here, bro.”
The Good Boy Page 28