Forty-five minutes later, Dooley glanced up from the cash and saw Jeffie, an hour early and right there in the store instead of at the Greek place across the street. Dooley didn’t like it. Kevin, at the back of the store, spun around at the sound of the electronic bell and frowned when he saw a scrawny brown guy in big pants, an extra-large T-shirt that hung down to his knees, a jacket over top—Jeffie aligning perfectly with Kevin’s profile of a gangbanger out to liberate a little product. He started up the aisle toward Jeffie. Kevin’s tactic with shoplifters: Get into their personal space immediately and stay there until they called it quits and left his personal space, which is to say, his store.
Jeffie veered left, making straight for Dooley’s cash and greeting him by name, which did nothing to allay Kevin’s suspicions. Terrific. On the basis of Jeffie’s knowing Dooley, Kevin would probably start getting into Dooley’s personal space.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to Linelle. He slipped out from behind the counter, grabbed Jeffie by the arm, and dragged him out of the store.
“I told you to meet me across the street,” he said when they were out on the sidewalk. “I don’t want you in there. I work in there.”
“It’s a video store,” Jeffie said, as if that meant anything. What was it with people and video stores? They all copped an attitude about video store employees, like a person had to be practically brain-dead or at least down a few pints in ambition to work there, but they all came in regularly to rent stuff, and they all bitched and whined and expected miracles when they couldn’t find what they wanted.
“Why’d you call me, Jeffie? And what are you doing here so early?” Dooley said. “You better not be going to stiff me on my money.”
“Hey, no, nothing like that,” Jeffie said. “You’re going to get it, every cent, I promise. It’s just—”
“It’s just what?” Dooley said. He should have known. Jeffie was a screwup. He should never have given him the time of day, let alone a wad of money.
“One more day,” Jeffie said. “That’s all I need.”
“You said you were going to pay me back today. That was the deal, Jeffie.”
“That’s why I came down here in person, you know, man to man,” Jeffie said. Dooley crossed his arms over his chest and waited. “The thing is … things didn’t go the way I planned and—”
Dooley cut him off. “That’s not my problem.”
“No, you’re right. It’s not. And it’s going to be all good. I got it covered. See, I was just coming out from a meeting the other night and I saw this guy back behind Jay-Zee’s—you remember the guy I told you about, Dooley? I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me. He was—”
“I don’t care about any guy, Jeffie,” Dooley said. “I just want my money.”
“Right. I know that. And you’re going to get it. It’s just that I didn’t get it at the time, but I saw the guy and he was with this—”
Jesus.
“You’re not listening to me, Jeffie.” Dooley stepped in close so that Jeffie had to back up a pace to get comfortable.
“I’m gonna pay you back,” Jeffie said. “That’s what I came here to tell you. I just need one more day. I’m about to score some serious money, Dooley. If I’d been thinking, I would have taken a picture. But, hey, he doesn’t know I didn’t—”
“Picture? What are you talking about, picture?”
Jeffie fumbled in his pocket for something—a pack of cigarettes. When he pulled it out, half a dozen scraps of paper fluttered to the ground. Dooley glanced at them as Jeffie ducked to pick them up. Phone numbers. Jeffie always had a pocketful of phone numbers because he could never keep them in his head. Dooley had told him one time that he could program them into his cell phone, but Jeffie hadn’t liked that idea. Too risky, he said. Right. Like a pocketful of paper was top security.
“Jesus, Jeffie, I hope your downtown guy isn’t one of those. What if the cops stop you?”
Jeffie grinned. “I don’t need to write down his number. He’s got one of those ones, you’d have to be a moron not to remember it.” Dooley shook his head. Did Jeffie ever look in a mirror? “It’s like a pizza number. It’s only once I’m in that I need—”
“Never mind,” Dooley said, impatient now. He didn’t care about Jeffie’s business. “Just make sure I get my money.”
“You will. I swear. I’m going to make out on this one, Dooley. I mean, really make out. I’ve even been thinking, you know, I could get out of here, maybe go back home.”
Jeffie had told him one time that he was from down east somewhere, but Dooley hadn’t asked where. What difference did it make? All he knew was that when Jeffie was high or when he was hungry and cold or when he was jammed up, he’d talk about how one time when he was in foster care, he’d lived in a house that was right on the ocean. It wasn’t a big house. In fact, he’d said, the place was cramped and kind of run-down. But you could look out the front window and see nothing but water forever and ever. You could smell it, too, that salty tang in the air all year round. And the best part, according to Jeffie, you could hear it and watch it, like a movie or TV. It was always changing. Big deal, Dooley thought. It was just water—salt water; you couldn’t even drink it. But Jeffie would get this faraway look in his eyes and tell Dooley he didn’t understand. He’d tell him, too, someday he was going to have his own place right on the ocean, and it wasn’t going to be some crappy run-down place, either. It was going to be a nice place, and he was going to get himself a big chair and sit out there in his front yard and watch the water and listen to it and smell it.
Jeffie sighed. “Remember I told you Teresa was talking about a kid? It turns out she’s pregnant. Nearly four months. Can you believe it?” He shook his head like he sure couldn’t. Then he saw the annoyed look on Dooley’s face. “Tomorrow,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking. Meet me tomorrow. I’ll have your money; I’ll be golden, you’ll see.”
Dooley grabbed Jeffie by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him close. “My money, Jeffie,” he said, slow but loud, so Jeffie wouldn’t miss what he was saying. “Get it or else.”
That’s when Dooley registered the electronic bong over the door. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Kevin standing there, arms crossed over his chest, waiting for Dooley to get back inside where he belonged.
Dooley told Jeffie where to meet him—a place across from his school.
“Three-thirty, Jeffie,” he said. “Be there.”
“Three-thirty,” Jeffie said, squirming. “No problem.”
Dooley released him and watched him scuttle away. Then he turned and brushed past Kevin on his way back into the store.
Five
At four-thirty the next day, Dooley was sitting in a booth facing the door of the restaurant directly across from his school, working on his second cup of coffee. Big surprise, Jeffie was an hour A late, which made Dooley think he wasn’t coming at all, which, in turn, put Dooley in a bad mood because he’d given Jeffie a lot of money and he wanted it back. And that put him in an even worse mood because it underlined just how fucked up his life was. Lorraine had just died. If she’d been a normal mother—and if he’d been a normal kid—the absolute last thing on his mind right now would have been money, right? But there he was, his eyes glued to the door, his mind working on all the things he would do to Jeffie if Jeffie tried to stiff him. He had tried Jeffie on his cell phone half a dozen times already and had ended up in Jeffie’s voice mail every time. The first time, he left a message: “It’s me. Be here, Jeffie, or else.” The second time: “Get your ass over here if you know what’s good for you.” The third time: “I told you, Jeffie. You fuck this up and you’re gonna be sorry.” The other times, he just ended the call. It didn’t make any difference. Jeffie didn’t walk through the door. Dooley swallowed what was left of his coffee, checked his watch and the clock above the counter one more time, and decided that if Jeffie wasn’t here by now, he wasn’t coming. He put some money on the table to pay for his coffee and left t
he restaurant.
When the doorbell rang just before supper the next night, Dooley looked through the glass in the door and saw the round florid face of Jerry Panelli, retired cop, friend of his uncle’s, a cynical son of a bitch whose bitter-eyed world view extended to Dooley, as in, “You’re gonna tell me a kid like that’s ever gonna fly straight? That’s like asking a dog to stop smelling shit.” He knew Jerry had seen him, but Jerry pressed the doorbell again anyway, letting Dooley know exactly what he thought of him. Dooley swung the door open.
“Your uncle here?” Jerry said, already looking past Dooley.
And a good evening to you, too, Jerry.
“He’s in the kitchen,” Dooley said.
He stepped aside to let Jerry through, and then he went back into the dining room where he had his homework spread out. Jerry glanced at the textbooks and binders as he went by. He paused when he got to the kitchen door and stood there for a second until Dooley sat down and dug into a math assignment. Jerry looked at him a moment longer. When he went through into the kitchen, he closed the door behind him. Dooley heard the rumble of Jerry’s voice, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. He sat there for a minute, staring at the table, then, what the hell, he crept to the door and held his breath as he listened.
“… relationship with Lorraine,” Jerry was saying. “How you two hit it off, how often you saw each other, that kind of thing. He asked me a lot of weird shit, Gary.”
Silence.
Then Jerry’s voice again, Dooley’s uncle not having said a word.
“I didn’t get where they were going, but I didn’t like the questions, you know what I mean? There was something behind them. It was like that prick Randall was insinuating something. I told him I didn’t know anything. I told him if he had any questions, he should ask you.”
More silence before his uncle finally said, “Thanks for coming by, Jerry.”
Dooley slipped back to the table and was staring at his math text when Jerry and his uncle came out of the kitchen.
“If there’s anything I can do—” Jerry said.
“I appreciate it,” Dooley’s uncle said. He didn’t even look at Dooley as he walked Jerry through to the front door and saw him out. He stood in the front hall for a few moments after that, looking more tired than Dooley had ever seen him.
“Is everything okay?” Dooley said.
“Everything’s just hunky-dory,” his uncle said.
“It’s just that he sounded concerned.”
“He was expressing his sympathy.”
His uncle went back into the kitchen. It wasn’t long before the phone rang. Dooley heard his uncle talking but couldn’t make out what it was about. After he hung up, his uncle called Dooley for supper. When they had finished eating and Dooley was clearing the table, his uncle said, “I have to go downtown tomorrow.”
“Yeah?” Dooley said. He waited.
“The guys in Homicide want to talk to me.”
Dooley paused on his way to the sink, a dirty dinner plate in each hand. “What about?”
“What do you think?” his uncle said. “Lorraine.”
“I told you, they’re treating her death as suspicious.”
“Yeah, and—?”
“And they want to talk to me.” His uncle looked pointedly at the plates. Dooley rinsed them, set them in the dishwasher, and went back to the table to clear the cutlery.
“But everything’s okay, right?” Dooley said. He picked up knives, forks, a couple of serving spoons.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why do they want to talk to you?”
“I mean, Jerry will alibi you, you know, in case the cops think you had anything to do with it.”
His uncle looked at him. “Why would they think I had anything to do with it?”
Dooley couldn’t stand sitting around the house. He couldn’t stand the buzz from the TV that he knew his uncle wasn’t even watching. He called Beth. They talked for a while and Dooley thought she sounded different—distant, maybe distracted. He had to work at filling the gaps in the conversation, which he’d never had to do before. Then, just when he was wondering what he’d done, or what Nevin had done, something in her voice changed and she said, “They’re doing inventory at the store tonight.”
Dooley perked up. “Yeah?”
Every couple of months the store where Beth’s mother worked, did inventory. That always meant two, maybe three nights when Beth’s mother didn’t get home until past midnight.
“Yeah,” Beth said. “You want to come over?”
She’d asked him—him, not Nevin. Maybe the things he’d seen didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was like she said—maybe they were just debating. Maybe he had nothing to worry about.
“Well?” Beth said.
“I’ll be right there.”
His uncle didn’t take his eyes off the TV when Dooley told him where he was going.
“Be home by eleven,” he said.
When Dooley got to work the next day after school, Beth was at the front counter, talking to Linelle. At first he smiled. He still felt good from the night before. He wondered if she did, too. Maybe she wanted to tell him how great it had been. Maybe her mother was doing inventory again tonight.
She turned when she heard the electronic buzzer over the door, and the smile faded on Dooley’s lips. He could see right away that something was wrong. He glanced at Linelle, who shrugged—wait a minute, was that an apologetic shrug? Before he could even begin to decipher what she might be apologizing for, Beth was in his face.
“You told me your mother was dead,” she said.
Dooley shot Linelle another look. She raised her arms in a gesture of surrender: So shoot me. He looked back at Beth.
“She is.”
“Very funny.” But, boy, no way was she even remotely close to amused. “You lied to me, Dooley.”
“Well, she’s dead now,” Dooley said. “And, anyway, what difference does it make?”
He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he’d taken the worst possible approach. This was Beth he was talking to. Beth had lost her father and her brother. She’d cared a lot about both of them. She took family seriously. That’s why she was staring at him like his skin had split open and she could finally see what lay under that Dooley face and what was hidden inside that Dooley body: Satan. Dooley took her by the arm to lead her outside where they could talk without Linelle and, now, Kevin, watching and hearing everything, but she shook off his hand. She hadn’t been this angry in a long time.
“I can explain,” Dooley said in a quiet voice.
She turned abruptly, her long dark hair flicking him in the face as it spun out around her, and did what he’d asked her to do in the first place—go outside—but marching out not because it was what he wanted but because it was what she wanted, which was to punish him. Dooley ran after her and caught her by the arm again.
“Come on,” he said, begging her. She faced him, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin jutting out, her eyes filled with fury. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you.”
“You were with me,” she said. “You were with me on Friday night and again last night, and you didn’t tell me.” Her eyes were hard on him. “But you told Linelle.”
Yes, he had done that. And it had been a mistake. He regretted it. He should have kept his mouth shut. He shouldn’t have told anyone.
“She was messed up,” he said. “Seriously messed up. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in years.”
“What happened?” Beth said. “How did she die?” Her tone told him that she was softening a little. She was concerned. She wanted to know. But he was pretty sure she would stiffen up again when he told her the truth.
“Drug overdose.” The words had the effect of a cattle prod, sending a shock through her and making her retreat a pace.
“You mean, like sleeping pills?” she said.
He shook his head. She was dead, for Christ’s sake, a
nd she was still fucking him up.
“The kind of drugs she used aren’t the kind you get from your neighborhood pharmacist. She had a problem, okay?”
She peered at him like a jeweler examining a suspect stone: Was he kidding? Of course he was kidding—wasn’t he?
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” he said.
“What’s why?”
“The way you’re looking at me now. It’s why I didn’t tell you about her.” What was the point? “Look, she wasn’t part of my life. We never talked. She wasn’t interested in me.”
“But she was your mother.”
“That doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.”
She seemed to think about that. Or maybe she was thinking about what it might mean when you were going with a guy and his mother, who you thought was long dead, suddenly passed away from a drug overdose.
“Linelle said there was a funeral,” she said at last. “She said she wasn’t clear whether you’d gone or not. Did you?”
He nodded. He couldn’t tell whether she was happy with his answer—at least he’d cared enough to do the right thing—or whether it made things worse—he had gone to his mother’s funeral but hadn’t asked her to come, hadn’t even told her about it. He stepped toward her. She did not shrink back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you. But I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what you’d think.”
She tipped her head back so that she could look him in the eyes.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
Boy, how could he even start to answer a question like that?
“I have to get back inside,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Kevin’s disapproving face on the other side of the glass. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
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