Fathers

by Matt Rogers

  Slater drove south through Dorchester, past cheap duplexes and tenement buildings and old narrow townhouses. The neighbourhood flashed past, but he didn’t take any of it in. He was deep in thought.

  Evidently, so was Tyrell. The boy stared glassy-eyed out the window, grappling with the gravity of what he’d done.

  Slater couldn’t take the quiet much longer than that. ‘Why’d you lie to me?’

  Tyrell was cynical as he glanced over. ‘Oh, so if I said, “Hey, would you mind driving me to confront my dad?” you would have said, “Yeah, no problem, brother, let’s get right to it.”’

  The kid had a point.

  Slater couldn’t think of anything to ask other than, ‘You said he rushed you?’

  ‘Yeah. He was gonna do something bad.’

  ‘Why?’

  Tyrell said nothing.

  Slater said, ‘Why?’

  ‘You sound mad.’

  ‘I’m…’ He trailed off. ‘Actually, I don’t know what I am. I’m confused.’

  ‘You taking me to the cops?’ Tyrell asked.

  One hand drifted toward the door handle. The boy didn’t seem to care that Slater was doing forty miles an hour. If it was a choice between leaping from a moving car or going to prison, he knew what he’d do.

  Twelve years old, Slater had to remind himself. Faced with that choice…

  Slater said, ‘No. I’m not taking you to the cops. Unless you went there to kill him.’

  ‘You should maybe think that, man.’

  Slater’s blood went cold. ‘Did you know what you were going to do?’

  ‘No. But I was gonna say some shit to him that he needed to hear and then I was gonna protect myself.’

  ‘You haven’t told me why you did it.’

  ‘Ain’t you all noble and shit?’ Tyrell asked. ‘Does it matter why I did it? I’m bad either way, right?’

  ‘I just killed your uncle and two of your dad’s enemies,’ Slater said. ‘You think I’m noble?’

  Tyrell scrunched up his face. ‘Those boys weren’t Dad’s enemies. They were his buddies. Or, at least, used to be.’

  Slater became statuesque, one hand still clutching the wheel. ‘What?’

  ‘They kept comin’ round to check on him. After everything went bad.’

  Slater recalled the windows, the door. Marcus had barricaded himself in, before his son walked straight through his defences.

  Slater said, ‘They weren’t checking on him this time. They were going to kill him. They had an AK-47 between their seats.’

  Tyrell’s gaze dropped to the footwell as he dealt with that revelation. Slater understood. The boy was thinking, So it was going to happen anyway? It didn’t need to have been me. I could have saved myself from those memories that’ll haunt me for the rest of my life…

  Slater said, ‘You can’t change what happened, kid.’

  Tyrell closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Slater asked, ‘When did everything go bad?’

  ‘Maybe a month ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Dad been dealin’ dope for as long as I can remember. Used to be pretty good at it. We used to live in a fancy place in Charlestown. Then I think he started taking the dope too. I mean, I’m guessin’. I never saw him do it. But he was gettin’ real scared, man. I don’t know what the word is...’

  ‘Paranoid?’

  Tyrell snapped his thin fingers together. He was more animated now. Telling the story had given him some detachment — he could describe it instead of living it through the memories in his head. ‘Yeah, man. Paranoid. And he wasn’t eatin’. He used to make me good dinners. He was a good cook. Then it became Mickey D’s for most dinners. Then every meal. Then he stopped ordering two of everything, ’cause he’d never eat it anyway. Probably thought it was a waste of money. He was gettin’ skinnier and skinnier, that’s what’s stuck in my head, man…’

  Slater thought about the huge jowls wobbling under Marcus’ chin in the harsh light of the kitchen. If that was Tyrell’s dad getting worryingly thin, then how enormous had he been before?

  Slater asked, ‘Give me a timeline. When did he stop eating?’

  ‘About two weeks ago. I mean, you know I don’t really mean that, right? Obviously he was eatin’, or he’d be dead. But it was only scraps, and he’d pick at them for a bit, then he’d get all quiet and tell me to watch the front door, and he’d go into his room and wouldn’t come out all night. I knew what he was doin’.’

  Slater connected the dots, the pieces he already knew about. A pair of gangsters with a Kalashnikov who were friends turned enemies. Marcus barricading himself inside the shack. Tyrell claiming his father was paranoid, sketchy, jonesing. Becoming a shrivelled, hollow shell of the man he once was, dealer or not.

  He realised how it all lined up, but there was one vital piece missing.

  He said, ‘This is a guess on my end, Tyrell, but do you think your dad was acting weird enough for his associates to turn on him?’

  ‘His what?’ Tyrell said, then interrupted before Slater could answer. ‘Oh. Associates … like business friends, yeah?’

  Slater nodded. The kid was sharp. ‘Like business friends.’

  ‘Yeah. I’d say that.’ Then the boy’s eyes widened as realisation struck him. ‘That’s why those guys came to kill him just before. Oh shit, that makes too much sense. That’s why he was gettin’ all…’

  He trailed off.

  Slater said, ‘I need to know why you thought he’d hurt you bad enough to shoot him.’

  That was the missing link.

  The piece that didn’t fit.

  Tyrell furrowed his brow, suddenly stifled with emotion. ‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’

  ‘Then I don’t have a choice but to take you to the police.’

  Tyrell hunched his shoulders, tucked his chin to his chest, shrivelling into a protective shell like a terrified animal implementing a defence mechanism. ‘No, man. Don’t do that.’

  ‘I drove you home so you could shoot your father,’ Slater said. ‘That makes me an accessory. I got no choice, kid. Unless you give me something that convinces me it was justified. If not…’

  He tapped the brake, and the car slowed slightly.

  Tyrell said, ‘He would have killed me. That’s the way he was gettin’. That’s the way it would have been with his two boys who came round today. He made them do that, man, with how he was actin’. And…’

  Tears rolled down Tyrell’s cheeks.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Slater said. ‘Take your time. Just tell it how it is.’

  Tyrell took a ragged shaking breath and continued. ‘And he was losin’ it. I mean, he used to be a great dad. He used to love me. I know parents say, “I’ll love you no matter what,” and all that shit, but he didn’t love me no more. He was startin’ to get … paranoid … even about me. That’s why I ran. I knew how bad Uncle J was, and I still knew he was a hundred times better than the way Dad was gettin’. He was gettin’ worse and worse and I thought it’s better if I don’t lose the good memories of him. I want to remember him when he was … good. If I’d gone back and stayed with him he woulda done something real bad to me. Real, real bad. He almost did, before I ran. He asked me if I was a spy. I told him, “No, course not, it’s me. It’s Tyrell. Dad, don’t ya remember?” And he still beat me up. Almost broke my head, I swear, man. I still got a headache from that.’

  Slater couldn’t hide his wince.

  Tyrell said, ‘So that was my plan, man. Stay with Uncle J as long as I could, try not to get myself killed, and when I had the guts, to go back and tell Dad why I hated him, and whatever happened after that happened. ’Cause I spent any longer there and he woulda beat me to death. Or, like, gone out on the street and killed some random people walkin’ by, thinkin’ they spies or something. That’s the way he was gettin’. And I’ve seen homies smoke those rocks he was smokin’. That’s like those streets that you can only go in one direction. One-way streets. That�
��s what that is. He was never goin’ to get better. Only worse. And I told him that and he flipped and…’

  Silence.

  Slater didn’t realise he was gripping the wheel with white knuckles.

  He said, ‘That memory’s going to stick with you, Tyrell. Forever.’

  Tyrell nodded. ‘I know. I was so scared. I just thought I’d hurt him. Hit his leg. Stop him killing me. But … maybe that was s’posed to happen. Y’know? Stop him from letting the bad get real bad. Better I do it than those other guys.’

  Slater shook his head. ‘No, Tyrell. That’s not true. It would have been far better if it was someone else.’

  ‘You just sayin’ that. You ain’t thinkin’ about it. What if all that barricading worked? What if those two boys weren’t good enough? Then Dad woulda shot them, and that would have turned him all the way bad. Who knows what he woulda done. Killed someone walkin’ down the street, mindin’ their own business, maybe. Nah. I wasn’t gon’ let that happen.’

  Slater couldn’t quite fathom it. Either the boy was insane, or the most stoic twelve-year-old he’d ever met. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘All funny. Heart’s racing. Think when I calm down I won’t be doing so well. Playin’ it back in my head. But that’s okay. It’s not s’posed to feel good.’

  That confirmed it.

  Tyrell was a special person.

  Slater shook his head in disbelief. The boy had taken it upon himself to do the hardest thing a person could do. He’d willingly confronted the gravest of pain: emotional pain. He’d placed that burden squarely on his own shoulders, and he wasn’t even a damn teenager yet.

  No, Tyrell wasn’t insane.

  He’d just been dealt the worst hand possible.

  Slater was so distracted by the boy’s predicament that it took him longer than it should have to realise he’d probably made an enemy of the entire Boston underworld. Or, at least, the side of it that Marcus and Jeremiah associated with. The brothers were dead an hour apart, and there might have been witnesses to place him in or around the scene of both. On top of that, two of Marcus’ associates were shot to death out front of his house. If their mission to kill a paranoid, rebellious Marcus had been a secret, then the whole thing looked like a coordinated hit on an entire faction of the dope dealing underworld.

  Slater baulked at the idea of having to potentially destroy the Porsche.

  Of course you do, he thought. It was right out front of both crime scenes.

  He wondered how he’d explain that to Alexis.

  26

  A short time after his first breastfeed, Rebecca gave Junior eye drops and a shot of Vitamin K.

  Violetta fought a bout of the shivers, deeply exhausted from the labour, despite its brevity. King wrapped blankets around her and sat beside her, held her hand. She sipped fluids and groaned occasionally, but above the discomfort was an aura of bliss.

  Her job was done.

  She could stand down.

  Alexis stepped in to hug them both at once. She’d already spent some time close to Junior, soaking in every detail of his perfect form.

  Now she said, ‘You did it.’

  Violetta murmured, ‘Where is Will?’

  King felt Alexis recoil.

  He didn’t say a word.

  27

  Slater drove around south Boston for nearly an hour, his head a disorganised mess of thoughts.

  Tyrell sat silently beside him.

  The kid was dwelling on his own problems. Neither of them needed to fill the silence. They had enough in their own minds to sort out first.

  Slater knew what he had to do, so he stopped avoiding it. He pulled the Porsche into the small lot of a convenience store, parking between two similarly-sized SUVs to mask its presence to anyone trawling past who might be looking for it. Then he pulled his phone out and scrolled through all the reputable local news sources, looking for any mention of recent shootings in Roxbury or Jones Hill. There was nothing yet, but even the hastiest of journalists needed some time to compose an article, so that didn’t mean much. The “gang violence” would make the rounds on all the channels by evening time, and there’d be a full fledged investigation after public outrage.

  Maybe they were in the clear with the authorities, but the underworld was another story.

  Tyrell chewed his fingernails as he gazed around the lot, watching the late morning breeze lazily spin a shopping trolley down an aisle.

  Slater put the phone down, took a breath. ‘How bad is this?’

  ‘Huh?’ Tyrell asked.

  ‘Do you know if your dad or uncle were important? Were they big shots? You said something about that suitcase. Belonging to the guy we passed in the stairwell. Did you say three kilos of H? Am I remembering that right?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what Uncle J said.’

  ‘Did Uncle J like to brag? Exaggerate? Say things that weren’t true?’

  ‘No shit,’ Tyrell said. ‘He was a gangster. What you think? Bragging’s all he did.’

  ‘About business, though?’

  Tyrell’s brow furrowed. ‘Nah. Now I think about it, he wouldn’t have lied about that.’

  ‘So why was he living in public housing?’ Slater asked. ‘If he was moving that sort of weight, he should have been in Charlestown, like you said your dad used to be.’

  ‘That wasn’t his place,’ Tyrell said. ‘He just paid some guy to stay there for a few days. He always does that when a big deal’s going down. Think ’cause it takes longer for cops to get there, in case it went bad and they had to shoot it out.’

  ‘Longer?’

  ‘You shoot someone in a place like Charlestown, they gon’ be there in seconds. South Roxbury … nah, not the same. You saw, man. We walked right outta there. You think we woulda done that at some fancy building with nice apartments?’

  Slater’s instincts told him to check the news again. ‘Just because we walked away doesn’t mean we got away with it.’

  Tyrell shrugged.

  Slater couldn’t get over how remarkably composed the boy seemed. He must have dwelled on that for too long, because Tyrell noticed the silence.

  As prescient as ever, he asked, ‘You wonderin’ why I seem so normal?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Slater said. ‘That’s what I’m wondering.’

  ‘I been ready for a while now,’ Tyrell said. ‘Last few weeks have been shit. ’Cause I saw the way it was going and I knew what I might have to do. So I guess I was sad about it then, but now that it’s happened, it’s like, I’ve already been sad about it. I already went through all that shit. Y’know?’

  Slater shook his head, then reconsidered. ‘I guess I do know. I just didn’t expect someone your age to know.’

  ‘How I grown up, if I ain’t know that, I wouldn’t be here. You gotta switch on and be smart on the streets or you ain’t makin’ it out.’

  Slater stared out the windshield.

  The drifting trolley rattled to a halt in a mess of tangled shrubs beside the convenience store. They used to be neatly trimmed hedges, Slater figured, before the harshness of life had withered them, beat them down, deadened their leaves and twisted their branches and blown them out of shape so they were unrecognisable from their tidy beginnings.

  That won’t happen to Tyrell, he thought. I won’t let it.

  But he didn’t want to force anything. ‘So what do you want to do?’

  Tyrell pouted in that youthful way, eyes glassy as they gazed out the passenger window. ‘I dunno, man. I didn’t think I’d get this far.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You shoot your old man, that’s it,’ Tyrell said. ‘Thought I’d go to prison, or my dad’s friends would get me for it.’

  Slater said, ‘Why don’t you stay with me for a few days?’

  Tyrell blinked. ‘I’m just gonna be trouble for you and your family.’

  ‘It’s just me and my partner. No kids yet. There’s plenty of room in our home. And you need a break. Crash with me, and we’ll figure
out where to go from there.’

  Tyrell said, ‘Okay.’

  Then bit down on his lower lip, and his Adam’s apple spasmed, and his eyes turned teary.

  The words “figure out where to go from there” must have hit him. He was looking toward a wholly uncertain future. His life was a vortex of possibilities right now. Most of them bad, but a few had the potential to be good. Slater knew if he dumped the kid on the sidewalk, or took him to the cops, he’d kill those good paths. Shut them off, seal them, and throw away the key. Then there’d be nothing but trauma and misery and drink and drugs and crime and death.

  He’d pulled Tyrell off that street corner.

  He might as well go all the way.

  He dwelled on his next move. ‘You’ve got to tag along with me to something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My best friend and his partner are having a kid. I need to go to the hospital to see them. It’s important.’

  ‘You bringin’ me?’

  Slater nodded. For at least the next twenty-four hours, Tyrell wasn’t leaving his sight. The brain is delicate and pliable, and Tyrell’s would go haywire if he was left alone in a house to contemplate what had happened to him, what he’d done. He’d probably do something incredibly stupid. Run, or try to hurt himself, or go off the deep end, lose his mind. Any of those options would destroy the progress Slater had already made with the boy. He hoped to delay those reactions for as long as he could, if not entirely avoid them.

  King and Violetta would have to understand the presence of some random kid.

  There wasn’t another option.

  Slater killed the Porsche’s engine and said, ‘Out.’

  ‘Where we going?’

  Slater jerked a thumb at the rental car lot on the opposite side of the road to the convenience store. It was the reason he’d parked here in the first place. ‘Switching rides.’

  ‘What about this car? It’s nice. You just leaving it?’

  ‘If it’s still here in a week or so, I’ll come back for it. I imagine all this will be over by then anyway. One way or the other.’

  Tyrell squinted in confusion. ‘What’ll be over?’