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  Now like I said, Leezie’d been going out most nights, and never saying who with. Made me real curious, her doing that, ’specially how she weren’t payin’ no mind at all to the curfew. I thought findin’ out just where she’s goin’ and who with might sort’f clue me in to what she’s up to, ’cause she ain’t a girl to say what she’s gonna do but just goes ’head and does it.

  So I jumped up fast and run downstairs and when I come in the hall I find Leezie standing there, ready to go out.

  Who’s here? I say.

  ’S my date, Leezie says.

  I dodge out front to the porch and look. Car’s down there parked in the street, a big GTO, old car but all souped up, painted slate gray with a six on the side, in red. Has an engine scoop stickin’ up through the hood and back tires wider than truck tires but with no tread, slicks is what they called.

  Sitting in it is a boy I know who got this long frizzy hair, yellow, and arms folded to show off his muscles, tattoos all over the goddamn place.

  Leezie comes out.

  You going out with him? I say.

  Why not! she says.

  That’s Bad-Ass Ricky!

  His name is Ricky Morgan, Leezie says, like I don’t know.

  Leezie, you can’t go out with him! He’s the worst boy around! He tried to get me to rob Shatze’s once! I seen him in the back of squad cars plenty of times!

  Go to hell, Billy, she says. I like him! He treats me real nice! He’s taking me to the circus!

  She’s trying to sound bold, but I can tell she’s embarrassed a little.

  I say, Don’t do it, Leezie! He don’t respect girls. Tell him to go away.

  She glares at me, her face so colored it looks wild.

  He talks dirty ’bout’m, I said.

  She goes to smack me and I duck.

  Ain’t lying! I say.

  Down there Ricky, he come out the car and is leaning against it, not coming up ’cause the damn fool’s stopped in the middle of the street. Leezie, she goes down, walking in that gonna-fall stilt-walk girls got walking in them spike shoes. And she goes up and the bastard puts his arm around her.

  Hiya, Ricky! I say. I’m tryin’ to sound friendly ’cause I seen this bastard get violent, beat the shit outta plenty of boys for no damn reason at all, and I sure don’t want him mad at me.

  He don’t answer but just raises his hand and squints and makes like a pistol with his fingers and fires, and then laughs, the fucker. Wearin’ an Iron Maiden T-shirt, know the kind I mean? Me, I laugh too just to look agreeable, but boy I feel bad for Leezie. And before I even get back inside the door he’s got her in the car and then slipped through his window hisself not even opening his door and BOOM that GTO is five hundred yards up the street.

  Circus my ass, I think.

  I turn to go back in, but I stop, looking down.

  I still got them mittens in my hand.

  Chapter Twelve

  I sat in the kitchen and ate a little and when Daddy got home I talked to him ’bout what he’d done all day, which was nothing, ’cept he gone to see that man who owns the fish shop and talked with’m all about what it takes to run a store like that, what sort’f papers you gotta draw up and how much stake you need to have a go.

  It was good hearin’ he really went so far as to actually meet the man and ask questions like he done, and I wanted to tell’m ’bout how I’d been goin’ around writin’ down addresses of empty stores I seen, but I figured it be best to wait till I called a few and found out just how much rent money they’d all want before getting Daddy’s hopes up.

  Daddy, he also found out you gotta have a truck to haul your stock up from them wholesalers downtown, and other things to boot you gotta own to get goin’, like ’frigerators to keep it all cold.

  He was pretty excited when he first started telling me, but after a while it seemed like there was so much to do and so much money needed for it that he got quiet and just sat there at the table. I told him it ain’t all that hard and not to worry ’cause I’d help’m, but he just sort’f shook his head and didn’t say nothing more, and I went upstairs.

  But I didn’t sleep.

  My head was all full of thoughts, especially thoughts about when to go to Miss Gurpy’s to check out them boxes, and really wishing she’d just let me clean her house on the inside, so I could take a look without no risk of sneaking in, and I figured I’d talk to Richie Harrigan about that.

  One thing I gotta say is when I thought about the man or the house or the boxes, I didn’t think ’bout what Leezie was doing out with Bad-Ass or worry ’bout Daddy moping downstairs—all that just slipped my mind. Ain’t that funny? It was the best damn way I’d had to get my mind off things since I used to go out late nights ridin’ on that old bike. ’Cept this time it was even better. ’Cause it was like a puzzle, with the only rule book the one I figure out myself, and nagging at me hard enough to make my worries just fade away.

  So I’m lying there in bed like that, sort’f dreaming almost about them boxes and the jewels and what to do to see’m, when just then I remember something and sit up straight like I been bit.

  Remember how today Skugger’d warned me when he was in a car with a man? That’s what I was thinking about now. At the time there’d seemed something familiar about that man. I don’t mean who he was, ’cause even though I’d never met him and didn’t know his name I’d seen him around time and again, always driving that same old car, and always with one boy or another who liked to get high.

  But right then in bed I knew what it was that I’d seen.

  It was his coat, or really the shirt he had on.

  I remember I was looking at’m through the smoke in the car, and he was smoking a jay and so high he was sort’f poking it at his face and missing his mouth, and sparks was falling on his shirt and he was rubbing’m out. And I saw it was a green shirt, green plaid, same as lumberjacks wear.

  It was the goddamn shirt I’d seen on the floor of the dark house, lying there with the puffy jacket. Shirt looked hot for the weather and his face was all sweaty but he was smokin’ so much reefer it didn’t seem to faze’m.

  I lay there staring, thinking ’bout that and all the other things I’d seen, and tryin’ my damndest to find a way to put’m together. And I must say it pissed me off not knowing just how to do it.

  Then suddenly I thought, I want to see that man . . .

  Meaning I want to spy on him, follow him around, see what the hell he’s up to.

  I was out of bed in a second and out the window even faster, climbing down the fire escape and walking crost the yard to the alley.

  Th’night was dark and it was just a few minutes before I come near Simon Hooper’s. I’d run all the way and got short of breath and doubled up awhile panting, then when I was ready I went through Hooper’s yard and over the board fence to the house next door. I was in the front yard and nothing had changed. Porch was empty. No lights anywheres. And no sound, neither.

  I went alongside and the window I’d looked in was covered now, same as the others, with black plastic, piece of a tarp, or just a trash bag. I felt a little bad ’cause I was hoping to see something, but there was nothing.

  Then I went around back and stopped dead.

  A car was parked there on the grass of the yard. Same car I’d seen Skugger in, blue Ranchero.

  I went up to it. Tried the doors but they was locked. Looked inside, and I seen this man don’t never clean his car, ’cause there a big mess of trash and cans on the floor, and on top it all Skugger’s goofball hat, long one with the pompom at the end.

  I was thinking to leave but I stopped.

  A car’s here, I thought. So a man’s here too.

  I looked around a sec, and then I went over to the board fence. Here, out back, there’s a big old gnarled tree in that fence, I mean the fence comes up to both sides of it with the tree right in the middle. And nailed on the tree is these wood steps, pieces of two-by-four sawed about a foot wide nailed up by some boy who
lived here long ago. I tried’m and they held tight, so I climbed.

  When I was up in the tree with the leaves all round me I found the tree fort. I’d seen it before in daytime, just an old rotty thing of worn planks, and I’d never thought to go up it till now. What I did was climb on and spread myself out facedown, over a place where the planks was busted, looking down at the car in the yard.

  I felt cold up there, wind was blowing over me. I don’t know how long it took. Hour, maybe. But soon after that I heard a lock turning there on the back porch, and the door opened.

  A man come out. But he didn’t turn the light on. Not the house light in the room he was coming from, or the porch light outside. He stood for a minute, looking around, then he closed the door real quiet and come down the back porch steps and went to the fence, walking slow. At the fence he unlocked a lock, gave a shove, and the whole middle of the fence swung open into the alley behind. Then he got in the car and started it, but he didn’t turn the lights on. He backed out real slow, and when he was in the alley he got out and closed the gate and then got back in the car and drove away, driving up the alley and never turning his lights on far as I could see.

  I stayed in that tree ten more minutes, long enough to know he weren’t coming right back.

  I hadn’t seen him good. Couldn’t say who he was. Was too damn dark. Must be the same man who come in the room that night, but I couldn’t tell for sure, ’cause down there in the yard with no lights on I’d only seen the shape of’m. From how he walked he was all thick and dumpy. Big, too.

  Was it the man in the car today?

  Maybe.

  If he was, and knowing who Skugger was, I figured he’s the man who gets’m the drugs, all that pot and them pills Skugger sells to his friends.

  But why’s he sneaking around in there, not turning on the lights?

  I’m still looking at the house.

  What’s he hiding in there? I’m thinkin’.

  I was getting close to something, and the closer I got, the more my other worries went away. What is it? What is it? Questions burned in my head. And right then they burned so hot I think I’d’f give all the money I made that summer just to know.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I couldn’t think about it too much ’cause the next day they turned the electric off and Daddy and me went downtown real early. We had to go downtown ’cause we couldn’t call nobody ’cause the phone’d been turned off about a week then and we had to go in person, to the electric company, I mean, so’s to get on what they call the low-income rate for electrical consumption. Actually we could’f called ’cause Leezie still got’r cell phone and don’t ask me how she was paying for it, prob’ly just sweet-talking some cell phone operator, ’cause she never did get a job back then, just me. But what I’m saying is she weren’t home that morning, she’d been out all night, and after seeing who she was going out with I didn’t even want to think about it.

  Downtown after we got off the bus we went to the building and waited in a long line just to get inside, then waited in another line, and they put Daddy on the runaround, always going to the wrong room and talking to the wrong person, till we got what they call an emergency reconnect ’cause there’s children in the house, then got sent out ’cause Daddy, he ain’t brought the right papers to prove lack of income, so they called it, so except for that emergency reconnect the whole thing was a goddamn waste of time.

  But coming home before we got the bus—we got free tokens by the way, Welfare tokens—Daddy, he remem­bered the larder was open, Social Services Larder, they call it, sort of like a ugly grocery store, more like a cage with food in it. So we went there first, and filled the two bags they give you, we going up to these racks where they got macaroni and cheese mix and corn cereal and these packs of cottage cheese that Leezie likes and cans of red salmon I personally can’t fuckin’ stand.

  So it weren’t all a waste, the day, I mean, ’cause we got all that and lugged it home, which was hard work, ’specially seein’ as how the bus stop up our way is at least half a mile from my house, and when we get there Leezie still ain’t home and I’m thinking, What’s that bastard Bad-Ass Ricky doing with’r?

  Now I’d promised Marvin I’d go out early but I was late and I felt bad for it, ’specially thinkin ’bout the money I could’f made. So after I got home I run down there. He was still out going his rounds, Miss Norris told me, so all I did was step out to the parking lot alongside and sit there, my back against the wall, my ass on the ground, feeling a shitload of gravel through my pants, chucking bits of that gravel at a sheared-off pipe I seen to see how many I could get in.

  After about twenty minutes Marvin drove up.

  He parked at the curb but then when he seen me he pulled in the lot and stopped right acrost from me. I’d been sitting there awhile and maybe I was worried about Leezie or thinking ’bout seeing that man last night, but Marvin looked at me like there was something wrong with my face, like I felt terrible, I mean, and he said, So, Billy, I guess you heard.

  Now I did feel bad. Sort’f dreadful. I just looked at him and groaned, Oh God, Marvin, now what?

  He looked a little surprised.

  You don’t know?

  He didn’t say nothing more, just reached aside. And when his hand come back up he was holding a piece of paper with Jimmy Brest’s face printed on it, under where big black letters wrote M-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  We drove and I was staring forward, looking at this piece of dashboard where the vinyl was cracked and had yellow foam in it, all tore up and brown at the edges under the crack. We’d go a block, stop, I’d jump out and tape a flyer, get back in, go another block, jump back out. That’s how it went. We didn’t talk at all, me and Marvin.

  The street was bright, with the green of the trees all spread over it, and flashes of sunlight comin’ through the leaves. The houses looked empty and clean and white under the gray roofs, set back far on the wide green lawns, no lawn furniture ’cause it ain’t allowed around here, not on front lawns, no jungle gyms, neither, or kiddie pools, nothing to play on, just grass and flowers and ivy and trees everywhere thick as you please.

  We got stopped three times. First by people in their yards who came over and talked about Jimmy Brest and the last time they seen him and where. Word was generally that he must still be around, that even if he was captured and kidnapped by this killer he had to still be in the neighborhood or in town at least, because here’s where Tommy Evans was found. So even though there was this sense of him being already dead, there was the idea that maybe he’d be found, or the man who took him would. Day was sunny and I remember ’specially how when we talked the people was always in the sun, holding hands up to cover their eyes but it weren’t any good, and they were squinting like they hurt, their eyes, I mean, and the streets and houses all seemed empty in rows behind’m.

  Third time we was stopped it was a cop. He asked Marvin what he was doing with me, and we both told’m no Marvin ain’t doing nothing wrong and we knowed each other real good and was even the ones hanging the flyers for Jimmy Brest and showed’m a bunch of’m. But this cop was young and dumb and new and looking for something to do, so he radioed in and wouldn’t let us go until another cop showed up, officer named Dryker, big old cop with white hair, who knowed both Marvin and me, Marvin from just around and me from when he caught me once taking eggs off porches.

  We talked and he asked us both if we knowed Brest and when we last seen him. I told him I did know him but hadn’t seen him awhile, and Marvin said pretty much the same. Then looking at me, Dryker said what a wiseass I thought I was but that this man out there was killing boys and for me to mind the curfew, which was now an hour earlier, five o’clock. I said, Yessir, I will, sir, or something like that, and he went off.

  Day after that was when they found Tuckie Brenner in Florida.

  Florida.

  So he ain’t around here, that Jimmy Brest, Marvin said. He was driving, looking on at the street. I was looking at the foam piece.


  Yeah, I said.

  Could be here. Could be in Florida. Could be anywhere.

  Yeah, I said.

  They hadn’t found all Tuckie Brenner, just a piece of’m, and that was three weeks back from when we was driving around now. Took’m three weeks, Florida cops, I mean, to identify out who it was.

  We didn’t talk about that, though. Just drove. I weren’t feeling at all good. I mean I felt real bad, but couldn’t say why, and I couldn’t talk much, or even look at anybody. And I guess Marvin, he noticed, ’cause after a bit he pulls the van to the side of the street and he stops and looks at me.

  Billy?

  Yar? I said.

  You didn’t get along with this Brest boy, did you?

  No, I said.

  He watched me a minute, Marvin, me just sitting there sort’f blank-faced and staring at the foam piece, and then he talked, low and smooth, almost a whisper to his voice.

  Billy, one thing you gotta know is, what you do or say, it don’t mean shit ’bout what’s real. You understand that?

  I didn’t say anything and he said, Fact is, you can even kill a man and it ain’t real. I mean it ain’t nothing you wanted to do, ain’t nothing you meant to do, but just something you had to do, ’cause that’s the way things were. War taught me that. Life—it all fucked up. Once you know that, things go easier. You can get complicated all you want but that ain’t gonna help. You just gotta know it. ’Cause what I’m saying is, what you said or done or what he said or done, that don’t mean shit now. What you been ain’t what you are. Understand? Most men take their whole life to learn that. But you gotta learn it right now. You hear what I’m saying?

  I hear, I said.

  So it don’t matter what you ever thought about him. You didn’t do this, Billy, even if you wished it. You understand?

  I sat still a minute then, just looking at him, and he never took his eyes off me.