I jumped back and whipped around, suppressing a shriek. I found myself face-to-face with the kid, his green eyes glowing in the dark like a cat’s. He was as startled to see me as I was to see him. Fortunately, neither of us was armed or we might have had a quick duel, doing each other a lot of needless harm.
“What are you doing?” he said. He sounded outraged, as if he couldn’t believe this was happening. His Mohawk was beginning to grow out and the wind was making it lean slightly to the left like a field of tall grass in one of those old commercials for Kotex. He had on a black leather motorcycle jacket and a rhinestone earring. His boots were knee-high and made of plastic scored to resemble cobra skin only looking more like psoriasis. It was hard to take this lad seriously, but in some odd way I did. I closed the shed door and snapped the padlock into place. What could he prove?
“I got curious about what you were doing back here so I thought I’d take a peek.”
“You mean you just broke in?” he said. His voice had that adolescent crack left over from puberty and his cheeks were hot pink. “You can’t do that!”
“Mike, sweetie, I just did,” I said. “You’re in big trouble.”
He stared at me for a moment, his expression blank. “You gonna call the cops?”
“Shit yes!”
“But what you did is just as much against the law as this,” he said. I could tell he was one of those bright boys accustomed to arguing righteously with adults.
“Oh crap,” I said, “wise up. I’m not going to stand out here and argue the California penal code with you. You’re dealing drugs. The cops aren’t going to care what I was up to. Maybe
I was passing by and thought you were breaking in yourself. You’re out of business, kiddo.”
His eyes took on a shrewd look and he changed his tack. “Well now, wait a minute. Don’t go so fast. Why can’t we talk about this?”
“Sure, why not? What’s to say?”
I could practically see his brain cells scurry around forming a new thought. He was no fool, but he still surprised me with the line he took. “Are you looking into Aunt Marty’s death? Is that why you’re here?”
Aunt Marty. Nice touch, I thought. I smiled briefly.
“Not quite, but that’s close enough.”
He glanced off toward the street, then down at the toe of his cobra boot. “Because I got something… you know, like some information about that.”
“What kind of information?”
“Something I never told the cops. So maybe we could make a trade,” he said. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets looking back at me. His face was innocent, his complexion clear, the look in his eyes so pure I’d have given him my firstborn if I’d had one. The little smile that crossed his face was engaging and I wondered how much money he’d made selling dope to his high-school friends. And I wondered if he was going to end up with a bullet in his head for cheating someone higher up in the scheme of things. I was interested in what he had to say and he knew it. I had to make quick peace with my own corruption and it wasn’t that hard to do. Times like this, I know I’ve been in the business too long.
“What kind of trade?”
“Just give me time to clear this stuff out before you tell anyone. I was about to lay off anyway because the narcs have some undercover agents at our school and I thought I’d cool it ‘til the pressure’s off.”
We’re not talking permanent reform here, folks. We’re talking simple expediency, but at least the kid wasn’t trying to con me … too much.
We looked at each other and something shifted. I knew I could rail and stomp and threaten him. I knew I could be pious and moralistic and disapproving and it wouldn’t change a thing. He knew the score as well as I did and what we had to offer each other might not be a bad bet on either side.
“All right, you got it,” I said.
“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” he said. “I’m freezin my nuts off.
It bothered me to realize that I’d started to like him just a little bit.
Chapter 15
We went to The Clockworks on State Street; he on his motorcycle, with me following in my car. The place is a teen hangout and looks like something out of a rock video; a long, narrow room painted charcoal gray with a high ceiling and the lighting done in pink and purple neon tubing. The whole of it resembles the interior of a clock in abstract and futuristic forms. There are mobiles looking like big black gears suspended from the ceiling, the smoke in the air moving them in slow circles. There are four small tables near the door and on the left are what look like shelves at chest height in a series of standing-room-only booths where couples can neck while drinking soda pop. The menu posted on the wall is larded with side orders like dinner salad and garlic toast that kids can snack on, paying seventy-five cents for the privilege of taking up table space for hours at a time. You can also buy two kinds of beer and a house chablis if you are old enough and have tangible proof. It was now nearly midnight and there were only two other people in the place, but the owner apparently knew Mike and his gaze slid over to me appraisingly. I tried to look like I was not Mike’s date. I didn’t mind a May/December romance now and then, but a seventeen-year-old is pushing it some. Also I’m not clear on the etiquette of making deals with junior dope peddlers. Who pays for the drinks? I didn’t want his self-image to suffer.
“What do you want?” he asked, moving toward the counter.
“Chablis is fine,” I said. He was already pulling his wallet out so I let him pay. He probably made thirty grand a year selling grass and pills. The owner looked over at me again and I waved my I.D. at him casually, indicating that he could card me, but he’d be wasting a trip across the room.
Mike came back with a plastic glass of white wine for me and a soft drink for himself. He sat down, surveying the place for narcs in disguise. He seemed strangely mature and I was having trouble dealing with the incongruity of a kid who looked like a Boy Scout and behaved like a Mafia management trainee. He turned toward me then, resting both elbows on the table. He’d taken up a sugar packet from the container on the table and he tapped it and turned it restlessly, addressing most of what he had to say to the trivia question printed on the back.
“Okay. Here’s what happened,” he said, “and I’m tellin’ you the truth. For one thing, I didn’t stash at Uncle Leonard and Aunt Marty’s until after she got killed and he moved out. Once the cops got done and everything, it occurred to me the utility shed was perfect so I moved some stuff in. Anyway, I went by the house the night she got killed… .”
“Did she know you were coming?”
“Nuh-uh, I’m getting to that. I mean, I knew they went out on Tuesday nights and I thought they’d be gone. Like, you know, if I was hard up and needed some bucks or something, I might cruise by and pick up some loose change. They kept cash around-not a lot, but enough. Or sometimes I’d take something I could unload somewhere else. Nothing they’d miss and nobody’d ever said anything about it so I figured they hadn’t tipped to it yet. Anyway what happened was I went over there that night thinking the place would be empty, but when I got there the door was open-”
“The door was standing open?”
He shook his head. “I just kind of turned the knob and it was unlocked. When I stuck my head in I knew something weird was going on….”
I waited, watching him uneasily.
He cleared his throat, looking over his shoulder at the front entrance. His voice dropped.
“I think the guy was still there, you know? The light was on in the basement and I could hear someone knocking around down there and there was this rug in the hall, like an area rug that had been thrown over something. I saw a hand sticking out with blood on it. Man, I took off.”
“You’re pretty sure she was dead at that point?”
He nodded, hanging his head. He ran a hand along the pink center divider of hair, looking off to one side. “I should’ve called the cops. I knew I should, but the whole thing really freaked me out. I hate that shit. And what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t tell the cops anything and I didn’t want ‘em looking at me, so I just kept my mouth shut. I mean, 1 couldn’t see what difference it made. I didn’t see who did it or anything like that.”