“And a’course I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that,” BJ continued, though he did seem to grab on to her hand a little tighter and the clamminess was entirely gone, making the experience that much more pleasant. “But I have been thinking, Stella, I’d sure like to get to … ah…”
His voice trailed off and his pace slowed a bit as they approached the park, a little triangular affair in what was once probably the center of town but, now that strip malls had siphoned much of the business a few blocks away, lay shadowed and abandoned on the back side of the imposing limestone town hall. It looked like the local garden club hadn’t visited in a while, either; the lowest branches of a ring of untrimmed fir trees bowed down close to the ground, shielding much of the center of the park from view. Only by peeking between the boughs did Stella glimpse the marble obelisk rising in the center of a number of benches.
It was the occupants of these benches that had given BJ pause. Four heads bent over an object that was blocked from their line of vision, but the hunching of shoulders and general furtive air did suggest that something illicit was going on.
“That sure does look like that Groffe boy,” BJ added. Stella murmured her agreement. Since Noelle had taken on the supervising of the boy’s grooming—Noelle being in the beauty business and viewing Todd as a sort of brother she never had—it was hard to miss his hair, which had a sort of punky two-tone look and reached down around his shoulders. There was also the matter of his shoes, giant boatlike sneakers, which looked like they belonged on someone twice his size, and which were visible under the bench, along with three other pairs of similarly outsized and unlaced shoes.
Next to him, the tallest of the four boys looked like a sure bet for Luka, and Stella was pretty sure she remembered that blue shirt.
Positive enough ID for her.
“Um, BJ, I wonder, would you mind waiting here for a moment?” Stella asked, gently disentangling her hand from his. “Here” was a cracked segment of sidewalk beneath a lilac bush, so it had the advantage of being pleasantly fragranced, and Stella hoped she wouldn’t be long—hoped, in fact, that she was wrong entirely about what she thought she was seeing.
“Sure, Stella,” BJ said doubtfully. It would take too much time—and be a bad idea for lots of other reasons—for Stella to explain that she had become awfully good at sneaking up on people, and that that was a task best done solo, so she set off on her own, sticking to the inside edge of the sidewalk that was shaded by overhangs and awnings, until she was situated behind one of the fir trees and had a clear view of what was going on.
Her heart sank to see Luka holding up a little plastic bag. While Stella couldn’t make out the contents, she did note that one of the other boys was smoothing out a stack of crumpled bills. As she watched, Luka palmed it smoothly, and the boy stuffed the bag into the pocket of his jeans.
No time to waste. Stella sprang out of her hiding spot with the focused release of energy that she’d been practicing on the heavy bag during the warrior burst drill. In half a dozen nimble steps she was ideally positioned to deliver a groin kick to the buyer. Before any of the others had time to react, the boy was doubled over, clutching himself and moaning.
“Awww, no, man,” Todd exclaimed. “Shit, Stella—really?”
“Yes, really,” Stella said, puffing from exertion while she grabbed the downed boy’s hands behind his back.
“What the hell?” Luka demanded, as the fourth boy squeaked with surprise and fear and took off at a sprint.
“Don’t bother running,” Todd said gloomily. “She’ll find you. I know she don’t look like much, but trust me on this, man.”
“Look, Mrs. Hardesty, I don’t know what you think you saw,” Luka said, talking fast, “but me and Todd and these guys, we were, uh, just talking about these codes? For Final Fantasy?”
“Can it, I’m in no mood,” Stella snapped and gave the boy’s arms a firm upward yank. He howled as Stella dug in his pocket and pulled out the ziplock bag.
Pills.
“Oh, good lord,” Stella sighed. “Todd, I don’t got my specs—read me what they say.”
“Those are for allergies,” Luka said quickly. “He ran out and—”
“I said shut the fuck up,” Stella snapped.
Todd took the little bag and squinted at it. “Wyeth,” he read in a resigned tone. “Got a big
A
on the other side.”
“No fucking way. Ativan?” she demanded. “Tranks? Do you have any idea what those can do to you, young man?”
The boy shook his head vigorously.
“I want the rest,” Stella said, holding out her hand.
“Now.”
Luka hesitated, then started digging around in his own jeans.
“Now listen here,” she said to the boy while she waited. “I’m DEA. Special division. It ain’t just me, either, there’s a whole bunch of us old ladies have got dispatched up here. So every time you’re tempted to buy yourself a quick little high, you think about the lady you seen in line at the grocery or next to your family in church or helping on the playground at your little brother’s school, and you remember that could be one of us.”
The boy nodded vigorously.
“This Russian shit they’re importing, it’s all fake,” Stella continued. “You can’t ever know for sure what it’s gonna do to you. Sad case last week, boy about your age, over in a little town to the north of here—thought he was getting Concerta and ended up with his balls shriveled up about as big as a couple of grapes. Doctors sayin’ the damage is permanent, too—they ain’t ever gonna
un
shrink. You want that to happen to you?”
The boy shook his head so hard it was a wonder it didn’t fall off his neck, and after a final “ow”-inducing squeeze Stella released him. He took off down the street, never once looking back.
Then Stella regarded the two remaining boys with narrowed eyes. “I’m gonna get up now, and sit my ass down on the bench, ’cause crouching down like this is hell on my back. I can count on you two to stay put, can’t I?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Todd said glumly.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Stella asked, addressing Luka. “You’re getting it from back home?”
“Yes,” Luka sighed.
Stella knew a little bit about the prescription drug market, having learned more than she cared to a while back when a good friend of hers had gotten himself hooked and subsequently unhooked from painkillers only to find himself accused of having killed someone while he was out-of-his-mind high.
“You got a friend sending it to you? What’s it cost, anyway, them two pills you just charged that boy thirty bucks for?”
“About … forty cents,” Luka said, “but you got to think about all the overhead, the postage—”
“Leaving you about what, a fifty thousand percent profit or something, right? Which I can understand would make this little business of yours pretty irresistible and all. But here’s something you don’t know. There’s folks who got here before you, the ones who gave the people in this town their first taste of diazepam or Rohypnol or hydrocodone, convinced them they liked it enough to spend their hard-earned money—or allowance, as the case may be—on the shit. Laid the foundation, so to speak. Primed the pump. And how do you think they’re gonna feel about you coming along after they’ve put in all that work and just start milking the cash cow? Hmm?”
Luka was staring at her as though a horn had sprouted in the middle of her forehead. “I thought you were, like, Chip’s grandmother or something.”
“
Grandmother?
What the hell, I’m fifty years old”—for a few more hours, anyway—“and Chip can’t be more than thirty, so how the fuck would I be his
grandmother
?”
“Okay, aunt. Whatever.”
Stella took a moment to let her irritation simmer down. She’d expected Luka to be a bit more easily intimidated, but he stared at her with wide and curious brown eyes and no trace of fear. “Look here, do you not understand what I’m telling you? When I say you’re horning in on someone else’s territory, I’m not exactly talking about a vacuum cleaner salesman. These are big-time dealers, gangbangers, who’ve come up from the city looking to expand their reach into these little hick towns. Just because it’s a small town don’t mean they operate any different.”
“I’m not scared,” Luka said. Todd was watching the conversation between them, head bobbing like a fan at a tennis match, not saying a word. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, Mrs. Hardesty, but they’ve already come around and told me to stop, but this is America, yes? They can drive by and kill me in any city, anytime. In America you have to accept violence as part of the society. Like taxes.”
“Is that what they teach you over there? Along with very nice English, I got to give you that, but do you really—wait a minute.” Realization flooded through Stella like an ice-water bath. “When they snatched Todd. That was them, wasn’t it? Your gangbangers?”
“How should I know, I wasn’t there,” Luka said with maddening calm. “I was asleep. Besides, I sleep with a knife.”
He slid a wicked-looking curved-blade hunting knife from a holster hidden under his jeans, his moves so unflinching and steady that any doubts Stella had about his bravery were put to rest. “Let me explain something to you. In Russia, I was selling DVDs since I was nine. We knew this guy, he’d get bootleg copies of new-release American films. The sound was shitty, it was just some guy taking film in a movie theater, you could see people’s heads, but we sold them for two dollars. Alexi, he let us keep seventy-five cents. That’s enough to feed a family over there, and lots of nights it did.”
Despite herself, Stella was fascinated. It took a little work, but eventually she got the rest of the story out of him. After everything went digital, and the market for DVDs dried up, he switched to selling knockoff prescription drugs.
“Wow…” Stella said when he finished.
“Look, don’t think you got a right to judge us. Mom’s not asking for a free ride.”
“And you like Chip?”
“He’s all right.”
Stella figured that was the closest thing to an endorsement she was going to get. “Okay, let’s go. You two are coming with me.”
Stella didn’t expect them to be happy about it, but when Luka stayed where he was, slouching back against the bench with his arms folded across his chest, Todd hesitated, too.
“Oh, hell. Seriously?”
“Stella, he’s fine, don’t make him—”
Stella’s arm shot out nearly as fast as it had the first time, and she grabbed the fine downy hairs at the nape of Todd’s neck, twisted them around her pointer finger, and gave them a good yank. Todd squawked like a stuck pig, and Stella kept up the pressure, dragging him up from the bench.
“Just defy me one more time, I’m asking you, Todd Groffe, because I cannot wait to tell your mom I been covering for your ass all this way up here and through all your shenanigans by mistake, and that you was evading the sheriff so’s you could vandalize your dad’s property in a cold and premeditated fashion. Because Kemper Boys’ Academy? They got a bunk just waiting for you, bucko, and unlike what your pal Luka here’s evidently used to, seventy-five cents won’t buy you a whole lot there except a package of stale Cheez-Its.”
Todd was trying to wrench himself free of Stella’s grip, mewling while tears of pain streamed down his face, but the more he fought her the tighter his hair coiled around her finger.
“As for
you,
” she told Luka, “I’m sure you’re a nice young man, and you’ve been through a heck of a lot, and I salute your mama for her patience and dedication. Only, you’re not
my
kid. So I don’t got to try it the hard way first. I can go straight to the tough love without a second thought. Now, I’m taking Todd with me. You’re gonna come home and stay there, and you’re not coming out again until we get a few things worked out.”
Stella was relieved when both boys shuffled after her when she started walking away. She wasn’t sure about Luka, who was as cynical as any grown man she’d ever met—but then again he was still a kid in many ways, with the faint speckling of acne along his hairline, the wad of gum in his cheek, the baggy jeans that hung low on his narrow ass. He stayed close as he shuffled along behind Todd, and Stella felt herself soften a little.
“I realize you’re some sort of teenage thug where you’re from,” Stella said. “Maybe you
are
that tough, I don’t know. But here’s what I do know. Your mom is important to someone who is important to me. And he has asked me to help. And I’m going to do so, whether you like it or not, and whether you like my ways or not. I’m not really DEA—”
“Well, no shit, Stella, I think he knows that,” Todd interrupted.
“—but I am a little more capable of defending myself and the people I care about than the average middle-aged lady. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Luka regarded her skeptically. “I guess, but I think you’re overreacting here. It’s just a—”
Stella felt her reserves of patience quickly emptying. “What it
is
is, it’s not your place to judge. You are still a minor. In this country, that means that grown-up people are still in charge of you. Specifically your mom. Do you have any idea—I mean, you of all people should understand the sacrifices she’s gone through for you. To make a better life for you. Do you realize, if you play your cards right”—and if Benton’s dead body went undiscovered, and Chip and Natalya remained unaccused of murder, and the INS viewed any future applications for permanent residency favorably, and Natalya obtained a divorce from a man who the rest of the world considered merely disappeared, not dead—all significant challenges, Stella had to admit—“then you have a chance at growing up in this country, going to college here, getting a job in a field of your choosing that is
not
against the law. I mean … Luka, you got a shot at the American
dream
here.”
Stella was getting herself so worked up that beads of perspiration popped out along her forehead. She was as patriotic as the next person, but the idea of kids forced to sell drugs on the cold and forbidding streets of an indifferent and hostile nation was enough to make her practically tearful. “Don’t you see,” she finished hoarsely, “if you don’t fuck things up, you could
be
somebody.”