Authors: G.M. Ford
Randy looked up into the boy’s brown eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m scared.”
“Doan worry ’bout it, dog. I been scared long as I can remember. Scared ’bout what that dumb ho gonna do wid me next. Scared some john gonna fuck her up more dan she already fucked up. Scared of the cops. Scared of the welfare people. I been scared of all dat shit my whole damn life.”
“Kid your age, that’s not right.”
“Right got nothin’ to do wid nothin’,” the boy said. “There’s what is and what ain’t.” He cut the air with his bare Popsicle stick.
“That’s the whole show right dere.”
Randy kept his gaze pinned on the boy. Behind the bravado was . . . was something else . . . terror probably. He wondered how a kid this age had managed to lose all sense of the ideal. How his short life had managed to extinguish that flickering sense of fairness most people carry inside themselves forever. That instinctual scale of justice with which people persistently refuse to part, no matter how many times they’ve been told that “life isn’t fair” or they “gotta roll with the punches” or any of the million other phrases designed to snuff out the eternal flame of how things actually “should” be. Randy slid down off the table. “I’ll be back,” he said.
“Good luck, dog,” Acey said as Randy walked away. The sun was behind him as he crossed the street, stepped over the patch of grass separating the street from the sidewalk, where, for some reason, he thought of Shirley and all the odd funny things she had to say. He wondered how so much inner grace could have been contained in such an ungraceful exterior. He started to think it wasn’t fair but cut himself off midthought with a bitter laugh. Once on the sidewalk, he stopped walking and looked back at the park. He was barely able to make out Acey in the gloom of foliage. The boy waved him forward. He took a step. His head swam. He thought he might pass out.
A single electronic whoop broke the spell. Randy looked over his shoulder just in time to watch a private security vehicle slide to a stop. The passenger side window slid down. The uniformed driver leaned over far enough to look Randy in the eye. He was black as the Beach Commons security car and just about as shiny.
“Help you, sir?” The voice asked not so much if Randy needed assistance but instead tacitly demanded an explanation for his presence on the street.
“Visiting friends,” Randy said with a car salesman smile.
“Who would that be?”
“Four thirty-two Water Street.” Randy anticipated the next question. “Wesley Howard.”
The guy pushed a few buttons on his dashboard computer, then looked up.
“Have a nice day, sir,” he said without conviction. The window slid up. The car drove silently off down Water Street. Randy stood and watched until the car turned right two blocks down and disappeared from view. Over in the park, Acey was on his feet now, standing with his hands on his hips, poised and ready to run. Randy gave him a wave and received one in return. He watched as the boy climbed back on the table and sat down, then turned and continued down the sidewalk to 432, where he mounted the small porch and rang the bell. He was about to ring again when he heard the rattling of a chain followed by the snapping of a bolt. The door eased open. One of the girls held the door in both hands. She had what he thought were the bluest eyes he had ever seen. For a moment he wondered if everybody didn’t start their lives with radiant eyes, only to have time and circumstance, little by little, dim the glow, to the point where the so-called windows of the soul came to function more like barricades.
“Is your mom or dad home?” Randy asked.
Opening her mouth to speak revealed a mouthful of clear plastic braces. “I’ll get her,” the girl said, running off toward the back of the house, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she half ran, half skipped around the corner. The sight tightened Randy’s chest. Her long graceful limbs suggested she was going to be tall, like her mother. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the growing knot of tension between his shoulder blades. The woman came around the corner alone.
Up close, she was prettier than she’d appeared at a distance, and although the girls had inherited her height and coloring, the similarity ended there. Her narrow features spoke of a Scandinavian background. The girls, on the other hand, were, to his eye, destined to a wider, more . . . more . . . He couldn’t find the word.
“Yes?” she said.
Randy swallowed. Whatever he had imagined he was going to say at this most important moment burst from the thicket of his mind like a covey of startled birds. He waited for the feathers to settle, held up a finger, and managed a weak smile.
“I was looking for Wesley Howard,” he managed finally. She turned her head and called over her shoulder. “Wes,” she called. “Wes.”
He watched the cords in her neck bow as she called out the name. Something in her tone set Randy’s teeth on edge, as if a great distance existed between the woman and whomever she was calling to. One of the twins danced back and forth behind her mother. Footfalls padded their way to Randy’s ears. She looked over her shoulder again.
“Here he comes,” she said without a shred of enthusiasm. She stepped back from the door, allowing a thickset specimen to plug the gap. “He was asking for you,” Randy heard her say to the man’s back.
“Can I help you?” the man asked. He looked Randy up and down, like there was going to be a test on it later. He had the look of a boozer. Running to fat, red-faced, with one of those wide stippled noses that reminded Randy of a golf ball.
“Hey, ah . . .” Randy stammered, still smiling, “I was looking for a person named Wesley Howard . . . guy I was in the service with . . . I was hoping . . . that maybe you were . . .”
“Never been in the service,” the guy snapped. “Wish I could help you . . .”
A muted voice in his head was telling him to watch the woman, to move his attention to the back of the stage, where the blond wife lingered stiff-legged and alert, and then yet another row back, where one of the girls skittered back and forth like a frightened fawn using the trees for cover.
Wes started to close the door. Randy stepped forward and put his face in the way.
The guy stopped the swinging door about an inch from Randy’s nose.
“I don’t suppose you’d know of anybody else of—” “Lots of guys with my name. Good luck.”
Randy pulled his face back just in time to avoid getting his nose broken. He listened as the chain was put in place and the door bolted. The last image . . . the look in the woman’s eyes in the second before the door closed spoke of something. . . He turned away from the door, walked down the pair of steps, and retraced his route. Instead of crossing the street to the park, he meandered all the way to the next corner, past the Mercedes and all the way around the block, so’s he could approach Acey and the park unseen. “They was lookin’,” Acey said as Randy sat on the table next to him. “Lookin’ fo’ a fuckin’ long time.”
“Huh?”
“They was peekin’ out though the curtains. I seen ’em.”
Randy dropped his head into his hands. He ran his fingers through his hair.
“So?” the boy asked.
“Not the right one,” Randy said.
“What? Da bitch got her a new man. So what?”
“Her man’s name is Wesley Howard,” Randy said.
“Shit,” the kid said. “What we gonna do?”
Randy thought it over. “Let’s go to the beach,” he said.
Junior Harris and his chickens had been right on the money. Randy found his dream beach in just under an hour. He’d started out south and worked his way north until the tower was just the right size. By the time he was certain he was in the right place, the sun was getting low on the western horizon. The sand was dull yellow and sharp to the feet as if some ocean creature had ground seashells in its gullet and then cast them up, half digested, onto the waiting shore. What Randy had imagined to be a distracting hour of throwing a Frisbee on the beach had run into a few snags. First off, they had to go to three stores to find a white Frisbee. The first two stores had Frisbees all right, but none of them were the obligatory white. Second, Acey, despite having been born and raised in Florida, had never been to the beach in his life and had most certainly never thrown a Frisbee. Took Randy fifteen minutes to talk him into removing his sneakers and wiggling his bare toes in the sand. Another five or so to get him to dip a toe into the water, and then when he decided he liked the experience, another half hour to find and buy him a proper bathing suit.
And so, as the last of the sunset doused itself to gray, Randy had yet to throw his newly acquired toy, but had instead spent the past hour watching a kid getting a chance to be a kid, maybe, if he were forced to guess, for the first time.
He’d lounged in the rough sand watching the boy fight epic battles with the waves, marveling at the kid’s energy and wondering what in hell he was going to do next. All he could think of was to get a room for the night and to get up in the morning and take Acey to his auntie. And then? And then what? He had no idea what came next. As of a couple hours ago, he was coming from nowhere and headed nowhere. The thought made him feel sick to his stomach. To the west, out over the tops of the shops and hotels, the day had turned purple, and the transitory warmth of spring had bolted town with the light. The kid’s teeth were chattering like castanets as the pair crossed the four-lane boulevard and hurried toward the Mercedes. As they approached the car, Randy pushed the button for the trunk, hoping he might get lucky and find a shirt or a blanket or something to help keep the kid warm until they got settled in a hotel room.
And there it was, a black wool blanket with matching fringe all the way around the edges, the kind of thing old codgers threw over their arthritic knees to keep warm. He reached in and snatched the blanket, snapping it like a whip to remove anything loose and along for the ride.
In a single motion, Randy settled the blanket around the kid’s shoulders and reached to close the trunk. Two green gym bags, much like his own but bigger, rested in the center of the trunk. He reached out and touched the nearest bag, pushing down on the shiny fabric with the flat of his hand, expecting whatever was inside to give. Nope.
Whatever was inside was solid and square. Randy checked the street and told the kid to get in the car. The street was empty. Other than his lower jaw, which was still vibrating his teeth together, the kid didn’t so much as flinch. Instead he bellied up to the trunk and peered inside. “Oh fuck,” he whispered.
Randy’s diaphragm froze. “Something I should know?” he croaked.
“That pimp fuck in Atlanta . . .”
“What’s his name?”
“Tyrone,” the boy said.
“What about him.”
“He sell a lotta rock.”
“And . . . you think what?”
“Sometimes—” He stopped, took a couple of breaths, and then went on. “Sometimes he get his rock from that Berry motherfucker.”
He pointed at the bag. “I seen him usin’ that bag before.”
“Seen who?”
“Berry.”
“With this Tyrone guy?”
“Yeah.”
“When was that?”
The boy turned away and didn’t answer. Randy opened his mouth to question the boy further, and then had a lightbulb come on in his head. Only way the kid could know what transpired between Chester Berry and this guy Tyrone when they were up in Atlanta was if he’d been there himself. Like maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d been used to pay his mama’s crack bills. Randy’s already queasy stomach rolled at the thought.
He reached for the bag and pulled back the long central zipper. Blocks of compacted white powder filled half the interior. Bundled in plastic wrap and sealed in freezer bags, the blocks emitted a vaguely medicinal odor, something like ether maybe. The other bag was full of money. Hundreds, all banded up nice and neat into thousands, then those rubber-banded into ten thousands. Lots of them. He took hold of the tab and pulled, but the zipper stuck. He leaned in and brought his other hand to bear. That’s when he noticed each brick of cocaine had a stiff cardboard tag tied to it. He turned the nearest tag. Read the cramped script. Property Room, Dade County Police. A name, an intake date, a court date, a case number, the whole nine yards. He zipped the bag and slammed the trunk with a bang.
“Lotta bad motherfuckers gonna be lookin’ for us, dog. Doan nobody be walkin’ off ’n Tyrone’s coke and live to talk about it.”
Randy pushed the green button. “Get in the car,” he said. This time the kid did as he was told.
The Excelsior Palms Hotel was three blocks off the beach; a crumbling remnant of the Rat Pack period, it professed an Art Deco motif, which was accurate only insofar as one never looked closely at anything in particular, and thus never quite internalized the degree of decay present in nearly every object.
Acey had wanted to simply get dressed. Randy had to work to convince him of the abrasive nature of sand and that a shower was in order. Apparently, the warm water had loosened his thought processes. When he came out of the bathroom, his eyes were hard as gravel. “They gonna kill our ass fo’ sure.”
“Not if they don’t catch us.”
The kid was shaking his head before Randy finished. His lower jaw was shaking, but it wasn’t from the cold this time. There was panic in his voice. “They gonna kill my mama.”
“Why would they do that?”
“’Cause they know where she is, dog.”
“She didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Doan matter to these people, dog. They gotta send a message.
‘Nobody fucks wid Tyrone.’ Period. End of fucking story.”
“I thought you were through with her.”
“Fuck that,” he spat. “She’s my mama.” He was about to cry.
“These people . . . they can’t find you . . . they kill everybody you know. They doan give a shit. They gonna keep killing people till dey get what dey lookin’ for.”
“First thing in the morning,” Randy said.
The kid thought it over. “First thing,” he said. Randy looked him in the eye. “First thing. We get you to your mama and we get rid of that car.”