Crying Wolf (24 page)

“I'm not surprised,” said Uzig.

Demand curve. How sharp was that? Freedy thought of a selling point, remembered someone saying it, really, but it was a good one just the same. “Kids love 'em.”

“I don't have kids,” said Uzig.

Silence. They looked at each other. Freedy got a very weird feeling: like he was seeing into his own eyes. Reverb, reverb, reverb. That was the feeling. His own eyes resembled the eyes of some British actor, according to his mother. He tried to remember British actor names, came up with only one, the James Bond guy. Were his eyes like the James Bond guy's? Were Uzig's? Freedy didn't know. Still, it couldn't be bad. The James Bond guy was a big star.

“No kids,” said Freedy. “That's a shame.” Just toying now. Toying, which proved he was as smart as, maybe smarter than, a college professor. Came by it honestly. That was a good one. “But you know what would be even more of a shame?” he said. “Even more of a shame than having no kids?”

Uzig watched him. His face was still, hard to read. Hard to read if that reverb thing hadn't been going on. But it was, so Freedy knew him through and through. It was sweet, knowing everything about the other guy when he knew nothing about you; especially when it was a father-son deal. How about that for a mindblower?

“What would be even more of a shame?” Uzig said at last.

“Not to have a pool in a space like this.”
Space
was the word you used—Freedy'd watched an architect use it over and over on a woman in Palos Verdes. “A crying shame. That's what it would be.”

“What do you propose?”

Freedy liked that. It made him want to clap Uzig on the back and say,
I get the feeling this is the start of something good.
It made him want to, so he did; even the clap-on-the-back part, maybe a little harder than he'd meant, but still well within the boundary of two guys hanging out, father-and-son style. “I propose to build you a pool you'll never forget,” Freedy said. He held out his hand. After a second or two, Uzig extended his. They shook. The old man didn't have much of a grip, and Freedy did his best to back off on the squeezing part. “How about I throw some specs together and get back to you?” he said.

“As you wish,” said Uzig.

Which Freedy took for yes. He tried to think of something else to say, some way to extend the conversation. Or maybe Uzig would say something. But he didn't, so Freedy finally said, “Get back to you then. Real soon.” Plenty of opportunity for conversation in the future. He walked home, down College Hill, across the tracks, into the flats, jazzed all the way.

* * *

S
he was on the kitchen phone when he went in, up early for her. Saw him, said something quick and low into the phone, hung up.

“Freedy,” she said.

“The one and only.”

“I'm . . . glad you're home. We should have a little talk.”

Fine with him. He had lots to tell her. Should he hit her with the whole thing at once, or—

But she spoke first. “I—we've had some good news, Freedy.”

“Yeah?”

“The fact is . . .” She bit her lip. “Maybe artists shouldn't even have children at all.”

Stoned again. Out of her goddamn mind. He would have pushed past her, gone into his room, except for that good-news part. He waited instead.

“Do you know that song, Freedy, ‘Last Thing on My Mind'?” She started singing, in a little-girl voice that irritated him even more than normal singing: “ ‘Could have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind, you know that was the last . . .' ”. Her voice trailed off.

Pathetic. He could see Leo Uzig as his father, especially after the reverb thing. What didn't add up was her as the mother.

“But now maybe I can make it up to you,” she said. “The fact is, I've come into a little money.”

“How much?”

“Some. I know you don't like it here.”

“Who said that?”

“You, Freedy. What with the cold and the lack of opportunity. Maybe I could help . . . set you up. In a warmer place, if you had some idea.”

“What kind of idea?”

“About what you'd like to do.”

Yes, a lucky day. What was it all about? Choice. He heard that all the time. Bill Gates, all the others, they had choices, they chose from different possibilities. Malibu, Miami, Mediterranean: choice. “I've got some ideas,” Freedy said. “How much are we talking about?”

“Some,” she said again.

“Can't start a pool—” Whoa, don't give anything away. “
Some
won't cut it in the business world.”

“What . . . what would be a likely amount?”

“Depends what's available.”

Her eyes went to the phone. What was she going to do, call the bank? Had to be a dope deal, although he couldn't imagine her making a big score.

“How would ten thousand do?”

Meaning there had to be four or five times that. Freedy was impressed. “Be a start,” he said.

She nodded, like it wasn't out of the question, like it could happen.

“There'll be some travel expenses too,” Freedy said.

“To where?”

“Florida.” Said it out loud. It was real, a real choice. “Let's call it another two.”

“Two?”

“G's.”

She nodded again. Should have said three, four, even five.

“When can I have it?”

She glanced at the phone again, opened her mouth to reply. Freedy heard a car door close.

He went to the window. A state police cruiser was parked on the street, a statie coming up the walk, but slow because she hadn't shoveled. Freedy's first thought:
there goes the dope deal.
Then he got a good look at the statie's face: the same statie who'd eyed him in the men's room of the stripper bar. He backed away from the window.

Didn't make sense. Ronnie had filed a complaint? What was wrong with him? Did he want to get seriously hurt? That wasn't Ronnie. But if not Ronnie, what?

No time to figure it out now. He turned to her; her mouth was still open. “I've gone back to California,” Freedy said.

“Not Florida?”

“That's just what to tell him, for fuck sake. Address unknown.”

“Tell who, Freedy?”

There was a knock on the door. Freedy could move. He moved: down the hall to his bedroom, out the window, into the backyard, through some trees, angling toward the river; heading for Ronnie's. Nothing to it; but he was pissed. This was supposed to be a lucky day.

But as for getting away clean, that was never in doubt. Freedy had only one bad moment, when a helicopter suddenly appeared. What was this? LA? It swept low over the river, passed above him at treetop level, close enough for him to see it had no police markings; no markings at all, except a big black
Z
.

“You must become who you are.” Identify the quotation and relate to the concept of the Superman.

—Final exam question 1, Philosophy 322

T
hat Ronnie.

Just when things were getting promising, just when Freedy's hard work was starting to pay off, who fucks it all up but Ronnie? Calling the cops? Calling the cops because he was too clumsy to avoid bumping his head on a laptop? This wasn't like the hairy thing under Ronnie's lower lip, or the girl from Fitchville South, both a bit funny in a pathetic way. There was nothing funny about this. Calling the cops about a private matter crossed the line—everyone in the flats knew that, and no one would blame Freedy, whatever he did. Ronnie was a disgrace.

The slider to Ronnie's basement was open a foot or so, off the track, askew. Ronnie had probably gone back to bed, was probably still asleep, maybe even with the girl. Was it a school day? Freedy realized he didn't know what day it was. Cool, in a way. Did the wolf keep track of the goddamn days, or the tiger?

Freedy went in, saw the weights lying around, saw someone's cut-off sweatshirt—his Planet Hollywood sweatshirt, found by some pool in the Valley, how the hell did that get here?—on the bench press, heard water dripping. He went upstairs to the kitchen.

All quiet, the fridge still humming away, the tub of KFC on the table. Freedy couldn't remember taking it out of the fridge, but maybe he had. He helped himself to another drumstick, then noticed the laptop, still lying open and unblinking on the floor. Drumstick in hand, he went down the hall to Ronnie's bedroom. Door closed. He opened it, went in.

Ronnie was back in bed all right, and alone. Eyes closed, maybe sleeping. Oh yeah—and his head was all wrapped in bandages. Freedy moved to the side of the bed. “Ronnie?” he said, swallowed what he was chewing, and said it again, more clearly, “Ronnie?”

No response, like he was in a . . . coma, or something. Impossible. Not even Ronnie. Freedy was thinking about giving him a little pat, a little poke, a little shake, when he heard footsteps in the hall; very light footsteps, but would anyone be surprised to learn that Freedy's hearing was second to none? That was why he was already turned toward the door, readying some high-school joke for the Cheryl Ann substitute, when the footstepper walked in.

But not the girl: Saul Medeiros, Uncle Saul, gnawing on a drumstick, just like him. Saul paused, paused in midchew, and said something, possibly not clear because the drumstick got in the way. It sounded like, “Boys.”

Boys will be boys. Must be what he means,
thought Freedy, and he started to relax. The laptop incident—no more than a boys-will-be-boys thing to Uncle Saul. Saul knew what Ronnie was all about; he remembered how Saul had smiled his nicotine-colored smile when Freedy said Ronnie was a pussy. Besides, he and Saul had developed a good working relationship. Not that they'd reached the mentor stage yet, but—

Two guys appeared behind Uncle Saul.

“Look who's here, boys,” said Saul.

The two boys were big boys, one about Freedy's size, the other a lot bigger. Both wore black satin jackets with
Saul's Collision
in gold letters and crossed bowling pins on the front, plus gold crests reading
Runners-Up '99.
Freedy wanted one.

“This here's Freedy, boys,” said Saul Medeiros. “Numbnut I was tellin' you about. Don't unnerstan' the . . . what'm I tryna say? The importance of business ethics.”

The boys didn't look happy to hear it.

“How can you say that, Saul?” said Freedy.

“Mr. Medeiros,” said Saul.

“How can you say that?” said Freedy, compromising by dropping the
Saul
; at the same time glancing at the window, hoping to gauge the distance to the ground. Surprisingly far from upstairs at Ronnie's: that would be the fucking slope to the river, why Ronnie had that basement with the weights, why they were friends.

“How can I say what?”

“Ethics. When you're the one that called the cops.”

Saul and his two boys all wrinkled their foreheads. “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Saul.

“The statie over at my place right now is what I'm talking about.”

“Nothin' to do with me,” said Saul. “Never called a cop in my life, never will, except for setting up a payment or some other legitimate business purpose.” The boys nodded their heads. “So don't question my ethics. You're the one broke the laptop agreement.”

“The laptop agreement?”

“You forgot?” said Saul. “Forgot we talked about laptops, you and me? Then all of a sudden—no laptops. Okay. I'm reasonable. If there's no laptops, there's no laptops. Supply don't meet demand. Happens all the time—why you got scalpers. But if it turns out there is laptops all along, is laptops but I'm gettin' some bullshit story there isn't laptops, then what's a reasonable, ethical businessman s'posta do?”

“There were no laptops,” Freedy said.

“What's that—some hallucination on the kitchen floor?”

The boys got a kick out of that one.

“There's just the one,” Freedy said, “and it wasn't for sale.”

“How come is that?”

“I was keeping it.”

“Getting into programming?” said Saul.

The boys liked that too.

“I needed it for research,” Freedy said.

“Research?”

“Nothing you'd be interested in. It's a family matter.”

Pause. “Family.”

“Right.”

“Family,” said Saul, “is very funny coming from you.”

The boys nodded.

“What's that mean?” said Freedy.

“Means we now come to the main event, laptops being like the undercard.”

“Lost me,” said Freedy.

“Don't you worry—I'll find you,” Saul said. “Refresh your memory—didn't we talk about family, you and me? Or are you tellin' me you forgot that too? Not surprisin', your ma being a hippie cocksucker down at the old Onion. I done some checkin', unnerstan' why you might want to forget the importance of family. Forget family legends. Forget Cheryl Ann.”

Family legends? Cheryl Ann? And that wasn't very nice about his mother. Was this some kind of Portagee shit? These people were stuck in the past, going nowhere, total losers. It pissed Freedy off to be in the same conversation with them. This was America, after all. “Is this some kind of Portagee shit?” he said.

The drumstick fell from Saul's hand. “I hear you right?”

Freedy put his drumstick tidily in the ashtray by Ronnie's bed. “I mean Christ almighty, Saul, Mr. Medeiros, whatever. Is that what this is all about? Portagee shit? Were you getting a piece of Cheryl Ann too? Or—” It suddenly hit him. “—or is it the new one, the schoolgirl from Fitchville South?”

Okay, maybe he wanted that last one back. But how did that work? How did you get things back? Besides, it was another one of his amazing insights. He could believe it, Saul and the sophomore, easy. So he said it. You had to be who you are, had to be who you are and make it work for you—right from the infomercials. Nothing wrong there. But jeez, that girl from Fitchville South: how could she do it with an old prick like that, hair on his nose? Freedy found himself smiling at the thought, shaking his head, maybe not the best time for that either.

Ronnie made a little noise in his sleep, coma, whatever it was, a relaxed sound, almost happy.

“Boys,” said Saul, not loud, almost a question.

“Now, Mr. Medeiros?” said the smaller one, Freedy's size, or maybe a bit bigger, Freedy realized.

Saul stepped aside.

The boys came into Ronnie's bedroom, reaching inside their satin jackets. They pulled out tire irons. 'Course, you had a wrecking yard, you had tire irons.

Freedy felt jacked right away, like he was full of andro, stoked on meth. Was he? He'd have to think about that later. Right now he had to deal with the boys. Just because you were big, just because you were strong, just because you dug beating the shit out of somebody, just because you weren't afraid, none of that made you a fuckin' leg breaker. What made you a fuckin' leg breaker came from inside, and the boys didn't have it.

Ronnie's bedroom wasn't big. It could scarcely contain Freedy, the boys, Ronnie and his bed. But that was neither here nor there, whatever that might mean. What was here and there was the smaller of the two boys, the one just a bit bigger than Freedy, moving in on him first. No surprise there: you expected the smaller guy to be quicker. He was quick, had that tire iron swinging sideways at Freedy's head—smart, much harder to block than a high-low—had the tire iron swinging at him quick. But not crow-quick, and even crow-quick might not have been quick enough. Freedy ducked: takes some nerve to just duck, but it works. Didn't even duck a lot, only the two or three inches necessary. The tire iron actually clipped his ponytail, for a moment floating free of gravity before his ducking head pulled it down.

The smaller big boy spun halfway around from the force of the missed blow. Freedy kicked him good and hard behind the knee; weak spot on most everybody. Freedy heard a cracking sound—that Thanksgiving sound, he felt like a kid again—and the smaller big boy went down.

Bit of a surprise at that point. The bigger big boy turned out to be just as quick as the smaller one, maybe quicker. He actually connected with the tire iron, actually made Freedy feel pain, shoulder temporarily out of service, maybe the arm too. Someone shouted: might have been Freedy. Then the big boy was on him, like a house. Three hundred pounds or more, saliva slobbering down, some growling: disgusting. Three hundred pounds on top, Freedy on the bottom, one arm not in tip-top shape. Oh, yeah: and the tire iron raised up high, cocked back, now coming down at his head. But what was this? Freedy felt something funny under his hand—left hand, but that was the only one working at the moment—almost as though some angel had put it there. His fingers closed around it—the goddamn KFC chicken bone, dropped by Saul, pig that he was, and gnawed on a bit. One end could almost be called sharp. That was the end that Freedy jabbed up with, up and up with his kind of quick, right up the nose of the bigger big boy, way, way up. The bigger big boy stopped whatever he was doing at that moment, whatever he was doing consciously. The tire iron left his hand, flew across the room, crashed into something; the bigger big boy fell on Freedy, lay there still.

The boys didn't have it, not what it takes inside.

Problem was, while Freedy struggled to get out from under all that weight, he forgot about the one other guy in the room besides him who did have it inside, who was a fuckin' leg breaker, as he should have kept in mind the whole time. Just because a guy is old and scrawny and has that sickening hair growing on the top of his nose doesn't mean he hasn't got it.

Saul Medeiros kicked him real hard in the balls. The look on his face when he did it was the genuine fuckin' leg-breaker look. All the air left Freedy's lungs, and there was no hope of getting more anytime soon. Uncle Saul reared back to give him another one. He wore filthy, oil-stained shit-kickers, what you'd expect down at the wreckers.

But at that moment, when things didn't look so good, Ronnie came through for him. He sat up, squinting, and said, “Can somebody close the goddamn shade?”

Saul glanced at him, an expression on his face that might have amused Freedy at some other time. A glance that lasted for a second or less, but enough time for Freedy to dig down deep, start a sideways turn, lash out with his top leg. Not a hard lashing out, not hard for Freedy, but Saul was old and scrawny. He fell without any resistance Freedy could feel.

Saul started scrambling to get up. Freedy, still needing that breath, a little sore here and there, started getting up too, but slow, like Superman exposed to whatever that stuff was,
k
-something. Slow for Freedy and scrambling for Saul turned out to be about the same. Saul had a sharp, shiny hooked thing in his hand, something from the yard Freedy didn't even know the name of. Didn't matter. That nose with the hair growing on top? Freedy flattened it with one punch, a left hand by necessity, flattened it flush into the rest of Saul's mean little face.

That left Saul and the bigger big boy motionless on Ronnie's floor, the smaller big boy crawling on his belly toward the door making moaning sounds, Ronnie sitting up in bed, his room a mess.

“Hold it right there,” Freedy said to the smaller big boy.

“Don't,” he said, and kept moving.

Freedy went over to him, bent down.

“Don't,” said the smaller big boy.

“What are you going to do about it?” said Freedy, and he tore that black satin jacket with the gold letters and the gold crest right off the smaller big boy's back.

Freedy walked over to the bedside, putting on the jacket, not easily because of his right arm. He looked down at Ronnie. Ronnie squinted up at him.

“Freedy?”

“Yeah?”

“Mind getting me a glass of water?”

“Guess not.”

Freedy stepped over the smaller big boy and went down the hall.

“And maybe a couple aspirin,” Ronnie called after him. “In the drawer by the sink.”

Freedy came back with water and two aspirin in his hand. Ronnie took the aspirin off his open palm, gulped them down.

“Ronnie?”

“Yeah?”

“Call it even, right?”

Ronnie nodded, winced, stopped nodding.

 

D
own in Ronnie's basement, on his way out, Freedy had a moment of . . . not weakness, more like he was tired for a second, what with missing a night's sleep and all. He sat down on the bench, the padded bench they used for presses, and swallowed an andro. What was this? Three left? As for the meth, he had enough for about that many hits in the Baggie in his pocket, the main supply stowed under his bed in the “Little Boy” room. The question: was this the time to go back and get it? Saul had said he hadn't called the cops and Freedy believed him. You could say what you liked about Saul Medeiros, but he was true to his word. That meant it was some pot deal of his mother's, nothing to do with him. So it was safe to go back and get it, right?