Dodgers (29 page)

East hung his head. “So when you gonna kill me?”

“Was up to me, you'd already be getting cold,” said his brother. “But I'm here on business. And I'm hungry. So let's eat.”

Early morning. So there was just one place to go. East walked Ty out to buy a box of doughnuts before the light. Ty waited down the street.

Even before six, the place was warm, confusing, alive. East stole a glance back from the counter. But he saw nothing but the windows reflecting movies of the inside.

He could run. He was faster than Ty afoot, or used to be. He knew the yards and fields here. He knew where Perry kept a key to the old truck.

But there was nothing in it, running. He could open a gap between now and his old life. But only a gap.

The doughnuts waited in their bins, blessed and bright. The counter clerk today was a thin boy, hair brushed straight up. He folded the box together, and East picked out twelve and paid.

“You get one more. Thirteen for a dozen,” the thin boy said.

East said, “No thanks.”

“What,” said the boy, “happened to your arm?”

East looked at it in the light for the first time. It was a whacked mess, the sleeve soaked and blackening. His stomach slunk downward. “Thanks,” he said.

Five people. It didn't matter who was in there or what he might have spoken out loud: they couldn't change things. But what Ty had said was right. If he were here to kill East, it already would have happened.

Though he could still take a notion.

Ty waited in a doorway, reviewing the morning
Plain Dealer.
Seeing East, he rolled the paper again and bagged it. The angle of a pistol sprang in his pants.

He fell into step beside East. “So this your house? You standing yard still?”

“Kind of the same deal.”

“Paintball? There's money in that?”

“There's money.” It would only amuse Ty if he said how little.

“What you running besides?”

“Nothing.”

“Straight up?” Ty laughed. “Huh.” They walked back along the highway without a word.

The day was coming up, black thinning to silver. The two boys crossed the damp lot, and East unlocked the door. The holiday bells rang. They'd been on there since he arrived, but weeks had gone by without his really hearing them.

Ty stalked around the place, examining the counter and the merchandise, trying on a pair of goggles. East stood watching until he felt time again, stretching long. He went to unknot the rope that slung the bag from the rafters and lower it to the floor.

Ty finished his circuit. “Now you sit down,” he said. “I brought a message.”

Gingerly East sat on one of the sofas. Ty took his perch opposite.

“Ready to listen?”

“I guess,” said East.

“Then—you're coming back. This ain't home. You don't belong here.”

East shrugged.

“The organization changed. So I came to get you. Here on, it's business.”

“Business,” East repeated blankly.

“Maybe the fat boy told you. Somebody bought The Boxes.”

“Walter told me,” East said. “So, they sold Fin out?”

“Streets and houses. Those shit holes you stand by, man,” Ty sneered. “Like this place. You remember how your place got taken down? That took five minutes. Police took two more while you were gone. It ain't even hard for them; they come before lunch. So, yeah, we sold them out.”

East shook his head.

“Things change,” Ty insisted. “They paid us like fools. Businessman from Mexico. In love with America, man. Paid us one and a half million dollars.”

East whistled. “But what's left? What's the business now?”

Ty's face tightened. “Don't you ever pay attention, man? Houses got no future. Police like hitting them, mayors like hitting them, news likes hitting them.” He wiped his mouth. “You the only one doesn't get it. Your boys, your crew? They back in school now.
Making
something of themselves.”

“What about us?”

“Us. We're making money. All that what Michael did at UCLA, we work other colleges now. Them schoolkids love weed. Smoke too much. Pay too much. They'll even go pick it up. Walter's back in school too. But he still works Saturdays at the DMV. They think he's, like, twenty-five. So far up in them computers now, they can't stop him.” Ty smiled. “You know Walter just makes up people, man.”

“He makes up licenses.”

“No. He makes people. He made you, Antoine Harris. We
talked
about this.”

East's arm smarted. “So how you gonna make money on that?”

“Shit, boy. People pay. You know what a college kid will pay to be twenty-one, have a second name? What a Mexican dude will pay to be in the computer for years going back?” Ty wiped his mouth. “People make lives on that shit.”

“Police gonna catch you on that too?”

“Walter is smart,” Ty said. “And careful. You don't even know his name.”

“Walter is his name,” snapped East.

Ty laughed in his face. “You don't listen. You don't even know who you are.”

“Your brother,” East said.

“Half brother. Right,” said Ty. “We got your mother in common. But since you always been Fin's boy, that organization gonna be yours. That's what Fin wants.”

“Fin's boy?”

Ty's face filled then, no longer just a talkative skeleton. It filled and flexed with the old hatred.

“Nigger, you know,” he said. “Half brother. But you are what I ain't.”

People had always whispered at it. But there was nothing he could trust upon. A father wasn't anyone he'd ever known.

It wasn't anything he could use now.

“We left town for that reason,” Ty said.

“What reason?”

“Protect the core.”

“The core?”

“You think Fin gonna send the four of
us
to kill a dude?” Ty said. “Makes no sense. Why not just two guns? Why not one?”

“To protect us,” East said dubiously.

“Get you out of town. Walter and you. Brains and blood.”

“But what about…” East said, and then it was as if he couldn't remember anyone's name. “What about Michael Wilson?”

“Michael Wilson was a babysitter. Bad one, we found out. He handled the polite situations. I handled the impolite ones.”

“But people higher up,” East said. “Sidney. Johnny.”

“There is no Sidney or Johnny.” Ty made a quick gesture that East didn't want to see. Something slipped, pulsed under East's ribs.

“But what about the dude?” he protested. “The judge? Why was that?”

“An excuse.”

“An excuse?”

“Prosecution got a hundred witnesses, man. They didn't need Judge Carver Thompson.”

“Why we
kill
him, then?”

“You,” said Ty.

“Me?”

“You were the only one took that seriously. It was you who kept on. Mission-focused—I hand it to you, man. Fin says something, you do it.”

Ironically Ty bowed.

“No,” East said. “That ain't how it was. Don't put it on me. We killed the man. What comes of that?”

“Nothing comes of it.”

“Nothing? People are dead now, man.”

Ty ran his fingers over the box and picked out another doughnut.

“Shit be crazy,” he said.

All that time, flickering again inside his skull. The van, the hours of country. Rolling under their wheels like wave tips passing his brown calves at the beach. The same feeling, the same dull roar, tires, water, the same laying out of light on the sand and fence posts and all there is. Lightly flying. He still felt it.

He shook his head out, the way he would sometimes after waking from a dream.

“How is Fin?”

“Fin?” Ty chewed slowly. “Two days after we left town, he turned himself in.”

“He did what?”

“He walked into a police station and sat down. Tired. Living house to house,” Ty said. “Don't think they weren't surprised, though.” He held up a finger while he worked something in his mouth. “Come back, man. It's what Fin wants. Fin
knows
you shot me. But he don't have but one bastard son.”

East rubbed his eyes. The light of day was finding the skylights.

“Terms of my employment,” said Ty, “is, I have your back.”

“I don't believe you,” he said at last.

“If I was gonna kill you,” said Ty, “this was my chance. No, come back. 'Cause Fin is giving us hell till you do.”

East stood. He tested his shaky legs. Ty made no objection to it.

“These doughnuts.” Ty was mumbling through a full mouth. “Good. I see why a girl like you would settle down.”

“I never heard you talk so much,” East said.

“Well,” said Ty, “we all got to do things we don't want to do.”

In The Boxes, when someone insulted you, you insulted them back, or if someone punched you, you punched them. But everything was subject to organization. If an insult came from inside, you threw it back. If it didn't, you found out first. Found out what you could get away with. It was possible you could get away with nothing. Possible you would need to swallow your pride.

If somebody really hurt you, bruised or beat or shot you, you didn't need to ask. Injury called for injury. No need for organization. These rules of living were inside out. These rules of living kept boys polite day to day, even if they had free rein to kill.

A brother putting a bullet into a brother was unacceptable. It had happened, no doubt. One must have had a reason. But there would be a response. East had known this without consultation. He knew it the way he knew walking, he knew language. He had come to Ohio expecting to be kicked, to be gutted, for the last bullet in the world to find him and spit in his face.

He did not expect to be fetched back. He did not expect doughnuts, still soft from the oven, or to be handed an air ticket reading
FIRST CLASS LAX DATE OPEN
with a name he'd never heard, clipped to a California state driver's license with that same name. Same name and a picture of his face, taken back one day when everything made sense.

Ty's car was a sleek gray Lincoln, parked a quarter mile down.

“How'd you get hold of this? You're thirteen.”

Ty fiddled with knobs. “You forgot my birthday. I'm fourteen now.”

That's right, fourteen now,
East thought. Both Sagittarius, born early December.

“Steal it?”

“No, man. Just a car service.” Finally Ty exploded with disgust. “Fuck this motherfucker. How you get defrost and heat at the same time?”

East flipped through the knobs, chose something. Ty shook his head and gunned the engine. It was smooth, new and powerful. “Couldn't figure out the radio either,” he confessed.

East had told a lie—that he had business to close up. Money hid and deposited, debts to be collected and paid. Otherwise, he feared Ty was just going to put him on a plane, today. It surprised him when Ty simply said okay.

As for Ty, he was flying home immediately.

“Don't make me come back,” he warned. “This car, we got one week.”

“
We
got?”

“You got six days left. More than that, I have to make a call. I
don't
want to make that call. So six days.”

“All right,” East said.

The wound was bandaged now. Ty had helped him disinfect it back at the range. The big first-aid kit had everything he needed. But picking the shirt out of the sticky, clotting blood hurt almost as much as the whupping. Ty bandaged the arm and taped it down. Squeezed it once, like a joke, and East screamed. “See?” Ty murmured. “See?”

Light rain fell. The temperature was dropping again.

“One thing I forgot to ask. How'd you
get
here?” Ty said.

East considered. This too, this memory, seemed like a train on a different track than he'd been on. “Old lady rode us to an airport. Walter flew home. Then I stole her car.”

“You stole a car?
You
stole it? From a lady who gave you a ride? Cold,” said Ty. “You get rid of it?”

“Left it two days back.”

“Two days, what?”

“Two days of walking.”

“You burned the car, right?”

“No. Left it by a police station.”

“Crazy,” Ty said. “So why you stop there? At your store, paint guns, whatever?”

East had to remember before Shandor, before Perry, when he was just a kid in the street. “I got cold, man. Cold and tired. Sign said
HELP WANTED
, so I went in.”

“I know they liked you, didn't they? Had you pushing a mop?”

East shrugged. “Hundred dollars a day.”

“White man stealing from you,” Ty jeered. “I hope you stole a little back.”

“I don't steal,” East said.

“You stole that lady's car.”

“Yeah.” East's blood quickened. “That was different.”

“Oh.”
Ty's fingers tapped the wheel. “Tell you one thing different. Bet it wasn't no white lady's car you stole.”

East shut his mouth and looked out at the dirty snow, stinging. Ty hummed. He drove fast, relaxed. Fourteen now, and he seemed to know driving by heart. He seemed to have the airport route in his head. He seemed just to pick things up like that.

East said, “Ty. Back at the gas pumps, when you held the gun on that dude. What were you thinking? What was the play?”

“You mean,” Ty said, “
before
you shot me?”

“Before I
had
to. You were out of control, man.”

“Maybe I was,” said Ty. “But come off it. Who was saving your ass, every time? In Vegas, from Michael Wilson, from that hick-ass town? And who did the job?”