Stevie waited on the sidewalk. The day was hot and the Mountain Dew sweet and cold. Sipe's always had the coldest drinks, and it was a good thing the store was so close to home.
A shadow fell across his face and Stevie looked up and saw Cody Messina standing there. The Messinas were a family Stevie wanted to avoid at all costs. They were in some kind of business that involved junk, and their yard was always a stinking mess of rusty parts of things that used to work. Cody was ten, three years older than Robert, and as mean as the Messina's Doberman, Deuce, who was kept on a chain in their backyard but who had enough chain to get to the fence and bare his teeth at whoever walked by.
“Gimme a sip,” Cody said.
No way. It wasn't just the principle of the thing, as far as Stevie understood principle. It was the thought of the gross, slobbering lips of Cody Messina on his can of Mountain Dew. There would be no drinking it after that.
Stevie was too scared to say anything. If he said no he'd probably get his jaw unhinged. And if he said yes he knew, even at five, that he'd be giving up too much of his spirit to a common bully.
Sitting cross-legged, he was also not able to get up and run. Even if he did, Cody was big and fast and would catch him as easily as Deuce snatching a tossed tennis ball.
“Gimme it,” Cody said.
Stevie didn't move. The Dew was cool in his hands. He tightened his grip on the can.
“I'm gonna pound your head down your neck.”
He could do it too. Stevie did not want his head to take that trip. But still he held to the can. He was, in fact, immobile.
Cody started to reach for the can. “Give it!”
Thunk.
Cody's head snapped back. A Mountain Dew, another one, clunked to the sidewalk. Cody slapped his hands on his head, yelping like a wounded puppy.
“Run!”
It was Robert. Stevie rolled right, shot to his feet, took off down Hoover Street. He didn't look back for four blocks. He held onto his Mountain Dew and kept going. When he did finally stop he saw he was alone. No hot pursuit by the hated Cody.
But what about Robert? Had Cody caught him? What would he do to Robert's head?
Stevie ran back, fast, scared that the whole neighborhood would be crawling with Messinas, from the oldest, Red, who drove and smoked and was mean, to the youngest, Danny, only three but who'd just as soon bite you as drool on you.
Any one of that pack could jump out of a bush or trash can. And they could swarm over Robert like cockroaches.
But when Stevie got home there was no one around. No! Carried off! Robert had been captured and was being hauled to the Messinas as fresh meat for Deuce! He'd get his leg chewed off! And it was all Stevie's fault, because he ran away and left Robert for dead!
“Get in here.” His mother, standing at the open front door.
“Mom, Robert's in trouble!”
“You both are. Come here now.”
Both?
Running in, heart thumping, Stevie let out a huge gust of relief. Robert was there. Sitting on the hard wooden punishment chair, his red T-shirt ripped.
“What happened?” Stevie said.
“I bit him,” Robert said.
Stevie laughed. The biting Messinas had gotten what they deserved.
“It's not funny,” Mom said. “He really hurt that boy. There's going to be hell to pay. Don't think there won't be.”
Hell? He could pay that, as long as he still had his head in the same place, on top of his neck.
Yep, Robert could sure throw. He'd nailed Cody Messina with that can of Mountain Dew and changed the course of neighborhood history. No Messina ever bothered them again.
In the law library, the vividness of the memory surprised Steve. It had been a long time since he'd thought about that day, and never so clearly, so emotionally as now.
All because his big brother was still alive.
If Johnny LaSalle was his big brother.
And if he wasn't, how did he know what he knew?
The clerk read the verdict at 4:27 in the afternoon, that same day. The jury had deliberated just two hours.
Carlos Mendez was found guilty of one count under penal code section 12021.
Steve felt his client tense up next to him, as if this was some sort of surprise. There were grumbles from the gallery. The sounds of a family not pleased.
They were sounds only half heard by Steve. He was still dazed by the money and the note he'd been given in the library.
The half awareness was blitzed by Judge O'Hara's voice as he polled the jury, then sent them on their merry way. None of them made eye contact with Steve as they filed out. A few smiled at Moira Hanson.
“Any reason we shouldn't set a date for sentencing?” the judge said.
The defense lawyer's tape player clicked on in Steve's mind. “I move, Your Honor, to set aside the verdict under PC 1181.6.”
It was the old insufficiency of evidence section, which gave judges discretion to set aside a jury verdict. The odds of that happening were about the same as the dice coming up thirteen on a Vegas crap table.
“Denied,” Judge O'Hara said. “How's August 20?”
Moira Hanson checked her appointment book and said, “That's fine with the People.”
Steve didn't check anything but mumbled an okay. He knew he didn't have any appointments coming up. A bottom feeder usually has a calendar as clean and empty as a desert preserve.
As the deputy approached, Mendez looked at Steve with a
now
what?
expression.
“There's a sentencing package that needs to be worked up,” Steve said. “I'll come see you and we'll talk about it.”
“When?”
“I don't know when. Soon.”
“Am I getting out?”
Of course not. He was on the way to the slam, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Steve said, “I'll do my best.”
That didn't inspire any look of confidence on Mendez's face. The same look was on the faces of his family members who jumbled at the rail, chattering in Spanish.
In his own head, Steve's voice sounded far away. He heard himself say something about getting in touch and doing all he could.
That night Steve had another dance with the demons.
He well knew you never totally get rid of the mind vibe once you've been hooked on blow. You're supposed to call your sponsor the moment you feel the hot claw of craving scratching at your brain. But you've got to decide to do it.
First, you go through a little five rounder with the imps of addiction. You jab at them, but they have punches too. You start to think about driving downtown to the Box, that collection of drug-infested city blocks between 4th and 7th, where a rock can be had for a drive-by and a sawbuck. You think about the night and the easy road to forgetfulness, and you remember how good it feels. Your body starts to vibrate with the remembering.
It's only a second before you make the decision and grab the keys, and once you grab them it's over. You're going all the way, there won't be any turning back.
In a world where your old nightmares come screaming back in the form of a guy who may be your dead brother, not dead anymore but alive, in that world you have a way out. Don't think about things you don't want to think about. Take the quick and easy road and float, get happy, that's all that matters.
Don't grab the keys.
Grab them.
Call Gincy.
Keys.
Once you grab them it's over.
Grab.
Was Robert really alive?
Would it make any difference?
Would it stop the pain?
Or just make it worse? Just dredge up the whole thing again, make it fresh, because there's no going back and revising your history. There's no going back and taking away the horrors. Taking away the memory of when you were fourteen and almost jumped off the cliffs near the Palisades. You were close then, and if it all comes back, might you actually do it?
Was Robert really alive? If he was, and that alone would be enough to blow an unstable mind, could he be saved this time? Given a new chance to live a good life?
Ten thousand dollars. Who cared who was who?
Or remember that first time you chased the dragon? You stopped then and knew it was about Robert. You had that instant insight that you were going to freebase because it was the only way to stop the dreams. And you thought about not going through with it, but then you did.
Make it stop.
Grab.
Steve snatched the keys from his front table and looked at himself in the hall mirror. His hair was sticking out a little. He smoothed it down. The eyes, normally dark brown, seemed almost black, with a rim of fire-engine red around them.
You'll look worse in the morning, pal, but then again maybe you won't wake up. That'd take care of a lot of things.
He jangled the keys and walked out. Down the stairs to the parking area. Jumped in the Ark, his mind already on autopilot. The map in his head was on-screen and would take him to the drug supermarket.
Then the engine wouldn't turn over.
He kept trying and kept getting the grinding in return. Got to where he was screaming at the car to start, cursing at it. Grinding, cursing, screaming. Until his throat got raw.
And then he sat back and started laughing. Hysterically. Steve Conroy was the biggest joke in the world. The butt of a joke, actually. It was enough to keep him laughing all the way back up to his apartment, where he fell back on his sofa, knowing he wouldn't sleep.
Tuesday.
In the morning, Steve had his car towed to a shop and got a loaner. A Camry. After the Ark it felt like he was driving an eyeglass case.
At least he'd managed to stay clean one more night. Nights were the worst. Now, in the light of day, he could pretend he was a lawyer again.
He wanted to be a lawyer. He started out with the plan to be the best. From foster home to college, from college to law school, a great American success story. Going into law, he'd be able to tilt the scales of justice in a way that had been denied him.
In moments of reflection over beer or bourbon, he'd sometimes think he was trying to be Archimedes. Give me a lever and a place to stand and I can move the world. That project alone was enough to keep his mind from the bad things. The yesterdays.
He remembered clearly the day the idea got in his head.
He was ten and his mom was dead and they had a little funeral. His aunt came out from New Jersey, Aunt Kate, the only time in his life Steve ever saw her. She had stringy hair and fat lips. She didn't sit next to Stevie in the chapel. The only one who sat next to him was Mrs. Bloom, who lived two houses down. She was a nice old lady, a widow who his mom used to borrow eggs from.
There weren't more than six or seven others there. His mom was in a casket at the front. Organ music was playing somewhere. It was like in a haunted house movie.
Then a red-faced man with a funny collar came out with this smile on his face. It looked fake. He stood in front of the casket and said, “This was a lady.”
He started saying some things about Steve's mom. But he'd never seen this man before in his life.
Then it hit him. For some reason he knew that this guy hadn't ever known his mom at all. That he worked at this place. That he gave speeches about people who were dead. If somebody wanted that kind of thing.
He knew that Aunt Kate had set this up. And he hated her for it.
Then the man stopped talking and invited people to come and view “the dear departed.”
What? Get up and look at her?
No.
Yes. Mrs. Bloom took his hand and walked him forward. Behind Aunt Kate, whose wide ride swayed under a blue print dress in a way both sickening and mesmerizing to Stevie.
The waxwork that was supposed to be his mother lay in a white satin hollow. The moment Stevie saw it, a chill that would soon lead to hot tears started swirling in his chest, an iceball behind the sternum.
It couldn't be Mom. She never looked this still. And the grotesque upturn of her mouth was horrifying.
For some odd reason he thought of a flashlight then, how if you put the two batteries in wrong the thing wouldn't light up. No life, no juice. Maybe they'd put his mother in wrong. Maybe if they turned her around in the box there'd be a spark and she'd be alive again.
It was too soon for her to be dead.
He burst out crying. Once the tears started he knew he couldn't turn them off and he pressed them out harder and harder.
Mrs. Bloom put her arms around him. Aunt Kate looked back at him, disgust on her face.
Maybe that was the moment she decided she didn't want anything to do with Stevie. He suspected she was like that anyway.
Stuff happened after that. Mom's possessions went to Aunt Kate. She left the trunk with the pictures, and Stevie raised such a stink he somehow got to keep it. When he went into foster care, they let him bring the trunk.
He would never give that up. They'd have to put him in a casket if they ever wanted to get it.
When he got to his office, he retrieved the envelope with the money, opened it, and spread the bills on his desk.
Fifty crisp Benjamins.
Probably dirty. The fruit of some sort of crime. Maybe even counterfeit.
Or maybe laundered.
If laundered, clean. And if clean, he could spend it.
He decided to drink it over. Pulled out the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam. But as he started to pour, something stopped him. A little voice. Maybe it sounded like Sienna Ciccone. Maybe he wanted it to sound like her. Whatever, he stopped and tried to keep a clear head.
Johnny LaSalle had told him something only his brother would have known. Steve did remember the stories Robert used to tell. Arnold and Beebleobble. Names that would make him cry when he was seven and eight and missing Robert terribly. Knowing he helped put Robert in the house that got burned down.
What about that? Could it really have been another kid in there? But the dental records. What about the records?