It took half an hour to get her into the stripped-down Hyundai. Cheap cars are the pits. Jenk owes me big for this one. Just as she started to back out of the parking space, the obnoxiously bad music blared from her phone, admonishing her to do every little thing she did to the glory of the One who made her. “Hope God likes this one—reconnaissance on a biographer for a gang that wants another guy dead. Glory to God on that one,” she snapped as she dug for the phone in her pocket.
“What!” She glanced at the name on the screen. “Really, Ernie?”
“Just making sure you got there ok.”
“I’m here, ok! I look all dulled up, and I’m on my way to Permbrook.”
“Pembroke!”
“I’m just joking. Get a grip.” She grabbed a mint from her purse. “I know how to do my job, Ernie.” Without another word, she disconnected and tossed the phone on the seat. According to MapQuest, she had a ten-mile drive.
“All right, Warren Whitfield, Trina Downs is on her way.”
He was cute—muscular. After three days of watching him, Trina knew all she needed to about Warren Whitfield, and a book signing at the coffee shop would be the perfect way to meet him. She pulled out her copy of Off Broadway: The Stages of Life and got in line—if you could call one other person a line. Maybe that meant he’d be willing to talk. She needed him to talk.
“Hey! Off Broadway—that was the most fun to research of nearly all my books. Have you read it?”
Trina nodded. “Twice.” He looked more rugged than his picture, with shorter hair. Killer gray eyes too. Then again, it was just a profile shot against a low-key background.
“Do you want it signed to someone in particular?”
“Oh, that’d be great—um—just Trina. Thanks.”
“Trina. You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
“I grew up in California. I’m just here to scope out the area. I want to try to write too—fiction. I don’t think I’d be good with nonfiction.”
The bell jangled, announcing another patron. Trina let her face fall when she felt someone come up behind her. “I guess I should go.” Once she had the book in hand again, she waved it slightly. “Hey, thanks a lot. I can’t wait to read whatever comes next. The way you show how Jesus turns a person inside out and upside down is just incredible.”
Undersell, undersell, undersell, she growled inwardly as she wandered to a couch in the corner, book in one hand and coffee in the other. It took two hours, but eventually, Warren stacked his remaining books and pushed his chair away from the table.
Please look my way. Just once. He did. At the door, his head turned toward her and he smiled. Her face jerked into a semblance of a beaming and adoring fan for just a moment before she forced herself to stare back at her book and prayed her face would—there it was—flush. How is that for calling on my roots, God? I even prayed. I’ll just say thanks and now we’re even. Don’t think this is a new habit. I’m not interested. When I break up, it’s for good.
A few minutes later, the doorbell jangled again, but this time Trina didn’t allow herself to look at it. If he had returned, and he just might have, she had to look surprised. “Trina?” Score!
“Oh!” She tried to manufacture another flush, but failed. Only one freebie, eh? Whatever. You are such a leech, God. “I thought you left.”
“I did. I drove around the block and came back.”
“Oh…”
“I wondered if you might want to get something to eat? Renee’s Diner has a great burger and even better fish and chips.”
“Sure! Really?” Dial it down. Eager, not stalker. Play it up as writer to writer. “That’d be great. I really appreciate the encouragement.”
“Encouragement?”
“As a writer. I thought—” She hoped her expression looked confused rather than maniacal.
“Well, I’d love to talk about writing, but I asked you because I thought I’d enjoy getting to know you better.”
Trina forced herself to count to three before answering. “I—that’s just great. I’d love to. Should I meet you somewhere? What time?”
“I could pick you up around six?”
She frowned. “Not to be rude, but I don’t tell strange guys—even cool writer ones—where I’m staying. My dad would kill me.”
“Smart dad.” Warren smiled. “How about we meet at Renee’s then.
“Great. Thanks.” Trina let him get two steps away and then added, “Hey, sorry about the paranoia. Years of sermons on wise as serpents and gentle as doves are hard to overcome.”
“Master lecturer?” His smile nearly killed her. Would he?
“Master preacher. Sunday morning—twice if you count Sunday School—Sunday night, Wednesday prayer meeting, and Friday worship hour.”
“Sounds like an idyllic childhood.”
“Ideal is right. I’ve had my bad times,” she admitted, “but right now I wouldn’t change it for anything.” Gives me just the right edge for a very lucrative job.
“Six o’clock?” He nodded at the book. “We’ll talk writing.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Hey, Ernie. On my way back now—yeah. This Warren guy knows nothing about Leo. We spent hours surfing the web, looking for him together.”
“How is he writing?”
“Using interviews with that old lady Leo beat up—her grandson, and people that he spoke to like his preacher friend. He’s looking, though. We need to keep an eye on his web browsing. I got an IP address for you.”
“Great, text it to me.”
As Tina drove away from town, she punched the number for Warren’s phone. “Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for all the encouragement. My dad called—grandma isn’t doing well and wants to see everyone before she dies… again.”
“Sorry to hear that. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you.”
“Me too. It’s been—nice.”
“Look, if you’re in the neighborhood again, call me.”
Yeah right. Like I want to be preached at again. “I’ll do that. Sorry we won’t get to do that movie. I really wanted to see it.” Gag me.
“Well, maybe next time.”
“Look, I’m coming on some traffic. Not sure why or how out here, but hey. I need to concentrate. I’ll call sometime.”
“Goodbye, Trina.”
The finality unsettled her. “Goodbye.” Why did it bother her? It shouldn’t, right? It was just his way.
“Warren Whitfield here. She just left. All clear.”
Chapter Eleven
A basketball bounced down the incline and into oncoming traffic. Leo watched as a pickup drove toward it, destining it to pancake status in less than thirty seconds. Without thinking, he dashed into the street, grabbed it, and shot out of the path of the truck before it had a chance to slow much. A horn blared as a man shouted, “Get out of the road, you idiot!”
Leo stuffed down the inclination to respond with an eloquent bit of sign language and waited for the vehicle to pass before he jogged across the street and up the incline and tossed the ball back to the boys. One of the guys called out his thanks as another beckoned him to join them. He hesitated. The kids looked familiar. After half a dozen class question and answer sessions, that didn’t surprise him.
“Come on, Leo! Even up the teams.”
What would parents think? Then again, thus far, none of the parents had withdrawn their kids from the class Q&A and there weren’t any complaints. Taking a chance, he strode toward the court. “Which side am I on?”
“You’ll play? Cool!”
The police cruiser rolled by slowly. Joe waved and grinned before turning at the corner. It seemed as if he had law enforcement approval anyway. “Just tell me who I am playing with so I don’t pass it to the wrong guy.”
“He knows how to pass. Whew!”
A red headed boy tossed the ball back to him. “I’m Kevin, that’s Tyler, Jordan, and Bryce. They’re the rest of our team.”
“Totally not fair. You guys got the t
wo tallest and fastest because you were one down. Now we’re even.” The protester was a short, scrawny guy of dark but uncertain ethnic origin.
“Oh, come on, Raavi. Get over yourself,” Kevin said. “I mean, we’re already twenty points up. You couldn’t catch up if you tried. He could be a liability.”
“I can go…” Leo began.
“Let’s play.”
The game began. Rusty as he was, Leo managed to snag the ball from the biggest boy on the other team and pass it to Kevin. The game intensified. He passed, shot, stole, and played harder than he’d played in years. It felt good—very good. As they neared the end, his team separated the spread by over thirty points. One of the boys from the other team let out a stream of profanity that Leo hadn’t heard since he’d been released after the trial. He felt the temptation to point out that losing a game didn’t mean you had to vomit your disgust all over everyone within hearing but decided it was none of his business.
Fire ignited in his chest as the ball slammed into him, a deliberate and direct hit from Jeff on the opposing team. It took him half a minute to realize that his own temptation to spew obscenities hadn’t surfaced—probably for the first time since he was six. “Ugh. Guess I need to pay better attention.” He mopped his face with the bottom of his tank.
“Hey, can I see your scars again?” No shyness in Kevin.
“Um, sure. I guess.” Feeling awkward, Leo removed his shirt and stood there feeling very much like a freak.
“Whoa. That is—whoa. They give your tattoos a cool effect, don’t they?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What’s the long one around your side?”
“That’s where they had to take out my spleen. Frog Mandini sliced me up pretty good. The doctors just opened it a bit more to do whatever they did to save my life.”
“Were you really that close to death or is it just some story that sounds good?” Tyler pointed to the scar in the center of his chest. “How’d that miss your heart?”
“They said the bullet missed it by so little that I should have had damage anyway.”
“Do you regret it?”
Leo frowned. “Regret what?”
“The whole religion thing and turning yourself in. I mean, what’d you get out of it? A dead-end job with no money and nothing to show for it. Weren’t you better off in your gang?”
“Depends on what you mean by better off? Yeah, I had money—”
“And respect and friends. Here you’re nobody with nothing.”
Leo grinned. “Gee, thanks. Sure, I had respect—of criminals responsible for more deaths than I knew of. I thought I was giving them news of the one I knew about. They told me about a couple dozen more, and that doesn’t include the people that died from overdose from the drugs we sold and gave away to hook people on them. I didn’t have the respect of respectable people.”
“You really bought the good guy line, didn’t you?” Tyler sounded disappointed.
“Look, I know my old life sounds cool. I mean I really do.” He glanced around him at the boys who thought gang life sounded so much better than his current one and tried to find the words to show how much better the new life was—boring at times—but better.
“Motorcycles, leather, drugs whenever you want them—”
Leo grinned. “Girls, lots of girls, money without doing much to prepare for earning it—no high school diploma, college, or anything—respect and a bit of fear from just about everyone. Yeah. It sounds great. Well, until you blow it.” He pointed to a scar under his jaw. “Then you get a fist full of ‘put you in your place’ because you checked out the new girl and it turned out to be the boss’s new chick.”
“That can happen anywhere, though. At least you had girls checking you out.”
“He’s got girls now. Miss Wahl is totally into him.”
For a guy with an Indian name, Raavi sounded almost Californian. Leo started to comment when Kevin grinned and said, “Love it when she’s our sub. At least it’s something nice to look at.”
“Hey, watch it,” he warned.
Jeff shook his head after dousing himself with water. “Oh, the town thug is into the hottest teacher ever. That’s not weird at all.”
“Look, even when I was in the Kasimirs, I didn’t talk about women like they were there for my own amusement.”
“Because you went out with biker chicks who could whoop your a—”
“Maybe.”
One of the other team members, Chris, sat listening quietly throughout the discussion, but now he seemed unable to resist the question. “What do you miss most?”
He glanced at a couple of the guys—guys he knew that were often in church. Should he answer it? It seemed cruel. Then again, if answering would help someone in the future... “Belonging. I miss a sense of belonging. I was part of a group—kind of like family.”
“But you’re part of the church now,” Jordan protested. “You’ve got family again.”
“Does he?” Raavi shook his head. “I’ve seen how your church people treat him around town. Who wants a family like that?”
Jordan started to protest. He opened his mouth, said, “That’s not—” grabbed a bottle of water, and took off down the street.
“It is true—even if Jordan doesn’t want to admit it,” Raavi insisted. “Gandhi said it right. Your Jesus seems like a cool dude, but his followers aren’t any better than the rest of the world. Most are worse.”
Bryce stepped closer and eyed the tattoos. “It’s a shame they ruined that artwork. The stitches really messed it up.”
“That and I’m out of shape. I had muscles back when these things were done.”
“Why no girls? I thought bikers always had tattoos of girls with big—”
“Not in the Kasimirs—unless you were married.” Leo tried to count how many he’d seen. “Probably three or four out of my core group.”
“Married? Those guys got married?”
There was his in—the chance to show how ordinary most of life in a gang could be. “Married, kids—shoot, one guy’s wife even went to PTA meetings. They had houses, doctor visits, and parking tickets.”
“Everyone’s got those,” Jeff said, clearly disappointed in the description of gang life.
“Yep, and that’s one area that everyone is like a gang. No one pays them.”
The boys all chuckled but it was halfhearted at best. Leo shook his shirt. “Mind if I put this back on now? Don’t want some little kid coming along and having nightmares.”
The boys nodded, taking one last glance before the tank dropped over his midriff. Raavi took a swig of water before offering it to Leo. “Do the tatts mean anything?”
It was a question he hadn’t anticipated and it made him feel vulnerable. “Yeah. Most have meaning.” He pointed to the snake. “This one doesn’t. I got it to irritate my mom, so I guess that’s the meaning behind that one.”
“I think it’s cool. When you move just right, it looks like it’s slithering.”
Leo nodded. “That was the idea. The guy who did it was a genius.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with that?”
“What?”
Kevin pointed at the snake. “You looked at it like it was something awful. I mean, it’s really cool.”
He hadn’t realized that his disgust over the tattoo he’d been most proud of showed. “I used to love it. It was just like art on my arm, you know? Now people that I like and respect are revolted by my arm. That bothers me.”
“Like who—oh, Miss Wahl?”
“Yeah, I know it bothers her. The chief’s wife, Mrs. Allen, even Chad, although I think Chad’s wife kind of likes it.”
“Willow? Really?” Raavi shook his head. “You can never tell what that woman is going to think. My mom is convinced she’s not all there.”
His talent for reading people told him he’d lose his audience soon, so Leo decided to make his last few comments count. “I said it once and I’ll say it again. The life
sounds exciting, but it’s not. I know you think I say that because I wear this stupid ankle bracelet and have two thousand hours of community service, but I say it because it’s true. Most of it is hard work and boredom all rolled together. Yeah, I had money, but I worked for that money just like your dad and your dad and your dad.” He punctuated his words with fingers jabbing into the air near the closest boys. “Unlike out here, if I messed up, I was asking for a beating like you can’t imagine. It’s like the army but there are no rules for the drill sergeants. They can do whatever they want—kill you if they don’t want to mess with you. Life isn’t exciting most of the time.”
“But you had friends and sort of a family,” Kevin argued.
“Yes. And that was nice, but those friends are also the ones who nearly killed me—tried to. If you tell Joe that you and your friends broke into the school and spray-painted the lockers, your friends will be upset. They might even refuse to speak to you, but they won’t try to kill you.”
“They wouldn’t kill you for that! Not for that!”
Leo shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Talking to the police is, in my old circles, equivalent to pulling a gun on them. They consider it an attack on the whole group—even if you’re only turning yourself in.”
The door from the office swung open and crashed against a tray of tools in the bays. Startled, Leo glanced up to see Allison standing there, shaking. “Alli—”
“There are motorcycles on Center Street—about a dozen. I saw them drive in and left my class with an aide.”
Leo didn’t hesitate. He hung the belt he’d been working with over a hook hanging from the ceiling and wiped his hands on a rag. “Let’s go see.”
“Are you crazy? Get out of here!”
He stared at her trying to ascertain what seemed so unusual. The answer both warmed his heart and kicked him in the gut. Panic. Allison Wahl, the epitome of unflappability, shook with fear—for him. When he reached her side, he gestured for her to lead the way out of the garage. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him, heedless of the grease and other automotive fluids that now ruined her outfit and tried to drag him back into the bay.
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