Convincing Jamey

by Pappano, Marilyn

  For years Reid had been the only threat to that no-deeper-than-the-surface emotion.

  Karen threatened to become another.

  He forced his attention back to her, to something she’d said about Landry having only one murder in seven years. She had looked—still looked—so sad that he wondered if that one murder had been her husband’s. He had assumed that Evan Montez had been killed on the job—by a pervert, she’d said, who liked little girls—but maybe that wasn’t the case. “Was Evan from Landry?”

  She nodded. “His family lived two blocks over from mine. We’d known each other all our lives.”

  “Did he die there?”

  She hadn’t expected the question, and for a time it hung between them as stiffness spread through her. Then, abruptly, she gestured toward the west side of the river. “No. Over there. A little girl had been kidnapped by a man with a penchant for kids. Evan’s partner Michael found them and, in the process of saving her, got shot. The guy was going to kill him and probably kill the girl. Evan drew his fire so Michael could get the girl out, and both he and the kidnapper died.”

  Jamey countered the emotion heavy in her voice with silent cynicism. Great. Her husband had died a genuine, bona fide hero. That was a lot to live up to, a lot to compete against. Not that he was interested in competing. Once he convinced her to leave Serenity, he would never see her again, would never think of her again. Out of sight, out of mind. He was good at that. He’d managed with Meghan. For a long time, he had managed it with Reid. It would be no problem with Karen.

  She continued, her voice growing flatter, less emotional. “You hear how military wives panic at the sight of the chaplain at their door or how cops’ wives dread that official visit when their husbands are on duty. For me it was Smith Kendricks and Remy Sinclair. Everyone in the department knew how close they were to Michael and Evan, so they were allowed to break the news. It was a long time before I could look at either of them without feeling that awful grief all over again.”

  “So he died, and you went home.” Whose death would it take to make her leave this time? If God cared at all about her, if He hadn’t already washed His hands clean of Serenity and everyone who lived there, maybe it wouldn’t be her own.

  “Not right away. I liked it here. We’d made a home for ourselves. I stuck it out for a while, but things didn’t get any easier, so finally I left. I sold the house, moved back into my folks’ house, right back into my old room, and became their little girl again. I let them and Evan’s family take care of me, coddle and baby me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I came here.”

  He shook his head, half dismayed and half amused. From All-America, Small-town USA, surrounded by loving and supportive family, to all alone in hell. She should have her head examined. Come to think of it, for spending all this time with her, for caring whether she stayed or left, for getting involved with her crazy schemes by taking her around this morning...

  So should he.

  Monday Karen did more cleaning and more painting and, armed with a saw, a hammer and some wood, she repaired a couple of rotted boards on the veranda. She didn’t work in any particular order. When she got tired of breathing paint fumes, she tackled the basic cleaning in another of the many rooms. When she tired of dust, she turned to a little small-scale woodworking. When that was done, she raked the yard clean of trash, pine straw and about five years’ worth of leaves. She was in bed by ten o’clock and hadn’t seen anyone all day—not Jamey or Reid, not Alicia or any of the people Jamey had introduced her to Sunday. In the muggy warmth of her bedroom, tired from the day’s labor, she slept like a log. If there were any disturbances on the street, she didn’t hear them. Maybe, she thought with a grin the next morning, she was getting used to this place.

  After twisting her hair into a knot, she tugged the baseball cap into place to hold it, then left the bathroom for the first floor. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top to take advantage of whatever sun might break through the clouds that still darkened the sky this morning, but it seemed more likely that rain would come first. That was okay. A little rain never hurt anyone, and it just might make the heat and humidity more bearable, at least temporarily.

  She’d already been downstairs once this morning, for a breakfast of a muffin, fruit and coffee. She had gathered her equipment then—a rake, broom and shovel, big plastic garbage bags, leather work gloves for handling nasty stuff and softer cotton ones for simply protecting her hands—and loaded it all into the plastic utility cart on the porch, along with a Thermos filled with lemonade, a bottle of cold tap water and Jethro’s water dish. She added Jethro to the cart, locked up and bumped her way down the steps. The cart wouldn’t fit through the gate at the end of the sidewalk, so she turned at an angle across the yard, pulling it instead through the second broad gate, where years ago the driveway had completed its semicircle around the house and exited back onto the street.

  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d suggested that cleaning up the park should be her first project. Granted, in its sorry shape, it wasn’t the most appealing place for kids, but it beat the streets for a playground. It beat by a long shot spending your entire life behind locked doors. She planned to clean up, paint the rusted fence, cover the graffiti with spray paint now, maybe with a mural later, and make a few minor repairs on the equipment; then she intended to beg, plead and somehow convince the mothers to take back at least that one small plot of ground for their children.

  The morning was misty, as if the fog hadn’t quite managed to form but drifted instead in small, wispy patches above the ground. It made everything look a little softer, a little blurrier, but no less shabby. Nothing less than the removal of people like Ryan Morgan and his friends and a massive dose of civic pride could combat the shabbiness of Serenity. She intended to talk to her friends about getting rid of him and his friends, and then she would work on the pride.

  She pulled the cart down the empty sidewalk, across the street and to the gate of the park. There she secured Jethro’s leash to the fence, took the leather gloves and a garbage bag and went inside to start picking up trash. According to Jamey, there had once been enough privacy in the park for teenagers to indulge in the experimentation that came so naturally to kids, but there was no privacy now. There was no place at all where a person could hide. That was why she saw Reid the instant she stepped through the gate.

  He was sitting on the back of the sole bench that hadn’t been destroyed, his feet on the slats that made up the seat, and watching her with a definitely unwelcoming look. Now that she knew more about him, she understood his perpetual scowl, but she was no closer to understanding his parents’ treatment of him. No matter how many years she lived, no matter how many dysfunctional families she dealt with, she would never understand turning your back on your own child.

  “Good morning,” she greeted as she began filling the bag. Picking up trash was never fun, but this... She wrinkled her nose with distaste. This went way beyond being not fun. This was just about as gross as any job she’d ever done and left her wishing she’d brought a pair of tongs so that not even her gloves would have to come in contact with this stuff.

  Reid didn’t return her greeting. He didn’t speak at all until she’d worked her way to within a few feet of his bench. Even then there was no friendliness in his voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning this place up. Why are you here so early? It’s not even seven o’clock.”

  Ignoring her question, he asked another of his own. “Why? They’ll just trash it again.”

  She noticed he said they would, not we. Did that mean he didn’t hang out in the park at night or simply that he wasn’t one of those who dumped his garbage there, smashed his empties against the bricks, set whatever would burn on fire or defaced the walls with obscenities? “Why do they do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Wouldn’t they like to have a decent place to hang out in? Doesn’t anyone on this street besides me miss the sight of grass
, flowers and healthy trees?”

  His scowl deepened. “Probably no one on this street has ever seen them—at least, not on a regular basis. Not around here.”

  “Jamey tells me that your friend Ryan more or less runs this neighborhood. Would you introduce me to him?”

  “No,” he said flatly, vehemently, with no room for backing down. “You’d better stay away from him and hope to God he stays away from you.”

  She allowed a slight smile. “You sound like Jamey,” she said quietly, fully expecting a show of anger, of insult. Instead, his expression turned unexpectedly sad.

  “Thanks for the compliment,” he said, trying for sarcasm but not quite succeeding. “I always wanted to be like good ol’ Jamey, who doesn’t give a damn about anybody.”

  She scooped up the remains of a hamburger, still in its wrapper and complete with ants, and dropped it in the bag before looking his way again. “That’s not true, though no one could blame you for thinking it.”

  For a long moment, he simply looked at her; then he grimly asked, “Who told you?”

  “He did.”

  “I didn’t think he’d ever admitted it to anybody.” He turned sarcastic, more successfully this time. “Let’s face it—I’m hardly the son to make a parent proud.”

  “He’s hardly the father to make a son proud.” Finished with the little corner where he sat, she began moving away, picking up everything in her path. When she stopped at a bench to pick up the burnt remains of broken slats, Reid circled around to lean against the wall. “Any chance your friend would make a deal with me?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You haven’t heard the deal yet.”

  “Give him everything you have of value, throw in your body for good measure, get the hell out of here and don’t expect anything from him in return. He’d be willing to go for that, but nothing less.”

  “Ask him if he’ll leave the park alone.”

  “He won’t.”

  “He’s got the rest of the neighborhood. It wouldn’t hurt him to give the kids this one part.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll ask him.”

  He moved to block her path. “Are you stupid? He’s leaving you alone right now because he figures you’re not worth the effort it would take to harass you. You get his attention by going around asking for favors, and he’ll make you sorry. He’ll make you damned sorry.”

  She crouched to pick up a cache of broken bottles, then tilted her head back to lock gazes with him. “Why are you friends with a man like that? You’re not like him, Reid. You’re not that mean. You’re not that sick. You’re not that worthless.”

  “Of course I am. Just ask my father. He’ll tell you. He’ll tell anyone. Hell, he’s told me face-to-face what a worthless bastard I am.” His smile was thin, mocking. “And he’s right. Jamey O’Shea is always right.”

  Before she could respond to that, a sliding noise came from behind her, then a soft little voice called, “Hey, Reid, whatcha doin’?”

  For a long time he continued to look at her; finally he forced his gaze away and above her head. “Hey, J.T.”

  She turned to see a young black boy, barely visible in the shadows of a second-floor window.

  “This crazy lady’s cleaning up the park for you kids to come and play in,” Reid went on, the subtle ridicule in his voice encouraging the same response in the boy.

  “Yeah, right,” J.T. scoffed. “My mom don’t let us play outside. ‘Sides, there’s nothin’ to play with down there. Everything is all broken and burned.”

  “The broken stuff can be fixed,” Karen said, rising to her feet and facing the boy.

  “Yeah, but it’ll just get broken again. Why bother?”

  Why bother? That seemed to be the motto of Serenity Street. Jamey had made a mistake twenty-some years ago and failed his son, but he wasn’t trying to make it up to him. Reid was grown, angry and hated his father. Why bother trying to change that? Reid had lived his entire life feeling like an outcast, but instead of trying to fit in, to build a relationship with someone who wouldn’t bring him down, he spent his life with people who would destroy him. Earning respect was a difficult thing; why bother? The people in this neighborhood had been run over and beaten down by life, by the system, by people like Ryan Morgan and Jimmy Falcone, but they didn’t fight back. They caved in. They gave up. Why bother?

  So why the hell was she bothering? She couldn’t help anyone who refused to help himself. Why was she wasting her time?

  Then J.T. leaned out the window and fixed his gaze on her. “You gonna fix the swings?”

  She glanced at the swing set. The metal poles were in place, sunk deep in concrete, but the chains were wrapped around the top crossbar, and the seats they were supposed to connect to were nowhere to be seen. They had probably been burned, hacked to pieces or carried off somewhere and dumped, just for the fun of it. “Yeah, I’m gonna fix the swings,” she replied. “I’m gonna fix everything.”

  “I like to swing,” he said wistfully. “When we go to my aunt’s, there’s a real park by her house, and she takes us there to play. It’s got grass and everything.”

  “This one will have grass, too.”

  “Real grass and swings?” For a moment the little face looked hopeful; then he shook his head. “It’ll all just get torn up again.” He looked away, as if listening to something inside, then hastily called, “See ya later, Reid,” as he slammed the window shut.

  “J.T.’s not allowed to open his bedroom window,” Reid said as Karen continued to look up. “He’s also not allowed to play outside or talk to strangers or to me.”

  “Why not? He seems to like you.”

  “Yeah, well, his mother doesn’t.”

  “Maybe it’s the company you keep.”

  He glowered at her, clearly annoyed. “You talk like it’s a matter of choice.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “If I quit hanging out with Ryan and the others, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Make new friends.”

  He laughed scornfully. “Half the people on this street are scared to death of me. None of them want to be friends with me.”

  “Get rid of Ryan and the others—and that chip on your shoulder,” she suggested. “Show them that you’re really a decent person. Give them a reason to like you, a reason to trust you.”

  “Hasn’t O’Shea warned you that I can’t be trusted?”

  “Yeah, well, contrary to his opinion, Jamey isn’t always right.”

  His bitter amusement faded, leaving his eyes empty and bleak. “Maybe not...but this time he is.” He turned and walked away, stopping only briefly to scratch the puppy, still sitting in the cart and chewing happily on her cotton gloves. Then, realizing that she was still watching him, he shoved his hands in his pockets, ducked his head and took off across the street.

  She never had learned why he was alone in the park before seven o’clock in the morning.

  She continued to work, circling the lot methodically, filling one bag and making a good start on a second before she reached the gate again. There she traded leather gloves for cotton, trash bags for a broom and dust pan and began sweeping up the broken glass.

  “You really are crazy, ain’t you, lady?”

  Looking up, she saw that the second-floor window was open again, a face pressed up close. “Crazy? Doesn’t everyone sweep the dirt around here?”

  “People don’t even sweep the floors around here. Why’re you doing that?”

  “It’s the easiest way to get up the broken glass, short of bringing in a bulldozer to haul off the dirt. Where did you disappear to?”

  “My mom was calling. I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

  “That’s a good rule.”

  “I’m also not allowed to open the window.”

  That wasn’t such a good rule. If these people were worried about someone trying to break in, a pane of glass wasn’t going to stop them any more than it would stop a bullet, a b
rick or a bomb. As a safety feature, keeping a window closed up tight was definitely a failure, and it only served to make the innocent people inside suffer more, especially in this heat.

  “My grandma says it’s gonna rain.”

  “I hope it does. I couldn’t get much wetter.” Her shirt was plastered to her back, and sweat stains were spreading across the front. Her shorts felt pretty damp, too, wherever they came in contact with her body. “Does your grandmother live with you?”

  “Yeah. Her and my mom and me.”

  “Do you think I could come upstairs and meet them?”

  There was a rustle of noise, then J.T. disappeared. The window didn’t close, though. Instead a woman came into view. Karen could make out nothing of her features in the shadows, but she could feel her suspicion as if it were a physical thing. Summoning her best smile, she said, “Hello. I’m Karen Montez. I moved into the old Victorian down the street.”

  There was no matching friendliness in the woman’s voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning up the park.”

  “Why?”

  “For the kids.”

  “To give that worthless bunch that hangs out here every night something new to trash?”

  “No. To give the kids like J.T. a place to play, so they can get some sun and fresh air and have a little fun.” She hesitated only a second before repeating her earlier request. “Can I come up and talk to you?”

  “I don’t open the door to strangers.”

  “All right. Would you come down here and talk to me?”

  “I don’t go outside with strangers, either.”

  “It’s a public park in broad daylight,” Karen coaxed, although that wasn’t quite true. The sky was darker than when she’d arrived an hour ago, and the smell of distant rain was sweetening the air.