Your House Will Pay

by Steph Cha

  “Don’t say that. We’re family,” he said. “And we all deserve a whole lot better than this mess.”

  The principal was gone or busy—either way, she wasn’t there for Shawn to plead with on his dumb-ass nephew’s behalf. He made his case with the receptionist instead, an elderly Latina woman who lit up when she saw Monique. He told her just enough about Ray’s arrest to trigger her fascination and sympathy, and she promised to tell the principal Shawn had come by. She gave Monique a cream soda Dum Dum when they left.

  He felt a little guilty, parading the child around. Aunt Sheila had been happy to watch her, but she wanted to follow Shawn, and he had a feeling he could use her help. Sweet-talking school administrators, keeping suspicious eyes off his back—it was almost always better to be seen as a black dad than just a black man, but maybe especially at a high school.

  Brianna agreed to meet him on campus after classes let out. By the time he made it to the front gate, she was already there, standing next to Dasha in front of a row of buses. The two girls were waiting for him, but they weren’t watching. They were turned toward each other, their heads close, their faces grave. He could see their lips moving, and he didn’t have to read them to know they were whispering about Darryl.

  Monique ran, making a beeline for Dasha. Both girls looked up and put on big smiles for the little one.

  “Monique!” cried Brianna, crouching down so her face was level with the child’s. “You’re so big now. Do you remember me? Brianna.” She said her name brightly, pointing at her own chest.

  Monique nodded shyly and let herself be hugged.

  “Hey, Dasha,” said Shawn, squeezing his niece’s shoulder. “Do you think you can show Momo around for a bit?”

  “What for?” she asked, looking at him sideways.

  “I need to talk to Brianna.”

  “So? I can talk to Brianna, too.”

  Brianna glanced between them with an uncertain smile and held Monique’s hand as she stood back up.

  “Just give us a few minutes, Dasha,” he said, hearing the stern edge in his voice. He remembered the empty lot across the street, where Darryl used to hang out with his friends, trying to catch tadpoles in ditch water. “Show Momo the tadpoles.”

  She glared at him for a full fifteen seconds. It shocked him—he’d never seen that look on her face before. She knew what he was doing—that’s what her eyes said—and she thought it was stupid, which meant it was stupid. Dasha wasn’t Monique. She was too old to protect by sending her off out of earshot. Still, he couldn’t have her with him, not if there was any chance her presence would keep Brianna from talking.

  “Come with me, Momo,” Dasha said, giving in at last. Monique obeyed, happy to follow the older girl anywhere.

  “Such a cutie,” said Brianna, as they watched the girls walk away.

  They stood without speaking, and Shawn could feel Brianna growing antsy. She was a lovely girl, with a heart-shaped cinnamon-brown face and a spray of tiny freckles like a Band-Aid over the bridge of her nose. Hoops and studs glinted from several piercings on her ears, and a small silver crucifix hung around her neck. She wore short, tight-fitting clothes, but the impression she gave was utterly innocent. Sweetness and good manners, with the natural exuberance of youth. Its restlessness, too, its discomfort with silence. Her fingers twisted the frayed hem of her cutoffs.

  “I’m sorry about Darryl’s dad,” she said at last. “And everything else that’s going on with your family.”

  He nodded. She didn’t ask what was happening, though he knew she must have been curious.

  “Have you heard from Darryl?” he asked. “Since yesterday?”

  “I don’t know where he is,” said Brianna apologetically.

  She cast her eyes down, and Shawn could tell she was debating whether to sell out her ex-boyfriend to his concerned uncle. He said nothing, not wanting to sharpen her sense of duty to Darryl. He watched the gate instead, the kids waiting for pickup, for the buses to board, backpacks sagging from their shoulders. It was another hot desert afternoon, and he could see the impatience on their unknowing faces, glowing with sweat and youth. They couldn’t stand still—they tapped the asphalt with their feet, they cracked their knuckles and twirled their hair. Half of them had their phones out, looking down at their screens, then up at their surroundings, to check if things had changed to their liking. This was where Darryl and Dasha belonged, in the safety of confined spaces, with gates to keep them from leaping unbridled toward every excitement. The dangers of shining things in dark places.

  He felt Brianna fidget while she waited for him to say something else. When he turned back to look at her, he knew she would tell him what he needed to know.

  “To be honest, I haven’t been able to keep track of him for a while now,” she said.

  “Because you broke up,” he prodded.

  She shook her head. “No. I mean yeah, we broke up, but it’s why we broke up. He started acting weird, and I wasn’t having it.” She looked around at all the kids who might overhear them. “Can we walk?”

  They walked to the football field, which Shawn knew from watching Darryl run track. There was football practice going on, but the bleachers were mostly empty. Brianna chose a spot in the shade, and Shawn sat next to her. He picked up right where she left off.

  “What do you mean, he was ‘acting weird’?” he asked. “Like when he was cutting school?”

  Brianna shrugged. “Yeah, cutting school, acting tough. He never used to be like that. You know him. He’s a teddy bear. But all of a sudden he’s swaggering all over the place, talking about how his dad and uncle were OGs, that they went to prison and all that.”

  She cast her eyes up at him shyly, as if she’d forgotten for a second that Shawn was Darryl’s uncle.

  “Anyway, he started disappearing on me. I’d call him or text him and he’d ignore me, sometimes for days, and when he popped up again, he’d pretend like nothing happened. It was like he had a secret life or something, and it got old fast.”

  “That’s why you broke up with him?”

  She started to say something, then stopped herself. When she spoke again, her face was hidden from him, cradled in one hand, and her words came from that vulnerable place.

  “I didn’t break up with him. Not in my mind,” she said. “I gave him an ultimatum. I said if he ghosted on me again, it was over. And he ghosted on me. Whatever bullshit he had going was more important.”

  Shawn wanted to tell her it wasn’t true. He’d seen Darryl after the breakup, shuffling around, listening to maudlin love songs and snapping at Dasha. He and Nisha had even joked about it—the kid was so sad, it broke their hearts, but it was sweet, too, how typical he was, a teenage boy dumped for the first time, moping around like a kicked dog, the earphone cord like a tail between his legs.

  But this girl would know he had no idea what he was talking about. He and Nisha had seen what was easy, the straightforward boy they wanted to see. What had they missed?

  “What was he doing? You gotta know.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said.

  “But?” he prompted.

  She touched her necklace, pulled the pendant forward for Shawn to see. It was a crucifix, but rounded and abstract, like a silver balloon animal.

  “He put this in my locker a couple weeks ago. It would’ve been our eighth monthiversary.”

  “It’s pretty,” he said, unsure where this was going.

  “It’s from Tiffany’s. It was in the blue box and everything. This cost one seventy-five. I looked it up. With tax that’s like two hundred. Where’d Darryl get two hundred dollars for something like this?”

  Shawn stared at it. Imagined Darryl walking into a jewelry store and picking out this precious, dainty pendant for the girl he wanted to win back. Nisha hadn’t mentioned it, and he had a feeling Nisha didn’t know about the gift. That in itself made the whole thing suspect. Darryl would’ve asked his mother for help, under normal circumstances.
/>   “Do you have ideas?”

  “Nowhere good, not if you don’t know.” She lowered her voice. “It’s gotta be drugs or something, right?”

  The way she said it, like someone who only knew crime from TV, grabbed Shawn by the heart. Just months ago, Darryl was on that side of things, rubbernecking across the divider like any other dumb teen. Did he really throw himself in the action, after all the warnings from his mother, from Shawn and Aunt Sheila?

  Shawn said nothing, and Brianna filled the silence. “And he’s been hanging out with Quant and them, and like, why? They aren’t friends. Quant’s like thirty-five years old.”

  Shawn blinked. “Quant?”

  “My cousin. You know him, actually. He used to live in your neighborhood.”

  The name came to him, clear and out of the blue. “Quantavius Fox?”

  Shawn remembered him. He was younger than Shawn by at least five years. A little homie when Shawn was in his twenties, at the peak of his game and his reputation. Quant was a tall, chubby kid, always nursing the patchy beginnings of a beard. He used to tag his initials on anything he could find, like a child who’d just learned to write his own name. Sprayed QF onto trees and abandoned cars. Scratched it onto street signs and toilet seats.

  Shawn might have forgotten all about him, except Duncan liked to keep Shawn posted on all the old neighborhood folk, especially the ones who moved to the Antelope Valley. A few years back, Duncan had mentioned that Quantavius Fox was running a transplant crew, a ragged set of Crips relocated from South Central to Palmdale and Lancaster. Shawn had thought it sounded pathetic—a bunch of guys in their thirties and forties, soft-bellied and reminiscing about the old days. It hadn’t crossed his mind that they might be recruiting.

  Brianna smiled. “You remember him. He’d be glad.”

  He thought of doughy-faced Quant filling Darryl up with bullshit, telling stories of guns and glory, the old days buffed up with lies and exaggeration. For the first time in years, Shawn played it cool when he felt dangerous. As if it meant nothing, he asked her, “How do I find him?”

  Shawn had hoped to surprise the man, but Brianna said Quant wouldn’t like it if he just showed up at his house, and she didn’t volunteer an address. Quant didn’t have an office, and Shawn didn’t have the time to stake out the gangster’s favorite haunts and hope he’d turn up. So he dropped the kids off and waited while Brianna called her cousin and arranged a meeting—Quant was hungry, and he said Shawn could come see him at the Chipotle on Mall Ring Road.

  Shawn watched him from the parking lot. Quant was seated on the concrete patio, chomping down a burrito. He didn’t look like he was waiting for anyone.

  Time had been kind to Quantavius Fox. Shawn wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t known to look. He’d been a big kid and was now a big man, but any fat he’d had on him had long since turned to muscle. He had a broad nose that had been broken and healed on a slant, looking more roguish than busted. The beard had grown in, and he kept it long but trimmed neat, like a hedge bush. It had to take some measure of skill to keep it clean while eating a burrito.

  He wiped his hands on a napkin and stood up when he spotted Shawn. He was taller than Shawn remembered, too, at least six foot three. There was strength in his arm as he patted Shawn on the back.

  He was a man now, not young anymore, but younger than Shawn, who felt his age reflected in Quant’s eyes, studying him with vague curiosity.

  “Shawn Matthews,” he said, drawing it out. “What’s up, man? It’s been a minute.”

  He spoke with a familiarity the two of them had never shared. Shawn recognized this for what it was: an assertion of power.

  “It’s been more than a minute,” said Shawn. “Last I saw you, you were boosting spray cans to tag gas stations.”

  He was out of practice, but it came naturally, this game of dominance. He supposed the detective had given him a good spar.

  “Shoot, that was a long time ago.” Quant grinned, as if the young Quant who followed Shawn around didn’t exist anymore. As if that young Shawn didn’t exist anymore either. He sat back down, and Shawn joined him. “Is it true you move couches now?”

  His tone was sly, and Shawn had to stop himself from reacting. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a job.”

  Quant stared at him and nodded. He took a big bite out of his burrito and chewed, still staring and nodding.

  Shawn wasn’t unfamiliar with feelings of inadequacy. He was a middle-aged man with a job that provoked no envy, too old and tired to start something new, his once promising future mostly behind him, left unclaimed. There was a time when he assumed he’d go to college—that Ava would go, and he would follow. Study science or literature. Become a teacher or a doctor. His girlfriend had the education, the good job, and he understood why some of her friends and family didn’t trust him straightaway. He knew he wasn’t inspiring anyone with his unlikely success story; he wasn’t one of these ex-cons who opened restaurants or wrote poetry or went to law school.

  But he’d been proud of his life, the one he’d made for himself after prison, working hard and hurting nobody. He would’ve thought he could stand tall in front of a grown-ass man still playing gangster, trying to look down on him across a fast-food burrito.

  Instead, he felt like a fucking fool. He’d played by the rules, the same rules that had put him in prison longer than his own sister’s murderer, for getting caught with drugs, for shooting at rival gang members in a firefight. He’d sucked it up, done his time, and come out with discipline, resolved to lead a quiet, law-abiding life. And for what? Ray was in prison, and Shawn knew it could’ve been him in there, too. His innocence didn’t protect him. He couldn’t choose his way to a life without trouble.

  He looked at Quant, this man who oozed confidence and aggression, tattoos gleaming on every inch of his thick, brawny arms. Shawn remembered Uncle Richard—quietly kind, careful with his words, measured in his emotions. The only father Shawn had ever known, but how little he’d admired him, after Ava died. He found other men to look up to, men who wanted to leave their mark on the world, whatever that mark might look like. So why did it surprise him that Darryl would look at Shawn and turn elsewhere?

  He’d been naive. He knew what he got up to when he was his nephew’s age, all in spite of Aunt Sheila’s interferences, her long list of precautions. It was enough to make him wonder why anyone bothered—kids were gonna be kids, and no matter what you did, some would get in trouble; some would get arrested; some would die.

  He knew the answer, of course. You bothered because you had no choice. There was no love without the bothering.

  Shawn set his arms on the table and leaned closer to Quant. “I’m looking for my nephew, Darryl,” he said. “You know where he is?”

  “He missing?” the big man asked, his mouth still full.

  “He left home yesterday and we can’t get in touch with him.”

  Quant swallowed his food. “That don’t sound like he’s missing. He’s probably just chilling somewhere.”

  “Got any idea where?”

  Quant pretended to think about it, then shrugged. “He’ll turn up. I wouldn’t worry about D. He’s a smart kid.”

  It was what people said about Shawn when he was a teenager. As if being smart could keep him out of trouble. It had, in a way—Shawn had avoided the stupidest shit and the longest sentences; he’d managed not to rob a bank and get hit with federal time; he was also alive. But prisons were full of smart black kids. Graveyards, too.

  “How would you know that?”

  “D’s my boy.”

  Shawn clenched his fist under the table. “What’s that supposed to mean? You got him banging?”

  “Banging.” Quant chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking, old man. It ain’t like that up here. No one’s going to war over territory. We’re not shooting it out at the Antelope Valley Mall. But you know how it is. It’s a tough world for a nigga. You know these white folks in Palmdale don’t like us. Their s
heriffs neither. We gotta stick together. Me and D, we’re friends.”

  Shawn recognized the tune. He’d sung it himself plenty of times before.

  “And what do you do when you hang out? You and your sixteen-year-old friend.”

  He shrugged again and picked up his burrito. “You don’t gotta worry. I’m looking after him.”

  Shawn stood, and before Quant realized what was happening, he grabbed him by the collar and punched him in the solar plexus. Quant gasped, and Shawn threw him on the ground, the half-eaten burrito landing beside him.

  Shawn was panting, and he didn’t bother to hide it. It had been years since he last struck a man, and no amount of exercise could make up for age, or keep dormant belligerence ready and trained for a sudden fight. But he had connected, and he had caught the younger man by surprise. The adrenaline felt good—alarmingly good, the first taste of sweet fruit long forbidden. It charged through him, replenishing his body with the illusion of power and youth. His knuckles ached, and it all came back to him: the beatdowns he’d given, the fights he’d won. He’d let himself forget how much he enjoyed it, the intoxication of dominance. No one gave him the last word anymore, and he had to be okay with it, this constant swallowing of pride. Well, he was taking the last word now. He’d think later about what it might cost him.

  Twenty-One

  Wednesday, September 4, 2019

  He’d offered to meet her in the Valley, but she was glad she decided to make the drive out. It had taken her a full hour, even with light traffic on the 405, and at the end of it, she was in a brand-new place. Venice was on the opposite side of L.A., and it felt like an entirely different city from where she lived. The streets were full of skinny white people with cool sunglasses and well-groomed dogs, who seemed completely accustomed to being out and about on a weekday afternoon. They struck her as downright exotic. None of them seemed to notice her, and she was grateful for that. She’d worn an old faded Dodgers cap, a shield against her internet fame.

  Jules Searcey was waiting for her on the back patio of a café, one that specialized in green tea. He’d converted a table into a cluttered desk, covering it with his computer and papers, his phone and chargers. She recognized his red Moleskine from the bar.