by Teri White
“Thank you,” Beau said.
Robert shrugged.
“Not just for the food. For what you did in the alley.”
“The odds sucked, that’s all.” He didn’t want anybody thinking he made a habit of running around doing good deeds.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Robert,” he said.
Their Cokes were delivered.
Robert unwrapped a plastic straw and pushed it into the glass. “What the hell were you doing out there in the middle of the night?”
Beau was stirring his drink. “What’s anybody doing anywhere? I was just there. You were there, too. Why?”
“None of your damned business.”
Beau gave a faint smile, then grimaced as his split lip objected. “Sorry.” He took a packet of saltines from the plastic basket on the table and slowly turned the crackers into crumbs. “The thing is, I didn’t have any place to go. I thought that maybe the alley would be a good place to sleep.”
Robert looked at him in disbelief. “You haven’t been on the street very long, I guess.”
“Couple days.”
“Well, you’ll learn.”
“I guess.” He didn’t sound very happy at the prospect.
The food arrived and Beau, after drenching his fries in a quart or so of ketchup, started to eat with enthusiasm. Robert chewed more slowly. A couple of hookers came in and took stools at the counter. He checked them out, just in case Marnie Dowd had decided to drop in for a bite between tricks. Both these women were much too young to be her. Marnie, judging by the mug shot, was on the downside of her good years. It must be getting harder every night to earn a buck. Why, after all, would anybody pay to fuck a wrinkled middle-aged broad when that was probably just what he had at home?
When you looked at it that way, maybe he should just kill Marnie; it would probably be a kindness. But he would avoid that if he could. No sense complicating things, right? If she didn’t want to cooperate, he’d decide what to do then.
Beau picked up a kosher dill that had seen better days and took a bite. “You a cop?” he asked between chews.
Robert shook his head.
“I only thought … because of the gun.” He whispered the last word.
No, I’m not a cop.
“Well, that’s fine with me, you know? I don’t think much of cops, actually. Back home, they’re just nothing but a bunch of government assassins.”
Robert finished his hamburger. “You must be from Chicago,” he said with a smirk.
“No.” Beau was frowning. “I don’t like guns much either. They scare me, you know?”
“They’re supposed to scare you. Everybody should be scared of them.”
“Are you?”
Robert shrugged. “In the wrong hands, yeah.” Meaning, of course, anybody’s hands but his. He leaned across the table and spoke quietly. “Make me happy, buddy, and forget you ever saw the damned gun, okay?”
“Sure, Robert.”
“You have enough to eat?” Robert asked as he checked the waitress’s addition.
“Plenty. Thanks again.”
“Sure, sure. No problem. I was hungry anyway.” That made it seem less like a nice thing to do. Robert took an extra twenty from his wallet and put it on Beau’s side of the table. “Here. I have to go.”
Beau picked up the bill and rolled it in his palm.
“So long.” Robert got up and walked to the cashier. As he stood waiting for his change, he looked back toward the booth. Beau was still sitting there. “Fuck it,” Robert muttered.
“What?” the startled cashier said.
He ignored her and walked out. On the sidewalk, he paused and stared back into the diner. Beau was looking at him. Robert didn’t know why he cared what happened to this boy, but he realized that if he just walked away now, he’d feel guilty later. It might be easier in the long run just to help the kid out a little. He stepped back inside and raised a hand to gesture toward the booth.
Beau jumped up immediately, starting to smile as he approached. “Yeah, Robert?”
“Come with me.”
They left the coffee shop. The paper-reading cop was standing on the corner, talking to another patrolman. Robert barely glanced at them.
“Hey, where we going?” Beau asked, hurrying to keep up.
“Just for tonight, you can crash at my place. Just for tonight, understand?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Robert glanced sidewise at him, shaking his head. This boy was a real dope. Sleeping in alleys. Talking to strangers. Now going home with somebody he didn’t know. Beau was just lucky that it was him he’d run into and not some pervert.
They reached the car and got in. Robert knew that he was going to regret this, probably by the time they got to the house. He wasn’t Mother Fucking Teresa, after all, so why the hell should he get involved in the problems of some idiot street kid?
But he couldn’t help remembering, with a sharp pang of hurt, that not so long ago, he and Andy had been a couple of homeless brats, bouncing around the system. More than once, it had been the two of them getting beaten up by the punks of the world. So maybe it was for Andy he was doing this. Instead of giving a freaking donation to the Cancer Society or something, he’d give this kid a little help.
It was no big deal. He’d let Beau crash for the night. No big deal.
9
1
The black woman led him through a long hall back to the kitchen. She was in the middle of baking the weekly supply of pastry which, she said, Mr. Epstein favored for his breakfast. The room smelled strongly of cinnamon and other good things.
The cook was a plump, cheerful-looking woman wrapped in a frilly pink apron. She insisted that Gar should call her Ruth. “Mr. Epstein, he just dotes on my tea cakes,” she said, returning to a large bowl of dough, which she started to knead vigorously.
Gar was perched on a wooden stool, balancing the cup of coffee she had served him. “What about Beau?” he asked. “Does he like the tea cakes, too?”
She smiled. “You ever see a teenage boy who didn’t inhale every bit of food put in front of him?” She patted the dough. “Beau eats everything.”
The coffee was very good. Epstein certainly was well taken care of, both at work and at home. No wonder he’d lived so long. “What is Beau like?”
Ruth didn’t take the question lightly. She poked and punched at the dough and thought about it for several moments. “Beau is a good boy,” she said finally. “Real polite, in a sort of old-fashioned way. His poor folks did a nice job of bringing him up, even if they did live down there in the jungle.”
“There seems to be a ‘but’ coming up here pretty soon,” Gar said.
“Well.” She paused, frowning. “Beau hasn’t been happy here. I know he misses his momma and papa, but there’s more to it than that. He’s like a sad little duck out of water. This is a real different kind of life from what he was used to.”
“And how about the relationship between Beau and his grandfather?”
Again she thought. “Mr. Epstein is happy to have the boy here,” she said, “although he isn’t one to show his emotions much. Which is too bad, because I think what Beau needs and what he wants is for somebody to grab him in a big hug and let him know he’s cared about.” She smiled a little. “Course, I guess you could say the same thing about everybody, right?”
He nodded. “But you don’t think Beau is liable to get that from his grandfather?”
She sighed deeply. “Mr. Epstein loves the boy, I know that. But he’s a proud man. Stubborn and set in his ways. I never met Jonathan, his son, but I do know that Mr. Epstein was very hurt by the way it went between them.” She hesitated, loyalty to her employer seeming to war with her desire to help him find Beau. That desire to help won out. “The sad thing is, he can’t see that maybe he was to blame some, too. Far as Mr. Epstein can see, he didn’t do anything wrong with the way he raised up Jonathan.”
“So he’s doing
the same thing with Beau?”
“Pretty much, I think, yessir.” She began to roll the dough. “Mr. Epstein is a wonderful man in so many ways. He gives a whole lot of money to good causes. But he is also a man who has a lot of power. Men like that sometimes can’t see that the power it takes to be rich and important outside doesn’t work when they try to act the same way at home.” She slapped the dough. “And Mr. Epstein, he was thinking that this boy would be like having his son back. You can’t make one child take the place of another.”
“No,” Gar agreed. “You can’t.” Even if they’d had six kids, it wouldn’t have made the pain any less when one vanished.
Ruth glanced at him. “One more thing about Beau.”
“What’s that?”
“He is a lot like some innocent little lamb. Smart like anything when it comes to school classes, but real ignorant about the world. He seems a whole lot younger than he is sometimes.”
Gar digested this. “That’s too bad,” he said.
Ruth nodded. “If he’s out there in this city,” she murmured, “being an innocent child is no good.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
Derek Thorn must have spent hours each day polishing the brass buttons on his trim blue blazer. Each and every button gleamed like a miniature golden sun. And no doubt whatever time he had left from that chore was spent having his steel-gray hair styled. There was no denying that the headmaster of Paynor Academy was an impressive-looking man.
Gar felt a little guilty that his visit was serving to ruffle that magnificent facade, at least temporarily. It wasn’t altogether clear whether Thorn was more concerned over the fact that one of his students was missing or over what that fact might mean to the reputation of his school. The only saving grace seemed to be that Beau Epstein had vanished after school was officially out for the summer. That might help keep Paynor blameless. Keeping Paynor’s image clean—which really meant keeping Derek Thorn clean—was clearly the top priority here.
Gar’s biggest concern at the moment was how to get comfortable in the damned plastic chair he’d been waved into. Even though it was made of plastic, that didn’t mean the chair was a Kmart Blue Light Special or anything like that. The molded black poly-whatever was actually a very trendy item. As a work of art, it was probably okay. As a piece of furniture for actually sitting in, it was a disaster. After struggling in it for several moments, Gar gave up and just resigned himself to being uncomfortable. He rested the cane across his knees and hoped that he’d be able to get up when the time came.
Thorn was waiting for him to speak.
“I was surprised to find you here when I called,” Gar said. “Don’t you get the summer off?”
Thorn shook his head, an act which disturbed not a single hair on his head. “Many of our students benefit from additional educational opportunities during the vacation period,” he said.
“Remedial classes, you mean?”
He admitted that with a reluctant nod. “Was Beau Epstein enrolled for the summer classes?”
“Yes. Although his grades were excellent for the short time he was here, his grandfather thought that he might best use the summer to improve his socialization skills.”
“What can you tell me about Beau?” Gar shifted his butt a little, so that everything wouldn’t go absolutely numb.
Thorn frowned. “We do our best with all the students at Paynor,” he said. The words sounded as if they came from a canned speech. “Many of them live what might be termed stressful lives.”
Gar wasn’t sure that “stressful” was the word he would use. Most of them were spoiled brats. But he also knew that it could be very hard having everything in the world except a pair of loving, attentive parents. He realized, maybe better than most, that a lot of these kids were orphans in all but actual fact. Beau, of course, was the real thing. “How did he fit in with the other students? Given his pretty unique background, I mean.”
“There were problems, naturally. He simply wasn’t, how shall I say it, accustomed to the way of life here.”
Gar could only imagine. “Did he make any friends at all?” That was the one piece of information conspicuously missing from the notes Epstein had given him. Usually the parents of even the most wayward youth could provide at least a few names to be pursued. But not this time.
Thorn was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Well, as to that,” he said, “unfortunately, I can help you very little.” He made a pyramid of his fingers on top of the desk. “Young people have their own fairly rigid social structure. An adult authority figure like myself has a very difficult time penetrating its walls.”
Gar thought it was pretty funny that Thorn seemed to think of himself seriously as having any real authority over the student body at Paynor. To the kids, he’d be willing to bet, this fool with his brass buttons was nothing more than a clown. A figure of ridicule, not authority. “Do I have your permission to speak to some of the students on campus?”
Thorn frowned again. “Well, ordinarily I wouldn’t be terribly comfortable with that. But Mr. Epstein did ask us to give you our complete cooperation, and of course we want to accommodate him in every way possible.”
Of course. Epstein was a man everybody wanted to accommodate. Except, maybe, his own grandson.
Gar used his cane as a sort of lever to get himself up out of the damned chair. He promised Thorn that he wouldn’t disrupt any classes and left the impressive authority figure sitting glumly behind his desk.
Apparently, summer classes at Paynor were pretty low-key. A number of students were scattered around the lawn, soaking up the sun, eating frozen yogurt, and listening to music from a variety of radios. Some of them were even looking at books. It was clear that “remedial,” at Paynor, did not have to mean dreary.
A young black man was selling the frozen yogurt from a small yellow truck parked in front of the school. Gar walked over and bought himself a cone of strawberry twirl. He licked it thoughtfully as he decided which students to approach. Three boys were sitting on the low stone wall that edged the lawn and none of them carried books. Gar went and sat on the wall near them.
One of the boys looked at him and Gar could see something like scorn reflected in the eyes. He could also see the effects of what was undoubtedly some recently smoked dope. “Hi, there,” he said cheerfully. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
None of them said anything.
“Don’t worry,” Gar said. “I’m not a narc.”
That earned him a snort. “No kidding,” the kid with the stoned eyes said. “So you’re not a narc. Gee, that’s really interesting.”
Gar smiled. “I do have a lot of close friends on the force, though. And some of them even work in narcotics.”
“Big deal.”
He shrugged. “Right. Big deal. Who the hell cares?”
“Not me,” the boy said.
“Not me either.” Gar finished his yogurt. “You can fry your brains with anything you like; it’s none of my fucking business.”
The boy grinned. “For an old crip, you have a pretty good attitude.”
Gar shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The thing is, I don’t have any attitude at all. I’m just here to do a job.”
“What job is that?”
“First of all, do you have a name?”
“Scott.”
“Okay, Scott. I’m trying to find a fellow student of yours.”
Scott didn’t look surprised. “Somebody hit the road, did they? Hell, that happens all the time. Who split?”
“Beau Epstein.”
All three boys smirked.
“You know Beau, I guess.”
“Nature boy? Sure, we know him.”
“What do you think about him?”
Scott wrinkled his brow in a parody of thought; maybe that was all he was capable of. “Oh, Beau is pretty much of a complete dork,” he said finally. “He walks around here like he’s better than the rest of us. Like he’s mor
ally superior or something.”
Gar wouldn’t have thought that moral superiority was a subject that Scott would have been very concerned with. “Do you have any idea why he might have taken off?”
Scott shrugged. “Who knows?” Then he grinned unpleasantly, as if someone had just told a dirty joke. “Unless maybe it has something to do with Kimberly.” His tone matched the grin in nastiness.
Gar wanted to sigh, but he was damned if he’d give these boys the satisfaction. Instead, he just took out his notebook. “Kimberly?” he said.
“Yeah. Kimberly Wyndham. She goes to school here.”
“She and Beau friends, are they?”
Another snicker. “Well,” Scott said, “that sort of depends on what you call a friend.”
Gar wanted to ask him exactly what he meant, but then he decided it would be better to hear the details from Kimberly herself. “You know where I can find her?”
Scott reached into his pocket and came out with a small electronic contraption. He quickly punched something into it, then turned its face toward Gar. “Kimberly’s address,” he said.
Gar read the digital readout and jotted it down. “There’s nothing else you can tell me about Beau?”
Scott’s momentary agreeability vanished. “You look in the jungle? Maybe he’s back swinging through the trees.”
“You’re pretty funny, Scott. For an asshole.”
Scott just grinned again and flipped him a finger.
Gar got up and walked away.
2
His daughter’s name was Jessica.
One day when she was just past sixteen, Jessica Lynn Sinclair had walked out of the house to go, they thought, to school. But she didn’t go there and she never came home again, either.
No evidence of foul play was ever found.
Inside her denim schoolbag, she had tucked her diary, her teddy bear, and two hundred dollars in baby-sitting earnings. It seemed as if she had intended to vanish.
Gar stirred the high-octane chili that Harry served at his hole-in-the-wall diner on Alvarado Street. It wasn’t the most convenient place to come for lunch, but some days nothing would do but a healthy dose of the spicy concoction. Or maybe it wasn’t so much the chili as it was the memories. On Saturdays, years ago, he would bring Jessica here. A father-and-daughter sort of day. Maybe they would catch the Dodger game. Or a museum. But whatever they did, it always started with chili at Harry’s.
