“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.” And I hung up.
I think I just stared at the kitchen clock for the entire hour. My hands were sweating as I dialed the number again.
“Ron Charles here.”
“Hey, Mr. Charles. It’s me, Jake. Is my brother there?”
And then I heard his voice. “Jakey, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Man, I haven’t heard your voice in a long time. In fact, you sound different. You sound like you’re all grown up. How’s life?”
I didn’t quite know how to ask him what I wanted to ask. I knew the counselor guy was there in the room. I wasn’t sure I wanted him in on what we needed to talk about.
“Cole, listen, life is sort of not okay. I need your help but right now I need you to pretend we’re like having a normal family conversation.”
Another pause while Cole tried to sort this out. He laughed. “Normal? We always said there was nothing normal about our family. So yeah, things are good, right? Tell me more.”
So I told him about Maria’s parents. I also told him Maria was missing and that I thought she might be in real danger. “Dalton thinks these guys are working for someone who’s in your prison. They have some kind of organization. Do you think you can find out what’s going on? Who might have done this and where we can find them?”
There was another pause while Cole chewed this over. “I think that would be a great idea,” he said, keeping the lid on what I was talking about. Then he leaned away from the phone and cheerfully said, “Ron, when could my little brother come visit me? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen his ugly face.”
“Day after tomorrow would work,” I heard Ron say. “Ten AM.”
“You hear that, Jakey? Can you make it?”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll get there somehow.”
“That’s great, little brother. I’m looking forward to seeing you.” And he hung up.
As I sat there alone in my kitchen, I felt scared. Scared for Maria and what might be happening to her. Scared for me and what I was getting myself into. I almost picked up the phone and dialled 9-1-1. I almost said to myself, This problem is way too big for me, and I can’t do anything about it. But I’d been saying stuff like that to myself my whole life. And, living in this part of town, I’d learned to stop trusting the police a long time ago. I’d seen them turn the other way when bad stuff was happening. They might not even care if someone from an illegal family had gone missing.
And from talking to Cole, I realized I’d been wrong to shut him out of my life after he got busted. I had been so angry at him for being stupid. Now I needed him.
My father came home. He’d been drinking. I knew this was no time to tell him about Maria or get him involved. Luke and I retreated to our old bedroom as we often did on nights like this. Mostly just to stay out of the old man’s way. After a few minutes, though, Dad poked his head in.
“No Maria?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. I wasn’t going to offer up more.
He shook his head. “Figures,” he said, then snorted and left.
I skipped school the following morning and connected with Dalton. He said he’d drive me to the prison, on the outskirts of the city in the industrial park, the next day. And then we went driving around Maria’s neighborhood, questioning people he thought we could trust. But no one had seen Maria. And it seemed no one really cared much.
“Let’s go check out the apartment one more time,” I said.
“You’re the boss,” Dalton said. So we drove there and he went in with me, but not before he grabbed a long screwdriver and slipped it under his belt. I guess I gave him a look. “What?” he said. “Just in case.”
Inside it was all about the same. I didn’t know what I’d expected. I poked around in drawers and looked in closets and found another torn-up photograph under a fallen-down bed. As I moved the bed out of the way, I saw that one of the floorboards was loose. I tried prying it with my fingers but couldn’t get it out. Dalton saw me and used his screwdriver to remove it.
At first I just noticed the dust, dirt and rat poop. But then I saw it. An envelope with a piece of paper inside. Maria’s birth certificate. I was pretty sure now it was why she’d left school that day and come back here. But I still didn’t know what had happened after that.
Chapter Nineteen
Dalton drove me to the prison as planned. I was kind of scared. I’d never been inside a prison before. I’d never even visited Cole, not once. And now I felt almost too scared to go in. And I had assumed Dalton would go in with me, but when I started to get out of the truck, he just sat there staring at the windshield.
“You coming with me?” I asked.
He tapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “What are you, crazy? I ain’t goin’ in there. I got this feeling that if I walked in there, they’d find some reason to not let me leave. No way. I’m not going in there.”
And that was that.
So I walked up to the gate and told the guard who I was and that I was going to visit my brother. He let me through and then I went into the prison itself. I was searched and questioned and finally left sitting in an ugly waiting room with gray walls and a gray floor. I could see why Dalton was afraid of coming in here. After about ten minutes a man in a suit walked in.
“Hi, Jake. I’m Ron Charles. I’ll take you to a room where you can speak with your brother.”
As I walked down a long corridor, I heard voices echoing throughout the building. Angry voices. Shouting voices. I heard doors opening and closing, and everything had a cold, hard sound. I wondered if I would have to sit in a booth and speak on a phone to my brother while separated by a glass window. But it wasn’t like that.
It was another gray room with a bare wooden table and two chairs. Cole was already there. He smiled as I walked in, and I suddenly felt so guilty for not staying in touch with him, for not coming to visit sooner.
Ron just kind of bowed and said, “I’ll be back later.” And he left.
“Jakey, man, it’s good to see you. What’s goin’ on with your hair?”
Yeah, my hair. It had grown quite a bit since Cole had seen me last. I smiled. “I finally convinced Dad to stop giving me that crappy haircut with those damn cutters.”
Cole shook his head. “I didn’t think any one of us would ever win that battle. But you’re lookin’ good, kid. The hair. And you got bigger. And something else I can’t quite pin down. But it’s different in a good way.” He scratched his chin and then said, “I know what it is. You look stronger.”
I shook my head. “I don’t feel stronger.”
“How’s Luke?”
“Luke’s Luke. He still doesn’t say much.”
And that was it for the small talk. “Okay, little brother, I know this isn’t about some family reunion.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m sorry I haven’t stayed in touch. I really am. But you’re right. This is about Maria.”
Cole took a deep breath. “Jake, it’s a really shitty world out there.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“Dalton was right. There’s a couple of guys inside here. We all know to stay the hell away from them. They moved down here from somewhere up north and started getting in on whatever they could—gambling, drugs. If it was illegal and they could cash in on it, they did it.”
I was almost afraid to hear what he was going to say next. I leaned forward.
“So, word is, they saw an opportunity coming their way. The government was cracking down on illegal immigrants, and some of the kids—teenagers mostly—were slipping through the cracks. Either staying on with relatives or just staying behind and trying to make it on their own. That’s when these guys would swoop in and kidnap them. Make them work for them or sell them.”
“Sell them?”
Cole nodded. I didn’t want him to explain further.
“But these two got busted for some big drug deal from a w
ays back. They ended up in here, but their operation kept going.”
“You think they took Maria?”
“Yeah, I do. I hope not. But it sounds like their thing. Like I said, it’s a really shitty world out there. And in here, it’s even worse.”
“I have to find her.”
“I know. It took some doing, but I have an address. Basement of a house at 1532 South Street. There’s three of them running the operation.”
“Three,” I repeated. “I think I’ve seen them.”
“Jake, what are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know yet. Think I should go to the police?”
Cole gave me a look. “Look who you’re asking. The way I hear it, the police already know what’s going on, but because it involves families of illegal immigrants, they just don’t care. I wish to hell I was out of here so I could help.”
I looked down at the table. “Me too,” I said. I knew I was in way over my head. Maybe there was nothing I could do to save Maria. I felt helpless.
“Jakey, look at me.”
I looked him straight in the eye.
“Talk to Pop. Tell him everything.”
“Are you crazy? He’s always telling me to run from trouble. To stay out of it. Whatever it is.”
Cole leaned back in his chair. “You’re going to have to tell somebody.”
Ron was back in the room now. We stood up. Cole gave me a big bear hug and said, “I’m gonna be out of here in eighteen months. We’ve got some catching up to do.”
Chapter Twenty
Dalton was tapping his fingers nervously on the steering wheel when I got in the truck. I told him what Cole had said. “That is definitely some nasty shit,” he said. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to find Maria,” I said. “No matter what it takes.”
Dalton fired up the engine and put the truck in gear. “Count me out. I’ve seen those dudes.”
He didn’t say much more as we headed toward our part of town. When we were back in the neighborhood, I asked him if he’d drive around to Duskie and see if we could find Oscar.
“Why Oscar?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
After going up and down a couple of streets, we found Oscar with his shopping cart. “Thanks, Dalton,” I said and got out.
Oscar was glad to see me, but his look changed when I told him what I’d learned about Maria. I told him the street number.
“I know that old house,” he said. “Not good people. I’ve been through their trash. Booze. Needles. Magazines. Curtains always closed. I never see anyone around there in the daytime.” And then he asked me the same thing Dalton had. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t.
Oscar walked me home. We didn’t talk. The streets seemed noisier than usual. And more unfriendly. When we got to my building, Oscar leaned toward me. “You need my help, all you have to do is ask.” Then he lightly tapped me once on my forehead and rolled his cart away.
Luke was in the bedroom with headphones on, listening to music. He looked up and nodded when I walked in. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. All I could think about was Maria.
A while later I heard the front door open. I knew my father was headed for the kitchen. He had already grabbed a beer when I sat down at the table across from him.
“Rough day?” I asked.
“Aren’t they all?”
“I saw Cole today,” I said.
My father looked at me in shock. “You visited him?”
I nodded. “I think he’s doing okay. He says he might be out in eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months can be a long time.”
“I told him about this problem I have.”
“Problem?”
“Yeah. He told me I should talk to you about it.”
“That don’t sound much like Cole. He never talked to me about what he was up to.”
“Well, maybe he’s changed.”
My father took a sip of his beer. “Tell me about this problem.”
So I filled him in, about Maria and about what Cole had revealed to me.
He was listening, but he stared at his beer bottle the whole time. When I’d finished he set it down on the table. “That’s one hell of a problem, Jake. Sounds like somebody better do something about it.”
He was breathing real heavy, the way he did sometimes when he was about to freak out. He got up from the table and kicked the chair over, then walked into his bedroom and slammed the door.
I sat there in disbelief. It looked like Cole had it all wrong. The story had made my dad angry, but then, hell, everything made the old man angry. So now he had shut himself in his bedroom. Yeah, I figured, that was the father I knew and loved. Cole so totally had it wrong.
But after a few minutes the door opened. My dad walked back into the kitchen and looked right at me. He was holding a gun. One of those small handguns like I’d seen a couple of kids carrying at school. He set it down on the table.
“You own a gun?” I asked. “You always told us you hated guns.”
“I do. I hate guns. But I have this one.” He slid it across the table to me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. That gun scared the shit out of me just sitting there on the table. My father had always been unpredictable. And he’d flare into violence over the smallest thing. This was not a man who should own a gun.
He looked at the gun and then at me. It was like he was reading my mind. “Don’t worry. I don’t have any bullets. If I’d had bullets, I would have killed someone a long time ago.”
Neither of us noticed that Luke had come out of our bedroom. “What’s goin’ on?” he asked, standing right behind us.
I was sure my father was going to tell him nothing, but instead he pointed to the gun and explained why it was sitting on the table.
No one spoke at first.
Then Luke just nodded and said, “I’m coming with you.”
My father gave him a hard look and then said one word. “Good.”
Then he walked over to the sink, bent down and opened a cupboard door. He pulled out a crowbar and set it on the table as well. “Always have backup. That’s rule number one.” He studied the gun and the crowbar for a minute and then said, “But we need to know exactly what we’re getting into before we go charging in there. I can’t say I’ve done anything like this before. So you have to let me sleep on it.”
I wanted to say we needed to go over there right away. But I kept quiet. As I went to bed that night, I was pretty certain my father would change his mind by morning. Maybe his wanting to help was just the beer talking. I’d seen that plenty of times before.
Luke looked up from the martial-arts magazine he was reading in bed. “We really gonna do this?”
I thought maybe he was getting cold feet. “You don’t have to be part of it,” I said. “It’s not really your problem.”
“No, Jakey. You don’t get it. I feel like I’ve been waiting to do something like this all my life.”
Chapter Twenty-One
But we never did get that good night’s sleep. None of us. At around eleven thirty there was banging on our door. This had happened before. Usually it was one of the drunk neighbors coming to see if we had any beer left in the fridge. Or coming to cuss out my father for being the mean son of a bitch he usually seemed to be.
I got up first. Through the peephole I could see it was Oscar. That was truly strange. I opened the door and let him in just as my father stumbled into the kitchen.
“Jacob,” Oscar said. “I’ve been watching that place ever since you told me about it. I’ve seen four of them in there today. Those three big guys and a young skinny punk not much bigger than you. So here’s the thing. Those three guys you saw, they left. I could be wrong, but I think it’s just the kid who’s left there now with whoever they’re holding.”
My father was blinking, standing there in his boxer shorts, staring at Oscar. He looked pretty pathetic, really, a
nd not at all happy about being woken up. Luke was in the room now too, looking like an oversized cartoon character in his too-small pajamas.
“Let’s do it,” my father said, heading back to his bedroom. I assumed to put some clothes on.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Luke said, like he’d done this sort of thing a million times before.
Me, I was scared. But the wheels were in motion, and I knew there was no turning back.
“How’d you get here, Oscar?”
“Dalton. He’s downstairs in his truck.”
I dressed as quickly as I could. I tucked my pocketknife into my pants pocket. Then I grabbed my old baseball bat from the dust under my bed. Louisville Slugger. Solid oak, not like the metal ones. From the one summer I had played baseball for three weeks before I got kicked off the team.
My dad got in the front of the truck with Dalton. Oscar, Luke and I sat in the back. Charging through the dark city streets was like some kind of a wild dream. I could feel the adrenaline kicking in and my heart pounding.
I could hear Luke’s running shoes tapping on the floorboards in a nervous, quick beat. Oscar touched him on the knee and then placed his forefinger on my forehead. “Stay cool. Stay focused. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those truly interesting nights.”
Interesting didn’t quite seem like the right word.
Before I could think another thought, Dalton was bringing the Ford to a stop in front of the building Oscar had scoped out earlier. The upstairs was dark. So was the downstairs. Windows all boarded up. My father got out of the front of the truck, crowbar in one hand and gun in the other.
Yeah, it was going to be an interesting night. And my family—well, for once I felt damn good about my family.
I pointed to the basement door. We really didn’t have a clue what was behind there.
Oscar, Luke and I followed my dad up the broken cement walkway and stood there in the dark metal doorway. My father tucked the empty gun into his belt and was about to use the crowbar to pry open the door when Luke stopped him.
“Wait,” my brother said. And in one powerful motion, he kicked hard on the door. Once, then twice. It swung open.
The Thing You're Good At Page 6
