High Risk

by Rick R. Reed

  Gene waved him away. “A joke, man, all right? A joke. Anybody got a sense of humor around here?”

  Mama turned the music louder. “Come on guys…who feels like dancing?”

  Abbott picked up Charley and hugged him to his chest. Suddenly, it felt like his birthday party was over. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but outside, the sky was getting dark.

  No one was looking at him. He bunched Charlie close to him with one arm, and with the other, picked up his fire engine. He started to run from the room.

  “Wait a minute, kiddo!” Mama called. “Don’t you have somethin’ you want to say to the guys?”

  Abbott stopped at his bedroom doorway. “Thank you.” He went into his bedroom. The music in the living room got louder and the men’s voices increased to compete.

  He couldn’t remember when exactly he had fallen asleep, but when he awoke, his bedroom was dark and he was sweating with all of his stuffed animals piled on top of him. They fell away as he sat up.

  He had to pee. And he needed to get his PJs on. Mama had the night off and he wondered why she wasn’t in here, getting him ready for bed. He wanted to hear a story.

  And he had to pee! He didn’t know how much longer he could hold it.

  He stood.

  It was then that he noticed how quiet it was in the other room. Music came from the radio, but it was soft, the kind Abbott thought boring. He moved to the door and heard his mother’s furious whispering.

  “No, not here. Not now. This ain’t right, Gene.”

  And Gene’s voice came out rough, his words kind of slow, like he forced them out. Why did they sound so funny? “What’s the matter, baby? You have been wantin’ it from both of us since we got here. Ain’t that right?”

  “No, Gene, no. You got the wrong idea.” Silence for a minute. “I think you and Duke better leave now. The party’s over.”

  Abbott swallowed hard. He felt like he could use a drink of water, but didn’t want to go into the living room, didn’t want to cross it with them out there, no matter how much he needed to pee or get a drink.

  “We were invited. It’s rude to throw out your guests.” Gene laughed. Abbott looked down to see he was balling up the bottom of his striped shirt and letting it go, balling it up again.

  “Please, Gene, I gotta get my kid ready for bed.”

  “Kid’s asleep. You know it, I know it, Duke knows it. The kid’s nothin’ to worry about.”

  More silence for a little while, and Abbott felt his pants getting warm and wet. Mama would be mad. Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming his way and shut his eyes tight as the door squeaked open. The light from the living room washed over him, making him squint. Then the door shut again.

  “I just checked on the kid. Out like a light.”

  “I just want you to go, please.” Mama’s voice was whiny and it made Abbott cold. Was she scared, too?

  “Just one more dance, ‘kay? Just do a little dance with me and then one with Duke and we’ll be outta here and you can sing a fuckin’ lullaby to your little rug-rat.”

  “Just a dance?” Mama’s voice went high.

  Gene snickered. “Yeah. Now, come here.”

  Abbott heard static, then Elvis Presley singing about how he couldn’t help falling in love, then the scrape of two pairs of feet moving closer to his door.

  “Don’t!” Mama’s voice cut through the music, louder.

  Abbott stuffed his fingers in his mouth.

  “Aw, come on, baby, give me a little sugar,” Gene said.

  “Please. Please, go.”

  Was Mama crying?

  Abbott sucked harder on his fingers, his other hand moving rapidly back and forth over the ribbed cotton surface of the new monkey.

  “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  Abbott heard a slap.

  “You bitch. Nobody hits me! Nobody!”

  A duller sound followed, like someone being hit. It sounded like a bunch of air rushed out of Mama and then, a crash, like she had fallen over.

  It felt funny in Abbott’s chest, hard for him to breathe.

  He heard a scamper of footsteps, then a bang and a bell as the phone crashed to the floor. Mama screamed. When another hitting noise followed, Abbott couldn’t stand it anymore. He rushed to his bedroom door and flung it open.

  All three adults turned. Mama’s mouth was open in alarm; blood trickled from her nose. Gene’s brown eyes flashed, a cigarette clamped between his teeth. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. Duke, the blond guy with the buzz cut, had a dumb grin on his face.

  “Honey, go on back in your bedroom. Mama will be in soon. I’m okay, honey. Just go on.”

  “Beat it, kid. Can’t you see your ma’s busy?”

  The blond guy snickered.

  Abbott swallowed, trying to find some spit in his mouth. His gaze moved from one adult to the other. He scampered to his mother and threw his arms around her legs. Something was wrong here, and it made Abbott’s stomach churn, the way it had when he’d eaten too much candy.

  Gene spoke. “Duke! Do somethin’ with the fuckin’ kid, would ya? Don’t just stand there like an idiot with your thumb up your ass.”

  “You want me to put him in his room?”

  “No, I want you to take him out dancin’. Jesus!”

  Abbott clung tighter to his mother’s knees as the blond guy neared him.

  “Leave him alone, please. Let me put him to bed, ‘kay?” Mama’s voice sounded weak, almost like a whisper, except her voice kind of shook.

  Duke had his hand on Abbott’s arm, trying to pry him away from his mother. “C’mon, kid, time for bed.”

  Abbott clung tighter.

  “I said come on. Didn’t your ma teach you no respect?” The man yanked Abbott away and he began to wail.

  “Aw, Christ!” Gene said.

  Abbott’s screaming reached new crescendos. His fists clenched in rage, shaking. He kicked at Duke, connecting with the man’s shin. It hurt when Duke pulled on his arms.

  “Don’t do this,” his mama whispered. “Please, Gene, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me get him calmed down.”

  Abbott screamed louder. Wriggling free from Duke’s grasp, he dashed headlong at Gene. When he got to him, he began pummeling his hard stomach with his fists, screaming and kicking.

  Gene grabbed Abbott by both arms and held him aloft, shaking his head and laughing at him. “Fuckin’ kid’s hysterical.” Gene put down Abbott, but held onto one of his wrists. He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and popped it open.

  Abbott stopped screaming. The knife glinted, silver, as Gene turned it in the light.

  Mama sucked in her breath. “Oh God, please.”

  “Duke, look around. See if you can find some tape, masking, duct, even Scotch’ll do. We gotta get this little troublemaker taken care of.”

  “You can’t do this!” Mama shrieked. She ran and began slapping Gene, her hands a blur as she hit his face, his chest, his shoulders.

  Gene let go of Abbott long enough to curl his hand into a ball and fling it in Mama’s face. The punch landed squarely, and Abbott cried out as if it had been he who had been hit. His mother stumbled backward across the room and slammed into the wall. She stared dumbly back at her son.

  Gene grabbed Abbott from behind, the cold steel of the knife pressed to his throat. “Try something like that again, Candy, and I won’t think twice about cutting your little bastard.”

  Mama stared. Why didn’t she do something?

  Duke held up a roll of duct tape he had found in the “junk drawer” in the kitchen. “Lookee here, Gene.”

  “Great.” Gene was breathing hard now.

  What was going to happen? “Now go in the bathroom. I need some clothesline I seen in there earlier. Go on and get it.”

  When Duke came back, he held a length of clothesline in one hand, the duct tape in the other.

  Gene walked over to the maple kitchen table and pulled out a chair. He slammed Abbott into it so hard it hurt his butt.<
br />
  “Take care of it, Duke.”

  Gene went back to Abbott’s mother and put his arms around her, trying to kiss her. She turned her head first one way, then the other, to avoid him. Buttons popped and rolled to the floor as Gene ripped open her blouse.

  Duke tied Abbott to the chair, wrapping the clothesline around and around him so he couldn’t move. Next, he slapped a length of duct tape across his mouth. All Abbott could do was whimper. “You want me to blindfold the kid?”

  Gene looked Abbott up and down. “Nah. Let’s let him watch. It’ll be educational.”

  “Please, no,” Mama whispered, but Abbott could barely hear her.

  Abbott felt Duke’s hand on his shoulder. “This will all be over soon, kid. You got to understand, your mama’s not really gettin’ hurt. She likes this. Everybody in the neighborhood knows it. She likes it.”

  Abbott cringed, wanting to scrunch his eyes shut tight, but unable to look away as Gene took off his clothes. His body was hard and hairy, even his back. Like a skinny monkey.

  And his thing, so big, sticking out in front of him, hard and red. Abbott didn’t know how it could get so big and, in his terror, wondered if it hurt Gene.

  “You know what to do,” Gene said to Mama, pushing her down to her knees. He grabbed her hair with one hand and drew her close. “Suck it.”

  His mother seemed stiff, her eyes dull, her movements like a robot as she took Gene’s thing in her mouth and began moving her head back and forth on it. Sometimes, Gene pushed savagely at his Mama’s face and she gagged, her hands fluttering around Gene’s hips like butterflies.

  Abbott began to cry…

  * * * *

  Now, Abbott found he could hardly breathe. They had both taken her, right in front of him. Why did she have to invite them over and make herself look the way she did? If it had just been he and she for his birthday, none of it would have happened to her.

  To clear his mind of the memory, he held the jar containing Beth’s fingers to the light, staring as they moved to point and accuse.

  It wasn’t his fault. He was only four. How could he have helped his mother?

  He looked at the fingers and, again, imagined them pulling on a stiff cock.

  How could she do that? Couldn’t she see the trouble she was getting herself into?

  The picture in his mind became more vivid. He saw the fingers stroking, their nails now bright red, the dick hard, finally shooting an arc of white semen into the air. Abbott felt a tightening in his jeans, then a spasm that went through him like an electric jolt.

  “No!”

  He flung the jar against the opposite wall, where it shattered. Alcohol ran down the wall in a dark stain. The room filled with the smell of it, disturbing the purity of the cold, clean air.

  Chapter 24

  “We’ll cut to a commercial here.” Joanna Downs froze the frame on a woman’s face. The woman had olive skin and black hair that indicated a Mediterranean heritage. Her large green eyes glistened with tears.

  “It’s a good shot. A lot of emotion there.” Yoshi Blake sat back in her chair, biting on a pencil and waiting for her boss to make the next move.

  The Joanna Downs Show was Channel 8’s offering in the nine A.M. time slot. Joanna Downs, former anchor of the Ten O’Clock News, had created the show two years ago, starting out with a half-hour, then progressing to an hour as the ratings took off. Joanna was disarmingly simple in her looks: wheat-colored hair, blunt cut at her shoulders, an upturned nose, and a slightly pudgy frame that made people trust her…and lower their guard.

  And Joanna knew how to move in for the kill. Yoshi had lost count of the times she had watched her boss reduce a guest to tears as she sided with them in their televised versions of marriages gone sour, victims of childhood abuse, battered wives, women who had been raped. Joanna would cry right along with her guests. What no one knew was that she shut off the tears as soon as she left the set.

  She was trying to follow in Oprah’s footsteps. But Joanna considered herself more original than that, more controversial, which is why she was always in the top-ten rated local shows. And this in spite of several advertiser boycotts and slams from both the Tribune and the Sun Times. Joanna knew the ratings and the shock value were already generating an interest in syndication companies, who could take her show national. And then—watch out.

  Yoshi knew her boss had a real taste for the slimy underbelly of things, a fascination with all things criminal and sexual. The best shows were when she combined the two.

  The Beth Walsh story was a good example. Joanna wanted to get a show about that case on the air as soon as possible. Yuppie housewife with a secret life disappears with her daytime lover, leaving hubby behind, slashed to bits. Yoshi remembered Joanna’s reaction when she first read about the story in the Sun Times.

  “Delicious,” she had said, putting down the paper.

  Yoshi Blake dreaded the visit she was going to have to make in the next hour or so. Kate Donner had not agreed to see her. Joanna vetoed the idea of trying to make an appointment as soon as Yoshi had suggested it. As producer of The Joanna Downs Show, Yoshi had little latitude or power.

  “Are you crazy? She’ll never agree to see you. Honestly, Yoshi, I don’t know how you ever managed to become a producer. Where’s your chutzpah? You have to catch the woman by surprise.” Joanna paused to light a cigarette. “And then show her how much you care.”

  Yoshi wondered how Joanna managed to seem so compassionate once the cameras started going. Yoshi also wondered if her salary was worth it.

  “Listen to this! Listen to this!” Joanna’s voice rose with excitement as she played back the sound bite for Yoshi to hear.

  “I never wanted to fall in love with another woman. All I ever wanted was the house, the kids, the dog. Why did God do this to me?”

  Yoshi looked up at the monitor. The dark-haired woman was speaking to the camera. Her husband stared off into space. Cut to the audience, where many hands were aloft, eager to chime in with their own opinions.

  “Delicious,” Joanna whispered.

  Later, Yoshi sat outside the Donner’s house. It was unlike the house in which she had grown up, in Crestwood. That house had been her Japanese immigrant parents’ dream, but Yoshi knew the little white brick ranch represented nothing more than cookie-cutter rigidity, one of many others just like it, built for blue-collar people just like her father.

  The Donner house, with its imposing edifice of gray field stone, leaded glass windows, and heavy oak doors was just the kind of house Yoshi and her friends would drive by after dark when they were in high school.

  She would wonder aloud where they got the nerve to sit in front of their lighted windows. “Aren’t they afraid someone will drive by and shoot them?”

  * * * *

  Not again. Kate turned away from the window, letting the draperies drop into place. The woman in the red Subaru had been sitting at the curb for the past fifteen minutes.

  What was she waiting for?

  Kate settled back on the couch, picked up the remote and sent the volume on The Barefoot Contessa up to an almost unbearable intensity. She reached for her tea and took a sip. A plate of butter cookies sat on the table before her. Ina Garten was making Béarnaise sauce.

  The doorbell rang, and Kate stiffened. She could recall a time, not so long ago, when the sounds of the doorbell or the phone’s ring were pleasant ones, filling her with anticipation.

  Now, all these bells alarmed her, set her heart to racing.

  Why couldn’t they leave her alone?

  Kate knew it was the woman from the Subaru, the one with black hair. Kate even knew what she wanted—she was some sort of reporter and eager to rip the skin from her, yank her outside, and throw her to the masses. They were like cannibals that way, hungry to feed on the miseries of their own kind.

  The doorbell chimed again. Kate spilled some of her tea in her haste to up the volume even more. Now, Ina was grilling steaks with her husband, Je
ffrey, on the patio of their fabulous house in the Hamptons.

  Once more, the doorbell. Again.

  Kate wondered if she just shouldn’t go upstairs, pull a pillow over her head, and wait it out.

  A knock at the door. Kate sat up, spine stiff, as heard the doorknob being jiggled.

  That was enough. Didn’t anyone teach these people any respect? If she had left the door unlocked, would the woman actually have had the nerve to walk in? Kate stood. Her hands were clammy. She marched to the door and yanked it open. She knew her face was red, knew her rage would be apparent to whomever stood outside.

  She found an Asian woman, a girl really, waiting. Her hand was upraised, ready to knock again. The girl wore a red leather jacket, white silk blouse, and jeans.

  “What do you want?”

  The girl smiled. “Hi, Mrs. Donner. My name’s Yoshi Blake.” She extended her hand and withdrew it quickly when Kate looked down as if it was something vile.

  “And I suppose you’re with the Trib or something? Need the family angle?”

  Kate’s question seemed to take Yoshi by surprise. She stepped back, as if she had lost her composure, as if she wasn’t sure what to say next. “Well, actually I work for Joanna Downs. Are you familiar with her talk show?”

  Kate grimaced. Who wasn’t familiar with the show that was giving Jerry Springer a run for his money? “Yes, I’m familiar with the show. I really don’t have time for this.” She began to close the door, but did it slowly, knowing and hating herself for the fact that she didn’t have the guts to slam the door in the young woman’s face. She knew her hesitation would give the woman a chance.

  Yoshi put up her hand, stopping the door’s progression. “Please, Mrs. Donner. Couldn’t you just spare a minute or two to let you know why I’m here?”

  “I don’t have a minute or two.” Kate looked into the dark almond eyes; so warm.

  “Mrs. Donner, I know you’ve probably been harassed by every reporter this side of Moline.”

  Kate nodded.

  “I’m not a reporter. I’m a producer for Joanna Downs. I’m not here to ask you a lot of nosy questions, just to speak for my boss. Couldn’t you just let me come in and tell you what she has in mind?”