Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  “Exactly.”

  “But I never said it was an award.”

  Verdina’s eyes worked faster than a Swiss clock, trying to be everywhere and anywhere. “But—but—” he sputtered.

  “Oh, that award,” Split supplied.

  “No. No!”

  “Where is it Funky Cold?”

  “How did you find—”

  Split pressed the tip of the pick into the man’s thigh, then slid it in the width of two fingers. The piercing scream made Bobby look away. When Split pulled it out he placed the tip beneath Verdina’s left eye and leaned in close. The gore-tipped pick dripped blood down Verdina’s cheek.

  “The rules have just changed, motherfucker. That was a question. You aren’t allowed to ask questions, especially when a question was asked. Give me an answer or let me take an eye.”

  “You want what I took from the home.” Almost a question, it was a statement of defeat. His gaze fell, saddened.

  “Yes.”

  “If I tell you, will you let me go?”

  “If you don’t tell me, you’ll lose precious parts.”

  “I don’t have it anymore.”

  “Where is it?” Bobby stepped forward. He’d had enough of this. He should be with Kanga. God knew what the man was doing. They should both be grieving together.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me or I’ll have my friends take you apart.” Having to deal with this perv less than a day after Laurie’s death was the ultimate disrespect for her. He found the rage and showed it to Verdina.

  “Please, I—”

  Bobby boxed the man’s ears, sending him to his knees. As Blockbuster let go and stepped back, temporarily stunned by the move, Bobby snatched the pick out of Split’s hand and shoved Verdina to the ground. He jumped atop the man’s chest, straddled it and shoved the pick an inch into the man’s nose. Verdina squeaked but remained motionless as the tip brushed against the tender interior.

  “We know what you are, you stinking little man. We’ve found your videos and your pictures and your books. The only thing keeping you alive is the knowledge of where you put the record.”

  Verdina swallowed slowly as he breathed through his teeth. He stared cross-eyed at the pick. The sickly sweet stench of urine sprung like a coward’s cologne.

  “If we turned you over to the cops, they’d never let you go. If we took you back to San Pedro, you’d die within the hour. Your only chance, and I mean your only chance, at surviving this day is to tell me what you did with it.”

  “Wait a minute.” Split stepped forward.

  Bobby held his hand up, silencing Split momentarily. He didn’t care that these two wanted to do, the man was his. The information was his. Lucy had so decreed. If they wanted to kill him, they’d have to do it another time.

  “I know you.” Each word slowly enunciated. “You were Sister Agnes’s favorite.”

  “You don’t know me. You only wished you knew me.”

  “I would have,” whispered the perv, unable to control himself. “Had it not been for that old witch.”

  Bobby stuck the pick an inch farther, the tip piercing cartilage. Verdina shook, his legs bucking violently. He howled, his eyes slamming open and shut and open again as if he couldn’t believe the pain.

  “You say another word about Sister Agnes and I’ll shove it all the way in.”

  The pain subsided, leaving a sly grin on the man’s face. “I don’t know how you found me.”

  “It wasn’t as hard as you think. Now tell me where it is.”

  “What’s to keep you from killing me once I tell you?”

  “My word.”

  Verdina cocked an eyebrow. “Your word?”

  “Yeah. It’s the only thing I own and I own it well.”

  “Would you pray on the soul of Sister Agnes?”

  “Yes. I’d pray on her soul.” Then Bobby shoved the pick back into the meat of the man’s nose for mentioning the sainted woman. Verdina loosed his bowels as his heels pummeled the floor. The man’s scream disappeared into the highest octaves.

  Bobby didn’t care. He reveled in the moment, allowing himself to be fed by the man’s pain. He imagined doing the same thing to the driver of the car who ran over Laurie. When he eased up, Verdina’s entire body went slack.

  “Jesus.” Split shook his head. He turned away, but only enough so that he could still see what was going on.

  “So tell me. Tell me and you’ll live. Tell me and I’ll stop.”

  “I’ll tell!” Verdina gasped. “A man named Shrewsbury in Palos Verdes. I traded it to him.”

  Bobby could only imagine what exactly had been traded in return. If this Shrewsbury was anything like Verdina, the answer was the result of the simplest equation. Bobby never did ask, but with every detail he understood how someone could get stabbed forty-eight times...

  He slammed the pick down, his own scream of anger drowning out Verdina’s. When he finally stood, he jerked the pick free from the floor where he’d sunk it, instead of Verdina’s eye. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said.

  “Wait. We aren’t going to let him live. You were just fucking with him, right?”

  “No. He’s going to live.” Bobby strode to the telephone on the wall next to the refrigerator and ripped it to the ground with one wicked jerk. He swiped the cell phone they’d taken from the briefcase and shoved it in his pants. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Split made to speak up again, but Blockbuster grabbed him and made the gesture to shut his mouth. Together they left Verdina sprawled in his own juices, his giggles counter-measuring Split’s curses.

  The gangbanger was silent until they were seated in the car. He started the engine, flipped off the radio, and held it in park. He watched Bobby in the rearview mirror as Bobby watched a boy and a girl playing spics and pimps in the overgrown front yard of the apartments. A rhododendron had been turned into a jail, the boy forced to sit on his knees as he stared forlornly back at Bobby. The girl paced in front like a guard.

  “Where did that come from?” Split finally asked.

  “What do you mean?” Bobby wasn’t in the mood for twenty questions. He was tired. He wanted to go home. He wanted to find out why the girl had locked the little boy up in the plant.

  “Who made you Clint Fucking Eastwood? I didn’t know you had it in you. I thought you were another—”

  “Southern white bread motherfucker who’d rather spend his days watching Jerry Springer than doing something about his life?” Bobby met Split’s gaze in the mirror, then returned to his vigil. “Yeah. I’ve heard that before. Good thing with preconceptions like that it’s easy to overachieve.”

  “You okay, Bobby?” Blockbuster asked.

  Bobby waited a long minute before responding. He wasn’t all right, but he wasn’t about to share. He did appreciate the big lug’s sincerity, though. “No. But I’m getting better.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  After a moment, “Just be my friend. I’m a good one and give as good as I get.”

  The girl suddenly quit pacing, faced the street, and marched forward three steps. When she stopped, she saluted, clicking her flip-flopped heels together in perfect Nazi fashion. Then she whirled on her prisoner and stalked toward him with balled fists and jutting chin.

  “What about Verdina? The perv? The pajiero?”

  “What about him?” Bobby answered, but his attention was on the girl.

  “We were going to kill him. Why didn’t we kill him? Shit, man. Why’d you let him go?”

  Bobby couldn’t hear what the girl was saying, but by the jut of the boy’s spine, she was reading a pre-pubescent riot act to him. He didn’t speak, he didn’t act out, his demeanor was perfect subjugation. What could they possibly be doing?

  “Hey. Are you listening to me?”

  Bobby didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the door and headed toward the children. He had to know what was going on.

  “Sing Britney Spears,” the girl
screamed like a drill sergeant. “Sing Oops!... I Did It Again!”

  Bobby stopped. This was all about singing a Britney Spears song??

  “You Al Qaida bastard, you tell us how you blew up the World Trade Center. You tell us or else!” She stepped in and hovered over the boy who stared back at her, pretending and shaking.

  Just as he thought how harsh she was, he remembered his own words and actions a few minutes ago. Had he really said those things? Had he done that? A smear of red stained his hand where the blood had dripped from the ice pick. He shuddered and wiped them on his pants.

  “Hey, Elvis Boy,” Split began, but Blockbuster reached out and silenced him with a friendly squeeze of the shoulder. Split cursed and put the car in gear. “Wait until Lucy hears about this shit.”

  The girl resumed her pacing, her small limbs transiting generations as they swung back and forth in Nazi high steps. So young. So serious. Back at the apartment, he had been more like her than he’d wanted to be. He needed to concentrate, to remember who he was.

  He got back in the car and they slipped out of the neighborhood the way they’d come. Four blocks later they pulled to a stop light. On one corner was a liquor store where four men in red flannel shirts open to their chests stared them down. On the other corner was a police car, its occupants staring at the four men. Bobby made a split-second decision and opened the car door.

  “What the hell?”

  Bobby ignored Split and headed toward the corner. As he approached the Bloods he kept his hands low and open. He smiled softly, making passive eye contact when necessary. “Hey, fellas.” As he said it, he realized he couldn’t have sounded more white.

  “What you want?” the tall one in the middle asked. A Dodger’s shirt peeked out from beneath his flannel colors. A platinum necklace with the letters OG rested heavily against his chest. His eyelashes were so dark they looked painted with mascara.

  “We’re from Pedro and we’re just leaving.”

  The light changed and Split hissed, “Hurry up.” Then to BB, “What the fuck is he doing?”

  “You ain’t gone yet?” The Blood rose a little on his toes.

  “We have a present for you.” Bobby glanced at the other three. Two of them watched him like he was about to jerk free a bazooka, but the other stared over his shoulder at the car.

  “For me?” played the banger with a dead smile. “You don’t even know me.”

  “For your people.”

  A man in a Nissan truck pressed on his horn. “Come on. Move it!”

  “What’s some San Pedro surfer homie gonna give me and my people?”

  “Jesus. Hurry up, Bobby.” Split’s voice cracked, but he didn’t move the car.

  Bobby leaned in close enough to smell Pierre Cardin cologne, the sweet musk of marijuana, and the sour stench of too much Colt 45. In rabid whispers, he spoke of Verdina, the living room, the walls filled with pictures, the tapes and the books. Bobby asked about the schools in the neighborhood. He commented about the playgrounds. He inquired if the banger had a little brother or a cousin or a son. Twenty seconds later he leaned back. “Tell people that this is a gift from Lucy.” Then he turned and strode back to the car. He was aware of both the eyes of the gangbangers on his departing back and the attention from the police car ten feet away. He ignored them all, walked around the back of the car, got in and closed the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  Split slid the car into gear and pulled slowly away, his eyes flickering back and forth from the police to the Bloods in the rearview mirror. When they got two blocks, Blockbuster turned in his seat and grinned broadly. “That took some big fucking Elvis balls.”

  Big fucking Elvis balls. He wished. All Bobby did was express his outrage. He actually hated the part of him that had sprung forward to deal with the situation, but knew he’d had to do it. He’d like to think that anyone would have done the same. Anyone except God. It seemed the boys Verdina had befriended were too small for God to notice, because if God had big fucking Elvis balls he would have stopped it right away. God, that great light of life in the sky, the reason for all the churches, televangelists, mail-order prayers, snake dancing, Middle Eastern Wars, self-mutilation, transubstantiation, bibles in every hotel and the owner of the mantle of self-righteousness. God, that great God who let Verdina fuck little boys and let cars run down Laurie. God, that beast who took things from Bobby when Bobby most needed them. Like parents. Friends. Lovers. A normal life.

  If Bobby really had big fucking Elvis balls he’d stand up to the gnarly light in the heavenly sky and empty his soul of curses. Bobby suppressed a sob and his vision narrowed, then he lost time as God took away even his consciousness.

  Chapter 14

  Bobby Dupree woke with someone knocking on his forehead. Rap rap rap. As his eyes opened, the jagged-toothed smile of a Hispanic boy widened in fear. The boy leapt to his feet and tried to run away with the four other children who’d been playing the Let’s Wake the Gringo game.

  The other children escaped, screaming at the tops of their lungs, but Bobby had reached out reflexively and grasped the boy by the arm. The child shrieked as terror hijacked his body. He jerked and kicked and cried, yelling for his mother. The cacophony was finally too much to take, and he let the boy go free.

  Bobby raised himself to a sitting position and noticed that his pants had been removed. His naked legs lay beneath a wool blanket. Thankfully his underwear remained.

  “Did you have to scare my nephew so bad?” Lucy entered the room and sat his three-hundred-pound bulk on the edge of the couch near his feet. The wood creaked but held.

  “Did he have to pretend he was the Avon Lady and my head was a door?”

  “I suppose not, but he wanted to see what the Terror of Van Nuys was.”

  “Oh.” An ache shot through Bobby’s head and he cradled it in his hands. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  “Why not? If you wouldn’t have, I would.” He put a meaty paw on Bobby’s leg. “You did good. Don’t let them ever convince you otherwise.”

  The last thing Bobby remembered was turning onto the 110 Freeway. Clearly he’d blacked out. He didn’t feel the aches and pains of a grand mal so he must have just lost time. This was getting real old.

  As if he’d read Bobby’s mind, Lucy pulled a pill bottle from the pocket of his green velour sweat pants. “I got these for you. Topomax. Your Medicare records said that these were the last drugs prescribed to you.”

  “When I was seventeen.”

  “If they worked then, they should work now.”

  “How’d you find out about them? How’d you get them?”

  Lucy lowered his gaze and scratched at an invisible spot on the back of his left hand. “Laurie arranged for it before...”

  Just twenty-four hours ago she’d been alive. Bobby cursed himself for not mourning. The problem was that he didn’t know how. He’d never been close to anyone in his life except Sister Agnes. Perhaps if he’d lost someone he’d loved while growing up, he’d have been better prepared.

  Jesus.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Bobby rubbed the sleep out of his face. “What time is it?”

  “Half past nine.”

  “Listen, I want to go to Palos Verdes and finish this.”

  “I’m sure you do, but that’s not in the cards. I need to do some recon first, then—”

  “Lucy, I’m no good here in California. I need to get what’s mine and go back to Memphis.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t fit here.”

  “You won’t fit anywhere until you figure out who you are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You react to other people’s actions. It’s almost as if you don’t have original emotions.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “Don’t get pissed, Bobby. This is just my observation.”

  Bobby felt the need to defend himself, but the more work
ed up he became, the more he recognized elements of truth in Lucy’s words. Maybe that was part of his problem. But so what? “What does it matter if I only react? What difference does it make? Just means I’m paying attention.”

  “Until you take ownership of your own self, until you figure out who you are and how you feel and why you feel that way, you’re not going to be your own man.” Lucy leveled his gaze. “Not that this is a bad thing. I know plenty of people who are just like you, Bobby. But they won’t ever realize their potential. Do me a favor. Don’t say anything, and don’t make any promises, but I want you to do something for me. I want you to forget about Laurie’s death and concentrate on your own search, for it is in this that you will finally discover who you are. And when you do, you’ll be able to mourn in the proper way. Until then, you don’t even know how to cry.”

  “How’d you get to be so smart?”

  “You think the only thing that qualifies me to be a leader is these fists?” Lucy asked, holding up both hands. “If that was the case, every bully would be a leader and the world would be filled with them. No, I was raised in a good family and that’s how I treat my boys and girls. I love them first and foremost, then I deal with them. Do you see the difference, Bobby? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Bobby opened his mouth to answer but realized he didn’t have anything to say. The fact was that he didn’t understand. He dropped his glare. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Love is the easiest emotion. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy. Everything that comes with it, everything that is because of it, now those are the hard things to deal with.”

  “No kidding.”

  “But no worries. I’ve talked to Grandma and decided that I’ll help you.” Then he stood. “I gotta run and take care of some business. You need to stay here. No heading off to the beach shack. If I need you, I don’t want to have to send Split after you.”

  “And my pants?”

  “Grandma has them. Said they were dirty and wanted to clean them. You want them, ask Grandma.”

  “Oh joy.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  Lucy grabbed a jacket from a chair by the door, snapped the top two buttons closed and hustled out the door. Six seconds later there was the sound of a car door slamming, the gunning of an old rumbly engine, then nothing but the silence of San Pedro. From the kitchen came the sounds of dishes being put away, accompanied by humming.