The Dope Thief

by Dennis Tafoya

  “I know you do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are. About the sorriest boy I ever knew.” She shook her head at him.

  “I knew I could make you smile.”

  “You always could, from the first time I ever saw you.” She leaned over slowly and let her head settle on his shoulder. “Ray.”

  “I like to hear you say my name. You’re the only one I want to hear say it.” He kissed her, and she leaned into him and put her arms tight around him and breathed into his mouth; peppermint and strawberry lip balm. After a minute he said, “You’re going to ruin that gown.”

  “You can always steal me a new one.” She fitted herself against him, and he grew hard and pushed his face into her neck, opening his mouth and tasting the salt on her skin. She put her hand on his face and he closed his eyes.

  “Take me somewhere, Ray.”

  “No one’s home at Theresa’s.”

  “Good. Take me there.” He got a flash of her then in his darkened room the month before he got sent up, naked in his bed, her small, dark body next to his long pale one, her brown nipples hardening under his hand. Her lips parted as he moved with her, her fingers on his arm, grasping.

  “Where does your dad think you are?” His voice husky, his breath ragged.

  “At Carole s. There’s a party there later.” Her fingers brushed lightly over the hardness in his jeans.

  “I don’t know if I can wait till I get you home.”

  She put her mouth against his ear, her cheek grazing his. “All good things,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “THERE HE IS. You awake, hon?” A nurse, big shoulders in green scrubs, a mask but kind- looking eyes under blue eye shadow. She turned to the door. “He’s awake.”

  “Ray, how you doing?” Another nurse, this one small with blond hair framing the mask.

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were leaking water. Fat tears that made him ashamed.

  “You’re in the hospital. Do you remember?”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s okay. We need to pull this tube out.”

  He blinked and tried to raise his arm. It was tethered to the bed with a soft strap. “I can’t get my arm.”

  “Sorry about that, hon, you were pulling at the IV.” The big nurse unwrapped his hand and it lifted, stiff and weightless as if reduced to denuded bone, and he brought it up to touch his face and felt stubble, then wiped at the gum in the corners of his eyes.

  He wanted a drink, and they gave him ice chips. He felt like he was wrapped in someone else’s flesh, a great swollen mass obscuring him, and he felt a distance between himself and his own wounded body. His arms were wrapped in gauze, and tubes ran under his blankets. He could smell himself, a rank smell of sweat and blood. In his leg he felt a sharp and constant stabbing as if there were still a knife blade in his thigh.

  “I really hurt.”

  The nurse patted his hand and told him they had orders for him to get pain meds.

  “I, uh, I have to go.”

  “You’ve got a colostomy, Ray. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Christ.”

  “It’s only for a while.”

  A third nurse, this one with red hair, came in, flicking a needle.

  “No. I don’t want that.”

  “It’s okay, Ray. It’s for the pain.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Is he, are you confused about what’s going on?”

  “No. It’s okay, really.”

  “Well, if you don’t feel you need it.”

  He turned his head to look at nothing. “I’m, uh. I have a problem with medication.”

  “Oh.”

  He heard them stop, all three, and felt them looking at him and each other.

  “I can’t. I shouldn’t have anything like that.” He could feel

  something, a wall going up. Something hardening in the air be

  tween them.

  “Okay, Ray.”

  “Can you make a note or something? I just don’t want them to ask me.”

  “I understand.”

  “ ’Cause I’ll say yes. Right now I can say no, so please don’t let them ask me again.”

  “We’ll get someone in to talk to you about it.”

  HE FELL ASLEEP again and awoke, this time the pain sharp and clear and insistent, fingers poking his ribs, his belly, his arms and his leg clamped in a vise. He woke breathing hard, his head full of webs and haze. Bart and Theresa were there, sitting on two chairs pulled close together. Theresa was looking through her purse, and his father was dozing, his breath a raspy whisper. Ray watched them and tried to control his breathing. He held on to the bed rails with a shaking hand.

  Theresa looked up, jumping from her chair when she caught his eyes. “Ray”

  His father started awake and stood up, rubbing his face. They looked down at him, and he stared back, shaking and wracked.

  “So,” he said, his lips cracking, “who’s watching the dog?”

  Theresa put a hand to her eyes and choked, and Bart put his hand on her shoulder and patted her, the gesture clumsy and stiff.

  “Look at you. Your heart stopped.”

  She couldn’t say any more, and Bart helped her into her seat. He came back to look down at Ray, and they stared at each other a long time. Ray put his shuddering, dry hand on his father’s arm. Bart looked down at his son’s hand and then raised his head, and Ray saw him smile. It had been so long since he had seen his father smile it was almost disconcerting, as if he had become someone else for a moment, but in another moment Ray was smiling, too. He shook his head and he raised his eyebrows at his old man, at what they knew about each other. Ray grabbed the skinny rope of muscle over Bart’s forearm, touching him where a heart was etched that had once been bright red but was slowly going green and black. It said caroline.

  His father shook his head and said, “So that’s done, then?”

  Ray nodded.

  “You’re kicking now?”

  “I figure they got me strapped down anyway.”

  Bart nodded back, and his mouth opened and closed a few times like he wanted to say something else, but he just patted Ray’s hand.

  “I know,” said Ray.

  Bart held a hand out and took it back, then reached out again and touched Ray’s head, patting him with a big hand of rough skin and loose bones. “We’ll come back, and I’ll keep her from cooking for you for a couple days.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.”

  Theresa blew her nose, a long honk that echoed off the hard walls. “What’s wrong with my cooking?”

  “Nothing, girl,” said Bart. “It’s just the boy can’t eat for a while.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Bart. I know that.”

  The shaking got worse, and Ray stuck his hands back under the sheet, sweat standing out on his forehead. Theresa stood up and held his cheek, and then they went out, Bart stooped and round- shouldered. Ray lay back and stared at the ceiling and bit his lips to keep from yelling out. After a few minutes of breathing through his mouth a nurse came in.

  “How’s it going?”

  He just looked at her, his eyes wild, and she nodded and lifted his gown to check his dressing. For the first time he saw the crisscrossed lines of sutures and dark blood that reminded him of barbed wire, as if an army had fought a battle ranging across the white expanse of his abdomen and left fortifications abandoned in the field. There was a red tube that he realized was blood draining from one of the wounds and a flaccid plastic bag taped over a hole in his gut.

  The nurse went to the sink and wet a washcloth and put it across his forehead. He nodded thanks at her, not trusting himself to say anything. He put his hand in his mouth and bit the fleshy part and growled, praying to pass out. The nurse told him things looked good. She said there was still a risk of infection but everything really did look good. He nodded without speaking, and she shook her head and left. It was more than he could stan
d, and he wanted to scream.

  HE WOKE UP again and it was night. He had a sense of days going by, but nothing changed except the light, so he wasn’t sure. He sat in the dark for a while getting used to himself, listening to the murmur of voices from the nurses’ station, and then a dark shape filled the doorway and Manny came in and stood over him.

  “Hey, man.”

  “Hey.”

  “How you making it?’

  “Not good. Not good.”

  “Yeah, they giving you anything?”

  “They wanted to. I told them no.”

  Manny shook his head violently. “What the fuck, Ray? You’re missing your big chance here, man.”

  “I’m trying to kick.”

  “You’re what? Are you kidding?”

  “No, I figure I can get straightened out.”

  “Ah, bullshit.” Manny stepped close, his voice a tense whisper.

  “What? I’ve been high for two weeks. I want to get clean.”

  “You’re not an addict, Ray.”

  “The fuck.”

  Manny got closer, pulled a chair up, and folded himself into it, his shoulders hunched. In the dark Ray could see pinpoints of light in the lenses of his sunglasses. “I’m an addict. I been in and out of rehab like six times. I’m a fucking dope addict. My mom was a dope addict. You . . .” He looked over his shoulder at the bright hallway and figures going by. “You’re just, I don’t know. Fucking with yourself.”

  Ray let out a long sigh and let his eyes close.

  “You think you need to pay for something. Man, you paid. You went to jail for nothing, and your whole life was fucked.”

  “A lot of people are dead.”

  “Yeah, that’s fucked up.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping. “But you didn’t kill anyone wasn’t trying to kill you.”

  “My head is full of it. All this shit I done. I can’t close my eyes.”

  Manny watched him and then turned his head to look out into the bright hallway for a while. “Listen to me.” He turned back to look at Ray. “Listen to me. You ain’t like me. Or Harlan. Or Cyrus or any of ’em. You can get clear of this and get a life. That guy you killed’”

  Ray shook his head no, but Manny kept going.

  “That guy you killed, he cut an old woman’s throat and did worse for Danny. That doesn’t mean you give up being a human being. Shit, if a cop had been there he’d have done the same.”

  “I threw it away.”

  “No, see, the fact you even think this way? That means something. Man, I never had two minutes worrying about any of the things I did. I say fuck ’em all and I mean it. You got all messed up with your dad going up and then the accident and that girl dying and then you came out of jail all fucked up. This money we got? I’m just gonna burn through it. In a couple of months it’ll just be gone and I’ll be broke again with nothing to show for it.”

  “What about Sherry?”

  “I love Sherry, but she’s as fucked as I am. She talks about kicking, having a kid, about buying a house, but at the end of the day she’d rather get high and watch TV and eat takeout food. We don’t need that money. It’s just going to kill us faster.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Take the fucking money and go somewhere and do something. What do you do I have no fucking idea. I never been nothing but a convict or a thief. What ever you coulda been you better start being it now. Fuck, man, your heart stopped. Twice, Theresa said. And here you are, breathing and talking and shit. That means something.”

  Ray shook his head. “It can’t be that simple.”

  “It don’t have to be complicated. You’re thinking of the debt you owe? Then, I don’t know, own it. Do something good for somebody. That money had blood on it long before we walked into that house. You want to help somebody, that’s not wrong, but you got to help yourself. You got to want to. I remember enough of that crap from rehab to know you got to at least think you got a right to be alive, to get through the day. You did things wrong, do what you can to make things right.”

  Ray sat and listened, his head cocked. It was the most Manny had said in years that wasn’t about wanting dope or girls or money, or getting dope or girls or money.

  Manny grabbed Ray’s upper arm and squeezed it tight. “Somebody’s got to make it. We can’t all die off. Somebody’s got to get their shit together and get right.” He let go of Ray’s arm and grabbed his hand. “I got to go, I’m turning back into a pumpkin.” He squeezed Ray’s hand and got up, looming in the dark.

  “Wait,” Ray whispered. “What happened to our friend? From up north?”

  Manny looked over his shoulder to check for anyone nearby in the hall, then turned back showing his teeth. “Bart finished the barbecue.”

  Ray flashed on the hole in the backyard, the pile of crumbling bricks.

  “That thing’s got the deepest foundation of any barbecue in the county. He’s motivated, your old man works fast.”

  MORNING, AND A feeling of being hollowed out, a husk around air and bones. There were two men in the room, behind the nurses as they worked checking the IVs and drains and patting his hand. Ray watched the men, one tall, long limbs folded into a chair, black hair and a knowing smile like an assistant principal who figures you were the one who took a dump in the faculty lounge and he’s just angling to prove it. He had a thick sheaf of papers and files in his lap.

  The other one was short, gray- haired, moving around the back of the room with a dark energy, touching the pitiful bouquet from downstairs that Theresa had left, a card left thumb-tacked to a board for somebody’s grandma who had been in the room before Ray. The nurses left, and he sat and looked at them.

  The younger one spoke. “Raymond!”

  Cops.

  “How are you, buddy? We thought we lost you there.”

  “Ah, you know. Making it, Officer.”

  “I’m Detective Nelson. This is Burt Grace, special investigator from the district attorney’s office.”

  Ray nodded, and the gray- haired older man just looked at him.

  “You know we’re police officers.”

  Ray shrugged. Cheap sport coats and fraying collars, did anyone else dress like that?

  “We wanted to talk to you about what happened.”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  The older one shook his head, snorted. “Right.”

  “Well,” said Nelson, acting the reasonable public servant. “What do you remember?”

  “I was coming back to my apartment in Willow Grove, this guy jumped out of the bushes and stabbed me.”

  “You were home?”

  “I guess. It’s all pretty hazy.”

  “Did you know the man with the knife?”

  “No, I didn’t really see him.”

  “Lemme guess.” The older cop again, Burt Grace. “It was a big black guy you never saw before.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Grace turned to Nelson. “This is a waste of time.” He pointed at Ray without looking at him. “This piece of shit is in the dope business, and he got stuck by some other piece of shit in the dope business.”

  Ray breathed through his nose, his body starting to hum with pain. “So is there something we have to talk about, or is this something you do for everybody gets stabbed in the county?”

  Nelson leafed through the papers in front of him. “You’ve had quite a time, Raymond.”

  “You got my life story there, do you?”

  “Three juvenile arrests, sent to Lima. Two arrests as an adult, both involving stolen cars. Sent up twice.” He flipped pages. “You got a lot of interesting friends, Raymond. Emanuel Marchetti . . .”

  Grace made a noise with his lips. “Manny Marchetti? That scumbag? Isn’t he the one his mother was a junkie retard got cut up in Bristol?”

  Ray cocked his head. “Yeah, and you all did shit about that. It’s been ten years. Any leads on that, Kojak?”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Burt?�
� Nelson held up his hands.

  “What?” Grace made a gesture of throwing something away. But he went to stand by the window.

  “He’s got anger management problems?”

  “Detective Grace is a good cop.”

  “I never heard a cop say another cop was anything else.”

  Nelson was still paging through the files. “Harlan Maximuck. Jesus. Is he still alive?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “Is that story they tell true? About the guy’s head in his trunk?”

  “I sure wasn’t going to ask.”

  “Vietnamese organized crime figures. You get around.”

  He went in the folder, held something up to his eyes. A picture. Turned it to face Ray and there she was. Marletta Hicks, in her cap and gown. He wasn’t prepared and turned his head.

  “Pretty girl.”

  “Why are you here?” His eyes down, boring holes in the floor.

  “Stole a car, smashed it up with the daughter of a state trooper in the passenger seat. Man, here’s another one.” He held up a picture of Ray, much younger with his eyes blackened, his arms in casts. “Off to adult prison that time, the first time. With your arms broken from the accident. That must have been fun. Of course, worse for the Hicks family.”

  Grace walked over and stood closer to Ray, and he thought the old man was going to take a swing at him. “You piece of shit. I knew I knew that name. You’re the one killed Stan Hicks’s kid. Jesus.”

  “That’s what it says.”

  Nelson lifted his head. “You say different.”

  “Why would I?”

  Grace said, “Oh, what the fuck. If this asshole is going to start lying again I’m going downstairs.” He looked at Ray. “They should have punched your ticket ten years ago, shitbird.” His footsteps moving away were like gunshots in the hall.

  Nelson had a smile fixed on his face, waving pages from the file as if inviting him to continue. “You got something to say about all’this’I’m all ears. I never knew a convict who didn’t like to spin a yarn.”

  “Okay, just be on your way.” Ray’s stomach cramped, and he gritted his teeth.

  Nelson nodded and got up, pulling his card from his pocket. When he laid it on the bed table, Ray looked up, out of breath. “You got the file?”