The Dope Thief

by Dennis Tafoya

  She had been tense, watching the sheets print out, her shoulders drawn in, her eyes flicking over his. She shook her head. “If I said I didn’t want you to do this, would it matter?”

  “Nothing will happen.” He smiled at her, or tried to, showed his teeth, but thought, how do I know that? “Anyway,” he said. “Anyway, I have to go.”

  “Okay.” She looked down. “Okay, but I’m driving you.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Fuck that. You’re pretending you’re handling shit. I get that. But I’m not sitting here and you go off and I never see you again.”

  He saw she was close to crying and thought about it for a minute and finally nodded. “Sure. Nothing is going to happen, but it’s cool you come with me.” He kissed the top of her head, and she held his arms.

  NOW THEY WENT slowly by neat houses, looking at numbers painted on mailboxes. They came to a brick house with a lot of windows, nicer than he thought it would be, the lawn trimmed. Flower beds, hard rectangles of turned soil expecting something that was coming.

  He didn’t know exactly what he had expected. Dust and cracked windows, he guessed. Things rusting on a lawn. While they sat at the curb, the garage door lifted and there he was. Moving purposefully out across the driveway with a rake. Attacking a small pile of winter- dead leaves and pushing it into a black plastic bag.

  He was still erect, and he matched the squared- away house. His hair was white etched with a few solid black lines, and his shoulders were broad. He looked like what he was, a state trooper. A cop. Retired, older, but still a cop.

  Michelle opened her mouth, but Ray opened the door and pushed himself out, straightening slowly and then reaching back for the cane. She watched his face, showed him the cell phone. He winked.

  He covered most of the distance to where Stan Hicks stood over the shrinking pile of leaves before the older man turned and faced him holding the rake loosely at his side. The eyes were pale gray and clear, focused. Ray wondered how old he was, comparing him mentally to the shriveled old man his father had been when they had finally let him out.

  “I wondered if you’d ever come here.”

  Ray nodded, thought about putting his hand out. He felt Stan Hicks look him over, taking in the cane, the thin frame. When Hicks looked back at the car, Ray followed his eyes to see Michelle sitting in the open door, watching tensely, working the cell phone in her hands like a rosary.

  “That’s a pretty girl.”

  “Yessir.”

  “She looks a little like my girl.”

  Ray nodded; there was no denying it. Ray allowed himself to see it, and he did have to look at Michelle again. He smiled at her.

  “Why did you come here, son?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You bring a gun? Going to make me pay for something?” He didn’t seem particularly worried about that possibility, and of the two of them seemed more able to defend himself.

  “No, I thought maybe you already paid what ever you had to pay for.”

  “And what would that be?” He looked Ray in the eye. “You think I ruined your life?”

  “No.”

  “You did that on your own.”

  “No, my life wasn’t ruined.” Ray stuck his hands in his pockets. “Took me a long time to see that. I’d have said it was, you asked me not long ago. But it wasn’t.” They both looked down at the wet pile of jagged leaf fragments at their feet.

  “Why didn’t you say what I did to you?”

  “I wanted the same thing you wanted.”

  “I kept expecting they’d come. I was ready for it. When you told somebody what I did.” He held the rake in his hands as if he were going to snap it. The way he’d snapped Ray’s arms.

  Ray could almost feel it again. Stan Hicks pushing him down on the cold asphalt, the rage spilling out of the older man in a torrent of screamed curses and spit. The metal bar falling once, twice on each arm.

  Ray cocked his head. “What was that? That bar you used on me?”

  “The tire iron from my patrol car. I was ready to account for it. I think I wanted to. I broke your arms. I lied, I made that dope addict Perry March say you stole his car. I was ready to tell it. I was proud of what I did. But no one ever came.”

  “No.”

  “You killed my girl.”

  “I loved her. A drunk driver killed her.”

  “You don’t say that.” His eyes were full of tears and his mouth worked. “You don’t get to say that.”

  “No, Stan. I think that’s why I went to prison. So I could say it. I think that’s why I let everything come. The beating and the lies you told.”

  Stan Hicks sat on the ground and put his head in his hands. Ray got down slowly on one knee, the cold water from the grass soaking through his pants. He turned, to see Michelle standing now, watching intently, her eyes wet.

  Stan Hicks spoke, his eyes hidden. “She’d have hated it. What I did.”

  “Yes. But she’d have wanted me to help you.”

  “I don’t deserve it.”

  “No.” Ray reached over and put his hand on the older man’s arm. “That’s why I had to do it. Come here and say it was okay. That it worked out okay. It’s the same thing she did for me. Loved me. Wanted good things for me that I didn’t deserve. She would have hated what you did. But she would have kept on loving you.”

  Ray got awkwardly to his feet, Michelle running across the lawn to help him. Together they helped Stan Hicks get up, and they went with him inside. The house was bright and empty, and there were pictures of Marletta and her mother. Michelle stood in the entryway and looked at them, and then at Stan Hicks and Ray standing in the kitchen. Ray got a glass from a cabinet and ran the water, filled it, and handed it to the older man.

  Ray leaned back against the counter. “My mother always did that.”

  “Mine, too.” Stan Hicks wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.

  “It always helped.”

  They both looked at Michelle. For the first time, the older man smiled. “Just like my girl.”

  HE WAS IN the store late on a Wednesday night, unpacking boxes and thinking about locking the door, when one of the detectives from the hospital came in. The tall one, good cop, the one named Nelson. The detective looked around and rocked on his heels. Ray waved from where he was kneeling in the space between the register and a display table, motioning him further in.

  “Nice place, Raymond.”

  “Ray. Everyone calls me Ray, Detective.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Right. Ray.”

  Ray pointed down the stacks. “Take a look around. Help yourself to anything catches your eye.”

  Nelson scratched his ear, smiled.

  Ray said, “If that’s not a problem. Graft or something.”

  Nelson pulled out his note pad and gestured at a table and two chairs up against the far wall. “You got a second?”

  Ray hesitated half a beat, then pointed to the chair nearest the door. “Sure. You want some coffee?”

  Nelson said yes, and Ray went back to the storeroom, returning with two cups. Nelson had wedged his tall frame into the seat, and his notebook was open on the table. But Ray’s eye was drawn by the paper- wrapped bottle that sat next to it. Green glass and a red cap that Nelson unscrewed. He poured a small dollop of the brown liquid into his coffee and held it out to Ray, who wagged his head for a second indecisively before saying sure, what the hell. Nelson sipped at his coffee, and they sat for a minute.

  “You’re seeing someone.”

  “You been keeping tabs.”

  Nelson laughed, holding up his hands to make peace. “No, really. Just saw you in the coffee shop with a woman.”

  “Michelle. She’s usually here, but she’s taking a writing class at Bucks.”

  Nelson nodded. “Nice. She seems like a nice lady, Ray.” He looked sheepish. “Not doing so hot in that area myself.”

  Ray sipped at the coffee, made a face. “Forgot how bitter it is.”
/>   “Only at first.” They sat in silence, Nelson tapping his pen on his cup.

  “I gotta ask.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Well, yeah. Is it about the kid in the house in Falls Township?”

  Nelson shook his head. “No, but thanks for that. They got the kid out.”

  “Good. I saw the news.”

  “They took two bodies out of the yard. Young girls who disappeared. At least we can tell the families something.”

  “That’s good, I guess. And you got the kid out?”

  “Yeah, into family services. I didn’t think you’d want your name in it.”

  “No.”

  “But that’s not why I came.”

  Ray raised his eyebrows. “Okay.”

  “I’ve been asking around. About what happened the year you went upstate.” Ray stopped smiling, and waited. “I talked to Perry March’s mother.”

  “His mother?”

  “He’s dead.” Ray shook his head. Nelson tapped the notebook. “Overdose, two years ago. She told me some interesting things.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said Perry would get high and talk about Stan Hicks and you and the car. She said her son was afraid of Stan and that Perry told her he lied about you taking the car because he was jammed up on a possession thing.” Ray put his coffee cup down and looked at his hands. “I looked at the records from the accident. And I looked at the medical records from the County Youth Authority the night you got your arms broken.”

  Ray rubbed his arms then, an old reflex. Feeling the thickened bones that ached when it was cold.

  Nelson said, “I talked to Stan Hicks.”

  Ray looked up now. “How did that go?”

  “He told me you’d been there. He told me everything.”

  “I guess he’s ready to tell it.”

  “He laid it all out. How he pressured Perry March with the possession beef and got him to say you stole his car. The guy who hit you and Marletta? The guy who was killed? He was a drunk. Blood alcohol well over the line. Your blood screen was clean. Stan pressured the DA, made her life hell until she made you a priority. Then he took you out of County in the middle of the night and broke your arms with something, I can’t figure out what. You went to prison with busted arms at seventeen. Stayed for two years for something you didn’t do.”

  Ray was quiet. “The jack from his car. He said. It was dark. He told the Youth Authority I ran away from him in the dark and fell off a loading dock. I said, sure, what ever. I didn’t care.”

  “So, what do you want to do?”

  “Do?”

  “About Stan Hicks. What do you want to do?”

  Ray shook his head, surprised. “Nothing.” He picked up the coffee again. “I really forgot. It does kind of grow on you.”

  “You might be able to press charges, I don’t know. Maybe sue, collect some money.”

  “No, I’m not doing that.” Ray looked into the cup.

  Nelson looked at him and rocked a little in his chair. “Okay, so . . .”

  “You never knew her?”

  “Marletta? No.”

  Ray looked at his pale hand. “She was, I don’t know the words. There was a light inside her. Ever know anyone like that? She glowed.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “She was one of those people. You just liked her. And she was the only one who cared about me.”

  “You feel guilty?”

  “I was driving. I can’t remember now, but I know what I was like then. Looking at her and not the road? I can’t remember, and I don’t want to anymore. Anyway, I can imagine what it was like for him. If she was my family? And then to lose her like that? I was Stan Hicks I would have done the same.” His eyes clouded over. “Worse.”

  “You got hit by a drunk driver, Ray. You can’t think she’d have wanted you to go to jail.”

  “No, she’d have hated that.”

  “How did you make it? With broken arms?”

  “Harlan Maximuck.” Nelson shook his head, not getting it. Ray said, “Harlan had a younger brother died in prison in Maine.” He conjured Harlan then, tall and lopsided, walking with a hitched step, a staccato lope from where a statie had tagged him with shotgun pellets in the thighs when he and an even crazier friend had robbed a pawnshop and killed two people. Broad across the chest and wild brown hair that he’d stab at with oddly delicate hands, trying to keep it out of his eyes.

  “So he, what? Adopted you?”

  Ray pursed his lips. “Guys like you? Like anyone I guess hasn’t been sent up. You see Harlan as a scumbag. As, I don’t know. Evil, I guess.”

  “And you think, what? He was misunderstood?”

  “No. No.” Ray looked at the books on the shelves and tried to stretch for the words. “He kept me alive. He didn’t have to. He didn’t take anything off me. Except what he took off everybody.” Ray smiled at a memory. “He’d be talking to you and, like, going through your pockets. Looking for cigarettes, what ever. I even saw him start to do it to a CO once.” Nelson picked up the bottle again and offered it to Ray, who waved him off. “But he was crazy. I mean he was crazy. I saw him, well . . . One time this guy flicked cigarette ash in his oatmeal? Harlan shanked him with a fucking pork chop bone.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. So it’s not like I don’t know who he is. Would he rat me

  out if that was in his best interest? Yes. Would he fuck me over in

  a deal? Yes, if by some tragic fucking wheel of fortune miscalcu

  lation he ever gets out again.” Ray leaned in. “But he also did this.

  He’s also this.” Made a circle in the air to include himself, the

  body saved. “Guys like Harlan? And Manny? Me, too? We’re more and we’re less than you think. Worse and better. And the thing is, all you people are, too.”

  “So what does a cop do about that?”

  Ray smiled wide. “Lock us up. What the hell else can you do? But maybe know, too. You lock up the good and the bad and sometimes both in the same person.”

  Nelson squinted, not entirely convinced. “Maybe.”

  “You think a person is defined by the worst thing he ever did? The most desperate, the most terrible day in his life?” He got a glimpse of himself in the farm house in Ottsville, the smoke hanging in the air, the milk and blood pooled on the floor and his head on fire.

  “That’s how the law sees it.”

  “What about Stan Hicks? He probably locked up a lot of guys who broke the law, bad guys who hurt people. You’re willing to send him away, too?”

  “It’s the law, Ray. Without the law, what do we have?”

  Ray lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. Just a lot of fucked- up people trying to get through a day.”

  ADRIENNE GRAY STAGGEREd home at two o’clock on a Saturday morning, and Ray was sitting on her steps in a bright cone of light. She started when she saw him and stepped back, holding her keys out. Her eyes were wide but red and bleary.

  “Adrienne.”

  “Is that you, Ray?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” She put a hand on her heart.

  “Jesus Christ. You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Sorry.” He thumped the cold stair next to him. “Come sit and talk to me.”

  She lifted her shoulders, patted her arms. “It’s cold out, hon. Can’t we talk tomorrow? I’ll come by the store.”

  “No. Come here.” She made a gesture of giving up with her spread arms and slowly navigated the step and parked herself on the step below him, holding her arms in her thin coat. Ray took off his parka and put it over her shoulders, and she smiled at him and pulled the sleeves together.

  They had started talking, Ray finding her coming out of Kelly’s or Chambers and walking her home. Trying to pull her into the store instead of letting her go back up the hill to the bars. Bringing her books she didn’t read.

  “Adrienne.”

  “What can I do for you, hon? You lonely?”

  “No. Adrienne, you ne
ed help.”

  She stood up slowly and turned to look down at him. “And you’re going to help me?”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He lifted a shoulder, not sure how this should go.

  In the cold light he saw her face close up, a subtle shift in her muscles, the way a closed hand becomes a fist. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Nobody. But you need a friend.”

  “I got all the fucking friends I need. The bars are full of them.” She shucked the coat and threw it down at his feet.

  “I don’t think those are your friends, Adrienne.”

  “What the hell do you know about it? What the hell do you want from me anyway?”

  He jammed up, not ready for her to be so amped up, ready to fight. “Don’t you want to get right? Get clean?”

  “So I can be what, like you? Your life’s a picnic and I’m invited?”

  “No, man. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know is right.” She stalked up the steps, her small, hard shins banging his bad leg. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You don’t know me.”

  “Adrienne.”

  She took a couple of steps back down toward him, and he retreated, almost losing the rail.

  “I lost my father. One day he’s a lawyer and he’s got money and respect and he takes care of me and the next day he’s dead, and his name gets dragged through the mud, and now he’s a shit-bag who stole money, and how do I even know what’s true? Everyone knows but me. Everyone knows he’s a shitbag. And me? I’m the shitbag’s daughter. You going to make that go away? Are you?”

  “No.”

  “And how do you even know my name? Where did you come from?”

  “I’m nobody. I just thought. . .”

  “Yeah, you just thought.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Go home, Ray.”

  “Adrienne. Goddammit.” “Go home.”

  TWO O’CLOCK IN the morning and Ray’s cell rang at the apartment on Mary Street. He looked at the number and didn’t recognize it.

  He whispered, “Hello?” Michelle sat up, widening her eyes to clear the sleep, her hair rucked to one side from sleeping on it. He kissed her and winked while he listened. Then his face changed and he started nodding.

  HE HADN’T BEEN inside Manny’s in almost a year. It was a narrow apartment fronting 611, quiet now at three in the morning. He looked right and left moving through the dark parking lot, the careful habits of his old life slow to desert him.