Hit and Run

by Norah McClintock

  What did I remember? Everything, and nothing much at all. It had happened four years ago.

  At quarter to eight every morning, five days a week, Monday to Friday, my mother left me with Mrs. McNab, a woman who lived across from my school. Mom had to be at work by eight-thirty, and school didn’t start until a quarter to nine, so I spent an hour in Mrs. McNab’s living room, quietly watching cartoons while Mr. McNab slept. After school I went back to Mrs. McNab’s and had a snack—usually crackers and milk—until Mom came to pick me up again, which she usually did by about a quarter to six. Then we went home, and Mom made supper and I did my homework, and if there was any time, we read together.

  On Fridays we went to Mr. Jhun’s restaurant for supper. Mom did Mr. Jhun’s books for him. Mr. and Mrs. Jhun really liked her. If Mrs. Jhun wasn’t too busy—and even if she was—she would come and sit with us for a while and talk to Mom. That ended about a month before Mom died, though, when Mr. Jhun was killed.

  Riel perked up when I mentioned Mr. Jhun.

  “The Korean guy, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You knew him?”

  “Sure,” I said. I told him that we always sat at the booth closest to the cash register—that was our spot on Friday night. If we were ever late coming in, there was always a little reserved sign sitting on the table. From there, Mom could chitchat with Mrs. Jhun, who ran the cash register whenever the place was busy, and it was always busy on Friday night. Because we sat close to the cash register, Mom and I noticed one night that Mr. and Mrs. Jhun seemed to be having some kind of disagreement. In Korean, of course. This was unusual. Most times they got along pretty well. But one night there was no mistaking the fact that Mrs. Jhun was upset about something and that Mr. Jhun wasn’t agreeing with whatever she was saying. After a while Mrs. Jhun came over and sat in the booth next to Mom. Mom took one look at her and sent me over to the counter. She knew I loved to spin around and around on the stools and, for once, she didn’t object. The two of them talked for a long time, until I had spun around so many times that I thought I was going to throw up. On the way home, I asked Mom what Mrs. Jhun had been so upset about. She wouldn’t tell me—she said it was none of my business—but later that night, when Billy came over, I heard Mom telling Billy about it. The fact that she was even talking to Billy about Mr. Jhun told me something. She knew Billy didn’t care about the old man. She’d got mad at Billy a couple of times because he had made jokes about foreigners, especially the Chinese, even though Mr. Jhun wasn’t even Chinese.

  “It’s bad enough he keeps that gold coin right on top of the cash register where anyone could walk away with it,” Mom said. Mr. Jhun’s gold coin sat in a little glass case. He called it his good luck charm. Sometimes he used to let me play with it. It was smooth and cool and heavy in my hand. “But the main thing is, he has far too much cash around,” Mom went on. “It should be in a bank, but he doesn’t like banks. She tries to reason with him. So do I. I tell him that I keep all my money in the bank.” I heard a little laugh and could imagine what was going through her mind—all my money, like she was loaded. “She’s so upset, and I don’t know what to do about it. She said she had a bad-luck feeling about the restaurant. The place that was there before burned down. You remember, Billy, almost the whole block went up in flames five or six years ago. And apparently the man who owned the place before that had a heart attack and died in the walk-in freezer.”

  “Yeah, that’s bad luck, all right,” Billy had said. He sounded like he was only half-listening to what Mom was saying.

  “It’s not that this is a bad neighborhood. It isn’t. But it’s just not smart to keep so much cash lying around.”

  “How much money are we talking about?” Billy asked. It was his favorite question, along with, “How much do you think that cost?”

  “A lot,” Mom said. “More than I’d know what to do with.”

  “From that dump?” Billy said. “A lot of people around here must have bad taste.”

  “He does everything in cash,” Mom says. “Pays all his suppliers cash. And he runs that catering business on the side. You’d be surprised how well a person can do when he works hard, Billy.”

  It was a gentle dig. From where I was sitting on the stairs, I could hear Mom sigh. “Now Mrs. Jhun has me all worried. Maybe I should have a talk with him. Maybe I should take him down to my bank and introduce him to the manager.”

  Billy laughed. “You’re Mike’s mom. You’re always acting like you’re my mom. That’s enough, don’t you think? This Mr. John—”

  “Jhun,” my mother corrected.

  “Whatever,” Billy said. “I’m sure he can look after himself.”

  Billy turned out to be wrong. Mr. Jhun’s restaurant was robbed less than a week later. The restaurant had been closed at the time, and the Jhuns were in their upstairs apartment. Mr. Jhun had gone downstairs, where he had surprised a robber and got himself killed in the process.

  “A couple of weeks later, Mom went to say good-bye to Mrs. Jhun,” I told Riel, “and she ended up getting run over.” My throat got tight and I felt my eyes sting the way they always did when I thought about that night. “I don’t know, maybe Mrs. Jhun was right, maybe it was all just part of the place’s bad luck.”

  Riel had been raising his bottle of beer to his lips, but he stopped all of a sudden and looked at me.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Bad luck,” I said. “Not that Mrs. Jhun is superstitious or anything. She isn’t one of those people who throws salt over their shoulders or freaks out every time she sees a black cat. But she gets these feelings sometimes.”

  “Are you sure your mother went to see Mrs. Jhun the night she died?”

  I nodded.

  Riel closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he was shaking his head.

  “We asked around,” he said. “We asked everyone in the area, everyone who knew your mother. We talked to your uncle. I’m pretty sure we even had someone talk to you.”

  A face flashed into my memory. A woman in a police uniform. She asked me a lot of questions about my mother and handed me a tissue when I started to cry.

  “She was out doing errands,” Riel said. “That’s what your uncle told us. So did his girlfriend, what was her name?”

  “Kathy,” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s what she said Billy had told her. We know she went to Shoppers Drug Mart—she had a bag with her—a tube of toothpaste, a container of laundry detergent, and a Simpsons comic book.”

  Jeez, the guy had a photographic memory. Either that, or he had been peeking in some files recently.

  “We know from the cash register tape that she was there about forty-five minutes before she …” He skipped the next word. “It’s about a twenty-minute walk from the store to your house,” he said slowly. “We asked, but we couldn’t find anyone who could help us account for the missing time. And nobody said anything about her being at that restaurant.” His eyes were sharp on me. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I thought you knew,” I said. “I mean, isn’t that your job? And, anyway, I didn’t know where she was until after Mrs. Jhun came back.”

  “Came back? You’re losing me, Mike.”

  “Right after Mr. Jhun died and the police weren’t making any progress in finding who killed him, Mrs. Jhun started to get sick. So her sister insisted she go back to Korea where she could look after her. The night my mother died, she saw Mrs. Jhun at the restaurant. The place was closed up. Mrs. Jhun was saying good-bye. She got into a taxi and went to the airport. She didn’t even know my mother was dead until she came back to Canada about nine months ago.”

  Riel ducked into the fridge and pulled out some green onions.

  “Cut these up, too, would you?” he said. “Nice thin pieces.” When I was finished, he said. “Where can I find Mrs. Jhun?”

  There was a bite to his voice, and it crossed my mind that maybe he thought she’d had something to do with it.


  “She was Mom’s friend,” I said.

  “I just want to make sure someone talks to her, Mike, that’s all.” He was looking directly at me and talking in a calm, quiet voice so I couldn’t do anything but believe him, even though I wasn’t sure I should. I told him Mrs. Jhun’s address. He pulled a steak out of the fridge and looked at me. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

  I was practically drooling at the thought of steak, but I said no. “I ate already.”

  He peered at me some more before nodding. “I’m going to take a look into this,” he said, “talk to a few of my friends. But I’m not making any promises. We looked at this thing every which way when it happened. Okay?”

  I said okay. Then I held my breath all the way home, hoping. Just hoping, that’s all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I flung open the screen door so hard that it clattered against the brick. I burst into the house, feeling like my heart was going to explode in my chest.

  “Jeez,” Billy said. He appeared so suddenly in the doorway to the living room that I almost collided with him. “I thought we’d been hit by a tornado or something. Where have you been, anyway?”

  “The cops are going to reopen Mom’s case,” I told him. “Riel is going to talk to them about it, get them to take another look at what happened.”

  “Yeah?” Billy didn’t sound nearly as excited as I was. But then, the main things that excited him were a night out with his friends, a night in with his girlfriend, or the chance to make some easy money. “How did that happen?”

  “I was talking to him. I told him about Mrs. Jhun. It turns out he didn’t know about that. So he said he’d look into it.”

  “What about Mrs. Jhun?”

  “She saw Mom the night she died.”

  I had the weird feeling that I was speaking a language Billy didn’t understand. He was staring at me, but he didn’t seem to be registering anything I was saying.

  “What are you talking about, Mikey?” he said.

  “I thought they knew. I didn’t know myself until a little while ago, but I thought they must have known because they’re the cops, right? They’re supposed to know stuff, that’s their job.”

  “Slow down, sport,” Billy said. He took a step closer to me. “What’s all this about Mrs. John?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing, but Riel told me the cops ran out of leads and that part of the reason for that was that they couldn’t find anyone who remembered seeing Mom that night. They know she went to the drugstore, but that’s all they know. But she saw Mrs. Jhun at the restaurant.”

  “The restaurant was closed then, Mike,” Billy said. “It closed right after the old Chinese guy was killed, remember? They closed it down and never opened it up again.”

  “I know. And Mrs. Jhun decided to go back to Korea to stay with her sister. She left that night. Mom dropped by her place to say good-bye to her. Then Mrs. Jhun took a taxi to the airport. She never even knew Mom had that accident. Or that the police were trying to find people who had seen Mom that night. By the time Mrs. Jhun came back here, the cops had given up on the case, and I didn’t even think about it until I was talking to Riel and—”

  Billy put his hands on my shoulders and sort of squeezed me.

  “Hey, calm down, Mikey,” he said. “You’re getting pretty worked up over what will probably turn out to be nothing.”

  “But Riel said he’d look into it. He said—”

  “Looking into something isn’t the same as doing anything about it,” Billy said. His face was all mashed up, like it was painful for him to have to say the words. “Jeez, it was a hit-and-run over four years ago now. They never found the car that did it. They never found the driver. I know you want to know what happened to your mom, Mike. I do, too. She was my sister. She practically raised me. But if it’s been four years and they haven’t found out who did it, what do you think their chances are now? Whoever did it probably got rid of the car years ago.”

  “But the cops are solving all kinds of old cases these days,” I said. I didn’t want someone to tell me what couldn’t happen. I wanted someone to tell me what had happened.

  “I read the papers sometimes, too,” Billy said. “The cases they’re solving are cases that involve DNA, cases where they have some leads. This isn’t that kind of case, Mike.”

  By now my mood was as flat as a stale Coke. Maybe Billy was right. After all, if Mrs. Jhun had noticed anything unusual or important, wouldn’t she have said so by now? She had seen Mom. I knew because she had told me. Mom had stopped by Mrs. Jhun’s place and had wished her a safe journey. Then Mrs. Jhun had gotten into a taxi, and the last thing she remembered was seeing my mother walking down Danforth toward home.

  “You got homework?” Billy said.

  Jeez, where did that question come from?

  “You’re in trouble, remember?” Billy said. “You let your schoolwork slide anymore and it’s not going to look good when you have to show up in court and try to convince some judge that you’re an okay kid who just made one mistake.”

  “You feeling all right, Billy?” I asked, kind of joking.

  “Do your homework, Mike.”

  I headed for the living room, thinking I’d sprawl on the couch to get my work done, same as I always did. Billy blocked my path.

  “We’ve got company,” he said.

  I peeked into the room. It was Dan and Lew, each with a beer in his hand. Dan saluted me with his beer bottle.

  “Here’s to homework and high school,” he said. “The best thing you can say about either is, when they’re over, they’re over for good.”

  “Amen to that,” Lew said.

  “Two more years, Mike,” Dan said, “and you’ll be a free man, just like us.”

  Two more years. Seven hundred and thirty days. As good as a lifetime away. I sighed and went upstairs to my room to do my homework.

  Friday got off to a bad start. I woke up with a headache that only got worse as I stood on the corner of Jen’s street. I had been planted there for so long that I thought maybe I’d missed her. Only how could that be? I had arrived extra early. There’s no way she could have got by me, unless she had all of a sudden decided to go to school at six in the morning. I was about to give up—I didn’t need any late notices—when I saw her come out of her driveway carrying a big box. She started down the sidewalk toward me, moving fast, like she knew she was late, then skidded to a stop when she saw me. She glanced back over her shoulder—she was checking to see if her mother was standing at a door or a window.

  I stayed put. Rushing up to her would have been a big mistake when she was worried about what her mother was or wasn’t seeing. Instead, I waited for her to come to me.

  “Hi,” she said. She glanced at me, but just barely, like she didn’t care about me anymore. Like maybe she cared about someone else instead, maybe a tall blond by the name of Patrick.

  I wrestled the box out of her arms. I wanted to score some points by carrying it for her.

  “It’s okay, I can manage,” she said.

  “Hey, no problem,” I said. I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. “What is it, anyway?”

  “It’s a cake,” she said. “The Girls’ Athletic Association is having a bake sale to raise money for uniforms.”

  “Bet it’ll sell out in no time,” I said. Then, because she wasn’t talking and I didn’t know what to say, I said, “Vin and Sal got busted, too.”

  “I heard.”

  Oh.

  “I also heard that the police asked you who was with you and you refused to tell them.”

  “Yeah.”

  Those green eyes turned on me. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe she was asking. “You mean, why didn’t I rat out my friends?”

  “It was their fault, wasn’t it?” Jen said. “I know you, Mike. I know you wouldn’t do something like that if Vin wasn’t pushing you. He’s a petty criminal. You’re not like that.”

  “Wh
oa, wait a minute. What are you talking about? Vin’s my best friend.”

  “Everyone says it was his idea. Isn’t that right?”

  Yeah, it was right. But how would it look if I blamed it all on Vin? I mean, I caught the box he threw to me. I ran after him and Sal. I even ate some pie.

  “We all decided together,” I said. It wasn’t true, but it means something when a guy’s your best friend.

  Her mouth tightened. She looked so much like her mother that it was scary.

  “You’re telling me that it was your idea to steal from that truck?” she said.

  “It was just a couple of boxes of cake.”

  “It’s a crime. You could end up in big trouble.”

  “I’m a minor,” I reminded her. Another mistake.

  “So you think you can just do whatever you want, is that it? You think nothing’s going to happen to you?”

  Jeez, what was going on?

  “Jen, what I did was wrong. I admit it. I got caught.”

  “And you refused to cooperate with the police.”

  “They’re my friends!” Why couldn’t she understand that? “I’m going to court. I’m going to pay for what I did. And it’s not like I’m planning to do it again.”

  “I defended you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “To my parents. I defended you. Both times.”

  “What do you mean, both times?” But I already knew. “I never touched your dad’s bike.”

  Sweet Jen. She didn’t look so sweet now.

  “You were in the house just before the bike was stolen,” she said. “You saw where we keep our keys.”

  Jen’s parents had a key rack in the shape of a big key hanging in the kitchen.

  “I never touched your dad’s bike,” I said again. “This is about that guy, right?”