The Ridealong

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Dad freezes, staring at the pen. Then, slowly, he runs his finger into the air. Stops at a spot that looks just like any other, hanging a foot away from the dumpster.

  "What?" I ask. "What is it?"

  "This is where the second guy's head was," he says.

  I don't understand. "I don't understand," I say. Because I'm creative like that.

  Dad looks at me. His eyes are haunted. Scared. I've never seen him like this, and it terrifies me. "It means we didn't shoot the guy. I didn't shoot the guy. Someone shot him from behind."

  He looks at the pen for another long moment.

  "It means that someone else was there."

  2

  I KNOW WHAT HAS TO be done next. So I move quickly, up and over. In the dumpster before I can think about Eau de Poop or whatever delightful odor I'm swimming in.

  "What are you doing?" Dad says.

  I poke Dad's pen, knocking it out of the bullet hole. Then I put my eye to the hole. The wall of the dumpster is thick enough that the hole creates a tunnel of sorts. Only one way to look through it and see anything, and that's by laying my cheek against the inside of the dumpster.

  It's sticky. I try my best not to gag. And fail miserably.

  "Hon, what are you doing?" Dad sounds worried, like maybe I stepped off the deep end.

  Haven't you noticed, Dad? We're already in the deep end. It came for us.

  "I'm looking where the bullet came from."

  The bullet hole angles up slightly, and as I look through it I can only see a line of red, then black above it. That doesn't make any sense. I press my face harder against the sticky gunk inside the dumpster, but no matter how hard I press, a red line with black above is all I see.

  I stand up. My cheek separates with the sound of suction letting grudgingly loose.

  And once I stand, I see. Once I see, I understand.

  I trace the angle of the bullet in the air, moving my finger away from the outer wall of the dumpster until it hangs in midair a few inches away. "That where his head was?"

  Dad looks. "I... think so."

  "So he got hit from behind, the bullet kept going, hit the dumpster here..." I finger the hole, then continue, "... and ended up in the dumpster. Where it either got dumped out with the trash, or just taken out later by the killer."

  "Where'd it come from? Who did it?"

  Dad is white. I'm worried he might fall over. Might faint or even just die right there. He looks like his world just took a big step to the right and left him floating in empty space.

  I point. Beyond the line where my dad said the criminals' car was is a street. And across that street is a line of businesses. Like the businesses on the street behind us, these shops are closed, shuttered tightly against elements and theft.

  All but one.

  A bar, sandwiched between two anonymous grey buildings with their graffiti-sprayed shutters. A neon sign says, "BAR," which gets straight to the point but isn't terribly creative.

  The top line of the "R" is the red line I saw inside the dumpster. Above it is the darkness of the sky, stretching off into infinity.

  "I can see that sign from the dumpster, looking through the bullet hole," I say. "Could the shot have come from the roof of that bar?"

  Dad looks. I can practically hear him thinking:

  Is this what we were supposed to find?

  What are we supposed to do now?

  Can I keep Mel away from it?

  I jump out of the dumpster. Start walking toward the end of the alley. The street beyond. The bar. Because he can't keep me away from this, and he needs to know that. I'm in it, and the only way out of it won't be to hide, it'll be to move ahead of the game. To figure it out and win.

  "Mel, wait!" I hear Dad yell.

  Then the radio sounds. Breaking the long silence, and I hadn't realized how nice it was not to hear Jack's voice until he started talking again.

  "She's on the right track, Latham. Let her go."

  I stop in my tracks. Dad almost runs into me. I feel his arms go around me, steadying himself as he comes to a too-sudden stop. "Mel –" he gripes.

  I ignore him. I'm spinning. Looking at the mouth of the alley, where our car is. Looking at the other end, where I was headed. Then up at the roofs of the buildings around us.

  "Where is he?" I say. "H knows where we are. He can see us."

  Dad's hands, still brushing against my arms even though I'm spinning, clamp down so hard I think I'll bruise. I can feel him looking now, too. Neck craning, eyes scanning.

  And neither of us see anything.

  The radio turns on. "You're moving in the right direction, Latham. Keep following Mel. Keep moving. Maybe you'll get through this."

  Dad hits his mic. "What are you –?"

  "We've been through this, Latham. Let's not repeat ourselves. Move forward, not back, eh?" Jack laughs. It's a jaunty laugh, like a kid looking forward to his turn on the merry-go-round. I hate it.

  "Keep going, Mel," says the voice on the mic.

  I take one step. Then another.

  What choice do I have?

  3

  THE BAR SMELLS LIKE sweat and spilled beer, twin scents held aloft by an undercurrent of old puke. It's worse than the dumpster was.

  The garment district isn't in the nicest part of town, and this isn't the nicest kind of bar. It's the kind of place I figure people come to drink hard, cheap booze and go home to hard, cheap mattresses before starting their hard, cheap jobs the next day. Rinse, lather, repeat, and the cycle continues.

  What a life.

  Dad enters first, walking past a brawny guy who looks like a Sequoia with a mouth cut in the side. The guy – likely the bouncer – is sitting on a stool, and he stands when we enter.

  "Wow," I whisper as we move further into the bar. "Wonder how many times his mom dropped him as a baby."

  "Quiet," says Dad. "Keep your mouth shut and stay close."

  Normally I'd probably argue the point, but truth be told I don't much want to talk in here. The place makes me feel dirty. I can't imagine coming here for "fun."

  Dad moves to the bar. The bartender is filling up a glass at the other end of the bar, but he moves over to Dad a second later. He's as dingy and nasty-looking as the rest of the place. Short, so short I can clearly see the few greasy hairs he has left, hanging to his scalp like survivors to a capsized boat. His eyes are beady and seem to pop out, giving his face the appearance of a frog that's been stepped on a bit too long. His lips don't even seem to match, with the lower lip being about three shades darker than the upper. And cap it all off with the fact that every single pore seems to be a permanent blackhead.

  Yeah, this guy's a catch.

  "Can I help you, Officer?" says the bartender. His voice is as grotesque as his appearance. It makes me think of rancid oil: slippery and slick and something bad under it all. "Something to drink? Maybe something for your partner?" He smirks when he says that last.

  Dad's face tightens, and I wonder if Froggy knows how close he is to getting his face squashed a little more.

  Yeah. He must. Because as the storm clouds gather on Dad's face, the bartender grins. I'm sure he means it as a nice, reassuring, "Hey let's not get tense we're all pals here" kinda grin. But with the weird lips it just makes him look like a manic clown.

  "Easy, Officer," Froggy says. "I'm a business man, doing business, and my business is your pleasure." He leans in close to Dad. "So what kind of pleasure do you need today?"

  Dad looks like he's trying not to vomit on the guy's threadbare head. "I'd like to go up on the roof," he finally manages.

  Froggy looks surprised. Then disappointed. "Really?" His mouth does this strange dance of shock, a clash of expressions I can't quite define.

  I suddenly wonder if there are dirty cops in this area.

  The great – the super-great – majority of police officers are good men, good women. They're out there busting ass to keep people safe. They make mistakes, they're human. But they're doing th
eir best.

  Still, the brotherhood is a big group. A big family. And in any family of large size there's bound to be a black sheep or two. An officer who's willing to look the other way for the right price. A cop who shakes down a mom-and-pop store in a bad part of town, or else "response times" might be too long.

  It's crappy and it gives the 99.9% of good cops aneurisms. But it's life.

  So maybe Froggy's expecting a shakedown. Maybe he's expecting a payoff. Whatever it is, "I'd like to go up on the roof" clearly isn't it.

  The expressions finally melt off the bartender's face. All that's left are the grotesque features he is permanently cursed with. "Sure, officer," he says. His tongue creeps along his mismatched lips. "Anything you say."

  The way he says it....

  Something's wrong. We're missing something.

  Froggy sidesteps a few feet and flips up part of the bar, allowing us to pass behind. There's a door back here and we follow him into a small room. The place is crowded with kegs of beer, bottles of booze. It smells dank and moldy. I doubt this place would get rated very highly if the city health inspectors were to come by.

  They probably wouldn't dare. Afraid they'd get shot.

  Maybe that's what Froggy thought this visit was about.

  He opens another door at the back of the storeroom, this one so narrow that I don't know how the squat barkeep could ever get through. The door squeaks on unoiled hinges. The sound hurts my ears, sets my teeth vibrating in my jaw. It sounds like a warning.

  The space beyond the door is dark. I can see a single tread, the first stair leading up. Beyond that, though... nothing. Just a solid wall of darkness leading nowhere.

  "It's up there," says Froggy. "I'd go with you, but my patrons aren't the most...." He licks his lips again. "Trustworthy. I don't think I should leave them alone with the products."

  That's the answer. He's not selling booze, he's selling products. Where the drugs are hidden, I have no idea, but he's a pusher. He expected Dad to ask for the weekly percentage.

  Dad looks at the bartender like he's something creepy-crawly out of a B-horror movie. And something about the look pushes Froggy out of the storeroom, into the bar.

  I'm not sorry to see him go.

  Dad looks at me. "Ladies first?" he says.

  "That's sexist," I answer. It's supposed to be a joke, but my voice cracks to pieces in the middle.

  Dad puts his right hand on his gun. Walks forward. He disappears into the black.

  And I follow.

  4

  UP AND UP, ONE STEP at a time. I feel my way forward, the smells of the bar at my back, hearing the creak of my dad's belt and gear just ahead, the strangely light shuffle of his feet on the wooden stairs. Occasionally one of the treads shifts under my feet, a loud creeeeaaakkkkk that makes my insides twist.

  Then Dad goes, "Oof!"

  "What? You okay?" For some reason I leap to the worst conclusions. Someone waiting up here. A knife, stabbing into him. Blood.

  The dark can play tricks on your mind.

  "Fine. Found the door with my face."

  I hear him fumble around, and the darkness of this little stairway splits open. The black becomes – well, a lighter shade of black, I guess. Bright enough I can barely make out the wraith-outline of Dad stepping out into the night beyond. I follow.

  The stairway ends in one of those little house-type structures: just a four-by-four space that holds nothing but the top stair and a door. That's what I leave through, joining Dad on the roof.

  "Where did you see?" he says.

  I look around. Behind the stairs is the top line of the neon sign, the straight line that makes up the top of the "R" in "BAR" just to our left. "There," I say.

  Dad and I walk over. The roof of the bar is shingled with tar paper and bits of gravel that crunches underfoot. It sounds like tiny bones grinding to dust.

  Dad reaches the edge of the roof. There's no wall, just a flat dropoff, about thirty feet down to the sidewalk below. Steel pins and thick bolts hold the "BAR" sign to the side of the roof. "Here?" he says.

  "Yeah."

  We both look around. Not knowing what we might find. Not knowing what to look for. We move in opposite directions across the roof, sweeping back and forth. A hopeless task in the dark.

  I keep looking at the neon sign. The back of it is solid, backed with some kind of metal sheeting, so the only light we get is an ambient red glow. The sheeting is gray and featureless, a shield between us and the alley.

  What was I thinking, bringing us up here?

  What do I know? I'm not Sherlock Holmes.

  I start to feel stupider and stupider the longer we look, my cheeks blushing so brightly they might give the neon sign a run for its money. I brought us here, thought I was so smart. But why? What are we doing here? Wasting time, probably.

  Self-doubt: the primary expertise of teenagers everywhere. In between knowing we know everything, we're pretty sure we're complete asses about everything.

  Dad makes a sound. Hard to describe, but my ears prick up. Because the noise sounds like a quiet, "Eureka."

  "What?"

  He leans over, pulling a pen from his pocket. He pokes it into something as I rush over. Holds it out as I get close.

  It's a bullet casing. The shell that's ejected after shooting a lot of guns. This one is long, so I'm guessing it came from a rifle. Dad's taken me to the range lots of times, but I'm no expert in spent shells.

  I am, however, an expert in my dad's face. He looks sick. Not hard to see why.

  "He was shot from up here," I say.

  "Yeah," he says. "We didn't kill him. Someone else did." He looks down at the shell again, a cylinder of brass that glints in the red neon light of the bar's sign. Looks like it's been dipped in blood.

  I'm missing something here. Something more. Something important.

  "What?" I ask.

  "This goes to an M4," he says.

  That doesn't mean much to me. "So?"

  "So that's a popular rifle... but only with a certain kind of person. Not something your average 'banger carries around."

  "Who uses it?" I ask.

  "Military, mostly." He looks at me. "Which would mean whoever came up here wasn't some slob from the bar. And they could have opened up on me and Knight and Voss and Zevahk and wiped us all out."

  I notice he leaves out the name of his partner. The one who did get killed. Not to mention the other 'banger and the dead kid in the alley.

  "So what does that mean?" I say.

  "It means that we didn't walk into a drug bust gone wrong. We walked into a hit. By a professional."

  He looks at the casing again. I glance at the siding behind the neon sign. And gasp. Not so much at the siding, but what I see beyond.

  I see a figure enter the alley we just left. Dark, cloaked in shadows. It kneels down in the center of the alley for a moment before standing and coming closer. The shadows draw black fingers across the person's face, then pull apart for a moment.

  It's Liam.

  5

  DAD SEES HIM THE SAME moment I do. We both step forward, like we are connected to the same string, controlled by the same maniacal remote.

  "What the hell...?" Dad turns to me. "What's he doing here?"

  I can't speak. I just shrug, mouth open in dumb shock.

  I take a step toward the still-open door to the stairwell, but Dad grabs me.

  "What are you –?"

  Dad cuts me off with a quick gesture. "Why's he here, Mel?" He turns to look at Liam, who is kneeling again, then standing and walking through the alley. Even at this distance I can see that Liam is moving oddly, like he is drunk. "No way it's a coincidence."

  "Fine, so we're going to spy on him?" I can't believe this. "What if he's in danger?"

  "If he looks like he's in danger then we go to him," Dad says. "But right now the only person I know is in danger is you. And I'm not willing to risk your safety for his. Not unless there's a damn good reason."
/>   I quiet down. Angry, relieved. Mad that Dad isn't charging down to Liam like a white knight on a steed, but oddly happy that we can stay here. I hate that alley. Gives me the willies.

  Then something changes Dad's attitude. Something unexpected – but at the same time, the moment it happens it seems like the only thing that can happen. I suddenly remember a line from a fairy tale Dad used to read me.

  "All this has happened before, and it will all happen again." A boy who never ages, who lives only to fight pirates, to bring children into a Neverland that seems perfect, but is a nightmare when you look close enough.

  I'm on a string. My eyes rise at the exact moment it happens. The exact moment it has to happen. And that's when Liam's eyes shift from spots on the ground in the alley – spots where evil and innocent have fallen...

  ... to mine.

  He looks up at the bar.

  He sees us.

  He smiles.

  And I see the gun.

  6

  DAD AND I RUN. BACK through the darkness of the night, the darkness of the stairwell, the darkness of a bar that caters to sleaze. It's like dropping into a bizarre neighborhood of Hell. A place where the drunks and crackheads go, catered to by a short devil who looks at you with ugliness and hate.

  We run. Run through the bar, back into the night, back into the alley.

  To Liam.

  He's standing in the middle. Halfway between the dumpster and the mouth of the alley where Dad and Knight and Zevahk and Voss cringed behind cars. Halfway between the place where evil died and the spot Dad's partner was gunned down. Light and dark in a place where blackness has crept in and now rules unchecked and unchallenged.

  Liam is standing over the spot where the kid died.

  He's looking at the street when we run up, his toe rubbing the ground like he's digging for something. Maybe hoping to strike down and discover the blood that soaked in there a month ago.

  He looks up when we approach. He's crying.