Calling Home (7 page)

“Oh, sure. We hang around together. You know.”

“When did you last see him?” In an eerie way, this was the first thing that Inspector Ng had said slowly, and the words were heavy. I hefted them, unable to think.

Mr. Williams lifted a hand from his desk. “Anything you can think of that can help, Peter.”

Inspector Ng nodded. “Anything at all. Did you see the subject accept a ride anywhere, or speak to anyone you did not recognize, or do anything else that might not at the time have aroused suspicion but which might, in looking back—” Inspector Ng leaned forward. “Anything,” he said slowly, “at all.”

Mr. Williams turned his hand palm up. “Mrs. Litton is tremendously upset. The poor, tormented lady.”

“It's awful,” I squeaked. “I had no idea.”

“You had no idea at all that Mead Litton was missing, none whatsoever, until this moment as you sat here in this room?” asked Inspector Ng.

“No,” I said, and the lie of it, knowing that it was a lie, climbed up my head like a monkey and tried to peek out at Inspector Ng through my eyes. I took a deep breath and told myself that if I had ever, in my whole life, shown any composure, this was the time to bring it back; this was the time to be a genius, this was the time to let my face lie for me so well that I could stand among these enemies like Daniel in the Den of Lions and walk free, completely unharmed.

I looked to the floor, at Inspector Ng's black shoes, noticed that they needed to be polished but that his pants wore a hard crease, and looked up, the perfect liar. “No, I didn't know anything about it. We hung around a lot, but he didn't tell me any of his plans.”

“I can believe it. That Litton kid is very low IQ. A behavior problem from nursery school,” said Mr. Tyler.

I looked into Mr. Tyler, seeing inside Mr. Tyler's intestines ropes made of IQ tests, and all the other tests students take by marking spots on pieces of paper they will feed into a computer. I shot the thought into his dried-up guts that what Mead had was something Mr. Tyler would never understand, and which all the computers in the world could not detect. But the face I showed Mr. Tyler was one of concern and humility.

Inspector Ng shrugged his shoulders. “We have to follow up on every possibility in a case like this, even when it is purely routine and the subject in question has probably, in all likelihood simply—” Inspector Ng closed his notebook—“taken a hike.”

“But,” said Mr. Williams, “if you hear from Mead in any way, you will please let an administrator know. His poor mother is so distraught. My word, it is a trial to be a parent.”

“The young have no comprehension. None at all,” said Mr. Tyler.

Inspector Ng said nothing. He tucked his notebook into his pocket, and clipped his pen into his shirt, and smiled at me, suddenly. He believed me, the smile said. This was all purely routine. I was a good, slightly mixed-up kid, who was, basically, harmless. But also, far inside the smile, I saw another Inspector Ng, an Inspector Ng who crouched, holding a thirty-eight with both hands, and shot holes in people he didn't like.

I found Lani sorting through books in her locker. For someone who was so healthy and sure of herself, she had a very messy locker, all trash and shoved-in books. Lani liked to read, and her locker was a jumble of mystery stories and inspirational biographies of famous athletes.

“I heard you were in trouble,” she said, looking at me carefully.

“No. No trouble. I want to go to the zoo. Want to come along?”

She showed very slight surprise. “I have softball practice, Peter, and it's late in the day to go to the zoo, isn't it? We could go on Saturday.”

“I feel like seeing some animals in prison. I feel a great kinship with them.”

She studied me and, as always, I had the sense that she really saw me, the actual human, and not simply what she expected to see.

The zoo was nearly empty, but warm and sunny in the late afternoon. We stood before a weedy plot of dirt, and an aqua-green pool of peeling paint and water. Two alligators lay before us, torpid as lengths of meat.

“I hate seeing animals penned up,” said Lani. “It makes me so sad.”

“Mead is missing,” I said, staring at the gigantic reptiles.

“What happened!”

“They think he ran away.”

“Why would he run away?”

“He just ran away. Who knows why? People do things for strange reasons.”

One of the alligators shifted his muscular, broad head. Then he stopped, and held the new position for a long time.

“I hope he's all right,” she said.

“I hope so, too,” I murmured, feeling terrible about lying to Lani.

I wanted to tell her everything.

9

We sat on the lawn watching the light break and form on the surface of Lake Merritt. A duck waddled to the edge of the lake and shook himself. Then he was suddenly on the water, sailing forth into the white, broken fragments of sunlight. He reached the place where the broken light was brightest, and vanished, covered over by the glare that eyes could not stand to look into.

Angela slipped off her shoes. She wiggled her toes and leaned forward and said to them, “I decided you were so rude because you're under a lot of pressure.”

“I'm not under any pressure.”

“I think you are.” She looked at me, then massaged her toes with both hands. “I think you are under some kind of stress.”

“I'm just bored. Everything is so tedious.”

“You're always bored. There's something different.”

I snorted.

“Anyway, I forgive you for snapping at me.”

“I was irritated because you say things and don't even think what they mean, like saying that you hope that your parents' plane crashes. What an evil thing to say.”

She stiffened, then stretched, and was plainly not going to be drawn into an argument, and I understood that she felt good about forgiving me. It gave her power over me, and I disliked her for her understanding, but accepted it because it was the easiest thing to do. I made up my mind, though, that I would try to be meaner to people in the future; it's so much more fair than to forgive them.

“I was just talking. Anyway, there's no such thing as evil. Just people and things they do. You know that.”

I leaned back on the lawn and covered my eyes from the afternoon sun. Lake Merritt is surrounded by buildings and streets, a lake in the middle of life. It's ugly when you get up close to it and see the scum-black rocks and algae-greasy beer cans, and when you get farther away, you see how gray and building-colored the lake is, even on a bright day, and how unlike a real lake it is, one that is surrounded by farms or mountains, and that people can stoop down to and touch and drink from. I didn't want to see the lake anymore, and I didn't want the light to needle my eyes, so I lay there and listened to the whir and moan of traffic.

“But there is something wrong with you. There's something in your eyes. I can see it. Anyone who really knows you can see it.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“No, it's not. There's something the matter with you.”

I listened to the city grumbling around me. A truck growled its gears and coughed a huge, phlegmy rumble as it took some load of something across the edge of everything I could hear and, gradually, diminished. I could hear Angela's silence, too, as she sensed the things about me she imagined herself able to sense.

“Yes,” I said, finally. “There is something wrong with me.”

“What?” she breathed.

“I find it very difficult to talk about. It's not the sort of thing I can share.”

“You can share it with me,” she said, hungry for it. And she cared, too, concern making her voice syrupy and smooth, as she leaned closer to me and murmured, “Tell me what's wrong.”

“I can't get it out of my mind. It eats away at me, and I can't stop thinking about it.”

“What?”

“My father asked me to come live with him.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Why not? He's my father.”

“You don't want to, do you? It would be awful if you moved away.”

“No, I don't want to. But I don't want to hurt his feelings.”

“His feelings.” She said it with contempt, but then she was quiet.

“Yes. I don't want to hurt his feelings.”

“Where does he live?”

“Newport Beach.”

“Where's that?”

“In Southern California someplace. I'm not sure where.”

“Oh, Jesus. Southern California. I'd kill myself if I had to live down there.”

“I don't know. I've never been there.” I hesitated. “I've never even flown.”

“It's no big deal. None of it is. Travel is boring.”

I sat up and blinked against the brightness. She put her arm around me, very tender now that she had a secret out of me, and whispered into my ear in a way that made my penis turn around and listen, “We ought to run away together.”

I smiled, because what could anyone do in a situation like that? She was the sexiest girl in California at that moment, and she knew it, and she wrapped herself around me and lay me down on the grass and stroked my lips with her tongue, controlling me and warping me this way and that, and I had the feeling that sharing something intimate with Angela made her feel like the most powerful woman in the world.

I struggled to my feet like a person climbing out of a sleeping bag, and she stood with me, her arm around me like she didn't want me to run away. And I didn't want to run, either, because I felt that nothing could happen to me as long as I was with her; she was that powerful.

A pudgy man held an object in his hands and teetered on the edge of the lake, working his feet into the gray, crusty rocks for steadiness. He kneeled and placed the object he held into the water. He stood again and looked down at it lovingly, and for a long time he did not do anything.

“A grown man,” Angela said.

The man stepped back and took a box the size of a small book from his pocket. An antenna quivered from the box, and the man pushed the box gently with one finger, as if he was dialing a phone.

The object began to move, and as it moved it bobbed over waves in the water that I had not noticed before, and rocked, and the small ripples of water broke over it and wet it. It made a purr that increased as it reached the quiet stretch of water and turned toward a duck. The duck swam hastily away from it.

The man watched it, not with a playful expression, but with a very serious expression. The antenna quivered as he manipulated dials in his hand.

“A grown man playing with toys.”

“It's wonderful!”

“What's wonderful about a grown man playing with a toy speedboat? He's older than my father.” Angela brushed a dried blade of grass from her pants, and it was obvious that the withered-up little blade of grass was supposed to be me.

“Mead ran away,” she said.

“I heard about that.”

“I think you know where he is.”

I felt cold. “Of course I don't. What a silly thing to say.”

“You've been acting very odd lately. Odd even for you. Lani mentioned it. She's worried about you.”

“Lani's a very nice person.”

“And I'm not?”

Angela is everything but nice. But I spoke carefully. “You're both nice people.”

“I think Mead is hiding out somewhere, and that you know where he is. I bet you get together with him and drink. I'm going to figure out where.”

“That's not true!”

“There's something funny going on. Look at you—twitching and sweating. Lani's right—there is something wrong.”

“My mother's been acting hysterical lately. If you had a mother like mine, you'd be strange, too.”

Angela tilted back her head and watched me. Not in the way Lani would look at me, but as though I were an insect skewered by a pin. “I'm going to tell Mead's parent that you know where he is.”

“Don't do that!”

She thought. “Maybe I won't. But my brother's coming back soon. I'm going to have him check you out.”

“How's your brother going to ‘check me out?'”

“Wait and find out.”

Angela's brother, Jack, had been in and out of trouble with the law for drugs and petty crimes like extortion and attempted murder. He had been sent to military school in Stockton, and word was that he had turned around and planned to join the Marines. I had been terrified of him during his criminal phase. He scared any thinking person. He was a large, square-headed hulk. He was also smart, in a shifty, unpleasant way. The idea of this military ex-thug coming to check up on me made me fidget.

“I'll tell him you've been abusing my affections.”

“What does that mean? You don't have any affections.”

“It implies sexual abuse, or something dishonorable like that.”

“You're a great friend, Angela, you know that? A terrific friend.”

She gave me a smile I did not like.

10

Lani answered the door herself.

It was not the first time I had visited her large, ivy-covered house, but I did not do it often.

Her father was a heavyset man who always had a book in his hand. His hand swallowed mine for a moment. “It's good to see you, Peter. So you've come to hear Lani play the piano.”

“Yes, sir.” I usually hated calling men “sir,” but there was something deliberate and serious about Mr. McKnight, and he made me respect him without any effort on his part.

Lani's father could be very grumpy. He hated to answer the phone, and he always, even now, gave you the impression that you had interrupted a very complex train of thought. He was a man who valued his time, and he didn't care to have his time abused by a skinny white kid with a dumb expression.

He had the same serious way of speaking that Lani had. Her mother had died of cancer years ago, when Lani was three. She could hardly remember her mother, but the loss seemed to make both father and daughter take things seriously, their words, and their actions, had weight.