Homicide Related (3 page)

Dooley caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it. He tensed up immediately. There, fifteen or twenty meters away up the path, was an animal of some kind. A raccoon, maybe? No, a dog. Jesus, a big one, too, and it was coming Dooley's way. He scanned the ravine for human life, specifically, a dog owner dangling a leash from one hand, but he didn't see anyone. In Dooley's experience, dogs in dark, out-of-the-way places were like people in dark, out-of-the-way places. You never knew what they were doing there or what they might do. But a dog with an owner and a leash—that was a different story. It was almost comforting. Well, most of the time it was. There was a guy who used to live in Dooley's old neighborhood. He strutted around with a pair of fight-hungry pit bulls at the end of a couple of chains. There was nothing comforting about that.

Dooley averted his eyes from the dog and hoped it would change direction or walk on by. It didn't. It stopped. Dooley ventured a quick peek. The dog was standing maybe ten meters up the path now, its eyes focused on Dooley, its body rigid. Dooley looked away quickly and forced himself 15 to breathe in and out at regular intervals. He tried to make like a tree or a rock, something immobile and uninteresting to a dog. Okay, so maybe a tree wasn't the best idea.

The dog didn't move. It didn't come down the path toward Dooley, which was good, but it didn't retreat either. It seemed to be studying Dooley. Goddamn Jeffie. Dooley would give him five more minutes, less if the dog so much as twitched in Dooley's direction, and that was it. It had been a major pain in the ass to get here in the first place. His uncle had wanted to know where the hell he was going at nine-thirty on a school night. Yeah, well, Dooley had been prepared for that one.

“I'm going to drop off those library books you've been nagging me about.”

“The library's closed.”

“They have a drop box. The books are due tomorrow. I don't want to forget.”

“You told me you'd take care of it,” his uncle said.

“And I'm going to. Right now. What's the matter? You don't trust me?”

His uncle fixed him with that used-to-be-a-cop look of his that was supposed to tell Dooley that, no, as a matter of fact, he didn't.

“Give me a break,” Dooley said. “I'm holding down a job. I'm going to school, and so far I'm passing everything. You gonna give me a hard time for the rest of my life?”

His uncle stuck with his cop look, but Dooley had been around him long enough by now to know that he wasn't the one-hundred-percent tyrant that he worked hard at making himself out to be.

“I spent two-and-a-half hours in the library this afternoon writing an essay for English,” Dooley said.

“You couldn't have returned the books then?”

“We were at the reference library. You can't borrow books from there and you can't return them there. Besides, my brain feels like it's gonna explode. I thought I'd take a walk, clear my head, return the books. That's all.”

“At nine-thirty at night?” his uncle said.

Boy, once a cop … “You want to come with me, hold my hand?” Dooley said.

“Yeah, and maybe keep you out of trouble?”

“Jesus,” Dooley said, starting to pull off his jacket. “Forget it, okay? I'll do it after school tomorrow,
if
I remember.” He wrestled free of the jacket, tossed it onto the back of a chair, and turned to leave the room.

Worst case: Jeffie would have to wait a day.

“Where were you planning to walk?” his uncle said pretty much on schedule, which is to say, when Dooley was halfway down the hall on his way to the stairs. One thing (but probably not the main thing) that Dooley had learned over the past few months was that a little credibility goes a long way. When he had first come to live with his uncle, he'd had none. He'd been, in the eyes of his uncle, a fuckup—someone who had screwed up so much and sunk so low that he was going to have to both eat and shovel shit for an eternity, and smile while he was doing it, just to prove that he could take whatever the straight-and-narrow world chose to dish out to him. Well, he'd done that. He'd paid those almighty dues. He'd abided by each and every condition dictated by his uncle and the court. And he had not, repeat not, fallen into that major sinkhole a while back. He'd left that to the rich kid.

Dooley didn't turn when his uncle asked him where he was planning to walk. He just glanced over his shoulder, like, what difference did it make now?

“I was going to go to the library and then walk around and get some air. If I'm not at school, I'm at work. If I'm not at work, I'm here.” Well, most of the time. Sometimes he got sprung. Sometimes he got to be with Beth.

And then there it was, that heavy sigh, the sweet sound of his uncle caving.

“Be back by eleven at the latest,” his uncle said, laying out terms so that it was clear who was in charge.

“Forget it,” Dooley said. “It's not important.”

“Jesus, Ryan,” his uncle said, exasperated. That was one thing Dooley could always count on: The pinched look on his uncle's face and the impatient snap in his voice every time Dooley didn't do whatever his uncle had it in mind that he should do. “You want to take a walk and return those damned books, then do it. All I'm saying is, be back by eleven.”

“Well …” Dooley said, thinking it over. “Okay.”

Down in the ravine now, books safely deposited into the library's drop box, Dooley eased his arm out slowly—he wasn't making any sudden moves as long as that dog was still there—and glanced at his watch. The only way he was going to be home by eleven was if he started back no later than twenty to. But what was the point in waiting that long?

Jeffie had said ten. It was twenty-five after now—no, make that twenty-six-and-counting after. Fuck it.

“Dooley. Hey, Dooley!”

Dooley turned and saw a familiar figure scrambling down the path toward him. Jeffie, looking thinner and smaller than Dooley remembered, his baggy jeans so low on his hips that they looked like they were going to slide right off, his jacket—leather, Dooley noticed—unzipped, its cuffs half covering Jeffie's hands. The dog saw him, too. It barked and growled. Jeffie stopped, bent down, picked up something—a rock?—and whipped it at the animal. He must have hit the mark, too, because the dog yelped and ran off in the other direction. Dooley shook his head.

“What if you'd pissed it off and it attacked you?” he said when Jeffie was close enough to hear him.

“Then I would have blasted it,” Jeffie said.

Whoa.

“You have a gun?” Dooley said. No way did he want to be around anyone who was armed. Not now. Not ever again.

“Relax,” Jeffie said. “It's a figure of speech.” Dooley wasn't sure that his English teacher would agree, but that was another difference between Dooley and Jeffie: Dooley had an English teacher. “You think I'd take a chance like that?”

Dooley didn't know what to think. Except for a brief chance meeting on the street at the beginning of the summer, he hadn't seen or spoken to Jeffie in a long time.

“Besides,” Jeffie said, “I showed him who's boss, didn't I?”

Right.

“What took you so long to get here?” Dooley said. “You said ten. It's nearly ten-thirty.” His voice echoed a little down under the bridge where he was standing, and he was startled to hear how much he sounded like his uncle. Was that where he was headed?

“You know how Teresa can be,” Jeffie said.

“You still with her?” Dooley said, surprised. Teresa was small and dark and, when she was out in public with Jeffie, she came across as kind of cute and helpless. But Dooley had seen them alone together. Then she was always at Jeffie for something: Why hadn't he remembered this, why hadn't he done that, always sounding like she was mad at him for something, which made Dooley wonder why she stayed with Jeffie. She sure didn't seem to like him much. More important, he couldn't figure out why Jeffie put up with her and her constant carping.

“Yeah,” Jeffie said. “It's okay, I guess. She keeps saying we've been together long enough, we should make it legal. And she's been hinting around about a kid.” Dooley couldn't figure how any of that fell into the category of okay. “She keeps telling me what a great father I'd be.”

Dooley tried to picture Jeffie soothing a baby who was teething or giving it a bottle, but couldn't. For one thing, Jeffie was in the wrong line of work. Also, he was too impulsive. He'd get an idea to do something and, boom, off he'd go and do it without thinking about the stuff he was supposed to be doing in the first place. He wasn't that bright, either. Mostly it was because he had a learning disability—Dooley knew a lot of guys like that. He'd heard somewhere that a high percentage of guys who got into trouble had either a learning disability or some kind of mental problem. Jeffie couldn't spell for shit. He was a disaster at math. And his memory? Tell him a phone number or an address, and chances were he'd forget it within five minutes. Plus, he had no reference point, no idea what a father was, let alone a great one.

“You gonna do it?” Dooley said. “You gonna have a kid with her?”

“Are you crazy? I'm nineteen. Who wants a kid at nineteen?”

Dooley couldn't think of a single person.

“What about you?” Jeffie said.

“What about me?”

“You with someone?”

Dooley didn't answer. Jeffie was past tense. Beth was the present and, he hoped, the future. Jeffie didn't push it. He had other things on his mind.

“I really appreciate it, Dooley,” he said. “You know I wouldn't have asked, but—”

“What's it for, Jeffie?”

Most of the time, Jeffie had a goofy-sweet expression on his face, like he was only catching about eighty percent of what was going on. But what you saw with Jeffie wasn't always what you got. Jeffie was no genius, but he was no fool, either. Nor was he a pushover. Anger flashed in his eyes.

“What difference does it make?” he said.

“I want it back, that's what,” Dooley said. “If you're just gonna piss it away on some game—”

Jeffie bristled. When he was wearing his normal, befuddled expression, he looked harmless. Make him angry though, and you'd better watch out. But he didn't scare

Dooley, who had worked out exactly how many hours he'd put in at the video store to earn what he was about to hand over to Jeffie.

“You're good for it, right, Jeffie?” he said.

“I said I was, didn't I?” Jeffie was trying to make himself as tall as Dooley. They locked eyes for a few seconds, Jeffie breathing hard at first and then, gradually, slowing it down, maybe figuring he'd better back off a little if he wanted Dooley to deliver. “One week, that's all I'm asking,” he said. “There's this guy, Dooley. He's one of those downtown guys, you know, in one of those big towers. He has more money than he knows what to do with. He was looking for a connection. The guy could be a gold mine. He likes to party. Hey, and you know what? He reminds me of you.”

Right. Ryan Dooley, party animal. He wanted to tell Jeffie, I don't do that anymore; I've cleaned up my life. But what were the chances that Jeffie would believe him?

“This guy,” Jeffie said. “If I deliver, I'm set.”

“So why do you need me?” Dooley said.

Jeffie shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but Dooley caught the shadow of fear in his eyes. “There's this guy I owe. He's insistent, you know? He doesn't want to wait. If I tell him he's got nothing to worry about, all he needs is to give me another couple of days, he's gonna—”

“Okay, whatever,” Dooley said, cutting it short. He didn't want to know what Jeffie was into. He just wanted to know that he wasn't flushing hard-earned money down the toilet. “I need it back, that's all I'm saying. Some people work for a living, Jeffie.”

“I hear some people even live with ex-cops and go to school regular,” Jeffie said, grinning at Dooley now, like, are you for real? “When are you up, Dooley? When are you gonna cut loose?” Meaning, when could Dooley go back to being Dooley? There were times—plenty of times—when Dooley thought about exactly that—when he would have the authorities off his case, when he could party again, when he could do all the things he used to do that made him forget all the crap in his life, that made him float, that took the sharp edges off, that made all the bullshit go away. If he wanted it, Jeffie could fix him up with something. It would be so easy.

“I'm out of that now,” Dooley said.

“Right,” Jeffie said, still grinning—see?—not believing him. Well, why would he? Why would anyone who had known Dooley then believe that he was different now? It irked him, though, to have put in all that time, to have done everything that he had these past few months, and then to come face-to-face with someone like Jeffie and realize that Jeffie didn't see the difference. What was the point?

Dooley dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out the money he had withdrawn from the bank. It was a good thing—good for Jeffie—that he had called when he did because what he wanted was more than the daily limit that Dooley was allowed to withdraw from an ATM. Twenty minutes later, the bank would have been closed and Jeffie would have been out of luck. But because he'd called when he had, Dooley still had time. He'd told Beth he wouldn't be long; he had to do an errand and he would meet her at the library. Then he'd gone and stood in a long line to get the money from one of two tellers working at a counter that had six teller stations. He held the money out to Jeffie now. Jeffie snatched it out of his hand, like he was afraid if he didn't, Dooley would change his mind. He started to count it.

“Hey, fuck you,” Dooley said. Didn't anyone trust anyone anymore?

“You have any idea what kind of shit storm I'll be in if I'm short?” Jeffie said. He continued thumbing the bills. When he finished, he jammed the money into his pocket.