Property of the State (17 page)
Read Property of the State Online
Authors: Bill Cameron
A long time ago, when I complained to Reid about the kid who beat off to his family photo album, he said, “The range of sexual need and expression is vast, Joey. Even among neurotypicals there is no normal. Who can say what this kid has been through, or what his personal challenges may be? Try to show a little understanding.”
He may as well have been talking about Philip.
Harley May tries to stop me, but I blow past her. My search runs from the library to Moylan's room, but Philip's not in the building. I find him out on the sidewalk, backpack at his feet, Book tucked under his arm. The rain has soaked his hair and jacket. He doesn't seem to notice.
“Hey, Philip. What's going on?”
He flinches at the sound of my voice. His mouth works for a moment, as if he's trying to decide what to say. At last he settles on, “My mother is coming to pick me up.”
His voice is calm, but his jaw is clenched and I can almost hear his teeth grinding. As I stand there trying to figure out how to explain without revealing my fortnight of trespass, he turns to face me. I don't know if the fluid on his face is from the rain or something else.
“I know what it looks likeâ”
“You let her in my
house
.” He all but spits as he adds, “You're the worst person I've ever met.” Considering his feelings about Kristina, that's saying something.
“Philipâ”
“Stop talking to me.”
“Please. I didn't⦔ He put his hands over his ears, squeezes his eyes shut. On anyone else it would look childish. On Philip it looks a little childish too, but mostly it looks angry. And justifiable.
I didn't know
.
I can't tell if I spoke aloud or not. Doesn't matter. Even if I shouted, first in one ear and then the other, he wouldn't hear me. I leave him there, eyes still closed, ears still clamped. I can't be around when Mrs. Huntzel arrives.
Back inside, the nightmare compounds. I find Trisha sitting outside the door to the library, her MacBook in her lap. She's not wearing braidsâher hair hangs loose and frizzy on her shoulders, half-hiding her face. I stop beside her, but she doesn't look up. I'm not used to being the first one to speak. Her name sounds garbled coming out of my mouth. “Trisha.” I repeat myself, louder. Clearer. “Trisha.”
The hallway chatterâall about Philipâis loud enough to bleed eardrums. How it happened, I can only guess. Maybe she heard him from the bathroom off the basement landing, then slipped out to find him in the vault. And saw her chance for a little revenge for all his little digs and derisionâ
zebretta
,
graham cracker
. Less certain is whether she realized Philip would realize I was the one who gave her access in the first place. Maybe that was a bonusâfor Kristina, for holding back. If so, I'm not sure I blame her.
“Trisha?”
She closes her laptop with a snap and stands.
“Listen,” I say. I'm thinking about Philip. And I'm thinking about myself too. A little bit. Feeling sorry for both of us. But mostly I'm thinking about her. “Trisha, please. Listen.”
She's already moving down the corridor.
“I'm sorry.” I don't know if she hears me. “I fucked up.”
Of course she hears me. She doesn't turn around, though. If being a foster kid teaches you anything, it's how to walk away without looking back.
They continue to unwind.
Mondayâdining room, conservatory, and foyer. Not that I'll be waxing and buffing today. Or ever again. With the YouTube hitting the fan, it's time for new digs.
On the Joey Getchie Catastrophe Continuum, today falls somewhere between Mr. Tinkel on the toilet and the Rieskes slamming concrete on I-84. It's two weeks ago all over again and my options are still crap. Maybe I could pitch a tent on Mount Tabor. If I owned a tent. I foresee a knife fight with a hobo in the near future.
Unless I make one more trip into stately Huntzel Manor.
I've circled through the park so I can observe the house from above without being seen. For most of the day, I've only watched. The windows are dark, no sign anyone is inside. Of course, it's still daylight. I'm being paranoid maybe, but I gotta be sure. The rain has passed. Blue sky is visible through the branches of the Doug firs on the slope. I sit at the top of the hill, back to a tree on which someone has graffitied a huge heart with a peace symbol in its center. Knotted bark digs into my back, but I don't care.
For the hundredth time, I pull the magazine out of my backpack. Buying a dead tree tabloid to read about a fake celeb feels like something Anita would do, but it was four bucks well spent.
Us Weekly
stared at me from the checkout line at Fred Meyer when I stopped for conveyor belt sushi. The issue the girl on the MAX was reading, the one with the story about Bianca in the lower right-hand corner. The tagline below her picture reads
Reality Bites For Bianca
.
Inside, there's not much. Two photos, a big one of grim-faced Bianca clutching a shopping bag, and a smaller one, inset, of her oily husband. The story is one 'graph.
“Reality television personality Bianca Santavenere finds herself getting the wrong kind of attentionâif there is such a thing for the fame-starved ex-child star. For the second time in four years, her sugar daddy husband, Florida businessman Nick Malvado, finds himself in the federal crosshairs. This time, it's a joint FBI/DEA task force probing Malvado's alleged ties to the Mexican Los Zetas drug cartel. Seen here leaving Luca Luca at Bal Harbour, a dour Bianca actually seems upset by the attention of the paps for the first time in history. She probably wishes her first husband, celebrated lawyer Pip McEntire, were still alive. Word was, he ate federal investigations for brunch.”
At least now I have a pretty good idea where the money came from. And why it smells so bad. It's Nick Malvado's drug money. How it got into the Huntzels' vault, I don't
even
want to know, but I do know I won't feel bad about snatching some now. Even a single bundle of dirty twenties will buy me a lot of nights in one of those no-tell motels down on Powell.
As I tuck the magazine away, Caliban charges out of the undergrowth and clonks into me. He wrassles me onto my side and scrubs me down with his sandpaper tongue before taking up a post at my side. Apparently he hasn't seen YouTube. “Anyone home, dog?” I scratch his mane between the ears. He responds with a tail thump on the fir needles and a string of drool. After a while, he gets bored and hops up. “Where you going?” I watch him trot down the hill toward the laurel hedge, then jump into a hole. I'm abandoned, again.
I take out my phone, try to compose a message. Nothing sounds right. Finally I settle on the one thing I know is true.
Used to be all I wanted was to be invisible. Now I wish I'd let you see me.
She doesn't respond. I wonder if she ever will.
The sun is just touching the West Hills when I climb to my feet and brush fir needles off my ass. Part of me thinks I should hold out until full dark, but the longer I wait the less chance I'll have to find a secure spot to spend the night. If there is such a thing.
I don't have much of a plan. Get my stuff from Kristina's room, stop by the vault, then jam before anyone knows I was there. If I get caught, I'll pretend I've come to clean. Worst case is they kick me out for being a trespassing dickhead.
But when I open the bedroom door, I realize I should have gone to the vault first. Mr. Huntzel is sitting on Kristina's unicorns. As I turn to flee he freezes me with his voice.
“No need to rush off, is there, Joey?”
Yes
.
In the last six months, I've fought for Philip, eaten with Mrs. Huntzel, but exchanged fewer than a dozen words with this man. There's a smell to him, a strange cologne. Something exoticâfrom Italy maybe.
“I have known for some time, in case you were wondering.”
“I needed a place to stay.”
“So Kristina insisted. She felt we owed you something. But circumstances have changed, have they not?”
I wish there was some way to make everyone understand I didn't know about the video. “Not in the way you think.”
“Does that really matter?”
My fight-or-flight response is pinned at
RUN
, but somehow his gaze locks me in place. No spit will form in my mouth. When I speak again I feel like my tongue is ripping open. “Now what?”
He shrugs, his eyes at once regretful and unfriendly.
“You're going to turn me in.”
Now he smiles. It's like looking into the face of a reptile. “I have
already
turned you in.”
I practically fall down the staircase. He doesn't follow, but then I guess he doesn't have to. The animal heads gaze in judgment as I fumble with the key to Kristina's doorâI'm a dumbass for locking up after myself. Finally the deadbolt clicks and I yank the door open, stumble out to the dead leaves.
And into the arms of a waiting cop.
They bind my wrists with a zip tie and shove me in the back of a patrol car parked on Yamhill. I can see the house, can see when Mrs. Huntzel and Philip pull into the driveway in the Toyota. The cops are on the front porch with Mr. Huntzel. From time to time, they glance my way, making sure I haven't slipped the zip, broken through the steel mesh barrier between me and the front seat and started hot-wiring the car. I'm too busy trying to figure out how to sit on the hard vinyl without cutting off circulation to my hands.
When Philip gets out of the Toyota, he stares down at me. Bug in a jar. At this distance, his expression is unreadable, but I can guess. Mrs. Huntzel doesn't even look. She stalks into the house past her husband and the cops. Philip continues watching me until Mrs. Petty pulls up behind the cop car and parks. Then he turns and follows his mother. The cops move out of his way. Mr. Huntzel ignores him.
Mrs. Petty raps on the window as she walks past the cop car. The vinyl almost melts under the heat of her glare. She then marches straight up to the cops. Mr. Huntzel offers her his hand, which she shakes without enthusiasm. They talk for a while, turning to stare at me every now and then. At one point, Mrs. Petty gets out her cell phone and makes a call. Then more talking.
Finally Mr. Huntzel goes back inside. Mrs. Petty marches back down the driveway toward me, the two cops hot-stepping it to keep up. Their legs come up to her shoulders, but no one out-trots Mrs. Petty. She heads straight up to the car and yanks the door open.
“Out.”
I have no feeling in my hands, but somehow I manage to twist around and push my way out of the backseat.
What's going on
? is the question on my mind, but the fury in her eyes keeps my lips zipped.
“I'm releasing his hands.”
The cops had plenty to say when they grabbed me outside Kristina's door, but now they're fumble-tongued as she whips out her Leatherman and walks around behind me. I hear a pop, then my hands are free.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Mrs. Petty puts a hand on my shoulder and guides me to her car. She waits at the passenger side door until I'm belted inâno shoulder strap in the old Impala, then goes around and gets behind the wheel. Tosses my backpack onto the seat behind her. The cops look at us, bug-eyed, as she peels out from the curb and tears down the hill. I assume the reason they aren't in hot pursuit is they got their fill on the Huntzel driveway. All I can do is embed my fingertips into the door handle and hope for the best.
She drives in circles. Belmont to Thirty-ninth to Burnside to Sixtieth and back down to Belmont again. I can tell she's thinking because of the way her jaw moves as she takes the turns. Eventually she finds an on-ramp to I-84 and my lips compress under the rising G-force. I figure we're heading to the middle of nowhere to abandon me. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as Mad Maddie used to say.
Turns out she wants to talk instead.
“Stealing, Joey? That's where we're at now?”
“What am I supposed to have stolen?”
“You deny it?”
“Would it make a difference if I did?” My mind flashes to Sergeant Zach. It sure as shit didn't make a difference with him.
For a minute she actually concentrates on driving, which lowers the overall terror quotient by an order of magnitude.
“He said he caught you walking out with Philip's Xboxâ”
“Philip doesn't even
have
an Xbox.”
“That's not what Mr. Huntzel told the police.”
“Philip wouldn't even know what to do with one.”
“Are you suggesting Mr. Huntzel is lying?”
“Like I said, would it make a difference if I did?” It
is
true I ate a lot of pudding cups.
She takes the exit onto I-205 and we head south, approaching Mach One. I wonder why Mr. Huntzel didn't tell the cops I was sleeping in the house. Maybe that didn't sound criminal enough. I am the hired hand, after all. I could claim I thought it would be okay, just a misunderstanding. But thievery of imaginary game consoles would be harder to explain awayâample revenge for YouTube.
“Here's where things stand. You are grounded to the house and school for the foreseeable future. Mr. Huntzel hasn't decided whether or not to file charges.”
“You're taking me back to the Boobies?”
“We have an appointment with Reid tomorrow afternoon.”
Tuesday: living room and library, dust and vacuum. Except now it's a Reid day.
“I take it I'm fired.”
“Joey, are you even listening?”
Everything I own of significance, little as it is, is still at Huntzel Manor. Trisha's laptop is the most important item. I don't give a damn about whether charges will be filed. I only care about where I'm going next. The Boobie Hatch, for all its failings, is better than juvenile detention. I might be able to escape from the Boobie Hatch. Or sit tight and maybe even keep The Plan alive, even if it feels like a long shot at the moment.
Despite nearly killing us both on the way, Mrs. Petty manages to navigate to the Hatch. She marches me through the door and turns me over to Boobie custody. Two weeks ago, if I'd only known, I could have gone to Mrs. Petty, and Wayne would be history. Now the balance of power has reversed. After a brief confab about my failings as a human being, Wayne pushes me up the stairs. That's when I learn he intends to lock me in.
“I'll let you out in the morning. And I'll be driving you to and from school, so don't get any ideas about striking out on your own. We'll all be watching you with eagle eyes.”
I look around the small room. “What if I have to pee? Should I wet my pants?”
He ignores the jab, or is too caught up in the moment to notice. With his fat hand, he indicates a Folgers can on the desk. “That should do you till morning.”
“When I tell Mrs. Pettyâ”
“Tell her what? You stole from people who trusted you. I fought in the first Gulf War and have an honorable discharge.”
Anita once let slip that Wayne spent the war at the naval base in San Diego. His honorable discharge was really medical. Abdominal hernia, congenital. I don't mention this. He's right about Mrs. Petty anyway.
Advantage: Boobie.
