Renegade (2013) (8 page)

ARMS CROSSED,
back against the wall, Pike sat on a hard bench bolted to the cinder-block wall. The cops and frequent visitors called the large community cell “genpop,” short for “general population.” The strong stench of unwashed bodies, vomit, and urine stained the air, but the smells were customary things to Pike. He’d spent plenty of days in places that were a lot worse than the jail he was currently in.

Two young black men still occasionally glared at Pike from their seats on the floor. Last night had been Friday, and the jail usually spiked in volume on weekend nights. More police were looking for collars in the streets, and more people were out in those streets.

One of the young guys had an eye that was nearly swollen shut. Pike had given him that when he and his buddy had tried to take Pike’s space on the bench. The fight had been brief, over in seconds, and the jail’s trustee had blown the incident off without writing it up.

As a result of the fight, the other black men in the cell gave Pike the stink eye too. He didn’t take it personally. Color was one of the first divisive things in lockup. Race made it easy to figure out who “us” and “them” were.

Weakness was another way. A man who didn’t fight for his own space was a victim waiting to happen several times over. In the orphanage, Pike had learned never to be a victim. Back then he’d
packed batteries and bars of soap into tube socks to create makeshift blackjacks. That education had come at the hands of other kids who’d taken what little he’d had. He learned to fight, to look out for himself, and he’d never lost anything else except to sneak thieves who stole his stuff without revealing themselves.

Thieves were the worst because most of the time nobody knew who they were. Once their identity was found out, though, being a thief in a group home was the worst experience ever.

Things had been better after Pike had gotten to know Petey. Both of them were fighters and schemers. They’d used their fists, and they’d used their cunning. And they’d both read a lot of books. Pike favored histories because seeing how other people, other civilizations, handled adversity gave him insights into the person he wanted to be and how he could get there.

Petey had liked caper novels, books about heisters and boosters. He’d wanted to live outside the fringes when he grew up, be a hard-core criminal.

Pike had just wanted to survive. Still, there was something about them—about the way they thought and the way they handled themselves—that left them connected. Petey had been the first to show that desire.

When Pike was eleven, when the orphanage had almost given up on finding him a foster home that would stick, he had gotten crossways with five older boys who had formed a gang inside the group home. Two of them had taken a new kid’s stuff. The kid had just lost his mom to an overdose and his dad to prison, and nobody in either parent’s family wanted to take him. He was just another reject from the real world. He’d still cried himself to sleep most nights.

Later that day, Pike had cornered the two guys and told them to give the kid’s stuff back. They’d refused. Pike beat them both down to the ground, then took the stuff back to the kid. It wasn’t much. Just a
book his mom had read to him sometimes and a ball cap he’d gotten from when his dad had taken him to a baseball game. The pack of Life Savers one of the administrators had given him was long gone, but there was no helping that.

The kid was grateful and tried to hang out with Pike sometimes. That hadn’t worked, though. Pike was a loner, and the kid got farmed out to a foster home a couple days later.

After that, the three other guys who belonged to the same gang as the two Pike had beat up returned from their short-lived forays into foster homes. They brought swag back with them, things they’d stolen from the foster families—pocket change and a few dollars. They found out what Pike had done, and they came after him.

At the time, with five on one, Pike figured the guys were going to kill him. He’d been going down, and then Petey had come out of nowhere, yelling like some ancient Viking warrior.

Together, Pike and Petey had proved to be more than the gang could handle. The home administrators ended up pulling them off the five guys because Pike and Petey wanted to make sure those guys stayed beaten down and wouldn’t try that again.

The home administrators had split up the gang anyway, and no way would those guys ever feel brave enough to come after Pike on their own. Pike had felt certain that would be the last he’d see of Petey, but somebody somewhere had decided to leave the boys together.

And that was how they’d finished up their tour through the orphanage: together. They’d shared comics, a few books, and chased after the same girls during the social activities the orphanage set up in an effort to integrate them into the straight world. That had been what they called it: the straight world. Petey and Pike hadn’t cared for the straight world. There were too many rules and expectations, and they both already knew those were bad things.

Pike stretched his legs and smiled a little at the memories. Those had been good times. As good as they got in the orphanage, anyway. Getting to know Petey had changed Pike’s life. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out, just the way he had back in the orphanage at night after lights-out. Sitting there on that bench in genpop, he felt more relaxed than he had in weeks.

After breakfast—a cold biscuit sandwich made with powdered eggs that stank and had an off taste—Pike got sprung. That surprised him because he’d figured with it being Friday night when he got popped, he’d be in jail for the weekend. Instead, shortly after nine o’clock, the trustee came for him and let him out.

The trustee was a young black guy who looked clean and neat but had eyes that said they’d seen too much. “Got your clothes in the changing room. Drop the jumpsuit in the laundry hamper, then go out the other door. There’s a detective waiting for you.”

“Who?”

The trustee shook his head. “I don’t know. They just told me to give you the message.”

“Thanks.” Pike turned to go.

“Hey, Marine.”

Surprised, Pike turned back to look at the young guy.

“I saw your file. I’m Marine Reserve too. I just got activated. You?”

Pike shook his head.

“You probably will be soon. Things are heating up in Afghanistan again. The tangos are on the warpath with a vengeance. You don’t want to sit this one out, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” With the way he was feeling and how things were going, Pike needed a war.

“Keep it together, man. Sounds like you got picked up on a bogus
beef. I hear nobody’s filing any charges. You protected that woman. Ain’t nobody gonna cry foul over that. Guy you busted up is shipping back to prison on Monday. Way I hear it, that couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.”

Pike nodded and reached out to shake the young man’s hand. “Good luck, Marine.”

“You too.” The young man’s grip was sure and strong.

Dressed in yesterday’s grease-stained clothes and wanting a shower and maybe a more substantive breakfast, Pike followed the paint line on the floor that would take him out of the jail. When he stopped at the property room to claim his personal effects, Detective Tom Horner stood there waiting on him.

The detective had on a suit and looked freshly shaved, his cheeks gleaming. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup, and the strong smell of coffee wafted to Pike’s nose.

“Mr. Morgan.”

“Detective Horner.” Pike stepped to the property clerk’s window.

“I thought maybe we’d have a word.”

“Go ahead, but I’m not going to be here long.”

Horner scowled, but he waved to the property clerk. “Get squared away here first.”

Behind the bars, a young black woman with gold highlights in her hair and long blue nails looked at Pike, then at the computer monitor to one side. “Pike Morgan?”

Pike nodded and stood there as she reached for a manila envelope with his name written on it. She dumped the contents onto the counter in front of her, checked his driver’s license, then took out the inventory list and checked the items. There wasn’t much. Pike traveled light.

After he’d signed the inventory sheet, Pike turned and headed down the hallway, still following the painted line to the outside world. Horner fell into step beside him.

“No charges were filed against you.”

“Good to know.”

“If you hadn’t hurt that man so badly last night, the detectives probably wouldn’t have brought you in.”

“They were just doing their jobs. I got no complaint. As far as hurting that guy, he came at me with a knife. Things could have gone a whole different way.” Except that would have been even worse for Hector, and Pike knew it. During the night he’d worried about Hector, hoping the boy was doing all right in spite of everything that had happened.

“I know that. I also know that you were careful not to kill anybody at that crack house.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“I got a phone call through the chief’s office. I don’t know who he talked to, but somebody wants me to give you a pass on this.”

Pike didn’t say anything.

“Nothing to say?”

“No.”

“Who are you, Pike? Really?”

Pike looked at the man then. “Nobody you would want to know, Detective. Me and you, we ride separate sides of the road.” He put his hand against the door and pushed through into the bright heat of the day. Taking his Oakleys, he slipped them on and kept walking into the parking lot.

“I came out here this morning to let you know I’m dropping the investigation into that crack house. Because I decided to, not because of that phone call. You want to know what changed my mind?”

Pike shrugged.

“The guys watching you yesterday said you were helping that kid with his math.”

That stopped Pike in his tracks. He spun and faced the detective. “Let’s make sure we have something straight. That kid stays out of whatever business you and I have.”

Horner held his ground, his face serious. “I’ve got kids, Pike. I’ve helped them with their homework. These days I help them with decisions they make. They don’t always listen, but I’m there when they need me. Something like that means a lot.”

Pike nodded, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I’m letting off the investigation into the crack house, but I’m going to step up the investigation into the people who put it into business. I’ll make sure they get the message that the neighborhood there is off-limits.”

The announcement made Pike feel strangely uneasy. The whole week was off-kilter, and he didn’t like it.
Roll with the flow, bro.
Pike knew that was what Petey would have told him, and then he would have made fun of Pike for being weirded out by what was obviously just a run of good luck.

“That would be good. Some decent people in that neighborhood.”

Horner looked at him. “I know. I want to help keep it that way. And if you’ll let me, I’ll give you a ride back to wherever you want to go.”

“I’ll make my own way.” Before Horner could respond, Pike turned and walked away.

Since it was Saturday and a training weekend for the local Little League, Monty was off somewhere with his son and the team. The garage was locked up and it looked like everything there was fine.