Saving Room for Dessert (38 page)

“How old would your boy be now, huh? You hear about a seven-year-old boy maybe bein’ mistreated, your nose gets wide open.
C’mon, Rayf, this kid’s a pro. You wanna check somethin’ out? Go inside. C’mon, Nowicki’s gonna make you detective sergeant,
go on in, look around, tell me what you see.”

“And look for what exactly?”

“I’m not gonna tell you, you’re the one wants to be a detective. Just go on in, let your intelligence be your guide. Go on,
I’ll watch him.”

“Don’t listen to him, man, he’s just like everybody else, nobody gives a shit.”

“Shut up, kid. Okay, I’m goin’ in,” Rayford said, and after Reseta took charge of the boy Rayford went in the same door the
boy had come out on the side of the house.

He went in and turned on the light to the cellar. He went down the steps and found the floor covered with at least six inches
of putrid water with opened, empty cans floating everywhere and many others visible just below the water’s surface: pink salmon,
sardines, tuna, peaches, pears, applesauce, baked beans, chocolate pudding, cola—the boy had been eating and drinking his
way through the Scavellis’ pantry and throwing the empties down the steps where their residue was mixing with the backed-up
sewer water.

Rayford didn’t see anything else that caught his eye, so he went back up the steps, turned out the light, and went into the
cramped, messy kitchen. All the cupboard doors were open, and there weren’t too many cans still left on the shelves. What
immediately caught Rayford’s eye was the heaps of mail and newspapers scattered across the small dining table near the refrigerator
and on one chair and on the floor underneath the table. The boy had apparently been amusing himself by going through the Scavellis’
mail every day and reading their daily paper.

Well you want to be a detective, Rayford thought, you better find something here. Reseta sounds too damn sure of himself.
What’s he think I’m gonna see that’ll make me know the kid’s lying?

Rayford fingered through the stacks of envelopes and papers. Among all the utility bills and advertising circulars, he found
Social Security checks for both the Scavellis. The delivery dates on them showed they’d each been in the house at least a
week. If the kid was the pro Reseta insisted he was why hadn’t he tried to sell them to somebody old enough to cash them?
Surely with that much time on his hands the kid would’ve thought of that. Maybe he didn’t trust anyone old enough to try cashing
them. Or maybe nobody he’d approached had offered him a satisfactory way to share the money. Nah, this isn’t what Reseta wants
me to find.

Well what then? Rayford kept pushing the papers around, first the bills, then the advertising circulars, then the newspapers.
It was the newspapers that finally attracted and held his gaze. There was something about them, but he wasn’t sure what. Then
it became so obvious he laughed out loud. The ones on the table were all the same section of the paper—not sports, not world,
national, or state news, not food, and not entertainment. The only news that interested this kid was the section devoted to
“local” news. At the bottom of that stack was the front-page story of Nick Scavelli’s assault on Canoza and Mary Rose Scavelli’s
death. And each succeeding paper in the pile was open and folded to the follow-up story the next day. The kid had picked this
house because he knew from the daily paper nobody was coming back here to live, and he could stay as long as the canned food
held out. Now how did Reseta know that? What the hell did he see that I didn’t?

He turned off the lights and went back outside.

“Okay, James. So how’d you know, huh?”

“Look at the sign.”

“What, the For Sale sign?”

“Yeah the For Sale sign, look at it.”

“I did. That’s what made me stop. I know there’s somethin’ wrong with it—aw man. I don’t believe it.”

“See what I mean? Kid’s a pro. Every word’s a lie, and then he busts your balls on top of it.”

“Hey, I didn’t put that sign up there, I don’t know nothin’ about that sign.”

“Yeah, right. Gimme him, James, go on home, get some sleep.”

“I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t know nothin’ about that sign—”

“Shut up and get in the back here! Had me goin’ with your bullcrap about starvin’ kids. Can’t believe I didn’t recognize that
number.”

“You gonna tell this?” Reseta said, trying not to laugh.

“You tell this I’m goin’ tell your dream.”

“Oh man, you have to tell—one of us has to tell this! It’s too good not to tell. I promise I won’t tell that you didn’t recognize
the number, okay? But we have to tell, man, it’s too good—tell you what, let me go grab up the sign—”

“Aw no, James, nothin’ doin’, it’s my collar, it’s my sign, I’m takin’ the sign, that’s evidence, that’s probable cause, man—”

“How could that be probable cause if you didn’t recognize the number?”

“The sign itself was enough to make me stop, I didn’t have to recognize the number, I knew the situation here—”

“Ohhhh, you knew the situation, I see. That’s why you’re gonna make detective sergeant. You recognize the situation, so you
didn’t have to recognize the number for the courthouse, I get it.”

“Awright, James, have your fun, go on and laugh all you want, man, but hand it over, it’s my evidence, c’mon.”

Reseta handed the sign over. “I’m givin’ you twenty-four hours, Rayf. If this story’s not all over City Hall this time tomorrow
night, I’m tellin’, man.”

After he’d restrained the boy’s legs, Rayford put the sign in the front seat on top of his gear bag.

“Know what, James? You can tell the whole thing far as I’m concerned. ’Cause there wasn’t any reason for me to recognize that
number. Anybody I need to call in the courthouse, I know their number there. I don’t b’lieve I’ve called that switchboard
number more’n twice in six years, man, so go ’head and tell it all, I ain’t scared to look a fool. This ain’t goin’ touch
me at all, man, go on and tell it, shit.”

“Aw now see? You gonna be like that, Rayf, I’m not gonna have any fun at all.”

“Hey, how long you guys gonna keep yakkin’, huh? I needa take a piss, let’s go if we’re goin’.”

“Shut up, you little Irish prick,” Reseta said, “before I whack you in the shins.”

“And you talk about my baggage,” Rayford said.

“Yeah, but the difference is, I understand my baggage. You didn’t even know you were carryin’ any till I explained it to you.”

“Talk trash on me all you want, James,” Rayford said, laughing hard, “I will not be touched. You can talk me a shit sombrero,
man, that will not be me wearin’ it—wait, wait, hold him a second.”

“Why?”

Rayford got a couple of green plastic garbage bags out of his gear bag and spread them across and over the front of the backseat.

“Okay, kid, you need to pee, go right ahead but now you won’t funk up my vehicle.”

“You think I’m gonna piss my pants?”

“Wouldn’t put it past you. Put the courthouse number on that sign, wanna play everybody for a fool, be just like you to try
to funk up my vehicle. Now shut up and get in. Watch your head. And swing your legs out.”

Rayford attached the nylon restraining strap to the boy’s legs, then shut the door on the other end, got behind the wheel,
started the engine, reported in to base where he was headed and why. Then he waved to Reseta and pulled away from the Scavellis’
house, heading south toward the juvey center.

“ ’Bout time,” his prisoner said.

“Shut up, kid,” Rayford said, glaring at him in the mirror. “Put the courthouse phone number on that sign, think you a real
wise guy—” ,

“I didn’t put that number there.”

“You didn’t put the sign up either, did ya? And you weren’t livin’ in that house, were ya? Or eatin’ all that food, or throwin’
all those cans down the cellar steps either.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, right, you don’t know anything. Well here’s what I know, kid. You did at least one thing right today. You served as
a bad example for a police officer. Me. William Milton Rayford. Patrolman. Soon to be detective sergeant. And I hope somebody
has sense enough to make you clean up that house.”

“I’m not cleanin’ it up, I didn’t dirty it up.”

When Rayford stopped at the light at the intersection of Main and Broad, he looked at the kid in the mirror and thought, my
beautiful little boy is dead and your lyin’ ass is alive. Just one more thing God got to answer for.

“What’re you waitin’ for, there’s nobody comin’! Go through it, I gotta piss I told ya!”

“Everything you say is a lie, kid, why should I believe you got to pee?”

“Oh you think you’re real fuckin’ smart, don’tcha? Fuckin’ nigger you.”

“Smart is relative, kid. Everybody’s smart about somethin’, everybody’s ignorant about somethin’. The lesson for you to think
on tonight is you’re the one in the backseat. Maybe you oughta start askin’ yourself how many times you wanna ride back there.”

The light changed and Rayford drove on, thinking, if that’s the lesson for him tonight, what’s the lesson for me? Got to learn
how to not let liars like him touch me with his lies. Got to get a whole lot smarter about my baggage. And I damn sure got
to memorize the number of the courthouse or I’ll never be able to shake this. Only chance I had was to tell it first. And
that’s gone, ’cause soon as James get back, I know he’s goin’ tell Stramsky. Got-damn … goin’ live with this for the next
twenty years.…

And why’s the PO still delivering mail to that address? And why’s the paper still being delivered? Okay, so if the kid was
taking the mail out of the box every day, I can understand why the mailman wouldn’t get wise, but the paper? Don’t the people
there read their own news? Guess not. Somethin’ else for me to learn.…

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