The Dope Thief (11 page)

Ray knew how Ho felt about family. He remembered Ho telling him about his parents taking him out of Vietnam right after the war, when he was barely a year old, his mother and father carrying him in their arms in a leaky boat across the China Sea. His father had been a colonel in the army, and they were on a boat with about fifty people who wanted him dead. The army and navy dissolved, and deserters were cruising around in stolen patrol boats and one of them attacked the boat and machine- gunned everyone. Ho’s parents hid with him among the dead. They drifted around the ocean for days with no water until a Taiwanese trawler picked them up.

Ray tried to picture the ferocity of that kind of love, and he thought about his father and mother and about how maybe family could be one of those things that just ends. Maybe it was all six kinds of bullshit, and you just made a choice about what illusion to believe.

RAY ASKED IF
Ho had any idea who the guys were, running a dope lab in a farm house in Bucks County. Ho shook his head.

“I have two guys I ask about that shit. It’s not an exact science, I just ask them what you ask me, if you go to a certain cor-ner on a certain street, does anyone have a problem with that? They tell me no, or yes, and if it happens I down some of the money I take off you to them. Usually, they’re happy to have less competition.” Ray described what he had seen of the guy and the car, the New En gland accent. Ho nodded and said he’d quietly ask around.

Ray put his hand up. “For Christ’s sake don’t let this get back to you. Maybe it was all talk, but this guy sounded crazy. All I need is enough information to get to this guy before he can get to me and Manny.”

“You need anything? Guns, ammunition?”

“Guns I got. My old man used to say you didn’t need more guns than you got hands, and I got more than that.”

Ho looked thoughtful for a minute, then held a finger in the air. He went to a closet with a steel door and pulled a ring of keys out of his pockets. After a second he found the right one and snapped open the door, stepped inside, and was gone for a minute. When he came out he had what looked like two dark blue sleeveless sweaters, each wrapped in plastic. He handed them to Ray, and he felt how heavy they were. Bulletproof vests.

“Yikes. I don’t know, man. If it comes to this . . .”

“If you’re not going to run, then you’re going to find him or he’s going to find you. What else could it come to?”

RAY WENT OUT
to the 4Runner and put the vests in the back and covered them with a gray blanket. Manny was smoking and keeping his eyes on the street.

“Ho will pull the money together in a few days. If he moves it first there’s more for us than if he has to front it.”

“Is that Kevlar vests?” Ray nodded, and Manny sighed. “Great. Well, at least we know Ho’s on our side. That’s something.”

“He’s going to ask around, see if he can find anything out about these guys.”

“Where to now?”

“Let’s swing by and see Theresa and keep trying to get ahold of Danny, or someone who knows him.”

Manny started up the car, and they moved down the street. Manny looked at Ray and then back at the street.

Ray watched him. “What?”

“He had a black eye.”

“Who?”

“Danny. He had a black eye when I saw him. It just came into my head. I didn’t think of it before.”

Ray looked away, thinking. “So maybe . . .”

“Maybe he had a beef with the guys he put us onto. Maybe he thought why not make a few bucks putting me onto them ’cause he was in some kind of scrape with them. They ripped him off and threw him a beating or something. Or they just pushed him around ’cause he’s kind of a punk, Danny.”

Ray put his hands over his eyes, suddenly tired. “Maybe. Or maybe he just fell down ’cause he’s a stone junkie and a thoroughgoing dipshit.”

“Maybe.” Manny laughed and shook his head. “You know, I’m

starting to have more respect for the police. This is some Sherlock Holmes shit.”

THERESA WAS SITTING
in the living room talking on the phone when Ray came in carrying a plastic bag under his arm. Manny was sitting in the backseat of the 4Runner, trying on the vest and watching the street.

“How long will that take?” she was saying, making notes on a yellow pad. She had a cigarette going and had the phone book open and papers spread out on the coffee table. When she noticed him come in, she waved and made a motion with her hand, opening and closing like a mouth flapping. “And how much will that cost?” She made more notes and shook her head. After another minute of listening she hung up the phone.

“What gives, Ma? Looks like big business.”

“The fucking government and fucking lawyers.” She picked up her cigarette and squinted at him through the smoke. “I’m about ready to unscrew somebody’s head.”

“What is it? You got tax problems?” She made a small motion with her head, like she didn’t want to talk about it. “You need more money, Ma? You just gotta ask.”

“Well, yeah, I’m going to need more money, but it’s not for me.”

His face darkened. “I can see where this is going, and I won’t fucking have it.” He stood up.

“Raymond, hon.” He stood at the stairs with his back to her.

“Theresa, there’s nothing I don’t owe you. For you, what ever you need, you know you got it. For that prick, I got nothing. He can die right where he is.”

She said, “He told me you went to see him.” Ray nodded and went into the kitchen, rummaged around in the fridge. “Then you know,” she called from the living room. “You know he’s got just a couple good months left.” She got up and moved into the kitchen and stood over him. He took out a beer and sat down at the table, and she sat across from him. He looked at the bottle, taking a dollop of foam off the mouth of the bottle with his tongue.

She spoke quietly, with no force in her voice. It was tougher to take than if she had been screaming. “The first time you got locked up, who was there for you?”

“You.”

“Me. And the second time, when you went to Lima, and the time after that when you went to the penitentiary. I never asked nothing from you and I never will. Not for myself.”

Ray took a long pull on the beer and then played with the label, peeling a corner up and plastering it back down. The dog sighed under the table. Ray put his hand over his face, talked through his splayed fingers. “You know, for a long time I just figured he killed her, my mother. One day she was gone, and he said she ran off, but I just figured he got so juiced and crazy he split her skull and dumped her in a ditch. Then that postcard came, and at least I knew she was alive somewhere.”

“He loved your mother, and he loved you. He still does.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But what the fuck good did it ever do any of us? Even you?”

“It’s not about what people do for you or to you. This is what I think: You just never give up. That’s what family means. He’s your family and I’m your family, and you’re ours. And that’s that.” Theresa went to the cabinet and got out a glass. She took the bottle from Ray and poured the beer into it. “I’m not stupid, Ray. You got a duffel bag full of money and no job. You and that dopehead Manny are stealing or dealing drugs or something’”

“Ma’”

She held up a hand. “Don’t even start.” She sat across from him at the table and picked up her lighter. “Just grit your teeth and give it up.”

Ray blew out a long breath and held his hands against his temples. It was like every cell of his brain was firing at once. Too many wants and fears were crowding each other in his head, and he couldn’t sort them out or figure which were the important ones. He couldn’t pick anything new up without dropping something. He felt like he had run a hundred miles in the last few days and he hadn’t gotten anywhere, had no idea what direction to move. He had the feeling again that he wanted to cry but that if he did he would lose control of himself completely. His eyes burned.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal.” He combed his fingers through his mustache and made calculations in his head. “I’ll finance the great escape if you go down the shore for a few days, on me.” Her eyes narrowed, and she chewed her lip thoughtfully. He held up his hands. “Don’t blow a head pipe trying to figure my angle. Just do what I say and we all get what we want. Though from what Bart said when I seen him inside, I don’t know that he wants what you want here.”

“Okay, okay, but I got calls in to the lawyer and the DOC. I’m at the shore they won’t be able to get me.”

Ray opened the plastic bag and pulled out a throwaway cell phone. He grabbed a pair of scissors off the counter and cut the package open. He booted up the phone and waited for a signal, pulling a pen and a pad of Post- its from a caddy near the wall phone. “I got you covered.” He watched the readout and scribbled down some numbers, then handed her the phone and the Post- it. “For the next few days this is your phone number. Call everybody back and give them this number. Keep it with you all the time, and I’ll check in with you every day or so. After you talk to the lawyer and whoever, pack a bag and I’ll take you down to the limo.”

“You’re in some kind of trouble, Raymond. Don’t think after all these years I can’t read you like a comic book, you little pissant.”

He dialed his own cell phone number, and the phone in his pocket buzzed. “Nah, I’m trying to stay out of trouble, and I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, too. So do what I say for once in your life. I’m taking you out of here in half an hour. So do what you have to do.”

“I’m an old lady, Raymond, it takes me a while to’”

He held up his hands. “Ma. Don’t talk, pack.”

“What about Shermie?”

Christ, the fucking dog. “I’ll get him to that kennel up on County Line.”

While Theresa got her things together and kept a running com plaint going about being rushed out of her own goddamn house, Ray went back into his bedroom and pulled the duffel out from un der the bed. He had to assume at some point they’d be here, and he didn’t want to leave anything for them to find. The bag was heavy, so he hefted it in two hands and lugged it out to the Toyota and set it on the open hatchback. He took out money in short stacks and put two in his pockets, handed two to Manny, and held two aside for Theresa. Down the street, two kids crept around their yard with water pistols, angling for position from behind bushes and skinny trees and then popping out to squirt each other, shrieking. He went back into his room and stood on the bed, pushing aside a ceiling tile and bringing down a tape- wrapped square of bills and throwing it on the bed and then reaching up for a short- barreled police- issue shotgun and a box of shells. He wrapped the money and the gun in his bedspread and carried it to the car.

He kept hearing a voice in his head telling him to leave it all, the money and the guns and the whole thing, and just get in the car and drive away. Was it Marletta’s voice? Maybe it was, trying to propel him away from the terrible things he had done and the terrible things he might do now. Was he really trying to get to some kind of safety or just so far down this road he couldn’t see any other place to go? He had been thinking so much he’d like to talk to her again, to ask what he should do. To explain he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, not really. He’d just fucked up so many times that every move seemed wrong, every way he could go seemed to lead down into a hole.

Manny was dialing the cell again, and he snapped his fingers to get Ray’s attention. Ray looked up, and Manny mouthed
Danny
and handed the phone to Ray.

“Hello?” The voice sounded whiny, young. Something else, agitated.

“Danny?”

“Who is this?” Fear. That was the something else he heard. There was a tremor in Danny’s voice, and Ray heard him breathing hard.

“Danny, it’s Ray. Manny and Ray.”

“You fucking guys, what did you do?”

“We did what you told us to do, Danny.”

“No, no way. I never told you to kill nobody. You fucking guys.” Whining, like a kid, Ray thought. Jesus, and this junkie dipshit knew who they were.

“Danny, don’t be an idiot. We’re on a cell phone.”

“You think that fucking matters now? You fucking guys, honest to Christ.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s going on? They know me, that’s what’s going on. You got to get me money and I mean right fucking now today, got me?”

“Danny, what did you get us into?”

“What did I get
you
into? Are you high? Manny never told me nothing about killing nobody.”

“What do you mean, they know you?”

“These guys from New Hampshire. They stayed at my fucking house, they know where I live.”

“Jesus Christ, Danny, why would you put us on to something that could get back to you?”

“I need money. I got bills and shit. I got a dependency problem and I owe people and I had no idea you two fuckups would get somebody killed.”

“Danny, they don’t care about that, which you should please stop saying on the fucking phone. They want their money back.”

“I need my money. You come here and gimme my money so I can get gone.”

“Why did they for Christ’s sake stay at your house?”

“My cousin, Ronnie, he knows these guys from being inside up there.”