The Odds (6 page)

It was going to get bad, he knew that, especially two days from now or three. The weaning had given him a preview of the main feature:
goose bumps, dilated pupils, watery eyes, runny nose, yawning, loss of appetite, tremors, panic, chills, nausea, muscle cramps, insomnia, stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, shaking, chills or profuse sweating, irritability, jitteriness
.

Like the flu. Maybe worse.

Think of good people, good places, he told himself. His friend Tracy who’d left Pitt because she was homesick. The lady detective who told him to get himself together.

   COLLEEN WALKED INTO THE pizza shop. The guy working the counter looked up, gave a shy flash of a smile, then went back to waiting on an older woman who was having some trouble making up her mind about toppings. He displayed peppers and loose sausage to the old lady with the patience of a loving grandson.

“Take a seat. I’ll bring it over when it’s ready,” he told the old woman. He turned to Colleen. “What’ll it be?”

“Same as she’s having, sausage, peppers.”

“Size?”

“Small.”

She watched him slide two shells toward him and begin to spoon on sauce. Then slivers of cheese wiggled through his fingers onto the dough.

What could she learn about the place? It looked clean. The green peppers were very green; the cheese did not look at all dried out. How could she get the guy interested in her?

“How long have you had this shop?” she began.

He tossed the green peppers on. “Oh, it’s not mine. I just run it. The shop’s been here couple of years, I think.”

“Different managers.”

He smiled, nodded.

Colleen went to the soda case and got herself a Diet Coke. The guy had the pizzas in the oven and was adjusting one of the oven settings. She watched him as well as she could. He was strong-looking, but his hands moved delicately, carefully. Pianist, guitar player …

She sat and waited, trying to find her moment.

And … let’s face it, she thought, the man behind the counter was extraordinarily good-looking—almost exotic. Olive skin, dark hair, blue eyes. He had a jaw that slanted forward ever so slightly, but somehow it was just right. Broken nose? Slightly off. But the whole thing together was … distinctive. And the eyes. Not just blue. An unusual, alarming blue. It almost hurt to look at them.

He delivered the two pizzas at the same time, and the old woman left.

Positioning herself so that she could seem to be simply looking out the window, she opened the box, wiggled a wedge of pizza out, and began eating. It was delicious. Certainly not a bad assignment so far.

She took a second bite of pizza. “This is fan
tas
tic pizza.”

“Thanks. I do okay.” He put the radio on and seemed about to say something else to her when suddenly the door to the back room opened and a man came out just past the frame. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty, dark, muscular, with short hair. “You have a minute?”

The two men went into the back room, and the older one closed the door.

Colleen looked about, but there was nothing to see. A minute later, the handsome younger one came back into the shop.

She took a drink of her Coke, pointed to the radio. “You like jazz, huh?”

“I don’t know much about it. I just like music. In the shop I generally flip back and forth between jazz and country.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Either 90.5 or 107.9 on the FM dial. Even though they call it 108. Right?”

“Right.” Something clicked in him, a gear shifted.

She tossed her Coke can into the garbage. “You ever go to hear jazz on the South Side?”

“I see the ads all the time, but I haven’t got there. I keep meaning to.”

“You should. I’m going tonight. With some friends. Blues Café. You’d be welcome to meet up with us if you’d like.”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “Maybe I will.”

“Good. We’re just a bunch of friends. They’re fun.” Colleen had eaten two pieces of pizza and thought she could manage a third. “This place has a nice atmosphere. Did you always do restaurant work?”

“No. I tended bar for a while. That’s as close as I got.”

“Where was that?”

“Kansas City. Couple of years.” He came around from behind the counter. “Mind if I sit?”

“Not at all. Kansas City, huh? You were born there?”

He paused, then said, “Yes.”

He was lying—interesting. She would have sworn he sounded like a local boy, someone from Western Pennsylvania. “I’m from nearby,” she said. “Never went too far. I was guessing you were from around here, too.”

He shook his head. “You work in the neighborhood?” he asked.

“Kind of. Headquarters is a couple of blocks away on Western. I’m on a job today in the hood. Canvassing. I’m police.” She’d said it as casually as possible, but she knew it might frighten him. In fact, he leaned over and started cleaning up stray pieces of paper and napkins.

“I’m trying to get an ID on some kid, but I badly needed to take a break,” she continued. She dug around in her bag.

He paused in his movement, crumpled the napkins in one hand.

“Here. This is off my assignment. Arch was my last street coming this way. But you can tell me if you recognize him at all.”

She showed the picture of BZ, watching the man’s face as he looked.

He angled the picture close, far. “No. I can’t say he seems familiar. What happened?”

“Drug overdose. We need to find his family.” She reported simply, “The kid may end up in potter’s field.”

“Crummy.”

“It is. Very. Surely somebody somewhere cared about him.”

He shook his head.

“By the way, my name is Colleen.” She dug out her badge and let him read it. It provided her last name, Greer. “I never got your name,” she said lightly. “I’ll tell my gang you might join us.”

“Nick.” He hesitated. “Banks.”

The truth? She couldn’t tell. She gave him her best smile. “Hi, Nick. You got yourself a regular customer. The pizza’s wonderful.”

“Thank you.”

“So maybe tonight at the Blues Café?”

“I’m going to try.”

Nick Banks, Nick Banks. He reminded her of someone. She was rapping her brain with it as she walked down the street. The way he moved, the whimsical smile, the nervousness. Damage, damage, and all that in a beautiful package. She saw Potocki waiting, standing next to the Monte Carlo.

“How’d you do?” he asked.

“I think I got myself a date for tonight.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You see anything going on?”

“Nothing we can get our hands on. Only one other player of interest, the guy in the back room, surely this K we heard about. I’d put money on it.”

“Who’s your date with?”

“The front-room guy. Here. Eat. It’s cold. But good.”

She remembered who Nick Banks reminded her of. It came into focus bright and clear as she heard again the rhythm of speech and thought, the natural self-deprecation. Her brother. Sweet, messed up.

“I want to show you something,” Potocki said when they got back into the car. He drove a few blocks in the opposite direction from Headquarters and parked in front of a row of fairly new town houses, clean and modest.

“I’m going to be living here,” he told Colleen.

She thought it looked small from the outside. He had a wife and kid. Judy and Scott.

“What I’m saying is—Judy and I are separating.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I had no idea. You’ve been keeping it very hidden.”

“I didn’t want to bother people with it. She took Scott to Florida so I can move this weekend. A couple of the lighter things myself tomorrow. The rest on Monday. You’re my partner. I thought you should know.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll help you move if you want.”

“That’s very decent of you. Hard for me to say no.”

   FRIDAY AFTER SCHOOL, Meg went seven blocks over to the neighborhood McDonald’s to put in an application. It wasn’t very busy, but none of the workers seemed to have time to look up. When she finally got the attention of a boy not much older than she was, he went into the back for almost five minutes before he came out with an application form. “You sit here, fill it out,” he said.

After wiping away a smear of ketchup from the booth table, she put down the application form and began writing. It was only the year of her birth she put down falsely. Making herself three years older struck her as almost true, as if you could age by saying it. She used her correct name, address, and Social Security number.

A big girl, big as Patrice, squeezed into the seat across from her. Was this the boss? The name badge of the young manager said LEAH CRANE.

“What are my chances?” she asked Leah.

“We might need part-time starting in summer. Can’t say for sure.”

“How many hours—if you have something?”

“We start small, like eight, ten a week. We don’t have anything now, but we might.”

Some food money, then, but not until later in the summer. It wasn’t enough.

She stopped at Subway and put in an application. They told her they had a waiting list of college students wanting jobs. She asked at the 7-Eleven; a man told her she was too late, he’d just hired somebody. Wendy’s had nothing. She ran back home because she hated to leave the others unsupervised for too long. She found a note from Laurie:
Went to ask about babysitting. Took S. with me
.

She changed clothes to her oldest sweats, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at her father’s picture. “What should I do?” she asked.

He seemed to say, smiling all the while,
Stick together
.

“About food.”

Her father kept smiling.

She heard somebody at the door, then the two voices of her sisters. “Whazzup?” Laurie asked her, standing in the bedroom doorway.

Meg nodded toward the picture. “He was nice, wasn’t he?”

“Except for dying.”

“Where’s Joel?”

“Oh, who knows. Hopefully getting some car washes.”

   JOEL CUT OVER TO THE ALLEY behind California Avenue, then the other smaller alley, looked left, right, darted through the high grass that obscured most of the first floor of the abandoned house, and got himself to the spot behind the propped piece of plywood that was wedged in the door of the building. He popped the plywood out, listened. Couldn’t tell if Mac and Zero were in there.

There were flies all around the back door and his shoes had picked up mud from the overgrown yard. The rain last night woke him up, so the swampy wetness of everything around him made sense; he didn’t question it, even remembered there were periods like this in late spring other years. “Spongy earth,” people called it. He climbed in, fitted the plank back in, and listened. Somebody was whispering upstairs. A fly dive-bombed his neck. He swatted it away, but it came back, again and again.

His jagged breath signaled him to be afraid of the place, every time. Lots of wall and floor were torn away. Most of the skeleton of the place was still there, the muscle and flesh gone. The stairs were rotting, but Mac and Zero climbed them anyway because they used the upstairs— that’s the part they liked—to mess around with the dope. There was an intact floor in much of the second story, and what had
been
on the walls was partly there, too—window, fireplace, closet. Joel was fascinated by the place. There was a back wall of what had once been a closet, one of those shallow ones like the one in his own room—a couple of hooks and not enough depth for a hanger even if you put a rod in. You could tell how things had been, even with the place ruined and torn up.

He topped the steps and there they were. They were busy, shooting up.

Mac said, “Get out. Go away.”

“Leave him alone,” Zero said.

“Wait, then,” Mac said.

Joel had never seen them do it. He knew it was dangerous. He thought maybe it was a good idea he was there. He could help if something went wrong. Did they carry Adrenalin? They were supposed to. But they weren’t very smart.

Now they were just sitting slack-jawed, eyes drifting almost shut. Zero laughed a little and let himself lie down, kind of like a doll, falling to the side from a propped-up position.

“Don’t talk,” Zero said.

Joel waited. The dope made them happy. He’d heard it didn’t last, so what was the use?

Finally they started sitting up, looking at him. “You want?” Mac said. His smile was nasty, condescending.

Joel shook his head. “I don’t have money. I need money.” They started coughing and coming to attention.

“We’re meeting somebody,” Zero said. Then he turned to Mac and shrugged. “We were planning to ask—”

Mac reached over and swatted Zero, “Fucking shut up, shut up.”

Zero said, “He was just asking, he don’t mean anything. He’s Curious George.”

Mac said, “Shut it.”

Joel thrust his hands in his pockets and walked around in a circle.

Mac muttered, “Kid like him wouldn’t know fuck about this, couldn’t handle himself.”

Zero had once been friends with Joel, and so he couldn’t seem to help himself, still talking. “H, you know what that is?”

Joel recited as if in school, “Called
boy
, called
horse
, called
H.
It has a couple of names.”

“See that,” Zero laughed.

“Geek,” Mac scoffed. “Who calls it that shit?”

Joel tried to humble himself. “I’ll do your reports. I’ll do your homework.”

Mac coughed so hard, Joel thought he was going to die. “I have to take a piss now,” Mac said. “Let him try it if he has ten bucks.”

Zero looked less certain when Mac went downstairs. “Want to come back tomorrow? I could get him to change his mind. He gets mean sometimes. Come back tomorrow.”

“How dangerous is it? Selling it on the street?”

“Not bad. We never sold it to strangers yet, just some of the kids at school, but we never had any trouble buying.”

“Who sells it to you?”

“Some guy. Carl.”

Joel felt a nausea come up in him. He couldn’t do it. He kept hearing his father’s voice telling him no.