When he saw me, he put the ball between two of the cushions and stood. He was tall and rather thin, short black hair. He looked like a ballplayer rather than a wrestler, though I know he was a state champion at that sport, too. His eyes were the feature most people were probably first attracted to. They were steely and shockingly blue. He put out his hand.
“Detective Parachuk?”
“Yes,” I said. I took his hand and shook it. His grip was surprisingly weak. I hadn’t expected that. Maybe kids aren’t taught to give a firm handshake these days, although that seemed counter to his father’s nature.
“My father said you were coming. You had a few questions to ask me.”
He didn’t seem nervous as he flashed me a smile like his sister’s. She stood next to me and her brother looked at her with what could only be interpreted as disdain.
“Thanks, Sam,” Tommy said, severely.
She looked at me and I gave her a smile. “Thanks. It was nice meeting you.”
She smiled brightly once again and I was struck by how much brother and sister looked alike. “Daddy said he’d try and make it, but he was in the middle of a meeting.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, and I remembered how my conversation had ended with his father the day before.
Yeah.
She turned and waved to me, and then she looked at Tommy, smiled and left.
“Please sit down, sir,” he said as he took a corner of the leather couch. It creaked as he sat.
“Did your father want us to wait until he arrived?”
He brushed back his hair. “No, not really. I mean, he said he’d be here, but sometimes he gets delayed.”
“Is your mother here?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what help she’d be.”
I smiled at the idea that help was needed. I just knew it’d be better if there was an adult in the room.
“Would you call her in, Tommy?”
“Tom,” he said quickly. “I actually like to be called Tom.”
He stood again. He was wearing pajama bottoms for pants—a phenomenon I probably would never get used to—and a Persia High Baseball T-shirt printed in the school’s blue and gold. He had on a pair of slippers worn down on the heel. He went to the entrance and yelled for his mother. He waited a few moments and then disappeared from the room. I heard them in the hallway, talking, Tommy’s voice sounding like a frustrated teenager’s, his mother’s low and inaudible. Both of them came into the room. I walked to Mrs. Beck and extended my hand.
“I’m Detective Parachuk, Mrs. Beck. Your husband wanted to be here, but Tomm…Tom said he was delayed. I thought it would be better if one of his parents was in the room.”
She shook my hand as she said, “Yes, I don’t really know what this is about. Rich said something about a fight Tommy was in this summer. Seems to me it’s a little late to be concerned about something like that now…almost a year later.”
Both the mother and son sat down. She was an attractive woman. Dark hair, with a nice figure. An elegant face with a long, classic neck. She wore her hair back like her daughter. Her hands worked at each other as I interviewed her son. I don’t think they stopped once.
“I’m here primarily, Tom, because of an incident that happened last summer. A fight between you and a kid named Steve Brown. Did such an incident occur?”
“Yes, sir,” he said without hesitation.
I wondered if his father had drilled him about calling me sir. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t want to distract him from the issue.
“What happened, exactly?’ I pulled out my notebook from my jacket and took a pen from its binding.
“Well…” He took a deep breath and for the first time he seemed a bit nervous. He put his hands through his hair again. His mother went to take one of his hands and he brushed it away.
“Everyone was drinking beer, I guess. Too much beer.” He laughed nervously. “Anyway, I had too much beer and this kid, Steve, I noticed a few weeks before he was paying a lot of attention to Carly…Carly Rodenbaugh. We were dating at the time.”
“Were?” I said.
“Yeah…yes sir. We don’t really anymore, I guess.”
“Why’s that?”
He shrugged his shoulders and began to crack his knuckles. “I guess we just got tired of each other.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with what happened last summer?”
“Not really.”
“So…you got into a fight with Steve Brown because he was…what? talking with Carly and you didn’t like that?”
“That was part of it, but not all of it. He smokes a lot of weed and I thought he maybe was influencing Carly.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, she was smoking with him that night.” He looked at me and smiled. “I guess she can’t get in trouble for something she did in the past.”
“I’m not worried about that. I just want you to be honest.” I looked over at Mrs. Beck and she glanced at her son. “I checked with the hospital and I see he had to have plastic surgery on his nose. I guess you broke it pretty badly.”
“He didn’t press charges,” he said. “I mean, I must’ve apologized to him about a million times. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
His voice lowered for the last part. Contrition? “I was drunk.”
I looked at his mother as I asked the next question. “So I guess it would be safe to say you are a pretty jealous guy. Is that fair to say?”
She smiled at me, but chose to be quiet. I wondered if she’d seen evidence of his jealousy before this.
He shrugged his shoulder, again. “I guess you could say that. I really cared for Carly and I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to hang around with someone who was using drugs.”
“So Steve Brown was into stuff other than pot?”
He knitted his brow for a moment and then said, “I don’t know, sir, I guess you’d have to ask him that.”
“Are there rumors that he does?”
“I’ve heard some things, I guess. Nothing I could prove, but I didn’t want Carly hanging out with kids like that.” He looked at me and his eyes intensified. “I’ve learned since then you can’t make people do what
you
want them to do.”
Again, I watched his mother as I asked the next question.
“Did you know Truman Engroff?”
His mother jerked her head toward Tom and then toward me. She put her hand on her son’s arm. “I don’t want him to answer that question.”
“It’s a simple question, Mrs. Beck. I assume most everyone knows about Truman if they didn’t know him.”
She shook her head, and I could tell she’d been told not to allow this line of questioning to occur. This time Tommy put his hand on his mother’s arm. “It’s okay, Mom.”
He looked at me and nodded. “Yes, I knew Truman. I didn’t know him well. He was a grade behind me. But he grew up here like I did.”
I decided I’d get as many questions in before his mother put a stop to it.
“You knew that he and Carly Rodenbaugh were good friends.”
He laughed with a short bark. “EVERYONE knew they were friends. They were like sister and brother.”
“You say sister and brother because…what? They couldn’t be anything else. I mean, if they were so close, why not girlfriend and boyfriend?”
Tommy’s smile broadened. He hunkered down in his seat the way I’d seen so many kids do, with their shoulders collapsing into a kind of smugness.
“I mean, it would be hard for that to be, seeing what Truman was.” And then instantly he put his hands out, palms forward. “I liked Truman, sir. Everyone liked him…or at least respected him. The dude was super smart, but weird.”
“How weird?”
“Well, I mean, you just have to read the papers. He was gay. I guess everyone knew that, including Carly.”
“Did she talk to you about that? About him being gay?”
“No, she didn’t. I don’t know if anyone really knew until…until he died, at least I didn’t.”
“So if that’s the case, you’d probably have been a little jealous of their friendship.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m really not jealous, sir. What happened with Steve and me had to do with him and Carly smoking weed. I didn’t like that. She understood that after a while.” He looked at me to be sure I got the point. “As a matter of fact, we stayed together until this past Christmas, I think.”
“You’re not sure…”
“He doesn’t have to be sure, Nelson!”
We all turned to see Rich Beck standing in the entrance to the room. “You said you wanted to ask him about a fight.”
I stood and so did Tommy.
“I did,” I said.
“He did, Dad.”
Rich Beck put his hand out to silence his son. He glared at his wife and then worked on a smile for me.
“Come on, Nelson. You didn’t say anything about questions about the Engroff kid. I don’t want Tommy saying anything about that…especially considering what happened to my wife yesterday.”
“It just naturally led to that, Mr. Beck. As you can well imagine, I ask everyone about Truman Engroff.”
“I can appreciate that, Nelson, but I don’t want Tommy questioned about this. If you have questions to ask him, it’ll be in the presence of our lawyer.”
“I guess I’ve asked all I need to ask him anyway.” I looked again toward Tommy. “Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Tom. Tell you the truth, this all stemmed from Carly Rodenbaugh. Of course I interviewed her about Truman Engroff, and somehow that led to the fight you and Steve Brown had last summer.” I saw Tommy stiffen for a second and I wondered why. He quickly relaxed. “I was curious about that and so I went to see Steve Brown.”
“I’m sure this is all very interesting, Nelson, but we haven’t eaten. I’d invite you for a drink, but it’s getting late.” Beck looked at his watch and then at his wife.
“I just want you to know, Tom, that what happened with Steve Brown is pretty serious business. If he’d pressed charges, you’d be in some bad trouble.”
Tommy nodded seriously. Rich didn’t say anything, and his wife finally stood and walked toward me.
“I have to get things ready for dinner, Mr. Parachuk. I think you need to know that Tommy’s a good boy. What happened last summer has never happened before and I’m sure will never happen again.” She put her hand on her son’s shoulder, patted it and then walked past me and her husband.
I watched her leave and then I again looked at Tommy. “I could press the Browns to press some charges, but I won’t. I’m sure your mother’s right, Tom.”
“Thank you, sir. I didn’t ever want that to happen, and if it hadn’t been for the beer it wouldn’t have.” He looked at his father, who frowned toward him. Irony, I thought, as we stood not twenty feet from a well-stocked bar.
“Tommy has a future, we think, with baseball,” Rich Beck said, a sudden effusiveness eclipsing the anger of a minute before. “He won’t have time for any nonsense from here on out, no tomfoolery.”
He laughed at his own joke—one he’d used quite often judging from his son’s response. Beck took a few steps closer to Tommy and me, looked back at the doorway and then said, “All three of us know this fucking kid is going to the majors if he keeps on the track he’s on right now.”
He eyed me and went on. His son shuffled with embarrassment.
“You were quite a ballplayer in your own right, Nelson. You know what this game does for someone who plays it well. It defines who we are as a people in this country. Older than the Chevrolet or…” He seemed unable to think of another comparison. “Tommy here knows he carries a lot of burden because of his talent. He knows what happened last summer was just a freak thing.”
He looked at his son and put his meaty hand on his shoulder. Tommy nodded in agreement, but I could tell he wanted all of this to end. I did, too. I had a bad taste in my mouth and I reminded myself to see if Sam Beck was also an athlete. I had a feeling this little family felt a lot of pressure from the head of the household.
“I thank both of you for your time,” I said.
Rich Beck turned his attention toward me, putting his hand on my shoulder now.
“We’re all men here, Nelson. The kid had a little too much to drink and he got pissed because some kid, some freak nerd, was coming on to his girl. Tryin’ to get her to smoke some grass and then probably get her pants off. All you have to do is look at the Rodenbaugh girl and you know why Tommy here got pissed.” He lightly nudged me in the ribs. “Know what I mean?”
I ducked under and away from Rich Beck’s hand and looked over at Tommy.
“I’ll keep track of you in the papers, Tom. Every so often I drive out to watch a little of a game. You’re a hell of a player.”
Tommy smiled genuinely, I think, for the first time that night.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve seen you there a few times. I appreciate you comin’ out to support the team. We have a good chance this year with Matting and Gibson in the lineup.”
“I’ll let myself out, guys,” I said. “You take care, and thanks for letting me come over.”
“You bet!” Rich Beck said in a voice too loud for the occasion.
I walked to the entranceway and looked back. Rich Beck was making his way to the bar and Tommy was picking up a
Sports Illustrated
from the coffee table. I walked past the kitchen and Mrs. Rich was at the stove stirring something in a large pot. I thought to say thank you, but decided against it. She’d probably had enough for the evening and, I thought as I let myself out the door into the cool, spring evening, her night had only begun.