Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (15 page)

The truck swerved toward the shoulder of the road. I could feel the tires slide on wet leaves.

“Watch out, Carter…”

He took his hand off my leg and directed his attention back to the road.

“So how do they train the monkey to do that with the Life-Saver?”

I think if the CEO of the parent company of Fruities had heard that question, he would have shot Max Russo.

“They don’t have to train her,” I said. “She just does it. She trusts me.”

“Billy, you got a slick answer for everything.”

We reached A-1 Self-Storage. In the dirt driveway Carter leaned out his window and punched a code into a metal box. An electric motor whirred, and the big wire gate slowly rolled open to let us drive through. The whole place was in concrete and yellow brick surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence with barbed wire on top. It was like a military compound, or a prison, except that no guards stood at the gate. An old TV aerial stuck up from the roof. The gray concrete storage units ran in neat rows toward the woods, and behind one of the units I could see the top of an RV. This wasn’t a place where you could put out a mat that said HOME SWEET HOME, not unless you had a strange sense of humor.

I jumped down from the truck, with Amy following. Carter jumped out on his side.

“Okay,” he said. “Make a move on Pablo.”

Pablo stretched out in the dirt in front of a door with a sign that said OFFICE, looking up at me dreamily. Hardly a threatening look, but he was a big hairy mongrel, and I remembered how he’d leaped up on those powerful haunches to get at Iphigenia.

“You scared?” Carter snorted and swallowed it. “You weren’t scared when you knocked him on the head with that piano leg.”

I whirled. “I didn’t knock him on the head.”

I had raised my voice. Pablo rolled over on his back and slobber trickled from his jaws into his mouth and into the dust. He began waving those huge paws in the air. He had done that when Carter had threatened him with a karate chop, but Carter was his master, and I was a kid.

Carter kicked him savagely in the butt. Pablo slithered away like a giant brown snake. “Old Daisy could lick this wimp now with one paw tied behind her back.” He chuckled. “Come on in the house, Billy.”

I didn’t want to go, but he opened the door and prodded me into the office behind Amy. A woman in bluejeans and black beaded jacket sat there in front of a computer, scrolling through a data base that showed all the storage units, who rented them, what they paid. The woman was Asian, with straight black hair and smooth skin the color of honey, but I couldn’t tell what country she was from. Next to her on the desk was a soapstone buddha and above her head hung a picture of Jesus Christ. Amy had never mentioned that anyone else worked at A-1 Self-Storage, although now it seemed perfectly logical.

The woman glanced up briefly, and Carter frowned at her — keep the help in their place. He guided me up a concrete staircase that led to the apartment where the family lived, into a small living room with worn brown carpet, brown overstuffed chairs, convertible sofa (Amy’s bed), a Sanyo TV and a VCR. A few of Amy’s drawings brightened the wall and no doubt covered up cracks and old nail holes. I smelled mold. A closed door led to the room where Amy’s brothers slept.

Amy said, “Today is Billy’s birthday.”

Carter pumped my hand. “Twelve, right? Happy birthday, young fella.” He called downstairs: “Ginette! Get up here! We got any cake for this birthday boy?”

The Asian woman who had been at the computer, whom I’d thought was hired help, glided into the room. Amy had laughed a lot when I’d asked if Ginette was French, but that wasn’t a clue to the truth of it. If Amy’s hair had been red instead of jet black and if her skin hadn’t been so white, you’d have seen right away that they were mother and daughter.

“No cake. You want some cookies?”

“It’s okay, ma’am,” I said, “I had an apple and a banana after school.”

“This is Billy,” Carter said. “I told you about him.”

“Pleased to meet you, Billy.” Ginette put out her hand, which was cool to touch, and delicate. I kept thinking, this is the woman who stabbed Amy — I’m shaking the hand that held the knife. But it was such a small, fine hand that it didn’t seem possible.

I saw that one of her cheekbones was rounded and had a blue mark on it where Carter had hit her.

“You visit Amy in the hospital,” she said to me. “You the boy with the monkey. I saw you on television. I laugh out loud. You sit down, please.”

I sat down in the chair that she pointed to, and then, because I didn’t know what else to talk about, and because all I could think was,
You stabbed Amy
, I told her that I’d won Iphigenia playing backgammon.

“I know to play backgammon,” Ginette said. “Nuns taught me to play. I grow up with nuns in Vietnam.” She smiled at me, and I saw a flash of Amy in her smile.

“That’s enough,” Carter said, and jerked his head toward the staircase. “Come on, Billy, I’m gonna show you something. You go, I’ll catch up. Amy, stay here.”

He commanded her the way he commanded Pablo.

I didn’t know how to say no, or why I should say no, the same way I didn’t know how or why to say no when he cruised by in the truck and picked us up walking on Newtown Lane. Adults have that power over kids. We have to go along with what they tell us to do, unless we want to start a fight. And how does a kid fight with an adult? So I got up from my chair.

Downstairs in the office, I rubbed my hand on the soapstone buddha that sat on the counter. For luck. Carter took me by the elbow. “Sorry about my wacked-out wife.” I didn’t answer, and outside, in the damp air, he asked, “You ever shoot?”

“Shoot what?”

“A gun, for Christ’s sake.” He reached under his field jacket and pulled out a pistol, a black pistol with a dark blue shine, fat more than thin, and it looking more deadly than a movie pistol. This was the gun Amy had told me about.

“Ever shoot one of these? No? Your people don’t do that kind of thing. I’ll teach you. That’s your birthday present from me.” He took me by the arm, propelling, steering, and I saw that we were headed toward the padlocked gate that led to the forest.

“Why do you have a gun?” I asked, my voice rising.

Carter waved a hand at the buildings of the storage unit. “Place like this, there are valuable things in there. TV’s, stamp collections, antiques — stuff like that. So you need a guard dog, which I had, until you came along, and some serious other protection, like this handy .38-caliber Airweight. Don’t worry, we got a permit.” He waved the gun in the air, then pointed it at the padlock. “Pow!”

He moved a stone with his foot, stooped to pick up a key that had been hidden under it, and unlocked another, smaller, gate.

Free from his grasp for a moment, I took a step backward.

“Thanks, Carter, but I don’t want to learn to shoot. It’s not my kind of thing, you know?”

The gate had swung open and was creaking. A breeze gusted along the edge of the woods, and the last of the brown and yellow fallen leaves swirled at our legs.

“I thought you were a kid wanted to try things,” Carter said.

“Usually. But not this. Thanks.”

“You mean, not from me.”

“I didn’t say that. Can we go back now, please? I’m getting cold.”

“We got things to discuss.” He dropped one hand onto my shoulder, and laid the barrel of the pistol on my other shoulder. I looked down to the left. The barrel was pointing at the trees. But that was something my heart didn’t seem to realize — it began to throb like the engine of Carter’s truck. “Yeah, last I heard,” he said, “you volunteered to pay half the speeding fine, and I don’t recall saying no.” I felt a coldness come from him as if a refrigerator door had opened in my face. “So what’s the deal? The check’s in the mail?”

I took some quick breaths. “I’ll pay you, Carter. I apologize that it took so long.”

“Shut up, Billy. You’re lookin’ pale. Don’t freak, don’t get paranoid on me. I don’t want your money. I was jokin’. I want you to tell me the truth, because money is not the issue between us. I never saw what the issue was until this very afternoon. We’re friends, Billy. Do you know that?”

“Sure,” I said, realizing that it was smarter to agree than to debate it. He had a gun.

“So we can talk straight. You’re twelve. Long time ago for me, but I can remember what it was like. I know you beat your meat. First step down the long and winding road. What’s the next step? Find some girl who’ll let you give her a feel. Hot diggety dog. Then you work up your courage, you head for third base. Know what I’m talking about?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Don’t play dumb, Billy. You go for her snatch. You ever tried that?”

“Carter, come on.” I looked around me, trying to see a way out of there. The breeze had begun to blow harder, the trees were bare, and the branches shuddered in the wind.

“Probably not,” he said. “You don’t strike me as the lady-killer type. Probably all up there in your mind. That right?”

“If you say so, Carter.”

“Don’t give me that shit. Talk straight. Talk like a man. You ever get hold of a girl’s pussy?”

“No, I never did.”

“How about her boobs?”

“No.”

“Ever try? Like, in a movie theater? Got your coat over your lap so’s she can’t see your hard-on. Slip your arm around her shoulder, inch up on her — heart’s going pitter-patter-pitter-patter — one-eyed trouser snake’s leakin’ all over the place. Almost there. Then — shit! — the movie ends. Never quite made it, did we, snake?”

He waited for an answer. He wasn’t letting me off the hook.

“I never tried that,” I said.

“You backward or somethin’? You never been to a movie with a girl?”

“Amy and I went to a movie once.”

“And there you have it,” he said, raising his neck to crack the little bones back there. Then his head came back down and his hard polished-silver eyes landed on me. “That’s the issue, which I never figured out till I saw you and her walking down Newtown Lane, all cutesy and cosy, boy and girl. And I think to myself, that’s where she’s been all the time, that’s why she don’t come home from school right away like she used to. Good old Billy. And then I ask myself the big question:
‘What’s going on?’”

I tried to speak like a man. I said, “Nothing’s going on, Carter.”

“Never put your arm around her in the movie house and try to grab a little of what’s there?”

“No.”

“Never even kiss her?”

“Just once. This afternoon, on her cheek.”

“You know something? I believe you.” Carter tapped my shoulder bone with the barrel of the pistol, and it hurt. “You slither around sometimes, but you don’t lie. And I would know if something was going on. Believe me, I would
know
. Don’t look so scared. We’re friends, right? Long as you don’t fuck with me or mine.” He chuckled. “Let’s go shoot.”

He pulled me with him farther into the woods. We walked in there until we were at a place where I couldn’t see out in any direction. We were in a little bare glade, and I stood next to him while he took bullets from a pocket and stuffed them into the chamber of the pistol. They slid in smoothly, as if they were coated with oil. “What I like about this baby,” he said, “is that it don’t make a lot of noise. Not like the movies. Kind of
‘snap.’”

He shot at a birch tree about twenty yards away. The gun made small, dry noises, and some smoke curled out of the barrel. He never said what he was aiming at, but chips of white bark flew from the trunk of the tree. After five or six shots he knocked down a branch. He grinned, and reloaded from his pocket.

“Your turn, Billy.”

“I don’t want to do it.”

He looked disgusted. “Come on, you jerk, take the gun.”

He pulled my arm up, twisted my wrist so that my palm was up, and slapped the gun into it — I had to grasp it or it would have fallen. The handle was cold but I felt the heat of the barrel.

“Shoot it,” Carter commanded.

“No,” I said.

“Do what I tell you.”

“No,” I said again.

“You fucking little wimp.”

He took the gun from me, turned his back and headed for the pickup, along the narrow path on sodden leaves. I followed him. Over his shoulder, he said, “Get into the truck and I’ll drive you home.”

“My bike’s still at the middle school,” I said.

So he drove me to the middle school. We didn’t talk during that drive. The sky darkened to the color of dead ashes. On Newtown Lane, in front of the school, I started to get out of the truck, but before I could do it Carter placed a firm hand on my leg.

“I got one thing more to say to you.”

Of course it wasn’t just one thing.

“I said back there at the house that I believed you and you were kind of backward. But things could change. You’re a smartass city Jewboy, so you could figure you got me snowed and now you can do what you like with my daughter. Well, that is not the case. I’m an old Bonacker country boy and I got a nose. You touch her, you just touch her anywhere you shouldn’t, and I’ll find out. And I’ll come round.” With that, he pulled the gun from under his coat, where it had been out of sight all the time, and touched the end of the barrel to my lips. The shock went all the way down to my toes. The metal was cold now and I smelled cold lubricating oil. “And I’ll squeeze this trigger,” Carter said. “Splatter your brains all over the ground and Pablo will have them for his supper. You hear me?”

Amy had said he’d used those same words to Ginette. I hadn’t entirely believed her, it seemed so gross, but now I knew she’d told me the truth. He must like the sound of those words, I thought. Words, not deeds. That filled me with sudden blazing courage I didn’t know I had.

With the edge of my hand I knocked the barrel of the gun aside. Carter’s eyes widened. Voice a little shaky, I said, “You have no right to use that word.”

“What word?”

“Jewboy.”

“Hey, you’re not a Jew? You’re not a boy? Put them together, adds up to Jewboy, right?”

“And I don’t live in the city anymore.”

“Listen, you dumb kid —”

I said, “Get out of my life, asshole.” I jumped out of the truck and slammed the door as hard as I could. He yelled at me but I didn’t listen. I wasn’t even scared. Even though I’d called him an asshole I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me in the back on Newtown Lane.