Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (9 page)

This is what I’m thinking when the
firefighter grabs my
wrist. And it’s what I’m thinking as we watch—about thirty
or forty of us, outside now, on the other side of the road—as water
is poured up into the third floor of Blaze’s building.

She rests her head on my chest. My arm
wraps around her shoulder
s. “They wanted you, Deck. I heard it.”

Of course they did. Only, it
isn’t
“they.”
It’s “he.”

Blast from the past...

“The paper’s laced,” I said.

“
But there’s a picture of Bart Simpson on
it,” Gina replied. At this stage, she was just a chick I knew from
school.

I shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I don’t make the
shit.”

“You think it’s safe?”

I shrugged again, because I didn’t really
know. “Well, it’s a drug. What do you want?”

She looked at me then, the trip on her
index finger—dangling ominously off it like a man with one leg off
a cliff and a heavy wind behind him.
A. Big L. Instant Zen.

LSD.

Not my thing. Never had been. But Gina had
been egging to do it for three weeks now. Asking me about
it, reading up on it. Talking
about a test they did in the sixties where scientists “reported
improved mental abilities for weeks after taking it” (she didn’t
comment on the article I found that “reported confirmed cases of
permanent psychological damage in some of the test’s
participants.”)

We were outside
The L
—a club that’s since closed down, and which made
no effort to hide the pun in its name with a huge yellow smiley
face next to the
L
of the club’s
sign. The yellow face had only three strands of hair, one of which
hung down in a curve, making a not-too-obvious (and not too
hidden)
S
on the face’s
left side, and a
D
(the “hole” of
the
D
being the smiley face’s eye) on
its right.

Hard House slammed through the club’s
doors and onto the street. Everything from Mohawks to glowing tank
tops and golden metallic blouses bopped and smiled around me. I’d
dropped two Mollys forty-five minutes earlier and I was already
feeling the rush. I had three speeds in my left pocket and another
two Adams for later in the night. In my back bluejeans pocket I had
a banky of the highest-grade Mary-Jane for firing up the hay with
later.

My mom was on the verge of
dying
. I tell you that
only for context, not for sympathy, because it doesn’t change what
I did—or what I
didn’t
do—and
what I let happen.

As more context, I’d started dropping
about a year before she passed. When things had gotten really bad.
When the money had run out. When she was suffering so hard that the
only merciful thought would have been one of letting her die
peacefully and on her own terms.

But that’s illegal in this country.
Because we believe in suffering right to the blood-coughing,
throat-scratching, defecating-in-the-pants
end
of a person’s life. Amen brother. Because it’s a
sin to let people die with dignity.
Can I get a halleluiah?

Well, this stuff was going through my mind
at the time. No
—
maelstroming
through it.

So I was looking around at all these
people, all sorts and ages—many of them couldn’t be more than
fourteen or fifteen (I mentioned the club’s since closed, right?)
On Molly, Hard House can sound like the works of god
himself.
Amen
halleluiah
. I was
bobbing my head, tapping my foot,
feeling
it. The goosebumps began, followed by the warmth
and smile. I ran my hand through my hair, damn near giving myself a
skin-gasm. Clouds of wispy smoke (in my mind) surrounded me. I
looked at my hand and it was starting to glow purple.

All was good with the world.
So
damn good. And I loved mom. And
pops was really a good guy. And this babe—
Gina
, was it?—she was cool, you know? And there she
was, right in front of me. Short and a little round (in a sexy way)
with eyes like waterfalls and hair the color of Batman’s
cape.

And I feel like Batman on this
shit, come to think of it. Hell yeah yipp
ee ki-yay.

I kissed her, hands on her cheeks
and...
wow
...it just
felt so damned
nice
and
good
and...YUMMY!

The touch-nerves on my fingertips were
suddenly raging flames of energetic fury. I could’ve kissed her all
night and felt wonderful and kind and friendly and
happy
.

But, you see, Gina wasn’t rolling. She
wasn’t high at all. Or, as I tend to look at it now, maybe she
wasn’t
low
yet: Because
all that euphoria you feel on the Love Drug is all bullshit, isn’t
it? Like the insane glee you feel when you’re facing the barrel of
a gun.
Yay.
Happy. I’m gonna die!

But that’s all just theory.

Point is, in her un-high state, she got
hot. Really hot. Horny hot. And she started reaching for parts
that, regardless of inebriated state, a man never loses touch
with.

S
o we fucked, in the backseat of her Hyundai.

And it was all...
nice and friendly and yummy dummy
wonderful beautiful. Yay
.

She never took the A that night. But, if I
have any logic about how things went that night (which I confess I
struggle with a little because of my state of chemical euphoria at
the time), she probably saw it like this:

He sourced me the A. And then, while we were
discussing how to take it, he kissed me. And then we fucked. So, he
must like me.

Can you blame her?

On her part, never having done anything
other than
Mow The Grass
with low-grade ditchweed, it’s pretty easy to grasp that
she likely would’ve had no clue about the “love” I was feeling for
the world and all its parts (including for the finger-sized roaches
the club was rumored to have) in the moment that I put my hands to
her cheeks and touched her tongue with mine.

But what she really thought, I will never
really know. No one will. Because no one can talk to her now. And I
never bothered to ask her about it in the three months that we
“dated” after that.

Before she lost her mind.

Back in the present...

“You’re Declan?”

I look up from my reverie. “Uhm, yeah,
officer.” The dude staring at me is huge, shaved hair, probably
about seven foot. Think: Denzel Washington on steroids playing
Robocop.

“Some people are saying they heard your name
being called out before the brick and the cocktail were thrown
in.”

“Cocktail?”

“
Molotov. Seems whoever did this threw a
brick in first—to smash the window—then fired a Molotov in. Good
aim. You play football?”

“I do.”

“Know any quarterbacks who could’ve done
this?”

“
Not a quarterback. Not even a football
player. But I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”

Blaze’s arm tightens around my
waist.

The weight of it all, lands
snugly on my head. Not too hard
to crush me, just enough for me to know that I’ll be walking around
a little heavier over the next few days. Or weeks.

Or until Dino Moretti is caught.

I can’t help thinking about my
dad’s
comments about
Karma—just before the hollow point nine millimeter bullet
mushroomed apart in his head.

To Blaze, the officer says, “Ma’am, we’ve
been trying to get a hold of your landlord. He doesn’t seem to be
answering his phone. Any idea how we could reach
him
?”

“
You won’t get him today.” The cop stares
at her blankly. “It’s the Sabbath? I think he turns all his phones
off today.”

“I see.”

Blaze tells me she’s gonna text this Mr.
Bernstein so that he’s not worried about her or any of the other
tenants when he turns his phone back on.

Away from Blaze, I tell the
cop the deal with Gina Moretti
and her brother. And that I recognized the accent and voice after
the window smash. But, when he pushes me, I can’t say I’m a hundred
percent certain of it.

“We ran,” I say. “My thoughts were on getting
us out of there. For all I know, it might’ve been someone else. It
just seems unlikely.”

“
Understood. Look, the building’s gonna be
closed at least for the day while the fire department inspects it
as to safety. The fire luckily didn’t spread beyond apartment Three
C. And we can count our stars that it didn’t seem to do any serious
damage. But no one’s gonna be allowed to sleep in there tonight.
You let me know where you stay and I’ll make sure there’s a patrol
car around your block tonight. Meanwhile, we’ll have someone bring
this Moretti guy in for questioning. You understand that, without
an actual eye-witness account—or other ways of having him placed at
the scene—we might have our hands tied here.”

“I do, sir.”

He look
s up at the red-brick building, then at the folks on the
street. “This used to be a pretty busy building. Most have moved
out since the big realty boys moved in. It’s practically abandoned
now. I think we were lucky today. Really lucky. Three C is empty,
so is most of the third floor. But I’d feel luckier if we caught
the sonofabitch who did this. Gimme your address, son. I’ll have
that patrol unit go by a few times tonight. I assume that’s
where...your girlfriend will be tonight?”

“
Uhm,
yessir
.
I think so.”

“
Good, ’cause there ain’t too many squad
cars to go around in this precinct.”

I give him my address.

Then I go to Blaze. And I decide to tell
her about my past...

We go to the
Swallow Café
because it’s nearby. And I can’t help thinking
about that punk Xavier as we sit here.
This is where he dragged her onto the
ground and almost hit her
.

And I also think of
her ex, Tolek—the punk and his posse
at
Slambam
on
Wednesday.

Dino Moretti is
Tolek’s doppelganger in shape and hair color, but
not in features: This Tolek dude had a nose that looked like it had
been broken at least once. Dino has a sharp Italian nose.
Which is in
desperate need of being broken
, I think.

Dino was a popular guy at school, so I take
it that means he’s probably good looking to the girls.

I think of other bozos
: Blaze’s werewolf “associates” who still
haven’t called her to let her know whether or not the gig is off,
but who make my chest buzz with rage whenever I think of them
talking to her about “friendship.”

Mad-Ass-Hat
, the ex-DJ who somehow considers her the
end of his world.

Catalina, my dad’s murderess, rotting in a
jail cell. And? What if she somehow gets out of that? Pleads
insanity or something? And comes after me again...

All these thoughts crowd around me,
smothering me, making me choke as I try imagine the possibility of
a life of ultimate joy and happiness with Blaze. Life’s telling me
I can’t have it. It’s like that game we played against Midwood in
high school. When everything had been lost, I started swinging. And
Trev and Skate swung with me.
Declan started it!
Skate had said. He was right. I did. Because when
the chips are down, I start punching...at anything which gets in my
way.

I’ll tell Blaze about Gina. Because she’s
been pulled into it. But after that, I’m gonna start swinging.

And swinging
hard
.

The story...

Gina Moretti also went to the same high
school as me. We were in the same year but she was
a little younger than me. So,
that night at
The L
, I was
seventeen. She was on the cusp of her seventeenth birthday.
Physically, she was as developed as a voluptuous nineteen year
old.

Emotionally, well, who can really tell.

I’d gotten a name in the school for being the
dude into the hard stuff. While most of the kids who did drugs were
simply whacking weed, I was one of the first to Molly it up.

I Mollied it up for the first time after it
became clear Ma wasn’t gonna make it. Again, context.

I also played football. With Trev. And Skate.
And we were unstoppable.

Gina liked me, I guess.

Now, let me just explain
that
, because it needs
explaining: I wasn’t your typical jock. I drank. I played. I got
stoned. Girls? Had ’em when they came around. Which, I suppose, was
often by some people’s standards (Skate’s). And not so often by
others’ (Trev’s). Point is, whereas Gina might’ve been a few years
underdeveloped in the emotional side, my emotional side was as
developed as a cardboard box. I think the first time I felt
anything about anyone was when Ma passed.