Hit and Run (18 page)

“But he's pretty sure that the car that hit her was stolen. He says either it was shipped out of town or it was cut up for parts, probably the very next day. He said one minute you have a brand-new Impala, the next minute all you have is a bunch of parts that get sold and a car that never gets found because even though the cops put out a description of it, the car thieves aren't going to come forward. But he knows guys, you know, from the auto squad.”

“Go to bed, Mike,” Billy said. He said it nicely. Later, when I was lying in bed, I thought I heard the front door open and then close again and a lock turn in the key. It was two in the morning. Where was Billy going?

I was glad I didn't have history the next day, because I don't think I could have faced Riel. Not after what he had said. Not after what I had said. I kept my head down and tried to at least look like I was doing my work. On my way home, when I got close to Mr. Scorza's store, I crossed the street so that he wouldn't see me and I wouldn't see him. I felt like I was hiding from everyone, like I had turned into the world's biggest coward.

When I got home, Billy was standing at the kitchen sink. For a guy who had told me to get some sleep, he didn't look like he'd even come close to taking his own advice.

“Hey, Billy,” I said. I prayed there was some peanut butter left and maybe a couple of slices of bread. I didn't even care how old they were. I was starving.

“I gotta talk to you, Mikey.”

“You gotta shave, Billy. Have you seen yourself lately?”

“I want you to talk to this guy Riel,” Billy said. “I want you to get him to back off, stop him asking any more questions. Tell him you decided you don't want to know. Tell him it's bringing up too many bad memories.”

What? Was he crazy?

“No way. Besides, I don't even want to talk to him right now.” I didn't want him to back off, either.

“Guys like him, Mikey, when they start asking questions, especially if they're asking cops, they can stir up a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble for whoever killed Mom,” I said.

“Maybe trouble for other people, too,” Billy said. His whole body was tense. One hand was clenched around the neck of a beer bottle. The other was picking at the label.

“What's the matter with you, Billy?”

“Jeez, Mike, why do you have to be so stubborn? You're just like Nancy. You get an idea in your head and you don't let it rest. Now look what you've gone and done.”

What? What had I gone and done?

“Don't you care what happened?” I asked. But the truth mostly was, no, he didn't. All Billy ever cared about was Billy. “She was my mother, and if I want to know what happened, I have a right.”

“What'd you have to go poking a stick into that cage for?” he said.

“You're drunk, Billy.” I decided right then to ignore him. Let him ramble on. Let him say whatever he wanted, I wasn't going to listen. All I wanted was to get past him, make a sandwich and get out of the kitchen.

Billy grabbed me. “I mean it. You got to make him stop.”

His hand bit into my forearm. Big mistake. I wasn't in the mood for this. And just because Billy was older, that didn't mean he was bigger or tougher. In fact, my dad must have been way taller than his because, minus the heels on his boots, the top of Billy's head only came to the top of my nose. Plus he had been drinking. Plus he sat around too much with his loser friends, so he
wasn't in great shape. I grabbed the thumb that was digging into my forearm and wrenched it back until Billy howled.

“You don't care what really happened to Mom, that's fine with me,” I said. It wasn't fine, though. It made me want to keep wrenching Billy's thumb until it snapped right off. “But
I
care. I care so much you'd practically have to kill me to make me stop. So butt out, Billy, okay?”

Billy's knees must have all of a sudden given way, because one minute he was standing and the next he plunked down into one of the kitchen chairs. I let go of him.

“Just stay out of my way,” I said.

“You don't know where this is going, Mikey.”

“Yeah? And you do?”

He looked down at the floor, or maybe at the toes of his boots.

“I saw the car,” he said.

I heard him say the words. I saw his mouth move, so I knew for a fact that they came out of his mouth. But I still didn't believe he had said it.

“I didn't know it was the one, though,” he said. He finally raised his head. He didn't look good. His face was kind of crumpled, like it was caving in on itself. His eyes were red—probably from the beer, I told myself, but maybe not. He looked a few centuries older than he really was.

“What do you mean, you saw it?” Was that really my voice? So quiet, so calm, like, hey, I had everything under
control, no problem. It didn't seem possible because inside I felt a white heat. It burned in my stomach, in my head, in my heart.

“I swear I didn't know it was the same car,” he said. “It wasn't the color they said, not that it would have made any difference. They didn't say anything about the color or the make until it was too late.”

He knew something. My Uncle Billy knew something about the car that had killed his sister—my mother.

“That guy pokes around anymore or gets guys from the auto squad to poke around anymore in that direction, he's gonna find out stuff that's going to put me in a spot, Mikey.”

The words formed in my brain. I could see them. Taste them. But it took forever before I could bring myself to spit them out.

“You were involved?”

Say no. Come on, Billy. Convince me. Say you had nothing to do with it.

Billy's head sagged. He stared at the crumb-speckled tabletop. Slowly he shook his head.

“Billy?”

His head came up. His eyes were watery. Tears?

“Did I have anything to do with what happened to Nancy? No,” he said. But I knew, I could feel it, there was something he wasn't saying. Something big.

“But?” I said it softly, like I cared that this was hard for him, when really I wanted to beat him over the head with the word.

His shoulders sagged. He was smaller and older than I had ever seen him.

“It's not cheap living in this city,” he said. “Some people got more money than they know what to do with, and some are just scraping by.”

I waited. The kitchen had grown very cold, the way the whole house had after Mom died.

“It was no big deal,” he said. “It wasn't like I was some kind of criminal mastermind or anything.”

I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach. A sick feeling, like at Vin's cousin's party.

“I just put in a few hours of overtime, that's all. A few lousy hours. A little muscle, that's all.”

“What do you mean, overtime?”

No answer.

“Jeez, Billy!”

“Sometimes, at night, someone would bring in a car and I'd work on it. You know.”

I shook my head.

“Strip it down,” he said.

“You know, for parts.”

“You mean, like a chop shop?”

“Jeez, no, nothing like that. Sometimes,
occasionally,
if I was working late, I'd find a car out back, and if I put the time in and busted it down, I could make some good money. Strictly cash.”

“You took apart stolen cars, is that what you're telling me, Billy?”

“Nobody ever said they were stolen,” he said. He was like a kid: I didn't know they were your Lego blocks
when I took them, I thought someone just left them lying there. “Mostly they were guys who just wanted a new car. They'd report their car stolen, then they'd arrange to deliver it to the garage and we'd take it apart for them. Help them make sure it would never be recovered. We'd split with them what we got for the parts. They'd collect from the insurance company and get a new car. Everyone was happy. No one got hurt.”

“We?”

“The guy I used to work for. He's gone now. Out of the country.”

I looked at my uncle and thought I had never seen a more pathetic human being in my life. I always knew Billy was no genius. If you'd pushed me, I would have said that he was flat-out lazy. Always looking for the easy way. Never putting himself out if there was someone else around to do the work. But this?

“Billy, are you telling me that you took apart the car that—” My throat was so dry it choked me. I couldn't make myself finish the sentence.

“When the cops came out with the information, they said green,” Billy said. “They said the car that killed Nancy was a dark green Impala. And they never said anything about stolen—” He stopped and looked at me. I think he realized he'd said the wrong word. He'd just admitted that he knew that at least some of the cars he was
taking apart
, as he put it, were stolen. “All I know is, this car was waiting out back, it was black, not green, and I took it apart.” He kept his eyes on the floor. “The
paint job was new. But I swear I didn't even think until later …” His voice trailed off.

“You know who probably left it there, don't you?” I said. What I was thinking was,
the guy who ran down my mother.

“I didn't see anyone,” Billy said. “I never saw anyone. I just did a job, that's all.”

“What about the robbery? Did you have anything to do with the robbery at Mr. Jhun's restaurant?” Even if he said no, I wasn't sure I was going to believe him. Mom had the second key. The place hadn't been forcibly broken into. Whoever had killed Mr. Jhun had probably let himself in with a key. That's what the police had said.

Billy looked me square in the face. “No,” he said. “I don't know anything about that. And I didn't have anything to do with Nancy getting killed, I swear it to you, Mikey. But here's the thing. If the cops start digging around or if you breathe a word of this to Riel, it's all gonna fall on me. It's not going to help them find out who killed Nancy. But it's gonna mean serious time for me, Mikey. They'll put me away for sure. And I didn't do anything.”

“Except destroy the evidence,” I said. “And make it impossible for them to find Mom's killer.”

“I swear I didn't know,” he said. “Jeez, Mike, you think I'd do anything to help my sister's killer get away with it?”

Did he ever listen to himself? I wondered.

“Isn't that what you're doing now?” I said.

“I'm the same as you, Mike. I want whoever killed Nancy to pay. But I don't know who did it. I don't know anything. All I know is that if they link me to that car, and if they look into what I was doing a couple of years ago, I'm in the biggest trouble of my life. I'll go to jail,” he said. More like he whined it. “Is that what you want?”

I stared at my uncle, the man I had been living with, who had supposedly been looking after me for the past four years. Stared at him and, for the first time, saw a big cowardly kid.

“How's it gonna help?” Billy said. “It's not going to change what happened to Nancy. You don't want me to go to prison, do you, Mikey? If I do, what'll happen to you? You want to be in foster care? Is that what you want?”

I stared at him a moment longer, then I went upstairs to my room, closed the door, and sat on my bed. I stayed there, not moving, while my room—and my world—faded from light to gray to black.

Billy wasn't home when I got up in the morning. I told myself I didn't care. I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to see him ever again.

I got dressed, went downstairs, and stared into the empty fridge for a few minutes. For once, though, I wasn't hungry. I wasn't anything, really. I don't think I slept. I kept thinking: all this time, Billy knew something. Billy had done something, and he had kept his mouth shut about it. Suddenly I couldn't stand to be in the house anymore. I couldn't stand the idea that I'd be standing there and Billy would walk in and I'd have to look at him.

I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door. My backpack. I looked at it. A sack of books and notes and school stuff that didn't mean anything. I threw it down and left the house.

I headed over to Jen's house and hung around out of
sight for a while, but I didn't see her. After that I walked up to Cosburn and across until I passed Woodbine. You could get into the park system there, and then you could walk and walk, all the way up to Sunnybrook Hospital if you wanted to. That's what I did. I walked and I thought.

Around ten or so, I remembered about Mrs. Jhun's funeral. I should have gone. She'd been a good friend of Mom's. She'd been a friend of mine, too. But it was too late. I was too far from my neighborhood. By the time I got there, the whole thing would be over.

I kept going. I walked so far north that I ran out of park, and still I kept walking.

I thought about going to the cops and telling them what Billy had told me. But then what? Billy was probably right. If Billy told them what he had told me—a big IF—they'd arrest him. If I told them, Billy would probably chicken out and deny it. What would happen then? The cops wouldn't just believe me, would they? They'd have to investigate. What could they possibly find out all these years later?