Homicide Related (35 page)

“It's okay,” Dooley said.

He was thinking about what Detective Randall had said. Why hadn't his uncle shown any interest in Dooley all those years? Why had he let Dooley think that he didn't even know about him? Why did he only come around after Dooley had got himself into serious trouble? He had a few questions of his own, like: Why had he been paying Lorraine regularly, in cash? Did she have something on him? At first when Dooley had found out that his uncle wasn't really his uncle, he couldn't figure out why, in that case, he had taken responsibility for him, especially knowing what he knew now about how his uncle felt about Lorraine. Now he wondered if Lorraine had forced him into it:
Your turn, Gary.
He sure hoped that Randall was wrong.

“Your mother was very pretty,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess.” She had never had any trouble attracting men, that was for sure.

“You don't take after her, though, do you?”

Dooley shrugged. He'd never seen any resemblance between himself and Lorraine—any physical resemblance, that is. But then, he'd never looked.

“I have a brother,” Jeannie said, smiling. “He takes after my mother and her side of the family. But you're like me, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like your father.”

He stared at her. What was she talking about? She had never met his father—unless …

Her smile wavered. “I'm sorry,” she said, unsure of herself again. “I thought those pictures …”

“What pictures?”

“There are some pictures in here of a man who reminded me of you. I assumed he was your father.”

Dooley put down his sandwich and picked up the photograph album. He handed it to Jeannie.

“Which man?” he said.

Jeannie leafed through the pages until she came to a strip of four black-and-white pictures that had been taken in a photo booth some place, Dooley had no idea where—Lorraine and Dooley, just a tiny baby—no hair, no teeth; Dooley couldn't even believe it was really him—and a guy who looked like he might be in his early twenties with shaggy dark hair and piercing eyes.

“You look just like him,” Jeannie said.

Dooley stared at the picture, but he didn't see the resemblance.

“In the eyes,” Jeannie said. “And the mouth. And the cheekbones. Isn't that your father?”

Which put Dooley in the position of having to admit: “I don't know. My father”—the word stuck in his throat like a piece of bone—“she said he took off when I was just a baby. Who knows, maybe right after that picture was taken.”

“Your mother never told you who he was or showed you what he looked like?” Jeannie said, sounding like she couldn't believe it.

“She'd cry about him sometimes,” Dooley said. Usually when she was between men and had been drinking. Drinking made her weepy, right before it made her mean. “The way she talked about him, I thought maybe he was dead.”

“Didn't you ask her?” Jeannie said.

Dooley looked at her. He bet she had never met anyone like Lorraine.

“What for?” he said. “It wouldn't have changed anything.”

Upstairs in the bathroom, Dooley stared into the mirror. Jeannie was right. He didn't look anything like Lorraine. But he didn't look anything like his uncle, either. Not even remotely.

The guy in the photo album, though, that was another story. At least, according to Jeannie it was. Dooley held the picture up to his face and looked at it—at the eyes, the wide mouth with the full lips, the sharp, high cheekbones. Then he looked at himself. Boy, Jeannie was better at this than he was. He stared at the man in the picture until he was sure he could recognize him in a crowded room, but he didn't see himself in that face.

If Jeannie was right, then Randall was wrong—maybe about a lot of things. Okay, so his uncle had been giving Lorraine money, but maybe it wasn't for the reason Randall had insinuated. Maybe Lorraine was supposed to have used it to look after Dooley. But all her friends said she'd spent it. She'd partied with it, up until about six months ago, which, according to Gloria Thomas, was when she had decided to clean up her act.

Because of a man.

He picked up the self-help book that was sitting on the back of the toilet where he'd set it when he came into the bathroom. He opened it and inhaled Lorraine's now much fainter scent. He thumbed through it page by page until he found what he was looking for. He flipped open his cell phone and started to punch in the number she had written in pencil in a margin. He flipped the phone shut again after the first four digits. What was the point? What would it change?

Still, before he went to bed, he ripped a piece of paper out of one of his notebooks, scrawled the number down, and tucked it into his wallet.

Nineteen

T
here was a folded piece of paper sitting next to Dooley's coffee mug when Dooley came down to breakfast the next morning.

“A note for Mr. Rectal about your absence,” Jeannie said. He couldn't tell if she was making an honest mistake or poking fun. Either way, he didn't correct her.

“I'm working tonight, six to closing,” Dooley told her. “And I have some things I have to do after school, so I don't think I'll be home for supper.”

Jeannie just nodded. She didn't give him the third degree the way his uncle would have.

School was torture, as usual. Well, except for the look on Mr. Rektor's face when Dooley marched into the office and handed him the note Jeannie had given him. He stood there while Mr. Rektor opened it and read it. Dooley was pretty sure he wanted to say something about it, guessed he probably couldn't think of anything because, after he'd scanned it, he put it back into the envelope. Dooley turned for the door.

“Terrible thing about your mother,” Mr. Rektor said. “And about your uncle.”

Dooley didn't turn around to look at him. He could imagine any one of half a dozen expressions on Rektor's face, and every one of them would only make him want to punch him. He left the office without a word.

Dooley sat at a table alone in the back of the cafeteria, a bottle of juice and a slice of pizza in front of him. So far he hadn't touched either. He was thinking about Jeffie.

Jeffie had been watching TV and all of a sudden he'd perked up and told Teresa that his problems were over. He'd gone out right after that and had made a phone call at a pay phone. Then he'd come to the store and told Dooley that things hadn't gone according to plan—meaning, maybe, that he'd gambled and lost—but that he was coming into some big money.

From what? More gambling? A big bet? Maybe someone tipped him to something?

But he had sounded so sure. He'd looked and acted one hundred percent confident that he was going to have the money to pay Dooley what he owed.

And then he hadn't turned up.

Dooley thought about Jeffie outside the video store on Monday night, pumped, practically dancing, telling Dooley that with the money he was going to get, he would be able to go home. On a gamble? No, wait a minute. He said he'd seen someone. He'd seen a guy. No, not a guy.
That guy.
The one he had told Dooley about. The downtown guy. It had to be. He'd seen the guy, and the guy had been with someone. But who? Dooley had cut Jeffie off. He'd told him he didn't care; he didn't even want to know. All he wanted was his money. But Jeffie was jazzed, that was for sure. He was jazzed about a big payday and it had something to do with a guy he had seen and maybe, according to Teresa, something he had seen on TV.

One more thing.
He'd said, If I'd known, I would have taken a picture.

What would he have done with a picture?

A picture of what?

He thought about what Randall had said. He thought about Edward-you-can-call-me-Ed Ralston, who had been in charge of Dooley at the group home for a couple of months until Jeffie had taken care of him. He thought about the other guy Randall said had made a complaint against Jeffie and then had dropped it.

What had Jeffie seen?

What had he been onto?

A shadow fell across his table.

Warren.

“Are you okay?” he said.

Dooley looked up at Warren's thin face and thick glasses.

“It's just, you know …” Warren said. Dooley didn't know. He waited. “I heard some kids talking about your uncle,” Warren said. “And your mother.” Dooley didn't doubt that there were plenty of kids in his school—teachers, too—who had heard about the whole mess by now and who had talked about it among themselves. He had caught a lot of looks in the halls and the cafeteria, in classrooms, in the can. But apart from Rektor, no one had said anything to him. “You never mentioned them to me.”

“Sorry,” Dooley said.

“I just wanted to say that if there's anything I can do …”

Dooley stood up.

Warren recoiled and then, just as quickly, recovered.

“I'm sorry if I—” he began.

“It's okay, Warren,” Dooley said. “I appreciate your asking. I'm okay. I just have to make a call. But thanks, okay?”

Warren blinked behind his glasses.

“Okay,” he said.

Dooley went outside and walked down the sidewalk a ways. Teresa had told him that Jeffie had used a pay phone to make a call the day before he'd disappeared. He'd used it before, too, to make other calls. Dooley knew all of his uncle's numbers—home, his cell, his stores. There was no way Jeffie would remember any of those without looking them up. Or writing them down. He thought about the scraps of paper that had fallen out of Jeffie's pocket. He pulled out his phone and punched in Teresa's phone number. It took five rings before she answered, and then she sounded groggy.

“Did I wake you?” he said.

“Yeah. But it's okay.” She didn't sound right, like maybe she was on something.

“Teresa, did Jeffie have a special place where he kept phone numbers?”

“In his phone, I guess.”

“I mean the ones he wouldn't have kept in his phone.”