Vanishing Act (15 page)

He was still coming.

I didn't budge. I didn't even flinch. Six years ago I would have run for cover. But not now. The kid was just a punk. After some of the guys I've handled, he didn't faze me at all. I continued talking.

“You're going to get hurt,” I told him.

Tommy grunted and took a swing at me with his right hand. He put his weight into it, but he was too slow. I had time to move out of the way. He hit the door frame, knuckles first. I heard a thunk.

He turned white and grabbed his hand.

“I think I broke it,” he gasped, doubling over in pain.

I
hung my jacket on one of the pegs in George's closet and shut the door. It was nine-thirty at night, and given the last couple of days, I should have been home in bed, but George had called me at the store around seven and insisted I come over. “I have a surprise for you,” he'd told me.

“It better be good,” I said, thinking of our last conversation.

“It'll make up for the other night,” he'd promised.

How could I have said no?

“Where's your dear nephew?” I inquired, stifling a yawn. The house smelled of spaghetti sauce and garlic bread. I wondered if George had any left.

“Gone for the evening.” George grinned. “That's my surprise. Quiet, isn't it?”

“Very.” The TV was off. So was Raymond's boom box.

“Are you sure you didn't tie the kid up in his room and duct-tape his mouth shut?”

“Now, that's a tempting thought.” George bent down and scratched Zsa Zsa's rump. She leaned against him and let out little woofs of pleasure. The dog was shameless. “Alas, no. He's at a Junior Crunch playoff game.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You reneged and let him out of the house to go to a hockey game? What did he do to earn time off for good behavior? Scrub your bathroom floor with a toothbrush?”

“Don't get smart. He's with a teacher I know.”

“That was nice of him.”

George straightened up. “Don thinks he and Raymond can connect.” He made the quote sign with his fingers around the word
connect,
leaving no doubt about what he thought of the sentiment.

“What gives him that idea?”

“Because he was raised in the suburbs and doesn't know any better.”

“I'm sure Raymond will teach him. It will probably be an educational evening all around.” I got down to the important question. “When will this teacher friend of yours bring him back?”

George's grin grew wider. “Not for a while.”

“A while, a while?”

George nodded.

“Works for me.” At this point I would have taken a five-minute quickie—not, of course, that I would ever have said that to George. I wouldn't want his ego to get even larger than it is.

 

 

The wind was rattling the glass in the storm door as I walked toward the hall closet. The wooden floor was cold under my feet. A draft eddied around my ankles. Zsa Zsa looked up from George's sofa, woofed a hello, and went back to sleep again. She looked elegant with her blond curly fur framed against the leather, although I was sure George wouldn't think so. The wind shook the windowpanes and prowled around the house's corners, looking for a way in. I repressed a shiver as I reached for my jacket and started looking through my pockets. Maybe it was the middle of March, but it sounded like February outside. According to the Weather Channel, it was going to be twenty degrees with a windchill factor of three tonight. I hurried back up the stairs, wishing I were wearing something besides George's shirt.

George opened one eye as I came in the room. “Where'd you go?” he asked, his voice heavy with the sleep I'd disturbed.

“To get this.” I handed him the restraining order against me that had been taken out by Tommy's father. I'd been carrying it around in my jacket pocket ever since I'd been served earlier that day.

He turned over on his back. “What is it?” he asked, holding up the paper so he could read it by the bathroom light.

“You'll see.” I pointed toward the ceiling. “You want me to turn on the overhead?”

George shuddered. “God, no,” he said, and kept on reading. “Too bright. Nice,” he commented when he was done.

“Not to mention fast,” I observed, getting back under the beckoning warmth of the covers.

George stifled a yawn. “Less than twenty-four hours. That guy definitely lit a fire under someone's ass.”

“And I didn't even do anything.”

“If I'm reading right, it says here his son broke two knuckles on his right hand.”

“It's not my fault if he was trying to punch me and missed.”

George grunted. “MacVaney obviously didn't see things the same way you did.”

“That man would sign anything someone put in front of him. Okay, I admit I may have upset the kid a little, but that's it.” I turned on my side and supported my head with my hand. “It just goes to show what high-priced legal talent and contacts can do. I couldn't have gotten something like this rammed through.”

“One thing I'll say about you,” George began to say.

“That I'm good in bed?”

“No. I was going to say that you certainly have a flair for making enemies.”

“Well, my grandma always said ...”

“Let me guess. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right,” George finished for me. “Do me a favor. If you're going to go back and talk to Tommy again let me know, so I can have some bail money set aside.”

“You don't think they'd release me on my own recognizance?”

“Not with these people involved.”

“Maybe,” I mused, “I should go talk to Tommy's father instead. He seems to be the man calling the shots.”

George chuckled dryly and handed the restraining order back to me. “Good luck,” he told me after I'd put it on the nightstand.

“Why not? What could he do to me?”

“That's not the issue. The issue is why bother? If he knew anything, and I doubt he does—what kid confides in his father?—why would he talk to you anyway?”

I shrugged. “You never know.”

“In this case, I do.” The planes of George's face composed themselves into a serious expression. “Robin, don't annoy this guy. You're like a mosquito to him.”

“Mosquitoes draw blood.”

“They also get squashed.”

“Not if they're fast.”

“There's always Raid,” George pointed out. “You can't run from that.”

“I can mutate.”

“Puhleeze.”

“All right. But I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something seriously wrong here.”

“With the kid or the father?”

“Take your pick.”

“I disagree.” George made the kind of soft popping sounds with his mouth that he did when he was interested in something.

“Okay,” I said after turning everything over in my mind for a minute. “I'll grant you the kid going off was in the normal range. I come in; I make some sexual insinuations about his missing girlfriend.”

“And him,” George reminded me.

“Right. I could see where he wouldn't take it well.” I stretched and tugged the blanket up. “I concede I shouldn't have pushed so hard, but until I did, I couldn't get anything out of old Tommy-boy.”

“Well, you did get a reaction.”

“True.” The wind keening outside interrupted my thoughts. “God, I wish it were spring.”

“It will be soon.”

“I don't want soon. I want now.”

“You know that's your besetting sin. Impatience.”

Personally, I thought anger and arrogance were, but I wasn't going to argue the subject.

“Do you think Tommy knew about Melissa?” George asked after a couple of seconds had gone by.

“Definitely. Why should Beth lie?”

“Because if he did know, it would give him a motive for killing Melissa.”

“I've been thinking about that, but it seems a little excessive.”

George turned toward me. “Never underestimate male vanity. It's a powerful force. Maybe Melissa said something like ‘You think you're so good.' And laughed in his face. Told him that all the time she'd been pretending and had really been getting it off with Beth. Don't forget. Women kill men in the kitchen, but men kill women in the bedroom.”

“I'm trembling already.” I fluffed my pillow up. George's sheets were Egyptian cotton. Mine were from J.C. Penney. On sale. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. “You just wouldn't think that kind of thing would be such a big deal these days,” I reflected.

“No matter what the media says, it still is to some people,” George said quietly.

“How do you mean?”

“My aunt kicked one of her sons out of her house when she found out he was gay. Her pastor told her it was the right thing to do.”

“What happened to him?”

George shrugged. “I don't know. He disappeared.”

“I wonder if Mrs. Hayes knew?”

“You could always ask her.”

I considered the suggestion for a moment. I couldn't imagine doing it. “Only if I absolutely have to,” I concluded. “Even then, I'd think about it.”

George yawned.

“What about Tommy's father?” I said.

“You mean, did he know about Melissa?”

“I was thinking about the restraining order.”

“He already told his son not to talk to anyone else. This is just one step up.”

“Having it issued makes the kid look guilty.”

“I'm sure Michael West doesn't see it that way. Look at it from his perspective. If you had a kid, would you want someone coming around and asking him all sorts of sensitive stuff at any time of the day or night? I certainly wouldn't.”

“I've talked to the kid only twice,” I protested.

“But you're the third person that we know of. Don't forget, he's already been spoken to by the police and campus security and most likely more than once. Then you come along and get his son all hot and bothered. Another problem to deal with. Maybe he can't get his son to listen to him—which must put a hair up his ass—but he sure as hell can get you to back off. Most likely he's got a lawyer on retainer. So it doesn't cost him anything to get a restraining order written up.”

“Having a father like that would certainly give you a sense of invulnerability,” I mused. “I can do whatever. Daddy will take care of it.”

“Or it could make you feel like you don't have any balls.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, remembering the tentative expression on Tommy's face when he'd come out to greet me the first time.

George reached over and put his arm around me. I snuggled into him. We lay that way for a few minutes, listening to the sighing of the wind. He kissed the tips of my fingers and then he kissed me. I kissed him back.

He wrapped his arms around me. I moved closer.

A car stopped in front of the house.

Zsa Zsa began barking in the high-pitched yappy way small dogs do.

“Jesus, your dog is a pain in the ass,” George grumbled in my ear. “She barks at everything.”

That wasn't true, but I wasn't going to argue the issue now.

Instead, I yelled at her to shut up and we went back to doing what we had been doing before.

I heard the front door opening.

The word “yo” floated upstairs.

George glanced at the clock and cursed. I followed the arc of his look. It was almost eleven. Somehow we'd both lost track of time.

Then we heard footsteps running up the stairs.

“I didn't know it was so late,” George muttered.

I think we both realized at the same time that the bedroom door was opened. What had we been thinking, I wondered as I pulled the sheet up under my chin. George leaped out of bed and raced across the room. He tripped over his shoes, stumbled then righted himself, and continued on.

The stumble cost him no more than a second or two, but that second or two was enough.

George had his hand on the doorknob when he and Raymond met.

Raymond's eyes slowly traveled the length of George's body. He grinned.

“Damn,” he said. “There goes another myth.”

T
he next few minutes were frenetic. George grabbed Raymond by the shoulders and jacked him up against the door. I heard a thud as the kid's body made contact with the wood. He hung there, his arms flattened against the door, his feet dangling a couple of inches off the ground. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide with surprise. He looked like a scarecrow on a pole. Too bad he didn't have a field to guard.

“Listen, you little shit ...” George was saying in a tone of voice that would have frozen Lake Erie solid when I yelled from the bed for him to put Raymond down.

The sound distracted George, and he turned his head toward me. He must have loosened his grip slightly at the same time, because suddenly Raymond's feet were planted on the floor while his jacket was still being pinned to the door by George. As he took a step back, a tight, smug little smile flitted across Raymond's lips for a few seconds before vanishing. Seeing the expression on Raymond's face jolted me. It made me realize that maybe Raymond had gotten what he wanted: George out of control. Except I don't think he was aware of the possible ramifications. This was someone who'd never heard the saying about reaping the whirlwind, or if he had, he hadn't paid close attention to the message.

Raymond took a couple of steps back. His movements were jerky with nervous energy. George let the jacket go. It dropped at his feet in a heap. He didn't even look at it. He was too busy glaring at his nephew. I hadn't realized how skinny Raymond was until that point. If he weighed in at one hundred forty pounds I'd have been surprised. George had about eighty pounds on him, and all of it muscle. It was like watching a cairn terrier and a rottweiler.

“I was joking, man,” Raymond whined as he rubbed his shoulders. His voice cracked when he spoke. For the space of a heartbeat he sounded like the fourteen-year-old boy he was. “Don't you do snaps?”

George didn't answer immediately. He was too busy taking deep breaths, trying to get himself under control.

“Get out of here. I'll talk to you later,” he finally ordered when he had.

“I bet you don't even know what snaps is,” Raymond persisted.

But George didn't reply. If he had, if he hadn't ignored him, if he'd even said something like good night, I think things might have ended there. Instead, he turned around, walked inside the bedroom, and began closing the door.

Raymond took a step forward. “I'm talking to you, man.”

“Well, I'm not talking to you,” George told him, flinging the words over his shoulder as he shut the door.

But that wasn't acceptable to Raymond.

Maybe he just had to have the last word.

Maybe his ego insisted.

Maybe he'd always started stuff, watched the show, and slipped away when things got out of hand.

Or maybe he had a death wish.

“You know what your problem is?” Raymond yelled at George from the safety of the hall.

I could see George's hand tightening on the doorknob. “Let it go,” I begged.

He didn't listen. Instead, he yanked the door open and stuck his head out of the bedroom. “I know what your problem is going to be if you don't get in your room,” George growled.

“Your problem,” Raymond countinued, ignoring the warning in his uncle's voice, “is you're tagging so much white pussy, you forgot what it's like to be a nigger.”

George let out a roar and ran out into the hall. The next thing I heard was the door to Raymond's room slamming shut, followed by a
kerthunk,
which I took to be the sound of George hitting it. I wound the bed sheet around myself and ran down the hall. George was using his shoulder as a battering ram when I got there.

“Don't,” I said.

George didn't answer. He just kept methodically working on the wood.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The door was trembling. I had an idea that Raymond was too.

“George!” I screamed.

He kept on going. I don't think he even heard me.

“Leave it alone,” I told him, and grabbed his left arm.

He spun around and threw a punch with his right hand. I jumped back. But I wasn't quite fast enough, and his knuckles grazed my shoulder. I groaned and staggered back. It felt as if I'd been clipped by a truck.

George's eyes widened in remorse when he realized what he'd done. His hand went to his lips. He took a step toward me. “Jesus, I'm sorry.”

“Forget it.” I grabbed his forearm and led him back to his bedroom. His skin was lathered with a fine coat of sweat.

“I could have killed him,” he whispered as he sat down on the edge of the bed. I couldn't believe the sheets were still warm. It seemed as if hours had passed since I left it. “I wanted to.”

George's shoulders sagged. His mouth crumpled. He looked as if he were going to cry as the implications of what he'd nearly done sunk in.

“It's okay.” I stroked his arm. He pulled away. I put my hand down.

“No, it isn't.” His voice was anguished. “I've never been out of control like that in my life.” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and dropped his head into his hands. “I don't know what I'm going to say to him.”

“Think of it this way. Tonight Raymond has definitely learned about the power of words,” I said, trying to make a joke. But even to my ears, it sounded lame.

George lifted his head. “I can't believe I just did what I did. Jesus, the kid's only fourteen. How could I have let him get to me like that?”

George didn't expect an answer, and I didn't give him one.

“Family,” George moaned, and dropped his head back in his hands. “Now I remember why I'm living up here.”

The sound of his breathing filled the room. I watched the muscles in his back bunch and release by the thin light streaming through the bedroom blinds from the streetlamp outside. I wanted to comfort him, but I didn't know how.

We sat separated by six inches of crumpled-up comforter for the next half hour as I watched the minutes on George's digital clock come up and listened to the house's creaks and groans. Finally I got up and started getting dressed. There didn't seem to be much point in staying. George didn't ask what I was doing as I hunted around the room for my clothes, and I didn't tell him.

He was still sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into space, as I left. When I said good-bye, he nodded his head to indicate he'd heard me.

I paused in front of Raymond's room on my way out and asked if he needed anything. But he didn't reply either—like uncle, like nephew, I suppose—and after repeating my question I walked down the stairs and whistled for Zsa Zsa. She came trotting out from the kitchen, where she'd probably been cowering under the table. She wasn't big on loud noises and angry words.

“Let's go.” I fished a dog biscuit out of my jacket pocket and gave it to her. She wagged her tail and gobbled it down. This is why I like dogs, I decided as I fed her another biscuit. They always respond.

The wind stung my face. I watched the upper half of a skinny cedar across the street bend from side to side and automatically calculated the path it would take if it fell. It was an exercise I and a number of other people tended to indulge in since the previous year. Late last March we'd had a storm that had tipped over a fair number of tall, shallow-rooted evergreens. They had caused a great deal of damage as they crashed into roofs, through windows, and onto cars. The one across the street looked like a good candidate to behave the same way if we had another spell of bad weather. I wondered why the owner hadn't taken the tree down already, but maybe he was like me—always giving things the benefit of the doubt well past the point when I should.

I turned on the radio as I drove through the streets on my way home and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs. I was surprised to find my hands were a little shaky. I tried not to think about what could have happened in George's house, but I couldn't help it. One good, solid punch from George and his entire life and Raymond's could have been changed forever, but then, I suppose you could say that about crossing the street and getting hit by a car.

I turned up the volume on the radio. The news was on. That was always good for a laugh. The announcer was saying something about the state funding a new marina on Onondaga Lake, which was pretty funny if you considered that it was one of the most polluted bodies of water in America and that in the summer, if an algae bloom started, it stank so bad that you could smell it five miles away.

However, I thought as I switched to another station, who was I to argue with economic progress. Especially since there'd been so little of it recently in Syracuse. Or maybe I was just jealous. After all, a lot of people were going to get rich from this project. Only I wasn't going to be one of them. Which was too bad. It would be nice to stop having to worry about money for a change.

The streetlights reflected off the bare tree branches and the cars parked in the driveways and the lawns and the houses. Here and there people had left out old furniture or washing machines for the DPW to collect. A few people were out walking their dogs, but most everyone else was inside, either asleep or watching TV or getting ready for the next day. At night Syracuse seemed tidy and quiet, removed from the problems of places like New York City. That's why Raymond's mother had sent him here.

But Syracuse wasn't problem-free. It wasn't the quaint small city, Cecilia thought it was. We had our murders, shootings, and robberies just like anyone else. Recently guns and drugs had become more visible as gang members had moved upstate. I shook my head as I pulled into my driveway and killed the cab's engine. Suddenly I felt completely drained. The evening had taken more out of me than I thought. I watched my cat jump up on the hood and walk to and fro in front of the windshield, meowing for me to come out and let him in the house and feed him. Patience isn't James's forte.

But then, as George had pointed out, it's not mine either. After I opened up a tin of tuna for him—white meat packed in oil to make up for my not having come home sooner—I listened to my answering machine.

There were four phone calls. One was from Professor Fell, one from Melissa's mother, one from Beth, and one was from Bryan Hayes. I didn't care.

Whatever they had to say would keep until morning. I was too tired to talk.