Gentlemen (9 page)

“You and Thomas, Tommy, are friends, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How long have you two known each other?”

“Since start of freshman year,” I said. “Going on two years now. Two school years, I mean.”

“He didn't go to elementary school with you?”

“Nah,” I said. “He's from North Cambria. I went to Central.”

Central was Soudley Central Elementary School, which is the only school in Soudley, so I don't know what the central is for.

“Yeah, course,” said Throckmorton. “I've seen you around town.”

And there was nothing weird about him saying that, I've seen you around, because like I said, he lived in Soudley, but I sort of interpreted it as halfway between neighborly and an I've-got-my-eye-on-you sort of thing. I guess I might've been reading too much into it; I couldn't tell. His eyes were muddy brown and sort of sleepy. People always say, like in the movies, that police have piercing eyes, that they look right through you, but that wasn't the vibe that Throckmorton gave off. He
didn't give off any vibe at all. It was like a poker face, which is supposed to be for the criminals, but I could see where it would work for him, too.

“And your friends out there?” he said, looking down at his papers again. “Bonouil and Malloy?”

“Yeah,” I said, “all three of us went to Central.”

“So Tommy was the new guy?”

“I guess.”

“Was that ever a problem, was he an outsider or anything like that?”

“Nah,” I said, but he was waiting for more, so after a while I went on. “I mean, it took him a while to get up to speed, but we're all tight with Tommy,” I said, trailing off to see if that was enough, but also because there'd been some friction between Tommy and Bones lately, and I didn't think it was a good idea to mention that.

“Get up to speed?”

“You know, like our jokes and stuff.”

“Got it. So you guys are good friends now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like links in a chain.”

I just tacked that last part on because, you know, I'd been thinking it.

“Who's closest with Tommy, would you say?”

“Me, I guess,” I said. I thought about it some more and nodded, because I was pretty sure that was the case.

“So he'd tell you if he was planning something big?”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“But you just said…”

“Yeah, I mean, I'm the closest to him, but that doesn't mean I'm all that close. This isn't like—we don't sit around talking all day. Tommy keeps to himself a lot. We're not, like…”

I couldn't think of how to finish that sentence.

“So when was the last time you saw him?”

“When he flipped the desk.”

“You didn't see him after that?”

“Not after he left the class. Last time I saw him was when the door closed behind him.”

“Haven't heard from him?”

“Nope. Tried to call him. I've tried every day on his cell. Just goes to voice mail.”

“You been leaving messages?”

“I've left a few,” I said, even though I didn't see why that mattered.

“It's been a couple of days now; do you have any idea where he might be?”

And I laughed, just a little bit, but it surprised me. I'm pretty sure it surprised Throckmorton, too. And the principal looked over from the windowsill. And it was a nervous laugh, too, which was pretty much the exact wrong thing to do. And the reason I did it, and I knew this right then, was because this would be the time to mention Haberman, and this little laugh came out because what was I supposed to say: “Well, Sheriff, he just might be stuffed in the trunk of our English
teacher's car”? I mean, I didn't necessarily think he was, but he'd said do I have “any idea,” and that was an idea.

I couldn't say it, though, no way. I mean, one, it would sound crazy. It would sound crazy, because it probably was crazy. And two, Throckmarten was right there, and he'd tell Haberman, and those two would have a good laugh over it, and I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. And I remembered one of the things that Haberman had said, too: Who would they believe? And that was spot-on true. I sort of wished I'd read more of the book, so I'd feel better about it myself, but I still wouldn't've said anything. So now I had to explain that laugh away, so I told him about how he'd bused it to Manchester last winter, and how we all thought that was kind of a crazy thing to do. And, you know, I should go to church on Sunday or something, because Throckmorton seemed to buy it.

“Yeah, he's done that a couple of times, I hear,” he said.

“Well, not like that. Mostly it's just like a day or two and he's still right around here, like he's got an older cousin in Cambria who he'll crash with if things get real intense for him.”

“That Albert?”

“Yeah, I think. He calls him Al. You talk to him yet?”

“He was number one on our list,” said Throckmorton. “Says he hasn't seen him.”

“You believe him?” I said. The sheriff just looked at me,
and Throckmarten looked over again, so I could tell that wasn't the sort of question I was supposed to be asking.

“No reason not to,” Throckmorton said at last. “What do you know about Tommy's family situation?”

And I looked at him for a moment. I'd been pretty much spilling the beans on everything he asked since I sat down. I mean, I figured we both wanted the same thing, as far as Tommy was concerned, so I might as well. But Tommy was pretty touchy about his family situation, as Throckmorton called it, and I understood that. I started thinking, What if Tommy was sitting here and the sheriff was asking the same question about me, would I want him talking? Both accounts would start the same way, in any case.

“It's pretty messed up,” I said.

“How so?” said Throckmorton.

I shrugged, but he just sat there, looking at me and waiting for more.

I let out a long breath, and once I was done with that, I was ready to talk.

“Well, the guy who's his stepdad now used to be his dad's boss, and that was a bad scene,” I said, and for the first time Throckmorton leaned forward and started writing stuff down as I was talking. I guess that kind of revved me up, because I went ahead and told him the whole thing.

“Like it was like she, I mean, I shouldn't be saying this, but it's like his mom was sneaking around with the guy for a
while before his dad found out, and when his dad found out, well, you probably know what happened then.”

“Yeah, I took that call myself,” said Throckmorton, and I was glad for that, because I didn't want to be the one to say that Tommy's dad beat the crap out of Tommy's mom.

“Right,” I said, “and then the guy, his name is Gary, comes over and he wales on him, too.”

Throckmorton would know that, too, it would've been on the same call, but I had no problem telling that part.

“So then Tommy's dad doesn't have a wife and he doesn't have a job, either, and for a while, Tommy didn't see his dad, and then it's like, meet your new dad, but Tommy always sort of hated Gary for busting his folks up.”

“You think Tommy blames his stepdad?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. I think his stepdad blames his stepdad. He worked real hard to patch things up with Tommy's dad, but that just made it more awkward, if anything. Like I don't think he pressed charges?”

Throckmorton ignored the question. “Is Tommy still close to his father?”

“I got to say not really. I mean, he resents the hell out of his stepdad, but it's not like he seems that cool with his dad. But then his dad's kind of a wreck, and I guess he didn't used to be. I didn't know Tommy back then. I don't think he's dying to live with his dad in that little apartment, if that's what you're wondering. The two are kind of like, what's
the word—formal?—with each other, but Tommy'll talk some smack about his dad when he's not around. Which is pretty much all of the time. Not all of the time that he talks smack, but all of the time that he's not around. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I think I do. I appreciate your help with this.”

“No problem,” I said. “I'm wondering where he is, too, you know?”

“And you don't have any idea?”

“Nah, wish I did.”

“Is there anything else?”

And here, I was thinking about Haberman again, thinking I should just mention it, just throw it out there, that he's been talking about murder and disposing of bodies, because even though there's a murder in the book, there's no disposing of bodies, not yet anyway. And I remembered how whatever it was in the barrel had tumbled out of it like a dead thing. But I just said, “No, don't think so.”

As soon as I said it, I thought, Crap, what if Bones or Mixer throw it out there? But I figured I could just say I didn't mention it because I thought it would sound crazy, so then I sort of hoped one of them would.

“All right, then, go on back to class. You can send Mr. Malloy in now.”

“You're up,” I said to Mixer out in the office.

“Great,” he said, and he was looking at me close, trying to
figure out if I'd been raked over the coals. I was going to say something to him, but everyone in the office was looking at us, so we just low-fived as we passed.

When I got back to class, Dantley didn't even look at me. On the plus side, first period was almost over. When we got to English, Haberman wasn't there. Our usual English sub, Ms. Yanoff, was up at the board scratching away.

It was weird because, in a way, I was disappointed. I was waiting for Haberman to say the one thing that would let me know he'd done it or the one thing that would let me know he hadn't. This was getting serious, and I wanted to know. I mean, he probably wasn't going to say something like that anyway, but he definitely wasn't going to say it if he wasn't there. On the other hand, I wasn't sure I had the energy for Haberman's crap after the morning I'd had.

But the first thing I thought when I saw Yanoff up there wasn't either of those things. It was this: Maybe Haberman is burying the body. And also: Pretty convenient that the day Throckmorton shows up, Haberman's nowhere in sight. I mean, him not being there didn't give us any new evidence one way or the other about Tommy, but it definitely made you think. After two days, a body'd be starting to turn, and it would be time to get rid of it, maybe some lime and a shallow grave, like on TV.

Part of me wanted to run down to see if Throckmorton was still around, because I didn't want to take the chance that Haberman might get away with it. But another part of me
was like: What kind of an idiot would bury a body in the middle of a sunny day? Plus, Haberman wasn't exactly the iron man of teaching attendance.

So anyway, like I said, him not being there didn't necessarily mean anything, but it gave you some extra room to operate, if you were thinking along those lines already. What's the phrase, enough rope to hang yourself with?

So that's where we were. We had questions, the police had questions, the school had questions, everyone had frickin' questions. No one seemed to have any answers. The only thing everyone agreed on was this: Tommy was missing. Throckmorton being there kind of made it official.

Him being gone, it changed things for Mixer, Bones, and me. You could just sort of feel it. It's like if you take one leg off a chair: You can still sit down, but you have to work a lot harder to find your balance and not fall on your butt.

I probably haven't done a very good job of explaining this, but Tommy sort of held us together. I mean, first of all, he was new blood. That can be pretty important when you've been hanging out with the same few people since you were little. He also sort of balanced us out. It's like he had some of
the same qualities as each of us. Like he was sort of a scrapper, like Bones, and he was sort of clever, like Mixer. And he was sort of, well, I don't know, whatever the hell I am. I always thought we had a lot in common, anyway.

And I know I've said how he was maybe a little nicer than the rest of us, but he was plenty tough, too. Like he was the one who taught us how to chew tobacco. Or he tried to, anyway.

All four of us were over in North Cambria last summer, because I mean, it's not like it's frickin' Times Square, but there are a few things to do there. Like there's a McDonald's and some batting cages. Anyway, it was crazy hot that day. I guess it was late June, early July. We'd been hanging out in the little town park, the one with the ball field. We were under the big wooden whatever-the-hell-it-is, the thing with the rope grid you can climb up to get to the platform. We were mainly there for the shade, just standing around under the platform, leaning against the posts with our feet in the cool sand.

That's when Tommy told us that he had some Skoal. Mixer was like, “No way,” but Tommy was like, “Yuh-huh,” and he looked both ways and reached into the back pocket of his jeans.

As soon as he looked both ways like that, I knew he really had it. He pulled a round green container out of his pocket. The word
BANDITS
was printed on the top, and the
A
had a little red bandanna painted on it. It was brand-new and he
sort of fumbled with it, trying to figure out the best way to break the seal.

I'd never had chewing tobacco before, and it was pretty clear that Tommy hadn't, either. He hadn't even opened the thing until we were all there, and that right there tells you something about him. While he was trying to pop the top without spilling it all over the place, Bones was saying how chewing tobacco was pretty cool and packed a nice little buzz and how Skoal was like the best kind.

Bones didn't actually say he'd done it before, but that was definitely the implication, you know? That made what happened even funnier.

Anyway, we heard the thing pop open, and I started making lame little jokes. I think I was a little nervous, which is funny because I'd done stuff way worse than chaw. Chaw's weird, though. It made me think of the villains in western movies, like spitting into the bucket from ten feet away.

“All right,” I said. “If we're going to do this, we need like cowboy names. I'm Shane.”

That might sound a little babyish or whatever, but we were just a bunch of kids under a glorified jungle gym in the summer. We were like a month past being freshmen. And that's how Tommy became Buster and Mixer became Wyatt. Bones insisted on Masterson. I have no idea what ass he pulled that one out of, but it did sound kind of cowboyish.

I was like, “Masterson?”

And Bones was like, “Yeah. Don't wear it out.”

I looked over at “Buster” and he started handing out the Skoal. It came in these gauzy little packets, prewrapped or whatever. That was good because I didn't want to deal with loose tobacco, like when a cigarette split. He handed us one each, but Bones said, “Keep it comin',” and he handed him a second one.

The only times I'd ever seen people chewing tobacco in real life was a few of the town softball games and things like that. I was trying to remember how to go about it, like how much to take, how to hold it, where to put it. I just held it in my palm.

“In between the cheek and the gums, ladies,” said Bones, still acting like a big shot.

I raised the thing up to my nose for a quick sniff, and it had this minty thing going on. Individually wrapped, mintflavored…The whole thing seemed much less rough than I'd thought it'd be. But I still didn't put it in my mouth right away. I looked around and the others were still holding theirs, too.

No surprise, Bones went first. I guess he was showing off, because he put one in each side of his mouth, like the cotton rolls they put in your cheeks at the dentist. Now, I didn't know much about chewing tobacco, but I was pretty sure that was the wrong way to go about it. That's when I knew Bones hadn't done this before, either. He'd just heard more about it.

He stuck one in the right side and one in the left. He just stuck his fingers in there like he was picking his teeth. For a
second I could see his teeth and his gums, and then the tobacco was in and he was wiping his hand on his shorts. The rest of us held our Bandits in our fingers. We were getting ready to join in, but first we were going to watch and see what happened with Masterson there.

He gave us this puffy-cheeked, chipmunk smile, then sputtered something out. I think he was trying to say, “Double dip,” but he never got through it. He coughed on the juice and then just froze. His smile disappeared and all of a sudden he had this horrified look on his face. It took me a second to figure out what was wrong: The lump was gone from his left cheek. He'd swallowed one of the packets.

He let out a few short sounds, somewhere between choking and coughing, and then he just started hurling. The first few bursts of vomit came out while he was standing, but by the third, he was on his knees. He was kneeling down in the sand and spewing puke a good two feet in front of him. As skinny as he was, Bones always did like a big breakfast.

We all took a few steps back, and I dropped my tobacco in the sand like it had bitten me. If it was just normal puking, we would've started laughing right away, but this was some intense wretching. You could tell it was painful, and even when it was over, he was still down there dry heaving. His mouth was hanging open like a cat trying to cough up a hairball. So we held it in.

“Jesus,” said Mixer.

“Aw, man,” said Tommy.

The smell of puke was really strong. If I didn't get out of there, I was going to boot, too, no tobacco required. I couldn't just leave him there, though.

“Damn, man,” I said. “You OK?”

He looked up, wiping his mouth with his forearm. It was quiet for a second. Bones spat a few times into the sand and then said, “Damn.”

“Dammit, Masterson,” said Mixer. “That's a waste of good tobacco!”

“Naw,” said Bones, a little smile creeping onto his face. “That stuff sucked.”

We laughed, but Bones wasn't off the hook yet. He'd tried to big-time us by double-dipping and then ended up swallowing one of them. We were going to bust his ass, and he knew it. We waited for him to get to his feet, and then we got the hell out of Pukesylvania.

After a while, we walked over to the McDonald's. We put our trays down on the table—just fries and a Coke for Bones, thank you—and it was like a firing line. Enough time had passed and he was feeling well enough and this is where we were going to start cutting into him.

And, I mean, we could've ridden Bones for forever about that, just ragged him mercilessly. But just when we were getting started, Tommy was like, “Same thing happened to Peter J, first time he tried it. Seriously, I saw it.”

Peter J was Peter Janklow. He was two years ahead of us in school and seriously, unquestionably cool. He was so cool
that the idea that he'd puked his guts out on chaw made it seem like maybe that was the cool thing to do. It was serious cover for Bones.

Tommy didn't have to say that. First of all, I don't even think it was true. But he did, and it sort of let Bones off the hook. Anyway, that was Tommy. And that's what I meant about how he kind of held us together, because Mixer and me, we really would've ripped into Bones. We probably would've gone too far, and he probably would've knocked one of us out. Just like that, we wouldn't have been such good friends anymore.