No Such Thing as a Lost Cause (6 page)

“Ow!” I cried, landing on my butt on the pavement.

“Roger! We got trouble.” The lady with the hose shouted. “Come out here and bring
Junior!”

“Forget Junior,” I howled. “Call 911.”

Two beefy men appeared, just as Mario’s lady friend jumped on top of me and pounded
my head into the ground. The older woman turned the hose on us, attempting to shock
us into civility, or at least stop making a mess on her sidewalk. Junior grabbed Mario’s
girlfriend, and pulled her arms her arms across her chest, like a straight jacket.

“Calm down, Sherese.”

Sherese kicked and cursed at him, but it seemed more obligatory than anything else.
All the fight had gone out of her.

“We’re not done, bitch,” she spat, as Junior guided her across the street and back
into her house.

My head ached, and I felt a little trickle of blood on my right temple. I ran my tongue
around the inside of my mouth, doing a quick assessment of my teeth. They all seemed
to be intact.

Roger offered a hand to me and I took it gratefully and struggled to my feet. I was
dripping wet, and my face was beginning to swell like a hot air balloon.

“You’re bleeding,” Roger observed. “Come on into the house and my wife will fix you
right up.”

I shot a quick glance at Mario’s place and shook my head. “I really appreciate what
you did for me, but I think I’d just better go.”

Roger’s wife threw a supporting arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry about her, honey.
She’s probably passed out on the couch by now. I’m Candice. Let’s get some ice on
your cheek. You don’t look so good.”

Their house was worn but spotless. Pictures of children and grandchildren graced every
available bit of space.

“That’s our grandbaby, Kendra,” Roger explained, pointing to a photo of a beautiful,
young woman in a cap and gown. “She just graduated school this year. She’s going to
be an R.N, like her grandma.”

Candice emerged from the kitchen with a bag of ice and some homemade chocolate chip
cookies. She followed my gaze to her granddaughter’s photo.

“That girl was raised right here in this house,” she stated with pride. Thrusting
her chin toward Mario’s, she didn’t bother to hide the contempt that crept into her
voice. “There are a lot of decent people in this neighborhood. It’s trash like them
that ruins it for the rest of us. Tell me, is what she said true? Are you that reporter
gal who shot Lewis?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“You did the world a favor, far as I’m concerned,” Roger stated flatly. “Course, not
everybody sees it this way.” He gave his head a rueful shake. “For the life of me,
I can’t understand it. Folks like him bring drugs and violence into our neighborhood
and half the town treats him like some kind of damn folk hero.”

Candice took my swollen face in her hand, inspecting the damage. “No offense, honey,
but it wasn’t too smart coming here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s a real problem of mine. Not thinking things through, and
all that. I’m working on it.”

“Well, why exactly did you come?”

I debated whether to confide in this nice couple. There certainly wasn’t any love
lost between them and their former neighbor. I opted for the truth.

“So, you think Lewis could have been murdered,” Candice said when I finished. “Makes
sense to me.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

She handed me the bag of ice and a couple of cookies. I took a bite of cookie and
winced. My cheek was killing me, but, not one to waste perfectly good dessert, I pressed
the ice against my face and kept on chewing.

“There was constant commotion going on in that house. Lewis and Sherese fought all
the time. He was a crazy bastard. He actually chased her down the street with a carving
knife one day because she let the kids eat his chocolate bar.”

Well, that would piss anybody off.

“I just prayed those babies would get taken away before something awful happened to
them.”

“People would come and go at all hours of the night,” Roger supplied. “There’d be
music blaring, dogs barking. It was impossible to sleep some nights.”

I thought back to the last time I’d heard music blaring. Lewis had used it to mask
the sounds of something far more disturbing in the trunk of his car.

“Who owns the empty lot next door to Lewis’ house?” I asked.

“They do. It was Mario’s grandfather’s place. The house burned down a few years ago,
and they finally got it all cleared out.”

“Could they have been using the property to stage dog fights?”

“Couldn’t say for sure. But I’ll bet there’d be upwards to fifteen dogs in that lot
at times. They treated them something awful, too. Once, Junior found a dead puppy,
stuffed in our trash. It couldn’t have been more than three months old. That puppy
had been mauled so bad there was practically nothing left.”

“Bait dog,” I thought, and almost threw up.

“Did anyone ever call the cops on them?”

“All the time,” Candice said. “But it never did any good, and after a while, they
just stopped showing up. There was no point to it. Anyway, you learn real quick around
here to mind your own business. It’s safer that way.”

Half an hour later I thanked Roger and Candice King for their kindness and then reached
into my bag for a pen and paper. I wrote down my name and number and laid it on the
coffee table. “I’m probably just grasping at straws,” I apologized, “but if you can
think of anything else, please give me a call.”

Roger cast a hurried look in my direction and then cut his eyes toward his wife. “How
about getting Brandy some cookies for the road?”

“I would,” Candice laughed, “but she ate them all.”

I followed the Kings to the door, taking note that Roger picked my number off the
table and pocketed it.

“You take care,” Candice told me, as she gave me a hug.

“Thanks for everything,” I said, “and sorry about the cookies.” I left with a sore
jaw and a heavy heart.

Okay, Brandy. Just accept the fact that there is no mystery tied to Mario Lewis’s
death. You shot him. He’s dead. Your fault. Move on.

I got into my car and pulled away, catching sight of Lewis’ kids standing on the porch.
They were scowling at me. Even the little one. Fabulous. First I shoot their father,
and then I deck their mom. I hate for anyone to think ill of me, but at the rate I
was destroying family members, who could blame them?

On the way home, I stopped at a liquor store to pick up some lottery tickets. I figured
in the past week, I thought I was pregnant but wasn’t, I almost got laid off but didn’t,
and Mario Lewis tried to kill me but couldn’t. Plus, I didn’t lose any teeth when
his girlfriend punched me, so, obviously, I was on a lucky streak!

A girl in line ahead of me cradled a six-pack of Budweiser. She looked about fourteen.
When it was her turn she sidled up to the clerk and hoisted the beer onto the counter.
“I’ll take a carton of Pall Malls,” she told him.

“I need to see some I.D.”

“No problem.” She reached into her back pocket and laid a driver’s license on the
counter.

The clerk took a look and laughed, and handed it back to her. Then, he scooped up
the beer and placed it on the counter behind him.

“Sorry, I don’t sell to minors.”

The girl leaned over the counter and jabbed the card with her index finger. “But it
says right here I’m over twenty-one.”

“Yeah. It also says you’re a man.”

“So, what’s the problem? It says I’m twenty-one.”

“A twenty-one year old
man
.”

She let out an exasperated sigh and turned around to me. “Hey, will you buy me some
beer?”

The clerk leaned across the counter and tapped her on the shoulder. “Uh, you know
I can hear you, right?”

I figured anyone with that kind of chutzpah didn’t deserve to go away empty handed.
I bought her some string cheese and a Red Bull and headed back to the car.

As I climbed into the driver’s seat, I spied a thirty-ish looking guy with a crew
cut rounding the corner. He was wearing shorts and flip flops and a tee shirt that
said, “I’m great in bed.” A spotted boxer- terrier mix puppy with big dark eyes, and
ears that stuck out like a bent antennae trailed along beside him.

I whipped out my cell phone and called Janine. “There’s a guy wearing a tee shirt
that says
I’m great in bed
,” I reported.

“Is he cute?”

“If he was cute, would he have to wear the tee shirt?”

“Good point. Well, at least he’s confident in his abilities. Do you think I’d like
him?” she asked.

Janine’s great, but her taste in men is borderline icky. The last guy she went out
with asked her if she’d be cool with a ménage a trois with a stripper he’d met at
a bachelor party (she wasn’t). Fran and I are trying to wean her off the weirdos.

The puppy stopped about two yards from the car and began sniffing the ground, then
squatted to do her business. The guy looked away, like he had no idea in the world
there was a dog attached to the other end of the leash and that he would be responsible
for what came out of it.

The puppy finished up, and the guy yanked on her leash and kept walking, ignoring
what the dog had left behind.

“Hang on, Neenie.” I rolled down the window and leaned over curbside. “Yo! Pick that
up, ya yutz.”

Mr. “Good in Bed” flipped me the bird and kept walking. How rude was that!

The guy reached the liquor store and tied the leash to a lamp post. The puppy lay
down and began to whimper.

“Shut the hell up,” her owner muttered, and punctuated his words with a vicious kick
to the dog’s hind quarters. The puppy yelped in pain.

My heart stopped. “Are you insane?” I screamed.

Ignoring me he turned and went into the store.

“Bran, what’s going on?” Janine yelled through the phone.

“I’ll call you back.”

Without thinking, I scrambled out of the car and ran over to the puppy. “Hi, Baby.”
I soothed.

She licked at her injured leg, but stopped to lick my hand, instead. I could see her
owner standing at the counter, talking to the clerk. In a flash, I untied the leash
and coaxed the dog to her feet. She began moving forward with a slow, painful limp.
I bent down and scooped thirty-five pounds of puppy in my arms, waddled back to the
car, and shoved her into the back seat of the LeSabre. Then I climbed into the driver’s
side and locked the doors, shaking with rage.

At that moment, the jerk came barreling out of the store and ran full steam toward
my car, only he stumbled and tripped on his flip flops. He yanked them off and threw
them at my windshield. They bounced off into the street. I scrambled to start the
engine, but sometimes it stalls in the heat and this was one of those days.

The guy reached the car and pounded on my window, his face turning the color of cooked
lobster. Any minute I expected his fist to come flying through the glass. I prayed
for a miracle and tried the key again. This time it worked.

“Give me my God damn dog!” he roared.

“Bite me!” I stomped on the gas and took off.

Oh my God. What have I done? I just stole a dog!
I called Janine back. “I just stole a dog.”

“Oh. Um, congratulations!”

“Neenie,” I huffed, swerving out of the way of a van, “I could be in real trouble
here.”

I glanced in the rear view mirror. The dog kicker appeared out of nowhere and was
following me in a black Ford pickup. He was about five cars back and gutter sniping
to close the gap.

“Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“He found me.”

“Who?”

“Jeez, Neenie. Keep up. The guy with the dog. I gotta go.”

He gunned his engine and tried to squeeze in right behind me. Luckily, the friendly
drivers of Philadelphia didn’t care much for this yahoo bolting the line. They closed
ranks and locked him out. I took the opportunity to hang a left on South Street and
prayed he didn’t notice. Unfortunately, he did. Three blocks later he was two cars
back.
Great. What now?

I was only a few blocks away from Uncle Frankie’s gym. Now, normally, I don’t like
to involve my friends and family in my petty problems. But so far, the day really
sucked, and I was tired of fighting my own battles, even if I
was
the one who’d started them. I hit speed dial and called my uncle.

“I’m in trouble,” I announced. “Could you meet me outside the gym in about a minute?”

“You got it, hon,” he said, no questions asked.

I looked in the rear view mirror again. The guy was practically riding my bumper.
He looked really mad. “Oh, and Uncle Frankie, you might want to bring some friends.”

Half a block later, I pulled into South Street Gym’s parking lot, the Ford pick-up
riding my bumper the entire way. Uncle Frankie was standing there waiting for me,
flanked by three giant gym rats with muscles to spare. I pulled up next to them and
jumped out of the car.

The dog kicker had gotten out of his truck and was headed in my direction. He was
so focused on me he didn’t seem to notice my steroid enhanced entourage.

Frankie gave me the once-over. “What happened to your face?” Without waiting for an
answer, he added, “Did he do this to you?”

My uncle has a soft spot for me and a short fuse when he thinks someone has done me
wrong. Before I could set him straight, he broke ranks and was on the guy like Whiz
on a cheese steak.

He grabbed him by the front of his shirt, stretching the collar all out of proportion.
“You’re a real big man, beatin’ up on a girl, aren’t ya?”

“Whoa,” the guy said, stumbling backwards. “I didn’t lay a hand on this whack job.
She stole my dog.”

“Hey, watch your mouth.” Frankie turned to me. “D’jou steal his dog?”

“I had to. He kicked it.”

“You swear he didn’t hurt you?”

I nodded.

Frankie smoothed down the guy’s tee shirt, and shoved him backwards toward his car.
“Get the hell outta here, you creep.”