Redhanded (6 page)

Raymond drove along for a moment. “Do you think you'll be able to say that again? Explain to Chad how he's making up stories?”

I didn't bother making a sound.

“I can't hear you, Steven,” he said.

“I'll tell Chad he's a liar,” I said, aware that I was being cock-proud and foolish. “To his face.”

“Really?” said Raymond, with a note of caution.

Or maybe it was the real thing, real glee. I couldn't read Raymond's moods so well anymore. He swung the car into the fast lane.

He said, “This is going to be fun,” his voice cracking with tension.

CHAPTER TEN

Raymond and I rarely came into this neighborhood, the flat-land district of San Leandro.

We cruised past storefront churches and insurance agencies, a neighborhood of overweight bikers, Harleys and Kawasakis sweating oil onto sidewalks. We passed flat-roofed blue and pink stucco building and blank windows, palmists and burglar alarm specialists.

Raymond drove a vintage Volvo his brothers had decided should be turned into a convertible. One fine, beery Saturday afternoon had seen Raymond's brothers laboring with hacksaws and acetylene torches, transforming this staid Scandinavian car. Now the gray two-door was open to the sky, with a long I beam welded across the backseat to give the vehicle strength.

Raymond pulled the car up a driveway and up onto the front lawn, parking under a spreading Monterey pine.

The front lawn was worn and rutted, areas of bare loam where cars had kept the sun from the grass, and a brown-and-black Doberman stood on his hind legs behind a chain-link fence and gave out a bark. Then he found a sag where the fence parted from the pole, stabbed his snout through the gap, and let out a low, bone-chilling growl.

The house was a tall white Victorian, handsome and genteel, except for the iron bars on the windows on the first floor and the flaking paint of the window frames. A blue wicker chair with a calico pillow sat on a broad front porch, overlooking the view of a taqueria and car stereo discount shop.

Raymond wiped his hands on the front of his pants and gave me one of his tight little smiles, his hand in no hurry to push the doorbell button.

Even in this broad afternoon sunshine a tiny electric light shined from within it, through the fingerprint grime. Raymond pushed the button, and as he twitched another smile at me I realized he had never visited Chad here at home before now.

And I felt some compassion for Raymond, unable to back out from the situation, with the whisper of the doorbell echoing in the interior of the house. I also realized something else as Raymond eyed me up and down, measuringly. Raymond was looking forward to showing me off, while I still had the nerve to call Chad a liar to his face.

Raymond was trying to find out something about Chad, and I was the test.

A pale young woman peered out through the screen while the Doberman at the side of the house barked full voice, leaping at the fence.

Raymond spoke, although I could not make out the words, a quiet politeness coming over him.

I barely heard her response: “My brother isn't here right now.”

I was more aware than ever how I looked, my clothes whatever my dad and I had been able to pick up at the clearance table at Ross Clothes-for-Less.

“Carrie, this is great,” Raymond was saying, “I'm very pleased to meet you at last. Chad is always saying wonderful things about you.”

The young woman did not respond to this. She was not as pretty as Danielle, and did not have Danielle's winning smile, but I wished I had taken a moment to comb my hair.

“We're going to play tennis up at Hiller Highlands,” Raymond added. “We hope to rent some rackets, work on our serves.”

He might as well have said we were going to play nine holes of golf at Pebble Beach. Hiller Highlands was a development far up in the hills where freshly painted concrete courts were enjoyed by dentists' and podiatrists' wives.

But the young woman hesitated, conquered by Raymond's talk, maybe, or by my look of apology. Or maybe she was just afraid of Chad's anger, whatever her brother would do if she turned us away.

“We're a little early,” I said.

She unlatched the screen door and let us in, the Doberman going crazy behind the fence.

“Who's this?” said a kid looking right at me, one of those tough junior high students who move with a swagger, even in his own living room.

“These are Chad's friends,” said Carrie. She turned to us and asked if we wanted to sit down.

“Steven is a boxer,” said Raymond, with something close to pride. He moved a sports section of the newspaper to one side and sat on the couch. I took my place in an old oak rocker, trying not to let it shift back and forth.

Raymond continued, “He's a welterweight, in the novice division. The coach thinks he can make it to the Junior Olympics or maybe even the real thing, Team USA.”

“How big is welterweight?” said little brother.

“Steven goes about one-forty-seven,” said Raymond.

“Not very big,” said the kid.

“Just about right,” said Raymond, putting out a playful hand, as though to cuff him gently all the way across the room. “Boxing fans don't usually like size. Big equals slow.”

If I made it to open division boxing, where you fight opponents who have real ring experience, I hoped to muscle up to middleweight, or even light-heavy, without losing my speed.

“On Monday, Steven fought Lorenzo Del Toro, a nineteen-year-old man with a three-and-oh record,” Raymond was saying, maybe too nervous to shut up. “Steven put a whole lot of pressure on him.”

The dog outside continued to go insane.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A large flowering plant branched from the dark fireplace, fake calla lilies. On the mantel was a picture of Jesus, looking away from us, toward a source of light that radiated from above.

In another framed picture a large young man with quiet gray eyes looked out at us, his arm around a tall blond kid with a basketball. Both of them were smiling, the sort of happiness you can't fake. “That's Milton and Chad, years ago,” said Carrie.

“Chad's older brother,” said Raymond. “He's in Vacaville, in the prison. He's always getting into fights in the exercise yard.”

Carrie indicated a large three-ring album on a shelf. “There are more pictures in there,” she said. “And letters Chad keeps, from Milton.”

The Doberman's barking took on a hoarse, maniacal note. Or maybe he was getting tired. Little Brother slipped away.

Carrie watched Little Brother leave, and then took the album from the shelf. She turned the pages possessively, letting us see the contents without actually sharing them. I glimpsed handwriting on lined paper, black ballpoint pen. “Chad keeps every letter.”

Carrie eased a snapshot from the album and handed me a view of Milton and Chad, unmistakably the same two people. Milton wore a gray work shirt and matching gray pants while Chad had grown up, filled out, and gotten a set of muscles. But he kept his proud smile. The two brothers beamed at the camera, while behind them blurry picnic tables and chain-links offered a sample of what I took to be visitors' day at a correctional facility.

“Mom works as a dispatcher for Friendly Cab,” Carrie said, maybe to explain her absence. “We rent the bottom floor; upstairs are the Websters. They sleep all the time.” She was quiet for a moment, maybe feeling she didn't owe us even that much information. Maybe having a brother in prison, and another one as big and sure of himself as Chad appeared to be, made her want to talk. She closed the album, put it on the shelf, and said, “Would you like some apple juice?”

The dog was going completely crazy, somewhere under the house by the sound of it, and I felt the intrusion of our visit, Carrie going out of her way to be civil to the two of us.

When Little Brother came back into the room and said, “That cat got under the house,” it was a welcome chance to leave the place, the walls gradually closing in.

Carrie showed us through the kitchen, a room with a high white ceiling and duct tape holding a pipe in place beside the water heater. Raymond stayed to one side of the back porch, over by a mop head dried stiff and gray. I took my time going down the steps, the Doberman peeling back the skin of his muzzle in a chilling display of white teeth.

I couldn't bear to look at the dog, even though Carrie said, “Bullet, go lie down,” and the beast retreated a few paces back.

Little Brother and Carrie stayed on the back porch, and Raymond was halfway down the steps. The Doberman was growling and slavering at me as I stood there trying to stare him down. Now and then he would dodge over to an opening under the house, a space big enough for a large man to crawl into. Between the space under the house and me, he couldn't decide which drove him most crazy.

“If you get the dog calmed down, I'll rescue the cat,” I said. “I can't do it with the dog about to eat my body.”

I had the mental image of my rear end being torn to pieces, and I had the impression everyone else had the same thought. Plus, Chad would be home just in time to see paramedics putting my remains into a body bag.

Carrie made it all the way down to the bottom step, and she gave a soft, all but inaudible whistle, and confused the dog-monster just a little. She hooked a single finger under his collar and gave me a guarded smile, not with her mouth so much as with her eyes. It was a little challenging, daring me to get down on my hands and knees and crawl under the house.

“What color is this cat?” I asked, as though there might be a dozen animals under there.

“It's white and gray,” said Carrie. “With black points on its ears.”

I crept on my knees to the gap in the white wire screen that shielded the dark under the house, and bent the wire lace slightly, peeling it back. White flecks of paint came off on my fingers.

The gap was smaller than it looked, and under the house it was very quiet.

The dirt in the darkness was soft and rose up into the air, like sifted flour. Spans of spiderwebs caught the dimming sunlight overhead, and when I tried to rise up, my head hit the underside of the house. Dust-laced webs trembled overhead, and I breathed a taste of cold soil, decaying lumber, mildew.

I avoided a bent nail in the dirt, and a white porcelain knob. A broken half of a blue-and-pink tea saucer impeded me briefly, until I set it aside in the bad light. Nobody had to rescue a cat from a refuge like this.

But pride kept me there, calling, “Kitty, kitty,” flat on my belly in the grime.

Eyes glittered. Reproachful, round eyes, and when I called in my gentlest voice, the eyes gazed steadily right at me, unwavering.

Raymond's voice reached me as though from an unearthly distance, asking was I all right.

I was far from daylight now, hoisting my body forward. Black widows loved dark, neglected places like this. The space was shrinking, the floorboards above pressing down on my back, my shirt catching on splinters in the wood.

The floorboards overhead creaked.

A heavy, deliberate tread crossed the room just above, and the steps continued, in no hurry, until I could not hear them. Raymond fell silent. The dog was quiet, too.

The cat was a dim shape, hunching, retreating from my hand.

I stretched my fingers, and the cat gave a low, disturbing sound, a throaty grumble.

I did not flinch, my hand extended.

I touched soft cat hair, stroked it with the very tips of my fingers.

Back in daylight the air was warm, the sun heavy and scented with honeysuckle.

The snapshots had not prepared me for Chad.

CHAPTER TWELVE

He was tall, but not giant, only six one or so, built like a heavyweight, with broad shoulders. He was in solid shape, no tummy fat at his belt. He hair was yellow, like fake coloring, bright blond. It was his eyes that stopped me right where I was. Blue-gray, with a steady gaze, he looked at me like he could see into my mind.

I looked right back. It's the first thing you learn as a boxer, the prefight stare. But fighters are half bluff, trying to fake each other out. Chad was actually using his eyes to observe me, measuring, about to pass judgment. Something about his gaze, and the possibly pleasant, possibly menacing openness of his expression made me want to win his favor.

Raymond kept off to one side, his arms folded.

Chad extended his hand, and I shook it. Dad once told me you want to shake hands not too hard, not too soft. Chad's handshake was all grip. I squeezed right back, and his eyes crinkled. He released my hand, and we both grinned, as though some point had been made.

“You hurt yourself,” he said.

I studied my hand. The cat gouges began as shallow rips, and then welled with blood where the claws had found meat. The blood was already drying, dark pearls. It was nothing that would keep me from fighting, although Loquesto would tell me I should take care of my fists.

“Cat,” I said.

“Not that old sick black-and-gray cat that couldn't hurt a baby?” asked Chad, in a softly teasing tone.

“Bullet chased it,” said Little Brother, watching all this with interest.

“That old wasted cat that has cancer?” Chad asked, just a little more playful sting in his voice.

“Chad, you are a disgrace,” said Carrie, with no attempt to lighten her words. “I'm going inside to get some medicine,” she said.

“That's the world's feeblest, oldest feline,” said Chad, with a little lift of his chin.

Raymond stayed quiet. I didn't know if I should rise to the insult, or laugh.

“Besides, didn't the police come around here last week saying look out for a cat with rabies?” said Chad. He stretched out the word, so it sounded like a strange name for a grotesque disease:
ray-bees
.

This was where Raymond had picked up his recent diction, a jailhouse, faintly Texan lilt. Raymond was full of convict lore lately, things he'd learned from Chad. Raymond maintained that men who have done time don't walk like the rest of us but adopt a habitual, loose-limbed, self-protective stroll, a pace not intended to cover ground.