Sendoff for a Snitch (2 page)

“What’s CDS?”

“Controlled dangerous substance. Drugs.”

He shivered and looked longingly toward the sink where I’d put the bowls.

“You cold?”

“Yeah.”

“Your clothes wet?”

“Damp. Especially the jeans. And my socks.”

I sighed. Clothes, particularly blue jeans, were expensive. I only had three pair: the ones I was wearing when I was released from prison, and two pair from Goodwill. Even at Goodwill, they were expensive.

“You wanna take a hot shower?” I asked. “If there’s hot water. That’ll warm you up. And I can fix some more oatmeal if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.”

I went into the tiny bathroom and turned on the shower. Then I went to put more water on for oatmeal. “Stick your hand under the water and see if it’s beginning to warm up.” Sometimes it got hot, sometimes it didn’t.

Benji looked doubtfully into the bathroom. He’d barely have room to turn around. It was dingy and the porcelain fixtures were stained, but I kept it clean. There’s a real incentive in prison to keep the all-in-one plumbing unit clean when it’s inches from the bunks. And I kept up with the habit.

He didn’t have to step through the door to put his hand under the water. “It’s pretty warm,” he said.

“I only got two towels,” I said. “But you can use them. After you get yourself clean.” I’d be heading for the laundromat soon anyhow.

He cast an uncomfortable glance at me. “You gonna stay out here?”

“You mean, am I going to get in the shower with you? No, man. Even if there was room.”

He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower.

I took his jeans and hung them on the radiator, which was starting to warm up. I hung the socks next to them. Loosening the laces on his shoes and pulling the tongue out, I set them on a chair as close to the warmth as I could. The landlord only had to provide heat between certain hours, and that was all he provided. I kept expecting the pipes, which crisscrossed my ceiling, to freeze one of these cold nights.

When he got out, I handed him a dry pair of socks and my clean pair of jeans. They were too big, but he put them on. He’d have to make do with the underwear he had or go without.

I fixed another bowl of oatmeal. He sat down and gobbled that up.

“Now,” I said, pulling up the other chair to the table. “I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on here. Your mother is in Las Vegas?”

“Yeah.” He licked the spoon. “She got some money. She said she was just going for a few days.”

“Do you know exactly how long ago was that?”

He rubbed an eye with the side of his hand. “It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.”

“And have you heard from her?”

“Yeah. She said she was doing okay. First she won some money, then she lost most of it, but she won some more again. And she met somebody.”

“Met somebody?”

“You know. A man.” Benji looked at his empty bowl. “She does that, sometimes. Meets a man. Then she thinks she’s in love.” He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

My mother had been killed in an accident at work when I was a toddler, so I didn’t really know what it would feel like to have a mother who was running around with men in casual relationships. But I could imagine. Especially what it would feel like to a boy who was just starting to understand about sex. And it wouldn’t feel good.

I asked, “How much money did she have?”

Benji shrugged. “Maybe fifty thousand dollars.”

I raised my eyebrows and almost whistled. It could last a good long time in Las Vegas, especially if she were alternating between winning and losing streaks and had any luck at all. “Where’d she get fifty thousand dollars from?”

“From Aaron’s dad.”

“Say again?”

“Aaron’s dad. She was married to him once. Before she met my dad.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Why would an ex-husband give her fifty thousand dollars?”

“He didn’t exactly give it to her. He died.”

“And she inherited it? Was she still married to him?”

“No. They got divorced years ago. Before she married my dad. But she was on a life insurance policy, and I guess he never took her name off it, ’cause she got a check for it.”

That was interesting. “Did he have a new wife?”

“Yeah. Suzanne. And I think she was pretty pissed.”

Seemed to me she had a right to be. “And did Suzanne get anything?”

“I dunno. But there should have been a lot of money. He had a business he sold about two years ago.”

“Did Aaron get any money?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know much about it. He had two older kids, too. A different mother. And he was married to Suzanne, but I don’t think they had any kids together. Mom said he’d promised he’d make sure Aaron was taken care of.”

That might have been why the insurance policy was still in her name. If so, she was squandering Aaron’s inheritance in Las Vegas.

Of course, Aaron could squander it on his own, and probably would. He’d blow through whatever he got and have nothing to show for it but a bigger addiction problem. He worked the same place I did, the same shift, but he often didn’t show up, and he tried to buy drugs from anyone he thought might have them. Including me. The only reasonable explanation for why he still had a job there was that he was a police informant and the company had been asked to leave him on the job for now. A truck terminal, with long haul truckers in and out all the time, could provide a good cover for transporting drugs. Since steel and products made from it were heavy, a maximum weight load left lots of room to tuck something in with the load.

“Aaron says he’s supposed to get a lot of money,” Benji said. “When the estate get settled.”

Maybe the insurance payout hadn’t been Aaron’s share. “When’s the estate gonna get settled?” I asked.

Benji shrugged. “Not for a while, I guess. Mom’s money came from an insurance company, separate, so she got it right away. And Suzanne said it’d be a cold day in hell before she let Aaron have any of it, even if she’s got to go to court.”

If the will said Aaron got some of the money, I didn’t know that she’d have any choice, but she could probably mess things up and cause delays. If the courts handling estates were anything like the criminal courts I’d seen, the only ones who’d come out ahead were the lawyers.

This line of conversation wasn’t getting us anywhere. “Where do you think Aaron went when he left you?”

Benji stared blankly, then said, “I thought maybe he’d come over here.”

“Any idea how long ago it was he left you in the truck?”

“Not really. It was dark. Pretty late. He said just wait for him. I tried to sleep. But after I snorted that crystal ice stuff, I wasn’t sleepy.”

That wasn’t surprising. Meth was a stimulant. I asked, “Where’s the truck now?”

Stirring uneasily, Benji looked away from me and didn’t answer.

Alarm bells went off in my head. “Did something happen to the truck?”

“Kind of.”

“What do you mean ‘kind of’?”

“Well, Aaron left it on the street by the park down by the railroad tracks. By the underpass. You know it?”

I did. The railroad ran along with the river and looped through town, left over from a time when every factory had an active siding. Now only a few trains came through. Underpasses carried street traffic under the main line, but in the industrial section of town, street level sidings branched off all over.

In the late afternoon and evening, the park Benji was talking about was an open air drug market. And lots of hookers met their johns there. For a cheap quickie, they’d take the johns into the underpass.

It was not a good place to leave a kid. Or a truck, for that matter.

But then if Aaron—or his mother—had any concern at all about what was good for a kid, Benji wouldn’t be in this predicament now.

“Is the truck still where he left it?” I asked.

“Not really.”

I sighed. Benji was a master at not stating things directly. “What’s not really?”

He started to wipe his nose on his sleeve, but reached for the roll of toilet paper instead. “Well, Aaron took the key. But I knew he had another one in the glove compartment. So when I got tired of waiting, I found it and started the truck up. At first, I was just gonna turn on the heater for a little while.”

“And?”

“And then I thought maybe he wasn’t coming back any time soon, and maybe I could drive it and go home. You know. Driving doesn’t look all that hard. You just turn the key to start the engine, put it in gear, press down on the accelerator, and steer. Step on the brake when you want to stop.”

I sized him up. He was probably tall enough to reach the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time. “So you tried to drive it?”

“Yep. I figured I could go home.”

He wasn’t home. “But what happened?” I asked.

He sniffed. “I got it started okay. And got out into the middle of the street. But when I tried to drive it across the railroad tracks, the front wheels got caught and turned sideways. I couldn’t get it unstuck.”

“So where is it now?”

Benji shrugged. “I guess still stuck in the railroad tracks.”

I looked at him in alarm. “You mean, like the truck is still on the tracks?”

“Kind of.”

“There’s no ‘kind of’ for that. It’s either on the tracks or not. Which is it?”

“Still on the tracks.”

That line wasn’t used that much anymore. No passenger service. But it did run past Quality Steel Fabrications where I worked and a few other industrial sites. And sometimes we’d get a shipment of steel or drums of chemicals by rail. The other places might get shipments, too. That meant a train could come by at any time. It wouldn’t be moving fast, but one characteristic of trains is that even if it was moving slowly and the engineer saw something on the tracks, it took forever to stop.

I got up and grabbed my jacket. “See if your pants are dry enough to wear. If they are, take off those too-big ones and put them on. And get your shoes.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to go see if we can get Aaron’s truck off the tracks. Before a train comes along.”

Benji’s eyes opened wide. “A train?”

“Yeah. What do you think runs on those tracks?”

“I didn’t think trains came here anymore.”

“Well, there’s not a lot of them. But there are a few. And all it would take is one to both crush the truck and maybe hurt some people on the train. You still got the key?”

He finished zipping his pants and tied his shoes. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key.

A scattering of rain drops splattered on the sidewalk as we hurried toward the park. It was too early for either the dealers or the hookers to be looking for business yet. Two lone figures sat on benches on opposite sides of the park, both nodding in time to their own thoughts. Or, I reminded myself, music coming through earbuds so small, they weren’t visible to passersby. People had things like that now. Neither one of them paid any attention to us.

We rounded a corner, and there it was—Aaron’s blue pickup. Its front wheels were wedged at an odd angle between the crossties and the asphalt at the edge of the railroad bed. I bent down and studied them. If I backed up slowly and turned them, I might be able to get enough room to straighten them out enough to ease the truck off the tracks. Or drive forward over them.

I didn’t really have a lot of experience driving. I’d been locked up before I’d ever had a chance to get a driver’s license, and it didn’t look like I’d have the opportunity to get one for a while now. Or the money—licenses weren’t free. Or the money to buy a vehicle. So that project was on a back burner for now.

But this wouldn’t be driving, really. Just easing the truck off the tracks and parking it on the street beyond.

I climbed into the driver’s seat, and Benji got in the other side. I started the engine. Despite never having a license, I’d driven home a few times when my brothers had been too wasted to get us there. They’d had an old car for a while. I’d been stopped a few times and gotten traffic tickets, mostly for driving without a license, but it had never been in the nicer cars they came up with sometimes, which I now realized were probably stolen.

Turning the wheels, I backed up a bit. Sure enough, the wheels felt like they were coming free. I straightened them out, switched gears, and gently pressed on the accelerator. The truck didn’t move at first, but then it lurched forward at an angle across the tracks. I reversed again and felt the wheels bump up over the asphalt edge. Pulling carefully onto the street, I headed for a long expanse of curb up the hill, away from the underpass, where I wouldn’t have to worry about maneuvering into a tight parking space. The truck glided to the side of the street and bumped the curb. I relaxed and leaned back.

A flashing blue light swept over the truck’s cab.

I looked in the rearview mirror.

Cops.

Chapter 2

M
y throat went dry, and all my muscles tightened, freezing my hands on the steering wheel.

At least that left them in plain sight, which was a good thing.

Panic swelled in my throat. I tried to choke it down and think.

Benji turned around and scrambled to his knees to look out the back window. “There’s two of them,” he said. “A man and a woman. They got something in their hands.”

“Guns?” I asked.

“Nope. Looks more like flashlights.”

Not a whole lot better. The flashlights were heavy and would do a good job clunking someone over the head. In this case, that someone would be me.

The cops approached, one on each side of the truck.

“Roll down the window and shut off the engine,” the male cop on my side said.

First, I had to shift the truck out of drive. I pried my right hand off the wheel, grabbed the gear lever, and put it in park. With the other hand, I fumbled with the buttons on the door, trying to open the window. With a loud “click,” the doors locked.

The cop’s hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight went down to his holster.

Stabbing frantically at the buttons, I managed to get the window next to Benji rolled down. Finally, the window next to me. Fumbling with the ignition, I turned the key the wrong way in the ignition, making the starter whine, then the other way, shutting off the engine. I pulled the key out and laid it on the dashboard. And put my hands back on the steering wheel.

The cop raised his eyebrows and waited to see what I would do or say. I just sat there, staring straight ahead.

Flicking on the light and bringing it up to the window, he shined the beam around the inside of the cab. His fingers gripped the flared front of the heavy flashlight from below, positioned so he could pivot it effectively. I sat still, knowing he could just flip it up across my face with a quick motion of his wrist.

“Anything in here I should know about?” he asked.

Heaven only knew what drugs or paraphernalia Aaron had left lying around. Or even worse, what weapons. “Not that I’m aware of, sir.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me. And why should he? “Not that you’re aware of? If you’re driving a vehicle, you’re in control of it. And you’re responsible for anything that’s in it. You know that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So let me ask again. Anything I should know about? Guns, knives, rocket propelled grenades, bombs?”

I licked my dry lips. “I sure hope not.”

“Drugs?”

“No.” What else could I say?

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t have a license.”

“Revoked?”

“No, sir. I never had one.”

“At your age? Got any ID on you?”

Fortunately I had my wallet, which held my work ID. And my old prison ID tucked in the back. I wasn’t going to pull that out if I could help it.

“I have to reach into my pocket to get my wallet,” I told him. I didn’t want him to think I might be going for a weapon.

“Go ahead.”

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the wallet and handed it over to him.

He held onto it, but didn’t open it.

The light drizzle picked up. Drops of moisture puddled on his hat.

“Now.” He turned back to me. “I don’t suppose you have any registration for the vehicle?”

I glanced at Benji. “Does Aaron keep the registration and insurance and stuff in the glove compartment?”

Shrugging, he said, “I dunno.” He started to reach over to open the door.

“Don’t touch it!” I told him. “Just sit still.”

His hand sprang back, and he looked at me, his eyes clouded.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, careful to keep my hands motionless. “Might be in the glove compartment,” I said to the cop. Along with who knows what else. I didn’t say that part.

“Richards?” he said to the female cop, who was standing next to the open window by Benji. “You wanna take a peak in the glove compartment?”

“Okay, Cunningham.” She reached in and tried to open it. The door stuck.

I hoped it wasn’t locked. And that the registration would be right on top.

“Who owns the truck?” the cop asked.

“Guy by the name of Aaron,” I said.

“No last name?”

“No. Well, yeah. But I don’t remember what it is.”

“Does he know you’re driving his truck?”

“No, sir.”

“And how do you know this Aaron?”

“We work together. At Quality Steel Fabrications.”

“And why aren’t you at work now?”

“We work the night shift. Midnight to eight.”

“Uh-huh. And where is this Aaron person now?”

“I dunno. He wasn’t at work last night.”

I looked over at Officer Richards. She had managed to get the glove compartment door open and was rummaging around. I expected something illegal to fall out any minute. A joint, a little baggie of white powder, a bottle of pills, a Saturday night special, a stick of dynamite. Nothing would surprise me.

But nothing fell out. She came up with a rectangle of cardstock. “Here it is.”

“What does it say?” Officer Cunningham asked.

“The truck’s registered to Gina Michaels.” She looked at me. “Who’s Gina Michaels?”

I shrugged and glanced at Benji again.

“That’s my mom,” he said.

Richards said, “Your mom? Does your mom know this guy has her truck?”

“No. She’s in Las Vegas.”

“And aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“I guess. But I didn’t go home last night. So I couldn’t get the school bus.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because my brother was supposed to be taking care of me, but he left me in the truck and didn’t come back.” Benji let out a sob.

The cop nodded toward me. “This isn’t your brother?”

“No. That’s Jesse. He’s a friend of my brother.”

While I wasn’t pleased to be characterized as a friend of Aaron’s, at least he didn’t say, “My brother’s dealer” or something like that.

“And your brother is who?”

“Aaron Stenski.”

Cunningham glanced at me. “This the Aaron you told me owns the truck?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t realize it wasn’t registered to him.”

Looking thoughtful, he said, “So if this Gina Michaels is owner of the truck, and she’s in Las Vegas and doesn’t know you have it, would it be safe to say it’s stolen?”

Swallowing hard, I said, “No, sir.”

He shook his head. “Let me get this straight. Who, again, is this Gina Michaels?”

I shrugged.

“That’s my mom,” Benji repeated. “But it’s Aaron’s truck. She never drives it.”

Cunningham peered at me. “Can you tell me why you, who don’t have a license, are driving a truck that belongs to a lady who’s in Las Vegas? And why you have her son, a minor who should be in school, in the truck with you?”

He was never going to believe me, but I had to try. “The truck was stuck on the railroad tracks. I wasn’t really driving. I just moved it. And I was going to park it here.”

“And how did it end up ‘stuck’ on the railroad tracks?”

“That was my fault,” Benji said. “I thought maybe I could drive it home. But the wheels turned in by the track, and it wouldn’t move.”

Cunningham cast a knowing look at his partner, who nodded back at him. I wondered if it was a report of the truck on the tracks that brought them out here.

“Here,” he said. He tossed my wallet over the hood of the truck. “Why don’t you run the ID?”

Richards snatched it out of the air and went to the patrol car.

Gloomily, I thought about what was going to pop up when she punched in my name. Convicted felon for sure. Violent convicted felon. Which would turn this into a felony traffic stop.

We waited.

“Cunningham!” Richards had climbed out of the patrol car again and was striding toward us, her hand on the butt of her service gun. The holster flap was unsnapped.

“What?” the other cop said.

“Get that kid out of the truck and step back. I got backup coming.”

“What?”

“The driver. I ran him. He’s right, he doesn’t have a license. But he does have quite a record, and he comes up ‘armed and dangerous.’”

Of course I would.

Cunningham backed up away from the truck. Both cops now had their guns in their hands. He said, “Let the kid out.”

My chest tight, I said to Benji, “Get out of the truck slowly and go back to the patrol car. Do what they tell you to do.”

“What are you gonna do?” he asked me, not moving.

Probably go to jail, I thought. But all I said was, “Just sit here until they tell me to do something else. You’d be smart to always do what the police tell you to.”

“The kid’s getting out of the truck,” I called out the window. My knuckles were white from the grip I had on the steering wheel. I knew better than to move my hands without an order from them.

Benji gave me one last puzzled look and opened the door. He slid out and slammed the door behind him. I didn’t turn around to watch, but I kept an eye on him in the rearview mirror. He walked back to the patrol car. Richards put him in the back seat. The other cop backed farther away from the truck.

The scream of sirens filled the air. Another patrol car skidded around the corner and almost hit the truck, but managed to stop in time.

Yet another one raced toward us from the other side of the railroad tracks. He was coming too fast, I thought. He should slow down before he actually hit the tracks.

He didn’t. The car bounced in the air and bottomed out with a sickening thud. Couldn’t be good for the oil pan. Or his nerves.

Great. They were all going to be pissed off, and they were going to blame me. There was nothing I could do about any of it.

Or much I could do about anything else, either. I sat there trying not to move, but still breathe.

The truck was surrounded by a sea of blue uniforms, all of them keeping their distance. Maybe there were only six or so, but it sure felt like a lot more. Most of them had their guns drawn and pointing at me.

One of them had a bullhorn. “Driver.”

That was me. No point trying to explain I hadn’t really been driving.

“Throw the keys out the window.”

I scraped it off the dashboard and tossed it out gently. I didn’t want it to look like I was trying to throw them at anybody. It hit the asphalt with a metallic clink.

“Reach out the window and open the truck door. From the outside.”

I reached through the open window and felt around for the door handle. I finally found it and fumbled with it, trying to figure out how to make it open.

“Do it. Now.”

Couldn’t they see I was trying?

Apparently not.

At last, I gripped the handle the right way, squeezed it with my awkward fingers, and the door mechanism clicked. I shoved the door open with my knee and waited for further instructions.

“Get out of the cab. Face away from my voice. Put your hands on your head and interlace your fingers.”

Hard to do all at once. I eased off the seat, planted my feet on the ground, turned toward the truck, and put my hands on the back of my head, fingers interlaced.

Then I braced myself for what I was afraid was coming.

Sure enough, I was tackled and thrown to the ground face down. Since I’d been anticipating it, I was able to fall away from the truck and avoid crashing my head into the open door. But my nose and chin had hit the pavement pretty hard. And I bit my tongue.

Someone slammed a knee down on my neck, and my legs were pinned to the ground. My hands were pulled roughly behind my back. I felt the familiar clamp of too-tight handcuffs on my wrists. I tried to relax my muscles and let them be manipulated, but they wouldn’t loosen up. Something warm and wet mingled with the damp gravel around my face. I stuck the tip of my tongue out and tasted it. Blood.

Strong hands encased in plastic gloves hauled me to my feet. Someone frisked me, feeling my pockets, under my jacket, between my legs. All they found was my keychain. They already had my wallet.

I blinked, trying to get the dirt out of my eyes. Everything was blurry.

“Should we put him in a car?” someone asked.

I couldn’t see well enough to know who was talking. Not that it mattered.

“Here comes the sergeant,” someone else answered. “Let’s ask him what he wants to do.”

I could feel my tongue, swollen and sticky from blood. I leaned my head forward so the blood would drip down my chin instead of filling my mouth. I knew how sick swallowing blood could make a person.

My arms would have bruises where I was being held. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a new pair of boots approaching.

“What do we have here?” the person attached to the boots asked.

I kept my gaze on the ground and couldn’t see who was talking. “Stolen truck, Sarge. Driven by a felon on parole. He don’t have no license.”

“When was it stolen?”

No one answered.

“You had to have run it. Does it come back stolen?” the sergeant asked.

“Well, no.”

“Okay. So maybe it’s stolen, maybe it’s not. Who’s it registered to?”

“This lady, Gina Michaels. But she’s in Las Vegas.”

“How do we know she’s in Las Vegas?”

“Her son told us.”

The sergeant sighed. “If this is her son, the truck’s probably not stolen. She might have told him he could drive it.”

Cunningham pointed toward the patrol car where they’d put Benji. “No. Her son’s in the back of that car.”

“Bring him over here.”

Richards brought Benji over. He was sobbing.

The sergeant looked at him in dismay. “A kid. Is he hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” the woman said and turned to Benji. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he choked out between sobs.

“Then why are you crying?” the sergeant asked.

“I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That you’re gonna do something to me.”

The sergeant looked at Richards. “Like what?”

“Something to hurt me.”

“Why would we want to do something to hurt you?”

“I dunno.” His shoulders shook.

The sergeant looked helplessly toward Richards. “Then why would you think that?” he asked.

“Look at what you did to Jesse,” he said. “You hurt him. He’s bleeding.”

The sergeant lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “This man—Jesse—we didn’t really mean to hurt him. Just restrain him. He’s a dangerous criminal.”

Benji sobbed again. “He was helping me.”

The light rain picked up, sweeping across the cracked asphalt.

One of the other cops came up, something in his hands. “Here,” he said to Benji. “You want a teddy bear? I got some in my trunk. We give them to kids.”