Thursday's Child (10 page)

Robert gave up. One of these days he was going to get himself into trouble, being such a damned soft touch. “Well, come on,” he said. “I missed supper, too. We'll get something.”

The boy struggled to his feet without saying anything and followed Robert out of the alley. They jaywalked across Sunset to a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. It wasn't until they were inside under the glare of the fluorescent lights that Robert realized just how bloody the kid was. A passing waitress looked at them, paused, and made a face before moving on.

Robert spotted the men's-room sign in the back of the place. “This way,” he said, and again the boy followed silently. Everybody in the place—losers most of them, of course, or why would they be here?—watched their journey curiously, but nobody said anything.

One man was in the john, standing by the sink. He was using a dripping-wet paper towel on a large mustard stain that decorated the front of his white shirt that badly needed laundering anyway. After a quick glance at the blood and then at Robert's face, he dropped the paper towel to the floor and scurried out without even taking the time to dry his hands.

Robert glumly surveyed the sight of the boy standing in front of him. “Jesus Christ, they did a real job on you.”

“Yeah. The bastards.”

“Well, you're starting to get mad. That means you'll be okay.” Robert took a couple of paper towels, soaked them in cold water, and took an ineffectual swipe at the bloodied face.

His patient flinched away.

Robert sighed. “You have a name, do you?”

After a slight hesitation, the kid blinked. “Beau,” he said.

“Okay, Beau, stand still, willya?” He tried again, remembering what the nurses had taught him about washing Andy. This time, Beau stood still and most of the blood was washed away. Robert took a step back. “That's better,” he said. “But that shirt is a write-off.”

Beau shrugged. “Yeah, well, it's all I've got. They took my stuff, remember.”

“I remember.”

After a moment, Robert sighed again and took off his jacket. When Beau saw the gun hanging there, his eyes widened and his face lost some color, but he didn't say anything. “Don't worry about it,” was Robert's only comment. He removed the holster, then unbuttoned the pale-green sport shirt and took it off. Finally, he pulled the clean white T-shirt over his head. “Here. Take that off and wear this instead.”

Beau made the change quickly, shoving the ruined shirt into the wastebasket. There wasn't anything that could be done about the jeans, but they didn't show the blood so much anyway. “Thanks,” he said.

“Yeah, sure.” Robert handed him his comb and watched as Beau used it.

Finally they were both ready to leave the bathroom. Nobody paid them much attention when they walked out and found a booth. Even a cop, newly arrived at the counter, only glanced at them before returning to his newspaper. The waitress, a weary-faced Chicana, finally came over. “You wanna see menus?”

“No,” Robert replied. “Just bring us a couple cheeseburgers, double fries, and some Cokes.” Then he looked at Beau. “That okay by you?” he asked belatedly.

Beau nodded.

The waitress dragged herself in the direction of the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Beau said.

Robert shrugged.

“Not just for the food. For what you did in the alley.”

“The odds sucked, that's all.” He didn't want anybody thinking he made a habit of running around doing good deeds.

“I don't even know your name.”

“Robert,” he said.

Their Cokes were delivered.

Robert unwrapped a plastic straw and pushed it into the glass. “What the hell were you doing out there in the middle of the night?”

Beau was stirring his drink. “What's anybody doing anywhere? I was just there. You were there, too. Why?”

“None of your damned business.”

Beau gave a faint smile, then grimaced as his split lip objected. “Sorry.” He took a packet of saltines from the plastic basket on the table and slowly turned the crackers into crumbs. “The thing is, I didn't have any place to go. I thought that maybe the alley would be a good place to sleep.”

Robert looked at him in disbelief. “You haven't been on the street very long, I guess.”

“Couple days.”

“Well, you'll learn.”

“I guess.” He didn't sound very happy at the prospect.

The food arrived and Beau, after drenching his fries in a quart or so of ketchup, started to eat with enthusiasm. Robert chewed more slowly. A couple of hookers came in and took stools at the counter. He checked them out, just in case Marnie Dowd had decided to drop in for a bite between tricks. Both these women were much too young to be her. Marnie, judging by the mug shot, was on the downside of her good years. It must be getting harder every night to earn a buck. Why, after all, would anybody pay to fuck a wrinkled middle-aged broad when that was probably just what he had at home?

When you looked at it that way, maybe he should just kill Marnie; it would probably be a kindness. But he would avoid that if he could. No sense complicating things, right? If she didn't want to cooperate, he'd decide what to do then.

Beau picked up a kosher dill that had seen better days and took a bite. “You a cop?” he asked between chews.

Robert shook his head.

“I only thought … because of the gun.” He whispered the last word.

No, I'm not a cop.

“Well, that's fine with me, you know? I don't think much of cops, actually. Back home, they're just nothing but a bunch of government assassins.”

Robert finished his hamburger. “You must be from Chicago,” he said with a smirk.

“No.” Beau was frowning. “I don't like guns much either. They scare me, you know?”

“They're supposed to scare you. Everybody should be scared of them.”

“Are you?”

Robert shrugged. “In the wrong hands, yeah.” Meaning, of course, anybody's hands but his. He leaned across the table and spoke quietly. “Make me happy, buddy, and forget you ever saw the damned gun, okay?”

“Sure, Robert.”

“You have enough to eat?” Robert asked as he checked the waitress's addition.

“Plenty. Thanks again.”

“Sure, sure. No problem. I was hungry anyway.” That made it seem less like a nice thing to do. Robert took an extra twenty from his wallet and put it on Beau's side of the table. “Here. I have to go.”

Beau picked up the bill and rolled it in his palm.

“So long.” Robert got up and walked to the cashier. As he stood waiting for his change, he looked back toward the booth. Beau was still sitting there. “Fuck it,” Robert muttered.

“What?” the startled cashier said.

He ignored her and walked out. On the sidewalk, he paused and stared back into the diner. Beau was looking at him. Robert didn't know why he cared what happened to this boy, but he realized that if he just walked away now, he'd feel guilty later. It might be easier in the long run just to help the kid out a little. He stepped back inside and raised a hand to gesture toward the booth.

Beau jumped up immediately, starting to smile as he approached. “Yeah, Robert?”

“Come with me.”

They left the coffee shop. The paper-reading cop was standing on the corner, talking to another patrolman. Robert barely glanced at them.

“Hey, where we going?” Beau asked, hurrying to keep up.

“Just for tonight, you can crash at my place. Just for tonight, understand?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Robert glanced sidewise at him, shaking his head. This boy was a real dope. Sleeping in alleys. Talking to strangers. Now going home with somebody he didn't know. Beau was just lucky that it was
him
he'd run into and not some pervert.

They reached the car and got in. Robert knew that he was going to regret this, probably by the time they got to the house. He wasn't Mother Fucking Teresa, after all, so why the hell should he get involved in the problems of some idiot street kid?

But he couldn't help remembering, with a sharp pang of hurt, that not so long ago, he and Andy had been a couple of homeless brats, bouncing around the system. More than once, it had been the two of them getting beaten up by the punks of the world. So maybe it was for Andy he was doing this. Instead of giving a freaking donation to the Cancer Society or something, he'd give this kid a little help.

It was no big deal. He'd let Beau crash for the night. No big deal.

9

1

The black woman led him through a long hall back to the kitchen. She was in the middle of baking the weekly supply of pastry which, she said, Mr. Epstein favored for his breakfast. The room smelled strongly of cinnamon and other good things.

The cook was a plump, cheerful-looking woman wrapped in a frilly pink apron. She insisted that Gar should call her Ruth. “Mr. Epstein, he just dotes on my tea cakes,” she said, returning to a large bowl of dough, which she started to knead vigorously.

Gar was perched on a wooden stool, balancing the cup of coffee she had served him. “What about Beau?” he asked. “Does he like the tea cakes, too?”

She smiled. “You ever see a teenage boy who didn't inhale every bit of food put in front of him?” She patted the dough. “Beau eats everything.”

The coffee was very good. Epstein certainly was well taken care of, both at work and at home. No wonder he'd lived so long. “What is Beau like?”

Ruth didn't take the question lightly. She poked and punched at the dough and thought about it for several moments. “Beau is a good boy,” she said finally. “Real polite, in a sort of old-fashioned way. His poor folks did a nice job of bringing him up, even if they did live down there in the jungle.”

“There seems to be a ‘but' coming up here pretty soon,” Gar said.

“Well.” She paused, frowning. “Beau hasn't been happy here. I know he misses his momma and papa, but there's more to it than that. He's like a sad little duck out of water. This is a real different kind of life from what he was used to.”

“And how about the relationship between Beau and his grandfather?”

Again she thought. “Mr. Epstein is happy to have the boy here,” she said, “although he isn't one to show his emotions much. Which is too bad, because I think what Beau needs and what he wants is for somebody to grab him in a big hug and let him know he's cared about.” She smiled a little. “Course, I guess you could say the same thing about everybody, right?”

He nodded. “But you don't think Beau is liable to get that from his grandfather?”

She sighed deeply. “Mr. Epstein loves the boy, I know that. But he's a proud man. Stubborn and set in his ways. I never met Jonathan, his son, but I do know that Mr. Epstein was very hurt by the way it went between them.” She hesitated, loyalty to her employer seeming to war with her desire to help him find Beau. That desire to help won out. “The sad thing is, he can't see that maybe he was to blame some, too. Far as Mr. Epstein can see, he didn't do anything wrong with the way he raised up Jonathan.”

“So he's doing the same thing with Beau?”

“Pretty much, I think, yessir.” She began to roll the dough. “Mr. Epstein is a wonderful man in so many ways. He gives a whole lot of money to good causes. But he is also a man who has a lot of power. Men like that sometimes can't see that the power it takes to be rich and important outside doesn't work when they try to act the same way at home.” She slapped the dough. “And Mr. Epstein, he was thinking that this boy would be like having his son back. You can't make one child take the place of another.”

“No,” Gar agreed. “You can't.” Even if they'd had six kids, it wouldn't have made the pain any less when one vanished.

Ruth glanced at him. “One more thing about Beau.”

“What's that?”

“He is a lot like some innocent little lamb. Smart like anything when it comes to school classes, but real ignorant about the world. He seems a whole lot younger than he is sometimes.”

Gar digested this. “That's too bad,” he said.

Ruth nodded. “If he's out there in this city,” she murmured, “being an innocent child is no good.”

He couldn't argue with that.

Derek Thorn must have spent hours each day polishing the brass buttons on his trim blue blazer. Each and every button gleamed like a miniature golden sun. And no doubt whatever time he had left from that chore was spent having his steel-gray hair styled. There was no denying that the headmaster of Paynor Academy was an impressive-looking man.

Gar felt a little guilty that his visit was serving to ruffle that magnificent facade, at least temporarily. It wasn't altogether clear whether Thorn was more concerned over the fact that one of his students was missing or over what that fact might mean to the reputation of his school. The only saving grace seemed to be that Beau Epstein had vanished after school was officially out for the summer. That might help keep Paynor blameless. Keeping Paynor's image clean—which really meant keeping Derek Thorn clean—was clearly the top priority here.

Gar's biggest concern at the moment was how to get comfortable in the damned plastic chair he'd been waved into. Even though it was made of plastic, that didn't mean the chair was a Kmart Blue Light Special or anything like that. The molded black poly-whatever was actually a very trendy item. As a work of art, it was probably okay. As a piece of furniture for actually sitting in, it was a disaster. After struggling in it for several moments, Gar gave up and just resigned himself to being uncomfortable. He rested the cane across his knees and hoped that he'd be able to get up when the time came.

Thorn was waiting for him to speak.

“I was surprised to find you here when I called,” Gar said. “Don't you get the summer off?”