Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

“Should I be jealous?” Susan said.

“Only if I take my letterman’s jacket out of mothballs.”

“Do you even own a letterman’s jacket?”

“Of course,” I said. “She wants to meet tomorrow.”

“What’s her name?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “She refers to Dillon as her BFF.”

“Maybe someone is trying to set you up.” I heard the shower start to run.

“Of course.” I sipped the beer and listened to Louis sing. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

He stayed fifteen days in Lawrence before two cops in a black van drove him to the Blackburn courthouse. They forced him to change into an orange jumpsuit, shackled his wrists, and led him up a back stairway and into a small courtroom with a tall ceiling. Every word and every move seemed to echo off the wooden walls. He was told to sit down in the front row and shut up. He turned to see his dad standing in the back row. His dad wore a suit. He didn’t even know his dad had a suit.

Up on the bench was the judge, a short, Italian-looking guy with black hair and wearing a black robe. He didn’t seem big or tough. The judge had on a Patriots Super Bowl cap and laughed it up with two bailiffs who wore guns. The judge spoke low, but something he said really set off the two men. They laughed hard.

He looked back to his dad. His dad caught his eye and nodded back.

Maybe he’d fixed the thing. Maybe his dad had called one of his cop pals and all this would go away. What he wanted more than anything was a shower and McDonald’s. He’d had dreams last night about a double cheese and fries.

He looked down the row at the other kids brought in. He didn’t see Tim, which was strange. Tim had been with him at Lawrence and then gone. He figured that they wanted to keep them separate, make sure they couldn’t connect their stories like cops talked about on Law & Order.

The shackles and orange jumpsuit made the boy depressed and humiliated. He wanted his street clothes back.

The judge took off his Pats cap, showing a long strand of black hair plastered to his pale scalp. He nodded to a bailiff, who told everyone to rise. The room was very quiet and hot, smelling of a stale furnace. The judge flipped through some folders, his eyes never looking at all the faces crammed into the courtroom. Not nervous. Just seeming not to care. He wore the kind of glasses that had a purplish tint and would turn full dark in the sun.

The boy hunched his shoulders and looked down at his hands. He waited for his name to be called. He was a big kid, big for his age, but today he felt small.

It was Wednesday, and he’d already missed two weeks of school. He wondered what his friends would say. What his wrestling coach would say. This was senior year, and he couldn’t have something like this in his file. Everything had to be perfect for a scholarship.

He never expected the room to be so crowded and so hot. He grew hungrier. More kids were led inside wearing orange jumpsuits, boys and girls. All of them with bound wrists. Some of the new kids’ names were read before his. He figured it took nearly three hours before his name was called.

He stood, looked back to his dad. But his dad had disappeared.

He looked to the bench and the doorway he’d entered. His dad was gone.

The bailiff pushed him along until he stood before the judge. Judge Scali looked down from on high at the boy. He rubbed his face as he considered the papers in front of him.

“You go to Blackburn?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“Did you come and hear me speak in the fall?” he said. “Or were you skipping school?”

“I heard it,” the boy said. “You came to our auditorium.”

“And what did I say?”

“Stay off drugs?” the boy said. Some kids snickered behind him and Scali shot them a mean glance.

“What else?”

“Stay out of trouble,” the boy said.

“Or what?”

“You didn’t give second chances.”

The judge smiled. His glass lenses a deep purple. “That’s right,” he said. “And so you rode around in a stolen car and then tried to rob an old man?”

“No, sir.”

Scali shook his head. He breathed deeply. He looked to a bailiff and shook his head like the boy made him sick. “Are you telling me the police are lying?”

“No, sir.”

“I know the police in this town,” Scali said. “I never even met you. You’ve been charged with car theft and attempted robbery. Do you understand your charges?”

The boy looked back behind him for his father. He searched each side of the courtroom but couldn’t find him.

“Look at me,” Scali said. “Listen to me.”

The boy nodded.

“I want you to listen good,” Scalia said. “I’m going to give you a break here today.”

The boy felt like he could breathe. He nodded to the judge.

“You may not appreciate it now,” he said. “But in ten years, you’ll remember this day as the one that turned your life around.”

The boy’s mouth was made of cotton. He couldn’t swallow.

“I’m sentencing you to eighteen months at the MCC camp on Fortune Island,” he said.

The boy wanted to speak but the words wouldn’t come. He felt the bailiff’s big hands on his biceps, pulling him away from the bench.

“Next case,” Scali said, already forgetting him.

5

I was back in Blackburn bright and early the next morning. I bought some corn muffins and a regular coffee at Dunkin’ and sat in my Explorer with the engine running and the heat on high. Downriver, the Merrimack’s black water moved slow and sluggish under the thinnest sheen of ice. “By June our brook would run out of song and speed,” I said between bites of muffin.

Not much later, a girl walked in front of my SUV. She was tall and, like many tall teenage girls, slumped in a self-conscious way. She had a longish nose, not much chin, and stick-thin legs. She wore a puffy silver coat, blue jeans, and tall rubber boots. Her hair was a light blond with a black streak blowing across her face. When I got out, I recognized her from the hallway yesterday. I had nearly run over her.

She nodded at me. “You work for Dillon’s mom?”

“I do.”

“And you wanted to find out why that moron arrested him for nothing?”

“That’s the idea.”

We stood in the shadow of the old mill, beside a city park with a snow-covered amphitheater. I asked her if she’d like to sit in my truck where it was warmer. Nothing like a middle-aged man trying to talk a teenager into his car. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I felt like a creeper. All I needed was to start keeping candy in my pocket.

“I’m already late for school.”

“I can drive you.”

“I’m okay,” she said. The girl held a battered purple backpack loose in her hand and hung there for a moment, seeming not to know what to say. She had a dark complexion with black eyes. The blond hair was probably fake but the streak was the original color. She shook a little in the cold wind.

“You fished my card from the trash?” I said.

“That asshole ran off to talk to Waters just as soon as you left.”

“He looked as though he needed the exercise.”

“Last year he broke into my best friend’s locker and found a half-pint of gin,” she said. “They arrested her and I haven’t seen her since. She was sent to some camp for girls. They make them raise vegetables and sing songs.”