Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

The slider to Ronnie’s basement was open a foot or so, off the track, askew. Ronnie had probably gone back to bed, was probably still asleep, maybe even with the girl. Was it a school day? Freedy realized he didn’t know what day it was. Cool, in a way. Did the wolf keep track of the goddamn days, or the tiger?

Freedy went in, saw the weights lying around, saw someone’s cut-off sweatshirt-his Planet Hollywood sweatshirt, found by some pool in the Valley, how the hell did that get here? — on the bench press, heard water dripping. He went upstairs to the kitchen.

All quiet, the fridge still humming away, the tub of KFC on the table. Freedy couldn’t remember taking it out of the fridge, but maybe he had. He helped himself to another drumstick, then noticed the laptop, still lying open and unblinking on the floor. Drumstick in hand, he went down the hall to Ronnie’s bedroom. Door closed. He opened it, went in.

Ronnie was back in bed all right, and alone. Eyes closed, maybe sleeping. Oh yeah-and his head was all wrapped in bandages. Freedy moved to the side of the bed. “Ronnie?” he said, swallowed what he was chewing, and said it again, more clearly, “Ronnie?”

No response, like he was in a… coma, or something. Impossible. Not even Ronnie. Freedy was thinking about giving him a little pat, a little poke, a little shake, when he heard footsteps in the hall; very light footsteps, but would anyone be surprised to learn that Freedy’s hearing was second to none? That was why he was already turned toward the door, readying some high-school joke for the Cheryl Ann substitute, when the footstepper walked in.

But not the girl: Saul Medeiros, Uncle Saul, gnawing on a drumstick, just like him. Saul paused, paused in midchew, and said something, possibly not clear because the drumstick got in the way. It sounded like, “Boys.”

Boys will be boys. Must be what he means, thought Freedy, and he started to relax. The laptop incident-no more than a boys-will-be-boys thing to Uncle Saul. Saul knew what Ronnie was all about; he remembered how Saul had smiled his nicotine-colored smile when Freedy said Ronnie was a pussy. Besides, he and Saul had developed a good working relationship. Not that they’d reached the mentor stage yet, but Two guys appeared behind Uncle Saul.

“Look who’s here, boys,” said Saul.

The two boys were big boys, one about Freedy’s size, the other a lot bigger. Both wore black satin jackets with Saul’s Collision in gold letters and crossed bowling pins on the front, plus gold crests reading Runners-Up ’99. Freedy wanted one.

“This here’s Freedy, boys,” said Saul Medeiros. “Numbnut I was tellin’ you about. Don’t unnerstan’ the… what’m I tryna say? The importance of business ethics.”

The boys didn’t look happy to hear it.

“How can you say that, Saul?” said Freedy.

“Mr. Medeiros,” said Saul.

“How can you say that?” said Freedy, compromising by dropping the Saul; at the same time glancing at the window, hoping to gauge the distance to the ground. Surprisingly far from upstairs at Ronnie’s: that would be the fucking slope to the river, why Ronnie had that basement with the weights, why they were friends.

“How can I say what?”

“Ethics. When you’re the one that called the cops.”

Saul and his two boys all wrinkled their foreheads. “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Saul.

“The statie over at my place right now is what I’m talking about.”

“Nothin’ to do with me,” said Saul. “Never called a cop in my life, never will, except for setting up a payment or some other legitimate business purpose.” The boys nodded their heads. “So don’t question my ethics. You’re the one broke the laptop agreement.”

“The laptop agreement?”

“You forgot?” said Saul. “Forgot we talked about laptops, you and me? Then all of a sudden-no laptops. Okay. I’m reasonable. If there’s no laptops, there’s no laptops. Supply don’t meet demand. Happens all the time-why you got scalpers. But if it turns out there is laptops all along, is laptops but I’m gettin’ some bullshit story there isn’t laptops, then what’s a reasonable, ethical businessman s’posta do?”

“There were no laptops,” Freedy said.

“What’s that-some hallucination on the kitchen floor?”

The boys got a kick out of that one.

“There’s just the one,” Freedy said, “and it wasn’t for sale.”

“How come is that?”

“I was keeping it.”

“Getting into programming?” said Saul.

The boys liked that too.

“I needed it for research,” Freedy said.

“Research?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in. It’s a family matter.”

Pause. “Family.”

“Right.”

“Family,” said Saul, “is very funny coming from you.”

The boys nodded.

“What’s that mean?” said Freedy.

“Means we now come to the main event, laptops being like the undercard.”

“Lost me,” said Freedy.

“Don’t you worry-I’ll find you,” Saul said. “Refresh your memory-didn’t we talk about family, you and me? Or are you tellin’ me you forgot that too? Not surprisin’, your ma being a hippie cocksucker down at the old Onion. I done some checkin’, unnerstan’ why you might want to forget the importance of family. Forget family legends. Forget Cheryl Ann.”

Family legends? Cheryl Ann? And that wasn’t very nice about his mother. Was this some kind of Portagee shit? These people were stuck in the past, going nowhere, total losers. It pissed Freedy off to be in the same conversation with them. This was America, after all. “Is this some kind of Portagee shit?” he said.

The drumstick fell from Saul’s hand. “I hear you right?”

Freedy put his drumstick tidily in the ashtray by Ronnie’s bed. “I mean Christ almighty, Saul, Mr. Medeiros, whatever. Is that what this is all about? Portagee shit? Were you getting a piece of Cheryl Ann too? Or-” It suddenly hit him. “-or is it the new one, the schoolgirl from Fitchville South?”

Okay, maybe he wanted that last one back. But how did that work? How did you get things back? Besides, it was another one of his amazing insights. He could believe it, Saul and the sophomore, easy. So he said it. You had to be who you are, had to be who you are and make it work for you-right from the infomercials. Nothing wrong there. But jeez, that girl from Fitchville South: how could she do it with an old prick like that, hair on his nose? Freedy found himself smiling at the thought, shaking his head, maybe not the best time for that either.

Ronnie made a little noise in his sleep, coma, whatever it was, a relaxed sound, almost happy.

“Boys,” said Saul, not loud, almost a question.

“Now, Mr. Medeiros?” said the smaller one, Freedy’s size, or maybe a bit bigger, Freedy realized.

Saul stepped aside.

The boys came into Ronnie’s bedroom, reaching inside their satin jackets. They pulled out tire irons. ’Course, you had a wrecking yard, you had tire irons.

Freedy felt jacked right away, like he was full of andro, stoked on meth. Was he? He’d have to think about that later. Right now he had to deal with the boys. Just because you were big, just because you were strong, just because you dug beating the shit out of somebody, just because you weren’t afraid, none of that made you a fuckin’ leg breaker. What made you a fuckin’ leg breaker came from inside, and the boys didn’t have it.

Ronnie’s bedroom wasn’t big. It could scarcely contain Freedy, the boys, Ronnie and his bed. But that was neither here nor there, whatever that might mean. What was here and there was the smaller of the two boys, the one just a bit bigger than Freedy, moving in on him first. No surprise there: you expected the smaller guy to be quicker. He was quick, had that tire iron swinging sideways at Freedy’s head-smart, much harder to block than a high-low-had the tire iron swinging at him quick. But not crow-quick, and even crow-quick might not have been quick enough. Freedy ducked: takes some nerve to just duck, but it works. Didn’t even duck a lot, only the two or three inches necessary. The tire iron actually clipped his ponytail, for a moment floating free of gravity before his ducking head pulled it down.