Dennis Tafoya - The Dope Thief

“Shut your mouth.”

“Burt?” Nelson held up his hands.

“What?” Grace made a gesture of throwing something away. But he went to stand by the window.

“He’s got anger management problems?”

“Detective Grace is a good cop.”

“I never heard a cop say another cop was anything else.”

Nelson was still paging through the files. “Harlan Maximuck. Jesus. Is he still alive?”

“Last I heard.”

“Is that story they tell true? About the guy’s head in his trunk?”

“I sure wasn’t going to ask.”

“Vietnamese organized crime figures. You get around.”

He went in the folder, held something up to his eyes. A picture. Turned it to face Ray and there she was. Marletta Hicks, in her cap and gown. He wasn’t prepared and turned his head.

“Pretty girl.”

“Why are you here?” His eyes down, boring holes in the floor.

“Stole a car, smashed it up with the daughter of a state trooper in the passenger seat. Man, here’s another one.” He held up a picture of Ray, much younger with his eyes blackened, his arms in casts. “Off to adult prison that time, the first time. With your arms broken from the accident. That must have been fun. Of course, worse for the Hicks family.”

Grace walked over and stood closer to Ray, and he thought the old man was going to take a swing at him. “You piece of shit. I knew I knew that name. You’re the one killed Stan Hicks’s kid. Jesus.”

“That’s what it says.”

Nelson lifted his head. “You say different.”

“Why would I?”

Grace said, “Oh, what the fuck. If this asshole is going to start lying again I’m going downstairs.” He looked at Ray. “They should have punched your ticket ten years ago, shitbird.” His footsteps moving away were like gunshots in the hall.

Nelson had a smile fixed on his face, waving pages from the file as if inviting him to continue. “You got something to say about all’this’I’m all ears. I never knew a convict who didn’t like to spin a yarn.”

“Okay, just be on your way.” Ray’s stomach cramped, and he gritted his teeth.

Nelson nodded and got up, pulling his card from his pocket. When he laid it on the bed table, Ray looked up, out of breath. “You got the file?”

Nelson held up the pile of papers. “Pretty much everything.”

“Okay.” Ray looked off, then back, breathing like he’d run a mile, spikes driven into him everywhere. “Okay, then.” He grimaced and sucked in air. “You know it all.”

“You got something to say about that?”

“Why would I?”

“Now’s your chance.” The cramp eased and Ray panted, open mouthed.

“No, my chance passed a long time ago. Just ask Stanard Hicks.”

“Marletta’s father? I know Stan Hicks.”

“Yeah?”

“Why would I care about any of this?”

Ray shrugged. “No reason. I mean, you got the file, so you got the story.”

“Raymond, you are a piece of work. Look at you.” He went into the file, came out with the picture again, and laid it on the table. Marletta smiling in her cap and gown, her brown skin glowing. “What ever else is true, Raymond, you’re alive, still. You know, in my religion, they tell me everything happens with some kind of purpose. You’re alive, and this beautiful girl is dead. I don’t know, Ray. I can’t see the purpose in that.” He turned, but Ray grabbed his arm, hard.

Nelson looked at the white hand on his arm and then into Ray’s eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“Not that. Forget all that.”

“What?”

“There’s a kid, down in Falls Township.” Nelson nodded, got out a pen.

ALONE AGAIN, PAIN threading through his limbs and abdomen like hot wires, Ray just stared off into space and drifted. He was back in a car on a hot day in June when he was a kid with his arm around a girl in a bathing suit, he was lying in a black road starred like the night sky with broken glass, he was in prison with his back against a green tile wall and his broken arms held out like clubs, he was in the front yard of his father’s house, watching the moon stab through the clouds and waiting to sleep.

THEY REPAIRED HIS gut, closed the hole from the colostomy, and discharged him quick, Theresa shouting after the clerk who came to tell him about his limited options. With no insurance, no job, no place to go, he found himself at the curb with a metal cane across the arms of his wheelchair, noticing trees across the parking lot starting to show bits of red. Theresa pulled up, and Bart waved from the passenger seat. They got out, and the orderly who had wheeled him to curb helped him into the backseat, where he sighed and fell in on himself like a derelict house. Bart pulled the seat belt across him, and he nodded thanks and let his head loll back. Bart stood back and pursed his lips, looked about to say something, but just nodded his head and closed the door gently.

At home Ray limped to the couch, still not comfortable on the cane, and Bart helped him down. The dog came and sat by his feet and watched him, and he leaned awkwardly down to pat the ancient head. His boots felt huge and stiff on his feet, and he swam in his clothes, gathering the empty expanse of his shirt in his hands. He watched Theresa empty his kit bag out, lining up his pill bottles on the TV while Bart got a pillow from the bedroom and brought it out and put it behind him.

“How’s that, old man?”

“Good.” Ray forced a smile, wished he was alone. “Thanks.” Couldn’t bring himself to call his father by any name and didn’t know where to put his hands.

He wished for a book, a cigarette, a drink. Theresa put on the TV and brought him the remote, a scepter for the new king of the living room. He was afraid they’d sit down, but their work done, they drifted to the kitchen while Ray flipped through the channels with the volume off. He heard the rattle of pans and smelled coffee and something sweet baking. Warm and yeasty smells after the antiseptic tang of the hospital.

He clicked through shows about decorating houses and planning weddings, watched men stumble around pitched decks in a storm, cops standing over a humped sheet, one naked hand open in the street. A broad red plain under a yellow sun, and jackals tearing at a carcass, the dead thing jerking with a simulation of life.

Thirty years and a month. It sounded like a sentence, something he’d been handed by a tough judge in a bad court. Well, he’d served it and what? Was he out and free? Was he marking time and dreaming of tunnels under the wall? He became aware of Theresa standing in the kitchen doorway, watching him. She was smiling.

“What do I do now, Ma?”

She stood and looked ahead, out the picture window at the lawn and the street and the trees and two jets from the base moving together through the darkening sky, a kind of arcing steel pantomime of love. Her eyes were lined and she looked tired, and he felt a pang of guilt. Theresa had buried a husband when she was young, been a knockaround girl who met Bart when she was a dancer and he was stealing heavy equipment and stood by him through arrest and years of jail and tried to raise Ray, an angry kid who became a thief and hadn’t told the plain truth to anyone about anything since he was eighteen.

She said, “How about some coffee?”

He laughed but said, “Sure, Ma.”

She stopped at the doorway to the kitchen. “I know you’re feeling bad, hon. I know. But it’s good to have you home with us.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, Ray.”

LOST WEEKS OF watching television. Sometimes with Bart, sometimes with Theresa. Nature shows. Muscular cats stalking in a rage through long grass. Travel shows, small, neat women walking along brick streets in walled cities in Tuscany, taking dainty bites of mushroom and boar sausage under trees that looked like gauzy green spearheads. Ray got into a rhythm; reading the paper every day, eating little, his stomach cramping and sometimes blood in his shorts at the end of the day.