Dennis Tafoya - The Dope Thief

“Nice place, Raymond.”

“Ray. Everyone calls me Ray, Detective.” He stuck out his hand.

“Right. Ray.”

Ray pointed down the stacks. “Take a look around. Help yourself to anything catches your eye.”

Nelson scratched his ear, smiled.

Ray said, “If that’s not a problem. Graft or something.”

Nelson pulled out his note pad and gestured at a table and two chairs up against the far wall. “You got a second?”

Ray hesitated half a beat, then pointed to the chair nearest the door. “Sure. You want some coffee?”

Nelson said yes, and Ray went back to the storeroom, returning with two cups. Nelson had wedged his tall frame into the seat, and his notebook was open on the table. But Ray’s eye was drawn by the paper- wrapped bottle that sat next to it. Green glass and a red cap that Nelson unscrewed. He poured a small dollop of the brown liquid into his coffee and held it out to Ray, who wagged his head for a second indecisively before saying sure, what the hell. Nelson sipped at his coffee, and they sat for a minute.

“You’re seeing someone.”

“You been keeping tabs.”

Nelson laughed, holding up his hands to make peace. “No, really. Just saw you in the coffee shop with a woman.”

“Michelle. She’s usually here, but she’s taking a writing class at Bucks.”

Nelson nodded. “Nice. She seems like a nice lady, Ray.” He looked sheepish. “Not doing so hot in that area myself.”

Ray sipped at the coffee, made a face. “Forgot how bitter it is.”

“Only at first.” They sat in silence, Nelson tapping his pen on his cup.

“I gotta ask.”

“Why am I here?”

“Well, yeah. Is it about the kid in the house in Falls Township?”

Nelson shook his head. “No, but thanks for that. They got the kid out.”

“Good. I saw the news.”

“They took two bodies out of the yard. Young girls who disappeared. At least we can tell the families something.”

“That’s good, I guess. And you got the kid out?”

“Yeah, into family services. I didn’t think you’d want your name in it.”

“No.”

“But that’s not why I came.”

Ray raised his eyebrows. “Okay.”

“I’ve been asking around. About what happened the year you went upstate.” Ray stopped smiling, and waited. “I talked to Perry March’s mother.”

“His mother?”

“He’s dead.” Ray shook his head. Nelson tapped the notebook. “Overdose, two years ago. She told me some interesting things.”

“Yeah?”

“She said Perry would get high and talk about Stan Hicks and you and the car. She said her son was afraid of Stan and that Perry told her he lied about you taking the car because he was jammed up on a possession thing.” Ray put his coffee cup down and looked at his hands. “I looked at the records from the accident. And I looked at the medical records from the County Youth Authority the night you got your arms broken.”

Ray rubbed his arms then, an old reflex. Feeling the thickened bones that ached when it was cold.

Nelson said, “I talked to Stan Hicks.”

Ray looked up now. “How did that go?”

“He told me you’d been there. He told me everything.”

“I guess he’s ready to tell it.”

“He laid it all out. How he pressured Perry March with the possession beef and got him to say you stole his car. The guy who hit you and Marletta? The guy who was killed? He was a drunk. Blood alcohol well over the line. Your blood screen was clean. Stan pressured the DA, made her life hell until she made you a priority. Then he took you out of County in the middle of the night and broke your arms with something, I can’t figure out what. You went to prison with busted arms at seventeen. Stayed for two years for something you didn’t do.”

Ray was quiet. “The jack from his car. He said. It was dark. He told the Youth Authority I ran away from him in the dark and fell off a loading dock. I said, sure, what ever. I didn’t care.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

“Do?”

“About Stan Hicks. What do you want to do?”

Ray shook his head, surprised. “Nothing.” He picked up the coffee again. “I really forgot. It does kind of grow on you.”

“You might be able to press charges, I don’t know. Maybe sue, collect some money.”

“No, I’m not doing that.” Ray looked into the cup.

Nelson looked at him and rocked a little in his chair. “Okay, so…”

“You never knew her?”

“Marletta? No.”

Ray looked at his pale hand. “She was, I don’t know the words. There was a light inside her. Ever know anyone like that? She glowed.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “She was one of those people. You just liked her. And she was the only one who cared about me.”

“You feel guilty?”

“I was driving. I can’t remember now, but I know what I was like then. Looking at her and not the road? I can’t remember, and I don’t want to anymore. Anyway, I can imagine what it was like for him. If she was my family? And then to lose her like that? I was Stan Hicks I would have done the same.” His eyes clouded over. “Worse.”

“You got hit by a drunk driver, Ray. You can’t think she’d have wanted you to go to jail.”

“No, she’d have hated that.”

“How did you make it? With broken arms?”

“Harlan Maximuck.” Nelson shook his head, not getting it. Ray said, “Harlan had a younger brother died in prison in Maine.” He conjured Harlan then, tall and lopsided, walking with a hitched step, a staccato lope from where a statie had tagged him with shotgun pellets in the thighs when he and an even crazier friend had robbed a pawnshop and killed two people. Broad across the chest and wild brown hair that he’d stab at with oddly delicate hands, trying to keep it out of his eyes.

“So he, what? Adopted you?”

Ray pursed his lips. “Guys like you? Like anyone I guess hasn’t been sent up. You see Harlan as a scumbag. As, I don’t know. Evil, I guess.”

“And you think, what? He was misunderstood?”

“No. No.” Ray looked at the books on the shelves and tried to stretch for the words. “He kept me alive. He didn’t have to. He didn’t take anything off me. Except what he took off everybody.” Ray smiled at a memory. “He’d be talking to you and, like, going through your pockets. Looking for cigarettes, what ever. I even saw him start to do it to a CO once.” Nelson picked up the bottle again and offered it to Ray, who waved him off. “But he was crazy. I mean he was crazy. I saw him, well… One time this guy flicked cigarette ash in his oatmeal? Harlan shanked him with a fucking pork chop bone.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. So it’s not like I don’t know who he is. Would he rat me out if that was in his best interest? Yes. Would he fuck me over in a deal? Yes, if by some tragic fucking wheel of fortune miscalculation he ever gets out again.” Ray leaned in. “But he also did this.

He’s also this.” Made a circle in the air to include himself, the body saved. “Guys like Harlan? And Manny? Me, too? We’re more and we’re less than you think. Worse and better. And the thing is, all you people are, too.”

“So what does a cop do about that?”

Ray smiled wide. “Lock us up. What the hell else can you do? But maybe know, too. You lock up the good and the bad and sometimes both in the same person.”

Nelson squinted, not entirely convinced. “Maybe.”

“You think a person is defined by the worst thing he ever did? The most desperate, the most terrible day in his life?” He got a glimpse of himself in the farm house in Ottsville, the smoke hanging in the air, the milk and blood pooled on the floor and his head on fire.