Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

He looked down again, knitted his hands and swung them between his knees. “There’s something special between them. More than just family. The bond of survivors. He’s not even twenty, has been through way too much for someone that age. For anyone. So bear that in mind. Okay?”

Ike came back into the room and said, “Bear what in mind?”

Dinwiddie sat up. “I was just telling them to keep things in perspective. How’s she’s doing?”

“Sleeping. What kind of perspective?”

“Just everything that’s been going on.”

“In other words, coddle me out of pity?”

“No,” said Dinwiddie. The boy looked away from him. “Ike, about the shotgun-”

“Forget it, Ted. You ended up saving your own life. What could be better?”

Generous smile, startling in its suddenness. But largesse tainted by bitterness. Dinwiddie picked up on it, knew what it meant- an immutable change in the bond between them- and his expression turned to misery.

Milo said, “You ready to tell us what happened, son?”

Ike said, “How much do you know?”

“Everything up to Bear Lodge.”

“Bear Lodge,” he said. “Rural nirvana, some pipe dream, huh? All I know about that is what I’ve been told. By Grandma.”

“Where’d you live afterward?”

“Where’d I live?” The boy smiled again and ticked off fingers. “Boston. Evanston, Illinois. Louisville, Kentucky. I was a regular ramblin’ man.”

Another smile. So forced it was painful to look at.

I said, “Not Philadelphia?”

“Philadelphia? Nope. I’m with W. C. Fields on that one.”

“Terry Crevolin said your father’s family was from Philadelphia.”

“Family.” The smile opened and twisted and turned into an angry laugh. “My father’s family was wiped out fifty years ago. Except for one distant cousin. In Philadelphia. Fat-cat lawyer, I’ve never even talked to him- couldn’t imagine he’d welcome me with open arms.” Another laugh. “No, Grandma wouldn’t have sentenced me to Philadelphia.”

I said, “Those other places- was that your mother’s family?”

He cocked a finger at me. “You guessed it, smart person. You get the rubber duckie. A progressive series of nice middle-class Negro neighborhoods, where I wouldn’t stand out like chocolate syrup in milk. Nice hospitable relatives who tolerated me until they got sick of me, or got scared of what it meant putting me up, or things just got too crowded- the middle class likes its comforts.”

Dinwiddie said, “Why don’t you sit down, Ike?”

The boy wheeled on him. “What, and relax ?” But he did lower himself into an armchair, stilt-legs stretching out onto the hooked rug.

A long silence. When Milo didn’t break it, I said, “Any reason you chose a Spanish surname?”

“Spanish? Oh yeah, that. I’d been using Montvert- some of my mom’s family were Creoles, so it seemed appropriate to go French.” Another joyless smile. “Then when I moved here I needed a new one. Covering tracks. I thought of Russian, for Grandma. But who would buy that on me? I didn’t want to attract attention. Then one day I scoped out Ocean Heights- it had been in the news, Massengil’s Jim Crow bullshit. I wanted to take a look at the place, see what KKK territory looked like in the eighties, took a drive through. Beaver Cleaverland. But I noticed they had all these Spanish names for the streets. Stone hypocrisy. So I thought, why not? Do ’em one better, go for Español. Which would be Verde . But that sounded wrong- like it wouldn’t be someone’s name. So I checked out a Spanish-English dictionary. Green . Slang for ‘novice.’ Which I was. An L.A. novice- go west, young man. Novato . Had a cool ring to it. The rest, as they say, is Will and Ariel Durant territory.”

Milo had started to squirm halfway through the speech. He said, “How’d it happen? The alley.”

“Boy,” said Ike, “you’re a real master of subtlety.”

“Fuck subtlety,” said Milo. “Let’s aim for truth.”

The boy’s turn to be startled. Then a genuine smile.

He said, “By the time they told me to meet them in the alley, I’d started to suspect something weird. Latch was too nice. I mean, the guy was an elected official and we were talking about murder, blowing things up. Him being really casual. As if it were no big deal. As if he were still a revolutionary. Not that I ever really trusted him in the first place. Grandma didn’t trust him- said the fact that he’d gone into establishment politics said plenty about him. So when be told me about the meeting, new information, I said sure, faked being all gung-ho. But I was suspicious from the outset.”

“Why down there? In Watts.”

Ike nodded. “Exactly. That bothered me too. Latch’s story was, the source I was going to meet was someone who lived there. From Mom and Dad’s past, the Black Liberation Army. Someone still wanted by the authorities, needed the cover of Watts, couldn’t afford to leave home territory.”

“Latch give you a name?”

“Abdul Malik. But he said that was just a code. He liked codes. Like some kid playing I Spy . I never really bought it.”

“The real reason for Watts,” said Dinwiddie, “was that a black body there wouldn’t cause the police to blink an eye. And that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

Milo ignored that, said to Ike: “So in spite of it smelling bad, you went down there.”

“I had to know what was going on. I figured if they were going to pull something, they’d do it another time, another place. Might as well be prepared, see what was going on. So I showed up early, hid my bike in the next alley, and found a hiding place next to this garage, behind some garbage cans. The bulb was out and that part of the alley was really dark. And rank . Something out of a nightmare.” He grimaced, remembering. “Junkies sneaking in and out, all these low whispers, deals going down, people shooting up, snorting, taking leaks, taking dumps. I started to get scared, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. But as it got later, closer to the time I was supposed to meet this Malik, the action started to slow.”

“When was that?” said Milo.

“About three A.M. I heard somewhere that’s the killing time of day, time the life forces are weak. Hiding in that place, you could really feel it. Everything going dead. Anyway, the junkies and dealers started to go home, only a few stragglers. Real losers nodding off, not caring if they were sitting in dog shit or whatever.”

He gave a sick look. Stopped.

Milo said, “Go on.”

“One of them- one of the stragglers- was about my size. Maybe a little shorter but almost the same size. And really skinny, like me. I noticed him because of that, kind of identified with him, thinking about what led him to get that way, there but for the grace of God, and all that kind of stuff. I mean this guy was really pathetic- totally wasted. Walking back and forth, muttering, stoked on God knows how many different kinds of poison.

“I’m watching him, watching all of this, the smells seem to be getting worse, and the darkness starts to get really heavy- crushing down on me. I know now it was my anxiety. I start thinking anxiety-thoughts, like is someone going to steal my bike and am I going to get stranded here? Who knows who’s out there. Watching. Then the guy they sent to do the job shows up. He’s early too. Half hour early. I can tell ’cause he’s dressed in black, wearing this long black coat even though it’s summer- that’s one thing that tipped me off, though by itself it didn’t mean much. Junkies get cold. But he stepped under a garage light and I saw that he was a white guy. Real cracker face, turned-up pig nose, but with stuff on his face. Greasepaint. To make him look black- like a minstrel act. In the darkness it almost worked. The few junkies who were left never noticed- they just wanted their dope. But I was looking out for it, so I caught it right away.