Blood Ties (27 page)

Lydia spoke. “Kate? What did you mean, about Tory Wesley? The jocks wanted something from her and she said no?”

I had a pretty good idea what Kate meant and I guessed Lydia did, too: What a teenage boy wants from a teenage girl. But as it turned out, I was wrong.

Kate Minor shifted on the bench. “The jocks. They can't—couldn't—stand Tory. She's too smart, and she dresses wrong, and she has zits.” Kate switched back and forth between the present tense and the past when she talked about Tory Wesley. I'd seen that before, when a death is too fresh, too new, not yet worked into the pattern of your life. “She was like, young. I mean, not really, but she acted like it. Kind of clueless. She didn't
get
it, you know?”

“Get what?”

“How things are. How they work. She doesn't—she wasn't
cool
at all. You know?”

“And that was a problem for the jocks?”

“Well, sure. They say what's cool and then if you're not that way, you're just, like, totally nobody. But Tory, she wanted them to like her so much she'd do anything. It was pathetic. Especially last year. They used to tell her to do stuff just so they could laugh at her, like carry their books to class, or get their lunches from the cafeteria line and stuff.”

“And she'd do it?”

“Last year she did. At least they were paying attention. But this year she thought she found something better, that really would make them like her.”

“What was that?”

Kate took a hand from her pocket, rubbed her mouth. Looking away from us, she said, “Dealing.”

I hadn't said anything yet and I didn't now. After a moment Lydia asked, “Dealing drugs? Tory Wesley was dealing drugs?”

“I wouldn't tell you,” Kate said insistently, as though we needed, all three of us, to understand that, “except . . .”

“I know,” said Lydia. “It's okay.”

Kate lifted her black-outlined eyes to the playground again. “It's not that hard to get drugs in Warrenstown. Everyone does grass and hash, I mean, it's no big deal. But trippy drugs, acid and things, it's a little harder. Jocks are into those because you can drop them after the Friday night game, party your ass off, and by Monday practice you're cool again.” She glanced at Lydia. “What?”

“I guess I'm just a little surprised. That jocks would do drugs during the season.”

“Are you serious? They party harder than anyone else. They're used to it, they've all been juiced on andro and shit for years.”

“Andro?”

“Steroids,” Kate said impatiently. “To make them big.”

“Where do they get them?”

“Andro, that one's legal. You get it at the health food store.”

“Androstenedione,” I said. “Mark McGwire was taking it.”

Kate nodded. “And prescription ones, they get them from dealers. Jocks'll drop anything that'll get them high or make them big. You didn't notice them, how huge they are? They think it makes them hot.” Her lip curled.

Lydia asked, “And Tory was dealing those drugs?”

“Not the steroids. The trippy ones.”

“I'm sorry, but I have to ask this,” Lydia said. “Is this something you know firsthand, or something you heard?”

Either Kate missed the implication, or she didn't care. “A guy I know. A friend of hers,” she said. “He tried to make her stop. He said it was dangerous, the people you get mixed up with. But she was into it.”

“And you think she got mixed up with people who were dangerous?”

Kate shook her head, snapped, “I'm not finished.”

“I'm sorry.”

Kate tossed her cigarette on the ground, mashed it with her toe. “She'd been dealing since school started. I don't even think she was making any real money, either, but anyway she had the jocks coming to her all the time.”

“Do you know which jocks? Their names?

“Not really.”

I doubted if that was true, but we were talking about a place where it was dangerous to refuse to do someone else's homework.

“Anyway,” Kate went on, hands back in her pockets, coat pulled around her hunched shoulders, “anyway, for that party? She went around telling everyone she'd have ecstasy.” Kate darted an unsure glance at Lydia and one at me. “That's a club drug. You know, a designer drug? You know about it?”

“Yes,” Lydia said. “I've heard of it.”

Kate seemed relieved, maybe that she wasn't going to have to explain what happened when you took ecstasy. “It's hard to get around here,” she said.

“Harder than acid?”

“You can only get it in New York. I mean, maybe Newark, but nobody goes to Newark.”

“But people do go to New York.”

“Not a lot. Tory never went. I don't know where she was getting it from. But she promised. Everyone was psyched.”

“And did she?”

Kate kicked at a clump of grass, over and over. She finally uprooted it. “No,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Paul told me. He told her she'd better leave town and forget about the party. He said she'd be fucked if all the jocks came looking for ecstasy and she didn't have it. But she was so into that party. She so thought it would make her cool. She had acid and crystal meth and coke and she thought they wouldn't care.”

“But you think they did?”

For the first time, Kate Minor looked directly at Lydia as she spoke. “Totally. It was what they wanted. They went over to Tory Wesley's and didn't get what they wanted. When the jocks don't get what they want, it's totally fucked.”

Kate held Lydia's eyes for a few silent moments. The wind had stopped and no one moved. From a distance, the three of us could have been any group of friends, lingering at a picnic table on a playground, reluctant to end the evening, not ready to go our separate ways to the pleasant houses with their glowing yellow windows.

Or we could have been the last people left in a vast, hostile wasteland, each one afraid to go out into the night alone.

Kate suddenly stood. “I hope you can use this,” she said. “I hope you can fry them.” She started to walk away, turned back. “But remember, anything you heard about anything in Warrenstown, you didn't hear it from me.”

She turned, strode toward the fence. I stood. “Wait,” I said.

She pivoted around, her black-rimmed eyes wide. “What? What do you want?”

“Who's Paul?”

“What?”

“Tory's friend, the guy who told her she should leave town. You said Paul. Paul Niebuhr?”

“I didn't say Paul. I didn't say anybody's name.” Kate's words were rushed, as though speed would convince me they were true.

I stood silent.

“Me talking to you,” Kate said, “that's, like, me. Because the jocks . . . it's too fucked. But anybody else, if I talk about them, I could get them in trouble. I didn't say anybody's name.”

I nodded. “Okay. I guess it doesn't matter. Reporter's instinct, trying to nail everything down. Just a few more questions?”

Kate darted her eyes toward her car. “What?” she said. “What?”

“Gary Russell. Is he a part of any of this? Does he buy drugs, deal them, anything?”

“I don't know anything about him. He's a jock. He's new.”

“Okay. Who's Premador?”

She blinked. “From CyberSpawn? That mutant?”

“Gary Russell gets e-mail from someone with that screen name. Do you know who that is?”

She looked down again, shook her head. A brainy, heavy girl at a school where the jocks ran wild, she'd probably spent a lot of her teenage years looking at the ground.

“Just one more thing, Kate. You said Warrenstown has a ‘famous tradition' of jocks making trouble. Were you talking about what happened twenty-three years ago?”

“Yeah, and before that, and every day since.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

“About what? What happened then?” She shrugged. “I don't know, some kid raped some girl and then killed himself.”

“A jock?”

“No, some geeky kid.”

“What did you mean then, about the jocks, if it wasn't a jock who did that?”

“Well, because the biggest deal about the whole thing was they arrested a Warriors player. Randy Macpherson's dad. He was co-captain. The whole town went crazy. When they came to arrest the other kid, the geeky one, they had to stop a couple of jocks from beating the shit out of him. And then they beat him up again after the cops let him go.”

“I didn't know that.”

“That kid,” she said, “he's . . .”

“He's what?”

“Well, it's stupid. I mean, he raped a girl, and that's really bad. But, see, she was in the jock crowd.”

“And?”

“And, well, some of the guys. . . . It's like he's Robin Hood or something. He raped one of the jocks' girls and then he got away.”

“Got away? He killed himself.”

A distant, sharp light shone in Kate Minor's eyes. “Got away
from them
. The cops let him go, but there was only one way to get away from the jocks and he knew it. And he had the guts to take it.”

“There are other ways,” I said, and though she didn't move, didn't speak, I was aware of a gate closing, iron bars slamming shut between Kate Minor and me.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. You've been a help. Kate?” I said, as she turned away from me. She turned back, waited. “I hope the dog's okay.”

She shrugged, nodded. As she spun around and ran to her car I thought I saw tears in her coal-circled eyes.

After Kate left nothing moved and nothing changed on the playground or anywhere I could see. The wind was gone; everywhere was tired silence, quiet and cold. I dropped back onto the picnic table bench, arms resting on my knees, stared at the ground as Kate Minor had. The clump of grass she'd uprooted lay in the dirt. By tomorrow it would wither and the wind would carry it away.

Lydia slipped off her perch on the table, came to stand in front of me. “Bill?”

After a moment I straightened, looked at her. Her eyes were soft. I stood. “Let's get out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Lydia asked as we walked across the playground, out through the fence.

“I don't know.” That struck me as funny. A famous Smith family tradition. In the years after we left Louisville, none of us had ever known how long we'd stay at any post or where we'd go next. When my sister left home, no one knew where she'd gone. I didn't know where Gary was, now. And finally here I was, not knowing where I was going, either.

But I had Lydia, walking beside me. “We're going to eat,” she said.

I looked at her. “We are?”

“You bet we are. Fill the stomach, feed the brain.”

“That's an ancient Chinese saying?”

She shook her head. “My mother. Making sure we were well-fueled before we did our homework.”

We got into our separate cars and headed out of Greenmeadow, to the strip highway that would lead us, when we were ready, back to New York. About half a mile down that highway I spotted a steakhouse among the brightly lit, interchangeable concrete buildings. I pulled into the lot, Lydia following.

Inside, low lights, heavy wood trusses, rough board paneling, and a wagon wheel or two tried their damnedest to drive the neon, the six lanes of traffic, and the last hundred years from diners' minds. It didn't work, at least not on me; but the sizzling sound of meat on the grill and the aroma that floated from someone's sirloin going by on a waiter's tray were, on the other hand, pretty persuasive.

We were seated, we ordered drinks and nachos, we left the table to wash our hands. I was back first; just after I sat the drinks and nachos came. Lydia's drink was, as usual, club soda; mine was bourbon, though the ersatz nature of the decor extended to the bar and my only choice was Jack Daniel's.

Lydia came back, sat, sipped at her drink and said nothing, except to order dinner when the waiter asked. She waited until I was halfway through the Jack, until I'd downed a few nachos, until I'd shifted in my chair, lifted my glass again, and looked around the restaurant. A young couple in a booth beside us gazed into each other's eyes. At a round corner table, three little blond kids tried to behave as their parents cut their steaks for them.

“Better?” Lydia asked.

“You were right, again.”

“I'm always right. You know that.”

“I forget sometimes.”

“Think how much easier your life would be if you remembered.”

“My life would be much easier if I could think.”

I took another sip, felt the liquor cut a warm track inside me. Lydia asked, “Speaking of thinking, do you think that's it?”

“Do I think what's what?”

“What Kate Minor said.”

I looked at my drink, swirled it around in the glass. Jack Daniel's might not be a favorite of mine, but I had to admit it worked. “No,” I said.

“You think she's wrong?”

“I don't know if she's wrong. She could be right. A bunch of kids who think they own the world go to a party expecting the high of their lives. Probably they're already high when they find out they're not getting it. One of them gets pissed off, goes a little crazy. It could happen.”

“Then what was the
no
for?”

“It could happen, and maybe it did, but that's not all that's going on here.”

“What else?”