Bullet Point (7 page)

“HEY. WAKE UP, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.”

Wyatt opened his eyes. Dub was in the room. He grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Wyatt’s head. Greer’s smell was on it; and everything, the whole night, came back to him. Dreamlike, but not a dream. Wyatt tossed the pillow aside. Dub gazed down at him.

“You look like shit.”

Wyatt rubbed crust from the corners of his eyes, saw no sign of last night’s unpleasant conversation on Dub’s face. “Not as bad as you,” he said.

“Ooo, that hurts, pretty boy,” Dub said. A big grin spread across his face, always a sign of some fun idea taking hold. Dub lifted the far side of the mattress off the springs and upended it like it was nothing, dumping Wyatt, bedding, mattress on the cold floor.

“What the hell?”

“Wakie-wakie.”

Dub left the room. Wyatt would have gotten the shit kicked out of him, no doubt about that at all.

Wyatt should have felt sleepy at school but did not, in fact found himself tremendously alive and engaged. In English class, he suddenly had his hand up in the air, very unusual for him to be volunteering a question, probably a first. The teacher, Ms. Grenville, wearing a brightly colored neckerchief—she had lots of them—glanced down at her seating chart and said, “Wyatt?”

“I, uh—” Too late, lowering his hand, this whole idea maybe not such a good one.

Ms. Grenville gave him an encouraging smile. “Go on.”

“What if he, um, Hamlet, would have just said forget it?”

Some guy at the back of the room guffawed, but Ms. Grenville leaned forward at her desk, looked interested. “Forget it in what way?” she said.

“Like figured it was all too complicated and left town.”

“And gone where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Remind us, someone, where the story takes place.”

“In a fort,” someone said.

“In Elsinore Castle in Denmark,” said Anna.

Ms. Grenville nodded. “Denmark,” she said. She turned to Wyatt, raising her eyebrows.

“I guess he’d have to leave Denmark,” he said.

“Because?”

“It probably wouldn’t be safe to just leave the castle, go to some other town in the same country. What with, um, Claudius being the new king, and all.”

“Very interesting,” Ms. Grenville said. “Your whole idea.
Has anyone read ahead yet?”

Anna raised her hand.

“And does Hamlet ever consider Wyatt’s idea?”

“Not directly,” Anna said. “But he thinks about suicide—isn’t that what the whole to-be-or-not-to-be thing is all about?”

“Yes,” said Ms. Grenville. “And Hamlet rejects suicide. In the end, he figures out a very clever way to get at what Wyatt calls the complications—in other words, to find out if the ghost has told the truth—and then he faces up to what he has to do.”

“But what about when Claudius tries to send Hamlet to England?” Anna said. “He kind of does leave the country after all.”

Ms. Grenville gave Anna a frown. Anna was the smartest kid in the class by far, and Wyatt had always assumed teachers loved having kids like that around; now for the first time, he wondered. “That’s a secondary complication,” Ms. Grenville said, “that we’ll get to in due course.”

After school, Wyatt drove to the bowling alley: closed. He called Greer, got sent straight to voice mail. He drove down the main street, keeping an eye out for a car with no plates. He stopped at High Sierra Coffee, looked in, saw Anna there with a few kids from school. She saw him and waved. He backed out of the coffee shop and drove to Greer’s apartment building. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, all with plates.

Wyatt went to the front door, standing under that strange
stone animal head, and checked the buzzer panel. All but one single buzzer had a plastic typestrip with a name beside it, none of the names being Torrance, G. Torrance, Greer Torrance, or even simply Greer. He was gazing at that unlabeled buzzer when his phone rang. The screen read
UNKNOWN CALLER
.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Wyatt. It’s, uh, Sonny. Sonny Racine.”

Wyatt had already recognized the voice, regretted answering. “Yeah,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hope I’m not bothering you. Got a chance to make a quick call, thought I’d take advantage of it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wanted to see how you were making out—in a new town, and all.”

“Fine.”

“Good to hear.” A long pause. “School okay?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause, this one maybe longer. “Got a favorite subject?”

“Not really,” Wyatt said.

“I used to like math the best.”

Wyatt said nothing.

From the other end came the sound of throat-clearing. And then: “Funny thing, I happened to meet your girlfriend.”

Girlfriend?
The word—maybe because he wasn’t thinking of Greer like that yet, maybe because of who was uttering it, or uttering it first—disturbed Wyatt.

“Talking about Bert Torrance’s daughter. Poor old Bert,
but that’s another story. As for Greer, she’s a charming young lady. And she seems crazy about you.”

This was disturbing, too; why, he couldn’t say. He remained silent.

“But maybe not my place to be making all these personal comments. Just a nice happenstance, that’s all, meeting her. I’ll let you go.”

“Okay.”

“If there’s anything you need, being close by now, and all, don’t hesitate.”

“Uh, sure. Bye.”

“Take care.”

Wyatt clicked off. If there was anything he needed? What was that about? How could Sonny Racine help even if Wyatt did need something? He was behind bars.

Wyatt glanced up and down the street. It was cold out, not a cloud in the sky, a sky bright enough to make his eyes water. He could see the tops of two smokestacks in the distance, but nothing was coming out of them. Things were different by day. That expression—as different as day from night—hit home. It wasn’t simply a matter of astronomy, the Earth spinning on its axis, but an internal difference, the way you thought and felt. The same person could arrive at different answers, depending on where he stood in relation to the shadow line moving across the face of the Earth. What if all the important things happened at night? Maybe they did.

Wyatt’s gaze went to the buzzer, the one with no label. He was a free agent. Nothing was stopping him from jumping in his car and driving up to East Canton. If he got started right
away and the weather held, could he make it by Cammy’s bedtime? Wyatt pressed the buzzer.

No answer. He didn’t press it again. He took one look—perhaps one last look—at the snarling stone creature over the door, and turned to go. Then a voice—Greer’s voice—came from the speaker by the buzzer panel.

“Who’s there?”

“Me.”

“That’s funny—I was just dreaming of you.”

Bzzz.

Wyatt went inside and up the stairs to the top floor. Greer was waiting with the door open. She wore a white terrycloth robe with
RITZ-CARLTON SHANGHAI
stitched on the front in blue.

“Just got up?” she said.

“No.” He closed the door behind him. “I went to school.”

“You did? But you look great, like you had a full night’s sleep. And I’ve been sleeping all day and I look like shit—what’s up with that?”

“You look fine,” he said. But in fact she didn’t—there were dark circles under her eyes, her skin looked ashy, and a tiny scab had formed under her eyebrow ring.

“You’re a liar,” Greer said, “but we already established that.” She took his hand; hers felt hot. “The funny thing is I may look like shit but I feel absolutely fantastic. And hungry. I’m ravenous. How about something to eat?”

“Sure. Okay. You want to go to the coffee shop, or—”

“Nah. I’ll fix something right here.”

“You can cook?”

“How do you like your eggs?”

“Well, um.”

“Scrambled, poached, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, over easy?”

“Scrambled, I guess. About last night, I—”

“Coming right up. Wait in the living room—I don’t like being watched.”

“No?”

“Not when I’m cooking.”

Wyatt sat in the living room, separated from the kitchen by a wide arch; Greer moved back and forth across the opening, different things in hand—eggs, spatula, pan, salt and pepper, an onion. He turned to the musical instruments—electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin—but didn’t pick any of them up. Wyatt had no musical ability whatsoever. “Can you play these?”

“Some,” Greer called from the kitchen. “What do you like—besides rap, I mean.”

Besides rap? Wyatt didn’t know much about any other kinds of music. “My mom likes Bruce Springsteen.”

“Cool.” Greer came into the living room. She fumbled behind one of the cushions on the couch, found a metal tube—a slide?—that she slipped on the third finger of her left hand, and then picked up the guitar. “How about this kind of music?” she said, sitting beside him and starting to play. Hey! She was good. The guitar made sounds a lot like moaning and crying. Then she sang:
“When things go wrong, so wrong with you, It hurts me too.”
Her voice was hard but somehow beautiful at the same time. She broke off in the
middle. “Bacon’s gonna burn,” she said, and hurried into the kitchen.

Wyatt followed. “Hey. You’re so good.”

“I’m a saint,” she said, flipping bacon in the pan. It smelled great.

“I meant your song.”

“It’s not my song,” Greer said. “Copied it note for note from Elmore James.”

“Who’s he?”

“Was,” said Greer, putting eggs and bacon on two plates and bringing them to the table. “Siddown. Eat.”

They sat at the table, a tiny rickety table, so small their feet had no choice but to touch under it. Wonderful smells rose in the air. “This is great,” Wyatt said. “And you can really play.”

“I fake it, that’s all.”

Wyatt shook his head. “And sing, too.”

“Shows you’ve got a tin ear,” Greer said. “I’m flat pretty much the whole time. My dad can sing, hits every note dead center. And he’s the one who can really play. He had a band, way back when. They came pretty close to getting a record contract.”

“He taught you to play?”

“Bingo.” Greer slid her bare foot up under his pant leg. “The bacon’s too crisp.”

“No. It’s perfect.” And the scrambled eggs: so light and tasty, with onion and pepper flavors, and something else he couldn’t name. “So, uh, how did your dad get from the band to, um—”

“Prison?”

“I wasn’t going to say that, but yeah.” He laid down his knife and fork. “I want to talk about the prison.” He could hear the tone of his own voice changing, growing harder. “What’s going on?”

“Meaning?” Greer said, cutting a bacon strip, not looking up. “How my father got there? Did he really do the arson?”

“That, too,” Wyatt said. Greer withdrew her foot. “But first, what’s the story with you and—” Kind of weird to be calling him by his full name, but no alternative was acceptable. “—and Sonny Racine?”

Greer raised her head. Yes, she looked terrible; beautiful, but terrible for her. “He was in the visitors’ room. My dad waved him over. End of story.”

“They’re free to move around like that?”

“Depends on what pod they’re in. The visiting area for the real bad-guy pod is one of those talking-on-a-phone-through-a-glass-wall deals. But they’re not bad guys, our dads.”

“He’s not my dad,” Wyatt said; his voice rose. “You know I don’t think of him that way, so why are you saying it?”

“Sorry,” Greer said. She cut her bacon into little pieces but didn’t eat any. Wyatt picked up his knife and fork. “He’s very popular,” she said.

“Who.”

“Mr. Sonny Racine. Everyone likes him.”

Wyatt put the knife and fork back down. “You’re talking about the other criminals?”

“They’re human beings, too,” Greer said. “You’re not giving him a chance.”

“A chance to do what?”

“To get to know you a bit.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“I just know he does, that’s all. He said he’d like to meet you.”

“Like I’d visit the jail?”

“Yeah.”

“Forget it. I told you what happened. He committed a horrible crime.”

Greer stuck her fork into a bacon piece, popped it into her mouth, started chewing. “The thing is, my dad thinks he’s innocent. It’s the consensus in there, in fact.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Sonny Racine may be serving a life sentence for something he didn’t do. I can’t put it any simpler than that. I’ve actually started doing some research, if you’d like to take a look.”

GREER WENT INTO THE BEDROOM,
came back with a sheet of paper. “I got this at the library.” She laid it on the table: a copy of a seventeen-year-old newspaper clipping from the
Millerville Beacon
. In the top right-hand corner was a picture of the sun with heat lines radiating off it, and the words
SUNNY AND MILD
. Below that was a headline:
THREE GUILTY IN NORTH SIDE BREAK-IN.

Wyatt looked up from the page. He felt sick, that perfect home-cooked breakfast threatening to come back up. Greer stood behind him, reading over his shoulder. “That’s some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “The story barely makes sense.”

“Horrible,” Wyatt said. “The baby.”

“Yeah,” Greer said. “Take that away and it’s almost funny.”

“Funny?”

“In a dark kind of way. Like a Joe Pesci movie.”

“I don’t get the joke,” Wyatt said. He ran his eye over the story again. “And there’s nothing here about any possibility of Sonny Racine being innocent.”

He turned to her. She still didn’t look well, and maybe because of that—the chalkiness of her skin, the bruised smudges under her eyes—the beautiful underlying structure of her face was all the more apparent. “I didn’t say he was,” she said. “I’m just reporting the opinion from inside.”

“From inside the prison, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“The opinion of criminals.”

“I don’t like that word. Not the way you say it.”

“How do I say it?”

“So judgmentally.”

“They’ve already been judged,” Wyatt said, surprising himself with a not-too-stupid remark.

Greer laughed, a strange laugh, not amused. “I’m either going to end up loving you or hating you, no in-between.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just a feeling. But one thing I know is that one particular criminal, the criminal a.k.a. my father, doesn’t claim to be innocent.”

“So he did it? Burned down the amusement center?”

“Torrance Family Fun and Games—might as well get the name right.” Greer went to the window, looked out. “He admits he did it,” she said. “Whether he did or not…” She went silent.

Wyatt thought of what Aunt Hildy had said:
A firefighter of my acquaintance got burned that night.
And even more:
Pretty clear that she was involved, too—they couldn’t prove it, is all.

“The point is,” Greer said, “they drove him mad, just out of his mind.”

“Who did?”

“That bank in San Francisco. All he needed was more time, just to ride out this slump, but those bastards wouldn’t do it.” She turned, and now there was color in her face, coming back in patches. “They cut his balls off instead. And guess what I hear, irony of ironies—now the bank’s in receivership, too.”

“So maybe it was hopeless from the get-go,” Wyatt said.

“What are you saying?” Greer’s voice rose. “What the hell was the point of that?”

Wyatt wasn’t really sure. Also, he didn’t know why she was suddenly angry. Maybe because of all that uncertainty, he blurted out what was bothering him the most. “Did you help him?” he said.

“Whoa,” Greer said, her voice much quieter. She backed up, bumped hard into the window. “Whoa. Who have you been talking to?”

“Nobody.”

She came forward. “Liar.”

Wyatt got up, faced her across the table.

“Let’s get this straight,” Greer said. “You’re asking whether I helped my dad light that fire.”

“You don’t have to answer. But it’s a logical question.”

“Oh, really?” Greer said. “Here’s one for you—friend or foe?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. One assumes friend after what we’ve been doing together, but a woman never fucking knows, does she?”

“Aw, come on,” Wyatt said.

She mimicked him. “Aw, come on—Mister Almost Seventeen.”

Wyatt felt himself reddening. “What’s wrong with you? It’s kind of…”

“Go on.”

“Kind of understandable, if you did help him.”

“Except what? Spill it. You’re thinking something—it’s all over your face.”

“Except for the firefighter who got burned,” Wyatt said.

Greer’s cheeks flushed, one brighter than the other, as though she’d been slapped. “Who have you been talking to? And don’t say nobody.”

Wyatt said nothing.

“That aunt of yours?”

“She’s not really my aunt.”

“But it’s her,” Greer said. She smacked her fist into the palm of her other hand; a gesture Wyatt had seen lots of guys do, but never a girl. “Small towns suck so bad,” she said. “She knows about you and me, right? This aunt-like figure, I’m talking about.”

Wyatt nodded.

“And she doesn’t approve.”

“I don’t care what she thinks.”

“Has she introduced you to Freddie Helms yet?”

“Who’s he?”

“The firefighter. Do you know how awful my dad feels about that?”

“No.”

“It’s why he pleaded guilty, didn’t even put up a fight, even though the lawyer said he had a good case.”

“Meaning he didn’t actually do it after all?” Wyatt said.

“Christ,” Greer said. “Meaning the case wasn’t solid, was going to be hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Don’t you know how justice works?”

Wyatt was getting tired of her tone. “But it ended up working here,” he said, “because your dad did it.”

Greer tilted her head to one side, as if to see him from a new angle. “You don’t care at all, do you? About me.”

“That’s a stupid thing to say.”

“Maybe you should go.”

Wyatt just stood there.

“Yes,” she said. “No maybes. Go.”

Wyatt nodded, his mind made up about lots of things. The most important: he was going home. He glanced down at the remains of his delicious breakfast, then headed for the door. All too much, nothing fitting together: Wyatt’s mind was in a kind of silent uproar. He opened the door and looked back. Greer was standing by the table, arms folded across her chest.

“Did you help or not?” he said.

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“That’s your answer?”

“Don’t like it? How about this? I did the arson all by myself and my father took the fall for me. Like that better?”

“Is it true?”

“Sayonara,” Greer said.

Wyatt walked out and closed the door. Halfway down the stairs, he heard a crash from above, the kind of crash a table getting overturned might make. He kept going.

Wyatt walked toward the Mustang, parked halfway down Greer’s block. The wind blew between the buildings; from somewhere nearby came the sound of a baseball thumping into a glove. He glanced around, saw nobody. Not quite true: a man was sitting in a dented old car across the street. As Wyatt unlocked the Mustang, the man got out and approached.

“Hi, there,” the man said.

“Hey,” said Wyatt, pausing, one hand on the open door.

The man gave him a careful look. “Yeah,” he said, “I can see it.”

“See what?”

The man smiled; a normal-looking middle-aged guy, small and pudgy, with a double chin. “The resemblance,” he said, “between you and Sonny.”

Wyatt felt his heart rate speeding up.

“Name’s Delino, by the way—Bob,” the man said. “And you’re Wyatt, no doubt about that. Sonny wants to know how things are going, settling in okay, that kind of thing.”

“How do you know?” Wyatt said.

Bob Delino smiled again. “Got his smarts, clear to see.” He reached into the pocket of his frayed denim jacket, took out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

Wyatt shook his head.

Bob Delino lit up, flicked the match into the gutter. “How I know,” he said, pausing to inhale, “is that he asked me personally to check up.” Smoke drifted out of Delino’s nose and mouth. “He knew I was getting out, see? From Sweetwater. We were friends inside.” He took another drag, squinted at Wyatt through the smoke. “I did sixteen months—all on account of a stupid misunderstanding about some copper pipe, but that’s nothing you need to know. Important thing is the sixteen months was up yesterday, so here I am.”

“Okay,” Wyatt said.

“A free man,” Delino said. “Feels not bad, the first few days. After that is when…” He tapped a cylinder of ash off the end of his cigarette, watched it disintegrate in the wind.
“Anyways, I’m heading back up to Minnesota, right after I get done seeing how you’re making out.”

“I’m fine,” Wyatt said.

Delino stared at him. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Delino shook his head. “Boy oh boy. Must be nice. School okay? Sports?”

“Yeah.”

“This your ride?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweet. Things are going good, obviously.” He glanced at Greer’s building, back to Wyatt. “That’s it, then. Done my job.” He reached into his pocket again, took out an envelope. “Sonny said to give you this. He’s a good man, plus bein’ a standup guy—don’t see that combo every day.”

Delino was holding out the envelope, but Wyatt made no move to take it.

“Not gonna bite you,” Delino said.

“What’s in it?”

“Money,” Delino said. “Couple hundred bucks.”

“No, thanks.”

“C’mon, man.” Delino shook the envelope.

“No.”

“But I’m s’posed to give you this.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Send it to the Salvation Army, then. Makes no difference to me, long as I do my job.”

Wyatt shook his head. “You keep it.”

Delino laughed, a harsh smoker’s laugh. “That’s a good
one,” he said. Then, very quick, he leaned forward and spun the envelope like a Frisbee. It sailed by Wyatt and into the backseat of the Mustang.

“For Christ’s sake,” Wyatt said. He climbed into the car, couldn’t find the envelope at first, finally spotted it under the front passenger seat. By the time he got back out, envelope in hand, Bob Delino was zooming past a stop sign two blocks away.