Crusader (17 page)

But Sam had no intention of keeping out of it. He walked up next to Verna and demanded of Hawg, "I have a question for you: Did you vandalize my car? And my store?"

Verna held up a big hand. "Hold on, Sam. I'm talking to this man."

"Right. Well, I'm talking to him, too." He suddenly exploded, "You did it! I know you did. The police know you did. And you're going to pay."

Hawg turned so that he had his back to Verna and Sam. This enraged Sam further. Sam walked around the group until he stood right in front of him. Hawg finally looked up. He said matter-of-factly, "You want to fight me? Okay. But you got to get in line."

Sam snarled at him. "No! I'm not going to fight you. I'm going to have you arrested, you ... you trailer trash, you redneck moron! So you had better be very careful what you say or do next. You got that?"

Hawg answered him slowly and evenly, "I'll tell you what ... I don't think I need advice from no sand nigger."

Sam's jaw opened involuntarily. "What did you call me?"

"You heard me."

Sam looked over at Verna. "Yeah. Yeah, I think we all heard you." Sam stood in his place, trying to decide what to do next. I think he might have gone after Hawg, even though Hawg is
bigger than he is, but then Uncle Frank intervened. He took Sam by the arm and steered him out into the mallway, talking very earnestly to him.

The Head Louse did the same sort of thing with Hawg, walking him out, too, but in the opposite direction.

And that's how it ended.

By now it was nearly closing time. The customers who had been in the arcade had all stopped to watch the ruckus between Sam and Hawg. Once that was over, they all left.

Kristin reappeared at the register. I called over to her, "Hand me the trash bag. I'll start the closing checklist."

She reached down, pulled up the bag, and handed it to me, without saying a word. I hauled the bag into the back room and dumped the contents of Uncle Frank's trashcan into it. I unlocked the back door and started out with the trash, but as soon as I hit the humid air, I heard a sound, the sound of gushing water.

I looked to the right, behind Slot #33, SpecialTees. Ironman was kneeling down, in the dark, with his back to me. He had his head under the outside faucet. He was completely soaking his hair, his shirt, and his pants. The gushing water puddled up around his knees and started running in a stream toward me. I watched it until it reached my feet.

Ironman finally turned off the faucet. But he continued to kneel there, on all fours, shaking his head and squeezing his hair. I stepped over the little river of water and approached him. "Hey, are you okay?"

Ironman turned and faced my way. With his hair wet, he looked even smaller, like some dogs do. I repeated, "Are you okay?"

He pulled two handfuls of scraggly hair back until they were behind his ears. Then he squeezed some more water out of them. He managed about half of his nervous smile. "I guess so."

"What happened?"

"I got swirled."

"What?"

"Those guys? The one that Kristin kicked? And the others? They swirled me."

"What's that mean?"

Ironman looked surprised that I didn't know. He explained, "They grabbed me in the men's room, at the food court..." He stopped there, leaned forward, and blew some water out of his nose. "They held my head in a toilet and started flushing it."

I screamed, "No!"

Ironman looked alarmed. He shot a glance at the back door of SpecialTees, then at the back door of Arcane. I dropped the trash bag and said, "I'll go get Uncle Frank."

Now it was Ironman's turn to scream, "No! No!" He struggled to his feet on the sloppy asphalt. "You don't get anybody! You don't tell anybody!" He slogged toward me as fast as he could. When he got close to me I could see real terror in his eyes. Terror and pain. He yelled, "And you can't ever tell Hawg! Ever! He's in enough trouble already. You gotta swear you will never tell him."

I nodded my head rapidly. "Yeah, okay. I swear. I won't tell Hawg."

"You won't tell anybody."

"I won't tell anybody."

"Not your uncle, or your father, or Kristin, or Karl."

"I won't tell anybody."

Ironman backed off a step. He tried to smile. "Anyway, it's no big deal. It's just a joke." He twisted his head to one side, trying to get water to drain from his ear.

The door to SpecialTees opened, casting a rectangle of light onto the watery mess that Ironman had made. Mrs. Royce
emerged with a trash bag, stepping carefully over the water. When she spotted us she stiffened in fright. But then she recognized us and said, "What are you doing out here?"

I waited for Ironman to answer his mother, but he just stared at her dumbly. Mrs. Royce took a wary step toward him. "And why are you all wet? Look at you, you're soaked."

I heard myself saying, "I did it, Mrs. Royce. I'm sorry. We were messing around with the hose, and I got him all wet."

Mrs. Royce stared at me curiously. "That doesn't sound like you, Roberta. That sounds like something those boys would do, but not you. I thought you had more sense."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Royce."

She pointed back toward the open door and told Ironman, "Get out of that wet shirt before you catch pneumonia. Take a shirt from the mistake pile."

Ironman set off obediently, peeling off his black T-shirt. His mother caught his arm as he passed by. "And give me that filthy thing. That's going into the trash right now."

He dropped the shirt onto her arm, without even looking, and shambled toward the lighted doorway. Mrs. Royce held it with two roly-poly fingers to put it into her trash bag, like it was a dead skunk. She looked at me. "You just got the one trash bag?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, let me have it. I'm going there anyway."

"Thank you. I'm sorry again about the water."

"That's all right." She looked at me sadly. "That's not the worst thing anybody's ever done to him. Good night, now."

"Good night." I went back into the office. The bathroom door was cracked open slightly. I thought about it for a moment, then I slipped inside. I found myself staring into that mirror again.

Suddenly I was startled by the sound of someone rushing
in from the arcade. I leaned closer to the mirror, so that I could see out. It was Uncle Frank. I thought about clearing my throat or turning on the water, to alert him that I was there, but I didn't.

Uncle Frank never even looked in my direction. His actions were very fast, almost frantic. He sat down hard in his chair. He poked at his desk lock with a key, got it in, and yanked the drawer open. Then he pulled out a clear glass bottle, opened it, and took a long drink. It looked like plain water, but why would he lock away a bottle of water? It had to be liquor. A clear liquor, like vodka.

The door opened again. This time it was Kristin. Uncle Frank must have hidden the bottle under the desk, because she didn't say anything about it. He sat looking up at her, the drawer wide open, until she spoke.

"Dad, do you know what Roberta tells people about her mother?"

Uncle Frank answered her evenly, "What, Kitten?"

"She tells them that her mother died of a heart attack."

"Is that right?"

"Yes. That's right. That's what she told Nina today."

Uncle Frank shook his head, confused. "Okay. What about it?"

"Well, isn't that a little sick?" Kristin shot a look toward the back. "Where is she now? At the trash trailer?"

Kristin walked out of view. This gave Uncle Frank a chance to stash his bottle and relock the drawer. Then he told her, "Kitten, let's let Roberta handle it in her own way. She doesn't have to go into the gory details for everybody she meets. Does she? Let her say what she wants."

Kristin reappeared. "Sure. She can say what she wants. I'm just worried that she actually believes it."

The two of them exited together, leaving me alone. Leaving
me motionless, like a mall model. Like a mannequin. I stared again at my face in the mirror. Whose face was it? Without the makeup, it was no longer Mom's. And how could it be? Mom was lying in Crypt #109E at Eternal Rest Cemetery.

I wanted to feel something at that moment, but I couldn't. If I felt anything, it was stupidity. I felt like one of those lonely women on
Angela Live,
the ones who lived with the serial killers and didn't know it. And didn't want to know it. I was stupid and lonely enough to tell myself that Mom died of a heart attack. But I knew it wasn't true. I'd known it all along.

I remembered the policewoman in our kitchen. And I remembered Dad. He was holding on to a kitchen chair like he might tumble over. He was crying so hard that he was slobbering. Stuff was coming out of his mouth and his nose and his eyes, all at the same time. He told me, "Roberta, your mommy's heart stopped beating."

And we left it at that. We never talked about the facts of her death again. That was the one story I never investigated. But then, I didn't have to. I already knew the facts. They were right there in the newspaper. They were on the local TV news. My mother didn't die of a heart attack. My mother was murdered. She was stabbed to death during a robbery at the Family Arcade on the Strip.

And her murderer was never caught.

I read the Sunday
Atlantic Times
from cover to cover. Then I locked up and headed out into the morning heat. I made it from our carport to the glass doors of the mall in fourteen minutes. That was a fast time, and I was really sweating because of it.

I used my key to unlock the office door. Suzie had told me that the September newsletter would be sitting outside the mall office in its PIP Printing wrapper, and it was.

The newsletter had a different look. Suzie had warned me about that. She said the old one was too depressing. The first thing I noticed was that the lead article was not written by me; it was written by Suzie. And it was not about the live models in the mall. It was about the rededication of the fountain. State senate candidate Ray Lyons was coming on September 25. He was to be the guest of honor, but there would be other special guests, too, including TV personality Angela del Fuego and West End Mall mascot Toby the Turtle. There would also be gigantic sales throughout the mall.

I had written up our modeling adventure, just like I promised Nina. It had taken up two full newsletter columns. Suzie had hinted that she had to cut back the modeling story to make room for "some last-minute stuff," but this was ridiculous. She
had butchered it, trimming it down to a boxed feature at the bottom of the right column. It was like a joke. Or a contest, to discover how little of an original story you could possibly use.

I checked the back. My "People Pieces" feature had survived. The back page also had an article about Ray Lyons's "lifelong dedication to the environment." It said, "Not an environmental crazy, but a true nature lover, Ray Lyons grew up here, and he remembers how it was...." I read as much of that one as I could stand, then I picked up the newsletters and set off to deliver them.

It was now eleven-forty-five, and employees were starting to arrive. I ran into Betty outside Candlewycke. She was staring through the window, looking for someone in the darkness. She said, "I'm looking for a new job. Are you guys hiring?"

"Are you kidding?"

Betty peered more intently into the gloom. "The only offer I have so far is from Devin, but this is where I started out two years ago, you know? I hate to go backward."

"Two years ago? How old are you?"

"Fifteen." Betty saw me calculating. She said, "I lied about my age. I still do."

"Do you lie on your income-tax form?"

"I don't pay taxes. I don't believe in them."

"How do you get away with that?"

"I don't get a paycheck. Never have. I work strictly for cash." I must have looked shocked, because she added, "A lot of kids here do that."

Devin appeared, spooky and evil looking, behind the glass. He started spraying Windex on a Nazi dagger case. Betty continued, "I hated working at the Chili Dog, anyway. Do you know what Gene does?"

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not." But she continued, "He takes the dirty 142
plates that people leave behind, and he scrapes off the chili and puts it back into the chili pot."

"Oh, god!" My stomach turned.

Betty looked toward the food court, shaking her jet black hair. "That Gene is a weird guy."

Upset as I was about the chili, I heard myself saying, "Oh, right. And Devin isn't?"

"Hey, let me tell you something about Devin: Devin is who he appears to be."

"Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of."

"I guess I have to work for him for a while, until something new opens up." Betty knocked on the window. Devin straightened himself up, like a vampire after a long night's sleep.

I said, "I have to deliver these." I handed Betty a copy and took off before Devin could reach us. I delivered most of the newsletters quickly, slipping them through the open cracks of the sliding-glass doors.

When I got back to the mall office, Suzie was on the computer, staring at the screen. She had a Danish in a Styrofoam container on her lap. As soon as she saw me, she hurriedly clicked out of her document. "Oh, hello, Roberta. Did you deliver the newsletters?"

"Yes."

"What did you think?"

"About what?"

"The exciting news! Mr. Lyons will be here in a week. I'm planning a huge event. I want all the merchants to take part. This new fountain could turn things around for the West End Mall."

"Will the fountain be ready?"

"The fountain has been ready. Don't listen to that Leo. I have a real plumber coming here now."

Suzie brushed some crumbs into the trash. "Tell your uncle
Frank I'm getting a tour bus to stop here today. A big Asian tour group."

"What kind of Asian?"

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

Just then I saw Dad through the window. He was getting cash at the ATM at SunBelt Savings. I watched him walk across the mallway, counting the bills.

He opened the door, and Suzie walked over to kiss him. "Mister Moneybags, are you taking me to breakfast?"