Fostering Death (3 page)

“Don’t you see that patrol car right there?” I nodded toward it.

Aaron glanced toward the alley. He seemed surprised. “Where the hell’d that come from?”

I just shook my head.

“You should let me into your apartment,” he said. “Then nobody could see what we’re doing.”

“Nothing for anybody to see. And I bet you got something on you that could get me in real trouble.”

“Nope.” Aaron scratched the three-day stubble on his chin. “If I had anything, I would’ve used it.”

“How about all that money? Where’d that come from? You could buy anything you wanted. Who told you to come to me?”

Anger flared in Aaron’s eyes. “Are you calling me a snitch?”

“You said it; I didn’t.”

Aaron’s voice started to rise to a shout. “You think you’re tough, don’t you? You think you can treat me like dirt and get away with it.”

I turned away. I wasn’t going to dignify that stupidity with an answer.

He pulled the tissue out of his pocket, wiped his nose again and grabbed my jacket with his other hand, still clutching the money.

Mindful of the patrol car, I forced my hands to remain motionless. At this distance, the cops in the patrol car probably couldn’t hear what we were saying. Unless Aaron was wired. But they could see. I didn’t want to look like I was threatening him. If I made a move to push him away, would they come to his rescue? Or just write a report to be resurrected later when they could use it?

The interior light in the cab of the pickup by the curb came on. I glanced over; the door was open a crack. What kind of backup had he brought along?

“Aaron!” a plaintive young voice called.

He loosened his grip on my jacket. “What?”

“You told Mom you’d pick me up, and we’d come straight home. That was hours ago.”

I backed up a step. “You brought a
kid
with you when you’re trying to score?”

Aaron shrugged. “My mom’ll only give me gas money if I do stuff for her, like pick up my kid brother if she’s at work.”

Disgusted, I said again, “And you brought him along when you’re trying to score?”

“Hey, I left him in the truck. He’s too little to know what’s going on. He’ll be fine.”

“You got no idea what you’re playing with, do you?” I shook my head. “Did you take him down to Park Heights with you, too?” I didn’t want to think about what could happen to a little kid if he got in the way of a deal that went down wrong.

No cop would knowingly send an informant out to make a buy with a kid in the truck. So maybe this really wasn’t a set-up. Or the cops didn’t realize that he’d be idiot enough to bring the kid along.

Aaron pulled another wad of bills out of his pants pocket and added it to those in his hand. “Come on,” he said. “I know you got something. Either sell me some or tell me where to go to get some.”

“You really gonna give me some of that money just for telling you where to go?”

Aaron sniffed. “I trust you, Jesse.”

My eyes narrowed, I stared at him. Kid in the truck or no kid, this
had
to be a setup. If I took any money, even if I didn’t supply anything, I’d be up against an intent to distribute conspiracy charge. “Only one person you can even begin to trust,” I said.

“Who?”

“You’re standing right there in his boots.”

“Me?”

“I’m not sure even that’s a good idea. But for sure you can’t trust nobody else. Including me.”

Aaron stood up a bit straighter and stared down the steps to my apartment. “I know how much you make. You live in a crummy basement room. You got to pay all those parole fees and court costs. Extra money would come in handy. You gonna help me or not?” He held up the bills again and waved them in front of me.

“Not.” I took a step back.

Aaron’s face twisted in anger. “You know, I could make your life pretty miserable. Get you fired from the job.”

He probably could—I didn’t think it would be that hard. But I just said, “Try it. I don’t think you’ve got much credibility with anybody at work anymore.”

“I could tell that girlfriend of yours some things.”

Ouch. This was a sensitive area. I took a deep breath. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Sure you do. Kelly? From work? You know she’s been putting out in the warehouse to anybody who’ll pay her. I been with her myself.”

My chest tightened. Kelly wasn’t my girlfriend, but I’d certainly like her to be. She treated me just like a regular person, not like a paroled murderer.

She was just divorced, with two kids to think about, so she spent most of her non-work time with them. I realized neither one of us was in a position to make any kind of commitment, and I think she did, too.

A couple of times she’d invited me over to her house for supper. I’d help out with the cooking and cleaning up, then sit down with the kids and their homework. Or just watch TV with them. Give Kelly a little time to herself and hope she didn’t open a bottle. It almost felt like I was part of a family, and I was achingly aware that I could become overly dependent on the warm feeling it gave me.

After the kids were asleep, sometimes we went to bed ourselves. If she hadn’t drunk too much. I didn’t drink. I wasn’t about to take a chance on violating my parole over something as stupid as drinking alcohol.

Kelly had introduced me to sex, and no matter what she did or what anybody else said about her, I would be eternally grateful to her for that.

But if she reached the point where she might be looking for a steady boyfriend, if she ever did, what could I offer her? A future of uncertainty, stepping carefully and never sure I wasn’t about to be picked up and sent back to prison to serve out my backup time? That was no way for a woman to live. Especially a woman with children. She deserved better than that.

Aaron was standing there, swaying slightly and still holding out the money. I knew he was lying about her putting out in the warehouse. Her job almost never took her back there, and I was in and out all shift long. She could be seeing other men, but it wasn’t during work hours. I’d never asked her about other men.

Really none of my business. I shouldn’t care.

So why was that sour taste rising in my throat? I felt like I might vomit.

Without me paying much attention, Aaron was babbling on. Since he hadn’t gotten a rise out of me with the job or Kelly, he’d changed topics.

“You can’t tell me you’re not using,” he said, giving my arm a shove.

“Don’t touch me,” I warned.

“Your nose is running, and your eyes are red. You’ve been snorting something, haven’t you?”

I stirred myself to answer. “Maybe I just got a cold.” I wasn’t about to tell him I’d been crying.

“Riiiight.” He stuffed the money back in his jacket pocket. “I know you could turn me on to a few contacts. Wouldn’t do you no harm.”

I just stood there, trying to keep an eye on the cops as well as Aaron. The sleet was changing to snow, which didn’t make any noise as it hit the ground. I wished he’d lower his voice. Although if he was wired, they were listening to every word we said anyhow.

“You’re gonna be sorry,” he said, turning toward the patrol car and away from his brother in the truck. “I could tell them things about you. Get you locked up again.”

My muscles tightened, and my mind started to go blank. Raising my clenched fists, I took a short step toward him.

Aaron flinched back.

A light in the patrol car winked on. I stopped, took a deep breath, and made myself drop my arms to my sides and back up a step toward the stairwell. This wasn’t prison. The consequence for giving Aaron a little of what he deserved wouldn’t be a month in disciplinary segregation, it would be street charges for assault. Possibly on a police informant, and in front of two officers. Not smart.

Aaron wiped his nose one last time, threw the tissue on the sidewalk, and scuttled over to his truck, climbing in and slamming the door. It lurched forward. I watched the taillights until it turned the corner. The patrol car just sat there.

I shivered and started toward the stairs. If the cops were going to burst in and search my place, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Beyond the stairwell, a sign above the entry to the first floor store front hung by one corner, banging in the wind. The sign was pretty new. Just recently, the abandoned pizza parlor had been rented out to a store-front church. Seemed more like a cult, really. They’d made a big deal about dedicating their new hand-lettered sign. It read, “All-Seeing Tabernacle of Inaccurate Conception.” Underneath, in smaller letters, it said, “Seek Impotent Wisdom—A Pure Mind in a Pure Body.”

That seemed pretty strange to me, but then the church members were pretty strange themselves. From what I could see, they were all male, and I figured they must have embraced celibacy in their quest for enlightenment. Or whatever they were seeking. They must have been pretty proud of it, and pretty weird, to announce it to the world like that.

As I watched, a gust of wind caught the sign and sent it tumbling to the pavement. I picked it up—it was surprisingly heavy for its size—and propped it against the brick wall in the sheltered entryway. It might be a weird sign, but they’d gone to the trouble of painting it and hanging it, and it’d be a shame to have it ruined, lying face down on the wet sidewalk.

I glanced back at the patrol car. The interior light was still on. The cop in the passenger seat brought the radio transmitter to her mouth.

They would sit there for as long as they wanted to. Nothing I could do.

The wind picked up, and snow blew harder as I finally started down the steps to my apartment. My feet crunched on the salt. I pulled out my key.

I didn’t think I’d ever get over the sense of satisfaction that came with holding the key in my own hand and unlocking the door myself.

A movement in the dim corner of the landing at the bottom of the stairs caught my eye. Half-frozen slush was beginning to pool around the drain in the cracked concrete. I peered more closely.

A small figure was huddled in the corner, somewhat out of the sleet. A cat. I eased my hand toward it. The cat cringed back further, but didn’t hiss, and it didn’t try to get past me. I scooped it up and looked at it.

It was wet and bedraggled, but it wore a red collar heavy with gaudy rhinestones and gems, and it wasn’t starving. If anything, it was fat. Had to be somebody’s cat. I carried it up the stairs to put it on the sidewalk. Going up on the salt couldn’t be good for its paws.

The patrol car ripped out of the alley, its light bar flashing. As it careened down the street, the siren rose into a scream.

They had something better to do than tear my place apart. At least for tonight.

The cat clung to my jacket. I let it snuggle against me until the lights and siren had faded. Then I put it on the sidewalk, giving it a little shove. “Go home,” I told it. “This is no weather to be out in.”

The cat stood in the dim light from the entrance to the temple. Its fur was a mixture of blacks, reds, and tans. It stood on the sidewalk, now getting even more thoroughly soaked and stared back at me with startling amber eyes. Its fur flattened against its body, ears and tail drooping.

“Go home,” I repeated. Like it could understand me.

The cat just stood there.

I went back down the stairs, into my apartment and shut the door firmly behind me. My clothes were soaked, and I was freezing. I took my boots off, loosening the laces and pulling out the tongues. I set them under the radiator to dry. I had to wear them to work tonight. At least I had dry socks I could put on. Maybe turning the jacket inside out and putting it on the back of a chair in front of the radiator would dry it out some by the time I had to leave. Stripping off the wet flannel and T-shirt, I replaced them with dry ones.

A cup of instant coffee sounded good, but I was due at work at midnight, and I needed to get any sleep I could. With my stomach still tied in a knot and all the thoughts racing around in my head, it was going to be hard enough to doze off as it was without putting any caffeine into my system.

My jeans were more than damp. I tossed them onto the seat of the chair with the jacket. I did have a dry pair for work. Then I sat on the edge of the bed to change into dry socks.

The bed that came with the furnished apartment might be lumpy but it sure beat the thin foam mattress with a slippery fire proof cover I had in prison. And instead of one skimpy blanket, I had a pile of bedding I could snuggle down into. When I got covered up and warm, I could relax and maybe fall asleep.

I thought of the cat, staring at me reproachfully as it huddled in the snow. And here I was, settling down comfortably.

Surely it would go home. The owners would be glad it came back and let it right in.

Unless it was lost. And if it wasn’t lost, what was it doing there outside my door in the first place?

It was just a cat.

But all I would be able to think of was the cat, out in the cold, and I’d never get to sleep. Not if there was something I could do about it.