It's a Crime (19 page)

BY THE RIVER

CHAPTER
23

T
he house loomed above several cars, including a Touareg, a model Will had never seen before. Even without his Mustang GT convertible (well, his father’s, really), the number of cars meant that they’d have to be arranged and rearranged for access. Inside the house was a lot of the usual crime paraphernalia, only fancy. Even the girl blended in at first—not a campy “girl” spread across an old Lemuel Samuel cover, but a real girl, a little girl, with sleek black hair and bright black eyes. She said, “Are you the babysitter?”

They were in the kitchen. Pat Foy had disappeared in a swirl of words, and he was standing there, looking absently at a glass-fronted cabinet filled with stainless-steel canisters and mounted knives. He said, “Do I look like a babysitter?”

Ruby was her name. She examined him with an air of defiance. She was not tall, yet she appeared to look at him straight on. “No,” she said at last.

“I’m a trapper,” he said.

She nodded. She was wearing skintight jeans and a snug little navy blue T-shirt. She knew he lived near her “country” house; maybe that was why “trapper” had popped into his head. But he didn’t think it was a big lie; he had everything a trapper needed. Really. He was shrewd, intuitive, independent, strong-stomached.

He was supposed to look for work here. That had been the plan concocted in his father’s hospital room a few days after he’d come out of his coma. Lemuel was cranked up in his bed, frowning; Pat was in tandem, rocking from foot to foot, and Will sat in his usual foldout chair, the one the young nurse had found for him to sleep in the first night. He was not enthusiastic—nor was his father—but anything would be better than this three-sided hospital room. Will felt like he’d burst and scatter pieces of himself across the walls. Besides, finding work couldn’t be too hard. Lots of guys his age secured jobs every day, and New Jersey appeared to have plenty of people, plenty of buildings, and plenty of money lying around. Jobs must be everywhere, like rubber gloves, just waiting for him to slip into.

But already the plan seemed less likely, and he’d dropped his father off at Newark Airport only a couple of hours ago, just in time for his flight to Miami, the embarkation point for his mystery cruise. It was hard for Will to conceive of any job he might do here. The airport, for instance, was full of individuals in their official capacities: ticket takers, baggage carriers, security (lots of security), cashiers, flight attendants, pilots, limousine drivers, fast-food workers. Not one of these positions was suitable. Some, like pilot, required unfathomable training; others, like cashier, required unattainable personal qualities, as all cash registers seemed to be run by dark-haired women with accents. He did not see injustice or even inconvenience in this state of affairs, however. He did not expect to be hired for a job he could not picture himself doing.

When Pat bustled back into the kitchen, she said to Ruby, “Isn’t he nice? I told you you’d fall in love with him.”

Will frowned.

But Ruby’s gaze, which had been fixed on him, swung implacably to her mother. “Where’s my peach yogurt?” she said. “You don’t expect me to eat blueberry, do you?”

It was hard to figure out whose statement was weirder, mother’s or daughter’s. Will liked Pat fine, but he’d noticed right off that although she was the sort of woman you’d theoretically want to watch over you—and in fact she’d whipped Lemuel’s hospital into shape—every time she’d talk, she’d leave you as jumpy as a cat. Sometimes her laugh would tickle something at the back of his head, and he’d end up laughing, too, until he realized he was laughing at nothing and he looked like a moron. Or other times she’d set her hand lightly on his arm, and his skin would start to pop. If only he could forget that she was Mallow. Or at least used to be Mallow.

Ruby’s self-involvement was easier to deal with. When her gaze swung back to him, he thought,
She expects me to root for her.
He was flattered. The seven years separating them made him into a sort of superkid, whose allegiance was worth seeking. What’s more, he admired her dogged hope.
She wants me to be on her side so much that I am.

After reading through the want ads the next day, pages and pages of classifieds with not one actual job offering that Will could discern, he began to suspect that here in New Jersey you had to be a person like Pat Foy, who already had money (stolen, apparently), or be her dependent, like Ruby, or her employee, like…Will. When she handed him a wad of bills from the sideboard at the end of the week, he was grateful. “Some trapper,” said Ruby from the doorway, fixing him with her unblinking black eyes.

You’d think that this would drive a wedge between them, but it did not. Will recognized Ruby’s dissatisfaction. The two might not have a lot in common in the obvious sense. When Will saw an ad, he was painfully aware that this little girl had the money to buy whatever was pictured. Ads therefore made him think in a certain way about Ruby and in a certain way about himself, because for him the ads would always remain just ads. It was complicated, and a real live person at the end of all those ads and feelings about ads made it more so. This probably meant that Will ended up thinking more about her than about someone he’d known his whole life. You’d never wonder if a person you’d known your whole life was on your side, because what would it matter? You’d know the sort of things he was going to say to you when you ran into him at the town plaza. Other stuff didn’t come into it.

Will wasn’t sure what he was expected to do at Douglas Point other than hang around and go for the occasional drive. The more specific and tiresome jobs were already filled. A dog walker showed up twice a day. Tuesday and Friday mornings three cleaning ladies arrived in a white van. At various times during the week different men would pick up scattered twigs or old leaves and then disappear. Will’s presence seemed to be enough, as if he were substituting temporarily for a member of the family. Ruby was in school till four. Then she went on one of the computers to IM her friends. Later she’d ask him what he thought of easy things like TV shows, types of food, or vacation spots he knew only by name.

Will’s problems with her began one evening in February while they watched a program called
Heist or Hoax.
The TV screen was pretty amazing, high-definition plasma, about forty-two inches—although that’s not as big as it sounds, because it’s measured on the diagonal. Will found himself watching a lot of shows like
Heist or Hoax
that he wouldn’t have normally because of the quality of the picture. The TV itself might have been as thin as a sandwich, but the world it contained was so three-dimensional he would have liked to walk into it.

The set was mounted high on the wall, probably by an ambitious immigrant, not by a lazy discontent like his new stepfather, who installed cable boxes but who was always going on fruitlessly about leasing an electronics or hardware franchise. “This county is wide open!” he would say, then start naming the various chains that had interested him lately. Will’s mother couldn’t have known that he—
Will
—would soon become unwelcome in their home, but she should have guessed. Still, she’d struggled for so long it was hard to hold it against her. And Will had fantasized about living with his father for years.

Will and Ruby were alone when they watched
Heist or Hoax
because Pat had driven off to visit Ruby’s father in prison. Instead of accompanying her, Ruby had made him a card from a digital photo of her dog Winky, which looked professional to Will, since Pat’s color printer made copies with no visible lines.

Heist or Hoax
was a reality show in which a dozen contestants were told that one of them was going to try to burglarize the estate they were staying at. In a twist known only to the audience, every guest thought he (or she) was the one playing the criminal.

“Jeez, it’s like really stupid, isn’t it?” said Ruby, with her usual mix of strong opinion and need for reassurance.

“That’s for sure,” said Will. They were laid out on the black leather couch with the dogs, the Lab’s hot, fragile muzzle resting on Will’s thigh.

“It’s supposed to be in the Palisades,” said Ruby, “but I don’t believe it for a minute. It looks like Florida or someplace. See those palm trees? There aren’t any palm trees in New Jersey.”

Will looked at her quizzically, then had a faint recollection of a “Palisades” nearby. “I think it’s supposed to be the
Pacific
Palisades,” he said. “It’s in California.”

Ruby flushed and muttered, “It’s still stupid.”

“East or west,” said Will gallantly, “they’re a bunch of amateurs.”

“Yeah,” said Ruby, giving him an interested, sideways, newly measuring glance.

At that moment one of the contestants hid some high-profile jewelry in a jar of peanuts. What to do with the extra nuts? Stuff them in your mouth, of course.

During the next commercial break Ruby said, “I guess you know about jewel heists and all that.”

Will shrugged. “Whoever set this up couldn’t rob his own grandmother,” he said, although his single brush with the law had been the year before, when he’d brought a can of Mace to school to defend himself and had been suspended for carrying a weapon.

“The two of us could really do something,” said Ruby. “About Neil Culp, I mean.”

“Mmm,” said Will, beginning to stroke the dog’s black head, figuring he’d let the whole subject float on by.

“We could break into his house,” said Ruby in a low voice. “We could take Snowbelle! That’s his cat. I’m sure she’d rather live with me.”

Will’s hand paused in midair. “Who exactly is this guy?” he asked sharply.

“Oh, you know,” said Ruby, backtracking, startled by his reaction. “He’s a big criminal.” She lowered her voice still more, as if Pat would have paid any attention even if she’d been around. “It’s all his fault that my father is in jail.”

As soon as the show was over, she made Will take her to a diner where certain kids from her school hung out. “They’re afraid of me already,” she explained, “because of my father. But they’ll
really
be afraid of me once they see you.”

CHAPTER
24

A
lot of the things Will had done recently had ended wrong side up, and it was hard to tell beforehand which ones would. It would be easier if, say, doing forbidden stuff always turned out badly. But there was no clear pattern. Sometimes it was the punishment that was the fun.

Not that Lemuel spent much time telling Will what to do. The closest he’d ever come to suggesting a rule was the previous summer, when Will had first come to live with him. They were watching baseball in the living room. Lemuel had his feet up on a wooden crate in which one of his fans had shipped him an ancient car horn in commemoration of some endless drive in
Road Kill.
Now it was covered with randomly folded newspapers. Lemuel said, “You didn’t let your mother down, did you?”

Will did not take his eyes off the TV.

“Because the only thing you have to remember is, never abandon a woman in need.”

It was enough to make you gag, this nonsense straight out of one of the Bud Caddy novels. What did Lemuel think he’d done when he left his family (i.e., Will and his mother)? And how could Will have let down his mother with his stepfather standing in the way? Lemuel had been drinking all night; his once neatly trimmed beard had become more and more erratic, as if straw had started to poke out of a scarecrow; he was lucky to be upright. Still, he seemed to have guessed at certain of Will’s secret lapses or evasions. For a long moment all that kept Will tethered was an image of the stadium on the television. He knew that sometimes you could do the wrong thing—the truly awful, sickening thing—when you thought you’d settled on the right.

But then Lemuel said, “I don’t care if you drink beer here as long as you don’t drink it all up,” and the creepiness passed, and soon the two of them were just sitting around watching baseball again. Will even fetched his father another can of beer, although he declined one for himself.

Will could tell that Ruby did not think her father was innocent, exactly. But that evidently did not make him guilty. And it was obvious that this man Culp must be worse. “He tricked my dad,” said Ruby before dinner one cold dark evening. “He tricked him and he took all the money and now he lives like a king while my dad is in jail.”

Ruby was picking at her white paper napkin as if it were skin.

“When he takes my dad’s place,” she said, “we can all go to Six Flags. They have a ride there that twists you upside down.”

Pat bustled in. When she’d showed up at intensive care, Will had thought she was in the wrong room. She was too glossy-looking to belong in the country, and although she was old, she looked nothing like the old women in the Berkshires—women, that is, who taught school, who shopped at the supermarket, or who came out of his friends’ houses late at night to berate them for missing their curfews. The lives of those women were over. You could tell that Pat was still centered in the whirlwind of hers. “What could the dogs have gotten into?” she asked, with that slightly clumsy energy of hers. “They are not at all well.”

“Neil Culp must have poisoned them,” said Ruby.

“Well, I don’t think that’s very likely,” said Pat, diverted by this entertaining new possibility. “But I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“When we get my dad out,” said Ruby, “my horse can greet him by whinnying and licking his hand.”

Will looked back sharply and swiftly at Pat, but she’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary about Ruby’s phrasing. Instead she asked, “What horse is that, honey?” You couldn’t claim that her voice held any particular surprise, since she always sounded like that—as if she’d just gone over a big bump in the road.

“You told me I could have a horse this year if I still wanted one as much as I did last year,” said Ruby.

“Really?” said Pat. “Wasn’t that two years ago?”

“Then I’ve wanted a horse for
two whole years.
I should probably get two of them.”

“But, honey, I’m afraid that’s impossible,” said Pat an octave higher.

Will could see her mind starting to spin like a hamster wheel, filling up with words, but Ruby forestalled them with a “Pl-e-e-e-ease.” She drew it out like gum; the initial resistance was followed by a weak string that finally snapped. “It’s only right,” she said, her flat black eyes fixed on her mother.

Will was used to this tone of voice now. Ruby wanted a horse the way she wanted justice. She was
greedy
for justice. She
demanded
a horse. You couldn’t distinguish between the cravings.

Let Pat deal with her wheedling, thought Will; then he wouldn’t have to. But Pat was slippery. In a transparent attempt to avoid further entreaties, she suggested that Will take Ruby to the Red Barn for ice cream after dinner. Actually what she said was “I have an idea! Ice cream in February! Wouldn’t that be marvelous! It’s really better in the winter months, because that’s when you need the extra animal fat in your diet. I’ve found that often received wisdom is just plain wrong, and something else is going on entirely. Did you know that chocolate makes you feel loved?”

Will didn’t mind. He took the Touareg because it had the best heater, and he left it going full blast as they idled in front of the barn-red building with the crossed white boards.

“She shouldn’t tell me she’s going to get me a horse if she isn’t going to,” said Ruby, her pink tongue smoothing an arc around the ball of ice cream.

Will, who was more of a biter, consumed a chunk of his cone as he resettled his left arm around the steering wheel. “Mmm,” he said.

“It’s not right.”

“This is good ice cream,” said Will.

“Yeah,” she said, showing a gleam of little pointy teeth like an animal’s. “I got into that weird stuff but then I realized there was nothing like an ice-cream cone.”

“Weird stuff?” said Will cautiously. “What weird stuff?”

“Not—” she said, coloring. “I mean here!” she practically shouted. “Stuff that isn’t ice cream! Like fizzes! And soft serves! Mistos!”

If she was going to get freaked out so easily, she shouldn’t wear a shirt that was barely held together on top by a leather shoelace, especially considering it was about twenty degrees out. Oh, he knew she had a crush on him; Pat hadn’t been far wrong. You’d think that this would give him some leverage with her, though, and it didn’t seem to.

“I wonder if we could get both of them,” said Ruby. “Neil Culp
and
Riley Gibbs.” Her pronunciation of the two names reminded Will of the way his mother had spoken the names of the lawyers when she finally divorced Lemuel. They became the whole outside world.

“I thought you wanted a horse,” said Will.

Ruby narrowed her keen black eyes. “I outgrew horses long ago,” she said scornfully. “I only want what’s right.”

Will basked in the heat whirring from the dashboard. Maybe greed always infused a crusade; maybe action was necessarily propelled by narcissism. Maybe both impulses stemmed from the same deep wiry root. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.

Will didn’t read any of his father’s books until long after the divorce. Once he had, certain scenes kept popping into his head: Bud Caddy hiding a runaway under his bed, Bud Caddy forced to shoot his friend through the heart, Bud Caddy’s tail-lights disappearing over a hill. Soon the bed, friend, and tail-lights all seemed to belong to Lemuel. They became the key elements of his other life, the one he’d come from and then slipped back into when he left the family. Sometimes Will envied this other life, sometimes he hated it, but it had always been as real to him as the side of the room he didn’t happen to be facing at the time—until he actually moved in with Lemuel and saw him watching TV in his undershirt.

Wouldn’t it be funny if this other sort of life, which was hard and glorious and free, did not belong to Lemuel, but Will. He pushed the exposed ice cream into the cone with his tongue.