Quid Pro Quo (6 page)

The line went dead, but I had heard enough to know what had happened.

An alien had taken over my mother's mouth.

chapter
sixteen
Dismissal

Termination of employment
The firing of an employee

H
oney?!?”

“Mama?!?”

“I made you something?!?”

What was going on? What happened to “Hey, kid, it's me.

“I made you something?!?”

Meet ya at McDonald's in fifteen. There's a coupon on the fridge for a free burger”?

And what was that thing about special donuts? I don't even like donuts. She's the one who likes donuts.

Was this a joke? Nah. Andy could never make it through one of her own jokes without cracking up.

Was she trying to impress someone? Act like the perfect mother? If that's what she was trying to do, she kind of blew it. Perfect mothers don't usually leave money in Player's Tobacco tins because perfect mothers don't usually roll their own cigarettes.

Normally, I met Andy around 6:30 for dinner, but I couldn't wait. I had to find out what this was all about.

I called the office. I got Atula. She was wild.

“No, Cyril, I regret that your mother is not in. She has not been in all day. In fact, I just received a telephone call from a colleague of mine. A very important colleague. Andy missed a meeting with him and as a result may have jeopardized future expansion of the Immigration Resource Center. He is not the least bit happy about it, I assure you, and neither am I. I am very sorry to have to tell you this, Cyril, but as of today, Andy no longer works for Varma and Associates.”

I didn't know what to say. I just sort of went, “Oh … right … okay … yeah.” I didn't even want to think about what this meant. Andy might be a little late for a meeting or forget papers she needed or file them under Deveau instead of Devine. But she'd never miss a meeting. She was really serious about work. She wouldn't screw up something as important to her as the Immigration Center just because she was too lazy or pissed off or freaked out by a little blackmail to show up when she was supposed to.

I knew right then that something really, really bad had happened.

I couldn't stay on the phone anymore. I mumbled something about having to go, but Atula wouldn't let me off that easy.

“There's one more thing I'd like to say to you, Cyril.”

Oh, geeez, I thought. Now what?

“I want you to know that my quarrel with your mother has nothing to do with you. You are a bright, capable boy, and I very much appreciated your help in the office this summer. You know, or at least I hope you know, that you are always welcome here. If you ever need help—or even just a home-cooked meal for a change—you should come to me. I make a very good chicken curry. Do you understand, Cyril?

“…Cyril?”

I didn't know what to say. “Thanks”? Or “As a matter of fact, I could use some help…”

In the end, I just said thanks.

chapter
seventeen
Abandonment

A parent can be charged under
the Criminal Code for deserting his or her child

I
stayed up all that night. There was no way I could sleep. I went back and forth between being really, really scared and being ready to kill Andy. What was she thinking?!? Why did she even let Byron stay with us in the first place?!? Obviously, something terrible was going to happen if you let a jerk like that into your life.

At 8:30 the next morning, I washed my face and changed my shirt. I left a note in the hall: COME AND GET ME AT SCHOOL AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME22!! I put on my Discman and left.

I didn't know where Andy was. I didn't know what she'd done or why she'd done it or what I should do about it.

All I knew was that nobody could find out she was gone.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: “What?!? Are you nuts? She could be in trouble! Call the cops!”

But it wasn't that easy.

Call the cops and they'd find out I was thirteen and living alone. Then what would they do? They'd send me to a foster home. They'd have no other choice. It's not like I had any relatives who wanted me.

It's not like I had
anybody
who wanted me.

Then the cops would start trying to find Andy, and I was really afraid of what they'd find her doing. The best possibility, believe it or not, was that Byron was forcing her to do something she shouldn't. I remembered from law school that if you commit a crime “under duress,” you can use that as a defense.

You know, an excuse.

In other words, you can say to the judge, “It's not my fault! He made me do it!” and if you're lucky, the judge will believe you and let you off.

Like I said, if you're lucky.

But there's no counting on the judge believing you. Especially if you're Andy. With our luck, she'd get the judge she rolled her eyes at.

What I was really worried about was that Andy would get a taste of her old wild ways again and start liking them. I mean, she'd given up smoking before. She made a big deal about how much better she felt and how much more money we had and how she'd never smoke another butt ever again, so help me God. And, well, you know what happened with that. Why wouldn't she take up getting in trouble again? She obviously used to like it. She did it for years.

I didn't know much about her life on the street, and I knew why I didn't: Andy didn't want it getting out. Why would she? It was hard enough for her to pull off the “responsible citizen” act without everybody knowing about her juvie record.

God. I hated to think what kind of stuff she must have gotten into back then.

If I sicced the cops on Andy and they found her doing something illegal, our life would be ruined. If she got convicted of a crime, she could get kicked out of the legal profession. On top of everything, she could even be charged with abandoning me. “Failing to provide the necessaries of life for a minor child,” they call it. She used to joke about that when I was little. I'd have a fit because she wouldn't buy me some action figure or some remote- control car we couldn't afford, and she'd go, “What are you going to do, Cyril? Charge me? I hate to break it to you, kid, but under the law, Super Thunderwheel Mini SUVs aren't considered a ‘necessary of life.'”

It wasn't a joke this time. Unless Andy had a really good excuse for taking off, she could lose custody of me. For good.

Andy could lose me. She could lose her job. She could go to jail.

I had no other choice. I had to find her myself.

I got to school, and Mrs. Payzant asked where I'd been. I said I had the flu. She said I still looked pale (No kidding). Was I feeling all right?

I said, no, and I meant it. She said I should go home then. There was a terrible bug going around. Her son had been in bed for ten days. Why didn't she call my mother at the office to come and get me?

I said that my mother didn't go in to the office today. She said that was good. She'd be able to look after me. I picked up my knapsack and left.

I couldn't believe how easy it was.

chapter
eighteen
Client-solicitor privilege

The responsibility of a lawyer to keep
confidential anything a client says to him or her

I
went home. I checked the mailbox and picked up the news-paper at the front door. I reminded myself that I had to do that every day. I didn't want people thinking that anything had changed around here.

I scrunched up the note I left for Andy.

I checked the messages. Nothing.

I checked the kitchen cupboards. Nothing there either. I was going to get pretty hungry if Andy didn't show up soon. I had about four dollars left from my allowance and could probably scrounge up another two or three dollars in change if I checked all Andy's pockets, but that was it.

I'd worry about how I was going to survive later. What I needed to do right then was figure out where Andy and Byron were. I needed clues.

I ransacked the apartment, the bathroom, the living room, the bedrooms. There was lots there, but nothing that hadn't always been there.

I went through Andy's closet, her drawers, her makeup bag, her laundry, her bedside table, her piles of junk. All I found were old clothes, broken eyeliners and overdue library books.

I went through Byron's stuff. That took, like, four seconds. I guess he was right. He wasn't into material things. All he had were the clothes he'd taken off the day before. They were folded neatly on my bed like he'd joined the army or was trying out for a job at the Gap. I poked them with a ruler, flipped them over, shook them. I even stuck my bare hand in the pockets. Nothing.

I kicked the wall for about five minutes until my foot hurt and the guy downstairs started banging on the floor with his cane. That's all I needed, him calling the cops on me. So I went into the living room and punched the couch for a while. At least it was quiet.

I finally got tired and stopped. For a long time I just lay there, staring at the big stain on the ceiling. It always used to remind me of a bunny in high heels. That was sort of cute. But that day I turned my head the other way and realized that the bunny's legs could be somebody's arms, and the high heels could be a couple of guns. That was sort of sick. That's what someone with a disturbed mind would see.

It's bad when you can't trust yourself to stare at the ceiling.

I turned on the TV and sort of watched it until 3:30, when it was safe to go. School was out. No one would wonder what I was doing on the street. I grabbed my skateboard and left. I stopped at Toulany's and picked up a beef jerky stick, some sour-cream-and-onion chips and a large cardboard box. I tried to make the food last, but I couldn't. I was starving. I had it inhaled by the end of the block.

I got to Atula's at about four. Toby gave me a big hug when I walked in, and Marge said she sure missed me. Mr. Lucas went on about how much I'd grown and Elmore Himmelman started screaming that I was an FBI agent who was trying to kill him for his million-dollar inheritance.

That's when Atula came flying out of her office, yelling at people to keep their voices down. Things must have been crazy for her without anyone to help, but she still smiled when she saw me. I told her I was there to collect Andy's stuff, and her smile sort of died. She rearranged that scarf of hers and asked me to stop by her office before I left.

I pried Toby off me, went into Andy's room and shut the door. I started dumping stuff from her drawers into the box. It was mostly loose-leaf pads, message slips, old school pictures of me, that kind of thing. Not what I was looking for. I was looking for evidence—whatever that meant.

I cleaned out the desk, then opened Andy's filing cabinet. That's where I figured all the really good stuff would be.

I was too late.

It was empty.

I had this moment of terror. You know, like in movies when the person who's going to get killed realizes that the phone is dead or the gun is gone. I imagined some thug—Byron, maybe, or whoever he was after—sneaking in with pantyhose over his head and rifling through Andy's office. There must have been something incriminating in her files … something they had to get … something they were willing to kill for.

Clearly I was getting hysterical. That's not what happened to the files. Atula had them! It was obvious. Andy was gone so Atula was looking after those clients herself now. Who else was going to?

I tried to think of some way I could get the files from her, but I knew that would never happen. There's this thing in law, “client-solicitor privilege,” that means anything you say to your lawyer is private. Even if you told him you killed somebody or robbed a bank, he's not allowed to say anything about it unless you let him. Same thing with your legal files. They're private. Atula was hardly going to hand them over to me. And I wasn't ready to steal them. At least, not yet. I had to figure this mess out some other way.

I put Andy's daytimer and her address book in the cardboard box. I wiped off her desk and threw the dead plant she'd had all summer in the garbage can. I grabbed the box and the coat she'd left hanging on the back of the door and went to see Atula.

Good thing Atula was so busy, because there was no way I could take another lecture or another little “you know I'm here for you” talk. Atula tried to squeeze one in anyway, of course, but the phone rang and she had to get it. While she was talking to the guy, she reached up and rubbed the back of her hand on my cheek. I don't know why, but that made my eyes get all watery. I felt like such a wuss. I just wanted to get out of there. I was worried I was going to start crying.

Or talking—that would be even worse.

I went “see ya” and bolted. Toby made a dive for me on the way out, but I was too fast. I said, “Gotta run, Tobe.” And I did.

chapter
nineteen
Real evidence

Evidence supplied by material objects

I
got home and dumped the box full of Andy's stuff on the kitchen table. It was pretty depressing. What a pile of useless junk.

I had to organize it somehow, make some sense of it.

I started by throwing out all the garbage, the empty cigarette packs, the wads of gum wrapped up in little bits of tinfoil, the paperclips that Andy had bent into weird shapes, but then I changed my mind. I took them all out of the garbage can again and put them back on the table. I realized this stuff could be important. Maybe Andy didn't chew that gum at all. Maybe somebody else did and left his slimy DNA all over it. Maybe all I needed was a little bit of his saliva, and the guy would be behind bars for the rest of his life.

I studied every single thing I took from Andy's office, one at a time. This is what I found.

Nothing.

So then I tried to put the stuff in groups. Maybe I'd start seeing a pattern. I put all the “garbage” over on one corner of the table. I put all the pink message slips on another. I put all the photographs together, all the pencils together and made two piles out of the loose-leaf: used and unused.