Sendoff for a Snitch

Sendoff for a Snitch
by KM Rockwood
Copyright © KM Rockwood, 2013

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This e-book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

Musa Publishing
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Issued by Musa Publishing, August 2013

This e-book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this e-book can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

ISBN
: 978-1-61937-296-2

Editor: Tricia Schwaab
Artist: Kelly Shorten
Line Editor: Jenny Rarden
Interior Book Design: Cera Smith

For Aunt Mary, who always had a mystery novel to read.

Chapter 1

S
pats of freezing rain pelted me as I hurried home from my overnight shift at Quality Steel Fabrications. I was cold, hungry, tired, and pretty sure that a shower would be a good idea before I got too near to other people. If I hurried, I had time for that, a shave, and a quick nap before the appointment this afternoon with my parole officer.

The late winter sun rose over the horizon and tried to peek through a gap in the lowering clouds, then abandoned the effort as the gap closed. Great. It had rained hard most of the night, and it would probably be raining again when I had to hoof it across town to the parole office.

Rothsburg was an old industrial town on the river that had landed on hard times as most of the factories had moved south, and it didn’t spend a lot on infrastructure improvements like drainage, especially in the part of town where I lived. My work boots were already damp from navigating the wet streets.

My apartment—room, really—was in the basement of a dingy building that had originally housed a pizza parlor, and more recently a struggling church, although I hadn’t seen any activity there lately. Outdoor steps with an inadequate overhang led down from the sidewalk to my front door. Nobody’s idea of luxury housing.

But it would do. And it sure beat the prison cell where I’d been living just a few months ago.

I slowed as I approached the steps that lead from the sidewalk to my front door.

Someone was sitting on them, halfway down.

It was a kid, leaning up against the brick wall of the building. He had on a bright orange fluffy vest with garish purple stars. That was layered over a tan fleece jacket. On his head, he had one of those knit hats with hanging tassels that looked like they’d been made by a Peruvian highlander in the Andes, only with a furry lining. Sitting on that damp concrete had to be cold. The seat of his pants was probably soaked through.

What was a kid doing sitting on my steps?

Stopping at the top and grabbing onto the handrail, I said, “Hey, dude, what’re you doing here?”

He looked up at me. I’m not good with kids’ ages, but my sometimes girlfriend had a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, and this kid looked bigger than that. At least ten? Maybe older.

His face was blotchy, and his eyes were red and swollen. His nose was running, and he wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket, leaving a slime of snot.

“Are you Jesse, mister?” he asked, his voice catching in his throat. He coughed.

“Yeah,”’ I said. “You looking for me for something?”

His shoulders heaved as he took a shuddering breath. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he said. “And I remembered you lived here.”

Interesting. I didn’t remember ever having seen this kid before. “Where are you supposed to be?” I asked him. “It’s Friday. Don’t you have school?”

“I guess,” he said, wiping his nose again with the sleeve. “But that’s way across town, and I don’t know how to get back there.”

Hard to make much sense of that answer, so I asked, “How did you get here?”

“My brother brought me. And he told me to wait in the truck. But it’s been hours, and he never came back. I remember he talked about you, and he said you lived in this little rathole in the basement. He pointed it out to me once.”

He wasn’t the first person to use the word “rathole” to refer to my place. “And who,” I asked, “is your brother?”

“Aaron Stenski. He works with you. When he goes to work.”

Ah. Aaron. I don’t know that I knew the last name. But I knew who he was talking about. Not somebody I’d want to trust with a kid. I looked around. The battered blue pickup truck Aaron usually drove didn’t seem to be anywhere on the deserted street.

I’m a sucker for kids, especially stranded kids. I remembered what it felt like. Too many times, I’d been the kid waiting while some overworked social worker tried to find an emergency foster placement. Any emergency foster placement. I’d sit in a hard chair in the social services office, all my belongings stuffed in a plastic garbage bag, wishing I could just fade away and never again have to worry about where I was going to be sent or whether the people there would be kind or cruel. Or even worse, indifferent.

Those people were only in it for the monthly check. Not something I’d wish on any kid.

Pulling my keychain with its single key from my pocket, I said, “We’d best get inside. The rain’s getting harder, and it’s cold out here.”

I went down the stairs, slipping past the kid, and opened the door.

He didn’t move.

“You gonna come in?” I asked. “Or stay out here in the weather?”

Looking uncertain, he said, “I’m not sure I’m supposed to go into your place. I mean, Aaron says you’re a convicted murderer. Is that true?”

“Yeah.” I tried to sound reasonable, as if there’s any way to respond reasonably to a statement like that. “But you knew I was a convicted murderer when you came over here, so what’s the difference if we talk outside, or go in where at least it’s not as cold?” I wasn’t going to say where it was warm, because my apartment usually couldn’t be called warm. But it was usually dry and not drafty. And as long as I paid the rent, it was mine.

Reluctantly, the kid got to his feet and took a step down toward me. “Ya know, we’re not supposed to talk to people we don’t know,” he said. “At school, they’re always telling us we should never get in a car or go into a building or anywhere like that unless we know the people we’re with.”

“What do they tell you to do?”

“To run away. Find a police officer. Or a lady with kids.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Find a police officer. Or a lady with kids. Run away.” If he did either of those things, I could stop worrying about him. “I’m not trying to stop you.”

He swiped the sleeve across his nose again. How much snot could one sleeve handle?

“I looked,” he said. “I didn’t see anybody like that.”

“There’s a police substation a few blocks down there and two over. To the left.” I pointed down the street. “You can prob’ly find a police officer there. And they’ll call your mother or somebody to come get you.”

“Aaron will be mad if I go to the police.”

“I imagine he would be.”

Aaron wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen, and he was on very familiar terms with the local police. “Look, kid.” I was cold and getting colder. And running out of patience. “I never had no skin charges brought against me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He frowned and looked back over his shoulder, up at the sidewalk.

Reminding myself that this was a kid, I tried to think of another way to phrase that. He knew to be careful of strangers, and if he lived with Aaron, he couldn’t be totally sheltered. “I’m not a sex offender. That’s what they mean by ‘stranger danger.’ You can check me out on the sex offender registry when you get home if you want. It’s on the Internet.”

He sat down again and shoved his hands into his pockets.

A few more drops of rain fell. “You can either come in here and tell me what’s going on and why you thought finding me might be a good idea, or you can leave.” I opened the door wider. “Or even just sit there if that’s what you want to do. But I’m going inside.”

Standing and taking a big sniff, he came down the last few stairs and followed me into the apartment.

The single room wasn’t huge, but it was much bigger than a six-by-eight-foot cell. And I didn’t have to share it with anybody. One corner was walled off for a bathroom. In another, under the high window that looked out on an alley, was a standard five-foot-long kitchenette with an under the counter refrigerator, narrow sink, two electric burners, and a few cabinets. It wasn’t fancy, but it worked.

I hung up my jacket on a hook and put water in a pan on a burner to heat up. The kid sat in one of the two rickety chairs at my equally rickety kitchen table. It was shoved up against the wall by the kitchenette.

“You know my name,” I said, “but I don’t know yours.”

“Benji.” He wiped his nose again with his sleeve.

I took the two steps over to the bathroom, reached in, and pulled out a roll of toilet paper. Putting it on the table, I said, “Use this instead of your sleeve.”

He tore off a long strip and held it to his nose, honking away.

“You wanna call your mother or somebody to come get you?” I asked, nodding at the phone on the wall.

The phone didn’t get much use. I didn’t have anybody much to call, really, but when I’d first been released from prison, I had it installed because I was on home detention. When I was within range, the phone had read signals from the box strapped to my ankle and transmitted them to the parole office, assuring that I had complied with my curfew hours.

Mr. Ramirez, my parole officer, had let me off home detention after a few months, but it had been so expensive to have the phone installed, I just paid the bill every month so I wouldn’t have to get it reinstalled if I got put back on home detention. Now that Mr. Ramirez didn’t call to check in on me, the phone never rang.

“No, thanks. I got my cell phone,” Benji said, patting his pocket.

Cell phone. I didn’t have one—who would I call?—and I’d forgotten that most people these days had cell phones. “Then why didn’t you call her to come get you a few hours ago?”

“She’s in Las Vegas.”

“What?”

“She’s in Las Vegas. She got some money and she said she felt lucky, so she went out to Las Vegas. She said for a few days. She didn’t say for sure when she’d be back.” His lower lip trembled.

“When was this?”

“Over a week ago.”

“And while she’s in Las Vegas, what are you supposed to be doing?” I asked.

“Aaron’s supposed to be keeping an eye on me. Mom said she left plenty of money. The first day, we went shopping. Aaron bought me some clothes. Like this.” He fingered the orange vest with big purple stars on it. “I wanted one pretty bad, but it’s real down, and Mom said it was too expensive. So as soon as she left, Aaron bought me one. He got one for himself, too.”

I tried to picture Aaron, who usually sported filthy gray hoodies and grungy jackets, in such a garish garment. “His orange with purple stars, too?”

“Yeah.”

From what I knew of Aaron, more than a week was a long time to expect him to hang onto money. I asked, “Does he have any of the money left?”

“There’s no food in the house, and we haven’t done laundry, and Aaron gets mad if I ask for anything. No beer, either. I think it’s all gone.”

Probably up Aaron’s nose or shot into his arm, if I had to guess. “You hungry?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I don’t got a whole lot,” I warned him. “But I was gonna fix myself some oatmeal. With brown sugar. You want some?”

“Yes, please.” The kid could be surprisingly polite.

Benji didn’t need to hear what I thought of a mother who would go off to Las Vegas and leave a child in the care of a known druggie like Aaron. So I didn’t say anything as I got out my two bowls, poured some instant oatmeal into the now-boiling water, and put the bag of brown sugar on the table. I got out a box of instant milk powder and poured a little into the bottom of each bowl. Then I divided the oatmeal between the bowls and stuck a spoon in each one.

We both dived right in. I had a feeling that Benji was used to eating pricier food, but I had to eat cheap, and to me, the brown sugar made all the difference. The prison chow hall served oatmeal sometimes, but there was never any brown sugar to put in it. I’d learned about that in one of the foster homes I’d lived in.

When we were done, I rinsed both bowls out and left them in the bottom of the sink.

Benji just sat there.

“Okay,” I said, sitting down again. “Where is Aaron, and why did you think coming to see me was a good idea?”

His eyes filled with tears. “Aaron talks about you a lot.”

“He does?” That didn’t sound good. “What does he say?”

“He says you’ve got it together.”

“What does he mean by that?”

“That you’re too smart to get caught.”

I laughed. “Did he tell you I spent twenty years in prison?”

“Yeah. He says that’s where you learned everything.”

“I don’t call that ‘too smart to get caught.’”

“Well…”

“That’s because I did get caught, but good. When I was sixteen. And for something really stupid.”

“Aaron says you killed a drug dealer who was cheating you. He says nobody messes with you and gets away with it.”

Shaking my head, I said, “It wasn’t at all like that. I was just a lookout. For my older brothers. We figured that if anybody got caught, I’d take the heat since I was a juvenile and they were adults. I thought they were just buying drugs. I didn’t know they’d killed somebody. And for sure I didn’t know you went straight to adult court if you caught a murder charge and you were over the age of fourteen. And then you get sent to adult prison.”

“So you weren’t guilty?”

“That’s not what I said. In this state, if you’re involved in a felony and someone dies, you’re guilty of murder. Whether you pulled the trigger or were the lookout.”

“What was the felony?”

I leaned back in my chair. “Robbing the drug dealer.”

“Did you know they were gonna rob the drug dealer?”

“No. I thought they were gonna make a buy. But that would have been a felony anyhow. Possession with intent.”

This kid seemed older than I’d thought at first. Not a confused, helpless little guy. So why was he sitting on my doorstep crying?

Still in his jacket and vest, Benji started to wipe his nose with the sleeve again. I shoved the roll of toilet paper closer to him. “You snorted something?” I asked.

He nodded, then took a piece of the toilet paper and blew his nose. Tinges of blood showed.

“You coming down now?”

Again, he nodded. “I guess.”

“Meth?”

“What’s crystal ice? Is that meth?” he asked.

“Yeah. Where’d you get it?” I was pretty sure I knew.

He stared down at the tabletop, then scratched the side of his neck. “Aaron.”

“Aaron gave you meth?” I hoped he was a lot older than he looked.

Benji shrugged. “Not really.”

“What do you mean, not really?”

“He had some. I was hungry. He said if I snorted a little, I wouldn’t mind so much. The hungry would kind of go away. He didn’t give it to me. I took it myself.”

But Aaron had provided it. Same difference, as far as I was concerned. “So then what happened?”

“He left me in the truck. Said he’d be right back. And we could go get something to eat. But that was hours ago, and he hasn’t come back.”

“You try calling him on your cell phone?”

“Yeah. It goes to voice mail.”

“Voice mail?” I wasn’t sure what that was.

“Yeah. You know, like an answering machine. You leave a message.”

The world I’d been released back into was much different from the world I’d left twenty years earlier. A lot had changed, as I’d discovered in the few months since my release. Maybe some people had answering machines before I got locked up. No one I’d known had one. And nobody had “voice mail” or “mailboxes,” except for the ones out by the road that the mail carrier put stuff in. I couldn’t remember even knowing what a cellphone was back then. If they had them at all.

I asked, “Why’d you come here instead of going home?”

“I was gonna go home. But driving the truck’s harder than I thought. And Aaron always said you could get hold of anything you wanted. So I thought maybe you’d have some more crystal ice or something.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t use. And I sure as hell don’t deal, especially to minors. You know how fast I’d be back in prison if they caught me with any type of CDS? And it don’t take much meth at all before you’re charged with intent to distribute.”