Snitch (The Bea Catcher Chronicles) (5 page)

She suddenly appears at the top of the stairs, looking flustered as she ties a robe around her slender waist. Her long, dark, gray-streaked curly hair is tousled; mascara is smeared under her long lashes.

“Jesus, Mom, you scared me.”

“You scared me, too. What are you doing home?”

“Forgot my lunch.”

She hurries down the stairs, into the kitchen. “You want me to make you something?”

“I thought you had a client meeting . . . the mural you’re painting in Bloomfield Hills?”

“No. No. The dad cancelled. I guess I slept in a little.” She sweeps her hair back behind her ears and adjusts her robe.

I sneeze. “Ugh. My allergies are horrible, and my nose won’t stop running. Can you please get me a Claritin?”

“Sure, hon.” She pulls out a chair, stands on it, and unlocks a combination padlock on a kitchen cabinet over the refrigerator.

“You don’t have to hide stuff anymore, Mom, you know that, right?”

She doesn’t answer, just pulls out a foil sheet of the allergy medicine, pops out a tablet, and hands me the pill.

My parents insist on locking up stuff ever since my overdose: everything from the bottle of scotch that my dad likes to sip now and then, to vanilla extract (as if I’d consider getting drunk on two ounces of a decade-old bottle of flavoring). And the Claritin. I mean, what am I going to do with allergy medicine? Snort it? Oh. Yeah, I think I did try that once.

It’s sad that they don’t trust me yet. But I made that bed, for sure. It’s like I’m their handicapped child and want, need to kick the crutches out from underneath me.

I lower my head under the faucet, slurp up water, and swallow the pill. “Oh, by the way, I’m going to hit a meeting after school, so I probably won’t be home till dinner.” I have to cover my butt, not knowing how long Sergeant Daniels will need me.

“Says here you already went to one before school.” She stands at the counter reading the note I’d left.

Shit.
“Oh, yeah, well, I got sidetracked with Willa and ended up not going. Something about a birthday party for me.”
Not a total lie.

“Well, that’s sweet of her.” She pours herself a cup of cold coffee—heats it in the microwave. “Then I’ll see you at dinner. Takeout, okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine with whatever.” I kiss her on the cheek and smell something different—a musky, smoky smell.

Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her robe. She reads the message and smiles.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, no one. Something about work,” she says as she rushes back up the stairs, forgetting about her coffee, texting the
no one
back. “Have a good day, hon.”

“Sure.”
What the hell was that about?

6 days
10 hours
15 minutes

I
sit on the bleachers at the top of the Packard High stadium, watching my PE class run relays on the track below. Eva Marie was right. My hair was a cinch to twist and didn’t take her long. I could join in on the relays or open my Moleskine and sketch out possible “tagger looks.” Duh, easy decision.

“Cool ’do.” Billy Weisman checks out my hair and smiles as he balances on his skateboard, teetering on the steps. I guess he’s cutting class, too.

I pat at the pinned twists. “Thanks. Eva Marie did an awesome job.”

“Hey, thanks for covering for me with Hogan—the smoke thing.”

“No prob.”

He bends his knees, stretches out his arms, leans his body forward, and begins to surf down the stairs, zigzagging, jumping gracefully from one row to another, zipping like a razor. His
movements are effortless, fluid. He approaches the steel railing above the football field, leaps up, and his feet land, balanced, crouched on the rail. He tucks his head close to his chest and ends the performance with a tight forward somersault in the air, nailing the landing with both feet on the ground, arms raised like a gymnast.

I applaud and give him a mental ten. Billy hitches up his baggy pants, vaults the railing, and jogs back up the bleacher steps, not even close to being out of breath, even though he’s a big-time smoker . . . of many substances.

“That was amazing, Billy. Is there anything you can’t do?”

Billy walks out of the stadium and over to a pop machine standing against the school wall, kicks it, gets us two free bottles of Coke, and hands me the soda as we sit on top of a chained-down picnic table. He lights up a joint and talks while inhaling, sounding like a muffled sock puppet. “Shit. You’re clean, right?” He hides it behind his back.

“Yeah. Just blow the other way.”

He does, exhaling a pretty line of silver smoke. He peers at me sideways. “Really, no prob?”

I shrug. I’m not sure what it’s like for Billy. I have no idea what his story is, but, yeah, it’s a problem for me. Every day. And yet, oddly, it also exhilarates me, the challenge of it all when the craving, the urge sticks out its big ugly face, like,
What are you going to do, fool?
Singsonging,
I’m stronger than you are, neener neener neener.

So this is what I do: I carry around bright-red boxing
gloves—in my head. And every time those words, the urge, that monster appears—even dares to—I do a one-two punch: uppercut to the jaw and then a left to the cheek. (I perfected it, for real, with the creep that raped Willa last fall.) Then I imagine the craving as a fizzle of impotent excrement dripping down to the ground, burying itself in a hole in the earth in shame, I kick dirt over it, stomp on it, and move on . . . until the next time—which could easily be five minutes later.

I also know that using again would shackle me, take me down into that hole. I
would
be handicapped. And do I really want to live with my parents, or be thrown back into rehab—or worse, on the streets—for the rest of my life? Live the life of a loser chump?

Billy stubs out the joint. “What’s poppin’, home skillet?”

I laugh. “I love the way you talk, your
speak
. . . . It’s so cool.”

“Da gangsta Billy rap?”

“You’re in a gang?”

“I gotta taggin’ crew goin’ on. But gang? Shit, no. I’m just innit for my art.” He raises his arms and slings off some hand gestures.

“Whoa. Let me see that tat on your arm.”

He smiles, lifts the sleeve of his T-shirt, exposing a detailed tattoo of the brain—the swirls of the four lobes wrapped around his upper arm.

“That’s amazing. Where’d you get inked?”

“I have this bro. Stan the Man. He has his own tat shop down on Main.”

“Huh.” I take out a cigarette—ready to light. “Um, you know . . . I’ve been thinking about getting into tatting.”

“Get out. That’s stupendous.” He slaps the table. “You got some of your art on you?”

I put the cigarette back in the pack. “Seriously? You want to see my designs?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

“Well, I’ve never really shared them with anyone. . . . It’s probably just a stupid dream.”

“Stupid? Bullshit. A dream starts here.” He points to the right side of his brain tat. “Come on, hand it over, lemme see.”

He leafs through the pages of my sketchbook, intently studying, outlining them gently with his finger as if they’re alive, three-dimensional.
He’s so high.

I lace up the imaginary boxing gloves—again—swallow the last slug of pop, and toss the bottle in the overflowing recycling bin next to the chained-down trash can.

“I’ve always known you could draw, but damn, this is inspired,” Billy murmurs.

“Yeah, you think so?”

“Is the Weisman wise? I’d let you ink me in a sec. And Stan . . . the man could teach you the ropes.”

“Oh my god, that would be so incredible.”

A car screeches out of the parking lot, music blaring through the stereo. A screaming senior hangs out the window: “Screw you, Packard High!”

I look at Billy. “Guess he got into college.”

“Or not.” Billy laughs. “So, what does your dad think about you inkin’? Isn’t he like a VIP dude at Michigan?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Hah, ditchin’ a BFA for a TAT.”

“Yeah, the whole situation stinks. He thinks I’m going to defer for a year, expects me to live at home—and my mom, she wants me to work with her, painting murals for kids’ bedrooms. Her business has picked up.”

Billy snorts. “You? Painting puppy dogs and kitty cats? No effin way.”

“I know, right? What about you, Billy? What are your plans after graduation?”

“Gonna help my pop out at the tire shop. Fitting semis. He deals and wheels ’em.” His eyes are red and squinty as he strokes his goatee. “So, you wanna go train-bombin’ with me? See my shit?”

“I thought you said the cops were after you.”

“That’s the fun.” He flings some more gang-speak. “Throw up some tags, slide and hide, and ditch the bacon.”

My phone buzzes with a text from Daniels—
the bacon
:

DANIELS: c u at 4. Don’t be late.

“Hey, Billy . . . you mind if I borrow your hat? I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

He pulls the cap off his head, slaps it on mine. “Fo’ sho’. You did me a solid, Beawash. It’s yours to keep.”

“And you think you could teach me some of da Billy rap?”

6 days
7 hours
55 minutes

M
y hands are cuffed behind my back. Sergeant Daniels, now in his uniform blues, with the three gold stripes on his sleeve, pulls me through the busy Ann Arbor Police Station. My baggy “fat” jeans from the backseat of my car slide down on my butt, my high-top Converse sneakers squeak as I trip on the linoleum-tiled floor. “Slow down, shit!” I cry out, acting like I’m out of breath.

The Sarge glances at me, his eyes squint with confusion, and I give him a little smile—for a nanosecond—and then slap the mask of phony urgency back on my face as that jerk, Detective Cole, passes us. I huff and grunt, pretend that the sergeant is yanking and twisting my arm. Cole smirks and nods at Daniels.
He doesn’t recognize me . . . yessss.
I’m just another low-life punk that got caught doing something bad—another one down.

The sergeant joins in on the charade and orders, “Get in there. Now.”

I fake a snivel as he shoves me into a stuffy room, slams the door shut, and locks it.

We both sigh. The performance is over—curtain closed.

“Jesus, Bea. What was that all about?”

“I wanted it to look real, not like you dragged me in here for friggin’ jaywalking or something. I had to play a part, come on.” I struggle with the cuffs on my wrists. “Hey, can you help me with these things? I kind of need my hands to work.”

“Sure.” He closes in on me—reaching around my back and unlocking the handcuffs—pauses for a beat. Our bodies touch slightly, our breath in sync. The woodsy smell socks me in the stomach . . . again.

Sergeant Daniels backs away, hooking the cuffs onto his belt, and I massage my sore wrists.

“I put them on really loose, Bea. If you hadn’t struggled like that, they wouldn’t have hurt.”

“Yeah, well, you live and learn. That was the first time I’ve been cuffed, thank god—and hopefully the last.” I pull the sleeves down on Chris’s oversize red hoodie sweatshirt and yank the jeans up over the elastic on a pair of men’s striped boxers (I wear them sometimes over black tights, on casual days).

The sergeant checks me out. “What the hell are you wearing?”

I wag my finger at him. “Don’t you mad dawg me.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said, don’t look at me that way—up and down, all
judgy-like. The case is gang-related, so I wanted to look the part. Got my taggin’ duds on.”

“I said the
case
is gang-related, not you.”

I yank Billy’s oversize Detroit Tigers baseball cap off my head.

“And what did you do to your hair?”

“My GF twisted then pinned it. What’s your beef?”

“You look like a boy.”

I place the cap backward on my head, scrunch my shoulders forward, slouch, and sign out the word
cop
with my hands—like Billy showed me. “Yeah, well, you look like bacon, a pig, in those duds.”

“Now what are you doing?”

“I’m throwing you signals—stacking—slinging some hand signs, dude. I did a little gangsta research after we convened.”

Daniels shakes his head, laughs. “You don’t do anything half-assed, Bea, that’s for sure.” He gestures for me to sit in a chair in front of a desk. A large window looks down on a cinder-block room. A young black kid sits alone on a folding chair behind a table. He looks scared—petrified, like he’s about to pee his baggy jeans. Tats peek out on his neck from beneath his sweatshirt.

“That’s him?”

“Yeah. Junior.”

“Damn. He’s a BG.”

“A what?”

“Baby gangster. You sure he’s seventeen?”

Junior checks out the room—his eyes wide with fear—and then stops. Focuses on me, his gaze burrowing through me.

I jump. “Whoa. Can he see me?”

“No. It’s a one-way mirror. But he probably knows someone’s observing him.”

His baby-sweet face with wide-set, dark eyes drips with innocence. His full lips turn down and quiver, like he’s fighting back tears. “You’re right. He didn’t do it.”

The sergeant leans in. “Wait. Are you seeing something already? What he’s thinking?”

“No, of course not. I’m not drawing.” I scoff.

“Oh. Okay. Right.”

“He just looks so sweet.”

“You need paper? A pen?”

“How long have you known me?” I pull my Moleskine and a pen out of a Pokémon backpack. I passed a yard sale on the way over and bought it for a quarter—thought it went well with the “look”—and transferred all the shit from my purse into the backpack.

“I’m going in there—going to ask him a few questions—pretend he didn’t confess to anything. I need to get him to talk. He knows something that he doesn’t want to say; in particular, who planted the weed, who set him up, who killed the kid in the Huron. He’s covering for someone.”

“You need the 411 on the OG.”

“The what?”

“Information on the original gangster. The boss in charge of it all—the big guns. Jesus, Daniels, you gotta get hip with the homeys.” I sling a few nonsense signs.

The sergeant ignores my gang-speak.

“By the way, Sarge? He’s not gonna rat someone out.”