The Jealous Kind (17 page)

“You mean summer camp?”

“No, it's
some kind of political crap.”

“What did your parents say?” I said.

“Neither of them finished grammar school. They think Krauser is big shit, the intellectual of the Houston school system.” He glanced at Valerie. “Sorry.”

She smiled at him with her eyes.

“Stay away from Krauser. Don't listen to anything he tells you,” I said.

“Tell that to my old man. He eats up Krauser's war stories. ‘Ole boy from South Carolina blew the treads on a SS Panzer and put a flamethrower on it. We nicknamed him Hotfoot.' ”

“You okay, Sabe?” I said.

“Sure.”

“You could fool me,” I said.

“I think I'm going to turn myself in,” he said.

“You're sure that's what you want to do?”

“Jenks says they found the brick and they're going to dust it for fingerprints.”

“Then why tell you about it?” I said. “Why not just bring you in?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything.”

A car passed. It had straight pipes, and the engine roared like a garbage truck. The guys inside it were big, their arms tattooed and hanging out the window, the sleeves cut off or rolled to the shoulder. One of them yelled something. Saber kept his eyes on the car until it turned the corner at the end of the block. “You know who those guys are?” he said to Valerie.

“I couldn't see their faces.”

“How about the car? A '49 Hudson.”

“No, I don't remember seeing it,” she said.

“Did you recognize them?” he said to me.

“No.”

“They look like bad news,” he said. He stared at the street, then at me. “I think they're dogging us.”

“They're just guys. If they wanted a beef, they would have stopped.”

“You don't know that.”

“What's going on, Sabe?” I said.

“Nothing. I don't
take guys like that for granted. I've had my fill of them.”

“You want to play a round of miniature golf?” I said.

“No, I got to get home. I don't feel too hot. I got to get off the dime. You don't let the enemy take the high ground. Rule one of the Army of Bledsoe, right?”

“Why not spend more time with Aaron and me?” Valerie said.

“Me?” he said.

“The rodeo and the livestock show are coming up,” she said. “My 4-H club has some exhibits.”

“That would be pretty simpatico,” he said.

“Can I tell you something?” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“Quit fighting with these people,” she said. “One way or another, they'll all disappear.”

“I don't think it works that way.”

“Yes, it does. Don't go seeing things, either,” she said. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. I think she almost had him convinced.

The car loaded with big guys came by again, slower this time, one guy sitting up on the passenger window bare-chested, shooting us the bone across the roof. Saber stood up from the table. A narrow object protruded from his boot, stiffening inside the leg of his jeans.

“Sit down,” I said.

“I'm tired of these guys,” he said. He gave them the Italian salute.

The car kept going, crossing the intersection, its straight pipes shaking the air. I pulled up the cuff of his jeans. “What are you doing with that?”

“Taking care of myself. Not taking any more shit. Sorry, Miss Valerie.”

“Give it to me, Saber,” I said.

“I'll give it to you when people like Krauser and guys like that bunch in the Hudson get off our backs.”

He had a sheathed British commando knife strapped to his calf. It was doubled-edged and dark blue and made of steel, including the handle, the blade tapering to a razor-sharp tip, an absolutely murderous gut-ripper you could buy for $2.95 and a coupon from any men's magazine.

Saber wiped his place clean and threw the napkin into a trash can.

“Stay with us,” Valerie said.

“Thanks. See y'all later,” he said. “Let me know if those guys come back. Maybe get their license number. I think it's time to start doing some home calls.”

He lit a cigarette as he walked to his car, not even bothering to hook his pants cuff back over the knife's handle, flicking the match angrily at the air.

Valerie stared at me. “He said Jenks?”

“That's the detective who's been giving us a bad time since Loren Nichols's car was torched and the Mexican girl was killed,” I said.

“Merton Jenks?”

“Yeah, that's his name. You know him?”

“Jenks was in the OSS with my father,” she replied.

I
HAD NEVER WORN
handcuffs before. Or been pushed face-first against a car and probed under the arms and in the crotch. It happened at the filling station the next morning in front of my boss and our customers. A plainclothes detective pulled my arms behind me and snipped the steel tongs into the locks and squeezed them into my wrists, bunching the skin, then turned me around and set me on the backseat. “Stick your feet outside.”

“Outside?”

He had a narrow face and large ears and nicotine breath and a level of irritability and malevolence in his eyes that seemed disconnected from the situation, as though he carried an invisible cross and wanted to visit as much damage on the world as possible. “You go to school. You don't understand English?”

“You want my legs outside the car?”

I looked at his eyes again and didn't wait for an answer. I hung my legs out the door. He pulled off my shoes, glanced at the soles, and dropped the shoes into a paper bag.

“Sir, what are we doing?” I said.

“Watch your feet,” he said, and slammed the door.

It was a short ride to Mr. Krauser's house. A cruiser and a cage truck from the SPCA were parked in front. I could see Saber's head through the back window of the cruiser. Krauser was standing in the
front yard, wearing tennis shoes and a yellow strap workout shirt and slacks dotted with paint, his shoulders and upper arms ridged with hair. His face was dilated, as though it had been stung by bees. The man who cuffed me was named Hopkins. He had taken off his hat inside the cruiser; there was a pale line across the top of his forehead. He looked at me through the wire mesh. “I talked about you boys with Detective Jenks. I don't know why he's put up with you. But that's him, not me. That man standing in the yard has the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Somebody should beat the shit out of both y'all. Your buddy in the cruiser says it was your idea. Is that true?”

“What idea?”

“Last chance. It's you or him or both y'all. He's already put your tit in the ringer.”

“Saber said I committed a crime?”

“His words were ‘It was Aaron's idea. I just went along.' ”

“It looks to me like he just got here. When did you talk to him?”

His gaze went away from me. “Saw your belt buckle. Don't try to ride this one to the buzzer. You'll end up in Gatesville.”

“I didn't do anything.”

“You've already got a jacket, boy. You think your shit don't stink? You think you're going to get away with this?”

“With what?”

I could see the hair moving in his nostrils. He got out and pulled open the back door. The pupils in his eyes looked like burnt match heads. He fastened his hand around my bicep. “Don't speak unless you're spoken to,” he said. “Don't be eyeballing, either.”

Krauser stared at me as we went up the driveway. His face was razor-nicked, a piece of blood-spotted toilet paper plastered to his chin, one of his eyes bulging and the other recessed and watery, as though diseased.

“I don't know what happened here, Mr. Krauser, but I didn't have anything to do with it,” I said.

“Broussard?”

“Yes, sir.”

He blinked and looked at Hopkins. “What did he tell you?”

“Maybe you
should go inside and cool off, have a glass of water,” the detective said. “Don't worry. We'll get the truth from these boys.”

“Bledsoe is the ringleader,” Krauser said. “He belongs in a juvenile facility. This one here is a snake. Don't turn your back on him.”

The other cops were taking Saber out of the cruiser. He was handcuffed and barefoot, his T-shirt stretched out of shape on his neck, one knee grass-stained, his elbows raw and bleeding. Hopkins pushed me up the driveway.

“I want to call my parents,” I said.

He didn't answer. I stepped on a bottle cap or a rock and had to hop on one foot. Then we rounded the corner of the house. The yard was in full sunlight, the humidity like spun glass, the air thick with the smell of feces. Flies buzzed around the trash can. The Doberman was stretched out on the grass, inches from an empty water bowl. A piece of butcher paper streaked with a copper-colored liquid had blown against the chain-link fence.

“You think we did this?” I said.

“You wear a ten and a half?” he said.

“Shoe?”

“No, your hat size.”

“Yes, a ten-and-a-half shoe.”

“Go up the steps.”

“The Harrelsons or the Atlases are behind this.”

“The who?”

“If you talked with Jenks, he told you about them.”

“What he told me is you boys may have caused a boy to lose his eye. Now, get your ass inside.”

“I want to call my parents.”

“You don't make the rules, boy.”

“I'm not going to cooperate with this.”

“You're going to do as you're told.”

The back door was open. So was the screen, slashed diagonally by a sharp knife or a box cutter. The dead bolt had been prized out of the doorjamb. Hopkins pressed his knuckle into my spine. Sweat was running down my nose; the sun was the hot yellow of an egg yolk,
the heat from the concrete and St. Augustine grass a wool blanket on my skin. I could feel my wrists peeling and salt running into the cuts, when I tried to twist them inside the cuffs. Hopkins worked his knuckle into my spine again.

“You son of a bitch,” I said.

“Didn't quite catch that.”

My nose was dripping, my eyes burning, the yard and house slipping out of focus. “I apologize.”

“Get inside,” he said.

“What for? I was playing miniature golf with a friend last night. I went from my house to work this morning. I couldn't have done whatever it is that happened here.”

“Inside, boy. I won't say it again.”

“I want a witness.”

“Witness to what.”

“Whatever you're going to do.”

There was no one else in the yard. I could hear Saber and the other cops out on the driveway. Saber had either fallen or sat down and was making them drag him into the backyard. Hopkins lit a Camel and took a puff and let the smoke out slowly. He looked at his cigarette, then raised his eyes to me. “You smoke?”

“No, sir.”

“Good for you. I got to quit these things one day.”

He stiff-armed me through the door. I stumbled against the wall. “I never did anything to Mr. Krauser. You probably cost me my job. Everybody in school hates Mr. Krauser's guts. He's a cruel, mean-spirited shithead, and everybody knows it. I want my damn phone call.”

“You'll get it at the jail.”

I knew that nothing I said would make any difference. He belonged to the huge army of people who believed that authority over others was an achievement and that violence was proof of a man's bravery.

Hopkins flipped his cigarette through the ripped screen into the yard and led me into a foyer shiny with fresh paint and tracked with shoeprints. He stood on the edge of the foyer and took one of my shoes from the paper bag and squatted down and fitted it inside a print.
Then he did the same with the other shoe. “Both shoes fit, wouldn't you say?”

“What does it matter? I didn't walk through that paint. I wasn't here. At least not yesterday or today.”

He didn't answer. The other cops brought Saber through the back door, one of them carrying his shoes. The cop handed the shoes to Hopkins. It took three tries before Hopkins could fit one of Saber's shoes into a print. Then he pressed the other shoe inside another print and stood up, flexing his back. “Neither one of you were here? That's your story?”

“Those tracks could have been put there by anyone,” Saber said.

Hopkins turned up the soles of our shoes. “How'd the same paint get on here?”

“You put it there,” Saber said. “We saw you do it.”

“That paint has been dry for hours.” He squatted down again and touched the floor and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. “See?”

Through the back door, I saw the SPCA man wrap Krauser's Doberman in a piece of canvas and carry it out of the yard. Hopkins walked into the weight room and turned around. “Bring those two in here. I want to see if they're proud of their work.”

I went ahead of Saber, the paint in the foyer sticking to the bottoms of my feet. At first glance, everything in the weight room seemed to be in order. The dumbbells were racked, the weight bar loaded with fifty-pound plates notched on the stanchions above the leather-padded bench, the memorabilia hanging on the walls. As my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting, I saw the methodical thoroughness the vandal or vandals had used in destroying everything that daily reassured Krauser who he was.

They had broken the glass out of the frames on the walls, then cut and shredded the citations and photos and military decorations inside them, reducing them to confetti and miniaturizing Krauser's life. They had used pliers or vise grips to mutilate Krauser's medals for valor and his combat infantryman badge. The Confederate battle flag hung in strips from the wall, each strip tied in a bow. The lamp made from a German helmet was upside down on the floor, propped against the
wall. Hopkins tipped it with the point of his shoe. A rivulet of yellow liquid ran onto the concrete. The white-handled Nazi dagger with the incised gold SS lightning bolts was gone.