The Odds (31 page)

K studied Mac. “Who’s the kid?”

“Joel. Nerd name.”

“Joel what? Are you fucking with me?”

Mac tried to recall if he’d even known a last name. It ran in his mind it was something common. “If I knew it, I would tell you. Joel … Martin or something like that. I know what. He washes cars. You see a kid about ye high, carries a bucket, washing cars, that’s the kid.” It would turn out to be a dead end, but Mac didn’t bother to say. It would occupy K for a while.

“I got other work,” the little guy said. “Take me back to my car, huh?”

K looked cross-eyed with fury, and it almost made Mac laugh.

   JOEL WAS TOTING HIS BUCKET. He hadn’t gotten much today, only an old Taurus.

He didn’t hear the van pull up beside him.

“Hey, you.”

He looked up. He thought at first the man wanted to get his car washed. “For a van, five bucks,” he said.

“Oh, really. That’s quite a deal. Maybe I should get it washed. Meanwhile, I want to talk. How about you get over here.”

Joel stopped in his tracks. “I’m busy. There’s another car I’m supposed to—”

“Come on. I can make it worth your while.” He held up a twenty. He kept the car idling down the street as Joel walked. “Not, not what you think. This is just a question about somebody I need to find.”

“No.” Joel kept walking.

“Okay. Just wait a sec, then.” The man put the car in park and got out. He was large, olive skinned, with closely cropped hair. Joel could not remember having seen him before, but he knew to be scared.

“Hey, kid, you sure got your lessons about not talking to strangers. Only, I’m not a stranger. Basically, I know people you know. See? And I need to talk to you.”

“What about?” Joel asked. He hated that he was shaking and that he wanted to run.

“When did you last go up to that house where they found the body?”

Was the man police, plainclothes? “What house?”

“Don’t lie. I know all about it. Carl? Nick? Where’d they go? Nick Banks?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know who you mean.”

In an instant, everything was changed, the man was on him, twisting his arm until his shoulder hurt. “Why are you running if there’s nothing wrong?”

“I’m not running. Let me go.”

“Not just yet. So, you know where he is?”

“How would I know?”

The man tightened his grip. “Well, let’s hope you get a little smarter, huh?”

Joel looked up and down the street, wondering where to run. He remembered people went in and out of the Lutheran Church at various times of day. Maybe he could be safe there.

“Well, I need to get hold of him. Okay?”

“Okay.” He made himself stop pulling in order to give the impression he was going to settle down and talk. “Okay.” But all the while he figured out what he had to do. “I still don’t know who you mean. Lot of people went up to that house.” He imagined himself down the alley, around the corner, and inside the Lutheran Church.

The man’s grip tightened. “Lots? Plus Carl? How about the guy worked the pizza shop?”

“I don’t know any pizza shop guy.”

“You little liar!” The man turned him and pushed him against the van, then raised a hand as if to hit him. “You lying little shit.”

Joel thought his shoulder socket would dislocate the way he had to wrench away, but he did it all at once and he ran, ran, ran leaving his bucket and brush right on the street.

He ran like an athlete, like wind, down the street, so fast, he felt unreal, or the pavement did—it was something that surprised him when he looked down, blocks of cement, one after the other, some blocks cracked, some higher than others. He saw what a sidewalk
was
as if for the first time. He ran right into the church, down the steps, past a meeting room, past a men’s room, a ladies’ room, and into a corridor.

He stopped. For a long time, he listened. If the man came in asking for him, he would scream until somebody listened. But when he realized what that meant, when he stopped and breathed, and the thought crowded in that there would be questions about where he lived, his family, when he realized all that, he wanted to give up. He pressed himself against a wall, gasping.

Maybe the man was a cop.

No. No, he wasn’t.

Joel listened for footsteps. All he heard for several minutes was the hum of voices, people talking, and the hum seemed to be coming from a room somewhere around the corner. The first notes of a hymn were struck on a piano. There was a pause and the piano started again. Somebody who believed in playing hard was doing just that, as if to force power from the wavering voices that followed uncertainly. Joel tried to hear past the hymn. Then, the worst thing happened. He could hear people leaving. Chairs scraping and murmurs of good-bye. His heart beat wildly.

He listened for the piano. Nothing.

After about five minutes, all the voices were gone. Then, when he was about to move, he heard footsteps. Joel leaned back into a well in the corridor. Ahead was a man with long hair, walking slowly, looking as if he were in a movie playing Jesus, just contemplating the Sea of Galilee. To Joel’s right was an open closet, made of wood, with thirty or forty choir robes hanging there. He slid in, plastered himself against the back wall of it. Inside he was almost laughing, almost crying. The silky lilac-colored material covered his face so he thought he would smother. He was swimming, tangled in purple robes that smelled of deodorants and perfumes.

He listened for the footsteps of the man he’d seen. The walking continued, unhurried. Lights went out, one after another. Suddenly the place was plunged in darkness. He was in a basement, no windows at all. It seemed as if night had fallen and he’d lost a day. When the footsteps were gone, he missed them. After a few moments of silence, he panicked like a drowning swimmer, batting the robes away. He turned every which way, trying to make his eyes take in some light; after a very long time, they did. He listened again. There was nothing to hear, except his heart pounding loudly.

He could stay here the night, but if he did, Meg would end up having to call the police. If he could find a phone, he could tell her he was all right. He made up his mind to find a phone. After another long wait—what seemed like an hour since he hadn’t heard anything at all—he made out a voice from the floor above, a single voice. Someone on the phone? He waited a little, listening for another hint of the voice. The air around him vibrated as if a long, low organ note reverberated into eternity.

He began to look for a way out of the basement. Soon he would find a door. He stopped, trying to think what he would do if the man who chased him was outside, waiting.

Light. He caught a glimmer of light. He headed toward it and found an exit sign at the end of another hallway. He saw the door had a crash bar on it; opening it might very well set off an alarm. He stood before the door, afraid to chance it.

Then he pressed the crash bar in one quick movement. At first it didn’t open. He pushed again and it did. No alarm sounded and he was tumbled outside where he came face-to-face with another person.

Before him stood the bearded man with the shiny long hair and the removed, peaceful face. For a moment, the two of them looked at each other. The man was smoking.

“Whoa,” the man said. “I thought I found myself a special place.” It was funny, really, how much he looked like all those pictures of Jesus— a little sad, a small tilt to his head, thin. His hair went the whole way to his shoulders. “Can I help you?” He stood very straight and seemed to protect the fall of his hair. He had a wistful smile.

Joel wanted to scan the surroundings for that other one who’d accosted him, but it seemed impolite to interrupt the slow movements of the man before him.

“You were in there. Where?”

“Downstairs somewhere.”

“You live around here?”

“Yes. I … was hiding.”

The man blinked in puzzlement.

“Someone was after me.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

Joel shook his head slightly.

“You must have been scared. I would have helped you if I’d known. How old are you?”

“Almost twelve.”

“You have brothers and sisters?”

“I have a sister almost eleven and another one seven and the oldest one of us is almost fourteen.”

“You could just say what age you really are.”

“I guess.” Joel turned his head finally. He looked behind him and around again. He didn’t see anyone else.

“Does your family have a church?” The man looked longingly at the stub of his cigarette and dropped it, then stepped on it, almost sorrowfully, as Joel’s father used to do with a pest he couldn’t persuade himself to let live—like a huge carpenter ant.

“Not anything steady.”

“Let me get you some brochures for your parents. We have a summer program. It stops at age twelve, so it’s good for you and your two younger sisters. Come with me. We have to go around to the front.”

Joel felt sick and his heart pounded. “That’s okay. I have to go.”

“No, come. I don’t mind. My name is Gordon. Yours?”

“Joel.”

The side of the church was windowless. There were a few beaten-down buildings across the alley from it. The whole way around the building, Joel expected to discover someone hiding, watching, ready to spring. Gordon moved swiftly now.

Without a word to each other, the two went inside the church. Joel’s sneakers squeaked on the stone floor of the lobby.

“Joe?”

He did not correct the man.

“Did you see the upstairs when you were hiding?”

“No.”

“Take a look.”

They passed through glass doors into the church proper, where they stood behind the pews and looked at the altar with its dark wood and purple cloth up ahead. The stained glass was modern—just a bunch of triangles, not elaborate like the windows of old churches with people washing feet and kneeling in prayer.

Space. There was space here. It was calm and clean.

Gordon led him into the office to the side of the vestibule. The office was large and had a big counter in front, like a school office. From this counter Gordon plucked three brochures, which he then handed to Joel. “The Bible-school program starts as soon as school is over. There are outings. We provide lunches. Do you think you could get your parents to come by and talk to me?”

Lunches. For Susannah, anyway.

“I’ll try.” Joel wondered if people who went into church work tried to look a certain way or if they were born with high foreheads and intense eyes and were fated to be attracted to church work. “Do you teach the Bible school? Are you the priest?”

“I just work here. The head honcho is called a pastor here. This is a Lutheran Church.”

Joel accepted the brochures. “Thank you. I’d probably better get going.”

“If your friends are rough on you, avoid them.”

“I will.”

“And don’t skip school. Learning is important.”

When Joel left, he went around to the alley and stood for a long time against the side of the church before he moved on to the side of a garage. After that he darted to another building and waited, going very still, listening, searching in every direction. He stuffed the brochures in his shirt. He wanted desperately to be home, but he couldn’t hurry and he couldn’t at all costs end up leading the man who had chased him to Nick.

Nick had to leave. For sure. Joel understood that now.

When he finally got home, he found Nick in the kitchen cooking up some kind of stew for dinner. Susannah was sitting there, waiting for him to turn and make a chess move between stirs of the pot.

   SHE AND POTOCKI WERE AT the office most of Saturday with the kid with the mop of hair and the sad eyes. Colleen was unwilling to leave him alone with Narcotics people for any length of time. Farber worked on the kid for hours, coming away with corroboration about the Wednesday and Sunday trips to Philly, about the way distribution worked. Farber asked seventy ways about the relationship between K and the street dealers, K and BZ, K and Nick, K and Philadelphia. And Colleen zeroed in on K’s reputation for getting rid of people.

By eight o’clock that night, Colleen was able to shove a piece of paper toward Carl, whom she now knew was really Matt. She was trying to get used to his correct name. “If you sign this, Matt, we put in the order for someone to drive you to Atlanta. Meals on the way. We get you into rehab there. After that, if you make good, we give you startup money. All this is dependent on you being in touch with your friend, Tracy, and with us. She’s our contact beyond the rehab center. All clear?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You have to trust us.”

“I’m trying.”

“One more thing. You know we have to go after these boys you mentioned. Anything else, any final thing, you want to tell me about them. Anything?”

“I don’t know anything else. They wanted work. They were at me for that all the time. I don’t have their addresses.”

Eight thirty, two uniforms were assigned to take Matt to Atlanta.

“You have my card?” Colleen asked. “Keep it. And memorize my number, too. If anything feels wrong, call me.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Bye, Matt. I’m wishing you all the luck you can possibly use. I hope this is the beginning of something. I’m counting on it.”

She watched him walk out to the car with the two uniforms.

“Atlanta,” Potocki said. “You’re going to get a lot of grief about letting him go to Atlanta.”

“He likes this girl Tracy.”

“People are going to say you’re losing your head.” He smiled.

“People are going to say any damn thing.”

“Want to go get some dinner?”

“Yeah. Then I want to call the principal and get some addresses. Talk to these two would-be dealers.”

“It’s a long day.”

“I know.”

“You’re relentless.”

They gobbled down steaks at Outback, where the steaks came with more gorp and show than they wanted. They were able to get a table only because there was no home game. They saw part of the away game—innings five and six and part of seven—on the TV while they ate. Finally, they got a call back from the principal of the school with the addresses they needed for Sean Zero and Peter MacKensie. They finished up a little faster than they wanted and were on their way.