The Odds (32 page)

   SEAN ZERO’S MOTHER HAD A fringe of badly permed blond hair. She wasn’t very old, but her face was already lined.

“What’s this about?”

“Need to talk to your boy.”

“I think I know. He called 911. I should have never let him call. He’s a good kid, he doesn’t need to be defending himself for trying to do the right thing.”

The woman had just solved one of Colleen’s unanswered questions. “Where is he?”

“With friends.”

“What’s his curfew?”

Mrs. Zero looked nervous. “Soon,” she said.

They waited in the house so they could keep an eye on the mother. Sean came into the house around eleven. Potocki on instinct hurried out to the street and moments later he was back, hauling in Peter MacKensie, who was giving him a viper’s look. “Might as well come on in,” Potocki said. “Otherwise we’ll just be coming to your place.” Once MacKensie was in, Potocki guarded the door with his body.

MacKensie sneered as Mrs. Zero urged her boy, “Tell everything you know about what you saw.”

“A dead guy,” Sean said slowly, checking with his friend.

No, MacKensie was not happy. He flashed Sean a look.

“We didn’t see anything else. It was dark,” Sean Zero said.

“What about another person up there?”

Sean Zero shook his head. His eyes checked with Mac again. “We didn’t see nobody else.”

“I don’t know anything about whatever,” MacKensie blurted. “I don’t know what you want with me.” Potocki took hold of him firmly to keep him from bolting, which he looked clearly ready to do.

“So, Sean, you made the call to 911 from Cedar,” Colleen said. “Good. That was good. You were trying to help. Who made the second call?”

“Go on, tell,” Mrs. Zero said.

“I don’t know about any second call,” Sean said. MacKensie tried to give him a sign to shut up.

“Tell us about the other guy up at the house, wounded.”

There was a pause in which Zero’s face showed surprise. He looked at his mother, who gestured that he should answer. “Some guy. Hurt.”

“How?”

“Shot in the leg.”

Colleen said, “If a kid, say your age, made the call, who would that be?”

Zero said, “Maybe a kid named Joel.” He looked at MacKensie, who wouldn’t look back at him.

“Who’s Joel? He deals? Sells on the street? What? Uses?”

Zero almost laughed. “No, he’s this little kid. Just a pest.”

“Where does he live.”

“I don’t know for sure. In the neighborhood. Somewhere near North.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You tell if you know,” Sean’s mother said.

“I don’t know. Honest, Mum.”

“What were you doing up at the house?”

“Nothing. We just hang out there. We saw something was going on, but we could hardly see at all. We ran.”

“Mrs. Zero, I’m going to need to take a look at your son’s arms.”

“What for?”

“Roll up your sleeves.” Sean did slowly, all the while looking toward MacKensie’s feet. “Yes,” Colleen said to the boy’s mother. “He’s got a habit. Either you knew or you didn’t.”

Mrs. Zero was close to fainting. “I work a lot of hours.”

“I understand,” Colleen said.

Generally, they would have taken both boys in and processed them for juvenile detention. But Farber had given strict orders to let them continue. There was a line from something, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was or where it came from… .
Let them continue in their crimes
. Something like that. MacKensie and Zero would be nervous for a day or two. They’d lose their confidence, but they’d go back into it, and Farber’s men could watch them if they bothered with anyone this low down. All Colleen could do was hope the mother stepped in.

It was almost midnight when she and Potocki left. They decided to get an address for the kid named Joel first thing in the morning.

   THEIR MONEY WAS ON THE table—the forty Meg had earned that day, ten of the twelve from yesterday, Laurie’s twelve, and Joel’s six. Sixty-eight dollars. Like little idiots, they were offering it all. And hanging on to him at the same time.

Joel got the picture, though. Joel was clued in now. “Bus is still the best bet,” the kid was saying agitatedly. His eyes were crazy from the run-in with Markovic.

Nick asked again, “Did he see you go into the church? Did you really lose him?”

“I lost him. But he has the neighborhood. He could ask around. He could see me again.”

“Once I’m gone, even if he gets in here, even if he searches, just say you never knew me. Okay?”

“Yes.” Joel nodded. “That’s what we’ll say.”

Meg got pale. She told her brother, “I’d rather Nick went straight to the detective. Because. If you
listened
to her,
it sounded
as if she understood. She said they wanted to
talk
to him. She didn’t say he was a suspect.” She turned to Nick, ready to make her speech all over again.

He didn’t want to fight with Meg. You couldn’t fight with her. He eyed the sixty-eight dollars, thinking what a nice long night of drinking it would buy. What he headed her off with was, “I’ll take enough for a bus ride to somewhere. When I make some money, I’ll send it back to you.”

Meg shook her head, then said, “Okay.”

He stood, pulling up the crutches. From his pocket, he took the wallet that Meg had given him, removed the twelve dollars, put it down, and picked up a twenty. That was enough. He did have some pride.

“Our basement,” Meg tried one last time. “We could set something up.”

He couldn’t help smiling at her determination. Outside their little place, he was wanted by the police on one end, Markovic on the other, and living in the basement was not going to fix it. His heart was racing still, although he tried to appear calm for their sakes. It was time now. He was going to go.

“Look. I’ll send you money when I have it, but you can’t keep going like this. When I’m long gone, you have to … get somebody in here. If not Alison, somebody.”

They all straightened up and didn’t answer him.

“I wish you had more clothes,” Meg fretted.

He wore the outfit she had bought him, a light blue denim shirt and a pair of wide-leg jeans. He’d caught himself in a mirror earlier and was surprised to see he looked more than respectable. He wore one of the shoes she’d scrubbed, but because of the Styrofoam block supporting his splint, he had to wear a big wool sock on the other. Still, nobody could tell at a glance what his leg was splinted with. He had taken to shampooing his hair and shaving as well as doing a couple of sink baths—whore’s baths, he’d always heard them called—a day. He didn’t smell.

Joel said, “One last thing. I have to cut a window into the Styrofoam, so that you can change dressings on your own.”

“Okay,” he said impatiently. “Okay.” He doubted he’d keep at it, but saying no was not an option. Joel was his doctor.

So he sat again at the kitchen table with his leg extended. Joel said, “I’ll get some things.” The boy got up and went upstairs.

Meg brought him more tea. “If we had a lot of money, we’d just rent a different place somewhere.”

“Move?” Susannah asked.

“Or we could rent a room for him. We could sneak over there, take him things.” Susannah brightened at this idea. It was a fantasy the little girl apparently liked.

Meg knew better than to ignore the fact of Markovic out there looking for him, but she was stubborn.

A few minutes later, Joel started working on his leg, cutting into the Styrofoam slowly and carefully. “Should have done this to begin with,” the kid said. “I kept wanting to look at the whole thing. Don’t worry. This is going to work.”

Nick watched Meg cleaning up the kitchen with a meticulous determination to account for every crumb. Finally she came to the table and looked unhappily at the money sitting there. “Take the money, at least. To give you a fighting chance.”

“Twenty is enough for a bus ride to somewhere.”

“And you need money for a city bus, unless you’re going to take a cab. Which you probably should do.”

“Cabs keep records. No, no cab.”

“Almost done,” Joel said. “Look. Here’s how you wash it. Swab in here. Let it dry. Fit the piece back in. You need to take the tape and use the Ace to hold it all together. Okay?”

He said, “I can do that. Look. If I’m going to get going, I ought to get going. I’ll gather what things I have.” He stood, pulled the crutches into place.

“Wait,” Meg said. “Wait. You have to time it right. You have to know where you’re going. And you can’t be waiting in the station where anyone can see you. You should buy the ticket just before you board the bus. And—I think they’re more likely to check the population at night. That’s when, you know—”

“Low-life types travel?” He shot her a smile, trying to work on her sense of humor.

“I don’t know. If you rest up and you go in the light of day …”

“I think so, too,” Laurie said. Joel scowled, but he held his tongue.

“Let me at least see about the PAT buses.” She went to the phone in the living room and soon after, he could hear her part of the conversation. “Travel information,” she said. Then, “From the corner of Arch and North to the Greyhound Bus station.”

She came back, wincing. “You have to catch the 500. It goes from North to Federal to downtown. Then you have to walk over to Fourth to catch the 56. It’s a lot of walking. Too much.”

“I can do it.”

“Then there’s getting through the bus station.”

“I can do it.”

She nodded. “Where will you go?”

“Erie, Baltimore, Columbus, somewhere—wherever I can.”

“Isn’t there someplace you want to go?”

He shook his head. But he was thinking they were right—Markovic was more likely to be roaming around at night. He sat back down. “Morning, then.”

For a while everyone just seemed relieved.

“Did you like it here?” Susannah asked.

“Sure. Very much.”

“We have a cap in the basement. It’ll help if you wear a cap,” Laurie offered thoughtfully. “I’ll get it.” She started for the basement.

“I can pack you a sandwich tomorrow morning,” Meg said, “but I wonder if you should be carrying something to make it look …”

“He can’t,” Joel said. “He needs to keep his hands free.”

“Backpack,” Laurie said, stopped at the basement door. “That would work, wouldn’t it?” Joel nodded. “I could let him have mine.”

“He doesn’t have anything to carry in it, though.” It was Meg’s voice, full of worry. They all looked at her.

Laurie told them, “There are the funny sweatpants and the pajamas. They’re no use to us. He might as well have them.”

“And the gun. Where is that?” he asked. There was a silence that told him the answer before he heard it.

Meg said, “We don’t have it anymore. I threw it out with the bloody clothes.”

“You what?”

The kids stopped looking at him. Nobody would look at him.

“I had to. I hate guns.”

Fury came over him so strongly, he choked with the surprise of it. “How could you? You never talked to me. Don’t you think that was my decision?”

“I couldn’t have it in the house with children.”

“I might … It could …”

“I had to.”

Nick sank more deeply into his seat. Meg’s face was red. He thought she was going to cry. She grabbed up all the money he had refused and put it back in the wallet. She took a key out of the kitchen drawer, showed it, and slid it next to the money. “Key to the house. In case you ever need—”

“Thank you.”

No gun. Okay, okay. Better that way. A relief, really.

Laurie came up from the basement with the cap. She plopped it on his head. “Looks good,” she said. “I’ll go get my backpack. It’s upstairs. Mine is the best.” The others nodded agreement.

When she returned with her plain brown backpack, she told him, “I put a couple of things in it. See, it’s going to look good, just right. You can act like a student.”

“I’m a bit old for that.”

“A graduate student like our father was.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll use it?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

There is a long silence. Finally Meg says, “Okay. We’d better get to bed so we can get up early.”

She starts the others toward the steps.

He says, “I don’t think I can sleep just yet. How about if I put on the TV again until I can? Would you mind?”

“No, of course not.”

He takes his time getting settled on the sofa, pulling a blanket up over him.

Does he like it here?—Susannah’s question.

With people moving around, doing this and that? The only family life he’s ever really had. He can hear the little girl’s voice asking him that question as he sits waiting for morning. He’s gotten used to the routines, the sound of a shower running, then stopping. Wet towels drying. Dishes clacking against each other. Voices raised and hushed. A human machine in motion. He likes it all right. A dangerous amount of liking.

When Meg appears downstairs after the others are asleep, he’s not surprised. He more than expected her. “Did I wake you?” she asks.

“I was just drifting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“They’re sad,” she says.

“You still think I’m something I’m not.”

“Please don’t laugh at me.”

“You must want to be a social worker.” But she doesn’t like it when he teases her, so he stops.

“Don’t drink,” she says. “Please. Don’t. It will help.”

He laughs, shakes his head. “You’re funny.”

“Please.”

“I’ll try. What if I say I’ll try?” Maybe he will … who knows.

“You’d better sleep. You need energy. I’ll get up early. The others, too. They’ll be upset if I don’t get them up.”

She is hesitant to leave. He reaches out a hand to her hand, squeezes. “All right. I’ll try very hard,” he says.

She nods and leans forward and kisses his forehead before she turns the corner and goes up the steps again.

What he feels is terrible. An ache in his chest, a feeling of weakness, tears just behind his eyes. He blinks them away, lies back, and watches whatever the TV gives him. He keeps himself awake for three more hours, trying to be numb. When the house seems utterly quiet, he begins to prepare the leave-taking. And at every move, he fears Meg will be wakened and will be at his side.