Total Immunity (7 page)

“If it's fated,” Maria said with a sad smile.

Then she kissed him on the cheek, turned, and got out of his car. He watched her go through the shadows of the parking garage, out into the light, and her new life in Chile.

As Jack started his car, he silently wished her well.

But somehow, he doubted that her future would be a happy one.

7

KEVIN WALKED DOWN Venice Boulevard alone. He looked down at the watch Jack had given him for his fourteenth birthday and smiled to himself. It was such a kick to walk away from school. To just go out for lunch, grab a burger at In and Out, and then, instead of walking back to the playground, just keep on strolling away.

What was weird, he thought, was the way things looked when you were free. Like if you were in a school bus or being driven around by freaking Julie, his dad's so-called new girlfriend (What the hell was wrong with Mom? He'd never found out an answer to that.) who was always talking to him about spiritual shit . . . “Oh, look at that tree; it's so spiritual.” What a moron . . . Anyway, if you were in a car with an adult, you just drove by junky old Lincoln Avenue and you didn't actually look at the cool places that were out there . . . or you kind of looked but you didn't really see stuff . For example, you might see the Exxon station right here, but you would never notice the guy sleeping on the side of it, with a bag over his head, like some kind of dude waiting to be executed by the chopper . . . And that wouldn't remind you of the great old AC/DC song, “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”. . . like your brain was exploding with connections right and left when you walked along . . .
away from freaking school,
and away from freaking Julie who would come to pick him up and like have her mind blown when he wasn't there . . .

He felt a little shot of guilt when he thought of that.

Julie would be worried as hell, probably thinking that he was going to end up on a milk carton or something . . .

last seen in venice, california.
If you see, please call 310-876-1167.

Yeah, she'd be freaked, but so the fuck what? Dad would be able to handle it, and it wasn't like he was around much anymore, anyway. Since Mom left for Baltimore (which proved she was nuts — who would leave L.A. for freaking Baltimore?), Dad had been out every night chasing down bad guys; Christ, Charlie was more of a dad than Jack was. Charlie picked him up for practice, and Charlie made him dinner and got him home on time . . . so Julie could tell him some spiritual discovery she'd had today . . . “Oh Kevin, I saw a pod, and I knew all life came from pods.” Which was because she was a freaking pod herself. A pod from Podsville!

She'd never look at the dead cat in the gutter, which was right in front of him, dead-as-a-doornail orange tabby cat with a slightly crushed head, where some truck had run over it, no doubt . . . nor would she look at the sixty-four-year-old bum with a three-foot beard as gray and gnarly as steel wool, who was skateboarding by, turning up the street toward the boardwalk and the beach, where all the free people lived.

He could already smell and hear the ocean lapping in on the sand, and he saw a kid break dancing to some rap thing . . . Bow Wow, he thought it was . . . yeah . . . and there was a guy with a bright pink Mohawk, and tats all over his arms, and Kevin wished he could get a tat, but his dad would kill him . . .

But he might just do it anyway . . . not today but soon . . . 'cause walking away from school made you feel free, and once you had a little bite of freedom, you didn't really want to go back and see things like a freaking slave.

Okay, slave was a little melodramatic, but it was practically true. Walking around down here in Venice, watching the kids rocking around the boardwalk, people going in and out of Small World Books, stopping at the Wishing Well Tavern, drinking and eating in the middle of the day, laughing, being alive.

Not wandering around talking about spirit, whatever the fuck that was, or worrying every minute about terrorists blowing the entire world up (and those dreams he'd had for the past three months of all of L.A. blowing into a billion fragments of blood and human flesh and concrete, and palm trees ripped from the ground, and hurtling like guided missiles through human bodies . . . oh, man, he couldn't use those dreams anymore, no thank you) . . . that wasn't the way life should be. It should be like this . . .

Walking away from dead school to have an adventure on the streets and boardwalks, to find other adventurers like himself who would understand his need to get to the heart of the real world, to fathom everything at once, as he remembered some poet saying . . .

Or maybe it was Jack Kerouac in
On the Road,
which he had already read three times, and certain parts, ten or twelve . . .

That was what he needed, wanted, and . . .

“Hey, dude, you got any pot?”

Kevin turned around and saw a kid with blue hair, which looked like it had been chopped off with an ax. He wore camouflage pants, Doc Martens, and a sleeveless black T-shirt, which revealed scrawny, pale white arms.

“You deaf, man?”

“No way,” Kevin said. “But no, I ain't got any.”

(And he felt silly saying “ain't,” trying to sound street black, which was so pretentious and dumb, but he kind of wanted to impress the kid, couldn't help himself . . .)

“Got any money?” Blue-hair said.

“A few bucks,” Kevin said.

“I know where we can get some. Rainey's place just down on the canal.”

Kevin had not only never smoked pot, he had never seen it. The very idea of an FBI agent's son taking drugs was almost inconceivable. Totally taboo, utterly wrong.

And thus, suddenly, now, this second, irresistible.

Why should he not experience everything? Wasn't he a free man now? On his own? Out there at the crossroads.

He smiled and looked at the blue-haired kid.

“Kevin. Who are you?”

“Flyboy,” the kid said. “How much money you got?”

“Fifteen dollars,” Kevin said. That was a lie. He actually had almost fifty dollars in his pockets, money he had been stealing from Julie's purse for the last month.

“That'll get us a couple of joints,” Flyboy said. “C'mon, man.”

They headed down the boardwalk past a flame-throwing clown who was scorching the air in front of the Sidewalk Café, and just beyond him on the beach there was a sand sculptor who was making what looked like a giant giraffe out of sand. People gathered around, enjoying the sun.

“You live down here, K?” Flyboy said.

“No,” Kevin said. “I crash over in the marina. Live with my big brother.”

As he said it — invented it — Kevin started to believe it.

“How about you?”

“I stay here and there,” Flyboy said. “No home too long. Man, you stay somewhere too long, they might come creeping up on ya.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “That's how I feel. I might drift on down to Mexico in a couple of months.”

“Cool,” Flyboy said. “Before you make that little jaunt, let me know. I know people down there.”

“Cool,” Kevin said. He felt such a wonderful sense of freedom. Talking about living with his brother, cruising on down to Mexico, made him feel that such things were possible. A whole new way to live, a life of freedom, danger, adventures.

His old man wouldn't approve, but what did he know?

All he saw were scumbags, and germs. He didn't understand people like Flyboy (and himself?) who were free, who didn't worry about the straight world.

They wandered up and down the streets, and ended up off Dell, and suddenly there was one of the canals. It was beautiful, but had this strange odor coming off it.

“Wow, what's that smell?” Kevin said.

“You don't know?” Flyboy said. “That's the ducks. They land here and shit here . . . gets pretty bad sometimes.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kevin said. Trying to act like he had known that, but somehow forgotten it. “Hey, is this where we get the pot?”

“Yep, just around this corner. Guy lives in a guesthouse along here.”

Flyboy gestured with his left arm that Kevin should go by the small hedge, which turned into an alley. Kevin was eager to do as his new partner said, to prove to him that he wasn't afraid at all. He was ready . . . soooo ready for a new life.

He took a step around the hedge and came to a small red house with blue trim. It looked like something he might have read about in a fantasy novel.
The Hobbit Visits Venice
. . . or something like that.

He started to make a comment about how quaint the place was (without using the word “quaint,” which would mark him as some kind of fag) . . . when suddenly a blow struck the back of his head.

For the first time in his life he understood people saying a blow to the head made them see stars.

Because there they were, stars up above him and stars on his shoulders. It was so strange, he felt like laughing, and would have if his head didn't throb so badly.

He wanted to tell Flyboy, though. He wanted to tell him how stars seemed to be whizzing by his nose, his lips. He could almost reach out his hand and catch them . . .

But then there was another slam on the back of his head, and when he turned, he saw a very different Flyboy . . . a much older guy who was looking at him in what could only be described as a look of repulsion and disgust.

In the guy's hand was a steel bar, like a crowbar or something.

As Kevin fell to his knees, he still wanted to explain to Flyboy that none of this was the way things had to go.

They were both beggars on the street, weren't they? Brothers, friends . . . Didn't Flyboy know that? He should.

What the hell? Wasn't it obvious?

Kevin fell over on his side and felt blood running down his face. It was hot and ran in streams.

Polite streams, he thought as he fell asleep. The second and third streams of blood seemed to wait until the first stream had worn itself out, rolling down Kevin's cheeks, over his chin and down into his shirtfront before they started on their short journey.

“Polite blood,” he thought. The words seemed funny, and he started to giggle a bit.

Then he was down on the ground, like a dumb animal . . .

Down but not quite out.

He could still feel it as the guy rifled his pockets. (Was it Fly- boy? His hands felt too big for Flyboy.)

“Wait,” he intended to say. “Wait a minute. We're friends, we're on a quest or some shit like that . . . I mean it.”

But it was too late. In a few seconds, both his money and Flyboy (and the other, bigger guy, if he even existed) were long gone. As he passed out Kevin heard the honking of the ducks.

He awakened two hours later, a spotlight burning his eyes.

“Hey. There you go, kiddo. You're coming around.”

He looked up at an LAPD officer, a huge man with a walrus mustache.

“What's your name, son?”

“Kevin Harper. Where am I?”

“About two feet away from falling into the canal,” the officer said.

Kevin looked over at the black water, smelled the stinking ducks again. His head throbbed, and it was all he could do not to burst into tears.

“Well, your father will be mighty relieved to find you,” the cop said. “There's been an all-points bulletin out on you. FBI agent's son gone. People thought it was everything from child porno to terrorists.”

Kevin shook his head, unable to speak.

Now it came back to him. Flyboy, the great quest to score pot, the steel pole in his head.

“You're gonna need some stitches up there,” the officer said. Behind him a red light was blinking on and off , and a siren

was screaming.

“I don't need to go to the hospital,” Kevin said. “Really.”

“Oh, yeah, you do,” the kindly cop said. “You stay right there. You are gonna take a nice fun ride on a stretcher.”

Kevin felt the tears rolling down his eyes now. Not from the pain, but from the shame of it all. He'd thought he could take care of himself, and that kid . . . Flyboy . . . had just suckered him right into it.

What a joke.

And his father . . . oh, man, Dad was going to kill him.

That fucking kid . . . Kevin felt something coil inside of him. He'd come back here and he'd get that kid. He would. The bastard!

The light was hideous in the emergency room of Santa Monica Hospital. Kevin lay there motionless as a Dr. Wahrabi sewed up his head.

Jack and Julie stood above him, looking down at him. They looked harried, exhausted.

“He's going to be fine,” the doctor said. “Lucky boy. I don't think you even have a concussion.”

“Hard head,” Jack said. An attempt to make a small joke, but Kevin could tell there was not much humor behind it.

The doctor gave him some prescriptions for pain medicine and said he wanted to see him again in four days.

When he had gone, Jack sat down on the bed next to his son. “How did this happen?” Kevin looked down at his sheets. He could lie to his father, but not if he had to look him in the eye.

“I don't know. I was exploring around the canals. I'd always wanted to see them and somebody came up from behind me and hit me over the head. Stole my money.”

“You didn't see the guy who did this?”

“No,” Kevin said. “How could I?”

Jack looked down at him with such intensity that Kevin felt sick.

“You were climbing around the canals all by yourself?”

“Right.”

“Kevin,” Julie said. “Do you have any idea how much you worried us? Walking away from school, disappearing, practically getting your brains knocked out of your skull?”

“I'm sorry,” Kevin said.

Julie shook her head and sighed deeply. It had obviously been rough on her.

“We didn't know where you were. What happened to you.”

“C'mon, we're going home,” Jack said. “We'll deal with this tomorrow. Needless to say, you're grounded for a month. No visits from friends, no trips to the mall, nothing. You come home, you study, and you go to bed.”