Moonlight Mile Part 6

"s.h.i.t!" She shouted it so loudly that I had to hold up a hand and she glanced in the direction of Gabby's room and cringed.

"They said I shouldn't have called Brandon Trescott names. They suggested I am uncouth and in need of an adjustment in my manners before I partake of their benefits program."

"s.h.i.t," she said, softer this time and with more despair than shock. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know."

We sat there for a bit. There was nothing much to say. We were getting numb to it, the fear, the weight of worry.

"I'll leave school."

"No, you won't."

"Yeah, I will. I can go back in-"

"You're this close," I said. "Finals next week, one internship, and then you're bringing home the bacon by summer, at which point-"

"If I can even find a job." I can even find a job."

"-at which point, I can afford afford to freelance. You're not packing it in this close to the finish line. You're top of your cla.s.s. You'll find a job no problem." I gave her a smile of confidence I didn't feel. "We'll make it work." to freelance. You're not packing it in this close to the finish line. You're top of your cla.s.s. You'll find a job no problem." I gave her a smile of confidence I didn't feel. "We'll make it work."

She leaned back a bit to study my face again.

"Okay," I said to change the subject, "lay into me."

"About what?" All mock-innocence.

"We made a pact when we married that we were done with this s.h.i.t."

"We did."

"No more violence, no more-"

"Patrick." She took my hands in hers. "Just tell me what happened."

I did.

When I finished, Angie said, "So the upshot is that in addition to not getting the job with Duhamel-Standiford, the world's worst mother lost her child again, you didn't agree to help, but someone mugged you, threatened you, and beat the s.h.i.t out of you anyway. You're out a hospital co-pay and a really nice laptop."

"I know, right? I loved that thing. Weighed less than your winegla.s.s. A smiley face popped on-screen and said, 'h.e.l.lo,' every time I opened it up, too."

"You're p.i.s.sed."

"Yeah, I'm p.i.s.sed."

"But you're not going to go into crusade mode just because you lost a laptop, am I right?"

"Did I mention the smiley face?"

"You can get yourself another computer with another smiley face."

"With what money?"

There was no answer for that.

We sat quietly for a bit, her legs on my lap. I'd left Gabby's bedroom door slightly ajar, and in the silence we could hear her breathing, the exhalations carrying a tiny whistle at their backs. The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear-that something could happen to her at any moment, something I'd be helpless to stop-had become so omnipresent in my life that I sometimes pictured it growing, like a third arm, out of the center of my chest.

"Do you remember much of the day you got shot?" Angie asked, throwing another fun topic into the ring.

I tipped my hand back and forth. "Bits and pieces. I remember the noise."

"No kidding, uh?" She smiled, her eyes going back to it. "It was loud down there-all those guns, the cement walls. Man."

"Yeah." I let loose a soft sigh.

"Your blood," she said, "it just splattered the walls. You were out when the EMTs got there and I just remember looking at it. That was your blood-that was you you-and it wasn't in your body, where it belonged. It was all over the floor and all over the walls. You weren't the white of a ghost, you were light blue, like your eyes. You were lying there but you were gone, you know? It was like you were already halfway to Heaven with your foot on the gas."

I closed my eyes and raised my hand. I hated hearing about that day and she knew it.

"I know, I know," she said. "I just want us both to remember why we got out of the rough-stuff business. It wasn't just because you got shot. It was because we were junkies to it. We loved it. We still love it." She ran a hand through her hair. "I was not put on this earth just to read Goodnight, Moon Goodnight, Moon three times a day and have fifteen-minute discussions about sippy cups." three times a day and have fifteen-minute discussions about sippy cups."

"I know," I said.

And I did. No one was less built to be a stay-at-home mom than Angie. It wasn't that she wasn't good at it-she was-it was that she had no desire to define herself by the role. But then she went back to school and the money got tight and it made the most sense to save on day care for a few months, so she could go to school nights and watch Gabby days. And just like that-gradually and then suddenly, as the man said-we found ourselves here.

"I'm going crazy at this." Her eyes indicated the coloring books and toys on our living-room floor.

"I gather."

"Bat-s.h.i.t f.u.c.king crazy."

"That would be the approved medical terminology, sure. You're great at it."

She rolled her eyes in my direction. "You're sweet. But, baby? I might be doing a great job faking it, but I am faking it."

"Isn't every parent?"

She c.o.c.ked her head at me with a grimace.

"No," I said. "Really. Who in their right mind wants to have fourteen conversations about trees? Ever? Never mind in one twenty-four-hour period. That little girl, I adore her, but she's an anarchist. She wakes us up whenever she feels like it, she thinks high-energy at seven in the morning is a positive, sometimes she screams for no reason, she decides on a second-to-second basis which foods she'll eat and which she'll fight you over, she puts her hands and face into truly disgusting places, and she's attached to our hips for at least another fourteen years, if we're lucky enough for a college we can't afford to take her off our hands."

"But that old life was killing us."

"It was."

"I miss it so much," she said. "That old life that was killing us."

"Me, too. One thing I learned today, though, is that I've turned into a bit of a p.u.s.s.y."

She smiled. "You have, uh?"

I nodded.

She c.o.c.ked her head at me. "You were never that that tough to begin with." tough to begin with."

"I know," I said, "so imagine what a lightweight I am now."

"s.h.i.t," she said, "I just love the h.e.l.l out of you sometimes."

"Love you, too."

She slid her legs back and forth across my thighs. "But you really want your laptop back, don't you?"

"I do."

"You're going to go get it back, aren't you?"

"The thought had occurred to me."

She nodded. "On one condition."

I hadn't expected her to agree with me. And the small part of me that had sure hadn't expected it this quickly. I sat up, as attentive and obsequious as an Irish setter. "Name it."

"Take Bubba."

Bubba wasn't only the ideal wingman on this because he was built like a bank-vault door and had not even a pa.s.sing acquaintance with fear. (Truly. He once asked me what the emotion felt like. He was also baffled by the whole empathy concept.) No, what made him particularly ideal for this evening's festivities was that he'd spent the last several years diversifying his business to include black-market health care. It started as a simple investment-he'd bankrolled a doctor who'd recently lost his license and wanted to set up a practice servicing the kind of people who couldn't report their bullet wounds, knife wounds, head wounds, and broken bones to hospitals. One, of course, needs drugs for such patients, and Bubba was forced to find a supply for illegal "legal" drugs. This supply came from Canada, and even with all the post-9/11 noise about increased border control, Bubba got dozens of thirty-gallon bags of pills delivered every month. Thus far, he hadn't lost a load. If an insurance company refused to cover a drug or if the pharmaceutical companies priced the drug out of wallet-range of working- and lower-cla.s.s folk in the neighborhoods, street whispers usually led the patient to one of Bubba's network of bartenders, florists, lunch-cart drivers, or corner-store cashiers. Pretty soon anyone living off the health-care grid or near the edge of it owed a debt to Bubba. He was no Robin Hood-he cleared a profit. But he was no Pfizer, either-his profit was in the fair range of 15 to 20 percent, not in the a.n.a.l-rape range of 1,000 percent.

Using Bubba's people in the homeless community, it took us about twenty minutes to identify a guy who matched the description of the guy who stole my laptop.

"You mean Webster?" the dishwasher at a soup kitchen in Fields Corner said.

"The little black kid from '90s TV?" Bubba said. "Why would we be looking for him?"

"Nah, man, I most definitely do not mean the little black kid from '90s TV. We in the oh-tens now, or ain't you heard?" The dishwasher scowled. "Webster's a white boy, on the small side, got a beard."

I said, "That's the Webster we're looking for."

"Don't know if it's his first name or last, but he cribbed up at a place on Sydney round-"

"No, he blew out of there today."

Another scowl. For a dishwasher, he was kind of p.r.i.c.kly. "Place on Sydney up by Savin Hill Ave.?"

"No, I was thinking of the other end, the place by Crescent."

"You ain't thinking then. You ain't know s.h.i.t. Clear? So just shush it, boy."

"Yeah," Bubba said, "just shush it, boy."

I wasn't close enough to kick him, so I shut up.

"Yeah, the place he staying is at the end of Sydney. Where it meet Bay Street? There. Second floor, yellow house, got one of them AC units in the window stopped working during Reagan, look like it gonna fall out on someone's head."

"Thanks," I said.

"Little black kid from '90s TV," he said to Bubba. "Man, if I wasn't fifty-nine and a half years old? I'd profoundly whoop your a.s.s over that s.h.i.t."

Chapter Seven.

Where Sydney Street crosses Savin Hill Avenue, it becomes Bay Street and sits on top of a subway tunnel. About every five minutes, the whole block shudders as a train rumbles beneath it. Bubba and I had sat through five of these shudders so far, which meant we'd been sitting in Bubba's Escalade for nearly half an hour.

Bubba does not do sitting still very well. It reminds him too much of group homes and orphanages and prisons, places he's called home for roughly half his time on earth. He'd already fiddled with the GPS-punching in random addresses in random cities to see if Amarillo, Texas, had a Groin Street or Toronto sent tourists traipsing along Rogowski Avenue. When he exhausted the entertainment value of searching for nonexistent streets in cities he never intended to visit, he played with the satellite radio, rarely landing on a station for more than thirty seconds before he'd let loose a half-sigh, half-snort and change the channel. After a while, he dug a bottle of Polish potato vodka out from under the seat and took a swig.

He offered me the bottle. I declined. He shrugged and took another pull. "Let's just kick the door in."

"We don't even know if he's in there."

"Let's just do it anyway."

"And if he comes home while we're in there, sees his door kicked down and takes off running, what do we do then?"

"Shoot him from the window."

I looked over at him. He peered up at the second story of the condemned three-decker where Webster allegedly lived. His deranged cherub's face was serene, a look it usually got when it contemplated violence.

"We're not shooting anyone. We're not going to lay a glove on this guy."

"He stole from you."

"He's harmless."

"He stole from you."

"He's homeless."

"Yeah, but he stole from you. You should set an example."

"For who-all the other homeless guys lining up to steal my bag so I'll chase them into a house where I'll get the s.h.i.t kicked out of me?"

"Them, yeah." He took another swig of vodka. "And don't give me this 'He's homeless' s.h.i.t." He pointed the bottle at the condemned building across the street. "He's living there, ain't he?"

"He's squatting."