I watched my father walk away, then returned to Chance, who handed me a fresh beer. “What the heck was that about?”
I leaned beside him, metal hot where the sun had baked it. “He’s looking for Jason.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
I shook my head. “He was being kind of a dick.”
But that was only part of it. He was still treating me like a kid. I didn’t like it. Sipping beer, I stared out at the water. Twenty kids were rafted up a hundred yards offshore. Beyond them, a lone figure floated on an inner tube, his legs bent at the knees, his head tipped back. “You good for a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Sit tight.”
I walked to the water’s edge, skinned off my shirt, and made a shallow dive. At the raft of kids, people called my name.
Yo, Gibby. Yo …
Jason saw me when I was twenty yards out, but he barely moved. His head turned. His hands made lazy circles in the water. “Gibby in the house.”
Hanging on the edge of his tube, I saw the lazy smile, the sunburn on his prison skin. Half a six-pack hung from plastic rings. “Dad is looking for you.”
Jason’s head rose a few inches. He cracked one eye to stare off at the shore, then shrugged without actually shrugging. It was a vibe, the way he settled his head back against the tube. “He was asking about the girls.”
“What girls?” Jason closed his eyes, a beer can cradled on his chest.
“Tyra, mostly, but Sara, too. I think it was a cop thing.”
“She probably wrecked another car.”
“He told me to stay away from you.”
“How’s that working out for you, little brother?” Jason smiled but kept his eyes closed, as if his joke was the end of it.
“It was weird. He looked scared.”
“That is also not my problem.”
But I played the conversation again: my father’s hands on my shoulders, and how they’d squeezed hard and then fluttered like feathers. “Do you ever get scared?”
“Of what?”
“Anything.”
“Nope.”
“Not ever?”
“Well, that’s the thing about war, isn’t it? Once enough people try to kill you, the little things don’t matter. Cops. The past. Not even dying.”
“What about prison?”
I knew the question was unfair, but so was his talk of fearlessness and little things. My life was made of little things. Jason understood, I thought, but I’d made him angry, too.
“Prison is different.”
He tried to end the discussion, but I was tired of being the youngest, the sheltered, the only one unproven by combat or adulthood or a long dive from a tall cliff. “But you’re scared of it,” I said. “You have to be scared of something.”
“Why? Because you are?”
“It’s not like that.”
“But you throw prison in my face when you know fuck-all about it.”
“Only because I saw you on the road that day.”
“You have no idea what you saw.”
“I saw your face, man, your face.”
My voice was too loud, and if someone asked, I’d be hard-pressed to say why any of it mattered so much now, on this day. Maybe it was because my father was afraid and my brother calm, or because the cliff rose above us. Perhaps it was due to thoughts of war and graduation, or the fact that Chance was dodging the draft, and made no bones about it. Whatever the reasons, I needed to see something of myself behind the armor my brother wore as easily as a T-shirt. If Jason understood that need, he didn’t care. His eyes were equally hard, his mouth the same tight line. “Just swim away,” he said. “Swim away, little fish.”
When French left his son at the quarry, he understood the hurt feelings he’d left behind. But what else could he do? Even if Jason was not involved in Tyra’s death—Please, God, don’t let him be involved—he’d still be swept into the investigation and tarred with the doubts born of his own poor choices. He was the killer, the user, the convict. How many people would resist the certainties of guilt by implication? French had few illusions.
Oh, you don’t know about Jason French?
The war?
The drugs?
They say he killed a hundred people …
Charlotte was a big city, but not that big. People knew your business, or thought they did, or thought they had the right. Gibby would be tarred with the same brush. So would Gabrielle.
But that wasn’t the worst, not even close.
“Jesus Christ, Gibby knew her, too.”
His good boy …
His youngest …
Murder cases swept up innocent people all the time. He’d seen it before: prison, shattered lives. Suspicion alone could tip the world on its side. “Damn it, Jason. Can’t you think, just for once? Can’t you make a decent, goddamn choice?”
It sounded unfair, but French had no idea what his oldest son did with his days and nights. Was he still abusing drugs? If so, where did he get them and from whom? Was he violent? Committing crimes? Where did he get money? How did he live? Whispers from other cops said Jason might be involved in something big. Guns, maybe. Or maybe gangs. The only certainty was that minutes led to hours, hours to days, and days to patterns of life. That was the math behind every bad case he’d ever worked. Small decisions. The wrong step. After that, it was all about the road.
French gave himself those seconds—those hard, dark moments of frustration and doubt—then locked the emotion down. He’d bought a few hours.
Not enough …
Going first to the house at Water and Tenth, he found two men on the sofa, hip-deep in chicken wings and beer. Neither had seen Jason for days. “He’s still paying rent?”
“Two months, cash in advance.”
“But he’s not sleeping here?”
“Money is money. I don’t care where he sleeps.”
“Any idea where I can find him?”
“The man has ladies.”
“Who and how many and where?”
“More than us, is all I know.”
Feet went up on the coffee table, and French let his eyes move over the room. The air smelled of grease and smoke and spilled beer. On television, Muhammad Ali was trash-talking some other fighter. “What about a woman named Tyra?”
“Tyra Norris…” One man shook his head. “He won’t be anywhere near that girl…”
“Not after what went down.”
French gauged the interruption, looking from one to the other. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it was a scene, man.”
They shook their heads, and drank beer and watched Ali. It took a minute to get the details, but once they started talking, both men reveled in descriptions of the ruined Mercedes and Tyra in the dirt, of how she’d screamed and pulled a gun, and how her skirt tended to ride up on one side. French raised a hand to slow them down. “Say that last part again.”
“She said your boy fucks women and kills dreams…”
“A direct quote…”
“She was yelling it up and down the street…”
“But she still tried to make out with him…”
“Truth, brother. Like … aggressively.”
“She’s crazy, but crazy hot, you know?”
“Lively, I’d say…”
“Like a wall socket is lively…”
They high-fived. They laughed.
“How did Jason handle it?”
“Oh, hey, man, Jason was cool. He rolled, but he’s like that. I told him to his face he was one badass dude. I said he was an iceman…”
“Like falling snow.”
“Yeah, yeah, cold but quiet. Just like that.”
“Anything else I should know? Did she say anything else? Do anything else?”
Both men shook their heads. “Nah, man. She tagged a few more cars, and split. Haven’t seen her since.”
French looked for signs of deceit; saw none. “If anyone else asks, you tell them what you told me, that Jason was in total control at all times.”
“Truth is truth.”
“I need to check his room.”
They went back to their beer and television, and French took the staircase up. In Jason’s room he found clothing, condoms, and in the back of a drawer, a .38 Special that he pocketed. Nothing else seemed remotely personal: a rumpled bed, a novel by Leon Uris called Battle Cry. Back outside, French knelt by the tree where Tyra had supposedly wrecked her Mercedes. He had no reason to doubt the men inside, but no reason to trust them, either. Gouged bark made him feel better. So did the shredded lawn, the bits of glass and broken plastic. Tyra had been here. She’d argued with his son; threatened him with a gun.
A shard of red plastic glinted in the sun.
Even if he was on drugs …
Even if the war had messed him up …
But French no longer knew his son. Drugs, prison, life in the dark parts of the city …
He needed more, so he worked the back alleys and informants, the off-license bars and drug dens and flophouses. He shook the trees, hoping his boy would fall out.
It didn’t happen.
By dusk, he could no longer ignore the radio. It squawked the moment he got back in the car. “David 218, Dispatch.”
He keyed the mic. “David 218, go ahead, Dispatch.”
“Detective Burklow has called four times now.”
“Stand by, Dispatch.” French lowered the mic and took a final moment for his sons.
What else could he do?
Gibby was safe—he’d made sure.
But Jason …
French stared out at a broken street lined with warehouses and bikers and women in short skirts. It was his seventh stop, and the story was the same as everywhere else. People knew Jason, but none had seen him, none would talk.
“Dispatch, David 218. Please tell Detective Burklow I’m 10-49, ETA twelve minutes.”