Chapter Six

Deke stood with mixed emotions in the wing of the memorial building and watched the worker seal the small opening where the urn containing the ashes was placed. He’d done what he could for the man who had been his father. They’d asked him if he wanted a minister and he’d shaken his head. He didn’t hold much stock with religion. It hadn’t done anything for him.

He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope with the card that the intern at the morgue handed it to him.

“Condolences from someone that knew your father. She asked me to give it to you if you showed up.”

“She?”

“Middle-aged, blond, seen a lot of wear and tear if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, thanks.’

When he’d torn it open, the lines inside were brief:

I’m sorry about your father’s death. Come to this address to pick up some of his belongings. He wanted you to have them.

No name was signed at the bottom and he debated whether to throw it away or follow up on it. As he stood there looking at the letter, he finally decided he didn’t have anything to lose. Maybe this person could fill in some blanks for him.

He gave one last long look at the wall where his father’s plaque was lost among a hundred others and walked out, his footsteps making a hollow sound on the tile floor.

The neighborhood was old, filled with cheap tenement boxes where the poor in wallet and spirit lived. The streets were cluttered with trash and dark faces stared at him with hard eyes. He got out of his car slowly and made sure it was locked. A young black man stared insolently at him as he approached the stairs.

“You got any money, man?”

Deke returned the look. He knew the ropes. “Do I look like I have any money?”

“You all duded up, man.”

“I just came from a funeral.”

He stared down his opponent and the young man shrugged and slouched off. “Another time, man.”

Deke rang the bell and a voice answered. “What do you want?”

“My name’s Deke Brucker. You left me a card at the morgue.”

“First door on your right”. A buzzer sounded unlocking the door.

He slipped through the front door, firmly closing it behind him and looked around. Apartment number one was the manager’s apartment.

A blowsy woman, fitting the intern’s description, opened the door.

“How do I know you’re Deke?”

He pulled out his wallet and showed her his driver’s license. “Will this do?”

She glanced down the hallway furtively and then drew him inside the room by his jacket sleeve. “I’m Dora. Come in”.

“What’s this all about, and why the secrecy?”

“Want some coffee?”

He didn’t, but if she was going to play cat and mouse, he’d go along. “Yeah, sure”.

She brought out two mugs. “Cream and sugar?”

“No.” He took the mug and waited, perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair.

“How well did you know my old man?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Well enough. I was a friend of your mother’s.”

He stared at her. “My mother?”

“She was a frail little thing. Gentle as a lamb. Never should have had a kid. You took a lot out of her. ”

“Yeah, I was just a bundle of joy.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Deke, she loved you. Ray did too. They can’t help what happened in their lives.”

“What makes you so sure? My old man didn’t have to rob a bank.”

“He thought he did. Now I’m not condoning what happened, but he wanted to take care of your mother. She was sick, very sick. Your father blamed it on the smog and the city, but he knew. She had lung cancer.”

“She gave me away.”

She exploded at him. “What choices did she have? She had no family, Ray was hauled off to prison, she was dying, and I couldn’t take care of a kid. My husband was an alcoholic and died of the stuff. Mary did what she had to do.”

He blanched before her anger and looked away. “I didn’t know.”

“Look, Deke, you survived. Your father didn’t know where you were and I couldn’t find out since I’m not family. He had a feeling they were after him and would get to him when he got paroled”.

“Who, the cops?”

She studied him, considering her words. “He owed some people a lot of money. He was trying to protect you and you mother.”

She waved a hand at the front door. “Anyway, the apartment you lived in is across the hall. It happened to be vacant and I gave it to your father when he got out. It seemed important to return to something he knew.”

She got up and folded her arms tight across her ample chest as she walked to the window. “They said they were cops. I knew they weren’t. I’ve seen their kind before. Hoods, cheap hoods, doing someone else’s dirty work.”

“What happened?”

She gave him a furtive glance. “Your father was nervous. He had a feeling, you know? He came over one night and handed me a manila envelope. He said if something happened to him to get it to you if I could find you. He said there was something he had to pick up if he could find a way and made me promise not to let anyone else know about it. That’s why I left the card with the coroner. He promised he’d give it to you if you came. It was a long shot. How did you find out about your father?”

Deke thought of the two “detectives” in Peavy’s office. “A couple of cops came to my work and told me.”

“Cops?”

His eyes narrowed. “Maybe the same cops that came here.”

“I heard the sounds. In this neighborhood, you don’t get nosey. I was afraid to open my door. If I interfered or called the real cops, they’d come back and get me. That’s how they work.” She looked him in the eye. “Deke, your father owed some guy a lot of money, something to do with a poker game. I don’t know how much, but those people never forget a debt, even a twenty-year old debt.”

He stared at her but his anger dissipated. Yeah, he knew how they worked. They played on greed and desperation, loaning the mark just a little bit more until he was up to his eyeballs in IOU’s. They’d let him win a little just to sweeten the pot and then they’d close in.

She went to her desk and opened a panel in the back, pulling out a manila envelope. “I did this for Ray, but mostly for Mary’s sake. I couldn’t do anything for her or Ray, but I could do something for their kid. Here’s what Ray left you, mostly some mementos.”

He took the folder and hesitated, not sure if he wanted to open it here. His emotions were closer to the surface than he could handle.

She put a hand on his arm. “Take it home. Maybe it will help, you know?”

He nodded. “Thanks.” He thought a moment and then, “Mind if I see the apartment?”

She shrugged. “Sure, the cops are through with it finally. It’s a mess. The cleaning woman is sick and hasn’t gotten to it yet.” She went to the desk, picked up a key and handed it to him. She didn’t offer to go along and he was grateful.

He peeled the yellow police tape off the doorjamb and pushed the door open slowly.

The odorous taint of a thousand cigarettes permeated the room. The apartment had been ransacked pretty thoroughly. No drawer or cupboard was left unopened. The covers had been pulled off the bed and stuffing was coming out of the mattress where someone had slashed it with a knife. He turned away and walked over to the kitchen. Glancing around, his eye was suddenly caught by something on a shelf, an open package of Oreo cookies. He reached up slowly and took the package down. Only a couple of broken cookies remained.

Mommy, can I have an Oreo? In his mind, the vague form of a woman reached out a hand for the box. He couldn’t even remember what she looked like. A sob rose up in his throat and he choked it down. Stumbling into the bedroom, he sank down on the ruined mattress and wiped his eyes with a corner of the sheet. Then he noticed something lying on the floor just under the night table. He picked it up and turned the cardboard square over. It was a cheap photo from a carnival booth. A woman was holding a small boy and smiling into the camera. He recognized himself and knew the woman was his mother. He stared at it a long time and then took out his wallet and carefully put it away.

He picked up the manila envelope Dora had given him and opened it. The first item was a faded clipping of a little league baseball team which he scrutinized for a moment then frowned and tossed it aside. Next was a photo in a cardboard frame of a man, woman and a little boy. As he looked closely, he recognized a younger version of the grizzled face on his father’s ID card, and then studied the woman. It wasn’t his mother. He rubbed his chin. They look like a family. Who are the woman and the kid?

He shook the envelope and a piece of yellow legal paper slid out and fluttered to the floor along with two other newspaper clippings. Some numbers were scrawled on the yellow paper. He was about to toss it aside, then reasoned, it was in the envelope so it meant something and his father wanted him to have it. He studied the numbers and realized it was a combination of some kind, but to what? He tucked the yellow paper in his shirt pocket.

Then he unfolded one faded clipping,

Bank money disappears. Nine hundred thousand dollars in bank notes taken from a local bank remains lost. One thief was cut down by police in a shootout and the other thief was arrested when police closed in on the house where the thieves had been hiding. A hundred thousand was found on one of the thieves but the rest of the money was not found. The surviving bank robber alleges that his partner hid it and he doesn’t know where it is. Witnesses identified the dead thief as the man who fired the gun wounding the bank guard. Well, that verified what the goons in Peavy’s office told him.

He put it back in the manila envelope and unfolded the second clipping. It was an obituary notice for a kid who’d been hit by a car. It was the same boy in the photograph with his father.

Tommy DuPont, son of Ray and Estelle DuPont of Big Bear Lake, died of complications after being struck by a hit and run driver…

Who the blazes is Estelle DuPont? He counted back from the date on the clipping. The little boy died five years before Deke was born. Maybe his father was divorced from this Estelle. But my name on my birth certificate shows me as Deke Brucker, my mother’s name. Ray DuPont never married his mother. Had he still been married to this other woman? The truth struck like a hot iron in the pit of his stomach. If his old man wasn’t divorced from his first wife, there was another family somewhere. I’m not only an orphan, I’m illegitimate as well.

He flung a hand up in the air. Given the rest of his stinking life, it figured.

He put the clippings and the picture back in the folder. Maybe he could find this Estelle DuPont if she was still living and get some answers. Big Bear Lake was in the San Bernardino Mountains. It wasn’t that far away from LA.

Just as he got up to leave, a thought occurred to him and his eyes widened. He pulled the yellow paper out of his pocket. His old man had a reason for leaving him the manila envelope. Was he trying to make up for what he’d done to Deke and his mother? Could it be? He folded the paper and kissed it.

“Looks like the old man left me something after all, if I can just find it.”

He returned the key to Dora.

As he started towards the door with the envelope in his hand, she stopped him. “You weren’t followed were you? You know what I mean.”

He shook his head. “I know a tail when I see one.”

“You don’t always see them, Deke. Be careful.”

He thought a moment and then folded the envelope carefully so not to damage the photograph and placed it inside his suit jacket pocket. He patted it and was satisfied that it didn’t bulge enough to show.

She stood in the apartment doorway and smiled for the first time. “You have your mother’s eyes, Deke.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself, kid”. She slowly shut the apartment door.

Over the years Deke became skilled at many forms of deception. If someone tailed him and was watching, he didn’t want to appear excited about something. He put on a long face, hunched his shoulders with his hands in his pockets and walked slowly down the stairs to his car, the picture of dejection.

“I should have been an actor,” Deke told himself gleefully after he had driven far enough to stop frowning.