I was breathing hard, trying not to bounce on my shoes, but my body wouldn't obey. When he swayed closer, I snatched the rucksack from his shoulder and shoved him away. He stumbled back a few steps and made no move to retaliate. I was shocked at myself, the panicked burst of courage, how easy it had been. With shaking hands I rooted furiously through the rucksack, but it contained only a handgun, two stacks of hundred-dollar bills bound with purple bands, a notepad and pen, and a change of clothes.
I dropped the rucksack. "There's no bomb?"
He shook his head and started to say something, but a coughing fit doubled him over, blood spraying from his mouth. The coin-size drops looked like oil in the dim blue light. Finally he straightened up.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I'm Charlie. I knew your stepfather."
"How? How do you…?"
He swayed on his feet, his eyes glassy with pain or from the crushing pressure of the situation. "I made an awful mistake. But maybe you can set it right. I trusted Frank. I trusted him with my life. He's the only guy I ever trusted a hundred percent."
"If you were friends, how come you didn't come to the funeral?"
I was bluffing; I hadn't gone either. I'd gotten dressed for the service but hadn't been able to stop vomiting long enough to make it into the car with
Callie.
"I was scared shitless," Charlie said. "You would've been, too. That's what this is about. That's why I needed you here. Frank always talked about you. Years ago. Years. If there's anyone I can trust to do the right thing, it'd be Frank's kid."
"I'm nothing like Frank Durant. I'm not even his kid."
But Charlie didn't seem to hear me. "I prayed to hell you still lived here. L.A. I didn't know who else… what else can be done. But if anyone can figure it out, it's you. At least from what Frank said. I don't have anybody else."
"How do I know this isn't a setup? How do I know you and Frank were really friends?"
He moved toward me again, ignoring my questions, digging in his pocket. "Here. Here. Take this. Hide it."
Something glinted in his blood-streaked hand. A key.
He grabbed my arm, shoved the key into my palm. It was brass, maybe two inches long, sturdier than a house key. "Hide it now. On your person."
His sleeve was shoved back almost to the elbow. On his forearm, in a faded tattoo blue, was the familiar kanji script.
TRUST NO ONE
I stared at the tattoo, stunned. Then I crouched and wedged the key through the cracked plastic window in the heel of my sneaker. With a push it fit into the air pocket. More drops of blood tapped the floor, the tops of his shoes.
His voice sounded loose, pain-drunk. "Your life is now on the line. I'll explain to you. I'll explain to you everything you need to kn-"
The cell phone they'd sent me in with rang in my pocket, shrill off the concrete walls. We both started, and I jerked upright. We faced each other, a few feet apart, bathed in the antiseptic glow of the pool. I pulled out the phone again.
He gestured for it. "I'll buy us another few minutes."
I handed it to him. He took it and staggered back a half step. Moving his injured arms gingerly, he unfolded the phone.
Charlie winked at me with that flesh-crowded eye. "Trust no one." He spit blood, raised the cell phone to his face, and said, "What?"
A white flash of an explosion replaced his head atop his shoulders, the concussion sending me in a slow-motion float back through the roaring air, and then into darkness.
Chapter 5
A few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, Callie left for a class she had saved up for at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was May, but already sweaty summer weather, and I headed out to see Backdraft with a few teammates. We stopped off after at our weekend hangout, the original Bob's Big Boy, one of Glendale's few cultural landmarks.
Isabel McBride. That's what the shiny new name tag, positioned left of her cleavage, announced. She was in her late thirties, with lush auburn hair, prominent breasts-grown-woman breasts-and a fringe of bra lace showing where her shirt was unbuttoned. She had a firm, lipsticked mouth and a few creases by her eyes when she smiled, which she did at me every time she leaned over to serve or clear. We all laughed and whispered and shot knowing glances to show how unnervous we were, and when I went up to the register to pay, she caught my wrist and said, "I get off shift at one. I have a daughter at home, but I could slip out to meet you and maybe teach you a few things."
"I'm seventeen," I blurted. "I live with my mom."
She glanced down at my Glendale High letterman's jacket and said, "Baseball? Meet me at your pitcher's mound."
I nodded, having lost the capacity for speech.
When I got home that night and opened the front door, Frank was standing in the hall as if he'd been waiting there for hours, though I knew he'd responded to the scratch of my keys in the locks. "Good," he said, turning back to his room.
I was thinking about Isabel McBride. The way that shiny hair curled around her collarbone to touch the top of her chest. The faint wrinkles in her neck that her tan had missed. She'd had a child. Though I was less experienced than I wanted to admit, this opportunity had stepped forth as if from the pages of a stroke mag, and there was no way I was going to miss learning whatever she was interested in teaching me.
"Frank," I said, "lemme keep the window open tonight. It's like a hundred out."
He stopped and scowled at me, as tired as I was of the old argument. He looked wearier than usual, yet wired at the same time. "Comfort doesn't matter," he said. "Security matters."
I lay on my bed and read, urging the clock on my nightstand to move quicker. At twenty to one, I slid from my sheets. I carried my shoes, wearing my socks to stay quiet down the hall. Frank had left his door open, and I could hear his even breathing issuing from the dark room. I stole into the kitchen, managed to get the waterproof magnetic box out of the garbage disposal without making too much noise. The key inside fit an alarm panel in the kitchen wall, by the door to the garage. I disarmed the system and slipped through the back door, locking the knob but forgoing the heavy-duty Medeco dead bolts that slid home with wall- vibrating clunks.
Ten minutes later I was navigating the dark campus, positive that she wouldn't be there, that it was all a joke, that I'd made it up. But there she was, a feminine figure on the pitcher's mound, her hands clutching a purse behind her back. She'd gone home and changed, and she wore a sundress that blew against her splendid form, showing both curves of her thighs.
"Hi," I said, as I approached. "I'm not really sure-"
She put her hands on my face and kissed me, her tongue flicking inside my mouth. Her body leaned into mine, and we were both responding, the first time I'd experienced a woman confident in her sexual appetite. She tugged me by the hand, and we walked to the outfield grass, still damp from the evening's sprinklers. Her hands were at my belt, and then I was in her mouth, arching my back, making noises, unsure of everything. She fought down my jeans and pulled her dress up to her waist and reached into her bag. "Here," she said. "Put this on."
I struggled with the condom, trying to unroll it upside down at first, and with all the tugging and the slow burn of my mortification, I came. I felt myself flush, and I turned away and threw the thing and collapsed onto my back. She stroked my chest and leaned over me. Her perfume was too sweet, and her hair brushed my skin, raising goose bumps.