Dunk (3 page)

I especially avoided the dealers. And not just for fear of getting busted. Every time I went past some guy working his territory, I expected a spray of bullets to come flying through the air. Maybe I was overreacting. It had been nearly a year since a dealer had been shot, and that hadn't even happened on the boardwalk. He'd been killed over in the bad part of Abbot Drive, where a lot of the dealers lived. But I can't always control my imagination.

While I managed to keep clear of the full-time criminals, some of the amateurs were harder to avoid. I ran into one of them less than a block down the boardwalk.

“Hey, Chad. Whuz up?” Anthony Glover strutted out of the Royal Cabana Gift Shop and joined me as I wandered along near the railing. The Cabana was one of those shops that sold tourist stuff like knockoff T-shirts and beach mats. They had watches that said
Gucci
or
Rolex
on them even though it was obvious they'd come straight here from some pirate factory in China. You could get any designer label you wanted, as long as you didn't care if it was fake. Anthony was carrying something in his left hand, holding it low, next to his stomach. Sunglasses. I could see the price tag dangling from the hinge. I could also see an Oakley logo on the frame. A tingle rippled through me, brought to life by the thrill of free stuff, but I fought it off. This wasn't cool, and I didn't want any part of it.

I kept walking, but nodded so Anthony wouldn't think I was ignoring him. There was no point making enemies. He was a year ahead of me, but we'd been in the same wood-shop class, so I'd probably be stuck with him again.

Anthony glanced over his shoulder toward the Royal Cabana. He had the sort of face that mothers trusted. And he had the sort of smile girls loved. He also had the sort of heart you'd find in a snake, or a stone. Back when I was a freshman, we'd hung out a bit, until I'd figured out how slimy he really was. By then I'd already gotten into a bunch of trouble.

“Just act natural. Okay? Nobody saw me.” He matched my stride, like we were the two best buddies in the world.

“I'm in a hurry,” I said. I didn't feel like acting any particular way for his sake. I could still remember the time he'd trashed my bicycle. He'd sworn it was an accident, but I knew better. Anthony liked to ruin things.

“Look,” he whispered, “just pretend we're together. No sweat.”

“Stop!” A middle-aged man raced out of the Royal Cabana. “Thieves!” he shouted, pointing right at us.

Thieves? No. There was just one thief. I had nothing to do with this. I didn't even want any sunglasses.

The man yelled again.

“Catch you later, Chad.” Anthony vaulted over the railing. I heard the dull thud of his sneakers smacking the sand six feet below, then the shuffling sound of him taking off.

I was jerked back as someone grabbed my wrist. “Hey, let go!”

“Thief,” the man said, yanking on my arm. “Lousy thief.”

“I didn't steal anything.” I searched the gathering crowd for a friendly face. No luck. Everyone stared back with the half-guilty, sure-glad-it's-not-me smirk people get when they've just seen bad luck fall on a stranger. Except for one person. This joker in black jeans and a black turtleneck, sitting on the bench I'd just walked past, stared at me like he was watching television.

The man from the shop kept shouting at me. He'd switched into another language.

“Look,” I said, “I didn't take anything.” I patted my pockets with my free hand, then glanced back toward the guy on the bench. “You saw it, didn't you? I was here the whole time.”

The guy didn't say anything. But somebody else did. “What's the problem here?”

Oh, crap. This was getting worse and worse. I hated hearing those words, especially when they were attached to a pair of cops. Cops didn't like me. Not just back when I'd hung out with Anthony. Even before then. Even after, I guess. Other words ran through my head.
You're so much like your dad
.

The man was still screaming. He'd let go of my arm, but I could feel where his fingers had dug into my wrist. I jammed my hands into my pockets to hide the shaking. Then I pulled them out because I was afraid the cops would think I was hiding something else. My whole body felt like it was buzzing. I struggled to look innocent, and wondered whether I should rat out Anthony. I didn't want to do that unless I had no other choice.

The man from the shop switched back into English long enough to tell the cops I was a thief who deserved to be whipped and thrown in jail.

The taller of the cops—Officer Manetti, according to his name tag—scanned the crowd and said, “Anybody see what happened?”

Suddenly, nobody was interested in us. They all slipped away. Except for the guy on the bench. “He saw it,” I said. “I didn't do anything. I was just walking along. Ask him.”

“You see it?” the cop called to the guy.

The guy shrugged.

The other cop, Officer Costas, glared at me. I could feel his gaze drilling through me, like he knew every detail of every bad thing I'd ever done.
Just
the bad things. He had the sort of eyes that couldn't see any of the good stuff.

“I'm not going to forget your face,” he said.

It took a second for that to sink in. He was saying he'd be watching for me. But it also sounded like he was letting me go. I waited, afraid to do anything that might make him change his mind.

“You stay out of that shop,” Officer Manetti said. “And you stay out of trouble. Okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice right now.

He turned to the man from the shop and pulled out a pad. “Can you describe the person who robbed you?”

“Him,” the guy shouted, pointing at me. “He robbed me. Sunglasses. Designer label. All day they steal. I try to make an honest living. But they steal.”

“No,” Officer Costas said. “Tell us about the one who took the sunglasses. Understand?” I got the feeling he didn't like the man from the shop any more than he liked me. Maybe Officer Costas didn't like much of anything. Or anybody. Some people were born that way.

I moved a step away. They didn't seem to care. I took another step. I halfway expected Officer Costas to draw his gun and shout, “
Freeze!
” Maybe even fire a couple warning shots through my knees. But they were done with me.

I wasn't in any mood to hang out on the boardwalk. I wanted to get back home. As I walked past the jerk on the bench, I said, “Thanks for all the help.”

“You're quite welcome.” His expression didn't change.

I muttered several words comparing him to various body parts. I didn't care if he heard me.

I headed north to Fifteenth Street. Every block, there's a zigzag ramp and a set of steps that go down to the sidewalk. As I walked along the ramp, I caught sight of the guy from the bench about ten feet behind me. I guess he didn't appreciate my comments.

I could run. But the guy looked like he was in shape. He wasn't old. He wasn't a college student, either. Maybe ten or fifteen years past that. Thin. The kind of thin that comes from skipping meals. Hair a bit too long for someone his age, and damp like he'd just gotten out of the shower. Taller than me but shorter than Jason. I wasn't ready to find out which of us was faster.

He probably wasn't even following me. My house was across the street and around the corner on Sea Crest Avenue three blocks up. I crossed over.

The guy crossed, too. I noticed he walked kind of funny, dragging one foot a bit. Nothing real obvious, but just enough so the sound of his footsteps wasn't even. As I walked, I scanned the trash cans for anything I could use as a weapon. Nothing. Not even a broken broomstick.

When I turned at Sea Crest, he was still following me.

My house was only half a block away. If I sprinted, I figured I'd get enough of a head start to reach the front door before him. I slipped one hand in my pocket and touched my key.

I crossed the street again, moving to the side opposite where I lived, just to see for sure if he was following me. If he came over, I'd spin and make a dash for the house. He wouldn't expect that.

He stayed on his side. Man, the next breath I took was the deepest one of the afternoon. I slowed down, figuring I'd wait until after he walked out of sight before I crossed back and went inside.

Things didn't work out that way.

He stopped in front of my house.

It wasn't until he'd climbed halfway up the side steps that the obvious explanation smacked me in the face. “Wonderful. Just wonderful,” I said as I watched him unlock the upstairs door.

The freak was our new tenant.

I
KNEW EXACTLY WHERE HE WAS
. E
VERY TIME HE MOVED,
I
HEARD
his footsteps. When he sat on the couch, the floorboards groaned over our own couch. For a while he stood by the front window. Then he walked to his refrigerator. I could even hear the thud of the fridge door closing.

I wanted to go upstairs and let him know what I thought of him. What kind of jerk doesn't stick up for someone who's in trouble? He could have told the cops I was innocent. But he'd just sat there. I flipped on the television, cranked the volume loud enough to annoy anybody living over my head, and tried to think about other things.

The knock on the door startled me. I looked at the clock over the sink. It was a couple minutes after seven.

“All set?” Jason asked when I opened the door.

“Yeah. Sure. Let's go.” I locked up and followed him out to the sidewalk. This year there was something else besides the usual rides and games and food pulling me toward the boardwalk. Someone else.

“First night,” Jason said.

“First of many,” I said. Whatever problems might be living over my head, I wasn't going to let them spoil the night. Jason and I had a tradition. We would walk all the way to the far end of the boardwalk without spending a dime, then do any stuff that cost money on the way back. It helped stretch out our cash.

Usually we'd hook up with our other friends along the way. Jason and I lived at the north end of the boardwalk. But everyone hung out closer to the center, near Panic Pier.

We came down Fifteenth Street and went up the ramp. It would be dark in an hour or two. That was one of the best times on the boardwalk. A million flashing lights and a thousand blasting speakers filled the air with so much sound and color, you could almost swim in it.

“That's one place I won't be going,” I said when we walked past the Royal Cabana Gift Shop. My stomach tightened as the memories played themselves back.

“Why not?”

I told Jason what happened.

“No big deal,” he said. “It's not like you've never been kicked out of a shop before.”

“Not in a while,” I said.

“Besides, all the stuff he sells is total crap.” He walked over to one of the shirts hanging above the entrance. Like many of the stores on the boardwalk, this one was open all along the front. “Cheap. Really cheap,” he said, rubbing the cloth between his thumb and fingers. He glanced at the label. “Ten percent cotton. Ninety percent recycled toilet paper. Hand wash, then flush repeatedly.”

There was a part of me that was dying to give the owner a real reason to call the cops. But there was no way I wanted to spend the first night of summer vacation locked up. I slipped toward the railing, far enough away so he wouldn't notice me. At the moment he had a much closer target for his anger. He glared at Jason from behind the register. “You! Stop touching!”

Instead of leaving, Jason strolled into the store. He went to the side wall and tapped a shirt that showed Mickey Mouse removing Donald Duck's head with an ax. “Hey, shouldn't there be like a trademark or a copyright or something?” Jason asked. “I don't think Disney gave anyone permission to show Mickey being so aggressive with an ax. And what about this one?” He tapped another rather nasty shirt. “I'm sure Charlie Brown wouldn't ever do that to Lucy.”

“Go. Leave. Get out!” the man yelled. He sprang from his stool and hurried around the counter.

“Oh, my word,” Jason said. He covered his eyes with one hand and pointed toward a rack of sweatshirts with the other. “Garfield would never be so evil.”

“Go!” The man shouted, waving his arm toward the front of the shop. “I don't want your business!”

“Yes, sir,” Jason said. “Have a nice day.” He strolled back over to me. “Yeah. It's definitely junk. I think you could live to be a hundred and never need to go in there.”

“That's not the point. The guy thinks I'm a thief. So do the cops.” Just the mention of that made my face feel hot.

“Are you a thief?” Jason asked.

“No.” A couple times, maybe. Little things. But not in the last few years. I remembered how Dad would bring stuff home. Weird junk, like a whole case of light bulbs, or a dozen red two-piece bathing suits.
Fell off the back of a truck
, he'd tell Mom. She'd get upset. Then he'd go off. I guess to sell it somewhere, because I'd usually see an empty whisky bottle in the garbage the next morning. “I'm not a thief,” I said.

“Then why do you care what he thinks?”

“I don't know. I just care.” I couldn't explain it. Jason didn't seem to worry what anybody thought. A thousand people could be lined up accusing him of something, and it would just roll off his back. But in reality, nobody ever accused him of anything. He never got in trouble. It was the one thing Jason and Anthony had in common. Though with Jason, at least, there was no deception. He really was what he seemed to be. He didn't have to work at it, either. People just naturally liked him. Jason probably could have said anything he wanted to Ms. Hargrove in history and she'd have patted him on the head and asked him to run for class president.

“
He's
the thief,” Jason said, pointing back at the guy in the shop. “He sells cheap crap for a high price. I'll bet he cheats on his taxes, too.”