Last Man Standing (22 page)

“So you already let him go?”

“Go ahead with your story, Kevin, that boy’s no concern of yours. Tell me why you did what you did.”

How did Kevin explain this? He had had no idea what would happen when he had done what they told him to. Then the guns started
firing and he was scared, terrified, but it had been a terror rife with curiosity. It had been a curious dread, actually,
to see what he had wrought; as though, say, you’d dropped a rock from a bridge onto a highway with no purpose other than to
scare some motorists, only to see your handiwork result in a fifty-car pile-up and numerous deaths. And so when he should
have run like hell, Kevin had gone farther down the alley to see what he had done. And the guns, instead of making him flee,
had somehow drawn him closer, like both the horror and allure of a dead body. “And then that man yelled at me,” he now told
his captor. Lord, how that had scared him. Rising up from all those bodies, that voice telling him to get back, stay back,
warning him!

Kevin looked at the man after describing all this. He had done what they had told him for one of the oldest reasons in the
world, money, enough to help his grandma and Jerome get into a nicer place. Money enough to allow Kevin to believe he was
helping out, taking care of others, rather than always being taken care of. His grandma and Jerome had warned him about accepting
offers of fast money from people who trolled his neighborhood looking for folks to do things they shouldn’t. Many of Kevin’s
friends had been so taken in, now dead, crippled, imprisoned or disillusioned for life. And now he had been added to that
miserable pile, at all of ten years old.

“And then you heard the others coming from down the alley,” prompted the man smoothly.

Kevin nodded as he thought back to that moment. He had been so scared. Guns in front of him, men with more guns cutting off
his only avenue of escape. Except across that courtyard. At least he had thought so. That man had stopped him from doing that;
had saved his life. Didn’t even know him and he had helped him. That was a new experience for Kevin. “What was the man’s name
again?” he asked.

“Web London,” the man said. “He’s the guy you talked to. He’s the one I’m really interested in.”

“I told him I ain’t done nothing,” Kevin said again, hoping that the same answer once more would make this man leave and let
him get back to his drawing. “He told me if I went out there I’d get killed too. He showed me his hand, where he been shot.
I started to run the other way and he say if I do that, they kill me too. That’s when he give me the hat and the note. He
shot that flare off and told me to go on. And that’s what I did.”

“Good thing we had another boy lined up to take your place. You’d been through a lot.”

Somehow Kevin didn’t think it was such a good thing for the other kid.

“And London actually went back into the courtyard?”

Kevin nodded. “I looked back once. He had that big-ass gun. He went back in there and I heard that gun go off. I was walking
fast.” Yes, he had walked fast. Walked fast until some men had appeared out of a doorway and snatched him clean. Kevin had
caught a glimpse of the other boy, roughly his age and size, yet who was a stranger to Kevin. He looked just as scared as
Kevin. One of the men had quickly read the note, asked Kevin what had happened. And then the other boy had been given the
cap and note and sent off to deliver it in Kevin’s stead.

“Why you bring that other boy?” Kevin asked again, but the man didn’t answer. “How come you sent him with the note and not
me?”

The man ignored the question. “Did London seem at all out of it to you? Like he wasn’t thinking clearly?”

“He tell me what to do. He thinking pretty good from where I be standing.”

The man took a deep breath and shook his head, obviously pondering this. Then he smiled at Kevin. “You’ll never realize how
extraordinary that is, Kevin. Web London must be truly special to have done that.”

“You ain’t tell me all what was gonna happen.”

The man continued to smile. “That’s because you didn’t need to know, Kevin.”

“Where’s the other boy? Why you bring him?” he asked again. “You think of every contingency, then most times things turn out
okay.”

“Is that other boy dead?”

The man rose. “Let us know if you need anything else. We’ll try and take care of you.”

Kevin decided to toss out a threat of his own. “My brother be looking for me.” He hadn’t said this before, but he had been
thinking it, every minute he had. Everybody knew Kevin’s brother. Just about everybody he knew feared his brother. Kevin prayed
that this man feared him too. Kevin’s spirits sank when he could clearly tell from the man’s face that he didn’t. Maybe this
man wasn’t afraid of anything.

“You just rest up, Kevin.” The man looked at some of his drawings. “You know, you’ve got a lot of talent. Who knows, maybe
you could’ve ended up
not
like your brother.” The man closed and locked the door behind him.

Kevin tried to stop them, but the tears just came in a rush down his cheeks, dripped onto his blanket. He rubbed them away,
but more took their place. Kevin sank into a corner and wept so hard he kept losing his breath. Then he pulled a blanket over
his head and sat there in the darkness.

W
eb drove the Crown Vic down the street his mother used to live on. It was a neighborhood on its last legs, its potential never
realized and its vitality long since exhausted. Yet the location, thirty years ago considered rural, was now smack in the
middle of prime suburbia, what with the continued sprawl of the metropolitan area, where commuters rose from their beds at
four to get to the office by eight. In five years’ time, a developer would probably buy up all the dilapidated properties,
bulldoze them under and new homes costing too much would arise from the dust of old ones sacrificed for too little.

Web got out of the Crown Vic and looked around. Charlotte London had been one of the older people living here, and her house,
despite Web’s efforts, was about as run-down as the rest. The chain-link fence was a few rusting strands from collapse. The
house’s metal awnings sagged with water and carried grime that could no longer be cleaned away. The lone maple in front was
dead, with brown leaves on it from the year before scraping a sad tune in the breeze. The grass had not been cut for a while
because Web had not been around to push the mower. He had fought a valiant effort over the years to keep it as it had once
been but had finally given up because his mother had taken little interest in maintaining her home and yard. Now that she
was dead, Web figured he would be selling the place at some point; he just didn’t want to deal with it right now, maybe never.

Web went inside and looked around. Right after her death he had come here. The place had been a mess, exactly as his mother
had left it. He had spent an entire day cleaning the house and ended up carrying ten thirty-gallon bags of trash to the curb.
Then Web had kept the electricity, water and sewer going after his mother’s death. It wasn’t that he ever envisioned himself
living here, but something just wouldn’t let him go. Now he surveyed the rooms, clean except for dust and the occasional cobweb.
He settled down, checked his watch and flipped on the TV just as a soap opera was interrupted for a special news event. This
was the promised FBI news conference. Web scooted forward and adjusted the picture and sound.

Web gaped as Percy Bates appeared at the podium. Where the hell was Buck Winters? Web thought. He listened as Bates ran through
Web’s distinguished career at the FBI and some feel-good film was shown of Web accepting various awards, medals and citations
from the Bureau heads and one from the President himself. Bates spoke of the horror in the courtyard and Web’s bravery and
grit in doing what he had done when confronted with such an overwhelming foe.

One shot was of Web in the hospital with half his face bandaged. This made Web reach up and touch the old wound. He felt proud
and cheap at the same time. He suddenly wished Bates had not done this. This “promo” wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
It just made him seem defensive. The journalists would crucify him, probably accuse the Bureau of covering their ass by shielding
one of their own. And maybe, in a way, they were. He let out a low moan. He didn’t think it could get any worse, yet it just
had. He turned off the TV, sat there and closed his eyes. In his mind he felt a hand on his shoulder, but there was no one
there. This seemed to always happen to him when he came here; his mother’s presence was everywhere.

Charlotte London had kept until her death the shoulder-length hair that had over the years turned from glorious, sexy blond
to elegant, luxurious silver. Her skin had been unwrinkled because she was allergic to the sun and had covered herself from
it all her life. And her neck had been long and smooth with tight muscles set at the base. Web wondered how many men had been
seduced by that delicate but overpowering curve. When he was a teenager Web had had dreams about his young, sexy mother that
to this day he still felt shame for.

Despite the drinking and less-than-healthy eating habits, his mother had not gained an ounce in forty years and the weight
had remained pretty much in its original locations. When she really put herself together, she had been a knockout at age fifty-nine.
It was too bad that her liver had given out. The rest of her could have kept going for a while longer.

As beautiful as she had been, it was her intellect that attracted most people. Yet the conversations between mother and son
had been downright bizarre. His mother did not watch TV. “They call it an idiot box for good reason,” she had often said.
“I’d rather read Camus. Or Goethe. Or Jean Genet. Genet makes me laugh and cry at the same time, and I don’t really know why,
for there is arguably nothing humorous about Genet. His subject matter was vile. Depraved. So much suffering. Mostly autobiographical.”

“Right. Sure, Genet, Goethe,” Web had told her several years before. “G-men, like me, sort of.” His mother had never gotten
the joke.

“But they can be wonderfully compelling—erotic, even,” she had said.

“What can?” he had asked.

“Vileness and depravity.”

Web had taken a deep breath. He had wanted to tell her that he’d seen some vileness and depravity in his time that would have
made old Jean Genet barf up his lunch. He had wanted to unequivocally inform his mother that these evils were nothing to joke
about, because one day somebody filled to the brim with vileness and depravity might appear on her doorstep and violently
end her life. Instead he had remained silent. His mother had often had that effect on him.

Charlotte London had been a child prodigy, astounding folks with her broad-ranging intellect. She had entered college at age
fourteen and earned a degree in American literature from Amherst, graduating near the top of her class. She had spoken four
foreign languages fluently. After college Charlotte had traveled the world alone for almost a year, Web knew, because he had
seen the photos and read her journals. And that was back in the days when young women didn’t do that sort of thing. She had
even written a book chronicling her adventures, and the book was still selling to this day. Its title was
London Times
; London had been her maiden name, and she had changed it back after her second husband had died. She had had Web’s surname
legally changed from Sullivan after she had divorced her first husband. Web had never carried his stepfather’s name. His mother
would not allow it. It was just how she was. And to this day he never knew why he had been given such an odd name as Web with
only the one
b.
He had gone up and down his maternal family tree and the answer wasn’t there. His mother had steadfastly refused even to
tell Web who had named him.

When he had been little, his mother had shared with Web much of what she had seen and done on her teenage travels, and he
had thought hers the most wonderful stories he had ever heard. And he had wanted to go on trips with her just like that and
write in his journal and take photos of his beautiful, adventurous mother against the backdrop of pristine water in Italy
or on a snowcapped mountain in Switzerland or at an outdoor café in Paris. The beautiful mother and the dashing son taking
the world by storm had dominated his boyhood thoughts. But then she had married Web’s stepfather and those dreams went away.

Web opened his eyes and rose. He went to the basement first. Thick dust covered every surface, and Web found nothing remotely
close to what he was looking for. He went back upstairs and into the rear of the house where the kitchen was. He opened the
back door and looked outside at the small garage that housed, among other things, his mother’s ancient Plymouth Duster. Web
could hear the cries of children at play nearby. He closed his eyes and rested his face against the mesh as those sounds sank
in. In his mind Web could almost see the football being thrown, the coltish legs hustling after it, a very young Web thinking
that if he didn’t catch that ball, his life would end. He sniffed the air, the smell of wood smoke mingling with the sweet
aroma of freshly cut fall grass. There was nothing better, it seemed, and yet it was only a scent, never lasting for very
long. And then you were pretty much right back in the shit of life. The shit, he had discovered, was never temporary.

In his vision, the young Web ran harder and harder. It was growing dark and he knew his mother would be calling him in soon.
Not to eat, but to run over to the neighbors to bum cigarettes for his stepfather. Or to hustle down to the neighborhood Foodway
with a couple dollars and a sad tale for Old Man Stein, who ran the place with a bigger heart than he should have. Always
hustling down to the Foodway was young Web. Always singing the sad Irish song, his mother coaching him on the lyrics. Where
had she learned it, the sad song? Web had asked her. As with the origin of his given name, she had never answered him.