The Disposables (17 page)

I let Derek Sams look down the barrel of my gun for a long time, let him see his future, something I later regretted, again and again, as he stared at me deep into the night. At the time, all I saw was the poor broken body of Alfred and how Alonzo, Alfred's twin, was destined for the same treatment if I didn't intervene. The law was broken when it came to child custody. I pulled the trigger without remorse. I gave Derek Sams a third eye to help him see his way to hell.

The description of prison caused gooseflesh to rise on Marie's back, ripple under my hand as she shivered and shook.

“I'm sorry, babe. I shouldn't have been so candid.”

She kept her head on my chest. Her hand came up to softly stroke my cheek. “Ssh, it's okay. I had to know.”

We lay there a while, as she thought of incarceration, and I thought about what a heel I was for risking her world.

“Don't,” she said, “Don't even think about it.” She'd tuned into my thoughts.

We were on the same wavelength, something that will always amaze me. She read me no matter how hard I tried to conceal my thoughts. If only I'd met her a long time ago. But then she probably would've turned and ran away screaming had she met the old me, the cocky, brazen BMF, the Brutal Mother Fucker, that had inhabited my soul.

That night we'd met in the hospital, shot by my own brethren, broken in heart and soul, exposed emotionally, she stepped right in, took hold of the controls, and she'd never let go.

She said, “I made my own choice.” She balled her fist and gently pounded on my chest, “Don't you dare. Don't you dare try and take all this on yourself.”

I put my hand over her mouth and held it there.

She pulled it down. Her eyes softened. “Seven kids are a lot of kids.”

Just like that she'd shifted gears, knew it was time to look at the silver lining, get us back on track, facing forward.

“They're great kids,” I said.

She nodded as her vivacious, big browns glowed with excitement.

I couldn't help but smile and said nothing.

She said, “You remember what we talked about?”

I knew what she was going to say, but pretended I didn't. “We've talked about a lot of things. You're going to have to give me a hint.”

She squirmed. “It's not right to ask. Not after all you've gone through.”

“Babe, spill it.”

Her eyes going large as baby brown moons. There was nothing she could ask that I wouldn't do. Nothing.

“Bruno, I saw Tommy Bascombe and—”

She didn't see me watching her on Wilmington as she got on the bus. When Dora Bascombe got off dragging Tommy by the good arm. Even after the ugly portrayal of our wonderful penal system, she was willing to step yet deeper into the quagmire of lawlessness.

Her eyes filled with tears. “You should've seen the way that evil witch treated him. It was horrible. It just tore my heart out.”

When I was released from prison, she met me at the gate with Alonzo. The whole thing with Alonzo started out as a simple surprise for me. She wanted to somehow get through to me, give me something to hope for and thought if she brought Alonzo on visiting day it might help. She went over to Alonzo's paternal grandparents' house, Derek Sams's folks who had legal custody because their son was dead. “Murdered by the black bastard, the no-good bitch's father.”

When she went over, she found Alonzo playing out front unsupervised in the parkway. Right next to the street as cars whizzed by on the busy boulevard not more than a couple of feet away. She said it wasn't a matter of “if” he wandered into the street, it was a matter of “when.”

Marie quickly pulled up to the curb, leaned over, and opened the passenger door. She called his name, with nothing more in her mind than taking the child out of harm's way. He toddled over dressed only in a urine-soaked Huggies diaper. He tried to climb into the car, his round belly atop of thin legs
wouldn't let him over the low ledge of the car's passenger footwell.

Marie looked up, her heart pounding in her throat at the thought that popped into her head. This from a physician's assistant who met a murderer while treating him for a gunshot wound inflicted by the police, corresponded with said murderer, and now contemplated “snatching” his grandbaby. That was the word she used to describe it later, “snatching.” She pulled Alonzo inside and left the door open so anyone in the house could see that it was something innocent. Alonzo cooed and played with her crucifix that always hung from a gold chain between her breasts. He patted her face, his smile huge.

She waited twenty minutes, or it could have even been thirty or forty as time played tricks on her. No one missed him. The car door still open, Alonzo curled up on the seat asleep in the warmth of the heater directed on him, the sun dropping below the tops of the houses, the world turning orange and yellow. With each passing minute she wanted someone to come out. At the same time she didn't. She wanted the justification to drive off with the child, and every minute that passed reinforced her decision that continued to teeter, the battle over morally right and legal.

In court, at my trial, she'd had a firsthand look at what the grandparents were like. They attended every day of the trial, bitter and angry, full of revenge. Of course, I knew them on a more intimate level having done battle with them over custody after my daughter died of an overdose of heroin, one her common-law husband, Alonzo and Alfred's natural father, Derek Sams, had given her. The day I lost the battle was the day I paid him a visit, the day I met Marie. She'd said, and I couldn't disagree, “the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.” The grandparents were intent on raising him in the same manner that they'd raised their now deceased son.

Marie reached over Alonzo, pulled the door shut, and drove slowly away, ten, fifteen miles an hour, twenty, then thirty, her conscience fighting a pitched battle. It wasn't until she looked up in the rearview and saw the drunk grandfather stagger out to the sidewalk, as if he all of a sudden realized he was supposed to be babysitting instead of watching Jerry Springer and drinking Mickey's big mouth beer.

She sped up and never looked back. She didn't bring Alonzo on visiting days. She was too scared “they would be watching.” If Alonzo's legal guardians reported him missing or snatched, it never made the news. She watched the six o'clock edition, the ten, and the eleven, expecting to see footage of the cops moving up to her door with a battering ram and with their long, black guns. They never came. She kept Alonzo for the better part of two years. It was easy to say she was the one who started us down this road. But deep down, I knew I was going to snatch my grandchild and lam out, the very second parole looked the other way.

Marie couldn't tell anyone in the hospital, any of her friends. She spent all her time either working at the hospital or taking care of Alonzo. Her friends gradually faded away. She cared for Alonzo on her own, while continuing to see other needy children, repeat visitors to the ER, who, if there wasn't any serious intervention, were not going to make it in this world. She'd crossed the line and got away with it. Felt good about it, as if her life really meant something. The next most logical step was to save more.

The day I got out she waited in the parking lot standing by her little Nissan Sentra with worry lines etched in her beautiful face. When I saw Alonzo in the car seat, I cried. She drove ricky-racer-fast from the prison looking at the road and over at me, back and forth. I wept and hugged and kissed my daughter's child. I told her to pull over. Her expression one of
fear made my heart rise up in my throat. Once stopped, the car in park, I said, “I just wanted to make sure you knew how much I appreciate this.” I kissed her, Alonzo between us. Then I understood why she was so angry the day I finally took the visit, the day she came all dolled up in the red dress. She'd committed a major felony for me and in my ignorance I had inadvertently made it look as if I were doing her the favor by seeing her when she came to visit.

The rest of the way home she talked a mile a minute, how the taking of Alonzo had come about, happy that I wasn't angry. How could she think I'd be angry? She told me all about the other kids she'd seen and who'd needed to be saved. We didn't discuss any plans, none whatsoever. We went home and slept, well, not a lot of sleep, we had to catch up after all. The next night I just showed up with little Ricky and Toby Bixler. She didn't say anything about how I came to have them. She accepted the two into our family as if they had always belonged.

Back in the motel room, our bodies cooling, sweat drying, I put my finger to her lips, I was about to tell her how Tommy Bascombe was safe and sound at Dad's, how I had already ordered and paid for his forged passport and then watch the wonder and pleasure come over her, and as selfish as it sounded, revel in her gratitude, when a loud knock came at the door.

My nerves on edge, the knock at the motel door startled me. Marie still lay on my chest, and I all but knocked her to the floor reaching for my gun on the nightstand, a gun that wasn't there. Marie bolted up, the gold crucifix bouncing between her naked breasts, eyes wide, mouth open. I held my hand up, and with the other, I put a finger to my lips, whispered, “Does anyone know you're here?”

She shook her head no. “Of course not.”

I knew she was too smart to tell anyone our plans, but I had no idea who could be knocking. Perhaps Robby. Had his team tailed me?

“Johnson?” The hard, coarse voice on the other side of the door drove a knife in my gut. Not housekeeping. This guy knew my name.

Marie waved her hands as she walked fast, back and forth along her side of the bed. Slowly, my good sense started to return. Robby wouldn't knock. He'd bust in the door, guns at the ready, with men charging in a high-risk formation.

“Johnson?” The voice again.

I jumped into my skivvies and moved to the door, listened. “Who's there?”

“Johnson, come on, man, open up. I can't be seen out here.”

I glowered back at Marie, who now stood frozen in one
place. I pointed to the door to indicate that I'd be opening it. She didn't move. “Put something on, babe.”

She snapped out of her trance, jumped for her abandoned clothes on the floor, and slipped into her still damp blouse and slacks.

I went to the door and put my hand on the knob. “Who is it?”

“Detective Johnson, for fuck's sake open the door. Open the damn door before someone sees me.”

I didn't recognize the voice. I did, but it was way back there in the far corner of my brain and refused to come forward. A voice from long ago. I opened the door a crack and peeked out. The small man had the stature of a jockey, his head a little too big for his body. He had jet-black hair with gray wings at the temples, a neck and face pocked heavily with acne scars. I didn't recognize him in profile, but when he looked directly at me, I saw his eyes, I did know him. Jessie Vanfleet.

I flung opened the door and yanked him in. Then I eased the door closed and listened, my ear to the warped wood. After a time, I turned to see Vanfleet as he stared at Marie who stood over by the bed. Marie, in her haste, had not put on a bra, leaving her breasts barely covered by the sheer blouse. Vanfleet was an over-sexed street perv who slung rock cocaine on the side, not for the money, but for sexual access to coke whores. There had always been something creepy about him.

I took hold of the back of his collar and shook him. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you know I was here?”

“Take it easy, man. I'm here to save your ass.”

Even though his words were directed at me, he still hadn't taken his lecherous ogle off Marie's breasts. I cringed as he licked his lips.

“You better talk and talk fast, little man, or I'm going to pound you into the ground.”

“Okay, okay. Chocolate sent me. The dude downstairs at the desk recognized you and told me. Chocolate put the word out that she needed to talk to you bad, real bad, so here I am. It's no big mystery.” He batted at my hand. “Take your big dick beaters off me.”

I let him go but shoved him toward the door. I went over to the bed, yanked the top blanket off and wrapped Marie in it. On Vanfleet it had the same effect as flipping off a light switch, the lecherous leer faded simultaneously with the blanket cover. I still had the urge to knock his brown teeth down his little ferret throat.

“Is Chocolate okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she's fine. She said there'd be a grand in it for me.”

“That right? And you're a lying little piece of shit too.” I looked back at Marie. I never used my street jargon around her and felt like a kid who'd just let slip a four-letter word in front of grandmum.

I looked back at Vanfleet. “You and I both know what she promised you, so don't yank on my dick.” I took a couple of steps toward him.

He held up his hands, “Whoa, there cowboy. You can't fault a guy for tryin'.”

“What's wrong with Chocolate? Tell me.” I had an idea but didn't want to give him any more information than necessary.

“She says you're a good Joe and that you just did her a solid. Boy, she could never convince me of that. I still got the scar from when you kicked me to the curb.” His hand came up subconsciously and rubbed his nose. I couldn't see any scar.

The first time I'd met the little weasel, I'd pulled up to a burglary of Radio Shack and he ran. His short legs pumping fast but no match for my long stride. I easily overtook him, ran right behind him, and told him one last time to stop. When he
didn't and kept running, I jumped up and kicked him in the back. He skidded headlong into the curb, broke his nose, and lacerated his eyebrow. He went to jail for consensual sex with a fifteen-year-old, a young girl he'd gotten hooked on coke just for that purpose.