Читать книгу Inside Passage - Burt Weissbourd - Страница 8

Three

Corey was watching Billy’s house. She was in her car across the street trying, unsuccessfully, to keep a lid on her excitement. The house was shabby, an eyesore in a transitional neighborhood. She tried to imagine Billy living in this house. She felt suddenly apprehensive. Corey checked her watch: it was time, three o’clock. But where was Sally, the caseworker from Child Protective Services? She was supposed to be here too. Trying to be patient, she stared at his house and worked at waiting—going over, for the umpteenth time, Billy’s sorry foster care history.

Billy lived in this group home along with four other foster children and one of their babies. He had started in an individual home, but after five months his foster parents decided they didn’t want to keep him. She wasn’t sure why. Six months later he was moved from his second foster home.

Until they found another foster placement, the state had kept Billy in the King County juvenile detention center for eleven days: a nightmare, she was sure. He finally got placed in this group home, in yet another school district where they made him repeat the ninth grade because he had fallen behind.

Corey winced; she wasn’t at all sure what to expect. Billy had visited her only once, sixteen months ago. Her friend Jamie had driven him fourteen hours each way. It hadn’t gone well. Since then, she wrote him long letters at least twice a week. He responded to her letters sporadically, and his replies were short and often unfocused. His letters stopped coming at all almost a month before she was released. Starting today, she was allowed to see him once a week for two hours. Sally, the caseworker, was “monitoring the reintroduction of the family unit.” Sally was okay, except that she always seemed too busy.

Corey couldn’t wait another minute. When she stepped out of her pickup and crossed the street, she could see that the group home needed a new roof and some hard work in the front yard. She walked up three steps to the iron outer door. She could feel her pulse, pounding in her ears. The basement windows had rusty wire-mesh grills dotted with cobwebs. A teenaged girl answered when Corey rang. She carried a baby on her hip.

“I’m Corey Logan, Billy’s mom,” Corey said. She could hear a television somewhere in the house.

The girl left the iron door closed, shouting over her shoulder. “Billy here?”

“How would I know? He thinks this is a damn motel. He’ll do extra loads if he comes home late.”

“Yeah, right, that’ll work good,” the teenage girl muttered to herself. Corey guessed she was sixteen. She was eating a candy bar. Her acne was pretty bad. “He’s not here.”

“I was supposed to meet him here,” Corey explained.

The girl shrugged, closed the inner door and went inside.

In prison there were times when she would lose her bearings and turn on herself, savagely self-critical. She did that now, blaming herself for all of the things that had gone wrong for Billy and certain that he must hate her. At these times, Corey felt as though she was being sucked under freezing cold water. She had learned to weather these episodes, to let her feelings run their course. Still, it was a long, bad moment. After it passed, she summoned her strength. She rang the doorbell, then she rang it again.

A wiry Caucasian woman reopened the inner door. Her body looked forty, though her hard, pallid face was older. Her red-rimmed eyes were tired.

The woman wiped a strand of hair from her forehead. “Why are you still here?”

“I’m Billy’s mom.”

“Billy, huh. He’s never here when you need him.”

“I was supposed to meet him here at three o’clock.”

“Well, now you get the picture. Sorry.” She closed the door.

Corey moved toward her car, panicky. Inside, she locked the door and carefully dialed Sally. She said yes, she would hold. She closed her eyes and wiped out her thoughts about Billy’s foster home, her confused feelings about well-meaning Sally, and even her worries about her missing son. Corey kept her eyes closed, her cell phone to her ear. She would keep her head clear and empty until Sally picked up. She knew how to wait. When Sally came on, Corey started right in, pleasant enough. “Do I have the wrong day or something?”

“Is this Corey? Corey Logan?”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Hey. Billy left me a message. He couldn’t make it. I didn’t know where to find you.”

“What?”

“Look, he doesn’t have to see you at all.”

“What?”

“Let’s try again next week.”

“I can’t wait another week. He’s my son.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll talk with him. Do what I can. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Corey said, breathless.

It was late. Corey couldn’t sleep. She sat at her worn plank table, her back to the smoldering fire, writing in her diary:

“Where’s Billy. Why wasn’t he there to see me? My ideas about that scare me. I have to find out. Right away. And who is that woman he lives with? And the girl with the baby? How many other kids live there? What have I done?”

She closed the book, hid it behind the chimney brick, then went into her bedroom and laid down on the bed. She would find Billy tomorrow, after her time with the doctor. She would try not to think about these things until she saw her son, talked with him. When she had finally put Billy out of her mind, Corey slept.

It was 7:30 a.m. The tide was out, and Corey was poking around the tide pools, killing time before taking the ferry to Dr. Stein. Her rocky beach was part of the Blakely Shelf, a rock formation that stretched under Puget Sound. The shelf revealed its hiding places—its shallow crevices, its nooks and crannies teeming with sea life—when the tide was low. She had already seen sea stars, a small flounder, tiny black eels, sculpins, and a Dungeness crab.

She sat on a partially submerged rock, watching a sea anemone swaying gracefully in the water between her knee-high rubber boots. She was working to keep the demons back, wanting to feel okay about herself before seeing Dr. Stein. She slowly turned her head north, toward the little cedar cabin her mother had built and the fancy new house next door. Her dad William Logan had died at sea four months before she was born. His troller went down in the Ouzinkie Narrows between Kodiak Island and Spruce Island, Alaska. He left the Bainbridge property behind—her mom always said that he left it for his daughter. Three years ago she, Billy, and Al, had painted her mother’s cedar cabin white. Now the paint was peeling, worn by wind and rain.

The owner of the new house had sent a balding real estate agent to offer money for her mom’s cabin, to tear it down. She said no.

When the guy came again, Corey shut the door in his face.

Later she was sorry she had done that. He was doing his job, and he had no way of knowing what this cabin meant to her. What it was, she decided, was that she wasn’t used to getting her way with people. She didn’t expect them to understand what she was saying. So she didn’t say much. She needed her energy for other things, like Dr. Stein. At least he tried to listen, even when he didn’t understand. She believed he was working hard and that he thought about what he did. Except at certain times—she could see it come on—when he seemed distracted, preoccupied. It made him miss some things, like setting that fire. Corey caught herself. That wasn’t her problem. She would make him see that she could be a good mom. She could do that. He could do that.

Corey took the steep old wooden staircase that switch-backed up the bank toward the cabin. She went slowly, looking down, reminding herself to replace the unstable, weatherworn steps. She was checking out a wobbly tread when her hand hit something hard—a piece of wood, a cane. She saw him then, an outsized man in a shabby suit, staring down at her from the landing through those oversized, gold-rimmed glasses that made his weird, cloudy eyes even bigger. Nick’s man. Lester Burell. He had set his cane to block her way. Since her arrest, Lester had visited her twice. After those visits she knew two things: Lester had a reptile’s thick skin, and a reptilian heart. She thought about running, but she couldn’t move. She felt cold—on her skin, inside her bones.

Lester tapped his cane against the stair railing. “You get one chance.”

Corey didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him.

Lester didn’t seem to notice. “You work for me. Whatever I need.”

She wanted to throw up. “Why are you here?” she asked, instead. “I haven’t said anything. I won’t bother Nick.”

Lester ignored her. “Chance to redeem your execrable self—” Another tap, and a mean smile. He nodded. “Show your good intentions…”

She looked out to sea.

He nodded again, as if she had said something, then continued. “I went ahead and squared it with your PO. Dick liked the idea.” He cleared his throat, an attention-getter. “And it could help you get your boy back. Might be the only way. We agreed on that.”

Corey tensed up, every single muscle. The lizard sonofabitch had talked with her probation officer. About Billy. She wanted to grab his ankle and pull, watch him tumble down the stairs onto the rocky beach. She waited, staring at the sea.

Lester went on, his voice gravelly, “Here’s how I look at it.” He waited until she turned back, then he lifted his large left palm, held it out. “In my pocket, or…” He raised his right palm, lowering his left, as if weighing two objects on a balancing scale. “Off the radar screen. Poof!” He blew across his right palm. “Gone.” He held both palms at the same level. “Works either way.”

Lester hawked up a wad of phlegm, lobbed it onto the beach—he was plainly finished here—then he climbed the steps and walked toward his car. Corey shifted, took slow breaths. She watched his back, his odd walk—a war wound. He had been a mercenary, he’d told her once. She knew that twenty years ago Nick had paid Al to ferry this man to Canada on his boat. Now, Al was dead and Lester was Nick’s grim messenger.

She hadn’t spoken with Nick himself since that harrowing night at King County jail. She still remembered the exact time—10:13 p.m.—when she finally made bail. Al, she assumed, had been contacted. She was in a bad dream. Al would help her sort it out, wake her up. When she stepped into the waiting area, her bad dream turned to a sweat-soaked, screaming nightmare. Right there, sitting on a bench next to Billy—engaging him in lively conversation—was Al’s cousin, Nick Season. Nick waved. He looked like a million bucks.

“Hey, Corey,” Nick said. “What a rough deal. We have to talk.”

She ignored him, hugged Billy and looked anxiously at her friend Jamie, who sat on Billy’s far side. She asked her son, “Where’s dad?”

“We couldn’t find him anywhere.” Billy frowned. “It’s really weird.”

“We called everyone we could think of,” Jamie explained. “Even the Bainbridge police. They can’t find him either. No one knows where he is.”

The pieces of the day’s puzzle were coming together for her.

She remembered stepping away from them. “Who posted my bail?” Corey asked, afraid of the answer.

“I did.” Nick took her arm, plainly concerned. “Let’s talk privately.”

“Wait here,” she told Billy as Nick led her outside. He took her down Jefferson to a door stoop.

She felt like she was underwater, drowning.

Nick used his handkerchief to clear a place for Corey to sit on the stoop. He sat beside her. “Perhaps I can help,” he offered.

She studied Nick’s handsome face, his perfect black eyebrows, his sure black eyes. “Where’s Al? What happened?”

“Al’s gone,” Nick said, as if talking to a slow child. “He’s not coming back.”

“Who did this? Did you—”

“Listen carefully, please,” Nick interrupted softly. His voice was calm. “Here’s what happened: You and Al were selling confiscated drugs that Al stole from the evidence locker. You hid them on your boat. Twenty kilos went missing. You sold ten already. Someone found out. Al ran with the money. He just disappeared. You’re going to jail.”

“Like hell.”

Nick squeezed her arm. His grip was like a vice. “You’re not listening. Here’s the point. I don’t want you to miss the point.” His voice was still soft. He gave her a second. She saw the veins in his neck throbbing. “I like your son. Nice boy. I’m worried about him though. A young fella without his dad.” Nick leaned in, so close she could smell his cedar-scented aftershave. “He could disappear too.”

She slapped him hard enough to leave a handprint on his cheek.

Expressionless, Nick tightened his grip. Then he pulled her up the stairs to the dark entryway. With his right hand, Nick freed his brass belt buckle. A thin, icepick-like instrument was attached to the buckle, housed under his belt. In one fluid motion, Nick had the pick through her lower jaw, piercing the roof of her mouth.

Corey gasped. She stood on her tiptoes, head back, leaning against the brick wall. Blood was pooling in her mouth. The way the muscle in his jaw was working, she thought he might kill her.

“Remember this,” he went on, his voice raspy and cold. Her toes hurt, and she could feel the pick working its way deeper. “Tomorrow. During your trial. When you’re in prison. Remember this one thing.” He raised the pick, like punctuation—if she came off her toes, it would impale her brain—then he spoke into her ear, enunciating each word. “You plead out. You do your time. You cross me…you say one word…I’ll kill your boy. Sure as sunrise.”

Nick slid the pick out. He stepped into a shadow, then he was gone. She huddled in the corner where the door met the brick wall. She held her arms tightly, trying to stop shaking. Then she was on her knees, biting down on her knuckle, tears running down her cheeks. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

Corey held her arms that same way now, watching Lester drive his Mercedes up her steep dirt drive.

At 11:30 p.m. she was back in the same worn leather chair. Her neck was tight, like a coiled spring, and her muscles, even her bones, ached. If she tried to talk about Billy now, who knows what could come out of her mouth. So she told the doctor that she would talk about Billy next time, since she hoped to see him for the first time later that day. He said that was fine and that he hoped her visit would go well. He was nice about it, and she wanted to offer something. So Corey told him, truthfully, that she loved her son and that she had let him down. She had to fix that, she explained. She didn’t tell him that Billy had missed their first meeting. Nor that she planned to find him this afternoon for an unauthorized visit. It bothered her that she was deceiving this man, though she wasn’t sure why.

Corey glanced at the quiet doctor. He was back in her file, puzzled, trying to figure who knows what.

“So you were arrested for smuggling marijuana once before,” he eventually noted.

She put on her game face. “That’s not right. I was nineteen years old. I had this great souped-up wooden cruiser. It was easy to bring a little bit down from Canada. Make some extra money. We’re talking hundreds of dollars here. That’s not smuggling. That’s a hobby.”

“I see.”

He didn’t, though, she could tell. “All I got was a warning, and I had to do community service.”

“But then they found…what…ten kilos on your boat?”

“A set-up. Seventeen years later. I hadn’t sold dope in years. For christsakes, I was living with a customs agent.”

“A customs agent?”

“Is there an echo in here?”

“Tell me about that.”

“Years ago he worked Roche Harbor. I used to stop there. I was just twenty-one. We both had family from Greece. One thing led to another. Then he got moved to L.A. Seven months later Billy was born. When I told him about his son, he was angry at me for having the baby. He didn’t want the responsibility. I told him that Billy was my responsibility, that I expected him to stay in L.A. Maybe three years ago, Al shows up again. He had grown up. We got together. Billy had just turned twelve.” And for almost a year, they tried to be a family. They had done all right too. Billy, especially.

“Where is Al now?” he asked.

“He disappeared the morning I was busted.”

“Just took off?”

Dead. Nick Season’s inhuman work. She hadn’t thought about it when Al told her Nick owed him money. She didn’t ask questions when Al said it was for some favor he had done years ago. It never occurred to her that Al, a small fish in any big pond, was about to brace a great white shark. Corey looked over at Dr. Stein. He was waiting, not in any kind of hurry. She didn’t think she ever really loved Al, but he was Billy’s dad. “I guess so,” was all she could think to say.

“Was Al selling marijuana?”

“Al? Al Sisinis?” she asked. But before he could answer, she said, “No.”

He was back in the file. “It says here that the marijuana they found on your boat was from an evidence locker at Customs.”

“That doesn’t mean Al was selling it.”

He looked up. “Did you keep marijuana on your boat?”

“Okay, we kept some dope on the boat—never more than an ounce—for personal use. And maybe Al was skimming off a bust he made. I don’t know.” That’s where everyone, especially the investigating officers, stopped listening to her story. “Someone else stole twenty kilos from that same shipment and planted ten on my boat along with a sawed-off twelve gauge.”

“So you believe you were set up?”

Corey looked right at him. “Believe? I know I was set up. Someone wanted me to go to prison.” That’s all she could tell him. Nothing she could prove, either.

“Why? Who would do that?”

Nick Season is who. “I dunno.”

“You pled guilty.”

“So? So what? That’s a deal. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Many of my evaluees believe they’re innocent. Some are, some aren’t.” Abe paused. “I can’t always tell.”

“I was innocent,” she said softly. “There’s nothing to ‘tell’.”

He made that “V” with his eyebrows. “Did you have a bad lawyer?”

“He was all right. But I never had a chance.”

“Did he tell you to plead guilty?”

Stein was like a pit bull. She caught herself starting to lose it. “Let it go,” was all she said, slow and clear.

“I can’t, Corey. What I do is try to understand why you do what you do. I may even be able to help.”

Help? Nick sent her a card every year on Billy’s birthday. “I don’t need your help. I’m out. And there are some things you just aren’t ever going to understand. You want my trust? Well, mister, that’s a two-way street. So when I say let it go, you’ve got to trust me on that.”

He made a note on his yellow legal pad.

Corey sat in her black pickup across the street from Jackson High School. She was checking out the kids as they came pouring onto the street, milling around, texting, grouping up at the bus stop or in the parking lot. They were young, uncertain, and scraggly, these high schoolers with their colorful Nikes and wild hair. Some of the girls had nose or eyebrow rings, and a lot of the guys were sagging their pants or their baggy warm-ups. A gangly boy caught her eye from afar. He was tall and somehow familiar. It was his walk, and the headphones. Was that Billy? Yes! He was tapping his fingertips against his thigh. My God, he had to be three inches taller. His hair was long, and kind of wild. He was walking alone, confident-looking, carrying a worn book bag over his shoulder. Billy was handsome, like his dad, and he looked like he could take care of himself. She teared up, relieved and proud.

Just like that, Billy was inside a bus and on his way somewhere. She followed the bus, unsure what else to do. On Pike Street, west of Twelfth Avenue, she saw him step down. He continued west, walking down the hill toward the water. His step was a little livelier, and he had done something to his hair—tied it back in a ponytail. He wore a hooded blue sweatshirt now, though he left the hood down. He seemed at ease here, eyeing the kids who roamed this edgy street.

This was her first time in the Pike-Pine corridor in two years. Corey took in the funky cafés, the gay bars, the music clubs, the ethnic restaurants, a hip sex shop, even a witchcraft bookstore. She had forgotten the spiked collars, vivid tattoos, and the occasional facial piercing. This was an offbeat, colorful world that drew more than its share of young people who wanted, for whatever reason, that second look.

It surprised her that Billy was here. At fifteen, she had started working after school at the wharf, canning fish. Summers, she would fish with her mom. She was in the twelfth grade when her mother died, leaving her just enough money to get through high school. The summer after she graduated, Corey shipped out on a seiner to fish in Alaska. She was eighteen, and she had fished or repaired boats or tended bar or worked odd jobs at the docks ever since. She hoped that her son would be the first Logan to go to college. Billy stopped in an alcove to light a cigarette. She grimaced, then reminded herself that she had smoked as a teenager too.

Corey considered driving up beside him, honking, but that didn’t feel right. She tried to pull over, but in this neighborhood there was never a parking place. Billy turned right toward Pine. When she made the turn, he was gone. She realized that he must have stepped into the coffee place down the block. A hand-painted wooden sign out front said Blue City Café.

She parked in front of a fire hydrant. From her spot she could see inside the café’s large mullioned window.

Billy was sitting at a table near the front with three other kids: two girls and a boy. One of the girls had her hand on Billy’s neck, and she kissed him, meaning it. Cigarettes. A girlfriend. Okay. But something was off. These kids looked different from Billy. Why? She watched a crew of four girls and three guys move two tables together and settle in.

And then she had it. They dressed like street kids—ripped jeans, even the old band t-shirts. But their clothes weren’t raggedy or old. No, they paid for this look. These kids were washed and coiffed and, in their own way, poised. Fresh out of the box, ready for whatever. None of these young people were in foster care. In fact, she would bet these kids didn’t even go to public school. They were thoroughbreds, on some kind of fast track.

Two guys stopped by Billy’s table to talk with him. These guys were big shots. They had that unmistakable look—indifferent, above it all. She could see other kids watching them, looking for clues. They high-fived Billy before moving on. Everything about this picture was wrong.

She used her cell phone to call the café. A woman behind the coffee bar picked up the phone. “I’m looking for Billy Logan,” Corey explained. “He’s the tall kid in the blue sweatshirt with little white letters on the front.”

“Ma’am, there are maybe four guys in here wearing that sweatshirt.”

She looked again. “Okay, right. Table by the window. With the blonde girl wearing silver sequins under the torn leather jacket.”

The woman behind the counter looked around, found the sequins. “That’s Morgan. Is Billy her friend on the left?”

My right, your left. “That’s him.”

The lady came around the counter with a portable phone. She handed it to Billy. He shook his head—there must be some mistake—but she had turned back to work.

When he had the phone to his ear, Corey said, “Billy, I’m outside. I wasn’t sure what to do. I need to see you right away.”

She could see him through the window, standing now, turning away from his friends. “What are you doing here?”

“Come out and turn left, you’ll see the truck.”

“It’s not my time to see you.”

“Billy, either you come out, or I come in.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

She watched him say something to his friends, then return the phone. He came out the door and walked to the truck. He was pouting when he opened the door and stuck his head in. “Why are you here?”

“Why?” she repeated. “Are you kidding?”

“You messed things up for me, big time. I’m doing okay now. Don’t mess me up again.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said gently, aware how wound up he was. She put a hand on the seat beside her. “Please sit. I want to talk with you. I need to.”

“If I do, will you leave me alone? Let me go back to my friends?”

She thought he looked wary and vulnerable. “Yeah. Sure.”

He hopped into the truck, closed the door, and sat against it, looking out the window.

Corey wanted to cry. “Billy, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, right.” He continued to stare out the window.

“What happened?” she asked. She could see he was biting down on his lower lip. “What happened?” she asked again.

Billy kept staring out the window.

When he didn’t respond, she touched his arm. “It’s me. Whatever happens to either of us, I’m still your mom.”

He finally said, “It’s no big deal.”

Right. His dad would have said that. “It is to me.”

“What’s that?” he asked, turning, pointing to her scar.

She touched it. “In prison, two women tried to kill me. One of them cut me with a shank. That’s—”

He raised a hand, interrupting, “I know what that is, mom.”

Okay. At least he called her mom.

Billy was looking at her scar. She watched his face soften, some kind of sea change.

She hesitated, unsure what was coming. What she remembered about being a teenager was the mood swings. Great mercurial changes because a boy didn’t notice her, or a sunrise was particularly nice. Hormones. She was wondering how she would have felt if her mom was in prison, if someone had tried to kill her there, when he finally broke the silence.

“Trouble follows you,” he said. A fact.

She put her arm around him. He leaned forward, head in his hands.

“And you?” she eventually asked.

After a minute Billy lifted his head. “It was fucked up.”

She waited. When he settled back beside her, she could feel her eyes well with tears.

He looked straight ahead, out the windshield. “At the first place they locked me in the basement if I broke any of their rules. They had rules like ‘No talking,’ ‘No excuses,’ ‘No eye contact.’ They said if I told Sally, or if I wrote you, they’d tell her I was locked up for stealing, and I’d go to jail. The second place, it was…I dunno…it was bad. They locked me out at night if I was late. Then I had to sleep wherever. I finally ran away. In juvie I got beat up twice. One time it was pretty hard.” He was working on his lip again. “And other stuff, you know.”

Other stuff? Jesus. What? And what had she done? She felt a great wave of worry building. She held on, eyes closed. When it broke, Corey let it wash over her. There would be better, easier, times for these questions. “What about now?”

“In this group home, at least I can come and go as I please, so long as I do the laundry she takes in. I play on this soccer team, the Chargers, and I met all these kids from Olympic. Those kids.” He pointed toward the café.

“How much do they know?”

“Not much.”

Something about this was off, but it wasn’t today’s business. She took a cell phone from her purse and handed it to him. “I want you to have this. My cell number is programmed in.” She showed him where. “They can’t keep you from talking with me on the phone. Call me anytime, about anything. I’m this close…” She held her thumb and forefinger so they were almost touching. “To getting you back. Please help me with this. Pretty soon you’ll be able to stay the night at the cabin.”

“Thanks for the phone,” he said.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m working on it.”

“Yeah.”

There was a startling bang on the roof of the pickup. Metal against metal. Then another. Corey turned, and there was Lester, bringing the brass handle of his cane down on the truck roof.

“No parking, “ he said, flashing some kind of badge. “Move along.”

“Get the hell away from me!” she yelled through the window.

“Move along, lady.” He brought the cane down again. When she opened the door and stepped out, he moved in closer. “Visiting day? Your case worker know about this? Your probation guy know?”

Lester loomed over her, a craggy colossus. His breath smelled of garlic. He wore an old-fashioned brown suit. She stood her ground, found his rheumy raisin eyes. “I’m not bothering anyone. So back off, creep.”

Lester winked at Billy, as if she hadn’t said a word. Then he made a pistol with his thumb and forefinger, pointing it over her shoulder at Billy’s head. “Pow,” he hissed, as he set his cane down on Corey’s instep. She gasped, turning away.

“In my pocket?” he asked, his cheek next to hers, his skanky garlic breath in her face.

When she turned back, Billy was gone.