Bad Bones (10 page)

Gabe sat in the Toyota, numb. A small gold crucifix, hidden by his T-shirt, hung round his neck on a fine gold chain. Father Simon had made him promise not to take it off. So much for not being converted. Truth to tell, religion ‘not being his parents’ thing’ was underplaying it more than slightly; if his parents saw it they’d think he’d gone nuts. His opinion, right now? He’d give anything a try.

He and Stella didn’t talk much on the way back to her house. Was there anything to say that wouldn’t make them feel worse? Not really. But Stella, it seemed, had used the journey as thinking time. Pulling up on her driveway she turned to Gabe.

“I have an idea – why don’t we meet up later, kind of like six thirty, seven o’clock?”

“Sure…” Gabe was caught off guard, but not so much that he couldn’t help but slap a grin on his face at the offer. “Where?”

“That pizza place, you know, the one on the corner of Woodman?”

“Yeah, OK, it’s a deal,” said Gabe thinking,
but is it a date?
“See ya there.”

The whole bike ride home his head was a mess. Way too many things to think about. All he really wanted to do was play out what it would be like, meeting up with Stella later on, which as ideas went was a pretty good one in his opinion. But other thoughts kept pushing forward and getting in the way. Like the fact that he was wearing a freaking crucifix to protect himself against some risen-from–the-dead, Devil-worshipping Spanish guy. Because that
really
was going to work.

Trying not to get totalled by some lame-brain driver on his cell phone, who thought wing mirrors were for decoration, at the same time as dealing with conflicting trains of thought kept Gabe fully occupied. So much so that it took him a moment to realize that someone on a scooter was riding right next to him, keeping pace. He glanced over, wondering why whoever it was didn’t just accelerate
past him, and saw it was Anton on his black Vespa.

“Pull over, man…” Anton shouted, pointing at the kerb.

Gabe had no choice but do as his friend asked. He didn’t want to stop and talk. He wanted to get home and get ready to go and meet Stella. But he knew he’d already stepped way beyond the mark with Anton, kept him at a distance when he should’ve let him in on what was happening. Pushed him away, and frozen him out.

He checked over his shoulder, braked and eased into the next parking space that came along. Anton pulled in behind him, killed the Vespa and took off his open-face helmet, rubbing his head.

“Man, you are one hard dude to track down lately.”

“Yeah, I know… Sorry, Ant.” Gabe was uncomfortably aware of what was hanging round his neck; he hoped Anton didn’t notice the cross, or his antsyness. “What’s up?”

“Kinda what I wanted to ask you, bro.” Anton put his helmet over one of the Vespa’s wing mirrors. “I know
some
thing’s up, and I figure, if I want you to be honest with me, I gotta be honest with you, right?”

“OK…” Gabe half smiled, wondering where this was all going.

“So, it’s like this…” Anton looked away, cracking his knuckles. “I didn’t exactly
follow
you the other day, not like as in I was trying to spy on you, right? But when I came out of school late and saw you going off with some beardy, long-haired guy…”

“You
followed
me?”

Anton shrugged. “Hey, you looked like, I don’t know, like you could be in trouble, like you might need someone with your back. So, yeah, I followed you. Saw you with that oxygen thief Benny Gueterro, getting in his van…”

“Aw, geez.”

“C’mon, man … a problem shared, right?” Anton pulled the scooter back on to its stand and walked towards Gabe. “I can help, with Benny, anyway. You probably don’t need any when it comes to that Stella chick…”

“
What?
”

“Look, soon as I saw you with her, bro, I went –” Anton held his hands up – “Scout’s honour, man, you
know
I’m no sleezoid peep-show weirdo. I just want you to tell me what the hell you’re doing in
spitting distance of that Benny guy, I mean, how bad can it be? We’re the Two Musketeers, right, Gabe? Always have been, since forever.”

Gabe stared at Anton and realized this was the same situation he’d been in with his dad, and he was feeling the same way; help was being offered, no strings attached, and all he was able to do was turn it down. With his dad he just hadn’t had the right words to say what he wanted to say; with Ant, he didn’t want to get his friend involved in the freak show his life was becoming. As he searched for a way out, any way out, his phone started to vibrate and ring in his pocket.

“You want to get that?” Anton looked away.

“No.” Gabe waited and let the call go to voicemail. “You are gonna
have
to trust me, Ant. Trust me when I say you can’t help. You really can’t, not right now. And I
will
tell you what the hell is going on as soon as I can, I promise…”

Anton walked back to the Vespa, put on his helmet and sat astride the scooter. He pressed the electric starter, revved the engine, then pushed the Vespa forward, off its stand, and rode away without a word.

Gabe watched him disappear into traffic as he got out his phone. Whoever had called had left a voicemail and he automatically pressed playback and listened to the robo-voice telling him he had one new message. Then Benny started talking and didn’t stop.
“You think I’m blind, maybe, Gabriel? Like what are you doing, hanging round with Eddy’s kid sister? What? I got eyes around the place, Gabriel. If it’s going on, I know about it, so don’t try and pull the wool with me, OK? Eddy Grainger, right? Kid sister’s Estelle or something… Stella. If I was playing nice, OK? If I was, I’d say I’d prefer it if you did not hang round with the broad. But I ain’t doing nice today, so back off, Gabriel, capiche? Do not go there, right? Or else.”

Gabe was having a tough enough time adjusting to the way his life was playing without Benny turning all mafia don on him. Was he being
threatened
, with the ‘or else’ again? He wanted to ring Benny back and ask him what his problem was with Stella, but he thought better of it.

Stella must have been
very
careless for Benny, not the sharpest knife in the drawer by a long stretch, to have found out she was doing whatever she was doing. Gabe had no idea what that might be, but
he had no doubts she should cease and desist right away. He rang Stella, but the call went straight to voicemail and he mumbled something inane, about how she should call him back as soon as she got the message, and cut off.

As if his life wasn’t complicated enough, as if he wasn’t
paranoid
enough, he now had to worry about Stella, and whether meeting up with her in a couple of hours time was going to be cool. He found it difficult – strike that, he found it impossible to believe that Benny had a network of informants all over the Valley reporting back to him. He was a low-level dirtbag with muscle for brains, so he’d either found out by accident or, for some reason, he’d been having Stella watched. 24/7? Would he do that? Unlikely. But was it worth the risk, thinking that he wouldn’t?

Gabe pushed his bike down the sidewalk. His life was unravelling. It had become a never-ending parade of unanswered and often unanswerable questions and worrying about them was screwing with his head. The irony hit him that worry, specifically about how he was going to try and help fix his family’s situation, was kind of what had got him into this mess in the first place.

As he walked he texted Stella:
Benny watching u – careful yr not followed tonite.
Gabe wondered how come, if Benny really was such a moron, he’d managed to stay out of jail for so long. And what did it say about
him
, the almost-straight-A student who worked for the guy? Who, out of the two of them, was the biggest loser?

A light breeze blew in, bringing with it the kind of comforting smell of a garden trash fire. Following on, underneath those top notes, came something heavier and more earthy. For a second it didn’t mean anything to Gabe, then, as if he was sampling a perfume, trying to work out its different components, he took a deeper breath and it clicked.

His hand flew up, grabbing his T-shirt, the sharp edges of the small gold cross digging into his palm, and he whirled round, expecting to find the old man in the faded red baseball cap right behind him.

He was nowhere to be seen.

Standing alone in the street, normal, ordinary life going on all around him as if everything was totally fine, Gabe didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He wished he could go back a few days, to when all he had on his mind was getting through
a Time of No Money; how simple did that seem now? Monday, when he could get the stash in his locker and give it to Father Simon, looked a long, long way off.

Anything could happen between now and then. The quiet voice from the dark place in his head reminded him, as if he needed it, that that also included him dying.

“You want to do
what
?”

Gabe and Stella were sitting at a corner table, right at the back of The Pizza Parlor. Under other circumstances it might have been the romantic choice, the place for a private tête-à-tête, but not tonight. Stella, hair up and wearing a beret, sat with her back to the rest of the room. She looked different, but it was no disguise. His attempt at being incognito had been riding every back double he knew to the restaurant with his hoodie up. He’d pushed it off his head as soon as he’d arrived, not wanting to look ridiculous. They’d done the best they could.

“Go over to Morrison tonight, OK?” Gabe took a sip of his Pepsi. “I mean, why wait till Monday, right? Do it now and I get my life back. You got a better idea?”

Stella looked like she didn’t know where to start, and then couldn’t anyway until the waitress, who’d
just appeared, had delivered their order.

“You want to break in? To the
school
?” She leant over the table, whispering. “Are you
crazy
? I know I’m new to the place, but even
I
know it’s got security up the wazoo since a bunch of tech was stolen last year. Maybe you didn’t hear yet…”

“Sure I know. I’m not a complete doofus.”

Stella smiled. “And I know that.”

“You do – how?”

“I know you a
lot
better than you know me. I’ve watched you.” Stella took a bite of her slice.

“You stalked me?”

Stella rolled her eyes. “No! Like not
as such,
just kinda sussed you out, but when we met the other day? You didn’t really have much of a clue who I was, did you? Took a moment to place me, didn’t it?”

“Yeah…” No point in denying it. “Seen you around, but, you know…”

Stella took another bite, Gabe getting started with his slice. “So, tell me, Gabe, what’s the plan? How’re you going to get into school?”

“OK…” Gabe bit off a real big mouthful, buying some more time to think on his feet and sort out the
tiny germ of an idea that had occurred to him on the ride there. “I never did it myself, but I was told there was a way in, through a window in a storeroom. It doesn’t shut properly. Apparently.”

“You’re going to risk doing this because there’s
apparently
a way in? Isn’t the system supposed to be computer-controlled?”

“Yeah, but this one window doesn’t have the gizmos on it, you know, the little electronic things which tell the computer what’s open and what’s closed? Or it has them, and they weren’t wired up right and don’t work. Like that.”

Gabe leant an elbow on the table and cupped his chin. This was one of those friend-of-a-friend stories he thought maybe he’d heard from Anton. He didn’t remember. But it didn’t matter where it came from because, listening to himself, he kind of agreed with the look of disbelief on Stella’s face which said it all. This wasn’t a plan, it was sheer stupidity. Except, Gabe squared his shoulders, it was the only stupid plan he had and the thought of doing nothing until Monday was driving him crazy.

“You’re gonna go, aren’t you?”

“Sure.” Gabe slumped back in his chair. “Can’t sit
around and wait.”

“I’m coming with you.”

It was Gabe’s turn to look incredulous.

“No arguments.” Stella shook her head. “You’ll need a lookout, backup, whatever… Gabe, you wouldn’t be thinking about this if I hadn’t taken you to meet Father Simon. I’m responsible.”

“No, you’re—”

“Yes, I am.”

The girl sounded so confident, so like she had made up her mind, and that was that. Breaking into the school hadn’t been how he’d intended to spend his first date with Stella, but it looked like he wasn’t going to have a choice. On top of everything else he had to deal with, having Stella with him would be extra pressure. Except, if it all worked out, the worst of the hassle he was getting – the you-could-end-updead part – would go away.

“Penny for them, Gabe?”

“Look, Stella…” Gabe made a thing of swirling the ice in his 7Up with the straw; they both knew he was playing for time. “OK, see, it’s like this. Here we are, making a lame-assed attempt to keep off of Benny’s radar because he thinks he owns me and, for
some reason he wouldn’t say,
you
are a no-go zone. And I am wearing a freaking cross to ward off the walking dead. So us breaking into Morrison to get the stuff from my locker was not the top of my ‘To Do’ list. And I
am
glad you’re coming with me…”

“But?”

“OK, yeah … but why
is
Benny so fired up about you, anyway?”

It was Stella’s turn to take a moment, rearranging the pepperoni on her slice.

“I was careless … he saw me taking pictures.”

Gabe watched as she kept on with the pepperoni rejigging, thinking,
OK, so I got that much right.

She took a deep breath. “I never believed Ed died of an ‘accidental overdose’, like they said. For a start, he wasn’t a user, I know he wasn’t. Someone did that to him.
I
think
Benny
did that to him, for some reason, and I want him to pay for that.”

Benny? Gabe couldn’t get his head round the idea of him as a killer. Sure, he could be mean as a snake, and would no doubt hurt any number of flies, given half a chance, but murder?

“Why would he want to kill your brother?”

“Oh,
I
don’t know, Gabe … maybe that’s what
I’m
trying
to find out?”

Stella’s angry sarcasm almost physically pushed Gabe back in his chair.

“Gabe, Gabe – I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…” Stella reached across the table, squeezed Gabe’s hand and wouldn’t let go. “It’s been such a weird day.”

“Yeah, it kind of has. And we’re going to top it off by going all
Mission: Impossible…
”

“It’ll be OK.”

“And if it isn’t? Why should you get the heat as well as me?”

“Look –” Stella squeezed Gabe’s hand again, then let go – “if it looks at all like there’s
any
chance we might get caught, we’ll bail, OK?”

Gabe stared across the restaurant at the world outside, the early-evening traffic flowing by the windows. Benny and the old man were out there, and he couldn’t help imagining them as roaming like a couple of hunting packs, him and Stella the prey. But they couldn’t stay and eat pizza forever and if they were going to leave it might as well be to actually
do
something positive. Not hide like mice from a cat. Or an owl.

“OK.”

For no good reason it had taken twice as long as the first time they’d done it to get the bike into Stella’s car, but they’d finally tortured it into a shape that fit into the back of the Toyota and were on their way to Morrison High, Stella taking an off-the-main-drag route. Gabe was head down, fiddling around with the stereo, trying to find a station playing something decent, when Stella slammed on the brakes.

Gabe sat up. “Geez, Stella – what happened?”

Stella pulled over to the kerb. “I meant to ask you…”

“Ask me what?”

“The news … did you see it tonight?”

“No, why?”

“There was a report on the murder, at the antique store…”

“And?”

“There were two bodies…” Stella trailed off.

“Two?” Stella nodded. “Did they say who the other one was?”

“Apart from the owner, the guy you met, Cecil whatever, they figure the second one must’ve been
a customer. The reporter said it was, you know, unconfirmed, but he’d been told by a ‘reliable source’ –” Stella quote marked with her fingers – “that it looked like they’d both had their throats ripped out. By an animal.”

Gabe stared at the digital read-out on the stereo, thinking, yeah, an animal all right; a coyote, had to be. And the second man, that was the person Cecil LeBarron had called, the client. Also had to be. He must have gone over to pick up the bracelet, and
so
been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gabe, not realizing what he was doing, reached up and touched the crucifix. “Let’s get going, I
really
need this over with.”