Criminals (24 page)

Angie turned from the window. Was she out of sight in the dark of the room? She wanted to get back into bed, into Pat's soft sheets. But she would have to take charge, the boy Jonah would have to leave. At least the girls should all be in the house, wherever the boy was. She didn't like the thought of Erika up on the balcony. In the tantrum years, the years of the forming will, she had taken care of Erika—never a child to be shielded, pitied. And what could Angie say now, if she went now and found her?
Don't let it hurt you
? For a long time she stood by the bed. Finally she pulled the red robe back on, tied it, and softly opened the door. Cham was standing a few feet away. “Same thing again,” Cham said. “Girls get up.”

“Are you familiar with this scenario?” Angie whispered. “Is this what happens? What's the story?”

Cham said doggedly, “Girls get up. Erika and one girl.”

“I mean, are we supposed to take action?”

“This boy is not for birthday. Not for girls.”

“Well then, I'll see what I can do.” She swept past Cham down the hall, and counted the girls in sleeping bags. Erika was one of the four.

At that moment the house exploded in blaring sound. Angie tripped and almost fell. Her hands found the rail, but that drove the buzz up her arms. As it poured in on her, the girls clambered up screaming. Cham was running flatfooted to the door. She peered through the hole and stepped back, making a violent crisscross motion with her hands at Angie to show—what? “Stop it! Turn it off!” Angie shouted.

“Girl,” Cham said, raising her voice angrily. “She try to open. So—” She pointed at the top of the door. A metal plate had dropped two inches to block it.

“So let her in!”

The girls had their pillows over their heads, all except Erika, who yelled, “Turn it off! Turn it off or the cops will come!”

“Oh, no, the cops!” The girls' heads came up. “Jonah! Rika, Jonah's not here, is he?”

“Cham!” Angie shook her by the arm. “Turn the alarm off this minute and open the door. We don't need the police here. It's Meghan!”

“A man,” said Cham. “A man is here.”

Angie pulled Cham away from the peephole and looked. First she saw the weeping girl, then a badge, held like a playing card between two fingers. Behind it a short heavyset man stood grinning, moving the badge aside to show himself, then bringing it into view again. “For God's sake Cham, it's her—employee! OK! It's all right,” she yelled through the thick door. Cham was finally punching in the code.

When the alarm stopped, the house seemed to sag like a parachute. Angie shot the bolt back and the man turned the knob, stepped back, passed Meghan neatly in before him and stuck out his hand. “Kirby Wells. With her dad's firm.” He had thick brown hair combed steeply back from a creased forehead. He gave a short man's bow, leaning into the handshake as if from a height, flicked the badge into his right hand, and offered it to Angie. “If you don't mind—gotta catch up with somebody.”

“I do mind,” Angie said, taking care to stand still and give way to no fluttering, elderly gesture. “Who?”

“Little guy out there. Party crasher.”

Angie smoothed the robe and raised her chin, gathering herself, like Katharine Hepburn. “Oh, dear, you don't mean Jonah? He is an invited guest.”

“Excuse me, ma'am, but this young lady has a few restrictions on her.”

“Ah. But this young man wouldn't be one of them,” Angie said.

“Wrong. Watchit there.” Angie had backed onto her hem. “Sorry, ma'am, but that's not the case. This kid is a menace.” Meghan looked straight ahead, her swollen mouth clamped shut, paying no attention to the three girls rocked back on their heels among the pillows, or to Erika, who had crawled down into her sleeping bag and hidden herself. “So like I said, I'm sorry,” the man said, “but the kid's going back.”

“Back where?”

“Juvie. Sorry about that.”

Angie thought he actually was sorry, sorry that she, his opponent, was silly and old. He wasn't all that young himself, the hair might be dyed. Above his muscled neck he had a low-slung face, engaged in some inner calculation, at once gloomy and self-satisfied. Gauging his own supply of whatever it was that kept men going at his age. “Why, I'm surprised to hear you say that,” she said. She was getting into her role, not so much Katharine Hepburn now as any old woman invested—self-invested—with a secret authority that could turn dire. “His family are friends of my daughter's.”

The man positively spluttered. “No! No, ma'am!” He rubbed his big short-fingered hands together, then jammed them into his pants pockets. “Nossir. These girls are shitting you. Excuse me. This kid's a problem from way back. I can guarantee you your daughter does not know this family.” Wells turned his lower lip out in a cartoon face of disgust.

“I know them myself,” Angie said in the dowager voice. “There's no telling who another person is acquainted with.” Though looking at Kirby Wells she was in the process of guessing a whole life for him. “Now, I don't know where you're stationed tonight, but I bet it would
be all right for you to go off duty now. Please tell Meghan's father we had no idea he felt this way. I certainly never got any such information from her mother.”

“Mother don't have a thing to say about it,” Wells said. “He's got a court order.”

“Now, Mr. Wells. I promise you I'll watch Meghan. I'll be right here where I've been all evening. Well, actually it's morning, isn't it. How about a cup of coffee? Cham? And do you have a partner out there?” Cham gave her a baleful look and did not move.

The man's hands in his pockets were balled into fists. He took them out and shook them. “I'm a one-man operation,” he said. “Tell you what I need, and that's a restroom.”

Angie sighed. “That way and down the hall. All the way down, on the left.” It was over. She felt mildly winded, as if she had been gripping the ropes of a swing.

But it was not entirely over. The door chimes rang out, echoed, rang again. Angie put her eye to the hole again. Two policemen stood there, with the boy Jonah between them. They had hold of him by the elbows, loosely enough that he was unwrapping a stick of gum.

Angie opened the door. Her high spirits drained away as the two men nodded soberly to her, creaking in the straps of their holsters and radios. But the taller one said in a friendly way, “I think we maybe have us a cat burglar. Is this what set off your alarm? Says he knows you.”

“‘This,'” Angie said, “is a friend of ours. Jonah, what are you doing outside at this time of night? And who called the police?”

“Your alarm went off, ma'am. We respond to that. The company gets the call and a few minutes later”—he showed his watch—“we get the call.” He was speaking to her a little more slowly and loudly than necessary. He was young but bald, and the other one had a buzz cut that showed his scalp. Both of them had the attractive neat police mustache.

Angie took a breath. “I'm sorry, Officer,” she began. “I'm Angela Rudeen. This is Jonah, and Meghan, and over there are my granddaughter Erika and her friends Brianne, Tamiko, and Jessica”—she spread the names out with their mild distracting power—“having a
slumber party. It's Erika's birthday. If they've been in and out I'm to blame. I can't tell you how sorry I am about the alarm. But it is a birthday party. Fourteen,” she added.

The tall one said, “These false alarms—they'll get you a big fine. If this is your first one you're in for a shock.”

“Oh, it is,” Angie said.

The shorter one said, “We get them all the time. The dog sets it off, the maid sets it off.” He glanced at Cham's bare feet. “They call us, we come out. Pretty soon, no police response for anybody. I'm just letting you know, ma'am.”

By this time they had let go of the boy's arms and he had begun to smile and crack his gum. Don't do that, Angie thought, don't smile. They're ready to go. They'll leave if you stay still.

Of course he was smiling for the benefit of Meghan, who was haughtily pushing the stuck curls off her face. She had been shooting looks at him from under her black brows, one after another like rivets, and he was replying with a message of his invulnerability. Her smile in return was radiant, if radiance could be secretive and not wholly benign. She put her shoulders back and her breasts up and Angie saw that for all her slightness she was not a little girl at all.

Far away the bathroom door opened. Kirby Wells was coming. “Well, here comes Mr. Wells!” Angie cried as he came striding on his short legs. “Mr. Wells ran over when he heard the alarm.”

“Well, looka here,” said Wells. His face was deep red, as if he had had trouble in the bathroom. “Hey, you got him.”

“Please,” Angie said. “I was just explaining the situation to Mr. Wells,” she added.

“The situation is, here we have the man himself, Mr. Smartboy,” Wells said.

“And Mr. Motherfucker,” the boy said with his smile.

“That's enough!” Angie said. But she sagged at the knees and the tall policeman's hand shot out for her elbow. “And Mr. Wells—! But let's sit down, why don't we,” she said. The door was flanked by granite benches, where no one ever sat. Angie was the only one who did so now, and as the boy took a gliding step in the direction of the open
door Wells grabbed his good arm so fast it spun him in his tracks. What struck Angie in that second was how ferocious a small thing like that could be, not at all like people throwing each other around on TV. It was as if a sharp gas had been released into the room. They all breathed it. Both policemen stepped forward.

“That's assault,” the boy said, shielding his narrow chest with the cast in a way that would have brought tears to Angie's eyes if he had not, the next minute, grinned around at all of them. OK, my friend, she thought, you can take care of yourself. This was a boy who was aware of his effect. He must get by on it, the pang stirred up in others by that combination of looks—for of course the girls had chosen him for what only now struck Angie as his beauty—and the suggestion of a misery, some error he was set on compounding.

“What's so funny?” Wells demanded. “You. What's so funny?”

“Oh, dear,” Angie said. “Mr. Wells is trying to help, I'm sure, but really, at this point I'd be happier if he'd just—maybe he'll listen to you.”

The tall policeman looked at her and at Wells in turn. His eyes swept the room. “Having fun, girls?” he called. “Whose birthday?”

“Hers,” they all said, pointing to Erika in her sleeping bag.

“Looks like she's sleeping through it,” he said. The radio on his belt gave off static and then a voice, numbers, an address. “And we've got your guest here, Mrs.—?”

“Rudeen,” Angie said. “Yes, you do.”

“Uh-huh. We apprehend a guest from time to time.”

The younger policeman got up close to the boy and spoke to him. “Buddy, you might be a guest, you might be whatever, but you need to clean up your mouth.”

“Rudeen?” said Kirby Wells. “Any relation to Rudy Rudeen?”

“My husband,” said Angie.

“Uh-huh. Well, things seem to be under control here,” the tall one put in easily. “Don't you think so, Frank? I think we can all just get back to business. And you're a neighbor, Mr. Wells?”

“I'm security personnel for Mr. Nicholas Pappas,” Wells said, rocking back and flapping his trousers from the pockets. “I keep an eye on the safety situation of his daughter. Yeah, I'd say things are under control.”

This satisfied the tall one. “Do you want to file a complaint?” he asked Wells.

“Wait a minute,” Angie said. “Mr. Wells is in my house. My alarm went off. Wouldn't I be the one to file a complaint?”

“All we'd need is, we'd need to run a few checks, maybe get your boss on the phone. And if not,” the policeman went on comfortably, to Wells, “you may as well call it a night.” His radio blurted again.

“No complaint,” Wells said. “I'm outa here. Whoa. Rudy Rudeen.”

“Uh-huh. And ma'am, you might want to shut down your borders. The gate. Gate's wide open. You can go ahead and shut it when we leave. Give it two minutes.” He stepped aside so that Wells could precede him through the door.

“Well, yes, I will. Thanks again, all of you.” Angie stayed sitting down, to conserve her energy. “Thank you, Mr. Wells. Good night. Seriously, don't worry.”

The moon had swung to the rear of the house, and from the bench she could see long, pale washboard clouds. Cham shut the heavy door. “All right, now,” Angie said after a minute. “Girls, get back in bed. Meghan, go to bed. Wait, Jonah. I don't know what I'm going to do with you.”

“OK, see this?” Meghan had come to life. “See his arm? Wanna know who broke it? Ray. His quote-unquote father. And look.” With a rough sweep, almost a blow, she pushed the boy's nylon soccer shirt up. Across his chest ran what looked like a purple tattoo, but proved to be a band of raw skin with scabs clustered along it. “That's rope burn.” At that the boy sat down beside Angie, shaking his head modestly as if Meghan were listing his accomplishments.

So Angie had been wrong again, wrong in thinking such a boy could take care of himself. And once she had been so unfoolable. She leaned back against the slate wall. Pumphead. “You'll have to stay until morning,” she said to Jonah, keeping her eyes closed, “and then I don't know.”

“Just take this off!” said Meghan, plucking at the neck of the boy's shirt. “It's pulling the scabs. See? Oh! See? They tie him up, they break his arm, and now he'll get killed.”

A loud, strangled sob burst from Erika's sleeping bag.

“Oh, yeah, Rika! Yeah, hear that? How do you like that? You got him over here. You turned the alarm back on. You got him into this.” Meghan's lips had gone white and she bared her small sparkling teeth as if she might sink them into Erika.