Dead Low Tide (22 page)

We sat in the Range Rover, the dome light on so that Tabitha could read lips. She sat in the passenger seat, Five in the back but leaning forward between us. Out my window were two cruisers parked side by side, filling the street, in front and behind them more. All jammed here, and all with their blue lights on.

The reporter and cameraman had only moved off the driveway and set up between cars right in front of the Whaley yard, where policemen still stood guard. Two more channels had showed up—2 and 5—and wedged themselves between other cars out there.

We’d been walking back to the Range Rover when those two reporters and their cameramen came jogging toward us on the grass and right on past us, no words out of them. We’d stopped then, watched them set up, those pools of light crashing down once the cameras were on. Three reporters, two women and one man, all dressed nice
and bright, standing and talking into the cameras. While nothing much seemed to be happening at the house behind them.

Five’d said, “Let’s go.” I’d looked at him beside me, seen in the blue lights he was looking across the street, but with his chin down, hands in his pockets. I’d turned, tried to see what he did.

Neighbors were out of their houses now: a couple stood on the front porch of the house across from the Whaleys’, someone stood out on the driveway of the house next to that, a clutch of people—a family, maybe—on the steps up to the front porch of another house three doors down.

“Yep,” I’d said, and we three had turned, gone to the Range Rover, climbed in.

“I still can’t believe this,” Five said from between us now, Tabitha half turned in her seat so she could see him. “I just can’t believe this.”

Tabitha pulled from one of the pockets of the jacket she had on—it was a nice one, a light tweed blazer, the blouse under it white and simple—a small pad of paper and pen, set the pad on her leg and wrote. Same as when she and I were first together, and I hadn’t yet gotten the whole signing thing.

She tore off the piece of paper, handed it to Five, and though it wasn’t meant for me, I could see as she passed it the plain and square and perfect printing she’d always had.

Five looked at it, nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and let out a sigh.

“What?” I said.

Tabitha looked at me, lifted a hand, her pinkie finger pointed out, and started to sweep it down, but Five quick looked up at me, said, “It’s personal.” Even in the dim light of the cab I could see his black eyebrows together, him incredulous, as though I’d asked to kiss his mom.

I looked at Tabitha, still with her pinkie in the air. She’d cut her eyes to him, looked back at me, shrugged. She put her hand down.

I looked out the windshield: still nothing up there but a lit-up orange
house bathed in a flashing blue I’d grown beyond tired of. From here inside I could see the halo of lights of the cameras, too, but not the reporters, or the garage door. Only policemen standing along the property.

“So, Five,” I said, “where’s your mom? Is she in there too?” and wondered for a second what that would look like, to see your mom arrested.

“Huh,” he let out. “No.” He paused. “She’s in Boca Raton. With a loser named Dante she hooked up with on a Celebrity cruise my parents took for their tenth anniversary.”

I was quiet a moment, said, “Sorry.”

“If she knew this was going down, Dad about to get arrested, she’d be dancing on a table,” he said, then, quieter, “They got divorced when I was six. Haven’t seen her in eight years.”

I looked at him, his head and shoulders there between Tabitha’s seat and mine, his eyes straight ahead.

I said, “Sorry, Five.”

He shrugged.

Tabitha gave a wave at me, and both Five and I looked at her.

He doesn’t like Five
, she signed.
He wants me to call him War
.

She spelled out the last word, and I said, “Why?”

“Stop that,” Five said, and let out another sigh. “We talked about this,” he said.

Tabitha looked at him, at me again.
He doesn’t sign
.

“Now come on,” he said, and leaned back hard in his seat, shook the vehicle the smallest bit.

I turned, looked back at him. He had his arms crossed, and faced the passenger window. I said, “You want to be called War? Are you serious?”

He looked at me. “Short for Warchester,” he said, and uncrossed his arms, set his palms on the seat either side of him. He gave a small smile. “Beats the hell out of being called Five my whole life. Nobody calls Dad Four.” He paused, and now he leaned forward, put his elbows
on his knees, looked out the windshield again for anything going on. “Just call me War,” he said. “Seems pretty logical.”

I sat back in my seat, looked at Tabitha.

Let’s call him Cinco
, I spelled.

She laughed.

“Not putting up with this secret shit much longer,” Five said from between us. But this time he didn’t sit back, only stayed right there.

“You need to learn to sign,” I said, and before I’d even finished the words a piece of me—a big piece—was sorry for it. I didn’t want him to learn this language. I didn’t want him working out words between them that only the two of them would know. I didn’t want his hand in her palm, or hers in his.

I looked at Tabitha. She’d seen what I said, and held my eyes for a second too long before she looked out the windshield.

I looked too. Nothing new out there. Only Unc somewhere inside. With Prendergast.

“Tried it,” Five said. “Signing.” And Tabitha turned from the windshield toward him, but just barely. She didn’t want him to see she was watching him, reading his lips. But she wanted to listen all the same.

I’d been with her a long time. I knew how she was.

“Ordered a CD with these songs on it and a book for the signs,” he went on. “Just couldn’t get the hang of it. But I know every word to the stupid songs by heart. ‘Who Knows the Alphabet?’ was one. ‘Opposites Are Out of Sight.’ ‘Up, down, big, small, young, old, short, tall,’ ” he sang, his voice bright but quiet.

He stopped. He took in a breath, let it out, and I could tell he’d heard himself carried away, singing inside a car while what was going on just outside was going on.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he whispered. “And I wonder who the son of a bitch is called this in. Who up on his porch watching right now called the cops on us. I don’t get it.” He paused. “Maybe Adkins across the street. Maybe Mrs. Herron.” He nodded ahead of us, as though I’d know which houses he was talking about and the
people involved. “I mean, I know the cars out here every week are a problem,” he went on, “but Dad sends everyone in the six houses on either side of us and the eight across from us this monster thing of Omaha Steaks for Christmas every year.”

And now, with his bringing the whole thing up, I wondered about that too: why tonight this had been called in. I didn’t care who had done it. But it was the fact of it that bothered me. Why tonight?

I looked at Five, him leaned forward between us, and saw Tabitha with her eyes on mine.

She looked at me, held it. She blinked, seemed to swallow. She glanced at Five, then out the windshield, and back to me.

I looked. Officers moved back and forth along the driveway. The world pulsed blue.

I turned back to her, still looking at me. “Why are you back here?” I said. “Why are you home?”

“Long weekend,” Five answered, still looking out the windshield.

“No,” I said. “Tabitha.”

He glanced up at me, at Tabitha. He shook his head, looked forward again.

Tabitha looked down a second, then back up. She pursed her lips, signed,
See my mom
.

“She’s here for an interview,” Five said at the exact same moment. “She could tell you where but then she’d have to kill you.”

Tabitha, thumb still at her chin and fingers spread wide for the word
mom
, froze, her eyes on Five. He looked at me first, had this smile on his face and raised his eyebrows, and turned to Tabitha.

Her fingers snapped together right at her lips, a tough little move it wouldn’t take much for anyone to figure out:
Shut up
.

“I know that one,” Five said, and looked at me, the smile gone.

Tabitha turned from him to the windshield again. She crossed her arms, settled in her seat.

“An interview?” I said, but she was ignoring me or couldn’t see
me, one. I reached across to her, touched her arm to get her attention, but she wouldn’t look, only sat tight with her arms crossed.

“She’s pissed,” Five whispered. “Best to leave her alone when she’s like this,” and he shook his head. “Shouldn’t have said anything.”

For a second I thought to tell him I knew when she was pissed, believe me. But I was still stuck on whatever this interview thing meant. And the idea she could be moving here for a job. Moving back home.

“Whose are these?” Five said then, like nothing had happened at all, like there hadn’t been any kind of turn just now for the possibility of her being home and why, no mystery to whatever she was here and interviewing for.

Because he knew things between them. He and Tabitha both knew about each other, and what could possibly be. I had nothing to do with either of their lives. He’d spoken out of line, she’d told him to shut up. Of course he’d moved on.

He reached between us to the console then, picked up the object of his interest: Unc’s wallet from the console tray. “If this is Leland’s,” he said, “then he’s …”

His words trailed off, and he set the wallet down, picked up Unc’s cellphone, all before I could tell him to leave those things alone, that they weren’t his to touch.

“Does he just have cash in his pocket when he walks in and when he heads home?” Five asked.

“Does it matter?” I snapped at him. “Leave it alone.”

But even as I said these things, I began to wonder at what it was he was touching: Unc’s wallet, his cellphone.

I thought of Unc climbing out of the cab after he’d told me about Mom, the hurry of it all while news of her life had pounded inside me, and the odd business of watching him pull out that wallet, set the cellphone there, and how nothing just then had made any sense at all.

He always had his wallet and cellphone with him. And even if he’d carried cash in his pocket and not in his wallet—which he never
did—how else was he going to call me out here, like he did at the end of every poker night, to let me know to come in and get him, walk him back to the car?

“Doesn’t he call you when he’s done to tell you—” Five started, his voice low and with a kind of confusion to it.

But Tabitha started tapping hard at the dashboard in front of her right then, and I looked up from the console, and from Five’s hand still holding the phone, to see her nearly jumping in her seat, and I looked out the windshield, saw it all start.

The perp walk.

Here came one man, and another, and another, a line of them headed along the driveway and away from the house, beside each one a man in a black windbreaker and pants, a hand up and holding the upper arm of the poker player beside him.

Every player with his hands behind him. They’d all been cuffed.

Five let go the cellphone, wedged himself up even farther between us. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.

A parade. A real parade. Men drenched in blue and dressed in those Nat Nast shirts and Tommy Bahamas all moved along the drive, some with their heads down, some with chins high. And more of them, and more, all easing along the driveway. All of them right toward where the cameras were set up, those halos of light.

The clutter of vehicles out on the street made it impossible to see what was happening to each one as he came off the drive, but I knew they were being fed into the back of the big black UPS truck down there: a prisoner transport. A good old-fashioned paddy wagon.

“There he is,” Five said in the same moment Tabitha started tapping hard the dash again, jabbing at the air in front of her:
Look!

Not Unc, or Prendergast, but Warchester Four. Five’s dad, doughy-faced even from here, but blue, like everyone else. He was smiling, I could see, head up, nearly strutting down the driveway. Then he disappeared behind the cars strung along in front of us.

“What an idiot,” Five said, and pulled away from us, his head and
shoulders disappearing into the backseat. “You guys just wait here. Be back in a minute,” he said, and popped open the door.

“Wait,” I said, and looked down at the console, the wallet and cellphone, and pieced together, finally, what Five had been on the border of figuring out for himself.

You stay put, you hear?
Unc had told me.
Where I need you is out here
, he’d said.

Unc had been the one to call this in.

“I need to get that stash up in his room, and to get my car,” Five said, the door standing open. “So I can follow him over to the station.”

“You think they’re going to let you stroll in and just take a wad of money out of a house in the middle of being raided?” I said. “And if your car is in the driveway, you think they’re going to drop everything and move all their vehicles for you?”

Stay put
, Unc had said.