Gentlemen (8 page)

Mixer and me were out in the hallway before homeroom on Thursday morning. Neither of us had heard anything new about Tommy, and Mixer was like, “D'ya read it?”

I was like, “I read part one.”

“How many parts are there?”

“I don't know, a lot,” I said. “This thing's got like parts within parts.”

He looked a little annoyed, like it was my job to read the stupid thing. Like there was someone with a knife to his balls ordering him not to, for that matter, so I said, “What?”

He shrugged because he probably realized he was being a jerk. Finally, he said, “So?” Meaning he wanted to know if the stuff Haberman said was in the book.

At that point, I really didn't know. It seemed like I'd read a lot, but I really wasn't that far into the book. So I kind of
recapped what I did know, thinking maybe he could help me puzzle it out.

“All right,” I said. “So, yeah, there's a crime, all right, a murder, but it's not the dude's mom. I was wrong about that. It's this old lady with like a pawnshop in her apartment. He completely offs her.”

And as I said that, I realized I was getting ahead of the story, and right away I was in the weird role of feeling like an English teacher or something. I just took a breath and started over.

“So it starts out and this Russian dude Raskolnikov is casing this old lady's apartment, but you don't know why yet. And anyway, the dude's sort of like a stuck-up ass, even though he's completely poor and hard up, and it seems like maybe he's a little nuts, so you figure this dude could do just about anything. Tick tick tick, total time bomb, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Mixer. He made a little circle motion with his finger: Move it along.

“But he's having trouble psyching himself up to do some bad thing,” I said, “which pretty early on you know is to kill the old lady and rob her little pawnshop. He's all like a commie about it, you know, give her money to the people and all, but he's kind of squeamish about really getting his hands dirty.”

“He doesn't want to kill her?”

“No, he does, he's just fagging out about it. So anyway, he meets this other dude who is a total drunk loser, who's like pimping his own daughter.”

“There any sex?”

“No, they just say he's pimping her. Or she's doing it herself, or whatever, but the thing is the family needs the money because the guy's a total loser and chicks couldn't work real jobs back then. And so the book goes on about the loser family for a while and then there's a dead horse and a letter from home and none of it seems to have much to do with anything until the dude, the main dude, is walking through a market and he, like, overhears the other chick who lives with the old pawnshop lady saying how she's not going to be home the next night.”

“Yeah, so he's going to whack her then.”

“Seriously, he thinks, like, the universe is telling him to. So he heads over there the next night, and he's got an ax that he found somewhere on a loop inside his coat, and he gives her some little thing to unwrap and as she's doing that—whack, man! Whack, whack, whack! He chops her up good. But then the other chick comes back, and it's like wrong place, wrong time, and he does her, too.”

“That's cold, man.”

“Yeah, and she's just like this cleaning helper lady to the old lady, like a relative, who totally didn't do anything except show up at the door and gawk at the body, and this dude—just one shot, whack, she's done, even though he's all like trying to come across as like the people's poet or some crap.”

At that point, the bell went off, and we had to get into homeroom. That was fine because that was just about as far
as I'd read. Anyway, we were sitting there in homeroom, and I could see across the room that Mixer was thinking about it. I thought that by the time the bell went off he might've come up with something in all that, but when we met up in the hallway on our way to first period, he was just like, “Well, what the hell? Haberman didn't mention any of that stuff.”

And I'm like, “Yeah, he's all talking about guilt and spreading stains and getting rid of bodies and weapons and stuff. This guy didn't even really get rid of the bodies, but he did clean off the ax and put it back where he found it. And with the guilt, I don't know yet. He just killed them, but like I said, he's pretty messed up in the head, and I could see him freaking out about it. He's a weird dude and a total bedwetter about pretty much everything else he does. Like he'll give people money and then go on and on, like, Why the hell did I give them my money for? I think maybe that'll be in the next section.”

“Do you think the chicks who got killed had any friends? Remember, Haberman's like, ‘That'll cause a lot of problems for their friends'?”

“Nah, I don't think so, but it seems like maybe more people will get killed. I mean, it's just part one and there's already a body count.”

“Yeah, maybe he'll kill someone more popular next time,” Mixer said, and we both laughed. And then we both really laughed, because there was a 99 percent chance that all this stuff was totally ridiculous, that we were talking about
this book for nothing and the only real crime was Tommy maybe getting molested in Manchester. And I said that, too, and so we were laughing even more, feeling pretty good. Then Bones turned the corner, and I was getting ready to tell him why we were laughing, but he was all serious and told us both to shut up.

“What's your problem, man?” Mixer said.

“Throckmorton's here, and he's going to be talking to people,” Bones said.

“Throckmorton?” said Mixer.

“Yeah, 'morton,” said Bones.

“He want to talk to us?” I said.

“What do you think, dumbass?” said Bones, so that was pretty much a total buzzkill. Sheriff Throckmorton. Not Principal Throckmarten, that we could handle. It was just two letters off, but a major difference. The story was that they were the same family back in the day in Soudley, and that the two names were the result of an old family feud. I've got no way of knowing if that's true or not. I mean, my family has been in town a long time, but that family's like the Founding Fathers or whatever, only no one knows which family that was: Throckmorton or Throckmarten. There's a brook named after one and a street named after the other and, no surprise, everyone always gets confused as to which name goes where.

The other rumor was that the two didn't get along at all, and I heard that one was definitely true, so Throckmorton wasn't here for a social visit.

“Oh, crap,” I said, and it was kind of weird, because I honest to god hadn't done anything. None of us had—not recently, anyway—but getting grilled by some dude with a badge and a gun was just not my idea of a good time. Not unless I was watching it on TV. It's like they wrote down what you said and asked you again and tried to get you to screw up. And then it's like you're guilty, even though the only thing you're guilty of is getting confused and saying the wrong thing.

So Thursday schedule, same as Tuesday, and that meant Practical Math with Doucheley first period. And sure enough, not halfway through it there was a knock on the door. Sometimes they call the teacher and sometimes they knock on the door. They don't announce it over the loudspeaker like they did in elementary school: “Will the following students please report to the principal's office.” And then the class would start snickering and looking over at you. They don't do that in high school, because sometimes in high school it's serious, and sometimes in high school it's not the principal you're going to see.

Dantley opened the door a crack, and a hand curled around the edge so you could see the fingers. It was a black man's hand, so I knew it was Trever, but I pretty much knew that anyway. The door opened up and no one was surprised when he asked Bones, Mixer, and me to come up to the front. But they didn't know what it was about. At least I don't think they did. Some of the others had been asking us what was up
with Tommy, but we were always like, Search me, so they all thought he was just suspended. They didn't know he was missing. They would now, I figured, because Trever called out a few other names, including Max. Max gave me a look like, What's up? But I gave him a look like I didn't know, because Max and me were never that tight.

Then Trever paused for a tick or two and added, real casual, “You too, Dantley.”

Man, no one saw that one coming. Trever said, “I'll watch the class till you get back,” but Dantley just stood there, a dumb look on his face and his eyes not looking at anything, and you could see that he was confused. His expression was like,
I'm
getting called to the principal's office? Then he turned to Trever with a big question mark on his face, and Trever was just like, “They just want to clear some things up.”

It was the same easy-breezy tone but now I could tell that Trever was working at it. I also realized right then that Dantley didn't know who he was going to see, and wouldn't he be surprised when he found out. Throckmorton was the county sheriff. Officially, it was County High Sheriff. Every four years since I could remember, red-white-and-blue signs went up in front lawns saying
VOTE THROCKMORTON HIGH SHERIFF
. It was like a thing to do to draw a big fat blunt on the sign because, you know, high sheriff.

It didn't matter much, I'd never once seen a sign for anyone else running for the job. Throckmorton lived in Soudley, but he got around. These towns around here were too small
to have their own police departments, so it was basically him and his deputies, plus the Staties prowling around to write the speeding tickets.

And that was about as much as I knew about him until it was my turn and I was called into the principal's office. I was surprised to see Throckmarten still in there because of that whole family feud thing. The sheriff had taken over the principal's desk, and Throckmarten was sitting over on the windowsill. They were talking as I walked in. “…because he didn't take anything with him this time, didn't pack, not even a pair of socks,” Throckmorton was saying, but he stopped talking when the door closed behind me. Throckmarten looked over at me and said, “Micheal Benton,” but not to me.

Throckmorton made a sound in the back of his throat, meaning that he'd heard him, and then flipped through some papers in his hands. I was thinking about
Without a Trace,
all the angry questions and accusations and hands slammed on tables.

“Take a load off,” he said, putting the papers down on the desk and looking back up at me. And right then, I knew this wasn't going to be like on TV. His voice sounded friendlier than I thought it would, and I had to remind myself again: I hadn't done anything. I didn't know where Tommy was, much less have anything to do with putting him there. There was no reason I should've been feeling the way I was—cornered is the best I can describe it, cornered and under suspicion—no
reason except I was in a closed room with the principal and the sheriff.

There were two chairs on the front side of the desk, and I took my usual one on the right side. I angled the chair to face Throckmorton and sat up straight so I wouldn't be shorter than him. I could feel my shoulders were tensed up and pinching together, so I shook them out a little.

“You cold?” Throckmorton asked, because I guess that looked like a shudder or something. It didn't sound like a real question, though.

“Nah, I'm OK,” I said, and then I thought, Am I supposed to call him sir or sheriff or something like that? I mean, I wasn't going to, but I wondered if I was supposed to. He paused, and I sort of looked around. Throckmarten was looking out into the front parking lot through the slits in the blinds. He was wearing a suit, which he didn't always, and I figured that meant he knew the sheriff was going to be there. It was a dark suit and it made me think of my gramps's funeral. The light was coming in through the blinds and cutting him up into slices as he sat there on the windowsill. He wasn't looking at me but you could tell he was listening.

I looked back and Throckmorton was looking at my left eye. He looked down at his papers quick, shuffled them a little, but I'd caught him.

“So I guess you know why you're here,” he said, raising his eyes back up.

“Tommy, I guess,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said, but he said it in that hip-hop way, like: yezzurr, and I was thinking: Did he just say that? Because even though that slang was like two years old, it was still slang. I mean, I used to say that. So now I was thinking, What is this dude's deal? Is he trying to be cool and like “relate” to me, or does he really talk like that? He was sitting behind the desk, so I could only see half of him. He had a button-up white shirt on, and it could've been part of a uniform, but it could also just've been a plain white shirt. I tried to remember other times I'd seen him around town, like in the pharmacy or wherever, and tried to picture what he'd been wearing. Was it a uniform, and if it was, would they take it away if he lost the election? I don't think I'd ever seen him in anything else. All I could remember was his face, his gun, and his jacket.

His face was square and fleshier than the rest of him, sort of bulldoggy, and his hair was dark brown, almost black. He still had all of it and I didn't see much gray, but you could tell he was real old, maybe even forty. I always thought of him as kind of a big guy, but up close, I could see that wasn't really the case. The jacket was slung over the chair behind him. It was dark blue and medium weight, and whatever it was made of reflected the light just a little bit.

His gun was out of sight at the moment, but I knew it was a revolver and a little too big, like he'd be shooting at something larger than a person with it. He walked right by
Mixer and me once when we were hanging out in front of the town hall, this was maybe three years ago, when we were still basically kids, and Mixer said, “Magnum.” I figured he was right, even though I'd never shot one of those. I'd never shot a pistol at all, come to think of it, just rifles and my uncle's shotgun once.