“Stabbed.”
“How many?”
“Who was stabbed?”
“A lady out there said it was her son.”
“Somebody’s dead?”
“It ain’t for sure.”
“I hope they kill the bunch who done it.”
“A boy pulled a stiletto, one of those Italian kind. That’s what they’re saying.”
With a three-inch square of gauze taped on my face, I went out in the concourse and headed toward the crowd that had formed around the shoeshine stand. I stepped up on the railing behind the stadium seating so I could see over their heads. A blond kid in jeans and a cowboy shirt and a crew cut, his hat stuffed under his head, was lying on his back, his shirt open, the cellophane from a cigarette package pasted over the wound below his left nipple. Two ambulance attendants were trying to push a gurney through the crowd. An open switchblade, its wavy surfaces rippling with light and streaks of red like fingernail polish, lay on the concrete. Loren’s greaseball friends were lined up and leaning on their arms against the wall while three uniformed cops shook them down, kicking their ankles apart, ripping their pockets inside out, splattering coins and keys and a couple of knives onto the concrete. I didn’t see Loren among them.
A soapy wine-colored bubble formed on the boy’s lips. A woman who must have been his mother was inconsolable. She beat her fists on a man’s chest as he tried to calm her. One of the boy’s hands was gripped on the wrist of a man in slacks and a clip-on bow tie and a white shirt kneeling beside him, a Bible held open by his thumb. The boy’s face was drained of all color; there was a dark triangle in his jeans where he had soiled himself. The attendants got through the crowd just as the boy looked straight into the ceiling and stopped breathing, as though someone had pulled a plug loose from the back of his head.
Everyone in the crowd became silent, even those who could not see what was happening. They all seemed to sense at the same time that the boy had died. I stepped off the rail into the crowd. A man in front of me whispered to a friend, “Back home, this wouldn’t make the jailhouse.”
Someone touched me on the back. It was Loren Nichols. “What happened?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I grabbed his upper arm and pulled him with me toward the men’s room. He tried to free himself, craning his head to see over the crowd. “Answer me, Aaron. What’s going on?”
“One of those boys from Tomball is dead. Where were you?”
“In the seats. A girl and I used the passes you gave me. Are the cops busting somebody?”
“That’s the least of it.” I pushed him along the wall, away from the crowd. “Don’t look up.”
“What are you doing?”
“They know you. I said don’t look up.”
“Who knows me?”
“The cops.”
“Those are my friends back there.”
“Yeah, and one of them just killed a high school kid.”
“Over what?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s where all this hard-guy crap finally ends up. A kid makes some quacking noises and somebody sticks a knife in him. That was his mother screaming back there. You want to explain to her why her son is dead?”
“Lay off that. I never carry a shank.”
“Yeah, but those guys do. What do you think is going to happen if the crowd gets their hands on them?”
“They’re still my friends.” He started to pull away from me.
“They’re not your friends. They’re pack animals, just like the rich kids who hang with Grady.”
“I’m not like Grady Harrelson, and neither are my friends.”
“Shut up.”