“Believe what?”
He started to speak again, then went weak all over and had to open the car door and sit on the seat. “I just pissed inside Grady Harrelson’s head,” he said, losing control again. “Oh, it was beautiful. It’ll take him weeks to figure everything out. He’s royally screwed six ways from breakfast and in serious danger.” He was doubling over, laughing so hard he had to hold his ribs, his face turning red.
“What did you do?” I said.
“Grady’s been shacking up in a motel on Wayside Drive with the wife of a guy who drives a wrecker on the night shift, a total animal who’s been in Huntsville twice for felony assault. Grady bought a convertible just like the one we boosted and sold in Mexico. I followed them to the motel last night and waited until they went to eat, then gave the maid two dollars to put a plateful of chocolate fudge laced with Ex-Lax in their room.” He started laughing again.
“Will you stop it?” I said.
He wiped at his face with a handkerchief. “Hang on. It gets better. I boosted his new convertible, then waited a couple of hours for the Ex-Lax to kick in so they’d be fighting to get on the bowl. I called the husband’s emergency number and told him Grady was putting the blocks to his old lady and gave him the motel address.” Saber was stamping on the driveway. “I watched it from across the street. The animal arrives and kicks the door off its hinges. Grady is inside in his Jockey underwear, and the broad is going nuts, and Grady is trying to explain himself, then he realizes his new car is gone and accuses the animal of stealing it.” Saber tried to stand up, then fell back on the car seat wheezing, his nose running, his entire face slick with tears.
“Saber, when are you going to grow up?”
“Never. Come on, don’t be so serious,” he replied. “You should have seen Grady. There was a brown stripe through the seat of his Jockeys. People were coming out of their rooms, and cops were shouting at them to get back inside. Grady started cussing at a cop, and the cop shoved him on the concrete. His face was white. I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“What are you going to do with his car?”
“Dump it in colored town.”
“That doesn’t sound like your friends,” I said.
“Manny and Cholo? They don’t want any more heat from guys like Vick Atlas and Grady. You know what Manny said? ‘Don’t mess with guys who got juice.’?”
“I’m really impressed with their great knowledge. When are you going to stop listening to these liars?” I said. “Come inside.”
“What for?”
“To wash your face.”
“You got to lighten up, Aaron,” he said, starting to get control of himself. “Things will work out. We’ll always be buds, right?”
“I didn’t bust us up,” I said.
“Okay, so I was wrong. Look, you’re already smiling. We’ve got senior year coming up. It’s going to be a gas.”
“Promise me you’re going to dump the car, Saber.”
“What do I want with it?”
“Where is it now?” I said.
“Manny has it in a garage for safekeeping. It’s fine. You’re always worrying. Let’s get a couple of beers and drink them in the park.”
“Jaime Atlas might kill my whole family,” I said. “Detective Jenks told me he was an enforcer in Chicago and New York. He burned his victims’ armpits and genitalia with a blowtorch. That’s why I’m not laughing a lot.”
The mirth went out of his face. He wiped his eyes. I never realized how long his eyelashes were or how much they reminded me of a girl’s. “Jaime Atlas did what?”
THE RAIN POUNDED down for almost an hour, flooding the streets, then the storm was gone and the sky was once again as bright and hot as tin. I drove to Valerie’s. Mr. Epstein was on his hands and knees weeding around the rosebushes in front of the house, bare-chested in cutoffs, in full sun, the gold hair on his back soggy with sweat. He grinned up at me, his arms thorn-pricked and speckled with dirt. “She’s inside.”
“How you doin’, sir?” I said in the same way my father always addressed another man.
He didn’t answer. He just continued to grin into my face. I was never comfortable around Mr. Epstein, perhaps because I was intimate with his daughter. Or maybe there was another reason. I knew little of the violence that is a constant in the lives of some men and a last resort for others and for some an option that doesn’t exist. I knew Mr. Epstein was not a member of the latter group. But where did he fit? He was a leftist and perhaps an ideologue; as a commando, he must have killed enemy soldiers or even civilians with a knife or his bare hands. How do you wash that kind of guilt off your hands?
I sat down on the steps and tried to hold his gaze. “I talked with Detective Jenks today.”
“Is Merton okay?”
“I think he’s real sick. In the lungs. Maybe the heart, too.”