At Risk of Being a Fool Page 6

  “I know, I know. I been telling him. What I figure is, give me the rest of the week, and then show up Monday, same job site. You stick close to me, buddy, you hear? Don’t give him any grief.”

  Quinto nodded energetically. “Like always. He’ll see. Mr. Wogan, he didn’t like me much either, but he seen it, I’m a worker. When I get out, first thing I’m doing is get a job on construction with you.”

  “Lotsa jobs around, Quinto,” said Ricardo. “Come up to Portland, back home, I’ll get you in at the store. Better job.” He looked at Danny apologetically. “Air conditioning, you know. Besides the kid’s an artist. He could use it in advertising or something.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better. There’s lots of opportunities out there for a guy with Quinto’s spunk,” said Danny. He slapped his thighs. “Well, I’ll be getting along now. Just thought I’d drop by. Glad to have caught you, Ricky. Bye Quinto, Dillon. Good-bye, Mackie.” The door thumped closed behind him.

  “Well,” said Mackie. “That’s good news, Quinto. Monday, it is! I’ll let Mr. Maldonado know. How about Jeanie and I back off for a bit? We’ve got paperwork and phone calls to catch up on. That okay with you guys?”

  Mackie retreated to the office, and Jeanie sat next to the office doorway, in visual range but out of earshot of quiet voices. Mackie dialed Maldonado’s number from memory. Jeanie looked through student essays, keeping half an eye on Brynna and Sorrel. Estelle Torrez, reflected Jeanie, would have had a fit. Who knew what they were arranging between them? Something despicable, naturally.

  Sorrel didn’t have much to say, but she was listening. She’d been pale for several days, though it was hard to tell under all the makeup. Stress, probably. Quinto, though, was exuberant, barely able to confine himself to one section of the room.

  You couldn’t program emotional growth, just accelerate it a tad, here and there. So many rehabilitative efforts tried to make sows’ ears into silk purses. And what happened, the moment the pressure let up? There’d be a bunch of pigs, running everywhere, tearing up the city, and everyone would be surprised. Jeanie grinned to herself at the foolish analogy.

  “Excuse me, er ...Jeanie?”

  Jeanie looked up, startled. Ricardo Cervantes stood next to her, running his hand over his styled black hair.

  “Hey, can I talk to you and Mackie for a bit?”

  “Of course. Mackie?” She followed Ricardo to the office, and stood in the doorway.

  “What’s up, Ricky?” Mackie set down the phone.

  Ricardo sat on the desk, one foot cocked up against the table leg. “Well, it’s nothing, really. It’s just, jeez.” He sighed and shrugged. “Look, I wanted to tell you, one of the guys in our old gang, Matt Houston, he got sent up when I did. Only he got sent to the pen.” He jerked his thumb to the east. “He was some older than me, got tried as an adult. He jumped the wall on a work release thing a few months back. Shit, you’d think they’d know he’d run. Work release,” he snorted in disgust. “Anyway, cops called me, checking up on all his homeys, see if he called us. But I haven’t heard from him since we got caught.”

  “Uh huh,” said Mackie, a certain reservation in her voice.

  Ricardo shot her a look. “Yeah, well, he sure don’t fit into my life now, and that’s a fact. I got no room for that kind of risk. Thing is, I figured he headed for Vegas, or L.A. or something, long gone, no problem. But with that bomb Saturday, I got to thinking. He wasn’t just the easiest guy to get along with.” His eyes flicked around the room, settled on Mackie, jerked away. “Look, Mackie, just keep an eye on Quinto for me. And you, too, Jeanie? My bro, he’s not, he’s—” He stood up, and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “He’s an artist, he’s got no . . .” He loosed his hand, and swung it up into the air helplessly.

  “No survival skills,” Mackie said.

  He exhaled. “That’s it. That’s it, right on. I keep wondering, what if Matt grabs Quinto, gives him some shit story. Matt’d sucker him right in.” He shook his head. “This is nuts, he’s gone, he’s off in Mexico for all I know. It’s just, I got to thinking. That’s why I called you a few days ago, figured I’d ask. Then I couldn’t say it, and you asked me down, and I figured, what the hell. Made more sense to talk to you face to face. So just, kind of, watch out for my bro, will you? He don’t always got good sense.”

  “No problem,” said Mackie.

  Ricardo looked at Jeanie, questioningly.

  “Absolutely,” said Jeanie.

  Ricardo sighed. “Great, that’s good. You call me if he gets into something, I’ll come down and shake him up. It bugs me, him being so far away. I get down to see him a good bit, but what’s an hour or two a week? You got a better chance than I do, keeping tabs on him.”

  “Jeanie does. I don’t, not so much.”

  “Right, I figured. And Mackie, maybe you’d talk to Danny for me? Ask him the same? I couldn’t catch him right now, the kid would’ve seen it.”

  “Sure thing,” said Mackie, warmly reassuring.

  Ricardo clapped a hand on Jeanie’s shoulder, and the other on Mackie’s, grinning his relief at them. Jeanie hid her surprise. He’d even overcome the “never touch” rule. Perhaps Quinto would too, in time.

  “We’ll watch out for Quinto,” she vowed. “Never you fear.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sorrel’s fingers shook as she wrote on the tablet in sprawling letters. One box of file folders, almost full; one and a half boxes of pencils; a bunch of printer cartridges. Mechanically, she looked at Carol’s list of printers, hunting for spare cartridges for each one. It was stupid, all those different kinds of printers. Why couldn’t they use the same kind? Or use that big laser printer down the hall? But no, Carol had a printer. Hilda had a printer, hauled down from the judge’s office. Most of those anal-retentive types down the hall had printers, and they were all different.

  God, she couldn’t think. What the hell was she going to do?

  She lined up the cartridges on the counter, sorted them, and started again.

  “Are you all right, Sorrel?” asked Dorrie, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  Sorrel slid out from under it. She closed her eyes and throttled down the anger. Dorrie didn’t mean anything. She was trying to be nice. “I’m fine. Thanks.” Sorrel had to force out the words.

  “Boy, doesn’t the security get to you? Seems like every time I head to the restroom, they’re running that metal detector over me.” Dorrie’s laugh floated over her shoulder as she ran her fingers over the shelves of file books. “I told that one cop, John, his name is. I said look, if I wanted to kill Hodges, I wouldn’t use a pipe bomb. I’d use rat poison in the coffee like in that old movie, who was it? Lily Tomlin, I think. He didn’t think it was funny. Security guards have no sense of humor.”

  That’s for damned sure. “It’s pretty bad,” Sorrel said, making an effort. “But I’m okay with it.” The cops thought Judge Hodges was the bomb’s target. It was only a coincidence that it was so close to the van’s drop-off point. She hoped they were right. She really, really hoped so.

  “Well, don’t fret about it. Even the judges have to go through the metal detector. Funny, huh?”

  “Yeah.” The security guys bugged her, always staring, as if their eyes had rubber bands on them, hooked to her ass. They counted her sneezes, her trips to the crapper, noticed every place her hand touched a countertop. If she snatched ten minutes to use the phone, somebody scribbled it down in a little book. Twenty fuckin’ months in Correctional, a month at Esperanza, one month back in Correctional, now almost six weeks at Torrez’s house of horrors. No wonder she was schizoid.

  Sorrel gave up on the cartridges and filled out the order sheet by guess. If she had to count them again, she’d scream. She rubbed her sweaty hands on her jeans and inspected her nail polish. Dust drizzled everywhere, floating through the windows from the courtyard where they yanked out all the bushes. That way, Carol said, there’d be fewer hiding places for bombs.

  A guy at the
counter waved a paper in Dorrie’s face. Dorrie patted the air in front of him. Sorrel would have hauled off and slugged him, if he treated her like that. Maybe that’s why they didn’t let her work counters. A moment’s humor flared and extinguished itself. Sorrel moved into Dorrie’s line of sight, pointed to her watch, and held up five fingers. Dorrie nodded, her stream of talk uninterrupted.

  Sorrel slid out the door and down the hallway past the security guard. Habit took over as Sorrel gave him the eye, and a swing of the hip. She might as well make his day for him. Once in the bathroom, she took care of a few things and repaired her face. The panic in the mirrored face shoved her back, suddenly breathless.

  It wasn’t the security guards making her crazy. It was the fear, the fear that he was looking for her. She didn’t used to be afraid of him. But when they’d evacuated the building, the fear had zoomed out of nowhere, that he was out to get her. She couldn’t shake loose of it. She wouldn’t nark on him. He had to know that, didn’t he?

  Worse, yet, the other fear had sprung up, full-blown. She hadn’t even thought of it until yesterday, listening to the guys shooting the bull. All of a sudden, it hit her, and she’d had a hell of time hiding her thoughts. She’d kept to herself, being inconspicuous. Damn, that was Torrez’s word, inconspicuous, and here she was using it.

  Had the others caught on yet? Jeanie didn’t have a clue, but like Quinto said, what else was new? Mackie was smarter. What if they knew, and were hiding it? They’d tell Randy, and Torrez. Her breathing came in short, hard pants. If Torrez found out, she’d be in deep shit. Torrez had had a cow, just with the story about the wedding.

  The door opened and a woman walked in. Sorrel Quintana smoothed her face into emptiness and retouched her eye shadow with meticulous attention.

  ~*~

  Tonio stopped short in the classroom doorway.

  “That dog,” he said.

  “Looks funny,” agreed Jeanie. “So I’ve been told, several times this afternoon. He’s a nice dog, nonetheless. He can’t help his looks. His name is Corrigan.”

  Tonio flashed her a look she couldn’t interpret. Corrigan took a sniff or two and bumped his head under Tonio’s fingers. Tonio rubbed his ears. “Friendly,” he remarked.

  “Oh yes. He’s a longhaired dachshund, about twelve years old. He’s my sister Shelley’s dog, but she’s in Germany right now, so I’ve had him for about a year. He gets lonely by himself at home, but if you guys don’t like him, I won’t do it again.”

  “No, bring him, bring him,” said Quinto. “I never had no dog.”

  “Germany?” said Rosalie, as if she’d heard the word on a game show, and couldn’t quite remember what it meant.

  “He looks deformed,” said Sorrel. “Like he got caught in a door and stretched out.”

  Jeanie nodded. “My sister took him through a revolving door once. His front end wound up in one section, and his tail two sections back. It took forever to get him out of the works.”

  Five faces showed identical looks of shock and even Dillon gave her a measuring look. Rosalie frowned. “Boy, that must have hurt him, poor baby.”

  “Actually,” Jeanie said, “my sister is known to exaggerate, on occasion.”

  Over the next hour, Corrigan trotted from one student to the other. Jeanie made her own rounds, soothed by the counterpoint of the dog’s travels. Rosalie, regrettably, was delighted to have yet another legitimate distraction.

  “Come on, Rosalie,” Jeanie said, removing Corrigan from the girl’s encircling arms. “Essay time. Pick a topic. Close your eyes and point.”

  With a rippling laugh, Rosalie stabbed her finger onto the sheet and read the words under her finger. “‘Should laws be enacted to prevent the sale of handguns in the United States? Explain your reasoning.’” Rosalie blinked. “Gee, I don’t know. Who cares? Everybody’s got guns. My Dad, he’s got guns. He goes hunting every year, gets deer mostly. He got an elk one time. They got big horns.”

  Guns were not Jeanie’s favorite topic. “So your Dad has rifles, right? The long ones,” she added, seeing Rosalie’s bewilderment. “Handguns are the little ones, like you see on TV.”

  “For holding up liquor stores,” said Dillon unexpectedly.

  Jeanie forced herself to relax and shifted her chair to include Dillon in the conversation. He’d have to take the same test. All of them would, and the Lord only knew what topics they’d have. “Among other things,” she agreed. “Though homeowners buy them, to protect themselves. What do you think, Rosalie? Is it a good thing for people to buy handguns, if they want them?” Rosalie looked wary, perhaps from too many talks with police and parole officers. “The test graders don’t care what your opinion is. They just want you to explain your opinion.”

  Jeanie cast a glance at Corrigan, presently engaged in sniffing Dillon’s boots. As she watched, Corrigan leaned against Dillon’s leg briefly, and wandered off again. Dillon, he’d concluded, was not a wolf, regardless of Jeanie’s opinion.

  “What do you think, Dillon? Should ordinary citizens be able to buy handguns, as they do now?” At his sardonic look, she replayed the sentence from his viewpoint, and answered it. Should a regular guy be able to steal a gun if he wanted one? Damned straight.

  “Who needs guns?” he said. His fists clenched a time or two, pocked scars standing out livid white against the dark tan.

  Corrigan stretched across Brynna’s feet, and yawned. Perhaps he knew Dillon was no threat, but perhaps he was being as perverse as Shelley contended when she’d named him for the rebellious pilot, Wrong-Way Corrigan.

  “You’re doing that on purpose, to scare me,” she accused, pointing to Dillon’s flexing biceps.

  He grinned at her, white teeth flashing like summer lightning, and as quickly gone. For one instant, he looked like a normal kid, the kid he might have been, raised in different circumstances. Brynna moistened her lips. Sorrel angled herself a bit, displaying her ripe figure.

  Jeanie cleared her throat. “So, what do the rest of you think? It’s a topic you may well see when you take the Writing test. On handguns, Brynna.”

  After a moment, Brynna dragged her eyes from Dillon. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I know a guy, he’s got all kinds of guns. I don’t think he ever uses them, he just collects them.” She snorted. “Once I seen him holding one with a long barrel, rubbing his hand over it, like it was—” She checked herself, glancing at Jeanie. “—a dog or something.”

  “All a gun’s gotta do, is work,” said Dillon. “It’s a backup plan, that’s all.”

  “I don’t trust no one behind me with a gun,” said Tonio, joining the conversation. “If a homey shoots some sucker, that’s all of us in prison for life.”

  “Accidental firing is a great danger,” said Jeanie, striving to move back to safe ground. “If it’s a tool, then it should be used safely, not left around loose. Is that right?”

  “Any moron can shoot a gun,” Tonio said. “If I’m gonna do a job, I’ll do it myself. Like on my motorbike, when the sprocket broke, I didn’t take it to no dude in a shop somewhere. I took it to work with me, and welded it back together. It’s my life on that bike, you know. Same reason I don’t trust no fucker with a gun, either.”

  “They let you use the welder at the Yard?” Dillon said, interested.

  “Yeah, on my own time. The guy there, he’s okay. I done some stuff for him, too.”

  “My Mama’s got a gun,” said Sorrel. “She keeps it at the apartment in case some dipshit breaks in, thinks a bunch of women’s an easy target. It’s handy getting rid of the shits too, like Carlos, damn him.”

  “You waved a gun at him?” asked Quinto, wide-eyed.

  “Grandma did. She let off a couple shots over his head, right into the wall. Said she’d go for his balls next. God, it was funny. He ran like hell, forgot his stereo, too. Of course, we had to move after that. Landlady got shitty about the holes. But screw her. A woman’s gotta take care of herself, don’t she?”

 
“Don’t you worry Tiffy’ll get hold of the gun?” asked Rosalie. “My Daddy, he always took the rifle apart and locked it up when he came home. He hid the black powder and bullets, too. We never found ‘em when we looked that time.” Her eyes shifted.

  “We hide it from Tiffy, top shelf of the back closet. When she gets bigger, we’ll teach her to use it right, let her blow the hell out of some pop cans. That’s what Mama did with me.”

  “Quinto, what do you think about handgun control?” Jeanie asked.

  “I don’t like guns,” Quinto said. As he spoke, his hand drew faces along the edges of his paper. Jeanie recognized a few of them. Danny Rivera, Tonio, Ricardo, two of the men at Dandridge House. “The only thing a gun’s for is killing people. So I don’t like them,” he said unequivocally. “Not ever. Some guys I know.” His glance flicked up, hit Brynna, Tonio, and Dillon, and skittered away. “They robbed one of them QuickStop places. They wanted me to go too, be lookout. But I didn’t, ‘cause one of ‘em had a gun.” He shot a look at Dillon, dropped his gaze to his drawings. “I wouldn’t nark, though. I wouldn’t do that. No names, no nothing.”

  Sorrel leaned forward and slapped the table. “My Mama works in a convenience store, dipshit. Anybody turns a gun on her, I’ll kill him.”

  “I didn’t go, I said so. They said I was just scared,” he muttered. “They was right, too.”

  “So,” said Jeanie bracingly, “Sorrel’s brought up a fine point. If a handgun can be turned to violence, that’s one thing, but when it’s your own family, it matters a lot more.”

  Brynna, whose family was her own worst enemy, rolled her eyes. Quinto’s hand jerked, marring a sketch. She recognized Bryce Wogan from the newspaper write-up on his therapy.

  “What I mean, Rosalie, is that guns don’t seem like a big deal until your own family is threatened. Right, Dillon? I mean, hearing about a shooting on the news isn’t nearly as important to you as if some guy threatens your grandmother with a gun. Or your mother, right, Rosalie?”

  A stillness smothered the room. Rosalie flinched as Dillon boiled out of his seat.