Kitabı oku: «The Forgotten», sayfa 6

9

Microwaving the pizza had left it tasteless with soggy crust to boot, but it was hot and filling and that was the best that Decker had hoped for at this point in time and space. He made it back to the station house by six-thirty with a belly full of grease and a head spinning with ideas. He knew that Ernesto Golding had not worked alone, but other culprits continued to be elusive entities. Decker would have liked to question Ernesto’s friends extensively—find out if they had information—but he knew that their parents wouldn’t allow contact. Without proof of involvement, Decker couldn’t muscle his way into their living rooms, and no other evidence was forthcoming because Ernesto insisted he was the sole perpetrator. Furthermore, since Ernesto had cooperated with the D.A., Melrose had high hopes of getting the charges knocked down to a malicious mischief misdemeanor—probation combined with community service, and a sealed record.

Now that Ernesto had entered into the legal system, Decker’s part in the play had been relegated to the role of supporting cast. He didn’t have a lot of working time. If he didn’t come up with something new very soon, the entire case would slip from his grasp—officially closed, naming Ernesto Golding as the one and only vandal.

Entering the detectives’ squad room, Decker was heartened to find Martinez and Webster at their desks. Wanda Bontemps was also finishing up her paperwork. She was hunched over her desk, her fingers playing with a cap of tightly knit curls. She wore black pants and a blue turtleneck. A black blazer was draped across the back of her chair. He flagged her down, along with Martinez and Webster, and the quartet convened in Decker’s office.

Webster said, “Was Golding arraigned yet?”

“An hour ago,” Decker answered. “No contest. He’s back home—own recognizance. Court date will be in about six weeks.”

“Was he expelled from school?” Wanda asked.

“That I don’t know,” Decker said. “I have this gut feeling that there’ve been some quiet negotiations behind the scene. You know how it is with institutions and money.”

“The way of the world,” Webster said. “Nothing you can’t buy with money. Even money.”

Decker said, “I don’t know what the headmaster is planning to do. In a perfect world, Golding should be expelled.”

“In a perfect world, he should be in jail,” Wanda said.

“This is very true. But given the fact that Melrose pushed through a rush job, it’s unlikely.” Decker felt glum, as if he somehow had failed Rina. “What’d you find out about the Preservers of Ethnic Whatever.”

“It’s run by a guy named Darrell Holt, who is a mixture of lots of races,” Martinez said. “So I can’t figure out how he reconciles his own genetic variety with his ethnic purity crap. Anyway, he’s wrangled endorsements for his cause from some token minorities—one Filipino, one Hispanic, one African-American, one Asian, one Jew, and for sake of completion, one Anglo.”

“What kind of endorsements?” Decker asked.

“You can see for yourself, sir.” Webster handed him the flyers. “It’s all the same crud. Y’all can’t pin them down just by reading the articles. They play the separate but equal over and over and over.”

Decker thumbed through the pages, scanning the paragraphs. “Here’s one that recommends an English-only policy.”

“Yeah, that’s the one by the Marine.”

“Hank Tarpin.” Decker scanned the printed material. “Superficially, there’s lots here that my wife would agree with. She would kill her sons if they married outside the religion.”

“She isn’t the only one,” Wanda said. “I’d like my daughter to marry a good African-American man. Life is hard enough. At least in your own community, you can go around without getting stares and snickers. I talk from experience. About three months ago she had a Hispanic boyfriend.” She looked at Martinez. “People gave them looks.”

“What happened?” Martinez said.

“They broke up, but not because of the race … although I’m sure that didn’t help. He was a cop and she’s a cop and that wasn’t good.”

“One of my kids married an Anglo,” Martinez said. “The other married a nice kid whose family was originally from Cuba. I’m from Mexico, and that’s another ball of wax. I can’t say I feel more comfortable with one son-in-law over the other. But that’s not the case with my parents, who don’t speak English all that well. There’s a language barrier. Which is why, personally, I’m big on an English-only policy in school. If you don’t speak and write the language of the country, you’re second class. No way my kids and grandkids are going to be second-class citizens.”

“I agree with you, Bert,” Webster said, “but I reckon that you and the Marine are coming at it from different angles.”

“That’s true, but it’s irrelevant.” Decker put down the papers. “But the only pertinent question now is, do we have anything to link Holt to the vandalized synagogue?”

“Nope,” Martinez said. “But we talked to Holt before you arrested Golding. Maybe if we went back and mentioned Golding—”

“And then maybe Golding’s lawyer would be all over our asses for giving out the name of a minor,” Decker interrupted. “Pulling the Ernesto card is out. If the Preservers of Ethnic ‘Racists’ is involved, we’ve got to get them without asking about Golding.”

“How about harboring a fugitive?” Bontemps said. “Tell the loo what you told me about Ricky Moke.”

“Who’s Ricky Moke?” Decker asked.

Webster explained. “Supposedly Moke has been implicated in blowing up university animal laboratories. Supposedly Holt knows Moke. Supposedly Moke has dropped by their office. Supposedly Moke is an ardent racist.”

“That’s an awful lot of supposedly,” Decker said. “Does this bad guy have a sheet?”

“Nothing I could find,” Martinez said. “But I’ve only checked locally.”

“If he’s implicated with bombs, the FBI would have information on him. Make a couple of calls tomorrow.” Decker sat back. “What about Darrell Holt? Does he have a sheet?”

Webster shook his head.

“Any information on him?” Decker asked.

“The Preservers have a Web site,” Webster said. “But that’s all fluff.”

“Find out what you can about him.” Decker scanned through the leaflets. “Are these the only papers you found? I’m wondering if Golding ever wrote anything for them.”

“I’ll check it out tomorrow.”

Decker thought about what Golding had told him, about his German grandfather and his dubious past. “While you’re looking up people in the computer, find out what you can about Jill and Carter Golding. I want to know everything I can about Ernesto, and it doesn’t hurt to start with the parents. Since they’re well known, it should be easy to find information about them. Also do a search with Golding and Holt and/or Golding and Ricky Moke as a common subject and see if the computer throws out any association.”

Webster said, “The Preservers also have a girl working there. She looks about twelve.”

“Name?”

“Erin Kershan.”

“Look her up.”

Wanda said, “Should we put a watch on them, Lieutenant?”

Decker considered the idea. “Are they local?”

“Yes, they are,” Martinez told him. “Matter of fact, they live in the same building although different apartments. I’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it, Bert,” Webster volunteered. “I got the two A.M. feeding anyway.” He looked at Decker. “Could I leave at about one?”

“Sounds fine, Tom. You can put in for overtime.”

“I can use the money, sir. Thank you.”

Decker started writing down a schedule. “While you’re doing stakeout, I’ll drop by the Goldings and run Holt, Moke, and the Preservers of Ethnic Integrity by Ernesto. The boy isn’t going to admit to anything, but a good nuance is worth a thousand words.”

The Goldings weren’t home, leaving Decker to wonder if they were hiding out somewhere. Just as likely, they were out to dinner. It was only a little past eight. Decker called Jacob and was apprehensive when no one picked up the phone. He tried Jacob’s car phone. The boy answered after two rings. “Yo.”

“Are you two all right?”

“Oh, hi, Dad. We went out for ice cream.”

In the background, he heard Hannah scream, “Hi, Daddy!”

“Hi, Hannah Rosie.” To Jacob, Decker said, “Is she in the backseat?”

“Backseat with her seat belt on,” Jacob replied. “We’re on our way home.”

“I was thinking about stopping by the shul to see Eema.”

“That’s fine. Don’t worry about us. I can put Hannah to bed.”

“Could you do me another favor?”

“What?”

“Before you put her to bed, can you two come down and bring me some junk clothes and my sneakers from home in case I want to help paint later tonight.”

“No problem.”

“Or maybe I should just go home, so Hannah won’t be subjected to—”

But the line had already gone dead. He thought about calling Jacob back. He didn’t want Hannah reading all that hate-filled graffiti or seeing those dreadful pictures. Then again, Rina had been there for a while: the shul was probably somewhat sanitized by now.

He arrived at the shul by seven and parked on the street because the tiny lot was full. A few broken windows had been boarded up, but light shone through the translucent curtains covering the intact glass doors. When he went in, he entered a construction site. Tarps and drop cloths had been laid down everywhere. More than a dozen people were working, brushes and rollers in hand. The walls had been primed, and open paint cans were everywhere. Rina was wearing overalls and a big red bandana over her head. Her face was dotted with Navaho white. She gave him an air kiss.

“How’s it going?” Decker asked.

“Baruch Hashem!” She was smiling and it was genuine. “Let me introduce you to some of our volunteers that you don’t know.” She walked over to two African-American women. One was tall and skinny, the other was short and fat. Mutt and Jeff. “This is Letitia and this is Bernadette. They’re friends of Wanda Bontemps from her church. As soon as she called them, they came right down to help.” She patted Decker’s shoulder with a paint-splattered hand. “This is my husband, Peter.”

“Your husband.” It was the one named Bernadette. She had a smooth, round face and a stern look. She rocked from side to side. She was as tall as she was wide. “The police lieutenant.”

It sounded as if she was holding his title against him; in light of the past allegations of his department, that could very well be the case. He held out his hand to her and she took it.

Decker said, “Nice of you to help out.”

“It was nice of Wanda to call them down,” Rina said.

“Our church has an outreach program to help,” Bernadette said. “No one should be able to get away with defaming a house of God.”

“I agree,” Decker said.

“We need to start something like that in our community.” Rina turned to her new friends. “It’s not that we’re so provincial, although that’s part of it. It’s just that we’ve been so busy trying to make this congregation work. We barely have enough time and money to get our own services in order. But that’s going to change. We have to get more involved.”

“This was an eye-opener to me,” Letitia said. Her face was long and she had a wide, horsey smile. “I always thought the Jews had the big synagogues.”

“Some do,” Rina said. “We sure don’t. We’re lucky to pay the rent.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s my own prejudice talking,” Letitia said. “I’d better stop yakking and get back to painting.” She smiled again. “Go with my strengths.”

“How about some more coffee?” Rina asked. “I need more coffee.”

Decker was happy to see Rina so charged up and filled with action. It helped mitigate the pain of why she was there in the first place. He said, “The way you’re flitting around, do you think you really need more caffeine?”

“I don’t flit, I move in a purposeful manner,” Rina explained.

Bernadette said, “She just appears to be flitting because she’s so graceful.”

“Uh-huh,” Decker said. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Rina yelled out, “Moishe, we could use some fresh coffee.”

Moishe Miller—a big bear of a man—was standing in front of several folding tables piled high with shredded paper and abused books. At the moment, the bearded dentist was painstakingly piecing together torn bits from prayer books. “Reg or decaf?”

The women looked about the room, then at each other. “Full strength,” Rina ordered. To Decker, she said, “Are you going to help out? We took down all the bookshelves. We need someone to paint them and put them back up.”

“Yes, I’m going to help out. Jacob’s bringing over some junk clothes. I have a little more work to do, and then I’m all yours.”

“Good to have someone who knows what he’s doing. House painting is a lot harder than it looks. It’s not just slopping paint over the walls.”

“So you’ve discovered.”

“It actually takes some practice.”

“Does this mean you appreciate me more?”

“I’ve always admired your manual skills. You just don’t work fast enough.”

“But I do a good job. And the cost is cheap. You get what you pay for.”

Rina nodded, then smiled at the women. But the expression was a taut one.

Bernadette caught the tension. “Well, nice meeting you … Lieutenant.”

“Peter is fine,” Decker said.

“Peter then.” Again, Bernadette shook his hand, then nodded to Letitia. The two of them went back to their artwork. Rina used the moment to take Peter aside. She said, “Yonkie called me—”

“I can’t talk about it,” Decker said. “The party is a minor.”

“The party is a kid named Ernesto Golding,” Rina whispered. “You didn’t tell me, Yonkie did.”

“Do you know this kid?” Decker asked Rina.

“Never heard of him until Yonkie told me. There must be someone else involved. This isn’t the work of just one person.”

Decker shrugged.

“C’mon. Yes or no? Is there someone else?”

“No comment.”

“Now you’re sounding like a politician.”

“If you’re trying to get me angry, I’ve had worse insults.”

Rina grew impatient. “Peter, this is your shul, too.”

“I’m painfully aware of that, Rina.” Then he said, “Please tell me that you haven’t mentioned Golding’s name to anyone else.”

“Do I look like an idiot?”

Now she was glaring at him. He said, “Don’t we have enough on our minds without fighting?”

“This isn’t a fight,” Rina announced.

“It isn’t?”

“No. It isn’t. This is … both of us glaring at each other because we’re both under a lot of stress.”

“I’m glaring at you?” Decker asked.

“Yes, you’re glaring at me.”

“You’re glaring at me!”

“I know,” Rina said. “That’s why I said we were glaring at each other!”

Decker paused, then started laughing. It broke the strain, allowing Rina to laugh with him. She reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. “I’d hug you except I’d get paint all over your suit.”

“Hug me anyway.” Decker took her into his arms.

They hugged—a long and romantic one. And she did get paint on his suit. He didn’t care. That’s why God invented dry cleaning.

10

It was past eight and the Goldings still hadn’t made it home. Decker would try them in the morning. Still, he wasn’t ready to call it a working day. Six months ago, Ernesto Golding had a girlfriend named Lisa Halloway. Golding had mentioned her, and so had Yonkie. His stepson had stated that she had been devastated by the breakup. Decker wondered if she had picked up any telltale signs of Ernesto’s antisocial behavior before the actual vandalism.

The problem was getting past the parents. But that turned out to be the easy part: the parents weren’t home.

At least she didn’t slam the door in his face.

Under the illumination of a porch lamp, he noticed the winking of metal—multiple studs in her ears and a small stone in the side of her nose. Who knew what was in her belly button? Decker realized he shouldn’t judge by externals—if Yonkie had liked her, she must be a girl of some substance—but he was a middle-aged guy with old-guy prejudices. Trying to be objective, if he looked beyond the holes, he saw a pretty, dark-eyed girl with a clear complexion, an oval face, and dimples in the cheeks. Lots of long curls framed her face. She had her shoulders hunched over as if she was cold, and her arms were folded across her chest. She was unhappy and not afraid to express it.

“I don’t know anything about the vandalism.” Her voice was raspy and low. “But even if I did know anything about the vandalism, I wouldn’t rat on Ernesto.”

“All I want to do is talk for a few minutes,” Decker said.

“Why should I let you in? You could be a rapist!”

Decker smoothed his ginger mustache, aware of Lisa as an angry, young girl wearing a clingy, white tank top and jeans and no underclothes. He could see her nipples even in the poor light. Being alone with her—in private—was not a good idea. He said, “So we’ll talk out here.”

“For all the neighbors to see?”

“Yeah.” Decker smiled. “That’s the point. You’ll feel more comfortable that way.”

“You can come in,” Lisa sneered. “I don’t seriously believe you’re a rapist.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine out here.” Decker kept his face flat. “Can I talk to you on a conceptual level for a moment, Lisa? Let’s say we are given competing attributes—loyalty and justice. Both are admirable traits, agreed?”

“I don’t see the point of all this!” She rubbed her arms. “Also, I’m cold.”

“I’ll wait while you get a sweater.”

“Never mind!”

She was thoroughly sullen, but Decker continued anyway. “If the party in question is accused of doing something criminal, but there is no definitive guilt or innocence, maybe the party deserves the benefit of the doubt, ergo loyalty. But if you know for sure that he did it—because he himself has admitted it—doesn’t his criminal act abnegate his right to expect loyalty, and isn’t loyalty moot because he already admitted the act?”

She swished her curls. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why be loyal when you know he did it?”

“Lieutenant Lazarus, it’s all moot. I don’t know anything about the vandalism. Can I go now?”

Lieutenant Lazarus—using Yonkie’s surname. “It’s Lieutenant Decker,” he corrected. “And it’s a free country. You can leave anytime you want.”

But she didn’t leave.

Decker said, “You went with Ernesto for a while, didn’t you?”

“You know I did. Otherwise, why would you talk to me? What’s the point?”

“Any of his friends twang your antenna?”

“You mean did he hang out with Brown Shirts?” She rolled her eyes. “And if he did, do you think he would have told me about it? I’m Jewish.” She gave a snort. “Not the right kind of Jewish for you.”

Decker’s eyes bored into hers. “What did you say?”

The intensity in his voice threw her off-balance. She blushed, then pressed her lips together and turned away, the implicit message being she blew it with her mouth. The other implicit message was that it probably hadn’t been the first time.

“Who have you been talking to, Lisa?” Decker pressed.

He knew damn well whom she’d been talking to. Now Decker had the advantage. She knew she had gotten Jacob in trouble. She’d have to call him and explain. But first she’d have to deal with Decker. If she remained snotty, she would add to Jacob’s woes.

Now she was scared, didn’t make eye contact. “Can I go now?”

Decker was relentless. “Have you been talking to my son?”

“Stepson—”

“I stand corrected. Where do you know him from?”

“Just around—”

“Where?”

“I met him at a party. What’s the big deal? Jesus! Now I know why—” Again she stopped herself.

“Go on!”

Lisa rubbed her hands together. “Look! I met Jake at a party. Ernesto was there. Maybe Jake mentioned Ernesto or me to you in passing.”

“Maybe he didn’t.”

“Well, then, okay. Maybe he didn’t. I’m just saying that parents don’t need an excuse to rag on their children. Even my parents … who are pretty cool … they still snoop. All parents snoop. Jake told me you snooped. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. But let me tell you something about your son—”

“Stepson.”

“He feels brainwashed by your stifling way of life. He struggles with it. But in the end you must have succeeded because he hasn’t answered my phone calls for the last four months. Congratulations.”

So she had made a play for Jake, and it had failed. So not only was it his fault that Jake was conflicted, but it was also his fault that she didn’t succeed in getting him. “You know what, Lisa? I’m going to do you a big favor. I’m going to forget what you just said and how you just insulted two thousand years of my stepson’s heritage. Let’s go back to talking about Ernesto—”

“It’s my heritage, too, you know,” she defended herself.

“Then if it is, you should be even more offended by what your ex-boyfriend did. I’m going to ask you straight out. Did Ernesto have any friends that made you nervous?”

She paused for a long time. So many emotions walked past on her face—defiance, shame, insecurity, embarrassment, anger, hate—the whole gamut. Finally, she settled on resignation. “I hope I’m not sounding spiteful. I don’t want to appear like the scorned woman.”

“Go on.”

She sighed. “There’s a kid in our class—Doug Ranger. He has an older sister—Ruby. She’s around twenty-two or -three … graduated from Berkeley with a degree in computer science. She’s smart … sexy … not to me, but to the boys. She’s full of ideas … more like full of shit!” Wet eyes. “I’ve seen her car at Ernesto’s house a couple of times.”

“Maybe it’s Doug’s car and he’s visiting Ernesto.”

“It’s not him, it’s her.”

“I guess parents aren’t the only people who snoop?”

She wilted, her voice soft and plaintive. “Please, Lieutenant.”

“So you’ve seen Ruby Ranger go into Ernesto’s house? Yes or no?”

“Yes.” Totally defeated now. “Several times.”

“What’s she like?”

A long sigh. “Politicized.”

“What kind of ideas does she have?”

“Libertarian stuff. Government should stop being everyone’s baby-sitter. And it certainly doesn’t have any right to be a censor when it’s so corrupt itself. She’s really big on a free Internet. That’s her raison d’être at the moment—to maintain an uncensored Internet. You’re twelve years old and wanna talk about porn in the chat room with convicted sex offenders, that’s your perogative. Fine with her. You wanna talk about incest or NAMBLA, fine. You wanna talk about scoring drugs, fine. You wanna talk about neo-Nazis and Hitler as heroes or buy Nazi stuff over the Internet, that’s fine, too. She said that … those exact words.”

Decker nodded.

“She also said—right to my face while people were listening in—she also said that I would have been perfect concentration-camp fodder because I have typical Jewish looks.”

Decker winced. “That’s awful. Not that you look Jewish, but the Nazi fodder part. That’s absolutely disgusting.”

“It creeped me out.”

“I can certainly understand that.” Immediately, Decker was thinking about how this woman might be stoking Ernesto’s sadistic sexual fantasies. Her prodding would be especially potent if Ernesto felt that he was from Nazi heritage. “What’d you say to her?”

“Nothing. I was too shocked to respond. And, of course, that’s exactly what she wanted. To get attention by being outrageous.” Her eyes were focused somewhere on her bare toes. “Jake wasn’t there. I told him about it afterward. He told me his grandparents were in concentration camps.”

Decker nodded.

“But they’re not your parents?”

“My parents are American,” Decker said.

“So are mine. And my father isn’t even Jewish. I was very offended by her statement. Then there’s this side of me … I was embarrassed by looking so Jewish, because Jewish girls don’t have a reputation for being hotties. That’s why I got the nose pierce. You probably think that’s awful, right?”

He did think it was awful. Awful and an awful shame. But he tried to keep his face neutral. “Feelings aren’t awful.”

She wasn’t buying. “Not true. Self-destructive feelings are very awful.”

Decker softened his tone. “Do you know where Ruby Ranger lives?”

Lisa nodded. “With her parents. Are you going to go talk to her?”

“Definitely,” Decker said. “But it didn’t come from you, all right?”

“She’ll think it came from Jake. He hated her. Every time she walked in the room, he’d leave. She once confronted him … something about him living an outdated life. That was a mistake! Wow, he got real scar—”

She suddenly shut down.

Jake got real scary, she had wanted to say. Decker would bring it up with him, a task he dreaded. The father part of him just didn’t have the energy to deal with another crisis. But the cop part kept pushing him on. He folded his notebook. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful.”

“Maybe I’ve been helpful to you,” she said. “But I certainly have not been helpful to Jake or to Ruby.”

He was minutes away from the shul. But his head was still spinning from what Lisa Halloway had just told him. He decided to make a quick pit stop at home. Be a concerned father and check up on his children. Besides, the longer car ride to his house would give him a few more minutes of thinking time.

How to approach Ruby Ranger. At twenty-two, she was not a minor, but he imagined that her parents still exercised monetary control over her. If he could get them on his side, maybe that would give him an in with Ruby. Still, if the young woman were so strongly opinionated with such outrageous ideas, it indicated that she wasn’t dominated by her parents. The age, early to mid twenties, was unpredictable.

It was getting late. The best thing was to wait until tomorrow. Maybe he’d have some other clever idea as to how to approach her. Maybe if she enjoyed baiting people, baiting a cop would be a big kick for her. He’d play dumb. If she hated Jacob, it would be even more of a kick to mess up his cop father.

Which brought him back to his stepson. After fifteen years of having a no-fuss, no-hassle kid, he was getting paid back in spades. Jacob was moody, sullen, and sarcastic. But scary? The kid never failed to surprise him.

He opened his front door, then went into the kitchen. Jacob looked up from the kitchen table. He was in his pajama bottoms, eating a sandwich, and reading Beowulf, yellow highlight marker in his hand. “Hi. What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the shul to help out?”

“I decided to come home first … see if you need anything.”

“I’m fine. Hannah’s asleep.”

“Any problems?”

“Nah, she’s a great kid.”

“Yes, she is.”

“You look tired,” Jacob said. “Like you just had a very bad conversation with a hysterical seventeen-year-old girl.”

Decker sat down at the table. “I’m loath to get you involved. But I need help. As a cop, the more information the better.” He stared at Jacob’s food. “What are you eating?”

“Tuna. There’s more in the fridge. I’ll make you dinner.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Sit.” Jacob got up. “Kibud Av. Honoring your dad gives you brownie points upstairs. I could use extra.” He fixed Decker a tuna on rye, complete with lettuce and tomato. Decker ritually washed his hands, then said the blessing over the breaking of bread. With two bites, half the sandwich was gone.

“You are hungry.”

“I’m always hungry.” Decker patted his stomach. Still firm but a bit wider. “Can we talk about Lisa?”

“If you want.”

“Actually, I’m more interested in a woman named Ruby Ranger. Lisa told me you knew her, also that you disliked her.”

“That is a gross understatement. Ruby Ranger is psycho!”

“Lisa said that Ruby tried to bait you once. You took offense and got pretty aggressive.”

“What really happened was I told her if she ever got in my face again, I’d blast her face to smithereens.”

Decker didn’t answer, too stunned to talk.

Jacob said, “I not only threatened to kill her, I told her how I’d do it. Then I told her how I’d cover it up. Then I told her I knew all about homicide investigations and how to trip them up because I was your son, and I’d seen you conduct enough of them to know the pitfalls.” He looked at his lap. “Actually, I think she believed me.”

Decker bit his lip, trying to figure out how to respond. He couldn’t get any words out.

“She never talked to me again,” Jacob said. “Course, I never saw her again. I stopped going to the parties. So I guess I’ll never know what she really thought.”

“Did people hear you threaten her?”

“Yeah, we attracted quite a crowd. For a while, I was worried that someone was going to report me to the authorities—the real authorities, not you. Which would have been the correct thing to do. But no one did. All of them … the convictions of a turnip.”

Silence.

Jacob said, “Being arrested would have been consistent with my self-image. I was in the nadir period of my life. I was smoking weed and taking pills and screwing around and screwing up. I was out of control. Thank God, you got to me first.” He looked up. “That’s a compliment.”

“Thank you.” Decker stared at him, as if looking at a stranger. “You didn’t tell me you were taking pills.”

He waved Decker off.

“What else didn’t you tell me?”

Jacob threw his head back. “You’re a good guy, Dad. You try to be understanding. But even good guys have their limits.” He faced his stepfather. “I’m scaring the hell out of you, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“I hate everything and everyone,” Jacob said. “I’m furious all the time. But I’m the problem, not the world. I’m trying to channel it all into constructive endeavors. Probably sounds like a crock of crud to you, but it’s true.”

Decker was quiet.

Jacob looked away. “I really am trying. For Eema, especially, because she deserves better. I haven’t touched anything chemical beyond an aspirin in six months. I’m doing well in school. I’m still working the suicide hot line once a week. I feed the homeless once a month. I am trying! But it’s hard!”