Down in the Zero

'What?' I asked him.

'It's…gonna sound stupid.'

'Ain't no 'stupid' among friends, mahn,' Clarence encouraged him.

'What's it about? Spit it out,' said the Prof.

It was quiet for a minute. Then Randy looked somewhere into the open space between the Prof and me, blurted out, 'I hate my name.

'Randy? Or…?'

'Randy. It's a kid's name. A baby name. Everybody always calls me that. Randy. I mean, nobody would say Randall. That's a name on a business card.'

'You don't like the game, you turn up the flame,' the Prof told him. 'A man don't pick his mother. Don't pick his father neither. But a man can choose his family, right?'

I reached over, tapped bottles with him again. Underlining the bond.

'You a man, cuzz. You old enough to play, you old enough to say, okay?'

'I…suppose so.'

'We give you a name, mahn,' Clarence said, caught up in the idea. 'Like a baptism.'

'You came through tonight,' I told the kid. 'What do you want your name to be?'

'I don't know. I mean…I never thought about it.'

'Ain't but two names for the outlaw game,' the Prof said. 'You a bad man behind the wheel. Drive like a hell–hawk tracking a mouse. Got to have a bad man's name.'

'Like what?'

'Like I said: whatever you do, it's one of two. It's Junior. Or Sonny. Got to be either Junior or Sonny.'

'Those don't sound like a bad man's names.'

'What I gonna do with this rookie, schoolboy?' the Prof said to me. 'True–clue him, all right?'

'It's the way things are,' I said to Randy. 'You meet a man named Junior or Sonny, you know you're dealing with serious stuff. Those are heavy–duty names.'

'I knew a man named Junior Stackhouse back home,' Clarence said. 'Baddest man in town. Junior would get himself drunk, nothing he liked better than to fight the police, mahn. He was a terror.'

'Junior…sounds like…I don't know. Like it should be Randall Cambridge the Second or something lame like that.'

'Well, maybe Junior's too slow around all this dough,' the Prof said. 'Sonny it is.'

'I never knew a man named Sonny that wasn't a stone dangerous stud,' I put in. 'Like the name was a brand so people could tell.'

'Rhymes with honey, too,' the Prof added. 'That seals the deal.'

Clarence held out his hand, palm up. Randy slapped him five. 'Damn, cuzz,' the Prof told him. 'You look badder already.'

The night didn't have a chance against the kid's smile.

'Here's what we got so far.' I ran it down. 'Somebody's doing ID switches— big money in that. And we got the suicides too. I can't see the connect, but there almost has to be one. If there is, Crystal Cove is the link.'

'The link stinks, bro,' the Prof replied. 'Kids off themselves. Do it all the time. Don't take much, 'specially out here. The beds are soft, but the life could be hard. Out here, they whip their kids with words. Cuts just as deep.'

'I know.'

'I don't see going in, Jim. What we need, we need to talk to the boss. The list…that's the key to that lock.'

'I may have another one,' I said. 'Few more days, I'll know for sure.'

'Company,' Clarence whispered, his hand going inside his jacket. I stubbed out my cigarette. Headlights cut the night, bluestone crunched under tires. A pearl white Rolls–Royce sedan pulled to a stop just past the garage.

'Charm,' the kid whispered. 'That's her car.'

Minutes passed. A car door opened and a person stepped out. I couldn't see anything about them— whoever it was wore a long black coat with a hood covering their head. The hooded figure walked confidently over to the big house, unlocked the back door and went inside. Lights went on.

'She has a key?' I asked.

'I guess so,' the kid replied, not sounding surprised.

She was inside maybe ten minutes. Then she went back to her car. There was nothing in her hands that I could see. The Rolls purred off, as unhurried as its driver.

We spent some more time out there, talking things through.

'Follow me back to the highway,' I told Clarence. 'I'll get you pointed toward home.'