22
The woman returned, holding a checkbook in the hand she wasn’t using to hold the boy. She tried to press it open on the back of the couch, then stopped and leaned toward us. “Go with Daddy now,” she whispered to the boy. He raised his head obediently and stretched his arms to the man at the door, who took him. The boy curled up on the man’s shoulder the same way he’d been on the woman’s.
“I’ve seen your son in the doorway sometimes when I deliver the paper,” I said. “He’s cute.” I reached to ruffle the boy’s hair then, but the man twisted away, moving the boy just beyond my reach. Both of our movements had been automatic, I think, but my hand was left in the air in front of the boy and his father until I dropped it back to my side.
The man looked harder at me. “Sometimes he has a hard time sleeping,” he said, and then, studying the bill, added: “And this isn’t due today.”
“It’s not,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.
The man on the couch slapped his leg and laughed wildly. He pointed at the television, where a number of motorcycles were tangled on the ground and riders scrambled to pull themselves from the mess. “Always the same turn,” he managed between laughs, “they always fuck up the same turn.”
“How much is it?” the woman asked.
“We don’t have to pay,” the boy’s father said, looking at me as if I’d claimed otherwise.
“But he’s right here,” the woman said.
“Take the baby and put him in his crib.” The man’s voice was tense, determined. “He should be sleeping.” He handed the child back to the surprised woman, who looked at me once more, and then headed from the room, patting the boy’s back and whispering to him. When she was gone, the man turned to me. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Travis,” I told him.
“Listen, Travis. Next time you have a bill for us, just deliver it the same as you do to everyone else. I don’t care if you see our light on, and I don’t care if you see my son. Just throw the paper on the fucking lawn and move on. Understand?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry. You don’t knock on our door in the middle of the night asking for money.”
I nodded and closed the screen door behind me as I let myself out, then walked up the drive to my car. I didn’t look back until I put the car in gear and pulled away, and when I did, I saw the man standing in the doorway, watching me leave.
23
My hands shook so badly as I made my deliveries to the next few houses that I could barely manage to get the bills into the bags, and when I pulled back onto the highway again and headed further north, I drove past the turn I was supposed to take. It was just a small access road that led back down into the industrial area where I would deliver to a couple dozen more warehouses before being done for the day, but suddenly it was behind me, and I was still going. It was easier to drive straight and fast on the highway instead of continuing to struggle with the newspapers, whose plastic bags snapped in the breeze roaring past the open window. After a few minutes, as an experiment, I dropped one of the papers out the window of the car and turned for a moment to watch it tumble crazily along the road behind me.
The sky was starting to brighten in the east, which meant that I was way behind schedule. I knew that if I just kept going north, though, I would cross the Columbia River soon, and would be somewhere new when the sun rose. I pressed the gas to the floor, and the car strained to pick up speed. And when I tossed the stack of bills out the window, I watched in the rearview mirror as they exploded into a mass of fluttering shadows, like a flock of birds in the night.
PART II. CROOKS & COPS
THE WRONG HOUSE BY JONATHAN SELWOOD
I’m working the pry bar along the north side of Mount Tabor Park trying to scrape together enough to make a buy off the Mexicans on 82nd. Normally I cop from Voodoo Mike downtown, but I’m already into that dreadlocked cock-sucker for almost a hundred.
The neighborhood is practically virgin this far up the hill, without a single security door along the whole block. I start off with a well-kept dark blue Victorian that looks like it got flipped right before the housing market went to shit. There’s an old Sam Adams campaign poster still on the lawn and not one but
Inside the house, the primary decor is giant action photos of a middle-aged lesbian couple climbing, biking, and even riding an elephant in some Third World country. The place is stuck in the last millennium when it comes to electronics-they’re still using a fucking VCR-but I score big with a dresser drawer full of heirloom jewelry and some antique-looking carved Buddha heads on display above the fireplace.
The sliding glass backdoor of the neighboring split-level ranch isn’t locked, so I just walk right into what turns out to be medical marijuana central. Even congested and junksick, the place smells to me like a flatulent skunk doused in patchouli. I spend a good twenty minutes turning the place upside down, but despite finding a bunch of dope scripts and a collection of vaporizers rivaling the Third Eye, I never manage to locate the actual weed. On the plus side, the place is a fucking gold mine of game consoles. By the time I’m out the door, I can barely zip my piece-of-shit duffel closed.
As usual, the jonesing part of me wants to just hoof it straight down the hill and see what Tearoom Timmy will give me for it all, but popping these rich fucks’ houses is like shooting monkeys in a barrel. It’d be sin not to rip at least one more.
Skipping a couple lots down from the last one I hit to throw off any eyeballing neighbors, I settle on a beige Craftsman with the standard black thumb landscaping of bark mulch and rhododendrons. All that separates the miniscule backyard from the park is a six-foot chain-link, so I can get a good look without actually having to trespass-the blinds are pulled, but it seems quiet enough.
Fuck it.
I hide the duffel in some blackberry thorns by the tennis courts for safe keeping, and hop the fence.
When I get to the backdoor, I notice that there’s at least an eighth of an inch gap between the door and the jamb, so I slip the pry bar in easy and give it a hard pull. The rotted wood splinters like fucking matchsticks and the door just swings open.
I step quickly into the house and push the door closed behind me to get out of view, then stop and listen for
