“A Zirton.”
“What’s a Zirton?”
“A space warrior. I just made him up.”
“A good guy or a bad guy?”
“Not sure,” the child said, head to one side. “A good guy, I guess …” He pointed to the chest armor. “That’s red. Red’s a good color, not a bad one.”
O’Farrell took the chair vacated by the girl. “So what happened here, then?”
Billy bent over his drawing, to avoid O’Farrell’s eyes. “Some men looked through my backpack and found a package. They brought me here.”
The history of the world, written on a postage stamp, O’Farrell thought. “That’s it. huh?”
“Guess so.”
“You know what was in the package?”
“Nope.” The denial was immediate.
“Didn’t you want to know?”
“Not really.”
“What if it had been something nasty? Mushy? Had leaked out all over the place?”
“Knew it wouldn’t.” There was a lift and then a drop of Billy’s head, bottom lip between his teeth at being caught.
“How could you tell, if you didn’t know what was inside?”
“Hadn’t leaked out before.”
“There’d been other packages, then?”
It was becoming difficult for Billy to find anything more to do to his picture. He nodded his head and said, “Uh-huh.”
“How many?”
“One or two.”
“Let’s do better than that, shall we?”
“Can’t remember.”
“You’ve got to remember, Billy. I want you to.”
“Five,” the child mumbled.
“You quite sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No more?”
Billy shook his head.
“How did it start, the first time?”
“I dunno.”
“ ’Course you do, Billy. That’s silly, to say you don’t know.”
“A man came up to me one day, before the school bus came. Asked me to run an errand. Said I’d get money for it.”
“Didn’t you wonder if you should do it?”
“It wasn’t to get into his car or anything. Mommy told me not to do that.”
“What did he want you to do then?”
“Just put the package in my backpack, that’s all. He said when I got off, I was to wait for a man to come up and say did I have a present for him? When I gave it to him, he would give me ten dollars.”
O’Farrell felt hot, his collar restrictively tight, at how exposed Billy had been. An image came into his mind that he didn’t recognize at first and then he did: it was a boy eating dinner in an exclusive London restaurant with his beautiful mother and ambassador father. O’Farrell blinked it away. He said, “Is that how it happened, all five times?”
“Kind of,” Billy said. “Sometimes I had to wait around.”
“But you always did?”
“Sure, always.”
“They must have liked that, knowing you were reliable, a good guy.”
“They did!” Billy said, smiling up, proud again.
“You become friends?”
“Kind of.”
“What did they call you? They call you Billy or maybe something else? Just kid or something?”
“Always Bill, after that first time,” the boy said, still proud. “Sometimes Billy-boy.”
“What did you call them?”
“I used—” The boy stopped and his face closed, as if a curtain had been drawn across ii.
“What, Billy?”
“Nothing.”
“You were telling me what you called them.”
“Didn’t call them anything. Never knew their names.”
O’Farrell turned Billy’s drawing around so that he could see it better. “What’s that again?”
“A Zirton,” the boy said. He was cautious now against relaxing at an apparently casual question.
“They make Zirtons in those things I bought you, a few months back?”
“I just told you. I made it up.”
“So you did,” O’Farrell said easily. “That was a good weekend, wasn’t it?”
“It was okay,” Billy said stubbornly.
“I enjoyed that hamburger and fries we had, near the lake,” O’Farrell said. “You remember what we talked about then?”
“Yes.” Billy said, unexpectedly direct.
“And the promise you made me?”
“Yes.”
At last the child’s lips were trembling, the first sign of giving way. O’Farrell was surprised Billy had held out so long and thought his grandson was a plucky little bastard. Just as he thought of himself as a shit, for coming down on him like this, and hoped it would all be worthwhile. Relentlessly he went on, “I don’t think you’ve kept it, Billy. I thought we were friends, loved each other, but I don’t think you’ve kept your promise.”
“You said I was to tell Miss James or Mommy if anyone tried to sell me drugs at school,” Billy said.
It was a lawyer’s escape and bloody good for a kid so young. O’Farrell said, “You knew what was in those packages, didn’t you, Billy?”
“No!”
“Or didn’t you want to know?” O’Farrell asked, changing direction with the idea. “Was that it? You thought you were safer if you pretended not to know what was in them? Even though you did, all the time.”
Billy couldn’t hold his grandfather’s eyes. He looked down into his lap and O’Farrell thought the tears were going to come then, but still they didn’t. “I didn’t know,” the boy mumbled.
“It was cocaine, Billy. That stuff that makes you feel funny, the stuff we talked about. And crack is cocaine in crystals, which is even worse.”
The boy shrugged, saying nothing.
“You do know some names, don’t you?” O’Farrell persisted. “Not all, not even complete. But you know some.”
“Can’t.”
The word was so quiet that O’Farrell feared he’d misheard. “What? What did you say?”
“Can’t,” Billy repeated.
“Why can’t you?”
“Frightened.”
“You mustn’t be frightened,” O’Farrell urged. “People will look after you.
The tears came as abruptly as Ellen’s had earlier. Billy suddenly sobbed and fell forward on his arms and O’Farrell sat in helpless indecision, wanting to go around the table and hold him and stop the tears but pulling back
