“Anything Ronnie needs?” asked Greg.
“His name is Dwight Torcelli,” Winn said.
“The best criminal defense attorney in the United States would help,” I said.
We ate for a while, and I thought in silence.
Then Darrell whispered to me, “You don’t need more money? I do. Rich white boys probably have their pockets full of twenties. You take it, give it to me. I keep a little and give the rest to my mother.”
I shook my head, but it didn’t stop him. He whispered to me as he finished his breakfast.
“I took a bullet in the back for you, Fonesca,” he said.
“Pellet,” I said. “Maybe you were the one being shot at.”
“People from my part of town don’t use pellets and BBs after they’re five years old. They don’t shoot people with toys. Someone after me’d have a serious weapon.”
“Because you’re so bad?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m just saying.”
“You didn’t tell people you got shot with a pellet gun.”
“Hell no.”
After we were finished with breakfast, Greg and Winn stood, and Greg said, “You’ll let me know?”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, though at this point I wasn’t sure about what it was I would be letting him know about.
“Sorry,” said Winn, though at this point I wasn’t completely sure what it was he was sorry about.
When they left, Ames finished a second cup of coffee and said, “Smart boys.”
I wasn’t sure how he meant it, and I wasn’t going to ask him to explain.
We picked up carryout breakfasts for Victor and Torcelli. The same truckers we had seen earlier were in line behind us at the cash register.
The one with muscles and, I could now see, fading tattoos on his arms, said to Ames, “Your grandkids cost me forty bucks.”
I touched Ames’s arm in the hope that he wouldn’t respond, but he said, “Cost yourself forty dollars.”
“Not the way I see it,” said the trucker.
“Let it go, Ben,” said the trucker who had won the bet.
“You let it go, Teek. Easy for you. You won. Way I see it, old bones here owes me.”
It was our turn to pay now. I handed over cash for the carry-out to Gwen’s daughter at the register. She pushed it back to me.
“Ames owes you shit,” said Darrell. “Right, Fonesca?”
“Right,” I said.
“Mess with Ames, he’ll shoot your ass,” Darrell said. “Mess with Fonesca he’ll break your nose. Ames shot and killed a man and Fonesca just broke a fool’s nose.”
“That a fact?” said Ben the trucker with the biceps.
“Fact,” Darrell said.
The trucker reached for Darrell. Ames put his arm in the way.
“You want to take this outside,” said Ames. “I’ll accommodate.”
I led our happy band out the door.
“Parking lot,” said Ben.
“I’m having no part,” said Teek.
When we got to the parking lot next to the restaurant, Ames opened his jacket so Ben could see an old, but very large, well cleaned, and shining pistol tucked into his belt.
“Bullshit,” said Ben, now glaring. He took a step toward Ames, who calmly removed the weapon from his belt and fired into the ground at the trucker’s feet.
“Another step and you’ll be on your way to the emergency room,” said Ames.
“He means it,” I said.
Ben backed away three steps and raised a fist, but didn’t say anything.
Teek took Ben’s arm and started to pull him away.
“Crazy old fucker,” said Ben, looking over his shoulder as he wisely allowed himself to be escorted from the lot.
I didn’t ask either trucker if they had a favorite first line from a book.
“You did him, Ames,” said Darrell holding up his right hand for a high five, which Ames didn’t deliver.
“Best we go now,” Ames said.
“Best,” I agreed.
15
'I’m not an unreasonable man,” Horvecki said, professionally looking at the camera and away from the SNN interviewer.
He was looking directly at me as I sat in my room with Ames, Darrell, Victor, and Ronnie watching the DVD Greg Legerman had given me.
Horvecki had the raspy voice of a smoker and a haunted look. He was slightly frail and definitely on the verge of being old. He had a well-trimmed, close-cropped head of dyed black hair and the slightly blotched skin of a man who had spent too many hours outside without benefit of sunblock.
“I pay taxes-a hell of a lot of taxes to this country, this state, and this county,” he said, looking back at the interviewer, a pretty young brunette who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two and who was definitely uncomfortable as she tried to control the interview. “So do thousands of other people who don’t have children in school, don’t have grandchildren in school. We pay to give a third-rate education to kids who aren’t even ours, and no one gives us a choice. Well, I’m fighting for that choice.”
“But this is a matter of funding a much-needed program for gifted students,” the young woman tried.
“So all students aren’t created equal?” he said. “Some get a better education. No one asked me what I thought about that. Did they ask you? Your parents? Did you go to Pine View?”
“No,” the girl said protectively, “I went to Riverview.”
“Education should be paid for by parents and anyone who wants to give money,” Horvecki said. “I don’t want to give money for the children of the people who should be paying.”
“And Bright Futures?” she asked.
“Same thing,” he said. “A big, phony boondoggle. Take lottery money and tax money and give it to smart kids instead of distributing it evenly among all the kids who want to go to college.”
“That’s what you believe, that the money that-?”
“I don’t think there should be any Bright Futures program or any Pine View School funded by my BLEEP money.”
“So?” she asked.
He turned again to face the camera and said, “Vote no on the funding referendum.”
Cut to a silver-haired man behind a desk with sheets of paper in his hand.
“Philip Horvecki,” he said. “Man on a mission with a gift for making political enemies and a record of convincing voters in the past fifteen years to vote for his self-named Self Interest Initiative Voters Alliance.”
The television screen went gray with thin white fizzling lines.
Darrell reached over, ejected the disk and turned off the television.
“See,” said Torcelli. “That man was a monster.”
“Your father-in-law,” said Ames. “Your wife’s father.”
“Yes,” Torcelli said, touching the bandage on his nose to be sure it was still there.
“So you went to see him because of your commitment to Bright Futures,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Nothing to do with your wanting to be his true son and heir?” said Ames.
“A little, maybe, but does that negate what I was trying to do?”
