more coaxing fell in step alongside my clipped wing.
“What do you know?”
The street was late-morning lackadaisical, light traffic and strolling pedestrians. I took weighty steps knowing the revelations I was about to unload.
“Your stepson killed your son.”
“I don’t have a stepson.”
“That’s because your husband never told you. His name is Bronson Carew.”
She grabbed my arm, nails digging like claws. “Carew? That’s Paulina’s name.”
“Your housekeeper. Yes. Your husband got her pregnant, but he couldn’t allow her to raise the child in your house or you’d eventually find out. You’d catch him playing with the boy. Or you’d see the resemblance in the boy’s face. One way or another you’d find out, so she sent him to be raised by his grandmother.”
She let go of my arm. “She could’ve quit to raise him.”
“But she didn’t. Maybe she loved your husband. Or maybe she couldn’t face going back to life on the south- side docks. Whatever the reason, she chose to stay in your home and sent her son to be with her mother. She probably convinced herself that the best thing she could do for her son was to keep earning a regular paycheck.”
We turned left, this street too narrow for cars, traffic noise fading, the rocking sound of slushing ice taking its place.
“But I don’t ever remember her being pregnant.”
“Did she ever take a leave of absence?”
“She left us for a few months once. She had to care for her sick father.”
“Nineteen years ago?”
Her last objection dashed, Crystal Samusaka stopped in her tracks. “That son of a bitch.”
I faced her profile, her lips pinched so tight I could barely see her lipstick. “Has he been unfaithful before?”
She stared straight ahead. “My husband is a selfish man. But he never had a bastard before.”
“Why did you stay with him?”
She took a large, overreaching step but the tapered skirt held her back. “I wasn’t born rich, Mr. Mozambe.” She hiked up her dress to her knees and stormed forward, short strides no longer satisfactory.
I stayed with her. “Your husband paid the police to report your son’s death as an overdose. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want the police to find his son’s murderer until I realized he was protecting another son.”
“My God, Paulina brought a young boy to the house sometimes. She said he was her nephew. Brownie was his name.”
“Could be a nickname for Bronson.”
“He was such a strange boy.”
“Did he play with your sons?”
“Sometimes, but mostly they picked on him. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten when she stopped bringing him. But I saw him years later when Franz brought him around. Franz said he’d run into Brownie somewhere, and now they were palling around.”
I stopped, put the bag down, and pulled Deluski’s chip from my pocket, held it to her temple. “That him?”
She jerked her head away. “That’s him.” Tears came, twin raindrops rolling down her cheeks, her mouth caught in a silent, misshapen cry. She let her skirt fall back down, hands moved to her eyes.
“Why?” she managed to wail. “Why did he kill my boy? Franz tried to be his friend.”
I lowered my eyes. “You won’t like the answer.”
“Tell me!”
“Your son was involved in the gay community. At some point he got sucked into a clique centered around an offworld doctor. This doctor made a new drug called the genie. It makes people extremely susceptible to suggestion. Your son Franz used the drug on Carew. He raped him for several days.”
The crying stopped. I expected denial. Refusal to believe. A wall of motherly love that would keep her from seeing the truth about her son. Instead she asked, “Is it a pill?”
“A liquid. It comes from snails.”
Her face went white. She wobbled on woozy legs. I reached for her in an attempt to catch her before she went down, but she’d already dropped to a seat on the asphalt. “Snails,” she whispered.
I sat next to her. “That’s right.”
A pair of teenagers walked by, strange looks aimed our way.
“Hudson gave me a snail to eat.”
I nodded, not entirely surprised.
“He told me it was a delicacy, fed it to me in a wine sauce. It was his birthday. He took me to bed, undressed me. Th-then he brought out a stranger from the closet. I remember wondering what he was doing in there. Hudson told me he was a friend. He wanted me to have sex with this man while he watched.”
The genie was true evil. “And you did it.”
“I did. I didn’t want to, but I did. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I thought I was depraved. I mean, who would do something like that?”
“You were raped.”
She pulled at her hair, strands coming out in her fingers. “I fucked him.”
“That wasn’t you. It was the drug.”
“How could I-”
I pulled her hand away from her hair, gave it a pat. “It wasn’t you.”
“Oh my God, he filmed it. I let him film it.”
“When was this?”
“He just had another birthday, so a little over a year ago.”
The last tile cemented into place, the Samusakas’ dirty mosaic now in full focus. Franz and his pop were quite a pair. Franz the young entrepreneur, selling the doc’s plastic surgery and introducing the genie to his gay friends. His father, a man who treated family like possessions. A man who would let his own wife get raped for his pleasure.
Franz must’ve shared the genie with his father. Hey, Pop, look what this snail can do. Gee, that’s pretty neat, son. I think I’ll try that on your mom.
“Do you remember when your home was broken into?”
She closed her eyes, her hands back in her hair, squeezing down, clumped strands poking through her knuckles like weeds through a fence.
“That was Carew’s doing. Paulina let him in, which was why no windows or locks were broken. He wanted Franz’s rape vid. He ransacked Franz’s room to find it and then he brought it to the police, but the police ignored it. These were the same two detectives who later covered up your son’s murder. They said the vid didn’t prove he was raped. Looked like he enjoyed it.”
She wrung her hair some more.
“Carew killed them.”
She moaned.
I kept talking. “Your other son, Ang, was the first to find his brother’s room after Carew ransacked it. But instead of reporting the robbery right away, he decided to hit his father’s study. He doesn’t like his father, does he? I’m guessing Franz was your husband’s favorite.”
I couldn’t tell if her moaning meant I was right or wrong. I plowed ahead anyway. “Ang found your husband’s vid, the vid of him feeding you the snail and everything that followed.”
She grabbed my arm, nails digging in. “Are you saying my son watched me?”
“Yes. He has the vid. But at first, he let your husband think the burglar took it. It must’ve taken him a few days to figure out what he wanted to do with it. He’s been using it to blackmail your husband ever since. I didn’t know what was on the vid until now.”
Her moans turned to sobs. Another shattered life. Welcome to the club.
