7
I stepped out behind her and took her arms. She was shaking. She turned into me, and we held each other. Her
voice was small and guilty against my chest.
'Do you think he ran away?'
'No. No, he was fine, Luce. He was okay after we talked. He was laughing at this stupid game.'
I told her that I thought he had probably hurt himself when he was playing on the slope, then gotten lost trying to find his way back.
'Those streets are confusing down there, the way they snake and twist. He probably just got turned around, and now he's too scared to ask someone for help; he's been warned about strangers enough. If he got on the wrong street and kept walking, he probably got farther away, and more lost. He's probably so scared right now that he hides whenever a car passes, but we'll find him. We should call the police.'
Lucy nodded against me, wanting to believe, and then she looked at the canyon. Lights from the houses were beginning to sparkle.
She said, 'It's getting dark.'
That single word: Dark. It summoned every parent's greatest dread.
I said, 'Let's call. The cops will light up every house in the canyon until we find him.'
As Lucy and I stepped back into the house, the phone
rang. Lucy jumped even more than me.
'That's Ben.'
I answered the phone, but the voice on the other end didn't belong to Ben or Grace Gonzalez or the security patrols.
A man said, 'Is this Elvis Cole?'
'Yes. Who's this?'
The voice was cold and low:
28
He said, 'Five-two.'
'Who is this?'
'Five-two, motherfucker. You remember five-two?' Lucy plucked my arm, hoping that it was about Ben. I shook my head, telling her I didn't understand, but the sharp fear of bad memories was already cutting deep.
I gripped the phone with both hands. I needed both to hang on.
'Who is this? What are you talking about?'
'This is payback, you bastard. This is for what you did.'
I held the phone even tighter, and heard myself shout. 'What did I do? What are you talking about?' 'You know what you did. I have the boy.' The line went dead. Lucy plucked harder.
'Who was it? What did they say?'
I didn't feel her. I barely heard her. I was caught in a yellowed photo album from my own past, flipping through bright green pictures of another me, a much different me, and of young men with painted faces, hollow
eyes, and the damp sour smell of fear.
Lucy pulled harder.
'Stop it! You're scaring me.'
'It was a man, I don't know who. He says he took Ben.'
Lucy grabbed my arm with both hands.
'Ben was stolen? He was kidnapped? What did the man say? What does he want?'
My mouth was dry. My neck cramped with painful knots.
'He wants to punish me. For something that happened a long time ago.'
29
BOYS BEING BOYS
On the second day of his five-day visit, Ben waited until Elvis Cole was washing his car before sneaking upstairs. Ben had been planning his assault on Elvis Cole's personal belongings for many weeks. Elvis was a private investigator, which was a pretty cool thing to be, and he also had some pretty neat stuff: He had a great videotape and DVD collection of old science fiction and horror movies that Ben could watch any time he wanted and about a hundred superhero magnets stuck all owe his refrigerator and a bullet-proof vest hanging in his front entry closet. You didn't see that every day. Elvis even had business cards saying he was 'the biggest dick in the business.' Ben showed one to his friends at school and everyone had laughed. Ben was convinced--profoundly supremely certain-- that Elvis Cole had a treasure of other cool stuff stashed in his upstairs closet. Ben knew, for instance, that Elvis kept guns up there, but he also knew that the guns and ammunition were locked in a special safe that Ben could not open. Ben didn't know what he would find, but he thought he might luck out with a couple of issues of Playboy or some neat police stuff like handcuffs or a blackjack (what, to his mom's horror, his Uncle Ren4 down in St. Charles Parish called a ' nigger-knocker. ') So when Elvis went outside to wash his car that morning, Ben peeked out the window. When he saw Elvis filling a bucket with soapy water, Ben raced through the house to the stairs. Elvis Cole
