DUST

We stopped at a McDonald’s near my house.  I’d never been there before, but Dustin seemed to feel like he was finally home; a McDonald’s seems to have that effect on kids.  I got in the drive-thru lane.  No way I could take him inside—it would have been difficult explaining why he wasn’t wearing pants or shoes.  The pants we might have got away with.  It was summer and kids mostly wore shorts, and as my hoodie came down to past his knees, I guess it could have been assumed he had shorts on.  But he didn’t have shoes, the hoodie fit him like a muumuu, and anyway, we were staying in the car.

I didn’t want anything.  I’d fix something for myself at home.  I didn’t do fast food.  I did do my own cooking. 

“What’re you getting?” I asked.

“I don’t have any money,” he said, looking over at me.

“I got it,” I said.  “Get anything you want.  My treat.”

He ordered two Big Macs, a large fries, a large Coke and a cherry pie.  I was looking at the menu board, and said, “Sure you don’t want some McNuggets to go with that?”  Sarcasm.  Kids knew about sarcasm, didn’t they?

“OK.  I like them with the barbecue sauce.”

Evidently his fear was gone, but his appetite had survived intact. I didn’t say anything, however.  I didn’t want to embarrass the kid.  He’d already had a bad night.  A bad week, I guessed.  But he’d just ordered enough food for a platoon and enough calories for two of them.

We pulled into my apartment building’s parking lot.  Mine wasn’t underground.  I was glad the hoodie came as low as it did because we passed Mrs. Grammerson on the way in, and her usual unfriendly stare at me this time was directed at Dustin.  He didn’t notice.  I did and would have said something but Dustin was walking ahead quickly.  Probably motivated by either hunger or need for a bathroom, the way he was walking.  I’d told him my apartment was at the end of the hall, and he was getting there as quickly as he could without running.

He ate and ate, sitting at the kitchen table, and I marveled at how such a small, skinny kid could pack it all away.  Seeing him now in decent light, I couldn’t believe he was almost 14, even admitting I didn’t know what age and kid was from their appearance.  He just didn’t look like how I thought a kid that age should.  He was short and skinny, and his face just looked very innocent.  Cute, but innocent.  He ate everything that had been in the bag, even licking out the last of the barbecue sauce from the little plastic container.

While he was eating, I made a quick phone call, then spoke to him.  “Dustin, when you finish all that, I’ve got a place for you to sleep.  The bad news is, I only have one bed.  I’d let you have it, since you won’t be here long, but I don’t really fit on the couch, and you do.  You’re small and light, and it’s a good couch.  I think you’ll be fine there.  I’ll put some sheets on it and give you a light blanket and one of my pillows.  That sound OK?”

“That’s fine,” he said, looking into my face before dropping his eyes and then yawning.  “I slept in a doorway earlier this week.  Just being inside and safe and not worrying is good.”

“OK.  That’s fine then.  And there’s one other thing.  I have to go out tonight.  It’s really important.  I’m sure you’d be all right here alone, but it doesn’t seem right, just leaving you.  If you got scared for any reason, no one would be here for you.  So, I called a friend, a woman.  She’s coming over when she can.  It’ll be late, but I’ll wait for her before I go.  You’ll be asleep by then and won’t see her come in, but if you do wake up before I get back and find a strange lady here, don’t be surprised.  Her name is Pat, and she’s very nice.  High-spirited, kind of sassy, seems to like teasing me, but she wouldn't do that to you.  I don’t think.”

He looked up but didn’t speak.  Probably was half asleep already with all that food in him and not needing to be afraid any longer.  He did nod, however.

I fixed the couch for him, which he watched without speaking.  Then I realized, if he took off my hoodie to go to bed, he’d be naked.  I wasn’t sure what to do about that.  It was a warm summer night, and the hoodie would be too hot for him.  I decided he could use one of my tee shirts as a nightshirt.  I got one for him.

“Here,” I said, handing it to him.  He took the shirt, and I followed up, saying, “You can sleep in that.  I’ll see about some clothes in the morning.  I put a new toothbrush on the counter in the bathroom.  A towel, too.  You can change into the tee shirt in there. Shower, too, if you want.  Brush your teeth.  Then you can go to bed when you’re ready.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not real good around kids.  No practice.  So if I’m missing anything you need, just tell me.  OK?”

He nodded, then took the tee shirt and headed for the bathroom.  I went into the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator.  I was hungry.  I’d gone to Jim’s early enough to catch him leaving his apartment and had missed dinner.

I’d had a steak and a huge baked potato yesterday and only eaten half the potato, wrapping the rest for some other day.  Today was the day.  I sliced it into half-inch-thick slices, which I laid in a hot sauté pan with olive oil, sprinkled on a little sea salt and a little dried dill weed and left them to brown.  I made a quick salad of red lettuce, very thinly cut red-onion slivers and chopped green olives with my homemade vinaigrette.  I microwaved some broccoli and red bell-pepper slices and turned over the potato slices to brown their other sides.  When they were perfect, I removed them and broke an egg in the pan, gently flipped it a minute later, and when it was just barely runny inside, took it up.  Dinner was ready; 15 minutes. 

I ate while glancing into the living room.  Dustin had wandered back in, looked into the kitchen while I was slicing the onions, and that was the last I’d seen him.  I washed my dishes, cleaned the kitchen and put everything away, then turned out the lights and walked into the living room.  He was fast asleep on the couch, wearing my tee shirt and covered with only a thin sheet.

I turned off all the lights other than one by my chair where I always sat to read.  Then I settled into my chair and picked up my current book.

It was an hour and a half before Pat showed up.

“OK, what’s the surprise?” she said.

I put my finger to my lips, then pointed at the couch.

She walked over and looked down at him, then up at me.  I beckoned her and led the way to my bedroom where we could talk without disturbing Dustin.

“So, you were hiding the fact from me you had a son?”

She didn’t sound mad.  And her eyes were twinkling.  I guess if I had had a son, she wouldn't have cared.  She might even have liked it.  I was the only one who’d have been upset by it.

“Not my son,” I said.  “I sort of accumulated him.  But I have to go out tonight, and he’s had a bad week.  I didn’t want to leave him alone.  Can you stay the night?  I’ll be back later, but I wanted someone here in case he had bad dreams or ran a high fever or something.  What about it?”

She laughed.  “Oh, my god!  What a scam!  You’re unbelievable!  Who is he, some neighbor’s kid?  You borrowed him for the night to convince me to stay?  I knew I could trust you from the moment I saw you—just like I’d trust a vampire in a room full of naked young virgins.  You have that look about you.  But this is low, Briar.  Really low.  Using a kid?  And who’s to say I needed the inducement, anyway?”

I started to get defensive, and she saw it and burst out laughing.  “Gotcha!” she said.  “You make ball busting too easy.  Of course I’ll stay.  I didn’t bring anything to sleep in, however.”

“Use one of my tee shirts.  That’s what he’s wearing.  I’ll put clean sheets on the bed.”

“I’ll help.”

So we did that, and then I had to go.  I’d waited long enough already.

When I got to Jim’s place, I drove past the building.  The windows in his apartment were dark, and there was no unusual activity on the street.  No overt police presence.  It was quite possible they hadn’t even discovered his body yet.  But they could at any minute, and they’d send a man, maybe two, to his apartment when they did.  Waiting for Pat to show up had wasted a lot of time, time I hadn’t had.  Being caught inside his apartment wasn’t something I wanted to even think about.  The cops’d take me in, and eventually see my car and his and compare dents, and I didn’t want to have to explain all that had gone down.

I parked across the street just to provide some distance.  Then I opened my trunk and took out my set of burglars’ tools.  I always carried them in my car.  In my profession it was a little of this and a little of that.  You did what you had to do, and when it was illegal, you did your best to see you didn’t get caught.

So, with legal gun and illegal tools, dressed so as not to cause notice, I crossed the street, made sure the lobby was empty by looking through the front glass door, then picked the lock again and entered.

His apartment, which I’d seen from his nametag on his mailbox, was on the third floor.  I took the elevator.

The corridor was empty, the apartment at the back.  I walked down the corridor as though I belonged there, not that there was anyone to see my performance.

He had a standard lock on his door, a Danforth; nothing special.  It took less time to pick it than it had the outside door.

The apartment had the feel of a place that was empty.  The air was still; there were no human sounds.  Still, I took a moment to go through it, just to be sure.  Empty.  Now I had to look for the ring.

A ring could be anywhere, but I thought it likely if he’d been drugging and rolling guys, that he had more than the ring to hide.  There was probably other stuff, so he’d need a bigger place than a coffee can or a vase with fake flowers on top.  The ideal place would be a hidden safe.

So I started looking behind pictures and mirrors.  I didn’t find anything.  Aware of how much time I was taking, I decided I had to look in all those places in the kitchen I was wanting to avoid.  Which meant going through things like the flour and sugar containers, boxes of cereal, stacked pots and pans.

I sighed, but that didn’t move things along at all, so I started in and tried not to worry about time passing.  I found it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected because he didn’t have much food on hand.  He must have eaten elsewhere most of the time.  The guy obviously wasn’t domesticated.  He did have flour and sugar canisters, and I popped the tops and saw, ta-da, flour and sugar. Reaching down into them simply made my hands floury and sugary.  I picked up the canisters and put them back in place and then stopped.  Something wasn’t right.  I myself cooked.  I knew what a canister of flour should weigh, and this one was too light for its volume.  It was full and it was larger than my own, yet weighed less.

I found an empty plastic bag and dumped the flour into it.  It was all flour, nothing else.  But I could see the bottom inside the canister and it didn’t match how deep the thing was.

It took only a moment to discover that the bottom portion of the canister unscrewed.  And I found that the bottom served as an abditory.  It was filled with little glassine envelopes.  A quick check showed various things inside: pills, powders, small nuggets of stuff.  “Oh ho!” I said out loud, then continued with the silent thought that rolling johns wasn’t enough: he was a less-than-friendly neighborhood dope dealer.  Then I remembered how Cynthia had told me he’d hooked her on H.  Aha!  So he had an ample supply of all sorts of drugs, and possibly he’d realized he could branch out from selling it and use some of the stuff for personal gain in an adjunct profession. 

I left everything where it was and screwed the bottom back on the rest of the canister, then carefully poured all the flour back in.  I wasn’t looking for dope.  I was looking for a ring.

I searched his bedroom, all his clothes, his dresser, his bedding.  His closet, his bathroom.  This wasn’t the top floor of the building so there was no crawl space above him, just another floor of apartments.

I checked my watch.  I’d already been here too long.  I was starting to think he’d done the cautious thing and rented a safe-deposit box at a bank.  I wasn’t even sure he still had the ring; he could have pawned it or sold it to his fence.  But I had to look.  Finding it here was my best hope for getting it back.  If he did have a safe-deposit box and the ring was there, well, then I’d be out of luck.  Only thing was, people with a box usually left the key in their apartments instead of carrying it around with them, and I hadn’t come across one.

I was ready to throw up my hands when a thought occurred to me. In the bedroom and in the room he was using as a den, there were throw rugs.  Both rooms had laminated-wood flooring.  I went to the bedroom first and with some effort due to the heavy furniture, looked under the rug.  Nothing.  Did the same in the den, and, aha!

There was a floor safe, built in.  It had a combination dial.  I wasn’t a safecracker.  I had no idea how to open it, other than using an explosive, and the neighbors might object to that.

So, I looked into the next best thing: taking it with me.  Working fast, I used my pry bar to remove the flooring around it, and after tearing out sections of subflooring, I could see the floor joists underneath.  The safe was mounted in a steel bracket that was bolted to the joists.  With the flooring removed, I could see the bolts going through a joist, and the nuts on the other side.  Four bolts, four nuts.  With my burglar tools I had two crescent wrenches.  I thought they might not be large enough to fit on the nuts, but opening their jaws as wide as I could, they just fit.

The nuts were tight but not too tight, and in only a couple of minutes, I had them loose.  Not off because as I loosened them the safe and bracket began to sag.  I didn’t think the people below needed a safe dropping through their ceiling, so I used some rope from my burglar’s kit and tied the thing off before removing the nuts all the way.  Then I pulled up the rope and with it the safe.  It was about a foot long and maybe ten inches by ten inches square on the sides.  Probably weighed thirty pounds.  My tools were in a capacious gym bag, and the safe and bracket, still attached, fit easily.

Time to book.  I had to assume I now had the ring and that it would take more time than I had to try to prove it right then.  I looked to be sure I hadn’t left anything of mine, saw I hadn’t, and started for the door.  Which, just before I got there, opened, and standing in the opening was Jim.  With a gun in his hand.