He checked himself for his most precious possessions: a glass pipe, three glassine envelopes of crack cocaine, and a small sum of money left over from pawning our great-grandmother’s ring. These he kept close by, sleeping with the pipe tucked in his armpit or cradled in his limp fingers, drugs in the folds of his crotch or between his butt cheeks. The cash he split between his socks.
Now his feet were bare and the money was gone.
The pipe lay within arm’s reach, its tip broken off.
He reached into his underwear and found the drugs.
He gathered the rest of his things, including a mostly full fifth of vodka that he drank furtively and quickly. One shoe he found behind a concrete pillar. The other was nowhere to be seen. He went around, kicking up piles of garbage, till he found some other shoe that sort of fit.
He stole a pipe off a guy passed out cold and smoked one glassine envelope.
Rolling up his sleeping bag, he shouldered his backpack and left the encampment through a hole in the fence.
At the corner of 8th Street and 5th Avenue he passed a sign for Laney College. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten. It must have been a long time; crack suppresses the appetite, yet he felt a gnawing hunger. He turned down 12th Street and entered a convenience store opposite Clinton Square. The owner caught him slipping a banana into his pocket and chased him out, waving a gun and yelling at him in Vietnamese.
Luke went around the block to get away from him. He sat down on the curb, ate his banana, and smoked a second glassine envelope.
Across the street, a bright-green Mustang was parked outside an apartment house.
Sweet wheels. It made him smile. He knew about cars. He hadn’t had a vehicle in forever and never anything remotely as cool as the Mustang.
He finished his smoke and went over for a better look. Mid-seventies. It was really nice. It was fucking amazing. Stars shone in it. The owner had taken good care.
He tested the door handle. Locked.
A bag of Cheetos sat open on the passenger seat. There were crumbs on the leather. It changed Luke’s opinion of the owner and pissed him off. That was no way to treat a beautiful machine, the most perfect car he had ever seen. He tried the passenger door but it, too, was locked. He still felt mad about the man at the convenience store who’d threatened him. He felt so furious he started pounding on the hood. He climbed atop the Mustang and stomped on the roof.
The hell are you doing. A man had materialized on the sidewalk. Get down from there.
Cheetos, motherfucker? Luke said.
The man’s name was Orlando Flores. He lived in the apartment house and was the owner of the Mustang. He registered Luke’s crazed mien and dishevelment and began backing away.
It’s a beautiful machine Luke said. It deserves respect.
Orlando Flores took out his cellphone.
People often refer to a mustang as a wild horse, but that’s incorrect. The mustangs that roam the American West descend from domesticated horses brought by the Spanish, cast back into nature.
A mustang is a feral horse.
That reckless instinct. Never harnessed. Never tamed.
Luke jumped down. He charged at Flores, dragged him to the sidewalk, beat him, and took his wallet and keys. One key fit the car door. Luke got in and fired it up. It roared.
On their way home from the fabric store, Rosa Arias and Lucy Vernon stopped to pick up dinner. Rosa called Ivan to let him know that Lucy would be joining them. Rosa was ordering garlic shrimp for herself and plain noodles and chicken for the kids. She read Ivan the menu so he could choose. Pineapple curry pork sounded good.
The last person who remembered hearing Rosa Arias speak was the hostess who handed Rosa her bags of Thai. Rosa double-checked that there was no spice in the noodles or chicken. Otherwise her kids wouldn’t eat it. The hostess assured her that there was zero spice.
At approximately five forty-five p.m., Rosa and Lucy exited the restaurant. That late in the year, it was dark. They got into the Kia and Rosa drove north on International Boulevard to 29th Avenue, which led to the freeway. She signaled left and edged into the intersection. The light turned yellow. She started to make the turn and a green Mustang traveling in the rightmost oncoming lane at seventy-five to eighty miles per hour crushed into the Kia’s passenger-side door.
Based on the point of impact, one would expect Lucy Vernon to be more grievously hurt. But it was Rosa who was killed outright when her head struck the window.
Lucy hung on for nine more days before dying.
Luke sustained a broken femur, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a lacerated spleen. He spent four days in a coma and woke up cuffed to the bed rail.
Chapter 13
From my front window I watched the San Leandro cops finally drive away. Once the cruiser had turned the corner, I brought in the trash can liner from my car and crossed the living room to the Great Wall of Cardboard.
Amy’s neat handwriting identified the contents of each box. BOTTLES/NURSING. WINTER COATS. GRAD SCHOOL BOOKS. BOOKS (CLAY). GIRLS CLOTHES 6–12 MO. BABY TOYS. An index to our lives. It made me think about my job: meeting dead people, trying to reconstruct their lives from the way they’d perished and paper trails they’d left. Property records and traffic fines. At that moment the work of ten years seemed as flimsy as inferring an ancient civilization from a few shards of pottery.
I took down a box marked BREAD MACHINE.
A wedding present. Not once had we made bread with it. In our previous home, a tiny mother-in-law cottage, I’d used the machine to store my personal firearm and ammo. Now we had a gun safe in the master bedroom closet.
I sliced open the packing tape. The lid of the bread machine was also taped shut. I peeled it back and put the bin liner, its tampons and toilet paper wads and the bloody Walther PPS, inside the baking chamber. I shut the lid, shut the box, fitted it back in.
Everything looked just like before.
I lay on the sofa in the dark, creating columns in my mind.
Luke left of his own volition.
Luke committed a crime.
Luke is the victim of a crime.
The first column I subdivided into Luke is okay and Luke is not okay.
Okay included a business trip, taking off to clear his head, or an affair.
Not okay included an accident in some far-flung or inaccessible place. Suicide. Relapse, him strung out in some rat-infested shell, hallucinating, eyes dilated and dry as husks. In which case he could resurface tomorrow or in a month or never. I’ve collected the bodies of people like that. I’ve met their families. They’re rarely surprised to get the news.
My brother’s criminal history and the discarded handgun made the second column — Luke committed a crime — hard to ignore. He could have acted alone or with an accomplice: someone to drive him away from the scene, which was why his car was still there. A young man, maybe, with a beard and a white truck.
But it was the third set of realities, that Luke had come to harm by the hand of another, that I found myself dwelling on. In part because Andrea had accused me of bias. In part because of the Camaro; accomplice or no accomplice, a car was a conspicuous piece of evidence to leave behind. But mainly because of the many bad actors my brother had encountered in his time on earth.
Laying out my fears systematically was useful. And soothing. Working a case like any other.
It was also disheartening. I had none of the usual tools a cop takes for granted. Partners to share the burden and reflect ideas. Databases. Support teams.