The old man looked up through the tree. A hairline of light had pierced the branches, creating a hot, white scar down the center of his degraded face.
“When it comes out that Casey died because of his association with Junior, how are you gonna explain that to your sister Sonia and Casey's mommy, her daughter Cheryl? They trusted their baby to you. How you gonna explain why he's cooling in the coroner's fridge instead of writing his thesis?”
The old man gazed out at the pool. The black bottom gave it a mirrored surface, no visibility of the depths. Ten years ago, black bottoms had been the thing. Then a few kids fell in and no one noticed them.
“Family ties,” said Milo. “But Don Corleone took care of his people.”
“My son is-” said the old man. “You'll never have such a son.”
“Amen.”
The cloudy eyes popped. “Fuck you! Coming in here, thinking you know, you don't fu-”
“That's the point,” said Milo. “I don't know.”
“Thinking you know,” repeated the old man. “Thinking you- moe-ron- lemme tell you”- a finger wagged-“she was good people, Hope. And her mama. Don't shoot your mou- don't disrespect people you don't know. Don't- you don't know so shaddup!”
“Was she family, too?”
“I made her family. Who the hell you think paid for her schooling? Who the hell got her mama outta hooking and into managing a club, regular hours, a paycheck, goddamn pension plan? Who? Some fucking social worker?”
The finger curled laboriously, managed to point at his caved-in chest. “I been working my whole life helping people! And one of the ones I helped most was that girlie's mother. When she got cancer I helped with that, too. When she died, I paid for the funeral.”
“Why?”
“Because she was good people.”
“Ah.”
“The girl, too. Little blondie, body like that, you think I couldn'ta got her into club work if I wanted to? But, no, I could see she was finer. Had a brain. So I told Lottie we keep her far from the clubs. We make sure she gets schooling. I figured she'd be a doctor, like Mike. Botha them did the science projects together, geniuses. She changes her mind, decides to be a shrink, okay, it's almost the same. I treated her like she was my daughter.”
“Smartest boy, smartest girl,” I said.
The wizened face snapped toward me. “You bet, pal. My Mike was the smartest thing you ever seen, you shoulda had such a kid, reading at three, saying stuff people couldn't believe. And you know where brains come from? Genes. They proved it. All the kids in my family are brains. Casey skipped two grades, got a brother studying at MIT, nuclear physics. I came to this country with nuttin', no one gave me shit. Greatest country in the world, you're smart and you work, you get what you want, not like the niggers on welfare.”
“Why'd you make Hope family?” said Milo. “ 'Cause you liked her mama?”
The old man glared at him. “Get your mind outta the gutter. If I wanted that kinda thing, I had plenty of others. You wanna know? I tell you. She helped Mike. Botha them helped Mike. Lottie and Hope. After that…” He crossed his index fingers. “Family.”
“Helped him with what?”
“He had a accident. Memorial Day picnic, I threw it every year for the employees- big barbecue on my land near the Kern River. Hot dogs, sausage, the best steaks from the plant.” Smiling. “Like I said, I ate the best.”
He licked his lips again and his head lolled as if he was dozing off. Then it snapped up. He flinched. I tried to picture him swaggering, bull-necked and muscular, into the slaughterhouse late at night. Swinging the bat at trussed hogs.
“We had races,” he said, nearly inaudible. “Potato-sack, three-legged. I hired a band. Flags all over the place, best fucking party in town. Mike was thirteen, went over to the river, where the water was strong. He was a great swimmer- on the school team. But he hit his head on something, a piece of wood or something, went down, got pushed out into the white water. No one heard him yelling except Lottie and Hope 'cause they were down there by themselves, talking. They both jumped in, pulled him out. It was hard, them being girls, they almost drowned, too. He swallowed a lotta water but they gave him the respiration, got the water outta him. By the time I got there, he was okay.”
Moisture in the glazed eyes.
“From that time on, she was a queen and she was a princess! Cutest little blond thing, coulda been a movie star but I said using the brain was better. I started this prize for science. They earned it, Mike was always straight As, never needed help on the homework, track and field, swimming, baseball, you name it- gotta fourteen hundred on his SAT test. So that's it, Mr. Cop. Nothing dirty. Smart kids being smart.”
“Until Mike got himself into trouble in Seattle.”
Healthy color finally came into the old man's face. A pinkening around the edges of his mouth. Clarity in the eyes- the health benefits of anger?
“Moe-rons! What'd he do, take some stiff and try to get something good outta it?”
“Minor technicality. The stiff wasn't dead.”
“What, no brain waves and it's ready to get up and do the fucking mamba? Bullshit! It was dead as your dick- they do it every day- what do you think they give the medical students to practice on? Their fucking girlfriends? Stiffs they give 'em! They got hundreds of 'em stored, pickled like pigs' feet. They take 'em apart, throw out the crap they don't want, like garbage. So what was Mike's crime? Not filling out the right forms? Big fucking deal. It was a put-up job. They didn't like him from day one 'cause he was too smart for them, showed them up all the time, pointed out their mistakes. I wanted to go up there, tell 'em they better cut out the bullshit but Mike said no, he was sick of 'em anyway, fuck 'em.”
“So he left and spent a year with the Brooke-Hastings program.”
“Fuck you, it was a program. Those kids were starving junkies in the Tenderloin, getting butt-fucked in the alley by perverts and niggers. We cleaned 'em up, got 'em medical care- Mike's a goddamn fine doctor.”
“Vocational training,” said Milo. “So they could get fucked by perverts who paid you.”
The old man made another unsuccessful attempt to spit. “You know everything, moe-ron- if they were being abused how come the city never charged us with nothing? Because the city knew we got 'em off the welfare rolls. Those with talent we encouraged to go onstage. So what? Others we sent to school- I musta sent fifteen, twenty girls to college, secretarial school. What the fuck did you ever do for society?”
“Nothing,” said Milo, exaggerating a grimace. “Just a civil-servant leech.”
“You got that right.”
“Why'd Mike switch from surgery to gynecology?” I said.