He’s reaching for the knob and a highlight-film escape when the door is thrown open, and he collides with a familiar razor-cut.
“You!” DeAndre exclaims in shock.
“Call her off, man, she’s going to kill me!” Terence croaks.
“Call who off?”
“The crazy lady!”
The sight of Terence and DeAndre together draws a gasp of horror from the woman’s lips. “You hurt my boy, and I’ll splatter you all over that wall!”
“Nobody’s getting hurt, Mama,” DeAndre says. “I know this yo.”
She lowers the bat, but only slightly. “DeAndre Rhodes, how many times have I warned you about the jailhouse trash you call friends? Fine people who break into houses at—” She stares at the kitchen clock. “Where do you get off rolling home at two o’clock in the morning? As long as you live under my roof—”
“I got busy, Mama.” DeAndre snatches the paper from Terence’s hands and peers at the note.
Impressed? You should be.
Terence
DeAndre is disgusted. “I hope you know what you’re talking about, yo, ’cause I must be missing something.”
Terence shuffles uncomfortably. “Mind taking this outside?” He gestures meaningfully in the direction of DeAndre’s mother.
She shakes the Slugger threateningly. “Don’t you act like I’m a blind woman, DeAndre! I got no respect for the life you’ve been leading! I can use this bat on you too!”
Her son ushers Terence into the hall. “Get some sleep, Mama,” he tosses mildly over his shoulder. “Remember your blood pressure.” He turns murderous eyes on Terence. “I could carve you up like roast beef! What jury’s going to convict me after you threatened my mama?”
“More like your mama threatened me,” Terence mumbles.
“That why you came here? To play Bad Boys of Comedy?”
“To make a point!” Terence counters. “Look how easy I got into your crib. You could be waking up tomorrow with this note on your pillow!”
“So?”
“So I got talent! You need me, you and your crew. That last score—pretty sweet, right? Plenty more where that came from.”
The snake eyes narrow. “You got something in mind, or are you just talking out of your butt, as usual?”
Terence grins.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
John Doe’s head wound heals. The mummylike dressing on his crown is replaced by a simple gauze bandage. There’s no unsteadiness or hesitation to his movements. He feels good. There’s only one problem: his memory is still missing in action.
Dr. Radnor puts Roxanne and Gecko in charge of showing the patient flash cards with pictures of common objects. Healy has no trouble recognizing a pickup truck, a cell phone, or a banana, but his own name continues to elude him.
“I know what things are called,” he explains mournfully. “I haven’t lost the world; it’s myself I can’t remember.”
“You shouldn’t rush it,” is the doctor’s opinion. “It may not be overnight, but your past will return to you. Retrograde amnesia is rarely permanent.”
It’s little consolation to Healy, and also to Gecko, who feels the group leader’s plight pressing relentlessly on his conscience.
Twenty times a day he has to hold himself back from bursting out with Your name is Douglas. Healy! Who knows—maybe those five words will jump-start the poor man’s brain.
But he can’t do it. Not until Healy is in a position to stick up for them with Ms. Vaughn.
He moved heaven and earth to give us a second chance. We have to assume he wants us to stay out of jail.
They have no choice but to wait for his memory to come back on its own.
The homework wars have subsided somewhat, mostly because Arjay now spends every spare minute practicing. He’s got nine days to learn the entire repertoire of This Page Cannot Be Displayed, a ska-influenced punk combo “too indie for the independents, too down for downtown, too loud to exist.” At least, that’s what it says on the posters advertising This Page’s first gig of the Arjay Moran era, scheduled for a week from Saturday at a club called Pus Groove.
He listens to the songs on headphones, his fingers dancing across the frets of the electric Fender. Everything is borrowed—Rat Boy’s demo disk, Voodoo’s CD player, and a school guitar, only slightly broken, courtesy of Mr. Cantor. Rat Boy is the singer and front man, with Voodoo on drums. (The final This Page member, the bassist, has no name—it’s the next new thing, he believes—though it still says Scott Kroshinsky on his driver’s license.)
“You guys need a new name,” Terence opines. “How about Brown Day?”
Arjay is annoyed. “You can’t even hear it!”
Gecko looks up from Healy’s laptop computer, where he’s typing the group leader’s weekly report to the Department of Social Services. “I can hear it. It’s pretty loud.”
“I’m trying to read here,” Terence complains. “Doing homework because the last time I tried to kick back, the big dog damn near strangled me.” He holds up his copy of Wiseguy.
“From To Kill a Mockingbird to a mob book,” Gecko says sarcastically. “You’re a regular professor.”
“Shows what you know,” Terence sneers. “This is real life—making scores, outsmarting the cops, putting together a crew. No mockingbirds—is that even a real bird?”
“That explains the D minus,” Gecko shoots back.
“How about a little respect?” Terence peers over his shoulder at the laptop. “Typical—you got Jumbo doing odd jobs for people around the building, and you’re getting great grades. What about me?”
“What about you?”
“I should have some accomplishments too.”
“You said you don’t care what a bunch of suits think of you,” Gecko reminds him.
“Am I your dog or what? Put that I got voted school president.”
Arjay lifts the headphones off his ears. “No way—nothing the dragon lady can check on.”
“Something else, then,” Terence persists. “Show me a little love. I’m the one bringing in all the cash.”
“All the cash?” Gecko repeats. “A hundred bucks—that goes pretty fast when you’re feeding three people. We’re going to have to find a way to make some money. You know what dinner is tonight? Mustard sandwiches.”
“So buy food!”
“And pay for it with what?” Gecko challenges. “Healy’s stash is almost gone. If we can’t make it last, juvie’s going to be the least of our worries.”
“I should have a little money after the show on Saturday,” Arjay puts in. “It won’t be a ton, but the band gets a cut of the gate.”
“If they give you what you deserve, we’ll be broke from funeral expenses,” Terence announces.
“At least he’s contributing!” Gecko exclaims.
“I’ve got something in the works,” Terence says haughtily. “Pretty soon we’ll have more green than we know what to do with.”
Arjay is wary. “I hope it’s got nothing to do with that kid with the dollar sign on his head. That’s a gang member if I ever saw one.”
“What do you know about it?” Terence snaps. “That’s how it works. You get down with a crew. You look out for them; they look out for you. That’s how it was in Chicago; that’s how it is here.”
“Just be careful,” Arjay insists. “If you screw up, we take the fall with you.”
Terence kicks the TV cart, causing the duct-taped figure to fall off the bowling trophy for the umpteenth time. “I’m the one who has to be careful? You joined a band, man! Lover boy’s got a girlfriend!”
“She knows nothing about us,” Gecko defends himself. “She thinks I’m in the volunteer program, like her. She doesn’t even go to our school; she’s in some private academy. I think her family has money.”
“Chicks are nosy, man,” Terence lectures. “The longer you’re together, the more she’s going to start snooping around your life. Don’t tell her anything stupid—like the truth.?
??
Gecko doesn’t admit it, but Terence’s prediction has already begun to come true. A lot of his precious time with Roxanne is spent steering the conversation away from subjects like “your apartment,” “your friends,” and “your family.”
He provides as little information as possible. “I have an older brother. I haven’t seen him in a few months.”
It’s not easy to keep secrets from Roxanne. Her interest in others is so genuine that it’s impossible to put her off. “Is he away at college?”
“Right, upstate.” Attica.
As he avoids the subject of family with Roxanne, he realizes he’s been doing the same with himself for years. It’s the not thinking all over again. Spending his childhood in Reuben’s getaway-driver boot camp, with Mom either absent, exhausted, or both, never seemed abnormal to Gecko. It was the only life he knew.
Look at Arjay. Every day is a personal battle to keep himself from picking up the phone and calling his parents.
Why don’t I feel like that?
The Fitzners are wealthy, but Gecko isn’t jealous of their money. The source of his envy is this: when Roxanne talks about family, it’s clear that she’s one hundred percent comfortable in her sense of belonging.
I never felt like that with Reuben and Mom. Not for a month; not for an hour.
It only rubs it in when she makes the assumption that his family must be similar to hers. “Your folks must be proud of your brother. My sister Dori was supposed to go to college, but at the last minute, she decided to travel around the world instead. My dad is hopping mad. He made this big donation to Yale, only to have her split for the airport with her boyfriend. He thinks all men are trying to lead his little girls astray. I can’t wait till he meets you.”
Gecko nearly rolls off his chair. “Meets me?”
“You’re so different,” she explains. “Daddy’s been on Wall Street too long. He thinks everybody’s got some kind of hidden agenda. But you’re so honest and genuine. I think you might short-circuit his whole belief system.”
“No, what I mean is—” He swallows hard. “Uh—how would he meet me?”
“My parents are having a party on Sunday.” She reads the reluctance in his eyes. “You have to come! It’ll be so boring without you! I’ll be trapped on my dad’s boat. I’ll go nuts. Please say yes!”
Not much has made sense lately, but Gecko is certain of this: stranding himself on a floating interrogation room to be subjected to the prying questions of countless strangers has got to be one of the stupider options for a Sunday afternoon.
“Sure, Rox. I’ll be there.”
The smile on her face makes it all worth it.
Sunday is cool but clear. Brilliant sun glitters off the chrome fittings on the watercraft that ring the small harbor. A dozen boats fill the rectangular inlet at the World Financial Center.
Gecko has no idea where to meet Roxanne. He’s already late, thanks to a subway breakdown at Twenty-third Street.
Then he spots her. She’s with several uniformed crew members who are escorting well-dressed ladies and gentlemen up a red-carpeted gangway to a massive high-tech yacht.
He gapes. This is “my dad’s boat”? The ship is moored alongside the dock because lengthwise it wouldn’t fit in the harbor. The gleaming superstructure towers over everything else in the inlet. A small bubble helicopter peers down from its space atop the helipad.
She notices him and waves. “Gecko!”
He’s rooted to the spot. Even a kid who comes from nothing can tell the difference between rich and superrich.
Eventually she comes over to get him. “Get a grip,” she murmurs, and kisses him.
“I’m working on it,” he tells her. In reality, the only grip he’s getting is on just how loaded the Fitzners have to be.
She takes him by the arm and introduces him to the crew. He shakes several white-gloved hands. Every single sailor shoots him a protective, vaguely threatening glance. They seem to love Roxanne just as much as the patients and staff at the hospital do.
“Good to meet you,” Gecko stammers, feeling like a low-class dope who has never seen a yacht before, and never will again.
They walk up the gangway and step onto the varnished deck. The watercraft is a floating version of one of those fancy Las Vegas hotels on TV. Everything is shiny chrome, polished and perfect.
Roxanne interprets his awe as reluctance. “It won’t be so bad. Once you’ve met my parents’ boring friends, we’re totally off the hook. There are a lot of good places to disappear on this crate.”
Gecko can believe it. “You know, Rox, when you talked about your dad’s boat, I thought it was, you know, a boat.”
She nods her understanding. “That’s Daddy for you. He loves Mom too much to trade her in for a trophy wife, so he went all Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Only he works so hard to pay for this stuff that he has no time to enjoy it. Come on, let’s see if the helipad’s open. Great views of the Statue of Liberty.”
They sit side by side on the pad, leaning on the chopper and each other, as the yacht slips out of the boat basin and takes to the gentle waves of the Upper Bay. Gecko has been living in New York for more than a month, yet he’s never seen the famous skyline from a distance before. The moment is so perfect it’s almost painful—Roxanne on his arm, the entire city stretched out in front of them.
She burrows her face into the skin of his neck. “I used to ride up here with my mouth wide open,” she murmurs. “I told my parents I was eating the wind.”
A sailor pokes his head through the access hatch. “Got her,” he says into his walkie-talkie. “Roxie, how many times do we have to tell you the helipad’s off-limits?”
“I like the view,” she shoots back cheerfully.
“Well, take one last look, because you’re coming down. Your father suggests that you mingle with the guests.”
“Suggests?” she returns. “He stopped barking orders long enough to suggest something?”
“And he wants to meet your friend,” adds the crewman. “Let’s go.”
Gecko swallows hard.
As they descend the companionway, Roxanne squeezes his hand. “Don’t look so terrified,” she whispers. “He’s going to love you.”
After all the buildup, the famous Mr. August Fitzner turns out to be a slightly pudgy middle-aged man in a blue blazer and white slacks.
“Gecko,” the multimillionaire repeats thoughtfully. “Is that Estonian?”
His daughter grins. “It’s lizard, Daddy.”
Gecko blushes. “It’s a nickname. My real name is Graham.”
“Nicknames are for the young,” announces one of Mr. Fitzner’s companions. “I went by Curly in my police academy days. What I wouldn’t give for somebody to call me that now.” He pats his bald head.
Everyone laughs politely except Gecko, who has heard the magic word: police.
“If you ever watch the news, Gecko, you’ll probably recognize Deputy Chief Mike Delancey.”
And there’s the convicted felon, the fugitive from a defunct halfway house, shaking hands with the number two cop in New York City.
Arjay would have a heart attack.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The cover charge at Pus Groove is ten dollars, but that means nothing to Terence. He merely points to the group that has just been admitted and says, “They paid for me.” Just like that, he’s in, melting into the noisy crowd. This place is far too packed and too loud for the bouncers to figure out who belongs and who doesn’t.
Besides, paying is for suckers. A baboon could get in free. Well, maybe not. Because there’s Gecko being carded and turned away.
It figures. Terence wouldn’t be caught dead in this headbanger heaven, full of stooges from the suburbs who think this is “the edge.” It’s Gecko who’s convinced him they have to be there to support Arjay at his first gig. And the dumb kid can’t even get past the gate.
I should just take off. Like Jumbo cares if I come to his show or not.
With a sigh of resignation, he pushes his way to the emergency exit and opens the heavy door. No alarm sounds. He’s not surprised. Pus Groove is so dilapidated it’s amazing the roof stays on.
“Gecko!” he hisses. “Get in here!”
The fourteen-year-old slinks down the alley, and Terence hustles him inside.
“Real smooth, man!” Terence says sarcastically.
Gecko is defensive. “What can I do if the guy cards me?”
Terence regards him pityingly. “He carded you because you stood there with your stupid puppy eyes saying, ‘Please let me in.’ You’ve got to show some attitude.” No wonder Gecko worships Douglas Healy. The kid is a newborn. He couldn’t have lasted much longer in juvie.
As they descend the tunnel-like staircase, the roar of the music swells. Terence winces in true pain. He’s got nothing against volume, but in this case that’s all there is. Haven’t these idiots ever heard of hip-hop?
“I hope Arjay’s band is better than this!” Gecko shouts in his ear.
Fat chance.
Downstairs is a crush of dancing, gyrating people who don’t seem to notice how pathetic the music is, or don’t care.
The Keelhaulers clatter to a merciful end, and there’s blessed quiet for a few seconds until a deejay puts on something even worse.
Terence takes advantage of the migration toward the bar and bathroom to grab Gecko and worm their way up front. No point in supporting Arjay if Arjay can’t see them there, supporting him.
All at once, Gecko is pulling on his sleeve.
“Cut it out, man! You trying to get us bounced?”
“Terence—look!”
It’s Casey Wagner, the doom-crier from their therapy group. He’s surprised to see her at first, but on second thought it makes sense. This is her kind of place—her music, and her crowd, her Disney World version of living dangerously.
“We can’t let her see us!” Gecko hisses. “If she mentions it at group, Avery might try to get in touch with Healy—and you know where that leads!”