Page 7 of A Week Away
“You didn’t bring anything with you? Luggage?” I asked.
“I have a backpack. I put it in the bushes in front of your place.”
This was definitely sounding very fly-by-night on his part. Like he’d run the credit report, and then the first chance he got, stole his mother’s credit card, and ran to the airport. And it didn’t seem like he was going to slow down any time soon.
I’d finished the chicken part of my chicken Caesar. They did it differently at the Pantry, they breaded and deep fried a chicken breast, sliced it, and plunked it on top of the salad. Their idea of health food, I guess.
Once I was done with the chicken I wasn’t much interested in the lettuce below. Cass was finished with his burger and most of the way through his fries.
“Is it just Cass or is that short for something?”
“Cassidy. My mother loved David Cassidy.”
David wouldn’t have been a bad choice if you were naming a kid after the teen idol. Which made me wonder, “How old was your mom when you were born?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s young.”
He shrugged. He’d probably heard that before. But it was true. He was seventeen and I didn’t think he could be trusted with a credit card, no less a baby. Cindy’s sister came over and asked if we wanted anything else. I asked for the check.
“What were you expecting?” I asked, once she was gone. “Did you think you’d just show up at your dad’s place and he’d be all excited to see you?”
“Maybe.”
Not very clear. It suddenly occurred to me that he might have wanted money from his dad. Love, revenge, money. The big motivators.
“Do you need money?”
“Not really. My mom does okay. And I’m gonna get a full-time job. When I graduate high school.”
That left love and revenge.
“Were you mad at your dad? Did you want to tell him that?”
“A little, maybe. I think I just wanted to know, like, why did he leave?”
So it was love. He wanted to know why he didn’t get the love he deserved. That’s why he was so fast to switch to killing the person who murdered his dad. They’d taken that away from him.
Cindy’s sister brought the check. I left a generous tip on the table and we went up to the register to pay. As we were walking across the park on the way back to my apartment, the kid asked, “So the guy who sold you my dad’s stuff. You don’t have his phone number?”
“I don’t have his last name. He was called Gavin. That’s all I know. Basically the guy’s a forger. You don’t put people like that in your address book.”
“How are we going to find him?”
“I know a place to ask for him.” I explained, “I was working in this bar under the table a couple days a week. Some kids came in who looked way too young to drink. I asked for ID and they showed it to me. It was good, very good—but I still didn’t believe they were in their twenties. I offered them free drinks if they told me who made their IDs. That’s how I heard about Gavin. They said he kept ‘business hours’ at a casino called Hobart’s in North Valley. I went to see him a couple of days later. Couple days after that I went to his place and picked everything up.”
“So youdoknow where he lives?”
“I’m not sure I can find it again.”
We were nearly in front of my building, El Matador, stopping right by the sign. I could hear the party going on above. Cass went to get his backpack. It was still before nine so I shouldn’t have been surprised when John Gallagher walked up with this guy, Melvin, who he’d been dating for a few weeks.
Like Junior, John had been our roommate and was now our tenant. He was tall and thin with tightly curled blond hair. Melvin was shaped like a fire hydrant. John wore short jean cut-offs, a mesh shirt and roller skates. Melvin looked like the leather guy in The Village People and held a casserole in his hands.
“What are you doing out here?” John asked.
“I’ve had kind of an emergency. Don’t tell Ronnie you saw me.”
