Page 56 of A Week Away
I did some quick math and his commission on that price would be close to forty thousand dollars, which might be another reason he wasn’t too concerned about my spending.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
September 16, 1996
Monday afternoon
While I was waiting for Cass to come out of the high school, something tumbled for me. There was no computer on Joanne’s desk in her den. The computer was upstairs on Cass’s desk next to a laser printer. A laser printer. A kid like Cass didn’t need a laser printer. Not to mention they were expensive. Ronnie was angling for one for Christmas. Four hundred dollars.
Joanne needed a laser printer though, to write her letters from Top Dawg. But then I doubted very much she went into Cass’s disgusting room to write the letters, so she’d have had her son do them.
Everything seemed to be in his name. She’d been setting him up. I was sure she used his age to justify it to herself. He’d begun working at Top Dog when he was fifteen. It made sense to blame him. Worst case scenario he’d go to juvie—and she’d go nowhere.
Cass was one of the last students to come out of the building. He slunk over to the car and got in.
“What took so long?”
He shrugged. I waited. Then he said, “Teacher kept me after class. She said I’m smart and if I tried harder I could get good grades. Bitch.”
“Oh yeah, that is bitchy.” I’d pegged him on the plane, I was a little proud of myself. I asked, “So why not try harder?”
“What for?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It would be a shame if you did well in life.”
He gave me a disdainful glance. “Nobody cares about your grades in high school. They just care if you got the diploma.”
“I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Just drive, okay?”
Before we got to his house, he asked what I’d done that day. I told him about my trip to the bakery and checking out Luca’s Lifts. Of course, I left out my trip to see his mother. But I did start to lay the groundwork for my plan.
“We need to convince your mother to tell us who told her your father was beaten to death by mistake and see if that person can tell us who actually killed him. Once we find out, I’m going home.”
I said the last very firmly, wanting to get him used to the idea I was leaving. I parked the car in front of his house. We got out and went inside. He went immediately to the kitchen, pulled open the drawer with take-out menus, and began going through them.
“Do you have homework?”
“Yeah, like that’s what’s important.” He’d picked out three of the menus. “On Mondays we have Chinese.”
Standing behind him, I noticed that each of the menus had dates written on top. They were spreading things out. Probably because they were using fraudulent credit cards and didn’t want to charge too much in one spot.
He looked at the clock; it was 3:50. He went over to the wall phone and dialed the number for a place called Dragon House.
“Yeah, I want to order for pick-up. I want a lemon chicken with extra white rice, shrimp fried rice, and two egg rolls.” He listened. “Forty-five minutes? Great. And make sure it’s hot. The name is…” He reached into his jeans and pulled out a card and read it. “Blansky. Brian Blansky.”
After he hung up, he said, “My mom likes to eat at five-fifteen sharp. You need to be gone. I’ll drop you at Motel 6.”
“I’d like to have a conversation with your mother.”
“I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. Then I’ll go home. Take me to the airport.”
“You’re not going anywhere until we know who killed my dad.”
“If that’s the deal then you need to actually let me find out for you. I need to talk to your mother.”
