including a red imitation leather wallet. He scooped everything back inside and took it over to the kitchenette. Although he knew damned well that his money was now living in the pocket of Mr. Dealerman’s designer jeans, part of him insisted that there must be some left, if only because he needed some to be left. Ten dollars was enough for three drinks or two six-packs, but it was going to take more than that today.
He fished out her wallet and opened it. There were some pictures—a couple of Deenie with some guy who looked too much like her not to be a relative, a couple of Deenie holding a baby, one of Deenie in a prom dress next to a bucktoothed kid in a gruesome blue tux. The bill compartment was bulging. This gave him hope until he pulled it open and saw a swatch of food stamps. There was also some currency: two twenties and three tens.
That’s my money. What’s left of it, anyway.
He knew better. He never would have given some shitfaced pickup his week’s pay for safekeeping. It was hers.
Yes, but hadn’t the coke been her idea? Wasn’t she the reason he was broke as well as hungover this morning?
No. You’re hungover because you’re a drunk. You’re broke because you saw the deathflies.
It might be true, but if she hadn’t insisted they go to the train station and score, he never would have seen the deathflies.
She might need that seventy bucks for groceries.
Right. A jar of peanut butter and a jar of strawberry jam. Also a loaf of bread to spread it on. She had food stamps for the rest.
Or rent. She might need it for that.
If she needed rent money, she could peddle the TV. Maybe her dealer would take it, crack and all. Seventy dollars wouldn’t go very far on a month’s rent, anyway, he reasoned, even for a dump like this one.
That’s not yours, doc. It was his mother’s voice, the last one he needed to hear when he was savagely hungover and in desperate need of a drink.
“Fuck you, Ma.” His voice was low but sincere. He took the money, stuffed it in his pocket, put the billfold back in the purse, and turned around.
A kid was standing there.
He looked about eighteen months old. He was wearing an Atlanta Braves t-shirt. It came down to his knees, but the diaper underneath showed anyway, because it was loaded and hanging just above his ankles. Dan’s heart took an enormous leap in his chest and his head gave a sudden terrific whammo, as if Thor had swung his hammer in there. For a moment he was absolutely sure he was going to stroke out, have a heart attack, or both.
Then he drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Where did you come from, little hero?”
“Mama,” the kid said.
Which in a way made perfect sense—Dan, too, had come from his mama—but it didn’t help. A terrible deduction was trying to form itself in his thumping head, but he didn’t want anything to do with it.
He saw you take the money.
Maybe so, but that wasn’t the deduction. If the kid saw him take it, so what? He wasn’t even two. Kids that young accepted everything adults did. If he saw his mama walking on the ceiling with fire shooting from her fingertips, he’d accept that.
“What’s your name, hero?” His voice was throbbing in time with his heart, which still hadn’t settled down.
“Mama.”
Really? The other kids are gonna have fun with that when you get to high school.
“Did you come from next door? Or down the hall?”
Please say yes. Because here’s the deduction: if this kid is Deenie’s, then she went out barhopping and left him locked in this shitty apartment. Alone.
“Mama!”
Then the kid spied the coke on the coffee table and trotted toward it with the sodden crotch of his diaper swinging.
“Canny!”
“No, that’s not candy,” Dan said, although of course it was: nose candy.
Paying no attention, the kid reached for the white powder with one hand. As he did, Dan saw bruises on his upper arm. The kind left by a squeezing hand.
He grabbed the kid around the waist and between the legs. As he swung him up and away from the table (the sodden diaper squeezing pee through his fingers to patter on the floor), Dan’s head filled with an image that was brief but excruciatingly clear: the Deenie look-alike in the wallet photo, picking the kid up and shaking him. Leaving the marks of