She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,102

started in with those people back when we were kids, and it all escalated since then. I thought the money was his way of paying you for helping him or for working with those guys or both, or something. He really spooked me with the gun. I pretended it was all good, but shit, Jack, a gun? We were twelve. We had zero business with a real gun. I figured the story about the girl was some elaborate coverup you concocted instead of telling me the truth. I kept my distance. I thought the whole story was bogus. Then I started seeing these posters around town with your phone number and her picture, and I knew it wasn’t. All those things you and Dunk told me back in the day about this girl, I thought you made it up. I should have known you wouldn’t lie. Dunk, maybe, not you, though.” He stared down at his shoes. “I’m sorry. You were my friend, and I let you down. I let you down on so many levels. I should have been there the whole time, and I wasn’t. I’m here now, though. I want to make things right, somehow.”

An awkward silence fell between us. I found myself leaning against the door, my eyes trailing the thin beams of light skirting around the curtains drawn in the living room. “Have you seen Dunk?”

Willy bit his lip. “I saw him yesterday coming out of the McDonald’s on 51. He didn’t look good. Real thin and in a wheelchair. I didn’t recognize the guy pushing him. There were about six other men with him too, nobody I knew, all older. They loaded him into a van and drove off toward the city with a patrol car right behind them.”

“So he still hasn’t been arrested?”

“My dad knows someone down in the DA’s office, and he told me they couldn’t tie any of it to him. That other kid confessed to orchestrating the shooting, and he killed himself before they could get the names of the actual gunmen. They’re trying to build a case against Dunk on the drug business too, but like Crocket, he’s isolated from everything. Looks like he’s taking over, probably already has,” Willy said. “Have you seen him?”

I shook my head and told him how he came by, told him about my visit with Dunk in the hospital. As I finished, I found myself looking at a bottle of Jameson on the table beside Willy, about a finger or two left in the bottom.

“Dude, you stink,” Willy said. “When was the last time you took a shower?”

Three, no four days.

“Yesterday,” I said.

He opened his mouth to say something, and I raised my hand and waved him off, heading toward the bathroom.

I stood under the hot water for nearly an hour, just stood there, let the water run over me, before I finally picked up the soap.

When I emerged from the bathroom, the aluminum foil was gone from the windows, all the boxes and bottles had been picked up, he even put fresh sheets on the bed, dirty laundry piled at the foot. Willy was in the living room, scrubbing at a mystery stain on the coffee table with a rag in one hand and a bottle of Windex in the other.

Three black trash bags stood in the center of the room, all full.

Gerdy’s dress and panties were still on the floor, where she left them, the only thing in the room left untouched.

Two McDonald’s bags sat on the coffee table, steam rising from one. A bottle of Gatorade beside them, orange flavored. Willy gestured toward the bags. “I got you two McGriddles. You still eat those, right?”

The idea of eating anything made my stomach churn, but I knew I had to get some food in me. My entire body was shaky from lack of calories, and my mouth tasted sour. I pulled one of the breakfast sandwiches from the bag and took a bite. The second bag contained a large coffee. I helped myself to that, too.

Willy gave up on the stain and sat on the edge of Jo’s chair. “I talked to Matteo. He wants us to come down there.” He pointed at the Gatorade. “Try to chug that. The electrolytes will help with your shakes.”

I nodded, finished the first sandwich, and started on a second, wondering what Willy did with the bottles that still contained a taste of whiskey. I didn’t see them anywhere.

10

“You’re a fucking drunk.”

Dewitt Matteo sat across