favor. “He makes all the explosives we use to bust into latched storage spaces, trucks, whatever. Most of the time we only gotta put one knocker on the main door.”
I interrupted. “Right. That’s why the ‘knock, knock’?”
He smiled. “Funny…that guy can barely read, but he makes those things go boom without any smoke or noise.”
“You mean the bombs.”
He stopped stretching and his smile disappeared completely. “They ain’t bombs.”
“You use them for blowing things up.”
“Nah, not really.”
“Polo said—” I clicked to start a new game.
“You really gonna go listenin’ to Polo?” He sighed. I saw him gnash his teeth, but I didn’t say anything else. Instead of continuing the sketch, he twirled the pencil in his fingers.
“Well, what are they for, then?” It came out all slurred and I wasn’t sure if he heard me.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I figured he probably hadn’t, but I wanted to sound aggressive. There could be no compromising stand concerning the lives of others. “What are they for?”
Now that he understood, he smiled and casually began sketching again. “Distractin’ people sometimes, playing pranks…”
“Do you—”
“No.” His voice was stern, giving me a warning I knew not to cross. “I would if it came down to it, but none of us ain’t done nothing like that yet. Polo basically makes smoke bombs down there. It’s real good if we can’t break into a truck or a warehouse and we need to buy some time. Other kinds we set off in the storage houses after we’re done with ‘em, burns away evidence we were there.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath the entire time. While Charlie and the guys had great potential to hurt others, their ability to do so was within their realm of necessity. And for some reason that brought me little comfort. What if the others had agreed with Wallace about the need to hurt me? Would I have been mere ash in that house?
“We’re just thieves, Addie.” He looked up at me then ,and although the corner of his lips turned up, I could sense a lie there. I could see something that wasn’t right. “Nobody hurts nobody unless we gotta.”
“And yet you’ve killed people before?”
I sensed he was getting annoyed. Maybe I was treading on territory he didn’t want to talk about. I needed to be very clear, though. If I was going to know as much about him as I wanted to, then I was going to have to be.
“I told you I wasn’t a nice guy. I meant that, Addie. I killed people before that I didn’t have to.”
We both let that sink in. As horrifying as it was, I didn’t have any difficulty believing him. I could see in my mind’s eye the rage of a moment taking him over and snuffing out a life before the sensibility of the situation allowed him to do anything rational.. In other scenarios, I could justify self-defense and I could tell myself that taking life during times of war was also permissible…but what Charlie and the others did was hardly a matter of survival. For them it was about profit, about how much money they could make while still avoiding punishment from the law.
And yet, how could I be allowed to judge? Charlie did have a point. My family was fortunate enough to not have to worry too much about financial matters. We lived in a good community, we were happy, and right up until Mom became sick, our biggest problem was running out of space on the bookshelf. I had switched out the last two summers of summer camp for waitressing at my Dad’s golf course—but it was the sort of employment that was designed to “build character.” I had always been provided for and never wanted for anything. With a different sort of life, who’s to say that I wouldn’t have been capable of far worse than anyone else?
I closed the laptop and picked up one of his sketchbooks. I began flipping through it page by page, taking my time with some of the drawings I found particularly beautiful. Toward the middle of the book was an incredible grandfather clock, sketched in afternoon light over an intricate Persian rug.
“Do you hate me now?” His tone was soft, on the verge of being broken.
I flipped the book closed and sat on the floor beside him. It marveled me how dangerous he could be one minute and how very much like a child the next.