Blood Games

Decker regarded the teen’s face. “Joey, do you believe that Greg committed suicide?”

The boy licked his lips. “I … I don’t know.”

“Was Greg upset lately?”

“Not upset. Different.”

“Can you define different?”

“Distracted. Something was on his mind.”

“Any ideas?”

“Nothing that I can put my finger on.”

Decker said, “How about we talk on Sunday? That way it doesn’t interfere with your schoolwork. Do you want to come to the station house?”

“That would work. Can we make it at eleven? No … sorry.” He banged his head. “I’m so messed up. That’s Greg’s memorial. It’s gonna last a while. You want to meet on Saturday?”

“That won’t work for me. How about later Sunday afternoon, four or five?”

“Five would be okay.”

Decker handed the boy his card. “If you get hung up, call this number. Where’s the memorial?”

“First Presbyterian on Tanner Road.”

“I’ll stop by.” Decker scribbled something down on his notepad. “Here.” He handed the boy a piece of paper. “This is for the taillight if you get pulled over again. It says I let you go with a warning and you’re going to get it fixed over the weekend.”

“Thank you, sir.” The teen looked at Decker, but didn’t say anything.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Um … did you really just happen to know my name or were you, like, following me or something?”

“Your taillight is broken, Joey.” Decker smiled. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

CHAPTER SIX

FROM THE BACKSEAT of a cab that reeked of tobacco, Gabe texted her at 1:23 in the afternoon.

I’m here.

A minute later, Yasmine texted back: running a few minutes L8. B there soon.

A few minutes stretched to five minutes. Compulsive and punctual, Gabe was particularly antsy when waiting.

As a young child, he was always waiting: for his mom to finish up at her school, for her to finish her homework, for her to cook for him, for her to read to him, for her to tuck him into bed. Mom was always busy, busy, busy.

The five minutes turned to ten, then to fifteen. At 1:45, he texted Yasmine again.

It’s getting L8.

sorry. B right there.

It was only in retrospect that he realized how hard his mother had been working. Every spare minute of her time was taken up with her education or making ends meet. He never knew when she actually slept because she was always up before he was and went to bed after him. When he was a preschooler, they lived in a shithole studio apartment in Chicago with minimal heating in the winter. He distinctly remembered being smothered under a pile of blankets while he slept. He hated the weight. It made him feel like somebody was on top of him. But as soon as he took off one or two blankets, he was freezing. He could vaguely remember the warmth of his mother’s body, sliding into their shared bed, all of it in a fog of childhood and sleepiness.

It wasn’t until he was around five that Chris came into the picture.

No matter how he now felt about his dad, Gabe felt gratitude for Chris’s intervention. As soon as he came on the scene, they moved into a two-bedroom apartment and life became livable. They not only had more food, they had better food—chicken, fruit and vegetables, and even cookies—a far cry from his previous diet of milk, white bread, peanut butter, and macaroni.

In the back of his mind, he remembered eating a lot of noodles before then. Sometimes he’d eat noodles for days. Most of the time, Mom joined him, but there were times where she fed him and just watched him eat. He realized even at the age of two or three that Mom wasn’t eating with him. He remembered thinking that maybe she was hungry and he should share. But he was so hungry himself. And before he knew it, he had eaten up his entire bowl and drank all of his milk. And his mom would kiss his head and tell him he was a good boy. And those nights, he never saw her eat anything except drink coffee.

He sighed.

After disappearing from his life for almost an entire year, she had reached out to him. And he had blown her off. He suddenly felt ashamed, and when he felt guilty, he became moody.

Where the hell was the little girl? This was a bad idea. He became even tenser.

After Chris appeared, they never went hungry again. They had heat, they had air-conditioning, and he had the greatest luxury of them all—a piano.

Chris had taken him to Paris six weeks ago for New Year’s. Being with his dad was always like being with a powder keg with a very long lit fuse. It would eventually go off, but you never knew when. Gabe had been polite and quiet and for once, his dad decided to behave himself. The two of them actually had a pleasant time.

Not that they were around each other all that much. Chris usually slept all morning while he was out taking in the city, long walks by himself, snapping iconic architecture on his camera. They’d usually meet in the afternoon and take in a museum and then they’d go to dinner and/or a concert. Then Gabe would go back to his room while his father trawled for women.

Trying them out one by one by one. The age of consent was younger in France, and Chris took advantage of the more liberal law, screwing girls that would have landed his ass in jail in the States. All in all, his dad went through around fifteen girls in ten days. Sampling the merchandise was how he put in. There was a tacit understanding that Gabe could take what he wanted, but that would have only led to complications. So he sequestered himself in his hotel room every night and looked at the varieties of porn offered on the French Internet.

In the end, Chris had offered only one girl a job. She was a beautiful but drug-addicted nineteen-year-old. He had bought her a coach ticket on the cheapest airline he could find while Gabe, Chris, and Chris’s current girlfriend, Talia, flew back first class on Air France.

“What are the chances she’ll actually come work for you?” Gabe asked him.

“Fifty-fifty.”

She showed up two weeks later. Such spoke to the power of Chris’s charm.

WHEN GABE’S WATCH read two, he became pissed. He had already racked up twenty dollars in waiting charges and she was nowhere in sight. He told the cabdriver to hold on for another moment and got out of the taxi, texting while pacing the sidewalk.

Where are u!!!!

Sorry.

Fuck! They were going to be late. He hated being late. It set his teeth on edge. Finally, at 2:20, he saw her running down the block. If he wasn’t so furious, he would have laughed because she was comical. Red faced, she was running on heels, wearing a mini black cocktail dress that was tight on her nonexistent hips, and a black sweater with an old-fashioned furry collar. Her hair was pinned up in a kind of formal ball gown style. She was holding a beaded evening bag. His dress? A denim shirt over a black cotton tee, khakis, and vans.

She waved to him.

He didn’t wave back.

When she got to the cab, she said, “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s really late. Let’s get out of here.”

She went in first, and then he slid in beside her and slammed the door shut.

Hard.

“Go, go, go,” he barked to the driver—a Russian who spoke with a thick accent. “Take the 405 to the 101 east that turns into the 134. Take that to the 5 south until you hit the 110 south. Get off at 1st.”

“Hokay.”

“We need to get there in a half hour.”

“That is impossible.”

“Do it and I’ll make it worth your effort.”

“You the boss.”

The driver punched the accelerator and pitched them backward. Yasmine let out a slight gasp, but he ignored her. He sat back in the bench seat, fuming inwardly, his folded arms across his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Yasmine told him.

He didn’t answer. Then he said, “What took you so long?”

“I told my mom I gave back the tickets. So I had to wait until my mom and sisters left for shopping and Michael Shoomer’s party. Then I had to get ready.”

Get ready for what?

He glanced at her. She was wearing a ton of makeup, stockings, and fucking pearls—like it was a coming-out party. Even those girls look so dorky. She looked like she was playing dress-up with her mother’s clothing. He glanced away.

Nervously, she fingered her necklace. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t matter to me,” Gabe told her. “I’ve seen opera. Although I hate to be seated late. Everyone looks at you and you’re climbing over people. It’s so rude to the performers.”

She was red faced and still panting. Her eyes swept over his body and she was quiet. When she spoke, her voice was filled with self-loathing. “I’m totally overdressed.”

Gabe said nothing and continued to stew. She turned and sat peering out the side window of the cab.

Traffic was light. They were making decent time.

Finally Gabe said, “Opera attracts a lot of different people. People dress anywhere from jackets and ties to jeans. Don’t worry about it.”

She continued to stare out the window.

They rode another five minutes in silence. Gabe suddenly softened. What was the point of being nasty? That was his father’s domain. He said, “You look nice.”

She started to say something, but changed her mind.

Gabe said, “Really, Yasmine. You look very nice.”

She faced him for the first time. Her eyeliner was slightly smudged. “I’m really sorry I’m so late. My family is always late. I should have warned you. If you wanted me to come at one, you shoulda said twelve. I thought going to the opera was a real fancy thing.”

“Sometimes it is.” Gabe said to the taxi driver, “Can’t you go any faster?”

“I already go sixty-five.”

“Go seventy-five. There’s no one in front of you.”

“You pay for my ticket?”

“Yes, I’ll pay for your ticket.”

“You the boss.”

Again the cab shot forward. Gabe checked his watch. They had about a half hour to go and were about a half hour away. “Nothing in L.A. is formal, especially a matinee.”

“Now I know. I’ve never been to the opera. I’ve never even seen any kind of live stage performance.”

“Your parents don’t believe in culture?”

“They have culture, just not American culture. In Iran, I’m sure my father was very cultured. He didn’t learn English until he was thirty. Why would he go to the theater here? All the nuances would be lost on him.”

“Point well-taken. That was rude. Sorry.”

She fidgeted with the beads on her evening bag. “I look ridiculous.”

He tried out a smile. “No one’s going to be looking at you because we’ll be stumbling through the dark when we come in.”

“Sorry I made you miss everything.”

“We won’t miss everything. We’ll just have to wait until there’s a natural interlude before they’ll seat latecomers. It’s no big deal to me. I’ve seen La Traviata before.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, I saw it about four years ago at the Met.”

Her made-up eyes got wide. “You did?”

“Yeah. I used to live in New York.”

“Oh golly.” She sat back and sighed, closing her eyes. “That’s my dream.”

“To live in New York?”

“No, to go to the Met.” She sat up. “Who sang Violetta?”

“I’ve got to think. It was a while ago … I think I saw Celine Army.”

“She’s great!” She faced him, her eyes not quite meeting his. “But Alyssa Danielli is better.”

“I don’t know about better. They’re different.”

“Well, I like Danielli’s voice better. It’s sweeter.”

“I’ll go with you on that one.” He regarded her made-up face with her smeared eyeliner. “How does someone who’s never heard a live concert come to have such a discerning ear?”

She shrugged. “I’m an alien.”

Gabe held back a smile. “Liszt used to introduce Chopin by saying that he was from another planet, so maybe that’s not so bad.”

“Maybe.” Yasmine pulled out a mirror and lipstick from her purse. When she saw her face, she became horrified. “Oh, my God! I look like a freak!”

“You look fine—”

“I’m totally embarrassing … like I came off a binge in Intervention.” She pulled out a premoistened lotion wipe from her purse and started blotting her eyes. All that did was make it worse. Her lower lip began to tremble. “God, I’m a mess.”

She began to attack her face with the towelette, taking off gobs of gook. With each swipe, she smeared more and more makeup. Tears began to trickle down her cheek.

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Stop, stop, stop.” He took the wipe from her. “Just calm down. You look fine. Hold still.” Carefully, he started removing the paint from her skin until it was gone. “There you go.”

With trepidation, she looked in the mirror and said nothing.

“I don’t know why you’d want to cover your face in all this shit,” Gabe told her. “You’re much cuter without it.”

“I told you Persians dress up for occasions. Besides, now I look around ten.”

“But a very cute ten.”

She finally smiled and then carefully applied some lip gloss. “Thanks for bearing with me.”

Gabe shrugged. “You know, as long as you’re making changes, you should take your hair down. No one our age wears their hair like that unless they’re in a bridal party.”

She made a sour face and started pulling bobby pins out of her hair.

“Need help?” he asked.

“I think you’ve done quite enough, thank you—”

“You’re gonna tear your hair if you keep yanking on it like that.” He reached toward her, but she backed away. He rolled his eyes. “Hold still. I’m trying to help you, okay?”

She suddenly stopped, and her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Do whatever you want.”

Never say that to a guy. He stifled a smile. “You’ve got a lot of hair.”

“I can see you know nothing about Persian girls. We all have lots of hair and much of it in unwanted places.”

He let out an unexpected laugh. “Ever think about stand-up?”

“Glad I’m amusing.”

“Hold still.” He closed the distance between them as he carefully picked bobby pins out of her hair, one by one by one. His face was inches from her. He could taste her breath. He inhaled her perfume. Her dress was a scoop neck that had exposed her collarbones. After he took out all the clips, he pretended to smooth out her hair, letting his fingers dance over her bony protrusions. He raked his fingers through the long strands—downy soft, black and wavy. He pulled out a few loose tresses from the back of her sweater, feeling the nape of her neck.

And there it was: that all-too-familiar jolt below his waistline. Not that his pants were tight, but he was tall and, lucky him, he was proportional. All she had to do was look down to see it. Thankfully, she was too naive to notice. It was going to go to waste, but it did feel good to get a buzz from something other than porno.

“There you go.” He laid the strands over her shoulders and sat back. “Now you look hot.”

“Yeah, right!” Yasmine turned away. It was hard for her to look at his face without blushing. He was the most gorgeous boy she had ever seen in her entire life.

Gabe checked his watch and became irritated again. Which was good but it was hard to be aroused and angry at the same time. He tapped his foot as the taxi sped to its destination. He checked his watch as they approached the Music Center. By the time the taxi pulled over, they had five minutes to go.

They were at the Ahmanson Theatre side of the block instead of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion where the opera was. Rather than redirect the cabbie, it was quicker to run it.

Gabe peeled out five twenties for a sixty-two-dollar bill. “Thanks.” He threw open the door. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

He began to run across the pavement, assuming she was with him. But a moment later, when he looked over his shoulder, she was twenty paces behind. Her dress was too tight to allow unrestricted movement and her heels too high for her to run with any speed. He stopped and grabbed her hand, dragging her along, hearing the click, click, click of her heels.

“How much did you tip that guy?” she asked.

“I dunno. Who cares?”

“I’m splitting the bill with you so I care.”

“I said I’d pay for it, if you came … even though you were forty-five minutes late.”

She was panting. “I said I’ll pay half—”

“Forget it!” He pulled her forward. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

They made it to the entry at 3:04.

The lights were giving their final on and off blink, indicating that the show was about to start. Over the speakers, he could hear the orchestra tuning.

He started bounding up the steps, taking two at a time with Yasmine in tow, but her weight was dragging him down. He turned around and saw the problem. Her mouth was agape. She was gawking upward. “Look at the size of those chandeliers!”

“Yeah, they’ll still be here at intermission.” He yanked her forward. “C’mon!”

They made it inside just as the lights were dimming. He ran past the usher telling her he knew where their seats were.

Stepping over people.

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.

Finally, he found the seats.

“Turn off your phone,” he told her.

“Right.”

Gabe slumped backward in his chair and exhaled out loud. He glanced at Yasmine who was unfazed by their in-the-nick-of-time arrival and seemingly unscathed by his churlish behavior. As soon as the orchestra launched into the overture, she sat at attention with her knees pressed together, her hands gripping her beaded purse, her body pitched slightly forward as if there was something to see besides a velvet curtain.

Unbelievable!

After several breaths, he rolled his shoulders and started to relax. They were in the first row of the loge so he had the luxury of a little more legroom for his six-foot frame. He sat back, spread his legs apart, and dropped his hands into his lap.

By accident, his knee touched hers. He pulled his legs together.

She glanced at his face and gave him an ear-to-ear grin, mouthing a silent thank you before returning her eyes to the stage.

He raised his eyebrows, a small smile of his own settling across his lips. He made himself comfortable in the seat, slouching back with his arms folded across his chest. Slowly his legs fell open until once again his knee found hers.

This time he kept it right where it was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SINCE THE STATION house was quiet, Decker was planning to rip through some of last week’s paperwork, but he couldn’t concentrate; his mind was still on Gregory Hesse’s memorial service. A giant blowup of the boy’s face had been strung across the altar, young eyes without a hint of the disaster to come. To a packed church, the minister delivered wrenching prose about a life cut short by the deepest secrets of the heart. He had to stop several times to compose himself. Then friends and family spoke, dredging up memories about a child too young for the past tense.

The service ended at twelve, and the reception lasted another hour. Decker did note that there were a lot of kids in attendance. After waiting in line to offer condolences to the parents, Decker figured he made the right move by coming to the service because Wendy Hesse squeezed his hand.

Please don’t forget about my son.

“Knock, knock.” Rina was at his door, holding a paper bag. “Room service.”

“Sit down.” He grinned. “What’d you bring me?”

“Cold roast sandwich on rye with horseradish and mustard. I have a meeting at school in twenty minutes. In the meantime, I thought I’d do what I do best and that’s feed you.”

“You do a lot of things extremely well, including feeding me.”

She sat down. “And you will be home by seven, right?”

“Yes, I’ll be there.” Koby and Cindy were coming over with the babies for dinner. “Are you sure you don’t want to go out?”

“If we went out, none of us would be able to eat. So I cooked. Even if none of us eat, it’s still more cost-efficient than going out.”

“No one cooks as good as you do. What are you making?”

She gave him the menu: roasted veal breast stuffed with rice pilaf and dried fruit, green beans, whipped yams, and peach pie for dessert. His mouth was watering even as he ate his sandwich. “Try to be on time.”

“I will not try, I will be on time. Look around this place. I’m the only one crazy enough to be here Sunday afternoon. Where’s Gabe?”

“He went to the opera. He said he’ll be home by dinner.”

“The boy is an enigma, but he knows a good meal.”

“How’d the memorial service go?”

Decker gave her a recap. “Actually I’m here to talk to Gregory’s best friend. He’s a little odd. Or maybe I made him nervous when I pulled him over.”

“Y’think?” When Decker made a face, Rina said, “What struck you as odd?”

“He’s holding back.”

“That’s not odd, that’s cautious.”

“Since when have you been hired as his defense attorney?” The intercom beeped, the receptionist informing Decker that Joey Reinhart was on line two. “Hi, Joey, this is Lieutenant Decker.”

“Uh, I could make it a little earlier.”

“Sure. What time?”

“I’m actually right outside the station house.”

“Go inside and I’ll come get you.” Decker put the receiver back in the cradle and stood up. “My interview showed up early.”

“I’ve got to go anyway.” She stood up and gave him a peck on the lips. “Today we’re discussing whether to install a vending machine or to set up a snack bar and sell our own food to the kids.”

“What’s the issue?”

“Well, if we let a vending machine company provide the food, there could be potential problems with kashrut. But the pro is that they handle everything and just send us a check. Plus we don’t have to have someone manage it. If we sell our own snacks, we make more money and kashrut isn’t a problem. But then we have liabilities issues and health department issues and we have to find someone to run the snack bar. Yes, it seems trivial, but these kinds of niceties go a long way with the kids.”

“I get it. Ever since we put in a professional coffee/cappuccino machine to go along with our candy dispenser, everyone’s been much happier.”

“So there you go.” Rina smiled. “Just goes to show you. Never underestimate the power of caffeine and sugar.”

EVEN LAYERED IN a bulky, hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans, the kid was all limbs and bones. Decker took the boy into an interview room, setting him up with a glass of water and a candy bar. The kid said, “I got the taillight fixed.”

“Great.”

“Thanks for not giving me a ticket.”

“No problem. Glad you got it taken care of.” Decker pulled out a portable tape recorder. “Do you mind if we record the conversation? It’s standard procedure. No one has a perfect memory.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Decker gave the introduction, the name of the person he was talking to, the time and the date. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Sure.” Joey interlaced his long fingers and shrugged. “What’s there to say?”

“Gregory’s mom is completely in the dark about what happened. It caught her off guard.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You didn’t see it coming, either?”

The boy looked doleful. “No.”

Decker said, “Tell me about Gregory Hesse. What was he like?”

Joey’s eyes darkened. “It’s hard to describe a person that you’ve known forever. Greg was Greg.”

“What did you two do together?”

Another shrug. “We hung out … went to movies, played video games. We always got along. We’re both kinda nerdy … like you can’t tell. I’m more the typical math/science guy. Greg was great in math also, but he liked English. Reading and writing came easy to him. He used to help me with my essays.” Joey bit his lip. “He was a smart dude.”

“You have other friends in common?”

“Yeah, we have group—Mikey, Brandon, Josh, Beezel. If you’re going to survive at B and W, you need buddies.”

“What happens if you don’t have buddies?”