Killer Read online

  During the past half year, he’d ended up in the E.R. thirteen times, had nearly died twice.

  His doctor tried to talk sense into him.

  Efren listened attentively, claimed he understood.

  Blithe lie.

  The same applied to pleading by his mother, two older sisters, an aunt who worked as a health care aide and was deemed the family medical guru, a hospital social worker named Sheila Baxter who was damn good and had accomplished wonders with other patients.

  Three days after assuring Sheila he’d changed his ways, Efren ended up in a near coma.

  She called me the day he was discharged. “Got time for an interesting one, Alex?”

  “Anything you can’t handle has to be interesting.”

  She recited the history wearily.

  I said, “Want me to be brutally honest?”

  She sighed. “Hopeless?”

  “I’m always hopeful, Sheila, but I can’t perform magic.”

  “No? Isn’t that what mental health’s all about? Spells and incantations and head-shrinking voodoo hexes? Heck, Alex, maybe I should break out my Tarot deck, couldn’t be any less effective than I already am.”

  I said, “The lightbulb.”

  “I know, I know, it has to want to change. Which is fine when we’re talking naughtiness in school. But this kid—and he’s personable and bright when he’s not screwing up—is going to die soon.”

  “I’ll give it a shot, Sheila.”

  “That’s all I can ask for. And guess what? This family can pay, I’m not asking you for charity.” A beat. “Which leads me to something else about the family. They’re intact in an official sense but the father hasn’t been around for a long time. He got sent to Pelican Bay when Efren was three and will be there for twenty more years.”

  I said, “Pelican’s all about serial killers and major-league gangsters.”

  “In this case, it’s the latter. Efren’s daddy was a player in the heroin trade.”

  “Business trumps prison walls, huh? Ergo the family’s ability to pay.”

  “Alex, please don’t tell me you just got qualms. Because no matter where the money originates, Efren really needs help and, believe it or not, his mother’s a good person. Long suffering, you know? And effective; two older sisters are in college.”

  “Do I get reimbursed with Baggies of black tar?”

  Another sigh. “I would think not, dear.”

  “Don’t worry, then. Qualms are for sissies.”

  She laughed. “I’m sure Efren would agree. Who knows, you two might actually get a rapport going.”

  Rosalinda Casagrande phoned two hours later and set up an appointment with my service for the following morning. Precisely on time, a low-riding Chevy painted gold with green pin-striping and a black Aztec eagle emblazoned on the trunk huffed up in front of the house. As its engine continued to pulsate, a skinny kid in droopy duds got out of the passenger side, scratched his saggy-khaki butt, and squinted up at the sun.

  The Chevy’s engine kept running. Anyone else in the car was concealed by heavy-tint windows.

  I stood in full view of the boy. He looked everywhere but at me.

  When he began to turn his back, I called down: “Efren?”

  Reluctant swivel.

  “C’mon up.”

  He stood there.

  I said, “Or don’t.”

  His mouth dropped. “Wuh?”

  “We can talk inside or out here.” I laughed. “You can even stay down there and we’ll yell at each other. Good workout for the vocal cords.”

  His face aimed up at me.

  I said, “Nice wheels. Maybe one day you can drive it.”

  His lips pretzeled. “I already drive.”

  “Great.”

  The Chevy revved loud. The boy flinched. A second clap of gasoline thunder got him rolling his head, as if trying to dispel the noise. Rev number three sent him trudging up the stairs.

  By the time he reached the top, the trudge had been replaced by a comical swagger. Up close, he was far from impressive: small for his age, a whole lot more bone than muscle, a chin that could use help, sallow cheeks assaulted by acne. His head was shaved to the skin. A toss of pimples had chosen his scalp for a nesting spot. He had long, soft-looking arms, not much upper body. Smallish feet that he tried to augment with too-large work boots verging on cartoonish. His fingernails were clean and he didn’t emit body odor but his clothes gave off that three-day-old must that flavors adolescent bedrooms.

  I held out my hand. He looked at it.

  Withdrawing, I entered the house and continued to my office without checking to see if he’d followed. I was behind my desk for ninety-four seconds before he appeared in the doorway and gave the room a quick scan.

  “You got a lot of things, man.” His voice cracked a couple of times. Alto aiming for tenor but a long way from success. On the phone, he could be mistaken for a girl. Hopefully testosterone would eventually come to the rescue. Insulin sure hadn’t been there for him.

  “A lot of things,” he repeated.

  The office was free of personal mementos, the way a therapy space needs to be. “Think so?”

  “Yeah, those art pictures out there.”

  “You into art?”

  “Nah …” He bobbed his head a couple of times, as if adjusting to an internal beat. “You trust me with all that, man?”

  “All what?”

  He smiled. His teeth were uneven but white. “Your things, man. You got nice things, I was out there with ’em and you were in here, man.”

  “You want my things?”

  “I can have ’em?”

  “Not a chance.”

  He stared at me.

  I said, “You can sit.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Or don’t,” I said, moving papers around and consulting my appointment book.

  He continued to stand there.

  I said, “Here’s how I see the situation. Everyone’s getting on your case to be a good boy with your diabetes. It’s like a mountain of noise, coming at you all the time. So you tell ’em sure, no problem, but you mean, ‘Fuck you, leave me alone.’ ”

  The obscenity caused his head to retract. Black eyes sharpened. A boot tapped.

  “Noise, nonstop.” I ticked my fingers. “From Dr. Lowenstein, from your mom, Aunt Inez, Aunt Carmen, Aunt Dolores, Ms. Baxter. Maybe a curandero I don’t know about.”

  He didn’t react.

  I said, “Basically, you’ve got an army of people getting on your case, so you need to defend yourself.”

  He shook his head.

  I said, “I’m wrong?”

  “You don’t know me, man.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Whatever.” The tapping picked up speed. An index finger bumped atop a thumb. A dozen times.

  I said, “So now they’ve got their backs against the wall and they send you to me. You know what kind of doctor I am?”

  Grunt.

  I waited.

  He said, “Head doc.”

  “Everyone’s hoping I can find a trapdoor into your head and crawl in and tell your brain you need to be a good boy. Problem is, even if I wanted to do that, I couldn’t ’cause there’s no, no trapdoor. Your brain is yours. No one can control you.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “To go into your head?”

  Nod.

  “No way, Efren. I’m thinking it’s a complicated place.”

  He whipped around, faced me.

  I said, “There’s a lot going on in your head because you’re a lot more than diabetes.”

  He mumbled. Inaudible but the placement of crooked upper teeth over lower lip suggested something beginning with “F.”

  He glanced at the couch.

  I wheeled my chair back, stretched.

  He said, “Why you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Psycho stuff. If you don’t wanna … if you don’t care.”
r />   “Once I get to know someone, I care plenty.”

  He smirked. “You don know a dude you don give a shit?”

  I said, “Do you care about people you don’t know?”

  “I don’t care about nothin’.”

  I got up. “You drink coffee?”

  “Nah hate that shit.”

  “I like that shit, wait here.”

  Leaving him alone in the office, I took time filling a mug from the kitchen. When I got back he was perched on the arm of the couch.

  I sipped. He licked his lips.

  “Thirsty?”

  “Nah.” He swayed.

  I drank some more, sat back as far as the desk chair would allow.

  One of his hands gripped the couch. A second sway, wider. His eyes began to roll upward. “You got like juice, man?” Weaker voice. Fading.

  “Got orange.”

  “Yeah.”

  I filled a glass quickly, returned to find him slumped on the couch, pale and sweaty. He drank slowly, revived quickly. I returned behind the desk, worked on my coffee.

  Suspending the empty juice glass between his palms, he gave the office another examination. “You make a lot of money?”

  “Enough.”

  “For what?”

  “Some nice stuff.”

  “That like picture you got,” he said. “Guys hitting each other.”

  “That’s a boxing print by an artist named George Bellows.”

  “Cost a lot?”

  “I got it a long time ago, so not so much. Also, there are a lot of them. The painting they’re based on is worth millions.”

  “Who got it?”

  “A museum.”

  “Where?”

  “Cleveland.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “About two thousand miles away.”

  His eyes glazed. Apathy, now, not low sugar. I might as well have said Venus.

  I said, “Too far to walk.”

  He began to smile, checked himself. “You always work in your house?”

  “Sometimes I go to hospitals. Or to court.”

  He stiffened. “Court? Like a cop?”

  “No, I get paid to be an expert.”

  “About what?”

  “Mostly it’s people divorcing and fighting over who gets the kids. I get paid to say what I think. Sometimes it’s kids getting hurt—like in an accident—and they pay me to say that’s a problem.”

  He stared at me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s a sweet deal.”

  “Who gets ’em?”

  “Who gets who?”

  “The kids they’re fighting for.”

  “Up to the judge.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Tell the judge what I think.”

  “You’re smarter than the judge?”

  “I know more about psychology—about how people think and act.”

  His soft little chin pushed forward. What would’ve been a jut had he had more to work with. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How do people think?”

  “Depends on who they are, what’s happening to them.”

  His expression said I’d failed some sort of test.

  I said, “Like you, Efren. Sometimes you think you’re in charge of the world, you’re huge and powerful.”

  Black eyes remained fixed on me.

  “Other times, you think you have no control over anything. It just depends.”

  His hands faltered. The glass fell to the floor, thudded on my Persian rug. Scooping it up, he said, “Sorry, man.”

  I said, “It’s the same with everyone. Sometimes we’re feeling big, sometimes we’re small. I get paid to be smart because I’ve had a lot of schooling and experience. But I don’t have magic and I don’t have trapdoors.”

  “What do you got?”

  “What people tell me.”

  “I’m not telling you nothing.”

  “Your choice.”

  Head shake. “Right …”

  “You don’t think you have a choice?”

  Silence.

  I said, “Unlike the other doctors who poke you and probe you and tell you what to do, I won’t order you to do anything.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it, Efren. You’ve got enough forced upon you. I don’t want to be part of that.”

  He looked down at his knees. “You don’t want it, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Being my—doing the doctor thing.”

  “I want to do my job,” I said. “I love my job. And you seem like an interesting guy and I’d be happy to work with you. But to be part of that mountain of noise? No way.”

  He stood. Hefted the empty glass, put it down hard. “You got that, man. I don’t need no more shit.”

  Zipping past me. End of session.

  I figured I’d never hear from him again, was rehearsing my sad call to Sheila Baxter when the service rang in.

  “A Mrs. Casagrande wanting to talk to you, Doctor.”

  “Put her through.”

  A beat. “Hallo?”

  “This is Dr. Delaware.”

  “This is Efren mother.”

  “Nice to talk to you. How’s everything?”

  “Actually,” she said, “a little good. Efren test himself twice after he come home from you.”

  “That’s great.”

  “He still find the candy and sneak but he at least test and take the shot … when you wanna see him again?”

  “He wants to come back?”

  “He forget to pay you,” she said. “I give him money, he forget. I send double, okay?”

  “Sure. So Efren—”

  “He say next week. That okay?”

  I found a slot, made the appointment.

  Rosalinda Casagrande said, “Thank you, Doctor. Effo say you a mean guy.”

  “Really.”

  “That good. To him, you know? Mean is strong. He live all the life with girls, everyone thinks he the little kid, you know?”

  “He gets babied.”

  “I think now he need someone to kick his butt. He come next week.”

  For the next three months the gold low-rider arrived punctually for weekly sessions. I never set Efren’s appointments in advance, offering him a choice each time—requiring him to make the choice explicitly.

  But keeping his slot open because he’d become high priority to me. A fact I’d never let on.

  With the exception of one instance when he had a cold and canceled personally with seventy-two hours’ notice, he opted to come in.

  The first few sessions were more question than answer. His questions about me—my education, how much money I made, the places I’d lived. I gave out very little information and my reticence pleased him: Someone who protected his own privacy could be trusted to respect his.

  I dealt with the confidentiality issue early on, being clear that at fourteen, he couldn’t be guaranteed secrecy. But pledging that I’d never divulge anything he didn’t want divulged even if pressured.

  “By the cops?”

  “By anyone. Why would the cops ask me about you?”

  Sly smile. “I dunno. They come in, you tell ’em, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “What if they busted you and beat your ass?”

  “I’d have nothing to tell them.” I showed him his chart. “This is what I write every time you’re here.”

  He flipped pages. Read. The identical note every week: “Patient doing well.”

  He said, “That’s bullshit, man. I’m fucked up.” He laughed. And remained jocular for the rest of the session.

  When he arrived looking settled, we talked in my office. When he was antsy, we moved to the garden where he got a huge kick out of feeding the fish and threatened to come back with a hook and line to “catch their asses for dinner.”

  When he flagged he asked for juice. Soon, he began thanking me for “keeping it nice and cold, man. You got beer?”
/>   “Not for you.”

  “Awww.”

  “How about vodka?”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  A couple of times sitting anywhere wouldn’t do and we walked. Leaving the property and getting as far as the Glen before returning. Once we spotted hawks circling and I had to disabuse him of the notion that they were those “vultans that eat dead stuff.”

  I learned about him. The TV he watched, the movies he liked, the foods he enjoyed. A girl in his class that had “like tits out to here, man, and prolly a real hairy pussy.”

  The subject of his father never came up. Same for his gang heritage. Not a word about the drive-bys in his Boyle Heights neighborhood, including two fatal attacks reported in the papers that I looked up in my Thomas Guide and found to be walking distance from his house.

  Same for diabetes.

  On the twelfth session, I took the risk.

  “Let me ask you something, Effo.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a smart guy—more than smart, you’re sharp, perceptive—you see things clearly—”

  “I know what that means, man.” Grin. “Like a college perceptor.”

  “On top of being smart, you like yourself. Which is good, that’s a sign of strength. You also understand all about diabetes. The scientific part.”

  “All that shit? Keep the sugar smooth, man.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So how come when they sent you to me you weren’t keeping it smooth? I’m asking ’cause I’m curious.”

  Shifting sideways, he stretched prone on the couch. “Know what I’m doing, lying down?”

  “What?”

  “I saw it on TV, they say that’s the way you spose to do the head-doc shit.”

  I smiled. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  He closed his eyes. His breathing slowed and I figured he’d sleep, or fake it, to avoid answering.

  He said, “Why’d I do it?”

  The eyes opened. He turned sideways. Winked. “It’s the diabetes, man. That shit don’t fit my lifestyle.”

  I thought: Lifestyle? You dumb kid, you’re lucky you still have a life.

  I said, “Okay, makes sense.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  Detective Millie Rivera said, “Looks like you chose the right patient. I never figured Effo could be right about anything but being wrong. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Years ago.”