Moondogs - Alexander Yates [111]
Monique brought the phone back to her ear and came in on Joseph advising her how best to break it to the kid. “They should be the first words out of your mouth. You should be direct and honest. It isn’t your job to console anybody. When my father—”
She cut him off by saying his name a bunch of times. Then, without letting him interrupt, she told him what she’d found in Shawn’s room. The new clothes. The cell phone. The pipe and baggies swollen with pot. Joseph was quiet for a while.
“I’m going to murder him.”
She laughed a little. “That’s exactly what I said when I found it.” Then she bit her lip, worried he might ask: To whom?
“How could I have missed the smell?” he asked. “We know that smell. And the clothes. How did I not notice new clothes?”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” she said. “You were surrounded by new everything.”
“You, at least, had an excuse. You were so busy. I feel terrible, Monique.”
“You have nothing to feel terrible about.” Saying this threw her off balance. She’d been sure his first response would fall along the lines of I-told-you-so. But he was being generous and empathetic. And she was standing there with Reynato working his fingers up and down her spine, getting closer to her ass each time, leaving a just-touched chill over her skin. She felt good and rotten.
“It’s late,” she said. “I should go.”
“You want input on his punishment?”
“Let him explain himself. Depending on how he does, nuke him.”
“I thought I might go easy. He’s had a tough year, too.”
“This wasn’t a recreational amount, Joe. It was a distribution, expelled from school, me losing my job kind of amount.”
“Shit.” He almost never swore. “I will talk to him.”
They said good night and hung up. Reynato swallowed Monique in a hug, one hand still knuckling her backbone. He was shorter than her, so she had to bend down to put her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder. He smelled faintly of fireworks.
“It’s the Bridgewater boy, isn’t it? The one you’re seeing tomorrow?”
“You know about this?” she asked.
“I do. News like that moves quick around the department, especially when the victim is the buddy of a newly minted senator. Even more especially when the victim is a white American …” Reynato trailed off, the corners of his lips twisting bitterly. “You tell that boy his father’s going to be just fine.”
She brought her face up from his neck.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I know he’s in trouble.” He emphasized the word I. “Tell the kid that he can bank on it.”
“I’m not making any promises,” she said.
“Well, I am.”
MONIQUE GOT ALMOST no rest that night. She wrote out a script of what she’d say and practiced it for hours. When she finally got to bed it was nearly impossible to sleep for those goddamn animals making so much noise. She woke once to find the lovebird perched on the footboard, singing at her, and again some time later to see the gecko walking along the ceiling directly above, green and peach-colored feathers jutting from its leathery mouth like fingers. She thought it was a nightmare until the next day around noon, when she woke to find a dusting of beautiful feathers on the hardwood, a severed foot, and a blood speck no bigger than a lentil. The gecko was still on the ceiling, digesting, but managed to escape when she went after it with a broom. Her loathing for the gecko tasted like a mouthful of batteries.
It was a Sunday, but Monique dressed as though heading to the office. She wore a long-sleeved bolero—her blazers all needed cleaning—over a conservative, border-print skirt and blouse. She applied heavy makeup to cover the rings under her eyes and then washed some of it off, not wanting to look too severe or plasticky. Howard Bridgewater’s son wasn’t in when she arrived at the Shangri-La, so she waited, returning to his room every half hour or so to knock on it, hard. When he finally answered