Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

My Life in Crime by Janice Law

It started the day Billy J showed up at school in a real leather jacket and a pair of Nike Zoom LeBron IIs. The leather was class, man, but LeBron IIs! The coolest shoes on the planet. I’m not the biggest kid on court, but I got a killer outside shot, and I’d sure fly with shoes like those. As I kept telling Mama, all I needed to take my game to the next level was better equipment. But Mama, who wasn’t my mom at all but my grandmother, had old-fashioned ideas and was all the time telling me that Payless sneaks were good enough if they “kept the wet off my feet.”

So there I’m dreaming of LeBron IIs with the special support straps that would lift my game, when in comes Billy J, fresh from a trip to Sportslocker and the top leather shop in the mall. He’s wearing a four hundred — dollar bomber jacket and my LeBron II shoes. Mine. Are me and the guys interested? Do we want to know how this could have happened when Billy J’s so dumb the corner dealers won’t touch him for a runner? Sure we do. Fortunately, Mitch, who lacks the cool and self-restraint that gives me a bigger game than you’d expect from my size, comes right out and asks him.

Billy J, moving and styling like some newborn rap star, says, “It’s the settlement.”

And being that dumb, he tells us the rest, starting with how his cousin knows a guy who knew another guy, plus confusing legal and medical stuff with relatives’ contacts we don’t need to bother with here. Some of my guys are losing interest before Billy J gets to the point, but I still got one eye on the LeBron IIs, and I keep my ears open. The deal was pretty simple once Billy J finally spits it out. The night of the accident, his brother Wesley drives the family car along South Main at eight P.M. “Eight exactly,” says Billy J. “No later, no earlier. Super important.” He goes on about this till we get the picture.

Anyway, Wesley’s on his way to his night shift at McDonald’s, and he has his sister Meghan with him, giving her a lift to a friend’s house. They’re rolling along Main, right at the speed limit, which impressed Billy J, “ ’Cause my brother’s a speed king,” when “Boom! Bang! Crash!”

Billy J’s got minimum verbal, as you can soon tell from talking with him. What’s happened is that the guy who knew the other guy who’s some far-off Billy J relative has come out of a side street and lost his brakes and piled into the back quarter panel of the Billy J family car.

“The bullet car was done professional,” says Billy J, like this is some sort of job, a career path like Mr. Dawkins is always going on about, how we need a “career path” to take us from where we are to someplace none of us can imagine. Perhaps I can put down “bullet car driver” next time.

“They hurt?” I ask.

Billy J gives me a look. It’s a scary thing, I tell you, to see a loser like Billy J in fancy gear with a scornful look. “I told you, done professional. Not a mark on them.”

“How you get money for that?” asks Kev.

“Whiplash,” says Billy J and nods his head. “The doctor said Wes was one bad case, and Meghan was almost worse. They had to have therapy and everything.”

“You got to pay for that,” says Mitch. “How they get health insurance?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with them,” says Billy J. “And the auto insurance pays for everything.”

“Sure, you say,” says Kev. “I don’t think there was an accident. I think you lifted that jacket and run out of the mall.”

“No way. You ask my Aunt Bessie. She ‘bout hit the roof we didn’t add her daughter as a jump-in.”

“I wouldn’t want to jump her daughter,” says Kev and everyone laughs.

“A jump-in ain’t even in the car. Just on the accident report. I’m telling you them insurance companies got the money.”

Kev and Mitch weren’t impressed, but I could sort of see how it worked. ‘Course you had to have a doctor, and a lawyer was good, too, ‘cause nobody in their right mind would take Wesley Durfen’s word for anything with cash involved. Major connections required, and even with the LeBron shoes, I’d probably have forgotten the whole thing, if other guys around hadn’t started sporting fancy gear. Then the Ramondis got a hot tub, and Hector’s dad got his teeth done. Tanya Morris managed a new car, and her brother-in-law got a set of tools and started doing cut-rate roofing jobs.

Pretty soon everyone at school and around the basketball court is talking settlements and the finer points of rear-end crashes. I learn a whole lot about whiplash injuries and back pain and rear-quarter panel damage — human and automotive. One night when Mama is complaining about the electric bill and telling me for the millionth time I can’t get a cell phone, I come right out and say, “What we need is a settlement.”

“We’re already next to a housing project,” says Mama. “A settlement’s more than I need.”

The thing with Mama is you’re not always sure if she’s onto you and making a joke, or if like most folk her age, everything new and big’s passed her by.

“I’m talking about an insurance settlement. Like everybody’s been getting.”

“You’re talking about a bunch of no-good gangbangers,” says Mama.

“Mr. Ventilla’s no gangbanger. He got his teeth fixed ‘cause he was in a car accident.”

“He gets hurt in an accident, he deserves to get his teeth fixed,” says Mama, refusing to see what’s right in front of her.

“It wasn’t an accident. Hector was in on it, too, and I saw him last month with one of those cool little Kawasakis.”

“He’ll have a real accident with that,” says Mama, which I thought was likely but wouldn’t admit. “Then where will he be? Wishing he’d left the damn thing alone.”

This is off topic, for sure, but that’s how Mama talks till you find yourself blocks away from cell phones or a way to tap into insurance. I spell out the details for her about Billy J and the lawyer and New Life Chiropractic, Inc., a little storefront down on River Street that’s all of a sudden doing business like Wal-Mart. I’m getting into whiplash and why it’s the best injury of all, when Mama cuts me off.

“I don’t want to hear another word more now or ever,” she says. “We don’t have much, but we’re going to live honest.”

She stuck to that, although when she had to cut back her hours cleaning at the motel, we had lots of bean and rice dinners, and I had to put my can money and circular delivery cash into groceries instead of a cell phone or LeBron IIs.

“Be up to LeBron IIIs,” says Mama when I complain. “You get yourself a better pair by waiting.”

I grouse to Kev and Mitch, but they aren’t much better off. Kev’s dad’s been gone even longer than mine, and Mitch’s working the Wal-Mart loading dock. “We gotta get ourselves a settlement,” says Mitch.

“Mama’d about kill me. She’d tattoo my ass,” I says, and ‘cause neither Kev nor Mitch has initiative, the settlement stays just so much bull around the court and in the hallways. Then one day Mama’s home from the Hampton Inn before I get back from school. I open the door and I can tell right then that something’s wrong. The apartment feels different, like the air has gone out of it, and it’s quiet in a different way too. Not the quiet of the TV or my boom box waiting to be turned on or the fridge opened and a soda cracked. Something else was waiting.

“Who’s there?” I call. I’m maybe even a little nervous. You don’t always know what you come home to in our neighborhood.

“That you, Davis?” Mama’s voice sounds different, like when she took pneumonia three winters ago.

She’s lying on the bed in her room looking very white and very old. I never think of Mama as being any particular age except when she’s sick. “What happened? You get the flu that’s going around?” I’m worried, but I’m also thinking now I can’t crank up the boom box and have Mitch and Kev over.

“Maybe. Probably that’s it,” Mama said. But she doesn’t sound convinced. “I’ve got this pain.”

I forget my afternoon plans and start to get worried. When Mama says she hurts, it’s something serious.

“Should we go to the ER?” I ask.

She doesn’t know. She says yes and then no, and I have a bad feeling about deciding either way. Finally, so I don’t have to be the one, I says I’ll ask Mrs. Perez. She’s our next-door neighbor, a little short woman with neat black hair, who has a night shift job in the hospital laundry. By default, she’s the medical resource for our block. Mrs. Perez comes in, takes one look at Mama, puts her hand on her forehead, which I hadn’t thought to do, and says, “I drive you to the ER.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” says Mama.

“I drive you and Davis stays with you. I gotta be here for Luisa getting home.” Luisa’s in the elementary and gets home later ‘cause of the bus routes.

So we get into Mrs. Perez’s ancient Subaru. Mama looks green and winces every time we hit a pothole. In the ER, we meet Dr. Patel, an intern, who has a round brown face that gets serious when he talks to Mama, and we get a referral to an oncologist, which sounds like a funny specialty but which turns out to be as bad as you can get. It’s like Mama says, you think you have worries, then you get real trouble and you realize things weren’t so bad before.

Now I got to come home every day after school, pronto, to shop and do the dinner; no hanging around the basketball court, working on my outside shot and my quick moves to the hoop. I gotta consult with Mama on the shopping, of course, because I’m too young to get a regular job and she’s had to quit at the motel. “Just for a few months,” she says. “Till I get over the surgery.”

I don’t know about that, but in the meantime, we’re living on welfare. Mama scours the coupons and flyers and gets on me to take the bus out to the big supermarket instead of shopping the Jiffy Mart or the Vietnamese market. A trip like that takes up the afternoon, and I usually make it on check day.

Mama has regular visits to the hospital for her chemo too. I go with her unless it’s during school time ‘cause Mama’s dead set on my staying in school. I have feelings both ways; I feel I should go and make sure she gets there in the old car and has somebody to be with her when there’s needles and doctors. On the other hand, I hate the smells of the hospital and the tight feeling in the air, like everybody’s facing some bad scary thing, which they are, for sure. Things I don’t even want to think about too much.

Anyway, Mama gets through the chemo and starts with the radiation. “Do me up like that new meat, doesn’t ever go bad,” she says, sounding like herself. But in the meantime she can’t go back to the Hampton Inn and making beds and cleaning, and she keeps mentioning my Aunt Rita, who lives outside of Jacksonville. Mama keeps saying things like how nice Aunt Rita is and how kind and how she has a boy, Brian, just about my age.

Last thing in the world I want is to go to Jacksonville, Florida, and live with Aunt Rita, who I don’t know, or her kid, Brian, either. What we need is a settlement, and we need one now. We got an old junker of a Ford that Mama used to drive to her work and now takes to the hospital. It’s ideal for the purpose, but Mama won’t consider it, and I’m not old enough for my license.

“She’ll never do it,” I say to Billy J. I’m so desperate, I’ve talked to him about the lawyer and the chiropractor and getting the job done professional.

“Up-front money for that,” says Billy J.

“If I had money I wouldn’t need a settlement,” I says.

He says he’ll think about it, like this is some big favor. I’d about given up hearing anything, when one day Mama is feeling okay, and there’s no radiation on the schedule, and the shopping is done, I’m down at the court, missing everything because I’m so out of practice, and this guy comes over. He’s skinny with a yellowish face and a thin mustache, and he’s smoking a green cigar. His waist is so little his pants are all bunched around his belt, and he doesn’t look like much except for his arms, which are ropey with muscle like he’s lifted serious weight.

He watches me for a while, then raises his chin and gestures to show he wants to talk to me. Privately.

I’m not enthusiastic. He’s no bigger than I am, but he gives off a kind of warning vibe, like a video game villain with a pulsing bad aura. I come over to the fence.

“You Davis? Friend of Billy J’s?”

I says yeah and there he is: Victor, the guy who makes accidents happen, who has arrangements with lawyers and chiropractors, who can do serious rear-quarter panel and axle damage without creating fatalities. He’s some kind of foreign, Viet or Thai or maybe some weird Indian-Hispanic. I don’t know what I expected a bullet car driver to be like. But this is it: thin, smelling of cigar smoke, with narrow eyes and a cold stare.

We sit on a bench in the park. He doesn’t like it that I can’t drive. He doesn’t like it that Mama won’t cooperate. He’s ready to blow off the whole idea, when I mention we just gotta have a settlement ‘cause Mama’s a cancer patient, fifth floor, Central Oncology unit. I don’t know why I added all that — guess it just made it sound more official, as if there’s anything more official than cancer.

He gets interested at that. “Sympathetic victim,” he says. Then he asks a lot of questions about what kind of car and when she goes out.

I said for a regular schedule of radiation. And Mama was always, always on time.

“Better if you was driving.”

“I’m not old enough.”

“Not even for a learner’s permit?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “But we do this, I want twenty-five percent — of everything.” He reaches out and takes hold of my shirt in a way I don’t like, but I know we have no choice. This is our one chance, and we have to take it.

Well, I start seeing him around our street and get so I recognize his car — a big, heavy Chevy Caprice, practically vintage. More than once I see him parked on a side street near the hospital. Then one day, just before Mama finishes with a round of radiation, the Caprice is idling at the curb as I walk home from school. The passenger side door opens. “Get in,” he says. “We gotta set this up.” Just like that.

I get in. It’s dead simple. Mama’s radiation appointments are set at three P.M. She’s always on West Walnut heading for the hospital lot by two forty-five; Mama hates to be late. Victor’s in the Caprice on Chapel Street, and the accident goes down at that intersection. “Very tricky,” he says. “Thirty percent.”

“You said twenty-five,” I says, but I already sense there isn’t much point in arguing.

“Midday,” he says. “Traffic. Cops. Very tricky.”

I can see that. “But nothing’ll go wrong,” I says, half wishing I was home and had never met him.

“Thirty percent and nothing goes wrong.” He smiles, and I swear he had pointed teeth.

“When?” I ask.

“Today.”

I hustle home and get ready to go with Mama. I’m all the time watching the clock, nervous she’s going to be late — or worse, early. It’s not one of her good days; she sits in the car for a minute, kinda collecting herself. She says radiation softens your brain and she is sometimes forgetful. She looks awful, too, pale in that soft doughy way old people get, which scares me when I let myself think about it. But this is why we need a settlement, so Mama isn’t all the time worried about bills and paying the pharmacy, and so I don’t have to live with Aunt Rita and her son Brian.

“We gotta go,” I says. “You want me to drive?” I don’t know if she knows I can, thanks to Kev’s older brother who lets us practice with a junker down on the river road.

Mama shakes her head and puts the key in the ignition. “You worried about something?” she says. “You got them big tests coming up at school?”

I wish. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just wish your radiation was over and you were all better.”

She puts her hand on my knee for a minute, just a minute, but it tells me everything I don’t want to know and a few things I need to remember. Then the car pulls away. I look out the window, counting down the streets. I wish this was over. Washington, South Adams, Jefferson. Chapel’s next. I gotta be alert ‘cause Victor’s gonna pull out in front of us and swerve and clip the rear on my side. I repeat that to myself a couple of times. I’m thinking how very cool it will be, the crash and all, when suddenly Mama hits the brakes and jerks the wheel so she misses the gray green Caprice that’s suddenly filling my window.

Our Fairlane swings into the oncoming traffic; Mama’s struggling with the wheel, trying to get us back in the right-hand lane. I shout ‘cause there’s this oncoming delivery truck, and Mama, who’s about got no muscle left between the chemo and the radiation, pulls the wheel but can’t get it round before the impact. Squealing tires and brakes, shattering glass, twisting metal. Not the crash I’d imagined, not a video game crash, but a shock that unhooks all your bones and wets your jeans and brings blood into your mouth where it sloshes around with your heart.

I realize I’m yelling and moving, but Mama’s not. She’s leaning over the steering wheel and her car door is caved in. I start struggling to get my seat belt off and unhook hers and I’m starting to pull at her to get her out when someone yells, “Leave her, leave her. You’ll hurt her worse.”

I don’t know what to do, but I keep talking to her, telling her she’ll be all right. There are sirens and a cop comes, and I’m telling him she’ll be late for her radiation, Memorial Hospital, Fifth Floor, Oncology Unit. The cop gets on his phone and calls for an ambulance, though we’re only two blocks away, and I’m thinking I can walk, we can walk, when the cop comes and puts a blanket around me, though I hadn’t realized I was cold, and has me sit down on the sidewalk. That’s what a real crash does to you; I guess why they call it a bullet car.

They keep me in the hospital overnight. I keep saying I need to see Mama, but it’s the next morning before they take me down to her room, which isn’t a real room at all but a glassed-in place like a big fish tank full of monitors and machines. This is worse, ten times worse than the oncology waiting room. A doctor’s there, not the intern we know, Dr. Patel, nor the gray-haired oncologist, but another doctor, a short African with an accent. He says I can talk to her for a minute. Only a minute.

“Mama,” I says, taking her hand, “Mama, I’m so sorry.”

She opens her eyes and though she squeezes my hand, I can see she’s already gone a long way off. I want to tell her about the accident, about the settlement, about the biggest mistake I ever made, but she shakes her head slightly. She has something important to tell me; she opens her mouth, struggles, and finally whispers, “Hall closet, your birthday.” Then she presses my hand again and closes her eyes.

The doctor puts his hand on my shoulder. Only a minute.

I see Mama several times after that, but she doesn’t speak again, and I don’t feel right telling her anything that would upset her. The day she died, the doctor sat me down and said she could not have survived anyway. Her cancer had metastasized. I knew what that meant from reading the little pamphlets in the oncology waiting room. All the radiation and all the chemo in the world would not have saved her.

A week later, I’m packing to go south when I remember the hall closet and what was so important that Mama told me that last, instead of anything else. I open the door. There’s a rolled-up quilt on the floor and underneath it, a shoe box. I know what’s inside before I lift the lid, and it makes me feel sick and glad and sad all at once: a pair of Nike Zoom LeBron IIs. My size.

I keep them under my bed now, and the only time I’ve ever hit Aunt Rita’s boy Brian was when I found him with his feet in them. I feel funny about those shoes. I can’t bear the thought of putting them on and playing in them, and at the same time, I can’t bear the thought of her saving up for them and giving them to me, and me not using them. So they’re in the box and ‘bout every night, I lift the lid and push aside the tissue paper and take a look at them. Sometimes that’s all I do; sometimes I put them on and even lace them up. Whenever I do, my old life with Mama and Kev and Mitch and Billy J and settlements comes back to me, along with my short life in crime.