The Big Time

CHAPTER FIFTY

TROY BOLTED UP OUT of the chair, tipping it over this time. He ran out the front door. The pine branches scratched his arms and face as he batted blindly through the woods, heading in the general direction of the railroad tracks, not thinking or knowing where he wanted to end up. Behind him, he could hear his mother's cries to come back.

He kept going. When he broke into the open cut of the railroad bed, he leaped up onto the tracks and headed for the bridge. His mind swam in a hot soup of rage and disgrace and broken dreams. When his feet hit the metal trestle, he ran ten more strides and stopped in the middle. Below, the green snake of the Hooch slipped past. Jagged roots and rocks too stubborn to be swept away poked out from the red banks, and the leafless trees stretched their fingertips across the expanse, leaving only a narrow column of blue sky above.

Troy had jumped into the Hooch before. Less than two months ago he'd taken the dangerous plunge, frustrated then about the father he never knew. Now he wished none of it had ever happened. What good was a father who would soon be in jail? And Troy knew what his mom and Bob McDonough were thinking. He'd seen it in their eyes, in their faces. They believed-and Troy couldn't help thinking it now himself-that the whole reason his father had even showed up was because of the money.

Troy gripped the lip of a slanted steel girder overhead. He leaned forward, out into the empty space, and lost his lunch in a stream that spun and floated until disappearing with a faint splat into the river below.

Troy wiped his mouth on a sleeve, then felt his stomach heave again. Nothing came out, but his insides twisted painfully all the same, and his choking noises drifted out across the steady water. Tears coursed down his cheeks, and he let them fall freely from his face without wiping them. The small dots of salty water fell like tiny bombs, lost from sight after only a few feet, gone as if they never were-and that's the way Troy liked it.

After a time he sat down and dangled his legs over the water. The sun slanted low across the treetops, painting them with yellow light. Troy thought about football practice and laughed out loud.

None of that mattered.

He sat for a long time with his mind mostly numb. The shadows deepened toward evening, and the river below turned dark enough to hide its movements. When Troy heard the sound of his mother calling his name, he sniffed and shifted his seat, wiping the last smudges of tears from his face. For ten minutes he listened as her calls grew closer and closer until he heard the rap of her feet on the steel bridge. She stopped calling, but Troy heard her all the same as she moved steadily closer and the final sound of her footfalls ended beside him.

"You can't keep running away, Troy," she said.

"I won't," he said, his voice, like his heart, empty.

"Bob McDonough wasn't finished. He had more to say."

"I don't want to hear it," Troy said. "I know everything. I know what you know, and I'm done trying to defend him. I've known all along that I've got this bad side to me, and I knew it never came from you."

"Oh, Troy," she said, sitting down beside him and snaking her arm around his shoulders, hugging him tight.

"I'm done crying about it," he said.

"Good," she said, her voice a whisper. "But it isn't completely hopeless, Troy. There's something you can do."

"Like what?" he said, his voice dull and disinterested.

"You can help your father," she said.

A small spark of hope glowed deep in a pit in his mind.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, "that the FBI wants your help. Mr. McDonough's friend said you could help them."

"Help them put my own dad in jail?" Troy asked, looking up at her and blinking in disbelief.

"I don't know if anything can keep him out of jail for certain, Troy," she said, "but the way I understand it is if you're willing to help, they'll take it into account."

"What's that mean, Mom?" he asked.

She sighed. "He could get ten years in jail. If you help them, maybe it's only one. Maybe he even gets off with probation. It's not him they really want."

"Who is it?"

"The people with G Money," his mom said. "They say he started hanging around with some mobsters from Eastern Europe to help his image in the rap world. I guess a lot of the rappers associate with criminal gangs. He did something different, not a street gang, but something just as dangerous. For some insane reason, I guess it helps a person in the music business to have a bunch of crooks for friends. It's those people who gave Drew the dirty money."

"I saw them," Troy said. "Outside G Money's. Playing poker by the pool. They looked mean."

"They are," his mom said. "Very."

"But how can I help?" Troy asked.

"Well," she said, "if you'll come back to the house, that's what we're both about to find out."

"Why?" Troy asked. "Who's at the house."

"The FBI."