But he picked up the envelope and tossed it in front of the guy. With a dry throat Steve said, “Not interested.”
“No, no,” the guy said. “That’s yours. Like I said, a gift.”
“I don’t want any gift from Johnny LaSalle. You can tell him that. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Steve, there is no obligation. Johnny wants to give you a blessing. After all these years.”
“And you both can stop calling me Steve. You can tell LaSalle I don’t want to hear from him again. Tell him he’s a sick man.”
Aware that the librarian, a bespectacled man at the front desk, was looking at them with disapproval, Steve lowered his voice. “Is that clear?”
“Please, Steve, this is your brother—”
“Listen.” Steve spun in his seat to face him. “There are cops and deputy sheriffs all up and down this building. If you don’t leave now I’m going to walk outside and get one of them to explain the law to you.”
“So you don’t believe Johnny?”
“Take your money and get out,” he said.
“Johnny told me you might react this way. He really is a good judge of character. He’s a man of God.”
“That’s why he’s doing time, I guess.”
The uninvited guest pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He unfolded it. It was notebook paper, three holes and lines. He put it in front of Steve.
“Johnny wanted you to see this,” he said.
Steve looked at it.
Brother, I know I blew you away. I couldn’t tell you everything at once. I want to tell you face-to-face. When I get out. But you don’t believe me and I guess I wouldn’t either if I was you. Something bad happened back then, but not what you think. I didn’t die. I’m alive. My real name is Robert Conroy. And just to show you, I tried to think of something that only you and I would know about. That’s was kind of hard. We’re talking twenty-five years, bro. I don’t know how much you remember from that far back, but I thought maybe you’d remember this:
Once upon a time there were two monsters named Arnold and Beebleobble. One was green and one was blue.
Steve’s world, inside and out, started spinning. He thought for a second he might pass out.
“The money’s yours,” the guy said. “Johnny’ll get in touch with you.” He got up and walked out.
10
It couldn’t be.
It was.
There was no way anybody would know about the monster stories Robert used to tell him. Oh, sure, maybe in a fantasy world of some kind, where coincidences rained like candy drops, this information could have come to a prisoner named Johnny LaSalle.
That was so unlikely.
Suddenly he was back in his old room. With the clown clock on the white chest of drawers and the red ball with the black stars. The way the sheets smelled like Tide and he’d put them up to his nose and breathe in deep.
The bear with the eyes that would shatter.
And Robert, lying on top of the bedsheets, a teller of tales and protector of little brothers. Once, they’d been sitting on the sidewalk one summer day, enriched with two packs of M&M’s and a Mountain Dew from Sipe’s Market, courtesy of Mom. Robert wanted to play Nerf football and ran in to get the ball.
Stevie waited on the sidewalk. The day was hot and the Mountain Dew sweet and cold. Sipe’s always had the coldest drinks, and it was a good thing the store was so close to home.
A shadow fell across his face and Stevie looked up and saw Cody Messina standing there. The Messinas were a family Stevie wanted to avoid at all costs. They were in some kind of business that involved junk, and their yard was always a stinking mess of rusty parts of things that used to work. Cody was ten, three years older than Robert, and as mean as the Messina’s Doberman, Deuce, who was kept on a chain in their backyard but who had enough chain to get to the fence and bare his teeth at whoever walked by.
“Gimme a sip,” Cody said.
No way. It wasn’t just the principle of the thing, as far as Stevie understood principle. It was the thought of the gross, slobbering lips of Cody Messina on his can of Mountain Dew. There would be no drinking it after that.
Stevie was too scared to say anything. If he said no he’d probably get his jaw unhinged. And if he said yes he knew, even at five, that he’d be giving up too much of his spirit to a common bully.
Sitting cross-legged, he was also not able to get up and run. Even if he did, Cody was big and fast and would catch him as easily as Deuce snatching a tossed tennis ball.
“Gimme it,” Cody said.
Stevie didn’t move. The Dew was cool in his hands. He tightened his grip on the can.
“I’m gonna pound your head down your neck.”
He could do it, too. Stevie did not want his head to take that trip. But still he held to the can. He was, in fact, immobile.
Cody started to reach for the can. “Give it!”
Thunk.
Cody’s head snapped back. A Mountain Dew, another one, clunked to the sidewalk. Cody slapped his hands on his head, yelping like a wounded puppy.
“Run!”
It was Robert. Stevie rolled right, shot to his feet, took off down Hoover Street. He didn’t look back for four blocks. He held onto his Mountain Dew and kept going. When he did finally stop he saw he was alone. No hot pursuit by the hated Cody.
But what about Robert? Had Cody caught him? What would he do to Robert’s head!
Stevie ran back, fast, scared that the whole neighborhood would be crawling with Messinas, from the oldest, Red, who drove and smoked and was mean, to the youngest, Danny, only three but who’d just as soon bite you as drool on you.
Any one of that pack could jump out of a bush or trash can. And they could swarm over Robert like cockroaches.
But when Stevie got home there was no one around. No! Carried off! Robert had been captured and was being hauled to the Messinas as fresh meat for Deuce! He’d get his leg chewed off! And it was all Stevie fault, because he ran away and left Robert for dead!
“Get in here.” His mother, standing at the open front door.
“Mom, Robert’s in trouble!”
“You both are. Come here now.”
Both? Running in, heart thumping, Stevie let out a huge gust of relief. Robert was there. Sitting on the hard wooden punishment chair, his red T-shirt ripped.
“What happened?” Stevie said.
“I bit him,” Robert said.
Stevie laughed. The biting Messinas had gotten what they deserved.
“It’s not funny,” Mom said. “He really hurt that boy. There’s going to be hell to pay. Don’t think there won’t be.”
Hell? He could pay that, as long as he still had his head in the same place, on top of his neck.
Yep, Robert could sure throw. He’d nailed Cody Messina with that can of Mountain Dew and changed the course of neighborhood history. No Messina ever bothered them again.
In the law library, the vividness of the memory surprised Steve. It had been a long time since he’d thought about that day, and never so clearly, so emotionally as now.
All because his big brother was still alive.
If Johnny LaSalle was his big brother.
And if he wasn’t, how did he know what he knew?