She put on her game face. “That’s not right. I was nineteen years old. I had this great souped-up wooden cruiser. It was easy to bring a little bit down from Canada. Make some extra money. We’re talking hundreds of dollars here. That’s not smuggling. That’s a hobby.”
“I see.”
He didn’t, though, she could tell. “All I got was a warning, and I had to do community service.”
“But then they found…what…ten kilos on your boat?”
“A set-up. Seventeen years later. I hadn’t sold dope in years. For christsakes, I was living with a customs agent.”
“A customs agent?”
“Is there an echo in here?”
“Tell me about that.”
“Years ago he worked Roche Harbor. I used to stop there. I was just twenty-one. We both had family from Greece. One thing led to another. Then he got moved to L.A. Seven months later Billy was born. When I told him about his son, he was angry at me for having the baby. He didn’t want the responsibility. I told him that Billy was my responsibility, that I expected him to stay in L.A. Maybe three years ago, Al shows up again. He had grown up. We got together. Billy had just turned twelve.” And for almost a year, they tried to be a family. They had done all right too. Billy, especially.
“Where is Al now?” he asked.
“He disappeared the morning I was busted.”
“Just took off?”
Dead. Nick Season’s inhuman work. She hadn’t thought about it when Al told her Nick owed him money. She didn’t ask questions when Al said it was for some favor he had done years ago. It never occurred to her that Al, a small fish in any big pond, was about to brace a great white shark. Corey looked over at Dr. Stein. He was waiting, not in any kind of hurry. She didn’t think she ever really loved Al, but he was Billy’s dad. “I guess so,” was all she could think to say.
“Was Al selling marijuana?”
“Al? Al Sisinis?” she asked. But before he could answer, she said, “No.”
He was back in the file. “It says here that the marijuana they found on your boat was from an evidence locker at Customs.”
“That doesn’t mean Al was selling it.”
He looked up. “Did you keep marijuana on your boat?”
“Okay, we kept some dope on the boat—never more than an ounce—for personal use. And maybe Al was skimming off a bust he made. I don’t know.” That’s where everyone, especially the investigating officers, stopped listening to her story. “Someone else stole twenty kilos from that same shipment and planted ten on my boat along with a sawed-off twelve gauge.”
“So you believe you were set up?”
Corey looked right at him. “Believe? I know I was set up. Someone wanted me to go to prison.” That’s all she could tell him. Nothing she could prove, either.
“Why? Who would do that?”
Nick Season is who. “I dunno.”
“You pled guilty.”
“So? So what? That’s a deal. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Many of my evaluees believe they’re innocent. Some are, some aren’t.” Abe paused. “I can’t always tell.”
“I was innocent,” she said softly. “There’s nothing to ‘tell’.”
He made that “V” with his eyebrows. “Did you have a bad lawyer?”
“He was all right. But I never had a chance.”
“Did he tell you to plead guilty?”
Stein was like a pit bull. She caught herself starting to lose it. “Let it go,” was all she said, slow and clear.
“I can’t, Corey. What I do is try to understand why you do what you do. I may even be able to help.”
Help? Nick sent her a card every year on Billy’s birthday. “I don’t need your help. I’m out. And there are some things you just aren’t ever going to understand. You want my trust? Well, mister, that’s a two-way street. So when I say let it go, you’ve got to trust me on that.”
He made a note on his yellow legal pad.
Corey sat in her black pickup across the street from Jackson High School. She was checking out the kids as they came pouring onto the street, milling around, texting, grouping up at the bus stop or in the parking lot. They were young, uncertain, and scraggly, these high schoolers with their colorful Nikes and wild hair. Some of the girls had nose or eyebrow rings, and a lot of the guys were sagging their pants or their baggy warm-ups. A gangly boy caught her eye from afar. He was tall and somehow familiar. It was his walk, and the headphones. Was that Billy? Yes! He was tapping his fingertips against his thigh. My God, he had to be three inches taller. His hair was long, and kind of wild. He was walking alone, confident-looking, carrying a worn book bag over his shoulder. Billy was handsome, like his dad, and he looked like he could take care of himself. She teared up, relieved and proud.
Just like that, Billy was inside a bus and on his way somewhere. She followed the bus, unsure what else to do. On Pike Street, west of Twelfth Avenue, she saw him step down. He continued west, walking down the hill toward the water. His step was a little livelier, and he had done something to his hair—tied it back in a ponytail. He wore a hooded blue sweatshirt now, though he left the hood down. He seemed at ease here, eyeing the kids who roamed this edgy street.
This was her first time in the Pike-Pine corridor in two years. Corey took in the funky cafés, the gay bars, the music clubs, the ethnic restaurants, a hip sex shop, even a witchcraft bookstore. She had forgotten the spiked collars, vivid tattoos, and the occasional facial piercing. This was an offbeat, colorful world that drew more than its share of young people who wanted, for whatever reason, that second look.
It surprised her that Billy was here. At fifteen, she had started working after school at the wharf, canning fish. Summers, she would fish with her mom. She was in the twelfth grade when her mother died, leaving her just enough money to get through high school. The summer after she graduated, Corey shipped out on a seiner to fish in Alaska. She was eighteen, and she had fished or repaired boats or tended bar or worked odd jobs at the docks ever since. She hoped that her son would be the first Logan to go to college. Billy stopped in an alcove to light a cigarette. She grimaced, then reminded herself that she had smoked as a teenager too.
Corey considered driving up beside him, honking, but that didn’t feel right. She tried to pull over, but in this neighborhood there was never a parking place. Billy turned right toward Pine. When she made the turn, he was gone. She realized that he must have stepped into the coffee place down the block. A hand-painted wooden sign out front said Blue City Café.
She parked in front of a fire hydrant. From her spot she could see inside the café’s large mullioned window.
Billy was sitting at a table near the front with three other kids: two girls and a boy. One of the girls had her hand on Billy’s neck, and she kissed him, meaning it. Cigarettes. A girlfriend. Okay. But something was off. These kids looked different from Billy. Why? She watched a crew of four girls and three guys move two tables together and settle in.
And then she had it. They dressed like street kids—ripped jeans, even the old band t-shirts. But their clothes weren’t raggedy or old. No, they paid for this look. These kids were washed and coiffed and, in their own way, poised. Fresh out of the box, ready for whatever. None of these young people were in foster care. In fact, she would bet these kids didn’t even go to public school. They were thoroughbreds, on some kind of fast track.
Two guys stopped by Billy’s table to talk