The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

They had taken him all over — all over L.A., the Valley, even to Oak Town once on a church picnic. There was plenty of water there, beer and red pop and lemonade and swine barbeque, too. He was thin then, and pretty. Just a baby boy — so innocent, such a good young brother. The picnic was on the Oakland Bay, and they’d all rode the bus up there, singing gospel songs all the way. There must have been a hundred buses, the whole California Youth Baptist Convention, someone said. And it was his knees that helped him get through it, basketball, softball, the three-legged race with pretty Althea Jackson. They were nine years old! Those were some of the best times in his life. And he was such a good guy, a regular brother, everyone said so, and now this lunatic murder, and this fucked-up Pemberton, that devil, poking his bloody self like a shitty nightmare in the midst of all his plans.

Fat Tommy ached at beholding all these tender scenes — Bea, the picnic, the tears — all the images like flashing detritus in a river streaming across his upturned hands. It was just too much. He closed his eyes, but the river of images burst inside them, flooding the darkness in his head even more vividly than before: his first day at Teddy Roosevelt Junior High; the time he and Bea won third place at the La Caja Boys and Girls Club Teen Dance-Off; and his best pal... not that goddamn Pemberton... but Trey-Boy, Trey-Boy Middleton (rest his soul). That was his best friend. It was cool Trey-Boy who befriended him even after he got fat and everyone started treating him like a jerk, and it was Trey-Boy who’d taken pity on him and helped him pimp up his style.

It was Trey-Boy. Not a murderer. A hip brother. True-blue. Trey-Boy showed him how to affect a gangster’s scowl, and helped him adopt a slow, hulking walk that could frighten just about anyone he encountered on the street. He’d showed him how to smoke a cigarette, load a gat, roll a blunt, and cop pussy, weed, and blow. He had even showed him how to shoot up once.

And Trey-Boy never got mad, even when that faggot Stick Jenkins bumped him on purpose and made him spill a good portion of the spoon of heroin Trey-Boy had carefully prepared. Trey-Boy had pimp-slapped the faggot — he called him “my sissy” and Stick had just smiled like a bitch and turned red as a yella niggah could get — and everyone laughed.

He remembered how Trey-Boy had cooked up what was left of the little amber drops of Boy they could scrape from the toilet seat and floor and showed him how to tie off and find the vein and shoot the junk even if he only got a little whacked — it was whacked enough to know he wouldn’t do that anymore. It wasn’t fun at all. He couldn’t stop puking. It felt like now — in this hot room with no water, under this white light. But he wasn’t no goddamn junkie. None of that puking and noddin’ and drooling shit was for him. He was strictly weed and blow, strictly weed and blow. He wasn’t no goddamn junkie. Let them try to pin that on him. They’d come up zero. Just like this murder. He wasn’t there; he didn’t do it. He didn’t see nobody; he didn’t know nobody.

Trey-Boy had given him his favorite street moniker — Fat Tommy. When Trey-Boy said it, it didn’t feel like a put-down. It was a term of war and affection. Fat Tommy was a lumpy 370 pounds but he didn’t feel fat when Trey-Boy called him Fat Tommy — he felt big, as in big man, big trouble, big fun — there’s a difference, really, when you think about it. A street handle like Fat Tommy made him feel like one of the hoods in The Sopranos — his favorite story. He’d made a small fortune with that name — not like he made with Cut Pemberton, when the margins and risks got scary and huge, and the fuckin’ Columbians got involved, and people feared him and only knew him by the name Pemberton hung on him, Moises — Moises Rockafella, the King of Rock Cocaine. He didn’t make big cake like that with Trey-Boy — but at least he didn’t have to worry about a murder beef, and the living was decent.