2. Thieves, Friends, Lovers
Henry was a cute kid and people often told him so.
Said he was handsome and occasionally someone said pretty.
Gram told Henry that his mom had been a beautiful, wild child with waves of flaxen hair.
The “oops” as Gram called her, arrived long past the point at which she and Pop thought they were having more children.
“Almost killed me giving birth to that mother of yours,” Gram would say, often adding, with a glint in her eye (or so it seemed to Henry), “And the way she behaved afterward almost made me wish she had!”
Henry’s mom—as if that term should even apply—abandoned him before he had the chance to develop even a whisper of her memory.
Gram told Henry his father was, “One of those darkies from the projects.”
Henry had no memory of him, either.
Henry was raised by his grandparents in Poughkeepsie, a city that mushrooms off the Hudson River barely 50 miles north of where it enters Long Island, just north enough to be part of that other New York called upstate New York, but close enough to absorb leftovers from the massive boroughs to the south.
Gram and Pop had four other kids, born years before Henry’s mother, so his aunts and uncles had children of their own by the time Henry was in kindergarten.
Ignored at family gatherings, his cousins treated him like an annoying pet they were forced to play with.
Three generations calling him the little weirdo.
A handsome, sometimes pretty weirdo.
Always ending up alone, watching everyone else.
Gram sent Henry to a private school where his thick curls and skin hue and quiet demeanor didn’t bode well with the other boys.
The schoolyard tradition of sorting the minions into functioning cliques saw Henry cast out as a stray.
As for the strays, adults call it bullying and try to stop it, but.
Henry was bullied. Once.
A freshly sharpened pencil driven into the soft belly of the much bigger boy solved that problem; unfortunately, it also created a host of other problems that Henry learned were best to avoid.
That was also about the time that Gram started muttering things about him being too much like his mother.
But nobody ever bullied him in school again.
Henry had now officially spent the majority of his life looking after himself.
The trials of his youth were forgotten; the lessons were not.
Running away at 13 had been traumatic, but Henry was clever and ruthless and Pop taught him that every good investment begins with some kind of sacrifice. A part of your principal.
No pain, no gain.
After running away, for several months he lived like a wild animal, stealing, hanging out on the pier, sleeping in abandoned buildings by the water.
Henry was clever, but eventually he was caught and beaten.
Sodomized.
So Henry advanced his coping skills, just like in the schoolyard.
For a while he hustled outside of the Chance Lounge, where BB King occasionally appeared.
Poughkeepsie had its share of tough neighborhoods and some of its streets could be deadly so when an old guy from Albany picked up Henry after a show and offered him a safe place with plenty to eat and all he had to do was suck the guy’s dick every now and then, who cared?
It was a good investment.
During the day, Henry did whatever he wanted.
And that’s what Henry had done since he was 13-years-old: find a safe place to shack up and do whatever he wanted.
He lasted a couple years in Albany and then headed east to Massachusetts, rotating between Pittsfield, Springfield and Worcester.
Insatiably curious, Henry had always been a quick learner. He took all that he had absorbed from Pop and furthered his education on the street; miraculously, avoiding the pitfall of drugs.
He learned from the different, urban environments, eventually finding his niche as a master cat burglar; his forte, blend into poor city neighborhoods and use that as a launching pad to prey on the rich workers living in the suburbs.
A clever chameleon, constantly reformatting, Henry remarkably hadn’t been arrested since he was a teenager.
Henry from Poughkeepsie was now a ghost, living off the grid.
A couple years back he wandered across the state line to take advantage of the rich neighborhoods around Hartford.
Had a good gig going with a girl in Stafford, but got sloppy and got her pregnant and disappeared back across the border and continued east, eventually running between Boston and Rhode Island.
Henry was at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in downtown Providence when he met a nice Portuguese girl named Luci.
Big Head Todd and the Monsters was the headline and the warmup was a fab young guitarist named Dave Mathews.
The rock n roll club was hopping.
Henry, now 27, still looked like he’d recently graduated high school and was stunningly handsome and no one questioned the fake ID that said he was 24.
Or that his name was Rico.
By the time Todd Mohr’s baritone was thundering about life being both sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet, Henry/Rico had targeted Luci and prepared his best Johnny Depp smolder.
Luci hadn’t a chance.
And so for the past few months, Henry had been Rico, keeping Luci’s bed warm in a town called Worthboro.
***
Kevin Dell liked to describe stuff using strictly numbers and nouns.
For example, himself: six-five and three-quarters, 192-pounds, dad.
A tall beanpole with three kids.
Occasionally, people commented on his resemblance to a young Clint Eastwood; though, Kevin would laugh embarrassed and insist that such a likeness could only be from the chin up, explaining that he’d always been thin and uncoordinated and with pipe-cleaners for biceps—ha ha.
But, while smart is an overused word used to describe those who standout because of a prowess in thinking, if there was a room full of smart people, Kevin was likely smarter than most.
Always tall and skinny and hopelessly uncoordinated, Kevin was abysmal at sports; ironically though, he fervently loved all things athletic and participated in the fall, winter and spring seasons at whatever managerial or scorekeeping type of role he was most useful.
In both high school and college he became editor of the school paper and journalism was where he found himself upon graduating.
Now, having recently turned the big four-O, Kevin and Sara had three girls (the two of them readily agreeing that BC really does mean, Before Children).
June arrived 11 years ago, her legs bicycling like she already wanted to be a standout athlete, like her mother.
Kai arrived three years later, uncannily prepared to chase after her big sister.
And five years ago, just days into the new century, Oxi arrived. (Oxi was pronounced oh-ZEE so everyone called her Zee.)
Today, dad-hood encompassed all of Kevin’s moments.
Stepping into the kitchen on a typical spring weekend morning, he immediately spotted the new, strategically placed message on the door of the fridge.
Centered in a mix of magnets and notes and old birthday cards and graded papers from school was a piece of drawing paper with a date written in heavy, black marker: July 16.
Below the date, in the same black marker, but excellent cursive: Half-Blood Prince.
Below that, crayon signatures of his three daughters: June (purple), Kai (green), Zee (orange).
“You have to be at the bookstore on that day,” June said.
Kevin, having bent over in an overt display of observation, straightened his long body and turned and eyed his young women.
They were seated on stools at the counter that separates the kitchen area from the dining room.
Sara, her dark hair pulled into a stern instructor’s bun and farthest to Kevin’s right, wore an all red, personalized, Sara’s Gym sweatsuit. There was a World’s Greatest Mom kind of coffee mug and she looked sexy (to Kevin, anyway) reading the Chronicle.
Seated to Sara’s right according to age were: June, Kai and Zee, still in pajamas.
Kevin wore a Celtics t-shirt with a Robert Parish double zero and grayish, long shorts, or ‘lorts’ as he liked to call them. (Recently, he explained to the horror of his eldest daughter, “If you could see what basketball players were forced to wear in the 70s, you’d know why I refuse to call pants that hang to the knees shorts!”)
Offering June what Kevin imaginatively thought of as, “the eye”, he said, “Do I now?”
June, wearing blue flannel pjs, paused from her bowl of cereal to explain, “I was at the Leaky Cauldron, you know, the website that JK says is cool. And the next Harry Potter book, number six, it’s called Half-Blood Prince. It goes on sale July 16, for the whole wide world.”
Impressed, Kevin gestured at the fridge and said, “And I see you’ve all signed this … this note for me.”
“So you won’t forget,” Kai said.
She wore a sleeper, green and yellow, with the typical Tinkerbell theme and was working on peanut-butter toast and a glass of milk that had ice cubes in it.
Sara said, her face in the paper, “As if your father forgets anything.”
Kai quickly added, “Cept not to burp and fart out loud.”
Zee giggled and June afforded a complimentary snicker.
“Totally unfair,” Kevin protested, stepping forward to glare at Kai, who ignored him.
Kevin’s gaze was drawn to Zee, sitting in the kid stool with the RugRats backrest, still with a bit of chubby baby cheek left in her perfect little face framed by black curls.
Her lips were pursed as though in anger and she was shaking her tiny fist at him, adorable features scrunched … for some reason.
Zee had a plate of melon in front of her and wore a well-worn, purplish, Eeyore sweatshirt with off-white leggings featuring green dinosaurs, somehow, whether by color or theme—and likely with Kai’s assistance—finding a way to match the unmatchable.
Ah-ha!
Kevin realized that Zee’s intent was to look threatening (five-year-old style).
He widened his eyes to show fear. “What?”
“You can’t read it first!”
She stared defiantly up at him, the high-pitched tone making it clear he shouldn’t have to ask such a stupid question in the first place.
Undaunted, Kevin crossed his arms and tilted his chin just a tad and said, “And why not?”
More, sternly cute features and an even higher pitched tone. Exasperated. “Because then you’ll know what happens!”
“And how does that matter when I read it to you?”
That gave her pause, but only for a heartbeat. “It just does,” Zee stated.
The two of them matched stares until Kevin detected the ghost of a grin on his youngest daughter’s lips and then he allowed his smile to show, saying, “I think I can hold off to the point that we all read it together.”
“Just make sure you’re at the bookstore on that day,” June said.
“I’ll be there.”
Numbers and deadlines. Kevin’s days were full of them.
Fresh out of college, Sara, with a lifetime of training in gymnastics, rented space for a small gym.
Twenty-years later, she ran a flourishing business with two specialized properties, one in Worthboro, the recently completed second edition in an adjacent town.
Kevin handled the financial dealings, while she was the human front of the business, able to flit between the gyms, spending time with students, which was what she loved.
Kevin’s official job, if you asked him, was NBC.
“Ha ha, not the network,” he would say, but Networking Business Consultant; though, now he was back to writing stories for the Chronicle, the local paper he had never really left in the first place.
Following college, as Sara built her business, Kevin was the Sports Editor at the Chronicle, running the department for 10 years when, suddenly, the world became connected.
A curiosity turned experiment saw Kevin single-handedly turn the Chronicle into one of the first, small newspapers to publish to the World Wide Web.
Kevin had a gift for coding, something he’d tinkered with as a precocious child thanks to his engineer Dad.
Once he learned what it took to allow the Chronicle port to a usable database and publish HTML pages—and having just turned 30 with a new baby—he foresaw an amazing opportunity.
An experienced newspaper guy, Kevin’s unique combination of skill sets made him supremely suited to bridging the gap between black-coffee gulping publishers trained on manual typewriters and young IT grads who swilled mountain dew and spoke languages like C++ and JavaScript.
Kevin handed his duty as Chronicle Sports Editor to Gary, his longtime assistant and became a highly paid consultant, hired to turn newspapers and other enterprises from paper-based publication to electronic form suitable for the internet.
As the world transformed, Kevin was an ultra-rare commodity and for a time, there were actually bidding wars for his services.
The fees he could charge became downright embarrassing.
But at least Sara and Kevin had a nice nest egg now and used cash to build the second branch to Sara’s Gym.
Weary of the grind, Kevin stopped taking offers.
Dad-hood was his only real job now, other than sacrificing enormous amounts of time to help keep the Chronicle afloat.
It was the newspaper calling that morning when the landline next to Sara began to warble. She checked caller ID.
“Paper.”
Kevin stepped over to grab the receiver from its cradle.
“Kevin speaking.”
After a moment, “I’ll be there soon.”
He replaced the phone and looked at his wife, after two decades plus, that telekinetic bond spoke volumes.
All she said was, “Jimmy?”, but something in Sara’s tone made June and Kai look up from their breakfast.
Kevin shook his head and said, “Lori. She’s overwhelmed and needs help.” He flicked his eyes toward their daughters, “I’ll tell you more later.”
***
A few weeks into a whirlwind romance, Rico drove to Luci’s in the Corolla he paid cash for at a local, used car place.
Parked in front of the tenement where Luci rented a room from a cousin (who was renting the three-bedroom apartment from whatever slumlord owned the building) and stuck a big red bow to the front windshield.
Rico used one of his cells to call Luci and when she came outside, handed her the keys and told her Merry Christmas (it was late March).
After bringing him inside and screwing his brains out, Luci sat up on the futon, breasts swaying provocatively.
“Where do you get all your money,” she blurted. Embarrassed. “I mean. I’m not used to being treated this way.”
Rico fondled a boob to distract her and said, “Like I told you, I’m a businessman. Real estate.”
Trying to look serious Luci said, “I watch the Sopranos, ya know.”
Rico let out a merry laugh and he looked so damn good Luci couldn’t help but smile and laugh back.
“Chica,” he told her. “I’m not a gangster, okay?”
Rolled on his back and flopped his arms to the side. Slender, but wiry with muscle.
“Look at me,” he said. “Do I look like the kinda guy who puts himself in danger?” Added, to reassure her, “I know stuff about finding property and investing. Believe me, I stay away from any kind of dangerous stuff.”
Luci lay her head on his chest. Smiled dreamily, lips tickling his skin as she said, “My man is sweet and gorgeous and generous and sexy. How’d I get so lucky?”
Rico kissed the top of her head and said, “Chica, luck’s got nothing to do with nothing at all.”
That night, Henry set out for his first score in the new town.
As Rico, he had been scouring Worthboro’s wealthy neighborhoods.
Occupied the afternoons perusing real estate records at the County Register in Fall River.
Picked up a mountain bike and the appropriate outfits and went for daily rides.
Found the local paper to be a diamond in the ruff and enthusiastically added the Chronicle to his daily routine.
Despite dropping out of school so young, Henry was a voracious reader and had a remarkable memory and local newspapers could be a goldmine of information.
He hung out downtown.
Strolled on the beautiful town common.
Perused the library.
Always watching and listening.
For the last week, Henry had focused on a development in the south end, only a couple dozen houses, all built in the early 90s.
A town like Wortboro kept strict zoning laws. All of the lots were at least an acre and the houses were big and expensive (of course).
A single street looped through the development and he drove through several times for three successive nights, at different hours.
Rode the bicycle during the day.
Scouted on foot in the middle of the night.
Nobody noticed him, of course.
Just a few barking dogs, but he knew where they were.
The first target was a French Country house with mansard style roofing, walls of stucco and oversized, multi-pane windows. Henry figured the 5,000 square feet listed at the registry of deeds was at least 10-percent high.
The beautiful home was centered on a large corner lot where the road curled 180 degrees.
Islands of landscaping provided spectacular cover.
Built on a slope, the entry to the cellar on the backside was fully exposed, but hidden below expansive decking.
The home was secured with a motion system that used motion detectors only (no infrared).
Contact sensors would be at every point of egress on the basement and first floor. A tripped alarm would bring the local police in minutes.
The worker couple who lived there had two adult children and no pets.
The father drove an F350 with dual back tires and the mother drove a BMW 500 series.
Monday through Friday, she was gone before sunup to catch the commuter rail and the hubby, a high-level construction dude, left shortly after.
While it was still dark and the parents prepped for work, Henry, in black, tight-fitting athletic wear, gained entry below the backyard decking.
A cracked cellar window enabled access to the house.
The daughter was away at college and the son, a high school kid with a new jeep, was gone by seven AM.
By the time the boy pulled out of the driveway, Henry had gone through the alarm system control panel.
He rarely had to tamper with electronics. As long as a system didn’t use infrared, he could usually beat it at the physical level.
But the place he was in now included motion detectors in every room on the first floor and on the staircases to the upstairs; thus, unless he could shut off the entire, inside motion system, access would be limited.
Or agonizingly slow and cumbersome and probably not worth the effort.
Luckily, the control panel had been placed on the metal box clearly mounted on a wall in the alcove next to the laundry room.
While the high school kid was in the shower, he turned off all indoor monitors so that when the boy left through the front door and entered the code to set the house alarm, the alarm company would assume someone was still inside.
Henry had all day.
He began with the downstairs den where the worker guy had an office. Picked the lock to the main desk drawer to find an envelope with 20, $100 bills.
A good start.
Spent the next hour methodically going through all desk drawers, all of the closets, bureaus and dressers, searching cupboards and clothing pockets, eventually netting another $700 in loose bills.
Cash was nice, but strictly for spending.
The real prize was jewelry.
Henry didn’t find anything worth taking in the several trays amongst the various bedrooms, but the huge walk-in closet attached to the bathroom (attached to the master bedroom) contained a tower with a half dozen drawers.
A master craftsman poured love into a case built of black cherry and stained to an almost purple hue. The box probably cost the workers who owned this home more than the Corolla he just bought for Luci.
Each exquisite drawer had a simple lock that Henry could’ve broken with his bare hands; instead, using the fine tools of his pickset, he daintily opened each.
Experience gave him a trained eye and when he found the diamond earrings he sucked in his breath and pulled out a folded, 40X eyepiece to verify a quality that would net him at least four times what he’d already pilfered in cash.
Several more pieces were added to a now excellent haul and Henry was done.
After resetting the alarm system he climbed through the same basement window through which he entered and dropped below the decking.
Dark when he came in, the sun was now high and light sawed through the floorboards.
An air conditioner condenser, pool equipment and plastic pool toys coated by dust.
Henry changed to shorts and a t-shirt and exited from beneath the deck through a screen door and went to where he stashed the bike.
With the small backpack slung over his shoulder and pushing the bike with one hand on the handlebars the other on the seat, he looked like a student walking off the property.
Henry got on the bike and rode back toward the center of town, eyes active behind the ray-bans, scoping the target he’d planned for the next night.
He liked bike riding.
And he was really starting to like this town.
***
Oscar liked to joke that Boston has Cheers, but Worthboro has The Home Run House!
The House, as everyone calls it, is the lunchtime pitstop if you work downtown.
During summer, Little League teams congregate there and during the school year, student athletes from Worthboro High fuel up at The House before and after events.
And if you are a parent with young kids and there’s no way in hell you feel like cooking?
Dash to The House for pizza.
Downtown, on the corner of Main Street and Fulton Ave, the Home Run House is post and beam with an open, barn-style interior, the beams, flooring and walls clear-varnished, the natural wood grains blending warmly with amber seat covers and table mats.
A long bar at one end, wooden tables in the seating area, a jukebox with a small, parquet dance floor on the opposite end.
Along each long wall, booths of blue.
Wall space is at a premium in The House, the spans between windows splattered with sports memorabilia.
Uniforms and equipment of all kinds and eras hang on the walls.
Helmets and shirts and pants and pads and socks and gloves.
Bats, balls, hoops, sticks, skates, cleats and nets.
A saddle from Suffolk Downs.
A mounted tuna.
Posters of famous Boston athletes and countless framed clippings from the Chronicle, highlighting Worthboro High’s many championship teams through the decades.
Keeping with local ritual, Oscar got drunk at the House on his 21st birthday.
That had been just a few weeks ago, with Carla.
Tonight, being a Friday and approaching midnight, The House was swarmed by sweaty young adults socializing; mostly townies, but as always a few groups had wandered in from nearby college.
Sports generally dominates the many large screen LCDs that hang from the rafters of The House, but all of the screens were currently synced to the Foo Fighters video playing on the jukebox.
Oscar and Carla were there with friends.
Really Carla’s friends, Oscar would say, because it felt like she was dragging him everywhere these days.
Dropping hints about rings and the future and stuff.
Oscar genuinely loved Carla, he did, but the thrill was gone. He had never been that interested in sex, anyway. At least not the way his guy friends were.
Carla was more like his best friend, who turned out to be his lover.
When out as a couple, Oscar and Carla were often mistaken for brother and sister. Both grew up on the westside. Brown hair and round faces. Short and pear shaped and already showing symptoms of a lifetime facing the battle of the bulge.
First went out their sophomore year.
Broke up and got back together and went to all the dances and proms.
Were voted a class couple and female and male class clowns.
Carla was gregarious and often loud, a physical jokester; whereas, Oscar liked to play on words and was an outstanding mimic.
Oscar’s dream was to be a stand-up comedian and an actor—a character actor, though, because let’s face it, physically? … He was easy to caricaturize.
Crammed into a booth with Carla and two other couples when he spotted Rico thought, oh dear Lord, if I’m ever reincarnated, I wanna look just like him.
Gorgeous with the perfect blend of cool.
Oscar had urges he could no longer deny; just hadn’t been aware of them until he was almost through puberty.
Born into a strict, Catholic community, he wasn’t sure what to do.
And he loved Carla.
But now, he’d see a guy like Rico and the nether regions were aflutter.
***
Rico was with Luci and enjoying a microbrew when he noticed Oscar looking his way.
Caught another look from the short guy with the crew cut and big eyes.
Realized that Oscar wasn’t looking at Luci’s plush posterior, but him.
Positioned himself in a provocative way and the next time Oscar looked, Rico was staring back.
Oscar’s blush was apparent, even from across several tables.
A bit later, Oscar headed to the bar as the jukebox pumped The Black Eyed Peas pleading, Don’t Phunk With My Heart.
Rico separated from Luci.
Oscar found a spot at the bar and ordered a cape codder with the lime and was waiting when someone sidled up behind him, just to the side, so all he had to do was turn his head and look; though, he knew it was that guy.
Henry had let his thickly curled hair grow. Trimmed his goatee to the rap industry standard. After the six-month New England winter, his skin could pass for southern mediterranean.
As Rico, he wore a soft, black leather jacket over a white t-shirt with jeans and some stupidly expensive sneakers. Felt like he should be some kind of wanna-be pop star, but Henry didn’t give a shit what he wore.
He let Luci dress him now.
Henry was glad to have been born beautiful, as the benefits definitely outweighed the latter; but really, his sexuality was no more than a valuable (but super fun!) piece for the toolkit.
Another end to the means.
Oscar also didn’t give a shit what he wore.
Baggy jeans and an off-white, collared shirt from work. The shirt had a stitched, colored logo over the left breast: a beach scene with a palm tree and splatter of sand; three, orange balls bouncing with the numbers 1, 2 and 3; a red banner with white lettering floated: You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play.
“You gonna tell me how to win?” Rico asked.
Oscar had no choice but to look up, Rico being half a foot taller. “Right,” he said, index finger tapping the logo.
Rico allowed the barest of a smile. “S-pose you get that all the time bro, no?”
Oscar shrugged. Normally fast with the comebacks, this guy had him speechless.
Rico, recognizing the hesitation, offered, “You work there?”
Oscar nodded and managed, “Operator. Level three.”
“Whoa! Level three, privy to all kinds of secrets.”
And just like that Oscar loosened up. “Yeah, it’s pretty intense, you know, but if I tell you too much…” and he gave Rico one of his well-practiced, single raised eyebrow flutterers.
“Ah, right, you’ll have to kill me.”
Oscar couldn’t help a smile and Rico extended a hand and they shook and told each other their names.
Rico asked, “Mind if I slide in?”
Oscar felt heat on his face and nodded as Rico moved next to him, their hips and elbows touching.
The bartender remained busy and Rico said, “Seriously, the lottery, eh?”
“Right, yeah. It’s not a bad gig. I usually do the second shift, which means the drawings. It’s kinda cool. Sometimes boring.”
“That’d be life bro, no?”
Oscar gave his voice a country twang and sang, “Sucks till ya die or blow yourself up to get sent to heaven with some virgins.”
Rico laughed and Oscar was thrilled.
Rico said, “So the draw, really? Where they choose the winning numbers? How’s that work?”
“After they pick the numbers on TV, I’m the guy who puts 'em in the system,” Oscar said and couldn’t help but sound proud.
Rico looked impressed. “No shit.”
“No shit, but it’s simple, just a GUI while security people stand and watch.”
“So seriously bro, how can you get me a winning ticket?”
Oscar offered his best, exaggerated roll of the eyes.
“There’s always a way, bro,” Rico chided and made playful contact by bumping shoulders. “Clever fella like you gotta have some ideas.”
Oscar said, “Not with modern, online systems. Foolproof, I can vouch.”
Rico eyed Oscar for a heartbeat and gave him a warm smile. “Guess you’d know.”
The bartender arrived with Oscar’s cape codder and the jukebox switched sexy Fergie for Weezer telling everyone to move to Beverly Hills.
Rico put in his order.
Knowing not to linger, Oscar said, “Nice to meet you,” smiling when Rico called after him, “See you around bro.”
Once leaving The House, Carla was happily drunk and all over Oscar as soon as they got to their apartment and when Oscar thought of Rico he got all wound up too and when they were sweaty and done Carla said, “Holy shit Hon, where’d that come from?”
She kissed him and passed out holding Oscar in her arms.
Oscar remained awake for a while, wondering why in hell life had to be so complicated.