This was a tough one! I needed to tie up some loose ends and amp up the "stakes" a bit, but it meant going to the dark side, too. It will probably change a LOT in the final draft--or it might not even make the cut. But this is the "kitchen sink" draft, so I follow Colt wherever he seems to want to go, regardless. Scary place to go, though, this chapter...

22.

I can’t explain how I felt after that conversation with Wyatt that day. It was like being high on something. Only it didn’t dull my senses, it fired me up like a double shot espresso—big medicine, this little woman.

I mean, remember when you were little and you found that little gift that the “Tooth Fairy” had brought you? Or one of those little tiny red amethyst stones in the sand, or a June bug that looked like it was made out of stained glass or whatever some little kid would get all excited about? You wanted to run up to everybody you met and say, “Look what I found!”

It was like that. Only amped up to infinity.

So I’m buzzing like a mofo when the “Bat phone” goes off. That’s the little red “dumb phone” I keep on me at all times, even if I have to shove it down into my shoe or something.

Cracks people up when I whip it out because it’s one of those little “grandma” flip phones that only does calls and texts. Only Big Man, the girls and Bonnie know that number and the ringtones we change every few weeks. And if it rings, it means there’s either something really good or really bad going down, so I grab it fast and shush whoever I’m with.

I didn’t have to shush Wyatt, because she was just chillin’ there next to me. She got used to me and my life so much faster than anyone I’d ever known. Maybe because she’d had to adjust to all kinds of things all her life—lots of different cultures and whatnot.

She just looked over to read me. Those eyes didn’t miss a trick.

So I said, “Dis-moi,” like I always do. Sounds like “Dee-mwa.” And it means, “Tell me!” in French.

And Aisha jumped right in.

“Papi, you better get over to Bonnie’s place’n’ get that girl to chill out,”

“Who, Maddie?”

“Yeah! They over there beatin’ the shit outta each other, her’n’ that Russian fool. Bonnie say this one neighbor done calt the police and you know she can’t be havin’ no police at her house right now. CPS be there talkin’ about takin’ those babies they don’t quit.”

I pulled back on the road and adjusted my route right quick.

“What the hell happened?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. We almos’ there, but she don’t listen to nobody but you when she high. You in the middle o’ somethin’ you cain’t get out of?”

“I’m on my way there,” I told her. “You guys see if you can get her away from the house if you get there before me.”

“Oh, you know I’ll slap a bitch,” Aisha said. “Lemme get off this phone while I’m drivin’. Mad as I am, I’ma run into somebody.”

We clicked off and I sped up some. I didn’t want to get stopped by the cops myself, so I had to stay calm and observe the limit, even though my heart was thumping even more now.

See, we were sure we were going to get a surprise CPS visit during the holidays. They come by at odd hours, like they’re trying to catch you slurping Jell-O shots or passing the bong or something.

And they were really watching us. I mean, she’s no angel, Bonnie. Stone cold sober over 10 years by the time the babies came, but she had a record for public intoxication, assault and passing bad checks. There’d been lots of bad men making bad choices in her younger days.

And of course they dug it all up during the guardianship hearing. So the judge promised she’d get “extra supervision and support” during a sort of probationary year—God, I hate that word “probation.” You know why.

I was given visitation rights with certain restrictions, to make sure I didn’t just agree to everything on paper but actually keep the babies at my house most of the time. That’s another reason they do surprise visits, of course. To make sure I’m not “subverting” Bonnie’s authority and the judge’s orders. That’s how the case worker put it—she actually winked at me when she said it. Like she knew it was bullshit but had to warn me anyway.

But I don’t trust the system or anyone in it. I knew if they found out I was “subverting” anything, she’d renege on that wink in a New York minute and say she’d warned me but I didn’t listen.

I was able to convince them to let me pretty much singlehandedly support the kids and Bonnie financially, as long as neither of us used the kids to control one another. Meaning she couldn’t refuse to let me see them trying to get more money from me and I couldn’t stop giving her money if I didn’t like something she was doing or wanted more time or something.

The judge had the last word about damned near everything, though—yes, yet another judge. But this one was reasonable, at least. And female, with kids of her own. So when you talked to her, she totally understood what you were dealing with.

Unfortunately, right from jump, Maddie started showing up at Bonnie’s house intoxicated, demanding not to see the kids but to get a cut of the money I gave them every week. She didn’t like actually seeing the babies at first, for reasons we’ll get into later.

But they issued the restraining order after she showed up at a mediation so high she sounded almost psychotic or something—I’m serious. Like how Charlie Manson talks when they show his parole board hearings on the news, right? Laughing at all the wrong things and making all these little speeches that don’t make any sense at all.

My most memorable moment from that day was when she pointed at me and said, “And he…”

And then she sorta sat there staring like the drugs were actually eating up brain cells at that very moment. So I held my breath, and I could see Bonnie doing the same thing across the table from me.

So then she gave this little laugh, and shook her head and said, “God, you are a pretty thing, aren’t you? Wakes up lookin’ like that, too—you’d love to see that, wouldn’t you girls?”

Now, the judge and case worker managed to keep their game faces on. But Bonnie and I were, like, ready to slide down under the table we were so embarrassed.

And she wasn’t done digging her own grave, Maddie. She gave the case worker a little slap on the back like they were in a bar somewhere and said, “Young blood! Good for what ails ya’! Good to the last drop…”

I was waiting for “Finger lickin’ good” but she let it go after that “drop.” And at that point, all we could do was try not to laugh. No, it wasn’t funny. But I mean, it was so off the charts wrong what else could we do?

See, she hates herself for what she did, for how she is…for a lot of reasons. So she makes sure things go wrong when something huge is at stake—bites the hand that’s trying to feed her.

So when Bonnie told her to remember there was a judge in the room, she jumped up, slapped over the pitcher of water in the middle of the table and started yelling and cussing a blue streak. She even fought the bailiffs who came running, which pretty much sealed her fate as they say.

Now, you may be wondering, after this sordid story, why I defy the order to let her see the kids sometimes if she can stay sober and civil. Well, I think the babies may be her last chance. I keep hoping that just seeing them will remind her what a miracle she made—give her a reason to straighten up and fly right, as that old song goes.

But my plan wasn’t working yet. Obviously. So I gunned it through a yellow light in full “fight or flight” mode. I needed a plan. Fast.

And Wyatt said, “Is there anything I can do?” in her “concerned teacher” voice.

“Nah, it’s just…baby mama drama,” I said, laying on the horn as some tiny little old lady started changing into my lane without realizing my car was there. I hated to do it, because those little rabbity looking ones might just startle and lose total control. But she didn’t move back over, she just kept coming ‘til I was almost waiting for the scrape, and then she slammed on her brakes and all the cars behind her almost ran into each other.

Wyatt looked back and said, “Poor thing. She can barely see over the steering wheel.”

“Yeah, they need to get those self-steering cars out here in Heaven’s Waiting Room as fast as they can. I saw they’re testing them now. On the news.”

“Is that your next project? Self-steering cars for seniors?”

God love her, she was trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh, she’s got jokes, now! Listen to that!” I said. Followed by, “I’m sorry you have to get mixed up in all this.”

She shrugged and said. “Life happens. I’m sure you’ll get it sorted.”

“Get it sorted,” I said. “That’s a Brit thing.”

“Yes, I relapse now and then,” she said. “The kids make fun of it sometimes.”

“Is that where you were most of the time? When you went over?”

“London was home base. I had an apartment there. With two roommates. I’d go somewhere and then come back to the flat for a few days. Do a few singing gigs to raise money for the next trip.”

“Nice.”

“It was.”

“You ever think about going back?”

“Oh, I couldn’t afford it. We paid $900 a month for that flat back then—split three ways it was a good deal. But it’s $1500 a day now.”

“Well, maybe we’ll go there sometime,” I said. I meant it, actually. But she was smart enough to know that while my heart was with her, my mind was over at Bonnie’s.

And boy, we could hear Yuri and Maddie screeching at each other before we got halfway through the ginormous apartment complex where Bonnie lived. So I parked as close as I could and Wyatt got out before I could come around and open her door.

“Just go! I’ll find you!” she said.

“I don’t know, Teach. It’s a rabbit warren in here.”

She gave me a little shove and said, “Go,” all urgent, to remind me what we’d come for.

So I ran toward the noise and when I got inside the little pool area you could see from all the back porches in that building, I could also see Yuri and Maddie wrestling on the patio by the pool with all these people standing on their little back porches watching and recording it all.

Bonnie and Kelli were up on their porch looking all flustered and freaked out. So I yelled, “YURI!” because I knew he would have a knee jerk reaction to my voice.

And sure enough, even though he was holding Maddie by her wrists like he’d been getting the worst of it, he let go as soon as he heard me. And then Maddie tried to swung on him, but missed by a mile and stood there sort of reeling.

They were both unbelievably high. Worse than I’d ever seen them. That really sloppy, stumbling high that told me they’d been drinking, too.

As I trotted over, Yuri said, “She called you?” like he was all shocked.

I said, “Back it up, hoss.”

And he squinted at me like he needed glasses or something—did that weird gurning thing with his lower jaw, too. You know, that thing when someone’s lower jaw sort of zig zags back and forth in that weird, herky jerky way. It’s usually E that causes that. A new addition to their “cocktails” of choice, apparently.

But he totally forgot about Maddie, though, once he saw me. I could tell he was ashamed that the man who was supposed to be saving his life was seeing him like this.

So I said, “Yeah, she called me and somebody else called the cops, dumb ass! What the fuck?”

He got all blubbery then. I hate how people go from wanting to tear your head off to sobbing like babies when they’re high. He frowned all up like one of those damned drama masks and ran his hands through his dirty hair as if that was going to help him look better somehow.

And he wailed, “The police will deport me—I have told you this!”

Maddie started cackling at him, then.

“I hope the cops do come!” she said.

“So they can take the kids?” I said.

She looked up toward Bonnie and yelled, “Well, they’d be better off with someone who knew how to raise a child!”

Bonnie shook her head and Kelli looked down at me all helpless. That poor kid was doing all she could but I was sure we were going to lose her soon.

So I said, “Oh, really? Like with some stranger you don’t even know?”

Yuri toddled over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Please,” he said. “I know I am a weak man. It is a sickness. I cannot resist!”

“You carryin’?” I asked. I had to stick to the possible legal issues.

“No! There is nothing,” he said. “I can assure you. I would never…”

“So you smoked it all?” I said. But he started turning his pockets inside out trying to prove he’d told me the truth.

And then Maddie stumbled up, stuck her finger in his face and went, “It went up his arm! Yeah, shoots it now! You gonna hire somebody who shoots all kinda shit in his veins?”

Yuri lunged toward her but I stepped between them and shoved him backwards.

“Chillax, man!” I warned him.

And he starts blubbering again.

“She will kill me,” he said. “I cannot be around this woman! You can see! She will drag me to my grave.”

“Oh, shut up! Pathetic bastard!” Maddie bellowed.

So I went, “Just get in the Rover—c’mon! Hurry up, dammit!”

They stumbled along behind me and Wyatt to the Rover just as the girls rolled up, and I yelled, “Follow me!”

But Mike popped up out of the sun roof and yelled, “We’re goin’ up to Bonnie!”

“Cool! I’ll be right back. Wyatt, maybe you should—“

“I’m going with you,” she told me. Firmly.

So we all got in and I drove off as calmly as I could, keeping an eye out for the cops. The one sort of good thing was someone was always calling the cops in that complex. Pleading domestic violence, mostly.

They were the dregs, most of the people in that complex. Down and out and mostly white. Lotta white supremacists, even, lived there. Skin headed bastard kids who spat on the few Hispanics and blacks that passed under their porches on the way to their apartments.

And they were always calling the cops and making false accusations about each other hoping the cops would find a parole or probation violation or some old warrant. Misery loves company, as they say. But the cops didn’t exactly rush when someone called them.

I’d been begging Bonnie to move somewhere else for months. She’d had a lot on her mind since the babies were born, and I wasn’t allowed to just take over and do things like moving her out and all. She had to handle as much of her own business as possible. But we were definitely going to have to do something. Soon.

Anyway, I drove to this little park a few blocks away and parked in the lot there. Yuri was sobbing and snuffling the whole time and going, “God help me…God help me” over and over again.

Maddie didn’t say anything. She just sat there glowering into space, mad at the world. And as soon as I stopped the car, she leapt out and went, “Who is this woman?!”

“Get back in the car and calm down, Maddie,” I said.

“Wait--I saw her before! Yeah! I saw ‘er at your place!”

“Then I don’t need to tell you who she is. Get in the car!”

She gave me this evil grin and said, “Now I get it—teacher, right?”

And then she folded her arms and said, “You think they’re going to let you’n’ some teacher raise my babies?! Hah! Wait’ll that’s all over the news, you’n’ her! Nice goin’, kid!”

Yuri got out, then. So I sighed and hauled myself out to stand between them again.

And he starts whining, “I am searching for her all night, this one! You should see where I must go! This ugly life, I tell you—it’s from hell, this life!”

“Yuri, you need to settle down, man,” I told him. “You want help? I can get you help. But you lay a hand on her or anyone else here and that’s it! You feelin’ me?”

“You got him a job!” Maddie yelled. “Him and that damned cop—I couldn’t believe it when he told me!”

“I haven’t gotten anybody anything yet,” I told her. “It was only, what…a few hours ago—“

“That fucking cop, he cannot be trusted!” Yuri yelled.

“Oh, now you know, huh?” Maddie yelled back. “First, you help the bastard arrest this guy and now you’re begging him to save your life!”

Yuri ignored her and turned to me again.

“He says that he will tell how I got my documents,” he said. “About all of my businesses—the people who helped me, they are all in danger now, too. And I paid this man! Those private schools for his children—I paid for that!”

I sighed and said, “Dude, listen…I’m tryin’a save my kids. That’s all I care about.”

“Oh, I bet she loves that,” Maddie said, all snide again. “You think a woman wants to hear all you care about is some other woman’s babies?!”

“Be quiet! It’s you who causes this!” Yuri yelled at her.

“Really?! I caused this!? You sorry son—“

I gathered up all my lung power and yelled, “BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

And it was like someone had thrown ice cold water on them—they froze there, sort of shivering even.

So I said, “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

Maddie folded her arms successfully at last and said, “He threw me out! So I needed some cash!”

“Can I trust you with money?”

“I don’t want your money!”

“Bonnie’s money is his money!” Yuri said with this big smirk on his face. “Me, I chase after her, because I know where she is going. I know what can happen—I’m thinking more about the children than she does!”

“You threw her out?” I asked, trying to keep the train of thought on the tracks somehow.

“I ask you don’t bring no more drugs into my home!" Yuri bellowed at her. "And what do you do? What do you do—tell him about this guy who comes to threaten me because you don’t give him his money! She sells now! To get what she wants, she goes to these thug guys who break down the door and hit me with guns!”

“Oh, be a fuckin’ man, wouldja?!” Maddie yelled back.

“They give her to sell, she puts it up her nose!”

“And you shot it up your arm!”

I raised my palms and said, “Stop it, wouldja! Jeezus Christ--I’m going to get her a room okay? And then Yuri, if you really want help, we got one o’ the best rehabs in the world right here in Tucson. I’ll get you in today, if you want. Cause she’s right about one thing. I can’t hire someone who acts like this. You’re going to have to prove you can maintain, man. It’s as simple as that.”

He put on that drama mask again and actually fell to his knees.

“You are the only friend I have in the world,” he told me. “From now on, my little brother, whatever you ask—you don’t even have to ask. I will do it.”

“Yeah, well, with friends like you, as that saying goes,” I said. “But I mean what I say. Get up from there now. You look ridiculous.”

He struggled up off the ground and started brushing himself off.

So I looked at Maddie and said, “You ready to go, too, or are you hell bent on dyin’ out here?”

She gave me this really evil smile and said, “Always the smart ass. But I’m smart, too. You’re gonna fuck up everything you worked for—I know that!”

“What the hell are you talking about now?” I asked.

And she staggered her way up closer to me and poked me in the chest. Took her a minute to pick one of the three me’s she was seeing, of course, but she finally honed in on the one in the middle and stuck that bony finger right on my sternum.

“It’s like you’re asking for it!” she said. “Sellin’ all those damned…businesses to the fuckin’ Russians and hirin’ fuckin’ drug addicts and crooked cops—those guys in Vegas, they can’t be associated with nothin’ like that. I mean, they are, but they gotta be careful how they do that shit. You’re not JJ, little boy. You think you are…”

I gave her a smile and said, “You’ve got everybody’s number but your own. Why is that?”

She smiled back. It was all crooked and cross eyed, but the woman was definitely coming at me with a vengeance.

And she said, “No, that’s where you’re wrong. This is me. And I was listenin’, all those years we were flyin’ high out there. I know Friendly. I know all those shady characters he used to run with. And I know if that cop doesn’t hear from you fast enough, he’ll play with whoever makes him a better deal. And if that means telling that judge or Sergei’s crew that you’re trying to help Yuri’s sorry ass get back in business, or telling some cop over there in Vegas you’re makin’ deals with Russian Mafia, he’ll do it.”

Now, that got my attention. And it encouraged her to keep right on going.

“See, your business guys may know the truth,” she said. “But those cops’ll be on your ass. And then some wise ass reporter will stir up a shit storm of epic proportions—so will all the jealous assholes out there who’ve been just waiting for you to mess up since the old man died. And the girl’s little dream deal will be dead in the water—how do you like me now, smart guy?”

I had a bad feeling about that speech. Like it was somebody else talking.

So I said, “He tell you that? Friendly?”

“He told Yuri that!” she said. “He told Yuri he was a liability you couldn’t afford. He was starting to wonder about your judgment, he said.”

I looked over at Yuri and said, “I thought he sent you to me.”

“He says he cannot trust me.”

“But he trusted you to give me a message?”

“One minute, he has an idea. The next minute, he thinks that somebody is trying to steal the idea, so he comes up with another idea to get back at this person who does not exist--crazy!”

“So he thinks you’re double crossing him, right? Talkin’ behind his back?”

“He thinks the world is crossing him! He is out of his mind, that one,” Yuri said, starting to gesture and pace around. Winding himself up again.

“He gets a thing from his wife…the thing to see you in court. For the divorce.”

“Whoa—she had him served?”

“Yes, that! She is embarrassed from him. She is asking not for him to see his children because he is out of control.”

“She’s got that right,” I said.

“Yes, but now also he is desperate even more. So he turns on me, he turns on you, he turns on everybody! This is a very dangerous man.”

“Look…siddown on the curb over there or something and catch your breath,” I told him. “Right there in front of the car—and you, Maddie—“

She stumbled backwards at the sound of my command, and yelled, “I’m not that little half-wit mother of yours, okay?! She may have let you run her life, but--”

Right then, as she was talking about Gracie, I saw Wyatt coming around the back of the Rover. And she looked pissed, too.

So Maddie strikes what she considers a bad ass pose and goes, “Get back in there old timer! You don’t want none o’ this!”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Wyatt told her as she stepped up next to me.

Maddie sort of tried to fold her arms again but they weren’t working right. So she put her hands in her pockets and snorted.

“Got all these ladies whipped, don’t you, son?” she said to me. And to Wyatt she said, “Lil Daddy can hit it, right? Yeah, my boy got skills.”

She said it like it was some big secret only she knew. But we’d only really done the whole deed twice. There’d been some serious making out a couple of times before that. But the whole “affair” lasted about two weeks. And it wasn’t big romance, believe me. So she didn’t know all that much.

 But she smiled like she had the total skinny and said, “That’s an ache Tylenol won’t cure, right?”

“Or crack,” Yuri hissed from the sidelines.

“Oh, shut up! You’d fuck him if he’d let you!” she bellowed at him.

And then she started cackling like a cartoon witch or something, and said, “You can’t even find it let alone hit it! You dumb Russian f--”

“Maddie, c’mon, man,” I said.

But she walked up closer pointed that sort of wobbly finger at one of the two or three Wyatts she was seeing at the time.

And when I went, “Hey!” real loud, Wyatt smiled and said, “Don’t,” and touched my back.

 And Maddie smiled down at her and said, “Oh, that’s so cute. That’s soooo cute. You think he’s gonna give all that good pussy up for you, don’t you, Miss Lady? Well, lemme school you. Even when I was at my best I didn’t stand a chance. And my worst was better than your best, kiddo.”

I slapped her hand down and said, “That’s enough! This is between you and me, okay? Step off!”

But Wyatt sort of smiled and said, “Madison. I’ve always liked that name.”  

I loved how calm she was. It was like at school, when she stepped up there trying to stop crazy Danny. She had this little streak of fearless in her that made her forget herself in dangerous situations. She was thinking of me. And, oddly enough, of Maddie.

Which, was, of course, very confusing to Maddie. Who squinted at her and said, “Why?”

Wyatt smiled and said, “No particular reason. It just has…what do they call it? Swag?”

Maddie peered up at me and said, “What the hell is she on?”

I said, “She’s high on life, dumb ass—listen, can we have a conversation now? Because the kids are in this shit neck deep. And you put them there.”

“Yeah, and they’re my kids! Not hers—you remember that!”

Yuri rose but did not approach. And he said, “That is a good man there, talking to you.”

“See? I told you you would fuck him if he’d let you,” Maddie said. With that evil laugh again.

“All I want is to be gone from you!”

“Oh, listen to Mr. High and Mighty here—you introduced me to all this, you bastard! This is your world, pal!”

Yuri jumped up and screamed, “For your babies, you couldn’t give it up! Little babies must go through withdrawals from the poison you put into them! And this man, is the one who stayed with them! This man is the one who held them while they screamed and shivered in those…glass cages--where was their mother?! Where was their mother?!”

Maddie fought her way out of his grasp. And when she lunged at him with those jagged claws up, intending to rake craters into his face, he moved just in time and she fell over the curb and down, hard, on the concrete sidewalk where she just sort of laid there howling like some kind of wild animal.

Wyatt took off over there first—I was so stunned by how fast it happened and the noises she was making that I couldn’t get my feet to work for a few seconds.

“Let her feel pain,” Yuri hissed at her. “Let her finally feel pain!”

“Pain’s all she feels, man,” I told him. “Twenty-four seven, she’s in pain. Don’t you know that?”

He chilled a little. But shook his head like he couldn’t muster up any more sympathy. And I could see why. He was in pain, too. And the “chicken or egg” thing, it didn’t matter. They were both dying, no matter who did what to who first.

But what blew me away was when I finally went over to Maddie, Wyatt was hugging her. Hugging her, right?

And she looked up at me like she was begging me not to say or do anything else mean to Maddie. So I knelt down and took Maddie into my own arms. And Wyatt sat right down on the dirty parking lot asphalt without any hesitation, rubbing Maddie’s back while I held onto her.

So Maddie quit howling pretty soon and just burrowed into me. Like I was a little cave she could hide in.

And I guess the quiet drew Yuri over. He sat down on the ground next to Wyatt like a little kid hoping Mommy will pay attention to him, too. So she reached over with one hand and squeezed his ankle.

And his whole body sort of “melted.” I mean, that drama mask dissolved away and I could actually see the tension flowing out of him, starting at his head and then sloooowly down through the rest of his body and out through his legs.

Big medicine. I told you so.