Mohawk

Minimum.”
    Dallas slumped into the seat in the booth. He had raised a little over eight thousand. One or two people might be able to pony up a little more, but not that much more.
    “I can’t make it.”
    “Of course you can’t. How do you think they pick those figures?”
    Dallas knew that, had known it all day and ignored it, glad for something to do. But there was a cop dead, and bail as high as it had to be. “It stinks,” he said.
    “They figure he’ll skip. Turns out he was drafted and failed to report, so that doesn’t help. The DA’s acting pretty cocky about the whole fuckin’ thing, but Dominic says he’s encouraged. Over what I don’t know. You can bet they’ll try to protect Gaff’s reputation.” Benny D. paused, and Dallas heard his cigarette lighter click. “What do you figure happened out there?”
    Dallas had no idea. He couldn’t picture Randall shooting anybody, but then he couldn’t picture Randall at all. Their paths never crossed, except at the diner, and then the boy was always in the kitchen. He never asked for anything, never seemed to want anything. Including the companionship of his father. Not that Dallas had been such a hot father, but you’d have thought the kid would have to be mad or something. Instead, it was like he hadn’t even noticed.
    After he hung up, Dallas just sat for a while. By now Anne would be hopping mad. She wouldn’t say anything, but he’d look at her and feel unworthy, the way he always felt around her. Then it occurred to him that with any luck she’d given up by now and gone home,a possibility that cheered him considerably as he rode the elevator to the second floor. The waiting room was empty, so he ambled down the corridor glancing at the three-by-five name cards in the metal slots outside each room until he came to 237, “Younger.” There were no policemen in sight, and he ducked in.
    Inside were two beds, one empty and the other occupied by a young girl, asleep, her light brown hair radiating outward on the white pillowcase. Her face, neck and arms were covered with purple bruises so bright they looked painted on, since there was no swelling. Dallas’ first thought was that Randall had been moved, probably to some high-security wing where the cops could grill him in peace.
    A woman was seated on the edge of the girl’s bed and, when she turned to see who’d come in, Dallas saw it was his brother’s wife. Her eyes registered nothing when she looked straight into his face. “Younger,” he’d said at the desk, not thinking.
    Someone had told him a week or so ago that his niece was sick, but despite repeated efforts to make himself remember he’d succeeded in forgetting. Since the night they’d slept together, Dallas thought about her pretty often, and there were times when he would’ve liked to go back. But he feared it would happen all over again. And though he was angry when he heard that John, married with three kids, was hanging out with her, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. She’d lost a good deal of weight and was prettier than she’d been since before David married her.
    It wasn’t Loraine he looked at now, but the girl. He couldn’t look away, and without wanting to he moved closer, up to the foot of the bed. His throat tightenedand he couldn’t breathe right. Trying to fight it off, the way he had delayed throwing up when he was a child, he tried to imagine his niece in the form before him. But there was little resemblance, and when he remembered the closet still half-full of his brother’s presents, he thought it would be good to die, if only to escape what he was feeling. If there was an open window, he thought, I’d jump.
    Then, to make matters worse, he realized Loraine was looking up at him and had actually taken his hand. Somehow she had found something to feel for him who couldn’t have deserved it less. Suddenly he realized he was crying. He hadn’t done that in twenty years, even at David’s funeral, and was embarrassed for doing it now. “Don’t,” his brother’s wife was saying. “It’s not your fault. You came. You’re a good man. A good man.” When she said that, he let some terrible sound escape, and before he knew exactly what he was doing, he had emptied his pockets into Loraine’s lap. Some of the bills fell to the floor, fifties and hundreds, all mixed together, neither counted nor organized. Then he ran out of the room and into a stairwell, at the bottom of which he