Puzzling Pieces

Chapter 16

I’m a rotten mess when Robo gets back from asking the neighbors. I eyeballed him moving from home to home; all checking their windows brazenly with no f***s given, and then either closing them shut for him to see or drawing back their tattered curtains with a grumble and moan to leave them be. A dog or two barks, but Robbo’s size makes them think twice about doing it again.  

A very friendly street … sarcasm reigns within my dampened spirits as I search for that pre-rolled spliff that I found stuffed to the knob in my back pocket with a few more traces of the green left inside.

 I have no lighter … a nice excuse, as I know I shouldn’t smoke-it because a clear head to alert my memory-gasm needs to be placed onto my idea that Y.O.M traces all the way back to something Nate told me when we were pushing numbers to individuals who wanted a very dodgy herbalist … who specialized in chemically tampering the product: making it more addictive. I wasn’t proud of my some-time-ish associations when I needed some extra broccoli and cauliflower.

…

“It amazes me that we do this s**t day-in-and-day-out, and still end up broker than aunt Maisy who sells knock-off timberlands for more than she can afford to pay her rent. Don’t you ever just want to say f**k it, grab a cab, and then head on down to paradise city in Manhattan?”

“Nate, we’d be on the cops list of delinquents in search of new territory. And those places around there aren’t fit for us. We don’t merge with the arthritically rich birds. I prefer the down-trodden - but still got paper in my blood ethics. It works for me.”

“I’m tired of working this way. Gathering names and numbers for that wet squid who had 3 – kids and no means to raise them at all.”

“I got to do something. I need to eat. You forget I’m on my last legs with Sidney.” By this period, I wasn’t in-to-deep, and I hadn’t heard of Henry which was his dad. Things were only beginning on that pissing Sidney off-front, but I was aware of Sidney’s association with these young rats who enjoyed bringing up the soldiering life of Vivian. It was a more peaceful time for me: doing odd jobs with nobody battering an eye to my extra activities that brought down their illegal deeds.”

“Sidney’s a pimple that hangs onto his dad’s outstretched arm. It’s his number one line when he gets into a fight.” Nate amusingly imitates Sidney whose voice is similar to a broke down engine in need of a fix; “my dad will come and beat your ass to death! You ain’t prepared for what he can do to you. Do you know … he can wipe out your family, and he’d have the back-up to get away with it.”

Shit. This comes flooding back to me too: Henry having contacts that could wipe away his infidelities and get away. Nate carries on speaking in my memory-gasm, “Then he’ll point out that Henry, that’s his dad name, can just get the recognition he needs from Y.O.M., and they’d cover him more than once – some s**t like that! I never wanted to join that gay-ass group.”

“Easy on the gay-usage.”

“My bad.” Nate apologized with a face that re-examines the dyke next to him as we walk to … I’ll keep that to my own recollection of not wanting to remember. “It’s just they think they’re so hard.”

“Who?”

“Y.O.M and that s**t stands for Young, Operational, Mandates. The heck … and do you know some kid told me that his uncle claims they’ve been around for a very long time?”

“Serious?”

“Yeah. They have a particular type … which is why I made the gay reference.”

And with that re-energizing my heart-rate I come back to life with the sound of hurgh - but not as dramatic as coming up from holding my breath underwater. I must’ve passed out due to tiredness? I haven’t slept for the past 18 -hours …19, which is soon approaching and making me rub my eyes awake!

 I snap out of my drugged tiredness and drawback to the sofa; dropping the spliff in the gap and gratingly trying to feed it out with my fingers. “Fucknig Y.O.M, how old is that s**t? Before I even had …” Robbo comes into the living room erratically.

“I had to knock on 10 – doors before one lady with two kids in both arms answered that the maid comes at around 5-pm, so we should wait as that’s in the next 2 – hours. She didn’t say, maid, more like a friend of the family or something. She asked if I was a cop: strong Mexican accent, I said nah, I was also a friend who they gave a key to … and do you know what she said to that?”

“Me vale madres?” I knew a little Mexican slang.

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t give a damn. Or something like that.”

“Close. But she said that the family gave out spare keys to often, and then would head to their gun ranch and stay on their little patch of land when a visitor would come knocking.”

“And then what?” -

“Nothing. She just closed the door in my face with no goodbye.”

“Was she cold with it? Did her attitude towards you change?” I’m still searching for that darn spliff!

Robbo heads out to the kitchen still erratic and nervy when he goes to open that fridge and pull out a can of soda. I’ve already followed him out there, “you must have more to say because this woman has left her bad vibes all over your body.”

He shuts that fridge and drops the soda can. We both go to pick it up; he accidentally slaps my hand away as if I’m a naughty cat who was about to lick it. I give him a fierce gaze, and he returns it and rolls back his shoulders intimidatingly, “I tell you what I need to. For instance, if I say that the woman knew of an old black man who visited a few months ago and left with that man to go to that gun range – what would you say, Sia?”

“I’d say we should get the details and head their straight away.”

Robbo flicks open the cap: zissst – and the air pops out, he’s tensing his whole body. “And that she invited me inside because she knew who I was?”

My eyes flicker from his left-to-right iris very vividly with a desire to read him between the lines. “I’d say you were right, and that you went inside, and she showed you something that has now given you some suspicion of me.”

“Not just you, my own grandfather too.” Robbo’s eyes fall to the kitchen floor and then his feet find the urge to walk past and head back into the living room.

 Only he doesn’t go in, he just stares at the front door; and then the bedroom; and then retracts back to me who’s in the kitchen watching this with no idea what is going on. “That Mexican woman said, very clearly, that the only reason anybody visited this house is that they were part of the same organization that was recruiting young boys, and more recently over the years, wayward girls into their circle of … misdeeds. That woman is also an informant for me. Because like you, I work for myself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Vivian is not my grandfather. He was just my protector from all these years when he recruited me into Y.O.M.

…

Vivian started bits of it from the beginning …

The little I know is, that Y.O.M started as a programme from the streets that wanted to help young boys maintain some sort of way in life that could see them gather enough credit and basic skills to make it into the military. Only, the way people would speak, it was more a boarding school or orphanage for those who had no real family or means of making it through their daily lives. s**t dug deep to the core.

Robbo had managed to find a key to the backyard, which was more of a site for dumping broken prams and a bicycle with no wheels; thousands of branches that could clog out a blocked toilet; bin bags filled with brown leaves, and an indoor step ladder missing 2 – steps that I go to check out for no apparent reason whatever. Plenty of clutter, in such a small space with no grass.

I start to move aside the branches to see if I might find anything … Robbo helps me out still obviously tense as he continues his story. “I was around … 12, when Viv caught me legging it home one afternoon after I broke into this house to steal a pair of sneaks.”

I stop my search, “you broke into a house to steal a pair of sneaks? I admit, even I wouldn’t sink so low.”

“All I literally had was what my stepfather would give me, and that was 2-sizes too big and no brand name or nothing. I was being clowned out there. You know how it be: young boys making fun of you and then making you feel inadequate.”

I sigh and shake my head; “who cares what others think?”

“Back then, it mattered to me. I had no real family helping me out. And my stepdad only took me in - under the condition that I would help out with some minor robberies.”

“Shit.” I chuck a bunch of branches aside and move ahead to another pile. This family sure like drinking out in their yard: cans of beer and few empty wine bottles not even making it into the recycle bin that I see tipped over. They even have a seaweed green recliner for normal food waste that’s fallen with the foxes having a nice meal for free. I pick up the recycling bin and see cardboard, broken glass, plastic, water bottles, and plenty of unused electronics and paper. Then something spots my fancy that I pick up that shouldn’t be in here: a small plastic bag with something inside.

I still hear Robbo speaking as he checks underneath his affordable high-tops to see if he’s stepped on anything nasty, “When Viv caught up to me, I was checking underneath my shoes like I am now. He pulls me aside … Robbo startles me by initiating that night with a fierce tug on my shoulder and them hurtling me to stand in front of him and giving me mixed vibes when he approaches in a hurry.

Thanks to my reflexes, I nearly strike him with my fist in his jaw, but he blocks that hit by flinging my fist back; “that’s the same way I reacted when he did that to me.” I don’t go for another hit. But this side of Robbo is unpredictable, to say the least. I don’t feel like I’m dealing with the same man who loves a jog.

“You’ve just … changed suddenly on me! I don’t know if you’re coming for me, or acting out some sort of play that won’t get any ratings?” I step back to give myself some space from him, “I’m going to have to ask you to get to the point because your starting to irritate me with your random behavior.”

“I never liked you.” Robbo’s telling me something that I’ve heard a thousand times before.

“Tough break. We never did move in the same directions for you to form a negative opinion on me though.”

“I knew of you. Big difference. And wake up a little to the meaning of recruitment and why somebody like Viv took an interest in you. It wasn’t paternal. It wasn’t even close to caring about you. In the end, you’ll find that the old man was only doing his job.” Robbo sniggers sadly to himself, “let me ask you, did he ever encourage you to home in your craft? Use your talents?”

“If you knew of me then, you’ll know he did.” I still haven’t looked inside that bag that I’m gripping inside of my hand. It could come in useful for the anxiety that’s forming in my respiratory system: inhaling and then exhaling to gather back the lost oxygen. I’m finding I might need it … and haphazardly tip out the contents onto the ground, and what falls out is a see-through cd case that opens with a black-and-red memory stick that tries’ to get away.

I look down to it, and so does Robbo, but neither of us makes a move. “Viv only used those caring lines on the youngers who had potential. That’s what why he wanted to find those who could become useful to him. When Viv spoke to me …” me and Robbo are still watching this memory stick blankly, “he was franker on what he saw in me.”

“What did he say to you?”

“That I had potential. And should work on turning my thievery into a payable and well-balanced profession.”

“Viv wasn’t a bad man.” I should pick up that memory stick; shove it in my pocket; and leave this conversation in the pits of hell! I don’t like where it’s heading? “Whatever you come to say about him, know that he was a good man deep down.”

“Says the girl who only knew half of the truth.”

In my aggravation at being let down again, I kick the memory stick and it disappears under the branches – but I can still make it out. “Then why do we even bother with all this then, Robbo? If the guy was full of false truths, then why are you and me here wanting to solve something that he probably deserved in the long run? Shouldn’t we just … pack up our things; move on; and head to wherever the sun gives us a new life?”

“I said … I never used to like you. And the reason for that was his admiration for you. His mentioning of you whenever he would spend time with me and give pierces to why you were so special. I looked up to this old man, more than anybody else I knew. And with no damn family, he’d only gloat about how you would be a-part of the perfect-3 in the Y.O.M.”

Robbo has my consideration, “the perfect-3? So, then, it has nothing to do with Henry, Viv, and the 3rd wheel which we need to find?”

“It has everything to do with them. And I think you should pick up that memory stick because I hear the front door opening.

“Hello?” That’s not the familiar voice of a female. Somebody was telling Robbo fibs.