Under Orlando’s bed.
“Take pictures.” The harshness of Theo’s voice startled Auggie out of the fantasy. “Then we’re leaving. We’ll call the police, make an anonymous tip about a burglary in progress, and let them find things just like this.”
Auggie tried to count the cash.
Theo shook him. “Now.”
But as Auggie pulled out his phone, he heard a door open downstairs.
16
For one moment, Theo thought they could make it. He glanced at the window. He was still holding Auggie’s arm, and he could visualize dragging him across the room, helping him out, lowering him until it was safe enough to drop.
But it was already too late.
The steps came up the stairs at an easy jog. Then they stopped.
“What the fuck?” Wayne said from the landing.
Then he moved into view, framed by Orlando’s doorway, and stopped again. He stared at them, and then his gaze flitted past them to the overturned bed and the hidden cache. Color drained from his face, but his voice was still hard when he said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I think you’re the one who needs to explain,” Theo said. “What is this stuff? Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know.” He rocked back and forth, and then he glanced around. “Where’s Peepee? What the hell is going on? Peepee? Get your sorry butt up here!”
“Don’t call him that,” Auggie said. Theo’s fingers tightened on Auggie’s arm until his knuckles ached, but Auggie either didn’t understand the message or ignored it. “You’re all terrible to him. Stop calling him that.”
“Screw you. You two don’t have any idea the kind of trouble you’re in. Jeez, what you did to Dad’s office—Peepee’s going to be lucky if he’s not sleeping in a gutter by the end of this. Peepee, where the hell are you?”
“I told you to stop it,” Auggie said.
“Leave it,” Theo ordered quietly.
“Peepee!”
“Stop!”
“Not now, Auggie!” Theo snapped.
The silence that followed was worse. Auggie refused to meet Theo’s gaze. Wayne was still looking around the landing, hands on his hips. Theo half-expected him to check his watch. Rules of the house: when somebody yells Peepee’s name, Peepee comes running. But the only sound was the rhythmic slosh and rattle of the dishwasher.
“Holy crap,” Wayne said. “He’s not here, is he?”
“You’d better tell us about the money,” Theo said. “Start talking now, and you’ll make your life easier down the road.”
“Boy, you two really think you’re the stuff, don’t you? I get kids like you all the time. They’re whizzes at Little League, but put them in front of a pitching machine and they swing like they’re trying to knock down a piñata. I know Peepee thinks you’re these grade-A detectives, but you’re a joke. Like him. And I’m calling the police.”
“This is yours. Yours and Cal’s, the money and the watches and the gear,” Theo said. “You took it as kickbacks for steering your best players to the right team, the right school, the right club. You pull the best players from several counties; you’ve always got talent you can peddle. Cal might have pissed his money away on drugs, but you’ve got a nice stash here. How long has it been going on?”
Wayne held his phone in one hand, thumb hovering over the screen, ready to place the call.
“I guess that part doesn’t matter,” Theo said. “What matters is that you and Cal reached a breaking point. He wanted more than his share. Maybe you just argued about it. Or maybe he showed up here and took some of yours. He couldn’t bring himself to sell the Mustang; that was his baby. But he couldn’t afford his next hit either. Good thing you had a piggy bank he could raid.”
“You were angry,” Auggie said, “when you found out. You’d worked so hard, and now your drug-addict brother was going to ruin everything. Drove you crazy. Trust me, I know a tiny bit what that feels like. And when he started stealing from you, well, you had to put a stop to that. You argued.”
With a merry beeping noise, the dishwasher announced that it had completed the cycle. The shadows on the landing had deepened. They lay across Wayne’s face, obscuring him so completely that when he tapped the phone to keep the screen unlocked, the renewed brightness of blue light only offered a weak outline.
“Maybe you can convince everyone that you didn’t mean to kill him,” Theo said. “Maybe you can make them believe that it was an accident. But it wasn’t an accident, was it? Because you realized, later, that your ass was still hanging in the wind. Nia knew about the drugs. She knew the White Rabbit. She knew you and Cal had argued. And you were afraid she was going to tell someone. The night of the demonstration was the perfect opportunity: everybody would assume it was the Volunteers. You made sure you looked the part. You wore the right gear. You planned the perfect escape.”
“Yeah?” Wayne tapped the phone. The blue haze intensified again as the screen woke. “Let’s talk about it when the police get here.”
Auggie laughed. “You don’t want the police here.”
“We’ll see who’s laughing when—”
“Oh, it’ll be us,” Auggie said. “We’ll be laughing. You’ve been a fucking joke your whole life.”
“Shut up. Yes, I need officers at my parents’ house. I caught two people trying to—”
“You’re the punchline to a joke that this family has been telling for thirty years, right?
“Shut up,” Wayne shouted.
“I didn’t see it until right now, but it all makes sense: you’re a joke. That’s why you sit around your apartment drinking beer by yourself. That’s why they turned your room into a fucking home office. That’s why you’re so hard on Orlando; you were so glad when Orlando came along. So relieved that someone else might get dumped on for a while. That’s why you ride him harder than anyone.”
“Shut the fuck up! Shut up!”
“You’re the oldest boy, but you must be shit at everything you touch. Cal was the better athlete. Cal was the better businessman. Cal was even better at partying. I bet after all those pills you popped to get big, you’ve got balls the size of grapes and a dick as hard as a piece of licorice. No wonder Cal had a girl while you had to sit on the couch at home with a finger up your ass.”
Wayne’s hand with the phone dropped to his side, a tinny voice asking questions. His pulse fluttered in his temple. Everything human had been ground out of his face; he looked like he was wearing a Wayne mask. His fingers spasmed, and the phone hit the carpeted landing with a soft sound.
“He’s a kid,” Theo said, moving in front of Auggie. “He’s just a kid. He’s saying dumb shit to rile you up.”
“Yeah,” Auggie said. “That explains a lot. You’re obsessed with Orlando’s dick. That’s why you call him Peepee. Did you catch a glimpse of it one time, and now you can’t get it out of your head? Your baby brother with a big old swinging cock, when you couldn’t jump start yours with anything less than a lightning bolt.”