A Dangerous Affair Read online

  Lloyd snorted beer through his nose. "You asked her to let you ride in the trunk."

  Josh nodded. "That turd on wheels was the worst part about going to school. I told Mom I'd rather walk to the prom."

  "You never went to the prom," said Lloyd. And in the same instant, he regretted the comment. "You didn't miss anything."

  Josh dropped his cigarette in his beer can. The burning tobacco fizzled. "It's not my dream car, but it runs."

  "Funny how things change."

  "Serious... Is that Dad's bike outside?"

  "I got it running."

  "I'll trade you," Josh offered.

  "You don't know how to ride."

  Josh lit another cigarette. "That never stopped me before." He wiped the edge of his nose. "Sheila lets me drive her car for errands. I drive the beater to work."

  "Are you still working hard or hardly working?"

  "I did construction for a long time. The builder let me go last year when the market took a dump. I was making eighteen an hour with overtime. People would camp out to buy a house that cost three times what it was worth. Now you can't give them away."

  Lloyd stared at the baby blanket on the rug. "What about school?"

  Josh ignored the question and gathered toys from the floor by the baby swing. "You haven't changed in eight years."

  "Ten," Lloyd corrected him.

  "You still look ripped. Must have pumped a lot of iron in prison."

  "A little."

  "What was the food like?"

  "It sucked."

  "Did you get in fights?"

  Lloyd crumpled his empty beer can. "Where should I put this?"

  "Under the sink."

  Lloyd pushed the can in the trash. "Mom asked about you."

  Josh nodded. His cigarette bounced in the corner of his mouth when he talked. "Must have been the booze talking."

  "When's the last time you saw her?"

  "Last summer."

  "She's sick, you know."

  Josh dumped the rest of his beer in the kitchen sink. "You wanna see something cool?"

  "Will it get me arrested?"

  Josh put his fingers in his mouth and pulled his dentures out. He flashed a toothless grin. "Don't try this at home."

  Lloyd stared at his brother.

  "Pretty cool," Josh mumbled with a toothless grin. He wiggled his jaw and popped the dentures back in. "It's hard to talk without them."

  "What happened?"

  "The meth rotted out my teeth. My front ones were in pretty bad shape. The dentist had to pull a couple molars in the back. It hurt like hell for a week." He bit down to seat the dentures. "I feel like an old man sometimes, but at least I can chew again."

  "Do you still get high?"

  Josh pressed his tongue against his gum line to adjust the fit. "I've been clean for three years. After you were busted I hit a wall and started chasing the wrong crowd. I was good at that, I guess." He avoided eye contact with Lloyd. "Nobody wants to grow up and be a junkie."

  "No worries," Lloyd reassured him. "It's behind you now."

  "You need a place to crash?"

  "I'm good for the next sixty days. The state has me chained to a halfway house. Part of my parole agreement."

  "That sucks."

  "It's better than the alternative."

  Josh shoved his hand in his pocket. "You need some cash?"

  Lloyd shrugged. "I'll find work."

  Josh pulled out a crumpled Jackson and offered it to his brother. "It's all I have on me."

  "Put your money away."

  "Take it."

  "I didn't come here to ask for money."

  "It's not a handout. It's a loan."

  Lloyd took the bill. "I'll pay you back."

  Josh smoked his second cigarette to the butt and snuffed it in the sink. "Sheila's got a girlfriend I could hook you up with."

  "I'll pass."

  "She's got a nice body."

  Sheila entered the room with one hand supporting her baby's soggy bottom and the other on his back. "We're out of diapers," she blurted.

  "I bought two boxes this morning," said Josh. "They're in the trunk."

  "Can you get them, please? My hands are kind of full right now."

  "In a second."

  "When are you going to fix the AC? It feels like Hell's Kitchen in here."

  "Put a cold washcloth on your face."

  Sheila cradled her baby. "It's not me I'm worried about."

  "I'll fix it tomorrow."

  "That's what you said yesterday."

  "I had to work a double shift."

  "You didn't have to watch the football game."

  Josh tapped Lloyd on the arm. "I'll be right back."

  "You need help?" Lloyd offered.

  "I got it."

  Lloyd wiped his forehead. Despite the fan blowing, he could feel the sweat dripping down his face. "What's his name?" he asked Sheila.

  Sheila dabbed the burp cloth on her baby's mouth. "Logan."

  "He has your eyes."

  "He has his moments. I never planned on getting pregnant."

  "How old is he?"

  Sheila stared at the cross tattoo on Lloyd's forearm. "Twelve weeks." She also noticed his boots and the bulge from his ankle monitor. Lloyd watched her face change as the pieces suddenly came together. "When did you get out?"

  Lloyd opened the screen-door for his brother.

  Josh balanced two boxes of Huggies on his arm. "I bought the good ones like you asked," he said.

  Sheila rolled her eyes. "You got the wrong size again."

  The infant cried in fits and starts.

  Sheila countered with a gentle bounce and a vigorous pat on the back. "How come you never told me you had a brother in prison?"

  "Ahh... probably because it was none of your business."

  The baby screamed.

  "I'm on parole," Lloyd confessed.

  "For what?" asked Sheila.

  "Doesn't matter," Josh defended his brother.

  Sheila switched the baby to her other shoulder. "You promised me you were clean."

  "I am," Josh argued.

  "Then what is he doing here?"

  "He came to see me."

  Sheila rolled her eyes. "Exactly."

  "What does that mean?"

  Sheila tore a fresh diaper from the box and carried the baby away. "I think your brother should leave."

  "He's family."

  "Not to me."

  Lloyd let himself out. "I'll catch up later."

  Josh followed him to the driveway. "Wait up."

  "I've got a long ride back," said Lloyd. He threw his leg over the bike and centered the front wheel. Then he keyed the ignition and started the motor.

  Josh looked back at the trailer. "She gets like this when she's on the rag. You just have to tune her out."

  Lloyd checked the view in his mirrors. "It's cool."

  "What are you doing tomorrow?"

  "I haven't thought about it," said Lloyd.

  Josh pulled a business card from his wallet. "I manage a car wash in Plant City about forty minutes from here. We could use some extra help. The pay sucks, but it's better than nothing. If you come by early, I'll introduce you to the owner."

  Lloyd kept the bike in neutral. "I've got a curfew at ten."

  "We close at seven."

  Lloyd rolled the bike backwards. He pulled the clutch and notched the transmission in gear. "I'll think about it."

  Chapter 11

  Lloyd parked the Triumph near the base of a thirty-foot flagpole at the entrance to the Seaside Cemetery. Offshore winds rifled Old Glory to attention. Dark clouds gathered in tight formation, threatening to resolve the semi-drought condition with a copious amount of rain.

  At the opposite end of the property, a Cadillac hearse led a funeral procession toward an open burial plot marked with fresh bouquets from mourners gathered at the site.

  Lloyd dismounted the bike and stretched his arms above his head. He could smell
the salty air and almost taste it on his tongue.

  The sound of ruffled canvas followed him to his father's grave marker. He read the short inscription. The simple words conjured memories of the father he loved and respected. A man who left him wondering, What happened and why?

  Thunder pounded the sky above him.

  Despite the ensuing crescendo of dime-size raindrops bouncing at Lloyd's feet, he hung his head and said a silent prayer for the man who taught him right from wrong; the man who showed him what it felt like to be part of a normal family.

  He opened the crumpled envelop Brenda gave him and read the ink-smeared note he found inside:

  Lloyd,

  I'm sorry for what has happened, but this was God's plan not mine. I accept what you have done, and I forgive you. No man is perfect. Sometimes we succumb to our temptations despite our best intentions. I hope this letter finds you in good health and good conscience. I wish I could offer you more. If you need an escape from reality, dig up Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Forgive me for not expressing myself to you in person, but as you know, I have never been a man of words.

  Love, Robert.

  * * *

  Soaked to the bone on the Triumph at fifty miles an hour, Lloyd punched holes through the asteroid field of steady precipitation pelting his eyes and face. Stay alert and stay alive, he told himself, enduring the white-knuckle ride over wet pavement blended with an oily sheen of hydrocarbon residue.

  He hugged the double yellow line to avoid the lake-size patches of runoff water. With tire friction at a premium, he kept the bike nearly upright through the turns, leaning just far enough to negotiate the bends in the road.

  He had an hour to spare before the evening curfew started—an easy achievement despite the rain, if not for a faulty sensor that indicated an indefinite quarter tank of gas.

  The engine sputtered and coughed, inhaling more air than fuel from the depleted reserve.

  Lloyd drifted to a stop several miles from the nearest gas station. He tapped the hollow gas tank, confirming his own stupidity for not observing the odometer more closely.

  Tired and drenched, he pushed the Triumph with his hip against the bike's frame to balance the center of gravity. A tractor trailer roared by with the air horn blasting. Cars followed in formation, but no one stopped.

  Not even Sheriff Blanchart in his unmarked cruiser.

  Chapter 12

  Ronald Varden counted seven men inside the halfway house with the backup lights engaged. He carried a police radio in one hand and a lantern flashlight in the other. The loss of power he could live with, a missing convict he could not. After his stint as a Florida State Trooper, he'd worked as a correctional officer inside the county jail in Sharpes. He understood how temptation could make a man do crazy, unpredictable things. He'd survived his share of confrontations and earned the stitches in his head to prove it. On the scale of evolution, a convicted felon was no more a man behind bars than a wild animal, never to be trusted no matter how reformed or docile he appeared to credulous members of society.

  Despite his own tarnished record hammered by unfounded accusations of unnecessary use of force, Varden doled out equal punishment to everyone who broke the rules. And despite the parole board assessments of the apathetic inmates who hid behind their rehabilitation guise, every convict was essentially the same. Unchanged. No better than he was before he entered the prison system.

  He trusted no one but himself when it came to managing his own house of ex-convicts, who'd learned over time how to carefully manipulate a broken system for a chance at a new life. A chance they neither valued nor deserved.

  The lights flickered, then came back on. A portable radio in the other room played rap music. Then as if on cue, Lloyd Sullivan entered the house dripping wet.

  "You're late, Mr. Sullivan."

  Parolees gathered around Varden to witness the inevitable confrontation.

  Lloyd stood grim-faced. He left his wet boots on the outside matt. "I ran out of gas."

  "Curfew started two hours ago."

  "I had to push my bike to get here."

  "The rules of this house are simple, Mr. Sullivan. I expect you to follow them like everyone else."

  Varden quoted the house rules from memory. "Part two, section four, curfew restrictions. If at any time a parolee fails to notify the proper authority, that's me, of his whereabouts prior to his late arrival for evening head count, said parolee will receive one strike." He glared at Lloyd. "Is it starting to sink in now?"

  "I get it."

  "Keep it up, Mr. Sullivan. I'll have you back in lockup before the week is finished." Varden unclipped his PDA from his hip holster and dabbed the pointer at the screen. "You're making faster progress than I thought."

  Lloyd wiped his face. "What do you mean?"

  "You were speeding. That's a moving violation, Mr. Sullivan. That's strike two. One more and your time is done here."

  "I wasn't speeding."

  Varden pointed to Lloyd's ankle bracelet. "Technology is a beautiful thing. I know where you are and where you're going before you get there. I know how fast, how long, and how far. I can know where you eat breakfast every morning and how often you take a shit. I can practically read your mind." He shifted his attention to the other men. "Lights out in five. That goes for everyone."

  * * *

  Lloyd pushed his way through the line of convicts hanging on the words of condemnation. He hung up his wet leather jacket behind the door in his room and pulled his shirt over his head. A wall of abdominal muscles melded with his carved pectorals that flexed as he wrung out his soaking wet shirt in a bucket on the floor beneath a ceiling leak.

  "Does this always happen?" he asked the dark-skinned bunk-mate resting in the top bunk with a reading light clipped to a textbook on what appeared to be electrical circuit theory.

  Marvin Tate looked down at Lloyd. "Only when it rains." He wore androgynous features with a blue bandanna around his head. He dropped a fist and bumped knuckles with Lloyd. "Name's Tate. Marvin Tate. The ladies often mistake me for Denzel, but you know... sometimes you gotta play the cards you're dealt."

  "I'm Lloyd."

  Marvin adjusted the book-mounted reading light. "I saw you the other day when Varden gave you the tour. Stay off his radar or you'll be bunking with Montgomery in county."

  Lloyd stepped out of his wet jeans and settled on the bottom bunk. "How long have you been in this house?"

  "Eighteen days, twelve hours, and forty minutes give or take." Marvin skimmed the chapter summary. "How long were you in the joint?"

  "Too long," said Lloyd.

  Marvin slid his finger to hold his place in the chapter summary. "You don't look like the head-busting type. I figure you for manslaughter. Some dude groped your girl at a bar. You were drunk, got in a fight. He threw down first. BAM! You hit him back harder than you meant to. Dude croaks. You take the rap. I've heard it a hundred times. Am I right?"

  "Something like that."

  "I knew it," said Marvin. "I did four years on a B&E. Believe that? Judge threw the book in my face. I kept my mouth shut and did my time. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a rat."

  "Good to know."

  "Why? You got something to hide?" Marvin stared at him, clearly gauging Lloyd's reaction. "I'm just messin' with you." His grin faded with the heated look on Lloyd's face.

  A door slammed from somewhere inside the house. The television in the other room went silent. Bits of loud conversation faded out of earshot.

  "You got family here?" Marvin asked.

  "My mother. And a brother." Lloyd rested the back of his hand against his forehead. Barely forty-eight hours out of prison and he found himself a gnat's ass away from violating his parole and losing the freedom he embraced. "What about you?"

  "I got a sister who lives in Kansas City. My folks live in Jacksonville, Missouri. I grew up there. Went to school. Got mixed up with the wrong woman. That's when it hit the fan. It always starts with a pre
tty woman."

  "Amen to that."

  Marvin propped his head on his lumpy pillow. "Life ain't the same as you remember it when you first get out. You see your reality check bounce when you fill out your first job application. When people discover you did time, they dismiss you like a bad juror. No one wants to be an ex-con. No one sure as hell wants to hire one either. You come out thinking you paid your debt, but once you're back in the real world again you learn your tab's never paid. People you knew look at you different, like you grew a third eye in the middle of your forehead. The ones that act like they're still your friends are lying to your face."

  Marvin's eyes were red. Lloyd wondered how long he'd been reading, then rolled on his side away from the leaking roof and the constant drip-drip-drip in the plastic bucket. "What's the deal with Varden?"

  "Varden hates everyone who comes through here. Black, white, red, brown—it don't matter. We're all the same in his eyes. And he knows things. In a weird way. Like he really can read your mind. I think he spent some time in the pen himself in a former life. God brought him back to work this place and remind him of what he used to be."

  Lloyd touched his ankle monitor and looked up to see Marvin staring down at him from the top bunk.

  "Don't mess with that," Marvin warned. "It's got an anti-tamper circuit wired into the clasp. You can trash it with a hacksaw and some serious elbow grease, but Varden will have you back in cuffs faster than you can say 'oh shit.'"

  "Can Varden really track us with this?"

  "Like a deer in a rifle scope."

  "Great..."

  Marvin opened the chapter summary again. "You play football?"

  "I played a little college ball."

  "You must have played linebacker. You got the shoulders for it."

  Lloyd thought about his brother's offer at the car wash. "Can you spot me some coin?" he asked Marvin straight up.

  "You lose your wallet in the rain?"

  "I'm good for it."

  Marvin closed the book and reached under his pillow, producing a billfold. He folded a Jackson in half and passed it down to Lloyd. "A white dude asking a brother for a loan? Never thought I'd see the day. Keep this on the down low. I don't want every motherfucker in here trying to tap me for some paper."