6. Deck
Chapter six
Deck
PRESENT DAY
C ori and I pulled into a neighborhood near the one we’d grown up in, walking distance to the ancient skating rink and not too far from the freeway.
Houses here looked slightly nicer than the ones on my parents’ street, with fewer sketchy apartments, but it wasn’t exactly Beverly Hills.
Weeds still sprouted thickly in the overgrown lawns, pushing on the low chain-link fences surrounding them.
Parking the truck a block away from our destination, I pointed out the drab yellow house to Cori. She took a deep breath and moved to climb down from her seat when I stopped her with a hand to the shoulder.
“You sure about this? I can go in on my own if you want,” I offered.
“No. I’ll go nuts if I sit here and wait. I’m going.”
“I figured. But we ought to do some things so you don’t draw attention. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll find. It’s two in the afternoon, so anything is possible. The party could be finishing up or just getting started, but there definitely won’t be any women who look like you in there.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “What should I do?”
“First, let’s not take your bag in with us. That’s just asking for trouble.”
I pulled the lid up on the silver lock box in the back of the cab. After taking out the pepper spray and shoving it in her pocket, she put her purse in, along with her phone. “Anything else?”
“Can you, um, maybe take your hair down, muss it up a bit? It’ll help if you look a bit…used.”
Cori flinched but didn’t argue.
With her hair down, she looked somewhat better, but those fancy clothes and clean sneakers weren’t gonna work. I couldn’t do anything about the shoes, but I could fix the rest. I grabbed one of my work hoodies from the back seat and handed it to her.
She slipped it over her head, no questions asked, drowning in the dingy gray size L with the J&D Construction logo on it. It did the trick, covering up her curves and masking the quality of her jeans.
“That’s good,” I said. “Stay by my side and try not to look at anyone too close, okay?”
“Yeah, Deck. I know.” I sensed the fear in her voice, but also the careful attention. She understood the rules here.
There were no sidewalks. Cars hugged every inch of the curb, so we walked side by side in the street.
All the windows had their curtains drawn tight.
The only evidence these houses were occupied were the cars, the bikes tossed haphazardly near the porches, and a few yards with faded Little Tikes slides out front.
Cori and I spoke quietly in the unnerving stillness.
“How did you know about this place?” she asked.
“My brother Emilio. You remember that do-gooder mothereffer is a cop? About a year ago, he mentioned he’d seen Johnny here, on the job. That’s how your brother and I reconnected.”
It had been dangerous engaging with Johnny because I hadn’t wanted to run into Cori. I’d known since I was a teenager that the best thing I could do for her was stay away. But her brother was a different story. I’d put Johnny in this situation. I owed it to him to try to fix it.
As we walked by a gray house with a makeshift wheelchair ramp out front, two enormous Dobermans came rushing at us, jumping up on the fence and barking viciously.
Cori launched herself against my side. My arm came around her shoulders instinctively.
After we passed the dogs, I attempted to remove it, but she grabbed on, locking me next to her.
“It might make more sense if we look like we’re, you know, together,” she said.
I didn’t want to have my arm around her. A dozen years on, I still remembered how good she felt there. But she had a point. I nodded and lifted the hinge on the gate. We walked up the path to the door.
My stomach churned as I tapped on the solid wood—memories of Chi-chi’s parties threatened to make their way to the surface—but I didn’t have a choice. Johnny could be in there.
I raised my fist to the door again, noticing it wasn’t fully shut. Eventually, I knocked hard enough that it opened.
Into a nightmare.
The door creaked wide, and we found ourselves on the edge of a putrid-smelling living room.
Navy blue sheets were duct-taped to the walls, covering the windows and back door slider.
Cori and I squinted, adjusting to the abrupt darkness, and I barely pulled her back from stepping in a puddle of something—vomit, probably, hopefully not piss—as we ventured in farther.
At least five couches were shoved into the room, all with people in various states of awareness on them.
A dilapidated coffee table covered in drug paraphernalia held a place of honor in the center.
I saw Cori’s eyes widen at the sight of burned foil and spoons, lighters and pipes.
Needles. One needle stuck up from the carpet, perfectly embedded.
“Watch where you step,” I whispered. Her reply was a slight nod.
A couple looked up at us with curiosity, but no one seemed to mind that two random people had walked into the house.
It was strangely quiet, just the sounds of breathing, snoring, and a squeak of pleather as someone moved around on a sofa.
I imagined this room looked a lot different a few hours ago.
Still a nightmare, but one with music and talking.
Again, I pushed down the memories that nagged me.
Shuffling on the carpet echoed from our left.
A woman came out from the hallway, the straps of her tank top falling off her shoulders and two stringy braids unraveling down her back.
She gave us an upnod as she walked by and went through the open doorway of the kitchen, passing close enough that I could make out her blown pupils and the track marks near her elbow.
Cori noticed too, gasping a teeny bit before catching herself.
At least it was a sign of life. Everyone else looked half dead.
I pulled Cori against the wall, hugging her to me—not that anyone was paying attention—and used that vantage point to check out the people on the couches.
None of them looked like Johnny. The guy slumped in the corner was too big.
The man on the far cushion was Black. Another couple was on one end of a ’70s-era paisley couch, and I realized with disgust that they were more awake than the others, the woman lazily rubbing her hand against the man’s crotch while he humped up against it.
Leaning down to Cori’s ear, I said, “I don’t see him here. I’m pretty sure that mujer who just passed us is the only one in the kitchen. We need to check the bedrooms.”
She trembled slightly as I rested my hand on her lower back, keeping close as we made our way down the hall.
The first bedroom door was wide open. Four people were on the bed—three women who might have been teenagers, and one man who looked like he was in his thirties, all naked.
I assumed they were passed out until the man glared up at me and shouted, “Shut the fuckin’ door, bitch! ”
I shut the fucking door.
His loud roar reverberated like an earthquake after the quiet we’d walked into. Cori and I held up for a tense moment, worried his yelling might have alerted someone who would object to our presence.
Nothing happened.
“Shit, that was close,” I breathed out.
Next up was a bathroom, the door cracked open.
I checked quickly and saw just one man, lying in the bathtub, needle still in his forearm.
The oppressively sour smell radiating from the pool of vomit in the sink of the unvented space almost made me throw up, but I choked it down in time.
“Nothing in here,” I said to Cori, shutting the door quickly.
It was a small house, two bedrooms, so there was only one door left to try. Had I brought Cori into this hellhole to come up empty on finding her brother?
Pushing open the last door, I registered that this room was darker than the other.
A double coverage of sheets blocked the light from its one window.
A beat-up dresser missing two drawers took up almost half the real estate in the tiny space.
Atop it was a bunch of pipes, needles, spoons and foil, a rubber band—the same stuff that had been on the table in the living room.
I could barely make anything out with only the dim light of the hallway as my guide.
On a twin bed pushed against the wall, a lone occupant lay still and unmoving. My breath stuttered.
“Johnny!” Cori whisper-shouted, pushing past me to kneel beside her brother.
“Johnny.” She ran her fingers through his hair.
Tears began streaking down her face as she rasped, “Johnny, can you hear me?” She frantically slapped his cheek, lightly at first, and then a few times with more force. “Johnny, wake up…please.”
Her brother lay on his side, legs curled up. He had on his hoodie and boxers but no pants. As Cori continued to plead with him, I discreetly pulled the needle she hadn’t noticed out of his toes.
I saw her stick two fingers on his neck and press her other hand against his chest. I held my breath as her face went pale, but then an expression of pure relief washed over her. “He’s alive, Deck. He’s not waking up, but he’s breathing.”
Thank fuck. “We need to get him out of here.”
I found Johnny’s pants shoved behind the bed and slid them on him quickly. I still had the sense we were on borrowed time. It would have been helpful if Johnny could have woken up a bit, but he was basically in a coma. Cori and I needed to make do.
We hoisted him up between us, and I bore the brunt of it as we draped his arms over our shoulders.
Johnny probably weighed fifty pounds less than me, but maldita sea, dios , he felt heavy.
Pure dead weight. His bare feet dragged on the carpet as we carried him down the hallway, but there was no help for it.
As we passed the other bedroom, I was grateful the man inside had forced us to shut the door.
No one on the couches looked up as we went back through the living room, but the woman in the kitchen—now drinking a Gatorade—cocked her head at us.
“J okay?” she drawled.
“Yeah, está bien . We got him.”
She nodded, and I exhaled shakily as we hobbled outside. It had only been twenty minutes, but the sun already felt foreign.
Cori must have sensed it too. “It’s like coming out from another dimension,” she said.
“Hundred percent.”
Her face twisted. “A horrible dimension with needles and naked girls and nobody giving a crap about anything. Just the drugs.” She spat out the raw words.
“Cori—”
“The world where my brother lives.” She shook her head, even as she did her part to keep Johnny steady between us. “I didn’t know, Deck.” Lifting her shoulder to wipe a tear from the bottom of her jaw, she continued softly, “I mean, I knew, but…not really. Not like this.”
We got to the truck, and I hoisted Johnny into the back seat. He seemed fine there, uncaring when I buckled him into the middle with just enough slack to lay him down. He let out a small grunt when his head brushed up against the door, the first sign he was coming down.
“What do you want to do, Cori?”
She remained stonelike for a moment, hunched in the passenger seat with her hands clasped in her lap. Eventually, she asked, “Can you take us to the hospital?”
Johnny would hate it, but it was the right call. “Yeah.”
“And Deck?”
“Hmm?”
“If the doctors have questions, I’m not sure how much help I can be. Will you stay with me there for a while? Just until I have an idea of what’s next. Maybe you can tell me more about him, what you know about his situation.”
At that moment, it dawned on me. I wouldn’t be able to keep pushing her away.
Not entirely. For Johnny to survive, he needed as many people as possible in his corner.
And it wouldn’t happen overnight. I thought I’d been helping him this past year.
I got the feeling Cori thought she’d been doing the same thing. But we’d just been passing time.
This didn’t mean we had to be back in each other’s lives. I didn’t want that for Cori, didn’t want to risk hurting her again. But we needed to work together to save Johnny. I owed her that much. Then I could stay away for good.