Vapors of Innocence

I put my sunglasses on and braced myself to leave the bar. We officially close at 2:00 am, but on Thursdays -- after we "close", management opens back up after a half-hour to allow industry workers to have their post-work drinks and pick which of their colleagues they're going home with for the night. Normally this process wraps up before the sun comes up, but not always, and never during the Summer.

I pinched my eyes tight, but it didn't help. It never did. The Sun was already bouncing off Boston Harbor and my head reeled. A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, pulling me out of my light-blindness.

"Another night; another dollar, eh?"

"Hmm." I grunted.

Connor Braeburn was a childhood friend. We had each started as dishwashers at The Gilded Rose in high school for video game money. Now in our early 30's, we worked security and helped clean the place up at the end of each shift.

"Sheesh, that sunuvabitch is bright, eh?"

"Hmm."

"Not many more monrings like these. Let's grab a bottle of Jim from the bar and go to Castle Island, rip some shots, and pass out in the Sun. Whatdya say?"

"I'm old and tired, Burny. I need my bed."

"Oh, come on, Cal, you're not that old. Besides, I've only got one more week left at the Rose. Then, I've got to grow out my mustache and start eating donuts all the time. I won't be able to fall asleep in the Sun."

I told him not all cops ate donuts and had mustaches. He said he knew. I said I knew he knew. We stared at each other, and he took a swing at me, laughing his head off. Unfortunately, he clipped me in my temple and -- joking or not- Connor had some big mitts and a lot of force behind them. I grinned at him.

"Sorry, Officer. I gotta get back to bed. I've got a case myself to work this afternoon."

He put his hands up, admitting deafeat. As I turned to leave, I caught another smack on my back.

"You read too many books; who even hires private detectics any more? Should have joined the BPD like me."

As he jogged off, I could feel the bruises already forming.

---

I got back to my apartment in Jamaica Plain around 6:00 am. I was eager for bed, but I had gotten several texts from my client throughout my shift and needed to respond before I went incommunicado again. Having worked security for the first decade of our lives, we both decided to move into our “adult jobs” when we hit 30. Connor had begun his training at the police academy, while I had been working towards qualifying as a private detective. I had only been licensed for a few months, and work has been pretty thin so far, which is why I had kept the job at the Rose. My current client represented my second official gig, and I didn’t want to blow it.

A neighbor in my apartment building, Ines Monteiro, had lost her 14-year-old son, Miguel, to a drug overdose two weeks ago. The police who had investigated it said that it looked like his vape pen had been laced with fentanyl, but she was skeptical they’d go further. She told me she’d pay me a thousand bucks if I could find the person who sold him the laced pen and bring them to the attention of the police. She wanted justice, maybe even revenge.

I doubted I’d be able to find out who had poisoned her kid, but she was a neighbor and a grieving mother, and a thousand dollars would do me a lot of good.

I had been working the case for four days at this point. I had made a lot of progress on the first day, but I had hit a wall I couldn’t get around. I learned who Miguel’s friends were, I figured out which ones were also vaping, and I had learned that they got their vape pens and cartridges from…” some guys who were outside the school at dismissal.” A dead-end if ever there was one.

“Hey, Mrs. Monteiro, this is Callum Bentham from upstairs. I got your messages asking me to call you. I’m sorry I was out of contact all night. I might be hard to reach for the next few hours as well, but I wanted to let you know that I’m headed back to the school today to see if I can locate the people who might have sold your son the laced vape pen. I’ll try you again when I head over there.”

I took a shower, turned the AC a few degrees colder, scrolled through news articles on my phone, and fell asleep.

---

I woke up to the sound of banging on my door. It was loud, urgent, and inexorable. I wondered how many times they had knocked politely before this had started. I pulled on some sweatpants and a heavily worn yellow t-shirt that I hated but had been a gift from an ex that I kept out of spite and wore when I missed her.

“Mister Betham. Mister Bentham!” came the shouts from the hallway. She hadn’t broken her cadence on the banging to yell. She must have had it dialed in with a metronome.

I opened the door. Mrs. Monteiro was there with another woman. She was of a similar age, but where Mrs. Monteiro looked angry, this woman looked sad. She had been crying, recently.

“Mister Bentham.” Mrs. Monteiro said.

“Hmm.” I leveraged my vast lexicon.

“Mister Bentham, it is almost 1 o’clock, and I saw your car outside. Why aren’t you at the school yet?”

“I was…preparing.” Such were the words under my command.

“Mister Bentham” She was getting a lot of practice with that. “Joe is dead, too.”

“Hmm?” I should have used better words.

“This is Mrs. DaSilva. You met her son Diego the other day at the school.”

“Shit.” Not that word. Both women crossed themselves. “Yes, I remember him; what happened?”

“Oh, they think it was the same thing, sir. Fentanyl. In his vape pen.”

The other woman said something in Portuguese or maybe Crioulo and they both crossed themselves again.

“After Miguel died, I told him, I said ‘you better not be vaping, too. And if you are, you better stop right away,’ but…” the other woman broke down into sobs. I felt it; I don’t have kids, but I felt it.

I went into my apartment and grabbed a pen and some paper. I saw the box of tissues and thought about bringing that, too, but I needed to hurry to the school and didn’t want to linger through a cry session.

“Here. Write down your phone number and the names of any friends that Joe and Miguel had in common. If you have their phone numbers or know their parents’ numbers, write those down, too.”

I went back into the apartment and changed into jeans and a different T-shirt. I splashed some cold water on my face and went back to the door as she finished writing.

“I’m going down to the school. I’ll call you if I get something.”

As I walked past them to leave, I felt a tug on my shirt. I turned and locked eyes with Mrs. Monteiro. She didn’t say anything. She just stared hard for a moment, and then she gave me a little nod. There was no sadness in her eyes, just something else. I felt it; I didn’t have kids, but I felt it.

---

I read the note on my drive over the middle school at the edge of Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury. It only had one name on it under Mrs. DaSilva’s phone number – Barrett Sands. I had met Barrett with Diego and a couple of other students on Monday. He had been the one doing most of the talking. They were all on the school’s soccer team and usually played at the open field a few blocks from the school after class let out while they waited for their parents to get out of work. I had staked out the soccer field Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, but I hadn’t seen anything suspicious, certainly no one that looked like they were selling fentanyl to kids.

I parked in front of some old triple deckers across the street from the main entrance to the school building at around 1:30. There was a bodega on the corner, and I walked down to grab an iced tea a bag of pretzels, and some nicotine pouches for breakfast while I waited.

I kept my eye on the sidewalks; there was plenty of foot traffic, but I didn’t even really know who I was looking for. I flipped back a page on my notebook to review what I had gotten from the kids I spoke with on Monday.

“Two guys who ‘seem’ white and are usually outside of the school at dismissal. Older than us [the kids], but not ‘old-old’.”

I wondered if they would have called me old-old. I dreaded being old-old.

The school’s bell rang; dismissal would begin soon. I scanned the sidewalk on both sides. A donut and a mustache wouldn’t have taken away from my inconspicuousness. I laughed to myself as I thought of Connor rolling down the street in a cruiser asking me why I was parked across from a middle school. The thought was funny. He had a mustache and a donut in the thought. I would have to work on these stereotypes; I’m sure some sociology student would call them problematic.

The main doors opened and all the chaos of a school dismissal in early June poured forth from them. I checked hands as they walked out of the building – cellphones, tablets, various toys and cards, a few frisbees and basketballs, but no vape pens. I looked over the adults in the area. Most greeted their kids with hugs and began walking or driving them home, but there were a few who seemed to be disinterested, or even bothered by, the torrent.

The guy from the bodega walked past me on my side of the sidewalk. He stopped two cars behind me to light up a dart, and I thought about getting out and asking if he could bring me another iced tea.

Before I could, I clocked the other kid, Barrett, crossing the street in my direction. He was alone, and he looked upset. I guess I would be too if two of my friends had just died. I assumed he wanted to talk to me, so I started rolling down my window. I stopped in an instant and pancaked against my seat when I realized he wasn’t walking towards me. I risked a glance out my rearview mirror and everything snapped into place. The bodega owner hadn’t lit a cigarette; it was a vape pen, and Barrett Sands was walking straight over to him.

---

If he had noticed me or the window of my car rolling down, he didn’t show any signs of it distracting him. As he approached the bodega owner, he was irritated and began shouting. I tried to hear what they were saying but couldn’t make anything out clearly over the din of the students on the other side of the car. I risked rolling my window up and the passenger side window down, but it didn’t help.

From where I was sitting I could see the lower half of their bodies in the mirror. They were close to one another, and I started feeling my heart race and my mind wander. I had been certified for a firearm as part of my private licensure, and I had even bought a pre-owned Sig from a gunshop a few weeks ago. It was uselessly sitting in a lockbox in my bedside table back in the apartment. Good work, Marlowe, way to be on top of things.

They started to move towards me. I let them pass and heard the bodega owner say, “Don’t fucking threaten me, kid. You would be arrested, too. You’re the one who bought them for your friends.” Shit, Barrett must have said he was going to go to the police. He had some serious ones on him to threaten an adult to his face, especially one who had already been involved with the death of two of his classmates. Once they had gotten a few cars ahead of me, I got out and started to follow them.

I thought of my next steps. Do I call the police now? Should I call Mrs. Monteiro? Should I talk to someone at the school? Do I attempt a citizen’s arrest? I had my license with me; I could risk it, but what if he was armed? What if he attacked the kid? I didn’t want to make the situation worse.

Before I could make up my mind, they both went into the bodega. I walked past and looked inside. There were a couple of other kids in there buying candy and sodas, so Barrett was safe at least for now. Then, I saw him; there was another man working the register now, and while I didn’t know what a fentanyl dealer might look like, I had to guess it would look kind of like him. He was tall and painfully thin; he was sporting enough face tattoos to make Mike Tyson blush, and he had dangerous, uncaring eyes.

I stood at the side of the bodega by their trashcans and pulled out my phone.

“Connor?”

“Cal! You’re up early. Want to shoot some hoops before shift?”

“No, listen, you know that case I’ve been working on?”

“The dead kid?”

“Hmm. There’s been a second death. I’m not certain, but I think I found the guys that sold them the fentanyl.”

“Shit, where are you?”

“I’m at the bodega across from their school, on the corner of Branch and Geary.”

“Ok, I can call it in to someone I know in the department.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? There are a lot of kids in there right now. I don’t want it to turn into a situation.”

“I’ll let them know.”

“The guys look dangerous, man. Just make sure—” I didn’t hear him come outside, but tattoo-face was staring at me with a bag of trash in one hand. His other hand went was slid into the back of his waistband.

“Shit.”

---

I had been a bouncer for almost a decade at this point, and I knew how to handle myself with drunks getting overly handsy with girls at a bar. I had never had to deal with an armed man before.

My brain turned off, and I dove for him. He got the gun out, but he didn’t get it pointed at me before I was on him. We fell into the trashcans. The gun went off, but it was out of his hands now somewhere in the mess of plastic, wrappers, and cardboard around us. I didn’t look for it; I just kept my hands on his wrists.

I managed to got on top of him and he threw a headbutt right into my face. I felt blood run out of nose. He was taller than me, but I was heavier and, I hoped, meaner. I threw a headbutt back at him while keeping his arms pinned down. His face was covered in blood now; it wasn’t his, but he was struggling to see through it. He kicked me in the balls, and I released him in spite of my best efforts to hold on. He was on his hands and knees digging through the trash now.

I struggled to get up; I couldn’t let him find the gun. That would be the end of things.

I could hear sirens, but they were still minutes away. I needed to move. As I got up, I saw the kids from inside the bodega had run across the street, but they weren’t leaving. Stupid. Barrett was with them though; that was something.

I leapt on his back. He tried to roll around to face me, but I had my bodyweight on him now. He was smothered, but he hadn’t given up struggling. With one hand on the back of his neck, I wound my other fist up and cold-cocked him hard in the back of the head. He was still struggling, and I saw him reaching for something in the trash. He had found the gun. I moved my hand from his neck to the arm that was reaching for the gun, but I was too late. He had it in his hand, but he couldn’t turn it around to aim it at me, but he could get lucky or a stray could hit the kids across the street.

I took a chance. I moved off from his back and slid my weight to the arm completely, and he started to try to stand up. I took my free hand and hit him in the back of the head again with as much strength as I could muster. He went limp this time.

I took the gun and released the magazine and popped the loose the round in the chamber. I threw the gun and the magazine in opposite directions and checked the guy. He was out cold. I fell on my back. The sirens were close now. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was bright and I had to squint. A figure mercifully moved in front to cover me in shadow.

“Cal.”

“Connor.”

“You look like shit.”

“Hmm.” I grunted, and then we both laughed.