Outcast

Waverly laughed when Ben told him later how he’d offered to check in on Epifanio now and then and do what he could to keep the kid in school. Waverly warned Ben that he was asking for heartache. He’d told Ben his chances of keeping Epifanio out of the 18th Street gang and off hard drugs—highly addictive crystal meth and crack cocaine—when his brother had been a gang member and a methamphetamines addict, were slim to none.

Despite Waverly’s advice, Ben had made a point of seeing the kid at least once a week over the past five months, although he never had told the kid what he really did for a living. Epifanio thought Ben worked in an office in downtown D.C., which Ben did. It just happened to be the ICE office.

It had taken a long time to earn the kid’s trust. And there had been setbacks.

Three months ago, Ben had come by one afternoon when Mrs. Fuentes was still at her babysitting job and been concerned when Epifanio didn’t answer his knock. He’d stepped inside the unlocked apartment and found Epifanio sitting on his bed, leaning against an interior wall spray-painted with graffiti, his pupils dilated so wide that Ben could have fallen into the kid’s eyes.

“What are you on?” he’d demanded, searching around the kid’s iron cot for drug paraphernalia. He’d pulled out his cell phone to call 911, afraid the boy might be in danger of OD-ing, but Epifanio had grabbed his wrist and said, “It’s only Ecstasy.”

“Only Ecstasy?” Ecstasy wasn’t addictive, but it was still a powerful narcotic. Then he’d had another thought. “Where did you get the money to buy that junk?”

The kid had hung his head.

“Well?”

“I stole the E from a locker at school,” he’d mumbled.

Ben had been so mad he could have wrung the kid’s neck. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

“It’ll wear off in a couple of hours,” Epifanio protested.

Ben had hauled the kid out to his car anyway, taken him to the emergency room and waited with him while the hospital did a blood test. The toxicology report confirmed that the only drug in Epifanio’s system was the amphetamines in Ecstasy.

Ben had been standing by, his arms crossed over his chest, when Mrs. Fuentes arrived at Epifanio’s hospital bedside, her dark brown eyes huge with fear.

Epifanio had been defiantly silent in response to Ben’s disapproval. But when his grandmother sank into the chair beside his bed, crossed herself, closed her eyes and folded her hands in prayer, the kid started to cry.

“I’m sorry, Abuela,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

Ben had kept up his visits to the household. And the kid had been true to his word. Two months later, Epifanio was still off drugs, still not part of a gang and still in school. Ben was counting his blessings, but because of constant reminders from Waverly that the good behavior couldn’t last, he was taking things one day at a time.

“I’m looking forward to having the sergeant as my brother-in-law,” he told the boy.

“I hate cops,” Epifanio said, his dark eyes narrowed, his lips pressed flat.

I’m a cop, Ben thought. But he merely met the kid’s gaze.

Epifanio made a face as he holstered his own plastic gun. “You might wanta watch yourself when you come around to the neighborhood. I been hearing rumors of something bad goin’ down.”

“Bad like what?” Ben asked.

Epifanio shrugged. “Just guys lookin’ over their shoulders, you know? That sorta creepy feeling you get when something’s not right?”

Epifanio might not belong to the 18th Street gang, dubbed the 1-8 by the MPD, but most of the kids in his neighborhood did. It was impossible for him to avoid them entirely.

As far as anyone in the neighborhood knew, Ben was supposedly a “Big Brother” from the community group Big Brothers and Big Sisters. His ICE connection was a secret. Which was why another ICE agent monitored the activities of the 18th Street gang.

“Thanks for the heads up,” Ben said.

Trouble among the gangs hit the streets like ocean waves. Some waves passed without incident. Some devastated everything in their path. He put a hand on Epifanio’s shoulder and said, “You be careful out there, too.”

“You know I will,” Epifanio said with a cheeky grin.

“How about that homework?” Ben said.

The kid grinned. “I ain’t got—”

“Don’t have—” Ben automatically corrected.

“Any homework,” Epifanio finished, his grin widening.

Ben ruffled the boy’s short dreads, something he wouldn’t have done even a few weeks ago. “Then go read a book.”

As they left the Games & More video arcade, Epifanio teasingly flashed Ben the 18th Street gang sign. He laughed when Ben frowned at the display, then sauntered down the street toward home.

Ben stuck his suddenly trembling hands deep in his pockets, clenching them into fists. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He had trouble catching his breath.

He felt the searing heat of the desert. The grittiness of the sand at his collar. The stickiness of blood on his hands.

“Hey! You gonna stand there all day? We’re late!”

Ben’s tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He jerked a nod toward Waverly, who’d pulled his Ford Explorer up to the curb.

“You okay?” Waverly asked, sticking his head out the open window.

Ben forced himself to take a step. Another step. He crossed behind the car, to give himself time to recover. After all these months, he wasn’t going to let this … shit … get the better of him. The incidents were occurring less often. They were less severe. Surely, at some point, they would stop entirely.

By the time he got to the front passenger door of the car his hands were out of his pockets and functioning without a visible tremor. As he slipped into Waverly’s Ford he said, “I can’t believe you and Julia are letting Patsy throw you a party, especially this close to the wedding.”

“Your dad was more of a dad to me than my own. When she suggested it, I didn’t want to say no,” Waverly replied. “Don’t blame me if your stepmother invited your whole family. Julia said just about everybody agreed to come.”

Ben groaned. “Everybody? My mom and the senator in the same room with my dad and Patsy?”

“Yep,” Waverly said.

Ben groaned. Although his parents had divorced twenty years ago, his mother had never forgiven his father for cheating on her with another woman. His father had never forgiven his mother for her lack of understanding and inability to pardon what he claimed was a single lapse in judgment under extraordinary circumstances.

Both had remarried within a year, and from what Ben could see, both had remarkably successful second marriages. But he was pretty sure his parents had never really stopped loving each other. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be so miserable in each other’s presence.

Unfortunately, their continuing attraction made things pretty uncomfortable whenever their respective spouses were in the room. Which meant the party tonight would be a parental minefield, exacerbated by the warfare that went on between the very different children who’d grown up as relatives because of their two second marriages.

Ben was one of thirteen siblings. And nobody was married yet or had produced offspring.

Actually, fourteen siblings. He was forgetting the reason for his parents’ divorce, his father’s bastard son, Ryan Donovan McKenzie. Ryan was the result of a one-night stand his father had indulged in with a barmaid, Mary Kate McKenzie. His dad had insisted on acknowledging and supporting his illegitimate son, and invited Ryan to every family gathering. The Black Sheep always declined.

“How many of the Fabulous Fourteen have said they’re coming?” Ben asked Waverly.

“The senator’s three kids by his late wife, one of your three brothers, your stepmom’s twins with her ex from Texas and your three half sisters. And, of course, my lovely fiancée. In short, nearly the whole dysfunctional bunch. No surprise, the Black Sheep sent his regrets. Should be a great party.”