ONLY HALF BAD
“Paulie was stabbed on the corner,” I said, whispering into the speaker of my smartphone.
“The guy in the drug house?” Angie replied.
“Yes, your neighbor, gurl.”
“Was it one of the druggies?” she asked.
“No. You’re not going to believe this. The guy came to pick up the drugs and the dufus stabbed himself on the fence.”
“What? How?”
“Well, you know he never fixes anything…”
“Yeah and you would think he’d have plenty of discretionary income with all that drug money!”
Angie had a point. She was ditzy as fuzz, but every now and then she could cut through it all with a clarity that was startling. I heard the doorbell ring and looked up from my phone at the monitor, which displayed my bank of cameras. It was Diego, Paulie’s father from the very drug house in question.
“Holy shit, Diego is at the door,” I said to Angie.
“OMG, THE Diego?”
“Yes, the very.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, open the door and see what he wants.”
“Alright, I’ll come over too.”
I wasn’t sure Angie coming over to eavesdrop was the best solution at the moment, but I had little time to question it. I opened the door and took in Diego standing on my porch, hat in hand. “Hello, Maria,” he said.
“Yes, Hi Diego. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I know you have cameras and…”
“Yoohoo!” chirped a voice from behind Diego’s ample frame. It was Angie, of course. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar, Maria? I’m baking some brownies and I’m all out.”
“Ah, sure,” I said, as Diego nodded “hello” at Ang. “Diego needs something first, though. You were saying something about the cameras, D?”
Diego looked more sheepish to say it in front of Angie, but the girl wasn’t going anywhere and once he knew it, he continued on anyway. “Yes, well, my son had an incident last week and I was hoping you had some footage for the police.”
“I thought he cut himself? Why would the police get involved in that?” Angie purred.
“No, he was stabbed,” he said.
“Oh my,” Angie replied.
“Okay. Well, why don’t you both come inside and we’ll have a look,” I decided. Then I flashed Angie a look because the girl positively jumped with anticipation at the invite. No poker face on that girl. None whatsoever.
Once in my office, I booted up the DVR for Diego and Ang to see. I clicked on the date and time in question and scrolled through the footage trying to find the event.
“There. There it is,” said Diego.
I stopped the tape and rewinded a couple of frames. There was Paulie, right there at the fence with a homeless man standing on the other side. I hit play. As the scene unfolded, Paulie reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sandwich and an apple and handed it to the man. The man asked him something. We didn’t know what. The tape didn’t record audio and Paulie threw his hands up in the air. Then the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small knife. He then proceeded to jab it through the fence right at Paulie’s side.
Paulie jumped back instinctively and bent forward clutching at his waist. He looked up at the man for an instant and that’s when we all saw it happen. The homeless man took the knife and whipped it at Paulie’s head like he was Matt Damon and someone was questioning his Bourne Identity. The knife landed and lodged itself right in Paulie’s face. It looked like it got stuck right in his eye. We all gasped. Angie screamed.
“My god. His eye!” she said.
“Yes, I know. Now my son may lose his sight. That’s why I have to get this footage to the police,” Diego replied.
I myself didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t the first time this week my suspicions had been dead wrong. It was just the first time I couldn’t explain it away. It almost felt like someone was re-writing what I knew to be true right behind me as I thought it. But, there it was in black and white. I dumped off the footage onto a drive for Diego and handed it off. He thanked me and went home, which left me with Angie and her fake sugar needs.
“Can you believe that?” she said. “I mean who gives someone a sandwich and then gets stabbed for the effort?”
“Maybe the kid doesn’t sell drugs at all. You think he’s just been feeding people, all that time, at that back fence?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he does both. Maybe he’s a benevolent drug dealer. Like maybe he keeps addicts in the habit, but then feels bad, so he throws them some grub to offset the bad. Sort of like when you buy carbon offsets to make good on all those cheap flights you took last year.”
There it was. Angie was truth slaying again. If Paulie was a benevolent drug dealer, I needed to find out. Living next door to a man who is only half bad was more my speed. After all, I do steal my internet from Ang. Hmm. I wonder if she knows.