Free Crimes Against My Brother by David Adams Richards Page A

doesn’t charge you but robs you blind.”
    His uncles now came back to see him—both speaking about how much they had loved his mother and tried to take care of him. He knew they had robbed her, and many times made fun of him, and he also knew this: that they were filching spies for Lonnie Sullivan, who wanted to know what Ian was up to. Lonnie envied anyone who got away from him, who made it out from under and directed their own life. So Ian put each of the uncles on an allowance of a bottle and a half of wine a week. And he bought them new rubber boots for the winter, so shiny and black you could pick them both out standing at the corner.
    And he thought: Yes, I am a blood brother—but neither Harold nor Evan ever take the time to say hello. And in his reverie he would think how both had cheated him, and both had neglected him when he was down. He would not have done so to them. Stung by old memories, he decided he would remain living on his own and make it on his own, with no help from his two former friends. When he was rich enough, they would see who he was. And this he longed for.
    Ian’s first month on the job, he heard that Harold had bought Annette “the diamond.” It was tiny, not much bigger than the smallest stone—but she wore it and showed it off everywhere she went. People told him he would no longer recognize her, that she was someone different now, and different in the way she acted. She was sure of herself now, and sure of her destiny.
    “What do you mean?” Ian asked when someone said this one night. He was hardly able to breathe, asking about her again.
    “She dresses the part,” the man told him.
    “What do you mean, ‘dresses the part’?” His throat was dry and his voice seemed to come from someone else.
    “Well, what Lonnie wants a woman to be, Lonnie gets.”
    This stunned him. For the first time he understood how much Lonnie controlled her, that she was Lonnie Sullivan’s shadow—and how had he not seen this before? It all came back to him, how she’d smiled at him from the car window. The man he was with continued to talk, pleased at the information he was divulging, declaring first this and then that.
    “Say nothing more about her to me,” Ian said, feeling blood rise to his temples and his eyes flame. The man turned white, shrugged and left. But when he got halfway down the block, he yelled, “She’s just a fuckin’ downriver twat. ‘Lonnie’s twat’ is what she is called. Ha, you don’t know. You’re as dumb as Harold Dew. She is with Lonnie in the car every day—she is on the road with him every day—so what do you think they do!”
    Ian started toward him, and the man turned and ran again. Ian went back to the store, sat on a stool and stared vacantly out at the river.
    Why was this story surfacing now about Annette?
    It had begun five months before. Annette had gone to Lonnie wondering, in her innocence, about the boy he had told her about, the boy with the seven million dollars. She thought Lonnie would be pleased with her inquiry. But Lonnie, having just lost on horses, was furious, and said he would not be going back there and for her to stop pestering him. His shirt was covered in sweat, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing his two tattoos. He counted money and now and again looked up at her. He called her greedy and said the one thing he hated was a gold-digger. (This is what someone had called him in Charlottetown.) Then, still counting money, he calmed himself and told her that he’d thought she was going with Harold anyway. So she should continue with that.
    “Harold?”
    “Why not—go get engaged to him, why don’t you?”
    Lonnie had not thought of Fitzroy’s money in a long while, and it was because of his falling out at the races in both Truro and Charlottetown, and his conversation with Annette, that he began to think of it again. He needed money, was always trying to determine ways to get it. And he had the idea that he would