Free Bad to the Bone by Stephen Solomita Page B

enough, go through a similar evolution.
    Tilley (along with Moodrow) still worked out in a local club, coaching the kids and staying in shape. When Lee had expressed an interest, Tilley had jumped at the chance to bring him down, and Rose, after a week of terrified refusal, had finally given her blessing. Now Tilley was bragging about Lee’s skill to Moodrow and Betty.
    “He’s got attitude which is the first thing,” Tilley explained, looking over to Rose for confirmation. “He’s not afraid to throw punches and take his chances, which is what it’s really all about. He’s also fast as hell and get this, Stanley—he doesn’t blink in the ring. I’ve got him sparring two-minute rounds, and he doesn’t blink.”
    “You better watch out,” Moodrow said to Rose, “or Jim’ll put him in the ring with Mike Tyson.”
    “He’s nine years old,” Rose said.
    Tilley, emboldened by the food and the alcohol, threw his hands in the air. “Hey, if the money’s right, what’s a few pounds?”
    The object of their speculation, along with his sister, was in Moodrow’s spare bedroom, the one that passed as his office. They were watching a cop show on a small TV set. Lee was fascinated by cop shows and though Jeanette, at seven, would have preferred a sit-com ( any sit-com), she worshiped her older brother. After all, he was almost through fourth grade while she was still in first.
    Betty looked back toward the small room where the kids were playing. For what seemed the tenth time, Rose was praising her cooking. Asking her how she learned. Who taught her.
    “It was straight compensation,” Betty finally announced. She was well on the way to getting plastered and she knew it. The knowledge, instead of making her cautious, only pushed her into speaking out. “I was married when I was twenty-one, right after I graduated from NYU. My husband was a high school teacher. I wanted kids, like every other woman in my generation, but I had four miscarriages in two years. The last one was really bad and the doctors predicted the next one would be worse. So I forgot about kids. I went to Brooklyn Law and I learned to cook. Both at the same time. My girlfriends showed off their babies and I showed off my coq au vin and my career. Twenty-five years later, my girlfriends’ kids are grown and gone, but I still have my chicken and my law degree. None of us, by the way, have our husbands. Which is a long way of saying I wish I had your problems with Lee and Jeanette.”
    Nobody said a word. Moodrow took Betty’s hand under the table and pulled it over against his leg, but Betty wasn’t looking for comfort. “What I’ve been thinking about is Connie Alamare’s grandson, Michael. What if he’s really being held prisoner? He’s got no one to protect him out there. As far as the police are concerned, he doesn’t even exist. When I think about him, I think about the faces of the kids on the backs of the milk cartons.”
    “ If he’s alive,” Tilley said quietly. “You have to figure that if Michael Alamare’s existence is some kind of threat to the commune, Craddock wouldn’t be likely to keep him around.”
    Rose threw her husband a dark look. “Aren’t we making some big jumps here? We’re taking a group of people who have a reputation for being straighter than straight and first making them drug addicts and then murderers. It’s nothing but speculation.”
    Moodrow glanced at Betty before he decided to respond. She was following the conversation attentively. “It’s not as far-fetched as you think,” he said to Rose. “I took a walk around the neighborhood last night. By the Hanoverian commune. I found a character over there named Ephraim Borrano. The mutt’s been a junkie for thirty years. A genuine homeboy—born in the building where the commune is now. He says there’s no rumors that the ‘blancos’ (which is his name for all non-Latino white people) have started using drugs. But he did tell me one interesting