Free Karma by Susan Dunlap Page A

“Are you any relation to Bobby Felcher?”
    Felcher’s hands were still for the first time.
    “Yeah, Bobby was my son. My only son. And if you’re going to ask how I feel about Paddy-what-sis getting his, I only wish I could have been the one who did it.”
    “Is that why you kept going there?”
    “To kill him? Make sense, wouldn’t it? But no. What I told you about the land is true. I want that land. I have a right to it. My son died there. He died because of them. I want to get that land and wipe out any trace of that bunch.” Felcher’s broad knuckles were white against the ruddiness of his hands. Sweat rolled down the side of his face, but he made no move to open the transom.
    “Mr. Felcher, you said they were responsible for Bobby’s death.”
    “Yeah. Those vultures. They lured him in there.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know what they told him.”
    “He lived with you?”
    “Only about a couple of months. I’m divorced. His mother had him before he came to me. She took him to her hometown—Visalia—in the San Joaquin Valley. We’d lived there when Bobby was small. He liked the town, he said. But as soon as he got there, he went wild. And she was too damned weak and woolly-headed to keep on him. By the time I got him, he was already up to his ass in drugs.”
    “What happened to Bobby after he came to stay with you?”
    Felcher’s fingers tapped on the edge of the desk. “Like I said, Bobby was in no great shape when he came back. We’d all lived in Berkeley before the divorce, so he knew all sorts of no-goods up on Telegraph already. I tried to keep tabs on him, but that isn’t easy when you work the hours I do. And then he spent every other weekend with his mother, and she let him lie around and pop pills and God knows what.”
    “So Bobby spent a good deal of time on Telegraph?” That supported what the Bobby Felcher file had said.
    “Probably. He got home late. He slept late. I don’t know what he did while I was working. Supporting him and paying alimony wasn’t easy.” Felcher leaned toward me, his heavy features stiffening as he waited for my nod. “I kept after him to do something constructive. Not school or anything as out of reach as that. Jesus, is it too much for a man to hope his only son would think about going to college? I work my ass off in this realty company. Bobby could have walked in here. He could have made forty thousand a year working part-time. You think … No. Not real estate. Not college. The kid couldn’t even get through high school.”
    “You said you’d pressed him to…”
    “Anything. Anything constructive. I tried to get him to work out, go to a gym like I used to do”—he glanced down at his stomach—“when I was thinner. It wasn’t so long ago. I was built like Bobby—lanky. I exercised; I kept in shape. He did nothing but sit and stare and take pills.”
    “And so he went to Self-Over?”
    Felcher froze.
    “I’ve already interviewed Garrett Kleinfeld.”
    “Oh, yeah, well, he’s no prize, either. But at least there, with him, Bobby was getting some kind of exercise and he was associating with a decent class of people.”
    “Oh?”
    “You wonder how I know about Kleinfeld’s setup, huh? I followed Bobby. I promised him twenty bucks a week if he did something. Vern Felcher don’t spend money for nothing.”
    “And did it help?”
    “Maybe a little; who knows. Maybe it would have, but about that time, he got involved with those damned Chinks.”
    “How’d he meet them?”
    Felcher’s face tightened. “Who knows? They’re all over. What difference does it make?”
    “So then…”
    “Then he started going over there, and next thing he’s living there, and then he’s dead.” He slumped back in his chair.
    “Do you feel they were responsible for his death?” I asked more softly, hoping my question would converge with his thoughts.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I know everyone said he brought in the drugs. He probably did. But what