“Anything that could get ’em in trouble—stealing money, peddling dope on the secondary market to other rich kids, setting fires for fun. They killed a dog, once. Bobo did. Neighbor’s dog. Said it barked too much, annoyed him, so he tossed some poison meat at it, and after it died, he and Garvey had Caroline walk by the dog’s gate a bunch of times when they were sure the neighbor was watching. So the neighbor would assume. Stuff like that. They bragged to me about it, thought it was funny. They talked about her like she was dirt. I don’t know why I started feeling sorry for her ’cause really I was no better than them, but somehow I did. Something about her . . . I just felt sorry for her, can’t explain it.”

“Obviously you weren’t like them.”

“Kind of you to say so, but I know what I was.” He removed the mirrored sunglasses, revealed sunken black discs split by comma-shaped slits, scratched the bridge of his nose, replaced the glasses.

“You felt sorry for her and started baby-sitting her,” I said.

“No, I did it for the money,” he said. “Told the boys I’d hang with her when the parents were out of town if they’d pay me. They laughed, and said, ‘You could turn her out, you should pay us, bro,’ figuring I wanted to do sexual things to her or maybe I was going to pimp her. And that was agreeable to them. I started coming by the house in my old Mercury Cougar and taking her places.”

“She just went along?”

“She was happy to be getting out. And she was like that—easygoing.”

“She wasn’t in school?”

“Not since fifth grade. Severe learning problems, she was supposed to be tutored but never really was. She still can’t really read much or do numbers. All she can do is cook and bake, but man, does she do that good, that’s her God-given talent.”

“Where’d you take her?” I said.

“Everywhere. The zoo, the beach, parks, she’d keep me company when I did deals. Sometimes we’d just ride around and listen to music. I’d be high, but I never gave her anything again—not after I saw what that blotter did to her. Mostly, I’d talk—trying to teach her stuff. About street signs, the weather, animals. Life. She knew nothing, I never met anyone who knew less about the world. I was no intellectual, just a stupid junkie-pusher, but I had plenty to teach her, which tells you how pathetic her situation was.”

He craned his neck. “Could I trouble you for another Diet Snapple, sir? Always thirsty. Sugar-diabetes.”