[Glenn Wright]

Stolen Fruit

(about 1,200 words)

Yeah, I knew who he was. Everybody knew him. He ran the goddam corner store. When my ma was in jail, I was in foster care on the same block.

No, I didn’t have a relationship with him. What, do I look queer to you? I was a kid. He was a grownup. Mr. Tony. He sold snacks to the kids on their way home from school. Sometimes my foster mom sent me to get a quart of milk from him. But this was almost twenty years ago. I haven’t lived in this neighborhood or seen him since then. Mr. Tony got himself killed. Sounds like somebody else’s problem to me. You detectives just figure that since I have a record, I must be the killer, right? I think I’m done talking to you. I want my lawyer now.

* * *

Okay, so if you’re someone’s lawyer, and they straight up tell you they did it, you can’t lie for them. So you don’t want me to tell you if I killed him or not. I get it. I’ll just say that if I did do it, he had it coming to him.

I’m not upset. I just don’t want to go up for something I didn’t do, or because my lawyer didn’t do his job. Yeah, we can go over the stuff they say they have on me. I’ll tell you what you need to know.

The baseball bat that killed him had my fingerprints on it because I picked it up after I found him. It was lying on top of him, covered in blood. I was trying to see if he was still alive, so I grabbed the bat and threw it off him so I could check for a pulse. Got blood all over myself. He was already dead. Oh, they say the spatter shows that I was there when he was killed? Well, maybe there was still some blood squirting out of him when I first got there, but it stopped pretty quick. That’s my story on that.

What I was doing there was taking a little trip down memory lane. I wanted to see if the Johansons were still living where they did when they fostered me. They were decent people. I thought I’d surprise them. While I was walking down the street to their place, I passed the store. I ducked in to buy a box of candy for the Johansons and found Mr. Tony. I didn’t know it was him at first because he was lying face down in a puddle of blood, but when I turned him over, I saw it was him.

I didn’t have time to call 9-1-1. I had just knelt down to try and find a pulse when the cops busted in and made me lie down on the bloody floor with my hands behind me. That’s what I get for being a Good Samaritan.

Yeah, okay. I didn’t like Mr. Tony very much. He didn’t like me either. One time I was on my way home from school and I passed by his store. I was hungry, but I didn’t have any money to buy a snack. He used to put boxes of overripe fruit out on a table next to the door on the sidewalk for kids to buy as cheap snacks. I took a couple of oranges and he saw me stuff them into my jacket. He chased me and knocked me to the ground. I got scraped up and ripped my pants. He told me he had been watching me and he knew I was no good. He let the Johansons run a tab so their foster kids could pick up groceries without handling money. Mr. Johanson had introduced me to Mr. Tony when I first came to live with him. I asked Mr. Tony if he couldn’t just put the oranges on the tab. He got mad and told me I was an ungrateful little shit like all the thieving kids that lived with the Johansons. He said he was going to teach me the difference between right and wrong since I obviously didn’t have any parents to do it. Then he whipped my ass, threw me out on the street, and threw the oranges in a trash bin. So, no. I did not have any friendly feelings toward Mr. Tony.

* * *

Yeah, Judge, I understand. You want me to tell you how sorry I am that I killed Anthony LaRosa so you can decide whether to send me up for twenty years or for the rest of my life. With my priors, you’re going to give me the maximum, so I might as well tell you the truth about Mr. Tony.

He was always watching the little boys that came into his store to buy things. He watched and he waited until he saw his opportunity. I gave him his opportunity when he caught me stealing his oranges. He didn’t get angry with me. He smiled at me and held up a candy bar, offering it to me. I went in and he took me into his office in the back. He did stuff to me. Made me do stuff to him. When it was over, he told me that it would be a shame if I told anybody about it because then he would have to call the police and have me arrested for stealing. He told me to come back every day on my way home from school. If there were people in the store, or if he was busy or tired, which was most days, he told me to go home. But sometimes he took me back to his office. Then one day he said I didn’t have to come anymore. He was done with me. He said it would be better for everybody if I just forgot about it. He told me that he had already forgotten about it. It never happened. Except it did happen.

I started getting in trouble at school and with the Johansons. Finally they called Child Protection and told them to come and pick me up. They couldn’t risk having me there with the other foster kids. I ended up in a foster home that was a lot worse than the Johansons. When I aged out, I tried going back to living with my mother, but she got arrested again. I was homeless for a while, and dealt dope to be able to afford a shared apartment with a couple of sketchy roommates. I wasn’t very good at it, though, and had a few arrests that made it impossible for me to get a real job.

I figured that Mr. Tony owed me for all that misery. I went to see him to tell him I wanted money. Not that much. A few hundred a month to help me get cleaned up enough to find a job. He laughed at me. I told him I wasn’t some little boy he could mess with anymore. If he didn’t give me what I was asking for, I’d make him sorry. He pulled out his baseball bat and told me to get out.

He asked me what I was planning to do. Go to the police? I was talking about something that happened twenty years ago, if it even happened. He had absolutely no recollection of it. He said he was willing to bet that the police were very well-acquainted with a lying, thieving little hustler like me.

The next thing I knew, he was lying on the floor in a pool of blood with his head bashed in. The police were already there with flashing lights and sirens. I’m not sorry I did it. Not one bit. Think about all the other little boys I saved from him. I don’t deserve a medal, but I don’t think I deserve to go to hell, either.