The Boys from Santa Cruz Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dad. No phone number, just “Dad,” a long, cryptic number, and an address that explained the cryptic number: San Quentin Prison, Marin County, CA.
    Another half dozen entries—presumably Luke’s buddies—were alphabetized by their first names—Joe, Kent, Larry, Michael, Micky—but on the
G
page was an entry for Grandpa Fred & Grandma Evelyn, with the same address as the one penciled in on the first page. At some point, obviously, Little Luke had moved in with his grandparents.
    Which didn’t mean that was where he’d gone now, but it was the closest thing to a lead they’d had since they learned of the boy’s existence. Pender thanked the deputy, pocketed the book, and wandered off in search of a telephone.

CHAPTER THREE
1
    It was still dark out when old Fred woke me up. “Get dressed, there’s somebody downstairs who wants to talk with you.”
    I was pretty groggy. It took me a few seconds to remember why I was in my old room at my grandparents’ house. Then everything snapped into place. Big Luke and Teddy were dead, and more than likely, the somebody downstairs who wanted to talk with me was wearing a badge and carrying a gun.
    Climbing out the window was a tighter squeeze than it had been when I was eleven, but the drop to the lawn was easier now that I was taller. I lowered myself from the redwood gutter by my fingertips, dropped the last few feet, landed softly on my toes, and toppled over backward from the weight of my pack.
    “Give you a hand there, son?” It was a huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim. He had a cigarette in his mouth. When he reached down to help me up, his coat fell open and I saw the gun in his shoulder holster. I had the feeling he wanted me to see it, so I wouldn’t try to run. I took his hand, which was the size of a first baseman’s mitt, and he hauled me onto my feet easier than I could have lifted my backpack alone. “I’m guessing you’re Luke.”
    “Who are you?” Through the open bedroom window, I could hear my grandfather pounding on the door and calling for me to hurry up.
    “Pender. FBI. I was supposed to wait out here while you talked to your lawyer. Thought I might as well have a cigarette. You smoke?”
    He shook a Marlboro out of the hard pack and gave me a light, but I only got a couple of puffs before I heard the bedroom door crashing open. Grandpa leaned out the dormer window calling my name. Pender stepped under the eaves with me, out of my grandfather’s line of sight, and held a finger to his lips.
    “We don’t have much time,” he whispered. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell your lawyer you’ll be happy to cooperate with the nice FBI man, and then you tell me everything you know about your father and Teddy.”
    “What’s the deal part?” I whispered back.
    “The deal part is, I don’t search your pack.”
    I don’t know if there’s a word for what I experienced at that precise moment in time. Outside my head, everything seemed to stop. Even the smoke from our cigarettes seemed to hang in the air. But inside my head it was like a boatload of rats and the boat was sinking. Thoughts tearing around, scrambling up the walls, looking for a way out. I didn’t even know I
had
a lawyer. I did know I was carrying a felony weight of weed. But could Pender do that anyway, just search my pack? And what did I know that he wanted to know? Big Luke’s business? Who he bought from and sold to? Yeah, right, likeI’m gonna rat out the Indians my father bought his pot from. They’d cut my balls off and serve them to me for an appetizer.
    But what choice did I have? I shrugged off the pack and stowed it behind a bush just as a guy in a light-colored suit and glasses came flying around the side of the house, his city slicker shoes skidding on the grass as he rounded the corner. “Did you see—” he started to call to Pender. Then he caught sight of me in the shadows. “It’s okay,