The Legend of Kareem by Jim Heskett Read Free Book Online

held out the picture to me. “The same day we took this photograph, Kareem later stole the neighbor’s motorcycle, and he crashed it into a building in town. I could not believe he even dared. Mother screamed for days.”
    Omar didn’t seem too broken up over the news of his brother’s death. “Are you okay, Omar?”
    His smile flattened. “I knew they would come for him. He also knew they would come for him, and he told so me often. Now that he is gone, they will come for me. Does not matter how little or how much I know. I cannot hide any longer.”
    “That’s why we need to get you out of the country, and away from all this. Maybe there are things you can do to stop them once you’re safely at a distance.”
    Omar set down the picture. “I will come with you and go to Mexico.”
    A wave of relief blanketed me. “Okay, great, do you need help packing?”
    “No, but I do need help leaving.”
    “Sorry, what?”
    “I’m not supposed to leave the home. You will have to help me escape.”
     
    ***
     
    Omar took me into his bathroom and used a red crayon to draw the layout of the house across the mirror. Three stories, seven bedrooms. All the doors on the first floor locked from the outside. The windows on the first and second floors were also restricted. The third-floor windows were unlocked, but the house had no trellises or vines or anything convenient like that to descend.
    The tricky part, he said, was that the on-site nurse lived in a bedroom on the first floor, so trying to escape from that level would be nearly impossible.
    Omar did not explain to me why we had to flee, or even why he was a resident here. I’d save that conversation for another time.
    He ran the faucet and splashed water over his crayon schematics, then smeared them into a circular mess.
    The plan, as he described it, seemed a little unusual, but he spoke with confidence and passion about each step, and I had to believe he knew what he was doing. The step where he would jump out the window seemed ill-conceived, but he assured me he’d done it before and everything would be okay.
    “Once we go down this road, there is no turning back,” he said.
    After he’d explained what we should do, we walked down the hall to the first bedroom on the floor. He leaned against the door for a moment, then turned to me. “I do not want to give you the impression, based on the motorcycle story, that my brother was some kind of teenage miscreant. He was rebellious, but also terribly smart. Always first in class at school. We all knew he would be successful in business someday, no matter which avenue. He seemed destined for great wealth.”
    “Okay.”
    Omar nodded, then entered the room. A man with wild hair and deep wrinkles on his face sat in a chair, staring out the window. A White Widow poster hung on the wall. This band had fans everywhere, it seemed.
    “Bernard,” Omar said.
    This man, Bernard, did not turn to look. He grunted, then leaned in his chair to fart. Omar pursed his lips and glanced at me, and I shrugged. This was his plan, so I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
    Omar knelt next to him and whispered into Bernard’s ear for a few seconds. Bernard nodded, reached out, and patted Omar on top of the head. Seemed to be a done deal.
    “Okay,” Omar said to me. “We are ready to execute the plan.”
    I followed Omar and Bernard down the stairs to the living room. The two ping pong players were now eating soup at a table, and three others were reading in chairs. A man wearing blue scrubs was scribbling on a clipboard, standing next to the front door. Elevator music drifted through the air from some other room.
    Omar put a hand on my arm. “It’s time.” Then he disappeared back up the stairs. The two soup-eaters stared at me.
    Bernard walked to the center of the room and stood there for a few seconds, looking a little confused. He coughed, then immediately crumpled into a heap on the floor and started writhing and foaming at