He swirls the coffee and brandy and takes a drink. Need to pick up a new bottle today. The Liquor Barn in Pleasanton this time. Haven’t been there in a few weeks. Not that he’s got anything to hide. Just nobody’s business how he lives his life.

Unfolding the paper, knuckling his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose, he reads the story about Ramon Arroyo being shot in the leg by police and he and his brothers being busted on an assortment of charges: stolen goods, drugs, weapons, resisting arrest.

Good lord.

He thinks about Caesar Arroyo, the boys’ father. The squat bundle of calluses and muscle that he used to see swatting his boys’ ears at soccer games when they didn’t play up to his standards.

He’d tried to have a word with the man once. Walked over to him on the sideline and smiled and suggested to him that his boys might play better, have a better time if they didn’t feel quite so much pressure. Caesar had stared at him, then waved one of his boys over. Ramon? Fernando? How long ago was this? Could it have been the youngest one? The one Paul had that trouble with?

The boy had come over and, staring Kyle Cheney in the eye, Caesar had slapped the boy hard. And stood there waiting until Kyle walked away, back to the adjoining field where Paul and George’s team was playing.

Bob Whelan had been there. He’d seen what Caesar was doing and looked away. He could have done something about it. Whelan is the kind of man who could have said something to Arroyo and made him think twice about knocking his kids around like that. At least made him stop doing it out on the soccer fields where the other kids saw it and got freaked out. But he didn’t do anything. Just like most people. Most adults just don’t have the kids’ best interest at heart.

Any wonder the Arroyos have grown up like they have? A drug lab. Here. In his town. When do these things happen? How do they happen? Don’t people know they have to monitor their children? Care for them? Love them? Otherwise, things like this happen.