Charlie audibly gasped.

I was terrified.

“You want cops all over the place?” Howie continued, in a voice I never heard before. “You want ‘em to throw your ass in jail?!”

Charlie slipped a trembling hand inside his front, right pant’s pocket and pulled out a lone key. He handed it to his dad with tears running down his face. Howie opened it, gave it a quick visual, reached in the back of it and found a stash of individual packets of cocaine. He quickly filled his pockets with them and slammed the drawer shut, leaving the key in the lock. He grabbed Charlie by the arm and literally yanked him out of the room, leaving by a side door. I followed them.

Howie drove Charlie’s car home with Charlie and I drove mine.  I tried calling Bette again but her message came on just like it did before, so I hung up.

 I was in a state of shock, thinking how docile and broken Howie was on the way to Lamppost and how much in charge he was now. I had never seen him in action before and too bad my first look at what he did for a living was demonstrated on our own son.

They parked in the driveway. I parked along the front curb. When I got out, I saw Howie was searching Charlie’s vehicle inside and out. He found a plastic bag of white pills in the jack bag and put them in his trouser pockets without asking any questions.

When we went into the house Howie took Charlie’s arm and steered him into his bedroom and began searching for more drugs. I helped by going through a chest of drawers as Charlie stood in the doorway, the color completely drained from his face, watching us.

Howie felt every garment of clothing in the closet, inside every shoe and even dismantled the kid’s audio speakers.

“There’s no drugs in here,” said Charlie, finally. “You’re wasting your time.”

“What about the rest of the house?” asked Howie

“No. I kept it all at Lamppost.”

“What was that in your car?”

“Uppers.”

“What about at school?”

“No, I‘m not that stupid.”

“Oh, I would call it very, very stupid to get yourself involved with that shit in the first place.”

We followed Howie into the kitchen where he got a pair of scissors. Then he made damn sure Charlie was with him as he went into the bathroom and began to cut the top off of each cocaine packet and dump the contents into the toilet bowl. He flushed occasionally and also got rid of the pills that way.

When he was finished we sat at the dining room table and Howie literally interrogated Charlie about who his contact was. He had a pen and pad and wrote everything down. He wanted a name, a telephone number, a description of the man, what he was driving and anything else the kid knew. Charlie was broken. He told Howie everything he wanted to know through his sobs. It was as if he was a little boy again who had gotten caught doing a very bad thing and his only recourse was to cop out about it and cry.

Howie eventually put his pen down, looked at both of us and said, “Now, what’re we gonna do about this?”