The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  “I watched him love both of ’em like they hadn’t never been loved before. He gave Darnell and Daneen whatever they asked for—least ’til they started messin’ with that shit. Then he backed away from ’em. And they knew he was right, so they never questioned him about it.

  “He never backed away from Kenya, though. He always treated her like she was his granddaughter. Used to buy her gifts and give her money, hug her and kiss her and make her laugh.

  “I watched it all, and at first I ain’t think nothin’ of it. But then one day I saw him tellin’ Kenya a story. She was sittin’ on his lap and lookin’ up at him, and he had his hand on her thigh, squeezin’ her legs, real slow. Looked like he was breathin’ a little heavy. Had his mouth open and his eyes down to slits.

  “That’s when I knew. I ain’t never see him have sex with her or nothin’ like that, but I knew. I thought back to that little girl in the trash bins, and everything everybody used to say about Sonny. And I knew in my heart it was all true.”

  “So what did you do?” Lynch said.

  Judy’s face was a picture of guilt as she paused and looked down at her hands.

  “I ain’t do nothin’,” she said quietly. “I acted like I ain’t know, ’cause if Sonny left, what was I gon’ do—keep sellin’ crack by myself, so somebody could come in there and blow my damn head off? I needed that money, and I needed what he brought in from whatever other hustle he had goin’ on.

  “That money was gon’ get me outta there,” she said earnestly, as a tear formed at the corner of her eye. “That’s what was finally gon’ give me a life, Kevin. After everything I done been through in the Bridge, don’t I deserve a life, too?”

  Lynch and Wilson both looked at her, trying to understand. Neither of them knew if the sick feeling in their stomachs was contempt or sympathy. They only knew that they had to find Sonny. So Lynch called in a description, and had it broadcast throughout Central Division.

  “Do you have any idea where Sonny is now?” Lynch asked hopefully.

  “No,” Judy said.

  It was the first lie she told them.

  “What the hell was you doin’ out in the hallway when I told you not to leave this house?” Lily asked Janay as she picked up the telephone.

  “I thought I could find her, Mom. I thought maybe I could—”

  “Shut up,” Lily said, cutting her off as she dialed 9-1-1. “I nod off for a minute and you got yo’ ass out in the hall. You don’t go nowhere without me ’til I say otherwise, Janay. You hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you sure that was Sonny? Don’t have me callin’ these people if you ain’t sure.”

  “Mom, it was him,” Janay said. “He was goin’ up on the elevator, and it was a piece o’ Kenya shirt right next to him on the floor.”

  Lily motioned with her hand to quiet Janay as a dispatcher answered her call. “I’m at the East Bridge Apartments. My daughter just saw somebody y’all might be lookin’ for.”

  The dispatcher asked a question.

  Lily opened her mouth to answer. But then she saw Janay looking at her expectantly. She stopped to think about what she was doing, and the words she needed to say wouldn’t leave her mouth. Lily froze for a moment, then hung up the phone.

  “Mom, why you hang up? They could still catch him.” Janay’s eyes stretched wide as she fought to contain her frustration.

  “I know they could catch him,” Lily said evenly. “But I don’t know if I want you to be the one who saw him, baby. I don’t want nobody comin’ ’round askin’ you no questions later on.”

  “I ain’t scared,” Janay said, her voice rising.

  “Yeah, but maybe you should be.”

  “Why?”

  “You remember Charmaine?”

  Janay fell silent at the mention of a neighbor who’d been the sole witness to a murder two years before.

  It had happened around three in the morning on the first hot Friday in May, when a piper approached a drug dealer named June, who was sitting with Charmaine in the project stairwell.

  Charmaine had always liked fast men and fast money. But she’d never been street-smart. She’d always believed herself to be invincible.

  That night, she sat with June and watched as he collected thousands of dollars for the vials of crack he’d sold throughout the night.

  By the time the last piper walked up the steps and asked if June wanted to buy a diamond-encrusted gold ring, Charmaine was caught up in the game.

  June took the ring and began to examine it. Before long, it became clear that he didn’t plan to buy it, or to give it back. Charmaine grew nervous as she watched it all play out. But she didn’t move.

  The piper asked June for the ring. June told him that the ring was a fake. The piper tried to argue, but June crushed his protest with his fists. The piper fell down beneath the weight of the blows, and June began kicking his head until it scraped against the rough cement floor. A gash opened above his eye, and tiny red droplets of blood spattered Charmaine’s white shirt.

  June drew back his leg and kicked again. The piper bounced against the wall and fell down a flight of stairs. Charmaine watched, horrified, as the man knelt down and begged for his life. She stifled a scream when June walked up to him, pulled out a gun, and shot him at point-blank range.

  A few weeks later, June was arrested for the murder. When Charmaine was approached by detectives, she agreed to testify against him. The District Attorney’s Office promised her protection. But when June made bail, Charmaine was still living with a cousin in the building.

  June didn’t waste any time. He and an accomplice broke into Charmaine’s cousin’s apartment. There were screams as June forced Charmaine and her cousin to kneel on the living-room floor. Then he ripped Charmaine’s blouse from her body, tore it into strips, and used it to bind his victims’ mouths. He shot each of them once in the back of the head.

  A year later, June and his accomplices were sentenced to death. But that was little solace to Charmaine. She’d gotten the death penalty, too.

  That stark reality swirled through Lily’s mind as she looked at her only daughter and vowed that she would never lose her to the violence of the Bridge. Not for Sonny. Not for Kenya. Not for anyone.

  “You all right, Mom?” Janay asked, stirring Lily from her reverie.

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” she said, then posed the question she knew the police would ask.

  “What was Sonny wearin’?”

  “He had on, like, this white, short-sleeved church-lookin’ shirt. And he had on some jeans and some black sandals.”

  Lily sat for a moment, trying to weigh the risks of becoming involved. She knew that once her name became a part of it, the police would come back to her for more information. They would ask about things she might not want to tell. And find out things she might not want them to know.

  But then, Lily thought of Kenya—the little girl who’d been as close as a daughter. Though Lily wasn’t ready to put Janay’s life on the line for her, Lily was more than willing to give her own. She loved Kenya that much.

  “Come on, baby,” she said, grabbing Janay by the hand and running out the door.

  The two of them went down the hallway and up two flights to the seventh floor. When they got there, Lily made Janay stand behind her as she opened the door and peeked down the hallway.

  A police officer was standing outside Judy’s door, jotting notes on a pad. Lily knew that his presence meant that the rumors of Judy’s arrest were true. She stood there for a few seconds more, watching and listening as someone said Sonny’s name over the officer’s police radio.

  Lily stepped out from the doorway with her daughter in tow and walked up to the officer.

  “I just saw somebody y’all lookin’ for,” Lily said.

  “The little girl?” he said, looking down at the pad as he wrote the last few words of the description he’d just been given over the air.

  “No. Sonny Williams.”

  T
he officer stopped writing and looked up from the pad. “Where’d you see him?”

  “He was goin’ up in the elevator a couple minutes ago,” Lily said. “He somewhere upstairs.”

  She gave him the clothing description that Janay had given her. The officer wrote it down, then called it into radio, along with Sonny’s last-known location.

  The radio crackled to life. “Six-A, have 611 and 613 go inside that building and search the top floors,” a sergeant said. “I’m en route.”

  With the shift change about to take place, 6A was the only sergeant available in the district. He had a five-minute ride from City Hall to the projects. Cars 611 and 613 were the only ones available. But since they were already outside the building asking questions about Kenya, getting upstairs quickly wouldn’t be a problem.

  When he got off the elevator at the twelfth floor, Sonny walked down the darkened hallway, inhaling the dank air that escaped from the open doors along the hall. Many of the apartments had been empty for over a year, and the Housing Authority had done little to secure them.

  Doors swung from hinges that had rusted almost completely away. Chipped and peeling paint rolled from cinder-block walls like giant palm leaves. The apartments were like abandoned crypts—burial grounds that played host to the project’s deepest secrets.

  Names had been burned onto the ceilings with lighters and matches. Others were scrawled onto the walls with spray paint. Sonny moved past all of it, oblivious to the stories told by the dingy walls and crumbling floors.

  He moved with purpose, walking out into the stairwell and up a short flight of steps to a chain-link fence held shut by a flimsy chain and lock. Pulling the fence back to create an opening, he squeezed through and trotted up the steps to the roof of the building.

  He opened a scarred metal door, and swirling rooftop air rushed into the hallway. Muted voices floated skyward as people made their way outside. It was after seven-thirty, and the working folk in the projects were coming out from behind the locked doors, where they routinely spent their Friday nights. Which meant that Sonny didn’t have much time.

  He crossed the roof quickly, stepping over torn tar paper, then zigzagging between two vents until he reached a brick, chimneylike structure that protruded about three feet into the air. There was a rusting iron grate on the side of the brick chimney. Sonny reached into his waistband and removed a screwdriver, then stuck it between the brick and metal and began to pry.

  There was a squeaking sound. A puff of red dust rose into the air and disappeared as the brick began to loosen. Sonny pried harder, pulling the grate out just enough to work his thick fingers into the space. He dropped the screwdriver and pulled. The grate gave way with a muffled pop, and Sonny dropped it before reaching into the chimney.

  His face contorted into a determined grimace as his arm disappeared into the hole. He pressed himself against the bricks and reached down, his fingertips brushing against the top of a canvas bag. When he tried to grab the bag, it slipped and fell on a pile of leaves and trash that had been stuck inside the chimney for years.

  Sonny pulled his arm out from the chimney and began to remove the bricks, overpowering the crumbling cement that had held them in place since the building was constructed. He reached into the space once more, and had just managed to grab hold of the bag when he heard the metal door to the roof creak open.

  Sonny put his arms through the straps on the bag, hoisted it onto his back, and pulled his gun. Then he leaned against the chimney and peered around the bricks. Suddenly, the cool rooftop air seemed stifling.

  “Six-eleven on location,” the officer said as he walked out onto the roof with his gun drawn.

  His partner, whose gun was also drawn, came up behind him. “Six-thirteen on location.”

  The two went in opposite directions—611 walking toward his left, 613 moving straight ahead. They had decided to start at the roof and work their way down, hoping to complete the search as quickly as possible. After all, it had been a long night.

  After shuttling back and forth with disturbances and prisoner runs from twelve to seven, they’d spent the rest of the morning questioning neighbors about Kenya’s disappearance.

  The officer from car 613 was especially tired. He had seen too much since being assigned to the sector of the Sixth District surrounding the projects: murders over less money than he made in an hour; twelve-year-olds peddling vials of poison to their neighbors; mothers too young to finish middle school.

  What he saw was enough to reinforce the beliefs he’d tried so hard to forget after growing up in the city’s largely white Northeast: Niggers live like animals. And they should be treated like animals. All of them.

  He knew that hating them was wrong. But it was hard for him not to do so. Especially when he saw children like Kenya disappear in the abyss, dying while their parents, aunts, and uncles smoked their lives away.

  “Friggin’ idiots,” he mumbled to himself as he made his way toward the middle of the roof.

  He walked past the first vent and stepped over the torn tar paper that Sonny had passed just a few minutes before. He passed the second vent, absently wondering if he would get overtime if the search stretched past eight. He walked toward the chimney, and paused as the stillness of the morning seemed to thicken.

  He stood there for a moment, feeling like something was wrong. As he passed the chimney, he found what he had sensed. Or rather, it found him.

  Sonny reached out from behind him, throwing both arms around the officer’s neck and squeezing. The officer struggled mightily, and managed to plunge an elbow into Sonny’s midsection.

  Sonny let out his breath in a great whoosh, but refused to let go. The officer’s finger tightened around the trigger of his gun. A shot rang out. Sonny pushed up from his legs and forced the officer’s head into the brick wall. Then he ran.

  The other officer spotted him as he ducked between the metal vents.

  “Stop!” he said.

  Sonny kept running, reaching back and shooting in the direction of the cop’s voice.

  The officer shot and missed, and Sonny dived toward the metal door at the end of the roof. The officer shot again as Sonny slithered along the ground and reached up toward the metal door. He pulled it open and crawled through, then struggled to his feet, ran down the steps, and popped through the twelfth-floor fence.

  The cop started to give chase, then thought about his partner. He ran toward the brick chimney in the middle of the roof and found him—his head covered in blood and his breathing ragged.

  “Six-eleven, officer down. Get me some help up here,” he said into his radio.

  “Six-eleven, what’s your location?” the dispatcher said.

  “We’re on the roof of the goddamn building!” he said, growing angry as he watched the blood trickle down his partner’s face. “Send me some help!”

  “East Bridge Housing Project. Assist the officer, police by radio,” the dispatcher said over all bands before calling Fire Rescue.

  “Six-A, I’m on location,” the sergeant said into his radio, running out of his car and heading into the building. “Six-eleven, where’s that male we were searching for?”

  “He just left the roof. Shots were fired and he escaped on foot through the door that leads to the twelfth floor.”

  As cops listening to the transmission scrambled to get out of morning roll call, and the sergeant went in through the front of the building, Sonny made his way down to the first floor.

  Then, as sirens wailed in the distance, he disappeared out the back entrance of the building and ran toward the morning sun.

  Chapter Five

  The streets surrounding the Bridge were in chaos. Though the assist had lasted only a few minutes—long enough for the injured officer to be brought down to a waiting Fire Rescue- vehicle—police still drove with swiveling heads and eyes stretched wide, desperately searching for Sonny.

  Dozens of them rolled through the streets, riding slowly and then accelerating, cruisi
ng to the end of one block and turning recklessly onto another.

  The people in the projects watched the drama from behind closed doors and windows, waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.

  They knew in the back of their minds that something was missing from the scene. They just didn’t know what.

  But Lynch knew. Even as he and Wilson left Central Detectives in an unmarked car with Judy’s sordid tale swirling in their minds, he knew.

  Still, he remained silent as they rode west on Vine Street—the northern border of Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Wilson did the same because, like Lynch, she was wondering if the search for Kenya was in vain.

  They had already spoken by radio with the officer who had spent the last two hours driving Daneen in circles, and arranged for him to bring Daneen to Eleventh Street. They would meet her there and take her back to Central Detectives to file a missing person’s report. In the back of their minds, they were praying that Kenya would come home on her own. Because if she didn’t, statistics said she wasn’t likely to come home at all.

  Lynch turned onto Eleventh Street and tried not to think about that. Instead, he thought of Judy’s willingness to talk, and idly wondered if the Bridge would give up its secrets as easily. Of course, Lynch knew the answer. The streets would never surrender Sonny. Rather, the worn concrete would crack open and hide him in its bosom, like a mother protecting its child.

  If the case dragged out, there would be noise about Kenya’s disappearance. But it wouldn’t be long before the people of the Bridge resumed living by the rules—rules that said if the wind blew, everyone bent, because it was the bending that allowed them to stand.

  These were the same rules that caused the working people in the projects to labor to get out while pretending not to see the ones like Sonny. After all, they’d grown from the same concrete as he, in such close proximity that they could smell each other’s breath in the morning.