The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  Sonny wasted no time. Shortly after Dot moved to Fairview, he began to visit her there. Soon after that, she gave herself to him. Her passion was violent, clawing at his back, biting at his neck, squeezing him between her thighs until his breath rushed out of his wide-open mouth.

  The sheer magnitude of it gave her power over him. Sonny couldn’t resist her. And in truth, he didn’t want to.

  So he came back to her again and again. First with a car, then with a diamond, then with more money than she’d ever seen. Because when she wrapped his body in hers, pulling him down into a place so sweet he could never taste it completely, she always stopped just short of giving him her all. Sonny was always left waiting for more. He knew, just as she did, that it would never come. That she would still have power over him. But that was about to change.

  As Sonny knocked on her door, he tried hard not to think of how her body felt against his. When she answered, though, he couldn’t help remembering. Her face had the soft glow it always did right after she awakened. Her butter-colored legs extended from her short, silk robe like candy. He looked her up and down, taking it all in. And then he steeled himself, brushed past her, and hurried toward her bedroom.

  “Well, damn,” she said, closing the door behind him with an attitude. “Good mornin’ to you, too.”

  Sonny grunted in response, then reached into her closet, took out an outfit, and threw it on the floor.

  Dot walked into the bedroom behind him, nuzzling her face against his back as he reached down into the closet for a pair of shoes.

  “What you come in here wakin’ me up for?” she asked, her voice filled with a sensuous smile.

  He took a deep breath before turning to face her. The first thing he saw was the mischief in her eyes. She looked like a child. He liked that. It would make it easier for him.

  “Gimme your car keys,” he said in a low, hard voice.

  “I gotta go to the market today, Sonny,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Why you can’t just take your own damn car?”

  There was a loud silence. And then the smack came from nowhere, his right hand sailing through the air and landing flush on her cheek. He smacked her again with his left hand, then punched her with his right. When he was through, she was on the floor, bleeding and startled.

  “I bought you that car,” he said calmly. “That mean it’s mine. Now get up and get me the keys to my car.”

  Dot placed her palms flat on the floor and dragged herself to her feet. Her head was spinning as she walked across the room and retrieved the keys from her dresser drawer.

  She watched Sonny warily as she brought them to him, moving slowly enough to duck another blow if it came.

  “Hurry up, Dot,” he said, never looking at her as he snatched off his pants and shirt and began to dress in the clothes he’d taken from her closet.

  She scrambled over to him, pressed the keys into his hand, and moved backward until she was on the bed, cowering in the corner and wondering why Sonny had beaten her.

  They were both silent while he dressed—Dot wondering what would come next, and Sonny reveling in the power he’d taken back from her. When he finished, he stalked over to her and took her chin in his hand.

  “You ain’t see me this mornin’, Dot. Matter fact, anybody ask you anything about me, you don’t know me, you understand?”

  She shook her head yes.

  “No. Answer me, Dot.”

  “I don’t know you,” she said, sniffing as she held back the tears welling up in her eyes. “I never did know you.”

  The weight of her words held him there for a moment. He looked around uncomfortably, not knowing quite what to say. Then he left.

  Dot lay on the bed, knowing he was gone for good. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, holding herself because there was no one else to do so.

  When the phone began to ring, she ignored it. By the tenth ring, when she reached across the bed and snatched the receiver from the cradle, she was angry. Before she could say anything, though, her mother was screaming in her ear.

  “Dot, you heard about Sonny?”

  She started to say something, but her mother cut her off.

  “The nigga done did somethin’ to Kenya, girl.”

  “Huh?”

  “I tried to tell you about Sonny,” she said, warming to the subject. “But you ain’t wanna listen.”

  “Mom, what you talkin’ about?”

  “Kenya is missin’, Dot,” she said, placing emphasis on each word. “She been missin’ since last night. The cops tried to stop Sonny ‘cause they figured he knew where she was. He ran. Damn near killed a cop tryin’ to get away. Then he musta stole a car and hit Judge Baylor. And from what they sayin’ on the news, he hurt him pretty bad.”

  Dot held the phone and tried to digest what her mother was telling her.

  “Dot?”

  “Yes,” she croaked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Dot, if Sonny come over there, don’t let him in ’cause he might … just don’t let him in.”

  When Dot didn’t say anything, her mother’s voice took on a nervous edge.

  “He ain’t there now, is he, Dot? Please tell me he ain’t there now.”

  “He ain’t here, Mom,” she said, swallowing hard. “I ain’t seen him.”

  “Dot, listen to me.”

  “Mom, I gotta go,” she snapped, and slammed the phone into the cradle.

  She sat for a moment, biting her lip as her eyes quickly shifted back and forth. It had all happened so fast, this falling-apart. But it was a moment that she’d known would come. And as she tasted the blood that oozed into her mouth from the places he had slapped her, she did what she’d always known she would.

  Picking up the phone, she dialed the police, gave them Sonny’s description, the location where he was last seen, and the description of her car.

  A calm swept over her as she hung up. She wiped away tears with the back of her hand and sat for a full minute before a smile began to creep across her lips.

  “You gon’ be sorry you hurt me, Sonny,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’m gon’ make sure o’ that.”

  The parking lot at Central Detectives was eerily still when Lynch arrived with Wilson and Daneen. But he didn’t notice. His mind was filled with images of Sonny and the man who would surely die because of him.

  As much as he tried, though, Lynch couldn’t make himself care about Baylor. He was much too worried about himself.

  “Come on, Daneen,” Lynch said, roughly grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the backseat.

  “Stop pullin’ on me,” she said, snatching her arm away and locking eyes with him.

  Their stare was filled not with anger, but with longing. It was Lynch who looked away first.

  Wilson watched as a slew of conflicting feelings hung like a thick fog between them. She turned and started to walk toward the building. There were more important things to worry about than that.

  “Lynch!” a detective called out, running out of the back door with two officers following close behind. “She’s gone!”

  “What are you talking about?” he said, a lump swelling in his throat as he tore his eyes from Daneen’s.

  The detective stopped in front of Lynch. “Judy Brown,” he said, panting. “Chalmers took her to the bathroom about twenty minutes ago. She must’ve hit him with something. Gashed the back of his head pretty good.”

  “So how did she get out?” Lynch asked, his face turning an ashen gray.

  The detective looked down at the ground, clearly embarrassed. “We don’t know. My guess is she put on his uniform and walked out through the parking lot. I mean, he didn’t have it on when we found him on the bathroom floor.”

  Wilson’s lip curled as disgust swept over her face.

  “Why he was in the bathroom with her in the first place?” she asked, pausing for effect. “With his uniform off.”

  “I don’t like your tone,” the detective said, his eyes
flashing anger.

  “And I don’t like your nasty-ass officers molesting our prisoners,” Wilson said, moving toward the detective.

  Lynch stepped between them and placed a hand on the detective’s chest. “Where is Judy now?” he said.

  The detective looked from Lynch to Wilson, then sighed in frustration before surveying the empty spaces in the parking lot.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “But it looks like Chalmers’s car is gone.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Wilson said, throwing her hands in the air.

  Lynch’s reaction was cooler. “Let’s put out a description of the car,” he told the detective. “I’m sure she couldn’t have gotten far.”

  But not even Lynch believed that. With the Ben Franklin Bridge and the state of New Jersey just minutes away, Judy could be anywhere. For that matter, Sonny could, too.

  None of that mattered to Daneen. Sonny was just a means to an end. For her, it was about finding the one person who could help her to reclaim what had been lost in their months and years apart. It was about Kenya. And she wasn’t about to let anyone forget that.

  So she turned to Lynch with piercing eyes and spoke with the concern of a mother. “What about my baby?”

  Lynch and Wilson looked at her, then at each other. But before they could answer, the handheld radio on Lynch’s hip crackled to life.

  “Dan 25?”

  Lynch snatched the radio from his belt. “Dan 25.”

  “A complainant at the Fairview Apartments says your male just left her unit. He’s wearing a brown shirt and black pants and driving a blue 1990 Ford Taurus with a Pennsylvania tag of B-Barney, W-William, D-David, five-six-four-three. Direction unknown.”

  “Dan 25, what’s the complainant’s apartment number?”

  “Eight D. That’s eight D-David.”

  He turned to Daneen. “That apartment number sound familiar to you?”

  “No,” she said. “But that’s probably that young girl he mess with up there.”

  “And when were you going to tell us about that?” Wilson asked, clearly annoyed.

  Daneen wasn’t about to be bullied.

  “I woulda told you when you asked me,” she said. “Ya’ll the cops, not me.” not me.

  “Dan 25,” Lynch said, ignoring Daneen and speaking into the radio as he went back to his car. “I want that description broadcast over J band and East Division. Stand by for flash information on Judy Brown, wanted for investigation on narcotics violations, auto theft, and assault on a police officer.”

  Lynch jumped into his car with Wilson and Daneen while the detective who’d told him of Judy’s escape rattled off her description to radio.

  As Lynch drove the three of them toward the Fairview Apartments, verbal pictures of Sonny and Judy were painted over the airwaves of Philadelphia.

  With Judge Baylor on his deathbed, and Lynch poised to take the blame, the search for them was about much more than Kenya now.

  The knock at the door startled Dot. She thought it was Sonny, coming back to apologize, to take her with him, to do anything but what he’d done before he left.

  She dragged herself from her bed, walked into her living room, and stared through the peephole at a police officer standing in the hallway with a notepad in hand.

  She hadn’t expected the police to arrive that quickly. But she opened the door, eagerly inviting the officer inside.

  “You here about Sonny, right?”

  “Yeah,” the officer said, walking in while flipping through the notepad. “Where is he?”

  Dot started to answer. Then the officer took off her hat and sat down on the couch. Dot’s mouth dropped open.

  “Why you so surprised?” Judy asked, smiling in spite of herself. “You thought I ain’t know about you and Sonny?”

  Dot stumbled to find the right words. “Know … what?”

  “Look,” Judy said, her hard voice tinged with a quiet anger. “We ain’t got time to play games, sweetie. I always knew. I saw the way he looked at you when you was livin’ with your mama. Smelled you on his skin when he came back from seein’ you. But I ain’t care. Long as he brought home what was mine.”

  “So what you here for?” Dot asked.

  “’Cause Sonny got somethin’ belong to me. And I got a feelin’ you know where he went with it.”

  “Well, you wrong,” Dot said with an attitude. “I don’t know.”

  Judy got up from the couch, walked over to her and stood just a few inches away, staring at the cuts on her lips.

  “You know somethin’,” Judy said. “From the looks o’ things, Sonny been here.”

  Dot self-consciously raised her hand to cover her mouth.

  “Ain’t no need to cover it up, honey,” Judy said, her eyes boring into Dot’s. “’Cause if you don’t tell me what I wanna know in the next five seconds, I’m gon’ make sure everybody see it.”

  Dot knew she should be afraid, but she stood her ground with flat-footed defiance.

  Judy took it in, and her eyes clouded over with a quiet rage. Her hand balled into a fist, her mouth turned down in a grimace, and as the seconds ticked by, Dot’s resolve began to waver.

  Judy made a sudden move. Dot fell to the ground in a shivering mess. Judy dropped to one knee and grabbed her by the neck. Dot reached up and tried to pry Judy’s hands away. But as Judy’s grip tightened around her throat, it was clear that Dot was too weak to fight her off.

  “Niggas don’t tell you ‘bout this when they tryin’ to get between your legs, do they?” Judy said through a maniacal grin. “They don’t tell you they woman might walk up on you and choke the shit outta you.”

  The veins on Judy’s forehead stood out as she squeezed harder, cutting off Dot’s air. Dot’s face turned red, then purple as she struggled to break free.

  For a split second, Judy considered squeezing the life from the girl who had taken a piece of Sonny away from her.

  But then good sense prevailed over anger. She let go, sitting back on her haunches as Dot coughed and tried to catch her breath.

  “Where he at?” Judy asked.

  Dot looked up at her, at once fearful and relieved.

  “Gone,” was all she could manage to say.

  Judy got up from the floor and looked down at her menacingly. “Gone where?”

  “To hell, I hope,” Dot said with a gasp.

  Judy continued to look down at her and wait. When Dot caught her breath, she repeated the description she’d given to 9-1-1.

  Judy memorized it. Then she rushed from Dot’s building and walked one block to the Salvation Army Corps on Huntingdon Street.

  She told them that she needed clothing for a rape victim she was taking to police headquarters. When they gave her the clothes, Judy went outside, slipped into an alley, took off the police uniform she was wearing, and changed into the clothing herself. From there, she walked to Germantown and Rising Sun, where she took a room in a two-story hotel whose most loyal customers were crack prostitutes.

  After checking into the room, she took to the street to find Sonny.

  Chapter Seven

  Lily looked from the cracked brown floor tiles in her hallway to the shadows that spilled across Darnell’s ashen gray face. She thought that if she stared long enough, she would find answers. But the only things she found were questions. And all of them were about Kenya.

  In the midst of her uncertainty, there were two things that Lily believed to be true. Sonny had molested Kenya. And somehow, he had arranged for her to disappear.

  As far as Lily was concerned, Darnell’s assertion that Judy was involved was wrong. No matter how much the drug game had hardened her, Judy wouldn’t have harmed Kenya to hide the truth about Sonny and their drug enterprise. She just wasn’t that ruthless.

  So when Lily looked up through the shadows of her uncertainty and saw what she believed to be the truth, she spoke it without the slightest hesitation.

  “It wasn’t Judy,” she told Darnell. “It m
ighta been some o’ them people that hang around her place. But it wasn’t her.”

  Darnell peered down the hallway at the living-room couch where Lily’s daughter sat, watching television. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “I wanna believe that, but I can’t,” he said. “Much as it hurt me to say it about my aunt, I can’t stop thinkin’ it was her.”

  “Much as it hurt you to say it?” Lily repeated sarcastically. “I don’t think nothin’ hurt you, Darnell. I don’t even think you remember how it feel to hurt.”

  He didn’t respond. Not outwardly. But inside, his mind was in another place—in a time when he and Lily couldn’t stand this close to one another without touching.

  “You’d be surprised what I remember, Lily.”

  “You said you came here about Kenya,” she snapped. “Not about us.”

  “Us?” he said. “Ain’t no such thing as us no more, is it?”

  Lily stared at him for a moment. And then she looked away. The memories from their time together reminded her of what it was like to be happy. It was easier when she couldn’t remember.

  “You right, Darnell,” she said finally. “It ain’t no us. But it’s a little girl that need to be found. And the cops damn sure ain’t gon’ do it.”

  “So you gon’ find her?” Darnell asked skeptically.

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Neither do 1. Seem like I been walkin’ in circles all mornin’, hopin’ I would run into her.”

  “You been out all mornin’ and you ain’t ran into nobody that seen her?” Lily said cynically. “Seem to me like you ain’t really been lookin’.”

  “Well, I did hear somebody say she was with that girl from the tenth floor. What’s her name?”

  “Lakeesha or Shanequa or one o’ them ghetto-ass names.”

  Darnell smiled. “Her name Tyreeka,” he said.

  Lily grunted, staring into the space between them as she conjured images of Tyreeka, the little girl who was too old for Kenya, but too young for the teenage boys she seemed to attract.