The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  When she looked at Sonny again, his gun was pointing out the driver-side window.

  “Hang up the phone, open the gate, and you’ll live,” he said calmly.

  Seconds later, the car sped out of the parking lot.

  Lily banged on Tyreeka’s mother’s door with curses poised on her lips. But when the door swung open, the self-righteous anger that had sent her running down the stairs began to melt away.

  Hattie Johnson stood in the doorway wearing a look that Lily had seen in so many of her neighbors’ faces. It was neither fatigue, nor sadness, nor frustration, but a combination of all three. It was the kind of look that came when tears no longer would, when the reality of the projects sank down to the very marrow of the bone.

  “Is Tyreeka here?” Lily asked, her voice more timid than she meant for it to sound.

  With three knee-high grandchildren grasping at her legs and the television blaring in the background, Hattie fixed her glazed, tired eyes on Lily.

  “I ain’t seen Tyreeka since ten o’clock last night,” she said, her eyes showing a spark of anger. “But when I do, she gon’ wish she ain’t have to see me at all.”

  Lily stood in the hallway with Darnell and Janay, looking and feeling uncomfortable. Hattie was about to step aside to let them in, but then she glimpsed Darnell, and the look and smell of crack gave her pause.

  “If y’all don’t want nothin’ else …” she said, and started to close the door.

  Lily reached out and held it open.

  Hattie looked at her expectantly. The spark of anger was gone, replaced by fatigue.

  “We tryin’ to find Judy’s little niece, Kenya,” Lily said. “Ain’t nobody seen her since last night.”

  Hattie’s dead eyes came alive again at the chance to gossip. “I heard about that,” she said in an anxious, conspiratorial whisper. “Heard they took Judy outta here in handcuffs this mornin’, and they lookin for Sonny. They think they did somethin’ to the child or somethin’?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said, looking up at Darnell, who stood quiet and still beside her.

  “But from what we heard, Kenya was with Tyreeka last night,” Lily continued. “I’m not tryin’ to get in your business or nothin’, but if you could tell us where Tyreeka went when she left here, it might help us find Kenya.”

  “Honey, if I knew where Tyreeka was at, I would be draggin’ her home myself,” she said, grabbing one of the children who had wandered too far into the hallway.

  “’Cause if she think she gon’ do what her sister did and stick me with her baby,” she added, her lips twisting with attitude, “she got another thing comin’.”

  Just then, Tyreeka’s twenty-week-old daughter screamed. She was sitting in the middle of the living-room floor, strapped in a tiny, padded rocking chair with curdled formula dribbling down her vomit-soaked sleeper.

  The screaming continued for a minute straight. Then the baby settled into a low-pitched, constant whimper.

  Lily looked at the child with concern.

  “Don’t worry ’bout her,” Hattie said, reading her expression. “She all right. She just loud.”

  Lily didn’t look convinced. But she continued anyway.

  “So, you don’t know if they was together at all?” she asked.

  “I just know I told Tyreeka to go to the store and get some cereal so I could put it in this baby’s bottle and put her to sleep. I mean, I knew she wouldn’t come right back. But I ain’t expect her to stay out all night.”

  “Okay,” Lily said, sighing as she turned to leave. “I ain’t mean to bother you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hattie said, calling Lily back. “There was one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My cousin came up here last night. I guess she called herself tellin’. She told me Tyreeka was—”

  Hattie turned around when she heard Sonny’s name on television. They all stopped to listen.

  “Police were in pursuit of a bright green Mustang driven by Williams,” the reporter said. “He was wanted for investigation in connection with the disappearance of a little girl whose identity has not been released. Williams allegedly hit Baylor’s car, causing the crash that killed the highly respected judge—a man widely expected to be the city’s next D.A. Williams escaped, but the car he was driving has been found at Thirteenth and Cumberland, and right now, police are combing the vehicle for evidence.

  “Channel 10 has also learned that Williams was stopped on the expressway by another officer about twenty minutes ago, but escaped after a struggle during which the officer fired his weapon. No word yet on the officer’s condition. We’ll have more details as they become available. But again, for those just tuning in, Common Pleas Judge John Baylor, community activist, respected jurist, prospective district attorney, has died of massive head injuries resulting from this morning’s crash. He was fifty-two. Police are searching for Sonny Williams, the man believed responsible for the fatal crash. And highly placed sources say that an investigation into the department’s role in the accident has already begun.

  “This is Jim Wright, Channel 10 News, reporting live from Hahnemann Hospital in Center City.”

  They all stood silently for the next minute or so. Their faces were portraits of shock.

  “Oh my God,” Hattie finally said, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and fear.

  “What is it?” Lily asked.

  “The car they said Sonny was in—that was the car my cousin told me the guy was drivin’.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy Tyreeka was talkin’ to,” she said, clenching her fist at her side. “The guy she got in the car with last night.”

  Chapter Eight

  They looked like soldiers marching to Crispus Attucks—the housing project just a few blocks west of the Bridge.

  Lily was first, walking so quickly that her feet flew over the cracked, uneven sidewalk in a blur. Janay was next, then Darnell. And bringing up the rear was Tyreeka’s mother, Hattie, who had asked her cousin to watch her grandchildren while she went out to find her daughter.

  Lily wasn’t really concerned about Tyreeka. All she wanted was Kenya. And as they approached the corner of Twelfth and Parrish, where a half dozen boys stood huddled outside a graffiti-scarred Chinese take-out restaurant, Lily was almost running to find her.

  Most of the boys saw her coming, and the group split to make room. But the one she wanted to talk to turned around too late. He wasn’t prepared to meet her with the rugged disposition that the corner required. And before he knew it, Lily was in his face.

  “Where Tyreeka at, boy?” she said menacingly.

  “What you—”

  “Look, nigga. I ain’t got time to be out here playin’ with you. Tyreeka cousin seen her get in the car with you last night. Now I wanna know where Tyreeka at, and I wanna know where Kenya went, too. And while you at it, I need you to tell me why you out here ridin’ around with nine-year-old girls in your car.”

  At that, the other drug dealers backed away slowly, looking at the boy with a mixture of pity and disgust.

  Soon after, the corner of Twelfth and Parrish fell silent. And that was no small feat.

  The sounds of Twelfth Street had always come from the lives that passed through it. Even the bricks of the low-rise buildings had stories to tell. Like the timeworn trolley tracks that split the pothole-riddled street, the bricks had absorbed the spirit of those who’d lived there for the past fifty years.

  And while the corner had transformed from a close-knit community to a disparate mix of fear and desperation, it had always been alive with children. But now, the sound of the corner was not the life that came from childhood games. It was the death that came from gunshots and drug deals gone bad.

  But with Lily’s arrival, even that changed. The ritual that the addicts and dealers had learned to perform came grinding to a halt. The banging pots and spatulas in the Chinese restaurant were still. The hum of traffic ceased.

 
The boy was silent, too, fingering the nine-millimeter that was tucked into his waistband as he nervously surveyed the faces of the other dealers. From the way they looked at him, he knew that the nine wasn’t an option.

  Though a dozen murders had been committed on that corner for less serious infractions than Lily’s, she had asked him about the whereabouts of a little girl. And if the other boys on the corner could help it, Lily was going to get what she demanded. Because even the dealers knew that little girls were off-limits. Especially when there were grown women who were willing to perform any perversion they could imagine for as little as five dollars.

  “Lemme talk to you for a minute, miss,” the boy said, tugging Lily’s arm to pull her away from the crowd.

  Darnell stepped closer when the boy touched her. Two dealers moved to intercept him. Lily saw what was happening, pulled her arm away, and stood her ground.

  “You can talk to me right here,” she said defiantly.

  Darnell and the dealers relaxed.

  “All right,” the boy said, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “But lemme straighten somethin’ out for you. If Tyreeka younger than sixteen, she damn sure don’t look like it. Plus she already got a baby by Bop, from down Twenty-second Street, so I know she ain’t nine years old.”

  There were solemn nods of agreement from the other boys on the corner.

  “That ain’t the point,” Tyreeka’s mother said sharply. “I wanna know where she at, ’cause she damn sure ain’t got no business with you.”

  The boy affected a cool bravado and tried to repair the damage the last few minutes had done to his reputation.

  “She spent the night with me over my aunt spot up Yorktown,” he said with a shrug. “We smoked a couple blunts, did what we had to do, and went to sleep in the basement. She got up and said she had to go home. So I threw her a couple dollars, and I ain’t seen her since then.”

  Tyreeka’s mother shrank back into the crowd, embarrassed by what she knew to be the truth about her promiscuous daughter.

  “What about Kenya?” Lily asked insistently.

  “If you talkin’ ’bout that little girl Tyreeka was with last night, I saw her go back in the buildin’ before me and Tyreeka started talkin’. She ain’t never get in my car. Matter fact, I ain’t been in my car since last night, ’cause …”

  He hesitated. But with the entire corner awaiting his explanation, he knew he had no choice but to tell them why.

  “I ain’t been in my car since last night ’cause somebody stole it from in front o’ my aunt house this mornin’.”

  “You sure about that?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, feeling smaller than he’d felt just minutes before. “I’m sure.”

  “If it’s the car I think it is,” she said, “you might wanna look up Thirteenth and Cumberland for it. Sonny Williams stole a car like yours and crashed it up there this mornin’. They had somethin’ on the news about it.”

  “Sonny, huh?” the boy said, his face filling up with anger as he turned to the other dealers. “I talk to y’all later. I got some business I gotta handle.”

  He left the corner with an exaggerated stroll, as if he was about to do something drastic. But while his furrowed brow and set jaw were theatrically perfect, the boy knew, like everyone else, that there was nothing he could do to Sonny. And as he walked away, that knowledge trailed behind him.

  Moments after he’d left, Twelfth and Parrish came back to life. The boy became grist for the rumor mill. The man he was supposedly going to find became something else altogether.

  Sonny left the hospital parking lot and gunned the stolen Maxima down South Street, hoping that the woman in the cashier’s booth would be too afraid to call the police.

  By the time he hit Sixteenth Street, he knew that she wasn’t. Two blocks ahead of him, a police car rolled into the intersection of Broad and South, its dome lights flashing as two officers jumped from the vehicle with guns drawn.

  Sonny, who had already passed Fifteenth by then, couldn’t turn because there were no other cross streets. He couldn’t take to the sidewalk because there were parked cars on either side. He had only one way out, and even as the officers aimed their guns at him, Sonny decided to take it.

  Stomping on the accelerator, he steadied the steering wheel, lowered his head, and headed straight for the police car. The Maxima’s engine went from a low-pitched hum to a rumbling scream. Glass broke over his head as bullets punched through the windshield. He raised his voice to a primal yell and lifted his head just before impact. Then he swerved to avoid a head-on collision.

  The officers dived for cover as he smashed into the car’s fender, causing it to spin into a nearby traffic light. The Maxima tilted on two wheels and the airbag deployed as the car crossed Broad Street, then came crashing down on all fours. Sonny braked, the car skidded, then he turned on tiny Clarion Street as the sound of police sirens filled the air.

  He grabbed the backpack, jumped from the car, and bolted, heading toward the nearby Martin Luther King Housing Project. A police wagon pulled in behind him, and two officers jumped out and gave chase.

  Sonny turned and fired. The bullets flew high, but the gunfire was enough to make the officers hit the ground. As they scrambled to their feet, Sonny rounded the corner, ducked through the broken basement window of a vacant house, and pulled the bag in behind him.

  When the officers ran past with their static-filled radios blaring, Sonny stood atop the basement’s three-foot-high pile of trash, trying not to breathe too heavily.

  When they were far enough away, he quickly put his gun in his waistband, then turned around and surveyed the dark basement, looking for a way out. It took only seconds to find the daylight pouring in from a hole where a tree had grown through the back wall.

  Sonny moved toward the light, stumbling over trash as rats scurried and squealed at his feet. When he reached the light, he realized that the opening was too narrow to accommodate him. He pulled at one of the bricks, and a row of them fell down, striking his head.

  He ignored the pain as blood oozed into his eyes, pulling ever more desperately at the bricks until he’d opened a man-size space. Then he squeezed out of the house, crossed the overgrown weeds in the back alley, and climbed over the rickety wooden gate enclosing the house on the other side.

  Sonny stood for a moment in the backyard, listening to the faint sound of a television. He didn’t hear any other voices. But even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. He didn’t care if there were people inside.

  Climbing the two crumbling concrete steps that led to the wooden kitchen door, he placed his shoulder against it, leaned in on an angle, and extended his leg for leverage. Then he pushed, splintering the doorjamb as he forced the door.

  Seconds later, he was in the house, desperately hoping to find a way out.

  When the call for an assist went out over the main band of police radio, Lynch and Wilson knew that Sonny had made his way to South Philadelphia.

  They broke off the search for Judy, which had taken them through all of the tiny streets around Germantown and Lehigh, and raced to Broad and South with Daneen still in the backseat of their car.

  Using the emergency lane that ran down the middle of Broad Street, it took them fifteen minutes to get to the scene. Once they arrived, they saw the devastation that Sonny had wrought.

  The police car he’d struck sat against a leaning traffic light, its front grille twisted into a broken, toothless grin. One of the two officers who’d occupied the car was being carted to a nearby rescue vehicle with a back injury.

  Just half a block away, the stolen Maxima sat in the middle of Clarion Street, its front end smashed and its driver-side door flung open.

  Lynch, Wilson, and Daneen took it all in, saying nothing. But in their minds, they were all wondering if Sonny’s elusiveness had cost them precious time in the search for Kenya.

  It was Lynch who broke the silence.

  “I’m gonna find out who’s i
n charge,” he said, after he’d parked among the dozen police vehicles that filled the intersection. “I’ll be back.”

  As he jumped out of the car and approached a lieutenant who was directing officers to close off the corner’s subway entrances, Wilson and Daneen sat quietly, each of them mulling her own thoughts.

  Wilson watched as two district captains and the inspector in command of South Division arrived at the scene along with a dozen more patrol cars.

  Daneen sat stoically in the backseat, consumed by the guilt she felt over her daughter’s disappearance.

  Wilson understood it, could feel it even without looking at Daneen. It was something that only a mother could comprehend.

  She knew that there was no other woman for Daneen to turn to, so she broke an unwritten rule, throwing off her professional detachment and allowing herself—if only for a moment—to simply be Roxanne Wilson.

  “Daneen,” she said, turning to face her.

  Stone-faced, Daneen stared out the window and ignored the detective.

  “I know what it’s like to want your child back,” she said gently. “I’m not saying I know what you’re going through, because that’s the last thing you need to hear right now. But I will tell you this. I want you to find your daughter for more reasons than you know—personal reasons. And I’m going to make sure I do everything I can to help you. Okay?”

  Daneen nodded silently. It was if she heard Wilson, but didn’t hear her. Wilson understood that, too, and pressed on in spite of it.

  “Now, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” she said, “and I’m not asking you this to be nosy or anything like that. But I’m just wondering if Kevin is the best person to help you with this.”

  She stopped and looked at Daneen, trying to gauge her reaction. Daneen didn’t turn to face her, so Wilson continued.

  “I’ve been watching the two of you, and there’s something going on there. It’s like you’re—I know this sounds silly, but I’m just going to say it. It’s like you’re in love with each other. Like I said, I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been around for a long time, and I’ve learned that only love can make you despise somebody like that.”